Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-09/New pages experiment

On 4 September, Gene McKenna, a blogger and occasional Wikipedian (User:Mckennagene), posted his opinions regarding bullying treatment on Wikipedia, "Bullypedia, A Wikipedian Who’s Tired of Getting Beat Up". He challenged any new editor to start an article and see if it would last seven days, stating that it was "guaranteed, your article will be marked for 'speedy deletion' within about two minutes of its creation."

The blog post was mentioned on the Wikipedia mailing list, leading User:Casliber to request comment on interactions with new editors. Part of the discussion on speedy deletion and how it affects new users led to User:WereSpielChequers accepting McKenna's challenge by proposing "that we all create a new account and use it to write an article".

Started on 5 October, Newbie treatment at CSD has seen twenty articles created by eleven editors, posing as twelve new users by creating new accounts to write their articles. Of the twenty articles so far included in the trial, only three have been deleted. Of those three articles, however, Grainger Games was deleted within just two minutes. Just over half the articles – eleven in total – were tagged for speedy deletion, while just under half the "new editors" received welcome messages at their talk pages. Three of those welcome messages were added as part of an automatic deletion tagging process.

WereSpielChequers notes that of the twenty articles created to date "only User:Stormie's sock User:Force1995 (author of Haig Sare) had no deletion tags, no deletion and a welcome, an experience that really ought to be the norm for new wikipedians who submit articles that don't meet our deletion criteria."