On 12/6/05, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: Since Jimbo said it was an experiment, "reversing" this condition should not be so daring. "Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for anonymous users in the English Wikipedia." -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 12/6/05, Steve Block <steve.block(a)myrealbox.com> wrote: Exactly. As an added bonus, a registered user actually has *more* privacy than an anonymous user since everyone can't see their IP address. Carbonite

On 12/6/05, Martin Osterman <stonewallgrant(a)gmail.com> wrote: I know. But human nature hasn't changed much in that time. And both Jimbo and I expected Wikipedia would become this popular and widespread. What annoys me particularly is pretending that this is an experiment. It's not. It's a permanent policy change. Who's willing to bet that I'm wrong?

On 12/6/05, Martin Osterman <stonewallgrant(a)gmail.com> wrote: Primarily because experiments are better designed. I think part of the problem is that what I'm thinking of as an experiment is different from how Jimbo's using the word. He's probably just using it to mean "I'm making a change and I'm not 100% certain of what will happen, even though I'm pretty sure it'll be good." Whereas I expect "experiment" to mean "I'm making a change and I don't know what will happen, but I've put in place mechanisms to measure as many of its effects as I can, so that I will be able to determine whether it is good or not." My suggestion is also based in a little appreciation for the immutability of human nature, which suggests that all institutions institutionalize, that is, tend towards restrictiveness, hierarchy, and centralization of control. Steps in that direction are rarely reversed. This is a small step, but its direction is clear.

On 12/7/05, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: I took it to mean "I'm making a change and I'm not 100% certain of what will happen, but after a few weeks I'll re-evaluate whether or not it was a good idea." Well, yeah, institutions tend to do this, because this tends to be a good thing. Stuff tends to not get done otherwise. Of course, Wikipedia is released under the GFDL, so if those that control the institutions make the wrong decisions, they will find that they are soon not in control of very much of anything. Anthony

Where are the results of that experiment discribed? Heinz Stan Shebs schrieb:

Look, you say that it can't be seen as an experiment because there arn't any start and end dates, and so forth, but does not mean it isn't an experience. You are right, it very well MAY be a permanent policy change if it works out fine... if it doesn't (many people complain, it doesn't really reduce bad entries, wikipedia growth is severely stuntet, etc) we will just change it back. We could sit around and discuss if this is a good idea forever, but the only way we will ever know for sure is to actually try it out. Look, this in no way (except in the very most theoretical wiki-fundamental way) limits the openness of wikipedia, and it very well might increase the overall quality, so why not try it for awhile? Remember, we are here to write an encyclopedia first and foremost. We are a grand social experment ofcourse, but not primarily (or however that qoute went). On 12/6/05, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Jimmy Wales wrote: Yes, but it would be nice if those experiments were driven by Wikipedia's needs per se, not by PR. Now this may have some positive impact on Wikipedia (though I personally doubt it), but the timing sure looks suspiciously like it was done for PR purposes, so we can say in response to the current media frenzy of the week that we're "doing something". -Mark

Magnus Manske wrote: But there does not appear to be any actual criteria under which it can be judged to fail. The only way it will be rescinded, basically, is if Jimbo changes his mind about it being a good idea, because there's no way he can be proven wrong about it being a good idea. No one has even informally defined what it would mean for it to be "successful", much less suggested how to measure that. One possible criterion: The overall number of bad edits on Wikipedia (counting new page creation and edits to existing pages) decreases. Another one: The overall number of bad edits on Wikipedia not caught within [x] hours (again counting both) decreases. Is anyone prepared to measure either of these, or some other useful statistic? -Mark

Just off the top of my head, I can think of three good things that would make it fail. 1. Many people (anons and regular users alike) protests 2. It is ineffective, that is, New Page patrollers see just as much crap article-creations as before (and what would be the point of restricting anons then). 3. Article growth severly stunted (also, minor point, but if there can be, as you say, no way to tell that it has failed, wouldn't that mean it's a roaring success?) Look, lets just try this out for awhile. A thing like this could be enormously effecting at reducing bad new articles/good new articles ratio, or it might make no difference what so ever. The only way to find out is to actually do it. Oskar Sigvardsson On 12/6/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jimmy Wales wrote: Anecdotal evidence from an avid RC patroller: I get the feeling that more people are registering accounts for the purposes of creating bad articles, that previously would have been created as anonymous users. This is somewhat annoying, since it means that when I'm running CDVF I have to look at every new page created, rather than just those created by anons. So there's a semi-serious drawback for RC patrollers. However, I also get the feeling that far fewer bad articles are being created, especially those of the "adshfsfhdsfhahdf" variety. We still get a lot of vanity and spam but those people would have been creating their articles either way. Instead, nonsense vandals -- since they can't create their own articles to vandalize -- are blanking other more, which is far easier to catch and revert. So overall I (tentatively) think this is making life much easier for RC patrol. Ryan

