Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people and existing companies*. "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
Jumping into VFD discussions with a reference to this email? Though let's see how many times the obnoxious have to be hit over the head with this before someone decides it's "spamming" and blocks them!
You see what I mean when I say that AFD/DRV consider themselves worlds unto themselves, and bitterly resist anything perceived as outside interference, i.e. the rest of the Wikipedia infrastructure.
- d.
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David Gerard stated for the record:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people and existing companies*. "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
Jumping into VFD discussions with a reference to this email? Though let's see how many times the obnoxious have to be hit over the head with this before someone decides it's "spamming" and blocks them!
You see what I mean when I say that AFD/DRV consider themselves worlds unto themselves, and bitterly resist anything perceived as outside interference, i.e. the rest of the Wikipedia infrastructure.
Many of us have been saying for a long time that the *fD gangs are doing active and hard-to-repair damage to the reputation of this encyclopedia. Of course, every time we do, the reply is an accusation that we are mindless inclusionist, and no serious discussion can be held.
Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless WP:VfU). The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and /damaging/ deletions. Deletions of unpublished garage bands can continue just as they do today.
The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process -- and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks. Any offenses too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
I would appreciate discussion of this suggestion, particularly by Jimbo and my fellow ArbCommies. Starting question: should we bash on it here, or take it to a Meta page?
- -- Sean Barrett | The last thing I want to do is hurt sean@epoptic.org | you. But it's still on the list.
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
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David Gerard stated for the record:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people and existing companies*. "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
Jumping into VFD discussions with a reference to this email? Though let's see how many times the obnoxious have to be hit over the head with this before someone decides it's "spamming" and blocks them!
You see what I mean when I say that AFD/DRV consider themselves worlds unto themselves, and bitterly resist anything perceived as outside interference, i.e. the rest of the Wikipedia infrastructure.
Many of us have been saying for a long time that the *fD gangs are doing active and hard-to-repair damage to the reputation of this encyclopedia. Of course, every time we do, the reply is an accusation that we are mindless inclusionist, and no serious discussion can be held.
Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless WP:VfU). The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and /damaging/ deletions. Deletions of unpublished garage bands can continue just as they do today.
The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process -- and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks. Any offenses too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
I would appreciate discussion of this suggestion, particularly by Jimbo and my fellow ArbCommies. Starting question: should we bash on it here, or take it to a Meta page?
So no action against those who vote to keep stuff that should be deleted? Remeber a keep vote is worth more than a delete vot on AFD.
-- geni
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geni stated for the record:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless WP:VfU). The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and /damaging/ deletions. Deletions of unpublished garage bands can continue just as they do today.
The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process -- and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks. Any offenses too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
I would appreciate discussion of this suggestion, particularly by Jimbo and my fellow ArbCommies. Starting question: should we bash on it here, or take it to a Meta page?
So no action against those who vote to keep stuff that should be deleted? Remeber a keep vote is worth more than a delete vot on AFD.
-- geni
No, no action. An erroneous "keep" is harms no one, since copyvios, attacks and libel, and similar damaging material are not subject to Votes for Deletion.
- -- Sean Barrett | I'm not a hero! I'm just an actor with a gun sean@epoptic.org | who's lost his motivation. --Bruce Baxter
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
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geni stated for the record:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless WP:VfU). The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and /damaging/ deletions. Deletions of unpublished garage bands can continue just as they do today.
The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process -- and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks. Any offenses too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
I would appreciate discussion of this suggestion, particularly by Jimbo and my fellow ArbCommies. Starting question: should we bash on it here, or take it to a Meta page?
So no action against those who vote to keep stuff that should be deleted? Remeber a keep vote is worth more than a delete vot on AFD.
-- geni
No, no action. An erroneous "keep" is harms no one, since copyvios, attacks and libel, and similar damaging material are not subject to Votes for Deletion.
Have you ever tried to bring up issues of copyright violation on AFD? I have. I got kinda outvoted (to be fair the subject was to do with schools).
Hoaxes are subject to AFD. Are you going to claim that voteing to keep them does no damage?
-- geni
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geni stated for the record:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
geni stated for the record:
So no action against those who vote to keep stuff that should be deleted? Remeber a keep vote is worth more than a delete vot on AFD.
-- geni
No, no action. An erroneous "keep" is harms no one, since copyvios, attacks and libel, and similar damaging material are not subject to Votes for Deletion.
Have you ever tried to bring up issues of copyright violation on AFD? I have. I got kinda outvoted (to be fair the subject was to do with schools).
Hoaxes are subject to AFD. Are you going to claim that voteing to keep them does no damage?
-- geni
Good point. Allow me to modify my proposal accordingly: anyone whose vote shows a culpable lack of elementary research should be penalized. This would include both those who deleted Jimbo's example that began this discussion, and those who /carelessly/ vote "keep" on fraudulent material.
Note that in both cases "I did my research but that was too subtle" ought to be considered as a defense. For example, both "okay, so he's genuinely notable in Kyrgyzstan, but I don't read Kyrgyzyse and that's the only language he's been published in" and "okay, so it's a hoax, but numerous credentialed scientists were also taken in" would be considered as mitigating factors by the Review Board.
- -- Sean Barrett | I'm not a hero! I'm just an actor with a gun sean@epoptic.org | who's lost his motivation. --Bruce Baxter
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Good point. Allow me to modify my proposal accordingly: anyone whose vote shows a culpable lack of elementary research should be penalized. This would include both those who deleted Jimbo's example that began this discussion, and those who /carelessly/ vote "keep" on fraudulent material.
Note that in both cases "I did my research but that was too subtle" ought to be considered as a defense. For example, both "okay, so he's genuinely notable in Kyrgyzstan, but I don't read Kyrgyzyse and that's the only language he's been published in" and "okay, so it's a hoax, but numerous credentialed scientists were also taken in" would be considered as mitigating factors by the Review Board.
Sean Barrett
Ok now it we've got it reframed so it is not such an obvious attempt to push inclusionism lets move onto the buracratic bit. While it appears the board at least favors increasing committes and the like:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
(looking at that you start to wounder if the foundation is running the EU as well)
The general wikipedia community tends to be less in favor. Where would these board members come from?
