[WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.

[Kirill Lokshin]

On 1/12/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Message: 10
> > Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:19:31 -0500
> > From: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Message-ID:  <43348cda0701120919k15954458g636078210a2adede at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> > I suggested something on another thread that stated that only people with
> > background in a certain field should be qualified to judge notability.
> > Chemists determine chemical notability, Finns determine notability of
> > Finnish folk, the list goes on. Perhaps it's time to give AFD a good ol'
> > reworking to separate the opinions of people who are qualified to speak
> > about the subject's notability and outsider's opinions (both are
> important,
> > but we can't put the fingers of clueless people on the red button).
> > Hopefully, through this, closing AFDs will be based less on vote counting
> > and more on evaluating the opinions of people.
>
> I'd have to agree with James on this one.  This could also be a boon for FA
> and GA promotions.  It would diminish the tendancy for voting at AFD, FAC,
> etc. to look like a division of "i don't like it" and the "i like it" camps.
>
> Several months ago, an AFD came up for "Amafanius", an early Roman Epicurean
> philosopher whose works, while unfortunately lost to the ages, were
> discussed at length in the works of Cicero (who trashed Amafanius with
> glee), and in Michel de Montaigne.  Because of their referencing,
> the philosophical offerings of Amafanius can actually be reconstructed...but
> only in broad strokes.  As someone who studied classics at Rutgers and am
> well-versed in this area, I recognized that he was notable and should have a
> place here at Wikipedia.  Thankfully, because a few others were just as
> well-versed, we were able to save the article.
>
> But, unfortunately, as it typical around here,  a large number of users who
> obvious appeared to be the tech-saavy, internet-raised Pokemon-crowd for
> whom nothing exists before, say, 20 years ago, voted for "Delete".
>
> One of the failings, one that probably contributes to some of the negative
> reputation Wikipedia has earned, is that it does not have any expert
> oversight.  Perhaps some sort of prominent, scholarly, editorial advisory
> board would be in order?  Even if loosely bureaucratic, it would add a
> little more weight to the credibility of the encyclopedia that would be a
> worthwhile step in counteracting an image diminished by our pop-culture
> heaviness (pokemon, star trek, etc.) and "anyone can edit (read:
> vandalise/insert false information)" repuation.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
> User:ExplorerCDT

I suppose now might be a decent time to trot out an old idea: what
about giving WikiProjects a greater role in the deletion process?
They are already (for the most part) the natural gathering places for
people with some interest in a particular topic (and, by association,
some degree of knowledge of it); presumably, we could therefore expect
that the consensus of participants in a WikiProject would thus be a
little more informed on topics within that project's scope than the
consensus of randomly selected editors.

-- 
Kirill Lokshin