<CPOV> Evaluating quality control of Wikipedia's feature articles

[Joseph Reagle]

[I hope people don't mind that I'm actually CCing David with my question as well.]

On Friday 16 April 2010, X wrote:
> On jue, 2010-04-15 at 17:30 +0200, Y wrote:
> > The research idea is indeed interesting. However, it is not representative
> > enough. Only 22 articles were analyzed, all in the english wp. Also,
> > grading from 1 to 10 can be quite a subjective matter. I believe such
> > research should be further developed in order to deliver a better
> > knowledge of wp's FAs.
> 
> I totally agree with your review. Moreover, this excerpt is really
> confusing:
> 
> "It is worth noting that many of the articles assessed did score quite
> well, proving that Wikipedia’s contributors can produce very good
> articles. The articles receiving lower scores, however, show quite
> convincingly that Wikipedia’s attempt at quality control is failing".
> 
> Since this accounts for 7 out of 22 (31.8%) it is hardly believable how
> this can shows that the whole process is failing (even less if we
> consider that the sample is far from representative, both in quantity
> and scope of content).

The article notes: "Out of the Wikipedia articles assessed, only 12 of 22 were found to pass Wikipedia’s own featured article criteria, indicating that Wikipedia’s process is ineffective."

I wonder which criteria of the featured article process were found not to be satisfied. We only have the numerical ratings, which I think are actually independent of the featured article criteria, as they were a general assessment by the experts.