User talk:Mackan79/Getting started on Wikipedia

Some thoughts
These are basically some thoughts on issue that I sometimes notice new editors do not fully understand, and perhaps come to wish that they had known earlier. I'm putting it here for now, but if anyone else has any thoughts on whether any of it might be useful, or expanded on, please let me know! Mackan79 (talk) 00:03, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding controversial subjects, I created an essay back in the day relating to the editing of such articles - it is In Wikipedia, X is an Article, not Evil. You may find it useful - even if only to warn people from acting on the advice found there. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:31, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

You may have intended to complete this
From "Your edits are permanently logged" section, second paragraph, is a line containing "For any unusual username, Wikipedia will become Consider also that your ability..."; I suspect that there is some missing text (and punctuation) after "become", but I obviously have no idea of the specific point the writer wishes to make - so WP:SOFIXIT does not apply. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:27, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. I had actually meant to delete that when moving the idea above, where I put that "...most usernames become the first result in web searches for that name."  Fixed it now. Mackan79 (talk) 23:23, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

For reference
Just adding that an essay I wrote a while back (and which I need to update to better reflect suppression) is located at On privacy, confidentiality and discretion. You might want to add it to the "see also" section, and of course you should feel free to mine it for any content you feel is useful.

A few years down the road, I believe even more strongly that editors need to be made aware of the incredible ease by which their Wikipedia activities can be linked to real life or other internet identities. Almost all cases of "outing" of which I am aware (including every one of those that have led to real-life disruptions) have been the result of some determined individual assembling and analysing publicly available information, including analysis of Wikipedia contributions and comparisons with similar postings elsewhere on the internet. Once the information is in the public sphere, it can never really be contained, particularly if it is something that was posted on this project. Suppression, oversighting and deletion can only go so far, and often it is only after someone has been the target of harassment that the "source" of the information is identified and removed.

I think the project needs to start thinking long and hard about what does and doesn't constitute a conflict of interest, in particular; there is a lot of grey space between our current guideline, which seems overly focused on not writing "puff pieces", and the reality, which sees editors just as often giving undue weight to negative information, creating articles about borderline noteworthy individuals with whom they are in real-world dispute, or turning articles about one topic into coatracks. Until we as a community come to grips with this reality, we will continue to be a target of choice for creating borderline attack pieces.

Finally, I think people need to own up to the fact that they are responsible and accountable for their own on-line behaviour; though my concern is mainly their behaviour on this project, it's not unusual for activities elsewhere on the net to have an impact on an editor's Wikipedia "career". Risker (talk) 21:56, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * More great suggestions, thanks. I'll give this some more thought. Mackan79 (talk) 23:34, 14 October 2010 (UTC)