On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
[outside views of Wikipedia among general public] > One thing that is not at all obvious to me is that there is any really > really credible reporting on this or other aspects of Wikipedia. It's > anecdotal at best - one or two incidents taken to stand for the site as > a whole, and its complexities. Plus people writing ignorant and > inaccurate stuff, of course. I agree, but there is probably a lot more unreported anecdotal stuff where people hear from others what Wikipedia is like and gain a false (or true, YMMV) impression of what Wikipedia is like and what it is about. There are certainly a lot of misunderstandings around, including the one that Wikipedia is some homogenous whole, when in fact it is a lot larger, mixed ad varied than people realise. Though there are uniformities and constants as well. But the treatment a first-time editor gets depends on who they encounter, what they edit and how good they are at adapting to the standards they encounter. What everyone can do is try and take the time to encourage new editors and not treat people as if they should know what to do (or not do). Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
