Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion: Difference between revisions
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<center>'''23 November 2009 - The data collection phase of this project is now over. If anyone in the future is contemplating starting a new phase of [[Mystery shopping]], please review [[Wikipedia talk:Newbie treatment at CSD|the talkpage]] and make sure you address the concerns expressed there.''' |
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<center>'''16 November 2009 - Please do not create new articles under this project until some issues on the talkpage have been resolved''' |
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But please continue to report articles that were created before this date.</center> |
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This page was created as a response to [http://travel-industry.uptake.com/blog/2009/09/04/bullypedia-a-wikipedian-whos-tired-of-getting-beat-up/ this critique of wikipedia], which poses two challenges: can we avoid the problem of new articles by newbies being [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion|tagged for speedy deletion]] within two minutes? And, can such new articles survive for 7 days? |
This page was created as a response to [http://travel-industry.uptake.com/blog/2009/09/04/bullypedia-a-wikipedian-whos-tired-of-getting-beat-up/ this critique of wikipedia], which poses two challenges: can we avoid the problem of new articles by newbies being [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion|tagged for speedy deletion]] within two minutes? And, can such new articles survive for 7 days? |
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Revision as of 13:09, 23 November 2009
This page was created as a response to this critique of wikipedia, which poses two challenges: can we avoid the problem of new articles by newbies being tagged for speedy deletion within two minutes? And, can such new articles survive for 7 days?
To take up the Let's all create an extra account challenge:
- Create a new wikipedia account (remembering of course to inform Arbcom per WP:Multiple Accounts by emailing (arbcom-l
lists.wikimedia.org) - Write an article that doesn't meet the deletion criteria
- After seven days add it to this page by creating a row in the results table.
- Create a subpage to this page in your user name and transclude it here whilst discussions are ongoing
- When you are ready to unveil your article notify all involved parties of this page, but please take care to be as discrete and gentle as possible when informing fellow editors of any mistakes they may have made.
Discussions about the scope of this project are welcome, at Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Scope.
Results
Info we'd like to collect here (Counting only the articles that didn't merit deletion):
- Did your article survive or get deleted? Of 20 articles so far 11 were tagged for deletion. Two were declined by other taggers, four declined by admins, two self-reverted and three deleted .
- what tags did it get
- If your article was tagged for deletion were you informed of this?
- Were you welcomed?
- Did anyone else edit your article and if so what did they do?
- Did you feel welcomed?
- Did you feel ignored?
- Did you feel bitten?
NB please don't name and shame those who you think made mistakes in the table.
Participants
Please shift these back to transclusions when discussions are active:
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Skomorokh
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/NVO
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Stormie
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/The ed17
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Geni
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/WereSpielChequers
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Olaf Davis
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Decltype
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/SoWhy
- Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Atama
Batu Niah
User:JamesBWatson came past and made a few, somewhat questionable changes (deleted two sources). Comment by user:Stevage moved here from the results table.
Stevage, Welcome to wp:NEWT, and thanks for creating Batu Niah! ϢereSpielChequers 13:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- Heh, why, thank you. I originally wrote it using my usual style, then went back and tried to "newbify" it a bit. But I suspect it was still a bit too good. And towns have pretty clear notability. Maybe I should try again with a person or a company or something.
- Also, to expand on my above remarks, I used three sources to write the article, and pasted their URLs (in clueless newbie non-bulleted format) at the bottom of the article. I can sort of see why James removed them, thinking they were advertising or something, but they are in fact the sources of the article...presumably it is still better that we retain the source of information, even if it's a website we don't particularly want to link to? Stevage 19:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Article by AJCham
Grainger Games
I created the article stub, Grainger Games, using the account User:ToonGamer.
Whilst I may not have done a great job of appearing as newbie-ish as possible, I did decide to experiment on how I would fare in trying to create the stub a little bit at a time. Many new editors create articles in this way, only to have them tagged for deletion as not demonstrating notability or lacking context, just before they get around to adding that bit. (I acknowledge that I too have been at fault here)
The same thing happened to me - twice. I personally feel that we would do well to allow a short grace period for new editors when it appears that they may still be in the process of adding details to the article. Of course, this does not apply to blatant spam, copyright violations, vandalism, attack pages or other gross BLP violations.
Interestingly, another editor suffered the same problem as I just an hour later, at the hands of the same deleting admin. He posted an objection on NawlinWiki's talk page here, and then a revised version here.
Summary
- The article was deleted twice while in progress - my 'finished' stub however has survived the seven days of the experiment.
- To my knowledge, the article has never been tagged - my understanding is that NawlinWiki deleted the articles whilst doing new page patrol, not in response to a CSD tag.
- I was not welcomed - a speedy deletion notification was posted to ToonGamer's talk page, but nothing else.
- The only other edits to the article have been to add it to a category and the use a more descriptive stub template.
- I believe a new user may have felt somewhat ignored, on account of the fact that I was not notified of the response to my message on NawlinWiki's talk page. I advocate use of talkback even for experienced editors, but it is especially useful for newbies.
- I felt bitten - a new user who has their article deleted while they are still writing it could quite understandably give up there and then, and blog postings such as the one that inspired this experiment are an inevitable consequence.
Conclusion
I feel that we stand to improve in our handling of new users who create unsuitable articles.
I would advise:
- A grace period shortly after the creation of a new article, that could be tagged as A1, A3 or A7, in the hope that the editor is still adding to it.
- More personal explanations to editors following the creation of these articles - the default notification templates seem harsh and unwelcoming. Users could create a custom template for this purpose, as I have done,
- That in spite of the above, we should acknowledge the unsuitability of certain editors to the project, and not waste time trying to make feel welcome those that are irreconcilably opposed to the way Wikipedia works.
A brief note on the blog post that inspired all this - I think we have shown that new editors' articles are not doomed to die within 7 days, and in fact only a rudimentary understanding of our policies on notability, neutrality and verifiability are required to produce something that can be kept. The user is invited to learn these requirements upon creating a new article, via a link to WP:YFA.
I hope that the results of this experiment will prove to be a valuable reference point in future.
Please note, that I don't intend to criticize NawlinWiki personally, and don't think he acted too badly - these are just a few pointers for all of us, that I hope are received in the same spirit they are given.
