2009/12/5 Carcharoth <[email protected]>:

> Give polite and constructive feedback on their editing, be gentle on
> what they are doing wrong, leave them with plenty of ideas for other
> things to do, and warn them that Wikipedia is a big place and some
> people they meet will be quite abrasive. If they are already abrasive
> themselves, support anyone they have upset.


"Wikipedia is part of the internet, so (a) there are a certain number
of complete idiots (b) there are a certain number of people who will
think you are a complete idiot. Whatever you do. Those of us here to
write an encyclopedia learn to be patient and get on with it."


> Or do you mean how to get them editing in the first place? That used
> to be "click this red link and create an article". As the standards
> for new articles rises and the links are to obscurer topics that need
> a good start when created, that is harder to do. Maybe promote more of
> the links to various projects such as disambiguation, wikilinking,
> vandalism patrol, simple article clean-up, and so on. But don't throw
> people in at the deep end and wonder why they are floundering.


That's why missing-article lists occur to me as a good starting point
- these are articles that someone has noticed we could do with. So a
coupla good references and they're likely to stick.


- d.

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