Anyway my experience was a disincentive to contribute to WikiPedia again and I have not done so since that time.

Thanks for the feedback! We hear stories like this all the time, and now we’re finally starting to collect the numbers to back them up.

An update about where to discuss this issue: here is a good place to start.

Also I see, slightly related, a change in extreme measures when something doesn’t meet the standards. I see it more and more that (old/long) articles get plain deleted because they don’t meet the standards. Instead of working together to let them meet the standards. This is of course not the same as comments on user pages, but to me it is the same tone of voice.

As DFB said (http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/05/02/neweditorwarnings/#comment-7378), where is the discussion?

We did see speedy deletion templates cropping up more and more after 2007, and those definitely tend to be very negative (big red icons, bolded text, etc.), but we didn’t keep track of the exact numbers. We’ll be sure to flag this question for further study.

Perhaps it was done in the past by recent changes reviewers, but from what I can see those people have been replaced by bots and Twinkle cyborgs – in part because almost a quarter of new creators’ edits are vandalism, and serving on the front lines is a clear route to the mop. Now the decision is not “What should the response be to this editor?” but “Is this edit vandalism? No? Go to the next edit.”

It might be interesting to see whether those people being warned did in fact “deserve” it. The first talk page edit probably does not relate to the user’s first edit, and even those whose initial contribution was at an average level may contribute lower-quality edits later. For example, they may upload an image without a fair-use template, or remove a section without an edit summary.

When it comes to the question of how good the first edits by these newbies are, we did some research that suggests there are just as many people making quality edits that are worth being praised instead of being warned. (Even accounting for the higher editorial standards for the encyclopedia.)

Some editors seem to want to more complete first page, which is cutting the good faith and will and even desires to continue. Maybe an intermediate solution could be found. The page having a kind of draft stage for a little while and instead of « you do bad » a message « here you could improve by… »

* new users today are worse than those in the past – perhaps because those most likely to thrive at Wikipedia might have been attracted early, because they are contributing for less altruistic reasons, or because the page rank means everyone and their 8-year-old ends up on the site
* new users are less likely to have a positive impact because the quality of existing articles is higher than in the past
* new users are just as bad as in the past, they’re just getting caught earlier (before they get any better) and are being warned earlier and more frequently due to increased automation

Good faith might shield you from a ban, but it won’t prevent criticism. A negative tone is preferred because the goal is to protect what is there already – not to encourage or tutor new editors. Warning signs are believed to be effective in deterring further editing.

Wikipedia is the “big leagues” nowadays. Sure, anybody can edit, but they have to do it right. If you want to learn how to edit, you have to do it on your own wiki.

While I’d caution once more that our sampling at this point is far from scientific, anecdotal evidence does suggest that this graph reflects a major problem on English Wikipedia – an increasingly hostile environment for new users. Discussion of how to fix it is on-going.

Some work has been done by the Wikimedia Foundation Board to get the discussion going (see their latest resolution on openness in the community). In English Wikipedia, this has led to the creation of the WikiGuides project to protect and nurture good new editors, and in the Russian Wikipedia, there is a similar pilot Incubator project that mentors new users by letting them create articles and receive positive feedback in a specially designated namespace.

We’re hoping that these are the first of many innovative community-led projects to help retain new editors, and the more data we accrue over this summer, the easier it will be for community members to find practical solutions to the problem.