Introduction

This is the secon of two RfCs about article creation and deletion at scale. Per the rules below, please feel free to add to questions/proposed changes for the first seven days; other suggestions, comments, questions or replies should be made within your own section.

This RfC will be announced at the articles for deletion talk page, the Arbitration Noticeboard, the administrators' noticeboard, the Bot policy talk page, Village pump (policy), Wikipedia talk:Notability and Centralized discussion.

Background

Page-related actions done at scale can overwhelm the community's ability to adequately monitor and participate effectively. The issue is exacerbated in the case of article creation at scale because it escapes the normal notification system and results in dysfunction at Articles for Deletion.

In the past, Wikipedia did not discourage article creation at scale under the assumption this was the best way to achieve broad coverage of vast subjects such as sports, plant and animal life, geography. There exists a policy that automated or semi-automated creation requires a bot request for approval. More recently, concerns have been raised in multiple venues that the continuing creation of such articles (or article creation at scale performed manually) has overwhelmed editors’ ability to track and assess these articles, and that the churn has become a waste of time and a cause of disruption. In a 2022 August decision, the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) requested an RfC addressing "how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion" (termed "AfD at scale").

A strong argument was made that the article creation at scale (sometimes known as mass, rapid, or large-scale creation) is one of the causes of dysfunction at AfD with regard to article deletions at scale, and that addressing this issue is a necessary precursor to the ArbCom-ordered RfC addressing AfD at scale. This was held at [[WP:ACAS]].

Statistics for mass creation

  1. Editors who have created more than seven articles in the past week, including lists and disambiguation pages
  2. Editors who have created more than seven articles in the past week, excluding lists and disambiguation pages
  3. Editors who have created more than ten articles in June
  4. Editors who have created more than ten articles in July
  5. Editors who have created more than ten articles in August
  6. Editors who have created more than 100 articles in the past year
  7. Editors who have created more than 100 articles in the past year, by month
  8. Editors who created more than than 10 articles in 2021, by month
  9. Editors who created more than than 10 articles in 2020, by month
  10. Editors who created more than than 10 articles in 2019, by month
  11. Editors by number of articles created in the past five years

Notes:

  1. None of these contain redirects that were converted into articles by the listed editor, but they do contain redirects that were converted into articles by other editors. I'm looking into fixing the latter; the former can be fixed for smaller datasets, but is too intensive for larger ones.
  2. External links counts can be suggestive about the quality of the article, it can also be meaningless - a low number may be because a large number of offline sources were used, while a high number may be because a template that provides links to a large number of database sources was added.
  1. Articles by editor by day over one year (1138 editor-days exceeded 10 articles; 163 exceeded 25)
  2. Articles by editor by week over one year (922 editor-weeks exceeded 20 articles, 150 exceeded 50)
  3. Articles by editor by month over one year (640 editor-months exceeded 40 articles, 123 exceeded 100)
  4. Articles by editor by year since 2020 (1156 editor-years exceeded 80 articles; 407 exceeded 200)

Note that these do attempt to exclude false positives from editors converting redirects created by the original editor, but some still exist, and this attempt does result in some false negatives. This is also the reason why a hard technical limit will be difficult; we will need some way to identify editors converting redirects into articles, and count those articles towards their count rather than towards the count of the original article creator. (Compiled by BilledMammal)

Purpose of this discussion

This RfC is to find and develop solutions to issues surrounding article creation at scale, partially in preparation for the RfC on article deletions at scale.

Rules

  1. All editors are required to maintain a proper level of decorum. Rudeness, hostility, casting aspersions, and battleground mentality will not be tolerated. Inappropriate conduct will result in a partial block (p-block) from this discussion.
  2. The sole purpose of this RfC is to determine consensus about policy going forward surrounding creation of articles at scale and to form consensus on those solutions. It is not a venue for personal opinion on past creation or creators of such articles or about previous tolerance of such creations, nor about past mass deletions, ditto. Editors posting off-topic may be p-blocked from this discussion.
  3. All comments must be about issues and proposed policy changes surrounding article creation at scale. Comments about any contributor are prohibited and will result in a p-block from this discussion. Any violations will be reverted, removed, or redacted.
  4. Please do not make changes in RfC questions that have already been posted. Anyone is permitted to post additional questions/proposals, below the existing ones. Moderators may at their discretion merge, edit, or condense questions at any point in the process. Any user may suggest such changes.
  5. Please make all additional proposals within seven days of the start of this discussion. Subsequent proposals may be brought up in an editor's own section for consideration and inclusion at the discretion of the moderators.
  6. Discussion is unthreaded. Please create your own comments section within the discussion section for each question, placing your username in the section header. Within your own section you may present your !votes, post questions to other editors, or respond to other editors; unthreaded discussions with other editors can be created on the talk page. Threaded discussion on the RfC will be moved to the talk page by moderators/clerk.
  7. Within a comment section each editor is limited to 300 words, including questions to and replies to other editors. (word count tool) Short quotes from other editors to provide clarity are excluded from the word count, but quoted material may be trimmed by moderators at their discretion. Moderators may at their discretion grant extensions following a request on the talk page that includes a brief explanation of why it is needed; please ping for such requests. Overlength statements will be collapsed until shortened. Hint: pipe long page titles and don't bother signing posts in your own section. Hint: pipe long article titles and just timestamp (5 tildes) posts in your own section.
  8. If you believe someone has violated these rules, please speak to a moderator on their user talk page. If you believe the moderators are behaving inappropriately, please speak to an arbcom member on their user talk page or by email.
  9. This discussion will be open for 30 days and will be closed by a panel of three editors with experience closing discussions and who will be appointed by the Arbitration Committee prior to the start of the RfC. The closing panel will summarize and evaluate what consensus, if any, exists within the community.
  10. Per their order and this amendment, any appeals of a moderator decision may only be made to the Arbitration Committee at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment. The community retains the ability to amend the outcomes of the RfC through a subsequent community-wide request for comment

Moderators of this discussion

The Arbitration Committee has appointed two moderators for this RfC:

Additional clerking help: MJL (talk · contribs)

Closers

The Arbitration Committee has appointed a panel of three closers for this RfC:

Proposals

More