G'day Geoff,
<snip />
And I admit that I agree for the most part with that
WikiProject's goals:
one fat collection of articles under {{stub}} was just not workable. It's
just that some times I have to wonder if all of the energy sorting these
stubs wouldn't be better applied to making them into full-length articles,
especially after Angela's example with [[Ambrosius Stub]] -- although
now that I've had a moment to think about it, I suspect someone was
having too much fun adding {{stub}}'s to Mr Stub's article.
I sometimes wonder if all the energy spent writing about minor
characters in /Star Wars/ or /Pokemon/ wouldn't be better spent
improving our articles on minor Australian politicians, but, as a number
of Wikipedians I hold in high esteem (inc. David Gerard, Tony Sidaway,
and of course Jimbo) have pointed out, you can't make people do the
stuff they aren't interested in by taking away the stuff they are.
Stub-sorting is a worthwhile effort; I don't think it's as useful as the
WSS believe it is, but we're better off having those users concentrating
on WSS matters than leaving altogether.
<snip />
What I see is the problem here is that eager new
editors, who are looking
for something easy to do, start adding every stub template or category
label that fits the article they can think of. I know I've been overly
enthusiastic in the past with some of my edits, so unless the WSS people
insist that I stop my stub pruning or be hauled before the ArbCom, I'm
assuming that most of these multiple stubs are the work of newbie editors
who will outgrow this habit in a month or two.
Worl, User:Grutness and User:Mairi are definitely not newbies; Grutness
has been around since before the dinosaurs started smoking and doing
drugs, and Mairi was recently made an admin.
But as a general rule, I think you could be right. A lot of easy tasks
(well, easier than editing, anyway) tend to attract newbies like so many
annoying but unbiteable blowies. This even includes AfD, where teaching
new editors that "AfD isn't a vote and even if it was the presumption
that keep votes are worth twice as much as delete votes isn't
'unfair'[0]" is an ongoing effort.[1]
P.S. Had I known my email would have generated so many
follow-ups, I would
have changed the subject line. But I doubt I could have improved on Mark
Gallagher's "stubification to the max!"
<bows />
[0] Or whatever it translates to. I'm not well-known for my maths.
[1] Speaking of which, a few more people trying to improve the culture
of AfD wouldn't go astray. It'll be more useful, but probably less
emotionally satisfying than bitching on the mailing list about those
deletionist vandals ...
--
Mark Gallagher
"What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
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