http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Newt

I don't recall this being mentioned elsewhere here (sorry if I am repeating stuff), but WP:NEWT, a.k.a. Newbie treatment at CSD, must represent a new all-time low for Wikipedia stupidity.

Apparently, a group of people completely devoid of real lives decided to waste their leisure hours creating sock accounts that gave the impression of being newbies. Then they created intentionally bad new articles, then watched and reported on the kind of behavior their intentionally bad articles received via CSD tagging.

Someone named Multixfer was unaware of these shenanigans and reported one of the NEWT gameplayers (NuclearWarfare) to ANI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ani...reatment_at_CSD

Incredibly, all of the drama whores at ANI came down on Multixfer's head, claiming he was being hostile!

I would like to thank the NEWT participants for confirming something that has been stated for some time: Wikipedia is nothing more than a big ol' stupid game and not a serious academic reference resource.

It is also astonishing that in view of the Grand Canyon-wide holes in too many areas of Wikipedia coverage (most notably the "consumer economy" article that Greg pointed out last week), these nincompoops are wasting their time creating new articles that are designed to be deleted.

We have found a witch, may we burn her?

That doesn't seem a particularly dumb idea, if someone has the time and inclination to do it. Pretty much every big organization uses "mystery customers" as an internal audit tool. At least these people have recognized that there's a problem and are doing something to test the scale of the matter, rather than (a) head-in-the-sand repetition of the mantra that Wikipedia doesn't have problems, or (b) extrapolating from one or two bad cases to "the whole thing has failed completely because this one thing didn't go the way I wanted it to". (Horsey, you've been on both WP and WR long enough to know that WP has too many of the former, and WR has too many of the second.) I really can't see what you're complaining about here.

The problems with the CSD process have been percolating for a long time. WP:NEWT only confirms what everyone already knows - the CSD process is seriously imperfect and Wikipedia editors like to play games.

So what are the results of this game? Are the admins who "bit" the faux-newbies going to be reprimanded? No. Is the CSD process going to be altered in any way to accommodate new editors? Of course not. Are the CSD judging requirements up for a rewrite? Don't bet on it.

What is the point of this exercise? To repeat a joke I made elsewhere: if these guys were the navigators on the Santa Maria, Columbus would have discovered Spain.

In more general terms, as a true wikipeidian wheel, you can also enjoy the pain of others by:

1. Baiting and using intensifiers in commentary (like... terrible, dumb, stupid, idiot, moron.)
2. Wack the banhammer and pwn someone.
3. Strive to be a WP:DICK
4. Accepting that anyone not a Jenuine Jimbo Juice Jerk is a sock and to be bitten hard and banned.
5. Acknowledging one guiding principle of Wikipedia - ITS OUR WAY OR NO WAY.
6. We Brake for no one.
7. Important to bush up on people skills by taking time to code your new automated BULLY BOT.
8. No need to fear, your protected by the JIMBO 503c3 and 230 defamation protection blanket - say any thing, do any thing you want - your above the sovereign laws of nation. Wiki is a powerful nation, which you are part of.
9. Any one not part of your wikigang - Ban early, ban many, ban with hate fulled zeal.

Try to use standard welcome/warning messages... TROLL, IDIOT, YOU MUST BE SOCK OF past victim, or the ole wiki favorite...YOUR A SOCK AND YOUR BANNED- SUCKER!!!

Consciously choose your agenda and POV , strive to be a true cultist of the Wiki, by fostering hate, anger, and never hesitate to provoke those who don't believe in our GOD, JIMBO.

To devote their time and resources towards building an Mound of BULLSHIT so high that it stinks to high heaven.

What're you rebelling against, Johnny?

There is, obviously, a double standard in that if somebody like TheKohser did something like this it would be immediately labeled WP:POINT and used to justify yet another block/ban, while it's considered a reasonable exercise when done by people better-connected in the power structure.

On the other hand, there's actually some merit to the concept of people (especially those who are high up and well-connected in the power structure) getting to see, once in a while, how the other half lives by pretending to be commoners and seeing the reaction their actions get. This is a concept that Mark Twain seemed to like, as he used it as the main premise of The Prince and the Pauper, as well as having the protagonist in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court do something similar at one point by mingling with the peasants without his identity known after getting many of his "clever" reforms enacted by the King in his position as a high-level advisor.

