I think that math is different from some of the other encyclopedia issues. Math has a more objective standard: the ability to prove a result as part of the article. Even in physics, the best you can do is to (in effect) list a bunch of numbers from an experiment & hope that people believe you. IMHO, there's 3 issues in math writing: 1. Is it correct? If not, resubmit when your proof is more convincing. 2. Is it important? Very, very difficult to say in math; e.g., novel proofs of old theorems are often very interesting. It probably isn't important if it shows old proofs of old theorems, unless the original theorem & proof are so inscrutable (see #3) that most people won't be able to understand the first version without a better exposition. 3. Is it well-written? Somewhat difficult in math. The first version of some important proofs may be quite a mess, but if the proof is correct, and the theorem is important, people will deal with it. (This is also true in the arts; take a look at Beethoven's manuscripts -- not everyone wrote music like Mozart, which were perfect the first time.) If you try to push someone to revise his/her paper, you may be slowing down progress, because some of these people have more important things to do & they may not have good graduate students to help them do a better version. At 11:48 AM 6/3/2012, Steve Witham wrote:
If Wikipedia were interesting to a lot fewer readers, then it would also be interesting to a lot fewer writers, and the quantity would *also* go down, regardless of the rules.
Interesting having the flip of the conversation about whether Wikipedia must suck because they let anyone come and write whatever they want.