[WikiEN-l] Proposal: improving quality on enwiki

[Matthew Brown]

Inherent in this whole thing is the belief that Wikipedia is getting
worse.  Is it?  Really?  I have my doubts.  Wikipedia is getting
bigger, and thus the absolute NUMBER of problems increases, but I am
yet to be convinced that the project as a whole is any more
problematic than it ever was.

What IS a problem is that the project is simply so big that it is hard
for everyone to work together as one community.  Thus, I do like the
suggestion that we encourage more of a sense of community and
responsibility in smaller, more manageable areas - sensibly, organized
around subject areas of common interest.

This may also help with the issue that many new contributors feel
lost, alone and confused on Wikipedia, because the project as a whole
is hard to feel at home in.

I'm not so sure we need /process/ in the sense of bureaucracy-
Wikipedia is if anything way too good at growing confusing bureaucracy
already - as much as /support/ for specialised groups to form and work
together at improving Wikipedia's quality.  Automation and frameworks
for doing things more efficiently might indeed help, though.

I also agree that all articles should be categorized - though that's
not enough, unless we have some idea where it fits into the project,
the right people will not find it and fix it.

More thoughts as they come.

-Matt