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

[The Mangoe]

On 6/11/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> What about the people who WANT to fix articles like that  like the person
> who started this thread. We have cleanup processes. No one asked if someone
> wanted to fix it. They just played the numbers game. It's not the amount of
> Google hits that count.

Well, actually the number of Google hits is going to favor current
officeholders with articles, as a rule, simply because anyone
referring to the office is going to drop their name.

It's interesting to look at this list of past presidents and
chancellors of the University of Maryland:

http://www.president.umd.edu/pastpres/

... because for the most part the bios supplied there are very short.
There are only three of any significant length. The bio for Mote, the
current president, is long, but that's because he's the current
president. Wikipedia has no significant biography on any of these
except, of course, Mote. I presume some completionist undergraduate at
UMCP will eventually stub out the rest, but more likely than not
they'll stay that way forever because there simply isn't any other
information to be had. And I dunno, if those article show up for AfD a
bunch of people are going to say that all university presidents are
notable as such, and if anyone goes to the UMCP website and sees that
there's no information on them, and says so, someone else will tell
them to go look elsewhere. But it's unlikely anyone will look
elsewhere. And the clutter problem is already there because one
Charles BIshop was president in the early 1970s. Since someone linked
every name, he has an article, only it's for the wrong person. I'm not
going to make a stub for him, because I don't think he's notable; and
if I go and delink the names in the list, I'm sure someone is going to
hit we with an inclusionist/eventualist complaint.

But anyway, the answer to the rhetorical question is: if the article
gets deleted, and you find good info on it and want to write it, then
write it. But write something that at least says enough that people
don't wonder why it's there in the first place. You don't need a stub
to write an article.