[Foundation-l] Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

Fri Dec 9 12:57:12 UTC 2005

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Ilya Haykinson <haykinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> When I found Wikipedia, I had no intentions of registering. At some
>> point when I created my first article (err...stub) I was just an anon.
>> I only registered after I saw how that new article got picked up by
>> the community and expanded and made usable:  I got hooked watching the
>> history of that first article.
>>     
>
> Recruitment like that is certainly a benefit and should be considered (the smaller the wiki, the
> more important recruitment is). But we also have to consider the bad effects as well. At least on
> the larger wikis the bad effects on anon article creation seem to greater than the positive. The
> larger wikis also have a much higher reader to editor ratio, so concentrating more effect on
> improving existing articles vs creating new ones that themselves need to be maintained may in fact
> be the better course of action.
>   
The way I read your answer, you assume that all improvement is coming 
from our existing editors. I do not know what you base this on. Do you 
have some sources for that that prove this assertion ??
>   
>> When you first approach the Wikipedia community it seems overwhelming,
>> and registering is a pretty big step. 
>>     
>
> If setting aside 10 to 20 seconds to create an account is too big of a step, then that person
> really should not be increasing the maintenance burden on the community. Smaller wikis excepted
> since the likelihood of any one reader becoming an editor is much greater than on larger wikis. 
>   
It is not the time that it takes that IS the big step.

You misrepresent the problem with vandalism on smaller projects. It 
takes quite some time and doing before there is a vibrant community. 
This is the time when a starting project is most vulnerable to vandals. 
The vandals drive people away and this often results in abandoned 
projects. The problem that exists is with a perceived problem, a problem 
that we have had from the beginning. We have always replied that we have 
a particular percentage of stubs and this has proved to be constant. We 
have always had a percentage of quality articles and this proved to be 
constant. We have always had a percentage of problematic articles and 
that proved to be constant too. Now the problem is that this cannot be 
helped. We can work hard to improve our quality and we do. But thinking 
that we can get absolute good quality is an achievable goal is like 
believing in Santaclaus. When people say that doomsday will come if we 
do not achieve this, they are spreading FUD. It is not helpful, if 
anything I fear the measures needed to get this unattainable goal may 
fracture and ultimately destroy our community.

In several answers I have read it is put forward that people may be 
willing to provide sources but only for the stuff that they ARE working 
on. Many also state that they are not willing to find sources for stuff 
that is already there. Consequently there are 600.000 articles in the 
English language wikipedia that will probably not be annotated. We may 
not get new articles from anonymous users but it is much harder to check 
anonymous changes. So yes, we have an experiment going. That is all the 
good that can be said about it.

I have read people say that when on patrol they get bored because not 
enough is happening... If anything the one thing that makes patrolling 
for problems a hardship, is the performance of our system.
>   
>> I highly suspect that a large
>> number of people who registered did so after the success of an article
>> they created as an anon -- like me -- and wouldn't have created the
>> article if they had to take a step of registering.  Becoming part of a
>> community is not something that some people take lightly, especially
>> as active and complex a community as Wikipedia is.
>>     
>
> Having a user account does not a community member make. We all have all sorts of user accounts on
> the Internet. That does not mean we belong to communities associated with those accounts. 
>
> -- mav
Having made the step to have a user account like described is a big step 
towards becoming a community member. That is the point that you try to deny.

Thanks,
    GerardM