On 7/18/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/18/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
There are at least two librarians posting to this list, and both have supported cautious and informed views about handling these issues.
I'm a third one, and for what it's worth I support the use of "cite this *now* or it dies a flaming flaming death" in appropriate cases. [[Demographics of Latvia]] is not an appropriate case. [[Notorious rapists]] is!
There are some articles that basically consist of nasty claims, yet have no sources. If we remove all the unsourced and potentially defamatory claims, we get "Joe Smith (b. 1964) is a Canadian" rather than "Joe Smith (b. 1964) is a Canadian criminal best known for molesting several young moose over a seven-year period in 1992", and at that point the article is pretty much worth quietly losing.
So I take out the claims, slap a prod tag on it, and let it be. To my delight, this has been mostly successful - only two or three got reverted with whiny edit summaries, and one of them got taken to AFD and deleted anyway (on the grounds that we really, really aren't a sex offenders registry). I strongly feel the encyclopedia was substantially better for doing this, and isn't that the point?
Absolutely. What I'm afraid of is that this process/PROD will end up being used on articles like [[Demographics of Latvia]] simply because there are far too many idiot gold farmers out there.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
If something is garbage, it should be {{prod}}'ed for being garbage not because it isn't sourced. Sourced garbage is still garbage.
- White Cat