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{{essay|]|WP:FAIL}} {{essay|]|WP:FAIL}}


Is ''']''' succeeding in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable reference work? Here are some illustrations of ways in which it is not fulfilling that aim.
''Note: Unless stated otherwise or directly sourced, the statistics used in this essay were collected on Feburary 2007 and may be currently out-of-date.''

Is ''']''' succeeding in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable encyclopedia? Here are some illustrations of ways in which it is not fulfilling that aim.


] is not ].]] ] is not ].]]
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*The criteria defined by the ] at {{tl|grading scheme}} accurately reflect the quality of the articles these ratings have been applied to. *The criteria defined by the ] at {{tl|grading scheme}} accurately reflect the quality of the articles these ratings have been applied to.
*That articles which are not either FA or A-class fall below the standards that an encyclopedia should demand of its content. *That articles which are not either FA or A-class fall below the standards that a reference work should demand of its content.
*That the sample of 300,000 articles assessed, with results listed at ], is representative of the whole encyclopaedia. *That the sample of 300,000 articles assessed, with results listed at ], is representative of the whole encyclopaedia.
*The definition of an encyclopedia in Misplaced Pages's article ] as a "compendium of human knowledge" is correct.


==Criteria which indicate substantial failings== ==Criteria which indicate substantial failings==
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Some or many articles may lose featured article status because they do not meet current standards, rather than because they have declined in quality. Without case-by-case analysis it is impossible to say what proportion this is the case for. However, we can note that the ] process has not been as successful as would be ideal at encouraging featured articles to improve in line with rising standards. Some or many articles may lose featured article status because they do not meet current standards, rather than because they have declined in quality. Without case-by-case analysis it is impossible to say what proportion this is the case for. However, we can note that the ] process has not been as successful as would be ideal at encouraging featured articles to improve in line with rising standards.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, certain hoax articles containing blatantly incorrect information can stay up for ''years''<ref>See ] for examples.</ref>. Recently, in January of 2008, the longest-running hoax ever was discovered, the article on ], which was a hoax claiming that ] has a ]. This hoax existed for roughly 3½ years.


===Rate of quality article production=== ===Rate of quality article production===
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] provides evidence that the rate of addition of substantial encyclopaedic content is low. You may find it informative to look at the last 200 recent changes and count how many of them are directly building the encyclopedia. That means observing reasonably sound content being added (and not under a 'trivia' header) to an article that is not a borderline ] candidate. (The info on bytes added/removed narrows the search quite quickly.) Typically this reveals less than ten substantive article-space change in 200. One such analysis can be found at ]. ] provides evidence that the rate of addition of substantial encyclopaedic content is low. You may find it informative to look at the last 200 recent changes and count how many of them are directly building the encyclopedia. That means observing reasonably sound content being added (and not under a 'trivia' header) to an article that is not a borderline ] candidate. (The info on bytes added/removed narrows the search quite quickly.) Typically this reveals less than ten substantive article-space change in 200. One such analysis can be found at ].

===The strength and size of the core community===
One of the most important aspects of Misplaced Pages is what could be called its "core community," as distinguished from the "community-at-large." The distinction is that the community-at-large is composed of everyone who edits Misplaced Pages, while the core community is the small group of veteran editors who regularly watch policy pages, facilitate the administration of various aspects of the site (such as mediation, the help desk, the reference desk, the various noticeboards, etc..). Earlier in Misplaced Pages's history, there was a project called ] designed to strengthen Misplaced Pages's core community. In mid-2007, Esperanza was disbanded after facing criticism. At first, other projects were started to fulfill the same role that Esperanza did. Several of these projects have since been abandoned.

Projects stemming from ] which were abandoned:
*]
*]

Projects stemming from ] which are still ongoing:
*]
*]
*]
*].

Then there is also ] and ] to consider. Assuming the information in both articles is roughly correct, it appears that Misplaced Pages has experienced or is experiencing a ], which of course is detrimental to its success. This criticism has been expressed before by a number of people <ref>See ]</ref> and the likelihood of this ] has not been explored in current statistical analysis. However, one disturbing statistic is the sudden drop-off in new users in October of 2006. Every month since Misplaced Pages was started, its userbase grew exponentially. In the month of October, 2006, however, the growth of its userbase slowed. <ref>,]. Retrieved on ].</ref> Was this ] or not? Well, there have been similar drop-offs in user growth across several Wikipedias, suggesting it is not. <ref>,]. Retrieved on ].</ref> In each case, as soon as a drop-off occurs, ] ceases publishing statistics on user growth. Why this has occurred is not clear and no new statistics have been provided as of September, 2007. One possible explanation is stated on Wikimedia's main page on statistics: <ref>{{cite web |url=http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm |title=Misplaced Pages Statistics - Site Map |accessdate=2008-01-25}}</ref>

{{Quotation|Since a year it has become increasingly difficult to produce valid dumps for the largest wikipedias. Until that problem is fixed some figures will be outdated.}}

This problem, stemming from either financial shortfalls or incompetence, is itself a demonstration of Misplaced Pages failure. If Wikimedia isn't even capable of regularly ''collecting'' and ''compiling'' statistics on Misplaced Pages's ''success'', then what ''can'' it do and how can we expect the Misplaced Pages project to succeed?


