[WikiEN-l] How friendly are we to Newbies? Create an article as a newbie challenge now paused

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> It seems that, under the guise of this project, some people are
>> intentionally writing very low quality articles and then rules-lawyering
>> over the specific speedy deletion category names:
>
> I'd argue that tagging something for speedy deletion when it doesn't actually
> fit the criteria is itself a form of rules lawyering.

Rules lawyering is generally taken to mean an excessively strict and
pedantic reading of rules often leaning on obscure clauses and
interpretations to push a preferred outcome contrary to intuitive
sense and the probable intent of the rule.

It didn't fit the explicitly stated criteria. A good example of rules
lawyering would be finding some obscure rule for image copyright that
failed to make it clear that it didn't apply to text, then operating
within the strict letter of that rule to delete the article. ("See
right here: 'All material submitted to Wikipedia must have a copyright
tag or it will be deleted'. It's even in bold!")

In this case the rule wasn't followed, but the tagging person was
clearly operating with the intent of and, in this case, the actual
result of improving the Wikipedia (or do you claim that we shouldn't
delete sub-stubs duplicating pre-existing articles?) — arguably
putting the rules violating deletion tagging under the auspices of
WP:IAR.

Only on English Wikipedia could someone describe an violation of the
letter of rules in favour of the spirit of the rules as
rules-lawyering.