[WikiEN-l] 100K challenge page up

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

"Rory Stolzenberg" wrote

> Am I the only one who thinks this is absolutely impossible?  I'm thinking
> 2,500, and even that's ambitious.  Per WP:100K, each FA requires 50
> editing-hours- that's 5,000,000 editing-hours for 100,000 FAs. Dividing that
> by 8760 hours in a year, that's over 570 editors working 24/7/365.  More
> realistically, we'd have editors working on average maybe 2 hours a day at
> most, so multiply that number by 12. That's 6840 editors working 2 hours a
> day, 7 days a week for a year, solely on articles that they will make
> featured.

Yes, the numbers don't really add up. This of course is not the only issue: trying and 'failing' in a quality drive may not be so bad. Depends on "opportunity cost" and other things.

So in the light of [[WP:DC]], what are the main issues.

(1) Numbers to add up

If enWP were equivalent to 1000 full-time people and if they could be told to give this their main attention, then it could just be perhaps be done in the time.

(2) Ancient rights and entrenchment

What gets the attention? Small city in the USA on which we have an article, or city in India of many times the population which currently doesn't? An academic who has written a popular book, and has a stub now, or one of much greater distinction in the field who happens to be less well known.

(3) The fried egg

This was a metaphor from a talk I gave on WP, with which to make the point that there is a risk that we get 10% or so of good quality articles, and a whole lot more that become an intellectual wilderness.

(4) Actually, churn rate matters

The whole open source thing is predicated on the eyeballs being spread over the whole project, and not just concentrating on where there is current activity.

(5) What is the context, on balance of strengths and weaknesses?

I think we know this by now. Wiki in general, WP in particular, is very good at mapping out territories. E.g. Radio stations in the USA: they can all be covered. This is not what needs to be reined in. Media, academia, popular culture can be mapped out, and this is a USP for this wiki. There clearly is a weakness, also, in achieving uniformly high quality. 

(6) Wot, no hypertext?

The focus on individual articles very clearly forgets that we are building a hypertext encyclopedia. It's not as if people really like scrolling down very long articles. A group of related articles on, say, heart disease, is actually a good solution, rather than cramming it all in one. Splitting topics across pages may expose weaker sections to greater scrutiny - which would be the whole point, though.

None of this says there need be no quality drive, just that there is a discussion here worth having.

Charles

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