[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
>  But this
> feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a
> minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of
> others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people
> doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles?
>
> My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have
> been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced,
> and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from
> who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press
> release) is found and used as a reference.
>   
But I don't think the issue will be resolved by more "guidelines". This 
is an interesting example where the web material is largely of the kind 
of self-validating, not really third-party stuff that can be 
problematic. (I don't think having the biography is problematic, but the 
critical approach is quite helpful here, in indicating what it should 
contain.) There is a great deal of point in being selective: much of 
academia has to be taken on similar terms, and I don't think we should 
slide too far into rejecting departmental home pages as references.

Charles