Anyway if you want to try and go forward with this you need to start discussing this on wikipedia as soon as posible.~~~~
-- geni
geni (geniice@gmail.com) [060121 07:05]:
Ok now it we've got it reframed so it is not such an obvious attempt to push inclusionism
Presumably this is an example of your grasp of good faith.
Anyway if you want to try and go forward with this you need to start discussing this on wikipedia as soon as posible.~~~~
wikien-l is part of the official Wikipedia infrastructure, whether you like that fact for the present discussion or not.
- d.
On 1/22/06, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
geni (geniice@gmail.com) [060121 07:05]:
Ok now it we've got it reframed so it is not such an obvious attempt to push inclusionism
Presumably this is an example of your grasp of good faith.
If the user is an inclusionist it is hardly imposible that they may propose policies that support their position. The original proposal did fairly clearly favor the inclusionist position. It is hardly ilogical to conclude that the intial proposal was in part meant to forward the inclusionist position. The regular anti deletionist sentiments expressed on this list renforces this conclusion.
There is a significant differece between AGF and stop thinking.
Anyway if you want to try and go forward with this you need to start discussing this on wikipedia as soon as posible.~~~~
wikien-l is part of the official Wikipedia infrastructure, whether you like that fact for the present discussion or not.
- d.
I fail to see the relivance for this. Recent experence suggests that for practical purposes disscusing something on wikien-I is not the same as discussing it on wikipedia.
-- geni
geni (geniice@gmail.com) [060123 06:03]:
I fail to see the relivance for this. Recent experence suggests that for practical purposes disscusing something on wikien-I is not the same as discussing it on wikipedia.
Recent experience suggests Jimbo announces stuff here and important issues get discussed and decided here, thus making it a useful part of one's reading. Else why are you here?
- d.
On 1/22/06, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
geni (geniice@gmail.com) [060123 06:03]:
I fail to see the relivance for this. Recent experence suggests that for practical purposes disscusing something on wikien-I is not the same as discussing it on wikipedia.
Recent experience suggests Jimbo announces stuff here and important issues get discussed and decided here, thus making it a useful part of one's reading. Else why are you here?
- d.
Again irrelivant. If you want something discussed it is better to do it on the main wikipedia site. Recent experence shows this.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/22/06, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
geni (geniice@gmail.com) [060121 07:05]:
Ok now it we've got it reframed so it is not such an obvious attempt to push inclusionism
Presumably this is an example of your grasp of good faith.
If the user is an inclusionist it is hardly imposible that they may propose policies that support their position. The original proposal did fairly clearly favor the inclusionist position. It is hardly ilogical to conclude that the intial proposal was in part meant to forward the inclusionist position. The regular anti deletionist sentiments expressed on this list renforces this conclusion.
That kind of us-versus-them attitude is bound to make achieving a solution more difficult. Those who really want to find solutions are careful to avoid using the words "inclusionist" or "deletionist". Characterizations that put participants in one camp or the other are just not helpful.
Ec
This would be a kangaroo court waiting to happen.
We should of course do more to encourage research before someone submits something for deletion. However, people have different research skills, different access to resources for doing so, and differing opinions on where to set the bar for inclusion. So this "review board" would either confine itself to the worst offenses (like the guy who put up [[Jean-Luc Picard]] for deletion), which can be covered by normal admins and WP:POINT anyway, or have a chilling effect on WP by essentially criminalizing differences of opinion.
Submitting an article to AfD really should be no big deal. Things that shouldn't be deleted get nominated, but that doesn't mean the sky is falling. Just vote keep and get on with editing.
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless WP:VfU). The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and /damaging/ deletions. Deletions of unpublished garage bands can continue just as they do today.
The penalties would be limited, perhaps to simply to "time-outs" of various lengths -- prohibitions from participating in any *fD process -- and would primarily serve as a way of getting the attention of the offenders that /they are damaging the encyclopedia/ with their thoughtless assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks. Any offenses too great for that level of penalty would be dealt with by the ArbComm.
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Rob stated for the record:
This would be a kangaroo court waiting to happen.
We should of course do more to encourage research before someone submits something for deletion. However, people have different research skills, different access to resources for doing so, and differing opinions on where to set the bar for inclusion. So this "review board" would either confine itself to the worst offenses (like the guy who put up [[Jean-Luc Picard]] for deletion), which can be covered by normal admins and WP:POINT anyway, or have a chilling effect on WP by essentially criminalizing differences of opinion.
Submitting an article to AfD really should be no big deal. Things that shouldn't be deleted get nominated, but that doesn't mean the sky is falling. Just vote keep and get on with editing.
I'm afraid your casual dismissal of the issue will not make it go away.
Since you haven't been paying attention, I'll recapitulate: Jimbo receives e-mail messages /at least daily/ from outsiders wondering why "we" [the AfD gang] are so nasty and insulting as we delete easily-verified information about highly notable people. The AfD gang is actively doing damage to Wikipedia's reputation on a on-going, daily basis.
Will these assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks make the sky fall? No, the servers won't even crash. Is this continuing harm to the encyclopedia a real issue that must be fixed promptly because the rate is accelerating? Yes.
- -- Sean Barrett | I'm not a hero! I'm just an actor with a gun sean@epoptic.org | who's lost his motivation. --Bruce Baxter
Yes, I've been paying attention, thanks. I've personally gone to a number of message boards to discuss AfDs with groups who are offended by an AfD discussion. Usually patient discussion and explanation works wonders. Perhaps a "So you've been nominated for deletion" page would be helpful in this manner as well.
Is it a problem? Yes, but I think your proposed solution would be an infinitely larger problem.
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I'm afraid your casual dismissal of the issue will not make it go away.
Since you haven't been paying attention, I'll recapitulate: Jimbo receives e-mail messages /at least daily/ from outsiders wondering why "we" [the AfD gang] are so nasty and insulting as we delete easily-verified information about highly notable people. The AfD gang is actively doing damage to Wikipedia's reputation on a on-going, daily basis.
