Mailing List Archive

> 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.

It is high time that we encourage the improvement of existing articles over adding new ones that
will need to be maintained. This effort helps to push us in that direction. I hope we will change
policy again if and when the negatives outweigh the benefits of letting new users create new
pages. New users and anons can’t upload since undoing that is something that only admins can do.
Creating new pages is also something that only admins can undo. Ergo…

-- mav




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Daniel Mayer wrote:

>New users and anons can’t upload since undoing that is something that only admins can do.
>Creating new pages is also something that only admins can undo. Ergo…
>
>
In a very narrow sense that's true, but any user (admin or not), may tag
an article (or image) for speedy-deletion, which is in effect as good as
deleting it (speedy-tagged articles rarely last more than an hour before
an admin comes along and clears them out).

-Mark

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--- Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >New users and anons can’t upload since undoing that is something that only admins can do.
> >Creating new pages is also something that only admins can undo. Ergo…
> >
> >
> In a very narrow sense that's true, but any user (admin or not), may tag
> an article (or image) for speedy-deletion, which is in effect as good as
> deleting it (speedy-tagged articles rarely last more than an hour before
> an admin comes along and clears them out).

And that is two actions instead of one to remove patent nonsense (at least double the work). Thus
it makes sense to limit the amount of patent nonsense we get (and thus that effort could be used
somewhere else). Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images
we have to deal with.

If *too many* anons that would have created crap articles as IPs start to create user accounts to
post new pages, then it would be logical to extend the new page creation ban to new user accounts
just as we already don’t allow new users to upload images. Slippery slope? Not really since there
is already a ledge to land on that was created with the upload policy.

It is a matter of weighing costs vs benefits as they pertain to our goal of creating the best and
largest free encyclopedia in the world. We can and should remain as open as possible for as long
as possible. But we need to constantly monitor our processes to see if they are, on average,
bringing us closer or farther from our goal. Once a problem area is identified we then need to act
but try to do so in a deliberate and thoughtful way.

-- mav




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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.

When you first approach the Wikipedia community it seems overwhelming,
and registering is a pretty big step. 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.

Ultimately most decisions have to be justified in terms of improving
quality. Will people who are determined enough to create fictitious,
libellous biographies be stopped by restricting page creation to
registered users? Not very likely.

-ilya haykinson

On 12/7/05, 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".
>
> SJ
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--- Ilya Haykinson <haykinson@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.

> 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.

> 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




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--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap
> images we have to deal with.

Odd. I just created a new user account and was able to upload an image. I was sure that new user
accounts could not upload. That might have been a temporary measure to combat a group of vandals.
Oh well.

-- mav




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On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
> If *too many* anons that would have created crap articles as IPs start to create user accounts to
> post new pages, then it would be logical to extend the new page creation ban to new user accounts
> just as we already don't allow new users to upload images. Slippery slope? Not really since there
> is already a ledge to land on that was created with the upload policy.

New users can't upload images? I must have missed that one. Is this
just on en, everywhere, in selected places? What is considered a new
user?
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On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Odd. I just created a new user account and was able to upload an image. I was sure that new user
> accounts could not upload. That might have been a temporary measure to combat a group of vandals.

Perhaps you confused uploading with page moving? The newest registered
users can't move pages.

Angela.
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--- Angela <beesley@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Odd. I just created a new user account and was able to upload an image. I was sure that new
> user
> > accounts could not upload. That might have been a temporary measure to combat a group of
> vandals.
>
> Perhaps you confused uploading with page moving? The newest registered
> users can't move pages.

That's it. My point is that we have already moved in that direction and the ability is already in
the software to ID new users.

-- mav



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Daniel Mayer wrote:

>And that is two actions instead of one to remove patent nonsense (at least double the work). Thus
>it makes sense to limit the amount of patent nonsense we get (and thus that effort could be used
>somewhere else). Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images
>we have to deal with.
>
>
But new page patrollers have had a consensus for a while (this was
previously discussed on the list) that this was never a major burden.
At any given time, 2-3 patrollers could deal with the stuff that came
in. Often, when I did new page patrol, I was actually a bit bored by
the slow rate at which crap articles I could delete came in at. This
seems like a solution in search of a problem, if that's the supposed
problem it's addressing.

-Mark

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On 12/7/05, Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >And that is two actions instead of one to remove patent nonsense (at least double the work). Thus
> >it makes sense to limit the amount of patent nonsense we get (and thus that effort could be used
> >somewhere else). Not allowing anons and newbies to upload images limits the amount of crap images
> >we have to deal with.
> >
> >
> But new page patrollers have had a consensus for a while (this was
> previously discussed on the list) that this was never a major burden.
> At any given time, 2-3 patrollers could deal with the stuff that came
> in. Often, when I did new page patrol, I was actually a bit bored by
> the slow rate at which crap articles I could delete came in at. This
> seems like a solution in search of a problem, if that's the supposed
> problem it's addressing.
>
> -Mark

Maybe new page patrol needs to be more about researching and improving
new articles and less about "deleting crap". The article that started
this whole discussion wasn't "crap". It wasn't "nn cruft" or
"vanity". But it did have some serious problems that could have been
resolved if more time was spent researching it.

