Forum:Discussion: Do we push new users away?

Hey all, it's been a while since I've really involved myself in the community, but something I've been hearing more and more of is the bad way we treat new users which has become ingrained in the wiki. I think we should discuss this to find ways we can solve this problem (if it exists) and move forward with some new ideas or new ways to warn and (not) block users who make mistakes.

Keep it civil though - the forum on the current state of chat got super hot at some point. Naming and shaming anyone is nonconstructive - no problem on this wiki is ever one person's or a specific group of people's fault. 05:42, November 12, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
I think we do, but in ways that it's difficult to explain. Per there was a recent discussion with on a blog of a new users where some of us voiced our opinion about how we all thought quick scoping was cheap/unfair/overpowered which was the complete opposite of his. While I'm not on chat so I can't speak for that, I haven't seen any interactions on blogs or talk pages that would scare off new users, so it could be minor stuff like that. Maybe users go here expecting the community to share many of the same ideas as them and feel a little shunned when we don't? Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 05:54, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * That seems possible, as some users join, make blogs, and either the blogs aren't interacted with, or things like the above with conflicting views happens. 06:17, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * I do remember one user who made a couple blogs that received very little attention and I don't think he's edited here since. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 06:38, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * Sadly. Sometimes it just goes under the radar due to wiki activity. I strongly believe and hope my monthly newsletters could help resolve this issue, as I could include them in the newsletter. That can be discussed here. 06:45, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * It also doesn't help that blogs aren't as popular on the wiki as they used to be in the past, and we can't exactly force people to write some comment on every blog they see. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 18:29, November 12, 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree completely! I'm not sure where da fuq this xenophobia (for lack of a better term) came from but I've definitely seen it in chat as well. I mean I don't want to have to be this guy in front of some newbie - because that is awkward for me, but making users feel unwelcome is definitely a problem. I guess my suggestion would be relaxing some of the rules (like making a ban an absolute last resort) and/or just trying to be more conscious of new users, since this is kind of a tough issue to solve I can't really think of any other way to do it. --Azuris( talk ) 07:01, November 12, 2014 (UTC)

Very rarely have I seen users actually come to talk, usually people make accounts, make a few edits, soon as one gets undone (usually justified) people leave. But hey, that's just my personal view of things. For others it may seem a bit different, and that's fine too. (Well, it nearly led me to leave because nobody explained why I screwed up with my inital edits until after about 10 goes someone finally explained why my edit was bad.) I feel we need to combat bad edits immediately to stop this, but be nice about it. We have the Bad Edit template, which is fantastic for the wiki, and something that I have used in the past myself, but maybe we need to be a bit more welcoming.

Without being informal, make the intro template new users get after their first edit a bit more chatty, that could help. Make the user feel as if they're being talked to by a human instead of getting a message that feels automated. Moreover, do the same with Bad Edits. Make a second template. One that is a bit more welcoming to new users, but keep the older one for users that maybe know the wiki but just to inform them that their edit hasn't met standards. But with regards to the new one, mention that they're new and welcome them (again) and say you're happy they're editing, y'know, encourage them to try a bit harder - I can write that up if you wish, I think I'm a relatively nice person!

I'm not sure what else we can do to welcome new users, other than be nice. However, revamps of the welcome template and maybe a few other templates to help welcome new users a bit more and make them feel valued is something I feel we should get done as soon as possible. <> Maybe we can discuss it in a dedicated chatroom - I personally feel more comfortable discussing things with just a few people in that format and that gets ideas out of me.

Hope you all feel the same way about this, or maybe can finetune my ideas. 17:22, November 12, 2014 (UTC)


