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

Fri Dec 9 15:32:41 UTC 2005

--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> 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. 

That is not what I meant at all. I was simply pointing out that on a large wiki, such as
en.wikipedia, the negatives start to outweigh the positives of allowing anon and newbie new page
creation. In other words (for large wikis), the bad effects of additional maintenance and strain
on existing users start to outweigh the benefit of recruitment and the relatively small part of
anon new pages that survive. We also have to consider Jimmy's reasoning; that new pages are much
more likely to have far fewer eyeballs on them and thus more likely to contain libel, slander, or
blatantly false information. Thus limiting that function to people who are less likely to do that
(at least on impulse), is something to try. 

We may in fact have just shifted much of the problem to new users and may need to extend this
experiment to cover new user accounts as well. Undoing a page creation is only something that
admins can take care of, so this would be not-unlike our prohibition on page moves by newbies
since multiple page moves can only be fixed by admins.

> But thinking 
> that we can get absolute good quality is an achievable goal is like 
> believing in Santaclaus. 

Nobody here is that naive. What we must do, however, is decrease the probability of creating bad
content and increase the probability of creating good content. We need to scale our processes to
meet new demands. Our software and methods need to adapt to an environment where people depend on
the larger wikis to be as correct as possible and where our fame and license makes the libel,
slander, and false information we host that much more harmful; both to those it directly puts into
a bad light and ourselves. 

> 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.

Have you seen the number of user accounts created on the Enlglish Wikipedia? It is an order of
magnitude greater than the size of the community. That misses the whole point anyway; our goal is
to create the world's largest and best free encyclopedia. The community is a means to that end.
Granted, the community is vitally important, but concerns about it should not trump our goal.
Let's not deny our goal.

-- mav

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