The Million Award
Here's an essay worth your time to read. It argues that Wikipedia tends to reward users for the number of articles improved rather than importance of articles improved (measured either by popularity or WikiProject importance rankings). This leads to massive improvement of low-importance, rarely viewed content, while important articles languish because they are time-consuming to revise and therefore less "profitable" in community incentives ( DYK credits, GA and FA stars, etc.).
This isn't intended to slag editors on obscure topics; I write a lot of rarely-viewed stuff too. But after more than a decade of operation, it's embarrassing that we haven't brought our most important and most read content to minimal standards. TCO makes a good case that we should start focusing on article importance rather than article quantity. As a small contribution in this direction, a few of us founded the Million Award to recognize editors who work on our most-read content.
About me
Userboxes
|
.jpg){kind=small}
I specialized in articles related to human rights or press freedom cases, particularly Amnesty International prisoners of conscience, and am a member of WikiProject Human Rights--you can read an interview about that here. I used to be an international development worker and have lived on a few different continents; I also have a literature PhD and worked for several years as a professor, and even wrote a few articles for paper encyclopedias before these largely disappeared. After a severe disability left me mostly bed-bound, though, I thought Wikipedia was my best outlet to keep contributing to education. (Happily, my health has improved significantly in the years since then, though not quite to the point where I can get back to teaching.) Mostly through my work with WP:Typo Team, I've made edits to more than 140,000 unique articles, about 3.5% of Wikipedia's total content.
Current projects
The Million Award
Here's an essay worth your time to read. It argues that Wikipedia tends to reward users for the number of articles improved rather than importance of articles improved (measured either by popularity or WikiProject importance rankings). This leads to massive improvement of low-importance, rarely viewed content, while important articles languish because they are time-consuming to revise and therefore less "profitable" in community incentives ( DYK credits, GA and FA stars, etc.).
This isn't intended to slag editors on obscure topics; I write a lot of rarely-viewed stuff too. But after more than a decade of operation, it's embarrassing that we haven't brought our most important and most read content to minimal standards. TCO makes a good case that we should start focusing on article importance rather than article quantity. As a small contribution in this direction, a few of us founded the Million Award to recognize editors who work on our most-read content.
About me
Userboxes
|
I specialized in articles related to human rights or press freedom cases, particularly Amnesty International prisoners of conscience, and am a member of WikiProject Human Rights--you can read an interview about that here. I used to be an international development worker and have lived on a few different continents; I also have a literature PhD and worked for several years as a professor, and even wrote a few articles for paper encyclopedias before these largely disappeared. After a severe disability left me mostly bed-bound, though, I thought Wikipedia was my best outlet to keep contributing to education. (Happily, my health has improved significantly in the years since then, though not quite to the point where I can get back to teaching.) Mostly through my work with WP:Typo Team, I've made edits to more than 140,000 unique articles, about 3.5% of Wikipedia's total content.
Current projects