On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:06:39PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
Put it this way. We have a lot of readers, and few contributors. The vast majority of our readers are willing to expend precisely zero effort learning how to use our system in order to help us.
Ok, let's focus right in on that, and hammer on it a bit, shall we?
An argument seems to be being made (by the side which, clearly, I am not on) that there is a group of contributors out there who
a) have something useful to contribute to WP b) have "precisely zero" interest in expending any effort to learn how to do so -- when that wall is *stunningly* low. (This isn't Framemaker, folks.)
If they can't be bothered to learn wikitext, can they be bothered to read [[Assume Good Faith]]? Or [[NPOV]]? Or follow the [[Village Pump]], etc, etc, ad nauseum?
Are we equipped, as a community, to deal with (let us say) tripling the number of active editors we have now, where most of the new ones can't be bothered to learn... well, anything?
Some would say we're in critical trouble on that front *now*; it doesn't make much sense to me to enable new people who "are willing to expend precisely zero energy" on working with our community, such as it is.
Cheers, -- jra