--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
The way I read your answer, you assume that all improvement is coming
from our existing editors. I do not know what you base this on.
That is not what I meant at all. I was simply pointing out that on a large wiki, such as
en.wikipedia, the negatives start to outweigh the positives of allowing anon and newbie
new page
creation. In other words (for large wikis), the bad effects of additional maintenance and
strain
on existing users start to outweigh the benefit of recruitment and the relatively small
part of
anon new pages that survive. We also have to consider Jimmy's reasoning; that new
pages are much
more likely to have far fewer eyeballs on them and thus more likely to contain libel,
slander, or
blatantly false information. Thus limiting that function to people who are less likely to
do that
(at least on impulse), is something to try.
We may in fact have just shifted much of the problem to new users and may need to extend
this
experiment to cover new user accounts as well. Undoing a page creation is only something
that
admins can take care of, so this would be not-unlike our prohibition on page moves by
newbies
since multiple page moves can only be fixed by admins.
But thinking
that we can get absolute good quality is an achievable goal is like
believing in Santaclaus.
Nobody here is that naive. What we must do, however, is decrease the probability of
creating bad
content and increase the probability of creating good content. We need to scale our
processes to
meet new demands. Our software and methods need to adapt to an environment where people
depend on
the larger wikis to be as correct as possible and where our fame and license makes the
libel,
slander, and false information we host that much more harmful; both to those it directly
puts into
a bad light and ourselves.
Having made the step to have a user account like
described is a big step
towards becoming a community member. That is the point that you try to deny.
Have you seen the number of user accounts created on the Enlglish Wikipedia? It is an
order of
magnitude greater than the size of the community. That misses the whole point anyway; our
goal is
to create the world's largest and best free encyclopedia. The community is a means to
that end.
Granted, the community is vitally important, but concerns about it should not trump our
goal.
Let's not deny our goal.
-- mav
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com