Alex wrote:
One thing that I think could help, at least on the English Wikipedia, would be to further restrict new article creation. Right now, any registered user can create a new article, and according to some statistics I gathered a few months ago[1], almost 25% of new users make their first edit creating an article. 81% of those users had their article deleted and <0.1% of them were still editing a few (6-7) months later, compared to 4% for the 19% whose articles were kept, giving a total retention rate of 1.3%.
However, for the 75% of users who started by editing an existing article, the overall retention rate was 2.5%. Still a small number, but almost double the rate for the article creation route.
This is significant, but I'm not convinced about the reason.
There is surely an attacking factor. You make them go through hoops, having to register an account, then destroy its work. It's normal that some potentially good contributors leave. But many of those are single purpose accounts which would only be interested in adding its myspace band, ever. We should support the first type users, but we don't want even its register for the second type.
The English Wikipedia, with 3.5 million articles, has been scraping the bottom of the notability barrel for a while. Creating a proper new article is not an especially easy task in terms of editing, yet the project practically encourages new users to do it. We're dropping new users into the deep end of the pool, then getting angry at them when they start to drown.
Completely. This mentality should be changed.
What we should be doing instead is suggesting that users add their information to an existing article somewhere (with various tools to help them find it). And if they can't find anything remotely related in 3.5 million articles, ask themselves whether they still think its an appropriate topic.
That's a good point, but not suitable for all topics. If I want to create an article that would have been considered relevant you shouldn't make me wander in circles. Some people shouldn't be treated as babies, while others should.