Agree 100% with David (DGG) here. On the other hand, a careful combination of templates with personalised messages can also work. See this essay here for more on this type of approach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ArielGold/Etiquette2 Carcharoth On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 7:47 PM, David Goodman <[email protected]> wrote: > Look again at those messages. The succeed in sounded cold, formal, and > sent by a computer without human intervention--which is just what > twinkle etc. make it so easy to do. They talk too much about > complicated rules, and they sound more defensive than helpful. > > I almost never use them, except when I'm dealing with someone I > suspect to be in bad faith. And even there they don't send a true > warning--people treat them as forms. a personal message to say that > one is personally and specifically watching can be much more > effective. > > They've gotten a little better over the last year or too, but most of > them need to be thought out differently. when one starts off > criticising, most people don't read to the bottom. > > and the reason people don't complain, is indeed because the > unsophisticated editors move on. They move on out of Wikipedia and we > lose them. > > But some people do complain: that's why we have the rule about not > templating the regulars. the regulars get insulted. They're right to > get insulted. Anyone would. But we only care about those who are > already regulars. > > Don't routinely direct people to our overlong, overcomplicated, > inconsistent, and frequently ignored guidelines, explain it simply: A > wording I sometimes use is "you need to become famous first, & then > somebody will write about you" . Now, that's not exact, but it's > understood, and nobody gets insulted--they know perfectly well they're > not famous, and it sort of makes a joke out of it. > > and for unsourced, "you really need a published reference for that" -- > they've heard that sort of thing in school, they'll understand. > > David > > > On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Phil Nash <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> creating good content through practice, the latter >> may need educating, and this is normally done through templated messages, >> the first level of which assumes good faith; however, it is often easier >> when time is short to revert with an edit summary of "unsourced", >> "irrelevant" or something equally blunt. > >>Again, in my experience, very few >> "unsophisticated" (and this is not meant to be an insult) editors complain, >> because they edit and move on. > >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> > > > > -- > David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
