[WikiEN-l] Display reason for article deletion to anons? (was: anons and new articles)

Sun Aug 8 13:15:52 UTC 2004

Martin Harper wrote:

>>Another idea would be to not allow anons to create new articles
>>(editing existing articles would still be allowed). They would get a
>>message after following a red link that invites them to create a
>>user account so that they can create a new page 
> 
> Rather than *forbidding* or *allowing* things, why not use a more 
> gentle method of discouragement? Simply don't display red links to 
> anonymous editors. They can still create articles if they really want 
> to by going directly to the appropriate URL, and experienced 
> anonymous contributors would no doubt do just that.

Although you're right that we don't want to "forbid" or "disallow" 
legitimate editing, I don't think we want to discourage it either. Your 
suggestion makes it harder for well-meaning newbies to find out how to 
edit or create articles.

A better way would be to encourage more healing. We already have the 
"stub" message which encourages newbies to expand a stub they encounter.

One idea I was toying with in my mind recently is this. When sysops 
delete an article, the article goes back to saying "Wikipedia does not 
have an article with this title yet." Maybe we should actually let 
everyone (including anonymous users) know that there used to be an 
article, and (this is the important part) show the reason for its deletion.

If a newbie goes back to see what happened to their article, and they 
see it gone, they are more likely to just put it back in (it looks to 
them more like a glitch in the system or an accident than a deliberate 
deleting). If it actually said "This article was deleted for the 
following reason: vandalism", they are more likely to ackowledge that 
putting their article back in is going to have the same effect again.

Timwi