[WikiEN-l] A Day in the Life of an Article

[Ben Yates]

"But there would be an enormous problem if we instantly added a stub
for every village on the planet"

There is no "we" -- most of wikipedia is written by people who are not
regular contributors.  If someone is motivated enough to write an
article about their local eatery, they're motivated enough to maintain
it.

On 9/18/07, quiddity <blanketfort at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are stub articles choking the encyclopedia?
>
> There was a mention (in some essay/guideline that I cannot currently
> find) about how our Notability criteria has gradually relaxed over
> time. I think it said something like: A topic that is not considered
> notable/acceptable in a 10,000-articles Wikipedia, will be more likely
> to be notable/acceptable in a 1,000,000-articles Wikipedia.
>
> The closest I can find is
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_is_not_paper#No_size_limits
>
> We seem to be essentially trying to limit the size of the individual
> projects to whatever each volunteer-base is able to
> somewhat-effectively manage.
>
>
> The pages on Deletionism vs Inclusionism, and Immediatism vs
> Eventualism are also very relevant
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Philosophy).
>
>
> I'd say that Deletionism is generally [[considered harmful]], but it
> is (sadly) tolerated, because otherwise our average article quality
> would plummet. We simply don't have enough people (in any language) to
> coordinate the 50,000,000+ articles that some Inclusionists envisage
> eventually existing.
>
> e.g. [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes]] says "Cities
> and villages are notable, regardless of size". But there would be an
> enormous problem if we instantly added a stub for every village on the
> planet. (or every notable song/book/film/company/etc)
>
> We can only grow as fast as we are growing (which is either too fast,
> or not fast enough, depending on your POV and on how you interpret the
> statement).
>
>
> I'm just a (persistent) dabbler though, so please allow for the
> oversimplifications/tangents, and correct any mistakes :)
>
> Quiddity
>
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-- 
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com