On 6/7/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
I sympathize. I want to write some articles on major omitted academic people in fields I know about, but I find myself completely occupied in rushed writing of articles for those that are challenged, even if the existing article is good enough as it is. I've rewritten a few on people whose main work was in languages I did not know, but which had just enough material and reviews and other commentary in English to try to show the notability. I sometimes succeeded, but someone more appropriate could have done a much better job--and there was no real need for the rush except the constraint of the AfD, because the positions asserted made a reasonable prima facie case for notability.
But, as for many other articles, those who first wrote them could have done a better job. I have frequently had the experience of asking an obviously interested editor who was clearly still on WP, & who clearly had access to the necessary material, to improve the article to prevent deletion, and had them ignore it.
Anyone can edit, unfortunately, means that anyone can edit, no matter how irresponsible or incompetent. KP and I & the few dozen similarly inclined can't help them all, but if all of the hundreds whose main interest is in deleting gave a hand at improving, we would get a better WP than if they did deletion only. DGG
On 6/7/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/7/07, Blu Aardvark jeffrey.latham@gmail.com wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 6/6/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/0 This is just *stupid*. This is what putting something up for deletion is *for* - saying "This article may be deleted, please look at it and give your opinion" - and there is no more effective way to do it than AFD, for all its faults. I have no idea why you believe someone needs to be personally prejudiced towards deleting the article in order to raise this question
It's a really annoying habit. There are genuinely articles that should be deleted out there. And plenty of others that aren't, but were nominated for crappy reasons. Nominating articles apparently at random, just to give AfD'ers something to think about is just creating work for everyone, with little benefit.
If you're not sure whether an article should exist, use {{nn}} or something and start a discussion on the talk page. Nominating for AfD is saying "This should be deleted, all in favour?!" Not for "What do people think?"
Steve
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In this particular case ([[Coşkun Can Aktan]]), a discussion on the talk page likely wouldn't have accomplished much. The last human edit before it was sent to AFD was in November 2006, and that edit included adding the {{notability}} concern.
Sending it to AFD, however, established that the person in question was, indeed, notable, and brought attention to the article which has been significantly improved over the course of the deletion discussion.
On the other hand we have Turkish editors you could have asked to look it over, and we have a solid group of economics editors who could have looked it over. That's what I do, ask someone to look over an article. It requires less Wikipedia time from people who don't have it.
I just think the forced working on an article that isn't as bad as a lot of the crap on Wikipedia (look at this before an after, lately I'm doing musicians for some reason) is not in the best interests of all editors concerned. Aktan is well-known enough that eventually someone would have got around to it. Meanwhile, look at what this article looked like before I eviscerated it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ithaka_%28musician%29&oldid=12...
There's so much crap, though, why force me to work on this particular article, Atkan, just because it's on your agenda? That's what it amount to, imo. Meanwhile, I have an important article I'm writing on a major and current topic in the news that Wikipedia doesn't have even a stub on. I personally think my writing that article is far more important than Aktan's article.
This reminds me, I have a Turkish film director stub that needs some work, namely translating the titles of the Turkish tv shows. Sinan Cetin made one of the funniest movies I've ever seen--I would have rather been working on his stub than Aktan's, also.
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-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
And we would have more good articles and fewer really poor ones. Well, I delve into AfD every 6 weeks or so and always regret it (actually, I multitask when I'm doing it, so I need something on Wikipedia that doesnt require my thinking).
I think that Wikipedia would be better off if every editor who nominated an AfD tried to improve it first. Which is what I do.
KP