Wikipedia talk:Please do not bite the newcomers

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Archives 22 Feb 2003 - 31 Dec 2006

[edit] Be welcoming vs not biting

I'm just wondering if the attitude this page takes is wrong. Rather than "Do not bite the newcomers", perhaps it should be "Be welcoming" (or something like that)? Not only would that be shorter and arguably easier to understand, but it suggests a positive course of action, rather than just condemning negative behavior. Granted, I'm not sure how much it really matters, but sometimes attitude can make a difference. Thoughts? —DragonHawk (talk) 03:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah that's so totally true, we should be more positive. i guess since they invested so much time drawing a don't bite new users logo and everything, they don't want to have to change it. speaking of the logo, what I'm really wondering is, why is a caricature of William II biting the newcomers in that picture. It looks just like him, he has the mustache, the German Spiked Helmet and everything. —jtgerman

The Do Not Bite picture was based directly on a famous caricature of William II. You can see the comment to that affect in the descriptive text on the image page. —DragonHawk (talk) 19:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I like the phrase

Please do not bite the newcomers is a good title for this page. It's a common phrase now on other forums.

I'd like to complain about how hard it is to request an article, or to create one in the first place. I think we should greatly encourage readers to show which articles they think need correcting. My solution to that problem had been to first create the talk page, using the talk page to provide useful links and notes about an article I think needs creating, and that I can spend just a bit of time working on. That now seems to be against wiki policy, for reasons I don't understand.

ENDRANT. Barring that, I think we should improve the wikipedia process for request articles. It should be greatly streamlined. Mathiastck 11:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Helping

think we could put something in here guiding experienced users to help newcomers fix their edits instead of reverting them or deleting parts of them. this is a common problem if you ask me. thuglas^T|C 15:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)