On 12/6/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske(a)web.de> wrote: Actually, I'd argue the opposite if I were to be didactic, because nothing is *truly* permanent. Though maybe Wikipedia will be the seed of a Teilhardian noosphere that will expand throughout the universe until its heat death. Jimbo claiming it's an experiment does not make it an experiment. Laying out metrics for success and failure would draw closer. The problems caused by increasing restrictions and decreasing openness are almost always very hard to see; it's very difficult to quantify lost opportunities. Especially if there isn't an effort made beforehand to define a proper metric, which is extraordinarily difficult for something like Wikipedia. If Jimbo were honest about it being an experiment, I'd recommend that he do something like have the anon article creation ability be turned on and off for semi-random, unannounced periods of time and see what happens as a consequence.

On 12/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Okay, I'm trying really hard not to be very annoyed. As the person running the "experiment" Jimbo is not supposed to make prejudgements on the results while we're collecting data. But then, if we were all willing to admit it's not an experiment, I'd be much happier. As for point (b), Jimbo also wrote: "Completely open" means without *any* restrictions. Compelled registration is not "completely open". All of those newspaper websites that force you to register (for free) to read their articles are not "completely open". Wikipedia has not been completely open for a long time -- the ability to move and delete articles has been pretty much always restricted. I'm not saying this is necessarily bad (though I do have my opinions about it) but that it is untrue that Wikipedia is completely open. Let me make a practical example: say I, a longtime user, want to create a new article but I'm not at my home computer. To do so I have to log in again; I have absolutely no memory of my password. Before Monday, I could still easily create the password. Now I have to have the system send me a new password, open up my email, enter the new password, and remember to change my settings at home with the new password. These are new hurdles that I may not want to go through, so no new article.

The Cunctator wrote: Ah, now I see: This "experiment" is, truth be told, an Alzheimer prevention program to make you remember your password! :-) Seriously: While a scientific experiment is open in its outcome, it is in some way designed along an expectation, namely that your working hypothesis is correct. Only if the experiment shows that this hypothesis is false, you will consider altering or abandoning it. I think that's the case here as well. While the outcome is open, the expectation is that it will help wikipedia and, thus, stay. If it turns out that, *unexpectedly*, it does harm to wikipedia, I'm sure Jimbo will be the first to get rid of it. And for the situation you mentioned: Why not create a user account and write, on the user page, "This is User:XYZ who forgot his password"? That way, the new article can still be credited to you (through the user page). If you, however, would create a new article as an IP, it would not be credited to you. Magnus

Delirium wrote: Technically, we'd have to run a second wikipedia, mirrored at the point where anaon article creation was disallowed on *one* of them, as a "negative control" :-) Since practical reasons prevent us from doing that, we'll have to compare statistics to the last few month. We should also take opinions (yes!) from the "new pages patrol" people into acount, wether the creation of junk pages has dropped noticably. Ultimately, to see if reality matches your hypothesis, you'll have to apply the conditions of that hypothesis to reality and see if it matches the expected outcome. That's what we are doing. If the results do not match our expectations, thus proving our theory wrong, we'll take the changes back; I have no doubt about this. Magnus (yes, I know the scientific hypothesis analogy is a little flawed...)

On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote: And maybe the problem will shift from new articles to edits of existing articles...in which case we may need to extend the restriction to making edits as well?

On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote: We already don't allow users who use anonomous proxies (even if they are logged in, in fact even if they are admins) to make edits, so there's "a ledge" there too. Of course we should only lock things down slowly and only when not doing so will cause more harm than good. Not allowing people to create new pages unless they've already had an account for a while *would* (in my opinion) cause more harm than good. There is, quite frankly, no experiment that I can foresee be performed that would convince me otherwise, because the harm would likely take place over a long time period. Anthony

On 12/7/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: I have a strong suspicion ;-) that lots of the articles asked on that page have been asked by wikipedians like you and me... "experimenting" :-) Delphine -- ~notafish

On 12/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Still want to make this bet? Anthony

On 8/31/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yeah, he said it doesn't seem to be working, and it's not open. So when is this policy change going to be reverted?

