[WikiEN-l] listcruft

[Todd Allen]

On 7/15/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's an hypocrisy detector: did you ever vote for deleting a list
> where you nonetless were intrigued by some of the items you saw
> listed, or for deleting an article which you nonetheless enjoyed or
> learned from?
>
>
> --
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>
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Sure. WP:INTERESTING is not a keep criterion. There's a lot of stuff
which is, for example, original research. It may be interesting or
informative research, it might be an inventive take on something. That
doesn't mean it's alright for a Wikipedia article. There are a lot of
opinion pieces I've greatly enjoyed reading throughout the years. They
can be insightful and thought-provoking, but I'd certainly vote to
delete any such thing that appeared on Wikipedia. That's not
hypocrisy, it's keeping articles appropriate and within an
encyclopedic scope. Wikipedia is not the Web, it has a limited scope
as a tertiary, encyclopedic reference work based upon
already-published information. There are thousands, if not millions,
of other choices as to where to place interesting and informative
content which isn't within Wikipedia's scope, including on a Wikia if
one prefers a publicly-accessible and editable Wiki.

What is hypocrisy, on the other hand, is for some people to use
IKNOWIT/ILIKEIT/INTERESTING to argue to keep articles in their area of
interest, but discount such arguments when used by others in other
areas. For consistency's sake, I ask the same questions every time-"Is
this article expandable beyond a stub without stuffing in trivia or
using unreliable or primary sources? Does this article befit an
encyclopedia, rather than another one of our projects, or a personal
blog or opinion site? Can this subject be written about in a neutral
manner? Can this subject be written about using mainly or solely
independent and reliable source material, without significant use or
interpretation of primary or unreliable sources?" If the answer is yes
to all, I argue to keep, if no to any, I argue to delete, merge,
transwiki, or otherwise remove as a standalone article as appropriate,
no matter how well I liked the article.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.