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

[WereSpielChequers]

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

>
> On Friday, September 18, 2009, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia@...> wrote:
>> This isn't a new issue by any means, but here's a nice post by someone
>> who's been contributing occasionally since 2004, about how daunting
>> "wikibullying" can be for newbies and other editors who aren't
>> well-versed in the procedures and processes.
>>
>> http://travel-industry.uptake.com/blog/2009/09/04/bullypedia-a-wikipedian-whos-tired-of-getting-beat-up/
>>
>> Unfriendliness is built into the system, even when admins and others
>> who enforce the rules are perfectly civil and try to be friendly at an
>> individual level.
>>
>> -Sage
>>

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[Gwern Branwen]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers@...> 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

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[George Herbert]

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@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers
> <werespielchequers@...> 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
>
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--
-george william herbert
george.herbert@...

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/10/9 George Herbert <george.herbert@...>:

> 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.


Needs writing up for the Signpost too.


- d.

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[Ian Woollard]

Personally, I think there should be a level above deletion and below
being visible in the wikipedia.

For example if we made the wiki's stubs come up with a blank screen,
with a disclaimer and some kind of clicky that makes the article
appear (possibly only if you're editing it or something).

It's not so much that the wikipedia will improve more quickly, but it
makes the difference between a friendly wikipedia and an unfriendly
one; the article can improve over time and graduate, right now, a lot
of articles with potential are simply being mashed flat, along with
the novice users feelings; it would be better if it wasn't  an AFD
process but instead it was SFA (stub for article).

--
-Ian Woollard

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[George Herbert]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard@...> wrote:

> Personally, I think there should be a level above deletion and below
> being visible in the wikipedia.
>
> For example if we made the wiki's stubs come up with a blank screen,
> with a disclaimer and some kind of clicky that makes the article
> appear (possibly only if you're editing it or something).
>
> It's not so much that the wikipedia will improve more quickly, but it
> makes the difference between a friendly wikipedia and an unfriendly
> one; the article can improve over time and graduate, right now, a lot
> of articles with potential are simply being mashed flat, along with
> the novice users feelings; it would be better if it wasn't  an AFD
> process but instead it was SFA (stub for article).

Out of curiosity, inspired by Ian's idea -

1. What happens with a new article's visibility under sighted
revisions, until someone stamps approval?

2. Can one un-sight an article and set it back into that state, if
that's a useful state?


--
-george william herbert
george.herbert@...

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[Andrew Gray-3]

2009/10/9 George Herbert <george.herbert@...>:

> Out of curiosity, inspired by Ian's idea -
>
> 1. What happens with a new article's visibility under sighted
> revisions, until someone stamps approval?

Under the proposed enwiki implementation? Nothing happens.

From the configuration:

# Don't set any FlaggedRevs level for new pages
$wgFlaggedRevsAutoReviewNew = false;
# Pages display the current version by default - i.e. unprotected
$wgFlaggedRevsOverride = false;

;-)

If that were turned on... hmm. Under patrolled revisions - well, it
wouldn't be patrolled yet, but patrolled/unpatrolled doesn't actually
factor into what gets shown to users. As far as I understand the
system, it'd be functionally identical to creating and then seeing a
new page now.

Flagged protection is the interesting one - but why would a newly
created article be explicitly protected? I suppose if it *is* then
something weird might happen, but this seems to be a bit of an
improbable situation. Worth testing, though, for the
delete-then-recreate situations...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray@...

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