Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is failing/Archive 1

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There are to many teenagers on here that havent even experienced puberty let alone a professional career, this kids then go on edit artices/edits that they have no knowledge of apart from browsing them on the net. Get real, if you want quality you need experts, and these people are busy fixing the needs of the world. From my experience wiki is a joke pretending to be a athoritive source. Boot the kids or at least put net nanny on for them. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.176.84.161 (talk • contribs) 07:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't claim to be reliable. Read the disclaimer. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The issue is what it aims to be, not what it claims. Encarta and Britannica have disclaimers too. That can hardly be taken as the mission statement. Try reading Wikipedia:About and links therein. Worldtraveller 19:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The other issues, of slipping quality and such, should be helped with the introduction of the stable versions system in a few months. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:46, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

That's been talked about for years. Always a 'few months' away. WP:STABLE is marked as inactive. Worldtraveller 19:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Thread moved from the Village Pump

[previously posted at WP:VPM#Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_failing]

Wikipedia doesn't claim to be reliable or reputable. Read the disclaimer. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Well if people don't even believe that the aim of the whole project is to write a reliable and reputable reference work, no wonder there are severe quality problems! Worldtraveller 19:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

See this. Durova^Charge! 23:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being too impatient when I worry that it will take a century to produce a quality encyclopaedia of any substantial size. I'm not being melodramatic - it actually would take about 150 years to generate 50,000 featured articles. Wouldn't you like a quality, reliable and authoritative free encyclopaedia before that? Worldtraveller 00:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but that's not going to happen. The fact remains, no matter what you do, this encyclopedia is run by volunteers, which means that you can not incentivise your writers to go faster. If you try to make people go faster, they ignore you or they quit. And something really doesn't have to be featured to be good. -Amarkov moo! 03:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikis have inherent problems with reliability and authoritativeness. I'm not sure how you extrapolate your prediction about featured articles - it seems to proceed from a premise that featuring will happen at a constant rate. With a growing editor pool, and with existing articles collecting improvements and citations, I find it hard to predict what that curve will be. Also bear in mind the standards for featuring: compare Pericles to the comparable article at Britannica or Bartleby's or Encarta. None of the others have line citations - they'd be rated B or A grade on our scale. Yet the Wikipedia article has over 150 line citations and an extensive bibliography. What any encyclopedia strives to provide is a basic introduction to a subject and a starting point for further research. Arguably, Wikipedia already does that very well although the quality here is uneven. Durova^Charge! 03:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

you can not incentivise your writers to go faster - speed of writing is very much not the problem. There are over 600 million words in the English Wikipedia. The problem is the lack of incentives to write better. I'd far rather have an encyclopaedia one tenth of the size of what we have now that had ten times the number of high quality articles. The system at the moment just encourages prolific creation of mediocre to dreadful articles, and the very slow raising of a very small number to featured standards.

I'm not sure how you extrapolate your prediction about featured articles - yes, I assume the rate is linear. That's been the case for the last 16 months, during which time the quality content has slipped from representing 0.1% of the encyclopaedia to 0.077%, according to WP:GAS.

None of the others have line citations - they don't need them. We need them because, as you say, wikis have inherent problems. Interesting to see that actually Pericles cites Britannica, several times. That's very poor practice. And that's a featured article - my analysis assumed that all of them actually are top quality.

What any encyclopedia strives to provide is a basic introduction to a subject and a starting point for further research - but according to many statements, we're not just trying to provide basic introductions, we're trying to build something britannica quality or better. Many teachers now tell their students not to use Wikipedia. That's a pretty shocking state of affairs. Worldtraveller 11:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest moving this thread (from below the original notice) to the talk page of the essay? -- Ben 16:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[end of moved thread]

Teachers tell their students not to use Wikipedia primarily not because it doesn't have enough Featured Articles, but because all articles are subject to radical change and insertion of incorrect information at any given time. That has nothing to do with insufficient incentives to write better, but with "anyone can edit". You're conflating two different criticisms. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 15:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

In the university setting at least, students can't use WP for the same reason they can't use Encyclopedia Brittanica or the World Book or any other encyclopedia - because encyclopedias are not scholarly sources. Even the most elementary freshman paper is expected to rely on primary and secondary sources rather than encyclopedias. There is nothing unique about WP here, except that it is more visible for some reason. CMummert · talk 15:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The function of wikipedia's growing is linear Linear_function, not exponential Exponential_function (it seems that the image has been deleted while i write this)

identifying quality articles with featured articles

The basic premise here seems to be that in order to be a quality article, an article must be a featured article. There is also an implicit assumption that every article should or will eventually become a featured article. These assumptions are both wrong. The FA process is not designed in such a way to encourage all articles to become featured articles, and in many cases it is not clear that the benefit of getting an article to pass an FA review would be worth the time and effort required to do so. If the entire "featured article" designation disappeared overnight, it would not mean that there were suddenly no quality articles at all... CMummert · talk 02:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that in order to be a quality article, an article must meet the featured article criteria, whether it's passed through the process or not. I also think that any encyclopaedia would surely want every single one of its articles to be of high quality, however it defined that. I think you've made a very significant point when you say that FAC is not designed to encourage all articles to become featured. 99% of editors are content to ignore it, and the criteria, because their article is up on one of the most popular websites in the world no matter how awful it is. There is an almost total lack of incentives for people to produce quality, encyclopaedic work, and by whatever reasonable definition of quality you come up with, there is a frightening dearth of quality content here.

Let's imagine that there are ten times as many 'quality' articles as there are featured articles, and that they're produced at a proportional rate. That would give us 12,000 currently and 11 more every day. To get to a respectable 50,000 quality articles, we're going to be waiting ten years. And if no more articles are ever created, it would take 400 years for them all to be of good or excellent quality.

A further problem is that, say we get to 50,000 quality articles, those 50,000 are not actually going to form a useful reference work based on current trends. Even after six years of work, not even one in twenty of the vital articles has been brought up to excellent quality. Very few core topics are being actively worked on. Worldtraveller 10:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Added essay tag and shortcut

For the sake of clarity and ease of reference, I've added "{{essay|[[WP:WIF]]}}" at the top of the essay, and created WP:WIF as a shortcut to it. -- Ben 16:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree

I haven't been here long, but my impression is that it isn't failing at all – far from it. We could probably use a little more funding, and I'm not going to pretend that there aren't issues, but I think that given the inherent limitations and problems of the wiki model, it's doing about as well as anyone could ever expect. Fixing any of the major problems would introduce others – for example, we could disable anonymous editing, which would reduce vandalism and improve reliability, but would drastically reduce growth. Large though it is, I think Wikipedia is still limited enough in its coverage and depth that we need to encourage growth as much as possible. Remember that the project is and always will be a work in progress – Qxz 19:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

In essence my argument is purely numerical. 94% of the so-called 'vital articles' do not meet the standards that are expected of them, and more than 99.9% of the whole work is sub-standard. I would have a lot more time for the 'work in progress' argument if those numbers weren't so high. It begins to look like this work in progress, having not even built the foundations properly, will never come anywhere close to producing the goods.

As for coverage, I really can't see how 1.6 million articles could be described as limited. The problem, I think, is that there is if anything excessive coverage, but without any widespread quality. The incentives present in the system encourage the creation of so many articles that only a vanishingly small fraction will ever be brought to high quality. Worldtraveller 19:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

"Building the foundations" is as simple as creating a stub. We have a lot of stubs, and they're generally well-organized (a vast amount of effort seems to go into stub sorting, for example). Coverage is good, and possibly even too thorough in some areas, but is very lacking in others, particularly areas outside of popular culture and Western history, in which the majority of contributors are not well-versed. There are many, many thousands of important topics that do not have an article at all, or have only a very short one. The article count needs to be far, far higher than it is now – I reckon at least ten million articles – before we can consider coverage to be even approaching acceptable, and certainly not "excessive". Excessive perhaps in some areas (Pokemon springs to mind), but certainly not across most of the project.

As for the argument about vital articles, that depends very much on your definition of "vital". Ask a group of people to each come up with a list of "vital" topics and there will be a lot of disagreement. Our "featured article" standard, too, is somewhat arbitrary, and the intention is not to bring every article up to featured standard. Thousands and thousands of articles are perfectly adequate for their purpose without being "featured" or even "good" in some cases – obviously more featured articles is a good thing, but I think it's wrong to declare the project a failure just because the number isn't as high as we'd like.

Put it this way: if we deleted all the "stub" and low-quality articles, the proportion of featured and high-quality articles would be vastly higher, so by your metric the project would be succeeding. But we wouldn't be better off for it – quite the opposite; we would be lacking information on hundreds of thousands of topics which, though not perfect, will still be useful to thousands of people. A short article is better than no article at all – Qxz 22:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think any editions of Britannica have more than 100,000 articles, so I am not sure how you can say that 1.6 million articles would not be enough to be considered extremely comprehensive. Of course, we touch on another problem here which is that so few experts edit Wikipedia that topics that require expertise are generally deficient, whereas those like fictional characters and pop songs which do not require expertise proliferate.

