[WikiEN-l] Pakistani politicians and systemic bias

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote

> When did you last go to [[CAT:CSD]]?  Even a 1% error rate will
> amount to tens of articles every day, and I don't think 1% is an
> unacceptably high error rate (or rather, shooting for less is
> probably unfeasible, given the rate of pay).

No one is arguing for an error-free system. The first question is, and clear from this thread, do we all agree on what is an "error"? You know, operation was successful, patient died.

> We have deleted over 5,000 articles in the last 24 hours.  That
> included an article on a "six foot tall single-celled organism,
> 'nuff said" and "your single source for all things mountain bike".

Fine. Neither sounds like a major Pakistani politician to me.

> Are you sure you are not being perhaps a little nostalgic here?  The
> simple fact is, very large numbers of worthless articles are created
> and deleted daily, and slowing down the removal of those will likely
> have an exponential impact.

Well, then, there is a "shoot on sight" policy de facto, and so there is a problem.  

>When the CAT:CSD backlog is below 500,
> there is a realistic chance of assessing each article in more
> detail.  But it rarely is, at least not in peak hours. 
> 
> I always look for the biographies first.  A fair few of them are
> obvious autobiographies, the username is very often a dead giveaway.
> To userfy, remove the redirect, untag and leave a {{nn-userfy}}
> explanation takes just short of two minutes, including the time to
> verify the username and user's other contribs (generally none, of
> course).  I don't mind doing that, but it would be better if the RC
> patrollers did it instead.  I'm sure there are admins who don't
> bother, and that's a concern for me per [[WP:BITE]], but even so,
> the problem of vapid self-promotion is one that must be
> acknowledged.  
> 
> Is vapid self-promotion more of a problem than biting the
> self-promoters?  Or does it depend  on whether they are promoting
> themselves, their websites or their companies?  I honestly don't
> know.

This would be another issue. We have a guideline in WP:COI  saying that the site doesn't want this, advises against the whole business. OK, of the three I mentioned, one is possibly under this heading. (The one deleted under A1, quite wrongly.)

Charles

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