It appears many of the ARS members are involved with this, including SoWhy who can never resist getting inclusionist hat on. It is completely disruptive to create bad articles with sockpuppets, especially if they are poorly formatted. It's making more work for those who do a valuable job flushing out the rubbish, just to prove some sort of point that newbies get treated differently to veteran editors which we all knew anyway and happens everywhere. Actually if NuclearWarfare created a badly formatted article with barely a coherent sentence in it, it would probably get tagged too.

Thank you for seeing what I saw!

But, of course, the NEWTonians don't see the obvious. WereSpielChequers made this astonishing statement at WT:RfA --

"One of the things I suspect we are seeing at Wikipedia:Newbie treatment at CSD is that some admins see a backlog of 100 or more at CSD as something to clear in an hour or two. As our number of active admins falls I fear we will see an increasing proportion of admin errors as a dwindling number of admins try to keep up with the demand for admin actions."

What is not being said is that people who are ill-equipped for such easy tasks should not be admins. Really, reviewing articles tagged for deletion does not take any great brains. Sadly, some people lacking brains (great or otherwise) run amok in CSD.

Of course, no one in NEWT is demanding the removal of the idiot admins who screw up at CSD on a daily basis -- and we all know who they are. As long as these people are allowed to push buttons, there will be chaos -- and NEWT will be yet another waste of everyone's time. Will the circle be unbroken?

I for one would have no issue with Greg doing something like this, as long as he didn't post his report in a trolling manner and say "look at what all these idiots did" (Like I did, I suppose )



The article wasn't completely terrible, see this version of the article that was redirected to somewhere else. Even the original versions of the article mentioned several key historical figures that this person was associated with - Peter I of Russia, Anna Mons, and Catherine I of Russia. This isn't some twelve year old MySpacer, but a historical figure. It should be obvious to most people that the correct thing to do was to look around for more sources, especially if a real source (a book by noted historian Robert K. Massie) is mentioned. The intent of this project, at least for me, was to teach those who mistagged the article or bit the "newbie" what they had done wrong, but clearly that went south fast. And I don't believe that any other member of NEWT (there are quite a few non-ARS members and deletionists there too) created a non-notable article; just one with a bunch of typical newbie or non-native-English-speaker mistakes.

And if I created an article like this? Well, for one, it wouldn't matter. Administrators have the userright "autopatrol", so no one would even review the article. But if by some chance someone did review it, I would know how to respond to them and how to appeal the tagging properly, unlike a real newbie. And an administrator reviewing the article would very likely stop and think "Hey, wait a minute. A sysop wrote this. They likely know notability and verifiability guidelines. So why such a crappy article. Let me ask them instead of deleting it." Newbies get no such fine treatment.

It's time for the percolator?

It's funny - I'm actually writing a doc on this at the moment. Let me start off with a simple question though:

Why do newcomers create articles that are against policies?

The answer is obvious - the interface allows them to. It doesn't require knowledge of Template: Cite or {{reflist}} or anything else. Start an article in mainspace and all you need to know is how to write. Hit save, walk away and wait for someone else to clear it up.

Of course, the easy way is to fix it at source. If there is something in policy, build it into the interface. If there is an established guideline, build it into the interface. If something is required in order for it to meet minimum standards, build it into the interface. If you expect people to read 10 or 20 pages of instructions before they can Be Bold, either your interface is wrong or your instructions are wrong. Any process analyst or auditor worth their salt will tell you this.

Then again, this kind of thing isn't a priority. But look at the MediaWiki technology roadmap - it's a collection of wishlists and features that are being band-aided onto the existing architecture. What about MediaWiki 2.0? What's the technology strategy? Is there even a technology strategy? The Strategy wiki outlines a series of issues or questions, but doesn't really set any visions. There's a list of "what should we do about our technology infrastructure", but this is looked at in complete isolation to "what should we be looking to do to improve encyclopaedic quality". This kind of thing is stupidly obvious to me, I'm amazed that the croudsourced collective they have there hasn't picked up on it already.

