[WikiEN-l] Bad writing and driving away newcomers (was: The whole point of wikipedia)

[Poor, Edmund W]

Here's an extract from what Tony wrote:

> Specifically the suggestion further up the thread was that we 
> needed to tackle vandalism because it's  so serious, and you 
> said "This is a project to make the best encyclopedia ever, 
> policy and procedure should evolve as our problems evolve, 
> and vandalim is one of the biggest problems, it discredits 
> us, wastes our time, and puts off good users. The least we 
> could do is be able to block vandals properly when they do surface."
> 
> Personally I think that bad writing and driving away 
> newcomers are the two worst problems of the project.  The 
> former can be fixed over time with effort.  The latter will 
> kill us if we keep it up.  Compared to those, vandalism 
> doesn't even count as a blip on the radar screen.

I agree, and I would say that the reason we tolerate (1) bad 
writing and (2) mistreatment of newcomers stems from an anti-
elitism which refuses to define standards of quality.

In our over-arching desire to keep this the "project of the masses" we
have settled for the lowest common denominator. Until we make
subordinate this value to the twin values of (1) having high quality
articles which people can rely on and obtain freely; and (2) providing a
congenial working environment for our volunteers - until we do this, I
say, we are at the mercy of the lowest elements of the on-line world:
the trolls, the time-wasters, and the people Fred Bauder's arbcom
describe as lacking the maturity to be part of this project. 

I hope our new Research Officer will be looking into the twin matters of
defining a standard of quality and providing a congenial working
environment. And I'd like to be on the committee which forms around
these 2 issues.

Ed Poor