[WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales should reconsider

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 4/22/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > With people who prefer deleting articles over actually handling the
> issues
> > they produce I often get the feeling they rather kill the project than
> look
> > for solutions.
> >
> > Mgm
> > _______________________________________________
>
> Oh ffs, this is ridiculous. The notion that the number of biographies we
> have has no correlation with the failure to properly monitor and
> maintain them is ridiculous.
>
> Most of the real BLP issues group round biographies of little known
> people. Bios that be nature can only ever have information about the bit
> part they played in some small-town scandal, and thus can never be a
> balanced 'biography' of the person's life. Bios that highlight news that
> otherwise would be forgotten. Bios that are damaging because they may
> are the only public biography of the person in existence. Bios that by
> nature are under-watched. Bios where few will know enough to spot spin
> and hatchet jobs.
>
> The notion that wikipedia can't survive if we have less of these
> tabloidesque articles is frankly nonsense.
>
> What we've got on this list are reactionaries who don't want any change
> and would rather pretend that everything's jolly and no change can ever
> improve everything. Sure, any change will have some downsides - but
> that's not the end of the story.
>
> Actually, I'm more optimistic here. I believe that there are solutions
> that can be found if there is a willingness to find them. But we need to
> be allowed to explore the radical, and not have people always pretending
> that any change would be death of wiki-civilization. In fact, a rigid
> attachment to the status quo is more likely to result in that.
>
> Doc


In this case I was talking about people who prefer deleting ALL articles
over any sort of sensible solution. If we are going to limit deletions to
articles that actually are causing problems and could never be fixed or
monitored, I'm all for deleting them.