What is this:
"This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin.
If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a request for someone else to create the page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles."
Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
Waerth/Walter
On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
What is this:
"This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin.
If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a request for someone else to create the page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles."
Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else. Brion implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some kind of results can be obtained. There is certainly not consensus support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do agree. I think this is "wait and see" time.
-- Sam
--- Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
What is this:
"This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin.
If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a request for someone else to create the page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles."
Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else. Brion implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some kind of results can be obtained. There is certainly not consensus support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do agree. I think this is "wait and see" time.
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it is sad, but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that those on new page patrol have to do. Now they can concentrate more effort checking for other things on new pages instead of tagging so many speedies. Id also like to say that this should be decided on a per wiki basis since letting anons create new pages still has more good than bad points for smaller wikis. But the larger a wiki gets, the more overwhelming anon clean-up work is.
Anons will still be able to edit existing articles. This is fine since existing articles are much more likely to be watched by users and decently linked from other pages.
It is also my hope that this will help push the English Wikipedia, however little, a bit from emphasizing growth and a bit more toward emphasizing quality.
-- mav
__________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:27:21PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it is sad, but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that those on new page patrol have to do.
Correlation!=Causation.
Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism -as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol to become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.
Let's see if that prediction comes out. Anyone care to place bets? :-)
read you soon, Kim Bruning
Kim Bruning wrote:
Correlation!=Causation.
Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism -as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol to become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
1. fewer crappy pages created 2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this, so we can proceed with actual data.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
- fewer crappy pages created
How are we doing for anon edits in general? Has that number changed?
- the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
Oh, I do like that phrase!
It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this, so we can proceed with actual data.
Always a useful thing to gather in an experiment ;-)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
- fewer crappy pages created
How are we doing for anon edits in general? Has that number changed?
I have no idea. I hope someone with access to the database and more clueful than me will gather all kinds of interesting stats for us.
- the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
Oh, I do like that phrase!
And it immediately suggests a social rule of sorts: anonymous redshirts are the ones you can use your phaser on without affecting the plot of the show. :-)
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Kim Bruning wrote:
Correlation!=Causation.
Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism -as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol
to
become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
- fewer crappy pages created
- the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since
some of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this, so we can proceed with actual data.
There's a guy standing over my shoulder, from 40 feet from my cube, who walked over, and saw the "Page creation limited" when clicking on "MPX" from the "PowerPC G4" .
He came to me "frustrated" and feeling "postal" (bang!) and complained to me.
Now, I'm not saying one way or the other on the issue. I just think the wording could be a little less forbidding.
Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
- fewer crappy pages created
- the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
You forgot: 3. more crappy edits to existing articles (anecdotally).
I agree we should collect more data, but we can't forget collecting data on #3, or else it will be pretty useless.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
- fewer crappy pages created
- the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
You forgot: 3. more crappy edits to existing articles (anecdotally).
I agree we should collect more data, but we can't forget collecting data on #3, or else it will be pretty useless.
I agee. There are probably a number of other small second-order effects as well. For example, by encouraging new users to register when they want to create a page, are we positively increasing the number of "good wikipedians" by transforming good people from "well, I edit sometimes, but I'm not a wikipedian, I don't have an account" to "Hey, I guess I'm a wikipedian, I'll do more good work"?
I doubt if we are in a position to figure that out.
--Jimbo
On 12/7/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
- fewer crappy pages created
- the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with no userpage).
You forgot: 3. more crappy edits to existing articles (anecdotally).
I agree we should collect more data, but we can't forget collecting data on #3, or else it will be pretty useless.
I agee. There are probably a number of other small second-order effects as well. For example, by encouraging new users to register when they want to create a page, are we positively increasing the number of "good wikipedians" by transforming good people from "well, I edit sometimes, but I'm not a wikipedian, I don't have an account" to "Hey, I guess I'm a wikipedian, I'll do more good work"?
I doubt if we are in a position to figure that out.
"Encouraging new users to register"? When did Jimbo start using doublespeak? Try "forcing" or "compelling". Honesty and precision in language are our weapons in the fight against unmeaning.
One of the potential negative consequences of creating a barrier to entry is that fewer good people will become editors because they will have been discouraged from creating a new article.
One of the potential negative consequences of creating a barrier to entry is that fewer good people will become editors because they will have been discouraged from creating a new article.
