User:AJCham/Newbie treatment at CSD

In October/November 2009 I participated in the "Lets all create an extra account challenge" - an experiment in which experienced editors would create an alternate account, and experience what it was like to be a new user trying to create an article, and whether the community was appropriately open and welcoming. I created the account User:ToonGamer, notified ArbCom of my intentions and set to work.

I created the article stub, Grainger Games. I deliberately chose to write about a company, as such articles are naturally (and correctly) scrutinised heavily due to the prevalence of spamming. I also chose a username that could potentialy be inferred as relating to the company (a video game retailer in Newcastle), without being an actual violation of username policy. (For the record, any inferred relation would be erroneous - I have no conflict of interest with the company.)

As much as I would have liked to appear as genuine a newbie as possible, I couldn't bring myself to committ the same deliberate mistakes others have done in order to achieve this. Therefore my stub was created with properly formatted piped wikilinks and citation templates. I did, however, purposefully leave the article uncategorised, I also added a non-specific {{stub}} template to attract stub sorters.

In spite of the above, I was able to carry out a test by editing the article a little at a time. I had the full stub already prepared in a text editor, and could have created it in one fell swoop. However, I feel it is not unreasonable for a new editor to create an article in small steps. Unfortunately, some articles get tagged or deleted within a few minutes, while the creator is at that very moment actively editing it. I should note that I am not free from blame here - I hold my hand up and admit that I have tagged a few such articles myself, although I now believe I was in error to do so. Anyway, I wanted to see if that would happen in this case.

It did.

The article was deleted twice by User:NawlinWiki as I was adding one sentence at a time. I feel that this kind of action is hasty, bitey and may in some cases represent a failure to assume good faith. Whilst the article as intially created did indeed meet the A7 criterion of failing to assert notability*, I think it is reasonable to give a short grace period. If the last edit to the page was within the last few minutes, it should be assumed that it is still being actively expanded and we should hesitate to jump to an evaluation of A1, A3 or A7, but give the editor a chance. It may only take a few minutes more for the editor to resolve that issue. Of course, this does not apply to blatant spam, copyright violations, vandalism, attack pages or other gross BLP violations.

* The second deletion, under criterion A3 (no content), was completely incorrect, but I assume that NawlinWiki accidentally pressed the wrong button when intending to use A7 again.

Interestingly, another editor suffered the same problem as I just an hour later, at the hands of the same deleting admin. He posted an objection on NawlinWiki's talk page here, and then a revised version here.

I left a comment at NawlinWiki's talk page after posting the full stub. I received a brief response at that page acknowledging that the page was now OK, and thanking me, which was great - however, I was not alerted to the reply, by way of a {{talkback}} template, for example. Had I been an actual new user, I may not have known to check back at NawlinWiki's talk page, and thus could have been left under the impression that no response was given.

To summarise

1. The article was deleted twice while in progress - my 'finished' stub however has survived the seven days of the experiment.
2. To my knowledge, the article has never been tagged - my understanding is that NawlinWiki deleted the articles whilst doing new page patrol, not in response to a CSD tag.
3. I was not welcomed - a speedy deletion notification was posted to ToonGamer's talk page, but nothing else.
4. The only other edits to the article have been to add it to a category and the use a more descriptive stub template.
5. I believe a new user may have felt somewhat ignored, on account of the fact that I was not notified of the response on NawlinWiki's talk page. I advocate use of talkback even for experienced editors, but it is especially useful for newbies.
6. I felt bitten - a new user who has their article deleted while they are still writing it could quite understandably give up there and then, and blog postings such as the one that inspired this experiment are an inevitable consequence.

In conclusion

I believe the community has room to improve in its handling of new contributors. But, I acknowledge that there is a process of give and take - we shouldn't push people away before they have a chance to learn how things work, but there is also onus on the new contributors to actually want to learn.

How do we do this? Well, hopefully this experiment will provide a useful resource from which we can all take on board some constructive criticism. I expect that the key points taken from our individual experiences will be compiled into a concise and convenient summary once the experiment has been concluded.

Offering additional guidance to new users after they create an unsuitable article may also be helpful. As a regular in the Wikipedia help and Articles for Creation IRC channels I encounter a vast number of users who have had trouble creating an article. Personal explanations of what the problem was and what they can do to improve their Wikipedia-related knowledge and skills go a long way. This doesn't necessarily require a great deal of effort either - it would be easy to spend a few minutes crafting one's own personal template, which one could then use as an alternative to the stock "your page has been deleted" templates. (I have drafted a version for myself, which I hope to improve further: User:AJCham/Deletion notice)

On the other hand, the user of a new account is automatically advised to consult WP:YFA, which should have given them this information anyway.

Certainly some users don't care for all that, and just want their article to be published - screw Wikipedia's ethos and customs. I don't wish to suggest we should be trying to make users such as those feel welcome - at the end of the day, not everyone is suited to Wikipedia, nor will they ever be, and we should be completely unapologetic about that. You've got to know when to give up on certain people.

So is any article by a newbie guaranteed to be deleted within 7 days? No. Whilst I did indeed see my article deleted twice, only a couple of sentences were needed to adequately assert notability, backed up by a couple of sources. Again, the new user is advised to read WP:YFA on trying to create a new page, so they have the opportunity to learn this before creating the page. I would, however, reassert my suggestion that new users be given a short grace period, should they decide to create the new page over the course of a number of small edits, rather than in one go.

I think what the blog post that inspired this experiment fails to take into account is that most of the articles that are deleted should be deleted.

Once again, I hope that the results of this experiment will prove to be a valuable reference point in future.

Finally, reading back on the above, I realise it seems more scathing of User:NawlinWiki than I intend it to. Really, I have no objection to NawlinWiki's work on the whole, and put into perspective the above are just a couple of relatively lesser points that may help us all, experienced and newbie, work together more harmoniously. With that in mind, I hope NawlinWiki accepts my comments in the spirit they are intended.

AJCham 19:50, 5 November 2009 (UTC)