Wikipedia:Requests for comment/new users

Dear all, I am opening up this debate on interactions with new users of wikipedia as I feel there have been alarm bells in this area which we can no longer afford to ignore. As such, the focus can be on any aspect or feature of wikipedia which affects how established editors interact with novice editors (and IPs for that matter). Other people are more than welcome to make new observations and slot in new proposals into the below. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:28, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Rather than ambitiously try to make wholesale changes to the way editors interact with one another, I have attempted to focus on problematic areas in the algorithm of dispute resolution on the 'pedia from go to whoa. I am concerned that approaches such as this are too nebulous to be effective.

We had a recent poll on civility (June-August 2009), which suggested we are being too harsh on new users, and highlighted problems with incivility to new users at Recent Changes Patrol and Admin Noticeboard and Incidents boards

The arbitration committee often fields emails from users blocked after disputes have arisen after material has been deleted or removed, and have to remind them that the arbitration committee is the last resort after other mechanisms for dispute resolution have failed. However, if the early stages are not amenable to new users then we risk driving many potential editors away.

There is already evidence for a drop-off in new users, and although the evidence for incivility as a cause for this is only anecdotal, there are plenty of anecdotes.

• User:Seddon/State of the wiki shows reduction levels of edits
• McKenna, Gene (September 4, 2009). "Bullypedia, A Wikipedian Who's Tired of Getting Beat Up". Retrieved 2009-10-05.
• "Proposal:Be More Inclusive and Friendly to Newbies". Retrieved 2009-10-05.
• "Wikipedia approaches its limits - The online encyclopedia is about to hit 3m articles in English – but growth is stalling as 'inclusionists' and 'deletionists' fight for control". ... a change by a casual editor is more likely than ever to be overturned, while changes by the elite are rarely questioned. "To power users it feels like Wikipedia operates in the way it always has – but for the newcomers or the occasional users, they feel like the resistance in the community has definitely changed." While Chi points out that this does not necessarily imply causation, he suggests it is concrete evidence to back up what many people have been saying: that it is increasingly difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of the site's inner core of editors.
• (folks, feel free to add more anecdotes here)

Drive-by tagging

In general, comments on how we do this are invited. Are patrollers too easy to slap tags on articles without attempting to improve them?

Was Are patrollers too eager to what was intended? That's how I tentatively rephrased this, but I quickly self-reverted when I realized that others might have read the question otherwise, and have replied yes or no to their own, different, and equally valid interpretations. Hoary (talk) 01:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes (Driveby tagging)

1. This is a huge problem, but people doing it rarely perceive it that way. Since it is a hundred times easier to add a tag than to remove it (by addressing its issues), vastly more are added than removed. Unless something changes, we are heading for Taggepedia, where the vast majority of articles have one or more maintenance tags at the top, in the face of the readers we would like not to drive away. I think an ideal solution would be to have a third space, besides "article" and "talk", where line-by-line maintenance info could live. Antandrus (talk) 21:22, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Very much agree. If you tag, you must at least be on talk with some suggestions as to how the article can be improved in the manner you would like to see. IronDuke 21:40, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
3. Agree to a certain extent. It is better to tag than to not tag, even if you can't really say anything more--many tags are obvious about what needs to be improved. Much better to do this than to pass over the problems altogether. Some specific help , however, is even more useful. New eds. really appreciate specific help more than the generalized statements of tags. DGG ( talk ) 22:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Agree very much. I don't actually think "it is better to tag than to not tag" -- if your knowledge of the subject is sufficient for you to recognize a problem with the text, then it ought to be sufficient for you to make some actual effort to fix the text (and I mean editing the article, not merely adding to the discussion page). I know some people like to rack up their edit count with drive-by tagging, but that's just leaving a mess for others to clean up -- everyone who leaves a tag should first ask themselves whether (a) they know enough to recognize a real problem (rather than an imagined one), and (b) it is possible to fix the problem immediately or prefaced by an effort to find substantiating or disconfirming sources.MikeGodwin (talk) 22:18, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
5. Agree, and suggestion. What if we made tags like, well, wikiproject tags? You add a template to the talkpage, where it's placed within invisible maintainance categories that allow gnomes to find them but doesn't disrupt the layout for readers. The templates could easily be amended to replace "A user has tagged this article as..." to "User:X has tagged this article as...". Ironholds (talk) 23:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC) ¶ I agree with this suggestion. Some tags are necessary to warn the unindoctrinated reader, but many of them would be more useful on the talk page, or even better replaced with a proper comment on the talk page, which is far less intimidating to new contributors (who may even appreciate having their work taken seriously.)—— Shakescene (talk) 00:55, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
6. Yes, but not an easy one to fix. Simply tagging less just shifts the problem elsewhere. Rather than potentially offending or confusing new users, we just lose track of which articles need specific improvements, hampering cleanup efforts in the long term. What we need to do is get more users involved in actually fixing articles. We need to make it clear, perhaps by restricting article creation, that the focus of the English Wikipedia needs to be on improving existing articles rather than creating new ones. Right now, the effort to actually improve articles is about as effective as trying to drain the ocean with a bucket. Mr.Z-man 23:58, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
7. Yes, of course, a veritable blight. Paul August ☎ 00:18, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
8. Not sure this is really a new user issue, but adding a tag to indicate something that is obvious at a glance (e.g. unwikified for an article that is a solid block of text without links) doesn't seem useful; perhaps would be less disruptive if the tags were smaller or only added a category. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
9. Strongly agree, particularly with regard to the ridiculous practice of slapping tags on an article while the original author is attempting to work on it. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 04:46, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
10. Tags usually look bad, and they are demoralizing to the people who write articles. Instead of asking, "Would this article would be better if the issue I want to tag it with is addressed?" we should be asking, "Does this tag improve the article as it stands today? If 1000 people read this article before it improves, are those readers better off or worse off seeing this article with a tag on it?" In many cases, adding a tag makes an article worse. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:17, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
11. Sort of: generally, "yes" but not "yes enough". But answering "yes" to the question as asked does not mean "yes it is bad and must be stopped". Quite the opposite. It must be far more vigorous and unforgiving. I'd rather see a clear message sent to article creators: "You created it. You, and only you are responsible to bringing it to our minimal standards. Do it or welcome to deletion process." NVO (talk) 11:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

    Why shouldn't we impose the same obligation on drive-by taggers? "You created this tag, and so you are responsible for fixing the problem you've identified?"MikeGodwin (talk) 15:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

    "Yes, I created this tag, and I stand by it. No, you created this unreferenced mess in the first place; at best I can remove all unsourced info except the name, but is it really what you want?" - Be real, how many uninvolved editors will spend their time fixing Ramesh Kumar ? Creators have interest in their articles. No one else does. NVO (talk) 19:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

    I have myself improved many articles that new authors did not better understand how to improve. So yes... there are editors who patch up articles that they did not themselves create. Being an editor of Wikipedia carrys with it a responsibilty that goes beyond just those areas where an editor has personal interest. If a newcomer is not chased off these pages, they quite often accept that responsibility and become terrific contributors. The crux here is that Wikipedia must be more newcomer-friendly. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 19:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

    @MGodwin: Because unfortunately, at any given time we probably have 10 times as many users willing to add to the backlog of poorly made articles (creating them) as we have users willing to try to identify problems (tagging them). Which leaves slightly more than zero users with the willingness and the time to fix the articles, if the article creators aren't willing to do it. Fixing the problems can't occur without finding them first, so we have to find a way to either decrease the rate of poor article creation, and/or increase the number of people willing to repair them.

    @MichaelQSchmidt: This is a volunteer project, no one has a "responsibility" to do anything that they don't want to do. Mr.Z-man 20:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

12. On March 20, 2008, Nicholson Baker wrote a New York Review of Books article entitled "The Charms of Wikipedia" Baker was reviewing Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (a book which ironically went up for deletion itself). In this review Baker stated: "There are some people on Wikipedia now who are just bullies, who take pleasure in wrecking and mocking peoples' work...They poke articles full of warnings and citation-needed notes and deletion prods till the topics go away." PC PRO magazine journalist Dick Pountain followed up by writing... (continued on talk page) Ikip (talk) 15:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
13. We need to explain to new editors precisely what Wikipedia is trying to achieve and its rules. One reason I stuck around is because someone did this for me. One of my earliest edits to Wikipedia was the following uncited addition to the Mary Wollstonecraft article. Kaldari left me an extensive talk page message, explaining inline citations, featured articles, original research, etc. This kind of careful, patient explanation from an actual person is invaluable. I went on to work with Kaldari on this article and, through him, met other Wikipedians and to write many FAs. :) This kind of communication is far more effective than tagging the article. Awadewit (talk) 18:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
14. Agree. No one ever fixes an article based on the tag banners anyway. Putting a citation needed tag next to a fact they personally honestly and sincerely disbelieve is true(and not just doing it all over the place as many unfortunately do), does get noticed and fixed at times. But I can't think of any occasion where a tag at the top of an article has done any good at all(other than the Rescue Squadron tag, of course). Dream Focus 18:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
15. Sort of. I don't think it needs to be required that a person "improve" an article, but I think the lack of communication with the folks working on the articles needs to be improved. If one tags an article, perhaps a note on the talk page as to why it was tagged. — Ched :  ?  18:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
16. Agree. Yes, those tagging are for the most part doing so with the best of good faith... but the tags rarely mean anything to a newcomer. Easier understanding of the growing levels of beauracracy should be made available to newcomers... and not just a "read this" type wikilink. A newcomer-friendly "newcomers guide to guidelines" should be made available. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 19:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
17. I've de-orphaned a few articles in my time, I think the process could be almost as easy and far less intimidating to newbies if orphans were marked with categories instead of tagged as orphans. You could even bot it with separate categories for 0, 1 and 2 mainspace links to articles other than lists or dab pages. ϢereSpielChequers 20:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
18. Yes. From the narrow perspective of tagging new articles of new users, I think the practice is discouraging. I see it as a barrier to entry (or at least significant resistance that must be overcome in order to participate respectfully). The Encyclopedia is being built by people, some of who, especially new users, have skills that may need to be developed. The veterans should respond with a respectful, humanized note about Da Rules, not a templated criticism. Like Roux and Christopher Parham, I believe many of the tags are not proportional to their message: many are long, coloured banners announcing a trivial feature has not been done and many should be placed on the talk page (not in the article). --maclean (talk) 18:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
19. Yes, drive-by tagging, unless for a specific purpose, is detrimental. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

    Ahhh ... but Julian, it helps one increase their edit count so easily. ;) — Ched :  ?  21:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

20. Driveby is an apt name for many taggers. Slapping a general cleanup tag on an article without adding anything to talk is nuts. I usually just delete such tags. If I work on the article long enough, I sometimes stumble on the actual problem and it normally would have been faster for the tagger to have just fixed it. A specific tag with details on talk can be very useful, but these are in the minority. Making newbies use the new improved Article Wizard would improve the quality of new articles so that they wouldn't need to be tagged. To illustrate that this isn't such a yes/no question, I've also posted under the No section. --UncleDouggie (talk) 09:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
21. Yes, huge problem compounded by editors who see this and just reverting as easy ways to up edit count - a status symbol in Wikipedia. There are editors that make a point patrol only for new editor's additions and either revert or tag and make no attempt to help new editors or improve content that might have a minor problem. That's all they do, they call it "vandal patrolling", and end up with huge edit counts in very short time - as opposed to an editor that takes the time to tries to help new editors. stmrlbs|talk 17:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
22. These tags are a plague. Wikipedia has flaws – it's well known. A select few, like {{autobiography}}, are needed. The rest are simply restatements of all that is inherently wrong with the open-editing model. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No (Driveby tagging)

1. I don't consider this a problem at all, in fact I am in favor of so-called "drive by" tagging, as long as the tags are accurately placed and any questionable tags (such as COI) explained on the talk page. I myself (as an IP) was introduced to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines through reading the various tags on the pages and their invitations for outside help. I think they greatly benefit the project as they let readers know that we are not a finished encyclopedia and we need all the help we can get. Furthermore, these tags group articles into cleanup categories which are easily used by editors focusing on a specific problem. If there are reports of newcomers being confused by our cleanup tags than the tags may need to be rewritten to point out the policies/gudelines in question and how a specific article may need to be fixed to address those policies/guidelines, but we shouldn't stop tagging just because a few of them may confuse some readers. ThemFromSpace 00:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Drive-by tagging in general is not a problem. Excessive tagging by some NPP and others may be a problem, but the principle of tagging is exactly that it can be done in a drive-by way. I have manually tagged 10,000 or so articles as BLP-unsourced, before most of this task was taken over by a (drive-by!) bot. I was not going to explain this on either the user talk page or the article talk page as well. I did not care whether these were old or new articles, and old or new editors either. Tagging is about articles, not about editors. Fram (talk) 07:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. I think what's needed is perhaps more guidance on what the tags mean and how to respond to them/interpret them, linked from each tag; a friendlier introduction for complete newbie editors and readers seeking clarification. I started a section in Wikipedia:Where to get feedback on your new article#What do these cleanup tags mean? with these thoughts, but it's not great as is - I mean something very newbie-friendly. Rd232 ^talk 12:45, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Echoing the above; Once an article is in the article space, it's fair game for any of our thousands of active users to mercilessly edit as they wish, within policy. If we don't want articles to be (accurately) tagged for issues, then I submit that we should encourage more userspace drafting. I see some tags as highlighting issues for which fixes might not be readily apparent - {{context}} is a good example - so relying on the authors, or those more familiar with the subject, makes some sense. ThemFromSpace has it right, in that we can't just tag an article, but we actually need to discuss why we tagged it, either on the article's talk page or the author's. A simple note that says "Look, your username matches the article title, that's not cricket, here's why..." is much preferable to "Baleeted, see WP:AUTOBIO". UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 15:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   Caveat: I'm taking "Drive By Tagging" as tagging without fixing. If someone tags an article and doesn't say why, on the talk page or the user's talk page? Not so much. "Sniping" may be the better term, here - the editor has no idea where the tag came from, or what it means. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 15:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   It depends on the tag. Many tags are pretty self-explanatory (albeit probably a bit Greek to newbies). Common exceptions (tags which really need explaining) include NPOV and (insert brain here). Rd232 ^talk 15:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

