[WikiEN-l] American diplomatic listings

[Ray Saintonge]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Oliver Pereira wrote:
>
>>[[Ambassadors from the United States]] and [[Ambassadors to the United
>>States]] are quite likely the pages you want. The latter doesn't exist
>>yet, and both may need renaming, but there is no reason why they could not
>>hold the information in question. There is no reason to remove such
>>information altogether.
>>
>
>I'm usually a 'completionist' not a 'deletionist' but in some cases, the
>work to continue including and updating some information probably isn't
>the best use of our time.
>
I too believe in a completionist philosophy.  More than a very small 
number of people on an ambassador list may be enough to move it into a 
pathetic little stub of its own.  Sooner or later somebody will find 
that stub, have pity on it, and improve it.  Updates will work in a 
similar way.  

One difference that we have from a paper encyclopedia is we cannot apply 
obsolescence as evenly as they do.  Everything on the 1911 EB is now 
uniformly 92 years old.  We have and can maintain variable obsolescence. 
 We may at some point have a five year old list of US ambasadors, but we 
CAN update it when somebody (perhaps some newby) is so inclined.  I 
agree that for most of us updating this kind of information is not the 
best use of our time, but this is a personal choice.  It may be 
absolutely true for you and me, and probably true for most experienced 
Wikipedians.  We do have the principle of "always leave something undone".

One suggestion that I would have for people inclined to work on 
ambassador lists, is that they should try to show appointment dates 
 This will always leave an at-a-glance impression of just how obsolete 
an article is.

Ec