Value, respect, and strive for diversity in editors

So we have two theories Theory 1. Good experienced editors are being discouraged by incivil editors who rules lawyer them, argue but never accept consensus unless it follows their opinion. The only way for Wikipedia to grow is to make it a safer place for experts and to come down hard on editors who don't follow the consensus.

Theory 2. Enthusiastic new editors are being scared off by pedants who pick at them over every little thing. The only way for wikipedia to grow is to lighten up and give people a chance to make some mistakes.

This is quite an important question. The quality of our projects depends on the quality as well as the quantity of our editors. How do we steer editors into the roles that best suit their abilities and temperament? How do we attract the editors who will be most useful? How do we get rid of the editors who, by accident or by design, only make the project worse?

I think both of your theories are correct. As always, we need to find the right balance, and I commented because in the current document I could see only one side (Theory 1). On the other hand there are people like the guy who appeared on the English Wikipedia and seemed unable to form a single short English sentence. Instead he kept spamming people with excessively long sonnets that (so far as I know) nobody could understand -- although some of the words he used suggested that the sonnets were custom-built and somehow related with the questions he had been asked -- and very long, confused paragraphs full of eccentric formatting.

That kind of thing can disrupt an article completely if it takes too long for the community to agree that such a user needs to be banned for using up much more of productive editors' time than he is worth. And a lot of people, especially experts, are simply not prepared to work in such an environment.

At the German Wikipedia it's relatively normal to block people with the reason "no discernible intent for encyclopedic collaboration". For the English Wikipedia this is an unacceptable reason unless a user is actually vandalising.

You say "At the German Wikipedia it's relatively normal to block people with the reason "no discernible intent for encyclopedic collaboration". For the English Wikipedia this is an unacceptable reason unless a user is actually vandalising." This seems to be a cultural difference. It is doubtful such a no-nonsense approach would be generally supported on the English Wikipedia. If nothing else, it involves jumping to conclusions rather quickly. People often play around a bit before they get down to work. Assume good faith is a sound approach.

I was thinking of users with a few thousand edits who are basically just disrupting talk pages.

I'll give you a case in question - me - a UK Wikipedian

I joined Wikipedia in 2006 and was initially interested in just one article (like most wikipedians). I transformed the article from a few paragraphs to a fairly comprehensive entry. Along the way I encountered the application of some of the really important rules that aren't really talked about to new members (verifiability, copyright, sources, etc).

A little later, the page gets marked for deletion as it's considered non notable. It sails through its AfD and we move on. Then new guidelines appear out of the blue for the subject area. These are initially draft proposals (that as a wikipedian working in the specific area of the project, I wasn't made aware of it). One editor decides that these new draft guidelines are in fact de-facto rules, proceeding to mark the article for deletion again as it breaches the new guidelines.

Through the subsequent AfD (that it goes through), I found the project and the new draft guidelines and they are completely biased towards an american system that has no basis to be applied in other countries (including the UK). On questioning the new guidelines, it becomes apparent that it doesn't matter what I say as the English Wikipedia is predominately American and maintains some bias to that. Combining this with incivility and insults in other article edits (including a specific persecution) the result is that I have little drive to participate in the project any more.

Both of the theories are absolutely bang on. As far as the specific talk page disruptors are concerned, you have a genuine point. trouble is that with Joe Wikipedian having to defend almost every edit to an article, there is a specific danger you will end up blocking the wrong people.

I think the thing I'm trying to say is that to get this value, respect, and strive for diversity in editors, the whole culture of the encyclopedia needs to change to the collaborative aim we all want.

However, The simple truth is that it won't.