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

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Executive summary: In this broadly attended discussion, more than two-thirds of those expressing a clear "support" or "oppose" opinion supported the proposal to limit article creation to autoconfirmed editors, either as a trial or on a permanent basis. Non-autoconfirmed editors would either need to submit new articles to Articles for Creation or create a userspace draft, preferably using an improved Article Wizard. However, because there is a vocal and passionate (albeit minority) opposition and there are empirical uncertainties about the exact impact of the proposed change, the preferred approach for proceeding is to conduct a trial of a definite duration, followed by the autoconfirmation requirement being turned off for a period of review, after which the community can decide for or against long-term implementation. The exact duration of the trial and review periods, and the preferred criteria for review, should be clarified prior to the trial commencing. A trial of 3-6 months followed by a review of 1-3 months seems to be the most common view in discussion thus far. In addition to these conclusions regarding the primary topic of the RfC, the discussion also showed consensus for making (unspecified) improvements to the Article Wizard and giving more attention to the Articles for Creation process, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the main proposal. Extended close discussion below.

This RfC received substantial community input, with over 500 editors participating. As with any large and well-attended discussion, there were comments about secondary issues and tangents, ambiguous statements, even contradictions. Nonetheless, there was considerable clear commentary for and against the main proposal of the RfC. One supporter of the proposal created a summary table that classifies the views of the participating editors. I conducted my own review of the discussion independently of this, but I believe the results are broadly similar. (Where I have noticed differences in spot comparisons, I was more conservative about not assigning a clear "support" or "oppose" value to ambiguous comments.) The overall result: more than two-thirds of the participants expressing support or opposition were in support. Depending on how some of the less clear comments are allocated, support might be as much as 70%, but I have chosen to avoid potential over-interpretation of such comments. Either way, the result is consistent with the Village Pump discussion that preceded the RfC, in which just under three-fourths of about 60 participants expressing a clear position supported the idea. (Most, but not all, of the participants from the earlier discussion followed through to the RfC.)

In addition to the discussion on the primary RfC page and the prior Village Pump discussion noted above, there was extensive talk page discussion and some discussions spun off onto subpages. The topic has also been raised at least twice at User talk:Jimbo Wales. I have also received comments regarding my prospective closing on my own user talk page and via email. While I have read all of this and it has informed my evaluation of the consensus, I will not attempt to summarize all of these numerous discussions. Some of the participants have already attempted to summarize the common arguments for and against the proposed change. I will not repeat all of those. What I will focus on from the primary discussion is two key points of disagreement, one philosophical and one empirical, and one point of agreement. I believe there are also some secondary points around which rough consensus can be inferred, which I will discuss at the end.

The philosophical disagreement is that many opposers see the proposed restriction as contrary to the "anyone can edit" principle, a core Wikipedia principle that is affirmed in multiple locations. Supporters argue that limiting article creation to autoconfirmed users leaves "anyone can edit" intact: anyone (even unregistered users) can still edit most pages, and those who wish to create new articles directly instead of through AFC will only need to achieve the relatively low hurdle of autoconfirmation. They also point out existing restrictions on editing that are accepted by the community: requiring account registration to create pages, and semi-protection of some pages. (A minority of the opposers – clearly not a consensus, even among the oppose positions – believes that these pre-existing restrictions are also contrary to "anyone can edit" and should be abolished. Similarly, a small and clearly non-consensus portion of the supporters called for even more restrictions than what was initially proposed.)

The key point of agreement, also philosophical, is that both sides want to encourage participation by quality contributors. One of the comments made to me was about the recent Wikimedia Foundation resolution on openness. I believe many participants on both sides would generally support the positions expressed in that resolution. But both sides view their own preferred approach as encouraging quality contributors and making Wikipedia more inviting to them, which is the key empirical disagreement. Supporters of the change believe that the current approach drives away new editors, because when they are allowed to create new articles without prior editing experience, the result is often for their articles to be deleted, which dispirits them and ends their involvement with Wikipedia. By channeling prospective article writers into editing established articles, they will become more familiar with Wikipedia norms before creating an article, and as a result will have a better overall experience. Some would-be article writers won't bother, but supporters believe these will mostly be the creators of vandalism and attack pages, who will not be missed. Opponents, on the other hand, believe the proposed restriction will simply drive potential editors away: upon realizing that they cannot immediately create a new article, most will simply give up on Wikipedia. Those that persist will primarily be dedicated vandals and POV-pushers. In effect, the two sides have mirror image expectations about the effect of the proposed change, and as suggested by Jimbo, the absence of empirical evidence prevents us from knowing which of these expectations is accurate.

The desire for better empirical evidence and sensitivity toward the strongly expressed concerns of the opposition – one of the more popular opposition views said this change would "kill Wikipedia" – led to discussions about conducting a trial. Although these discussions drew less participation than the primary proposal, discussion was robust enough that I believe some conclusions can be taken from it. Most who discussed the idea of a trial generally supported having one, with some supporters directly conditioning their support for the proposed change on the idea of it being a trial. Discussions about possible details of the trial were less conclusive, but a couple of common themes did emerge. Most crucially, the trial should be for a strictly defined time period, with a firm understanding that the feature will be deactivated at the end of the trial and not reactivated (if ever) until the results are reviewed and discussed by the community. The messy end of the recent pending changes trial was cited as an example of what to avoid. A trial period long enough to gather substantial data (at least three months) was the most common preference. The need to gather "before and after" data sets and have some prior notion of what to review were discussed, but no specifics were decided. Further planning is needed to refine these items.

Finally, some "secondary" items were discussed that had broad support. Almost everyone who commented on it seems to think that the Article Wizard can and should be improved. There were also repeated concerns about making sure that the Articles for Creation process gets more attention so it does not become clogged and proposed articles get the improvements they need. Participants on both sides of the discussion agreed on these points. There were also a number of ideas proposed that I cannot describe as having consensus, but which did have some support and may be worth discussing on their own merits. These included trying to make New Page Patrol less confrontational through better notifications and/or grace periods for new articles, a suggestion to limit new articles to titles redlinked from existing articles, and a suggestion for automatic creation of user sandboxes. Finally, there was noteworthy support for the view of User:Malleus Fatuorum, which cautioned against neglecting established editors in our efforts to improve the experience of new ones, a fitting point on which to end this somewhat TL;DR summation of an even longer discussion. --RL0919 (talk) 02:10, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

---

Follow-up: After my close above, discussion of the details of a trial was begun at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Trial duration. --RL0919 (talk) 20:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

In a discussion on the Village Pump, User:The Blade of the Northern Lights proposed preventing users creating new articles until they gain autoconfirmed status. The Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) rationale was:

1. This would reduce the workload on New Page Patrollers;
2. New users would be "bitten" less due to the resulting reduction in stress on the part of those most in contact with them;
3. New users are less likely to be disenchanted by their article being deleted – because they would not be able to create them automatically, but instead send them through WP:AFC;
4. Autoconfirmed users with 10 edits to existing articles would enjoy an easier learning curve than trying to create an encyclopedic article with their first edit.

Notes: autoconfirmed status is automatically given to editors who reach 10 edits and whose account is at least 4 days old. Under the proposal, editors without the status would not be able to create articles in mainspace without some form of assistance. Possible forms of assistance include the Articles for Creation system, the Article Wizard (an exemption can be engineered for non-autoconfirmed editors using it) and the use of userspace drafts in combination with a request to move the draft to mainspace.

Individual views

View from User:Fetchcomms

This is basically repeating what was discussed at the Village Pump. I don't think this RfC will result in anything conclusive, because the change is so massive that we will probably end up having a community-wide vote on whether or not to do this.

I propose two things:

1. This RfC be ended or put on hold for a short period of time (one month?) as the arguments from the VP will only be repeated.
2. A more efficient AfC, article wizard, or other article creation system—possibly even a MediaWiki extension later—be designed and tested, and data collected.

I hate to bring up the words "pending changes" again, but I think a strict PC-type trial (maybe just one month long, no questions asked) that collects data we can use to analyze both the a) editor retention rate and b) the article retention rate, would be very helpful here. Because otherwise, we're going off random opinions that have no solid backing other than Wikipedia philosophies.

Users who endorse this view

1. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Hits all the right points. NW (Talk) 20:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Didn't understand this one at first. But yes. I see broad support for change. If it's short of a consensus, we should run a controlled trial, rather than letting speculation stop a potentially good idea. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Not sure about putting it on hold, per se, but I think that any trial with a very clear scope would cause much less drama. bobrayner (talk) 19:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Yes, we should fix the software then test it. I'm not comfortable with telling newbies we don't want their articles, but getting this in place first would certainly reduce the damage. ϢereSpielChequers 20:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Sadads (talk) 05:56, 16 April 2011 (UTC) - very good, we need time for other options which have been in the making for a while to work, instead of wholesale banning new users from article creation
7. Tom Cloyd (talk) 22:55, 27 April 2011 (UTC) YES, let's get some actual performance data before any decision is made. That's very reasonable, and any resulting decision would be far less contentious.
8. Nat682 (talk) 21:25, 28 April 2011 (UTC) - I really think we should have a vote. The views from both sides are clear, and there is by far enough opinions for everyone to make a very informed decision when voting on this. So let's just vote on it!
9. — Ekin^(talk·@) 08:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC) - Let's do this. Simple and true. End of anonymous vandalism.
10. Frozen Windwant to be chilly? 14:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Ironholds

This is going to be a bit TL:DR, so I apologise for that, but this is a pretty big topic, and a pretty important one. New users and new articles are primary to Wikipedia. We are a project built around a simple goal; to be "The encyclopaedia that anyone can edit". That is our mission statement. An encyclopaedia, that anyone can edit; two clauses which sometimes, inevitably, conflict. When they do, one has to be partially sacrificed for the other - be it restricting editorial rights to protect our encyclopaedic status, or tarnishing our position as an encyclopaedia in an effort to include more people in the box marked "editors". In this case, we are being asked if we support the former - a restriction on who can edit, or who can edit in a particular fashion, to protect our position as a compendium of that knowledge we judge to be notable. When making changes which impact on part of our statement, we need to take a lockean balance-of-rights approach; restrictions must be:

1. necessary for the upholding of the mission statement as a whole, or other elements of the mission statement, and;
2. the smallest possible restriction necessary for the upholding of the mission statement (or elements thereof).

So, does this restriction pass that test? In my opinion, no.

There are various arguments put forward in favour of this proposal. The first is that it will reduce the workload of those who patrol Special:NewPages. I admit, this is the case, but is that workload reduction necessary? Special:NewPages has a 30 day "buffer"; after an article is more than 30 days old, it falls off the back of the log. Fairly simple. At the moment, the buffer has 20 days remaining - in other words, even with the complaining about how difficult and stressful being a new page patroller is, we could happily not touch it for 3 weeks and not suffer an issue. I don't mean to ridicule those complaining, because I understand the issue. I'm a patroller myself, and I've cleared the entire backlog twice. I'm not ignorant of the workload patrollers face. But the workload is not as bad as it's being made out to be, and people are failing to take into account the long-term possibilities; that if an effort is put into accepting and tutoring new users, they will become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Any issues with more people needed at Special:NewPages can be solved simply by getting more people involved.

Another argument is that shifting people from Special:NewPages to WP:Articles for Creation will reduce the "bitiness" new users experience, and thus the problem with retaining them. I disagree. Special:NewPages is a place categorised by stress and a siege mentality, which comes from having a backlog, a small number of contributors, and the feeling that Everything Will Break if things aren't done immediately. That's where bitiness comes from. Shifting people from Special:NewPages to AfC will not fix the problem, it'll simply move it - by ensuring that the Articles for Creation people become stressed, backlogged and overworked. Sound familiar?

New users are less likely to be disenchanted from editing if their articles are sent through AfC, yes. However, a lot of new users simply won't bother trying. The AfC interface is problematic, and many new editors create articles for the immediate thrill of doing so. Denying that thrill will send a lot of them off, never to return, during a period when we're having significant problems with attracting users. If you want to do this, you have to improve AfC to a decent standard first; you can't just shove this into place and then scramble to fix things afterwards.

This proposal does not address actual problems, alternating between shifting the burden to another party and simply driving off contributors. If you want to fix the issues, fine, but don't kill our intake of new users along with it. Ironholds (talk) 20:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. User:Darion29 ((User talk:Darion29|talk]]) 16:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
2. HighSocietyCanada ([User talk:HighSocietyCanada|talk]]) 21:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Note: user's only other edits consist of promotion in own userspace. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 07:35, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

1. Ironholds (talk) 20:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. very strongly. DGG ( talk ) 21:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. ^ Juliancolton (talk) 22:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. The proposers intentions are pure but I just don't see the current proposals for locking down article creation (or trying to push them to AfC) as helping the issues stated. History shows that the amount of good faith editors that will be lost is under appreciated and the amount of bad faith editors who will give overestimated. The AfC idea makes logical sense but the current structure of the process and the significant historical precedence we have on wiki shows that the backlog, and the problems, will likely only move from one place to another. James of UR (talk) 02:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. I tried AfC the other day as an IP. I managed to do it only because I was proposing a redirect. There are too many steps and too many options. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Hear, hear. Stickee (talk) 07:33, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
7. ϢereSpielChequers 07:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Ruslik_Zero 15:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Protonk (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. I don't see the length of the New Articles backlog as particularly problematic. Carrite (talk) 01:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:31, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
12. At the moment, we need that influx of users. Long processes are scary. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 04:24, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Definitely agree. This change would discourage a lot of potential contributors and merely shuffle workloads. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 17:02, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Agree. A bureaucracy is more likely to drive away new users who have potential than a pack of bitie wolves at NPP. Abductive (reasoning) 07:43, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
16. Strongly agree. -- Orionist ★ talk 10:36, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
17. Agreed. The bottom line is: "to be "The encyclopaedia that anyone can edit". Any measure that conflicts with that is bound to invoke the Law of Unintended Consequences and must be avoided at all costs. André Kritzinger 11:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Strongly agree. This is a terrible proposal and contrary to the principal of wikipedia. There are enough editors here to sort out the new articles anyway. We need to be doing everything we can to encourage growth and new content from new editors.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Strongly agree. Some of the best content I've seen in recent months has come from non-autoreviewed editors. It would be more than a shame to force them to go through extra hoops to create articles. I don't believe the patrolling backlong to be that severe as yet. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 13:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

    If some of the best content you've seen in recent months has come from new editors then you and I are obviously inhabiting different universes. In any case, the aim ought to be to make patrolling less necessary, to reduce the burden on existing editors. Malleus Fatuorum 22:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

20. Timneu22 has expressed his frustration with new articles to me in the past, so I understand that patrollers may perceive inexperienced users as nuisance. Nevertheless, I don't believe that shifting the burden to a new group isn't going to reduce the overall levels of frustration. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Strongly agree, I don't think I would have ever started contributing if I had not been able to start immediatiely by creating an article and then got hooked. Davewild (talk) 16:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
22. Unquestionably agree. The encyclopedia has survived thusfar on these principals. LiteralKa (talk) 18:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
23. I agree strongly. The problems that come from this openness are far outweighed by the credible invitation to become part of the encyclopedia's future through contributing. I have seen great work come out of the blue that this would frustrate. Wareh (talk) 18:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Strong endorse - the project is not served by selling part of its soul for a modicum of convenience, even if that be substantial, which this arguably won't be. What's that, an encyclopedia anyone can edit? See fine print for qualifications and restrictions, other conditions may apply. If the intent is to solve the problem of biting, making the entire project less open and friendly isn't a solution, it's a surrender. ☯.ZenSwashbuckler.☠ 20:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
25. I largely agree with Ironholds here, and I am surprised there is so much enthusiasm for this poorly thought out proposal. It is indubitable that further restricting what new editors can do will lead to fewer new editors. How could it not? Chick Bowen 22:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

    Here's a statistic for you. According to figures published in The Signpost, in February more than half (52%) of the 21,366 articles created by new editors were deleted. In what way is that a desirable state of affairs? What's more discouraging? The likelihood that your new article will be deleted, or being asked to at least superficially familiarise yourself with some of the ropes before creating your new article? Malleus Fatuorum 22:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

    Notwithstanding the amount of work it creates for new page patrollers, 52% doesn't seem that high to me. That means 10,000 articles were kept. Chick Bowen 23:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

    It means that 10,000 articles weren't so obviously crap that they met the CSD criteria, which is a pretty low bar. Malleus Fatuorum 23:45, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

26. Ironholds makes a lot of good points on this; I particularly agree with the last paragraph. CT Cooper · talk 22:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
27. Strongly agree. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 22:47, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
28. --Gwern (contribs) 23:46 7 April 2011 (GMT)
29. Agree. If this policy had been in place when I created my first article, I would not be an editor today. This proposal will not be appropriate until the AfC process is simplified and streamlined. --E♴(talk) 01:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Very well put. Just like Pesky below, I very much doubt that I would have become a regular editor if such "safeguards" had been in place back in 2004. The principle of "anyone can edit" also means that if you notice an article missing (like I did on 20 March 2004), you can create it without having to jump through some hoops. I fully understand the reasons for this proposal but I also think that there are ways to reach those goals without practically dismantling a founding principle of this project. Any restriction that basically says "You have to first prove your worth before you can create an article" (even if the requirements may be low) is not creating a welcoming and collegial editorial environment but instead adds more unneeded "classes". On a side note, while I do support the principle of self-government, I do think that such a drastic change should probably be approved by the Foundation. This proposal effectively makes it impossible for anyone to create articles without first editing and thus has potential to change the way Wikipedia is perceived by others. SoWhy 08:24, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Agree, especially with Denying that thrill will send a lot of them off, never to return, during a period when we're having significant problems with attracting users. I would like to add that auto-confirmed is awarded on a per-project basis, and therefore experienced users from sister projects would be surprised to find they first have to prove themselves here first. That seems like very condescending behavior to me! Jane (talk) 09:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

    There's already a workaround for that; all you have to do is go to Requests for Permissions and ask for the autoconfirmed flag. It's not that hard, and an experienced user from another project would almost certainly know how to do that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

32. Strongly agree, though I can see the point of the proposal. I'm one of those who would most likely not have come back if I;d had to go through a clunky process to get my first article (2006) in place. I think a lot of people "want to do it NOW!!", and curbing the enthusiasm of new editors who may well have some real potential in future is probably not where we want to go. Pesky (talk) 12:34, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

    And you have to take a look at this user's history. You really do. And their article. I really think that the kind of editor who has the bodlness and energy and enthusiasm to want toleap right in at the deep end and just do it is, in the long term, also going to be the kind of editor who has the enthusiasm and energy to stick with it as and whn it gets a bit tough, who can see their end goal clearly, and is likely to turn out to be one of the best. We just can't afford to lose those because the first thing they come across is a clunky 'prove yourself first' attitude which may well make them say "Bugger that! I'll go where I'm appreciated instead." Pesky (talk) 08:59, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

    While the statistics somewhat agree with you, they also show that it's not a sustainable way to attract users. Users who create an article that gets kept have an extremely high retention rate. However, since 75-80% of new users see their articles deleted, the overall retention rate for users who start by creating articles is fairly low. Mr.Z-man 13:38, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

33. Absolutely. J Milburn (talk) 13:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
34. All makes sense. And so too does Jane023's perceptive comment three above this. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:47, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
35. I suspect the proposal is more likely to deter useful editors than spammers. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 06:05, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
36. Agreed on all points, the autoconfirmed requirement would be the step too far that pending changes narrowly avoided. Res2216firestar 06:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
37. This proposal would move Wikipedia further in the direction of ossification and sterility. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:18, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
38. Agree. What if the user is only interested in a pair of articles/topics. Would be obligated to edit 10 existing articles before obtaining status for creating a new page? JuanR (talk) 12:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
39. Agree. Goes against our mission statement. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 14:47, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
40. Agree. The proposal seems to go against the whole concept of Wikipedia, and the "problem" with backlog isn't really a problem anyway. Dennis Brown (talk) 19:15, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

    Oh really? Exactly how much NPP have you done? For my part, I've done 11,000+ pages since last June. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:31, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

    Last time I checked, this was not a "mine's bigger than yours" competition - this is about logical oratory and rhetoric. "I've patrolled more pages than you, therefore your opinion is invalid" or "your opinion contradicts mine and must be subservient because I have patrolled more pages than you" is not how it works. If it was, I'd point nicely towards my 38,942 patrols and invite you to kindly swivel on it. Ironholds (talk) 23:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

    Then I wasn't particularly clear, that's my fault. I'm trying to get an idea of how much Dennis has done with new pages; the purpose of pointing to my patrol log is to show that I have experience. Someone who's done 1 day of NPP will likely have a somewhat different take on the situation then after 150 days of doing it. I'm not trying to turn this into a competition, I really didn't mean to come off that way. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:44, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

41. Agree. I've spent a long time thinking about this and come to the conclusion that it is totally contrary to WP's mission. Preventing users from creating articles based on their status is simply wrong. rpeh •T•C•E• 23:12, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
42. Agree. I think that this is the best approach. Qrsdogg (talk) 05:01, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
43. Agree. Placing more hurdles in front of new editors really moves us further away from the encyclopedia that anybody can edit. Ironholds has summed this up very well. -- Whpq (talk) 14:11, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
44. Very strong support. The way to stop pissing off new users is to stop pissing them off (ie take a damn sight more care before speedying good faith, but Wiki-incompetent contributions) not by giving them more damned hoops to jump through. SpinningSpark 15:07, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
45. Many good points here. I agree that this proposal wouldn't do much beyond moving the backlog from NPP to AfC, along with all the associated problems. Also, reading Ironholds' view led me to look at AfC closely for the first time. I agree that (a) the interface is problematic, and (b) the disappearance of the thrill to which Ironholds refers would be a big problem. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 20:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
46. Well Said --Mactrac (talk) 22:39, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
47. As above, you're just shifting weight. NativeForeigner ^Talk/_Contribs 04:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
48. Agree. Well put. --EnOreg (talk) 13:28, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
49. Agree. I created a new article on my third edit way back in 2002 (we were a little more relaxed back then). Anyone notice the irony that all the opinions here are from people who are already autoconfirmed? twilsonb (talk) 15:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
50. Agree. Requiring a user be auto-confirmed (which is an off-putting name, without looking it up I have no idea what auto-confirmed means, which I guess is a slight burden, but again off-putting) gives at least the impression of non-openness. I realize that the criteria for auto-confirmed is rather objective (I think, I'm actually still a little unsure if I understand auto-confirm-ness exactly, by the way is there any way to check to make sure you're auto-confirmed? I realize this is probably just me, but something about the terminology strikes me as confusing), I think an impression a new user might get is "we need to make sure you're good enough for our club" - which is the opposite of what Wikipedia is trying to promote. Jztinfinity (talk) 03:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

    See WP:AUTOCONFIRM. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

51. Agree. Excellent presentation of the issues.Roberterubin (talk) 18:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
52. Agree. /Julle (talk) 05:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
53. Agree. Sindinero (talk) 13:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
54. Strongly agree. I'm very leery of this proposal. There's an aroma of unintentional elitism wafting from it. My first edits were admittedly clunky complete articles, some of which have become rather nice articles through the advice and contributions of others. I can state with confidence that if I had been barred from doing so by a policy like this I would have thought to myself "What the eff? Doesn't it say anyone can edit", and I would have walked away.Glorioussandwich (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
55. I strongly agree with Ironholds. Restricting potential new users will not make them want to stay. You can say that 4 days and 10 edits isn't all that much, But as Ironholds mentioned, Its the thrill of making an article. If you cant do that when you first join up (especially if its an article you are passionate about), you might not even bother trying. Some people may not be able to maintain their enthusiasm that they had when they signed up to create the article. To be honest, i dont think i could. Bailo26 (talk) 23:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
56. Agree. Wiki ian 04:26, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
57. Sadads (talk) 05:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
58. Indeed. Hobit (talk) 11:15, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
59. Aye. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
60. I agree with Ironholds. I'm a contributor of the Catalan Wikipedia (Viquipèdia) and there, the motto was slightly changed: "the encyclopedia that anyone can improve." Maybe we should adopt it here as well. - Al Lemos (talk) 15:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
61. Bulwersator (talk) 18:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
62. Agree. I don't know enough about WP yet to give proper comment, but if it helps, from the vantage point of a new user, this makes absolute sense to me. — Gk sa (talk) 22:03, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
63. Wholeheartedly agree. Disabling page creation is incompatible with Wikipedia's anyone can edit philosophy. Forcing the article wizard for non-autoconfirmed users is a much much more reasonable and measured action to the situation than having a knee-jerk reaction to a "crysis" whose impact is greatly exagerated (backlogs are at perfectly reasonable level, situation is no worse today than it was a few months ago). Minimal changes [Article wizard for non-autoconfirmed users] have to be tried before paradigm shifts [no one but the in-crowd gets to create articles]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
64. Per my comments under DGG's proposal. Alzarian16 (talk) 16:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
65. Agree. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
66. What's next: You can't make your userpage until you are autoconfirmed because you might use it for spam? Reaper Eternal (talk) 01:15, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
67. Agreed. Very good points. Mark Mukasa (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC).
68. Agreed. Cheers! Feedintm (talk) 00:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
69. Agree. This comment will probably get lost in the shuffle, however one of my concerns is the trend that this proposal innately suggests. Will it stop here with "quieting" non-autoconfirmed editors? OR once this is in place, then what will be the next way we decide to restrict editors? How long will it take until Wikipedia is just like other encyclopedias that require a masters or even a PhD to edit? – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  02:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    As the one who got this started, I can categorically say I would be completely against anything more restrictive than this. I'm a major proponent of IP editing, and I've seen plenty of new users add some great content; however, editing and creating new articles aren't the same and aren't mutually exclusive. I don't think we'll be going back to the days of Nupedia, as your comment seems to suggest. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

    Good words spoken with good intent. We shall see? – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  02:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

70. What Spinningspark said. Ladislav the Posthumous (talk) 11:27, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
71. I know I certainly wouldn't if I was a new user. Everybody starts from somewhere and this certainly isn't welcoming. Magiciandude (talk) 09:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
72. Strongly agree.Ddama (talk) 05:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
73. Sleigh is what teaches a foal. Let new users try. Forcing them through a complex, controlled process is not going to help us getting new energy to our ranks. No one is obligated to partol New Pages, there is no excuse to be bitey to new ones. Pitke (talk) 12:26, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
74. Strongly agree. Some other views here that suggest new page creation doesn't fall under "editing" are taking our catch phrase a bit too literally. Say a new user has interest in a single overlooked topic. Why force him/her to practice on other topics? One can get the gist of creating a new article by reading up on policies prior to taking the plunge (as I did myself before making my first edit). Though nearly every edit I've made in my Wikipedia "career" has been cleanup-related, I do it gladly knowing that those more creative than I can continue to expand our scope of knowledge without restriction. I'd happily spend 12,000 more edits cleaning up new user errors than miss a single useful new article generated by someone who wouldn't bother if such restrictions were implemented. Some suggestions I've seen to the effect that "all the useful articles have already been created" concern me greatly; they sound much like "we know all there is to know". --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 15:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
75. I like how you used the phrase "the smallest possible restriction necessary". The autoconfirmed status means several days worth of waiting and several edits. That's not really the smallest possible restriction; a step up from the requirement to create an account would be the requirement to e.g. make 1 legitimate edit before creating a new article. We could also refine that to 2 edits, or maybe 2 edits and 6 hours. My point is, there is no apparent proof that the specification of the autoconfirmed status exactly matches the requirements of a procedure for creating articles. Picking it seems pretty arbitrary. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:38, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
76. I agree, more than helping this will simply deplete our supply of newcomers.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:08, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
77. Couldn't agree more strongly. The proposal is not without merit, but our volunteers remain our greatest asset, and they should not be discouraged. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 00:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
78. Strongest agree. I first used wikipedia as a resource, and once found it lacking in an article. So I went away and found out, and added to en.wiki as well as I could, so that the next guy would have my entry to draw on. I do not think that is unusual. If it had been any more effort to create that article I would not have bothered. I'm a New Pages patroller and so long as I remember not to "bite" I think I'm converting lots of first timers into wiki editors with a plate of cookies and an offer of help. Editing and creating are very different things anyway, and auto-confirmed status shows experience in one, which is probably not applicable to page creation. Many people's first edits are to insert a comma of fix a typo. That does not prepare them for creating an article. Philip.t.day talk 00:50, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
79. Agree! New and anonymous users are important to the project. DrPoque (talk) 02:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
80. I agree with what you say. Many of us are making long term committments to Wikipedia so it continues to be free for all. However it is confusing, I was doing a page for a bio on my own user page as suggested and that suddenly showed up on Google with my user name and the person I was doing the biography on while I was still referencing it completely, and while I was trying to fix it I suddenly got a big red notice of Speedy Deletion before I had it ready to even ask for input from other editors or admins. It has left me feeling stupid. User;JoeyD2010 — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoeyD2010 (talk • contribs) 06:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    N.B. diff of the article in question Rivertorch (talk) 07:48, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    That's an interesting note, because I also have just recently noticed User pages coming up during Google searches, and I thought User pages were supposed to be out of that loop and unsearchable. Whassup with that? – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  17:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    The search engines seem to like our userpages, although if you'd rather they not show up on search engines you can use noindex tags. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:46, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    I suppose I read long ago that the noindexing was automatic for User pages. Things change. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  23:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

81. As a brand new user myself, I strongly agree. Although I haven't made any new pages, if I had to jump through hoops to make an edit I would have just stayed a lurker. Blackhawk441 (talk) 07:12, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
82. Its better to uphold the motto and accept the newbie attempts at new articles. Ten edits aren't going to make someone much wiser than zero edits without hand-holding and guidance, and ten edits are reached quite fast. Let all be free to create articles but new editor receptions, courses, guidance etc be increased multifold in volume. AshLin (talk) 18:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
83. I agree--don't drive off new contributors.Adallas (talk) 20:09, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
84. Before I tried editing an obviously lacking article on a subject I am currently researching, I thought of Wikipedia as something like Encyclopedia Britannica (if I thought about it all) that would require you to be some sort of editorial professional. I was thrilled to be able to make a change - if I had been dissuaded by any you-can't-do-this-without-training kind of message I would have dropped it right there. I made close to some 200 edits on the live page - newbie ignorance and overkill not to mention no training at all (I just looked at the code of other articles and tried previewing my versions of it) - but there's something to be said for jumping into the deep water. I'm sure a lot of new editors are the kind of people that assemble things without reading the manual, although I could see why it would drive experienced users a bit nuts. Curiocurio 20:51, 25 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Curiocurio (talk • contribs)

    You do realize that around 80% of the users who jump into the deep water right away essentially drown in the process? The status quo is not only aggravating to experienced users, its discouraging to new users. Mr.Z-man 20:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    So essentially, this boils down to which is more discouraging: (1) jumping in and probably drowning, or (2) not being able to jump in and sink or swim in accord with one's education and abilities. If I were new to Wikipedia, I would prefer seeing a notice to the effect that you mention, i.e., that most new articles written by new users take a lot of work to meet WP standards, and that, if I still want to create a new article, then I should keep that in mind. I'd rather see that than to find out that Wikipedia excludes me from creating articles simply because I'm a new user. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  23:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

85. I agree with the views expressed by Ironholds. Deb (talk) 17:21, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
86. Agree with Ironholds. - Rgrant (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
87. I too agree with Ironholds. --LeValley 04:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
88. I agree with Ironholds User:jkslouth 18:26, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
89. Agree - why encourage people to make 10 needless / potentially unconstructive edits if they really want to put a rubbish or malicious page up? Jimbobolaffsson (talk) 22:10, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
90. Strongly agree. Well written, thoughtful analysis. Even today, there are subjects WP arguably lacks coverage of. I doubt this will do anything to stem vandalism, but it might well stem contributions. Holmwood (talk) 23:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
91. Agree strongly - Richardofoakshire _[talk] 10:37, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
92. Agree. The proposal will only shift the workload elsewhere, not reduce work. The key to getting out of our current problem is growing our editor base, and this will only serve to reduce it. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 13:57, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
93. Sounds about right. Melchoir (talk) 22:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
94. Agree - SteveStrummer (talk) 01:33, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
95. Agree, and I've added an argument of my own below.--Johnsemlak (talk) 05:17, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
96. Agree with Ironholds. Wikipedia been losing long-term contributors faster than it is gaining them, which increases the workload on the remaining volunteers and the WMF is rightly concerned about the issue. This RfC started as a request for more voluteers at NPP, which is what we need. The restriction of requiring autoconfirmation will get us less volunteers and make things worse, not only at NPP but everywhere on Wikipedia. This restriction will not deter vandals, spammers, etc., it will only deter the good volunteers we so desperately need. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 08:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    That's not quite how it happened. I started off suggesting both that we need more NPPers and the autoconfirmed idea. Just for clarification. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

97. Agreed. [[User:J'ai osé] 01:33, 29 April 2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by J'ai osé (talk • contribs)
98. Agree, AFC will simply move all the existing problems to a new location. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
99. Agree more or less with this sentiment. TomStar81 (Talk) 11:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
100. Chester Markel (talk) 18:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
101. Agree! --NERIUM (talk) 18:57, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Jayron32

Lets keep this short and sweet (which is very hard for me to do). Edit is not the same thing as create articles. Newly created accounts can still edit existing articles, so there is no loss to Wikipedia's core mission by disallowing new users to create articles. By restricting article creation to autoconfirmed users, we substantially reduce the number of deleted articles without affecting the core mission, since new users may still contribute. Since creating a proper article (one which will survive deletion and stick around) is very hard, this will allow new users to "get their feet wet" and to learn basic Wikipedia policies and guidelines. 4 days and 10 edits is enough to do that, without being so long as to drive away potentially serious users. Restricting article creation to autoconfirmed users is a change we should make.

