On 06/18/04 at 09:31 AM, David Gerard said:
> I know a few users who started by creating a page, because they knew
> something about something that didn't have an article. Generally as an
> anon user. Why should they bother waiting a week? What's in it for them?
I would turn the question around: what is in it for us?
Maybe three years ago, when the project was just starting and it was important to build momentum, we needed every contributor and contribution we could get. But now we have ~300k articles, many of which still need lots of work, thousands of regular users, and a database which is unable to keep up with the demand, no matter how much hardware we throw at it. Maybe we should start thinking in terms of quality rather than sheer quantity.
V.
Since this is the foundation-l mailing list, just a thought.
This comment may be true for the english wikipedia. Perhaps beginning to be true for the german one. It is not for all the other projects.
I also think new users are synonym of potential quality, as they are synonym of more diversity. And there are few things as magic for a new comer, than to click on a red link and start a new page. This is very precious.
Moving a page, however, is not something most newbies start with. And it does not hold the same magic. And it implies more work to fix.
Still, current problematic issues are due to a user who is absolutely not a new user, but who in particular use some weaknesses (perhaps) of our log-in system.