User talk:Jimbo Wales

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Amadigi di Gaula

Could I ask you a favor? Could you take a look at Amadigi di Gaula and tell me your opinion. Someone who seems to follow me and behaves as a troll added flags there. This person thinks I did something wrong, by adding a few lines from two articles which I found on internet. I contacted one of the authors, and he does not seem to be annoyed, on the contrary he is willing to help. But I really think I did not do something wrong. In fact I made references which is usually enough in academic circles. I contacted an experienced scientist and he told me if this person is not the author, I should not worry. But this wikipedian has different ideas, probably because he does not like me for some time. Nobody else seems to bother. The article is very poorly visited.

This person earlier hijacked George Frideric Handel's art collection which I started. He removed all the links to the Dutch and Italian painters and thinks he did a good job. I don't think he is a good pedagog. The link to this article from the main article Georg Frederick Handel is poor too, so nobody is going there to investigate. Taksen (talk) 16:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

You do not appear to understand Wikipedia's copyright policy. You must never copy material directly from a source without putting it in quotation marks, "like this", or in a quotation box. Never. Never, never, never. No matter how nice it is. When you do that, you put Wikipedia in the position of breaking the law. If you don't follow this rule, you will have to be blocked from editing. Looie496 (talk) 17:45, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I followed your advice. I hope it works.Greetings from Amsterdam.Taksen (talk) 18:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. In my point of view the English Wikipedia changed into something that reminds me to the GDR, where you cannot trust anybody. They are unwilling to help and might attack you not understanding the culture or on your language. Besides the rules on the continent are more layed back. We don't have as much lawyers as you have who would like to make a buck, and I can compare because I have experience on the Dutch, German and French Wikipedia. Taksen (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Ask 1,001 users: To User:Taksen, some English Wikipedia users might be more hostile than before, but there are many editors who keep trying to be civil and helpful, despite the thousands of editors who have left English WP during the past 2 years. There are hundreds of policy-point or guideline rules here, and someone could always complain over any of a hundred different issues. I think we still have over 30,000 editors who are somewhat active every month, so you would need to check with about 1,001 users to see if they are generally more hostile or not, but I agree the hostility can seem extreme at times. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:03, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I am stunned (and utterly demoralized) that this has landed here. Please see my response here (or preferably, since this is incredulous, please don't be bothered to see it). GFHandel ♬  08:56, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I think this study explains a lot: Can undergraduate students determine whether text has been plagiarized?. Taksen was clearly plagiarising, but may well not be aware of the fact. Hans Adler 09:30, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

The funny thing about that article is that even its author doesn't actually understand the rules: he thinks that paraphrasing is okay if the wording is altered enough. That's not true: plagiarism occurs whenever the wording is derived from the wording of the original version, regardless of how extensively it is modified. The only way to avoid plagiarism is to write entirely in one's own words (or to indicate explicitly that the wording of the original is being used). Looie496 (talk) 16:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

"plagiarism occurs whenever the wording is derived from the wording of the original version, regardless of how extensively it is modified" -- I don't think you can put it that way. When you summarise someone else's text it is perfectly normal and desirable to use the key words from the original text and follow its necessary structure. Plagiarism is when you also use non-essential aspects of the original text such as accidental formulations and accidental structure. Or when you get this right but omit the citation.

Can you point me to evidence that the author of the study really got this wrong? Hans Adler 17:17, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

My guess is that Looie496 is referring to the ethics of the situation: I would call it plagiarism if someone were to copy a few paragraphs from a source, then massage each sentence with the intention of making the result acceptable to copyright defenders, then paste it into an article. In such a case, the editor acted merely as a robot to perform a copy-with-modification. Wikipedia's reputation would be damaged if that occurred frequently. Johnuniq (talk) 22:49, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

That's definitely not what I described as acceptable, and I am not going to re-read the entire study to see if they somewhere say something indicating that the examples they considered acceptable were in fact not acceptable. Maybe Looie496 has seen the actual questions somewhere? I would be very much interested in seeing them. Hans Adler 22:57, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion regarding a message of yours re Wikipedia and democracy

