I'd like to push the notion of "keeping and relisting" pages on AfD as - an appropriate means of closing controversial AfDs with a high level of outside participation - a good alternative "vote" to express on such AfDs (e.g. "'''Keep and relist''' on AfD in 4 weeks").
I think the discussion about pages like Eon8 has been hampered by the perception that a page, once kept, will reside in Wikipedia forever.
To me, this is an example of old-fashioned encyclopedic thinking. But we are not living in an old-fashioned culture, and Wikipedia is not a traditional, "patient" medium. We update existing articles with information about events the moment they happen, whether it's someone dying or a football score. We often remove or summarize information that has been added during a particular event once it has phased into our cultural memory.
However, in the area of judging the existence of articles, I think we are currently dominated by a "Keep vs. Delete" attitude, the idea that an article is either "utter rubbish" or "eternal wisdom." We are split ideologically into factions of "deletionists" or "inclusionists". I think this is wrong.
We need novel thinking, because we are dealing with novel problems. Internet subcultures would like their every fart to be documented for eternity. Are we going to do that? Of course not. But I don't see anything wrong in principle with including ephemeral information in an ephemeral manner.
Of course, there can be no compromise on verifiability or WP:NOR -- Wikipedia is not a soap box or a place to explore novel theories. Nor am I proposing that spammers should be given room to promote their products for a "limited time only" (pardon the pun). What I am saying is that there are ephemeral phenomena that generate a lot of noise in ephemeral media like blogs, and in many cases there's nothing wrong with documenting them -- ephemerally.
Erik
On 7/5/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to push the notion of "keeping and relisting" pages on AfD as
- an appropriate means of closing controversial AfDs with a high level
of outside participation
- a good alternative "vote" to express on such AfDs (e.g. "'''Keep and
relist''' on AfD in 4 weeks").
[snip]
This would further shift control of the AfD process towards extremists who are heavily involved pushing their particular agenda and whom are often the source of the AfD hostility that keeps more moderate users away from the process.
It's a minority of deletions that are at all controversial, even after prod. These controversial AfDs are poisonous to the community and while they are few in relative number they can be large in impact. They divide us into factions and voting blocks and they encourage combat rather than cooperation. As such the real problem with controversial AfD's isn't the outcome of the AfD but the impact on our users.
As such, I think it is most important that we settle such AfDs as quickly and efficiently as possible regardless of the outcome. At times it would seem clearly better to consistently make the wrong decision then to prolong the arguments... as such I can't see supporting something thats just going to twist the knife in the wound.
If you were instead suggest something like "relist in one year", I'd answer that it doesn't take wikien-l discussion or policy changes to achieve that. ... For the past three months I've been making a list of every article kept due to what appears to me to be pop-culture mania. Once each entry is a year old I'll begin proding the ones that everyone has forgotten about.
On 7/6/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
This would further shift control of the AfD process towards extremists who are heavily involved pushing their particular agenda and whom are often the source of the AfD hostility that keeps more moderate users away from the process.
How so? After all, the idea is to delay the process so that these extremists (which exist on either side of the spectrum) become recognizable as the lone voices which they are. Besides, I'm not proposing anything what these people could not have done already -- no change of policy is needed.
As such, I think it is most important that we settle such AfDs as quickly and efficiently as possible
In cases like Eon8, semi-protecting the page and/or relisting it later (weeks, months, a year -- whatever is appropriate for the situation) seems like a good way to achieve that. The more we are talking about bold actions by individual admins, the more you will have tension, escalation and accusations. Another option to reduce fighting about controversial decisions would be to allow a quorum of closing admins to make a decision quickly, rather than waiting for the full 5 days.
So, you could have:
Calling an admin quorum of 5 admins to keep and relist a year from now.~~~~ * Support.--~~~~ * Support--~~~~ => Passed
As for how long to wait with the relisting, I think it depends on the case. I suspect that much of the interest in Eon8 will have dissipated by August.
Erik