[WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles

[Jimmy Wales]

Martin Osterman wrote:
> Now, I don't profess to know why we were the last to find out... that could
> be for any number of reasons.  However, I think that this experiment is
> going to yield interesting results, and for that reason I endorse it.  (Not
> as if anything needs my endorsing since I'm just one editor among hundreds)

Let me put it this way: the news report which "announced" the change
would happen on Monday appeared on the web before I even knew that the
change would be possible on Monday.

Reporters were asking me how the site works, leading to discussions of
various small tweaks that might help make new pages patrolling easier,
and I was asked when we might see some changes.  I said something like
"probably by Monday".  The reporter took this to mean that this
_particular_ change would be implemented on _Monday_, and ran it as an
announcement.

It turned out, in a completely unrelated sequence of events, I had asked
how hard such a change would be to implement technically and he reported
back to me on Monday morning that it was ready.

I think we will be making a lot more changes, doing a lot more
experiments, and that we should do them on an experimental basis (try
it, see what happens, go back if it doesn't work, etc.) rather than try
to guess everything from an "a priori" basis.

--Jimbo