[WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

[Steve Block]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/9/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> You put it very well. The matter is demonstrated best by the question of notability. I believe all professors can have their articles, in an AfD debate many will disagree with me. Consensus doesn't exist. What is the closing admin supposed to do? If he is to apply his personal opinion regarding the debate then I most certainly disagree. We will be better off with voting than giving admins more power.
> 
> You raise a very good point. I quite strongly believe that general
> principles should be sorted out in one forum, and AfD should be
> strictly about applying those principles to individual articles up for
> deletion. It's exactly the same issue as with RfA - I believe we
> should as a group decide how many edits are required for an admin, and
> set that in stone. Then for any individual candidate, we can simply
> check that he meets all the requirements.

Being an admin is about earning community trust.  Sadly there are people 
who vote at RFA who forget that means they are commenting on whether 
they trust the user and instead have this notion that there are 
standards to be achieved.  The default position at RFA should be trust 
is given until it is proven that there is a reason not to.  Too many 
people take the reverse view, with-holding trust until a number of hoops 
have been jumped through.  These kind of people place trust in their 
standards rather than the admins.  I saw someone oppose on the strength 
of a number of nominators a candidate had the other day, something 
somewhat inane.   People are hedging their bets too far, trying to 
ascertain whether their trust will be broken.  We should simply be 
stating our trust as it stands there and then.  We have a procedure in 
hand to deal with times when admins go round the bend. They're called 
"Tell Jimbo and keep out of the way until the dust settles". :)

The only thing that isn't undoable as an admin is image deletion.  The 
rest has become pretty much fixable.  Yes there are wheel warring 
dangers and the like, but once you take an eventualist approach, it all 
settles down a lot.

> 
> In the case of AfD, and more particularly, notability, we can vote on
> the proposal "all published academics are notable". Should it pass,
> then no "not notable" argument should ever be accepted on a published
> academic. And should it fail, then you would need to find another
> argument for keeping an individual article on an academic.

The problem with notability is that it's situated in muddy water, and 
all attempts to clean the water up are resisted.  It's an issue that's 
never going to be sorted out until the community settles the issue one 
way or another.  Either the three key policies are all we need, and the 
concept of notability is linked to them, or a concept of notability 
separate from the three is established. Sadly too many people seem to 
reject any defining of the concept, although I've never been clear why, 
since their argument seems to be that the three key policies are enough. 
  To me that makes the case that the concept should be linked to the 
three key policies, but it appears that proposal is doomed to fail.

But as it stands no not notable vote should ever be considered, since it 
presents no argument as to why the topic in question is not notable. 
I've been involved in discussions where an article asserts that it's 
topic is thought to be one of the first in its field, and this isn't 
deemed notable enough.  Someone even argued that it either was the first 
or it wasn't, something which to me contradicts NPOV policy.  We should 
never assert something is the first, we should assert it is claimed to 
be the first by such and such a source, or it is widely held to be the 
first.  But that's my take on it.

Steve block


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/334 - Release Date: 08/05/06