5. In the narrow context of new users (trying not to go past tagging in general, which has its share of general criticisms), if new users are offended by cleanup tags on the page, then there are other issues at hand, whether it be not knowing that they don't own the articles they create, not understanding the open and easily reversible nature of Wikipedia and other related wikis, or outright sensitivity issues. Could tags be improved as Rd232 suggested? Certainly. Also consider the implicit benefit (and utility) that such tags bring in organizing which articles need cleanup, copyediting, neutrality-check, etc. MuZemike 16:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
6. No. Tags, while useful for current editors, are infinitely more useful for readers--the people we are here for, which we keep forgetting. If a reader sees that information is uncited (for example), they know that the information in that article is less reliable. Perhaps what would be useful would be dividing tags into two categories: those aimed at editors (e.g. {{inuniverse}}) and those aimed at readers (e.g. {{cn}}), and place the former on the talkpage of the article. Perhaps to alleviate all concerns, {{articleissues}} needs to become a bot task (so it becomes automatic), and any non-inline tags get grouped into it. Rewrite it to be a little less annoying, stating "Editors have identified the following problems with the article, please see the talkpage for details." → ROUX ₪ 17:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
7. No, in general, I don't think that "drive-by tagging" is a problem. There are certainly some tags that irritate newbies, but these are generally tags that communicate unwanted information to people that are going to be unhappy with Wikipedia's policies anyway. There's no truly "friendly" way to tell someone that their tiny new business can't have an article on Wikipedia. "No notability" means "no article", no matter whether you say this with {{subst:prod}}, WP:AFD, {{notability}}, or a personally written custom message. Tagging has the significant advantage of providing links to relevant pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
8. No. If an article is posted unwikified, it is likely that the author does not know wikicode. Slapping a {{wikify}} tag to the article will alert him of the problem and direct him to the resources required for fixing it. That is useful communication. The same applies mutatis mutandis to most other tags.  Sandstein  19:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
9. No. It's actually very interesting to read all of the comments on both sides of this thread, because editors on the two sides are closer to agreeing than the yes/no divide might imply. I think most of us agree that we don't want to discourage new editors due to tagging, and that we don't condone unexplained tags, but that we also don't want to leave flawed material just sitting there, and while "fix it yourself" is a noble ideal, in practice we are all volunteers and there are limits. But I want to point out something that could be collateral damage of this talk thread. The phrase "drive-by" is a loaded one, and goes way beyond tagging of new pages created by new editors. (Indeed, one could think of "drive-by" page creation, too.) Some editors who comment on how they feel tags diminish the value of pages (one point where I do disagree), are not just commenting on new pages, but on pages in general. I've seen POV-pushers who howl over POV tags and use the same "drive-by" phrase as a pseudo-argument. Let's please be careful not to provide ammunition for bad behavior that has nothing to do with new editors. Tags serve a purpose, when used responsibly. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
10. I don't see this as a significant issue; if articles need improvement, then tagging them is a very good way to draw attention to that. That said, the backlogs in the cleanup categories mean that there is far more addition than removal of tags. Stifle (talk) 08:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
11. When I was a new user, the tags did not bother me, unless accompanied by a sarcastic edit summary. The tags were helpful, because they showed me that the community felt that the problem was so commonplace that a tag had been made for it. Abductive (reasoning) 19:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
12. Tagging, when used appropriately, and explained on Talk pages where necessary, is very useful. It's a good way to introduce new users to basic policy, and inform them of issues with their work (they may not even know about Talk pages yet). For other readers, in encourages them to contribute by highlighting areas where their work would be particularly useful. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 14:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
13. Drive-by tagging is almost all I do on en-wiki. I see it very probable that there are wikipedians with a very narrow scope like me, focused on a particular aspect of maintenance: copyedit, wikify, add images, link sources to sentences and so on. Automatic listings of problem articles make their work possible. Or they may very well be a product of my imagination, like gnomes and fairies, and tagging would not be useful.--M4gnum0n (talk) 14:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
14. Patrollers don't have all the time in the world. It is better to do 10 drive-by tags than 1 cleanup, because at least the reader is informed of the problem. Moreover, the author probably knows more about the subject than the patroller, and so should be the one improving the article. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
15. Tagging is less traumatic to an author than proposing deletion. At least readers see in the meantime that we know there are problems with the article and perhaps they won't think that all of Wikipedia is poorly written. I just did a new page review of Lehren.tv, which was a mess. It looks notable so I just tagged it. If there was only one problem, I would have fixed it instead, but it just needs too much work (although I at least did a move to fix the title). Someone else already came along and wikified it and removed the deadend tag. There are links in the other tags to point the author to resources for making improvements. The only other option is to userify the article until it's ready, which I have also done in extreme cases. --UncleDouggie (talk) 09:37, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
16. There's a question of volume here. The quantity of new articles here is literally overwhelming. I don't have the statistics on how many articles fall through the patrolling net, but I suspect it's significant - anyhow, there's never a shortage of articles anytime I drop by NPP. It's really a question more of well-designed tags that let the authors know what to fix. If they have questions, they can always ask the tagger directly. But expecting a personalized case-specific message for every tag will crush what effectiveness NPP has. Ray^Talk 23:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
17. I've got to mirror the comments of RayAYang; if drive-by tagging is a problem, it's because there's not enough NPP being done; I've recently done some, and it's like drinking from a firehose. I hate to think what RCP is like. The tags explain what's wrong, but sure, they could be more tutorial-like. They WP:AGF, so I until NPP is under control, I don't see that more than just tagging can be done. It's easy to make an article, harder to make an acceptable one. Wizard 2.0 is helpful is knocking a lot of this crap on the head. Josh Parris 04:06, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
18. Driveby tagging is good. We should not make patroller's job harder by requiring them to do a massive investigation before tagging an article. If we want to stop clobbering brand new articles the minute that they're first saved, we should modify the template code and/or software, so that a patroller can tag the new article without delay, but the tag wouldn't actually take effect for an hour. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 07:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Fence-sitting (Driveby tagging)

1. It depends on the tag, the tagger, and other matters. A huge number of untagged articles richly deserve warning tags. A great number of tags seem to have been added by patrollers with minimal concentration spans (which is not to denigrate all, or even the majority of, patrollers). One simple rule that all should observe is this: if a tag refers the reader to a discussion on the talk page, there must be a lucid and helpful comment on the talk page. If a patroller either has no time to state on the talk page what they think is the obvious, or disagrees with the way the tag points to the talk page, they should not use that tag. -- Hoary (talk) 01:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

   Yeah, I don't think anybody has ever been upset by the {{Uncategorized}} tag, for example. Abductive (reasoning) 21:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

2. It depends. Sometimes you don't have the time, ability, knowledge or energy to fix an article, but you can tell there's a problem. That said, some tags might be best placed on the talk page; does the average reader care about consistency of citation style or wikifying, for instance? Some tags are necessary warnings to the reader, some are relatively minor maintenance, style or layout issues. Fences&Windows 01:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

   Citation style seems relevant to any reader who wants to try and track down the article's references; it's warning them they're not uniformly formatted. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

   How does a reader wanting to try to track down the article's references benefit from being told that these are not uniformly formatted? Incidentally, while a lack of consistency in the formatting of articles looks slipshod, it rarely strikes me as a serious problem. (I'm far more worried by bogus referencing, as where an assertion that brings in a first mention of an institution is "sourced" to a web page that describes [or merely mentions] the institution but provides no evidence to back up the specific assertion.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

   So long as all the relevant, useable information is included in a citation or footnote, I don't think uniformity or consistency is the main problem. It's better to fit the citation to the source or material than try to fit non-conforming information into one of those awful citation templates. The day of the week usually doesn't matter, for example, but for newspapers it's often useful to know when it's a Sunday edition — or when it's the Monday before, the Wednesday after or the Thursday after a Tuesday election (in the U.S.), or the Wednesday before, the Friday after or the Saturday after a Thursday election (in Great Britain). Some on-line newspaper articles give the author, date, edition and page number of the printed article (e.g. The New York Times), which should always be given for the benefit of those checking off-line in a library, but many don't (e.g. The New York Times). While you always want to cite the exact edition you're quoting from, it's often also helpful (within reason) to let readers know about other editions that are more recent, in paperback, or in print in their own countries. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to follow the article's existing order of first names, last names, title, date and publisher (or city of publication), but if it's important enough to regularize inconsistent orders in existing footnotes, then it's worth just doing it yourself, rather than pasting a tag onto it, which is more likely to upset editors or confuse readers than to help. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

   Seriously, the MOS is great and all, but it is a secondary concern to content, sourcing and factual accuracy. Our readers do not need warnings emblazoned across articles telling them that the house style is not being adhered to. Fences&Windows 22:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

3. As with all of this though, there are two sides to the coin. We shouldn't pretend a crappy article isn't a crappy article, but some of the taggings I see drive me nuts. I actually have tried to have a few of the tags themselves deleted in the past if I thought they were useless, but was shouted down each time. What is the point of adding {{uncategorized}} to an article when one can usually find a category and add it in about 5 seconds? I've even seen people add that tag at the same time they added a stub template, which adds it to categories, thus making it false to begin with. And an awful lot of users don't get that {{expand}} shouldn't be put on stubs, since it's already marked as a stub, which implies it needs expansion. My feeling is that more education as to the proper and careful use of tags is needed. I can't stand it when users use Friendly to add four or five tags to a page when they could just use {{articleissues}} and list the problems on the talk page, but they don't want to bother because that requires more thought than automated tools allow for. .ok, ok I'll stop foaming at the mouth and calm down now. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Don't know about the severity, but it is at least somewhat of a problem. It would be nice if there was, with some of the less self-explanatory tags, an integrated way to leave a note with some specifics (that way the patrollers also don't need to make a flow-breaking separate edit to the talkpage; although I'm speculating as I'm not a regular patroller). It also might be good if the tags left a record (one more accessible than trawling the article history) of who placed the tag in the first place so that editor might be contacted later if the reason for the tag's presence is unclear (or was used abusively). --Cybercobra (talk) 23:50, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments/suggestions (Driveby tagging)

• Is there some way to incorporate into the tags something like "You can ask for help from the editor who added this tag" (link leading to user talk + new section of the editor who added the tag)? Or maybe just link to a relevant noticeboard, or maybe Wikipedia:Reference desk? Right now the problem with most tags is that they say "Here's a problem, fix it" without giving any indication of how the user is supposed to do that: I don't think most users (especially new users) are used to the concept of research, which is what is needed to clear out an unreferenced tag. Nifboy (talk) 03:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• How about rewriting tags with newbies in mind? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 14:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, that would be welcome and welcoming. Abductive (reasoning) 19:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
• Hear hear! Josh Parris 03:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

• Why not make the tags smaller and not take up the whole page width? At the moment they are ridiculously intrusive. Fences&Windows 01:01, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

That's one thing that could be immediately helpful. There are many small articles, perhaps containing a single sentence and an infobox, which have a giant tag which is larger than the entire article. Rather than having a banner stretching across the page, how about a little tag off to the side containing something along the lines, in small font, "For issues with this article identified by Wikipedia editors, click here..." Antandrus (talk) 01:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

May be good for some issues (layout issues mainly), not for content issues though. We shouldn't hide the major problems many articles have, like being unsourced. Fram (talk) 07:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

It wouldn't be hiding the problems, it'd be making the box less disruptive to the article appearance. Compare:

Fences&Windows 23:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Many of the detailed templates have useful wikilinks to resources on how to make improvements. We could instead have a short name that links to another page containing the more detailed information. --UncleDouggie (talk) 10:11, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• I think less obtrusive page tags are a good idea. Also support more new-user-friendly ones too. Maybe a link to some examples Peregrine and they can be worked on individually. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I started here with some sample tags at User:MuZemike/Cleanup proposal. Basically, the verbiage is at a much lower level and is easier to read. I hope that's the desired direction here. MuZemike 02:09, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
• Killer problem is the invitation on the bottom of the "Sorry, didn't find your search term" special page to just create the article. This ought to throw you at the Wizard 2.0 to reduce the amount of speedies and other tagging that has to be done out of new-editor ignorance of policies. Josh Parris 09:28, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• How about automatic adding in these templates of text saying "for suggestions on how to correct/improve xxx - contact ~~~~", where ~~~~ would be automatically replaced by the tagger's signature to his talk page? I could help with these template changes stmrlbs|talk 17:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

CiterSquad

• Wikipedia:CiterSquad - helpful or harmful? How is it going? There has been some discussion on the talkpage about it. (link any specific ones) Is it worth changing the focus?

Comments (Citersquad)

• Definitely harmful. Adding those tags makes the entire encyclopedia look not trustworthy. Besides, there are 147,294 articles tagged as part of the project. There's no way we're ever going to cite every single one of them in a short time (if ever). Netalarmtalk 01:16, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• Then again, Wikipedia as a whole isn't trustworthy, so highlighting this is not a bad thing. We shouldn't hide the problems many articles have from our readers (and the articles tagged by the bot actually hide the problems from readers!). There are, apart from the 147,000 articles in Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot), another 182,000 unsourced tagged articles in Category:All articles lacking sources and again 53,000 more in Category:All unreferenced BLPs, or a total of 382,000 articles currently tagged as unsourced. Any project trying to do something about this (which is the goal of the Citersquad: the goal is not tagging, the goal is removing the tags by fixing the problem) should be lauded. Whether tagging is a problem is discussed in a section above: but why anyone would see the CiterSquad as a problem is beyond me. Fram (talk) 09:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• Anything that helps our readers to evaluate reliability of articles is a net benefit to the project. Anyone who says otherwise is focused on the editors and not the readers--it's much like focusing on making life better for the stage crew of a theatrical production; the focus must be on the audience experience. → ROUX ₪ 17:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• Its good to see just how many articles don't have references. Many people nominate something for deletion based on that alone, without checking for any themselves, saying its the responsibility to the article's creator, even if it was made years before that requirement came into place. Hopefully we won't have people using this to rampage about trying to eliminate an article, by prod, afd, or putting a redirect where its at now sometimes calling it a "merge". Usually they only target things that have few active editors or views, so not to get noticed and challenged for their actions though. Dream Focus 19:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

  One editor even took a list of stubs that had been un-edited for a couple years and started deleting them all. Some were clearly parts of a structure - like a language stub. Rich Farmbrough, 03:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

• I've never encountered them. What is it exactly that they do that people might disagree with? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 14:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
• Deeply and odiously harmful. Could someone please tell me how this helps the encyclopedia? A one-line stub. The tag is bigger than the article. If a person is standing in the desert sun thumbing a ride, do you stop your car, hang a sign around his neck saying "HEY! pick this person up! He needs a ride!" and then drive off? Wouldn't it be a better use of time to find a reference or otherwise improve the article rather than spray-painting one of these obnoxious tags on it? It absolutely floors me people do not see this unproductive behavior as the huge and unaddressed problem than it is. Antandrus (talk) 00:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

  So instead of attacking the project whose purpose is to find references, why not find a reference for the article? Rich Farmbrough, 04:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

• Problematic, per Antandrus. Good example; it demonstrates that the project (as its page indicates) is NOT about finding resources. If it was mainly about that, I wouldn't be against it.--Elvey (talk) 01:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for speedy deletion

Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion - specifically, are the criteria tight enough now? Too inclusive? Too exclusive?

