AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them. For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses to--carry out this task.
The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago. The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not immediately undoing this travesty.
I am therefore taking the unusual step of undeleting this article.
Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got no keep votes.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 16, 2005, at 2:52 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them. For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses to--carry out this task.
The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago. The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not immediately undoing this travesty.
I am therefore taking the unusual step of undeleting this article. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Folks,
I have looked at the article and it is in good shape at the moment. Mind you, that isn't to say that it was a one-line stub at the start.
I will vote to keep it if further discussion ensues. Could someone drop me a line at the Capitalistroadster username if it does just in case I am aware of it.
Regards
Keith
On 10/17/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got no keep votes.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 16, 2005, at 2:52 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them. For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses to--carry out this task.
The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago. The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not immediately undoing this travesty.
I am therefore taking the unusual step of undeleting this article. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got no keep votes.
We have to do something about people advancing false pretexts to delete or to keep deleted. Time and again people in VFU absolutely refuse to actually look at the article, falsely claiming that they're notpermitted to actually take the valus of the thing to Wikipedia into account. This repeated peddling of falsehoods, which has taken such a strong hold in VFU that it is almost impossible to remedy a bad deletion debate, must be nipped in the bud before more good content is lost.
Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote: Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got no keep votes.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 16, 2005, at 2:52 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them. For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses to--carry out this task.
The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago. The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not immediately undoing this travesty.
I am therefore taking the unusual step of undeleting this article. _______________________________________________
I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense in VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
On 10/16/05, Brian Haws brian@bhaws.com wrote:
I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense in VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will be listed on VFU by it's supporters.
-- geni
From: geni geniice@gmail.com
On 10/16/05, Brian Haws brian@bhaws.com wrote:
I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense in
VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will be listed on VFU by it's supporters.
-- geni
In my experience, one common use of VfU is for authors of deleted articles to immediately try to get their article undeleted, even though the article has been subjected to vigorous discussion and debate, and a clear consensus of Wikipedia editors is that the article should be deleted *on policy grounds* (e.g. consists solely of original research, is a neologism, etc.).
Jay.
On Oct 16, 2005, at 4:47 PM, geni wrote:
On 10/16/05, Brian Haws brian@bhaws.com wrote:
I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense in VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will be listed on VFU by it's supporters.
VfU has never once seen "any" AfD that decides to delete, nor even "most" VfUs that decide to delete get brought up there. This is a complete straw man argument.
-Snowspinner
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
VfU has never once seen "any" AfD that decides to delete, nor even "most" VfUs that decide to delete get brought up there. This is a complete straw man argument.
-Snowspinner
Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get wiped out through AFD.
-- geni
On Oct 16, 2005, at 5:21 PM, geni wrote:
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
VfU has never once seen "any" AfD that decides to delete, nor even "most" VfUs that decide to delete get brought up there. This is a complete straw man argument.
-Snowspinner
Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get wiped out through AFD.
In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self- evidently absurd.
-Snowspinner
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self- evidently absurd.
-Snowspinner
Don't claim it is flawless. I just tend to feel it it is good enough. Probably because I take a longer term view. VFU's (why isn't that AFU?) main function should be makeing sure closeing admins are following procedure and that people are not abuseing speedies. If no one who cared enough about an article to make a case for it on AFD visted it in 5 days I tend to feel that says something about the article. If new information comes to light that changes everything write a version includeing that information then point out the pesumebrly substantial change to anyone who tries to speedy it.
-- geni
On 10/16/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: VFU's (why isn't that
AFU?) main function should be makeing sure closeing admins are following procedure and that people are not abuseing speedies.
Well actually a bad speedy can be remedied by any admin.
So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.
Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to delete come from?
About 25-30% of all nominations to AfD fail to result in deletion.
Get over it.
VFU's function is not to deal with those problems. Its function is to look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually good articles.
And undelete them!
Why doesn't it do its job?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Tony Sidaway wrote:
So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.
Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to delete come from?
Sometimes admins either don't pay attention or do stupid things when closing AFDs...
- -- Phroziac Encrypted Email Preferred OpenPGP key ID: 0x8DA573EA
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Well actually a bad speedy can be remedied by any admin.
Technicaly true but if your not an admin VFU is probably where you are going to end up
So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.
Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to delete come from?
Every action on wikipedia should be subject to oversite by the community. You know this.
About 25-30% of all nominations to AfD fail to result in deletion.
Get over it.
Doesn't bother me one iota. 70-75% get over it.
VFU's function is not to deal with those problems. Its function is to look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually good articles.
Since when?
And undelete them!
Why doesn't it do its job?
Since people redifined its job.
-- geni
On 10/17/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
VFU's function is not to deal with those problems. Its function is to look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually good articles.
Since when?
SInce it was designated as the forum for undeletion.
And undelete them!
Why doesn't it do its job?
Since people redifined its job.
No we didn't.
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
No we didn't.
The consensus appears to be against you on that one. -- geni
On 10/17/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
No we didn't.
The consensus appears to be against you on that one.
Absolutely not. When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting articles should not undelete articles?
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Absolutely not. When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting articles should not undelete articles?
Is that a strawman?
It would appear that you can't get the version of policy you want to stick therefor it would appear that what you think should be policy is not in accordence with what the community thinks.
-- geni
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
On 10/17/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
No we didn't.
The consensus appears to be against you on that one.
Absolutely not. When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting articles should not undelete articles?
VfU does undelete articles, regularly. What you are arguing about are what VfU should consider as valid rationales for undeletion. Until now its mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process - in other words, an appeals court; you would like to expand that to include undeletions based on content.
Jay.
Yet again, somebody who puts process before content has deleted this perfectly valid article, contrary to the fundamental axiom of our deletion policy: *if in doubt, don't delete*. Somebody please undelete it.
Why do we have to go through this clownish pantomime every time some ignoramuses delete a good article?
Undeleted.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 16, 2005, at 8:30 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Yet again, somebody who puts process before content has deleted this perfectly valid article, contrary to the fundamental axiom of our deletion policy: *if in doubt, don't delete*. Somebody please undelete it.
Why do we have to go through this clownish pantomime every time some ignoramuses delete a good article? _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/17/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Undeleted.
-Snowspinner
Be glad Ed Poor isn't a steward any more. *beaks out popcorn*
-- geni
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Yet again, somebody who puts process before content has deleted this perfectly valid article, contrary to the fundamental axiom of our deletion policy: *if in doubt, don't delete*. Somebody please undelete it.
Why do we have to go through this clownish pantomime every time some ignoramuses delete a good article?
I was originally in agreement with you concerning the existence of the article but insulting the 'other side' is hardly a good way to get other people to sign up to your philosophy on this matter.
Chris
On 10/17/05, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
I was originally in agreement with you concerning the existence of the article but insulting the 'other side' is hardly a good way to get other people to sign up to your philosophy on this matter.
Are we writing an encyclopedia or running a beetle drive? We have somehow arrived at a system that pits well-meaning, bureacratic ignorance against the only force that can ever gainsay it: pure self-absorbed, unflappable belief that good stuff shouldn't be deleted.
The unanimous vote to delete that article can only possibly mean one thing: we've got a real problem on AfD. it's become a means by which information is removed from Wikipedia for no other reason that brute ignorance.
If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry. There is no pleasant way to put that bad news.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry. There is no pleasant way to put that bad news.
My original statement was that I disapprove of you insulting the other side while criticising their actions. It's unnecessary. I am not offended by your opinions on the issue (and I'm not quite sure how you got that idea from my previous comment).
Chris
On 10/17/05, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry. There is no pleasant way to put that bad news.
My original statement was that I disapprove of you insulting the other side while criticising their actions. It's unnecessary. I am not offended by your opinions on the issue (and I'm not quite sure how you got that idea from my previous comment).
