[WikiEN-l] Defamatory Biographies - another problem looming forWikipedia?

Wed Dec 21 19:06:55 UTC 2005

Geoff Burling wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Dec 2005, David Gerard wrote:
>>Geoff Burling wrote:

>>>(And for the record, when I find an article with more than one stub tag
>>>attached, I always reduce the number to one. Don't like it? Then turn
>>>the stub into an article, & we'll both be happy.)

>>PLEASE DON'T DO THIS. Different stubs are subcategories of different
>>parent categories. Someone from a wikiproject about content will often
>>go into that project's stub category and start work on stuff they find
>>there.

> Are you serious? To repeat myself, how many stub notices does Wikipedia
> need on any given article? This is the silliest idea I've seen proposed
> here -- including many I have proposed -- for these & probably many
> more reasons:

> -- just how many people actually look for stubs in their area of interest?
> I've seen anecdotal evidence that few people bother to chase down stubs.
> (When I am on the hunt for a topic to work on, I'm as just as likely to
> look under the more broad categories as under the stubs.)

I don't know about others, but I look through [[Category:Scientology
stubs]] when I'm bored.

> -- this confuses meta-information (which should be on the Talk page)
> with warnings to the reader (which should be on the article page) I
> believe this falls under the category of "instruction creep". If an
> there is a reason an article needs more than one stub notice, then
> shouldn't they go on the talk page?

That's a good idea, actually. Would you be averse to moving second and
third stubs to talk pages instead of just deleting them?

> And last, & perhaps most important:
> -- just exactly when was this policy dreamed up, debated, & voted on?

People started doing it presumably because they found it useful.

> Until reducing multiple stubs becomes a bannible offence, I will
> continue to do it, based on my editorial discression. you have been warned.

Well, I can't stop you :-) But if you could please move them to talk so
they're still findable by interested editors (presumably with a note of
why), that'd be good.

>>I didn't say 90%, I said 20-30%!

> You're right. I went back & checked my log of Wiki-EN mail, & I
> misremembered the figure. (I'm amazed, though, at how many people threw
> around "90%" when talking about issues.) I sincerely apologize.

Although it's still a horrible percentage. I wonder what the numbers are
like now.

- d.