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This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the propagated objectives of e.g. Stack Overflow were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone, etc. pp. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling someone where he/she did wrong, that his/her content doesn't meet quality requirements, maybe that some behavior of refusing to admit errors / improve content is stupid behavior, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more that it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more. It much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks -- from new users and from users that somehow get addicted on rep gains, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

IMHO, you should rethink this whole strategy. On the particular topic of this "new contributor indicator" -- the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users -- in most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rude, but clear and direct), downvote if appropriate, vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions, so, why care?

This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the purported objectives of Stack Overflow (and other Stack Exchange sites) were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone, etc. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling people what they did wrong, that their content doesn't meet quality requirements, or perhaps that refusing to admit errors or improve content is stupid, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more that it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more. It much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks - both from new users and from users that somehow get addicted to reputation score, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

Please rethink this whole strategy. Regarding this "new contributor" indicator, the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users. In most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rudely, but clearly and directly), downvote if appropriate, and vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions - so, why care?

###This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the propagated objectives of e.g. Stack Overflow were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone, etc. pp. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling someone where he/she did wrong, that his/her content doesn't meet quality requirements, maybe that some behavior of refusing to admit errors / improve content is stupid behavior, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more that it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more. It much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks -- from new users and from users that somehow get addicted on rep gains, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

IMHO, you should rethink this whole strategy. On the particular topic of this "new contributor indicator" -- the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users -- in most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rude, but clear and direct), downvote if appropriate, vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions, so, why care?

This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the propagated objectives of e.g. Stack Overflow were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone, etc. pp. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling someone where he/she did wrong, that his/her content doesn't meet quality requirements, maybe that some behavior of refusing to admit errors / improve content is stupid behavior, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more that it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more. It much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks -- from new users and from users that somehow get addicted on rep gains, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

IMHO, you should rethink this whole strategy. On the particular topic of this "new contributor indicator" -- the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users -- in most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rude, but clear and direct), downvote if appropriate, vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions, so, why care?

###This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the propagated objectives of e.g. Stack Overflow were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone etc. pp. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling someone where he did wrong, that his content doesn't meet quality requirements, maybe that some behavior of refusing to admit errors / improve content is stupid behavior, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more, it much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks -- from new users and from users that somehow get addicted on rep gains, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

IMHO, you should rethink this whole strategy. On the particular topic of this "new contributor indicator" -- the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users -- in most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rude but clear and direct), downvote if appropriate, vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions, so, why care?

###This is just another small step into the general wrong direction.

If the propagated objectives of e.g. Stack Overflow were taken seriously, such an indicator wouldn't exist. If you really want to build a useful library of knowledge in a Q&A format, there's only one thing you should care about: Quality of the content.

Rude behavior like targeting someone personally, ridiculing someone, etc. pp. shouldn't be accepted and isn't accepted by the communities. Telling someone where he/she did wrong, that his/her content doesn't meet quality requirements, maybe that some behavior of refusing to admit errors / improve content is stupid behavior, should by all means be accepted and encouraged.

Of course, we see more and more that it isn't. I've already had my (high rep) Stack Overflow account deleted for reasons along these lines. From time to time, you read about high rep users requesting deletion or just leaving silently and my guess is more and more will follow. As far as I'm concerned, it's (especially in the case of Stack Overflow) because I don't believe in the goal of building this useful library any more. It much more feels like the goal is to get clicks over clicks -- from new users and from users that somehow get addicted on rep gains, no matter how bad the content quality gets.

IMHO, you should rethink this whole strategy. On the particular topic of this "new contributor indicator" -- the problem isn't that experienced users don't pamper the newcomers enough. The problem is that many newcomers don't take the time to learn what's expected. In some cases, the problem might be mitigated by finding better ways to present the expectations to the new users -- in most cases, nothing will work because they just don't care. Well, one thing will still work: Tell them what's bad about their posts (not rude, but clear and direct), downvote if appropriate, vote to close if appropriate. Someone feeling unwelcome after these reactions is very unlikely to ever make good contributions, so, why care?