UESPWiki:Archive/CP Please be more lenient with Show Preview advice

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It might be me, but I feel that sometimes regular editors can be too hasty when giving the known "Use Show Preview" advice to new editors. For a new user the advice might seems to be contradictory. Everyone is invited to freely make edits, but then they see a notice on their talk page that too many subsequent edits gives the patrollers a hard time. I fear this might scare them.

Admittedly, patrolling a few subsequent edits (especially edits to user space) doesn't bother me. They are easy to patrol. Just open the series in tabs (every browser supports them now) and quickly check each edit, and base your judgment on only the last revision. After that Mark the entire bunch as Patrolled. For that reason I never felt warmly towards the idea of Userspace Patrollers. Easy edits are fast to patrol, most time is spend checking edits with dubious claims.

That's my view on it, however, so you can imagine I don't feel comfortable if new editors are warned if they made 5-10 subsequent edits. Give new editors time to figure out the effects of their edits first. Only when someone starts making repeated sessions of 5-10 edits give them a friendly reminder. That's my request to the other (regular) editors, please be more lenient in this regard. Here is at least one editor who patrols who doesn't mind a few series of subsequent edits. --Timenn-<talk> 12:57, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I only tell people about this if they make a huge series of minor edits, especially repeatedly.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 00:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it is better to remove the "(our patrollers really appreciate it!)" part of the standard welcome message. I think a new user does not really need to know what a patroller is, and should not feel like I will not edit this so I don't bother the patrollers. --Wizy (Talk/Contribs) 05:20, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll be honest and admit that I think it is a nuisance to Patrol multiple edits in Userspace. I don't really mind though, as new users will have to practice somewhere. I rarely post "Advices" or anything - except if I'm addressing the User about something else, then I always make sure to link to Help:Show Preview which explains the entire Patrolling procedure a whole lot better than "our patrollers really appreciate it". As for our standard welcome message, I suspect that new users gets tired of clicking links when they reach the "Policy and Guidelines", which is of no real interest to them; it is only important to us, as we can later claim that the User was informed about the Policies when he/she joined. An idea could be to move the Help:Show Preview link a bit closer to the top and place the rather “boring” must-have links to the bottom of the message.
Nevertheless, I have noticed the same as Timenn - way too often new Users gets a Notice after only four edits done to the same page; and sometimes they get the Notice several hours after they finished working on the page and that is quite simply wrong. Established community members should realize that such a Notice, no matter how friendly it is, will take away a lot of energy from a brand new user. Must be annoying to be “corrected” after making four edits to a page – and many new users even feel obliged to post an apology, which takes away a bit of the fun they were supposed to have in here.
On the other hand, multiple edits (10+) done to an article will net the user a notice from me right away, as I regard Page Histories one of the most important tools on the Wiki and I simply hate when someone is clogging it up with experiments. --Krusty 06:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a difference between Userspace and Gamespace when it comes to a threshold for advice: as Krusty points out, it's sometimes annoying when histories are clogged up with dozens of tiny edits, but there's rarely a need to look at the edit history of user pages, and I'd rather see people practicing on their pages than on a major article.

I take the point about the Policies page, but the link is to quite a basic introduction that offers a good list of the important policies without being too intimidating. One page that might be worth making is a Help:New Users page. I know we already have at least three policy/help pages devoted to getting started, but a single page describing the most common mistakes might be useful. No gossip, no guesswork, no personal experiences, sign your talk posts and so on. rpeh •T•C•E• 08:54, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Timenn here; consecutive edits to a userpage, especially for the first time, shouldn't get an "advice" message. What I think deserves the use-show-preview advice message:

• over, say, 20, consecutive edits to the same page in userspace
• the second, maybe third, time the user has made ten or more consecutive edits to the same page in userspace
• over ten consecutive edits to the same article outside userspace
• the second or third time the user has made over five consecutive edits to the same article outside userspace

Now, please don't get me wrong, I certainly do not want to create a policy over something so small, but I agree that perhaps some users should hesitate before handing out advice messages so frequently. I've provided the above suggestions just so that others can see what criteria I use(d). --GK^talk2me 03:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Those four "rules-to-keep-in-mind" are actually great and resemble my own philosophy about multiple edits. Of course, exceptions tend to show up every now and then; if three edits in a row adds a "!" to the page, then changes it to a ".", then back to a "!" - it is time to pull out the Notice right away. Nevertheless, I think it would be great to incorporate the four pointers somewhere, so it is possible for Patrollers and active non-patrollers to look it up when in doubt. --Krusty 06:38, 24 December 2010 (UTC)