 * I already saw admins undoing edits from new users without providing a reason or with providing a "reason" but without explaining why was it reverted. And, due to the fact this Wiki is a bit strict on policies & guidelines, admins as well as users need to help new users as much as possible when they make their first edits to make sure that in a couple of days they will perfectly know every policy. If users are ignored when they make their first steps here they are likely to leave, and I can understand that. 17:56, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * I have been guilty of this in the past. Undoing edits from new users without explaining what's wrong with them definitely is a problem. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 18:29, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * If you want, next time you see a dodgy edit, or maybe a slightly bad post on chat, can I have a go at giving them a 'nice' warning? I reckon I'd be able to show you all what I mean and maybe set a benchmark. New editors barely read the summary of edits don't forget... If not I understand fully though. 21:58, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * I originally proposed COD:SUM for this exact reason but its effect seems to have been short lived and now it is almost completely ignored. Joe Copp  01:09, November 13, 2014 (UTC)
 * I wasn't even aware that there was a summary guideline... Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 02:22, November 13, 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't bother with an edit summary when its undoing vandalism. Wasn't there a time when an edit summary was specifically capable of identifying why an edit was made from a list of options? Zeta1127 of the 89th Legion (talk) 02:38, November 13, 2014 (UTC)
 * We're talking about when a new user accidentally makes an edit that goes against a policy we have, not vandalism. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 02:50, November 13, 2014 (UTC)

From a point of view from chat. I don't think we're ever too strict on new users, but I do feel they can sometimes feel more brunt of warnings. A good example may be the log seen on the Forum regarding chat, right now I think most us thought "Oh, that's N7, Damac and Azuris, they're like that normally" and had a laugh and let it slide. But if that same log occurred between 3 new users, then there's a good chance someone would have stepped in and likely performed a kick or ban. Also, if a new user had joined during that there would of really been two outcomes; either the user would have been put off (as even for our humour, that particular log was relatively strong), or they would have thogut it was OK to do things like that, and then got themselves kicked/banned in the future for doing what they thought was right. For that I think we may be seen as too lenient on standing users than on new users, which in turn makes us look too strict on them. For that reason I do think we need to find a middle ground in chat, where we're a touch more lenient on new users, and a touch more stricter on long standing ones. I'm not suggesting we start buckling down rules on users, or start letting users get away things they shouldn't. But we should try our best to push conversations away if they're straying in to touchy territory, and be careful in our choice of words to new users (so it seems more like a polite request than a warning). I'm certain the latter applies more for me, since I normally do a lot of warning. But I'm hoping with the former, a lot of our long standing user can understand a polite request isn't us trying to stop the fun, or be strict. It's just a polite equest because the conversation is steering into an area some users may not like. 18:02, November 12, 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we do.

-Our Policies are too strict and too complicated for any new user to follow. We don't allow tips, we have strict rules about whats even allowed in article, the image policy has been brought up numerous times, and the punishments for infractions are quick and, at least in the past, very very impersonal and unlikely to solve the issue (Though on that note, I haven't checked around enough to really observe if that's improved). Sometimes the punishments get as severe as blocks very very quickly. I actually don't blame this on anyone person, and I see it more as when the Wiki was younger everyone competed to micro-manage every part of the wiki and essentially "leave their mark" and what we are left with is a mess policy wise where no one is particularly clear on how the wiki works. Go on, Quiz all the users on our policies and what's allowed/not allowed and I doubt anyone would get a 100. And this is a problem we continue to have, which is why I was so strongly again Sysop Trial periods and why I'm against the current forum about the State of Chat.

-There is a little community interaction anymore. We no longer do community events to get people more involved with everyone. The community news, while fun for most of us veterans, is just a weekly in-joke that is hard, or even sometimes confusing, for users to get into. The chat is very clicky, and while some users open newbies with open arms, or at least try too, a lot are indifferent or even hostile to new users. Our news team, including myself, has even slowed to a trickle. We rarely report news anymore, which means we rarely have anythign to tweet out, which means we aren't bringing anyone new to the wiki.
 * -To add to this point I feel we as a community are also jaded. We've seen so many more trolls than actual users, especially since the release of Ghosts, that every new user is immediately put on a watchlist rather than treated as an equal.

-We aren't a wiki for the competitive side of Call of Duty. I brought this up in my forum on tips. The larger Call of Duty community is competitive, or at least Multiplayer based. They do not care for the lore aspects of the wiki, or the trivia, or the transcripts. They are looking for ways to improve their game, something that, other than weapon stats, we really do not provide. Since we don't provide that, there isn't much incentive for new users to join up and help out, nor is there incentive for people to return here once they do. Now wether or not this is a solvable problem has yet to be seen.

