There is a similar discussion at the en.wiki Village pump on this, and I think it runs parallel to this discussion. I tend to think that the bigger problems with AFD is the lack of participation on many of them; if you disagree, then look at the bottom of each page of any given day's AFD and observe all the relisted (some twice) discussions that have zero, perhaps one other comment. I think people are discouraged from participating in AFD discussions or even sounding off what they think the best actions should be taken for two reasons. First, there are those who are afraid to participate in AFDs for the fear of being pigeonholed or labeled (i.e. as an inclusionist or a deletionist when they are actually in the middle). Second, there are those users who are discouraged or perhaps disgusted over the level of wikilawyering and incivility that permeates especially in the more contentious discussions. I partially fall into both camps myself. When I first came on over a year ago, I took a lot of advice from the Help pages (as the article indicates, taking it in by 'osmosis'). [[Help:Contents]] mentioned "deleting pages", which I kind of took as some sort of a Wiki-responsibility to participate in AFD discussions, or at the very least, chime in. And that's what I did for about the first six months or so in which I have been active. However, that has slowed down greatly since then for the reasons that I have explained above. Not to say that I don't regret not having participated in AFD discussions frequently. In fact, it was through AFD where I have learned about everything policy and guideline-wise that I know now, how to interact with other users as well as what to do and what not to do in a general sense (not just in AFD discussions but in any WP discussion). With that said, I don't think the pros or cons of AFD are going to necessarily effect article volume. There are always going to be new topics out there, which will perpetually facilitate new articles. Looking at the big picture with regards to the current information that exists on Wikipedia, it ultimately becomes an exercise on "how" to organize said information as opposed to squeezing every last bit, every last letter, into everything (not that you don't see the latter, as that happens very often, as well). Speedy deletion is going to happen, PROD is going to happen, AFD is going to happen. The rest, as Ian puts it, depends on the integrity and open-mindedness of the editors out there to make sure they're running with the intention of the encyclopedia's net benefit in mind. -MuZemike --- On Thu, 8/13/09, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

"Luna" <lunasantin(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:1adf38660908131222j772acaa8h544580d05e716d02@mail.gmail.com... What? And let it out that wikipedians hav WebCams on celebrity sex life?

Steve Bennett wrote: Yes, the mean here might tell less than the median. (I.e. you'd expect to see very different figures for controversial and non-controversial articles, and lumping all articles and frequent editors together and averaging isn't going to be that helpful.) As http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/ admits, they (the PARC people) have basically done a press release on a conference paper that won't be produced until WikiSym in October. This would account for the rather sensationalised tone of it all. Charles

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 3:04 AM, David Gerard<dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ah, yes. This was an obvious test I should have thought of. One of my pet hates: when an IP changes a figure in in infobox or somewhere in article, with no comment, and no source. I've heard reports of people doing this as sport, just to be annoying, but in my experience, they're often right. But it leaves you in a real quandary, if you can't verify it either way. Steve

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Ian Woollard<ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote: I see a lot of these patrolling recent changes in Huggle. I look at the user's other contribs and provided I can find just one in the same day where he's blanked the page and written "SUCK MY ASS!!!" I'll revert the numeric change and put "rv numerical change by bad faith editor but editors may wish to double-check" as an edit summary. Another warning sign is a number of numeric changes, without any other sort of edit, in completely unrelated types of articles. I wouldn't necessarily rv on that basis but I probably would if they've had any sort of warning that day.

Carcharoth wrote: Indeed. And I've seen canny vandals instigate a deliberate chain of contradictory vandalism (perhaps involving sockpuppets) with the apparent intent of goading well-meaning but careless vandalism patrollers into doing precisely this. (It's an annoyingly effective technique.)