On 1/6/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
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.
I'm wasn't talking here about writing style, which is something that
everyone has independently of Wikipedia, but referencing style. Very
few people come to the project with established preferences for how to
research and reference encyclopedia articles. And while it's true
that you can offer suggestions for improvement for people who come to
stay, the same is not true of the short-term contributors who account
for most of our content. Our one chance to reach many of our
contributors is through the articles they read before contributing,
and if the majority of those articles are unreferenced or poorly
referenced they are going to (as I did and I suspect many others here
did at first) start by writing unreferenced or poorly referenced
articles; if they only work on one article, that may well be all they
write.
Failing to have the resources is not an argument for
extreme action.
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.
This is an example of a view of the Wikipedia system that I find very
unconvincing. First, the notion that articles organically develop and
improve over time, with each stage of the article serving as the
building block for the next, is not supported by examining articles
that expand and improve substantially from their creation; generally,
such expansion is a result of a single editor replacing (as opposed to
slowly expanding upon) the existing content (an interesting essay on a
subject related to this can be found at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Britt/Don%27t_just_do_whatever>).
While there is certainly a value to having something, whatever it is,
at a given location (breadth of coverage is a sort of quality in and
of itself), we shouldn't overstate the role that existing weak
articles play in developing strong articles to replace themselves.
Furthermore, I think the almost dialectical view, evident in your
comment above, that Wikipedia is headed inexorably in the correct
direction is an incorrect and dangerous one. While the project has
already achieved a great deal, it is still quite possible that it
could end up as something much less than it has the potential to be,
that it could become largely a compilation of the collected wisdom of
the internet instead of a true collection of human knowledge. So long
as the volume of content from passer-by contributors continues to
dwarf that from regulars (i.e. for the foreseeable future), the
quality of referencing in contributions from new users is going to be
the greatest factor in determining the direction we move in in this
regard. Taking a lassez faire approach to article quality (and
specifically, reference quality) will ensure that our average article
remains rather poorly referenced, and strikes me as a sure way to at
best delay the development of a higher quality encyclopedia, and at
worst lastingly sidetrack the project.
--
Robth
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)