Chris Owen wrote:
I suggest that we tackle this by putting all new articles into an approval queue - they shouldn't appear on Wikipedia unless they meet basic quality standards. If a reviewing editor judges that the article meets an objective set of criteria, it should be "published". If not, the submitted new article should either be deleted or sorted into a "needs improvement" category outside the main namespace.
Probably the simplest way to do this would to tag the article with an appropriate template that contains a category.
Mind you, cleanup is already so big and growing so fast I can't see us getting through it in a reasonable time ...
We're effectively trying to bail out a leaky boat while the water is still entering.
Yes.
Note also that quite a few of the speedy deletions were things like personal attacks, patent nonsense, tests etc (e.g. "wow, hey carly, i cant believe i can put this on a site! :O its so cool!"). I strongly suspect that people wouldn't submit this sort of thing if they knew that they wouldn't see it appearing instantly on a Wikipedia page.
Remember that this stuff shouldn't be assumed to be vandalism, i.e. malicious - a lot of it is just sandboxing. "'Edit this page'? What on earth? That's unbelievable ..." (hits "submit") "... Oh. Er. HELP!"
- New articles should go somewhere outside the main
namespace until reviewed and passed. They should *not* immediately enter the main namespace.
Possibly. Seems like work.
- We need a simple, clearly defined set of criteria
for assessing whether an article passes the grade. Is it wikilinked? Written in English? Correctly formatted? Includes references? etc etc...
Let me once more strongly suggest my new article prefill idea:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/034414.html
This clearly shows the expectations for a new article. I'm sure we'll get some really amusing and creative new BJAODN, but the new editor who's heard of this "Wikipedia" thing will see what we're after.
- Reviewing editors should assess newly created
articles against these criteria. If the article passes, the article should be cleared to enter the main namespace. If not, it should be sorted into a queue to deal with whatever the problem is. For instance, an article lacking any wikilinks and incorrectly spelled should first be sorted into a "needs links" queue, then moved to a "needs spelling corrections", then finally moved to the main namespace.
This might actually be almost workable without instruction-creeping into Nupedia. Looking through a slush pile with an editorial eye and tagging something with its defects is a *lot* easier, more scaleable and less painful than actually trying to fix some horrible crappy prose right then and there.
Because reviewing editors would necessarily need to be people with a bit of experience of editing, I would limit the ability to review and approve new articles to editors with a certain number of edits - say 500+. However, any editor should be able to work on improving a queued article. Any thoughts on this idea?
It's new process, so therefore should be assumed to be instruction creep until absolutely proven not to be ;-) But parts of it might be workable and would help all by themselves.
I really would like anon page creation switched back on, but article prefill would IMO help a *lot*. And prefill would work with an assumption of good faith on the part of the new editors, and that assumption's what's got us this far.
- d.