Wikipedia talk:Wiki Guides/Allow IP editors to create articles

Related information
I will be using this section of the talk page to organize related informtion. -  Hydroxonium  ( H3O+ ) 14:39, 14 February 2011 (UTC) — update -  Hydroxonium  ( H3O+ ) 16:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The beginning
The restriction on IP users creating new articles arose from the Seigenthaler incident where an IP user created a WP:BLP violation.
 * Announcement From Jimbo of this being an "experiment" and mentioning "negative side-effects" on the WikiEN-L mail list. (2005-Dec-5)
 * Announcement at Village Pump (2005-Dec-5)
 * Anouncement in Signpost calling it an "experiment" that could be changed to only ophaned articles. (2005-Dec-5)
 * Edit to interface page mentioning it is "temporary". (2005-Dec-6)
 * Jimbo stating "experiment for a few months". (2005-Dec-6)

Ending the restriction
The restriction was going to be ended in 2007 with an analysis of the situation after one month.. This led to a lot of discussion and an RfC.
 * Announcement ending the restriction in 2007 on the on the WikiEN-L mail list. (2007-Oct-26)
 * Confirmation of the announcement on the on the WikiEN-L mail list. (2007-Oct-27)
 * Discussion at the Village Pump. (2007-Oct-27)
 * RfC: Anonymous page creation. (2007-Nov-9)

Related discussion
A related discussion came about in 2010, which mentioned some of the effects of the restriction.
 * Discussion at the Village Pump. (2010-May-15)

Analysis

 * Analysis of articles created by IPs

Improving this RfC
I would encourage everybody to modify this RfC to improve it. I would also like to request any other information that might pertain to this RfC before we submit it to the community. Thanks. -  Hydroxonium  ( H3O+ ) 16:29, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Many more admins?
One of the arguments for this is that it is asserted that we have many more admins now than we did in late 2005 when IPs lost the right to create articles. But almost all that increase has been in inactive admins. Currently we have more active admins than at the end of 2005, (We ended 2005 with 720 active admins, we ended 2010 with 766), but with RFA broken and a longterm trend of a 1% a month fall in active admins we are unlikely to end this year with as many admins as we had at the end of 2005.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  22:02, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll concede that the number of admins are falling in small amounts, but remember that a number of people here are eligible for admin status if they want it. We used to maintain lists of people who were either interested in become admins or who had a high edit count but were not admins. Shoring up admin numbers based in part on such lists could help increase the number of admins we have on site. Another point to consider is that it will take a while for news that isp editors can create articles to spread across the net, and that if we do allow the isp editors to create articles again we may inspire more eligible contributors for admin status to put in a an rfa for the tools so they can patrol their selected areas of wikipedia. Also, do not discount the possibility that if the isp editors return those who left or retired in protest over the change may return to help once more. Finally, having been locked out of our site for so long it may also be possible that those isp editors who return will help admins and others by singling out those creating bs pages or otherwise acting against policy so as not to end up completely locked out again. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * wp:EDITS exists but doesn't currently mark which editors are admins so is not very helpful when scouting for candidates, I think that Autopatrolled is probably a better recruiting ground. As for the potential responses by IP editors, I'm inclined to think that the bulk will be schoolkids who currently just vandalise. I would be very surprised if anyone who left us because of this is still watching and ready to return.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)