[WikiEN-l] Improve quality by reviewing all new articles

Sat Dec 17 03:21:33 UTC 2005

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh opinions.  But frankly, if
>you don't find those errors to be blindingly obvious, you need to find
>another hobby.  Writing an encyclopedia is quite frankly beyond you.
>  
>
Me too, then. When the mood hits me (as it often does) I spend a lot of 
time clicking "random page" and tidying up any articles I come across 
that look in need of tidying. Before this controversy I've never heard 
of Siegenthaler before, so if I'd hit this page and tidied it up I would 
have left all of those errors in place because they are _not_ obvious. 
All of those things could well have been true for all I know, and it's 
not like I'm giving my personal stamp of approval to every word in any 
article I click the "save" button on so I shouldn't have to fact-check 
every one of them whenever I throw in category tag or succession box.

If it had said Siegenthaler had been suspected of being involved in 
Nixon's assassination, or had lived on Mars for a period of time, then 
_that_ would have been a blindingly obvious error. And even then I'd 
forgive an editor who just skimmed over the line without noticing it 
while doing other things, since it still fits well enough into the flow 
of the article that one might suffer a momentary lapse of attention.