If anyone was contemplating participating in [[Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD]], please don't create any more new articles under undisclosed new accounts, whilst we discuss concerns that some users have raised that the damage to the new page patrol process may outweigh the benefits.
WereSpielChequers
Message: 6 Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:38:53 +1100 From: Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How friendly are we to Newbies? Update on the create an article as a newbie challenge To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: b8ceeef70910272238p654f1ebdsfe94b15ad6a6fe8b@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 4:55 AM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I want to personally look at the articles and responses in more depth before I comment more, but this has been exceptionally valuable research.
Yes, can you please post the usernames and the articles that were created? If some were speedied, do you have the original text? Obviously we shouldn't be having an "omg rampant speedyism" debate if the articles were actually speedyable...
Steve
WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com wrote:
If anyone was contemplating participating in [[Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD]], please don't create any more new articles under undisclosed new accounts, whilst we discuss concerns that some users have raised that the damage to the new page patrol process may outweigh the benefits.
Sounds like just more strategic deletionist excusism. There is no excuse for anyone giving to destruction a higher value than they do to creation.
So now that things are wrapping up, don't forget to hand out some merit badges to the 'winners.' Ostensibly, there is a deletionist who stands out from the pack, for whom a specially branded Trout Award will do just fine.
-Stevertigo
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:34 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like just more strategic deletionist excusism. There is no excuse for anyone giving to destruction a higher value than they do to creation.
So now that things are wrapping up, don't forget to hand out some merit badges to the 'winners.' Ostensibly, there is a deletionist who stands out from the pack, for whom a specially branded Trout Award will do just fine.
WereSpielChequers could have expressed his concerns a bit better here.
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASeb_az86556&action...
There can be a fine line between probing the boundary of new user treatment and a breaching experiment.
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
I'd argue that tagging something for speedy deletion when it doesn't actually fit the criteria is itself a form of rules lawyering.
Sort of like getting annoyed with a police officer for giving you a warning for speeding. No harm done to anyone, just don't speed next time.
Pun intended.
~A
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:35, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
I'd argue that tagging something for speedy deletion when it doesn't actually fit the criteria is itself a form of rules lawyering.
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On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
I'd argue that tagging something for speedy deletion when it doesn't actually fit the criteria is itself a form of rules lawyering.
Rules lawyering is generally taken to mean an excessively strict and pedantic reading of rules often leaning on obscure clauses and interpretations to push a preferred outcome contrary to intuitive sense and the probable intent of the rule.
It didn't fit the explicitly stated criteria. A good example of rules lawyering would be finding some obscure rule for image copyright that failed to make it clear that it didn't apply to text, then operating within the strict letter of that rule to delete the article. ("See right here: 'All material submitted to Wikipedia must have a copyright tag or it will be deleted'. It's even in bold!")
In this case the rule wasn't followed, but the tagging person was clearly operating with the intent of and, in this case, the actual result of improving the Wikipedia (or do you claim that we shouldn't delete sub-stubs duplicating pre-existing articles?) — arguably putting the rules violating deletion tagging under the auspices of WP:IAR.
Only on English Wikipedia could someone describe an violation of the letter of rules in favour of the spirit of the rules as rules-lawyering.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
or do you claim that we shouldn't delete sub-stubs duplicating pre-existing articles?
If the title is valid, it is easier to turn it into a redirect and merge any content not already mentioned in the existing article (a s-merge as it is sometimes called). The failure to consider moving content elsewhere (and leaving a redirect to preserve the contributions history) is a common misunderstanding made by those who request deletion in such cases. Whenever I look at an article proposed for deletion, I ask myself, "is this verifiable and encyclopedic and would someone potentially be searching for information on this topic?", then I ask myself if it is "notable"? If it is not notable but still verifiable and encyclopedic, the answer is usually to merge the information (in some limited sense) to a broader article. Deletion is a blunt tool sometimes used when editorial consideration and actual editing can get better results instead.
Carcharoth
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
or do you claim that we shouldn't delete sub-stubs duplicating pre-existing articles?
Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
If the title is valid, it is easier to turn it into a redirect and merge any content not already mentioned in the existing article (a s-merge as it is sometimes called). The failure to consider moving content elsewhere (and leaving a redirect to preserve the contributions history) is a common misunderstanding made by those who request deletion in such cases.
+!
Well, that's the point. If our sanitation engineers actually did what real sanitation engineers do and actually salvaged things (nice coffee table!), nobody would have a problem with deletion as a process.
And as for the philosophical aspects, we don't generally let nihilists have too much control for the simple reason that they tend to turn destruction into an -ism.
-Stevertigo "Is that some sort of Eastern thing?
