[WikiEN-l] Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets bigger (formerlyCan you trust Wikipedia?)

[Neil Harris]

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at web.de] 
>>Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 3:56 AM
>>To: English Wikipedia
>>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Slipping quality as Wikipedia gets 
>>bigger (formerlyCan you trust Wikipedia?)
>>
>>
>>Well, as the author of said feature, I've been asking for a 
>>long time what's the holdup. I'm fairly certain it is, at the 
>>very least, ready for the planned test phase. I keep asking 
>>people what should be fixed, but so far (that is, in the last 
>>few month) noone could tell me the reason it remains turned off.
>>
>>If parts of it are broken or not up to MediaWiki standard or 
>>Evil(tm) in some other important way, please, PLEASE tell me 
>>so I can fix it.
>>
>>Should I backport it from CVS HEAD to some other branch? 
>>Which one? Anything!
>>
>>So far, I've been mostly ignored.
>>
>>Magnus
>>    
>>
>
>Please put this feature into effect immediately! If we don't like it, we
>can always turn it off afterwards. But we will NEVER know if thousands
>of Wikipedians will like it if we wait for an overwhelming clamor on
>this mailing list.
>
>Ed Poor
>
>  
>

I really think that ratings are vital, in order to deal with improving 
and maintaining Wikipedia's quality as its size and audience scales. If 
the ratings code is a performance, hog, at least trying it 
experimentally will find out how bad the problem is, and perhaps 
illuminate how it could be fixed to make it better. I can think of lots 
of potential strategies for doing this, but it would be nice to see the 
problem in reality, rather than in theory, before trying to fix it.

Perhaps the rating code could be turned on only for admins, or users 
with usernames beginning with 'E' to 'J', or only during non-busy 
hours... or automatically turned off if load rises over a pre-set limit?

Or perhaps just turned on for a few hours one weekend, to see what the 
effect on load really is?

-- Neil