[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 10

Mon Oct 3 01:20:01 UTC 2005

On 10/3/05, *Tony Sidaway* <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

"I have a different view of Wikipedia's strengths--I think we're really good
at producing so-so, useful but not perfect articles, and that we should
spend energy trying to maximise our production rate at this level. I view
the FA process as masturbatory, self-congratulatory, and of low impace on
the project as a whole."

While you are entitled to your opinion, you are simply wrong. The featured 
articles have many-fold benefits. Not only are they wonderful for public 
relations (because when people ask "How the hell can Wikipedia produce 
something of quality?" we have a ready-made answer), but the featured articles 
also encourage people to produce higher quality writing *instead* of medeocre 
ones. In other words, it gives us a very visible way of "pushing" the manual 
of style and other good writing habits onto people. (If it were not for the 
featured articles, who would bother to cite references in an article?) 

Turning the FAC into something like the AFD is a perfectly good way of 
ruining a well-functioning system. We should instead be exploring ways 
to make AFD (which is functionally broken) more like the FAC. 

The thing is - let's face it - we have all the bases covered. We already have 
articles on more-or-less all the topics you would expect in a traditional 
encyclopedia. The big job from now on is going to be improving those articles 
into something better. It's easy to write a stub; it's hard to write a 
comprehensive, well referenced article (which is what we *should* be aiming for, 
not medeocrity). 

-Mark