==Questioning these criteria== ==Questioning these criteria==
Is it a bad idea to use Featured Article or Good Article status as criteria for judging the number of excellent articles in Misplaced Pages? It is possible that many or most articles that meet the ] or ] have not been officially reviewed, because review is a time-intensive process that often suffers from a backlog of nominated articles. The Good Article process historically has had a much less rigorous promotion process than the featured article process, so some editors reject it as a measure of article quality. In addition, the editors who work on articles that could potentially pass either the "good" or "featured" criteria may decline to participate in those processes because they see them as bureaucratic, unpleasant, and predominantly run by non-experts in specialized topics. Is it a bad idea to use Featured Article or Good Article status as criteria for judging the number of excellent articles in Misplaced Pages? It is possible that many or most articles that meet the ] or ] have not been officially reviewed, because review is a time-intensive process that often suffers from a backlog of nominated articles. The Good Article process historically has had a much less rigorous promotion process than the featured article process, so some editors reject it as a measure of article quality. If these processes do not succeed in recognizing quality content, then this may be a failure of Misplaced Pages to perform accurate self assessment rather than a failure to produce quality articles.

If these processes do not succeed in recognizing quality content, then this may be a failure of Misplaced Pages to perform accurate self assessment rather than a failure to produce quality articles.


==Food for thought== ==Food for thought==


If Misplaced Pages just aimed to be a social site where people with similar interests could come together and write articles about anything they liked, it would certainly be succeeding. However, its stated aim is to be an encyclopedia, and not just that but an encyclopedia of the highest quality. Six years of work has resulted in 3,000 articles of good or excellent quality, at which rate it will take many decades to produce the quantity of good or excellent articles found in traditional encyclopedias. Over 1.6 million articles are mediocre to poor to appalling in quality. If Misplaced Pages just aimed to be a social site where people with similar interests could come together and write articles about anything they liked, it would certainly be succeeding. However, its stated aim is to be an encyclopedia, and not just that but an encyclopaedia of the highest quality. Six years of work has resulted in 3,000 articles of good or excellent quality, at which rate it will take many decades to produce the quantity of good or excellent articles found in traditional reference works. Over 1.6 million articles are mediocre to poor to appalling in quality.


==Open questions== ==Open questions==


*Has the system failed to produce a quality encyclopedia? If so, why? *Has the system failed to produce a quality reference work? If so, why?
*Is change necessary? *Is change necessary?
*If it is, then is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up? *If it is, then is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up?
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*Does the number of active users increase in the same way as new user accounts, or do significant numbers of editors leave the project? *Does the number of active users increase in the same way as new user accounts, or do significant numbers of editors leave the project?
*Could it help any to introduce one or more of the following: *Could it help any to introduce one or more of the following:
# A clearer vision and mission statement, prominently displayed? # a clearer vision and mission statement, prominently displayed?
# Better defined performance metrics for articles or edits? # better defined performance metrics for articles or edits?
# Voting, as popularity, or by "distinguished members" (opening a can of chicken/egg soup here)? # voting, as popularity, or by "distinguished members" (opening a can of chicken/egg soup here)?
# Profiling authors/editors to identify promising candidates or repeat offenders so as to offer them voluntary coaching/mentoring (on private channels, not in public on discussion pages)? # profiling authors/editors to identify promising candidates or repeat offenders so as to offer them voluntary coaching/mentoring (on private channels, not in public on discussion pages)?
# Offering references to alternative sites so as to channel creative energies of writers who repeatedly fail to meet Misplaced Pages criteria? # offering references to alternative sites so as to channel creative energies of writers who repeatedly fail to meet Misplaced Pages criteria?
# leaving it as it is because the last few questions lead to an unworkable data nightmare?

==Responses to alleged rebuttals and inadequate responses==
::''See also ]''

The sister essay contains a great deal of "rebuttals" and "responses" to this essay based upon a number of sources. This essay concludes that these alleged "rebuttals" in the sister essay are weak and its responses are inadequate. It relies on ] ] which seems to both stem from and play on the general public's misconception of appropriate ] and ]. This is one the root causes of ''problems'' on Misplaced Pages to begin with. The poor quality of the ] is ''itself'' a reflection of the systemic problems of ] and ] on Misplaced Pages.