FYI there is currently a discussion on a policy talk page in the section Wikipedia is not a democracy regarding a previous message of yours that is linked to from the policy. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
P.S. The discussion is just in the first part of the section, not the subsection. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
P.P.S. Strikeout because the formatting was changed (fixed) to place the off-topic subsection in its own section. --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there a particular question that you or someone else has? For what it is worth, I don't agree with Septentrionalis. Wikipedia really is not a democracy. Wikipedia is also not an experiment in consensus. Wikipedia is a project to write an encyclopedia. Anyone who thinks any other goal is higher has missed the point. As a project to write an encyclopedia we have elements of consensus, democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. All of those elements are valid so long as they serve the purpose of building an encyclopedia, and invalid when they get in the way of that. People who treat the project as a political game are missing the point.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 23:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Without disagreeing with your main point - that we are here to create an encyclopedia - I will point out that there is no human social activity (anywhere) that is devoid of politics. If we do not put the effort into constructing a functional political system of some sort, then what we will end up with is a dysfunctionally haphazard mess of conflicting political agendas, and that will interfere with the quality of the encyclopedia. In fact, it already does interfere: As a project we are incapable of resolving many contentious issues because there is no systematic method of addressing ideological divides (short of endless talk page disputes geared towards trumping up excuses to block or topic-ban one side of the dispute - is that what you consider a rational decision-making process for an encyclopedia?)

The project has been pulling an ostrich on this issue for far too long, if you ask me (not that you did… ). I don't really care what system we end up with (the system is secondary to the goal, as you point out), but we need some rational, consistent, un-neutered system, because the alternative is… well… talk:abortion, talk:cold fusion, talk:Race and intelligence, talk:creationism, talk:pregnancy, talk:Muhammad/images, talk:goatse.cx, talk:Messianic Judaism, etc, etc, etc… --Ludwigs2 00:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I thought Wikipedia was an experiment in child rearing; at least that's what some women here have noted. However, I also agree with some things User:Ludwigs2 has stated, and see the need to define some pro-active governance systems, such as randomized juries to decide issues, rather than the current they-all-respond-together WP:TAGTEAM !votes at WP:ANI, plus perhaps run anonymous or secret-ballot votes, where only the totals are revealed. -Wikid77 05:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

An experiment in child rearing? I have never heard of this before, but it makes sense. Fortunately my six-year-old daughter is a lot more mature than many Wikipedians. Hans Adler 08:06, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Did you just describe Wikipedia as a monarchy, Jimbo? --FormerIP (talk) 00:40, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Just as disturbing is the mention of aristocracy. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

These are all accurate descriptions of aspects of our community. Are you all blind? Hans Adler 00:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm more wondering whether to do Jimbo a special crown-shaped barnstar. Of course Wikipedia is, to a significant extent, a democracy. There'd be no point in it otherwise. And of course democracy does not mean the tyranny of the majority. But we are subject to the tyranny of anything, we have a problem. --FormerIP (talk) 01:06, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

We have a blood based, probably ethnically distinct, elite that extracts social wealth in an "in-kind" or "labour corvee" form through threats of violence concealed beneath reciprocal obligations tied up in concepts of honour? Fifelfoo (talk) 00:55, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

The tiniest bit of attention in history lessons can help avoid such misunderstandings. Or one can look things up in Wikipedia: "In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy. In later times, aristocracy was seen as rule by a privileged few (the aristocratic class)." Jimbo obviously meant the first sense. Hans Adler 01:10, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

If we have an aristocratic class here, they need spoons up their bums. We have functionaries and an unelected committee. --FormerIP (talk) 01:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

(ec)"Ethnically distinct"? I daresay that is a rather objectionable statement. AFAICT, Wikipedia is an ordered attempt to produce as good an encyclopedia as possible using reliable published sources, and edited by an array of people who may have differing points of view who are willing to lay such points of view aside in the interest of producing a neutrally worded and accurate encyclopedia. Cheers. (Shameless self-promotion of WP:PIECE and WP:KNOW inserted) Collect (talk) 01:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

You know, I've just been having this discussion on my talk page. interesting. What we currently have on project is a kind of pre-tribal band system, which can look like any other system (because the elements of all sophisticated political systems are present 'in the bud' in social bands). There are some elements of tribal society developing (Arbcom and administrators fill a role like 'tribal elders' in loose tribal aggregates, policy and guidelines take on an almost mystical/devotional role in some discussions), but on individual pages it still largely devolves to conflicts between small ideologically insular groups fighting for control of a resource. Aristocracy in any sense of the term would be a superior system; in Aristotle's sense it would be far superior.

I'll admit that I'm a huge fan of consensus systems (I live for deliberative democracy…), but consensus systems are hard: they take a lot of self-reflection, a lot of self-moderation, and both a willingness and an ability to set aside small personal concerns in favor of large public concerns. These features are noticeably absent from many of the more contentious discussions on project. If we are not willing to take the steps to achieve a properly functioning consensus system, then we would really do better to try for another less-open approach, because dysfunctional consensus systems are ugly, ugly, ugly beasts. It's why Aristotle considered 'democracy' the worst form of governance (because his understanding of democracy was more-or-less rule by the ignorant and emotionally volatile masses). --Ludwigs2 01:30, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Collect, I was referring to the repeated discussions of the role of ethnically coherent invaders in early Feudal societies, and their tendency to declare themselves as a nobility or aristocracy over the previously indigenous inhabitants; cf: the Normans in Saxon England. In a way, my reaction to the suggestion we tolerate monarchy is equivalent to your reaction to my suggestion that ethnicity could be involved: we hold with the common enlightenment values regarding proper ordering of constitutions and politics and especial political classes and racialism are both repugnant to the values of the enlightenment. Your suggestion of rule by highest reliability sources is far more desirable to me than the suggestion that we tolerate monarchies or aristocracies in the encyclopaedic project.

Ludwigs2: why doesn't MILHIST have governance problems; and, why does it respond to political criticism from external groups, such as FAC, so readily? The criticism regarding article quality and supply of reviewers (an economic problem) was resolved rather rapidly, and without battleground behaviour against the external group. MILHIST seems to have incorporated heightened sourcing quality, citation presentation, textual quality, and MOS support based on criticisms. Why does MILHIST work where other projects fail? I'd suggest it may be the combination of a high participation culture, an internal rewards and recognition system, a commitment to quality that backgrounds consensus, a recognition of externally driven standards as the key to resolving crises, and a decision to not recognise attempts to revisit community consensus. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

sorry, those are not articles I generally work on, so I can't speak to the details. I suspect, however, that it's largely due to the fact that Military History has a strong academic tradition and rarely works with controversial material. Most major military actions have a host of well-documented sources, and disagreements are usually over details rather than core principles. Where MILHIST verges into controversial material - for instance, the Armenian Genocide - I expect you see just as much consternation as you see on the pages I mentioned above. Please remember, much of wikipedia works perfectly fine, just the way that pre-tribal groups often shared the same hunting grounds without conflict. Problems occur where there's competition, because there's there's no overarching wikipedia culture to stabilize such conflicts, and no system in place for dealing with them as a collectivity. --Ludwigs2 05:12, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I concur regarding the common academic culture in MILHIST. There are fundamental disputes emerging within the structure, across projects, and I'd suggest that the model of pre-agricultural society isn't a useful one. Intrafirm competition within conglomerates, or interdepartmental conflict within bureaucracy are far better models. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Except that is not the case here. what Wikipieda lacks is the overarching culture/structure that makes conglomerates and bureaucracies work. I mean for heaven's sake: if you read the disputes I get into you'll find editors heatedly trying to redefine what 'knowledge', 'information', 'neutrality', and etc mean, so that they can get the result they want; That's nuts for an encyclopedia. you'd never find a conglomerate where different segments try to redefine what 'money' mean, nor a bureaucracy where one group claims that Frank is Joe's superior while another group claims that Joe is Frank's superior. Any corporation or bureaucracy that wound up in that state would be incapable of doing anything, which is the condition we find ourselves in on contentious articles. We simply don't have a sufficiently sophisticated system to compare ourselves with any modern organization. --Ludwigs2 00:41, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Soviet bureaucracy in the 1930s shows some interesting parallels with our situation. Including expert baiting, use of an invented moral code to get people removed from the society/social-organisation, and internal redefinitions of "production money," "time," "skill," and "acceptable output quality," on a regular basis so that people could get the results they wanted. Because the economy was massively expanding, it worked. When it went into contraction after 1945 it was a failure. Conglomerates play these games all the time with notional internal costs btw. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:57, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Jimbo, Re your question, "Is there a particular question that you or someone else has?" - Not from me. I was just giving you a heads up on a discussion on a policy talk page about whether or not the policy page was misinterpreting a previous message of yours. And I wasn't requesting anything from you. I thought the section was an important part of policy because it influences how much value to give to consensus polls. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 01:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Update. On that policy talk page it turned out I was mistaken about your message being misinterpreted and I corrected my error. Regards, --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Let you know about petition

