[WikiEN-l] Anonymous page creation will be reenabled on English Wikipedia.

[Gwern Branwen]

On 2007.10.29 13:25:52 -0700, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> scribbled 0 lines:
> Hi Greg,
...
> I know as research officer you are well aware that the results from such an
> experiment will be of interest not just to the en: community itself, but
> also to the wider wiki research community. Is there a page detailing the
> metrics you have in mind, and listing possible studies that could be done to
> determine "evidence of harm" from the switch? It seems like this is a good
> chance for brainstorming on-wiki with both the research community and the
> newpage patrol folks about possible ways to measure quality, etc., of new
> articles, a discussion that seems overdue anyway given some general
> unhappiness about deletion practices.

I'd just like to make the general point that the experiment here is not turning off the disabling; the experiment was the disabling in the first place. All Greg and us supporters are suggesting is ending the experiment.

There is no evidence of harm for a reversion to the ''status quo ante Seigenthaler'' (if I may coin a phrase) - just like there is no evidence of benefit for the disabling in the first place. (And there are other considerations of benefits from this as well as more prosaic observations like us having better tools and more editors this time around.)

> Also, before taking on such an experiment, it seems like it would be
> worthwhile and sensible to run any intended metrics & studies on the current
> state of affairs *first*, so there is something to accurately compare to.
> AFAIK our understanding of what gets deleted, how many pages get deleted
> versus kept; how many articles are speedied a day out of these, etc. is
> imperfect; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'd also be interested in
> seeing which studies you're referring to that inclusively suggest that "the
> change has been harmful to the quality of Wikipedia"; I'm not familiar with
> that work and it seems like a tough thing to measure given overall explosive
> growth in this timeframe.

Yes, all these statistics would have been nice to have the first time around. Someone should tell Jimbo that for the next time. There are some retrospective efforts, though, like [[User:Dragons flight/Log analysis]]. You can interpret those charts basically one way: that the disabling had minimal effect. I take this to mean that the benefits postulated by supporters of disabling, and the things they warn of should we return to the status quo - that is, the numerous comments along the lines of 'My god, have you seen Special:Newpages or WP:CSD lately? We will be buried!' - never materialized, and thus that such arguments overestimate the net effect (I'm not sure whether by exaggerating the risks or by underplaying the benefits).

> cheers,
> Phoebe

--
gwern
1ee NSAS Mat'Kal investigation Shipiro sweep IWIS Shayet-13 Avi codes
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