User talk:Karmafist/Response
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If the only response you can give to Ambi is 'your personality is defective', then it would be more constructive not to respond at all. Markyour words 14:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
- I disagree, since I also consider myself to have faults, and I would be honored if people let me know and gave me ways to fix those problems if I asked. I also complimented her, if you didn't notice, since she is an expert on Australian State Politics despite her incredible rudeness. Karmafist 14:54, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Edit Summaries
You seem to be saying edit summaries are only useful for explaining edits: Not at all. They are also useful for describing edits. You know, so we can look at your contributions and get a feel for what you're doing without examining them diff-by-diff? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:29, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
- About 70% of my edits are welcomes nowadays, and it's fairly easy to determine which ones those are(look for a talk page and a black N next to it), and maybe another 25% are commas and such(which I assume nobody cares about, since I don't), so if my edit summary total is around 5%(I didn't check), well, there ya go. Karmafist 19:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Newbies and wikipolitics
Karmafist, I've decided to chime in on this, since it reminds me of an experience I had when I was fairly new here. Back when I was quite new, I decided one day to go see what this "Wikipedia namespace" I'd seen mentioned was, and got to looking at some arguments that were going on at the time. Looking at them, I thought, wow, the answers to these questions are really simple, maybe I should just jump into these discussions and argue for my solutions. Luckily, I decided not to do this. I say "luckily" because my solutions were (how do you say) wrongedy-wrong-wrong. I simply hadn't been around wikipedia for long enough to understand the background and meaning of the discussions, and I can now see that the solutions I had in mind don't actually make sense once you get a better feel for how wikipedia works.
This is why I think your analogy of newbies to women before women's suffrage is a bad one. Women do not (that I have noticed) turn into men as they get older; newbies do turn into experienced editors. Insightful and valuable participation in policy discussions is a lot easier for people who have been around to get a feel for this place; everyone will eventually have cogent opinions and valuable insights on policy, but they take time to form. I still don't tend to participate in policy discussions (with this comment standing as an obvious exception) because I'm not sure I have a firm enough grasp on all the relevant issues. That isn't to say that newbies should be prevented from discussing policy--and if they do enter policy discussions people should take care to be respectful--but in general people should be encouraged to find their way to policy discussions slowly, after accumulating experience. You're quite right in stating that the person on the other side of a new username could be a nobel prize winner, but being a nobel prize winner, or a MENSA member, or whatever else, does not grant an immediate understanding of the ways of wikipedia; that has to come with time. Those people will immediately become valuable contributors to articles, and over the long term will probably come up with useful policy insights, if they want to turn their attention there, but if they get involved in wikipolitics too early, we could lose all their future contributions. If I'd jumped in and started discussing policy when I was new here, someone would probably have disagreed with me for good reasons that wouldn't have made sense to me at the time. I might well have gotten frustrated, things could have heated up, and its quite possible that I would have fairly quickly said "screw it, wikipedia makes no sense," and left the project.
So this is why encouraging newbies to jump into policy arguments is a bad thing. Although you certainly weren't forcing people to enter wikipolitics, you were encouraging them to do so before they had the wikipedia experience to understand the discussions they were about to enter, and thus were encouraging them to enter into situations where their feelings could easily be bruised. Although there is the possibility that one of these new contributors would provide a valuable insight on policy, this potential benefit is, in my judgement, far outweighed by the risk that valuable contributors could be chased away from the project before they ever had a chance to really get started. It's clear to me now that the things I thought were good policy when I was new here would not in fact be good policy, and if I'd actually put those things in writing on some policy page, no possible good could have come of it. It would have done a great disservice to me if someone had encouraged me to contribute to policy discussions before I was ready; we shouldn't do a similar disservice to today's new editors. RobthTalk 20:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why petitioning newbies is bad
Because the vast majority of newbies have not been here long enough to form their own opinion about how Wikipedia should work in the backstage. By throwing a "manifesto" at them, without making clear the motivations and rationale behind the proposed remedies, you're deliberately hiding information and denying them the right to make an informed opinion. Hence what you're doing isn't too far from being propaganda in the modern sense of the word.
I really hope that's not the way you intend to change the real world, because if it is I cannot, in good faith, wish you good luck. 84.145.239.40 20:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Evil != Death
Hi Karmafist, my message is regarding your response to Evilphoenix. Since I didn't see any oppose vote from Evilphoenix in your RfA, but I saw a footnote with Deathphoenix on it, I can only assume that when you saw my name on an oppose vote, you automatically thought I was Evilphoenix. As has been pointed out in many other places, I can assure you that we are two different people, and that I definitely don't have an axe to grind with you. --Deathphoenix 06:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Disclosing personal information(?)
Was the bit on Phroziac's location/name/gender identity placed with the editor's consent? I provisionally removed it until this could be clarified. El_C 12:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
- This is of special concern because Karmafist indicated the other editor is a minor. Jonathunder 15:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
