Thomas Dalton wrote: >> 2009/2/16 Phil Nash <[email protected]>: >>> I think that this was bound to happen; any venture based on >>> describing the known universe has an inherent limit in any case, >>> and it seems obvious that once you've reached some level of >>> coverage, what happens then is more determined by the pace of real >>> life events. However, like software, it's arguable that an >>> encyclopedia is never really finished. Good Articles may be good, >>> and Featured Articles better, but something will always come along >>> to require additions. As for relaxing notability guidelines, I >>> think we very largely get it about right at present, and opening a >>> can of worms does not commend itself to me as a policy. >> >> If we get to the point where virtually no new articles are being >> created (beyond current events) and a very large proportion of the >> existing articles are at least Good, then it might be worth relaxing >> the guildlines - what would be the downside? I think a lot of people >> that like writing new articles don't like the fine tuning that is >> required to get from Good to Featured, so if we don't let them write >> new stuff we'll just lose them. We might as well have them doing >> something.
I think the downside might be exactly what is covered by [[WP:NOT]] at present, and especially [[WP:NOR]]; I've seen several articles that were extremely worthy as research projects, but offended against those policies, and [[WP:SYNTH]] in particular. I hated to nominate for deletion, but it had to be done, within existing policy. I hoped we would not lose those obviously committed and competent editors. The problem is that relaxing [[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:SYNTH]], if not done with extreme care, opens the floodgates to all sorts of abuse, and that is why I don't think it should happen. As regards quality of articles that pass the intial [[WP:CSD]] and [[WP:N]] tests, it's very largely up to editors being interested enough to dedicate time and effort to take an article to its appropriate level. Take [[Tiddleywink]] as an example; it is notable, by definition, because it's a settlement. But without major research effort, it's extremely unlikely to ever achieve GA, let alone FA. Perhaps that is a problem with the requirements of GA & FA, and perhaps also those criteria are worth looking at. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
