[WikiEN-l] Article quality deterioration (was: a valid criticism)

Tue Oct 11 02:59:33 UTC 2005

On 10/10/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> But there is an elegant solution somewhere between protecting an
> article (too rigid) and article rating (too complex) - every article
> can have a marker indicating the last-agree-upon-version. Anyone can
> change the marker to point to a particular version in the edit
> history, in wiki fashion. In effect, it would be the version that "the
> crowd" considers the most acceptable one, while editing, sparring,
> major revisions are happening on the 'current' one. If there is
> consensus that it is generally good, the marker can be moved upon
> every edit to be the current one. Or if overhauling is being done, the
> marker can be kept back to an older rev while issues are ironed out.
> (It removes the angst of having your edits "winning" and being in the
> current version, and removes much of the 3RR angst.)
>
> The marker system is easy to understand, straightforward to implement,
> minimally impacts current working methods, does not require agreed
> upon metric values, and is inherently wiki.

I'd rather see a radical expansion of the the featured articles system.
Instead of nominating an article, you'd nominate a version of an article.
The standards would be radically lessened from the current featured article
standard, of course. As long as an article was well structured, had adequate
references, lacked non-free images, was NPOV, etc., it'd pass. No
requirement that the article actually be one of "the best", just that it be
acceptable for a static/semi-static copy (think CD/DVD distro).

Even if an article failed this process, it'd produce a list of what needed
to be fixed.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

Anthony