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:13 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
or do you claim that we shouldn't delete sub-stubs duplicating pre-existing articles?
Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
If the title is valid, it is easier to turn it into a redirect and merge any content not already mentioned in the existing article (a s-merge as it is sometimes called). The failure to consider moving content elsewhere (and leaving a redirect to preserve the contributions history) is a common misunderstanding made by those who request deletion in such cases.
+!
Well, that's the point. If our sanitation engineers actually did what real sanitation engineers do and actually salvaged things (nice coffee table!), nobody would have a problem with deletion as a process.
And as for the philosophical aspects, we don't generally let nihilists have too much control for the simple reason that they tend to turn destruction into an -ism.
To be fair. When actually trying to do this at NPP, practice is harder than theory. I have every sympathy and respect for those doing NPP, as they will make mistakes. I would err on the side of caution and leave such articles to be dealt with later, but then PROD and AfD also get applied without much cleanup effort applied, so that doesn't seem to help either. Often, the only real solution is to apply {{sofixit}}. Which, ironically, is sort of what I think this whole project (WP:NEWT) was doing. Making an attempt to gather data to get a fix to a perceived problem. There have been some good suggestions for other ways to gather the data. Me, I'd personally be interested in looking at articles that got deleted at seeing whether any can be rewritten and (in some cases) the history undeleted. Take a random sample of deleted articles and see what proportion actually didn't fix the criteria and what proportion can be written as acceptable articles.
Carcharoth
Carcharoth wrote:
Take a random sample of deleted articles and see what proportion actually didn't fix the criteria and what proportion can be written as acceptable articles.
Have a look at [[Charles Mills Gayley]], which I created as a stub, was deleted as an A7, and which I eventually returned to this year, restoring it and expanding, and which an anon has this time run with. That's how Wikipedia is supposed to work. We lost over three years of potential article growth there.
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Rules lawyering is generally taken to mean an excessively strict and pedantic reading of rules often leaning on obscure clauses and interpretations to push a preferred outcome contrary to intuitive sense and the probable intent of the rule.
I'd say that the probable intent of the rule was to allow a small number of very unambiguous, very specific, and very obvious cases, which have been extensively discussed in advance, to be deleted. Speedy deletion is *not* meant to delete everything that's delete-worthy.
Adding another case that hasn't been discussed in advance is an attempt to push it towards deleting anything delete-worthy, which is not what it's for.
Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
I'd argue that tagging something for speedy deletion when it doesn't actually fit the criteria is itself a form of rules lawyering.
++++
-Stevertigo
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
I'd argue that tagging something for speedy deletion when it doesn't actually fit the criteria is itself a form of rules lawyering.
Actually, it's the other way around. Deliberately writing a bad article that should be deleted, but doesn't technically fit the CSD due to some loophole, sounds like the definition of disruption to make a point. I'd have to see a test case to say that for sure.
- causa sui
- causa sui
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Ryan Delaney wrote:
Actually, it's the other way around. Deliberately writing a bad article that should be deleted, but doesn't technically fit the CSD due to some loophole, sounds like the definition of disruption to make a point. I'd have to see a test case to say that for sure.
But CSD *isn't for deleting everything that should be deleted*. So the fact that the article doesn't fit CSD but should be deleted anyway isn't a loophole. Plenty of things which should be deleted don't fit CSD.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Ryan Delaney wrote:
Actually, it's the other way around. Deliberately writing a bad article
that
should be deleted, but doesn't technically fit the CSD due to some
loophole,
sounds like the definition of disruption to make a point. I'd have to see
a
test case to say that for sure.
But CSD *isn't for deleting everything that should be deleted*. So the fact that the article doesn't fit CSD but should be deleted anyway isn't a loophole. Plenty of things which should be deleted don't fit CSD.
No argument there. What's important about this case is that (as it has been explained to me, anyway) someone was deliberately writing a bad article with the express intention of being a pain in the ass. That's gaming the system in a disruptive way to make some kind of political point, and we generally frown on that for obvious reasons.
- causa sui
2009/11/16 Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com:
No argument there. What's important about this case is that (as it has been explained to me, anyway) someone was deliberately writing a bad article with the express intention of being a pain in the ass. That's gaming the system in a disruptive way to make some kind of political point, and we generally frown on that for obvious reasons.
Yes, that's just being silly. A test is to write an article as if you're not a known experienced editor, but still try to do a reasonable job on it.
- d.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 3:14 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/11/16 Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com:
No argument there. What's important about this case is that (as it has been explained to me, anyway) someone was deliberately writing a bad article with the express intention of being a pain in the ass. That's gaming the system in a disruptive way to make some kind of political point, and we generally frown on that for obvious reasons.