plaintive

Just ran across this - Petition: Replace the image of Jimmy Wales with that of a golden retriever. Thought it was funny. And a golden retriever would be adorable. Silverseren^C 01:55, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I personally support this too. Sceptre ^(talk) 02:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Utterly agree. He's Gone Mental 16:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh no! I'd have to donate all over again. Cloveapple (talk) 18:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

<-- Yes, that! Silverseren^C 18:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:RFP/R

Hi,Jimbo.I just have a query.Why can't experienced rollbackers give permission for rollback at Requests for rollback page?I try to mean,that,rollbackers cannot give any more permission other than for rollback?That's me! ^{Have doubt?} Track me! 16:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Because that's not how the software works. DS (talk) 16:25, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Why doesn't the software gets updated to a new version which has this facility?That's me! ^{Have doubt?} Track me! 16:31, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Because why would they? Admins don't approve other admins--Jac16888 ^Talk 18:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

"This enshrines old bad practices and privileges the past over the future"

Jimbo, a few weeks ago, you made the above disapproving comment. I was wondering, how are Wikipedians generally supposed to know that this is a bad thing for the encyclopedia—where can we find a statement of principle that promotes this sentiment? Uniplex (talk) 20:38, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:BOLD and WP:IAR.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Fundraiser

I don't know where to say it but here: This year's fundraiser looks exceptionally well done. Mixing personal appeals from multiple members/editors from the community, with a Wikipedia staff programmer, and yourself, is very effective. And the messages are great. I know it's too early to tell, but I'll say it: well done. First Light (talk) 06:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

More plagiarism

LOL @ this from the Daily Mail. "Like Eric Clapton, he popularised use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock,which he often used to deliver an exaggerated sense of pitch in his solos. He was influenced by blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King and Elmore James, and later began wearing a moustache like singer Little Richard, saying 'I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice'.

I wrote those lines myself in the wikipedia article. When are these shoddy journalists going to write things for themselves? They should not be using wikipedia text without attribution. Are we going to let major newspapers copy from us without attribution? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that only you as the original author can do something about it. Have you contacted your lawyer yet? No? Too expensive? That's why they can get away with it. Hans Adler 10:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Not the first time DM has done it. Perhaps I should contact them and inform that "we're onto them" and warn them against doing it again?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Take it to the |Mail - and then to the media if they have nothing to say for themselves; plagiarism is still viewed harshly in media circles and other outlets, I am sure, would love to gloat at the Mail being caught ;) --Errant ^(chat!) 12:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

They would love to do so, but I am afraid they will all be worried it might become an own goal. If I were in charge of a newspaper, I guess I would run coyvio tests over my newspaper's output the way we are doing, but even if everything looked clean I would still feel uneasy about it. Hans Adler 13:40, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I have emailed the Daily Mail warning them.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:06, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

That must have been quite a rushed copy-paste job. They didn't even fix the space in after the comma in ...mainstream rock,which... . Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 13:23, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Study on GA/FA and whether Wikipedia is failing or not

Sorry, I know that this page is watched my a myriad of users, so I'd like to make more public about a publication that has sparked some discussions during the last few days -- user TCO has put some issue analysis down here:

