[WikiEN-l] Health advice from the web

[Steve Bennett]

On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Ben Kovitz<bkovitz at acm.org> wrote:
> attention to tags?  I know it's 2009, and I know tags will never go
> away, but most tags still strike me as both anti-wiki and page
> clutter.  If a page has a problem, fix it.

That attitude is "anti-wiki". I can diagnose far more problems than I
have time, knowledge or inclination to fix. Fixing is better than
tagging. Tagging is better than ignoring.


> For example, if a factual
> claim is unsupported b.s., don't insert {{fact}}, just delete it on
> the spot.

If you *know* it's b.s.. Of course. Even if it's supported b.s.. But
if it's just unsourced, and you don't know if it's true - that's
exactly what fact is for.

> And then again, it does seem like a mass posting of {{missing | safety
> information}} tags on drug pages would quickly set a lot of editors to
> digging up the missing information.  It would get the attention of
> editors faster than starting a Project.  Despite my objections, that
> might be the most effective way to go.

Sounds good to me. In my experience, to get action you need to
indicate that just a little bit of information is missing. People who
fill an empty page with some huge template structure to fill out are
making too much work. But give a small task, and someone wants to
knock it off.

Steve