AJCham 19:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks for that interesting test and insightful analysis. I've restored 17 deleted versions of the article, ignoring a large number of vandalisms and some cluebot revisions. The first version was created in 2008, had no assertion of notability and became a bit spammy before a succession of edits turned it into what would have been a good call for a nonsense or vandalism delete, and user:the JPS deleted it {{G1}}, perhaps not realising that there was a good faith article to restore to, in my view an {{A7}} delete would have been OK as I could see no assertion of notability at that time. Interestingly the earlier deletion does gives us the opportunity to bring some genuine newbies into the discussion, well one was a newbie when it was first deleted. ϢereSpielChequers 21:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- To be fair to NawlinWiki, I think that the problem was partly down to an edit conflict this edit was meant to tag your article with {{expand}} and {{unreferenced}}, but because the first version had been deleted {{A7}} - (correctly on the basis of the first sentence) it wound up creating an article with just those two tags, and that was a legitimate {{A3}} delete. So neither the admin nor the tagger did anything wrong, but sadly the patient died. Your article has not yet been patrolled, so it still awaits those who patrol from the back of the unpatrolled queue in about three weeks time. strategy:Proposal:Speedy deletion - 24 hour pause for some articles would have resolved the matter - a 24 hour pause would have got the article to the point where A7 didn't apply, and if it hadn't been deleted the accidental recreation and consequent A3 deletion would have been avoided. ϢereSpielChequers 22:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Report by Durova
It's important to consider in advance exactly what one intends to do with NEWT. This isn't a scientific experiment; real time chat with other editors revealed a touch of perverse joy to seeing one's new article getting tagged for speedy--along the lines of Yes, something happened. Uneventful new article creation is relatively boring. So unless one has a plan, it can be tempting to veer toward the wrong edge of mimicking a new editor v. provocation. Once other Wikipedians begin to react the situation gains a lot more variables.
My plan was to start an account with a borderline-provocative username and write straightforward encyclopedic stub articles. All of the stubs had one to three reference sources from Google Books, none of which were given with inline citations. I imitated a new user by struggling with wikimarkup and neglecting to use edit summaries and by implementing categories poorly, also by making occasional minor typographic errors.
The account name was Fergus MacTroll, which is fairly easy to Google back to my actual username (he's the name of a fabric puppet I made for Wikiversity last year). If anyone had asked about that or asked whether this was part of the NEWT project I would have disclosed the truth.
Fergus created ten stub articles about species of Antarctic moss:
- Grimmia antarctici
- Schistidium antarctici
- Sarconeurum glaciale
- Pottia heimii
- Andreaea depressinervis
- Andreaea gainii
- Andreaea regularis
- Dicranoweisia brevipes
- Dicranoweisia crispula
- Didymodon gelidus
All articles began with a one sentence post that gave the Latin name and stated it was a species of moss and provided a general description of the species range. References were added afterward. Two of the ten stubs (first and fourth) were nominated for A7 speedy deletion by different editors less than one minute after creation.[1][2]
The official description of A7 speedy deletion criteria:
- ; A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organisations, web content).
- An article about a real person, individual animal(s), an organization (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except schools), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative works. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.
"Fergus" ignored the proposals and continued developing the articles without contesting the speedies or interacting with other editors. Both A7 nominations were rejected on the basis of not meeting the criteria: the first proposal lasted 11 minutes[3] and the second lasted 3 minutes.[4] Two different Wikipedians evaluated the proposals and removed the tags, both noting in their edit summaries that A7 does not apply to moss. A third editor blanked Fergus's user talk page and replaced it with a friendly welcome, noting in the edit summary that none of Fergus's edits had been vandalism.[5] The editor who welcomed Fergus also left reminders on the talk pages of the two editors who had proposed speedy deletion.
Two other editors assisted with improving Fergus's stubs. The most impressive improvement occurred at Schistidium antarctici, which doubled the length and added inline citations as well as a taxobox.
The Fergus experiment lasted approximately one hour. Immediately after ending it I logged in as Durova, gave out five barnstars to the editors who had been helpful, and explained the experiment to them. Also on Durova I assisted the articles by adding project tags to the talk pages and making an inquiry to confirm the accuracy of the taxobox. Two of the five responded and our interactions were positive.
During followup today an additional development came to my attention. Although no one challenged the "Fergus MacTroll" username while he was active, one editor did so several hours afterward and other followed up with a modified comment. I have informed those two editors about this experiment and linked them to this report, and have provided similar messages for the two editors who nominated moss articles for speedy deletion. Any of these people are welcome to discuss or comment. One raised additional observations about WP:UAA, which may be read at the talk page of this report. In light of those comments I have notified one more editor and will be adding a sockpuppet disclosure to Fergus's user page; Fergus's user page was redlinked throughout the experiment.
Overall, the site handled this pretty well. Am a little concerned about Fergus's reception in the initial minutes when the new articles were proposed for speedy deletion. Perhaps Wikipedia should initiate a better training program for new page patrollers so that this type of article gets tagged for improvement (or at worst, prodded) rather than nominated for speedy deletion. Shereth, one of the administrators who responded, has raised additional concerns that perhaps the username policy gets enforced too vigorously on good faith new users.
