[WikiEN-l] Bigger or Better

[geni]

2008/7/29 Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>:
> You're playing fast & loose with the word "comprehensive" here :-). This
> thread was meant to call attention to Wikipedia's seeming obsession with
> size as a measure of quality in a work. Most articles - most edits - most
> posts -  -! The companies cited in the beginning of the thread are finally
> learning that bigger can mean thinner. And the thinner in their case means
> their bottom line.
>

And what exactly is our bottom line? In any case I can find examples
where the oposite is the case (Amazon would be the classic example).

Numbers may be crude measures but if people enjoy counting them why
stop them? If people like creating large numbers of stubs why stop
them? If people like doing large numbers of micro edits why stop them?
They are rather useful for things like spelling and formatting. Not
everyone is good at adding content. Not everyone is good at research
and those that are and enjoy doing it are unlikely to be concerned by
talk about numbers because they are intelligent enough to realize that
it isn't a good measure for them. Equally when you want to concentrate
on improving one article wikipedia's size comes in very handy. You
really realise this when you discover it isn't big enough. I was
expanding our [[canal]] article today and I wanted to mention back
pumping. I don't however want to stop and explain what it is so I rely
on us having an article on the subject except we don't so either I've
got to go and write an article on that subject or I've got to include
a digression in the canal article to explain just what I'm talking
about. Wikipedia being larger would facilitate the writing of a core
article in this case.

And for those who don't want to measure by articles or edits. We have
featured articles various article grading systems DYK or a selection
of barnstars.

Our featured content is given a much higher profile than our lists of
editors by edit count.

For those who work on images we have  featured images, quality images
and valued images (or you can count how many other projects your image
has been used on)

For refs there are at the moment I think only barnstars

You claim of obsession with posts is highly questionable. Appearing at
the top of the monthly list is mostly a hint to reduce your post rate.

The claim that wikipedia is obsessed with quantity over quality
doesn't really hold up under close examination.

-- 
geni