Wikipedia:WikiProject community rehabilitation/Ched-scratchpad

OK .. this is just a sandbox thing at the moment - please be patient while I work on it.

Julian, new users, and help project

After thinking about this a bit, I think that a point that Tznkai made (here) about having a singular page to direct new users to is important. I believe it's important that the page be concise and simple enough to encourage editors to continue, and not so intimidating in a manner that frustrates editors. New editors face a wide variety of issues, so in keeping with that thought - here are some items I think that need to be addressed:

Communication

Communication is a key factor in keeping new users interested, encouraged, and happy. One very good method is the "+-+" (or the positive, neg/teach, positive method. To be honest, this applies not only to new editors of WP, but to communicating to people in general.

OK - this comes from two different areas of studies that I've had in my life: 1.) As a single parent, I studied how to communicate with my daughter. 2.) At a couple places I've worked in the past, I've been thrust into a management position, and as such I've often been privy to various "management" and "communication" courses. The bulk of my take on it all is this:

First: Open conversations by saying something positive about the person you're approaching. People like to hear nice things about themselves, and it encourages them to listen further and perhaps consider what you continue to say. Once you have their attention, it's much easier to communicate with them. If the first words they hear (or see) are negative - it's going to put them in a defensive position before you ever get to any type of communication (which hopefully will lead to understanding)
Second: Now that you have a person's attention, you can explain how they can improve what they are doing. Always try to do so in a constructive and teaching fashion - simply telling someone they are "wrong" isn't going to lead to any improvements.
Third: Once you've explained how things can be improved, then you should go back and close the conversation with a positive note. This leaves the person with a better feeling, and they are more likely to think about what you've said in its entirety.

example

Ched writes up how to remove a virus from a computer.

Now; Julian reverts and can take 2 approaches:

with a note: "Your edit is wrong - See Policy WP:NOT"
(1) "Ched, I can see where you're coming from, and you have a good point - (2) however, our project has a policy WP:NOT. This policy basically says that our project should not attempt to add "How to" information." (or whatever). (3) Your point that "A" is a bad thing is good though, perhaps we could explain what "A" is.

method 2 takes more time to type out to begin with - but it can avoid a long thread at AN/3RR - so in the long run, it's actually more time effective to explain nicely why my attempts to put "how to remove a virus" into an article is not going to be acceptable.

— Ched : ? 01:37, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Page Proposals

1. Project page

duh .. that's the main one this is starting from

as this goes along - I'd imagine this page would list the various sub-pages we work on. For now, the list of goals, and the list of members of our task force are good things to have on it. If the page/project grows a lot, we could always have a separate "members" page, but I doubt that would be necessary for quite a while. For the time being, it prolly serves pretty well as the "Welcome page" too.

comments

2. Help (general)

help (perhaps a title of "New help" as I'm sure that WP:HELP is not a redlink

we have a variety of help pages and tools for various things

the help desk page,
the reference desk, and
{{helpme}} templates are ones that come to mind .. I know there are others.

comments

3. Editing reverted

My page was (or will be) deleted - or my edits were reverted

WHILE we do have AN/3rr or AN/EW - as Tzankai and others have mentioned - often we respond with a bunch of alphabet soup. Also - going directly to any AN venue leads to a new user being chastised, rather than being educated. I'm not looking to find fault with our current AN resources, as those who face the repetitive task of reducing edit-warring must often deal quickly and concisely to resolve a problem so that they can move on to other issues. Rather I'm saying we need to have a pre-AN system that educates users in a friendly fashion - to get them up to speed as to the why something is not acceptable. We can't expect to just say "You can't do that" AND have our new users remain interested and happy without taking the time to explain the "why" WP:N, WP:RS, WP:/COI, etc. are important.

I think that some things can be written out in a few pages that explain what our policies mean in practice - but we have to be patient and willing to also explain specific situations as well.

comments

4. How to

A page dedicated to brief explanations on how to get around our massive project. Some links to the help stuff, some brief explanations of our 5 pillars, brief description of accepted behavior, NPOV, WP:N and WP:V, etc.

comments

5. Members discussion and Q&A page

A place to outline our direction, our methods, and our goals. Also a place (perhaps on the talk page) where folks could ask general questions. If this projects works as well as it could - a "Q&A" page could be developed for the sole purpose of addressing any issues that need to be discussed

comments

scratch

As such - here is a list of a few pages items I think we need to look at developing:

Welcome (sample)

A helpme page with a good "search" for users who prefer to work on their own

Task force list of users: (the list of members on this page for now)

List of venues to seek help

A brief guideline for "us"

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for volunteering your time to help our project. While everyone is welcome, and new users are encouraged to be bold - admittedly there can be confusion and frustration for those of you who don't fully know all our little policies, quirks, and unwritten practices. This page and project is an attempt to address some of those concerns. People who spend much time behind the scenes working on our project quickly fall into some habits and "wiki-speak" practices which can appear daunting at first glance. An example is the way that we often refer to page of policies ... such as: WP:N. At first glance, this means nothing to an editor who is not yet familiar with our culture. Our own lingo has grown out of almost 10 years now of people working and developing the how and what we do. When someone remembers to put the double-brackets around the "WP:N" - it becomes a link to a page on wikipedia.