Will these assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks make the sky fall? No, the servers won't even crash. Is this continuing harm to the encyclopedia a real issue that must be fixed promptly because the rate is accelerating? Yes.
On 1/20/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I've been paying attention, thanks. I've personally gone to a number of message boards to discuss AfDs with groups who are offended by an AfD discussion. Usually patient discussion and explanation works wonders. Perhaps a "So you've been nominated for deletion" page would be helpful in this manner as well.
I like the "so you've been nominated for deletion" page idea.
I also like the idea of "speedy keep" being more widely used; if someone comes up with a really strong justification for why something should not be deleted, particularly if it completely rebuts the nominator's reason for nominating it, why waste time arguing about it?
Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator. I'd imagine anyone whose nominations were continually getting pulled for being inappropriate would eventually start to think about them more, no penalty necessary.
-Kat Potentially Awful Ideas R Us
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking "Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast upward. For there you have been and there you will always be." - Leonardo da Vinci
On 1/20/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/20/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I've been paying attention, thanks. I've personally gone to a number of message boards to discuss AfDs with groups who are offended by an AfD discussion. Usually patient discussion and explanation works wonders. Perhaps a "So you've been nominated for deletion" page would be helpful in this manner as well.
I like the "so you've been nominated for deletion" page idea.
Something like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geni/so_your_article_has_been_nominated_fo...
Feel free to suggest changes. -- geni
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Kat Walsh stated for the record:
Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator. I'd imagine anyone whose nominations were continually getting pulled for being inappropriate would eventually start to think about them more, no penalty necessary.
-Kat Potentially Awful Ideas R Us
I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self.
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
- -- Sean Barrett | I'm not a hero! I'm just an actor with a gun sean@epoptic.org | who's lost his motivation. --Bruce Baxter
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self.
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
If you look at the list of deletionists over at meta you will find most don't list much stuff for deletion.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self.
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
If you look at the list of deletionists over at meta you will find most don't list much stuff for deletion.
-- geni
As an ironic note, the ADW secretary-general has recently been cursing "those damn deletionists" on IRC, and I myself (as a member of the ADW) often cast "keep" votes on AfDs. Most deletionists don't vote to delete things out of spite (although there are always a few vocal bad apples).
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
geni wrote:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self.
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
If you look at the list of deletionists over at meta you will find most don't list much stuff for deletion.
I was Officialy Informed that the page in question is "a joke page" and "was never meant to be serious". Last time I looked it was in [[m:Category:Humour]].
On Jan 20, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
Yes, because Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return.
Your inflammatory statements are only serving to fan the partisan flames here. We could be having a rational discussion about ways to improve the deletion system so stuff that should be kept gets kept and stuff that should be deleted gets deleted, but instead you're just pulling out the "deletionists are evil, let's form a committee to ban them" card. That's definitely not a logical or dispassionate response.
-FCYTravis
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
Your inflammatory statements are only serving to fan the partisan flames here. We could be having a rational discussion about ways to improve the deletion system so stuff that should be kept gets kept and stuff that should be deleted gets deleted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geni/so_your_article_has_been_nominated_fo...
Just needs an introduction before being throw open to the general community to disscuss.
-- geni
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Travis Mason-Bushman stated for the record:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
Yes, because Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return.
Your inflammatory statements are only serving to fan the partisan flames here. We could be having a rational discussion about ways to improve the deletion system so stuff that should be kept gets kept and stuff that should be deleted gets deleted, but instead you're just pulling out the "deletionists are evil, let's form a committee to ban them" card. That's definitely not a logical or dispassionate response.
-FCYTravis
Since the statement you attribute to me has absolutely no resemblance to anything I actually wrote, it's clear that you are only seeking to fan the partisan flames here. We could be having a rational discussion about ways to protect Wikipedia from the on-going damage it is suffering, but instead you're just pulling out the "falsely attribute an absurd position to him, then ridicule that position he never took" straw man.
- -- Sean Barrett | I'm not a hero! I'm just an actor with a gun sean@epoptic.org | who's lost his motivation. --Bruce Baxter
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:17 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
Since the statement you attribute to me has absolutely no resemblance to anything I actually wrote, it's clear that you are only seeking to fan the partisan flames here.
Excuse me? My quote is a *direct quote* from your earlier e-mail. Unaltered and unedited. Are you now retracting your statement?
You wrote: "I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self. Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less."
You proposed to form a committee whose sole purpose would be to punish "deletionists" by banning them from deletion pages. That is inarguably a hostile act that will do nothing but embitter those you target and make them more determined to oppose *anything* you present as being the work of, as you said, a "bitter, cynical, twisted" person. You could have made a rational suggestion, like geni's "So your article has been nominated for deletion" page, which I have already worked to improve, or kat's call for more speedy keeps. Those are both rational, logical ideas. Creating an anti-deletionist bureaucracy is nothing but spite.
-FCYTravis
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Travis Mason-Bushman stated for the record:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:17 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
Since the statement you attribute to me has absolutely no resemblance to anything I actually wrote, it's clear that you are only seeking to fan the partisan flames here.
Excuse me? My quote is a *direct quote* from your earlier e-mail. Unaltered and unedited. Are you now retracting your statement?
You wrote: "I would like to think that -- really I would -- but two years on the ArbComm have turned me into a bitter, cynical, twisted shadow of my former cheery, optimistic, happy-go-lucky self. Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less."
You proposed to form a committee whose sole purpose would be to punish "deletionists" by banning them from deletion pages. That is inarguably a hostile act that will do nothing but embitter those you target and make them more determined to oppose *anything* you present as being the work of, as you said, a "bitter, cynical, twisted" person. You could have made a rational suggestion, like geni's "So your article has been nominated for deletion" page, which I have already worked to improve, or kat's call for more speedy keeps. Those are both rational, logical ideas. Creating an anti-deletionist bureaucracy is nothing but spite.
-FCYTravis
ONE: The straw man you were attacking, as you know, was "Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return."
TWO: As for the "bitter, cynical" remark -- is the whole subject of humor unfamiliar to you, or just the sarcasm subset of it?
