On 12/8/05, Garion1000 garion1000@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/8/05, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/8/05, Carbonite carbonite.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/8/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
By the way, I really hope the experiment of switching off anon page creation is followed up with an experiment in switching off AFD for a month.
Isn't that a bit like experimenting with not taking out your trash for a month? They're both fairly unpleasant experiences that no one really
wants
to do, but they can't be halted without some other way of getting rid of
the
refuse.
Turn off AfD, let all editors delete articles.
I don't want to know how many times [[George Bush]] would be deleted. :)
Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just like any other abusive editor.
The Cunctator wrote:
Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just like any other abusive editor.
I shudder at the thought of it, Wikipedia would turn into chaos, trolls would go wild, in short I am extremely opposed to the idea of turning off AFD for even a day.
-Jtkiefer
People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one hell of a mess.
In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a proposal.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User: Capitalistroadster
On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just like any other abusive editor.
I shudder at the thought of it, Wikipedia would turn into chaos, trolls would go wild, in short I am extremely opposed to the idea of turning off AFD for even a day.
-Jtkiefer
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Keith Old wrote:
People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one hell of a mess.
In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a proposal.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User: Capitalistroadster
Ok, if someone comes up with a serious proposal then I'll voice my nay or aye on it but the thought of entirely turning off AFD for even a short period of time is ludicrious.
-Jtkiefer
Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote: Keith Old wrote:
People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one hell of a mess.
In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a proposal.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User: Capitalistroadster
Ok, if someone comes up with a serious proposal then I'll voice my nay or aye on it but the thought of entirely turning off AFD for even a short period of time is ludicrious.
-Jtkiefer _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l At the risk of being a bore on this topic, I think Uncontested Deletions has some potential as a way to reduce the volume at AFD....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested...
"According to DragonsflightÂ’s 100 days survey, 58.2% of all AFD nominations resulted in uncontested deletions. No one, not even the creator, voted to keep those articles."
I'm not proposing this as a total replacement of AFD however....
Jtkiefer wrote:
Ok, if someone comes up with a serious proposal then I'll voice my nay or aye on it but the thought of entirely turning off AFD for even a short period of time is ludicrious.
That's bit of an opinion. Personally, I can't see why turning it off for a short time is "ludicrous"; if it turns out to suck and we turn it back on it'll just have to run at slightly higher capacity than usual to work through the backlog that built up during the outage. If AfD can't handle running at a slightly higher capacity then it's all going to fall apart in a little while anyway once Wikipedia grows past that limit.
I would support such a move if substantial leeway was given to newpages patrollers to speedily delete obvious ads, spam, forumcruft, etc. - pages that may not necessarily currently fall under speedy delete criteria but would clearly and unambiguously lose if placed on the now-closed AfD. I've gone back to doing newpages since the anon ban, and the rate of sheer crap coming in is still spectacularly high.
-FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia
On 12/8/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one hell of a mess.
In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a proposal.
I'm having real trouble determining if people are being facetious or not when they write such things as the above. "People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post." That sounds like Ari Fleischer's admonition to Bill Maher:
"It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate... There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
http://unquietmind.com/presssec.html
My proposal is entirely serious; just because someone doesn't like the thought of it doesn't make it unserious. Just because someone thinks it will fail or have negative consequences doesn't make it unserious. You *might be wrong*, you know.
I often am.
Because I'm human.
Jtkiefer wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just like any other abusive editor.
I shudder at the thought of it, Wikipedia would turn into chaos, trolls would go wild, in short I am extremely opposed to the idea of turning off AFD for even a day.
No, I mean just turn it off, not Cunc's plan. See Tony Sidaway's email for the numbers: AFD is not the last barrier against the downfall of Wikipedia, it's now just somewhere people try to win arguments and salt the earth. It would result in only a few more articles staying around and a lot less querulousness and bad faith to newcomers.
- d.
David,
What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up being speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would they have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to salt the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding participants in Articles for Deletion.
We have agreed procedures for deletion that to my way of working work well most of the time. It isn't perfect but few human institutions are.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User:Capitalistroadster
On 12/9/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Jtkiefer wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Of course, the rules against vandalism and the 3RR would apply. People who arbitrarily or abusively delete articles would be treated just like any other abusive editor.
I shudder at the thought of it, Wikipedia would turn into chaos, trolls would go wild, in short I am extremely opposed to the idea of turning off AFD for even a day.
No, I mean just turn it off, not Cunc's plan. See Tony Sidaway's email for the numbers: AFD is not the last barrier against the downfall of Wikipedia, it's now just somewhere people try to win arguments and salt the earth. It would result in only a few more articles staying around and a lot less querulousness and bad faith to newcomers.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
David,
What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up being speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would they have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
Yes. Those non-speedy candidates that are deleted out-of-process and are capable of being articles of some kind can be speedy undeleted again under the undeletion policy. This isn't rocket science.
Tony,
At the moment we have a process where these debates are centrally located and where the communities that may be affected can be advised. I do this for Australia related deletions for example.
If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
Under that system, articles can be deleted with hardly anyone knowing. Further, if you are a newby, you are not necessarily going to know where to go to have your say.
It would be less user friendly and less accountable than the existing system. That is why I strongly oppose it.
I simply add: if in doubt don't change.
Regards
*Keith Old*
Keith Old
On 12/9/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
David,
What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up
being
speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would
they
have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
Yes. Those non-speedy candidates that are deleted out-of-process and are capable of being articles of some kind can be speedy undeleted again under the undeletion policy. This isn't rocket science. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
Only for a short while. After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would stop. Trust me on this. Calvinball.
What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep, redirect or merge?
We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we look at making such a significant change to our processes.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User:Capitalistroadster
On 12/9/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
Only for a short while. After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would stop. Trust me on this. Calvinball. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/8/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep, redirect or merge?
They'd probably grow a talk page.
We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we look at making such a significant change to our processes.
It's just an experiment. Instead of arguing about what might happen, let's just try it for a while and see what happens.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User:Capitalistroadster
Anthony
Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well and performs an important task without having something that works better.
On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/8/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep,
redirect or
merge?
They'd probably grow a talk page.
We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we
look
at making such a significant change to our processes.
It's just an experiment. Instead of arguing about what might happen, let's just try it for a while and see what happens.
Regards
*Keith Old*
User:Capitalistroadster
Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Keith Old wrote:
Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well and performs an important task without having something that works better.
Important task, yes. Works reasonably well, no. It's poisonous and the edge cases are being decided in ways harmful to the community.
- d.
G'day Keith,
Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well and performs an important task without having something that works better.
Ay, there's the rub. I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task. Rather, they'd prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already apparently go too far ...).
If you've noted an element of sarcasm or, at the very least, tongue-in-cheekery from David, Anthony, etc. then this may provide a plausible explanation as to why.
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Keith,
Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well and performs an important task without having something that works better.
Ay, there's the rub. I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task. Rather, they'd prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already apparently go too far ...).
Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want to get rid of any poisonous feelings.
I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself. Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for the wrong reasons.
If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.
On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Keith,
Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well and performs an important task without having something that works better.
Ay, there's the rub. I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task. Rather, they'd prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already apparently go too far ...).
Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want to get rid of any poisonous feelings.
For my part, I just want to get rid of the enormous waste of time.
I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself. Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for the wrong reasons.
If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.
I kind of think we should take the exact opposite approach. Shut off AFD, and then we'll find out what was right with it. Then those exact solutions can be found and addressed.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.
I kind of think we should take the exact opposite approach. Shut off AFD, and then we'll find out what was right with it. Then those exact solutions can be found and addressed.
Seconded!
- d.
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want to get rid of any poisonous feelings. I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself. Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for the wrong reasons. If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.
I don't think so. I think it's bad enough that just dynamiting the damned thing can't be worse than it is now. We do need a deletion mechanism, but we don't need it more than we need not to have a festering pit of bad faith.
- d.
On 12/10/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want to get rid of any poisonous feelings. I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself. Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for the wrong reasons. If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.
I don't think so. I think it's bad enough that just dynamiting the damned thing can't be worse than it is now. We do need a deletion mechanism, but we don't need it more than we need not to have a festering pit of bad faith.
- d.
So address the bad faith. The bad faith is coming from users, real people, not from the page. Now if you were to delete the people... it might actually have a noticeable effect.
