Answering questions

Piotrus answers the first two questions asked of the taskforce, what approaches have been tried and what measurement methods could be used.

Piotrus' answers:

• Quality could be assessed against known and recognized Featured Article criteria and discussing how to improve the numbers of these. But other metrics exist.
• If looking at quality overall, we need to decide what exactly we're looking at, which ties into this.

No further discussion.

Task force/Wikipedia Quality#Task force mandate lists 4 questions. How about we try to answer them? :) Btw, I find the liquid threads annoying... is there a way to switch to a regular talk page editing mode? Why is my editing window 6 lines long (I can count them!!). And why is it set to topposting by default? Why are section edit buttons not working? Aaargh! PS. I wanted to write more, but I the liquid threads have succeeded in demotivating me :( --Piotrus 03:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Q1

What approaches to improving Wikipedia's quality have been tried and what has been learned? What questions remain?

First, we need to operationalize quality. Are we talking about just articles, or gnomish/community issues as well? As for quality, are we looking at style? References? The answer here is tied to the Q2 below, and I think we need to summarize research on Q2 before we can progress further. --Piotrus 03:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Q2

What metrics or approaches could be used to measure quality and change in quality over time?

How about, for articles, saying that a top-quality article has the FA-level qualities as described here ([1]), and discussing how we can improve the number of FA-class level articles? But that is certainly not the only metric - just do a search at WP:ACST for articles with with a keyword on "quality"... --Piotrus 03:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Q3

What supports (data, tools, processes, funding, training, etc.) are needed to improve the quality of Wikipedias? How might these vary based on the size or maturity of different projects?

Q4

Who is needed to support these efforts to improve quality (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external partners), and what do they need to do?