Question: was the unanimous decision to delete an informed one, or was it an uninformed one?
In this case, we have overwhelming evidence that it was uninformed.
We're letting articles be deleted because the editors who happened to look at a nomination were ignoramuses. I don't mean that they were uninformed, but that *they failed to inform themselves*.
Why do we have a process that is biasds towards taking into account the opinions of people who clearly do not make an effort to inform themselves?
And then in the VFU phase we have people who utterly refuse to take into account the content of the article and its value to Wikipedia, and in fact go so far as to claim falsely that it would be wrong to do so.
Again, wilful ignorance.
I cannot put it any other way.
Wikipedia deletion policy is being traduced by ignoramuses.
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Are we writing an encyclopedia or running a beetle drive? We have somehow arrived at a system that pits well-meaning, bureacratic ignorance against the only force that can ever gainsay it: pure self-absorbed, unflappable belief that good stuff shouldn't be deleted.
The unanimous vote to delete that article can only possibly mean one thing: we've got a real problem on AfD. it's become a means by which information is removed from Wikipedia for no other reason that brute ignorance.
If pointing this out offends you, I'm sorry. There is no pleasant way to put that bad news.
We've got problems everywhere. The question is which ones to worry about the most and how bad the side effects of adopting certian solutions would be.
Incerdently the article has been deleted again (take one sip). Did we ever decide if the 3RR applies to deletion?
-- geni
On 10/16/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
On 10/17/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
No we didn't.
The consensus appears to be against you on that one.
Absolutely not. When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting articles should not undelete articles?
VfU does undelete articles, regularly. What you are arguing about are what VfU should consider as valid rationales for undeletion. Until now its mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process - in other words, an appeals court; you would like to expand that to include undeletions based on content.
Until now? Didn't I send those links to what the VFU pages said just a few months ago?
VFU was initially a page where you could list an article that you wanted to undelete, and the community would discuss whether or not to undelete the article. It wasn't about process, it was about whether or not the article should be undeleted or not. There were articles which were deleted out of process, which received a majority of support to keep deleted, and there were articles which were deleted within process (at least, assuming you agree with the twisted definition of consensus as 67%), which received a majority of support to undelete.
Someone went in to the "rules" at the top of the VFU page and changed them to say it was about process, claiming that there was a consensus for this viewpoint. Based on the discussion here, there obviously wasn't such a consensus.
Jay.
Anthony
On 10/17/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote: Until now its
mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process
That is utterly, completely, false. Why are these utter falsehoods always tramped out to defend the failure of VFU to do a proper job of fulfulling the undeletion policy: to decide whether Wikipedia is better off with or without an article?
On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote: Until now its
mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process
That is utterly, completely, false.
To wit:
Article wrongly deleted (ie that Wikipedia would be a better encyclopedia with the article restored)
G'day Jay,
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com Absolutely not. When we decide that the forum dedicated to undeleting articles should not undelete articles?
VfU does undelete articles, regularly. What you are arguing about are what VfU should consider as valid rationales for undeletion. Until now its mandate has been to undelete (or not) based on process - in other words, an appeals court; you would like to expand that to include undeletions based on content.
Worl, "appeals court" is pretty slim. I don't think we *need* an appeals court on Wikipedia, frankly. Not unless instruction creep becomes a lot creepier ...
I know I've had to change my vote from "delete" to "keep" (or, on one memorable occasion, "merge with existing article on this person") from time-to-time. Not often, it's true, but often enough, as an article is rewritten, or new information slinks out from under the bed. What happens if this information pops up a few days and/or weeks too late for me to change my vote? For everyone to change their votes?
It's time for undeletion then, innit?
Cheers,
G'day Tony,
On 10/16/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: VFU's (why isn't that
AFU?) main function should be makeing sure closeing admins are following procedure and that people are not abuseing speedies.
Well actually a bad speedy can be remedied by any admin.
So the only function of VFU is to undelete articles that have been processed properly but shouldn't have been deleted even so.
