[WikiEN-l] Destructionism

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> The reason is that improving articles is going to get more and more
> difficult; there will have been lots and lots and lots and lots of
> really smart people that have polished those articles over many, many
> years, and the chances of any random edit being an improvement is,
> realistically, going down with time, particularly for FA articles.

This is not true for articles where the "story" has not yet finished
and updates are needed.

I often use Hurricane Katrina as an example. This hurricane took place
in August 2005. It was promoted to FA-level in June 2006 (over four
years ago), but as time went by it was noticeable that no-one was
really updating the article to include the ongoing legacy of this
natural disaster. I would sometimes comment on this, but nothing much
got done. It was defeatured in March 2010, with the discussion seen
here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Hurricane_Katrina/archive1

The concerns expressed there didn't include "is the article
up-to-date", but look at the article and ask yourself if it really
covers in the detail you would expect, what the continuing impact on
the area is?

Maybe the information is in other articles? We have articles like these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering_and_infrastructure_repair_in_New_Orleans_after_Hurricane_Katrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_New_Orleans_Back_Commission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Architecture_and_the_rebuilding_process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_It_Right_Foundation_New_Orleans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_civil_works_controversies_(New_Orleans)

Some of those articles are in a very poor state.

My conclusion is that if I want information on how New Orleans and the
surrounding area recovered and is recovering (or not) after Hurricane
Katrina, and what the long-term effects are, I have to look elsewhere
(i.e. not on Wikipedia), though there is some bits of it in these
places:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans#Post-disaster_recovery

"The Census Bureau in July 2006 estimated the population of New
Orleans to be 223,000; a subsequent study estimated that 32,000
additional residents had moved to the city as of March 2007, bringing
the estimated population to 255,000, approximately 56% of the
pre-Katrina population level. Another estimate, based on data on
utility usage from July 2007, estimated the population to be
approximately 274,000 or 60% of the pre-Katrina population. These
estimates are somewhat smaller than a third estimate, based on mail
delivery records, from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
in June 2007, which indicated that the city had regained approximately
two-thirds of its pre-Katrina population.[30] In 2008, the Census
Bureau revised upward its population estimate for the city, to
336,644.[31] Most recently, 2010 estimates show that neighborhoods
that did not flood are near 100% of their pre-Katrina populations, and
in some cases, exceed 100% of their pre-Katrina populations.[32]"

There are some hints of the population figures in the Hurricane
Katrina article, but not much, mainly this bit in the economic effects
section and this bit in the lead section:

"Nearly five years later, thousands of displaced residents in
Mississippi and Louisiana are still living in trailers. Reconstruction
of each section of the southern portion of Louisiana has been
addressed in the Army Corps LACPR Final Technical Report which
identifies areas not to be rebuilt and areas and buildings that need
to be elevated."

Though to be fair, it is not actually that normal for natural disaster
articles to go into the level of detail about the aftermath and
long-term reconstruction as would be possible here. But it should be
clear that articles about contemporary events need constant updating
as the histories get written. Articles about the past, for which the
major histories have already been written, only tend to need updating
when new scholarship and histories are written, and that, I agree,
does need careful integration with the existing articles.

I sometimes think getting an article to FA-status too soon can impede
its future development. There is a right moment to push for an article
to get to FA level, and there is a wrong moment as well.

Carcharoth