Kirill Lokshin wrote:
On 9/12/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and
GAs. It's popular becuase
of it's good enough articles.
True. But being respectable is not really the same thing as being
popular; and I was under the impression that the former was a more
practical concern for us than the latter.
I'd personally be more interested in being *useful*, which is an
eminently practical concern. From that perspective, a lot of different
things are important. Having "good enough" articles on as wide a range
of subjects as possible is definitely high up on the list---we provide
information that is difficult to come by otherwise. Having very good
articles, especially on frequently-consulted topics or topics where
errors would be more problematic (biographies; national/ethnic disputes;
technical subjects) is another important consideration. More to the
point, it's quite helpful to allow a reader to quickly identify how good
we think an article is.
It's not clear to me what role, if any, the GA/FA process plays in any
of these concerns. It doesn't tell a reader which articles are good,
because it rates articles as a whole rather than revisions---FA status
provides no guarantee that the current article is any better than a
similar-looking non-FA article. It appears to provide only a moderate
and highly beaurocratic method of encouraging article improvement in the
first place. On the whole I'd say I personally never pay attention to
whether an article is "featured", and I don't know anyone else who does
either. It simply doesn't solve any of the practical problems that come
up when reading Wikipedia.
-Mark