===Clarifying possible misconceptions===
A popular misconception among the public which is also encouraged by the media is the claim, "A scientist proved it in a study, so it must be true!" Science relies on proper methodology, objectivity, and replicability, among other things. The sister essay invokes a handful of studies without addressing criticism of their methodology or the fact that they arguably haven't been replicated. In particular, the single-study by ''Nature'' is held up as the ] proof that Misplaced Pages is as accurate as Britannica, though its specific methodology is ignored, peer-reviews aren't cited, and so on.

In addition, it is important to clarify that ], another fallacy the essay seems to evoke by repeatedly evangelizing about Misplaced Pages's growth without narrowing in on where that growth has happened and how, that is, specifying the ''cause.''

===Outside scientific studies confirming Misplaced Pages failure===
First of all, it should be clarified that the burden of proof rests on those making positive assertions, which includes "Misplaced Pages is succeeding." In a 2005 study, Emigh and Herring note that there are not yet many formal studies of Misplaced Pages or its model, and suggest that Misplaced Pages achieves its results by social means—], a core of active users watching for problems, and expectations of encyclopedic text drawn from the wider culture.<ref name="emigh">Emigh & Herring (2005) "Collaborative Authoring on the Web:
A Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias", Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences. ()</ref> Such assumptions regarding "self-norming" appear to bear similarities with ] ] and ] assumptions about human behavior under ] and ]. While Misplaced Pages model has not been evaluated, a broad array of research in ], ], and ] would likely undermine it. Specifically in Psychology, ] (which are made worse, not better through group participation, see ]), in Sociology ], and in ], there are things to consider such as ] and ].

With this mind, it should also be clarified that the assertion that Misplaced Pages failure has not in any way been validated by any outside studies is patently false. Just as the definition of "success," has been skewed, if we inappropriately define "failure," as "total apocalyptic, nightmarish collapse," then no, that hasn't happened yet, so of course it hasn't been proven. But failure is more accurately defined by the question: "Is Misplaced Pages moving in the right direction"? According to a number of studies, such as the study by the University of Minnesota, no. <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cs.umn.edu/~reid/papers/group282-priedhorsky.pdf |title=Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Misplaced Pages |accessdate=2008-01-25 |author=Priedhorsky, Chen, Lam, Panciera, Terveen, Riedl}}</ref>

Their abstract reads:
{{Quotation|Misplaced Pages’s brilliance and curse is that any user can edit any of the encyclopedia entries. We introduce the notion of
the impact of an edit, measured by the number of times the edited version is viewed. Using several datasets, including recent logs of all article views, we show that frequent editors dominate what people see when they visit Misplaced Pages, and that this domination is increasing. Similarly, using the same impact measure, we show that '''the probability of a typical article view being damaged is small but increasing, and we present empirically grounded classes of damage'''. Finally, we make policy recommendations for Misplaced Pages and other wikis in light of these findings.}}

Their specific policies recommendations:
{{Quotation|It is likely that vandals will continue working to defeat the bots, leading to an arms race. Thus, continued work on automatic detection of damage is important. Our results suggest types of damage to focus on; the good news is that the results show little subtlety among most vandals. We also generally believe in augmentation, not automation. That is, we prefer intelligent task routing approaches, where automation directs humans to potential damage incidents, but humans make the final decision.}}
This proposal has been completely ignored, but it is a proposal that has merit. For instance, in order to address the problem of ] and ], there could be the creation of a "]" which automatically generates a list of articles which likely contain inappropriate edits, based upon the likelihood of ''certain'' sources to be regularly misused again and again. This could more appropriately address extreme violations of ] and ], which are not captured by bots, while at the same time allowing humans to make the final decision as to what constitutes a "reliable source" or not.

As for the study by Nature magazine suggesting Misplaced Pages is as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica, <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/online-encyclopedias-put-to-the-test/2005/12/14/1134500913345.html |title=Online encyclopedias put to the test |accessdate=2008-01-25 |author=Stephen Cauchil}}</ref> this essay rejects that study on the grounds that it invokes the same flawed methodological assumptions in the sister essay. Furthermore, it is possible that the more specific claims made by The Register regarding the study may have merit:

{{quotation|"…''Nature'' sent only misleading fragments of some Britannica articles to the reviewers, sent extracts of the children's version and Britannica's 'book of the year' to others, and in one case, simply stitched together bits from different articles and inserted its own material, passing it off as a single Britannica entry."<ref> {{cite news | url = http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23/britannica_wikipedia_nature_study/
| last = Orlowski | first = Andrew | date = ] | publisher = The Register| title = Nature mag cooked Misplaced Pages study | accessdate = 2008-01-25}}</ref>}}

