[WikiEN-l] A morsel of substance, a truckload of nonsense

[Oskar Sigvardsson]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 10:37 AM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> Not the point.
> This article is not about the feudal system, not about an example of a
> person with a hundred plots of land.  It's about one person, their  life.  Not
> their land holdings.
>
> By the way.  I didn't "target a constructive editor".  I did not  look, and
> don't make it a habit to look at *who* edited an article.  It's a  waste of
> time.  The article is the thing, not the people behind it.
>
> This article is poor.  Whether it's a good example of the feudal  system or
> not (and it's not) isn't relevant to whether it's a good example of a
> stubby biography (which it's not).
>
> Will

First off all, this is not the place to bring this issue to light.
Articles have edit-buttons and talk-pages for a reason. If you feel
the article is poorly done, we have plenty of avenues for you to try
and do something about it. This mailing-list cannot function if every
problem someone has with any article is brought up here. Here is where
we discuss general issues concerning wikipedia, not small problems
with individual articles.

Second, I'm very vary of arguments that go "this information shouldn't
be in wikipedia", especially in cases like this where there is no
doubt of the factual basis, no problem with sources, the notability of
the article in question is firmly established and the information is
completely uncontroversial. Why shouldn't it be in the article?
Wikipedia is not paper, if we can have an article on every Simpsons
episode, why not include this information?

It's not an unthinkable scenario to imagine a person wanting to know
the land-holdings of this particular earl, and going to wikipedia to
find out. Why shouldn't we provide that information?

It seems to me you are essentially making a stylistic argument, like
"the article looks strange with this list at the bottom". But I don't
quite see it. The biography is there, the family and intro is there,
and the list doesn't make it any harder to read. If it really did
clutter up the article, I suppose you could make a separate "List of
landholdings by William de Warenne" and link it, but I think the
information works just fine where it is.

--Oskar