Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Anonymous page creation

According to User:Tim Starling, a Wikimedia Foundation developer, there would need to be a consensus for anon page creation to be turned back on the English Wikipedia. This page allows comments to be added, and the community can assess whether this is a viable idea and the conditions under which it would occur.

Comment by Ryan Postlethwaite
I can see no harm in turning on anon page creation for a period of 30 days, as long as after this period has finished, we can take a long hard look at the whole process and evaluate whether or not we want this as a permanent feature. I think the developers should respect this wish, and if things turn out badly, they should be willing to turn off the feature right away. Likewise, if during the 30 day evaluation period there is a consensus to turn the creation off early, the developers should also consider this. There hasn't been the ability for IP users to create pages since 2005 and things change, it's certainly worth a try and we can always go back to how we are at present if the trial doesn't work.

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1)  Ry an P os tl et hw ai te  01:40, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) As long as, at the end of the month, we can say "this isn't working, screw it", there's no harm in trying it. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs (st47) 01:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) As long as consensus overrules developer discretion. —Animum (a rag man) 01:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Why not?  Mr.  Z- man  01:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Since turning it off was an experiment that never got evalutaed, we need to turn it on to run the expirement. The Placebo Effect 01:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) There's little harm in this idea, though there may be a built in bias. We'll hear all about the bad articles, but any decent articles or stubs we'll never know about. As long as that bias is taken into account, it sounds reasonable. -- Kendrick7talk 02:48, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Mtmelendez (Talk) 03:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Ρх₥α 03:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Doomsayers are wrong. Speciate 03:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) --- RockMFR 04:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Agree. I wasn't here when anon creation was "turned off" but it doesn't seem to have stopped the creation of junk articles.  Theres nothing stooping these anon users from making an account and then creating the article right away (except a few clicks of the mouse).  I would hope that anon users have to enter a confirmation code (CAPTCHA I believe its called), and it may be a good idea to add a feature to Special:Newpages which would allow a user to view only pages created by anons.   Sasha  Call   05:07, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) I think it's worth regularly testing the waters in the direction of more openness. Per Kendrick7's concern, I hope we're prepared to do a little before-and-after analysis this time. William Pietri 05:36, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) I support the idea, although I think some safeguards could be built in so that this can be turned off before 30 days in certain cases (massive vandalism, etc.). This might satisfy some who are opposed to this on technical grounds. Ante  lan  talk  05:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) Maybe it's the closet anarchist in me, or maybe it's the CAT:CSD masochist, but I'm curious to see what happens when we hand a few of the asylum keys over to the inmates. Metaphorically-speaking, of course. Caknuck 05:41, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) It works fine for all the other Wikipedias. It worked fine for us. Time to reverse this decision that was made as a knee-jerk reaction to negative press.  r speer  /  ɹəəds ɹ  06:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) We should try. As IP page creation was turned off without discussion (and of course without consensus) and there have never been any studies about that experiment, why do we need consensus to return to the status quo ante? Kusma (talk) 06:49, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Anon's have rights too.- gadfium 07:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 18) I think we should give it a trial. Davewild 08:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 19) Let's try. Other WPs have it and the world didn't end yet. Yes there is a lot of junk, but I know that some (sensible) articles are created in the Talk: namespace because the anon didn't want to create an account. -- lucasbfr talk 10:25, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 20) —Random832 14:15, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 21) Well said.  Neran e i   (talk) 15:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 22) - For it, we could learn a lot from this, either way it turns out from a 30 day trial. An old Chinese proverb: "Behold the turtle! He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out." Think along those lines. JoeSmack Talk 19:19, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 23) The end times are not nigh. The eschatonologists who are predicting this as disastrous to Wikipedia's survival are overreacting. The users who think tagging and deleting spam is comparable to wartime with metaphors about "trenches" and "air-raid shelters" galore border on offensive. Say No To Handwaving Freakoutery! Atropos 08:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 24) It's not like this is trying something completely untested.  Anonymous users could create pages for a long time.  In a perfect, non-vandalizing world, this is a good thing.  Turning this on for a month with a specific focus on monitoring it only adds to our ability to weigh the benefits of having something closer to a "perfect wiki" versus the harms of possibly increased vandalism.  And no matter what you think about gmaxwell's way of going about this, I don't think anyone can argue against his skills as a wikistatistician.  kmccoy (talk) 08:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 25) Seems like a perfectly reasonable experiment.  I'd like to see it have a shorter length though. -- John Reaves 08:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 26) Even if turns out to be a mistake, as least we'll know.  The risk is small, the potential benefits are big.--ragesoss 16:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 27) I was already to go do new page patrol, but then someone said that this wasn't happening. I support the open page creation, and this will bring in new editors. --Rayc 19:45, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 28) Yup, it will provide the raw data from which we may be able to extract some findings (and a reasonable set of failsafes in case it starts metastasising). LessHeard vanU 20:50, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 29) Agreed as per above. Travb (talk) 00:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 30) It's not that hard to deal with.  Let's give it a shot.  &mdash; madman bum and angel 03:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 31) Agreed.  +sj + 04:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 32) Agreed. Give it a try. Revert if tough. In particular, I think it needs to be turn on during Wikipedia Week. Anthere 08:07, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 33)  Wikidudeman  (talk) 22:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 34) It can always be turned off. Oysterguitarist 04:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 35) User:Veesicle 08:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 36) That's the critical point; it must be able to go either way (ie page creation on or off) if needed. James086 Talk &#124;  Email 09:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 37) Support the experiment. We need hard data on it. We lived with it for years, we can live with if for one more month.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 38) Agreed.  Jonathan —  end transmission  00:38, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 39) Yes. We need to undo this arbitrary change. Ab e g92 contribs 10:53, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 40) Agreed. Oldak Quill 15:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 41) Isn't Wikipedia an encyclopedia that anyone can edit? -- Taku 11:09, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 42) Disagree that it should be turned back off after 30 days, but since this seems to be the most popular pro-anonimous page creation comment, I'll just add my !vote here so that it counts.  Grue   12:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 43) We might need more administrators and some work defending the encyclopedia in Real life. But this is good. Marlith   T / C  04:31, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 44) Otherwise we can only speculate how it will turn out. - Rjd0060 (talk) 22:13, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 45) I support it keeping it on permanently. Wikipedia should be the "encyclopaedia anyone can edit". I was appalled that it ever got shut off in the first place. -Halo (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 46) Anthøny  12:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 47) 99.230.152.143 (talk) 18:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by W.marsh
Just adding the standard "I don't think an experiment is a good use of our resources" rebuttal. Basic arguments:
 * In 2007, of all the problems we face, "not enough new pages" isn't really one of them
 * Will create problems with WP:BLP as it will probably be easier for unreferenced pages to slip through newpage patrol
 * Even a 1-month trial will represent hundreds or even thousands of extra admin work hours dealing up with the undeniable increase in articles needing admin attention
 * WP:AFC exists, and requires a reference for new articles... which is something we can't currently do automatically.
 * Article quality, and backlogs related to newpages, such as Special:Lonelypages, have actually improved in the 2 years without IP page creation, despite massive growths in the total number of articles. Re-enabling IP page creation could mean a return to the 2005 era with lots of totally unreviewed articles (each one a potential Seigenthaler).

