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

[K P]

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.
>


"The thing about most such articles is that they can't be improved."

Pleaese don't knock editors who can and do put in the effort to
research and make a decision based upon the value of the article to
Wikipedia, just because you don't.

If I go to AfD and look at articles and vote on them, I decide, based
upon WP policies and the information I am able to find, whether or not
the article belongs in Wikipedia, not whether or not the editor should
have put in better references (you'd be voting to delete [[Rock
climbing]] based upon your criteria).

I've fixed up or contributed to fixing up a lot of articles that
actually belong in Wikipedia.  It just doesn't take a lot more effort
than voting, "Delete" it really can't be improved.  How can you prove
a negative when you're not even trying?

See Daniel Rodriguez.  It's the type of small biography that has a
place in Wikipedia, but not necessarily in Britannica.  But, just
because it wasn't perfect, it was up for deletion (not by a
deletionist, though).  But people put effort into making it a good
article, because it is Wikipedia content.

AfD is a process that is being abused--that's how it wound up with an
editor vandalizing an account and then nominating it for deletion
based upon it missing information he had just removed--that IS the
atmosphere at AfD: delete, delete, delete.  But that won't write an
encyclopedia.

AfD is less work than researching an article.  I've been adding
sources to plant articles for the last 24 hours--it's a lot of work,
verifying first the article has the correct name, checking higher
level taxonomies, finding sources, typing in the darn references with
25 word titles, moving articles, and their redirects.  AfD is a much
easier boost to my edit count.

Half the articles at AfD every time I got there can be fixed, many
require simple fixes.

I really don't know what the AfD deletionist community is about, but
it's not about improving Wikipedia if articles are vandalized to make
them eligible for deletion, if topics found in every major
encyclopedia out there are up for deletion, and if improving an
article that is up for deletion makes the nominating editors hostile
towards you.   But none of that is about improving an encyclopedia.

KP