Forum:The RW Challenge

< Index | RW Article discussion

Here be a thought, along the lines of the Article of the Week Club and so on. The idea is that the people who sign up to the challenge pick a bronze-rated article that interests them and then over the course of the competition (couple of weeks?), they research, write and nurse the article up to silver grade. Of course, such a thing shouldn't be at the expense of normal editing; the articles don't suddenly become "hands-off, it's mine!" and we don't discourage anyone else to contribute. But a single user takes kind of "unofficial responsibility" to get it up to speed, working on wording, illustrating and referencing to make it better. I just really like using the idea of the rating system to 1) identify articles for improvement and 2) encourage and reward some good work. ^theist 21:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Geek. We had our Article Creation Drive 3 years ago! ħuman 03:25, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

This is more "article improvement drive". The ACD built most of RW, but it left it with quite a few stubby subjects. ^theist 13:36, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 15:09, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The ACD built most of what is now the funspace, actually. But, yeah... ħuman 18:20, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

We should get the article rating system straightened out first. As it stands, the distinction between bronze & silver looks pretty arbitrary in any case: the only tangible difference in the criteria seems to be that there should be references & illustrations. So it's not clear what this goal-setting exercise would actually involve. Wėąṣėḷőįď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:40, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

For reference, here's a link to the RationalWiki:Article rating page. The rating thing looks about as clear as it can be, assuming the categories are cumulative, i.e. a silver articles meets the conditions of both silver and bronze. It's still going to be subjective, but it might help get some of the older stuff rewritten or expanded. ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 19:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

One question for you. Some of our stubs deserve to remain as stubs, since it would be beyond our mission (or interest) to expand them. If I remove the stub category thing, will some stubbot come back in and add it again? ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 20:18, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

{{nostub}} does it, I think. 20:26, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. That'll clear things up a little bit. ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 20:26, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, nostub works wonders. I do agree we should straighten out the criteria a little more, there's nothing wrong with it being slightly arbitrary and subjective, but a few more pointers would be nice. ^theist 08:34, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

One idea would be to run a theme for a couple of weeks at a time. This would be useful by fixing up interconnected articles, ensuring that they link together and are correctly categorised. We'd probably have to gauge interest in a given topic, since it's not going to achieve much if we nominate physics and then find barely anyone interested or qualified to do the work. We could form a project page, ask for suggestions of areas to be worked on (physics, logic, apologetics, etc.), and if we have agreement we push ahead for two weeks with the articles in that area. I think at least two weeks at a time makes sense given that it allows people more time to pop in and make small but useful changes without feeling the need to rush or commit too heavily. It should be time limited though, so we don't end up indefinitely doing little for any given area. ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 09:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Project pages were tried once. Nothing happened and they were mothballed. But themed ideas for a few weeks seem good, that seems to be how RW works so it makes sense to play to what happens. I.e., everyone tends to pile on a subject when it's raised, like cryogenics for a while. Recently it seemed like chiropractic was getting a lot of attention. ^theist 09:53, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

One way this place "works" is when someone edits an article everyone else had forgotten, it gets renewed attention. Sometimes editing a dusty article results in ECs because other people join in (a good thing). The dependence of many people on using RC to "access" the site has never made sense to me. ħuman 03:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I read via RC basically because it's possible to - David Gerard (talk) 10:48, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Same here. Handy as well for spotting good edits and vandalism. Arm, numbers don't matter too much. We won't change the nature of the beast, but realistically one good article is better than nothing. I've been a bit lax with the rating business, but I'm in anyway. What I would like is to have a decent category/template to indicate that a review or help is needed. At a bare minimum, a request fir proof reading would be useful. Sometimes RC moves a bit too quickly for people not checking every day. ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 14:49, 20 June 2010 (UTC)