Yes, let's. Experiments go both ways, remember...
Oh good. I was wondering when this experiment was going to end. For purely selfish reasons from the perspective of a mostly logged-out user, you see.
But as a rationalization, I can go with:
- We will lose good new pages created by anons of good will.
My first IP address was http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/209.167.55.131
As you see, after briefly checking that I could, in fact, edit, I jumped right in with article creation. What would happen if I wandered into Wikipedia today?
- The articles I created exist now, and that field has much better coverage now. Would I have new articles to contribute?
Absolutely, there are many missing topics in that area still. Even some of the red-links I created way back then I still haven't made blue (nor has anyone else).
- Wouldn't I just register an account?
Don't know. Hard to say what I would do. But, quite aside from the question of whether anon creation of new articles should be allowed, have people actually tried to logout (WHAT did he say? log OUT? Burn him!) then follow a red-link to create an article, and follow the process through? There might be some improvements to be made there. I have tried to be deliberately Wiki-naive, and have wound up either lost in AfC, or correctly submitting to AfC which then promptly gets ignored. And I don't think I was being unreasonably dense. Even if I guess that the CORRECT choice from the article-not-found page is actually "create an account", at the end of it I wind up back at the main page. The obvious thing to do here is to back up in the browser history, but this doesn't help, unless I guess that I have to back up one PAST the article-not-found page to the original red-link page and click it again! An unlikely guess.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it is precisely these obstacles which also cuts down on the nonsense.
Regards, Dan Mehkeri
On 8/23/06, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
My first IP address was http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/209.167.55.131
As you see, after briefly checking that I could, in fact, edit, I jumped right in with article creation. What would happen if I wandered into Wikipedia today?
I have to say that this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curry%27s_paradox&oldid=458475
is pretty clearly the work of a troll, trying to convince us that black is white and that God doesn't exist.
On 8/24/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
I have to say that this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curry%27s_paradox&oldid=458475
is pretty clearly the work of a troll, trying to convince us that black is white and that God doesn't exist.
?
-Matt
On 8/23/06, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
have wound up either lost in AfC, or correctly submitting to AfC which then promptly gets ignored. And I don't think I was being unreasonably dense. Even if
Promptly ignoring all AfC submissions is a very efficient, high pay-off strategy that I would recommend to anyone.
I guess that the CORRECT choice from the article-not-found page is actually "create an account", at the end of it I wind up back at the main page. The obvious thing to do here is to back up in the browser history, but this doesn't help, unless I guess that I have to back up one PAST the article-not-found page to the original red-link page and click it again! An unlikely guess.
No, you have to wait 4 days to create the new article anyway.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it is precisely these obstacles which also cuts down on the nonsense.
Damn straight. :) Seriously, what gets posted at AfC is sludge. And that's from the newbie editors who actually made the effort to wade their way through the process and make a submission!
The only benefit in allowing anons to create articles is in stroking their egos long enough for them to become good editors (while deleting their creation in the meantime). We should attempt to quantify that benefit.
Steve
On 8/25/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/23/06, dmehkeri@swi.com dmehkeri@swi.com wrote:
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if it is precisely these obstacles which also cuts down on the nonsense.
Damn straight. :) Seriously, what gets posted at AfC is sludge. And that's from the newbie editors who actually made the effort to wade their way through the process and make a submission!
The only benefit in allowing anons to create articles is in stroking their egos long enough for them to become good editors (while deleting their creation in the meantime). We should attempt to quantify that benefit.
Steve
I think it is a very poor assumption to think that anything which would have been created by users not logged in will find its way to AfC. In fact, I believe that the AfC process tends to filter out exactly those submissions which are preferred - casual submissions by someone trying to improve things, and does very little to discourage people who are trying to push a viewpoint from wasting people's time.
I've especially found the AfC process to be ridiculous when I run across a redirect that needs to be created.
Anthony
On 25/08/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think it is a very poor assumption to think that anything which would have been created by users not logged in will find its way to AfC. In fact, I believe that the AfC process tends to filter out exactly those submissions which are preferred - casual submissions by someone trying to improve things, and does very little to discourage people who are trying to push a viewpoint from wasting people's time. I've especially found the AfC process to be ridiculous when I run across a redirect that needs to be created.
In that case, should AFC be replaced with a notice saying "You need an account to create articles"?
OTOH it sounds like a completely honest introduction to Wikipedia bureaucracy.
- d.
On 8/25/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/08/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think it is a very poor assumption to think that anything which would have been created by users not logged in will find its way to AfC. In fact, I believe that the AfC process tends to filter out exactly those submissions which are preferred - casual submissions by someone trying to improve things, and does very little to discourage people who are trying to push a viewpoint from wasting people's time. I've especially found the AfC process to be ridiculous when I run across a redirect that needs to be created.
In that case, should AFC be replaced with a notice saying "You need an account to create articles"?
I'd say probably. I always thought AfC was a stupid idea. If you want "anons" to create articles, just let them create them.
Anthony
On 8/25/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think it is a very poor assumption to think that anything which would have been created by users not logged in will find its way to AfC. In fact, I believe that the AfC process tends to filter out exactly those submissions which are preferred - casual submissions by someone trying to improve things, and does very little to discourage people who are trying to push a viewpoint from wasting people's time.
What we probably really want is a way where anon users *can* create articles, but that they're kept in quarantine. AfC is a very clunky way of achieving that.
I've especially found the AfC process to be ridiculous when I run across a redirect that needs to be created.
