1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better.

On 1/30/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org> wrote: That's sort of like saying, why do we have to choose between tax cuts and more spending on health? Why don't we cut taxes *and* spend more on health?

[originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?] Hi all, This is the deletion paradox as I see it: 1) Wikipedia has nearly a million articles. A very large number of them are crap. The more articles we delete, the better. 2) Deleting articles causes unhappiness and tension. The more articles we delete, the more unhappiness and tension.

Anyway, the vastness of crap on Wikipedia and the high proportion of stubs indicate that the wikipedia workforce is unable/unwilling to keep up with this amount of work. So, given that our poor dog is suffering a terminal illness in great pain, do we put him down or simply pray for him to get better?

YOU are free to stop bothering WIkipedia's collaborative work if you think it amounts to a poor dog suffering a terminal illness in great pain. ME are free to continue adding my improvements to the greatest knowledge base in history if only you would stop trying to kill the dog. Sorry to say this to you, but since Wikipedia is not a dying dog, it doesn't need any euthanasians.

Steve Bennett wrote: through the large number of better. tension. The more articles

On 1/30/06, BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne(a)gmail.com> wrote: Aputation on the other hand... It is just that the gangrene is starting to smell.

Dear god, if you don't stop with the bad allegories, I'm going to kill something (and I mean it literally, I'll go to a pet store, buy a cat and drown it when I get home if I hear one more of these!) Cheers! --Oskar _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

The solution is pretty obvious, then: redirect (possibly after merging any useful information) the crap articles with abandon. I'm surprised, for instance, that we don't simply redirect each vanity band entry to [[Garage band]]; most of the authors won't be back to check, I suspect.

Has anyone considered the possibility of improving those crap articles? That would be a fine lateral solution to the paradox. Ec

YOU are free to stop bothering WIkipedia's collaborative work if you think it amounts to a poor dog suffering a terminal illness in great pain. ME are free to continue adding my improvements to the greatest knowledge base in history if only you would stop trying to kill the dog.

There's no reason to *delete* a 2-sentence unverified stub, merely to make clear to our readers that it is in fact a 2-sentence unverified stub, and so ought to be read accordingly. Of course, an intelligent reader already ought to be able to recognize that for themselves, but we can help the rest along. -Mark

On 1/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote: In order to test the truth of the above assertion, I pressed "random article" ten times and wrote about what I saw. The results were as I expected. Out of ten articles, not one that I would be completely happy about deleting. They could all use improvement, some more than others. I contend that the phrase "the vastness of crap on Wikipedia" is extremely misleading. We have a quality product and the world is beating a path to our door to sample it. Enough breastbeating! We should be proud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK Rather nice article about a rapid transit system in Queens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claycomo%2C_Missouri Article about a small village in Missouri. Extensive use of census information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Skorton Biography of the President of the University of Iowa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatayu Disambiguation page. Leads to two good short articles and one single-sentence stub. I added an appropriate stub template to the stub. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/544 A historical link page about the year 544 AD. Sadly it is lacking in any information about what was happening outside Europe and the Northern Mediterranean area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_Pattern A well written and compendiuous article about a feature of the Japanese cartoon series: Transformers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narail_District A stub about a district of Bangladesh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Clemens A brief biographical article about a professional basketball player who retired in 1976. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Naples It does what it says on the tin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksmusik An article about a German folk music form. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

In many many cases there is a reason to delete a 2-sentence unverified stub. We need to be extremely aggressive about doing so when the article in question contains negative claims about any living person or existing company.

The whole point being that if it remains unverifiable for other editors that particular stub will never be expanded, which basically robs the stub of its only function.

On 1/31/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Actually that has long been one of our criteria for speedy deletion, and I believe that it has always been implemented aggressively.