Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-11-12/Page creation redux
Unregistered page creation remains on hold so far
Despite previous plans to reenable the creation of Wikipedia articles by editors without accounts, the change has yet to take place and faces significant community opposition. The idea of conducting an experimental evaluation of the effects, as in the original announcement of a 30-day trial beginning 9 November, now seems to be in limbo.
With a general consensus on the move unclear in either direction, the anticipated start date saw instead a request for comment to "assess whether this is a viable idea and the conditions under which it would occur." Although initially launched by Ryan Postlethwaite with a statement supporting the experiment, it quickly attracted a sizable group of editors against it.
At press time, two comments opposing the experiment each had more contributors endorsing them than Postlethwaite's original statement (not surprisingly, there was significant overlap between the two groups opposing). A number of editors argued that from observation of
In another comment
One development may leave open the possibility for the experiment to take place. Both authors of the primary statements opposing the experiment, Vickers and W.marsh, also signed on to another comment by John Broughton indicating that he might support it but considered the parameters poorly defined. Broughton (incidentally, also the author of a forthcoming book that is a guide on contributing to Wikipedia, part of the O'Reilly Missing Manuals series) argued that the evaluation criteria and measures for success were lacking. He said the experiment needed those to be conclusive, otherwise the only guaranteed result would be "a fight about what to do at the end of the 30 days".
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