There was a lengthy discussion recently on en:WP at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#FAC_...
about the fact that many featured articles – at least on en:WP – are about niche topics, while so-called "vital articles" (VA), i.e. core topics that any encyclopedia would be expected to cover well, are underperforming, with comparatively few making FA or GA. Looking at the VA list,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VA
topic areas like philosophy, languages and social sciences seem to be doing particularly poorly.
Generally speaking, it stands to reason that articles on niche topics are easier to improve. One or two editors can work in relative peace and quiet, and the number of sources is more manageable. If there are only two dozen sources covering the topic, it's clear where to start; but where do you start with a topic like Information technology?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology
After ten years, it's still a start-class article in en:WP, little more than a stub really (though I note it is a featured article in Catalan Wikipedia).
Do vital articles need a special approach to get them to FA standard, perhaps with Foundation-sponsored outreach to universities, formation of article improvement teams involving outside experts, and expert involvement in the FAC (featured article candidate) assessment process? Or do we trust that these articles will improve in time through the normal process of editing?
What is VA quality like in other language versions of Wikipedia?
Andreas
uh .. you are right ... sometimes one might wonder what http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Education_Program are for if such basic articles stay in such a state. like one "professor for information technology": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program/Cours...)
for the article, what about starting with "information" and "technology", and explaining the information pyramid with data --> information --> knowledge, and associate with technology? * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_ladder * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology
and then there are others like: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_data_processing * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_processing
rupert
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 16:01, Andreas K. jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lengthy discussion recently on en:WP at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#FAC_...
about the fact that many featured articles – at least on en:WP – are about niche topics, while so-called "vital articles" (VA), i.e. core topics that any encyclopedia would be expected to cover well, are underperforming, with comparatively few making FA or GA. Looking at the VA list,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VA
topic areas like philosophy, languages and social sciences seem to be doing particularly poorly.
Generally speaking, it stands to reason that articles on niche topics are easier to improve. One or two editors can work in relative peace and quiet, and the number of sources is more manageable. If there are only two dozen sources covering the topic, it's clear where to start; but where do you start with a topic like Information technology?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology
After ten years, it's still a start-class article in en:WP, little more than a stub really (though I note it is a featured article in Catalan Wikipedia).
Do vital articles need a special approach to get them to FA standard, perhaps with Foundation-sponsored outreach to universities, formation of article improvement teams involving outside experts, and expert involvement in the FAC (featured article candidate) assessment process? Or do we trust that these articles will improve in time through the normal process of editing?
What is VA quality like in other language versions of Wikipedia?
Andreas _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
It's hard to write articles about general topics, general principles, overviews. Just describing a detail, one specific thing, is much easier and can be done in an assembly line style.
Also, niche topics always seem to be more attractive than the normal stuff. English Wikipedia nearly has more on the obscure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-stroke_engine (given that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-_and_four-stroke_engines should be counted in) than on the run-of-the-mill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_engine
Peter User:Pjacobi
I agree that the discussion about important topics is cruical - but it is important to read that whole thread to get a balanced view.
The discussion from experienced contributors makes it very clear that:
a) the analysis given in that presentation was hugely flawed and that; b) peer review on wikipedia has never been more thorough or comprehensive.
I think any conversation about improving the important articles on wikipedia needs to proceed with acknowledgement of these facts (especially the second one). Its also indisputable that so far foundation initiatives aimed at improving content have at best produced mixed results (US Education program) and at worst been catastrophic disasters (India Education Program). Given this, it is clear that any future content initiatives should first gain a strong consensus from volunteer contributors.
As a supplementary issue - many editors have pointed out that the Vital articles "assessment" is an arbitrary and flawed metric of article importance. So it would be better if it is not used in discussions at present. -- Alasdair
On Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 17:04, rupert THURNER wrote:
uh .. you are right ... sometimes one might wonder what http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_Education_Program are for if such basic articles stay in such a state. like one "professor for information technology": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program/Cours...)
for the article, what about starting with "information" and "technology", and explaining the information pyramid with data --> information --> knowledge, and associate with technology?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_ladder
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology
and then there are others like:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_data_processing
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_processing
rupert
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 16:01, Andreas K. <jayen466@gmail.com (mailto:jayen466@gmail.com)> wrote:
There was a lengthy discussion recently on en:WP at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#FAC_...
about the fact that many featured articles – at least on en:WP – are about niche topics, while so-called "vital articles" (VA), i.e. core topics that any encyclopedia would be expected to cover well, are underperforming, with comparatively few making FA or GA. Looking at the VA list,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VA
topic areas like philosophy, languages and social sciences seem to be doing particularly poorly.
