[WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

Sat Oct 1 02:36:10 UTC 2005

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Michael Turley wrote:
> On 9/30/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Geoff Burling wrote:
>>
>>>Just a thought, SPUI: can you think of a traffic circle that you could
>>>write an article worthy of Featured Article status? I ask this in a
>>>constructive way, because a very irrefutable argument to anyone who
>>>writes on AfD to the effect "This is only an X, & all X is non-notable.
>>>Delete" is "Well, Y is an X, & it is a *FEATURED ARTICLE*!!!"[*]
>>
>>If I had better access to historical records, I might be able to do that
>>for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnelle_Circle . It's a very busy
>>intersection, located on the Route 1 Extension, considered by many to be
>>the first "super highway" in the United States.
> 
> 
> Honestly, my memory sucks right now.  I'm not trying to be flippant:
> Isn't there a famous traffic circle or two worthy of featured article
> status in London, England?  Perhaps one in Paris, France or Rome,
> Italy as well?
> 

There's a famous (or rather, infamous) one in Adelaide: Britannia
Roundabout.

Worst traffic nightmare in the city. Many plans have been made (but
never carried through) about what to do with it, from turning it into
traffic lights to building over & underpasses.

Does it exist? Yes.
Is it verifiable? Yes.
Have books been written about it? Probably not.
Has it appeared in the media? Yes.
Should I write an article about it? Maybe.
Would said article be speedy deletable? No.
Would said article be deleted via AfD? Probably.
Is there enough information to make it to Featured status? Maybe.

What should I do?

Put it in [[Major roads in Adelaide, South Australia]] or similar.

Here's my take on the whole inclusion/deletion thing:

Including things for the sake of inclusion is BAD. You end up with junk.
Wikipedia is not a place to braindump.

Deleting things for the sake of deleting is BAD. If it's true,
verifiable, NPOV, etc. it's the sort of information Wikipedia is able to
accept. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia. It is SUPPOSED to have INFORMATION.

Inclusionists and Deletionists are playing what they think is a zero-sum
game. It's WORSE than that: the mere presence of their mindless ranting
is actually HURTING Wikipedia. By arguing over what should be
kept/deleted, we lose information. We lose readers. We lose editors.

The solution:

Become more encylopedia-like.

For just about every value of X, where the number of total X is
sufficiently large, we can make more logical and more comprehensive
articles by MERGING the bits of information we have (which on their own,
are perma-stubs) into more comprehensive articles on the topic.

In doing so, we play a BETTER than zero-sum game. We build articles that
a "traditional" encyclopedia would be jealous of. We HELP Wikipedia by
having articles that both retain information and look proffessional.

Just remember:

Every time you arbitrarily delete an article, you lose a potential
editor, who says to themselves, "What a stupid bunch of morons! They
deleted the article on X!"

Every time you arbitrarily keep an article, you lose a potential editor,
who says to themselves, "What a stupid bunch of morons! They have an
article on X!"

If you are careful to only delete things which are copyvios, original
research, neologisms, dicdefs, and speedy deletable (and they are the
ONLY criteria under which things should be deleted), you will only keep
INFORMATION.

If you are careful only to keep things which are verifiable,
informational, and non-trivial (which is what an ENCYCLOPEDIA should
have), you will only delete JUNK.

If you use common sense, remember what NPOV is, and merge into DECENT
ARTICLES, you will save a lot of bother.

Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy.
Dont' stuff beans up your nose.

For great encyclopedia!

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