[WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

Thu Jan 12 18:14:20 UTC 2006

geni wrote:

>On 1/12/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Jan 11, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>So? I'm free to chose to write about what i want rathen than what
>>>other people want to rant about.
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm not sure I understand your argument.  In my opinion, if someone
>>is willing to go to the trouble to list an article on AfD, they
>>should be willing to go to the trouble to improve it to non-deletable
>>standards.
>>    
>>
>Why? I might know that an article on an area of chemistry is a hoax.
>Doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in writeing about that bit
>of chemistry.
>
The essence of straw man arguments is to choose an example that everyone 
will agree to, and use that as an excuse to apply the agreed solution 
for the special case to an expanded environment.

To know that an article about chemistry is a hoax implies that you have 
enough knowledge of chemistry to recognize a hoax.  The person to whom 
you are responding made no mention of a hoax, and I would suspect that 
being a hoax is a problem with only a very small portion of the articles 
in question.  Debatable notability is far more often the cause of 
disputes.  The information provided by "non-notable" articles may be 
trivial or meaningless, but it is not deceptive and completely wrong in 
the way that a hoax article would be.

Ec