Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Trial duration

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There's a clear consensus for a six-month trial, followed by a one-month period of discussion to determine the trial's effects. Given the wide support and uncontroversial nature of this, combined with me not quite knowing who to ask or where to go to enact this result, I am leaving that to the folks over this way. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


RfC: Autoconfirmed status required to create articles (trial)[edit]

A consensus was reached on 27 May 2011 to restrict the creation of new mainspace articles to contributors whose accounts have reached autoconfirmed status.

The preferred approach voiced by the community is that this restriction first be implemented as a trial with a recommendation for a period to be determined (3–6 months) , followed by an evaluation period (1–3 months) with the trial switched off. Other recommendations voiced by the consensus concern the use of Articles for Creation and the Article Wizard systems, regardless of the outcome of this trial, and will be discussed elsewhere.

A discussion on the software changes is taking place here.

  • This discussion concerns only the duration of the trial.
  • Technical Changes to the site software and user interface messages will be are the subject of a separate discussion on a separate page here.
  • Required pre-trial statistics have been gathered and extrapolated for the last six months, and will be updated for the calendar start of the trial. They will be discussed here.

It is therefore proposed[edit]

  1. To operate the trial for a period of 6 (six) months during which the holders of registered accounts may not create pages in article mainspace until their account has reached autoconfirmed status
  2. After six months of trial, to stop the trial for a period of 30 (thirty) days. A new set of statistics will be gathered for direct comparison with the pre-trial data.
  3. A discussion will take place over the 30 days immediately following the end of the trial.
  4. The implementation of the editing restriction will depend on the outcome of the data comparison and the discussion.
  5. In the event of consensus favourable to the permanent implementation, following comparison of data and discussion, the new rule will be implemented immediately.
  6. The trial will not be extended.

Editors to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles: Trial duration[edit]

A consensus was reached to limit the creation of new articles to the holders of Autoconfirmed status. This discussion concerns the duration of the required trial.

This RfC will run until either a consensus is reached, or 30 days have elapsed.

For information purposes, a stale discussion (collapsed) is included here.

Stale discussion (last edit 13 June 2011

A consensus was reached on 27 May 2011 to restrict the creation of new mainspace articles to contributors whose accounts have reached autoconfirmed status for the duration of a trial. It was agreed that some form of evidence-based evaluation would then occur, and the question of implementing the restriction on the longer term reexamined in light of the results. Some details of the implementation of this need to be worked out. Hence this RFC.

The most popular of the proposals will be implemented.

Proposal A[edit]

Within the framework of the recommendations made in the closing discussion summary:

  • To operate the trial for a period of 6 (six) months during which the holders of registered accounts may not create pages in article mainspace until their account has reached autoconfirmed status
  • After six months of trial, to stop the trial for a period of 30 (thirty) days for evaluation, before reinstalling the restriction as a long-term feature of en.Wikipedia.

Discussion[edit]

This seems, to me, to be the simplest way to go about this, and seems the way most likely to yield results. Waiting only 30 days will give us some vague sense, but we need to know what the longer-term impact will be. We also need to know what will happen once we shut it off, hence the 30 days afterwards. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Not acceptable as per closing admin summary "Most crucially, the trial should be for a strictly defined time period, with a firm understanding that the feature will be deactivated at the end of the trial and not reactivated (if ever) until the results are reviewed and discussed by the community.". Cenarium (talk) 22:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Frankly, it's immaterial whether or not it's still on when we discuss permanent implementation. I suggest it because it's easier to decide when we can actually see what effect it's having. The difference between this and PC is that this would confirm it'll still be running, which should resolve a lot of the issues the PC trial is plagued with. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    It still isn't in accordance with the closing summary so cannot be considered here, since this RFC is made pursuant to the closing admin assessment. Cenarium (talk) 23:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Definitely not acceptable. You state "...stop the trial for a period of 30 (thirty) days for evaluation, before reinstalling the restriction as a long term feature of en.Wikipedia" - surely this assumes that the trial is going to be successful - you stop it for 30 days, then state that we'd reinstall it as a long term feature. Surely it would be - stop it for 30 days, evaluate it, discuss whether it should be continued, seek feedback from users affected by the change, THEN decide whether we're putting it back. FishBarking? 17:27, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate proposal from Rd232[edit]

Trial for a period of 6 (six) months during which the holders of registered accounts may not create pages in article mainspace until their account has reached autoconfirmed status, with one exception: they retain the ability to create articles via the Article Wizard.

User:Rd232/creationdraft, which would replace the current MediaWiki:Nocreatetext, illustrates how options would be presented to the new user in this case.

