Defining quality

good points, but I really do think that a consistent framework would serve Wikipedia's goals. That would take the guesswork out of "what stage" a project is in, how much content is up, etc. I do not agree with going for filling in the spaces and letting quality lag in the process. I believe that a standard should be consistent at all times. Otherwise, if we start a new language Wiki for example, for the Abkajeckfa language, there might be a lot of new pages with very little consistency and quality that do not mirror the overall brand of Wikipedia. People reading the pages may not understand that low quality is NOT Wikipedia. In truth, whenever Wikipedia allows that which is not consistent with its brand to exist as Wikipedia, it dilutes the brand. Kind of like IBM and laptops. There is a reason Lenovo is now not IBM. IBM truly isn't about laptops any more than Dell is really about consumer products. Wikipedia is about accurate knowledge. Standards in keeping with Wikipedia's core ideals and values keep Wikipedia being Wikipedia, no matter how it expands.

They're consistent. A standard framework can exist, that allows for human nature and cultural or wiki-community variations.

But so long as a wiki (eg Abkajeckfa) is poor quality, then for people who read that and inconveniently don't read enwiki or de/frwiki, that is Wikipedia, and we are poor quality. That said, inevitably the wider world will judge us by our bigger wikis alone.

this is the thing with brand, as you guys will see when someone posts my graphic (LOL) or not see, or as you may already know from your own experiences with various brands -- ONE customer experience can and will define the entire brand for any given customer/user. ONE bad wiki -- one incomplete, poorly written, unvetted wiki -- can and will define the Wikipedia brand for millions of users. As any brand specialist will tell you -- it is common knowledge that getting a customer back is SO MUCH HARDER that just keeping him or her in the first place.

that said, consistency is key. users need to know at all times what state a wiki is in, and they need to understand what the ultimate goal is. With the current structure for wikis, that is just not possible. Currently, wikis are sometimes really bad or incomplete or... yet they still carry the Wikipedia brand.

Originally, creating Wikipedia out of nothing took a lot of daring just to make it exist. But the same conditions of introducing a brand no longer exist. Now Wikipedia is an established brand and users see it as a valid information source. Going to the next level may mean changing the way the infrastructure works in order to stay TRUE to the Wikipedia brand. That may mean that inaccurate or misleading information may never be tolerated as a "public" or "finished" wiki. That may mean that we have to create an interim wiki for discussion and work (FT2's idea off list that we are still hashing out a bit in small group -- email me if you want to be included in the email) that eventually gets posted with a "done" (or close to done) status... there are many possibilities, but in the end, the brand that users experience as Wikipedia matters.