PowerPoint: Wikipedia's poor treatment of its most important articles --Sp33dyphil © • © 10:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly this article rants on about "core articles" and how do we achieve this. Your answer lies in the section "Social rewards may help us align quality incentives". If you seriously want to the proportion of core articles to be GA or higher than we need to introduce a mechanism such as a Core Contest of the Month scheme to focus on the top important articles and reward those editors who put the most work into achieving it. Funny how such reports continue to be released and the issues are obvious but nobody could care less about actually doing something about it. If you want "new blood" and better focus on core article quality you need bait, plain and simple, just expecting people to come and work on the core articles is unlikely to yield the even quality articles we desire on such topics. Unless we actually start to do something actively towards addressing it then such reports will continue into the future and are utterly pointless unless there is a conscious drive to answer it. Its all well and good producing such reports but who is actually gonna take the initiative to do something about it? I would, but I don't have the power on here to implement a scheme which I am certain would be effective at improving our proportion of quality articles on important topics. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Just read it. My views on the subject are here. I think this is something WMF should look at. (Obviously, since those are my views.....) heh! What do you think? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld That's a great idea! Thanls <Sp33dyphil jots down idea> --Sp33dyphil © • © 10:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Sp33dyphil, but I am going to need mass support on this if anybody is going to seriously consider it. There was a Core Contest scheme back in 2008 financed by a private donor and i won it with my article Deforestation in Brazil. I only bothered to write such an article because of my competitive nature and the incentive. There was a bank of "Core Articles" drawn up and participants were allowed to select an article of their choice from several hundred articles. The contest was a major success given that the incentive had the effect of multiple editors selecting a core article and considerably improving it and it was fun I thought. If we do this every month financed by what would be an extremely small percentage of the annual budget or if not monetary based on Amazon vouchers then something of esteem or social value, then we would continously have our core articles improved and I'm certain more good articles on important topics. Now its all well and good talking about the issues but I want to see a move towards actually addressing them!♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Response from Dweller

I'm fairly sure that this is not the right place for this discussion (if there's a proper venue, please point me there) but here's my response. Apologies to Jimbo, but here I go.

The arguments are interesting, but I am bothered by them on several counts:

• Vital articles

Before you talk about page views, you discuss Vital articles. Now, I'm sure a lot of hard work and massive amounts of consensus finding went in to choosing them, but ultimately, they're a horse designed by a committee. Worst, they don't set out to - and therefore don't - correspond with readers' needs.

You cite in the powerpoint Family as one of our vital articles. I'm sure it's a very worthy choice. And indeed, it's had 115,000 views in the last 30 days. Not bad. Except Lady Gaga has had 2.3 million hits in the same period. I'm not certain Lady Gaga would ever gain the consensus to be deemed a vital article. But she is what people want to read about. There are musicians/composers in the vital articles list; 14 of them in total (counting the Beatles as 4). Of those 14, 12 are dead, nearly all of whom died before 1980 (and mostly before 1900).

• Passion

Deriding the FAs that we produce because they're about topics that some editors deem less worthy than others misses the point. People produce FAs because they're passionate about them. Believe me, without passion, you wouldn't bother entering the process a second time, even if you managed to the gumption to stick through a first time.

And that passion will equate to others' passions, too. I have little to no interest in hurricanes. In the UK, hurricanes hardly ever happen. But I admire the efforts of the editors who produce streams of hurricane FAs - and they'll be useful and interesting to a group of readers.

I tend to write on football and cricket. The latter is the subject of gleeful derision by some, mostly Americans, which I can understand. But cricket is immensely important to many - especially the growing internet userbase of the Indian subcontinent, who treat their cricketing heroes like modern day gods.

• Pride

We should be proud of the FAs we produce and encourage people to participate in the Featured processes. By all means, encourage people to develop FAs for articles you think are important. The biggest problem I have with your powerpoint is that it seems to me to disparage the work currently done. Phrases like calling some types of articles "peculiar" is counterproductive. Just because you may have little interest in mushrooms is irrelevant if someone has done the hard work to develop quality articles about mushrooms. And who's to say that with a couple of FAs under their belt about mushrooms, they may not take on getting Science featured? Worse, you even disparage individual FA writers, who should be lauded and festooned with garlands of barnstars and ribbons and praise, as "dabblers" and "star collectors". Or you deride the article itself. The Adelaide Leak article, a fascinating study of an intriguing incident, you discount as "1930s cricket player dramah". I tell you, the "dramah" is in your presentation.

