I am mulling over whether we as a community to tighten our standards on who is permitted to create a draft and ask for it to be reviewed. As part of a thought experiment, I decided to look at the New Pages Feed and look at a few of the entries.
I decided to take a look at Special:NewPagesFeed on 18 May, and I selected the first six consecutive items in the list. This is clearly not a substantial sample, but it is enough to illustrate some points.
| Entry | Editor | edit count | Link | comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Robeatlas | 73 | link | I don't know enough about the acting community to know whether this meets the notability guidelines without doing a little research but it strikes me as very plausible. That means we probably ought to have an article on this actor.
However, this version has several significant shortfalls which I would not expect from an editor who meets my minimum standards for creating new articles. For example, the first usage of the person's name is not capitalized. There is no info box (I know, I know it's not required, but most such articles will have one.) On a positive note it does have references, but all of the references are bare URLs. This is an excellent example of a draft who subject ought to have an article in Wikipedia but has enough shortcomings that it ought not to be in mainspace as is. A qualified editor would almost certainly produce an acceptable draft which could be accepted this one requires a fair bit of work by reviewers, which could be better spent elsewhere. |
| 2 | 71.198.50.178 | 4 | link | I don't know enough about tennis community to know with this person is notable but I suspect not.
If a qualified editor considered working on an article about this person, they are likely to know enough to check with the relevant wiki project before undertaking this, or checking with some other experienced editors to determine whether it's worth even starting. Purportedly this is about a tennis player but there's nothing about the Pro tour so perhaps the claim to fame is that they are a coach. That comes across as an aside in the intro. It does have a very minimal info box and that info box has a birth date, but the date in the lead is in a different format. A qualified editor would know to use a template for birthdate. It looks like there are three references but there are only two. A qualified editor would know how to reuse references. It makes reference to family members which are not supported by reliable sources. A qualified editor would know that "son", "father", and "mother" should not be capitalized Arguably the most important sentence in the article is that he is coaching a notable person but that claim is not sourced. This is another example of the wastage of valuable resources. A qualified editor would either determined that this person isn't notable enough to deserve an article or if they happen to be sufficiently notable would have produced a higher-quality draft one that could be accepted as opposed to begging for significant copy edits. |
| 3 | 70.115.147.65 | 6 | link | On the surface this looks good. It's created by an IP who wouldn't meet my experience requirements to be qualified. This serves as a good example of why there may need to be an alternative to a hard experience requirement for the creation of drafts.
This IP has created an article in the past — I'm not sure why they have not registered an account. I be willing to bet that they would breeze through the Wikipedia adventure and Wikipedia adventure part two (not yet created) with ease. |
| 4 | Alexinmathew | 7 | link | Not a single citation. While it probably did not take the review long to reach this conclusion it still constitutes a waste of time. A qualified editor would not make this mistake. |
| 5 | Musicgurureviews | 2 | link | Not a bad start. Needs more citations but in fairness, I can find a lot of articles currently in main space that aren't reference this well.
This is a fair example of why there needs to be a path to qualified editor other than a pure experience requirement. |
| 6 | 68.103.78.155 | 6 | link | This clearly meets (or will meet) notability requirements.
One might question whether it's premature to have an article about 2020 but having created articles about 2020 events I'm lief to challenge it on that point. It has zero references, and that's not acceptable qualified editor would know this. Despite having a future date, there are references to three ballpark changes which almost certainly have been discussed in reliable sources. If they have they should be referenced if they haven't they shouldn't be listed. I am sympathetic to some of the red links (E. G. 2020 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament) but I'm opposed to the inclusion of red-linked templates for conference standings. I believe that a qualified editor have created an acceptable draft — this one requires too much tender loving care from reviewing editors. |
General observation
Let's start with the caveat that six items constitutes too small a sample to draw statistically significant conclusions, but these entries do illustrate points worth considering.
As a placeholder, I'm going to use the term "qualified editor" as someone who meets certain standards to be determined, and who status permits them to create a draft and ask for a review.
- Two of the entries (3, 5) are in decent shape. As with any early draft that is room for improvement but I wouldn't be unhappy about seeing either of these in main space. Both of these illustrate the point that a hard count/experience limit should not be the only path to becoming a qualified editor.
- Two of these entries (2, 4) illustrate the problems caused when allowing unqualified editors to create a draft and ask for a review. While the review might not take a long time, when there are literally thousands of items in the queue, a wasting of time by the reviewer as well as the editor creating the draft. Both of these editors might be capable of making small edits to existing articles and when they have enough experience it is very possible they might be able to create an acceptable draft.
- Two of these entries (1, 6) are examples of subjects which probably ought to have an article in main space, but these two drafts illustrate that the lack of knowledge of the editor produces something not yet acceptable. Both of these create a drain on resources as a reviewer has to take the time to be both positive about the likelihood that the subject matter is notable but explaining some of the shortcomings so that the draft can be improved. If the reviewer spends a lot of time and thoroughly lists all issues, perhaps the re-review will be successful, but if they only identify low hanging fruit issues, the next review might also fail. In both of these cases, it is my opinion that a qualified editor would produce an acceptable draft which would produce a higher quality product and lower drain on reviewer resources.
We need more data points, but this very preliminary review suggests that requiring that review requests must come from qualified editors will cut out a portion of doomed submissions, and increase the chance that the submissions which are made are in much better shape and require fewer reviewer resources.