[Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 3:00 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> Sue Gardner wrote:
>> I spent some time this weekend on New User Contributions on the
>> English Wikipedia, reading the talk pages of new people who'd been
>> trying to make constructive edits. I was trying to imagine the world
>> through their eyes --- what their early experiences felt like. Some
>> had welcome templates and some didn't, and many also had templates
>> added that were probably intimidating for new people (warnings and
>> corrections of various kinds, mostly).
>
> You should try gaining the other perspective: thousands of edits each hour
> from people all over the world, a decent-sized percentage of which are
> purely malicious and another decent-sized percentage of which are completely
> clueless.

On English. On some African language wikis, a single edit can be a
cause for celebration[1]

I think it's important to remember as we chat on Foundation-l that
"Wikipedia" is not a single monolithic entity. :-)

Also, since not many people seem to want to clutter up the thread with
answers to my welcome message question, I posted it on my blog
instead; comments welcome. http://www.phoebeayers.info/phlog/?p=2009

-- phoebe

1. http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=802