[WikiEN-l] 17,268 badly referenced living biographies

[Gallagher Mark George]

G'day Chris,

> On 5/6/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just went through and whacked a bunch of unsourced statements 
> from that last
> > category. 100 fewer BLP articles with the {{fact}} tag on now.  
> Are there
> > 81.82 other editors out there who will step up and do the same?
> >
> Your idea of a 'solution' is to delete anything some random idiot put
> a {{fact}} tag on.  Your actions are indistinguishable from those 
> of a
> rogue bot, but unlike a bot no administrator can press your stop
> button without getting desysoped  Let me pick one of your
> 'contributions'(Read: Attempts at deletionist brown nosing) at random:
> Paul Laxalt
<snip example/>
> I can only hope there are no other editors are willing to follow in
> your foot steps.

That's a tad harsh.  Well, not just a "tad".  I mean, it's *really* harsh.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it is such a harsh post that you've crossed the line from being a concerned fellow editor to being a big meanie poopy pants, and that's a terrible sight to behold.  However, the intent of what you have to say --- seen in the parts where the big meanie hasn't quite taken over --- is quite reasonable, and by "reasonable" I mean, of course, only that I agree with you.

One removes a {{fact}} tag either by finding a source, or by deciding that the {{fact}}ed portion is spurious --- of course, as you haven't said you know, but Nick presumably understands, the bar for removing {{fact}}ed statements is far lower in biographies of living persons than it is in other articles.  There does seem to be plenty of support for the notion that the press nicknamed Paul Laxalt the "First Friend", and it's not what I'd call an example of a sentence that should be deleted if unsourced (compare with: "thought to be involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy", which should be removed, not {{fact}}ed).

The simple fact of the matter ({{fact}} of the matter) is that just removing, unread, sentences tagged with {{fact}} is not an acceptable solution to the problem of too many articles tagged with {{fact}}.  I mean, it's better than removing the tags and keeping the sentences there, but There Is A Better Way.  If all we wanted to do was delete sentences tagged with {{fact}}, we could get one CVUer looking for some variety, equipped with a semi-automated wossname, to do the whole thing and save the time of 81.82 more valuable editors.

The reason we get backlogs in the first place is because this sort of stuff is difficult (sometimes), painstaking (always) work.  If anyone could spend five minutes and get rid of a hundred {{fact}} tags, we wouldn't have eight thousand of the buggers running around wild.  It's great to see someone extending a bit of effort to reduce one of our more concerning backlogs, but a bit of common sense never goes astray.

Now, Chris, why the wikihate towards Nick?



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[[User:MarkGallagher]]