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) --W.marsh 01:54, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) —Scott5114↗ 01:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) --AgneCheese/Wine 01:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) --Rschen7754 (T C) 01:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Tim Vickers 02:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) T <font color="#0000C0">M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 02:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) – Steel 02:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) This is a Secret account 02:18, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) TerriersFan 02:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) - Euryalus 02:30, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) —  xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  02:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) - <font color="#0000cd">auburn <font color="#EF6521">pilot  talk  02:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) <font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain  <font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda  02:44, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) MER-C 02:50, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) David D. (Talk) 02:58, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Rekija 03:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Law/Disorder 03:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 18)  shoy  (words words) 03:58, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 19) Tim Q. Wells 05:49, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 20) — <span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#000066 1px solid;background-color:#E6E6FA;padding:0 4px 0 4px;">xDanielx T/C 06:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 21)  E LIMINATOR  JR  07:11, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 22) Graham 87  07:25, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 23) Max S em(Han shot first!) 07:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 24) -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v ) 08:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 25) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:23, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 26) One of the world's largest Internet sites is not a good place to run experiments on. --B. Wolterding 11:09, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 27) Plenty of downside for the encyclopedia with minimal upside. JodyBRoll, Tide, Roll 11:18, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 28) Absolutely.  Wizardman  13:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 29) DrKiernan 14:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 30) Of course. Acalamari 17:25, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 31) Carlosguitar 18:54, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 32) Sandstein 21:13, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 33) JoJan 21:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 34)  Krakatoa  Katie  00:34, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 35) <font color="Gray">Adrian M. H.  01:41, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 36) <font face="Verdana"> Sephiroth BCR  ( Converse ) 01:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 37) — J  A  10  Talk • Contribs 02:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 38) Unfortunately.  Eluchil404 09:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 39) --<b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 11:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 40) Marskell 13:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 41) PeaceNT 13:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 42) With over 2 million articles, Wikipedia should focus on quality instead of quantity. Allowing non-registered users to create articles will result in Wikipedia having thousands of low-quality articles which will take longer for registered users to wikify, categorise and improve. We will have to deal with more vanity articles and "BLP time bombs". --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 43) I'd actually go the other way and make page creation MORE difficult - we have serious quality issues which will not be helped by this proposal. --Fredrick day 18:26, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 44) Quality over quantity. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 45) I agree with Fredrick. We should still put the new page wizards and such that we were discussing. GlassCobra 15:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 46) Agreed with Fredrick day.  Perhaps semi-protecting page creation - a 4-day wait.<font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 20:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 47) Agree with W.marsh and J.L.W.S. -- Sandahl  01:54, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 48) Mieciu K 18:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 49) SmileToday☺(talk to me, My edits) 21:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 50) VirtualDelight 22:20, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 51) Kaldari 03:23, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 52) Jreferee    t / c  08:19, 13 November 2007 (UTC) Article creators typically are notified of an AfD involving their article and IPs don't stick around long enough to keep this a viable option.
 * 53)  Tewfik <sup style="color:#888888;">Talk  18:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 54) Agreed. B figura  (talk) 04:00, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 55) &mdash;Cel es tianpower háblame 20:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 56) -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 21:51, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 57) If anything we need MORE being done to stop the unceasing flow of libel, copyvios, spam, nonsense, and other crap. New article creaton turned off until a user's 30th mainspace edit, perhaps. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  15:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You may want to try to resurrect Autoconfirmed Proposal, then, where this was proposed as an amendment. Good luck with that, though - it seems these days, the two or three users who're guaranteed to show up in objection to anything are enough to prevent the developers from flipping any switches they aren't directly ordered to by the Foundation. &mdash;Cryptic 17:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) --Kevin Murray 18:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Wikipedia is no longer in an early stage in which unlimited contribution is necessary or proper. It's sad but true that registration is, I feel, the only gentle way of tweaking the flow of the Quality and Quantity faucets into something resembling equilibrium.  --Merovingian (T, C, E) 00:22, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Endorse - <font size="+1">R udget zŋ 17:07, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Endorse - I'm in favor of not allowing anon IPs to edit, period, let alone give them more ability to vandalize.   RGTraynor  12:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Endorse - I'd actually be in favor of EVERY new article by anyone registered or not who hasn't already created (one? five?) go through AFC. It'd really save time on AfD/db-X patrol.  -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 02:53, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Endorse - Though I'm rather against Mscuthbert's idea, because I admit it: AfC can sometimes be skewed, and perfectly good pages will sometimes be turned down simply to clear a backlog (which, incidentally, is now gone) or because of laziness of an editor. Temperal xy 01:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 12:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC).
 * 8) Endorse, WP:AFC is a resource which should not be forgotten in this debate.  --Chrisfow (talk) 17:02, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Shamess (talk) 14:42, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Bingo. Wizardman  02:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Definitely.    jj137  ♠ 22:07, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) with a heavy heart.--CastAStone//(talk) 22:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Tim Vickers
Sticking your finger into an electric shredder is not a sensible experiment, we know exactly what the result will be and confirming the prediction will be painful. Creating pages is already very easy on Wikipedia, and consequently a large proportion of what is created is complete junk. Editors who are motivated to contribute useful content are similarly motivated to register, while most casual vandals have no such motivation. Making article creation easier will do nothing to help our serious contributors and only aid those who wish to dump nonsense into our servers. At this stage in the project we need to focus on quality - this proposal would only be a step backwards. Tim Vickers 02:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) -- AgneCheese/Wine 02:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) --  Fun  Pika  02:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Creating a decent new article is time consuming. IPs make wonderful edits as they read articles, such as fixing mistakes, grammatical errors, etc. But creating a new page the right way takes considerably more time than most people will commit on a whim as they read another article. --W.marsh 02:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) The backlongs are already bad enough. Do we need more? Rschen7754 (T C) 02:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) – Steel 02:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) —Scott5114↗ 02:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) <font color="#CC0018">T <font color="#0000C0">M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 02:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) This is a Secret account 02:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) TerriersFan 02:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) - Euryalus 02:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) —  xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  02:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) - <font color="#0000cd">auburn <font color="#EF6521">pilot   talk  02:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) <font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain  <font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda  02:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) David D. (Talk) 02:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Definitely. MER-C 03:19, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) –– Lid(Talk) 03:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) why must we endure the hardship just to prove a point?  isn't that the point of WP:POINT? wouldn't this be a disruption on a massive scale? Law/Disorder 03:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 18)  shoy  (words words) 03:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 19) Rekija 04:15, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 20) -- Fuhghettaboutit 04:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 21) Right now, quality, not quantity, is what we want here.  Singu  larity  04:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 22) — <span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#000066 1px solid;background-color:#E6E6FA;padding:0 4px 0 4px;">xDanielx T/C 06:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 23)  E LIMINATOR  JR  07:12, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 24) Max S em(Han shot first!) 07:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 25) I can say that the moment Anon Article creation is turned on, we'll have so much new articles of complete crap that we'll need respirators to breathe.  One gem is not worth digging through a ton of offal. -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v ) 08:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 26) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 27) Neil   ☎  09:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 28) - JodyBRoll, Tide, Roll 11:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 29) The learning curve for anons is already steep enough when it comes to quality; letting anons contribute to low-quality quantity makes the problems even worse. I don't see how a 30-day experiment is going to prove otherwise. – sgeureka t•c 12:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 30) Ling.Nut 13:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 31) Exactly.  Wizardman  14:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 32) DrKiernan 14:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 33) We need to reduce our backlogs, not increase them. Acalamari 17:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 34) Admins should work on main space too. Any admin who worked on CAT:SD knows that you lose the whole day trying to clear the backlog. I do not want to see CAT:SD or WP:XFD increasing and leaving more work to admins for benefices of a minority.  Carlosguitar 18:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 35) Sandstein 21:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 36) &mdash; Coren (talk) 21:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 37) --Crusio 21:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 38) JoJan 21:52, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 39) We should be focusing on quality right now, and anons will probably not contribute to that. AFC is great; all articles will be referenced, wikified, and peer-reviewed. This process helps prevent growth of the backlog of articles with wikify and unreferenced tags; replacing it with anon page creation is a bad, bad idea. As other have said, a project this large is not the place to perform experiments, specially ones whose result are predictable. --<font color="Green">Agüeybaná  23:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 40) <font color="Gray">Adrian M. H.  01:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 41) <font face="Verdana"> Sephiroth BCR  ( Converse ) 01:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 42) Tim Q. Wells 02:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 43) — J  A  10  Talk • Contribs 02:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 44) And you think the deletion backlogs are bad now? Just wait until IP creation is open. It's like opening big can of worms. <b style="color:green; font-family:georgia;">Miranda</b> 07:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 45) --<b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 11:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 46) Marskell 13:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 47) --<b style="color:red;">Anthony.bradbury</b><sup style="color:black;">"talk"  14:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 48) An exercise in futility. KnightLago 14:13, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 49) The small percentage of non-registered users who wish to create useful articles should be encouraged to register and learn more about Wikipedia. Instead of writing a dozen stubs, they may write a dozen GAs. Furthermore, while vandalism to existing articles is easily reverted, if a non-registered user creates an attack page or an article that is patent nonsense, we will need an admin to delete it. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 50) --Fredrick day 18:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 51) -- θnce θn this island  <font color="#EC5800">Speak! 00:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 52) I agree, its bad enough that they can even edit much less create pages.-- Southern  Texas  05:44, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 53) This change is definitely a step in the wrong direction. The average quality of a Wikipedia page, in terms of edits per article, is gradually going down as more and more stubs are created; this will only accelerate that process, and give us much more work to do over at WP:SD as well. We do not need vast numbers of new pages; we need to improve the 2,000,000+ pages we already have. Terraxos 06:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 54) Who donated their hard-earned cash just so more hardware could be purchased to accommodate the junk coming this way? Spellcast 12:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 55) Creating an account isn't difficult, but does provide a slight barrier against those who don't wish to seriously contribute to Wikipedia. I don't think there are many serious contributers who have a problem with registering though, so I see no reason why anons should be able to create articles. Darksun 14:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 56) When our signal-to-noise ratio at Special:Newpages is already exceptionally low, it is not the time to say "Hey, we better make creating new pages easier!" If anything, it's time to say "Hey, maybe we better have some more restrictions on page creation." Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 57) What we need is not a larger amount of articles, but a larger amount of better (i.e. more reliable and beter written) articles.--Aldux 18:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 58) &mdash; BillC  talk 00:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 59) Quality not quantity!! <font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 20:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 60) <font face="comic sans ms"> Kwsn   (Ni!)  02:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 61) Robert Brockway 02:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 62) Peterkingiron 09:06, 12 November 2007 (UTC).  I would go further and want editting to be done only by registered and logged in users.  In this way, vandals can be idetnified and asked to desist.  On the articles that I watch at least 50% of the content supplied by anonymous users is vandalism, though I have not counted exactly.  I would suggest that new users should be allowed to edit at once, but should have sanctions applied if more than a certain (fairly high) percentage of their edits were reverted.
 * 63) SmileToday☺(talk to me, My edits) 21:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 64) VirtualDelight 22:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 65) Kaldari 03:24, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 66) Probably the most precise statement here. --<font face="Harlow Solid Italic" color="black">DarkFalls  talk 07:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 67) Quality not quantity. - <font face="comic sans ms"> Kathryn NicDhàna  ♫ ♦ ♫ 07:57, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 68) Perhaps a wizard would still be able to preempt some of the nonsense.  Tewfik <sup style="color:#888888;">Talk  18:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 69) Anyone could see this coming.  bibliomaniac  1 5  A straw poll on straw polls 05:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 70) With the rider that we should be doing more to stop the "complete junk" at source, rather than just arguing for the junk-rate-of-increase status quo.  Alai 19:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 71) &mdash;Cel es tianpower háblame 20:19, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 72) -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 21:53, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 73) If anything we need MORE being done to stop the unceasing flow of libel, copyvios, spam, nonsense, and other crap. New article creaton turned off until a user's 30th mainspace edit, perhaps. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  15:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 74) --Kevin Murray 18:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 75) Biophys 21:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 76) Agreed. --Bobak 23:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 77) There is no reason to waste time on an experiment with a clear result. As said above, doing so only represents what should be avoided as established in WP:POINT. SorryGuy 04:34, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 78) Please, no. Leave things as they are. --Michael Johnson (talk) 23:38, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 79) Endorse.   RGTraynor  12:49, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 80) Yeah, no purpose will be served by doing this.P4k (talk) 06:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 81) Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 12:27, 20 November 2007 (UTC).
 * 82) Right. Wizardman  03:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 83) The words: open, madness and floodgates come to mind! Well said Tim, pointless experimentation indeed! ><  Richard  Ω6  12  19:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by GRBerry
Account creation is a trivial task. If all page creators have an account, we'll at least have a place to talk to them and attempt to help them improve. If anon page creation is enabled, many pages will be created by editors on dynamic IPs, who will never see our messages to them. There is a real benefit for communication with page creators in requiring that page creators have an account. It is a lot harder to create a viable new page that will escape speedy deletion than to improve an existing page, so we should have a better communication/education system for page creators than we do for editors. If we do run the experiment, we might consider suspending WP:CSD during it so that we can at least leave messages for dynamic-IP page creators at a place they might look. But I think we don't have anything to gain from the experiment, so I'm not in favor of it. GRBerry 02:09, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) AgneCheese/Wine 02:15, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) —  xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  02:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) David D. (Talk) 02:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) well said. Law/Disorder 03:58, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Rekija 04:25, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) - JodyBRoll, Tide, Roll 11:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Good point! --Crusio 21:25, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Concur. hbdragon88 01:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) PeaceNT 13:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Those who really want to improve Wikipedia will register, and if articles newly-registered users create are not up to standard, it will be easier to communicate with them. Moreover, contributors who register will gradually become more familiar with Wikipedia's policies. As I said, instead of writing a dozen stubs, they may write a dozen GAs. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) <font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 20:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) Jreferee    t / c  08:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) --Shirahadasha 07:21, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 12:32, 20 November 2007 (UTC).
 * 15) Barno (talk) 21:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Whilst I also support Ryan's view, above, I see sense in what you are saying: I would rather interact with a registered account than an IP, firstly because there is more of a sense of talking to a "real person" than when posting a comment to a string of randomly-assigned numbers, and secondly because the dynamic nature of many IPs that edit nowadays makes if often difficult to ascertain that you are continually discussing with the one user: after all, there's no guarantee when one navigates away from Wikipedia and back again, you'll be on the same IP. No, registering an account is the preferable course of action, where possible. <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny  12:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 17) Agree. Account Creation takes, what? 10 seconds? If the person wants to contribute to Wikipedia, they can create a free account. --12.227.165.134 23:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Agne
I think amidst all this discussion it should be made clear that anon editing is not evil. On the contrary it can (and has been) very beneficial to Wikipedia. However, as W.Marsh notes above, IPs generally make better edits while improving existing articles that they are reading rather then with creating new articles. Many of us who disagree with this proposal have issues more so with the details of this proposal (the 1 month period, how the results will be measured etc) then with the anon editing itself.

