[WikiEN-l] Proposal: Article Improvement Weeks! (was Turn off article creation AND deletion.)

Sat Dec 10 18:38:33 UTC 2005

I think the idea of a heavily promoted Article Improvement Week is a useful
one.

However, there is no reason to turn off AfD. Indeed, often the reason that
articles are in AfD is that the topic is notable but the article is crap for
various reasons including:

* short and lacking context;

* bogus articles on legitimate topics;

* lacking references.

My main focus in AfD is looking for articles that can be improved and turned
into encyclopedia articles. There is no reason that AfD cannot form part of
Article Improvement Week.

Similarly, not allowing the development of new articles may turn off newbies
who came to Wikipedia for the purpose of creating articles. If we were to
turn off article creation for the week, we should continue to have Articles
for Creation working as well as allowing people to work on articles in their
userspace. Alternatively, we could have a situation where articles could
only be added by authorisation of an admin who could certify that it meets
minimum encyclopedic standards.

The main focus of Article improvement week should be to have banners
proclaiming it everywhere with a page showing how articles have been
improved (ie articles cleaned up, stubs expanded, articles referenced and so
on).

In summary, the idea of an Article Improvement Week is a useful one and
should be pursued.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster

On 12/11/05, Brian Haws <brian at bhaws.com> wrote:

> Effects I expect at the end of the week:
>
>   * Some article polishing.
>   * More people practiced in article polishing.
>   * A flood of new articles out of userspace. Hopefully better ones.
> People will also treat this as "work on those new articles you were
> thinking about" week. That's fine too.
>   * A consequent flood of AFDs, but hopefully not as much because the
> articles will have been worked on for a week!
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> - d.
>
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> I think with the exceptions here and elsewhere I think it's worth
> trying  out for a week to see what happens. We're falling farther and
> farther  behind with cleanup and it's not impossible that doing this 4-5
> times a  year might make a real difference. It might also make cleanup type
> work more of a core value among editors...
>
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