[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Gwern Branwen]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Cary Bass <cary at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Just restored a former prime minister.
>>
>
> Hi!
>
> I just want to ask a question about this, and since I don't know the
> article of which you speak, I can't judge its specific merits.  This is
> my personal opinion, and does not reflect that of any organization of
> which I may be employed.
>
> Judging by your contributions, you've been restoring articles and
> providing sources.  Reading your email, I think, "The result of deleting
> this biography was that it get restored and provide sources, that's a
> good thing, right?  The quality of the project goes up one more notch."
>    I don't have an issue with the article of a former prime minister
> disappearing for a few hours.
>
> I want to get a full perspective, however.  If you see fault with my
> interpretation, please help me understand.
>
> Cary

That argument sounds like a broken window fallacy. Cunctator has been
irked and annoyed, and driven that much closer to leaving the project
forever. And he can only experience that joy because he's an admin.

A regular contributor will have different reactions. When he hasn't
been driven away already.

And what benefit was there *really*? I see a lot of mindless fetishism
of sourcing here, but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and
stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in
1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new
information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? Is it
better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder
if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be
relieved?

Speaking from personal experience on the _Evangelion_ articles: I have
on multiple occasions spent hours or weeks tracking down some fact
widely accepted amongst Eva fans & academic commentators to its
original source and found it.  And then felt a sick hollow feeling as
I realize that all I have done is waste my life satisfying RS
standards, when the fans and professors knew it all along because they
trust each other and their forebears and can see for themselves the
consilience of all those commonly accepted facts.

Sourcing is orthogonal to quality. I would trade a thousand useless
citations for a single good administrator, or heck, even editor.

-- 
gwern