On 1/6/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Sure. We also know how thoroughly people read software manuals. We do have all sorts of articles that are bloody awful, but we have to give our serious contributors a little credit for recognizing trash. Each new contributor will follow his own writing style. He may look at the bad articles to understand how wiki markup is used, but that doesn't mean that he will adopt someone else's writing style. If he makes atrocious gaffes in his writing I would hope that someone who notices this will become a mentor who understandingly encourages him to improve, rather than criticises him on his stupid style.
I'm wasn't talking here about writing style, which is something that everyone has independently of Wikipedia, but referencing style. Very few people come to the project with established preferences for how to research and reference encyclopedia articles. And while it's true that you can offer suggestions for improvement for people who come to stay, the same is not true of the short-term contributors who account for most of our content. Our one chance to reach many of our contributors is through the articles they read before contributing, and if the majority of those articles are unreferenced or poorly referenced they are going to (as I did and I suspect many others here did at first) start by writing unreferenced or poorly referenced articles; if they only work on one article, that may well be all they write.
Failing to have the resources is not an argument for extreme action.
We all have our own image of what is needed for an ideal article. For any article this develops over time, sometimes over a very long time. An early stage article may be deficient in many respects. Only blatantly illegal, offensive or vandalous activities require immediate attention. Otherwise, fix what you can or leave deficiency notices and move on. Eventually someone who is interested in the subject will do what needs to be done.
This is an example of a view of the Wikipedia system that I find very unconvincing. First, the notion that articles organically develop and improve over time, with each stage of the article serving as the building block for the next, is not supported by examining articles that expand and improve substantially from their creation; generally, such expansion is a result of a single editor replacing (as opposed to slowly expanding upon) the existing content (an interesting essay on a subject related to this can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Britt/Don%27t_just_do_whatever). While there is certainly a value to having something, whatever it is, at a given location (breadth of coverage is a sort of quality in and of itself), we shouldn't overstate the role that existing weak articles play in developing strong articles to replace themselves.
Furthermore, I think the almost dialectical view, evident in your comment above, that Wikipedia is headed inexorably in the correct direction is an incorrect and dangerous one. While the project has already achieved a great deal, it is still quite possible that it could end up as something much less than it has the potential to be, that it could become largely a compilation of the collected wisdom of the internet instead of a true collection of human knowledge. So long as the volume of content from passer-by contributors continues to dwarf that from regulars (i.e. for the foreseeable future), the quality of referencing in contributions from new users is going to be the greatest factor in determining the direction we move in in this regard. Taking a lassez faire approach to article quality (and specifically, reference quality) will ensure that our average article remains rather poorly referenced, and strikes me as a sure way to at best delay the development of a higher quality encyclopedia, and at worst lastingly sidetrack the project.