Look at this gimp....
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtop ... f=8&t=9426What a shit way to start a thread. Because Wikipediocracy likes to protect cowards like Andy The Gimp, he never gets enough reminders as to what the purpose of the website actually is, and so he produces ill thought out and meandering garbage like that.
What a serious with critic would do in this situation, what I would have done, is outline the real problem. It took me five minutes to identify it - there is a policy based reason not to use miles and chains in this fashion, indeed someone on Wikipedia has already articulated it........
I refer you to Wikipedia's manual of style, under 'Technical language', especially "Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do". If you're unable to explain why this abstruse term must remain in the article, then it ought to be removed.
Euphiletos (talk) 12:54, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
The people he was talking to, simply ignored his policy based argument, and responded with their own justifications, which, while loosely related to general policy (consensus, verifiability), do not overcome his well made point, which trumps theirs because of its high degree of relevance in context.
That is the real issue here. The people who are being tendentious, defending a poorly supported WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, are indeed doing so because they are railway enthusiasts, but the more pressing problem is they are also Administrators.
Wikipedia's broken system of governance ensures that it is easy, very easy, for Administrators to exemplify the poorest standards of debate, especially if acting as a group who are claiming to be protecting the integrity of an article. And while I'm sure they would meticulously abide by WP:INVOLVED and not personally block the users who are mystefied by their stated content preference, the ease with which involved Administrators can find an uninvolved one who will simply assume the Admin is in the right, is a factor.
That, Dear Andy, is how Wikipedia ended up with stuff in articles that your tiny little brain doesn't understand. "Why don't you just click the link?" is also an argument that appears with some frequency in this issue. It is invalid, people are not required to click the links before being able to understand the basics of an article, but because Wikipediocracy provides a natural home for the sort of lazy asshole who thinks this is a well made point, you'd be more likely to see it put forward as a reply to Andy's shit thread, not included in his OP as further context as to what really prevents Wikipedia being an accessible, useful, encyclopedia.
On a final related point, serious crtics would never forget that Wikipedia is, theoretically at least, both for general and specialist readers. So, while you should not use technical language in the opening line, if the units used have relevance to the field for specialsts, as these do (easy to verify, if the discussion didn't help Andy figure it out), they should appear somewhere in the article.
Or, as one Wikiepdia editor put it.....
The lead is not meant to be detailed, so giving an exact measurement there is not necessary. In the body however the specificity is useful, but adding a note (because the man on the street speaks in fractional miles) is helpful for comprehension. -mattbuck (Talk) 20:02, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Will that user's perfectly sound interpretation of policy be respected by these trainspotting Administrators who are edit warring to retain their preferences? The answer is no, for two reasons. One, that user is not an Administrator. And two, the user spends little time on en.wiki, devoting most of their attention to Commons (where you will see, ironically, that they are a trainspotter).
So as a final humiliation for Andy, it is clear from a few minutes reading the source code of the Matrix, that this failing of Wikipedia isn't easily explained by simply casting trainspotters as the problem users, the people who don't understand what Wikipedia is for. Critics are meant to be able to read the source code.
Andy isn't a serious critic. He's a basic bitch. He's my bitch.
Zoloft is still missing. Quite right too. Fancy defending this garbage. For shame.