[WikiEN-l] Proposal: improving quality on enwiki

[Steve Bennett]

On 3/31/07, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> * All articles must be categorized.  A bot can be used to generate
> lists of uncategorized articles, and the articles found in this way

To be precise, all articles must be categorised within the main
hierarchy of categories.

> * A mapping of categories onto Subject Working Groups needs to be
> established.  Each Subject Working Group is responsible for the
> maintenance of all articles which are categorized within categories

Yes.

> assigned to that SWG.  (If an article is within the scope of multiple
> SWGs, an arbitration process, with both automated and deliberative
> components, will determine which SWG will be primarily responsible for
> it.)

No. It's not important who is "primarily responsible" for it.

> * Editors, most of whose edits are made to articles categorized within
> a specific SWG, will be identified and asked to form a SWG (or
> formalize an existing informal one).

Yes. This already kind of happens with WikiProjects. It's sort of
flattering to be asked to join a WikiProject. :)

> * SWGs will have the responsibility to ensure that all articles within
> their ambit are properly sourced, cleaned up, etc.

Yes. We should not be scared of using the word "responsibility".
Obviously we don't punish people if they fail. But we define the group
who is ultimately responsible.

> * Any article which remains unsourced for one month will be deleted.
> A bot will detect unsourced articles and notify the responsible SWG of
> the article and the need to source it.

Oh, this is interesting. Implicit in this is that the SWG can decide
whether they want the article or not.

> This is all entirely orthogonal to vandalism management.

Is it? I hoped one advantage would be fewer dusty, never visited
corners of Wikipedia. With the supervised category approach, we could
guarantee to patrol every page.

> Please feel free to refine this idea or just tell me it's a load of hooey.

I really, really like this idea. It's the next logical step forward.
Implementation details please.

Steve