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

[George Herbert]

On 1/25/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I think that this is oversimplifying and polarizing the reality,
though it does have a lot of value as a model to explain a change that
WP is starting in to.

The level of completeness varys wildly from field to field, as does
the quality level of articles.

I disagree that we don't still need size; as I said earlier, there are
whole classes of topics for which articles are missing or sketchy.
Beyond poorly covered topic areas, we have whole fields full of stubs
for which content needs infilling.

I almost want to suggest a graduation system for articles; once it
reaches a "good enough" level, then a different set of rules kick in,
and changes are required to go through a more rigorous check system,
citations become required, etc.  This might make a good fork, or could
possibly be a change in how WP works.  Both reducing the vandalism and
raising the expectations for rigorousness in edits, if and only if an
article is at an appropriate level to start with.

What I very strongly don't want to see is cutting off the informal
editing ability which allows articles to reach that level to begin
with.  That's cutting off our roots and nourishment to spite
ourselves.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com