Geoffrey Burling wrote:
Now while some people will use this as proof that Wikipedia badly needs improvement and eoter rant that we need to work on our quality, or dismiss this finding as belaboring the obvious, a little math will show that if the 5% figure is correct then there ought to be at least 42,000 articles that are Good in quality -- or better. That's not a bad statistic, especialy when one considers some proprietary encyclopedias don't have that many articles *in total*.
Wikipedia is not a finished product encyclopedia. It's the raw material for one. It's good enough to be usable, and our popularity (#30 today, #29 yesterday - we've broken the top 30!) shows there's an aching need for something like Wikipedia, even if we don't fill it as well as we'd like to.
Let's stop making assumptions, and do some more math: more articles are listed & debated on AfD than on Peer review. It's hard not to conclude from that simple calculation that Wikipedians are more motivated to remove an article than to improve it. Small wonder, then, that so many people complain about the quality of the articles on Wikipedia: that's what they look for -- the bad articles instead of the good.
Yes. I wish more AFD regulars would work on writing and improving stuff. (I know a lot do - Geogre, for instance, an ardent advocate of clearing crap, very much has the runs on the board when it comes to producing new stuff of high quality. I'm a fan.)
I know this would be unenforceable, but wouldn't it be a good policy that before an editor nominates an article to AfD, they have to also nominate an article to Peer review? And that before an editor adds to the debate at AfD, they have to contribute to the debate at either Peer review or Featured articles candidates? Maybe that might make some people complain about those fora like some people complain about AfD now, but it just might help uncover more of those 42,000 unrecognized Good articles.
I heartily endorse this product and/or service!
(And if you have someone who's a good admin who is good at spotting crap but a terrible writer, e.g. geni, who is dyslexic, they should be able to find people to help them with editing their prose into shape. I'll volunteer.)
- d.