It is increasingly common that non-notable people write to me after they find their own name in Wikipedia via a google search. They are finding, of course, their own AFD entry.
In these entries there are very very very VERY VERY VERY often comments which suggest a suspicion that the entry was vanity.
"Non-notable scientist vanity. Has very few publications. If he ever publishes anything he should submit the page again then." -- paraphrase of example problematic comment
Now imagine that you are very innocently minding your own business and then you discover that this is the top ranked link in google for your name. How would you feel?
I can tell you how most people feel. They feel sad and annoyed enough to write letters to me about it. And justifiably so. And then I have to figure out what to do with it.
What I recommend is the following procedure:
1. A general meme that it is extremely discourteous without absolute positive proof to speculate that the author of some non-notable biography is the subject himself or herself. Yes, it is often true, but there is zero gain to us from assuming this rather than assuming the opposite. We really don't care who wrote it: we care if it is worthy for inclusion or not.
2. At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
Simply useing nofollow tags and not includeing it in the database dump would be preferable. We try to be as open as posible on wikipedia. -- geni
Can we prevent google from indexing Vfd discussion pages? Preventing these discussions from being a top google hit on a minor person or company is something I strongly agree with, and this would be a way to do this without sacrificing any openness or useful history. I'd say delete them, but vanity articles and articles that appear to be vanity are often resurrected and old vfd discussions are useful in those instances.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Rob wrote:
Can we prevent google from indexing Vfd discussion pages?
This would be a start, and I've talked to the dev's about it. But I don't think it is sufficient. Deletion seems much preferable to me.
How about a compromise position of just blanking the AfD page, perhaps with a template to indicate that the old discussion can be found in history? That way non-admins can examine old AfD results as well.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Rob wrote:
Can we prevent google from indexing Vfd discussion pages?
This would be a start, and I've talked to the dev's about it. But I don't think it is sufficient. Deletion seems much preferable to me.
How about a compromise position of just blanking the AfD page, perhaps with a template to indicate that the old discussion can be found in history? That way non-admins can examine old AfD results as well.
I'm happy with that compromise.
On 1/18/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Rob wrote:
Can we prevent google from indexing Vfd discussion pages?
This would be a start, and I've talked to the dev's about it. But I don't think it is sufficient. Deletion seems much preferable to me.
I think Sam had the best idea above, which I would have also suggested.
Blank the page, or perhaps just leave a default notice. The debate will still be accessible in the history, the search engines will only see the default notice. They will still see the debate while it is going on, but that is going to happen anyway.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
The first problems I see are 1. transparency and 2. linking to prior AfD debates if the page is nominated again. Can't we just add AfD to robots.txt? There's not any reason that I can fathom that anyone besides people who are actually on Wikipedia anyway would need to see it. Or is there something about that that I'm missing?
Point 1 should be essential, though. [[WP:AGF]] and all that. Not all articles about non-notable people are submitted by the people themselves.
-Hermione1980
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
[snip]
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion
is deleted. If there is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
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Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever. If there's ever any reason anyone needs to look at it, then they can look at it.
and 2. linking to prior AfD debates if the page is nominated again.
What I'm suggesting is that we keep a page there, noting the existence of a prior AfD debate, so that we can quickly yank that back into public view if there's a good reason.
The point is: the problem isn't google indexing (though of course that's a start), the problem is us retaining pages that hurt innocent people's feelings for no reason. I see no compelling argument for this.
If anyone ever accuses us for lack of transparency for doing this, my mind will boggle. SEKRET CABAL COVERS TRACKS?
--Jimbo
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever.
It pretty much does.
If there's ever any reason anyone needs to look at it, then they can look at it.
Not without some difficulty.
-- geni
On 1/17/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever.
It pretty much does.
Not to be facetious, but that does depend exactly *how much* transparency. I think Jimbo's point is that there is no meaningful loss in transparency.
If there's ever any reason anyone needs to look at it, then they can look at it.
Not without some difficulty.
Again, that is the balance to be struck.
-- Sam
On 1/17/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/17/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever.
It pretty much does.
Not to be facetious, but that does depend exactly *how much* transparency. I think Jimbo's point is that there is no meaningful loss in transparency.
If there's ever any reason anyone needs to look at it, then they can look at it.
Not without some difficulty.
Again, that is the balance to be struck.
-- Sam
I think that deleting VFD/AFD debates does eliminate a certain degree of transparency. At the very least, we should keep a record on the comments and result on the subpage, if not the actual comments themselves. I don't think it is '''Delete''' that we are worrying about, but rather the actual text that follows.
-- Ben Emmel Wikipedia - User:Bratsche bratsche1@gmail.com "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake
geni wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever.
It pretty much does.
No, it pretty much does not.
Should we do this a few more times, or can we perhaps add some content to the discussion?
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever.
It pretty much does.
No, it pretty much does not.
Should we do this a few more times, or can we perhaps add some content to the discussion?
There is no objective ay to judge the imporance of any internal debate. Thus we have to keep records of them.~~~~
-- geni
On 18/01/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
It pretty much does.
No, it pretty much does not.
Should we do this a few more times, or can we perhaps add some content to the discussion?
There is no objective ay to judge the imporance of any internal debate. Thus we have to keep records of them.~~~~
See, this is the thing. I very much doubt the delete-all-afd theory was meant to extend to having it a hassle to get at those deleted pages; the obvious corrolary is to have a policy that, if someone wants to read the content of an old debate, you undelete it for them for a day or two.
Think of it as a library. We're not burning all these tedious administrative documents, nor are we declaring them classified; we're just taking them off the public shelves and putting them in the storage room in the basement. If people want one, they can ask at the desk.
There isn't anything *wrong* with these administrative documents, sure. But they clutter up the shelves, and people keep finding them in keyword searches in the catalogue and getting all overexcited (because there really isn't anything interesting in 99% of them), and we're never *completely* sure that people aren't wandering into the stacks and cutting pages out or adding new ones in - they're all loose-leaf - so they can go back and quote them later.
Switching metaphors for a moment... There are a lot of freedom-of-information or government-transparency laws in the world. A lot of them have provisions against governments putting up undue barriers to access - expensive charges, or classifying everything "secret", or having "public viewing" of documents for one hour a week on the third Sunday in March in the National Archives but only if you know about it and remember the back door is unlocked.
None of them considers "writing to a civil servant and asking for a copy" to be in any way a barrier to transparency.
(Actually, a few do think so - on grounds of illiteracy. But the actual "asking a civil servant" part is okay, you just get to do it verbally)
We are bizzarely, insanely transparent. It's great. But that doesn't mean we can't reduce our level of public exposure a tiny, tiny smidge and still be hugely transparent. Not everything done on Wikipedia is public, remember - we don't display details of checkuser logs, or edit summaries of deleted material - so it's not like we're starting from an absolute pinnacle of crystal-clear perfection. We're doing damn well; even with this change we'd be doing damn well.
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Andrew Gray wrote:
Think of it as a library. We're not burning all these tedious administrative documents, nor are we declaring them classified; we're just taking them off the public shelves and putting them in the storage room in the basement. If people want one, they can ask at the desk.
The notion of using deletion as a way to "store" stuff long-term gives me the heebie-jeebies. The name and intent of the process is completely wrong, for starters. Deletion is supposed to prevent people from accessing stuff, but we want everyone to be able to see these historical AfDs when they want to so you're proposing adding a kludgy intermediary layer to have admins manually undeleting and redeleting this particular type of article on request. This will be a burden on both the people wanting to view the AfDs and on the admins, who already have plenty of demands on their time.
And historically, deleted articles have been permanently purged before - IIRC the last time was somewhere in 2002. How do we know it won't happen again? We know that old versions of existing articles aren't going to be purged because the GFDL probably makes that illegal, but there's nothing stopping deleted material from going away forever at some point in the future.
There isn't anything *wrong* with these administrative documents, sure. But they clutter up the shelves, and people keep finding them in keyword searches in the catalogue and getting all overexcited (because there really isn't anything interesting in 99% of them), and we're never *completely* sure that people aren't wandering into the stacks and cutting pages out or adding new ones in - they're all loose-leaf - so they can go back and quote them later.
We should our cataloging and searching methods, then. Deleting them just to keep them out of sight is analogous to piling them in a dumpster out back along with all the other trash and hoping the garbage men never come, not putting them in a storeroom. Who collects their trash in a storeroom?
Too many people have an annoying tendency to use level 2 headers for even one paragraph sections. This automatically makes horzontal rules show (in most CSS I guess) and breaks flow for reading. This is annoying as fuck.
Discuss.
SV
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On 1/18/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Too many people have an annoying tendency to use level 2 headers for even one paragraph sections. This automatically makes horzontal rules show (in most CSS I guess) and breaks flow for reading. This is annoying as fuck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28headings%29 MoS says to start with level 2 headings, not any other level, which makes alot of sense.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
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stevertigo stated for the record:
Too many people have an annoying tendency to use level 2 headers for even one paragraph sections. This automatically makes horzontal rules show (in most CSS I guess) and breaks flow for reading. This is annoying as fuck.
Discuss.
Perhaps I'm unusual, but fuck isn't annoying to me. I kinda like it.
- -- Sean Barrett | Keep the dream alive: sean@epoptic.org | Hit the snooze button.
--- Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Perhaps I'm unusual, but fuck isn't annoying to me. I kinda like it.
And we are all (to one degree or another) familar with
that natural bias.
But 'f***' being the Swiss Army knife of the English language (and some others too apparently), I was simply using the word for its emphasis --not for its connontations of conjugality. Apologies for any ambiguity. ')
SV
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On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 05:07:37 +0100, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Too many people have an annoying tendency to use level 2 headers for even one paragraph sections. This automatically makes horzontal rules show (in most CSS I guess) and breaks flow for reading. This is annoying as fuck.
Discuss.
SV
Technicaly it's not a horizontal ruler, it's just the bottom border set on the h2 element. Just add:
h2{border:0px;}
to your User:<whatever>/monobook.css file (asuming you use the monobook skin) to remove the underline if it's bothering you. You can change font-size and so on the the same manner. As long as you are logged in you can pretty much change the look and feel of everyting to your liking by making your own stylesheet this way (asuming you know a bit CSS). Personaly I like the underlining.
Makes it easier to edit. I don't get the horizontal line I guess. I think the question on headers is whether the subtopic, if expanded, amount to something.
Fred
On Jan 17, 2006, at 9:07 PM, stevertigo wrote:
Too many people have an annoying tendency to use level 2 headers for even one paragraph sections. This automatically makes horzontal rules show (in most CSS I guess) and breaks flow for reading. This is annoying as fuck.
Discuss.
SV
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On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Makes it easier to edit. I don't get the horizontal line I guess. Fred
Hmm which skin do you use?
-- geni
Articles should err on the side of having too many headings and section breaks, not too few; it makes them much easier to expand without losing their structure. At the risk of seeming unfashionably factionist, I'd point to the Association of Structurist Wikipedians -- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Structurist_Wikipedians
On 1/18/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Makes it easier to edit. I don't get the horizontal line I guess. Fred
Hmm which skin do you use?
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
Cologne Blue on Wikipedia. I use the default skin (Monobook) on Wikicities and have noticed (and been slightly annoyed at) those weird lines and boxes though. Monobook is rather annoying in a number of ways. I guess I like the familiar.
Fred
On Jan 18, 2006, at 7:42 AM, geni wrote:
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Makes it easier to edit. I don't get the horizontal line I guess. Fred
Hmm which skin do you use?
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Sherool wrote:
h2{border:0px;}
That may work for me, but most people use monobook. So its at least practical for me to state "this minor thing is a bit annoying" and maybe should be tweaked.
Other little niggles which impede reading: Improper [[WP:HN|hatnotes]], and {{otheruses}} tags would be better off, like xx:Language tags, in the sidebar or in a div box, like {{shortcut}}.
Fred wrote:
Monobook is rather annoying in a number of ways.
The fact that the default (when Im not logged in) is all white still bugs me a bit.
SV
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I use the Classic skin myself; it was the standard when I first joined. It does not impose a full-width horizontal line after a level 2 heading. In Wiktionary we decided long ago to use a horizintal line between languages, with the language names as level 2 headings. This has led to periodic complaints from those who use Monobook and end up with horizontal lines both above and below the language name.
I appreciate the intent of allowing Monobook to be modified bu users, but that does not do much good for those of us who may be interested in content, but have limited experience or understanding about amending css files. To the extent that they might want to do so, if users are going to be able to modify their skins that should apply to all skins.
Ec
Fred Bauder wrote:
Cologne Blue on Wikipedia. I use the default skin (Monobook) on Wikicities and have noticed (and been slightly annoyed at) those weird lines and boxes though. Monobook is rather annoying in a number of ways. I guess I like the familiar.
Fred
On Jan 18, 2006, at 7:42 AM, geni wrote:
On 1/18/06, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Makes it easier to edit. I don't get the horizontal line I guess. Fred
Hmm which skin do you use?
geni
On 1/18/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I use the Classic skin myself; it was the standard when I first joined. It does not impose a full-width horizontal line after a level 2 heading. In Wiktionary we decided long ago to use a horizintal line between languages, with the language names as level 2 headings. This has led to periodic complaints from those who use Monobook and end up with horizontal lines both above and below the language name.
I appreciate the intent of allowing Monobook to be modified bu users, but that does not do much good for those of us who may be interested in content, but have limited experience or understanding about amending css files. To the extent that they might want to do so, if users are going to be able to modify their skins that should apply to all skins.
Ec
You can modify any skin but for the most part people don't modify classic since it is pretty much perfect.
-- geni
I think that if the artice is only a lead and a little bit of text, you shouldn't have many headers at all. -- ~Ilya N. http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
geni wrote:
On 1/18/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I use the Classic skin myself; it was the standard when I first joined. It does not impose a full-width horizontal line after a level 2 heading. In Wiktionary we decided long ago to use a horizintal line between languages, with the language names as level 2 headings. This has led to periodic complaints from those who use Monobook and end up with horizontal lines both above and below the language name.
I appreciate the intent of allowing Monobook to be modified bu users, but that does not do much good for those of us who may be interested in content, but have limited experience or understanding about amending css files. To the extent that they might want to do so, if users are going to be able to modify their skins that should apply to all skins.
Ec
You can modify any skin but for the most part people don't modify classic since it is pretty much perfect.
Most people use Monobook :)
On 1/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Most people use Monobook :)
-- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
And they wounder why they have problems. Ok classic does have problems with a few things (large numbers of catigories and interlang links) but it has it's advantages.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Most people use Monobook :)
-- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
And they wounder why they have problems. Ok classic does have problems with a few things (large numbers of catigories and interlang links) but it has it's advantages.
Yes, classic does have its problems. Personally, I like having the serif typeface, and having the categories at the top.
Ec
On 1/18/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
The notion of using deletion as a way to "store" stuff long-term gives me the heebie-jeebies.
<snip>
And historically, deleted articles have been permanently purged before - IIRC the last time was somewhere in 2002. How do we know it won't happen again?
