Wikipedia:Having a clue
 | This is an essay on the Wikipedia:Competence is required guideline. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Most experienced Wikipedians don't expect readers or new editors to have a clue. Wikipedia has a steep learning curve, and as long as new editors are clearly trying to improve and are taking the advice of more experienced editors, we'll be patient with a lot of mistakes.
Editors
[edit]In general, no one expects an editor with under 500 edits to have a clue, including understanding how much there is you don't have a clue about. At this level, we expect only that you show willingness to learn and accept advice.
Around 1000 edits, we expect you to realize there's a lot you don't have a clue about still. We expect you to at minimum have a dim idea of the fact you're a bit clueless. We still expect you'll make a lot of mistakes. But we expect you to be realizing you may not understand much of what's going on around you on Wikipedia.
Around 2000 edits, we expect you to be showing signs of actively trying to get a clue – that is, to have an idea of your own cluelessness and to be trying to rectify that by checking policy before you post at AfD, RfA, DRV, noticeboards, and talk pages. We don't expect you to consistently know what you're talking about, but we do expect that you've learned that maybe listening is better than talking if you aren't sure.
Around 5000 edits, we expect you to be pretty good at knowing what you don't know, to recognize when a discussion involves the things you don't know, and to read rather than posting in those discussions. We expect you at this point to be showing you do actually have a clue.
Around 10,000 edits, we expect you to be able to post, usually cluefully, in many discussions, and to usually recognize when you shouldn't be talking because you aren't clued-in enough on the topic. Again we don't expect you to know every policy and guideline and be able to quote them off; we don't expect you never to post a silly opinion. We never expect that of anyone. We all occasionally look clueless. We just expect that most of the time you'll be posting cluefully. A big part of that is admitting when you've said or done something clueless.
Readers
[edit]A reader of Wikipedia cannot be expected to have a clue about anything regarding the internal workings of Wikipedia. Most readers could not care less about the policies and procedures that the Wikipedia community has developed over the years. They have no idea that for 6.9 million articles, Wikipedia has 62.2 million back-of-house pages. (And if the reader ends up caring about updating Wikipedia in any capacity, they voluntarily become an "editor.") Most readers are on Wikipedia with the mission to find what they are looking for, usually in the quickest manner possible, so they can get back on with the rest of their day. They may not even realize that the back rooms of Wikipedia, such as talk pages, user talk pages, and the project namespace, exist.