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[en] RFC: article creation and unregistered accounts

Should IP users be allowed to contribute articles? –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 06:16, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Aye. Naw. It was brought up on the Scots leid Discord that it would help cleanup if IP article creations were prevented on a software policy. One IP user has contributed hundreds of articles about European nobles without any sources and in dubious Scots. The rest of the vast majority of IP article creations are just vandalism or poorly translated English articles. However, there are sometimes contributions from IP users which are an exception to this. –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 06:16, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  I got Aye and Naw confused. Woops! –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 06:35, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Aye. Naw. So long as folk trying to create a new article are encouraged to create an account to do so. soothrhins (tauk) 09:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  Also got Aye and Naw confused. Think the section title needs updated to reflect the question below it. soothrhins (tauk) 08:42, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Soothrhins:  Duin –MJL ‐Tauk‐^☖ 05:03, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

  Strang Naw. Maist o ma edits this weekend hae been sortin/deletin/merkin up pages made by IP users, so jist wantit tae uphaud ma original naw. soothrhins (tauk) 11:02, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

• Aye. We need them, not all IP users are vandals. They should also be encouraged to create accounts. My Scottish is also very poor but I try. --Synoman Barris (tauk) 10:21, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Aye. Naw. Maist of the airticles creatit by IP users add nothing to the sum of human knowledge. There's 55,000 airticles here and they're maistly stubs, little mair nor a single line an a cut+paste infobox. The barrier to creatin airticles is too low as it is. We want quality ovver quantity. I'm sympathetic to the idea of only allowing edits from registered accounts too, to slow down the use of non-Scots words.--Illandancient (tauk) 10:31, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
• Naw. Creating a new account is a minor hurdle at worst, if someone is knowledgable enough about a subject that likely wouldn't stop them. We could also add a page to request new pages, if any IP users are unable or unwilling to make an account. There's been few (if any) well-sourced non-stub new pages created by IP users so I don't think we'll be losing much by slightly restricting them. I have no objection to IP users contributing to existing pages, though. my_hat_stinks (tauk) 13:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Naw. Iverhing a wis wantin tae say on 'e maiter wis awready said bi my_hat_stinks. -Cobra! (tauk) 00:38, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

• Naw - The wiki willnae be helped bi badly translatit an unsoorced airticles oan German nobility or Turkish weapons. Mebbe set up an AFC if an IP has an idea fur an actually uiseful page CiphriusKane (tauk) 10:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• Naw (en) for reasons already outlined above. I'll also add here something I mentioned on Discord, that I think implementing this policy in combination with the growth team's tools mentioned here would go a long way in promoting new contributors to join up and stay. James Hyett (tauk) 13:47, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• comment (en) raising the bar to article creation, does not necessarily improve quality. need to have a welcome wagon, and coaching for new editors. need to patrol and triage new edits, responding differently between good faith mistakes, and vandalism. some people prefer to edit as ip, and they can be trained to be more productive. and you will lose some if you require account creation to get things done. Slowking4 (tauk) 16:58, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
• comment (en) See m:Limits to configuration changes#Changes that are likely to be declined. --Minorax (tauk) 12:16, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
• Generally Aye, but unsure and can be easily swayed. There can be IP edits that are useful, and as the Wikipedia is being monitored more now, I think the sort of IP bot chains we have seen in the past -- as mentioned on James Hyett's userpage -- are very unlikely. Disruptive IPs can be easily be detected and banned and are in the minority, and there seem to be just as many badly translated articles on niche subjects created by registered users than IPs. (Although, as has been mentioned, creating an account really shouldn't be that much of a hurdle for someone who wants to contribute legitimately to the encyclopedia).

I think it's worth nothing that the recent controversies related to this site were caused by registered users, not IPs. Also, more recent articles of Tadeusz Cyrankiewicz and Wincenty Kononowicz -- which users spent significant time and effort trying to improve the Scots -- ended up being likely hoaxes (see ongoing VfD here). Of course I know you can ban IP editors and look out for registered bad-faith actors, but I think it's looking in the wrong direction here.

As someone who doesn't speak fluent Scots myself, I would add that my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. If the majority of Scots speakers want IP editors to be banned from article creation, then they probably ought to be. I wholeheartedly agree that welcome wagons, coaching for new editors, improved resources (inasmuch as is available) is definitely the best way to go. And of course, we should encourage IP users to register an account in any case. --Bangalamania (tauk) 00:23, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

• Naw They dinnae know what they are doing most of th' time. The C of E (tauk) 17:47, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

(en) Follow-up RfC on Growth team experiments

(in Inglis) It's now been over a month since the above RfC began, and little discussion has been had in the past few weeks. I'd like to get the wider wiki's input on the proposed Growth team experiments mentioned at the Mercat Cross by Trizek (WMF). I'm going copy a chunk of Trizek's message below:

The Growth team's goal is to create tools that would help newcomers, and you apparently have more newcomers these days. The objective is to increase the retention of new editors.

This is the newcomer homepage (displayed using Czech language)

We have created several tools to help them, and also to help community members who help them:

• Newcomer tasks: a feed of task suggestions that help newcomers learn to edit. Newcomers make productive edits through this feed. Also, they are more likely to stay on Wikipedia after making edits using this feature!
• Newcomer homepage: a special page that hosts the "newcomer tasks" and is a good place for a newcomer to get started. They get the contact with an experienced mentor who can help them.
• Help panel: a platform to provide resources to newcomers while they are editing. If they do suggested tasks, they are step-by-step guided.

These tools are already available on some wikis, you can also try them on https://test.wikipedia.org.

We can deploy these tools on Scots Wikipedia. What do you think? I'm looking for people who could help working on translations and also to check on the configuration. What you have to do is explained on this page. It is mostly about translations, identifying useful templates and have a list of mentors ready to help. I can also assist you anytime with it.

So, what do you think? Should we try these tools out? James Hyett (tauk) 19:15, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the follow-up, James Hyett. I think these tools are a great opportunity to help your community grow after being in the spotlight. Turkish Wikipedia decided to go with the Growth tools after being blocked during two years; this way, they expect to have newcomers joining and staying. Trizek (WMF) (tauk) 17:37, 20 October 2020 (UTC)