[WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

[Delirium]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>But nobody's making excuses here. I'm just saying that you will always
>>be able to find sore spots if you want to. If you believe in the
>>Wikipedia way, what you do is try to fix them or call them to the
>>attention to others. If you don't, then you write pissy articles about
>>them.
>>    
>>
>
>I don't think this is what our general response to this sort of
>complaint should be.  I think our response should be: hey, you know
>what, he's right!  These articles ought to be pretty decent, but they
>aren't.  Why?  What can we do to improve?
>  
>
Well, in principle, *all* our articles should be pretty decent, but we 
have nearly a million of them in en: now, so that takes some time.  Even 
if you take only all high-profile articles, there's at least a few 
thousand of them, so the fact that someone can find 2 of those thousands 
that aren't very good at one particular moment in time isn't 
particularly convincing.

I'm not convinced that any general problem has been illustrated in terms 
of the editing process.  If anything, the main thing illustrated (which 
is already recognized) is that we don't have a good way yet of marking 
particular revisions as high quality.  If we did implement a sort of 
'sifter' project, as long-contemplated, and people found crappy articles 
among /those/, then we'd have a demonstrated problem.

-Mark