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

[Anthony]

On 4/2/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/1/07, 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.
>
> Any proposal based on an assumption like "people spend X hours a week
> working on Wikipedia, and if only we could stop them wasting those X
> hours working on something silly" is flawed.

I don't think that's the assumption.  Rather, the assumption is that
the people who spend X hours a week *cleaning up* new articles, would
be perfectly content cleaning up existing articles instead.

But that leads me to an idea.  What if new article creation was still
allowed, but only logged in users could see those new articles?  This
might be enough to put those new articles into a lower-priority bin
while still allowing those who *want* to work on them the freedom to
do so.

One problem is this really doesn't lend itself to a "three months
only" solution.  Another problem is who would be allowed move articles
into the full public view, and under what rules?  If the solution
winds up creating more work than the problem, then it's not really a
solution.  The final problem is, it requires code, albeit probably not
that much.

I don't know if I support this idea or not.  I'm presenting it as a
brainstorming activity, not as a proposal.

Anthony