I wouldn't agree that the definition of an FA is arbitrary at all. In fact, I can't see that any other definition is even possible. Well written, neutral, verifiable, of appropriate length, etc - these are actually more like basic requirements than something by which you can identify the very best. A long time ago I asked on Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates whether FA standards were something every article should aspire to, and almost everyone said yes, every article ultimately ought to be an FA. The discussion is here.

You say that 'thousands and thousands' of articles are adequate for their purpose - how are you making that estimate? If this is the case, there should be some means of rapidly identifying and listing them. This was the idea behind WP:GA, which I imagined would pretty quickly generate a list of 10,000 excellent short articles. Unfortunately, it soon transpired that they don't exist, and after well over a year of GA existing there are only 1,700 of them listed.

You're absolutely right that you could increase the proportion of quality content without actually really improving anything. But it's the absolute numbers that are very disturbing. Just 1,300 articles of the highest quality? Is that enough, after six years of work by many thousands of people? Another 1,700 defined as articles that are OK but not as good as what you could find in other reference works, and then over 1.6 million that are unassessed, and whose quality is often abysmal. Please do read 10 random articles, and see for yourself how many are excellent, encyclopaedic articles.

To me the numbers paint a bleak picture. Wikipedia is not producing anything like a large number of high quality encyclopaedia entries. It is not on course to become a reputable and reliable reference work within the next decade or even the next century. If it is not to be superseded by other interactive reference works which will surely arise, then everyone involved with it needs to consider whether somehow the culture and incentives of the project need changing to allow it to achieve its aims, or whether it would just be better to aim for something else, and no longer claim to be producing a reference work. Worldtraveller 00:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

From a purely statistical viewpoint, going by the numbers at WP:1.0/I (which are, admittedly, somewhat limited; there's still only around 300,000 articles assessed), we have about 25,000 "usable" articles (where "usable" is defined as B-Class or higher). Extrapolating from those numbers, I would say that Wikipedia as a whole probably has around 100,000–150,000 such "usable" articles.

The numbers do, however, break off rather sharply once you get to anything above "usable" (GA-Class and higher); there are only about 3,000–3,500 such articles in the assessment system at the moment. Kirill Lokshin 01:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

former FAs

Most former FAs were unfeatured because standards have gone up, not because the articles have declined. Hesperian 01:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

What's your evidence for that assertion? Worldtraveller 01:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

No evidence; that's my observation, take it or leave it. Hesperian 02:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I had a look at WP:FARC. Of the 18 current FA removal candidates, 16 were nominated not because they have degraded, but because standards have changed, especially with respect to referencing. I realise the current FARC list is only a small sample, but 89% is a pretty compelling figure. Hesperian 02:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Disclosure - this from only a cursory examination of each nomination. No doubt attributing a single reason to each nomination is oversimplification. Still, it would appear that the failure of old articles to meet current referencing standards is overwhelmingly the main concern at WP:FARC right now. Hesperian 02:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, that's interesting. If that's the case, we also need to ask ourselves why no-one improved them when they were under review. It's a significant problem if no-one is prepared or able to improve old FAs to meet current referencing standards.

My own observation on maintenance of standards is based on seeing what happened to the 24 featured articles I either wrote or collaborated on, during three months in which I didn't edit them at all. Here's what's happened to some of them:

• Sun's lead section was butchered by someone who thought they were improving the article when they weren't.
• Mauna Loa lost a whole section for a month because no-one spotted some vandalism.
• Comet Hale-Bopp is currently in a mess, due I think to a revert that somehow restored one section and deleted another, and a word was removed from the first paragraph ages ago and has not been restored, so it doesn't make sense.
• Almost all the images have been removed from Cat's Eye Nebula and Planetary nebula
• Crab Nebula suffered a sustained attack from someone who bizarrely claimed that it wasn't a supernova remnant.
• Venus has been given a paragraph beginning According to Alex Alemi and David Stevenson and ending it remains to be seen what sort of acceptance it will achieve in the scientific community., which is poor style and an overall detraction from the quality of the article.
• Surtsey's lead section is now only two paragraphs instead of three.

I should note the honourable exception in the ones I've looked at, which is that Herbig-Haro object has not declined in quality but has a nice new section about infra-red counterparts. You could very well say to me, "well why don't you go and fix up the problems you've identified, right now?". I could, but knowing that inevitably exactly the same kind of detrimental editing is going to afflict them in the next three months really kills my motivation. Why bother writing high quality content if it's only going to get slowly ruined? This is why some sort of static version is desperately needed. Worldtraveller 10:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that collaboration on Wikipedia is largely illusory. Very nearly every exceptional article is written and maintained predominantly by a single person. Not to diminish the value of other contributors, but if you take away an article's key author/maintainer, it is condemned to decline. Hence the neglect at WP:FAR: I'd bet my boots that these are articles where the key author/maintainer has left Wikipedia or lost interest in the topic.

Read Who Writes Wikipedia for non-speculative statistics about the nature of collaboration on Wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.243.56.98 (talk) 18:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

I think I see where we differ. We agree that article quality is ephemeral; that your best work will begin a process of gradual decline the moment you stop maintaining it; that all you get for all the effort you expend on an article is an extended period during which it shines brighter than most. But I don't think this makes writing articles pointless, and I certainly don't think it means that Wikipedia is failing. Hesperian 11:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S. But yes I'd like to see a stable version system brought in. Hesperian 11:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think in the end no article would lose featured status if its primary author had been actively maintaining it. So what drives primary authors away? It is very important to first attract the best editors and then retain them. If this is not happening, that's a significant problem.

I don't think we should accept that quality will always be ephemeral. In the end, if an unwatched article will decline in quality, that means that if I want 'my' featured articles to stay excellent, I've got to watch them closely. So the more I write, the more time I have to spend watching, reverting, working out what to do with poor edits, etc, and the less time I have to actually write. In the end, writing high quality content does become pointless. If nothing at all is done to protect high quality content, then it seems like the project doesn't really value that quality content.

If there were many thousands or tens of thousands of quality articles, I'd be a lot less bothered because at least there would obviously be large numbers of dedicated, able editors actively working on articles. But there's only just over 1,000, and only one more a day is added to the list. Much more important than the decline of existing quality content is the painfully slow rate of production of new quality content.

Wish I knew whether anyone is seriously working on a static version system. I've heard plenty of talk, lots of 'in a few months', but nothing concrete. Worldtraveller 00:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree a lot with Hesperian, here. I don't think it's as gloomy as Worldtraveller suggests. I do think standards both for FA and GA have gone up - and someone recently proposed raising the standard for B-Class assessments. Just two years ago very few articles had references, and now most decent length articles have several, often inline. A standard criticism at FARC is to say, "Oh, it was passed in the old days" implying that it wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of passing now. As for vandalism generally, two years ago I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time just protecting a few articles, yet now there are bots, popups and AWB zooming in to eradicate many of the routine problems. All the articles I contributed to making decent (FA/GA) a couple of years ago are still comparable IMHO - maybe some have had weak additions, but some have been improved. Even when I don't police them I see my colleagues at WP:Chem doing so.

It's also a mistake to say that only FA (and perhaps A/GA) standard articles are worth anything:

• In my field, chemistry, many chemical compounds are listed as Start-Class, yet you often can still find the main information you want - the melting point, the formula, etc.
• Take a look at an outsider's view of one article. The article in question was probably Start-Class at the time, albeit with good refs (chemists do tend to be good at refs!).
• That translates overall across the whole of Wikipedia to a vast database of information that has made it the no. 1 reference website in the world. OK, so Sun may not have such a well-written lead as it used to, but that doesn't mean people won't find the article useful.
• I looked up my home city, Newcastle Upon Tyne, in an old (1970s) copy of World Book recently. I was surprised how poor the entry was. Firstly, despite being one of England's eight "core cities" it was basically a stub. Secondly, the article was very out of date even for the 1970s. I suspect that the article would be better now - but at the time, that was the bestselling encyclopedia, providing an out-of-date stub on a major UK city.

As for VAs, I can accept that little progress has been made. However, there has been definite progress over at Core topics, partially because of the Collaboration there. I can think of a couple of Starts that are now an FA and a GA after the collaboration, and many others have seen some improvement. The folks over at WP:COREBIO also seem to be making progress.

I think the effects of the assessment system have yet to be seen fully, but I think it does help by stressing the importance of improving quality over quantity of articles. There is now more of an incentive to see your peers recognise your work as you take an article from Stub to Start to B to A.