-We don't treat editting as anything worthwhile anymore. And I know everyone's gonna read this and think "You're supposed to edit cause you want too, not to earn something." but did you honestly ever do that? Just edit without any goal in mind? Maybe you just wanted to break 1000 edits, maybe you wanted to prove your loyalty to become an admin, maybe you wanted to get user of the month or a medal. But do you notice how none of that seems to matter to anyone anymore? No insult to recent Users of the Month or Admins, but the past User of the Month was decided by a whopping 6 people, and no one has even voted on this months even though we're halfway through the month already. The recent successful rfa's have pretty much been "You've been around for awhile and haven't fucked up, so yeah I'm sure you'll be fine." Is that a bad thing? Not particularly, but most of the votes seem to be low effort "I like this guy" votes with no real reasoning behind them. So if a new user comes and sees that both User of the Month and Adminship are basically popularity contests, what's going to keep them around? If they just want to work and not socialize, they have no reward to look too, especially considering how rarely medals are given out.

Maybe this was a bit too much of a rant, and maybe I should have taken a little more time to work out my ideas before posting them, but these were my general thoughts when I read this forum and my general conclusion is yes, we push users away and that's not gonna change unless the Wiki see's some radical overhauls in it's policies and it's users attitude, and I'm not exempt from the latter. 20:38, November 12, 2014 (UTC)


 * A couple points to what you said: A lot of our policies came out of previous problems we've had in the past, and the reason we have policies on no tips and what to add into trivia is because those sections frequently get overrun with random, usless, untrue or obvious facts and it became too difficult to police all of them in a time effective manner. The community interaction is a big problem (and you made a good point about us being jaded). I for one would be up for more community events, since they were always a blast before. Unfortunately, after the debacle that was the MW3 event, over which we lost an admin, they don't seem to have a significant amount of support behind them. And even for the veterans (like me, for example), the weekly news often makes no sense and isn't too much fun to read anymore since even I don't get a lot of the in jokes. And I think that there's a forum to give out/create more medals, which should help address your last point. And really do need more of them and need to give them out in a more efficant manner, since I wasn't even aware we still did that until Sam gave me one, my first one, a month or so back. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 22:29, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * With all due respect to Eltomo, his departure always struck me as a bit out of touch with reality; I get the feeling that he thought it would be a flawless execution. The event was not nearly as well planned out as it should have been due to its size and the time between sign-up and the actual event. I would think that most of us expected some measure of failure when the idea was conceived. That said, I don't disagree that community events have lost some favor, but we also haven't figured out the best possible way to run them... something that can only be accomplished by planning more of them. Some smaller-scale events might do us some good. Joe Copp  01:09, November 13, 2014 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, there was a forum to have a Ghosts community event that had like, six people who were interested in it. But some smaller-scale events would probably be a good idea. Conqueror of all Zombies (talk) 02:20, November 13, 2014 (UTC)

I think the community needs to discuss the current policies and change/improve them. I can understand new users have difficulties to follow them, given the, as Damac said, strict rules we have in editing (50-75% of new contributors get their first edits reverted for being incorrect, according to the policies). We may need to be more tolerant towards new users. Also, the community may need someday to discuss which kind of contributions should be considered as relevant or not, instead of undoing/reverting edits because our opinion tell us that "it's crap". I have seen a lot of relevant contributions that got reverted for some reason. 20:48, November 12, 2014 (UTC) To be serious, I understand the main problem here is that a large number of contributors such as Andi322 ignore all warnings and repeatedly violate policies. But instead of sending them automatic templates (Bad edit, vandalism, etc.)., I think speaking with his own words to a user is kinder than sending a straight message to tell you that you made a bad edit without even precising the reason of the revert (for the Bad Edit message, it's just a bullet list of "bad edits", it's up to you to find out what was wrong). I think that posting a kind message clearly explaining why the edit was wrong on a new user's talk page helps them not doing it again and get a shitload of "Bad Edit/Image" on their talk page. On other Wikis I sometimes use text templates like Bad Edit, but I prefer chatting with them to make sure they understand the problem. I don't believe a user can understand all our policies with a simple "Bad Edit" on his talk page. 21:23, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * I admit, these days there is an issue with not looking at edits in good faith. And some people will leave the Bad Edit warning without explaining what they did, and sometimes, and I admit I'm guilty of this at times, not leave it it at all. But in the case of some scenarios, we put in policies for a reason. I mean, yes, uploading multiple images incorrectly leads in a very short block, I personally go for at least 3-4 warnings, at let them know to contact me if they need help. If these go unheaded, like any warning we take action. Prior to this, all we did was load up pages with warnings, and one of the worst users pages looked like this. Now, no one likes receiving a warning, but we need to look at both sides here. I understand our policies may look very hostile to new users, but some of them have been in place since we made the wiki, like the ones regarding tips, and IRL. Perhaps we do need to rethink our warnings to ensure we're not just slapping templates on pages, but at the same time, we need to remember why the policies are there in the first place. If we revoked the image policy there would be all kind of hell, in fact there was one image called "images.jpg" which had about 50 different versions of the image because people had kept uploading over it with their own personal image. I mean, in retrospect, we're still pretty open about what we let users do with their images, as long as they name them and license them they can use them how they wish, some wikis and Wikipedia don't allow personal images at all, only images that are on a page. A lot of the other policies I leave alone. But before we start pinning the blame on the policies themselves, we have to bear in mind all of them came in to affect with a consensus, and the image policy has been attacked about as much as media attacks video games, in fact, I haven't had to give out a block for image violations for at least a few months, warnings sure, but no blocks. And frankly, if a user can't stand to get warned then what can we do? If someone does something wrong we have to warn them, we can't just ignore the issue because that seems "kinder". I will admit, maybe our execution of the policies seems a bit overly strict, and that may be what makes them seem so harsh, but I do not believe the issue is the policies themselves. 21:03, November 12, 2014 (UTC)
 * tbh Sam, when you arrive on the Wiki and look at that huge Policies page, it gives you the feeling that this Wiki somehow looks like the USSR (joke intended).
 * Regarding your points, Sam, I personally think we need to push longstanding users harder to leave personal messages in addition to or instead of templates on talk pages. It may not be the be-all, end-all of the issue, but it's a step in the correct direction, and in my opinion needs to happen if we intend to improve the situation. Joe Copp  01:09, November 13, 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand we need to talk to people more, but even in Andi's case, you can't say that just because we used a particular type of warning it means we can't do anything. He even got spoken to by Whiskey, Cod4 and myself outside of a warning, and he still didn't license any of his images. In the end, he stopped editing, but he had only had about 2 bans, and about 12 image licensing warnings. My point being is that we can't simply start retiring policies because we think it'll be "kinder". IF we got rid of the image policy we'd end up with nothing but poorly named images like before we performed the overhaul. The Danger Close icon used to just be called "danger close.png", now that AW is out what if someone uploaded over it because they didn't feel like naming it correctly? Granted, perhaps we should tone down our warnings, and make some a bit more personal, but I don't see how revoking all our policies is a means to an end. 22:15, November 12, 2014 (UTC)

I am a veteran of several other wikis, even being an admin on a few, but I generally avoid the bureaucratic side of things, primarily because of Wookieepedia, to the point I was rather surprised by the Adminship offers I have been given over the years. I wasn't exactly put off when my initial edits of commas in lists of appearances at the beginning of articles were swiftly removed. I stuck around and eventually ended up making plenty of productive edits, but I am probably the exception not the rule. Zeta1127 of the 89th Legion (talk) 21:02, November 12, 2014 (UTC)

i find that were very good to new users. ive only edited on one other very active encyclopedia wikia and am not anymore because i was not treated so well (but i wont get into that). i dont see a way we can be any better to them. we give them warnings if they do a bad edit instead of instantly blocking them, we give users fair block times and we welcome most new users. so i dont see a problem. RisingSun2013 21:28, November 12, 2014 (UTC)

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't done the greatest job at it, but I've been championing the concept that we need to improve our new user experience since about 2011. I'm glad to see it's finally being taken seriously. Joe Copp 01:09, November 13, 2014 (UTC)