Sam Korn wrote:
We should *encourage* the creation of forks, so long as they have a compatible licence.
I'm speaking of a particular reason for a fork. Are you saying you think the current example, and the image of Wikipedia that's the reason for it, is a *good* thing?
Then we can merge them back in and hopefully restore our image within the specialist communities.
That's a good idea, but ...
A little more assumption of good faith and preparedness to admit to being wrong on AfD would also help.
Go reread (or read) the evidence in the webcomics case. Note the direct assumptions of bad faith on the part of subject experts saying to AFD "actually, you're wrong on this one." They didn't start out having no faith in AFD's good will.
Funnily enough, many people when confronted with utter blithering stupidity will go so far as to say out loud "that's blithering stupidity."
- d.
On 1/11/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Funnily enough, many people when confronted with utter blithering stupidity will go so far as to say out loud "that's blithering stupidity."
- d.
Perhaphs but it helps if you provide evidence to support you case. This has the secondary advantage of slightly decreaseing the amout of blithering stupidity in future. People watching will learn. And with luck they will not make the that mistake in future. Of course they will find new ones but that is what keeps things interesting.
-- geni
On 1/11/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Sam Korn wrote:
We should *encourage* the creation of forks, so long as they have a compatible licence.
I'm speaking of a particular reason for a fork. Are you saying you think the current example, and the image of Wikipedia that's the reason for it, is a *good* thing?
No, we should encourage forks in a different way. We should encourage the creation of forks with the specific intention of having the content merged into Wikipedia when it is of better quality and therefore less likely to be deleted.
Then we can merge them back in and hopefully restore our image within the specialist communities.
That's a good idea, but ...
If your point is that it's impractical, we should damn well *make* it practical.
A little more assumption of good faith and preparedness to admit to being wrong on AfD would also help.
Go reread (or read) the evidence in the webcomics case. Note the direct assumptions of bad faith on the part of subject experts saying to AFD "actually, you're wrong on this one." They didn't start out having no faith in AFD's good will.
Funnily enough, many people when confronted with utter blithering stupidity will go so far as to say out loud "that's blithering stupidity."
I'm talking about both sides. However, it is easier to deal with people acting in bad faith when you're not acting in bad faith yourself.
-- Sam
"Sam Korn" wrote
We should encourage
the creation of forks with the specific intention of having the content merged into Wikipedia when it is of better quality and therefore less likely to be deleted.
Nurseries. Yes, not a bad attitude. I would add that in typical popular-cultural areas a good WP article might be a survey with 50 redirects leading to it, while a specialist wiki would stretch out to one page per minor character or whatever.
Charles
Sam Korn wrote:
No, we should encourage forks in a different way. We should encourage the creation of forks with the specific intention of having the content merged into Wikipedia when it is of better quality and therefore less likely to be deleted.
Why are we deleting bad quality articles anyway? AFAIK there is no due-by date for Wikipedia and it doesn't matter how long it takes to get a good article.
Chris
On 1/11/06, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
Why are we deleting bad quality articles anyway? AFAIK there is no due-by date for Wikipedia and it doesn't matter how long it takes to get a good article.
I am simply saying that bad articles are more likely to be deleted than good articles. That isn't my preference, just a fact.
-- Sam
On 1/11/06, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
Why are we deleting bad quality articles anyway? AFAIK there is no due-by date for Wikipedia and it doesn't matter how long it takes to get a good article.
Chris
It is posible for an article to be worse than nothing. -- geni
It is posible for an article to be worse than nothing.
geni
And that's not some theoretical possibility - that's everyday reality. Deleting all the contents of [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]] would arguably improve the encyclopedia. There would be *some* worthwhile stuff deleted, though, and the fallout would hurt the community, which in turn would hurt the encyclopedia. So don't stuff that bean up your nose you IAR-admins! :)
Regards, Haukur
"Haukur Þorgeirsson" wrote
Deleting all the contents of [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]] would arguably improve the encyclopedia.
