[WikiEN-l] I'm disappointed in Wikipedia.

[Phil Sandifer]

On Jun 9, 2007, at 9:52 AM, John Lee wrote:

> As I anticipated, the only reason the article was deleted was a  
> lack of
> sources. That's perfectly fine.
>
> What's not perfectly fine is how lazy people are when it comes to  
> looking
> for sources. I often see quotations tagged with {{fact}} that have  
> sources
> readily available on Google (I just select a random phrase from the  
> quote,
> plug it in, and the search results nearly always yield something  
> useful).
>
> Likewise, http://www.google.com/search?q=Glurge yields more than  
> enough
> sources on the phrase's etymology (though that's more for  
> Wiktionary) and
> background. Is it really that hard to Google something?

Though in this case I have trouble finding many sources that meet  
stringent standards of reliability. 644 unique appearances on Google,  
though.

For me, this points to another problem with stringent standards of  
reliability. Yeah, we only have 644 independent sources on Google,  
none of which may be the most reliable of things. But we're dealing  
here with a neologism, and any source that uses the word, regardless  
of some ontological notion of reliability, is giving us significant  
information. Of course, the most stringent NOR monkeys will still cry  
foul over this.

This is, for me, the really disheartening thing about the deletion  
debate. If people had approached the subject as reasonable, thinking  
editors there would be a really interesting discussion of how best to  
source this article. But people approach it as robots and we get  
"Delete, neologism."

-Phil