If I'm not mistaken, I was one of the editors who patrolled a few of those articles, and I have to say this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:29, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- Postscript: four days later, I have rescued four of these antarctic mosses from CAT:HOAX where they had been placed by an editor suspicious of the "Fergus MacTroll" username. I have explained to the editor concerned how to check something like this in Scholar; IMO adding {{hoax}} is a sensible thing to do and should be encouraged where an article is suspected of being pseudo-scientific gobbledegook but the tagger is not able to check himself - it will bring investigation, real hoaxes will be removed, and if the article is genuine the tag is removed and no harm done. JohnCD (talk) 22:04, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
- (EC - reply to Malleus) Yes, in mine too. Because of the similarity of the articles, this is one of the most interesting tests. What I take from this is that NewPage patrol is a very inconsistent place. A good editor like Malleus would recognise these as encyclopaedic articles and tag them as patrolled, but two of the ten were incorrectly tagged for speedy deletion. Of course this isn't a scientific sample, so we can't even speculate as to what proportion of articles at newpage patrol are incorrectly tagged. But I do see this not only as further evidence that the process of newpage patrol is faulty, but also that it is inconsistently faulty. ϢereSpielChequers 22:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Zscout370's experience
At the suggestion of a few users, I decided to take a shot at this. The impression I wanted to give was someone who might not had English as a first language, so I went to a language I know well, Japanese. I took the list of needed articles I found at the WP:JAPAN and just try my hand. The account I made was called User:Sakurasoldat (Cherry Blossom Soldier (mixture of Japanese and Russian) and made four articles. The first two articles I made, Heita Kawakatsu and Ikuo Kabashima, were of current governors of Japanese prefectures. Both had the lower name not capitalized and always used a singular source for information that was not in English. I also used Japanese terms in the article, like ken, Showa and Heisei and always used the Japanese calendar system. Both of these articles were not touched or tagged by anyone. The last one I did, Masahiro Futahashi received some attention, but not much. However, the third article I did, Daizō Nozawa got the most attention. The first edit, which can be seen here, is a one sentence stub from an archive page of former PM Koizumi (Daijin is another term for Prime Minister). I listed his ministry that he headed and the dates. The second edit, here, it was tagged for CSD. The specific tag, CSD A3, says "no content whatsoever, or consists only of external links, category tags, a "see also" section, a rephrasing of the title, an attempt to correspond with the person or group named by its title, chat-like comments and/or images." There was text, one external link, no category, so this would not have qualified for CSD A3. The user who placed the speedy tag, User:Thewtfchronicles, has been told countless times on his talk page about the use of speedy tags and that many of his speedy requests were rejected. His Wikipedia account is also new; made an account on Nov 7 and received a block two days later. I don't think he is personally new, since he knew about the programs and templates when making his userpage. The next edit was by User:LadyofShalott, who capitalized the names and also declined the speedy tags. She also helped fixed some of the articles until I decided to tell her, using this account, to explain about what I did and that I will take over for the articles created by Sakurasoldat. While my experience is quite interesting, but having 1 out of 4 articles tagged for a speedy by someone who has not even looked at the content, this is disturbing. What also bothers me is that we, at Wikipedia, are supposed to report knowledge about the world. If we have folks on NPP that just speedy tag things that are not in English or might not be about English topics, our systemic bias will just increase. I work on a lot of content about Belarus, Japan and other countries, so we need to shore up our focus and include a lot of content from outside the Anglo speaking world. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 21:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
NuclearWarfare's experience
All people mentioned here have been notified.
As of 00:26, 12 November 2009 (UTC), I have removed the names of the people mentioned. You can find out who they actually were via the edit histories of the page if you so wish. NW (Talk)
I know I'm posting this well before the seven day period, but this has gone through such a whirlwind that I feel
obligated to post this. Note that every time I posted this, the article clearly asserted notability. Article was tagged as A7 by Editor 1 within a minute of being posted, and the account was welcomed with the standard Twinkle Welcome + Speedy warning, which would have completely overwhelmed me as a new user. I improved the article somewhat, as this was the only revision of the article that asserted notability only weakly, to a point where it did. I also added {{hangon to the bottom of the article, as I have seen new users try to add the tag and fail. I left a message on the talk page, saying I had more to write about, but that was ignored. Sysop 1 came by and deleted the article as A7 and the talk page as G8. I asked him on his talk page why he deleted my article, and he used admin rollback to revert my comment. He did not leave a followup message on my talk page.
I recreated the article with the same content that was deleted, minus the templates. Sysop 1 tagged it for deletion as A7 (giving me another Twinkle warning), and it was deleted by Sysop 2. I made minor alterations to the article and reposted it, whereupon it was tagged for speedy deletion by Sysop 1 as A7. Editor 2 gave a warning to not create autobiographies, even though the subject of the article was alive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The following (rather harsh, I thought) message was then left by Sysop 1: "I wonder if, after two deletions, the possibilty might have ocurred to you of providing some references. If this woman is notable, there will be articles about her on the web. Have you thought of providing external links to those articles? Also have you considered the possibility that dates of birth and death might be appropriate in a bio article? Ignore the ridiculous message below - I shall tell the Eagle...Why do you persist on having a lower case b on balk? Was it too difficult for you to create the article at Matrena Balk?" The article was then deleted by Sysop 3. I recreated 20 hours later as Matrena Balk, with a badly formatted source, but quite reliable source. The article was redirected without comment by Editor 1, and I would have had no idea how to fix that if I was a newbie. I undid his edit with an edit summary. Sysop 1 then prodded the article with a rationale "no evidence of notability". I removed the prod, and was reverted using rollback by Editor 1. Editor 1 then redirected the article to Peter I of Russia with the edit summary "This person is not notable other than shagging Peter I. Not worthy of an article". And that is where I decided to end my trial. NW (Talk) 14:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- At first glance, this looks like a really bad experience. Before I say anything else, I would just like to urge everyone participating to make sure to remain civil, and to not intentionally provoke, or "bait", other editors, lest the entire project be brought into disrepute. I am not saying this happened here, this is something I've been thinking about for a while. The intent of this project is not to entrap new page patrollers. decltype (talk) 15:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC) At least, that's not why I signed up
- Firstly, the articles being discussed were written by user Matrena balk (talk · contribs · logs) who is clearly a newbie. The main message above was written by NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs · logs) who is an experienced editor. But NuclearWarfare writes in the first person! Please explain!
- Despite all our messages, the text was scarcely changed between the first version and last version:
- the basic matter of dates of birth and death had not been attended to
- no mention of the alternative spelling Matryona
- no mention of her brother Willem Mons or her daughter Natalia Lopukhina, who both have articles
- there are a number of interesting articles about her on the web but no attempt was made to link to them.
- Despite all our messages, the text was scarcely changed between the first version and last version:
- In short, a really slovenly piece of editing. Yes, my message could be called harsh but it was in response to the third attempt to post the article. What are we to do with someone who cannot even manage to add a date? I think our response was appropriately escalated. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 16:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- The article was correctly tagged and deleted multiple times under A7 as it did not credibly assert the importance of the subject. Simply being the mistress of someone notable does not automatically confer notability, as notability is not inherited (also, one reference is not enough to establish notability). I never personally saw a hangon template on the page. I agree with User:RHaworth that this "article" was not changed noticeably between our many messages on the article creators talk page and their repeated recreations. Simply recreating something that has been deleted, which does not satisfy the issues clearly spelled out in the "standard twinkle speedy notice", is easily interpreted as disruption. On my very first day here, I was still able to READ notices on my talk page, act on them or at least ask someone for help when I was unsure what they meant. My frustration is palpable. Those of us who patrol newpages do a thankless, yet important job. Do you know how much garbage, outright vandalism/hoaxes and nonsense would currently exist in Wikipedia if nobody partolled newpages? At any given time, I can pop in and find that up to 80% of new articles being created are blatant hoaxes, patent nonsense, attacks, pure vandalism, or are incomprehensible or don't contain enough context to understand what the subject of the article is. Yet we are regularly brought to task for tagging articles that do not satisfy the criteria for speedy and/or being "rude" because "newbies are incapable of understanding the twinkle speedy notices". I would also like to know, as does RHaworth above, why NuclearWarfare is writing above in the first person when the article was, in fact, created by an account named User:Matrena balk. I do not recall seeing NuclearWarfare in the edit history for this now-deleted article! <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 18:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC) EDIT: Now I see that the Matrena balk account has a userpage that specifies it is an alternate account of NuclearWarfare. What the hell is this but deliberate baiting and a blatant violation of WP:POINT??? <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 18:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Again, the purpose of the project is not to bait or make a POINT, and it is not what happened here. The purpose of the project is briefly summarized in the latest Signpost. decltype (talk) 19:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- The article was correctly tagged and deleted multiple times under A7 as it did not credibly assert the importance of the subject. Simply being the mistress of someone notable does not automatically confer notability, as notability is not inherited (also, one reference is not enough to establish notability). I never personally saw a hangon template on the page. I agree with User:RHaworth that this "article" was not changed noticeably between our many messages on the article creators talk page and their repeated recreations. Simply recreating something that has been deleted, which does not satisfy the issues clearly spelled out in the "standard twinkle speedy notice", is easily interpreted as disruption. On my very first day here, I was still able to READ notices on my talk page, act on them or at least ask someone for help when I was unsure what they meant. My frustration is palpable. Those of us who patrol newpages do a thankless, yet important job. Do you know how much garbage, outright vandalism/hoaxes and nonsense would currently exist in Wikipedia if nobody partolled newpages? At any given time, I can pop in and find that up to 80% of new articles being created are blatant hoaxes, patent nonsense, attacks, pure vandalism, or are incomprehensible or don't contain enough context to understand what the subject of the article is. Yet we are regularly brought to task for tagging articles that do not satisfy the criteria for speedy and/or being "rude" because "newbies are incapable of understanding the twinkle speedy notices". I would also like to know, as does RHaworth above, why NuclearWarfare is writing above in the first person when the article was, in fact, created by an account named User:Matrena balk. I do not recall seeing NuclearWarfare in the edit history for this now-deleted article! <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 18:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC) EDIT: Now I see that the Matrena balk account has a userpage that specifies it is an alternate account of NuclearWarfare. What the hell is this but deliberate baiting and a blatant violation of WP:POINT??? <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 18:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- In short, a really slovenly piece of editing. Yes, my message could be called harsh but it was in response to the third attempt to post the article. What are we to do with someone who cannot even manage to add a date? I think our response was appropriately escalated. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 16:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Question If an admin or experienced editor wants to see what editing Wikipedia is like for new editors how can they do so? Is the creation of an alternate account to explore this issue legitimate? ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- How can an action be POINTy if it's completely neutral and the proving of the point is entirely at the discretion of a third party (i.e. incorrect tagging and deletion)? I can understand that you are frustrated that your mistakes are displayed on a prominent page for everyone to see but participating in this project is neither POINTy nor baiting. I doubt ArbCom would have allowed all those accounts otherwise. Regards SoWhy 18:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Are you serious? I was deliberately baited and entrapped by an unannounced role/sock account and you're chastizing me? If this is what the project has come to, deliberate baiting, entrapment assumptions of bad faith and then public floggings then I think Wikipedia is not for me. Also, the behavior is not neutral. It's deliberate and meant to prove a point by goading people acting in good faith. <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 18:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I think implying that NW acted deliberately to bait and entrap you is assuming bad faith of his actions - not to say completely unlikely since he could not have known who will patrol said article? The project was created to allow experienced users to experience how new users are treated. It makes absolutely no difference whether the creator of said article was actually an admin (like NW) or a new user - the tagging was not correct, regardless of the creating user, so yes, we can "chastise" you for that. You have admitted yourself above that you used notability as a standard which A7 explicitly does not. If you allow me to give you a bit of advice, I'd suggest you ignore the identity of the user who created the article and simply focus on what happened and maybe what you can learn from it. Regards SoWhy 19:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- It's not about this specific person, it's about anyone who would do this. The "data" here was obtained via false pretense and I reject it. As I noted at AN/I, if this had been a real newbie and someone had stated on my talk page that I was being too bitey, then I would have been much more likely to take that to heart. Instead, I was tricked and then brought to a public flogging here where everyone is saying I need to "learn a lesson". My anger has nothing to do with my ego and everything to do with the manner in which this started. Trickery, subterfuge and using sock puppets to troll otherwise constructive editors, WHOMEVER they may be, to elicit an expected behavior, is not helpful. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 00:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I think implying that NW acted deliberately to bait and entrap you is assuming bad faith of his actions - not to say completely unlikely since he could not have known who will patrol said article? The project was created to allow experienced users to experience how new users are treated. It makes absolutely no difference whether the creator of said article was actually an admin (like NW) or a new user - the tagging was not correct, regardless of the creating user, so yes, we can "chastise" you for that. You have admitted yourself above that you used notability as a standard which A7 explicitly does not. If you allow me to give you a bit of advice, I'd suggest you ignore the identity of the user who created the article and simply focus on what happened and maybe what you can learn from it. Regards SoWhy 19:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Are you serious? I was deliberately baited and entrapped by an unannounced role/sock account and you're chastizing me? If this is what the project has come to, deliberate baiting, entrapment assumptions of bad faith and then public floggings then I think Wikipedia is not for me. Also, the behavior is not neutral. It's deliberate and meant to prove a point by goading people acting in good faith. <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 18:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- How can an action be POINTy if it's completely neutral and the proving of the point is entirely at the discretion of a third party (i.e. incorrect tagging and deletion)? I can understand that you are frustrated that your mistakes are displayed on a prominent page for everyone to see but participating in this project is neither POINTy nor baiting. I doubt ArbCom would have allowed all those accounts otherwise. Regards SoWhy 18:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- I must note that A7 is not about notability - whilst notability is not inherited, a claim of being related to a notable person, if credible, is an indication of importance sufficient to pass A7. Actual sourcing and notability should be dealt with at PROD or preferably AfD. Tim Song (talk) 18:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Please read RHaworth's note above. The tag was correct. <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 19:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- No, it wasn't. A7 is not about notability and the article claimed sufficient importance or significance to fail speedy deletion. The fact that it was incorrectly deleted is irrelevant for assessing the correctness of the tagging. Regards SoWhy 19:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wrong. It clearly failed to indicate why its subject is important or significant. A7 seems correct in all the versions I've seen, including the deleted versions. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Arthur Rubin says it better than I could myself. I was speaking of "notability" in the context of importance. I know what A7 means, I just picked the wrong word. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 00:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wrong. It clearly failed to indicate why its subject is important or significant. A7 seems correct in all the versions I've seen, including the deleted versions. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- No, it wasn't. A7 is not about notability and the article claimed sufficient importance or significance to fail speedy deletion. The fact that it was incorrectly deleted is irrelevant for assessing the correctness of the tagging. Regards SoWhy 19:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Please read RHaworth's note above. The tag was correct. <>Multi'‑'Xfer<> (talk) 19:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- This is not a bad example at all. Five secs on Gbooks [6] reveals almost 100 hits. And a source was provided, not using fancy citation templates, but it was there. Power.corrupts (talk) 22:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- That's not the question. Even if the reference were fully cited, there was no claim of importance or significance. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Sigh, are we getting in a deletion debate now? The central point is the bitey nature of Multixfer and wikipedia as a whole. We all know that if someone wants something deleted, they can come up with some policy which supports the deletion. Dismissing 100 google book hits as no "claim of importance or significance" is flawed on so many levels. Ikip (talk) 15:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Even the original versions of the article mentioned several key historical figures that this person was associated with- Peter I of Russia, Anna Mons, and Catherine I of Russia. This isn't some twelve year old MySpacer, but a historic figure. The correct course of action was not to say "well, maybe this fits A7" and try to justify tagging it, but to take a quick look around to see if there are additional sources. As Power.corrupts notes below, Google Books has nearly 100 hits that can be accessed easily. Even if this might fail WP:NOTINHERITED, that is meaningless at this stage. NW (Talk) 00:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- If an A7 is in doubt, AfD or PROD it. Potential overrides deletion. Also, your claim that NW is not a newbie and therefore you haven't bitten one. I'm inclined to agree; you haven't bitten a newbie yet. However, you've shown your propensity to do so, which is why you should take this to heart anyway. Finally, with regards to "Trickery, subterfuge and using sock puppets to troll otherwise constructive editors, WHOMEVER they may be, to elicit an expected behavior, is not helpful.", is it not true that teachers will frequently "trick" students to teach them? Aren't tests and quizzes made difficult to teach? Such behavior, showing you where your weaknesses lie, may be painful, but it is decidedly helpful if you are willing to change and improve yourself. I, for one, welcome such behavior. Had I fallen victim to NEWT, I would reflect on my own mistakes instead of flaming anybody and everybody who I feel is "trolling" me. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR talk // contribs 00:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I appreciate your thoughtful comments. However, I do not believe the NEWT project is a net positive one, however fun and interesting it may be: this simply is not the way to go about educating anyone. We're all volunteers here, we're all flawed, and we all know this. The proper course of action in my mind would be for a notice or even a warning to be placed on my talk page asking that I not be bitey, or otherwise instruct me as to why A7 or a redirect were not proper (this is what was done in the past and I improved quite a bit because of it). My solution to this episode is that I'm not going to patrol newpages anymore and won't tag CSD anymore. What I've learned here is that it's not worth the effort. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 01:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- As one of the accused who actually carried out one of the deletes, I must plead guilty of violating the technicalities. However, I must also state that in the 18 month since my first contribution, nothing has steamed me so much as becoming ensnared in the traps deliberately baited to catch the imperfect. To prevent further transgressions, I believe my best course of action may be to simply to avoid monitoring CSD, now that I know that the field has been mined. I agree with Multixfer – this project is not a net positive. (I had lots more to say, but decided that my rants would be a waste of time - both mine and yours.) -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 07:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I appreciate your thoughtful comments. However, I do not believe the NEWT project is a net positive one, however fun and interesting it may be: this simply is not the way to go about educating anyone. We're all volunteers here, we're all flawed, and we all know this. The proper course of action in my mind would be for a notice or even a warning to be placed on my talk page asking that I not be bitey, or otherwise instruct me as to why A7 or a redirect were not proper (this is what was done in the past and I improved quite a bit because of it). My solution to this episode is that I'm not going to patrol newpages anymore and won't tag CSD anymore. What I've learned here is that it's not worth the effort. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 01:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- If an A7 is in doubt, AfD or PROD it. Potential overrides deletion. Also, your claim that NW is not a newbie and therefore you haven't bitten one. I'm inclined to agree; you haven't bitten a newbie yet. However, you've shown your propensity to do so, which is why you should take this to heart anyway. Finally, with regards to "Trickery, subterfuge and using sock puppets to troll otherwise constructive editors, WHOMEVER they may be, to elicit an expected behavior, is not helpful.", is it not true that teachers will frequently "trick" students to teach them? Aren't tests and quizzes made difficult to teach? Such behavior, showing you where your weaknesses lie, may be painful, but it is decidedly helpful if you are willing to change and improve yourself. I, for one, welcome such behavior. Had I fallen victim to NEWT, I would reflect on my own mistakes instead of flaming anybody and everybody who I feel is "trolling" me. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR talk // contribs 00:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Even the original versions of the article mentioned several key historical figures that this person was associated with- Peter I of Russia, Anna Mons, and Catherine I of Russia. This isn't some twelve year old MySpacer, but a historic figure. The correct course of action was not to say "well, maybe this fits A7" and try to justify tagging it, but to take a quick look around to see if there are additional sources. As Power.corrupts notes below, Google Books has nearly 100 hits that can be accessed easily. Even if this might fail WP:NOTINHERITED, that is meaningless at this stage. NW (Talk) 00:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I think Dick Pountain's of PC PRO and New York Review of Books US novelist Nicholson Baker experience captures the frustration that many new users feel:
- "[Baker] explains how Wikipedia continually struggles to repel vandalisation...but as a result is now ruled by bands of vigilantes who delete all new material without mercy or insight. This is such a strong claim that it needed checking, so I decided to attempt an edit myself. [Political Quarterly is] a venerable UK magazine for which I write occasional book reviews...The Political Quarterly was just a stub, so I tried to add a proper entry for the magazine."
- I think Dick Pountain's of PC PRO and New York Review of Books US novelist Nicholson Baker experience captures the frustration that many new users feel:
- "I wrote a roughly 100-word potted history of this 75-year-old periodical, mentioning that early contributors included Leon Trotsky and Benito Mussolini. Sure enough, within five minutes I received a message to the effect that this entry has no content, is only about my friends (some friends!), lacks citations or corroboration and has been put up for "express deletion"."
- "I was permitted an appeal, but it was disposed of in about two minutes and then the piece was gone...So Baker's concerns would appear to be merited...It seems Wikipedia has completed the journey by arriving at an online equivalent of the midnight door-knock and the book bonfire..."
- I warmly welcome this projects and members soul searching. Anything to stop the nasty way new editors are regularly treated. Ikip (talk) 15:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- New editors are not regularly treated nastily; a few examples is not representative of the thousands of new articles processed every day. In some cases, I've gone out of my way to help people improve articles so that they may be kept and I know others do so as well.
- The other way of looking at this is that we'll end up with a great pile of horrible, POV pushing, marketing copy and other garbage. My recommendation is that if people want to shoot for quantity versus quality, then rewrite the CSD policy so that only pure vandalism, blatant hoaxes and attack pages can be deleted. I assure you we'll end up with more than our fair share of unreferenced, unwikified articles about myspace bands, fringe publications, and questionable facts in general. I see this project as a reactionary response to a non-issue. Everyone and their cousin who has ever written something on Wikipedia and had it deleted has complained about it afterwards. I thank god I don't bother with cleanup except in articles I actually write or take a specific interest in. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I would be interested in the supporting evidence that "New editors are not regularly treated nastily" In support of my view that they are, I have this study to back it up, and the observations of several journalists. [Would you be interested to read many more?]
- I am concerned that so many editors regularly call editors contributions "garbage". Is Matrena Balk garbage?
- Ikip (talk) 06:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- WP:AGF is still a core policy. This study and the experience of a few possibly-biased journalists (who may or may not simply be deliberately hunting for something scandalous to write about) do not represent scientific research and assume bad faith or at least willful negligence. Newpage patrollers do not act in bad faith nor are they willfully negligent and the suggestion that they do or are is offensive. As several people have now said, data that represents the reality of the situation could be obtained by watching newpages in realtime and/or reviewing logs. Saying "that's too hard" elicits little sympathy from me: few things worth doing are ever easy. I would be more inclined to believe your claims if people were running a proper study instead of a few experienced editors creating socks and using them to set traps.
- I don't recall anyone ever calling Matrena balk "garbage", so your over-simple rhetorical device seems to lack a few gears. It's a shame you are so concerned. Spend two weeks patrolling newpages, walk a mile in my shoes and and then maybe you'll comprehend the reality of the new-article situation. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 23:26, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- It seems a bit ironic that your complaint would be that you were caught in a trap designed to ensnare the imperfect. It seems like the readiness with which we speedy delete new articles is itself a trap designed to ensnare the imperfect. I don't mean this to be a personal attack - I think that perhaps we do too much to encourage admins to delete first and ask questions later.Rich0 (talk) 19:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Those journalists and the editors of this study, "assume bad faith or at least willful negligence"? Whereas those who are CSDers protect Wikipedia from the "great pile of horrible, POV pushing, marketing copy and other garbage"?
All CSDers want is respect and recognition for the hard work you do, people just don't realize how bad the new-article situation is?
When you hear someone say "elicits little sympathy from me" does this evoke a negative or positive response?
Yes, CSDers are very, very important. Yes, you are correct, I apologize, no one ever said Matrena balk was garbage. While shoveling the "garbage" Matrena balk was in that "great pile". So there was either (a) a mistake, (b) Matrena balk is garbage, or (c) something in between. No one is questioning your dedication to Wikipedia, we respect the work you do. I think people are only trying to make sure only the garbage gets thrown out, not potentially notable articles too. As an experienced CSDer that is why we need your help in suggesting solutions.
"I would be more inclined to believe your claims if people were running a proper study" well, why don't we set one up then. If "that's too hard" I would be happy to help. But keep in mind if you are interested in helping create this study, that unfortunately, there seems to be a group of editors, that no matter how much evidence is provided, their stance will never change. Ikip (talk) 10:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Jake Wartenberg's experience
I created Antonio del Río as Speedmark (talk · contribs). It was tagged with {{db-bio}} within three minutes while it was in this state. The article at no time met the speedy or deletion criteria. When the article was in this state the user who tagged the page placed a {{hangon}} tag. When I had expanded the article to this the tagger removed both the {{db-bio}} and {{hangon}} tags. He then placed a {{wikify}} and proceeded to editwar with me over it, reverting twice and adding it the third time even when the article was wikified in this state.
I imagine a newbie bitten here. This isn't particularly meant as a criticism of the tagging user; I don't think that my experience was at all atypical, especially given the results the other participants of this project have documented.
— Jake Wartenberg 19:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Interesting. I won't be doing any further CSD's, as it appears they're really not worth the energy. Might even give a pass on tagging too, since that also seems to offend people.
- Cheers,
- Bagheera (talk) 20:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Please understand that driving users away was never anyone's intention. Your work here is definitely appreciated; please don't think otherwise. The hope is simply that these writeups will provide us all with lessons on how to improve and make this project a more welcoming place. — Jake Wartenberg 20:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Jake, I understand the intent isn't to drive contributors away. But a "Dude, I think you're being a little aggressive on the CSD's Give 'em a little more time" would probably have been more effective. At least in my case. As I posted in my own page, I'm going to step away from tagging and such and simply correct obvious grammatical and typographical errors. Much less likely to step on someone's toes.
- Cheers, Bagheera (talk) 21:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
- Just follow the tagging rules to the letter and you won't go wrong. I would also suggest giving an article 10-20 minutes before tagging to develop. ViridaeTalk 00:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Riana's experience
I created this account under the username 莲乸 (talk · contribs), which is an approximate transliteration of my name in Mandarin. I deliberately selected a non-English username, as I've noticed some bias against users with foreign usernames (and, I freely admit, I have fallen prey to this on one or two occasions). Not an attempt to trap NPPers, just a bit of a twist in the experiment.
The account's contribs clearly indicate that I haven't waited the requisite 7 days - not even 24 hours - but I think the experiment's played itself out as far as possible.
The term is valid, an extremely important element of Chinese nationalism and Communist Party historiography. Cursory Googling reveals as much, and even more results under different names ("century of national humilation", "hundred years of humiliation"... you get the picture).
Overall I'd class my experience as extremely positive. The article was tagged at the ubiquitous 2-minute mark by Wuhwuzdat (talk) under A1 (insufficient context), despite the article not meeting this standard at the time, in my opinion (as someone who both writes the occasional article and deletes a fair share of speedies). I received the automatic {{firstarticle}} and speedy tag that Twinkle provides. I added a {{hangon}}, which was removed along with the speedy tag by JohnCD (talk) within 7 minutes of tagging - a very decent response time IMO. He didn't move my comments to the talkpage, but I don't think they needed to be.
As JohnCD was removing these tags I was writing a message on Wuhwuzdat's talkpage asking him not to delete my article. Here comes the only negative aspect of my experience - Wuhwuzdat removed my message without responding to it, merely citing the "violation" (strong word!) of some "rules" on his talkpage.
- If I were a newbie, I would not have known about the removal and would have remained confused about the speedy tag, given that I would not have utilised the convenience of a watchlist, or known how to track my contributions.
- At least 2 of the "rules" I ignored - not beginning with a section title and not leaving a signature - are rules I occasionally flout even as an old-and-mouldy user. Were it not for Mediawiki's section title reminder, I would probably leave tons of messages without a heading. While this probably speaks to my early-onset dementia, I am about 80% sure that Wuhwuzdat would not have blanket-removed a message from, say, me.
- The lack of response was obviously rather rude.
Apart from this the experience was, as I say, extremely positive. Skomorokh (talk) did a wonderful rewrite as the above event took place, continuing to do so over the next several diffs. He misunderstood my English and inserted an error at one stage, which I notified him about, receiving a kind response and a further rewrite. I received more help from Msrasnw (talk), pointing to some links in another article (some of which I'd added myself, days ago, under my main account! ;) ).
DGG (talk) also noticed the article, placing a {{NPOV}} on it. While I would have liked to have seen a note on the talkpage (which the tag requests but admittedly does not explicitly require), I agree with the addition. I requested clarification from Msrasnw, who left me some very helpful pointers.
I'm generally very happy with the experience. Wuhwuzdat's treatment left me a little cold, but everyone else involved went above and beyond. I frankly wish people would be this helpful when I write articles on topics I'm not too sure about! :P
The only thing I wonder is whether an actual newbie would have been as persistent as I was in requesting help and clarification. ~ Riana ⁂ (lián-nǎ), 03:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Posted clearly near the top of my talk page, in bold text, is this; "I reserve the right to delete any postings from people unwilling or unable to obey these simple requests.". If deliberately flouting the rules posted at the top of the page gave you an experience you did not like, I would strongly suggest reading any such headers posted on users talk pages in the future. WuhWuzDat 06:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'd say having a list of rules on your talk page is pretty DICKish to begin with, and removing comments – especially from newbies – that fail to comply with them highly uncivil. If I, as a Wikipedia oldtimer, ever had occasion to leave you a message on your talkpage and encountered those rules, I probably simply wouldn't bother leaving you a message at all. +Angr 07:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I am glad to note that your incivility extends to all. Equal opportunities are ideal.
- On a less sarcastic note, do you really think new editors read headers like that? It's an overwhelming amount of information to have to read. I have a similar list of "rules" on my talkpage but I certainly do not remove comments that don't comply with them, I merely refactor them. I find your actions yesterday, and your attitude today, extremely worrying. ~ Riana ⁂ 11:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I agree that simply removing posts from a well-intentioned newbie isn't exactly welcoming. It's fine to have ground rules set for your talk page, but please try to have a bit more tolerance. –Juliancolton | Talk 19:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
- You did a brilliant job of (a) deception - I was aware of this experiment, but never for a moment suspected your article, (b) choosing an important and under-represented subject, and (c) writing it in such an inarticulate and POV way that it seemed to beg for deletion. I will admit that when I removed the speedy and hangon tags my intention was to move your message to the talk page and then PROD the article as OR; if I had succeeded in doing that I would probably have gone on to do some searches and then removed the PROD, but after a couple of edit conflicts Skomorokh had started his rewrite, I had found the "see also" link I added, and it became clear that others were taking an interest and the article was going somewhere. There no longer seemed any point adding your "hangon" message to the talk page. What I didn't do but should have done is give you a message saying not to worry about speedy deletion and giving some advice; you had edited again and so would have seen that the speedy tag had gone, but could probably have used some encouragement. JohnCD (talk) 11:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I think you handled it very well, John. Kudos :) ~ Riana ⁂ 11:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I would probably have prodded or AFD'ed it; as User:JohnCD said, it was written "in such an inarticulate and POV way that it seemed to beg for deletion." To generalize: If you knew some language x and were a new user, how likely would you be to start a page on an x-language web site where you put 4 words in your own native language as part of the definition of the subject of the page? Bwrs (talk) 12:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
JC's experience as a newbie
Under the username Full Gale (talk · contribs) I created Ashokan High Point (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch as a poorly-formatted and terribly organized, yet still adequately notable. I fully expected it to be tagged for cleanup or proposed for deletion, but instead, Suffusion of Yellow (talk · contribs) stepped in and turned it into a legitimate page. Subsequently, they left a welcome on my talk page. I must say I'm thoroughly impressed by their contributions and I suggest all other editors work to duplicate his efforts. –Juliancolton | Talk 04:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- I don't think I deserve too much credit for that one. I had been made aware of this experiment (and had skimmed this page) just a few hours before I edited that article. Durova (talk · contribs) had in fact used the phrase "referenced but badly formatted stubs" and it was certainly on my mind at the time. I'm not saying I wouldn't have cleaned it up (I have a pro-mountain POV), but I don't know if this result should count. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 06:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
- Absolutely this counts. The idea behind this page is to improve the new page patrol process. If we were trying to hide this process whilst it was taking place and produce a report showing just how bad things were in the fall of 2009 we would have followed a very different methodology. ϢereSpielChequers 09:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Report by Coffee
I created the account McJombo Sails (and informed ArbCom), to help with WP:NEWT, on 12NOV09. I originally edited the user page and talk page saying hello, then proceeded to Talk:Main Page and asked if I could do anything to help, I was then welcomed; after that McJombo created his first article: Broadway Rag. Broadway Rag was not tagged for CSD, and survived the duration of this test.