And arguably would not. Rather than arguing, I'd prefer to wikify. Why do we have all these 'hanging judges'? There has always been a proportion of junk and random stuff up there. We have always in the past tried to treat bad articles as an opportunity for improvement. I don't use a flamethrower to weed the garden, either.
Charles
Deleting all the contents of [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]] would arguably improve the encyclopedia.
And arguably would not. Rather than arguing, I'd prefer to wikify. Why do we have all these 'hanging judges'? There has always been a proportion of junk and random stuff up there. We have always in the past tried to treat bad articles as an opportunity for improvement. I don't use a flamethrower to weed the garden, either.
If only it were so simple that the articles in [[Category:Articles that need to be wikified]] actually just needed to be wikified. That's very rarely the case.
And as I noted in my post I'm not actually saying we should go and delete them all, it would destroy *some* useful content and alienate a lot of people. It wouldn't be worth it.
And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off researching the topic and writing about it from scratch than trying to salvage the existing articles.
Regards, Haukur
"Haukur Þorgeirsson" wrote
And as I noted in my post I'm not actually saying we should go and delete them all, it would destroy *some* useful content and alienate a lot of people. It wouldn't be worth it.
Format is never a good reason for deletion, is it?
And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off researching the topic and writing about it from scratch than trying to salvage the existing articles.
You can do that, in fact. It leaves the old version in the history.
Charles
And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off researching the topic and writing about it from scratch than trying to salvage the existing articles.
You can do that, in fact. It leaves the old version in the history.
Yes, of course you can. You're trying to tidy up the encyclopedia and you come upon a worse-than-useless article which doesn't fall under the CSD criteria. You have three options:
1. Research the topic and write a proper article, even if it's just a stub. 2. Drag the article, perhaps kicking and screaming, to AfD. 3. Do nothing.
It's not surprising that the third option is a popular one and that we have a large backlog of absolute crap. It's not a very serious problem because a lot of the crap has very low visibility to anyone not engaged in Wikipedia cleanup. But it's disheartening to those of us engaged in such cleanup.
"Why isn't the first option taken more often?", you might ask. Well, writing a proper stub can be surprisingly hard work even if you manage to verify that the topic is reasonably worthy. And many of us have our favorite topics which we like writing articles about and do cleanup as an activity where we want to do more manual work and less brain work.
I'm not crying doom and gloom here, I'm just trying to justify why the quality of an article - not just its subject matter - legitimately affects whether it is deleted.
An excellent article on a marginal topic is kept. A useless article on a marginal topic is deleted. A marginal article on a marginal topic may or may not be deleted. This is as it should be.
Then there is the rare case where a useless article on a marginal topic brought to AfD is vastly improved and then kept. This is what is happening with this article I mentioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cards_and_a_top_hat
But exceptional cases like that don't mean we should not take useless articles on marginal topics to AfD. Which in turn doesn't mean that I'm endorsing continually picking fights about something like webcomics.
Regards, Haukur
On 1/12/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
And I *do* cleanup work in this category but the really frustrating thing is the cases where you'd be better off researching the topic and writing about it from scratch than trying to salvage the existing articles.
You can do that, in fact. It leaves the old version in the history.
Yes, of course you can. You're trying to tidy up the encyclopedia and you come upon a worse-than-useless article which doesn't fall under the CSD criteria. You have three options:
- Research the topic and write a proper article, even if it's just a stub.
- Drag the article, perhaps kicking and screaming, to AfD.
- Do nothing.
There's always 4) Make it a redirect.
And if you're an admin, there's 5) Speedy delete it and hope you don't get de-adminned. (Has anyone actually been de-adminned for speedy deleting worse-than-useless crap?)
I'd argue that (1) doesn't really require much research in most cases, especially when (4) isn't appropriate.
It would be nice if there were some other option which is easier to implement than AfD but more consensus based than speedy deletion. Semi-deletion was a proposal for such an option.
It's not surprising that the third option is a popular one and that we have a large backlog of absolute crap. It's not a very serious problem because a lot of the crap has very low visibility to anyone not engaged in Wikipedia cleanup. But it's disheartening to those of us engaged in such cleanup.