Data should be gathered for 30 days prior to trial, and evaluation of the overall concept should begin after 4 months. If no consensus is reached by 6 months to continue the concept indefinitely, it is switched off. If consensus is reached, it is retained indefinitely. Evaluation of the Wizard immediate-creation option may begin separately at any time, if editors feel there are issues arising which require discussion. If there is a consensus to switch off that option, it may be done at any time.

Discussion[edit]

Not acceptable per closing admin summary: "Most crucially, the trial should be for a strictly defined time period, with a firm understanding that the feature will be deactivated at the end of the trial and not reactivated (if ever) until the results are reviewed and discussed by the community.". Cenarium (talk) 22:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate proposal from Protonk (talk)[edit]

Comments can be made here. There is also some elaboration of the technical bits there as well.

The proposal above reflects the spirit of the RfC but is both too long and insufficient to gather the necessary data to evaluate the impact of restricting article creation. Instead I propose a shorter trial which requires some developer involvement and may require gathering and anonymizing information on not just contributions but potential contributions.

Technical details[edit]

Format

The trial should proceed in three phases. An initial data gathering phase to last 30 days where no external changes are made to article creation, an implementation phase where article creation is restricted (see below for details) also to last 30 days and a followup phase where the article creation is returned to the status quo ante for another 30 days. Given the volume of articles created and deleted per week, 3-6 months is more than necessary to determine the immediate impact of restricting article creation. 30 days will provide more than enough data. The pre and post periods are there to gather data for a representative comparison should contemporaneous statistics be deemed too difficult to collect.

Data

The trial should gather data not only on number of articles created but their disposition after 15 days, the history of the accounts which created the articles and the number of articles not created during the trial timeframe. Some of these data are available to editors and administrators but some will only be available to developers. Specifically:

  • During the entire trial all pages where a non-autoconfirmed account attempts to create an article should be noted, as well as the account itself. Creating this notification may be burdensome for the developers or the servers or it may not, I do not know the exact implementation details.
  • Each account which creates an article or attempts to create an article should be recorded and the number of follow-up edits (and status like blocks, etc) should be noted. This data may be sensitive, as it would require monitoring not only edits but attempted edits so I suggest that developers develop a system to log the information and present anonymized statistics to the community (simple summary statistics will do).
  • If possible, the articles created during the pre and post period by non-autoconfirmed accounts should be recorded and the status of the article (deleted, tagged, nominated for deletion, etc.) for 15 days past the date of creation should be noted.
Motivation

A primary concern among supporters of the RfC was disenchantment with wikipedia due to an aggressive (but reasonable) response by new page patrollers when faced with a grossly inappropriate article. Chief among the concerns of those critical of the RfC was the potential loss in contributors due to increased editing friction. A trial which simply changes the ability of non-autoconfirmed accounts to create articles without determining the impact on potential article creation will overestimate the effectiveness of the trial to reduce inappropriate articles and greatly underestimate the potential loss of contributors.

My version of the trial solves these problems in two ways. First, breaking up the trial into three parts where data is gathered in each allows us to see the switch-on and switch-off effects of the policy change. We can compare the overall article volume and quantity as well as editor retention in the trial to both the pre-trial condition and a post trial condition where some new editors may have learned of the change. Second, the inclusion of statistics on article attempts during the trial will catch most cases where a non-autoconfirmed account attempts to create an article and what their response is. If they still attempt to create the article via the AfC we will know the source of the change. Likewise if they go on to make regular edits (or request confirmation) before re-creating the article we can measure this as well. Of course should the account simply stop editing after a stymied attempt to create an article we will know this as well.

Potential Improvement

Though I suspect that the developers will not want to engage in a trial which presents a non-uniform face to users, it would be most optimal to engage in a trial where editors are randomly selected to see one of three options when opening the "create a new page" link:

  • A page describing the policy change and linking to AfC
  • An immediate redirection to AfC with the article title preloaded
  • A page simply noting the policy change and nothing more.

Using these three options we can track user response during the trial against each change. We would record the same data as I described above but would have the additional advantage of a randomized trial showing the effectiveness of each potential change. Since one of these three (or something like them) options will be made the default should the trial be deemed a success it behooves us to kill two birds with one stone and perform some A/B testing while we are conducting the trial.