Mgm
Mark Gallagher wrote:
Ay, there's the rub. I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task. Rather, they'd prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already apparently go too far ...). If you've noted an element of sarcasm or, at the very least, tongue-in-cheekery from David, Anthony, etc. then this may provide a plausible explanation as to why.
Oh no, not at all. Most of what hits AFD is complete shit, and should be killed as quickly, messily and painfully as is feasible. A deletion mechanism is something that we have a need for; my objection is to the atmosphere of the AFD we have and the fostering of bad faith, and that getting any policy change on deletions is like stalemated trench warfare.
- d.
On Dec 8, 2005, at 11:48 PM, Keith Old wrote:
We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we look at making such a significant change to our processes.
No. We really don't. Because serious thought on Wikipedia has always amounted to navel-gazing, and perhaps some fiddling while Rome smolders. We need for the problem to become a real one. Then we can figure out what it is, and actually create a solution. A hypothetical solution to a theorized result of an experiment we're only discussing conducting is sufficiently removed from any notion of reality as to be a vapid philosophical exercise.
Turn off AfD. See what happens. if it's a disaster, we turn it back on and say "Well, shit, that was interesting." If it's not a disaster... we say "Well, neat, that was interesting." Really, there's only about three letters difference in the reactions.
-Phil
G'day Phil,
Turn off AfD. See what happens. if it's a disaster, we turn it back on and say "Well, shit, that was interesting." If it's not a disaster... we say "Well, neat, that was interesting." Really, there's only about three letters difference in the reactions.
And if we can't agree on the results? If a vocal minority --- including your good self --- cries "yippee, my article on minor fanfic characters can't be deleted! Neat!", do we consider the experiment a success?
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Phil,
Turn off AfD. See what happens. if it's a disaster, we turn it back on and say "Well, shit, that was interesting." If it's not a disaster... we say "Well, neat, that was interesting." Really, there's only about three letters difference in the reactions.
And if we can't agree on the results? If a vocal minority --- including your good self --- cries "yippee, my article on minor fanfic characters can't be deleted! Neat!", do we consider the experiment a success?
I would consider it a success if those who wanted to delete articles on minor fanfic characters recognised, firstly, that such articles really aren't a problem for Wikipedia and second, that there are alternatives to deletion that would be acceptable to all.
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
Only for a short while. After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would stop. Trust me on this. Calvinball.
Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's working reasonably well.
Jay.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
JAY JG stated for the record:
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
Only for a short while. After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would stop. Trust me on this. Calvinball.
Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's working reasonably well.
Jay.
Which certainly describes AfD, for sufficiently /unreasonable/ and /bad/ values of "reasonably well."
- -- Sean Barrett | Dear Santa, for Christmas I would like sean@epoptic.org | a copy of your list of naughty girls.
JAY JG wrote:
From: Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,
Only for a short while. After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would stop. Trust me on this. Calvinball.
Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's working reasonably well.
Assumption of fact not in evidence. AFD is not working reasonably well. Deletion of pages is one thing; the current culture of AFD is utterly poisonous to the community and has an appalling tendency to assumption of bad faith, *especially* when anyone dares question how it currently works. (wikien-l is apparently regarded as an enemy of AFD now. Goodness!) I believe there's an arbitration case on at the moment concerning precisely this atmosphere of bad faith perpetuated on AFD.
- d.
Keith Old wrote:
What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up being speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would they have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
The creator often doesn't have a chance now, because the AFD regulars think it's too much like work to notify them.
Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to salt the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding participants in Articles for Deletion.
See current RFAr. It blatantly encourages an atmosphere of bad faith and that's damaging.
- d.
David,
I would have no problem with adding a requirement to notify the original author as part of a requirement for nomination. We should also look at systems where communities possibly affected by a decision are advised of the decision. Posting articles on relevant noticeboards is one way of doing it.
We have a situation where Wikipedian A disagrees with Wikipedian B over all sorts of issues such as schools, webcomics, etc. We have to look at ways of trying to reach some sort of common ground and involving the community as much as possible in the decision. Ultimately, we have to delete some articles that just aren't suitable for Wikipedia and we should have a process where as many people
Ultimately, I have looked at RfAr. As far as I can see most of the cases relate to pushing POV on particular pages. That would continue whether or not we continued with AfD or some other system.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old
On 12/9/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Keith Old wrote:
What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up
being
speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would
they
have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
The creator often doesn't have a chance now, because the AFD regulars think it's too much like work to notify them.
Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to
salt
the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding participants in Articles for Deletion.
See current RFAr. It blatantly encourages an atmosphere of bad faith and that's damaging.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Basically, I agree with Keith here. We need some centralized discussion. Not only is does it take a lot less time for admins to manage one central place and delete what needs to be deleted, it's also easier to refer people to that place.
Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested.
How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
No matter what method you use, deletion is always going to have some ill-will with it. It's something that can't be avoided until we all reach common ground, and stop taking deletions personal.
As Keith said, you can use AFD without any ill-feelings by simply bringing forth good arguments.
Mgm
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
David,
I would have no problem with adding a requirement to notify the original author as part of a requirement for nomination. We should also look at systems where communities possibly affected by a decision are advised of the decision. Posting articles on relevant noticeboards is one way of doing it.
We have a situation where Wikipedian A disagrees with Wikipedian B over all sorts of issues such as schools, webcomics, etc. We have to look at ways of trying to reach some sort of common ground and involving the community as much as possible in the decision. Ultimately, we have to delete some articles that just aren't suitable for Wikipedia and we should have a process where as many people
Ultimately, I have looked at RfAr. As far as I can see most of the cases relate to pushing POV on particular pages. That would continue whether or not we continued with AfD or some other system.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old
On 12/9/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Keith Old wrote:
What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up
being
speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would
they
have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
The creator often doesn't have a chance now, because the AFD regulars think it's too much like work to notify them.
Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to
salt
the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding participants in Articles for Deletion.
See current RFAr. It blatantly encourages an atmosphere of bad faith and that's damaging.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Basically, I agree with Keith here. We need some centralized discussion. Not only is does it take a lot less time for admins to manage one central place and delete what needs to be deleted, it's also easier to refer people to that place.
Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested.
How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we *don't know* because we haven't done it.
When people have a difference of opinion about the consequences of a change, some positive, some negative, that's a sign that trying the change as an experiment would be a good idea.
Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested.
How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we *don't know* because we haven't done it.
True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like).
Can you please address those questions?
Mgm
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested.
How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we *don't know* because we haven't done it.
True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like).
Can you please address those questions?
My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing. AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?) deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
So the elements of my experiment would be: 1. Turn off AfD. 2. Make deletion/undeletion a common power. 3. Follow the rules for edit/reversions to police whether deletions are done properly.
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing. AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?) deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
Its not quite reversible yet:
1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I believe so copyvios can be hidden). 2. Deleted stuff goes away eventually in database purges. I think, although I may be wrong.
If 2 is a non issue, admins could be given free deletion and restore without afd, but not normal users.
Justinc
On 09/12/05, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing. AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?) deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
Its not quite reversible yet:
- Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
believe so copyvios can be hidden).
Deleted *material* can only be seen by admins. The revision history, however, is visible; all users can see dates, modifiers and edit summaries of deleted revisions even though they can't see the content.
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
- Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
believe so copyvios can be hidden).
We need a way to lock revisions from public view, separately from deleting the article. A locked revision would remain in the edit history (showing the date and editor who made it) but would not be viewable (nor could a diff be constructed against it) except by an administrator. The ability to lock (and unlock) revisions needs to be restricted to admins. That would take care of the libel and copyvio issues.
It's almost enough to get me coding again.
Kelly
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
- Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
believe so copyvios can be hidden).
We need a way to lock revisions from public view, separately from deleting the article. A locked revision would remain in the edit history (showing the date and editor who made it) but would not be viewable (nor could a diff be constructed against it) except by an administrator. The ability to lock (and unlock) revisions needs to be restricted to admins. That would take care of the libel and copyvio issues.
It's almost enough to get me coding again.
Kelly
Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it takes a developer to remove. If something like this is implemented admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being seen by non admins
-Jtkiefer
On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it takes a developer to remove. If something like this is implemented admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being seen by non admins
Locked revisions would have their edit summaries obscured (it would appear as "(edit summary obscured for legal reasons)" or something like that).
Kelly
Kelly Martin wrote:
On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it takes a developer to remove. If something like this is implemented admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being seen by non admins
Locked revisions would have their edit summaries obscured (it would appear as "(edit summary obscured for legal reasons)" or something like that).
