[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia and autism and newpages/RC patrol and buckets of crap

Wed Oct 12 14:31:40 UTC 2005

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>What worries me here is that we patently *don't*.  Should we ever
>block an editor who's clearly demonstrating good faith, is not
>violating any policy of Wikipedia, but isn't complying absolutely 100%
>with all the guidelines?  Of course not, you say, that's absurd, we'd
>never do such a thing.
>But this is precisely what was done to Maoririder twice within one
>week of his arriving here.
>Why does it happen?  What unacknowledged bit of vindictiveness
>existing in the human spirit enabled this to be done by people who
>told themselves that they were doing so for the best of motives?

Newpages/RC patrol fatigue. Which may not be an excuse, though it
seems to be the reason.

I have every sympathy with those valiant souls who hold back the
barrage of truly shoot-on-sight crap we get. You've done both, you
*know* what I mean. (Speaking as a broad inclusionist myself, maybe
20-30% of new stuff needs to die immediately, and I think everyone of
inclusionist leanings really needs to do a bit of newpages and RC
patrol. Sunday evening US time is a fantastic time for really good bad
examples.)

OTOH, the general standard goes overboard at times - any one-sentence
stub even on a subject eminently worthy of coverage tends to get shot
on sight for being a single sentence, even though that's not a
Candidate for Speedy Deletion. I'm not sure what to do about this, and
I'm reluctant to criticise those on the front lines too strongly.

- d.