"Why isn't the first option taken more often?", you might ask. Well, writing a proper stub can be surprisingly hard work even if you manage to verify that the topic is reasonably worthy. And many of us have our favorite topics which we like writing articles about and do cleanup as an activity where we want to do more manual work and less brain work.
It doesn't have to be a "proper stub" to be "better than nothing". A simple one-liner stating whatever it is you know that verifies that the topic is reasonably worthy should be enough. If the article is "worse than nothing", then surely it's worse than a one-line stub, so you've improved the article and punted the problem to those people who like to delete things.
I'm not crying doom and gloom here, I'm just trying to justify why the quality of an article - not just its subject matter - legitimately affects whether it is deleted.
An excellent article on a marginal topic is kept. A useless article on a marginal topic is deleted. A marginal article on a marginal topic may or may not be deleted. This is as it should be.
This is clearly your opinion, but you haven't really shown any reason for someone with a differing opinion to change his or her mind.
Then there is the rare case where a useless article on a marginal topic brought to AfD is vastly improved and then kept. This is what is happening with this article I mentioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cards_and_a_top_hat
But exceptional cases like that don't mean we should not take useless articles on marginal topics to AfD. Which in turn doesn't mean that I'm endorsing continually picking fights about something like webcomics.
Regards, Haukur
I just don't see the point of spending your time listing something on AfD (and thereby taking up a bunch of other people's time as well) when you could have spent about the same amount of time replacing the article with a redirect or a one-line stub. To that effect, I don't think one ever *should* take useless articles on marginal topics to AfD. (Which is not to say that there aren't situations where this is a terrible choice, just that I can't think of any situation where it's an optimal choice.)
Anthony
An excellent article on a marginal topic is kept. A useless article on a marginal topic is deleted. A marginal article on a marginal topic may or may not be deleted. This is as it should be.
This is clearly your opinion, but you haven't really shown any reason for someone with a differing opinion to change his or her mind.
Regardless of the context this is such an excellent sentence that it made me laugh out loud :) I'll have to keep it somewhere. This is so often the case and I'm guilty as charged.
I just don't see the point of spending your time listing something on AfD (and thereby taking up a bunch of other people's time as well) when you could have spent about the same amount of time replacing the article with a redirect or a one-line stub.
If I can replace absolute crap with a one-line stub then, sure, I'll do that. But using redirects as a sort of pseudo-deletion is something I'm a bit uncomfortable with.
- - -
I seem to be coming across as some sort of AfD-troll out to decimate badly formatted marginal articles, or something :) That's not the case at all. I don't think I've ever brought anything but slam-dunk cases to AfD and I try to do it as gently as I can. Here's my most recent nomination:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Razz_The_Rabbit
Regards, Haukur
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It doesn't have to be a "proper stub" to be "better than nothing". A simple one-liner stating whatever it is you know that verifies that the topic is reasonably worthy should be enough. If the article is "worse than nothing", then surely it's worse than a one-line stub, so you've improved the article and punted the problem to those people who like to delete things.
A one liner turns all the links blue. Fewer people will then notice that it needs some serious expansion.
-- geni
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It doesn't have to be a "proper stub" to be "better than nothing". A simple one-liner stating whatever it is you know that verifies that the topic is reasonably worthy should be enough. If the article is "worse than nothing", then surely it's worse than a one-line stub, so you've improved the article and punted the problem to those people who like to delete things.
A one liner turns all the links blue. Fewer people will then notice that it needs some serious expansion.
-- geni
And you think this is a big enough problem that it renders the stubs to be worth less than nothing? If so, I disagree. Logged in users can mark links containing less than X characters specially anyway (which is *better* information than just red vs. blue), and users that aren't logged in couldn't even edit the article if it was deleted completely.
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
And you think this is a big enough problem that it renders the stubs to be worth less than nothing? If so, I disagree.
