[WikiEN-l] Rating the English wikipedia

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 3:03 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not sure that judging a project with 3 million articles based on a
> sample of just one article a great idea.

That was tongue-in-cheek, but a reminder to be wary of the state of an
article. I wonder whether the recent editing history should be more
visible to readers, or at least an indication of when the article was
last edited? The "This page was last modified on 15 February 2011 at
01:35." is right at the bottom of the page - arguably (like on other
sites) it should be up at the top.

>> I'm tempted to ask whether the "system" worked here or not. I
>> understand that there is always a chance that you come across an
>> article in a poor state during editing, but quite why there wasn't a
>> proper reaction here, I don't know.
>
> I'd say it's hit the wall of text problem beyond a certain size unless
> there is an individual really prepared to look after the article there
> is a tendency towards messiness.

I've just discovered a talk page section where the editors discussed
things. I missed it because it was stuck at the top of the talk page,
rather than the bottom of the talk page (a common misplacement done by
editors not familar with talk page conventions). So the system was
working here. It was just that the discussion was slightly hidden
away. And the talk page is almost as confusing as the article. I
wonder if there is a tool that shows when reading an article if there
has been recent talk page activity? I know you can just click the talk
page tab, but some of this information should be visible immediately,
and not just a few clicks away.

Carcharoth