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Reassessing where we are at right now

Here is where we are right now: a group of editors who feel like the status quo is fine, are severely criticizing those editors who set out to show the status quo isn't fine, arguing that these editors broke the rules.

Was anyone naive/idealistic enough to think this experiment would change anyone's behavior? That editors would be shocked at the way we treat newbies? Based on the fierce resistance I have seen to any constructive criticism in the past four years, I could have predicted this negative reaction before this study started. Most veteran editors already know, and many seem to accept biting newbies at the least as a necessary evil. There will always be a group of editors who vigorously support the current system, no matter what evidence of harm is provided.

So now what? This test only seemed to highlight these broad divisions even more. That is unless those who are opposed to this study are in the minority and just happen to be more vocal. But I don't think this is the case, because the new user RFC has a lot of support of the status quo, and overall doesn't come up with conclusive consensus.

I note this page has no section explaining the goal of this experiment. What is the goal? So now what? Ikip (talk) 10:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Who here has argued that the status quo is fine? —Kevin Myers 15:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi Ikip, the nearest this page has to a defined goal is this bit at the top "This page was created as a response to this critique of wikipedia, which poses two challenges: can we avoid the problem of new articles by newbies being tagged for speedy deletion within two minutes? And, can such new articles survive for 7 days?" I think we can now answer both those questions with a definite maybe, maybe your article will be tagged for deletion and maybe it will be deleted. If none of our articles had been incorrectly tagged or deleted then we could simply have concluded it as a success - we'd taken the challenge and passed it. Unfortunately we found that we do have problems with the way we handle newbies and their articles. Because of the number of participants, and because two of them created Wikipedia space redirects to my userspace, I moved this from my userspace to Wikipedia space, so where do we go from here is up to the community, as it is no longer in my userspace normal wiki rules apply. As far as I'm concerned I'm going to see what lessons can be learned from this and have made a number of suggestions. ϢereSpielChequers 21:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Ikip, did you think this project would somehow be exempt from any criticism? <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 05:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
LOL, hell no. I have edited for 4 years now, I know how wikipedia works. Ikip (talk) 20:18, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

A slightly different question

Look at Wikipedia:Articles for creation and take a count how many (or how few) legitimate articles are rejected. The advantage of this approach is that it doesn't require the creation of a secondary account. Bwrs (talk) 13:01, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

AFC standards are quite different from NPP standards. For example, in AFC we quick-fail all submissions that do not have at least one reliable source. (I even got troutslapped once for putting them on hold instead.) "Not having reliable sources" is not a CSD and rightfully so. Tim Song (talk) 07:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

If you want bitey treatment of a newbie from a new pages patroller...

Look no further than this series of edits:

  1. reverts good faith attempt to start article. With Huggle, natch.
  2. templates user with vandalism warning. Again, with Huggle.
  3. deletes my query on their user page
  4. defends templating on the ground that "bad formatting" is unconstructive editing
  5. reverts with edit summary "because it's my talk page and I can"

Incidentally, somewhat to my confusion (not to say a newbie's), this is all done through two different accounts.

Not helpful in the slightest. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Update. OK, this user has now apologized to me, removed the template and also apologized to the new user. Good going. It's heartening that this editor has now been able to respond and react accordingly to my pointing out the problem. But this is just another reminder to take care when patrolling new page creation! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:55, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Oy Gott, I recently met this person. Let's call this a good faith misunderstanding. Give this a day and I'll try to iron things out if any concerns remain. Durova366 19:56, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I just saw your "interaction": an appropriate CSD (mosses are neither people nor animals, so don't really need an A7 template), done with Twinkle, then removing your talk page note without comment. I mean, I don't want to single out this individual: I think it's great that they want to help the encyclopedia. These are good faith attempts to deal with the possibility of vandalism. But it's another piece of evidence to show that the people who do new pages patrols probably need to be better trained. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's a happy ending to the story, and again props to the editor for removing the template and apologizing. But I fear nothing would have been done if I hadn't intervened. And it's only due to chance that I happened to be watching this new user's talk page (because she has signed up for a school project). If it had been a regular new user, they'd no doubt have walked away. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I thought we weren't using this space as a place to drag people for public floggings and humiliation in the spotlight? Am I missing something? Why couldn't you just discuss the issue you were having with their poor use of CSD and huggle on their talk page and leave it there? Maybe the person is new to patrolling newpages. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 05:32, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
There's no public humiliation here. It's simply another instance, part of this general reflection. If we're going to talk about actual instances, it's hard to make them anonymous, but you'll note that I haven't mentioned the user's name here; it's not about them. As it happens, in fact, in this case everything turned out well. And I've thanked the user for their graciousness. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 15:07, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I see now, thank you. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 06:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

(out) - not mentioning names, but it is also heartening to see that the user in question was able to take the criticism in stride and (I hope) improve their speedy tagging and interactions with other editors. Regards, —Ed (talk • contribs) 07:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal/Idea for NPP changes

Note: This is something of an extension of WP:NEWP by Sebwite and later offer by Explodicle, though neither have been discussed seriously or acted upon and I'm not sure where else this would seem good to post.


I'm convinced a the only way to change overall behavior of patrols is a guideline to suggest that anything but the most obvious A7s get a newpage or construction tag. They already exist, they're productive, they show good faith, they inform the user instead of basically screaming at them, and gives us a chance to do basic improvements without having to drop everything and spend time on it that minute. This would require something manually left on the user's page, which might be forgotten by... lazier people. Just like there's a listing for PRODs @ 7+ days we could have a check of newpage'd articles @ 3+ days to check for improvements and PROD/AfD after that if none. This would also be when observers could do the most basic of improvements and add normal tags; could leave user another (polite!) message if the article winds up okay. If the article is simply hopeless, normal editors could remove the newpage tag and add a normal PROD. I'll repeat, this would only be for borderline and "uncontroversial" harmless-looking A7s.

Extremely dangerous, disruptive and destructive articles meeting G3 (including BLP issues) or A10 would still instantly CSD'd and there wouldn't be any change in the "maintenance" CSDs like A1, G1 G2 G7 etc. Discussion of how loosely we could change CSD opinion on A9 and G11s we'd need to deal with later.

One major thing holding this back besides it not existing for now would be the lack of a "New user Good Faith article" option available on Twinkle and Huggle, presumably that would be listed at the top of CSD options so it was noticed. Using it would (theoretically) add the {{newpage}} tag to the article and a short, specific user talk entry (not a welcome and not a huge red sign). I do this all with articles I remove A7s on, but it's time-consuming to manually write a message. It also forces me to do quick wikification on the article to hit at least an extremely low stub standard with at least 1 resource cited to keep another CSD from popping up on it. I've yet to get any angry talk messages from other patrols for removing their CSDs if I put the newpage tag on and many go back and put on a normal PROD (which I think is fine). An second version could use {{construction}} "Article in Good Faith" that would be an alternative used for existing editors.

Thoughts? This alone would dissipate a lot of user anger, it would mean less subjectively-tagged A7s, it would eliminate the need for most hangons that hinder the process instead of help in most cases. Less stress and frustrating judgment calls for everyone, patrols would be relaxed instead of paranoid. I know the Twinkle/Huggle changes aren't even needed to do this, but it would result a hundred times more usage and a hundredth the time required. I know I don't have a trackrecord of reputation to use as support, but after a lot of thought I can't see how this wouldn't be a net help toward a few of Wikipedia's most nagging issues. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 04:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like the best idea I've heard in a long time. Complete support from me. The biggest issue with the status quo is with the subjective nature of A7. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 05:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Oppose, makes it too easy for users to circumvent speedy deletion by just removing the tag, leaving piles of nn-bios stacking up in mainspace. Stifle (talk) 11:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
This is already incredibly common. Users just delete the PRODs on their pages anyway... I don't see people rushing to fix that since there no way they get followed up. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 14:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the end date for this experiment?