Users who endorse this view

1. --Jayron32 20:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC) (as writer)
2. Nyttend (talk) 20:54, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
5. agreed A ntv (talk) 21:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Malleus Fatuorum 22:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Pol430 talk to me 22:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Users who do "get their feet wet" rather than diving into the deep end right away are more likely to have positive experiences. Mr.Z-man 23:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
9. There's something to be said for letting them learn to drive in the parking lot, instead of jumping onto the highway. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:27, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Even restricting article creation to editors who had ever made one edit in an existing page might help. The people at the biggest disadvantage are the ones whose only main-space edits are at a page they created themselves. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
11. To recycle my favourite metaphor for this issue: creating articles is like learning how to drive. The status quo is an Angry Dad giving his kid the carkeys and saying "off you go, try not to crash and burn, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOT, DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE?". This is why driving instructors exist. Rd232 ^talk 23:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
12. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Basket of Puppies 01:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
14. -- DQ (t) (e) 02:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Silverseren^C 02:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
16. Rd232's metaphor is a true one --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 02:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
17. MER-C 04:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
18. A sensible approach - one must crawl before one can walk. And of course, WP:AFC remains an available option for new users with a desire to create new pages.--JayJasper (talk) 04:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Racepacket (talk) 04:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Per Rd232. The metaphor is apt. Rivertorch (talk) 06:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Rschen7754 06:24, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
22. Giving potentially serious users a hoop or two more to jump through is not a bad idea. It might make them feel more important and give them a sense of belonging to the project, rather than those who don't give a hoot and just breeze in to to vandalise, make hoax, attack, copyvio, and test pages, or paste huge chunks of foreign languages they have no intention of translating. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Hut 8.5 10:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
24. --Mkativerata (talk) 10:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
25. -- Donald Albury 10:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
26. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
27. To avoid repeating what others have written already – my views mirror those of 7 (Mr Z-Man) and 21 (Kudpung) above Apuldram (talk) 10:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
28. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
29. Stifle (talk) 13:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Danger (talk) 19:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Tentontunic (talk) 19:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
32.  Sandstein  19:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
33. Rd232's metaphor is perfect. bobrayner (talk) 20:00, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
34. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 20:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
35. Brammers (talk/c) 22:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
36. Killiondude (talk) 00:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
37. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 01:49, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
38. Elekhh (talk) 02:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
39. Yoenit (talk) 09:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
40. Shrike (talk) 14:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
41.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
42. Ajraddatz (Talk) 01:25, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
43. Jayron32's reasoning is clear, concise, and—in my opinion—correct. Guoguo12--Talk--  02:11, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
44. My thoughts exactly. Excellent points. Deyyaz ^{[ Talk | Contribs ]} 03:24, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
45. Agree completly. Lugnuts (talk) 06:43, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
46. Wikipedia has changed from the slap and dash days when we wanted to grow and any content was welcome. We did grow, though we also gained a reputation for publishing unreliable and poor quality material. We are now in the days of more demanding quality article building, and our reputation is improving. Article editing and article creation is more difficult now, and it requires an editor with more than a five minute attention span, and who has the patience and willingness to read guidelines and follow consensus. Editors who are not prepared to wait, listen and learn are not the editors we want. SilkTork *^YES! 11:15, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
47. Sole Soul (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
48. Absolutely. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 14:14, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
49. This makes more intuitive sense to me than the counter-proposals. We should at least try this and figure out which fears and hopes voiced in this RfC turn out to be true. Pichpich (talk) 18:56, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
50. —mc10 (t/c) 22:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
51. Steve2011 ^Chat 00:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
52. —Ancient Apparition • Champagne? • 4:48pm • 06:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
53. eo (talk) 10:58, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
54. Also agree with JayJasper --- User:Shuipzv3 Shuipzv3 (talk) 11:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
55. I've been expecting this for a while now. About time. -- Scjessey (talk) 11:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
56. Very persuasive argument. - Artoasis (talk) 11:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
57. --BelovedFreak 11:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
58. - Sitush (talk) 12:13, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
59. --Coemgenus 12:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
60. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
61. Ynhockey ^(Talk) 13:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
62. patitomr (talk) 13:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
63. Works for me. It takes just a little time to "learn the ropes". If the new editor is serious about contributing, then a break-in period won't hurt. As an encylopedia, we still expect minium standards, don't we? Cuprum17 (talk) 13:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
64. Well said. SheepNotGoats (talk) 14:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
65. I made quite a few IP edits before registering to create my first article. Definitely helps with acculturation. I see only an upside to requiring some of that. Ntsimp (talk) 14:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
66. Well said. Sounds like good justification to me. Ruby2010 talk 15:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
67. Agreed TomorrowsDream (talk) 15:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
68. Yes. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 16:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
69. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
70. Probably a good idea TheTechFan (talk) 17:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
71. Jclemens (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
72. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 17:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC) - Spend some time patrolling the User creation log and you'll begin to see the patterns that gave birth to this discussion: Almost all new articles created by new users fall into two types: Pure vandalism, and piles of incorrectly formatted text. Thus my endorsement of the above viewpoint.
73. This. Newcomers should be encouraged to enhance and improve existing articles. Get them used to things there, then they can create. Tarc (talk) 17:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
74. Imzadi 1979 → 17:22, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
75. This will decrease the pressure at on new page patrollers, AfD patrollers, and admins who patrol CSD's by quite a bit. And this comes from a user whose first non-IP edit was to create an article (which later went on to be a GA). I don't think that having to get auto-confirmed would have stopped me from creating the article. —SW— ^babble 17:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
76. THANK YOU! Nobody leaves in 4 days, esp when they're allowed to make edits from day one. Ratibgreat (talk) 17:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
77. Yes. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 18:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
78. Otelemuyen (talk) 18:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
79. I know this is a contentious issue but--as a vandalism patroller--I believe it may result in a net improvement. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
80. This will help make the encyclopedia a bit less of a target for trash edits. Binksternet (talk) 18:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
81. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 18:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
82. yes, wholeheartedly agree. Soosim (talk) 19:04, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
83. If they can't wait 4 days, it wasn't meant to be. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 20:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
84. --CutOffTies (talk) 21:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
85. Agree; would like to see the autoconfirmed requirements go up and hope that as an added plus we might curtail paid article writers and COI's by making them provide other productive work apart from what they are after.
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 22:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
86. I appreciate the clarity of this presentation by Jayron32. A better balance of rights with responsibilities, no doubt. Sunray (talk) 23:36, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
87. Agree. Reduce the number of bigheaded proud people who make self-glorifying articles about themselves. --43?9enter ^☭msg_☭contribs 23:45, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
88. Agreed. I don't put much weight into the concern that new users who want to create new articles won't bother with WP:AFC (I probably wouldn't have even noticed or cared about this mechanism as a new user, so who cares?). I think most would just wait a short while and do the small amount of edits to get their credentials (autoconfirmed), and many of those eventualities will seem like a sudden, delightful surprise for the user. I'd much rather have new users get their chops by learning how to edit properly before creating an article, which literally requires several wiki skill sets. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 23:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
89. Schlitzer90 (talk) 00:08, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
90. Very well said. I'd like to add that improving existing articles is often more important than creating new articles, given that there are no longer so many broad topics not yet covered. IPs are of course welcome to improve existing articles, and statistics have shown that they do that more than they contribute bad-faith or good-faith nonconstructive edits. But articles created by IPs are many times more likely to have to be deleted than their simple edits have to be reverted. --Jsayre64 (talk) 00:19, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
91. Agree Openskye (talk) 01:20, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
92. Agree - the best start by putting a little toe in the water first to test the waters before going in, and adding an article-create restriction means that new users have to take time to twiddle with things a little bit before expanding things. SchuminWeb (Talk) 01:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
93. Agree There are so many good points being made, all spurred on by Jayron32's core argument: "edit is not the same as create article". And I would add this: mechanisms are already in place that make distinctions between IP and user (q.v. semi-protection). I don't think it degrades the "openly editable" model, it merely refines the permissions. VoxLuna (Talk) 02:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
94. This is exactly the comment I hoped to make. Further, people who try to create their own article to promote a business will perhaps think twice before sending it through AfC. Whereas, they might hope that it wouldn't be noticed if they made it themselves. Strong support, Cliff (talk) 03:17, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
95. Fair and well said. DP76764 (Talk) 03:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
96. — Glenfarclas  (talk) 04:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
97. Concur.  Ravenswing  04:38, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
98. A key reason that autoconfirmed status exists is so that those who may wish to vandalize or disrupt are deterred. Someone wishing to create a junk article just for giggles might not want to go through the process of having to make 10 other edits and having to wait four days first. Conversely, a new editor wishing to make a constructive new article probably has a better head on their shoulders, and wouldn't find having to go through a very small confirmation process a hindrance to their goal of adding something worthwhile to our community. Restricting new article creations to autoconfirmed users is a proposal I endorse. --Sgt. R.K. Blue (talk) 06:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
99. Herostratus (talk) 07:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
100. canticle (talk)09:13m 8 April 2011 (UTC)
101. It might mean that the number of people needed at AfC is going to increase dramatically. The people at AfC are competent and used to backlogs though. This is needed, I think. This is doable too. So let's do this and hope for the best. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:23, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
102. Agree. --Phospheros (talk) 08:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
103. Your opinion is correct! --Ghostshock (talk) 08:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
104. Sound argument Warren (talk) 10:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
105. Agree. It's a very small hoop to jump through and it's much better that a new editor has a couple of minor edits reverted in the process of learning what's what that an article that many have taken a significant time to produce. PRL42 (talk) 12:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
106. Ditto? dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 12:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
107. Editing is not necessarily the same as creating. Anyone can set up an account, and make 10 edits over 4 days. The mission is not compromised. The proposal brings new editors in on a more gentle learning curve; We'll have a better chance of retaining them. --Kvng(talk) 13:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
108. Reluctantly agree Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
109. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
110. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
111. Based on thousands of hours I have spent patrolling new articles and edits by new editors, this is a sound proposal. Edison (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
112. Endorse. Shajure (talk) 17:18, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
113. Agree Mo ainm~Talk 17:36, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
114. Agree - Provided this does not stop creation of user-space sub-pages. Currently, if, as recommended, a new user prepares an article in their user space, they must be autoconfirmed to move it. However, they can create a main space article with their first edit - crazy. Arjayay (talk) 18:10, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
115. Well put Jebus989^✰ 19:12, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
116. Ten edits over four days is a very minor hurdle. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 20:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
117. good idea Bentogoa (talk) 21:17, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
118. Makes sense. Users who come to edit first rather than specifically make an account to create an article they want usually seem to end up being much greater contributors as a whole in the long run. A simple message saying some brief editing is required before an article can be created would put off only the users who have no interest in staying around, just the ones who are more likely to create jokes, ads, or articles on themselves. Plus, if we encourage starting creations in userspace, I think most confused new users would still be satisfied. And there's always AfC.--Yaksar (let's chat) 22:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
119. Should save everyone some time. Albacore (talk) 22:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
120. Quality, not blind quantity. — Coren ^(talk) 23:11, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
121. Makes complete sense that new editors should take some time to get to understand the project and how to edit before attempting to create an article. Based on the experiences of those working in the trenches (NPPers), I believe it's completely reasonable to require a few days and edits before being given the option to create. Just make it very clear to new users why this restriction exists and what they can do to prepare themselves to create a successful article. Lara 01:15, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
122. Agreed. Parrotistic (talk) 03:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
123. It lessens the effort needed to monitor new articles that should have been put into improving existing ones. Moray An Par (talk) 10:48, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
124. I agree to the proposal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mittgaurav (talk • contribs) 12:41, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
125. Makes sense. Mystylplx (talk) 16:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
126. --STATic message me! 19:36, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
127. Makes sense to me. Baby steps. The more you edit the more likely you are to get a feel for the place, become a better editor, and maybe get hooked and branch off into other articles and 'behind the scenes' stuff.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 20:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
128. Agree USchick (talk) 20:40, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
129. Nev1 (talk) 21:08, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
130. First Light (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
131. A few days and a few edits are not too much to ask before article creation is enabled. If someone declines to participate in Wikipedia at all because of that minor restriction, it is unlikely to be a major loss to the project. Neutron (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
132. Absolutely. Would probably vastly reduce silly non-notable autobiographies, attack pages, and G11s. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 23:50, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
133. Yep; not more for me to say beyond my view below. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
134. Personally I waited about six months before I created a new article. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:27, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
135. Nolelover ^{It's almost football season!} 05:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
136. Same thoughts. Tbhotch* ^{۩ ۞} 07:09, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
137. Jclavet (talk) 12:32, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
138. Agreed. You wouldn't believe how many new article creations from recently registered editors get smacked because of the CSD. Someone who is serious would not really need to (or want to, since (s)he would be more cautious by virtue of the fact that (s)he's more serious,) create many articles (I myself haven't created a single article yet, all I've done is do complete overhauls on a few, like Alkali metal.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:27, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
139. jcgoble3 (talk) 21:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
140. AussieLegend (talk) 23:25, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
141. This is a good move to help confirmed editors manage their time more effectively and help new users contribute in meaningful ways. — btphelps ^{(talk) (contribs)} 01:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
142. Open to changing my mind if the data shows otherwise, but tentatively leaning towards this view. T. Canens (talk) 04:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
143. Completely agree with "edit is not the same thing as create articles".--  Forty two  06:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
144. Agreed for auto confirm users to create new articles User:PREVRAVANTH Prev Ravanth 07:15, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
145. Yep. It's time to shift from article counts to quality control, and this is a really small requirement. A data-collecting trial should be done. --JaGa^talk 08:21, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
146. —DoRD (talk) 12:19, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
147. Yes, that makes sense. Wikid^as©
148. Even in 2005, when there were lots of notable, easy topics still missing (lots of notable ones are still missing today, but not so many easy ones anymore), I made 13 mainspace edits and was around for 6 days before creating my first article. If someone or some rule would have said back then that I should have made ten, or twenty, or fifty edits before starting to create an article, I would have considered this to perfectly normal. Everyone can edit, sure, but you have to learn a bit how things are done before you can start, and first editing some articles before actually creating new ones is a good method to get a bit more used to Wikipedia culture and style. Fram (talk) 13:40, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
149. Right on. Makes sense to me. Most of the new articles I see, from accounts created today are crap. Love letters to their schoolmates, hoaxes or vandalism. Few new-inexperienced editors can create decent articles that can pass muster on their first day. They still can edit and gain experience, and they still can request a new article be created. I see no problems with this approach. -- Alexf^(talk) 14:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
150. Agree I am currently about 8 hours from being auto-confirmed. I would say I'm probably the exception as opposed to the rule. I've been on Wikipedia for 3 years, but just under 4 days ago I decided to make an account to start regularly contributing. I've made close to 100 edits over the past 4 days- most of that copy editing and wikifying. While I am making efforts to expand a few regional pages, I would say I am not ready to create a page yet. And I am an educator- a writer- and technically comfortable. So if I'm not ready, I have a hard time believing the vast majority of non-auto-confirmed users are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nightenbelle (talk • contribs) 15:03, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
151. The "getting their feet wet" way of viewing it is a really good idea.  A p3rson ‽ 23:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
152. Agree - 4 days and 10 edits is a low barrier to entry. Greenshinobi (talk) 01:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
153. This will be for the good of the wiki in the long run. Kansan (talk) 05:22, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
154. I would be interested to see how many articles created by non-autoconfirmed users actually last, get expanded, and become a useful part of the project. My gut instinct and experience tell me that people who come here with a particular article in mind, that they immediately create, are rarely of benefit to WP as a whole. Indeed, they often seem to be responsible for some of the more egregious and problematic content.--Korruski^Talk 08:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
155. Absolutely support. Restricting creation is an effective way not only to get newbies more experience with editing, but to encourage them to get the feedback they need on their new contributions and how they can do better next time from processes like AfC before they get bitten by rapid deletion. Dcoetzee 09:35, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
156. Huzzah! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
157. Support --Chris.urs-o (talk) 20:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
158. Short, sweet, and exactly why we should implement this. _EricLeb⁰¹ (Page | Talk) 21:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
159. Spencer^T♦C 21:50, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
160. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
161. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:52, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
162. DavidHobby (talk) 14:22, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
163. Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:30, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
164. Evanh2008, Super Genius (User page) (talk) 08:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
165. Hkcd1265 (talk) 10:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
166.  Badgernet  ₪  10:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
167. --Teukros (talk) 12:03, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
168. Short and sweet and completely right -- Fyrefly (talk) 17:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
169. Should be more than autoconfirmed status - several hundred edits, in my view. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
170. Baseball Watcher 01:18, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
171. Agree, Wikipedia is a fascinating project, but quite honestly a bit of a maze. I have made about 100 edits I guess, have managed to familiarize myself with some cite templates and a couple of dozen policies and guidelines, but do not feel sufficiently experienced to create an article yet. This proposition demands a very low-level of commitment (4 days, 10 edits) and if it reduces the workload and stops 50% of new articles being deleted then I say "yo". Captain Screebo (talk) 13:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
172. Agree, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 13:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
173. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:33, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
174. Agreed with this view. It is very sensible to follow through with this. Gb105 (talk) 17:00, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
175. Absolutely agreed.YuYuNinjaGaiden (talk) 12:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
176. It's a good point. - Al Lemos (talk) 15:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
177. Alfie↑↓© 08:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
178. Agree নাফী ম. সাধ nafSadh^talk —Preceding undated comment added 13:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC).
179. Agree. The Helpful One 22:18, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
180. Agree. - Cullen328 (talk) 02:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
181. Agree Zlqq2144 (talk) 03:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
182. Strongly agree. Not only is this proposal very reasonable, it really should have been implemented a long time ago. --SoCalSuperEagle (talk) 17:20, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
183.  Support -- Thomas888b (Say Hi) 07:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
184. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:35, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
185. I agree with the general idea here, but I don't think that NPP is a problem. I've seen the backlog fluctuate from 45 days to a of couple hours. I would hope this action would lead to a less bitey community, but new users who don't have a clue (often through no fault of their own) are still going to tick off some established users. I think implementing this change will force those new users to read a few more pages like WP:FIRST and hopefully understand to at least a minimal degree WP:NOT, WP:V and WP:RS, among others. If they feel there is a sudden, urgent need to create an article, they can be directed to WP:AfC, preferably from the page that tells them they can't create a new article. P. D. Cook ^{Talk to me!} 19:36, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
186. Agree. Simple enough to explain, simple enough to implement. Shouldn't deter useful contributors. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
187. I agree with this view--Nyswimmer (talk) 09:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
188. Definitely seems like the way forward. BigDom (talk) 10:30, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
189. NYyankees51 (talk) 14:28, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
190. Improving existing articles is much more needed than creating new ones. -- Marie Poise (talk) 16:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
191. Agree Karl 334 ^{☞TALK to ME ☜} 16:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
192. Agree. It would avoid disappointing potentially valuable editors, whilst reducing the workload on the existing community. Hchc2009 (talk) 21:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
193. Absolutely right. This change should've been made a long time ago. Jahahn (talk) 04:01, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
194. Captain panda 07:02, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
195. Gah, the difference between editing and creating articles has been driving me crazy. Thank you for stating exactly how I feel about this; we can be open to new editors contributing to the encyclopedia without allowing just anyone to create articles (which require additional administrative attention, and can serve to drive away otherwise well-meaning editors when they simply just don't "get" the rules).
     Personally, I think we're far too obsessed with picking up every single potential editor than in asking ourselves if any of those potentials are actually a good fit for a massive collaborative project; let's not kid ourselves, we may want to be open to anyone editing, but being an active contributor means you have to learn what the rules are and be able to follow them. That isn't everyone's cup of tea. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
196. Thought I'd endorsed this one already! It makes perfect sense: "edit" is not a synonym for "create", technically, colloquially, or in Wikipedia jargon. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 01:06, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
197. STSC (talk) 04:04, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
198. Strongly Support. 'Auto-confirmed user' has such a small requirement. It even confirms that the User is interested in contributing: not just adding A page, but get general knowledge about the rules. They can even ask their WikiGuide if they got one, for support. AdvertAdam ^talk 05:03, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
199. Support A great reduction of clutter and a good way to de-noob the noobs. Dahn (talk) 10:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
200. This is simply right. PT (talk) 11:20, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
201. Agree --  Nashville Monkey  talk  -- 20:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
202. Even more than with Jayron32's comment, I agree with WhatamIdoing. If your first edit to Wikipedia is creating an article, then something's fishy (WP:COI). In my opinion, a simple "one edit, and then you're allowed to create" rule would be enough, but this autoconfirmed proposal is better than the status quo. --bender235 (talk) 01:24, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
203. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:13, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
204. Sounds sensible. Doctorcito (talk) 09:08, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
205. This can be done. Support, especially if new users are automatically made aware of the possibility to draft in userspace. Pitke (talk) 12:28, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
206. Strong Support 4 days and 10 edits is the figure at the heart of the issue. Aaditya 7 18:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
207. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:07, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
208. Agree . Per nominator. Adrian (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
209. Agree. Most of the deleted new articles come from non-autoconfirmed users. It would give new editors a chance to look around, and I think would limit page-creating vandals (who tend to be lazy.) 78.26 (talk) 21:53, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
210. Agree. Unless more controls are put in place Wikipedia is on its way to becoming the new Craigslist. There are too many spammers and they will just over run the supply of responsible editors sooner or later. As is, there are not enough people to watch pages, and this will free up badly needed resources. History2007 (talk) 22:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
211. This proposal does little harm, and I believe will actually encourage users to stay, rather than discourage, as some editors have said in other suggestions. The truth is that Wikipedia is hard--it's not like any other place on the web, in that it allows open editing but also has a very complex set of policies and guidelines that govern that editing. Let's help good-intentioned new users by giving them a little bit of exposure to our structures first before giving them the opportunity to do something that will almost certainly not succeed. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
212. Agree to the view. The objective of wikipedia is bare & free representation of facts. This supports this core objective. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hardik4 (talk • contribs) 08:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
213. Agree Requiring new users to gain some minimal editing experience before diving in to create articles from scratch is completely reasonable. — Loadmaster (talk) 14:39, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
214. Agree. Although not all non-autoconfirmed users vandalize and spam Wikipedia, a large portion do, so these suggestions are especially useful here. — Glenn L (talk) 05:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
215. Agree "By restricting article creation to autoconfirmed users, we substantially reduce the number of deleted articles without affecting the core mission..." Webwires (talk) 10:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
216. Agree nothing more to say. mabdul 15:33, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
217. Agree. Really no new editor should try creating a new article with edits 1-10. Johnbod (talk) 00:08, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
218. Agree We have to crawl before we walk. Trilobitealive (talk) 01:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
219. Agree. Four days and 10 edits is a tiny feat to accomplish before the much larger task of creating a good article. I'm a very new editor, and I still agree with this, and don't think it is discouraging to other newcomers. SnehaNar (talk) 01:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
220. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:19, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
221. Agree The bar is set so low it is no impediment to anyone who is serious. Sarah777 (talk) 21:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
222. Agree—Sensible. Please do it as an important step towards professionalising the project. Tony (talk) 14:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
223. Agree Dzlife (talk) 19:51, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
224. Agreed Frozen Windwant to be chilly? 14:43, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
225. Agree. Theoboyd (talk) 15:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
226. --mauchoeagle _(c) 20:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
227. Agree. A minor change with an impact in the right direction.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
228. Agree, and would add that editors who are impatient and demand to do everything their way right this moment are probably not good fits for this project anyway. The vast majority of "first edit is a creation" articles are destined for deletion, of types ranging from well-meaning but inappropriate articles to obvious promotion and pure vandalism. I'm certainly glad to drive off spammers and vandals, and this would help to keep them away, but I am worried about those whose articles were clearly written with good intent but just not in keeping with our project. With a little learning of the project first, they may have come to the realization on their own that their planned article wouldn't work, rather than writing it just to have a speedy notice/prod slapped on it. Which of those is more discouraging to someone who wants to make good contributions but just doesn't know how yet? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
229. Oh, hell. Looks like this is going to pass. "Fuck the newbies" should be new motto of this project. Let's see how the WMF deals with this emanation of consensus in their grand strategy. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
230. Yes, as long as there is a mechanism for a draft to be reviewed and accepted/rejected in a decent time why not. The procedures and set up at AFC need to be overhauled before this is implemented though Spartaz ^Humbug! 09:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
231. KarikaSlayer (talk) 23:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Mr.Z-man

Will shifting the NewPages backlog to AFC just result in a bigger backlog at AFC? Almost certainly. Are "restrict article creation and have new users use AFC" and "no change" the only options? Absolutely not. The restriction of new article creation should be accompanied with a shift in focus to improving existing articles rather than creating new ones. If new users create their articles at AFC, they're still going to fail in large numbers because its still difficult. We should be encouraging users who want to contribute to contribute to our existing body of stubs articles. We have over 3.6 million articles; how many notable topics are there that are so unrelated to anything we currently have an article on that a new article is necessary? People seem to read WP:N as some sort of commandment: If its notable, then it must be in a standalone article. By using a quantity over quality approach, we're doing a disservice to readers by scattering related information all over lots of tiny articles and we're doing a disservice to new users by encouraging them to start editing by doing one of the most difficult editing tasks first.

