[WikiEN-l] Maintaining and ensuring technical accuracy of articles?

[MuZemike]

What I think is happening is that most of the articles (most of the 
major topics) have been created, and most people, many of them newcomers 
or laypeople, are not aware that anyone can come in and expand articles 
that have been started but not finished - coincidentally about 1/3 or so 
I estimate are still stubs. For most of these people, it's getting past 
this notion that people "own articles" in a purely social sense - that 
in a wiki, people are free to add, modify, or delete content; at the 
same time, people need to do this within standards set by the wiki 
community. (Note that I am not just talking about Wikipedia but most any 
wiki in general.)

-MuZemike

On 2/9/2011 1:30 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
> Re Ian Woolard's query:
>
>> As the Wikipedia moves towards some arbitrary definition of notional
>> 'completion', can anyone point to a board or mechanism in the
>> Wikipedia which is specifically for maintaining and ensuring technical
>> accuracy of articles?
>
> I'm not sure who if anyone thinks we are complete or anywhere near
> completion. But there are lots of boards and mechanisms that concern
> themselves with the accuracy of articles, most if not all the
> wikiprojects involve people who are concerned about the projects in
> their remit.
>
> The death anomalies project just focuses on death anomalies
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Living_people_on_EN_wiki_who_are_dead_on_other_wikis
>
> We also have the typo team and the BLP noticeboard among many
> different ways in which Wikipedians can collaborate to improve the
> pedia.
>
> WereSpielChequers
>
> On 9 February 2011 18:48, Ian Woollard<ian.woollard at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 04/02/2011, Nathan<nawrich at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> "It's a common story in the human species. First, we want to achieve a
>>> goal. Second, we discover that we are all different[2] and that we
>>> need some rules to organize our work. Third, we make the rules really
>>> complicated to fit every corner case. Fourth, we completely forget the
>>> goal of those rules and we apply them blindly for the sake of it.
>>> Fifth, we punish or kill those who don't follow the rules as strictly
>>> as we do."
>>
>> To be perfectly honest, I've not really seen that happen; although
>> people will often get their work reverted for not following rules. I
>> cannot think of a single example of people getting banned for not
>> following rules (other than copyvios and behavioral rules).
>>
>> I've much more often seen people, or even worse, groups of people,
>> tearing up rules and just doing something fairly random, often because
>> they think it "reads better" or because they just don't like something
>> or other(?)
>>
>> One of the weaknesses of Wikipedia is actually that of accuracy. It's
>> not that it doesn't happen, in fact it very frequently is accurate,
>> but accuracy only occurs because individuals put it into articles,
>> whereas there are often groups of people quite happy to systematically
>> remove accurate information.
>>
>> As the Wikipedia moves towards some arbitrary definition of notional
>> 'completion', can anyone point to a board or mechanism in the
>> Wikipedia which is specifically for maintaining and ensuring technical
>> accuracy of articles?
>>
>> --
>> -Ian Woollard
>>
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