It is high time that we encourage the improvement of existing articles over adding new ones that will need to be maintained. This effort helps to push us in that direction. I hope we will change policy again if and when the negatives outweigh the benefits of letting new users create new pages. New users and anons cant upload since undoing that is something that only admins can do. Creating new pages is also something that only admins can undo. Ergo
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
New users and anons can’t upload since undoing that is something that only admins can do. Creating new pages is also something that only admins can undo. Ergo…
In a very narrow sense that's true, but any user (admin or not), may tag an article (or image) for speedy-deletion, which is in effect as good as deleting it (speedy-tagged articles rarely last more than an hour before an admin comes along and clears them out).
-Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
New users and anons cant upload since undoing that is something that only admins can do. Creating new pages is also something that only admins can undo. Ergo
In a very narrow sense that's true, but any user (admin or not), may tag an article (or image) for speedy-deletion, which is in effect as good as deleting it (speedy-tagged articles rarely last more than an hour before an admin comes along and clears them out).
And that is two actions instead of one to remove patent nonsense (at least double the work). Thus it makes sense to limit the amount of patent nonsense we get (and thus that effort could be used somewhere else). Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images we have to deal with.
If *too many* anons that would have created crap articles as IPs start to create user accounts to post new pages, then it would be logical to extend the new page creation ban to new user accounts just as we already dont allow new users to upload images. Slippery slope? Not really since there is already a ledge to land on that was created with the upload policy.
It is a matter of weighing costs vs benefits as they pertain to our goal of creating the best and largest free encyclopedia in the world. We can and should remain as open as possible for as long as possible. But we need to constantly monitor our processes to see if they are, on average, bringing us closer or farther from our goal. Once a problem area is identified we then need to act but try to do so in a deliberate and thoughtful way.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images we have to deal with.
Odd. I just created a new user account and was able to upload an image. I was sure that new user accounts could not upload. That might have been a temporary measure to combat a group of vandals. Oh well.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Odd. I just created a new user account and was able to upload an image. I was sure that new user accounts could not upload. That might have been a temporary measure to combat a group of vandals.
Perhaps you confused uploading with page moving? The newest registered users can't move pages.
Angela.
--- Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Odd. I just created a new user account and was able to upload an image. I was sure that new
user
accounts could not upload. That might have been a temporary measure to combat a group of
vandals.
Perhaps you confused uploading with page moving? The newest registered users can't move pages.
That's it. My point is that we have already moved in that direction and the ability is already in the software to ID new users.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
If *too many* anons that would have created crap articles as IPs start to create user accounts to post new pages, then it would be logical to extend the new page creation ban to new user accounts just as we already don't allow new users to upload images. Slippery slope? Not really since there is already a ledge to land on that was created with the upload policy.
New users can't upload images? I must have missed that one. Is this just on en, everywhere, in selected places? What is considered a new user?
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
If *too many* anons that would have created crap articles as IPs start to create user accounts to post new pages, then it would be logical to extend the new page creation ban to new user accounts just as we already don't allow new users to upload images. Slippery slope? Not really since there is already a ledge to land on that was created with the upload policy.
New users can't upload images? I must have missed that one. Is this just on en, everywhere, in selected places? What is considered a new user?
No, that's nowhere.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Daniel Mayer wrote:
And that is two actions instead of one to remove patent nonsense (at least double the work). Thus it makes sense to limit the amount of patent nonsense we get (and thus that effort could be used somewhere else). Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images we have to deal with.
But new page patrollers have had a consensus for a while (this was previously discussed on the list) that this was never a major burden. At any given time, 2-3 patrollers could deal with the stuff that came in. Often, when I did new page patrol, I was actually a bit bored by the slow rate at which crap articles I could delete came in at. This seems like a solution in search of a problem, if that's the supposed problem it's addressing.
-Mark
On 12/7/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
And that is two actions instead of one to remove patent nonsense (at least double the work). Thus it makes sense to limit the amount of patent nonsense we get (and thus that effort could be used somewhere else). Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images we have to deal with.
But new page patrollers have had a consensus for a while (this was previously discussed on the list) that this was never a major burden. At any given time, 2-3 patrollers could deal with the stuff that came in. Often, when I did new page patrol, I was actually a bit bored by the slow rate at which crap articles I could delete came in at. This seems like a solution in search of a problem, if that's the supposed problem it's addressing.
-Mark
Maybe new page patrol needs to be more about researching and improving new articles and less about "deleting crap". The article that started this whole discussion wasn't "crap". It wasn't "nn cruft" or "vanity". But it did have some serious problems that could have been resolved if more time was spent researching it.
I'm not saying this to lay blame, after all new page patrol is a volunteer effort so any help is better than nothing. But if you're ever "bored" I can think of a few million things to do, things that are more important than "deleting crap" anyway.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Maybe new page patrol needs to be more about researching and improving new articles and less about "deleting crap". The article that started this whole discussion wasn't "crap". It wasn't "nn cruft" or "vanity". But it did have some serious problems that could have been resolved if more time was spent researching it.
