[WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

Tue Sep 12 11:32:18 UTC 2006

Frankly I agree with you. I've always been annoyed that the current
maintenance collaboration is to create articles that have been
requested for over a year. Articles are constantly requested, yet
there are always requests being filled. So what do we do with the
requests we cannot fill? I propose:
1. Article requests be cleaned up very thoroughly, with entries
deleted if they can't be filled adequately or should not be on
Wikipedia
2. Focus of experienced editor efforts be on clearing out merger
backlogs, voting per specific policies in AfDs, clearing out speedy
backlogs (sysops, obviously) and the like.
3. Attention be paid to the cleanup taskforce and wikification backlogs.
That way we can increase the quality of the encyclopedia. It would be
good if unneccessary stub articles (careful attention should be paid
to whether or not the article should be deleted, but either way
[[Wikipedia:Articles for undeletion]] will pile up with incidents)
could be cleared out, and vandal fighting tools spread to the masses
(every CVU member should know about Lupin's tool or VP/VP2/VS/MWT, for
instance).

You mention that we should aim for 100,000 featured articles. I assume
[[WP:ARCAID]] (merger of [[WP:COTW]] and [[WP:AID]] for those who
weren't informed) will help, however I propose it be expanded so that
there is more advertising of the ARCAID around Wikipedia and
experienced editors are encouraged to contribute. I'm not aware of
other broad attempts to improve the quality of articles (by broad I
mean broad, so SCOTW and the like do not count)

How about we start a wikiproject for the cleanup taskforce? I've
already established one for the wikification taskforce, it has worked
very well and the wikification backlog is being cleared out quicker
every day. A formalisation of the process in a wikiproject would
encourage people to join in, not only to cleanup articles, but to
assist in other measures like publicity for the cause which could
eventually lead in many more people helping out.

And then we could have bureaucrats force 1FA upon RFAs :)

As for your competition, I suggest you give the winner the chance to
donate $100 to Wikimedia instead, its an option I'd personally prefer.

-- Akash/Draicone

On 9/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The following is a modified version of an announcement I posted on Recent
> Changes:
>
> Times have changed in Wikipedia. Once, our goal was to cover as much as
> possible, to reach a million articles, to be the biggest encyclopedia in the
> world. As Jimbo said in his talk at Wikimania, we have to start changing the
> focus from quantity to quality. We have to make sure that the key articles that
> we do have are as good as possible. Rather than getting another million
> articles, I believe that we need 100,000 more Feature-quality articles.
>
> Some numbers that were run yesterday show that we have over 230,000  without
> any sources whatsoever. That's almost 20 percent of our total articles
> without any sources. Even if we were to provide sources for 15 of these articles  an
> hour, it would take upward of two years to cover them all … and this does not
>  include articles which are inadequately sourced or which contain spurious
> information, which raise this number by several orders of magnitude.
>
> Before suggesting that these are all stubs, I invite you to look at some
> examples: [[Amethyst]], [[Alto saxophone]], [[Alexander I of Russia]] (who
> fought against Napoleon), [[Italian literature]], etc., etc., etc. These  articles
> are the mainstay of a quality encyclopedia.
>
> This means is that there is a lot of work ahead of us. It is time to shift
> the focus. I therefore propose two solutions:
>
> 1. The field "Requests" on "Recent Changes" be changed to "Requested  feature
> articles." Instead of asking people to create brand new article, the  focus
> should be on improving existing articles.
>
> 2. Regular contests should be held to promote article improvement. To that
> end, I will donate $100 in books and media from Amazon to the person who most
> improves an unsourced article related to history or selected from
> [[Wikipedia:Vital articles]]. The contest will end on October 7. A panel of  judges will
> be selected to decide on the entries. For more information about  what
> constitutes an "unsourced article" please contact me. For historical  reasons, this
> will be known as "Danny's third contest."
>
> I hope to see as many people participating in this contest as participated
> in the previous two.
>
> Danny
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