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Some poor assumptions.

Lots of the things that this essay says are dubious assertions:

  1. FA's that are downgraded are overwhelmingly because standards have risen.
  2. The idea that you can measure the quality of the encyclopedia by counting FA's is ludicrous. Many editors I've spoken to refuse to push their articles through the process because it is so painful. Hence there maybe large numbers of FA-quality articles that simply haven't been through the process. Ditto for GA quality.
  3. If you measure success by counting FA's and uses that as the basis of directing our efforts then you might well end up with an encyclopedia with a couple of thousand perfect articles and 1.6 million terrible ones. There has to be a balance between pushing up the quality of lesser articles so that they at least don't stink too badly. Sadly, this doesn't help your statistics - but it's certainly arguable that pushing every single Wikipedia article up to at least (say) B-class would be preferable to pushing a few hundred up from GA to FA.

As to what to do about it - let's try to be constructive for a bit. Here are some thoughts:

  • I think politics and Wikipedia-space stuff in general in growing out of all proportion to the actual job of creating a quality encyclopedia. I would go through Wikipedia-space pruning off anything that's not directly needed to keep the encyclopedia running. We need to get people off of spending every waking hour arguing about whether fair-use photos of aardvarks are or are not replaceable - we need to quit babbling on about whether to reassign unusued user account names or whether to allow user-boxes to be in template space or not. All of this is unnecessary babble - and it's cutting into the time people spend doing constructive work. We should prune out most of the Village pump sub-sections - rip out large swaths of non-official essays on policies that don't exist. Be bold, be brutal.
  • As for the GAC and FAC processes: People who comment with things like "as per WP:MOS, number and units should be separated by a single non-breaking space" are wasting everyone's time. It would take far less time and effort for them to simply fix the problem themselves. This would cut down dramatically on the stress levels involved in getting an article through that hurdle. Also, nebulous comments like "quality of english not good enough" should be banned! If you can't tell me exactly what is wrong with the text in words I can understand - and if you can't fix the problem yourself - then it's not a problem! We have to switch from an adversarial model to a cooperative model in getting articles through GAC/FAC. These measures would greatly improve the number of articles submitted and the rapidity with which new GA and FA articles could be created and passed.
  • Drive-by tagging. Nothing annoys an editor who is working hard on an article more than to see someone who has no previous or subsequent contact with the article cruise by and litter his article with a cloud of little tags. It makes the article look like a complete mess to our readers and it does nothing whatever to help the article quality. Once again, rather than spend your Wiki hours self-righteously sticking little tags into articles - crack open some books and add facts and references yourself. Tags like "this article does not belong to any categories" for example. Are you seriously telling me that the person who adds that tag couldn't spend a couple of minutes to track down the appropriate categories? Argh!
  • More generally - let's get rid of the destructiveness inherent in our processes and channel that energy into creativity. All of those people who read and comment on FARC and who seem to think it a victory when they manage to get an older FA de-listed should be spending their time pulling those same articles back up to the required status. There shouldn't even be a de-listing vote. It's terribly demoralising to the guys at the coal-face hewing new FA's out of the ether to find others tearing them down faster than they can be put up. Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Automobiles - that project has just three car articles up to FA status - and three more that have been de-listed! It is literally the case that they are being de-listed faster than we can create them! This is not a good thing for editor morale!
  • Protect good editors. Right now, if you spend most of your time editing articles, you cannot get adminship (trust me - I tried - I was shot down in flames because I hadn't spent enough time whittering on about nothing on Wikipedia: pages!). This is ridiculous. Adminship is a tool - not some kind of honor to be bestowed. The admins are supposed to be there helping out the editors - but when a well established editor needs to have their article sprotected or to have a disruptive person banned, or some other piece of administrivia dealt with, it's a major struggle. We need to switch around the seniority levels here. People who spend the majority of their time editg and who have GA's and FA's under their belts need to be given a 'status' that clearly places them above the admin strata. Admins can deal with background work - but they should realise that their sole function in life is to help the successful editors and not to create annoying roadblocks.

Without good editors - we are a mere talking-shop full of hot air.

