Re: Wikipedia:Verifiability - Mailing lists as sources

 --- Jörg Rhiemeier skrzypszy:

>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Mailing_lists_as_sources
>
> Hmmm - I don't really know what to say about this.
>
> On one hand, it is good that the Wikipedians are concerned about
> the quality of their articles and thus are worried about the
> reliability of the sources.  On the other hand, I somehow feel
> this goes a bit out of hand.  To my taste, there is too much
> deletionism in fashion.  And it is a bit self-contradictory to
> forbid references to open wikis if your own project itself is
> an open wiki, isn't it?
That's exactly how I feel about it, too. I've been a moderately
active wikipedian for about four or five years (although not
primarily on wikipedia.en) and I cannot deny that much of the fun is
gone. Deletionism has become fashionable, and the whole thing seems
to have gone pretty bureaucratic, too. The benefit of the doubt has
gone pretty much extinct, it seems. And in its place we constantly
face tags, tags, and more tags. Right now, you virtually can't write
a single word without having to add at least five references that
prove it, otherwise you'll promptly get a tag. Or worse, your article
is submitted for deletions. And when you look at the discussions
about whether something should be deleted or not, all you see is
abbreviations, all of which point to some policy page. Those
discussions themselves are nothing new; but where in the past there
had to be "rough consensus" for deletion, the present situation that
the closing administrator himself decides which arguments are best.

And yes, instead of contributing something sensible there are
definitely a lot of people who spend a lot of time undermining other
people's work.

Sometimes I wonder why this is. Could it be the fact that
Wikipedia.en has grown so much? That everyone who had something
substantial to contribute has already done so?

That said, I do agree with many of those policies regarding
verifiability, notability and original research. But in my view they
are pushing it. If it can be proven that something exists and is not
the domain of interest of just one or a few persons, that should be
enough to warrant an article. If everything you do is constantly
being undermined by others, well, for me much of the fun is gone. I'm
already tired of it. All that keeps me there is the Constructed
Language Portal, which was largely my work and which I'm still quite
fond of. If someone else would do the job for me, I'd be more than
happy and withdraw from WP.EN altogether.

Jan

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     — G'Kar quoting G'Quon, Babylon 5

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