Blargh, I don't know. I was talking more about AfD, though.
Nevertheless, the FAC process needs to go faster. Look at last week: we gained four and lost three FAs. That comes out to a total gain of one. This is unacceptable.
From: Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: RE: Re: Taking your eyes off the ball
Ryan W. (Merovingian) wrote:
I have to admit to being guilty of oppose-and-run. :(
Why would you even consider that?
On 10/2/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) bigwiki@earthling.net wrote:
Blargh, I don't know. I was talking more about AfD, though.
Nevertheless, the FAC process needs to go faster. Look at last week: we gained four and >lost three FAs. That comes out to a total gain of one. This is unacceptable.
The standards for a FA are increaseing.
-- geni
Geni wrote
The standards for a FA are increasing.
Amazingly, in line with the need for a daily article.
FAs recognise some of the good work that goes on. Not all of it, by a long chalk. It's now an institution, but not representative of what wiki-en can do in areas that are harder to research or expound.
Charles
On 10/2/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) bigwiki@earthling.net wrote:
Blargh, I don't know. I was talking more about AfD, though.
Nevertheless, the FAC process needs to go faster. Look at last week: we
gained four and >lost three FAs. That comes out to a total gain of one. This is unacceptable.
The standards for a FA are increaseing.
If this is an accurate statement of the problem, and the reason for it, then I fail to see a real problem. Articles whose quality degrades over time can be reverted to an acceptable version. If the problem is rising standards, stop raising the standards.
And adopt a more productive process. The current process is sterile, masturbatory and in my opinion does not produce articles of high quality, but rather encourages editors to indulge the stylistic quibbles of a few voters.
What if we took 100 articles every day, chosen at random. Debate whether they are not worthy of featured status. After five days all articles *except* those for which there is a consensus that they aren't featurable are raised to featured status. There is no reason why we shouldn't treat any random article as featurable on our front if there is not a good argument not to.
We could delete AfD and redirect to this process. I'm only half joking. Think of it as a Modest Proposal. If the problem is that keep voters on AfD are squandering their talents on borderline articles, get them to refocus on cleaning up potential FAs.
As a test, here are the first ten articles I obtained just now by pressing the Random Page link. I did a quick cleanup where on the first one (Mis-Teeq) but left the others alone. I see no reason why any one of these, save one, shouldn't appear on our front. They're all informative on their subject and correctly represent Wikipedia as a very eclectic work in progress. Come on, who ever thought there'd be a law case called " U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessarieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._v._One_Package_of_Japanese_Pessaries "?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mis-Teeq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Abkhazia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Wildlife_Trusts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swingers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_Hunt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Belli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Chi_Alpha
The exception of the ten is this one, which in my opinion needs extensive cleanup and expansion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_contraception
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._v._One_Package_of_Japanese_Pessaries "?
Anyone who had spent any time with law students
short lack pictures
short not enough references
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Wildlife_Trusts
short no references whatsoever
short no references whatsoever no pics should probaly have some info on some of the other music they have produced.
stub no refernces shortage of pics (come on some one must have a copy to scan the cover)
Not bad needs references and wikifying
Needs NPOVing references and expanding
Needs expanding
A little short. LAcks context for non us readers. Needs references
The exception of the ten is this one, which in my opinion needs extensive cleanup and expansion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_contraception
Try advertiseing it on christian and athiest messgae boards. With luck the resulting edit war should improve it somewhat. -- geni
On 10/2/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
short not enough references
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Wildlife_Trusts
short no references whatsoever
[etc]
Quite. All of these failings could be addressed in a five-day AfD-like process where 100 articles are listed at random and either improved to presentable standard or, if consensus exists to reject, marked as in need of attention.
There are many, many articles that are nearly ready for the main page; a process that produced more than 100 featurable articles per day would be feasible and would probably be a better use of the copious resources expended on AfD.
Afd is unnecessary. Hoax articles and other unverifiable stuff could be listed and processed in a WP:CP-like system. Verifiability should be added to the key policies of Wikipedia to facilitate this. An unverifable article should not be retained on Wikipedia no matter how many people vote for its retention.
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Quite. All of these failings could be addressed in a five-day AfD-like process where 100 articles are listed at random and either improved to presentable standard or, if consensus exists to reject, marked as in need of attention.
Your idea runs into the problem (that inclusionism makes worse) that people want to write about stuff they are interested in.
-- geni
On 10/2/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Quite. All of these failings could be addressed in a five-day AfD-like process where 100 articles are listed at random and either improved to presentable standard or, if consensus exists to reject, marked as in
need of
attention.
Your idea runs into the problem (that inclusionism makes worse) that people want to write about stuff they are interested in.
This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the largest reference works in the English language.
Articles on subjects in which nobody shows any interest should probably not be on our main page.
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the largest reference works in the English language.
It is a problem becuase you run into the issue of not very good articles. Your proposal won't work because only a very small number of people want to work on subjects they are not interested in when they could work on subjects they are interested in.
