Right. And "trash" is more akin to speedy deletes, which is altogether different. AfD candidates are rarely hurting anyone; just out of place or against one or another content policy.

Looking at the huge number of articles on AfD that are unanimously deleted, I'm not sure how else to describe them other than "trash". These articles may not be as bad as speedy deletes (the decaying food that will cause a stench if not quickly removed), but that doesn't mean they should

kept. What we need is a process to efficiently remove articles that currently receive 100% support for deletion on AfD. If these articles no longer had to go through AfD, I think we probably could scrap the whole thing and send the volunteer garbagemen packing.

Carbonite wrote: This might be a good time to plug my year-old proposal, [[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]] (the only one to have ever received support from a majority of Wikipedians). Of course I'm not saying we should put up for yet another vote. It might be a good idea to review it and cull some material for the ongoing process of deletion reform (that's as slow as ever, I might add). For the umpteenth time, AFD isn't scaling. It works, but it's not scaling. Plain and simple. We're already seeing almost 200 article debates in one day. If we're 10 times smaller than Google or MSN, what happens when we reach that size? 2000 debates in a day. We'll have to break it down by hour! This simply ain't gonna' scale, folks. We need to come up with something. It's alright to proceed slowly, but from what I can see, deletion reform is as slow and as stalled as it was a year ago when I mooted Preliminary Deletion. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

AfD is ugly and quickly becoming completely useless. And it takes up so much of the energy of some of our most intelligent editors. Let's take a one month holiday from it and see what happens. The 5000 or so articles that won't be deleted are only equivalent to three days normal growth.

Further to MGM's point, as we get more popular, more attention will be paid to us and we cannot afford to carry thousands of bad articles if we can avoid it.

On 12/10/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: Moreover, I'd say AFD is a horrible solution for "bad articles". The vast majority of "bad articles" deleted via AFD, which don't already fall under a speedy deletion criterion, could easily be either changed into a redirect or into a good, albeit short, article (usually on an obscure subject). If you're saying we can't afford to carry good short articles on obscure subjects, well, I disagree there. We can afford to do it, and it doesn't require lowering our standards at all.

One thing we should probably introduce in this area though is that articles which do not provide any references should be speedy deletions. Now there are probably a whole lot of good articles out there right now which would fit that, so for now let's make the CSD criterion only for articles caught in the first 48 hours. And let's require the user who created the article to be informed of the deletion on her talk page.

On 12/13/05, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think this is something that we need collaboration for. A page upon which articles that don't contain any references at all can be placed. If references are added they can be removed from the page. If they stay there for a month or so, they may be deleted. No limits on article age would be needed.

On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: I believe it's about the same amount of time we give suspected copyright infringements.

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 13:24 +0000, Tony Sidaway wrote: Thats much better. When do we start? Justinc

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 21:41 +0800, John Lee wrote: Well lets start putting it in more. Yes, things with little interest are an issue. I think I will have to make full list of articles I am interested in being good that I have contributed to, and prune my watchlist of the stuff that I just made small fixes to and dont really care about in order to make this improvement thing work. I might however have a few erudite references for chicken nugget in my large pile of history of food books. Justinc

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 21:41 +0800, John Lee wrote: Well lets start putting it in more. Yes, things with little interest are an issue. I think I will have to make full list of articles I am interested in being good that I have contributed to, and prune my watchlist of the stuff that I just made small fixes to and dont really care about in order to make this improvement thing work. I might however have a few erudite references for chicken nugget in my large pile of history of food books.

I also believe we should cite primary, secondary or tertiary sources, whichever is available. In the case of primary sources, of course, these should only be readily available ones.

On 12/13/05, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote: Exactly the result I feared when people started to press not only for sources, but only sources that fit certain criteria. I argued then that even a poor source is better than none, because it traces where the information came from and allows people familiar with the subject to dig deeper. I also believe we should cite primary, secondary or tertiary sources, whichever is available. In the case of primary sources, of course, these should only be readily available ones. Ideally, an encyclopedia is a tertiary source - a summing-up of knowledgable opinion - but I would not exclude primary or tertiary sources unless better are available.

That depends on what you mean by "limitations". "You can't use the subject's autobiography, wait until you can get a two-page treatment from a textbook" is kinda silly and limiting. However, there already are very significant limitations: we aren't allowed to rely on the ravings of madmen to build a case. Translated into NPOV, this means that the followers of Lyndon LaRouche are no longer allowed to use wacko LaRouchite propaganda to claim he's more important than he really is. I support this (well, nobody's asked me, but ...), and I imagine you do too if you've any knowledge about LaRouche, his movement and its followers, and the sort of material he prints.

I always cite any possible source - even tertiary ones. They're better than nothing at all, and when someone with a better source comes along, they can be replaced. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 13:24 +0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:

>No need to userfy. Just add an "unreferenced" tag. This has the >advantage of permitting casual visitors to find and improve the >article.

