This is what bothers me most about Wikipedia.
Low-quality articles are tolerated on the assumption that every low-quality article is the nucleus around which a pearl will coalesce.
Unfortunately, one of the things that seems to be scaling, possibly increasing, is the ratio between the rate at which irritating grains of pollutant are introduced and the rate at which nacre is being deposited.
The de facto situation here seems to be that we would _rather_ have more article than better articles.
I really don't know where you get these ideas from. How are low-quality articles "tolerated"? Who would rather have more articles than better articles? Who even thinks there is a choice between more articles and better articles?
I thought the Guardian article was very fair and accurate. And speaks quite
well of Wikipedia. We have consciously chosen to produce an encyclopedia in which most articles are "almost good enough."
But if we want them to be better, we have got to do something to direct more nacre around fewer nuclei.
Either would probably be sufficient, but I agree we could do more to focus more on a core set of articles. It's one of the reasons I think we should eliminate VFD and the like. It wastes far too much time focussing on at best accomplishing nothing and at worst decreasing the quality of the encyclopedia.
Quality is not one of the "five pillars of Wikipedia." And only a certain
level of quality results from the natural operation of the Wiki process.
If we want Wikipedia to be not just a "free encyclopedia," but a "high- quality free encyclopedia," something needs to change.
Probably a lot needs to change, and not just "something". But that's pretty obvious. What's less obvious is what it is that needs to change. Anthony