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In Wikipedia, anew account is aregistered user which has too few contributions to obtain a definitereputation, or is registered too recently for it. The opposite qualifier is anestablished user but there is some gap between these two extremities: an account which just ceased to be a new one does not immediately become an established user. It is generally expected that a new account belongs to anewbie, but it is actually not so for following reasons:
Although it is certain that the reputation depends on account’s edits, there is no definite threshold when the reputation appears and solidifies: it depends on which are edits, where they are made, and which interval of time they span. There are at least two different reputations: thecontent (encyclopedic) reputation and thesocial reputation. Creation of the social reputation goes approximately through following questions which established members of the Community answer:
The content reputation tends to increase with each good edit proportionally to amount of content created (or fixed), and an account which made content contributions summarily equivalent to 2–3 medium-sized articles obtains a solid reputation (not necessarily agood one, but a definite reputation), given it had not failed socially.
A brand-new account is a recently created account, a short amount oftime ago. They are the most suspected in sockpuppetry, especially if they edit controversial articles.
These accounts were registered a long time ago. Such accounts had been inactive (or had few edits) for a prolonged time, but suddenly started to edit actively, or made a few edits over a long time.
This is asubjective classification: to me, an account becomesnew when it attracts my attention first. But when I see that the account is, in fact, established, I stop thinking of it as new. If for some reason an account avoids attracting attention when making contributions, then it is perceived as a new one when it is discovered by the Community. If such an account has many useful contributions by this time, then it becomesestablished.
There have been some cases when an account became inactive for a prolonged time and was then reactivated. If its new activity matches the Community’s ideas about its owner, then there is nothing unusual. But sometimes such an account appears to be controlled by another person. The Community then considers such an account as an effectively new one. Note that Wikipediaforbids giving an account. to another person.
The category of new accounts is roughly the same as one ofred-faced accounts. As a general rule, an established user does not have a red link at their user:, but there is no such rule and occasional exceptions occur. Though, there are many new accounts with a “blue” (existent) user: page. They either can create it themselves early, or may be created by other users in the case of sockpuppetry suspicions, for example.
Although new accounts sometimes experience certain amount of help and compassion from the Community, they are the least protected category of editors. They position is heavier thanone of IPs. A registered user isexpected by the Community to create their reputation, whereas an IP is not. Certain misdemeanors of IPs which usually are ignored (except for reverts and automatic warnings which lead to nothing) can lead to anindefinite block of the new account. Any new editor who wants to establish themselves in Wikipedia has to cross this strip between IPs (sometimes referred to as to anonymous) and established users, the strip where they are the most vulnerable to mistreatment from the Community.