[WikiEN-l] A further descent into self-referential idiocy

[Andrew Gray]

I have never been so ashamed to be associated with Wikipedia as I am just now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Allison_Stokke_%28second_nomination%29

There are a large number of people saying we should have this article.
As of the time of writing, they seem to *all* be basing this on
various forms of an assertion that because the subject fulfils an
arbitrary criteria that we ourselves made up, having an article is
therefore either necessary, our right, or inevitable. (It is not clear
which of these schools they subscribe to, but it seems implicitly to
be one of the three)

There is *one* passing comment, made in response to my complaint,
about a neutral article being a defensibly a "good thing", because
then we get on top of the google results and it's better than the
alternatives - I disagree with it, but it's a reasoned position.
Otherwise... not a smidgen of editorial thought. Just an incantation
of an article of faith, a slavish devotion to a meaningless line in
the sand.

And then, the crowning glory: "Strong keep ... No BLP issues and
Wikipedia contains content you might find objectionable ... Wikipedia
is not censored ... ethical point of views and non-neutral !votes are
irrelevant." - from, god help me, an admin. One of the people we
theoretically select for common sense and an understanding of our
goals. Linking - I am not making this up - to the content disclaimer.

Are we really saying that *because we made up an arbitrary rule
ourselves*, we get to ignore any form of editorial sense and then
loudly disclaim responsibility for the result? Do people honestly
believe that this makes us an encyclopedia? A grand game of nomic over
what does and doesn't constitute a topic, an endless series of rules
on who we can and cannot write about, without any attempt to apply
*judgement* to them? Without any attempt to say - hey, sometimes we
have to make decisions on things?

The world is not full of hard and fast situations. We can't draw nice
defining lines everywhere and get shining happy results. Sometimes,
God forbid, we have to think about boundary cases. I wish people would
show some willingness to.

What happened to the project I signed up to back in 2004? This twisted
imitation of an attempt to write an encyclopedia sure as hell doesn't
seem to be it.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk