[WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

[Ray Saintonge]

Charles Matthews wrote:

>Gareth Owen wrote
>
>>"Charles Matthews" writes
>>
>>>Until a recent VfD experience, that was, with a mathematical article where
>>>
>>>the 'keeps' really couldn't know why the content was objectionable, and
>>>precisely 'diminishing' to WP.
>>>
>>Can you be more specific please, so we can look up what you're referring to.
>>
>Certainly - [[unifying conjecture]] survived VfD recently.  It was a load of
>tendentious sociological twaddle by a once-notorious now-banned user.  It
>seems that 'looks interesting' is enough in some quarters.  After the vote I
>moved it to [[unifying theories in mathematics]], to give context to the one
>sentence that wasn't pretty well false as it stood.  That's not a finished
>article, though it's not bad, by the way.
>
Is the 142 in question really the same as the banned individual.  His 
original posting was dated Feb. 21, 2003, and you made the first 
subsequent edit 4 months later.  My guess is that this was put there 
before the banned user became active.  Apart from that, it's a good 
example for this discussion.

I have to admit that it would take a great deal of effort on my part to 
understand what it's about.  On first reading I have no basis for 
agreeing whether or not it is in fact twaddle, but if I chose to 
participate in the VfD on this I would want to have a reasonable basis 
for my vote.  However, I am not ready to spend hours trying to figure 
out what the guy is talking about in order to decide on a yes or no 
vote.  That being said, I would vote to keep based on giving the 
contributor the benefit of the doubt.  That's IF I were voting at all. 
 It looks as though the survival vote worked in this case, because it 
encouraged you to work for a "not bad" article.

I also do not support arguments that are styled, "I am an expert, and I 
know better."  New theories that deviate from orthodoxy tend to be 
routinely viewed as muddle-headed by the experts.  In a vast majority of 
these cases, the experts will probably be right, but the idea must stand 
or fall on its own merits.  If a nutcase proposal is more than 
idiosyncratic, it should be enough to add a polite comment about that, 
without the need for a detailed demolition of the proponent's points. 
 Sometimes a pointed statement can be more effective than copious 
verbiage.  If argument B in the proponent's theory is based on perpetual 
motion, and he shows that arguments C through K depend on that detailed 
discussion of C through K is useless.if you have adequately dealt with B.

Ec

I think that we are perhaps closer to agreeing on a permissive approach 
about articles that are harmlessly trivial.