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

[David Goodman]

Personally, I think most articles could be improved if the research
were done--but it would, as Mangoe says, often be non-trivial
research, not the sort that any one of us can do on many articles a
day--which is why most people make substantive contributions only to a
limited range of subjects.
Upon finding an apparently trivial bio on a contemporary subject, it
is however almost always possible to do a quick check   which would
confirm or disprove the validity of many dubious articles. Sometimes
in doing this it becomes clear that one can't tell, and then i think
it reasonable to nominate for AfD so other people can see it. (It
would never be appropriate to nominate for speedy if one were unsure
oneself, and there is still no mechanism to ensure that prod's get the
attention of the necessary subject groups). I can see the possibility
of a more organized check by the people in these groups as a general
matter (but the people checking the wide field of biography
notability, however well-intentioned,  can not possibly be doing it
carefully at the speed they are going)
DGG

On 6/10/07, The Mangoe <the.mangoe at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.