So, overall I think Wikipedia is gradually improving. I hope that in time we will be able to implement Stable Versions (latest I heard was not optimistic), as well as some of the ideas on article validation. Till then, we are still helping more knowledge reach more people every day. People will forgive us the poor grammar, most people I speak to in my profession seem to really value our greater mission. Walkerma 04:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

(de-indenting) I partially agree that Wikipedia is gradually improving - in the sense that the overall number of high quality articles is slowly rising. But the problem is, the number of not very good articles is increasing far faster, and the rate at which high quality content is being created is extremely slow. Although of course B-class and start class articles are not useless, they are falling considerably below the standards we set ourselves, and other encyclopaedias could do a better job. You're lucky that your fellow chemists are on the case with chem articles - my astronomy articles have suffered with lack of maintenance, even though there are several active and highly able astronomy editors, because the volume of edits is so great that it's simply impossible to keep on top of it all. Sun, Mercury (planet) and Venus in particular bear the brunt, because everyone thinks they need to add something and few people have anything truly worthwhile to add. Worldtraveller 16:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you actually looked at Encyclopedia Brittanica articles? They tend to be very short and very shallow for anything above the junior-high-school level. For many science and math articles, the text that EB has would be stub or start class if it was evaluated here. Compare, for example, aldol reaction, crab nebula, or group theory. CMummert · talk 16:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Immediately helpful small step for FAs

I've suggested before, but it would be helpful if the FA template linked to the particular version that was passed. Reverting to that version would be made easier, and the "passed" version could be updated after a FAR. A random editor who knows little about the topic when confronted with a Featured Article that seems to have picked up problems, would then have the ability to easily revert to the reviewed version. Jkelly 23:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea. It's something I really miss on the FA template, much better than the link to the history page. Garion96 (talk) 23:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

As soon as all the {{ArticleHistory}} templates are installed (Gimmetrow and I are working on it), the approved version will be linked in article history. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:26, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Great! Jkelly 23:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Credit to Dr pda, Gimmetrow, Kirill, and Raul654; entire article history will be given in the template. For an example of a recent promotion with a "history", see Talk:Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice, very nice. Garion96 (talk) 23:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Or, for an article with a more interesting history, see Talk:DNA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

POV

Goodness, no mention of the single largest (IMO) failing of Wikipedia: one that really matters? The ease with which special interest groups can, and do, push an agenda right up to the top of Google? [1] In my limited time on Wiki (one year), I've found that the following policies and guidelines are rarely enforced: neutral point of view, verifiability, reliable sources, and no personal attacks. My two cents is that the issues have little to do with featured status, although featured articles should at least set the example.

Also, it's incorrect to judge that most FARCs are because of citations; articles may come to WP:FAR for lack of citations that may not be attended to, but those articles often have additional problems, due to the neglect of not being on anyone's watchlist. The articles that are FARC'd for only citations—and have no other WP:WIAFA failings—aren't common. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting essay

I think this is an interesting essay that deserves some serious consideration. However, I somewhat disagree that the goal should be to get every article up to Featured Article status. The FAC process is time-consuming, and although I would like to send many articles there, I am reluctant to do so, simply because several of the FAC reviewers either don't understand the subject material they are reviewing (leading to some "interesting" objections), or have personal interpretations of WP:RS or other guidelines. For me, FAC is a daunting and occasionally absurd process, albeit one I'm forced to use twelve times a year, for lack of a better process. I'm not certain that the consensus that an article is of Featured quality is the same thing as an article being Featured quality, and have mostly turned my attention to the GA process. I think this essay could be improved by de-emphasizing the FA aspect. Firsfron of Ronchester 23:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I asked some time ago whether FA was intended to identify a small subset of the very best, or whether it was a standard to which every single article should aspire, and everyone agreed it was the latter. The relevant discussion was linked to a bit further up this page. The FA process is clearly a bottleneck, because despite vast increases in the size of the encyclopaedia, FAC's throughput has remained essentially constant for well over a year. You're absolutely right that it's time consuming, and I'm more and more convinced that it's not the best way to generate high quality content. Many articles which have become FAs have significant failings.

But for the purposes of this essay it seems reasonable to me, as a first approximation, to equate 'quality content' with 'FA'. There are not enough FAs, they are not on the right topics, and their numbers are not increasing at anything like the rate we need. Worldtraveller 01:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between the vital articles and the rest; does the article on a 70s television show need to meet the same quality standard as the one on James Joyce? Some of the articles on (for example) minor movie/comic characters include pretty much all the detail that is available about that character, so there's really no room to improve them, but I don't think anyone would claim that they should be featured. --TALlama 17:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the assumption that wikipedia should strive to be fully encyclopedia-quality in some small number of years. Remarks like, "at this rate it will take 500 years" are ignorant. The OED took decades. The Encyclopedia Brittanica must have taken decades as well. Rome was not built in a day. It is not a race. Have patience. --User:Talk 21:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

the view from this heading

Worldtraveller has provided a very reasonable assessment of the situation. I don't think we need to engage in math related to the proportion of articles that are "good/featured/whatever" to establish the problem. Some sampling and observation are enough to see that, to the extent that this project's goal is to match the coverage of a standard encyclopedia, it's pretty hit-or-miss.

I have noted that the "process" orientation and philosophy of many users interested in the "wiki" ideal is often at odds with the goal of building a good encyclopedia. As Worldtraveller notes, we don't even have a way to consistently maintain the best articles. Why?—because any such method is deemed "anti-wiki". The question that really needs to be answered, at this point in the project's history, is: is this a wiki first, or an encyclopedia first?

Worldtraveller has proposed the "random article" test. I propose this test: look at the last 200 Recent Changes, and count how many of them are unabashedly, directly building the encyclopedia. That means observing reasonably sound content being added (and not under a Trivia header) to an article that is not a bordline AfD candidate. (The info on bytes added/removed narrows the search quite quickly.) If you can find one substantive article-space change in 200, you're doing good. (Quadruple bonus points if it's not a "pop culture" article.) –Outriggr § 01:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

How depressing. I just looked at the most recent 50, found just one substantial building-the-encyclopaedia edit, then deleted it as a copyvio. :-( Hesperian 01:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a good way of sampling what is currently being done, and the results are not at all what I expected - definitely cause for concern. Worldtraveller 15:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Semiprotection of GA and FA content

I'd like to see stable versions implemented as per other people here, but in the interim until this is available (it certainly doesn't seem on the near horizon from what I can tell) why can't we ensure our higher quality articles are a little more protected from inexperienced users and vandals by automatically semi-protecting them? It is currently far too easy for random people to negate the hard work done by people to bring an article to these higher standards. Over the long term, to prevent a high quality article from deteriorating you really need to have specialist knowledge related to the article itself - otherwise, besides the obvious vandalism it's difficult and time consuming to judge whether individual contributions are correct and improvements to the article. Does anyone think it's realistic for such experts to monitor their pet articles day-upon-day for the next X years or decades while Wikipedia exists? Semi-protection isn't a panacea, but it would raise the bar to help minimize the work of maintaining article quality, at least until something like stable versions arrives. (Caniago 01:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC))

I like this idea, in theory at least. High-traffic Featured Articles like Dinosaur are hit with nearly constant vandalism and unhelpful edits. We recently had a fellow who replaced the entire text of the article with bulleted points, and who got very indignant when his contributions were reverted. It's hard to maintain FA articles while trying to build up new ones. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem of new users making well-intentioned but obviously unhelpful changes is indeed a tricky one. Obviously, such changes need to be reverted aggressively, but you don't want to scare people away. Unfortunately, there is no clear place to ask for help in fending off particularly persistent editors of this sort. In general I think we should be less hesitant about reverting our featured articles. Aggressive reversion has a bad name but is the most powerful tool in the quality-maintainance toolbox for FAs and GAs. In many of the cases identified a few sections up, simply reverting to the featured version would have helped the article a lot, even if it rolled back a few positive edits as well. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Well said, Christopher. Unfortunately, reverting back to an earlier version cannot seriously be done for more than a few weeks or months. In the case of articles with information which is always evolving and ever-changing (such as the previously mentioned Dinosaur), it may not even be the best solution, though I cannot say what the "best" solution is. For now, the article remains on semi-permanent semi-protection, because of the near-constant IP vandalism. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Automated protection schemes

In order to reduce the amount of time spend patrolling for juvenile vandalisms I'd like to see page protection automated in an algorithmic manner based on page status, edit history and past protection. For example, a page that has N reverts of edits by anonymous users within a period of M days should get automatic semi-protection for P days. The values of N, M and P would vary based on past protection history and the GA/FA status of the page. — RJH (talk) 18:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

My comments

• Just because an article is not FA or GA does not mean it is not quality, therefore some of the assumptions in the article are invalid. How many articles have even been rated by wikiprojects in total?
• Not all subjects need or deserve more than a few sentences.
• "Core" articles = who cares. If they were all that "core" then people would be interested in them and improve them. There are plenty of resources on the interweb that cover them, why rewrite that which is written. Wikipedia's stength lies in its coverage of topics that normal -pedias miss.

-Ravedave ^{(Adopt a State)} 02:59, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Your first point is true, but we do need some measure by which we can estimate how many quality articles we have, and I can't think of a better one. WP:1.0/I shows that 290,000 articles have been assessed by projects, of which just over 2,000 are FA or A-class.

I very much agree with your second point. I don't want every single article to be 32kb or more, and I think the mania for articles that are 60-100kb in length is very damaging to the FA process. You could write 10 15kb articles in the time it takes to write one 60kb article, and while some topics of very great importance do deserve 60kb, tens of thousands of topics need nothing more than three or for paragraphs. These, though, still need to be of high quality.

As for core articles/vital articles, you ask why rewrite what's already written? But that's what we do with all articles. We summarise what is known, taking our information from Wikipedia:reliable sources. What we produce is distinct from what the rest of the web already has because it is freely licensed and freely available to everyone. But if we fail to produce good articles where other encyclopaedias traditionally succeed, then we're failing in our mission. Worldtraveller 09:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

All that needs to be done...

