[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 10

[SJ]

On 10/2/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:

> While you are entitled to your opinion, you are simply wrong. The featured
> articles have many-fold benefits. Not only are they wonderful for public
> relations (because when people ask "How the hell can Wikipedia produce
> something of quality?" we have a ready-made answer), but the featured articles
> also encourage people to produce higher quality writing *instead* of medeocre
> ones. In other words, it gives us a very visible way of "pushing" the manual
> of style and other good writing habits onto people. (If it were not for the
> featured articles, who would bother to cite references in an article?)

I agree with Mark completely here.  Striving for perfection is one of
the things that subtlely drives the entire project.  Three glorious
things that I cherish that Wikipedia has pioneered are: the
distributed featured article, the distributed news essay, and the
distributed writing class.  Each is worthy of real praise.  All three
require talented individuals to produce model content for others to
emulate, and require the development of simple policies so that people
three steps removed from the models can still contribute productively.

I'd like to know at what point WP has produced half of the world's
"writers familiar with good encyclopedic style."  We're probably a few
years away from that yet.

SJ