[WikiEN-l] Newbie and not-so-newbie biting

[Charles Matthews]

Emily Monroe wrote:
> Yeah, it does seem to me that the more "spammy" the article, the more 
> likely the person simply doesn't know of Wikipedia's COI, spam, and 
> notability requirements. It's not that they are writing in bad faith, 
> they really don't know that, for example, just because their 
> competitor has written an article doesn't mean that they should write 
> an article about their own company. Sad, really.
Getting back to the initial complainant: 
http://howwikipediaworks.com/ch10.html covers all sorts of things that 
are also not well known generally, but probably cannot so easily be 
found on the site. For example, bot edits were (a more ranty) part of 
the complaint, and they are dealt with in that discussion. That book 
chapter has no official status at all, of course: but in comparison the 
suite of policy pages and help pages is unambitious in actually 
explaining how the system functions, in the round. There is a proper 
distinction to be made between "user-friendliness" and simple 
"friendliness", of course, but it doesn't seem entirely helpful to have 
two separate discussions going on, one on "usability" at Foundation 
level, and another on "the community" as self-criticism on the enWP 
level, without some sort of model of this "life cycle" kind in the 
background.

Charles