I'm not saying this to lay blame, after all new page patrol is a
volunteer effort so any help is better than nothing. But if you're
ever "bored" I can think of a few million things to do, things that
are more important than "deleting crap" anyway.

Anthony
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> If *too many* anons that would have created crap articles as IPs start to create user accounts to
>> post new pages, then it would be logical to extend the new page creation ban to new user accounts
>> just as we already don't allow new users to upload images. Slippery slope? Not really since there
>> is already a ledge to land on that was created with the upload policy.
>
> New users can't upload images? I must have missed that one. Is this
> just on en, everywhere, in selected places? What is considered a new
> user?

No, that's nowhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>Maybe new page patrol needs to be more about researching and improving
>new articles and less about "deleting crap". The article that started
>this whole discussion wasn't "crap". It wasn't "nn cruft" or
>"vanity". But it did have some serious problems that could have been
>resolved if more time was spent researching it.
>
>I'm not saying this to lay blame, after all new page patrol is a
>volunteer effort so any help is better than nothing. But if you're
>ever "bored" I can think of a few million things to do, things that
>are more important than "deleting crap" anyway.
>
>
Well, they aren't really comparable activities. New-page patrol for
crap is a mindless activity that can be done to procrastinate and/or
relieve stress. Researching someone I've never heard of, don't care
about, and don't have the resources available to research in the first
place isn't. On the occasions I *do* want to do serious research for
Wikipedia, I prefer to do it on areas in which I either have expertise
or at least some amount of interest (I have a long list of articles I
care about that need improving or writing in the first place). Perhaps
some volunteers can be persuaded to do "random researching", but I
suspect it will be relatively few.

-Mark

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On 12/7/05, Delirium <delirium@hackish.org> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >Maybe new page patrol needs to be more about researching and improving
> >new articles and less about "deleting crap". The article that started
> >this whole discussion wasn't "crap". It wasn't "nn cruft" or
> >"vanity". But it did have some serious problems that could have been
> >resolved if more time was spent researching it.
> >
> >I'm not saying this to lay blame, after all new page patrol is a
> >volunteer effort so any help is better than nothing. But if you're
> >ever "bored" I can think of a few million things to do, things that
> >are more important than "deleting crap" anyway.
> >
> >
> Well, they aren't really comparable activities. New-page patrol for
> crap is a mindless activity that can be done to procrastinate and/or
> relieve stress. Researching someone I've never heard of, don't care
> about, and don't have the resources available to research in the first
> place isn't. On the occasions I *do* want to do serious research for
> Wikipedia, I prefer to do it on areas in which I either have expertise
> or at least some amount of interest (I have a long list of articles I
> care about that need improving or writing in the first place). Perhaps
> some volunteers can be persuaded to do "random researching", but I
> suspect it will be relatively few.
>
> -Mark

After reading this, I find it hard to believe there isn't much much
more blatantly false content in the encyclopedia. It does kind of
kill Jimbo's idea that "reduc[ing] the workload on the people doing
new pages patrol" will solve anything, though, assuming most new page
patrollers treat it the same way as you (limited to just "deleting
crap"). Suddenly I feel less bad about calling new page patrollers
firemen, but I should keep in mind that you don't speak for them all.

Anthony
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Ilya Haykinson <haykinson@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
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--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@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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Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@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.
>
>
Over time more people sign on to our project. Given our importance the
number of these people in a similar time frame increase. It is a similar
situation as with stubs, numerically the numbers grow and as a
percentage they stay the same. The point of this exercise is to decrease
the existence of flawed articles. The blunt mechanism that is chosen for
now will not help the existing flawed articles. It only leads on an ever
increasing path of repressive measures.
>> 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.
>
>
When you say that we need to improve our methodology I agree. I agree
that it requires tooling. When you single the bigger wikis out to be
correct, I think the tooling you are thinking of is probably flawed. The
small wikis are probably more in need of improvement than the bigger
ones. The chance of lawsuits is not less but more complicated. The
consequences of not addressing issues may lead to a total ban of our
resources in a given country. I rate the current block of wikipedia from
China as more damaging for the relevance of our data. My motivation is
that we know that there are issues with content and we do address these
issues as well as we possibly can. By loosing our public we lose our
relevance and we lose their point of view that helps our point of view
to be neutral.
>> 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
Again, the number of users needs to be seen in relation to a time frame
and in relation to the size of our popularity. I would not be surprised
that the amount of new users has been fairly constant.

I would be the last to deny our goal. I am all for better tooling and
for being more discriminatory. I am all for stimulating annotations. I
am however also afraid that the current train of thought is well under
way, we are its passenger and we do not know where it will lead us and
how far it lead us away from the very ideals that so many hold dear.

Thanks,
GerardM
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