QUOTE(Malleus @ Wed 21st April 2010, 1:09am)
QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Tue 20th April 2010, 9:04pm)
QUOTE(Malleus @ Tue 20th April 2010, 5:24pm)
QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Tue 20th April 2010, 5:21pm)
For example, I might write an article on Churchill, referencing lots of fine articles in the Times and Sunday Times (which might be perfectly adequate, though clearly targeting a different market than a reference work). While a Wikipedian FA reviewer would probably rate those sources as quite desirable, an expert on Churchill would be aghast.
Clearly you've never taken an article to FAC if you really believe that claptrap.
Clearly, you are an twit if you cannot see that the point I was making is that it is not enough simply to check the sources, but for a review process to be useful, the reviewers need to have knowledge of the subject, and may not have any idea as to what is the real deal on the subject matter.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia is founded on the principle that a million idiots can do the work of one intelligent person, and it is assumed that the FAC review process is gifted with the same magical abilities with far fewer idiots.
If you think it's clear that I'm a "twit", then I think it's equally clear that you're a fucking idiot.
You just did the classic Wikipedian NPA workaround thing which is to be rude about someone without using direct words, so I just made it obvious in return - you've already implicitly called me a fucking idiot in your original response so you didn't need the extra reply.
The point I was making was simple, plain and obvious to anyone who understands the concerns about non-experts concocting articles based on a pot-pouri of sources. Just to be clear, if you know nothing about the detail of a subject, then you could:
a) See that there are some sources referenced and tick a box.
or with a bit more effort
b) See that the words appear to match the sources.
or with more effort
c) Google to see if there are other articles or sources that suggest the sourcing is not representative (but you really need access to more specialist sources than Yahoo! Answers if you are going to validate academic subjects)
or with more effort
d) Read through the sources more completely to get a sense of whether the balance of the source has been kept
or with more effort
e) pop down the library and read up on the subject and research your own sources.
By the time you are down at c and beyond, you really need some subject expertise to find your way around, not the typical computer geek knowledge that is over-represented on Wikipedia.
So unless you are really a subject matter expert, then the amount of effort required to validate the quality of an article in terms of content rather than superficial measures of grammar and syntax and reference counting is going to submerge any volunteer effort, even at 42 articles a month.
Alternatively, you can seek to build a review panel of subject matter experts who can quickly say whether the article is on the mark or not. Alternatively again, you could see what other processes you could come up with to provide a system that can review content rather than style, leaving the debates about commas and capitals to those who have the time and enthusiasm for that grunt work (and having written a book or two myself, there is plenty of work to be done in managing style to keep the game players content).
What is not an acceptable answer is simply to say that "this is what the process is and it is good enough for us editors" when even in a small, flawed research article it can be shown that the process does not produce reliably good articles.
What would be really interesting would be to get the newly appointed WMF Readers' Representative take on what FA status means to readers - or should mean. It is a simple test of that role, and the general point about how Wikipedia can self-certify the quality of its output (or not) would seem to be important to the long term respectability of the project.
I fail to see why all this should be such an anathema to Wikipedia, after all it was some process along these lines that was envisaged when Wikipedia was first evolved. Then some twit thought that crowd-sourcing was the complete solution, failing to recognise that other open source models actually do rely on subject matter experts. Take any quality open source software project, and the people who do the gate keeping are subject matter experts.
So, do you care to contemplate that point, or do you just want to fuck around? I'm quite happy to poll the mods for a ban if you prefer the latter.