Single lines are not stubs
Logged in users can mark links containing less than X characters specially anyway (which is *better* information than just red vs. blue), and users that aren't logged in couldn't even edit the article if it was deleted completely.
Most loged in users however don't
-- geni
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Single lines are not stubs
Um, they aren't? I guess _de jure_ they aren't, but _de facto_ any that isn't is a permanent dicdef and needs transwiki-ing. Could you explain?
Logged in users can mark links containing less than X characters specially anyway (which is *better* information than just red vs. blue), and users that aren't logged in couldn't even edit the article if it was deleted completely.
Most loged in users however don't
Perhaps it would be a good idea to make this a default.
-- Sam
On 1/12/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Single lines are not stubs
Um, they aren't? I guess _de jure_ they aren't, but _de facto_ any that isn't is a permanent dicdef and needs transwiki-ing. Could you explain?
A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs. People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost. Still all the details can still be found in the page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=326499...
Perhaps it would be a good idea to make this a default.
-- Sam
The fight over the number of characters would be fun to watch. From a safe distance.
-- geni
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs. People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost. Still all the details can still be found in the page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=326499...
The way to get rid of the substub category was not to move all its contents somewhere else. The only way was by deleting them. I see your point about why they aren't stubs.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to make this a default.
-- Sam
The fight over the number of characters would be fun to watch. From a safe distance.
Let's have a poll across all WikiMedia sites, with double votes for en.wp users and 1.5 times for sep11 users (hell, I feel like it).
-- Sam
On 1/12/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs. People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost. Still all the details can still be found in the page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=326499...
The way to get rid of the substub category was not to move all its contents somewhere else. The only way was by deleting them. I see your point about why they aren't stubs.
So is a substub a candidate for speedy deletion? If so, and a substub is better than the original article, then what's that make the original article?
IOW, if you replace a really bad article with a one line substub, can someone else then delete it? LMAO, this "build an encyclopedia" game is silly sometimes.
Anthony
On 1/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/12/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs. People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost. Still all the details can still be found in the page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=326499...
The way to get rid of the substub category was not to move all its contents somewhere else. The only way was by deleting them. I see your point about why they aren't stubs.
So is a substub a candidate for speedy deletion?
Not as far as policy is concerned.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/12/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
A while back when there was only one stub catigory and it became completely overloaded someone came up with the idea of substubs. People tended to object to the template on the basis that substubs shouldn't be in wikipedia at but that was mostly a side issue. the core was correct. Single lines do not qualify as stubs. Of course when we switched over to stubs by subject the substub catigory was lost. Still all the details can still be found in the page history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Substub&oldid=326499...
The way to get rid of the substub category was not to move all its contents somewhere else. The only way was by deleting them. I see your point about why they aren't stubs.
So is a substub a candidate for speedy deletion?
Not as far as policy is concerned.
CSD tends to take care of most substubs; they either don't provide context (A1) or make no attempt to explain the subject's notability (A7).
On 1/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/11/06, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
Why are we deleting bad quality articles anyway? AFAIK there is no due-by date for Wikipedia and it doesn't matter how long it takes to get a good article.
Chris
It is posible for an article to be worse than nothing.
geni
Sure, and it's also possible (even trivial) to make that article better than nothing without deleting it.
On 1/11/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Sure, and it's also possible (even trivial) to make that article better than nothing without deleting it.
So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what other people want to rant about.
-- geni
On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what other people want to rant about.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. In my opinion, if someone is willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD, they should be willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable standards. Obviously, this only applies to articles that merit inclusion in Wikipedia (i.e., meet the standards for notability and the like).
-- [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what other people want to rant about.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. In my opinion, if someone is willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD, they should be willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable standards.
Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax. Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about that bit of chemistry.
-- geni
On Jan 11, 2006, at 8:38 PM, geni wrote:
Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax. Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about that bit of chemistry.
Well, you seem to have removed the last sentence of my post, which read, "Obviously, this only applies to articles that merit inclusion in Wikipedia (i.e., meet the standards for notability and the like)." A hoax article would obviously fall under these terms. I'm *not* talking about articles like that, and I didn't think the discussion was either.
