On 6/5/07, James Farrar <james.farrar(a)gmail.com> wrote: I begin to wonder how many people systematically vandalize articles prior to deleting them or sending them to AFD (but do it in a less transparent way than this particular hoodlum did). —C.W.

On 6/5/07, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote: Awesome! He signed on as an IP to nominate it for deletion, removing content first! Who keeps telling me there are no such thing as deletionists?! KP

On 6/5/07, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote: Dang, I'm not ever playing darts with you, there'd be no room in the bullseye for anyone else. Here's some more good ones, including a couple of nominations by folks not sure an article should be deleted, and one by an editor who thinks an article shouldn't be deleted--yes, nominated by an editor who thinks it shouldn't be deleted. Got a good one along the lines of [[Rock climbing]]--still my personal favorite AfD nomination. More off target deletionist AfDs Instead of discussing article quality and lack of sources on the article's talk page: "This article on a Turkish professor lacks sources and contains numerous vague assertions ("He published many books and articles" without explaining further). I am unsure whether an article on him would be encyclopedic, and think some discussion on this would be useful." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Co%C5%9Fkun_Ca… In other words, the nominator himself/herself doesn't know if it should be deleted, so they've put it up for deletion for others to decide. A quick google and scholar search turns up all sorts of information on the subject, but the nominator couldn't be bothered to do that--actually less work than the nomination for deletion. Here's another deletionist, he didn't have to state which criteria for deletion the article met, because it was obvious to him! http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion… Nominated because it did NOT SEEM to merit an entry--not because it didn't merit an entry, mind you, because it didn't seem to. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/E… Here's a good one, [[User:Haemo]] is nominating an AfD that even he/she doesn't have an opinion on whether or not it should be deleted--in other words, this user is a deletionist! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ashlea_Evans_%… Here we go, a well-known organization (although possibly not as well known as [[Rock climbing]] when it was nominated for deletion) nominated for deletion by a deletionist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Society_for_Cr… Here's an editor who nominated an AfD based upon his dislike of the news media being able to decide what's notable!!!! Morals and ethics? Who cares when we want to rule the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Michael_J._Dev… It get's better, nominated for deletion even though the nominator thinks it should be kept, and gets speedily kept--now that's a singular use of editoral time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2007_June_… KP

On 6/5/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hmmm, I know, it seems incredibly stupid that NOMINATING something for deletion would make an editor think you wanted it deleted. It's amazing what morons pass for Wikipedia editors Articles FOR Deletion--and people go around thinking it FOR deleting articles. It's just stunning. Simply stunning. It was originally a speed delete, too, by the uncertain person who nominated it FOR deletion, based upon that editor's uncertainty if there was a COI or other uncertain reasons. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Co%C5%9Fkun_Can_Aktan&diff=13… To think, a moron assuming Articles FOR deletion means articles FOR deletion. It's just stunning, isn't it? KP, resident idiot

On 6/6/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, last time I thought I knew about something, then wasn't able to find much to confirm what I thought I knew, I asked another editor to investigate the subject (a smart 16-year-old who got crap at RfA for being 16), she couldn't find anything and suspected it of being a hoax, so I nominated it for deletion (well, someone did, I couldn't find the instructions for doing a nomination), aexplaining that I didn't know if it was a hoax, and explaining what I and the other editor had done to try to figure it out, and the article was deleted. I don't get the feeling that this is what is going on in AfD, though. People are simply finding articles, somehow, on obscure topics, outside of their scope of knowledge, and nominating them to be deleted without looking into it any further. There are simply no end of ways to finding someone more competent on a topic than you yourself are--find them, ask them about it. But, for some reason, this is far removed from the mind of the deletionist. I think there's some power in deleting articles or something, and that's what's really going on. KP

On 6/7/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 6/9/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia(a)downlode.org> wrote: Maybe that was the purpose of the account that edited the article then nominated the article for deletion based upon the article missing what he had just removed from it.... I just can't imagine a less desirable item to put up for bid than a Wikipedia admin account. Pay to be an administrator on Wikipedia? KP