If a conscientious effort was made to improve the Vital articles and that effort was completed then you'd have a strong base to work from. Those experts would improve the ancillary articles and you would create a core group of articles that experts would be interested in defending. There's no problem with having a sea of silly fun reads, if you know where the island of knowledge is located. FAs could fight for the privilege of being considered a Vital article.-BiancaOfHell 13:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

As an example, If I think the Computer Science article should be considered a Vital article, I would first have to get it up to FA status, and then state my case. All current Vital articles will remain so even though they're not all FAs. This is probably a great argument that many Wikipedians want to have. What is a Vital article? And you can only present an article to be considered as a Vital article if it has reached FA status, otherwise people will show up with all kinds of malformed arguments before they even fully know the subject.-BiancaOfHell 14:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Once these vital articles are created, how do you expect these articles to be defended against "the unwashed masses" for eternity? The effort required to defend our existing high quality articles is already consuming the time of the editors who could be spending it improving other articles. Besides, any general encyclopedia worth consulting is far more than just a 1000 "vital" articles. (Caniago 14:35, 13 February 2007 (UTC))

It's a start. As I said, the pool of Vital articles will increase, and you can only present FAs for consideration. With such a focus on high quality important articles you will find people gravitating towards writing potential FAs that can be later considered as Vital articles. It's a noble effort so you will find more people willing to defend vital knowledge rather than any of 1.6 million articles. There's a little more essentiality to Vital articles than there is to an FA about a song or a video game. And "offense is the best defense", and the sooner this idea gets off the ground the sooner awareness can be brought to a new mission at Wikipedia.-BiancaOfHell 14:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I think your notion of what is vital on wikipedia is noble, but a little quaint. You only need pick a random article here and then Google for the same term to see that for many articles, whether they meet your vital criteria or not, they are often in the top 3 results on Google. I would consider any wikipedia article which either has a high number of visitors, or is near the top of the Google search results to be a "vital" article. If people are consulting Wikipedia as a reference for a particular topic in preference to alternative sources, we need to be providing them with high quality material. (Caniago 15:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC))

Yeah, what is vital is going to be a great argument, and a vicious one. Some people think Britney Spears is vital and can argue well for that, others might think David Mamet is vital, others Computer Science. I think that this argument is extremely important, and needs to be started now. But not here. In the Vital article process.

[outdented] So I see these steps needed to move forward

1. Come up with an initial idea of what a "Vital article" is, and agree to call them "Vital articles" or something else.
2. Find someone like Raul654 to run the show.
3. Start improving those Vital articles to FA status.-BiancaOfHell 15:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I also think that the Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great articles need to be permanently protected, with a 10 day wait list or something. A lot of people wouldn't mind improving them, except their efforts would be in vain and terribly difficult because of all the reverts and vandalism. I don't know what the debates are on protecting those articles. Do those unprotected articles help to concentrate vandalism on a select few popular articles lessening damage to less often watched articles?-BiancaOfHell 15:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, Julius Caesar has had around 11 vandalisms today, 8 reversions, and maybe 3 tiny improvements. — jesup 02:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this proposal just another version of what the Wikipedia CD-ROM project is trying to do? They have already classified and graded a few thousand articles so that they know which ones are vital to a CD-ROM release. Most Wikipedia projects also have a ready-graded importance scale for articles in their fields of interest. Why not simply have people contribute to articles high up on those existing importance scales? Let's simply suggest to editors that they put their efforts into getting the topmost articles up to FA status (well, I think we already are)? What about the Wikipedia article creation and improvement drive? They too have a mechanism to pick the most important articles by some complex voting scheme and then have people pile in to improve the most important article that comes up each week. We don't need yet another layer of bureaucracy. What we are short of is people to actually DO the things that all of this bureaucracy is setting itself up to direct and judge. Dragging more people into this pointless waffling is strongly counter-productive. There are already plenty of ways to direct effort where it's needed and to judge the results - all we are missing is some committed editors to actually do the work. The Wikibureaucracy needs some drastic slimming down - not bloating. SteveBaker 20:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

"Few thousand" → "almost 300,000". ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

If people worked on the most important articles first, that would be great. But the question is a) why haven't they, up until now, and b) how can we encourage intensive work on the core topics? Just saying to people 'it would be really great if you worked on this set of articles' is unlikely to lead to any sudden rapid onset of work on them, I don't think. Worldtraveller 20:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, nothing you do will help. Wikipedia editors are generally here to edit topics that interest them personally; very few will go and work on some arbitrary artile X merely because someone told them it's very important.

On a practical level, a decent approach may be to try and draw the relevant WikiProjects into fixing up those of the vital articles that fall under their purview; but if you really want to see improvements to articles of your choice—rather than those which the editors choose—you'll basically need to come up with some motivating factor beyond "oh, it's very important". Kirill Lokshin 20:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

ahem :-) Regarding "very few will go and work on some arbitrary artile X merely because someone told them it's very important", that is exactly the job that FAR regulars do daily :-) I've had the pleasure of working to preserve featured status on many articles I find distinctly distasteful and far outside of my realm of interest. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

My point exactly: note how many FAR regulars there are! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:59, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

ah, point taken. It's hard work to save someone else's abandoned article. Well, then consider this advertising—maybe some folks will come help. Right now I'm in search of a Dutch editor to help Fanny Blankers-Koen. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I think for so called "trusted editors" the bureaucratic process does need slimming down. However for the random IP contributors and new users more sand boxing needs to be put in place to limit the amount of damage they can do, particular to our good quality content, and the effort required by everyone else to fix it. (Caniago 03:50, 14 February 2007 (UTC))

[outdented] Having a Vital article stamp would help make the decision for others on what they want to contribute to. It's a goal to achieve. Otherwise, I can tell you no one's going to show up, but if suddenly you have thousands of articles in which you can achieve a VA with, they're going to get more attention. Not only are you achieving FA, but afterwards you can achieve VA. It would work. The reason I improved the Aaron Sorkin article is specifically because I wanted to achieve FA. Now, maybe I'd be more inclined to tackle some of the much more difficult Science articles if there was a possibility of a VA at the end of the road. There are articles which are MUCH more difficult to do than others, and it just so happens most of those articles are Vital articles. Let's reward people for choosing to improve those MUCH more difficult articles.-BiancaOfHell 22:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Or endlessly discuss alternatives when it's pretty clear that this VA idea has legs. Will I improve the David Mamet article next, or will I tackle the Computer Science article? Both are FAs, one is also a VA.-BiancaOfHell 22:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Your proposal doesn't address the underlying problems with Wikipedia. Nobody develops open source software (Firefox, Linux, etc) using the sort of open free-for-all Wikipedia provides, so what makes you think it is possible to develop a reliable encyclopedia using it? We have a hard enough time defending the 3,000 GA and FA articles, let alone the >100,000 articles needed to build an comprehensive reference. If the systematic problems in Wikipedia can be fixed I think you would see more people willing to contribute to building better quality content. (Caniago 02:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC))

The OpenSource software situation has similarities. People work on things that they need - or that interests them. There are 'holes' in the availablility of OpenSource software - things that nobody much wants to work on. For example - Tax preparation software. Everyone would love to be able to do their taxes using Linux and free software - but there really isn't anything out there with much support because writing Tax software is tough and it's boring. Projects like games or game support tools that are fun to work on get lots of support - things that 'scratches an itch' like browers and email clients also get lots of support...but Tax software?!? Hell no. The issue of openness is a little more patchy. Most OpenSource projects (and ALL of the ones I run) will allow anyone to contribute once they've signed up to be a project member...which is a little harder than getting a Wiki account - but not much more. The difference - and the thing that stops vandalism in its tracks - is that each piece of software (think: "Each Wikipedia Article") has an owner - that person lets people into the project and can kick them out and revert their changes if they are a pain in the ass. The Wikipedia analogy would be if some editor "owned" their own set of articles and could ban people from editing his article if they were disruptive. This would be a big problem though because that editor might do a terrible job and have a crappy article - and it would be hard for the community to get rid of that. In OpenSource software this happens all the time - but we frequently have many, many pieces of software that do essentially the same thing but in different ways and with different degrees of success. The end user picks the one that everyone is talking about and uses that...the ones that have no users generally get no contributors - so they die out eventually. The good ones flourish and come to dominate the others. If we followed that analogy in Wikipedia, you'd have to have many articles on the exact same topic - some of them containing utter bullshit - others being really good quality. Somehow readers would have to figure out which version of the article was a good one - and the most popular versions would somehow gain prominance. That's a weird model for writing an encyclopedia - but it would have it's advantages. When there is a major flame war about two different viewpoints - you'd simply end up with two articles - one expressing each view. Somehow, I don't think we can stretch the analogy that far. SteveBaker 17:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

If getting an FA star doesn't motivate someone to work on nature or science or any other very broad topic, why will getting a VA tag motivate anyone? Particularly when the emphasis is on these very broad articles that historically get little interest, because it's substantially harder in a wiki environment to treat a broad topic superficially than a narrow topic deeply. Opabinia regalis 03:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

And there is even an attendant risk that by telling people "Your article isn't vital" - and therefore cannot ever get the ultimate "platinum star with diamonds" of a VA+FA - that you'll actually put people off working on FA's in general. I just don't think this helps in any way - all it does is add yet another layer of WikiBureaucracy - more committiees - more policies - more guudelines - more wasted effort. If this matters so much then there is already a perfectly usable importance system in place in the Wikipedia CD-ROM project - if you want to work on getting 'important' articles through FAC - then go to it - the graded importance list already exists. Personally, I want to write about what I know and love and understand and have shelves full of books (aka 'references') to use in my researches (which happens to be old English cars - never likely to be a VA topic). I have little interest or knowledge or reference books to deal with Automobile (although I've done some pretty serious re-org work on it - there is no way in hell I could get that through FAC). SteveBaker 17:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I don't see the point of this, although I do suspect that people are more realistic about their assessments of what is or isn't 'vital' than what is or isn't 'featured-quality'.