Users who endorse this view

1. Mr.Z-man 20:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. My point exactly. There's no shame in making existing articles better. Quality over quantity. --Jayron32 21:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Mergism does have its appeals. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:46, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. This approach is particularly valuable for subjects described at WP:ORG. We do newbies no favors by permitting them to write articles that nobody ever wants to read, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Rd232 ^talk 23:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
6. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Sturgeon's law applies to Wikipedia, too. MER-C 04:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. --JayJasper (talk) 04:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. That's basically my editing/mainspace philosophy in a nutshell. It's not how many pieces on the Wikipedia globe, but how they fit. –MuZemike 07:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
11. -- Donald Albury 10:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Apuldram (talk) 12:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Indeed. At this point in the game, we should redirect new users toward improving rather than creating. Less cruft, fewer n00b roasts. (Oh what shall I eat then though!) Danger (talk) 19:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Brammers (talk/c) 22:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
16. Permastubs are evil and utterly useless to our readers. Yoenit (talk) 09:09, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
17.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
19. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
20. ... with the caveat that "improving the average quality" is best accomplished by actually improving articles, rather than deleting articles on encyclopedic topics but deemed too problematic to fix. Jclemens (talk) 17:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Useful thought. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 23:59, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
22. Yes, "shift in focus to improving existing articles rather than creating new ones" is wave of future. Herostratus (talk) 07:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Bloat will kill off Wikipedia. Too few eyes on too many stubs and other junk will lead to problems. We could probably stand to shed a few hundred thousand articles as it is. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:40, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Wikipedia has matured. New articles are not as valuable as they once were. Policy needs to reflect this. --Kvng (talk) 13:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
25. As well as expanding stubs there's also Category:Redirects_with_possibilities. In both cases we have "placeholders" for subjects that the community has already decided are "encyclopedic". (Well mostly, stubs do go to AFD) Turning these into articles instead of creating new ones is less likely to get a newbie nastygrammed off of Wikipedia. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:57, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
26. Lara 01:17, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
27. Nolelover ^{It's almost football season!} 05:33, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
28. — anndelion ※ 23:29, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
29. --Nyswimmer (talk) 03:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Fair point, especially with all the backlogs there are currently! The Helpful One 22:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Armbrust ^{Talk to me} _Contribs 10:53, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
32. -- --  Nashville Monkey  talk  -- 20:51, 23 April 2011 (UTC) agree completely
33. agree - workload doesn't disappear, it gets moved sideways to AFC. Burden is a burden, doesn't not get alleviated by shifting load around. Either have a NPP drive to increase numbers to deal with NPP or improve new article wizard. --Takamaxa (Talk) 03:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
34. Focusing new editors on the [edit] button on existing pages is a better use of their time and ours. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Sven Manguard

I am of the longstanding view that Wikipedia has too much bloat already, possibly as high as 300,000 articles worth of it. We're inconsistent at best and deliberately manipulative at worst when it comes to interpreting notability guidelines, especially for things that touch on modern popular culture. I don't participate at NPP because I know that I will personally be more heavy handed with deletions than most, and I don't want to be the direct cause of other people's suffering, so to speak.

The answer, I believe, is to make all non-autoconfirmed users go through Articles for Creation, and to refocus Articles for Creation with an eye on efficiency. Recently, AfC got rid of the 'hold' option for nominations, which is a step in the right direction. In reality, it needs a policy shift towards the very explicit:

"If it can be made ready easily, do the work yourself and push it live. If it can't be, userfy it at the creator's namespace, leave them a message, and then if the person comes back (which is rare) work with them in the namespace then push it live. Anything that can't be saved gets declined, anything that needs deleting gets tagged."

I say this because while de facto policy is moving in this direction, too much of AfC's time is still wasted on waiting for people that will never come back to help fix problems that can be done by the reviewers themselves.

This has three benifits:

• The RPP will shrink dramaticly, I would expect.
• Because AfC has a focus on getting articles ready before going live, this will result in less articles needing wikification, less unsourced articles, less articles with major problem tags, etc. If you don't think that's the case, consider this: By making all non-autoconfirmed users use Files for Upload to upload images, the amount of copyvio images has gone down.
• Ideally, because we'd have more human interaction and personalized response, we'd be able to have more positive responses to Wikipedia by the new users.

There is a downfall:

• Fixing articles is more time consuming than placing deletion tags on them. This will likely cause backlogs if the current level of AfC participation remains the same. However hopefully AfC would be able to recruit people that were doing NPP, and the people that do wikification and cleanup, and have them do what is essentially a similar task in a centralized location.

I think this will work, and I think it's the best option. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. My idea, so... Sven Manguard Wha? 21:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. I like this as a next step if this RfC passes. AfC can indeed use some streamlining, and doing it in the style Sven recommends will help with the "But then AfC will be backlogged instead of NPP!" problem. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Pol430 talk to me 22:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
5. That would help. Rd232 ^talk 23:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
6. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:25, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
8. The only issue is that we would need to have these "drafts" deleted 3 months after the last time they were edited so we don't have a glut of these that need to be taken care of. I would be more then happy to help improve brand new articles if this goes through. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 02:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Seems reasonable. Rivertorch (talk) 06:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Definitely worth further discussion. -- Donald Albury 10:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Stifle (talk) 13:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Yes. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
13. RadManCF ☢ open frequency 20:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Yoenit (talk) 09:14, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
15. —Ancient Apparition • Champagne? • 4:50pm • 06:50, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
16. --JaGa^talk 16:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
17. I agree. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 18:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Well, "make all non-autoconfirmed users go through Articles for Creation" ... yes, that would be a valid alternative (to simply forbidding article creation by non-autoconfirmed) and would be OK to try this instead. Herostratus (talk) 07:57, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
19. I also think it will work. --Kvng (talk) 13:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Baseball Watcher 01:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Bloat kills. Safety Cap (talk) 04:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
22. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Armbrust ^{Talk to me} _Contribs 10:56, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
24. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:13, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
25. reasonable and sensible approach to strengthen and give article wizard more teeth and grunt to handle new users article request. --Takamaxa (Talk) 03:36, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
26. Agree. History2007 (talk) 20:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
27. I would agree with this. Bassist DaTaco (talk) 03:42, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
28. Agree, mabdul 15:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:HominidMachinae

This is a tough issue for me because I see good points both ways, but my opinion remains that the quality of Wikipedia, and its long-term prospects would be better served by limiting article creation.

Wikipedia is at a turning point of sorts, we already have almost all of the high-visibility and vital articles created (in other words, the articles that an encyclopedia must have to be taken seriously as a source of knowledge have long been stable articles). That places less importance on the creation of new articles and more importance on focusing on creating and maintaining a high level of quality.

The problem with allowing new users article creation ability is that they don't understand the community norms. I would say of my work at NPP fully 80% of the material meets the criterion for speedy deletion. They're not vandals, that's important to point out, they just don't know any better. They don't understand that 'well he exists' isn't a good reason for making an article about their 9th grade biology teacher, or their garage band or why they can't use myspace as the only source for an article. They could be good editors in time, but giving them immediate article creation access does not serve that purpose.

It is inherently bite-y to delete someone's first and only article, but just because we wait an extra week doesn't make it less bite-y either. An article about a garage band that meets three different CSD categories will always be an unsourced article about a non-notable garage band, no matter how long we wait. The solution to not biting these newcomers is to help make sure they have read the "big three" (wp:RS WP:N and WP:V) and understand what they can and cannot do before the user and established Wikipedia community are both faced with the uncomfortable situation of dealing with their unsuitable rookie article

In summary, as Wikipedia moves from its teenage years into adulthood the focus must necessarily shift from growth to maturity, from the desire to get as many new articles included as possible to the task of sorting, filtering and polishing those articles. There is little to lose from forcing pre-vetting of articles from the very newest editors and much to gain in terms of reducing the undeniable tide of poor articles that are creating a significant backlog.

Users who endorse this view

1. HominidMachinae (talk) 21:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Pol430 talk to me 22:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Malleus Fatuorum 22:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 23:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
5. With one minor tweak: They don't necessarily have to read the policies, just understand them, learning by experience is the key here IMO. Mr.Z-man 23:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
6. A slower introduction is likely to retain more editors in the long run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
7. What WhatamIdoing said. Rd232 ^talk 23:46, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
8. --Jayron32 00:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Silverseren^C 02:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Quality over quantity. I somewhat disagree with the bit about noobs contributing garbage don't know any better -- the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia obviously forbids schoolyard nonsense, spam, band advertising, vanity and the like. MER-C 04:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
11. --JayJasper (talk) 04:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
12. In fact, giving them immediate article creation access may be detrimental to their long-success as editors. Rivertorch (talk) 06:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Rschen7754 06:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Giving potentially serious users a hoop or two more to jump through is not a bad idea. It might make them feel more important and give them a sense of belonging to the project, rather than those who don't give a hoot and just breeze in to to vandalise, make hoax, attack, copyvio, and test pages, or paste huge chunks of foreign languages they have no intention of translating. And in my experience at NPP, although 80% is about right, at least half of that is from the 'don't care' creators. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:15, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
15. -- Donald Albury 10:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
16. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:00, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
17. Yes. Quality, not quantity, should be the aim Apuldram (talk) 11:04, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Danger (talk) 19:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Kudpung says exactly what I was thinking (but more eloquently). bobrayner (talk) 20:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
20. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 21:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Brammers (talk/c) 22:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
22. The times, they are a-changin'. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
23. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 01:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Yoenit (talk) 09:15, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
25. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
26. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 17:13, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
27.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
28. I wasn't going to worry about participating in this discussion, but I had to support this excellent statement of the situation. Johnuniq (talk) 08:50, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
29. Yes. We are now in the quality development stage. And we do also need to pay attention to the thousands of pages of unsourced original research that was created in the early days of Wikipedia, and often lies hidden in orphaned or uncategorised pages. SilkTork *^YES! 11:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Agree completely. The priority should not be creating yet more articles. Efforts should be much more focused on significantly improving the vast number of poorly written, unreferenced, etc. articles that we have already. -- Alarics (talk) 11:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Agreed. Hekerui (talk) 11:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
32. --BelovedFreak 11:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
33. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
34. Very well stated. Cuprum17 (talk) 13:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
35. --JaGa^talk 16:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
36. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
37. ... noting that WP:N is still not a policy, I don't disagree with it being one of three key things that normally torpedo new articles. Jclemens (talk) 17:17, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
38. I likey. Ratibgreat (talk) 17:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
39. Yup. Binksternet (talk) 18:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
40. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 18:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
41. Mgcsinc (talk) 20:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
42. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 03:10, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
43. Herostratus (talk) 07:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
44. Well said. GRAPPLE X 12:37, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
45. Definitely will take some of the WP:BITE out of Wikipedia and we desperately need that. --Kvng (talk) 13:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
46. Extremely good analogy in a well-written summary. Agree completely. Lara 01:19, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
47. The key to this philosophy is that we aren't discouraging users from contributing content, we are in fact providing them "on the job training," as it were, by directing new articles from brand new users to a place where they can be given a once-over or twice-over by editors with both experience, and the patience to explain the basics to a newcomer. Users who might have searched and found an article on Wikipedia who want to contribute content, can just poke around as they always have, without being bitten too severely and chased off forever by surly, over-worked NPP and RC patrollers. This may also help reduce that group of editors on NPP who just seem to perversely going around deleting articles by newbies, without bothering to see if the article could be rescued, just because it isn't standards-perfect and ready to achieve "good article" status. --OliverTwisted ^(Talk) (Stuff) 07:31, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
48. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:10, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
49. Golgofrinchian (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
50. Absolutely. First Light (talk) 23:41, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
51. Well put. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:29, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
52. —mc10 (t/c) 05:12, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
53. --joe decker^{talk to me} 22:34, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
54. Nolelover ^{It's almost football season!} 23:01, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
55. —DoRD (talk) 12:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
56. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
57. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
58. Jebus989^✰ 14:58, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
59. I fully agree with the need for more controls, the need to restrict new article creation and I support HominidMachinae's "turnig point" comment, but I must say I could not possibly agree with the spirit of the statement that:

    "we already have almost all of the high-visibility and vital articles created (in other words, the articles that an encyclopedia must have to be taken seriously as a source of knowledge have long been stable articles".

    Stable, maybe. High quality? Please kid me not. Taken seriously? You must be kidding! Stable is one thing, "pure junk" is another. Is Search engine technology an important topic for an encyclpedia? Yes. Is that article stable? Yes. Is it junk? Yes, absolute utter junk. How about Intangible property? And I can point you to 50 more important and pure junk articles. So there are many articles out there, and they need "better quality" while the rush is on to add millions of more articles on obscure artists who have recorded 1 obscure album, and waste our time. Wikipedia quality has a long long way to go while IPs create havoc. There is need for more quality, better controls and less chaos. History2007 (talk) 17:06, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    As an extreme example, look at the sad state of studio album. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

    Yes, we are floating on an ocean of junk and the rush is on to put more water into the ocean. And also see the Wikipedia is not Twiggy metaphor in response to DGG below. History2007 (talk) 16:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

60. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:25, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
61. Perchloric (talk) 01:48, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:My76Strat

I think every perspective highlights valid consideration; To this extent, I think we have the best balance achievable, currently in place. After consideration, I believe we should keep everything related, as it is. I would agree that the Article Wizard could be improved, but that is a separate consideration.

Users who endorse this view

1. My76Strat (talk) 22:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. jtbobwaysf - I agree with 76strat and oppose this proposal. This is an effort to make it more difficult to create new articles, and is i am sure widely supported by the "Deletes." Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:53, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Short and to the point. We are dealing with Special:NewPages at an adequate rate. There is no real issue with "over creation" or at least the current system's ability to keep up with it. Philip.t.day talk 00:54, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:DGG

I cannot easily think of a better way to kill Wikipedia. It should be obvious to everyone that our medium- and long-term survival depends of new editors joining, becoming active, and staying active. Many people join in order to write articles on something they want to write about--let's say half, though it may be greater. About half the time, what they write is capable of being a decent article. Probably of those whose first article is not possibly useful, half are capable and willing to learning how to write a good article, if treated nicely and the standards explained to them. This suggestion proposes to discourage about 40% of the people who want to join Wikipedia. It would really need to have amazing benefits in order to be worthwhile, and the benefits would need to be proven in advance.

The benefit that is proposed is eliminating the half of new articles that are not good. Actually, it won't even do that. Of the hopelessly bad articles that get written, probably half the people are determined to write them in any case. This certainly includes any POV pusher, and any serious vandal. But we catch these pages usually- fewer get through now than was the case a few years ago, based on my experience actually working on the problem: I've deleted over 12,000 articles in my years as an admin--and most real junk is now removed before that by the edit filter. In general, I do think new users should start making trivial edits and work up from there, and that's the advice I always give. But people have many ways of doing things, and there are many perfectly OK editors who started with an article. I'm not at all sure all of them would have started if there were any blocks at all to the process--considering that so many of the complains of people who tried to use Wikipedia and stopped has been the difficulty with even the current interface. I didn't find it difficult myself, but I was used to HTML, and used to other forums.

The real thing we need to do is positive work with new editors. In a sense, this will solve the problem of insufficient experienced editors to help the new ones--there will be so many fewer new ones.

Users who endorse this view

1. DGG ( talk ) 23:08, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Scray (talk) 23:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Agree esp. wrt "Easiest way to kill Wikipedia." --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Agree, people join to write 1 thing (We almost all started as a SPA). Taking away things like that is much more significant then recognized. James of UR (talk) 02:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. I wouldn't be here today without Akin Ayodele – I created an account just to create that article. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6. It is a quarter rather than a half of those who start editing. But we should be trying to keep more of the good faith newbies. ϢereSpielChequers 07:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Creating articles is one of the primary reasons why new accounts are created, including mine (and that had to survive CSD and PROD in its first week). Perhaps some sort of stricter quality control should be introduced, but a blanket ban on non-autoconfirmed users creating articles? I think not. Alzarian16 (talk) 10:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

   What's proposed is "a blanket ban on non-autoconfirmed users creating articles" without any assistance (via AFC and/or Article Wizard and/or userspace draft+request to move to mainspace). Rd232 ^talk 20:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

   Right. But for most new users, that equates to the same thing. AfC and userspace drafts are techniques that few new users could easily find out about unless they'd spent a fair amount of time editing anonymously, in which case they're probably well suited to independent article creation anyway. Alzarian16 (talk) 20:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

   Yes, probably, but that's fixable. eg we should make MediaWiki:Nocreatetext ("you can't create this article" message) more like MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext ("you can't edit this article" message), pointing to relevant options. (We should really do that regardless.) Also at the moment I think search hides the redlink "create a page" option if you can't create a page, and it would probably be better to provide the redlink and let it go to MediaWiki:Nocreatetext. Rd232 ^talk 22:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

8. Ruslik_Zero 15:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Protonk (talk) 21:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Agree, other than with the figures which are rather arbitrary (see WSC above) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 00:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Cbrown1023 talk 01:53, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Agree very strongly. NeilK (talk) 02:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Totally agree. -- Orionist ★ talk 12:42, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
14. it's dead already, but this is dancing on the grave. Slowking4 (talk) 20:49, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Agree. We need fresh blood to prevent further calcification of the project. This proposal would limit the supply. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 17:07, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
16. Agree. If one considers only those users who will mature into useful editors, it is a bad idea to restrict them. Abductive (reasoning) 07:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
17. Very well put. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Agree 100%. Newbie users need freedom to create articles. --Marcusaurelius161 (talk) 13:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Agree with DGG completely that to prevent new editors from creating articles would be extremely damaging to content in the long term. Wikipedia depends on new editors from different parts of the world to write new content. It is then up to us established editors to sift through it and built upon it and delete the non notable stuff. We need need new contributors on wikipedia to have the freedom to route out new topics. The obvious no notable ones are usually speedied anyway♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Prettily put. Especially as someone whose first substantial edit (on another account, lo these many years ago) was a new article. This cannot but discourage new article creation. And yes, the people who want to put crap up will simply put it up there regardless; a lot of what I see in newpage patrol is POV-pushing stuff that keeps coming back again, and again, and again... --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC) Addendum: Just as an example: Hoge Heren, UP 6916, Isabella Cortese, 2011 Rio de Janeiro school shooting, Márton Illés - all recently created, perfectly correct articles that were not created by autopatrolled users. The problem isn't as significant as is being suggested. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Enric Naval (talk) 14:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
22. New users won't commit themselves to meeting the new requirements. Requiring autoconfirmed status is a turn-off. The only new users willing to commit themselves to the extra effort will be the determined, ideological POV-pushers. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
23. its an issue of trust. We need to trust these new contributors. Errectstapler (talk) 15:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Davewild (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
25. While this may be seen as contradictory, I agree with this position as well--at the least, the cautions need to be heeded. While "Autoconfirmed" isn't a particularly high hurdle, it is a hurdle, and one which we should mark (if adopted) with well-documented guidance of the pathway between a new user and their ability to create new articles. The hurdle should serve to educate, rather than outright eliminate, the clueless newbie. Jclemens (talk) 17:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
26. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 19:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
27. Tibetologist (talk) 19:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
28. I don't think it will kill Wikipedia, but I agree with the point that whatever happens, this should be approached with caution. CT Cooper · talk 22:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
29. Very strongly agree. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 22:50, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Hits the nail on the head. Frickeg (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Eloquently put. Regards SoWhy 09:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
32. I don't always see eye-to-eye with DGG, and I can't speak for the numbers, but yeah, I strongly agree with this view. J Milburn (talk) 13:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
33. Absolutely. --Falcorian ^(talk) 20:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
34. Perhaps there's a hint of hyperbole in DGG's choice of words, but I agree with the sentiments. A Very Bad Thing. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
35. C628 (talk) 21:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
36. Unable to believe this RfC even exists and even more ashamed this is the first "against" viewpoint on the list. - filelakeshoe 23:20, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
37. Neither HTML or American english are universal languages so more hurdles for the majority of people who use neither is a very bad idea.Jnast1 (talk) 00:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
38. This is very well put, and I agree completely. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 03:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
39. After creating an account, my first edit was starting the article Book League of America. --Rosiestep (talk) 05:13, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
40. JoshuaZ (talk) 14:12, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
41. Agree SpinningSpark 15:13, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
42. I agree, and the backlog will not be eliminated, just shifted. --Bejnar (talk) 16:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
43. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:35, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
44. I agree and add that to a new user, they are there to add some knowledge that they have and the easiest way to get them committed is to allow them to write a dreadful article, and allow an experienced editor to correct, encourage and guide them. What is impenetrable to a new users are the waves of bureaucracy, the layers of Ruritanian style status, and the hijacked words- 'auto-confirmed' what has that to do with a ritual in the Anglican church untaken by commoners wishing to marry princes? This week I was speaking to several museum curators, trying to persuade them to become involved and they already were put off by the rigmarole of the editing process, so now it is suggested that they, experts in their field must do random number of copyedits before they add material we want? I vigorously disagree with more pfaffing around. --ClemRutter (talk) 12:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
45. I agree User talk:Blackrock01 —Preceding undated comment added 06:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC).
46. I agree. I created my first real article as my fourth edit, which wouldn't have been possible under this current proposal. To borrow another experience of mine - On the Scots Wikipedia, one of our top article creators is an IP. They do tons of quality work there, and I'm sure there are similar persons here. ^Avic_ennasis @ 23:40, 11 Nisan 5771 / 15 April 2011 (UTC)
47. Sadads (talk) 06:02, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
48. Agree we shouldn't do anything that would discourage new people from participating. I got started after creating my first article. Dream Focus 06:23, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
49. I think deleting new people's work (edits or new articles) is what really drives them away and not letting them create new articles is likely going to be even worse. Hobit (talk) 11:18, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
50. Very well said. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
51. Agree as well. It seems that a lot of people who are trying to push this are underestimating the impact of such a seemingly small change. User:Duttler (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC).
52. Strongly agree. "Easiest way to kill Wikipedia" indeed. Scaring away potential contributors by making them jump through a ton of bureaucratic hoops is completely wrong-headed. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:40, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
53. STRONGLY AGREE--Moneya (talk) 20:17, 20 April 2011 (UTC) My first article was deleted and was willing to improve but had this polocie been in place i would have not continued
54. Agree. WP is too biased towards its own language & culture. This change would deter people creating balance with translated versions of articles from a different world view. So what if it needs reflowing or spell checking - such collaboration is precisely what WP is about. Ephebi (talk) 08:31, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
55. Your warning is a good reminder.Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (talk) 04:13, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
56. Strongly agree. Ddama (talk) 05:09, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
57. Agree. This proposal is a solution in search of a problem. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 16:56, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
58. Agree. I'm willing to look at editing restrictions for our most vulnerable article, but that should be the exception. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 00:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
59. Agree! I've endorsed a few similar opinions, but I think this hits the nail on the head. A good number of new users are creating articles which need a bit of help. When that user never comes back or feels attacked and gets moody, it's us who's in the wrong, not them. Usually we failed to Assume Good Faith for a moment, and they reacted to a NewPages patroller behaving badly. Wikipedia needs a new attitude to new editors, not a new policy! Philip.t.day talk 00:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    At the risk of sounding annoying, can I ask what ability you have that allows you to tell the difference between a good-faith editor and a spammer? It can be extremely difficult/impossible to tell the difference, and while we need more of the former we need to strongly discourage the latter. AGF isn't a suicide pact to allow shitty pages to endlessly sit around, and there's no non-BITEy way to tell someone that their article will be deleted. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:41, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

    • Comment on DGG's view and metaphor DGG's comment that "I cannot easily think of a better way to kill Wikipedia" made me think of an interesting metaphor. I think he fears that Wikipedia will die of starvation. But have no fear of that my friend, the prognosis here is certainly not anorexia nervosa, alas it is likely to be atherosclerosis. Wikipedia is in no danger of starvation at all. Does Wikipedia remind you of Twiggy? No. Is it wafer thin and starving? No. The scenario seems to be one of a person who has just eaten 12 orders of chicken wings in the last 5 minutes, is offered 24 omelettes, accepts them immediately, and before he can finish, orders 37 burrito just to be on the safe side. And the feast continues indefinitely. "Give me more, give me more" seems to be the mantra in the Wikipedia diner. Alas, a lot of it is junk food that ends up blocking the arteries. Just above here HominidMachinae made the point that after a decade "most articles on major topics that an encyclopedia needs have been created". I agree with that point. I do not have exact numbers, but I guess that 90% of the major article titles that exist in Encyclopædia Britannica already exist in Wikipedia. So the task for the next decade is not to recreate those, but improve their quality. There is a serious shortage of experts who can improve the quality of articles. The key focus should be to attract and maintain those types of users now, not get new articles started on a wannabe musical trio looking for their first album deal. Personally the two types of information I find accurate in Wikipedia are geographical facts (e.g. cities, towns, etc.) and the number of times celebrities such as Charlie Sheen have been to rehab. That second type of information is probably always accurate. But would I trust Wikipedia information to make a business decision? No way. Would I trust Wikipedia information on medical matters? Not in this lifetime. At a time when the quality of key existing articles remain so low, focus should not be on force-feeding, but the cleaning of arteries and quality improvement. Wikipedia is in no danger of starvation, but does run the risk of becoming "the largest rummage sale on the planet". We should avoid that scenario. History2007 (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

60. Agree with DGG and several of the WMF staff who have said the same thing. Requiring autoconfirmation is likely to kill Wikipedia in as little as a year. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 08:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC) NOTE: numbering is broken by the comment with the asterisk above. This would be number 60 on the list. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 08:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    So can you tell me what my career path is going to be? You seem to have such fortune-telling skills. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    There, if it does not kill Wikipedia in 1 year and 1 day from today, by May 1, 2012, I want my money back. History2007 (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

    On a separate note, another metaphor is that the requirement to do work before creating articles is a form of taxation, and the statement is that this will kill Wikipedia. Actually, all communities have various forms of taxation, and FYI Wikipedia has it too, except that they call them "requirements" so people do not get nervous. Where? Most recently in DYK: A user has to review a DYK before they can submit one. A user has to "pay dues" by working to review a DYK before they can get on the front-page. That is taxation. So the days of free editing ended some time ago - and no one noticed it. And it has not killed anyone yet. History2007 (talk) 21:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

61. I came to Wikipedia looking for an article which did not exit and then created it. Almost embarrasing now to look at that edit. But with a little help from friendly editors I got drawn in. Been involved in vandal/sock-fighting, became an admin and although am not very active still do a bit of wikignomish work. In short: If I had not been able to create that one article back on 06 there would be 20k articles missing from here. Agathoclea (talk) 16:59, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Cardamon

If we make this change, I suggest automatically creating a sandbox for every newly registered user, and automatically leaving each new user a message explaining how to get to their sandbox, how it can be used to work on a new article, and how long it will be until they can make articles. Cardamon (talk) 23:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. I suggested something like this recently. It could just be a subpage in the user's userspace, with an additional tab added via CSS/Javascript to access it, with a nice helpful header in it (like MediaWiki:Welcomecreation, perhaps, only the user can actually get back to it). Obviously the new tab would need to be deactivatable via a Gadget - I think many would find it useful, but it's bound to irritate some. Rd232 ^talk 23:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. This is a seperate issue from letting new users create articles, but it seems like a very good idea --Jayron32 00:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 02:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Sure. It could also be done manually along with giving them welcome templates. Rivertorch (talk) 06:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Brilliant idea, I'm all for making it easy for them to contribute if they have something to contribute I'd even be all for having a way for them to contact an admin saying "I think this is ready, can you move it?" HominidMachinae (talk) 06:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Great idea. Sandboxing helps to improve quality and build confidence Apuldram (talk) 11:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
7. I agree. Strongly encouraging article creation in a user sandbox would help new users experiment in a safe place. Would be good to make this and "Your first article" more prominent on the Welcome template --CharlieDelta (talk) 06:34, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Worthwhile compromise. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Yep, that's a good idea, and I think we should carry on with it regardless of the result of this RfC. -- Orionist ★ talk
10. A good idea, with the caveat that sandbox edits ought be dated somehow (to prevent them from becoming forgotten WP:WEBHOSTs). Danger (talk) 17:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Anything that gets the user used to the way WP works, before diving into the main article space has to be good  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
12. I didn't sign on for this one already? Oops. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 13:28, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
13. —Ancient Apparition • Champagne? • 4:57pm • 06:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 10:58, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Interesting idea. --BelovedFreak 11:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
16. ditto Cuprum17 (talk) 13:58, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
17. Strong support! That would be really helpful for new users. Farscot (talk) 16:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Sandbox, or an article wizard, or something. We should redirect, rather than outright block, new users. Jclemens (talk) 17:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Useful idea. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 00:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Yes, something like this. Direct them to a sandbox, or an article wizard, or some place, rather than then just saying "no you can't do this yet". Herostratus (talk) 07:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Agreed. It should also contain a link to AfC and the guidance boards. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
22. Others have argued here that the main reason people create accounts is to create articles. If that's true, shouldn't we be setting new users up for the regardless of whether we make the proposed policy change? --Kvng (talk) 13:39, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Dabomb87 (talk) 13:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
24. I believe this is a very good idea if it's causally added into a welcome message that mentions various other ways they can contribute. I think it's not a great idea to make it a focus or, you know, put greater emphasis on article creation for new users. But I think it is a great idea insofar as it lets users who have registered in order to create an article know exactly what the requirements are and what they can do in the meantime of meeting those requirements. Lara 01:22, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
25. Golgofrinchian (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
26. Interesting idea. —mc10 (t/c) 05:13, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
27. I support this or some other meaningful process to encourage competent editing. Could we make the creation of a sandbox automatic for every editor's first new article? Ten edits in four days doesn't accomplish anything. It only adds another hierarchical layer to the burgeoning bureaucracy. I see a lot of optimism here about the general quality of articles, and how major subjects are already covered. Present on a page, maybe; but humanities articles as a whole are still not at the level of science and math articles. I'd say that most articles I see about literature are either woefully outdated, or generally poor. So there are major coverage gaps, despite some excellence. This may seem tangential to the issue of new-article creation, but if we want to recruit more competent editors, this proposal should be part of an overall strategy to make sure knowledgeable contributors aren't driven away by learning the daunting rigmarole. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
28. Excellent idea. 28bytes (talk) 18:06, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
29. Very neat idea.--Korruski^Talk 08:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Great idea. Currently, explaining the concept of creating a subpage/sandbox in a userpages is very difficult. I think that's probably the reason why most of the users who ever go through the trouble of asking helpers how to start an article are those who will benefit from it - the COI's. Making the creation of drafts easier will help attract new users who will hopefully stick and lessen the number of new articles going live broken. --Obsidi♠n^Soul 18:54, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Safety Cap (talk) 04:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
32. The Helpful One 22:20, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
33. I'm against making the proposed change to new page creation but if it's going to happen, let's at least make these usability improvements! TotientDragooned (talk) 20:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
34. I like this idea. However, realize that edits to the sandbox will count toward the 10 needed for auto-confirmed status, which may not be the kind if experience that will help a newbie the most. —UncleDouggie (talk) 10:02, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
35. A brief apprenticeship should not discourage a potentially good contributor. Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (talk) 04:19, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
36. Great idea. We'll need to make that these new sandboxes can be easily monitored and periodically deleted if they dont contain anything useful, but that is implementation details. Teaching new users about their userspace is vital. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:29, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
37. Also, newbies wanting to make a wikipage on a lark for a friend or acquaintance can do so in their sandbox. I see no harm if they want to print wiki-flyers for birthdays and the like, providing they don't subject the rest of us to their exposition. Measure for Measure (talk) 08:11, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Shooterwalker

Asking an editor to make 10 edits before creating a new article isn't a lot to ask. I see it as much more difficult to ask someone with no editing experience to create an article that doesn't run afoul of basic policies like verifiability, original research, and neutrality.