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) Strongly, anon editing is very valuable.  —  xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  02:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) With emphasis on editing. - <font color="#0000cd">auburn <font color="#EF6521">pilot   talk  02:49, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Max S em(Han shot first!) 07:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Key word: editing. -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v ) 08:18, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Anon editing is essential for Wikipedia. Tim Vickers 21:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Good point.  Mostly because they're drive-by improvements, like spelling, rather than going in and completely replacing the entire thing.  (Unless they replace it with something like zOMG! i CAN EDIT THIS!!!!! or such. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 23:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) This is an important point to emphasize.  Eluchil404 09:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) We shouldn't forget it. Marskell 13:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) While I am opposed to anon editors being allowed to create articles, I strongly believe they should be able to edit them. (With the occasional exception due to semi-protection, of course.) Terraxos 06:28, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Absolutely. I saw tons of beneficial edits by anons while on RC patrol. It's only page creation I'm opposed to, anons should absolutely be allowed to edit existing articles. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Agree, anons should be able to edit articles.-- Sandahl  03:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * They can. This is about creating them. <font color="Black">J- <font color="Red">ſtan  TalkContribs 18:43, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I know it's about them creating pages which I am opposed to, but they should still be able to edit pages.-- Sandahl 03:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) User:Veesicle 08:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Anon editing is essential to Wikipedia, but anon page creation poses a bit of a problem.  Singu  larity  20:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Anonymous editing is what made Wikipedia Wikipedia. - ∅  ( ∅ ), 21:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Annon editing is beneficial to the project (for the most part), while annons creating new pages poses some problems that are already listed above. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 21:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) As you say, we need cold, hard facts on the benefits and costs of Anonymous page creation. Whilst one can attempt to foresee the results at present, or predict them with 2005's figures (when Wikipedia was a very different place), in all honesty we need to take our hypothesis and transfer it into the situation at hand: we need to try out Anonymous page creation. <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny  12:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Kendrick7
A bot would go a long way towards keeping WP:AFC up to date. For the most part, bad article submissions are immediately rejected, while decent submissions can languish for months (if you think I'm lying, look at this, submitted 2007-10-19, created probably only because it got mentioned here). I don't understand why that is, and I admit I'm not actively helping, but for whatever reason editors who do work there never get around to publishing the submissions that aren't rejected. A bot would be an ideal solution, though I wouldn't know where to begin writing one -- Kendrick7talk 02:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Editors seem to be keeping relatively current on submissions; January 2007 through August 2007 are completed. The problem seems to be clearing out the really old stuff from 2006. A bot would help only if there were consensus to accept everything submitted in 2006 that hasn't yet been rejected, but I doubt there is consensus to do that. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The point is the argument that "Oh, IP editors can just use AFC" when that project is constantly backlogged is completely misleading. WP:AFC simply isn't a well functioning part of the project; it makes the DMV and the Bureau of Consular Affairs look like models of efficiency. If it was called WP:Articles for Rejection or even WP:Redirects for Creation, I'd say it was doing a great job as those are the only tasks it ever stays on point with; actually creating articles is consistently an afterthought. Sure, I'm an inclusionist, but IP editor who submitted an article in 2006 shouldn't have to be still waiting, and IP editors who submit articles today shouldn't have to wait until early 2008 for the backlog to get caught up to them. A bot would keep this project from falling hopelessly behind again. I don't mean to curse the darkness rather than light a candle, but a bot powered bonfire would be better. -- Kendrick7talk 17:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You might want to wait until the proposed restart of anon article creation is definitely dead (it might be revived in some other form, perhaps as a well-defined experiment), and then formally propose a policy change - that AfC proposals that are older than a month and haven't been resolved be automatically accepted. I suggest 30 days rather than a week or two weeks, because a delay that long is - I think most would agree - unreasonable to the person submitting the suggestion, while a delay of week seems much more arguable to be acceptable. (As for a bot, that's really the tail on the dog - it's a good idea, but the community needs to accept the concept before working on the details of implementing it.) (And if you want this to happen, I strongly suggest that the new policy only apply to 2007 and beyond, and be phased in; this shouldn't be about past injustices, but rather about preventing backlogs from growing in the future.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Thanks for the feedback. -- Kendrick7talk 19:22, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) A bot that would automatically create any article that has remained in the list for one week? Tim Vickers 03:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Although I begged AzaToth to make a script to help with the Afc (User:AzaToth/twinkleclose.js), a bot would be useful too. <font face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#2A8B31">Ρх₥α  03:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Cryptic
I used to do a great deal of new page triage. I don't anymore, and mostly haven't since around the time anon page creation got turned off. While the initial reason why I stopped was due to lack of time, I haven't gone back for more than a couple hours every few months because turning off anonymous page creation removed three major weapons from the new page patroller arsenal while providing almost no benefit to speak of: The thirty-second speedbump that is account registration does not provide any measurable increase in impulse control. If a user had to be autoconfirmed before creating a page, that might&mdash;might&mdash;compensate for losing the above benefits. If you had to have a couple dozen edits before becoming autoconfirmed in addition to waiting the four days or whatever, that would help even more. Both of these proposals, however, went down in flames, leaving us with the worst of all possible worlds. &mdash;Cryptic 03:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) There was always a fairly reliable relation between the quality of newly-created pages and whether they were created by a bluelinked user, a redlinked one, or an anon; we've lost fully a third of this metric.
 * 2) The very worst sort of articles - such as the one that started the mess - can no longer result in anything worse than a 24-hour autoblock.
 * 3) Repeat offenders are now impossible to track. Where before someone with a static IP might make an attack article and be blocked for a day, make another and be blocked for a week, and make another and be blocked for a month, all we see now are three completely unrelated indef-blocked users.