-- [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
Well, you seem to have removed the last sentence of my post, which read, "Obviously, this only applies to articles that merit inclusion in Wikipedia (i.e., meet the standards for notability and the like)." A hoax article would obviously fall under these terms. I'm *not* talking about articles like that, and I didn't think the discussion was either.
-- [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
It would be quite posible to write a hoax about Sn1 reactions. Doesn't mean such reactions would not meet wikipedia's standards for notability.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
Well, you seem to have removed the last sentence of my post, which read, "Obviously, this only applies to articles that merit inclusion in Wikipedia (i.e., meet the standards for notability and the like)." A hoax article would obviously fall under these terms. I'm *not* talking about articles like that, and I didn't think the discussion was either.
-- [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
It would be quite posible to write a hoax about Sn1 reactions. Doesn't mean such reactions would not meet wikipedia's standards for notability.
As has happened at least once before; Wikipedia has a hoax article, article is deleted as a hoax, article is recreated to describe the hoax once the extent of the hoax is discovered.
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of geni Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2006 13:39 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who don't want to bother?
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what other people want to rant about.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. In my opinion, if
someone is
willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD,
they should be
willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable
standards.
Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax. Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about that bit of chemistry.
Likewise, if something or someone isn't notable, all the rewriting in the world isn't going to make it so. [[Vicarius Filii Dei]] is an example. Lots of pictures and pseudosources to cover a myth that Snopes doesn't even bother listing.
Peter (Skyring)
geni wrote:
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what other people want to rant about.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. In my opinion, if someone is willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD, they should be willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable standards.
Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax. Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about that bit of chemistry.
The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution for the special case to an expanded environment.
To know that an article about chemistry is a hoax implies that you have enough knowledge of chemistry to recognize a hoax. The person to whom you are responding made no mention of a hoax, and I would suspect that being a hoax is a problem with only a very small portion of the articles in question. Debatable notability is far more often the cause of disputes. The information provided by "non-notable" articles may be trivial or meaningless, but it is not deceptive and completely wrong in the way that a hoax article would be.
Ec
On 1/12/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution for the special case to an expanded environment.
No it isn't. See [[Straw man]]. What I am in fact doing is establishing the principle. People may now comence haggleing over the price.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/12/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution for the special case to an expanded environment.
No it isn't. See [[Straw man]]. What I am in fact doing is establishing the principle. People may now comence haggleing over the price.
Thank you for a reference that proves my point.
Ec
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
In my opinion, if someone is willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD, they should be willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable standards. Obviously, this only applies to articles that merit inclusion in Wikipedia (i.e., meet the standards for notability and the like).
Yes, but someone who puts up an article for AfD thinks the article does not merit inclusion in wikipedia.
Garion
On Jan 11, 2006, at 8:39 PM, Garion1000 wrote:
Yes, but someone who puts up an article for AfD thinks the article does not merit inclusion in wikipedia.
Wasn't this discussion aimed at the listings for "bad-quality" articles (i.e., salvageable, but when listed, in bad shape)?
-- [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
On Jan 11, 2006, at 8:39 PM, Garion1000 wrote:
Yes, but someone who puts up an article for AfD thinks the article does not merit inclusion in wikipedia.
Wasn't this discussion aimed at the listings for "bad-quality" articles (i.e., salvageable, but when listed, in bad shape)?
Perhaps, but I don't see many articles being nominated for AfD with the reason that it's a bad quality article. It might well be so. But the reason is usually, hoax, nonsense, or the most popular one "non notable".
Mind you, I don't spend that much time on AfD so I could be missing a lot.
Garion
Perhaps, but I don't see many articles being nominated for AfD with the reason that it's a bad quality article. It might well be so. But the reason is usually, hoax, nonsense, or the most popular one "non notable".
AfD gets a lot of rotten press here and much of it is richly deserved. But it's not completely hostile. Look at this little tale.
