At 04:34 AM 10/8/2009, Ray Saintonge wrote: >Fixing an article involves a lot more work than deleting it. The firemen >who would do that are further discouraged by the crowd that is hurling >rocks from the rooftop.
For a while, I would try to fix articles that I thought could be rescued, then I noticed that sometimes, too often, finding reliable source had no effect at all on the discussion, and, in spite of hours of work finding sources and thus improving the article, it would be deleted. Writing an article that meets the high standards of scrutiny that are often applied at AfD can be a lot of work. The wiki model was that, you know about a subject, you write an article, at least that was half of it. The other half was someone went to a library and created an insane number of half-assed articles that were sourced, all right, but written, too often, by someone who didn't understand the topic.... Ideally, these two streams would merge and articles that were good to someone who knows the subject would also be sourced, but if the article is deleted first, the process can't happen. The original wiki model didn't even contemplate deletion beyond what Sarsaparilla/Absidy/etc. called "Pure Wiki Deletion." Which is simply blanking, an ordinary editorial decision, leaving everyone free to see the article who wants to. I gave up. Eventually I came across a controversial topic that particularly interested me, where I had the background to understand the sources and where my research radically changed my mind. So I started working on it, I even bought a pile of books about it (on all sides of the controversy), and a major recent and very expensive mainstream work on it was donated to me, and I became much more vulnerable as a result, since I now had an opinion and a POV, based on reading the sources, and I started asserting content based on the most reliable of the sources, especially peer-reviewed secondary source. The information necessary for my major shift of POV is much more than most editors could absorb with some light reading. There exist secondary sources that cover the field that, if editors would trust them, would make it easy, but .... they don't trust these sources, even when published by independent, non-fringe publishers, since what they say contradicts the easy positions of ignorance. After all, doesn't everybody with a background in science know....? Reliable source guidelines, if followed, would address the problem, but are useless against entrenched opinion, because editors will invent this or that excuse for disregarding them, so that the article doesn't fall into their view of undue weight. So ... I'm no longer a Wikipedia editor, I'm now working off-wiki, with real knowledge and research in the field that interested me, and, as well, on the kind of voluntary structure that I see as the only way out of trap that Wikipedia has fallen into. It's much easier, though, of course, it all takes time. I still have an account, and the block will expire, and I'm not burning any bridges, but .... once I realize that a wall definitely exists, I don't butt my head against it. I walk around it or dig under it or climb over it, if I actually want to get to the other side, or I do something else. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
