Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User warnings/Testing/CorenSearchBot: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:01, 13 December 2011

Revision as of 22:46, 13 December 2011

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Then again, maybe you've got the past experience to know this is what works best. — [[User:Coren|Coren]] ^{[[User Talk:Coren|(talk)]]} 22:01, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

:Thanks for looking over these – obviously still very much a work in progress, and we appreciate the feedback :)

:So, couple of reasons we're writing them this way:

:* A lot of people who copy-paste stuff into Wikipedia are coming from cultures where it's totally okay to do that, and they honestly don't understand why it would be a problem.

:* Newbies are newbies. Things that seem obvious to someone who's been editing for even a month are not obvious to somebody who's just making their first edits. We get tons of [[:Special:FeedbackDashboard|feedback]] every day from very new editors who can't find their contributions, don't know how to add section headers, and all the basic interface stuff that quickly becomes second nature to Wikipedians. I think we should be as deliberate as possible in any newbie-oriented warning, to helping them clear the initial scary hurdle of editing.

:* Nobody likes legalese (except some Wikipedians, heh), and that's what the language of these warnings looks like. Generally speaking, people never read those long disclaimers and fine-print terms of use anyway, and most other websites never use that kind of language for things they actually want people to pay attention to. Instead, they use really clear, simple, precise language... 8th-grade reading level, which is also the standard for most newspapers :)

:Does that make sense? The patronizing tone thing is definitely a problem to watch out for, I agree, especially since there are cases of false positives. But I think most people getting this message are ''not'' experienced Wikipedians who've been around for ages, like yourself, and we shouldn't talk to them that way :) Anyway, please do let us know what you think as we're tinkering with these, and feel free to offer more suggestions/advice! [[User:Maryana (WMF)|Maryana (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Maryana (WMF)|talk]]) 22:46, 13 December 2011 (UTC)