Last happened on 3 December 2003. Also, there was a database crash on 8 June 2004, which had the same effect.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
geni wrote:
There is no objective ay to judge the imporance of any internal debate. Thus we have to keep records of them.~~~~
Well, I've already modified my position on other grounds, so we don't need to argue it further. But it's worth pointing out that 'deletion' is actually 'making dark', we'd still have the records, and any of hundreds of admins could undelete anytime it seemed useful to do so.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well, I've already modified my position on other grounds, so we don't need to argue it further. But it's worth pointing out that 'deletion' is actually 'making dark', we'd still have the records, and any of hundreds of admins could undelete anytime it seemed useful to do so.
Until the deleted version database gets purged again.
On 1/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Until the deleted version database gets purged again.
Database dumps should mean that nothing is ever irretrievable.
-- Sam
On 1/19/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Until the deleted version database gets purged again.
Database dumps should mean that nothing is ever irretrievable.
-- Sam
I don't think the deleted stuff is included in database dumps. At lot of stuff gets killed before it can turn up in any database dump (an article's first week on wikipedia is it's most dangerious).
-- geni
Sam Korn wrote:
On 1/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Until the deleted version database gets purged again.
Database dumps should mean that nothing is ever irretrievable.
-- Sam
Problem is that we have 700 admins and...how many devs? In the event of a crash, we'll need the devs to go digging through the dumps for trivial material that really isn't worth their time. I don't see the point in deleting the debates; just hide them from bots or something.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Sam Korn wrote:
On 1/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Until the deleted version database gets purged again.
Database dumps should mean that nothing is ever irretrievable.
Once upon a time I asked around a bit trying to find such a database, I was looking for a copy of [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct disputes archive/Bryan Derksen]] (or [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Bryan Derksen]], for that matter). I hit a dead end. Do you know where I could find this?
Even if it can be located, though, it's going to be a great deal of trouble for me to dig out. Database dumps are enormous to download, I don't have the right software installed at the moment to dig it out, etc. This makes it far more inaccessible to the average user than even a normal deleted page, and there won't even be any way to know it was there in the first place. Deletion really is a bad way to "store" something. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct_disputes_archive/Bryan_Derksen&action=edit
Agreed. If we set a policy using deletion to store old edits, then we might run into problems in other areas. People like Siegenthaler who are the victims of libel, for example, could justifiably complain that the offensive material was not really deleted when we delete it. Of course it's not visible, but after all, if it never goes away, why call it deletion?
On 1/19/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Deletion really is a bad way to "store" something.
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geni stated for the record:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Hermione1980 wrote:
The first problems I see are 1. transparency
I see no problem with transparency. Transparency doesn't mean that we are in any way required to carry every little snippet of non-notable discussion on things forever.
It pretty much does.
To my amazement, I agree with geni.
I want to keep a public record of exactly how mind-boggling hostile AfD is, and what a horrific experience it is to have an article one has worked on subjected to that vicious process.
We need AfD to remain /fully/ transparent, at least internally, so that the myriad insults and assumptions of bad faith are not hidden.
You think AfD is toxic now, just wait until no one can be held accountable for their attacks!
- -- Sean Barrett | To bite off your shadow is neither easy nor sean@epoptic.org | painless. It demands a single-mindedness | that is almost unknown in this day.
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice, perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought to be able to go back and look at the debate.
-Kat
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking "Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast upward. For there you have been and there you will always be." - Leonardo da Vinci
On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If
there is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice, perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought to be able to go back and look at the debate.
Indeed - with the number of debates that close with two or three votes - many of which are deeply flawed closes - I would be wary of making it so fewer people can find bad debates.
I think another important thing here would be to do away with voting on deletion. We supposedly did that when we called it AfD instead of VfD, except we kept the vote structure. Why don't we just stop with the bulleted list of boldfaced keep and delete votes and have it be an actual discussion. You know. "This guy doesn't seem like a very important figure in his field - I can't find any publications," says one person. "I just found one in Journal X." "Oh, yeah, but he's third author, and that's his only publication - he's probably a grad student." And people who just want to chime in with "me too" delete votes, well, don't have to.
Then closing admins can just read the discussion, read the arguments, look at past precedent and make a call, remembering things like "when in doubt, don't delete."
Best, Phil
Phil,
The problem under discussion isn't created by the words "keep" and "delete" on AFD pages, it's about the tenor of the discussion itself. This solution doesn't fix the base problem.
K.
On 1/17/06, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If
there is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice, perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought to be able to go back and look at the debate.
Indeed - with the number of debates that close with two or three votes - many of which are deeply flawed closes - I would be wary of making it so fewer people can find bad debates.
I think another important thing here would be to do away with voting on deletion. We supposedly did that when we called it AfD instead of VfD, except we kept the vote structure. Why don't we just stop with the bulleted list of boldfaced keep and delete votes and have it be an actual discussion. You know. "This guy doesn't seem like a very important figure in his field - I can't find any publications," says one person. "I just found one in Journal X." "Oh, yeah, but he's third author, and that's his only publication - he's probably a grad student." And people who just want to chime in with "me too" delete votes, well, don't have to.
Then closing admins can just read the discussion, read the arguments, look at past precedent and make a call, remembering things like "when in doubt, don't delete."
