Jimmy Wales wrote on Sun Nov 13 03:48:10 UTC 2005:
you took any random 20 articles and compared them to their predecessors 2 years ago, virtually _all_ articles would have improved.
I agree. However, to judge a reference work, do you go by the best, or the worst, or the average quality? I think most readers would judge us by their first few impressions. As soon as they stray away from the featured article on the front page, or happen to run into the random pages, their impression will be not favorable. That's what I tried to find to out with my twenty random pages.
A thought experiment: if we were the editorial committee of an encyclopedia to be written from scratch and were given Wikipedia's current content as a basis (but not the user base), what would we do? I guess we would put our energy into improving the material, i.e. rewriting/deleting/merging most of it. But we would not try to acquire more articles of that quality. (Ah wait, we ARE the editorial committee of an encyclopedia to be written from scratch...)
I think this is a brilliant observation. :-)
I absolutely do think that acquisition of huge numbers of additional stubs on increasingly narrow topics ought not to be a priority, and certainly ought not to be allowed to get in the way of quality improvement on existing articles.
But it IS getting in the way. I have recently spent several hours patrolling the newpages and recent changes, and that was a very sobering experience. While I have no statistics (would be an interesting topic, though), I estimate that more than ninety percent of the newpages by anonymous contributors are unsalveageable. Of the rest, a sound majority qualifies for merging or heavy reworking. Plus an unbelievable amount of vandalism. I spent most of my time writing {{test}}, {{test2}}, {{test3}}, and {{test4}} messages at high speed, deleting, reverting and occasionally blocking a vandal. I can't remember seeing more than a few new pages by anonymous editors that resmbled anything remotely interesting or well-written. There were also many pages by newly-logged-in users that were no better. To summarise, the signal-to-noise ratio on recent changes is depressingly low, and many qualified editors spend hours and hours trying to pick the few jewels out of mountains of dirt.
If we look at the continuum of quality ranging from the average anon's average "Phil is gay" contribution to well-researched work by well-informed people, it is reasonable to assume that even above the newpages level there is a great body of contributions with a negative benefit-versus-work-needed balance. In my opinion, it far too great.
(At the same time, of course, it's worth pointing out that there's an easy mental trap to fall into... assuming that time people are spending working on obscure fancruft could in any way be diverted into increasing the quality of other articles. That's probably not true.)
Yes. (Warning: heresy ahead) I would simply reply that we could do without these people. Along with the vandals and trolls and clueless kids, they waste the time and energy that we should spend improving our encyclopedia. They waste an _enormous_ amount of time and energy while not helping us much.
Another thought experiment: What if we shut down new page creation for a year? Simply declare 2006 the year of quality improvement and accept no new pages until 2007. We might lose may good editors. We might lose many _potential_ good editors. We would drop in the Alexa ranking. We might lose donations (although I doubt it). But we could start lifting the quality of the average article to where it belongs, and we would have a chance to lift our reputation beyond the "public toilet" image that has deservedly been bestowed upon us.
So much for the heresy. Now flame me. Kosebamse
kosebamse@gmx.net wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote on Sun Nov 13 03:48:10 UTC 2005:
you took any random 20 articles and compared them to their predecessors 2 years ago, virtually _all_ articles would have improved.
I agree. However, to judge a reference work, do you go by the best, or the worst, or the average quality? I think most readers would judge us by their first few impressions. As soon as they stray away from the featured article on the front page, or happen to run into the random pages, their impression will be not favorable. That's what I tried to find to out with my twenty random pages.
Here's a better idea: start from the main page.
Featured article is [[Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9]]. Description links [[Photograph]], [[Schmidt telescope]] (which is a redirect), [[Roche limit]] and a few others...
- [[Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9]] is featured; I'll come back to this. - [[Photograph]] is pretty short but reasonable - [[Schmidt camera]] is fairly technical but readable - [[Roche limit]] is featured
Now, from the main page article we find the following "items of interest":
- [[Palomar Observatory]], also linked from the main page, is reasonable - [[Astronomical spectroscopy]] is fairly long, reasonably technical, but readable - [[Hubble Space Telescope]] is featured - [[Ulysses probe]] is short but reasonable
So, what have we found?
