User talk:Amgine/Reboot

This 'Challenge' business

OK...so, I'm going to try to be cool. This little 'sub user page' you've set up is problematic. It is essentially trying to do an end run around policy. The articles did not REALLY go through the editorial process. I will trust you to do the right thing, please.--Bddpaux (talk) 18:34, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

So, let me tell you a little story about the history of en.WN as I recall it. The project was slow - not as slow as it is now, but still very slow. Then an important news event occurred, and a few hundred people were editing en.WN every day. Rather than lose the firehose of content someone was BOLD and ripped up the publishing policy and turned it around - anyone could publish an article as soon as they thought it met the minimum criteria.

And, to make sure that did not cause (too much) chaos, it became a policy that anyone could unpublish an article if they felt it did not/no longer met the minimum criteria.

After the news event settled down, it turned out that this format attracted more contributors. They had fast gratification. That meant we (almost always) had enough people on the project to swiftly manage the spammers, trolls. It also resulted in conflicts, rarely resulting in brawls but occasionally, yes. That level of passion also seemed to keep people engaged in the project.

This policy was in place for about 18 months. At the end of that period the community was publishing 20+ new articles per day, off of its peak week of 30+ per day a few weeks earlier.

Within a month of reinstating the formal-review-before-publishing the rate of publication was down to 2-3 per day. It has declined ever since.

This 'challenge' business was a test to see if enough people who remember that period of productivity could be stirred to write articles, with no expectation of being reviewed. Not enough have enough interest, or care enough any more, to try to energize this "community" which expends more energy policing user space than writing or reviewing news articles.

The test failed. Delete whatever the hell you want to. - Amgine | t 06:27, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

P.S. Policy is just the way things get done. If things get done a different way, then the policy has changed; do it the different way.