[Wikipedia-l] Quality, audience and policies (apparently) colliding... what a mess!

[Massimo DZ8]

Greetings everyone on the list! I am new!
Being the list about problems with multiple wikis I guess it's the right
one for a problem I noticed.
This has been originally posted to the wp:HD but we then realized it was
better to ask someone other.

Just to start, I must say I haven't spent much time on searching - about
half an hour - I apologize if this has been taken up in precedence. I
see some people speaking about the 'quality' WRT stub ratio and about
stubs becoming articles so I guess this (quality, audience and
expertise) is a complex issue being dealt with.

Sabine writes:

> What is Wikipedia's audience? ...



In my research, I found a previous post which seems to hit the problem
perfectly:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikipedia-l/2002-September/004583.html
Tarquin writes: 

> There are certain topic areas where amateurs *know* they are out of 
> their depth,and only the likes of Mr "relativity is wrong" Jones dare to 
> tread.
> 
> In other areas, *everybody* thinks they know something.


This is what's happening. I wrote a major edit some time ago which was
hardly believed by most people - I guess they didn't found what they
expected - however, it was referenced by the two highest autorities in
the field.
As the months passed, the "quality" went worse and worse. In the last
few weeks, it basically became a stub again.
Pointing the thing to the help desk, an editor originally suggested that
according to WP:CON the new content was preferable. After examining the
thing in more detail, he later agree the whole issue was definetly more
complex... which takes us here.

I plan to later summarize this discussion and post back to WP:HD the
results.

A first issue was about WP:CON, since my edits (referenced) seems to
have met very little consensus so I've tried to pull out a few
"focalized" questions. 

     1. Is WP:CON valid on different informations? In other words,
        WP:CON obviously applies when the information given is the same.
        Does WP:CON apply when the information is different? Does it
        make sense? 
     2. Is WP:CON allowed to "override" WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:RS? The
        implication of this are rather important: it means that if the
        average user is misinformed, the articles should spread this
        misinformation just because this is what's expected. It's
        definetly something that doesn't seem to make sense, especially
        when this badly collides with the references. 
     3. How is consensus evaluated in reference to audience? It
        obviously doesn't make any sense to count the number of votes,
        especially for highly specific readings (quantum physics?
        relativity? chemistry?)

Moreover, I have a few additional questions regarding the issue I
recently faced. 

     A. The power of an hypermedia paradigm is allowing each reader to
        "follow its way". I have read a few about the need for
        introductions however doesn't this contradict the capabilities
        of hypermedia? Is it wrong to assume a reader would follow
        links? What is a "reasonable" assumption? This may imply that
        every article should include at least a part of others,
        something that doesn't seem optimal. 
     B. How can editors be encouraged at writing something which is
        actually a redlink or stub? I have seen a user removing the
        redlink and maybe even complaining because there was one. 
     C. Supposing two references collide with each other, what one takes
        precedence? This actually doesn't happen for careful readers but
        seems common for casual readers without in-depth knowledge,
        probably because they don't recognize the context is different. 
     D. What's the way to deal with users that (good faith obviously
        intended) end messing up everything? 
     E. How to deal with the above issue when the new version meets
        greater consensus? 
     F. What to do when the above case contradicts sources? What if, to
        remove the contradiction, the sources are removed? (ykes!) 
     G. What about "article attacks"? An user once wrote as an edit
        summary "...this seems stolen..." and then pointed out over 2000
        pages to check!
     H. More generally, how are the "quality" and "audience" issues
        being addressed?



Thank you very much,
Massimo