With nearly 90% support (88.8% to be exact), Creation of new articles in the main space is restricted to accounts that have reached autoconfirmed status (four days registered and at least ten edits).
That being said, there are important points to consider going forward to accommodate this change.
The first, and most important to the opposition, was the effect this will have on outreach, editathons, educational projects, etc. Specifically, the concern is that someone cannot simply show up to one of these events and start creating pages in the mainspace. This is a valid concern, one which even the creator of this RFC expressed interest in resolving. While an "event coordinator" position/PERM has not yet been established (an RFC to create it will likely be run shortly after this close), the confirmed PERM is available, as is requesting that participants join/edit Wikipedia before showing up to any event where page creation is expected (i.e. obtain autoconfirmed status ahead of time). It is an awkward and unfortunate hurdle, but even without an "event coordinator" position it is not an impossible one to manage.
The second concern was to the effect on the Articles for Creation backlog. There are multiple ongoing discussions at this time, including one conducted through the WMF, on how to improve/streamline/update/etc the AFC process. As far as ACTRIAL relates to the AFC, it was shown that it increased the number of daily submissions, but as noted by TonyBallioni the "age" of the oldest drafts has not significantly increased over the trial period. This is a topic area that will definitely require more discussion and thought outside of the bounds of ACTRIAL and this RFC.
Other concerns that were brought up were that this change moves us further away from "The Wiki Way" (where anyone can create and edit a page immediately after joining), it gives a barrier to those wanting to immediately use the Content Translation tool, and for "philosophical reasons". Suggestions for how to mitigate these circumstances were proposed by various supporters of the RFC, and those interested in pursuing policy or content change to implement them are encouraged to start relevant discussions. Primefac (talk) 14:01, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
If you came here because someone asked you to, or you read a message on another website, please note that this is not a majority vote, but instead a discussion among Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia has policies and guidelines regarding the encyclopedia's content, and consensus (agreement) is gauged based on the merits of the arguments, not by counting votes.
However, you are invited to participate and your opinion is welcome. Remember to assume good faith on the part of others and to sign your posts on this page by adding ~~~~ at the end.
New user activity and retention is largely unaffected
Creation of pages by new users shifted to draft space from article space
Fewer low-quality and inappropriate pages have been created in article space
The independent consultant's research generally shows that the concerns (hypotheses) that were raised before the trial about the restrictions having a negative impact on retention of new editors did not occur, the trial and the research conducted has received generally positive feedback.
Following the trial, and in view of the promise to the community that the rule will not be permanently installed without a further discussion, it is proposed that as from 3 May 2018, (or sooner if a consensus is reached):
Creation of new articles in the main space is restricted to accounts that have reached autoconfirmed status (four days registered and at least ten edits).TonyBallioni (talk) 13:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support as proposer. While ACTRIAL was not a cure all, it was in my view, an enormous success. For the first time in at least two years, both AfC and NPP are at their sustainable levels: AfC only has 4 drafts at the 60+ day mark, and all of NPP is below the Google index point: we have effectively eliminated the NPP backlog, while maintaining AfC at an adequate level to serve the needs of good faith contributors.To me, probably the most significant statistic from the survey was the we reduced the median number of articles deleted a day by 227while reducing the number of A7s by 84% and the number of G11s per day by 73%. This is probably the single biggest time saving change we've had on-wiki, and while it did reduce the number of patrol action per day, freed up admins and new page reviewers to do other needed work for the encylopedia.Finally, I will close by pointing out that anyone who has been near the new pages feed or the CSD categories in the past few days has seen the clear increase in unencyclopedic content starting immediately after ACTRIAL ended, showing it to be necessary to restart as soon as possible. I want to close with this quote from, Shrikantarts', the first article created by a new editor after ACTRIAL ended: Hello, Myself [Name]. Art has always been an inspiration to me. That inspiration credits goes to my Brother and my mom, who stood up always when I started falling apart. I don't think I can make a better case than that. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm sure this number will continually fluctuate over the course of this RFC, but as of this particular point there are zero pending drafts at 60+ days. Primefac (talk) 14:00, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, even better :) I'd gotten my number a bit before launching this! TonyBallioni (talk) 14:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support – Trial phase showed considerable net positive outcomes for the project, with none of the feared negatives. — JFGtalk 13:45, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support without qualification. The outcomes of the trial far exceeded expectations in confirming that this remedy actually does work, and has no perceptible undesirable side-effects. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support For sure! Dial911 (talk) 13:52, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Just like I support waiting periods before buying guns. It's only restricting impulsive creations, not creations generally. It only makes sense that someone right off the street can't just create an article right away. ‡ Єl Cid of ᐺalenciaᐐT₳LKᐬ 13:56, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong support Probably the most positive comment I can make about turning autoconfirmed creation off is that it gives me an excuse to go and find more admin candidates to work the NPP and CSD queues. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 13:57, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
This just in : Steven haderlie (for those without the tools, the entirety of this article reads "He is the best Chemistry Teacher EVAH") We had none of this during ACTRIAL. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 15:51, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The postives in terms of the reduction in poor-quality creations far outweight the very minor negative of adding a small extra step during outreach events. SmartSE (talk) 14:00, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - At the end of the day, letting someone create an article with their very first edit isn't just time wasting for us, but there's really just no totally non-BITEY way of telling someone you're deleting their work, no matter how obviously inappropriate it may be, and that goes doubly for users where their very fist interaction ever with another editor is a big scary looking template. It's really just setting people up for failure. AfC has it's own set of challenges that need looked at, but it's still a better process, more likely to provide meaningful feedback, and less likely to summarily communicate "Go back to Facebook. You and your work are equally worthless, and we don't much care for you." GMGtalk 14:04, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Doesn't appear to be any negative effects on say editor retention, but has massive improvements in the quality of the articles, and gives more time for patrollers to focus on afding spam than A7ing articles that took a minute to create. Creating an article requires time, and understanding of wikipedia, which is why the delay makes sense (beyond the empirical evidence of mass improvements in article quality). And, as GMG says, less bitey to prevent someone from creating a bad article than giving a big delete notice Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - At the level just below that which needs deletion is that which, though promising, isn't ready for mainspace. It bears repeating that it's more encouraging for new users to have their material promoted from draftspace than demoted to draftspace. ACTRIAL wasn't just a protection against trash, it was a less confrontational path for new users to have their material accepted. Cabayi (talk) 14:08, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per Galobtter. Double sharp (talk) 14:20, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per TonyBallioni and Galobtter. JTP(talk • contribs) 14:28, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support New editor attraction and retention were not negatively impacted, and creation of obviously poor new articles was reduced. The only negative unforeseen consequence of note seems to be that the AfC queue has gotten longer. That is and acceptable trade-off for reducing the speedy delete and PROD queues. Eggishorn(talk)(contrib) 14:30, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
This was foreseen ([1], [2]) but appears to be manageable. ~Kvng (talk) 14:56, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong Support Great results, even though the AfC backlog is increasing. L293D (☎ • ✎) 14:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. The difference between the admin workload and quality of new articles with and without the autoconfirmed requirement is like night and day. It also makes paid for spam stand out sufficiently enough that it can be detected with simple behavioral heuristics. To anticipate/reply to some objections: Any solution to this problem must deny proactively, i.e. before the article is created. Otherwise, volunteer time must be wasted in finding, researching, debating and deleting promotional, social networking and/or non-notable crap. Speedy deletion of this rubbish is still a waste of volunteers' time. Automatic flagging of crap articles is not an acceptable solution and the raised CORP notability standards are necessary, but not sufficient. Similarly, NOINDEXing unpatrolled articles helps but there are many new page patrollers out there that cannot recognise paid-for articles. Userspace is NOINDEX but there's still plenty of junk added each day (if it's empty, see my deletion log). Patrollers also become less effective when flooded with garbage. Anti-abuse tools in MediaWiki are sufficiently derelict that a subject matter filter can only currently be implemented by the edit filter. (It is near impossible to get any useful software development out of the WMF in any reasonable amount of time.) While I really like the idea of a spammer who types out their article then getting denied when saving it (wastes their time = increases their costs), it's not a good experience if there's false positives and collateral damage. A subject matter filter can be circumvented by a bait and switch approach. Therefore, it must be run on every attempted edit by a non-autoconfirmed user and thus performance questions arise. A solution that denies proactively must run in real time. (I believe ORES runs ex-post.) I suspect that we're going to need all alternative measures AND a permanent autoconfirmed restriction in order to keep the spammers out, given how persistent and widespread the abuse can be. A consequence of Wikipedia getting more popular is the need to minimize the amount of time we spend processing each junk page in order to maintain quality. The restriction achieves this. Finally, I had the privilege of deleting the first page created by a non-autoconfirmed user after ACTRIAL ended, and yes, its creator made no effort to understand what an encyclopedia is before he edited one. MER-C 14:45, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - No significant negative impacts identified during trial. "AfC struggle" noted in the report does not appear to actually exist. Several significant positive impacts have been identified. Article deletion is a topic contributing strongly to new and experienced editor dissatisfaction therefore the reduction deletion activities associated with this change is a huge improvement for the community. ~Kvng (talk) 14:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Weak and conditional support. Every fiber in my wiki-body screams for me to oppose this. It's basically ending everything that has made Wikipedia so big and influential in the first place, creating barriers for people when barriers should not exist. While we know how many articles have been deleted less, we have no idea how many good articles were not created because of this barrier. Unfortunately, I do see that the amount of articles that are eligible for speedy deletion has climbed rapidly once ACTRIAL has ended. I do understand the outreach-concerns though, so I can only support this if we also allow participants of outreach events to gain confirmed status. Any good faith coordinator for outreach programs must be allowed to request confirmed status of all participants with no questions asked. Only then can such events still work. Regards SoWhy 14:51, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
One of the striking but downplayed results of the trial is that article growth was unaffected. The same number of new articles survived before and during the trial. Articles we would have deleted in due course were never created. The only barrier created here is a barrier to inappropriate material and associated deletion drama and manpower requirements. ~Kvng (talk) 15:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Kvng, make sure you are putting a hash before your indented comment. Otherwise the numbering is broke. talk to !dave 15:12, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
if the coordinator told participants to go to PERM and ask for confirmed status saying "I'm in training with User:SoWhy today" they would get Confirmed before they have a page ready to publish. Newbies should learn about PERM anyway as we hope they will want to NPR someday. Legacypac (talk) 15:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Pretty obvious supporttalk to !dave 15:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - Some large and obvious benefits, together with very few measurable downsides, were enjoyed during the trial period. Making "unsupervised" article creation contingent on the user at least cutting their teeth on some basic editing work and sniffing around the place for some days seems to filter out so much dross that we should aim to reinstate this setup at earliest opportunity. enWP is not primarily in the content growth phase anymore, but in the content improvement and curation phase; at the same time the incentive to spam the encyclopedia with undesirable material has never been greater. We should prioritize use of manpower and effort accordingly.--Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The trial showed the benefits very clearly; the only downside is the ever-growing AFC backlog, which is, in my view, a more-than-acceptable trade-off. Yunshui雲水 15:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support turn the control back on ASAP. I'll make more comments later. @User:Yunshui notwithstanding the WMF report that talks about a WP:AFC "struggle" there are some other reasons that AfC backlog rose temporarily. The loss of three prolific reviewers during ACTRIAL being bigger than the new Draft influx. The AFC backlog is dropping the last few days amd at 2200 pages is far far smaller than the NPR backlog. The entire AfC backlog is about 10 days worth of the 227 pages of junk pouring into mainspace without ACTRIAL. Also around 200-250 new pages are submitted to AfC a day so the backlog is really only about 10 days worth of submissions, but some more complex topics or borderline cases take longer to find a willing and able reviewer. Anyone qualified is welcome to join WP:AFC to help out (a little ad) Legacypac (talk) 15:49, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Strongest possible Support I've been patrolling the edit filters linked at CAT:CSD (almost all new pages that trigger at least one of these should be speedied or prodded), and I immediately noticed that all 4 of them had substantial increases in hits when ACTRIAL ended. This small restriction is absolutely necessary to keep as much crud out of mainspace as is possible. Iffy★Chat -- 16:19, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support mostly per User:GMG. Allowing new accounts to create crappy articles doesn't help them any more than it helps us. If new users have a gem to create, it can go through AFC where they'll get gentle/structured feedback (under the current system, they get a delete-your-worthless-contribution tag and an auto-generated talk page post). Also this will free up some of the time editors currently waste deleting unambiguous junk. As for the outreach concerns, it sounds like this can be dealt with separately by the community without interrupting the valuable work done by outreach-focused folks. Ajpolino (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I oppose below against prohibiting new users who register in programs, trainings, and workshops from making articles. People who go through a chain of responsibility to oversee users in programs should be able to permit new users to create articles. I will support general ACTrial prohibitions against new users making articles in the main space when instead they can post them to the draft space and expect to need a review before their article goes live. Please continue to develop the difference between the sort of new user who participates in training and outreach events versus new users acting outside the context of recruitment programs who become more engaged when they have options to meet standards and publish sooner. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The trial had many, many positive effects. The number of completely unsuitable new pages dropped radically. As a result, so did the number of speedy deletion requests, where the change was immediately noticeable. Also as a result, the backlog of pages needing review was able to be reduced substantially. As soon as the trial was over, we immediately resumed getting ridiculous pages, each of which requires the input of several volunteers to deal with. ACTRIAL reduced the workload on our volunteers, and undoubtedly also reduced their frustration which is likely to lead to burnout. And this was without any loss in new-editor retention. This should become permanent. --MelanieN (talk) 17:21, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The only remaining concern seems to be the effect on editathons, and there have been lots of discussion about ways to sidestep the issue entirely (including simply moving the article for the new user from draft to main). This does not and cannot outweigh the enormous benefits that we have seen arrive with ACTRIAL. At New Pages Patrol, where I spend quite a bit of time, we have been able to make progress in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise, reducing the backlog from 15,000 or so down to just 3,400 (and below the index point). Yet in the last 5 days, since ACTRIAL ended, the NPP backlog has already risen by 15%, a trend which looks to continue without permanent implementation of the restriction on new user article creation. It is important to note that the rate of new article creation has been unaffected by the trial, yet the proportion of deleted new articles fell from 35% to 15%! At the start of ACTRIAL we thought that we might have to chose between quality and quantity, but we don't; the quality of new articles has gone up while the quantity remained the same! I cannot impress upon how awesome this is, but in short, ACTRIAL has been an unmitigated success. I would also support giving experienced event coordinators the ability to confirm new users, as there is a significant difference between new editors that start at editathons and new editors as a whole (most new editors are sadly not here to build an encyclopedia, while editathon participants nearly always are). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 18:00, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - Seems very beneficial. One thought, as an AFC newbie; although it's the case ACTRIAL wasn't the only cause of the Afc backlog, it seems equally clear it had some impact. Thus, we should probably think about addressing the ongoing Afc impact of this proposal. This can partly be done by recruiting new reviewers, which has also been successful, but I suspect some review of processes will also be required. Various ideas for possible enhancements in this area have already been floated. KJP1 (talk) 18:10, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Just as a minor note: while the AfC number of drafts is up, the number at the 60 day mark (which is what Primefac uses as his “we’re doing good” standard) is currently zero. NPP and AfC are effectively backlog free in that all the pages are being handled within the projects’ best practice dates for review. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Noted and thanks. A very helpful reminder of the good work being done. KJP1 (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per all above, and my previous thoughts on this topic. jcc (tea and biscuits) 18:12, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per the above, makes perfect sense to do this. LugnutsFire Walk with Me 18:20, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Assuming the research report holds up (it's not in a peer reviewed journal...), ACTRIAL shows pretty obvious benefits. The issues the rport writers asked us to address are as follows:
A key question for the community following the trial is: what should Wikipedia’s publishing model be? The Wiki Way is to publish instantly, but make it easy to undo. The restrictions on article creation made by ACTRIAL shifts the model to review-then-publish for many accounts. Research on AfC has found that going through that process means drastically less collaboration than creating an article directly in the main namespace.[4] Is that beneficial to Wikipedia? If the community decides that article creation should be restricted, is autoconfirmed status a good threshold? One example where that restriction hinders contributions is if an experienced contributor comes in from another Wikipedia. Where they previously could create an article (e.g. a translation of one of theirs), it would now have to go through AfC or be created as a draft in the user namespace and later moved, both reducing the opportunity for collaboration and improvement.
How can the community encourage and reward maintenance work such as reviews at New Page Patrol and Articles for Creation? There is no doubt that work on encyclopedic content is important, but maintenance work is also important. They are a vital part of Wikipedia’s quality assurance processes. The February 20, 2018 Signpost news and notes mentions that there were no Requests for Adminship in January 2018. Being an admin is performing maintenance work. Studying ACTRIAL, we see some of the challenges with sustaining these types of communities, e.g. being able to keep up with the influx of articles or drafts needing review. It seems quite clear that switching off article creation for a group of potential contributors does not solve this problem, meaning that the community should carefully consider how it values and rewards maintenance work, and how it can maintain a healthy community of maintainers. — Autoconfirmed article creation trial/Post-trial Research Report
The Wiki Way is to publish instantly, but make it easy to undo. Indeed, but article creation is not easy to undo. Yes, we have CSD, but that still takes the time for a passing admin to come along. Courtesy blankings help, but inappropriate page titles are not as simple.
One example where that restriction hinders contributions is if an experienced contributor comes in from another Wikipedia. We need to point such users towards WP:PERM if 4 days is too long to wait (the editathon issue can likewise be resolved, if an admin is on site).
User:Bellezzasolo Might it be possible to link to the research report, rather than copy a long extract into your comment? Thank you: Noyster (talk), 18:39, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Noyster: I had it as collapsed, Primfac removed the collapse template, as it wasn't long enough to be merited. I mainly did that because I'm editing on iPad, and switching is a pain. But I did also feel that it was useful to have the quote here, as it's essentially addressed to this RfC. ∰Bellezzasolo✡Discuss 18:57, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The proof is in the findings. ZettaComposer (talk) 18:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Fully aware that we got a tremendous long way with the wide-open-door approach. But the context is now radically different to that of the early 2000s and we have to start adapting in this and other ways: Noyster (talk), 18:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support There is no practical downside here. Jbh Talk 18:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support this has massively reduced the amount of work do be done getting rid of inappropriate new content. Slightly inconveniencing editathons is a price worth paying for that (and there are things we could do to resolve that issue). Hut 8.5 19:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. I'd hoped the trial would be successful, and the results have seriously exceeded anything I expected. It's shown no serious downside, and hasn't damaged participation as had been feared. I think it would be a serious mistake not to make this permanent now, and my thanks go to those who put so much effort into making the trial happen. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, absolutely--Ymblanter (talk) 19:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: given the clear benefits reported, I have no option but to support the proposal, and believe it should be implemented as soon as possible. However, I would like to see a resolution to the problems that this measure creates for event organisers. --RexxS (talk) 19:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. This was clearly a net benefit, and decreased the amount of garbage being directed to NPP. Natureium (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. The stats bear it out: ACTRIAL works. I have nothing else to say that hasn't been articulated better in previous comments. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per the proposer, it's severely reduced the amount of A7/G11 articles. The only downside highlighted is Wiki meetup events, and they can just create in draftspace, and get moved to article space by any autoconfirmed user. Which takes about 30 seconds, in comparison to the hours spent on crap articles before ACCTTRIAL. Joseph2302 (talk) 19:45, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Time can now be better spent on other areas of need. Jon Kolbert (talk) 19:59, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per overwhelming support (of both the trial, and this). Definitely has more positives than negatives - TNT❤ 20:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. This would reduce a lot of backlogs (CSD, PROD, NPP, etc.) KMF (talk) 20:43, 19 March 2018 (UTC)+
Support, every experienced editor has seen the benefits. I sympathize with outreach efforts, but those can figure out a technical fix around this or focus on article improvement. Renata (talk) 20:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - Recognizing the stated issues about events, to which the answer is either to autoconfirm the participants in advance or to have a dedicated reviewer to fast-track the submissions. As to the philosophical principle that anyone can edit, this principle must be weighed against the principle of being an electronic repository of human knowledge, which requires quality control. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:02, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support so time can be spent in better ways than vetting new articles from brand new users. This restriction is not much of a burden on new users, and ultimately improves the ability for this encyclopedia to be run by anyone & everyone. Even the workshops in college I participated in for editing Wikipedia actually led us through steps of editing existing content first and exploring Wikipedia before the course led us to create new content (though that was not a single day workshop). Cr0 (talk) 21:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support as new editors at our outreach events are best served in draft space. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Mentored editathon newcomers can go here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/Confirmed. Unmentored newcomers need edits and time to get the basic ideas. Anyone can edit. Anyone can add material to an existing page. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. ACTRIAL has shown that requiring users to be autoconfirmed has significant benefits while the adverse affects are minor and can easily be mitigated. Mduvekot (talk) 21:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. The benefits strongly outweigh the negatives. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:00, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support No brainer. Blackmane (talk) 23:03, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: Prevents a lot of nonsense from being created by non-autoconfirmed users. — MRD2014Talk 00:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - especially now that we've experienced the benefits. Atsme📞📧 02:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - indubitably.--John Cline (talk) 03:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I've been at NPP for so long and it was a lost battle until ACTRIAL came along. The arguments below are minimalistic views that clearly have not factored in the advantages of ACTRIAL. The predominant focus of editathons needs to change from creating articles to teaching new users how to edit our current articles and seeing their changes live instantly. If there's a user who quits because they weren't allowed to create a new article in their first edit, well, not at the cost of NPP please. Lourdes 03:37, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support ACTRIAL may not be perfect (see discussion of editathon problems and solutions below), but ACTRIAL is clearly required to reduce the flood of gunk that inevitably burns out those trying to deal with it. Anyone worried about a new editor who cannot immediately see their live article should spare a thought for the larger number who would see their creation speedy deleted. Johnuniq (talk) 08:14, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I agree with SoWhy that ACTRIAL runs directly against the founding principles of the encyclopaedia. But no principles are carved in stone, and, after all, we haven't been "the encyclopaedia anyone can edit" for some time now, so this is actually a less radical step than it seems. And in any case, ACTRIAL doesn't stop anyone from editing: it merely creates a measure of oversight. I think we all know from "real life" that a degree of supervision is useful when one is starting at a new job, or course, or general path in life.And while I sympathise with those who self-define as inclusionist, I assume that is reasonable quality that they wish included...not gems such as Shrikantarts', which is exemplar of the vintage that ACTRIAL is specifically directed at. —SerialNumber54129...speculates 10:03, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. The benefits far outweigh the costs. Autoconfirmed is not a very high bar for an editor who is actually here to help build the encyclopedia, few unmentored new editors should be creating an article with their first edits, but such an editor can. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 10:23, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, per arguments well articulated above. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, obviously. Like, SoWhy, I earnestly believe this goes against the spirit of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia family of pages in general. The argument that we are the only site in the world without some barrier to publishing isn't convincing; that's what set us apart, it's what makes this place such a gem. ACTRIAL/ACREQ is bad, and we shouldn't need it, but we do; the infux of new, unacceptable pages is just too great. We're a victim of our own success, and patrolling CSD the past week makes it abundantly clear how necessary maintaining this is. I am thankful that it appears quality will not be significantly affected. The RfC for something like User:TonyBallioni/Event coordinator is for another day (not sure why it can't be incorporated into accountcreator) but I think it is essential and required should ACREQ come to pass. Outreach will only be more important with this roadblock, so let's encourage it. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 12:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong support. ACTRIAL made an immediate and substantial improvement to new page work, enabling us to bring the NPP backlog from a peak of 20,000+ to below 5,000, and completely eliminate the backlog of search engine-indexed, unreviewed pages. The opposes so far are not convincing. Wikipedia has restricted IP editors from creating new articles from near the beginning of the project. This only ups the requirement slightly. We shouldn't forget that autoconfirmed has very low requirements: ten edits over a few days. The effect on outreach work―or more precisely, off-wiki editathons, not everyone who promotes Wikipedia editing works for WMUK―is similarly overblown. There are several workarounds: participants can be asked to create accounts in advance; organisers can request that participant accounts are manually confirmed on the day (or do it themselves, if they're admins); and participants can create articles in draft that organisers then move. The only explanation we've had for why these aren't sufficient is that, apparently, new editors need to be able to create articles directly in order to experience a "magic wow moment". To be honest, it seems like this objection has less to do with the practicalities, and more the fact that certain outreach employees feel aggrieved that they were not specifically consulted about the trial in advance (but of course, nothing was stopping them joining the discussions like the rest of us!) – Joe (talk) 13:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Having to wait several days to create an article is generally a minimal impediment to new content creation. The demonstrated benefits wholly outweigh the concerns. /wiae/tlk 13:28, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - it's all been said above already. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:31, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support It is not to hard to expect people to learn about Wikipedia before creating an article. Plus making it harder to make an article cuts spam, and we can't expect 500 people to deal with the spurious stuff created by thousands. Prince of Thieves (talk) 15:48, 20 March 2018 (UTC) - struck vote from blocked sock. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, after considering the opposition by outreach people. I do outreach myself and have to admit that we'd rather rethink outreach activity than ACTRIAL. There is a lot that can be done on existing articles. --Pgallert (talk) 15:53, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support this has massively cut down on problems. The bit of issues that it causes is certainly something that must be solved, butthat problem is orders of magnitude smaller thanthe alternative. —Dirk BeetstraTC 16:07, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - I sympathize with the outreach people, but this is clearly a NETPOSITIVE for the overall project. We should look at what we can do regarding moving drafts created by outreach projects (which seems to be the current method) into the mainspace in a more timely manner than the AfC route, or find other better alternatives. 78.26(spin me / revolutions) 16:10, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - as per the above votes. This has clearly been beneficial to the project and should be made permanent. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:37, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - completely reasonable limitation.--Staberinde (talk) 16:40, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support As others have mentioned, Wikipedia is not a blog. There is power and accountability in the first sentence of the lead of a Wikipedia article, which in many Google searches comes up as the first result. In video games, you still need to acquire skills before you reach certain levels. You don't bend the rules so new users can feel the a buzz. Perhaps the one-day workshops need to be revisited so that the goal is not for each participant to create a separate article over a period of several hours. Perhaps the workshops need to be re-framed as a group project where participants know at the beginning that the veteran editor will publish the new article at the end of the session and they can watch the red turn to black. This is a more realistic process as no one user owns articles anyhow. Or they can wait the four days and have an accompanying Twitter event to celebrate the article's inauguration. What about letting new users upload photos or add an item to Wikidata or WikiSource? Then they can check out their global contributions over time. Framing the process so that a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction comes from acquiring the skills step by step over time is not impossible.Oceanflynn (talk) 16:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
"You don't bend the rules so new users can feel the a buzz."සැකිල්ල:HpClassic. <clap clap> Lourdes 00:09, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Fewer bad articles while not affecting new user recruitment? Sounds like a win-win to me. YilloslimeTC 18:07, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The problems raised by opposers are broadly in two categories. Firstly, a number of people are philosophically opposed to making it harder to edit. I'd agree with the sentiment of this, but the reality is that English Wikipedia has been successful to the point where how to handle the huge wave of new content coming in is something we have to take seriously and act to deal with. The AfC process may not be perfect, but it has generally seemed to be reasonably consistent in demanding and enforcing some basic quality requirements in articles from new users. Secondly, the problem of new users at editathons and outreach events. In the past, this has been generally been solved by ensuring that admins are available to hand out +confirmed to users at editathons. One solution we might have is if we could have a list of administrators willing to work with editathon organisers to +confirmed on accounts quickly. I'd be happy to work with trusted, non-admin editors involved with editathons to very quickly grant +confirmed to editathon/outreach event participants and I'm sure we could find a few other admins who could help. Similarly, if the "Event coordinator" role that is being discussed comes to fruition, I'd be happy to try to ensure that editathon/outreach coordinators are granted permissions speedily. I commend the proposers of this, and those who have worked to test and study ACTRIAL. —Tom Morris (talk) 18:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support because of the following reasons:
It will stop blatant spam, and idiotic article.