SteveBaker 04:58, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

You are rightfully concerned about wasted effort, but have you considered the effort required to keep at bay the hoard of vandals, school-kids and other contributors who either intentionally or unintentionally degrade the quality of B, GA and FA articles? There are quite a few articles I would invest time improving to GA or FA standard, but until I can be sure that I won't need to monitor these articles every day until eternity to prevent the degradation from happening, there is no way I will invest the time required. Wikipedia needs to take some lessons from the process used for open source software development projects (Mozilla, Linux and the like). You should only allow your trusted editors to make direct changes to your most valuable content; all contributions can be filtered through these trusted editors. (Caniago 05:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC))
Read my penultimate paragraph. I would give editors-in-good-standing (perhaps those with at least one FA and multiple GA's substantially attributable to their work) the ability to go to an admin and require support for sprotection of these articles and for direct support in banning persistant vandals. SteveBaker 13:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
There are some remarkably poor assumptions about the FAC and FAR rooms in this section titled "some poor assumptions". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Please explain. Just saying "You're wrong" is not progressing the debate. SteveBaker 13:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
"People who comment with things like <X> are wasting everyone's time. It would take far less time and effort for them to simply fix the problem themselves."
That seems an inaccurate and short-sighted view of the process. Most often, the issues either would not be that easy/fast for another editor to fix, or there are questions of judgment that should be decided by the original editors. When they are easy to fix, usually someone does just fix them. An example is when there are WP:MSH issues; renaming the sections should be up to the involved editors. Further, whenever an editor comments on something that needs to be done—instead of just doing it—a record is left by which other (current or future) editors can learn guidelines and policies. I didn't know the difference between hyphens, endashes and emdashes until I saw another article reviewer referring to WP:DASH. On the other hand, many reviewers do help do easy fixes when asked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
" ... would greatly improve the number of articles submitted ... "
There is no lack of articles submitted; probably a third to half of the articles that come to WP:FAC would have benefitted by first visiting WP:PR. Strengthening peer review would help. Also, most FAC reviewers also pitch in at peer review, so suggesting that they have time to fix issues as well as point them out isn't quite right. Half of the articles that come to FAC fail probably because they weren't even close to prepared, and have issues that could have been raised and addressed on peer review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
"people who read and comment on FARC and who seem to think it a victory when they manage to get an older FA de-listed should be spending their time pulling those same articles back up to the required status. There shouldn't even be a de-listing vote."
Who are these people you refer to who think it's a victory to get an article delisted? The people who pitch in at FAR do spend their time pulling articles back to status, whenever they can and whenever there is an involved editor knowledgeable about the topic, and often even when there's not. Most reviewers and participants at FAR work very hard for every keep. In fact, the entire FAR process was revamped to allow for a full-month review, so that editors would have time to bring articles to status. When work is ongoing, that time is often extended (to as much as two months). It is very intensive work, and many people pitch in selflessly to work on articles that they may have no personal interest in. Most articles that are FARC'd lose their star for one reason only; the original editors are gone, the article is abandoned, and no one is able to fix it. So far this month, FARC has had more keeps than demotes—a fine record, because we are finally gaining enough helpers to work on abandoned articles. And there isn't a de-listing vote; in fact, FAR is not a vote. Articles which are being worked on are allowed to stay on FAR virtually indefinitely, even if there are multiple Remove votes. Articles are FARC'd when there is no ongoing progress. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
"Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Automobiles - that project has just three car articles up to FA status - and three more that have been de-listed! It is literally the case that they are being de-listed faster than we can create them!"
Take a look at the reviews on all three of those cases. Do you see the notification to the Automobiles Project? Do you see a single bit of feedback, response, or effort to improve the articles from either the Project or the original editors? No. I certainly don't have the resources to fix Ford Mustang; it is sad that in spite of the intense effort we put into notifying Projects of articles that come up for review, most articles that end up FARC'd are simply abandoned by their Projects and by their original editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
To your second point, I agree that the FA standards are at a point where the changes they demand often provide benefits so marginal as to be worthless, e.g. non-breaking spaces between numbers and units. This is one good reason why the number of FAs becomes an increasingly worse measure of the number of high-quality articles -- many of the requirements at FA have only little bearing on article quality. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
No - that's not what I said (and I disagree actually). The formal FA requirements are just fine. I have no problem with requiring non-breaking spaces between numbers and units - or any of those other seemingly trivial rules about the length of the introduction, that links should only be made the first time the word is encountered...a million other things. That's no problem because I can zip down that list very quickly as the last thing before FAC and fix them. What I do have a problem with is when I put an article up for FAC and see that someone has written something like:
  • Reject - You don't have non-breaking spaces between numbers and units and the standard of English is generally poor. ~~~~
...because trivial matters like non-breaking spaces could have been fixed by that reviewer quite easily - making that part of the complaint a non-problem. This is what I mean by a 'collaborative' rather than 'adversarial' model of GAC and FAC review. The second half of this hypothetical complaint is one I've seen in lots and lots of failed FAC's. The problem with it is that you can't disprove it - and you can't fix it because it's far too vague. I'm no English major - and my grammar and sentence structure may well be sub-par - but there is no way that I can address this complaint. This gives me the impression that I am simply incapable of producing FA quality articles - which is a strong disincentive to bother submitting them. What is needed is (again) either that the reviewer fixes the problem - or is much more explicit about the nature of what is going wrong with my writing style. Personally, I'd already have gone through the article a hundred times looking for problems prior to FAC, I've played tricks like reading it aloud and I've done things like making sure that several other experienced editors have read through it - both at GAC and in Peer Review and because I asked them to. But still I see complaints that the quality of English misses some unspecified standard in some unspecified way. This is a useless comment - yet this exact thing sinks a vast number of FAC's and dissuades otherwise great editors from coming back to the process. SteveBaker 13:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Steve, I agree very much with the idea of emphasizing collaboration in the FAC room and getting rid of the adversarial overtones. FAC reviewers often seem to act as if they've been given the right to disregard the person on the other side of the nom (who, in good faith cases, has invested many hours in their work). I too cringe when I see "oppose - blankety blank minor concern". Too many editors, and I include myself, are guilty of doing everything but reading the article. There are so many wiki policies to apply against the article, making sure it conforms, that what the article actually says is often the last thing anyone cares about. –Outriggr § 01:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I can't agree that reviewers have a general obligation to fix what problems they find; 'this sentence is badly written' is much more helpful to me than a ham-handed attempt to rephrase it. On the other hand, some of these trivial 'my copy of the MOS is written in stone' objections are not productive and amount to {{shrubbery}} demands. Still, notice the trend that well-written, copyedited, and nicely formatted articles - those that really "look ready" - actually get fewer nitpicky objections than articles that were prematurely nominated or have sloppy formatting problems despite good content. Clearly reviewers should actually read, rather than just look at, the article, but the culture should also emphasize that reviewing an article (unless it's an obvious WP:SNOW situation) involves some degree of commitment toward helping the nominator resolve the objection. Opabinia regalis 02:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I think steve has raised some good points, we have the same problem in mathematics. Old FA get delisted at about the same rate as new one are created. The major reason for the delisting is because the FA standard has risen, not because of vadalism or gradual erosion of quality. Yes it is demoralising to see this happen and its putting editors off the whole FA process. Generally maths articles on FA review seem to attract little attention, its less fun trying to maintain an FA status than getting a new article through FA. Some interesting psycology here: gaining FA is something you want to do, keeping an article at FA is something someone else (i.e. FA reviewers) want you to do. To me the FA bar does seem to high, great for those interested in a single specific topic (Say KLF) who are prepared to put all their time into a single article, less good for those in projects with large numbers of article to maintain. --Salix alba (talk) 16:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Ironically WP:KLF is comprised of 44 articles, four of which are featured articles. + Ceoil 20:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
"The major reason for the delisting is because the FA standard has risen, not because of vadalism or gradual erosion of quality. " I'd have to disagree; if you peruse the math articles defeatured at WP:FFA, you'll see that most of them have experienced prose and quality deterioration, and there was little attempt to correct the deficiencies. In general, their problms are not rising standards, but poor quality of prose. The Math project could benefit from having copyedit review of their FAs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree that reviewers don't have "a general obligation to fix what problems they find" - clearly that would be unreasonable. The standard I would apply to their obligation would be something like: (1) Where possible, the reviewer should simply fix trivial layout/formatting/spelling/grammar problems than complain about them. (2) In the event that a problem is too deep-seated or technical for the reviewer to "just fix it", the complaint must be very specific - with multiple examples quoted from the text so that the article's maintainers know precisely what to do to fix it.
The first rule addresses the "We need non-breaking spaces between numbers and units" kind of complaint - the second rule addresses the "English not good enough" kind of complaint. Eliminating those kinds of complaint gives an honest, committed editor the tools he needs to get the article through GAC/FAC with a minimum of stress. If this were an enjoyable process - carried out with respect for the editor - then he's much more likely to go on to find other articles to bring to FAC. Right now, it's a stressful, largely non-helpful process that scares most editors off.
My personal experience with this was that my first ever FAC (which passed fairly painlessly) was Mini (about an old British car). That encouraged me to use my expertise to use the same 'formula' to push MINI (BMW) (a more modern British car) to FAC. As far as I could tell, both articles were comparably good - but MINI (BMW)'s FAC died under a flurry of "English not good enough" complaints. I begged and pleaded to get some explanation as to what specifically I needed to do - but I was told that it wasn't the job of reviewers to do that. But what happened? I wrote most of Mini and everyone loved that - had something snapped in my brain and caused me to put out gibberish? I had no clue. The FAC failed - and I was very put off from trying again...I mean what do you do when the article looks great - GAC loved it, PR loved it, all the same gang of people worked on it. So I pretty much gave up and went back to being a WikiGnome - fixing stuff here and there - and the MINI (BMW) article has degenerated somewhat (mostly because a ton of new information has had to be added to it - and that new stuff ain't FA quality yet).
So recently, I thought to try again with another FAC - and I pushed Mini Moke (yep - another obscure British car with 'mini' in it's name) through GAC, PR, etc. It's stagnating in FAC right now - a flurry of enthusiastic supports - with some easily fixed problems (which I fixed) - and one big stinking "English is poor" kind of complaint. To be fair, this last one is a little better than the useless complaints that afflicted MINI (BMW). There are a few specific complaints about paragraph length and such - but I hold to the mantra that each paragraph should be a separate statement of related information. Gluing short paragraphs together just to meet some arbitary standard when those paragraphs don't relate to each other is kinda pointless. I'd argue about this with the guy who gave that review - but we are warned in several of the "How to get an article though FAC" not to argue with the reviewers....Argh! SteveBaker 17:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Grrr Wiki!!

