Mailing List Archive

On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
> What is this:
>
> "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
> to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.
>
> If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
> request for someone else to create the page here
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."
>
> Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?

Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else. Brion
implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some
kind of results can be obtained. There is certainly not consensus
support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do
agree. I think this is "wait and see" time.

--
Sam
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--- Sam Korn <smoddy@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
> > What is this:
> >
> > "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
> > to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.
> >
> > If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
> > request for someone else to create the page here
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."
> >
> > Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
>
> Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else. Brion
> implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some
> kind of results can be obtained. There is certainly not consensus
> support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do
> agree. I think this is "wait and see" time.

For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it
is sad, but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that those on new page patrol
have to do. Now they can concentrate more effort checking for other things on new pages instead of
tagging so many speedies. I’d also like to say that this should be decided on a per wiki basis
since letting anons create new pages still has more good than bad points for smaller wikis. But
the larger a wiki gets, the more overwhelming anon clean-up work is.

Anons will still be able to edit existing articles. This is fine since existing articles are much
more likely to be watched by users and decently linked from other pages.

It is also my hope that this will help push the English Wikipedia, however little, a bit from
emphasizing growth and a bit more toward emphasizing quality.

-- mav




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On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:27:21PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
> most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it
> is sad, but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that those on new page patrol
> have to do.

Correlation!=Causation.

Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism
-as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol to
become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.

Let's see if that prediction comes out. Anyone care to place
bets? :-)

read you soon,
Kim Bruning

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Kim Bruning wrote:
> Correlation!=Causation.
>
> Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism
> -as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol to
> become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.

Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:

1. fewer crappy pages created
2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
no userpage).

It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this,
so we can proceed with actual data.
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On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:27:21PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
...
> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact
> that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the
> English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it is sad,
> but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that
...

A. Creating new crap article now consists of typing the name of the
article, typing the article + clicking one button.

B. Creating new article with compulsory registration adds aditional
requirement of creating one crap account.
Necessary effort consists of typing a random user name, 2x random
password + clicking one button.

C. Creating new article with compulsory registration with unique
email adds requirement to crate one crap email.
Necessary effort consists of typing a normal email into jetable.org,
and clicking one button.

and so on....

In long term perspective we'll achieve the same ammount of harder
to spot vandalism. Effort required from vandals will increase e.g.
twice, from one click to two clicks.

Look from
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
viewpoint.

>
> Anons will still be able to edit existing articles. This is fine
> since existing articles are much more likely to be watched by users and
> decently linked from other pages.
>

This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched
articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually
unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.

IMO Wikipedia should less try to mimic what works for traditional
encyclopedias (like the CITE madness) and concentrate more on
inner proceses which works here - and improve software to aid them /
identify where they fail. For example, locating various more likely
dangerous articles, such as
*unwatched articles
*articles with high (external readers/wikipedian readers) ratio

> It is also my hope that this will help push the English Wikipedia,
> however little, a bit from emphasizing growth and a bit more toward
> emphasizing quality.
>

I'm affraid it only pushes us from SoftSecurity which works to
HardSecurity which can not work for us.

Jan Kulveit
[[User:Wikimol]]
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Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
> 1. fewer crappy pages created


How are we doing for anon edits in general? Has that number changed?


> 2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
> of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
> no userpage).


Oh, I do like that phrase!


> It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this,
> so we can proceed with actual data.


Always a useful thing to gather in an experiment ;-)


- d.

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Jan Kulveit wrote:
> This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched
> articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually
> unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.

I think it would be excellent for us to study this. What I have long
dreamed of is a regularly published list of "the most read / least
watched articles". Take the number of pageviews divided by the number
of watchers (plus one to prevent division by zero I guess). Or some
more sophisticated variant of that to take into account minimum
thresholds of concern perhaps.

I think there are many cool tools yet to be developed, indeed yet to be
dreamed of.

--Jimbo
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David Gerard wrote:
>>Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
>>1. fewer crappy pages created
>
> How are we doing for anon edits in general? Has that number changed?

I have no idea. I hope someone with access to the database and more
clueful than me will gather all kinds of interesting stats for us.