 * Points 2 and 3 make no sense. Have you not heard of checkuser? – Gurch 09:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Checkuser might not be appropriate for fishing for attack page creators registering different accounts. In any case, it would certainly overload chekuser. Carcharoth 13:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you seriously suggesting NPP patrollers wade through the instruction-crept bureacracy of RFCU for every single account that gets an indef block for page creation? Especially when the first two points in the "Unacceptable requests" section all but guarantee it'll be declined, complete with patronizing Fisher Price "no" symbol?  Wikis have always relied on the principle that it's easier to repair damage than cause it; while that's never really been the case for page creation, it's currently less so than ever. &mdash;Cryptic 15:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Your claim that "Repeat offenders are now impossible to track." is simply untrue. Somebody re-creating the same attack page three times will see the title salted and their IP blocked. Tim Vickers 17:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I read that more as different pages created by the same person using multiple accounts. Mr.  Z- man  18:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) I wasn't around "back then" when anon page creation was turned off, but from my experience in other areas, this is an accurate assessment. (And I proposed limiting page creation to autoconfirmed users.) Mr.  Z- man  04:18, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) This is a convincing argument. Ante  lan  <sup style="color:darkred;">talk  05:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Given the numbers Dragonsflight posted on anonymous edit quality and my experience patrolling recent changes, this is very believable to me. It's certainly worth getting data to test the hypothesis. William Pietri 05:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4)  r speer  /  ɹəəds ɹ  06:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) I am one of the people who opposed the proposals making it harder to create new pages. I concur with Cryptic's comments on the benefits of getting the IP addresses of page creation vandals. Page creation vandals do not need to have the extra anonymity and privacy protection that comes with an account. Kusma (talk) 06:23, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Agree, it's a convincing argument.- gadfium 07:53, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Makes perfect sense. Throwing out the bathwater only makes it harder to determine what's actually wet. Oh, and there might have been a baby in there somewhere.... -- Kendrick7talk 05:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Well put.  +sj + 04:20, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) User:Veesicle 08:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10)   Grue   11:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Agree. Ab e g92 contribs 11:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) This is by far the major reason that IP new pages sound good to me. I would like to be able to block the perps for weeks at a time instead of being limited by a 24 hour autoblock. However, I would very much like to see Guy's suggestion for the page creation wizard implemented first. That would give us the highest likelihood of seeing net positive benefits. ··coe l acan 06:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Right, we had a problem with vandals. So as an experiment, we made it harder to stop them. Anyone else see the flaw in this logic? Rayc (talk) 16:55, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) Haukur (talk) 12:54, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) delldot   talk  06:43, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 16) Agree. --Gwern (contribs) 23:44 2 December 2007 (GMT)
 * 17) Absolutely. Od Mishehu 12:16, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by User:121.216.137.231
This is an absolute disgrace that anonymous page creation hasn't been turned on yet, it clearly had the support of one of the most experienced wikipedians, and given the endorsements here I'd say it has the support of the a large number of more senior wikipedians as well. You see the problem is I'm only on holiday for about a week, and every second that anonymous page creation is left off is time that I could be spending disrupting wikipedia when instead I have to do things like mind my younger brother. And it's not as if I can just create a new account and vandalise away, every time I do that I have to go through the letter confirmation thing which takes forever to get right. Seriously guys, I'm not sure if you know how annoying it is to try and create GG WIKIPEDIA JUST GOT SCREWED OVER and to be told to got through articles for creation, but it's got to stop. The sooner we embrace anonymous article creation the better. 121.216.137.231 09:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) Best argument against re-enabling anonymous article creation I've seen yet – Gurch 09:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Precisely. Yes, I know "how annoying it is [for you] to try and create GG WIKIPEDIA JUST GOT SCREWED OVER" (you can stop right there) because I have to deal with the resulting crap. MER-C 11:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Very funny. Hands up who logged out to make this point? Carcharoth 13:26, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) I'm tempted to nominate this IP in our next election for GodKing. Tim Vickers 17:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Carlosguitar 18:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Indeed!  A disgrace!  &mdash; Coren (talk) 22:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) You wanna disrupt something?  Harass 4chan; do us all a favor. -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v ) 22:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) You deserve a Barnstar of Good Humour. Maybe you should vandalise existing articles instead, or... (remembers WP:BEANS and decides not to finish his sentence.) --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Exactly. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 16:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - I don't endorse the summary, however, I'm concerned about this diff made on the IP's talkpage made by a registered user, who is calling the IP's comment disruption. In my view, it is not disruption and is simply his Point of View. Shouldn't the user that called it "disruption" get a warinng of some sort? Davnel03 18:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Pretending to be a member of a minority group in order to deliberately ape the worst stereotypes of that minority is distasteful and uncalled for. White entertainers who wore blackface were just expressing their "point of view" too. How is this substantially any different? I's gonna run away massah, and makes me some bad articles wit da white women! Hee haw! -- Kendrick7talk 19:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * (Of course, I understand that whoever wrote the faux-IP comment is British, and therefore lacks the American cultural legacy wherein this sort of thing isn't considered funny anymore. And I'm unsure how many levels of parody he meant to express. But I'm just as willing to cut those who do consider it disruptive the same amount of slack.) -- Kendrick7talk 19:21, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I am the registered user who referred to this as disruptive. Have you actually read this summary Davnel03? Its clearly a registered user who logged out to make a disruptive and sarcastic addition to this page. I think this section should be removed completely. I would have no problem with an actual IP editor giving a serious comment on this page. I actually think that would be a good idea. Atropos 19:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking at the IP's contributions, you do have a point. Do we know whose IP address it could be? I'm guessing it might be someone who endorsed the summary. I guess it's their way of making a point. Davnel03 20:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * One has, actually. Scroll down. -- Kendrick7talk 19:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) I find this very funny. We don't want it easier for IPs to make vandalism articles.  <font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 20:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Ha!!68.101.123.219 (talk) 01:06, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Desu desu! --Gwern (contribs) 23:44 2 December 2007 (GMT)
 * 4) Disagree You can't be serious,man.  That would go to AfD in under,what? 10-21 seconds? He certainly deserves that Barnstar of Good Humor.99.230.152.143 (talk) 21:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Statement by User:Random832
What we're all forgetting is that what's being proposed is not an experiment - it's the end of one. Disabling anon page creation was an experiment; and that experiment, until this is done, lacks a control group. But calling this an experiment is a mistake. Having Wikipedia be the encyclopedia anyone can edit has always been the status quo. But, if, as some have said, an experiment is not a good use of our resources, then let's abandon the experiment. —Random832 14:11, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) I think the experiment (no IP page creation) must have been seen as a failure by other language Wikipedias -- is there even one that doesn't allow it? Time for us to take a look whether it really makes a big difference. Kusma (talk) 15:52, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) The experiment of WP:AFC certainly seems to have failed to produce articles in a timely manner. -- Kendrick7talk 17:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) User:Veesicle 08:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) This. This. This. Absolutely agree. Ab e g92 contribs 11:04, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) delldot   talk  06:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Totally agree. The statistics, as parsed by Dragonsflight and others, are unambiguous: the experiment has been useless. To everyone arguing that this would increase vandalism: show some facts, not your subjective "Well, I think that bad things would happen and that's why we shouldn't re-enable anon page creation". The 'cure' has failed, and the cures for the cure, like AfC are themselves failures. --Gwern (contribs) 23:49 2 December 2007 (GMT)

Comment by John Broughton
I would support an "experiment" of 30 days IF the process for evaluating it were well defined, in advance, and there was consensus about that process of how the experiment would be evaluated. What would be particularly painful with this "experiment", as it is now, is that it won't resolve anything, precisely because we haven't defined the "before" period to measure it against, we haven't defined criteria to use to evaluate it, we haven't defined what results would or would not confirm that the experiment was or wasn't a success.

