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

[Charles Matthews]

William Pietri wrote:
> That reminds me of something I've been meaning to propose: 
> topic-specific groups of subject-matter experts who serve as resources 
> for article writers.
>
>   
<snip>
> I saw this mainly as an editor-pull system, rather than a expert-push 
> system. 
Any such "layer" needs to take account of wikiprojects, naturally. And 
of the tendency of dispute resolution, wrongly set up, to invite 
escalation. Wikiprojects are a mixed bunch, most being small in terms of 
active members, I guess; but the first place to take a content dispute 
should be the wikiproject's main talk page. Only a small proportion of 
disputes or difficulties, in an editor-pull system, should be getting to 
the "panel of experts" stage, since most issues are best dealt with by 
informal mediation and/or someone digging up further references.

There have been such suggestions before (2004 springs to mind) and none 
so far has filled the yawning gap of "content dispute resolution". 
Which, looked at over historical time, seems somewhat remarkable - or 
more precisely it seem surprising that we have limped on to where we are 
(which is not a bad place to be, really) without an implementation of 
some sort of external refereeing.

WP still has nothing to "sell" to academia, but per David Goodman we 
perhaps have a chance to "parlay" a bit, and get experts more 
interested. I don't quite see how we would do a serious scheme, and deal 
with the downside. The downside is obvious to academics or ex-academics 
like me (there is an inaccurate written account of my role in the fight 
between [[John H. Coates]] and [[Alan Baker (mathematician)]], but as it 
is in Japanese I have been spared having to read it and get annoyed). 
Importing more proxy wars into WP wouldn't be the best idea: we have one 
or two already. It wouldn't do to be naive about expert input as panacea.

Charles