Editing Encyclopedia:Historical archive/Policy/Approval mechanism (section)

==Wikipedia approval mechanism, defined==

"Wikipedia approval mechanism" means any sort of mechanism whereby Wikipedia articles are individually marked and displayed, somehow, as "approved".

===Purpose===

The ''purpose'' of an approval mechanism is, essentially, quality assurance.  By presenting particular articles as approved, we (Wikipedians) would be representing those articles as reliable sources of information.

===Proposed basic requirements===

Among the basic requirements of an approval mechanism would have to fulfill in order to be adequate are:
* The approval must be done by ''experts'' about the material approved. ''A [[Wikipedia:Trust model|trust model]]?''
* There must be clear and reasonably stringent standards that the experts are expected to apply.
* The mechanism itself must be genuinely ''easy'' for the experts to use or follow. ''[[Nupedia]]'s experience seems to show that a convoluted approval procedure, while it might be rigorous, is too slow to be of ''practical'' use.''
* The approval mechanism ''must not'' impede the progress of Wikipedia in any way. ''It must not change the Wikipedia process; it should be an "add-on".''
* Must not be a bear to program, and it shouldn't require extra software or rely on browser-specific stuff like Java (or Javascript) that some users won't have. ''A common browser platform standard must be specified for them, preferably low level but not so low level that the machines don't have CDs.''
* Must provide some way of verifying the expert's [[blind credential|credentials]]&mdash;and optionally ''a way to verify that ''he or she'' approved the article, not an imposter.''

Some results we might want from an approval system are that it:
* makes it possible to broaden or narrow the selection of approvers (E.g., one person might only wish authors who have phd's, another would allow for anyone who has made an effort to approve any articles.),
* allows for extracting topic-oriented sets (e.g., in order to produce an "Encyclopedia of Music") (The idea is that article approval could contain more information than just the binary "high-quality" bit, e.g. topic area, level of detail, and so forth.  Such "approved metadata" would allow easy extraction of user-defined subsets of the full approved article set.), and
* provides a framework for allowing multiple sets of "approvals", allow not just one set of ''approvers'' or one ''approval rating'' but different sets to allow for different standards. (I.e. as with consumer products, different safety approvals, scuba diving certifications, etc.)

===Advantages===

The advantages of an approval mechanism of the sort described are clear and numerous:
* We will encourage the creation of [[Wikipedia:brilliant prose|really good content]].
* Large, reputable websites and the web in general are more likely to use and|or link to our content if it has been approved by experts. ''And, especially, if the current version of an article has a persistent URL that they can link to. At present only a past version of an article actually has such a URL!''
* The addition of an approval mechanism will be attractive to academics who might not participate without it&mdash;particularly the academics who might want to be reviewers. ''All that matters is a mass of [[GNU FDL]] text on important topics that is good enough for serious scholars to find worth correcting. [[User:EntmootsOfTrolls|EofT]]''
* What does "All that matters is a mass of GNU FDL text on important topics that is good enough for serious scholars to find worth correcting." mean? [[User:Brianjd|Brian]][[User talk:Brianjd|j]][[Special:Contributions/Brianjd|d]] 10:22, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC)
* It makes it easier to collect the best articles on Wikipedia and create completed "snapshots" of them that could be printed and distributed, for example.  ''This issue is central to [[Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0|Pushing to 1.0]].''

Generally, Wikipedia will become comparable to nearly any encyclopedia, once enough articles are approved. ''It need not be perfect, just better than [[Britannica]] and [[Encarta]] and [[ODP]] and other CD or Web resources.''

===Disadvantages===

I am not sure there are any significant disadvantages of an approval mechanism, but idly, I think there might be one. I think that it's possible that Wikipedia might become more of an "exclusive club" than it is, if people start comparing nascent articles contributed by new contributors to the finished projects. I might not want to contribute two sentences about widgets if I think ten neat paragraphs, with references, is what is expected. Again, I don't know if this is really apt to be a problem.

Another general argument against is that this really doesn't seem necessary.  An approval mechanism has been suggested since Day One of Wikipedia, and evidence aside that Wikipedia is working just fine, will probably continue to be suggested 'til kingdom come.

* An expert-centered approval mechanism might be considered a hierarchic methodology, in contrast with the bazaar-type [[open-source]] projects like wikipedia, that are known to achieve good results (e.g. [[Linux]]) through aggressive peer-review, and openness ("With enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow"). It can be argued that the ''very reason'' Linux has become so reliable is the radical acceptance, and for some degree, respect, for amateurs' and enthusiasts' work of all sorts.

* Experts have controversies among themselves: for example, many subjects in [[medicine]] and [[psychology]] are highly debated. By giving a professor the free hand in deciding whether an article is "approved" or "non-approved" there is a risk of compromising the [[NPOV]] standards by experts' over-emphasizing their specific opinions and area of research.

* Finding an expert who corresponds to a certain article can sometimes be troublesome:
**Can a Ph.D on applied Mathematics "approve" articles on pure mathematics?, or more strictly, should one be accepted as a approver only if he/she have made research on the specific subject he/she is approving? Who will decide whether a person is qualified for approval?
**Some obscure or day-to-day topics don't have any immediate "expert" attached to them. Who will approve articles on hobbies, games, local cultures etc.?

===Is it needed?===

These are arguments presented for why an additional approval mechanism is unnecessary for wikipedia:

* Wikipedia already '''has''' an approval mechanism; although anyone can edit any page and experts and amateurs of all levels can [[Wikipedia:be bold|be bold]] and contribute to articles, ''communal scrutiny is an approval mechanism, though not as centrally-controlled as [[peer review]]''.

* Imperfect as it currently stands, Wikipedia already fosters a more sophisticated critical approach to ''all'' sources of information than simple reliance on "peer-reviewed" authority. Low-quality articles can be easily recognized by a reader with some or no experience in reading wikipedia, and by applying some basic [[critical thinking]]:
**The style may sound biased, emotional, poorly written, or just unintelligible.
**Blanket statements, no citing, speculative assertions: any critical person will be careful in giving too much credit for such article.
**The history of an article shows much of the effort and review that has been brought into writing it, ''who'' and ''how qualified'' are the writers (Users seem to put some biographical information about themselves on their pages.)
**a sophisticated reader soon learns that the ''Talk'' page is often enlightening as to the processes that have resulted in the current entry text.

* Cross-checking with other sources is an ''extremely'' important principle for good information gathering on the internet! No source should be taken as 100% reliable.

* Some "authoritative" and "approved" encyclopedias don't seem to stand for their own claims of credability. See, for example, [[Columbia Encyclopedia]]'s article about [http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/t/turingtes.asp Turing test], compared with Wikipedia's [[Turing test]]. "Human-like conversation" is not the same as "human-like thought". See also [[Meta:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia]].

* The very idea of an article being "approved" is debatable, especially on controversial topics, and can be seen as an unreachable [[ideal]] by some.