On 10/9/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
One of the underlying principles is deference to the community on content issues, and to a defined system of appeal upwards from that. The Office does not historically enjoy a role of roving court of appeals. In the past, in cases like this, Office members, including Jimbo, have started AfDs and made it very clear that they are asking the community to rethink inclusion on this one. The switch from that to nuking is, I will repeat, a significant turn, and a very bad one.
Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement. Perhaps I shouldn't find it shocking that some [[troll (Internet)|opportunist]] found it useful take advantage of Danny's high profile in order to play out a little bit of performance art.
It is unfortunate and uncharacteristic to see you equate the elevation of experienced judgement and consideration over strict policy conformance with a lack of deference to the community.
It appears to me that in this thread we have seen numerous complaints about HOW this was carried out masquerade as complaints about what was done... The reality is that the claim that the deletion was clearly inappropriate can not be supported by fact: no answer was given to the point that we lack articles on the numerous similar devices which have an equal claim of notoriety, nor has our oh so violated community bothered to even write a section on this oh so notable product in the article it was later redirected to.
I wouldn't expect everyone to agree with exactly how such situations should be handled: if it were easy it would be a non-issue. Like most other things: This is a matter where rational people can disagree about the exact nature of its resolution.
However, I would expect that our long term participants could stand together, .. that they could see the clearly good intentions of each other, and not allow petty difference of opinion get in the way of friendship, respect, and our over arching goals (which I think we *all* agree does not include Wikipedia being turned into a free advertising forum).
I think this thread is just further demonstration that the English Wikipedia is no longer a community in any sense beyond a collection of people which are nearly located in 'space'... and the resemblance to an actual community appears to becoming more superficial as time passes.
In recent times English Wikipedia appears more like a ragtag band of castaways mutually stranded on an island... where distrust and petty bickering are at least as common as friendship and cooperation.
Perhaps our mere colocation on the project like the castaways in my example makes us, by definition, a community. But if that is really the destiny of the English Wikipedia community then it is a failure by my standards... and I hope such an end would be a failure by all of your standards as well.