Special favors in Articles for Creation process?

[thekohser]

Wil Sinclair recently (May 29, 2014, as far as I can tell) submitted to the Articles for Creation process a short stub about Chadwick modular seating (T-H-L). Six days later, his stub was accepted into Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, we can look at more than 150 AFC submissions that have been waiting more than a month for reviewer attention.

Some of the very old submissions with more content and more references, which Wil was able to "cut in front" of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Boston_CitiNet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Biph ... e_leukemia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... 27s_Office

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:WA_S ... llenge_Cup

Wil's submission got special notice from a two-time ArbCom member and husband of the chair of Wikimedia Indonesia. (Wil is the live-in partner of WMF executive director, Lila Tretikov.) These other article submissions shown above haven't been so lucky to be "connected" in the way Wil is.

I wonder what Wil thinks of the AFC process, now that his personal experience was fast-tracked, but for hundreds of others, they're stuck in the muck. I wonder if Wil assumes that the current process is fair to all participants? I wonder if he perceives a system that is not "first come, first served" will engender goodwill among Wikipedians?

[Vigilant]

Wil Sinclair recently (May 29, 2014, as far as I can tell) submitted to the Articles for Creation process a short stub about Chadwick modular seating (T-H-L). Six days later, his stub was accepted into Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, we can look at more than 150 AFC submissions that have been waiting more than a month for reviewer attention.

Some of the very old submissions with more content and more references, which Wil was able to "cut in front" of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Boston_CitiNet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Biph ... e_leukemia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... 27s_Office

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:WA_S ... llenge_Cup

Wil's submission got special notice from a two-time ArbCom member and husband of the chair of Wikimedia Indonesia. These other article submissions weren't so lucky.

I wonder what Wil thinks of the AFC process, now that his personal experience was fast-tracked, but for hundreds of others, they're stuck in the muck. I wonder if Wil assumes that the current process is fair to all participants? I wonder if he perceives a system that is not "first come, first served" will engender goodwill among Wikipedians?

Let the inculcation commence.

[Kumioko]

The AFC process has long been a joke. People who submit in good faith are often declined and in many cases if they would have just created the article it would be out there in production and no one would even argue it. The AFC process is, for the most part, another one of those things that just distracts time and attention away from article improvement and pushes potential users away. Reviewers frequently leave unnecessarily rude or abrasive comments, their decisions are frequently prone to severe POV and opinions and often articles that are close to being ready for inclusion are declined for extremely minor problems that can easily be fixed but the reviewer is too lazy to do so.

[Vigilant]

I have a hard time seeing any value in afc.

It should wither and die.

[thekohser]

Note that the boy who reviewed and approved (after 2 minutes of consideration) Wil's submission is "a 16-year-old atheist libertarian". Following in the footsteps of Der Jimbo, eh?

[Kumioko]

And a highly educated and socially capable 16 year old das boot (I mean err, to boot) I'm sure.

[Vigilant]

And a highly educated and socially capable 16 year old das boot (I mean err, to boot) I'm sure.

Who started on wikipedia when he was 13.
I'm sure his expert opinion on whether to create the article would widely be considered as sufficient.

Perfect.

[thekohser]

If you think about it, Sinclair's article about this specific type of furniture is sourced to two outside references.

One, the art-directory.info biography of the designer, Don Chadwick. That biography has this to say about the furniture:

In 1974 Don Chadwick designed "Modular Seating", a system for upholstered seat furniture. It consists of five independent modules, one of which is rectangular while the other four are wedge-shaped. Any number of these modules can be fitted together to make an endless sofa.

Two, the John R. Berry book, Herman Miller: the purpose of design, has this to say about the furniture:

1974: Chadwick "modular" seating, designed by Don Chadwick, is introduced.

That's it. A brand new Wikipedia article is created, using only the content you see above to establish notability. It's the Mzoli's Meats of 2014.

