[WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

[Ray Saintonge]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Fastfission wrote:
>  
>
>>But clearly "obscurity" is not the factor which determines a good or
>>bad article. Plenty of articles on obscure people are very good and
>>plenty articles on very simple things can be quite bad. But still, he
>>did not, of course, give any rationale for these two articles except
>>that they exemplify the fact that Wikipedia is edited by amateurs and
>>sometimes has spotty content. So what?
>>    
>>
>It disappoints me to hear a Wikipedian take this attitude towards
>quality.  "So what?"  So -- we're trying to be better than this, that's
>what.
>
There can be many intonations on "So what?" that cannot be adequately 
represented.  Some are indeed offensive. I would prefer to nassume good 
faith on this. 

>>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?
>
>If we study it up one side and down the other and conclude that there is
>nothing to be done about it, then fine.  But we should not just accept
>the current state of affairs if there are sensible proposals for
>improvement.
>
I haven't read the two articles in question; perhaps it's better that I 
don't.  I don't expect anything to be a perfect article, but we do have 
some that come damn close.  The entire project has perhaps become 
successful because of and despite its imperfections.  If *anyone* 
complains about a particular article the {{sofixit}} comeback is always 
available; if you complain about an article you must have some idea 
about what needs to be done.

We would all like better production from the crop of articles in our 
collective farm..  We do have some Stakhanovs among us, but it would be 
wrong to expect as much output from the rest of the volunteers.

>>We're not making software, here -- just because some parts of it are
>>spotty doesn't mean the entire package won't work. In that way we're a
>>lot less restrained than the open source software projects and can
>>afford to have a philosophy of eventualism.
>>    
>>
>I don't have a problem with eventualism -- but 'eventualism' is not the
>same as saying "so what?" to quality problems.
>
Some of the best practices that inspired the growth of Wikipedia do not 
scale well at all.  We all believe in the ideal that the articles should 
improve in quality.  But is the poison pill of impatient perfectionism 
the appropriate prescription, or does it leave us drugged out in 
illusions that we are accomplishing something?  We will always have 
articles that can best be described as a piece of shit, and those are 
far more apparent in an environment filled superior work.  Sometimes if 
the duchess sees the problem, and the hired help is not immediately 
available she may just have to get down on her hands and knees to scrub 
the bathroom floor.

Quality is a concern for all of us.  However, when quality becomes a 
mantra it can easily bring us to a tipping point where that urge 
overwhelms the values that were responsible for the growth.

Ec