The first experience for new users to the English Wikipedia

I'm very doubtful about this assumption that the first thing new editors do is to create new articles. In over five years on English Wikipedia, it seems to me that most people register in order to edit existing articles, or because they've been told on article talk pages that they ought to register. The 'biting' consists of an immediate reversion of their edit, maybe because it's unsourced, or wrongly formatted, or in poor English, with no edit summary, or an edit summary of "revert vandalism", or a put-down of their intelligenge and abilities. Often they are told that they are POV-pushing, and they may be subjected to savage attacks on the talk page. I became a user in 2005, and my first bold edit of an article - with an explanation on the talk page - was reverted within minutes by an established editor (and admin), who subsequently went to war with me on a number of articles, telling me that what I was doing was vandalism and that I would be blocked. The problem I faced is the same problem newbies today face: established editors, even if they remonstrate with their fellow-editor for his or her attitude, instinctively side with him or her because they like the article the way it is, and don't want some newbie to rock the boat. Or, if there is a POV issue, editors of the opposite POV gang up on the newbie, calling him or her a sockpuppet or SPA. This means that even if the newbie is savvy enough to go to the wikiquette page, or AN/I, or dispute resolution, it will never result in the established editor(s) backing down or being sanctioned. Bear in mind that if you use the word "bully", you are deemed to be in breach of AGF and NPA! That's why I'm sceptical about the idea of a "help me I'm being bullied" template. In the end, I feel that what the problem comes down to is the sense of community among established editors (even those who are perpetually at each other's throats), and the newness of a newbie. This is not something that can be easily solved by changing procedures or by "mentoring".

Looking at my contribution record, I find that I first made a contribution to talk pages in April 2007. I progressed to starting a new article in December 08. Since then I think I have started one other article and made amendments/additions to various others. Maybe I've been lucky (or conservative) but none of my contributions has been erased or reverted by anyone other than myself. However, when I first started editing, it was a lot easier than it is now, because the standard layout at that time provided a toolbar. I therefore revert to the old wikipedia format when I sign in. If I were thinking of starting to edit now, using the present format, I would probably give up.

Some people start fixing articles and don't create new ones for ages if at all - I was definitely in that group. But every year many tens of thousands of newbies start by creating an article. I've just looked at en:wiki/Special:NewPages and five out of fifty articles created in the last hour were by editors with redlinked talkpages, and that isn't unusual. Newpage patrol on EN wiki is an intimidating place and extremely unfriendly to newbies, so I doubt if many of the new editors we get there will stay with us, but it is where we meet and reject a large proportion of our newbies.

Most speedy deletions are "correct" as far as policy is concerned, and I've little sympathy with the vandals and spammers who are a significant proportion of these editors. Though I suspect we could re-educate/retrain and recruit a larger proportion of our copypaste merchants whose first article creation is a copyvio - remember every such article tagged as copyvio is an opportunity to create a sourced article.... Though not all are reliable sources or notable subjects.

However the editor survey will leave a lot of these article creators out because it didn't have access to deleted edits, and many of these newbies will have had all their edits deleted. My experience of looking at thousands of articles tagged for speedy deletion is that a disconcertingly large minority are overhasty or simply incorrect tags. Almost every time I go through the category of articles tagged for speedy deletion I find an incorrect tag and a bitten newbie, sometimes with a redlinked talkpage that means they might never know the fate of their article. Some of my fellow admins seem capable of clearing category speedy deletions at a speed that leads me to suspect that many incorrectly tagged articles are deleted per that tag.

Different people like to do different things. Some like to create stubs, some much prefer to add content to an article which already exists, some like to copyedit. I'm happy to have each and every one of them participate. That's what makes Wikipedia work. "From each according to ability, to each..." barnstars? never mind. ;-) Right now, I'd like to find some of those stub people, as each of the Ministries in the Cabinet of Egypt could use an article, even if it only starts off as a modified clone of one of the others. Maybe that will encourage one of the adders to expand it. I'm really not interested in holding my breath until someone who can do every step perfectly shows up, and I'm pretty irritated at those who are chasing everyone else away. What do we want? Content! When do we want it? Now! As opposed to, "after you've spent endless hours reading docs you don't understand and will never use, because that's what we like to do so we're going to make you do the same Because We Can - So There!" (What part of 'wiki' do those guys not understand?!) I can recognize the difference between someone adding junk that's cut and pasted from a brochure, and someone trying to add something or someone notable. There's no need to treat them all the same. Flatterworld 20:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)