[WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

Wed Aug 25 05:47:55 UTC 2004

Stan, I tend to agree there is a (perhaps misplaced) sense of urgency
about having to "mop up" quickly, list things on VfD, etc. Some of it
might be arrogance or nastiness.

But I'd like to offer another interpretation - there is no confidence
these suspicious edits will be found or caught later. And that can bug
certain types of people. Of all the mechanisms Wikipedia has for
tracking changes and edits, perhaps the weakest is how to allow new
entires to linger for a specified period and grow, and then come back
to evaluate later. For many, "check it later" means "check it never."

I guess this could be cast as a finer grain interpretation of
inclusionism and deletionism.

Absolute inclusionist - any and everything should be in Wikipedia
Optimistic inclusionist - maybe not good now, but it may be, keep and
check back later
Pessimistic deletionist - may be good sometime, but delete it now, and
keep only when good
Absolute deletionist - it's not "encyclopediac", get rid of it

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:45:08 -0700, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
> 
> > [...]
> 
> > Who cares if there's a page up for a month or so lauding the wonders
> > of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center? These article all fall squarely
> > in the "borderline" category. Get them cleaned up, but we don't need
> > to drop everything and do it right away.
> 
> This should be tattooed on the back of each hand of every Wikipedian,
> so it's visible while typing. :-)
> 
> Going by comments I've seen, I think it feeds some people's egos
> to believe that they're saving WP's reputation from certain doom
> by quick listing of obscure articles on VfD - but WP's reputation
> is really made or broken by the quality of content in the articles
> of general interest, since those are the ones that readers find.
> 
> Another thing that I see is a sense of urgency, as if all the
> editing is going to come to a stop in 24 hours, and everything
> needs to be perfect by then. Even some oldtimers seem to act
> as if they don't really believe WP will be around next year,
> the year after, and the year after that. (It will, right? :-) )
> 
> Stan
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com