Jimmy Wales wrote:
I absolutely do think that acquisition of huge numbers of additional stubs on increasingly narrow topics ought not to be a priority, and certainly ought not to be allowed to get in the way of quality improvement on existing articles.
I agree with this, but it is still a big leap to go from discouraging these stubs to a policy of systematically deleting them. Often more energy goes into the deletion process than was ever put into creating the stub, more energy that might have been better spent in improving existing articles.
People write best about what they know best. If that happens to be about Pokémon, World of Warcraft or a local school so be it. We do not encourage these people to become better editors of more significant subjects by emphasizing the triviality of what they write. A little kindly mentoring would be more productive. Students will improve if we begin by recognizing their personal reality, and patiently working with them to bring about improvements.
Think back to your own school days and how a teacher's approach to a subject could have a life-long effect on how you would relate to that subject matter. As experienced Wikipedians we are in a position to be the teachers and mentors. Do we need to repeat the errors of those teachers whom we ourselves found least tolerable?
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