I'm not saying this to lay blame, after all new page patrol is a volunteer effort so any help is better than nothing. But if you're ever "bored" I can think of a few million things to do, things that are more important than "deleting crap" anyway.
Well, they aren't really comparable activities. New-page patrol for crap is a mindless activity that can be done to procrastinate and/or relieve stress. Researching someone I've never heard of, don't care about, and don't have the resources available to research in the first place isn't. On the occasions I *do* want to do serious research for Wikipedia, I prefer to do it on areas in which I either have expertise or at least some amount of interest (I have a long list of articles I care about that need improving or writing in the first place). Perhaps some volunteers can be persuaded to do "random researching", but I suspect it will be relatively few.
-Mark
On 12/7/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Maybe new page patrol needs to be more about researching and improving new articles and less about "deleting crap". The article that started this whole discussion wasn't "crap". It wasn't "nn cruft" or "vanity". But it did have some serious problems that could have been resolved if more time was spent researching it.
I'm not saying this to lay blame, after all new page patrol is a volunteer effort so any help is better than nothing. But if you're ever "bored" I can think of a few million things to do, things that are more important than "deleting crap" anyway.
Well, they aren't really comparable activities. New-page patrol for crap is a mindless activity that can be done to procrastinate and/or relieve stress. Researching someone I've never heard of, don't care about, and don't have the resources available to research in the first place isn't. On the occasions I *do* want to do serious research for Wikipedia, I prefer to do it on areas in which I either have expertise or at least some amount of interest (I have a long list of articles I care about that need improving or writing in the first place). Perhaps some volunteers can be persuaded to do "random researching", but I suspect it will be relatively few.
-Mark
After reading this, I find it hard to believe there isn't much much more blatantly false content in the encyclopedia. It does kind of kill Jimbo's idea that "reduc[ing] the workload on the people doing new pages patrol" will solve anything, though, assuming most new page patrollers treat it the same way as you (limited to just "deleting crap"). Suddenly I feel less bad about calling new page patrollers firemen, but I should keep in mind that you don't speak for them all.
Anthony
On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:27:21PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote: ...
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it is sad, but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that
...
A. Creating new crap article now consists of typing the name of the article, typing the article + clicking one button.
B. Creating new article with compulsory registration adds aditional requirement of creating one crap account. Necessary effort consists of typing a random user name, 2x random password + clicking one button.
C. Creating new article with compulsory registration with unique email adds requirement to crate one crap email. Necessary effort consists of typing a normal email into jetable.org, and clicking one button.
and so on....
In long term perspective we'll achieve the same ammount of harder to spot vandalism. Effort required from vandals will increase e.g. twice, from one click to two clicks.
Look from http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity viewpoint.
Anons will still be able to edit existing articles. This is fine since existing articles are much more likely to be watched by users and decently linked from other pages.
This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.
IMO Wikipedia should less try to mimic what works for traditional encyclopedias (like the CITE madness) and concentrate more on inner proceses which works here - and improve software to aid them / identify where they fail. For example, locating various more likely dangerous articles, such as *unwatched articles *articles with high (external readers/wikipedian readers) ratio
It is also my hope that this will help push the English Wikipedia, however little, a bit from emphasizing growth and a bit more toward emphasizing quality.
I'm affraid it only pushes us from SoftSecurity which works to HardSecurity which can not work for us.
Jan Kulveit [[User:Wikimol]]
Jan Kulveit wrote:
This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.
I think it would be excellent for us to study this. What I have long dreamed of is a regularly published list of "the most read / least watched articles". Take the number of pageviews divided by the number of watchers (plus one to prevent division by zero I guess). Or some more sophisticated variant of that to take into account minimum thresholds of concern perhaps.
I think there are many cool tools yet to be developed, indeed yet to be dreamed of.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Jan Kulveit wrote:
This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.
I think it would be excellent for us to study this. What I have long dreamed of is a regularly published list of "the most read / least watched articles". Take the number of pageviews divided by the number of watchers (plus one to prevent division by zero I guess). Or some more sophisticated variant of that to take into account minimum thresholds of concern perhaps.
Unfortunately the pageview statistics are turned off :(
Waerth/Walter
Jan Kulveit wrote:
I'm affraid it only pushes us from SoftSecurity which works to HardSecurity which can not work for us.
Actually, this *is* an example of SoftSecurity in action.
SoftSecurity is about using minor speedbumps to discourage bad action in combination with making it very easy to make a good action to undo a bad action.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Jan Kulveit wrote:
In long term perspective we'll achieve the same ammount of harder to spot vandalism. Effort required from vandals will increase e.g. twice, from one click to two clicks.