In other words, all this "experiment" is guaranteed to do, at the moment, is add a fight about what to do at the end of the 30 days, and since that certainly won't be conclusive, an ongoing fight about how to judge the results. And it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect those who supported the proposal in the first place to find statistics that show it worked, while opponents look for (or interpret) statistics showing the opposite. We already have enough work dealing with problem articles - whether at Articles for Creation or New Pages Patrol; we don't need a fight about an "experiment" on top of that. Turning anonymous page creation back on, now, is way, way premature. We need to agree ahead of time how to judge the experiment, and if we can't get consensus on that, exactly what would be the point of doing the experiment? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:21, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 14:21, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Well said. A lot of the opposition to this is more about how it's been handed down, rather than the general idea of an experiment. If well defined as you describe and done in as scientific a way as is practical, I'd probably support it... especially if combined with another 30-day trial of an autoconfirmed requirement for new page creation. We would look 3 months later at how many articles survived from each period and a control period... I think we'd get much more useful data and feedback from such an approach. Experiments shouldn't be done just to advance one favored course of action (IP page creation, in this case). Obviously most people are going to see the result they wanted anyway when the experiment seems biased. --W.marsh 14:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) An excellent point, but to be properly controlled you'd have to do anonymous page creation and registered page creation in a rotating pattern over the test period, I'd recommend changing every week, for at least eight weeks in total. This would give four comparable datasets. Otherwise the stats could be biased by an unexpected change in an uncontrolled variable between the test and control periods - for example a school holiday. Week-based test periods would also control for the obvious differences in editing patterns that occur between weekends and weekdays. Tim Vickers 17:53, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Tim, that's a good point too, but there is also the potential corruption of the data if the on/off pattern is publicly disclosed - it could be used to either rally vandal groups or be on "best behavior" for the trial; either of which would skew the results. Wouldn't it make more sense to implement it either in a blind experiment or at (seemingly) random deployment? As long as the results and data are disclosed after the fact and there are multiple independent observers, the test pattern doesn't need to (and shouldn't) appear predictable by normal users, IMHO. Just some food for thought; I'm not a statistician. Girolamo Savonarola 23:13, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think the benefits of pattern randomisation would offset the benefits of providing as closely-comparable data as possible, the major variables are probably time-based rather than user-behavior based, so creating closely-matched controls is probably more important. However, as was always drilled into me at university, if you don't consult a statistician before you run your experiment your results may well be meaningless. Tim Vickers 00:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Your point about blinding is a good one. The only way to assess this properly would be to strip all user ID information from the edits, randomise their order, and then assess them as good/bad. Once they have been assessed, you can then relate back to if they are IP/user and under which conditions they were made. Otherwise there will be endless arguments about the data and people will try to bend the good/bad classifications to fit their arguments. Tim Vickers 04:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You'd still have to take into account edit count though, obviously. -- Kendrick7talk 10:13, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Agreed.  I could support an experiment, but it would need more definition than the existing proposal.  We need to define some parameters and determine what we'll be analyzing once the 30 days are complete. JavaTenor 18:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Agree. Tough for the reasons given I doubt such a consensus would be possible. I also think that the efforts but into such an experiment even if well defined would better be used at the many backlogs concerning quality problems. VirtualDelight 22:45, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Excellent point. We are stumbling in the dark; we need more data on the project - but too often 'experiments' we run are so amateurish they are a joke. Let's explain how we are going to analyze anon's contribs and than turn it on. No need to vote; the project can handle it and needs data. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:00, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Agreed, without a reasonable experimental design we'll have no way of evaluating the change other than a long drawn out community discussion that will rely on anecdotes and instead of serious analysis. I can't conceive of an experiment design that wouldn't be easy to intentionally screw up in small scales; and I don't think we have the resources available to do a large scale experiment with good design.  One example where we lack the resources for a large scale experiment is checkusering IPs that create pages to see if they are regular editors who choose to create a page while logged out in order to influence the experiment outcome - we don't have the checkusers, even if policies allowed this to be done.  Those who think there is a meaningful experiment to be run here need to propose a design that has at least a chance of producing meaningful results; "just do it" is not such a design.  GRBerry 21:58, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) That would be a good idea to make an experimentation before we can completely allow anon page creations. However, I suspect, that there will be an explosion of non-sense page creations, test page creations and simply pages with vandalism only. I could support it as long as there are ways that would limit the number of nonsense page creations. JForget  18:43, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Aecis
As much as I support welcoming new and anonymous users, the cons definitely outweigh the pros in this case. We're already dealing with enough problems as it is. Enforcing our BLP and copyright policies is difficult enough. Too much BLP violations, copyright violations and vandalism already go unnoticed. Opening up article creation to unregistered users is bound to open a floodgate of even more vandalism. And it's not necessary. If new users want to contribute to Wikipedia, they can already do so at existing articles. If they want to create articles, they need to register an account. That's a useful threshold or barrier. It helps us reduce the amount of garbage we receive. Anon page creation will definitely improve the quantity of Wikipedia, but at the expense of the quality. And as Jimbo rightly said a few years ago, we need quality over quantity. A ecis Brievenbus 02:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1)  A  ecis Brievenbus 02:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) All too true. -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v ) 02:45, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Well said. --<font color="#CC0018">T <font color="#0000C0">M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 02:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Anons that are serious about creating articles will find themselves at AfC, or create an account. It is already very easy for them to create an article, and we get a lot of garbage even with that barrier. Tim Q. Wells 03:13, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Evidently Wikipedia does not follow the conventional wisdom that "prevention is better than cure". Why invite more vandalism, patent nonsense, vanity pages, attack pages, "BLP time bombs" and copyright violations? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) --<b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 16:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) --Rschen7754 (T C) 00:42, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) I've said as much above. Terraxos 06:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9)  For God's sake anons, if you find it necessary to make a horrible article, just create an account!  Well said.  <font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 20:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) DrKiernan 11:16, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) I agree. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 22:00, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Quality over quantity any day! (Although I do sometimes enjoy smashing stupid vandalism on NPP :D) --carelesshx talk 06:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Should this go ahead...
I think we need to turn to sister projects, and have a look at where they are at in relation to problems/benefits of IP page creation enabling. Then we need to make the necessary amplifications of these things to befit en.wp, particularly the problems. I think that, should this idea go ahead, that we should move cautiously, and experiment, before doing anything big. See how it goes for a specific period of time. See how large the CSD backlogs become. And, after that time, we can examine the carnage, and have a long discussion about whether it was a good idea.

Should this be approved, we will obviously need to more heavily patrol the already often overflowing CSD backlog, particularly the nonsense and non-notable sections of the category. Changes will need to be implemented in various regions of policy, and in the very text of the corresponding pages. Other things need to be considered, other than just the actual re-enabling; the fact that IPs are only very rarely indefinitely blocked is another factor to be considered, for example.

The most important thing we need to ponder on is the actual benefits that the project as a whole will have should this page creation by IPs be re-enabled. We need to ask ourselves what portion of the pages these IPs are going to create are going to be kept. We need to think to ourselves 'Are we going a little bit far with some of our core beliefs when we are deciding to allow this, such as WP:AGF?'

My personal opinion
My personal opinion is that page creation will result in large dents and punctures in the quality of the content, with only minor returns. In the eyes of much of the world, in the eyes of a great deal of the press, in the eyes of many critics, and in the eyes of even many of our readers, Wikipedia is already unreliable, vandalism-wrought and flawed, on so many levels. Do we really want to allow them to be more correct in their assumptions, to have more excuse to call the project tarnished and broken? Do we really want to willingly make a move that will probably ultimately reduce the quality and accuracy of the encyclopedia as a whole? I suppose that can be left to whoever has the onerous task of finding consensus among but a small portion of those who will be affected, among but a relatively small group of people who don't even fairly represent the whole of Wikipedia, let alone its millions of readers.

What can come of this?-- Anonymous Dissident  Talk 07:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this comment

 * 1) Good comments. Tim Vickers 08:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) <font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain  <font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda  03:56, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) How true.  <font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 20:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Agreed.  Singu  larity  00:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Agreed. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 22:01, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) <font size="+1">R udget zŋ 17:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) I agree. Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 12:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC).