About right (Criteria for speedy deletion)

1. Gotta stem the moderate but unceasing stream of completely hopeless vanity/crap articles somehow (e.g. everyone's local garage band). --Cybercobra (talk) 21:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
2. The criteria are fine. The careless use of it by some administrators is another matter. The 3 parts that needs to be fixed are One Admins should not be able to delete articles singlehanded except for abuse & vandalism. This is where the errors are made Two. It should be absolutely required to notify the editor. Even if the editor is a troll, the notice puts it on record. Three. The warning templates need to be improved, & encourage more specific information. DGG ( talk ) 22:15, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

   Your point One would be huge change to the existing criteria, would it not? It would essentially eliminate the concept of speedy deletion altogether--without singlehanded deletion, some form of consensus-gathering would have to be used for all articles except those two narrow categories you mention, right? So I'm puzzled by your statement. Chick Bowen 15:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

   My understanding of DGG's point is that Admins should only be speedy deleting articles listed here Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Singlehanded deletion of articles on site without notice leads to errors. --maclean (talk) 18:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

   I may even be prepared to agree with that--my point is just that it's a change to policy (since previous tagging is not listed as a speedy deletion criterion), and I think would be regarded as a major one if proposed through the usual means. Yes, let's interpret CSD strictly, but that doesn't mean interpreting it to say something other than what it says. Chick Bowen 20:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

   So if an admin is doing new page patrol, and sees an article that is an unambiguous speedy candidate (but not vandalism), they shouldn't be allowed to delete it until someone else has shown up and slapped a tag on it? That would cause mayhem, especially at the "slow" times of day when there aren't many patrollers about. The backlogs are already bad enough. Black Kite 21:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

   Surely there would be more than one admin currently active? The patrolling admin could tag it, and the other would double-check and delete. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 14:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

   You'd be surprised sometimes how few admins are actually engaged in admin-related tasks at a given moment. I don't think we need admins double checking every single deletion, that kind of defeats the purpose of having admins in the first place, we are expected to have the judgement to make such decisions. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:19, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

3. Agree with DGG. But we should also take into consideration the difference between the clearly helpless ones and those that could be worth of inclusion. I had thought several times of proposing a 'delayed' speedy deletion system, something like a grace period, that could be used on those articles that qualify but could be improved so as to no longer qualify, and used optionally at the discretion of the tagger or reviewing admin (it would categorize separately and offer a more user-friendly template). But I never got around to propose this. Cenarium (talk) 22:18, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
4. This is related to the drive-by tagging problem. If there wasn't so much crap coming in so fast, we might be able to slow down a bit and give new users the help they need. Mr.Z-man 00:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
5. Speedy deletion works much better than the concept would lend one to believe, mostly because of how strict the criteria are. The biggest potential problem is with A7 because that is a more subjective criteria than the others, and newbies aren't warned before hand not to create articles without any assertation of notability. But overall the system works pretty smoothly because the bar is set so low. ThemFromSpace 00:17, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   A7 is relatively easy as compared to G11. The current trend seems to be that anything that doesn't fit A7, such as books, & someone wants removed, they call it promotional. DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

6. The criteria are generally OK. But I really don't understand why A7 and A9 need to be speedy criteria. The other criteria deal with rationales which should be inherently noncontroversial, or which involve active harm to the encyclopedia. Having just looked at the current (backlogged) speedy candidates, I noted (and untagged) quite a few A7 tags that were plainly wrong, and virtually no A7 tags applied to articles where immediate deletion was really beneficial. Too many G11 tags focus only on the "promotional" part of the criterion and ignore salvageability part, applied to articles that really require fairly minor copyediting meet NPOV. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 06:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
7. I think the criteria are about right. As for the process, I might be slightly happier if there were an hour or two between the "tag" and "delete" steps, or (alternatively) if the deleting admin always notified the creator about the process for getting a copy. We mostly speedy-delete articles that shouldn't exist at all, but occasionally we speedy a valid topic. For example, I'm aware of one case in which the editor accidentally saved in the middle of the first sentence, resulting in a (not entirely unreasonable) speedy deletion. By the time s/he'd finished a decent little stub, the article had been deleted out from under him. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
8. They're adequate for filtering out some 90% of crud on Special:Newpages, and judging by WP:DRV results do not seem to be abused too often.  Sandstein  19:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
9. I agree with DGG that templating the author should cease to be optional, except within reason - if you are going to tag every member of a football team for deletion tag the author with one tailored message not a dozen templated ones. I watch out for authors with redlinked talk pages when I'm at CSD and most of the patrollers I've spoken to about this have been positive, but they don't have to tag the author at present and there are a couple of new page patrollers who don't think they should. I'll also admit one scenario when I'm loathe to template - attack accounts where the name of the account is a blatant attack. I don't think the people who do that need or deserve an explanation more than their victim deserves the user page and user talk disappearing fast. I also think that the recent change to allow speedy deletion of non-notable pets was a good move. But I think that more non-notable bios could be userfied - and some testpages could be moved to their users sandbox as well - and I suggest that our newpage patrollers could sometimes do that rather than delete. However I disagree with the idea of requiring multiple admins to delete a speedy, if we have overenthusiastic speedy deleters we need to have quiet words with them not escalate the workload overall. ϢereSpielChequers 21:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
10. CSD is, as a whole, about right. There are some things I'd like changed, but no fundamental changes are necessary. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
11. In my experience, the criteria are about right, but I agree with DGG that the process could be improved. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 14:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
12. They're generally okay. I think it may do some good to point out that, if in doubt about whether a deletion would be upheld at DRV, the presumption should be against deletion. Ray^Talk 23:22, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
13. They're fine, the unceasing stream of truly dreadful articles is a serious problem that isn't widely appreciated (I'd recommend people spend some time looking through Category:Candidates for speedy deletion). Tim Vickers (talk) 16:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Too broad (Criteria for speedy deletion)

1. Most software articles have someone claiming "G11. Unambiguous advertising or promotion." no matter how they are written. If we have hundreds of thousands of articles that don't have references(as mentioned above), most of them made before that requirement, then should we mass delete them on a whim because of A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organisations, web content)? That one is used a lot of times to delete something, usually articles that they check to make certain few people visit and will notice. And no, there are no dedicated patrollers picking up every single bad nomination there is. Articles like this should go to AFD, after the nominator has done at least some searches for references themselves. Dream Focus 19:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Too broad; It should be absolutely required to notify the editor. --Elvey (talk) 01:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Too narrow (Criteria for speedy deletion)

1. It would make the task for new page patrollers and sysops much easier if all new articles had citations to prove their assertion of notability. Wikipedia is no longer a small site, there's simply too much work to be done now. While I am not thinking that all new articles without proper sources be marked with CSD, I am proposing that we take a tougher stand on articles that assert notability but do not include references to support it. This may be done via automated bot notifications or even an abuse filter that checks for references in all new pages. Netalarmtalk 01:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Netalarm's proposal is unacceptably broad, but BLPs (at least) must be referenced. I see no problem in culling all unreferenced BLPs (yes, I know, a gargantuan hit to total articles count). NVO (talk) 11:43, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. I agree 100% with NVO. All unreferenced BLPs should be given one month to be given adequate referencing and then summarily deleted. It is far too widespread a problem to chip away at piecemeal. → ROUX ₪ 17:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Per all previous. Stifle (talk) 08:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
5. Per the above to a large extent. With a decreasing active/interested user base and an increasing work load I think opening the CSD to less strict and narrow interpretation would be helpful. Orderinchaos 12:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
6. The criteria are too narrow. There should be much more speedy deletion. The biggest complaint newbies make about speedy deletion is that they start working on a new article and it's tagged or speedied as unsourced/NN within a minute of their pressing "save", when they think they are still editing it. That can be remedied by exempting articles less than one hour old, or modifying the speedy template (backed by a software patch if necessary) to not take effect until the article went for a full hour without being edited. Alternatively, all users (including those with autoconfirmed accounts) could be required to use the new article wizard (WP:AFC) for the first one or two articles they create, so they get used to the idea that sourcing is required and not optional. It's actually a pretty nice way to help a newbie through the process of making a new article. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 06:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem isn't the Criteria for Speedy Deletion, it's how they're used

1. Per DGG above. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Per DGG above. Particularly point One, which I've been meaning to check whether it's policy yet and propose it if it isn't! Rd232 ^talk 12:48, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   And have now proposed - cf WT:CSD. Rd232 ^talk 14:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

3. Well put by DGG. DuncanHill (talk) 13:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   Yes and No, neither A7 or G11 are patent nonsense or vandalism, so should/can they just be moved to WP:PROD? Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:18, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   In the present PROD system that would result in a big impact on AFD, I think. You're right though that A7 and G11 are less "speedy-necessary" than most of the other criteria. But without either a big change in PROD (not likely) or a new process between CSD and PROD (urgh) or amendment to CSD (marginally less urgh), there's not much that can be done. Personally I think we need to do more to prevent speediable articles being created in the first place. Has anyone noticed any quantitative impact from the Article Wizard 2.0? Rd232 ^talk 14:29, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

4. Yes. The speedy deletion policy has been one of the most worked-over policies here, which have been worked on to get a precise as possible in order to avoid "false positives" in articles that may well belong getting deleted. A few of the criteria do get misused (from my personal observation, A7, G1, and G2), which is more of a problem in that those who tag are not properly applying the speedy deletion criteria. More education on how these speedy deletion criteria are applied would be needed, whether it would be telling the user on their user talk why the criterion didn't apply in a certain case or something else along those lines. MuZemike 17:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
5. — Ched :  ?  18:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
6. I think the main problem is not over-eager admins, but over eager taggers. The most misunderstood criteria tend to be "notability" and "patent nonsense." Any changes to the criteria should of course be discussed or at least linked at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion which has a fairly active stable of contributors constantly mulling over potential changes. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
7. WP:IAR only goes so far. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:52, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
8. We need a more managed article creation process. New users should be forced to use the most awesome new article wizard, which should be enhanced to make a record of their responses to the questions on the talk page for the created article. For brand new users, we might even force userification pending review. Another option is to use flagged revisions for articles by new users, assuming that the software can completely surpress a new article pending review. The idea here is to allow us to help a new user get an article right without feeling pressured to immediately delete because it's a total mess and is publicly visible. I know everyone will complain about the inevitable backlog, but would it really be worse than the current system from a new editor's perspective? Right now they get pounced on and before they can respond their article is gone. --UncleDouggie (talk) 12:16, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

   See current discussion at WP:VPR#autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation on just that. Rd232 ^talk 12:56, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

9. Yes I am with DGG here, I am quite shocked at the amount of inappropriate speedy deletions I find. Too many administrators simply do not follow the criteria, and this sends out a bad message to taggers in what is perhaps a deadly cycle. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:40, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
10. Agree with Beeblebrox. I suspect we could achieve a lot if we could somehow force people to simply read tags before applying them - I can only assume some people aren't from the sheer number of taggings in situations which are specifically excluded by the text on the tag. Olaf Davis (talk) 18:22, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Some Criteria for Speedy Deletion need 24 hours

It is necessary to blank attack pages and tag them for deletion ASAP. But it isn't necessary to tag something as non-notable or lacking context based on the first edit "xxx was a family doctor in Penarth, Alberta born 1892, died 1963" - tag as A7 in 10 seconds. New Page patrollers working the front of the queue currently have two options, tag as patrolled or not tag as patrolled and leave for someone less cautious (they can also tag for speedy deletion, categorise etc). It would really help to have a third option - 24 hour pause. That would enable articles that were one line but innocuous to be left for 24 hours, giving the author time to finish their first editing session, then after 24 hours they could reappear at the top of the new page patrol list and "xxx was a family doctor in Penarth, Alberta born 1892, died 1963, best known for winning Gold in two consecutive winter olympics" would hopefully not be tagged A7. ϢereSpielChequers 21:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps with some sort of notice (e.g. special coloring) once it's back in the queue to indicate "OK, this had 24 hours, you're good to take firmer action like CSDing"? --Cybercobra (talk) 21:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes absolutely it would need to appear in a different colour for patrollers after the 24 hour pause. ϢereSpielChequers 00:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but would require development work. I don't expect it'll be prioritized very highly. Stifle (talk) 08:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I like this one. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 14:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This has come up in previous discussions (Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Simplify policy RfC). Pages of word salad, attack pages, blp vio, copyvio all need to go straight in the bin - they are generally created by vandals anyway. Some other categories of speedy are just maintenance (deleting page at creators req, deleting page to make way for move) and so uncontroversial. But one or two categories can be problematic with speedying without looking behind the page creation. A 24 or 48 hr notice - please improve or contact tagger for advice (I take the view that if I tag something under A7 I should be prepared to advise the creator as to what to do to improve the article should they ask me) Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I may spin this out into a program request. As for copyvio articles I never understood why people assume they should be speedy deleted, copy vio images yes of course, but a copy vio article that is on a notable subject? Provided the copy vio is from a reliable source, all one needs to do is stubify and identify the copyvio'd article as the source, or am I missing something there? ϢereSpielChequers 17:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you're probably right with that last point. Elen of the Roads (talk) 19:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, it would appear others don't agree. I've just come from User talk:LA Emergency Management (EMD), where I have tried to help a user who wanted to create an article on a public agency in Los Angeles...... note, a public agency, not the Acme Snake Oil Company. Observe what happens next. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Promotion is promotion; period. I work for a public agency, have most of my life; it's quite possible that the spammer may have been a fellow AFSCME member! That doesn't give them a free pass on promotional edits and spam usernames/role accounts. There is some kind of misunderstanding floating around in the non-profit sector that it's okay to spam Wikipedia as long as it's for a good cause, a noble organization, or a governmental agency. We must not cater to that delusion. If I created an article advertising the agency I worked for, I'd expect it to be deleted if it failed to meet our standards; and if I used a spamusername, I'd expect to see it blocked pronto. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

OrangeMike, I'm sure your application of current policy is perfectly correct, and I would not like you to think I meant otherwise. However, I do feel it is reasonable to discuss the effect of current policy, as is being done here. I would have thought that with any large public agency, the presumption should be that there are sources out there that establish notability. The proposed article was not advertising - the agency has nothing to sell. It was entirely informative, and did not MHO warrant speedy deletion. That said, I don't want to start an argument with yourself over this particular incident, which is done and dusted for better or worse. It is interesting to see the "opposing view" if you like (that one should not mollycoddle users who breach the rules) set out so concisely. Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

While this particular case isn't problematic, I'd note theres far more to promotion than just selling. Even an agency which makes no money whatsoever may wish to look good to an unrealistic extent or may not wish to have information it regards as prejudicial circulating around about it. Orderinchaos 12:36, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that promotion applies as much to organisations dependent on public grants and consumer donations as it does to commercial companies; the difference is that I'm more willing to spend my time stubifying a copyvio or advert for a not for profit than I would be for a business. But to refocus on the topic of the thread, a 24 hour pause would give time for a newpage patroller to not just pause the deletion of spam or copyvios for 24 hours, but if they want, to stubify it and leave a note for the author explaining what they'd done. If the author responds by reverting to spam then their article would be rather less likely to survive when it came back to new page patrol at the end of the 24 hours. I'm sure I'm not the only editor with experience of stubifying a speedy only to find by the time I'm ready to save it someone else has deleted it. ϢereSpielChequers 12:54, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps a shorter version of WP:PROD, I know that when I do new page patrolling, sometimes I see an article that has promise but it not yet ready and if not improved, should be speeded, I'll PROD it to get the editor a chance to improve it, and I'll then check back in a day or two and then remove if their is any improvement and their often is :). Best, Mifter (talk) 00:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Make the templates friendly

If someone is vandalising or creating attack accounts then we need to warn them. But if their first edit is a CV, a love letter or a bio for their schools prettiest ever prom queen I think we can be a little less abrupt in our templates - something more like {{welcomecookie}} ϢereSpielChequers 21:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The best solution I found in one case of someone trying to add stuff and getting constantly reverted for spamlinking was to actually look at his site, and then take 20-30 minutes to write him a note on his talk page. Sure it took time, but then so would more of the edit war, ending up with administrative action and hard feelings all 'round; much better to persuade the newcomer to desist or leave with positive feelings towards the Project, perhaps to use his or her knowledge and time to help in a more productive way. You sometimes have to take several paces back, and look at Wikipedia from the outsiders' point of view: they want to offer what they see as useful help to others, and need to understand why Wikipedia can't always accept it in the form they've offered it. See: User talk:69.132.178.111 and User talk:Shakescene#Thank_you. —— Shakescene (talk) 08:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Today, I created and started using this template to inform users when I speedy delete a page they created in which they may still want to work on: User:MuZemike/Deleted (BTW, let me know how it looks so far as I only whipped it up in about 20min), which gives them the opportunity to let me know if they want a copy of the deleted page (provided it's not a copyvio, attack page, etc.). In fact, I'm sure this could possibly be incorporated into Twinkle as an option in the "speedy deletion for admins" part (For those who don't know, the "csd" tab deletes the article per Twinkle's default settings if that user using it is an admin.) along with the "orphan backlinks" option. MuZemike 02:21, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Lets all create an extra account

It's over two years since I was a newbie, I suspect most of us don't know what its like for new editors creating an article today. I suggest that we all create a new account and use it to write an article. and after seven days report in to User:WereSpielChequers/Newbie treatment, (then of course mark the account as an alt account of your main account). I'll try and compile the results and see what lessons we can learn from it. ϢereSpielChequers 21:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Why a new account? Go the whole hog, um I mean the stringent fast, and edit as a mere IP. (In response to complaints from some IP about unthinking reversions of edits by IPs, a month or so back I tried editing without logging in. Not a single one of my edits was reverted, even though at times I was bold and/or wrote on a subject that seemed to excite young north American males.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

IP editing tests RC patrollers; new account tests NP patrollers. The response you get may well be quite different. FWIW, I think this is an excellent idea. Tim Song (talk) 01:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