On January 8th a new user created the article [[Three cards and a top hat]] with this content:
"Suppose you have three cards: one that is red on both sides, a second that is white on both sides, and a third that is red on one side and white on the other. The puzzles is this: Put all of the cards in the hat pull one put and look at one side. Given that that side is red, what is the probability the other side is also red."
Half an hour later the articles was, unsusurprisingly, on AfD. Four days on it has grown into a substantial piece and will probably be kept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cards_and_a_top_hat
It's "mathcruft" or "puzzlecruft" but once a reasonably decent article is there we just can't bring ourselves to delete it.
Regards, Haukur
Mind you, I don't spend that much time on AfD so I could be missing a lot.
Garion _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 1/12/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cards_and_a_top_hat
It's "mathcruft" or "puzzlecruft" but once a reasonably decent article is there we just can't bring ourselves to delete it.
Apparently all the "voting" that's taken place on AfD hasn't yet found a decent title, which is the true problem with the article. "Three cards and a top hat"? That gets 0 google hits. The info should be included *somewhere*, but there shouldn't be an article called that.
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/12/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cards_and_a_top_hat
It's "mathcruft" or "puzzlecruft" but once a reasonably decent article is there we just can't bring ourselves to delete it.
Apparently all the "voting" that's taken place on AfD hasn't yet found a decent title, which is the true problem with the article. "Three cards and a top hat"? That gets 0 google hits. The info should be included *somewhere*, but there shouldn't be an article called that.
Actually, now that I've read the article in depth, I see that this problem is equivalent to the Monty Hall Problem.
On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
Wasn't this discussion aimed at the listings for "bad-quality" articles (i.e., salvageable, but when listed, in bad shape)?
No. It was my comment that started it, and my comment was that, in general, bad articles are more likely to be deleted than good ones. I don't think anyone in the debate will contest that.
-- Sam
On 1/11/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/11/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Sure, and it's also possible (even trivial) to make that article better than nothing without deleting it.
So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what other people want to rant about.
Yes, you are. But the question was "Why are we deleting bad quality articles anyway?" You responded that "It is posible for an article to be worse than nothing."
Surely it is easier to change an article into a one-line stub than it is to put it through the non-speedy deletion processes. You don't *have* to do either, but there's no reason the community *has* to provide an option for the more difficult and less useful solution.
I was just pointing out how your "answer" was really a non-sequitur. Of course, maybe you were talking about speedy deletions...
Anthony
Surely it is easier to change an article into a one-line stub than it is to put it through the non-speedy deletion processes.
Let's do a case study. Here's an article which looks to me like useless semi-coherent original research which we'd be better off without:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_pos...
Yet the topic - which the article does a very poor job of defining - is probably worthwhile. How would you recommend we proceed? Can you quickly salvage a coherent useful stub out of this?
Regards, Haukur
On 1/12/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
Surely it is easier to change an article into a one-line stub than it is to put it through the non-speedy deletion processes.
Let's do a case study. Here's an article which looks to me like useless semi-coherent original research which we'd be better off without:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_pos...
Yet the topic - which the article does a very poor job of defining - is probably worthwhile.
Actually I don't think the topic is at all appropriate for an encyclopedia. It'd make a good essay, but I seriously doubt you'd see such a title (or indeed any which start out "Changes in...") in, for example, Britannica. For Wikipedia sometimes we get strange article titles like this for what is really a subpage of another article, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
How would you recommend we proceed?
Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's worthwhile).
Can you quickly salvage a coherent useful stub out of this?
Regards, Haukur
Anthony
On 1/12/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 1/12/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_pos...
How would you recommend we proceed?
Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's worthwhile).
Actually, I'd recommend implementing semi-deletion so that the article could be deleted while the content kept viewable by everyone. But since semi-deletion doesn't exist, redirects are the next best thing.
Anthony
(This discussion is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_pos... )
Actually I don't think the topic is at all appropriate for an encyclopedia. It'd make a good essay, but I seriously doubt you'd see such a title (or indeed any which start out "Changes in...") in, for example, Britannica. For Wikipedia sometimes we get strange article titles like this for what is really a subpage of another article, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Nevertheless it would be possible to write a well-referenced article on this topic in encyclopedic style and if we had such an article it would be kept if brought up for AfD.
