Although not relevant to the AN/I discussion, read Sauron#The_Lieutenant_of_Melkor. "My master, Annatar the Great, bids thee ^welcome!" 16:38, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but my point is: if you're the lieutenant of Melkor, i.e. Sauron, who is using the first person to call you "my master" in your sig? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:40, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, of course he's allowed to remove things from his talk page, or restore them, no question about that. But we're also talking here about an editor who is obviously very young, and I think we have a certain obligation to educate inexperienced editors to the culture and byways of Wikipedia. Yes, certainly, I could have done that with a note on his talk page, and perhaps I should have -- but you'll notice that he's removed all the good advice he's received (from myself and others) already, so that would probably have been a wasted effort. I won't contest your revert (as you say, it's not something to dwell on), but I do wish you had allowed him to make that choice rather than taking it on yourself - maybe, just maybe, he might have decided to grow up just a little bit, which would have been a step in his progress.

In any case, water under the bridge. Best, BMK (talk) 16:52, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's not that you're wrong; you're quite right that we need to educate inexperienced editors. But the question is: how do we do so, and what tone do we take while we do it? What's more the point is that you/we tried that already, and he restored them. So clearly it's his wish to have them, and, y'know, it's really not that big a deal, so there's no reason to possibly antagonize him further by removing it again. Trying to remove them once was all right, but trying again was a little much, IMO.

It's a fine line, of course: the need to provide meaningful instruction balanced against the need to not antagonize them (which will make them not listen to the instruction). I think, with this particular person, we're falling too much on the side of stick and not enough on the side of carrot. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" works (if you're of the school of thought that it does work, that is) because a child is a captive audience, so to speak--they have no choice but to take their medicine, which in turn gives them a chance to learn from it. Here, since editors are not a captive audience, employing the rod can simply drive them away forever, making any good advice unheard and thus worthless.

There's also the need to minimize damage, of course; drawing the line at the RfA, for example, was probably a good call (though even then, closing it 15 minutes after it went live was still probably somewhat hasty). But the self-awards is really not the behavior we need to make a stand about. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:11, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that we, as a community, have a good handle on how to deal with young editors. We've got WP:CIR, of course, but that's most often used as a reason for blocking, and there's very little that can be done before it reaches that stage, because, in general, we insist on treating all editors the same, as responsible adults, even when its clear that this is not the case. (I'm speaking in the abstract here, not particularly talking about ZackDickens12 and this minor incident.) It's somewhat reminiscent of the WMF's refusal to see that not requiring registration, and allowing IP editing, is, overall, a detriment to the project, and that much vandalism and quasi-sockpuppetry (editors with accounts logging out to avoid scrutiny) would be eliminated if they changed their policy to something reasonable, like pretty much every other website on the Net.

Anyway, I'm rambling - my point is that it would be nice to have a way to deal with young editors somewhat differently than adult editors, other than the informal things that have grown up over time, such as the "Not Now" closing of ZD12's RfA. If there were systemic restrictions on their editing, and they understood that when they began, then it wouldn't seem so punitive to have curmudgeons like myself wagging their finger at them. As it is now, by assuming from the beginning that all editors are going to behave like responsible adults, the negative response to childish misbehavior is magnified; and by the time it becomes clear that the behavior is childish because a child is behind the keyboard, everyone's already a bit put out, and inclined to be harsher than they (I) probably should be. BMK (talk) 17:51, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]