[WikiEN-l] Re: VfD etiquette

On the Internet, one must be constantly aware that discussions that "feel" as if they are taking place in a club-like atmosphere of a few dozen people are, actually, completely open to the public. (The Pentagon does not need to log my USENET posts in any Total Information Awareness program; Google News, and Deja News before it have already done that!). In Votes for Deletion, conversations are sometimes conducted as if they were taking place behind a contributor's back, with the sillier items being openly sneered at and ridiculed. A lot of these remarks are actually witty, e.g. "Delete this before his vanity develops an event horizon" or "Delete. Delete fast. Delete ruthlessly. (this has nothing to do with the [actual content], but I can't stand it when people use 'principal' when they mean 'principle')" Unlike a closed-door executive session, these frank discussions are not only taking place in public, but the contributor has been all-but-invited to them by the placement of the VfD notice. Moreover, the contributor may not arrive until a number of remarks have accumulated or may not choose to announce his presence immediately. In the case of the "event horizon" remark, there was actually a nice symmetry, because the subject of the article had a weblog, _linked from the article,_ in which _he_ was making rude remarks about the people who were trying to get his article deleted. Although the edit submission page warns that contributions be "edited mercilessly," I do not believe that it is clear to a newcomer that the seemingly wide-open opportunity to add a page is coupled with the possibility that the page will be deleted. (This has recently been addressed by a paragraph on "notability" on the Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Keep_in_mind) page). I am sure that there are many people who semi-innocently think that an encyclopedia page with a friend's bio is a pleasant and amusing gift—rather like having the International Star Registry name a star for them, only it's free. And I am sure there are many pushy self-promoters actively looking for fresh walls on which to paste their posters who do not see any "Post No Bills" notice. Trickiest of all, as with USENET, I sometimes see submissions that give me the impression being of well-meaning efforts from people whose social and/or communications skills are marginal. In reality, discussions on VfD _need_ to be frank and often critical, and having a page undergo the VfD process must be enormously ego-bruising, and there is probably not a lot that can be done to soften the process. But, particularly in VfD, discussants should maintain an awareness that the contributors whose items are being discussed are quite likely to be newbies, and are quite likely to be _present_. -- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net alternate: dpbsmith(a)alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/