>>2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
>>of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
>>no userpage).
>
> Oh, I do like that phrase!

And it immediately suggests a social rule of sorts: anonymous redshirts
are the ones you can use your phaser on without affecting the plot of
the show. :-)

--Jimbo
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Jan Kulveit wrote:
> I'm affraid it only pushes us from SoftSecurity which works to
> HardSecurity which can not work for us.

Actually, this *is* an example of SoftSecurity in action.

SoftSecurity is about using minor speedbumps to discourage bad action in
combination with making it very easy to make a good action to undo a bad action.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:

> Kim Bruning wrote:
> > Correlation!=Causation.
> >
> > Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism
> > -as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol
> to
> > become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.
>
> Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
>
> 1. fewer crappy pages created
> 2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since
> some
> of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users
> with
> no userpage).
>
> It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all
> this,
> so we can proceed with actual data.

There's a guy standing over my shoulder, from 40 feet from my cube,
who walked over, and saw the "Page creation limited" when clicking on
"MPX" from the "PowerPC G4" .

He came to me "frustrated" and feeling "postal" (bang!) and
complained to me.

Now, I'm not saying one way or the other on the issue. I just think
the wording could be a little less forbidding.


Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan@yahoo.com
chris.mahan@gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/



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The one bonus I found so far is the increased dialog between editors, in an
effort to improve the new articles. This can only be beneficial.

I'd personally recommend extending this to a week long trial.

Currently, an IP is either banned or unbanned. What if we had a middle
ground for problem IPs, which didn't allow them to create new articles, only
edit existing ones. It wouldn't be a cure-all, but it might be interesting
concept to play with.

Nick
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--- Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd personally recommend extending this to a week long trial.

I recommend extending the test to the end of the year.

> Currently, an IP is either banned or unbanned. What if we had a middle
> ground for problem IPs, which didn't allow them to create new articles, only
> edit existing ones. It wouldn't be a cure-all, but it might be interesting
> concept to play with.

By far the biggest problem has been with anons who create a junk article or two and leave never to
return. So the middle ground you mention really won't help much.

-- mav





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Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Jan Kulveit wrote:
>
>
>>This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched
>>articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually
>>unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.
>>
>>
>
>I think it would be excellent for us to study this. What I have long
>dreamed of is a regularly published list of "the most read / least
>watched articles". Take the number of pageviews divided by the number
>of watchers (plus one to prevent division by zero I guess). Or some
>more sophisticated variant of that to take into account minimum
>thresholds of concern perhaps.
>
>
Unfortunately the pageview statistics are turned off :(

Waerth/Walter
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Daniel Mayer wrote:

>For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
>most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
>
That is simply incorrect. I do (or did, until this policy change)
new-pages patrol on a regular basis, and I'd estimate no more than ~30%
of new pages created by anons are "complete crap". Certainly no more
than 10-20% ever warranted speedy deletion.

-Mark

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Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
>
>1. fewer crappy pages created
>2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
>of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
>no userpage).
>
>
You forgot:
3. more crappy edits to existing articles (anecdotally).

I agree we should collect more data, but we can't forget collecting data
on #3, or else it will be pretty useless.

-Mark

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--- Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
> >most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
> >
> That is simply incorrect. I do (or did, until this policy change)
> new-pages patrol on a regular basis, and I'd estimate no more than ~30%
> of new pages created by anons are "complete crap". Certainly no more
> than 10-20% ever warranted speedy deletion.

Your crap tolerance must be higher than mine. :) You also misquoted me; I included a range
modifier.

-- mav




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Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
>>>most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>That is simply incorrect. I do (or did, until this policy change)
>>new-pages patrol on a regular basis, and I'd estimate no more than ~30%
>>of new pages created by anons are "complete crap". Certainly no more
>>than 10-20% ever warranted speedy deletion.
>>
>>
>
>Your crap tolerance must be higher than mine. :) You also misquoted me; I included a range
>modifier.
>
>
Well on the Dutch wikipedia the crap range for anon new pages is way
over 50% so I guess on the english wiki you guys are really lucky ;)

Waerth/Walter
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Jan Kulveit wrote:
> In long term perspective we'll achieve the same ammount of harder
> to spot vandalism. Effort required from vandals will increase e.g.
> twice, from one click to two clicks.