Best, Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:54 PM, Katefan0 wrote:
Phil,
The problem under discussion isn't created by the words "keep" and "delete" on AFD pages, it's about the tenor of the discussion itself. This solution doesn't fix the base problem.
I disagree - the problem is, I think, created by the expectation and compulsion of comment. When your opinion is measured by whether you speak instead of by what you say, you are given more of a license to speculate. It doesn't matter what you say after "delete," after all. You're not really accountable for it, because the substantive part of what you say is "keep" or "delete." Everything else is posturing.
If the content of your comment is your reason, and if your voice doesn't matter save for the reason you give to it, you are obliged to not be stupid in your reasons. Whereas right now, your reasons don't matter - just your right to put things in boldface.
-Phil
On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:23 PM, Snowspinner wrote:
I disagree - the problem is, I think, created by the expectation and compulsion of comment. When your opinion is measured by whether you speak instead of by what you say, you are given more of a license to speculate. It doesn't matter what you say after "delete," after all. You're not really accountable for it, because the substantive part of what you say is "keep" or "delete." Everything else is posturing.
If the content of your comment is your reason, and if your voice doesn't matter save for the reason you give to it, you are obliged to not be stupid in your reasons. Whereas right now, your reasons don't matter - just your right to put things in boldface.
I must say I think I agree with the gist of what Phil is saying — I don't think anyone on this list is harboring any ideas that AfD is working perfectly at the moment. I am concerned about the added pressure and time required of the administrator closing this type of AfD debate. Are there any ways to alleviate this problem?
[[en:User:Bbatsell]]
Kat Walsh wrote:
Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice, perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought to be able to go back and look at the debate.
Well, that's what I've done in a few cases, blank the page as a courtesy. But it is often the case that the poor person complains about it being in the history.
My thinking is that it could be standard practice to temporarily undelete it upon request anytime anyone has a reason to look at it.
In this way, we take the maximal steps to be sure that we're not annoying innocent people for no reason, while still ensuring that we have good information in the event of a second VfD.
Perhaps the rule I am suggesting could be limited to living persons and existing companies, or something like that, but I really don't think there's much use at all in these pages unless and until there is a second debate.
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Perhaps the rule I am suggesting could be limited to living persons and existing companies, or something like that, but I really don't think there's much use at all in these pages unless and until there is a second debate.
I'm not sure it would be even technicaly posible. Well over 100 afds a day. We'd have to cheack through tens of thousand of afds to find the ones that talk about living people.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Perhaps the rule I am suggesting could be limited to living persons and existing companies, or something like that, but I really don't think there's much use at all in these pages unless and until there is a second debate.
I'm not sure it would be even technicaly posible. Well over 100 afds a day. We'd have to cheack through tens of thousand of afds to find the ones that talk about living people.
We could just put the AfD pages up on AfD to determine whether they fall under the guidelines requiring it to be deleted...
On 1/18/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
geni wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Perhaps the rule I am suggesting could be limited to living persons and existing companies, or something like that, but I really don't think there's much use at all in these pages unless and until there is a second debate.
I'm not sure it would be even technicaly posible. Well over 100 afds a day. We'd have to cheack through tens of thousand of afds to find the ones that talk about living people.
We could just put the AfD pages up on AfD to determine whether they fall under the guidelines requiring it to be deleted...
AFD is not an article. It's an MFD. Anyway we discussed listing AFDs for deletion and the answer was no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Miscellaneous_deletion/Wikipedia...
-- geni
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
How about a blanking, linking to the last version in the history for archive purposes, then protecting. This should mean that there won't be anything to complain about.
-- Sam
Sam Korn wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted.
[...]
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
How about a blanking, linking to the last version in the history for archive purposes, then protecting. This should mean that there won't be anything to complain about.
This is the approach we've taken in the past when people have written to info-en@ about gratuitously hurtful AFD records. I don't see any problem with institutionalising it.
Cheers,
N.
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It is increasingly common that non-notable people write to me after they find their own name in Wikipedia via a google search. They are finding, of course, their own AFD entry ... They feel sad and annoyed enough to write letters to me about it.
What I recommend is the following procedure: ...
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted.
I like the idea of deleting the VfD page when the debate has closed. I remember one debate about a teenager who had killed himself, where the discussion about whether he was notable involved allegations that his parents were implicated in his death. That very hurtful page is probably still floating out there on Google.
The broader issue is why we allow Google to pick up any of our talk or project pages, where NPOV, NOR, and V don't apply. Can anyone explain why we allow that?
Sarah
If it's possible to do, it seems to me the solution requiring the least potential future work (undeleting, etc.) would be simply fixing it so that search engines can't archive these kinds of pages.
K.
On 1/17/06, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
It is increasingly common that non-notable people write to me after they find their own name in Wikipedia via a google search. They are finding, of course, their own AFD entry ... They feel sad and annoyed enough to write letters to me about it.
What I recommend is the following procedure: ...
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted.
I like the idea of deleting the VfD page when the debate has closed. I remember one debate about a teenager who had killed himself, where the discussion about whether he was notable involved allegations that his parents were implicated in his death. That very hurtful page is probably still floating out there on Google.
