Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/12/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
And it's very easy to give people the wrong idea when we don't have a final or even a stable version of anything. Considering that Wikipedia has been going for five years, I think we're ready to start. Stable versions, even more than article ratings, are a feature we need. In fact, I think setting up article ratings before stable versions is completely backwards, because it's the stable versions we should be asking people to rate.
I generally agree with your comments, although this one strikes me as backwards. I see ratings as a way of determining whether an article is in fact stable. If an article must first be judged stable what would be the mechanism for making that decision?
You seem to be confusing "good" and "stable". It's easy to see if an article is in fact stable. Just look at when the last time is that it's been edited. I suppose you could get even more detailed, and look at the types of edits that have been performed (minor fixes indicated stability or major changes and new content indicated lack of stability), but even that isn't what ratings are about. Ratings are about whether or not a version is good, not whether or not it's stable.
And in order for ratings to be useful, you have to have a lot of ratings on the same version. That's why you need stability before ratings can be effective.
The two go hand in hand, or become part of a feedback loop. A "poor" rating will have the effect of destabilizing an article. This is perhaps a chicken-or-egg kind of problem. One would need an easily applied criterion to measure stability. We all know that the edits on [[George W. Bush]] can be chaotic. For comparison I looked at the recent edit history of [[Martin Van Buren]] and it had 26 edits in the last month. I didn't look at the details, but it would still take time for someone else to do that if it were being considered for rating. To be effective a rating system should be able to automatically adjust its results for stability.
The lack of an agreed mechanism for doing that has been a major factor in not getting the 1.0 project off the ground.
Ec
I agree. That's why I haven't really opposed adding ratings in. Agreeing on something is better than nothing here. Worst case scenario ratings come out and everyone realizes why they weren't such a good idea, and then new ideas can come forward.
Yes. Ratings like any other tool will have bugs.
Ec