Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
We all know about "POV warriors." I'm
fortunate or wimpy enough not
to have been involved in articles with serious long-standing POV
wars, but my impression is that _for the most part_ these things seem
to stay under reasonable control.
On the other hand, I think we are developing "topic warriors" who
feel that a specific subject area deserves very detailed coverage,
systematically watch VfD for any cases where articles on their pet
topic are nominated for deletion, and oppose deletion of _any_
article on their topic on principle, regardless of the quality of the
article.
If you're talking about Wikiprojects, better get the asbestos underwear
ready... However, I've also seen many articles on AfD improve immensely
and end up being kept simply because someone knowledgable on the subject
of the article came along and improved to the point where it was no
longer suitable to delete the article.
Unlike POV, a relatively small number of topic
warriors CAN
effectively achieve their goal. (And, of course, they are assisted by
Wikipedians who do _not_ accept the premise that "Wikipedia is not
an indiscriminate collection of information.")
It should be noted that many of these "topic warriors" feel that
"Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" - merely
that Wikipedia lacks decent articles in certain areas.
NOTE NOTE NOTE ---> topic wars are FAR, FAR less
damaging to
Wikipedia and FAR less of a concern than POV wars.
Glad to hear it...
Some Wikipedians undoubtedly feel that topic wars do
not damage
Wikipedia at all. My feeling is that they do, because they
deliberately _create_ systemic bias, and create an area in which the
average quality of the articles is lower than the rest of
Wikipedia.
Hence we have a Wikiproject to counter systematic bias; also, the more
topics which *are* covered, the less that are *not*.
They certainly damage the Wikipedia community by
factionalizing it,
creating an "us versus them" mentality, and, in some cases, publicly
gloating over their "success."
If you mean inclusionists, yes. I still call for the public execution of
the Associations of Inclusionist and Deletionist Wikipedians, and
imposing mentorships upon all editors who still claim to be editors at
the time that these projects are shut down. They are the primary cause
of the angst associated with AfD.
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