If we must have a new process, then what we need is a meaningful and organized way to evaluate 'excellent short articles', which was the original purpose of GA before it got derailed into... whatever it is now. FA has a functional length requirement; it gets waived from time to time but something like Oops-Leon - about which there was some GA dispute - is never going to be an FA because there just isn't enough information to fill out an FA-sized article. If we're going to be placing so much emphasis on these assessment schemes (which I disagree with, but that's another point), then we need a way to say 'this article isn't very big, but it's big enough and good enough for the topic it covers'. Opabinia regalis 03:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Criticism Doesn't Ask WHY

One reason I could see why this occurs is that new editors and a huge group of current editors are really ignorant and unaware of the policies of Wikipedia. I see tonnes of edits made which fails WP:V, don't even rely on references. Then when references are used, it is a blog or a primary source. Rarely does a reference appear that passes WP:RS. I see so much WP:OR it drives me nuts. Certain subsections of wikipedia such as TV show summaries do not follow policy much. They just cite the TV show as a primary source and then write up the plot. Why should we allow such an analysis on Wikipedia without reliable sources? Even worse, these fiction articles seem to produce lazy editors who do not know anything about WP:V, WP:RS, WP:OR or any of the notability guidelines. This is what I precieve to be the real root of the issue. --Quirex 14:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that something like 30-50% of the articles I've worked on don't meet V. You see, V didn't become policy until well after I joined the wiki. I had created perhaps 1000 new/rewritten articles by that point, and I have little interest in slogging through them to go add a ref I've long ago forgotten. It doesn't mean those refs don't exist, nor could you possibly infer the information is any less accurate. All it means is that I didn't post a ref in the currently accepted format. I'm sure you do see "tonnes of edits" that fail V, but I remain unconvinced it has any meaning. Maury 15:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:V doesn't require sources to be explicitly cited except for facts that are "challenged or likely to be challenged". It seems to be a fad lately to think that WP:V states that sources are required for every paragraph, or every fact, or something like that. CMummert · talk 15:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

If people added tags in an article over statements it means the fact/statement is challenged and thus needs a citation. I don't think this fad is bad as it makes OR very obvious. That said whether or not everything has to be cited or referenced doesn't get around the fact people are unaware of the policies themselves and thus make poor edits. If you look at many AFDs people talk about how they feel and not about how this article does or doesn't violate policy. This is especially noticable with anything to do with WP:WEB. This is a general feeling I get. --Quirex 17:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Bad faith move

I find the moving of this article's title from "Wikipedia is failing" to "Wikipedia is succeeding" to be a bad faith propaganda move. Wikipedia has problems. Those problems need to be fixed, not brushed under the rug. RunedChozo 17:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - well, it's because we got slashdotted. Having a discussion page entitled 'Wikipedia is failing' is misleading to outsiders - but we all recognise it for what it is - a place to discuss some specific issues with article quality. That Wikipedia is the only open/volunteer-driven/non-commercial ever to make it into the top ten web sites on the planet means that we are NOT failing. We are a runaway success - aside (arguably) from the Linux operating system, this is probably one of the greatest free/open projects in history, the greatest repository of human knowledge in history and the most widely read "book" in history. That's a success by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah - it would have been better not to be slashdotted with such a dramatic title. Would they have headlined it if this topic was "Problem with promotion of high importance articles to featured article status"? Hell no! Fortunately, Slashdot readers are generally pretty smart people - they'll see it for what it is. SteveBaker 18:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

My input

After reading this essay and other editor's commments on it, I feel that many important points have been raised. Will Wikipedia actually fail? I think that depends on what the goal of WP is. If it is to present encyclopedic knowledge; then no, it will not fail. If the goal is to present NPOV encyclopedic knowledge; then yes, it will fail. I think the problem is not in the quality of the writing (some of the best writing I have seen on here is in Pokemon articles), but it is in so many editors trying to push their opinions in many of these articles (especially in "high-profile" ones). Unfortunately, this is something that I do not foresee changing. Through my RC patrol, I have seen countless number of arguments in articles because of conflicting opinions. This, however, is what make WP so good (the fact that anyone can edit). Yet, this is what also makes WP somewhat unreliable in that one side of the argument will "win" if they have a larger faction.

This is very common. I have been abused by islamic editors numerous times. RunedChozo 17:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Another reason with why WP could fail may be due to the sheer number of administrators. I strongly feel that admins are a vital, integral part of WP but there seems to be more than is possibly necessary. Through the past couple of months of me editing WP, I have had the pleasure of meeting several knowledgeable, helpful and all-around pleasant admins. However, I have also, unfortunately, met some most disagreeable ones. Not everyone is going to be nice on here, however, I feel that admins should represent WP to the best of their ability and should not abuse those privileges as I have seen on several occasions. That, as a whole, brings down morale here.

I strongly agree with Denial's idea about a reward system. That way, people do get an incentive to be better editors. Several times I have asked myself why do I continue to fight vandals or edit pages that will just be reverted by someone trying to push their POV. I have yet to find an answer. However, I have noticed that after the two times I have received barnstars, my edit numbers went up and I felt good about what I am doing here. Rewards work. MetsFan76 17:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The real Wikipedia is succeding

I think we have to distinguish between Wikipedia as it really is and what its power structure seems to think it is or wants it to be. The real Wikipedia derives it authority from the collective knowledge, wisdom and commitment of thousands of editors, not from cited sources. Most articles are written be people who think they know their subject, not by someone sitting in some library abstracting info from secondary sources. What the V RS OR NPOV NOT et al policies really accomplish is providing experienced editors tools needed to control undesirable abuses of the system. These tools themselves depend on the judgment and good will of the editors and administrators who use them, not rote application. If they were enforced thoroughly and uniformly, most of Wikipedia would evaporate.

Wikipedia is an experiment in decentralized content creation. The result is a resource that hundreds of millions of people use, a resource that no centralized organization could duplicate even if it had billions of dollars to spend. The quality of Wikipedia is best judged, in my opinion, not by reading random articles--there is plenty of junk-- but by selecting topics you know about and topics you've always been curious about and looking them up, then folowing the links from those articles. I've done both many times. Sure, I encounter articles that need work. But I am generally very impressed with what I find. And it is usully easy to spot bad information.

The real question in my mind is whether Wikipedia is sustainable. Will the ratio of good editors to bad stay high enough as the initial excitement wears off and when most of the topics editors know about have been written about. It may be that a new phase will be required where more of the work goes into certifying articles and maintaining stability. Just because such a second phase may be needed doesn't by any means guarantee that there will be enough volunteers to carry it out. What this article demonstrates is the the FA and GA mechanisms have little hope of being what the next phase needs. They are too bureaucratic and labor intensive and, at the end, articles can drift away from the version that was approved.

Maybe what is neded is not a single certification process, but a mechanism for incorporating many such processes and allowing decentralized groups to develop and implement their own. This could include Citizendium, FA, GA and others that might be proposed. Guidelines might be needed to insure some degree of neutrality. We should put more effort into coming up with ways such processes can hook into Wikipedia and encourge experimentation about the certification methods themselves. I think that's the only way we will find out what really works for us. --agr 18:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

• Interesting ideas Arnold. My only problem is that WP is so inundated with guidelines right now that anymore could just cause a meta-physical catastrophe. I think a change is needed to ensure the quality of the writing here but it just seems too many admins/editors are focusing more on guidelines and less on the writing. MetsFan76 18:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

What I am suggesting are guidelines as to what constitutes an acceptable article certification process, not more guidelines for individual articles. These might incude open discussion, written judging criteria (subject to interpretation, of course), providing feedback, no partisan groups, no single individuals, etc. --agr 18:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well I definitely agree with you there, unfortunately, WP is riddled with partisan groups, especially with certain articles. MetsFan76 19:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent points Arnold. I think it's important that we consider the ratings are the problem, not the articles. In fact, I think we need to stop and ask what these ratings do, if anything. They don't appear to improve the actual articles, and they seem to take up a lot of time, so what's the point? Maury 20:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

In some sense the {{grading scheme}} is a form of decentralized certification, identifying the better and more important articles in a given project. I've though for some time it might be a good idea to have a project specific peer review for articles to gain A-class status (just a little shy of FA), and B+ status (a mathematics specific grading for the better B-class articles). This could be a quicker process than FA/GA and might help stimulate projects to improve their articles. It would also raise the status of A-class articles giving some form of comunity validation to those articles. --Salix alba (talk) 20:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It's doable (e.g. WP:MHA#A-CLASS), but requires a fairly large and active project to function consistently; it's probably not an option for most smaller projects. Kirill Lokshin 00:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be worth have a discussion of what we want certification processes to do that is separate from specific examples. Here are some possibilities, :

• An easy way to designate a candidate article for review
• Provisions for multiple certifications, maybe distinctive logos
• Mechanism for new reviewing process to be set up
• Mechanism for finding out what stands behind a reviewing process: who the reviewers are, what qualifications they claim what viewpoint they represent, what criteria are used (might not be Wikipedia's)
• An easy way to see the version of the article that was actually reviewed
• The ability to add content that is distinct from reviewed content, perhaps in an editable coda that included errata, subsequent developments and the like
• Provisions to get expert approval as a separate form of validation.
• Periodic review and consolidation of proposed additions.

