[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:03 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/1/21 Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>:

<snip>

>> silent mass deletions are now an acceptable admin tactic.
>
> That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first. Perhaps a
> {{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
> OR THE ARTICLE DIES.

I'm not going to say much in this thread (I'm in the group that's been
asked to arbitrate this dispute), but I would urge a list be made of
where discussion is taking place on-wiki about process related to
this, and for people to help form a workable consensus there.

I would add that one part of the problem is bagging and tagging these
BLPs when they are created. If someone can demonstrate that BLPs
currently being created are getting enough attention, that would
ensure that things are reasonably under control from that end (the
BLPs that have been unsourced for years are technically a backlog -
the ones being created now should also be dealt with, otherwise the
problem grows again). The lessons from the past are that if you turn
away for even a few months from situations like this, the creation of
new articles returns you to square one.

Overall, a discussion on whether Wikipedia has the volunteer resources
to maintain articles of a certain type to a minimum standard, is
needed. Plus whether technical measures (flagged revisions) will help
that or not. Another part of the problem is that some of these
discussions have been had before, and some people are assuming
everyone knows the stats and figures involved. Pointers to summaries
are helpful. There is one here:

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080415/the-biographies-of-living-people-problem/

We also have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_essays_on_BLP

Carcharoth