[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Emily Monroe]

Can anybody explain what PWD is?

Thanks,
Emily
On Jan 26, 2010, at 1:24 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>>
>>
>> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
>> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
>> think they came up with any at all.
>>
>> Are there any?
>>
>> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
>> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)
>>
>
> Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I
> want to carry that reasoning forward. I think there are two compelling
> reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a
> wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an
> encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that
> basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it.
> (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates
> intractable problems like this one.
>
> Because of the terrific success we've had with making all /other/
> kinds of content edits subject to the Wiki model (and our almost
> religious faith in the dispute resolution process), I think the burden
> ought to be on everyone else to explain why pure wiki deletion
> /wouldn't/ work. It doesn't introduce any new problems that we don't
> already have extensive experience and process in place to solve, since
> deletion would be treated as any other kind of edit (and so edit wars
> over deletion could be treated like any other edit war) -- it
> increases transparency and makes it easier to restore content in cases
> like this one, so that we ALSO wouldn't feel so bad about temporarily
> deleting marginal BLPs until they can be improved (and by anyone, not
> just admins) -- and it massively simplifies deletion process in the
> case of 99% of deletions which are absolutely uncontroversial.
>
> The only software changes we would need would be that blanked pages
> should show up as redlinks and should not be indexed by search engines
> or show up when someone hits Random Page. That's pretty much it. The
> software changes are easy and minimal, but the cultural change would
> be massive.
>
> I appreciate everyone's trepidation over this, really-- big changes
> are scary. But I really wonder how many of these catastrophic snafu's
> we'll have to go through before people get fed up with the problems
> that inevitably result from this deletion system and look for some
> kind of major overhaul. That's not pie in the sky -- it's in order. We
> ought to get started now.
>
> - causa sui
>
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