While getting/waiting to become A-CON, a user might get familiar with notability topics.
The short term vandals will not create stupid articles as they will have to wait a few days, and make few edits to be eligible for article creation.
This doesnt give any leverage over sleepers/socks, and LTAs; but creating articles is not hobby of the most of these categories.
A good-faith novice user might get friendly with wiki-coding, using <ref>reference</ref> and other templates, and some basic policies.
In short, a lot of time of NPP/R folks will be saved from gnoming the articles by such editors.
ACTRIAL will take enwiki a fraction away from "encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. (the only con)
In conclusion, ACTRIAL is good. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:56, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support and I don't feel the need to reiterate my reasoning on this, I've said it off and on for 6+ years now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I see this as the logical extension of the restriction of IPs from creating new pages, now that Wikipedia has become so much of a target for spammers and advertisers. Pawnkingthree (talk) 23:09, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per above. Clear net positive. -FASTILY 23:46, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Weak support - Philosophically I'm against restricting Wikipedia and I do think we lose something by turning the encyclopedia from one anyone can edit to one only trusted users can edit BUT I appreciate that this may help deal with problem pages at NPP and NPR. As beneficial as this is, there is still an unresolved issue with ACTRIAL's effect on outreach work, and please walk in my shoes for a while if you don't view this as an issue because workarounds are just as Wikipedia states: "a bypass of a recognized problem or limitation in a system. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed". However, if the Event Co-ordinator RfC helps resolve the outreach issue then I see no further reason to oppose ACTRIAL.Stinglehammer (talk) 01:52, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
It doesn't actually turn the encyclopedia from one anyone can edit to one only trusted users can edit, as unconfirmed users can still edit. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 07:28, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Stinglehammer, is there anything in the paper that your found particularly relevant to this discussion? (I'm a bit perturbed that they seem to think of Wikipedia as a form of social media, but whatever) Mduvekot (talk) 12:55, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Mduvekot I think the whole paper is relevant purely in exploring the activities, discussions and motivations occurring in editathons and indeed why some editathons are focused on creating articles (addressing areas of under-representation) and why having that moment of ownership at the moment of publishing can be a very real positive impact on the editor to make them see the point of adding quality contributions to Wikipedia and have a positive experience in the process. if the trainer is there to support and vet new articles and if the editathon focused on creating new articles in under-represented areas is motivating for academics and librarians from different disciplines to come together to have their first experience of editing Wikipedia then I don't see the need for limiting their efforts with captcha codes and the 4 day rule. Hence why I support the Event Co-ordinator RfC proposal.Stinglehammer (talk) 13:19, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Stinglehammer you present it as research, and I don't see anything in the article that supports your position, so I had hoped that you could have at least pointed to something concrete. Mduvekot (talk) 14:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Mduvekot The study is by two academic researchers and is published in International Research: an international electronic journal published quarterly by the University of Borås, Sweden. But fair enough if you don't see anything to engage with in its findings. To each their own. Stinglehammer (talk) 16:21, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely support Not only has ACTRIAL kept huge amounts of dross out of mainspace while also reducing the overall workload of reviewers, it has also "forced" events such as editathons to be much better organised than before. During ACTRIAL editathon participants had to be properly registered and prepared in good time before the start of the event itself. Random people with zero experience just pitching up and expecting to create a decent article in a couple of hours is (and always has been) a ridiculous fantasy. There is a real difference between "Anyone can edit" and "Anyone can create a fully compliant new article in a few hours with zero prior experience or preparation". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:57, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support net positive. Responses to the concerns raised by oppose !voters are well-articulated above. shoy (reactions) 13:55, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per many reasons above.--Dlohcierekim (talk) 13:59, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per TonyBallioni, Galobtter and others. The trial worked well. SarahSV(talk) 14:09, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per the obvious, proven benefits which far outweigh any minor issues that would arise.- MrX 🖋 14:57, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support looks like I'm preaching to the choir here, but I support per Galobtter and many, many others. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 15:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per the excellent arguments by Galobtter and my own experience as an occasional NPP. The negatives (if any) are far outweighed by the proven positives. The edit-a-thon "problem" can be resolved via the event coordinator proposal. Having said that, I question the wisdom of throwing completely inexperienced editors in at the deep end in the most difficult task of all, creating a viable article from scratch. I have seen many dire results from that approach over the years. Voceditenore (talk) 15:27, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - thought I already supported this. A sensible change. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 19:55, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Maybe you voted for the Trial 6 months ago. There was massive support for then too.Legacypac (talk) 00:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I very much wish we did not need this, but we do. And I 'd guess that we will continue to need it all the more--the prominence given WP articles on Google will continue to give every business or profession a strong incentive to have a WP article about themselves. Dealing with editathons and similar projects is a problem, but it shouldn't hold up adopting the basic principle. We can deal with exceptions later when wwe know what will really be needed. Trying to get all the potential exceptions and special cases dealt with at the beginning is one of the reason for our convoluted structure of incompatible and incomprehensible guidelines. DGG ( talk ) 23:38, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per above. Clearly a net positive. New users can still edit, they just can't get bitten nearly as hard. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:51, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - much needed. Swarm♠ 01:46, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong support: the research report is overwhelmingly positive. The oppose reasons I see are slippery slope (a fallacy), philosophical grounds (something I empathise with but don't place much importance on) and editathons. For editathons, I strongly support the idea of event co-ordinators getting the right to confirm users so they can create the articles in the main namespace, even if some of those articles are not really in a proper state (necessary fallout that is worth it for the advantages it brings). However, even if this is rejected by the community, the draft namespace is not a terrible backup plan, and I would still support the autoconfirmed requirement for article creation. I think the necessity of this restriction on article creation reflects on the steep learning curve that editing Wikipedia has. It's difficult to know what to do about this, because editing Wikipedia is such a complicated process – I definitely learn new things every day I edit, especially when I step outside the areas I'm most familiar with. Article creation is hard and so I think only users with the 10 edits and 4 days experience and dedication to the site are going to get it right. It's unfortunate that we now have so many more user restrictions than "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" might imply, but I think it's necessary in this case. — Bilorv(c)(talk) 03:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong support - Why not?! Per Tony, GMG, MERC, ICPH et al and obviously the report which speaks for itself.IMO, Outreach-related-problems (which do have a genuine work-around) are not sufficiently important enough to be a hurdle over here.~ Winged BladesGodric 06:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: For me, the “anyone can edit” function is predominantly fulfilled through normal editing of existing articles, whereby a new editor learns the processes, with other editors helping adjust formatting, guiding on trivia vs appropriate content, etc. Article creation brings a different level of question of appropriateness and multiplies others’ effort to deal with the problems of inappropriate articles. Although it can be gamed by the exploitative interests, and involves workarounds for new editor workshops, the metrics from Actrial and this consequent proposal provides a good balance. AllyD (talk) 08:43, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support-Good bye to all mainspace copyvio violators, A7 candidates — FR+ 11:44, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - To create an article with your very first edit is an invitation to casual users to create unencyclopedis articles. Much better to show commitment and get the feel of Wikipedia with some practice edits before launching into your first article. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support massive reduction in articles that will invariably be deleted. IazygesConsermonorOpus meum 14:52, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong support Clear net-positive. The event arguments can be fixed, and the other arguments are not convincing. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 18:14, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - During the trial phase, I noticed that what would most likely be the creation of articles that were promotional, spam, test pages, vandalism, and the like - were either created in the account's user space (their user or user talk pages), or in the draft space - both locations that are much more manageable and easily resolved than having these edits go directly into the mainspace. Instead, we should do what... well, just about any website would do before you can do something comparable here, which is to start the new user off with the need to make a few legitimate edits and wait a few days before they can create articles. Most new accounts that I observed when patrolling the user creation log would create promotional or other pages on their user page just to see that they don't edit Wikipedia thereafter. These pages were within the U5 or G11 criteria and easily handled compared to letting them create articles and spending extra time to go down the various deletion roads that way. I think that this implementation and change to process will be a net positive, and will shape this project from being "what it was in 2007" and steer it in a direction to open the door for more important changes that will be needed to maintain the project as it grows and things change years down the line... ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs) 23:12, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Support This is a very small step toward taking our responsibility to the public seriously, and reducing the burden on existing editors of the torrent of crap that gets poured in without this, balanced with our commitment to openness. It is soul destroying to work NPP without this small speed bump and this goes a long way toward alleviating the burn out. In addition the notion that some period with training wheels is necessary for brand new editors is not even a little bit crazy or bad. I realize that people who do outreach love giving people at editathons the WOW moment of publishing a brand new page; but this is an expectation that they create. At some point hopefully they will understand this. There is a ton of value to improving existing articles (there is so much very important work in that!) and those changes can be immediately published. If outreach folks focused on that, there would be way more long term value both for the new editor and the encyclopedia. Anyway, there is really no downside here at all outside of that specific bellyaching which in my view is misguided on multiple levels. Jytdog (talk) 03:21, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support ACTRIAL was a great success and shows Wikipedia has achieved a lot. When it started even non-logged users where allowed to create articles but had to be prevented when the situation no longer warrant that. We are yet at another point where that bar is no longer acceptable and ACTRIAL trial has shown the great benefit of this. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:29, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Given the outcome of the trial, yes, I will support this. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 15:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Alex Shih (talk) 16:30, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Reading MER-C’s post, only thing I can say is I support it. — regards, Revi 18:07, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support as a long-term IP editor. The constant reversions and speedy deletions of new-user contributions are among the worst forms of newbie (and oldbie) biting in the project. If the goal is to make new editors more welcome, decreasing that biting is of far more benefit than the cost of occasionally losing a contributor who can't wait 4 days to publish their new article. In practice it's near-impossible for an unassisted new editor to write article that escapes speedy deletion with less than 4 days on the site anyway, so I don't see this hypothetical loss as something to worry about. The ACTRIAL data indicates that speedy deletion of new articles slowed down (because their creation slowed down) tremendously during the trial, and imho that is decisive. The special case of outreach sessions has a simple technical fix: let coordinators (and imho others) set +confirmed on new accounts. I've commented on TonyBallioni's RFC to the effect that it's the right idea but I'd prefer making it simpler. The "philosophical" opposition of wanting to minimize restrictions on unconfirmed editors mostly ignores much more significant editing restrictions that we unconfirmed editors already face. As an unconfirmed editor I appreciate the support, but I'd prefer have it redirected to easing up existing restrictions such as the overuse of semi-protection, and resisting the cavalier introductions of new userrights (like extended confirmation) that we keep seeing. Many !votes support the proposal based on arguments of drama and workload reduction for page patrollers etc. I see that benefit as secondary, but it's still a benefit, so it also speaks in favor of the proposal. Overall the proposal is an obvious net positive, thus support. I'm happy for the extended discussion though. More serious restrictions like extended confirmation protection and the template editor userright got put in place almost in the middle of the night. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 19:08, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - Now let's ramp up the number of edits required for Auto-Confirmed status. Down with sock-puppetry and vandalism! Carrite (talk) 20:04, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. I came here inclined toward support, so I carefully read every oppose (currently 16). I basically see three concerns. I'd say the weakest is editathons. I say it's the weakest because even the opposes appear to generally agree that that those issues can and will be addressed. Second, I see concerns that AFC be improved. I expect that won't be as easy as addressing editathons, but I don't see it as an obstacle. Making ACTRIAL permanent will naturally put more focus on how we run AFC. Perhaps the most significant objection was philosophical, that we're supported to be open, and that ACTRIAL-barriers might turn people away. As a counterpoint, I think we're doing more harm when so many new article creators get hit with SpeedyDeletes and AFDs. Whatever the failings of the current AFC experience, I think AFC is better for a new user than having our arcane and more serious mainspace procedures crash down on them like a meteor from nowhere. The AFC process has the prospect of improving into a more positive on-ramp. The WMF's report appears to suggest feared-losses due to ACTRIAL didn't actually happen. Alsee (talk) 22:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Alsee, AFC's heart is in the right place and its participants work hard, but unfortunately I think it is hopelessly broken. Some time back there was a (cough) secret plan afoot to replace it with something that sounded likely to be even worse. It has a praiseworthy goal but uses completely ill-advised methods to pursue the goal. Plus, Wikipedia's morphing from an encyclopedia into a SEO app guarantees that AFC's workload will always be overwhelming. So I wouldn't put much reliance on AFC getting better. Enrolled editors with new articles are better off waiting the 4 days. Unenrolled editors who have figured out their way around the site are better off improvising. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 23:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
SupportJust piling on now. See this as a net positive. AIRcorn(talk) 02:07, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. I didn't do that many AfC reviews during the ACTRIAL period, but I read through the research findings and on the basis of those statistics, this certainly looks like a good idea. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:40, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support This should have been done years ago. Conifer (talk) 05:54, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support; better than the alternative. Jc86035 (talk) 10:38, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Net benefit for the project. 10 edits/4 days is no real limitation for good faith editors. Pavlor (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
The results appear encouraging. Sandstein 18:08, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: Let's cut off spammers from creating articles. KGirl(Wanna chat?) 18:21, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Look, this isn't a perfect system. I completely agree with some of the opposes based on the spirit of Wikipedia and the frustrations behind the current AfC system. On the whole, ACTRIAL has been a massive net positive, and I really appreciate all the work that people have put into this. Best, Kevin (aka L235·t·c) 20:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Support While I originally opposed the implantation of WP:ACTRIAL after seeing it in action I can't argue with the results. It seems like a lot of the cruft that we used ti have created, and recreated isn't making it past the draft stage. While I still have slight concerns this is just moving the issues over to AFC, I do like that it keeps copyvios out of main space, so for this alone I'd support. --Cameron11598(Talk) 03:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Clearly a net positive for the project. --Az1568 (talk) 03:30, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. I agree that this has been a net positive. 331dot (talk) 19:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: per the outcomes and recent research results, this has clearly been an improvement. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The research results are clear that this change is very helpful to the integrity of the encyclopedia, and the change does not deter good faith new contributors. This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit as long as they comply with our policies and guidelines. The alternative is chaos and collapse. There are over five million articles that IP editors and newly registered accounts can improve as they see fit, following our reasonable policies and guidelines. Writing an acceptable new article is something that very few fresh accounts can master quickly, although four days of serious study is about right. I consider the AFC process to be flawed but it must be emphasized that it is entirely optional. As for edit-a-thons and other outreach events, we should provide a complete package of tools to the organizers that will allow acceptable new articles to be moved to main space promptly. The notion that our goal should be to enable newly registered editors to create an acceptable brand new encyclopedia article with their second or ninth edit strikes me as excessively idealistic and counterproductive. Cullen328Let's discuss it 04:31, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support It's a low hurdle to ask editors to clear, with a large benefit to the project. Meters (talk) 09:12, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support This is an encyclopedia, not a "Post anything" free-for-all. Any measure that reduces the amount of G11 spam should be supported. It's not a deletionist measure at all, and it's odd for anyone to say as much. Regards Exemplo347 (talk) 15:28, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support As much as I dislike AfC for its focus on whether an article could survive AfD rather than on a focus which helps new editors and actually helps them create, learn the system and find sources, I have long been a proponent of changing the climate from an encyclopedia that anyone "can" edit to one in which anyone "may" edit. Quality overrides quantity always and to preserve the integrity of the project controls must exist. Whether or not I believe that AfC is the best venue for creation, which I don't, it is clear from the data that controls are necessary. SusunW (talk) 17:34, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The simple fact is that almost nobody is ready to create an article with their very first edit. Anyone who has spent even one hour of their life looking over new articles knows this, and now it appears we have empirical evidence to back it up. Unconvinced that the needs of editathon organizers trump the needs of the entire rest of the community. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, per my reasoning seven years ago. It is my hope that, with this controversy behind us, we can move to finding better processes for engaging and assisting potentially constructive editors trapped behind this limit. I look forward, too, to meaningful discussions about paving over the potholes this might create for edit-a-thons. --joe deckertalk 19:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Permanent ACTRIAL implementation will greatly improve Wikipedia, as the pie charts at the bottom of this page support and as many editors said above. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. Wikipedia is not a blog, nor a web host, nor an advertising platform, nor a social network. 20% of articles by non-autoconfirmed users survive 90 days, while 80% of articles by autoconfirmed users survive 90 days. Luis150902 (talk | contribs) 20:25, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - based on the benefits for the project, as shown in the report and in feedback from active volunteers in this area. GermanJoe (talk) 22:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Glad to see that the evidence supports this as a way to reduce the number of low-quality articles created. Reywas92Talk 23:30, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Support as the trial was a success in reducing csd standard articles in mainspace and apparently didn't affect retention Atlantic306 (talk) 12:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Support What's it been, like seven years sinced we first started on this journey? The pacing here is positively geological, and it's about time we actually ran the study we asked for so many years ago. It is good that the data has vindicated our initial hypotheses, and this is a net benefit for the project. Better late than never. --Jayron32 13:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, with of course any reasonable accommodation for edit-a-thons etc. as deemed necessary, and assuming the good folks at AfC do not enter the room with hair on fire telling us to stop immediately. Let me say for the record that I do not agree with the conclusions of the report regarding the crucial point of editor retention, but IMO a small drop is a price worth paying. Boring details: Admittedly I have not read the full report and may have missed something, but I believe I have read everything concerning H5 (in particular meta:Research_talk:Autoconfirmed_article_creation_trial/Work_log/2018-02-07). The conclusions can be summarized as "editor retention has not dropped as feared, but even increased, and we do not really know why". However, other parts of the report say there might be a school-cycle effect (i.e. for whatever school-related reason editors that start in September are more likely to "survive"). The correct conclusion is thus not "editor retention has increased" but "editor retention might have decreased, but by less than the cyclical variation", which is not the same as "editor retention drop is within the measurement precision"; if the cyclical rise is large enough to be measurable, it could swamp out a decrease of a larger-than-measurement-precision size. TigraanClick here to contact me 15:31, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - necessary given the positive results. Shellwood (talk) 16:00, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Support and if there are concerns about editathons and outreach events there's some way for an admin to push a button to manually confirm such people, as I recall. EEng 05:00, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Support This is such a minimal threshold and yet seems to be doing a decent job keeping all the Balrogs on one side of the bridge. Chetsford (talk) 07:08, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Support – A four-day wait is not unreasonable when AFC is also available. 142.161.81.20 (talk) 07:22, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Support If spam goes down and quality goes up, I'm all for it. Rexogamer (talk)