I am a frequent patroller of new pages and new users, but I wasn't aware of this project until it was brought up today on WP:ANI. What I discovered was that I object pretty strongly to learning that my work is the subject of an experiment that I didn't agree to participate in, using methodology I'm not convinced is effective. There doesn't appear to be any way to opt out of this experiment, other than to stop patrolling new pages and new users until the project is concluded. I enjoy patrolling, and I'll miss doing it. When will this project have the data it needs to draw its conclusions, so I can go back to my patrol? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 14:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the idea is to end this ASAP and the ANI from last evening are disgustingly unacceptable and a reminder that this might be doing more harm than good. The theoretical "end" is when people actually agree on a plan, but since low participation it means there will probably be no changes, which is asinine. I don't know. This probably should be posted somewhere "bigger" in a Wikipedia visible area so people know some of us want to do something, but it's held up by dead silence or apathy. Some of the people "testing" seem to patrol, a lot don't and perhaps don't appreciate the stress and extra work some people put into it. I really can't offer many answers, sorry... ♪ daTheisen(talk) 15:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
As both a participant in NEWT and a frequent CSD patroller[1][2] with quite a large number of deletions and patrolled actions, I welcomed this experience. It gave me an additional insight as to how the NPP process really works, and taught me to be more careful with my actions. Perhaps everyone who participates in NPP and CSD ought to give this process a couple of tries; I can guarantee that it really will change your mindset about CSD, and that is quite important. NW (Talk) 16:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for the invitation, but I don't want to create a sockpuppet account, nor do I think it's a productive use of my time to make articles that are not as good as they can be. I can find other useful things to do with my time on Wikipedia until this experiment is concluded. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:04, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I can't deny that after so many edits after so long that it might be a fresh view so if one were responsible about the new page... persons who patrol and the like aren't really bad to have trying it, but just running some tests on a puppet seemingly for fun and to tell stories about other editors (good or bad) isn't cool. As ridiculously experienced persons, would you say a {{newpage}} on things short-term to save and hopefully contact the author is alright if removing a CSD? I mean, is anyone going to eat my soul through my monitor for shattering the grand scheme of deletions? It can be a lot of research time and talk page messages, so any simplification or automation I would kill for. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 16:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
@FQ - hey there, long time no talk! :-) To address one of your thoughts, this isn't sockpuppetry. See WP:SOCK#LEGIT: "longterm users might create a new account to experience how the community functions for new users." —Ed (talk • contribs) 00:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Serious Request

Stop making bios of living people. Seriously. Hipocrite (talk) 13:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I would have to agree with this one. Administrators are supposed to be given extra leniency with dealing with bad biographies of living persons, so creating them for the purposes of this experience is not a good idea. NW (Talk) 21:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Magic pen (software) & Huntsville (game)

'Moved from WP:ANI --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

These were deliberately created by someone at WP:NEWT (using an alternate account) to supposedly test the treatment of "newbies". Huntsville (game) was speedily deleted and then re-created.

I am now being admonished for tagging it for speedy deletion, because there is no category for software. I would like to get some opinion on whether or not the members of said project can go around creating such articles, and the thing now has to go through an AfD, and I am being taunted for.... well, you get the point. (user has been informed) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 04:50, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

So they're disrupting disrupting wikipedia to prove a point, socking and what else? if you've got direct evidence of all this and it seems that page is quite clear, these user are not blocked why?--Crossmr (talk) 05:40, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
That's what I am wondering as well. The pages were deliberately created as junkish beyond junk, and the alternate account was playing dumb beyond dumb (Unfortunately, the talkpage was deleted in the first round), with questions like "I don't get it, what are "sources"?" (my answer: click here> [SOURCE]) and then "So like, if I like type "click here> GAME", that's like a source?".... I remained patient, and explained again. Now I'm being told not to "bite the newbies". I did not. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 05:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
This project was created to test the way that articles get tagged, and how new users get treated when they create encyclopedic articles. It's not "disruptive socking" and ArbCom was made aware of all of these accounts. And it is "biting the newbies" to tag an article incorrectly, as that just pushes people away from the project when they are creating articles worthy to be here, whether or not they are written in a perfect fashion when originally created. --Coffee // have a cup // ark // 06:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm almost certain that the people creating these articles are capable of creating far better articles than these two. Obvious misspellings, and in one case they basically just created an article for an article that already existed under a different name. These articles were created purely to prove a point which is against policy and since the accounts are editing against policy they're disruptive.--Crossmr (talk) 06:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(undent) How is contributing notable articles disruptive to Wikipedia? Have you read our section on legitimate uses of alternate accounts? Let's not blow things out of proportion. –blurpeace (talk) 06:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't disagree more. Said articles are obvious junk, and a blind man with a stick can see that. It is very pointy. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 06:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Said articles are not junk, they are written like junk; that doesn't make them un-notable just means that they need to be rewritten. We don't delete article just because they weren't wrote correctly, we delete articles if they aren't notable. --Coffee // have a cup // ark // 06:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
U-ha. But vandal-fighters are guinea-pigs? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 06:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
On the one hand, the WP:NEWT folks do have a valid point. Newbies tend to get bitten a lot around here - they do occasionally have perfectly legitimate articles that get deleted simply because they look like someone took the woodchipper to them. I myself have been a bit guilty of biting the newbies, I suppose. That much is valid, I give the project credit. The problem I have is that you have legitimate editors creating articles they *know* are junk just to prove a point. If the subjects of the articles are really worth inclusion, then why not just create the quality articles from the get-go instead of going through all this chicanery and adding that much more to the clutter. I think the project's ambitions are admirable, but I also think the actions taken in pursuit of those goals aren't quite the right ones.DJBullfish 06:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
One article had what can only be seen as intentional misspellings, and the other was put in place when an article for the subject under another name already existed. These kinds of articles being created by experienced editors is pointy plain and simple.--Crossmr (talk) 06:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
They aren't proving a point, they are performing an experiment, so endorsed by ArbCom, and in reviewing the rest of the articles so created as part of this experiment, they later go back and clean up their messes (fix the bad articles, notify the affected users who were unwittingly part of the experiment, etc. etc.). There's no net damage to the Wikipedia; save for the overreaction of users who feel like having articles deleted as fast as possible should be a goal to strive for. The whole deal is, as long as they clean up their mess, there's no problem here, as far as I can see. --Jayron32 06:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
There is a problem. I am not here to engage in role-playing games with fictional characters, neither is anyone here to be a guinea-pig. It is terribly pointy to play a "gotcha"-game with people who are simply trying to keep this place clean. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 06:41, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Clean from what? It's not a competition to see who can get the most articles deleted... --Jayron32 06:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Where did you get that from? "Competition"? I never said that, never saw it that way. You lost me. Really. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 06:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
The idea is not to play gotcha with new article patrol, but to address a very serious problem; the decline in the rate of recruitment of new, dedicated editors. It is important to note that this idea of socking as newbies was generated independently a couple of times (once by me) and there are quite a few members of the project. I didn't even know that the experiment was approved and underway. Abductive (reasoning) 06:53, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Let's agree to disagree. You think it's a great idea, I think it's beyond dumb and unethical. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 06:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, I only suggested people create a sock to experience being a newbie. I did not suggest that they do anything afterwards. Abductive (reasoning) 22:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(out) - why is everyone taking offense to this? Why not treat the comments as constructive criticism to improve your speedy tagging? Don't think of it as "gotcha"; think of it as "well, I was wrong. Time to take a couple lessons from this and apply them the next time I go speedy tagging." Who knows, maybe a noob who otherwise would have been bitten will decide to stay and will become a useful contributor. You never know. Please, Seb—do not get angry. We are all here to improve the encyclopedia; if this experiment changes your mind and causes you to not add a speedy tag to just one article in the future, it's done its job. Keep your cool, and take the comments in stride. All the best, —Ed (talk • contribs) 07:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Because they are intentionally being disruptive? There are also far more things that go into people leaving the projects than speedily tagging articles. There are greater issues that might need to be solved on wikipedia and frankly wasting time on "experiments" with socks and pointy edits might put some editors off cause them to leave since they see the community making no progress and instead playing silly games. As pointed out, it isn't a scientific experiment, so then what is the purpose? other than to play games with a few editors. That's it.--Crossmr (talk) 08:20, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes. In order to support good faith in favour of newbies, they are assuming bad faith on the part of people who patrol for crap. And the vast majority of the articles that get tagged and nuked are crap. I don't know why the NEWT folks can't work with real newbies and real new articles - patrol CAT:CSD and rescue stuff that's not unambiguous junk, work with the newpage patrollers to educate them and so on. This is, as has been noted multiple times above, disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, and they should know better. Guy (Help!) 11:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Of course, part of NEWT creates an article, it's gets possibly improperly tagged for CSD, the CSD'er gets "admonished" for doing so, and it arrives at ANI - either someone just proved that NEWT had a good point, or they provided the best example of what happens. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Except once again one of those articles clearly was disruptive. It was a terrible one line of an article that already existed. The other one is on the road to deletion as clearly non-notable. NEWTs page says they're supposed to be creating articles which meet wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. Not that I think they should be creating any at all like this or disruptively socking, but they can't even follow their own guidelines. So once again if they're disruptively socking and going beyond the bounds of this supposed "experiment" why aren't they blocked?--Crossmr (talk) 11:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Please tone it down. The scope of the experiments is not narrow, but wide. This is not improper. The persons conducting the experiment include some of our longest serving and best known contributors.
If you believe that it's intentional disruption - have you considered that you are validating the hypothetical problem? Do you really want to do that with arbcom and most of the senior policy community looking on intently?
If this was felt to be a bad approach it would have been discouraged long ago. Please appro ach the experiment with good faith. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 11:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
If we really have to do this, these articles need to be obviously exempt from the CSD criteria. This one, the one tagged by the editor above, was so close to WP:CSD#A1 that I can't blame the editor for tagging it at all. If we're going to do this, could it be done so that the articles are very clearly not CSD candidates, especially if we're going to criticise the taggers afterwards? I'm really concerned that this is driving people away from NPP, which is backlogged enough as it is, given all the real crap that comes flooding through our gates. Black Kite 12:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
The project has collected evidence that its driving people away from NPP. Mr.Z-man 17:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I fully agree with doing tests even if they take up a little effort and are sometimes annoying. However I believe it is wrong to do any admonishing or whatever of editors who 'fail' such tests. Doing so undermines support for tests. I am reminded of a story of someone who was going to be burned as a heretic because they went to a mass, however the 'mass' was performed by an agent provacateur and so it was not a mass and the charge was dropped. Dmcq (talk) 12:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I think we're missing something here. What authority do these people have to 'admonish' anybody? Why shouldn't they just be ignored?

