[WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

[Phil Sandifer]

On Mar 31, 2007, at 2:43 PM, doc wrote:

> "We're sorry you had to complain about this. Regrettably that's the
> price you pay for our determination to retain as many articles as we
> can, even though we can't currently maintain most of them. You see, if
> we change things we might upset some of our editors who might have  
> some
> of their unreferenced articles deleted by mistake. Basically, we're  
> more
> concerned with that type of collateral damage than with wrecking  
> your life.
>

Oh stop being ridiculous. This is straw man argumentation at its most  
needlessly outlandish.

Nobody, to my knowledge, is advocating unchecked expansion of  
articles and the maintenance of bad information. Nobody doesn't want  
libelous and false information to be removed.

However...

1) The idea of an error-free encyclopedia is a pipe dream. No  
sourcing requirements, no matter how onerous, will render us error- 
free. Pursuit of an impossible goal at the expense of achievable ones  
is foolish.
2) The statements "we need to improve the accuracy of our articles"  
and "we should begin large-scale deletion of the content that made us  
so prominent in the first place" are in no way equivalent.

There are ways to demonstrate a commitment to improving accuracy  
without sacrificing the process that developed a very good resource.  
I tend to think that WIkipedia is pretty good. Needs improvement, but  
is pretty good. I wouldn't care if it weren't. So I tend to be  
skeptical of solutions that seem to involve throwing a lot of it out.

The biggest problem is not unsourced information - it's false  
information. It's appallingly libelous shit that anyone who looked at  
the article would see if only people looked at the article. But with  
one million articles, we can't afford to look at the article. But  
adding sourcing requirements won't change that, because no rule will  
suddenly increase the number of eyes on articles.

Hence the need for stable versions to be implemented. And for a time- 
out where we work on creating stable versions of as many of the  
million as we can manage before we proceed with new material.

-Phil