Discussion[edit]

  • Support as proposer. While the trial I propose above will be technically complicated and will require a great deal more attention from the WMF and developers I feel we have a responsibility to accurately gather user data before making a change of this scale. We cannot simply just turn the feature on, leave it there for a few months and then note that the sky has not fallen. This was a principal flaw with the PC trial and was as bad as the debacle over the trial end date. Without statistically meaningful and valid metrics any discussion post trial will devolve into a recapitulation of positions held before the trial. Thank you. Protonk (talk) 23:09, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting. i) I think the "live" phase needs to be at least 3 months, though. A/B randomised testing is an interesting option; they've done that with the fundraising banners AFAIK so it may not be so unlikely a notion to get it here. ii) part of the reason I think the live phase needs to be longer is because the primary object is not articles (which are more or less being handled anyway), but editors, and it needs more time to evaluate how editors entering through the new process have different wikilives than those who didn't/don't. iii) I don't see the point of a switchoff per se. I would relegate switch-off to a failsafe down the line, if consensus can't be had by about 6 months, say, that it should be retained. Rd232 talk 23:39, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I included the switchoff phase because during the course of the trial we are asking the devs to gather and aggregate data they normally (I assume) would not. At the end of the 30 day post phase we can look at the response from editors for all three phases. So an article created on the first day of the "pre" phase will be tracked for 90 days (the editor as well), and then anything after that can be tracked for 90-t days. After the end of the post phase the devs can remove the tracking and data collection regardless of the outcome. Protonk (talk) 00:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well I doubt there's much benefit to the devs to switching that sort of data collection off; it just seems like an extra task. The big deal is setting it up in the first place, I would think. Unless the devs express a preference, I would keep both the data tracking and trial in sync, and leave the trial running up to 6 months, and then switch off both if it hasn't been previously agreed to implement the idea indefinitely. If an agreement is reached to that effect, data collection can stop sooner. Rd232 talk 00:36, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • The benefit is twofold. First, I'm sure there is some performance cost to gathering this data, however small. Second, the data I am suggesting we gather is nominally private. Specifically when we record that a non-autoconfirmed account visited a red-link then navigated away we are capturing data which I doubt we want to keep around in perpetuity. But because this information is vital for understanding what would otherwise be only the absence of an article I recommend we gather it during the trial. And I recommend this method of testing in order to avoid a 6 month trial. I have other reasons to want to avoid a 6 month trial (which I will articulate elsewhere), but 6 months is a lifetime in terms of a website. If we turn this feature on and it has a deleterious effect on new user growth and we persist for 6 months when we are done it will be too late to reverse the trend. 90 days with a 30 day switch on is more than sufficient. Protonk (talk) 00:46, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that we don't need a long trial to collect good data. But I think that re-opening the flood gates will not provide useful data. There's almost certainly going to be a surge in new article creation once we go back to a free for all. Also, the trial can be short. But the long-term impact is still important. Are editors that sign up sticking around longer because they experience a better learning curve? That's the key question we're trying to answer. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:17, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • "we don't need a long trial to collect good data." seems to be contradicted by "Are editors that sign up sticking around longer". I'd argue the most important stickiness is not on the timeframe of days, it's at least weeks (if not months or years...). That points to a longer trial. Rd232 talk 02:34, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I disagree with that statement. I'll post some data when I put a section in the talk page explaining my decision, but a rough estimate of the half life for a wikipedia account is on the order of days. And specifically we are talking about marginal (as in on the edge, no pejorative connotation) editors for whom the difference in making 5 edits and stopping and 20 edits and continuing is critical. If at the end of a 90 day trial an account is still editing whether or not they stay is pretty much out of the scope of their first article. Protonk (talk) 03:17, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • The trial itself can be short. Gathering the data after the trial is over will definitely require months. But we can revert to the status quo while we wait for the data to come in. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:31, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • "Gathering the data after the trial is over will definitely require months." ?? why? Data processing might take a little time, but not so much as to require a long wait after trial completion (I would think it could easily be done in a 2 month time period, from month 4 to 6 of a 6-month trial as per my proposal). Unless you know something I don't? Rd232 talk 04:39, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
            • Some comments here. Protonk (talk) 05:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
            • The most relevant question, in my opinion, is "who is still editing after 90 days?" If we have a 6-month trial, the soonest we could answer that question would be at the end of 9-months. I'd prefer something shorter than 6-months for that reason. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
              • That's not true. New accounts and new articles are created all the time. The soonest we could say "who started editing at the tail end of the trial and is still editing 90 days later" is 9 months, but that isn't a very interesting question. Further you would have an uphill battle convincing me that editor retention past 90 is a matter that this proposal should at all be concerned with. The issue of auto-confirmed editors creating articles is one of a 0-30 day timeframe. If someone is still editing 30 days after their account creation then whatever gets them to stay or leave probably isn't within the scope of the autoconfirmed user group. Protonk (talk) 05:07, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I highly doubt that new editors are watching this trial page and just waiting for some post trial shutdown in order to create a flood of new articles. Much more likely is the vast majority of editors don't know this page exists and will never know. Their interaction with the trial will be when they go to create an article and either can or can't. As for long term impact, I feel that is totally beyond the interest of this trial or any prospective data we may collect on it. IF we want long term data on wikipedians then we can use data dumps. For our purposes a window of 60-30 days (from the start of the actual switch on to the actual switch off, measured in days until we stop collecting data) is fine. Any editor in the sample still editing at the end of the 90s can be considered a long term editor. Protonk (talk) 03:17, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: 15 days is too short to measuring AFD deletions. Too accomodate for relists and late nominations the measured period should be at least a month. I also have serious doubts about the technical feasibility of measuring "attempted article creation". I think the only thing you can measure is the number of times the no-create text is viewed, but that does not necessarily mean the editor wanted to create an article (he might just have clicked a red link or wanted to see the deletion log). Yoenit (talk) 10:40, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • 15 days was just thrown out there. For a 90 day trial we would be able to follow any article created for 90 - t days. As for the limitation, if we can only measure how many times the no-create text is viewed, that's something. If we can specifically measure how many times a non-confirmed account viewed the text that is better. Protonk (talk) 14:47, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • As per the closing statement "Most crucially, the trial should be for a strictly defined time period, with a firm understanding that the feature will be deactivated at the end of the trial and not reactivated (if ever) until the results are reviewed and discussed by the community.", the restriction should be lifted at the end of the trial and after the review period, a consensus should develop for reinstating it. And honestly, what's the point of a trial if we keep on regardless of the results ? I'm not entirely certain on how this proposal 'ends' the trial. Cenarium (talk) 22:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What statistics do we want?[edit]

