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(a)gmail.com>
Sender: "Wikimedia-l" <wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org>Datet;Date: Fri,
25 Mar 2016 10:27:33
To: Wikimedia Mailing List<wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)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(a)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(a)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?
Sphilbrick
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