[Foundation-l] 10 thoughts on how to improve the quality of Swedish Wikipedia‏

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Congratulations !! It is great when you are at a stage where quality is
becoming the major consideration. Given that the Swedish Wikipedia is a top
10 Wikipedia in size, it can also be expected. When you consider that there
are over 250 Wikipedias you will agree with me that for most Wikipedias it
is still very much a question of quantity.

This does not mean that quality is not an issue for all the other
Wikipedias, it is that the weight given to quality is a different one. We
all agree that wiki links are important but also that too many red links are
not a positive thing. I totally agree with the notion that being an admin
should not be special, but that needs to be offset somewhat by the
experience that is needed to be the kind of admin that is sufficiently wiki
aware (and yes I have to assume good faith).

Some of the proposals make sense for a project of any size. Quality is
important but at the same stage it is important to provide information.
Providing information in a stub that has nothing to offer is not the same as
offering a link to an article in a language that is also understood by the
reader.

Thanks for sharing your article, I enjoyed it. I hope it will help us
consider how we can provide better quality in the smaller projects as well
(without forgetting them needing) more content.
Thanks,
     GerardM



On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <
wikihannibal at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Just to let you know a bit of what's happening at the Swedish Wikipedia.
>
> In the middle of February I published an essay. As it was I who wrote it,
> I
> am perhaps a bit biased here, so I will try to put it mildly: it created
> the
> largest number of positive actions I have seen in… well, forever, at
> Swedish
> Wikipedia. It has since become a document that many Swedish Wikipedians
> refer to as a standard document. It will certainly be a main topic at our
> general assembly of Wikimedia Sverige. I recently posted this to
> internal-l,
> and got questions about reposting it on foundation-l. It has since been
> "released" on Meta as well, both in English and the orginal Swedish.
>
> Therefore I thought I'd share the essay with you. Hopefully some of you
> will
> see it fit to publish somewhere on your Wikipedia. For maximum effect, cut
> and paste into an edit box and see all the beautiful pictures and links
> (though some may have to be corrected on your Wikipedia, it has been
> converted into fitting in on English Wikipedia).
>
> Please excuse any language errors. Also, apologies to Frank Schulenburg
> for
> misunderstanding everything that he said during his visit to Sweden in
> January.
>
> The original essay appears as a subpage of my user page: *
>
> http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal/10_tankar_om_kvalitet*
> <
> http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal/10_tankar_om_kvalitet
> >
>
> Best wishes
> Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia
> Sverige<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige>
>
>
> ---
>
> [[Image:Lennart Guldbrandsson Ordförande WikimediaSverige.jpg|thumb|
> [[:sv:User:Hannibal|Hannibal]]]]
> ==Ten possibly provoking thoughts about improving the quality of Swedish
> Wikipedia==
> Right now we have [roughly 276 000] articles on Swedish Wikipedia.
>
> For a long time that has been the most publicized measure of how good we
> are. Obviously it's good to have many articles. But already in 2006 Jimmy
> Wales spoke at Wikimania about how he wanted Wikipedia to go from a
> quantity
> based point of view (the maximum number of articles) to a quality based.
> This you could divide into two phases. ''Phase one'', where we've been so
> far, could be likened with [[Star Trek|"boldly going where no one has gone
> before"]]. "Phase two", which we are entering now, is rather about seeing
> to
> it that [[Deadwood (TV series)|the frontier town will get some law and
> order]].
>
> [[Image:Frank in gothenburg.JPG|thumb|Frank Schulenburg during the meeting
> in Gothenburg.]]
