Toby Bartels wrote: <snip preliminaries and background> This may be a primary point for discussion. IMO We should be grateful for the smallest quantum of information a contributor provides and create easy opportunities to provide it. Why? Because small quantums lead to repeat quantums which lead to steady streams of quantums. If a stream of quantums exist then there exists a finite time in which a significant packet by any measure will accumulate. Further, if it can be shown that steady accumulation of quantums and packets leads to exponential growth in the number of quantum providers, the rate at which they contribution, or the summed total product; then there exists a growth rate at which our goal of deep, broad, and reliable can be achieved within human lifetimes absent any limiting scaling factors which leads to loss of useful participation as fast or faster than it grows. A leading online free Encyclopedia which has depth, breadth, and reliable content will require massive effort to create. Consider 200 million people currently connected to the internet. Most of them fairly well educated and over half of them literate in English. If one million wander by in 2004 four or five times to look at Wikipedia material and one percent of them leave a link, correct an error, or write a sentence on 20 percent of their visits then we will have collected aproximately: 1 percent of 1 million = 10K (10K)*(.33)*(1 applicable link) - (10K)*(.33)*(1 error) + (10K)*(.33)*(100 byte sentence) = + 3,000 links - 3,000 errors + 300K content This twikification is apparently a minor influence compared to regular contributors. Unless we find in 2005 that of 1.5 million visitors, 500K are now repeat visitors and 2 percent of these are likely to create a paragraph, insert 5 best links of a google search, edit an article for readibility, insert crosslinks between specialized areas of personal interest, or research and write one stub to fill in a blank area of intense personal interest. Now we have in addition to the above for the first million, something like this for the 500K: (2 percent) * (1/5 probability of contribution) * 500K = 2K/category + (2K) * (500bytes/paragraph) or 1Mb + (5 best links) * (2K) or 10,000 links + (2K) * (1 reability improvement) or 2,000 articles improved + (2K) * (5 cross links) or 10,000 new crosslinks + (2K) * (researched stubs) or 2,000 stubs Still fairly minor compared to the 100K plus articles we should easily have by 2005. But consider 2006 Assuming approximately the same 500K vistor growth to 2 million. One million of whom are new casual dropins same as above. 500K are repeat visitors of whom 2 percent become contributors same as above. 250K of whom 1 percent are repeat significant contributors who do at least one of the following: 1.) adopt a couple of articles of interest (weekly error correction, augmentation and fast response to questions on talk page) 2.) write a couple of draft stubs (5 plus paragraphs, 2 external ref., 2 links) 3.) research and improve a stub significantly (5 plus more paragraphs, minus 2 errors, plus 2 ext. ref, 2 open questions and 1 paragraph of brilliant prose) 4.) edit several articles for readability (minus 5 comma splices, minus 2 errors, minus 2 typos, plus some formatting) 5.) contest or question several facts for checking (figure 25% are quickly answered, 25% stimulate discussion, 50% erased) 6.) present a significant (say over 1%) minority view for inclusion (Priceless! New content by definition! .... under 1% are run off as cranks) 7.) read a cluster of specialized articles of interest and crosslink them (100 cross links, 50 percent inappropriate or errors, 50 useful) 8.) insert an index list of detailed subtopics within a subject (??? attractive to students or specialists???) 9.) add some highly specialized detail to a topic of professional interest (say ten pages of highly technical gobblety gook ... ala Alex 8) ) 10.) refactor a lengthy article into a summary article with links to new subarticles 1 percent (250K) times .10 equals 250 contributors in each of ten categories: 1. (250) * 2 adopted articles or 500 newly adopted articles 2. + (250) * 2 stubs or 500 draft stubs or 250K content 3. + (250) * (5para)(500bytes) - 250(2 errors) + 250(2 ext.ref.) + (2 open queries) 4. laziness sets in. The point is that contributing volunteers grow into contributing in their own way from the initial starting point of a single edit or contribution through whatever path they choose of a myriad of potential ways to contribute. A few poor stubs lying around to help new readers become contributors should pay off handsomely in the long run, if poor stubs help entice an initial contribution. What could be less threatening than an almost empty page with one sentence describing your home town or a city you have driven through? Later when we have thousands of regular contributors the poor stub contribution will fall off because poor stubs are hard to find. Right now with less than 200 regular contributors and less than a thousand repeat contributors, any growth in the number of contributors is very significant. People discouraged from useful participation by the incomplete work in progress can be impressed in the future after the contributing community has grown sufficiently to grow the content easily accessible to the main page to the high quality necessary to impress non contributing consumers. Your argument here seems to be that the incomplete material is hard to find. This may be true for a dedicated writer looking for new empty titles to write under. I assure you that many attempting to use the reference material specific to the topic in question will encounter the incomplete material. Murphy's law applies here. Since you wish to augment the material, it is hard to find; since they wish to use the incomplete material it manifests quickly via a seach or excellent branch index link routing. Hopefully someone will choose to edit, to at least add a quantum of information. Perhaps the policy (recommendations for voluntary participation methods) could/should be to add at least one of the following: 1. one sentence 2. one external link 3. one internal link 4. other easy or tiny quantities of information It seems to me that this is within an order of magnitude of the effort required to request deletion. With several hundred Wikipedians browsing around following this policy the stubs should start growing even if no one chooses to do detailed and extensive research or real work in augmenting it. So why should Wikipedia