Encyclopedia Britannica rejected the study and while their analysis is unreliable for obvious reasons of bias, their claims do support a possible hypothesis, which itself bolsters the conclusion of this essay. Britannica denied the validity of the ''Nature'' study, claiming that it was "fatally flawed" on the grounds that the ''Britannica'' extracts were compilations that sometimes included articles written for the youth version.<ref name=FF>{{cite web |url=http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf |title=Fatally Flawed |publisher=] |date=March 2006 |accessdaymonth=14 July |accessyear=2007 }}</ref> ''Nature'' acknowledged the compiled nature of some of the ''Britannica'' extracts, but disputed the claim that this invalidated the conclusions of the study.<ref>{{cite journal | title = Britannica attacks | journal = ]| volume = 440 | pages = 582 | doi = 10.1038/440582b | date = ]
| url = http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440582b.html
| accessdate = 2006-07-14 }}</ref> Encyclopedia Britannica also argued that the ''Nature'' study showed that while the error rate between the two encyclopedias was similar, a breakdown of the errors indicated that the mistakes in Misplaced Pages were more often the inclusion of incorrect facts, while the mistakes in ''Britannica'' were "errors of omission".

Supporters of the claim that ] may cite the study by Fernanda Viégas of the MIT Media Lab and Martin Wattenberg and Kushal Dave of IBM Research which found that most vandal edits were reverted within around five minutes.<ref>{{cite paper|url=http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/papers/history_flow.pdf|publisher=MIT|format=PDF|title=Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations|author=Fernanda Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave}}</ref> However, this isn't a particularly controversial or strking conclusion, nor is it particularly relevant. The same conclusion was reached by the researchers of the University of Minnesota. From a sociological perspective, Misplaced Pages's ability to prevent obvious vandalism is intriguing, but that alone is not how Misplaced Pages's success is defined since the problems stem from systemic bias and erosion of good content, which, unlike random vandalism, cannot simply be addressed through the use of large networks of bots crawling Misplaced Pages and making automatic reverts according to a set algorithm. The development of such a network of bots, according to the University of Minnesota, is largely one reason why blatant vandalism is difficult on Misplaced Pages.

A study by Dartmouth University found that there are perverse incentives involved in the way Misplaced Pages works, such that good editors find absolutely no social rewards for good editing while paradoxically a great deal of good editors, which are not vandals or trolls, only edit Misplaced Pages a few times then leave. <ref>{{cite web|title= The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Misplaced Pages|publisher=Dartmouth University|author= Anthony, Denise; Smith, Sean W.; Williamson, Tim|accessdate=2008-01-24|url=http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/reports/abstracts/TR2007-606/}}</ref> This offers an empirical basis for the hypothesis of ] and the idea that many potentially ''good'' contributors are regularly turned away by Misplaced Pages's chaotic process, while the best veteran editors have to ''struggle'' to keep believing in the project, when they continually face so many unnecessary obstacles to appropriate edits. This study has been criticized as having a flawed methodology, but it was received favorably by the Scientific American community, despite its flaws. <ref>{{cite web|title=Misplaced Pages "Good Samaritans'' Are on the Money|publisher=Scientific American|author=Larry Greenemeier|accessdate=2008-01-24|publisher=Scientific American|url=http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=B9CB44D9-0807-DCEF-D35BA51C831A1CF6&chanID=sa003}}</ref> <ref>{{cite web|title=Dartmouth Misplaced Pages Study Flawed But Still Valuable|publisher=Scientific American|author=David Drake|accessdate=2008-01-24|publisher=|url=http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-entry/Fresh-Frozen-David-Drakes-Blog/Dartmouth-Misplaced Pages-Study-Flawed-Valuable/300001124}}</ref>

An academic study of Misplaced Pages articles also found that the level of debate among Misplaced Pages editors on controversial topics often degenerated into counterproductive squabbling: "For uncontroversial, 'stable' topics self-selection also ensures that members of editorial groups are substantially well-aligned with each other in their interests, backgrounds, and overall understanding of the topics...For controversial topics, on the other hand, self-selection may produce a strongly misaligned editorial group. It can lead to conflicts among the editorial group members, continuous edit wars, and may require the use of formal work coordination and control mechanisms. These may include intervention by administrators who enact dispute review and mediation processes, completely disallow or limit and coordinate the types and sources of edits."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mailer.fsu.edu/~bstvilia/papers/stvilia_wikipedia_infoWork_p.pdf|title=Information Quality Work Organization in Misplaced Pages|author=Besiki Stvilla, Michael Twidale, Linda Smith, Les Gasser|publisher=Florida State University|accessdate=2007-10-05}}</ref>

In conclusion, this essay finds support in studies conducted by the University of Minnesota, the University of Dartmouth, and the University of Florida.

