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.