| "The encyclopedia anyone can edit" is another rule the site was founded on, yet that's clearly not true. Look at the hostility that IP editors face even though most good wikipedia edits come from IP editors and IP editors are less anonymous than logged in editors. Try using WP:IAR anywhere on WP today and you'll quickly see how far WP has moved from founding priciples. EDIT: I mean, just look at usernames. You're supposed to be able without a login, but sometimes that causes problems. So you go to create a username. The software has a list of words that you can not use (very. Few people think allowing a username like "JewKiller666" is a good idea). But then there's a username policy. This has been reviewed to make it more friendly to new users. But the application of those rules is still pretty hostile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username That's the policy. See the changes to the "misleading" names section. That section had to be expanded because editors using their real name in a different script (eg, Japanese users) were being told their unicode name was misleading. Or a user with a eg psuedo-random string of characters was told that their name was confusing, even thoigh there wasn't any other name or namespace to confuse "kejdhdkaksaas983" with. The "dealing with inappropriate usernames" section required a lot of work to prevent the admin-wannabe users from making many reports. Once you've picked a name that gets past the software's filters but which an editor -or bot- thinks is bad you face: 1) templates. {{subst:uw-username}} 2) a RFC http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RFC/N 3) an administrator notice board http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_adminis... Notice that bot reports which the not admits may be low quality get sent to UAA, not the lower levels of discussion. 4) a holding pen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Usernames_for_adminis... This convoluted conflicting mass of policy is hostile to new users, especially in the way it gets applied by editors. Just try using "WP:IAR" during this process. |