User:Matt Britt/Don't just do whatever

Caution! This is an opinion piece, take it as such. If you disagree with me, I'd love to hear from you. If you think I make a good point, please feel free to link to [[User:Matt Britt/DJDW]] to show your support.

Don't just do whatever

"I prefer it that way... Wikipedia was built on a 'do whatever' sort of philosophy.. it's very lax"—CakeBoy, some random clever IRC person

In reading some recent thoughts on Wikipedia authorship and having some discussions with folks on the Wikipedia IRC channel, I've come to realize that there are some flaws in the ideology of the editing process that is held in such high esteem. More specifically, the Wikipedia process as it pertains to individual articles does not, in my experience, produce high quality articles. For the purposes of this discussion, I will talk mostly about featured articles. However, it's important to note that the featured article requirements and nomination process are certainly not the only benchmark by which a "high quality article" can be gauged, and this process definitely has its own bias that may lend itself unduly to my conclusions (see below). It's simply out of convenience that these are the focus of my argument because these articles are heralded as the "best articles in Wikipedia"; the shining gems of the Wikipedia concept and editing process. In addition, most of the claims I make in this article are derived only from my personal experience and talks with other editors. I would like to eventually setup some tests to put some numerical evidence behind my ideas, but that has not happened as of yet.

In an idyllic world

The editing process we are led to believe in generally involves many editors from varied backgrounds progressively adding an article. Each one brings his or her own flavor and perspective to the table. Each one contributes something that the others may have overlooked; an explanatory sentence, a critical fact, an appropriate image, even a spelling correction. There is no argument that this is exactly the process that occurs and produces the bulk of significant-length Wikipedia articles. So what is the cause for skepticism?

Article quality is the key here. In general, the wiki process produces articles of mediocre quality at best. The quality of each article usually is roughly proportional to the number of sincere editors working on it. This is hardly surprising, but ideally we would like for every article (and realistically, every core topic) to be of featured article quality. Herein lies the fundamental problem with the process. Featured articles do not come out of the disorganized edits of a hundred different people. It is either not possible or has simply not happened that a large body of editors can create the high organization, flow, clarity, and topical relevance required for a high quality article. If the body of featured articles are taken as an example, a trend appears. The version of an article promoted to featured status is usually mostly or wholly the work of one or two editors.

One explanation for this phenomenon is that many articles just require a good copyedit, reorganization, and fact-check to attain featured quality. In this case, it's obvious that the article was indeed produced by the community and simply polished for FA by a small number of skilled editors. I don't believe this is the case, however. In my experience, most featured articles have been mostly rewritten and are the original work of just a couple editors. I looked at the list of recently promoted featured articles and picked at random enzyme. The last five hundred edits before it received the featured article stamp of approval are totally dominated by one user, TimVickers. [1] In fact, what parts of the article have not been rewritten by him are mostly his original work. This article exhibited a lot of characteristic problems of a typical community-produced Wikipedia article before it was rewritten. This version contains poor and often confusing prose, unclear explanations, and elaborations that are out of the article's scope which unnecessarily impede readability.

In my experience this is indicative of the problem with the ideal editing philosophy. It successfully creates disorganized mediocre articles, but cannot create a featured article. Featured articles are mostly the work of a couple of editors, and that work often replaces all the previous work rather than significantly building upon it. For example, the central processing unit article was in a state that I humbly describe as a "blithering mess" before I totally rewrote it. There were literally hundreds of edits to this article before I began to rewrite it, but its current version is nearly totally my original work. Of course, on Wikipedia we shun the notion of article ownership, but in a very real sense, featured articles are usually owned by one or two people by virtue of the amount of work they put into its current state. Take also the example of computer. While this is a topic that every single Wikipedia editor should know something about, the current state of the article is such that it requires a total rewrite to be transformed into a complete and well-executed discussion of computers. I have tried to gather editors to assist, but have only been able to find one other person who is dedicated to improving this very high-profile core article. As things are currently progressing, the computer article will also be the work of two or three people if it ever attains featured article status. The supreme irony of all this is that featured articles are the ones placed on Wikipedia's front page. The articles that are proudly presented to the world as the best that the wiki editing process can produce weren't really produced by the wiki editing process at all, but by a couple of skilled and dedicated editors.

The state of featured articles also leads to another observation. While the collective knowledge of the community is capable of producing an article, it usually takes a person who is well acquainted with the subject to create a featured article. The reason is that only someone with a high degree of familiarity with a topic is generally able to discern what an article on the subject should contain. This is especially the case for technical articles, but applies nearly equally well to most other topics. Taking again the example of the central processing unit article, we see that the original article contained some true information, but it lacked scope, generality, and was mostly comprised of lists of information that were not really even relevant to an article about CPUs. My suspicions have been confirmed at times in discussions with other editors who suggest other possible topics to include in the CPU article which are really irrelevant to the subject. These editors have nothing but good intent, but simply don't have the breadth of knowledge about the subject to identify what information is relevant and what isn't. The wiki editing philosophy does not generally acknowledge that it often requires an extremely adept person to create a great article, and that often they cannot do so without rewriting much—or all—of the existing content.

