[WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

Wed Aug 25 18:59:57 UTC 2004

I've never understood the mentality that it's okay to keep trash articles around for some unknown period of time.  Months, now?!  Do you not understand what it says about Wikipedia when Google and Yahoo! mirror all of the crap and that's the face that Wikipedia presents to the world?  How are we supposed to maintain even the idea that we're creating a real, useable encyclopedia if anybody is allowed to put whatever trash they want to put into it and nobody seems to be the least motivated to clean it up?

RickK

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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