Another idea would be to not allow anons to create new articles (editing existing articles would still be allowed). They would get a message after following a red link that invites them to create a user account so that they can create a new page
Rather than *forbidding* or *allowing* things, why not use a more gentle method of discouragement? Simply don't display red links to anonymous editors. They can still create articles if they really want to by going directly to the appropriate URL, and experienced anonymous contributors would no doubt do just that.
I think this would also improve the reading experience for those who have no intention of editing.
-Martin
Martin Harper wrote:
Another idea would be to not allow anons to create new articles (editing existing articles would still be allowed). They would get a message after following a red link that invites them to create a user account so that they can create a new page
Rather than *forbidding* or *allowing* things, why not use a more gentle method of discouragement? Simply don't display red links to anonymous editors. They can still create articles if they really want to by going directly to the appropriate URL, and experienced anonymous contributors would no doubt do just that.
Although you're right that we don't want to "forbid" or "disallow" legitimate editing, I don't think we want to discourage it either. Your suggestion makes it harder for well-meaning newbies to find out how to edit or create articles.
A better way would be to encourage more healing. We already have the "stub" message which encourages newbies to expand a stub they encounter.
One idea I was toying with in my mind recently is this. When sysops delete an article, the article goes back to saying "Wikipedia does not have an article with this title yet." Maybe we should actually let everyone (including anonymous users) know that there used to be an article, and (this is the important part) show the reason for its deletion.
If a newbie goes back to see what happened to their article, and they see it gone, they are more likely to just put it back in (it looks to them more like a glitch in the system or an accident than a deliberate deleting). If it actually said "This article was deleted for the following reason: vandalism", they are more likely to ackowledge that putting their article back in is going to have the same effect again.
Timwi
I always wondered why that doesn't happen. I think this would be a good idea if implemented properly.
John Lee (User:Johnleemk)
Timwi wrote:
Although you're right that we don't want to "forbid" or "disallow" legitimate editing, I don't think we want to discourage it either. Your suggestion makes it harder for well-meaning newbies to find out how to edit or create articles.
A better way would be to encourage more healing. We already have the "stub" message which encourages newbies to expand a stub they encounter.
One idea I was toying with in my mind recently is this. When sysops delete an article, the article goes back to saying "Wikipedia does not have an article with this title yet." Maybe we should actually let everyone (including anonymous users) know that there used to be an article, and (this is the important part) show the reason for its deletion.
If a newbie goes back to see what happened to their article, and they see it gone, they are more likely to just put it back in (it looks to them more like a glitch in the system or an accident than a deliberate deleting). If it actually said "This article was deleted for the following reason: vandalism", they are more likely to ackowledge that putting their article back in is going to have the same effect again.
Timwi
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l .
On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 14:15:52 +0100, Timwi wrote:
One idea I was toying with in my mind recently is this. When sysops delete an article, the article goes back to saying "Wikipedia does not have an article with this title yet." Maybe we should actually let everyone (including anonymous users) know that there used to be an article, and (this is the important part) show the reason for its deletion.
That wouldn't work with the way things are currently deleted as sysops usually don't type a reason when deleting speedy deletion candidates. They leave the full text of the article as the deletion reason, which helps others to check what has been deleted as any user can read this text in the deletion log.
As an alternative, I've added the following to [[MediaWiki:Noarticletext]]: * If you created an article under this title previously, it may have been deleted. See [[Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion#The cases|candidates for speedy deletion]] for possible reasons.
Perhaps this will help explain to newcomers where their article went.
Angela.
Sounds like a good compromise to me, although that won't cover pages that went through VfD very well.
John Lee (User:Johnleemk)
Angela_ wrote:
That wouldn't work with the way things are currently deleted as sysops usually don't type a reason when deleting speedy deletion candidates. They leave the full text of the article as the deletion reason, which helps others to check what has been deleted as any user can read this text in the deletion log.
As an alternative, I've added the following to [[MediaWiki:Noarticletext]]:
- If you created an article under this title previously, it may have
been deleted. See [[Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion#The cases|candidates for speedy deletion]] for possible reasons.
Perhaps this will help explain to newcomers where their article went.
Angela. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l .
This is an excellent idea IMO. A friend of mine had one of his articles deleted and he didn't know what for. He just thought it was a technical problem and never came back.
Christiaan
On 8 Aug 2004, at 2:15 pm, Timwi wrote:
One idea I was toying with in my mind recently is this. When sysops delete an article, the article goes back to saying "Wikipedia does not have an article with this title yet." Maybe we should actually let everyone (including anonymous users) know that there used to be an article, and (this is the important part) show the reason for its deletion.
If a newbie goes back to see what happened to their article, and they see it gone, they are more likely to just put it back in (it looks to them more like a glitch in the system or an accident than a deliberate deleting). If it actually said "This article was deleted for the following reason: vandalism", they are more likely to ackowledge that putting their article back in is going to have the same effect again.
Like Fred, I think this goes against the spirit of a Wiki. Wikis thrive on the contributions of anonymous people. We wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as we are today if we didn't give anons the freedom they have now.
John Lee (User:Johnleemk)
Martin Harper wrote:
Rather than *forbidding* or *allowing* things, why not use a more gentle method of discouragement? Simply don't display red links to anonymous editors. They can still create articles if they really want to by going directly to the appropriate URL, and experienced anonymous contributors would no doubt do just that.
I think this would also improve the reading experience for those who have no intention of editing.
-Martin _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--- John Lee johnleemk@yahoo.com wrote:
Like Fred, I think this goes against the spirit of a Wiki. Wikis thrive on the contributions of anonymous people. We wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as we are today if we didn't give anons the freedom they have now.
Wiki is a means to end, not an end in itself. We are buiding an encycloedia here first and foremost. So when the people who are on new page patrol start to complain about the volume of anon-created substubs and junk new pages, then we should take that seriously. Looking at the issue, it would seem that making it a bit more difficult for anons to create new pages (or at least sub-200 byte pages) would solve a large part of the problem. Anons will still be able to edit and at this point *improving* the articles we already have should be encouraged over creating more tiny articles.
But this should be a wiki-by-wiki feature. Smaller wikis *need* to encourage the creation of many small articles in order to seed topics. With well over 300,000 articles, the English Wikipedia no longer needs to do concentrate on that so much. We already have too many seeds for the amount of fertilizer and water on hand.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
Looking at the issue, it would seem that making it a bit more difficult for anons to create new pages (or at least sub-200 byte pages) would solve a large part of the problem.
But this "if people can potentially do something wrong, make it impossible" is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to the "conclusion" that wiki will never work, or that proprietary is clearly better than open-source.
Anons will still be able to edit and at this point *improving* the articles we already have should be encouraged over creating more tiny articles.
No, not at all: Do you really think someone will go "Oh my, I can't create this new article. Why, in that case, I'll go and improve an existing article!" Certainly not. It would discourage the creation of very short pages (including legitimate ones), but it would neither encourage the improvement of articles, nor (this is important) will it discourage the creation of pages containing rubbish.
With well over 300,000 articles, the English Wikipedia no longer needs to do concentrate on that so much. We already have too many seeds for the amount of fertilizer and water on hand.
I don't think we have "too many", and I don't think we could ever have "too many". It's not like having a million stubs and 100,000 full articles would be worse than only half a million stubs and 100,000 full articles. In other words: It's not like more stubs meant less full articles. The English Wikipedia doesn't need to focus on creating stubs, but why lessen it?
Timwi