User:Khazar/DYKstatement

The recent proposals made by TCO have made me do quite a bit of thinking about DYK, it's history, and its continued relevance to wikipedia. A recurring theme from TCO's comments seems to be a dislike for the DYK's reward system; specifically the awarding of DYKs to those editors who have either been long time contributors to DYK or to those who practice churning out articles as quickly as possible to get more DYKs. In general, his attitude towards these editors is that they should by now have moved beyond DYK to doing more beneficial work within the encyclopedia, such as writing GA/FA articles. But is this really a fair assessment of DYK and the work produced by its main contributors? In reflecting, I do not think so. Let's consider TCO's suggestions to stop editors from participating at DYK after they reach the 50 article mark. What is the benefit of stopping such rewards? Why stop incentives which encourage expansion? What does it matter if the article was written by someone who has been on wikipedia for 5 years or 5 days? New content is new content and the whole point of this project is to encourage new content growth, from both old and new users. Encouraging new users is important to this project, but so is encouraging those who have been editing since day 1. Another concern TCO has is about those who churn out a large number of articles to get more DYKs. But is this really a problem? What is so wrong with those who pump out articles en masse? Are there really major quality issues here? I would say no. DYK policy is to not promote tagged articles, including those tagged as stubs, or for NPOV, orphan, copyediting, referencing, etc. Therefore, if it meets wikipedia's notability guidelines and passes the DYK criteria than those articles are going to be a positive addition to the encyclopedia, even if they are not of GA/FA quality. They will still provide more coverage than what was there before. Additionally, articles with room for improvement are often the best recruiters for new editors to the encyclopedia. How many of us made our first edits expanding or improving pre-existing articles? It is funny to me that TCO is complaining about editors who churn out articles en masse to get DYKs, since this is the exact effect DYK is hoping to achieve. In my opinion, we want DYK to produce editors that want to get DYKs over and over. We want editors to continue to churn out new articles. This was the whole point in creating DYK; to create editors who like to churn out new articles. Ultimately, the conflict here seems to boil down to the issue of quality versus quantity. It is a fact that DYK has always emphasized quantity over quality and I do not feel we should apologize for this. It is not a coincidence that pretty much every editor that complains about DYK are those who participate in either GA/FA or both. These editors have become obsessed with improving wikipedia's quality, which is the point of the reward system at GA and FA. This is a good thing. We want editors to want to create quality articles. Yet, wikipedia also aims to create the widest coverage possible since our goal is to have a free encyclopedia which contains the sum of all human knowledge. Therefore, expansion (i.e. quantity) is also a goal of the encyclopedia. While GA/FA were created to stimulate quality, DYK was created to stimulate quantity. The truth is that wikipedia needs both quality and quantity to achieve its purpose and maintain its relevance. With the total knowledge of humanity more than doubling every year according to some sources, there will always be a need to continue creating/expanding articles. The need for more article creation is never going to go away. Likewise the best quality article possible is the most desirable article to the reader, and therefore the need for quality will never go away. Therefore incentives for both quantity and qaulity are needed. DYK is the only award incentive on wikipedia for expansion other than wiki cup (which has only a relatively small number of participants). I despise wiki-cup since I think contests have no business being a part of wikipedia. On the flip side, we have two rewards for quality on wikipedia: GA and FA. In conclusion, there should be room for programs that inspire article creation in addition to programs that inspire article quality. In an ideal situation, a program can do both. However, as a pragmatist I don't think it's possible to do both at the same time well. We could easily go to FA/GA and complain that their standards are too high and therefore not enough editors are interested in working on improving articles to FA/GA status. Yet, if FA/GA lowers it standards it would be bad for the encyclopedia. Likewise, raising the standards for inclusion too high at DYK would prevent it from doing what it is supposed to do: generate new articles. I think a fair analysis of DYK is that it is an effective tool for encouraging expansion of wikipedia's coverage; a goal which is central to achieving wikipedia's primary purpose. As DYK is the only award given for new content, it is both a unique and vital program within the encyclopedia's community. While it does often produce articles of lesser quality, the vast majority of DYK articles are not bad articles, merely sufficient ones. One has to only look at any given DYK queue to see they are not articles in a horrible state, but are in general mostly mediocre articles with a few good articles mixed in. There are other award incentives on wikipedia, i.e. GA/FA, which do stimulate the raising of article quality to higher levels. Wikipedia, therefore does not need DYK to become another quality control program. It does, however, need DYK to continue doing what it does: encourage the creation of new content.4meter4 (talk) 06:42, 25 June 2011 (UTC)