On 3/29/07, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
I rather think all of this misses the point. Vandalism to our most popular articles is not really a problem: new users/anons editing those articles isn't a problem either. Reverts are easy.
Something we should really think about, though, is semi-protecting our quality articles; GAs and/or FAs. The current state of affairs, where quality articles deteriorate very rapidly if no one is looking after them due to people introducing questionable junk that isn't out-and-out vandalism, is not acceptable. Semi-protection would help here, because those responsible for introducing this kind of material - often trivia - are usually anons.
Moreschi
I don't know how true this is for most FAs, but those I've previously been involved with end up being defeatured due to increasing standards for FAs. Some of the finest (IMO) featured articles I've been involved in, on the other hand, don't seem to have deteriorated all that much despite becoming featured over a year ago. (Though to be fair, they're on obscure topics.)
It seems to me that the FAs most prone to such nonsense are those which also happen to be extremely famous (oh God, I remember the frustration I had dealing with [[Theodore Roosevelt]] due to overenthusiastic editors introducing material on trivialities and downplaying his actual achievements - not to mention their penchant for calling him "TR" instead of Roosevelt). I'm wary about introducing full protection on these articles, though. We got a lot of good content that could be shipped out to subarticles that might not have materialised at all if people went "Damn it, this thing's protected - I guess I won't write anything about TR's African expedition after all."
Johnleemk