On 7/18/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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?
Yes, crap usually dies an easy death. Wikipedia is working when that
happens, just as much as when good articles prevail or salvageable
ones survive.