Talk:Task Force/Wikipedia Quality/Definition of quality

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defining quality

I think there are three aspects of quality missing: accuracy, completeness (of the article, not Wikipedia), and the success in explaining complex ideas clearly. I think the current description of quality substitutes current Wikipedia policy for "quality," which I fear will only keep us going in circles.

I fully recognize that we cannot make completeness or accuracy policies or requirements for editors. But when people read our articles, many of them will not care about our policies. I think their notions of quality mean that they find the article readable and informative; experts will judge the quality of the information according to how accurate and complete it is.

"Verifiability" and "neutrality" along with NOR are policies that stand in for quality in an editing environment where many editors will violently disagree as to what is accurate or complete. Similarly, these policies guide a process that we suppose will produce quality articles. In fact, I think these policies often are quite successful in producing quality articles.

Nevertheless, I do not see neutrality or verifiability as aspects of quality, these are ou policies, our mechanisms, our means.

I look at it this way: if I am an expert on a topic, having read a great deal of diverse views on it, if I read an encyclopedia article and I think it conveys to readers a condensed but clear account of what I know, then the article is of high quality.

I think we need to be clear about means and ends, between what quality is and the criteria for edits, or guidelines through which we produce it. Slrubenstein 00:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I think the omission of accuracy is particularly troubling. Look at any article in the popular or scientific press which has evaluated the quality of Wikipedia articles, and the emphasis is always on accuracy, sometimes to the exclusion of all other factors. 99.22.94.150 01:12, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]