I know some of these ideas have been proposed before, but I think there is a need to discuss what we want to accomplish and different ways of doing that without getting bogged down in specific proposals.--agr 02:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

What ticks me off when I'm editing a page

I was watching live scores online for a Martina Hingis match a week ago. When the match was over, I went over to wikipedia to look at the Hingis page. I thought I may as well update the stats. There's a LOT of them. Within a few minutes, I had the basic stats up. I thought I was quick, but the page for Hingis' opponent was updated within 30 seconds of the match ending. Where else can you get info updated this quickly? So I looked around and updated all the other stats on the Hingis page as well as a couple pages for the tournament she was in. I also added a little paragraph because she broke a record for most tournaments won at that event previously held and tied by both herself and Davenport. I thought this might be useful info. I even sourced it. Within 30 min, someone came in and said there was too much info and deleted most of what I wrote. It happens all the time. People are apparently good at nitpicking little details, but suck at actually writing useful content. You can debate this all you want, but I don't see why deleting such a small amount of words would matter. Anyways, this was negative reinforcement and I never want to contribute again. You have editors where it's their way or the highway. So what you have is turf wars.

I especially hate the citation needed tag. I see this on things that can be verified in the real world, but because you can't find it online, then it's claimed to be unverified. Well no. It's unverified by you! Not unverified by anyone who cares to look using traditional means. And usually to find info on someone, I value words from the person him or herself. Yet wikipedia has a rule not to allow people update info relating to them. I can just imagine what the Alan Kay page has on the term Object Oriented. Is he not allowed to say how he came about coining the term? Can nothing be used that comes from him? What about Neil Armstrong? Are we not allowed to quote him saying "One giant leap for mankind"? If I want to be ticked off in no uncertain way or if I want a flame war, I know exactly where to go: HERE! Also, citation required when you state where the info was broadcast such as a news show with the date should be enough. But no. Citation needed.

But for those wondering what wikipedia has right is the general information. And current events are stored in the discussion page, even if editors don't like this. The general public LOVES it. I rarely encounter a page where I don't find most of the info I want, or at least a starting point. I think wikipedia is failing because the really useful (FA) information has to faught with blood for it to get included. People consider the rules to be literal. Rules are supposed to have intent. If a rule would obstruct or otherwise make an article less valuable, it should be put aside for the good of the article.

I had the same problem trying to get information on the various PSP firmware revisions added to the PSP page, an editor who thought he owned the page was continually reverting it off and harassing me. Who did the admins beat up? You guessed it, the new guy, they didn't do jack shit about his harassment of me. They're still at it even after another editor added the content I'd originally suggested to the article now. This is why wikipedia's going to die. People like me who actively want to make it better are way outnumbered by the stuck up admin snobs who get off on harassing people and the POV cliques who think they own the articles. RunedChozo 19:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

My 2 cents repeated from Reddit because you (might) benefit most

The reason the encyclopedic content of Wikipedia would be "failing" FLOABT is because there is no tracking of the number, size, quality and conflict of content in different areas of knowledge.

Quality: People don't up or down vote the quality of an article like articles are on Everything2 (which on E2 is itself a very subjective and flawed measure).

Content Coverage: There's no massive "tree" like on the directories for Google and DMOZ.org that says we have N articles on Materials Science and only M articles on Geology, so we need to focus on content here and there.

Size: Do number of words in an article count as quality? Why not an "overview/in brief" version of each article with a more in depth version for those who want more detail? When the dog from Star Trek gets more coverage than the deity it's named after (Porthos) it's kind of odd.

Conflict: There is way too much conflict over content and editors argue over seemingly over-zealous and anal-retentive administrators. The original content for Marshall McLuhan was wiped because it was (drumroll for irony) ... an essay.

Suggestions:

1. A voting system from 1 to 10 (as opposed to strict yay or nay).
2. An enhanced category system that allows people to create lists and categories together to remove this dichotomy between the two along with a category article count.
3. "Node" a book or two. (E2's term.) This may be an idea for a different kind of school book report, ie we've got essay writing, review/regurgitate writing and then encyclopedic writing.
4. 24 hour "chill out" period before obviously non-vandal content gets deleted.

Merosonox 19:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

NOR

Just wondering: are essays exempt from NOR? Proteus71 19:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course - that applies to articles. Worldtraveller 19:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

questioning objectivity

In my oppinion, the quality isn't that bad. There are a lot of different people, a lot of different styles and you can't expect everybody to be a top author unless you write that into the posting requirements. After all this is a collective free-for-all approach and if someone does not like the quality s/he's free to improve it.

I am more concerned about the subjectivity of Wikipedia.

For example: We tried to get Dr. James Jim Hurtak a Wikipedia page. The people who have studied his work are sure he has brought a higher knowledge with his books. Most people on this planet will not agree (because they do not know it or do not care at all). That's fine, but he is a person with a great scientific and spiritual background, founder of a worldwide active non-profit organization, publisher of music, videos and multimedia art, has written a lot of papers, is frequently on major archeologic expeditions, has released a ton of audio tapes and seminar papers and the whole esoteric scene has based hundreds of books on his work. He failed the WP:RS because links to his book, organization, google.video, UNO speaker reference and some science links have not been enough. I suppose because most of his scientific colleagues don't dare to credit him because he is also related to spirituality. He is even already referenced in Wikipedia. In my oppinion: we don't have many people on this world we can be this proud about.

What I entirely fail to understand is: Why do we have over 50 bondage models in Wikipedia (sorry, no offense girls) and girls not even 15 years old that just have made ONE record (also no offense), but a man like J.J.Hurtak is denied an entry.

No question if the poeple mentioned above have deserved an entry. It seems that public known people get an entry here and that is ok. But I question the selection of the people. If an encyclopedia favors porn stars over spiritual/scientific stars then there is some balance needed. I can understand and accept that people are not into spirituality but the objectivity of Wikipedia is threatened if we do not honor the people who contribute massively to the human knowledge (notable in our oppinion or not).

My question is: is Wikipedia just another mainstream media or does it give room to the full spektrum? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MetaByte (talk • contribs) 20:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC).

Amazing amount of information

Wikipedia has information that NO OTHER encyclopedia in the world has.

Try and go to Encyclopedia Britannica and find an article on Radix Trees.

You can't.

Wikipedia has a breadth and a depth that is unsurpassed by any other publically and freely available repository of information.

I would call that one hell of a success.

Com2kid 21:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I would propose that the essay's definition of success is subjective. Featured articles require that "prose is compelling, even brilliant". From a technical point of view accuracy is more important that prose. Provided the prose is unambiguous and readable that is enough. Maybe Wikipedia is simultaneously a dismal failure to a professor of English and a roaring success to a professor of Physics? John Dalton 22:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a battle going on in Wikipedia. On one side are those who measure success as a proportion of good articles and are on the war path to delete what does not live up to their standards. On the other side are those who measure success by information content and think having the information in Wikipedia is more important than an overall impression. John Dalton 22:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It's better than that!

Like the previous poster, I find all kinds of great info here in Computer Science, Physics, and Mathematics that is nowhere else that I know of.

I have a PhD in Physics, so let me simply concentrate on a few Physics articles that I have read. Uniformly, 10 out of 10, they were good articles. Each was packed with accurate information and was a wonderful bringing-together of multiple perspectives. I remember thinking: I wish this had been around when I was a grad student at Caltech back in the 80's, and no class or professor could give such a concise and accurate treatment of many aspects of particle physics (my specialty).

Here is something I noticed: several of these very good articles are marked as "start class" or some such thing...which I guess is some sort of rating scheme. I think the ratings simply have not caught up with the quality of the contents.

