On 5/7/07, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au>
wrote:
G'day Chris,
On 5/6/07, Nick Wilkins
<nlwilkins(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Just went through and whacked a bunch of
unsourced statements
from that last
category. 100 fewer BLP articles with the
{{fact}} tag on now.
Are there
81.82 other editors out there who will step up
and do the same?
Your idea of a 'solution' is to delete anything some random idiot put
a {{fact}} tag on. Your actions are indistinguishable from those
of a
rogue bot, but unlike a bot no administrator can press your stop
button without getting desysoped Let me pick one of your
'contributions'(Read: Attempts at deletionist brown nosing) at random:
Paul Laxalt
<snip example/>
I can only hope there are no other editors are
willing to follow in
your foot steps.
That's a tad harsh. Well, not just a "tad". I mean, it's *really*
harsh. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it is such a harsh post that you've
crossed the line from being a concerned fellow editor to being a big meanie
poopy pants, and that's a terrible sight to behold. However, the intent of
what you have to say --- seen in the parts where the big meanie hasn't quite
taken over --- is quite reasonable, and by "reasonable" I mean, of course,
only that I agree with you.
One removes a {{fact}} tag either by finding a source, or by deciding that
the {{fact}}ed portion is spurious --- of course, as you haven't said you
know, but Nick presumably understands, the bar for removing {{fact}}ed
statements is far lower in biographies of living persons than it is in other
articles. There does seem to be plenty of support for the notion that the
press nicknamed Paul Laxalt the "First Friend", and it's not what I'd
call
an example of a sentence that should be deleted if unsourced (compare with:
"thought to be involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy", which
should be removed, not {{fact}}ed).
The simple fact of the matter ({{fact}} of the matter) is that just
removing, unread, sentences tagged with {{fact}} is not an acceptable
solution to the problem of too many articles tagged with {{fact}}. I mean,
it's better than removing the tags and keeping the sentences there, but
There Is A Better Way. If all we wanted to do was delete sentences tagged
with {{fact}}, we could get one CVUer looking for some variety, equipped
with a semi-automated wossname, to do the whole thing and save the time of
81.82 more valuable editors.
The reason we get backlogs in the first place is because this sort of
stuff is difficult (sometimes), painstaking (always) work. If anyone could
spend five minutes and get rid of a hundred {{fact}} tags, we wouldn't have
eight thousand of the buggers running around wild. It's great to see
someone extending a bit of effort to reduce one of our more concerning
backlogs, but a bit of common sense never goes astray.
Now, Chris, why the wikihate towards Nick?
Why the 'wikihate'? I'd guess for deleting material without attempting to
check for sources. You pretty much said it. Deleting tagged material like a
bot is not the way to go about it.
Mgm