[WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new article as a newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days

[Gwern Branwen]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Apologies for reviving a thread from three weeks ago. But the idea
> that we had degenerated into a newbie biting place where one could
> "challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that
> article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be
> marked for “speedy deletion” within about two minutes of its
> creation." bugged me, so I thought I'd unscientifically test it.
>
> I made a suggestion at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/new_users#Lets_all_create_an_extra_account
>
> Nobody including myself knows how many articles have so far been
> created as part of the test, and yes one has already been deleted
> under the novel speedy deletion criteria of "the wikilinks did not
> have the proper markup".
>
> But there are at least two other articles that have survived more than 24 hours.
>
> Anyone else who is interested in following the test is welcome to
> watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment
>
> Two articles at least should be unveiled in the next few days.
>
> WereSpielChequers

I particularly enjoyed WilliKing's comment:

> My bad...I sincerely apologize. If I knew about the "challenge", I would have kept the article. It did have, though, words without proper wikilinks. Willking1979 (talk) 02:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I sympathize with him entirely; if I had known about the cop around
the corner, I wouldn't've casually shoved that woman off cliff. In my
defense, though, she was ugly.

-- 
gwern