On 9/9/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
If the article is being edited and re-edited, constantly being improved enough to get certified by another user or two, I don't see any problem at all with this type of gaming the system. In fact, I think we should strongly encourage that type of gaming the system.
Well, I mean for articles which clearly ARE non-notable; i.e. some vanity band page and the bassist keeps adding new information to the article in an appeal to keep it alive. But needing another user (and not a sockpuppet) to "certify" any requests would probably stop 90% of that sort of "gaming".
Stubs expand only if they exist. This rhetorical "someone else" seldom writes fully referenced and cited articles in one fell swoop.
Well, true. But stubs don't expand by themselves, either. (Of course, I have to admit, I enjoy writing new, uncreated articles in on fell swoop, in part because then I can add it to the "Did you know?" list, and having things on the front page is very satisfying to me; not so much for the vanity aspects, but it's one of the easiest ways to get some attention for your articles from other editors).
The problem is that article authors have an investment in what they write. VfD voters usually have no investment whatsoever; when I've called for the most basic of research of notability before voting "delete", a three second Google search, I've been accused of making personal attacks against delete voters. VfD will always remain toxic, especially to new users who aren't accustomed to it's climate, if we cannot insist that delete voters put in at least some tiny effort into research before voting.
Sure, but I don't know how you'd get *voters* to do that without doing something like limiting the voting pool significantly. One alternative approach is to make *nominators* work a bit harder -- i.e., not allowing nominations which don't reflect some sort of attempt was made to really assess the article or not.
Sometimes (maybe most of the time), I think this is the case: a nominator comes in, says, "Look, this biography looks like a vanity article to me. This guy's name gets no google hits. He apparently used to own a baseball team. Big whoop. Let's axe it." Most voters wouldn't even have to verify this -- if only a few voters DID check up on the nominator, one of them would likely vote "Strong Keep -- what you've written is just plain wrong, I ran his name through Google and found out he's president of the United States!" which would hopefully influence other voters as well.
(Of course, I haven't been taking part at all in the deletion reform, so I shouldn't be so eager to be an armchair philosopher about it.)
FF