There are already sufficient processes and policies to deal with people being jerks, they are just underutilized. This entire mess is a classic case of disruptive sockpuppetry-- the only reason the perpetrators are being given a pass is because they, supposedly, have good intentions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for trying to get people to be less mean to newbies, but crap like this is not the way to go about it. Jtrainor (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed a couple of threads about this new NEWT group, and I have to agree with the above comments about its disruptiveness, and what point it serves. Creating a bad article on purpose is unambiguously disruptive. There is nothing to dispute about that. Admins/long term editors know how to create an article properly, so to do anything else is wasting time. What is this project achieving? Everyone knows newbies are treated differently to long-term editors - why do people need to disrupt Wikipedia to prove this point? We even have a guideline - WP:BITE - because of this. I don't agree with being harsh to newcomers but it happens. All this project is achieving is wasting valuable new page patrollers' time. Essentially, you're putting people off doing it, and you're forcing them to deal with what is esentially time-wasting through disruptive socking and the deliberate creation of crap articles.
I am not saying NPP is done perfectly. However, this is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. It's a terrible idea. If you see a problematic tagging/deletion of an article by a real newbie, discuss it with the admin/tagger.
I am very very strongly inclined to nominate this disruptive Wikiproject for deletion. Majorly talk 14:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that's going a bit far, but I'm somewhat confused as to what it's supposed to prove. People tag articles badly for CSD? Well, call me shocked. Any admin that deals with the CAT:CSD queue knows that already. Perhaps the question ought to be why people do this? Could it possibly be because the CSD criteria are so confused, impenetrable, and don't cover a wide range of clearly speediable articles that they feel they have to wedge an article that's going to be deleted into one of them? Who knows? Such an experiment is clearly trying to find answers to questions, but one has to wonder whether the data gathered is only going to prove what we already know, with the "bonus" of pissing off some of our most hardworking editors. Black Kite 14:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
My experience is that real new users tend to fall into three main categories: (a)purely disruptive, (b) hopelessly incompetent, and (c) competent but unfamiliar with the rules. WP:NEWT appears to be simulating new users who are (d) incompetent, but will become competent if we are nice to them. I'm not sure how a simulation of a category of new users that is very rare will be useful in improving interactions with actual new users, but I find that this is a game I don't choose to play. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 14:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
When I first heard of WP:NEWT, I nearly joined in, realizing how easy it would be to create another account, write a deliberately bad article on a notable topic, and trick a new page patroller into tagging it for deletion. Then I realized that what I was about to do fit the definition of trolling. The NEWT project seeks to address real problems, but ends do not always justify means. —Kevin Myers 15:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I highly doubt anything more will come from this that couldn't have come from a less disruptive method like the CSD survey. The methodology being used is sloppy, amateurish, and unprofessional. Rather than being realistic newbie works, some of the articles are specifically "engineered" to be as bad as possible while still remaining just outside of the speedy deletion criteria, including several unsourced (at the time of creation, and often for several days afterward) BLPs. Mr.Z-man 17:53, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

  • This hits the nail on the head. Magic Pen is a perfect example. It is a subject which is not likely to meet our guidelines for inclusion but is only not subject to CSD because of the specificity of A7. In other words, because A7 doesn't include software (only because the volume is much less than bands or people or business), the CSD tag was wrong. Then once the error has been made, the "real" account swoops in and lectures the mark about CSD tagging. This is a decent idea that has been ruined by the need to name and shame (and now it appears the newfound zeal for accusing critics of various sins rather than engaging criticism). Protonk (talk) 20:17, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Super Granny is also a good example, its a game downloaded from the web and occasionally played on the web, but since its designed to be downloaded and played offline, its not "web content" (or so I'm told, I'm still not convinced). Haig Sare is another example of the problems this can create. For 16 days, it was left by its creator as an unsourced BLP, with a negative comment about another living person. Mr.Z-man 00:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • This is some of the most disturbing bollocks I have read recently. If someone places a pigs ear of an article that is notable, why not delete it? It can be recreated again, and if it is done to a reasonable standard it stays. Rubbish gets removed quickly, because keeping rubbish on the page detracts from the perception of WP as a source of reasonable quality and authority. A lot of the external criticism of WP is that poor material is permitted to be published, yet here we have those editors who are trying to stem the flood of turdery from detracting from the project being criticised for the prompt removal of it - even if the focus is on the less than optimal interactions with the "new accounts". If I become aware of the original accounts of these put ups then I would seriously consider blocking under WP:POINT to see if they can argue the case why it is okay in one instance and not in another (and especially if it is an Arb). I am disgusted (and that is not a phrase I use lightly, since I know what it means) that the non-content footsoldier editors who use their free time in trying to keep the encyclopedia from being swamped by sub standard bollocks are being treated so shabbily. Damn, the more I read and react to this the angrier I am getting - perhaps I should stop now before I say something really hurtful about the prats who thought this was a good idea. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