If IPs were allowed to create articles I'd suggest trying to create one as an IP. ϢereSpielChequers 07:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This isn't a bad idea, but it's not going to produce the results you're looking for. If I were to create a new page under a new username, I would not make the typical newbie mistakes. We don't usually stop to figure out whether the page was created by a newbie, because we don't really care about that. What we care about is whether the product is WP:N and WP:V (and so forth). If a newbie meets the usual standards, the page will not be deleted. If an experienced editor doesn't meet the usual standards, then the page will be deleted in exactly the same way. The problem is "Newbies don't know what the rules are", not "NP patrollers are picking on newbies." WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I hope that it will show that new page patrollers are not picking on newbies, and I'm confident that they don't do so deliberately. But I suppose to make the test work you need to create the article in mainspace, not a sandbox, save one paragraph at a time and stick to unmarked up text. ϢereSpielChequers 07:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

What? No {{cite}}? No metadata? You make me sad. Get real, an adult cannot imitate the babble of a two-year-old; some clues will, usually, give away editor's background. Few editors are as artful as the writer of the Corset Riot :)) NVO (talk) 07:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Do we all get a blanket go-ahead for sockpuppeting? Yeeehaaa... NVO (talk) 05:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

No, this is a suggestion that we create alternate accounts, per Wikipedia:Sock puppetry#Legitimate uses of alternative accounts also "When an alternate account is used in violation of this policy, it is known as a sock puppet." ϢereSpielChequers 07:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The way I read the policy, setting up socks to disrupt patrolling and deliberately pretending to be a newbie (no link to main account) is an offense. NVO (talk) 07:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't consider that the writing of legitimate new articles is disruptive. Though I can see the argument that under a strict interpretation of policy admins should inform arbcom of such alternate accounts, even if they intend to link them to their main account within a week. One such account has already emerged, and I think it is more worrying that the article it created was tagged as nonsense and deleted because "the wikilinks did not have the proper markup" than that the account was an alternate account. ϢereSpielChequers 09:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Improving our treatment of newcomers—the ones who could keep Wikipedia alive in the coming decades—is a strong rationale to ignore those rules. Hidden cameras and disguises are practically hallmarks of investigative journalism. (Yes, I used Tyra Banks in a fatsuit to illustrate a possible case of IAR. Weird, I know.) --an odd name 09:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:SOCK has "maintenance" as a legitimate reason. In this case linking to the main account immediately conflicts with the maintenance objective, so I'd say linking a week later would be OK. But as noted, there's always WP:IAR. Rd232 ^talk 10:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think instead of just editing articles as an IP, you should try participating in Wikipedia processes as an IP, like XfDs etc. Every now and then someone will pop up and delete your comment, or will strike out your comment, or will claim that IP editors are not allowed in project related discussions. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 11:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Comment: the difficulty of established editors in impersonating newbies is substantial. One solution would be to find some crappy submissions and re-submit them (maybe with minor changes), to have a better test of NPP response. Rd232 ^talk 10:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• This was my idea! Seriously, established editors have no idea what it is like for new accounts. A secret shopper program would be educational for all involved. There has to be some way to do this within the rules. Abductive (reasoning) 20:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This is an excellent way to see how new users are treated on Wikipedia, which is greatly important since we seriously need more people to help out. For those of you that don't want to create a new account, I suggest you follow the contributions and talk page of a new user and see how they're treated. By creating a new account and editing, we're not being disruptive in any way, and per the above reasons, this is a pretty good scenario to use IAR. Netalarmtalk 01:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

WereSpielChequers, I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by "no markup". Does that mean don't build the web? Does that mean "no complicated infoboxes and citation templates"? Does that mean "pretend you can't figure out what the buttons at the top of the edit box do"? Does that mean "don't list any reliable sources"? What counts are "markup" in your mind? WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Something that makes difference between Groucho and Karl. NVO (talk) 08:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. If you want to test what its like editing as a newbie don't create a new account but then edit with links categories and infoboxes. this was a great example of an article that looked sufficiently newbyish that it got incorrectly deleted. If it survives the first week unscathed, then go back and add cats, links and so forth. ϢereSpielChequers 16:52, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Your example also contains no assertion of notability, which actually a required element for a new article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting point, however this is a test for speedy deletion where notability is not required, merely an assertion of importance or significance. I've no experience as to whether AFD would or would not deem such an article as notable, but it is about a BBC documentary. My own "newbie" article isn't perhaps such a good test of CSD as I would be really embarrassed if it failed either CSD's assertion of importance or significance test or AFD's notability test. ϢereSpielChequers 20:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

That's my point: your "test" article, about a song, did not "indicate why its subject is important or significant". It therefore clearly met the standards for speedy deletion.

If you're trying to test whether articles that clearly and unambiguously meet CSD A9 get deleted, then congratulations: you have proved that the system is working exactly as designed.

I had thought, however, that you were trying to determine whether articles that don't meet the CSD were getting deleted. This would require you to create an article that does not contain this fatal flaw. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but that article shouldn't have been speedied. It's subject was significant enough to be shown by the UK national tv company. That suggests it might be notable, there might be references to it or reviews of it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, are you referring to the Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus article? That doesn't appear to be subject to CSD A9 since it is not a "musical recording". --maclean (talk) 23:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

On looking again, I see that it's a film about a song (and the culture that produced it), instead of about the song itself. I completely agree that it didn't deserve a "patent nonsense" deletion, which is what happened to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I emailed arbcom to report the account I created for my own test article, and been advised that their preference is that accounts created for these tests be reported to the arbcom mailing list, arbcom-l at lists.wikimedia.org. ϢereSpielChequers 22:05, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Some deleting admins assume the CSD'ers are right and delete blindly

Rich Farmbrough, 05:34, 1 November 2009 (UTC).

Proposed deletion

• Wikipedia:Proposed deletion - does this process need to be more new-user-friendly?

• If yes, then how?

• Do we need to make PROD templates, such as {{PRODWarning|Name of Article‎}} less confrontational?

• Do we need to promote or patrol the use of such templates as Template:Hangon?

Yes (Proposed deletion needs to be more friendly)

1. I think the process needs to be more user-friendly in general. New users come in all shapes and sizes - some of us are "new" to particular parts of Wikipedia, for example. I once saw an article I thought should be deleted and went to the above link to see what to do about it. I started to read the page and several hours later just decided not to bother with the deletion. It seemed like too much of a bother. I guess I shouldn't have cared about reading the instructions, eh? :) Awadewit (talk) 17:48, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Yes. I use Twinkle so I tend to forget the complications of proposing an article for deletion without it. The process could probably be more simply explained; it took me ages to even be aware of the various types of deletion. I think the proposed deletion process is valuable, it allows deletion of articles without a rush and without the hue and cry of AfD. If someone is always having their prods removed, perhaps they don't understand the meaning of "uncontroversial". Prod patrolling also needs advertising, there's only a few of us. Fences&Windows 01:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
3. The only real problem with PROD is the general tendency of editors start an AfD with "PROD removed by original author", as though he doesn't count as a "real" editor. I'd vastly prefer if the "Discussion" part of "BOLD, revert, discussion" didn't necessarily mean AfD. Nifboy (talk) 08:30, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

No (Proposed deletion is basically okay)

1. I don't think you can get much more lightweight than PROD. If you use Twinkle, then it's almost assured the creator gets properly notified. As far as the PROD template itself, I don't think it's confrontational itself, whereas the deletion process as a whole can be. I mean, the color red naturally means "warning", which I think is appropriate for the situation. Now, as with tagging, I can see it being simplified a bit, if it helps any. For {{hangon}}, we have a category for this, Category:Contested candidates for speedy deletion, so that is already easily patrollable. It could probably be promoted a bit better (which is also why I have that category on my personal deletion board page). MuZemike 17:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. No, PROD should be dispensed of entirely. It's largely a waste of time; I slap a PROD on something, the article creator takes it off, so I take it to AfD instead. Kill the entire PROD concept and just go straight to AfD or speedy. → ROUX ₪ 18:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. Seconded. Options I can see: 1) get rid of prod. 2) make it (similar to speedy deletion) so that the article creator isn't allowed to take it off, but others can. Alternately as a middle ground; if a second user certifies an article as proddable, eliminate the idea that the article creator can take the tag off. Ironholds (talk) 18:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Get rid of Prod entirely. The only time something gets deleted with it, is if there is no one around to notice, and they normally don't alert the article's creator. If you think the article should be deleted, send it to the AFD for notice and discussion. Dream Focus 19:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   This is not true; many articles are gotten rid of by prod, and just two users, DGG and ThaddeusB are sufficient to patrol the list. If they don't deprod, the article richly deserves to be deleted. Consider also that anybody can ask for an article deleted by prod to be restored. Abductive (reasoning) 23:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

5. I think prod is fine. Sure: it hurts to have you "baby" deleted, no matter what process is used. People that are unhapppy about justified prods are going to be unhappy about justified AFD deletions, too. IMO prod is the ideal approach for unsourced articles that were created a while ago and have been neglected since then. I saw a good prod candidate a few weeks ago that, in its earliest versions was essentially a unsourced (and unsource-able: I checked) story about how heat intolerance explained vampire myths. Why not prod something like this? It doesn't meet CSD, but why should the very busy AFD be bothered with something like that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
6. How?  Sandstein  19:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
7. Might possibly be good to mention WP:REFUND in the user notification template, but the system works pretty well. Pretty hard to get any easier than "just remove without so much as an edit summary" to object --Cybercobra (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
8. Every WP system could use some adjustments, although I don't think PROD is particularly bad in that regard. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
9. How much friggin friendlier could it possibly get? Anyone, even the article's creator, can remove the PROD without even explaining themselves, and boom, that's it, it can never be deleted by that process. The only way we could make it friendlier is to not have it at all. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
10. The tag can simply be removed by the creator, so I don't see much of a problem. Maybe we could put in the deletion log, "anyone can ask for the article to be restored" or something like that. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:56, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
11. With a seven day waiting period and the ability to remove PROD tags without explanation, it is probably one of the friendlier processes to new users. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
12. It's a very good process, and I use it a lot. Honestly, I think most of my deletion tagging is with PROD. It's a very clean process that doesn't overburden AFD with abandoned bad articles and the like. Ray^Talk 23:26, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
13. Prod works the best and causes the least problems of any deletion process. The problem is that people don't use it enough. Plenty of articles would be better handled by prodding rather than afd or speedy. The only change is that it should be encouraged as the preferred alternative for never-prodded articles.John Z (talk) 22:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

    People might be willing to use PROD more if there was a centralised system for collecting de-PRODded articles (eg bot+list), so that others (not just the tagger) have a chance to follow up problem articles. Some of the choice to PROD rather than AFD (certainly with WP:Twinkle, where each, is equally easy) is down to the need to worry about followup, I think. On the other hand, some preference for AFD may still come from a residual concern that PRODs may not get sufficient scrutiny; that somebody should be checking more thoroughly, as happens, generally, at AFD. Finally, since we're talking about newbies here, some certainly don't get how (technically or permission-wise) to handle challenging a PROD. Is there no way to add a Twinkle-style button to PROD templates, so such users can easily de-PROD? Rd232 ^talk 08:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

¶ PLEASE NOTE: The comments suggest that people have different ideas about what "yes" and "no" mean in this section. I've labeled them according to the first question ("does this process need to be more new-user-friendly?"). If yours now appears to be in the 'wrong' section, then please feel free to move it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't say PROD

PROD, like DAB, is an especially-insidious abbreviation, because its meaning has nothing to do with the real-world meaning of the lower-case word. It took me months to figure out what "Prod" and "Dab" meant, even though I was running across them every week. At least with RfC (not the Royal Flying Corps) and RfA (not la République Fédérale d'Allemagne), you know you're dealing with arcane Wikijargon. Rule 1 for making Wikipedia friendly to strangers, newcomers and even those who stay for a few months, is to toss out about 80-90% of these acronyms (many of us semi-old-timers still have to pause half a second mid-sentence to remember what something like XfD means) from one's own edits, comments and (space permitting) edit summaries, and use real language instead. And a wikilink is nowhere near an adequate substitute. Only a tiny percentage of Wikipedia readers, i.e. some registered editors, have installed WP:Pop-ups, and you can't expect people to open a new window and then return every time they encounter one of these acronyms. Even WP itself has half a dozen meanings (Wikipedia, WikiProject, etc.) —— Shakescene (talk) 04:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I've remarked before that the importance of the phrasing of shortcuts is generally underestimated. PROD and DAB are particularly bad, as you say. Jargon in general is a big problem on Wikipedia, but jargon that doesn't clearly identify itself qua jargon is the worst. Rd232 ^talk 10:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Who cares what shorthand we use on a page like this? The newbie who really needs to understand 'prod' is going to be looking at a big template that not only spells out "It is proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern:" without using the shorthand name of the template, but also provides five sentences, in plain English, describing what needs to be done, and a link to the WP:Proposed deletion page for anyone that wants more information about the process.

I like new editors, and to help them along, I tend to link pages in discussions so that those who don't recognize a shortcut will always be able to figure out what I'm talking about, but this concern is misplaced. The newbie that is facing the proposed deletion of a page isn't going to see the word "prod" anywhere, and therefore cannot be hurt by that shortcut. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I care what shorthand's used (even if newcomers never see it) because I'm very tired of trying to remember and decode all of it! (I had to think a minute before I remembered and deduced from context what the h*** PROD meant. It's counter-intuitive.) Don't bite the old-timers. :-) —— Shakescene (talk) 08:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

PROD must go away. We confuse the heck out of everyone with the arcane use and rules of CSD, prod, AfD and XfD. What do they mean and who is permitted to remove which templates under what conditions again? And if someone messes up they are sent to Wikipedia purgatory while their screw-up is used as further ammo to justify the delete. I've seen this over and over. Unfortunately, the best examples are on talk pages which have of course been deleted! --UncleDouggie (talk) 12:32, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Explanation and communication

(by FT2)

• This is a long standing concern of mine, that I see a lot. A newcomer posts something - an article, a stub, or similar. It's (correctly) deleted under WP:CSD or reverted for other issues. Where's the careful explanation to the newcomer what has happened and why it's been done?

• A template or manual explanation should be automatic when deleting or reverting possibly good faith work or an apparent new user -- even self promotional -- because how else will they understand what we did and (if well meaning) what to do about it, not to repeat, or how to do it better or explain their "side"?

• On a wider issue should there be a clear link to a basic (brief) Wikipedia manual or explanatory page, giving the basics even a newcomer needs to understand, when they create their account or edit as an IP? We expect a lot of them but don't guide them to it, then (sometimes) hammer them when they don't know/guess it.