The broader issue is why we allow Google to pick up any of our talk or project pages, where NPOV, NOR, and V don't apply. Can anyone explain why we allow that?
Sarah _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 1/17/06, Katefan0 katefan0wiki@gmail.com wrote:
If it's possible to do, it seems to me the solution requiring the least potential future work (undeleting, etc.) would be simply fixing it so that search engines can't archive these kinds of pages.
K.
I still think (and I don't remember if it was my idea originally or someone else's now :-)) that AfD needs to be in its own namespace and not indexed by Google so it has the added bonus of not making searches in Wikipedia: space useless by cluttering it up with noise.
-Kat
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking "Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast upward. For there you have been and there you will always be." - Leonardo da Vinci
On 1/17/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
I still think (and I don't remember if it was my idea originally or someone else's now :-)) that AfD needs to be in its own namespace and not indexed by Google so it has the added bonus of not making searches in Wikipedia: space useless by cluttering it up with noise.
I wholeheartedly agree with that.
Kelly
On 1/18/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/17/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
I still think (and I don't remember if it was my idea originally or someone else's now :-)) that AfD needs to be in its own namespace and not indexed by Google so it has the added bonus of not making searches in Wikipedia: space useless by cluttering it up with noise.
I wholeheartedly agree with that.
As do I.
-- Sam
"Kat Walsh" mindspillage@gmail.com wrote in message news:8e253f560601171355k3dae65d6mda84f9e8382a1697@mail.gmail.com... On 1/17/06, Katefan0 katefan0wiki@gmail.com wrote:
If it's possible to do, it seems to me the solution requiring the least potential future work (undeleting, etc.) would be simply fixing it so that search engines can't archive these kinds of pages.
I still think (and I don't remember if it was my idea originally or someone else's now :-)) that AfD needs to be in its own namespace and not indexed by Google so it has the added bonus of not making searches in Wikipedia: space useless by cluttering it up with noise.
I assume that the new Namespace Manager will make something like this eminently doable: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace_manager
On 17/01/06, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
The broader issue is why we allow Google to pick up any of our talk or project pages, where NPOV, NOR, and V don't apply. Can anyone explain why we allow that?
It's logistically quite tricky to arrange matters so the spiders understand the difference between a talk page and a "real" page; "allowing" isn't the key, it's "why don't we prevent it", and the answer is "if we tried it probably wouldn't work very well".
Not to stop anyone attempting something, but...
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 1/17/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
It's logistically quite tricky to arrange matters so the spiders understand the difference between a talk page and a "real" page; "allowing" isn't the key, it's "why don't we prevent it", and the answer is "if we tried it probably wouldn't work very well".
Not to stop anyone attempting something, but...
Wouldn't adding
Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion
to http://meta.wikimedia.org/robots.txt do the trick? I assume the search engines will treat subpages as directories, as they are separated by slashes.
Can robots.txt use wildcards? If it can, we could quite easily restrict caching of the entire Wikipedia namespace, if we wanted (and I doubt we would), using:
Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia:*
-- Sam
On 1/17/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
On Jan 17, 2006, at 3:59 PM, Sam Korn wrote:
Can robots.txt use wildcards?
Not according to the Robots Exclusion Standard, so no.
Regards, [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
Isn't there something you can put in the head of a html page that makes search engines not index that page. It would be trivial to change the mediawiki code to include that in all articles starting with "Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion", wouldn't it?
The whole blanking it thing and linking to the history, I'm not sure that would work, wouldn't the robot simply follow the link and index that page? It would probably be lower in the scores, but it would still show up in searches.
- Oskar
On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:12 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
Isn't there something you can put in the head of a html page that makes search engines not index that page. It would be trivial to change the mediawiki code to include that in all articles starting with "Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion", wouldn't it?
Yes, although in the past this hasn't been as widely supported as robots.txt (it may be pretty much equal now). I do believe that disallowing spiders from /wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion would do the trick rather nicely. The only way we can find out is to give it a shot!
Regards, [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
I don't see the need to delete debates and as noted before, it would cause problems when linking to earlier debates. And it would be harder for newbies to figure out why "their" article was deleted. The whole point of archiving the debate is to keep it accessible for people within Wikipedia (including non-admins).
We should just make sure AFD debates are kept out of google. If we adjust robots.txt or whatever we need to adjust to manipulate Google bots, we don't even need to anymore.
Mgm
On 1/17/06, Brock Batsell wikipedia@theskeptik.com wrote:
On Jan 17, 2006, at 3:59 PM, Sam Korn wrote:
Can robots.txt use wildcards?
Not according to the Robots Exclusion Standard, so no.
Regards, [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
I don't see the need to delete debates and as noted before, it would cause problems when linking to earlier debates. And it would be harder for newbies to figure out why "their" article was deleted.
Ok, it sounds like everyone disagrees with me and I'm basically convinced by this argument. I don't see much need for random people to look at these pages (and probably they almost never do), but certainly if newbies just suddenly find their article deleted and can't read way, they'll just be a pain in the neck by recreating over and over.
