[WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?

[William Pietri]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> The trivial counter to your argument is that there have been plenty of
> products that caused harm slowly enough or at a infrequently enough
> rate that LOTS of people still purchased/used them.
>
> It's not that people who smoke think "I don't mind cancer", it's that
> they don't experience the negative effects often enough to encourage
> them to make another decision.

Are mistakes in Wikipedia really harmful? My very first edit was to fix 
a minor mistake. That seems to be a common origin story. One of my 
favorite tricks for getting people to engage with intranet wikis is to 
leave obvious mistakes or omissions. And in a wiki-based startup I'm 
involved in, we are concerned that staff building the site too much can 
reduce community involvement.

I don't think many people take up smoking for the cancer. But judging by 
the number of anonymous little fixes, a lot of people edit Wikipedia 
because of damaged articles.

William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri