[WikiEN-l] Some more unscientific findings

Fri Dec 9 19:37:11 UTC 2005

On 12/9/05, Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>And so last night I started to
> add up all of the articles listed in [[Category:Old requests for peer review]]
> & found this category contained only 1328 articles. In other words, for
> every *40* Good articles in Wikipedia, only *1* article gets any
> special attention to be singled out for consideration and review!

> I know this would be unenforceable, but wouldn't it be a good policy
> that before an editor nominates an article to AfD, they have to also
> nominate an article to Peer review? And that before an editor adds to
> the debate at AfD, they have to contribute to the debate at either
> Peer review or Featured articles candidates?

Since you used [[User:Carnildo/The 100]] as one of your sources, I've
got some relevant statistics that aren't immediately obvious from
looking at the table:
* Of the 100 articles I examined, none of them was something I'd be
willing to submit to FAC.
* Of the 100 articles I examined, three of them are in good enough
shape that I'd be willing to submit them to peer review, if I knew
enough about the subject.
* Of the 100 articles I examined, all had gotten past newpages patrol.
** I speedy-deleted one of them as a vanity bio
** I listed one on VfD as a vanity band listing
** I listed one on VfD as a potentially vanity bio
** I listed an article related to the potential vanity bio on VfD for
being non-notable
** I listed one on WP:CP as a copyvio
** I speedy-deleted one as a re-creation of a VfD'd hoax

Submitting something to peer review implies a major commitment of
time: it may involve a trip to the library for reference books.  It
may involve contacting other Wikipedians for relevant pictures.  It
will certainly involve learning more about the subject than you though
possible.

Submitting something to VfD does not involve much time, particularly
for vanity articles: a couple of minutes searching Google, a couple
more minutes reading any results it comes up with, and maybe one
minutes for the mechanics of actually submitting the article to VfD.

The reason that far more articles are being listed on VfD than are
being listed on peer review is twofold: Listing something on VfD
involves a much smaller time commitment, and there is much more
material suitable for deletion than is suitable for listing on peer
review.  At a rough estimate, a VfD listing takes 20 minutes over five
days, while a peer review listing takes 5-10 hours over the course of
a week.  Based on my sample of articles that had not already been
listed on VfD by newpage patrol or RC patrol, there are two bad
articles for every good article.  If you include the listings from
newpages patrol and RC patrol, the ratio gets far higher.

--
Mark