Why should revisions like that be kept at all? It sounds like what you're proposing is just a way to mix deleted revisions in with undeleted revisions in the article history, rather than having a separate group of deleted revisions you have to click a link to see.
Wikipedia's content is commonly mirrored. If these "hidden" revisions don't go along with the published databases they're as good as deleted anyway. If they do go along with it, then they're not "hidden."
On 12/9/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Why should revisions like that be kept at all?
We have to retain the edit history for GFDL compliance.
It sounds like what you're proposing is just a way to mix deleted revisions in with undeleted revisions in the article history, rather than having a separate group of deleted revisions you have to click a link to see.
Wikipedia's content is commonly mirrored. If these "hidden" revisions don't go along with the published databases they're as good as deleted anyway. If they do go along with it, then they're not "hidden."
We may have to exclude the text of locked revisions from database dumps, then. That's not totally infeasible, just requires a few changes to the code used to generate database dumps.
Kelly
On 12/9/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Why should revisions like that be kept at all?
We have to retain the edit history for GFDL compliance.
Not really. The GFDL only requires that the authors are listed in the history. And even then, that only applies to authors whose contributions aren't deleted. And of course Wikipedia doesn't comply with the GFDL anyway, so it really doesn't matter.
On 12/9/05, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
Yes but unfortunately as it is now edit summaries are always viewable to anyone even when deleted which the vandals have figured out and are now using to get away with slander and privacy policy violations which it takes a developer to remove. If something like this is implemented admins should have the ability to also hide the edit summary from being seen by non admins
Locked revisions would have their edit summaries obscured (it would appear as "(edit summary obscured for legal reasons)" or something like that).
Kelly
Strong support for the locked revisions idea. Also for the ability to obscure edit summaries, perhaps independently of this.
-Kat [[User:Mindspillage]]
-- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams
On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing. AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?) deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
Its not quite reversible yet:
- Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
believe so copyvios can be hidden). 2. Deleted stuff goes away eventually in database purges. I think, although I may be wrong.
If 2 is a non issue, admins could be given free deletion and restore without afd, but not normal users.
#1 is not required for legal reasons. Essentially all users should be able to see the deletion history.
Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading towards.
Undeleting (in my vision of this experiment) would be accessible to all registered users who have been around for some non-zero, non-huge amount of time.
The Cunctator wrote:
Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading towards.
Yep. Anyone who thinks becoming an admin is a big deal hasn't looked too closely at some of our admins.
- d.
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to cover them.
Mgm
Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from AfD? I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
Pottercast/PotterCast (and podcasts in general) Forums and Blogs Bands (C-Moon - German, is it vanity or not?) Schools (examples shouldn't be needed for this one), although I have to admit discussion is pretty much growing on this. I'm sure this will eventually lead to notability guidelines.
All these could be covered by some number statistic and notability guidelines, but a quick test to easily determine its deletion worthiness is much harder. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find one, though.
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Pottercast/PotterCast (and podcasts in general)
Hmm, I couldn't find the article (guess it's been deleted), but I did find a mention of it in the New York Post. I don't think this article should have been deleted, and in fact I think it's kind of obvious that it should have at least been kept as a redirect. Turning it into a redirect wouldn't have required AFD or a speedy deletion criterion.
Forums and Blogs
I assume you don't mean [[Forums and Blogs]], so I'm really not sure where you're coming from. But I also think maybe we miscommunicated over what I was disputing. You suggested that there were articles which "everyone agrees should be deleted" but which there could be no speedy deletion criteria to cover. Your first example was of something which I think pretty much everyone would agree should be a redirect. This one, well, it doesn't seem to be an article at all.
Bands (C-Moon - German, is it vanity or not?)
User:Zordrac certainly doesn't seem to think so. But I'd say the article meets a speedy deletion criterion I'd like to see established - it contains no references to verify the information in it.
Schools (examples shouldn't be needed for this one), although I have to admit discussion is pretty much growing on this. I'm sure this will eventually lead to notability guidelines.
Yeah, you don't have my support to delete any schools, and I think a lot of people would agree with me. I think what will happen eventually here is that schools will not be eligible for deletion due to notability.
All these could be covered by some number statistic and notability guidelines, but a quick test to easily determine its deletion worthiness is much harder. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find one, though.
Well, the only one which I agree should be deleted fails a quick and easy test - it contains no external references.
Anthony
G'day Mgm,
Pottercast/PotterCast (and podcasts in general) Forums and Blogs Bands (C-Moon - German, is it vanity or not?) Schools (examples shouldn't be needed for this one), although I have to admit discussion is pretty much growing on this. I'm sure this will eventually lead to notability guidelines.
All these could be covered by some number statistic and notability guidelines, but a quick test to easily determine its deletion worthiness is much harder. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find one, though.
Bands are a good example. In theory, we could say "failing WP:MUSIC makes them speediable". But there's always a chance that we might want to keep articles on some of the bands which fail WP:MUSIC ... and that's what AfD is for.
AfD isn't for *deleting*, it's for *keeping*. AfD is the compromise between geni's "admins can delete anything they like" idea and Anthony (and others') disguised "nothing verifiable should be deleted, ever" idea.
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
Bands are a good example. In theory, we could say "failing WP:MUSIC makes them speediable". But there's always a chance that we might want to keep articles on some of the bands which fail WP:MUSIC ... and that's what AfD is for.
I would certainly not agree with making the failing of the WP:MUSIC tests as a criterion for speedy deletion - or indeed any other of these guidelines. I agree that a decent article on a band that passes WP:MUSIC *should never* be deleted, but that there are grounds for keeping beyond those included in any such set of guidelines.
I also don't, bluntly, trust every admin out there to apply complex criteria fairly (in either direction).
-Matt
Using WP:MUSIC as a criterion for speedies would be a disaster. The kind of judgement required by WP:MUSIC and similar guidelines is rather subjective and requires some research to be done--which newpages patrollers are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to do.
I don't have any personal issue with band vanity. Most of it should be deleted under the verifiability criterion, which doesn't really require the kind of debate we have on AfD. Just have a "verifiability problems" page (like copyright problems) and people can edit the articles to add verification. After a month or so if the existence of the band isn't verifiable it should be deleted. This would apply to other classes of article whose subject matter isn't verifiable.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Using WP:MUSIC as a criterion for speedies would be a disaster. The kind of judgement required by WP:MUSIC and similar guidelines is rather subjective and requires some research to be done--which newpages patrollers are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to do.
Furthermore, WP:MUSIC is hopelessly US pop-biased. It was something someone made up as "no no these aren't requirements for an article to exist" and somehow it's morphed into being it.
- d.
G'day Tony,
Using WP:MUSIC as a criterion for speedies would be a disaster. The kind of judgement required by WP:MUSIC and similar guidelines is rather subjective and requires some research to be done--which newpages patrollers are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to do.
Exactly. We need AfD for deciding if a band passes WP:MUSIC --- and, if not, whether we should still keep it.
Getting rid of AfD and replacing it with speedy-if-not-WP:MUSIC would be a Very Bad Idea, for reasons elucidated by Tony and Matt. Getting rid of AfD and *not* allowing the use of WP:MUSIC to consider speedying will just result in the flood of band vanity articles getting stronger.
Mark Gallagher wrote:
Getting rid of AfD and replacing it with speedy-if-not-WP:MUSIC would be a Very Bad Idea, for reasons elucidated by Tony and Matt. Getting rid of AfD and *not* allowing the use of WP:MUSIC to consider speedying will just result in the flood of band vanity articles getting stronger.
And let me add that despite my concerns over WP:MUSIC, it is a *flood* of really bad band vanity articles that thoroughly deserve a quick death. I've just looked through five days of AFD. The stupid (the articles nominated), it *burns*. To be fair, I can see why AFD regulars become terse and hard-bitten.
- s.
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Mgm,
Pottercast/PotterCast (and podcasts in general) Forums and Blogs Bands (C-Moon - German, is it vanity or not?) Schools (examples shouldn't be needed for this one), although I have to admit discussion is pretty much growing on this. I'm sure this will eventually lead to notability guidelines.
All these could be covered by some number statistic and notability guidelines, but a quick test to easily determine its deletion worthiness is much harder. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find one, though.
Bands are a good example. In theory, we could say "failing WP:MUSIC makes them speediable". But there's always a chance that we might want to keep articles on some of the bands which fail WP:MUSIC ... and that's what AfD is for.
