----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Snow" <wikipedia(a)verizon.net>
The post I was responding to was nothing but an
assessment of a
Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to
an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some
speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have.
It was explicitly contrasting how Wikipedia actually is, or tends to be
like, as compared with the corresponding CZ article. I think the
observations were accurate and reflect pretty well what controversial
Wikipedia articles are like, namely festooned with supposedly reliable
citations, and bearing obvious battlescars from years of edit-warring. The
contrast was specifically prompted by a claim by Gerard that Wikipedia's
relaxed attitude to 'expertise' leads to better articles. I don't think it
does.
If your intent is to
discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually
explicitly discuss them.
I don't want to discuss content as such. I want to discuss generic and
systematic problems with the way Wikipedia is organised that lead to poor
quality articles. There needs first to be some recognition there is a
quality problem and that it is serious - I think there is an element of
denial that is evident from some of the replies here, as well as elsewhere.
Once the problem is recognised, there needs to be a careful examination of
possible causes for this. And then a further examination of how policy and
governance could be changed to address some or all of these causes. Does
that sound reasonable?
I might suggest that you should
familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider
whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this
conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the
Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects,
not just Wikipedia.)
I consider this is the best mailing list for the purpose. What do people
here think?
Peter