  1. What statistics do we want to collect?
    • How many new accounts were created during the trial, compared to a similar non-trial period?
    • Of the new accounts created under trial conditions, how many editors were still active after 90 days compared to editors from a similar non-trial period?
    • How often were articles created by the trial cohort, compared to a similar non-trial period?
    • Of the articles created by the trial cohort, how often were articles retained compared to a similar non-trial period?
    • Of the articles created by the trial cohort, how often were articles deleted at AFD compared to a similar non-trial period?
    • Of the articles created by the trial cohort, how often were articles speedily deleted compared to a similar non-trial period?
    • How did activity at "Articles for Creation" change during the trial, compared to a similar non-trial period?
    • For each of these questions, comparisons should be made in absolute quantity, and in relative percentages or per-capita comparisons wherever possible.
  2. Which of those are reasonably feasible?
  3. [Restating 1. from a different perspective] Let's imagine that the trial's finished, and we're trying to evaluate it. What statistics are we going to wish we'd collected in order to help decide whether the costs outweigh the benefits? Rd232 talk 02:40, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. How does this effect the growth in the number of WP articles?
  2. Does the reduced flow of articles through NPP result in a slower pace there, with patrollers doing more improving of articles and less templating.
  3. We also need to measure the unintended consequences - if we make article creation more difficult will that increase the number of incidents where people create artiles on talkpages, turn redirects and dabpages into articles or even change the subject of an article. ϢereSpielChequers 05:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. There are two more options for "how often were articles deleted by process X", PROD and BLPPROD, I'd include those separately. I would hope that a good article creation process would drastically reduce the number of deletions by BLPPROD.
  2. How many articles were retained but still marked "unsourced BLP" at the end of the trial and control tranches?
  3. (Extra difficulty) Does this have an effect on the OTRS volume? (Tricky to measure in many ways, this might not be doable.) --joe deckertalk to me 16:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. How many accounts managed to gain autoconfirmed status by performing relatively tiny edits just to get the required 10 - such as editing their userpage in small chunks just to get to the needed total? FishBarking? 17:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Technical changes required[edit]

Requiring developer action[edit]

For implementation[edit]

Currently MediaWiki's settings would only allow us to prevent non-autoconfirmed users from creating pages in any namespace, including their own userspace. (This is the createpage userright - see m:Manual:User rights - which in MediaWiki all user groups have by default. On en.wp's MediaWiki configuration this is currently removed from anonymous users, with the result that everyone but anonymous users can create pages.) Possibly the desired result can be better achieved another way, but the most obvious solution is:

  1. A new user right, createarticle is required, assigned to all groups by default, like createpage is now. That needs a modification to MediaWiki.
  2. For en.wp that new right needs removing from anonymous ('*') and non-autoconfirmed ('user') user groups. That needs a modification to the MediaWiki settings, once 1. is done.
  3. Create MediaWiki:Nocreatetext-anon as a variant of MediaWiki:Nocreatetext shown to anonymous users, if it exists.

For trial data[edit]

Other[edit]

MediaWiki:Nocreatetext is the message shown to users who try to create an article and don't have the necessary permission.

