User:Bovlb/Throttle item creation by anonymous users

Previous discussion

There have been several similar proposals in the past:

• Wikidata:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive/2023/02#New_items_creation_to_be_restricted_for_anonyms_and_for_not_autoconfirmed_users?
• Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2022/02#Stop_allowing_unregistered_edits
• Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2021/12#Allowing_IP's_to_add_data,_not_change_data
• Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2017/08#Restrict_merging_rights_to_autoconfirmed_users

This proposal is very specific and is generally weaker than previous (failed) proposals.

Underlying facts

Before I get to the proposal, here are some facts that I hope we all agree on:

1. All editors should be prepared to receive feedback and pause or modify their edits appropriately.
2. Communication is especially important for bulk edits, because any errors (or missed opportunities for improvement) made repeatedly will be harder to correct after the fact.
3. The bulk creation of pages is a special case of bulk edits where there are additional ways to make errors, and communication is therefore even more important.
4. New users often make mistakes or misunderstand the nature of this project. This also makes communication important. Anonymous users are not necessarily new users.
5. We allow anonymous (IP) users to create and edit items. This is necessary because of our mandate to support the policies of client projects, especially with respect to the creation of Wikidata items for existing client articles.
6. It is difficult to communicate with anonymous users. If they change their IP, they won’t receive their messages. Anonymous users cannot be pinged. Mobile anonymous users do not see any message bar.
7. Anonymous users can never become autoconfirmed. No matter how many edits they make, their item creations will always swamp new page patrol.

Proposal

I therefore propose that we have a policy that anonymous users be restricted to some number (say 5) of item creations (across all namespaces, but excluding item creation from sitelinks) over some period (say a week). I further propose that we enforce this policy with an abuse filter. When an anonymous user hits the limit, they will be told that they need to create an account in order to create more items.

Examples

This policy would not affect most anonymous users. There are several LTAs who would be affected by this in a way that strongly benefitted the project.

See also https://wdpd.toolforge.org/creations

There are many other prolific IP item creators that I did not list because all of their items were deleted. There are probably much better examples that I have missed.

To evaluate this proposed policy change, we should ask two questions:

• Would these users have stopped creating items rather than create an account?
• If not, would the project be significantly diminished by the loss of these items?

If the answers to both these questions is "yes", then this proposal should fail.

Notes

For the avoidance of doubt, this proposal does not suggest any restriction on item creation by registered (but unconfirmed) users. While there is a case to be made for a similar restriction, the arguments are somewhat different, and I prefer to keep them separate.

Special:AbuseFilter/225 is an example of such a filter (currently without a sitelink exclusion). I am assuming that, if we put this policy in place, we will be able to find a way to continue to enforce it under any future changes to IP privacy.