THREE: Your question would be taken as rhetorical by the vast majority of people, but a lack of answer of course allows you to read anything you want into my silence, so the explicit answer to "Are you now retracting your statement?" is "No."
- -- Sean Barrett | There's no place like 127.0.0.1 sean@epoptic.org |
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:48 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
TWO: As for the "bitter, cynical" remark -- is the whole subject of humor unfamiliar to you, or just the sarcasm subset of it?
You apparently missed my sarcasm in quoting your words at their face value, just as you quoted my words "pounding into dust" at face value. Both are, of course, hyperbolic and humorous.
The fact that said "pounding deletionists into dust" mentality exists is inarguable. Witness Bjorn Lindqvist's missive, stating that "lifetime bannings (of deletionists) are OK for me," and that they "are doing more harm than any other type of troll or spammer."
Just a wee bit inflammatory, you think?
-FCYTravis
Yes, because Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return.
Yes please. Although I know that Wikipedia has a little more moderate stance so lifetime bannings is OK for me. The "deletionists" are doing more harm than any other type of troll or spammer.
-- mvh Björn
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
Yes, because Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return.
Yes please. Although I know that Wikipedia has a little more moderate stance so lifetime bannings is OK for me. The "deletionists" are doing more harm than any other type of troll or spammer.
-- mvh Björn
Define "deletionists", please.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee wrote:
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
Yes, because Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return.
Yes please. Although I know that Wikipedia has a little more moderate stance so lifetime bannings is OK for me. The "deletionists" are doing more harm than any other type of troll or spammer.
-- mvh Björn
Define "deletionists", please.
People who quite honestly couldn't give a Royal Flying Rat's Arse if what they are doing is harmful, so long as they "purge crap" from the encyclopedia.
(I wonder how many of same joined the pro-userbox crusade?)
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
John Lee wrote:
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
Yes, because Lord knows those evil deletionists must be PUNISHED! Drilled into the ground, pounded into dust, made never to return.
Yes please. Although I know that Wikipedia has a little more moderate stance so lifetime bannings is OK for me. The "deletionists" are doing more harm than any other type of troll or spammer.
-- mvh Björn
Define "deletionists", please.
People who quite honestly couldn't give a Royal Flying Rat's Arse if what they are doing is harmful, so long as they "purge crap" from the encyclopedia.
(I wonder how many of same joined the pro-userbox crusade?)
What's wrong with purging crap from the encyclopaedia? Nothing wrong there. And as for "don't care if what they are doing is harmful", I challenge you to name me anyone who you think seriously holds that philosophy.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
I don't think words like "deletionist" are helpful here, really. But Jimbo has hit on the core problem: that there is not enough discussion, not enough thought, put into alternatives to nomination for deletion. Our written deletion policy has lots of pious words that, if followed, would turn a large proportion of our daily deletion listings into merges and whatnot.
You know if arbcom gets a request, and the person making the request hasn't bothered with other parts of the dispute resolution procedure, and hasn't given a good reason for not doing so, the case is rejected.
Let's develop a similar procedure here. If someone sees a deletion nomination where deletion could obviously be avoided if a merge or redirect were to be negotiated, then that person should remove the AfD tag and start a discussion on the talk page about that alternative action. The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*. It should be for those proposing that the article, category, article template or other encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.
On 1/21/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Let's develop a similar procedure here. If someone sees a deletion nomination where deletion could obviously be avoided if a merge or redirect were to be negotiated, then that person should remove the AfD tag and start a discussion on the talk page about that alternative action. The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*. It should be for those proposing that the article, category, article template or other encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.
You appear to be asking them to prove a negative. That is generaly considered to be imposible (outside maths).
-- geni
On 1/21/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/21/06, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those
proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*. It should be for those proposing that the article, category, article template or other encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.
You appear to be asking them to prove a negative. That is generaly considered to be imposible (outside maths).
If that is impossible then why are so many voting to delete articles? Besides, the proposal is to have them prove that a positive did not occur within a limited (but extendable) timeframe. Sortof how the Americans failed to prove that there is weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but managed to prove that they couldn't find any during 200304-200601.
-- mvh Björn
On 1/21/06, BJörn Lindqvist bjourne@gmail.com wrote:
If that is impossible then why are so many voting to delete articles?
Huh?
Besides, the proposal is to have them prove that a positive did not occur within a limited (but extendable) timeframe.
No it wasn't
Sortof how the Americans failed to prove that there is weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but managed to prove that they couldn't find any during 200304-200601.
Huh?
-- geni
--- Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
[snip]
Let's develop a similar procedure here. If someone sees a deletion nomination where deletion could obviously be avoided if a merge or redirect were to be negotiated, then that person should remove the AfD tag and start a discussion on the talk page about that alternative action. The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*. It should be for those proposing that the article, category, article template or other encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.
Damn, that sounds too much like _work_.
That's probably part of the problem with AfD: People don't want to expend the effort to do any sort of research. That's also probably part of the reason any suggested reforms get shot down in a ball of flames (mixing my metaphors here, I believe); most of them require more work than AfD.
-Hermione1980
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:36 PM, Hermione1980 wrote:
That's probably part of the problem with AfD: People don't want to expend the effort to do any sort of research. That's also probably part of the reason any suggested reforms get shot down in a ball of flames (mixing my metaphors here, I believe); most of them require more work than AfD.
One could say the same about a lot of articles that get put up for AfD. If an article's authors had expended a little more effort in writing them, so that they would clearly state the article's importance, they could have saved people a lot of time nominating them and voting on them.
In my opinion, this all comes back to the fact that the Cleanup system is hopelessly broken. One cannot simply tag a borderline article - an article about a subject that may be worthwhile but is hopelessly poorly written, has no sources and amounts to a personal essay "cleanup" because in all likelihood that article will sit around untouched with a Cleanup tag for six months or a year or even more. So what's to do? Nominate it for deletion, because while the subject may be worthwhile, nobody's going to see it and be able to improve it into something resembling a usable stub unless someone sees it - and if you put it on AFD, at least someone's going to see it.
