Jonathan Walther wrote:
On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 05:25:33AM -0800, Jimmy Wales
wrote:
On Oct. 20, RK returns and adds section headings
and introduces the
first "Changing Doctrines" material.
It is of note that the Changing Doctrines material was a straight dump
of material RK had already written and put on another page on the
Wikipedia, so it consisted of paragraphs and paragraphs of duplication.
Secondus, the material wasn't even directly related to the topic of the
article that he dumped it in. RK's information dump would have been
appropriate in the talk page, but not the article proper.
I don't agree with you on this. The Changing Doctrines material is
directly applicable to the subject of the article, "Jehovah's
Witnesses: Controversial Issues". That material is about the
Jehovah's Witnesses. And it is a controversial issue. So it belongs
directly on that page.
Characterizing copying and pasting of legitimate information as an
"information dump" is not very helpful.
I will refrain from characterising RK's action,
but I invite you to look
at what he added, then imagine if you were a Jew, and someone dumped
something like that in the article on Judaism, how would you feel?
If the article were titled "Judaism: Controversial Issues" and it
dealt with some points that were (a) about Judaism and (b)
Controversial Issues, I'd be fine with it. Did those paragraphs need
NPOV-tidying? Then that's what should have been done, then.
----
Are you operating on a theory that no material should ever be
duplicated in the wikipedia? I would agree with a milder claim that
_often_ we should avoid duplicated material, and that duplicated
material _often_ signals a need for refactoring. But just saying
"This is duplicated from elsewhere" is not a sufficient reason to just
summarily delete something (over and over and over and over and over).
--Jimbo