Feedback from New Editors

I'll start. Bulleted lists (Alt+0149) are nice.

• As a new editor, it takes a lot of courage to make any edit much bigger than fixing typos.
• (One of my first mistakes was to create an article that did not meet the notability guidelines--I was confused by the fact that a redlinked article might not need to be made, and assumed a stub was better than nothing. Something this teaches me is that first timers will not always understand the existing rules (and they were definitely not offered up early on to me by anyone or anything) and will not understand why their articles/edits are rejected. I'm not sure that all of you veterans out there think of things like that. Sometimes you assume that everyone knows the "basics". So far, notability is the only guideline I know, and then only because I got a rejection and then looked it up. People don't want to read thirty thousand articles on seemingly common sense/irrelevant guidelines.

My Ideas for Improving the System (which I'll add to as the discussion progresses):

• Channel our enthusiasm-tell us how we can help so we can do something useful instead of wasting time by making editors undo changes.
  • Ask us about our interests and recommend projects for us to join.
  • In these projects, designate leaders who will delegate small duties to newer users, as well as mentors to help them if they need assistance (You'd not believe what seemingly simple things I still don't have figured out. Indenting this required about a minute and a half of screwing around with the formatting bar.)
  • Show us how we can be useful. Personally, I feel that I have nothing valuable to contribute, because I feel as if I am blundering around causing problems and not fixing any. This is very discouraging, and I still (after several weeks) have made no contribution longer than three words, simply because I cannot find anything to contribute to, and don't have very hopeful prospects of doing so in the near future. This is actually probably the longest thing I have written.

•Another idea would be to add rollover explanations: "Takes you to the _______ page", "Inserts a section of _______ text", "[verb]s a(n) [adjective][noun]", etc.