Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards/Quality Management Project

Quality Management Project

Having an online open source encyclopedia has wide appeal: such a resource is valuable and can contribute to peoples lives. Through informed understanding of the world around us, more effective and meaningful ways of living are brought about.

It would seem to be self evident that the articles of such an online encyclopedia should be of reasonably high quality: a good article gives good information, is appealing to read, and helps ones understanding of the world. Poorly written articles don't accomplish this, and the open source project becomes dull in its contribution, or meaningless.

With many editors who have wide divergence of what is "good", there needs to be standards for encyclopedia articles: without adequate co-ordination, we as editors are forced into a condition of dysfunction.

Thats about all that needs to be said: but there is a background for standards of quality, which is considered below.

Quality in history

The issue of encyclopedic standards may likely be seen from countless points of view. If one takes the point of view of a standard for an encyclopedia as being related to quality, one might start to explore the Greek notion of excellence (aréte). Excellence from a metaphysical viewpoint could be considered to have properties that would be both universal and particular in nature. [1] The Chinese notion of excellence is captured in the term kung fu, which means "achievement through skillful effort" + virtue, and includes the qualities of motivation, self discipline, and time.

Quality in business

"Quality management" would be the relationship of an editor or editors to aréte in terms of this encyclopedia.

Quality areas and framework: 1) content 2) context 3) style 4) organization 5) communication 6) perception 7) skill in technical use of the Wiki tools and ability to compose an article 8) self control and working within one's proper limits of understanding.

Definitions of Quality

"Framework management" would be the management or application of the above framework to the article in development and the encyclopedia.

The "framework management process" might involve the use of some basic principles that are part of the essence of Philosophy-rational debate and discussion:

"Philosophy is the discipline concerned with the questions of how one should live (ethics);
what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); 
what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); 
and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic)".

Thus, the rational inquiry into what constitutes quality in editing an open online encyclopedia would be at the heart of discovering what the standards for quality would be.

The possibility of the Quality Management Project (QMP) is writing and editing an online encyclopedia created by ourselves that is of high quality.

Definition of possibility: a possibility is what inspires us in life and what we are enthusiastic about.

Ideality describes the disposition towards perfection, towards beauty and refinement in all aspects of life.

An ideal is a principle or value that one actively pursues as a goal. Ideals are particularly important in ethics, as the order in which one places them tends to determine the degree to which one reveals them as real and sincere.

A goal is a state of affairs or a state of a concrete activity domain which a person or a system is going/tends to achieve or obtain.

A desire or an intention becomes a goal if and only if an action for achieving it, is activated. See Goal (management).

See Goal (management). See also Objective (goal). See also Project and Project management.

An ideal becomes a standard when a community of observers a) consensually considers it to be a standard, b) applies it as a condition of membership in the community, and c) co-ordinates action to preserve the standard in the community. (See Humberto Maturana).

Measurement

A standard for quality in the encyclopedia articles could be considered to be drawn from the Featured Article series. These are some examples:

Seabird - Fauna of Puerto Rico - Green and Golden Bell Frog - Galaxy - Solar System

The evolutionary process of an article can be quite varied. The development of the Philosophy article is presented here as an example of an article's path. An interested editor can see the origin and development of this article by researching the Archives. They display the primeval state of the article to the current state: at the time of this paragraph the article is considered a "B" grade. It seems to be a fair reflection of the state of affairs of the field of Philosophy as presented in an online collaborative overview of the subject matter. There have been periods of intense contention, and how these conflicts were managed can be used as a "case study". The development of the article can also be utilized as an anchor point for further reference in the process for the formation of standards for the purposes of this forum and this encyclpedia.

Featured article criteria

Comparison: Seabird