However, we were told recently by Wikimedia Foundation employee Steven Walling that Wikipedia should not have an article about a $4 billion company called Comcast Business, because there are not enough sources to document it.

[Randy from Boise]

I recently touched my first AFC piece. It was actually an excellent contribution on a famous tobacco auctioneer. It was miles and miles over the GNG bar and a great contribution to WP. Unfortunately, during the submission proces, review, move here, move there process, every single footnote was garbled. This before I even saw the piece.

I tried to communicate with the writer so that the footnotes could be restored and never heard back from them. I put the piece up sans footnotes; maybe someday he'll sign in again and we can figure stuff out.

I found the "review" mechanism to be unusable. That's a big part of the problem. With New Pages Patrol, it just takes a click to approve something. Getting something out of the AFC queue and into mainspace was a pain in the ass.


RfB

[Vinegar Monk]

AfC's a bloody mess and pretty much everyone knows and admits it. It wouldn't surprise me if someone freaking XfD'ed the entire process in the near future. It accepts shitty articles, rejects good ones, and generally puts off any likely new contributor from wanting to stick around.

[thekohser]

AfC's a bloody mess and pretty much everyone knows and admits it. It wouldn't surprise me if someone freaking XfD'ed the entire process in the near future. It accepts shitty articles, rejects good ones, and generally puts off any likely new contributor from wanting to stick around.

But it worked quite well for the partner of the WMF's executive director, yes? Similar to how your travel costs to Wikiconference USA worked out nicely, while my travel costs turned out to have left me short $5.30, and I didn't even get to go anywhere.

[Ming]

AfC's a bloody mess and pretty much everyone knows and admits it. It wouldn't surprise me if someone freaking XfD'ed the entire process in the near future. It accepts shitty articles, rejects good ones, and generally puts off any likely new contributor from wanting to stick around.

Well, Ming hasn't been involved in it for a while, but its main purpose is to serve as a tonsil for the numerous promotional bios and business articles. Ming has no idea whether it is serving that purpose well.

[Poetlister]

Wil Sinclair recently (May 29, 2014, as far as I can tell) submitted to the Articles for Creation process a short stub about Chadwick modular seating (T-H-L). Six days later, his stub was accepted into Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, we can look at more than 150 AFC submissions that have been waiting more than a month for reviewer attention.

Some of the very old submissions with more content and more references, which Wil was able to "cut in front" of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Boston_CitiNet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Biph ... e_leukemia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... 27s_Office

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:WA_S ... llenge_Cup

Wil's submission got special notice from a two-time ArbCom member and husband of the chair of Wikimedia Indonesia. (Wil is the live-in partner of WMF executive director, Lila Tretikov.) These other article submissions shown above haven't been so lucky to be "connected" in the way Wil is.

I wonder what Wil thinks of the AFC process, now that his personal experience was fast-tracked, but for hundreds of others, they're stuck in the muck. I wonder if Wil assumes that the current process is fair to all participants? I wonder if he perceives a system that is not "first come, first served" will engender goodwill among Wikipedians?

I think we should be pleased. It shows that despite his participation here, there are senior Wikipedians who still like him.

[EricBarbour]

This is all well and fine, but it would help if you could assemble an account of the AFC systems' creation, a timeline, or at least more examples of favoritism....

[Vinegar Monk]

AfC's a bloody mess and pretty much everyone knows and admits it. It wouldn't surprise me if someone freaking XfD'ed the entire process in the near future. It accepts shitty articles, rejects good ones, and generally puts off any likely new contributor from wanting to stick around.

But it worked quite well for the partner of the WMF's executive director, yes? Similar to how your travel costs to Wikiconference USA worked out nicely, while my travel costs turned out to have left me short $5.30, and I didn't even get to go anywhere.

Your choice to not go anywhere. I'm sure you could've found something fun to do in NYC for a weekend, even if it didn't involve trying to troll Wikimedians.