Support - this experiment shows why it is necessary. Also, 'EDITATHON' problem should be solved on priority basis. Störm(talk) 18:04, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: There is no need for the statistics to prove it, although it's there. It's an embarrassment for such an important reference work to have such lax standards on creating new entries, so it is overdue. Esquivalience (talk) 19:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Support New users who wish to create new articles should be encouraged to start in the draft space. Tony Tan·talk 23:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. This improved things, full stop. ~ Rob13Talk 01:07, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - No downside that I can see. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:34, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The results far exceeded my expectations. AFC will need some significant adjustments, but that was already true anyhow, and doesn’t remotely imply this is anything but a big step in the right direction. The sooner the better. Innisfree987 (talk) 06:47, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I'd say it is necessary. Jytdog expressed it very well above, I think. --bonadeacontributionstalk 07:01, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Strong Support During the ACTRIAL period I have both been at NPP and have helped run an Editathon. This trial did not by one iota change the fact that Wikipedia was - and still is - the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. Permanent implementation of this tiny initial restriction of 4 days/10 edits will not alter that either. With immense effort, the backlog of New Pages at WP:NPP was whittled away by an army of helpers from somewhere around 30,000 (can't remember the figure offhand), to just over 3,200 by its end. But I've seen it rise sharply by 1,000 in just 2 weeks since the ACTRIAL trial finished, and my CSD log is filling out nicely with dross that simply wasn't there to be deleted a fortnight ago. I recognise those who run or help out at editathons and similar events have some concerns that permanent implementation of this very simple, sound limitation on putting pages directly into mainspace from day 1 would affect them. I hear those concerns, but do not feel that content created by brand new editors in a controlled, managed training environment need ever be regarded in the same way as the stuff produced by goodness knows how many hundreds of editors every day instantly creating garbage that takes huge effort to deal with. And since the ending of ACTRIAL we're clearly not managing to deal with it all. There is a completely separate proposal under development to ensure that editathon and WiR projects are not affected by the implementation of this sensible and necessary proposal, and I welcome that. And regarding AFC, I can do no better than to quote Insertcleverphrasehere, who elsewhere on this page says: "New users ending up at AfC is entirely a result of the fact that AfC exists, and therefore becomes the only option for a new user who wants to publish now. ACTRIAL was never about sending new users to AfC instead of NPP, but rather about stopping them from creating new articles in the main space altogether (for a time). The short delay has a massive impact in keeping away spammers and trolls in a similar way that AfC does (they don't get instant gratification of a main-space article), so the non-good-faith editors mostly just go away. Meanwhile good-faith editors are in general not dissuaded from editing by the short probation period... ...ACTRIAL is a good thing, regardless of the fact that some new editors end up at AfC, it is still overwhelmingly positive in its impact. AfC reforms can come later,... ...but please don't oppose this change just because you don't like AfC's somewhat flawed process". Equally, I would urge others not to oppose this proposal because of concerns over any potential and relatively limited impact on editathons, either. This, too, can be dealt with. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:05, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, the numbers show ACTRIAL worked and really didn't have any negative impact. Anecdotally (yes, I know what the plural of it is not), the G11 queue, which I often check, had a lot less in it during ACTRIAL, even when drafts and sandboxes in it were considered. The fewer pages we need to speedy, the better. It wastes volunteer time to tag the article, check over it once tagged, and then perform the deletion if needed. I think, rather, that once some spammers saw that there was going to be more to it than just slapping up a bunch of "copy", and that what they wrote would be reviewed before appearing in the encyclopedia, they decided not to bother. It also might be that good-faith users who also sometimes write G11-worthy material (fan/boosterism stuff) got a few edits under their belt and realized that wouldn't fly. We don't have to delete one more page, and they don't get chased off. ACTRIAL is a win all around; it discourages bad-faith actors and spammers, while giving good-faith new editors a gentler path in than creating a page and immediately having it nuked from orbit. SeraphimbladeTalk to me 16:22, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support 4 days is not a long wait, and will show that the user is committed to the project. Ronhjones (Talk) 18:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, reluctantly. While I am uncomfortable with this on principled grounds, I think my main objections have been well answered. I originally intended to oppose this until editathons could be accommodated, but until an RfC to give editathon leaders +confirmed rights occurs (and I would support this) there are enough valid workarounds: be or find an admin, move drafts to mainspace, create placeholder pages etc. BethNaught (talk) 21:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, per many above especially TonyBallioni and Galobtter. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 00:07, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Arguments in favour seem overwhelming. Hawkeye7(discuss) 00:30, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per above. --Rschen7754 00:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per personal experience and above. Iseult Δx parlez moi 02:07, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support It is an absolute necessity and will become a permanent feature of Wikipedia. Start today. scope_creep (talk) 09:35, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per TonyBallioni. --Teukros (talk) 11:24, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support Having joined NPP only halfway through the trial, yet reviewing a little over thousand pages in that time span, I can say that this trial was definitely a net positive on the quality of content I'm seeing in NPP. I'm largely an inclusionist - I only vote delete in AfD if the subject obviously breaks site rules. Rarely did I PROD or nominate for deletion a new article during the trial, yet within days of it ending I have noticed the need to PROD more articles and I've seen many more marked for deletion that overwhelmingly pass. This is a no-brainer, any negatives are easily remedied by interested participants joining the site to meet the page creation requirements. It's not that hard to meet the req's, and we should really desire editors whose first introduction to Wikipedia isn't something challenging, like making an article, but by editing around for a little while to get a feel for the place first. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 13:13, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Which is to say very strong support. I cannot tell you how many inappropriate "notability-defying" articles (many of which have been around for years) that I have come across during my 8+ years here on En Wiki (both before and now after ACTRIAL) that have probably 90% been created by "drive-by" (i.e. single-use accounts that were not autoconfirmed, and were never used again after the creation of an inappropriate article) editors. The only time there was any let up in this was during the recent ACTRIAL. Please! make it permanent!! --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:27, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support per arguments in favor. The burden on NPP will also decrease. MT TrainTalk 17:59, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support The unsuitable article count has increased since ACTrials trial discontinuation. And it's not like new users will not be able to create articles anyways. Nikolaiho☎️📖 20:58, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Support. Has been needed for a very long time. Tdslk (talk) 01:37, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Support - basically this is essential to the health of the whole encyclopedia. It usefully limits conflict-of-interest editing; it stops a great deal of ill thought out silliness and spur-of-the-moment article creation; it avoids a logjam in the new page patrol and articles for deletion; and it helps the whole project to run smoothly and gain a better reputation for quality and reliability, sorely needed. The end of the trial has immediately been marked by a return to the bad old ways, so the experiment has unquestionably succeeded in showing that the mechanism is necessary. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:08, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Support the ACTRIAL was very successful in helping NPP burder and that's a good thing. I'm OK with articles being created in Draft space first. Learning the Wiki ropes isn't easy. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Support I originally opposed this measure, but after reconsidering my original reason for opposing and after reading through the various responses on this page (including Kudpung's response to my oppose), I'm reasonably convinced that this measure is a net positive for the encyclopedia. Sierrak28 (talk) 03:41, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Support: per proposers comments and rationale. The main heading of WP:5P3 states "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute". In the lead of the article Wikipedia it states "...based on a model of openly editable content.", and the third paragraph, "...the remarkably open-door policy of allowing anyone to edit", seems clear that "create without restriction" is missing. Although vandals usually resort to IP addresses I am sure many here have run across articles created by COI, paid, or SPA editors and while creating has been easy, getting rid of articles that otherwise do not appear to qualify for a speedy or BLP violations, are not "easy" to get deleted. This alone ties up editors as well as admins in numerous and sometimes repeated AFD's . Add to this that it does not seem ACTRIAL hampered the encyclopedia and issues over "new users at events" can be dealt with. Otr500 (talk) 09:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Support, The arguments for outweigh those against by an order of magnitude. There are sufficient interim measures for events, and a separate RfC should sort that problem out anyway. Every argument I can think of has already been made, so I will stop here. · · · Peter (Southwood)(talk): 11:39, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Support given the results from the trial. the wub"?!" 21:58, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Support contingent on Administrators continuing to be able to confirm users. I feel AfC and Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/Confirmed could somehow eventually be merged into a friendlier interface with an admin watching new article creation of a user to promote as easy access as possible without clogging up the queue. Regardless, the trial was successful in my view. Ryan Norton 02:33, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Support, as proposer. The trial was successful and would prevent inappropriate articles from being created by users not in the 'confirmed' group. Nigos (talk•contribs) 08:17, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. I haven't been particularly active on Wikipedia for a while, and when I recently reviewed a large number of articles in the NPP, I was extremely surprised by their abnormally high quality. Now I understand why. I am personally curious how much (if at all) the number of articles which were created declined during ACTRIAL after removing deleted articles from both statistics (I don't know where I'd find that data, nor do I have time to do it myself at the moment). But I don't expect the difference to be utterly appalling, and short of that I don't see any reason not to do this. AfC is of course a problem right now, but we shouldn't wait for AfC to resolve their issues before implementing this, especially as it would likely push AfC to act more quickly. —Compassionate727(T·C) 15:25, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Support Evidence shows many positives such as backlog reduction and no negatives. Worth implementing. Kges1901 (talk) 18:44, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Support Improves the quality of the encyclopedia. Buckshot06(talk) 21:50, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Support, a reduction in the amount of trash reaching the mainspace is reason enough to do this. As someone who helps with editathons, I find the Opposes here unpersuasive; it is simple enough to add the necessary user rights to these accounts with a little bit of organisation and forward planning; it is not in practice a barrier to participation. Lankiveil(speak to me) 01:51, 3 April 2018 (UTC).
Support, per RexxS, so long as solutions are found for events and classes. It isn't always practical to just tell them to register beforehand, and not all will. Johnbod (talk) 12:35, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Support - Working within both WP:NPP and WP:AfC, there is an obvious issue with a backlog of articles, regardless of where they end up. However, articles being left in draft space until they are suitable for inclusion simply makes sense. It's also a very good time to educate new good faith users. Articles that get reviewed will grant the user more insight, and better high quality articles in the long run. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 13:24, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Support it's not a miracle cure but I believe it's still a net positive for the project. Pichpich (talk) 18:39, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Support this helps more than harms the encyclopedia. Also, the New Pages feed is full of poor articles now. Another RFC needs to be created to handle new users during editathons. --Frmorrison (talk) 19:10, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Support yes, this does have negatives. Yes it is a step against the Wiki Way. However if we are going to make becoming an Administrator so biblically difficult, then we cannot complain that actions that do a good job at balancing issues need to be bought in. Credit should also go for how the whole process has been handled - it would be nice to see such proper before/after/before comparison, with analytics, for any equivalently large change in the future. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:28, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Support, BUT AfC needs improvement. ~Awilley (talk) 01:03, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. Well, it's a start. The results of the trial fully justify making the bar at least this high on a permanent basis. RivertorchFIREWATER 06:49, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Support Seems to me that this will result in a net improvement --Imminent77(talk) 15:30, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Strongly support: We absolutely need to be welcoming to first-time editors, but the right way for a first-time editor who has literally no experience with WP to contribute is emphatically not by creating a new article and putting it up live in mainspace. As the data quoted above indicate, it's highly unlikely that an article created by a totally new editor will survive our standards and review processes anyway, and it's vanishingly unlikely that it will do so without input and oversight from more experienced editors; that's an excellent description of the function of AfC. If there aren't enough experienced editors to keep up with the rate at which inexperienced editors try to create articles, then that's a separate problem that has no direct connection to whether that work happens at AfC or at NPP. Anything that reduces the amount of time editors spend cleaning up messes and increases the time spent creating and improving content should be welcomed heartily.-Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 15:14, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. It is too easy to create an article and too hard to delete a bad one. Even a small step to reduce the flood of inappropriate articles is welcome. I would prefer larger steps.Xxanthippe (talk) 03:19, 6 April 2018 (UTC).
Support. I believe that it is well past time for Wikipedia to focus more on quality of its articles rather than on quantity. This proposal is a way to tilt in that direction. Overall, I'm pleased with the results of the trial. Deli nk (talk) 17:34, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Support something I have long wished were the case. (Vanamonde below has neatly described why; in the end, I think it's better for a bona fide new user to go via the AFC process than to create something and immediately have it CSD/AFDed. Better for not squashing the user's enthusiasm, that is, although also better for WP.) Pinkbeast (talk) 19:00, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Support As per points above, this seems like a necessary step vis a vis stemming inappropriate articles. Sanctaria (talk) 08:56, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Support despite my gut-level opposition on philosophical grounds. There is sufficient evidence that ACTRIAL is improving the encyclopedia as the reader sees it, and that it reduced the burden on NPP. Furthermore, some folks above have made the persuasive point that requiring newbies to create content in the draftspace, where the standards are less exacting, is actually more welcoming than allowing them into mainspace where their work is likely to be hit with some form of deletion tag. Vanamonde (talk) 11:22, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. In the seven years (!) since I closed the original RfC on this, I have had plenty of time to think about this issue and form a clear opinion of my own. The results of the trial confirm what I already suspected: this is the right thing to do. It creates a relatively small but crucial barrier for vandals and spammers, and diverts good faith new editors to a place where they can get feedback without the pressure of a speedy deletion tag. Concerns about the impact on editathons are legitimate, but don't seem hard to overcome. --RL0919 (talk) 18:08, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Support This is much needed from both the perspective of patrollers being able to evaluate articles as well as from new editors creating them. It's much better for a new editor to poke about and meet the 10 edits/4 days requirement and then create an article after getting a basic understanding of policies than just randomly getting talk page notifications on A7, G11, G4 deletions and being sent away. Any issues with outreach events can be addressed by event specific allocation of confirmed rights, including the one week or 10 day confirmed status. —SpacemanSpiff 02:40, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. I think the trial was a success. TimBuck2 (talk) 13:53, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. It seems sensible, and a solution can be found for outreach events. Strobilomyces (talk) 17:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. End of a happy era, but obsolescence happens. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:51, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. Believe this will be a net positive. Home Lander (talk) 19:34, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. I spend a lot of time reviewing new pages created by new editors, and I can scarcely express how much better it was when, during the trial, I could devote that time to constructive work to help new editors instead of close to 100% of the time being spent on removing as many as possible of the continuous stream of totally unsuitable articles. Also, it is far more discouraging to a new editor to have his or her proudly created new article immediately deleted without warning than to be told that his or her proudly created new draft needs more work before it is suitable. As for the comments about "outreach" events, that is a very good argument in favour of making the restriction permanent, for two reasons. (1) Such events usually result in a flood of unsuitable articles which then waste the time of other editors who have to clean up, and worse still some of them slip through the net. (2) People being introduced to editing Wikipedia should be introduced to what editing Wikipedia is really like, not to some utopian fictional version. It is not helpful to those people to mislead them as to what editing is like by letting them publish unsuitable articles just because the people running these events give higher priority to giving the participants the experience of getting an article published than to making sure that no article gets published unless it is suitable. The minority of those participants who then go on to become regular editors very often then find they are getting slapped in the face for doing exactly what they have been taught to do. It is much more helpful to such potential editors to let them create drafts and have them reviewed. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:08, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. Wikipedia exists to provide a useable encyclopedia for hundreds of millions[තහවුරු කර නොමැත] of users. The auto-confirmed requirement is minimal compared to the work of producing a useable article. — Neonorange (Phil) 18:23, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Support. Unquestionably. This is the "encyclopedia which anyone can edit", but restricting article creation for a handful of days doesn't change that; nothing in the motto requires that all kinds of edits are made available on literally the first day working with the project. Arguments about editathons and classes are well-formed, but not persuasive. Participants in such endeavors can be granted the confirmed user right by any administrator for the duration of the event. Although the proposed event coordinator right would streamline the process, I do not consider it burdensome to expect that someone actually running an editathon make arrangement to have an admin available at the appropriate time (even remotely). I am certain that it should not be difficult to do so, and frankly ensures that these events have at least some modicum of actual preparation behind them (which is a complaint occasionally raised when their members produce poor caliber work). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:49, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Support Happy to see this finally coming to fruition, despite the previous roadblocks that the WMF put up to prevent it. ‑Scottywong| confess _ 16:17, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Support The research shows this worked, and worked well. Courcelles (talk) 18:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Support I saw no articles requiring speedy deletion tags over 6 months of active editing using Huggle while the trial ran; now I am seeing them again. Most of the articles that get tagged are pure vandalism, self-promotion by non-notable and usually young persons or spam/advertising. They are not just poorly crafted articles. This is a small example of use of patroller's/reviewer's time that could be spent on something else. This has already been described more persuasively by JamesBWatson and others. As Courcelles and others note, the research shows the trial worked; no loss of new editors was shown. This is a good step in the right direction. Donner60 (talk) 06:43, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Support per results of ACTRIAL. The editathon issue appears to have sufficient workarounds for now, with further possibilities under discussion. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:34, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Support Per reults of ACTRIAL. If some drastic and unforeseen disaster comes of it, it can be reversed at a later date. However the trial seems convincing. Overall, we had good results putting 100 new articles though draftspace in the 2016 SCAR virtual editathon. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 13:24, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Support per all of the above. While I see that there are issues with editathons, I don't see those as blocking this initiative as reasonable workarounds exist. Note that a link to this RFC was published on the Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group. Ca2james (talk) 15:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
It was also posted in the "Wikipedia & Education" Facebook group. BethNaught (talk) 19:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Support per above. The hurdle is low and there are ways to expedite users to confirmed status if needed. This is a really positive and common-sense proposal. Cesdeva (talk) 20:56, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Support Positives far outweigh negatives. – Craig Davison (talk) 13:01, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Oppose A four-day delay is directly disruptive to outreach events such as this which are usually scheduled for a single day during which new editors are trained and encouraged to start new articles about neglected topics. Andrew D. (talk) 13:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Andrew Davidson: are the outputs of these usually suitable articles? Outreach events certainly could still create Draft: articles - and a speedy review/move process could be incorporated. — xaosfluxTalk 14:04, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Andrew Davidson:, perhaps if you were to read this you might take note of all the workarounds for editathons. That said, plenty of editathons result in overtime for our New Page Reviewers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:13, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Workarounds like AfC are awful and one result of ACTRIAL was that AfC got worse with even longer delays which are measured in weeks rather than days. Such delays are a turnoff and are unacceptable for a website. It's well established that online users expect responsiveness measured in seconds not days or weeks. Andrew D. (talk) 15:41, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
We're also the only major online website that until this did not require some form of delay or confirmation before receiving full use of the website. The reason this had no impact on recruitment (and actually saw some forms of account grow) is because people are used to waiting on confirmation from websites they just signed up for. It is the norm. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:43, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't buy that argument Andrew Davidson. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a web service, and the abberation is that access to editing it is the least restrictive of all the millions of forums and blogs out there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:31, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Ballioni's absurd claims are unsupported by any evidence. Here's some actual examples from my recent experience:
a) TripAdvisor. I stayed in a hotel at the weekend and, in the follow-up, they solicited a review on that site. I wrote a brief review and decided to start an account as TripAdvisor has been showing up in recent articles that I've started, such as The Black Swan, Oldstead. The process of joining was fast and welcoming – the only part that took any time was choosing a screen name that hadn't already been taken. My membership was accepted immediately and my review published immediately. They then gave me good feedback with encouragement to write more reviews. That was a fast and positive experience which only took about 5 minutes.
b) PayPal. I've had an account for years but when friends sent me some money recently, this tripped some security and they suspended my account until I verified my identity. This was annoying but it's understandable as it's a legal requirement for them to do this because of the money-laundering regulations. I sent them a copy of my driving licence which has photo-id and address but they responded saying that they needed a second piece of id. I sent them a utility bill and they restored access. Now this was a hassle but this is a site concerned with financial matters and so their processes have to be correspondingly rigorous. Their agents were reasonably responsive and the whole process took two days, not four.
c) Trustpilot. I ordered some bathroom fittings online yesterday and, when I checked out, they said that they would donate to a cancer charity if I wrote a review on Trustpilot. The charity hook worked and so I registered an account and wrote a brief review. The only part that took time was confirmation of my email address -- it took a few minutes for the email to arrive -- Gmail can be slow sometimes. But the delay didn't exceed my patience and so I'm a member. The site doesn't seem as welcoming as TripAdvisor and so I'm less likely to use it.
So, in my experience, the only sites that might take days to onboard are those where there is significant financial risk and regulation. Wikipedia is nothing like that as it doesn't validate or verify user accounts. The four-day delay is petty obstruction for its own sake – see jobsworth and computer says no. Andrew D. (talk) 08:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Absolutely totally irrelevant examples Davidson. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a web service, and the aberration is that access to editing it is the least restrictive of all the millions of forums and blogs out there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Some responses to Andrew's points:
a) TripAdvisor: "My membership was accepted immediately and my review published immediately. They then gave me good feedback with encouragement to write more reviews. That was a fast and positive experience which only took about 5 minutes." – Despite being a long-time member, I've never seen my review published in five minutes. As per TripAdvisor's official statement, a review takes between 24 to 48 hours to be published. You filled in membership details, became a member, got your review published, got feedback from them to write more reviews – all in five minutes?
b) PayPal: : "Their agents were reasonably responsive and the whole process took two days, not four." – Ok... But what are you trying to imply? Are you saying you're okay with a two days' delay for new editors to make articles but not four days? If not, then how does this example help?
c) Trustpilot: : "They said that they would donate to a cancer charity if I wrote a review on Trustpilot." – Yes. Some websites even give discounts if you write reviews. This is equivalent to writing for consideration, altruist or otherwise. I presume you wrote your review for Trustpilot on Trustpilot's website after buying bathroom fittings with money that you paid them, which they pocketed and then told you they'll donate part of it to charity. They would of course be obliged to publish your (presumably positive) review immediately.
These really are inappropriate examples. I wonder if Trustpilot's bathroom fittings were equivalent to our articles, and if they were open to new users undertaking design changes to these products that would go live for sale on their website immediately after the new users undertook the design change, would you have supported that and bought the same products designed by these new users? Then why would readers come to our website to read arbitrarily made articles that are allowed to go live? Lourdes 03:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Those three examples are all notable and so are better than anything the supporters seem to have offered. But if you don't like them, here's three more:
a) Meetup. I use this to attend and organise events in London. It was quite successful but last year it was taken over and the new management has been making changes. The organisers of events hate these changes which seem quite dysfunctional. One major group I attend was plagued by account lockouts recently which were quite disruptive for ongoing events. The people making these changes seem quite clueless about the needs and wishes of event organisers. There's some inertia keeping people there but if this keeps up, the site will die.
b) Parkrun. This organises regular runs in parks and it's really taken off. I joined last year and am very impresssed by the slick operation of its website and timings. The events depend entirely on volunteers and you typically need about 10 of them to turn out early each Saturday. Last Saturday, it was snowy and cold because of the latest "beast from the east" but my local event still ran well with an adequate number of volunteers and plenty of runners. It's a success.
