User:Josve05a/IRC-guidelines

This is an essay.

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.

When helping people at #wikipedia-en-help ^connect people often use the briliant Helpmebot to try to answer users questiions, as fast as possible, by only typing a small command. Sometimes this is good, when there are many people wanting to get help at the same time, but sometimes it is defenetly *NOT*.

Example[edit]

This example is based on a real event.

<Helpmebot> Hi there, User. Welcome to the English Wikipedia help channel!
            Please ask your question and wait for a reply (this could take several minutes).
            If you are asking about a particular page, please provide a link.
<Helper>    Hello User, how can we help you today?
<User>      An article I wrote got declined and I don't understand why? I cited twitter as a reference.
<Helper>    !42 >User
<Helpmebot> User: Articles require significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. http://enwp.org/WP:42
<User>      Do you say twitter isn't reliable? Other articles, as "ARTICLENAME" uses twitter as a source.
<Helper>    !otherstuff >User
<Helpmebot> User: Do not try to use the existence of other articles to argue the validity of yours.
            See http://enwp.org/WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS for details.
<User>      Am I talking to a robot? Can I please talk to real, fu**ing person!?!?
<Helper>    !calmdown >User
<Helpmebot> User: You seem to be extremely upset or agitated. Unfortunately, the volunteers in this channel can't help you in that state.
            What I suggest you do is take a few minutes to read http://enwp.org/WP:CALM then come back and ask your question related to
            editing Wikipedia in a calm and civil manner. Thank you very much.
<Helper-2>  Helper - you're making things worse.

Analasys of the conversation above[edit]

The user wanted help understanding why his article was denied.
The user got some automated messages that it needed better sources.
The user asked (in a bad way) to talk to a person.
The user was "denied" to talk to a real person, by sending him *another* automated message.

Possible outcomes[edit]

The user might leave the channel and
- stop editing Wikipedia.
  - which is BAD.
- start talking ill about Wikipedia's support (helpers)
  - which is BAD.
- start vandalize Wikipedia/try to create the article multiple times without fixing the issius.
  - which is BAD.
Another helper might try to help the user.
- but this is unlikely due to that many people wants help.
  - which is BAD and can lead to something mentioned above.

Suggestion[edit]

Try to use as few bot-commends as possible, if you know that the bot has a better answer than you can write copy it from the bot's database of commands, without using the bot.