[WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Alan Liefting]

On 17/05/2012 3:49 a.m., Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
> Indeed. Why *are* the skeptical geeks now on Reddit and not Wikipedia?
>
I take (took?) a hard line on keeping articles when doing new page 
patrol, especially for an unreferenced article from a new contributor.  
WP is under continual attack from spammers, scammer, vandals, 
mischievous students, tests of WP's systems by journalists and academics 
etc. Given all this, and the fact that it is time consuming to chase up 
the veracity of the article contents WP needs to change. (Unfortunately 
instigating change on WP is next to impossible.) The current deletion 
processes are way out of date for what WP now is.  Also, the onus should 
be on an editor to supply refs (unless it is not contentious) rather 
than the overworked regular editors to chase them up.


Alan Liefting