My personal take

I once loved contributing to this place but the politics, bureaucracy, and general "fuck you" attitude of many of the players of game on this site wore me down. I keep checking back to see if things have changed and it is obvious they have not. This project is the perfect example. It is an attempt to improve the encyclopedia by ensuring new users don't get the CSD welcome of doom within 30 seconds of submitting a new article. Guy's attitude above is the perfect example of this. Yes, the articles are crap in their current state. But, if you remember back to the start of Wikipedia, so were most of the articles that we now point to as the finest examples of the project. Lately, we expect full fledged articles that are near perfect right out of the gate or they will be deleted immediately. There is no policy on this site that says it has to be perfect and this is what this project aims to prove. All of these articles meet the criteria for the basics and do NOT meet any part of the CSD criteria as set forth today. We do NOT have a category for software. We do NOT have a policy that it must be sourced as notable (only claim). These articles have proven that the vast majority of those who deal with the new pages don't understand these basic facts. My final statement here before I scramble my password: making a point can be a good thing. It clearly shows the decline of new users to the project isn't solely because all the knowledge in the world has been cataloged. It is partially due to the "welcome" some of these people get when trying to create content. Yes you can prune these articles if they don't turn out to be worthy. You don't have to do it in the first five minutes of the articles existence. I learned that and once I realized that the vast majority of the NPP'ers didn't realize this, it showed me this project has more problems and no tools to create solutions. The fact that people are trying to shut this project down is a perfect example of this. Goodbye and good luck. spryde | talk 16:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, I know all of those rules, and follow them in my new page patrolling. I don't think that "some new users have bad experiences" naturally leads to "therefore, we should waste the time of all patrollers by creating deliberately bad articles designed to trick patrollers into incorrect tagging and being deliberately obtuse with patrollers who are trying to help in good faith". I don't flatter myself that I am indispensable to Wikipedia, but I am a fairly active patroller of new users, and I'm so put off by WP:NEWT that I don't want to risk encountering one of their fake articles- I won't be doing any more of that kind of patrol while this project is active. It's true that we have a rule prohibiting biting the new users, but that doesn't mean that it's okay to bite the more experienced ones. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
And there you probably have the issue in a nutshell. Not only is the project discouraging NPPers, but we can't even have a discussion about how it could be improved without someone taking that discussion completely the wrong way. C'est la vie. Black Kite 16:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, lets all have a cry about how unfair it is to NPP's that someone checks if they are doing it correctly. Unomi (talk) 16:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Shall we get back to reality, please? NPP is not an exam - all these people are volunteers. To continue the analogy, there are plenty of ways of checking that people are tagging correctly without throwing in trick questions. As I said above, if CSD tagging is so difficult to get right all the time, perhaps we ought to be looking at why that is. Black Kite 16:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Since all articles created at NEWT are explicitly created to be not eligible for speedy deletion, is it really biting the patrollers when they make a mistake and the mistake gets pointed out to them? I think it's an assumption of bad faith if you think that the purpose of NEWT was to "trick patrollers" in any way rather than to see how new users who create valid articles that simply are not having the right layout or citation templates are treated. I don't think anyone participated with the goal to humiliate new page patrollers or to drive them away from it but rather to evaluate what can be improved in that area. Regards SoWhy 16:31, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Some of these articles are very close to the margins of CSD. As I said above, if we really have to do it this way, let's make them very obviously not CSD-able, please? Black Kite 16:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
... but the problem isn't the incorrect tagging of obviously non-CSD-able articles, is it? Tan | 39 16:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
There is no legitimate reason why the goal of evaluating what can be improved in these areas could not be accomplished by looking at the ways that patrollers deal with real new articles and users. Fake new users don't behave like real new users, and deliberately bad articles are not typical of real new articles, so creating them is not the most effective way to accomplish the goal. I cannot see any reason that one would choose to use fake accounts to create deliberately bad articles instead of looking at what is really happening other than the fun of humiliating patrollers. As a patroller, I am very deeply hurt and insulted, and I think those fellow admins who know me know that I'm not a user who is easily insulted or who often involves herself in Wikipedia drama and politics. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:41, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
It is exactly the issue if you are going to criticize editors for making borderline incorrect tagging decisions, rather than obviously wrong ones. The 'biting the newbies' issue is immediately secondary - we're biting the experienced editors instead. Black Kite 16:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
If there was only a way to make everyone hear that. Personally, I felt a surge of fresh air when I read that comment (only to realise that my window was still open). Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) My own Wikipedian work is primarily in NPP, and I was unsure as to whether I agreed with the idea of NEWT or not. (At least, until it seemed to be that I hadn't made any mistakes in dealing with material generated by these NEWT accounts. ;-) But I could be next.) I've been doing pretty much entirely NPP since I became an admin, because of the way my time schedule works, and I have to say that I learned "on the job" by making mistakes. Not only that, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to grasp the nuances of NPP policy, and I'm not absolutely sure even now that I do, from time to time -- after 18 months' experience and having deleted more than 20,000 pages. I have occasionally wondered if there could be an initial step that is somewhere between "ordinary user" and "administrator" -- kind of like "administrator with training wheels doing NPP only" -- where people could get experience in making the kinds of decisions that new page patrollers need to make, perhaps even with the oversight of an experienced administrator. But I wanted to mention two things that I've noticed in the last 18 months or so that may usefully bear on this situation. First, before I became an admin, I found it very hard to learn when I had made a mistake because when administrators declined my speedy tags, they rarely told me why; I had to notice that the tag had been declined and try to gather the reasoning from the edit summary. These days when I decline a speedy tag I try to be clear about why, both in the edit summary and on the talk page, and almost always communicate with the tagger directly; I would recommend this to others. Second, and this is perhaps a broader-view idea, my gradual realization over the last 18 months is that "Wikipedia selects for bullies". There is a certain personality type that wants to control the work of others, and that personality type finds NPP a very attractive area in which to work. Since I've been considering this point, I have made an effort to not be a bully but, frankly, it's very tempting. When you encounter a child who wants to belittle one of his classmates or promote his own YouTube account, and mounts specious and disingenuous defenses against his page being deleted, when it's perfectly obvious that the page hasn't got a snowball's chance of remaining, it's really tough to assume good faith and follow the proper procedure without short-circuiting it. In situations like that it's very personally satisfying to think, "I know exactly what is happening here and I'm in charge, so I'll do it my way." I like to think that I'm a fairly polite and reasonable person, and *I* don't always manage to control myself, so I imagine that the temptation for those who tend more to the bully type than I must be extreme. I don't know how to address this point; it's hard to suggest that the people who most like to do this work are the least appropriate to do it. But since the children and time-wasters of the world insist upon creating hundreds and hundreds of useless new pages daily, this work must be done and it might be that those of us who do it will have to find a new set of policies under which to do it. So, although I see that NEWT was created to make a point and it's a galling point for new page patrollers, including myself, it might be a valuable starting point for those new policies. I'll try to assume good faith here as elsewhere. Accounting4Taste:talk 17:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Could I have a postdated Support !vote for this admin please. Unomi (talk) 17:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

As a completely uninvolved editor - largely ignorant of NPP and certainly unaware of NEWT (until I saw this here while looking at another incident), it strikes me that communication could have headed off much of this friction. This outcome is unfortunate, because NEWT does seem to be a good-faith project to address a real problem, and engaging NPP in the solution might have been both more effective and more consistent with assuming good faith. If NEWT members had simply notified all NPP members that they were going to be doing this "experiment", then NPP'ers might have gotten the message from the start, and at least wouldn't have felt blind-sided. If some NPP'ers had adjusted their behavior, hewing more closely to CSD criteria because they knew they were being "examined", would that have been so bad? Maybe such shifts would have persisted, for everyone's benefit? Last, if some NPP'ers recently got a little testy with NEWT members posing as newbies in talk space, maybe it's because some of the NEWT members weren't such good actors (it's not easy to feign ignorance) - in other words, maybe the NPP'ers were perceptive enough to suspect that they were talking to a sock. I apologize if this is just seen as a non sequitur. -- Scray (talk) 17:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what information they couldn't have got in this instance form just looking at the first cut of a number of new pages, rating them independently, and then checking further how hey were treated. I'm sure that would would have achieved everything that this study was supposed to achieve. I'm not against tests but they should be well designed for a reasonable purpose and not duplicate what can be easily found otherwise. And any editors that get involved in tests should be commended for their participation and apologied to for the time taken up for practically whatever they did good or bad. Dmcq (talk) 20:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
As I said in the last AN/I thread about this, there are clear and valuable advantages to be gleaned from a "secret shopper" approach. But undertaking such an approach requires patience and discipline. Creating articles which are borderline CSD-able (or are spared from speedy deletion by dint of a technicality) tends not to help. What would help is a long term (maybe >3 weeks) test with multiple accounts and some baseline quality for new articles. Then, at the end of the process, seeing what happened. No immediate intervention from the admin alter ego. No trolling. No silly spelling errors or outlandish talk page requests "in character". Protonk (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
To be fair, I haven't seen any "immediate intervention from the admin alter ego." NW (Talk) 22:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I suspect it isn't the norm, but this is an example (only lifted because for some reason Slakr's talk page is on my watchlist). Protonk (talk) 23:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
From that discussion - [3]. <facepalm>. Black Kite 23:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

