On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
By comprehensive I mean that it covers what it should. We could write lots of tests for this (several present themselves), but for now, let's leave it at that. It's not missing anything. Note that NPOV is an aspect of comprehensiveness. This also covers excluding stupid trivia, to my mind. It also means that it provides a good start to research. This includes providing further places to look, i.e. "If you want to know more about Derrida, go read..."
Comprehensiveness sounds good, but there is a lot of room for disagreement about what "should" be included. Articles also need to be focused and balanced, because on the Web they can't be very long. We have links so excessive detail and tangents can be linked to. And too many articles have long sections on one aspect while giving short shrift to other aspects.
By accurate I mean that nothing in it is incorrect. Currently we try
to achieve this by sourcing, and in some cases that's obviously going to be necessary. Where those cases are is something we need to determine better. Sourcing should be used to back up things a reasonable reader might doubt.
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to
show why the subject is interesting to someone who isn't already a fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy Metal Umlaut]] anybody?
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Adam