Comment by 86.42.90.189
I'm very disappointed by how uncommitted some registered editors are to an encyclopedia anyone can edit, one even to the point where he would log off and comment here as a joke. What happened to the ethos of being bold, of ignoring structures and procedures if that sort of thing bothered or intimidated you, of Wikipedia being open and self-corrective, of avoiding the endless politics that can go on without you? Were these not part of the project you signed up for? Yes, it will be work dealing with inappropriate articles. But vandalism can happen anywhere right now, in articles that are supposed to be of worth to people searching for them. Any article that gets created through this that is not vandalism is not worthless, there will be some return on those. Stop distinguishing between anon and reg editors. "180 IP addresses or IP ranges had written at least 50 articles, accounting for over 21,000 articles." - Wikipedia Signpost. Apologies for yet another comment. Couldn't find one that fit me close enough to write under. 86.42.90.189 09:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this comment

 * 1) I completely agree. The overall tenor of the discussion here ignores that the vast majority of IP edits contribute positively to the encyclopedia. The WP:BURO WP:CREEP problem with the experiment of banning IP article creation, now the entrenched status quo, is obvious; it just creates another tier of people, one registered editors can look down their noses at, which is why WP:Articles for Rejection functions as smoothly as it does. -- Kendrick7talk 10:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Anybody can register, so anybody can create pages. The only restriction we apply is that they must be able to solve a CAPTCHA. Tim Vickers 18:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) I agree. I cannot see spampage creation increasing significantly with this change. It would, however, increase our appearance of openness. Atropos 20:24, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Concur, with suggestion per Tim Vickers. LessHeard vanU 21:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Just to be clear, that means that 180 IPs had created over 50 articles each when that article was written in November '05.  Agreed with this post.  And almost everyone is ignoring the tremendous work done by some of our longest-lived anonymous editors, who rank among the top editors of all time.  +sj + 04:23, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * To be even clearer, this was as of 5 November 2007 rather than November '05. ;) 86.42.83.73 (talk) 10:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) User:Veesicle 08:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Completely agree. Some people here don't seem to understand the spirit of Wikipedia.   Grue 
 * 3) Agree on philosophical grounds.  We can handle it.  Fishal 23:08, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) yes. (and 21k articles across all of them means that, on average, those 180 IPs had created over 100 each) —Random832 21:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Agreed. Turning off just article creation seems kind of arbitrary to me, as does the barrier we've put in place, registerring an account. It seems like just a way to get fewer contributions, which does indeed cut down on unconstructive edits, but this is a wiki, and I think our avenues for dealing with unconstructive edits work pretty well.   delldot   talk  06:51, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) His really makes more sense than the other IP address's comment. Agree,but I probably won't create any personally. 99.230.152.143 (talk) 21:21, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion by Hildanknight
I have to sleep soon, and will type out a detailed statement explaining why I oppose allowing non-registered users to create articles tomorrow.

However, I feel compelled to suggest a better way of determining consensus. We should split the page into "Support allowing non-registered users to create articles" and "Oppose allowing non-registered users to create articles" sections. In each section, supporters (and opposers) of the proposal could place their arguments in a numbered list. Those who support (or oppose, like I do) the proposal could sign in the relevant section. Beside their signatures, they could include the numbers of the arguments which form their rationale for supporting (or opposing) the proposal. For example, if I opposed the proposal due to arguments 3, 5 and 10, I would add this to the "Oppose" section:

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC) (3, 5 and 10)

This would allow us to readily determine whether most are in favour of or against the proposal, and, more importantly, which arguments carry the most weight. A group of experienced admins (which could include Jimbo and members of the Foundation) should close the discussion in accordance with community consensus, bearing in mind the main arguments presented by both sides (this is particularly important if the community appears to be evenly split on this issue). Allowing non-registered users to create articles is a significant, Wikipedia-wide change, and I fear that if a single admin closes this, as is the case for AFDs, their personal biases could affect their decision (especially if the community appears to be evenly split).

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It would be good to create a page similar to Attribution/Poll, but I think, there is already no consensus to enable a new experiment. Carlosguitar 17:33, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup, not really needed now; while this isn't quite WP:SNOW, it's clear that the large majority, of those expressing an opinion, doesn't want anon editors able to create new articles. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:12, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Hardly. It should be no surprise that the first people aware of this RFC were people following the village pump discussion, and that the people following the village pump discussion were against anon page creation, because people for it thought it was going down and stopped paying attention. The first half of the endorsers for the Tim Vickers summary were made in 6 hours and 15 minutes, while Ryan Postlethwaite is continuing to grow as more people become aware of the discussion. It should also be noted that this is entirely without anything from GMaxwell, the originator and primary supporter of the proposal, and that 92% of the endorsers of Tim Vickers' commentary sign with only their name (or a word like "Absolutely"), 86% of the endorsers of Ryan Postlethwaite's commentary add their own arguments. This is not a vote, right? Atropos 22:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that invoking WP:SNOW is a stretch. I've also left a note on GMaxwell's talk page so he's aware of the RFC. -- Kendrick7talk 22:45, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * At the 6 hr 15 minute point, the count was 17 versus 52 (23+24+5). As I write this, the count is 37 (32+5) versus 109 (44+55+10), including only the first four comments and endorsers, and the most recent (which are the ones that seem most clearly to be for/against). Wikipedia isn't a democracy, and this isn't a vote, but I don't think the numbers show any significant change from the initial trend. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:26, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, well I was mostly looking at comment 1 versus comment 2 or 3, not comment 1 versus 2 + 3, and 2 and 3 are essentially different versions of the same argument with many endorsements by single editors present in both. So, as far as whether it is snowing, I'm looking at 32 versus 45 or 32 versus 55, not 32 versus 100. -- Kendrick7talk 16:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * If I wrote "anon page creation should be enabled" in 2 other ways and those other 38 people signed each of those would we have 115 votes? There is such a huge amount of overlap between the different opposition votes the only fair way is to count the one with the most votes (now 32 to 57). Atropos 18:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's still no consensus. Even if hypothetically the count were 57 in favor to 32 opposing, that still would not indicate a clear consensus. When the supporters are the minority, it's quite clear that consensus is not yet present. That's not to say we can't continue the discussion, or that a future argument might not change minds, but at this point it's clear that the consensus that Tim Starling said must be present isn't actually here. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No one said it was. We're saying its not a snowjob. Atropos 22:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

(undent) Yes, everyone agrees it's not WP:SNOW. On the other hand, I've not seen any disagreement with my figures on the trend. It's correct that there is a lot of double or triple endorsements: when I combined 2+3+4 (NOT just 2+3) and eliminated duplicates, I got 68 (as opposed to 115); that still means that 10 editors didn't endorse #3 (at 58 at the time I did my count), so 1 versus 3 isn't quite the right comparision, though it's much closer than my original figures. That puts the matter at something like 33 to 68, and yes, some (whose?) opinions should be discounted because this isn't a real vote. In any case, I'll stand by my assertion that we're not seeing any trending away from the initial reaction to the RFC (roughly 2 to 1 ratio of oppose to support opinions). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Thebainer
Anon page creation was always the easiest thing to deal with: it popped up all red and numbery in the page creation log, and could be easily flagged in vandalism tools. It was incredibly easy to identify such pages, check them out, and deal with them if necessary. I would think that disallowing anon page creation has only made it more difficult to deal with drive-by vandalism, since it now consists entirely of inserting vandalism into existing articles, where it can easily get lost (which was the problem in the first place).

