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