Grants talk:IdeaLab/Wikipedia Article Incubator

AfC

How would this improve on the Articles for Creation process that already exists on the English Wikipedia? Samwalton9 (talk) 10:16, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

In the Afc process, drafts are cultured till they are ready to be released into mainspace. Articles marked for deletion never enter the draft space. My proposal is that the articles marked for deletion be necessarily be moved into draft space. Since it can be definitely assumed that the people who created the article, are essentially ignorant of Wikipedia norms, else the article would never have been marked for deletion. So, we would need to have a caring approach in order to successfully channelize those ignorant users to the proper channel that they should follow. The process would also ensure that those users cannot try to re-create the same article with the previous issues unsought. Moreover, deletion essentially leads to loss of some effort which had gone to creation of the articles. My proposal would help in preserving such efforts but marking it with a necessary to-do list to be complied to. Anasuya.D (talk) 11:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok. Slightly different question then - how would this be different to a proposal for moving 'deleted' articles to Articles for Creation and/or draft-space? Not that such an idea would gain consensus. Samwalton9 (talk) 11:07, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Hardly different from moving 'deleted' articles to Articles for Creation and/or draft-space. However, this 'marked for deletion' process yields two vital sources of information. The first is the article topics that are prone to be abused. Rather than allowing an article to be re-written outright, the article would have to follow a guided process before it is 'published' once again. Although the new article pages are patrolled anyway, this will mark another point to be patrolled. The next source of information from articles 'marked for deletion' is the users involved. Essentially, they need an organized guidance process. This will be a variation of new editor retention program and new user adoption program. I believe that such a process will enhance the quality of edits on Wikipedia and will help in reduction of disruptive edits. Anasuya.D (talk) 11:17, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Asked and answered

As is indicated by the proposal itself, this was already tried. It was well intentioned, but it failed. Trying to recreate it through this process is an end-run around the en.wp community's established consensus on this idea. If someone wants to revive this they need to gain a consensus that it should be re-tried first. The way this proposal is frame dit would be significantly more problematic than the previous incarnation. I certainly do not see why a grant would be necessary to revive it. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

No grant/funding is sought. I thought that ideas can be discussed here. I thought that this is the right place to rethink the previously abandoned idea. If not here, where should it be discussed? Anasuya.D (talk) 10:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

As this idea is solely about the English Wikipdia, and no funding is sought, the English Wikipedia Village Pump would be a good place to go to. --LukeSurl (talk) 13:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

LukeSurl: I have already posted a note there pointing to this discussion. Anasuya.D (talk) 16:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that's how I found it, but there's no logical reason for this discussion to be on meta at all as it is only interested in reviving an old process on wn.wp. If you somehow got a consensus here to go ahead and do this, you would still need to have conversation over there, with the members of the effected community, before you could implement it. So, this is basically a non-starter.

I would suggest that if you still plan to proceed with a new discussion at en.wp, that you read the discussions that led to the incubator being closed in the first place and carefully consider whether or not this has a real chance of being accepted. It dies a slow death over a period of years. It was a well-intentioned idea but it just did not work out and was eventually down to basically one person. We also have the Draft namespace which was the explicit reason the incubator was finally closed. This idea is significantly more ambitious in it's goals than the old incubator, so it's unlikely to work. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Beeblebrox: Could you help me to locate the discussion(s) that led to the incubator being closed in the first place? Anasuya.D (talk) 02:44, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
[1] was the final discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:02, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Beeblebrox. Anasuya.D (talk) 09:28, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Huge additional admin load

Basically this looks to me like it is proposing a huge additional load on administrators, who already have other backlogs to deal with. It might work with more administrators, but seems infeasible now, unless maybe if we created an additional user right called "new article publisher" or something similar, whose job it would be to move new articles out of the incubator and into main space. The "extended confirmed" user right might work for this. Anachronist (talk) 19:11, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I was trying to propose a way to retain and use the ignorant users and to convert them into knowledgeable Wikipedians whose contributions can help in enriching Wikipedia. Not that I have a concrete plan. But could you people think again about what could be done to educate these guys who do disruptive work on Wikipedia? Anasuya.D (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Discussion elsewhere

In parallel to this proposal, I had been discussing on this with several experienced editors. I felt that the following could be mentioned here: Anasuya.D (talk) 09:18, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

The following is a part of the discussion at w:User talk:DGG#WP:INCUBATOR:

We rely on new users for new ideas. Those of us who have worked here a long while can easily get into a stereotyped way of thinking. And even ideas (like this one) that have been considered and rejected in the past, may prove to be valuable when circumstances change. And circumstances do change: With the increasing recognition of the perceived importance of Wikipedia, it has become very valuable in the competitive world for organizations to have a WP article, and preferably one they can control. It will be increasingly more difficult to maintain the difference between an encyclopedia and a directory, but maintaining it is still necessary to our integrity. We therefore cannot expect to actually solve the problem or promotionalism, but it will take increasing amounts of time and energy.

To be able to have the time and energy, we will always need new users; the most important thing we can do to attract them is not to unfairly reject their initial work. To do this while still rejecting even honestly-meant but mistaken attempts at promotionalism if the necessary balance. We won't get there by reshuffling procedures; fighting degradation requires work -- and the elimination of obsolete work-consuming practices. Some optimists see a place for AI, and I must admit that even an imperfect AI should be able to do better than some reviewers. DGG ( talk ) 05:09, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

The following is a part of the discussion at: w:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#WP:INCUBATOR

@Anasuya.D: I'm afraid that, as any participant in this project would tell you, the vast majority of pages in draftspace (>90%) are not suitable for inclusion. It is also becoming increasingly common that problematic but marginally notable articles in mainspace are moved to draftspace for improvement (the kind of "soft deletion" once trialled by WP:INCUBATOR), so I do not think a separate process for that is needed. The other aspects of your proposal are, in my opinion, unlikely to gain significant support because they go against a number of established Wikipedia principles. Per WP:NOTWEBHOST, we shouldn't encourage people to use draftspace to host content that is not a viable encyclopaedia article. And per WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL, we cannot know if topics which are not notable now will ever be so. Asking new editors to work on unencyclopaedic topics is a waste of their time and ours: it is much better to clearly communicate, early, that Wikipedia does not have articles on everything and that the topic they have chosen is not one of them. – Joe (talk) 17:21, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Joe Roe. Your words make sense. It is possibly due to my inexperience that my proposal bears errors. Thanks for clarifying. I was trying to propose a way to retain and use the ignorant users and to convert them into knowledgeable Wikipedians whose contributions can help in enriching Wikipedia. Not that I have a concrete plan. But could you people think again about what could be done to educate these guys who do disruptive work on Wikipedia? Anasuya.D (talk) 19:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

It's a commendable goal, Anasuya.D (talk · contribs) and there are several projects that try to do that. This project (WP:AFC) is one – many reviewers put a great deal of effort into providing feedback and mentoring new editors writing their first article. Another is The Teahouse, which is a friendly venue for new editors to ask questions. – Joe (talk) 20:14, 8 February 2017 (UTC)