I could weather my first two problems in your presentation as minor, but this third is just abysmal and it brings everything crashing down with it.

Don't go trying to improve something that is difficult and requires skill, effort and perserverance (in exchange for no money and a hard time at FAC) by disparaging the contributors and their contributions.

Go rip up this powerpoint and make a fresh start with some humility and respect for the people producing quality articles. --Dweller (talk) 11:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC) PS This "dabbler" hadn't heard of the Core Cup till he read your report. I don't understand the table and can't find it onwiki. Where is it?

I don't see any particular disrespect for people producing quality articles. I see it more as identifying the major problem we have of systematic bias and editors write because they are interested in a subject, which means Lady Gaga gets a great article and Togolese culture remains a lousy article. As an encyclopedia we have an obligation to try to cover topics evenly with a consistent level of quality. We are not achieving this because there is no incentive for editors to go that step further and write about a topic they otherwise might not. I wouldn't normally write an article about the Family but I'd be willing to write about it if there was some incentive which attracted me to it... Obviously there would be disagreement over what constitutes a "Vital Article" and I believe a far higher percentage of GAs are certainly valuable articles. But the issue still exists and we have a duty to address it precisely because editors usually only edit articles they are passionate about and why the quality of wikipedia may differ dramatically. Every featured article is extremely valuable whatever the topic and there's nothing wrong with writing about topics you are passionate about. it often produces the best results, but because of this some topics which may be considered "vital" are ignored because they lack interest or are difficult to write. As I say as an encyclopedia it is our duty to try to produce more even quality on "core" topics and at present we are failing to achieve this because there is lack of encouragement to editors to work on them when they otherwise might not do.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia does have a consistent quality, it lies between stub and start classes, with a healthy mix of undefined. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:07, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Take Togo for instance. Daunting prospect to write about it. I am interested in the country but I'm just lacking the edge to want to write it to a high standard. If somebody said "write this there is a chance of winning a reward for your efforts at the end of the month" I suddenly become interested and an incentive to try to write it. I'm sure I'm not the only person here who thinks like this. We have editor interest in a huge range of topics but we are not fulfilling our potential in what they can produce. Because we solely rely on passion for topics this is why a lot of traditional encyclopedia subjects considered "Vital Articles" on countries/capital cities for example are often barely start class and Lady Gaga B sides are featured articles. Given that this is the way wikipedia is written it is hardly surprising. Unless you rope people into writing these vital articles to a quality standard then this is how wikipedia is going to remain. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

You can propose any new reward system you like without needing to disparage the current contributors and their contributions. Doing so undermines the credibility of the person making the proposal, in my book. If my boss told me I needed to work differently and offered me an incentive to do so, I might be enthused, but not if he added "oh, and by the way, everything you've to-date is ****" --Dweller (talk) 12:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, you can't really attack editors for what they choose to write about, given that nobody has to edit a thing here, agreed. Given that we solely rely on the goodwill of people... But at times it does get frustrating for instance to see only a handful of GAs on traditional "Vital" topics and then hundreds of US TV episodes as a matter of priority.. There is an obvious issue but you can't blame people for what they choose to write about when they are offered nothing to write about it. I want GAs and FAs on TV episodes and on any article we have on here but I also want to every one of our core articles up to GA level... But its never going to happen unless there is a coordinated drive to get people to write every core article to a good standard... ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:32, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

