[WikiEN-l] deleting unsourced articles ..... gradually

[Phil Sandifer]

On Mar 31, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> In en.wikipedia, we have a base of work for the future.  And therefore
> it is natural and proper that we should over time get more and more  
> and
> more serious about quality.

Then what the hell was the point in writing all the stuff in the  
first place?

I mean, I've made a good number of contributions based on personal  
knowledge and on primary sources of philosophical and theoretical  
texts in the humanities. Stuff that doesn't fit the current  
"independent secondary sources or bust" model at all. I'm appalled at  
the idea that these contributions - contributions I made admin on the  
basis of, and contributions that my ability to make was part of why I  
fell in love with the project - are now part of a steaming pile of  
shit that needs to be cleared out.

If we want to get serious about quality, there are ways to do it  
without starting to destroy what we've already built. But this idea  
that we should feel guilty because you got slammed in a television  
interview is ridiculous. Of course Wikipedia has inaccuracies. It  
always has. You know full well we haven't fixed them all. And we've  
had a defense in line for that for years too - "it's a work in  
progress. We don't recommend using Wikipedia as the only source for  
serious research. We recommend using it as a starting point, with  
care, and looking at the sources and other resources provided." I  
know being slammed in a TV interview isn't fun. But, well, if you  
want to be able to go on TV praising a project that's done and  
accurate and wonderful, Wikipedia probably isn't the project to go on  
TV about. It doesn't lend itself to that. It lends itself to having  
to be defended, over and over again, against the same objections. It  
lends itself to waiting for two or three years at which point we'll  
be better. It lends itself to recognizing that we hit the big time  
well before we were ready to. You of all people should know that. So  
stop trying to guilt the community because the job of evangelizing  
Wikipedia isn't as easy as you'd like.

-Phil