So, I bow to the wisdom of others, and suggest this alternative (suggested by others):
1. blank and protect 2. leave the history there, but don't call special attention to it (this is so the victims don't feel that the blanking is pointless -- any wikipedian, even newbies, will know to click on 'history') 3. ask brion to see what he can cook up for blocking search spiders from it
--Jimbo
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
So, I bow to the wisdom of others, and suggest this alternative (suggested by others):
- blank and protect
- leave the history there, but don't call special attention to it (this
is so the victims don't feel that the blanking is pointless -- any wikipedian, even newbies, will know to click on 'history') 3. ask brion to see what he can cook up for blocking search spiders from it
--Jimbo
Going over the archives is still going to be a major comitment of rescorces (unless we give a bot admin powers and people are still not completely happy about doing that).
-- geni
geni wrote:
Going over the archives is still going to be a major comitment of rescorces (unless we give a bot admin powers and people are still not completely happy about doing that).
A blanking-bot wouldn't require admin powers. Protecting them would, but I expect that the vast majority of the blankings would never get reverted so we can skip that for the time being on the old pages.
As for server resources, just adjust the bot's speed to whatever level's acceptable. There isn't a pressing deadline.
On 1/18/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
geni wrote:
Going over the archives is still going to be a major comitment of rescorces (unless we give a bot admin powers and people are still not completely happy about doing that).
A blanking-bot wouldn't require admin powers. Protecting them would, but I expect that the vast majority of the blankings would never get reverted so we can skip that for the time being on the old pages.
As for server resources, just adjust the bot's speed to whatever level's acceptable. There isn't a pressing deadline.
run it early saterday or sunday morning (UTC). Shouldn't be a problem.
-- geni
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
I don't see the need to delete debates and as noted before, it would
cause
problems when linking to earlier debates. And it would be harder for
newbies
to figure out why "their" article was deleted.
Ok, it sounds like everyone disagrees with me and I'm basically convinced by this argument. I don't see much need for random people to look at these pages (and probably they almost never do), but certainly if newbies just suddenly find their article deleted and can't read way, they'll just be a pain in the neck by recreating over and over.
So, I bow to the wisdom of others, and suggest this alternative (suggested by others):
- blank and protect
- leave the history there, but don't call special attention to it (this
is so the victims don't feel that the blanking is pointless -- any wikipedian, even newbies, will know to click on 'history') 3. ask brion to see what he can cook up for blocking search spiders from it
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Do you mean blanking and protecting all VFD/AFD debates on people/buisinesses that we have on record currently, or to start this practice right away, and continuing it for only new debates? I think I agree with geni here, going back to all the former debates and blanking/protecting is going to take a very large amount of resources in terms of server load and editor time.
However, I think I generally agree with this proposal. I recently had to blank a AfD myself because of some hurtful comments about the subject.
-- Ben Emmel Wikipedia - User:Bratsche bratsche1@gmail.com "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." -- William Blake
Ben Emmel wrote:
Do you mean blanking and protecting all VFD/AFD debates on people/buisinesses that we have on record currently, or to start this practice right away, and continuing it for only new debates? I think I agree with geni here, going back to all the former debates and blanking/protecting is going to take a very large amount of resources in terms of server load and editor time.
However, I think I generally agree with this proposal. I recently had to blank a AfD myself because of some hurtful comments about the subject.
I'm assuming that if we adopt a general blank/protect policy going forward, then people who care about the old ones could get around to doing them whenever they feel like it.
"X takes a lot of work" doesn't usually deter someone from taking up the challenge and doing it. :-)
--Jimbo
On 1/18/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
"X takes a lot of work" doesn't usually deter someone from taking up the challenge and doing it. :-)
--Jimbo
It seems to prevent the clearing of the backlog on WP:CP.
-- geni
On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 22:53:13 +0100, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 17/01/06, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
The broader issue is why we allow Google to pick up any of our talk or project pages, where NPOV, NOR, and V don't apply. Can anyone explain why we allow that?
It's logistically quite tricky to arrange matters so the spiders understand the difference between a talk page and a "real" page; "allowing" isn't the key, it's "why don't we prevent it", and the answer is "if we tried it probably wouldn't work very well".
Not to stop anyone attempting something, but...
It's not nessesary for the spiders to know the differense between the namespaces. As long as MediaWiki know the difference it should be trivial to make it include:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
in the header when rendering a talkpage (and any other namespace we don't want indexed).
All the spider need to know is not to index pages that contain that directive, and most major web indexers (including Google) do honor that tag.
It would require a one time purge of the cache of all the affected namespaces after it was implemented to take effect though, and stuff that have already been indexed might hang around in search results for months before the effects fully propegate.
Jimmy Wales wrote
It is increasingly common that non-notable people write to me after they find their own name in Wikipedia via a google search. They are finding, of course, their own AFD entry.
Despite a great deal of adverse comment, certainly on this list, we do seem stuck with AfD as monolithic, unsegmented, and to a large extent the lowest common denominator of behaviour.
How about, first, just making AfD for biographies a separate institution? And secondly, making a policy framework for it? And thirdly enforcing that framework more rigorously than for discussion about - well, minor Star Wars backstory characters or whatever?
Charles
Now imagine that you are very innocently minding your own business and then you discover that this is the top ranked link in google for your name. How would you feel?
