[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

All articles should meet that standard, eventually, however, we will
always be receiving articles that do not, most of which  can be
improved to that point. What you give is the goal, not the starting
point.

By including basic information we encourage the addition of more. By
including basic information about  people we encourage editors here to
improve them. Many more of those who come here will, in practice, be
able and willing improve an existing Wikipedia article , than are able
to properly start one. The continued existence of Wikipedia depends on
the continued recruitment of new editors, and this will be primarily
from students. Very few active editors remain for more than three
years--they very reasonably develop other interests--writing for
Wikipedia is rarely a career. If we do not replace those who leave, we
will die; if we merely replace them, we will be static.

There is very little here that will not be greatly improved by wider
participation--this focus on wide participation is the basic idea
behind open editing, what made Wikipedia worth starting and makes it
worth continuing. Working on local topics is the ideal way of getting
started, and what we have always recommended to beginners. Wikipedia
is not harmed by the inclusion of borderline topics: it is harmed by
the inclusion of spam and prejudice and error. The way of preventing
these is to have more individuals working here, many of them
inevitably very unsophisticated at least at first. The way of working
here effectively is to add good material. It is more valuable doing
this than focusing on the deletion of harmless articles. In the time
it has taken to have this discussion during the last few weeks,  we
could each of us engaged in it have started or improved many articles.
I will now return to doing that, and so should all of us.

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



On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Carcharoth
<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum
>> standard).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/B-Class
>
> * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate
> inline citations.
> * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious
> omissions or inaccuracies.
> * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or
> more sections of content.
> * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
> * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an
> infobox, images, or diagrams.
>
> Should all BLPs meet that standard?
>
> Carcharoth
>
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