If it would cost a dollar to create an account, at least the foundation would get rich from this.
Look from http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity viewpoint.
Do they provide a proven solution for wikis with a million articles?
On 12/6/05, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Jan Kulveit wrote:
Look from http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity viewpoint.
Do they provide a proven solution for wikis with a million articles?
If by proven you mean works 100% of the time, of course not. If by proven you mean works 99% of the time, well, Wikipedia is the proof.
Anthony
Daniel Mayer wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
That is simply incorrect. I do (or did, until this policy change) new-pages patrol on a regular basis, and I'd estimate no more than ~30% of new pages created by anons are "complete crap". Certainly no more than 10-20% ever warranted speedy deletion.
-Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
That is simply incorrect. I do (or did, until this policy change) new-pages patrol on a regular basis, and I'd estimate no more than ~30% of new pages created by anons are "complete crap". Certainly no more than 10-20% ever warranted speedy deletion.
Your crap tolerance must be higher than mine. :) You also misquoted me; I included a range modifier.
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
That is simply incorrect. I do (or did, until this policy change) new-pages patrol on a regular basis, and I'd estimate no more than ~30% of new pages created by anons are "complete crap". Certainly no more than 10-20% ever warranted speedy deletion.
Your crap tolerance must be higher than mine. :) You also misquoted me; I included a range modifier.
Well on the Dutch wikipedia the crap range for anon new pages is way over 50% so I guess on the english wiki you guys are really lucky ;)
Waerth/Walter
On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken walter@vankalken.net wrote:
What is this:
"This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin.
If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a request for someone else to create the page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles."
Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else. Brion implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some kind of results can be obtained. There is certainly not consensus support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do agree. I think this is "wait and see" time.
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
Do we have stats on that?
On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, The Cunctator wrote:
On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
Do we have stats on that?
New, usable articles created by anons accounted for around 40% of all new articles. This ignores speedied articles, etc which might inflate the figure in favor of anon-creation.
Lots of them need wikification and start life as stubs; I wouldn't call that "crap".
SJ
--- SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, The Cunctator wrote:
On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
Do we have stats on that?
New, usable articles created by anons accounted for around 40% of all new articles. This ignores speedied articles, etc which might inflate the figure in favor of anon-creation.
Lots of them need wikification and start life as stubs; I wouldn't call that "crap".
When I used to work new page patrol I found that most of all IP-created articles were deleted or listed for deletion/copyvio. I would call those crap. Most of the remaining ones had significant clean-up issues that needed to be fixed and/or were nearly useless stubs. I would call those borderline cases since they add little in comparison to the increased maintenance burden on the community. Most of total + most of remaining = almost all in my book
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
When I found Wikipedia, I had no intentions of registering. At some point when I created my first article (err...stub) I was just an anon. I only registered after I saw how that new article got picked up by the community and expanded and made usable: I got hooked watching the history of that first article.
When you first approach the Wikipedia community it seems overwhelming, and registering is a pretty big step. I highly suspect that a large number of people who registered did so after the success of an article they created as an anon -- like me -- and wouldn't have created the article if they had to take a step of registering. Becoming part of a community is not something that some people take lightly, especially as active and complex a community as Wikipedia is.
Ultimately most decisions have to be justified in terms of improving quality. Will people who are determined enough to create fictitious, libellous biographies be stopped by restricting page creation to registered users? Not very likely.
-ilya haykinson
On 12/7/05, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, The Cunctator wrote:
On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
Do we have stats on that?
New, usable articles created by anons accounted for around 40% of all new articles. This ignores speedied articles, etc which might inflate the figure in favor of anon-creation.
Lots of them need wikification and start life as stubs; I wouldn't call that "crap".
SJ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
--- Ilya Haykinson haykinson@gmail.com wrote:
When I found Wikipedia, I had no intentions of registering. At some point when I created my first article (err...stub) I was just an anon. I only registered after I saw how that new article got picked up by the community and expanded and made usable: I got hooked watching the history of that first article.
Recruitment like that is certainly a benefit and should be considered (the smaller the wiki, the more important recruitment is). But we also have to consider the bad effects as well. At least on the larger wikis the bad effects on anon article creation seem to greater than the positive. The larger wikis also have a much higher reader to editor ratio, so concentrating more effect on improving existing articles vs creating new ones that themselves need to be maintained may in fact be the better course of action.
When you first approach the Wikipedia community it seems overwhelming, and registering is a pretty big step.