The difference of opinion comes down to the impact. Some people warn this will literally kill Wikipedia, because if people can't create articles in their first ten edits then they'll never want to participate at all. It's obvious that I agree more with those who think this will keep new users from wandering into a difficult area, reduce the clean-up workload, and lead to a more friendly learning curve for new users. But the problem is people are just going to advocate for whatever scenario they believe in, based on their ideological preference of what Wikipedia should be.

Why not be empirical about it, instead of being ideological? Why not test it?

I propose a pilot study. Not sure what the parameters would be: a particular subject area, or to try it for 14 days... But it would allow us to measure the real impact, and measure the benefits against the cost.

Users who endorse this view

1. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Yes, a trial, see my view at the very top. We should compare making all new users go through AfC vs. the current system. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:48, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Absolutely. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 23:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Such a major change should be planned as much as possible to collect data and consider how it works in practice. However it's also enough of a culture shift that I think it would need to be more like 3 months to see how the community adapts to the new philosophy of trying to help newbies (as opposed to defending Wikipedia against a continuous onslaught of newbie jokes, spam and mistakes). Rd232 ^talk 23:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Unlike Rd232 I don't see this as a major change, just basic common sense. Nevertheless it's perhaps prudent to consider some kind of trial along the lines he suggests if that will assuage those who do not see the proposal as common sensical. Malleus Fatuorum 00:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6. I see no downside to attempting to test this in a careful manner. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
7. A trial will be the best way to accurately assess the effectiveness of this proposal. Airplaneman ✈ 02:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
8. A trial would probably be the best way to determine how effective this will be. Silverseren^C 02:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 02:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Agree in spirit, though I am not sure about technical feasibility, or on actual mechanics of how it should work. Afraid of implementing needed changes if something like this leads to "paralysis by analysis", so I have my concerns, but at least in spirit we should be open towards studies like this. --Jayron32 03:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

    This could probably be tied to the autoconfirmed right; rather than require 'user' (ie, login), the software configuration would require 'autoconfirmed'. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 01:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

11. MER-C 04:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
12. if technically feasable, I'd be all for it. It would be nice to be able to measure in percentage terms the reduction in CSD usage and deleted articles, and see if it impacts signups. I share Jayron's concerns about waiting forever while collecting data, however. It should be a defined trial with defined objectives. HominidMachinae (talk) 06:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Without a trial, all we have are speculations and conjectures. T. Canens (talk) 10:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Fourteen days, IMHO, is far too short a time to measure editor retention, and trials must be carefully constructed and analyzed (cf. the current arguments over PC), but we really could use some hard data on what works. -- Donald Albury 11:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
15. (edit conflict) I am unsure one can measure the ratio of "articles that newbies created that wouldn't be otherwise created and would miss important content". Then again, any study is better than no study, as it now stands (afaik). —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
16. I agree; there are some widely conflicting beliefs on what the effects would be if the very newest editors were restricted to working on existing articles instead of creating new ones. I do not agree with those who feel that it would cause a serious problem by deterring new editors, but that concern is valid, so I think it would be very useful to run a trial to see what happens. Make the scope of the trial clear - we don't want another PC. However, I think that 14 days is too short:

    A: Part of what we'd want to test for is a behavioural change among existing wikipedians as well as newbies, and that might take a little while to settle down (as a couple of backlogs are cleared and existing editors gradually find new things to work on &c)

    B: It might be useful to see what happens to the newest editors over a slightly longer period; the effects could, presumably, last longer than the first two weeks of their life as a wikipedian. bobrayner (talk) 20:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

17. Would recommend a longer trial period, but I can see that a compromise will probably be required. Brammers (talk/c) 22:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Let us be empirical whenever feasible. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Always in favour of trials, rather than assumptions Yoenit (talk) 09:40, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Tests are good. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 17:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
22. A trial is sensible - though it would need to be conducted over a long enough period to measure impact. SilkTork *^YES! 11:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
23. —Ancient Apparition • Champagne? • 4:59pm • 06:59, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
24. --BelovedFreak 11:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
25. Mainframezen (talk) 15:50, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
26. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
27. Nightscream (talk) 19:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
28. A trial would be welcome, BUT you to gather the right data, which will take at least a year. You need to determine not only if the new editors still create articles under the new rules, but also if their retention rate is affected by the new rules. Maybe they'll go trough the hoops to create their one beloved article, but still leave at the same rate as before, and their first article may still be junk. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
29. Trial, yes. Tijfo098's point about needing a year to measure retention is well taken, but: this is not possible, a year-long trial is essentially the same as adopting for good. True, a short trial won't give any retention data, but you can't have everything. 14-day trial, or something like that. Herostratus (talk) 07:47, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Two things: 1) The trial better have an end date, the community won't stand for another indefinite trial like PC turned out to be. 2) Cardamon's idea above should be incorporated into the trial. With those things, I'd say yes. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
31. A trial is an excellent idea, although I doubt 14 days is enough time for good data. But this could be hashed out later; if the community decides to look into a trial, we could get feedback from WMF or whomever about the proper time span. In this discussion on Jimbo's talk, it appears data collection over four-week periods has been discussed. --JaGa^talk 17:56, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
32. —mc10 (t/c) 05:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
33. As long as the trial is very clearly defined right from the start. Nolelover ^{It's almost football season!} 23:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
34. Trial, yes. With an end date and how it would be measured. I suspect it will be a success. If not, at least it's a trial. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 12:17, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
35. We can build the trial with a simple WP:Edit filter, which means it is easy to turn off after the trial period. (no need to ask WMF to enable and disable the feature) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
36. Well defined tests are good, even of common sense. Subjective feedback from New Page Patrollers is also good. Measure for Measure (talk) 08:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
37. Cautious agreement. Though I agree that a well-defined trial, setting out the metrics to be measured and means to measure them before the trial begins, is a good idea, our last trial (PC) turned into a massive debacle due to lack of planning and failure to stick to the plan. The trial parameters (including its end date) should be set out in stone before we even think of asking approval to start it, and they'd better be held to this time. No one would stand for another trial continuing past its expiration date. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Kaldari

So much for all our campus ambassador programs, not to mention all the random college classes that have started integrating Wikipedia editing on their own initiative. Just when we were starting to get a large influx of serious scholarship into Wikipedia, we're going to shut the doors behind us. This semester alone, we have several hundred college students adding new Wikipedia articles through the public policy initiative. If we implement this policy, we won't be seeing any more of that in the future. Kaldari (talk) 00:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment This is a very important issue to raise but it can probably be fixed by adding the autoconfirm flag to those who are part of recognized university programs. I am a Campus Ambassador and I know exactly what you are talking about. If it's not already I'll raise it on the CA talk page to see what might be done. I would like to request that if the proposal to require autoconfirm is passed then it specifically allow for granting of autoconfirm before the normal threshold is up. Basket of Puppies 01:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I've started a conversation on the ambassadors talk page here. Basket of Puppies 01:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

comment We could also easily change the program to have people create their articles in user space as drafts which are then moved by an administrator involved in the ambassador program to mainspace when they are ready. I think that encouraging the sandbox draft as best wiki practice would be appropriate for a program encouraging people to get into editing in any regard. In addition it's possible for a user to be confirmed without being autoconfirmed, by editing their bits isn't it? HominidMachinae (talk) 06:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment Most of the professors in the ambassador program already require their students to edit some (often random) articles before picking a target article, so this change wouldn't affect them. Many of the classes also require the students to improve an existing article, so they wouldn't be trying to create a new article for a while. I don't see any significant impact on the ambassador program from the proposed change. -- Donald Albury 11:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I hate to be the typical site moderator who screams "Source?!" at everything, but how do you know this? Juliancolton (talk) 21:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

My comments were based on my personal observations from being an Online Ambassador. In many of the classes the students are required to pick an existing article to improve. All the classes I've looked at require the students to get their feet wet by making edits in existing articles before settling down on a specific article. Can you cite any classes where the professor has asked the students to create a new article without first doing some editing in existing articles? I would be interested in seeing any case of classroom assignments that would actually run afoul of this proposal. -- Donald Albury 21:32, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I have had students create new articles in my college classes. In general it is their first contact with Wikipedia. I have not however done this as part of a formal 'campus ambassadors' programme. Tibetologist (talk) 19:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

How did that go? Many of us are arguing that editing an existing article is a better way to get started on WP. Can you share any experience to the contrary? --Kvng (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I also had students create new articles in a specialized area, without editing experience. Since the goal of the class was for them to become experts on the topic, not to learn how to edit wikipedia in particular, it would not have made sense for them to have an assignment to edit other pages. As the professor, I made an effort to become familiar with Wiki policies and to help the students implement them. None of the articles was deleted or needed massive editing. All have been up now (with me continuing to monitor) for more than a year. A number of people have told me they are an important resource in our area. So I consider it a success all around. But I would not have contributed to the project under the proposed change. I think it will negatively impact contributions from colleges -- which are valuable. --Kfederme (talk) 15:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

If you contacted me with a proposal like that (especially with examples of what you'd already been doing), and asked me to set autoconfirmed rights on your students' accounts or move userspace drafts for them into mainspace, I'd help you without a second thought, as obviously the careful oversight in that case eliminates the need that this proposal addresses. However, yours is an extreme edge case, and those can and should be handled on a case by case basis, as one edge case does not demonstrate there's not a need. We should write regulations for the rule, not the exception, and the rule here is that 99% of new editors (a made up statistic admittedly, but I doubt far off the mark) know little to nothing of what an article should be, and a good percentage of that number don't care either. We want to attract the ones who care now and will learn later, and requiring them to edit first will help with that in the vast majority of cases. We can always address edge cases through special exceptions, we've done that many times for many reasons. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment This seems unnecessarily pessimistic and dramatic. I seriously doubt professors couldn't easily work around this change, were it to happen. Having students register on the first day of class, for example, and having them make 10 productive edits over the next four days. Having them draft the article in their sandbox first, as HominidMachinae suggested is also a very good idea and, as he noted, a good practice to encourage anyway. Lara 01:28, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

And how exactly do you propose to inform all these college professors about how to work around this problem? Do you really think they are all going to take the time to figure this out rather than simply coming up with something less complicated that doesn't involve Wikipedia? Even if that means 1 fewer well-written article for Wikipedia, that's a net loss. Kaldari (talk) 06:03, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it is preferable to encourage newbies to create articles in mainspace rather than in sandboxes, aside from the benefits of collaborative editing, if a sandbox is moved to mainspace doesn't it bypass newpage patrol? ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment Assuming the article creation wizard is functional, they could just use that to make the article instead of starting from the ground up. Probably better articles anyway, and unless it's a web design class they're probably going to want the hand-holding anyway. SDY (talk) 20:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

1. ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:WereSpielChequers

We have several problems with the current New page patrol process, a large proportion of the articles coming in do merit deletion or being turned into redirects. Currently we are fairly efficient at deleting the vast majority of the new submissions that merit deletion. However we often do this in an unnecessarily bitey way and worse still a significant minority of speedy deletion tags and even deletions are incorrect. This annoys our newbies, and some of our longstanding if intermittent editors, and has brought us bad publicity because of mistakes and over zealousness by people deleting articles or tagging them for deletion. Much of our problem at newpage patrol is due to miscommunication between Wikipedia and the 25% of our new editors who start their wiki career by submitting new articles. The symptoms of that miscommunication include hundreds of thousands of articles every year that we manually tag and delete. Deleting those articles is an effective way of treating the symptoms of our miscommunication, but it does little to solve the problem.

So this is a complex multi-faceted problem and solving it merits several changes to Newpage patrol:

1. We currently communicate our requirement for new articles to be notable, verifiable and encyclopaedic by tagging the ones that aren't for deletion, and usually informing the author that we've done so. This is communication after the event, and would be much better done up front by edit filters or other software. We need the article creation screen used by new editors to include a routine that checks for the presence of a reference, and if one is absent asks the author for an independent source such as a newspaper article. This software needs to have routines capable of spotting links to Myspace, Facebook or LinkedIn, explaining that such sites are acceptable as a link to the subject's own website, then returning to the page that asks for a reference. We also need a clear prominent option for the creator to tick that "the subject has not yet been reported on by journalists or other writers unconnected to the subject" have that leads to a page explaining our notability requirement with an option to have the article emailed to the author.
2. Currently it is optional to notify the author when you tag their article for deletion, and occasionally we get newpage patrollers who consciously choose not to do this. I accept that there are some circumstances such as RTV where notifying the author is inappropriate or overkill. But it should no longer be acceptable to leave a newbie with a redlinked talkpage when you tag a newly created "good faith" article for deletion. Informing such authors should be seen as part of the process of tagging an article for speedy deletion.
3. Many new articles should be deleted on sight, especially those that are validly tagged as G3 or G10. But for most good faith contributions there is nothing to be lost and much to be gained by leaving the article a few hours for the second or third edit that gives it context or explains why the subject is notable. Giving patrollers an extra choice for a new article of a 24 hour pause would in effect create an incubator in article space with the author unbitten but give rescuers the opportunity to rescue the article before it risked being tagged for deletion. Full proposal at strategy:Proposal:Speedy_deletion_-_24_hour_pause_for_some_articles.
4. Some templates are needed to warn our readers that an article is spammy or unreferenced. Others may be useful in they are proven to persuade some readers or newbies to fix the article. But many templates serve neither purpose,so we have no benefit from them to outweigh the cost of template bombing an article. such templates should be replaced with hidden categories. We don't need to warn a reader that an article is uncategorised or an orphan, and we certainly don't expect newbies to start their wiki career fixing such issues, hidden categories would serve our purposes just as well and without the disfigurement of templates.

Users who endorse this view

1. ϢereSpielChequers 00:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Airplaneman ✈ 02:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Totally agree and I think focusing on things like that are going to help both NPP issues and new user issues. I do think many of our templates need a bit of a rework as well :) We seem to like mean looking templates..... James of UR (talk) 02:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
4. We can change NPP, or we can change article creation requirements. The latter is process-based and easier to implement, the former avoids most of the issues but is harder because it's people-based, and people can be ridiculously stupid at times. NPPers are always working hard and many of them follow these types of informal guidelines, but having something written that tells new users "your article must be V w/ RS etc. and might be deleted in 24 hours if you don't come back" could help. And re. templates, can we just make them not fake-sounding? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. (except that it is not unreasonable to create a p. in several edits, and the ref need not be added in the very first, as long as it is promptly added. The difficulty in allowing for this in screening is the only reason why I have not made a similar proposal to his #1.) DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Indeed we have several problems with the current New page patrol process, many newbies might start their career by making new articles - ironically, many start their wiki career by policing them at NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Kingpin¹³ (talk) 00:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Agree. Perhaps together with the Sandbox idea proposed by Cardamon above which would provide for a "not ready for mainspace" option to move a poor/embryonic article to the user's sandbox along with the a menu of a few links to the basic requirements. That would be a lot less bitey.--CharlieDelta (talk) 06:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
10. -- Orionist ★ talk 12:36, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
11. These are good ideas worth discussing whether or not this change goes through. Danger (talk) 17:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Good ideas. They need further consideration regardless of what happens in this current discussion. SilkTork *^YES! 11:27, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
13. This could fix some of those times where a patroller nukes a new page, and the page turns out later to be a notable-enough topic. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Davewild (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Jclemens (talk) 20:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
16. These are excellent ideas. Frickeg (talk) 03:03, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
17. In addition to the idea above a link to the wikipedia-en-help IRC channel and a talk page for help should be given in an editnotice. MorganKevinJ^(talk) 03:35, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
18. I'm not sure how effective these proposals would be, but they, and any similar bright ideas, should be tried before embracing the dreadful idea of requiring autoconfirmed status to create new articles. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
19. The Land (talk) 18:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Agree entirely. And, if I knew where to begin trying to work towards #1 I'd start today. An automated, as-I-edit-am-still-here interface that tells me what I did wrong and helps me do it right is a thousand times less bitey than tagging, deleting now, deletting later, or any other option. The lack of interactive feedback is the at the core of the majority of new user bite, in my opinion. --joe decker^{talk to me} 22:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Perhaps we need a deletion patrol, or an admin-bot that can track the tagged pages that get deleted before creator is notified. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
22. Glorioussandwich (talk) 21:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Aye. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Nice ideas. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
25. Good ideas, especially the edit filter extension, and the 'prevention is better than cure' attitude in general Jebus989^✰ 15:03, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
26. Good commentary.Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (talk) 04:09, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

View from MER-C

Something we can do right now as a stopgap measure (via a couple of lines in MediaWiki:Common.js) is to force all non-autoconfirmed users through the article wizard. Hopefully this will flatten the learning curve a bit and slow the inflow of crap while we work out a more permanent solution.

Users who endorse this view

1. MER-C 04:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Support as a short-term stopgap measure.--JayJasper (talk) 04:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. If that can be done, I think it's a good idea, especially as it can be done quite quickly. Rd232 ^talk 12:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

   From my post at VPM, the code is like: if ( user is not autoconfirmed && url.contains("action=edit") && namespace == 0 && page does not exist && !url.contains(some parameter in the URL that signifies the user went through the wizard ) { location.href = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AW2" } (though not sure if location.href works now). Everything here can be discovered through pre-existing JavaScript variables -- wgAction, wgNamespaceNumber, wgUserGroups, wgCurRevisionId (==0) and whether the URL contains the preload from the wizard. To avoid the wizard, one needs to be quick to stop the page from loading or add the preload parameter to the URL (unlikely). MER-C 12:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

4. no mater what the outcome is we should do this --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 15:38, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Should be done only as an interim solution if and only if the outcome is to require autopatrolled status to create articles.Marcus Qwertyus 13:50, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Just by the size of this discussion, it looks like this will take a while. The stopgap proposal is an improvement to current policy. I'm not convinced it is uncontroversial. I'm not convinced that it is any easier to implement that the original proposal. I do support it though. --Kvng (talk) 13:47, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Lara 01:31, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
8. This might help, and it certainly won't make things worse. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:31, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Wholeheartedly agree. Disabling page creation is incompatible with Wikipedia's anyone can edit philosophy. Forcing the article wizard for non-autoconfirmed users is a much much more reasonable and measured action to the situation than having a knee-jerk reaction to a "crysis" whose impact is greatly exagerated (backlogs are at perfectly reasonable level, situation is no worse today than it was a few months ago). Minimal changes [Article wizard for non-autoconfirmed users] have to be tried before paradigm shifts [no one but the in-crowd gets to create articles]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:47, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Armbrust ^{Talk to me} _Contribs 11:04, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Promethean

We have many different things to consider here and some of these things are: Are we trying to make it easier for ourselves at the cost of fucking new users over? Are we staying true to our "anyone can edit" motto? What impact this will have on our dwindling user base? I've briefly thought about all of this and this is my 2 cents on the matter. New pages are something that needs to be addressed, the ratio of crap to actual useful stuff being created is completely over the top in most cases and it has come to a point where we have to make the changes we want to see. Every competent user on Wikipedia wishes that new users would get an understanding of our policies before they started creating articles and we have to provide new users with a reason (and the time) to gain that understanding. If new users can just click the create button, why on earth would they want to go through all the hoops of checking whether the topic is notable and has sources etc? It would just be easier for them to play the hit (it doesn’t get deleted) and miss (it gets deleted) game of article creation. So no, if we restricted article creation to autoconfirmed users we would not be fucking new users over, rather we will be equipping them with the knowledge so less of their articles are deleted (which makes a happy user) and they will play a greater role in the community for a longer period of time. The only people we might be putting off are those who don’t give two hoots about what they are publishing and that is a good thing.

In regards to our "The free encyclopaedia anyone can edit" motto, I feel that people need to remember that building a free encyclopaedia comes first, the anyone can edit bit is secondary. So if restricting new page creation to Autoconfirmed users reduces the ratio of crap to useful stuff then I am all for that. I would like to add that dealing with this now WILL have a positive flow on effect to other areas such as cleanup, CSD and AFD, NPP etc.

The Article Creation Wizard is a great idea and my proposal is this:

• Restrict article creation to Autoconfirmed users only.
• Force any user to use the Article Creation Wizard for their first 5 articles.
• Make the Article Creation Wizard a preference option so people can keep being forced to use it if they wish after their first 5 creations.
• In the mid-long term (if not required for the above), make the Article Creation Wizard an extension.
• In the mid-long term, Allot of our project pages and templates are not 'New User' friendly by any means, some are quite technical and other require Mediawiki syntax knowledge to use properly. This really has to be addressed.

Creating articles is allot like uploading images and we don't allow non auto-confirmed users to do that, so this would also bring things into line with other areas.

Users who endorse this view

1.   «l| Promethean ™|l»  (talk) 05:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Do note that creating articles doesn't necessarily have anything to do with "anyone can edit", since they can still edit Wikipedia as much as they want without creating an article. Also...I think 10 articles is a bit high, 5 seems more appropriate. After 5 articles, you should know what you're doing. Silverseren^C 05:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Even as a moderately experienced Wikipedia editor I wouldn't attempt to freehand a new article, there are too many steps to follow to make a proper article. I also very strongly support re-writing projects and templates and even policies to make them more readily understandable to newbies or perhaps creating a lightweight summary page to point new editors to that covers the most important points. HominidMachinae (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
4. This probably needs to be discussed as a separate issue, but I do like the idea. However, what changes to the software would be needed to make this automatic? Would redirects count as articles for this? Lots of things to consider. -- Donald Albury 11:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
6. I think first five articles going through the wizard is excessive, but otherwise a good proposal. Lara 01:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Rivertorch

Recruiting and retaining editors is critical, but not just any editors. One hundred conscientious editors who are willing to take the time to learn the ropes and get it right, in terms of both the content they add and the procedures they follow to add it, are more valuable than 10,000 editors who neither have any understanding of what Wikipedia is about nor particularly care to learn.

The current bar for gaining autoconformed status is set quite low; four days and ten edits is often insufficient to reveal whether a new editor will be an asset to the project. It is likely that any person unwilling to cross that very modest threshold before being granted the privilege to create a new article is someone lacking the patience and diligence necessary to become a good editor. Considered in the context of the constant bombardment of "junk" articles that Wikipedia faces every day, requiring autoconfirmation before allowing new users to create articles seems like an entirely reasonable policy that should be enacted.

Users who endorse this view

1. Rivertorch (talk) 05:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Silverseren^C 06:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Rschen7754 06:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. -- Donald Albury 11:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Go through your IRL circle of friends right now and ask around among them to see who edits Wikipedia regularly. We are a rare bunch. --Jayron32 11:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Apuldram (talk) 11:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Rd232 ^talk 12:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
10. MER-C 12:24, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Explains why this proposal will do very little damage. There are also benefits for new users in terms of a friendlier learning curve. Shooterwalker (talk) 12:49, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
12. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Stifle (talk) 13:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Danger (talk) 19:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
15. bobrayner (talk) 20:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
16. Spot on. Brammers (talk/c) 22:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
17. Mr.Z-man 22:33, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Yoenit (talk) 09:42, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 09:48, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
20. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
21.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
22. Malleus Fatuorum 23:54, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Johnuniq (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Yes. If Rivertorch hadn't written this, I would have written something similar. SilkTork *^YES! 11:28, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
25. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 23:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
26. —Ancient Apparition • Champagne? • 4:59pm • 06:59, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
27. I have high standards for what I'd hope to see in Wikipedia, and I constantly find that people consciously lower their standards in the interests of being nice. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. We can greet, guide, and mentor, new users without having to accept bad articles, it just takes a lot more work than placing a delete tag. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:13, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
28. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
29. --BelovedFreak 11:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
30. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
31. --JaGa^talk 16:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
32. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
33. There is indeed a power law distribution in new editor productivity. Jclemens (talk) 17:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
34. Nightscream (talk) 19:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
35. I agree and would like to see the autoconfirmed requirements go up to serve as a filtering mechanism. If they don't care to make 25 edits & two weeks worth of editing...I don't care to see their article make it onto the Wiki.
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 22:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
36. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 00:21, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
37. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 03:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
38. Herostratus (talk) 08:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
39. —Coroboy (talk) 11:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
40. The qualified editors we lose due to being bitten must be far greater than the qualified editors we retain by allowing them to create a new article within their first 10 edits/4 days. --Kvng (talk) 13:51, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
41. — Coren ^(talk) 23:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
42. Lara 01:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
43. Spot on.--Yaksar (let's chat) 04:49, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
44. No-brainer. First Light (talk) 23:43, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
45. Yep. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:32, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
46. —mc10 (t/c) 05:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
47. Nolelover ^{It's almost football season!} 23:07, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
48. —DoRD (talk) 12:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
49. This view is "spot on". I remember a thread on Wiki-en a few years ago about someone, apparently either from the Turkish government or at least with a pro-turkish POV complaining about the semi protection of some Armenia related articles and my first thought was "is it really that difficult to create an account and wait a few days?". Whoever it was wanted to push their POV RIGHT NOW. Many articles that are eventually deleted are created by new accounts that never edit again, this includes articles that are pure vandalism or LULZ articles about high school kids. In other words they were created by school kids on their lunch break. Requiring new editors to make a small jump through a tiny little hoop in order to create a new article will cut down on the number of "drive by" article creations. Someone who won't do something if they can't do it "right now" is unlikely to make a good long term editor. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
50. Exactly.--Korruski^Talk 08:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
51. Bingo! Interferometrist (talk) 23:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
52. —UncleDouggie (talk) 10:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
53. Captain panda 07:06, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
54. Spot on Jebus989^✰ 15:06, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
55. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:08, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
56. Indeedly! Pitke (talk) 12:35, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
57. Srays (talk) 06:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
58. Agree. History2007 (talk) 20:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
59. Agree. chuckster2.0 (talk It seems logical to require a certain level of responsibiliity and dedication in order for a user to start an article. 10 edits seems a little too easy. I also think that there should be a certain amount of agreement among users before this policies is put into effect. 17:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
60. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from The Blade of the Northern Lights

I seem to be the one who got this started, and I've made my view pretty well known. I'll only add the following points. One, the backlog is down, for now, but it's trending upward again. We had it down to nothing briefly, and to keep it there I was regularly patrolling around 200-350 pages a day. Secondly, it may be that 25% of new users start by trying to create an article, but that still means the majority of new users will be unaffected. When I joined, in March 2010, it was to fix typos; I didn't really get into it until a month or so after I joined. Furthermore, I would submit that a substantial number of these new users are only here to promote their wares; I strongly suspect that the vast majority of editors whose first edit is to post about their garage band have no intention of helping the encyclopedia. We have a system now where it's frequently difficult to tell who's here to spam and who could actually turn into a decent user; I will make any effort necessary to retain the latter, but I don't want to encourage the former. This is not only a problem for the new users, it makes NPP a very lonely, isolated job; new users get a bad impression of us when we tag their articles for deletion, and even a couple of misfires (which happen to everyone doing anything here) bring wrath upon us. This sort of job actually fits my personality pretty well, but I've learned over my 20+ years of living that my personality is extremely unusual. I would, however, agree that a trial run would be the best way to go; if it does turn out to be a complete fiasco, we can reconsider our options. I doubt it will, but stranger things have happened.

Users who endorse this view

1. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Well, just know that all of us established users really appreciate the work you guys do. :) Silverseren^C 15:42, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Rivertorch (talk) 19:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Brammers (talk/c) 22:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Boo to backlogs. Yay to backlog patrollers. Danger (talk) 22:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
6.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:28, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
8. --BelovedFreak 11:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:22, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Yes trials are good. Herostratus (talk) 08:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:34, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
12. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:35, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from NickPenguin

Interestingly enough, my 5th edit was the creation of a new article, back in 2005. Would this appearing as a new page get deleted with today's standards? Probably. Would that have strongly influenced my decision to stay? Definitely. Would the current version get deleted if it showed up looking like it does? Maybe. Would everyone involved benefit from some guidance in the creation of their first article? I think so. And we are seeing the beginnings of this undercurrent with the Wikipedia:Wiki Guides program.

I think many of us, especially editors who have been here a long time, are subconsciously caught in the 'old tyme' thinking that increasing the article count is the only way to increase coverage, and thereby increase credibility. If the statistics show anything, regardless of silly things like facts and truth, Wikipedia is the go-to place for most people on the planet.

If we look around, it's easy to say Wikipedia has reached it's most current plateau. And I mean this in terms of the number of editors, the number of articles created per day and the quality of those articles. I think we are in the middle of a paradigm shift in how the wiki is improving, especially in the last few years now that most policies and best practices are considered long standing. Now, major improvements to coverage and quality are through existing articles, rather than new articles.