Yes, that's just being silly. A test is to write an article as if you're not a known experienced editor, but still try to do a reasonable job on it.
I partially disagree.
Writing a "bad article" - unreferenced, poor grammar, etc - on a subject which is not yet covered and yet which clearly meets our notability and topic requirements and whose notability and validity can be easily established with web searches - is an excellent experiment.
Part of the challenge here is not just "What if a nobody comes along and creates an ok article".
Part of the challenge is whether we handle new clueless nobodies well, when they have a good article idea but no idea how Wikipedia does things, yet. That's what doing a bad-ish article tests.
Writing an intentionally bad article in the "there's no reason to have an article on this" isn't particularly good - we can find enough of those in new page patrol logs and CSD deletion logs - spam, opinion pieces, vandalism, random graffiti, BLPs of schoolchildren, etc. without doing experiments, I think, unless we think we need some control cases done by the same testers.
Keep in mind that this was a very ad-hoc experiment, and by normal protocols horribly run. That said, it's also horribly important, and has (despite the flaws) given some extremely important data.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
But CSD *isn't for deleting everything that should be deleted*. So the fact that the article doesn't fit CSD but should be deleted anyway isn't a loophole. Plenty of things which should be deleted don't fit CSD.
Absolutely.
The intention of CSD is to reduce the overhead related costs of the full deletion process for classes of deletions which are broadly uncontroversial.
"Your speedy deletion of X was bogus because the matter of articles of X-type being deleted is not at all clearly clear, and I think the article should be kept" is a clearly reasonable objection.
"Your speedy deletion violated paragraph 3 sub-paragraph 2 section A of speedy code 27b/6.", without any tying back to the intent of the rules and the goodness of the outcome is another matter entirely…
If we're really to the point where we have to make boundary-testing articles to probe the process as clearly good newbie articles are being kept, then the problem can't be that bad. ...
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
If the title is valid, it is easier to turn it into a redirect and merge any content not already mentioned in the existing article (a s-merge as it is sometimes called). The failure to consider moving
In this case it was one sentence of the "X is a Y" form, and we already had an article on X by another name. Calling anything coming out of that a 'merge' would be a polite lie at best. It's one I've made before… but we should still call it for what it is.
Many of the redirects I've created in the past were later deleted. I don't know that anyone has any clue what the criteria is for keeping redirects or not, so I can't say that one should have been created here. Since no one seems to have joined clubs based on redirect preferences there doesn't really seem to be many loud arguments about the right criteria.
The conversion of an article to a redirect is equivalent to straight deletion, the most significant exception is the deletion may have missed an opportunity to create a useful redirect. (In my view, the fact that the old text is available in a highly obscure location rather than a very highly obscure location isn't very important). It's harmful to miss the redirect, but if your goal is to improve redirects there are MANY more low hanging fruit that could be addressed before worrying about deletions which should have been redirect conversions.
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 3:05 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I disagree that this rose to the level of a breaching experiment. However - it was intended as an experiment, not a way to pick on individual new page patrollers. And ended up being perceived as the latter, rightly or wrongly. And that wasn't a good thing. The lessons and changes to flow out of this (I hope...) need to be structural and community, not individual and personal and inquisitorial.
My apologies: It was my intent to say that this was walking that line, not that it was over it. On re-read I see that I didn't at all come off that way.
I'm sure all involved intended to do well. I think they'd do best by avoiding process pedantry and sticking to clear-cut cases which were handled clearly wrong with a harmful outcome. There will be fewer examples of this, but the examples found will be far more compelling.
This kind of experiment is only part data collecting... it also has the purpose of convincing a wider circle of people that there is a problem which needs to be addressed. Only people who are already convinced are going to be moved by borderline cases.
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, it's the other way around. Deliberately writing a bad article that should be deleted, but doesn't technically fit the CSD due to some loophole, sounds like the definition of disruption to make a point. I'd have to see a test case to say that for sure.
The entire NEWT project is a "disruption to make a point" - and the point is well made: A good number of deletionists could do something better with their time.
-Stevertigo
so far from being disruptive, the project is an attempt to demonstrate the ongoing disruption being routinely carried out by people deleting improvable articles. sometimes a few test cases are the clearest way to show that, and the project seems to have made done that very successfully. We now need to consider how to improve what we do so the discouragement of new authors decreases.
I remind everyone that what admins do is open and can and should be audited. Though that was not the purpose of the project, it is perfectly in order to check the deletions of individual admins. We should expect at least the same knowledge of basic rules we look for at an RfA.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:17 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, it's the other way around. Deliberately writing a bad article that should be deleted, but doesn't technically fit the CSD due to some loophole, sounds like the definition of disruption to make a point. I'd have to see a test case to say that for sure.
