On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:59 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I re-copy edited it. It was rescued in a rush, and
improved in a rush.
The next step is to collate with the original article., and then to
look for good additional material.
Thanks.
Some of the above discussions imply much too high a
standard, both for
what should be in Wikipedia and for what the quality of the content in
Wikipedia should be. We are not producing a definitive scholarly
resource, nor are our basic methods adapted to doing so--scholarship
requires critical evaluation and editorial control, two things we are
unable to provide.
Good points. There should still be a quality control endpoint, though.
Clearly not "featured article" in cases where the information is
minimal or incomplete, but still some definite minimum standard (I
would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum
standard).
What we can provide is a rough-and-ready general
reference work, and our strength is the potential for of a large group
of amateurs to be extremely comprehensive , and include a wider range
of material than any conventional method of work has ever provided.
Indeed. But the question is whether the *process* of producing that
will end up with a distorted view of someone's life and career. Kind
of like WP:UNDUE. When these mini-bios are produced for websites or
conferences, they deliberately don't try and cover everything, but
Wikipedians, when aggregating disparate sources, can go too far.
Judgment in editing is still needed.
It can neither make true judgments of importance, nor
will it be
guaranteed accurate--those who want to read such have the full range
of conventional sources at their disposal, and another goal of the
free scholarship movement --different from ours-- is to make these
more widely available. Those who want to write a this level need to
write in the more conventional way, a way that requires qualified
researchers with access to the full range of relevant sources, and
trained editors with professional standards.
WP articles will only ever be a starting point, never an endpoint,
that's the way I describe it to myself. In some ways, Wikipedia
articles try and be the best online resource there is for a topic, but
that is all it is, at the end of the day: a *resource*, a starting
point to go on and read more about the topic.
Many FAs I've looked at are nowhere near comprehensive. It is easy to
find stuff that has been left out, either through ignorance, or
something being considered trivial. I used to worry about that, but
now I tell myself that the WP article is only a starting point, a
usually rather comprehensive overview, but in no way the final word on
anything.
The goal for BLPs --or any other topic--cannot be the
complete
avoidance of error, for not even the most professional of resources
have the ability to do that. Not even the most carefully edited
publications have succeeded in being free from hoaxes and libel. The
goal is to be as reasonably correct as possible, to remove obvious
error when pointed out to us, and have working policies that will
exclude the worst blunders and discourage the use for libel,
propaganda, and promotion. The only way to avoid these entirely is to
include nothing at all about anything involving anyone living or any
living writer-- some of our worst BLP problems involve our comments on
living authors.
But do you think that something like as "approved article" status for
BLPs might help?
The easiest thing is to write nothing. The second
easiest to is
eliminate material without thinking. The third easiest, is a little
different, for it is to write without thinking. We can not exclude
the thoughtless from working here, either to make foolish positive
contributions or foolish negative edits, and only the most reckless of
all or the most obviously biased can actually be rejected.
But about the timescale? What should be done with *any* backlog when
it builds up beyond the resources of the volunteer workforce to deal
with or to maintain existing articles?
Carcharoth