[WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

[Justin Cormack]

On 8 Nov 2005, at 18:39, kosebamse at gmx.net wrote:

> Thanks for the feedback. One interesting point with my little test  
> seems to
> be that the average quality of our content has not much improved  
> since March
> (or since 2003, as far as I can remember).

What do you base this on?

> A thought experiment: if we were the editorial committee of an  
> encyclopedia
> to be written from scratch and were given Wikipedia's current  
> content as a
> basis (but not the user base), what would we do? I guess we would  
> put our
> energy into improving the material, i.e. rewriting/deleting/merging  
> most of
> it. But we would not try to acquire more articles of that quality.  
> (Ah wait,
> we ARE the editorial committee of an encyclopedia to be written from
> scratch...)

I dont know. Despite what other people seem to think there are huge  
areas
that are missing. A lot of people find it easier to write with  
something to
start from. I have written a few of articles from missing encyclopaedic
articles (ones I knew something about) and other people have found  
them and
improved them. So even having more stubs is useful.

Ok, just had a chance to go through your list, and yes the World of  
Warcraft
article is fancruft. But it has been edited by 6 people. If people  
afre going to
write this much it is hard to recommend merging.

William Roberts the first edit says "information is thin" but clearly  
notable.
Someone will fix this one day, using a copy of "Not very eminent  
Victorians".
The formatting will be ok then.

Reverse potential is a dab page but not in the usual style. I think  
thats ok.

Entertainer I agree is bogus. However it is because it is a remnant  
of life before
categories. It and many of the linked lists need to be removed.  
Categories make
this stuff redundant.

Gripper. Should die.

Imari porcelain is not incoherent, it makes a good effort at a  
difficult subject.

Diego Luna is what I would expect about a not very important actor.  
Reads like a
copyvio actually.

Justinc