[Foundation-l] Priorities

Sun Oct 21 14:25:17 UTC 2007

--- Florence Devouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:

> We are more numerous, more protective to our 
> featured-content, less welcoming to our newbies (for
> technical or social 
> reasons).
> How many experts have been driven away by the agressivity
> of some of our 
> members ? How many new editors just were discouraged by
> the difficulty 
> of editing a table or a template ? How many newbies were
> blocked because 
> they just did not understood quickly enough how to use a
> talk page ?
> Also, during the year, several cases of online or offline
> harassment of 
> contributors were reported. Harassement which came as a
> result of their 
> contributions to our projects.

Absolutely.

Having tried editing anonymously for a few weeks myself, I
can assure you our treatment of newcomers - even those that
understand things from a technical perspective - leaves
much to be desired.

I'd also like to add another question to your list, if I
may. How many experienced editors with thousands of edits
and no user conduct issues have been forced to stop
contributing after they were found to be editing via
proxies and issued with a de facto ban by administrators
enforcing a policy for policy's sake? While the number may
be small, the loss from each is significant.

-Gurch