We should only allow auto confirmed users to create articles, simply because the kinds of articles that still need to be created, and the standards we hold new articles to now, take a little more effort and a little more knowledge of how the community operates. Investigating new articles should be done by editors who have been here a while, and know what it's all about. This would probably also increase the quality of both newly created articles and new editors, since you have to make an effort to stick around to create articles. No more of the driveby-delete-disappear cycle, instead we would include the word discussion. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 19:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

1. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 01:51, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Editors who poke around a bit are also more likely to discover requested article lists. Danger (talk) 02:49, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
3. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:09, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Good points. People who start editing because they see something they think they can improve (typos, style, etc.) are more likely to become continuing contributors than are people who want to create an article about their pet topic. -- Donald Albury 21:40, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
6. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
7. "[M]ajor improvements to coverage and quality are through existing articles, rather than new articles" is probably wave of future. How about this: You only get to create a new article if you delete an existing one first. OK, just kidding. But do endorse NickPenguin's point generally. Herostratus (talk) 08:13, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Agreed. There is a plethora of random articles popping up just for the sake of creating a Wikipedia article. It is always better to ease a beginner into the community by allowing them to make edits, correct spelling mistakes and generally try and improve an article that is already there, before the next stage of allowing them to create an article. Gb105 (talk) 16:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
9. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Danger

I like the proposal in principle, but I'm also concerned about the attention span of new users. I think that something like this would be a big enough deal to create a new user flag. Instead of using the current auto-confirm flag, use an alternative based solely on edit count so that a person can sit down, figure out how to use Wikipedia, make a few edits and then create a page. If I were starting over now and I were the sort to write new articles, I would never have the patience to wait four days doing nothing; I would probably make 100 edits in the first few days and then get bored. So, perhaps set the confirmation to 15 edits on 2 different pages, at least one of which is in article space (so the user has gotten out of the sandbox).

Danger (talk) 20:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC) I've changed my mind based on talk page arguments, but if others want to endorse this, okay. Danger (talk) 17:16, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

1. Experience editing is the key here. I believe the time requirement on autoconfirmed is just to deter vandals. Mr.Z-man 22:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. I could probably accept this as a reasonable compromise if one is necessary. Alzarian16 (talk) 22:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
3. I think we should be reviewing the autoconfirmed threshold before & after the first trial. The mw:Manual:$wgAutopromote functionality used to determine autoconfirmed is quite flexible, and we could add more conditions to it easily enough.(a few lines of code). For example, we could have a lower age for accounts which have confirmed their email address. And we could use APCOND_AGE_FROM_EDIT instead of APCOND_EDIT. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Brammers

The slew of poor quality articles that new users create (80% are deleted, according to User:Yoenit) wastes potential contributors' time and that of the new page patrollers. I believe the statistics compiled by Mr.Z-man are telling: less than 0.65% of new users whose article is deleted will stick around, but many more users whose first actions are edits will be retained.

Wikipedia is no longer a young project. With every extra article, maintenance and vandal fighting becomes more work. At over 3.5 million articles, I believe that the bulk of future work will be (to quote Albert Michelson) "in the sixth place of decimals", i.e. refining and improving rather than article creation. After ten years, everything obvious has an article; the days of huge gaps in coverage which must be plugged are out. The days of MOS, REF and 3LA are in. The need for rapid numerical growth in the articlespace is a bygone, and quality requirements are much more stringent.

Our need now is for new editors who have the patience to develop a grasp of the tools and the guidelines with which we build this admirable project. My first edits were damn unencyclopedic, but after a dozen or so I was getting a better idea of things. I suspect that after ten edits and four days, any problematic editors would have been picked up and either coached (assuming good faith) or blocked (as vandalism-only accounts).

To summarise, forcing new users to make edits before they can create articles will:

• Expose them to what the encyclopedia is actually about (not a garage band directory, or repository for your CV, or a soapbox)
• Deter some instant-gratification vandals
• Help new users who really want to improve the project get assisted by established users
• Do no harm to the project: as I've said and as evidence has shown, most new pages are not kept
• Grand summary: this measure would encourage competence in new users and be less bitey than stomping on pages created by willing but inexperienced newbies.

In the long term, the project must adapt to its growing maturity or it will wither and decay.

Users who endorse this view

1. Brammers (talk/c) 22:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
2. As I noted above, I'm unconvinced that the age of an account matters, but otherwise, I concur. Danger (talk) 22:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

   • Sorry for being ambiguous: I believe that the four day wait would give ample time for other users to see any problematic edits via their watchlists. Ultimately I think the number of edits is more important, but that the "cooling off period" is also a necessary restriction. Brammers (talk/c) 22:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

3. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
4. bobrayner (talk) 09:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
5. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
6.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
7. - BilCat (talk) 22:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Yes. We are at a different stage. We must address our current concerns. Growth is not a priority. Cleaning out the existing poor quality edits is more important. SilkTork *^YES! 11:53, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Yes. As Wikipedia matures, focus must move toward quality control, especially a change like this that makes for a less bitey experience. --JaGa^talk 16:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
11. --M4gnum0n (talk) 17:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Thanks for the statistics. I disagree with the MOS part: it's a perennially edit-protected page due to never ending opinion wars between regulars that should probably invest that time in improving some articles instead. I hope you're not suggesting new editors need to pass the MOS exam before being allowed to edit. Also, I disagree with "everything obvious has an article", unless by that you mean everything you see on pop TV. Plenty of book-length topics don't have an article. I can give you examples if you want. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

    • No, not at all. Expecting new users (and even most regular users) to memorise a 70-page document would be unfeasible and extreme. I used MOS as an example of the "quality over quantity" approach to improving the encyclopedia. As for the "everything obvious" article, I used "obvious" in the sense of "obvious to a member of the general public". In specialised areas, there is still room for improvement. I've noticed that by the third year of an undergraduate chemistry degree, a few of the topics taught have either thin or no coverage on Wikipedia. But the chances of someone deciding to join solely to write one esoteric article would probably be fairly slim (e.g. a lot of the fungus articles are created by a few prolific editors, not new users). Off-topic: is there any list of "technical articles that are not yet created but we could do with", such as ones one might encounter during the course of an undergraduate degree? Brammers (talk/c) 13:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

13. Herostratus (talk) 08:34, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Actually agree with this too. I don't think it a) has been shown that a problem exists, b) that non-auto-confirmed users are responsible for this problem and c) that this proposal will actually address any hypothetical problem that may or may not exist. Basically, convince me why this matters first.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:57, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
15. —mc10 (t/c) 05:19, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
16. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:42, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
17. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:06, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
18. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
19. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:46, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:bobrayner

The current system is a shameful waste; the large minority of new editors who start by creating an article will usually find that it's speedied (which upsets them) or, if they're lucky, it will languish under a heavy burden of tags (which frustrates them). Either way, much labour is wasted. Meanwhile, more experienced editors also spend lots of time trying to clean up this mess when they could be making substantial quality improvements elsewhere; or, if the surge of new pages slowed, NPPers could take the time to make deeper improvements rather than a ten-second tagging.

This is a huge waste of willing volunteers - wikipedia's most precious commodity. There's so much more improvement that they could make - new and old - on en.wikipedia's huge pile of existing articles. We shouldn't worry that a lightweight restriction will prevent some important new article being created - it's a low hurdle and there will still be thousands of willing & talented article-creators around.

Users who endorse this view

1. bobrayner (talk) 09:13, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC) NPPers are already supposed to be doing more than a WP:NPP|ten second tagging.
3. You're probably right, NPP is likely the biggest inefficiency we put up with in order to maintain "anyone can edit [anything at any time]" at all costs. Mr.Z-man 13:26, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Airplaneman ✈ 13:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
5. --Jayron32 14:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Well said. The labor and time of existing volunteers–especially NPPers and other maintenance workers–should not be taken for granted or wasted. Danger (talk) 17:09, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
7.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:31, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
8. - BilCat (talk) 22:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Rivertorch (talk) 03:27, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Yes. SilkTork *^YES! 11:54, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
11. bahamut0013^words_deeds 15:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
13. --M4gnum0n (talk) 17:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Herostratus (talk) 08:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Autoconfirmation is such a low standard, the idea that this will "kill Wikipedia" is ridiculous hyperbole. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:36, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
16. —mc10 (t/c) 05:20, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
17. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:44, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Jebus989^✰ 15:09, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Radical view from User:Collect

Perhaps we are looking at this backwards. There is no doubt that new articles just created by new users do not generally meet WP standards. The current system is "delete new non-notable articles even if less than 1% of the new users will ever try again at all." This is not-good. I suggest that new articles be auto-tagged as "in progress - noindex" and allow editors to try contacting the new user to explain how to improve the article which, in the meantime, would not be "published" to mainspace. Indeed, the "pending chages" software would likely be of immense benefit for such a change in procedure. New editors who write about clearly non-notable topics (My Dad) would get a polite non-templated welcome saying that, while the editor personally would love to meet your dad, it is not really important enough for an encyclopedia article without something special others can look up about him. The purpose of this suggestion is to get the retention rate at least up to 2%. Clearly the current system fails at editor retention utterly. Second part: Also end the unfriendly "your edit was deleted" welcome message (other than for obvious vandalism). Tell the person why the edit has a problem, not just that it was an evil edit (yes - that may mean a menu of templates for those who do not wish to write sentences) . Collect (talk) 11:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, we need to have specific templates for specific instances and the "your edit was deleted" message. Some of the edits are well intentioned and if they get the "your edit was deleted" welcome message, than they will be turned off from editing again and think "screw this, I'm never editing Wikipedia again." Like you said, it's all about retention and boosting it. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 17:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. Collect (talk) 11:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
2. NeilK (talk) 21:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC) This is a step in the right direction
3. I've separately advocated that articles deleted for notability concerns should go into some sort of purgatory, where they remain available for imrpovement, but are not searchable from outside the site. Jclemens (talk) 17:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Did someone actually find a productive use for the Pending Changes functionality? Well, hell - this sounds like it might be a winner to prevent a quick speedy deletion. SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 05:55, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
6. I'd be willing to compromise to this. - filelakeshoe 23:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
7. ϢereSpielChequers 16:36, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
8. A brilliant idea and a good use for PC. It does need a positive and polite explanation that will encourage newcomers to stay and earn creation rights. Certes (talk) 15:01, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
9. One of the few palatable uses of PC I've read so far. Interesting idea. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:47, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
10. YE ^{Tropical Cyclone} 15:14, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Agree. Most of our "welcome" templates are hardly welcoming at all. Philip.t.day talk 01:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 17:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
13. I think this may address the issue while best adhering to the principle of open editing. AndreisEntaro (talk) 05:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Orionist

I didn't take part in earlier VP discussion, so this is hopefully a new view:

I thought we already have a way to deal with backlogs: we get more people to work on them. Ever wondered what all these unreferenced BLPs, Wikification and copyediting drives are all about? If we apply the same logic of this proposal to other backlogged areas, we'll end up sending to AfC or userfying every single article that is not Featured, and restricting any editing in main namespace to administrators. This proposition will only shift the load to AfC, and soon we will have editors working there complaining about the huge backlog and how we should add hurdles for new editors. AfC is not that helpful either, I can see there very good articles, better than many on the main namespace, that are declined for reasons like "needs more inline citations" or "wikify". Another thing, if 80% of new pages are really deleted for good reason, then why on earth would we want their authors to make 10 more edits - edits that they don't want to do in the first place? We'd be only multiplying the problem by ten, and adding a huge amount of questionable - if not vandalous - edits to the backlog of RC patrollers. And what if after a while, the number of NP patrollers goes down, and they - again - face the same problems? Should we raise article creation threshold to, say, 100 edits and 20 days? And what if the patroller numbers go down again?

Most new pages that are worthy of deletion do not constitute a real danger on the 'pedia. If they are about obscure or non-notable subjects, no one would read them anyway, except maybe the creators and their friends. If the subject is notable, but the article is crappy, people will stumble upon it and improve it, that's the whole point of the wiki, and that's how Wikipedia has become what it is now. The real danger comes from POV pushers, WP:POINTy editors, and uncivil editors who could be well established. These can not only destroy the quality of articles, but also chase away other editors, newbies and veterans alike. Hurdles should be set up for them, instead of the well-meaning but inexperienced.

Some alternative suggestions:

• Recruit more NP patrollers. Have a look at the methods used by successful projects and follow them. Spread the word, I think most Wikipedians have no idea what NPP is.
• Article Wizard can be a great tool, used by new and established editors alike, but not the way it is now. If it's ever going to be useful, it should be turned into a real wizard, not a bunch of instructions. The AfC can also improve. As a start, editors can lend a hand at creation instead of judging. Once these two processes see significant improvement, we can discuss rerouting new users through them, but in any case, that should happen because they are useful to new editors, and not because we want to "slow them down": We are checking new pages in the 'pedia, we are not defending it against a Hun invasion.
• To reduce the chance of "bitiness", several things can be done: a "grace period" can be set up, during which pages shouldn't be tagged or deleted, I guess a duration of one hour for tagging and one day for deletion would be suitable, with an exception for harmful material (e.g. libel, hate speech). Another thing could be tweaking the tags and templates, and including big, clear buttons or links to help areas, where newbies can ask friendly established editors (Wiki Guides for example) who'd have the patience to explain the policies, or talk on their behalf to the taggers/deleters, thus avoiding the bitiness or lessening its impact.

Other solutions can be devised. The proposal above, however, would cause many more problems, without solving any.

Users who endorse this view

1. -- Orionist ★ talk 12:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
2. the thesis that "i will stop biting people, if we make it harder for them to put their fingers in my mouth" is farcical. behavior modification will require what you suggest, and above all leadership Slowking4 (talk) 20:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
3. I tend to agree. The wizard is ugly, and AfC would need more volunteers. Why not just volunteer for NPP? Abductive (reasoning) 07:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Barriers to entry should not be raised ever higher, at least not explicitly. Implicitly they are anyway rising since I joined (2004), as citations etc become necessities and the language more and more technical. IP editors are likely to register to write or edit articles on subjects they are passionate about, not to correct semicolons and apostrophes. Forcing 10 initial edits is likely to either a) entangle and kill that passion in editing red tape, or b) ensure that those edits are hurriedly done, trivial (if not damaging) and do not really serve the cause of him/her learning the ropes, as the good-intention is.VishalB (talk) 20:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Though I'll note that there is tremendous consensus against providing a blanket grace period for articles (for PROD or AfD). Most times it has been suggested at WT:DEL or WT:AFD it has been quickly shot down. But I prefer people actually work on backlogs rather than offer dramatic faux-serious change in order to avoid backlogs. Look at the recent unreferenced BLP drive as an example of best practices. Rather than nuke/blank/whatever all of the articles because it was "impossible" to deal with them we just set out to deal with them. Harder work, but there is no free lunch. Protonk (talk) 22:07, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
6. --V111P (talk) 07:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Ronhjones

As most have said, the need for new pages is not as great as years ago. We have an excellent range of articles, and the number of really good articles that need to be created must, by definition, be very low. Therefore why not stop all page creation in article space, making the users make all their new pages as user subpages. When the user thinks the page is ready he can ask for it to be moved. Move rights need to be the same as for files - i.e. for those who have the Wikipedia:File mover right. Will also stop new users moving articles unnecessary, and may also reduce cut and paste moves.

Nope - the need for new pages is as great as years ago. The geotagging study is just one famous example of that; there are many more. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:20, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Really? Really? REALLY? Unless life didn't happen, than there will always be a need to create articles. It must be nice living in a world where nothing happens and your Wikipedia is stagnant. If we stopped article creation than Wikipedia would become just that, stagnant. Not everything that has ever happened in the history of the world is on Wikipedia. So there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of articles yet to be created. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:59, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

View from User:Malleus Fatuorum

Wikipedia has become so desperate to attract new editors that it ignores the retention of existing editors. There are plenty of articles, but far too few of them are even half-way decent. The new editors who need encouragement are those who pitch in and improve articles, not those who create articles on their newly formed garage band or whatever on their first edit, as I think the statistics clearly show.

Users who endorse this view

1. Malleus Fatuorum 02:43, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Thank you for being so frank on saying this. Some of the above skirts around the issue (including me), but you say it well. --Jayron32 03:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
3. More or less, yeah. Rivertorch (talk) 03:27, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Yep. MER-C 03:48, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Malleus makes a point, and I share Jayron's sentiment. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
6. bobrayner (talk) 09:17, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Grabbed the nettle by the stem. Brammers (talk/c) 09:39, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Johnuniq (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
9. I agree, editors who come to WP to create an article about their garage band, something they heard at school or saw on YouTube, or their company or themselves, are not likely to become helpful contributors to WP. -- Donald Albury 10:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Yes. While there is an important focus on newly created articles, we should also look at existing articles. Try clicking on Random article 10 times and see if you're satisfied with all ten articles you encounter. We need quality editors who are willing to work on improving existing articles. It is a shame that so many WP:Vital articles are in such a poor state. SilkTork *^YES! 12:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
11. I wouldn't have worded it quite so strongly against attracting new editors, but how to encourage new and existing editors to improve existing articles definitely doesn't occupy enough of our mindspace. Encouraging prioritising of articles to improve (eg WP:Vital articles, per Silktork) is also important and not done enough. One point made elsewhere I think (this RFC is getting long) is that new articles on closely related subjects can easily end up pretty duplicative, so you end up with 2 crappy overlapping articles which then at some point take a lot of effort to merge and/or properly demarcate along the line the topic should be split. There is, in general, too much emphasis on creating new articles as a goal in itself, rather than taking the goal as expanding Wikipedia's coverage of encyclopedic topics in a way that is useful to readers. Rd232 ^talk 12:46, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
12. bahamut0013^words_deeds 15:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
13. a little freaked out that I'm agreeing with Malleus about something, but somehow I am. I wouldn't say that all new editors who want to write articles are of the garage-band type, or that we should not encourage editors who want to create new articles at all, but Malleus speaks the truth when he says that prioritizing those who want to create their own pet article over those who want to improve the 'pedia through various other methods is silly. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Couldn't say it better myself. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:56, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
15.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 19:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
16. --Guerillero | My Talk | Review Me 23:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
17. --JayJasper (talk) 04:39, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
18. Shockingly enough, I agree completely. Mind you I'd go further by tightening up the notability guidelines and culling upwards of 500,000 articles (the 300,000 currently unsourced articles and the massive bloat that teeters on the edge of even the low standards we have now. I'm quite confident that we can cut half a million articles without really losing anything. That, however, is a separate matter.) Sven Manguard Wha? 07:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
19. Sure, I agree with this. I don't have much of an idea how to improve the situation, though... Abductive (reasoning) 08:02, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
20. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
21. Sound comment. Also tend to agree with User:Sven Manguard's OT point, especially if it results in a reduction in articles about (to me) non-notable schools and other educational establishments, many of which are of irredeemably poor quality and frequently vandalised. - Sitush (talk) 11:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
22. BelovedFreak 11:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
23. Agree 100%. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 13:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
24. Enric Naval (talk) 14:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
25. --JaGa^talk 16:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
26. --M4gnum0n (talk) 17:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
27. One way to invest in the retention of existing editors is to devise ways to reduce the amount of janitorial work required to maintain the project. This change would result in a precipitous drop in the number of AfD's, CSD's, and new page patrolling required, and would free up experienced editors to do more valuable tasks. —SW— ^confer 17:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
28. We need to balance attracting new, productive editors to at least replace the actual attrition rate of our productive contributors. Jclemens (talk) 17:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
29. Otelemuyen {talk) 18:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
30. I agree with this feeling, but I don't know what if anything it entails for the question at hand here. We need some real statistics as to how many new junk articles are created by new editors relative to mmkay articles created by new editors. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
31. Agree with this sentiment
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 22:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
32. --Diannaa ^(Talk) 03:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
33. Pol430 talk to me 08:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
34. Fully agree. Pedro :  Chat  09:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
35. A belief I have held for a while now (but at the same time, we should still be gentle with all good-faith and potentially productive newbies, regardless of their first edits). Dabomb87 (talk) 13:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
36. In general yes, though some areas are still woefully underrepresented.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
37. Wikipedia could easily purge a good half a million articles, maybe more, and be better off for it. We desperately need existing articles polished. Lara 01:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
38. Exactly. Wolfehhgg (talk) 16:44, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
39. Anytime me and Malleus agree on anything there has got to be something to it... Beeblebrox (talk) 01:38, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
40. —mc10 (t/c) 05:21, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
41. New users shouldn't focus on article creation, when they do create a new article it'll most likely get torn apart and destroyed. I agree with this wholeheartedly. —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 4:47pm • 06:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
42. —DoRD (talk) 12:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
43. Yes, the quantity vs. quality issue... Mojoworker (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
44. As with others, disconcerted to agree with MF, but he is correct. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
45. — anndelion ※ 00:18, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
46. Per this ANI incident which drove off another established editor and basically rewarding poor behavior on the part of a newcomer. That being said, I'm concentrating more on that first statement, which I think is clearly going on. –MuZemike 18:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

    Drove off? Sorry, I see no evidence of this. Ruslik_Zero 18:27, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

47. I agree. But what do you propose exactly? Xionbox^₪ 09:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
48. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
49. Enough speaking, a Big YES. Ald™ N☺Nym☻us 22:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
50. —UncleDouggie (talk) 10:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
51. I agree. So many times admins have not blocked editors who only contributions are making pages made of vandalism just because they are new. JDDJS (talk) 16:31, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
52. More blunt that I would have put it, but correct. Captain panda 07:10, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
53. Hits the nail on the head. AD 14:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
54. The article count increase has dropped off to linear (I believe somewhat independently of the decline in new editors); there is no need to focus on new articles nearly as much. Old missing articles are likely on non-English/Western topics, which we're SOL on regardless. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:01, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
55. Well said! A good starting point.Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (talk) 04:05, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
56. Yes, as of now "There are plenty of articles, but far too few of them are even half-way decent." Are we trying to create a rummage sale here or a "high quality encyclopedia"? There is need to better focus the efforts of the experienced and responsible editors, instead of the spammers and joyriders. History2007 (talk) 22:43, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
57. agree. Johnbod (talk) 00:06, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
58. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:49, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
59. Too true, they can always create articles in their sandbox and ask others to check them out. Chaosdruid (talk) 02:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
60. mabdul 20:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Worm That Turned

A new article requires an administrator to delete. Sure, we can use speedy deletion criteria, but it still requires an administrator to do the work. Moving to this system will therefore reduce the amount of vandalism that cannot be reverted by normal editors. Autoconfirmed status does not take long to get, and there are alternative methods to creating articles. This seems like a good move to me.

It won't reduce the amount of vandalism. That's wishful thinking. A portion of the users will vandalize to the required amount edits to meet the requirements. So no it won't curb vandalism. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:53, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say it would reduce the amount of vandalism, I said it would "reduce the amount of vandalism that cannot be reverted by normal editors" - the more editors who can revert vandalism the better IMO. Worm^TT · (talk) 09:33, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. Worm^TT · (talk) 11:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:36, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
3. --M4gnum0n (talk) 17:04, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
4. True, it would reduce CSD work as well as work at NPP (which has been mentioned before), so freeing up editor time for other things. That's probably not that important (I certainly think the key issue is the new editor experience), but it does, and that's obviously a benefit. Rd232 ^talk 19:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Yep. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
6. +1 bobrayner (talk) 21:12, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
7. —Mojoworker (talk) 17:42, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Baseball Watcher 01:24, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
9. —mc10 (t/c) 02:11, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
10. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 16:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Agree. AD 14:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
12. This is a very good point. We need to reduce the need for admins to press the block or delete buttons routinely for hours, as this encourages the continuation of the model of sysop rights going to people who merely block and delete, and prefer to do that than communicate. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Rd232

Somewhat reluctantly I add an additional view to the growing list, because Jayron32's view (the leading view in support of the basic idea of restriction) does not mention some key points. So, in addition to everything said in favour of preventing brand new (non-autoconfirmed) editors from creating articles in mainspace without some form of assistance, it must be emphasised that such editors should still be able to quickly create articles with assistance. I see three assistance options, and I think all should be available if the restriction is implemented.

1. Articles for Creation. I think the key element of the immediacy of the status quo actually involves a form of feedback - of look, it's really there on Wikipedia, I CAN create it! (in parallel to the more common I CAN edit it!). The AFC system should provide much of the key "I CAN create it" experience. AFC may not put the article live into mainspace as quickly as the status quo permits, but it does (should) provide fairly quick feedback, and in particular, it gives new editors the crucial expectation of positive feedback, as opposed to the present experience of creating an article without knowing what feedback to expect (which feedback typically turns out negative, via deletion or tagging).
2. Article Wizard. An exemption can be engineered so that editors going through the Article Wizard can immediately create articles. This is partly to reduce the workload on AFC, partly to direct users who aren't really interested in feedback away from AFC. It also provides users who want it real immediacy of creation.
3. userspace drafts in combination with a request to move the draft to mainspace provide a way to quickly create articles without going through AFC or Wizard, which some find very offputting. This needs a little work to make it clear how to do (from the "you can't create a new article" message) and then how to request a move to mainspace if the user isn't willing to wait (possibly adapting the Article Wizard's userspace draft preload, which provides some help). user:Cardamon's view mentions a per-user sandbox which could work well to make this approach easier to grasp for the newcomer.

Users who endorse this view

1. Rd232 ^talk 11:22, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Armbrust ^{WrestleMania XXVII} _{Undertaker 19–0} 11:39, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
3. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:09, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
4. I'm flexible on which/how many options are available, but some options should be available and well-advertised. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Absolutely essential points to make this change work right. Jclemens (talk) 17:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Support options 1 and 2. These exemptions are reasonable ways for legitimate new users to create new articles. Some editors come here explicitly for the reason to create a legitimate article, and may not be interested in making 10 other edits to other articles. If a user created a userspace draft, however, they would probably (hopefully) already be auto-confirmed after they finished their userspace draft, so this option is probably unnecessary. —SW— ^comment 18:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
   1. They might well get to 10 edits, but do so quite quickly (< 4 days). Hence the need for a clear path for requesting moves (eg via WP:FEED or WP:NCHP) to avoid frustration. Besides which, a request ensures a second pair of (more experienced) eyes before the article goes live. The potential feedback there reduces the risk of deletion/tagging/etc. Rd232 ^talk 19:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
7. --JayJasper (talk) 18:47, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
8. —mc10 (t/c) 02:11, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Marcus Qwertyus

If we are going to require autoconfirmed status to create articles we should also require reviewer status to review them. There are 5,500 reviewers already and it can easily be requested.

Users who endorse this view

1. Marcus Qwertyus 13:45, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

View from AGK

A suitable compromise would be that anonymous users can still create new articles, but that pages they create are not viewable except to them and to registered users until the article has been confirmed in much the same way as FlaggedRevs provides for. AGK [•] 14:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)re

Users who endorse this view

1. AGK [•] 14:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
2. ...Or make it viewable but require that the article eventually be patrolled at some point Currently all articles that aren't patrolled after (3?) months disappear from the patrol log. Articles that are written by autoconfirmed users could still expire from the list after a set amount of time. This would prioritize page patrolling of articles written by new users by backlog patrollers. Marcus Qwertyus 16:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

   It's 1 month. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

3. There is mileage in this. I think that "article incubation" is probably the sort of thing, though the term has been taken over by an existing process that holds deleted articles in a community userfication space. A process whereby articles created by unregistered or new editors are automatically placed in an incubator which is noindexed and not part of article mainspace would be great. I think that is what people have been looking for all this time, and keep missing. The article would remain in the incubator until an admin or reviewer checks it over and moves it into mainspace or deletes it. The current Article Incubator is misnamed, misunderstood, has been misused (people deleting articles out of process), and doesn't work. It might be an idea to hold a RfC on the existing Article Incubator to see if that can be made to work under a new name (Community Userfication?) or simply closed down so the Article Incubator name can be used for this idea. SilkTork *^YES! 16:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
   1. How is that different from my third point in my View (userspace drafts)? Rd232 ^talk 16:39, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
4. --M4gnum0n (talk) 17:06, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Jclemens (talk) 04:30, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
6. I like the way this avoids the pitfalls both of incubation and of userfication. ϢereSpielChequers 20:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
7. this sounds like a decent solution. Also, I would argue that there is less potential for damage and abuse from new users creating new articles (which get checked anyway) than from those same users editing existing articles. Sometimes a new user can do serious damage to an article and if the changes aren't super obvious it takes a while to catch the changes which by that point may have been incorporated into other changes since. Drew.ward (talk) 01:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Possibly contrarian view from Daniel Case

For one thing, I thought this was already a requirement. But with all the UAA work I do, I should have realized it wasn't. Perhaps I was confusing the semi-protection requirements with the creation requirements. It doesn't matter.

Now, if I were forced to take a stand on this RfC I'd say, do it. A lot of accounts that begin by creating articles are indeed SPAs that create an article about something non-notable and, no matter how politely you treat them about this, never edit again as far as I can tell (and by "as far as I can tell", I mean that I've actually had email dialogues with some of these people about this). Whereas a lot of accounts that begin by editing existing articles (and by editing, I should clarify that they are actually adding good-faith factual information, or copy editing, and not just spamming external links) seem to have more staying power. To generalize from my own experience, I had had my account for a month before I felt the courage to create a new article (clip show, if anyone cares), and I was still so apprehensive about doing it that I created it anonymously (that was still allowed at the time). It's been almost six years and I'm still here.

So as far as this proposal goes I will say at the very least, get data on whether editors who start by creating articles or editors who start by merely editing existing articles (again, as opposed to spamming or vandalizing them) before we make any decision.

But that's not as far as I want to go.