Generally speaking, it stands to reason that articles on niche topics are easier to improve. One or two editors can work in relative peace and quiet, and the number of sources is more manageable. If there are only two dozen sources covering the topic, it's clear where to start; but where do you start with a topic like Information technology?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology
After ten years, it's still a start-class article in en:WP, little more than a stub really (though I note it is a featured article in Catalan Wikipedia).
Do vital articles need a special approach to get them to FA standard, perhaps with Foundation-sponsored outreach to universities, formation of article improvement teams involving outside experts, and expert involvement in the FAC (featured article candidate) assessment process? Or do we trust that these articles will improve in time through the normal process of editing?
What is VA quality like in other language versions of Wikipedia?
Andreas _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org (mailto:foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org) Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Interesting that Theology is not a 'vital article'. As for philosophy, none of the main philosophical schools (nominalism, realism, scepticism, empiricism, rationalism, existentialism etc) are mentioned. Why is this?
On 4 December 2011 17:49, Edward Buckner peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
Interesting that Theology is not a 'vital article'. As for philosophy, none of the main philosophical schools (nominalism, realism, scepticism, empiricism, rationalism, existentialism etc) are mentioned. Why is this?
There are always going to be disagreements over what should constitute a vital article. That isn't important to this discussion. I think most people's top 1000 articles would have a lot of overlap (I expect most of the top 100 VAs would appear at least somewhere in most people's top 1000) and even articles in that overlap aren't particularly good at the moment.
"Thomas Dalton"
There are always going to be disagreements over what should constitute a vital article.
There are disagreements about whether Theology is a vital article????? Isn't the real answer that no one has actually looked at this list or revised it for some years (clue, I just checked).
That isn't important to this discussion.
I think the fact that Wikipedia has been unable to settle on what articles are 'vital' to it is pretty important to this discussion. Of course, the fact that some of them, in fact most of them, are pretty terrible is also important to this discussion. Actually the article on Theology is pretty terrible too.
Edward
On 4 December 2011 18:21, Edward Buckner peter.damian@btinternet.com wrote:
"Thomas Dalton"
There are always going to be disagreements over what should constitute a vital article.
There are disagreements about whether Theology is a vital article?????
Well on the basis that Universities should have some vague idea what is important only 13 UCAS listed UK universities offer V610 (ie actual theology rather than various comparative religion) courses.
If you look at the '10,000" articles list - it becomes very clear that the selection is totally arbitrary. ( more actors than painters listed - as a random example) So far the best suggestion that I have seen for "important" articles is that a wikiproject has ranked that article as "high" or "top" importance. But even that is a totally arbitrary criterion.
did you already improve one of these articles or you are just writing theoretical mails about theoretically improving a list, and theoretically improving some text?
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 19:31, Alasdair web@ajbpearce.co.uk wrote:
If you look at the '10,000" articles list - it becomes very clear that the selection is totally arbitrary. ( more actors than painters listed - as a random example) So far the best suggestion that I have seen for "important" articles is that a wikiproject has ranked that article as "high" or "top" importance. But even that is a totally arbitrary criterion.
-- Alasdair
On Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 19:03, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 4 December 2011 17:49, Edward Buckner <peter.damian@btinternet.com (mailto:peter.damian@btinternet.com)> wrote:
Interesting that Theology is not a 'vital article'. As for philosophy, none of the main philosophical schools (nominalism, realism, scepticism, empiricism, rationalism, existentialism etc) are mentioned. Why is this?
There are always going to be disagreements over what should constitute a vital article. That isn't important to this discussion. I think most people's top 1000 articles would have a lot of overlap (I expect most of the top 100 VAs would appear at least somewhere in most people's top 1000) and even articles in that overlap aren't particularly good at the moment.
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You can see all my contributions to en.wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ajbp or get an overview at http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ajbp&lang=en&w...
Even if I had never contributed to wikipedia in my life however: If you look at my messages, I was very obviously making a point about the clearly expressed views of contributors far more experienced than myself (and, incidentally, far more experienced than you) and suggesting that we consider such views in the future with the respect they deserve when discussing en.wiki content issues. I would expect anyone responding to me to be able to comprehend that.
It is not very becoming of you to respond to what was a productive conversation with such a lazy "theoretical" message.
Wow, this thread went from interesting to pointless bickering in record time.
Ryan Kaldari
On 12/4/11 11:47 AM, Alasdair wrote:
You can see all my contributions to en.wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ajbp or get an overview at http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ajbp&lang=en&w...
