[WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea

Wed Sep 14 18:27:38 UTC 2005

On 9/14/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
> > >
> > >JAY JG wrote:
> > > > > From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
> > > > >
> > > > > On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
> > > > >
> > > > > Does it? How?
> > > >
> > > > It reduces the credibility of the project.
> > >
> > >In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how
> > >credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for
> > >centuries hence.
> >
> > One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as
> > an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even
> > acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e.
> > Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of
> > support and funding.
> >
> > We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I
> > think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
> 
> I think your classification of getting taken seriously as "one of
> Wikipedia's biggest issues" is a POV, and personally, I don't agree
> with it.
> 
> Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the
> selection of article topics.  R&C are a function of quality and
> quantity of references and citations used within the individual
> articles.  Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of
> coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of
> encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else.  Any educator who finds
> a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it,
> however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in
> articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.
> 
> Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some
> seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki.  Individual
> articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project,
> and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced
> articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the
> project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving
> this role.  There are just too many rough edges in a wiki
> 
> I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any
> topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia
> because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply
> accept that as part of the project.

I wanted to add to my own post that Britannica and Encarta and similar
others can get away with far fewer references and sources is because
they aren't wikis.  Everyone working on the publicly visible portions
of product are paid professionals who lose their paychecks if they're
not reliable and credible.  We don't have that particular "luxury", so
we need to cite sources and provide references.

-- 
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused