User:Diamond Blizzard/Why the Wikipedia Reference Desks Should Stay

Some people feel that there are severe problems with the Wikipedia Reference Desks. There have been concerns such as poor behavior from regulars, not being able to give good answers, the desks not fitting with Wikipedia's purpose, and trolling attacks. There was the Village pump (proposals)/Indefinitely semiprotecting the refdesk which, in addition to the titular proposal, had others such as shutting down the refdesks altogether.

I believe that these reasons, while understandable, are not enough for me to oppose the Reference Desks. I think that the reference desks are actually often doing a good service, so they should be kept. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Mathematics/2019_February_4 not only did I get a good, well-researched answer, the other person who asked a question there did too. Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities&oldid=885390827 there are also some other people, besides me, who had genuinely helpful editors giving detailed answers to their questions. (This isn't a random sample, but there is so much content in the history of the refdesks that I can't put all of it here. Maybe later I will try to get a random sample to analyze).

There are many other Q&A sites on the Internet. I even agree that some may be of better quality than the Refdesks are. However, all of the ones I found require registration. Registration can be a safety issue because you have to keep your password safe, but the best safety requires a separate password for each site, which can be difficult to memorize. I have a few accounts elsewhere, but if I add even a few more, it will be difficult for me to remember all of the passwords and not mix them up, and others can also have memorization problems. Having to log in to make any change, even a small one, is also a big hassle. (This is why I oppose semiprotecting the refdesks, and any attempt to make registering an account mandatory for editing Wikipedia).

Furthermore, your question is less likely to simply not be answered on the Refdesks than elsewhere. Other websites, such as StackExchange and Reddit, often use a system in which older questions can soon move off the front, where people can see them, before they get a chance to be answered. While archiving exists on Wikipedia, in my experience it takes longer for a question to go out of view here than on those other sites (and yes I have accounts on those sites).

As for trolling, it is usually easy to deal with the trolls. Severe cases do happen, but they are never permanent. Trolls can also move elsewhere if the Refdesks are semiprotected or shut down completely. Diamond Blizzard  talk  19:41, 27 February 2019 (UTC)