AfD isn't for *deleting*, it's for *keeping*. AfD is the compromise between geni's "admins can delete anything they like" idea and Anthony (and others') disguised "nothing verifiable should be deleted, ever" idea.
-- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse
Actually, I'm fine with "admins can delete anything they like". AfD is a long drawn out process to achieve pretty much the same result (while claiming that "consensus" is being followed, which it isn't). I don't think verifiable information should be deleted (at all, if you include moving to other projects), but I've pretty much conceded that point. I think we should stop wasting time pretending to care about consensus.
Anthony
The Cunctator wrote:
<snip>
Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading towards.
Really? I never knew this. But honestly, I don't see why I anybody could be that optimistic about this. RfA is getting ridiculous. On one RfA (NSLE's), we had an oppose vote because, among other things, the user started thanking people for voting support before the RfA finished. On another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your talk page seems to be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on the side of caution, and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure". Adminship is supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more clear when you look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people vote oppose because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is off-topic, but I really think we should be looking into the RfA process as well as AfD, because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD (yes, VfD). Last time, it was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's the "in" thing to bash RfA, as anyone who spends some time on our IRC channels should notice. This is worrying.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your talk page seems to be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on the side of caution, and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure". Adminship is John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Surely you can ignore votes with this kind of reason? If anything being vandalized shows you do a good job and keeping vandals at bay which is always a good thing.
Opposition should be based on the user's own action not that of others. (Perhaps that last line could become policy to get rid of some bad reasonings to oppose adminships?)
Mgm
John Lee wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading towards.
Really? I never knew this. But honestly, I don't see why I anybody could be that optimistic about this. RfA is getting ridiculous. On one RfA (NSLE's), we had an oppose vote because, among other things, the user started thanking people for voting support before the RfA finished. On another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your talk page seems to be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on the side of caution, and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure". Adminship is supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more clear when you look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people vote oppose because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is off-topic, but I really think we should be looking into the RfA process as well as AfD, because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD (yes, VfD). Last time, it was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's the "in" thing to bash RfA, as anyone who spends some time on our IRC channels should notice. This is worrying.
Never underestimate the overwhelming power of stupidity. In more dangerous circumstances some of these people woud be candidates for Darwin Awards. :-)
I'm perhaps one of the longest standing non-admins on Wikipedia. I turned down the nomination on a couple of occasions. I have no intention to apply in the forseeable future, but I think that the inquisitorial process would be a deterent.
Ec
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Adminship is supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more clear when you look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people vote oppose because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is off-topic, but I really think we should be looking into the RfA process as well as AfD, because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD (yes, VfD). Last time, it was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's the "in" thing to bash RfA, as anyone who spends some time on our IRC channels should notice. This is worrying.
Never underestimate the overwhelming power of stupidity. In more dangerous circumstances some of these people woud be candidates for Darwin Awards. :-)
Being someone who votes oppose to RFBs if he thinks there isn't need for new bureaucrats, you might want to be careful about what you say to a mailing list. You aren't sending a private email to your buddy here.
- -Ryan
Ryan Delaney wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Adminship is supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more clear when you look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people vote oppose because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is off-topic, but I really think we should be looking into the RfA process as well as AfD, because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD (yes, VfD). Last time, it was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's the "in" thing to bash RfA, as anyone who spends some time on our IRC channels should notice. This is worrying.
Never underestimate the overwhelming power of stupidity. In more dangerous circumstances some of these people woud be candidates for Darwin Awards. :-)
Being someone who votes oppose to RFBs if he thinks there isn't need for new bureaucrats, you might want to be careful about what you say to a mailing list. You aren't sending a private email to your buddy here.
??? I'm not too sure what you are addressing. If I were voting for this sort of thing in Wikipedia I would likely take a stronger stand than you about the need for fewer bureaucrats AND admins. As long as I'm not a candidate for anything, I don't need to worry about the outcome of any such vote.
Ec
On 12/12/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
??? I'm not too sure what you are addressing. If I were voting for this sort of thing in Wikipedia I would likely take a stronger stand than you about the need for fewer bureaucrats AND admins. As long as I'm not a candidate for anything, I don't need to worry about the outcome of any such vote.
Fewer admins? Really? Why? I happen to think we could use more. Grunt work is boring and people get tired of it.
-Kat [[User:Mindspillage]]
-- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams
On 12/12/05, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/12/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
??? I'm not too sure what you are addressing. If I were voting for this sort of thing in Wikipedia I would likely take a stronger stand than you about the need for fewer bureaucrats AND admins. As long as I'm not a candidate for anything, I don't need to worry about the outcome of any such vote.
Fewer admins? Really? Why? I happen to think we could use more. Grunt work is boring and people get tired of it.
-Kat [[User:Mindspillage]]
We also need fresh faces. Otherwise we end up with a bunch of burnt out cynics.
-- geni
Anthony wrote:
On 12/13/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/13/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
Wikipedia does not and should not give legal advice. If you'd like to do research on what the laws are your contribution to the encyclopedia would be greatly appreciated. But the foundation can't and shouldn't force anyone to do that research.
I did quite a bit of research. However, since Wikipedia apparently should not offer legal advice, I removed all such research since it constitutes offering legal advice. The only people who can really contribute on understanding of the laws would be judges and lawyers. I cannot affrord to pay a lawyer for his opinion and since, as with all areas of information, it is best to engage an expert, it appears this recourse is blocked.
If you can come up with a way to be in better compliance with the laws of a particular jurisdiction without removing useful information from the encyclopedia, then I think we should definitely consider it.
Based on what you've already stated, I would say it is impossible to be able to offer such a suggestion, since if no guidance is offered on what may contravene laws in certain jurisdictions, it is impossible to think of a way to comply with such laws.
Steve Block wrote:
Anthony wrote:
Wikipedia does not and should not give legal advice. If you'd like to do research on what the laws are your contribution to the encyclopedia would be greatly appreciated. But the foundation can't and shouldn't force anyone to do that research.
I did quite a bit of research. However, since Wikipedia apparently should not offer legal advice, I removed all such research since it constitutes offering legal advice. The only people who can really contribute on understanding of the laws would be judges and lawyers. I cannot affrord to pay a lawyer for his opinion and since, as with all areas of information, it is best to engage an expert, it appears this recourse is blocked.
This is bizarre. I know that some places have laws to prevent non-lawyers from giving legal advice. It is understandable that when lawyers are deeply involved in legislation they would take steps to protect their own interests.
Writing about law is not the same as giving legal advice. That latter term has normally been interpreted as giving specific advice to a person about his own circumstances. It does not apply to general discussions of law.
Ec
Kat Walsh wrote:
On 12/12/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
??? I'm not too sure what you are addressing. If I were voting for this sort of thing in Wikipedia I would likely take a stronger stand than you about the need for fewer bureaucrats AND admins. As long as I'm not a candidate for anything, I don't need to worry about the outcome of any such vote.
Fewer admins? Really? Why? I happen to think we could use more. Grunt work is boring and people get tired of it.
It is indeed. Maybe we need more efficient ways to handle the grunt work.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Kat Walsh wrote:
On 12/12/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
??? I'm not too sure what you are addressing. If I were voting for this sort of thing in Wikipedia I would likely take a stronger stand than you about the need for fewer bureaucrats AND admins. As long as I'm not a candidate for anything, I don't need to worry about the outcome of any such vote.
Fewer admins? Really? Why? I happen to think we could use more. Grunt work is boring and people get tired of it.
It is indeed. Maybe we need more efficient ways to handle the grunt work.
Most of it can be semi-automated. e.g. CDVF is a fantastic tool. It's not even the greatest software (CryptoDerk would be the first to admit this, and if not then Kelly Martin can get quite direct about the code ;-), but the fact of it being there has helped RC patrollers immeasurably. So we need more admins who are also coders, because boy will they have an itch to scratch!
- d.
True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like).
Can you please address those questions?
Mgm
Uncontested deletions answers these observations nicely I think:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested _deletions
I've suggested this here before, I think it's a good way to tune out a lot of the garbage that falls in between speedy deletions and what AFD should be spending it's time on.
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested.
How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
That's what you think the result of the experiment will be. But we *don't know* because we haven't done it.
True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like).
Can you please address those questions?
Mgm
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Giving admins more responcibilities is never a good idea.
-- geni
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Giving admins more responcibilities is never a good idea.
-- geni
I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
Anthony
Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
-- geni
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
Anthony
Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
geni
You're really going to have to explain this one. It is the communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion, not the admins. What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins that they didn't have before?
I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete [whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion]. But even that isn't a responsibility.
So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better? I really don't understand. (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case I don't even see what the new responsibility is.)
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
Anthony
Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
geni
You're really going to have to explain this one. It is the communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion, not the admins. What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins that they didn't have before?
I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete [whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion]. But even that isn't a responsibility.
So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better? I really don't understand. (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case I don't even see what the new responsibility is.)
Anthony
The areas which you expand into involve more subjective descission. Of course this could largely be delt with by knocking out orphans. Go through AFD sometime and look at the correlation between unanimiuos deletes and orphans.
-- geni
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
Anthony
Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
geni
You're really going to have to explain this one. It is the communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion, not the admins. What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins that they didn't have before?
I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete [whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion]. But even that isn't a responsibility.
So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better? I really don't understand. (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case I don't even see what the new responsibility is.)
Anthony
The areas which you expand into involve more subjective descission. Of course this could largely be delt with by knocking out orphans. Go through AFD sometime and look at the correlation between unanimiuos deletes and orphans. -- geni
I never said which areas I would expand to. I'd suggest looking at what articles "everyone agrees should be deleted" and then coming up with objective criteria to describe them. Surely this can be done, and while it might take a while to come up with good criteria, that's a one time job which will save countless hours of time wasted on AfD in the future.
Of course, a "unanimous delete" on AFD is not necessarily an article which "everyone agrees should be deleted", it's merely one that everyone who hasn't gotten frustrated with AFD agrees should be deleted. There's no subjective decision that has to be made to delete "obvious band vanity". After all, the fact that it's "band vanity" is "obvious".
Anthony
On Dec 9, 2005, at 12:36 PM, geni wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Giving admins more responcibilities is never a good idea.
Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket default without evidence?
-Phil
On 12/9/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket default without evidence?
-Phil
Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea:
1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity
2. Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people stoped trying to make it so
3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers.
4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the number of subjective descissions will not help that.
-- geni
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket default without evidence?
-Phil
Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea:
1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity
If everyone wants something deleted, an admin is going to delete it anyway. Not putting the article through AfD first *reduces* the manpower required by everyone, and doesn't affect the manpower required by admins.
- Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people
stoped trying to make it so
Adding a new criterion for speedy deletion doesn't make adminship a big deal.
3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers.
Again, I don't understand this. The new criteria for deletion should still be cut and dry.
4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the number of subjective descissions will not help that. -- geni
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones. Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to happen.
Anthony
Replacing AfD means instead of a decision being located in a central spot where it is open and accountable, you will have decisions being made by one or two people. You will then end up with hellacious disputes at Undeletion and accusations of Admins acting in bad faith.
While there may be grounds for expanding the Criteria for Speedy deletion, there are always going to be cases where more careful consideration is required.
Regards
Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster
On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket default without evidence?
-Phil
Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea:
1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity
If everyone wants something deleted, an admin is going to delete it anyway. Not putting the article through AfD first *reduces* the manpower required by everyone, and doesn't affect the manpower required by admins.
- Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people
stoped trying to make it so
Adding a new criterion for speedy deletion doesn't make adminship a big deal.
3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers.
Again, I don't understand this. The new criteria for deletion should still be cut and dry.
4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the number of subjective descissions will not help that. -- geni
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones. Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to happen.
Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/9/05, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Replacing AfD means instead of a decision being located in a central spot where it is open and accountable, you will have decisions being made by one or two people. You will then end up with hellacious disputes at Undeletion and accusations of Admins acting in bad faith.
While there may be grounds for expanding the Criteria for Speedy deletion, there are always going to be cases where more careful consideration is required.
Regards
Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster
So turn off AfD, and then we can find out what those cases are. Maybe there will be some types of articles which we can't come up with objective criteria. Fine, then we come up with subjective criteria and let people vote on whether or not the article meets those criteria. Yes, it means AfD would be back, but only for a subset of articles, and in a much more streamlined form.
We can sit here talking about it, or we can just try it and see.
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to happen.
No it would not. It would simply start an all out fight between the inclionists and the deletionists.
-- geni
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to happen.
No it would not. It would simply start an all out fight between the inclionists and the deletionists. -- geni
Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen. Let's try it out and see.
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen. Let's try it out and see.
Anthony
Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem.
-- geni
On 12/9/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 9, 2005, at 2:16 PM, geni wrote:
Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem.
If the turn-off-AFD idea is a disaster, we can try this next.
I suggested something like this in August under the name of Free fire deletion.
The idea is that if an administrator thinks an article should be deleted, he goes ahead and does it.
If it's contested, it's undeleted and taken to AfD. I think this would seriously reduce the traffic in AfD because administrators in general do exercise reasonable judgement.
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen. Let's try it out and see.
Anthony
Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem.
-- geni
Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen. Let's try it out and see.
Anthony
Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem.
-- geni
Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?
Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or whatever. We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a good idea.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen. Let's try it out and see.
Anthony
Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem.
-- geni
Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?
Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or whatever. We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a good idea.
-- geni
I wonder how long the GNAA article would last if we let admins delete whatever they want :)
-Jtkiefer
Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or whatever. We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a good idea.
-- geni
That last line is pretty much my view.
Anon article creation blocking was based on the fact a lot of nonsense articles are created by anons, so not allowing them to create such articles would alleviate a lot of new pages patrol. I think Jimmy made a reasonable assumption here.
Even if he didn't, he is our benevolent dictator. If he required us to stand on our heads every time we didn't source our edits, we'd have to do it. He's the boss.
Mgm
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen. Let's try it out and see.
Anthony
Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem.
-- geni
Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?
Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or whatever. We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a good idea.
-- geni
No, it's not always a good idea. If we want to get ridiculous, I could propose turning off editing for a week. Anyway, I suspected you were just proposing something you don't actually want.
For my part, I don't think removing the rules over deletion and letting admins do whatever they want (subject to review and reversal, of course, and if some admin goes around deleting articles like [[George Bush]], reprimand and loss of admin powers) is such a bad thing that trying it for a week would be a mistake. In fact, if you combined this with allowing users to see the content of those deleted articles, I actually think it'd be the best solution.
Anthony
For my part, I don't think removing the rules over deletion and letting admins do whatever they want (subject to review and reversal, of course, and if some admin goes around deleting articles like [[George Bush]], reprimand and loss of admin powers) is such a bad thing that trying it for a week would be a mistake. In fact, if you combined this with allowing users to see the content of those deleted articles, I actually think it'd be the best solution.
Anthony
AFD holds people accountable for their action and asks what the community actually wants. While I'd love more freedom in deleting obvious crap, I think it should be based on policy rather than some freedom.
I'm sure we'd get at least some accusations of abuse of admin powers of people who feel their opinion wasn't heard when something not specifically falling in policy gets deleted. Admins should have a recourse if they're not sure.
Mgm
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
For my part, I don't think removing the rules over deletion and letting admins do whatever they want (subject to review and reversal, of course, and if some admin goes around deleting articles like [[George Bush]], reprimand and loss of admin powers) is such a bad thing that trying it for a week would be a mistake. In fact, if you combined this with allowing users to see the content of those deleted articles, I actually think it'd be the best solution.
Anthony
AFD holds people accountable for their action and asks what the community actually wants. While I'd love more freedom in deleting obvious crap, I think it should be based on policy rather than some freedom.
I'm sure we'd get at least some accusations of abuse of admin powers of people who feel their opinion wasn't heard when something not specifically falling in policy gets deleted. Admins should have a recourse if they're not sure.
Mgm
I think one of the problems with AFD is that it removes accountability. Other than myself, I don't think anyone has been reprimanded for simply voting.
But anyway, admins don't need a recourse if they're not sure, they already have a really simple rule: "When in doubt, don't delete."
You wouldn't, but the AFD regulars resist any such move furiously.
People are happy to agree with these ideas on wikien-l. But I strongly suggest they try saying it on [[WT:AFD]] and see for themselves how resistant the AFD regulars are to any change to the deletion process short of anyone pulling a complete replacement deletion system out of thin air.
I would oppose moving deletions to such places, but I have yet to see proof people oppose informing people with knowledge about a deletion. I've done so myself on several occasions.
Please reply to my newly started thread. It's not AFD that's poisonous. People will always feel ill-will when deletion is concerned no matter what method is used. It is how people act and react on AFD. We need to treat the cause not the symptom.
