[WikiEN-l] Let's get rid of VfD

Fri Jan 9 20:17:32 UTC 2004

On 01/09/04  at 08:07 PM, erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) said:

> Already it is often very difficult to get rid of pages that contain  
> nothing but trivia. You may feel that enumerating all the things in the 
>  world in which the number "101" appears is valuable, I think it is  
> worthless trivia. I think that my view is supported by every legitimate 
>  philosophical understanding of the terms "knowledge" and "encyclopedia" 
>  (the latter being a sum of the former).

> If we remove the VfD process entirely it will become even more difficult 
>  to remove these pages, and we will stray away even further from our
> goal   of being an encyclopedia. Instead, our new goal will then be to
> be a loose   collection of provably true statements. E.g. it is a true
> statement that   the number 101 apperas in the film title "101
> Dalmatians", but it is   hardly of encyclopedic value. Such a collection
> is much harder to maintain   and much more likely to be inconsistent
> than a true encyclopedia, and I   also believe it tarnishes our
> reputation, because we claim to be something   which we are clearly not.

These are excellent points. I think the concept of what is "encyclopedic
knowledge" needs to be made more explicit. For my part, I feel I know it
when I see it -- and correspondingly I know unencyclopedic material when I
see it but I can't rationally explain what the difference it is -- it is
an inituition. I've taken information out of articles which I consider
"unencyclopedic" but when confronted about this I can't explain why.

V.