(Just a sort of followup here) Our very own AaronSw has been writing some articles on his blog when he's not busy running for the Board. I found the second of them quite interesting since it seems to have some direct ramifications for our discussion of blocking article creation by anons. "Who Writes Wikipedia?" ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia ) "But, he [Jimmy] insisted, the truth was rather different: Wikipedia was actually written by "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" where "I know all of them and they all know each other". Really, "it's much like any traditional organization."" .... "Wales presents these claims as comforting. Don't worry, he tells the world, Wikipedia isn't as shocking as you think. In fact, it's just like any other project: a small group of colleagues working together toward a common goal. But if you think about it, Wales's view of things is actually much more shocking: around a thousand people wrote the world's largest encyclopedia in four years for free? Could this really be true?"" ..... "Wales seems to think that the vast majority of users are just doing the first two (vandalizing or contributing small fixes) while the core group of Wikipedians writes the actual bulk of the article. But that's not at all what I found. Almost every time I saw a substantive edit, I found the user who had contributed it was not an active user of the site. They generally had made less than 50 edits (typically around 10), usually on related pages. Most never even bothered to create an account." ..... "I don't have the resources to run this calculation across all of Wikipedia (there are over 60 billion edits!), but I ran it on several more randomly-selected articles and the results were much the same. For example, the largest portion of the Anaconda article was written by a user who only made 2 edits to it (and only 100 on the entire site). By contrast, the largest number of edits were made by a user who appears to have contributed no text to the final article (the edits were all deleting things and moving things around). When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site -- the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it's the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content." .... Aaron essentially concludes with: "Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit. Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even proposed." Submitted for your consideration...., ~maru

On 04/09/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hop on the page and suggest useful approaches to him. I assume if he's running for the board because he thinks this is an important issue, he would probably prefer not to be leading himself up the garden path. - d.

On 05/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: Please reread the thread so far - you're asserting one of the facts we explicitly don't have numbers on. - d.

On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, that's *supposed* to be the criterion ... - d.

On 9/4/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: How many more admins do you *really* think it would take. Certainly not 1000. Surely the 3 or 4 more clicks it takes to create a crap article now aren't stopping that many anons.

On 9/6/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: condition of being an admin, I would just stop being an admin. Would you want to be an admin if all you could do was check articles created by non-logged-in users? I have to agree with those who suggest that we won't see that big of an increase in the number of junk articles created. But if we do, the solution will not be to dedicate humans to cleaning up the mess. -Rich [[W:en:User:Rholton]]

Jimbo, As long as you keep us posted on changes, be they intended or implemented, I (and probably most others) won't have any problems whatsoever. My business is to help make the encyclopedia better through the knowledge I have; knowing what changes are going to be made helps me in my task. Take care, Martin Osterman PS -- Don't you just love the media? LOL I've seen them do this a few times before... -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 7:54 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles Martin Osterman wrote: could (Not hundreds) Let me put it this way: the news report which "announced" the change would happen on Monday appeared on the web before I even knew that the change would be possible on Monday. Reporters were asking me how the site works, leading to discussions of various small tweaks that might help make new pages patrolling easier, and I was asked when we might see some changes. I said something like "probably by Monday". The reporter took this to mean that this _particular_ change would be implemented on _Monday_, and ran it as an announcement. It turned out, in a completely unrelated sequence of events, I had asked how hard such a change would be to implement technically and he reported back to me on Monday morning that it was ready. I think we will be making a lot more changes, doing a lot more experiments, and that we should do them on an experimental basis (try it, see what happens, go back if it doesn't work, etc.) rather than try to guess everything from an "a priori" basis. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

The Cunctator wrote: That's rather a bit over the top, isn't it? Wikipedia is still completely open to everyone who is attempting to make a legitimate contribution. --Jimbo

Anthere wrote: one of my tests was pretty conclusive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_succession was created in less than an hour and the history (though completely elliptique for anyone outside the community) is at least refering to WP:AFC http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Secondary_succession&action=h… Congrats Leithp :-)