[WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

[Steve Bennett]

On 1/31/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> I am always dismayed when I see a good editor wikifying and tagging an
> absolute crap article, rather than blanking/radically stubbing it (at a
> minimum) or deleting it (often would be better).

It can be really hard to tell the difference when you're not familiar
with the subject matter. Another reason why chants of "don't just
report the bad articles, fix them!" aren't helpful - if you assume
that whatever is in the article is mostly correct but just needs
reformatting, you end up making matters worse.

In my recent sample, I changed an "External Links" section to
"Sources". Then something bothered me, I ended up checking out the
links, and realised that the whole article was a puff piece for a
probably non-notable Indian journalist. But I really have no expertise
in determining whether someone is notable, or whether writing for the
Times in India is significant or not. So I tagged the thing
{{POV-check}} and left it.

I wouldn't have felt comfortable blanking/deleting the article.
Assuming that the guy *was* notable, all it really needed was a slight
de-POV tweak and some misleading statements removed.

Steve