[WikiEN-l] Improve quality by reviewing all new articles

Fri Dec 16 01:39:27 UTC 2005

Hello,

> Note that I didn't check whether the content was
> *accurate*, merely whether it was organised, formatted
> etc in accordance with Wikipedia standards. As these
> figures indicate, the majority of new articles created
> during this period failed the quality check. Nearly a
> quarter failed so badly that they were worth deleting.
> This certainly accords with my previous experiences in 
> monitoring [[Special:Newpages]]. 

Nice (original) research! I considered doing something similar with AfC.
There, the vast majority of pages fail on the grounds of "already exists
under another name", "not noteworthy", "not a dictionary", "silly" etc.
Let's face it - newbies should be not be making new pages. They just
don't have the concept of what belongs in Wikipedia and what doesn't.

> 1) New articles should go somewhere outside the main
> namespace until reviewed and passed. They should *not* 
> immediately enter the main namespace.

Why stop at new articles? Why not do the same with newbie edits, or
edits detected by the system to be possible vandalism. (Massive
reductions of text, swear words, etc.)

> 
> 2) We need a simple, clearly defined set of criteria
> for assessing whether an article passes the grade. Is
> it wikilinked? Written in English? Correctly
> formatted? Includes references? etc etc...

Passes the grade to be published? Add "contains sufficient definition
and context". Wikilinking maybe less important?

> 3) Reviewing editors should assess newly created
> articles against these criteria. If the article
> passes, the article should be cleared to enter the
> main namespace. If not, it should be sorted into a
> queue to deal with whatever the problem is. For
> instance, an article lacking any wikilinks and
> incorrectly spelled should first be sorted into a
> "needs links" queue, then moved to a "needs spelling 
> corrections", then finally moved to the main namespace. 

Are you proposing "reviewing editors" as being a particular class of
editor, akin to a "moderator"?

> Because reviewing editors would necessarily need to be
> people with a bit of experience of editing, I would
> limit the ability to review and approve new articles
> to editors with a certain number of edits - say 500+.

Woot, I qualify.

> However, any editor should be able to work on
> improving a queued article. 

Wholly concur. I amigane a situation where some article is up to version
1593, and its *published version* is 1589.  You edit the article, see
version 1593, save your changes, it becomes 1594.  Eventually a reviewer
reviews it and publishes it - now the two versions are in sync at #1594,
and can be distributed to mirrors etc.

Libel considerations aside, it might be worthwhile making "unpublished"
versions available to the general public underneath massive spammy
WARNING UNVERIFIED banners.

Steve