User talk:BOZ/Articles for Review proposal

Discussion

Let me know what you think of this proposal before I submit it! Any constructive criticism is appreciated. BOZ (talk) 19:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, you asked for my feedback. In principle, this sounds like a worthwhile endeavor. It could also be used as a forum to determine whether deleted articles should be recreated; WP:DRV is often not a good fit for this. Though we do have some vaguely similar processes already - incubation and Articles for Creation - and I wonder whether there's no overlap with these. I am also not sure whether there's enough editor interest in doing extensive research for "other people's articles", if you know what I mean - often, people are most motivated to research what they themselves have knowledge and want to write about. Perhaps you could test the process on some article talk pages and ramp it up later if there's enough interest?  Sandstein  19:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! There is probably some overlap with incubation and AFC; in fact, I addressed them to a point in the proposal so far. I know that AFC has failed submissions which just sit around forever, and I have seen more than a few incubator articles which do the same, so this process may be able to make something useful out of what is now detritus. But both processes could be skipped by going straight to a process like this one instead, yes, that is true. Is that a good thing or a bad thing; is this simply another option?

I don't know how to gauge the level of interest in something like this. I can only tell you that I know for a fact that there are editors who troll around AFD and add sources to articles that they find there – it's wonderful that this happens, but I have no idea how widespread it is, and it's just that sort of editor I'd be trying to attract with something like this. You are right that most people edit primarily what interests them – I am surely guilty of this – but plenty of people just work on whatever needs working on. I am also hoping that a process like this would cultivate skills in other editors where more experienced searchers could lead by example, and that would benefit Wikipedia tremendously by increasing that sort of productivity. I wouldn't expect any one editors to do any extensive research, but I would expect one of these to hopefully go more like an AFD, where most participants would spend a few minutes on one article and then move on. For example, say an editor has access to HighBeam, he could go around to an article or two (or five or a dozen), look for sources, add citations wherever he finds them and then move on to doing something else. Another editor might come around and give it a copyedit. Another editor might come around and only do a Google search. Another editor might come around and take it upon himself to spend a couple of hours working on it. You know, "you decide your own level of involvement."

I wouldn't mind refining this a bit more and then maybe roadtesting it on a few articles as you suggest, but how would I go about testing a process which has not yet been implemented? BOZ (talk) 20:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Well... it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, to be sure. But I think part of the challenge is that we already have many ways of alerting people to articles (or not-yet-articles) in need of improvement, beginning with project-specific lists of redlinks, to cleanup tags and categories, to the processes mentioned above and by Casliber below. I think the principal challenge is helping people find the type of content they're interested in helping out with - perhaps a more detailed system of cleanup tags. But for the reasons Casliber provides below, I'm not sure that just adding another rather similar process would help.  Sandstein  20:35, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I support this proposal and would love to help. Web Warlock (talk) 21:19, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! :) BOZ (talk) 15:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I still think the best thing is to discuss and combine with Peer Review. Okay, maybe people don't review like this in practice but there is nothing to say that reviews like this can't happen there. There are too many places for editors to post articles for review already and a lack of reviewers. My concern is that this spreads reviewers even more thinly - one of wikipedia's strengths is more sets of eyes and stronger articles as a result, and somehow embedding article improvement practice within an established review system I think would be better for everyone. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:50, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Do you see anything in the proposal that you think would be salvageable in some form? Or would it help if I made it a clearer distinction that articles in better shape should go to peer review, while articles in poor shape would go here? BOZ (talk) 15:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Look I think the idea is a good one and agree we should incorporate it in some form somewhere. I am re-reading and ruminating.....20:44, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

How about this?

The more I think about it, the more it seems like there is a bit of hangup on the "and do some cleanup" aspect of my proposal. So, I decided to do some rewriting and refocusing to come back to my original point. When I thought of this idea in the first place, the whole idea was to source unsourced articles and beef up the sources where an article has at least a starting point. The idea of doing other cleanup on an article was more of a "well since you're here already, what else can you do" afterthought, and maybe I went overboard by focusing on it too much and making it too much like "Peer Review lite". The main goal is to get the sources on there, and additional cleanup is a secondary (yet important) goal, so I have moved that to more of a suggestion than an integral part of the process. Besides, isn't cleanup a lot easier once we have found and identified some good sources? So let's just focus on that.

I know we have plenty of ways of alerting people to articles in need of cleanup and sources, but let's face it; how many times have you seen an article sit for years with a {{notability}}, {{refimprove}}, and/or {{primarysources}} tag, or sit on some project's watchlist, or otherwise just sit there in limbo and go unnoticed, when maybe a simple search could pull up a source or two – and maybe a fantastic one at that? I have been going through a large series of articles with another user who has access to HighBeam and it is amazing what we have been able to do with some cases; some articles with zero sources or maybe one or two might now have 5. And I have seen other people do similar things with neglected articles that I pointed them to. That is a big part of my point here; some TLC on unloved articles, just a bit of love to show that we care.  ;) And if we have it in a process structured similarly to AFD, that temporarily gets it the exposure that it might otherwise not have.

I also removed the idea of discussing what to do with an article that is insufficient for a standalone article; this sort of discussion can continue on the article's talk page, on a WikiProject talk page, or at an AFD, or wherever. Cutting down on the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" approach. ;)

Cas, if you want to use some of my ideas to combine with Peer Review, be my guest; they are preserved here with a diff, so waste not want not.  ;) Maybe this can be developed to help those kinds of reviews become more effective in practice? BOZ (talk) 23:20, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the spirit behind the concept. Finding sources is a critical aspect of what WP is all about. But I wonder if WP already has processes that could be used to do this job? We already have WP:Article Rescue Squadron, WP:Good Article nominations, and WP:Peer review. All of those are forums whose roles include identifying and integrating sources. The PR and GAN processes presume that the nominator already found sources & incorporated them, so they are not an exact match to what you are proposing. But what about WP:Article Rescue Squadron ... could that process be evolved to meet the need? --Noleander (talk) 19:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much process is actually involved in WP:ARS. But there is a natural relationship here, even if ARS gets a bad name from some tangential activities. However, my concern is that they are more concerned with articles that are under actual threat of deletion, rather than articles which could in theory be deleted one day. I know that probably some of our best source-finders are involved there already, and these are the sort of folks I'd like to attract to this. There may be some sort of way to marry the two, but if not then I'd like to see what we can do here with my idea. BOZ (talk) 21:40, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that first trying to enhance Article Rescue Squadron is the best way to go. There is a shortage of volunteers in WP, so creating a new process/forum is something that should only be done as a last resort. I suggest that you post a proposal on ARS's talk page, suggesting something like: ARS expands its charter to accept articles that are not in AfD. Thus, anyone could nominate any article for consideration by ARS; and ARS volunteers could then locate and supply sources. Good luck. --Noleander (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I will give that some thought, thanks. BOZ (talk) 14:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)