Joanne Benson wrote:
On 3/31/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
<snip> > It isn't a panacea, but it is a start - and it begins a process of > making inclusion dependent on article quality and not just the > notability of the subject. We need a thin end to our wedge here - > something workable and broadly acceptable to our more inclusionist > elements. Thoughts?
There's a lot of value in this proposal, especially regarding the biographies. I think that we've proven on numerous occassions that, as this point in time, Wikipedia as a whole just simply isn't able to build decent biographies on most living people. There are several exceptions of course, articles that are well sourced and balanced. But the majority? We simply don't seem to have have the right procedures or ways of thinking in place that make *sure* that we don't mess up - and biographies are NOT an area that we should be experimenting in like there are no consequences. I've handled and seen plenty of OTRS tickets that show the effects of where we're failing at the moment - and it isn't pretty.
So, we'd delete an unsourced bio after a week. Where's the harm? If we delete, and kindly explain to the creator of an article like that that we need sources, and why, they shouldn't be too upset. Especially as restoring if someone can provide decent sources for what they wrote can be done with one single click...
We need to re-educate our current and new editors - but we can't be too 'soft' about this any longer - it has real life consequences too often.
Kind regards,
JoanneB
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You hit the nail on the head. Everyone is so worried that if we change things we may end up deleting some things that *could* be sourced or otherwise fixed.
The fact is, with regard to biographies at very least, we are now tfar too high profile for the eventualism that says we must keep awful, pov, unsourced stuff, because in theory we could fix most of it. That's now simply unacceptable.
On aggregate, we are not fixing it. Our quantity is such that our quality control is not up to it. And so the only responsible thing we can do is to change our liberal inclusionism.
We either do that by
1) drastically lifting notability thresholds to reduce the number of biographies to a level we can manage to maintain and monitor.
OR
2) introducing a strong quality threshold, where we don't include, or swiftly delete, articles that aren't currently up to it. Yes, in theory they can be fixed, and if someone is actually willing to do it, then fine; but most wont be fixed and should not hang around 'because in an ideal wiki we'd fix them'
We need a reality check here, folks. Doc