AfC works well whenever anyone links an AfC article on a high profile page outside of AfC. It's completely broken the rest of the time, one of the reasons I heavily encourage anyone creating articles to bypass AfC.

[thekohser]

Your choice to not go anywhere. I'm sure you could've found something fun to do in NYC for a weekend, even if it didn't involve trying to troll Wikimedians.

You sure do throw around that "troll" word quite often. It seems that you use it especially while you happen to be doing it. For the record, instead of going to New York City that weekend (I hear from the Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports that Wall Street is a "dirty place in every sense of the word"), I spent the weekend very much enjoying three of my daughter's softball games, helping to organize a pizza picnic for all the girls and their parents after one of the away games. I also got to watch her summer basketball team's first regular season game, which they won by 14 points or so. My wife and I both appreciated how gorgeous the weather was all weekend, and it was mentioned a couple of times over the weekend how my family was kind of thankful that I "didn't have to go to New York". My buddy who is a nightclub DJ in the NYC metro area was disappointed that I didn't come up, because we planned to get together Friday night at his regular gig -- he had a dance remix of "Once In A Lifetime" all lined up for me, because he knows how much I dig the Talking Heads.

I hope one day you can enjoy the love and comfort of a loyal and supportive spouse, along with the miracle of a happy, growing, outgoing child (or children). It seems like you have a number of anger and revenge issues to jettison before you'll fully appreciate the possibilities that life offers. I suppose that there's maybe some shame you're burying in there, too, given that we found out you're sponging off donors' money to pay your travel costs to these sorts of exclusive NYC junkets, rather than paying your own way with your lucrative "In Residence" salary. I really suggest you just let it all go and stop punishing yourself. Rest your weary head, as it were.

[Vinegar Monk]

Your choice to not go anywhere. I'm sure you could've found something fun to do in NYC for a weekend, even if it didn't involve trying to troll Wikimedians.

You sure do throw around that "troll" word quite often. It seems that you use it especially while you happen to be doing it. For the record, instead of going to New York City that weekend (I hear from the Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports that Wall Street is a "dirty place in every sense of the word"), I spent the weekend very much enjoying three of my daughter's softball games, helping to organize a pizza picnic for all the girls and their parents after one of the away games. I also got to watch her summer basketball team's first regular season game, which they won by 14 points or so. My wife and I both appreciated how gorgeous the weather was all weekend, and it was mentioned a couple of times over the weekend how my family was kind of thankful that I "didn't have to go to New York". My buddy who is a nightclub DJ in the NYC metro area was disappointed that I didn't come up, because we planned to get together Friday night at his regular gig -- he had a dance remix of "Once In A Lifetime" all lined up for me, because he knows how much I dig the Talking Heads.

I hope one day you can enjoy the love and comfort of a loyal and supportive spouse, along with the miracle of a happy, growing, outgoing child (or children). It seems like you have a number of anger and revenge issues to jettison before you'll fully appreciate the possibilities that life offers. I suppose that there's maybe some shame you're burying in there, too, given that we found out you're sponging off donors' money to pay your travel costs to these sorts of exclusive NYC junkets, rather than paying your own way with your lucrative "In Residence" salary. I really suggest you just let it all go and stop punishing yourself. Rest your weary head, as it were.

Haha, if you knew what my residency paid, you'd probably laugh. I do, luckily, enjoy the love and comfort of a loyal and supportive partner, though we feel a bit to young to get married. I have far few anger issues than you probably assume, and a comically low number related to revenge - and those mostly apply to those who have physically hurt good friends of mine. Boston a couple years back you could probably call a junket - NYC this time around, not so much. Glad you had a good time with your family over the time period the conference ran.

[lilburne]

Your choice to not go anywhere. I'm sure you could've found something fun to do in NYC for a weekend, even if it didn't involve trying to troll Wikimedians.

You sure do throw around that "troll" word quite often. It seems that you use it especially while you happen to be doing it.

