[WikiEN-l] A bold fix needed to the "omg backlog" problem

Sun Dec 4 14:48:12 UTC 2005

Alex Schenck wrote:

> I will copy what I wrote to David here...
> I want to ask for your opinion here. I was feeling brave this morning and
> decided to see if I could make a dent in Category:Wikipedia
> backlog<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog>.
> After looking at about 25 articles with the wikification tag attached to
> them, and being so disgusted with the lot as to be unable to make a
*single*
> change, something major hit me.
> We need to, as one might say, flush the crap down the toilet. Allow me to
> explain.

On his userpage, George argues this better than me, but basically the
argument is that sometimes, nothing is better than something.  I'm sure that
many of the articles in that backlog actually do more damage than good to
the project, because someone who finds them is going to judge the quality of
wikipedia as a whole based on those articles.  Not finding anything, on the
other hand, will probably not result in as great a negative reaction.

That said, I'm not sure what should be done about it.  Deletion is tempting,
but shouldn't be applied haphazardly.  I wouldn't be opposed to the creation
of an AfD criterion (not CSD) that allowed for the deletion of truly
unorganized and difficult to use text.  This is different from patent
nonsense, and CSD shouldn't be extended, which is made clear because Alex's
example, [[Help the Aged]], was just reverted to a previous version by
Angela and now it looks fine.  (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help_the_Aged&diff=30111977&oldid=28413926).
Deleting it would have been a bad idea.

Just my two cents.

Nathaniel / Spangineer