Even if I had never contributed to wikipedia in my life however: If you look at my messages, I was very obviously making a point about the clearly expressed views of contributors far more experienced than myself (and, incidentally, far more experienced than you) and suggesting that we consider such views in the future with the respect they deserve when discussing en.wiki content issues. I would expect anyone responding to me to be able to comprehend that.
It is not very becoming of you to respond to what was a productive conversation with such a lazy "theoretical" message.
i started improving http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology and i felt somehow left alone by you native english speakers only writing emails :)
what do you think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WPRV prepared by the team around http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team?
this team around martin walker also made quite an effort of defining what is "important", defining an assessment scheme and a nomination process: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Core_topic... * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Release_Version_Nominations * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Ve... * e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Psychology/Assessment#Imp... * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment
rupert.
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 20:47, Alasdair web@ajbpearce.co.uk wrote:
You can see all my contributions to en.wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ajbp or get an overview at http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ajbp&lang=en&w...
Even if I had never contributed to wikipedia in my life however: If you look at my messages, I was very obviously making a point about the clearly expressed views of contributors far more experienced than myself (and, incidentally, far more experienced than you) and suggesting that we consider such views in the future with the respect they deserve when discussing en.wiki content issues. I would expect anyone responding to me to be able to comprehend that.
It is not very becoming of you to respond to what was a productive conversation with such a lazy "theoretical" message.
Alasdair
On Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 19:38, rupert THURNER wrote:
did you already improve one of these articles or you are just writing theoretical mails about theoretically improving a list, and theoretically improving some text?
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 19:31, Alasdair <web@ajbpearce.co.uk (mailto:web@ajbpearce.co.uk)> wrote:
If you look at the '10,000" articles list - it becomes very clear that the selection is totally arbitrary. ( more actors than painters listed - as a random example) So far the best suggestion that I have seen for "important" articles is that a wikiproject has ranked that article as "high" or "top" importance. But even that is a totally arbitrary criterion.
-- Alasdair
On Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 19:03, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 4 December 2011 17:49, Edward Buckner <peter.damian@btinternet.com (mailto:peter.damian@btinternet.com)> wrote:
Interesting that Theology is not a 'vital article'. As for philosophy, none of the main philosophical schools (nominalism, realism, scepticism, empiricism, rationalism, existentialism etc) are mentioned. Why is this?
There are always going to be disagreements over what should constitute a vital article. That isn't important to this discussion. I think most people's top 1000 articles would have a lot of overlap (I expect most of the top 100 VAs would appear at least somewhere in most people's top 1000) and even articles in that overlap aren't particularly good at the moment.
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I think rupert and I perhaps got crossed wires in translation…
getting us back on topic - I am not sure that the "defining important" argument is the most cruicial part of the problem (though at a glance it does look like more work has been done on those than on vital articles) . I think the important question is who we encourage quality contributions in those areas.
One good suggestion I had seen discussed somewhere (forget where) was that similar to the community travel grants scheme - the foundation might produce a "community research scheme" where people who are looking to improve an important article but who need to purchase access to sources can get a grant (payable when the article reaches GA/FA level) for JSTOR accounts or whatever. This would probably only work on mature wiki's where the peer review systems for a FA are high enough - but it is an interesting idea. -- Alasdair
On Monday, 5 December 2011 at 05:29, rupert THURNER wrote:
i started improving http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology and i felt somehow left alone by you native english speakers only writing emails :)
what do you think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WPRV prepared by the team around http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team?
this team around martin walker also made quite an effort of defining what is "important", defining an assessment scheme and a nomination process:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Core_topic...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Release_Version_Nominations
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Ve...
- e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Psychology/Assessment#Imp...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment
rupert.
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 20:47, Alasdair <web@ajbpearce.co.uk (mailto:web@ajbpearce.co.uk)> wrote:
You can see all my contributions to en.wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ajbp or get an overview at http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/pcount/index.php?name=Ajbp&lang=en&w...
Even if I had never contributed to wikipedia in my life however: If you look at my messages, I was very obviously making a point about the clearly expressed views of contributors far more experienced than myself (and, incidentally, far more experienced than you) and suggesting that we consider such views in the future with the respect they deserve when discussing en.wiki content issues. I would expect anyone responding to me to be able to comprehend that.
It is not very becoming of you to respond to what was a productive conversation with such a lazy "theoretical" message.
Alasdair
On Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 19:38, rupert THURNER wrote:
did you already improve one of these articles or you are just writing theoretical mails about theoretically improving a list, and theoretically improving some text?
