Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion/AJCham

Article by AJCham

Main page: User:AJCham/Newbie treatment at CSD

Grainger Games

I created the article stub, Grainger Games, using the account User:ToonGamer.

Whilst I may not have done a great job of appearing as newbie-ish as possible, I did decide to experiment on how I would fare in trying to create the stub a little bit at a time. Many new editors create articles in this way, only to have them tagged for deletion as not demonstrating notability or lacking context, just before they get around to adding that bit. (I acknowledge that I too have been at fault here)

The same thing happened to me - twice. I personally feel that we would do well to allow a short grace period for new editors when it appears that they may still be in the process of adding details to the article. Of course, this does not apply to blatant spam, copyright violations, vandalism, attack pages or other gross BLP violations.

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

Summary

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

Conclusion

I feel that we stand to improve in our handling of new users who create unsuitable articles.

I would advise:

• A grace period shortly after the creation of a new article, that could be tagged as A1, A3 or A7, in the hope that the editor is still adding to it.
• More personal explanations to editors following the creation of these articles - the default notification templates seem harsh and unwelcoming. Users could create a custom template for this purpose, as I have done,
• That in spite of the above, we should acknowledge the unsuitability of certain editors to the project, and not waste time trying to make feel welcome those that are irreconcilably opposed to the way Wikipedia works.

A brief note on the blog post that inspired all this - I think we have shown that new editors' articles are not doomed to die within 7 days, and in fact only a rudimentary understanding of our policies on notability, neutrality and verifiability are required to produce something that can be kept. The user is invited to learn these requirements upon creating a new article, via a link to WP:YFA.

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

Please note, that I don't intend to criticize NawlinWiki personally, and don't think he acted too badly - these are just a few pointers for all of us, that I hope are received in the same spirit they are given.

AJCham 19:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that interesting test and insightful analysis. I've restored 17 deleted versions of the article, ignoring a large number of vandalisms and some cluebot revisions. The first version was created in 2008, had no assertion of notability and became a bit spammy before a succession of edits turned it into what would have been a good call for a nonsense or vandalism delete, and user:the JPS deleted it {{G1}}, perhaps not realising that there was a good faith article to restore to, in my view an {{A7}} delete would have been OK as I could see no assertion of notability at that time. Interestingly the earlier deletion does gives us the opportunity to bring some genuine newbies into the discussion, well one was a newbie when it was first deleted. ϢereSpielChequers 21:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

To be fair to NawlinWiki, I think that the problem was partly down to an edit conflict this edit was meant to tag your article with {{expand}} and {{unreferenced}}, but because the first version had been deleted {{A7}} - (correctly on the basis of the first sentence) it wound up creating an article with just those two tags, and that was a legitimate {{A3}} delete. So neither the admin nor the tagger did anything wrong, but sadly the patient died. Your article has not yet been patrolled, so it still awaits those who patrol from the back of the unpatrolled queue in about three weeks time. strategy:Proposal:Speedy deletion - 24 hour pause for some articles would have resolved the matter - a 24 hour pause would have got the article to the point where A7 didn't apply, and if it hadn't been deleted the accidental recreation and consequent A3 deletion would have been avoided. ϢereSpielChequers 22:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)