G'day Brian,
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 01:27:09AM -0700, Pete
Bartlett wrote:
>Er. [[WP:OWN]]? Images are an exception, as
nearly all images
are the
>work of one or two people at most. Articles
are not. Articles
can,
>and often are, watched. Wikipedians ought to
pay attention to
their
>watchlists if they wish to express opinions
about their
contributions.>
The vast majority of AfDed articles are very new
and have just
one author.
Indeed and it is likely that they are put off by having their gems
described as "cruft". However, I think people are put off more by
otherthings:-
I would make a distinction between "gems" and "articles that should not be
deleted". Good articles are rarely put on AfD (an exception is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/TransLink_%28S…,
which I started myself and wholly acknowledge received a *lot* of effort; but which is not
an encyclopaedia article). Articles that need work and could one day become real gems,
however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a pity.
1. General jargon of which cruft is just one.
Absolutely true.
2. Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes
of starting the
article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their
way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take
time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad,
theymake a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the
editor on
his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad
mannersand certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so
quickly. There
is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy
deletea few articles.
Indeed. What's the rush?
3. Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to
me", "seems
non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done
enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few
AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is
showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion
has its
responsabilities.
For many people, nominating an article is no different from "voting" to delete.
I've been sporadically trying, along with several others, over the past few months to
lift the quality of AfD nominations (the AfD nomination I link above, I would consider a
minimum standard). An article nominated for deletion on the grounds of non-notability,
for example, should include the reasons the nominator believes the article is non-notable,
any steps he took to verify this (check history for number of editors, check "what
links here", check Google, and so on), relevant policy if any, and so on. What it
should *not* include is any bolded recommendation
("'''Delete''' NN"), insults, or the word
"merge".
4. Nominations which are basically "I do not
understand this, so lets
see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and
keep stuff, noit delete it.
Absolutely.
I could go on. AfD depresses me for several reasons
and the fact that
most of the articles are so bad they deserve deletion is only one of
them. It is the others that could be improved that leads to so much
trouble.
Fortunately there are very few of these, but those that crop up could be handled much
better.
>> It is
amazing how often AfD debates
>> do not benefit from the opinion of the original creator.
They may not have set their preferences so articles they edit
automatically go on their watchlist. They probably do not yet
understandthe watchlist system. Welcome messages should advise
newbies on the
watchlist.
Uhh, *no*. Welcome messages are long enough as it is --- I often wonder how many newbies
take the time to read the current crop of welcome messages, let alone an expanded
version.
Cheers,
--
MarkGallagher