On Mon, 24 Oct 2005, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On Mon 24 Oct 2005, dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
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?
Editor makes a good-faith edit to article. It is reverted by another editor who is uncompromisingly pushing a POV. A conflict results, sometimes more acrimonious than at other times.
Rinse, lather, repeat. Eventually the first editor will decide that it is more rewarding to start creating articles & turn those red links blue than to argue over content -- unless that editor is also uncompromising about a certain POV, & decides to squat on certain articles to preserve that POV.
Either path means that articles improve to a certain point, then unless something happens they remain at that level of quality. We need more tools to ensure that "something happens".
Geoff