[WikiEN-l] To boldy delete what no one had deleted before!

[David Goodman]

If you and I were the people involved, we could reach a compromise.
Indeed, for about 90%of the people who care about the issue, we could
reach a compromise. This leaves 2 ways of proceeding:

remove or silence the most difficult 1%.
compel them to reach a compromise--which amounts to binding
arbitration of policy

Arb com can of course do the first of these. That's a way which on
other topics has not proven the least successful--there is always
someone else to continue the position.

 Or make policy. I know it pretends not to have that capability, but
they've done it before. It may not have done it very well, but they've
done it.  As for what the community will accept, I predict it will
accept what works, provided it does work.

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 9:12 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 5:03 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What harms  the public view of Wikipedia is not articles on minor
>> subjects, or on matters i anyone will understand are of significance
>> only to fans. What really harms the perceived quality of  Wikipedia is
>> promotional and inaccurate articles. almost everyone can realize that
>> the content of a reference work may  include things they do not
>> themselves want--but they do expect it to be both honest and accurate.
>>
>> We could decide either for or against the detailed coverage of popular
>> culture, but what we cannot tolerate  is the diversion of effort in
>> dealing with this. There is of course an obvious solution, which is to
>> silence everyone who does not agree with me, but that's not going to
>> fly. What we need is some way of not just forming a compromise but
>> having it persist--otherwise any solution will be back to the same
>> point in a few months. Arb com apparently does not think it is capable
>> of this, but I don't see how else it can be done--they should try a
>> little more boldness. Since they'll be criticised whatever they choose
>> to do or not to do, they might as well decide.
>>
>
> Arbcom isn't supposed to be there to make policy.
>
> The diversion of effort dealing with this has been part of a long drawn out
> war over inclusionism or deletionism.  Which has never settled to a
> consensus.
>
> Your belief that we cannot tolerate the diversion of effort is common, but
> also *extremely* dangerous...  This is a community, the community is
> divided, has some fairly fundamental disagreements over what it wants to be,
> and the politics and dynamics and discussion over those fundamental
> disagreements are how we stay one community and avoid forking or driving
> away a large part of the community.
>
> Part of the problem here is that we have two sets of idealists (purist
> exclusionists, who think that non-serious topics should not be considered,
> and purist inclusionists, who think that everything must be), who naturally
> talk past each other as they have fundamental goals disagreements, combined
> with two sets of realists (realist inclusionists who are deleting primarily
> over quality and RS issues, and realist inclusionists who favor the
> gradualist approach on article quality and prefer to work on article
> quantity for the time being) who are talking past each other when they could
> engage more productively.
>
> Along with many in the middle who wish no part in duking it out.
>
> Perhaps there is fruitful discussion to be had in getting the two realist
> camps to cooperate.  There is nothing gained among either realist camp by
> denying that a number of the popular culture articles have been woefully
> badly sourced and unencyclopedic, or in denying that popular culture
> articles are popular and desired by a lot of article editors (and presumably
> readers, assuming that readership follows editorship interest trends).
>
> Coming to a cooperative resolution of the "Delete vs Improve" problem would
> get us enough of the way there that setting both the purist camps on fire
> and hearing the lament of their women would become a credible and possibly
> legitimate way to solve the problem.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG