Grants:IdeaLab/Increased attempt to be friendly and civil

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Increased attempt to be friendly and civil

I believe we need to increase the friendliness towards newcomers of wiki projects as this deters new users, and may be disproportionately putting off women.

idea creator• Banak

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created on19:29, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

As a user who recently started contributing positively, I've seen how easy it is to be put off on Wikipedia. I've seen those who've repeatedly brought newbies in front of admins. Others quote pages of policy. Also, en.Wikipedia's not a forum policy puts off socialising and sometimes even relevant discussion.

What is your solution?

• No policies that single women, as in my opinion this may put off or isolate women, even before any backlash is considered.
• Renewed effort to not only not bite newbies and assume good faith, but to go out of your way to be friendly to them.
• Making it clear you cannot just name a policy, rather you must say what it says there.
• Reconsidering of en:NOTAFORUM
• A guide/helpers for defence of new editors at English wikipedia's WP:ANI.
• A comprehensive interactive guide that allows you to find out about how to do new things.
• Links to new topic discussion areas as well as projects like the teahouse for new users.
• A team set up to investigate how we can make wikipedia more friendly.
• Some form of recognition that editors can choose to actively find new projects together, rather than making any such behaviour seem as being coincidence, stalking or a conspiracy as they seem to be commonly seen as partly due to rules on English Wikipedia.
• A review of how the Statistics on gender are gathered, to ensure confidence in it so it cannot be dismissed as women under-reporting themselves.
• A survey of those attitudes towards wikipedia men/boys compared to women/girls/those of other or no gender, as well as what areas of wikipedia there are interested in.

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