- The second article I created was Tornado Jockey, I made a particular note not to source anything, and make it sound as "newbieish" as possible. It was tagged for deletion, 1 hour and 43 minutes after creation, by an editor, as CSD A7. A7 of course doesn't apply to software articles, and as Tornado Jockey is a desktop based game, it is software. An admin declined the speedy and put a notice on the tagger's talk page concerning this.
- The third article I created was Polar Golfer, again taking note to not source the article. It was tagged for CSD A7 by an editor, 58 minutes after creation, at the same time he tagged Tornado Jockey, and Super Granny. Again CSD didn't apply due to it being software. An admin declined this one as well, leaving a note on the talk page.
- The fourth article I created was Super Granny, as the previous two it was made in a poor fashion. It was tagged 2 minutes later as CSD A1, I put a {{hangon}} tag on the article, and left a note on the talk page saying that I thought it was notable. The article did have enough context to identify the subject and therefore did not meet the criteria for CSD. 1 hour and 17 minutes later the article was deleted per CSD A7. Again the article was about a game (which is software) and therefore did not meet the criteria for speedy deletion. I left a note on the deleting admin's talk page, begging him to help me, he didn't reply. I re-created the article 9 minutes later, and left a note on the talk page asking for it to not be deleted again. 2 minutes later an editor tagged it for CSD A7, he then proceeded to tag Tornado Jockey and Polar Golfer under the same criteria. I placed a {{hangon}} tag on the article. Another admin declined the speedy.
- The final article I created was Blackhawk Striker 2, again with the same editing style. It was tagged for PROD, and as I couldn't find any substantial refs, I went ahead and deleted it.
- This shows a need for more scrutiny when tagging articles, too many editors and admins seem to think that the faster an article is gone the better. Taking a few extra seconds to look over what you're tagging/deleting isn't that hard.
Angr's experience
I created two articles under two different names: Kheew created Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev, and User:Intaritul created Jean Palaprat. The only thing that happened to either article was that Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev got patrolled one minute after creation: Jean Palaprat is still unpatrolled, neither article was tagged for anything at all, neither article was cleaned up or wikified or touched at all by anyone. And neither newbie was welcomed. So my newbies don't feel bitten, but neither do they feel welcome, or feel like anyone cares about these articles at all.
During the past week, I have also done a lot of new page patrolling, which I previously virtually never did, because I wanted to see what it was like being on the other end. And I've learned that new page patrolling is hard. You can't just open ten tabs at a time and zip through the pages. First you have to decide whether or not the article is speediable, which often means Googling a few select phrases of the text to see if it's a copyvio. If it isn't one, and if the article isn't otherwise speediable, the hard part begins. That's when you have to do at least some cursory wikification, grammar corrections often as not, and you have to search for at least a few external links to add so the article is at least somewhat verifiable. When you've committed yourself to patrolling a new page, you have to count on it taking up to as much as half an hour per article! So WP:NEWT has given me not only new sympathy for newbies, but also new respect for NPPers. +Angr 20:12, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Henrik's experience
All in all, I was positively surprised. I was particularly impressed when Jean-Paul Costa went from this to this in five minutes after creation. None of the articles were tagged for deletion, despite being unreferenced and being created by a username which could be interpreted as promotional. The rest were also correctly tagged as unreferenced and quickly expanded into properly formatted and categorized stubs. Kudos to the new page patrollers! If I have anything to complain about, it is that my user missed a welcome. As a new user, I would have been impressed by Wikipedia's speed and attention, but the article improvements felt more like actions of an unseen machinery, rather than a community one could join. henrik•talk 21:41, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Awards
Those who have rescued our newbies articles from deletion, especially non-admins declining speedies may be awarded the rescue barnstar:
- Parameter: {{subst:The Rescue Barnstar 3|message ~~~~}}
Those who have gone out of their way to be nice and helpful to our newbies may well deserve the random acts of kindness barnstar:
- Parameter: {{subst:The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar|message ~~~~}}
Participants whose socks have created good newbie articles may be rewarded with the Righteous Sock award:
- Parameter: {{subst:The Righteous Sock Barnstar|your message here ~~~~}}
The NEWT notice is a polite way to inform other editors that they have inadvertently become part of this experiment, such as through tagging one of the articles involved. Judicious use of the message parameter is strongly recommended, especially if you are critical of their actions.
- Parameter: {{subst:NEWT notice|your "newbie" account|discussion thread|your additional message ~~~~}}
proposals inspired by these tests
- strategy:Proposal:Speedy deletion - 24 hour pause for some articles
- strategy:Proposal:Welcome all useful new users, if necessary by a bot
- Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Suggestion - authors must be informed
- Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SDPatrolBot II a bot that would do this
- Wikipedia talk:Newbie treatment at CSD#Proposal/Idea for NPP changes - Twinkle and Huggle scripts for newpage and construction tags
- Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Should unsourced become a speedy deletion criterion?
- Wikipedia talk:Newbie treatment at CSD#Informing taggers that you've declined their tags
- MediaWiki talk:Welcomecreation review the welcome screen that you briefly see when you create a new account.