c) Nupedia. This was the original encyclopedia project. It had a workflow in which contributors were vetted and articles were reviewed before being published. It was a clear failure as that way of doing things was uninspiring and obstructive. Wikipedia replaced it with a model that was open and immediate and this was a massive success. One reason for this success was the general spirit of boldness, enthusiasm and collaboration. We now seem to be returning to a spirit of caution, acrimony and suspicion. Our history indicates that this is not healthy. Andrew D. (talk) 08:49, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Per WP:ATD, I try to be constructive rather than destructive. For example, I loaded up the new pages feed just now to take a fresh look. The oldest item in the queue was discrete mathematics! Having that substantial old article in the queue is silly and marking it as reviewed was pointless busywork but I took care of it. At the front of the queue, I found Late Night Woman's Hour. That's a reasonable new topic which mostly needed some constructive assistance so I added a reference and made a start on wikifying it. Speedy deletion was not appropriate in either case. Andrew D. (talk) 18:27, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
If you're going to use an example, at least make sure it's a valid one. Discrete mathematics was a redirect for a hot second, and when redirects are turned into articles they get placed on the New Pages Patrol. Unfortunately, it gets listed as it's creation date, which sometimes makes for a weird time. Primefac (talk) 18:33, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
So, that's a good example of the defective logic of the New Pages Feed, which wastes people's time. Late Night Woman's Hour is a good example too because this was created as the first edit of a new account. ACTRIAL would have prevented this and so this demonstrates that this barrier to entry would prevent such good faith contributions. My view that ACTRIAL is disruptive is confirmed. Andrew D. (talk) 18:38, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
No, looking in the NPR at a page turned from a redirect into an article proves nothing. No demonstrated experience dealing with the flood of garbags proves zero sensitivity to the efforts of all the hundreds of editors trying to keep the garbage out. Your good creation by a new account may have been done in draft via AfC too or maybe that editor had an account and just created another onone? We have not allowed IPs to directly creat new pages for years, so what's the difference here exactly. A good route exists for any editor to create a page. Legacypac (talk) 20:28, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
New users at events must be able to immediately make articles ACTrial research does not consider new users who participate in Wikimedia workshops, training programs, and campaigns. I will not comment on whether new users should be able to make new articles in general. I will advocate for a specific case: in the context of organized Wikimedia outreach, such as by Wikimedia chapters, user groups, Wikimedians in Residence, Wiki community campaigns, or any Wikimedia community effort to recruit and train new contributors, then in those programs, new users must have a quick and easy confirmation process which immediately allows them to create new articles in the program. The way to identify the new users who should be able to immediately make new articles is that they should be registered in a program logged at the meta:Programs and Events Dashboard. In this interface, Wikimedia trainers direct individuals users to register as a participant of a program for tracking, support, pointing to online training modules, and automatic generation of reports. There is lots of discussion about how outreach should work and the development of this outreach interface is a priority in the meta:2017 Community Wishlist Survey. See some related discussions happening now:
For context, there are hundreds of English language Wikimedia outreach programs and events every year, recruiting 1000s of new editors many of whom will only edit for fewer than 10 days and therefore not get "confirmed" rights to be able to make new articles with this experimental ACTrial prohibition. In almost all of these programs these new users have good support from experienced Wikimedians and the WMF grant schemes have encouraged and continue to encourage more of these outreach programs. These outreach programs, software development directions, and the WMF grantmaking regime depend on new users have a path to immediately make articles when they participate in workshops, trainings, and campaigns. Most instances of Wikimedia media attention are local publications talking about Wikimedia programs and events, so this is also a major public relations issue for the reputation of Wikimedia and a major influence in how key partnerships and in-person communities experience, discuss, and form long-term perceptions of Wikimedia projects. Again, I cannot speak about new users outside of organized outreach, but if anyone participates in training programs, those 0 edit count new users need to be able to make articles. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:BccSure, and that's a reason to find a solution to the problem (as is being discussed below), not a reason to wholesale oppose the change. I think there is general agreement (especially now with expiring user rights) that we should be able to create a work around for outreach events. The question on how we do that is complex enough on it's own, however, and really should be the subject of it's own discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
These things are all possible and we are acutely aware of the very important work of Outreach, but what is needed is more communication and objective discussion between those outreach workers and the regular Wikimedia community. Several solutions have been discussed already, none of which require funding from the WMF. We can create as many user rights as we like, such as allowing lead facilitators to quickly confirm the accounts of their students - it doesn't take long at the beginning of a session, I've done it myself; all we need is the consensus to do so. And to get that, the WiRs will need to follow what's going on and vote for those solutions - indeed they could start their own RfC proposals for them. With ACTRIAL being permanently implemented, the previous RfC consensuses can, and probably will change in favour of those solutions. It will happen but we need to do things by stages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Kudpung: I am comfortable with a prohibition on new users creating articles so long as there is an exception for new users who participate in training programs under a trainer. I will not be quick to dismiss WMF funding because the WMF funding is coming at a scale beyond the comprehension of most people participating in on-wiki discussions. Please make no mistake that Wiki community culture developed in an ~2010 environment where there was US$10,000,000 for the world, and now the present 2018 situation is that there is US$100,000,000+ in circulation with very little acknowledgement of the change. Maybe US$1-2,000,000 of this funding every year has a strong connection to outreach and new user recruitment, and this investment often gets in-kind matches from institutional partners like medical organizations, universities, academic conferences, GLAM institutes, and think tanks. I advocate for the meta:Programs and Events Dashboard as the best available present solution for any program organizer to tag all program participants, make their identities and edits public and searchable, and associate a chain of responsibility from WMF/institutions to organizers to new users to their edits. That dashboard is already in place and has been used for 1000+ programs. It is currently getting WMF staff development at meta:Community Tech/Programs and events dashboard. I call on anyone who advocates for ACTrial reforms to propose any standard for new users to meet when getting the ability to make new articles. For example, the dashboard could force new users to take its training before giving them permission to make new articles, or there could be other standards imposed like the event organizer has to take the training, or get approval through some userright process to lead events, or any other thing. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
To be honest, I would be content with the requirement solely being in person attendance (no confirming in advance), an automatic expiration of confirmation, and trust that event coordinators have sufficient judgement as to know when to +confirm someone. Like I said below, I've started workshopping a proposal that can be taken to an RfC if this passes at User:TonyBallioni/Event coordinator, and think that some sort of workaround should be put to the community if this is made permanent. I do think that is a distinct conversation, however, especially as the community has opposed this in the past in relation to ACTRIAL. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:12, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: Yes, you understand the situation, and yes, that is what I want and would resolve the issue. I would like to preserve the tradition we have of having live Wikipedia trainers having small-workshop discussions with new users who then immediately can edit Wikipedia and have the collective and intimate experience of publishing live Wikipedia articles immediately. The existing workaround is as you said, that there are currently "course coordinator" userrights from old software which permitted certain users to create accounts and log the new users they recruited to facilitate public wiki community review and oversight. I do not think this is a distinct conversation because this proposal would directly affect the culture of in-person wiki outreach and the tradition that the WMF has established for encouraging all sorts of groups to do outreach with their grant funding. The wiki chapters system has a foundation in local, in-person outreach and wiki editing as a social practice which welcomes new users who join as peers and can immediately edit like anyone else. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
"are the outputs of these usually suitable articles? " Yes, of course. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:03, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose Not ready until the editathon issue is sorted out. Jheald (talk) 17:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
We presumably had this issue not sorted out during ACTRIAL. I assume editathons weren't suspended. Do we have any feedback from editathons that occurred during the trial? Lirazelf? ~Kvng (talk) 17:43, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
There has been six months of ACTRIAL to sort that out. Will you take over NPP covering new pages by new users in the mean time and fill User:Jheald/CSD_log up? Legacypac (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
"The editathon issue" is mostly a non-issue. While I suspect that a user group will eventually be created for experienced event coordinators to give them the ability to confirm new users, this is not particularly necessary in the short term. There are numerous easy stopgap solutions currently available. Including:
Request users create an account 5 days before the event. One event leader reported 100% success with this request.
Have an experienced editor at the event move the pages after checking them. This can done on any device logged in as a user with appropriate rights and the new users can follow along and learn from it.
Have an experienced editor anywhere in the world monitor the drafts off an event page and move them as appropriate.
Have new users make a request at WP:PERM for confirmed status, specifying they are at an event and naming the editor running the event.
Have a physically or virtually present Admin give out Confirmed status for event participants.
Kvng I've run a few events of varying kinds over the last few months, trying different approaches and different workarounds, with varying levels of success. RexS gives a good summary of the need for control and flexibility in approach at events in the discussion section below, so I won't re-hash here. Lirazelf (talk) 10:10, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
"We presumably had this issue not sorted out during ACTRIAL" Great. Where is that solution, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:03, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing:Insertcleverphrasehere's bulleted list above answered this question for me. There has been a lot of information given elsewhere on this page by the people running them about how editathons are run. ~Kvng (talk) 16:01, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
A problem with outreach efforts is that there have been some not under effective control, either because those in charge had insufficient experience, or even had an agenda that was different from our usual standards. (This is very similar to what happened with the ed program--some of the courses produced junk, and there was considerable resentment when it was not approved. We can control neither editathons or nor classes in editing WP--anyone in the world may run one. But for the ones that we try to control, we now have apparently replaced control of classwork by volunteers with control by WikiEd paid staff; although I very strongly dislike the principle, in practice the results aren't quite as bad. For editathons, we have no equivalent way of control, even over those that are willing (tho various group such as A+F and Afrocrowd, and some chapters like WM-NYC try to have some input, there are now too many events--and and too many inexperienced people who want to run one. In consequence, I think it better to not make an exception for either editathons or classes, and I think of the workarounds suggested, that the people running the event should not necessarily be the ones to approve articles. (I have had such a role for some events in NYC, and I will admit there was a COI--though I kept out most unjustified autobios, I a few times may have felt pressure to accept articles that I might not have accepted otherwise. DGG ( talk ) 04:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
I advocated for program organizers to have special rights to help new users create new articles immediately. At the same time, all the problems which DGG describes here are also correct. Having one set of rules for everyone is best. We should avoid designating more administrator-like positions, like "program coordinator", and giving special rights only to people who pass some review. I am not sure what I want for the long term, but for now, it helps a lot that during live events, new users who get training can make new Wikipedia articles immediately. Perhaps if there were software tools which made it really easy for users at events to get quick review of their submissions, then there would be no need for special rights at events, but for as long as the software interface and social infrastructure we have makes it challenging to get speedy review for people who attend in-person training and write new articles there, then I think that people who attend in-person workshops under the direction of event organizers should get some special access to be able to publish their articles. It takes particular commitment to attend a Wiki training in person and to have conversations with others in a class and to commit to publish at an event. When this happens, creating a new article is an intense and memorable part of the experience that has become part of the culture of Wikimedia outreach. I do not want for new users to lose that special experience. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:02, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Legacypac: Your point? User:Legacypac/outreach_logd:Special:Contributions/Legacypac. We each work on what interests us, where we think we can make a particular contribution. This is an RfC for the whole community, regarding the effects for the whole community, not just those who spend their lives watching policy boards or who live for patrolling. Everyone has a say here, and is entitled to register a dissent. Jheald (talk) 20:11, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose on philosophical grounds. It seems to me that this rule would undermine the idea that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. “Yes, anyone can edit Wikipedia, but not everyone can do A or B or C or D...” I understand that this rule might improve Wikipedia’s content, but it may be a bit contrary to our mission and values. Of course, similar restrictions exist already. Centibyte(talk) 20:09, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:HpAnyone can edit Wikipedia, even with this restriction. Even article creation is not withheld from anyone; new users will simply have to wait a few days before publishing their draft/sandbox. There is WP:NODEADLINE, and this is probably something that new users should learn early. It is clear that new users often submit content before it is ready, or before they know what is appropriate for inclusion (previously 80% of new articles by new users were eventually deleted). This restriction actually helps new users by giving them a bit of time to learn how to swim before letting them jump into the deep end. The alternative is a situation where the first experience that 4 out of 5 new editors have on Wikipedia is having their first article deleted. While an oppose on philosophical grounds is OK in principle, I urge you to consider the positive effect that this actually has on the new editor experience. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 20:51, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
IP editors like me already can't create articles, so it hasn't been "everyone can do anything" in many years. There are similarly 1000s of semi-protected articles that non-confirmed editors can't edit. At least for me, semi-protection is a much bigger editing nuisance than being unable to directly create articles. I'm obstructed by semi-protection all the time ({{editprotected}} doesn't work anywhere near the way it should) but it's been years since last time I wanted to write a new article (I put it through AFC). So regarding the philosophical objection, I think that ship has already sailed. I'm still perplexed about why anyone thinks creating articles is so exciting. WP:WHAAOE! Anything I want to write about is already the subject of an article− it's just likely to be a crap article. And that means I can find the article and improve it without dealing with (e.g.) finding sources to establish basic notability before getting to the interesting parts, which is nice. There is a new article that I hope to write this year (I have some notes for it) but the bottleneck is the time and energy of researching and writing it, rather than getting it into mainspace. AFC is badly broken so my plan is to just ask another editor to look it over and pagemove it if they think it's ok. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 08:00, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
This rule doesn't change the idea that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. It does put up an additional requirement to be able to edit, which is in place so that everyone else is able to productively work on the project. To impose universal requirements that improve the editing experience for everyone is not new. For example, you need internet access and a computer to edit Wikipedia, because to have it any other way would be a massive strain on other editors (in any way I can think of it working). This proposed rule is another use requirement that does not inherently block anyone but does actively improve the experience of all editors. While I can agree we should minimize the burden to participate (i.e. create a new article), we need to balance that with...well, minimizing the burden of participating (i.e. moderating new content)! With that in mind, this proposal's benefits outweigh the negatives. Waiting a few days is not much of a burden, and having to make 4 edits on this vast and evolving encyclopedia is also not much of a burden for any would-be page creator. Cr0 (talk) 20:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
It’s important to note, as others have above, that the ability to edit what exists remains. What is, slightly, restricted, is the ability to create a totally new article. That is unarguably a restriction, but from my experience, both of article creation and AFC reviewing, any disadvantage will be outweighed by the quality benefits. It’s a compromise, like most things, but I’d suggest it’s a very beneficial one. KJP1 (talk) 21:40, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Centibyte's objection is perhaps more clearly voiced in the WMF report. See the first paragraph in this section. We are theoretically or philosophically losing some collaboration opportunity. We did the trial to see what exactly, in practice was lost. Not much. ~Kvng (talk) 21:59, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose for now Once the issue around outreach events has been resolved I would be prepared to support. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:02, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
If these issues were not pressing enough to resolve in the last 6 months why hold up a very useful change for an indeterminate amount of time to resolve minor issues for which there is Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions#rperm-confirmed and other solutions. Legacypac (talk) 22:08, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
When I was aware of the trial six months ago I was told it had already been set in stone and would be going ahead. I concentrated my efforts on supporting WIRs in the UK and helping them deal with this new development, and fully expected to have an opportunity to discuss the matter once the trial had concluded. Sorting the issue should be a prerequisite to a permanent roll out otherwise it risks being forgotten as an afterthought. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Richard Nevell: If you haven't already, also have a look at the bullet points posted by Insertcleverphrasehere above in this section. I did not appreciate that there were so many ways for event organizers to effectively work within the proposed restrictions. ~Kvng (talk) 22:34, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, as someone who has done outreach events I have noted elsewhere while those suggestions are well intentioned they aren't exactly foolproof. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:45, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:Hp"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams. Completely foolproof isn't what we are aiming for. The point is that the workarounds are 'good enough' that we don't need to tank this proposal because of the issue, and an 'event coordinator' usergroup can be discussed at a later date without losing anything in the meantime. I understand that it makes the running of these events slightly more awkward, and requires a bit of adjustment on the part of event coordinators, but there are solutions that mean that nothing needs to be lost in terms of capability (New users can still publish articles at editathons, they just need a wee bit of help). — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 22:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Using your own acct to move the pages you have checked is foolproof and takes seconds. You can do it on your phone and you don't even need to add wikiprojects, cats or bio details. I've tested that with AfC submissions - some NPP will jump on those jobs within minutes and fix three other little things I totally missed. However, using the AFC tool to submit and accept a page is really helpful because it assists with those tasks. Legacypac (talk) 23:09, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I do love a good Douglas Adams quote. How about we substitute 'foolproof' for 'robust. Yes, I can move pages. But what if I'm in a room with a dozen people and find that they want to move their articles across at roughly the same time. If that's all I'm doing it's eminently manageable but if someone has a question about how to format references or why an article is written like this then that's another demand on my time. Yes those methods can work, but 'No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy'. Richard Nevell (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Richard Nevell, Its not perfect, and it isn't as simple as it used to be, that is true (I also have been a helped out at editathons for new users, so I do understand). But slightly awkward or not, we are not going to throw out a change that is overwhelmingly beneficial to hundreds of dedicated maintenance Wikipedians (dare I say essential), just so that editathons can be done the way they always have. It seems that you don't really want to oppose this anyway, but that you are afraid that a proposal for an 'event coordinator' usergroup won't be acted upon. We are going to act on it; I suggest that instead of opposing this RfC, you have a look at User talk:TonyBallioni/Event coordinator, where we are actively discussing this issue. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 23:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
...I already linked to Tony's page above. I intend to take a closer look, but frankly it's nearly midnight so I'm off to bed. Richard Nevell (talk) 23:40, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:Ec@Insertcleverphrasehere: It is indeed foolish to try to make a process completely foolproof. But it is fallacious to assume that means we shouldn't try to make the process as foolproof as we can. I certainly don't think there is sufficient grounds to tank this proposal, especially as I don't accept that ACTRIAL has to result in problems for event organisers. I do agree with Richard, however, that the community ought not to forget that there is a negative impact on events, and that there is a simple solution available. The rationale behind preventing very new editors from creating new articles directly has no application in the controlled environment of an organised editathon, nor is there any evidence whatsoever of participants at editathons abusing the abilities that will now require confirmed status prior to ACTRIAL. It is obvious that we can satisfy every objection based on impact at events by making it possible for all properly organised events to have someone who can temporarily grant +confirmed status to participants who need it. --RexxS (talk) 23:20, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Actually, if you read through all of this and associated pages, you will find an anecdote or two about significant problems with material produced at editathons. I certainly don't assume this a common situation but apparently it does happen. ~Kvng (talk) 23:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I have read through all of it, thanks. Perhaps I need to remind you of two things: (1) the plural of anecdote is not data; (2) I wrote that there was no evidence presented of abuse in previous editathons of the abilities that will now require confirmed status (i.e. new page creation or moving). For all any of us know the editors producing non-notable stubs may have been already autoconfirmed. You don't fix the issue of problematic content being produced at an editathon by restricting page creation to participants who are auto/confirmed; you fix it by having organisers who teach a circumspect approach to notability. --RexxS (talk) 03:23, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose I can see some merit in the proposal, but as someone active in both WP:NPP and WP:AfC, even if we say that the trade-off is worth it, it will still lead to an increase in the AfC backlog. I'm not ready to support the proposal unless steps are made to ensure that the backlog at WP:AfC can decrease significantly, or to somehow make it easier for newer users to make articles. Also, I'm opposing this partly on philosophical grounds: yes there are many unconstructive articles made by newbies on Wikipedia, but there also many others that are also made by newcomers. While they can of course try other editing activities to improve their experience, a barrier can still discourage many others from editing at all. I'm willing to become supportive of the proposal, but as I've mentioned, only if AfC's problems are fixed, or if some leeway is granted to promising users (like maybe we could give them the confirmed flag immediately). Narutolovehinata5tccsdnew 04:31, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
As already documented above, the increase in the AfC backlog is simply false when measured by time it takes to handle reviews: the number of pages awaiting review for more than 60 days is zero. The number of pages is up at AfC, but the time it takes to handle them is still well within the acceptable norm. There is no backlog at AfC or NPP anymore, and that is largely due to ACTRIAL. Even if this wasn't the case, it is preferable for there to be a backlog at AfC than it is at NPP because the pages aren't indexed to Google automatically after 90 days containing potential BLP violations, copyvios, and advertisements. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:34, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Narutolovehinata5, The average length of time before a review was, I believe, shorter before ACTRIAL (though it is still being held at bay within AfC's working limit). While AfC has been stable, I won't pretend that the AfC backlog and the sometimes lengthy wait times are not significant issues. However, as you say, it is a trade off and this issue is no more so than the NPP backlog was before ACTRIAL (it was 8 months behind and counting). I think that AfC's issues can be addressed over time with a number of proposals, and there have been some ideas floating about with regards to policy changes that may help in that regard. There have also been a lot of editors applying to join AfC in recent months, which is good news and indicates that there seems to be a significant pool of experienced editors to draw from when it comes to additional hands to be added to AfC. I won't comment on philosophy, as we have discussed this at length already and will likely continue to agree to disagree. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 04:46, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Narutolovehinata5,If one reads the WMF report closely, it is clear that they have stated they will be taking a close look at the AfC sitution and will help with any reasonable solutions. The AfC issue is even more minor than the concerns brought up by the Outreach people. It should not be a reason to object to ACTRIAL becoming permanent. At the end of the day, AfC is not even an official process, if push came to shove, it could be disbanded completely and the drafts could be handled by the New Page Reviewers by incorporating the AfC scripts and templates into the Curation GUI and giving the AfC reviewers the WP:NPR status - the NP reviewers have very adequately demonstrated their capability of reducing huge backlogs, and new pages need a lot more research before patrolling or rejecting than is carried out by AfC; it's the one place where bad faith users exploit the encyclopedia for thier own ends get exposed - stuff that most often doesn't even reach AfC. It's a place where COI and socks get detected. That is not to say that anyone is advocating any such radical solution for AfC, and talks are taking place at Wikipedia talk:The future of NPP and AfC. Permanently implementing ACTRIAL is the biggest and most important neccesary organic policy change since since the WMF barred IP users from creating new articles in mainspace, get that done and the other issues will certainly be addressed and urgently, but we can't be expected to do everything at once. It would certainly prove the point as far as AfC is concerned and will speed up the search for solutions for it - it's not a project that ever performed particularly well despite the excellent efforts of Primefac and a few others to chivvy it up. The comments by RexxS above and in the disscussion section below say all that needs to be said. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:45, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose for philosophical reasons. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia where anyone can make constructive contributions with as few hinderances as possible. This principle has been instrumental in developing the project into the resource it is today. We can not continue moving away from these principles without fundamentally changing what Wikipedia is. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:27, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
The world has changed. The internet has changed. Wikipedia has changed. Reality is change. For the project to continue to be successful we need to negotiate change. I can't imagine this can be accomplished successfully by rejecting change. ~Kvng (talk) 17:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose until the outreach issue is sorted. Throwaway comments by supporters such as "Mentored editathon newcomers can go [to RFPERM]" and "new editors at our outreach events are best served in draft space" show that some editors have put little thought into how to accommodate new editors being ably mentored by experienced Wikipedians (who may not be admins) at short-form outreach events. Other than that, the results of ACTRIAL speak for themselves. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose for now Once the issue around outreach events has been resolved I would be prepared to support. What happened to the discussion month? Or is RfC going to last a month? I'd like to include a few more voices from Outreach in this discussion so we get a consensus that truly suits everyone. Incidentally I really don't think common agreement is now far away on this. I know a few Wiki usernames, Twitter accounts, Facebook groups (e.g. Wikipedia & education) where Outreach editors lurk I would like to raise awareness of this discussion without swaying one way or t'other as I don't want to fall foul of WP:Canvas. I know you may argue that it is the fault of Outreach for not being more involved (and I think we have to do a bit of an inquest on why that is) BUT I think any comments of "too bad, too sad" would not be terribly helpful or inclusive at this moment in time. Really I think we should not be working in opposition on this issue. Not when an agreement that serves the interests of everyone is entirely possible. Cheers. Stinglehammer (talk) 15:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Any off-wiki canvassing would be 100% unacceptable. Especially of users who quite frankly in many cases have no connection to what is actually happening on the English Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi TonyBallioni - Was told by another experienced editor that posting the link without comment would be acceptable but genuinely trying to work within the guidelines here which is why I asked the question and didn't just do it. That there is a disconnect is evident. How we bridge it is so that we can work better together and have Outreach editors aware of discussions that effect them is how we move things forward. Stinglehammer (talk) 15:58, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Stinglehammer, it is completely against the guideline, and if you do it, I will go to ANI to request that you be blocked from editing. Derailing an RfC by off-wiki canvassing of a group that is not engaged at all with the English Wikipedia is quite frankly the definition of inappropriate canvassing. You are allowed to have your opinion, but you are not allowed to artificially inflate the turnout at an RfC of users who share your opinion, especially when they are not engaged enough on-wiki to notice that it has been posted on every singe major discussion venue and the centralized template. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:04, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi TonyBallioni. Thank you for your candour on this. There is absolutely no need to threaten me with ANI though. I haven't done it and won't do it if you feel this strongly about it because I am seeking to work with my fellow community members instead of in opposition. Hence, why I raised it here first. Point is that there many fine editors working on Wikipedia today and doing excellent outreach work who maybe currently unaware of this discussion. I see many usernames missing from the discussion here today. Lots in fact. My point is a general one - I need to encourage my fellow Wiki editors & trainers to take an increased part in these discussions that define Wikipedia so that our voice is included in discussions that effect us. Especially when they are conducted with what appears to be unseemly haste at the moment. Seriously, what happened to the discussion month? Take your point about artificially inflating turnout but surely having an increased awareness of the discussion is a good thing? Again, not attempting to sway here. Just throwing an idea out there. Stinglehammer (talk) 16:24, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
And, is the aforementioned experienced editor one of the outreach folks?!I find it very hard to believe that any experienced editor would even dwell upon the idea of clear-cut offline canvassing.~ Winged BladesGodric 16:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Just no!The very premises of this question highlights the disconnect between most of the outreach folks and the reality at WP.~ Winged BladesGodric 15:36, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
We need to bridge this disconnect though rather than working in opposition, Winged Blades of Godric. An inclusive movement can do this.Stinglehammer (talk) 15:58, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Note that Stinglehammer struck thier !vote with the edit summary "removing opposition in hope Event Co-ordinator RfC will meet needs of outreach." — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 01:44, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose until article creation at edit-a-thons are enabled per the reasons above. I know there are work-arounds for people connected with administrators and willing to put in extra effort to move articles out of draft space. But we're drafting a policy here. Things should work as advertised, not according to some secret backdoor that connected editors know. If the community is comfortable with making an exception for people who are trained, then it should say so clearly on the website itself.--Carwil (talk) 21:13, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
That's the issue: it's unclear if the community is comfortable with making an exception. They weren't in August, and the passage of this RfC should not be based on the assumption that the community is fine with carving out an exception. That's a distinct issue, that will receive it's own discussion if this passes. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:03, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. I'll disregard the general question of where this proposal stands with respect to our community values and the direction we want to be heading: for better of worse, we aren't quite the "encyclopedia than any one can edit" anymore. I'm restricting my comments entirely on the pragmatic side of things, with the disclaimer that this is based on my observations from December and January. In many respects, the AfC process functions very well, but with its current setup there is one crucial aspect that is fundamentally unacceptable: the fact that the decision on whether the draft article is retained or deleted effectively stands with a single editor. Yes, the new user could resubmit and get another editor to review, but the vast majority of people do not resubmit. And yes, in the interval between the decline of the draft article and its more or less automatic deletion by G13 six months later, anyone could intervene and prevent this deletion. But – notwithstanding the efforts of a small number of AfC "elders" – this seems to happen only rarely. So, why is this a problem? For one, we don't normally let the decision for the deletion of an article to be taken by a single person – for very good reasons, there's a quorum requirement at Articles for Deletion. Furthermore, the community of AfC reviewers appears to have, on average, higher expectations of notability and article quality than the ones relevant at Articles for Deletion. Some of it probably has to do with the absence of an expectation to do WP:BEFORE, and some of it is likely due to a bias inherent in the current review process: it takes considerably less work to decline a draft than to accept it. The net effect of all this is that decent draft articles on notable topics get deleted. I won't oppose the extension of ACTRIAL if the AfC process is restructured to address these issues. – Uanfala (talk) 02:13, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:HpI am largely in agreement with you about some of the deficiencies of the current AfC system, but regardless of them, ACTRIAL is something that we need. There are some ideas at this page that are being kicked around with regard to reforms to AfC to address some of the issues you speak of above. Nothing happens quickly I'm afraid. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 03:26, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Uanfala, Spurred by your comment above I finally got around to actually putting some of the ideas that I had to a discussion, as well as posting some data recently gathered indicating that AfC is indeed, too strict. Please see this section at the AfC talk page. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 05:39, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose This is an endless trip, what's next? Extended users? Not the way to go. RedUser (talk) 04:02, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:HpNo one has proposed anything like that. While about 80% of non-autoconfirmed submissions were deleted and 20% kept, the reverse is true of Autoconfirmed users, with over 80% kept. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 05:39, 21 March 2018 (UTC) ගොනුව:NPP flowchart.pngThis is NOT made up -- it's right on WP:NPP for new new pages patrollers to learn!