Yes (Explanation and communication)

1. The speedy deletion process needs to be more user-friendly, clearly. For the third point, I think there should definitely be an introductory page for our processes, policies and internal workings, recognized by the community and linked in the appropriate places. I had proposed this in early September, similar proposals have been made, again recently. It would need some work and consensus-gathering, but it would be a net positive for new users and WP in my opinion. Cenarium (talk) 23:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Again, this is something that we need to do, but the sheer volume of the problem compared to the number of users working on it currently makes this impractical. Mr.Z-man 00:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. Yes, educating the offenders will most likely reduce their number. But I believe we already had guides on acceptable content, CSD tagging, and a lot of other subjects. Automated CSD notifications bu Twinkle already include a "Welcome" message first, which contains links to just about everything a new user could need. Maybe we could create one centralized help page, allowing the user to easily navigate to their topic of interest. As Mr.Z-man pointed out above, we don't have enough people to help out, so I think automated scripts and bots are the way to go. Netalarmtalk 01:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Yes. Isn't it possible to set up some template checklists for "Reasons why your edit has been reverted" or "Reasons why your article has been nominated for deletion" that gives a list of say 3-5 lines of explanation per reason, with links to policies but clear basic explanations in the text, and boxes for the explaining editor to tick (or select the text to appear, or something). We have lots of individual templates, but too many for those like myself who only patrol (some of) their watchlist articles to remember. But there is still the problem that ISPs are unlikely to see this. If it had a shortcut, it could be linked to in the edit summary, with the relevant sections, though again how many will see this? Johnbod (talk) 11:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   There is Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?. Perhaps it should be more widely linked to [1] in relevant template messages. Rd232 ^talk 12:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

5. I do think it behooves admins to explain to those who don't understand Wikipedia's basic guidelines and policies. (The one policy that gets broken the most in this context is our policy on copyright violations, since most people don't understand that this is a free encyclopedia, the word "free" meaning "free content" and not "free beer".) I understand that this can be cumbersome in some aspects as it does take time to explain to new users why Wikipedia cannot accept certain content. The plus side is that these new users will understand better and will better function as a productive editor, creating a net positive. MuZemike 17:16, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
6. Yes. I don't thinkg user-friendly is the right term--CSD notices should be clear and direct. But more user-explanatory would be better, and written from the point of view of a complete newb. Too many of the notices have Wikipedia jargon in them, or buried links to policies. → ROUX ₪ 18:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
7. Absolutely, for all but the worst vandalism. When I delete articles I always try to leave a detailed explanation on the creator's talk page so that they will understand. My very first article was deleted, and if the admin who pushed the button hadn't been so nice to me at the time I might never have returned. Karanacs (talk) 18:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
8. Good point. per nom. — Ched :  ?  18:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
9. Make it friendlier, since most rampant deletionists do seem like evil people, who don't care about the feelings of the article's creators or others, and just destroy anything they don't like. Linking to the suggested guidelines, and ignoring the policy that says Wikipedia is not a collection of rules and things should be done by common sense and consensus, is a real problem though. The guidelines are constantly changing, and there has never been any Wikipedia wide vote on what should be allowed and what shouldn't, most people seeing the long never ending arguments on those pages, if they find them at all, and not getting involved. So most don't really take them seriously. People see articles which don't meet the requirements, such as bestselling novels that have no reviews anywhere, sometimes get saved, and sometimes not. We need the community to feel involved, voting on things in a general election mentioned on the main page, like they do with the donation drive banners, and then people will support the rules, following and enforcing them. Dream Focus 19:30, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
10. Naturally. WP:YFA does a good job explaining how to start editing. Stifle (talk) 08:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
11. I think I take more time to explain stuff and help the newbies I run across than 99% of 'pedians. It hasn't helped as much with retention as I'd like. But, if everyone did it, it might. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 14:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
12. +1 –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
13. Yup: WP:BITE. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:58, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
14. Yes. I've had non-wikipedian friends point me at a deleted page and ask why it was deleted. They have no idea, and even if they saw "A7" they wouldn't know what that meant. ThemFromSpace 05:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
15. Yes, quite. I've always been in favor of explanatory deletion summaries and communication with other editors. JamieS93 20:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Making the dispute resolution process easier

• A new user dispute resolution board. Cons - board creep (boards are underpopulated enough as is), Pros - does not require behavioural change in existing areas, just friendlier editors watching out on the page.

• Make Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents more friendly. Cons - how??

• Ensure more people patrol Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests, and ensure more people know about it (I didn't until I just wrote this now)

Yes (Making the dispute resolution process easier)

1. Yes to the third point. Cenarium (talk) 23:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Yes regarding getting help to new editors caught up in their first dispute. The tendency towards WikiLawyering can be irresistible, and there need to be people willing to walk new editors through it. New editors who come to the noticeboards or whatever should be given help, not bludgeoned and marginalized until they resort to disruptive activity out of sheer frustration (by which point they are probably beyond help for the short term). Ray^Talk 23:29, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

No (Making the dispute resolution process easier)

1. Note that we already have Wikipedia:New contributors' help page.  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Board/Help creep desperately needs reduced. Nifboy (talk) 03:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. If people can't figure out which system or board to go to for help, the solution is not to add more places to the list of possibilities. If anything, we need to consolidate and simplify things. Mr.Z-man 03:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
4. In the context of new users, no; even though in general, I'd agree that the dispute resolution process is a mess and is in dire need of streamlining. As far as ANI is concerned, I thought one of the tangential objectives of dispute resolution is to encourage the usage of talk page channels and discouraging the usage of ANI. MuZemike 17:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
5. Dispute resolution needs more teeth and more accesibility. For the latter, I would actually suggest a new tab at the top of every page (yes, would require an interface edit) called "Solve Dispute" or "Solve Problem" that will take users to a page outlining the steps in dispute resolution, and where to go for which sorts of problems. A flowchart or wizard or "Is the problem with content? Go here. With a user vandalising? Go here" type of thing would be excellent. As for teeth, WP:3O is fine as it is, but MEDCAB needs to be tasked with providing final answers and directives, as an ArbCom/MedCom-light. Perhaps more admins need to be involved in MEDCAB to ratify solutions/compromises found by the mediator. → ROUX ₪ 18:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

   This is what the "help" link is for. --UncleDouggie (talk) 12:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

6. Noticeboard creep. Stifle (talk) 08:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
7. Agree with Mr.Z-man. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:47, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
8. Extra bureaucracy. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
9. Agree with Mr.Z-man. --UncleDouggie (talk) 12:56, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments (Making the dispute resolution process easier)

• I think there is something missing in dispute resolution, but I don't know what that step is. Something less harsh than AN, less formal than MedCab, less complicated than RfC, and more "bang for your buck" than 3O. — Ched :  ?  18:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• Clarification request. Is the proposal for a "a dispute resolution board dedicated to new users" or for "a new resolution board that involves user disputes"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• This actually goes to the heart of one of wikpedia's biggest problems. Solve this, plus a WYSWYG editor, and you've basically solved every problem. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Make all the boards more responsive and user-friendly - make them forums

Wikipedia should not be using text-editing software for discussion forums. Why not replace the administration boards with forums? The software is built for discussion, and it would be so much easier keeping track of a topic/incident. The way it is now, it is easily see new posts on an administrative board. You have to go through the history, and then find that entry for that person on a HUGE page.. and hope that someone hasn't "hatted" the discussion you are looking for, because you can't find it unless you show every hatted discussion. I realize that the tech/software group here is already taxed with the requirements of Wikipedia. But considering the popularity and notability of Wikipedia, why reinvent the wheel. There are some great forum software products on the internet already. Wikipedia could put out an offer to outside forum software groups to convert the boards/ fix problems with requirements needed by Wikipedia, in return for publicity about that particular forum software? "Wikipedia uses xxx forum software for their adminstrative boards". I bet that would be attractive to many software groups out there. stmrlbs|talk 18:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Increased use of semi-protection?

If more pages were protected, vandal-reverters could go at a lower speed and maybe will facilitate taking more care at reverting IPs. Realistic? Worth a try? I'd really like input from Recent Changes Patrollers here.

Yes (We should semi-protect more articles)

1. Articles such as Rachel Carson, where the overwhelming majority of IP edits are vandalism, should be on permanent semi-protection. Most of the good faith edits at this article are reverts of vandalism--it's hard to find changes on the history page that reflect an actuall improvement in the article since it went FA. Articles that are subject to waves of vandalism yearly, like Earth Day, should get semi-protected for 30 days or so before and after the peak day of media coverage.--Hjal (talk) 00:43, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. For articles prone to driveby vandalism (say, >10 vandal edits/wk?) by IPs, yes. As well as those subject to waves of vandalism, per Hjal. Not content disputes, per MuZemike below. Flagged Revisions is a red herring here, as the people who didn't understand how it actually works shouted loud enough to make sure it inly gets tested/implemented on BLPs. For that matter, I would support semiprot on all BLPs until FR is put in place. → ROUX ₪ 19:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. I will believe FR when I see it. Until then I use semiprotection liberally and find it an invaluable timesaver. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Oh, goodness yes. It's one thing to Watchlist articles you like and are genuinely interested in learning about changes to. But watchlisting decent articles just because vandalism isn't quite frequent enough to merit semiprotection under the current policy is an enormous chore. We should, at a minimum, be much more liberal with semiprotection for BLPs. Flagged revisions may change things, or it may not. That one's too much of an unknown at this point. Ray^Talk 23:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

No (We should semi-protect the same, or less)

1. More use of semiprotection will further disenfranchise and repulse IPs and new users. Not the way to go, instead improve our global monitoring methods (as of now, mostly RC and watchlists, also HG) and local protection systems (as of now only page protection), for example with Patrolled revisions and Flagged protection. Cenarium (talk) 22:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Given the trial of Patrolled revisions that is about to start, & which has as one important specific purpose decreasing the need for semi-protection, this is not the time to deal with this DGG ( talk ) 22:16, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
3. Not enough direct correlation between semi-protection and greater time per RC patrolled page. As stated above, we should be trying to avoid semi and encouraging instead one of flagging options (once they get enabled), so anons aren't discouraged by finding an interesting page uneditable. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
4. Vandalism, yes. Content disputes, absolutely not. (I've also learned that quickly as a newbie admin myself.) As DGG pointed out, with Flagged Revisions/Protection just around the corner, this is another useful tool in helping weed out vandalism but keep good-faith edits by IPs and non-autoconfirmed users as opposed to outright semi-protection (or even full-protection). MuZemike 17:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
5. I don't see the causal connection postulated in the question. The issue is set to be resolved with flagged revisions, anyway.  Sandstein  19:41, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
6. I like semi-protection; I think it's valuable and effective. But since the problem is the vandals, not the articles, and since many vandals move from one article to another, I think it might sometimes be more effective to reduce the standards for very short blocks on IPs engaging in blatant vandalism (e.g., replacing an entire page with "I LOVE CHEESEBURGERS!!!!!!"), without waiting for the disruption to become "persistent". A couple of hours soft block on a first offense doesn't actually seem unreasonable to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
   • I'd like to add an update: I've just asked that WP:LAYOUT be semi-protected. I'm hoping for an indefinite semi-protection. Why? Because nearly all of the 'vandalism' on that page is by a newbie with a brand-new account that's trying to start a new article and has absolutely no clue that the edit box on a new article should be BLANK instead of having all of these handy directions about how to layout the article. So: yes, let's have some sensible use of semi-protection to protect newbies from making simple mistakes that result in a string of "mean" and "angry" templates being thrown at them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
7. If anyone has read the TIME article, it's pretty scary what Wikipedia is becoming. Freedom to edit was what got Wikipedia started; we need to continue this way. If you want nearly perfect accuracy, go get a conventional encyclopedia. (Actually, Wikipedia's articles on conventional subjects are not bad, it's the articles you wouldn't find in a book that tend to be of poor quality.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:05, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
8. It would just turn IP vandals into new user vandals. If someone wants to vandalize, creating an account won't stop them. It's better to have them as IP editors so we can apply different filters. --UncleDouggie (talk) 13:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
   1. Having to wait four days (to become autoconfirmed) might stop them, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
9. This would need to be done on a massive scale in order to make a difference, and this would affect our reputation in the media. "Anyone can edit" should mean that anyone can edit, this should only be trumped if there is a pressing concern for a particular article. We shouldn't protect pages if we don't have to. ThemFromSpace
10. Semi-protection really goes against the "anyway can edit" principle by blanket disallowing new users/IPs to make edits, and I think it is used enough already. If any expansion of page protection should take place, it should be through flagged protection which is a little bit softer to IPs/new users by still allowing them to make edits even if they have to be approved. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:48, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments (Increased use of semi-protection?)

1. Yes and no. As others have pointed out above, semi-protection is very useful but likely to be overtaken by better methods over time. However, vandalism is a huge problem that wastes way too much editor time. As much as I'm sympathetic to welcoming new editors, I think that if one has intentionally vandalized, and been warned enough times to be able to figure out that it's not benign, and yet keeps on doing it, there comes a time (and it comes sooner not later, in my opinion) when welcoming just does not apply. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Yes for BLPs, no for everything else. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Moving and building of a more robust unblock and unban committee

Currently the Ban Appeal Subcommittee is part of the arbitration committee, and it sometimes gets de-prioritised when workload increases. The arbitration email list also gets requests for unblocks quite frequently. There is also an unblock-l mailing list (is this a quiet list? Long turn around?). Maybe all three can be combined to simplify the process.

Yes (Moving and building of a more robust unblock and unban committee)

1. Committee, no. But I believe this is one case where a specialised noticeboard would be useful. Wikipedia:Administrators' Noticeboard/Unblocks, perhaps. It would save some of the drama, high traffic, and edit conflicts from AN/I. Crosspost notices to AN and AN/I, of course (User:Random Banned User wants to come back, see link), with the caveat that it is only available for those blocked/banned by the community; ArbCom blocks and bans need to be dealt with by ArbCom. → ROUX ₪ 19:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Agree with Roux. We indefinitely block far too many good faith editors and turn them off to Wikipedia for life. --UncleDouggie (talk) 13:07, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

No (Moving and building of a more robust unblock and unban committee

1. A power shift to a small centralized committee is almost never a good idea, and is certainly not here. Trust the wiki model, welcome participation.  Skomorokh, barbarian  01:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. As above, and I find CAT:RFU to work just fine. We also have WP:GAB linked to all over the place for new users.  Sandstein  19:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. Get blocked, use {{unblock}}. Get ArbCom-banned, appeal to ArbCom. Get community-banned, appeal to the community. I think the current system is fine. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:07, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Beyond moving and building of a more robust unblock and unban committee

1. This is a problem, but part of a much greater one. I had proposed the Appeal committee in August to handle this specific problem, but now I'd favor a more fundamental reform. I'll write an essay with a detailed proposal. Cenarium (talk) 23:28, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
2. I agree. I think this is a HUGE problem. I think we need to be a more forgiving community that is willing to welcome back good people who can contribute positive things to the project. And no, I'm not suggesting some suicide pact like letting GwarpHaggar on wheels edit the pedia. — Ched :  ?  19:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
3. ANI threads are contentious, difficult to read, and scrolling past all the other incidents is a royal pain, which cuts down on participation considerably. Unblocks on talk pages are typically only read by admins who do unblocks. Greater community input into unblockings may be desireable, at least in some subset of cases. Purely throwing out ideas here: maybe an RFC or AFD type format, or some sort of jury system among willing editors? Ray^Talk 23:37, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Newcomers help page

There is a Wikipedia:Newcomers_help_page - is a static page enough? Is it staffed sufficiently? Are queries answered? Should it be combined with Wikipedia:Help desk? Are these promoted prominently enough?