WP:AFD is the *single fastest way* to get a borderline/potential article cleaned up into a worthwhile stub, because *people look at AFD.* I agree, that means our system is broken. Let's figure out how to fix Cleanup.
-FCYTravis
--- Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
WP:AFD is the *single fastest way* to get a borderline/potential article cleaned up into a worthwhile stub, because *people look at AFD.*
I know. There have been several times that I've been sorely tempted to put something on AfD just so that it would get more attention. If every AfD vote could be transformed into an edit on an article on Cleanup, we'd be a whole lot better off. Maybe we should just redirect AfD to Cleanup.
-Hermione1980
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
The way these things keep going... ah hell, here's an updated version of what I suggested about a year ago:
1. No article may be listed on AFD unless a serious attempt at discussing cleanup, redirection, renaming, etc., has been made on the article's talk page. 2. No article may be listed on AFD twice in the same month. 3. If three (3) users (not IPs, have contributed to article space, had accounts for at least a week, not found to be sockpuppets, yada yada, etc, etc) say "Speedy keep" on an article's AFD, it is immediately closed as "speedy keep". (Abuse of this rule to stifle an actual debate on the merits would, of course, be a violation of policy.)
Note: Copyright violations and other "urgent deletions" (for example, as in a past case, the revelation of the real name, city of residence, college currently attended, and exact place of work of a certain young woman depicted in certain pictures on the Internet under a stage name) should be dealt with outside of the system used for normal articles. Listing something that is not an "urgent" deletion on the page for those should be recognized as a violation of policy.
I don't know why people have to hit over the head with the basics: If an article can possibly be merged or redirected, don't put it on AFD: talk about it on the talk page, use {{mergeto}}, and so on. If an article isn't a copyright violation and doesn't have some other really pressing need to have something expunged from history (cf. example above), then deleting it is not a priority- certainly ranking far below adding content to articles.
-- Jake Nelson
On Jan 20, 2006, at 4:42 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
- No article may be listed on AFD unless a serious attempt at
discussing cleanup, redirection, renaming, etc., has been made on the article's talk page.
So I couldn't AFD [[Bob's Used Cars]], an article on a hypothetical clearly non-notable organization that doesn't meet speedy deletion criteria, unless I had a pointless conversation on how this article which fails all Wikipedia guidelines could somehow magically be made to fit those criteria?
Let's be honest here - the VAST MAJORITY OF ARTICLES which get AFDed are deleted by clear consensus without controversy. We are talking about a small minority of controversial deletion decisions. Out of the 150+ nominations each day, fewer than 5 make it to DRV. Some get speedy-kept with no controversy, some get speedy deleted with no controversy and the rest get some sort of consensus, or a no-consensus keep.
-FCYTravis
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
So I couldn't AFD [[Bob's Used Cars]], an article on a hypothetical clearly non-notable organization that doesn't meet speedy deletion criteria, unless I had a pointless conversation on how this article which fails all Wikipedia guidelines could somehow magically be made to fit those criteria?
"clearly non-notable" - in this hypothetical, is it a business that actually exists?
If so, it's not "clearly" non-notable: it's debatably non-notable. The correct action would be not to AFD it, but to put up the standard boilerplate template about "fails to state the importance", and make a comment on the talk page asking if anyone can demonstrate that it has any importance.
If you can't find any evidence of such a business existing, put up {{unverified}} on it, and put a note on the talk page asking if anyone can demonstrate it exists.
Then go off and do other things. Check back on it at some point, see if anyone's provided information that resolves the issue. If not, then you could AFD it.
-- Jake Nelson
(another point)
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
Let's be honest here - the VAST MAJORITY OF ARTICLES which get AFDed are deleted by clear consensus without controversy. We are talking about a small minority of controversial deletion decisions. Out of the 150+ nominations each day, fewer than 5 make it to DRV. Some get speedy-kept with no controversy, some get speedy deleted with no controversy and the rest get some sort of consensus, or a no-consensus keep.
The vast majority of emails I get in a day are spam. They can be marked as junk and put aside without worrying. If I were to set my spam filters to mark almost everything as junk, we'd be talking about a small minority of controversial spam-labeling decisions. Out of the one to three thousand emails I receive each day [not an exaggeration... average is 1621 last time I looked], less than a hundred are not spam.
If I were to set my spam filters to mark nearly everything as spam, I'd lose messages that matter. Maybe not a lot, maybe it works most of the time... but I'd lose some. Whereas if I set things so that messages are only marked as spam if they absolutely are, I can get 0 real messages junked and only a few dozen bad ones slip through. Those get in the way a little, but I can get rid of them easily enough. In Wikipedia, they don't even get in the way of getting at things you want to see. They're just in the background.
Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
-- Jake Nelson
On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
-FCYTravis
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Hoaxes: Slap an {{unverified}} up top, edit the page if you've got evidence it's a hoax to cite that evidence.
Attack pages: #6 for articles on [[WP:CSD]]. Speedy it.
vanispamcruftvertisements: if it meets CSD (Unremarkable people or groups), speedy it. If it doesn't, slap a warning on it for unverified and biased, and edit it to something more neutral. Most of the time, if it's a big blob of advertising-y text, it's copied verbatim from another site, so just put a link to that in External links, ditch the adtext, and put a stub in.
-- Jake Nelson
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Why should anyone consider Wikipedia to be authoritative? It's written by amateurs. But I agree that we should get rid of tripe. BUt we should discuss it properly. Jimbo is right, there is far, far too much emphasis on deletion.
Bad articles can be identified and improved, or if there's nothing good about them they can be deleted. But there should be more emphasis on improvement. There should be fewer AfD listings carried to term. We should encourage editors to seek innovative solutions, and not fetishize the deletion process. So often these days it seems like a fairground ride--once the journey starts you have to keep your hands inside the car, and mustn't tamper with the deletion proposal. Why on earth not? If an article looks like an obvious redirect candidate, then do it and thank you for saving us five days worth of debate about deletion. Any further discussion can continue on the discussion page.
On 1/20/06 6:02 PM, "Tony Sidaway" f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
But there should be more emphasis on improvement.
