User:WCFrancis/A Modest Proposal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

D R A F T


Contents

[edit] Facts

Facts are never subject to consensus.[1]

[edit] Proposal - Incomplete First draft in progress

[edit] Background

As I type this (17:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)), the Main Page says "we are currently working on 901,479 articles." [[Special:Statistics|-->] says 901,547 articles, so 68 additional articles were started between the time the Main Page was last edited. It also states: "That number excludes redirects, discussion pages, image description pages, user profile pages, templates, help pages, portals, articles without links to other articles, and pages about Wikipedia. Including these, we have 3,014,260 pages." This page also states "We have 754,971 registered users, of which 768 (or 0.10%) are administrators." That amounts to around one administrator for every thousand registered users. (These numbers are changing all the time, of course.) No numbers are given for unregistered users or edits.

Recent controversy regarding false information in the biographical article on John Seigenthaler Sr. is discussed

  • here and in an article regarding Brian Chase (Wikipedia hoaxer). There was much coverage by news media. There have been other victims of potentially libelous entries; some have spoken out regarding this.

Wikipedia changed policies around December 5, 2005, to only allow registered users to create new articles or change article names. In my opinion this is totally inadequate for quality control on something that claims to be an encyclopedia.

(note: checking on AfD stats.) wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 18:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The only true control over users who edit articles is the ability to block registered users if they are vandalizing or adding hoax information to existing articles.

[edit] Notes

  1. The proposal has nothing to do with eating babies. If you don't get this literary reference, please check A Modest Proposal. wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 16:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  2. Is wikipedia worth saving? Convince me and I might continue with this. wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 05:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Still wondering. Remarks from Jimbo Wales make me continue to doubt. wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 17:59, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  4. Wikipedia could be sued on a daily basis with the right attorney team (and very deep pockets) for allowing libelous material to be distributed with no effort to limit or control it.wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 18:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  5. Wikiscanner useful in rooting out improper edits, but will do nothing to prevent them. wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 19:19, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
  6. Holy excrement - a separate article for The Simpsons opening sequence. Is Wikipedia doomed to crush itself with its own bloat? wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 19:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)