On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Achal Prabhala
<aprabhala@gmail.com> wrote:
In general, the idea is to focus on instances of a citation gap: either
an already created article whose basis has been established but for
which there are no citations available, or a situation where citations
cover a topic only partially, or an article that should be created but
can't be because of a lack of supporting scholarly evidence.
Congratulations, Achal. I look forward to following your work on this.
The only thing I can contribute from our experience in the Hebrew Wikipedia is a simple observation: a small Wikipedia begins with laxer norms, including allowing plenty of "common wisdom" assertion in articles.
In the past couple of years, as the Hebrew Wikipedia approached (and passed) 100,000 entries, there was a distinct "maturing" of the editing community (without external pressure, mind!), and now citations are considered necessary, substantive (as distinct from stylistic, grammatical) edits are expected to be supported by references, and even previously-"featured" articles are _demoted_ to regular articles for lack of citations. I.e. it used to be possible for an article to be featured even without any citations; it no longer is.
If others small editing communities experienced the same "maturation", perhaps it can be posited as an expected, natural course for nascent editing communities?
Cheers,
Asaf