Agreed. But nobody's listening.
Again, I point out that there are 15,000+ articles piled up on the Cleanup queue. I am *not* just going to tag an article "Cleanup" and let it sit there for six months. That is *not* a solution.
Fix the Cleanup system, get an actual Cleanup Patrol going to deal with these articles, and I'll be much less tempted to just speedy or AFD borderline tripe that I can't make heads or tails of, but sure shouldn't just hang around on the encyclopedia like it is.
-FCYTravis
I posted earlier about this brouhaha, but evidently because I had not yet subscribed, the message is in limbo. So there may be another one coming on this situation. I would truly appreciate some feedback from those who are more acclimatized to Wikipedia. The summary:
I was contacted over a year ago by an author who was working on the Frances Farmer article for Wikipedia. He had linked my web article "Shedding Light on Shadowland" and recognized I had a certain expertise in this subject. He invited me to come to Wikipedia and begin revising/correcting the Farmer article (as well as others that linked to it), which I happily did. Prior to this, I had never even heard of Wikipedia (sad, but true). Over the past year, I have pretty much completely rewritten the article, adding a lot of salient information and correcting a lot of misinformation in the article, trying at all times to keep it completely factual, non-sensationalized and as free of POV as possible. I should state here for the record that my Farmer research has received worldwide attention and served as source material for several books and newspaper articles, as well as documentaries on both NPR and A&E Biography. So I feel, hopefully rightfully, that I know whereof I speak on this subject.
About two days ago a user named Wyss started making wholesale edits to the article, which in and of itself doesn't bother me at all--if you look at the edit history I have let many a revision pass if it contains factual information. However, several of Wyss' edits contained outright factual errors. I don't want to pester you with details, but if you go into the edit history, you will see my first fledgling attempts to correct them.
I then posted to her Talk page (evidently incorrectly, as I did it at the top and didn't sign it, which completely set her off), asking her please to fact-check her material before posting it. She then posted vaguely threatening messages to my Talk page, including such sinister sounding lines as "I don't know what you're up to" and "I'm watching this page." She then reverted her edits back to the incorrect version. She also denied she had made any errors. I ultimately provided her with a URL of her edit history, describing the errors she had made, and hopefully showing her that she had indeed made them.
When I posted this to her Talk page, she, actually quite laughably, posted to my Talk page calling me a "bonehead." She then, rather incredibly, spent the next several hours denying she had called me a "bonehead." (I know, it's ridiculous, but it gets better or worse, depending on how you look at it).
So anyway she has continued to edit, adding completely wrong information repeatedly. She also began wholesale copying of my copyrighted article "Shedding Light on Shadowland," which I, again, posted to her talk page about, warning her that she was pushing the limits of Fair Use and that she was facing possible legal action if she continued quoting my research without citing it.
This is where is gets incredible to me: she then had me banned indefinitely for "making threats and harrassing." Interestingly, the person who banned me then immediately went "inactive."
Now Wyss on both the Farmer talk page and her talk page is accusing me of having "cloned" her, whatever that means, and of harrassing her anonymously. I have made NO anonymous edits to any article prior to my editing privileges being revoked, and I certainly do not have the Wiki-knowledge to clone someone's user page. As Wyss herself took me to task for, I couldn't even post to her Talk page properly, and I have to struggle to make edits to Wikipedia.
I state for the record I am a near-50 year old husband and father who, quite by accident, ended up spending 20 years researching Frances Farmer and who gained a certain renown as a Farmer expert. My web article has been read by tens of thousands of people and commented on by such notable people as Leonard Maltin and Washington Post reporter Jack El-Hai.
So here I am, "banned" from Wikipedia, still struggling to correct Wyss' incorrect edits (though I am "banned" I can still edit--maybe someone can explain that to me), while I also am suffering from what I personally consider to be her near-slanderous comments that I have "cloned" her and/or harrassed her. She is also now claiming that I am not Jeffrey Kauffman and I did not write "Shedding Light on Shadowland." Hopefully my email address is some proof for you, but I also refer you to my website:
http://jeffreykauffman.net/http://jeffreykauffman.net/
I even posted to the Farmer Talk page what I believe has happened: I am rather well-known in the Farmer fan community and I know for a fact there are several others who have been following Wyss' incorrect edits for the past few days. These are all younger folk, the Cobain contingent as I call them, and they certainly have more Wiki-knowledge than I. It is quite possible that Wyss is being targeted (wrongly, as I myself posted on the Talk page) by one of these people, but I again state it is *not* me who is doing this.
In the meantime, Wyss has just in the past 10 minutes added several more inaccuracies to the Farmer article, which, when I try to correct them (providing source material, as I always attempt to do), she immediately reverts back to her incorrect versions. All the while insisting I'm not "me."
I would very much like someone to offer me a little help. If I have done anything wrong, I apologize. But I have worked for a very long time to make sure only the facts about this actress are published on Wikipedia, and it pains me greatly to see someone come along and destroy over 12 months' of very careful, considered work.
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
Again, I point out that there are 15,000+ articles piled up on the Cleanup queue. I am *not* just going to tag an article "Cleanup" and let it sit there for six months. That is *not* a solution.
I'm not going near cleanup while some people are trying their very best to use "process" as an excuse to get rid of quite a lot of perfectly good articles.
One of my first experiences on Wikipedia was the tail end of an AfD where the article had originally said:
"Nicholas Humphrey was born in England in 1943. He received his Ph. D. in Psychology from Cambridge University in 1968. Dr. Humphrey currently holds a School Professorship at the London School of Economics as well as a half-time Professorship at the New School for Social Research in New York."
What shocked me was that the nominator obviously hadn't even bothered to do any research at all. He did not recognise that the subject of the article was Nicholas Humphrey, the prominent evolutionary psychologist. To delete this would be like saying "oh Carl Sagan, some guy who used a telescope. Delete."
On 1/20/06 8:58 PM, "Tony Sidaway" f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not going near cleanup while some people are trying their very best to use "process" as an excuse to get rid of quite a lot of perfectly good articles.
