User:Novem Linguae/Essays/If you're new, be a sponge

If you're new to a social group, be a sponge.

This is good advice both on Wikipedia and in other places such as the real world. This could apply to a new job, a new school, a club you just joined, a subreddit, a Discord server, anything.

Honestly I'd go so far as to call this a social skill. Folks that do this will have noticeably better social skills and better working relationships with people.

What does "be a sponge" mean?

Soak up tips and advice! Just like this sponge soaks up water.

It means that, like a sponge, new folks should soak up ideas and advice from their surroundings, rather than resisting them and causing friction. It means don't resist when other people give you direction or advice. As a newer editor, try to avoid fighting battles. Have the attitude of "OK, this person is telling me how things are typically done around here, let me try doing it that way" instead of "Everyone else is wrong, and I'm right. Everyone else is the problem, not me."

What does this mean on Wikipedia?

When I was a newer editor, I paid attention to who the experienced editors were. And if they objected to something I was doing, or they gave me advice, I would usually give them the benefit of the doubt. I would assume they were correct, and I would assume that they were letting me know that there's a certain way of doing things on Wikipedia, and that I was out of alignment with that.

I would then take their advice and calibrate. I'd update my mental list of Wikipedia cultural norms and rules.

A lot of Wikipedia editors don't like exact edit counts for things, but for me I kind of did pay attention to edit count. When I was below 10,000 edits, I would give a lot of respect to editors with over 10,000 edits.

The idea is that experienced editors will have developed wisdom, which is a sense of how things are typically done and are supposed to be done. And a newer user can benefit from being told that, because sometimes this is hard to document, and violating it can cause a lot of friction.

Why should I care what other people say or think?

Relationship building – Think of it as an investment in the future. If you're going to stick around editing Wikipedia for a long time, other experienced editors will become your co-workers. And you need healthy working relationships with them to do your work smoothly. Every time you are pleasant to interact with, you build some relationship capital or social capital or whatever you want to call it. Every time you are unpleasant to interact with, you lose some relationship capital. Lose enough relationship capital, and doors start closing quickly. You may never be able to pass an RFA. You may get sanctioned or blocked. Folks may start resisting you or ignoring you on talk pages, not wanting to deal with you. Folks may stop assuming good faith about you or stop giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Following best practice – Organizations, subcultures, etc. have norms and rules for a reason. It allows folks to work in harmony and it avoids anarchy. Certain practices are the outcome of years of having to deal with certain issues -- these practices contain a lot of wisdom and institutional knowledge. Following these rules and norms is a best practice that, in Wikipedia's case, helps us write the best encyclopedia possible, in the most harmony with other editors as possible.

Do I have to be this submissive forever?

Absolutely not. Just do it when you're new. Do it while you're still "learning the ropes". Do it while you're learning what the cultural norms and rules of the social group are. Once you've got a good handle on that, then you can go back to normal behavior, which is treating everyone as an equal.

Once you're more experienced in the social group, and you know the social group's rules and norms, then you can sometimes choose to dig in or "double down" or call out some of the experienced members of the social group. Because you'll have a much better idea of when folks are acting inappropriately, and where the gray zones are, and when it's worth using your social capital.

Can I just read policy pages and follow that?

Our policies and guidelines are our attempt to put our current consensuses, our rules, and our cultural norms into writing. But they are not perfect. They may get out of date, they may be misunderstood, or they may purposely not reflect current practice because a faction is stonewalling them (keeping them from getting updated).

While policies and guidelines are a good tool, they should not be the final source of truth on a matter. In fact, this idea that we are not dogmatically strict on our rules is enshrined in the idea of ignore all rules.

The final source of truth on an issue on Wikipedia is a consensus of experienced users. A consensus of experienced users can change any policy. A consensus of experienced users can tell you "even though it says A, in this specific scenario we typically do B".

Policies and guidelines may look simple but may actually be complicated. For example, WP:GNG seems simple enough. Go find a couple sources that talk about the person/place/thing you want to write about. But what if one of your sources has a lot of quotes and is clearly based off a press release – is that independent enough? (No.) What if one of your sources only has a couple of sentences about the subject in question – is that significant coverage? (No.) It can take a lot of experience to correctly interpret some policies and guidelines.

Avoid the trap of having 10 edits, reading a policy or guideline, then thinking you're an expert in it and arguing with a page full of people about it. If experienced editors are telling you you're misinterpreting the policy or guideline, then perhaps you are.

Some people may not like this essay

Wikipedia and the open source movement actually value egalitarianism a lot. This idea that everyone is equal, from an unregistered IP editor to an administrator. We let anyone participate in our processes, even if they don't have an account (IP editors). A janitor's mop or a set of tools are often used as a metaphor for administrator powers, to emphasize that we expect administrators to continue acting like normal editors and not some super-class of ruling elites.

So this essay that recommends following a hierarchy may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Try to look at it as social advice. In my view, this is how the world naturally works both inside and outside of Wikipedia.

But also feel free to ignore this essay if the idea that new editors should be WP:BOLD is more in line with your philosophy.