Worl, I'd say a bunch of delete votes with no argument, attached to a subpage where the nominator made no argument, but where the admin deleted, counts as "not processed properly". Surely VfU has something to say there?
Where did this idea that we needed to check up on admins who failed to delete come from?
That's not what he said. Why would VfU be checking up on admins who *fail* to delete?
About 25-30% of all nominations to AfD fail to result in deletion.
Get over it.
VFU's function is not to deal with those problems. Its function is to look at the articles deleted and see if they were, in fact, actually good articles.
And undelete them!
Well, erm, we must be careful to see that VfU doesn't become AfD part 2. If new information comes to light, if the deletion arguments were unworthy, if the admin closed incorrectly ... any more? I don't recall seeing "If Tony Sidaway, Ray Saintonge and SPUI wish to redress the balance against those lousy deletionists" on the VfU guidelines, but then, I admit that I'm not a regular there, and on a Wiki these things can change bloody quickly.
Why doesn't it do its job?
You've already said why, repeatedly. Somewhere along the way it stopped being a last-gasp "hang on we missed something" effort and became an appeals court. "Dost thou have a point of law to make? Then begone!"
We're slowly building our own government to mirror that of the Real World, at least in Western Common Law countries. We're unconsciously trying to build "courts" of different jurisdiction to judge articles and users, and --- you'll laugh when I tell you this --- even an effort like Esperanza was meant to come with a free top-heavy parliament!
Some of y'all complain of "instruction creep". I think the big problem with instruction creep is not, well, creeping instruction, but that we're trying to mirror real-world institutions e'en when they be entirely inappropriate for us. If no-one else objects, I think I'll add to the "community" section of WP:NOT --- "Wikipedia is NOT the real world."
On 10/17/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
Why doesn't it do its job?
You've already said why, repeatedly. Somewhere along the way it stopped being a last-gasp "hang on we missed something" effort and became an appeals court. "Dost thou have a point of law to make? Then begone!"
Well no. That's how some people treat it. But that isn't its mandate, nor does it have anything to do with the undeletion policy.
In short, it's bloody broken. That people hang around there and make comments disturbingly similar to your parody above is only the final nail in the coffin.
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self- evidently absurd.
Quite.
We have long ago reached the point where AfD closers sometimes felt that they had to close an article as a deletion, even though, in Doc's words, "the AfD consensus was illogical." I mean, this was the actual opinion of the guy who pulled the plug.
Doc has even greater reservations about my unilateral action, but fuck it, this isn't about me. It's about a screwed-up process that is not remedying blatantly bad decisions.
Doc says: "I think you could at least have waited to see if the VfU process would have come to the right result."
Well no. Because a number of VFU regulars continue to claim loudly, if falsely, and to the point where anyone who claims otherwise is treated as a heretic, that content must not be considered as a reason for undeletion.
When I quoted the actual undeletion policy (which says the opposite) this text was removed from the page on the grounds that practice dictated policy. In other words, those who couldn't be bothered to check the policy falsely claimed that their ignorant actions constituted de facto policy.
There's something deeply wrong with this. If some people see the Wolters article as a vanity article, they're entitled to their opinion, but please, let's not permit such thinking to cause articles to be deleted.
On 10/16/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
In which case your real argument is that we don't need VFU because AfD is flawless - an argument that is not so much a straw man as self- evidently absurd.
Quite.
We have long ago reached the point where AfD closers sometimes felt that they had to close an article as a deletion, even though, in Doc's words, "the AfD consensus was illogical." I mean, this was the actual opinion of the guy who pulled the plug.
So? I've blocked people under the 3RR than gone in and taken up thier case.
Doc has even greater reservations about my unilateral action, but fuck it, this isn't about me. It's about a screwed-up process that is not remedying blatantly bad decisions.
Doc says: "I think you could at least have waited to see if the VfU process would have come to the right result."