64.128.85.2 22:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)Steve Otto

For topics where there are no shortage of knowledgeable editors, such as those you cite, its natural that the article quality will be quite good. However, for important domains where there are few knowledgeable editors contributing its a real struggle to maintain article quality in the face of hoards of uninformed editors, vandals, etc. In my area of interest we have a very small number of editors trying to maintain and improve over 1500 articles. I believe there are some fundamental changes to the way Wikipedia works which could improve the situation. (Caniago 22:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC))

I think Michael really hit the nail on the head. Many of the science articles are of good or even better status, mainly because it is scientists/educators/academics who are writing/contributing to them. Other articles that do not reach such status seems to be a result of constant squabbling among opposing, and many times, biased opinions. I would highly recommend most of the science/movies/TV shows/even Pokemon articles to people looking for information, but I would never, in good faith, direct them to any of the political/religious/racial articles; not because they aren't good, but because they tend to be too biased towards a particular "herd" opinion. MetsFan76 23:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Comments from User:Rfc1394

Moved from the article page... (Caniago 03:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC))

Comment: A number of articles may represent reference material of the 'duller than ditchwater' class of article, where someone reads it to look up something, like the list of counties for any U.S. State, or other tables. Nobody reads such articles for insight, they read them for reference material. There is quite a bit of history and information, for example, in the article List of counties in California, including county seats, maps showing locations, dates of establishment and so on, plus it's formed into a nice table for display. Yet even though it is accurate and insightful, it's a reference text, it's not something someone would read the way they would read, say, an article about a book or a movie.

Comment: Gresham's law says that 90% of everything is crud. Not everything will be excellent; the quality of an article is directly proportional to the interest of the persons who edit the articles and their knowledge of the subject. A person who might be a strong expert in the subject might simply look at an article, then dismiss it, without editing it since he knows that the article isn't very good it's not worth bothering over. Someone else might be willing to edit it but isn't that knowledgeable on the subject. There are people who use Wikipedia on a regular basis who have no idea that they can edit an article if they discover something that needs to be changed and might consider making changes here to be on the level of putting marks in one of their grade-school textbooks. It might be important to make it clear that we welcome input from anyone who has something relevant to add to an article.

Comment: Just because articles are not nominated for the "hall of fame", does not necessarily indict the article as being worthless or invalid. Many articles will probably be adequate or of reasonable quality to be useful without necessarily being outstanding. Whether we like it or not, to get outstanding requires more resources than are available; those who are experts in esoteric or valuable subjects are unlikely to contribute here where they get neither professional recognition, nor remuneration. Either we need some way to find people who are experts to cover subjects and perhaps pay them, or we need some way to encourage people who do have expertise in a particular subject to be encouraged to participate, perhaps by their employer.

Question: What's hard about the vital/core/overview articles?

Everyone here mostly agrees that our broad, general overview articles by and large suck, and that this is not a desirable state of affairs. Various drives and collaborations have failed to motivate people to do significant amounts of work on these articles. Some are neglected, with recent edits consisting almost entirely of vandalism and its reversion (biology, history) and some are bogged down in long-term disputes about how to rework them (physics). I think it's interesting that, at a glance, biographies and geography/places account for most of the high-quality assessed articles in the VA list; these are articles whose subjects (and projects) lends them an intuitive narrative structure missing in something like nature or weapon.

Most of the vital articles look 'okay' at first glance - they aren't stubs, they have images, they aren't overly specific or technical, and so on (though there are serious clunkers; see Hammurabi). A closer look usually reveals structural problems; my very quick random click-through found poor prose and external link farms on quite a few. Virtually none of the non-FAs have adequate leads. They usually do have some references, but not up to current standards, even the current FAs. (And by that I mean 'just a list of books at the end', not the 'you didn't use my favorite footnote format, so I'm going to piss in your cornflakes' argument that keeps coming up.)

So: we know that, in the aggregate, these articles aren't very good. We know that people have resisted efforts to get them to work on these articles. We already know they're not all that fascinating, but people do edit articles they don't find fascinating for the sake of expanding coverage, so why not these? Before trying to come up with some sort of incentive, as proposed above, we should know why these articles collectively get neglected. My initial thoughts, outside the personal-interest factor:

• I don't know who the audience is. I can reasonably anticipate the needs of someone looking up sequence alignment or proteasome, but when a reader looks up biology in an encyclopedia, I don't know what it is he's looking for. I tend to view these overview articles as essentially hypertrophied disambiguation pages: if you wanted the history of biology, here's a short summary and a link to the main article; if you wanted evolution, look here; if you wanted taxonomy, look there, etc. These articles evidently get a lot of traffic - if we take vandalism levels as a proxy measure for readership - but I honestly don't know who's reading them (as opposed to looking up man in the hopes of writing 'has a penis' after every occurrence of the word).

• There's a reason everyone skips section 1 of chapter 1 in their textbooks. Biology texts inevitably start with a few pages of pablum about 'diversity of life' and no one ever reads it. Even defining the scope of these broad topics is difficult without lapsing into triviality.

• Practical considerations. These articles are hard to edit because of all the vandalism. They're also hard to edit because most clueless but earnest newbies can recognize that they're unqualified to edit technical articles like Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector, but every high school kid who just finished his midterm thinks he's qualified to edit physics.

Thoughts? Opabinia regalis 04:15, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The biggest problem I see is that all these articles are high profile enough that any attempt at a major change will promote a large dispute. It is practically impossible, if you make a large and bold change, to avoid charges of pushing a POV or otherwise damaging the article. The result is that people who don't want to fight don't edit the article. The fact that Wikipedia lacks a good framework for enticing people to work collaboratively aggravates this problem. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I would add as a second point that because of the breadth of the topic, synthesis of a large amount of literature is crucial to writing such an article. You can't simply compile facts, rather you have to exert a keen editorial eye as to what is important and what is not, and summarize briefly the message of entire bodies of literature. Not only are the products of this synthesis often controversial, as addressed in my previous comments, but they do not work well within the framework of Wikipedia's citation requirements. Those requirements encourage articles not to synthesize and to instead list specific, easily citable-facts. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty that are not controversial - virtually the whole of the last three sections, technology, mathematics and measurement, for example - and could be brought up to scratch relatively easily: prompted by this, I am currently looking at radian and parsec. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia tends towards the granular, where the details, the explanations, and in some cases only a handful of sources are. It's why there's this recurring idea that "Every X should have an article" where X is anything from webcomics to high schools to pro football players (individual grains, if you will). It's also why there are so many stubs, because in many cases every X does have an article. Nifboy 07:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Chris, I was going to put your second point on the list, but thought it might pertain too specifically to articles in my area of interest. It's been such a hassle getting some topics' articles referenced at all that the ongoing 'a footnote for every fact' argument is, in the larger picture, somewhat peripheral. In the rare case where I've tried to write a general article, though, I agree that this is a stumbling block; I'm just not sure it's a central one (if I may mix a metaphor ;)

The first point seems true of some articles but not others - I gave the example of physics above, a rewrite of which has apparently been a source of dispute and deadlock for months - but a lot of the VAs just look sloppy and unmaintained. Biology hasn't had a content edit in over a month, and the most recent surviving one to force, as far as I can tell, was in November. Earth science takes my disambig analogy to an unreasonable extreme. I'm not sure a massive rewrite of one of these would attract much notice. The ones that have a resident defense force tend to be the ones that are already in a defensible state - not great, but at least usable.

Do we have an article for every X because it's easier to write ten short articles than one long one? Out of a sense of completeness? Because you have to fill in the red links after you've made the nav template? Opabinia regalis 07:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a particularly stupid essay

Look, I'd appreciate a good essay that shows me why Wikipedia is failing. However, the assumptions here are: all articles that aren't featured are crap or mediocre and that FA article quality declines over time. It assumes that 1.6 millions articles are terrible, and 3,000 are very good. It assumes that featured articles get worse over time. Sure, that sometimes happens, but rarely in my view. What has happened is that FAC has become more discerning when it comes to quality, and FA article sthat used to be seen as FA quality no longer reach that standard as the standard has risen - not that the article has decreased in quality!!!!! When seen in this light, it makes many of these assertions look pretty dopey really.

This is a particularly stupid response. The assumptions are that articles that haven't been assessed as being the very best are not the very best, articles that have been assessed as good are good, articles that have been assessed as B-class, start class or stubs are mediocre to poor. I haven't assumed that FAs get worse over time, I've offered concrete evidence to show that they do. You can offer a view but it's meaningless without evidence to back it. It seems very strange to me to say how great it is that articles aren't declining in quality but were never actually good enough in the first place. Worldtraveller 10:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The open questions, by the way, are either misleading or the wrong questions to be asking. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I can only speak for the Philosophy article, which I mentioned above, and which has steadily got worse over the course of 20,000 edits. Much the same applies to the philosophy sub-articles. Generally WP is good for science and maths and fan-stuff. For humanities in general it's a disaster zone. Dbuckner 09:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Not sure I'd agree it's so great for science either, Dbuckner. In astronomy at least, there are several FAs but many basic concepts have articles that aren't up to scratch. What's good is very good but there's not nearly enough of it. Worldtraveller 10:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with TBSDY here. Our purpose is to provide people with encyclopedic articles which they will find useful/interesting/helpful/valuable/informative/whatever. The fact that Wikipedia has such a high readership is due to the wealth of topics we cover here, and people will understand quite well that we cannot have featured or even lengthy articles on all the topics. For goodness sake, only a small proportion of the articles in Brittanica have sufficient content to meet our featured article standards, and that encyclopedia is still considered highly respectable. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

No, we cannot have lengthy articles on everything and nor should we, but surely, surely, you'd like to see us having an excellent article on all the topics we cover. Britannica will be more respectable than Wikipedia for a long time because a) it's written by experts, b) it's not open to be vandalised, c) the standard of articles is homogeneous and high.

