[WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

[Ray Saintonge]

The Cunctator wrote:

>On 1/4/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 1/3/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Robth wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading
>>>>Wikipedia.  If we're going to relax our content standards
>>>>substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they
>>>>learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Do you have any evidence for that theory?  Those who are interested only
>>>in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the
>>>flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia.  We also
>>>have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting
>>>standards for their area of interest.
>>>      
>>>
>>It's a hard theory to provide specific evidence for, seeing as it does
>>involve trying to get inside people's heads, which is all but
>>impossible on the internet.  What I do think we can reasonably state,
>>though, is as follows:
>>
>>1. People learn more about how to write Wikipedia from reading
>>articles than they do from reading style guides.  I know this has been
>>the case with me, and I haven't met anyone with whom it isn't.  We
>>have an ungodly amount of guideline material relating to what articles
>>should look like, and anyone who attempted to read it all before
>>sitting down to begin writing for Wikipedia would get bored and give
>>up before they ever started typing.  Style guidelines are all well and
>>good, but we have to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, the
>>drive-by contributors who account for most of our material are, in the
>>best case scenario, going to write something that looks like other
>>articles they have read on Wikipedia.  The better the average article
>>is, the better the average passer-by contribution is likely to be.
>>Think how great it would be if just 1 out of every 10 college kids who
>>make a drive-by contribution to Wikipedia went and got a book from the
>>library, checked their facts, and cited their sources when they wrote.
>>That isn't impossible, but it would require that our across-the-board
>>quality be high enough that getting the book would seem like the
>>natural way to contribute to Wikipedia.  Quality begets quality.
>>    
>>
>I fully agree with above.
>
Sure.  We also know how thoroughly people read software manuals.  We do 
have all sorts of articles that are bloody awful, but we have to give 
our serious contributors a little credit for recognizing trash.  Each 
new contributor will follow his own writing style.  He may look at the 
bad articles to understand how wiki markup is used, but that doesn't 
mean that he will adopt someone else's writing style.  If he makes 
atrocious gaffes in his writing I would hope that someone who notices 
this will become a mentor who understandingly encourages him to improve, 
rather than criticises him on his stupid style.

>2. You can't quarantine topics from each other.  Now I'm not arguing
>  
>
>>that people are going to read poorly sourced webcomic articles and
>>then immediately go write articles on medieval Scandinavian literature
>>sourced from the same blogs.  You refer to people who are "only
>>interested in serious topics", but people do read and write about more
>>than one topic apiece on Wikipedia.  And there is a startling amount
>>of really shitty content about serious academic topics on the web,
>>waiting for people who have learned to look to google for their
>>sources to come snap it up.  I don't use web sources when I'm writing,
>>but every now and then I google the topic I'm working on and am blown
>>away by the sheer quantity of incorrect information there is out
>>there.  If people observe that "Some Internet Guy said it" is accepted
>>as a reasonable source for large portions of our site, they're going
>>to go look and see what Some Internet Guy has to say about medieval
>>Scandinavian literature when they decide to help out Wikipedia by
>>writing an article about this cool book they just heard about.
>>    
>>
>This I find hard to believe.
>
Yes, at some point you need to accept that you do not have a monopoly on 
good sense.  Sometimes other editors, including newbies, hav a little of 
it.  Fixing an article should always remain a preferred option.  Quick 
deletions as a solution is a bit like forbidding one's children to go 
out because you're afraid they might meet bad people.

>>3. We don't have the manpower to contain the spillover.  This is my
>>problem with the argument that we can allow Some Internet Guy to serve
>>as our source for articles about stuff that only Some Internet Guy
>>cares enough about to write about, but then, through rigourous
>>enforcement of our standards in other topics, ensure that only
>>reliable sources are accepted for most subjects.  Now this might work
>>for subjects like Israel-Palestine, where both the IDF and Hamas have
>>full-time personnel vetting every single edit (or have we not reached
>>that point quite yet?), but it won't work for the vast majority of
>>topics, in which most articles are monitored loosely or not at all,
>>and any edit that isn't vandalism tends to stick.   Remember, source
>>quality and style guidelines are invoked only in those rare cases
>>where two people find themselves working on the same article at the
>>same time; editing in a fairly popular academic subject area, I have
>>seen such simultaneous editing on only two or three occasions (outside
>>of the FA or GA processes) in my year here.  We don't have the
>>resources to maintain the kind of line that seems to be envisioned in
>>many people's comments on this topic.
>>    
>>
>I really find the "spillover" argument profoundly unconvincing.
>
Failing to have the resources is not an argument for extreme action.  
What happens in trying to bring an article to feature status is only 
going to happen in a handful of articles.  One should not expect such 
rigour in the vast majority of articles.

Both sides of the Israel/Palestine issue have enough English-speaking 
readers to maintain a dynamic tension about the subject.  Nevertheless, 
I would suspect that the tone of the articles is very different on HE:WP 
or AR:WP.

We all have our own image of what is needed for an ideal article.  For 
any article this develops over time, sometimes over a very long time.  
An early stage article may be deficient in many respects.  Only 
blatantly illegal, offensive or vandalous activities require immediate 
attention.  Otherwise, fix what you can or leave deficiency notices and 
move on.  Eventually someone who is interested in the subject will do 
what needs to be done.

Ec