Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-01-04

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2010-01-04. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation (652 bytes · 💬)

• Any chance of a link to find out why ArbCom resysopped GlassCobra?--Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:03, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

There is an explanation or two in this discussion. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 02:27, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Features and admins: Approved this week (467 bytes · 💬)

Congratulations to everyone who put in so much work to have some content featured! And thanks to everyone who participated in the review process. Scartol • Tok 14:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

In the news: Financial Times, death rumors, Google maps and more (2,933 bytes · 💬)

The misguided news articles that attempt to paint Wikipedia in a negative light because of random examples of vandalism always irk me. They prey upon the average reader's lack of knowledge about how the encyclopedia's inner workings function. Falcon8765 (talk) 01:08, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

• Yet another premature death -> [1]. Has there been enough for WMF devs and dictators alike to pull their finger's out thier arse and enable flagged revs?   «l| Promethean ™|l»  (talk) 09:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Agreed Falcon. BTW Promethean (and I do agree), you can now get a detailed breakdown of where the devs are with FPPR, see the techblog. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 09:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

The FT article exhibits certain characteristics in common with some dodgy Wikipedia articles: parts of it are well written, other parts poorly written, and when considered as a whole it's bollocks. Columnist Andrew Waters strongly implies that Wikipedia has no existing peer review process whatsoever, which is an insult to those hard-working editors who spend much of their time assessing articles.
Of course, giving Featured and Good articles preferential rankings over unsourced stubs in Google search results would not be a perfect solution, but it would surely be more meaningful than pie-in-the-sky ideas like having some Googlebot attempting to analyse and rate editors and articles.
Mr Waters then tries to trivialise the WP:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions proposal, describing "a plan to improve the English-language version ... by subjecting changes proposed by newcomers to approval by more experienced editors and flagging up any revisions" as a "minor but highly symbolic innovation". Whether an effective end to the era of "the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" would be an improvement is open to debate, but to describe it as "minor" displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of Wikipedia.
He goes on to observe "The problem is not necessarily that the average quality of articles is low; rather, that there is no way to tell which can truly be relied on." Much like newspapers, then. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 18:46, 11 January 2010 (UTC)