Well no. Because a number of VFU regulars continue to claim loudly, if falsely, and to the point where anyone who claims otherwise is treated as a heretic, that content must not be considered as a reason for undeletion.
When I quoted the actual undeletion policy (which says the opposite) this text was removed from the page on the grounds that practice dictated policy. In other words, those who couldn't be bothered to check the policy falsely claimed that their ignorant actions constituted de facto policy.
Umm that is pretty much how most of our policy turns up. All this formalised voteing stuff is pretty recent
There's something deeply wrong with this. If some people see the Wolters article as a vanity article, they're entitled to their opinion, but please, let's not permit such thinking to cause articles to be deleted.
Vanity is a legit reason for deletion. So in this case they were wrong how about explain that to those who voted delete? Until you added a link to [[Redeemer University College]] (which is also on cleanup) the article had no incomeing links so it's lose for 6 months or so is not something I'm too concerdened about. Perhaps it is however it is time to sort out [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Academics]] (although I'm haveing a hard time figureing out how you can make it to the level of professor without publishing in an international recognised journal).
-- geni
Okay, I'm probably asking to get flamed by writng this, but would people *please* make an effort to check their spelling & grammar before they post here? In the haste to contribute to an ongoing conversation, sometimes the result can be, well, incoherent, as shown by the quoted passages below.
(I've stripped out the identifying information because my point is not to target any one person, but to address everyone in general.)
VfU has never once seen "any" AfD that decides to delete, nor even "most" VfUs that decide to delete get brought up there. This is a complete straw man argument.
I've spent several minutes trying to parse these sentences, & I'm still not sure what is being said in the first sentence. Obviously, "VfU" has not seen "any" items that are somehow related to "AfD", which is then qualified as "nor even 'most'" of those items. But what are those implied items? From the context of discussion, it would appear that we are talking about deleted articles -- yet even if this is the case, the odd progression from (paraphrasing here) *not any* of these items to *even most* suggests that the author had in mind some specific subgroup of these deleted articles.
Then there is a glaring grammatical error. The subject of the verb "decides" appears to be "AfD", but from the context "AfD" is clearly the direct object of "has never once seen".
The confusion in this sentence is only compounded by the second one, where the author describes the situation in the first sentence as a "complete straw man argument". Here I must ask,"what argument": does the first sentence describe an actual condition or does it describe a possible one, & if so who originated this condition?
Maybe I just need more caffeine to understand this -- no one else seems confused by this paragraph -- but I honestly have no idea what is being said here.
Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get wiped out through AFD.
I wouldn't say anything about this paragraph, had it not appeared in the same post, because despite having a college degree in English, I still manage to misspell words. However, it borders on parody to find one statement with 3 glaring misspellings follow an incoherent one. I like to think that the people who post here on a regular basis are some of the brightest & most articulate (& yours truly) members of Wikipedia; seeing the above, I have to strongly reconsider that assumption. Typos & misspellings only undercut the power & logic of a writer's arguments, which is why I struggle to keep them out of what I write. (And an old Usenet rule dictates that at least one of these can be found in my email.)
To repeat myself, if you believe your opinion is important enough to be put into an email to this list, then it is important enough to proof-read that email before you send it to this list. I may be wrong to say this, but any topic will wait a minute or two while you perform this simple task.
Geoff
On 10/17/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
Okay, I'm probably asking to get flamed by writng this, but would people *please* make an effort to check their spelling & grammar before they post here? In the haste to contribute to an ongoing conversation, sometimes the result can be, well, incoherent, as shown by the quoted passages below.
I agree with you, although the fact that you misspelled "writng" in your very first sentence leads me to believe you don't use a spell checker yourself.
Unless you consider the reason for this may a combination of low profile and the knowlage amoungst those that do know about it that they would be wasteing there time. Any article that is so important that it must be included in wikipedia this year is unlikely to get wiped out through AFD.
