On 10/22/07, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote:
An article shouldn't have to be comprehensive
to be a GA
Oh lord, the ten thousandth person who gets a kick from griping about what
GA should and shouldn't be while, in the meantime, people are actually
improving and promoting articles.
As I said, GA is being and ought to be used as an indicator for what we
would not be ashamed to have published in a hard copy edition of Wikipedia.
To raise the bar to a near-FA standard is to make it less useful in this
respect, and make it more like a gold star - which has its own advantages,
but not the same broader benefit it was intended for.
I think GA as it was originally intended would be very helpful in
distinguishing the non-crap from the crap. We could alternatively have a
process for recognising shitty articles; I suspect that might be more
efficient, but for obvious political and psychological reasons, this won't
happen much beyond the existing process of sticking colourful templates on
articles. The only other alternatives if we want to separate the
worth-publishing from the needs-fixing are to alter the GA standards, or to
establish a third process.
I'm not harping on this because I have an axe to grind; I'm harping on this
because I think we're failing to take the long-term view here and look at
the potential benefits of different GA standards.
Johnleemk