As the discussion has spiralled way down while I was sleeping, I'll post this here: From the NEWT page Write an article that doesn't meet the deletion criteria. Their criteria is to write articles which don't meet deletion criteria. Both of these articles are off-scope and as far as I'm concerned not protected by their "experiment". A one liner based on an article that already exists and an intentionally misspelled one liner on a non-notable game meet deletion criteria. This is why I consider them pointy and disruptive.--Crossmr (talk) 21:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

You can add me to the list of new page patrollers who will not be doing any work until this "experiment" ends. I've already voiced my concerns about this on the original project page. I've patrolled literally thousands of pages, and I'm sure I've made mistakes and will continue to make them. However, I believe my contributions have been overwhelmingly positive and in good-faith. I don't need a lecture. Thankfully, I have not run afoul of this mess as of yet, but I don't plan on continuing to volunteer to do this "job" while being lambasted as a group of bad-faith taggers who are just trying to get as many articles deleted as possible as part of some "competition". I'm more than happy to help legitimate new users (and please check my history, talk page, barnstars, etc. if you'd like to verify that), but there is so much crap coming in by the minute that to ask for each page to be cleaned up, wikified, sourced, etc. by the NPP'ers just to draw a few new users to the project is, in my opinion, ridiculous and ultimately harmful as, at least in my case, I'm not sticking around long if I have to take out the trash, thank the person who made it, and then fix it for them. If they are making a good-faith effort to do it on their own, I'll go out of my way to help but go talk to a few of these new users and find out how many of them are actually willing to put forth that effort versus how many of them are here to, at best, dump of a POS article and leave it for someone else to fix. Wperdue (talk) 23:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm taking a 24 hour period away from NPP to reflect on what I learned. Not because the person who posted the articles I tagged for CSD (as he didn't see it fit to inform me about this) but because of the messages left by the admin declining the CSDs. WP:NEWT has its advantages and disadvantages but if you are a subject in a experiment it is nice to be informed that you were part of that experiment. Jarkeld (talk) 23:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Addendum: Got my NEWT message: 23:40, 15 November 2009 (UTC) Jarkeld (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
and in that "report" [8]. The user admits to creating articles which don't belong on wikipedia as part of the "experiment". The guidelines of this experiment strictly say that shouldn't be the case and I maintain that these are disruptive socks making pointy edits--Crossmr (talk) 01:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
This project is for articles that don't meet the deletion criteria, and so I've removed one from the results because it did meet the deletion criteria. Monitoring the fate of articles that don't meet the CSD criteria but do merit deletion would be an interesting project, but in my view it would be best done by some sort of bot that records all CSD tagged articles that are subsequently deleted by Prod or AFD. Deliberately creating articles that do meet the deletion criteria is not a good idea, as several people have pointed out. So it would IMHO be innappropriate to broaden this project to do that as the methodology would have to be so different. ϢereSpielChequers 09:21, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Reporting accounts to ArbCom

Folks keep saying that they reported their sock accounts to arbcom before they use them to create the new articles. However, while this appears to give the impression that ArbCom has specifically sanctioned this project, they have not and this actually doesn't mean much. See my own AN/I thread here [9] from a few days ago where an ArbCom member states this. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 06:11, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

So this isn't sanctioned by arbcom? do I need to repeat my question from above?--Crossmr (talk) 08:11, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I put up something pretty lengthy[10] at WP:AN about the general progress (namely lack of) and frustration (quite much of) this "project" is causing. I forgot what good it was ever meant to do, since we apparently lost that several days ago once people started to realize they'd been test subjects in one form or another. I know the ANIs were shut off and moved here but they didn't exactly accomplish much. The article page (not this talk) has had a lot of hits, and it'd be really really nice to actually find something constructive so we can get back to, like, you know, patrols and edits. More PR problems patrols would not be so good. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 08:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Time to stop and take stock

There are a number of issues here

  • The project is driving newpage patrollers away, even if temporarily. These volunteers are vital - lest anyone doubt that, the back of the current unpatrolled articles queue stretches back to the 19th October. That's nearly a month that articles containing libel, BLP violations, personal attacks or copyvios could have been sitting there.
  • A large number of respected editors have cast serious doubt on its efficacy - some have gone as far as labelling it disruptive (see above)
  • It prompts a culture of suspicion. Even when I was patrolling CAT:CSD yesterday, I was looking at tagged articles thinking "is this one a trick?".
  • Some participants aren't following the "rules" anyway
  • It is unclear whether the data gained is of huge value - aren't we merely confirming what we knew anyway, that some editors tag articles badly? The more important issue is why they do that - and that probably comes back to CSD criteria issues.
  • Proposal. That WP:NEWT stops the project whilst the scope, methodology and issues above are discussed. Black Kite 09:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Disagree firstly the back of the unpatrolled articles queue is currently 27 days, 10 days ago the backlog was 30 days. So this project is not increasing that backlog. Secondly this project is not about creating trick articles or articles that merit deletion, and I've tightened the wording to emphasise that. Thirdly as to the efficacy and value of the data, this has already generated a number of proposals for changes and with the data already collected I'm confident that it will inspire more. Lastly the signpost article on this has now been up for a week and presumably a new signpost will be coming out later today. So I would anticipate that the next few days will see some articles declared that survived their 7 days unscathed, which should balance the ones that were tagged or deleted and emerged earlier than 7 days. Looking at the first wave of articles that were created in early October, the results were very different when you included the articles that went through the 7 days smoothly; So though I've already moved on to analyzing the results and making tentative suggestions I think that it would be premature to judge this project until we have the results from all the articles created for this project as a response to last Monday's signpost. ϢereSpielChequers 11:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, clearly there's nothing we can do about the articles already created - the point is that we should not be creating further articles given the detrimental side-effects that it is clearly having (most of which occur in the article's very early life). Black Kite 12:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Obviously I'd be concerned if this had detrimental side effects. Do you know what the normal fluctuations are in the length of the backlog at NewPage patrol? Are both the current 27 day backlog and the 30 day backlog of ten days ago within normal fluctuations? ϢereSpielChequers 13:25, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • It fluctuates a lot. However, the clear effects are the retirement of at least six newpage patrollers (there may be more, they're the ones I found in a quick check) and the issues raised above about disruption are worrying even if they are contentious. Black Kite 13:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, that's a net loss of only five, because this experiment has inspired me to become a newpage patroller, something I virtually never did before. I didn't only want to see how newbies are treated (my results should come up on Thursday of this week), but also to see what it's like for NPPers. And I've learned a lot about doing NPP already. +Angr 13:57, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • support I see neither merit not mandate to perform this "experiment". I see no justification for can only be seen as admitted disruptive socking. They have no permission to create alternate accounts and "test" things. They were bold, they've been called on it, its time to stop and discuss. They're already assuming bad faith of new page patrollers, to continue at this point shows contempt for the community.--Crossmr (talk) 12:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I too would support this, as a participant in this proposal. I have two more accounts that I went through with this process, but I have refrained from posting them as a gesture to the significant group in the community that feel that the project is currently a net negative to the project. While I still think there are benefits to this sort of project, I think it would be wise for NEWT members to stop any new trials while the discussion happens. NW (Talk) 12:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • support WereSpielChequers did a great thing starting this experiment with minimal planning or beauracracy. But continuing it in this fashion isn't justified, we have enough data to draw some conclusions and think about any next steps. And clearly, some articles were created that weren't really within the spirit of this thing. So, let's take stock. Stevage 14:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • support Per nom and Crossmr. Sneaks and tricks have done nothing but generate mistrust among the community, which is dangerous and counterproductive. The issue is not with NNP but with CSD criteria and instructions. If we are to accept AGF at face value, the issue lies not in the people but in the instructions and policy.
    Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, but this does not preclude requiring them to read some sort of ultra-simplified set of instructions for newbies... something that would at least describe (in a FEW sentences, not some huge bureucratic tome) how to legitimately assert importance and significance, explain that one or two reliable sources are important, and how to do some basic formatting. I don't expect newbies to be able to write featured articles off the bat, but a list of very basic beginners instructructions would do MUCH to help NPPers tell the difference between hoaxes/vandalism/nonsense and articles that are just written and formatted horribly, and would also help n000bs articles be kept. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 19:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support - I had assumed that the point of this project was to take a sample, not create an ongoing covert watchdog group. I think we have enough examples that more aren't needed. I assume that there are still a few editors with secret newbie accounts waiting for the 7 days to expire, and if so their results should be included but I suggest a notice for the project requesting that editors no longer create alternate accounts for the project. -- Atama頭 19:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose Support I will support the closing with one caveat: I would like to ask the editors who support closing this project, what now? What solutions do you suggest to curtail this new user treatment? Unless there are concrete proposals which are inacted, nothing has been learned and the poor treatment will continue unabaited. Ikip (talk) 19:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • What new things have we learnt from this experiment? We all know newbies get treated differently: that's why the experiment was created in the first place. So, what can be done about it? Certainly not more disrupting Wikipedia to prove this. I don't know the answer, but pretending to be a newbie will help how exactly? Majorly talk 20:42, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Well, it may have actually helped if people did it right. Somewhere along the line (near the beginning), the goal seemed to shift from "see what its like to be a newbie" to "trip up admins by gaming the wording of CSD." Mr.Z-man 22:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
      • You know, these broad statements are really starting to becoming tedious. You have been editing long enough to know, that you don't presuppose editors thoughts, motivations and intentions, because it only reflects badly on the editor who is hypothesizing. Ikip (talk) 22:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • @Ikip: I am not suggesting closing the project; merely halting it to examine the results so far and possibly attempt to find a new method of examining the issue of new user treatment without the problems that this methodology has created. Black Kite 21:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Black, okay. I changed to support. Ikip (talk) 22:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Support: I'm concerned about ends justifying the means here. There are a lot of admins getting upset about being "duped" or annoyed that they're unwittingly taking part in an experiment. It's time to take a step back and evaluate whether the current methodology is best or if there are improvements that can be made. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    The entire thing needs to be shut down. If someone wants to run an "experiment" then they need to make a proper case for it and demonstrate that it can be done in such a way to generate data that could actually be useful in making conclusions rather than random anecdotal evidence. Until such a time it is nothing more than a few users playing games with other users.--Crossmr (talk) 04:11, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Mystery shopper or Institutional review board?

