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
I'm not sure you're referring to the same issue as Daniel, but you do raise
a major one. What tools do you think we need more of to ensure that
something happens?
I think the Requests for Comments page is a good idea for how to resolve
these types of problems, but last time I followed it (many months ago) it
was more about trying to get someone banned than about resolving problems
with articles. Looking at the page again it seems it's been reorganized and
more focused around "Article content disputes". But it's just a bunch of
links to talk pages, so in that sense it's probably not focussed enough to
do much good.
Do you think the RfC page could be adapted to resolve these issues more
easily? I don't know if it could or not. It takes a lot of effort to argue
your point effectively, and it's pretty easy for a troll to game the system
until you give up. This is a really tough problem, somewhat inherent in the
concept of a wiki, and I don't have much of a clue how to resolve it.
Initially I saw Wikipedia as more of a rough draft than a finished product.
Over the years it's been made abundantly clear that the majority of
Wikipedians don't see it that way. I've come to accept that, but I guess I
never really figured out how it would work. Along those same lines, I've
never heard anyone explain how you could solve the quality problems inherent
in a wiki without throwing out all the advantages.
Nowadays my greatest optimism is that we'll be able to point to the highest
quality version of any particular article, even if it isn't the most recent
version. So in your example, the POV pusher might be able to make his/her
version the latest version, but the software would still recognize that most
people consider that version to be POV. I suppose if you're going to that
you might as well just make that version the latest version, though. So now
I've come full circle.
I don't know. :)
Anthony