Re:A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign
by tptacek on Saturday May 19, 2018 @06:40PM
(#17110117)
No, you've misunderstood my argument. The problem is that it's difficult for editors to remove "cruft" on articles about marginal topics, because there are so few (usually: zero) reliable sources to draw from. You can't start from a premise that "cruft" can be removed without removing classes of articles; that begs the question that deletionists answer.
Re:A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign
by xelxebar on Monday May 21, 2018 @02:28AM
(#17116543)
> No, you've misunderstood my argument.
I'm jumping in the middle here, but mind if I make a meta-comment?
Phrases like "you've misunderstood my words" can sound quite confrontational and, in my experience, tend to provoke defensive responses rather than Cooperative Idea Sharing TM.
I find ideas flow more freely and coopertively by taking the miscommunication blame on myself, "Oh, I must have been unclear. We're on the same page about X, but what I was really trying to say is..."
Anyway, that's just my feel on the meta-interaction above. Carry on.
Deletionists tend to confuse their personal ignorance (often of a website called "Google" [yes I know how notability works, no that's not an argument against not bothering to even trivially check whether an article can be improved rather than deleted]) with a mandate to sabotage Wikipedia.
People who remove cruft from articles, rather than speedy deleting articles that aren't about Pokemon, are not deletionists and should not be invoked as human shields for deletionists.