On 2/26/07, Sage Ross sage.ross@yale.edu wrote:
On 2/25/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com writes:
On Sunday 25 February 2007 03:18, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at by people who have some understanding of the issue. As usual that got nowhaere.
This is already happening to a certain degree with the Deletion sorting project, but that effort is sporadic, probably due to the excessive number of articles being listed on Afd.
A simpler solution would be to require that any Afd that does not meet CSD must be listed on a deletion sorting list for 5 days before closure to ensure adequate exposure and time to resolve issues.
Yup. I was the one who made that proposal (unless someone else proposed the same thing independently). As I recall, the primary objection to it was that it was a bad idea because "the author of this proposal [me] is an extreme inclusionist"--true, but irrelevant. -- Kurt Weber kmw@armory.com
I remember the objections being more along the lines of asserting that such a change would allow the inmates to run the asylum - fancruft is kept in check by nonfans, and if deletion debates are dominated (by policy and not merely by practice) by fans/members of the relevant Wikiproject, that check would be removed.
If there is agreement about the value and neutrality of content among a wide enough group of fans for there to be a WikiProject, that seems like a good place to invoke "Wiki is not paper". The nonfans should keep such articles in perspective and correct for the systematic biases of fans, but if a WikiProject wants an article and is willing to invest the effort to correct for blatant POV and COI, why not let 'em have it?
This sounds like it would improve how subject matter experts view Wikipedia; their contributions would not be initially subjected to Afds conducted by random people, and project members could spot new contributors more readily and ensure they are treated more respectfully.
It would be nice to see Afd headers on the articles replaced with pretty subject specific alerts that indicate to the reader that the article is currently "under review".
If Afds at the project level are being called into question or are not timely, the review could then be relisted on each project up the hierarchy of projects in search of consensus before needing to end up on the top level Afd. This would probably result in more action on DRV, but at least the DRV would have more carefully considered comments on the review discussion.
While it is possible that some projects may end up like an asylum run by inmates, other parts of Wikipedia can and will take on the added responsibility and use it appropriately.
-- John (aka Jayvdb)