[WikiEN-l] Re: Quality

Mon Oct 24 20:58:35 UTC 2005

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> On Mon 24 Oct 2005, dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> >
> > This is what bothers me most about Wikipedia.
> >
> > Low-quality articles are tolerated on the assumption that every
> > low-quality
> > article is the nucleus around which a pearl will coalesce.
> >
> > Unfortunately, one of the things that seems to be scaling, possibly
> > increasing, is the ratio between the rate at which irritating grains of
> > pollutant are introduced and the rate at which nacre is being deposited.
> >
> > The de facto situation here seems to be that we would _rather_ have more
> > article than better articles.
>
>  I really don't know where you get these ideas from. How are low-quality
> articles "tolerated"? Who would rather have more articles than better
> articles? Who even thinks there is a choice between more articles and better
> articles?
>
Editor makes a good-faith edit to article. It is reverted by another
editor who is uncompromisingly pushing a POV. A conflict results, sometimes
more acrimonious than at other times.

Rinse, lather, repeat. Eventually the first editor will decide that it is
more rewarding to start creating articles & turn those red links blue
than to argue over content -- unless that editor is also uncompromising
about a certain POV, & decides to squat on certain articles to preserve
that POV.

Either path means that articles improve to a certain point, then unless
something happens they remain at that level of quality. We need more
tools to ensure that "something happens".

Geoff