[WikiEN-l] An example of a bad biography

[Jimmy Wales]

James Farrar wrote:
> 2008/4/29 Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk>:
>>  Not really. If an article's always going to be a stub, there's no point having it all.
> 
> I disagree that a BLP is ever "always" going to be a stub - in this
> specific case, many union leaders go into politics; at the least, he
> may turn into another [[Bob Crow]].
> 
> Our inability to predict the future extends to other categories of
> article, too. For instance, before 1st August 2007, many might have
> said that [[I-35W Mississippi River bridge]] was "always going to be a
> stub". Having it existing as a stub probably helped editors build it
> up when it became somewhat more notable than it previously had been.

I doubt very much that a stub helps very much with building things up 
when they do become notable.  At any rate, we have no empirical evidence 
of that, and no examples that I know of where new developments did not 
lead to an appropriate creation of an article that had previously not 
existed or been deleted appropriately.

We do have empirical evidence of people using Wikipedia to hurt others, 
in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with our encyclopedic mission.

--Jimbo