There's an interesting page linked there, wikipedia's internal Newbie Treatment Study. Good to see they're at least considering they might have a problem.
I created an article with three links to coverage by reliable sources, two of which were significant. The article clearly identified the subject, and was tagged and deleted as patent nonsense, without any communication whatsoever with the creating account. Skomorokh, barbarian 02:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
The reason I deleted the article was that the wikilinks did not have the proper markup. In addition, "See also" should be used instead of "See articles" and "External links" should be substituted for "Sites". Willking1979 (talk) 02:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure any of those reasons are relevant to CSD, and sadly I note that User talk:...and the circus leaves town is still a redlink. ϢereSpielChequers 09:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Wow. I had to read Williking's comment a few times to make sure it wasn't a subtle parody. (Just to check: he did genuinely mean that comment, right?)
I think we can end this experiment now; it's an obvious success. --Gwern (contribs) 22:37 8 October 2009 (GMT)
It's very easy to build a spam-filter that stops all spam simply by dropping all mail. Similarly you can easily avoid false-positives by letting anything through.
What's really tricky is to create an algorithm, or a process involving humans, which keeps both false-positives and false-negatives within tolerable limits (and also what ratio between the two is desirable).
I've not noticed much complaint about nonsense and spam in Wikipedia which I assume means it's being dealt with by the very same people who are complained about when they delete something valuable.
I have experience of a similar project (where I generally argue for less drastic policing) but it seems rare for anyone in these debates to acknowledge that there is a balance and that any attempt to enforce a standard is going to have a negative impact on contributions, and vice versa, any attempt to make it easier for newbies will probably lead to more mistakes and vandalism.
There can be a third way but the most active commentators seem to polarized to contribute to furthering that.
That was interesting. I sometimes wonder if these admins realize how 'insider' they've gotten. Anyway, there, right at the top of the table, is a prime example of a self-appointed executioner. His brag table includes over 2000 deletes.
Just last night I spent a lot of time looking through the Cosmology articles. The favorite theory had a long, long page that has obviously seen a lot of attention. Almost all of the alternative theories have crappy pages, often with nasty remarks in them about how only a very small number of scientists don't accept The Proven Theory. Never mind that Edwin Hubble himself was skeptical to the last about the redshift/distance relationship.
If WP can't keep the Orcs at bay, the day is coming when all the articles will be red-mattered like Vulcan in ST 2009.
Very interesting study. Look at the number of articles which were tagged in under half-hour even though they did not meet deletion criteria. That should tell Wikipedia management about the serious problems they have on their hands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Newbie_treatment_at_C...