I know it is bad form to quote an entire post just to say "me too" but I wanted to say that Daniel is right on the money here, and displays what I think of as true Wikipedia spirit. We have to have a passion to *get it right* or we'll be full of rampant nonsense.
A list like this can be useful and educational but it *has* to be approached in the way Daniel discusses: complete intolerance for additions that do not adhere to the rudiments of scholarship.
--Jimbo
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
OK, this fool will walk in, donning asbestos suit, etc.
There are contributors, who enjoy contributing to Wikipedia, who do not embrace or understand the rudiments of scholarship.
Here's what I mean by "rudiments.
"List of people believed to have been affected by bipolar disorder" which was originally just a completely unsourced list of raw names; confirmed, plausible, asserted, and unlikely, all mixed together. It was nominated for deletion, and consensus was that it was OK _provided that_ the list confined itself to names for which there was _a verifiable source citation._ I.e. it is OK to tell the reader that the source was Kay Redfield Jamison's book and let the reader decide how credible Jamison is.
The opening paragraph was rewritten to say "This is a list of people accompanied by verifiable source citations," etc.
On a fairly regular basis, people will simply add names to the list with no explanation or citation. OR, they will add names accompanied with statements like "he has been very open about this" or "it's been in the news" or "One of his songs is entitled 'Lithium.'" I've been fairly pestiferous about removing unsourced entries, usually moving them to Talk with an explanation, and trying to half-coach the people who added them.
And indeed some of them have been surprised that I mean exactly what I say, and that while "Adam Ant: Has spoken openly on television about his condition" will not do, a web reference to an arts.telegraph article, "Adam and his fall," is just fine.
Other have felt that the onus was somehow on _me_ to research and provide references for the names _they_ had added, thought I was questioning their honesty when they asserted the existence of references, etc.
Now, all this is fine as far as it goes. There are some inexperienced contributors, I try to police the article a bit, I try to help a bit, I try to coach a bit, some of the inexperienced contributors "get it," some of them don't. The article slowly improves over time. All Wiki-good.
The problem occurs when you have a topic area that attracts a very large volume of contributions from editors who do _not_ get the idea of what it means for an article to be well-researched, thorough, and accurate.
Wikipedia depends on the notion that bad articles will get improved. That implies a certain kind of balance or equilibrium.
I believe the "cruft" label, which I don't like and try to avoid using myself, is shorthand for "topic area in which low-quality articles are being created faster than they are being improved."
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
Wikipedia works only when _most_ articles are in at least a quarter-decent state, and articles that are really just drafts or placeholders or article _requests_ disguised as articles are a relatively small proportion of the whole.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l