[WikiEN-l] Expert feedback on Featured Articles

[Nihiltres]

(Pardon me if I'm doing something wrong regarding the mailing list, I'm a newbie to posting despite lurking for some time)

David Lindsey wrote:

<snip>

> I would like to think that we can all agree that Professor Wertheim's
> critical response is a helpful one, and that adapting the article
> appropriately would be of benefit to Wikipedia.  The entire process of
> finding an expert to review the article took no more than a half hour of my
> time and produced a benefit for Wikipedia that substantially exceeds that
> cost.

</snip>

Yes, the critical response is helpful, and reacting to it would be a good idea.

I do raise my eyebrows at the time required, though. There are plenty of difficulties involved in finding an appropriate expert, contacting them, and—importantly—convincing them to use their time to review the article. It's hard to generalize that most Wikipedians should be able to find a (willing) expert on a subject in so little time, especially for more obscure or less academic topics.

<snip>

> Finally, though this idea failed to gain any real traction on wiki, I would
> like to state my support for the idea of adding a fifth criterion to
> WP:WIAFA: "5. The article, if possible, has been reviewed by an external
> subject-matter expert."  Even if no such criterion is added, though, I would
> like to emphasize that it will always, or nearly always, be productive to
> attempt to find an expert reviewer.

</snip>

Yes, expert reviewers are generally a good thing. I think that there might be some trouble with controversial articles (if the expert is slanted one way or another, a review correcting "mistakes" might not be helpful to NPOV). The dubiousness of Citizendium's homeopathy article makes a good example.

I don't currently believe that expert review should be added as a criterion for Featured articles, however, because of the classic problems with experts. First,  how would the interactions/credentials be verified? I can just imagine it now: "I'm submitting this article 'Unobtainium synthesis' to FAC because I think it meets the criteria. Also, the article got an excellent rating on review by Dr. L. Olfake, which she emailed to me the other day." (In case you didn't catch it: "lol fake") Second, how do we avoid Citizendium-like problems? (This is certainly an issue, see also the earlier "Citizendium dead?" thread in this list) Third, would it add systemic bias, or extra hurdles to the process, as Charles Matthews mentions? I'll stop touting the issues, because that's not quite helpful, but there are significant problems with integrating expert review that we ought to address (if not solve) before making it remotely mandatory.

If we were to integrate expert review, I'd start it as another *layer* of Wikipedia. I strongly believe that showing very prominently the level of review a given article—or even a given *revision* thereof—has received, and the perceived level of quality involved, is a good thing.  The Wikipedia 1.0 assessment system (Stub, Start, C, B, A, GA, FA…) seems to serve as a decent start for that sort of thing. (In the long run, I'd love to see some system integrating this with some addition to the planned "patrolled revisions" feature that adds passive flags to revisions.) If we were to bolt on an expert review process to the Featured article system, why not make it a new level? I can imagine it now: "FA+". Take a community FA, and give it a (reasonably verified) expert review, and if all outstanding issues are addressed, call it an FA+ instead. Granted, this involves all sorts of instruction creep, but it's just a starting idea. A practical implementation is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)

I think that expert review is a good idea (we like expert participation as long as they're not jerks about it), but I'm cautious about its feasibility in Wikipedia as an "official" process.

</ramble>


Cheers,
Nihiltres