So, sorry I went off on a bit of a tangent there. But yes, Newbies create crap because the interface lets them. They get bitten because the tired admins are fed up of mopping up after newbies for the umpteenth time. This isn't telling you there is something wrong with the admin. It's shouting at you that there's something wrong with the interface. It's software design 101.

If you're interested, I'll share with you what I think the overall technology strategy for WMF should be. But I doubt it.

See Harry LeRoi in Shakespeare's Henry V.

I for one am most definitely interested to hear your ideas for this. Anything to stem the tide of crap articles and newbie "biting" at NPP.

Only if you sing it in a bluegrass style, like Bill Monroe:

I asked that on WR some time ago. MediaWiki is too simple, too primitive. The user is expected to know how to format a new article--a format that is poorly designed and not well-explained in the help section. Online help is minimal, and admins are too damn busy playing popularity games and reverting vandalism to help new users. There is no reward or payment for helping new users.

It's a sick culture, as most people here will tell you.

I defy you to get the devels to recognize this as a problem. If you do, you run the risk of being accused of "trolling the WMF staff", a terrible, terrible crime. Apparently, they are far too busy playing office politics to develop a revamped system that would be easier to use. It is not even seen as an issue--easier to just pile more semi-useless bureaucratic features onto the existing framework.

Is office politics a euphemism for trampoline? That would make far more sense

Alright. I'll post some content after the weekend - unfortunately I'm away at a wedding for the next few days, so you won't get much for a while.

The Hate filled cesspool of lies, defamation, and misinformation which Wikipedia has become.
I am rebelling against BIG BRAVE admins, who, in real life could never stand up to a real argument. The BIG BRAVE admins, who, without the ban button, could not stand toe to toe with a 6 year old.

I am rebelling against the lack of governance, Wikipedia has none. Only the rule is the rule of the Amazonian jungle, where jungle law is the law of wikiepida.

I take it your an Wikpediot admin, and as such, you think Wikipedia is this noble "sum of all human knowledge" project, but in reality, I think Wikipedia is just this evil online social simulator of the ideas articulated by "KAFKA" "ORWELL" "SOLZHENITSYN" which shows disrespect for natural law.

So, has anything of value come out of this project yet? Or has everyone gone back to doing their homework?

Apparently it came to nothing. WP is so sick, it can't even admit it's sick.

Actually the way the system works, if it runs across an admin or editor that tags/deletes an article incorrectly you end up with something like this. So admins are checked, but what the experiment is showing so far is that NPP is, for the most part, a smooth process for someone who creates a encyclopedia worthy article.

So what are the results of this game? Are the admins who "bit" the faux-newbies going to steroids be reprimanded? i guess no mates .

A true apologist. People, like you, are like the mother who cries.... Johnnie not a bad boy, while Johnnie is on trial for mass murder.

Lets have no mistake or mis-understanding, Wikipedia has no system of governance, no rules. The only system Wikipedia has is gang rule, corruption, and jungle law. Think of Wikipedia to be a failed state, run like Somalia. The rule of guns, gangs, and warlords.

Why does this post and co13's other post contain "steroids" in the midst of it? Is someone infected with a spambot?

Seems so, thanks for the spot.

They're selling steroids at WP:NEWT? Oh, those wacky teenagers -- what new heights of mischief will they reach next?

A picture is worth a thousand words...
Note, in this picture, how [[WP:NEWT]] is applied.

I'm no technical expert and don't know how easy it is to implement but it shouldn't cause too much controversy(at least in a rational world) so why not do one of two things:

1. When a new article is created, and the author does not provide any source, a prompt comes up that says: "This article has no references, please provide a reference before content can be published." or

2. Any newly created and unsourced article has a tag that says "This newly created article has no sources, please provide a source and this tag will be taken down" Only an admin can take the tag down or the tagged article will be automatically deleted in X amount of days if no source is provided. (Kind of like an auto-prod).

This should help weed out a lot of junk articles more quickly and maybe help new editors in the process.

Too sensible.