  • Just look how diffcult it is to edit.....
  • discussion section is sloppy

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Forgotthename (talk • contribs) 19:41, 14 February 2007

The REAL reason Wikipedia is failing

(saw this on Slashdot, originally posted by "kmweber"): from [1]

Wikipedia will fail, yes, but its content model has nothing to do with it.

It is the organization of the project itself that cannot last.

Wikipedia is fraught with pretentiousness, which attracts uptight anal-retentives who simply like to power trip and enforce every last minute consequence of every obscure policy rather than, and sometimes to the detriment of, creating good content--and even if the situation to which they were responding wasn't actually hurting anything.

I believe in the idea of Wikipedia, but the idea of Wikipedia needs to be saved from Wikipedia. To that end, I have created an alternative encyclopedia, Opencycle that I believe will fix those problems. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.135.28.176 (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

Not the only reason. I've been blocked from improving Wikipedia by Arbitrators who ignore policy and rules. (SEWilco 18:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC))
Ditto. The problem is that the administrators of wikipedia, far from wanting to improve an encyclopedia, are here to abuse their powers and get their rocks off harassing people. "Policy" and the rules only apply to you if you don't have a powerful admin friend or aren't an admin yourself, at which point you can do anything you want, call anyone any name, and if they so much as try to protest you'll be backed up and the person you're attacking will be harassed by the admins.RunedChozo 18:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
As I mentioned above, I don't think it is all the admins that are the problem. There are many on here that are really very nice and helpful. Unfortunately, there are a few bad apples that do not improve things here. MetsFan76 18:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
The supposed "good" admins never do anything about the "few bad apples." They're just as bad and just as corrupt for letting the bad ones have their way and even defending the bad ones. RunedChozo 18:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." -- Albert Einstein
I have to agree with RunedChozo's assertion that any "good" admin who does nothing about the bad ones is no better than those bad admins in the first place. Personally, though, I think the big reason that Wikipedia is failing is not the admins themselves but the many policies, some of which were instituted to protect WP, that do nothing but make things worse for the site and its users and contributors. What good is a protection that destroys the very thing it is meant to protect? And what good is a policy that makes people want to leave and start again elsewhere? --206.186.79.91 22:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
In an effort to not paint an entirely negative picture of the situation, let me add that Khaosworks is a good admin. And I say this after he and I have tussled from time to time. So, there at least some out there. I'm not claiming they are a majority. Proteus71 18:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Has he stood up against the bad ones? No? Then I've no reason to feel he's any better than they, because he's enabling their bad behavior. RunedChozo 19:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
And I thought I was the only one. I gave up on Wikipedia as an organization the day that the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome article was deleted by users who RunedChozo has accurately described. If Wikipedia cannot find a solution to this problem, I hope another organization starts up that will. Proteus71 18:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
May I suggest you all consider Opencycle? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.135.28.176 (talk) 19:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC).
You already suggested it once in this discussion. Once it enough. Proteus71 19:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
It's too late to start writing a new encyclopedia. There is essentially zero chance that 1.6 million articles will be rewritten for Opencycle or anything else like that. Even if you started off by mirroring all of Wikipedia content, any delay in people realising that Opencycle is 'better' would result in the mirror getting hopelessly outdated - splitting the editor community right down the middle and doing critical damage to both communities. The fact is that the general public - the readership - know what 'Wikipedia' is - it's like 'Google', 'Yahoo', 'YouTube' and 'Myspace'. You don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of getting that mass of people switching over to Opencycle - so every person you attract over there just makes matters here worse...for no particular benefit. At this point, reforming Wikipedia is the only way. There is undoubtedly a problem with heavyweight and self-sustaining 'management/politics/administration', there are just vastly too many policies, discussions of policies, discussions of how to change policies, policies about how to change policies...there comes a point where we are lugging around thousands of people and pointless talk pages which are doing nothing to support the actual editors - and in many cases are coming to decisions that are at drastic variance to the desires of the community that their actions are considered to be close to vandalism. The fair-use/free-use debate is a classic example of this. SteveBaker 23:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
If anything you should consider making Opencycle a project to improve wikipedia rather than to fork wikipedia. You may think that such projects are failures, though they don't necessarily complete their mission that do add to the overall quality. Wikipedia is additive, though we may feel it grossly bottom heavy, that's just a fact of the huge number of articles. Dharh 14:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

From the Philosophy department

I'm interested in the discussion! I've long campaigned for some sort of trust system (no hierarchy, either you are in it or not - I hate hierarchies). Is there a problem? Just look at the Philosophy article which is complete SHITE from beginning to end. It started off not too bad, got steadily worse and look at it now. I have a sample of amusingly bad edits on my talk page, check it out (and check out the Bristol stool scale too).

Something has to give. I've lobbied admins, but the answer is always, it's my fault for not being able to handle trolls. Oh well. Keep up the campaign. Dbuckner 18:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Admins don't care about writing a quality encyclopedia, are you kidding? They care about their power base and using it to get their rocks off harassing people. RunedChozo 18:57, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The biggest laugh was when a respected Oxford philosopher turned up one day. He stayed about half a day, and left shortly after being lectured by a complete moron about how he didn't understand ancient philosophy. (His fault for reacting badly to trolls). We have lost another two excellent editors in the last week. Dbuckner 18:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


Through my RC patrolling, I have noticed the downfall of the Philosophy article and it's a shame. I'm not sure how the admins can help out though as they are always so bogged down with rules and regulations and forget about maintaining the integrity of some of these very important articles. MetsFan76 18:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Philosophy is one of a handful of pathological articles. Under the current system, the only solution is to achieve some sort of consensus amongst competent editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy to just aggressively revert any edit to that article that is not an obvious, indisputible improvement. But the real solution is to take whatever good ideas came out of "article probation", "stable versions", etc. and begin experimenting with them on articles that are floundering. Jkelly 18:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of the proposed criteria

For an article to become featured, an editor must make it so. This is a natural "bottleneck" function that distorts the meaning of "fraction of articles which have been marked featured article."

So, what is a better way of saying which articles have reached a state of excellence and which still need work?

Random sampling of articles

Wikipedia contains many articles that ordinary encyclopedias would be unlikely to contain. These articles are arguably more valuable to society as they exist in Wikipedia compared to their non-existence.

We can congratulate ourselves for having articles that no other encyclopaedia would have, but don't we also want those articles to be high quality? If there are hundreds of thousands that are not, are we really providing something valuable? And do we really need individual articles for episodes of TV series? Does every school in the world need an article? Should every murder victim have an article? Worldtraveller 23:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The surest method of improving the outcome of random sampling would be to simply delete all non-featured articles. This indicates the subjectivity of random sampling as a criteria for the overall quality of Wikipedia.

Yeah, but no-one's suggesting that. The issue, if random sampling consistently turns up a large number of very poor articles, is how to improve those articles, not to rig the test. Worldtraveller 23:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

A more relevant method of random sampling would be to select pages at random with probabilities directly proportional to the number of times the article has been read or the number of readers who have read that article.

Interesting idea. What should happen to articles that few people have read? Are they not worth bringing up to high standards as well?
It's not a matter of 'not worth bringing up to high standards' - it's a matter of practicality. If we only have N editors and they each spend M hours per week editing and one editor can fix up a typical article in P hours - then only (NxM)/P articles can be fixed up in a given week. There isn't much we can do about the size of N, M or P. Should those very limited editing resources be directed towards articles that almost nobody reads or should they be the articles our readership finds most important? Clearly, the latter. So whilst it would be nice to have all articles brought up to a higher standard - that's just not possible.
In an ideal world, we would start using our limited editor manpower to improve the most popular/critical articles first - and gradually work our way down to the lesser articles only when the important ones are at FA. Sadly, even that isn't going to happen.
How come my article on the Mini automobile is an FA - when the article on Automobiles in general is not only not an FA, it's not even a GA! Well, the answer is really simple. One particular editor (me!) is a fanatic about Minis and has every book ever written about the car, knows every nut and bolt and owns nearly every toy or model of the damned thing. It was relatively easy for me to drag this article up from stub to FA because I care, I have the knowledge and I have a personal library of books about the beast to produce references from. On the topic of Automobiles in general, I'm relatively non-knowlegeable, the subject is too wide for me to have a whole lot of knowledage, I don't particularly have an interest in the things the article needs to say - and I certainly don't have any books that I could cite as references. Hence, Mini (a relatively obscure subject) is an FA and Automobile is a neglected B-grade and in severe need of help.
Sorry - but that's life. Whilst we might come up with some ideas about how to improve these important 'top tier' articles - unless there are editors who want to work on them - they won't get improved...period. SteveBaker 23:57, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I completely agree - the simple maths of it means that the vast majority of articles will never be brought up to high standards. If the project has failed to attract the kind of editor who would write an excellent article on a basic topic like automobiles, isn't that also a failing? It's not like qualified and enthusiastic people aren't out there. Expert editors are vital, but what's the incentive for an expert to give their time up for free when a) most of the encyclopaedia is and always will be poor quality, and b) even the recognised good stuff is not protected in any way and usually degrades over time? Worldtraveller 00:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
There are many, many car enthusiasts here - WikiProject Automobiles is quite active. But the defining feature of car nuts is that they all - without exception - have one or two favorite car brands/marques that they are fanatical about. The topic is too big for someone to be a 'deep guru' about all of it. So what happens is that hundreds of editors nibble away at Automobile - and it never really gets the concentrated single-minded effort it needs. This may be true for quite a lot of these top level articles. SteveBaker 20:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Simply put, the real question should be "Is Wikipedia better than other encyclopedias?" To answer that question, compare it to either articles selected randomly from other encyclopedias, or articles that users appear to think should be found in an encyclopedia. Due to the nature of Wikipedia, there will always be "fetishists" contributing bizzarre little niche-interest articles, but that isn't a bad thing in and of itself. To randomly select articles from Wikipedia weights those fetish articles heavily for no particularly good reason. It's not typical for someone to look things up at random. Heathhunnicutt 01:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Rate of article creation vs. rate of article improvement

The critical criteria proposed flatly state that continued exponential growth of Wikipedia is assumed. An assumption of continuous exponential growth might not hold true.

It might not. But assuming the present situation will hold into the near future seems a lot more reasonable than assuming that some other law we haven't seen before will soon come into play. Worldtraveller 23:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a great success, the Wikimedia Foundation a complete failure

With more and more contributors, languages, and articles, Wikipedia is a huge success. The Wikimedia Foundation was useful to pay for the servers, but they became a worthless bureaucracy. If someone would want to create a better Wikipedia, it would be easy to do without their passive interference. The creation of an in-between structure locked the project in a social nightmare.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.251.70.185 (talk • contribs) 21:37, 14 February 2007

Random Article Test Results

I performed a Random Article test, and here are my results. The comments only reflect my personal opinions, of course.

10,000_Shots - an album from 2005. Not encyclopedic quality. But it is interesting to note that the article exists. I don't know too many encyclopedias that list album information for Canadian Celtic Punk bands.

Diego_Alvarez_Chanca - one line about a physician of Columbus. Not encyclopedic quality.

Yugoslavia_at_the_1932_Summer_Olympics - 2 sentences about the event. Not encyclopedic quality.

Mesoridazine - a pharmaceutical removed from the US market in 2004. A couple of paragraphs. Not a bad article.

TAUVEX - a space telescope array designed and constructed in Israel - pretty good article, IMHO.

Pietro_Badoglio,_2nd_Duke_of_Addis_Abeba - I am not sure who the Duke of Addis Abeba is, and this 3-line and 1 table article didn't really help. Not encyclopedic quality.

Galung_language - Two sentences about an entire language. Not encyclopedic quality.

Fraser_Valley_Action - not a bad article about a soccer team. Lots of charts and team rosters. It seems that the comment stating that articles about pop culture that do not need an expert are plentiful and more complete has some validity.

Cathedral_of_Christ_the_Saviour_(Moscow) - Pretty good article. I'd say of encyclopedic quality.

Andrew_Holmes - 3 sentence bio of an American officer in the War of 1812. Not encyclopedic quality. - but again, would this article even exist in any other encyclopedia?

Chad78 17:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Great idea Chad! As soon as I saw it I tried it myself...

  1. Matthias Corvinus of Hungary - excellent article, highly encyclopedic. not rated
  2. Georgia Gold Belt - short article, likely could be longer. not rated
  3. Versus de scachis - article about a poem on chess. needs to explain what the poem actually said! - not rated
  4. Alfred Law - short article on a politician. length seems fine. not rated
  5. Marc Dutroux - good article on a Belgian criminal. could use a little cleanup in term of English grammar. rated B-class, but I would consider it A
  6. AD-mix - short article on chemistry. FAR too technical, no description of what it's used for. not rated
  7. Operation Ironside - stub article on a "mission within a mission". not being familiar with it I cannot say if this should be merged into Fortitude, or expanded. rated stub
  8. Michael Powell (director) - mid-length article on a film director. rated B-class, although it seems much better than that
  9. Super Mario Compact Disco - a CD of Super Mario music. could use some minor copyedit. rated unrated
  10. Early Netherlandish painting - interesting article, one of many on the history of painting. not rated. I couldn't help but click on one of the paintings in the article and read Arnolfini Portrait, a superb article. not rated

