[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of
BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for
evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done
harm by being there. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that out
of the 500, 1 or 2  of them was a potential problem;. Based on my
running work with this, for about half of them there was both the
ability to source enough to lose the unsourcedBLP status very easily,
and the  potential to become a acceptable articles after reasonable
work. The project thus has been wrong several hundred times more than
it has been right. A yield rate of less than 1% and a damage rate of
50% is unacceptable quality.

I would feel quite differently if either 90% of the articles were
truly unsourceable or unsuitable, or if  even 5% of them had been
actual problems. BLP violations are serious, and I agree that we ought
to risk making a few  errors to remove them--a 5% error rate is as low
as any Wikipedia process can reasonably attain-- but this was a
process 99% of which was either wrong or unnecessarily hasty.

If this does not meet the standard for "disrupting Wikipedia   to make
a point", I do not know what would.  True, they made the point. There
were so many ways to have done it better. They would have made the
point just as well with 50, not 500 deletions. They would have made
the point just as well and contributed something to the process if
they actually checked for even the most obvious and easily sourceable
notability.  They would have been less foolish if they had not deleted
the 5 or 10% of articles that did have sources, though not in the
usual places.

In the month or so that this plan probably took shape, each of the 50
people involved or strongly defending them   could have checked
properly 10 articles a day  while still doing their usual work. That
would have cleared 10,000 articles. In the years that people have been
complaining about the situation, if they had worked instead of talked,
the whole problem of the old articles could have been dealt with--even
by themselves alone.  And then we would be able to concentrate on the
much bigger problem of all the sourced articles in Wikipedia that
nonetheless contain major errors.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
>> are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.
>>
>> Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project,
>> so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our
>> old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess
>> when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just
>> reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every
>> day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by
>> their heroic daily efforts.
>>
>> --
>> gwern
>
> This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone.
> I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email.
>
> - causa sui
>
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