I love Wikipedia, both the idea behind it and the site it's self, and have contributed plenty of time and cash over the years. However I have to agree that the processes have become far too labyrinthine and unfriendly for the uninitiated.
We (the existing Wikipedia community) need to have a rethink of how we lay out our rules and guides and the process for navigating them, we also need to start being a smidge more consistent about how we enforce the rules.
Mostly though, we need to be a little more tolerant of the N00Bs. I get it's tricky, you're busy, hundred things at once and some muppet comes in asking the same question we've been asked 16million times before; it's easy to be a bit terse, but if we want Wikipedia to continue to succeed we need to take a deep breath in those moments and remember to that person, at that moment, we are Wikipedia. A bad impression that turns them away from the site means they're unlikely to ever come back and that's the last thing we want.
I get why everyone's being defensive, and yes, the article was written in a very combative style, but we also need to face up to it landing a few fair points, lets take those and get working on that instead of wasting time rowing about who's in the right.
How can we clarify the deletion process for someone looking from the outside in? How can we make it clearer who to contact in those sort of circumstances? Is there any way we can make talking to people easier?
We (the existing Wikipedia community) need to have a rethink of how we lay out our rules and guides and the process for navigating them, we also need to start being a smidge more consistent about how we enforce the rules.
Mostly though, we need to be a little more tolerant of the N00Bs. I get it's tricky, you're busy, hundred things at once and some muppet comes in asking the same question we've been asked 16million times before; it's easy to be a bit terse, but if we want Wikipedia to continue to succeed we need to take a deep breath in those moments and remember to that person, at that moment, we are Wikipedia. A bad impression that turns them away from the site means they're unlikely to ever come back and that's the last thing we want.
I get why everyone's being defensive, and yes, the article was written in a very combative style, but we also need to face up to it landing a few fair points, lets take those and get working on that instead of wasting time rowing about who's in the right.
How can we clarify the deletion process for someone looking from the outside in? How can we make it clearer who to contact in those sort of circumstances? Is there any way we can make talking to people easier?