On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Cary Bass <[email protected]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > The Cunctator wrote: >> Just restored a former prime minister. >> > > Hi! > > I just want to ask a question about this, and since I don't know the > article of which you speak, I can't judge its specific merits. This is > my personal opinion, and does not reflect that of any organization of > which I may be employed. > > Judging by your contributions, you've been restoring articles and > providing sources. Reading your email, I think, "The result of deleting > this biography was that it get restored and provide sources, that's a > good thing, right? The quality of the project goes up one more notch." > I don't have an issue with the article of a former prime minister > disappearing for a few hours. > > I want to get a full perspective, however. If you see fault with my > interpretation, please help me understand. > > Cary
That argument sounds like a broken window fallacy. Cunctator has been irked and annoyed, and driven that much closer to leaving the project forever. And he can only experience that joy because he's an admin. A regular contributor will have different reactions. When he hasn't been driven away already. And what benefit was there *really*? I see a lot of mindless fetishism of sourcing here, but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in 1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? Is it better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be relieved? Speaking from personal experience on the _Evangelion_ articles: I have on multiple occasions spent hours or weeks tracking down some fact widely accepted amongst Eva fans & academic commentators to its original source and found it. And then felt a sick hollow feeling as I realize that all I have done is waste my life satisfying RS standards, when the fans and professors knew it all along because they trust each other and their forebears and can see for themselves the consilience of all those commonly accepted facts. Sourcing is orthogonal to quality. I would trade a thousand useless citations for a single good administrator, or heck, even editor. -- gwern _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
