On 1/19/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/19/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/19/07, Ryzvel(a)3mail.com <Ryzvel(a)3mail.com> wrote:
>
> I was intrigued last year to find that somebody had deleted one of my
> contributions on the grounds that the deletor [?] had never heard of
it.
Acting on
this criterion, I would spend my waking hours deleting
Wikipedia
articles. Tim . . .
Yes, that seems to hold a lot of weight in deletionist debates, someone
who
has never worked in the sciences never heard of a scientific concept and
doesn't understand the underlying basics, but thinks the article should
be
deleted because it's on a concept they
"had never heard of."
KP
Are said articles sourced? My experience (obviously, hardly a scientific
study here!) is that few articles with decent sources get nominated on the
grounds of the concept never having been heard of. Recently I came across
a
talk page request for external sources on an Olympics results page because
the requester had never heard of Olympic racewalking. Perfectly
reasonable,
and I wouldn't blame anyone for having their first reaction being thinking
that the page was a hoax--the idea of walking being an Olympic competition
made me boggle the first time I heard of it.
If articles on scientific concepts aren't sourced, it can be nigh
impossible
for people to tell the difference between a hoax and an actual concept
that
they just haven't heard of before. Obviously, talk pages or
{{unreferenced}} tags would be my preferred first reaction in such a case,
but seeing the number of articles in the unreferenced category from
December
2005 is daunting.
Of course, on the other hand, if referenced articles are getting nominated
because people haven't heard of them, such people should be gently
reminded
to, you know, go read the source first.
-- Jonel
If the concept is in the sciences and the person is nominating it simply
because they've never heard of it, how can they tell if the source is
worthwhile? I didn't even know what to say to someone who nominated one
article recently, on a subject the nominator had obviously never heard
of, on the basis that the nominator questioned how sea levels could possibly
rise if there was less water held in the ice caps, or maybe he/she was
questioning the amount of the rise. I don't think having the nominator read
the source would have helped much. On the other hand, it appears the
article writer hadn't gotten anywhere near a source, either....
I'm finding a few problems with sources on articles. People don't realize
you can't copy entire sentences from the article ("well, I only copied a few
sentence, and never two in a row...."), and that you can't say the article
said something it didn't. If the article said he started studying singing
seriously at the age of 10, you can't say he started singing at 10. Maybe
it's the Masson/New Yorker method of quoting in the latter case.
How can anyone possibly nominate an article dealing with particle physics
for deletion, thinking it is a hoax, if they know nothing about quantum
mechanics? I personally thought quantum mechanics was a hoax until I
studied it. I think if you know nothing about an area, you aren't qualified
to decide to use time resources of other editors by nominating an AfD
because YOU don't know anything about it. Why not just ask someone in the
area? Need a geology editor, go to the geology page, look a bunch of edits
and ask someone. But don't say, "I don't know anything about the subject,
so I never heard of most of it, but really never heard of this, so I think
it should be deleted." It's absurd and wastes time and resources.
Race walking. Yeah, right.
KP