My first thought when I learned of this experiment was that, had it been done at a hospital or university in the United States, it might require approval (or at least exemption) by an institutional review board. But then it occurred to me that this was more similar to a mystery shopper: people who are hired to pretend to be shoppers at retail outlets in order to assess service. I suspect that in some jurisdictions, an employee must be informed that they may be serving mystery shoppers. But of course NPPers are volunteers.

I see the point of the experiment, but it seems that it has gone awry.--Curtis Clark (talk) 02:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't a retail business. Years ago when I worked retail there was always notice about mystery shoppers. They were hired and thus given permission by the company to do that. The experiment wasn't run in any kind of scientific basis, so there was very little point except to collect random anecdotal evidence, it really doesn't prove anything and because of that it doesn't benefit the project. Since it doesn't benefit the project and was run, apparently, without permission this was poorly done from the start.--Crossmr (talk) 04:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
What the participants of this "project" do is neither "mystery shopping" nor "institutional review" nor "internal investigations" (or any other good-sounding name you wish to call it). This is, quite simply, entrapment. The participants deliberately create articles which are not strictly speaking speedyable (i.e. are about notable topics), but which are deliberately in extremely bad shape -- poorly written, too short, written in very bad English, poorly formatted, without slightest attempt to provide sources, ets. All this is done to trap NPPers into making bad calls. In fact the participants deliberately create articles which they know are of poor quality -- i.e. they are quite consciously and deliberately disrupting Wikipedia. (Yes, to make a point -- the point being that NPPers are "bad people": a massive assumption of bad faith.) -- 89.52.176.229 (talk) 04:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Can we please desist with the accusations of bad faith? --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:23, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Let's just look at the results table. Look at the articles as they were created: [11], or [12], or [13] for instance. I am sure none of you would have inflicted such poorly-written stubs on Wikipedia if you were using your main accounts. You people have deliberately created bad articles, often going to extreme lengths such as trying to simulate someone who doesn't speak English. I admit that the subjects were notable -- at least notable enough not to fall under any CSD. But the articles were, on purpose, of extremely poor quality. If that is not disrupting Wikipedia, then what is? Moreover, alternative accounts have been used, to trick and trap unsuspecting regular users and NP patrollers. I am astonished and saddened that ArbCom has apparently sanctioned this extremely unethical behaviour. -- 89.52.176.229 (talk) 06:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Actually arbcom didn't sanction it. An arbcom member specifically stated they didn't sanction it. It only looked like they did because part of the instructions involve emailing arbcom the alternate accounts. Not all articles created were notable either. Those that weren't were white-washed from the list.--Crossmr (talk) 08:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

According to people I know who have worked in retail, the spectrum of mystery shopper extends to entrapment. And the purpose of an institutional review board is to prevent an experiment from using entrapment or other methods that violate the norms of human experimentation.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:02, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Which shows why your analogy fails since NEWT does not involve entrapment. +Angr 14:20, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Which shows why your reading fails. I never said it did, merely that entrapment was not precluded by either one. Many service industries find mystery shoppers useful, and institutional review boards protect both human subjects and investigators. I think both provide a useful perspective to anyone who doesn't alredy have a "side". I don't have a horse in this race, although if I ever had any thoughts about becoming either an NPP or a newbie user, I'm somewhat dissuaded.--Curtis Clark (talk) 02:36, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Informing taggers that you've declined their tags

Accounting4taste made a very good point above about the need to inform taggers that you've declined or amended one of their tags that you consider incorrect. We've discussed this more than once at wt:RFA, usually after someone only learns that their tagging is controversial at RFA, and I've informed quite a few new page patrollers of tags I've declined. I like to think I'm fairly diplomatic about it, but as we've seen from this page it can be a very contentious thing to do. Can anyone suggest how we can increase the amount of feedback given to taggers when their tags are changed or declined, whilst at the same time doing it in as non-bitey way as possible? I think it would be a useful result from this project if we could think up a proposal that would address this issue. ϢereSpielChequers 01:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

CSD Helper is an excellent script for declining, deleting, changing rationales, and converting to Prod that automatically notifies the tagger if their original tag was incorrect. I highly recommend it to anyone doing CSD patrol. NW (Talk) 01:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, does it give you the option to choose not to notify when the original tag was also correct? I can think of situations such as where a subsequent edit by the article creator merits deleting an A7 as a G10, and I'd rather not send an automated message to the tagger in such circumstances. ϢereSpielChequers 01:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
It does give such an option, though notifying is checked by default. NW (Talk) 01:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
It can be turned off by default as well though. I use it with a number of settings I prefer, including a personal list of decline reasons and generating a list of declined speedy requests. The script's main page (WP:CSDH) informs about those and anyone wishing to use my list can get it from my monobook.js. Regards SoWhy 09:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not computer literate enough to deal with code. Any chance that something like this will become part of our automated preferences? CSDing has become so easy -- too easy? -- via Twinkle, and so I think we need to have this function made widely available to all as well. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 21:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Should all articles have sources?

One of the many things that this project has highlighted is that whilst our policy is that data needs to be verifiable, many editors are working to an unwritten policy that new articles need to be verified by a source. My view on this is "Strong Neutral" as I think that either a consistent policy of all new articles require a source, or a reaffirmation of current policy would be far preferable to the current situation. I've started a thread on this at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Should unsourced become a speedy deletion criteria?, and I hope that those who've taken strong views on both sides of the issue on this page will put their case there. ϢereSpielChequers 11:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Seriously?

This has to be one of the most retarded things I've seen here, even better than a 26-revert war over the genre of Boyzone's music. I don't see anywhere on WP:SOCK where "gaming the system to catch out people we don't like" is a valid reason, but I do see quite a few valid reasons for not doing so. This is just people playing at being spies, and it smacks of so much of the "let's all pretend we're actually really important" attitude that poisons this place. I shan't be new page patrolling for a while now. Find something useful to do, like changing the CSD criteria that mean bad calls like these have to be made in the first place. Oh, and don't think this is anything new just because some butt hurt blogger kicks up a stink. I'd say at least 1/10 speedy deletions are inaccurate anyway.

