[WikiEN-l] Article deletion

Tue Sep 13 19:18:05 UTC 2005

Keith Old wrote:

>We should be encouraging users to participate in the process not 
>discouraging them with artificial limits. It seems that many people who 
>don't participate in the process are the most vocal about its supposed 
>deficiencies. It's a bit like complaining about the quality of the 
>politicians that are running the country while you don't vote. 
>
I used to participate, as part of doing new pages patrol, but between
the socks and the ignorant, the whole thing was so unpleasant and
inefficient that I moved on to other WP activities. It's kind of a
shame, because I've read perhaps 10% of all of en's articles, and
edited on some 15K of them, so I'm in a pretty good position to know
what fits, what doesn't, and what's redundant - but it's pointless
to participate in a process where those who know nothing of a subject
area can outvote the people who actually know something. WP only
works because 99% of the time the ignorant are willing to defer to
the knowledgeable; but VfD process works in the opposite way -
the knowledgeable are made to do extra work to overcome the
objections of the ignorant.

Stan