No subject

had some help from user Ezhiki in the beginning, and the help was very mu=
ch
appreciated: instead of going to my talk page and trying to explain me
smth, he just edited a couple of the pages I was working on, correcting
some typical mistakes (templates, some standart names, spelling of Russia=
n
names etc which are by no means a common knowledge) and referring to
relevant policies. On one occasion, I also asked the wikiproject about a
usage of a certain template. All in all, I had not more than 10 edits of
other users in "my" articles. Walking to the office today, I tried to
calculate how many articles are waiting for my attention. Well, Russia ha=
s
about 80 republics and oblasts, which amounts to say 2000 districts. Most
of them are stubs or non-existent. Including district centers, rivers,
mountains, stubs on the towns, some notable persons I would have interest
to write an article on, this must be not less than 3000 articles. With my
speed of 1 article per day (which presently I am not planning to increase=
)
this would be 10 years of my work. Note that this is just a narrow topic
which does not overlap with my professional interest (I am a theoretical
physicist specializing in nanoscience). In this field, I am just an amate=
ur
(may be slightly above the average level).=20

My conclusions from the two-weeks experience:

1. May be the really low hanging fruit, almost on the ground level, has
been picked up, but in the vast majority of articles there is much room f=
or
improvement. Note that I did not add any special things - only the basic
info which you expect to find in the encyclopaedia. I did not aim at GA o=
r
FA. I used may be 10% of the information I had, and what I had I found in
the internet.

2. I seem to be perfectly suited for these articles - I have a general
interest in the topic, and also I know Russian and can work with Russian
sources. On the other hand, I an not a native speaker, and I can leave so=
me
slight spelling errors / incorrect wording etc. This may be a problem, an=
d
generally I am not sure how this problem can be solved. However, if I
estimate the balance, probably I created more of a useful product than I
created troubles.

3. Even for an technically experienced user as myself it is difficult to
start contributing to the project. I was able to clear the barrier, but I
am afraid many of the regular users would leave, not being able to
understand the usage of templates and similar things. On there other side=
,
I got some necessary help, and I know where to ask if I need more.

4. Comparing the quality of this particular class of articles to Russian
Wikipedia, I see both advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, there is a
high chance that someone just living in the district will add some info i=
n
the article in Russian Wikipedia. On the other hand, there are two major
problems with these articles in Russian Wikipedia - copyright violation
(big pieces are added to articles and stay there for years - things becam=
e
considerably better with the implementation of flagged revisions, but sti=
ll
persist), and adding a big number of insignificant and often unsourced
details, including spamming of local interest websites. The English
articles are completely free of these problems. I realize though that thi=
s
line of reasoning can not be generalized to all articles, since the
articles on other topics may have very different issues.=20

Summing up, there is plenty of room on the bottom (c) Richard Feynman.

Cheers
Yaroslav