If setting aside 10 to 20 seconds to create an account is too big of a step, then that person really should not be increasing the maintenance burden on the community. Smaller wikis excepted since the likelihood of any one reader becoming an editor is much greater than on larger wikis.
I highly suspect that a large number of people who registered did so after the success of an article they created as an anon -- like me -- and wouldn't have created the article if they had to take a step of registering. Becoming part of a community is not something that some people take lightly, especially as active and complex a community as Wikipedia is.
Having a user account does not a community member make. We all have all sorts of user accounts on the Internet. That does not mean we belong to communities associated with those accounts.
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Ilya Haykinson haykinson@gmail.com wrote:
When I found Wikipedia, I had no intentions of registering. At some point when I created my first article (err...stub) I was just an anon. I only registered after I saw how that new article got picked up by the community and expanded and made usable: I got hooked watching the history of that first article.
Recruitment like that is certainly a benefit and should be considered (the smaller the wiki, the more important recruitment is). But we also have to consider the bad effects as well. At least on the larger wikis the bad effects on anon article creation seem to greater than the positive. The larger wikis also have a much higher reader to editor ratio, so concentrating more effect on improving existing articles vs creating new ones that themselves need to be maintained may in fact be the better course of action.
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. Do you have some sources for that that prove this assertion ??
When you first approach the Wikipedia community it seems overwhelming, and registering is a pretty big step.
If setting aside 10 to 20 seconds to create an account is too big of a step, then that person really should not be increasing the maintenance burden on the community. Smaller wikis excepted since the likelihood of any one reader becoming an editor is much greater than on larger wikis.
It is not the time that it takes that IS the big step.
You misrepresent the problem with vandalism on smaller projects. It takes quite some time and doing before there is a vibrant community. This is the time when a starting project is most vulnerable to vandals. The vandals drive people away and this often results in abandoned projects. The problem that exists is with a perceived problem, a problem that we have had from the beginning. We have always replied that we have a particular percentage of stubs and this has proved to be constant. We have always had a percentage of quality articles and this proved to be constant. We have always had a percentage of problematic articles and that proved to be constant too. Now the problem is that this cannot be helped. We can work hard to improve our quality and we do. But thinking that we can get absolute good quality is an achievable goal is like believing in Santaclaus. When people say that doomsday will come if we do not achieve this, they are spreading FUD. It is not helpful, if anything I fear the measures needed to get this unattainable goal may fracture and ultimately destroy our community.
In several answers I have read it is put forward that people may be willing to provide sources but only for the stuff that they ARE working on. Many also state that they are not willing to find sources for stuff that is already there. Consequently there are 600.000 articles in the English language wikipedia that will probably not be annotated. We may not get new articles from anonymous users but it is much harder to check anonymous changes. So yes, we have an experiment going. That is all the good that can be said about it.
I have read people say that when on patrol they get bored because not enough is happening... If anything the one thing that makes patrolling for problems a hardship, is the performance of our system.
I highly suspect that a large number of people who registered did so after the success of an article they created as an anon -- like me -- and wouldn't have created the article if they had to take a step of registering. Becoming part of a community is not something that some people take lightly, especially as active and complex a community as Wikipedia is.
Having a user account does not a community member make. We all have all sorts of user accounts on the Internet. That does not mean we belong to communities associated with those accounts.
-- mav
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.
Thanks, GerardM
--- Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@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
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@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.
Over time more people sign on to our project. Given our importance the number of these people in a similar time frame increase. It is a similar situation as with stubs, numerically the numbers grow and as a percentage they stay the same. The point of this exercise is to decrease the existence of flawed articles. The blunt mechanism that is chosen for now will not help the existing flawed articles. It only leads on an ever increasing path of repressive measures.
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.
When you say that we need to improve our methodology I agree. I agree that it requires tooling. When you single the bigger wikis out to be correct, I think the tooling you are thinking of is probably flawed. The small wikis are probably more in need of improvement than the bigger ones. The chance of lawsuits is not less but more complicated. The consequences of not addressing issues may lead to a total ban of our resources in a given country. I rate the current block of wikipedia from China as more damaging for the relevance of our data. My motivation is that we know that there are issues with content and we do address these issues as well as we possibly can. By loosing our public we lose our relevance and we lose their point of view that helps our point of view to be neutral.
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
Again, the number of users needs to be seen in relation to a time frame and in relation to the size of our popularity. I would not be surprised that the amount of new users has been fairly constant.
I would be the last to deny our goal. I am all for better tooling and for being more discriminatory. I am all for stimulating annotations. I am however also afraid that the current train of thought is well under way, we are its passenger and we do not know where it will lead us and how far it lead us away from the very ideals that so many hold dear.
Thanks, GerardM
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