On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 3:53 AM, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/5/08, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
That said, if you have so many articles that you can't *create* them by hand, then you're naturally going to have trouble *maintaining* them by hand.
You're only going to have trouble maintaining more articles if the very existence of those articles attracts more vandalism, but that view would completely ignore what we've seen through the whole history of the project, which is that productive contributors are attracted at a greater rate than vandals. If FritzpollBot articles attract more vandals, they'll simultaneously attract more contributors.
I see "maintaining" articles as including more than just stopping vandalism. If a city gets a new name, or the province it is in changes, or it merges with another city, or something like that, it requires "maintenance". This type of maintenance will probably be much more difficult to keep up with than protecting against vandalism.
I do think that having these articles will clearly attract both more vandals and more positive contributors. Without thinking about it too deeply I'd guess the ratio of positive to negative contributions will be lower than the current average. But I don't see that as a very big deal. I think the effect would be minor. If no one has created these articles yet, there probably aren't very many English speaking Internet users who care about the location enough to contribute *or* vandalize an article on it.