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

[The Mangoe]

On 6/10/07, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/10/07, The Mangoe <the.mangoe at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Since it isn't, it gets put through AfD to force someone to put
> > up a real reason. I don't think there's anything wrong with
> > this, other than people write this kind of article in the first
> > place instead of providing the notability themselves.

> If you have been nominating, for deletion, articles which you believe
> could (or even should) be improved rather than deleted, please cease
> and desist right now.

Well, as a rule I don't nominate AfDs, though at times I do go through
them. But even so, as a rule, I don't believe that articles can be
improved unless I know something about the topic which I believe is
notable and which the article doesn't include. For bio articles on
people in notable positions, it's not up to me to search for some real
notability about the person, and it is especially not up to me to dig
up some personal detail to pad out such an article.

The thing about most such articles is that they can't be improved. I
don't fight it personally, because every attempt I've made to get
reasonable notability standards set up has been rebuffed by the
combined forces of the "it's useful" crowd and the "you want to delete
all my work" crowd. But I see lots of articles, especially bios, which
could only really be justified by some considerable research, which
might not turn up  anything anyway. Someone putting a trivial,
notability-less article doesn't obligate anyone else to do the work to
prove its notability, and particularly in the case of BLPs I think
such articles ought to be speedily deleted.