> During my two days long meeting with
> [[:de:Benutzer:Frank_Schulenburg|Frank
> Schulenburg]], vice chair from [http://www.wikimedia.de/ Wikimedia
> Deutschland] in January of 2008, we therefore discussed, in general terms,
> why [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite the German Wikipedia] often
> is
> considered one of the best versions of Wikipedia. In the magazine
> [[Stern]],
> there was last year a comparison between German Wikipedia (dewp) and
> [[Brockhaus Enzyklopädie|Brockhaus]] (the German equivalent of our
> [[Nationalencyklopedin]]), where dewp's grades were much better than
> Brockhaus's, see [http://www.stern.de/magazin/heft/604448.html The front
> page of the Stern issue where the comparison is published]. That could not
> be said about Swedish Wikipedia - yet. But not about English Wikipedia
> either.
>
> One explanation that has floated around is that [
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page English Wikipedia] to some extent
> is
> written by users with other mother tongues than English, which makes the
> level of the text lower and hence the quality. Since Swedish Wikipedia in
> that respect is more like the dewp than the English Wikipedia (enwp), we
> can
> leave that theory and instead concentrate on two more important questions:
> * what have dewp done to reach such a high quality ''and''
> * could Swedish Wikipedia (svwp) reach the same high quality
>
> The answer to question number 2 is: Frank thought so. And I think so, too.
>
> The answer to question number 1 is what the rest of this essay is about.
>
> I wish to stress that these are no more than thoughts, if provoking
> thoughts. I am aware that not all these proposals neither can nor should
> be
> implemented. That is not the goal. (I am, for example, not sure that I
> agree
> with each and every proposal that I write about.) The goal is instead to
> get
> all regular users to think about quality (phase two), rather than quantity
> (phase one), but also rather than various other considerations. But we
> will
> get there.
>
> Quite simply, this is my take on '''dewp's recipe to become a better
> encyclopedia'''.
>
> ===Thought number one: delete the bad articles===
> I want to begin with a controversial proposal. It was controversial on
> dewp
> and the result there is still not totally clear, but I think that it may
> be
> good to start with a jolt.
>
> The proposal is to '''remove all bad articles'''. Bad articles come in
> many
> forms: stubs and substubs, articles with low real content (e.g. peacock
> and
> weasel terms), articles without proper language, articles that are
> confusing, lists that can never be completed, etc, etc. By deleting them
> we
> won't have a [[:Category:Wikipedia maintenance|maintenance page]] that's
> always full of things to do and has become a constant guilty conscience,
> rather than a project which some time will be more or less fulfilled.
>
> How would this be done? Well, the active users in a particular topic, for
> example a [[:Wikipedia:WikiProject|project]] or a
> [[:Wikipedia:Portal|portal]] (in other words: people who are interested),
> regularly go through "their" categories and weed out the worst articles -
> ''of course, they should enhance the articles they can". Enhancements are
> naturally better, but in many instances it would take such a long time
> that
> it's better to simply remove the articles.
>
> '''Summary:''' This deletion proposal would lead to svwp downsizing the
> article count. We could even go below 250,000 articles. But think of it
> like
> this: what kind of press release we could issue! "Wikipedia takes out all
> garbage."
>
> ===Thought number two: remove all conflicts===
> It take up a lot of energy, the conflicts,  the arbitrations, and the
> bothersome users that push their agenda and spend most of their time on
> svwp
> discussing the topic instead of writing articles.
>
> The proposal, which is also based on discussions with [
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Notafish Delphine Ménard], about her
> experiences from French Wikipedia, is to remove the conflicts from svwp.
>
> Remove the conflicts? Is that even possible? Most likely there will always
> be differences of opinion about how articles should read, but lately these
> conflicts have come to deal more and more about the topics themselves than
> how the articles should look. It can be fun to take a break from writing
> articles by discussing something, but it also create a lot of conflict and
> draw focus away from the goal of making an encyclopedia. It has become too
> much "communism is bad" instead of "how should the article about communism
> be balanced?" (This is *not* solely about how communism should be
> portrayed,
> but representative of two different ways of working. One way works on
> webforums where the goal isn't anything else than discussing, the other
> way
> works better when the goal is [[WP:NOT|to write an encyclopedia]].)