===An absolute definition of Misplaced Pages success===
"Absolute" statistics in scientific analysis are generally to be regarded with immediate skepticism, because they do not measure continuous rates of change, only self-selected variables at certain fixed points in time ("snapshots"). The sister essay's unique definition of "success," appears to differ widely from the goal of the Misplaced Pages project explicitly stated in ], early statements made about Misplaced Pages made by ], and the definition of ] itself as a "compendium of human knowledge." Based on these definitions, one cannot argue that Misplaced Pages is succeeding because it has managed to develop an ''absolute'' amount of content that furthers that goal, while ''overall'' the majority of its resources go against the goal, through encouraging public ignorance and misinformation, and wasting resources on hosting unencyclopedic information on a website calling itself an "encyclopedia." The rebuttal also carelessly invokes the massive growth of Misplaced Pages without noting exactly where that growth has happened. This essay ''acknowledge'' the growth of Misplaced Pages but asserts that such growth is not happening in the right places and in the right ways.

According to Wikimedia's mission statement, the goal of Misplaced Pages is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content... ...and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

The definition of "success," appears to have been downgraded recently in response to the clear evidence that Misplaced Pages is failing. The argument, then, is not that "Misplaced Pages is succeeding," but that "Encyclopedias were never that useful to begin with." In response to criticism, Misplaced Pages should change, not lower the bar.

This is demonstrated by comparing earlier statements made by Jimbo Wales with more recent cynicism and skepticism that got greater and greater as time went on.

{{Quotation|Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to '''the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing'''.|Jimmy Wales, July 2004<ref name="jimmyresponds">{{cite web|title=" Misplaced Pages Founder Jimmy Wales Responds"|publisher=Slashdot|author=Jimmy Wales, July 2004 2004|date=2004-07-24|accessdate=2008-01-24|url=http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1351230}}</ref>}}

{{Quotation|I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any '''proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person'''. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think.|Jimmy Wales, July 2004<ref name="jimmyresponds" />}}

{{Quotation|'''We help the internet not suck.'''|Jimmy Wales, September 2005<ref name="cspaninterview">{{cite web|title="C-SPAN Interview"|publisher=C-SPAN|author=Jimmy Wales 2004|date=2004-07-24|accessdate=2008-01-24|url=http://qanda.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1042}}</ref>}}

{{Quotation|'''Our goal has always been Britannica or better quality'''. We don't always achieve that.|Jimmy Wales, September 2005<ref name="cspaninterview" />}}

{{Quotation|No, '''I don't think people should cite <nowiki></nowiki>, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either''' -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place.|Jimmy Wales, September 2005<ref>{{cite web|title= Misplaced Pages: "A Work in Progress"|publisher=BusinessWeek|author=Jimmy Wales, December 2005|date=2005-12-14|accessdate=2008-01-24|url=http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051214_441708.htm}}</ref>}}

{{Quotation|I can NOT emphasize this enough. '''There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag.''' Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.|Jimmy Wales, May 2006<ref>{{cite web|title="Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information"|publisher=WikiEN-l ] archive|author=Jimmy Wales, 2006|date=2006-05-16|accessdate=2008-01-24|url=http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046440.html}}</ref>}}

The sister essay to this article relies on an "absolute measure" of Misplaced Pages's success, which doesn't seem to be quite what Jimbo originally had in mind when he founded Misplaced Pages along with the Wikimedia foundation's original definition of "success," or even the claim that Misplaced Pages should be "Britannica or better quality." To have the same quality as Britannica would involve having the same ''marginal'' rate of accuracy, a relative measure of success, not the some arbitrary ''absolute'' amount of encyclopedic content. The absurdity of an "absolute" measure of success or quality can be demonstrated through the following analogy: Let's say you have a book not owned by Britannica, but which contains 100% every piece of information ''contained'' with ]. Let us then say that you place this book on top of a landfill, which is ''continually'' growing and even often defended because of the policy ]. What you end up with is this:

]

To look at that and say, "Misplaced Pages is succeeding! I mean, look, all the information in Britannica is there and besides, in German Misplaced Pages, the landfill isn't growing!" is absurd. If Misplaced Pages were to delete everything other than the articles which are currently featured and then focus on creating articles worth featuring, ''then'' it would be sensible to call it an encyclopedia that is roughly comparable in accuracy to Britannica.

The essay regularly engages in such ], including the following assertion:

{{Quotation|"...many B- and Start-level articles are indeed superior to their counterparts in standard encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopædia Britannica. For example, the coverage of the B-level article, Secondary structure, a core topic in protein science, is far superior to its coverage in the Britannica..."}}
Many humans have red hair, therefore ''most'' or ''all'' humans have red hair? This assertion doesn't follow, not to mention that it invokes am ambiguous subjective ] which shouldn't be found in value-free scientific analysis.

Growth, by itself, is not necessarily a good thing if the "growth" is in unencyclopedic material rather than encyclopedic material. If an article is "roughly comparable" in quality in Britannica, then it is fair to assume that it ''should'' be featured.

