Mirwin wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>Mirwin wrote:
>>If it is a good title then it is an invitation
>>for anyone who encounters it to add to it.
>For somebody interested in writing content (which
is what we want),
>I think that a link of "?" is more inviting than a non"?" link.
>If I know about a subject, then I'll follow "?" links but not
non"?" ones.
>If the non"?" link is to a contentless page, then this means
>that I won't be writing articles that I otherwise would write!
Ok. I can see this might be a problem for writers
oriented
towards writing complete new stubs or articles. Perhaps a
list article page inversely sorted on article length such that
the shortest show up first and the longest last would help
address this. This may be a current capability on the stub
page, I have not been there for a while.
It's been a while since I've been on [[Special:Shortpages]];
I should go back. Cleaning this out is part of the Wikipedians' job.
But in the meantime, active links that should be inactive "?"s do harm,
and I'm interested here in preventing further activation of these links.
Indeed, I don't intend now to argue for deletion of substandard stubs.
I brought up the idea, and others with much stronger feelings than mine
have taken up that cause. I just want to prevent their creation.
I think we also want tweaking experts and readers who
will
occasionally do some research and drop a sentence, paragraph,
definition, or lengthy rambling explanation that can be tweaked
into quality content. A thousand readers occasionally tweaking
equals how many dedicated Wikipedians? A lot of highly educated
people are also fairly busy. While they may not choose to be
regular contributors, the value of their tweaks should add up
or something is seriously wrong with our project model.
I think that I understand what you mean by "twikification",
as a model for building Wikipedia. Generally, I agree.
But I think that the creation of a new page is unusual,
because of how it impacts the presentation of pages that link to it.
(Change this impact, for example with a link coded to the page's size,
as another poster has suggested, and I may change my opinion accordingly.)
I strongly believe that new pages should never be tossed off lightly.
They shouldn't be created for the sake of writing 200 stubs in a weekend,
and a new page of nonsense or emptiness or copyright violation
should be deleted in preference to replacement with a lightly done stub.
OTOH, a stub with thought put into it is a very different matter.
I'm not against stubs, and I'm not against twikification;
I'm only against the combination of the two.
>>I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or
Militia
>>routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
>>only slow down the growth in breadth and depth of
>>the Wikipedia. Some people may like organizing
>>the link structures and establishing good initial titles
>>and interconnections. Why should this contribution
>>be routinely deleted? How much subsequent work is
>>then lost from contributors who while browsing may
>>choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
>>undertake an entire stub and the effort required
>>to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?
>I really have no idea how you think that this will
work.
>Do you have examples on Wikipedia?
>(If I need to look in page histories to see
>how this worked in the past, then that's fine too.)
Some use the term twikification or wikification when
they
do a concise edit. Tracing these from recent changes
may illustrate the concept if you find a stub that has
just become active or controversial.
I can't find "twikification" on [[Special:Recentchanges]] now,
but I'll look again later.
Perhaps the index pages in the tree branch {main
page},
{technology},{space technology},{propulsion} would be
illustrative. I added space technology and alphabetized
technology, IIRC approximately 6 months ago when I first
arrived. They have been slowly undergoing tweaks
since then but are still pretty poor stubs. They do
however provide a substrate for tweaks to settle upon.
I don't think that any of these pages is a bad stub,
and I can't find any bad stubs in their histories.
I definitely think that creating all of these links
in lists in pages of this nature is a good idea.
These are initially "?" links, which is great,
and spurs people to write new articles about technology etc.
I don't want people to follow "?" links and write bad stubs;
I don't want newbies who follow "?" links and write
nothing, nonsense, or copyright violations
to have their material replaced with bad stubs.
I ''do'' want people to follow "?" links and write good stubs.
I saw one example, [[Technology]] -> [[Telemetry]],
where a newbie experimenter made a blank page and somebody
replaced it with a good stub (and that's an overly harsh term).
Perhaps this person (well, let's not be coy, it was you)
did this to keep the article from being deleted.
Fine! Just don't put in a ''bad'' stub for that reason!
I suspect (but certainly cannot prove) that if
Wikipedia
is: not a dictionary, not a tutorial, not a place for
discussion of advanced material, not a place for video
addicts, not a place for resolution of controversy and
neutral presentation of all views, not an etc. etc. then
it will have a hard time becoming and remaining an in depth,
broad, reliable Wikipedia.
All of these are supposed to be contrasted to
that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.
It is not a dictionary, but it must contain definitions,
when these serve the purpose of clarifying an encyclopaedia article.
It's not a place to resolve controversy, but controversy must be resolved
when this is necessary to writing an NPOV encyclopaedia article.
I think that we're essentially in agreement here, because even
"A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." is, in your opinion,
the beginning of a process that will result in an encyclopaedia article.
I oppose it because my opinion disagrees,
since I think that the loss of the "?" will inhibit article creation.
We may disagree on the best way to build an encyclopaedia,
but we agree, I think, that Wikipedia ''is'' an encyclopaedia.
>But I think that links to articles with no content
''adds'' to this problem.
>When the link doesn't have "?", things look even more complete.
>But they are not complete, and "?"s will make things look properly
incomplete!
To see what I'm getting at, consider Kajikit's recent post,
showing the result of 20 results from [[Special:Randompage]].
I hope that you agreed that the best result was,
first an article with a lot of material that could still be improved,
and next an article with a lot of active links and a few "?" links as well.
These both strike a good balance between presenting information to the reader
and enticing the potential writer to join us in building Wikipedia.
I don't want people to write stubs for the "?" links just to make them
active.
I do want people thinking <Hey, I could write a paragraph on that!>
and writing a full paragraph. A paragraph is still a stub,
but a full paragraph would have to be pretty badly written
before I thought that it was a ''bad'' stub.
Once that solid foundation is set, anything from major overhauls
to twikification can improve the new article (which ''is'' an article),
and if we can get a few new "?" links in the new article,
then the whole project is a resounding success.
"A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." falls short of that.
Mike, you've never done anything that I disagreed with
(at any rate not that I noticed was done by you).
I saw some "stub"s that you created in the [[Technology]] area,
and I thought that they were all clearly improvements.
So I don't think that I want you to change your practices.
What I want out of this discussion is:
1 It becomes clear that blank pages and nonsensical pages
are candidate for summary deletion by anyone with that power,
so long as they have no history (this clause is important).
2 Items voted for deletion won't be removed from the list
just because they could be made into encyclopaedia articles;
instead, they will either be made into articles first
or else an argument will be made on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]].
3 Point 6 of [[Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages]]
will be clarified to more clearly state that
it (unlike points 2 through 5 and 7) doesn't ''forbid'' deletion,
but instead ''authorises'' it (subject to the other rules).
Some people regard this as a change in policy,
but I think that it clearly already says this;
it just needs to be made ''more'' clear.
4 As a result of the previous item (item 3),
nobody will be able to say that you can't delete a page
just because it could be made into an encyclopaedia article;
instead, they'll have to follow item 2 to save it.
I don't think that any of the above entails a change in policy,
only a clarification.
And lest there be any confusion, here is something
that I ''don't'' want to result from this discussion:
0 It becomes OK to delete any page just because it isn't now an article.
OTC, there are many pages whose deletion is neither authorised by point 6
nor forbidden by points 2 through 5 and 7, and these must be discussed.
In fact, many of those authorised by point 6 should also be discussed,
lest there be any doubt that point 6 actually applies.
Although I've been playing the other side lately,
my natural sympathies are still "If in doubt, don't delete.".
-- Toby