Other viewpoints

There are, of course, exceptions to what I perceive as the status quo. Articles that receive a large amount of attention by larger number of editors tend to be the best examples of where the Wikipedia ideal works. For example, following the opinion editorial and subsequent CNN interview regarding John Seigenthaler's negative experience with Wikipedia, the community rallied to the call and produced something that is very good, though not quite a featured article for various reasons. Additionally, it has been pointed out that using featured articles as the centerpiece of my argument may be flawed in itself. Usually editors will commit themselves to writing a featured article and enact their plans singlehandedly. This certainly is the case with articles like Oakland Cemetery, which treats a very specific subject that relatively few editors would (or indeed, could) contribute to. However, I truly believe that the majority of articles on important topics can not be expected to reach near-FA status until one or two skilled and competent editors take an interest in doing so.

Why this is a problem

"This is so amusing... People always feel the need to edit the Featured Article even when they have no involvement with it."—Dan in an edit comment

The focus in Wikipedia is too often not on article writing. People just don't seem to want to write articles, and the "do whatever" philosophy supports them in this. Granted, we shouldn't force people to write articles, but then again, we shouldn't have to. Far too many editors get so caught up in vandal fighting and what I like to call wikipolitik that they devote no time to that which should be the central focus of this project. I don't mean to suggest that vandal fighting and bureaucracy are unimportant, but they should be treated as subsidiary concerns to article improvement. Which would you rather see: a new featured article or a new policy? Comprehensive coverage of core encyclopedic topics, or a comprehensive policy on userboxes? I'm not nearly the first to come to this conclusion, though I have condensed a lot of feelings and ideas into this document. There are pages like WP:FUBAR which indicate that other editors are just as frustrated with so many people forgetting the encyclopedia portion of Wikipedia as I am.

I think a lot of editors gravitate to vandal fighting and policy making because it is daunting and frustrating to produce top-quality articles with little to no help from others. When I wrote the aforementioned CPU article, I nearly pleaded for other editors to join me in contributing or at least making suggestions. Despite the fact that there are plenty of editors with the knowledge to do so, none did, which eventually led to me finishing the article mostly on my own. Really, nobody wanted to add to the article until after it had already been deemed featured quality, leading to the above observation by Dan. Right now I'm taking an interest in semiconductor device related articles and have a fairly long list of topics that I'd like to promote to featured status. Despite the fact that there are a number of competent electrical engineers and physicists on Wikipedia, I know that the only way these articles will likely find themselves improved into great discussions of their respective topics is if I rewrite them myself. At my current rate of featured article production, this could take quite some time.

Conclusions

Wikipedia's ideal editing process produces articles of mediocre quality at best. It is an overly optimistic and perhaps naive notion to believe that a body of disorganized editors will produce high quality articles on their own. As policy currently stands, featured articles usually are the result of a very small number of editors dedicated to their respective topics. This policy works if the objective is to create a large mediocre encyclopedia, but fails if we wish to create a subset of excellent articles. However, things can and should be done to curb the trends. Projects like WP:AID and the WikiProjects are steps in the right direction. These efforts exist for the specific purpose of organizing editors for the specific purpose of improving important articles on a topic to featured status. This is not a lofty or unattainable aspiration, but it is severely hurt in practice from lack of support. Very few AID articles actually succeed in passing featured article candidacy because there are simply too few skilled editors participating to expect articles to be in excellent condition after just a week. Wikiprojects often stagnate for a time if one or two strong editors who are the main organizational force stop participating.

We need to have policies to strongly encourage people to get involved in directed efforts for improving important articles to near-featured or featured status. There should be officially endorsed and highly organized efforts to concentrate editing efforts on creating these featured articles. The "do whatever" mentality has produced the current situation of featured articles arising from the efforts of the few. This is totally contrary to what Wikipedia is supposed to be about. Passively expecting featured articles to simply appear will continue to facilitate their extremely slow development. I would like to see some serious official support from the higher ups for an effort like AID. We also should have an overarching article improvement organizational system similar to the Wikiprojects but again with official endorsement and a strong emphasis on participation. Without these kinds of improvements specifically targeted at creating great articles rather than just articles, I fear that ambitious projects like WP:1.0 will never become a full reality. I think Wikipedia is truly one of the greatest uses of the internet, but a laissez-faire (to borrow an economic term) approach to article improvement will seriously harm the development of the very core of what we hope to be: an encyclopedia.

Let me know what you think about my ideas. Think I'm spot on? Or am I merely a bitter pessimist and nay-sayer? Am I inventing solutions to a problem that doesn't exist or identifying an important issue? Tell me!