User talk:ExplorerCDT

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy! &mdash;LrdChaos 14:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
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Rutgers University VFD

 * I think you need to reconsider your Votes for deletion nomination of the Rutgers University Wikiquote article Votes_for_deletion, first re-reading the Wikiquote article and realizing that LrdChaos jumped the gun by VfDing a page only minutes after it was started with no consideration that a.) it was a work in progress, and b.) it will be more than it appears, and c.) sometimes things interfere with the quick completion of one's work. &mdash;ExplorerCDT 18:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

You don't need to make your arguments to me personally; I watch VfD very carefully. I apologize if we seem a bit hasty to delete here. Clearly Rutgers University is not in the same class as most VfD'd articles, as the institution is clearly notable and has potential as a solid quote article. But we have a lot of experience with new editors creating articles with infrastructure but no acceptable quotes, and never returning. This would not be a problem if we had a million editors like Wikipedia, but we typically have only a few dozen active ones at any given time — at best! — to review thousands of articles, so the mood among the active editors is generally to delete problem stubs and wait for someone who demonstrates their commitment to the subject by collecting the quotes before they create the article.

Of course, there are many opportunities for "jumping the gun" in this practice, and "Rutgers" may be one of them. The problem here is one that isn't made clear in WQ:WQ, but is in What Wikiquote is not — that Wikiquote, just like any professional quote compendium, does not collect entire source copies of anything, copyrighted or no. That is Wikisource's realm. You seem to think that just because something is old, it is automatically no longer copyrighted. Consider that the song "Happy Birthday to You", whose melody was written in 1935, but has rights that don't expire until 2030. The only thing currently clear in U.S. copyright law (which we must follow) is that works created before 1923 are no longer copyrighted. Wikimedia Foundation projects cannot take a chance on unsourced claims that material is in the public domain. (French Wikiquote was shut down over a single similar copyright issue, and has yet to be restored.) But even if every single song was not copyrighted, their entire lyrics should be added to Wikisource, not Wikiquote.

The quickest way to get editors to change their votes here would be to trim the current complete lyrics of the listed songs down to a few pithy lines each. This would remove the complete-work issue. There would remain the need to source the material, and the argument of relevance. The current mood seems to be that it's not enough for something to be somehow connected to the subject; it must be fundamentally about the subject. Thus, the school song would be relevant, but songs merely written by alumni, or songs that might be used elsewhere, would not. You will probably be asked to prove each song's relevance. We just finished reviewing another college article, University of Texas at Austin, that had only two quotes tangentially related to UTA. (I highly recommend that you read this VfD. The article creator decided to take a stand instead of taking the simple advice I gave to source the famous phrase "Hook 'em horns", which would have created an unassailable stub, after which there would be only content issues. I can't speak for the other participants, but that 5-minute effort would have changed my vote.) I suspect the quick nomination and voting on "Rutgers" was to prevent a sudden peak in collegiate promotion (rather than concise quoting) that it and a few related articles seemed to be leading to.

Regardless of these problems, there are two things to keep in mind. First, even the deletionists here welcome interesting, sourced quotes fundamentally about a notable subject. I'll give you the same advice I did unsuccessfully for the "UTA" creator: add those quotes (which surely must abound), and the deletes will go away without prompting. Once the article passes VfD, you've got plenty of time to work out content issues. Second, even if the article is deleted, it can be recreated when such material is established upon creation. Any recreated article about a clearly notable subject will be given at least two weeks (and often much more) to justify itself. But it's best to use the next 11 days to scare up some uncontestable quotes (rather than flesh out song lyrics that will have to go to Wikisource anyway) to prevent this article's deletion.

I want you to realize that I am being so verbose because I want this article to meet Wikiquote standards. (I could probably save it myself in 5 minutes, but I've taken this time to convince you to do so, so Wikiquote will gain one more valuable contributor.) I am an inclusionist by nature, but a deletionist by practice simply because most creators of VfD'd article refuse to learn Wikiquote's purposes and practices or even to take shorthand advice (not like mine!) on how to get articles to meet standards. I can assure you that no VfD participant wants a potentially useful article like "Rutgers" to be deleted. You just need to give them a reason to change their votes, by addressing the issues in the article content. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)