User:Frank Schulenburg/Thoughts about quality

1. Content quality has been a key factor for Wikipedia’s success

Today, our readers trust the quality of our content to an extent that they deem Wikipedia a useful tool. That wasn’t the case in the early days of our project at all. Yet, quality increased over the past 18 years to a degree that millions of readers perceive Wikipedia as one of the most useful and trustworthy sources of information on the web. However, if we ever were to lose the readers’ trust in the reliability of our content, Wikipedia’s right to exist would be jeopardized.

'''2. Don’t panic. Given Wikipedia’s enormous popularity it seems like we’re getting more things right than wrong about quality'''

It wasn’t that long ago that the general public considered Wikipedia not more than an “experiment”. While the number of people being skeptical about the open and collaborative nature of Wikipedia might have decreased, the encyclopedia keeps being scrutinized by outsiders – we all know scores of press articles highlighting Wikipedia’s shortcomings. Yet, overall, our projects’ many mechanisms of improving quality have proven to be effective to a point that “looking something up on Wikipedia” has become a daily part of people's lives.


 * I haven't paid attention to this lately -- is there any data that could help to quantify/visualize these trends? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:27, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

3. Exaggerated requirements and a too strong focus on formalities prohibit top quality content from emerging

A too strong focus on formalities and technicalities (e.g. in featured content candidacies) inhibit the emergence of high quality content in the long run. Content always trumps form: there are plenty of people who can fix the formatting of an article, but only a few that can explain a highly complex topic in an understandable way to our readers. Also, when contributors of high quality content lose their belief that they can get an article or an image to be “featured”, they tend to lose their motivation of guiding their work through the nomination process. Yet, featured content candidacies play a vital role in achieving the highest level of accuracy and readability and set examples for others to follow.


 * It seems like there's something to be said here for the other forms of highlighted content other than FA/FP. For example, GAN (and maybe DYK) on WP and QI/VI on Commons are much more accessible and attainable for new users. I'd argue that the positive reinforcement of achieving a GA for a new user isn't functionally much different than an FA. It's only once you get into it that you start to understand the differences, and even then, FAC isn't for everyone (or even most). I would also add (although I don't know that this point actually needs to be made) that the folks involved at FAC would argue that the formalities and technicalities they choose to focus on are important in the communication of knowledge (consistency/predictability/effectiveness/standardization/accessibility). Not everyone would agree on their absolute necessity, of course... :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:17, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

4. Online harassment and a contentious working atmosphere deter us from achieving the quality growth that our readers deserve

Only very few people enjoy spending their free time in a contentious work environment. Personal attacks and online harassment have a negative effect on improving the quality of Wikipedia’s content. They deter new contributors from staying engaged and they encourage valuable long-term editors to leave our projects.


 * You might open this up to other kinds of newbie-unfriendly behavior that falls short of harassment/personal attacks. An obvious example is the immediatism of erring on the side of reverting rather than fixing. Some might say that culture of insisting things be correct immediately is part of why quality improves, but also certainly discourages otherwise productive new editors. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:19, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

5. “Quality improves by itself” is only half the truth at best

Our existing base of editors has improved Wikipedia’s quality in a striking way over the past 18 years. However, Wikipedians only work on topics that they find most interesting. That has led to many content gaps in content areas that the existing community doesn’t care much about. Those gaps can only be filled by recruiting and onboarding new contributors who are invested in filling Wikipedia’s many gaps and in improving Wikipedia’s coverage and depth in their own field of expertise.

I think you can expand this point to be about the long-term role that temporarily, but effectively engaged expert editors (like students, scholars and scientists) will play in ensuring quality going forward, in addition to keeping the traditional Wikipedians happy and engaged. TJ (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:46, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

6. We need better tools and methods to measure content quality, even if certain aspects of quality are hard to quantify

So far, we have a very limited understanding of the overall quality of our content. Which thematic areas have been covered well and to which extent? Which are the articles our readers are longing for but can’t find on Wikipedia? Up until today, we haven’t developed appropriate tools allowing us to measure content quality in a comprehensive way across topic areas. While we succeeded at counting words or the number of references in an article, we struggle (and most likely will continue to struggle) with developing automated ways of measuring quality indicators like “elegance of language” and “focus on the essentials of a topic”.


 * Yes to this. Good point. We've seen just how useful ORES has been. As great as that tool is, the metric provides just one kind of at-a-glance estimation. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:25, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

7. There’s no better way of ensuring Wikipedia’s quality in the long run than keeping the existing producers and curators of content engaged and happy

18 years into the history of Wikipedia, we now know that only very few people on this planet enjoy spending large parts of their free time on creating and curating encyclopedic content. Wikipedians are a very special breed and only a tiny fraction of the world’s population is eager and willing to contribute to our encyclopedia. Therefore, dedicated support for our existing community of editors will play a vital role in the advancement of our mission.


 * Maybe a tangent, but something I think remains unexplored: We've seen that creating new Wikipedians is really hard. But we've also seen that Wikipedians' attention can be focused on particular kinds of content (WikiProject Women in Red is a good example). I'd bet there's a lot of potential in that idea: cover content gaps not [just] by reaching out to new editors with those interests, but by reaching out to people already on Wikipedia who might be interested. We do surprisingly little of that in any coordinated way. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:22, 30 July 2019 (UTC)