I have read through series of comments by amazing members of the community here and on talk pages. Some editors argued that constituting a "Project Accuracy Editorial Review Board" is against the spirit of Wikipedia. This is a fallacy! Review process is impeccable in every encyclopedia and normally Wikipedia articles are expected to pass through the review process before they are visible on the main space. Improper review is why most Wikipedia articles contain inaccuracies such as errors, ideological biases, and nonsensical or irrelevant text. If there is a way this can be addressed, why not? Peer review have been funded in the past but as Wikipedia's popularity skyrocketed, revenues to fund the project stalled and Jimmy decided to discontinue funding for a salaried editor-in-chief in December 2001, partly as a result of the internet economy at that time, and his vision to established an openly editable encyclopedia. Thus, the idea of funding content creation, editing and editorial review was aborted in December 2001. Shortly after Jimmy stop paying Larry Sanger who was the editor-in-chief, he resigned and the Nupedia website at nupedia.com was shut down on September 26, 2003, barely 3 months after the [[Wikimedia Foundation]] was established. Since December 2001, it has become common practice for the WMF not to fund direct content creation, editing and peer review. This is a major problem with the idea of establishing "Wikiproject Accuracy" which rely on paying editorial board members to function. Wikimedia Foundation cannot fund projects where individuals will create content, edit or review article as that comes very close to paid editing. Instead, the foundation fund projects that engage or motivate groups of people in editing or adding content to Wikimedia projects, such as editathons, photo walks, or contests.
However, if the appointed or elected members of the Editorial Review Board of the project accuracy are willing to serve voluntarily, without pay, I do not see anything wrong with that. Betty and her team of coordinators can start a pilot, and Wiki project medicine might be a good start, as Stephen Philbrick rightfully suggested, basically as a result of the importance and sensitivity of that subject matter and partly because of the strong initiatives of editors in that area. Wikiproject Accuracy seem like a level beyond FA. Thus I don’t think anyone would reasonably expects that all articles in the English Wikipedia will immediately or eventually become FA talk less of RAAFA. I'm silently saying that it is unreasonable to assume that all, or even any meaningfully significant proportion of all articles will reach the level of RAAFA. Thus, I don't see "WikiProject Accuracy" becoming a major problem. I think Betty Wills (User:Atsme) should go ahead with the pilot project while we keep our fingers crossed that everyhting will work out as planned. Let's see what will come out of this in the next few months.
Best,
Olatunde Isaac. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
-----Original Message----- From: Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com Sender: "Wikimedia-l" wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.orgDate: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 10:27:33 To: Wikimedia Mailing Listwikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiProject Accuracy
Featured Article, Good Article and point of view, in sequence. Hope that helps.
On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 10:20 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Sorry but your alphabet soup makes it hard if not impossible to understand. I do not edit en.wp and that should not be a necessity to understand what is being said. Thanks, GerardM
On 25 March 2016 at 14:13, Stephen Philbrick stephen.w.philbrick@gmail.com wrote:
Improved accuracy is like motherhood and apple pie — I trust no one will be opposed to the goal.
However the initial proposal to achieve that goal needs a fair amount of work.
*Clarify scope* – the page WikiProject_Accuracy is in the English Wikipedia, so implicitly, the initial scope is the English Wikipedia. I note that page has a scope section with no content as yet. However, I think taking on the entire English Wikipedia is biting off too much initially. Projects such as this work best if started as a pilot project. While someone may envision this eventually applying to all languages and treat English as the pilot, there is no way in which a project who scope is over 5 million articles can meaningfully be described as a pilot. Consider a much more limited scope pilot. For example all articles within the purview of wiki project medicine might be a good start, primarily because of the importance of that subject matter and partly because of the strong initiatives of editors in that area.
*Clarify ownership* – the seal of approval appears to be granted by a group called the Project Accuracy's Editorial Review Board (PAERB). Are these WMF employees? Editors who meet some criteria? Who establishes the criteria?
*Clarify mechanics* – unless there is a fundamental change to the way Wikipedia works, it will be meaningless to slap a seal of approval on any particular article, as that article could change literally seconds later. I see two possible options although there may be more. The first and most likely option is that the seal of approval appears on the article itself but is actually a permanent link to a reviewed version. This concept has been discussed by wiki project medicine I believe. A second option is to add the seal to the article but then invoke pending changes protection. It would probably have to be a new level of protection allowing only qualified editors, either members of the PAERB, or vetted by the PAERB to make changes. The second option will require a whole new level of bureaucracy.
*Eventual scope* – the current Wikiproject Accuracy page suggests that RAAFA is a level beyond GA & FA. I don’t think anyone reasonably expects that all articles in the English Wikipedia will eventually become FA, so that implies that it is unreasonable to assume that all, or even any meaningfully significant proportion of all articles reach the level of RAAFA. Is it intended to limit this to some subset such as vital articles?
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