I wouldn't say anything about this paragraph, had it not appeared in the same post, because despite having a college degree in English, I still manage to misspell words. However, it borders on parody to find one statement with 3 glaring misspellings follow an incoherent one. I like to think that the people who post here on a regular basis are some of the brightest & most articulate (& yours truly) members of Wikipedia; seeing the above, I have to strongly reconsider that assumption. Typos & misspellings only undercut the power & logic of a writer's arguments, which is why I struggle to keep them out of what I write. (And an old Usenet rule dictates that at least one of these can be found in my email.)
Take a look at the other writings by this person. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it might be that they don't speak English as their primary language.
To repeat myself, if you believe your opinion is important enough to
be put into an email to this list, then it is important enough to proof-read that email before you send it to this list. I may be wrong to say this, but any topic will wait a minute or two while you perform this simple task.
I don't usually do it, but I did click on "check spelling" for this particular post.
Geoff
Anthony
On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 10/17/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
[snip]
I wouldn't say anything about this paragraph, had it not appeared in the same post, because despite having a college degree in English, I still manage to misspell words. However, it borders on parody to find one statement with 3 glaring misspellings follow an incoherent one. I like to think that the people who post here on a regular basis are some of the brightest & most articulate (& yours truly) members of Wikipedia; seeing the above, I have to strongly reconsider that assumption. Typos & misspellings only undercut the power & logic of a writer's arguments, which is why I struggle to keep them out of what I write. (And an old Usenet rule dictates that at least one of these can be found in my email.)
Take a look at the other writings by this person. I'm not sure what the problem is, but it might be that they don't speak English as their primary language.
The point of my email was to focus on the problem, not the person; that is why I snipped off the identifying details. But since you raised that issue, I'll say this. I was under the impression that the original poster (OP) was a native English speaker, based on the idiomatic fluency of his language. Add to that the fact that the OP often makes a logical & plausible argument for his opinions, & this blemish of typos & misspellings is just a shame. If he's not a native speaker of English, he's fooling me now, & would fool me even better if he did just a little more work.
Had this person been another, run-of-the-mill whiner sending us another forgettable "I've been banned by a rogue Admin who picks on me because I violated the 3RR rule, but I won't mention it because that would make me look like the loon I am" email, I wouldn't bother making the effort; at most, I'd adjust the settings on my computer & make his email go bye-bye.
I'm trying to offer constructive criticism here. My message was "you could be a more effective writer if you did these things", not "your lack of grammar & spelling cancels out anything you might have to say; now go away." I'm sorry if that was not how it was received.
Geoff
On 10/17/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
The point of my email was to focus on the problem, not the person; that is why I snipped off the identifying details. But since you raised that issue, I'll say this. I was under the impression that the original poster (OP) was a native English speaker, based on the idiomatic fluency of his language. Add to that the fact that the OP often makes a logical & plausible argument for his opinions, & this blemish of typos & misspellings is just a shame. If he's not a native speaker of English, he's fooling me now, & would fool me even better if he did just a little more work.
Had this person been another, run-of-the-mill whiner sending us another forgettable "I've been banned by a rogue Admin who picks on me because I violated the 3RR rule, but I won't mention it because that would make me look like the loon I am" email, I wouldn't bother making the effort; at most, I'd adjust the settings on my computer & make his email go bye-bye.
I'm trying to offer constructive criticism here. My message was "you could be a more effective writer if you did these things", not "your lack of grammar & spelling cancels out anything you might have to say; now go away." I'm sorry if that was not how it was received.
Geoff
Your quotes writen by two different people. The one with the spelling errors is mine. You are correct in thinking that english is my native language. The spelling issue is largely to do with dyslexia. Correcting my spelling tends to be very time consuming so I tend tend not to worry too much about it outside the article namespace.
-- geni
VFU should concern the content of the article. You can't decide whether the article was right- or wrongfully deleted without actually looking at it. And additional evidence that a subject is worth an article that was not discussed in the AFD should be reason to rethink the initial deletion debate.
