I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.
There are arguments that articles are not worth having. There is merit to those arguments. Everyone has a different threshold, though.
There are arguments for including almost anything which someone thinks is worth typing. There's merit to that as well. And again, we all have different thresholds.
The fundamental problem is not that things are good or bad, it's that we are not tackling the problem of how to indicate how significant things are.
Side issues are vandalism and such but moves and editing can take care of those with a quick move to [[vandalism: original title]]. The same applies to everything else.
So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of user_Jamesday
I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.
I will agree only if Wikipedians agree not to bathe, brush their teeth, or launder their clothes for six months as well. You'll get the same result on your person as with Wikipedia.
-Fuzheado
Andrew Lih wrote:
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of user_Jamesday
I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.
I will agree only if Wikipedians agree not to bathe, brush their teeth, or launder their clothes for six months as well. You'll get the same result on your person as with Wikipedia.
Speaking as an inclusionist, I have to agree; it sets up a scarecrow with a six month gestation period. Would nine months make it more human?
Ec
A six month moratorium is ridiculous. Even a one week moratorium is ridiculous. Do you know how many garbage articles get created daily? Do you really want to keep around an article that says nothing but "Joey is gay"?
RickK
user_Jamesday user_Jamesday@myrealbox.com wrote: I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.
There are arguments that articles are not worth having. There is merit to those arguments. Everyone has a different threshold, though.
There are arguments for including almost anything which someone thinks is worth typing. There's merit to that as well. And again, we all have different thresholds.
The fundamental problem is not that things are good or bad, it's that we are not tackling the problem of how to indicate how significant things are.
Side issues are vandalism and such but moves and editing can take care of those with a quick move to [[vandalism: original title]]. The same applies to everything else.
So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.
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Strawman! Something that is clearly not attempting to be an encyclopedia article can be still be deleted unilaterally, and any article can have its content replaced/rewritten as usual. "Joey is gay" is going to disappear quickly in any case.
Stan
Rick wrote:
A six month moratorium is ridiculous. Even a one week moratorium is ridiculous. Do you know how many garbage articles get created daily? Do you really want to keep around an article that says nothing but "Joey is gay"?
RickK
user_Jamesday user_Jamesday@myrealbox.com wrote: I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.
There are arguments that articles are not worth having. There is merit to those arguments. Everyone has a different threshold, though.
There are arguments for including almost anything which someone thinks is worth typing. There's merit to that as well. And again, we all have different thresholds.
The fundamental problem is not that things are good or bad, it's that we are not tackling the problem of how to indicate how significant things are.
Side issues are vandalism and such but moves and editing can take care of those with a quick move to [[vandalism: original title]]. The same applies to everything else.
So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.
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Strawman! Something that is clearly not attempting to be an encyclopedia article can be still be deleted unilaterally, and any article can have its content replaced/rewritten as usual. "Joey is gay" is going to disappear quickly in any case.
With all due respect, how is this a "strawman?"
Jamesday said "I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months." Sounds pretty absolute.
-Fuzheado
Andrew Lih wrote:
Strawman! Something that is clearly not attempting to be an encyclopedia article can be still be deleted unilaterally, and any article can have its content replaced/rewritten as usual. "Joey is gay" is going to disappear quickly in any case.
With all due respect, how is this a "strawman?"
Jamesday said "I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months." Sounds pretty absolute.
Yeah, I think I'm mixing up the different ideas. In any case, "asdfasdf" and friends should still be able to be deleted on sight, and we would have to rely on sysop honesty not to declare that "list of newspapers in Hong Kong" is obvious nonsense that should get the same treatment. :-)
Stan
At 10:25 PM 11/6/03 -0500, James Day wrote:
So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.
There are enough Wikipedians that _we don't all have to work on the same thing_.
There is no reason that some people can't start working on such a specification now, at the same time as others look for copyright violations, copyedit articles, take photos to illustrate bird articles, research people who turn up on "requested articles", and do all the other things that are part of creating this encyclopedia.
I'd suggest that those who want such a specification start a page, maybe at [[m:How to tell what's significant]], where it can be worked on. I'm not opposed to a specification of this sort, I just don't feel up to drafting it. So I'll keep doing the things I do know how to do, which includes writing, copyediting, and deleting obvious garbage.
I'll just register my strong objections to a deletion moratorium for the record. I do not see any evidence for "rampant" deletionism and think VfD works reasonably well (have people agreed on a threshold, 80% or something like that, of votes required for deletion yet?). If you want to see rampant deletionism, go to Everything2.com, where pages get "nuked" arbitrarily and anonymously. Wikipedia's process is open, based on consensus-forming and well-documented policies.
There are people who make even the deletion of the crappiest conceivable article difficult by voting to keep by default. This kind of behavior leads to the amassment of junk in the database, which never gets cleaned up because once it is gone from RC and VfD, everyone quickly forgets it. You might say people will eventually edit it, but in the case of the rare, obscure and idiosyncratic, that might very well happen years from now, if ever. Of course we shouldn't delete legitimate stubs, but we should remove articles which are in clear violation of one of our policies, be it NPOV or "What Wikipedia is not".
Junk will still get spidered by the search engines if a single link points to it, nd if people come to Wikipedia and find this stuff (like Sep. 11 articles with tributes mixed in), it will greatly lower their opinion of our project (in cases that I consider "fixable", the 7 days of VfD are a nice ultimatum for doing so). Remember that most of our new users come from the search engines.
I am somewhat disturbed by Wikipedia 1.0 being used as an argument not to keep the working Wikipedia clean of junk. Both serve the same purpose. The goal for Wikipedia 1.0 (a limited subset for distribution) is to filter out the kind of stuff that is hard to verify, too obscure, offensive etc., but that would go through VfD unscathed.
Given the large majority support needed for deletion, I do not think that any kind of out-of-control deletion is to be expected. If you are the kind of person who thinks a "List of heterosexuals" might be useful, then you might feel that Wikipedia is somehow oppressing you, but if you want to build an encyclopedia, it is unlikely that you will.
The whole idea to label one faction of Wikipedia as "deletionists" and another as "inclusionists" is bogus. This only makes it more difficult for people to reflect their own decisions and contributes to herd-like behavior. With very few exceptions, everyone accepts that some cleaning up is needed. We just need to agree on when to delete and what to remove, which is best done by improving, newly implementing and pointing to policy pages.
Regards,
Erik
I would also like to disagree. I have complained about aspects of VfD before, but these have been mostly about listing on VfD when really one wants Cleanup or something -- articles that the submitter knew full well shouldn't really be deleted.
-Matt (User:Morven)