One of the things that makes me sad about the failures I've identified is that part of the mission was always to distribute an encyclopaedia as cheaply as possible to schools and the like. A print version, a CD or something like that. But whenever I've tried to collect a bunch of articles together to make things like a Wikireader, I've found that most are not good enough to go into print, not by a long way. Worldtraveller 10:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

To respond to your points regarding Brittanica's respectability, a) An attempt to write Wikipedia with expert reviewers was a dismal failure (Nupedia), b) The ability for anyone to edit is the exact reason why Wikipedia is as large as it is today, c) I have the full version of Britannica on CD-ROM and several of the articles (often on small places, but otherwise as well) would be classified as "stubs" on Wikipedia.

Obviously, I would like all the articles we have to be excellent. Indeed, there are very many things which I want but realize that I cannot get, and where I will be satisfied with what I have. The last article I created, on Haugastøl is not a good, great, excellent or featured article. But it is still better than the corresponding article in my Norwegian Aschehoug encyclopedia (which, being written in 1970, is so old that it has nothing at all about the now preserved station building), and far better than the Britannica which has no article on the subject whatsoever. Even though the article I created probably is below average in quality compared to all our other articles, I cannot possibly perceive a reason why we would be better off without it. I have in my two years here, written no featured articles, yet I am pretty pleased with my contributions, and sincerely hope and believe that the articles have been useful and informative to the readers. If they have been, I think the contributions I have made can be deemed "successful". You are using the wrong benchmark for success, it is the broadness and depth of the information we provide and the pointers for where people can find more information, which makes Wikipedia such a valuable website. It has not been, is not, and should not be the quality of articles people come to Wikipedia for. To me, the standards you seem to set for articles to be alright seem to be far too exclusionary, and in direct contradiction to the editing policy. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Sjakkalle: You say our purpose is to provide people with encyclopedic articles that the general public will find "useful/interesting/helpful/valuable/informative ". You seemed to have missed out the words 'accurate' and 'correct' here. Some of us care about those words, too. Dbuckner 11:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Sjakkalle, what would happen to the quality of these articles should you decide to leave Wikipedia (assuming there isn't someone else as knowledgeable as you about the topics around to maintain them)? (Caniago 12:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC))

Of course, accurate and correct are important qualities. But then again, information which is not accurate or correct is not very useful, interesting, helpful or valuable. If I left Wikipedia... I cannot be sure what would happen to the quality of the articles. In general, most of the articles I have made have been left mostly untouched since I created them, with the exception of minor fixes, removal of typos, recategorisation and so on. I have not yet seen any of them get progressively worse as time went on, and I do watchlist the stuff I create. There are some, such as Battle of Vågen which have improved immensely through the work of others. I would be hopeful that any deliberate vandalism or insertion of random nonsense will be caught by the vandalism patrollers (their work has been, remains, and will remain indispensible) but you can never be sure. Vandalism is something Wikipedia will need to contend with as long as we remain open to edit and that does bother me. Most of the articles I have created are sourced up to the point that somebody could go through the sources and check the truthfulness of the article (though the person would need to understand Norwegian on many of them.) There is however a big gulf between "having problems and concerns" and "failing". Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's problems are so systemic it will take a revolution, a new Project ... or worse

I quit WP earlier today and then saw this article at slashdot. I thought I'd come and make another post, simply pointing to my user page as to why I left. Good luck with changing things from within. I think it will never happen, except perhaps after WP becomes subject to a long, costly lawsuit over someone's biography. CyberAnth 10:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The other essay

A couple of people have taken it upon themselves to add 'balance' to this essay. It doesn't require balance; it sets out with a narrow objective, to show that there are reasons to consider that Wikipedia is failing. There is another essay at WP:WINF, where it would be more productive to add your material. Compare WP:NGR and WP:WWISG for an equivalent situation. Worldtraveller 14:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

So long as this essay is in WP space, it seems to me that everyone is free to edit it - if you want to own it, you should put it in your userspace. CMummert · talk 14:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The mission of the article is to assess whether Wikipedia is failing, no? That's why it begins with a rhetorical question

“ Is Wikipedia succeeding in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable encyclopedia? ”

Therefore, to show that it is failing, you must address its failures in terms of the accepted standard criteria applied to encyclopedias. Then we will all have a better understanding of how Wikipedia is failing, and what we can do to fix it. Willow 14:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

That sentence continues, here are some illustrations of ways in which it is not fulfilling that aim. That is what the essay sets out to do - illustrate some ways in which it is not fulfilling its aims. There are already plenty of pages extolling its virtues, and this set out to highlight problems. It's not called 'Is Wikipedia failing?', it's called 'Wikipedia is failing'. There is a page called WP:WINF which is the ideal place for all your material. It's not appropriate to put it here. And it's especially inappropriate to bump all the original material right down to the bottom of the page. Worldtraveller 14:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that you have reverted the material three times this morning, so one more would put you over WP:3RR. Although you may feel some personal attachment to the original goal of your essay, it is in WP space. CMummert · talk 14:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

CMummert, please don't start with the WP:3RR warning. Worldtraveller is absolutely correct in his reverts. The article was structured incredibly bad (see my statement below). The article is titled "Wikipedia is failing." If that is the title, then the article should be structured in a way to address that first. Then it should be followed by opposing views. I do not believe that they should be omitted completely, but should be placed after the views of Why Wikipedia is failing are stated. MetsFan76 14:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I intentionally didn't reintroduce the material after Worldtraveller's third revert. I am just pointing out that Worldtraveller seems to have ownership issues with this essay, and he/she appears to be edit warring rather than discussing the way that the essay should be structured. CMummert · talk 14:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I certainly don't have 'ownership issues'. The point is, adding huge amounts of opposing viewpoint is simply inappropriate. If you went to WP:NGR and added a load of positive stuff at the beginning, that would also be inappropriate. If I went to WP:WWISG and added a load of negative stuff, that would also be inappropriate. This essay considers measures by which Wikipedia could be considered to be failing, Additions should remain within that scope. Discussion can take place here. Worldtraveller 14:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The scope is covered by consensus, not by fiat. The fact that other people keep adding material outside what you consider the scope to be indicates that your opinion may not be the consensus one. CMummert · talk 15:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually Worldtraveller, opposing views may be appropriate as I mentioned before. This is to give readers a broader spectrum of the viewpoints. I haven't read WP:NGR or WP:WWISG but I definitely intend to today. If their formats include opposing views, then that should probably be reflected here as well. Opposing views should come later on though. For example: If the title of the article was The Sky is Blue, nobody would start the article by stating why the sky is not red, they would provides references and examples as to why the sky is blue. But that is what seems to be the case here. People are trying to dilute the claims as to why WP is failing by inundating the article with all the opposing views first and circumventing the main idea. While I may not agree wholeheartedly that WP is failing, I think this article is a very important one. MetsFan76 15:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Changing of the essay

I am a little concerned with how the essay is structured as opposed to yesterday. If the title of the article is "Wikipedia is failing", then the opening paragraph should not give opposing views by comparing WP to EB nor should all the evidence be presented first. The essay should be re-structured giving views as to why WP is failing followed by all the evidence provided as to why it will not. However, I don't think anything should be deleted as opposing views can open up a great debate! Unfortunately, what I see here is exactly what I discussed in this talk page earlier: editors pushing a POV and basically burying what the main theme of the article is about but relegating to the bottom of the article. Because this is not on a userpage, it can be edited by anyone, but please, do it the right way. MetsFan76 14:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm totally in favour of discussion and debate. I want to reassure you that I haven't deleted anything, I moved it all to WP:WINF. I'm totally opposed to people trying to obscure and suppress the points made in this article by swamping it with their own analysis of completely different points to those considered here. The essay's narrow focus needs to be maintained, opposition needs to be expressed on the talk page or in WP:WINF, and people need to stop seeing it as a major threat - some people really seem to be taking personal offence at it. My intention was to spark discussion, and I'm very happy it's been successful with that. It would be much better if people, rather than spending time attacking me and this essay, set to work immediately on one or two vital articles and brought them up to the excellent quality we all want to see everywhere. Worldtraveller 14:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry Worldtraveller, you have my vote. I just feel that the opposing views should be left up to give readers a different opinion but those opinions should be stated after the reasons as to why WP is failing. MetsFan76 14:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I feel that it's enough to give a link to the opposing essay, WP:WINF. This essay simply sets out to show examples of measures by which Wikipedia could be considered to be failing, just as WP:NGR shows reasons why Wikipedia is not so great. That doesn't also contain all the information at WP:WWISG but stands on its own with a negative point of view. Worldtraveller 14:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no reason why all opinions cannot be accommodated in a single essay. The split makes it hard to follow what is going on, and makes the situation adversarial rather than collaborative. CMummert · talk 14:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

All opinions should be accommodated, but whose bright idea was it to completely distort the article? I haven't looked at the history yet but it has become clear that several individuals oppose this essay and are seeking to alter it so their POVs are read first. This is a classic example of some of the problems on WP. MetsFan76 15:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)