It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to cover them.
Mgm
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to cover them.
Mgm
Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from AfD? I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
Anthony
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from AfD? I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
[[Historical persecution of Muslims]] [[Historical persecution by Muslims]]
and suchlike.
-- Sam
On 12/9/05, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from AfD? I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
[[Historical persecution of Muslims]] [[Historical persecution by Muslims]]
and suchlike.
-- Sam
What's wrong with redirecting this to [[Muslims]]?
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/9/05, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from AfD? I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
[[Historical persecution of Muslims]] [[Historical persecution by Muslims]]
and suchlike.
-- Sam
What's wrong with redirecting this to [[Muslims]]?
other than the fact that the article is [[Muslim]] :)
G'day Anthony,
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Verifiability is necessary, but not sufficient, for an encyclopaedic article. But not everyone agrees on that (IIRC, you yourself have gone to great --- perhaps even "extreme" --- lengths to show your disagreement).
What I would like to see is a sort of category-based deletion. User bungs a {{dp|18 December 2005}} (say) template on it, which prints the following text in a disgusting pastel box at the top:
This article has been proposed for deletion on: 18 December 2005. Please see the relevant discussion on the _talk page_.
The article is added to a category, [[Category:Proposed deletions/18 December 2005]], where people can go and see what's been proposed for deletion lately, and turn up on talkpages and do their little thang. Meanwhile, the person who put up the template writes out his reasoning on the talk page.
Apparently something similar was proposed in the past, but never got off the ground. I certainly don't expect writing this on the list to help (but, y'never know) --- I dare say the end result of one or two articles being deleted (omigosh!) rules this idea out of consideration.
On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
What I would like to see is a sort of category-based deletion. User bungs a {{dp|18 December 2005}} (say) template on it, which prints the following text in a disgusting pastel box at the top:
This article has been proposed for deletion on: 18 December 2005. Please see the relevant discussion on the _talk page_.
The article is added to a category, [[Category:Proposed deletions/18 December 2005]], where people can go and see what's been proposed for deletion lately, and turn up on talkpages and do their little thang. Meanwhile, the person who put up the template writes out his reasoning on the talk page.
I don't think having a category here is more useful than (or as useful as) having a list. A list has a history and you can pop it on your watchlist to see when its content changes (as new articles would be proposed for deletion or older ones are removed after discussion).
There are three problems with a category:
Firstly, our current display software doesn't handle categories with a large number of entries.
Secondly there's no easy way (as there is with a list) to see which articles were recently added; you need to use your memory for this (mine has a chronic malfunction)
Thirdly you cannot watchlist a category and thus track changes in its contents.
Our current AfD system where we have a list of transcluded lists is probably the best that can be done with our software.
On 12/11/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Firstly, our current display software doesn't handle categories with a large number of entries.
I meant to say "doesn't handle categories with a
large number of entries *well*."
On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Anthony,
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Verifiability is necessary, but not sufficient, for an encyclopaedic article. But not everyone agrees on that (IIRC, you yourself have gone to great --- perhaps even "extreme" --- lengths to show your disagreement).
Verifiability is in some ways quite a harsh requirement. It was what got [[yoism]] deleted.
-- geni
On 12/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Anthony,
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Verifiability is necessary, but not sufficient, for an encyclopaedic article. But not everyone agrees on that (IIRC, you yourself have gone to great --- perhaps even "extreme" --- lengths to show your disagreement).
Verifiability is in some ways quite a harsh requirement. It was what got [[yoism]] deleted.
-- geni
I'm not familiar with that case. It seems like you're saying that there is non-verifiable information that should nonetheless be included in the encyclopedia? I highly doubt you could convince me to agree with that.
Anthony
On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Anthony,
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Verifiability is necessary, but not sufficient, for an encyclopaedic article. But not everyone agrees on that (IIRC, you yourself have gone to great --- perhaps even "extreme" --- lengths to show your disagreement).
Verifiability is in some ways quite a harsh requirement. It was what got [[yoism]] deleted.
-- geni
I'm not familiar with that case. It seems like you're saying that there is non-verifiable information that should nonetheless be included in the encyclopedia? I highly doubt you could convince me to agree with that.
Anthony
No. I'm just saying that verifiable thing can be a lot harsher than many people think.
You can read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Yoism
And yes this did go through deletion review as well.
-- geni
On 12/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Anthony,
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote: >Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more >*objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not >*subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Verifiability is necessary, but not sufficient, for an encyclopaedic article. But not everyone agrees on that (IIRC, you yourself have gone to great --- perhaps even "extreme" --- lengths to show your disagreement).
Verifiability is in some ways quite a harsh requirement. It was what got [[yoism]] deleted.
-- geni
I'm not familiar with that case. It seems like you're saying that there is non-verifiable information that should nonetheless be included in the encyclopedia? I highly doubt you could convince me to agree with that.
Anthony
No. I'm just saying that verifiable thing can be a lot harsher than many people think.
You can read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Yoism
And yes this did go through deletion review as well.
-- geni
Hmm, I'd say an article in the Boston Globe means there are certainly verifiable sources which can be used to create an article on Yoism. Verifiability may have been one of the reasons you gave for the nomination, but it doesn't seem to be a valid one.
Anthony
On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Hmm, I'd say an article in the Boston Globe means there are certainly verifiable sources which can be used to create an article on Yoism. Verifiability may have been one of the reasons you gave for the nomination, but it doesn't seem to be a valid one.
Anthony
Problem is the boston article provides minimal info.
-- geni
On 12/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Hmm, I'd say an article in the Boston Globe means there are certainly verifiable sources which can be used to create an article on Yoism. Verifiability may have been one of the reasons you gave for the nomination, but it doesn't seem to be a valid one.
Anthony
Problem is the boston article provides minimal info.
-- geni
That's only a problem if you're one of those people that insists that all articles be long. Let's see:
-----
[[Yoism]] is a movement started by [[Dan Kriegman]] which deals with topics such as environmentalism, experientially proven beliefs, and social activism. The group formed a non-profit corporation, '''Yo, Inc.''', in December of 2002 [http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corp/corpsearch/CorpSearchSummary.asp?ReadFromDB...] which was recognized as a public charity by the United States [[Internal Revenue Service]].
==External links== *http://www.yoism.org/
==References== *Taking Yo off the streets and into church, Boston Globe, Junuary 11, 2004
-----
This is just a quick article I came up with without knowing anything at all about Yoism. I'm sure others who know more about it could come up with a lot more, all completely verifiable by pretty much any standard (government documents, newspapers, etc). But I'm not one of those people who thinks an article has to be long in order to be useful.
Anyway, I see now the article has been redirected to [[Open source religion]]. There was no need for an AFD to do that.
Anthony
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Anyway, I see now the article has been redirected to [[Open source religion]]. There was no need for an AFD to do that.
Yes. Could the staunch defenders of AFD please give an appropriately loving clip round the ear to people who make this sort of unneccessary nomination? AFD is the size of a planet as it is.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Anyway, I see now the article has been redirected to [[Open source religion]]. There was no need for an AFD to do that.
Yes. Could the staunch defenders of AFD please give an appropriately loving clip round the ear to people who make this sort of unneccessary nomination? AFD is the size of a planet as it is.
- d.
Speaking of this, I see a lot of speedy tags these days because "duplicate of article X" or "author recreated at proper title". It never fails to amaze me how so many people have totally forgotten about the existence of redirects.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On 12/11/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Anyway, I see now the article has been redirected to [[Open source religion]]. There was no need for an AFD to do that.
Yes. Could the staunch defenders of AFD please give an appropriately loving clip round the ear to people who make this sort of unneccessary nomination? AFD is the size of a planet as it is.
- d.
