Tim wrote:
Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability from mere grammatical imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.
Well, it tells you *something* about the quality of the article. I'm pretty sure that the Encyclopedia Britannica would be concerned if one in five of its articles was riddled with grammatical errors.
Mark Richards wrote:
I don't think so, although, of course, the two sometimes do go together. We have some contributors for whom English is not their first language. Grammar and spelling are an issue for them where facts are not.
Someone who can't communicate well in English is more likely to produce inadvertent errors of fact. As one rather humorous example of this, years ago I knew a guy from Mexico with a thick accent who declared that he wanted "world piss." It took a few minutes before everyone figured out that he was actually saying he wanted "world peace."
In the stub articles I mentioned, the grammatical flaws in one were numerous but insufficient to prevent me from discerning the author's intent. In the other article, one of the sentences was so poorly written that I couldn't figure out the writer's meaning at all. When that's the case, I think poor grammar and spelling do indeed call "the facts" of the article into question.
The bottom line, though, is that an encyclopedia article shouldn't have errors of grammar *or* fact. I know some respected university scholars who have problems with spelling and grammar, but before their writings get published, someone fixes those problems. An article in the Wikipedia that has problems with spelling and grammar clearly hasn't been through the level of review that goes into a student's term paper, let alone an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
I'm not saying that contributors should be banned from Wikipedia if they have trouble with spelling and grammar. All I'm saying is that Wikipedia hasn't yet figured out how to match Encyclopedia Britannica with respect to the quality of its articles. Some individual articles in the Wikipedia are undoubtedly superior in quality to corresponding articles in the Britannica, but with the Britannica, *every article* comes virtually guaranteed to be accurate and well-researched -- and also correct in terms of spelling and grammar. That degree of confidence doesn't exist across the board for the Wikipedia.
--Sheldon Rampton
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
The bottom line, though, is that an encyclopedia article shouldn't have errors of grammar *or* fact. I know some respected university scholars who have problems with spelling and grammar, but before their writings get published, someone fixes those problems. An article in the Wikipedia that has problems with spelling and grammar clearly hasn't been through the level of review that goes into a student's term paper, let alone an article for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Absolutely right.
I think right now we have a situation of very high average quality (esp. for articles over a certain length), but with some very important weaknesses. That's going to be the goal of a review process: to address those weaknesses while at the same time respecting and working with our community model.
I'm generally in agreement with what Erik Moeller says about this. That is, I think that it is best if one way or another our review process grows organically from our existing traditions of review for featured articles.
--Jimbo
I agree - is there any way that we could use markers or categories (maybe on the talk page) to 'certify' that articles have been checked by someone for g and s? It would limit the amount of duplication of effort, of course, it would only be much use for relatively stable articles. Mark
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
The bottom line, though, is that an encyclopedia
article shouldn't
have errors of grammar *or* fact. I know some
respected university
scholars who have problems with spelling and
grammar, but before
their writings get published, someone fixes those
problems. An
article in the Wikipedia that has problems with
spelling and grammar
clearly hasn't been through the level of review
that goes into a
student's term paper, let alone an article for the
Encyclopedia
Britannica.
Absolutely right.
I think right now we have a situation of very high average quality (esp. for articles over a certain length), but with some very important weaknesses. That's going to be the goal of a review process: to address those weaknesses while at the same time respecting and working with our community model.
I'm generally in agreement with what Erik Moeller says about this. That is, I think that it is best if one way or another our review process grows organically from our existing traditions of review for featured articles.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:31:13 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
I agree - is there any way that we could use markers or categories (maybe on the talk page) to 'certify' that articles have been checked by someone for g and s? It would limit the amount of duplication of effort, of course, it would only be much use for relatively stable articles. Mark
Currently this wouldn't matter as someone could come right after the article was checked and mess it up. I think what might be useful is to have an easy syntax to refer to a certain version. Something like: [[Wikipedia@4613311]] which would expand to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&oldid=4613311 or some such. If we really publicised this, then it would also be better for those trying to quote something on Wikipedia without fear that their quote will no longer be in the article. They can do the quoting right now for older versions, but the most recent version doesn't have an oldID attached to it (since it's not old yet).
Yes, I see your point, but you would still be able to see at a glance when it was last checked, and who had edited it since, and make a better determination about whether to bother re-checking it than you can now. I like the idea about being able to quote old versions. Mark
--- Dori slowpoke@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 09:31:13 -0700 (PDT), Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
I agree - is there any way that we could use
markers
or categories (maybe on the talk page) to
'certify'
that articles have been checked by someone for g
and
s? It would limit the amount of duplication of
effort,
of course, it would only be much use for
relatively
stable articles. Mark
Currently this wouldn't matter as someone could come right after the article was checked and mess it up. I think what might be useful is to have an easy syntax to refer to a certain version. Something like: [[Wikipedia@4613311]] which would expand to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia&oldid=4613311
or some such. If we really publicised this, then it would also be better for those trying to quote something on Wikipedia without fear that their quote will no longer be in the article. They can do the quoting right now for older versions, but the most recent version doesn't have an oldID attached to it (since it's not old yet).
