Wikipedia:Don't hope the house will build itself

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A man tries to build a house. He has a few of his neighbors come to help. They are working with much enthusiasm, but without a plan or any organization.
Soon, a building inspector comes by. "Those stairs look dangerous," the inspector says, pulling out a tape measure, "and by these measurements, they are not wide enough."
The builder replies, "Someone else will fix them eventually."
The inspector moves on. "This wall isn't supported enough!" the inspector says with worry.
"It doesn't matter," the builder replies, "We're not leaning on it."
"And look!" the inspector cries, "There is no ceiling! The owners of this house will be angry indeed when they get rained on!"
"They won't be!" the builder retorts angrily, "It will obviously never rain!"
The inspector ignores him. "This house is no good, builder. it must be torn down." Instead of fixing the problems, the builder then spends the next day setting up an angry protest to prevent the house from being demolished.

There are times when you will walk in on a void in Wikipedia's coverage. A topic nobody has thought of yet, or perhaps one which you know about but few people do. Perhaps you followed a red link, and heard the call of a large edit box on your screen.

Sometimes articles, like buildings, were ill-planned or incorrectly built and should be destroyed unless they are repaired.

This is a story lived hundreds of times every day; of an editor writing a few heartfelt lines on a topic they know about—only to have their work put up

editors who patrol new pages
are only looking out for our common objective: the encyclopedia.

Like building construction, there are

important rules
to follow. And, also like building construction, you can't expect the inspectors to fix things for you, or to close their eyes and hope the problem will fix itself someday.

The topic of your article is notable?

plenty out there
, add them to the article yourself.

So; how to avoid the frustration? It's actually quite simple:

  • Learn the
    building code
    , so you know which mistakes to avoid;
  • make sure you
    materials
    before you start; and
  • if there is a problem, don't spend your efforts complaining about
    fix it
    !

Above all, don't expect people to just look past the problems just because you say they might be fixed eventually.

See also