  1. The current MediaWiki:Nocreatetext would be moved to MediaWiki:Nocreatetext-anon (which would be shown to anonymous users in that situation)
  2. A new version of it would be created. It would be much the same, but replacing the "log in /create" line with "click here to start an article". That link would go a page looking something like this mockup: User:Rd232/creationdraft.

General discussion[edit]

I am very dismayed at the result that we have to have a "trial period". The pending changes trial could not have been more of a disaster. WP:PCRFC is still in limbo, no up or down decision has been made after literally years of discussion. We must not repeat the mistakes that led to that situation. We need to plan out what happens after the trial period now, or we will end up in the same indefinite quagmire, to the benefit of nobody. That being said, I really don't like the option to allow creation with the article wizard. The idea behind the wizard is a good one, and when it works it works brilliantly. Unfortunately it has also led to a lot of new articles that look more like proper Wikipedia articles but are still junk. On another note, we also need some safeguard here to prevent this from turning into another thousand headed hydra of a discussion with thirty or forty separate proposals duking it out, insuring that no one proposal will ever attain consensus. How to do that? Not sure. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:15, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd concur; the Wizard discussion is related, but should probably be separated from this, at least at this point. Once we get this implemented and see what happens, then maybe we can talk about it, but I want this to focus on the actual implementation. I've got my idea above (6 months/1 month/long-term), and to keep this from becoming a giant mess I'd like other proposals to be along those lines. The Wizard discussion, as I see it, is something that should happen separately. That would help keep the discussion under control, as it would streamline the discussion into the more straightforward question; how do we implement the consensus at the initial RfC? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