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 19:31, Alasdair <web@ajbpearce.co.uk (mailto:web@ajbpearce.co.uk) (mailto:web@ajbpearce.co.uk)> wrote:
If you look at the '10,000" articles list - it becomes very clear that the selection is totally arbitrary. ( more actors than painters listed - as a random example) So far the best suggestion that I have seen for "important" articles is that a wikiproject has ranked that article as "high" or "top" importance. But even that is a totally arbitrary criterion.
-- Alasdair
On Sunday, 4 December 2011 at 19:03, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 4 December 2011 17:49, Edward Buckner <peter.damian@btinternet.com (mailto:peter.damian@btinternet.com) (mailto:peter.damian@btinternet.com)> wrote:
Interesting that Theology is not a 'vital article'. As for philosophy, none of the main philosophical schools (nominalism, realism, scepticism, empiricism, rationalism, existentialism etc) are mentioned. Why is this?
There are always going to be disagreements over what should constitute a vital article. That isn't important to this discussion. I think most people's top 1000 articles would have a lot of overlap (I expect most of the top 100 VAs would appear at least somewhere in most people's top 1000) and even articles in that overlap aren't particularly good at the moment.
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On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 15:01:45 +0000, "Andreas K." jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
There was a lengthy discussion recently on en:WP at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#FAC_...
about the fact that many featured articles – at least on en:WP – are
about
niche topics, while so-called "vital articles" (VA), i.e. core topics
that
any encyclopedia would be expected to cover well, are underperforming,
with
comparatively few making FA or GA. Looking at the VA list,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VA
topic areas like philosophy, languages and social sciences seem to be
doing
particularly poorly.
Whereas it is an important issue, I believe it can only be resolved by wikiprojects who can compile their priority lists and collectively work on the most important articles. At some point, about three years ago, I tried to organize in Russian Wikipedia an umbrella wikiproject cross-project work on VA. It was never a success.
Cheers Yaroslav
On 12/4/11 4:01 PM, Andreas K. wrote:
many featured articles – at least on en:WP – are about niche topics, while so-called "vital articles" (VA), i.e. core topics that any encyclopedia would be expected to cover well, are underperforming, with comparatively few making FA or GA. Looking at the VA list,
[...]
Generally speaking, it stands to reason that articles on niche topics are easier to improve. One or two editors can work in relative peace and quiet, and the number of sources is more manageable. If there are only two dozen sources covering the topic, it's clear where to start; but where do you start with a topic like Information technology?
From reading a number of other encyclopedias, both general and specialist, this problem seems fairly common in various degrees. The article standard for an article on a specific topic (say, one smallish archaeological site) in a specialist encyclopedia will typically be extremely high, but the standard for articles on general topics (like "archaeology" or "forum") varies much more.
One approach is to hire someone famous to write their personal, often not-NPOV, take on it (the EB1911 approach, where famously Peter Kropotkin wrote the article on anarchism). Another is to try to get together a smallish group of experts to write a survey article, which may end up more NPOV, but usually still with a significant slant. In my experience, experts in a field usually *hate* these general encyclopedia articles, and rarely agree with them. I know that when I look up "artificial intelligence" (my area) in an encyclopedia, even a specialist one, I'm always prepared to groan. But I can look up more specific techniques with less fear of disappointment.
One solution is to lower the bar for what an FA-standard general article needs to be, and recognize that these articles will just not be as good. That, de facto, is what most other encyclopedias do. Another approach is to keep the bar high, and recognize that there will never be as many broad topics meeting that standard.
I do think it's interesting to think of how to fix it, though. I'm not sure it's a problem anyone's solved *outside* of Wikipedia, so it'd be an interesting trick to solve within it!
-Mark
On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
In my experience, experts in a field usually *hate* these general encyclopedia articles, and rarely agree with them. I know that when I look up "artificial intelligence" (my area) in an encyclopedia, even a specialist one, I'm always prepared to groan.
The same holds true for me when watching/reading the news. If I'm being freshly informed I just take it in. But when it's a report/article on something I know intimately I'm often left open-mouthed by the angle they've taken or the vital things they've neglected to mention.
The extension of that is to watch/read news and think - for *every* *single* *thing* you see and hear - that someone somewhere is more knowledgeable than the journalist and doing a massive facepalm.
However, it is far too cognitively uncomfortable and difficult to process media in that way and it is vital that one reverts to just giving everything they say 98% credence in order to preserve one's sanity.
Bodnotbod
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