[WikiEN-l] Lock new article creation for three months

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

If this was to be implemented it would be for a limited amount of time and
applied for creation of a specific set of articles. It is not to give admins
more powers, it is to focus the attention of editors on fixing existing
articles instead of creating new articles. It is easier to fix what we have
if there isn't a constant influx of new material that doesn't get the eyes
it needs.

Mgm


On 4/1/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Many of the proposals to "fix" Wikipedia of late have seemed to
> take
> > as a premise that what we've done is wrong. I, personally,
> disagree.
> > I think we've got a pretty good encyclopedia. It needs work, but
> it's
> > good enough to go public with, which, thank God, since we went
> public
> > with it. Sensible users can use it well.
> >
> > But if we really do want to speed up its improvement (which I
> can
> > take or leave, but everyone else seems desperate to take it)...
> >
> > Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace
> entirely
> > for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> > articles.
> >
> > Anything that's absolutely vital that comes into being in those
> > months will still be possible to write about in a few months, so
> > there's no real rush. And a lot of the crap that we create by
> reflex
> > will not get created and be pleasantly forgotten about. (Brian
> > Peppers, anyone?) And we could easily make the red page text
> read
> > something like "On XX/XX/XXXX suspended new article creation
> until XX/
> > XX/XXXX in order to better work on existing articles. If this is
> an
> > important topic that has developed since we made this decision,
> you
> > can probably find information on it by looking at existing
> articles
> > on related topics."
> >
> > We've suggested doing it for a day here and there. The heck with
> > that. Let's do it for a long period of time so that the culture
> of
> > fixing what we have becomes entrenched.
> >
> > Or, I mean, we could decide that everything we've worked on this
> far
> > is actually crap and create drastic proposals for how we could
> start
> > over.
> >
> > -Phil
>
> This is not a good idea. Haven't we learned anything from locking
> down *anonymous* page creation, and from the constant, and
> people-pissing-off, mess that is Articles for Creation? It's not a
> success by any standards - it's led to burnt out editors, deeply
> frustrated and well-meaning outsiders, and an arcane submission
> process that is slow, glitchy, and doesn't scale! There is no
> evidence whatsoever that AfC has helped Wikipedia: no evidence
> that it has encouraged people to focus on articles.
>
> And now you want to disable page creation for everyone except
> admins?  Besides the obvious aspect of adding yet another thing
> only admins and other higher ups can do, with ramifications for
> the culture and legally (if this goes through, and admins have to
> manually approve each article, will Wikipedia pass from being a
> host capable of claiming DMCA safe harbor to a publisher
> exercising editorial control and discretion over posting of new
> articles?), this simply won't scale. There are only  what, 1100
> admins, and how many of them are active? 900? Admins are already
> kind of busy with deletions and page moves and other sort of
> processes which are already too often backlogged (and related
> stuff like OTRS). We should be very very reluctant to propose any
> new process which could dump literally thousands of entries a day
> onto their collective laps.
>
> --
> Gwern
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>
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