Ray Saintonge wrote:
I have no objective data about our proportion of
"American geeks", and
I would say that your asserion that the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind
being deleted by them is not evidence based.
Yes, there are people who mind, but the average user won't notice the
deletion of articles on a Hong Kong handbag company or a school. They
will notice if you delete an article on, say, Gucci, or Eton, because
those are indisputably encyclopedic. Where there's a grey area, the only
people who actually make a big deal about it are inclusionists and
deletionists, because most of them lack an ability to accept "in
between" things, like most extremists.
Although I sound like a deletionist, in reality, like Dpbsmith, I am a
strong neutral on much of this - I don't see how Wikipedia gains or
loses from the creation or deletion of any of these articles, unless
indisputably encyclopedic. And though there is no hard evidence, I think
it's suggestive how there are never any complaints about the deletion or
creation of these articles except from the article's author(s) and the
hardline inclusionists/deletionists.
While there is some element of truth to the belief
that "an"
encyclopedia is not "drastically" hurt by deleting school articles.
The conclusions that you extrapolate from that are little more than
sophistry. Yes, eventually we should have more school articels, but
meanwhile they need to be subjugated to a deletionist gauntlet which
then turn around and says that the paucity of such articles justifies
the deletion of additional ones.
It depends on how they use the deletion of an article to justify the
deletion of another. Articles under a grey area of encyclopedic value
should be decided on a case-by-case basis. The last thing we need is for
everything to be handled in a cookie cutter manner.
This may be hypocrisy as well as sophistry. You have
purported to
reflect the community, but have you tested your hypothesis, or are you
just engaging in pseudoscience?
My hypothesis is based on my experience that it is only the hardliners
and those who have nothing better to do complain about the deletion or
creation of such articles. Most users couldn't care less.
And to close by saying, "WE must work with the
community, even if
YOU think it's an unreasonable one." Is this rhetorical flourish or
what? It's a clever change from first to second person in the
sentence. Where do you get the idea that the rest of us consider the
community unreasonable? We may consider you unreasonable, but you are
not the community.
It was 1AM when I wrote that, so maybe I wasn't paying attention to my
writing, but what I was trying to say was that even if you think it's
unfair that much of the community doesn't care very much about the
inclusion or deletion of certain articles, trying to subvert the process
isn't helping your cause (this applies to both deletionists and
inclusionists).
Ec
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])