Office actions - WikiEN-l

17 Dec 2006


      The major issue with WP:OFFICE as I see it is an admin/non-admin problem.
When [[Paul Barresi]] was stubbed per WP:OFFICE in April, the article was
still editable, so an interested editor simply had to adopt the article and
add carefully sourced statements one by one. No problemo.
In the case of [[Pacific Western University]], the article is only editable
by admins. Several good non-admin editors have developed serviceable scratch
articles in the last four months. I suppose there's a question whether these
scratch articles should even be on Wikipedia if the actual article is in
lockdown.
There's really no clear system to discuss those proposed versions, come to a
consensus, and incorporate those changes. What we end up with is multiple
people saying on the article's talk page, "Hey, check out this version I
wrote," or "Let's add this well-sourced statement," but then there's no one
coordinating or incorporating the consensus-based additions.
Instead, and I have found this extremely frustrating in the case of the PWU
article, we get unilateral decisions made by admins regarding changes. For
instance, an editor who created a well-sourced scratch article also created
a [[List of Pacific Western University people]] containing a rather crufty
but well-sourced list of people claiming degrees from PWU, some of whom are
notable. The article was put up for AfD, but was instead quickly deleted in
its entirety, edit history and all, with the sourced statements about
notable alumni removed as well. I understand the need for caution, but this
kind of unilateral decision to completely delete articles containing useful
material that could be merged into other articles is what drives good people
from the project. The information can't even be retrieved by non-admins and
adds to the growing sense that non-admins are less important/less valued
contributors. Because they were redlinked in the PWU scratch article, I
gathered a lot of information and started articles on three officers of PWU,
including the founder, president, and owner, all of which were similarly
deleted on sight by JzG. The simultaneous lack of process with WP:OFFICE and
the unilateral deletion of all ancillary PWU articles made today my least
favorite Wikipedia user experience to date.
My from-the-trenches suggestions:
- Impartial admin(s) assigned to each OFFICEd article at the moment it is
protected (preferably someone with no edits to the article prior to
WP:OFFICE). Perhaps randomly chosen from an existing pool of volunteers and
an a WP:COI clearance for the article in question. That person would be
listed on the talk page as the coordinator and would check back in each day
and respond to proposed changes.
- A registration system for articles locked down by WP:OFFICE for impartial
non-admins to make edits, perhaps with a high threshold (edit number, WP:COI
clearance, etc.).
- Barring that, a centralized location where a scratch article can be
prepared and discussed by admins and non-admins alike, possibly
registration-only or off-site.
I recommend adopting the first suggestion immediately, and then discussing
the other options somewhere before implementing them. All the Office has to
do is lock and stub the disputed article, then the WP:OFFICE admin pool
would take it from there. I believe articles would slowly but surely move
toward unprotection from there, rather than languishing for many months
under the current system.
Jokestress