As I said it before. An AFD closure may be totally correct at the time, but VFU also concerns articles when situations have changed. "The Jar" webcomic is a good example. It was deleted for lack of notability because no one could find any information to verify the info in the article.
If someone comes in with information from the Wayback Machine Internet archive showing it was a popular comic when it was still active that should b enough info to argue an undeletion even when the AFD was correctly closed at the time.
I think VFU should be used to reconsider deletions when certain important info was not included in the final judgement. That's why the justification is so important.
--Mgm
I think the problem with the Wolters deletion is that nobody was around at the time who could be bothered to actually check. Sometimes you get that--people who just sit around and vote delete without even looking.
We don't normally delete articles (non-vanity) published authors. We don't normally delete full professors (except maybe American ones because apparently the word "professor" means something different there). There was no reason to delete this article.
Perhaps Wikipedia's guidelines are too strongly oriented towards American assumptions. Outside the US, a professor is definitely someone you want to know about. Within the US, I think I'd need to see strong evidence that the professor in question really was just a guy with a PhD and a part time job.
On 10/16/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/05, Brian Haws brian@bhaws.com wrote:
I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense in VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will be listed on VFU by it's supporters.
Why is this a problem?
On 10/16/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Why is this a problem?
extends the conflict. Means that as well as watching AFD you have to watch VFU. It's bad enough that we don't have a "don't list an article on AFD more than once a year" policy without opening another arena for conflict.
-- geni
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
On 10/16/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/05, Brian Haws brian@bhaws.com wrote:
I agree, this insistance on process and instruction over common sense
in VFU is very disheartening to me. And the proposed Deletion Review doesn't seem to be concerned about this, the goal seems to be making it as easy as possible to keep things deleted.
well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will be listed on VFU by it's supporters.
Why is this a problem?
If you think AfD needs to go, it's hard to understand how turning into a double AfD will help.
Jay.
Appalling yes, but not at surprising. If I have no idea who this person is I'm not going to be motivated to take the time to learn enough about him to make an informed vote. I've got other things to keep me busy. Most of us are unaware that a deletion is being considered until after the deed is done.
Ec
Snowspinner wrote:
Rightly so - this was a slam-dunk keep, and I'm appalled that it got no keep votes.
On Oct 16, 2005, at 2:52 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
AfD sometimes makes mistakes, and VFU is supposed to correct them. For some reason it signally fails to--often point blank refuses to--carry out this task.
The article on Professor Albert Wolters was delete a few days ago. The usual false pretexts are being posed as excuses for not immediately undoing this travesty.
From my talk page:
== [[Albert M. Wolters]] Talk page ==
Just curious: why wasn't [[Talk:Albert M. Wolters]] undeleted in addition to undeleting the article? Is the discussion there now irrelevant? --[[User:Tabor|Tabor]] 19:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually I'd no idea that it had been deleted. I don't think it's normal practice to delete talk pages, except for mischievous pages. I'll undelete it and merge in my comment. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]][[User talk:Tony Sidaway|<small><sup>Talk</sup></small>]] 21:12, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
:That's my fault, I deleted the talk page when I deleted the article per AfD. In hindsight it was a mistake - indeed deleting the article was probably a mistake since the AfD consensus was illogical. Tony, I do think we need a mechanism to review bad AfD decisions (like this one) and not just the process. But, for the record, I'm a little uncomfortable with you unilaterally restoring this - are you now the last court of appeal in any process! [[User:Doc glasgow|Doc]] [[User talk:Doc glasgow|(?)]] 21:27, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Doc. I know it's uncomfortable, but IAR is like that. A corollary of IAR is that I'm putting my reputation on the line. If this article is deleted I personally will not undelete again, but I rely on others who think the article is a worthwhile one to undelete it. I am pretty sure we can ensure that way that there is a clear lack of consensus to delete. Deletion policy has this: ''if in doubt, don't delete''. Honestly we should not be deleting good stuff, because it's a stupid thing to do. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]][[User talk:Tony Sidaway|<small><sup>Talk</sup></small>]] 21:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)