It's not quite that bad: I find that about 80% of the articles that I
know enough to tell and think ought to be kept are kept, and another
10% are debatable. 90% is doing rather well, by WP standards. The ones
that get unfarly deleted are primarily the passable ones that nobody
care to defend or improve, and I see no way to have a process that
will protect in such cases. What we can do:
1/ is prohibit placing an article on Afd without notifying every
editpr who has been substantially involved-- and similarly on
sfd--everyone who has used a category or a template, or commented in a
discussion on them.This can be done by a bot.
2/ prohibit nominating an article unless one has made at least a
preliminary search, and found nothing usable--with a report of the
search and a link to the results.
3/ to find a way to indicate approval of short articles.
4/ to prohibit placing a second AfD within at least 6 months after a
keep decision and 3 after a no consensus, unless new negative
evidence can be demonstrated at Deletion Review, and then to require
individual notice to everyone present at the first AfD
5/ To require continuing the debate if fewer than 5 WPedians have
participated; after two additional periods, to automatically make the
closure no consensus
6/ to automatically restore history for examination on request to
anyone who asks, and to the entire community during an XfD*
7/ to prohibit speedies during the discussion except by the
concurrance of 2 admins. Everything that gets there should stay the
full time.This will apply to speedy keeps too--those stupid enough to
nominate them wil have their work visible.
8/ to track those repeatedly proposing deletions that are rejected,
and display the results.
9/ to track those making closures overthrown at Deletion Review, and
to post the results.
10/ to change the time period to 8 days to accomodate less frequent editors.
and involving other processes:
11. that in cases of proven copyvio only the copyvio material be
removed. If this leaves a page empty, that's a separate step.
12. The relevant parts of these provisions apply to speedies and prods as well,
*with exceptions of true cases of blatant copyright violation, BLP, or
other specific harm to individuals. The level of this should be the
level required for office actions or oversight.
I know a few of these have been rejected at various times.
This still leaves the basic problem of which KP complains--uninformed
editors and stupid actions. Those will always be with us.
DGG
On 6/6/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/6/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 0, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> scribbled:
This is quite common on AfD, though, that
articles are deleted because
they are too short or stubs. Truthfully, I doubt there are many other
editors who are deleting stuff to make sure they are too short then
nominating them for deletion, but there are organism and botany
articles that I have written or watch that are a single line of text.
Was there really no material to preserve after the copy vios were
deleted? Could folks who edit pulp fiction have been asked? Could it
have been left alone after the copy vios were deleted if you simply
didn't know enough about the topic?
KP
1) I didn't see anything - the H.P. Lovecraft was literally more comprehensive than
any non-copyvio stuff. (Besides, wouldn't the non-copyvio stuff be tainted as a
derivative work?)
2) I don't know anyone who works on pulp fiction. I know of a Fiction WikiProject,
but that's about it.
3) As a blank page or sub-stub at best, I guess. Doesn't sound appealing.
--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.
I see lots of ways around this, like popping a sentence in the
article, or asking the Lovecraft editors to look it over, or a dozen
other things that would have taken less collective Wikipedia work than
an AfD.
Another problem, imo, is that there ARE deletionists. That's why SCA
and Rock climbing get nominated in the first place, and many other
credible topics, simply because some editors are looking for something
to delete. Then we get nominations like
idon'tknowanythingaboutitsoitcan'tbenotable..
There is seldom a single nomination among the ones I look at that is
compliant with AfD procedures--they're nominated for the wrong
reasons, they're nominated by people who don't know anything about the
topic, they're nominated because they're stubs (stubs aren't
disallowed on Wikipedia), they're nominated because the nominator
thinks it might not be notalbe (it is Articles For Deletion).
It is frustrating, and it's degenerating and getting worse.
KP
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