So in the end I went to eleven pages. Only three of these were rated, and I disagree with two of them (the third was a bot). On my own, three I considered to be excellent (1, 10, 11), one needed a little cleanup to join those three (5), two were short or medium length but seemed appropriate (4, 9), two were short and likely needed expansion (2, 8), two clearly needed expansion (3, 6), and one was stubish (7). Maury 20:50, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Then I re-wrote Diego Alvarez Chanca :-) So given the statistically unsound two samples so far it seems about 30% of articles would be considered "good" or better. That implies that the wiki contains about half a million good articles. That compares with Britannica 1991, which has 40,000 total. Perhaps our results are not typical, but if you play with the numbers you're still going to end up with a group of good-to-excellents that overwhelms any similar resource. Maury 21:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Ha ha, yes, because you can extrapolate meaningful conclusions about overall quality from 21 articles and not from 289,000 articles. Worldtraveller 23:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, you are 100% correct - the sample size is too small. So look at the 'Wikipedia Version 1.0' assessment figures:
All rated articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low ??? Total
FA 1,577 2,506 2,420 1,964 181 8,648
FL 181 688 768 703 100 2,440
A 371 680 788 583 91 2,513
GA 3,250 7,388 14,833 19,759 1,759 46,989
B 17,021 33,045 54,777 70,157 23,564 198,564
C 17,023 54,475 136,356 314,425 92,733 615,012
Start 18,531 92,562 417,449 1,637,083 414,546 2,580,171
Stub 4,269 31,389 277,681 2,810,130 762,320 3,885,789
List 4,915 17,308 54,493 198,167 72,338 347,221
Assessed 67,138 240,041 959,565 5,052,971 1,367,632 7,687,347
Unassessed 122 482 1,239 16,778 402,424 421,045
Total 67,260 240,523 960,804 5,069,749 1,770,056 8,108,392
About this table
Unassessed articles don't help much - so let's ignore those. That leaves about 300,000 articles that have been surveyed. My statistics are a bit rusty but I think that's a big enough sample. So - what do we see? Well, even for the most important articles - most of the articles are B-class. As we go down the importance scale, the ratio of great articles to merely bearable articles gets worse and worse...well, that's somewhat good news. It means that more effort is going into important articles. But overall, across all importances - more than half are stubs. about a quarter are 'start', about 8% are B-class - and things go steeply downhill after that. HOWEVER: Note that an article that has not yet been through GAC can only be B-class. So no matter how good the article is, if nobody tried to get it through GAC, it'll stay at B-class. We don't know what proportion of B's are actually GA's, A's or FA's in terms of quality...we just don't know. All we can say is that no more than 8% of all articles are B class or above. It's also noticable that there are more FA's than A-class...what does that mean? Probably it means that since A-class is as high as an article can get without going through FAC, then once an article has made it through GAC, it has a good chance of being pushed up to FAC and making it. In fact, since the number of GA's and FA's are very similar, it strongly suggests that once someone has pushed and article to GA, it's very likely to get pushed all the way to FA eventually. SteveBaker 00:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
You're assuming you've got a random sample. My gut says better articles are more likely to be tagged into an assessing WikiProject, and projects in an assessing WikiProject are more likely to be improved. So this sample is skewed towards good articles. Hesperian 00:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The results agree pretty well with our unscientificly small random sample. But in any case, there is a limit to how bad the bias can be in a sample that is 20% of all articles. The sheer number of articles that have been checked mean that unless someone was trying very hard to find only articles that meet particular quality and agressively ignoring the worse ones. Besides, the data for this chart comes from the assessment efforts of individual Wiki Projects. Some of those might exhibit a bias - but it's a lot less likely that there is a systemic bias when so many different groups of people are doing the work. SteveBaker 01:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
It's not true, actually, that GA status has any bearing on whether an article can be rated higher than B-class. There is nothing at all to stop an article that has never been near WP:GAC being rated A-class or becoming an FA. If you look at WP:GAS you can see that the similarity in GA and FA numbers is just a coincidence. Won't be long before they diverge. Worldtraveller 00:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Huh! You're right - I hadn't actually read the criteria closely. But I've been looking at a few dozen A-class articles - and I havn't yet found one that hasn't already passed GA. So even if this is theoretically true - it doesn't appear to be that assessors are truly applying that rule. My Mini Moke article sat at B-class for ages - the day I passed GA, it jumped all the way to A-class. Also, since an article can be better than B-class but NOT up to A-class, it must stay in B-class until it passes GA. There is no "As good as a GA - but hasn't actually been offered for GAC yet". So it is still possible to say that there is an editorial reluctance to push through GAC. SteveBaker 01:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Of the 14 Australia-related A-class articles, one is a former FA, one is a good article, one is a former good article but retains its A-class rating (!), two are A-class under WP Australia but have contradictory B-class ratings for other projects; and the remaining seven appear to be straight-forward cases of promotion to A without going through GA. Whether these ratings are appropriate is of course another matter. Hesperian 01:21, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Projects vary so widely in their use of the A-class designation that I'm not sure it's useful for 'quality assessment' procedures. Of course, all the project assessments are essentially relative to the general article quality in that project, but the usage of the rating is not consistent. Some projects hardly use it at all, and when they do, it's mostly an interim thing for articles on their way to FAC. Some have a semi-formal internal review for A designations and some leave it to individuals. And a lot of projects are just not spending that much time on assessment. In short, I just don't trust assessment numbers enough to draw any conclusions from them. Opabinia regalis 02:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the random article test is rather like randomly choosing ten tunes from the entire canon of recorded music, noting that only one or two are any good, and concluding that humankind's capacity for musical creativity is shot. Hesperian 23:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

All right, I'll bite with a random sampling.

  1. Wangoi -- robot generated text
  2. Traditional_Chinese_star_names -- a list of Chinese-English translations
  3. Peachland -- disambig page for robot generated text
  4. Ranks_of_the_People's_Liberation_Army_Air_Force -- list (of Chinese ranks!)
  5. Wild_ARMs_Music_the_Best_-feeling_wind- -- track listing of weird anime record
  6. Obrint_Pas -- band fancruft
  7. Sylvester_James -- rather interesting article about a musician. One source, but a good one (a biography.)
  8. George_of_Antioch -- rather interesting article about a 12th century general. Multiple sources.
  9. Uncle_Charlie_&_His_Dog_Teddy -- track listing of album with famous song.
  10. History_of_Dublin:_Earliest_times_to_795 -- very subtantial article, multiple sources, well written.

My conclusions: the majority of stuff on wikipedia falls into three categories: robot-generated, lists, music fancruft. A substantial minority of the content is well sourced (often multiply sourced) and rather well written.

