[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Nathan wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. <snip>
>>
>> -- phoebe
>>
>>     
 >I don't think Gwern was saying that sourcing is irrelevant, only 
that"unreferenced BLP" is a blunt measurement that doesn't return much 
real information about the status of any given article.

It's a blunt metric, to be sure, but Gwern's argument that some 
referencing looks like make-work (true) means that adding references to 
biographies is pointless (false) is pretty much flawed. Consider how one 
tests an article to see whether it is a hoax: one tries to verify this 
and that, and in the end nothing checks out, which is the "now I'm 
suspicious" moment. A proper reference in a BLP shows it isn't a hoax, 
and that is one criterion our articles should satisfy.

>I'm sure there are all sorts of other long backlogs of article problems, even on BLPs.

This is also true. The people who worry about copyright are, well, 
worried. This is the most interesting comparison. Do we or do we not 
regard lack of sourcing in a BLP to be as serious as copyright 
violation? No consensus on that yet, clearly. One step is being taken in 
that direction, would be one way to explain what is currently going on. 
Even that much is not perhaps going to be accepted. But the two issues 
stand out from other things such as POV and writing problems because 
they have a legal dimension, or in other words could be threats to the 
whole project.

Charles