  • Support: as proposed. The research for the restriction was made over a period of 6 months monitoring the effects of WP:NPP|new page patrol, and statistics gathering. Due to seasonal and other fluctuations in editing, 6 months is needed to asses the effect of the restriction. Thirty days without the trial should be enough for evaluation purposes. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Kudpung. This is a reasonable follow up to the consensus achieved at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles. Cunard (talk) 20:13, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Kudpung. ╟─TreasuryTag►Not-content─╢ 21:47, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 6 months seems the perfect length of time and it's nice to have specific rules for what happens after the time period, so we don't end up with another fiasco like with that other famous trial period. Hopefully, the data resulting from this is conclusive one way or the other. SilverserenC 21:51, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Six months is an appropriate amount of time to ensure that the results are not skewed by seasonal variations in editing patterns. —SW— spout 22:11, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support time frame, but question about other proposal elements. Six months seems reasonable. However, I'm concerned with the statement that "The implementation of the editing restriction will depend on the outcome of the data comparison and the discussion." Community consensus has already been reached that such a requirement be implemented; any proposal here that opens the door to re-litigating the concept of autoconfirm-to-create after the trial is going to lead directly to exactly that: a re-litigation of the issue, with all the accompanying drama, with people having had six months to arm themselves with arguments for and against, and with a high likelihood of eventual "oh, there's no consensus here, screw it" throwing up of hands. To do that would be to fly in the face of the community, which supported exceptionally strongly the implementation of autoconfirm-to-create. I would support a wording of this proposal that specified that "the exact method of implementation of the editing restriction will depend on...", but strongly oppose any version of this proposal that allows the re-trying of the case for and against autoconfirm in general.Redacted, because I just re-read the RfC close and I clearly misrembered the trial/full-on-implementation thing. Let me try this again: I remain a little worried about the phrasing of that sentence, because without definite guidelines against which the trial results will be judged, the post-trial RfC will just be another re-litigation of the issue. Is there any provision, in this step of the trial-setting-up or another, to define exactly what metrics we will be judging the usefulness of the trial by? I feel strongly that these need to exist before the trial begins. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:23, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think that, to some extent, a re-litigation of the concept after the trial will be inevitable. We will have a lot of new data to explore, and perhaps the analysis of that new information will significantly change our perspective on the whole idea. The discussion period after the trial will basically be a re-litigation, except with hard data in place of theories and projections. In other words, it will ask the question: "What does everyone think of this idea, now that we know exactly what the result of its implementation is?" In general, I think that the success of the trial will likely be judged on whether or not it meaningfully reduced the number of inappropriate articles created (and therefore meaningfully reduced the deletion and patrolling workload) without alienating new editors or significantly reducing the number of legitimate new articles created. —SW— talk 23:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Without wanting to re-litigate it, my impression of the previous discussion was that the community actually supported making the change already (with the option of reversing it at any time if we decide we hate it), not testing the change temporarily and then discussing the results and maybe re-implementing it.
I agree with Fluffernutter: There's no point in running a trial if you don't know what you're trying to find out from it. You'll end up with a study design that doesn't help you learn what you want to know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, Snottywong, I think those are reasonable grounds to evaluate based on, but I guess my point is that unless we can get people to agree beforehand on what constitutes "pass" and "fail" for those (or other) areas, people will just toss the goalposts around willy-nilly to suit the decision they want to be reached when the discussion reopens post-trial. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 23:54, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose unless three is provision for 1/concurrent monitoring of the results with respect to the creation of valid articles, as well as invalid ones, and 3/ ptrovision for stopping the trial early in the results of the measurement is disastrous. Without a provision for stopping early, the harm can be better judged with a shorter trial, say 2 or 3 months. (I'll just observe I don't think the majority of people who work with newcomers here are aware of this, and the degree to which it contradicts the strategic goals adopted by the foundation a year ago.) DGG ( talk ) 23:35, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can you describe a plausible outcome which could be defined as "disastrous"? —SW— babble 23:41, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, maybe that we see a 25% drop in the number of new accounts making their first edit each month. (That's the proportion of accounts making a first edit, whose first edit is to create a new page.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:48, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While it's extremely unlikely that 100% of users who create an account with the intention of creating an article will just quit when they are informed that they have to become autoconfirmed first, I think that's a valid statistic to monitor during the course of the trial. My point is that it's important to identify which specific statistics need to be monitored, rather than just mandating that statistics, in general, should be monitored. —SW— squeal 23:54, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. If we must have a trial, this appears to be a sensible way to go about it. Rivertorch (talk) 05:11, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support at least 6 months—may I speak openly? This is a no-brainer: (1) admins, new-page patrollers, AfD resources, are stretched beyond their limit and have never coped with the volume of newly created articles; (2) we expose ourselves to potential embarrassment and controversy—particularly WRT BLPs creations—unless they're properly audited. Tony (talk) 14:44, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Far too many articles created by non-autoconfirmed editors result in too many man-hours and wikidrama deleting them. The wikipedian community has better things to do than mess around with AfDs on beyond-trivial stuff. Greg L (talk) 14:56, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose this length Three or four months is the longest we should be considering for the interventional phase. The seasonal variations are well known—activity drops during the summer—and can be controlled for by comparing activity to the same months in the previous years. Also, the 30-day post-intervention phase is too short. IMO it should be 60 days. Finally, if we want to know the long-term disposition of the articles, we need more than 30 days post-intervention to find out what happens to them. Since one of the hopes is that this will increase the quality of articles created/reduce the number of articles deleted, we cannot use last year's pattern of deletion to guess what will actually happen to these articles. We'll have to get the actual data. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It will be an order of magnitude more difficult to analyze the stats if we have to first try to "correct" them using previous years' seasonal variations. I don't see the harm in running the trial for a sufficiently long time such that we can make an informed decision based on raw data rather than approximated data projections. —SW— soliloquize 01:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Or you could compare "June 2011" to "June 2012", instead of assuming that "July to December 2011" tells you anything about "Janaury to June 2012". That would completely eliminate the need to correct for seasonal variations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a trial; slightly opposeed to a permanent implementation. I hope at the end we will be able to think clearly about the issue instead of just succumbing to social inertia. jorgenev 16:12, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a trial in the 6 month active range, I'd support numbers down to about 3 months but no lower, and I think data from a trial as short as three months would be tricky to objectively analyze because of the "lifecycle of the newly created article". The editors we may lose at day 1 are potentially being "traded off" with those we lose at days 1-60 (where new article deletion usually happens, often after a long and frustrating process). We won't even begin to have an idea of how many of the latter we're saving with the newer policy until days 60-90, unless perhaps the casualties up front are so overwhelming as to make the disaster obvious. --joe deckertalk to me 16:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, a reasonable and logical proposal. — Cirt (talk) 18:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let's get crackalackin. C'mon already. --Jayron32 18:22, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Kudpung says what I wanted to say, but more eloquently. bobrayner (talk) 20:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: seems reasonable. I think we could afford to be shorter with the trial. But since seasonality could be an issue, we're better off with more data than to risk making an uninformed decision. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:40, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Sounds reasonable. Now get on with it! MER-C 03:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Fine with me. Just make sure there will be no PC-trial-type antics. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:05, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditionl support Six months is about right if we are to get any meaningful data. OTOH, I do not wish to see the same débâcle as we had over flagged revisions. It should therefore be made clear that the restrictions will end immediately at the end of the designated period, pending evaluation of the results against clearly pre-defined objectives/criteria. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 05:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That appears to be clear in the proposal statement, particularly to avoid the flagged revisions issue: at the end of the trial, the restriction will be reverted for the duration of the 30-day evaluation, which will alow ample time to see if there is a resurge in the number of creations. The same scripts made by Snottywong can be run again on a daily basis. It wont' take long to see the result. For reasons of clarity, I confirm that the present proposal excludes any reconduction of the trial - six months of pre-trial data and six momnths of trial data are long enough to provide conclusive results one way or another. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Or the community could revisit the data in Month 6 (with the trial end still the default), so if it decides the trial is A Good Thing, we could avoid on-again, off-again disruption. Tony (talk) 06:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is indeed intended and the necessary software settins are being discussed. It also includes an option to automatically create a blank article template in the user's sub-space and/or the article wizard from where it can be moved to mainspace by an established reviewer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Open to supporting per Ohconfucius. We need to balance being welcoming to newbies, and preventing wholesale vandalism and promotion. Bearian (talk) 16:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I supported the underlying proposal. The stats have been collected. There is a very definite plan for On/Off toggle without a open ended nebulousness (Like PC). 6 full months is a good way to track a educational cycle (like a college semester or half of a pre-secondary school year) Hasteur (talk) 14:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support A sound proposal. Dabomb87 (talk) 14:40, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – This type of measure is far overdue. Graham87 14:28, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and let's get it rolling. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:40, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Fetchcomms. 28bytes (talk) 15:21, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes please. Salvio Let's talk about it! 13:42, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Although I was not a great supporter of the original proposal, a trial as proposed is reasonable, given the clear sunset clause. CT Cooper · talk 20:34, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Having ventured further into NPP over the past month, the sheer volume of articles that are clearly unsuitable for inclusion really shocked me, particularly those written solely for promoting a company. No wonder NPP is so backlogged. I am now more convinced than ever that the proposal is worthwhile, and the trial conditions sound fine. On with the trial already! Brammers (talk/c) 12:10, 22 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I've got various opinions about this, but I don't see benefit in elaborating here; I support the idea that, instead of new users creating articles that are often speedied - and them being deluged with warnings - they should get timely assistance from others. This proposal appears to be a step towards that.  Chzz  ►  04:02, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Exactly what we needed. --Σ talkcontribs 01:51, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a reasonable proposal that will allow us to move forward with this much needed change. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 20:32, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the time frames are logical and a good balance. jsfouche ☽☾Talk 03:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Never thought I'd see the day we actually got this far! Can't quite believe the amount of bureaucracy involved with such a logical change; but, we're here now so lets get on with it. Pol430 talk to me 21:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, ~~Ebe123~~ talkContribs 18:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Questions[edit]