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) bainer (talk) 03:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) This is akin to what User:Cryptic wrote earlier. And people forget that while stopping anon page creation was touted as the solution to the Seigenthaler controversy, you are correct that it had nothing to do with the actual problem (i.e. unless something has been oversighted that I don't know about, his page wasn't created by an anon). Banning anon page creation as a result of some later vandalism is simply project phase five. OK, I take that back. Thanks for figuring this out Cryptic. -- Kendrick7talk 03:45, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, revisions of that article were overseen (or at least removed from the db—did we have oversight yet at that point?). The libelous version of the article was written by an anon in May 2005, some four months earlier than the oldest visible revision, as detailed in Seigenthaler controversy; this is how Brandt tracked him down.  I don't recall whether the anon created the article or just vandalized it; Seigenthaler controversy alternately implies both (the former in the lead, the latter in the Hoax section), but doesn't state it outright. &mdash;Cryptic 12:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I was an IP editor until they stopped letting IP editors create articles, but I had always been given the impression this began as IP vandalism, not IP page creation. Kinda ironic we keep around this massive database of article histories, but its not there when we need it. Who would know the answer to this? -- Kendrick7talk 17:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The offending revision has only been deleted, not oversighted. Admins can view it here. Kusma (talk) 09:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * So do I get a straight answer then? Was the problem vandalism or new page creation? -- Kendrick7talk 17:15, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Creation. The article's deleted history is strewn all over the place, but the only revision I can find older than the one Kusma links to read "John Seigenthaler SR"; it was deleted three minutes after creation. &mdash;Cryptic 19:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Yes; see Cryptic's note above.  +sj + 04:21, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Agree, the amount of vandalism across WP is unlikely to increase - some of it may just be redirected to new article creation which, as said above, is far more easily moderated. LessHeard vanU 10:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It's easier to AFD an article than hit "revert"? And what about pages that shouldn't be deleted, but need large amounts of work, like referencing, expert attention, etc? Deleting or reverting vandalism is trivial... it's the newpages that aren't quite vandalism, but still need large amounts of work to make them not be eyesores. These are exactly the kinds of articles new users are most likely to create, too... under the current system. Actually doing newpage patrol is kind of important to understanding this situation... it takes 2 seconds to delete a vandalism newpage... it can take hours to deal with one on a probably legit topic, but that arrives in the typical disastrous state of many newpages. --W.marsh 18:40, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:TIND. I'd rather have a page around that's an eyesore than no page at all. In the example you describe, you'd at least have a chance the IP editor would still be around to help improve the page, unlike WP:AFC, where by the time a submission gets published the submitter will have long since moved on (likely to a quiet nursing home by then). -- Kendrick7talk 19:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Have you read WP:TIND? It says "Wikipedia is not Wikinews and has no need to scoop anyone. Turn this into a strength by working on your article in your userspace or scratchpad until you have the best possible article, fully referenced, a masterpiece of neutrality. " this doesn't seem to support the idea of creating bad articles that need a lot of work. --W.marsh 19:09, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course that is the ideal -- though I confess I almost never create articles that way -- but there's still no deadline to get from point A to point B, and there's no self-appointed martyrdom required to accomplish this at some arbitrary breakneck speed. The "many hours" you complain about can be spread across many users and even many years, at the end of which we would have a good article, as opposed to no article at all, which would seem to be your own preference. -- Kendrick7talk 20:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The "many hours" may also be needed to determine it's not a hoax... AFDs take time and energy even if the result is a "delete". The thrust of the "there is no deadline" page you cited is that there's no deadline for having 2 million or 5 million articles... so why not do what we can to make sure they're decent articles. --W.marsh 21:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah. New page patrol sucks. We all know that. What we don't know is if anon page creation will really make all that many more crap pages. Account creation is easy right? Atropos 21:43, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, a lot of people supporting this change never do new page patrol... so I wonder how much they know about it. At any rate, why not do a true experiment of all three theories here, and test autoconfirmed page creation (4 day waiting period)? Why not test an improved article creation process with a wizard? Why do we have to make just this one change that supports a particular ideology? --W.marsh 21:46, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * And by the same token, most people opposing this change have never submitted an article to WP:AfC, about which I've already made my opinion clear. You are using big words like "autoconfirmed" which I don't understand, but I'd be perfectly happy to reach some sort of middle place between the current "leaking spigot in the dam" accounting for any IP article creation at all versus just "opening the floodgates." -- Kendrick7talk 22:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Autoconfirmed just means a 4-day waiting period before an account can create a newpage, as I was trying to explain. --W.marsh 22:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ideology? That's a strong word. I support reverting back to allowing anons to create pages because the disabling was a PR move made by Jimbo without consensus or discussion which had no real effect. There should be as few restrictions as possible, and this is one that doesn't help anything. For what its worth, I have patrolled and tagged new pages on occasion when I felt like some grinding. Atropos 22:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * "There should be as few restrictions as possible, and this is one that doesn't help anything. " that's just your theory, though. My theory as that newpage creation is not a good task for most inexperienced users, so encouraging them to get some experience first before tackling a newpage will help everybody. Why do we only get to test your theory? --W.marsh 22:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, I take W.marsh's point that AdF'ing is more labour intensive than rollback, but new page vandalism is far easier to spot. Finding easy, dealing with it harder - and vandalism on established pieces can be the opposite. As for the effort required in getting a marginal new page up to scratch, isn't this the case already? The "enthusiast over style" created article editors are just as likely to get themselves an account to get their vision onto WP, creating them as ip's mean we get them a few days earlier (no real change in quantity after the initial rush). I don't do New Page Patrol (maybe I should?) but I do AIV and a far amount of vandalism is new - and recreated - attack pages; so the dedicated vandal will take that time anyway (and create socks to continue it). One possible further upside is when an account is created the individual should have some working understanding about article creation (if that's what they want to do) after trying it as an ip. LessHeard vanU 23:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Yes. Kusma (talk) 17:46, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Duh. --- RockMFR 05:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Good point.  Grue   11:15, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment/Proposal/Suggestion by Lincalinca
Anon page creation is general, as a rule, a poor idea to reactivate. To note that the Wikia projects agree with this by the fact that they have it disabled has to suggest it's not being encouraged far and wide, even by those who do have an erroneous amount of crap (sorry, that's a bit of original research I thought I'd share with you all, about the quality of the Wikias). However, I do have to say that for privacy reasons for the concerned IP editors who actually do a lot of good work, some just don't want to register, but do a damn fine job (I'm sure any of you who's been a general Wikipedian, rather than centralising on one article or topic will have some across these dedicated IPers, hell I even gave one a Barnstar).

What I propose is to identify sole-user IPs who have established an intent to better Wikipedia and allow individually on and IP to IP basis as to whether or not to allow their IP to create articles and upload media. Until that happens, they can always sandbox in their IP and got to WP:AFC to have their articles uploaded. It shouldn't be like an RfA where the community decides, but simply a request by the IP editor, a quick scan by the crat or sysop (whichever way is decided) and decide based on their established use whether to roll the dice or not.

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) linca  linca  11:19, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - dynamic IP? Someone could spend hours working on an article in their sandbox or have heaps of good edits, or conversely have plenty of vandalism, and then their IP changes and noone knows about it
 * You're exactly right, but it's the price the IP users pay. Note that most IP users who vandalise eventually just register an account after resetting their modem anyway, and we do have a lot of users who roam, but this to me is the only type of article creation model I can get behind, unless someone proposes something I haven't thought of. -- linca linca  09:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) I agree with this statement, but there needs to be something added about dynamic IPs. I have seen good IPs, and I am grateful to them. -Jéské ( Blah  v^_^v ) 22:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by TML
There is a saying in Chinese: 不入虎穴，焉得虎子 (How can we retrieve the baby tiger without going into the tiger's nest?)

If we don't take this risk, how can we get results? Besides, Wikipedia doesn't have much to lose with this experiment, as it involves creation of content, not deletion of content. If it turns out to be a success, then great; if not, we can terminate it at any time.
 * Our most dangerous PR controversy, that could have well started us on a downward spiral as a project, came out of our then-inadequate ability to handle newpages... the fact that such a thing hasn't happened in 2 years strongly suggests we've improved our ability to handle them. I'd say we have a great deal to lose by upsetting the current balance we've achieved through 2 years of hard work. --W.marsh 13:05, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * To what PR controversy are you referring? kmccoy (talk) 23:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess I assumed you meant the Siegenthaler thing, but then I didn't understand how that connected to new page creation. I just read above that there's some sort of link, so never mind. :) kmccoy (talk) 23:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it's more that the community has grown a spine since then. I was around for Seigenthaler, and I was greatly disappointed in how many people acted like they were Chicken Little with a head cut off and the sky was falling (if I may mix expressions there). Perhaps people actually have a sense of perspective these days about such matters. --Gwern (contribs) 23:49 2 December 2007 (GMT)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) TML 09:52, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) As commented previously, it was the turning off of ip article creation that was supposed to be the experiment. Well, that is now the status quo - and it may be time to check if the template is still valid. There will be very many people keeping an eye on matters should it be turned back, so the likelihood of something horrendous slipping through is very unlikely. It may even be the case that a couple of good articles might be created. It's worth the try. LessHeard vanU 20:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) I agree with this summary. While I am pessimistic about the potential results, I realize that we need to try it at the very least to know whether or not it will be a good thing. Life, Liberty, Property 18:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Endorse, per LessHeard vanU. <font color="#2A8B31">Anthøny 12:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by James086
If you look at CAT:CSD, the backlog is usually between 50 and 200 pages and rarely outside those bounds. That is when the creator has to sign up and wait to create a page. Most of these are non-notable people, bands and companies (A7). If we allow anons to create pages I think the number of vandalism pages ("lollollol James smellz" etc.) will skyrocket and the pages that would otherwise be deleted will get through. In short, I think that the large number of nonsense and vandalism pages will distract new-page patrollers from the A7 articles.

