[WikiEN-l] A Day in the Life of an Article

Tue Sep 18 01:49:45 UTC 2007

Good evening, gentle folk,
I've a bit of a story for you I like to call "A Day in the Life of an
Article."  I'm keeping the names out until the end, where I'll post
the article history for you (it's quite short), but mine is one of
those tales which often begins "pay no heed to the names here, it
matters not."

When we say this, of course, we mean "the names shouldn't matter, but
seriously, who's causing a ruckus now?"  If there is a ruckus here, or
as I fear, someone wielding something POINTy, well...I hope someone
can fill me in, because I just don't see it. I've been away a bit, so
if there's a cause du jour, I've missed out.  If it's not some POINT
or political statement, then it's awfully depressing to see.

Our story begins this morning, at 9:33am.  An article stub is created
consisting entirely of one sentance.  The edit summary, honestly, is
longer than the article - but at least it says, "adding more soon,
help with reliable sources welcome."  Our article creator is an
experience editor, and admin of Wikipedia.

Twenty-two minutes later, it's speedy deleted under A7:Article about a
company that doesn't assert significance.

About an hour later, another editor recreates it and begins again.
Five editors and about 45 minutes later, we're up to four sentences,
two references, one external link.  Somewhere, avians are nesting in
fruit trees.

The deleting admin comes back and "prod's" the article.

The prod is removed, some catagories are added and someone plays with
Notability tags.  Six minutes after the prod tag, the deleting admin
has now filed a full AfD on this article.

Now, over the next seven hours, there's been four more edits to the
article, and around thirty-six edits to the AfD (almost overwhelmingly
in support).  Our little article, only alive for around ten hours, has
been speedied, proded and is currently rolling around AfD.

And this is what I really don't understand.  Now, certainly, it could
be one admin unhappy with another.  It could be a dispute pouring over
into a display of extreme process wonkery.

In slightly better faith, it could also be an example of education
through process.  It's not an uncommon theme on this list that some
admins could communicate better - some seem to prefer educating other
users (even fellow admins) through the blunt application of process.
Not a gentle way, perhaps, but not guarenteed to cause strife...some
simply shrug it off and move along.

The best faith interpretation I can come up with is someone
stringently fighting cruft. True, the article was only one sentance
and in its short life has only made it up to four.  Sources are few
and somewhat weak, and notability is iffy.  But how soon is too soon?
Only twenty-two minutes from creation to a speedy deletion.  A bit
over two hours from creation to an AfD.

Is cruft this bad?  Are stub articles choking the encyclopedia?  On
the flip side, is our good faith really so...short?  How long should
we give an editor after they create an article to fully source it,
establish notability, etc.  How long for an admin?  And if there is no
window of grace in first creating an article, should someone approach
the bot makers?  Would it make sense to have a bot simply speedy
articles under a set number of characters?

I'm concerned about this article, not because of the principles
involved.  Not because of the frightfully short timeline.  I'm
concerned because I can't see any reason to be so stringent about
trying to eradicate a simple little article.  Whether it be between
editors, admins, or "people we expect to know better."

Because we do, don't we?  We expect some people to know better.  Look
at the article, [Mzoli's Meats], look at the history below, and go
ahead...go "oh, well, that's DIFFERENT." But really, I can't even see
how different might cut it either.  I just can't.  Please, someone,
help me understand this.

Article History (with the speedy thrown into the timeline):
14:52, September 17, 2007 Violetriga (Talk | contribs) (2,473 bytes)
(+ext link) (undo)
12:13, September 17, 2007 Wikidemo (Talk | contribs) (2,206 bytes)
(?Description - add material) (undo)
12:00, September 17, 2007 David Eppstein (Talk | contribs) (1,745
bytes) (?External Links - another blog entry, from Jimbo's old
version) (undo)
11:54, September 17, 2007 Carcharoth (Talk | contribs) (1,610 bytes)
(add three more) (undo)
11:51, September 17, 2007 ^demon (Talk | contribs) (1,529 bytes)
(Nominated for deletion; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mzoli's
Meats.) (undo)
11:50, September 17, 2007 Cobaltbluetony (Talk | contribs) (1,312
bytes) (dunno how the tag got back on...) (undo)
11:49, September 17, 2007 Cobaltbluetony (Talk | contribs) m (moved
Mzoli's to Mzoli's Meats: full name of establishment) (undo)
11:48, September 17, 2007 EVula (Talk | contribs) (1,327 bytes)
(contesting prod; I think if we give this article a bit more than a
couple of hours of existence, we might have something worthwhile)
(undo)
11:46, September 17, 2007 Carcharoth (Talk | contribs) (1,695 bytes)
(hmm, we don't have a category on butchers, I'm not surprised) (undo)
11:46, September 17, 2007 Carcharoth (Talk | contribs) (1,717 bytes)
(add categories) (undo)
11:44, September 17, 2007 ^demon (Talk | contribs) (1,645 bytes)
(Proposing deletion) (undo)
11:40, September 17, 2007 Cobaltbluetony (Talk | contribs) (1,277
bytes) (notability needed according to wiki standards) (undo)
11:36, September 17, 2007 Melsaran (Talk | contribs) (1,262 bytes)
("famous"is a value judgement, and it is not really relevant anyway +
doesn't add anything to the article. the fact that some sources call
it famous doesn't mean that we should.) (undo)
11:34, September 17, 2007 Wikidemo (Talk | contribs) m (1,269 bytes)
(restoring "famous" - source says it is; other coverage suports
claim.) (undo)
11:30, September 17, 2007 Grcampbell (Talk | contribs) (1,262 bytes)
(how is it famous??) (undo)
11:18, September 17, 2007 EVula (Talk | contribs) (1,269 bytes)
(removing G11 tag; just because we have an article on a company
doesn't mean that it is spam) (undo)
11:08, September 17, 2007 Cobaltbluetony (Talk | contribs) (1,281
bytes) (spam) (undo)
11:05, September 17, 2007 Wikidemo (Talk | contribs) m (1,269 bytes)
(Undid revision 158530993 by Deb (talk) rm advertising tag - this is
not written as an ad; it simply reports sourced info) (undo)
11:03, September 17, 2007 Deb (Talk | contribs) m (1,280 bytes) (tag) (undo)
11:01, September 17, 2007 Wikidemo (Talk | contribs) (1,269 bytes)
(write new article; have not seen deleted version but this is new,
sourced content that claims importance/notability of subject) (undo)
09:55, September 17, 2007 ^demon (Talk | contribs) deleted "Mzoli's" ?
(CSD A7 (Corp): Article about a company that doesn't assert
significance)
09:37, September 17, 2007 Jimbo Wales (Talk | contribs) (275 bytes)
(just collecting some links as a base for writing more) (undo)
09:33, September 17, 2007 Jimbo Wales (Talk | contribs) (206 bytes)
(just a stub for now, will be adding pictures and more in coming
days... I need help finding reliable sources though)

InkSplotch

-- 
"Stercus, stercus, stercus, moritus sum!"