Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
If a nomination is crap, explain why in the AfD. If
your explanations
are convincing, people will vote to keep. If nominators notice that
their nomination has been buried by a near-unanimous string of keeps,
they'll be embarrassed and stop making problematical nominations. This
procedure has the great advantage in that it works and that it does not
making people angry thereby provoking counter-responses directed at
your manner rather than at the merit of the topic.
It also has great disadvantage - it doesn't work! People continue to
vote "OMG TRAFFIC CIRCLE DELETE".
In _any_ AfD discussion, it is much more helpful to address the
_particular_ article under discussion than to pass blanket judgments on
an entire class of articles. Nominations that say "oh cmon its a
traffic circle" and "roadcruft" are not helpful. Neither are responses
that say "all traffic circles are notable." Even if you believe that
all traffic circles should be deleted or that all traffic circles
should be kept, neither of these extremes is a widely held opinion and
repetitive, strident assertions of these general principles are not
going to create a consensus. (Neither do repetitive, strident
assertions that there _is_ consensus in areas where there actually is
not).
How else would one argue from the basis that yes, all named traffic
circles are local landmarks and thus "notable"? The whole "notability"
thing just doesn't work, because there's no way to counter "nn
roadcruft".
I wonder how people would argue their keep vote if I were to nominate a
small town of population 40-50 with the only edits by Rambot. What other
argument would apply to a generic small town than "all towns deserve
articles"?
When nominating a traffic circle, give reasons why _this particular_
traffic circle shouldn't be kept. Two of the nominations mentioned
above do this, although not in a very coherent way. When arguing that
an article on a traffic circle should be kept, say why _this
particular_ traffic circle is worth keeping. Is the article
particularly good? Do traffic reports in the city reference it?
Playing devil's advocate, traffic reports mention minor streets. Doesn't
mean they should be kept.
The reason for doing this has nothing to do with The Principle Of The
Thing. The reason for doing it is that these techniques _work_.
Unless it's "nn cruft". They they fall flat against an unstoppable
stream of assholes.
(Another technique that works for keeping articles is to improve them a
bit _before_ entering the nomination discussion).
Someone did that for White Horse Circle. It didn't help:
# 00:21, 29 September 2005 . . Gpietsch (tweak)
# 00:18, 29 September 2005 . . Gpietsch (added enough to prevent this
article from getting deleted ;-))
# 01:25, 22 September 2005 . . Aranda56 (Placed VFD)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/White_Horse_Ci…
The only argument that makes sense against "Oh cmon its a traffic circle
nn Delete" is "fuck you, asshole".
And I see that Calton continues to be an asshole:
I'll note that SPUI deleted the AfD tag in the article. He's getting
passionate and breaking rules over a traffic circle? --Calton | Talk
02:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)