User:Pohick2/Wikipedia Quality Improvement

it seems to me, that lacking leadership, we need to provide leadership such as you. i've been looking for a Wikipedia:Improvement Cabal

• principles of Edwards Deming
• Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal
• Wikipedia:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia Reform/Attrition/Study

Problems with Wikipedia management

• "It's right that our founder and the other long-term Wikipedians who started a project that that had inadequate standards should regret they did not insist on sourcing from the beginning--but their reaction is typical of those who try by harshness to make up for the sins of their childhood. What I think is truly harmful is anything that discourages new editors: the entire thrust of Wikipedia policy should be devoted to the encouragement of new people, , and the development of them into active and well-qualified editors, to replace the ones who will inevitably be leaving. This is done by helping the articles they write become good content. The proper reaction to an unsourced article is to source it, ideally by teaching the author how to do so, and impressing on them the need to do this in the future. What does not help is to remove it without doing everything feasible to see if it can be sourced, and if it can be considered important enough for the encyclopedia." - User:DGG
• Admins here do not need to know administration in the ordinary sense of the word, any more than our editors are editors in the ordinary sense. They are administrators in the sense of routine web site administrators: they have the ability to remove material, block individuals. and carry out a few technical functions. fortunately, none of this requires knowledge of management, though some of it requires an understanding of people.
• Wikipedia is an example of trying to do without formal management, except to the extent needed to operate within the rules of legality and to raise funds to support the technical resources.
• some of the problem is the peter principle, where editors who have become admins are not trained, or experienced in the management of an organization or process.
• We do not have what Deming called a constancy of purpose.
• We do not have the same vision of what the encyclopedia should be, and we have no means of obtaining one. We have no source of authority, and have permanently rejected having one. The necessarily detrimental effect of this on quality will need to be tolerated.
• Our current approach to people who have problems with the articles they are writing is to give them a general notice and a link to an exceptionally complex and confusing ill-written mass of instructions.
• we have Arbcom and Whales acting as management, which seeks change through "crises" like BLP) i see little acknowledgment of quality improvement principles. rather we have ad hoc rules, built in response to the latest crisis.
• we have Foundation reacting to emails:
  • if it's a notab8ility complaint then dismiss
  • if it's a defamation complaint then speedy delete content
  • if it's "pornography", then Jimbo will delete [1],[2]
  • if it's a kidnapped journalist, David S. Rohde, then watch, block [3], [4]
  • if it's a DMCA complaint then WP:Office speedy delete article history

Current Quality Assurance

• Bots dedicated to reverting vandalism
• Volunteers dedicated to quality assurance tasks (e.g. vandalism, copy editing)
• Editors tagging articles as "controversial" or "needs sources"
• Internal review processes
  • Qualified articles being tagged as "Featured" (considered to be the best articles in Wikipedia, as determined by Wikipedia's editors; reviewed as featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to featured article criteria) or "Good" (considered to be of good quality but which are not yet, or are unlikely to reach, featured article quality)
  • Project groups that rate additional articles according to the complete Quality Rating Scale

Solutions

• we are already in a process of continual improvement
• education of contributors
  • People need to learn how to write and use references
  • The skill of writing clear prose and doing effective elementary research for sources is not natural or inborn, and we can not assume that it is taught effectively in schools--and least not in the United States.
  • by guided experience. What I try to do is better called teaching , than leadership--except to the extent that it is leadership by example.
  • individual tutoring, and the more experienced editors will need to take the responsibility.
• education of Administrators in WP:Before, WP:Bite, and quality improvement principles
• quality circles
• Leadership, to be sure, we need and we have, in the sense of the informal leadership characteristic of human societies.
• The best means of producing a quality reference work remains the conventional method employing professional writers, editors, and publishers.

• the more we move to a professional-looking referenced encyclopedia, the absolute critical processes worth bolstering are DYK, GA and FA process - also Peer Review. These are where folks learn by example and I think the majority of the real spit and polish of substantial articles takes place these days. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

• I think we could agree to use external consultants on these, at least for FA, not as decisors, but to guarantee a fresh but informed viewpoint. If you make such a proposal at the VP, I will support it. ` DGG ( talk ) 07:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

• quality improvement organized in a proactive way, either from above, or below. Pohick2 (talk) 16:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Deming 14 Points

1. . Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. . Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. . Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. . End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. . Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. . Institute training on the job.
7. . Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of "Out of the Crisis"). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. . Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis")
9. . Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. . Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. . a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
    1. b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. . a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
    1. b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia," abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis").
13. . Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. . Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.