How would you recommend we proceed?
Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's worthwhile).
I don't think it's worthwhile, I think it's worthless. But why should we have a redirect there? The title is, as you noted, ridiculously long and clumsy so no-one is likely to type it in. And the article has no incoming links. Shouldn't we just delete it?
In any case I realize that since you feel that the topic of the article is inappropriate for Wikipedia this was not in fact a good example for the discussion we were having :)
Thanks for taking a look!
Regards, Haukur
On 1/12/06, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
(This discussion is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_immigrant_groups_extended_family_pos... )
Actually I don't think the topic is at all appropriate for an encyclopedia. It'd make a good essay, but I seriously doubt you'd see such a title (or indeed any which start out "Changes in...") in, for example, Britannica. For Wikipedia sometimes we get strange article titles like this for what is really a subpage of another article, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Nevertheless it would be possible to write a well-referenced article on this topic in encyclopedic style and if we had such an article it would be kept if brought up for AfD.
Maybe it would be kept, I'm not sure, but we weren't really talking about what would happen but rather what should happen. An article at that title just shouldn't exist, in my opinion, regardless of how well written it is.
This does touch on the question of how to break up articles which are too large, though. For example, we have an article, [[Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks]], even though such an article title would probably never be found in a traditional encyclopedia. But I see that as really a sub-article more than an article in itself.
In that vein, maybe [[Changes in immigrant groups extended family positions]] would make sense as a sub-article of [[extended family]] or [[immigration]], but barring some space considerations in those parent articles I'd rather see it merged, regardless of the quality of the text.
How would you recommend we proceed?
Redirect to [[extended family]] (optionally merging if you think it's worthwhile).
I don't think it's worthwhile, I think it's worthless.
Fair enough. I was more thinking if the person making the redirect thought any parts of it could be easily salvaged. Personally, if I were the one fixing it, I'd just make the redirect without any merge at all.
But why should we have a redirect there?
Because the system doesn't support semi-deletion, and redirects keep the information there for someone else to fix. I'm not confident enough to say that no one could ever find any of that information useful for making an encyclopedia, so I wouldn't feel comfortable deleting it. Making a redirect is easily reversible should someone disagree with my decision, and yet it doesn't require bothering a large group of people to see whether or not they agree.
The tiny bit of disk space the content takes up in the mean time is not, in my opinion, worth the time it takes to have a discussion on whether or not to remove it.
The title is, as you noted, ridiculously long and clumsy so no-one is likely to type it in. And the article has no incoming links. Shouldn't we just delete it?
In my opinion, no, we shouldn't. But I'm going on the assumption that the content wasn't complete patent nonsense, and therefore not *completely* worthless.
In any case I realize that since you feel that the topic of the article is inappropriate for Wikipedia this was not in fact a good example for the discussion we were having :)
I guess. When I made the statement I was more thinking about an article title which we absolutely should include. Maybe my statement was a bit overbroad in not taking these titles which I referred to as "sub-articles" into consideration.
Thanks for taking a look!
Regards, Haukur
Sure thing.
Anthony
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
Sam Korn wrote:
No, we should encourage forks in a different way. We should encourage the creation of forks with the specific intention of having the content merged into Wikipedia when it is of better quality and therefore less likely to be deleted.
Why are we deleting bad quality articles anyway? AFAIK there is no due-by date for Wikipedia and it doesn't matter how long it takes to get a good article.
Chris
Good question. I usually support deletion of bad quality articles when I feel the topic is borderline or just plain unworthy for inclusion in Wikipedia. (So while I might abstain or even keep a well-written school article, I'd rather delete an article on the same school that was just junk.) I don't think terrible content alone is a good reason to delete, unless nothing at all can be salvaged from that content. But in cases where the topic of the article is borderline, content might be the tipping point on whether to keep or delete (for me).
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])