>
> What I am talking about is a '''lower tolerance level''':
> * Faster blocking for things that are not vandalism (personal attacks,
> bullshitting, for example). It doesn't necessarily have to be long blocks,
> and sometimes warnings are enough - or why not a question on the user's
> talk
> page?
> * Letting people know when the discussion goes too far off-topic.
> * Telling people to take a [[:Wikipedia:Wikibreak|wikibreak]] when they
> seem
> to be stressed.
> * Focus more on [[WP:mediation Cabal|mediation]] than on getting admins to
> take action against the other part.
>
> And this will require:
> * More admins and less prestige about having the admin tools
> * Less [[Jante Law|tall poppy syndrome]] (admins, including me, have let
> irritating behavior through, most likely because of the "should I's" -I
> who
> don't know the subject, who hasn't been through every part of the
> discussion, who recently became an admin, who doesn't want to make
> enemies,
> etc.) and more ''"can do"'' (it's not that hard to know what a personal
> attack looks like, eh?)
> * More barnstars and other forms of kudos for those who take an active
> part
> in conflict resolution
>
> '''Summary:''' Think of being able to spend your time here to actually
> make
> the articles better rather than answering people on talk pages. And every
> conflict is another risk to alienating yet another active user.
>
> ===Thought number three: add a quality meter===
> At the moment, the following message welcomes users at the Main page of
> svwp:
>
> <div style=text-align:center>
> <h1 style="font-size: 162%; border: none; margin: 0; padding:.1em;">
> Välkommen till [[Wikipedia]],</h1>
> <div style="font-size: 95%">den '''fria encyklopedin''' som '''[[Hjälp:Hur
> man redigerar en sida|alla kan redigera]].</div>
> <div style="font-size:85%;">Just nu finns det
> [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}]] artiklar på svenska</div>
> </div>
>
> Read it carefully. I don't think this message gives the impression that we
> focus very much on quality. At all. We just want to show how many articles
> we have got, and that everybody can edit them.
>
> But maybe that isn't very surprising, since there even isn't a "magic
> word"
> to indicate how many featured articles a specific language version of
> Wikipedia has got. There are magic words to show the number of users, the
> number of admins, the number of edits, the number of uploaded files, etc,
> but none for quality. However, we now have created the template
> [[:sv:Mall:Antal utvalda artiklar]], which says how many featured and good
> articles Swedish Wikipedia has at the moment.
>
> Hence, I'd like to add one thing: a meter that shows the quality of the
> encyclopedia, already at the Main page. This is an example, that has been
> created quite quickly (maybe some kind of graph would be nice?), just to
> show what I mean:
>
> <div style=text-align:center>
> <h1 style="font-size: 162%; border: none; margin: 0; padding:.1em;">
> Välkommen till [[Wikipedia]],</h1>
> <div style="font-size: 95%">den '''fria encyklopedin''' som '''[[Hjälp:Hur
> man redigerar en sida|alla kan redigera]].</div>
> <div style="font-size:85%;">Just nu finns det
> [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}]] artiklar på svenska, varav
> [[Wikipedia:Statistik över utvalda artiklar|1,3‰ är utvalda för sin
> kvalitet]]</div>
> </div>
>
> Then we wouldn't focus just on how many articles we have got, but also on
> the quality of them, already from the start. By putting the textbox there,
> we would almost be forced to increase our quality. (And when I say "Main
> page" I don't mean only the Main page, but for this should be a number
> that's seen on various places.)
>
> As you can see, we count our featured and good articles in permille, not
> even in percent. Just imagine what an inspiration it would be to increase
> this percentage to maybe 1%. (As of today, this would mean that 2700 of
> our
> articles were either featured or good. As an comparison, dewp has
> 1260 featured and 2295 good articles. After all, dewiki is about ten times
> as big as svwp, but if you see to the percentage of featrued articles, we
> are about equal (dewp's 1,81 permille compared to svwp's 1,3 permille).
