On Mon, 24 Oct 2005, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On Mon 24 Oct 2005, dpbsmith(a)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