That said, I have no objections to a test run of a month. James086 Talk &#124; Email 09:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) Well I endorse my own comment obviously ;) James086 Talk &#124;  Email 09:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest that the people creating the page "lollollol jamez smelz" would otherwise be vandalising existing pages with "lollollol jamez smelz". People may be falling for the possible fallacy that the amount of vandalism will increase with ip article creation, rather than it being the same vandals in a different (more easily patrolled) area. LessHeard vanU 21:20, 13 November 2007 (UTC) (ps. I have now done some Newpage patrolling...)
 * Vandalism newpages can be dealt with very quickly and a rise in them is not a serious problem. It's the more marginal pages that can take 30 seconds to create but hours to deal with responsibly that are the real problem. "Bob is gay" is easily enough deleted. "Bob is a guru of off-belt Karate in Los Angelos who won the Calitzo prize in 1998"... can't really speedy delete it. It might be BS, it might be vanity, it might be a legitimate topic. If the creator had provided us with a reference it would be a lot easier to figure out what to do with it, but instead he's thrust a task upon us that will take a good deal of time for us to deal with properly. The reason CAT:CSD gets so backlogged isn't just the number of items added to it every hour - if they were all vandalism, we could have twice or even thrice as many items and no serious backlog. You can delete 3-5 a minute if they're all vandalism or test pages. The reason CSD gets backlogged so notoriously is the ones that aren't quite speedy deletable under a literal reading of CSD, and need a lot more time to even figure out what the article is, let alone what to do with it.
 * The point is that a rise in vandalism newpages isn't really the danger here... it's a rise in the number of pages that start out like Seigenthaler's did. Maybe it's BS, maybe it's vanity, maybe it's a valid topic. Takes a lot of time to deal with... and the less experienced the creator, the less likely they'll help us. Again, this is why people who do newpage work cringe at the idea of letting even less experienced people create newpages... the problems here really aren't obvious until you're actually down there working with these things. --W.marsh 03:01, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I just re-read my original comment and it wasn't too clear. What W.marsh said is pretty mcuh what I intended. I'm not worried about the number of vandalism pages, it's the ones that you have to think about. If there are heaps of G3 pages then I think the possible A7's which require more than just zapping will slip through the cracks and we will end up with lots more low quality stubs which should have been deleted. James086 Talk &#124;  Email 06:35, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Guy
I have no philosophical objection to anon page creation, only a pragmatic one: that it will overwhelm our ability to keep up with the firehose of crap. May I suggest that as a first step we implement the new article wizard for all new page creation in mainspace, see if it has a measurable effect on the quality of new articles, and then try for anon page creation. Guy (Help!) 14:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) While this wizard just kicks IP editors back to AFC (I checked), this could be a step in the right direction. Actually, if we made everyone go thru WP:AFC, that area of the project would get a lot more attention. The only problem with this wizard is it makes the job for editors who publish WP:AFC submissions one more step more difficult. -- Kendrick7talk 17:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, yes. I think I'd like to see what IP editors come up with (there are some good IP editors), but to be honest it is difficult for new users to make a good new page. The wizard could tip the balance. This makes the idea of IP new pages much more attractive. ··coe l acan 06:34, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Walton
The philosophical questions are unimportant here. Wikipedia may have been founded as "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit", but this need not be taken literally. From the point of view of the general public - and remember that Wikipedia has thousands of times more readers than editors - it is far more important that Wikipedia should be a reasonably reliable and useful resource than that it should comply with abstract philosophical principles. (Hard as it may be to believe, I've talked to many, many people in real life who simply never realised that they could edit Wikipedia; you'd be surprised how many simply never spot the "edit this page" button. :-))

What is important is the practical question; will this move be detrimental to the quality of our encyclopedia? The answer is a resounding Yes. Simply put, it will vastly increase the volume of crap created on a daily basis, and will have a negligible effect on the level of creation of good content. Let me clarify; I am not one of those who argues that unregistered users shouldn't be allowed to edit at all. Most of our typo corrections, for instance, are carried out on a casual basis by ordinary readers who do not have registered user accounts. Some beneficial content is also contributed that way. But those who are serious contributors, and have an interest in creating pages, are generally willing to create accounts.

Many above have raised the problem of CAT:CSD, which would unquestionably become much, much fuller if we re-enabled anonymous page creation. CSD is one of the worst backlogs on Wikipedia already. Emptying it is very dull and largely menial, yet at the same time not always easy; it's essential that the deleting admin always check the page history to make sure it hadn't simply been vandalised, and that they exercise some level of judgment in deciding what fits the criteria. It's well-known that we don't have enough active administrators. I used to be one; I resigned that position because I simply didn't have the time, with an increasingly busy and exhausting real life. Many others are in the same situation. The few hardworking admins who clear out CAT:CSD on a daily basis do not need masses more work to do. And since RfA reform proposals seem to have trailed off, it's unlikely that we will be able to promote masses more admins to do the job (and indeed, as I was explaining, it does take some level of experience and good judgment to handle the job itself).

This, then, is the essence of why we should not re-enable anonymous page creation, attractive as the idea may be. WaltonOne 10:11, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) DrKiernan 11:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Well put. This is, as you stated, the essence of the problem.  Pyrospirit  ( talk  ·  contribs ) 16:33, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Probably the best put comment here. <font style="background:#7FFF00">Reywas92 <font style="background:#00ff7f">Talk 21:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) Agree with the comments on both problems. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 22:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 5) Excellent comment. I am working very few on main space due to backlog created on CAT:SD. That is bad for encyclopedia. Carlosguitar 03:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 6) Agreed <font color="orange" face="comic sans ms">Captain <font color="red" face="Papyrus">panda  03:23, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 7) Yep. MER-C 04:37, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 8) Couldn't agree more. --<font color="#CC0018">T <font color="#0000C0">M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 05:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 9) Excellent summary. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 20:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 10) Very well put, Walton. GlassCobra 21:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 11) Very nice. Who's idea was it to turn it on in the first place.  <font color="Black">J- <font color="Red">ſtan  TalkContribs 02:31, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 12) * It was never turned on. It was allowed the moment it became a Wikia. The function was disabled with the controversy that occurred in '05, among other things being implemented, such as vandal patrol and BLP being created. I don't think it should ever be switched on again, except via a screening process, as I've suggested above. -- linca linca  07:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 13) Yes. Sandstein (talk) 13:57, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 14) PeaceNT (talk) 16:18, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * 15) Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 12:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC).

Question by Sbowers3
Is it technically possible to distinguish static IPs from dynamic IPs? If it is possible, I think it would be worthwhile to treat them differently. We can communicate with static IPs, we can't with dynamic IPs - meaning that if we leave a message on the talk page of a dynamic IP it very likely will never be seen by the original user of that IP. We can block a static IP; we can't effectively block the user of a dynamic IP. Sbowers3 16:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't believe it's possible do this entirely automatically, since it happens locally to the ISP. But it could certainly be done for large ranges of IPs that are known to be managed in this manner, if we'd be OK having an opt-in/"closed world assumption" (i.e. assuming anything not specifically identified as "dynamic" is "static").  Perhaps as an extension to the blocking mechanism, or else via something like the spam blacklist/whitelist.  But what would the distinction be, exactly?  Allow static IPs to create pages and edit semi-protected articles?  Or just the former?  Alai 18:34, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment by White Cat
Its disable was a mistake, its reactivation will correct the mistake. It never had any purpose and had prevented nothing. The entire issue was the very definition of "pointless action."

I hole heartedly agree that pages created by anons are 99% of the time completely useless. But this lets us detect problematic new pages pretty easily. Other wise registered users create the same pages. This really is all there is to it.

-- Cat chi? 02:32, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * How was its disablement a mistake? I believe there's a place for anons to be able to create pages, but only established "pseudo"-anons, who've established a reason for us to assume good faith of them. We assume enough good faith for registered users, but IP users can be problematic in that if they've not been identified as a suitable user, they can create any crap, potentially. The registration process filters out some who simply come to do harm (admittedly not all, but at least we're filtering it to reduce the impact). -- linca linca  10:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * But it is accounts that give people anonymity. An unregistered user is clearly identifiable by his IP address, a registered user using a new account for every page he creates is perfectly anonymous. If you want to be anonymous on Wikipedia, you need to register. "Anon" IPs are much easier to control than the true anonymity provided by registration. Kusma (talk) 10:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) --Gwern (contribs) 23:49 2 December 2007 (GMT)
 * 2) For the record. --Kendrick7talk 05:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Horst.Burkhardt
There is a very good reason for not allowing anonymous page creation. That reason is not technical, or even to do with spam, in my eyes. There is possibly nothing cooler than having an account on Wikipedia and being able to say that you are a Wikipedia editor, and responsible for doing such-and-such. This is nice because you get a USer-talk page, Contributions page, etc. As long as you're not an idiot who crapfloods (please pardon language), you should be proud that your contributions should be recognised.

Viva Wikipedia! Horst.Burkhardt (talk) 08:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

View by Kusma
The speedy deletion process, once permanently backlogged at 200+ pages, has been very efficient lately. I have patrolled the category every day for the last year, and in the last three months, the average number of items in the category has steadily gone down and is well below what it used to be (and we used to manage even in times when 100 was a low number of speedy tagged pages). We can therefore easily afford an experiment that might increase workload in this area. Kusma (talk) 10:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Is there still a page that monitors the average number of pages in CAT:CSD? There used to be... anecdotally, yes, I think you're right.. the backlog is rarely over 100 when I start, and it used to always be. But I'd like to see numbers before jumping to any conclusions. It's also possible that having a low CSD backlog is optimal for overall article quality... less problematic stuff sneaks through due to the 12+ hour wait. --W.marsh 23:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The data is available in the histories of User:Cyde/List of candidates for speedy deletion/Subpage and User:Cyde/List of candidates for speedy deletion. Kusma (talk) 13:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * 1) For the record. --Kendrick7talk 05:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Stwalkerster
Personally, I feel that re-enabling anon creation is a bad idea. As a new-page patroller, I am usually fighting through floods of new pages, finding most of them untouched. Whenever I'm NPP'ing, I always feel bogged down in the sheer number of new pages. Therefore, re-enabling ip-create would only serve to increase the problem. If a person has a genuine article to create, AfC is there, or they can create an account and then create the page. :-)  Stwalkerster  talk 01:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

 * --:-)  Stwalkerster  talk 01:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)