Last week George Herbert requested that I update this list on the progress of my test [[User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie treatment]] where I and other volunteers create new accounts which submit new articles to Wikipedia.
The results so far, with 5 editors creating 7 "newbies" who've submitted 9 articles. Firstly the guarantee that someone would tag your new article for deletion within two minutes. Well six out of nine were tagged for deletion, though with times ranging from one minute after creation to almost an hour; so the good news is that most survived their first two minutes untagged. The bad news is that yes we do have a problem with overenthusiastic speedy tagging, there are various possible solutions to this including http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Speedy_deletion_-_24_hour_pause_for_some_articles As for surviving seven days, three have gone, three had to be rescued, and three have survived the week unscathed. Again, not as bad as our critics may think, but yes we have a problem. Of our newbies, one has received a template welcome, two "welcome warnings" for their unloved offerings, and four have not been welcomed. My own unloved alter ego whose unpatrolled article has yet to be edited by anyone else, still has a redlinked talkpage as does his article. Possible responses to this include http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Welcome_all_useful_new_users,_if_necessary_by_a_bot On the plus side one editor declined a speedy and rescued one of these articles, so I gave them a Barnstar. WereSpielChequers > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 18:21:58 -0400 > From: Gwern Branwen <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new > article as a newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days > To: English Wikipedia <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Apologies for reviving a thread from three weeks ago. But the idea >> that we had degenerated into a newbie biting place where one could >> "challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that >> article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be >> marked for ?speedy deletion? within about two minutes of its >> creation." bugged me, so I thought I'd unscientifically test it. >> >> I made a suggestion at >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/new_users#Lets_all_create_an_extra_account >> >> Nobody including myself knows how many articles have so far been >> created as part of the test, and yes one has already been deleted >> under the novel speedy deletion criteria of "the wikilinks did not >> have the proper markup". >> >> But there are at least two other articles that have survived more than 24 >> hours. >> >> Anyone else who is interested in following the test is welcome to >> watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment >> >> Two articles at least should be unveiled in the next few days. >> >> WereSpielChequers > > I particularly enjoyed WilliKing's comment: > >> My bad...I sincerely apologize. If I knew about the "challenge", I would >> have kept the article. It did have, though, words without proper wikilinks. >> Willking1979 (talk) 02:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC) > > I sympathize with him entirely; if I had known about the cop around > the corner, I wouldn't've casually shoved that woman off cliff. In my > defense, though, she was ugly. > > -- > gwern > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2009 16:04:17 -0700 > From: George Herbert <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Accepting the challenge to create a new > article as a newbie and see if it lasts 2 minutes - or 7 days > To: English Wikipedia <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 > > This is very good data in the "how friendly are we to newbies" question. > > Thanks for running the test. > > Please send another update in a couple of more days at least, I am too > busy to follow on-wiki but I want to see more of the results of this. > > > -george > > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Gwern Branwen <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:55 PM, WereSpielChequers >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Apologies for reviving a thread from three weeks ago. But the idea >>> that we had degenerated into a newbie biting place where one could >>> "challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that >>> article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be >>> marked for ?speedy deletion? within about two minutes of its >>> creation." bugged me, so I thought I'd unscientifically test it. >>> >>> I made a suggestion at >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/new_users#Lets_all_create_an_extra_account >>> >>> Nobody including myself knows how many articles have so far been >>> created as part of the test, and yes one has already been deleted >>> under the novel speedy deletion criteria of "the wikilinks did not >>> have the proper markup". >>> >>> But there are at least two other articles that have survived more than 24 >>> hours. >>> >>> Anyone else who is interested in following the test is welcome to >>> watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie_treatment >>> >>> Two articles at least should be unveiled in the next few days. >>> >>> WereSpielChequers >> >> I particularly enjoyed WilliKing's comment: >> >>> My bad...I sincerely apologize. If I knew about the "challenge", I would >>> have kept the article. It did have, though, words without proper wikilinks. >>> Willking1979 (talk) 02:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC) >> >> I sympathize with him entirely; if I had known about the cop around >> the corner, I wouldn't've casually shoved that woman off cliff. In my >> defense, though, she was ugly. >> >> -- >> gwern >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikiEN-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >> > > > > -- > -george william herbert > [email protected] > > > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