The proposal says:

  1. Six months on (for example, "January through June")
  2. One month off ("July")
  3. One month of discussion "over the 30 days immediately following the end of the trial"

Which month is that one month of post-trial discussion? The use of the word "trial" seems to refer both to the whole scheme (in which case, the answer is "August") and solely to the interventional phase (in which case, the answer is "July", which would be idiotic).

(The correct answer, by the way, is "September", because there's zero chance that we'll have the data about what happened through 31 July 23:59 collected and organized by 01 August 00:00, but that sensible solution has clearly been excluded.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It won't take 30 days to compile stats. At most, it would take a day or two. And, if DGG's request to constantly monitor the stats is fulfilled, then there will already be plenty of stats to discuss on 01 August 00:00. The only stats that won't be immediately relevant are the number of articles that were deleted in the latter portion of the trial (i.e. an inappropriate article that was created on July 31st might not actually get deleted until the end of August), but this will likely not make a significant difference to the stats since the sample size will be extremely large. —SW— confess 23:57, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That depends entirely on what stats you're collecting and how you're collecting them. If you want to know, for example, how many of the articles created by newbies in "June" are undeleted six months later, or how many of the people creating accounts in "June" are still making edits six months later, then you cannot, by definition, have that data until the end of "December". Some of the previous efforts at collecting information have been entirely manual. Expecting manually collected data to be prepared within seconds is obviously unreasonable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Question - At the top of this page, it states;

Required pre-trial statistics have been gathered and extrapolated for the last six months, and will be updated for the calendar start of the trial.

