[WikiEN-l] Re: Sub-stub city

Sun Aug 8 13:07:36 UTC 2004

Hi.

Please could you tell your mail software to use word-wrapping? Thanks.

> I think 200 bytes is a reasonable lower limit.  [...]
> That would eliminate almost all tests in the article space and increase 
> the likelihood that an article has at least some useable context to it.

I doubt that. I think it would only encourage more wordy tests. Instead 
of "Bush is gay" people will just write "Bush is gaaaaaaaay" (with loads 
more a's). Or if someone is posting a dicdef I think they're likely to 
fill the article with newlines at the end to bring it to 200 bytes. It 
really doesn't help the specific problem you've mentioned.

If we introduced your suggested mechanism, we would be acting against 
our own philosophies. In loads of places we brag how everyone can 
contribute, and advise people to "be bold". You are now essentially 
saying that some contributions should not be accepted, and some people 
should not be bold. I disagree.

Wikipedia brags about its self-healing abilities. People patrolling RC 
and NP are valuable because they make this self-healing work. The 
"correct" way to "fix" this situation is what Daniel Mayer mentioned: 
Allowing logged-in users (or only admins) to "flag" an edit to show 
others that it's been looked at. This eliminates duplicate work, but it 
does not restrict the ability of anyone to post new articles or make any 
other edit.

Timwi