On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com>
wrote:
2. At the close of all VfD debates, the
discussion is deleted. If
there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact
that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the
history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be
resurrected by some admin.
Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice,
perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing
history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought
to be able to go back and look at the debate.
Indeed - with the number of debates that close with two or three
votes - many of which are deeply flawed closes - I would be wary of
making it so fewer people can find bad debates.
I think another important thing here would be to do away with voting
on deletion. We supposedly did that when we called it AfD instead of
VfD, except we kept the vote structure. Why don't we just stop with
the bulleted list of boldfaced keep and delete votes and have it be
an actual discussion. You know. "This guy doesn't seem like a very
important figure in his field - I can't find any publications," says
one person. "I just found one in Journal X." "Oh, yeah, but he's
third author, and that's his only publication - he's probably a grad
student." And people who just want to chime in with "me too" delete
votes, well, don't have to.
Then closing admins can just read the discussion, read the arguments,
look at past precedent and make a call, remembering things like "when
in doubt, don't delete."
Best,
Phil