Yes, *please* let's do something about this and quickly. I'd like to use a mess I made myself as an example, I think it's fairly typical.
- - -
I find a page for a not-very-well-known writer and drag it to AfD with a suggestion to delete. My fellow AfD trolls agree and add that the person probably wrote the article herself - or maybe her boyfriend did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AfD/TB (Created a redirect to avoid putting the person's name into the mailing list archives and thereby exasperating the problem.)
Currently this AfD discussion is the #2 English language Google hit for the person's name, soon it will be the #1 result. Someone searching for her in that way will immediately find the words "non-notable" attached to her. That's not good.
Even when we trolls over there are at our best behaviour an AfD discussion which ends with a biographical article being deleted is always going to read like rubbing one's eyes with sandpaper to the person involved.
Regards, Haukur
"Haukur Þorgeirsson" haukurth@hi.is wrote in message news:36532.206.165.150.70.1137536847.squirrel@webmail.hi.is... [snip]
Currently this AfD discussion is the #2 English language Google hit for the person's name, soon it will be the #1 result. Someone searching for her in that way will immediately find the words "non-notable" attached to her. That's not good.
It happened: #2 on the list is a paragraph on your talk page, presumably in Icelandic, which might or might not be saying "WTF? She's really famous! undelete her now!" but I can't tell :-)
Jimmy Wales wrote:
In these entries there are very very very VERY VERY VERY often comments which suggest a suspicion that the entry was vanity.
"Non-notable scientist vanity. Has very few publications. If he ever publishes anything he should submit the page again then." -- paraphrase of example problematic comment
This is actually how a friend of mine, Steuard Jensen, first got interested in Wikipedia. He's somewhat notable amongst theoretical physicists and J.R.R. Tolkien researchers (both small communities) and someone put an article up about him. Which was promptly AFD'd with lots of comments about his assumed vanity in writing it. His name is on lots of pages Google references so it gets lost in the shuffle and wasn't as big a deal, but still not a good thing.
- A general meme that it is extremely discourteous without absolute
positive proof to speculate that the author of some non-notable biography is the subject himself or herself. Yes, it is often true, but there is zero gain to us from assuming this rather than assuming the opposite. We really don't care who wrote it: we care if it is worthy for inclusion or not.
Human nature. You can try to get people to be 'nice'. With alot of work you can even do it... for a while. However, after going through the thirtieth bio about J. Smith who won the Kramer County spelling bee championship (or whatever) >someone< is going to make a comment. Even if that somehow weren't the case... AfD is in many ways >inherently< offensive. It declares a person/group/whatever 'not notable'... when they will quite often disagree.
The whole 'Blooferlady' incident (on articles for 'Joseph Vargo' his band), which I believe you got involved in, is a good example. She and her partner sold quite alot of records and met alot of the listed standards for music notability... but she was writing an article about her business partner (which also had POV issues) so people voted to delete it... and then she had this Google hit saying that her partner was an un-notable hack. Yes, she was clearly trying to use Wikipedia to 'advertise' and that might well be a reason to delete, but not to put out what amounts to >negative< advertisement.
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Any way we can keep them out of Google works for me. Whether that's deleting, blanking, putting them on 'ignore' lists, or whatever... any of those options would be better than the current situation.
"Jimmy Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote in message news:43CD62A2.30709@wikia.com... [snip]
What I recommend is the following procedure:
- A general meme that it is extremely discourteous without absolute
positive proof to speculate that the author of some non-notable biography is the subject himself or herself. Yes, it is often true, but there is zero gain to us from assuming this rather than assuming the opposite. We really don't care who wrote it: we care if it is worthy for inclusion or not.
This is pretty much [[WP:AGF]] and we should surely be doing this already. Shouldn't we?
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Much as I hate to disagree with the God-King, this is a step too far: deleting the discussion altogether is destroying potentially useful information.
Why don't we simply adjust the closing instructions so that instead of prepending the "discussion closed with such-and-such result" notice, whoever closes the discussion **replaces** it with that notice. Then all the discussion can be hidden in the history, available to anyone who needs to check it out.
Whether this fixes the problem of old discussions turning up on Google and mirrors is a whole new problem: maybe we should consider trying to ensure that anyone who mirrors Wikipedia updates their mirror regularly.
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
Alternative approach: Make it so that certain pages, with admin approval, won't show up on Google or other search robots (use the META ROBOTS tag). Write guidelines that say these can only be used for closed AFD debates. The page itself should SCREAM that it doesn't show up in search engines so it is easy to tell when it has been misapplied.
That way we have the benefit, for our internal use, of knowing past debates and their results, but our dirty laundry won't be aired to the world (i.e. Google).
FF
Oh hey, looks like I missed two days of discussion. Nevermind!
FF
On 1/19/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If there
is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Is there anything wrong with this concept?
Alternative approach: Make it so that certain pages, with admin approval, won't show up on Google or other search robots (use the META ROBOTS tag). Write guidelines that say these can only be used for closed AFD debates. The page itself should SCREAM that it doesn't show up in search engines so it is easy to tell when it has been misapplied.
That way we have the benefit, for our internal use, of knowing past debates and their results, but our dirty laundry won't be aired to the world (i.e. Google).
FF