[Wikipedia-l] September 11 articles

[The Cunctator]

"Jeroen Heijmans" <j.heijmans at stud.tue.nl> wrote:
> * The main article, as it is, has a very good start, and little has to
> be changed to that. My main problems are with the subpage and related
> pages. First of all, many of the subpages, such as /Satire, /Slogans and
> terms, etc. should not be in an encyclopedia, or at most be noted in
> short piece of text with a few examples ("Most american media developed
> slogans like "America strikes back" at the start of American attacks on
> Afghanistan"). Others can be severely shortened, removing the "news
> value" and reverting to facts and summaries. The parts of the
> subarticles that really have to do with the subsequent attack and
> anthrax attack should be at those articles. External links should be to
> pages that give a good summary of the issue, and not merely newspaper
> articles. Much of the remaining subpages could be included in the main
> article itself.
> ....

I basically disagree with all of your proposals, which shouldn't be too
surprising
since I'm responsible for most of the entry. And being from New York I have
a certain personal weight on it.

But a general philosophy that I believe is true for the entire encyclopedia
which
applies here in particular is: Don't remove information. If someone has gone
to
the effort to add information to Wikipedia, and you feel it is poorly
presented,
then improve the presentation. Don't delete it. There's no good reason to
get rid
of the subpages. They should be edited such that they follow a pyramid
structure
of general overview to specific information, but specific information should
not be
lost.

We are under *no* constraints of size. This is not paper.

Similarly, with the casualties (and I'm working on correcting the missing
persons/
casualties list--it's pretty inaccurate, but oddly, about the only one
available on the Net),
just because the current entries aren't full now doesn't mean they shouldn't
be in the
Wikipedia. There is tons of biographical information about nearly every one
of the victims
available; which should be added to Wikipedia.

If you don't care about them, then ignore the entries, instead of deleting
them.
Other people do care. And that should be the criterion for what deserves to
be
in Wikipedia. As long as it follows the basic stylistic guidelines, any
topic is worthy
of entry.