[WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

[Phil Sandifer]

I think before we can really deal with questions of what should and  
shouldn't be sourced, what a good source is, and what is and isn't  
worth having articles on, we have to go back to brass tacks and  
answer "What is a good article?"

Once we understand what an article should be it becomes easier to  
write guidelines that point to that. And I mean this on a more basic  
level than what we have at [[Wikipedia:What is a good article?]]

To my mind there are three parts of a good article: it must be  
comprehensive, accurate, and interesting.

What do I mean here?

By comprehensive I mean that it covers what it should. We could write  
lots of tests for this (several present themselves), but for now,  
let's leave it at that. It's not missing anything. Note that NPOV is  
an aspect of comprehensiveness. This also covers excluding stupid  
trivia, to my mind. It also means that it provides a good start to  
research. This includes providing further places to look, i.e. "If  
you want to know more about Derrida, go read..."

By accurate I mean that nothing in it is incorrect. Currently we try  
to achieve this by sourcing, and in some cases that's obviously going  
to be necessary. Where those cases are is something we need to  
determine better. Sourcing should be used to back up things a  
reasonable reader might doubt.

Interesting is more intangible. We've unfairly demonized  
[[WP:ILIKEIT]], but usually what people are trying to say when they  
say that they like it is that they learned something from the article  
that they think is interesting. That's the point. (Incidentally,  
[[WP:INTERESTING]] is total shit. Seriously - somebody nuke that  
section stat. Actually, all of arguments to avoid in deletion  
discussions is crap - the page gives no sense of what an argument for  
keeping could possibly be other than the negative "it doesn't seem  
deletable to me.")

Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to  
show why the subject is interesting to someone who isn't already a  
fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I  
think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about  
notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put  
us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough  
articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably  
proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy  
Metal Umlaut]] anybody?

Are there any problems that people can see with this formulation?

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a  
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

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