>
> The user [[:en:User:Danny|Danny]] of the English Wikipedia - the same
> person
> that started [http://en.veropedia.com/ Veropedia] and
> [[:en:Wikipedia:Danny's contest|the competition about best new articles]]
> -
> did write in September 2006, that English Wikipedia should aim for 100 000
> featured articles. 100 000 featured articles! Now, that would have been
> something. (Also see
> [[:en:Wikipedia:100%2C000_feature-quality_articles|100
> 000 feature-quality articles]].)
>
> Enwp also has a list of which users that have been the main authors of the
> greatest number of featured articles, [[:en:Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians
> by
> featured article nominations|here]]. Would that be something to introduce
> just to make more writers to do that last little something? Who is first
> to
> reach 10 featured articles? Has someone already reached 10? How about 20
> then?
>
> '''Summary:''' Just imagine that svwp could reach 1% featured articles.
> Then
> we would be five times as good as German Wikipedia!
>
> ===Thought number four: get money===
> [[Image:WMF 2007-2008 spending plans.svg|thumb|How Wikimedia Foundation
> want
> to spend their money]]
> Wikipedia is nonprofit - I know. But to get Wikipedia work at all,
> donations
> are needed. (By the way, please donate [
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Insamling here] or to bank giro
> 5822-9915 to support
> [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_SverigeWikimedia Sverige].)
> The money goes to servers, bandwidth, technical staff,
> and the expenditure of the organisation (see [
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Planned_Spending_Distribution_2007-2008planned
> expenses 2007-2008]).
>
> It would be sad though if the donations just would be about getting
> Wikipedia to work. Donations are also about increasing the quality.
>
> The counterpart of Wikimedia Sverige in Germany, Wikimedia Deutschland,
> works hard with their money to increase the quality:
> *buying expensive reference literature for research of heavy subjects
> (which
> later is "stored" by the users)
> *travel expenses so that the Wikipedians could meet and discuss projects,
> or
> just meet (because it is easier to discuss with people you know - a German
> Wikipedian who was living in Finland could meet other German Wikipedians
> for
> the first time thanks to WMDE)
> *prize money in article-writing-contests, for example
> [[Wikipedia:Academy|Zedler-medaljen which is recieved during Wikipedia
> Academy]] (dewp has the contest two times a year - 40% of the
> contributions
> becomes featured articles)
> *arrange fairs and so on, for example Wikipedia Academy
> *fix scanning of pictures to Wikisource (other local chapters of WMF sends
> out photographers to photograph etc.)
>
> More than that: The contributions sent to Wikimedia Deutschland have also
> led to them gaining more respect - according to the thought "if grant
> institution X have seen that Wikimedia Deutschland/Wikipedia is good,
> maybe
> we should help them as well" (which have led to them gaining more
> contributions and so on). They have also been able to send out press
> releases about their successes, which have given them positive PR. It is
> often just about getting throught the first application procedure, and the
> next time it is easier to pass.
>
> On the longer run we hope that Wikimedia Sverige will be able to take the
> same types of initiatives. But we need more ideas of where money should
> come
> from, and where they should go. All such proposals/ideas are appreciated.
> You can also, of course, help. Please sign up on [
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige/Medlemssidan the member
> list of Wikimedia Sverige].
>
> To dream even more: what if Wikimedia Foundation could recieve enough
> money
> (the last fundraising didn't correspond with the expectations and some
> planned projects are therefore cut down) to spend its energy on more
> ''important things'' than to think about money all the time. Then they
> would
> be able to design an interface that is [[WYSIWYG|more like the result]]
> than
> today's complicated tags, templates and and tables.
>
> '''Summary:''' With more money it would be much easier to get our press
> releases publicated in media which would increase the interest of editing
> on
> Wikipedia. "Wikipedia awards the best article", "She got her student books
> from Wikipedia", or preferably, "Swede makes Wikipedia simple to edit".
