On 10/30/05, Tom Cadden thomcadden@yahoo.ie wrote:
One problem is that as Wikipedia gets bigger, the odds are that some articles will get substandard edits but no-one will notice, because the people who previously worked on the articles will be working on newer articles. I was off Wikipedia for a month and when I came back I noticed that a host of articles I had keeping an eye on because they were in my area of expertise had had some appalling edits done. Most of the people who had brought the articles up to a very high standard had either left Wikipedia (some driven away from the frustration of trying to maintain quality, or because they had other commitments elsewhere), were working elsewhere on Wikipedia, or were simply fed up constantly proofing edits in those articles.
We need to be able to in effect save articles that achieve a high encyclopædic quality as a form of permanent template, with subsequent edits perhaps being worked on and discussed elsewhere before inclusion. Otherwise the danger is that articles, having climbed to high quality will slip down to drivel. I noticed that a couple slipped from an A standard to D through a series of poor edits that weren't noticed by people who knew the facts on the topic. Articles that were better than equivalent articles in Brittanica, etc suddenly were reduced through a handful of edits to third rate high school essay standard.
The real danger is that the bigger Wikipedia gets the more poor edits will slip through. In terms of quality we may go backward rather than forward. This is likely to become a bigger problem, and Wikipedia's credibility may well rest on how we deal with it.
Thom Cadden
Please name a few of these articles in serious decay. I am very interested in seeing several examples of this. So far, all I've seen is vague affirmations that this indeed is happening. I don't doubt that it has happened, but I'd like to have a look to better understand the trouble.
-- Michael Turley User:Unfocused