/rant. ninety:one 21:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the number is closer to 20-25% in my experience. Btw, how can the goal be "catching people we don't like" if the whole purpose is not to know who will handle the article or how? Regards SoWhy 09:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

already had an RFC with suggestions, comments.. didn't do much

Perhaps this project was not conducted in the best way possible, but I think it is a good wake up call. Some people say, why bother with doing something like this when everyone knows there is a problem? Because that is the problem.. everyone knows there is a problem, gives it lipservice (or sarcasm).. and forgets about it. The issue was brought up in the traditional RFC[14], and had some response, people commented, made suggestions, and it has faded away in the usual RFC way. If you comment, then you've done your part and you go on to the next thing. I think this project highlighted some problems in a way that couldn't be done with an RFC. So, perhaps it didn't meet everyone's criteria, but I think this project will be something that definitely made people think about the problem. stmrlbs|talk 03:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

It made me think that I hadn't previously realized how many people assumed bad faith of the work I was doing as a new user patroller, how few people thought that work was in any way valuable, and how likely it was that my years at Wikipedia were entirely a waste of my time... was that the kind of thinking you meant? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 03:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
My question is why are you taking this so personally? I'm surprised that someone that is so sensitive to criticism would find it hard to understand the point of this whole project. If you feel this way because of some comments by a few people here, how do you think a new person feels when they have their first efforts at Wikipedia flagged publicly as a rejected and inferior article? For reasons they probably won't understand until they've gone through wikipedia law school like the rest of us? stmrlbs|talk 04:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Since this wasn't scientifically conducted, what was the point exactly? What will you take away from this other than some meaningless anecdotal evidence? The sample size was too small. There was no control, there was zero benefit from this other than User X can say they created a sock, made a pointy edit and someone did or didn't tag it in X time. What that means in the grander scale of wikipedia? Zilch. But you did manage to chase away some NPP and create some ill will.--Crossmr (talk) 04:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Unless your intention is to chase away more good faith editors, I suggest you tone down the rhetoric. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Sure. But we still need an explanation from NEWT going forward about what benefit a non-scientific test is and how they justify what has occurred here without permission or mandate.--Crossmr (talk) 06:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it is unreasonable to take a project like this personally. NPP and RCP (I only have personal experience w/ RCP) is pretty menial work, but rewards expertise and communication. It doesn't result in 'lasting' contributions or plaudits like FA work, and doing it enough will make your userpage the target of persistent and pernicious vandalism. Doing a job like that requires a great deal of intrinsic motivation and one way that people generate intrinsic motivation is to invest themselves personally in their work. Consequently, when a project is developed whose ostensible goal is to expose NPPer's as careless or callous and whose methods fall within a broad definition of the word 'trolling', it is hard not to feel personally slighted. Protonk (talk) 22:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
i can see some problems, like experienced editors who think its okay to disruptively sock, make pointy edits, and assume bad faith if they think they have a "really" good reason for doing it. This project has done a fantastic job of highlighting that as we now have a list of users who feel like that on the project page.--Crossmr (talk) 04:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't see a single experienced editor participating in NEWT who has disruptively socked, made pointy edits, or assumed bad faith. (Note that creating an alternative account is not necessarily disruptive sockpuppetry.) What this experiment has shown is that some people do NPP right, some people do it wrong, and of those who do it wrong, some of them admit their mistakes and try to do better, while others get defensive and start slinging mud. +Angr 07:28, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Really?
The premise of this "experiment" was to create articles which didn't meet the deletion criteria. But so far we had the two that spawned this discussion, 3 video game articles I've tagged for notability that'll be off to AfD unless someone provides coverage on them, and at least one more than was white-washed from the list. Experienced editors creating articles which don't belong on wikipedia is disruptive. They created those articles while using socks. The did this to try and prove some point. What was the point? an we avoid the problem of new articles by newbies being tagged for speedy deletion within two minutes? Problem assumes the NPP are doing something wrong and that assumes bad faith.
All of this was done without permission, endorsement or mandate from the community.
As for your results, if that is all you took from this, I could have saved you all the trouble and told you that before. Try reading your sentence again and substituting anything in for NPP and you'll find it to be true. Some people cook steaks right. Some people do it wrong, and those who do it wrong, some of them admit their mistakes and try to do better, while others get defensive and start slinging mud. The whole point of doing an experiment would be to get away from using the word "some". Its a weasel word. We avoid them in articles for a reason. They do nothing to further a greater understanding of the issue. I can't see how this has done anything to further a greater understanding of the issues newbies face.
CSD templates exist for a reason. They're exist to inform administrators that they should have a look at an article. They also exist to inform article creators that there is some issue with the article. If the templates need to be adjusted to give out hugs to make newbies feel more welcome that is something that should be looked at. But the entire reason they exist is because the community has identified those categories of articles as articles which don't belong here. There are already tools available to notify people that something they created is up for deletion. If NPP need to be encouraged to use those tools, so be it. But right now there are at least two sets of eyes going over an article before its deleted. Both of which should be experienced editors. If a single individual is repeatedly making mistakes, take that up with them on an individual basis. I've also seen that done in the past many times.--Crossmr (talk) 08:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
We need actual resolution and outcome, yes. The fact that none of the people who started the "study" have bothered to follow up on it is hurting. Don't know where to go from here, they don't give suggestions. Usually when someone opens an investigation they have to close it too, with steps taken as an outcome. Not just write a few lines humiliating some editors and saying everything they did wrong, but it can be seen as extreme elitism that long-standing admins can participate in NEWT and then just go back to what they feel is actually important. We haven't actually decided anything from the whole experience besides "huh, CSD is a little off-balance" (which we knew already). The number of ANIs is probably nearing the number of undelete requests from the experiment by now. Why would some take this more personally? It completely promotes the idea that most editors have no voice and should not think on their own. Even though I haven't directly been touched by NEWT, this stil greatly angers me. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 09:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I started this, I paused this and I've already written some proposals based on things I've learned from it. I haven't walked away from this, but I would like more feedback about some of the proposals at Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD#proposals inspired by these tests before I make more suggestions. ϢereSpielChequers 09:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I can't see how anything can be proposed based on these tests. There was no scientific basis for these tests. They have generated no meaningful and useful data.--Crossmr (talk) 10:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I never said everyone walked off :) ...and precisely, it wasn't scientific, so what was the point? If there was never any actual purpose and no intention to use it to help the community, I would highly question motives and would demand some explanation from editors (there are a few editors in particular who seem to fit "did this for fun", at least). Since that is contrary to the most basic Wikipedia philosophy, they either need to explain why, or be held accountable. There's been enough damage and frustrating disruption already. Proposals are good, but despite how important the subject is to any new users, normal users who create a lot of new articles, and to anyone on NPP it's kind of disappointing there's not further participation. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 10:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
We're not going to solve a problem as pervasive as this very quickly--there would be quite a number of things that we would need to change, including attitudes that are not susceptible to formal regulation. I regard this as a very successful demonstration that there really is a problem. It's now that the hard work begins. Numerous proposals have been made in the past, directed at both articles and users--and both new users and admins--and should now should be considered once more, in view of the visibility. DGG ( talk ) 20:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
and what evidence would you give to support this non-scientific test at being successful at showing there is a problem? I've created 20 or 25 articles and never had any tagged, so my anecdotal evidence says there is no problem.--Crossmr (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I had an article tagged for speedy deletion as a newbie, even though I had made a basic assertion of notability. It was even deleted. I didn't understand why. So I politely asked the deleting admin why it was deleted, and said why I thought it met the guidelines that had been linked in the deletion rationale. The admin explained it to me, I found the needed sources, the admin agreed that the person was notable after all and undeleted the article. It wasn't a particularly upsetting experience for me. Of course, I was a real new user, and so I didn't behave like an fake one. I agree that this project is very useful at determining what interactions are like between patrollers and fake new users; is that a useful thing to know? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 21:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Fisher Queen is right here. I've also had articles tagged or deleted. You ask the mod to undo it and if you're polite they always do. This whole thing is a weird experiment to make Wikipedia into something that people who want to have virtually everything included in charge. But that will include a lot of terrible rubbish with untrue crap included. A few years ago, I tagged an article that claimed without proff to be about a tv program (Mr.rabbit or similar) for deletion. It was kept by mods who didn't check the links were briken. It soon became a meme on Digital Spy, with references to it being added else where. Eventually it was deleted by a mod amongst much complaints of fakers claiming to be new people who'd been biten. The mod took hell for it but was right the program didn't exist and WP looked like a patsy. So now you people have got WPto not NPPer new bpages. Great. Let the mods that did that fuck off elsewhere. But Digital Sy, /b, b3ta and other places will now create plausible but clearly crap pages instead. And WP will die a little more in plausibility. Not that you could go lower. I hope DGG is pleased with herself, spoiling the place that she likes (and yes i know that that's a now a personl attack because statements of fact are not good. So ban me). 80.176.233.6 (talk)
DGG had nothing to do with the creation of this project and most certainly isn't a "she" either. --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:25, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I did create this project and it certainly isn't my intent to "make Wikipedia into something that people who want to have virtually everything included in charge". This was created to test what happens to articles that don't meet our deletion criteria, so the fate of articles that do meet our deletion criteria shouldn't be relevant to this project. ϢereSpielChequers 17:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

