Talk:Overspending

Primary source is outdated

The expansion of this article relies heavily on MiKyeong Bae, Sherman Hanna, Suzanne Lindamood (1993), "Patterns of Overspending in U.S. Households" (PDF), Financial Counseling and Planning{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), reporting on 1990 data. As such, it is 18 years out of date, and has little informative value to a contemporary reader. Thus, the {{Out of date}} tag has been added. Discuss. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 05:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• Nonsense. 18 years is nothing - we may use sources that are 1800 years old because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and its articles have a historical perspective rather than being topical news items. But I shall add a source that is 2 hours old to demonstrate the issue is still a contemporary one. Colonel Warden (talk) 05:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense, yourself. The point is that the article attempts to describe the "distribution" of overspending, but that data is old. Certainly old sources are valid if one is talking about a historical topic, or making a historical comparison, but that's not what we have here. You've attempted to expand this stub by summarizing points from a 1993 report based on 1990 data, and that's {{out of date}}. What harm is there in flagging the article in hopes that more recent data can be found? Why are you so seemingly opposed to any kind of maintenance tag to help improve the article, especially if you feel so strongly that it merits encyclopedic treatment? --ZimZalaBim ^talk 19:08, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of improvements to the article are best done here, on the talk page. Tags do not in themselves improve the article - they spoil it by disfigurement. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:04, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

You ignore the important role of templates in (a) notifying the casual reader that there might be issues or concerns related to the article, (b) prompting a more active reader to perhaps take steps to improve the article, and (c) automatically placing the article in relevant categories, alerting editors who patrol said categories that an article needs attention on a particular issue. I find your aesthetic argument unpersuasive and unsupported by policy. Further, you have not responded to my reasoning as to why the article would benefit from updated statistical data. As such, I'm putting the {{out of date}} tag back. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 01:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Economic statistics always tend to be somewhat in arrears due to inevitable delays in compilation and publication. And new statistics appear all the time so the article might be constantly updated, like a ticker. Most articles are like this and tags should be reserved for exceptional problems. The current statistics are adequate for our purpose and do not warrant tagging in this way. Colonel Warden (talk) 16:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

I am responding to a request for a third opinion.

After reviewing the dispute and the article I concluded that the article does indeed need improvement as is specifically encouraged by the {{Out of date}} template: "The factual accuracy of this article may be compromised due to out-of-date information. You can improve the article by updating it."

I also note that user Colonel Warden should perhaps review the Wikipedia:Ownership of articles policy, which, in a nutshell, says "You do not own articles. If you create or edit an article, know that others will edit it, and within reason you should not prevent them from doing so." — Athaenara ✉ 17:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Even with a history section...

Even with a history section added, the citation used to support the majority of the claims in the article remains out of date, and the {{out of date}} template remains appropriate. I've added it back. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 23:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Really, having a small-scale edit war over a tag is petty. The point of a tag is to alert editors so that they may fix the article. That's been done. Next time, rather than adding and re-adding the tag, just make a note that you'll check back in a week to see if the problems have been fixed. However, I agree that this article needs serious work. - brenneman 01:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with brenneman in that you shouldn't fight over maintenance tags. I disagree in that the job of the tag is done. The tag should remain as it alerts new editors that find the page while looking for stuff, and it also automagically adds the article to Category:Articles with obsolete information, where editors interested on getting articles up to date can find it. A maintenance tag does not diminish the value of an article. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)