User:Jh12/School articles and deletion
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This is an essay containing my thoughts about deleting school articles. --Jh12 (talk) 20:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Speedy deletion
School articles should never be speedy deleted. The speedy deletion process implies that the article would not survive an
As a WikiProject Schools member with a possible
Burden on the editor
It is difficult for an editor to create a good school article. In my research for
How many editors are able to go through this much effort for a U.S. school article? Now consider the articles for foreign schools, where access to such comprehensive archives may not even be possible. Take
Don't worry about Jimmy Wales
I'm not sure why Jimmy Wales has changed his attitude over the years. He once wrote "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." — Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
He wrote on Nov 7, 2003:
Let me make my point more clear: arguments about what we ought to if someone really starts to abuse wikipedia with thousands and thousands of trivial articles do not prove that we ought to delete any and every article that's too trivial today.
Put another way: if someone wants to write an article about their high school, we should relax and accomodate them, even if we wish they wouldn't do it. And that's true *even if* we should react differently if someone comes in and starts mass-adding articles on every high school in the world.
Let me make this more concrete. Let's say I start writing an article about my high school, Randolph School, of Huntsville, Alabama. I could write a decent 2 page article about it, citing information that can easily be verified by anyone who visits their website.
Then I think people should relax and accomodate me. It isn't hurting anything. It'd be a good article, I'm a good contributor, and so cutting me some slack is a very reasonable thing to do.
That's true *even if* we'd react differently to a ton of one-liners mass-imported saying nothing more than "Randolph School is a private school in Huntsville, Alabama, US" and "Indian Springs is a private school in Birmingham, Alabama, US" and on and on and on, ad nauseum.
The argument "what if someone did this particular thing 100,000 times" is not a valid argument against letting them do it a few times.
Yet, when I queried him on Dec. 23, 2008 he wrote "No, I would not agree with what I wrote in 2003. I had no idea what an eternal nightmare the schools issue would become.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)" Similarly, he would actually chose to delete some featured articles. Which version of Jimbo is to be used as guidance? My answer is that at the end of the day, Jimmy Wales is still only one user and he does not create consensus by himself. Although I greatly value his thoughts, it is the Wikipedia community that really makes this site what it is and it is the community's consensus that provides the best guidance.