How friendly are we to Newbies? Update on the create an article as a newbie challenge - WikiEN-l

30 Oct 2009

I'm hoping that we won't have too many "trick" articles in this
process, or articles that should be deleted but not by CSD (the
criteria are "write an article that doesn't meet the deletion
criteria".

So far we've had a range from Battleships and miniaturists to Monarchs
and a winger. I think we've tested the charge that a new article
submitted to Wikipedia will be tagged for deletion in two minutes and
is guaranteed not to last seven days.  But it would be a Pyrrhic
victory to respond to the press that  It is still possible for a good
article to be added to Wikipedia by a newbie, as we'd have to concede
that enough get deleted by over-enthusiasm at CSD to constitute a
problem - the press exaggerated the problem, but they didn't entirely
invent it.  We've also established that neither welcoming nor
wikification are currently keeping up with the flow of newbies and
their articles.

My own contribution has in the first sentence "was king of ****** from
***** to ***". It has yet to be marked as patrolled and I anticipate
it reaching those who patrol the back of the unpatrolled  newpages at
some point this week.

Regards

WereSpielChequers

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 Message: 2
 Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:52:18 -0400
 From: David Goodman &lt;dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com&gt;
 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How friendly are we to Newbies? Update on the
        create  an article as a newbie challenge
 To: English Wikipedia &lt;wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;
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        &lt;480eb3150910290952i5afcb259qadfdd6751246d1b3(a)mail.gmail.com&gt;
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 It's not hard to do. Mention the unspectacular factor that claims
 notability in an obscure position in the middle without any details,
 add some foolish spam about how good they are & how they will change
 the world,  include an email address to contact for more information,
 and omit references. For models, check CSD.

 David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

 On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:17 AM, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:32 AM, WereSpielChequers
> &lt;werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:
>> The idea is to test the speedy deletion process with articles that
>> shouldn't be speedy deleted.
>>
>> Links to several of the articles in the process and their fates have
>> been posted to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment
>
> Hey, that's really cool. I've made my own lame newbie attempt to join
> the experiment. It's hard to write a convincing newbie stub article
> that you think deserves to exist, but could be dissed by a patroller
> acting in a hurry.
>
> Steve
> 