Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/2/16 Phil Nash
<pn007a2145(a)blueyonder.co.uk>uk>:
>> I think that this was bound to happen; any venture based on
>> describing the known universe has an inherent limit in any case,
>> and it seems obvious that once you've reached some level of
>> coverage, what happens then is more determined by the pace of real
>> life events. However, like software, it's arguable that an
>> encyclopedia is never really finished. Good Articles may be good,
>> and Featured Articles better, but something will always come along
>> to require additions. As for relaxing notability guidelines, I
>> think we very largely get it about right at present, and opening a
>> can of worms does not commend itself to me as a policy.
>
> If we get to the point where virtually no new articles are being
> created (beyond current events) and a very large proportion of the
> existing articles are at least Good, then it might be worth relaxing
> the guildlines - what would be the downside? I think a lot of people
> that like writing new articles don't like the fine tuning that is
> required to get from Good to Featured, so if we don't let them write
> new stuff we'll just lose them. We might as well have them doing
> something.
I think the downside might be exactly what is covered by [[WP:NOT]] at
present, and especially [[WP:NOR]]; I've seen several articles that were
extremely worthy as research projects, but offended against those policies,
and [[WP:SYNTH]] in particular. I hated to nominate for deletion, but it had
to be done, within existing policy. I hoped we would not lose those
obviously committed and competent editors. The problem is that relaxing
[[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:SYNTH]], if not done with extreme care, opens the
floodgates to all sorts of abuse, and that is why I don't think it should
happen.
As regards quality of articles that pass the intial [[WP:CSD]] and [[WP:N]]
tests, it's very largely up to editors being interested enough to dedicate
time and effort to take an article to its appropriate level. Take
[[Tiddleywink]] as an example; it is notable, by definition, because it's a
settlement. But without major research effort, it's extremely unlikely to
ever achieve GA, let alone FA. Perhaps that is a problem with the
requirements of GA & FA, and perhaps also those criteria are worth looking
at.