[WikiEN-l] UIC Journal: Evaluating quality control of Wikipedia's feature[d] articles

[Steve Summit]

> http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2721/2482

I found three quotes quite interesting:

	David Archer [...] remarked that he could tell
	[the article on global warming] "was not written
	by professional climate scientists"[.]

	Among the articles that did not score as well, several of
	the expert reviewers compared the articles to the work of
	high school students or university undergraduates.

	Several others also noted the problems associated with
	non-expert authors, noting that the sources used were
	poorly selected and not representative of the broader
	literature.

All three of these criticisms, of course, are the almost
inevitable result of some of our most strongly-held policies:

* We have no requirement that articles be written by experts in
  the field; indeed we tend to discourage experts.

* Even if you deny the existence of an anti-expert bias, the fact
  that we're "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" virtually
  guarantees a certain mediocrity -- an article's quality does
  not increase monotonically until it is near-perfect, but rather,
  oscillates around a mean quality which is determined by all the
  editors who contribute to it over time (many of whom, yes, will
  be high school students or university undergraduates).

* Our vociferous insistence on sources guarantees that some
  (if not many) of them will be "poorly selected".

(And, of course, these policies of ours are cherished for some
pretty good reasons; I'm not trying to criticize either us or
this critic.)