[WikiEN-l] 100, 000 FAs as an achievable goal with a plan (was Contest and quality)

[Carl Peterson]

On 9/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 13/09/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I believe this is in fact a standard view on FAC - that if too many
> > > articles are passing then they need to be pickier. Which is fine if
> > > its goal is to award prizes for exceptional brilliance, but not if
> > > it's to pull up the quality of the whole encyclopedia - which is what
> > > I meant about whether the amount of editor work it takes to get past
> > > FAC is actually worth it for the effect on the article.
> >
> > Maybe we could use the "A-Class" rating from the WikiProject
> > assessments here?  The projects would be in a good position to
> > determine whether an article passed most of the FA criteria; what we'd
> > get, presumably, are articles which are comprehensive, accurate,
> > neutral, etc., but which may have minor faults -- particularly in
> > regards to prose style -- that wouldn't quite meet the "very best
> > work" criterion.
>
> I've just been discussing this elsewhere, and my proposal:
>
> At the top of the pyramid, leave FA as it is now, but emphasise that
> it's a prize for our (subjectively?) "best" articles rather than those
> which are objectively above a specific level (inclusive of shrubberies
> and other clutter).
>
> This takes FAC in the direction it seems to naturally want to go, and
> allows us to make A-class into the "article scoring top marks and
> ticking all the boxes" level.
>
> So we formalise A-class, adopt some way of centrally recording all of
> them like we do with good articles and featured articles. But what we
> don't do is create a formal process for it... rather, we leave it to
> the wikiprojects. They know the field; they know what's needed and
> what the normal conventions are and so on. There's a central set of
> standards, but they can modify those standards to their own fields
> (requiring maps for geographical articles, say), they hold the
> discussions in a fairly decentralised way, and everyone's happy.
>
> Then the next layer of recognition is our trusty Good Articles, which
> at the moment are not quite working as anticipated (1400 articles?).
> We throw this open. Nominally, anyone can nominate and anyone can
> approve a GA; we want to emphasise this fact. Get projects to do it.
> Have ad-hoc committees do it. Have one editor mark some articles as
> candidates, then go to another and say "Can you look over this list
> and see what you agree with?". Bingo, much more throughput, much more
> chance of a good article being recognised as such.
>
> (For good and A-class articles, yes, this could be open to abuse. But
> I can think of two or three ways offhand to handle abuses of the
> proposed system; it's worth at least giving it a shot)
>
> I don't think this will solve all our problems - it won't magically
> create new good writing. But it will help us identify quality and it
> will help us appreciate its creators, and that'll bring many
> benefits...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>

While there are potential abuses, there's still the ability to appeal/review
a rating. An editor can always come along and say, "this article doesn't
meet criteria x, y, and z" and downgrade the article. It all works out in a
nice check-and-balance system, because if it turns into a rating war, we can
always do an RfC, PR or something on that order.

Carl