Everybody above seems to take it as a settled assumption that the decline in activity from newer accounts is a Really Serious Problem and that if we don't do Something Drastic Right Now Wikipedia won't be around in a year. Or a day. Those of you as long in the online teeth as I am may remember "Imminent death of the net predicted. Film at 11. The only difference is whether this proposal is seen as an acceptable tradeoff in light of this.

I do not dispute the facts about the editing patterns of new editors. I am, however, beginning to have second thoughts about the extent to which this has been seen, or been allowed to be seen, as some sort of existential threat.

We say this often enough to mock it as a cliché, but it's no less true for that: This is a project to create an encyclopedia. It is therefore about creating and maintaining quality content above all else. How we continue to grow and adapt as a community can only be considered within the context of that goal.

We should not consider it our goal to attract as many new users as possible. Yet we are on the verge of discussing this and fretting about this to the point that perception will trump reality, that the discourse about this will make any actual underlying facts, their implications or the lack thereof irrelevant. And when you have reached that point, you no longer have a problem but a moral panic or the equivalent.

Or to be a bit more restrained, I note that we presently have no article on the well-known organizational phenomenon of goal displacement (And no, I don't mean this; see here instead). Because it seems to me that without some skepticism at the right time (i.e., now), we're headed in that direction, with the usual deleterious effects likely.

The smaller amount of new accounts that become regular editors is an issue. A concern, perhaps. And certainly not without some relevance to the question of how welcoming we are to new users. But it's not a PROBLEM.

For it has been equally true that while this has happened, the total amount of edits has remained relatively steady as the existing core of editors has increased their activity. I see other indicators that, from an editorial standpoint, the community is doing quite well for itself. I note that we seem to be producing as many featured articles as we generally have, and the proportion of defeaturings to FA promotions has also remained relatively consistent. Likewise more articles have reached GA status in the last couple of years than the years before. The amount of new admin candidacies has declined, but no more than the amount of new long-term editors (IMO) (and maybe that's not such a bad thing, to be honest).

And is the decline in new editors necessarily the result of, or only of, our practices toward new editors and new articles? I suppose it is true that we have become more efficient at sizing up a new editor and assessing their potential than we were in 2005, allowing less time for a vandal to become a serious editor. But I also have to point out that, with five times as many articles as we had back then, perhaps new editors see less places where they can add new information (An interesting metric in this regard would be the amount of new editors in the last few years who have built up their edit counts on pop-culture phenomena that did not exist in 2005 ... episodes of, say, Lost that have aired since then and associated articles. Or newer TV shows that have become very popular, like Modern Family). Maybe we should find out what newer editors are editing and what we can do to encourage more of this, before we go throwing what may or may not be solutions at what may or may not be problems.

We may also have to consider that we have captured most of the user base that has the time and inclination to effectively write and edit open-content online encyclopedia articles in worldwide collaboration. Especially with strict requirements for sourcing and such ... a lot of us too easily forget, I think, that many people don't have pleasant memories of writing papers in school and approach the imperative to footnote their work with the same dread I'd have if I had to factor quadratic polynomials again on a routine basis.

And that such a user community is OK working with a decidedly retro editing interface that lacks WYSIWYG capabilities (believe me, when we solve that problem, we won't be worrying about what we can do to attract new editors. In fact, we'll have the opposite problem. And then, anyone who doesn't remember what that problem was like will be pining for the days when we had discussions like this.) Or true social-networking capabilities (We could stand to learn a few things from Facebook) that could enhance the editing experience. Within a few years web users will expect that sort of thing, and we will need to provide it if we want to get some of them into our community).

So here's to conversations that I think we should be having. Daniel Case (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. Daniel Case (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
2. --M4gnum0n (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Danger (talk) 17:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Rd232 ^talk 18:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
6. --JayJasper (talk) 18:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Agree -- As a gnome-ish, for-the-most-part contra-vandal, I see the problem being not so much one of quantity as quality. There seems to be no shortage of people who think it's fun to trash articles. (Even the fictional Howard Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory suggested they "vandalize some Wikipedia pages" for fun.) I'm not at all sure that someone having a millisecond attention span and unwilling to wait less than a week to create articles is the sort of person that will help build a good encyclopedia. But, then again, I could be wrong. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 19:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
8. --Jayron32 19:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
9. Agree with the general tenor. Many excellent points. Settled assumptions part (para 3) overstated; I don't assume that at all. Rivertorch (talk) 19:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

   Good; I'm glad some people are keeping their heads on. That does seem to be the view on some of the mailing lists, though. Daniel Case (talk) 00:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

10. The reason we thought it was a requirement was because if the users follow the suggestions and create their article as a draft in their userspace, they are unable to move it into mainspace until they are autoconfirmed. So the people who follow the suggestions are punished, while those who dump new articles directly in main space are rewarded. Gigs (talk) 19:58, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

    That is a very, very good point. Rd232 ^talk 21:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

11. Not sure I fully agree with everything here. But very well thought out... and more experience than me. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
12. Lara 01:44, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
13. Very well thought out and expressed. I would wager that if we eliminate from the Wikimedia study all SPAs that create new vanity and spam articles, then the new editor retention rate would rise significantly. The real question should be "how do we retain editors who are serious about writing an encyclopedia?" If anything, this proposal would help those quality new editors see that Wikipedia is serious about writing a quality encyclopedia. First Light (talk) 05:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
14. Some people have their priorities on Wikipedia all wrong. We aren't aiming to be the biggest encyclopedia, nor are we aiming to be the best one. "Anyone can edit" is already false, because of all the users that get blocked every day. Creating an article is a step up from simply editing. In the rare case of a good article being created by a brand new editor, no harm will come by waiting a bit. AD 14:34, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
15. Wikipedia de facto entered a new phase a while ago when the emphasis on quality was jacked up and good-faith-but-uncited stuff started getting routinely reverted. I agree that a WYSIWYG editing interface would probably have the greatest possible impact of most of the change suggestions being circulated. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:52, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
16. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Brief view from Anetode

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 19:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Totally inappropriate metaphor which seemingly ignores everything said by proponents of the proposal. Also a "view" which adds nothing to existing ones, and ignores the instruction at the top of the page to avoid unnecessary proliferation of views - so I've moved it here. Rd232 ^talk 19:34, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Moved back. It's all right if you disagree with my view, but I would appreciate a respectful treatment of it. Although concise, the metaphor I brought up took some consideration. In order to save people the time of reading multiple paragraphs which would have detailed my reasoning I would much rather offer a thesis. My intention is to get people to consider this statement and comment on whether their conclusions are ultimately similar. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 19:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I gave your view rather more respect than it gave the proposal. Rd232 ^talk 19:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I see. You may have the impression that this view is in some way contemptuous, but that was not my intent. It's honest, if unorthodox. And speaking of unorthodox, please allow me the following parable:

Imagine wikipedia as a vast and empty plot of land where people are allowed to build whatever they want and help each other out. After the first couple of years the plot accumulated a sparse number of shacks and, oddly enough, the foundations for a number of skyscrapers. More people come and join the build as the years go by. Wikipedia is no longer a plot, but a sprawling city. Many fine structures are erected and people who occupy them feel a sense of comfort and achievement (and rightfully so).

Then something bad happens. The people in the nice houses become vary of the litter of small shacks from the continuing influx of builders. Such ghettos are blamed for lowering property values. A fence is put up wherever newcomers attempt to lay even a brick. Now they need a license, a security check and a complete blueprint to populate the wiki-metropolis.

Unsatisfied with the lack of camaraderie and the price barriers instituted by the emergent wiki-government, they leave to create their own suburbs, towns, dens and lairs. The mighty skyscrapers require constant maintenance, but the lack of new talent gradually turns them into a state of disrepair.

So the point is, you don't have to limit new constructions to established "citizens". We need fresh talent, more houses to store new ideas. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 20:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

And with that metaphor, you can also end up like Rio or São Paulo, with a small elite that does a lot of good for society with a giant morass at the fringes progressively growing larger and degrading the overall appeal of the city. Or you can institute some building codes and prevent that from happening in the first place. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Very nice job describing the status quo. Now how does it relate to this proposal? Or did you think you don't need a license, security check and a complete blueprint to prevent your shack from being crushed by a bulldozer right now? Yoenit (talk) 20:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did have that impression. Your extended metaphor deflects that impression, but also fails to take into account that the issue here is not exclusion, but lack of skills. We don't allow just anybody to put up a building in a city anywhere they like, without any assistance or supervision. Even if they're trying to build something desirable, there's a good chance they'll make an almighty mess, and then get upset when they fail and the neighbours angrily point to the flaws. Much better to ask for help beforehand, getting the neighbours' help (see my View on the key assistance issue). The second house they build they'll still struggle, but at least have some degree of clue, plus be clearer about the community's expectations. Rd232 ^talk 21:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I take exception to your assumption that the issue boils down to a lack of skill. It's premature to gauge skill potential - or lack thereof - from a couple of simple contributions. The issue here is experience. Without the opportunity to engage in article creation at the base anonymous level there's no incentive to pursue editorial experience. And while a few contributions may acclimate a user to wiki markup or layout, they are no substitute for starting of with an idea (new article) to build on. User status (anon/new/old/admin) is a formality where the actual content is concerned, so the definition of a community must be widened to include the entire readership as potential contributors. This is the very premise of a wiki, the nose or eyes or what have you, the principal distinguishing characteristic. If it is encumbered by too many layers of bureaucracy then the growth and development of the project is compromised. Requiring autoconfirmation effectively destroys the first couple of steps to experienced contributorship and isolates the idea of a community to an internal wiki that not just anyone can edit. This is just another case of the neighbours crying NIMBY. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 22:38, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't distinguishing skill from experience here; it's not about "gauging" skill since anyone can attain autoconfirmed status purely off their own back without anyone else getting involved. The issue is that creating new articles (which most new users do not start off doing) is a difficult thing, and 80%+ of them fail. That right there suggests that something is broken and needs fixing for the sake of the newcomers, not for the sake of the existing editors. Insisting that new editors go through a creation route which involves a modicum of assistance if they want to put something live in mainspace in less than 4 days is very very far from putting up barriers. It's repeatedly asserted that only unwanted editors like spammers will be willing to wait 4 days; well what sort of editors refuse to create an article merely because they're required to get some assistance in doing so? Are these editors actually a loss to the project? I would say not. There are both quality and quantity issues about converting readers into editors, where those readers wish to begin by creating an article (most don't), and on both counts, insisting that they get some help so that they don't flat on their face 80% of the time (WP:BITE) ought to be an improvement. Finally, whether this is formally done as a trial or merely kept under review for possible cancellation, we should keep a close eye on the impact. Speculation only gets you so far. Bottom line: the status quo is really crappy [it worked very well when Wikipedia was young, but as of 2011, it's crappy], and we ought to try something different. Rd232 ^talk 23:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

You make some very good points and a trial might be a workable idea. Overall though, I think that this proposal runs counter to the model that's made wikipedia a success. 10 years is still pretty young for such an ambitious project. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 01:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

If we were writing a paper encyclopedia, I would agree. But 10 years on the internet is basically a generation, if not several. 10 years ago, IE6 was the top of line, there was no Firefox, Facebook was still 3 years away from being created, and Google was only about 3 years old. Mr.Z-man 01:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Grrr. Ten years ago, Netscape was top of the line and IE was more like bottom of the barrel ;) Your point is well taken, though; a decade at Wikipedia is an eternity. To Anetode: in general, I like methodical trials and careful analysis of hard data, but I'm not sure that would be workable in this case. If this proposal is enacted and then compelling evidence shows it to be having a deleterious effect on either clueful new editor retention or the creation rate of worthwhile articles, I'd be inclined to support its repeal. Rivertorch (talk) 04:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

This pointless discussion should be moved to the talk page. Lara 01:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this discussion is pointless. It gave me a better sense of the issues than most of the rest of this page. Kathyfeller (talk) 18:22, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. It is a natural feature of any mature community to reject growth and move toward solidifying extant positive qualities instead (ie quality not quantity). This is poisonous in the extreme especially when the problem we face is not a lack of quality but a dearth of growth in our userbase. Protonk (talk) 01:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

   "the problem we face is not a lack of quality but a dearth of growth in our userbase." - um no, clearly the problem is both. The response to this dual problem depends an awful lot on whether, or how, you weight users. Is a zero-experience user who only ever makes one edit worth exactly as much as a 1,000-edit Wikipedian making their 1001st edit? If not, is the relative value (to the quality/size of the encyclopedia) fixed, or changing over time? If it changes with the growth of the encyclopedia in quality and size, in which direction does it change? I think you know the answers many people would give to these questions; and that leads to certain conclusions about how to focus efforts to turn readers into contributors who actually make meaningful contributions. eg the proposal this RFC is about. Rd232 ^talk 02:13, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

   No we don't face both. the quality problem is endemic to any venture. Acting as though it is unique to wikipedia requires blinders. Second, if we face a declining editor to reader ratio and an increasing average account age, what in the world do you think this proposal will do to those figures? Improve them? Third, there seems to be this lurking notion that we can somehow quantify the quality of a contributor or that we are willing to build walls to new contributors in order to keep or privilege existing contributors. I invite anyone holding that view to please step back and think about it in context. If you had to bet money could you identify long term users, banned users, admins, FA writers, etc. from their first article (excluding blatant vandalism) or their first edit? Even if you could, what the hell kind of judges are we that we can decide what worked well enough for 10 years on wikipedia suddenly doesn't work now? Wikipedia was created in order to be the fastest means to add or retrieve information about the outside world. The competitive advantage to wikipedia was that it was faster than any other website which you could add information. It had less friction for potential contributors. And we succeeded beyond anyones' dreams. All the people who wanted to do exactly what we are proposing right now left for Citizendium content that they would weather the coming hordes of non-productive contributors (or whatever the euphemism of the day was). Look at them now. 10 years later we face a crisis--not a crisis of quality but a crisis of relevance. Fewer people can edit wikipedia (as more people are connecting to the mobile site), and among those who can fewer do. As those numbers continue to drop we will probably have a few years of inertia where the existing stock of information is still relevant to readers. But after a certain point people will have moved on to some source which allows them to make changes without some elaborate procedure or arcane set of policy pages. If you want to hasten that day, go right ahead, but I'll be damned if I am going to let it come sooner without protest. Protonk (talk) 03:27, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Tijfo098

I looked at the data, and unfortunately it's not the right data for the question at hand here. If the new editor's fist edit is kept, the data gathered tells us nothing about whether their first article is kept or not (of if he ever creates one). Also there is no data (in those tables) on articles created by old editors in the same period (kept/deleted or total). The only thing you can answer is:

• Assuming your goal is just to retain new editors and nothing else (no regard for article quality, articles created, or retention of old editors), you're better off preventing new editors from creating articles: 1.33% retention for 1st edit being article creation vs. 2.57% for regular mainspace edit. (I did not consider the non-mainspace action relevant. Do we want more users that focus elsewhere? I also did not calculate the statistical significance of this.)

However, by not allowing the new guys to create article right away, you might not have gotten at least 2,375+ kept articles (and possibly more; they may have created more than one each). Maybe they wold have created them under the new rules, maybe not. There is no way to tell that from the data gathered. We also don't know if the "non-create" editors ever created any articles after their first edit (to compare with the 2,375+), or if their edits were plain reverted, which means they might also have been a net negative. Sadly, based on data gathered, you cannot even answer the question:

• Assuming you want to retain new editors whose first article is kept, are you better off preventing new editors from creating articles?

If you assume that among those new guys only those who created an article on their first edit ever created one (big if), the answer to the above is no (i.e. the proposed measure contradicts the goal of retaining new [minimal] quality contributors), because based on the data gathered the retention rate of editors who created a new article that is kept is above average for the mainspace sample. (4.4% vs. 2.32%) But, unless you have some data on the article creation of non-create-by-first-edit editors, you can't really answer the big if part. I doubt anyone followed this, but hey, everyone has an opinion, informed or not. Tijfo098 (talk) 20:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Blackwidowhex

As a new user, I see contentious points are points of pressure on Wikipedia. It's what drives the new Wikipedia users to contribute to Wikipedia. Wikipedia should make it mandatory that new wikipedia users be warned that their first articles will be deleted and be advised how to create articles that are not contentious, before the new user makes an article. Blackwidowhex (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

• It is not a given that an editor's first article will be deleted. There are many of us who created a first article after having made a few edits over a few days, without the article being deleted. I believe that making new editors wait a few days and make a few edits before they can create an article will increase the chances that the first article they create will survive. I also believe that the potential editors who are not willing to make a few edits and wait a few days before they can create their first article are not likely to turn into productive long-term contributors to Wikipedia. Of course, we need to do more to help new editors. There are many ways to do that. Helping new editors does not diminish the benefits of adopting this proposal, however. I would also note that the problem is not "contentious articles". Editors may be contentious; articles are not. It is unsourced (and often unsourceable) articles about non-notable subjects that are the problem. -- Donald Albury 21:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
  • It is though a probability that a new editor's first article will be deleted, according to what figures are available. Malleus Fatuorum 22:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
• We try to give new users advice. The problem is, creating a new article is just really hard. If we give people all the advice they need, no one will read it because it would be too long. However, the skills needed to create a new article do not have to be taught. The point of this proposal (as I see it) is to have new users learn from experience, rather than the community continue trying (and failing) to teach by passive advising. Mr.Z-man 22:07, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so this is a rewrite for my flawed view. It's a definite phenomenon that people prefer getting it done to taking the time and get it done right. I would think that most people do not need to be introduced to the idea of citations. I would think it's a standard practice with today's education. The Article Request log is also backed up. So new users perhaps are overwhelmed if few Wikipedia articles come to mind that they like to edit. Here are two possible modifications to make: Wikipedia could detect if a new user adds an article without references and then stop the article from being created. And have the create new article pages written with "may be deleted" big and bold. Blackwidowhex (talk) 02:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Barts1a

I personally think that this proposal is a good idea. It will allow users to learn the basics by editing existing articles rather than learning only how to get a slap on the wrist for creating a non-notable article. Good faith but incorrect edits are much easier to correct and point the user in the right direction with than good faith but non-notable articles. Barts1a | Talk to me | Yell at me 23:02, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and support asking new page creators to register Tim bates (talk) 10:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

That is already required. You seem to misunderstand the proposal here. Tijfo098 (talk) 12:30, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:NatGertler

I agree with those who say that this would set an unnecessary bar. However, I think in addressing this situation, we should be looking for ways of being less discouraging through our new page deletion, and be careful of doing anything that makes proper page patroling too difficult (as a frequent deleter, I can tell you that one of the reasons I do NPP is that it's simple; when I have a minute or two I can look at a few new pages, and with Twinkle I'm a click or two away from calling for deletion of things that qualify for deletion; if I had to engage in a conversation to justify each one to its author, I wouldn't be doing much patrolling.) If possible, I would like to see most categories of deletion not actually delete but rather userfy the page by default. I'd like to have Twinkle leave a message saying "Your page has been removed from the Wikipedia listing because we require articles about organizations to say why that organization is notable, and yours doesn't. However, your article is still right here (LINK TO USERSPACE COPY), and we encourage you to improve the article and resubmit it by such-and-such a process. Here (LINK) is a guide to the sort of content that suggests notability of an organization. And if you need any help or have any questions here (LINK) is my talk page." Make it seem less like we're rejecting their work outright, and that the time they spent creating the article is down the tubes. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree with NatGertler's idea. It may be that new users creating a new article not yet up to scratch would appreciate the kindness of a twinkle-generated anonymous loss, while still having the ability to continue work on their contribution until it's at an acceptable point for inclusion. There should be, in that case, an algorithm that counts their twinkle rejects so they get no more than 2 or 3 before an actual person reaches out to them with some helpful words. Sctechlaw (talk) 09:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

1. Good Idea Jane (talk) 09:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
2. I like the idea about shoving the new poorly written article over to their userspace. It saves any work they have done and allows them to fix it to the standard. As it stands the vandal tools we use can sometimes be pretty harsh and I wish I had more options. Golgofrinchian (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
3. This seems eminently sensible. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:29, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:dankarl

Oppose. There are users who would rather jump in and create a new article and they may be the better informed users with writing and research experience in other venues; although they would be well advised to start offline or in user space, this concern is more a matter of mechanics than of content. If you have researched your topic and know the basic rules of notability you should be able to produce a decent start that will stand scrutiny.

Putting in something that amounts to advance peer review is contrary to WP:Bold and imo would encourage blandness.

That said, there will be new users who do not know the rules. I really like User:NatGertler's suggestion in the post above. I also think patrollers should back off a little bit and wait til a new page has not been edited for an hour or so before doing anything, to avoid both the impression of a slapdown and possible edit conflicts. Dankarl (talk) 13:35, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I've said this before, and I'll say it again; that solution will lead to an enormous increase in spam. A huge percentage of speedy deletions are G11s, and if we delay deleting those we'll have even more businesses dumping advertisements on us to improve their search engine rankings. Not to mention that with just about all of these pages (see the talkpage for an example I gave), the chance of them becoming a decent article is mathematically zero. Userfication can work in some instances, and I too would like a better process for that, but we can't default to that; there'd be too much garbage floating around in userspace if we just userfied everything. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I concur. Userfying at this scale is like dumping unfiltered chemicals in the river—out of sight, out of mind. Plus, if an editor leaves, this is just even more wasted space that may never be freed up simply because it is orphaned and forgotten. It would at the very least create a need for an entirely new Wikiproject of massive proportions. As a member of the GOCE, I can tell you that there are a lot of pages that need a lot of editing...I can't even imagine the rate at which first-edit page creates are deleted. Trawling through millions of pages worth of dusty junk is not a task I can see editors leaping to volunteer for. And WMF doesn't have enough server space to keep all that junk forever.Bronsonboy (talk) 18:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:History2007

I see this as part of a larger trend. The "total freedom paradigm" in Wikipedia is gradually fading out - ever so slowly. And I see that as necessary, given that as the "value of the content" in Wikipedia increases, more protection will be needed. As the number of Wiki-pages increases, so should protection. Given that I am tired of reverting vandals (and the ever increasing number of skillful spammers) in general, I support this as another step along the path of the end to the "total freedom paradigm". Along that path we will encounter the 5 stages of the Kübler-Ross model of accepting the inevitable: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. At the moment a large portion of the Wikipedia community is in the first stage: Denial of the end to the total freedom paradigm. The other stages will gradually follow. Then in a few years, Acceptance will eventually arrive. History2007 (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. Other models notwithstanding, I more or less agree. Rivertorch (talk) 19:04, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
2. I wouldn't have brought Kübler-Ross into the discussion but I fully agree with your views. If WP doesn't protect itself better most of it will gradually become a very unreliable and badly written heap of trivia. If it isn't already. Every single forum on the internet, from airplane model builders to the zoo cleaners association, is better protected than this. FCTS 142 (talk) 15:03, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Nothing gold can stay. It has occurred to me that, as a supplement to my view above, that there is a certain amount of misguided nostalgia behind this. Was Wikipedia really ever more welcoming than it is today? (Take note of when WP:BITE was first written, after all). And even if we somehow reverted ourselves, the world around Wikipedia has changed since 2005. And there's no reverting that. Daniel Case (talk) 01:15, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

View from 75.57.242.120 (talk)

WTF? You mean autoconfirmation isn't already required to create new articles? I thought it had always been that way (ever since IP's became unable to create articles) and I just got done proposing elsewhere that only reviewers should be able to create articles. The same should go for image uploads. Something like 80% of new articles are speedied, new users are constantly templated to death by bots for NFCC problems, and the inhumanity of it all is appalling. That tells us two things: 1) inexperienced users who think they have a suitable topic for a new article are usually wrong, and 2) inexperienced users interested in creating new articles are really better off with some guidance and handholding from an experienced user.

I actually think the above (making article creation and file upload require an advanced permission) is a pro-freedom proposal, since it puts IP's back at the level of autoconfirmed users (autoconfirmation itself was very controversial when it first arrived, I've heard). I used to be annoyed when that parity was taken away, but after submitting a few new articles through WP:AFC and seeing what crap arrives there, it became clear that shutting off completely unfiltered article creation was unavoidable. But, I think the stuff coming from brand-new accounts isn't much better than stuff arriving from the "fire hose". So adding more filtering wins in all ways: improves WP content, decreases newbie biting, and gets closer to the founding principles vision that editors without accounts still have something close to full privileges. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 05:40, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Halo

Polls are evil. This will effect a large amount of users negatively, yet the only people contributing are self-selected hardcore editors of Wikipedia who will have their own biases.

The slow erosion of freedom, the ridiculous bureaucracy, and complete inaccessibility of Wikipedia process are why I don't contribute anymore and why editors are constantly dwindling.

I think this trend should be reversed. IP article creation should be turned on, autoconfirmation and rollback flags scrapped, the abolishion of the chronically abused semi-protection, and a promise that flagged revisions will never be implemented. -Halo (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Although I admire the firmness of your belief, I feel that in this case it is incompatible with the available evidence: The quality of new articles created by first-time editors; the NPP statistics; the user retention rates; the torrent of speedies; and so on. bobrayner (talk) 21:22, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: I object. Not everyone's a self-selected hardcore editor here. I support the idea, and I am not fitting that description. Removing semi-protection, autoconfirmation and rollback flags will unleash a hellstorm of vandalism, especially on sensitive pages about celebrities and certain anatomical parts. HTMLCODER.exe (talk) 23:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Chzz

I fully support the proposal. I will quote verbatim from what I wrote in Signpost 14 Feb;

As Wikipedia matures, we shift focus from "quantity" to "quality". This makes it harder for new users to join in. It is no longer a reasonable expectation for any truly new user to write a new article, from scratch, and for it to conform to basic policy and guidelines without help. I'm sure that less than 1 in 250^* first articles are - without considerable help to develop them - really, genuinely meaningful additions to the project. It is no longer a matter of mere competence; learning to edit takes effort.    ^*The figure is a very rough estimate; we desperately need to analyse this information.

A few people will learn things for themselves, but largely these are from the type we already have in abundance. The system lends itself to attracting the younger, more technical adept, mostly male, mostly American editors. To widen the demographic, it is essential we make the whole system more friendly and accessible.

There is a disparity with the way new users are treated if they make a live article, as opposed to if they use AFC. Most (truly) new editors creating a live article get a CSD-tag, and/or other template warnings. In AFC, they (mostly) get informed help. I think that creation of new articles needs general reform - and I'm sure it will happen, one day. The system is nasty, to new users - and really, that is why we don't get retention of new editors, and why the editorial mass becomes more and more of an entrenched community.

However, it is not a mere volume of new blood we need, it is quality editors. AFC is most frequently used for Conflict of Interest, so we may be focusing resources on the wrong people. Most new editors are not here to edit an encyclopaedia, they are here to have their article up.

We're approaching the stage where anything with good coverage in RS is already on Wikipedia, particularly for Western culture. We're not lacking in articles on e.g. (ex-) Kings, a (non-trivial) USA town, or some invention (that is known to a few thousand). So naturally, most new articles are either junk, (few) genuine new discoveries or - and this is the big one increasing - conflict of interest cases. At least, this applies to Western culture topics; the drive for new editors from other places can shift that, but raises other issues, as they often need considerable help with the language itself, and there are the difficulties in sourcing information in other languages.

The ratio of helpees to helpers is shrinking.

I think we will require a 'quarantine' for all new articles, similar to AFC, changing auto-confirmed requirements to e.g. 100 edits / 1 month, and thus force all new users to create articles in a 'holding pen', with a checking process. This would inevitably create AFC-type backlogs, but would considerably reduce new page patrol, speedy deletions, proposed deletions, requests to userfy, and annoyed new users, shouts for help, people blocked, and so forth. So instead of productive new users getting horrible nasty CSD template warnings, they'd get helpful advice - "Sorry, can't accept that because of x, y, z - if you can address those concerns though, sure, it'll be fine - ask again".

New users are the lifeblood of the project; we need to treat them much better.

I'll also repeat what I wrote on the AFC talk page a year ago;

As I understand it, back in 2005, Mr. Wales decided to stop non-registered users from creating articles (signpost article here). This was to prevent vandalism. AFC provides an alternative way for non-registered users to create pages, with various assistance and checks that the articles meet standards.

I am all in favour of keeping Wikipedia as open as possible. The questions is - which is it? Can non-registered users create articles, or not? If the community believes that they should be able to, that's fine - we can just enable it again (though whether we could cope with the vandalism is another matter). If not, then should we really be 'bending over backwards' to allow them to create pages via AFC?

OK, so we are helping them to format articles and make them pass the notability criteria, etc, but, why should they receive this special treatment, which is not afforded to people who do create an account - often the latter create a poor article which is speedy deleted, and we hope that we have processes in place to help them. In reality, those processes are poor - but that seems to indicate a general fault, and not a reason for an alternative system to create things via a 'back-door'.

There seems to be rather an overlap, and perhaps excess bureaucracy, by us having requested articles, articles for creation, and the ability to create user-space drafts.

Perhaps we are shooting ourselves in the foot here, by going to all these efforts to fix problems in this way. Perhaps we ought to say 'get an account' and that's the end of it. Surely users who do get an account should receive helpful advice and assistance with their first article - perhaps moreso than those who do not take this step.

I notice that, currently, the messages that a non-registered user will see if they try to create a page are not exactly user-friendly. If they type in a non-existent article name, it goes like this;

1. "There were no results matching the query", "You may create the page "(NAME)", but consider checking the search results below to see whether it is already covered."

(There may or may not actually be any results)

Note, this is a bit wrong already - the anon may not create it.

2. Clicking on the red link produces; Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for (NAME) in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.

• Start the (NAME) article, using the Article Wizard if you wish, or add a request for it.
• Search for "(NAME)" in existing articles.
• Look for pages within Wikipedia that link to this title.

3. Clicking on the 'Start' link then produces a page entitled 'Unauthorized', which says;

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact title. Please search for (NAME) in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.

