[Foundation-l] Organization on Wikipedia that deals withcontent issues.

Wed Sep 1 16:04:39 UTC 2010

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Snow" <wikipedia at verizon.net>

> The post I was responding to was nothing but an assessment of a
> Citizendium article. It made no comparison, favorable or unfavorable, to
> an equivalent article on Wikipedia. At most it engaged in some
> speculation about what Wikipedia *might* have.

It was explicitly contrasting how Wikipedia actually is, or tends to be 
like, as compared with the corresponding CZ article.  I think the 
observations were accurate and reflect pretty well what controversial 
Wikipedia articles are like, namely festooned with supposedly reliable 
citations, and bearing obvious battlescars from years of edit-warring.  The 
contrast was specifically prompted by a claim by Gerard that Wikipedia's 
relaxed attitude to 'expertise' leads to better articles.  I don't think it 
does.

> If your intent is to
> discuss content issues in Wikipedia, then you need to actually
> explicitly discuss them.

I don't want to discuss content as such.  I want to discuss generic and 
systematic problems with the way Wikipedia is organised that lead to poor 
quality articles.  There needs first to be some recognition there is a 
quality problem and that it is serious - I think there is an element of 
denial that is evident from some of the replies here, as well as elsewhere. 
Once the problem is recognised, there needs to be a careful examination of 
possible causes for this.  And then a further examination of how policy and 
governance could be changed to address some or all of these causes.  Does 
that sound reasonable?

> I might suggest that you should
> familiarize yourself with some of our other mailing lists and consider
> whether another list, like wikien-l, is better suited to have this
> conversation, since foundation-l exists for issues related to the
> Wikimedia Foundation and the overall movement surrounding its projects,
> not just Wikipedia.)

I consider this is the best mailing list for the purpose.  What do people 
here think?

Peter 