Research talk:Newcomer quality

Todo

• Insert analysis of inter-rater reliability Done
• Insert table of sampled data counts from each semester. Not done
  • Superfluous upon re-assessment
• Talk about who did the coding. Done
• Expand introduction to introduce the problem of the decline and previous work. Probably best to be heavy on citation to WSOR11 and related academic work. Done
• Add plots from data analysis. Done

--EpochFail (talk) 23:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Version 1.0 ready! --EpochFail (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

perhaps standards have gone up?

when the Wiki started, just dumping anything up there was better than nothing.

But now, standards are higher. Especially on established articles, clueless first edits (for example adding something to the lead that is not lead worthy, is a detail already covered in article) are degrading.

There really is still a shortage of the kind of people who write real honest to god books or nonfiction articles or journalists or academics. And in some ways the Wiki rejects even them. But that said, having more people that want to post low quality stuff is not good...can even be bad. we really ought to have controls to protect articles more, have registration required, have to earn the right to edit a GA+ article, etc. Yes, a newbie IP might occasionally help an FA. But that is a very small chance of it...and a much bigger chance of degredation. Even when reverted, it just pisses the newbie off.

Need to get out of the mindset of letting anyone edit anything and relying on all sorts of manual (and auto) patrolling. Even the person reverted is upset by it and turned off. Better to have some natural apprenticeship model. Sadly, I think there are some people who actually enjoy the patrolling and warning and banning and such. Gnomes and moderators and such. Often (not always) they lack the capability to write real content and self actualize by feeling important playing whackamole.

As it is, I honestly urge anyone wanting to contribute to Wiki to consider instead either blogging (at least you have control and it is not rewritten) or just writing a real book or article or the like. It is truly amazing to prowl through a large library and consider the amazing amounts of content in there, often deep, well written and organized. Much more powerful what is in books than what is in Wiki.71.246.149.159 02:46, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

an ad hoc observation

The number of articles that seem to be "in thrall" of a particular editor seems to be increasing over time. Further than welcoming content, they revert new users' edits with pedantic references to bureaucratic rules.