Charles Matthews wrote:
Gareth Owen wrote
"Charles Matthews" writes
Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a
mathematical article where
the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and
precisely 'diminishing' to WP.
Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring to.
Certainly - [[unifying conjecture]] survived VfD recently. It was a load of
tendentious sociological twaddle by a once-notorious now-banned user. It
seems that 'looks interesting' is enough in some quarters. After the vote I
moved it to [[unifying theories in mathematics]], to give context to the one
sentence that wasn't pretty well false as it stood. That's not a finished
article, though it's not bad, by the way.
Is the 142 in question really the same as the banned individual. His
original posting was dated Feb. 21, 2003, and you made the first
subsequent edit 4 months later. My guess is that this was put there
before the banned user became active. Apart from that, it's a good
example for this discussion.
I have to admit that it would take a great deal of effort on my part to
understand what it's about. On first reading I have no basis for
agreeing whether or not it is in fact twaddle, but if I chose to
participate in the VfD on this I would want to have a reasonable basis
for my vote. However, I am not ready to spend hours trying to figure
out what the guy is talking about in order to decide on a yes or no
vote. That being said, I would vote to keep based on giving the
contributor the benefit of the doubt. That's IF I were voting at all.
It looks as though the survival vote worked in this case, because it
encouraged you to work for a "not bad" article.
I also do not support arguments that are styled, "I am an expert, and I
know better." New theories that deviate from orthodoxy tend to be
routinely viewed as muddle-headed by the experts. In a vast majority of
these cases, the experts will probably be right, but the idea must stand
or fall on its own merits. If a nutcase proposal is more than
idiosyncratic, it should be enough to add a polite comment about that,
without the need for a detailed demolition of the proponent's points.
Sometimes a pointed statement can be more effective than copious
verbiage. If argument B in the proponent's theory is based on perpetual
motion, and he shows that arguments C through K depend on that detailed
discussion of C through K is useless.if you have adequately dealt with B.
Ec
I think that we are perhaps closer to agreeing on a permissive approach
about articles that are harmlessly trivial.