>
> ===Thought number five: more clearly defined projects===
> Frank told me about two or three users on dewp who decided to create
> articles about ''all lillies''. They made it. It took about a year. We've
> had similiar projects on svwp: [[:sv:Wikipedia:Projekt Tintin|Project
> Tintin]] for example, where the goal to create articles was accomplished
> in
> less than a few months. After that, some think, the project has reached a
> stand still. I would say that the project largly has reached its goal.
>
> But there's no shortage of projects on svwp. Presently there a couple of
> hundred projects. Far from all of them have any clear goal, nor any
> attainable goal. Not many of them document their progress, somthing which
> is
> good for both the group behind the project and other interested parties.
> This leads me to a couple of questions: How many of our projects have
> served
> their purposes? How many of them are dead? Anyone willing to go to town
> with
> the template {{:sv:Mall:Färdigt projekt|This project is done}}?
>
> Recently there was a project on svwp with amazing results, see
> [[:sv:Wikipedia:Projekt wikifiering|Project wikify]]. One thing that I
> believe contributed to the success of that project is that they calculated
> what needed to be done and what was done and presented that on the project
> page. The goal became very clear.
>
> '''Summary''' With clearer goals for the projects we can accomplish great
> things. Then we should dismantle that project.
>
> ===Thought number six: rally more Wikipedians===
> Right now there are [57 000] registrered users on svwp. We need to be many
> more if we are to raise the quality in any mentionable measure. As it is
> now, around half a percent makes roughly 50 percent of all edits. That
> means
> that there are 300 very active Wikipedians against 56 500 rather
> indifferent
> Wikipedians.
> There are several dangers here: intellectual inbreed, reduced article
> growth, conflicts that can risk the future of the project, wikistress, POV
> and blindness to the systematic bias, and last but not least, that
> outsiders
> begin to think of the users here as a group that's very hard to get into.
> Considering that Sweden, Finland and almost all the other countries where
> Swedish is a large language have such a large portion of the population
> connected to the internet, we should, with no big problems, be able to
> rally
> more users.
>
> [[Image:WT-träff om wikipedia academy.jpg|thumb|Wikipedians meet to
> discuss
> Wikipedia Academy: [[:sv:User:Hannibal|Hannibal]],
> [[:de:Benutzer:Frank_Schulenburg|Frank Schulenburg]],
> [[:sv:User:Moralist|Moralist]] (on his knee), [[:sv:User:Grillo|Grillo]],
> [[:sv:User:Boivie|Boivie]], [[:sv:User:Mnemo|Mnemo]] and
> [[:sv:User:LA2|LA2]].]]
> Some proposals for rainy or sunny days:
> * make the [[:meta:Edit_Wikipedia_Week|Edit Wikipedia week]] a bigger
> event
> * mention for your friends and family that you edit Wikipedia (and why)
> and
> encourage them to do the same
> * ask someone you know to be an expert on a particular topic to read the
> article on Wikipedia and help make it better
> * ask your school if they can't do a project creating articles with the
> framework of a certain subject, see [[:en:Wikipedia:School and university
> projects|Using Wikipedia in school]]
> * mention Wikipedia (and the other Wikimedia Foundation projects) as a
> source when you post on internet forums
> * use images and other media from Wikimedia Commons, quotes from
> Wikiquote,
> word explanations from Wiktionary, etc, in essays, articles and other
> written texts
> * greet and guide new users in a friendly way - even the not-so-nice ones
> * attent a Wikipedia meetup
> * attend the local chapter general assembly (and join, of course, a 100
> kronors in the case of Wikimedia Sverige is not a lot of money)
> * "accidentally forget" the web browser at the main page of Wikipedia when
> you finish surfing a public computer - and if possible, bookmark it among
> the favourites
> * buy Wikipedia things from
> [http://325837.spreadshirt.net/se/SE/ShopWikimedia Sverige's webshop]
> or [
> http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia CafePress] and wear them in a public
> place
> * start a contest around who can produce the highest number of new users.