To respond to Worldtraveller, Monte Carlo sampling of a database can often lead to interesting and substantive conclusions. It's not a substitute, but rather a supplement, to "directed" investigations (e.g., looking for how wikipedia treats a major subject, a controversial subject, etc. etc.) Sdedeo (tips) 23:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

A more interesting random survey would be to use those in the list of the 1000 most view articles from WikiChart. A cursory look shows that theres a fair few FA's in the list, plus a lot of the problematic overview type articles. --Salix alba (talk) 00:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Sdedeo, you don't know what Monte Carlo Method means, it seems. No, the random sampling Worldtraveller performed isn't valid by any standard method of statistical sampling other than "random." Heathhunnicutt 00:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I find your remarks insulting, Heath. As it happens, I use Monte Carlo techniques all the time in my work -- perhaps I was using the term a bit loosely here. Other than that, I can't seem to make sense of your comment. When I have a sample and want to get a sense of what is going on, random sampling is a good technique. If you want to disagree with the weighting, as I've suggested above, go ahead. Sdedeo (tips) 00:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I am ever so sorry. I find the term "Monte Carlo" to have a high degree of shininess and authority-sound than "random" and really don't like to see it used where "random" is more correct. But I am sorry I stated that you must have made that mistake unknowingly. Heathhunnicutt 01:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Heahthunnicutt, you're really becoming quite obnoxious. Which random sampling did I perform? Worldtraveller 00:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
In your initial revision of the essay, you wrote "A useful exercise is to critically read ten random articles. It is very likely that most or even all will contain poor writing and unsourced material." which is a recomendation of unweighted random sampling. Heathhunnicutt 01:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
That was explicitly not what I based my conclusions on, but just a suggestion of a way in which a reader might judge for themselves informally how much quality content there is. Worldtraveller 12:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, and when we did, you claimed it wasn't valid. No, it's worse than that, after I clearly stated the sample was not statistically significant, you had the gall to "laugh" at the test you devised and then claimed in the log that it was not statistically significant. Gee, really?
In its defense, it should be stated that this sampling will, at least, select from the entire wikipedia, not some artifically accrued subset that is generated by a clearly non-random system. With enough such samples the result set will be far more significant than the ones you've quoted. Of course practially every single post on this talk page has already pointed this out, so I doubt this post will be any more convincing
Geez, instead of all this teeth knashing, why don't you just take your own advice and try the test yourself? We've had three samples so far and the 30% appears to be holding strong. I'm sorry if you don't like those results, but what exactly is your defense? That you're too lazy to try it? Maury 20:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I did a random-article sample in early November to get a rough sense of topic coverage. Perhaps the 1.0 project has substantially progressed since then, but so few of the articles were assessed that I didn't bother keeping track. 250 articles, while still a painfully small sample size, may give a better idea of topic coverage than 10 at a time. (It also seems we've ramped up our stub- and cleanup-tagging since then.) See User:Opabinia regalis/Article statistics for the breakdown. Opabinia regalis 02:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

See also Carnildo's random multiple month 100 articles survey. User:Carnildo/The 100. Interesting read. Garion96 (talk) 18:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

statistics are influenced by the negative

In response to the Open question Are the statistical measures introduced by this essay relevant to the conclusion drawn by the essayist? lets look at what the comparisons really were as at 1st September 2006;

  • Wikipedia
  • articles 1,400,000
  • no. of words 609,000,000
  • avg. words per article 435
  • Britannica (online edition)
  • articles 120,000
  • no. of words 55,000,000
  • avg. words per article 370

Source of these statistics, from this wikipedia has 11x the number of articles, 11x the number of words. From this same source there was only 100,000 articles with less than 200 characters. The reality of the statistics used in this essay are based on the falacy that only articles that have been through FA or GA are any good yet it ignores the articles that have been rated as A class by the various projects and articles that havent been rated.

I've been following this debate with great interest (I personally fall in the "Wikipedia has failed as an encyclopedia but succedeed as a cultural repository" camp) and I'm curious; what constitutes an "article"? Is it any page? Are disambguation and stub pages considered "articles"? Is Statewide_Athletics_Committee an "article"? Is there some minimum standard? Why is number of articles being considred a standard for success? --Ricks99 18:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The next statement that is of concern is This means that 94% of the essential topics that should have excellent articles fall short of the standard. such a statement indicates that they must have been assessed, have they? Presuming that FA is the standard being referred how many of this 94% have been assessed at WP:FAC, and failed.

So compared to Britannica Wikpedia has a broader coverage of topics, the articles are on average 20% longer. The conclusion is that statistics can be manipluated to present any POV. Its the premis of this essay that is influencing the discussion Wikipedia is failing. If the essay had been Wikipedia is succeeding then statistics would be based on that. Gnangarra 14:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:1.0/I has the best set of numbers to use, sampling almost 20%of Wikipedia. You can see there that the number of articles at the very top of the quality scale is incredibly small. I haven't ignored A-class at all, but there are less than 1,000 of them so they don't help the argument that there are thousands and thousands of great articles.
I haven't checked all the vital articles but I'd be extremely surprised if any hadn't been assessed by WP:1.0. I'm sure many of them haven't been to FA at all, but the question is why not? Why didn't the project get the basics right first? Will it ever get the basics right?
As for the size, number of words and length of articles relative to Britannica, I simply don't agree that that offers any information at all about quality. We have to look for clear evidence of the number of articles that are making it up to acceptable quality, and I can't see any better evidence than WP:1.0/I. That shows the distribution very clearly, and the fraction of articles meeting acceptable standards is tiny. Worldtraveller 14:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
WP:1.0/I only covers 580,000 articles of which 290,000 are unassessed only 18% of all articles. To apply the assessed figures from here directly to the total number of articles is erroronous. Gnangarra 14:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
It's not erroneous at all. Statistically, a random sample of 289,000 out of 1.6 million will introduce very small errors into overall calculations. It would be an impossible stretch of the imagination to say that all the unassessed articles have a much higher percentage of high quality content than all the assessed articles. Worldtraveller 14:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The end is nigh

I argue that the overall quality of Wikipedia doesn't need to match that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but the current situation is becoming unbearable. If the quality of articles (and above all, reliability) is not improved, Wikipedia will fail. It will become just a massive mess of junk text and the primary source of misinformation. From this point of view the increasing number of articles becomes irrelevant, or even a negative issue. In addition, the nonsense and poor editing may become so overwhelming that the more experienced editors will lose their interest (many already have) and leave the project further speeding up its downfall. Therefore, something radical must be done.--JyriL talk 14:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget about the bureaucracy and politics that go on here. I think if those issues can somehow be rectified (which they can't), then maybe people can focus more on writing and improving articles and less on if an article is an essay or a stub or or bringing articles in for mediation or three-revert rules. Granted, these are important regulations, but people spend way to much time on them and the articles suffer. MetsFan76 15:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia:Static version or a similar system should be implemented. It doesn't help disputes and problems within the Wikipedia community, but makes the encyclopedia more reliable which should be the primary goal.--JyriL talk 16:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair and open debate

I do see that my original arrangement diluted the initial data presented by User:Worldtraveller and would be happy to re-arrange it to present everything fairly from a NPOV. I'm very sorry for having been inconsiderate, but hope that you will forgive me for it. I don't think it's helpful to threaten anyone with WP:3RR or WP:OWN; I'm sure that we all know the policies and share a common goal of making this essay fair, complete and well-referenced, especially now that it's become so prominent in the public eye.

