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

Fri Dec 16 20:12:17 UTC 2005

Chris Owen wrote:

> I suggest that we tackle this by putting all new
> articles into an approval queue - they shouldn't
> appear on Wikipedia unless they meet basic quality
> standards. If a reviewing editor judges that the
> article meets an objective set of criteria, it should
> be "published". If not, the submitted new article
> should either be deleted or sorted into a "needs
> improvement" category outside the main namespace.

Probably the simplest way to do this would to tag the article with an
appropriate template that contains a category.

Mind you, cleanup is already so big and growing so fast I can't see us
getting through it in a reasonable time ...

> We're effectively trying to bail out a leaky boat
> while the water is still entering.

Yes.

> Note also that quite a few of the speedy deletions
> were things like personal attacks, patent nonsense,
> tests etc (e.g. "wow, hey carly, i cant believe i can
> put this on a site! :O its so cool!"). I strongly
> suspect that people wouldn't submit this sort of thing
> if they knew that they wouldn't see it appearing
> instantly on a Wikipedia page. 

Remember that this stuff shouldn't be assumed to be vandalism, i.e.
malicious - a lot of it is just sandboxing. "'Edit this page'? What on
earth? That's unbelievable ..." (hits "submit") "... Oh. Er. HELP!"

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

Possibly. Seems like work.

> 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...

Let me once more strongly suggest my new article prefill idea:

 http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/034414.html

This clearly shows the expectations for a new article. I'm sure we'll
get some really amusing and creative new BJAODN, but the new editor
who's heard of this "Wikipedia" thing will see what we're after.

> 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. 

This might actually be almost workable without instruction-creeping into
Nupedia. Looking through a slush pile with an editorial eye and tagging
something with its defects is a *lot* easier, more scaleable and less
painful than actually trying to fix some horrible crappy prose right
then and there.

> 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+.
> However, any editor should be able to work on
> improving a queued article. 
> Any thoughts on this idea?

It's new process, so therefore should be assumed to be instruction creep
until absolutely proven not to be ;-) But parts of it might be workable
and would help all by themselves.

I really would like anon page creation switched back on, but article
prefill would IMO help a *lot*. And prefill would work with an
assumption of good faith on the part of the new editors, and that
assumption's what's got us this far.

- d.