I was about to suggest that anons be allowed to create redirects, but there would be the obvious loophole that they could edit it afterwards. Then again, editing a redirect is pretty much creating a new article, so maybe that should be banned anyway for anons.
Steve
On 8/25/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I think it is a very poor assumption to think that anything which would have been created by users not logged in will find its way to AfC. In fact, I believe that the AfC process tends to filter out exactly those submissions which are preferred - casual submissions by someone trying to improve things, and does very little to discourage people who are trying to push a viewpoint from wasting people's time.
What we probably really want is a way where anon users *can* create articles, but that they're kept in quarantine. AfC is a very clunky way of achieving that.
But what would the quarantine involve? Can people who aren't logged in see articles in quarantine? Who can edit articles in quarantine? Who can delete them? Who can take them out of quarantine?
My own thoughts on this suggest that it'd be enough to just stick a big "WARNING: THIS WAS CREATED BY AN ANON" on the top of such articles for a while, and keep them out of google searches.
But maybe you and certainly others see quarantine as something different.
Anthony
On 8/25/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
But what would the quarantine involve?
Sitting quietly in a corner and not disturbing anyone.
Can people who aren't logged in see articles in quarantine?
No.
Who can edit articles in quarantine?
We can.
Who can delete them?
We can.
Who can take them out of quarantine?
We can.
My own thoughts on this suggest that it'd be enough to just stick a big "WARNING: THIS WAS CREATED BY AN ANON" on the top of such articles for a while, and keep them out of google searches.
But maybe you and certainly others see quarantine as something different.
WARNING: THIS WAS CREATED BY AN ANON
John B Smith is a man from New Jersey who was suspected in the death of John F Kennedy Jr. Nothing was ever proven.
See the problem?
Steve
On 8/25/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
My own thoughts on this suggest that it'd be enough to just stick a big "WARNING: THIS WAS CREATED BY AN ANON" on the top of such articles for a while, and keep them out of google searches.
But maybe you and certainly others see quarantine as something different.
WARNING: THIS WAS CREATED BY AN ANON
John B Smith is a man from New Jersey who was suspected in the death of John F Kennedy Jr. Nothing was ever proven.
See the problem?
a) The statement isn't true; and b) the statement isn't referenced. Of course c) the statement wouldn't survive today for more than a couple minutes mainly due to the WP:BLP policy; d) that article could be created just as easily by someone logged in as by someone not logged in; and e) such a statement could be just as easily added to an existing page as it could be added to a brand new one (and in fact it would be much more likely to be caught if it was added to a brand new article).
The Siegenthaler incident happened exactly once. Using it as an excuse to shut down new article creation by "anons" makes as much sense as permablocking the class A netblock which happened to create the article.
I'm all for experimentation. When Jimbo announced the experiment to limit new article creation I applauded it. But it's become rather clear that this was never an experiment at all.
Anthony
On 25/08/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The Siegenthaler incident happened exactly once. Using it as an excuse to shut down new article creation by "anons" makes as much sense as permablocking the class A netblock which happened to create the article.
Mm. We haven't had much more in the way of Siegenthaler experiences because of aggressively pursuing verifiability and NPOV on living bios, and an active wikiproject for just that job.
I'm all for experimentation. When Jimbo announced the experiment to limit new article creation I applauded it. But it's become rather clear that this was never an experiment at all.
I think the Siegenthaler thing was more coincidental. We were getting a FIREHOSE of crap created daily. Still are, I think.
- d.
On 8/25/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think the Siegenthaler thing was more coincidental. We were getting a FIREHOSE of crap created daily. Still are, I think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Newpages&namespace=0&a...
Click on stuff created by redlink users, draw your own conclusions. If you spend 15 minutes and don't find something outrageously libelous, ... well, you must click slower than I do. :)
David Gerard wrote:
I think the Siegenthaler thing was more coincidental. We were getting a FIREHOSE of crap created daily. Still are, I think.
If we still are, then what was the point of stopping article creation by non-logged-in users?
It's possible not as _much_ crap is being created daily, but that remains to be proven by the analysis I've been asking about and not seeing any trace of.
Steve Bennett wrote:
I was about to suggest that anons be allowed to create redirects, but there would be the obvious loophole that they could edit it afterwards. Then again, editing a redirect is pretty much creating a new article, so maybe that should be banned anyway for anons.
Why should even _more_ activities be banned when we haven't even seen an analysis of the results of the _previous_ set of activities that were banned?
On 8/25/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
I was about to suggest that anons be allowed to create redirects, but there would be the obvious loophole that they could edit it afterwards. Then again, editing a redirect is pretty much creating a new article, so maybe that should be banned anyway for anons.
Why should even _more_ activities be banned when we haven't even seen an analysis of the results of the _previous_ set of activities that were banned?
Ok, I wasn't very explicit, I was actually suggesting making it possible for anons to create redirects, on the creation that they can't then edit them again.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/25/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
I was about to suggest that anons be allowed to create redirects, but there would be the obvious loophole that they could edit it afterwards. Then again, editing a redirect is pretty much creating a new article, so maybe that should be banned anyway for anons.
Why should even _more_ activities be banned when we haven't even seen an analysis of the results of the _previous_ set of activities that were banned?
Ok, I wasn't very explicit, I was actually suggesting making it possible for anons to create redirects, on the creation that they can't then edit them again.
What about an anon editing a redirect that _wasn't_ created by an anon? If there's no distinction drawn between the two then my previous objection stands exactly the same. If there is a distinction between the two, I don't see _why_ there's a distinction between the two. A redirect is a redirect.