[WikiEN-l] RE: Articles for Creation vs. Requested Articles

Thu Dec 8 17:24:40 UTC 2005

On 12/8/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/8/05, wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > > From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> > > >
> > > > I bet it is a permanent policy change because (a) it seems to be working
> > > > quite well and (b) it is consistent with our commitment to remain open.
> > > >
> > > > --Jimbo
> > >
> > >
> > > [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]] is already 62 kb long.
> > >
> > > --
> > > geni
> >
> > The "Requested Articles" pages are longer.
> >
> > Actually I don't know even how long they are, because they are currently
> > a medium-sized page consisting of nothing but links to a hundred or so
> > medium-sized pages consisting of nothing but article names.
> >
> > So, what's your point?
>
> [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]] is heading towards being
> unmanageable. It's useing up rescources that could better be spent
> elsewhere.
>
>
> --
> geni

What articles are sitting there?  Are they ones we really need?  If
not, maybe the problem is that we have an "articles for creation" in
the first place.

As for the indication that this change is working, I'd like to see
some more details.  How is it working?  How is it failing?  One place
it is probably working well is with those one liners that non-logged
in users create when they click on a red link and wind up with a text
box.  This probably isn't even malicious in many cases.  Maybe we
could try addressing this but still allowing people to create new
articles without logging in if they do so explicitly.

I've tried to keep an open mind about this experiment because I agree
with Jimbo that it doesn't really change the openness of the site. 
Pretty much anyone can create an account if they want to.  It also
doesn't disallow anonymity, since in fact the only way to really be
anonymous (to those without CheckUser) would be to create a new
account with each edit anyway.  (Note that these points wouldn't apply
to other changes like not allowing new accounts to create new
articles.)  The way I see it, this is basically a question of
efficiency, what policy best facilitates the creation of good articles
but hinders the creation of bad ones.  I still haven't seen enough
data to make up my mind though.

Oh yeah, I'd like to point out the one data point which I found most
persuasive.  In the statistics that were given, the number of new
articles went down by nearly exactly the same as the number of
deletions.  If that holds up over a long period of time, damn that's a
good statistic.

Anthony