Well, I am - attempting to wade through a few of these. There are 200 articles with a cleanup tag from January, 2006 beginning with A-Bo. Anyone like to join me in trying to reduce that some? It's barely scratching the outer layer of the surface, but it's a start.
-FCYTravis
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
Well, I am - attempting to wade through a few of these. There are 200 articles with a cleanup tag from January, 2006 beginning with A-Bo. Anyone like to join me in trying to reduce that some? It's barely scratching the outer layer of the surface, but it's a start.
May do. Last time I did this the cleanup task often involved simply removing the tag from a perfectly acceptable article.
Consistent? Not I!
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
Again, I point out that there are 15,000+ articles piled up on the Cleanup queue. I am *not* just going to tag an article "Cleanup" and let it sit there for six months. That is *not* a solution.
Fix the Cleanup system, get an actual Cleanup Patrol going to deal with these articles, and I'll be much less tempted to just speedy or AFD borderline tripe that I can't make heads or tails of, but sure shouldn't just hang around on the encyclopedia like it is.
The "fix" for the Cleanup system is also the source for the people for a "cleanup patrol": get everyone to stop wasting time at AFD.
This was, in fact, much of the point for the creation of Cleanup in the first place, but it was only halfway successful: Cleanup was created, but people kept listing pages on AFD instead.
I keep hoping, "this time it won't get stuck halfway", "this time people will actually try to fix it instead of just slapping it on AFD and running"... If we actually convince enough people to dig in at cleanup and get rid of the backlog, we might be able to dig ourselves out of this pile. Too often, I still think it'd take Jimbo himself deleting AFD to make it stick.
-- Jake Nelson
On 1/20/06 9:11 PM, "Jake Nelson" duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
This was, in fact, much of the point for the creation of Cleanup in the first place, but it was only halfway successful: Cleanup was created, but people kept listing pages on AFD instead.
Why are you thinking this is either-or? There are some articles which should be cleaned up. There are some articles which should be deleted. AFD *and* Cleanup have their purposes.
-FCYTravis
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
Why are you thinking this is either-or? There are some articles which should be cleaned up. There are some articles which should be deleted. AFD *and* Cleanup have their purposes.
(writing eight paragraphs of a response, then deleting the whole thing)
A lot of articles listed on AFD belong on Cleanup. A lot of time is spent watching AFD to try and keep things from being deleted that shouldn't be deleted. That time can't be easily redirected unless things stop being listed on AFD that shouldn't be.
Maybe 'Article improvement month' - nobody delete articles for a month, while everyone focuses on creating and improving articles instead of getting rid of them. (Exceptions for "urgent deletions" as described prior, of course.)
-- Jake Nelson, who shouldn't be up this late when he has to be at a big meeting all day tomorrow...
On 1/20/06 9:57 PM, "Jake Nelson" duskwave@gmail.com wrote:
A lot of articles listed on AFD belong on Cleanup. A lot of time is spent watching AFD to try and keep things from being deleted that shouldn't be deleted. That time can't be easily redirected unless things stop being listed on AFD that shouldn't be.
And a lot of articles on Cleanup should be listed on AFD, as I'm finding out by going through the Cleanup pages.
-FCYTravis
"Travis Mason-Bushman" travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote in message news:BFF6F744.94C8%travis@gpsports-eng.com...
On 1/20/06 6:02 PM, "Tony Sidaway" f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
But there should be more emphasis on improvement.
Agreed. But nobody's listening. Again, I point out that there are 15,000+ articles piled up on the Cleanup queue. I am *not* just going to tag an article "Cleanup" and let it sit there for six months. That is *not* a solution. Fix the Cleanup system, get an actual Cleanup Patrol going to deal with these articles, and I'll be much less tempted to just speedy or AFD borderline tripe that I can't make heads or tails of, but sure shouldn't just hang around on the encyclopedia like it is.
Isn't this the exact point? If the effort put into relentless AFD nomination and discussion were put into CLEANUP instead, that backlog could be cleared much earlier.
And those articles which would have been AFD'd in the meantime? They'll turn up in the CLEANUP queue later on, and you can fix them then.
It is actually much better to have a sub-standard article, clearly marked as such and requesting assistance, than a hole in the ground with a sign saying "the last article on this subject was a crock: don't even consider writing another because we'll nuke you until you glow in the dark and then shoot you full of lead".
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Why should anyone consider Wikipedia to be authoritative? It's written by amateurs. But I agree that we should get rid of tripe. BUt we should discuss it properly. Jimbo is right, there is far, far too much emphasis on deletion.
Bad articles can be identified and improved, or if there's nothing good about them they can be deleted. But there should be more emphasis on improvement. There should be fewer AfD listings carried to term. We should encourage editors to seek innovative solutions, and not fetishize the deletion process. So often these days it seems like a fairground ride--once the journey starts you have to keep your hands inside the car, and mustn't tamper with the deletion proposal. Why on earth not? If an article looks like an obvious redirect candidate, then do it and thank you for saving us five days worth of debate about deletion. Any further discussion can continue on the discussion page.
From someone in the trenches (I've been keeping [[WP:AFD/Old]] 100% backlog free for a week) who has disagreed with Tony before, I have to say that this is an excellent proposal. There's too much reliance on closing admins to do the work. Instead of saying "* '''Redirect''' as per Foo," why the hell not just redirect it?
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Why should anyone consider Wikipedia to be authoritative? It's written by amateurs. But I agree that we should get rid of tripe. BUt we should discuss it properly. Jimbo is right, there is far, far too much emphasis on deletion.
Bad articles can be identified and improved, or if there's nothing good about them they can be deleted. But there should be more emphasis on improvement. There should be fewer AfD listings carried to term. We should encourage editors to seek innovative solutions, and not fetishize the deletion process. So often these days it seems like a fairground ride--once the journey starts you have to keep your hands inside the car, and mustn't tamper with the deletion proposal. Why on earth not? If an article looks like an obvious redirect candidate, then do it and thank you for saving us five days worth of debate about deletion. Any further discussion can continue on the discussion page.
