On 1/19/07, Nick Wilkins nlwilkins@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/19/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
If the concept is in the sciences and the person is nominating it simply because they've never heard of it, how can they tell if the source is worthwhile? I didn't even know what to say to someone who nominated one article recently, on a subject the nominator had obviously never heard of, on the basis that the nominator questioned how sea levels could possibly rise if there was less water held in the ice caps, or maybe he/she was questioning the amount of the rise. I don't think having the nominator read the source would have helped much. On the other hand, it appears the article writer hadn't gotten anywhere near a source, either....
I'm finding a few problems with sources on articles. People don't
realize
you can't copy entire sentences from the article ("well, I only copied a few sentence, and never two in a row...."), and that you can't say the
article
said something it didn't. If the article said he started studying
singing
seriously at the age of 10, you can't say he started singing at
- Maybe
it's the Masson/New Yorker method of quoting in the latter case.
How can anyone possibly nominate an article dealing with particle
physics
for deletion, thinking it is a hoax, if they know nothing about quantum mechanics? I personally thought quantum mechanics was a hoax until I studied it. I think if you know nothing about an area, you aren't qualified to decide to use time resources of other editors by nominating an AfD because YOU don't know anything about it. Why not just ask someone in
the
area? Need a geology editor, go to the geology page, look a bunch of edits and ask someone. But don't say, "I don't know anything about the
subject,
so I never heard of most of it, but really never heard of this, so I
think
it should be deleted." It's absurd and wastes time and resources.
Race walking. Yeah, right.
KP
What, the sea-level can rise? I don't believe you! ;-)
But seriously, it sounds as if in that case an unsourced article that needed plenty of work got improved because it was nominated for deletion. Which is the typical result for deserving topics that get nominated, for whatever reason. I wouldn't consider that a waste of time. There may be more long-run efficient ways of going about improving articles, but none that gather more immediate results.
Yes, the article did get improved, which it desperately needed.
But AfD is so hostile, and the intention behind deletions is not to get them improved, and nominators tend to be extreme deletionists, even though there is no such thing as a deletionist. The whole area of deletions is just a cesspool of bad behaviour. Not always, or even most of the time, and, yes, one look at the new pages makes one think deletion should be an automatic default in any quest for quality, but aren't there more civil ways to go about it?
On the other hand, if you see a crummy article, that you don't have enough knowledge to correct yourself, its owners will attack you for tagging it in need of clean-up. So, maybe you should just nominate crummy articles for deletion and other editors will fix them up?
And how can someone in the know convince someone that something is an appropriate article in an encyclopedia againt the primary argument that "I was born after the Cold War and Lech Walesa is a nobody to me?"
Personally, I agree with you on what people *should* do when they come across an article about something they have never heard about and doubt the veracity of. No matter what the subject area.
As for non-experts being able to tell if sources are worthwhile, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. What I'm saying is that even nominators who think "I've never heard of this" is a valid reason for deletion are typically just reasonable enough to realize that if there is a source, there's probably ''something'' to the topic. They are far less likely to make the nomination in that case. The article may still be complete crap based on junk sources, but that is something that requires knowledgeable editors' eyes in any case and an AfD nomination, regardless of purported reason, will bring those.
-- Jonel
Sometimes what it may amount to "KP is always right, so don't require me to prove it...."
KP