The focus wouldn't be to have people submit their demos and development articles to the wiki instead of to the places already available. It would be to have information, in-depth coverage of language features and programming concepts, answers to common questions, etc.
Forum_account wrote:
Correcting them makes the author learn
... Not necessarily at all. There's no guarantee he'll even notice. A forum is more suitable for this.
makes others learn (ex: correcting someone's usr abuse points that problem out to others)
Again, in a forum, not a wiki... Not many would notice that the problem was ever there, seeing as you've edited it away to the archive.
[...]
I don't get you. Everything you've said is better accomplished by the present forums. Demos and tutorials included. If the author gives a venue to discuss it (such as a blog post, Creations topic, etc), people do so and give their opinions and criticism.
This is a partially-legit concern, but I think it comes down to how you handle it. [...]
You'd think so, but I've seen cases where it's still pretty much the same situation even though the person was addressed nicely. Not surprising in the event of the common "no, your wrong, my way is definately good to because it works, so your way is just another way to do it" case.
Wanting to help others is a good thing and you shouldn't discourage it.
Of course, this will should be applauded. But the help giving itself should be discouraged when it's clearly doing the opposite.
So yes, the "help" giving should be (and has been) discouraged when the person in question consistently gives counterproductive help and spreads mistakes.
You wouldn't tell the first beginner to give up programming because they made a mistake
No, what's that got to do with anything? I'd tell him to stop trying to help others until he gets to know the language well himself.
This is a legitimate concern.
Mistakes will be posted on a wiki. Correcting them makes the author (who made the mistake) learn, makes others learn (ex: correcting someone's usr abuse points that problem out to others), and it makes the person correcting the code realize what types of mistakes people make.
The wiki environment is somewhat ideal for this, at least over demos and tutorials. Someone who writes a bad tutorial or demo isn't likely to get much constructive feedback. Very few people would look through an entire demo to find mistakes and provide constructive feedback. A wiki lets people post small snippets and examples that people could take the time to correct.
This is a partially-legit concern, but I think it comes down to how you handle it.
Consider the situation where a beginner makes a mistake. Another beginner makes a mistake in trying to correct the first beginner. Someone else steps in and say "read the DM guide before trying to help". The protest you speak of ensues.
Wanting to help others is a good thing and you shouldn't discourage it. You wouldn't tell the first beginner to give up programming because they made a mistake, they just need to work at it more. You should say the same thing to the second beginner. Correct them both and move on.