If you want the rather small group of existing FA writers to write FAs about things they don't feel passion for, being sarcastic/rude about them and the things they do have passion for is a really, really bad start. --Dweller (talk) 12:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, they don't need to change what they do. The amount of editors willing to write a featured article on a topic they are simply not passionate about is next to zero. To put in that amount of work and dedication to one article almost always means passion is the motivator so asking them to work on Vital articles some of which may not be of interest is a tall order... Based on personal experience I've found FAC to be extremely tiresome with expectations of virtual perfection, why would anybody want to run through that just for the sake of getting a core article to FA without reward? That's where the problem lies. People simply don't want to write an article to such extreme lengths as FA if they are not passionate about it. Rather, we need a bank of new quality article writers and need a way to rope them in....♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Note that the article assessments are often way off base. Ancient Greek philosophy is supposedly a start class article, while it is obviously at least C-class. The same goes for many of the supposed "start" class articles: something like Drinking water or Sexism is not a start class article any more by any strectch of the imagination. The quality assessments often lag significantly behind the article improvements, making any study based on those assessments a bit dubious. That doesn't mean that an article like oil couldn't do with some improvement of course. Fram (talk) 13:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Another major issue of course is degree of difficulty of writing an article. An article on a village in northern Togo for instance would require far less research than one on Togo which woud need a massive amount of research and effort. And this is why we often have featured articles on obscure railway stations and TV episodes when the parent article itself remains of poor quality as they are easier to write. A lot of core topics on here are amongst the hardest to write about because of the time and effort needed to do the full research and then the condensing..♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:14, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I've always thought that ease of writing about a subject is inversely proportional to the number of sources available on it. --Errant ^(chat!) 13:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

And it's also negatively correlated with how much you know about it before you start. One problem with core topics is that the choice of topics to mention, and among these the choice of topics to stress, is necessarily original research in the technical sense (under the current, rather sweeping interpretations), unless you just plagiarise from another encyclopedia. And it's not even the easy kind of original research. For someone not trained in the subject (which is the usual case, because the experts tend not to be motivated), I guess that getting an article on certain core topics to FA quality is similarly hard to writing a PhD thesis. Hans Adler 13:56, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed Hans. To produce a truly comprehensive concise article on something like a country would require an extreme amount of research and time to produce the best quality article. Articles like Ming Dynasty (arguably those sets are the best articles on wikipedia) is another example of an article needing an incredible amount of time and research and it was only because Pericles was passionate about Chinese history that he produced those articles and they were probably something to do with his studies.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

This also represents a problem with your "reward system" proposal. If you proposed such a system or context for say, Canadian history, I would be all over it. But for 19th century composers? Artistic movements? Philosophy? Can't say as I would bother. I lack the passion, knowledge or source material for it. I'm with Dweller on this. The solution is not to trash the work others are doing, but to find people with an interest and desire in these topics. If you think a reward system would work, by all means, go for it. Resolute 14:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

The key problem I see in trying to broaden the numbers of dedicated editors is that Wikipedia consensus system, in its current form, makes it at least ten times harder to follow the existing rules than to break them. For example, someone can add an unattributed sentence about some occurrence into an article in a couple of minutes; if it's not obviously wrong or vandalism, by Wikipedia rules, I'm supposed to try to find an attribution myself, which can take me twenty minutes or more if I need to hunt down a couple of reliable sources in the online periodical archives available to me. Filibustering editors who choose to, say, contest relatively straightforward copy edits can drag out what should be a quick in-and-out process to days of discussion, and if the article isn't a popular one, a consensus may never get reached. Though it doesn't happen often, after just a few incidents of this, all the joy of editing is sucked out of it, knowing that your next edit may turn into interminable discussion. Who wants to lend their editing expertise to produce a featured article, when it's always just an edit away from drawing you into a protracted, contentious dispute? isaacl (talk) 16:37, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it would be good to shift focus on to processes that can get random poor articles into decent shape and away from new processes aimed at producing content of the very highest quality.

WP:ITN is a good process for doing that and, contrary to what you might expect, the improvements it throws up are quite diverse. So, over the past week, articles like Dersim Massacre, Bulbophyllum nocturnum, Tony Stewart, Metallic microlattice, National League for Democracy, Eurasian Union and Soyuz TMA-22 have all been significantly improved. More often then not this means turning an article which is a complete dog into one that gives a decent overview of the subject, even if it doesn't reach WP's very highest standards.

How might that sort of process be enhanced or replicated? --FormerIP (talk) 14:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

@Reso. Yes but there are many editors who would be interested in writing about 19th century composers and philosphers, myself included. The idea is that enough people know about an article of the month scheme where they have the chance to win something and select any article from a batch of core articles to develop... You'd be surprised at the diversity of interests if there was an incentive involved...♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)