Flameviper Velifang
So I propose a week of restricted article creation (or at least in the main namespace). For a burnination of unencyclopedic material.
So I propose you first inform a couple of hundred hardened speedy nominators, prodders and AfD regulars that this is not yet official. Create articles, youse bums!
Charles
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On 12/10/2007, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
So I propose you first inform a couple of hundred hardened speedy nominators, prodders and AfD regulars that this is not yet official. Create articles, youse bums!
I just wrote a long chewy email to an outside correspondent arguing that a surprising amount of our problems are due to people not writing enough articles. Not because we don't have enough - we have huge amounts of them - but because so many of our most active and ubiquitous users are massively and fundamentally disconnected from the fundamental activity of the project.
Vandal-fighting and link-fixing and spam-weeding is all well and good, but unless you set aside an hour every now and again to read something, consider it, synthesise it, distill that down and write a nice clear encyclopedic summary... well, you're going to end up forgetting why we do what we do.
It might be a trivial topic. It might not be of much use to the encyclopedia, all things considered. But it'll put your own work in context, and *you'll* be much more use to the encyclopedia as a result.
(This has been your dreary-Friday-afternoon manifesto. Go forth and annotate.)
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Flameviper Velifang
So I propose a week of restricted article creation (or at least in the main namespace). For a burnination of unencyclopedic material.
So I propose you first inform a couple of hundred hardened speedy nominators, prodders and AfD regulars that this is not yet official. Create articles, youse bums!
Charles
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Taking out the garbage is an important, if often thankless, task anywhere. Try not doing so in a large office for a week. Granted, it isn't the -only- important task that happens there, but there will sure be problems as soon as it quits happening. I'm very grateful to those who perform filtering, and while I do see some inappropriate nominations, on the whole they do it damned well.
We may need speedy, but what would happen if we had a month-long moratorium of AfD? with everything sent to afd being held for improvement? Not introduction of a new procedural step, as some have suggested, just a shock effort to improve articles.
On 10/13/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Flameviper Velifang
So I propose a week of restricted article creation (or at least in the main namespace). For a burnination of unencyclopedic material.
So I propose you first inform a couple of hundred hardened speedy nominators, prodders and AfD regulars that this is not yet official. Create articles, youse bums!
Charles
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WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Taking out the garbage is an important, if often thankless, task anywhere. Try not doing so in a large office for a week. Granted, it isn't the -only- important task that happens there, but there will sure be problems as soon as it quits happening. I'm very grateful to those who perform filtering, and while I do see some inappropriate nominations, on the whole they do it damned well.
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David Goodman wrote:
We may need speedy, but what would happen if we had a month-long moratorium of AfD? with everything sent to afd being held for improvement? Not introduction of a new procedural step, as some have suggested, just a shock effort to improve articles.
On 10/13/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Flameviper Velifang
So I propose a week of restricted article creation (or at least in the main namespace). For a burnination of unencyclopedic material.
So I propose you first inform a couple of hundred hardened speedy nominators, prodders and AfD regulars that this is not yet official. Create articles, youse bums!
Charles
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Taking out the garbage is an important, if often thankless, task anywhere. Try not doing so in a large office for a week. Granted, it isn't the -only- important task that happens there, but there will sure be problems as soon as it quits happening. I'm very grateful to those who perform filtering, and while I do see some inappropriate nominations, on the whole they do it damned well.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Well, I, for one, will in that case find -very- inventive ways to determine that things fit a speedy criterion. :) Realistically, though, we need -more- cutting, not less. We've got plenty of writing done already, but far too much resistance to cutting, a normal and healthy part of any editing process.
On 10/15/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I, for one, will in that case find -very- inventive ways to determine that things fit a speedy criterion. :) Realistically, though, we need -more- cutting, not less. We've got plenty of writing done already, but far too much resistance to cutting, a normal and healthy part of any editing process.
If that's the way you feel, you could probably delete everything I've created, FedEx me a box of razor blades, and come out ahead.
Less whimsically, I think too many of us carry that immediatist, "db-notreadyforprimetime" attitude. If an article looks like crap, but you can find a decent source or two for it, it deserves at least the courtesy of a one-sentence merge and redirect. If somebody gives you pennies, rather than throwing them back you probably roll them up for dollars. Not right this instant, but there's always a jar or coffee can and always an uneventful evening in the not-too-distant future.
Then there's the myth of notability. The "soft" deletionist will say "I've not heard of it and with any luck I never will, ergo not notable. Delete." (though not in those words) whereas the hard deletionist might admit to having read the paperback book, or even having watched the made-for-TV movie, but still (lacking the inclination to improve content as it stands) put forth the same patently flawed argument.
Maybe a year later the article will be started over from scratch. If it escapes deletion under the usually mis-applied G4, it will be because it is leaps and bounds beyond the first attempt. Better editing skill, more sources (though not any newer ones), same topic. Kept. Maybe never formally challenged. Decent reading too.
How many articles miraculously skip the "stub" stage? A few percent? Less?
If somebody has recent a database dump with complete edit history ("the big one") and wants to see how many articles (created in the last two years, let's say) do not contain any revisions matching "{{.*[Ss]tub}}" I'd really like to know.
—C.W.
On 15/10/2007, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I, for one, will in that case find -very- inventive ways to determine that things fit a speedy criterion. :) Realistically, though, we need -more- cutting, not less. We've got plenty of writing done already, but far too much resistance to cutting, a normal and healthy part of any editing process.
If that's the way you feel, you could probably delete everything I've created, FedEx me a box of razor blades, and come out ahead.
Less whimsically, I think too many of us carry that immediatist, "db-notreadyforprimetime" attitude.
I spent an hour today clearing up after someone who'd deleted a swathe of disambiguation pages with four or five article-worthy redlinks and one link, then redirected them to that page. And then gone through more disambiguation pages *removing* redlinks from them - again, things which obviously were going to be articles.
I really do despair, sometimes.
On 10/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/10/2007, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I, for one, will in that case find -very- inventive ways to determine that things fit a speedy criterion. :) Realistically,
though,
we need -more- cutting, not less. We've got plenty of writing done already, but far too much resistance to cutting, a normal and healthy part of any editing process.
If that's the way you feel, you could probably delete everything I've created, FedEx me a box of razor blades, and come out ahead.
Less whimsically, I think too many of us carry that immediatist, "db-notreadyforprimetime" attitude.
I spent an hour today clearing up after someone who'd deleted a swathe of disambiguation pages with four or five article-worthy redlinks and one link, then redirected them to that page. And then gone through more disambiguation pages *removing* redlinks from them - again, things which obviously were going to be articles.
I really do despair, sometimes.
I admire your perseverance. After seeing this happen so many times I've tired of fixing up after this. Gone are the intelligent deletionists like Geogre.
Johnleemk
On 10/15/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/10/2007, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I, for one, will in that case find -very- inventive ways to determine that things fit a speedy criterion. :) Realistically, though, we need -more- cutting, not less. We've got plenty of writing done already, but far too much resistance to cutting, a normal and healthy part of any editing process.
If that's the way you feel, you could probably delete everything I've created, FedEx me a box of razor blades, and come out ahead.
Less whimsically, I think too many of us carry that immediatist, "db-notreadyforprimetime" attitude.
I spent an hour today clearing up after someone who'd deleted a swathe of disambiguation pages with four or five article-worthy redlinks and one link, then redirected them to that page. And then gone through more disambiguation pages *removing* redlinks from them - again, things which obviously were going to be articles.
I really do despair, sometimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JHunterJ#Disambiguation_pages Ugh...
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ParkingLotTherapy (!)
—C.W.