Oppose. I can't deny that ending the trial is a big pain in the ass for a lot of people. Nor do I actually do NPP/AfC patrolling. Nonetheless, for all its visible benefits, I still fear this restriction has a hidden cost -- I think that new editors who might otherwise have gotten involved, either in the aforementioned editathons or on a more informal basis, are being pushed away. Additionally, I'll add that the reason why I don't do that patrolling is that people there are being asked to do far too many things and to be far too demanding against article creators. Junk articles fail really obvious criteria that anybody can spot if they look at them, and if nobody looks at them, they don't matter! (According to the Turing test they literally are already deleted articles in that case) And my gut feeling is that if Wikipedia tries to put on too many airs of being genuinely true, genuinely "vetted" (God I hate that concept) it starts to despise its user-generated user-editable origin, so it does not in any way alarm me to see an occasional piece of complete junk floating around. They're the flies in the cistern water that remind you not to drink the rest without further treatment. Wnt (talk) 10:51, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
So essentially... Oppose because it would solve a huge problem and improve the quality of the encyclopedia. Yep. Those are... those are words someone typed... and in that order... apparently on purpose. That's a thing that happened. GMGtalk 11:18, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Well, fossil fuels solve a big problem and improve quality of life, and yet, there's that greenhouse thing. Sometimes an immediate fix comes with lingering consequences, and that means the fix, however desirable it may seem, has to be kept within limits. Wnt (talk) 11:31, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I am... struggling to find words to express how little this rationale makes any sense whatsoever. The closest thing I can come up with on only one cup of coffee is probably something along the lines of I really love my daughter's baby photos. We posed her next to half a dead cat, and it really brings out the life in her eyes by comparison. The photographer complained that bringing the half-cat into the studio would be a health hazard, but I reassured him that according to the Turing test, if we ignore the flesh eating bacteria, it doesn't really exist. He tried to respond with something about the Turing test being about artificial intelligence, and not the existential reality of rotted meat, but by that point I had stopped listening, because public health is really so very complicated, and I can't be bothered with it, what with my busy schedule and all.GMGtalk 11:56, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
That makes sense for a photo posted to your refrigerator, but it doesn't make sense for a web search -- and Wikipedia is fundamentally a kind of web search. There I should be able to find your daughter if I want and a dead cat if I want. Wnt (talk) 11:42, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
...sorry, what did you intend to illustrate by posting the NPP flowchart? The fact that new page patrol is striving to become an accountable, structured and well-documented process is somehow an indictment how, and reflects badly on proactively reducing the number of bad articles via ACTRIAL in which way? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:34, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
The NPP backlog is a result of the guidelines being excessively complicated. In addition I should say that looking at that chart, they are not excessively complicated because they do so much good, but because they are assed. Look at that chart -- it tells reviewers that if some, assh-ahem, helpful editor blanks the new article you started, they should wait 10 minutes then put it up for speedy deletion. Say whaaat? They have a copyright violation check in there that could be done any time by the bot they tell the NPP reviewers to use which has nothing to do with whether the article as a whole should exist. But above all, a huge part of the diagram is predicated on an utterly arbitrary appeal to personal prejudice, "does the article contain a credible claim of importance or significance?"! There is no pillar of Wikipedia for importance -- and it is going to be 100% pure cultural bias. Note this flowchart is not asking if, say, multiple sources were cited, which would be an objective criterion! [apart from those sufficient for a formal GNG review to save the article, which is an AfD criterion not a speedy criterion] And then you should run through your bias and decide if it's an "unimportant" song (as opposed to an "important" song), etc. Screw that. We don't need half this stuff, so we don't need half the work spent on NPP reviews, so we don't need to fend off new would-be editors to make NPP reviewers' lives easier. Q.E.D. Wnt (talk) 11:42, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Utter nonsense.And this is what happens when you speak just for the sake of it, without realising that you've crossed over into the territory of functional equivalency of trolling.
Going by the amount of time you have been on en-wiki, I expect you to know that the fundamental pillar of one of our most executed CSDs is credible claim of importance or significance.Obviously, you may want it to be repealed too but unless you manage to do so, it will remain an important toolkit for us, NPPRs.You alone know what you mean by helpful editor blanks the new article you started, they should wait 10 minutes then put it up for speedy deletion.And, for your kind information, CorenBot is long-dead and AFAIK, copy-vio checks, are damn important from a legal point of view and there exists a specific CSD criterion for the purpose of nuking copy-vios.And, we don't decide what's an important/unimportant song by fiat; our G-searches and the availability of sources do it for us.
Frankly, what we don't need is your exasperating farrago of distortions and outright lies.~ Winged BladesGodric 12:11, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
I think it's probably enough to say that at this point you have well crossed over from fundamentally not understanding NPP, to fundamentally not understanding basic... foundational things about what Wikipedia is. I am sincerely dumbfounded how someone who's been here for eleven years can fit so much wrong into such a small space all at once. I honestly started to type a detailed reply for each individual point... but when I had to start with "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" ...I... kindof just figured my time was probably better spent doing literally anything else instead. GMGtalk 12:24, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Any time a reader reads a crap Wikipedia article and goes away muttering "this page is crap, obviously all Wikipedia is crap" is a negative event for the project and this regardless of the "notability" of the topic of the crap article: Noyster (talk), 12:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm not really sure how the NPP flow chart (which I agree is too complex) is really relevant to this discussion at all. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:49, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
That thing was a friggin' godsend to me when I was getting my mind round NPP processes. As a reference for "what to do in this corner case I'm encountering for the first time", complex and detailed is just fine. It's not as if one keeps using it once all the various options have been internalized. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:33, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose - Tazerdadog said it best, in that this is supposed to be an encyclopedia open to anyone interested. Yes, there's a positive for new page patrollers and admins who previously to spend their time sifting through poor quality articles that frequently got deleted. That being said, I fail to see how creating a hurdle (albeit a pretty low hurdle) for new users to add new content to the project helps attract new editors. Should we amend WP:BEBOLD to include "Be bold unless your account is less than 4 days old and has less than 10 edits" to the page? Sierrak28 (talk) 05:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)(Changing !vote to support) Sierrak28 (talk) 03:41, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Also worth mentioning that there's a significant backlog at WP:AFC. Until we can sort out the issues at hand with the AFC process and the resulting backlog caused by the influx of drafts, I worry that we're going to inadvertently WP:BITE new users with the process. Sierrak28 (talk) 05:04, 22 March 2018 (UTC)(Changing !vote to support) Sierrak28 (talk) 03:41, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
There may be a backlog at AfC but it's insignificant compared to NPP that does the actual patrolling. AfC was never a particularly well performing process before or during the trial. Nothing will be gained by postponing ACPERMANENT until AfC gets its ducks in a row. The NPP backlog is already up by 1,000 in the few days since ACTRIAL was turned off. We'll probably never have sufficient manpower in the future to cope with it. What will happen to AfC if ACPERM is not implemented will be that New Page Patrollers will be shifting even more drafts to AfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:12, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, at least until article creation at edit-a-thons is enabled per #9 Carwil and others above. It's not enough to say "comply quietly and we may look at the problem later". Even then, I share the philosophical reservations of #4 Centibyte and others. I was initially deterred from responding by the wall of criticism which every other opposing comment has attracted, but feel that I should add another voice on this important issue. Certes (talk) 12:32, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose, ACTRIAL makes running outreach events harder for participants and for trainers, I'm basing this on the experience of running outreach events before and during the trial. The trainer often doesn't have time to move every page during the event, so they have to do it afterwards. The Programme and Events Dashboard is an amazing tool that make metrics incredibly easy, ACTRIAL breaks the tracking done in the dashboard because it doesn't count creation of sandboxes and I found that moving articles individually added a significant amount of time. Also moving the articles makes it look like the trainer did all the work in the events dashboard. Here is an example situation for an editathon where ACTRAIL breaks the metrics tool available P and E Dashboard:
If I run a day long workshop which has 15 new editors and 2 existing editors where each person creates one new article. Only the 2 existing editors will be able to create new articles, the 15 new editors will only be able to create drafts. At the end of the event there are two options for me as someone who cannot confirm accounts:
1. I move the drafts from the 15 editors to main space on the day of the event, the dashboard records this as me creating the 15 new articles and the new editors as doing no work.
2. I extend the timeline of the event to one week on the dashboard to allow the 15 new editors to move the articles themselves once they have been confirmed. This relies on all 15 editors coming back to move their articles and remembering how to do it. If any of the existing editors do any other Wikipedia work over this time period it will count towards the event metrics.
If we don't make metrics easy it won't be done and we won't have information for research to improve events, understand retention and provide information for funders e.g through FDC. Additionally in my experience being able to publish an article on the day provides a real sense of accomplishment to the new users and in my experience is a key driver to retention.
ACTRIAL is part of a wider set of processes and policies which are hostile to new editors. A typical example was a new editor who took remotely for the event I helped run on International Women's Day, used the name of the organisation for their username (new editors are not told this rule when they sign up because the rules are on a long page they don't know exists). They wrote an article that wasn't up to the standard of being published. Rather than being provided guidance on improving their article and changing their username their article was deleted and they were permanently blocked. This is someone who had knowledge to share and could potentially be a partner who could provide resources to improve Wikipedia e.g hosting events, providing content. I do not mean this to be critical of the person who did this, I mean the system is really broken if this keeps being an outcome. Their expperience was:
Wikipedia: Please help improve Wikipedia :)
Them: OK, I will try
Wikipedia: No, you didn't follow the instructions you didn't know existed
Them: Sorry, how do I fix it, can you help me?
Wikipedia: Your article is deleted and you have been blocked for doing something you didn't know not to do, bye.
@John Cummings: You say that "moving the articles makes it look like the trainer did all the work", but I really don't understand how that can be so. Moving from Draft to main space will preserve the history and will make it just as clear who wrote it as if it had been written directly in main space, won't it? Or am I missing something? (Also, I feel I must point out that your specific example of the new editor who was blocked appears to be unrelated to ACTRIAL). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee:, thanks for the message, sorry I didn't make it clear, the events dashboard measures an article being created when it is added to mainspace, not a draft being created, so if 15 people create drafts and I move them to mainspace it counts as me creating 15 articles and them as doing nothing. I've corrected my text to make this clearer. Thanks again, John Cummings (talk) 16:02, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings: Understood, thanks - I'm not familiar with the events dashboard. But I have to agree with Legacypac, below, that the tool should be improved. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:30, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
User:John Cummings if the Event Dashboard is incorrectly crediting the user that moves a page instead of the page creator, fix the Event Dashboard. That glitch has nothing to do with ACtRIAL - if a Draft needs work and the trainer fixes it and moves it you have the same stats problem anyway. A flaw in this Dashboard a terrible reason to reject the best thing that this project has ever tried to curtail spam and garbage. I'd also suggest that spending some time after the event reviewing and moving pages is a reasonable part of hosting an event. I'd want to review what was created anyway just as a point of personal accomplishment and to understand how the event went. Legacypac (talk) 16:48, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings: all the more reason to fix the tool - its a simple coding issue to swap the part that looks for the editor that moves the page for the editor that created the page. This has absolutely nothing to do with ACREQ. Legacypac (talk) 16:05, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. Who is Wikipedia for? Everyone or just veterans and new page patrollers? Is it the encyclopedia anyone can edit or is it the encyclopedia which exists as a sandbox for a self-elected group of volunteers? Gamaliel (talk) 15:59, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
User:Gamaliel hey wow you know better than most that "can edit" has never meant "do whatever the hell you want". Brand new editors still have almost complete freedom to do whatever they want; they can still add sterling high quality content to any page, or replace a page's content with "cow cow cow". This removes a tiny sliver of what is possible for people to do for a very short time, and has enormous benefits for the project and everybody else. (btw, answer to your rhetorical question is - WP is for people who want knowledge - they are who we serve. We are trying to build a high quality encyclopedia, in a community, to serve anyone who wants knowledge) I don't get where you are coming from. Jytdog (talk) 16:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I can understand Gamaliel's perspective; there is a sentiment that Wikipedia nowadays can be a walled garden at times, extremely difficult for newcomers to get involved, especially when compared to the past. But I don't think it's applicable here; as the project matures, there are some basic measures that should be taken, it's simply the rational thing to do. Alex Shih (talk) 16:36, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
"Creating an article at a Wikimedia event under the guidance of experienced volunteers" should not fall under the category of "do whatever the hell you want". Gamaliel (talk) 17:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia is for its readers, not its editors. Attracting new editors is a Good Thing only insofar as it improves the encyclopaedia. It should be balanced against other things that improve the encyclopaedia, e.g. a trivial and easily-overcome technical barrier that nevertheless demonstrably eliminates the vast majority of new article spam. – Joe (talk) 19:03, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Are you calculating how many potentially-productive new editors we're turning away with what seems like a "trivial and easily-overcome technical barrier"? You have a bunch of experienced outreach volunteers pointing out that it is actually not so trivial . Wikipedia succeeded because it lowered the barriers to access, it will not thrive when we keep raising them higher and higher. Gamaliel (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I think we're turning away more new editors by speedy deleting their articles instantly on creation, than we would by having them wait a while. And I don't see any opposition to the proposal of letting outreach coordinators manually confirm new accounts, so the whole outreach objection seems to have a simple technical fix. There might be deeper unvoiced objections and I respect that, but I think those objections aren't being presented clearly enough for a thoughtful discussion. In particular, we have far worse roadblocks for contributors than a waiting period for new article creation, and nobody here seems to want to do anything about those. We shouldn't treat new-contributor article creation as something special and magical that must be defended even though it almost always results in speedy deletion, while thinking nothing of putting our boots to those same contributors' faces at every other possible turn. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 21:44, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
If that's the way we're gonna go, let's give the outreach volunteers those tools, because many of them don't have them yet. At many events I attend, I'm the only volunteer in the room who can do it. And as for "it almost always results in speedy deletion", that's the kind of mistaken thinking that turns away new editors. At every event, new valuable contributions that are just a little rough around the edges are immediately proposed for deletion and lumped in with Kudpung's spammers. Gamaliel (talk) 13:54, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Gamaliel, Who is Wikipedia for? Easy answer: Except for the spammers, autobiographers, and those who exploit it to make money out of it with paid editing, it's for the readers. Anyone who is impatient to get an article on here is doing it either for self-satisfaction, spam, or money. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:37, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
How disappointingly reductive and exclusionary. Our motives are pure, theirs are not! Gamaliel (talk) 13:54, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. To quote the research report, "A key question for the community following the trial is: what should Wikipedia’s publishing model be? The Wiki Way is to publish instantly, but make it easy to undo. The restrictions on article creation made by ACTRIAL shifts the model to review-then-publish for many accounts." We're drifting away from the original way that Wikipedia worked, and the way that it became very successful, into something that is much more tightly controlled. That's not something that's worked out well for Wikipedia clones that have tried to operate with various restrictions applied to contributions, and I don't think it will work well here in the long run. The main argument against this seems to be "it didn't make things worse", which isn't a particularly great conclusion to draw. The other is "more use was made of the draft user space" - which is nice for control, since another editor needs to be involved before the article goes live, but not the 'Wiki Way'. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:16, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
The 'Wiki Way' is fine when editor #1 can easily add junk to an existing page and Editor #2 can easily reverse it. Equal effort provides balance. ACREQ addresses the unequal situation where Vandal adds a whole page of junk in seconds and it takes a team of GF editors to identify, categorize, tag, maybe discuss for a week or longer, and eventually an Admin is required to delete. Legacypac (talk) 01:44, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
The arguments about editors at outreach events are the easy problem to solve - let's just get an admin that's present or otherwise willing to make an exception for them. That's a nice, well-defined, problem that can be solved by an exception. However, it creates an exclusive channel for new editors, and that's not OK - why should someone that attends an event get a free pass, while someone that finds Wikipedia online and wants to add an article has to go through so many steps, even if they have read through and understood all of the guidelines? How can they then ask for that same exception without going to an event? Mike Peel (talk) 01:17, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
They could ask on someone's talk page or at a wikiproject (we should encourage that more). My preferred version of TonyBallioni's proposal is to let basically any established editor (my concrete suggestion was anyone with +autopatrolled) set +confirmed on any account, with no 10 day expiration or limitation to event coordinators or anything like that. Are you familiar with how hard it is to write a new article that doesn't get speedied? Are there many genuine examples of new users doing it in less than 4 days? What are the "so many steps" other than making other edits for 4 days? Is it really frequent that someone's first contribution to Wikipedia is a usable article? Maybe ACTRIAL has some data about that. I was mightily impressed by the claimed finding that their data shows the opposite: we get about the same number of usable of articles as before, but we sidestep the creation of a lot that get speedied. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 01:39, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
They could ask someone. That very concept goes against the whole concept of Wikipedia - if you want to make an edit, then go ahead and do so, you shouldn't need to ask someone's permission to do that. You need to back in up with references, but that's another discussion. Mike Peel (talk) 01:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Of course Wikipedia is drifting away from the procedures that worked in the early years when anyone literally could create an article consisting of a short paragraph based on their own knowledge. Now there are over five million articles and most topics with reliable sources have been covered. Also, Wikipedia is now the go-to knowledge website and has a giant reputation. That makes it a target for spammers and those wanting to promote their product or idea. We live in different times and different procedures are required to avoid burning out the few editors trying to deal with deluge. Johnuniq (talk) 01:43, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: There are way more than just 5 million topics that need articles and that can be supported by reliable sources, by at least a factor of 10. I don't buy the argument that we've drifted away from the original concept, it's just that some people are pushing us in that direction. Yes, we have a reputation now, and we need to handle that - but that's by providing *more* information, not by excluding contributors (meh, spammers, yay editors that provide anti-spam info). As regards few editors: yes, that's a natural consequence of exclusionism, the answer isn't to exclude more people, it's to include them instead. Mike Peel (talk) 01:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:Ec The answer to that, Mike, is that the makeup of editors at editathons is demonstrably different from the that of the general editing community. The research surrounding ACTRIAL demonstrates quite clearly the large reduction in creation of poor quality articles when unconfirmed editors cannot immediately create articles. It's clear that a significant proportion of articles created prior to ACTRIAL wasted not only the time of the new editors but also that of the new page patrollers who had to identify the problematic creations. There is little evidence of the same problem existing at editathons, and a well-run event will have any new article reviewed on-site by an experienced editor. A good trainer will ensure that anyone wanting to create an article is guided through WP:N before starting. Preventing new editors at events from creating articles in no way aids the purpose of ACTRIAL, which is to reduce the load at NPP. It not a question of giving anyone a "free pass"; rather it is all about recognising that the number of automated scripts, vandals, spammers and zealots are vanishingly small at events. The added restriction imposed by ACTRIAL is unnecessary in those circumstances. --RexxS (talk) 01:53, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
@RexxS: Editathons should not be the only way that we introduce people to our community. If we are failing to do that introduction outside of editathons, then we are failing as an online community/project. Mike Peel (talk) 01:59, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't follow your reasoning, Mike. Nobody is suggesting that the only way to introduce people to our community is through editathons. If someone takes the time to attend a Wiki-editing event, and the organisers have put in the effort to make it an enjoyable experience for them, then we might reasonably expect it to be a good introduction. That's not to say that those who are introduced to Wikipedia via other routes are having a bad experience. But what is clear is that ACTRIAL made a huge dent in the NPP backlog and reduced wasted admin time in deleting unsuitable articles. It is crucial that the community adopts the increased hurdle to article creation before NPP fails under an ever-increasing load from the vandals, corporate shills, spammers and misguided folk who think that Wikipedia needs an article about them. --RexxS (talk) 02:17, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
