Response testing/WMF Projects/Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion

History

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the project was begun on 5 October, 2009, there were 249 edits, and the last edit but one to the project page was on January 7, 2010; The final edit on January 22 was to point to a discussion later archived. The talk page history shows, from 31 October, 2009, through January 19, 2010, 522 edits. This was the original proposal:

This page is created to take up Wikipedia:Requests for comment/new users#Lets all create an extra account the challenge - create a wikipedia account, write an article and see if it lasts seven days.
Info I'd like to collect here:
  1. Did your article survive or get deleted?
  2. what tags did it get
  3. Were you welcomed?
  4. Did anyone else edit your article and if soo what did they do?
  5. Did you feel welcomed?
  6. Did you feel ignored?
  7. Did you feel bitten?

The first test result was posted the next day, and it brought immediate discussion: Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Individual reports were moved to subpages, this one became Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD/Skomorokh

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Opinions / Thoughts / Talking points

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This area is for you to drop any opinions, thoughts or talking points in. In particular, if you have a 'feeling' about something, and would like to discuss it further - this is the spot! Don't feel that your thoughts or arguments have to be fully formed, and don't jump down the throat of editors who might be unsure about how they feel, but wish to express something :-)

Privatemusings' Thoughts

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I think this project exposes interesting tensions in the wiki environment - in many ways it was rather blatantly contrary to the 'wp:point' guidelines, on the other hand, I have no doubt it was executed in good faith. In fact, good faith is about the best you can attribute to the project, because again, in rather typical wiki fashion, it wasn't really competently designed or executed - to me it came across as bumbling, the 'drama' it created was predictable, and it hasn't really delivered any insight particularly. I suspect it's more valuable as something to study (here, for example) than in its desired and stated goals.

It touches on 'AGF', 'wp:point', and even the use of 'socks' - fundamentally it illustrates to me how these rules are not actually treated as matters of principle (despite editors genuinely believing they are doing so) - they're actually really just 'by definition' something someone of ill intent contravenes. Using rules which boil down to intent is not a workable solution - it absolutely creates drama and disharmony rather than resolving it - not a great idea, and this is a good example :-) Privatemusings 03:28, 24 July 2010 (UTC)