Message: 5 Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 06:38:36 -0800 From: "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation... To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org I have formatted your user subpage into a table, for easier viewing and consolidated your results:
7 bad: 2 fancruft, 1 not of encyclopedic standard, 1 list of marginal interest, 1 needs work, 2 non-articles
8 stubs: 3 salvageable, 4 average / acceptable, 1 decent
5 good: 3 decent or fine, 2 acceptable / "short but informative"
Based on this, I give Wikipedia a score of 25% - a failing grade.
But all is not lost. If we mark articles as bad or stub, we could keep them somewhat hidden from the public.
Volunteer contributors could see them, of course, by "opting in". Everyone else (call them "general readers") would be told that we don't have an article on the subject yet BUT that we are working on it.
"And would you like to see the work in progress?"
Ed Poor Quality Maven
Are you being facetious?? If that were put into practice, nothing would improve! The reason articles improve is *because* people see mediocre, "failing" articles. "Shielding" them would only shield them from improvement.
Besides, last time I checked my math, 25% of 800,000 was 200,000. That's more *total* articles than we had less than 2 years ago. So, another way to look at it is, in less than 2 years, *every* article has been improved to "good". *100%*.
darin
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Brown, Darin
But all is not lost. If we mark articles as bad or stub, we
could keep
them somewhat hidden from the public.
Volunteer contributors could see them, of course, by "opting in". Everyone else (call them "general readers") would be told that we don't have an article on the subject yet BUT that we are
working on it.
"And would you like to see the work in progress?"
Ed Poor Quality Maven
Are you being facetious?? If that were put into practice, nothing would improve! The reason articles improve is *because* people see mediocre, "failing" articles. "Shielding" them would only shield them from improvement.
It would slow things down, sure.
Stubs should be visible because although they aren't complete articles, at least they contain SOME information. Whenever I see a stub where I can add a bit of information in passing, I'll add it. Sometimes I'll stop, do some research and add a paragraph or two, maybe a photograph. Sometimes I'll even find a whole article that needs writing, and that's a special joy.
Of course, all this is, ahem, theoretical because I'm not allowed to edit.
Peter (Skyring)