User talk:Moni3/Slacker

Grey areas

Tags and templates in Biographies of Living Persons (BLPs) should be resolved immediately. There are some editors who assert that anything that is unreferenced in a BLP should be removed, and while this certainly protects the accuracy of information relating to the subject of an article, removing information does not improve the content of Wikipedia. Searching for reliable sources and citing what is not referenced does.

The accuracy of medical articles should be maintained at all costs.

Similarly, current events articles are often so rapidly edited that information is inserted by dozens of editors in an hour. Not all of that is accurate. In both BLPs and current events articles, everything should be cited, and attention to these details should be stressed moreso than in general articles. In a current events article, however, news about it is widely available and there is simply no excuse not to cite information. Furthermore, these articles are so rapidly edited that removing uncited facts is a temporary solution. Enough editors watching the article and accessing reliable news sources should replace it with cited accurate information immediately.

I disagree with "Tags and templates in Biographies of Living Persons (BLPs) should be resolved immediately". I suspect the intent was that we should prioritise fixing major problems re biographical information about living people above other issues, but in some cases this would do the reverse. {{Orphan}}, {{sections}} and {{deadend}} should be low or medium priority even if in a BLP, whilst other tags might signify a more serious problem in an article which isn't a BLP. For example, BLP issues can come up in many articles that are not themselves BLPs, and {{hoax}} can appear anywhere but doesn't get backlogged because the community treats hoaxes as a priority. A potential solution in my view would be to replace some of these templates with less intrusive hidden categories. ϢereSpielChequers 16:22, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

If you disagree with that statement, do you think they should not be resolved? Or immediately? I'm not quite sure what you would place there instead. I'm confused. Moni3 (talk) 16:35, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Editing this section

How about

The accuracy of medical articles should be maintained at all costs.

to

Medical articles should be addressed as stringently as BLPs; potentially harmful, poorly sourced or inaccurate information should be removed immediately if better sourcing can't be located.

or something of that nature? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, change it to anything you think is appropriate, but it should match the theme of the rest of the essay, which is addressing effortless actions that do nothing to improve Wikipedia, and in fact harm it in many cases. --Moni3 (talk) 17:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Ping MastCell or Colin? I'm not in a state to be thinking about this particular matter today, or reading any more shit medical articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Fact is, without journal access, it's very hard to improve or check medical articles correctly while not relying on primary sources; best one without journal access can do is tag the article.[1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:47, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Gnomes and fairies

I love the sentiment expressed here. One little nitpick – do TagSlackers really label themselves gnomes? I've long considered myself a gnome but I'm sure the number of tags I've added could be counted on one hand, probably with most of the fingers cut off. But I've resolved plenty of {{citation needed}}s, {{copyedit}}s and {{dead link}}s and consider this core wikignome work. I guess all I'm saying is that the current wording sounds disparaging toward all contributors who call themselves gnomes or fairies, which I don't think is your intent.

By the way, check out User:Redthoreau/Nuggets_of_Wiki_Wisdom#Spoof_Banners_by_Jorge_Stolfi if you haven't already.

Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I did not intend, and I hope that the essay does not convey the meaning that all Wiki-gnomes or Wiki-fairies are slacktivists. My issue was with users who label themselves gnomes and fairies as an identity and are content to do the least amount of work possible because they assume an identity that comes with a label. If you have a way for me to express this more clearly, please suggest it.

Someone sent me the link to Jorge Stolfi's unused banners recently. Interesting stuff. --Moni3 (talk) 14:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

</longdelay> It was slack of me to complain without suggesting an improvement

How about this, which I think addresses my and WereSpielChequers' comments:

Wikipedia is famously a collaborative encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Nothing bars a user who is able to put a tag on an article from verifying or rewriting information himself. More concerning are editors who take pride in these article-flight actions, labeling themselves gnomes or fairies but spending no time investigating issues on the talk page, or asking questions about something they might find confusing or "off". There are article-flight copy-editors who find stray issues to settle then move on to the next article. That is different. A quick necessary copy edit for a misspelling or punctuation mistake is always welcome.

The changes are and --> but after fairies, plus WereSpielChequers' suggestion.

Meanwhile, here's a nice little example of a fly-by tagger who reformed.

Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 15:48, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Fly by comment

 Done

In defence of gnomishness, I would have thought "A quick necessary copy edit for a misspelling or punctuation mistake should be remedied" would be better phrased as "A quick necessary copy edit for a misspelling or punctuation mistake is always welcome". Personally I reckon to remove a lot more tags than I add, and if you differentiate between article tags and talkpage tags my record is even better. There are some tags such as expand that I would agree are pointless, but several of our maintenance processes do benefit from the tagging process - most clearly the categorisation drive. ϢereSpielChequers 13:16, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that fix. ϢereSpielChequers 22:23, 8 February 2011 (UTC)