Most people have two driveing factors.1.) the desire to write stuff 2). the desire to write about stuff they are interested in. Now lets see how inclusonism and deletionism work on this two factors. Inclusonism plays to both factors but results in a large number of articles that only one person cares about. Works against the second but gains the advantage of encourageing colaberation since A space is smaller it means that editors are more likely to interact. This means that the mean number of active editors per article increases. This increase the mean amount of editor energy per article which in turn increases their quality. Sure in time you may exauste A space at which point it is time to enlarge it but until then there is no need to do so.
Articles on subjects in which nobody shows any interest should probably not be on our main page.
Really? Lets look at [[Algerian Civil War]]. Featured article. Look how short it's talk page is. Go back to before it was on the main page and you will find it was basicaly wirtten by [[User:Mustafaa]]. That is how interested people were in the topic.
-- geni
On 10/2/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the largest reference works in the English language.
It is a problem becuase you run into the issue of not very good articles. Your proposal won't work because only a very small number of people want to work on subjects they are not interested in when they could work on subjects they are interested in.
We don't want "not very good articles" on the main page. I still don't see how your observation of people's personal preferences supports your argument that this is a "problem".
Articles on subjects in which nobody shows any interest should probably
not
be on our main page.
Really? Lets look at [[Algerian Civil War]]. Featured article. Look how short it's talk page is. Go back to before it was on the main page and you will find it was basicaly wirtten by [[User:Mustafaa]]. That is how interested people were in the topic.
If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a FA?
On 10/2/05, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Tony Sidaway" wrote
If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a
FA?
Come now, it doesn't work like that.
I know how it works. I'm suggesting that articles of no interest to anyone except the author (and I don't happen to think the example given comes anywhere near qualifying for that particular condition) probably shouldn't be FAs. Conversely, articles of wide interest, even though imperfect, should probably take precedence over polished articles on less interesting subjects. The main page isn't really the right place to showcase solely writing and organisational skills, because really those are very much subsidiary to making useful information accessible to all.
In short, the answer to worries about having too few featured articles is to feature far more, many many times more, articles on the main page. Even those ten randomly chosen articles wouldn't take much work to make them perfectly acceptable for the main page.
Tony Sidaway wrote
I know how it works. I'm suggesting that articles of no interest to anyone
except the author (and I don't happen to think the example given comes anywhere near qualifying for that particular condition) probably shouldn't be FAs.
But aren't you trying to make your point, by a confusion of two senses of 'interested'? If there wasn't the fact that people can be interested in articles (sense 1), in the sense of appreciating the content, without being interested (sense 2), being prepared to author them at least in part, WP would be a different animal. Wikipedians support those who are not simply doing work they might have done themselves, given time. So, a single-author article can perfectly well be suitable for FA. (If this is not relevant to what you were saying, in some way, perhaps this thread is straying off topic.).
Charles
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
If as you claim only one person is interested in it, what's it doing as a FA?
No. of people interested in it is not a featured article criteria. Remember in thoery any article if it is of a high enough standard can become a featured article
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
This isn't a problem. It's what has made English Wikipedia one of the largest reference works in the English language.
It is a problem becuase you run into the issue of not very good articles. Your proposal won't work because only a very small number of people want to work on subjects they are not interested in when they could work on subjects they are interested in.
It's only natural to work on what interests you, and that's fine. It does mean that some areas get less attention than they should, but very few people are able to write a superior article outside of their interests. They're often lacking the general background.
Most people have two driveing factors.1.) the desire to write stuff 2). the desire to write about stuff they are interested in. Now lets see how inclusonism and deletionism work on this two factors. Inclusonism plays to both factors but results in a large number of articles that only one person cares about. Works against the second but gains the advantage of encourageing colaberation since A space is smaller it means that editors are more likely to interact. This means that the mean number of active editors per article increases. This increase the mean amount of editor energy per article which in turn increases their quality. Sure in time you may exauste A space at which point it is time to enlarge it but until then there is no need to do so.
The deletionist's anomaly is that he is often nominating articles that are outside of his interests. If a candidate article comes up in his own field of interest he is in a better position to improve it. I don't have a lot of interest in rock bands, so apart from a very few very big names none of them are notable to me. Taking that further, even if I were interested in such music how could I possibly evaluate the local scene in some other large city. Of course, if I participate in the vote I expect my vote to be counted even if I have no idea WTF I'm talking about. If it's a matter of rock bands (and similarly for other subjects), perhaps a vote should have less value if the person has done no editing in that subject area.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The deletionist's anomaly is that he is often nominating articles that are outside of his interests. If a candidate article comes up in his own field of interest he is in a better position to improve it. I don't have a lot of interest in rock bands, so apart from a very few very big names none of them are notable to me. Taking that further, even if I were interested in such music how could I possibly evaluate the local scene in some other large city. Of course, if I participate in the vote I expect my vote to be counted even if I have no idea WTF I'm talking about. If it's a matter of rock bands (and similarly for other subjects), perhaps a vote should have less value if the person has done no editing in that subject area.
