William Pietri wrote:
Rob wrote:
The fact that a block gets someone MAD does not
justify further abuse,
and the talk page should not be used to give a troll a soapbox to
attack people.
I'd agree with that. On the other hand, there's this pattern I'm
worried
about that goes something like this:
1. A new user tries to do something that seems reasonable to them,
but is annoying to us -- e.g., adding their friend's band to
Wikipedia.
2. Almost instantly they receive a boilerplate negative reaction from
us -- e.g., their article is speedied.
3. They struggle to understand what the hell is going on and do
something they think is reasonable -- let's say they replace the
speedy template with {{hangon}} and go on editing their article.
4. They get another instant boilerplate negative reaction and
experience more frustration -- perhaps they get the template back,
a user page warning for removing speedies, and an edit conflict to
boot.
5. After repeatedly being frustrated in trying to do something they
think is useful, they express their frustration with less than
perfect politeness.
6. The cycle of negative interactions spirals until they end up blocked.
The disrespect starts at #2. If the person so acting took the trouble
to open a dialogue instead of slapping on impersonal boilerplate and
initiating hostile action a lot more of these newbies could be mentored
into becoming useful contributors.
And then from here, I'm sure a most of those people
just go away,
nursing their burnt fingers and telling their pals what jerks those
Wikipedians are. A few of them take it as a great injustice and turn
into long-term enemies.
With full justification for doing so.
I would rather we took more time with these people, as
I think we
currently create more enemies than we need, and discourage potential
contributors.
That's the big problem to overcome.
Ec