[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

Wed Sep 29 07:19:06 UTC 2010

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

> You can hardly move on Wikipedia without tripping over experts in
> whatever topic you're editing. Why are there any experts on Wikipedia?

This is very telling.  Someone is trying to select Philosophy articles for 
the Wikipedia 0.8 release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy#Philosophy_articles_have_been_selected_for_the_Wikipedia_0.8_release

They have left a message on the Philosophy project page which seems to have 
elicited no response.  Now look at the list of articles selected.

http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&namespace=0&pagename=&quality=&importance=&score=&limit=100&offset=1&sorta=Importance&sortb=Quality&filterRelease=on&reviewFilter=0&releaseFilter=1&projecta=Philosophy

Of the 22 'top importance' articles, 9 are start class, with tags like 
'multiple issues', 'clean up', 'attention from expert required' and so on. 
9 are C class, many also (e.g. metaphysics) have tags all over the place.  3 
are B class (including one I wrote).  Only one (philosophy of mind) is FA 
class, and that was written by a very good editor who has since given up.

Of the high importance, many of these have been wrongly categorised (in some 
cases, incredibly so). 