User talk:Ritchie333/How newbies see templates

The templates come across to me as officious. As people trying to make themselves look quasi-official since there is a box around their words. And sort of trying to get the upper hand. I don't like them. TCO (talk) 10:16, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

So true...

I see this all the time and was even treated this way when I first started on Wikipedia under a different name (years ago - new account to distance myself from my old identity). It especially sucks that people tend to use WP:HAMMER (and the essay itself is written in a hugely-condescending tone, like "We're SO tired with dealing with people who do this and you should know by now) with all the subtlety of a child getting thrashed on the behind with a switch. Just thought I'd reinforce the essay's point. LazyBastardGuy 21:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

If you spend enough time with n00b editors you get to exactly this point. I'm not saying this is good customer service but template warnings exist because we have a need to use them. I blame the editors that make this sort of action necessary. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

While competence is required, templates still won't necessarily have the effect. They can can be misinterpreted or the recipient will think "well of course that doesn't apply to me!" A personalised message explaining the problems from a sympathetic viewpoint will always be better. Unfortunately, that takes more time and diligence. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:59, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Chris does have a point though. It doesn't excuse biting, but it does explain it. About the 100th time you explain something that should be obvious to someone who isn't paying attention and didn't even try to understand how we do things, you just want to shake them like a rattle. Instead, you just bite them a bit. We all do it sometimes, in spite of our best efforts. Most of the time I do use personalized messages instead of templates for things other than vandalism, but the sarcasm can still leak out sometimes. That said, I love this template and proud to have played a tiny role in the wording. It reminds me stay calm. And by the way, I've seen how some people leave personal messages....using a template is a better idea for some of them. ie: Removing a well intentioned but spammy link, the level 1 template is better than "Stop adding your stupid spam or you will blocked. (etc)" Some people don't communicate well. Dennis 2¢ 14:51, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I got a good laugh out of your example template

I got a good laugh out of your example template. I am going to ramble about a quasi experiment I performed, 40 years ago, when I was an undergrad. I did most of my work on the Faculty of Arts new UNIX system. But I was a teaching assistant for an introductory course, computers for arts students, where my students had to use the University's big iron, an IBM 370 computer, running CMS. CMS was extremely painful to use, because it was originally developed as a simple DOS or CPM like single processor operating system for system developers to use when testing systems software on their virtual machines. Every user got their own virtual card readers, virtual disks, and other virtual devices.

Anyhow, using one system during the day, and another at night, I found myself typing the commands for one system, when I was on the other system. I noticed other people did this too.

I wrote a shell procedure, with many incoming links - kind of like the linux busy-box. My first iteration would try to figure out what I meant, by looking at my args, and then just invoking the real Unix commands for that. But that almost never worked the way I intended.

In addition to the man command, that showed pages from the Unix manual, this version 7 system had a command that would print a much briefer synopsis - usually just a couple of lines. So, my second iteration just used arg zero, the name the shell procedure was invoked under to call up the synopsis page for the corresponding Unix command.

One day I happened to be watching Dave use the Unix system, while I was talking to his friend Frank. I saw him type in a CMS command, when he was on the UNIX system. I saw my shell procedure work perfectly, and tell him he tried a CMS command, when on Unix, and give him that brief synopsis of how to use the Unix command.

Then a few seconds later he said, "Hey Geo, how do you use this Unix command".

I was flabbergasted.

I asked him if he didn't see that my clever shell procedure had just shown him the synopsis.

He said, "Oh yeah, that bumpf. I didn't understand that stuff the first time this happened, so I always just tune it out."

I see this as similar to what you described in your essay.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 05:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)