[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

I re-copy edited it. It was rescued in a rush, and improved in a rush.
The next step is to collate with the original article., and then to
look for good additional material.

Some of the above discussions imply much too high a standard, both for
what should be in Wikipedia and for what the quality of the content in
Wikipedia should be. We are not producing a definitive scholarly
resource, nor are our basic methods adapted to doing so--scholarship
requires critical evaluation and editorial control, two things we are
unable to provide. What we can provide is a rough-and-ready general
reference work, and our strength is the potential for of a large group
of amateurs to be extremely comprehensive  , and include a wider range
of material than any conventional method of work has ever provided.
It can neither make true judgments of importance, nor will it  be
guaranteed accurate--those who want to read such have the full range
of conventional sources at their disposal, and another goal of the
free scholarship movement --different from ours-- is to make these
more widely available. Those who want to  write a this level need to
write in the more conventional way, a way that requires qualified
researchers with access to the full range of relevant sources, and
trained editors with professional standards.

The goal for BLPs --or any other topic--cannot be the complete
avoidance of error, for not even the most professional of resources
have the ability to do that. Not even the most carefully edited
publications have succeeded in being free from hoaxes and libel. The
goal is to be as reasonably correct as possible, to remove obvious
error when pointed out to us, and have working policies that will
exclude the worst blunders and discourage the use for libel,
propaganda, and promotion.  The only way to avoid these entirely is to
include nothing at all about anything involving anyone living or any
living writer-- some of our worst BLP problems involve our comments on
living authors.

The easiest thing is to write nothing. The second easiest to is
eliminate material without thinking. The third easiest, is a little
different, for it  is to write without thinking. We  can not exclude
the thoughtless from working here, either to make foolish positive
contributions or foolish negative edits, and only the most reckless of
all or the most obviously biased can actually be rejected.

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



On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of
>> finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit,
>> and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page?
>>
>> I mean, what's the point?
>>
> Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time
> editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with
> someone who is not in your time zone.
>
> Charles
>
>
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