I sympathize. I want to write some articles on major omitted academic
people in fields I know about, but I find myself completely occupied
in rushed writing of articles for those that are challenged, even if
the existing article is good enough as it is. I've rewritten a few on
people whose main work was in languages I did not know, but which had
just enough material and reviews and other commentary in English to
try to show the notability. I sometimes succeeded, but someone more
appropriate could have done a much better job--and there was no real
need for the rush except the constraint of the AfD, because the
positions asserted made a reasonable prima facie case for notability.
But, as for many other articles, those who first wrote them could have
done a better job. I have frequently had the experience of asking an
obviously interested editor who was clearly still on WP, & who
clearly had access to the necessary material, to improve the article
to prevent deletion, and had them ignore it.
Anyone can edit, unfortunately, means that anyone can edit, no matter
how irresponsible or incompetent. KP and I & the few dozen similarly
inclined can't help them all, but if all of the hundreds whose main
interest is in deleting gave a hand at improving, we would get a
better WP than if they did deletion only.
DGG
On 6/7/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/7/07, Blu Aardvark
<jeffrey.latham(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 6/6/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 05/0
This is just *stupid*. This is what putting something up for deletion
is *for* - saying "This article may be deleted, please look at it and
give your opinion" - and there is no more effective way to do it than
AFD, for all its faults. I have no idea why you believe someone needs
to be personally prejudiced towards deleting the article in order to
raise this question
It's a really annoying habit. There are genuinely articles that should
be deleted out there. And plenty of others that aren't, but were
nominated for crappy reasons. Nominating articles apparently at
random, just to give AfD'ers something to think about is just creating
work for everyone, with little benefit.
If you're not sure whether an article should exist, use {{nn}} or
something and start a discussion on the talk page. Nominating for AfD
is saying "This should be deleted, all in favour?!" Not for "What do
people think?"
Steve
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In this particular case ([[Coşkun Can Aktan]]), a discussion on the talk
page likely wouldn't have accomplished much. The last human edit before
it was sent to AFD was in November 2006, and that edit included adding
the {{notability}} concern.
Sending it to AFD, however, established that the person in question was,
indeed, notable, and brought attention to the article which has been
significantly improved over the course of the deletion discussion.
On the other hand we have Turkish editors you could have asked to look
it over, and we have a solid group of economics editors who could have
looked it over. That's what I do, ask someone to look over an
article. It requires less Wikipedia time from people who don't have
it.
I just think the forced working on an article that isn't as bad as a
lot of the crap on Wikipedia (look at this before an after, lately I'm
doing musicians for some reason) is not in the best interests of all
editors concerned. Aktan is well-known enough that eventually someone
would have got around to it. Meanwhile, look at what this article
looked like before I eviscerated it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ithaka_%28musician%29&oldid=1…
There's so much crap, though, why force me to work on this particular
article, Atkan, just because it's on your agenda? That's what it
amount to, imo. Meanwhile, I have an important article I'm writing on
a major and current topic in the news that Wikipedia doesn't have even
a stub on. I personally think my writing that article is far more
important than Aktan's article.
This reminds me, I have a Turkish film director stub that needs some
work, namely translating the titles of the Turkish tv shows. Sinan
Cetin made one of the funniest movies I've ever seen--I would have
rather been working on his stub than Aktan's, also.
KP
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David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.