Comments (Newcomers help page)

1. On the merger point, I recently asked that very question, and was then convinced that it's useful to have a separate page to direct newbies to from various templates [2] etc, where their basic question won't be next to something fearsomely technical (perhaps). I added a message at the top of the talk page: "The new contributors' help page exists to create a friendly environment where new contributors can ask questions. It is separate from the help desk, which deals with everything, including often some quite technical questions." Rd232 ^talk 12:56, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Honestly, I think something that would help enormously (though perhaps impossible to implement) would be a chat interface the same as Facebook's, though with 'rooms' (not IRC, that has enough problems; building it into the site means it would then have to operate under WMF auspices). That way it stays right on the page, can be restricted to help channels only (to avoid server load from lots of chatting), and is transparently accessible. → ROUX ₪ 19:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

You know I have to agree on chat but disagree on IRC. I point people in there all the time, with my welcome template and on talk pages. I don't see much of a problem there - having a live person in real time really helps. JoeSmack ^Talk 16:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

1. I think some of the boards should be merged to be honest. Newcomers are directed to over 9,000 pages when they arrive, and I still find it rather confusing –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Introduction

Are there issues with the Wikipedia:Introduction? Does this properly and understandably introduce the major aspects of Wikipedia to new users ? Have any new users reading this here found it helpful? Should this be made more prominent to new users ? Note: The Introduction has four tabs introducing wikipedia, linked from 'anyone can edit' on the main page and elsewhere

• Introduction
• Learn more about editing
• Explore Wikipedia
• Tutorial

Comments (Introduction)

• Introduction is irrelevant. It cannot replace experience. How long is the learning curve? For me, I reckon, it was at least 2K mainspace edits (wishful thinking?). Had I read all policy and quidelines in advance, would it help in any way? Nope. The learning curve should not take as long as it does now? Absolutely! but I don't have answer how. Do you? NVO (talk) 12:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Well there's the rub - shorter so that people will pick up some key points and more novices will actually read it (I never did), or longer and more inclusive...or what. Does it matter? Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

As short and sweet as possible. Currently most of the introductions etc have too many links to the deepest darkest depths of WP and usually finish on a page of such links. I think we need a very simple introduction with an obvious progression to more complex overviews, one's which even experienced editors might learn from.Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 14:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

• Learning by doing is the most effective technique. There's simply no substitute for experience. Reading about something does not provide either the persistence or depth of understanding that doing (and re-doing) it does. Even memorizing large swaths of policy isn't as instructive as making a few mistakes. What we need is pretty much what we have: a way to look up the bits of information that will be useful to me right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Do we (or could we) have some graduated way to introduce new users to easy tasks? Like, Step 1: add a wikilink or two to this random unwikified article. Step 2: add a source to this random unsourced article. That sort of idea. Direct new users to tasks they might be interested in, up a well-thought-out learning curve. Rd232 ^talk 10:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I have suggested something similar under 'tutorials' i.e. have more...I suppose another question would be the balance between static help pages and active tutorials. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 14:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

• The first page is fine, but 'more on editing' and 'explore are' just a bunch of links, not very good for a brief overview! The tutorial itself covers the links in the current 'more on editing tab' in much better context. I also feel Explore might have lost its way somewhere ( between how to browse articles vs community). I think for the purposes of a providing a quick overview we need a tab should on how to browse wikipedia articles, another as an introduction to the community side of WP. Maybe we could adopt Wikipedia:Simplified ruleset or sections of it as a improved 'more on editing' page. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 00:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

• I get the feeling that the help paegs should represent the actual experience of editing WP rather than presently WP's ideals, otherwise the first time a user encounters the real WP will be as a shock, maybe point out about equitette and better coverage of how to deal with it. I do wonder how many new editors might make a few edits only to encounter a uncivil editor who puts them off becoming further involved. Something like 'wikipedia tries to be a civil place, if you feel you've been treated badly please go 'here' Note: sometimes you may encounter slightly uncivil or unconventional editors, some of whose editing style is put up with when they otherwise benefit wikipedia with their contributions, others occasionally need reminding to be more polite.' - that's just off the top of my head for the gist of course .... Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 14:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Tutorial

Are there issues with the Wikipedia:Tutorial? Is this laid out in a way which helps new users edit? Have any new users reading this here found it helpful?

Comments (Tutorial)

• We would need a survey of new users to figure this out. Abductive (reasoning) 20:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• It more of an issue of current info and relevant info. I think Help space needs to be reaquired and revamped for Tutorial purposes. JoeSmack ^Talk 06:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• I would like to see a series of tutorials of varying degrees of comlpexity, and also maybe tailored for specific types of editing, and maybe at the end of the first tutorial have one of the tasks for a user to place some sort of index on their user page ( for their own reference ). This could provide quick access to the areas of help they've covered and maybe list the tutorials and help levels they feel they are comfortable with. ( i.e. instruct them how to mark a tutorial in the box as completed). Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 14:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Welcoming Newbies

Do we/should we welcome newbies? Did you get welcomed and did you find it welcoming and useful? Do you think that welcoming more newbies would make newbies feel more welcome, and give them useful info?

This has now partially been spunoff to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 31#Welcome Bot - advanced version

Yes, helpful (Welcoming newbies)

1. I was welcomed a few days after starting editing, It took me months to look up my welcomer and by then he was blocked. But I did appreciate the welcome and learned a fair bit from the links in the message. It saddens me but I don't think we do this as much today. ϢereSpielChequers 22:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
2. Yes to all the questions. It's a perennial proposal (WP:PEREN#Use a bot to welcome new users), but we might look again at the reasons for rejection and see if they can be addressed. They are: 1. cold and impersonal - maybe can be overcome if a random member of a suitable group of volunteers is listed as the poster, rather than the bot itself. 2. Removing redlinks makes vandals/newbies less visible - um. Perhaps we can somehow retain the redlink, eg by making the welcome message part of the software somehow? Tricky, but might be workable. 3. Pointless edits to accounts who never edit - well 2 might address that, as would a bot waiting til people edit. Rd232 ^talk 10:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
3. I think it really depends on the template. {{Welcomeg}}, {{Anonwelcomeg}}, {{WelcomeIPh}}, {{Hi and Go}} {{W-graphical-anon}} and {{W-graphical}} are horrible and overwhelming. Many of the text only ones are boring. I prefer any with some humor or little icons, like {{WelcomeIcon}}. Abductive (reasoning) 21:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

   I mainly use three {{welcome-anon-vandal}} for minor vandalism warnings for IPs with redlinked talkpages (Gurch changed Huggle to recognise it as a level 1 warning), {{welcome-anon}} for good edits by IPs with redlinked talkpages and most commonly of all {{welcomecookie}} (often with a tailored PS). I think it would be good to do some research on people who've been welcomed by various templates and whether they went on to further editing - I suspect we'd find that some welcomes are far more effective than others, if we knew which we could deprecate or amend the less successful. ϢereSpielChequers 08:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

4. I consider it to be very helpful and always add welcome templates to any new editors I see pop up on my watchlist or in recent changes that are making decent edits. Every once in a while I do get a thank you note on my page from some of the users I've welcomed and it feels nice. I usually just use the standard {{welcome}} but sometimes I do personalize it based on what kind of edits the new editor made. It's that they've been acknowledged and noticed that matters more than the helpful links included in the welcome template. -- œ^™ 17:08, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
5. This past week I have taken to welcoming people from the new user account page, those who have made one edit. All told i'm close to 2k new users welcomed. My welcome message (User:JoeSmack/w) is intentionally a little funny, emphasized to be from a real person, and heavily pushes users with questions to ask them on my talk page or wikipedia-en-help. It is also relatively simple, with more 'poking' if interested pointing at Wikipedia:Help. I've gotten lots of questions on my talk page and sitting in wikipedia-en-help notice lots go in there. I would definitely say it helps - although it is not high yield just having a person to ask a question that is accessible is what makes it very very good for new users. JoeSmack ^Talk 06:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
6. Yes I frequently add {{welcome}} templates to user talk pages, and all users that have replied to these have expressed thanks at being welcomed. I myself remember being welcomed, and I did appreciate it. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:51, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

No, patronising (Welcoming newbies)

1. I'm a long-term dynamic IP editor so I get those templates all the time. I don't think they are very welcoming to genuine newbies either. They come across as spam. A real welcome means looking closely at the newbie's contribs and leaving the person actual, thoughtful comments about his or her edits, along with an offer of any kind of help, links to wikiprojects in the newbie's areas of interest, etc. Everybody appreciates that. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 07:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments (Welcoming newbies)

• I wasn't welcomed -- in the official-template sense of the term -- but I fairly often welcome new editors. Usually, I leave two notes: the welcome template, with a WP:MED invitation, or the welcome template with an explanation or warning about what they're doing wrong in an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
• I was welcomed a considerable time (a few weeks or months, or so it seemed) after I'd started editing seriously, so it was out of synch. And templates in general defeat the purpose because they look so institutional; you either want to welcome the newcomer as a fellow-editor or as This Mysterious Institution, but at that point I'd already had to investigate some of the stranger workings, procedures and rules of Wikipedia on my own, so I wasn't inclined to read many of the helpful but pre-packaged links in the pre-packaged welcome. See my talk page and history for chronology, which I should review myself. I wasn't antagonized by the welcome, nor did I feel unkindly towards the welcomer, but it was something of a let-down or disappointment. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
• Perhaps one of the first steps we should do, assuming the welcoming committee is the main point of focus and center as far as welcoming newcomers is concerned, is to reassess the group's current membership, because as with other projects I've been with, I'm not quite sure 535 is an accurate number. MuZemike 15:10, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
• Welcoming can be both harmful and beneficial, depending on how it is preformed. People going through the account creation log and turning every redlink blue just via a cold, impersonal template is not a good thing, and I think it's a bit offensive. Typing up a hand-written note (or a template that sounds like a hand-written note) is far more welcoming. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • IMO, the only way to produce a template that sounds hand-written is to have it specifically address what the new editor has actually done, and that level of customization pretty much defeats the purpose of a template. That's why I usually leave two notes: one for general/background information, and the other that's entirely customized. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Not really; I've been using User:Juliancolton/Welcome as of late, and it seems to work fine. In fact, I've had a few newbies actually respond, whereas they usually don't even acknowledge the standard welcome templates. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
      • I think your template feels more personalized than the typical ones, but it doesn't address my needs because it cannot be sufficiently specific. See this example. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

• I've had users who placed welcome message treat them as warning messages and get miffed if they are messed with... that's not welcoming. "Why did you do x with my welcome message?" It's as if it's a permanent inviolable warning message that you have to leave where it is unchanged or something, when in reality, it could be dumped into the middle of a discussion without a header, and could obviously be "late" if one reviewed the discussions already on the talk page. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 06:01, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• Note: I've proposed what might be considered an automatic welcome message at WP:VPT#MediaWiki:Welcomecreation -> Welcome notice. It would place MediaWiki:Welcomecreation at the top of a new user's talk page in software (until they chose to dismiss it) leaving the talk page redlinked. Please comment there. Rd232 ^talk 16:55, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Change in culture - are all the above observations missing the point?

Is what is needed a general change in culture on how we interact with each other here. If so, how can we achieve it?

• I think we need an overall professional atmosphere akin to what most modern workplaces strive to achieve. Civility, NPA, AGF, are all part of this, as is treating co-workers with respect and dignity, and carefully avoiding saying things that make other people not want to work with you. If your behavior would get you fired or demoted at work, or cause your co-workers to shun you, you shouldn't behave that way on Wikipedia. I also think we need a binding Code of Ethics for those with extra powers -- admins, checkusers, arbs and so forth; corruption is fatal once it gets established, and especially if it is defended by its practitioners. We're big now, and need to study some of the mechanisms that keep large organizations together. In the early days we were a village where everyone knew each other -- we have big-city problems now. Antandrus (talk) 21:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

many of our users are not quite at the professional level yet. We need an culture that will encourage and develop them. The first step is for those of us with experience to do things properly, because if the newcomers see the fighting here, it's either going to scare them off or encourage their own worst behavior. DGG ( talk ) 23:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC) .

Completely agree with Antandrus and DGG. The need for professionalism in our administrators and even regular editors is absolutely necessary in our current high profile, public image which is only going to grow in the future. As we already know the media can come down quite hard on Wikipedia when it perceives a problem. New users should be welcomed but they need to know that this isn't a place for kiddies to play around in. -- œ^™ 03:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That kind of an attitude is the problem now. We (sometimes) act all welcoming at first, then if they make a couple mistakes, they get the "you may be blocked" warnings with little to no attempt at education. If people aren't able to get it right the first time, they just get blocked as vandals or scared away from the project. Mr.Z-man 12:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Some of that arises from experienced users, involved in a content dispute, using the harsher warning templates against relative newbies. Less of that would be helpful. Rd232 ^talk 13:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Professional? Most modern? Have you been at a Manchurian sweatshop lately? Half of mankind will envy those wage slaves... The point is, by mimicking a professional corporation wikipedia will completely disregard the diversity of cultures already present here. On the contrary, it must continuously adapt to it. The entry barrier (or lack thereof) is a critical factor that makes wikipedia different from real-world organization. They control access; wikipedia does not. NVO (talk) 12:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you might be missing my point. We are not mimicking a professional corporation, which exists to make money, we need to model the behavioral standards that allow large groups of people to work together harmoniously, and a large modern corporation is just one example of such a place. You can find the same thing in large volunteer organizations. I don't think I'm the only one to observe that our behavioral standards are in decline, and the slope of that curve approximately follows that of the drop in new content and contributors. This is serious stuff and we need to pay attention to it. If the ad hominem becomes our standard currency, and political infighting the chief motivator for our most public conversations, then the people most likely to join our project will be those who like fighting rather than building. We need to draw in new people who like to create, not fight. Antandrus (talk) 16:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I wish that weren't so true. But what can we do? Rd232 ^talk 16:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Antandrus. Maybe there needs to be more attention paid to not-quite-new users: people who think they know how things work and are now policing newbies, but who don't get how important professional behavior is, or understand that it isn't optional. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 00:30, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• One major problem is that we don't have enough people. That's causing us to speed up in our tasks and employ the use of automated bots. Automation isn't bad, and we need it to handle the flow of new users. (We're the 4th or 5th most visited site.) Maybe we could somehow restrict the flow of vandalism and new users that do not understand policies and guidelines. Netalarmtalk 01:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • And the result of too many robots and not enough humans is talk pages of new users that look like this one. Can you figure out from those messages, without looking at the contributions history, what the editor was doing wrong and how xe should correct it? If there's one thing that we should restrict the flow of, it isn't new page creation. It's awful piled-on boilerplate messages from robots, and people with automated editing tools acting like robots. People in these discussions wanting even more robotically-applied boilerplate user talk page messages are really missing the point of how new users often view Wikipedia. Uncle G (talk) 14:57, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
• We also have to keep in mind that this isn't 2001 anymore, nor is it 2006 anymore. This is 2009, and, as with everything else on the Internet and even in technology in general, things change and has changed very quickly. The writing is on the wall in that we're approaching that natural "wall" – that point where Wikipedia is shifting from creation and expansion to maintenance, current content expansion/cleanup, and organization. That is, the rate of article creation will always keep expanding (since time is always moving forward and with new events), just at a slightly slower rate.