The Wiki way is whatever we say it is: we have no divinely inspired set of principles of unchangeable constitution: we are governed by consensus first and foremost. If we say this is the Wiki way, it is because we say so. That is the advantage of being a self-governing community: we can do what we want. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:02, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: The 'wiki way' is how we came to exist as one of the main websites on the internet. Sure, we can throw that away if we want - but I have to ask, why? Mike Peel (talk) 02:06, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Because we are now the 5th largest website in the world and are the default source of knowledge for the English-speaking world. That's a very different set of circumstances as a website that was supposed to be the feeder for Nupedia. Times have changed, and we change with them. All of the evidence shows this was a good thing and had no negative side effects at all (it's already been shown in multiple ways how even the AfC concerns are overblown). Something that has only had positive results and no negatives should not be thrown out simply because of philosophy. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:10, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:Ec They may not be as divine as the Buddha's hand, but Wikipedia has five pillars which guide our philosophy. Interestingly, none of them say anything about who is allowed to create articles, perhaps this is not an existential-level debate. The most relevant bit is to be "welcoming to newcomers", and it's arguably more welcoming to prevent the creation of articles through (deliberate) technical limitations than through actively deleting them (and in many cases, delete them we must). power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:11, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Linking to NODEADLINE is very weak. Just say you don't care if thousands of junk pages mount up in mainspace because someone else will do the work, eventually, maybe. If they don't burn out first. Johnuniq (talk) 04:03, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
So make Wikipedia a combo of facebook, linked in, a resume site and home for corp spam. I'll quit working on or ever reading it again. Legacypac (talk) 16:05, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
New pages don't stop coming on when we get behind, so the backlog wont ever go away if the conditions become impossible for us to keep up (which was the case for the year or so before ACTRIAL). The only way to get rid of the backlog at that point would be to simply let the flood of crap enter the wiki unfiltered. If you don't believe that the NPP backlog is an issue, then you essentially don't believe in NPP at all, or its goal of trying to maintain quality amongst new pages. WP:NODEADLINE applies well to individual articles, but just can't be applied to backlogs that continuously grow; with these it is essential to keep up, or else you will eventually have to give up entirely in the face of an insurmountable problem. Giving up on New Pages Patrol would essentially be the end of the wiki as we know it. I don't mean to be doom and gloom, but any argument that the NPP backlog isn't a problem is incredibly naive. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 23:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
It is a weak argument and doesn't take cognizance of evolution, you either change or die, and WP was dying to an extent, certainly for that aspect of article creation. I dont know if you have spent a lot of time on NPP. I have. I worked about 2k article over a 3-4 month period last year, and it was 16.5k articles when I started, and it was roughly 16.5k,when I finished. It was insurmountable, and a truly free lunch for advertisers and spammers. The top 10000 businesses (with exceptions), now run, in one form or another, an advertising based, revenue generating model, and we must take cognizance of that fact, and take steps to mitigate the effects of it. scope_creep (talk) 10:26, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I think that TIND works fine. On a long enough timeline, all backlogs are immaterial. But hey, as I alluded to in my original edit summary I didn't expect to actually convince anyone or turn the tide...I'm just registering my discontent with the direction we wanna take things. You do you boo-boo. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY[u+1F602]17:13, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Contrary to WP:5P; also the problems caused to outreach events have not been adequately addressed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:00, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. I'm willing to go with restricting new page creation to 10 edits plus 4 days, but not to directing contributors during this window towards Articles for Creation, which is, to put it politely, not fit for purpose. I'm very concerned that no-one has discussed AfC's suitability for this role here before and will try to start some discussion below. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:34, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:HpIt might not matter much, but I just want to point out that they are not sent directly towards AfC, but rather sent to the new user landing page. Only if they choose the third option (article wizard) will they end up at AfC. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 04:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
However, as I said below to Tony Ballioni, if the editor wants to create a new article then landing page will send them to the article wizard & AfC, rather than saying "sorry, not experienced enough yet, please do a bit of editing & looking around first to get your bearings." Espresso Addict (talk) 04:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
So, basically you Oppose ACREQ because we left a path open for brand new editors to still create new topics? I might even support cutting off all new editor Draft and Userspace creations (given I patrol both spaces a lot and nearly everything new users create is junk) but we have to get past the problem of they would be unable to practice in their sandbox or start a userpage. Legacypac (talk) 05:06, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I place a high value on editor development and retention; the main basis of my opposition is that directing new good-faith contributors to AfC, on the basis of what I've seen, appears noticeably more negative than telling them to go away and get some experience first, and then submit directly into mainspace. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:22, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I think most of us share your reservations about AfC, but at the moment there isn't another option. There are ongoing discussions about how to turn AfC into something that is fit for purpose at WP:NPPAFC, if you're interested. – Joe (talk) 09:24, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. On top of creating a barrier to editathons, classes are also negatively affected by this change. And it's unclear to me if the 10-edit requirement refers to mainspace, talk page, user page or a combination of those. OhanaUnitedTalk page 23:23, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Please reevaluate your oppose as you evidently are not clear on what you are even opposing. The ten edits to get autoconfirmed can occur in any namespace - nothing has changed there. ACREQ only stops mainspace page creations without autoconfirmed or confirmed status. That takes a request (for confirmed) or any ten edits and 4 days to pass. It's a very low bar to cut out a whole lot of impulse spam by throwaway accounts Legacypac (talk) 23:41, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
weak Oppose my main concern- that not allowing new users to create articles- outweighs the potential benefits of not allowing them to do so. Although it has been shown that a higher percentage of articles by autoconfirmed users were kept, a portion of those made by non-autoconfirmed users are positive contributions, and not allowing this is against the spirit of Wikipedia. If you want to stop non-autoconfirmed users to create articles, why not reinstate Nupedia? 1.02 editor (C651 set 217/218) 08:07, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Massive oppose to any attempt to restrict article creation to autoconfirmed editors. There is no justification for this. It would cause serious harm to the project in terms of loss of suitable content and editor retention (bear in mind this would place increased deletionist pressure on experienced editors because the devil makes work for idle deletionist hands). What we should actually do is to allow anonymous users to create new articles, since the vast majority act competently and in good faith. We should not have caved in to political pressure to remove that user right from them in the first place. James500 (talk) 13:40, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Did you even read the conclusions of the WMF's research report? There wasn't any measurable drop in new article creation or editor retention. "The vast majority act competently and in good faith"... Um, no. The statistics are dead against this statement; for non-autoconfirmed users, 80% of new article submissions were deleted, mostly under speedy criteria. The fact is that we have very good data and statistics that state that there is justification for this. I'm not going to entertain the idea of IPs being able to create articles; Wikipedia would quickly be overrun with vandalism and advertisement spam and I am confident that most of NPP would quit the project immediately. This Oppose is the worst thought-out !vote on this entire page. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 19:18, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
James500, you've hardly edited Wikipedia for nearly 3 years; could I respectfully suggest that you read what the project is all about, and the comments in this RfC before making such totally inaccurate and incorrect assumptions? You cannot simply discredit scientific research. Oppose on valid grounds such the impact on AfC or Outreach if you will, but as it stands, your commennt will almost certainly be discounted by any serious closer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:07, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
The interpretation of any data is opinion, not fact. The data is an outlier, the interpretation of that data is not correct, and, as far as I can see, they have not even asked the right questions. You can't disprove eleven years worth of observations with six months. That's a blip. For example, we have occasional spikes in article creation (the last was in 2015) and this trial seems to have landed on top of one which will confuse the results. They don't seem to have even considered the effect on the long term retention of long term editors. Admittedly, it is a very long report, but all I saw was stuff about short term retention of new editors. On top of that we have an abnormally low level of article creation and editor retention now, so you are not testing the wiki under normal conditions. Saying the restriction won't cause editor numbers to go down further does not prove it won't stop them from going back up to what they were before 2007, and we want them to go back up, pronto. Unless I've missed something, not in the research. Try running the trial under normal conditions of the kind we had in 2006, when we had a larger number of editors, many of whom edited more casually than the 'hard core' that is left, creating 1800 articles a day, and the results might be very different. Research isn't always right. James500 (talk) 09:46, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Ah yes, obviously, the trial needs to be run again in 2006 - Kudpung, why didn't you think of that? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:49, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
So if I'm parsing that production correctly, you are opposing because the lack of substandard new articles to delete would cause the mean deletionists to descend on substandard old articles, thus alienating their authors, thus lowering established editor retention? - That has to be the least-well reasoned oppose of the lot so far (and there is some stiff competition above.) --Elmidae (talk ·contribs) 15:27, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
There is not any reason to indulge in a debate with this! vote. Anybody seeing Jame's contributions to meta discussions on these aspects over the last week or so ought to realize that every fool isn't worth being tended to. ~ Winged BladesGodric 15:50, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
@Winged Blades of Godric: Please take a moment to review WP:PA. Keep your comments focused on the content, not the contributor. Thank you. Cbl62 (talk) 01:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
If a lot of new articles are deleted, that is more a reflection on the (largely poor) quality of nominations and decisions to delete, than on the suitability of the articles. (There is a consistent pattern of, amongst other things, failure to look for sources (or advert to sources already present), failure to understand GNG, failure to advert to inclusionary criteria in SNG and other indicators of importance (in CSD) or notability, failure to apply ATD, rubber stamping of nominations without checking the nominator's claims, etc, taking place on a significant scale). Its seems to me that if there are fewer perfectly good new articles to delete, one would expect there to be greater efforts to delete perfectly good old articles. James500 (talk) 14:41, 8 April 2018 (UTC) And another thing, the draftspace is absolutely not a more welcoming environment. Because in the draftspace you have AfC. And AfC is notorious for frivolous rejections of perfectly good drafts and in violation of SOFIXIT. There was an article about some external research into this in the Signpost a few years ago that claimed AfC was making life impossible for new editors. From what I can see, the undesirable rejections have not stopped. James500 (talk) 15:14, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
The most recent article I have deleted is Triveni Maurya. Its text is, in full, "Triveni Maurya belongs from the faizabad distric of the Uttar Pardesh India. Triveni Maurya was born at 01 jan 1989 in and maurya family livening in the faizabad." A Google News search returns 0 hits; a web search returns only the standard self-published / social media hits. Please, anyone, explain how I could improve this article and make a DYK out of it. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 18:30, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
(1) That is an extreme example and it is one example. At the other extreme we see absurd deletions of genuinely important topics with coverage that satisfies (and better than satisfies) GNG. It is clear that at least half of all PRODs, and a large majority of AfDs, have the sort of problems I've described. I can't give you a precise figure for bad CSDs at this time beyond "lots". (2) Regarding what you said to Cbl62, I understand why you think that, but sending new editors to the dark domain of AfC and CSD G13 and "no one who might be inclined to help even knows your draft exists", where they are liable to get more obstruction than help, is not obviously better than giving them an A7. What we really need to do is give new editors a list of articles they can create with a degree of confidence, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Tracking or Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles generally. If you want to help these editors, get a link to a list of missing articles, or at least a list of reputable encyclopedic etc works where missing topics could be expected to be found, included on the CSD A7 notification template. That would do far more good than the proposed restrictions. James500 (talk) 21:56, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Stop Press: I have thought of a brilliant idea that is much better than this proposal. We already have a robot called Cluebot that seems to be capable of distinguishing between good edits and vandalism. So presumably we should be able to create some kind of 'bad article robot' that can distinguish between good articles and bad ones, and move only bad ones created by non-autoconfirmed users to the draftspace. Excepting a few false positives, that would at least avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water. James500 (talk) 04:49, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
When machine learning gets to the point that this is possible, this will be a good solution. In the meantime, we must do what we can. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 05:06, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Oppose: The concerns raised above regarding outreach events resonate with me. Even more fundamentally, though, we should be making it as easy as possible for new editors to begin contributing. Initial contributions by new editors are likely to be subpar (mine certainly were back in 2007), but the project gains far more by maintaining an environment that attracts, fosters, and encourages new users -- not one that immediately confronts new users with bureaucracy, autoconfirmation requirements, and other such restrictions. Out of today's crappy initial contributions will emerge the future stars of Wikipedia. Let's not squelch the future. Cbl62 (talk) 15:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
And that's why you cast a "strong support" vote, but is there a reason why "support" voters feel the need to comment on every single "oppose" vote? Isn't it enough to just let the vote play out? Cbl62 (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Because some oppose voters are living in a world of wishful thinking fldisconnected from reality. The good faith editor most often starts by fixing little things they notice wrong before plunging into new page creation. They will not even notice ACREQ. The editors stopped are impulse creations which stats show 80% of which is deleted, most by CSD. The GF editor with a legit topic has AfC or waits 4 short days. Legacypac (talk) 23:55, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
But your statistics are irrelevant. You are answering the question you would have liked to been asked, instead of the one you were actually asked. Percentage deleted is not the same thing as percentage correctly deleted. The question you need to address is this: How many of those deletions were "trigger happy" deletions? How many were impulse deletions? That said, since you've already made the same argument several times, there is little point in repeating it over and over again, if you have nothing new to say. On the other hand, it would be helpful to have more concrete data on the number of dodgy CSD deletions. James500 (talk) 00:51, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
You raise - with NO DATA - the idea that there are lots of incorrect deletions. To advance a narrative that suggests lots of users and Admins are making lots of mistakes YOU -not anyone else -need to present data to support your assertions. Absent evidence, these assertions are just misinformation. Legacypac (talk) 01:01, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
No, those in charge of this website should have collected this data automatically as part of their ongoing research. But, since this task is probably going to fall on those members of the community who think there is a problem: How much detail do you want? The more detail, the more rigour, the greater the sample size, and especially if you want raw data and commentary in the form of a list of wrongly nominated/deleted articles plus rationales for each one (this might have issues because it would mean naming names, and I suspect it would not be allowed under the rules of the site; are you really sure you want "data" rather than anonymised statistics?), the harder it will be and the longer it will take. A further limitation is that I can't look at deleted content (though I can look at it before it is deleted). In any event, someone will have to determine the statistics of what proportion of deleted article topics were notable etc at some point, because otherwise we are acting on unacceptably incomplete information. James500 (talk) 02:32, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
While there are no doubt some deletions of notable topics, nearly all of these cases are because the article would need a fundamental rewrite (i.e. it fails some CSD criteria such as being a copyvio or being an advertisement). I've seen no evidence whatsoever that there is a massive amount of incorrect deletions going on, and certainly not that the number would be so high as to invalidate the 80% deleted statistic. We have very clear guidelines and a very high bar for admins to pass before they are granted the tools to delete articles. Those who abuse those tools and delete stuff spuriously don't often stay admins for very long so I don't see how it could be rampant as you describe unless your personal standards are very different from those of the community at large. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 05:17, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
You can't have this both ways. If you want me to produce a full blown statistical study of how much coverage deleted topics actually had etc, then your own claim is not supported by remotely sufficient evidence, because you have provided zero positive evidence about the quality of deletions. The "nearly all of these cases are because the article would need a fundamental rewrite" claim is a pure assertion at the moment. I have never seen that (ie "nearly all") in ten years, and I have seen a lot of deletions. Even if it was theoretically possible that what I have seen is an unrepresentative sample, you have produced no convincing evidence of that. Our guidelines cannot be described as "very clear". GNG certainly contains subjective elements. What level of coverage do you think is significant? My understanding is that is incredibly difficult to remove admin tools because there is no time limit on the term of office and WP:RECALL is not compulsory. The RfA process does not give any guarantee about what admins will do in the future, which is one reason why so few admins are promoted now. In fact, I am not aware that any policy or guideline says that admin tools can be removed for 'rubber stamping' of PRODs or CSDs, especially as PRODs can (technically) be placed for any reason no matter how completely absurd. At AfD, since an admin can't exercise a super vote, he could not be desysoped for endorsing the most absurd local agreement as far as I am aware. So I don't see how RfA or tool removal can ensure quality control of deletions. The vast majority of the community do not participate in deletion processes (unless they are on the receiving end). Those who do are a self selecting group (ie not a random sample) and accordingly cannot be automatically assumed to be a representative sample of community opinion. Right now, this 80% claim is simply irrelevant. A great deal more supporting evidence is needed. Right now, I think that a fully rigorous statistical study of how much coverage deleted topics actually had, whether there was a parent topic etc to which they could have been merged/redirected, etc would be a brilliant idea, and would be best done by the WMF, since they have far more resources than the likes of me. Until then, this proposal should fail because it lacks crucial supporting evidence in a number of areas. James500 (talk) 21:57, 9 April 2018 (UTC) Quite apart from that, even if, for the sake of argument, only 20% of the articles were worth having (which is not admitted), we have a far more serious problem with missing notable topics. Right now, the overwhelming majority of notable topics do not have an article. Yet the rate of article creation is declining for no good reason, to a level that is starting to look dangerously low. If even 20% of those articles are notable, we need every single one of them and cannot afford to lose any. If the NPPs have to slap a few CSDs on the rest, which will be incredibly easy and take them all of about five minutes, that is a price well worth paying. James500 (talk) 22:30, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
No NPR flag, Not in AfC userlist and User:James550/CSD_log so what exactly does James500 know about any of this? Legacypac (talk) 00:48, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
I am sorely tempted to answer this with "more than you". Actually I used to do NPP, and I made several hundred CSD nominations (some of which I regret) and patrolled other pages. I would have got the NPR flag automatically, but I was inactive at the time they were being handed out and have not had time to go and ask for the flag. I've dealt with AfC drafts aswell. There is no reason why I should create a CSD log in order to gratify other editor's editcountitis or desire for wikihounding. There is no reason why I should join a wikiproject I strongly disapprove of when they do not WP:OWN the draftspace or any of the drafts they've reviewed. Now if I want to find out about deletion all I have to do is go and look at the deletion sorting lists, the prodlist, the candidates for speedy deletion category, special new pages and the deletion log etc etc etc. And all the policies, guidelines, essays, talk pages. and archives that relate to deletion. All of this is reading and requires no editing. And I have been looking at these things for an enormous amount of time for many years. In fact I have been looking at them every day for weeks and months and years on end (with some breaks). Frankly, I am sick of looking at them, and wish that many of these nominations would just shut up and go away, preferably into a dustbin, where they belong, so that I don't have to witness this sort of thing ever again. The point is that I have a fairly good idea of what is going on with deletion. I'm sure that you already know all of this, and are just trying to be unpleasant. Now, what do you know about deletion? James500 (talk) 02:07, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
@James500: You do not need to be an admin to decline speedies. If you want to help out, go to CAT:CSD (or use the fast links on my user page next to "dumpster diving"), look an article with a CSD tag, and any that you don't agree with - just remove the tags. Provided you didn't create those articles, you are perfectly within policy to do so. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 10:54, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
Folks, when you add a new reply, please remember to start the indent with a "#". If you don't, it will mess up the numbering and make any new Oppose start at number 1 again. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:38, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
"We desperately need new articles, even at the cost of overall article quality decline" is directly contrary to the assessment of just about anyone else who has ever taken the trouble of investigating new article creation vs article improvement. And we do have some actual statistics to back up that stance (vide ACTRIAL results). Not convincing. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
Oppose if the problem is not enough NPP patrollers, then we should find a way to increase NPP. Make a NPP Teahouse or something. I use the phrase loosely here, but "recruit" and "retain" NPP - streamline the process - devote as much time to that as has been devoted to ACTTRIAL. I would favor a much more direct solution that is unlikely to have severe and undesirable side effects. I'd also like to remind people of Aaron Swartz's "Who Writes Wikipedia?" Much like others above, I have philosophical objections to turning off potential positive contributors. Not every new editor is a thirteen-year-old vandal or a paid corporate lackey. Some of them are well-versed in writing and citing. Plural of anecdote is not data, but one recent question in the Teahouse involved a wrongly rejected AfC reviewer didn't know about NPROF, apparently. I agree that people who learn they have to jump through hoops will decide they don't have time to deal with this Kafkaesque bureaucracy and leave (since, you know, this is a volunteer project). My meatspace jobs involve clearing backlogs - in none of those positions have our solutions involved "stop taking clients" or "tell clients to stop coming". No matter how people are wording it, this is what that is. Rotideypoc41352 (talk) 15:40, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank-you for a reasoned oppose.
The issue is not a lack of NPR reviewers, it is the ease of creation vs effort to delete. If there is a problem with people doing donuts on the playground every day we don't recruit more volunteers to fix the playground, we put up a low barrier that will not stop good faith playground users but will impede the impulse vandalism and misuse.