===Misplaced Pages success is qualitative, not quantitative===
The sister essay seems to assume that Misplaced Pages success is ] rather than ]. Misplaced Pages success is defined, not by the quantity of the articles, but by the quantity of ''high-quality'' articles. As an example, they cite an ]. This independent test was carried about by a Misplaced Pages user who appears to have reacted emotionally to reading this article and from that alone their analysis is suspect. Furthermore, their test does not demonstrate the ''quality'' of an edit, which is what matters in the "Rate of FA production" argument.

To demonstrate the above point, we return to the "landfill" analogy. Two common objects found in landfills are ]s and ]s, the latter being far larger than the former. The fact, however, that the refrigerator is larger than the banana peel does not establish that arguments over larger "trash" as opposed to smaller "trash" is necessarily progress. Plenty of edit-wars can certainly be fought over large articles and large amounts of content as opposed to stubs. In fact, it is intuitive that it would be the case, since stubs are stubs precisely because they are viewed less often.

Progress is only made when there is a greater amount of ''good quality'' edits, not just greater amounts of large edits as opposed to smaller edits. Large amounts of large edits, by themselves, do not necessarily imply an increase in articles of high ''quality'', something which isn't captured by the "independent study" cited.

==="Maintenance of high-quality articles" ===
For this argument, the essay offers no rebuttal, which is why it's not clear why its assertions are given the title "rebuttal." It acknowledges that high-quality articles are poorly maintained. It dispute that this reflects Misplaced Pages failure by use of a ]: The argument was not against random acts of obvious vandalism done in bad-faith, but continual destruction of high-quality articles which may in fact even have been done in good-faith. If it acknowledges the fact that high-quality articles are regularly poorly maintained, then it should address ''that'' fact and not dispute it by bringing up the irrelevant fact that ''random'' and ''blatantly obvious'' vandalism is rare. This essay, in fact, agrees with that point and makes no assertion otherwise.

===Lowering the bar===
The idea that encyclopedia were never that reliable or useful to begin with is not an adequate defense of Misplaced Pages's success. If this were true, then it's not clear why anyone, especially in Misplaced Pages's early history, should ever have had the enthusiasm that they do if that were the case. It is often said that Misplaced Pages is not reliable as an academic source, but it is a "good starting point" or a "good academic reference." These assertions seem self-contradictory. A good starting point for what? A good starting point for research would be a collection of good sources, something which Misplaced Pages does not currently necessarily provide. After all, if its ''sources'' were accurate, then it ought to be far more accurate. The issue itself ''is'' the unreliability of the sources used. As such, it cannot be a starting point for another other than what the average person generally thinks about a topic, based on what he can dig up on it on Google, in a matter of seconds. In this regard, it is a step above Google by saving people time they would have to otherwise spend looking for ''some'' sources themselves, but it remains a step below actual encyclopedias.

Furthermore, the idea that the appearance of Misplaced Pages failure can somehow be a misleading statistic generated by editorial standards that are "too high," doesn't seem consistent with the wiki process, because the editorial standards are ''themselves'' generated by the wiki process, not arbitrarily determined by expert editors. If the editorial process was too strict, it would be particularly easy for there to develop a consensus around ''lowering'' the standards. Ironically, the sister essay accuses the editorial standards of being too high, while at the same time it refuses to come out and directly say, "And to address this, we think editorial standards should be lowered."

===The assumption of limitless patience===
Out of every assertion made in the sister essay, the "assumption of limitless patience," stands out like a sore thumb.

{{Quotation|Critics argue: ''About one article a day on average becomes featured; at this rate, it will take 4,380 years for all the currently existing articles to meet FA criteria.''<br>] are very ].}}

Misplaced Pages editors are ''not'' limitlessly patient. It's admittedly tough to measure a possible ] on Misplaced Pages without having information on users' credentials or educational-status. However, there are a clearly a number of cases of expert editors and editors who aren't editors but are just plain good leaving Misplaced Pages because they get fed up with drama and bureaucracy. This is not to assert ], but to use such cases as illustrations (see ]) of how existing Misplaced Pages policy is counterintuitive to good editing.

===Speculations regarding German Misplaced Pages===

It's tough to say why German Misplaced Pages has done so well, but one possible speculation is this: According to ], German Misplaced Pages is run as an "Adminocracy." In other words, they have a very low tolerance for trolling and admins are given a great deal of deference in dealing with trolls and vandals. Other wikis, such as Dutch Misplaced Pages, which are dominated more by ] ], are crumbling due to majoritarianism and bureaucracy, two things ]. Jimmy himself seems to have an appropriate understanding of ] that is not shared by the community.<ref>See the discussions at ], ], and ]</ref> Jimmy has stated:

{{Quotation|If I see is publishing shit, maybe by swearing or not making sense, I warn him ...the second time he turns on, I block him.|Jimmy Wales, May 2006<ref>{{cite web|title=Life, the universe and Wiki|publisher=Sydney Morning Herald|author=Jimmy Wales, 2005|date=2005-09-20|accessdate=2008-01-24|url=http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/09/19/1126981972225.html}}</ref>}}

This may shock some people, but it's perfectly acceptable if, in fact, Jimmy is in the right when he does that. And the claim above is in direct contradiction to the flowchart which describes how to ].