I also encourage others to think, just for fun, what things would be like if Wikipedia wasn't one of the world's most popular websites on the Internet. MuZemike 17:39, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Being serious about enforcing WP:CIVIL would be a good start - as a social convention, ideally, rather than with blocks.  Sandstein  19:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Echoing Netalarm's comment above, any proposed change in guidelines needs to recognize that Wikipedia has limited human resources. New page and recent change patrollers (who are often the first to interact with new users) are watching over an ever-expanding number of articles. Has the number of volunteers who work in this area kept up with the growth? Crafting personal emails that address problems with the user's edits takes time and meanwhile, other cruft gets into Wikipedia unchecked. In gnoming around I've come across longstanding articles and edits that make me go, "how the heck did that go by unchecked?". Also, as I've stated elsewhere, there's only so many ways you can say, "please provide a source" or "the subject you're writing about has to meet Wikipedia's definition of notability". --NeilN ^{talk ♦ contribs} 20:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Sandstein is on the right track. We're grouchy to newbies because we're grouchy to everybody. No amount of WP:CIVIL enforcement will fix that though. The problem is the endless amount of crap stressing everyone out. We should be less tolerant of crap from established users--not just raw incivility, but every type of tendentiousness and system-gaming. That will clean up the whole atmosphere and give us more energy for being friendly to newbies. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 07:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Article creation

This was originally under "Change in culture - are all the above observations missing the point?" until Cenarium made a new section for it. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

• This didn't seem to fit anywhere else, so I'm placing this comment here: Perhaps we should up the time/# edits threshold required to be able to create new articles? As alluded to in the comments in the CSD and PROD sections, if there wasn't a complete mob of questionable articles running in thru the gates all the time, we wouldn't need bouncers playing high-speed whack-a-mole and people could actually spare the time to help newbies understand the policies; it would also force/give them more time to acclimate and more chances to hear about some of the policies as they edit existing articles. I suppose it could make it look like we'd gone into "maintenance mode" though. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

  (I created a header Article creation.) I wouldn't support to raise the requirements for article creation but we should probably make in sort that new users be more familiar with the expectations for new articles before the creation. The Article wizard has been recently developed, and while I'd prefer it stays an optional process, we may try to work out some ideas so that new users can make better articles from the start. As for dealing with the flow, we'd need better patrolling tools - I'll come up with patrolled revisions again. Cenarium (talk) 00:39, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I would support this. I think its about time we (not so subtly) indicate that we need to start focusing on quality rather than quantity. Note that we don't currently have a time/editcount threshold at all for creating articles, all registered users can. We have 3 million articles, and more than half a million of them (nearly 20%) have a maintenance tag on them. Mr.Z-man 03:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• You can't create a new article without being shown a link to Wikipedia:Your first article which seems to me to cover most things well, but how many read it? Perhaps the initial page "You may create the page "Foo", but consider checking the search results below to see whether it is already covered" (which doesn't have much text) should have some link or warning about the likelihood of a new article being deleted. What % of new articles are deleted (or redirected), do we know? Johnbod (talk) 12:03, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Cybercobra: A good idea which I supported at first sight... but then... You cannot learn how to swim unless you actually step into deep water. Can we be assured that 3,000 or 30,000 edits to articles already created by someone else are enough to write an impeccable article? NVO (talk) 11:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Impeccable (defined how? FA?) isn't the goal. Good enough not get speedied or prodded is, I think, the goal. Rd232 ^talk 13:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • The problem is that our current focus on quantity basically consists of tossing people into the water and hoping that they already know what do do. Too many users come to Wikipedia and try to create an article with no knowledge whatsoever on how to do it. The end result: The article gets deleted, the user gets discouraged, and new page patrollers/admins spend the time reviewing and deleting it. Its not a productive exercise from any perspective. Mr.Z-man 13:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Alt: autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation

There is currently an RFC happening at VPR on this idea.--Cybercobra (talk) 18:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• If the Article Wizard 2.0 was considered good enough (or improved til it is), it might be an option to restrict new accounts from creating articles without using the wizard. Not sure how popular that would be, but if/when the tool is good enough, there's a case to be made that, say, you need to be auto-confirmed to create articles without using it. (This would require a software tweak to make possible, AFAIK.) Rd232 ^talk 13:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• Sounds like an excellent idea. Autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation. Ironholds (talk) 18:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• I support this. Do it on a trial basis. It's something that might actually make a difference, unlike most proposals. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
• Nobody's yet pointed it out, so I will: one of the big incentives to get an account, as opposed to edit anonymously, is being able to create an article, which is what most newbies seem to want to do. Delaying the ability to create things may well lead to fewer people being drawn in and becoming good editors. (There are quantity/quality issues, but still.) So there's a big difference between preventing newbies creating articles, and preventing them from creating articles without going through the Article Wizard (which provides some minimal education and guidance for the many who can't be bothered to do the Tutorial). The latter I find easy to support, the former I'd be more concerned about what sort of trade-offs we'd be accepting. Rd232 ^talk 17:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • That's a good point, though I would be interested to find out why so many people want to create articles as the first thing they do. Mr.Z-man 17:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Sure. It would be great if there was some way we could survey new users - the sort of users who aren't going to participate in an RFC. Rd232 ^talk 06:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
• Comment. I am unsure that this will work. Wikipedia went from "IPs can create articles" to "only accounts can create articles" only to get a slowdown in legit article creation, but was there a slowdown in crap article creation? The reason people create articles the first thing they do is that they were editing as an IP before, got an idea, and wanted to make an article. Requiring them to make ten edits before they can create an article will be viewed as lame. Requiring them to wait days will create resentment. The vandals will be inconvenienced, but will view it as a challenge, and some honest newbies will be driven away. Abductive (reasoning) 06:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree (I basically said this above with a different emphasis). Do you agree that requiring new users to use the Article Wizard would address that? (As Ironholds put it, "Autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation.") Rd232 ^talk 08:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
    • This is a good idea. A great one in fact. Funnel all new users trying to create an article to the Article Wizard. If they're serious it'll help them, if it is vandalism or boredom the process might see them off. Fences&Windows 00:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
      • Agreed, and it would also help from an ease-of-use perspective by giving newbies some guidance. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:22, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
• So long as it only affects creations in Article space. Nifboy (talk) 06:27, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I think that's understood (I think at present IPs can actually create user subpages, but not articles). Incidentally by "it" do you mean the original proposal or requiring autoconfirmed for unassisted article creation? Rd232 ^talk 08:09, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Either really, but the wizard is a good place to start. Nifboy (talk) 18:43, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Note:I proposed this at WP:VPR. Rd232 ^talk 12:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Promotional articles

I'm placing this here because most promotional articles seem to be created by new users that do not understand Wikipedia guidelines and policies. There are currently 9705 articles with a promotional tone. People look to Wikipedia as a way to advertise their company or product now, we need a way to stop this. Maybe do something with UAA and promotional usernames? Netalarmtalk 01:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not that they don't understand it, I think it's that they just don't care. They don't care about Wikipedia and its policies, only that it's a high profile site that often comes up first on Google and the only thing that matters to them is their own self-interest. That's why blatant promotional material should be deleted without hesitation, and that those new users should be dealt with aggressively. -- œ^™ 03:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, too many articles get slapped with advertising tags simply because they're favorable articles written by new users about things they like. There's a big difference between overexuberance and flacking. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 06:03, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, part of the problem is that quite often the difference isn't that big! Newbies often don't write in the appropriate tone about things they like, and if it's a commercial topic, it easily sounds like advertising. Short of something drastic like banning newbies from creating such articles (eg requiring them to be userspace drafts, and moved to mainspace by an experienced user), I don't see much that can be done. Perhaps one thing we could do is show examples of What To Do and What Not To on these topics? Trouble is, that would help spammers too... Rd232 ^talk 13:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

If a spammer creates an article that's properly sourced and written from an NPOV, is it really a problem? Mr.Z-man 13:48, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The WP:COI issues are too great: WP:NPOV, notability and reliable sources are likely to be interpreted flexibly. Add that up, and you have an advertisement masquerading as an encyclopedia article, on a subject obscure enough that few people are likely to do anything substantive about it (excluding categorisation, wikification, spelling drive-by fixes). Rd232 ^talk 14:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That's the thing, though; if the subject is notable, and the article is wikified and well-sourced, and if the tone is neutral, then does it really matter who wrote it? The promotional value to the subject would be minimal, and readers get more neutral, verified information on a subject they care about (having clicked to it). UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 15:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

As I said above, the problem is that COI will drive editors to interpret each of the criteria you mention flexibly, in their favour. That's the reason WP:COI exists! For example, it will mean relying heavily or exclusively on material written by the subject, and not bothering to look for third party information. Or looking for it, and discarding anything negative. By saying "if the subject is notable, and the article is wikified and well-sourced, and if the tone is neutral, then does it really matter who wrote it?" you're entirely begging the question. It's the difference between standing in front of an English castle and saying "does it matter who built it?" and standing in front of a pile of sand and a three-year-old and saying "if he can build a castle, what does it matter who builds it?". Apples and oranges. Rd232 ^talk 15:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The original author's opinion of the quality of sources and neutrality is not particularly relevant to whether the article is kept or deleted. If an independent observer (a new page patroller or an AFD voter) cannot find fault with the article quality, how is it a problem? Mr.Z-man 17:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That's addressing a slightly different question than the one I raised. Only if the COI manifests in trying to write an article for something that really isn't notable does deletion become an issue. What I'm talking about are "spamicles", to coin a word, on topics of low notability (high enough to probably pass AFD, low enough that few people care about the subject). NPP will catch obvious spamicles (mostly), and AFD scrutiny will catch less obvious ones (mostly). The issue is the spamicles that slip by NPP and don't get nominated for AFD, either because notability is clear enough, or because nobody can be bothered. Such spamicles can have all manner of COI issues, as noted above. Rd232 ^talk 10:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Answer: It isn't. That's why the WP:COI page distinguishes between having and abusing a conflict of interest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Where does WP:COI do that? Seems a strange way of putting it. I'd say the issue is whether someone can overcome or put aside their COI and still act in the best interests of the encyclopedia. I'm unconvinced that someone with a genuine COI problem can do that, at least without neutral help, even if they want to. And the issue here is spamicles which are substantively written by a single COI editor. Rd232 ^talk 10:46, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

"Editors who may have a conflict of interest are allowed to make certain kinds of non-controversial edits...Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is notable and conforms to the content policies [you can't do this if you're not allowed to edit at all].... Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but if you have a conflict of interest avoid, or exercise great caution [when doing four major things -- the point here being that a person with a COI is expressly allowed to do these things if so long as he doesn't abuse the COI/"exercises great caution"]....Who has written the material should be irrelevant so long as these policies are closely adhered to...."

The principle is present throughout the text, actually; it just doesn't have (any longer?) a concise way of expressing it. My impression of the guideline is that it has become much more restrictive and negative over time. On the positive side, WP:COI finally really communicates the notion that being extremely knowledgeable in a given subject area doesn't create a conflict of interest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

OK. But I don't see how that addresses the problem I'm talking about above. Implied in the COI policy, for me, is scrutiny by others (or if it isn't implied in the policy, it should be), and I'm talking about a class of articles where there is little real scrutiny. Rd232 ^talk 21:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ads

Wikipedia ads	file info – show another – #21

Should we be making better use of {{Wikipedia ads}}? I've got a pretty big list of Wikipedia tasks and places that could use more internal advertising (excluding wikiprojects): {{wikipedia ads|22|2|4|5|6|9|12|13|14|15|17|18|21|24|37|44|67|71|89|104|125|150|163}}. Some places like WP:FEED currently don't have ads, and the ads could placed in more places (Village Pump?) and editors encouraged to place them on talk pages. Rd232 ^talk 14:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

These annoy the heck out of me (flashing/bright colors/etc is too distracting). I'd oppose them being added to more places. Karanacs (talk) 18:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I also dislike the ads. If I only see them every now and again, then it might be kind of cute, but every time I open a well-traveled page would be seriously annoying. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I tune out when I see them, so I am not sure. Does anyone like them? If so post here. I can see they were well-intended. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Much of the annoyance comes from the animation, I guess. Perhaps static images would be less intrusive, and more of an option for displaying more widely? Rd232 ^talk 10:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Adds aren't really helpful in my opinion. I just ignore them for the most part. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

"for the most part". So some of the time you do notice them? Isn't that better than nothing? Rd232 ^talk 06:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

¶ For another perspective, here's one [Image:Qxz-ad16.gif] that I shamelessly filched from User:Garion96 :

It was a great consolation to someone who'd just lost his Request for Administratorship; see User talk:Baseball Bugs/Archive011#S-s-so you wanted to be an adminiss-sstrator?

As for the substance, even moderatly-animated ads are way too distracting, and can aggravate the chances of a Flash Crash on feeble systems and connections like my own. There has to be some happy medium between all those static dull notices and things that looks like they need the accompaniment of John Philip Sousa, the U.S. Marine Band and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I run a website for a large local government organisation, and we recently did some work on users of our website using eyetracking. We have a big banner ad top centre, below the search and above the buttons for the 'do it on line' features, that do get heavily used. For the purpose of the research, we set the banner to advertise a particular service, then asked the users to go to the page for that service. The eye tracking showed that not one of them even looked at the banner. Guess what's going in the bin on the next redesign? Elen of the Roads (talk) 19:18, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

"we set the banner to advertise a particular service, then asked the users to go to the page for that service. The eye tracking showed that not one of them even looked at the banner." This is slightly unclear. How long had the banner been there? Had users seen it 100 times before the testing? Were you expecting people to click the banner, and instead they went there some other way? Anyway one example like that does not prove that all banners everywhere are always useless - we still have online advertising, don't we?? It does, though, suggest that some way of tracking ad clicks on {{Wikipedia ads}} would be helpful. Most obviously it could be done by making the clicks go to a redirect page, and then measuring the access stats of that page with this tool. (Though obviously that would be a very blunt instrument - no clue about impact of placement of ads on different pages.) Rd232 ^talk 08:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

To explain further - the users we recruited were not regular users of our website, and could not recall having been to it recently (or at all). We gave them a task "go to the page for x" and put an advertising banner that said "click here to find out about X", with some graphics on it. From the evidence of the eyetracking it could have said anything. The tracker showed that the users eyes skirted all round the banner and never read it at all. They appear to have processed it as an advert and blanked it out - I believe e.e 'doc' smith was the first person to document this phenomenon. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:21, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I too first read of that phenomenon in the Chronicles of Civilization (but Edward Elmer "Doc" Smith never lowercased his name, unlike e.e. "doc" cummings)! Good catch. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:03, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Aha. So you gave them a task from which an ad will generally be a distraction, and are surprised when, under test conditions, the users avoid looking at ads? How realistic is that? People don't navigate that way! What you want to measure is how much people, in normal usage but not in the middle of a navigation task, bother to look at something possibly related to the current content that looks ad-like. Rd232 ^talk 22:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. I offer to share a brief summary of some very expensive research, and all I get is a smart ass comment. Think what you bloody well like, it's all one to me. Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I didn't intend it to be smart-ass. It's just from what you said, it doesn't sound to me like good research. Whether that's a flaw in the research, your explanation, or my interpretation I don't know (though obviously in remarking it's "very expensive" it makes it less likely it was the research). Rd232 ^talk 07:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The ads suck and they should be eliminated. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 07:17, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

They aren't used much. Do you mean the specific ads suck (better ones might be ok), or the principle of having such ads sucks? Rd232 ^talk 10:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Community initiative

Since a few weeks, I came to think we need an extensive community initiative to review how we deal with new users, usability problems, the way our policies, help pages and system messages are presented, if possible in collaboration with the usability initiative, from which I hope this RFC will be a start. Wikipedia:Help Project and Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability may be of help for this. Cenarium (talk) 23:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that is what I was thinking too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:43, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm pleased with the response to the Article Wizard 2.0 and to WP:COPYPASTE, and more ways to make processes easier and policies more understandable for newbies should be sought. Rd232 ^talk 13:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I will add that usability is also a concern for new users on the software-end of things, and it's just as big a concern IMO as the culture issues. Personally, I'm looking forward to the implementation of the LiquidThreads extension, which works to bring wiki-style editing and traditional Internet forum-based threading/organization together to increase user-friendliness especially for new users. MuZemike 17:45, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• I think that far too often projects and initiatives arise as a "band-aid" for a specific problem. As the drama dies down, and solutions are found, too often some great ideas are abandoned. Lessons learned are soon forgotten, good projects turn into ghost towns. People drift back to their own articles, projects, ideas, boards, or whatever area they enjoy working in. Where is the incentive to continue working on an effort that is behind the scenes? Welcoming committees, and Esperanzas are never going to make the main page, give out barnstars, achieve any "Featured" anything. I am as guilty as anyone else, somehow things like User:Ched Davis/Helping Hands either never catch on, or just dry up after a while. I don't know the answers, but I do think more can be done on the "assistance" end of wikipedia. — Ched :  ?  19:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't think that such efforts are sustainable. The rewards to the people doing the heavy lifting are minimal, even if the benefits to Wikipedia might(!) be substantial. In the real world, you'd have to pay people to do this (and we do: e.g., schoolteachers). The sustainable parts of Wikipedia are the parts that have intrinsic rewards (the creative aspects of developing an article, the satisfaction of meeting your project's goals, providing information to outsiders) or extrinsic social rewards conferred by the Wikipedia community (the social status of serving on ArbCom, the public thanks of respected editors). IMO, it's generally fun to work with a promising new editor, but to work with any and all comers? Well -- you'd have to pay me. I have much more interesting and rewarding things to do than to try to take on the doomed task of attempting to turn an immature brat with poor language skills, a complete disregard for copyright laws, and a conviction that nothing is more important than TV celebrities into a productive editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Also: If this is so impossible, how come we're all here? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• As a note, some of this would be useful over at the call for proposals. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• I didn't mean a permanent project, but an organized effort, for a few months, to tackle the issue, i.e. identify usability problems and problems encountered by new users, propose solutions, technical enhancements, etc. It could be called the '2009 usability community initiative'. A few pages would be needed to centralize and organize, and we'd need to make surveys and requests for feedback, so make use of notices. We could, of course, relaunch regularly such initiatives in the future. Cenarium (talk) 12:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Username blocks

Does blocking new users for having spammy user names drive away users who might have started on some spammy personal topic then expanded into new areas? Someone once observed to me that you can learn something about nearly every user by looking at their very first edits; so maybe the tendency of uses to name yourself after your business is fairy normal, and need not suggest that the user will persist for long in a promotional state of mind.

