On Dec 11, 2005, at 7:27 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
The deletion problem will still be there, because the heart of the deletion problem is that people have a fundamentally different idea of what should be in the encyclopedia. And that wont go away.
This wasn't always the case, though - at least not on the level we're seeing now. And as evidence, note that it's still not a problem on articles. Why? Because "cite sources," "verifiability," and "NPOV" are principles. And so our article editing still gets done. It's our administrative facilities that are grinding to a halt.
We don't need massive checklists and rules for article editing. Just for deletion. Because they "bring order to the system." Except they bring a bad order - an order marked by playing to win, terrible decisions, hostility, and suspicion. And by ignoring policy and principles in favor of process. We would be better off without them - we'd be better off with admins capriciously and arbitrarily deleting what they want and undeleting what they disagree with. Because that, at least, would be a decision making process instead of a game.
We settled what should be in the encyclopedia ages ago. [[WP:NOT]] is an ancient page. Our deletion policy is ancient. We've had that settled. But then we got rules. And this belief that the rules trump our long-established policies.
It's very, very bad.
-Phil