User talk:TalkHard/Quality over Quantity

I'm very interested in comments and other ideas on how to improve the quality of articles. For those who disagree with the points I bring up, I have a couple questions:

Is Wikinews valuable right now? In other words, if it never grows into anything bigger, will it still be valuable?
If yes, what value does it serve? If no, what will it take for it to become valuable, and how long will this take?

I appreciate all feedback. - TalkHard 12:03, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Feedback

I think if you increase the number of people working in a article you rather help improving the article quality. However the best results will be get if you increase the number of people working in a article during review. You can have a lot of wikiusers working in an article and you still get a bad one because these people generally can't see the problems others can. People who have not primary edited the article (article is first time seen) can do better reviews. When you are envolved in a work you don't see the same troubles people who are at some distance can see. So I think the increasing of the number of people working in a article may improve (not necessarilly) the article quality but the increasing of the number of people doing the review will sure improve the article quality.--Carlosar 02:34, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. The thing though is I'm not just talking about fixing problems with articles. But rather creating and finding useful information for use in them in the first place. This is not done in review. I believe Wikinews will serve no useful function if we don't create articles that are better than articles found in daily papers, in terms of depth, background, and context. Anything less is a waste of time. Why would anyone come here? - TalkHard 10:07, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Carlosar 15:35, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)--Some ideas:

Writing: we have good possibilities of assuring quality if some of the reviewers -or editors- is a English native language speaker or is known by the community as been as a good English speaker.
Policies: we need to have well defined policies. But these policies can not be too complex or extense otherwise the edit/review process will become difficult and slow.
Legality: the same as Policies. I think the present legacy policies are good enough.
Comprehensiveness: the same as writing
Accuracy: maybe we need some rules here; so it is the same as Policies
Neutrality: an article can be NPOV but there is not NPOV wikinews editors/reviewers. Everybody have their own point of view about every subject. This is inevitable. An article will be NPOV if people with different point of view work in it. Sometimes is impossible to write a completely neutral article. In these cases, the people with diferent point of view must have a oportunity of showing their diverse vision by giving contributions to the article. These contributions must be validated by physical evidences, events which really happened; they cannot be personal opinions - although I think there are situations where you can use an opinion. However even in these situations you must say that what you are writing is an opinion.

I sense the first round of the Wikinews' version of the stub debate is coming..

Pro/additional points

I personally agree that 5 to 10 is a good number to have for each quality article, and one or two articles at a time is quire reasonable amount multi-tasking (though I would say 4 is fine).
Compared to Wikipedia, in case you know one, Wikinews benefit a lot less from harnessing an article from a stub to a comprehensive version taking a long time. By that time, news value could become almost none.

Contra/questions

If there are some incomplete reports and empty pages, people may indeed start adding to it or writing an article.
It is the sense of "Oh, why no one is taking care of such an important story? Do I have to do it!?" that draws people in.
Not everyone knows how to write a good news story, or how to collaboratively produce one. And people do not like to be told what to do, what not to do. So better let them learn by experimentation and observation, rather than imposing rules.
More organization and more rules stifle people's creativity.
We want speed, and we should go by dynamic interaction and good faith, not rules.
Chaotic energy is part of any prospering wiki.
We need many more people first, because with this amount of people, areas of interest/expertise do not overlap much, and collaboration is not as easy.
Voluntarily taking up a duty is fun and exciting, but being assigned a task is not.

On other parts, I am one of those who think we should aim for a weekly. But yes, holding off release is not that meaningful. We just need to think of in-depth coverage than breaking news, i.e. weekly than news wire. Tomos 21:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Feedback from Lyellin

I'm using a new header just to break it up a bit... Anyways. I agree, quality is needed to bring more people- the Catch 22 you mention. I'm wary of your idea, but it's better than anything I've come up with to help quality ;). Here's why I'm wary: With the lack of people we have now, that's perhaps 1 or 2 articles developing at a time, maybe 3 or 4 (counting regular contributors). Assume a turn over of a couple days, and we're not producing much (not to say this is a bad thing, per se, but could be a problem). We also are constricting people across the board... you acn't write about this unless others will write with you. Well- I want to write about the public transportation problems in PA... how many people can help with that? That's where I see the real trouble lying with your suggustion. Lyellin 02:44, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Quantity will lead to quality

My philosophy for wiki and for news in general: The more stories we write, the more people will be exposed to us. That will lead to more people joining the team, which, in turn, means more critical eyes will see each story; improving the quality of our product. This means that I am of the group that says there should be no review process in place that would slow down the dissemination of information. I am opposed in principle of making Wikinews a peer-review publication for every article we produce. -- Davodd | Talk 09:43, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with the premise that the kind of stories we are currently producing will bring anyone to the site. Meanwhile, there are people like me who have decided to stop wasting effort on something that lacks any value. I suspect that unless something is done, the site will stagnate as people lose interest. I have a new mini-proposal that I posted at the Water Cooler that I believe is a good compromise between my idea here and the objections to it. - TalkHard 04:26, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)