[WikiEN-l] Re: Becoming more encyclopedia-like: 1: Encephalon's comments

Sat Oct 1 18:13:59 UTC 2005

Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>> 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.
>
> I'd like to call attention to some remarks by Encephalon. I hesitate  
> to do this because of the context that they're in, and I hope he/she  
> will work them up into a standalone essay, but nevertheless. Take a  
> look in
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lingnan_Primary_School 
>
>
> near the bottom, the portion that begins:
>
> Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That is the very first thing you read  
> under Key Policies (WP:RULES), the main page of the essential rules  
> that govern this encyclopedia. It is the very first thing that you  
> read in the fundamental five pillars (WP:5P). The fundamental  
> requirements of encyclopedia writing are enshrined in the basic,  
> fundamental tenets of its policies. WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV are each  
> and all fundamental rules that we may not ignore as we please...
>
> ...and the subsequent discussion, and this _very interesting_ comment:
>
> "I am using the criteria all of us should use: the principles central  
> to writing encyclopedic articles on WP. Pages which violate those  
> policies should be removed, whether they've been on WP for 3 weeks or  
> 3 years, whether they pertain to the United States or to sub-Saharan  
> Africa. Likewise, pages that are written in accordance with such  
> principles should be kept, no matter how obscure or unknown to WPns  
> at large."

The article in question is clearly a stub.  The deletion debate about it 
is clearly not.  One can only wonder what a great article we would have 
about the Lingam School if the energy spent trying to delete it had 
actually been wasted on trying to improve it. :-)

My first impression of the last quoted paragraph is that it's 
tautological.  Then by being referenced there it confuses standards with 
the application of standards.  The time and place references in the 
paragraph are redundant since the princilples would be equally 
applicable without them.  The paragraph could be summarized in, "If it's 
a good page keep it; if it's a bad page delete it."  Who would argue 
against that?

The underlying assumption is that the article proposed for deletion is a 
bad one, and since everybody knows that it's guilty why bother with a 
trial?"  Let's proceed directly to the execution.  I'm sorry but the 
rest of us are not so brilliant as to understand this swift logic, we 
still need to be shown why it's a bad unencyclopedic article. 

Ec