[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

Thu Dec 15 20:03:37 UTC 2005

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 12/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>The crux of the problem is in what the endgame should be for an
>>unreferenced article.  Is it deletion or improvement?  I would easily
>>support improvement.  If an article is unreferenced that does not imply
>>that it is wrong; we just don't know if it's right.
>>    
>>
>There's no question over the endgame.  The question is over what to do
>in the meantime.  If we don't know whether or not something is right,
>it shouldn't be in an article.  Doesn't mean it can't be in user
>space, or on a talk page, or in the edit history, or in the deleted
>articles history.  That's my interpretation of
>[[Wikipedia:Verifiability]], anyway.
>
We can begin with some kind of "unreferenced" tag, maybe even a flashing 
red "CAUTION" sign. :-)
Beyond that, we need to remember that most of our non-referenced facts 
aren't controversial at all.  Look at how long it has taken to put 
category tags on all articles.  That's a much simpler task than 
referencing.  Of your four suggestions only putting material on the 
article's talk page will even give a sporting chance for review.  If you 
outright delete an unreferenced article there will not even be a link to 
Xxxx's talk page so that the material can be reviewed and documented.  
Have fun finding it! 

Assuming good faith needs to be extended to the articles themselves.  It 
recognizes that a contributor who was himself deceived by the 
information was probably acting in good faith.  Fact checking an article 
is a tedious process that needs to apply to every statement in an 
article.  It may be easy enogu to have a bot tag every unreferenced 
article with a notice that if it is not referenced in 24 hours it will 
be deleted.  If ALL of us were to devote ourselves to that task for that 
24 hours without sleeping there would still not be enough of us for the 
job.  So when your second bot comes along and clears out the still 
referenced articles what would we have left?  We need common sense, not 
impatience.

>>Actions based on a deletion endgame consistently attract bitter disputes
>>and needless stress.  In planning new strategies this should be
>>considered from the beginning. in the hope of avoiding the stress.
>>Without that this will be no different from AfD.
>>
>>Ec
>>    
>>
>The endgame in either case is a well referenced article.  The question
>is how do we get there.
>
Of course, but we can't depend on any kind of quick fix.

Ec