On 09/06/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote: Horses for courses :-) I couldn't possibly imagine paying money to, er... upgrade my berserker to level twelve magical whatnots, or whatever it is people do in MMORPGs.... -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/

On 05/06/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote: My problem is that you complain about deletionists, about people who want solely to delete articles, and then the example you cite is someone saying "uh, might be worth keeping, I dunno". Not quite the hardline KILLITALL sort of person... ...or is simply even contemplating bringing an article to AFD viewed as the act of some kind of crazed deletionist vandal now? If so, I think this polarisation has gone on a bit too long. You might want to pick less silly-sounding examples, is all. (AFD, incidentally, is so named because it used to be Votes For Deletion, and that was felt silly. Have the other *FDs stopped being "- for deletion" now? Maybe we should call it "article inclusion discussions", or somesuch) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 6/7/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think Kelly Martin, myself and a few others pointed out this problem one or two years ago. At the time Kelly was pushing for AfD to be renamed to something more focused on discussion of article quality. As I said then, AfD is basically the low-end counterpart to FA. People ignore things like peer review because there's no real action that comes out of them - how much attention does your article get if it's tagged with a notability tag? From my experience, not much - at least, that's how it's been with PR where there's even a centralised list of articles with summaries of concerns about them. The basic problem is, people put articles on FA and AfD when they want discussion about them, because our other processes for outside input on articles don't work when there's no end objective in sight. Johnleemk

On 6/7/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually this has unfortunately become the standard procedure for discussing merges and the long-term prognosis of any topic of a previous deletion review. —C.W.

"You might want to pick less silly-sounding examples, is all." I would love for AfD deletionists to provide me with some, in between the rampant uncertainty about what the article is about, the nominating [[Rock climbing]] for deletion, and deleting text to create a short article then nominating it for deletion for being a short article and missing the text the nominator just deleted, I'm hard pressed to find the less sill-sounding examples. I hadn't considered the sitting around and hitting random page, but now that you offer it, yes, that would explain a round of deletions a while ago by one editor who knew nothing about the topics he nominated for deletion and nominated article entirely outside of his range of topics, and articles that hadn't been recently edited. All the articles were on obscure scientific topics that had few google hits, but were pretty standard fair, and most were speedily kept. But, yes, that is what I suspect he did, and it rather bothered me trying to think of how he came up with this funky set of deletions. What do people think is sometimes sincerely asked, but it's not usually by the same editors who haven't researched the topic to even find out what it is. When I posted the possible hoax I followed a prior example by another editor who had searched for the topic, linked to his searches, suggested it didn't belong, and asked others' opinions. I suspect there is not a lot of thinking going on, it's just tossed up for deletion, hoping someone else will do the thinking. KP

On 6/7/07, Blu Aardvark <jeffrey.latham(a)gmail.com> wrote: On the other hand we have Turkish editors you could have asked to look it over, and we have a solid group of economics editors who could have looked it over. That's what I do, ask someone to look over an article. It requires less Wikipedia time from people who don't have it. I just think the forced working on an article that isn't as bad as a lot of the crap on Wikipedia (look at this before an after, lately I'm doing musicians for some reason) is not in the best interests of all editors concerned. Aktan is well-known enough that eventually someone would have got around to it. Meanwhile, look at what this article looked like before I eviscerated it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ithaka_%28musician%29&oldid=1… There's so much crap, though, why force me to work on this particular article, Atkan, just because it's on your agenda? That's what it amount to, imo. Meanwhile, I have an important article I'm writing on a major and current topic in the news that Wikipedia doesn't have even a stub on. I personally think my writing that article is far more important than Aktan's article. This reminds me, I have a Turkish film director stub that needs some work, namely translating the titles of the Turkish tv shows. Sinan Cetin made one of the funniest movies I've ever seen--I would have rather been working on his stub than Aktan's, also. KP

On 6/7/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: And we would have more good articles and fewer really poor ones. Well, I delve into AfD every 6 weeks or so and always regret it (actually, I multitask when I'm doing it, so I need something on Wikipedia that doesnt require my thinking). I think that Wikipedia would be better off if every editor who nominated an AfD tried to improve it first. Which is what I do. KP