]

Why isn't Jimmy thinking of "a reasonable change that might integrate" with the troll's ideas? The answer: Because there are none, when you're dealing with trolls, in which they case they should be blocked either in accordance with policy or in accordance with ignore all rules which is ''itself'' policy.

In that flowchart, ] isn't present and the result has been an unwritten policy that ] is to ignored itself, which favors violations of ], ], and ].

It could be speculated, then that German Misplaced Pages has been more effective because the role of administrators and ] in the wiki process has been more clear. The four main principles of German Misplaced Pages <ref>{{cite web |url=http://209.85.135.104/translate_c?hl=en&langpair=de%7Cen&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Grundprinzipien |title= Misplaced Pages: Basic Principles, German Misplaced Pages |accessdate=2008-01-25}}</ref> are:
# Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia
# A neutral point-of-view (where ] and ] are both heavily emphasized)
# Free content
# No personal attacks

This is far more simple, more clear, and apparently more ''effective'' empirically, and this essay recommends all wikis follow the example of German Misplaced Pages and reject the absurd proposals made in ]. A more thorough review of their proposals will be published in the future.

==References==
{{Reflist}}


==See also== ==See also==
Line 232: Line 85:
* ] * ]
* ] * ]

==And finally...==

If this essay makes you feel angry, stressed or miserable, the essay ] may or may not make you feel less or more so.

Revision as of 11:31, 27 January 2008

Essay on editing Misplaced Pages
This is an essay.
It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Misplaced Pages contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.		Shortcuts

Is Misplaced Pages succeeding in its aim of becoming a reputable, reliable reference work? Here are some illustrations of ways in which it is not fulfilling that aim.

File:Misplaced Pages feedback loop.jpg
Success is not guaranteed.

Assumptions

To assess the quality of Misplaced Pages's articles, some assumptions are necessary. Here it is assumed that:

  • The criteria defined by the Misplaced Pages 1.0 editorial team at {{grading scheme}} accurately reflect the quality of the articles these ratings have been applied to.
  • That articles which are not either FA or A-class fall below the standards that a reference work should demand of its content.
  • That the sample of 300,000 articles assessed, with results listed at WP:1.0/I, is representative of the whole encyclopaedia.

Criteria which indicate substantial failings

Performance on core topics

Vital articles lists 1182 articles on topics that can be considered essential. These topics should have articles of the very highest quality - ideally a featured article. So do they? In fact, of those 1182, only 72 are featured articles. This means that 94% of the essential topics that should have excellent articles fall short of the standard, assuming that all vital articles that meet the FA criteria have been nominated for FA status.

Do they fall short by a long way? 131 are listed as good articles, which, according to Template:Grading scheme, means that 'other encyclopedias could do a better job'. Some editors have criticised the GA process as inconsistent and arbitrary, so the quality of those articles is further in doubt. 133 are listed as articles which are either stubs or have a cleanup tag. The rest, presumably, are B-class or start-class on the assessment scale; this indicates that many articles require substantial work before they will match or exceed the standards found in other encyclopaedias.

On current trends, how long will it take before all the Vital Articles are featured articles? On 1 January 2006, 41 of them were featured; by 1 January 2007, this had risen to 71. As FA promotion rates have remained approximately constant for well over a year it would be difficult to assume anything other than a constant rate of VAs becoming FAs. At this rate of approximately 30 a year it will take 37 years for all of the vital articles to reach the standards expected of them.

Performance on broader topics

There are about 1,300 featured articles. There are also about 1,700 good articles. However, there are currently 6,929,542 articles on Misplaced Pages. This means that slightly more than 99.8% of all the articles on Misplaced Pages have not yet been assessed as featured or good articles. In many cases this is because they are not considered well-written, verifiable, broad, or comprehensive in their coverage. The results of the largest-scale assessment of Misplaced Pages content, covering 18% of the total number of articles, can be found at WP:1.0/I. These results show that 0.7% of assessed articles are either FAs or A-class articles.

One useful, informal exercise for a reader is to critically read ten random articles. The numbers above suggest that on average, you'd expect to find one FA or A-class article in every 143 articles you looked at (based on WP:1.0/I), or every 762 (based on total numbers of FAs and A-class articles).

Maintenance of standards

Do articles which are judged to have reached the highest standards remain excellent for a long time, or do standards decline as well-meant but poor quality edits cause standards to fall over time? There are currently 340 former featured articles, so that more than 20% of all articles that have ever been featured are no longer featured.