Technically it would be very easy to provide a form similar to the one an editor sees when uploading an image to Commons, say, with a section for references, instead of displaying a blank editing screen and expecting a newbie to know what's required in terms of wikimarkup and layout.

It would look something like this, perhaps?

It would indeed. Where the hell did that come from, and why hasn't it been implemented?

Rd232 (T-C-L-K-R-D) , apparently.

That's EXACTLY what they should be doing. I will bet you, however, that because the official devel-o-twits didn't think of it, it will never become a standard feature.

In fact, I wonder if Vibber is leaving because he wanted to implement a better interface like that one, and the staff shot him down. As time goes on, WP's bureaucracy becomes increasingly rigid and unchangeable, just like most other human bureaucracies.

At this point, I suspect that the only thing that would change them is the arrival of a "better", more open-appearing user-edited encyclopedia. One that steals their rabid users away......

In fairness to the WMF developers, they have a tricky balancing act between hand-holding new writers, and not irritating existing contributors by constantly telling things they already know, Clippit-the-paperclip style. Personally I think they should have the wizard enabled by default, as Commons does.

I don't know if you've created a new Wikipedia account recently, but the first thing anyone logging in for the first time now sees is this screen, with links to assorted tutorials.

I think the article wizard is a brilliant idea. As somebody already said, new users are given a completely empty box with unknown buttons at the top that, if clicked, put weird equals signs, brackets and whatnot. It's just much too open to abuse, which is possibly why so many crap articles are created. Now, if the article wizard was implemented and removable in gadgets - or perhaps they could be flagged in some way by an admin if they are regularly creating good articles - we'd have fewer rubbish articles created, and AFD would be kept clearer.

FAIL.

Automation just lets you do crap things quicker.

I disagree.

You're right. It also makes it harder to spot the crap, because the crap will look like a properly structured article that has been thought about, and all those Twinklers will be unable to apply their finely honed analytic skills to tell that just because it has a few headings, the content is unadulterated garbage.

It seems you're going to stereotype every person who uses twinkle as a clueless idiot. Therefore, your so-called argument means nothing to me.

Well if you are going to stereotype my clueless meanderings as an argument, then I'm not going to play, so there.

Lots like the NEWT project has had an effect after all:

I think I see a way out of this.â„¢

The software is open-source and available under the GFDL and the 3.0-if-by-sea-tac. Has the idea of a creating forked version of it (which need not be substantially different)—in order to use and distribute it under… you know… a more dignified title—occurred to any of its users, or do they kinda enjoy being the butt of jokes?

Not for a week or so, no.


Perhaps, but I'd suggest that wikipedia is beyond the point of needing more articles and now needs better articles.

Rather than create further noise in an already long and varied thread, I've started blogging on the topic.

Oh, and automation is great where it enforces rules that need to be applied. It should not just be a case of being able to generate crap more quickly, but enabling people that aren't familiar with the maze of policies and guidelines to produce good quality work easily. There's no point upgrading the abacus when a primer in trigonometry is what's needed.

In the beginning it was ok to throw a bunch of crap on the wall and see what sticks. It does not take much expertise to do that. Now its time for that fertilizer to grow into a beautiful, well-manicured garden which takes considerably more expertise. Everyone knows about wikipedia now so if someone is truly interested in participating in "good faith" having a few more hoops to jump through to create more integrity shouldn't be a problem anymore. If the Catholic church can accept the earth revolving around the sun, wikipedians can accept alterations to their core values as the project evolves.

lol, no one wants to get caught biting in the sting operation?

NEWT LIVES!

Privatemusings had boldly, all things considered, started a new ethics/response testing resource on Wikiversity, and proposed taking a look at NEWT. As various editors were raising specters or waving ghosts (Jim BOO!) at Pm, I went ahead and started this, taking plenty of time to wait for objections. And setting up some pretty tight guidelines that should avoid causing legitimate offense.

I found looking into the NEWT history -- which I've only begun to do -- fascinating. I'm carefully avoiding making judgments on the WP editors involved, but some of them really do make themselves look like compleat idiots. I will not name them -- at least not on Wikiversity.

And others, even if they goofed, handled it well, an example would be Tedder. He was gracious and thanked SoWhy for helping him see that he was going too far.