That said, if indeed the goal is an open-minded NPOV debate about whether Wikipedia is failing, rather than a soapbox essay espousing one viewpoint, then we should allow alternative viewpoints and alternative data. I worked rather hard to assemble the standard criteria by which all encyclopedia are judged, and provided references for all of my hard data. If you disagree with those criteria or data, or with their application to judging whether Wikipedia is failing, then the burden of proof would seem to fall on those who disagree to provide referenced counter-criteria or counter-data.

Again, it's not enough to say that Wikipedia is failing; we should strive to analyze in what ways it's failing, the reasons for those shortcomings and possible solutions for it. Hoping that you agree and also for a serene resolution, Willow 16:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Willow, no apology is necessary. Your words above are very respectful and hopefully helpful to the discussion here. After just looking at WP:NOTFAIL, I noticed that the structure there is much better than the one that was being implemented here. That essay is broken down into several sections refuting each point in WP:FAIL with their own evidence. If something like that was used here, it might be more accepted rather than pushing all of the "Fail" ideas to the bottom. MetsFan76 16:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, the way Wikipedia is failing is simple: it should be completed by now but only about 1% of Americans edit the thing. If we each got five of our friends to make a couple of edits, two of them would become hooked, and Wikipedia would be finished in no time. Essays like WP:WIF aren't the way to do that. Heathhunnicutt 17:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I object most strongly to people who disagree with this essay attempting to force their own bias into it by rewriting it totally. You're completely missing the point of it and denying everyone else the opportunity to see the simple, evidence-based argument it presents. You would do everyone a much greater service by working on WP:WINF. Can you understand why there are two opposing essays at WP:NGR and WP:WWISG, rather than a single essay including both views? Worldtraveller 17:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Heathhunnicutt, I think issue is that you are not respecting Worldtraveller's opinion. If you feel so strongly about WP not failing, then why don't you contribute to that essay and let the people who feel that WP is failing work on this one. That way, we don't introduce any biases into each essay. I respect your opinion but it is really introducing alot of unnecessary debate. Worldtraveller is trying to express his opinion in a meaningful way just like you are so maybe we should all just leave things alone for a bit and allow other editors to chime in. This is not a debate that will be resolved anytime soon. =) MetsFan76 18:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fraction of good articles in Wikipedia

If there are several problems with the "random article" method as listed, then obviously it is a poor method to determine the quality of articles and it is a poor statement to make in the article. I will not remove it from the article yet, as I would like discussion, but already the article is starting to look like WP:NOTFAIL by attacking the methods by which the editor believes WP is failing. I think we either need a better method or delete that from the article. MetsFan76 17:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Who said there are lies, damn lies, and statistics? The sad thing here is that such bad math has been used to confuse people; in particular the bit about everlasting exponential growth. Heathhunnicutt 17:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

People trying to re-write this essay

The people who are trying to re-write this essay in a far more positive light are missing the point of it and behaving stupidly. It is here to be provocative and engender discussion. It is based on clear evidence. You are adding material which clearly attempts to dilute the arguments presented. I think you are mature enough to understand that WP:NGR and WP:WWISG come to different conclusions and that an article that attempted to fuse the two would be useless. The same applies here, and you can put all your positive analysis in WP:WINF. We'll all be better off for that. Stop trying to disrupt the discussion here and suppress arguments that you disagree with. Worldtraveller 18:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with Worldtraveller's views (see my comments on the talk page) and I wish he'd avoid terms like "behaving stupidly." But I agree that it is better to have a clearly stated position to argue against than a diluted mishmash. I'd encourage him to be bold and revert to a version he feels best makes his case, as long as he includes a prominent link to the other side's article. Yeah, maybe this the wrong name space. So what? He has started a useful discussion.--agr 18:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, unfortunately, Worldtraveller and Willow have both been blocked for 24 hours for 3RR. The admin who blocked them just justified my above words in that many editors/admins are more concerned about rules/regulations that actually editing. A good debate was going on here and now its been postponed regrettably. MetsFan76 18:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
That is unconscionable in this case. CyberAnth 18:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The block was valid. In addition, while the essay may not be an article, it is part of Wikipedia. As such, no one can "own" the essay. Others may edit it as they see fit and if there is a disagreement then consensus must be used to come to an agreement on what the essay should say. I've reverted the essay to Willow's last version, which contained views and points which shouldn't have been deleted. Reach consensus on Willow's changes, don't simply delete his/her points. Best, --Alabamaboy 19:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

What you fail to realize, Alabamaboy, is that nobody is insinuating that they "own" this article. It is an essay detailing someone's views and opinions on why WP is failing. It raised very good points and quality discussion. To block our two main contributors is counter-productive and for you to revert the article is even worse. MetsFan76 19:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I just realized you mentioned that a consensus should be reached. How can a consensus be reached if you are going to revert the article? MetsFan76 19:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Because one editor was removing the edits without consensus and acting like he owned the essay. Start a discussion on this subject. If consensus is to keep Willow's edits out, then so be it. I for one, though, think Willow added valid points to this essay which belong here and not at

WP:WINF.--Alabamaboy 19:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

While I respect Willow's points, most of them were diluting the article and were refuting why WP is not failing so why wouldn't they go over there? Anyway, an addendum has been added to the article to make everyone happy. MetsFan76 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Go to WP:WINF where a more solution-oriented essay is starting.-BiancaOfHell 19:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I disagree that this page is "part of Wikipedia." According to WP:NAMESPACE all Wikipedia articles are in the main namespace (no prefix). It says the project namespace (Wikipedia: prefix) is " for matters about the project, such as guidelines and discussions". One cannot have a discussion if one person's stated opinions are constantly being edited by people with a differing viewpoint. This page was cited in Slashdot and people coming from there should be able to see the original version, not a watered down consensus.I am restoring the page to he original author's last version and removing the essay template.--agr 19:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I noticed someone has added a note and link to the original version, so I have not reverted the article. I don't want to add to a revert war.--agr 19:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


If consensus had been to remove his edits to WP:WINF, that would have been appropriate. To simply do it was not appropriate. If anyone wants to write an essay which no one else can edit, Wikipedia is not the place for the essay. (see new section below for more) --Alabamaboy 19:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

You didn't even give it a chance for discussion on the talk page. You just went and reverted without any input in the talk page from you. Do you mean that WP is not the place for this kind of essay? MetsFan76 19:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Not in project space, unless the essay is open to edits by everyone.--Alabamaboy 02:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Questioning these criteria

(Someone placed the following into the article and not here on talk CyberAnth 18:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC))

On the other hand, it could be a bad idea to use "Featured articles" and "Good articles" as criteria for judging Wikipedia's success. These are time-intensive criteria that probably aren't even applied to the majority of articles that merit them. Certainly for the case of Good articles, there must be at least ten times as many articles that meet the criteria out there as ones that are actually tagged as "Good article", because very few people care about or use the "Good article" designation anyway, as it is an unofficial and arbitrary process.