*[[André Dumontagne]] - no references, should be a speedy *[[Andvakaar]] - no references, should be a speedy *[[Main series]] - useless, technically contains no references, could be redirected to [[Dancemania]] I suppose, but it's not even properly capitalised. I'm sure we could come up with some sort of speedy criterion for this crap. Even if not, I wouldn't hesitate to delete it anyway if I was an admin (guess this is one of the reasons I'm not). I guess I'll admit I don't have a perfect solution for this, though AFD is not a particularly good one either. I just noticed it was made 5 October 2005, by an anon. *[[John Fullerton]] - move to User:Johnfullerton or keep (I didn't even bother looking at it), neither require AFD. *[[Narniaism]] - no references *[[Datacomsys]] - no references, not in English, probably a copyvio (speedy, transwiki and speedy, list on copyright problems or speedy, accordingly, none of which require AFD) *[[Übersexual]] - redirect somewhere. not [[human sexuality]], there's probably something more specific; if not, create an article to talk about metrosexuality/ubersexuality/etc and merge [[metrosexual]] there too as it is currently a dictionary definition. None of this requires AFD. *[[Cilek]] no references *[[Overnightscape]] [[The Overnightscape]] - keep *[[Rockman Resurrection]] - no references *[[List of people who resisted the Holocaust]] - list; resurrect [[wp:lists for deletion]] *[[Ben Humphrey]] - keep *[[Paige Craig]] - keep
Should I go on? AFD is nothing more than a collossal waste of time, in my opinion.
Anthony
On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/11/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Hmm, I'd say an article in the Boston Globe means there are certainly verifiable sources which can be used to create an article on Yoism. Verifiability may have been one of the reasons you gave for the nomination, but it doesn't seem to be a valid one.
Anthony
Problem is the boston article provides minimal info.
-- geni
That's only a problem if you're one of those people that insists that all articles be long. Let's see:
[[Yoism]] is a movement started by [[Dan Kriegman]] which deals with topics such as environmentalism, experientially proven beliefs, and social activism. The group formed a non-profit corporation, '''Yo, Inc.''', in December of 2002 [http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corp/corpsearch/CorpSearchSummary.asp?ReadFromDB...] which was recognized as a public charity by the United States [[Internal Revenue Service]].
==External links== *http://www.yoism.org/
==References== *Taking Yo off the streets and into church, Boston Globe, Junuary 11, 2004
how do you know that that is NPOV?
-- geni
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Anyway, I see now the article has been redirected to [[Open source religion]]. There was no need for an AFD to do that.
I've been hitting AFD of late and occasionally reminding people that if they can possibly just merge-and-redirect they should do so, because AFD is the size of a planet already ;-)
- d.
On 12/14/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
Anyway, I see now the article has been redirected to [[Open source religion]]. There was no need for an AFD to do that.
I've been hitting AFD of late and occasionally reminding people that if they can possibly just merge-and-redirect they should do so, because AFD is the size of a planet already ;-)
Let's just start closing AfDs that have obvious merges. AfD is big and doesn't need to be bloated unnecessarily.
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day Anthony,
On 12/9/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Yes, you've confused what I've said. I think we should add more *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not *subjective* ones.
If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted. Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
Verifiability is necessary, but not sufficient, for an encyclopaedic article. But not everyone agrees on that (IIRC, you yourself have gone to great --- perhaps even "extreme" --- lengths to show your disagreement).
Well, articles should be on nouns (more specifically, articles should be about the thing which the noun describes). Otherwise you're talking about a dictionary definition. But other than that, yeah, verifiability is pretty much all you need to at least have a redirect (whether or not we should be redirecting things like [[beautiful]] to [[beauty]] is a separate question the answer to which is probably "sometimes", but I don't suggest getting rid of redirects for deletion).
Anyway, I was specifically talking about "articles that everyone agrees should be deleted". "MGM" asked "You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like)." My response was to "make [them] speediable".
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes you think anything will have changed this year? If people won't trust admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy something? If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And frankly, I don't blame them. Scandals like the bitter edit war over licence vs license in a Mediawiki template have proven that, sadly, our admins can and do get into trouble. Even the best of us, like Everyking, get too heated and involved in articles we edit that we cause pointless edit/revert wars.
An objective measure of an article's "deletability" would be one nobody could disagree with. For instance, you can't disagree that, say, fuddlemark got >90% support on his recent RfA, because that's an objective measure of support. (At least, you can't disagree without appearing insane.) However, many articles on AfD that get deleted by unanimous support have their "deletability" measured by subjective methods. To some people, schools are notable. To others, they are not. How do you resolve this? How do you objectively measure a school's "deletability"? Is "deletability" even an objective value in itself? Truth be told, it's a miracle our CSD have grown so big, because even they aren't objective. After all, how many of them received unanimous support? Clearly some people disagreed with them, and probably with good reason. This would inherently make them subjective.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On 12/10/05, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes you think anything will have changed this year?
I *don't* think anything will have changed. I said was talking about what we *should* do, not what's going to happen. If everyone agrees something should be deleted, we should delete it, period. Running it through some AFD process first is not smart.
That said, if we turned off AFD, I think the number of speediable categories would quickly grow.
Plus, in my opinion, Jimbo has set us into a new era of experimentation on Wikipedia. We no longer need consensus before we can at least try something out. Don't you think the paranoid community would have rejected a proposal to disallow users that weren't logged in from creating new articles? I certainly do, in fact if you want consensus I don't even think the community would accept such a proposal now (maybe it'd get a majority, I really don't know).
If people won't trust admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy something?
I don't understand that question at all. Why should the votes of a few non-admins and a few admins override the consensus of all admins? If all admins insist on keeping something deleted, then there's nothing that can be done about it.
If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And frankly, I don't blame them.
As long as the ability to delete remains possible, the potential for admin abuse is very small. What is the potential abuse here? GNAA gets deleted? I actually doubt it would.
You know what, forget the AFD experiment. Let's give admins free reign over deletion for one week. Surely they won't vandalise Wikipedia to the point where we can't fix things after the week is up. After one week, we look at what got deleted, and we see if there was any admin abuse, and if so how severe it was.
AFD is still there, but it's there for actual disputes. Preferably it's there mainly for discussion about the underlying issues of what should and shouldn't be deleted, and doesn't get bogged down in minutiae of every single article (in some especially heated cases maybe there will be a vote over a single article, but not hundreds a day). AFD doesn't get it right perfectly 100% of the time. There's no reason admins need to either. As long as there aren't gross violations of the standards which we reach *through consensus*, it really doesn't matter.
We'll probably wind up with somewhat more deletions this way, and really I see that as a bad thing. But as AFD has pretty much completely abandoned the notion of consensus anyway, it's probably inevitable.
Scandals like the bitter edit war over licence vs license in a Mediawiki template have proven that, sadly, our admins can and do get into trouble. Even the best of us, like Everyking, get too heated and involved in articles we edit that we cause pointless edit/revert wars.
This is actually more a problem with the enormous reluctance to take adminship away from people. In my opinion (and this is really a completely separate topic), the bar to adminship needs to be lowered, and the bar to deadminship needs to be lowered as well. The real question is how can this be achieved. I don't think it can be achieved through voting, at least not voting among a large group of people, because adminship and deadminship should not be based on popularity, and large groups of people invariably factor popularity into a vote (because there is essentially no *accountability* in voting).
An objective measure of an article's "deletability" would be one nobody could disagree with.
If you want perfection... Of course, if you just want "better than AFD", it'd only need to be a measure that more than 2/3 of people would agree with.
For instance, you can't disagree that, say, fuddlemark got >90% support on his recent RfA, because that's an objective measure of support. (At least, you can't disagree without appearing insane.) However, many articles on AfD that get deleted by unanimous support have their "deletability" measured by subjective methods. To some people, schools are notable. To others, they are not. How do you resolve this?
Well, I'd resolve it through compromise. Keep the articles somewhere outside the encyclopedia, somewhere which isn't controlled by a for-profit corporation and somewhere that respects the GFDL. That leaves two possibilities, really. We put it in a sister project, or, if the board won't let us start the sister project, we start a new organization and put it there. Now that we've moved the information, we change the links to that article from red links into light blue links, that is, external links to the other source.
Sure, not *everyone* will be happy with this, but I think most people would find it acceptable. And sure, we wouldn't wind up with exactly the same breakdown as we'd get through AFD. But that second point I really think is irrelevant. AFD is not perfect. Even those that really like AFD only feel that it gets things approximately right. If a few borderline cases get decided differently from AFD, it's not the end of the world, especially not if the information is still preserved somewhere else, and maintained under the GFDL so that we can retrieve it back, most likely in better condition, if we change our minds.
How do you objectively measure a school's "deletability"?
Personally I don't feel that any schools are deletable. I think enough people agree with me that one couldn't legitimately say that there is *consensus* to delete an article on any school. That some get deleted through AFD is simply an unpatched flaw in the deletion system. In any case, we've strayed off the original topic. This particular subthread got started when someone claimed that there were articles which *everyone* felt should be deleted but wouldn't be because we couldn't come up with an objective measure. Articles on schools don't fall under this category.