>
> ''Any cooperations'' would be good ideas: what if Amazon.com, national
> record archives, radio stations, book review sites, MySpace and similar
> sites linked to the appropriate page on Wikipedia. Then the webb traffic
> (and probably also the number of users) increase dramatically.
>
> '''Summary:''' More users equals higher quality. How about "10 000
> registrered users on Swedish Wikipedia"? Everyone with more than 10 edits.
>
> ===Thought number seven: educate the general public in how Wikipedia
> works===
> [[Image:Consolation-Lake-Szmurlo.jpg|thumb|Not everybody know that Commons
> contains pictures this good. Please let them know that.]]
> I have myself started a cooperation with Gothenburg City Library to see if
> we can do seminars and workshops for the general public. The library have
> shown great interest. I doubt that other libraries would be less
> interested:
> right now there is a great discussion about how Library 2.0 should look
> and
> feel and many already work with databases. And in that contact I have also
> gotten proposals to speak in front of two senior citizens' internet groups
> about how Wikipedia works. There are more such groups. What if there were
> 200 senior citizens adding information about their era's movie stars,
> tools
> that are almost forgotten nowadays or aspects on our history that we
> younger
> people cannot possibly be aware of.
>
> Teachers need lesson plans for how to view material on the internet. There
> many of us Wikipedians can teach a lot - about Wikipedia's quality
> programs
> (version handling, adminship, recent changes, blocking, oversight, etc) as
> well as source critizism. By getting the teachers on our side, we could
> potentially get approximately 100 000 new users each year (the mean number
> of children born each year in Sweden).
>
> Based on Wikimedia Deutschland's material, Wikimedia Sverige is in the
> process of developing leaflets to hand out and presentations that
> practically anyone with a month's worth of experience from Wikipedia could
> do, about how Wikipedia works. Please help with this!  [[:sv:User
> talk:Hannibal|Contact me]] for more information. If you don't want to do
> the
> presentationen yourself there shouldn't be to hard finding someone else to
> do it, if you pay for travel expenses.
>
> '''Summary:''' Think about the headline "Wikipedia visits school" or why
> not
> "Confront Wikipedia at the library"? "The mean age of Wikipedia is now 55
> years" may not be a dream, or is it?
>
> ===Thought number eight: educate the experts in how Wikipedia works===
> But it's not only ''more'' users we need. We also need expert competence
> in
> lots of different subjects to make sure the articles not only scratch on
> the
> surface. (That's also one of the disadvantages of having so few regular
> users: we cannot possibly be experts on everything and hence the articles
> are less deep than if we could stay in our respective areas.)
>
> So, how do we get more experts to contribute to Wikipedia, other than the
> proposals I've already mentioned?
>
> [[Image:Academy Goettingen Moeller 0824.JPG|thumb|One of the workshops
> during Wikipedia Academy in Göttingen 2006.]]
> One proposal that we are already in the process of making come true
> through
> Wikimedia Sverige is staging a '''Wikipedia Academy'''. In Germany, France
> and South Africa these meetings between Wikipedia and the academic world
> have become very successful and have wetted the respective countries and
> chapters an appetite for more. For dewp Wikipedia Academy meant among
> other
> things an increase in media exposure, but also more contributions from
> scientists. The best example is a [[emeritus]] in [[agriculture]] who was
> so
> fascinated by Wikipedia that he started writing two or three articles a
> day.
> So far he's written about 300 of them - on a scholarly level. Since he has
> a
> personal image library Commons now have a treasure trove the price of
> which
> can hardly be overestimated.
> The first Swedish Wikipedia Academy will take place in [[Lund]], in
> cooperation with [[Lunds universitet|the university]]. There you can both
> make new contacts and make yourself useful (we need everything from
> organisers to kitchen staff).
>
> Another proposal is getting experts for money (or not) to participate as
> '''judges in article writing contests'''. Through seeing that way how good
> Wikipedia's articles actually can get, they may be lured into writing for
> Wikipedia, at least some time or another. Imagine [some local celebrity
> expert editing in his or her expert subject].