• Log in or create an account to start the (NAME) article. (which links to special:login)
• Submit the content that you wish to have created. (which links to AFC)
• Search for "(NAME)" in existing articles.

There are quite a few problems there, and it's certainly not a very 'friendly' start.

Surely, if a non-registered user tries to create an article, they should be seeing some nice, friendly message - suggesting that they sign up, offering alternatives, and certainly highlighting the basic need for reliable sources.

...and that is why this proposal makes sense - to provide a friendly, uniform interface to new users wishing to contribute.

 Chzz  ►  17:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who support this view

• You said it exactly right: As Wikipedia matures, we shift focus from "quantity" to "quality". The policies that drive an organization as a startup have to change as the organization grows. Successful organizations change policy as the world changes, and as they change. History2007 (talk) 18:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

1. Despite my sneaking suspicion—or just a wild hope—that there are lots more worthwhile, sourceable topics to write articles about, this is all very sensible. Rivertorch (talk) 19:14, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

   Oh, I'm absolutely sure that there are, Rivertorch. Especially as we widen our horizons (India, etc.) - but the best chance to assist those users is, to provide them with support from day 1. If we didn't have to worry so much about all the utter crap articles that are created every few minutes, we'd have more time to help 'em. And even the quality-standard required of brand-new articles has increased dramatically over the years.  Chzz  ►  20:56, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

2. To the extent there are folks in India (or elsewhere) who'd like to write for Wikipedia, it's far more important for them to do it in their own languages than English. En.wp has 3.5M articles and Tamil WP has about 30k, less than 1/100th as many. We're trying to give everyone in the world an encyclopedia in their own language, so in some sense a new Tamil-language article is worth 100x as much to the project as a new English article. I'm stuck here because English is the only language I can write, but someone who can write other languages is far more useful on the smaller wikipedias. Sure there will always be more things to write about, but we can make do with 3.5M for a while. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 07:30, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
3. I support this view as well, but from a different angle, perhaps. I have been a user since September 2009. I joined simply to correct a few minor typos in some articles. Since then, I think I've got 25 edits under my belt and, recently, I have started to escalate. I have never created a page in mainspace, although I want to - badly - and I think I would do well. My different angle is that, and perhaps I'm a rare new user, though I hope not, I actually took the time to read all of the policy pages - twice - once then - and once recently. It is an intimidating process. I would never attempt to create a page without spending time learning how things work. I have a fair idea right now, but I humbly submit that even I would need a lot more than 4 days and 10 edits to be "allowed" to create a page. --Alex146 (talk) 02:34, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Said perfectly.--v/r - TP 00:03, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:BeenChanged

I think that creating a page is a far bigger commitment than editing one. Anyone can be on Wikipedia, find a mistake in an article they can fix, and fix it properly and quickly. Creating an article takes time and commitment. Time and commitment from a user would indicate that they would like to be a Wikipedia "user", therefore they most likely already have an account. Anyone can have an account, and you literally don't have to put anything on your userpage. Therefore, I believe only those who are willing to make a simple userpage and account should be trusted to make quality Wikipedia articles. BeenChanged (talk) 18:07, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand what making a userpage has to do with it. There are veteran editors who apparently have never made userpages (not to mention the ones whose userpages just redirect to their talk pages). Rivertorch (talk) 06:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't get it either. Userpages are not required to create articles. Some choose to have them and some don't. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 10:30 am, Today (UTC+2)

"Creating an article takes time and commitment" - Creating a passable article takes time. The underlying problem behind this whole RFC is that the vast majority (75+%) of articles created by new users are so seriously deficient in some way that we speedy delete them. Mr.Z-man 16:44, 10 April 2011 (UT

Speedy deleting an article discourages new users from participating in the basic functions of Wikipedia. Sure not all articles will be kept. But we have to look at each article on an article by article basis to see if there is merit on keeping them. Any form of deletion is discouraging. So telling new users what they can do to improve the next article they create or how to improve the current article, than we would retain new users instead losing them because of deletions and not bother to work to coach them or work on the article. Most times I see people who tag for speedy deletion don't bother to see if the article can be improved to standards that meet the criteria for it being kept. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 20:33, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it does discourage them, we already know that. Unfortunately, most of the articles deleted are entirely unsalvageable. They are articles about non-notable garage bands, things made up in school, amateur sports teams, videos on Youtube, etc. There are some problems that simply cannot be fixed by more editing. Even passing the criteria for speedy deletion doesn't mean it will be kept, it just means it won't be deleted immediately. Coaching would be great. Unfortunately, there are so many new users (tens of thousands per month) and new articles (several hundred deleted every day) and so few people patrolling new pages/working AFC (probably less than 50), its just not a realistic option. Mr.Z-man 22:07, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

If you see my view point under this one it addresses what you are saying in some ways. But I'm saying that some articles are not unsalvageable. Some can be kept and shaped to fit the standard set forth here on Wikipedia. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:04, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion about making a userpage is simply a way for a new user to show that they are serious about contributing. Looking back on that, I didn't choose my words well. However, I do agree with Fishhead2100 that deletion, especially speedy deletion is discouraging. At the same time, speedy deletion is usually reserved for articles that have no real worth to Wikipedia, and discouraging users from making more articles of the that type can be useful. If you are taking the time to make an article that is good enough not to be deleted, you probably are smart enough to realize the difference between what was speedily deleted and the good article you are making. BeenChanged (talk) 23:28, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Having a userpage doesn't show how someone is serious about contributing. For example, if I didn't have a userpage, but over 50,000 edits, you wouldn't consider me a serious contributor? That's a bit of an ignorant view. Someone could have stuff on their userpage, but isn't a serious contributor, but the fact they have a userpage you would consider them a serious contributor. Looks can be deceiving. Not everybody who has a userpage is necessarily serious about contributing or vice versa. You can't go off whether or not they have a userpage. It's a userpage, it's optional. That's the whole point. If you forced everyone to create a userpage, than half the users would create one just to satisfy you. Doing something just to do it to satisfy someone doesn't show inherent seriousness. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:04, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I think one viewpoint expressed in this discussion is that creating new articles should no longer be considered a "basic function of Wikipedia". We have plenty of articles, most of which need a lot of improvement. While there's occasionally reason to create a new article, that should now be considered an advanced function rather than a basic one, as opposed to improving the existing articles. I wouldn't let anyone create new articles until they'd made a reasonable number of sourced contributions to existing articles. (They could still propose new articles through AFC or something similar). 69.111.194.167 (talk) 03:16, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Why don't you create that as a new view if it hasn't already. But any edit can look good no matter if it's NPOV, POV, original research, a hoax article, or whatever if it's sourced. So that's where my view under this one comes into play. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:09, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Fishhead2100

From some of the views I've read, I haven't seen this issue addressed. Couldn't the number of days and edits be upped? Maybe to sevens and 15 or 20 edits with them being reviewed. Some people might do unconstructive edits to get the required amount of edits. I know monitoring new members might be hard to do, but I am sure there is portion of the new members who will make unconstructive edits and wait the four days to get autoconfirmed status so they can create articles that are POV (easy to fix), PROMOTE something, or create a vanity article which is on themself. A well intentioned editor wouldn't do that. But how are we to know if they are well intentioned? We need to find a way to monitor new editors. Since there is a user creation log, we could use that our advantage to monitor the creation of new accounts. But how we would monitor them is another challege unto itself. But this would make sure we are getting well intentioned editors and community members. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 10:30 am, Today (UTC+2)

Users who endorse this view

1. Yes. This needs to be explored. Rivertorch (talk) 15:51, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
2. Yes - I did mention in View from User:chzz, above, about "e.g. 100 edits / 1 month".  Chzz  ►  01:39, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
3. --M4gnum0n (talk) 12:52, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Dream Focus

How many articles are currently created by new editors? How many of them remain? Any way to actually find that out? I only edited by IP address when I first got here, not bothering to register a name until I wanted to start an article.

Solution: Just have it where when someone makes an article it says "if you want to make an article, you must include two references in it(click that thing that looks like an open book, and fill in a reliable source for something in the article)". Check to make sure they did that when they try to post it, and refuse to let them if no references are found. There, problem solved. Dream Focus 12:51, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

An overly simplistic view, no doubt motivated by your blinding case of rabid inclusionism. Here are the stats you're looking for. In the February 2010 study, 168 articles that were created by new users escaped deletion. The other 12,432 were deleted, at a considerable expense to the time of new page patrollers as well as those who monitor AfD's (i.e. experienced contributors). Your solution assumes that there is a practical, automated way of ensuring that a reference someone submits is valid and from a reliable source. Any half-witted new user would surely figure out that they could just put in "asdjfaofijwenrakwnfoasij" for the reference and get their article created. —SW— ^chat 13:53, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Those whose articles are deleted almost always have zero references in them. Done by people who make simple mistakes. I've patrolled new pages before and seen this time and again. By simply stopping them and saying they have to have a couple of refs in there, you will eliminate most of the problems. If someone adds in fake references, it'll be a small minority, and they'll be much easier to go through without all the rest there. New users aren't usually trying to put something they know won't belong here. Its just honest mistakes. Assume good faith. Dream Focus 01:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

1. Guy Macon (talk) 01:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC) Brilliant solution! With just the right verbiage explaining why, this could solve many many problems and help to retain editors as well.
2. Excellent concrete solution. We can have the edit notice offer editors a '2 min quick start' guide to referencing in case they lack the patience for the article wizard. Dream's proposal wont frustrate newbies by making them wait and unlike interventionist solutions it doesn't reply on a large pool of good willed editors with the time to help new users. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:37, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
3. I'd rather go for one reference than two, but yes this is a much better way to go. ϢereSpielChequers 12:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
4. We need to reduce both the excessive creation of deletable articles and the resulting excessive number of AfD nominations.  Low barriers or guides to the creation of articles both guides people in what we want and reduces the voluteer effort to remove what we don't want. 
   (1) List two content sources  The content policy requirement uses the plural "sources", so I agree with requiring the listing of two content sources, and it is not even necessary to impose a software requirement since not having two sources could be a speedy deletion criteria.  Getting the software to require "asdjfaofijwenrakwnfoasij" would be the next step up and entirely useful, because better than 90% of people want to do a good job, and those using "asdjfaofijwenrakwnfoasij" have self-identified their skill/intent level. 
   (2) User:Plrk's requirement to have a red Wikilink to the new article (see below) before it can be created is another very simple and useful guide. 
   (3) Require a statement of notability from the creator on the talk page of the new article is a third suggestion.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:47, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Jamietw

I believe that most of the articles I flag as a New Page Patroller are by New Users who are not using the Article Wizard - however, sometimes articles written by new users can by really good, therefore I believe that we should force all users who are not confirmed or auto-confirmed to use the article wizard or articles for creation therefore new users can still create articles but if they use the article wizard then they are guided and thus more likely to write a better article. Jamietw (talk) 16:13, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

You can't force someone to do something or use something if they don't want to. That would turn them off. I've never used the article creation wizard even when I was a new user. Why? For the simple fact I wasn't forced to. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Users who endorse this view

View from User:Arghyadeepd

Okay! I too agree with the motion. But what about the articles which is totally relied upon personal experiences? Means, there are certain articles and certain topics in which you can't cite any references. They are very common among new users. And by many people they are considered to be vandalism and thus removed. Arghyadeepd (talk) 18:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

If no refs at all can be cited, such articles shouldn't exist. They're not vandalism, though. I have off-wiki drafts of several articles that need better sourcing before I'm willing to bring them online. Rivertorch (talk) 18:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I have myself seen an article to be made in front of my eyes and that too by a new user in a wikipedia seminar about a small town which eventually grew to be a full fledged article (Nirjuli). So should it be barred only because proper citation couldn't be placed?--Arghyadeepd (talk) 20:05, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

No, not at all. The standard is verifiability, and for non-BLP topics and non-contentious topics proper sourcing can be added over time. You said, "there are certain articles and certain topics in which you can't cite any references [my emphasis], and that was what I was replying to. Rivertorch (talk) 04:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:A p3rson

I think that this would be a good idea, with limiting creation of new articles to auto-confirmed users. However, I have some of my own thoughts:

Give the user a choice for what they want to do when creating a new article. Either they:

• Use the Article Wizard, and they put their information that way, or,
• Give them the option to user-fy their new page, and once it is done, let them ask for it to be moved (also exposes them to Wikipedia's discussions). This would probably be used less, as most articles take more than 4 days to complete, especially for newcomers.

Maybe this has already been proposed (TL;DR), but I think this is the most practical (and easiest to engineer) option.  A p3rson ‽ 23:28, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:BarkingFish

NB this view was moved after being misplaced in the implementation-focussed Trial discussion section. Rd232 ^talk 00:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely no way should this be put into effect. It does not benefit the project as a whole, and it does breach the spirit of the site. Saying "yes you can edit, but you can't make an article for 5 days" is like saying "we don't mind what else you do, but you ain't making something till we're sure we can trust you." This is absolutely wrong and you will drive a whole lot of new editors away if you implement this. Shelve it and get on with writing articles instead of working out how to stop people from doing so.

Fish^Barking? 22:33, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

So experienced editors should be writing articles? Well it's too bad they have to spend so much of their time undoing changes by unverified users then, a high percentage of which are deliberate attempts at defacement and misinformation. And if an admin blocks that user, no problem - they can just set up another account and do the exact same thing! If new editors spend the first 4 days editing they won't even notice this change. There are freedoms to be protected here, but you're trying to protect the wrong ones. RedactionalOne (talk) 23:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Are NPP folks who would otherwise be writing new articles? I'm an NPPer, and I know I'm not. I've probably written one new article per year, and they're stubby things to boot, and I've never skipped doing one because I was busy doing NPP. I doubt many people start editing Wikipedia articles Because They Want To Be An Editor; they do it because they see something that needs fixing, or something that isn't covered and should be, and if we stifle that instinct and tell them that they have to go edit things they didn't particularly want to before they're allowed to do what they do want to, we're apt to start generating fewer "experienced editors" to do anything. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:26, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Nat :) My point in a nutshell. The problem as I've been told is that we're gonna let people write articles through AFC, but not directly. Which is going to lead to experienced editors cleaning up the mass of AFC's put in the wrong place, the backlog of AFC's which will be generated by this "experiment", and all the general crap that comes with templates on the wrong pages, people sending absolute garbage to AFC, etc... We'll just create a shitload more work than we already have by doing this. Fish^Barking? 23:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Please lend me some of your TRUTH^TM, you seem to have plenty of it. Yoenit (talk) 23:35, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

My "TRUTH" as you put it, is that this whole idea is an utter abomination, and should be burned with fire. We're trying to encourage people to contribute, and this is not the way to do it. Fish^Barking? 23:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

BarkingFish, you were telling editors that they should be writing articles instead of engaging in a debate you don't support - not cool, btw. NatGertler was not supporting your assertion because she was discussing people seeing things in articles that aren't right and trying to fix them - which is editing. "...should be burned with fire" is an aggressive statement and not a very Wikipedian form of conduct.

NatGertler, I agree that many experienced editors would have set out with that as their motivation, and I don't think anyone here is trying to stifle that. The bar for becoming a Wikipedian is incredibly low, and users can edit - even extensively - without having cleared it. In fact, so extensive are a new user's editing rights on day 1 that an admin block is all but useless. If we are careful to be welcoming and positive in our wording to new users we can foster that motivation, by letting them know that they will be able to create articles in just a few days, and encouraging, for instance, sandbox experimentation in the meantime. (We already do this, and we do not emphasise to non-confirmed users that they can create articles.) If a signup isn't willing to wait just 4 days to create their first article that doesn't bode well for their attitude and value as a Wikipedian.

RedactionalOne (talk) 12:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

View from N419BH

As a regular participant in WP:NPP and a participant in WP:AFC when the backup gets big, I wholeheartedly support this proposal. Any New Page Patroller knows that the the vast majority of new articles are speedied, and most of the rest require tons of cleanup. Requiring new accounts to use AFC will ensure new editors get the help and support that the welcome template just doesn't provide. There is good content out there, and AFC does lead to good articles being written. Some are even written by account holders already. I think requiring AFC to be used will actually encourage new editors; the process of writing an article from scratch with wiki-markup is exceedingly daunting, and knowing there are people there to help will be a big plus to new editors and encourage content creation.

I'd actually be a fan of turning the "Autopatrolled" flag into an "article creator" flag. AKA we would require everyone to use AFC until one shows the ability to create content within the guidelines, in particular WP:N. Two or three articles would be sufficient to show this, but that's another proposal for another day.

With that said, the AFC process, while workable, can be somewhat clumsy to use from a reviewer standpoint (I have not tried it from a content creation standpoint). There are automated tools which can help, but it gets clumsy particularly when an article is submitted multiple times. Definite improvements can be made. Nevertheless, it works reasonably well, and can handle more traffic than it currently receives from both a content and reviewing viewpoint.

If this were implemented I think a lot of NPP people would migrate over to AFC and continue doing mostly identical work there. Really we have two choices: Implement this now and then improve AFC, or implement this later and improve AFC now. Either proposal works for me. I would strongly oppose a trial period as we all know how the last one of those went. Lots of drama and no consensus. We either need to do it, put it on hold and then do it, or we need to not do it. Doing a "trial" is just going to muddy the waters.

In short, this is going to improve the wiki, make a smaller backup at NPP, and make a larger one at AFC. AFC will give new accounts the help and support they need. Improvements to AFC can be made, but the system as is can handle a massive increase in activity provided more article reviewers step up, which I think they will. Just look at how many people stepped up for Reviewer when PC was trialled. Applying the lesson from PC, a trial will be counterproductive. Therefore, I strongly support requiring Autopatrolled rights in order to create a new article without AFC. N419BH 01:59, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

1. I've put a few articles through AFC. It's tolerable but it should probably be reworked, or (it occurs to me) maybe even eliminated. It's always possible to write a new article in userspace and then ask a regular editor to check it and put it in articlespace. We should stop pursuing new articles in general. New editors should be encouraged instead to contribute to existing articles, and to join wikiprojects of areas that interest them. All wikiproject should develop some culture and process for editors wanting to write new articles, i.e. you'd write in userspace and then put a link on a wikiproject noticeboard. Preferably before the person even start writings, they'd get a few other editors' views on whether their article idea sounded worthwhile and if they had suitable RS to write from. I like the idea of autopatrolled as a "new article creator" flag. I had elsewhere proposed using Reviewer for that. There should also be a flag for file uploader, which is given only after a brief conversation/quiz to check that the person understood NFCC policy. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 07:44, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Dcoetzee

When discussing article creation, I often make a comparison to TV Tropes wiki, which has a very successful article creation forum called YKTTW (You Know That Thing Where). Although it is not strictly mandatory to use it, something like 95% of new tropes are created through YKTTW. The large majority of suggested tropes simply fall away either for lack of interest, or because someone discovered it was redundant, or because there was consensus it was not considered a useful trope. Even of tropes I've proposed, probably less than 30% ever got launched, and I'm not a newbie there. Sometimes experienced editors will comb the very old YKTTW posts for good looking tropes and revive them and clean them up - similarly, someone could comb through old AFCs and rescue the ones that look especially promising. We could learn a lot from this model.

And this model is not unlike AFC here at Wikipedia: just as a proposed trope can sit indefinitely on YKTTW, a rejected new article proposal can sit indefinitely on AFC without fear of contaminating the project, and an author can continue to learn from their experience of working on proposed new articles, whether or not they are ever launched. For a newbie, it hurts far less at an emotional level to see your rejected work face constructive criticism and then fade into obscurity than to see it summarily eliminated while still fresh. Everything we can do to encourage new editors to use this process will benefit them and benefit us, in the short and the long run. Fears of a backlog are unfounded for the same reason they are unfounded on TV Tropes: because the backlog itself represents the long tail of rejected and forgotten proposed articles. When your proposed articles are hanging out in user space, there is no real need to decide the ultimate fate of every last one of them. Dcoetzee 09:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Shipsview

Have I got this wrong?
Is it being proposed that we should encourage, no force, new users to make changes to existing articles as a means of testing their Wikipedia writing ability? How does the garage band publicist (to take an example from above) choose which article to edit? Should they work on The Beatles? Elvis Presley? Would you be happy for them to work on one of your articles just for the sake of it?

Whilst they spoil the appearance of many pages already, maybe a banner saying 'This article was produced by a new user' might be a way of going forward? Shipsview (talk) 10:03, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

You can't force someone to do something if they don't want to. That would turn them off. We can't afford to turn off new users. A portion of them are here because they want to contribute. That's why monitoring new users is crucial to seeing which are here to be a legit contributor. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:46, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Guy Macon

While I support the basic idea of requiring autoconfirmed status the use of a wizard in order to create articles, I strongly oppose any proposal for a "trial" until I recieve some sort of assurance that the trial will not be extended indefinitely against clear consensus, as is currently happening with the pending changes "trail." See Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment February 2011 for details.

View from User:Peter coxhead

I'm not convinced that we yet understand the potential impact of such a change. Statistical analysis of the data at User:Mr.Z-man/newusers (see User_talk:Mr.Z-man/newusers#Statistical_analysis) shows that being allowed to create new articles does have a small effect on staying on, but is far, far outweighed by the negative effects of first edit(s) being deleted. However, we don't know enough about why these edits are deleted. We may be putting off editors who shouldn't be here – because their only interest is to advertise or push some POV. We may be putting off editors who simply don't know enough about Wikipedia's policies and practices – in which case perhaps mentoring will help. So at present I'm against the change. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:03, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Steelpillow

There is a real danger here of using bureaucracy to override individual energy. Many of the best Wikipedia features subliminally leverage the user's attitude to advantage. We must not lose sight of that. (Ancient Oriental political and military philosophy makes some interesting parallels). If we do anything it should be incremental. One might begin by say watermarking suspect articles, and allowing only autoconfirmed users to remove the watermark. Would the watermark demotivate vandals? There's only one way to find out. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:CycloneGU

My honest answer? No, we should not limit article creation only to those who earn the AutoConfirmed status. My simple reason: Jackie Evancho. Yes, before August 2010 it probably should have been deleted because there was not sufficient notability for Wikipedia. Now, she is the youngest debut artist ever in the Billboard Top 10 and the biggest debut of the year for all of 2010 for O Holy Night. The creator of the biographical article created the page in her userspace and moved it into the article space, where it got a haircut. Since AGT 2010 however, it's quintupled its original size and then some. If the article wasn't there when I found it right after the show, I would have watched its creation for sure, but this user submitted something that is going to get a lot of clicks for the next few years. I'm currently keeping an editorial eye on the page and am in the process of cleanup across articles as some information appears to be duplicated across the articles. CycloneGU (talk) 20:53, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Remember, the current proposal would allow non-autoconfirmed users to create drafts of new content in userspace and then request the content be moved to mainspace. So a scenario like you the one you described could still take place under the new proposal as well.--JayJasper (talk) 21:20, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I guess I don't undertand the point of this Jackie Evancho story. Somebody wrote an article that might not have appeared for a few more weeks otherwise? WP:NOTNEWS, the delay doesn't matter. 69.111.194.167 (talk) 03:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

view from User:purplepox01

Agreed. That would be a good tool as considering the recent articles that appears to be based on crap. jeez... But honestly, if and when this is implemented, we should be able to see vandalism drop sharply.

Vandalism won't drop. That's wishful thinking. Do you not realize that people will vandalize to get the required amount of edits to satisfy the current requirements? Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

users who endorse this view

That's right. Ianlopez12 (user talk:Ianlopez12|talk]]) —Preceding undated comment added 04:15, 15 April 2011 (UTC).

View from Quintucket

I had a lot to say, but I realized most of it was just a complaint about how picky Wikipedia's new article standards are, even for non-controversial topics. I know from experience that it's a lot easier to start a stub and watch people edit it, or edit a stub, or both than it is to make a decent article in one go. I stopped regularly participating in Wikipedia once my stubs started getting deleted because I was using that strategy.

My other point: I haven't used this account for five years, editing anonymously for most of that time when the mood struck me, after Wikipedia required new users to go through AFC, I simply stopped trying to create articles. It would have been easier to retrieve the password to my old account, and damned if I was going to do even that. --Quintucket (talk) 18:20, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Crisco 1492

Support proposal. Naturally, we must remember that Wikipedia is "The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and therefore limiting anonymous and new users' permissions too much will make us stray from that mission. However, I must note that anyone could still edit articles, they just can't all create articles on their own. Semantically, we'd still be true to our mission. As for the reasoning behind this proposal, I firmly agree that something needs to be done to reduce the workload of our serious editors and admins. There is a backlog a mile long for stuff like articles that are too technical or written like essays. It would improve the quality of the encyclopedia enormously if editors could focus on that instad of hundreds of new articles that violate policy. Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:22, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Filmmaker2011

I agree with the proposal, however the biggest problem I see in the subject areas I am looking at (the arts) is the huge numbers of people joining to create their own personal CV page as an article with zero notability. Is there no way to separate individuals as a category that has this (proposed) new functionality whilst leaving creation of articles about everything else as it is? I imagine that this would be more complex than what is proposed here, but if you examine motivation, this has to be the primary reason anybody would create a totally invalid article as a first or early edit. It is different to say an article that is based on a persons activity or subject area that has bias but involves other people (for instance politics or commerce) and therefore has more chance of debate on relevance or suitability. filmmaker2011 —Preceding undated comment added 07:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC).

If you would look beyond your subject area you would see the same thing applies to companies, organizations, bands and websites. There is a reason we have a special speedy deletion criteria for those articles. A very practical problem with restricting only those articles is that you somehow have to know what an article is about before the user starts to write it. Only way we could possibly do that is by presenting the user with an multiple choice question "click here if you want to write about X", in which case we are back to some form of the wp:Article Wizard. Yoenit (talk) 08:12, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I do see your point Yoenit, it can be reduced to the open or closed debate and wikipedia is what it is because it's open. However, my point is exactly that personal pages are different from the other examples you give as even a website has a structure that involves many areas and probably many people. Personally I like the fact that I can use wikipedia as a collation of type, for instance examples of artistic creation, whether or not they are generally notable. It is a very useful part of research and one that mostly doesn't require personal information about the creator unless they themselves are a leading light for the category of work. To me there is a clear and practical distinction of at least 'potential' usefulness vs blatant uselessness. In the new user section of the Wikipedia article it states

"60% of registered users never make another edit after their first 24 hours. Possible explanations are that such users only register for a single purpose, or are scared away by their experiences."

I think I know what a sizable portion of that 60%'s single purpose might be. Couldn't there be a 'double speedy' deletion process for what I posit is a uniquely problematic area of motivation for page creation of non serious participants? --Filmmaker2011 (talk) 09:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Train2104

As a community project intended to cloudsource the editing and creation of content, it appears at first glance that requiring permissions and/or experience for the creation of new content is counterproductive. However, the English Wikipedia has become massive, to the point where new users are often daunted by policy and procedure once their first edits get reverted or deleted. If we do implement the change at hand, we will significantly reduce the deletion backlog. Not only will the CSD rate drop, the PROD rate will also drop to the point where it may not be even necessary. If you consider that several AfD's a day are denied PROD's and many PROD's are of new articles, I don't think that the AfD rate will increase significantly if PROD is eliminated under the new proposal. However, every proposal has it's pitfalls. Upon learning of this procedure, a new user may consider making unconstructive or even vandalistic edits just to achieve the 10 edits required. If necessary, we can raise this to 25 edits and decrease the time requirement to 2 days. This will help distinguish legitimate alternate accounts from new users. For those contributors who would submit to an assisted program like AfC, the reviewer (combine with PC reviewer?) can autoconfirm the user then and there if the article meets all standards and is created. Even if the creation rate of legitimate articles drops, we already have millions of articles and each new one increases the chance of copyvios or non-notable topics. Also, how about requiring autoconfirmed at a minimum to creating userpages? While they are designed to be a collaboration tool, many new users consider it as a personal webhost. Why should we dedicate server space to a new user who may never come back? — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 02:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I feel that, though 10 edits are too much, atleast 2 or 3 of them should be made by a person before he can make a page. Richu1996 12:45, 23 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richukuttan (talk • contribs)

I think 100 unreverted edits at least for article creation, 50 for editing without pending changes. The day will come when that will be implemented, it is just a question of accelerating it. History2007 (talk) 21:55, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:ZoneAlarm5

I don't think this will change the amount of vandalism, just relocate it.

If someone wants to create a new page, they will jump through any hoops we put in front of them to do it. Others have mentioned the likelihood of seeing an increase in page edit vandalism to increate your pages edited score. I suggest that there would be other unintended consequences of this proposal, some of which we can't even foresee.

Perhaps the low barrier to entry -- that includes being able to create new pages -- is an important ingredient to new editor generation. If that goes down because this proposal is adopted and the overall number of new editors drops, I believe we are likely to see reduced numbers of quality editors as well.

