[WikiEN-l] Improve quality by reviewing all new articles
Bryan Derksen
bryan.derksen at shaw.ca
Sat Dec 17 03:21:33 UTC 2005
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh opinions. But frankly, if
>you don't find those errors to be blindingly obvious, you need to find
>another hobby. Writing an encyclopedia is quite frankly beyond you.
>
>
Me too, then. When the mood hits me (as it often does) I spend a lot of
time clicking "random page" and tidying up any articles I come across
that look in need of tidying. Before this controversy I've never heard
of Siegenthaler before, so if I'd hit this page and tidied it up I would
have left all of those errors in place because they are _not_ obvious.
All of those things could well have been true for all I know, and it's
not like I'm giving my personal stamp of approval to every word in any
article I click the "save" button on so I shouldn't have to fact-check
every one of them whenever I throw in category tag or succession box.
If it had said Siegenthaler had been suspected of being involved in
Nixon's assassination, or had lived on Mars for a period of time, then
_that_ would have been a blindingly obvious error. And even then I'd
forgive an editor who just skimmed over the line without noticing it
while doing other things, since it still fits well enough into the flow
of the article that one might suffer a momentary lapse of attention.
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