[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[Ray Saintonge]

Mark Gallagher wrote:

>G'day Ray,
>
>  
>
>>Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:15:33 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>If there is any expectation that the editor will be around it is worth 
>>>>starting a personal dialogue.  If he is a flash in the pan who happened 
>>>>to add something on a momentary impulse and be gone in a short time, 
>>>>waiting a while to remove trivial but harmless material will help to 
>>>>avoid the most pointless arguments.
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>The biggest problem is single-purpose accounts, who will endlessly
>>>request deletion review of blatant spam.
>>>      
>>>
>>It doesn't take long for that lot to stand out in a crowd with their 
>>evident bad faith.  Blatant spam may not even be harmless.  You can 
>>start by giving them the benefit of the doubt, but with a little 
>>patience the lack of doubt is soon apparent.
>>    
>>
>(I assume you meant "Blatant spam may even be harmless")
>
:-[

>AfD and RC Patrol and Wikiproject Spam and those CVU people and so on 
>seem to have taken a different view of spam.  Remember when we had 
>biased articles and said, "Time to rewrite this to be more neutral"? 
>Remember when we said to those who wanted to have articles about their 
>companies or whatnot in Wikipedia and we said, "Good authors are always 
>welcome, just don't step out of line, punk"?
>
This nostalgia brings tears to one's eyes.

A few days ago in this list someone made reference to 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Unusual_university_spam
I sometimes wonder what drives the anti-spam attitude of some people; 
they seem to have lost all ability to recognize the stuff.  It suggests 
a kind of insular or siege mentality that regards anything from beyond 
their narrow world as some kind of hostile inroads.  If this were 
happening only on Wikipedia it would be bad enough, but it strikes me as 
though some deeper social dynamics are at work.  These are reflected in 
the distant but over-protective ways in which some children are raised, 
and those effects may only become visible in Wikipedia 15 to 20 years 
from now.

>Now we say, "There's a minor chance, if I reverse the polarity of the 
>neutron flow, that the subject of this article may approve of its 
>presence in Wikipedia!  We'd better take off and nuke the entire site 
>from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!"
>
Reversing the polarity at the receiving end, without consulting those at 
the transmitting  end could conceivably have a ballistic effect on the 
communications links.

Ec