If it would cost a dollar to create an account, at least the
foundation would get rich from this.

> Look from
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
> viewpoint.

Do they provide a proven solution for wikis with a million
articles?


--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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On 12/6/05, Lars Aronsson <lars@aronsson.se> wrote:
> Jan Kulveit wrote:
> > Look from
> > http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
> > viewpoint.
>
> Do they provide a proven solution for wikis with a million
> articles?
>
If by proven you mean works 100% of the time, of course not. If by
proven you mean works 99% of the time, well, Wikipedia is the proof.

Anthony
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Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
>>
>> 1. fewer crappy pages created
>> 2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
>> of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
>> no userpage).
>>
>>
> You forgot:
> 3. more crappy edits to existing articles (anecdotally).
>
> I agree we should collect more data, but we can't forget collecting data
> on #3, or else it will be pretty useless.

I agee. There are probably a number of other small second-order effects
as well. For example, by encouraging new users to register when they
want to create a page, are we positively increasing the number of "good
wikipedians" by transforming good people from "well, I edit sometimes,
but I'm not a wikipedian, I don't have an account" to "Hey, I guess I'm
a wikipedian, I'll do more good work"?

I doubt if we are in a position to figure that out.

--Jimbo
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On 12/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales@wikia.com> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> >> Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
> >>
> >> 1. fewer crappy pages created
> >> 2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
> >> of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
> >> no userpage).
> >>
> >>
> > You forgot:
> > 3. more crappy edits to existing articles (anecdotally).
> >
> > I agree we should collect more data, but we can't forget collecting data
> > on #3, or else it will be pretty useless.
>
> I agee. There are probably a number of other small second-order effects
> as well. For example, by encouraging new users to register when they
> want to create a page, are we positively increasing the number of "good
> wikipedians" by transforming good people from "well, I edit sometimes,
> but I'm not a wikipedian, I don't have an account" to "Hey, I guess I'm
> a wikipedian, I'll do more good work"?
>
> I doubt if we are in a position to figure that out.

"Encouraging new users to register"? When did Jimbo start using doublespeak?
Try "forcing" or "compelling". Honesty and precision in language are
our weapons in the fight against unmeaning.

One of the potential negative consequences of creating a barrier to
entry is that fewer good people will become editors because they will
have been discouraged from creating a new article.
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On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Sam Korn <smoddy@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
> > > What is this:
> > >
> > > "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
> > > to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.
> > >
> > > If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
> > > request for someone else to create the page here
> > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."
> > >
> > > Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
> >
> > Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else. Brion
> > implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some
> > kind of results can be obtained. There is certainly not consensus
> > support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do
> > agree. I think this is "wait and see" time.
>
> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
> most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.

Do we have stats on that?
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On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, The Cunctator wrote:
> On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact
>> that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the
>> English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
>
> Do we have stats on that?

New, usable articles created by anons accounted for around 40% of all new
articles. This ignores speedied articles, etc which might inflate the
figure in favor of anon-creation.

Lots of them need wikification and start life as stubs; I wouldn't call
that "crap".

SJ
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--- SJ <2.718281828@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 12/5/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact
> >> that almost all, not just most, new pages created by anons on the
> >> English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap.
> >
> > Do we have stats on that?
>
> New, usable articles created by anons accounted for around 40% of all new
> articles. This ignores speedied articles, etc which might inflate the
> figure in favor of anon-creation.
>
> Lots of them need wikification and start life as stubs; I wouldn't call
> that "crap".

When I used to work new page patrol I found that most of all IP-created articles were deleted or
listed for deletion/copyvio. I would call those crap. Most of the remaining ones had significant
clean-up issues that needed to be fixed and/or were nearly useless stubs. I would call those
borderline cases since they add little in comparison to the increased maintenance burden on the
community. Most of total + most of remaining = almost all in my book

-- mav




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