What does the "create new account" screen look like? Does it contain plenty of good advice? Hesperian 23:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about spammy username blocks in particular, but I agree that username blocking in general is probably one of the biggest drivers-away of new users. I've tried patrolling WP:UAA in the past, but got frustrated at the number of reports that, to me, didn't seem actionable without any actual evidence of bad faith in the form of bad edits. It may be better now, there seems to be at least an effort to wait for edits, but we really need a better system for monitoring "potentially bad" usernames, rather than just reporting them for immediate blocks. Mr.Z-man 00:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The register screen is at Special:UserLogin/signup (bottom bit is MediaWiki:Signupend, top bit, only shown if you're logged out, is MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount). It contains enough advice, for people who can be bothered to read it; maybe even too much. Possibly MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-createaccount could be improved by having a positive suggestion like "Choose a username that identifies you personally, either using your real name, or using an alias of your choosing." This would slightly contextualise the prohibitions, on what not to do. And I'm inclined to wonder how necessary it is to tell people of the technical limitations in advance - it would be neater to hide that and only tell people if the need arises. Also, it would be rather more aesthetic and possibly less confusing if the captcha appeared nearer the Create Account button. It looks kind of misplaced, as is. Rd232 ^talk 11:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I had a go at a redesign. See MediaWiki talk:Fancycaptcha-createaccount. Rd232 ^talk 15:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• It would be better to prophylactically create all the bad usernames we can think of (or computer generate) so that they are all "taken", than to allow people to to create them and get dinged. Abductive (reasoning) 20:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• I think we should be as welcoming as we possibly can to new users and make every effort to attract potential editors. However, there comes a point where we need to also focus on remaining professional and free of spam. I'd say most sysops at UAA are fairly careful with "promotional accounts" in that they only block when necessary. If the user is serious about editing, they can always request an unblock and a username change, so I think username blocks are, for the most part, applied correctly. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Julian, I'd beg to differ with that. User talk:LA Emergency Management (EMD). User:OrangeMike is a very good admin, and the user set out in apparent good faith to create an article about the Los Angeles disaster co-ordination services - and somehow the collision resulted in a userpage deletion and an indefinite block without warning. The policy (which OrangeMike followed scrupulously and I'm not picking on him, this just happened while this discussion was going on) needs further examination. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

A heavier emphasis on research?

The early phase of Wikipedia was marked by the ability for new editors to contribute what they knew. So long as the information was more-or-less accurate and there weren't any obvious problems (WP:NOT etc) then we accepted it as a work-in-progress and only really used sources as a fall-back when what users "knew" disagreed with each other. It was as academically rigorous as a high-school essay, maybe less. Now, our standards are closer to the sophistication of university work, but new users are still basically the same. The minute they start a new article they are tested on their research and source evaluation, skills that our older users have had years to hone. There is no "Research sandbox", where users can learn, by experimentation in a no-stakes environment, how to find good sources on their topic. The various routes to article deletion are basically a bunch of pass/fail pop quizzes on how well an editor researched his topic, which means picking good topics. And I think we've completely and utterly failed to communicate that. We place a heavy emphasis on being "The encyclopedia anyone can edit", encouraging editors to add add add, but the key step before hitting that "Save page" button is completely external to Wikipedia: Doing the research. And there is incredibly little guidance to help new users with that fundamental task, much less make them aware of its importance.

TL;DR: How do we help users do research, and not flunk them out of the Wiki if they get it wrong? Nifboy (talk) 07:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The immediate reaction I have is "userspace drafts!". Encourage much wider use of those - everything's less dramatic in userspace. (Article Wizard 2.0 has a handy option for it.) Rd232 ^talk 09:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Instead of userspace drafts, a simple stub should be established for a new article, with a Talk:articleX/draft used as the draft space, like templates have sandboxes, and so that many collaborators can collaborate without having edit histories spread all across creation, with each their own personal drafts, and needing odd history merges. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 06:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a straight route to POV forks. Might work on benign subjects (where you won't see many editors crowding in to edit, in the first place) but will only add to the drama on already contested topics. NVO (talk) 05:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Hadn't thought of that... I was thinking of those userspace scratch pages that some editors invite other editors onto to craft an article before going live, except that the final product is c&p'd onto the final location, with the contribution history missing, and since some editors use a general scratch pad, the history of that location is not specific to the new article (or they have a scratch pad they repeatedly blank for each new task, instead of being multisectioned)... 76.66.197.30 (talk) 18:07, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think tagging {{unref}} instead of {{refstyle}} , {{refimprove}} or {{nofootnotes}} may discourage, and moreso when editors revert saying "unreferenced" the instant something is added, regardless of whether it is unreferenced or not, as long as it didn't use a >ref< tag is not friendly. If someone writes, from book-name-Y by author-X it is said that factoid-Z, obviously this is referenced, or if someone adds "(book-name-Y ISBN code-here)" there is a reference, the ISBN is automagically linked for further information on top of that. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 06:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Rules overload

I wonder how many new or would-be editors study all the rules and procedures they're supposed to follow, or are just intimidated from doing more than correcting the occasional spelling or date, or adding the odd External Link. One of the regulars at WT:Manual of Style recently made a big effort to reduce the overall bulk of the page without reducing the substance, but his trial page is still pretty dense. And there are two dozen sub-pages of MoS, including WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), plus over 100 specialized pages for different languages and topic areas. That's not counting general guidance and iron-clad rules about Civility, Point of View, Conflict of Interest, Reliable Sources, Original Research, Fair Use and Living Persons.

While I don't want to import here a long-running, long-standing and inherently-unavoidable controversy that would overwhelm everything here, I think useful guidance about common conventions and practice needs to be distinguished from the rules that everyone almost always has to follow such as the essential points of civility, technological compatibility, handicapped-accessibility, fairness, reliability and non-ambiguity. New editors need to absorb and digest the latter pretty quickly, even if that involves frequent reversions and talk-page reminders. The finer points of formatting, titling, capitalization, punctuation, dating or citation, however, can be picked up gradually and should be handled much more gently and more consensually (WP:Don't bite the newcomers).

The difficulty is, of course, what's really an essential rule and what's more a matter of convention, consensus, preference and style. I'm in the more libertine, inclusionist, slash-the-rules, let a hundred flowers bloom, camp, while those who are more passionate about a uniform appearance and "encyclopedic tone" tend more naturally towards the patrol and Manual of Style pages. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:37, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

As a general point, certainly, rules overload is a problem - both the number of rules and the complexity of individual ones. There is WP:PROJPOL working on it. There is also Wikipedia:WikiProject Manual of Style. MoS itself is a guideline, so less important than policy. Personally I've never felt the need to pay any attention to the MoS; I just follow a standard absorbed from looking at lots of articles. AFAIK MoS is only really an issue for Good Article / Featured Article status, and I've always stayed well away from those, mostly be accident, and slightly on purpose (from hearing about the battles involved). Rd232 ^talk 21:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Although I easily fall into the latter camp mentioned above by Shakescene I can agree that the MoS is meant to be for reference only and referred to when one needs to look up a particular thing, such as if you need to know how and when to use an endash or an emdash for example.

Maybe the same could be applied for most of the other guidelines.. new users could be encouraged to study Wikipedia in that manner.. instead of learning by reading it all at once, gradually referring to them when the opportunity arises. But I'm guessing trial and error is already the way most new users begin to learn Wikipedia. -- œ^™ 18:00, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

My own feeling? Having rules, and telling people that they can and will be blocked for breaking them, while also encouraging them to "break all rules", and often not enforcing rules against (what are perceived by many to be) favoured editors must be highly confusing to new editors (not to mention quite a few of us not-so-new ones). As for the MoS - I haven't looked at it for a while, but last time I did it struck me as unreadable. DuncanHill (talk) 18:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)}

MoS is currently 25 sections and 152kb. I've no desire to tackle it, but it seems to me like it must be improvable, perhaps by better organising the sections. But I also wonder who the audience is... It seems designed like a print-based MoS; something for people to read to educate themselves. Who does that? Why not just have a much briefer overview of what the different hyperlinked subsections of MoS are, providing only enough text to explain what the different subsections are about? I don't really see the point of the duplication, because the result is a page nobody really wants to use. Rd232 ^talk 19:49, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I think there are a few bits of MOS that regularly trip up newbies. AD/CE changers who get referred to wp:ERA, and people who change between English and American English spelling. There is a proposal on the strategy wiki that could resolve this. Then of course there is the first thing we have to tell newbies - signing talkpages. ϢereSpielChequers 00:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, it's not obvious which rules get ignored more frequently than others. If you were to order the guidelines/policies by their immediacy (that is, how quickly they are likely to be applied to a violation and/or new user) the heirarchy looks something like this:

• Stuff that will get you blocked on sight (WP:3RR, WP:VANDAL, WP:DICK)
• Stuff that will get you reverted on sight (WP:N (esp. new articles), WP:COI, WP:NOT and variations, WP:CSD)
• Stuff that will make people extraordinarily mad at you (WP:POINT, WP:GAME, WP:SPAM)
• Core content policies (WP:V, WP:BLP). Note this is closer to the middle of the list, NOT the top.
• Wikiquette and other norms (WP:AGF, WP:CONS, WP:BRD)
• Everything else (WP:MOS etc.)

It's really confusing to a new user when he sees that verifiability is a core content policy yet we leave uncited articles laying around, while at the same time we immediately jump on a new user adding links to his webpage (EL and COI being guidelines). I think we're reasonably good at getting users to understand our long term goals by way of e.g. WP:TFA etc, but we're really bad at telling them what we patrol for in the short-term, and why. Nifboy (talk) 00:59, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

One problem is that new users assume that someone who throws a YOU WILL BE BLOCKED! template at them, or rewrites all their work claiming the Absolute Authority of the MoS, must be an administrator with the authority to kick them off Wikipedia for insisting on using a hyphen, an ordinal date or too many capital letters. In fact, administrators involved in an editing dispute are supposed to refrain from administrative action against other participants in the same dispute, because that's considered an abuse of power and conflict of interest. But newcomers don't know that. This is pretty intimidating, alienating and rather discouraging. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually I'd add WP:COPYVIO to "Stuff that will get you reverted on sight". It gets applied very quickly now (and rightly so!). See Wikipedia:Copyright problems and Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations. I check new opera-related articles daily, and just in that small area, I almost invariably find one or two significant chunks of straight copy/pastes from copyright sources (a lot of COI too, as they often go together). The Article Wizard doesn't seem to help much. A significant number of the ones I find came from the Wizard, and I've yet to see a Wizard-created article in my area that wasn't a serious copyvio. If someone is determined to get themself, their friend, their organization, whatever, onto Wikipedia, they just do it and ignore all warnings. I'm sure they don't bother to read the recommened guidelines they are pointed to either. Voceditenore (talk) 12:18, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Well based on that feedback I've made several changes to the relevant wizard page (Wikipedia:Article wizard 2.0/Wizard-Content) to highlight the issue more. Let's see if it makes any difference. The problem, I think, as much as anything else, is that too many newbies start with a single source and no relevant experience, and the result, even if it isn't just copy-pasting the whole thing, is frequently a close paraphrasing. Fundamentally, writing an encyclopedia entry is hard work and takes some skill and experience! (Who'd a thunk it?) Rd232 ^talk 12:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

That's pretty good. I can't see how you could make it more emphatic. For those who don't use the wizard.... I notice that in the Italian Wikipedia, every time you edit this appears immediately below the edit box:

NON COPIARE DA TESTI PUBBLICATI O SITI INTERNET. RISPETTA IL COPYRIGHT.

The warning on the English WP is way too discreet and ignorable.;-) Re the hard work and skill required, I totally agree. But for those editors who are only interested in getting themselves/associates/clients into Wikipedia, hard work is the last thing they want to put in unless they're forced to, and even then, they couldn't care less about the rest of the project. They maintain "their article" (aka alternative web site) and that's it. I'm afraid my view of this sort of thing has become increasingly jaundiced over the years. Sigh... Voceditenore (talk) 13:56, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding jargon

It's a point raised above (with "PROD" and "DAB" highlighted as particularly bad cases of jargon, because it's less obvious that they even are jargon), but I think this is another area we can try and improve. Wikipedia jargon seems to develop on its own, like a weed; we need to occasionally make a conscious effort to see what can be cut back to most benefit to newbies and least cost to the regulars. One example, I think (though there are other motivations too) is Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words - hence my proposal to rename to Wikipedia:Avoid vague attribution. Perhaps a wikiproject could take on the task of identifying particular problems and suggesting solutions. Rd232 ^talk 19:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been here for about 18 months and thousands of edits, and I still don't understand the specific Wikipedia meanings of transclusion and WP:namespace. —— Shakescene (talk) 19:25, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Some good points. Specific examples of material we can make more accessible can be listed and linked. "Weasel words" is not restricted to wikipedia, but is maybe not as accessible to all either..Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Under Construction

It seems that many here agree that new editors create pages slowly, without the foreknowledge to make it look so polished, and often edit them in stages. As a new page patroller myself, I will stop myself from nominating an article for deletion if the {{undercontruction}} tag is on an article. Is there a way that this tag could be automatically added to a new user's first few articles? That way, blatant vandalism would still be deleted, but articles with the potential to add notability if the editor is given a few hours would be given time to develop before being marked for deletion. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Or could there be some kind of (manually or automatically attached) query on such pages asking about the time the user contemplates needing? Of course, the originating editor may not think the article needs any more work, in which case she or he should be warned that deletion is likely unless someone fills in a few details, supplies a reference or fixes something else. But when the editor does plan to build up the article, sometimes all that's needed is time to go downstairs to retrieve another reference work, while in other cases the originating editor won't feel able to fill the gaps until he, she or someone else returns to school or work from a long vacation. The sincere intention to complete the article is present in both instances (and all the ones in between), but a new-page-patroller won't know the difference. So would some kind of Template:estimated completion? for either the article itself or the editor's talk page, and/or a date addition to Template:under construction itself be helpful? —— Shakescene (talk) 22:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

How do you encourage use of those, by the sort of newbies who really need to? I think more use of userspace drafts is the way to go (plus use of incubation, perhaps, if Wikipedia:Requests for comment/userfication leads to it being added to Twinkle. Possibly also, as a drastic measure, preventing non-autoconfirmed users from creating pages in mainspace. Too easy to create pages that get deleted = too easily bitten and not going to return. Rd232 ^talk 18:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think limiting their ability to create and article will make the problem discussed here worse. I meant, not encouraging, but having it automatically placed on pages written by new users, much as the {{uncategorized}} template is automatically added to articles without categories. That is why I asked if there was even a way to do it, as I am unfamiliar with coding, what that would take, etc. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that we need a system that allows new page patrollers to see that some good faith article creation is going on and give the article 24 hours without worrying the newbie with templates. I think this might do the trick. ϢereSpielChequers 01:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Abusive hatting and archiving / refactoring

This is a practice that I've seen abusively used to stifle discussion from new editors. There is a discussion about this here: Template_talk:Hidden_archive_top stmrlbs|talk 20:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)