[Wikipedia-l] "Drive-by tagging" advice needed

[Ray Saintonge]

Maury Markowitz wrote:

>I recently got into a minor squable that started with another example of 
>what I refer to as "drive-by tagging". Basically someone comes by an article 
>and inserts a whole bunch of tags without any comment. Some of these may be 
>valid, others less so, but very often its impossible to know one way or the 
>other without the original "tagger" pointing out the problems.
>
>For instance, consider this example I came across recently: Mirror Fusion 
>Test Facility. The "tagger" inserted a needs cats and needs wikification. 
>The cats one was entirely valid and I added one, but I can't for the life of 
>me even imagine what needs additional wikification. It seems to follow the 
>style guide perfectly. I wrote to the tagger, but he responded saying "by 
>following the link within the tag for all you need to know about wikifying 
>an article", which is a non-answer.
>
>I would like to hear any comments you all may have on this topic. Is it OK 
>to simply remove vague tags if the article in question does not appear to 
>have a problem related to the tag and there is no comment? I ask because, as 
>I noted, the last time I removed tags the tagger then stamped the article 
>with a PROD, their argument being that removing tags is PRODable.
>
The response to that may simply be "So fix it!"  The article says what 
it says with or without categories or Wikification.  Neither are 
essential.  Since the items that need additional Wikification are the 
ones that he doesn't understand he is in the best position to do it. ... 
but then it might not be practical to Wikify EVERY word. :-)

Ec