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

Collaborative views

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In favour of proposal

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Notes:

1. Implementing the proposal would result in non-auto-confirmed editors being unable to create articles without assistance. Assisted creation options would include the Articles for Creation system, the Article Wizard (an exemption can be engineered for non-autoconfirmed editors using it) and the use of userspace drafts in combination with a request to move the draft to mainspace.
2. Users become autoconfirmed automatically after 10 edits and 4 days; after this, they can create articles without any assistance as at present.
3. Most new editors do not start off by creating articles. Most now start off by editing existing articles, so this only affects a minority (approximately 1/4).
4. The proposal applies only to restrictions on creating articles (that is, pages in mainspace).
5. Non-auto-confirmed users currently cannot move userspace drafts to mainspace themselves. This puts users more conscientiously putting in the work to do a draft (for example, using the option in the Article Wizard) at a disadvantage compared to those who dive straight into mainspace.
6. As the number of articles grows (6,822,575 and counting), the number of editors needed to reasonably manage and maintain those articles grows. This means that increasingly less emphasis needs to be placed on attracting editors who merely wish to create a low quality article and then leave, and more on those who are willing to become longer-term contributors interested in maintaining and improving existing articles. That means finding ways to allow the existing community to better support newcomers along the learning curve of contributing.

Advantages of proposal: primary

1. Better new user experience in creating articles, as they will have a much clearer expectation of community standards, either from experience gathered, or from positive feedback from the community. (The status quo emphasises negative "You're doing it wrong!" feedback to new article creation, via rapid deletion and/or problem tagging.)
2. Encouraging change in Wikipedian culture to emphasise supporting and educating newcomers, rather than seeing them as creators of problems to be dealt with.
3. Recruiting and retaining editors is critical, but not just any editors. Greater focus on converting readers into longer-term contributors, by giving them support and making them feel welcomed by the community. This may mean a reduction in the number of new accounts, if some editors are put off, but if more are converted into long-term experienced contributors, that is well worth the loss of some (even many) toe-dippers/spammers/self-promoters/jokers.
4. By recruiting and retaining more editors who become experienced Wikipedians, we are more likely to expand the coverage of Wikipedia in the areas it has real gaps. Clearing up after jokers and self-promoters who have no further interest in the encyclopedia detracts from identifying and really supporting those who might help Counter Systemic Bias.

Advantages: secondary

1. Reduced workload at WP:NPP and WP:CSD, freeing up editor time for other things - notably the increased workload at WP:AFC which would result.
2. Fewer junk articles (WP:BLP violations, spam, etc) picked up immediately by Google etc. (Google is very quick to index new Wikipedia articles, much slower to delist after deletion, and may provided cached versions some time after deletion on Wikipedia.) There are other ways to solve this, but we've never managed to agree on one, and this proposal would have a substantial effect in this area.

Responses to points made elsewhere

1. "many new editors create articles for the immediate thrill of doing so" (View of Ironholds) - it is questionable whether it's "many" or whether such thrill-seekers are really the sort of editors we can reasonably hope to turn into long-term contributors. It can equally be argued that the key emotion is "yes, I CAN create a new article - Wikipedia is open to me". With the vast majority of new articles being deleted, that emotion can be fostered rather better via the assistance mechanisms mentioned (eg AFC).
2. "AFC does not provide immediacy" - the Article Wizard assistance option does.
3. "Both AFC and Article Wizard may be offputting" - the userspace draft assistance option is there as an alternative
4. "People won't know about these assistance options anyway." - we should make MediaWiki:Nocreatetext ("you can't create this article" message) more like MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext ("you can't edit this article" message), pointing to relevant options.
5. "This change will make it more difficult for college students to create new articles as part of class assignments." - most assignments involve students doing some editing first. In any case, the assistance options (including the minimal assistance option of userspace draft + request to move to mainspace) obviate this. In addition, faculty or TA can set up new pages for students to "fill in" or otherwise ensure that students know about the assistance options.

Against proposal

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1. If we apply our existing notability guidelines to all the cultures of the world, we have millions of potential new articles to write, most of which are not going to be written by the existing community.
2. The Special:NewPages backlog is not yet close to be being maxed out (30 days).
3. This change will make it more difficult for college students to create new articles as part of class assignments.
4. This change will cause us to lose untold numbers of good new articles (even if they are the minority of the new articles that get created), and thus will be a net loss for the encyclopedia.
5. This proposal is based mainly on opinions and anecdotes, rather that any systematic analysis of the problem.
6. This proposal is against the grain of Wikipedia as manifest in Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
7. This will drive off countless new users who create an article for the 'thrill' of it.
8. It will cause a backlog at AFC and a large amount of work for people tidying up misplaced AFC tags and misplaced AFCs.
9. Many "new" editors who create an account to start a new article have already edited as IP's, so the proposal might make little difference to the amount of editing experience new article authors have.
10. We should focus on making it easier to create articles which meet Wikipedia's standards rather than adding more obstacles.

Responses

1. "Most new editors do not start off by creating articles." Finding a user whose first edit is a creation of an article is easy. Any one of them can be a valuable contributor. In fact, it would be interesting to see the development of people who started out by creating an article with people who started out by edits to existing ones.

Other

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Other This should apply to file upload too, not just article creation. People get clobbered for NFCC vios and lash out and leave. It's better to not let them upload images until they know what they're doing. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 07:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I was invited to comment on this, on my watchlist page.. I simply wish to vote in favour of this proposal.. Shouldn't there be a simple way for people to say such things ? (no offence to anyone) talk