The entire NEWT project is a "disruption to make a point" - and the point is well made: A good number of deletionists could do something better with their time.
-Stevertigo
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On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 9:00 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
so far from being disruptive, the project is an attempt to demonstrate the ongoing disruption being routinely carried out by people deleting improvable articles. sometimes a few test cases are the clearest way to show that, and the project seems to have made done that very successfully. We now need to consider how to improve what we do so the discouragement of new authors decreases.
I remind everyone that what admins do is open and can and should be audited. Though that was not the purpose of the project, it is perfectly in order to check the deletions of individual admins. We should expect at least the same knowledge of basic rules we look for at an RfA.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
You might be misunderstanding what the objection is here. Nobody needs to be reminded that use of sysop tools is subject to peer review.
-- causa sui
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
You might be misunderstanding what the objection is here. Nobody needs to be reminded that use of sysop tools is subject to peer review.
True (though I don't think David is misunderstanding anything). The issue is not reviewing how sysops use their tools. It is about correcting the misconceptions upon which sysops base a substantially destructive usage of those tools.
-Stevertigo
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 9:50 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
You might be misunderstanding what the objection is here. Nobody needs to
be
reminded that use of sysop tools is subject to peer review.
True (though I don't think David is misunderstanding anything). The issue is not reviewing how sysops use their tools. It is about correcting the misconceptions upon which sysops base a substantially destructive usage of those tools.
I think that's a noble goal, and the idea behind this project seems like a good one. Incidentally, I'm probably in the running for most rabid inclusionist here. I think we all ought to be able to understand, though, that it goes too far when the experiment itself becomes a source of disruption. I don't know all the details, but I'm guessing that's why WSC asked to put it on hold.
-- causa sui
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
I think that's a noble goal, and the idea behind this project seems like a good one. Incidentally, I'm probably in the running for most rabid inclusionist here.
Correcting systematic wrongs is, I agree, good.
I think we all ought to be able to understand, though, that it goes too far when the experiment itself becomes a source of disruption. I don't know all the details, but I'm guessing that's why WSC asked to put it on hold.
Eh. Remember when Jimbo nullified the WP:ATT merger? Or when Foundation handed over a 1/4 Million USD to some marketeering outfit?
The point is that "disruptions" happen. We celebrate the good ones.
-Stevertigo "见风转舵
On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 3:17 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
The entire NEWT project is a "disruption to make a point" - and the
No. The main goal is/was data collection - to find out whether the assertions made by the original blog post were accurate or not. It seems that there are grounds for considerable improvement, but we're not at crisis point.
Steve
Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
WereSpielChequers could have expressed his concerns a bit better here. It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names: There can be a fine line between probing the boundary of new user treatment and a breaching experiment.
I don't really understand the "[x]-lawyering," in that diff (in Greg's post). (Note that "[x]-lawyering" is largely just a stigmanym given out like candy to anyone who's actually somewhat successful at arguing against mob rule).
But, since you mention it, is "intentionally [creating] very low quality articles" really a serious problem on Wikipedia in the first place? Edits like these ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Big_Lebowski&oldid=286557 ) are what built Wikipedia, and yet the deletionista says these need immediate deletion to "purify" and "protect" WP from "POV" and "OR." (In that case at lease, capable people decided to employ Wikipedia's article editing functionality, and {{sofixit}}ed it instead).
The issue is really that deletion is reserved for two things: 1) Articles created with no purpose (ie. titles that do not correspond to anything encyclopedically conceptual), and 2) articles created as vandalism. My thinking is that lots of [[red links]] are in fact a good thing for WP. Maybe making red links a different color (green?) might counter our tendency to undo new links and thus foster article creation? The issue there is teaching newbies how to find the existing article and redirecting to it.
-Stevertigo "Some people say a man is made outta mud..
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:34 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like just more strategic deletionist excusism. There is no excuse for anyone giving to destruction a higher value than they do to creation.
So now that things are wrapping up, don't forget to hand out some merit badges to the 'winners.' Ostensibly, there is a deletionist who stands out from the pack, for whom a specially branded Trout Award will do just fine.
WereSpielChequers could have expressed his concerns a bit better here.
It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering over the specific speedy deletion category names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASeb_az86556&action...
There can be a fine line between probing the boundary of new user treatment and a breaching experiment.
I disagree that this rose to the level of a breaching experiment. However - it was intended as an experiment, not a way to pick on individual new page patrollers. And ended up being perceived as the latter, rightly or wrongly. And that wasn't a good thing.
The lessons and changes to flow out of this (I hope...) need to be structural and community, not individual and personal and inquisitorial.