I think the idea of a heavily promoted Article Improvement Week is a useful one.
However, there is no reason to turn off AfD. Indeed, often the reason that articles are in AfD is that the topic is notable but the article is crap for various reasons including:
* short and lacking context;
* bogus articles on legitimate topics;
* lacking references.
My main focus in AfD is looking for articles that can be improved and turned into encyclopedia articles. There is no reason that AfD cannot form part of Article Improvement Week.
Similarly, not allowing the development of new articles may turn off newbies who came to Wikipedia for the purpose of creating articles. If we were to turn off article creation for the week, we should continue to have Articles for Creation working as well as allowing people to work on articles in their userspace. Alternatively, we could have a situation where articles could only be added by authorisation of an admin who could certify that it meets minimum encyclopedic standards.
The main focus of Article improvement week should be to have banners proclaiming it everywhere with a page showing how articles have been improved (ie articles cleaned up, stubs expanded, articles referenced and so on).
In summary, the idea of an Article Improvement Week is a useful one and should be pursued.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster
On 12/11/05, Brian Haws brian@bhaws.com wrote:
Effects I expect at the end of the week:
- Some article polishing.
- More people practiced in article polishing.
- A flood of new articles out of userspace. Hopefully better ones.
People will also treat this as "work on those new articles you were thinking about" week. That's fine too.
- A consequent flood of AFDs, but hopefully not as much because the
articles will have been worked on for a week!
Thoughts?
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l I think with the exceptions here and elsewhere I think it's worth trying out for a week to see what happens. We're falling farther and farther behind with cleanup and it's not impossible that doing this 4-5 times a year might make a real difference. It might also make cleanup type work more of a core value among editors...
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