It specifically states "pre-trial statistics have been gathered". Has this already occured? Could somebody please clarify this or provide a link to the data? I have been unable to find it. Thank you kindly. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 03:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Snottywong/Article creation stats. —SW— soliloquize 05:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 05:29, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The linked page appears to give the actual (not extrapolated) data for five months, not six. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The month of June can be added to the stats once enough time has passed for articles created in June to be deleted. I doubt that the average values listed in the table will change much from the addition of June, given that over half a million articles were created in the five months that were analyzed (i.e. sample size is huge). I'm also not sure what point there would be in extrapolating the data out to the future, since we're about to make a major change which is going to affect the stats in unpredictable ways. I think it would be useful to do a similar 6-month graph for the number of new accounts created per day, and the number of new accounts per day whose first edit was to create a new article (per your comments in the discussion section above). I'll try to add those stats and graphs to the page sometime soon. —SW— gab 17:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nice data/graphs there, thank you! --joe deckertalk to me 17:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My point is only that the statement above about "six months" is actually wrong, since the data that has been collected represents five months. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:29, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's also mentioned that now that we have the required scripts (which took a long time to get organised), this can be very quickly updated to concur with the start of the actual trial. I see no problems with that. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:56, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So I'm assuming that huge spike in confirmed user article creation is when we collectiveley lost our minds (April 1st) Hasteur (talk) 14:21, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It was a bot automatically creating a few thousand articles. I checked into it, but I forget which bot it was at the moment. I think the articles were about mushroom potato species or something. (It was User:PotatoBot.) —SW— squeal 17:05, 14 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Question - What will happen if, at the end of the 6-month trial, there is general agreement that it's working fine and there is no need to switch it off?  Chzz  ►  20:54, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine it would get switched off for a month and then switched back on permanently. —SW— confer 23:22, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My concern is, who will turn it off? Who will take responsibility for making sure that actually happens - and, is there any way we can actually guarantee it'll happen? I'm sure you're well aware of the background here, re PC.  Chzz  ►  00:36, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it (=perhaps not very well), only the WMF staff are capable of making these changes (whether "on" or "off", and NB that it's far more complicated than twiddling one setting: we have all sorts of documentation and error messages that would have to be re-written). I believe that you can be reasonably confident that they will keep their commitments. (They might entirely refuse to make the changes, if they thought it not in the best interests of the Wikimedia projects, but if they make the commitment, I think you can rely on them to follow through.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:03, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Someone from WMF has to turn it on. As long as we tell that person in advance that it will need to be "turned off" in 6 months, then they should be able to build in a mechanism to make it relatively easy to switch on and off. —SW— gossip 15:23, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly recommend getting a clear statement on that, before trial - to avoid the kind of angst that occurred when the PC trial was not ended as promised. In this case...I'm not terribly worried, because as far as I'm concerned, I'd support it just being implemented without trial. But still - I suggest getting it a lot more clear than "someone said somebody would turn it off, or something".  Chzz  ►  06:46, 26 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are two more points that I think would be good to apply here:

1. Users denied the opportunity to create a page due to lack of autoconfirmed status should receive an immediate, easy to understand message telling them that if they keep their account four days and make 10 edits they can start a new page. (There's a special situation for Tor users, but... I don't know, but I find myself suspecting that you could count these on one hand. The sysops don't seem very friendly to anonymous users nowadays)

2. The definition of autoconfirmed should not be changed for this purpose during the trial; any proposal to change it should be announced here to solicit input. Wnt (talk) 22:09, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no intention whatsoever to change the definition of 'autoconformed' which will remain as it has before: Four (4) days AND ten (10) edits. There appears to be no reason why this should be changed, it was not part of the object of the proposal or it trial, and it would be an entirely different discussion.
Each Wikipedia is responsible for its own local policies. The en.Wiki is the largest of them all and the new rule was adopted by a clear consensus (depending on the outcome of a trial which was agreed to be conducted in deference to a minor consensus). The WMF would be treading on ice to refuse a new policy that has been adopted, and their only involvement is their control over the mediaWiki software - it should be quite clear here that the resolution affects only the en.Wiki use of the Wiki software.
The technical requirements are clear, as well as the options that will be presented to the new users for redirects to the three options of the Wizard, the Article Requests, and creation in user space, together with the wording of the messages. The software request will be going to Bugzilla today or tomorrow, with the clear indication that the software settings for the trial should be reverted be after the 6 months. After 30 days of evaluation a consensus will be reached to either restore the trial settings as a permanent software feature, or to abandon the project for this policy reform in which case other solutions would then need to be examined for the prevention of the creation of thoroughly unsuitable pages. Note that the Wizard, Article Requests, and user page drafts will not be a cheap workaround - pages will still need to be moved to mainspace by an autoconfirmed user after review for suitability. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:05, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


  • "Confirmed" at present, admins can grant "confirmed" status , which works the same as autoconfirmed. (see WP:AUTOCONFIRM#Autoconfirmed users Not that many have been done, since there has been very little need for them. The current holders are listed in Special:ListUsers/confirmed -- a good many of them are authorized alternate accounts. This will be useful in some purposes, such as for the WP Ambassadors projects. We'll always need a way to handle special cases. DGG ( talk ) 04:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The main issue there would be for experienced users from other wikis wanting to come here. We'll need to figure out a way to communicate that, but that conversation should take place here instead. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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