[WikiEN-l] How friendly are we to Newbies? Update on the create an article as a newbie challenge

Thu Oct 15 17:55:00 UTC 2009

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 2:20 AM, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Last week George Herbert requested that I update this list on the
> progress of my test [[User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie treatment]] where
> I and other volunteers create new accounts which submit new articles
> to Wikipedia.
>
> The results so far, with 5 editors creating 7 "newbies" who've
> submitted 9 articles.
>
> Firstly the guarantee that someone would tag your new article for
> deletion within two minutes. Well six out of nine were tagged for
> deletion, though with times ranging from one minute after creation to
> almost an hour; so the good news is that most survived their first two
> minutes untagged. The bad news is that yes we do have a problem with
> overenthusiastic speedy tagging, there are various possible solutions
> to this including
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Speedy_deletion_-_24_hour_pause_for_some_articles
>
> As for surviving seven days, three have gone, three had to be rescued,
> and three have survived the week unscathed.  Again,  not as bad as our
> critics may think, but yes we have a problem.
>
> Of our newbies, one has received a template welcome, two "welcome
> warnings" for their unloved offerings, and four have not been
> welcomed. My own unloved alter ego whose unpatrolled article has yet
> to be edited by anyone else, still has a redlinked talkpage as does
> his article. Possible responses to this include
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Welcome_all_useful_new_users,_if_necessary_by_a_bot
>
> On the plus side one editor declined a speedy and rescued one of these
> articles, so I gave them a Barnstar.
>
>
> WereSpielChequers
>
>
>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 18:21:58 -0400
>> From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new
>>        article as a    newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days
>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Message-ID:
>>        <cbf55b100910081521v1923edd1k5682ed9e7ceb551a at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:04:17 -0700
>> From: George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new
>>        article as a    newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days
>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Message-ID:
>>        <38a7bf7c0910081604t551d26fbu2f7f0ea13d434999 at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>
>> This is very good data in the "how friendly are we to newbies" question.
>>
>> Thanks for running the test.
>>
>> Please send another update in a couple of more days at least, I am too
>> busy to follow on-wiki but I want to see more of the results of this.
>>
>>
>> -george
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Thank you for the update.

I want to personally look at the articles and responses in more depth
before I comment more, but this has been exceptionally valuable
research.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com