[WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

[Robth]

On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that
> underly Wikipedia.
>
> "You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the
> key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the
> thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.

Principles are different from methods, and this is a critical
distinction.  Accepting just about anything people are give us has
been a method of ours for a long time, and has worked its way deep
into our culture, but it isn't our principle--that's writing a great
free encyclopedia.  Today's tasks are different from the tasks of a
few years ago, and we shouldn't be afraid to reevaluate our methods if
necessary.

What we see here is a bit of a clash between two forms of quality; we
are proverbially good at one, and proverbially bad at the other.  The
first is size; we can tell you something about more topics than anyone
else.  We got here through the work of casual contributors (although
the five minute thing is nonsense--this model of articles improving in
tiny partial edits doesn't gibe with a reality in which, while the
bulk of our content is written by casual contributors, the casual
contributors in question are people who sit down and spend half an
hour or so adding a serious chunk of text).  The second form of
quality, the one we're proverbially bad at, is reliability.  When we
started out, we needed size, and our policies were designed
accordingly.  Now, we got size, but we still need reliability.  If we
can alter the system that's already made us big to focus on improving
the stuff we have, we should do it.

Nor do I think the change is that radical.  As I said above, I don't
put much stock by the five minute figure.  Articles don't grow in
smooth little increments; they balloon out of nowhere, then wait a
year, then expand rapidly again, as people come in, sit down, and
spend serious time writing something up; it's punctuated equilibrium,
not gradualism.  An encyclopedia is not written in five minute bursts,
no matter how many of them there are.  And for people who do sit down
to spend serious time on an article, grabbing a book, checking the
facts, and noting that they have done so isn't so great an additional
burden.

The image of "Susan" or someone like her has been a powerful one in
Wikipedia culture; there's this belief that we got to where we are
through countless tiny doses of effort and time, rather than a more
finite number of larger doses.  I have seen no evidence to support
this view, and plenty to suggest otherwise.  I think its time to
recognize this and do what we can to maximize the improvement that
occurs as a result of those larger doses.

-- 
Robth,
feeling somewhat like Comrade Gletkin