[WikiEN-l] Proposal: Article Improvement Weeks! (was Turn off article creation AND deletion.)

Sun Dec 11 20:22:43 UTC 2005

On 12/11/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > In my opinion it is never acceptable to keep false information in the
> > article namespace.  There are places where eventualism is acceptable,
> > but presenting false information as true information is not one of
> > them.
> >
> > Oh well, whatever.  Two separate people seem honestly and irreparably
> > opposed to the idea.  I'll just drop it.
>
> I agree with you, but with one caveat.  It shouldn't be removed, just
> marked as being unverified.  If it is marked as such, Wikipedia
> specifically abdicates all responsibility for the contents.  This way,
> the information is still available so *anyone* can verify it, admin or
> not.
>
> --
> Sam

For some reason I see a huge difference between leaving false
information in and putting a disclaimer at the top and moving the
information to the talk page.  Doing the latter still leaves the
information available so anyone can verify it.

Unfortunately, talk pages of deleted articles are candidates for
speedy deletion.  But then again, it really doesn't matter, because
history only undeletion can be performed by any admin without a vote. 
So if any user wants to verify it, admin or not, just look up the
title in google, write a couple sentences, and request history only
undeletion.  Or, alternatively, ask an admin to give you the text of
the article.  Either way it's not *that* big of a deal, though I do
feel things would be better if you didn't have to go through that
step.

I'm gonna say one more thing (for this message), and that's that the
current policy already kind of supports this.  Anything that isn't
verified can be moved to the talk page, a page which contains no
content is a CSD, and a talk page of a deleted page is itself a CSD.

Anthony