User talk:A3RO/Archive 5

Thanks (I think) for your message
Hi Eric, I got your message on my talk page, and I am hoping that it meant that we now have a bit of a détente. I can understand why you reacted as you did on the Emil Gilels article, and I hope that you can understand my concerns as well. One of the greatest challenges we have now on Wikipedia is the recruitment and retention of good new editors. It's a lot harder now than it was a couple of years ago; there are fewer "new" articles to write, and many existing articles are watched over and brought up to a quality level that makes it difficult for a newbie to edit. RC patrollers can play a really big role in identifying potential editors and helping them to get off on the right foot; sometimes, however, it's difficult to tell a potential editor from someone who's just messing up an article. Some of these editors are obviously vandalising (page blanking, adding obscenities or "teh gay" comments), and I block those editors without hesitation. On the other hand, when the edits fall into a sort of grey area (e.g., changing content rather than removing it, swapping sourced for unsourced or less well sourced content), I've found that there's often value in writing a short note to the newbie editor explaining my concerns about their work, and popping a welcome template on their page. I've had about a 50% success rate in getting the newbies to at least explain what they are trying to do, and about a third of the time their concern is quite correct.

The requirements and methods for RC patrolling have changed a lot in the past year, with fewer edits (and fewer vandalistic edits) being made to the encyclopedia, and more powerful scripts and tools available to revert, undo, and automatically warn or report editors. It's a real challenge to find the balance. Your work here, with and without tools, is worthwhile and important, and I know it is easier with tools than without them. I would be happy to support reinstating your rollback permission (and, by extension, your Huggle permission) if you're willing to be a bit more inquisitive about edits that aren't great but aren't blatant vandalism either. Would that work for you? Risker (talk) 00:11, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes thank you Risker, that can work. Although I'm more into creating articles now as I have with Connecticut School of Broadcasting and InSpeak. I'm focusing on creating articles so my rollback will now be seldomly used until I do restart up with anti-vandalism. Thank you Risker :-D -- eric (mailbox)  07:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Motto of the day
Hello, I notice you're using one of the motd templates, run by Motto of the day. You may have noticed that some of the mottos recently have been followed by a date from 2006, or on occasion simply "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". The reason for this is that Motto of the day is in some very serious need of help. Participation in the project, which has never been especially high, has dropped considerably over this past summer, to the point we have had several days where no motto was scheduled to appear at all. Over the past several weeks, I've been the only editor scheduling mottos at all, but there aren't enough comments on some of these mottos to justify their use. If we do not get some help - and soon - your daily mottos will stop. In order for us to continue updating these templates for you, we need your help.

When you get a chance between your normal editing, could you stop by our nominations page and leave a few comments on some of the mottos there, especially those that do not have any comments yet? This works very simply; you read a motto, decide whether or not you like it, and post your opinion just below the motto. That's it - no experience required, just an idea of what you personally like and what you feel reflects Wikipedia and its community. If you do have past experience with the project, then please close some of the older nominations once they've got a decent consensus going. There are directions on the nominations page on how to do this.

If you have any questions, please let me know, or post on the project's talk page. I'm looking forward to reading your comments on the suggested mottos, and any additional suggestions you'd like to make. Until then, happy editing! Hers fold  (t/a/c) 01:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)