Forum:Alienation of new and IP users: Difference between revisions

Forum:Alienation of new and IP users (edit)

Revision as of 07:13, 26 August 2011

3,330 bytes added , 26 August 2011

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173.228.85.35

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 I think we need to come to some conclusion with this. With new second half of the series coming out at the end of the month, there is a high chance we will get some new Users. Some may be temporary, some may not be. We should decide and talk about how best not to alienate these new Users and how (or if) we will used the templates suggested in the above discussion, or create a guide for new Users. [[User:Mini-mitch|MM]]/<small>[[User talk:Mini-mitch|Want to talk?]]</small> 16:06, August 8, 2011 (UTC)
 :I think we need to revisit how we interpret vandalism, and especially unintentional vandalism. I don't think blocking is necessary in ''every'' instance of vandalism, especially when it can be something not done with malice.
 :I think the block command has been used a bit like a battering ram where a simple note on a talk page would have sufficed. Several of the recent blocks could have been sorted out via a talk comment, rather than a block I think.
 :We need to be, I think '''a lot''' more forgiving and patient with new users and ''explain'' some things to them.
 :As admins we need to be the ones who have the buckets of patience with the new users, not the other way around.
 :With ''Miracle Day'' we've left the story pages '''unprotected''' and we haven't seen any major vandalism, should we continue and carry that through to the Doctor Who episodes? Leaving them to be edited by everyone? We can then wait and see if the page attracts bad faith edits before protecting it.
 :I agree that a short guide would be useful, but how short?
 :I've often toyed with the idea that it should be ''incredibly'' basic with examples to illustrate it, as that's how I learnt how to edit, by looking at the Wiki and following suit, so;
 ::*Use '''British''' spelling for everything on this wiki, so that's '''colour''' not ''color'', '''realise''' not ''realize'', see [[Tardis:Spelling policy|our spelling policy]] for more information.
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 ::*All story pages have a layout which is common across all formats see; ''[[The Krotons]]'', ''[[Red Dawn]]'', ''[[Love and War]]''.
 :That would be about it, the Manual of Style, is quite literally what it's become a full '''manual''' of style, with all the heft of a manual for style and writing. I don't think overloading any guide for new users is perhaps the best method (the MoS is there for a full explanation of stuff), new users want to jump in and edit '''straight away''', so being able to read examples of articles is better way of understanding how things work. --[[User:Tangerineduel|Tangerineduel]] / '''[[User talk:Tangerineduel|talk]]''' 07:13, August 10, 2011 (UTC)
+:
+::I think all of your ideas are good, and more wikis should try moving in the same direction (or at least watch this one to see how it goes). Especially the idea of a brief edit guide; that's so much better than a single sentence linking to a massive Manual of Style that nobody will ever read. But, I have some comments to add.
+::
+::First, taking your idea farther: I don't know if there's a way to do this with the software, but if you could make the brief edit guide actually visible on the page the first few times a user (or IP) makes an edit, that would be hugely helpful. Similarly, if someone tries to edit, say, the plot section of the latest episode's article, a link to a good example of a plot section from a previous article would be great.
+::
+::When someone makes a silly mistake in their first edit, if you tell someone what they did wrong and revert their edit, they get frustrated; if you find a way to fix their mistake but preserve the important part of their contribution (and then explain why you changed it), they often understand that you're trying to train them up as a member of the team, so they stick around. Of course that's more work, but if your goal is to attract and retain editors, that's the best way I know of.
+::
+::The idea of "in-universe" isn't as obvious and clear-cut to someone who isn't a regular in some kind of fandom-based wiki (or forum, newsgroup, etc.). For example, the plot of an episode describes what happened in the universe, but it's not an in-universe section. Also, there are out-of-universe sections on in-universe pages and vice-versa (e.g., "Behind the Scenes" on character pages). I'm not sure how to get this all across, but maybe give examples first: "Articles about characters, cities, wars and other in-universe stuff are past tense; articles about episodes, writers, and other real-world things are not." (But not with the words "stuff" and "things", hopefully.)
+::
+::Finally, a trivial bit. This is red-pen grammar-nazi stuff, but the edit guide really needs to be absolutely perfectly written, because it's going to be what people read right before making their own edits. So: The first sentence is a run-on. There should be a semicolon or full stop before 'see' (or, if you want to be ultra-modern British, leave that as a comma but remove most of the other commas). The other two sentences use semicolons to introduce lists, and semicolons can't do that; you can use a colon that way, or an em dash, but for something this simple, it's better (at least in British English, which is what matters here) to have no punctuation. On the other hand, those same two sentences need semicolons before 'see' (or, better yet, full stops); you've got it in the wrong clause. The last sentence would be simpler as 'All story pages have a common layout, across all formats'. The italics for the American spellings in the first sentence are weird (italics don't just mean 'emphasis, but not as much as bold'). And you probably want to put the spellings in quotes (because you're talking about the word 'colour', not about colours)—and it's a good idea to have quotes somewhere anyway, so that Americans realize they're supposed to use single quotes where they'd normally use double quotes. --[[Special:Contributions/173.228.85.35|173.228.85.35]] 07:13, August 26, 2011 (UTC)