Is "deletability" even an objective value in itself? Truth be told, it's a miracle our CSD have grown so big, because even they aren't objective. After all, how many of them received unanimous support? Clearly some people disagreed with them, and probably with good reason. This would inherently make them subjective.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
True, though CSD deletes quite a few articles which not everyone feels should be deleted.
Anthony
On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/10/05, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes you think anything will have changed this year?
I *don't* think anything will have changed. I said was talking about what we *should* do, not what's going to happen. If everyone agrees something should be deleted, we should delete it, period. Running it through some AFD process first is not smart.
And how are you going to determine whether everyone agrees? Without a central place, the only way to find out if a discussion is going is by running across it on RC or in a watchlist, which you could miss if you happen to not be online when it happens.
That said, if we turned off AFD, I think the number of speediable categories would quickly grow.
Plus, in my opinion, Jimbo has set us into a new era of experimentation on Wikipedia. We no longer need consensus before we can at least try something out. Don't you think the paranoid community would have rejected a proposal to disallow users that weren't logged in from creating new articles? I certainly do, in fact if you want consensus I don't even think the community would accept such a proposal now (maybe it'd get a majority, I really don't know).
Jimbo is our benevolent dictator. He can do things because he's the boss. If Jimbo decrees something that doesn't mean the rest of us should stop looking for concensus.
If people won't trust admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy something?
I don't understand that question at all. Why should the votes of a few non-admins and a few admins override the consensus of all admins? If all admins insist on keeping something deleted, then there's nothing that can be done about it.
If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And frankly, I don't blame them.
As long as the ability to delete remains possible, the potential for admin abuse is very small. What is the potential abuse here? GNAA gets deleted? I actually doubt it would.
You know what, forget the AFD experiment. Let's give admins free reign over deletion for one week. Surely they won't vandalise Wikipedia to the point where we can't fix things after the week is up. After one week, we look at what got deleted, and we see if there was any admin abuse, and if so how severe it was.
AFD is still there, but it's there for actual disputes. Preferably it's there mainly for discussion about the underlying issues of what should and shouldn't be deleted, and doesn't get bogged down in minutiae of every single article (in some especially heated cases maybe there will be a vote over a single article, but not hundreds a day). AFD doesn't get it right perfectly 100% of the time. There's no reason admins need to either. As long as there aren't gross violations of the standards which we reach *through consensus*, it really doesn't matter.
How can you determine if there is a dispute at the moment you nominate something? If it's not yet deleted, it needs to be discussed (AFD is a debate). If it is deleted in error you go to DRV.
We'll probably wind up with somewhat more deletions this way, and really I see that as a bad thing. But as AFD has pretty much completely abandoned the notion of consensus anyway, it's probably inevitable.
On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/10/05, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Anthony
Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes you think anything will have changed this year?
I *don't* think anything will have changed. I said was talking about what we *should* do, not what's going to happen. If everyone agrees something should be deleted, we should delete it, period. Running it through some AFD process first is not smart.
And how are you going to determine whether everyone agrees? Without a central place, the only way to find out if a discussion is going is by running across it on RC or in a watchlist, which you could miss if you happen to not be online when it happens.
I think it's kind of obvious when an article is so horrible that no one thinks it can be retained - not even if it's cleaned up, not even if it's changed into a redirect.
That said, if we turned off AFD, I think the number of speediable categories would quickly grow.
Plus, in my opinion, Jimbo has set us into a new era of experimentation on Wikipedia. We no longer need consensus before we can at least try something out. Don't you think the paranoid community would have rejected a proposal to disallow users that weren't logged in from creating new articles? I certainly do, in fact if you want consensus I don't even think the community would accept such a proposal now (maybe it'd get a majority, I really don't know).
Jimbo is our benevolent dictator. He can do things because he's the boss. If Jimbo decrees something that doesn't mean the rest of us should stop looking for concensus.
Obviously this experiment won't take place without a) consensus, or b) Jimbo's approval. My posts on here are an attempt to either form such a consensus or convince Jimbo to implement it.
If people won't trust admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy something?
I don't understand that question at all. Why should the votes of a few non-admins and a few admins override the consensus of all admins? If all admins insist on keeping something deleted, then there's nothing that can be done about it.
If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And frankly, I don't blame them.
As long as the ability to delete remains possible, the potential for admin abuse is very small. What is the potential abuse here? GNAA gets deleted? I actually doubt it would.
You know what, forget the AFD experiment. Let's give admins free reign over deletion for one week. Surely they won't vandalise Wikipedia to the point where we can't fix things after the week is up. After one week, we look at what got deleted, and we see if there was any admin abuse, and if so how severe it was.
AFD is still there, but it's there for actual disputes. Preferably it's there mainly for discussion about the underlying issues of what should and shouldn't be deleted, and doesn't get bogged down in minutiae of every single article (in some especially heated cases maybe there will be a vote over a single article, but not hundreds a day). AFD doesn't get it right perfectly 100% of the time. There's no reason admins need to either. As long as there aren't gross violations of the standards which we reach *through consensus*, it really doesn't matter.
How can you determine if there is a dispute at the moment you nominate something? If it's not yet deleted, it needs to be discussed (AFD is a debate). If it is deleted in error you go to DRV.
You delete it and see if anyone objects. If it's already been deleted and undeleted, then obviously there's a dispute. *That* is when we need dispute resolution.
I'm suggesting being bold in deleting pages. "Be bold" doesn't mean get into edit wars, but it does mean that you don't ask for permission to do something which you don't think anyone would have a problem with. I think we have enough admins at this point that the abuse level would be negligible. Of course I'd be more comfortable if people everyone could see the content of deleted articles, not just admins. Even that is much less of a problem now, though. Non-admins can at least see that an article has been deleted. And the vast majority (everyone but me?) can ask to see what the deleted text is on wp:vfu.
We'll probably wind up with somewhat more deletions this way, and really I see that as a bad thing. But as AFD has pretty much completely abandoned the notion of consensus anyway, it's probably inevitable.
John Lee wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable!
Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes you think anything will have changed this year? If people won't trust admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy something? If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And frankly, I don't blame them. Scandals like the bitter edit war over licence vs license in a Mediawiki template have proven that, sadly, our admins can and do get into trouble. Even the best of us, like Everyking, get too heated and involved in articles we edit that we cause pointless edit/revert wars.
This is a key part of the problem. Most speedy deletion candidates are undoubtedly good candidates, but many admins have not built up their trust with the community. One can spot-check an admin's candidates, and if his claims are consistently valid he will build trust. He will make mistakes, but how he reacts when those mistakes are brought to his attention will have a direct impact on how much he is trusted. A willingness to give his critic the benefit of the doubt will go a long way toward building trust. Being seen as a hardline defender of deletions will negatively affect trust, even if what you do is more moderate than what you say. If a vocal supporter of more deletions also takes an active role in expanding speedy deletion he will leave the impression that he is trying to "pull a fast one". Being a trust builder is a far more important skill for a sysop than knowing and enforcing the rules.
Ec
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Basically, I agree with Keith here. We need some centralized discussion. Not only is does it take a lot less time for admins to manage one central place and delete what needs to be deleted, it's also easier to refer people to that place.
Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested.
How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)?
Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside?
Why not spend the day organizing the mess that's already there? The biggest problem with AFD is that the same questions get asked over and over and over again.
Anyway, I don't understand how turning AFD off for one day would cause a mess. It'd just double the number of nominations the next day. Considering the growth rate, that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. Might as well get a feel for how it's going to work.
No matter what method you use, deletion is always going to have some ill-will with it. It's something that can't be avoided until we all reach common ground, and stop taking deletions personal.
How do we reach common ground? Certainly not by just keeping things the way they are now. You could probably eliminate 99% of the ill-will surrounding deletion by simply giving people access to the content that was deleted.
As Keith said, you can use AFD without any ill-feelings by simply bringing forth good arguments.
Mgm
Keith Old wrote:
I would have no problem with adding a requirement to notify the original author as part of a requirement for nomination. We should also look at systems where communities possibly affected by a decision are advised of the decision. Posting articles on relevant noticeboards is one way of doing it.
You wouldn't, but the AFD regulars resist any such move furiously.
People are happy to agree with these ideas on wikien-l. But I strongly suggest they try saying it on [[WT:AFD]] and see for themselves how resistant the AFD regulars are to any change to the deletion process short of anyone pulling a complete replacement deletion system out of thin air.
- d.