Many editors observe that an FA that is not actively maintained inevitably declines; for an example see Ryanair, which attracts large numbers of highly biased edits which have wrecked a formerly excellent article. Sun's lead section was reduced to a few short sentences by an editor who either hadn't read or didn't understand the guidelines on what a lead section is supposed to be, and no-one has restored the previously existing summary. A whole section of Mauna Loa was removed by a vandal in November, and was not restored for a month. Generally, if the primary author of an FA does not take care of it, checking changes up to several times a day, it is likely to have its quality compromised by unnoticed vandalism or, far more damaging in the long term, well-intentioned but poor quality edits.

Some or many articles may lose featured article status because they do not meet current standards, rather than because they have declined in quality. Without case-by-case analysis it is impossible to say what proportion this is the case for. However, we can note that the featured article review process has not been as successful as would be ideal at encouraging featured articles to improve in line with rising standards.

Rate of quality article production

Many argue that Misplaced Pages is a work in progress and that, given time, all articles will reach very high standards. Unfortunately, this is not borne out by the rate at which articles are currently being judged to meet featured article criteria. About one article a day on average becomes featured; at this rate, it will take 4,380 years for all the currently existing articles to meet FA criteria. If the current approximately exponential growth rate of Misplaced Pages (which will see it double in size in about the next 500 days) continues, then on current trends there will never be a time when all articles have been promoted to featured article status.

Should we even expect all articles to meet the featured article criteria? A majority of people who commented on one earlier discussion felt that the featured article criteria do indeed define the standards that all articles need to meet.

Is WP:FA a bottleneck? The rate at which articles have been promoted has remained more or less constant for well over a year (see WP:GAS), while article creation rates have increased exponentially throughout that time. If the system prevents large numbers of quality articles from being recognised as such, then that indicates that some kind of reform of the system is necessary.

Special:Recentchanges provides evidence that the rate of addition of substantial encyclopaedic content is low. You may find it informative to look at the last 200 recent changes and count how many of them are directly building the encyclopedia. That means observing reasonably sound content being added (and not under a 'trivia' header) to an article that is not a borderline AFD candidate. (The info on bytes added/removed narrows the search quite quickly.) Typically this reveals less than ten substantive article-space change in 200. One such analysis can be found at User:Opabinia_regalis/Article_statistics.

Questioning these criteria

Is it a bad idea to use Featured Article or Good Article status as criteria for judging the number of excellent articles in Misplaced Pages? It is possible that many or most articles that meet the featured article criteria or good article criteria have not been officially reviewed, because review is a time-intensive process that often suffers from a backlog of nominated articles. The Good Article process historically has had a much less rigorous promotion process than the featured article process, so some editors reject it as a measure of article quality. If these processes do not succeed in recognizing quality content, then this may be a failure of Misplaced Pages to perform accurate self assessment rather than a failure to produce quality articles.

Food for thought

If Misplaced Pages just aimed to be a social site where people with similar interests could come together and write articles about anything they liked, it would certainly be succeeding. However, its stated aim is to be an encyclopedia, and not just that but an encyclopaedia of the highest quality. Six years of work has resulted in 3,000 articles of good or excellent quality, at which rate it will take many decades to produce the quantity of good or excellent articles found in traditional reference works. Over 1.6 million articles are mediocre to poor to appalling in quality.

Open questions

  • Has the system failed to produce a quality reference work? If so, why?
  • Is change necessary?
  • If it is, then is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up?
  • Does this matter, given that Misplaced Pages is one of the most popular websites in the world?
  • Does popularity establish authenticity?
  • What is Misplaced Pages really, and what do we want it to be?
  • Are the statistical measures introduced here relevant to the conclusions drawn?
  • Are Misplaced Pages's own criteria for success accurately reflected here?
  • Are the Featured Article and Good Article designations useful for determining the number of quality articles in Misplaced Pages? If they are not, how can they be reformed?
  • At what rate is the number of new user accounts increasing?
  • Does the number of active users increase in the same way as new user accounts, or do significant numbers of editors leave the project?
  • Could it help any to introduce one or more of the following:
  1. a clearer vision and mission statement, prominently displayed?
  2. better defined performance metrics for articles or edits?
  3. voting, as popularity, or by "distinguished members" (opening a can of chicken/egg soup here)?
  4. profiling authors/editors to identify promising candidates or repeat offenders so as to offer them voluntary coaching/mentoring (on private channels, not in public on discussion pages)?
  5. offering references to alternative sites so as to channel creative energies of writers who repeatedly fail to meet Misplaced Pages criteria?
  6. leaving it as it is because the last few questions lead to an unworkable data nightmare?

See also

And finally...

If this essay makes you feel angry, stressed or miserable, the essay Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages may or may not be failing may or may not make you feel less or more so.

Category: