[WikiEN-l] Re: Rambot city articles vs. other topics

Sun Oct 23 03:59:04 UTC 2005

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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 10/22/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>>>One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
>>>thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a
>>>problem with
>>>that either.
>>>Anthony
>>
>>The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
>>contain articles on "non-notable" topics.
>>
>>Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
>>(they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
>>percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
>>derive from good (though uncited) sources.
> 
> 
> 
> If anything I think that only makes my point stronger. If we have the
> resources to maintain an article on virtually every U.S. city, then surely
> we have the resources to maintain an article on a tiny fraction of the
> garage bands in the world.
> 

Except that we actually have data that the subjects of the Rambot
articles existed (censuses and the like). We have no way of verifying
the existence of many garage bands.

I have two or three reasons for deleting things: violates [[WP:NOT]]
(eg. dicdef, spam, advertisment), violates [[WP:NOR]] (eg. lacks
references, terminal POV problems), or is a CSD. Lately I've tried to
work out where "article makes no claim of notability" and "article is
unverifiable" - I think NOR covers these, but there's probably some
overlap with WP:NOT as well.

> Comparing Rambot articles to other topic classes is perfectly fine as long
> as you limit your comparison to the proper aspects. Frankly, I think the
> uniformity in style, content, and quality is a bad thing, but that wasn't
> related to the thread I was making the comparison in.

I don't. Uniformity in articles in a certain topic area is a Good Thing,
because it lets readers (and editors) know what the article /should/ be
like. We have the Manual of Style so that articles are presented in a
logical manner; David Gerard has made much better arguments than I ever
could about why we need a uniform and concise writing style.

I think the whole style, content and scope debate is best summed up as:
articles in Wikipedia should be Sane, Safe and Consensual.

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