MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 8/21/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
This was way back in 5 Dec 2005. Has the experiment run long enough? What sort of experiment varies the independent variable only one way?
Let's turn page creation back on for anons. We turned it off, so let's see what happens when we turn it back on; otherwise we're simply running on sheer blind inertia and unthinking myopia.
We don't need to. We saw what happened in the 4 years before it was turned off.
But how can we tell what changed in the year after it was turned off relative to those four years? Other than purely anecdotal reports, which are effectively useless for a system the size and complexity of Wikipedia, what analysis has been done?
Take a look at the monumental failure that is AFC sometime, which turning
off page creation has forced on us. Valid, good articles are being entombed there.
And look at how many nonsense creations are being stopped there too.
The question isn't simply whether nonsense creations have been stopped. If that was the only goal, then the perfect solution is obvious; disable new article creation entirely.
We need to see some sort of rigorous statistical analysis of article creation patterns before and after the anon-disabling, producing objective results rather than subjective opinions. I've long been annoyed that this experiment was apparently set off without any plans for this. It's fortunate (though less than ideal) that Wikipedia's database retains enough information to still do some analysis after the fact.