[WikiEN-l] Featured editors?

[Michael Noda]

On Nov 15, 2007 3:09 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> I am, however, somewhat frustrated by the continual arrival of
> newcomers to old discussions, each requiring that the whole thing be
> gone through again.

Guy, I have some very, very bad news for you.

We are growing at a rate of several hundred users, *every day*.  Every
one of these newcomers (well, the legit ones, not the couple dozen
socks) has absolutely no idea what the history is of our long-term
abusers.  Each newcomer that encounters our dealings with these
abusers is going to have questions about it, because that's human
nature.  So unless you write up documentation that can be used as a
reference (not the LTA hall-of-fame that we had once, but real
documentation), someone is going to have to explain things to them.
If it's not you, or any of the rest of us, it's going to be WR.

Think of an elementary school where the kindergarteners, on arrival,
have yet to be taught the basic things like queueing up, sharing the
toys, raising your hand and waiting to be called on, etc.  Now imagine
a school that has a has a new class of kindergarteners every week.
That's us.

If that sounds nightmarish to you, you're not alone.  Your frustration
is perfectly understandable and very human.  Others have headed for
the exits on realizing what the future held if they stayed.  We can't
specialize our way out of it, either; there is no Corps of Newbie
Indoctrinators/Kindergarten Teachers who can do all the heavy lifting
for us; the burden is on each of us.

This is an inherent part of being a Wikipedian.  It won't stop until
the community stops growing, which now that our growth has slacked
from exponential to polynomial might not happen for a very long time.

So long as we can keep our wits about us and *stay patient* with our
newbies, they will grow into mature members of the community, and help
in turn with future generations.  If we can't, we'll get a lot of
anti-social behavior and the place will go to hell.

I'm sorry if this is unnecessary, but it seemed like a reminder of why
WP:BITE is one of our most important policies was called for.