[WikiEN-l] When Unsourced Isn't That Bad

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 4/9/07, Philip Sandifer <sandifer at english.ufl.edu> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen¹³ is a more or less totally
> unsourced article.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cadmus is also a more or less
> totally unsourced article.
>
> It is my sense, and I suspect that others who read the articles will
> agree, that [[Gen13]] is a toe-curling atrocity that should be hacked
> to ribbons, whereas [[Project Cadmus]] is an OK start.
>
> There are many reasons for this - [[Gen13]] is a sputtering mess of
> subtle POV-pushing, making lots of claims about the social
> circumstance the comics were coming out in. [[Project Cadmus]] sticks
> basically to the question of what this thing is, where it's appeared,
> and what it was doing there. [[Gen13]] has the tone of a fan essay,
> [[Project Cadmus]] of something from a DC-Universe encyclopedia.
>
> What's further interesting here is that [[Gen13]] is trying to be the
> better article - lots of sections on real-world stuff, less in-
> universe focus. [[Project Cadmus]] is much more in-universe. But it's
> also the better article in practice.
>
> Curiously, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Juggernaut_Bitch%21%21 is
> sourced and worse than both of them - written in a totally
> inappropriate style, ridiculous captions, and, despite being well-
> sourced to things that might answer the question, totally lacking in
> any answer to "who cares?"
>
> Moral of the story: differing quality and style of articles have
> different sourcing needs - not just in terms of what makes a good
> source, but in terms of what sources are needed. At some points in an
> article's development what it needs most are sources. At others what
> it needs are clean-ups, or additions of whole new sections and facets
> of the article, or other things. There is no one-size-fits all
> solution, and sometimes complaining about the wrong thing is just
> ridiculous - of the three articles, only [[Gen13]] really needs
> sourcing right now. Only [[Project Cadmus]] needs heavy refocusing on
> an out-of-universe perspective. And only [[The Juggernaut Bitch!!]]
> needs the tender, loving care offered to articles on AfD.
>
> We need to stop trying to craft general solutions to all articles and
> start realizing that articles develop in different orders and on
> different paths. Solutions that fix a problem we're seeing in one
> area of the encyclopedia should not be crafted with the intention
> that they will expand to encompass other areas. With nearly two
> million articles, top-down editorial control just isn't plausible. We
> need to abandon - immediately - the quest for broadly reaching
> editorial mandates like "source everything" or "remove all X" and
> start figuring out what areas of the encyclopedia are having what
> problems and figuring out what solutions we can craft for those
> problems and those problems specifically. The questions we need to
> ask aren't "how do we fix BLPs" but "How do we fix the articles on
> actors from Star Trek up?" (Because those articles likely share a
> pool of editors, and thus also likely share a pool of strengths and
> weaknesses)
>
> This is an ENTIRELY new dynamic for how to think about editorial
> problems on Wikipedia. It means something is going to have to happen
> that, previously, hasn't happened - the sorts of editors who
> subscribe to and post to the mailing list (editors who tend to be
> interested in the big picture of Wikipedia) are going to have to
> learn to talk to the sorts of editors who only do work on articles
> related to DC comics.
>
> They're a very different bunch - full of local concerns that most of
> us don't care about, and generally mistrustful of the logic "Well, I
> can't let you do X because then some unknown group of people over
> here might do X and that would be bad." They're often ambivalent or
> hostile towards bits of policy - go ahead and try explaining in-
> universe perspective to a rabid editor of My Little Pony articles (to
> pick something I've never even looked at). But they're also well-
> meaning, dedicated, and write most of our articles.
>
> We need, very badly, to start thinking about how to implement
> projects of repairing Wikipedia on local levels. This isn't going to
> be done by policy either - it's going to be done by figuring out ways
> of going into the various trenches and working well with people who,
> in some cases, seem to be on a different planet. A very well-meaning
> planet, mind you, but a different one.
>
> So what can we do? What can we put into place that facilitates this
> sort of local engagement?
>
> -Phil


I haven't read the articles in question, but agree with the general idea. We
need to scale down and do things wikiproject-wide instead of Wikipedia-wide.
Breaking jobs down in manageable chunks might actually get them done instead
of forming into a backlog. (That's part of the reason I included
WikiProjects in my [[WP:IRE]] proposal).