-- [[en:User:Dori]] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Mark Richards wrote
I agree - is there any way that we could use markers or categories (maybe on the talk page) to 'certify' that articles have been checked by someone for g and s?
There seems to be plenty of flexibility in the category system for 'rating usages'. The page history would show up edits subsequent to any 'rating'. Of course this is most useful on pages that are rarely edited. Which will in many cases be those that are _least_ read. I don't know how practical it would be to institute a drive to spread this all over WP. The basic categories are not propagating so very rapidly, IMX.
Charles
Yes, it would be most use to articles that don't get much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones that do get more action get checked more. It's the ones that noone ever sees that concern me most. The edit history would show whether there were major changes since a check. Can anyone who is more conversant with how the categories (or another system) work suggest a way to trial this that wouldn't annoy people?
--- Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Mark Richards wrote
I agree - is there any way that we could use
markers
or categories (maybe on the talk page) to
'certify'
that articles have been checked by someone for g
and
s?
There seems to be plenty of flexibility in the category system for 'rating usages'. The page history would show up edits subsequent to any 'rating'. Of course this is most useful on pages that are rarely edited. Which will in many cases be those that are _least_ read. I don't know how practical it would be to institute a drive to spread this all over WP. The basic categories are not propagating so very rapidly, IMX.
Charles
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On Wednesday 14 July 2004 23:03, Mark Richards wrote:
much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones that do get more action get checked more. It's the ones that noone ever sees that concern me most. The edit
Unrelated to the topic, but this gave me a thought. How many articles there are which are not on anyone's watchlist? Should'nt be so hard to determine. I think that the results will be either surprising or frightening.
And interesting. It would be good to have a list of article by how many people had them on their watchlist, so some folks could watch 'un-watched' articles, and not commonly watched ones.
--- Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
On Wednesday 14 July 2004 23:03, Mark Richards wrote:
much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones
that
do get more action get checked more. It's the ones that noone ever sees that concern me most. The
edit
Unrelated to the topic, but this gave me a thought. How many articles there are which are not on anyone's watchlist? Should'nt be so hard to determine. I think that the results will be either surprising or frightening. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Yes, it would be most use to articles that don't get much attention, but then, I am guessing that ones that do get more action get checked more. It's the ones that noone ever sees that concern me most. The edit history would show whether there were major changes since a check. Can anyone who is more conversant with how the categories (or another system) work suggest a way to trial this that wouldn't annoy people?
--- Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Mark Richards wrote
I agree - is there any way that we could use
markers
or categories (maybe on the talk page) to
'certify'
that articles have been checked by someone for g
and
s?
There seems to be plenty of flexibility in the category system for 'rating usages'. The page history would show up edits subsequent to any 'rating'. Of course this is most useful on pages that are rarely edited. Which will in many cases be those that are _least_ read. I don't know how practical it would be to institute a drive to spread this all over WP. The basic categories are not propagating so very rapidly, IMX.
Charles
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Sheldon Rampton wrote
. All I'm saying is that Wikipedia hasn't yet figured out how to match Encyclopedia Britannica with respect to the quality of its articles.
This might be quite true. Or one could look at it another way. The concern about 'minimum standard for inclusion in WP' is quite natural; but in a sense there is no real minimum standard. Well, some small proportion of the dross is deleted every day at VfD; rather more is strangled at birth in quick deletion; but we really operate a presumption in favour of inclusion (e.g., in the past few minutes, a Gundam article on a particular armour suit - don't tell me this is Britannicable).
Basically there is not much of a cut-off at the lower end. We could remedy this with (my pet scheme) editable page ratings, of which only the featured-article and deletion settings would not be accessible to everyone. The point is that we could easily implement some way of keeping stubs and so on out of RandomPage, or other kinds of filtering, if there really seemed to be a need. Considering the low level of what is printed in newspapers (which are not free), not to speak of the Web as a whole, there doesn't seem to be much pressure yet for implementing any serious division of articles.
Charles
--- Sheldon Rampton sheldon.rampton@verizon.net wrote:
... That degree of confidence doesn't exist across the board for the Wikipedia.
Granted. But Britannica has been at it a lot longer than three years.
The other thing to remember is that a lot of our articles are very modern and refer to completely current events. They are very relevant to people on the cutting edge. Someone mentioned a type of armor in Gundam anime. This would be important for anime film translators, artists, and for afficionados. The Britannica cannot help them there.
It's a matter of the usefulness of the encyclopedia that is important.
===== Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan@yahoo.com chris.mahan@gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/
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