Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-04-26/Special report

''Kudpung has been a Wikipedia contributor since 2006 and and an administrator since 2011. His focus is on policy changes concerning deletions/notability, RfA, and the improvement of the new page patrolling and AfC processes. The views expressed in this article are his alone and do not reflect any official opinions of this publication.''

Confirming the massive 2011 consensus to put an end to the inappropriate pages that comprise up to 80% of a day's intake of new articles, the new ACTRIAL debate was closed on 18 April this year after running for exactly 30 days almost to the hour, with a clear majority to permanently implement a new rule: in future, the creation of articles in mainspace is to be limited to users with confirmed accounts. Champagne corks were heard popping from as far away as New Zealand.

The RfC registered 88.8% consensus for the most important change in editing policy since the Foundation limited article creation to registered users in December 2005. Faced with an imminent roll out of ACTRIAL by  community administrators in 2017 using  a locally developed filter, the Wikimedia Foundation offered support this time round in  the form of professional statistical research. The results and those of the ensuing debate illustrate that while the WMF brusquely rejected the trial in 2011 (The Signpost, 26 September 2011), under the organic evolution of Wikipedia they are able to respond to urgency. The volte-face was welcomed by the community.

Among the users opposing the introduction of the new rule, the arguments were centred mainly around an expected increase in the workload for reviewers at Articles for creation (AfC), and claims made by several Wikipedian-in-Residence (WiR) employees and other Outreach and editathon volunteers, that the move would inhibit the creation of new articles by session participants. Wikipedians-in-Residence, who primarily maintain a link between their institutions and the Wikimedia editing community by organising, for example, training events and editathons, are generally paid for their work either by the institution or by a Wikimedia-related organization. Many editathons are also organised by the outreach teams of Wikimedia chapters, and Wikipedia projects such as Women in red. Solutions suggested by those countering the arguments included the need for these organisations to be more aware of developments throughout Wikimedia and related projects, providing more support from administrators (Sysops), or even the creation of special user rights for the organisers.
 * How they voted

Opposing on the premise of much increased AfC submissions, admin who has herself deleted over 3,500 pages, expressed her concerns in the discussion section that reforms for AfC appear to be overdue: To which replied "New users ending up at AfC is entirely a result of the fact that AfC exists, and therefore becomes the only option for a new user who wants to publish now. ACTRIAL was never about sending new users to AfC instead of NPP, but rather about stopping them from creating new articles in the main space altogether (for a time). (...) AfC reforms can come later, and I for one am committed to making sure that happens, but ACTRIAL is needed now to prevent an overwhelming deluge of terrible submissions from overwhelming New Page Patrol."

Jim Henderson (supporting) exposes in the discussion section his experience as an editathon facilitator with an arresting description of those who attend his many sessions in New York: Where such debates often serve to highlight related problems, commenting early (vote #16), admin highlights the difficulties in communicating the needs for  assistance from the Foundation: "It is near impossible to get any useful software development out of the WMF in any reasonable amount of time." Summing up, closer concludes by saying "Other concerns that were brought up were that this change moves us further away from 'The Wiki Way' (where anyone can create and edit a page immediately after joining), it gives a barrier to those wanting to immediately use the Content Translation tool, and for 'philosophical reasons'."
 * AC-TRIAL goes AC-PERM

The RfC resolution was passed by 207 editors supporting, against only 26 in opposition. ACTRIAL is scheduled to go ACPERMANENT (or ACREQ) on 3 May, or earlier, by WMF core software developers. A debate is taking place to discuss a suggestion made by for solutions requested by the event coordinators.

Moving forward – AfC meets NPP
In another venue, workshopping some future suggestions for the two systems, according to the Wikiproject Articles for creation (AfC), and the core function of Page Curation (aka NPP) share the same goals: These two systems, if they were to function at an optimal level, would appear to complement each other well by addressing not only the needs of the creators of new pages, but also those of the reviewers.
 * 1) Ensuring that inappropriate new articles are not published in main space.
 * 2) Helping the creators of articles with potential to better understand how they can efficiently prepare their articles before publishing in mainspace and thus avoid deletion.

Clarifying that they are as similar as they are different, explains that "while the the two systems are almost the same, they operate at different stages of content creation and apply slightly different criteria for retention or rejection: while AfC is proactive, the reviewer doesn't have to prove anything, the submitter must demonstrate notability/suitability, while  NPP is reactive, the the reviewer has to prove non-notability/unsuitability". He goes on to imply that "NPP is the 'necessary evil' (if we want to have quality control) and AfC is the 'necessary kindness' (if we want to be able to provide a path for very new editors to create articles)".

As the systems of reviewing new pages and for processing drafts are inextricably correlated, talks are on-going at The future of NPP and AfC and at AfC Process Improvement with  the participation of Foundation envoy  who is looking into the possibility of supporting improvements to the AfC process. Other recent talks on improvement to AfC include suggestions that the New Page Reviewer user right (NPR) should become the default qualification for processing submitted Drafts. In order to demonstrate their understanding of the challenges of better reviewing, a large number of active AfC reviewers have already applied at Requests for permissions for access to the NPR user group. Administrators have been able to accord many applicants that key to the Curation tool set.
 * New developments in the aftermath of ACPERM

Other suggestions include the AfC process sharing the New Pages Feed and the Page Curation tool, and encouraging the WMF to address the list of required improvements to the new page patrolling software.

While regular AfC reviewers are expecting some possible help from the WMF on the design and wording of their templates, the New Page Reviewer faction remains optimistic that the deciders of Foundation engineering projects will accord top priority to upgrading the Page Curation software developed by the WMF 6 years ago.
 * Outlook

!!STOP PRESS!!
Per the RfC, the page creation limitation enacted during ACTRIAL is now permanently implemented as of 26 April 2018 22:37 (UTC)