There has to be some good way to judge the encyclopedic quality of Wikipedia as a whole, but simply using the numbers from "Featured" and "Good" articles doesn't appear to be it. == User:Cyde 14:45, 15 February 2007

Reverting

This article is going to just keep getting reverted back and forth. This is ridiculous and now our two main contributors have been blocked for edit warring. This is why there are problems with WP. MetsFan76 19:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep. Even an essay that would serve to spark discussion to move WP away from kiddieland degrades so much its author would not recognize it. I placed the link at the top of the article into its history. Let us see how long that lasts before the trollish wikilawyers find some policy they can twist to remove it. CyberAnth 19:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Hopefully it lasts. I also posted a comment on your talk page regarding it. Good job! MetsFan76 20:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Philosophy is one of a handful of pathological articles

Mentioned above. Rubbish. Just go to that page, and click on the Category of philosophy articles needing attention (located at the bottom). There you can find about 200 more pathological articles. Dbuckner 19:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

In general, Dr. Buckner, I agree with you. Though I do take delight in moments when good authors and good administrators run into each other and then protect pages, like here. Maybe the good authors among us just need to solicit more "security". KSchutte 00:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Should Willow's edits be allowed in this essay?

As the title says, should Willow's edits be allowed in this essay? I for one see Willow's points as correcting several major flaws with this essay. Because of this, I believe Willow's edits should be here and not at WP:WINF. That said, if people wish to have the essays and views on this issue totally separate, then I'd suggest a note at the top of both essays with a link back to the other side's views. Either way, though, no one's edits to this essay should be simply deleted, as was done to Willow, without discussion and consensus. Best, --Alabamaboy 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nor should the article be reverted without discussion and consensus. I think everyone as a whole should express their ideas below regarding the entire article and maybe we can come up with something that would make everyone happy. MetsFan76 19:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The more fundamental question is whether an essay in the Wikipedia: namespace is open to editing by all editors. The current banner at the top of the page [2] suggests the idea, which I had previously never heard of, that an essay in WP space can have a single author whose opinion controls what the essay says no matter what other editors think. I would think that user space is more appropriate for personal opinion than WP space. CMummert · talk 19:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
So should WP:NOTFAIL go on a user space as well? MetsFan76 19:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm saying that if you explicitly want it to be your own personal opinion, without interference from anyone else, then you should keep it in your own userspace, where others are strongly discouraged from changing it. By putting an article into WP space you are encouraging others to edit it. CMummert · talk 20:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think Worldtraveller was discouraging others from editing the article, but I do think he had a right to remove edits that had absolutely nothing to do with why WP is failing. What he removed was material that diluted his argument. Should we all go to WP:NOTFAIL and fill it with evidence why WP is failing? Of course not. While its important to have conflicting ideas in these types of articles, when the balance is lost, the article becomes worthless and just another venue to push POVs. MetsFan76 20:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe the article should have been in user space, but it was a good faith attempt at criticism and it got wide attention outside the Wikipedia community via Slashdot. Allowing it to be edited in a way that waters down its impact makes Wikipedia look like we can't take criticism. People should be able to read the original author's essay in its full form. Discussion is one of the stated uses of the project namespace. The idea that one side in a discussion should be able to edit the positions of the other side is bizarre. --agr 20:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

As I've said before, any essay in Wikipedia space must be open to all editors, even if the edits "water" the essay down (I don't believe that's what Willow's edits did but I'm using this term). I also don't like the note at the top of the article, which does suggest that one editor owns this essay. Wikipedia doesn't exist for one editor to push a POV while excluding all other POVs.--Alabamaboy 21:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Alabamaboy, what is the title of this article? I'm not accusing Willow or anyone else of anything but when someone strategically places edits to change the theme of the article, then yes, a POV is being pushed. The note on top is simply stating that an alternate version of the article exists, which you reverted, that readers might also be interested in. WP:NOTFAIL also exists so maybe both articles should be combined. MetsFan76 21:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I would note that the article and the talk page has been moved to the User namespace, so this discussion is now moot. It is now clearly a personal essay that should only be edited by the author. --agr 00:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC) 

essay (noun): a composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view
I'm baffled by this notion that essays are free-for-alls. By definition, an "essay"—which Wikipedia sanctions with a template tag—is not a free-for-all. If you don't agree with the essay, you're showing disrespect to the person who wrote it by tampering with it. You can refute it on the talk page, link to your own counterpoint, or whatever, but this wiki ideal that anyone can edit anything is not an excuse to obfuscate someone else's opinions because you don't agree with them. –Outriggr § 01:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Others are baffled by the idea that the author posted his/her personal opinion in the WP namespace when he/she didn't want others to edit it, ignoring the third pillar. Why not just keep it in userspace and put pointers on a few talk pages? I'm glad it was moved to userspace, which puts the issue to rest. CMummert · talk 01:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
So you don't mind then if I change the wording of your last comment to something silly? Third pillar, baby. –Outriggr § 02:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Standards on talk pages differ from article/project pages. I agree with your comments on editing personal essays, but there a legit question of where they belong. Keeping them on User pages is a reasonable position. We are not a bolg host so personal essays have a limited role on Wikipedia. I'm willing to give Worldtraveller the benefit of the doubt and assume he simply misjudged the appropraite place for his essay. Before this discussion, I might have done the same.--agr 02:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC) --agr 02:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I see your point. I just wished to point out that I'm not sure how different editing a user's "essay" is (unsolicited) from editing someone's talk page remarks. I know they may be seen as different under the wiki ethos (namespaces et al), but from a "reasonable man" POV, I'd expect editors to show more discretion in that regard. Anyway, I must stop now. –Outriggr § 02:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Worldtraveller, the essay is all yours now. I hope when your block is banned that you contribute to it again. I plan on linking it from my user page and I hope others will too. Good luck! MetsFan76 01:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

horsetrading

I find it amusing that somewhere along the line the section I added on "horsetrading" has been removed [3]. How to get it back? Why, by horsetrading, of course! (I'm not too fussed by its removal, actually, just find it amusing that it's business as usual even here!) Sdedeo (tips) 20:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Tiny comment

Too bad all of the time and effort that went into the above debate didn't go into improving actual wikipedia articles. Awadewit 22:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I've discovered many Wikipedians prefer squabbling over contributing. See WP:FAC for a perfect example. 129.120.94.174 23:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Hey, if we can't reflect on the negative aspects of Wikipedia and try to improve the situation to make the system more effective then wikipedia will certainly fail. (Caniago 23:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC))
I don't see all that much reflection and reasoned debate going on here. Awadewit 05:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, lead by example and start offering some reasoned comments if your insight is that much better than everyone else. (Caniago 06:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC))

failing

I would say the only thing Wikipedia is currently failing in is properly referenced articles, especially on people. However, it's been getting much better due to stricter guidelines and enforcement. 129.120.94.174 23:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion to improve Wikipedia

All who have an interest in well-writen and well-cited articles but don't like {{cite}}, please read and edit the essay I have written and released to the public domain: Wikipedia:A suggested improvement 0001. --Heathhunnicutt 03:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I read your essay, which concerns templates, mostly. A very mechanical solution. Nowhere do I see any attempt to address the main problem, which is lack of good human editors. This could be addressed by giving them a pleasant working environment, and freedom from the endless task of fighting vandalism, arguing with recalcitrant individuals with idiosyncratic theories, &c. Dbuckner 12:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
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