On 10/16/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

On 10/16/05, Brian Haws <brian(a)bhaws.com> wrote: well yes the alturnative is that any AFD that decides to delete will be listed on VFU by it's supporters. -- geni

On Oct 16, 2005, at 4:47 PM, geni 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

On Oct 16, 2005, at 5:21 PM, geni 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

On 10/16/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: VFU's (why isn't that 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?

On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: Technicaly true but if your not an admin VFU is probably where you are going to end up Every action on wikipedia should be subject to oversite by the community. You know this. Doesn't bother me one iota. 70-75% get over it. Since when? Since people redifined its job. -- geni

On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: The consensus appears to be against you on that one. -- geni

On 10/17/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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

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?

On 10/17/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Be glad Ed Poor isn't a steward any more. *beaks out popcorn* -- geni

On 10/17/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org> 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.

On 10/17/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris(a)starglade.org> wrote: 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 10/16/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote: 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, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: To wit: Article wrongly deleted (ie that Wikipedia would be a better encyclopedia with the article restored)

G'day Tony, 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? That's not what he said. Why would VfU be checking up on admins who *fail* to delete? 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. 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." -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.2/137 - Release Date: 16/10/2005

On 10/16/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

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.) 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. 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(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote: 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. 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 I don't usually do it, but I did click on "check spelling" for this particular post. Geoff Anthony

On 10/17/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote: 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

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, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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

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: