[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[Annalee Newitz]

Who is this "Wired guy" you told? I'm the person who wrote about Sonia
Greene on Wired. Are you talking about me?

If the problem was copyvio, then why were readers redirected to H.P.
Lovecraft? Shouldn't the article have just have been left blank? I
remain convinced that there's something a little heinous about blanking
out a writer's page and then redirecting people to the page of a guy she
was married to for two years. Seems like it doesn't serve the community
very well at all, because it makes it appear that Wikipedia considers
Greene important only because she's an appendage of HP Lovecraft.

Think of it this way: if you found copyvio problems in the page of
William Wordsworth, would you blank it and redirect readers to the page
of his sister Dorothy Wordsworth? Probably not. You'd blank it, list the
reason as copyvio, and hope that somebody would come along and write
something original. That's what should have been done with Sonia Greene too.

Annalee

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On  0, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> scribbled:
>   
>> http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=3803
>>
>> - d.
>>     
>
> "And then, while I was at it, I re-created another entry recently deleted for not being notable enough — that of Sonia Greene, a pulp fiction writer and publisher of the 1920s who was briefly married to H.P. Lovecraft. Of all the insulting things to have happen, her entry had been erased, and people searching for her were redirected to an entry on Lovecraft. How's that for you, future scholars? Looking for information about a minor pulp fiction writer? Too bad she's not notable — but we can redirect you to an entry on a guy she was married to for two years. (A guy, I might add, who pissed her off so much that she burned all his letters when they divorced.) Yuck."
>
> Dammit, I *hate* it when people mis-characterize the [[Sonia Greene]] thing. Like I told the Wired guy as well, Valrith didn't blank and redirect to H. P. Lovecraft because Sonia wasn't notable, he did it because the entire article was a tissue of multiple copyvios and there wasn't any material to be preserved or anything else that could be done (neither he nor I were Greene experts).
>
> --
> Gwern
> Inquiring minds want to know.
>   


-- 
Annalee Newitz

writer: science, technology, pop culture, sex
http://www.techsploitation.com/
*
editor: other
http://www.othermag.org
*
contributing editor/blogger: Wired
http://www.wired.com