[WikiEN-l] Lock new article creation for three months

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 4/1/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> >> for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> >> articles.
> >
> > Because things happen every day that deserve to be documented, and
> > there are always people who want to do so. Don't force them to try to
> > do what you want.
> >
> > There are much softer solutions to get people's attention.  For example:
> >
> > A simple notice:
> >
> > "We have 1,715,464 articles in English. Why not bring an existing one
> > up to [[featured article status]]?"
> >
> > on the new article creation page.
> >
> > A contest announced through the site notice for registered users.
> >
> > A "how to make Wikipedia better today" newsletter
> >
> > Making an "Improvement of the month" part of the Main Page for
> > readers, which would also raise awareness of what Wikipedia
> > represents.
> >
> > Organizing face-to-face meetups with a focus on actual research & work
> > -- perhaps by making them focused on topics, or WikiProjects.
> >
> > E-mail newsletters of the "how you can help Wikipedia today" type.
> > Real-time collaborations with Gobby. Topic-oriented mailing lists and
> > IRC channels.
> >
> > Be creative. Locking article creation is not.
>
> Trying to "be creative":
>
> How about locking article creation for everyone one day a week? Or one
> day in 5? or 10?
>
> Keeping up with current events becomes much less of an issue. It
> resembles the sort of routine that many people are familiar with (where,
> for example, they do not work on weekends). And it would allow for some
> time to "catch up".
>
> Of course, it would not have the immediate degree of impact that locking
> page creation for 3 months would have--but that includes both desirable
> and undesirable impact.
>
> -Rich


Even an addicted Wikipedian can simply not edit for one day of the week if
they only want to create new pages. It may help administrators with cleaning
backlogs, but when a lockdown isn't long enough it won't help people catch
up.

Say for example we use Sunday as the off-day and let's assume for a moment
that  I spend 8 hours here. If I want to do some serious research to
reference an article it may take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour.
In the best of cases that would mean I can source 32 articles if I go at it
for an entire day.

It would be a drop on a hot plate.

Last time I read about the stats for this, there were 55000 articles with
citation needed templates alone (that's not counting entirely unsourced
articles which are at least another 50000). To get rid of both, we'd need
100000/32 = 3125 Wikipedians who know where to find the relevant sources
working a whole day to get rid of the existing backlog. The WikiProject for
factchecking doesn't have enough members and I doubt everyone is willing to
make an effort to do this for a full working day.

In the other six days in which creation wouldn't be locked down we'd have at
least 2500 new pages created a day (those are the ones that survive) many of
which need sources added (that is 6x2500=15000 new entries that need vetting
every week) A oneday creation block simply wouldn't be enough to get rid of
the backlog or even lighten it in any sort of meaningful manner with the
amount of material coming in during the days where the wikipedians doing the
checking are busy with other stuff.

Mgm