Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-04-19/In the news

I think that Lindsey article is interesting, but has some major shortcomings. The biggest thing that stood out to me is the reliance on only one expert per article, meaning that each data point could be just as much a reflection of the reviewer's own standards and personal tastes. Amongst some academics, there is a tendency to rip any written work to shreds, just to show that you can do it. Other academics might be inclined to rate an article highly just because they are jazzed that someone else cares about the subject. This study has no way of controlling for reviewer bias.

I still think this study is useful, and given the nature of it, its a bit much to expect much more. Still, I think drawing sweeping conclusions from such a limited study is a mistake. Bonewah (talk) 18:13, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Agreed, which is why I think it's great that the reviewer himself admitted as much. In terms of knowing that some older FAs would have trouble passing the current standards, I don't think that's news to anyone. Standards keep getting raised and there are always going to be some articles that are behind the curve. Matt Deres (talk) 22:00, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, the study did not examine the "age" of an article's featured status, which is essential for evaluating how well the featured article process is working right now. Sure, the Max Weber article may not meet the current featured article criteria, but it was promoted in 2006, so it's never been formally evaluated using the current, more rigorous, criteria. In my opinion, we've only had "serious" featured article criteria for about one year, when the "well-researched" requirement was added. It's good to see that none of the articles that were promoted in 2009 or later scored less than a 7 on the 10 point scale.


 * It's also nice to see that some older featured articles did relatively well in the study's review. Did they do well because they were in good condition when they were promoted to featured status? Or did they do well because they were improved over the years, after having reached featured status? The study doesn't tell us, but this information is essential for evaluating the featured article promotion process. Lindsey appears to have overlooked in this point, and so his "conclusions and recommendations" do not really follow from his findings. The study evaluated the current quality of a random selection of featured articles. But it did not examine the quality of promotion process; to do that, one would have to examine the quality of the version of the article that was actually promoted. Perhaps the results would be about the same, but I'm not sure that we should assume this.


 * But I suspect that the major recommendation of the study is correct: the process would greatly benefit from input by experts. How to do that is an open question. We at least have an example of how not to do it. —Kevin Myers 15:54, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with the assertion that time makes a difference. It is telling that none of the most recent FAs were considered of poor quality by experts. Also, that the Global Warming article, since it is contentious, has received more collaboration than most other articles; I think that it received a rating of 10 shows that our crazy little system of collaboration works quite well. The current FA process involves a lot of factual and referencing nit-picking, so I find a 2008 study on length as a criteria for FA to be less relevant to the current situation. The problem is, this site is so organic that research becomes out-of-date practically from the moment it is published. かんぱい！ Scapler (talk) 07:29, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting study, but I find the criticism that articles may be written at a high school/undergrad pretty worthless. The same can be said of most newspapers and magazines. Just because Wikipedia is not written in the utterly dull, repetitive, and jargon-filled language that many academics prefer is not an automatic negative; it's one of our strengths. Joshdboz (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)