[WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A rational proposal

Sun Feb 19 19:34:37 UTC 2006

Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 2/18/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>I think to a degree Wikipedia has reached that stage Usenet did, where
>>>suddenly the influx of new people is beyond the rate at which they
>>>tend to acclimate to the older culture.  There are so many newbies
>>>that a newbie-culture can develop without having to join the existing
>>>one.
>>>
>
>Is this true? It's a fairly bold statement...is there evidence for it?
>
In the process of bashing on the untagged images that have
accumulated since last summer, I've noticed quite a few
accounts where they've uploaded, banged on articles, etc, yet
the talk page is blank - no one ever posted a welcome message.
There is another contingent of logins whose talk pages seem to
record mostly semi-informed discussion with other newbies. Some
stick around, some only last for a day or week.

Dunno if it it's evidence, but clearly there is a bunch whose
first interaction with the "older culture" is coming six months
after their first edit, and only because an uploaded image is
found to be missing information.

Stan