Ack! Wiki-wonks have as much skill in trolling as Maleus has in being uncivil. They really are quite poor at the task.

Anyway back to the issue at hand. Again it is a wikipedia process that has been created as usual with no clear goal in sight, or indeed any understanding of what existing problem it was meant to address. It thus becomes a process in of itself, its outcomes are irrelevant, and indeed there is no attempt to measure whether it has any effect as the original motivation for the process is long since forgotten. Thus as with everything wiki-wonkery successful navigation of the process is by grace and favour.

[Randy from Boise]

Although Kevin and Greg's exchange was entertaining, it sort of obscured Kevin's more important post acknowledging that Articles for Creation is dysfunctional: backlogged and a deterrent to turning contributors of a first topic into long-term editors and a potential candidate for complete elimination.

That's pretty much on the mark, it seems to me.

RfB

[Ming]

Although Kevin and Greg's exchange was entertaining, it sort of obscured Kevin's more important post acknowledging that Articles for Creation is dysfunctional: backlogged and a deterrent to turning contributors of a first topic into long-term editors and a potential candidate for complete elimination.

It's backlogged for the same reason that Ming skips over 95% of AfD these days: nobody wants to put themselves through reading all the puff biographies, band articles, and corporate promos. In that respect it's "working" in that it appears to keep some of this garbage out, but yes, it surely does discourage those who have, er, more wide-ranging interests.

[Bonkers The Clown]

The good folks at AfC are doing a splendid job! Tireless reviewing of mostly crappy articles and blocking people who disruptively give spurious reviews for these very crappily written articles should be commended.

[Peryglus]

The good folks at AfC are doing a splendid job! Tireless reviewing of mostly crappy articles and blocking people who disruptively give spurious reviews for these very crappily written articles should be commended.

It might be pertinent for me to note for the benefit of other readers that you were heavily involved in AfC yourself, are indefinitely blocked and have

999999921 spouses

Bias should be taken into consideration.

[thekohser]

I find it amusing that "Articles for Creation" was a process that one would assume was intended to help facilitate the creation of Wikipedia articles that might endure in the project.

Instead, there is now quantifiable proof (from WMF's Aaron Halfaker) that the Articles for Creation process actually stifles the creation of enduring Wikipedia articles.



I suppose we might say "fewer Wikipedia articles about bullcrap topics" is actually a good thing. But, I assure you, the WMF staff views this as a bad thing.


If you want to torture yourself with the whole presentation session:

[Poetlister]

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the graphs but it looks like there was a huge increase in newcomer drafts accompanied by a moderate fall in the proportion that survived. Thus the output - the creation of articles - soared, but the efficiency - articles created divided by effort - fell. Why should WMF care about efficiency?

[thekohser]

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the graphs but it looks like there was a huge increase in newcomer drafts accompanied by a moderate fall in the proportion that survived. Thus the output - the creation of articles - soared, but the efficiency - articles created divided by effort - fell. Why should WMF care about efficiency?

Before the mid-2011 rise in promotion and popularity of using AfC, Aaron said that about 3% of new survivable articles were being made with AfC. After the mid-2011 shift, about 30% of new survivable articles were being made with AfC. Let's crunch the numbers (roughly), based on what the graph seems to show.

In 2009, maybe 1250 drafts per month were coming into AfC. 28% were surviving as new articles. That's 350 new articles, which accounted for 3% of a total of 11,666 new articles per month.

In 2013, maybe 7000 drafts per month were coming into AfC. 17% were surviving as new articles. That's 1190 new articles, but accounted for 30% of total new articles per month (or, 3,966).

That's a reduction in output, whereby AfC being promoted as the "preferred" way to create a new article was killing off more wannabe article drafts than just the plain old "here, let me start an article" method was killing.

Unless I am misunderstanding Aaron's analysis in some key way (which is very possible, because he had some typos in his presentation).