A view on what we have learned from NEWT, and a suggestion

New pages patrol is dull, and hard work; and we need new pages patrollers. I think that what NEWT has shown is that there are new pages patrollers who are making decisions a little too hastily, perhaps without taking time to search for sources.

I think the issue is that the new pages patrol mechanisms encourage that behaviour. The danger is that a NPPer who takes time to perform a diligent search for sources will be beaten to the punch by a NPPer who is less thorough, so by the time they get around to tagging the article, someone else has already tagged it. This must be discouraging, and I see this aspect of the system as an incentive to tag as fast as possible in order to avoid the feeling of wasting your time.

Would it be possible to add a template, called something like {{NPP-assessing}}, to twinkle? This template would prevent other CSD tags from being added automatically. (The tag could still be added manually, which would hopefully prevent abuse of the template.)

That way, a NPPer can "lay claim" to the assessment of an article, in the same way that someone closing an AfD can add {{closing}} to it. And thus, the NPPer will then feel able to take more time over the new article assessment process.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 15:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a very good idea to me. What do other NPPers think - is that a significant problem? Olaf Davis (talk) 15:41, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I second Olaf's praise, but would say that as a former NPPer, when I wanted to do this I would simply mark the page patrolled (thereby rendering it invisible to my colleagues), and then spend 5 mins or so researching, safe in the knowledge that the article would not be speedied.  Skomorokh, barbarian  16:53, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
The concern there, Skomorokh, is that not everyone patrolling new pages is using the dedicated NPP tools. I think a lot of new pages are first examined by vandal-fighters using Special:Contributions/newbies where they don't even see if the page is patrolled or not.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 18:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Is it im/possible to add the patrolled pages shading to that page? 80.176.233.6 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC).
And wouldn't it be better if an idea like "{{NPP-assessing}}" was swapped for some sort of page-approval like they have at Wikipedia News (Wikinews? WikNews? sorry not sure). That would let people doing "NPPer" (?) have as much time as they could like to sort the goats from the sheep wouldn't it? 80.176.233.6 (talk) 20:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with that system - could you explain it? And it's Wikinews - so between the two of us we know what it's called and how it works! Olaf Davis (talk) 20:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Sounds terrible. Sounds exactly like ownership. I see no issue with the current process. If newbies feel bitten, and what evidence do we have to suggest that any significant amount of newbies do, then change the existing template to be softer and deliver a clearer message. NPP could be required to use certain tools to do the job which would automatically notify the user and check their talk pages for standard welcome templates, in the absence of which it would lay one down.--Crossmr (talk) 00:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
It is not ownership. It is extending courtesy to a fellow NPPer's view that there might be some reliable sources and a search is warranted. I would support this if a bot can be written to remove the template say 6 hours after it was added. Tim Song (talk) 04:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
That way, a NPPer can "lay claim" to the assessment of an article, how does that sound like anything other than ownership?[15]--Crossmr (talk) 04:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Because it is transient? Or do you think a {{closing}} template is also an ownership claim? Tim Song (talk) 04:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
The AfD process requires an admin to close the discussion and make a decision as to the articles fate based on the consensus generated during the discussion. That's entirely different to slapping a tag on an article and saying "Back off, I'm assessing this one" as that's the impression I get from the wording of "laying claim".--Crossmr (talk) 05:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
The proposal is basically a special case of {{inuse}}, which doesn't say "back off, I'm editing this" so much as "if you make a change while I'm working on this we might trip over each other's toes, so be careful". There'd be nothing to stop a second NPPer seeing the template and keeping the article open for a little while, then checking back on it to patrol it themselves if the first one didn't complete it - any more than {{inuse}} prevents someone else from working on an article. Perhaps "lay claim" was a poor choice of words but I don't see that the spirit of S Marshall's suggestion violates the spirit of WP:OWN. Olaf Davis (talk) 11:45, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

My friend Todwulff could create a autohotkey program which searched for sources on all new articles created, google books, google news, etc. Ikip (talk) 05:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec)*99% support of the NPPing tag, but it should be extremely polite, and basically say "hey it's under review, so if you're also on patrol you can move on or look around too". I don't see that as WP:OWN since there are plenty of things that are done solo more often than that anyway. ...If Twinkle is going to be added for that, I'm up to 100% support (and I'd assume Huggle eventually). Needs more *grumbling*Incubator project to one day ever be completed. I'd assume it would eventually wander into Huggle but I know that's entirely different. Honestly though, until the incubator procedure is finalized (if even, I know), the NPPing tag is only half the problem area adjusted (but still awesome). {{hasty}} might also be useful if it were reworded. It's practically never used so I doubt anyone would miss the old version. Oh, and the NPP would need a "version 2" for admins to mention a (theoretical) userify option. At least I think that's how things were leaning, but that part has nothing to do with me :) ♪ daTheisen(talk) 12:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I've got no problem with a template on the page saying "This page is under review, feel free to continue editing it". But the "laying claim" makes it sound like if someone puts the template on the page another editor shouldn't touch it. Sorry, that doesn't fly with me.--Crossmr (talk) 12:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
No worries. ANYTHING is an improvement from now, and I'm sure we'll end up with variants and welcome messages related, etc. Just getting this 1 thing out there is big. The odds a 2nd patrol would try to put up a tag at the same time is fairly low, but I will agree that it's not worth risking a NPP equivalent of wheel warring. We do dangerous enough work already and don't need to turn on one another :) Besides, without your version we'd risk things like one person spending 3 hours researching the same possible A7 tag just to find out that an article was a ridiculously good hoax as I did here[16]. Really brutal hoax. I think my experiment into "how far might you have to go to really learn everything about a possible A7?" went a little too far; I need to pound my head into a wall until I've reverted back to before NEWT started, I think. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 13:47, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I like the {{NPP-assessing}} idea, but see a risk both in it being seen as taking ownership, and I'm not sure how well a newbie editor would respond to such a template appearing on their article. I think that strategy:Proposal:Speedy deletion - 24 hour pause for some articles would address the same problem but without any risk of upsetting newbies. If you pause an article at new page patrol both you and the newbie could then continue editing it, and you would be unlikely to be disturbed by other newpage patrollers until the pause ended and the article reappeared at the top of "Special new pages". ϢereSpielChequers 17:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • The rather good ideas suggested by the IP address above need more attention in this discussion.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 19:47, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I've occasionally marked a page as patrolled before doing research if it looks borderline enough that another user may incorrectly tag it (in good faith, presumably) for deletion. But when I do that, another patroller may reach the article and tag it without knowing that someone's currently researching it. So I wouldn't mind such a feature as long as a) there is no claim of ownership (anyone else is free to tag or improve the article if they wish) and b) the message is newbie friendly (this sort of template could easily scare away new contributors if worded poorly). Reach Out to the Truth 19:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
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