[WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias

[John Lee]

On Nov 8, 2007 2:41 AM, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> "John Lee" wrote
>
> > But recall, in this case, how would you salvage the article's content?
> What
> > useful article could be made out of the content contributed?
>
> I don't accept the framing. As far as I'm concerned, a deletion is an
> assertion that the topic is unwelcome. In other words that no useful stub
> can be made. Not that _no useful stub can be made out of the words on the
> page_. I'm sure we used to be better at this.


Ah,  this is where we have to agree to disagree then. Over time I think I've
become much more inclusionist than I used to be, but fundamentally, I see
nothing wrong with deleting useless content; to me, it's the same thing as
removing useless content from an existing article. If the article is
useless, and I can't write a better one which the topic deserves, then there
is nothing wrong with deleting the article. What ever happened to the idea
of red links encouraging article creation?

Note that I'm framing this in a context where the choice is between useless
article and no article; not useless article and semi-useful stub. If it is
ever at all possible for you to create a useful article, whether based on
the existing content or through your own research, you ought to do that. But
because we don't live in an ideal world, I see nothing wrong with excising
useless content if there is no alternative.

I'm not fond of deletions based on content alone. But sometimes they are an
acceptable alternative if you don't know how to write a useful stub - and in
such cases, the resultant red link will inform editors that this article
still needs to be written.

>
>
> > As I said, in this
> > case we aren't working to establish whether we deserve an article on
> this
> > particular topic, but whether this particular article as it stands would
> be
> > a useful article at all (or could be made into one), assuming this topic
> > should be covered. In this case, reading the original revision, I don't
> see
> > how we could salvage it.
>
> You are working with the narrow version of "salvage", basically
> copy-editing only. That is why I think the approach shown is blinkered. That
> is why I think systemic bias is the background. As I say, we used to be
> better at welcoming new articles as prompts to create something.


Fundamentally the idea is to build off something; if the article provides no
basis for improvement (i.e. there is no fundamental difference between the
article as it stands, and a blank page), then where is the prompt to create
new content? I'm extremely sympathetic to systemic bias issues because I
frequently confront them, but it's not an excuse to tolerate content with no
use whatsoever. There are times when we should alter our standards of
content to account for systemic bias, but I'm not convinced that this
specific example you're citing is one of them.

Johnleemk