From the main page, I've found 3 featured articles, and anything else of
interest wasn't bad. Maybe it's just the subject matter we're dealing with (hard science tends to be easy to write about because you don't need to interpret and speculate from 1000 sources); how will tommorrow's featured article fare?
On 11/15/05, kosebamse@gmx.net kosebamse@gmx.net wrote:
As soon as they stray away from the featured article on the front page, or happen to run into the random pages, their impression will be not favorable. That's what I tried to find to out with my twenty random pages.
I submit that the vast majority of the truly awful pages on Wikipedia are very hard to find without the Random Page function, because they're very poorly linked into the site. There are many substandard articles on important topics, but much fewer that are utterly horrible.
But it IS getting in the way. I have recently spent several hours patrolling the newpages and recent changes, and that was a very sobering experience.
Another point of view is that it's getting in the way of only those editors who patrol New Pages. The flow of new pages is not so large that we are having trouble coping, and the harm of most of these is minimal, since they're not linked into the rest of the site. The only reason to patrol New Pages at all is that it's easier to weed out the utter crap at the point of entry.
Another thought experiment: What if we shut down new page creation for a year? Simply declare 2006 the year of quality improvement and accept no new pages until 2007.
Frankly, if we did that, I quit. I'm sure I'm far from alone.
But we could start lifting the quality of the average article to where it belongs, and we would have a chance to lift our reputation beyond the "public toilet" image that has deservedly been bestowed upon us.
You care too much about the public image, frankly. You hear the complaints louder than the praise, and louder than the silent praise of all those people who, day after day, use Wikipedia for information.
Some parts of Wikipedia are frankly awful, yes; I submit that a good proportion of them don't matter. They're on topics nobody gives a damn about.
Making the barriers to entry harder is a tempting thought, but among these newbies and dabblers are tomorrow's admins and writers. A small proportion of them, granted, but making it harder decreases the flow of good people as well as bad people.
Yes, I'm an eventualist. From my point of view, Wikipedia has a long, long way to go, and that's not a bad thing. It's that the sum total of useful human knowledge is so vast. There are many subject areas that Wikipedia's coverage is scant or wholly lacking. Yet, at the same time, there are articles on Wikipedia that are better than ANY other online resource. I am sure there are some that are better than ANY published article, on or offline. Isn't that something to feel good about?
-Matt
On 11/15/05, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I submit that the vast majority of the truly awful pages on Wikipedia are very hard to find without the Random Page function, because they're very poorly linked into the site. There are many substandard articles on important topics, but much fewer that are utterly horrible.
My experence of following links around is that it is pretty easy to stumble upon rubish.
Frankly, if we did that, I quit. I'm sure I'm far from alone.
A less extream meausure would be limiting the creation of orphans. Allows new articles to be created but at the same time in theory ups the minium level of careing (someone cared enough about the article to think it should exist).
-- geni
"Matt Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote in message news:42f90dc00511150452r4a9f2cb5o9d8b0b9a32167aa@mail.gmail.com...
Yes, I'm an eventualist. From my point of view, Wikipedia has a long, long way to go, and that's not a bad thing. It's that the sum total of useful human knowledge is so vast. There are many subject areas that Wikipedia's coverage is scant or wholly lacking. Yet, at the same time, there are articles on Wikipedia that are better than ANY other online resource. I am sure there are some that are better than ANY published article, on or offline. Isn't that something to feel good about?
Would it be really awful if, for something of actual interest to a reasonable number of people, Wikipedia provided the ONLY consolidated resource for information?
We have the awesome ability to pull together threads of information to create a tapestry of knowledge which could inform and delight. We have the capacity to create the biggest darn tapestry of this kind ever.
Instead entirely too many people are nitpicking about whether we're using the correct gauge of thread, and whether we're allowed to weave in this particular manner, making a round of Mornington Crescent sound positively staid and reasonable.
Some are even burning little holes in it because they don't like some of the stitches, bringing to mind the "Family Tree of the House of Black" from Harry Potter.
May the motto of Wikipedia never become "toujours pur"...