The idea that the NPRs are being swamped with bad articles will not wash. The rate of article creation is a third of what it used to be, and at its lowest level since 2004. A terrible drought has reduced the mighty river to a feeble trickle. If we did not need this when we were creating more than 1800 articles a day, we certainly don't need it now, when we are creating less than 700. My recollection of the old days is that NPP took little time (and I was doing it manually). If it was difficult to nominate an article for deletion, it was because another editor usually nominated it first before you could get the nomination template on. It ought to be the easiest thing in the world now with so few articles being created. When I look at special new pages these days, I see very few bad articles. It is certainly not easier to create valid articles. It is much easier to delete them. With automated tools you can spray huge numbers of nominations onto articles in no time. And it takes longer to write one valid article than it does to plaster lots of deletion !votes all over AfD. James500 (talk) 04:49, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
You clearly don't understand how NPP has changed in the intervening time. A much greater percentage of articles are bad now, due to promotional articles. These are also not quick to deal with. Our editor base has also declined in the intervening time. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 05:06, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
"The idea that the NPRs are being swamped with bad articles will not wash." The last three article I deleted this evening were Lost Boy Productions ("Lost Boy Productions' is committed to developing quality content in the form of television shows, web series and theater plays. Through creative partnerships with other like minded producers, directors and writers, and by nurturing young and budding talent, Lost Boy Productions aims to become a leader in the entertainment industry"), Falen jancis ("Falen Jancis is a Russian hacker for the hacking group PoodleCorp. He is thought to be one of the dearest hackers of all time. The hard part is not much is known about it since Falen Jancis is his secret identity. His actual name is thought to be Jalen Francis but no one knows for sure.") and Service Hero ("Service Hero is a consumer driven index, based in Kuwait, that measures customer satisfaction among brands in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Surveys are conducted and collected on Service Hero's website. Users are able to rate brands that they have interacted with..."). I'm pretty inclusionist compared to others, but there is certainly plenty of crap coming into NPP. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 23:05, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Assuming I'm thinking about the same anecdote as you, as the person who complained about the reviewers and accepted the draft, what we should rather do is make it clear how autoconfirmed users can bypass AfC - because the person was autoconfirmed anyhow - and reduce AfC usage by directing new users much more to existing articles. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:04, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Weak oppose for now: The report makes a good point, which I think is a prima facie barrier to the usefulness of this: Experienced editors from foreign language editions of Wikipedia, would be initially discouraged from creating translated versions of articles on their own projects. I think article creation should be limited to some kind of confirmed group, as the benefits shown by the trial are undeniable. However, I think the local autoconfirmed/confirmed validation should go hand-in-hand with a (slightly more restrictive) Wikimedia-wide confirmation status. It would be simple enough, I think, to create a Wikimedia-wide user group into which users are automatically added if they have, say, 500+ edits and registered 180+ days ago. If something like this were implemented to go along with the local (auto)confirmed permissions, I would be in support.--Newbiepedian (talk · contribs · X! · logs) 21:55, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
(Note: If you respond to this, could you please ping me ({{ping|Newbiepedian}}), as I don't intend to visit this page every time someone edits it! Thanks. --Newbiepedian 21:55, 14 April 2018 (UTC))
@Newbiepedian: Have you seen WP:EXTENDEDCONFIRMED? It's an "automatic group" with a threshold of 500 edits and 30 days. At present, any registered editor can create an article, so if you want to restrict that ability to editors with longer tenure, can I suggest you ought to be supporting this measure because it's a step nearer to your position that what we have now. --RexxS (talk) 22:10, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
@Newbiepedian:, as I read it, this is not an oppose vote at all. It's more of a crticism that the restrictions imposed by ACTRIAL are not strict enought. Ironic? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:27, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
@RexxS:@Kudpung: I'm afraid you've both misread: I'm not asking for stricter confirmation criteria, I'm asking for these proposed confirmation criteria to be implemented in conjunction with Wikimedia-wide confirmation criteria, except that the latter would have to be stricter in order to account for differences in administrative oversight across languages and projects.--Newbiepedian (talk · contribs · X! · logs) 01:32, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Newbiepedian: I've not been commenting on the opposes because this RfC is in pretty clear pass mode and I don't thinking badgering people about their views is useful, especially with this strong support, but I do feel the need to point out that we already require extended confirmed status on the English Wikipedia to use the content translation tool. This is because we want to restrict the use of machine translations and make it more difficult for users who are unaware that the English Wikipedia does not allow for it. So, FWIW, the community already has a standard where it actively discourages translations by non-extended confirmed users through technical means. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:39, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, the desire is not to discourage translations, but to allow someone who has an analogous amount of experience on another language Wikipedia to be allowed to create articles, as a kind of reciprocal extended confirmed status. isaacl (talk) 01:51, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
┌───┘ @TonyBallioni: To me, that's just another good reason to create an interwiki confirmed group. Someone with 1,000 edits on de.wikipedia isn't going to be an irresponsible user of the translation tool, regardless of their edit count on en.wikipedia.--Newbiepedian (talk · contribs · X! · logs) 01:48, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
@Newbiepedian: see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mhsohaib. That is a user with over 15,000 edits on ar.wiki who was blocked here for sourcing issues with what I'm assuming are translations of ar.wiki footballer articles. He's been socking ever since, and I've been working with ar.wiki admins to block the xwiki socks. Not all language editions of Wikipedia have the same standards we do, which is why we have a built-in check like this for content translation. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:58, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:Ec@Newbiepedian: I think you'll find that the technical problem with having an interwiki confirmed group is that the "autoconfirmed" and "extended confirmed" groups don't actually exist. Their implementation is by means of a server-side check on an editor's contributions and tenure each time they make an edit that requires those "groups". If that were to be extended across all projects, then the number of checks that would need to be made would potentially multiply several hundred-fold. There is no central repository of editors' total edits, nor any mechanism for implementing one. You would be asking for a lot of development work on the MediaWiki software just to solve the problem of an experienced editor coming to a new wiki to make a translation. That's actually less usual because translators generally work best if the the target language is their native language, to ensure accurate idiom. I'll still recommend that you solve that problem once we install ACREQ by having the translator work in a sandbox for up to four days while they gain autoconfirmed status on a new wiki. For most experienced editor-translators, that would be little hardship, I suspect. --RexxS (talk) 02:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
All said and done (and this RfC is clearly going to pass), what we are concerned with right now is only the en.Wki. As the Foundation's largest project and reaching billions of English speakers, it's a magnet for inapproprate new articles. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:21, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
#Neutral-ACTRAIL has many benefits, CSD nominations decrease, the work of the NPP become easier, quality articles get created by experienced (autoconfirmed) users, truckloads of junk seem to vanish into thin air. According to the research while we keep the mainspace clean, the bulk of the junk gets migrated to Draft space. This means the editor whoes article passes the requirements (BEFORE), would be tagged with maintainence templates such as {Refimprove}(before ACREQ) will have to face the rejection of his draft more than once for various reasons(Take for example Maragathakkaadu). Also, Drafts such as this, this and this leaves no doubt that improper creations has not been eliminated rather, they have been pushed underground leaving it to the AFC reviewers to do the dirty work. That being said I recognise the points in favour of ACREQ(as said above) and thus cannot oppose outright. I am sitting on the fence on this one. — FR+ 09:45, 20 March 2018 (UTC)Moved to support
Allow users in the 'confirmed' user group to create new articles, and allow account creators to grant new accounts the "confirmed" permission. This should solve concerns re. editathons. feminist (talk) 05:55, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Users in the confirmed user group would be able to create articles. The question re: event coordinators will be addressed in a separate RfC should this pass as it has a lot of distinct issues, technical and otherwise, that need to get sorted through, and the community has not been supportive of it in the past, even for an exemption to ACTRIAL. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:44, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Regarding GLAM related events and workshops, the solution to that is to make sure an admin is around to promote such accounts to confirmed immediately. Or do you think Tyler Bonner (American drug trafficker) is an acceptable encyclopedia topic? Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 13:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Ritchie333: showing up means you are not likely to be a random vandal - but it doesn't mean you know how to actually write an article (that is, that initially creating a Draft isn't best). In regards to event flags, once the Program and Events dashboard account creation process is a bit better, I'd be in support of it also having a "+confirmed, 10 day expiration" option built in. — xaosfluxTalk 14:04, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I think that is the solution, and it's been discussed on the ACTRIAL talk page. I'd support it, and have offered to help draft an RfC on it should this be successful. I did not include it in this proposal, however, because it had previously been rejected by the community twice in August in different forms, so I thought it would be better to have its own RfC rather than have two potentially controversial changes being tested on the same page. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:07, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Yup. Writing an article isn't that easy - the topic needs to be notable, need to find sources and avoid close-paraphrasing, write it in encyclopaedic style etc. Somewhat offtopic but I think these events would be better if they focused on improving existing articles. I too would be supportive of a +confirmed - but I think we should make sure event coordinators with that ability reasonably monitor created articles to make sure they are atleast ok (and don't dump a reviewing load on NPP) Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:14, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I'd love to have an admin on hand for every event I ran, but logistically that's difficult. For sure, as Tony and others have suggested, some accommodation for GLAM events could be made - I found the workarounds suggested for use during the trial to be only partially useful in maintaining event quality. Lirazelf (talk) 14:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Lirazelf, yep. Agreed. I don't think anyone is anti-GLAM or anti-outreach, and at the very least, I'm more than willing to put in the effort to get a new proposal and draft guidelines up and running for how we can get Xaosflux's +confirmed, 10 day expiration suggestion a reality. I know some individuals involved in outreach wanted that to be part of this RfC, but given that similar proposals in August failed, and that others whom I trust on and off-wiki suggested that having them as distinct RfCs would be better, I left this as a simple proposal on the creation requirement itself. I'm fully expecting there to be another RfC to make accommodations for GLAM and outreach efforts if this is implemented. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:25, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Lirazelf I'm curious about your statement above: "I'd love to have an admin on hand for every event I ran..." when the obvious solution is that you could be that admin, given that you're an experienced WIR and have sufficient experience to pass RFA. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Dodger67 Hah, yes, that is something that I've begun to think about... wouldn't solve the problem more generally of course, but yes. Lirazelf (talk) 16:43, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
I'd support that "+confirmed, 10 day expiration" too, despite the two previous RfCs (one of which I believe I even opposed myself). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:17, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't see the point of an expiration at 10 days when an active user would gain autoconfirmed at 4 days, but the general idea is a good one. Cabayi (talk) 14:33, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Cabayi: Autoconfirmed is 4 days and 10 edits. ~Kvng (talk) 17:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I suggested that so that we don't clutter up the confirmed list with people that never come back, but also don't have any clean up to manually do for people that do contribute (which will usually easily rack up 10 edits including their new outreach article/edits). — xaosfluxTalk 18:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
That would actually only exclude "one-time only" contributors who somehow managed to finish their editathon with less than ten edits. How many editors can complete a passable article in less than ten edits? I think it would be a stretch even for highly experienced editors. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:53, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
@Ritchie333: There's no way of ensuring an admin is around for every event that I run, so your suggestion is a non-starter for me. However, there will always be someone around who is at least as experienced an editor as I am, so the obvious solution is to give the ability to grant +confirmed to those editors instead. --RexxS (talk) 19:31, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
IMO it's sufficient to let outreach coordinators permanently have a userright that lets them permanently set +confirmed on new accounts. It shouldn't even be reserved for outreach coordinators but can be rolled into some existing right. There's no need for 10 day expiration. This should be a non-problem. +confirmed isn't a dangerous permission and "this person was interested enough to show up at an event and/or seems to know what they are doing" is good enough reason to give it. The software gives it automatically after 4 days, for heavens' sake. I posted something like this in TonyBallioni's RFC comments. We shouldn't be looking to make things more complicated and stratified than they have to be. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 19:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Question - Do our outreach events focus on creating new articles or is this just where participants insist on going? Online, we like to encourage new editors to start by improving existing articles. I assume this should be the case in person as well. ~Kvng (talk) 14:41, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Kvng: No one has data summarizing outreach. In the United States there have been hundreds of outreach events every year for the past few years. A common activity is the creation of new articles based on information from databases. Professional societies collect lists of people (list of scientists, artists, etc) and publications about them. Museums and archives have curator's notes and critiques about their pieces. Making an article for an individual or museum object is not high impact in terms of audience reach, but working from databases, I confirm that new users are able to accomplish this and enjoy it. Event organizers love this because it surfaces information otherwise trapped in databases and because it is so easy to present sources to cite and articles to write using this outreach strategy. We can recommend this to every museum, archive, and professional organization in the world. I see positive results at the current level; I am not sure about scaling it 10x and globally. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:44, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
@Kvng: This is all anecdote, but I ran a fairly general editathon in March, and my personal preference was for people to improve content rather than create new articles. This basically didn't pan out. None of the suggestions I came up with for improving pages was of any interest to the participants. We had several people interested in creating new articles via translation. Understandably, people want to scratch their own itch, and IMO new articles are the easiest way for a new contributor to do that. Part of the problem is that easier to discover missing articles rather than articles that need improvement. In addition, improving an article requires a higher level of expertise than creating a new one. Adding basic information to a new article is easier than adding missing information to an existing one; you have to know more about the subject than the people who have already worked on an article. There's also the problem that fixing an article often requires changing someone else's work. I recently met a very prolific editor with an M.D. (so she absolutely had more expertise than the average editor on these subjects) but even she was more hesitant to fix existing pages rather than improve existing ones, because of the feeling of not wanting to change someone else's work. I think for a new editor this feeling is perhaps even stronger, because the other authors of the article are by default more experienced editors than a new editor. Mvolz (talk) 11:24, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Mvolz. How much briefing do participants get on what is an acceptable new article material? WP:N, WP:NOT, WP:BLP, etc. ~Kvng (talk) 22:19, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
A solution to the outreach problem is to badger the WMF into creating a version of Special:UserRights that operates on multiple usernames at once. MER-C 14:48, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be possible to create a user script that does the same? Regards SoWhy 14:54, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes. (I'm not volunteering.) MER-C 14:56, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Depends on the event, depends on the outreach activity, depends on the desired outcomes. For example - some of the events I've run have focussed very particularly on addressing gaps on Wikipedia, and have been concerned with creating new biographies, for example. Others have a mix of "articles for creation" and "articles for improvement". In partnership with the host organisation, we create a hitlist in advance (some groups will do a huge amount of research in preparation, others will just turn up on the day) to try and influence the direction of work (trying to ensure as far as possible that we've got a good idea about notability, avoiding COI, etc), and try to steer them toward something that will result in a more positive first-time editing experience. A lot of the time we're working with individuals to find what it is that will make Wikipedia "click" for them. (IME, it's often the moment of publishing.) Possibly also worth mentioning that almost all of these events will feature a lot of "myth-busting" about Wikipedia, (More accurate than you think! Vandalism is deleted faster than you think! Write Wikipedia, don't cite Wikipedia! etc). Lirazelf (talk) 15:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
We don't need to tolerate a firehose of crap every day to give a few people in a training session a "WOW I can mainspace this" moment 4 days sooner (especially shen there are workarounds) . Edithons don't always produce wonderful pages either. A Wiki Loves Nepal effort in 2014 created hundreds of pages on Monuments that had to be bulk draftified, have been deleted twice G13 and run twice through MfD now. They have been restored at least twice from delete. Huge workload for a bunch of unfinished stubs that at least two subsequent follow on events have not managed to finish. Legacypac (talk) 15:30, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
The workarounds are what I'm concerned with, but sorry to hear that you've had bad experience of event-created content.Lirazelf (talk) 09:49, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Wildly in support of this, it seems the obvious way to cut the Gordian knot. Emphasizes the importance of outreach, allows for the important moment of creation to inspire new editors, minimal impact on the entire project. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 17:42, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
This came up somewhere else a while ago, but my understanding was that it was not technically feasible to unbundle pieces of tools, like only being able to perform one type of page protection like semi, but not others, or only being able to assign one type of user permission. Is that a thing or am I misremembering? GMGtalk 17:46, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
This was proposed in two different forms before ACTRIAL and was rejected both times by the community. It was proposed by a WMF technical staffer, so I don’t think it was technology reasons, as much as the idea that the community at the time saw no reason to exempt editathon participants from ACTRIAL. Those proposals also didn’t come with guidelines for granting. The reason I feel very strongly that it should be a distinct RfC is that while every time it is brought up, people are generally supportive of it, both times it has been put to RfC it had failed. The guidelines and specifics need to be worked out, and that is best to take place in a different discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Lirazelf for the background. I can appreciate that seeing your new article appear live during the event would help build a new editor's enthusiasm for Wikipedia work. I am concerned that when they visit the next day (or hour!) and find it unceremoniously tag bombed or mysteriously deleted, it will erase all of that and more. Improvements to new articles can also be seen live and editors often get more friendly feedback if these need to be reverted. Articles submitted to AfC do take a while to be reviewed but the review process can serve as a nudge to keep new editors engaged after the event. In short we can look at these restrictions as an obstacle or we can see it, as the trial amply demonstrated, as opportunity for improvement. ~Kvng (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
"the review process can serve as a nudge to keep new editors engaged": given it is a backlogged process and there is little indication how long people are expected to wait, I don't think it really will engage people. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:09, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Richard Nevell: Because, "when will my submission be reviewed?" is a FAQ for us at AfC, wait time is clearly indicated in the submission banner on each draft article and it is fairly accurate. Longest waits are currently 60 days but this generally applies to competent submissions with no obvious flaws. A beginner will likely make a mistake receive some sort of feedback much sooner. Also read RexxS's description directly below. AfC is not a desirable part of the process for at least some events for other reasons. ~Kvng (talk) 22:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
While AfC are desparately trying to cope, up to two months is simply too long. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:48, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
AfC is doing just fine, it was NPP, before ACTRIAL, that was desperately trying to cope. I accept that two months is longer than acceptable for you but please respect that we're all WP:VOLUNTEERS here and WP:NODEADLINES applies to most everything we do. ~Kvng (talk) 14:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
WP:NODEADLINES does not apply to brand new users trying to create pages at an outreach event. Waiting a couple hours or days for the mainspace creation is not acceptable for them so we need to leave the site open to all manner of spammmers, trolls and idiots as well. Most AfC submissions are processed in the first day or so of submission. Some take longer for valid reasons. Legacypac (talk) 21:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
In the first day or so of submission - whaaaaat? Have you put anything through AFC in the past few years? It took less than a day 10 years ago but more recently it takes months. After my last (2014, time flies) experience with it (not dissing the hardworking volunteers, it's the process itself that's broken) I decided that next time I write an article I'll either post it to a wikiproject, or find an editor knowledgeable about the topic, and ask them to pagemove it if it looks ok to them. AFC tries to do way too much and it's a big PITA for everyone. It's dysfunctional unless something has changed a lot recently. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 08:43, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
In a typical editathon, I'll spend the first 30–50 minutes taking the participants through creating their user page; using their sandbox; and adding references. Experience tells me that those are the three most valuable lessons for new users, especially the importance of references. For the rest of the time, the participants will initially work in their sandboxes and only later in mainspace, while my assistants (if any) and I patrol the room, answering questions and helping fix problems one-to-one. It depends on the event, but the as skills and underpinning knowledge required to create a new article are far greater than those needed to improve existing articles, most participants are encouraged to do the latter. In the few cases where the new editor has the ability to create a new article, I'll personally guide them before they publish to mainspace.
AfC has no place in that process, partially because I remain sceptical about the consistency of review, but also because I see no need to pass off the job of reviewing participants' work to other editors who have not had the experience of working with those participants. I do appreciate the hard work of all those who do their best as AfC reviewers, but I expect them to reciprocate by accepting my judgement about the suitability of work that I have guided the creators through.
When it comes to organising events, it's important to understand that Sod's law applies: if something can go wrong, it will. I want to be certain that as much of the organisation is within my hands as possible, with as little as possible handed-off to others. Experience has shown that asking in advance for an IP address to be white-listed for the day of the event sometimes fails: the hosting institution gets its external IP wrong, or it changes, or somebody makes a mistake with the date, etc. It's simply not a sufficiently robust process, with too many potential points of failure that I can't have any influence over. Therefore I rely on the accountcreator right to ensure that anybody who forgot to register a Wikipedia account (or just turned up on the day) can have an account to work from. I similarly don't accept that asking at WP:PERM for a bunch of editors to be granted +confirmed is a risk worth running. The folks monitoring that are volunteers, and they're not going to have to cope with the problems that delays in that process would cause me. I see no upside to that and a big downside. Again, having the ability to grant +confirmed temporarily is the obvious means of making sure that the smooth running of the event remains in my hands.
I've written this in personal terms, because I want folks to understand just how important running events properly is to me, and for them to have an example of a real person who is going to be affected. Please understand that despite the possible problems it may cause, I still strongly support permanent implementation of ACTRIAL. --RexxS (talk) 20:12, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
It sounds like new articles are created infrequently enough at events you supervise that it is perfectly feasible for you to review and move the finished products to mainspace with your own account. I'm sure you let them know that such supervision is only required for very new contributors. I don't see a problem with autoconfirmed users skipping AfC for their own work or for work of others they've reviewed. There's been no discussion of any such restrictions. ~Kvng (talk) 20:59, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
As I said, it does depend on the event. Occasionally I'm leading an event at an institution like an archive where there is a local group that is focused on a very narrow topic. They have the sources in their archive for that topic. There will then probably be fewer existing articles and I have to spend more time explaining how our notability policies work and coaching them, because many of them have already decided that they will be creating new articles. You'll also appreciate that not every event organiser works like me, and then there is Ewan's very pertinent point about the value of having the article creator publish the article themselves. The value of outreach events is not confined to crude metrics like number of articles created or bytes added; it's far more about engaging new editors and their particular expertises, as well as creating networks and contacts that appreciate and support Wikipedia. The more we can make an outreach event something that participants will remember as enjoyable, the more likely we are to meet our broader goals. --RexxS (talk) 22:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
To echo that point, the value of outreach is more than the sum of bytes added to Wikipedia. It's an opportunity to engage, demystify, and win people over. Every additional step which makes that harder distances us a little more from both our audience and prospective editors and support. Richard Nevell (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Amen to that. Regards SoWhy 08:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
This, this, and this. RexS makes excellent points all round. I'll add, on the point made by Richard Nevell, that I've run a number of editathons where I've used the format as a tool for advocacy - addressing key influencers / key groups of staff in an organisation (or umbrella organisation), in order to lay the groundwork for future partnership. A group of university lecturers, public library staff, or university library staff. Each of these events tailored to helping them "get" wikip/media, and open knowledge aims more broadly. Flexibility of approach (and control, as RexS mentions above), is important for that, so I'm glad that TonyBallioni has started the draft proposal. Lirazelf (talk) 09:59, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Centibyte, just as a note, you do realize that until less than a week ago, you had never edited a Wikipedia where this wasn't the rule, right? You registered in January 2018, and this was only turned off 5 days ago. I'm only pointing it out because you seem to think it would be a change: all we're proposing is making the last 6 months permanent. We turned it off because the community has in the past not liked it when the WMF just kept a "trial" going without further discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
I realize that the feature has been on. I just want to oppose keeping it on. Centibyte(talk) 20:27, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Okay. That's fine. I just wanted to be sure you understood this wasn't brand new. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Just a question, if this proposal is accepted and implemented, what does an editor who tries to create an article see? Are they redirected to draft or do they get a "Go elsewhere" message? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:21, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Question Can someone explain why these outreach events revolve around creating articles? We're overwhelmed with articles and almost any topic a newbie is likely to think of will either already be an article, or shouldn't be. Why not do outreach events where people think of interesting facts about whatever (history, science, geography, etc.) and see if the fact is already in Wikipedia? Like maybe someone remembers learning in school that George Washington had wooden dentures. They'd check the George Washington article to see if that fact was already there (it probably is), and if yes, think of something else (so they get to surf multiple articles, which is good even by itself). If it's not already there, ding ding ding! The next thing is show them how to use a search engine to find an RS for the fact, and then finally add it to the article with a citation. Now they are a content contributor! Yay! I can't for the life of me figure out why outreach coordinators and the WMF are so obsessed with having people create yet more crappy articles, or why the users themselves want to create them. Am I missing a gene or something? Maybe others feel some kind of excitement over creating articles, that I can't relate to. I can think of dozens of WP articles that I'd like to improve, but if I tried to come up with topics for new articles, I'd draw a complete blank. So from my maybe-genetically-deficient point of view, I think the outreach coordinators should de-emphasize new article creation and switch to article improvements. If creating articles at outreach events is really that important though, one simple technical fix might be make anyone with the Autopatrolled permission (or maybe ACC) also able to mark new accounts as autoconfirmed. Then the outreach coordinators would get that permission if they don't already have it, and use it to autoconfirm their new fledglings. That means we get fed new articles, something like how birds feed worms to their young. I don't find a diet of worms very appetizing, but maybe other people do. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 14:02, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
I've questioned that before. Improving the encyclopedia would be far more beneficial than getting people to find a niche topic to create a new article. Natureium (talk) 14:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Why do users at events need to create articles that immediately go live? I see zero problems with having them create articles in draft space that are then reviewed and moved to article space. What is the problem people are having with this? Natureium (talk) 14:43, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't know honestly. I assume it's just intuitive for new users, e.g., "What is it people do on Wikipedia?" ... "Obviously they write new articles." When, writing new articles is actually a comparatively small part of what gets done, even compared to just other content creation tasks, the bulk of the work being done every day is on improving and updating existing articles. I mean, as I write this 3.1 million of our 5.9 million articles are stubs.
I've never run a Wikipedia event, but it seems a bit like I have a room full of people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing. So obviously I'm going to start them off on the one task with the highest chance of having your work completely and immediately deleted, and which requires a good understanding of several pages of policy in order to do correctly. Maybe updating outdated information and expanding existing stubs isn't flashy and exciting enough for people to turn out for. GMGtalk 14:57, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
A problem with creating articles is draft space is that incoming links are not allowed. The author therefore doesn’t engage with related content in mainspace, and therefore doesn’t encounter topic-interested existing editors. Newcomers in draftspace are therefore isolated from the real community. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, I hadn't thought of that, but if I wanted help with a draft I think a better method would be post to a relevant wikiproject. Maybe outreach coordinators could teach people how to do that. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 08:13, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
An alternative is to simply get the event organisers to review and publish the drafts their students have made, themselves. I can't see why this is hard, or even why there is an argument. If you organise an event, it is your responsibility to make sure the content is good and add it to the encyclopedia, and if you don't have the people to do that, then who is supervising the students to begin with? Prince of Thieves (talk) 15:54, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
I asked basically the same question immediately above and got an answer that satisfied me at least. Be sure to have a look at that. ~Kvng (talk) 16:52, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Q: "Can someone explain why these outreach events revolve around creating articles?" A: They don't. At least, a lot of them don't; it depends on the event. If I'm running an event for the Theoretical Roman Archaeological Conference, chances are that most participants will be working on existing articles. On the other hand, if I'm running an event related to Women in Red, I know that Wikipedia has about 1,250,000 biographies of men and only 250,000 biographies of women. That means I believe we need to create another 1,000,000 biographies of women to reach parity (unless somebody can convince me that women are inherently less notable than men). So those events will have a greater proportion of new article creation. It's a mistake to think that all outreach events can be categorised identically, even though many goals will be the same for all of them (there are lots of ways of improving the encyclopedia, and lots of different audiences to engage). --RexxS (talk) 17:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
RexxS, that's a reasonable point about Women in Red, so my obvious next question is if you're really getting usable articles and attracting good editors that way (I mean I'm really asking, not insinuating that you aren't). Regarding the disparity, we could fix it by deleting 1,000,000 of the articles about men (imagine the AfD for that) but more seriously, the problem is more likely caused by systemic bias in the world's RS, and on Wikipedia we're kind of stuck with that. (WP:CSB is worth reading though). I do find it dismaying that 1/4 of Wikipedia's articles are biographies, and I think around half of the biographies are BLP's. That's a systemic bias all by itself. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 09:54, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I think we're getting some reasonable articles and some good editors - have a look at Wikipedia:TRAC Wikipedia Workshop 2018/Edits and achievements for the articles created and edited at the most recent event I was involved with. But we're also raising the profile of Wikipedia with academia, learned societies, GLAM, etc. as well as creating contacts and a network that helps support open learning. There's a whole narrative that extends well beyond the very modest achievements in terms of articles edited and created. Wikipedia doesn't exist in a vacuum and is still growing, and we need to provide fertile ground for that growth to take place in. I do agree with your view on systemic biases, although I put much of the recentism down to the relative ease with which editors can find sources online, compared with the effort required for older, printed sources. I suggest that biographies may also be somewhat easier for newer editors to write because you can only need to read a few existing bios to get a good idea of a structure for a new biography. Just my humble opinion, of course. --RexxS (talk) 19:42, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
By systemic bias in the world's RS, I'm just referring to a (plausible) theory that the academic and media institutions that publish our so-called RS have historically been sexist and eurocentric. So (from a viewpoint that notability comes from what someone does and not from what someone else writes about it), we could say there are equally many notable women as men, but the notability of the men (particularly the white men) is far more thoroughly documented in the sources that we're constrained on Wikipedia to rely on. That bias thus gets transferred into Wikipedia itself. A tertiary publisher like Wikipedia unfortunately isn't the best place to fix that. It's way out of my clue zone, but I think there are whole subfields within historiography and other topics that deal with these issues. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 21:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
My anecdotal experience is that fewer sources exist about women than about men, and the further back you go, the greater the disparity, so I agree with your theory. However, we don't always need a large number of sources to create an article about a notable woman. Although it does mean that generally more time and effort is needed to find useful sources when fewer exist. One of the joys of working with new editors who have specialised in a niche topic is that they often have just the sources at their fingertips that I would need months to find. Much of the "low-hanging fruit" now have English Wikipedia articles already, so the importance of engaging expertise grows greater. --RexxS (talk) 00:50, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Question: The proposal as stated would restrict creation to accounts that have reached autoconfirmed status. Would accounts which are confirmed rather than autoconfirmed also be able to create articles? Certes (talk) 18:34, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Comment—Several editors above (173.228.123.121, Natureium, GreenMeansGo, etc. have asked why outreach events are focused on creating new articles. RexxS hits the nail on the head with Women in Red, but I want to emphasize that other outreach events often have a similar purpose: broadening coverage of the encyclopedia, often to eliminate coverage of systemic bias or bringing in content area experts who don't have previous knowledge of Wikipedia. New pages are both a goal for the outreach programs (which are really designed to improve the encyclopedia's coverage and reverse systemic bias) and the strongest incentive for these new users.
