Matt Brown wrote: He wouldn't happen to live in TRENTON, NEW JERSEY would he? :) -- This email message contains boring stuff of no interest to anyone (possibly even including the intended recipient(s)). If you are a nosey parker, and are reading my emails CUT IT OUT IMMEDIATELY! I'd threaten you with assorted legal lead-pipe clauses if I thought there was any point to it. If you have the poor judgement to be running some version of Windows, and catch a virus from this email, it serves you right.

I was always in favour of deletion of pages, and disagreed with those who wanted to keep every irrelevant, impossible-to-make-encyclopædic article. But rampant deletionism has hit ridiculous levels on WP now. I daren't even go near the article deletion page because of what goes on there. Now the template deletion page has become ridiculous. While it is understandable to delete most single use templates, it seems to have hit a stage where perfectly valid, obviously usable templates are been dumped. It shouldn't be too hard to tell the difference between a once-off template that is unlikely to have a use on more than one page, and one that obviously has widespread uses now and in the future, but simply hasn't been put into all the articles they may be used for 'yet'. I created one as part of a wholescale rewriting of articles on the government of Northern Ireland. Because of problems saving stuff due to those goddamned error messages I worked on two articles on my desktop. I put the template into one (it already was in the first one to be written) to find that it had already been proposed for deletion. Anyone with elementary cop-on would have realised from its contents that it was going to be used in up to 10 articles. Single use templates with massive amount of codes are being deleted and substituted even though firstly that makes them are easier to vandalise, secondly they make an article difficult to edit if there are a lot of codes all over the place, and thirdly it then means that they cannot be used elsewhere even though their contents make them ideal for multiple use as a template. We could no with a page of ''useful templates'' where existing templates could be picked out for use in new articles. It seems to be the same 'greek chorus' of deleters who do the blanket nominating and do blanket voting to delete everything in sight. They seem all too often to drown out protests from others that their deletionitis is out of control. Once it was the case that only crap was deleted. Now it seems that crap survives while the delete gang propose good articles, good templates and good infoboxes for deletion. Wikipedia needs to do something to reign in the delete brigade. Deletion used to be used to keep up standards. Now it is bringing down standards, doing damage to content and design and seriously pissing off users who are doing serious work and have to spend their days fighting off attempts to delete things. The final twist is that many of the most fanatical deleters seem to be down damn all writing themselves, simply proposing large numbers of things for deletion all the time, irrespective of quality, usefulness or benefit to Wikipedia. Thom ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: Unfortunately the greek chorus of deleters all group around chanting ''delete, delete delete. Begone you nasty template'' like something out of Lord of the Flies. And they don't like anyone saying 'Hold on a minute'. You get the image they all turn around and mutter in unison: did someone dare speak on our page? How dare he? He isn't one of us.' lol I'm beginning to think they do it that way in the hope people who might disagree with them won't notice. When recently a whole blitz of Irish templates were put up for deletion by the one user (He seemed to be having one of his 'and today I will wipe out Ireland' moods) I dared to contact Irish users to suggest they look at the proposed deletions. One of the deleters went beserck. How DARE I "spam" users to tell them about the deletions. She went on and on and on and on in the "How dare I" rant in message after message. Obviously users are meant to have psychic powers to know that she and her colleagues had now picked Irish templates for wipeout. And for daring to disrupt the smooth running of deletions by bring aliens who might vote 'no' onto the page. (She made snide comments about how they were all doing my bidding when they dared disagree with her.) she promptly nominated a another template I had created on the page even though WP was perfectly happy with it and using it all over!!! The Deletioners and their antics makes Lord of the Flies sound positively heavenly. Thom ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Model Search 2005 - Find the next catwalk superstars - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/model-search/

Maybe the people who are adept at editing are not as adept at playing tag. The multiplicity of tags, templates and incomprehensible shortcuts are imposible to remember. In many case plain language would be more meaningful than shortcuts designed to save writers a few seconds. The process that Tom describes in relation to the Irish articles appears to be organized vandalism by the wiki's Hell's Angels. Ec MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

--- Matt Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote: I agree. The problem is that one fanatical deletionist can propose vast numbers of deletions. The same group of like minded individuals can all en block vote for deletion. Then when someone comes along and says 'hey, this is ridiculous in this case' the chorus jumps up and says 'that's policy. We've deleted 'x' number on these grounds. If you oppose this you are opposing policy'. Others then think that if it is policy it must have been defined and discussed somewhere, so they, even though it seems illogical, don't stand up to the block, meaning more and more articles or templates get deleted in effect by an ad hoc policy set by a few likeminded individuals who are always on the page voting. And because they don't even notify people in advance, the first thing a user knows about a deletion is when a perfectly good template has disappeared, and they are left muttered 'what the hell???'. Thom ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

--- Travis Mason-Bushman <travis(a)gpsports-eng.com> wrote: No. Not at all. There is no policy. There is a group of people who are engaging in mass deletions, not of stuff worthy of deletion, but of often high quality stuff on the basis of made up grounds which they justify on the basis of past deletions which they themselves masterminds. They usually do it without even informing the creators of the work of their proposed deletion and go ballistic if their pseudo-policy is questioned. (Many of them do not then even bother to fix the problems deletions cause but leave it to others to inform people of proposed deletions, to try to introduce some sanity into the manner in which deletions are handled, and to repair broken articles after the stuff has been deleted. Thom ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

That argument works both ways; when I looked over AfD recently I saw a number of voters whose predictable vote was "Keep. We always keep this kind of article". And keep in mind, given AfD policy's inherent conservativsm (i.e. bias towards keeping articles), you need 3 "deletionists" for every "inclusionist" for this to happen, so this strategy works far better for "inclusionists" than for "deletionists". And finally, again, please ratchet down the rhetoric; use of adjectives like "fanatical" (or frankly, even nouns like "inclusionist") cheapens the level of discourse. Jay. Jay. Jay.