Ec
This is an idea I've been toying with myself - giving the parts of the community concerned with a topic (WikiProjects, basically) more autonomy in their respective fields. We already do that in some ways - [[WP:MUSIC]], [[WP:SFD]]. Of course, this could lead to a certain "inbreeding" / "groupthink" mentality.
grm_wnr
grm_wnr wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The deletionist's anomaly is that he is often nominating articles that are outside of his interests. If a candidate article comes up in his own field of interest he is in a better position to improve it. I don't have a lot of interest in rock bands, so apart from a very few very big names none of them are notable to me. Taking that further, even if I were interested in such music how could I possibly evaluate the local scene in some other large city. Of course, if I participate in the vote I expect my vote to be counted even if I have no idea WTF I'm talking about. If it's a matter of rock bands (and similarly for other subjects), perhaps a vote should have less value if the person has done no editing in that subject area.
This is an idea I've been toying with myself - giving the parts of the community concerned with a topic (WikiProjects, basically) more autonomy in their respective fields. We already do that in some ways - [[WP:MUSIC]], [[WP:SFD]]. Of course, this could lead to a certain "inbreeding" / "groupthink" mentality.
That is a real danger. I've seen it in the sciences where too many are quick to put a pseudoscience label on things that they don't understand. If these topics turn out to be complete nonsense let them do so on their own lack of merits, without applying a prejudgement. Preventing inbreeding requires some system for occasionally bringing in people from outside the field, perhaps in the way that a faculty person from another department might be brought into a thesis committee.
Ec
On 10/2/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Your idea runs into the problem (that inclusionism makes worse) that people want to write about stuff they are interested in.
You're proposing that Wikipedia's greatest strength is a problem. In general terms, I couldn't disagree more strongly.
People write at Wikipedia because they want to. First, we should recognize that they want to write about what they're interested in and strongly encourage them to do so. This gets them involved here.
Then, we must recognize that volunteer editors will only write about articles they aren't interested in if they're motivated by another related interest.
I had no prior interest in [[Sigurd Syr]] before contributing to the article on him. What I did have an interest in, was improving Wikipedia, and making an apology to User:Briangotts, and he selected [[Sigurd Syr]] as my assignment when I offered to make a referenced, content contributing, good faith edit to an article of his choice.
Although I think I did a pretty good job with Sigurd, I never would have done so if I'd not been interested in the other goals of my edit.
A second example: in an edit summary on the [[FairTax]] article, I thought I was a little harsh, so I apologized to User:Morphh, who until that day, had only ever edited FairTax, FairTax talk, and the talk pages of a few other editors on that single article. Well, I made my offer, and gently insisted that I wanted to do an edit for him. He assigned me my choice of articles in the topic of [[Life extension]] or [[Transhumanism]] and I chose [[Roy Walford]].
As a direct result of this, he posted on his talk page, the following: "Very nice. A side effect of your proposal is my own exploration of wikipedia. I've added half a dozen sections to my watch list. I've already made small edits. I don't have the time to make good contributions to many articles but its fun to get involved. The amount of information available on this site is amazing."
And now Morphh has begun to edit outside of FairTax.
So the puzzle is NOT to prevent people from writing about what they're interested in, but to find newer and more creative ways to get them interested in a broader range of topics. -- Michael Turley User:Unfocused
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Afd is unnecessary. Hoax articles and other unverifiable stuff could be listed and processed in a WP:CP-like system. Verifiability should be added to the key policies of Wikipedia to facilitate this. An unverifable article should not be retained on Wikipedia no matter how many people vote for its retention.
Then why do you expend so many rescources on it? Stop closeing AFDs and let it fall over of it's own accord.
-- geni
On 10/2/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Afd is unnecessary. Hoax articles and other unverifiable stuff could be listed and processed in a WP:CP-like system. Verifiability should be
added
to the key policies of Wikipedia to facilitate this. An unverifable
article
should not be retained on Wikipedia no matter how many people vote for
its
retention.
Then why do you expend so many rescources on it? Stop closeing AFDs and let it fall over of it's own accord.
I have not closed any AfDs for some weeks and I have no plans to participate in AfD, excepting a vote here and there, in the future.
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
I have not closed any AfDs for some weeks and I have no plans to participate in AfD, excepting a vote here and there, in the future.
Good now we must work to spread the apathy.
-- geni
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
If this is an accurate statement of the problem, and the reason for it, then I fail to see a real problem. Articles whose quality degrades over time can be reverted to an acceptable version. If the problem is rising standards, stop raising the standards.
Or start a new system. Current system is to focused on the main page space. -- geni
On 10/2/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Come on, who ever thought there'd be a law case called " U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessarieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._v._One_Package_of_Japanese_Pessaries "?
I love seizure cases.
I've expanded this article somewhat.
Kelly