Unfortunately, the NPP and AfC process are uniquely unsuited to handle obscure topic areas. NPP and AfC require reviewers to evaluate their suitability for Wikipedia guidelines, and many truly good and truly bad articles are easily processed. But the ones that get looked at but not reviewed, or not approved or rejected are typically (and here's the research on it) "time consuming judgment calls". And a key type of TCJC is articles that are "well-written but have questionable notability." (Scroll up in the link to see that last term.)
Well, that's exactly the kind of articles that edit-a-thons tend to produce. The explicit goal of many Edit-a-thons is to create Wikipedia pages on topics that are insufficiently covered on Wikipedia. These Edit-a-thons teach principles of notability to editors so that they don't created deletable pages, but they don't teach AfC and NPP reviewers how to effectively evaluate that notability for a subject that is chosen precisely because it's underrepresented in the popular imagination. Result: these articles are consigned to purgatory (i.e., they get looked at but not reviewed and end up in the long tail of the backlog) and edit-a-thon attendees learn that Wikipedia is a place where their hard work goes to die. A 60-day limit to the backlog at AfC might feel good for long-term reviewers, but it's a nasty slap in the face for your first article. As a part-time AfC reviewer, I can say that I've often found well-written articles on obscure but notable topics languishing for months, well past the point where we might have given the author a bit of positive feedback to create on Wikipedia again.--Carwil (talk) 14:40, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
NPP is most likely to simply approve these articles. Reviewers if anything are over hesitant to tag subject matter they are not familiar with (it's why Bollywood actresses are such a significant portion of the tail end of the new pages feed). I don't see the relevance to AfC here? I'd agree with those critiques of AfC (for example, if you died before the year 1990, you basically should just give up on AfC approving the biography). The solution here is simply not to use AfC for editathons: just draft and move to mainspace, which is what I even do for my own drafts, and I'm an administrator who has the autopatrolled bit already, so I wouldn't really need to worry about someone hastily tagging it. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:47, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
My experience w/ NPP is all secondhand, but I've directly seen Draft/AfC become an extended purgatory. This is why we want solid articles going straight to mainspace, something that the ACTRIAL restrictions make more difficult. My comments are intend to address claims like this—"I see zero problems with having them create articles in draft space that are then reviewed"—above. Thanks for working on a userright that might solve this problem; I think it should be rolled into this proposal, especially since most of the "oppose" votes are coming around this one issue.--Carwil (talk) 15:03, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't think that is appropriate since it would present the community with a false choice (pass with that new group or don't pass) and people would be more likely to approve it just to get rid of the opposes rather than think through it and work out the technical details of the implementation, etc. The community has rejected similar proposals in the past (ironically some citing the very reasons why people think an exception should be made as the reasons for not making one.)I do support it as I believe in giving people the tools they need to do their job, but I think the proposal is distinct enough and has enough things that need to be thought through that it should be considered on it's own merits: i.e. I'm proposing it because I'm fairly decent at drafting policy proposals that can pass and I will support it because I believe in finding middle grounds and giving people the tools they need to do their job, but I also recognize that anytime a new user right is created, a lot of discussion about it's use and granting happen in the RfC establishing it. I think that's an important part of the process, and would prefer it to be given the attention it deserves. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Sure, quality of articles may have improved, and NPP and CSD/PROD may have been reduced. However, I'm worried that (it's been probably established that) some users may find some ways to bypass the implemented technical restriction to become autoconfirmed users (like either make one edit for fours or ten edits total) with or without creating one article and thereafter still make bad edits or create bad articles in mainspace. How would those users be detected once the restriction on article creation is implemented again? George Ho (talk) 22:25, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
They will, but the real issue is that many of the problems that need serious cleanup or deletion are from users that have basically no commitment to the whole thing one way or another. They're just drive-by making articles, often by copy/pasting their company's "about" section or recreating a social media profile. That's the reason even such a low barrier as auto-confirmed is actually a meaningful deterrent. It's also the reason why so many of their articles are of such an exceedingly low quality that they need to be outright deleted. It's... actually a little depressing, but a lot of people won't last out ten edits and four days, even to shamelessly promote themselves or their business. GMGtalk 22:44, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this happened. In my view, however, it made the undeclared paid editing accounts (who are what we are really talking about here) somewhat easier to spot: there were one or two easy to spot signs, and while it didn't prevent the creation of articles, it made spotting them easier. I'll ping Smartse on this as he is one of the other admins who is most active in this area. At the same time, it's important to remember ACTRIAL was never designed to prevent this type of spam: it raises the bar for inexperienced freelancers, but otherwise it just makes them easier to spot.What it was designed to do is as GMG points out: get rid of all the crap put straight into mainspace by high school kids, autobiographers, Big Foot sighters, mom and pop store owners, people with grudges against their ex, and marketing employees from companies themselves who can't be bothered to figure out how to pass the barrier. It did a very good job at keeping all of those out, which in turn made the other stuff easier to deal with. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:48, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
I concur with Tony. By reducing the number of articles created ACTRIAL makes it easier to find the UPE. Sure people will find ways around it, but the there are plenty of tools e.g. https://tools.wmflabs.org/nppbrowser/ that you can use to look at articles created by users with low edit counts. We know about other loopholes but there are pretty simple ways to monitor them. SmartSE (talk) 23:41, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
Interesting that the majority of OPPOSE and most of DISCUSSION are about editathons. As it happens I coach at such events more than once most months and they are a useful institution. However, they don't generate many new persistent editors. They mostly attract attendance by promising new biographies, and newbies arrive expecting to make articles about their friends. Friends who, through no fault of their own, are unfortunately still alive and able to benefit. We tell them how difficult this is. Having arrived with the wrong expectation, they may ask for new a direction. We may say they should find and fix Wikipedia's plentiful old, bad articles. Such things are relatively easy for us, but not for those who lack familiarity with the criteria that make a bad article. If they succeed in finding a few refs and write a new biography in userspace, that's when they run into the 4-day 10-edit barrier. We usually have enough coaches to take care of these directly by a mainspace rename. So, the major problem is the concentration on new BLP, and the Autoconfirmed barrier is a minor one. That barrier could be further shrunk by giving Account Creators the right to boost newbies for one day or four, and maybe someone can suggest other methods, but it shouldn't be a reason for allowing the rawest newbies to create articles on their own. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
This stuff is edited out of my already longwinded support !vote.
Consider all the (possibly non-existent) articles that a user might want to edit (editing a non-existent article means creating it). Unconfirmed users are currently prevented from editing articles under protection, semi-protection, extended confirmation protection, pending changes protection, and template protection (I'll count template edits as article edits if they want to edit a template to change its contents as shown in some article). The proposal at hand is to add non-existent articles to the list. Compared to the stuff already on the list (plus edit filters that act more aggressively against unconfirmed than confirmed users), being unable to create new articles is IMHO an almost insignificant obstruction. I encounter some annoyance with semiprotection or edit filters in almost every editing session. By comparison, I've only written one new article (through AFC) in the past 5 years.
The newbie biting mentioned up top is largely an artifact of our malignant bureaucratic culture: beating back that culture is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But I don't see any realistic path to reversing it in the near term (it stems partly from COI of the community itself). So we're left with measures like this based on the theory of the second best if nothing else. If this proposal passes and we later somehow dial back the bureaucracy, we can revisit the proposal.
Finally, some "philosophical" opponents seem to have an unspoken premise that the existing restrictions are ok, but that there is someething special and worth preserving about letting unconfirmed users create new articles. That's a perfectly honorable belief, but I'd appreciate it if opponents with that view could articulate it more, so that I can understand it better. I personally think there's nothing special about creating articles. I find the other restrictions much more annoying (and usually less beneficial) than being unable to directly create articles. Of course, that's just me. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 20:26, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Articles for Creation's suitability for assessing new articles
As I wrote in my oppose vote, I am deeply concerned that AfC is simply not fit for assessing new articles. I have reviewed a tiny fraction of the biographical articles requested for speedy deletion recently from this project, and have found a worrying error rate, far in excess of the usual NPP errors. In a very small sample (not had time to look at more, for firefighting all the problems uncovered so far) potentially viable articles are being rejected for relatively trivial stylistic reasons, for not having inline citations, for being written in the wrong tone or for suspected COI.
In mainspace these problems could be fixed by any of the hundreds of thousands of active editors, alerted via the template-warning system or via categories, and relevant Wikiprojects are notified by talk page tagging & the various newbots. In draftspace, only the creator has the opportunity to fix them, without any assistance from the reviewers, and largely doesn't have the knowledge.
As ACTRIAL started on 14 September 2017, any problems associated with the AfC reviewing during the trial won't necessarily become publicly visible until six months afterwards, when the stale drafts become eligible for G13, which presumably is only just starting to happen. Was this taken into account by the research report? I see no evidence that the assessors looked into this aspect at all. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Any editor can move a draft to mainspace once they become autoconfirmed. AfC is not mandatory. I'm probably one of the people more critical of AfC, and I agree with most of what you say. I don't see this as relating to ACTRIAL, however: all they have to do is wait 4 days and they can mainspace it themselves, or as you have pointed out, they can just copy it straight to mainspace rather than moving (which is fine so long as there is only one author). TonyBallioni (talk) 01:20, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
But the problem is, having been directed to AfC, the poor (here assumed good-faith) contributor does not know that they are allowed to simply ignore the reviewer's decline and publish anyway! This comes up again & again at the Teahouse (and I've been admonished in the past there by AfC personnel for advising a good-faith contributor with a perfectly adequate article to take matters into their own hands).
Who decides what goes onto the page that non-autoconfirmed editors reach when they try to create an article? How can this be changed/debated? Espresso Addict (talk) 01:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
The big problem is that most editors who are trying to create articles after registering a brand new account are either not good faith or aren't capable of creating articles to meet our standards. 80% of all articles by new users were deleted within 90 days before ACTRIAL. See the graph below:
Sure, AfC isn't great, but if you're a good faith new user, it's a lot better than mainspace. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
"AfC isn't great, but if you're a good faith new user, it's a lot better than mainspace." Based on my experience (lots of patrolling A7 over the years) I'd say the converse. A half-decent article on a notable topic going through NPP has the chance of being picked up by all the mechanisms I've mentioned, while in AfC everything rests on a single reviewer.
I would agree that most new editors are not (yet) capable of creating an article without substantial assistance. The question is whether it is better to direct them to AfC, as I believe happened during ACTRIAL & would (I assume) therefore be proposed should this RfC succeed or -- as I would suggest -- to tell them to go and edit existing articles for a while before trying their hand at starting new ones. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:55, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:BccThey weren't always directed to AfC. They hit WP:LANDING, which sent them first to their sandbox, where they could submit to AfC if they wanted, or they could use it to draft and move themselves. It also gave them the option of improving existing articles or going through a newly reworked article wizard (which would send it to AfC). You'll note that the automatic AfC option was the last choice they were presented with. ACTRIAL was about much more than just the restriction. It was also about improving how we handled new users and directing them on how to get involved.Re: your first point. We actually agree on NPP being more forgiving if an article is halfway acceptable, the issue was that 80% of them aren't. For those 80% of non-autoconfirmed creators, AfC would have been better (also, I can't find it now, but I think the data on the number of new users who created an article that survived had it somewhere around 4% of all new accounts. We aren't talking about that many people in the grand scheme of things here.) TonyBallioni (talk) 02:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that the landing page is not equivalent to sending wannabe new-article creators to AfC. The sandbox option mentions test edits only, and nowhere says you can create an article there and move it to mainspace. In my experience at Teahouse, new users can't move articles at all, let alone between spaces. If the editor wants to start a new article, they'll go straight to the article wizard, which sends the result to AfC. No-one at AfC will ever mention that if you've achieved autoconfirmed you can simply accept the article yourself.
"We aren't talking about that many people in the grand scheme of things here." I believe the issue of what happens to the ~4% of new editors who are both good faith & competent is absolutely critical -- these after all form the pool of editors who will create new content in future -- if they aren't turned off by their initial experiences. Via NPP, they will at worst get a speedy that an admin will review and hopefully decline or an AfD nomination in which they are invited to review policy and argue; at best, they'll get help from more-experienced editors who assist in integrating them into the community. Via AfC, they seem likely to get a capsule decline which they won't understand & with which they can't readily argue, followed (n months later) by semi-auto deletion as stale. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:07, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
From anecdotal experience (as we did not measure this), the number of drafts created in user sandboxes increased after the landing page, which based on the feedback from some people who worked in outreach, was something that we wanted. Also, to your second point, I'll agree, except the data shows that ACTRIAL had no impact on recruitment or retention of new editors: the survival rate of accounts had no statistically significant change for autocreated accounts, and an actual increase in retention and activity for non-autocreated accounts (see meta:Research talk:Autoconfirmed article creation trial/Work log/2018-02-09.) Additionally, the data shows that the survival rate for those who created drafts decreased to match what it would have been if it was in mainspace (so no net change), but that the survival rate for accounts that did not create a draft or article has a statistically significant increae. The tl;dr being: there is no evidence that anything we did here had any impact on editor retention, which is what we would expect if AfC was so bad as to scare everyone off. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I'll have another look at the report, but my first thought on it was that lack of statistically significant difference often means inadequately powered or ill-designed study, rather than no difference. There's a big potential confounding factor with starting the trial in mid-Sept when activity perks up after the summer slump. It's a problem that we're looking for needles in a haystack, the tiny proportion of new editors who will go on to become prolific content creators.
"the survival rate for accounts that did not create a draft or article has a statistically significant increa[s]e." If I'm understanding this correctly, it sounds like my notion of simply preventing editors from creating articles until they reach autoconfirmed is a good idea, yes? Espresso Addict (talk) 03:47, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:Ec@Espresso Addict, I also have some concerns about AfC, and have raised a comment section on the AfC talk page floating some ideas for reform. I think we should probably add a sentence to the AfC template stating that "AfC is an optional process and you are free to move it yourself"; something that I have suggested previously. I agree that this isn't always clear to AfC users. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 02:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Reform for AfC seems overdue. Sadly, if the template says the process is optional, then bad faith editors will jump on that. The trouble is that the project as a whole needs to differentiate between new stuff that is never going to be content and stuff that is fundamentally ok but needs substantial work. I'm not seeing AfC do that accurately, while most NPP reviewers seem to do a reasonably good job (and if they don't one can remove their permission to patrol). Also the necessary work actually needs to be done -- which tends to happen in mainspace but not in AfC. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree 100% with everything you say here. I don't really see it as having an impact on ACTRIAL, however, because like I said above, the data shows no real negatives on retention, and actually some positive signs in that regard. TonyBallioni (talk)
AfC approval rates are not far off the roughly 20% survival rates of non-autoconfirmed direct into Mainspace. And if the page gets through AfC is has a 90-95% chance of getting through NPR without being deleted. I'm a big fan of approving notable topic in AfC. If I made all the decisions I'd approve anything to mainspace that is not CSDable and meets N and V. True new users rarely have the skills to create a great new page, and the throwaway paid COI accounts rarely have the ability to meet N for their non-N clients. That said, issues in AfC are NOT a good reason to reject ACREQ. Legacypac (talk) 02:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I was quite startled by the (high) quality of some of the articles you speedied or that fell off the G13 shelf recently, hence my concerns. You say "issues in AfC are NOT a good reason to reject ACREQ" -- genuine question, why not? It seems to me the main question is whether newbies' first page-creation efforts get directed to NPP or to AfC. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:34, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
සැකිල්ල:HpNot really, the 'main question' is whether newbies should be allowed to post a new article the moment after they sign up at all (all of our research before and during ACTRIAL suggests that they shouldn't). New users ending up at AfC is entirely a result of the fact that AfC exists, and therefore becomes the only option for a new user who wants to publish now. ACTRIAL was never about sending new users to AfC instead of NPP, but rather about stopping them from creating new articles in the main space altogether (for a time). The short delay has a massive impact in keeping away spammers and trolls in a similar way that AfC does (they don't get instant gratification of a main-space article), so the non-good-faith editors mostly just go away. Meanwhile good-faith editors are in general not dissuaded from editing by the short probation period (I suspect most if not the vast majority of new good-faith editors don't start with writing an article anyway, and hence never notice ACTRIAL). ACTRIAL is a good thing, regardless of the fact that some new editors end up at AfC, it is still overwhelmingly positive in its impact. AfC reforms can come later, and I for one am committed to making sure that happens, but ACTRIAL is needed now to prevent an overwhelming deluge of terrible submissions from overwhelming New Page Patrol (the backlog is already up over 1000 since ACTRIAL ended on the 14th). Please stop by the AfC talk page and discuss your ideas for reform, I think your voice may be well heard, but please don't oppose this change just because you don't like AfC's somewhat flawed process. — Insertcleverphrasehere(or here) 05:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
AfC serves several purposes. It helps weed out problematic new pages and helps good faith new editors develop missing topics. We see three types there: the POV/COI/PAID users, the clueless posters of resumes/social media profiles and other nonsense, amd the rare new editor that found a notable topic and started to write it up. Group three is why AfC exists, and we can improve how they are handled. We really need to improve handling group 1 & 2 submissions by deleting them more quickly. Legacypac (talk) 06:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
With you on 2 & 3, but I think 1 is a little more complicated than just delete on sight when any COI is scented; after all, nearly all new editors will start out wanting to create pages on things they know about. (I certainly edited a few articles back in 2006 that I'd probably hold back from now.) One of the issues I see with AfC and new users is that (based on my limited experience) reviewers seem to assume bad faith very quickly. There's imo often not a lot wrong with, say, a PhD student starting an article about the head of department, as long as the subject is notable, sources are available, the article is neutral or can readily be edited into neutrality, & the creator is not being paid (in some fashion) to add the bio, and such a PhD student might be encouraged to write on different notable topics in future if their first experience is positive. Perhaps I've looked in the wrong places but I've not seen evidence of AfC reviewers trying to help newbies develop material and quite a bit of evidence of the converse. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm talking G11 SPAM in point 1. AfC reviewers tell the submitters what is wrong and how to fix it. Often we edit the pages to help move them in the right direction. Recently I despammed a page at Draft:Race Winning Brands then we find out the editors are company paid marketing consultants Draft_talk:Race_Winning_Brands Given the majority of submissions are COI/PAID how much volunteer time should we give to make sure paid writers can get their payday? Legacypac (talk) 04:21, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
For clarity, I'm entirely happy with paid editors being directed to AfC. Or even all articles by new or single-purpose editors on companies, as such a high proportion are likely to be paid contributions, and the quality can appear good enough on first glance that NPP might well miss them. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
It appears to me that reform initiatives at AfC have stalled. The AfC community is currently polarized between reviewers focused on article quality and and reviewers focused on inclusion suitability of the subject of the proposed article. Since the outcome for any submission is largely dependent on the disposition of a single self-selected reviewer, we're going to continue to see inconsistent results from AfC. ~Kvng (talk) 16:16, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't think there is polarization, and I do think we are making progress on adjusting the templates to improve workflow. Also the backlog is dropping from 2500 around March 15 to about 2200 today even though the end of ACTRIAL has not seen a reduced flow of submissions like one might expect. Legacypac (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@Kvng:,@Legacypac: My outsider viewpoint would agree with Kvng, that such polarisation is relatively clear in the AfC reviewer pool, and is resulting in random outcomes & considerable frustration among new good-faith editors, which is hidden from view because it appears on reviewers' talk pages. Another thing is the enormously higher standards of both notability & sourcing than are generally required by NPP reviewers. Yet a third thing is that the AfC reviewer, a single editor required only to have 500 mainspace edits, is second-guessing the outcome of an AfD discussion on any topic, without even being required to do due diligence with Google. As a long-term editor & admin with ~15k mainspace edits, I would be chary of second-guessing the outcome of a given AfD discussion, even in subject areas I know well, and I rarely delete an article without popping the name in Google, which has led to a surprising number of A7 declines. That's why we bother with AfDs -- if the outcome were always obvious, they're a waste of everyone's time.
@Legacypac: Interested that the number of submissions has not declined after 15 March; are these figures logged anywhere? Espresso Addict (talk) 02:00, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Espresso Addict, AFC submissions dropped from 299/day in February to 245/day in March, and March saw more than 1k fewer submissions than in January (which saw 277/day but was also 3 days longer than Feb). If you wish to discuss AFC statistics I'm happy to do so elsewhere. Primefac (talk) 02:11, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
@Primefac: Where do you suggest? I'm sure others are interested in these issues, and discussions have become rather fragmented. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:15, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, AfC arose in a somewhat grassroots manner as an effort by community members to help IPs and new users create new articles. I'm not too familiar with AfC, but I seem to recall, back from when I considered joining it, that developments therein unfolded in much the same way. It may be necessary to hold an RfC at some point in the near future to clearly define what AfC's objectives are and are not. —Compassionate727(T·C) 13:13, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Opposers might get a kick of satisfaction out of this. Read it before it's deleted. L3X1◊distænt write◊ 16:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
OMG, it would certainly demonstrate to James500 how totally wrong his unresearched and unfounded assumptions are. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:33, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
For the benefit of those without admin goggles the deleted page that Beetstra refers to says in its entirety: Irving Stone Enterprises manufactures Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. It has 250 Billion employees and has $2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in revenue in the last 30 seconds. It was deleted as a hoax. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:48, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm tempted to take a page from two Admins who recently argued similar cases and say that page should not have been deleted because part of the page is plausable. Irving Stone Enterprises could be a real manufacturer and plausably noteworthy. There is clearly a claim of significance included. Jeff Bezo and Steve Jobs are real people and the unspecified currency could be Zimbabwe dollars amd therefore only refer to a few thousand USD. This could just bad translation work. Fix it through normal editing. Remember WP:PRESERVELegacypac (talk) 16:00, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
10 days into this RFC we have 149 Supports, 20 Opposes and 1 Neutral. 88% Support is as clear a result as we are ever going to get and running this longer will not change the result. Time to make ACREQ a reality and stop growing the NPR backlog which is up over a thousand pages (around a 1/3rd larger) since ACTRIAl ended on March 14. Legacypac (talk) 18:06, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
No, we should run the RfC for the conventional 30 days and not risk cries of "We wuz robbed" from opponents. It will be pointed out that the original RfC in 2011 attracted over 500 !votes, and this one only 170 to date. We lived with the current system for many years up to last September, and surely we can cope with it for another 3 weeks: Noyster (talk), 18:34, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. Also, let's not give the excuse of "irregularities" in the RfC as an excuse to decline implementing this, if someone's so inclined. This should go strictly by the book. SeraphimbladeTalk to me 20:41, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Agreed with both Noyster and Seraphimblade. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:00, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Also worth noting that the original RfC's trial duration subpage reached a consensus for a one-month discussion period. Anyone who believes the original RfC's validity has not been diminished by time should respect that. BethNaught (talk) 21:14, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Who is going to successfully overturn an 88% agreement? Will the few opposers here take over New Page Patrol of new user creatons for the next 20 days? Legacypac (talk) 21:27, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Even though I support this proposal and agree about the growing backlog. Changing a consensus reached timeline, even possibly under a SNOW clause, can lead to cries of improper closing being premature and only 1/3 the way through. The fallout of the backlog is terrible but we need this to be clear and undeniable. Otr500 (talk) 09:38, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