Thats much better. When do we start?

On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>Whenever you hit "Random page" and get an article with no references and >no external links that isn't a stub. That's how I do it! Get in the >habit until people get the idea about these things. >Heck, it strikes me as eminently bot-assistable - no external links, no >word "References" or "Sources", no stub message, flag it for the >operator to press the button on.

And the first editor, and the last three editors, get a message on their talk pages? I'd go with that.

On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: I believe it's about the same amount of time we give suspected copyright infringements.

No need to userfy. Just add an "unreferenced" tag. This has the advantage of permitting casual visitors to find and improve the article.

On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: That isn't the right question. It's not whether somehting is *verified*, it's whether it's *verifiable*.

It's wiki. Lack of references (as in the very earliest version of the article Oxygen, see the addendum to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oxygen&oldid=271622) can be solved by editing. It can never be solved by deletion, which should be reserved for articles that seem, after an honest effort has failed, to be unverifiable.

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My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.

In my mind verifiable, as used in Wikipedia, implies that it is easily verifiable.

If something is asserted without providing any source, and a quick good faith effort to find a source fails, I'd say verifiability has failed.

My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.

I find the unreferenced tag to be useless. Either it says that the article contains some unreferenced facts, in which case we'd be better off tagging those few articles which don't contain unreferenced facts with the opposite tag,

or it says that the article contains zero references, which is already evident to anyone scanning the article anyway.

If you want to put the tag on the talk page or use a category, in the case of articles with absolutely no references, I wouldn't object. But I don't think that is a solution for what I'm saying, which is that we shouldn't be creating such articles in the first place.

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Then it shouldn't be used to tag the article. That's not what it's for. The tag puts the article in the category. It also looks like a big ugly box telling the editor "PLEASE DO BETTER KTHX." I suggest that we can only lead by example and peer pressure, and the template does IMO help there.

On 12/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: There's no question over the endgame. The question is over what to do in the meantime. If we don't know whether or not something is right, it shouldn't be in an article. Doesn't mean it can't be in user space, or on a talk page, or in the edit history, or in the deleted articles history. That's my interpretation of [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]], anyway.

The endgame in either case is a well referenced article. The question is how do we get there.

I find it hard to believe that you read anything that I actually said. You've completely misrepresented my points in two substantial ways. 1) You talk about "non-referenced facts", while I am talking about non-referenced articles. Not just facts that don't have sources, entire articles without a single reference to anything outside the encyclopedia. 2) You talk about how it's impossible for us to fix "every unreferenced article" within 24 hours. But I am not talking about *old* unreferenced articles, I'm talking about *new ones*. Fixing all the unreferenced articles we currently have will be hard, and it will take a long time. But we'll never get finished if we keep creating new ones. This isn't a quick fix. It's the first step in a long process. Anthony On 12/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: >Anthony DiPierro wrote: > > >>On 12/15/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: >> >> >>>The crux of the problem is in what the endgame should be for an >>>unreferenced article. Is it deletion or improvement? I would easily >>>support improvement. If an article is unreferenced that does not imply >>>that it is wrong; we just don't know if it's right. >>> >>> >>There's no question over the endgame. The question is over what to do >>in the meantime. If we don't know whether or not something is right, >>it shouldn't be in an article. Doesn't mean it can't be in user >>space, or on a talk page, or in the edit history, or in the deleted >>articles history. That's my interpretation of >>[[Wikipedia:Verifiability]], anyway. >> >> >We can begin with some kind of "unreferenced" tag, maybe even a flashing >red "CAUTION" sign. :-) >Beyond that, we need to remember that most of our non-referenced facts >aren't controversial at all. Look at how long it has taken to put >category tags on all articles. That's a much simpler task than >referencing. Of your four suggestions only putting material on the >article's talk page will even give a sporting chance for review. If you >outright delete an unreferenced article there will not even be a link to >Xxxx's talk page so that the material can be reviewed and documented. >Have fun finding it! > >Assuming good faith needs to be extended to the articles themselves. It >recognizes that a contributor who was himself deceived by the >information was probably acting in good faith. Fact checking an article >is a tedious process that needs to apply to every statement in an >article. It may be easy enogu to have a bot tag every unreferenced >article with a notice that if it is not referenced in 24 hours it will >be deleted. If ALL of us were to devote ourselves to that task for that >24 hours without sleeping there would still not be enough of us for the >job. So when your second bot comes along and clears out the still >referenced articles what would we have left? We need common sense, not >impatience. > > >>>Actions based on a deletion endgame consistently attract bitter disputes >>>and needless stress. In planning new strategies this should be >>>considered from the beginning. in the hope of avoiding the stress. >>>Without that this will be no different from AfD. >>> >>>Ec >>> >>> >>The endgame in either case is a well referenced article. The question >>is how do we get there. >> >> >Of course, but we can't depend on any kind of quick fix. > >Ec > >