Wikipedia talk:En.Wiki is not De.Wiki

If you're not sure what point I was trying to impart, then ignore the essay completely. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 09:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Why de-wiki has proportionally more featured articles than en-wiki

There's a very good reason why de-wiki has proportionally more featured articles than en-wiki: at de-wiki there's no particular expectation that featured articles provide inline citations of their sources--a simple bibliographical list suffices, and it doesn't even have to be very long. Click on http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dapete/random/dewiki-exzellent.php a few times to see some random featured articles at de-wiki, and you'll see what I mean. What's more, if you try to oppose FAC's there on the grounds that the article doesn't cite its sources, you'll get shouted down. People will come to vote "support" and say quite explicitly that the reason they're voting support is to counter the "absurd suggestion" that articles should cite their sources. Writing featured articles is easy when you can just make stuff up! —Angr 19:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

That's not the only reason, inline citations don't automatically make articles better and I doubt that editors try to simply make stuff up. Many of the early featured en.wiki articles were well-written, accurate, and comprehensive despite a lack of inline cites. When they were nominated at FARC (or whatever the previous venue), many original authors were simply not around to provide the necessary references. I'm not saying that inline citations aren't necessary, especially given the baptism by fire that is WP:TFA, but they are not the only metric for evaluating article quality. I am not well aware of the community mechanisms and biases behind de.wiki, I was hoping to learn more by looking at the responses to this essay. If there is some sort of elitism which encourages editors to dismiss inline citations as a technicality, I would assume that it must be offset by a general appreciation of quality prose and lucidity. Quality control could be maintained as long as the original authors of these "excellent" articles are knowledgeable and willing to monitor new revisions for inaccuracies. Of course I may be completely mistaken and the standards at de.wiki may just be way too lax. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 03:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Inline cites don't make articles better per se, but they do go a long way toward making articles verifiable. At en-wiki, WP:V is, along with WP:NPOV, probably the most important policy regarding article content. De-wiki doesn't even have a policy corresponding to WP:V. (WP:V links to de:Wikipedia:Quellenangaben, which is a redirect to de:Wikipedia:Belege, which links back to WP:CITE and is really a guideline on how to cite sources rather than a policy stating that material must be verifiable.) Here, you can't add things you know to be true if you can't back them up with sources; there, you can. Probably the unsourced articles there are accurate for the most part, because people have added things they personally know to be true. But of course it's much easier to write an article based on what you know to be true if you don't have to spend time finding web pages and books and page numbers. Anyway, this is a sensitive subject for me; the fact that trying to get sources out of the editors at de-wiki is like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip is the reason I have left de-wiki. —Angr 06:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I've thought of another reason why de-wiki has proportionally more featured articles than en-wiki: they don't allow nonfree images. Here at en-wiki, we waste so much time and energy maintaining the nonfree images (making sure they're correctly tagged, chasing down their uploaders if they aren't, deleting them if they don't meet the criteria, removing the red links after they were deleted) that we could be spending writing and improving articles instead. If only we'd just get rid of the nonfree images, we'd free up enormous amounts of human resources for bringing articles up to FA status. —Angr 20:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

And there wouldn't be nearly as much ill will between users over image disputes. Our lack of an unambiguous policy restricting fair use leads to disputes and uneven opportunities for illustrating articles. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 17:56, 12 August 2007 (UTC)