Disputes Regarding Edits

The new Wikipedia user faces the problem of unknown unknowns. For many types of negative or unproductive interactions a new user might have on Wikipedia, remedies are available somewhere on Wikipedia, but the new user doesn't know where to find them, or even that they exist. And the software is still too dumb to have any idea of what the new user is trying to do, much less advise the new user on the best way to go about it.

Instead, the Wikipedia interface is optimized for people who know what they are doing. We may not solve this problem until human-level intelligence is available in a personal computer. According to Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, that might happen sometime between 2030 and 2040.

Editing on Wikipedia would be fun for the new user if an experienced user with vast knowledge of Wikipedia arcana was looking over his or her shoulder and offering timely advice at every step. It is very difficult for the new user to start with some arbitrary editing goal, and construct the optimal procedure for reaching that goal on Wikipedia, without any expert help. Once we can put the expertise into the software, instead of parking it in manuals that have to "run" on the user's brain, Wikipedia will effectively become simple again.

We don't need to trust a computer to guide the user through unknown unknowns; really, Wikipedia doesn't stand out of the cognitive intelligence of its programming. The code itself is elegant, relatively simple, and well-designed. The intelligence of Wikipedia is in its collective editors and contributors.

What if we just set up some groups for new users? You could be added to a group of new users possibly based on a very short, optional questionnaire, and these groups could be assisted voluntarily by editors. The editors could act as mentors to these groups, possibly with a special page that tracked the changes made by their group members.

By making all of this voluntary, we could allow new users who want to get started on their own to do so, and only those editors interested in helping out new users would act as mentors. It seems then much less likely to get a conflict of interests between a voluntarily helpful mentor editor, and a new Wikipedian. By breaking these folks up into groups, veteran editors who are interested in helping newbies could be easily networked with a small group of newbies who want help, perhaps combating what would otherwise undoubtedly be an overwhelming sea of new faces.