Does anybody know how many quality editors we now have who started by creating a single page? They might not be editors now under this proposal. ZoneAlarm5 (talk) 20:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Mr Grim Reaper

I do not support this. What would it solve? It shuts people out; you shouldn’t have to register to create an article or even log in if you so choose. It may relieve the articles needed to be deleted and the load on new article watchers, but now you’ll have a log of unnecessary user accounts (how many people will make accounts just to make an article and never use it again? If they realize they need to wait or make edits they‘ll just abandon it) not to mention a new log of articles that need to be checked for approval. I may not be a very involved user of Wikipedia, but I feel the need to express my distaste for this idea. —Mr Grim Reaper 20:12, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Yes, as you said, you are probably "not a very involved user of Wikipedia", and it shows from the comment. My watchlist says: You have 1,174 pages on your watchlist. This is for 400 articles I have written, 400 or so I have expanded and another few hundred that I just watch. Do you have any idea how much time I waste dealing with totally idiotic edits by IPs and vandals? My biggest help against vandals has been Cluebot, but it can not catch everything and there is little other protection. There need to be "more controls". Will I write another 400 articles? Not a chance, for as long as there are so few controls, I will not be able to watch them against the idiot IPs and vandals. Go figure... History2007 (talk) 21:30, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Err, but then you're also against the status quo - one already has to register and log in in order to create articles. This discussion is about adding additional hurdles to those that already exist. See Wikipedia:User access levels. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:10, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Popa01

Personally limiting creation of new pages to users who have been autoconfirmed is great but since I have not been an active member in these discussion. I can not say that this opinion I have has been vocaly heard in the cammunity. Personaly I also feel that Wikipedias' allowance of not registered persons to edit is the worse thing that is part of Wikipedia. Controling new users ability to create new pages is a step in the right direction. Removing non logged persons to edit pages will help wikipedia become an official source in educational communities across the world. -Popa01 (talk) 12:20, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, they can register in 2.36 seconds anyway. So? Registering has nothing to do with it at all. Wikicopter _{what i do} s + c cup|former 00:06, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Having it were only registered editors may edit Like I said would be a major step in making Wikipedia become a reliable source of information. The main concern of schools and teachers alike is do Wikipedia's allowance of non-registered editors to edit causing any information on Wikipedia to be unreliable. That why I porpuse that all edits to be made by those that are register only.Popa01 (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Jezhug

I think that 10 edits is quite fair to ensure that new users learn the ropes before jumping into a new page. I initially tried to start a new page and found that without editing other pages I didn't have the knowledge to create pages to the correct standards. I am still a few edits off having auto-confirmed status, but am enjoying my Wikipedia apprenticeship. -User:Jezhug (talk) 01:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

1. Agree. As an editor of a couple of month's standing, with some major edits I am quite pleased with, I have yet to create a page, and have become less inclined to do so as I see just how many existing pages need work on them.RobinLeicester (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
2. CRGreathouse (t | c) 03:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Albicelestes

this article is quit important.I think 10 edit is not enough to learn,making more than 50 edit is better.User:Albicelestes (talk) 04:57, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:WikiCopter

I support this. If somebody wants to submit an article for creation and is not autoconfirmed, either let him submit an AfC or ask an admin at PERM for confirmation. Besides, if you aren't autoconfirmed, you probably didn't edit enough to know what goes into an article and what doesn't. Wikicopter _{what i do} s + c cup|former 00:06, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

That last sentence reeks of ignorance. How do you know if someone doesn't know what goes into an article or not? Just because they only have had an account for a short time doesn't mean they don't know how Wikipedia works. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Teles

Not agreed. This proposal does not follow the founding principles. We can't force anyone to create an account, wait ten days, edit ten times and then be able to create an article. Instead of forcing registration, we could, however, think about a way of reviewing articles created by non-confirmed accounts like it is already done by reviewers (Pending changes). In fact, we are not really following those principles already, since we disallow article creation by non-registered accounts...” T_eLeS (T _{@ L C S}) 02:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: Principles change over time. Else static societies perish. Wikipedia is the new Carigslist where there are far too many spammers and vandals. I would like to suggest that anyone who does not support more controls in Wikipedia should immediately volunteer to revert 100 vandals and 20 spammers every month. That would be fair, would it not? Would you please volunteer to revert 100 vandal edits per month to support the "founding principles"? Your help will be greatly appreciated, because some of us who deal with spammers and vandals could use help with waste of time actions like this, again and again. Or this spam link within the last 2 hours or so where again I had to tell him this is not Craigslist, or this one in the last hour. Look: There are not enough people to revert deliberate junk insertion like this. Responsible editors need to free up so they can help revert these. And the long list of the readers and philosophers here who "observe and comment" should help much more instead of just commenting. It is time to stop this type of IP spam and vandalism, and that should start by restricting article creation, then move on to edit controls. The effort I spend checking on and reverting vandals could have gone into fixing articles. History2007 (talk) 10:21, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure. When I'm here reverting vandalism I undo 100 vandal edits in less than a day. You can provide lots of vandalism diffs, since they happen all time... but what exactly they mean? We all know about the existence of vandalisms and that is all your diffs can prove. Are we being unable to control the vandalisms? I would like to see a diff that could show us that. Watching your diffs, I notice that none of them shows article creation. So, if we approve this proposal, how would a vandalism like those ones you provide be stopped? If a vandal can't create an article, s/he will simply vandalize an existent article. So, how much difference does it make? On the other hand, if a good-faith user are not allowed to create an article, I'm not sure s/he would want to wait four days and be forced to edit ten times until be considered trusted. In my opinion, it won't stop any vandal, but might stop a good-faith contributor. Thanks for reading my opinion.” T_eLeS (T _{@ L C S}) 22:55, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The only reason we have a lid on vandalism is the combination of bots and edit filters that keep a lot of shit from entering in the first place. If we didn't have the anti-vandal bots and the edit filters going, combined with the automated tools, we'd be fucked. The difference is that with vandalism, there's a pretty low error rate, and one misfire from an edit filter or bot results in, at worst, a uw-vand1 note on their talkpage which isn't terribly bitey or an edit filter false positive report that user probably never sees. With new pages, we can't do that; we need humans to look at everything, and there's a severe shortage of people doing that in conjunction with the never-ending flood that is NPP. One misfire on NPP results in an angry new user who may/may not return and an NPPer who feels they screwed up and are being detrimental. History2007 has said the remainder of what I would have said, so I'll stop here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Teles thinks we have total control of vandalism? Wow! Just look around, there is junk and spam floating everywhere. If I stop for 2 weeks, spam begins to fill much of my watchlist. If there were other people to watch,Ii would not bother. But there are not. The bots failed to catch the diffs I provided above. There are a few pages where I know there are trusted users who watch, but many others I have to watch. My watchlist says: You have 1,175 pages on your watchlist. Would you Teles, hereby agree to watch half of those pages for me everyday to help out? That way I could "fix articles" instead of checking on spammers. History2007 (talk) 02:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I did never say we have total control of anything, or did I? I said something about your diffs that I really want to know about. None of the edits you have linked above will be affected by this proposal and that is why I think they are not making your argument stronger. These are the edits that will be affected (and only new articles). What I'm saying is even after we approve this proposal, you still will have to keep an eye on your watchlist. The reason is obvious: the articles on your watchlist already exist and only article creation will be affected. The vandalisms on existent pages won't be reduced. So if you want to stop watching the existent pages from your watchlist, we have to approve any other proposal but not this one.
Honestly, I don't think you are really busy reverting vandalisms per your edits; maybe you are talking about vandalisms that other users undo, because I wouldn't want to approve it because of about five edits a day (that is the reason you gave me). At least you don't make massive use of rollback tool... it is routine anti-vandalism edits. I also wouldn't want to approve a proposal that involves the founding principles using your single experience (or any other's experience) or my willing to watch pages from your watchlist as an argument. Don't take it personally, but you are proposing a big change and need a very well accepted good reason for that... if you have this reason, you didn't show me above.” T_eLeS (T _{@ L C S}) 02:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, I take it you do no want to watch 500 of the 1000 page son m watch list. And let me end by pointing you to Digital Equipment Corporation. Their "founding principle" was that computers are to be shared and the chairman thought that personal computers were against that principle. Guess what happened. End of story. History2007 (talk) 13:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

So there is a really big and hostile discussion above and nobody pointed out that routing article creation through articles for creation is practically implementing "pending changes for articles"? Yoenit (talk) 13:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Not a long discussion by the usual measure of Wiki-discussion. And hostile? Not at all. However, the articles for creation route is certainly a good way to manage the quality of new articles and avoid pages about someone's favorite cousin etc. History2007 (talk) 15:17, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

History2007, you are ignoring my question... and I made it twice [1] [2]. The pages on your watchlist already exist. So how this proposal will reduce the vandalisms on existent pages if what is being discussed here is article creation? If you don't answer, should I presume you don't have an answer for that?
Founding principles can change, but, as I already said, you didn't give me a good reason for that... the reason is not on your watchlist.” T_eLeS (T _{@ L C S}) 22:56, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Darion29

DISagree. I need to add one whole new page. and if anyone knows how to do this, I would very much, and humbly, welcome their input.

I live in California and am 29 years old; and having been ostensibly introduced to a science fiction author whose work I've never read, who I could in theory meet in the next month...y^3seinfld:ref....

The Valvutome thing is because I cook, sorry if that caused anyone any pain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darion29 (talk • contribs) 09:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from RA0808

I agree. The autoconfirm threshold can act as a safeguard to ensure that a new user could learn the ropes and be able to create an article that meets Wikipedia's guidelines. RA0808 (talk) 03:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

You obviously skipped over my view because I've addressed that we could monitor new users to make sure they make good constructive edits and up the edit limit/days waited to get autoconfirmed status. Plus getting autoconfirmed status doesn't mean they bother creating an article that meets Wikipedia guidelines because want disrupt Wikipedia in some way by creating a hoax article, an article on themselves, to promote something, or to spam. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 16:21, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from Marlith

Well, in all honesty, I believe the autoconfirm threshold is not right now necessary. New troll articles aren't a big problem because they can be dealt with quickly and easily through CSD (compared to standard vandalism to highly developed articles, which can deter readers and spread misinformation). Furthermore, this can also deter new editors from continuing editing. Again, just my two cents.  Marlith (Talk)  04:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

We're already deterring new editors by deleting 80% of the articles that they create. Mr.Z-man 17:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and the process of dealing with the trolls and other awful articles consumes a tremendous amount of time for the few people willing to do it, resulting in steady burnout that drives away experienced contributors while the flow of junk remains constant. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with The Blade of the Northern Lights. Just above here, in response to Teles, I recorded the junk and spam I have had to revert today in a few hours. The junk and spam never ends. All this philosophical talk of "foundation principles" is yesterday's news, and is generally unaware of how tedious and tiring it is to deal with irresponsible vandals. As I said there, those who argue against more controls, should volunteer to do at least 100 reverts a month. Then they will change their minds. History2007 (talk) 20:51, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:TimShuwy

I agree with the concept... brand new users should have some form of review prior to publication. We were all "new users" at one time, and didn't really know how to do anything at first. I am still learning, and while I don't know everything, I do know abuse and vandalism when I see it, and I have reversed a few bad edits. One thing I have noticed is that much of the abuse/vandalism comes from people who dont have accounts at all, using their IP address. At the very least, edits by IP addresses should be reviewed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timshuwy (talk • contribs) 03:53, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Kiwhan

I DISAGREE. Uh... I'm new to Wikepedia. (I think) I think new users like me who are still having problems acting or editing in Wikepedia, would never have any mind left to think about autoconfirmed or something. What if starters feel uncomfortable about this rule and just stop editing. I feel like stop doing something when I get to know a very strict rule about the something. Starters might feel like that. I thought Wikipedia didn't care about mistakes of editors.. So, I DISAGREE to this concept. --Kiwhan (talk) 16:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

View From User:Pi

When I joined Wikipedia I created three new articles in my first 50 edits. I did not join Wikipedia so that I could tag categories, add references and enforce the manual of style. Things have changed and now I do much less creation of articles (I've probably only made 10 other articles in my next 3,500 edits) and more stuff which is probably more necessary to the encyclopedia. The question is, what are we worries about new users submitting? As a part-time recent changes watcher I'm quite happy to delete new vandal pages or tag up non-notable companies/bands/people for SD, and in fact I think this is much easier and less effort than patrolling AFC and either creating articles for people or telling why they're inappropriate. Fundamentally I think this policy fails both tests I would apply to it:

1. Does it solve a problem? No, it won't reduce the workload of admins and RC watchers
2. Does it compromise the principles of the wiki? Yes, we lose the principle that anyone can come and improve the site without joining the cabal. I'm not trying to challenge the fact that we need policies as to what can be added, or the idea that some wikipedians are going to have to be more equal than others, but I think that by placing more and more restrictions on new users we will discourage people from getting involved (bearing in mind that most new users probably have little passion for the project and are merely curious).

I think that if someone who previously only read wikipedia sees a page that is missing and wants to create it, then that new editor is a potential asset to the project even if their article is going to be speedy deleted. I am more than happy to commit time to cleaning the wiki in order to ensure that other new users can join on the same terms that I did, as a vaguely curious 16 year old who's just discovered that I'm actually allowed to edit and contribute to a flipping encyclopedia.

If their page is speedy deleted and they never edit again (which in the vast majority of cases, they don't), how are they an "asset"? They've wasted their time and ours and they now have a negative opinion of the project to share with others. I would point out that while you did create articles early on, you also made at least 10 edits to existing pages before doing so. Users who begin their wiki-careers like that are far less likely (about 40% vs. 80%) to have their first article deleted, and are therefore far more likely to become a regular editor. I don't really understand your second sentence at all. You seem to be implying that the only major tasks on Wikipedia are creating new articles and trivial maintenance tasks. We have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of articles that are only a few sentences long and in desperate need of expansion. Mr.Z-man 18:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

View From User:Jam1991

I fully agree with starting this policy! I'm actually surprised that it's not already in use. It only makes sense. It'll prevent pointless articles from being created and will help ensure that more of the new articles are actually subjects that are worthy of receiving their own article. Less debates over what is and is not a valid article. More time to work on the actual content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jam1991 (talk • contribs) 18:16, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

View From User:WIERDGREENMAN

Not going to give an opinion right now, because requiring people to have autoconfirmed status has some good arguments in its favor. However, I may be leaning towards the other end, because some IPs edit for the sake of contributing and do not want recognition at all, and do not want to be registered users.

Remember the PRINCIPLES of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that ANYONE CAN EDIT. FREE to create articles without needing qualifications and reviewing, BY ANYONE. Also known as autoconfirmed, new and anonymous users.

I follow the rules of Wikipedia, regardless of what I think. I believed that Rebecca Black should have been deleted. While in real life I know that she was a phenomenon, that is more popular and well-known than many other things on Wikipedia, the article WAS IN VIOLATION OF WIKIPEDIA RULES. Something in violation of the rules must be dealt with according to the rules, and I believe that if one of Wikipedia's statements is that ANYONE can edit, then ANYONE should be able to edit.WIERDGREENMAN (talk) 23:19, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

View From User:thisthat2011

To create articles I think should need autoconfirmed status. I also would like to suggest that it depends also on load on admins. If the load is heavy, put the articles in a queue with a level of protection queue, may be only as an acknowledgment from the beginning that protection levels mechanism will come into effect. If the load is lesser, then begin with a lesser protection level.असक्ताह सततम्, कार्यम् कर्म समाच्रर | असक्तॊ ही अचरण कर्म 15:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Vörös

I agree with this proposal. I also believe that newly submitted articles should be reviewed by an administrator to see if it meets Wikipedia's basic policies. That way we can get rid of WP:CSD. -- Vörös  yes?  21:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Many of the newpage patrollers do a good job patrolling articles, yes we need to improve the quality of newpage patrolling, but I don't think the solution is to make this admin only, even if we had the admins available. But as it is we don't have sufficient admins to do that even if the community wanted to, and even if you reduced that to merely articles created by editors who don't have the autopatroller flag. With RFA broken and the number of active admins in long term decline we need to plan for how the community operates with fewer active admins, not create extra time consuming admin only roles. ϢereSpielChequers 11:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Tenebrae

I agree with this proposal, and given Wikipedia's widespread credibility problem overall, I would, in fact, like to see more stringent safeguards on editing. Forbidding anonymous IPs — by far the greatest source of vandalism and uninformed, non-constructive edits — would be a very important start. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

1. Support. I think the issue of "Wikipedia's widespread credibility problem" that you mentioned is real. The question is do we believe what Wikipedia says about itself: The page for Bradley E. Schaefer says: "Schaefer is known by students to repeatedly discredit the accuracy of Wikipedia and Google in class and in assignments." Is that even true? At the moment, it is unreferenced folklore. I have no idea if it is true. But overall, I think while we are all busy giving barnstars to each other the people in universities are pretty much laughing. That should change - and stopping the flow of junk IP articles is a good start. The first decade was just a start. In the second decade, Wikipedia needs to get serious and gain reliability. History2007 (talk) 23:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:MaxWyss

I agree with this proposal because wikipedia needs quality more than numbers of editors.MaxWyss (talk) 07:44, 28 April 2011 (UTC)MaxWyss

1. Agree. History2007 (talk) 18:10, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:LordVetinari

At first glance, this seems like a sensible idea as it forces new users to learn a bit about Wikipedia before they create an article. In that respect, I'd support the proposal and even recommend the edit count and account age criteria be higher and more stringent. However, this not only risks going against policy ("anyone can edit"), there is also no guarantee that the new user will attempt to learn Wikipedia policies and guidelines. In other words, if a new user can't write an encyclopedic article (or even, in some cases, a simple sentence) after 1 day, there's little chance they'll be able to do so three days later.

In reading the other comments above, I also find it interesting how so many people here seem to refer to new pages as though, in being created by a new user, they somehow belong to that user. (I refer to the common use of phrases such as "their article"). Granted, this may simply be a phrase of convenience rather than fact, but it seems to highlight a view that new pages don't belong to the community but rather to the page's creator. I wonder if this is why new page patrolling often appears so bitey; instead of requesting a page creator to help upgrade a new page, the attitude seems to be to expect the page creator to fix everything. That approach may be useful at WP:FAC, but not at NPP: it places too much expectation on new users.

LordVetinari (talk) 13:12, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Burhan Ahmed

Yes, it should be the case because of increased number of vandalism on Wikipedia! Burhan Ahmed | Penny for your thoughts? 15:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:metalfan1976

I like the concept. Listen let's be blunt about this. As long as someone can randomly click on a page, and edit it with utter nonsense, it will be very hard to get people to take this page serious. What we need to do as wikipedia contributors is band together, and make wikipedia a valuable research portal. And by forcing people to sign up with a valid account to contribute will lessen the clutter, make the job of the moderators easier, and improve the reputation of wikipedia as a whole. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metalfan1976 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Melchoir

I patrol Newpages, and I think this is probably a bad idea, but I could change my mind. However, arguments won't convince me. I would need to see an actual writeup explaining how the new system would work and how it should be implemented, including possible forms of assistance and improvements to be made to those processes. If you want a trial, then the trial needs a writeup too, explaining how the change would be made, how and when it would be reversed, a list of the metrics to be collected, and a history of those metrics to date, for comparison.

Until we know exactly what we are discussing we should resist any change by default. Melchoir (talk) 22:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Seriously? That sounds like a recipe for stagnation to me. That's what this whole discussion is for and why we're having a structured discussion rather than a straight vote. If we know what people want before drafting a proposal, it will greatly improve the chances of getting it right the first time. Mr.Z-man 01:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I was under the impression that this RfC is soliciting consensus for action. At least that's what most of the above views seems to assume. Are you saying that this is one step among many? If so, where is the roadmap? Melchoir (talk) 04:38, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:HTMLCODER.exe

IPs can edit, as can users. Making it so that only autoconfirmed users can create articles would fix at least one scenario, when an IP tries to create a page, fails, then registers a user account and creates it. It's almost no different from allowing IPs to create pages. HTMLCODER.exe (talk) 23:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: Also, this means that, in order to create a page, an user has to spend some time on Wikipedia, not only idling, but making edits as well. 4 days and 10 edits seems reasonable enough, if not, it's a topic for another discussion. What I want to say is that such "delay" should greatly reduce numbers of "lol dongs" and similar in Newpages. --HTMLCODER.exe (talk) 00:04, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Plrk: You should only be able to create an article if there is one or more articles in the main namespace linking to it.

I think that you should not be able to create articles from scratch, but only from redlinks within the same namespace. See this 2008 text for details: User:Plrk/On the creation of articles. It greatly reduces problems with notability and spam, and opens up for possibly allowing anonymous contributors to create articles again. At the time of my original text, I made a small investigation, see User:Plrk/Incoming links to A7-deleted articles and User:Plrk/Incoming links to patrolled new pages. I quote the conclusion:

"Although the sample is small and the statistical error margin is huge, my research shows that 80% of all articles that are deleted with reference to WP:CSD#A7 have no incoming links, and would therefore not have been created if my proposal had been a reality. It also shows that of the articles that are legitimately created and are not disambiguation pages, 89% have incoming links and would have been created anyways."

Plrk (talk) 07:00, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting idea. If I understand correctly, though, wouldn't it be awfully simple just to add some unnotable person's name or gibberish with double brackets around it somewhere in an existing article and then go create the article? Rivertorch (talk) 07:19, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, of course - but that is a big step. Many new articles are written in good faith, but aren't relevant enough to avoid deletion. These would disappear. For the others, creating a vandal article would suddenly have a few extra steps to it. Plrk (talk) 22:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I like Plrk's idea and find it interesting that it didn't gain any traction the first time around. I support the more liberal version where auto-confirmed users can still create articles without this restriction. I have a further suggestion that would address the concerns about people being able to start a brand new subject. We could create a "new articles" special page where non-auto-confirmed users could introduce the first redlink to their new article. This page could be patrolled in much the same manner as the New Page Patrol, so non-desirable articles could be quickly caught. As for the concern about people introducing meaningless redlinks on existing pages, if those pages are being watched, the links would be quickly caught and deleted, and hopefully the watching editor would also follow the link and flag the new page for CSD. Robman94 (talk) 21:42, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Good idea.  Yes, an abusive editor can easily work around this barrier, so what?  And a good-faith editor may also choose to add a distantly related wikilink to solve the requirement.  It is reasonable and will have a real-world effect that we want.  I do think the developers should have an opportunity for input with the cost/benefit of implementation, though.  Unscintillating (talk) 17:16, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

We already have a "What links here" feature, so I don't think it would put very much extra strain on the servers. Some development, of course, but not overwhelmingly much. Plrk (talk) 22:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this would be unhelpful and unnecessary bureaucracy, imagine the scenario in the next major natural disaster if we can't have an article created until its been linked. Also we already have a problem with people removing redlinks in the erroneous belief that we shouldn't create the link until an article exists, combining that with a policy of only creating articles where redlinks exist would be Kafkaesque. ϢereSpielChequers 11:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a low fence, a good faith user that can't be bothered to find a distantly related article on which to put a wikilink could still add such a wikilink on their own talk page.  BTW, Wikipedia is WP:Not a newspaper.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:01, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

If there is, say, a major earthquake in, say, Visby, it will not take many seconds until there is a link to it in the article on Visby. Also, if you let autoconfirmed users create articles regardless of incoming links, this wouldn't be a problem at all. Plrk (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

View from user:johnsemlak

I would like to respond to a view mentioned several times above. Several users are supporting the proposal based on the idea that slogan 'encyclopedia that anyone can edit' does not mean anyone can start articles. I don't agree with this. When you 'Edit' a document it means you make improvements such as moving sections, deleting sections, and creating new sections. That's (part) of what editing is. Users are here to edit the encyclopedia, which means they may want to add new sections to it, i.e. articles. Thus I strongly disagree with users who are suggesting users don't have a right to create new articles. The right to do so is part of Wikipedia's core mission IMO. I do find many of the arguments about the benefits of the proposal rather convincing; however I still feel that in trying to fix the problem we must keep Wikipedia's core mission closer in mind.--Johnsemlak (talk) 17:19, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

See what I wrote below in response to Mike Cline; it applies here as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how that response to mike Cline applies to my argument.--Johnsemlak (talk) 18:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's to do with the fact that the "core mission" is a moving target; what was A Good Thing in 2007-2008 is what's (IMO) a problem today, for reasons I've laid out elsewhere. The core mission, as I understand it, is to be a free encyclopedia; when you could throw a dart at the Encyclopedia Britannica and hit something we didn't have an article on, we needed more articles. The core mission now should be quality control, which is what this is about; going with the "core mission" doesn't mean we have to stagnate. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I see. Still, are you saying that we need to change the core mission of 'an encyclopedia that anyone can edit?" If that's what's necessary, I'd say the change has to happen at a level higher than this discussion forum. In any case, my view was mainly is that the current core mission of 'anyone can edit' does in fact mean that 'anyone can create articles' because article creation (and deletion) is an essential part of the editing process.--Johnsemlak (talk) 19:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

View from user:Yankeesrule3

I think that this is incredibly good idea. I know that in my early days of editing, I made a couple ill-advised pages on minor league baseball players for the New York Yankees. I feel that new users should (if this is possible, sorry if it is not) not be able to create content pages but should be able to create redirects and disambiguation pages. I know experienced editors sometimes have reservations on creating redirects, and often will not create some redirects, such as I did for Fastest pitch ever recorded, as the wording does not sound very professional. The same idea applies to the disambiguation pages. I do not think they should be albe to create (or move) content pages, because some of them may have been previously deleted and they neglect to read the log, or create something that would obviosuly be not significant to anyone else. I also think, on a related note, that non-autoconfirmed users should not even be able to edit anything not in the user or main namespaces, for similar reasons. Yankeesrule3 (talk) 00:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Chaosdruid

As well as considering implementing this, there are other courses to consider (in tandem or instead).

• Make RfA more pleasant and encourage more RfAs to increase Admin numbers to deal with the problems
• Adopt a more synergistic approach to new users by implementing a process that encourages/forces them to use the article creation wizard.
• Change the deletions process by adding "userify" as a standard process - Pages that do not fully meet the necessary criteria can then be moved into the creating users space and left for them to work on (for a certain time period rather than for ever).

At the end of the day we need more users, less new pages that need admin actions and less rubbish left around in mainspace with five or more notices for improvement/deletion. Channelling them into the wizards and towards help in creation, whilst still allowing them to edit, is the main goal here is it not?

Userifying is still a much under-used solution to many of the NPP problems and it has to be more encouraging that their article is still there. The process could easily be done for those articles which were not obvious deletes and would perhaps encourage them to ask for help to work on improvements if they thought there was still a chance the article would be "published" later on. It would also give them time to learn the processes instead of being thrown in the deep end of AfD, COI, and other scary unfamiliar bannered processes without a flotation aid, as well as removing most of the remaining detritus from mainspace. Chaosdruid (talk) 02:33, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

View from user:Mike Cline

I oppose this tactical change not on the basis of merit, but because it doesn't seem that any of the arguments, pro or con are being made in light of the overall wikimedia strategy: [3]. Unless we made tactical changes only after careful evaluation of their impact on our strategic goals, we run the risk of going backwards, instead of forward. Sun Tzu reminds us: Strategy without tactics is a slow route to victory. Tactics without Strategy is the noise before the defeat.--Mike Cline (talk) 02:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll see you that and raise you Han Feizi, whose arguments were based on the fact that the Sage Kings did what was right for their time, but that his state had to do what was right for it now. Per a lot of the views above, I'd argue this is what we need now; this wouldn't have made sense in 2007, but it does now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:30, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I would argue that this is consistent with the Wikimedia strategy. One of the goals is "Increase quality" – increasing focus on improving existing articles and reducing the number of poorly written stubs by brand new users seems like it would have that effect. Another goal is "Increase participation" – While it would require a trial to see if there's an actual increase in retention, the most successful routes for new users, in terms of retention rates, are editing existing articles without creating one, or editing existing articles before or concurrently with creating one. Removing an unsuccessful route from the possible options may help. But there's no way to know without at least testing. Mr.Z-man 04:36, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Strategy did I hear? Well, the internet (Wikipedia included) is the best example of how the dynamic world of the 21st centuriy defies upper echelon strategies. IBM used to have a "strategy" in personal computing, announced with pump and glory by their management. Now they no longer make PCs. History2007 (talk) 01:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:deadagain33

I reget this notion. Although figures show that new users are likely to vandalise, some people JOIN WIKIPEDIA exclusively to create an article that should be there but isnt. I do not thing that people should be subject to the encouragement of "mass editing" in order to create said article. Some new users read on how to create articles and are more skilled than older users. I am new, and have created an article that was obviously missing. This isn't the best article, but it is notable and sourced, layed out averagely- as you would expect from one whom wasnt too experianced. We need to encourage quality not quantity, but the experianced wikipedians often outshine new users, as editing can be a complex proccess. I agree that we need -something- to stop vandals, but them to go around and edit 10 pages first shouldn't be one of them, as wikipedia is already intimidating enough to new users- thus the slow down of the creation of articles (along side the maintanace of exsisting articles and less obvious articles to create). --deadagain33 —Preceding undated comment added 11:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC).

Its not about vandalism. Of users who come here to create an article, and do so without any editing experience, 80% have their article deleted and we lose almost all hope of having them as contributors. Very few actually do read enough to get their article to stay. However, of users who also got some editing experience before creating an article – like you did – the percentage of articles deleted drops to below 40%. Mr.Z-man 04:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

View from User:Themane2

I support this notion. Wikipedia needs to cut down on spamming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Themane2 (talk • contribs) 03:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation

I ask anyone reading this discussion to please take a look at Category:Pending AfC submissions, and preferably help handle a few (it happens to be severely backlogged); by doing so - by looking at typical submissions - you'll get a great insight into what we're dealing with here.

It's very easy to review an AFC - if it's good enough, move it to mainspace, and tidy up.

If it's not, change the first line from e.g.

{{AFC submission|||ts=20110513....

...to...

{{AFC submission||d|PUT THE REASON HERE|ts=20110513....

(ie, stick a letter 'd' (for 'decline') as the first parameter, and put your reason for declining as the second.

That's it.

For those whole like such things, it can be made easier and prettier if you add the following line to your Special:MyPage/skin.js;

importScript('User:Tim Song/afchelper4.js');

...that gives you a 'review' button when you look at a pending submission.

Any questions and comments, WT:AFC.

Cheers,  Chzz  ►  17:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

And make sure you blank copyvios too; EarwigBot gives you instructions on how to do that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Further discussions

• See talk page for discussion about procedure and other related matters
• See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Collaborative views for a summary of the main arguments'
• See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Discussion on running a trial for counter-proposals and discussion for how to proceed with a trial, should there be a consensus to move forward