contribution be work? Contributors will either enjoy contributing or leave. What are you going to do in a few years when new stubs to initiate with a high quality new draft are scarce and take serious work to find? If Wikipedia becomes successful as a deep, broad, reliable resource then contributions beyond wikification are going to become increasingly difficult to make. For example: I recently became interested in neural nets and started reading up a bit on neuron organization in the human brain. Somebody has done a pretty good job in this area already on the Wikipedia, at least to a layman's summary and fundamentals level. The best contribution I could easily and reliably make to the "neuron" article after a few hours of technical reading was a question on the talk page regarding the precise nature of synapse connections between adjacent neurons. I may answer this in the near future or a neurologist, physiologist, or biologist may wander by and answer with an appropriate edit. Alternatively another none specialist may research it extensively and decide that they can answer the question definatively or at least clarify it reliably. Does the fact that a specialist could spot and rephrase this sentence (that I find ambiguous) more accurately with trivial effort make it an insignificant contribution? I do not think so. It effects how I model my "neuron" class/object in a potential future neural network I may write to toy around with. This makes it highly significant to me. It is also of significance to every future reader, whether it is in error or merely unclear, until it is corrected. A single quantum of information, yet a highly significant contribution waiting to happen. Coquille is a small town in Oregon. Is this a trivial stub which should be deleted? Not if a fellow Coquille H.S. graduate shows up, adds a description of the annual "Gay 90s" parade, and sticks around to help fill details on the Coquille River valley and watershed. Particularly if a third Coquille H.S. graduate shows up, adds the years Coquille took the OR state football and track championships (to the new stub on OR state championships and Coquille's article), notes that a graduate competed in the Olympic trials but did not make the cut, adds some non classified detail on the stealth bombers he flies and drops some chit chat on my talk page. If I let him know the other person has an account and that he should drop a message, suddenly we have an asynchronous 3-way social event. It is more likely that all participants will be repeat users and contributors and very possibly could attract further attention from other Coquille residents or graduates or current friends and acquaintenances. Coquille is a town of 5,000 and I know many people that could add useful detail to the Wikipedia. Tucson is a city of how many people with how many H.S. graduates? I think we can live with a stub until somebody from Tucson shows up to expand it and correct errors. Likewise a network of detailed technical stubs related to neurons .... over 50 neurotransmitters! .... this impending list could act as an attractor for neurology students who could answer my question in a timely manner. I can hear it now: "Wikipedia is not a technical almanac, leave this to the human genome or proteanome project." Perhaps if it was, at some appropriate level appropriately accessed a dictionary or almanac, it would have correct unambiguous explanation of how neurons intercommunicate. Surely a neurology student looking up neurotransmitters for some obscure reason would have fixed the layman's overview by now? Perhaps if each neurotransmitter had a few links to online technical papers it would attract some attention of neurology students stranded away from technical libraries over Christmas break? In conclusion/confusion, let us quickly reexamine that "lousy" stub: I presume a good title such as: Tucson, Arizona or whatever the current style is "A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." What is precise population? Census data is available online and via public signs at the city boundary. A resident or former resident could likely add a lower boundary accurate to within a few thousand. large - qualitative subjective description. There is room for improvement but it has significant meaning. Large for Arizona or for New York? For the Western US or Eastern Seaboard. Largest in Arizona or merely fifth largest in the state? city - not a town, county, or a military base. Are there any military bases nearby? Is it in the fallout patterns for nuclear tests conducted in the 50s and 60s? Any historically significant cattle trails, military confrontations, events? Where did the name Tucson come from? Was the city built on top of ancient ruins or located near a river or oasis also used by ancient peoples? southern - bottom half Is it on the Mexican border? Is it affected by weather patterns off the Gulf of Mexico? Any famous flash floods or other disasters? Does it still have an artificial lake with a wave machine? Arizona - one of fifty states, a link to further information What other links are appropriate? Sister cities, trade partners, famous monuments or nearby national parks, etc.? It (the "lousy" stud) seems like a fine starting point to me for anyone wishing to add a quantum or few of information in whatever applicable units, directions, or subjects they prefer. Each quantum they add can presumably be linked in some way to multiple other quantums. Leading to grand unified quantum entanglement theory or something similarly silly sounding (related to probability of spontaneous source apparition and retention or repeat emission capture) yet critical to nurturing exponential growth in the size of the contributing community. Well, I have enjoyed chattering with you immensely about this qualitatively significant issue but I think I shall go fool around elsewhere a while. Ta ta. Seriously! Small changes in exponential growth curves are tremendously significant. Sign changes are even more dramatic. If the stubs are not significantly damaging your productivity, I think we should leave them, they should expand fairly quickly if they have good high quality article titles for linking from elsewhere. If they prompt a new user to contribute something while waiting for expansion to serious draft or high quality stub/article status, then they will have served a pivotal purpose in leveraging our community participation growth curve up a bit. A second contribution is much less scary than the first one. regards, Mike Irwin