Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>Rambot
articles are of disputable encyclopedicness.
>
>
Places are certainly encyclopedic.
Places are no more indisputably encyclopedic than schools or people.
Once more inclusionists impress me with their pedantry. By places, I
generically mean human settlements.
You're accusing the wrong person of pedantry. Human settlements are no more
indisputably encyclopedic than schools or people.
Au contraire, it is often easy to find a community's website than a
school's website. Often personal webpages, because contributed to by
only one party, aren't an independent source of verifiable information,
so most vanity articles are definitely of disputable encyclopedicness.
Can you
point to a single encyclopedia that has articles on years? What
about non-cardinal numbers? Lists I think are clearly unencyclopedic.
A definition of "Encyclopedic" should not be based on what other
encyclopedias do.
Encyclopedic is not necessarily "topics most
encyclopedias cover".
On the other hand, maybe I should be pedantic, because you seem to be making
up random definitions of words. Unlike many other inclusionists, I think
one can meaningfully talk about whether or not a topic is "encyclopedic",
because I think a common definition of "encyclopedic" is "similar [in
topic]
to what traditional encyclopedias include". But, if you're going to define
"encyclopedic" as "something which Wikipedia should include", you
should be
aware that that term has very little useful meaning in terms of an inclusion
argument (as it commonly turns into a fallacy of begging the question). At
the very least if you're going to make up a definition to fit your argument,
make up a new term so as not to confuse people into thinking you're talking
about the word which already has a definition. Maybe "Wikipedic".
I believe I defined it in an earlier post as "independently verifiable
knowledge".
Yes, I agree. I
personally have no problem with having school substubs
merged into their town articles.
Then it seems we are in heated agreement, because I have no problem with
this either. In fact, in the case of substubs, that's what I *prefer* we do
with them (and sometimes I actually favor merging and deleting).
Now, you and I may disagree about what constitutes a substub, but even with
school articles bigger than a substub I still wouldn't mind merging and
redirecting. I'd prefer that we keep them, so that's how I "vote", but
would it make more sense if I just copy pasted something like "I'd prefer
that we keep this but merging and redirecting would also be acceptable"?
Yes, it definitely would. I'd support such a measure, because I believe
that's a more reasonable manner of preserving this information.
The amazing thing is, merging and redirecting
doesn't even require an admin,
and so it can be done without even touching VFD. Adding to VFD has gotten
complicated to the point where it's probably just as much work, too.
Sometimes I wonder if the deletionists just have more fun playing on VFD,
and that's why they choose this method to "improve Wikipedia".
Sometimes some people are malicious, but often, I think there are other
circumstances involved. (See my earlier response to Nicholas Knight.)
And you want to talk about substubs? Rambot articles
have less useful
information than most school articles.
Population, maps, location, etc. I'd say most Rambot and school articles
are nearly equal, but the Rambot articles at least contain some relevant
information.
Here's what I find useful in the bare Rambot articles. County, population,
latitude and longitude. Note that the bare rambot articles (and there are
many of them) don't even have maps. So if it were up to me, I'd strip the
articles of all but that information (unless it was particularly atypical,
95% white or 90% black or whatever), and then I'd merge and redirect with
the county article and include a link to the demographics (either on the
census site or on wikisource).
But looking at school articles, most of them have at least this much useful
information. City, state, number of students, principal, and in many the
ones I've verified, latitude and longitude. The vast majority of them have
even more information than that.
So even if you're going to define "encyclopedic" as "should be in
Wikipedia", I think almost every school article which is deleted is more
useful than [[Mount Vernon, Illinois]].
Communities often have their own websites or have been mentioned by
other sources. Most schools haven't.
It's a
manner of organisation. The information within is encyclopedic.
With the year pages I can see your point, I guess. They're similar to
lists, which even though I think they're clearly unencyclopedic, should
probably stay in Wikipedia anyway. I stand by my belief that [[163
(number)]] should be tossed, though.
The information within is independently verifiable.
I think the
real debate here is organisation. I don't think school
substubs deserve a separate article - Mark Richards and anthony do.
Actually, I don't. But I think we have a different concept of what a
substub is.
I think so too. So we agree to disagree then?
But we agree that they should be in the
encyclopedia. We just disagree
over
where they should be.
You and I might agree with this (after all, we're both neutral, right), but
the deletionists want this information completely removed. That's the
purpose of VFD, after all, not to merge things into other articles, which
doesn't require admin powers, and which neither I nor any of the other
"inclusionists" would likely object to.
I think that was the original purpose of VFD, but I've found VFD in
recent times to be a pretty smart idea: A place to publicise the fact
that an article is of dubious encyclopedic value, or at least doesn't
deserve its own article, but the nominator doesn't know what to do with
it, beyond delete. Publicising this leads to someone more knowledgeable
sufficiently rewriting, or merging the article appropriately. If nothing
had been done, or this was just mentioned on the talk page, I can
guarantee you that nothing would be done to fix this article up for
months, if not years.
Yes, deleting
them will cause no harm. A school article is nice to have,
but if it's a substub, I see no reason for it to have its own article.
If you mean that the information should be kept somewhere else instead, then
we are in complete agreement.
Yes, we are.
I laugh at your
exaggerated statement. Movies and actors - if they have
an entry on IMDB, they absolutely should be kept. They are verifiable.
You're starting to sound like an inclusionist now. Many movies and actors
on IMDB are deleted.
Then they probably shouldn't.
But, I actually disagree that movies and actors on IMDB
are all verifiable.
I know people with movies on IMDB, and I know what kind of verification was
done. Virtually none. That said, most movies and actors on IMDB are
verifiable.
Yup, most. If we must set a standard, probably an actor with more than
two performances should be kept.
If their
articles are deleted, it's a shame. I think few deletionists
would agree [you mean disagree?] with me. Sometimes inclusionists just
love giving
deletionists positions they don't hold.
Movie articles are regularly *speedy deleted*.
They are? If they aren't worthless substubs, then it's a contravention
of policy.
I'm certainly not giving
anyone a position they don't hold. After this conversation, I'm not giving
you any position, because I really can't figure out what your position is.
I'm just continuing a long tradition of flip-flopping. I waffle on just
about everything - my heroes are [[Linus Torvalds]] and [[Bill Gates]];
I think both the Republicans and Democrats are worthless; and I think
politicians from both the ruling party and opposition parties in
Malaysia should be shot dead. This is just another instance of me having
positions on a subject not easily classifiable into one of two partisan
sides.
Anthony
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])