[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Cool Hand Luke]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> At the same time,
>
> *Always leave something undone.
> **Give the author a chance.*
> *Build the web.*
> *Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.*
>
> and
>
> *If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular
> editing,
> rather than deletion.*
>
>

These maxims were very good in the formative stages of our project.  You and
other early editors were right (maybe even prophetic) to adopt them.  The
fledgling project needed hands, eyeballs, and content.  By zealously keeping
and expanding content--even shoddy content--we grew dramatically.

But this debate has come to a boil because we've been too slow in realizing
that the balance must change because conditions have changed.  We are no
longer a small project, but one that places in the top three google search
results for almost any topic in our encyclopedia.  We have succeeded because
of our formative policies, and with our success comes responsibility.

In an era when any living subject can have their life harmed by a poorly
vetted biography, we should strike a new balance.  We should not bite off
more than we can chew.  In this area, we ought to weed out BLPs that we can
no longer maintain at appropriately high standatds.  As a happy consequence
of this process, many notable biographies will be improved.  I hope that
this improvement and re-examination process is continual.

In this way, we will effectively shoulder the responsibility we have for
maintaining one of the top ten sites on the internet.

Cool Hand Luke