On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
So tell me, what failure rate would you find acceptable? You apparently are not disturbed at a >90% failure rate to use external links; would you be disturbed at 95%? At 99%? Before trying to put me onto a slippery slope, explain where on the original topic you would finally agree, 'yes, this is too bad a failure rate, something must be done'. Until you present some principled reason or specifics, you read like a blind defense of the status quo. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net ------------------------ ------------------------ This rate, without additional context, is meaningless. As Rob pointed out, there are many different reasons for moving references/links/citations from an article to a talk page, and unless you have more information about why people are moving these to talk pages, the rate at which they move back doesn't really mean anything. By labeling this rate a 'failure rate' you are strongly implying that success would be keeping the link in the article. I don't believe this is right - I believe that 'success' is doing what's best for the article. Even if 99% of things that were moved to talk pages were not subsequently returned, I would not find this at all disturbing without evidence that a large portion of the removed things should not have been removed. Frankly, I would be surprised if 10% of things that I personally moved to talk pages were moved back in to the article space. Generally if I move something to a talk page it's because it's not fit to be in the article and I don't see an easy way to make it fit to be in the article but I think that they may point the way to a resource that should be in the article. Your observed facts are interesting, but they do not (sufficiently) support your conclusion. ---- Kevin Gorman User:Kgorman-ucb _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l