On 7/15/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@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.