>
> A third proposal is approaching '''expert organizations''' and ask them to
> help with their areas of expertise. The article on [[torture]] could for
> example need an hours work from a specialist at [[Amnesty International]].
> And if we only give them an introductory course in how to enter sources
> etc
> into the article, I do not believe that questions about [[WP:NOT|no
> original
> research]] and [[WP:NPOV|bias]] should be overwhelmingly large. It's
> definitely in ''their'' interest to look good on Wikipedia - and as long
> as
> we explain that the best way to get respect is to be neutral, I believe
> that
> we can handle the organizations that cannot manage that trust.
>
> '''Summary:''' Image the headlines "Now you can correct [some famous
> know-it-all] on Wikipedia" or "The founder of Wikipedia comes to Sweden ―
> checking the collaboration with Lund's university".
>
> ===Thought nine: concentration on the basic articles===
> Okay, say nothing in this essay will happen: no deletion of bad articles,
> no
> lowering of the tolerance level for conflicts, no quality meter, no money,
> no clearly defined projects (but already a project has started to check
> articles for relevancy, so the risk of nothing happening here is nil), no
> massive increase in Wikipedians, no education of either the general public
> nor the experts - what do we do then?
>
> There is still plenty we can do, on both large and small scale, to
> increase
> quality: one of my favourite examples is to '''make it easier for newbies
> to
> edit Wikipedia'''. That's one area with lots to do. Image yourself to be
> new
> to Wikipedia and clicking the edit button. To put it mildly: it's not
> entirely clear what everything in the edit box [
> http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gustav_Vasa&action=edit here]
> means.
>
> It's not easy to learn what rules apply on Wikipedia. I have for a long
> time
> planned to make some big changes to the
> [[:en:Wikipedia:Community_Portal|Community Portal]] and several other
> pages
> listed on the menu to the left of every page. They are a mess.
>
> But that's not what I suggest we concentrate for the near future.
>
> [[Image:Size of English Wikipedia broken down.png|thumb|This is how
> Wikipedia should look. Or?]]
> My suggestion is rather that we take a good look at what people a) most
> likely need and b) really seem to want. There two tools are the starting
> point for a bigger project:
> # [[:sv:Wikipedia:Kvalitetsgranskningstabeller|our quality assessing
> tables]] which uses the 1000 articles long [[meta:List of articles all
> languages should have|list of articles all Wikipedias should have]] but
> also
> includes assessements of how svwp's versions are.
> # [[:sv:Wikipedia:Populära artiklar|lists of our most popular articles]]
>
> Using these two tools we have identified the most important articles. It's
> basically these articles that Wikipedia is judged upon.
>
> '''The project is quite simply to during the near future making sure that
> a)
> all 1000 articles in the quality assessing table either attain featured or
> good quality status, and b) the 200 most popular articles every month at
> least is presentable (does not have template warning of low quality), but
> ideally also attain featured or good quality status.'''
>
> I am aware of the fact that this will be no picknick. But it is important,
> and if we work together it can happen pretty fast. If everyone of the
> regular Wikipedians (all perhaps 300) take upon themselves three or four
> articles to enhance until the end of December 2008, we have reached the
> goal. It's actually not harder than that.
>
> ===Thought number ten: (surprise)===
> <div class="boilerplate metadata plainlinks" id="stub">
> {| cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color:transparent;"
> | [[Image:Wiki letter w.svg|19px| ]]
> | ''&nbsp;<sup>This [[Wikipedia:Stub|section]] needs
> [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=edit}} to be expanded]. It's no
> coincidence that this last point is empty. I don't have all the answers.
> In
> fact, I would like more suggestions. So make a new section and present
> your
> thoughts of how best to improve Wikipedia.''
> |}</sup></div>
>
>
> --
> Lennart Guldbrandsson, ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt
> för
> svenskspråkiga Wikipedia
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>