From someone in the trenches (I've been keeping [[WP:AFD/Old]] 100% backlog free for a week) who has disagreed with Tony before, I have to say that this is an excellent proposal. There's too much reliance on closing admins to do the work. Instead of saying "* '''Redirect''' as per Foo," why the hell not just redirect it?
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
That's the point that annoys me most about AFD: You can't just redirect or merge the articles, because of course once an article is on AFD, it's sacrilegious to remove the AFD tag from the article and forgo the "discussion" that's supposedly happening. So, it's basically locked until it's deleted or kept. Of course, you can still edit and improve it, but I'm not going to do that to an article that I think should be merged or redirected anyway.
grm_wnr
On 1/21/06, grm_wnr grmwnr@gmail.com wrote:
That's the point that annoys me most about AFD: You can't just redirect or merge the articles, because of course once an article is on AFD, it's sacrilegious to remove the AFD tag from the article and forgo the "discussion" that's supposedly happening. So, it's basically locked until it's deleted or kept. Of course, you can still edit and improve it, but I'm not going to do that to an article that I think should be merged or redirected anyway.
grm_wnr
I've done it and got away with it (to be fair everyone includeing the author agreeded with me).
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 1/21/06, grm_wnr grmwnr@gmail.com wrote:
That's the point that annoys me most about AFD: You can't just redirect or merge the articles, because of course once an article is on AFD, it's sacrilegious to remove the AFD tag from the article and forgo the "discussion" that's supposedly happening. So, it's basically locked until it's deleted or kept. Of course, you can still edit and improve it, but I'm not going to do that to an article that I think should be merged or redirected anyway.
grm_wnr
I've done it and got away with it (to be fair everyone includeing the author agreeded with me).
Well, lots of non-process stuff is done and gotten away with, as everyone probably knows by now. I'd just like to see this added to the normal deletion rules, so that users that don't want, don't dare or don't know about IAR can and will do it as well.
grm_wnr
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently disagreeing.
Ec
On 1/20/06 11:27 PM, "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
On Jan 20, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Deleting one valid article is a significantly bad thing; not deleting ten bad articles is so minor a bad thing as to be almost beneath notice.
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently disagreeing.
And we are saved from falling to the [[false dilemma]] [[strawman]] raised by Mr. Nelson, that somehow you cannot rid Wikipedia of patently bad articles without deleting good ones.
-FCYTravis
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
On 1/20/06 11:27 PM, "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently disagreeing.
And we are saved from falling to the [[false dilemma]] [[strawman]] raised by Mr. Nelson, that somehow you cannot rid Wikipedia of patently bad articles without deleting good ones.
No he didn't. I quote Mr. Nelson:
If I were to set my spam filters to mark nearly everything as spam, I'd lose messages that matter. Maybe not a lot, maybe it works most of the time... but I'd lose some. Whereas if I set things so that messages are only marked as spam if they absolutely are, I can get 0 real messages junked and only a few dozen bad ones slip through.
He's using an analogy here, but basically what he's saying about article deletion is "if we only delete articles as 'bad' when they absolutely are, we lose 0 good articles and only a few dozen bad articles slip through." The sorts of articles you're talking about above (hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements) are the sort that are _obviously bad_, and so under Mr. Nelson's preferences would still get deleted.
On 1/21/06 1:10 AM, "Bryan Derksen" bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
The sorts of articles you're talking about above (hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements) are the sort that are _obviously bad_, and so under Mr. Nelson's preferences would still get deleted.
Except such things are not nearly always "obviously bad." It takes a deliberative process, at least one that is semi-deliberative, such as AfD, to make the determination in many cases - unless, that is, you would like to give admins more speedy deletion leeway - which probably *would* result in more good articles being deleted, because there simply wouldn't be nearly as many eyes falling upon them - and Nelson's statement would be true.
As it is today, AfD is far from perfect but it results in these borderline and questionable articles (is it a hoax? Is it fluff or really something good) getting eyeballs. It doesn't always work, but I'm waiting for someone to come up with a better way to do it and so far everyone's just said "it doesn't work" in 11 different ways.
-FCYTravis
First of all, I want to thank Mark for IMing me and telling me not to stress.
I am sure this all seems patently ridiculous to many of you, but, as I stated in an email to some of the Administrators, I have spent 20 years of my life attempting to rectify print and other media inaccuracies about Frances Farmer, and my only vested interest in the Wikipedia article is one of accuracy.
I want to say that evidently Wyss has gone back and reworded some of the information she cribbed from my web article "Shedding Light on Shadowland," I assume in an attempt to make it seem less plagiarized. That is fine and I will let that issue rest for the time being.
There is one funny (for me, anyway) punchline. Wyss reverted one of my corrections, citing an American Atheist article as her source. Ready for it?: the American Atheist article (which does contain some minor errors of fact, including the one Wyss is repeating) uses my research extensively, quotes me throughout and indeed features a whole additional article largely devoted to me and my research. The American Atheist article was written by my friend Conrad Goeringer.
So here is Wyss, insisting I am not Jeff Kauffman and not the author of "Shedding Light on Shadowland," reverting my absolutely verifiable corrections (I will happily provide source material to anyone who asks) to incorrect version while citing an article that uses my research to begin with!
OK, I think I've vented enough now.
It would be nice if someone would restore my editing privliges and ask Wyss to stop making her completely unfounded allegations that I somehow "cloned" her User ID. I'm sure it is easily provable by ISP numbers or whatever is used that I did not clone her User ID, nor make any harrassing commments to her. All I ever did was ask her to fact-check her information before posting it.
On 1/21/06, Travis Mason-Bushman travis@gpsports-eng.com wrote:
Except such things are not nearly always "obviously bad." It takes a deliberative process, at least one that is semi-deliberative, such as AfD,
I question whether AfD can be considered "deliberative" at this point. I think a deliberative process is obliged to listen to arguments presented and make a decision based on them, and the evidence that AfD does so is somewhat lacking.
Kelly
On 1/21/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
I question whether AfD can be considered "deliberative" at this point. I think a deliberative process is obliged to listen to arguments presented and make a decision based on them, and the evidence that AfD does so is somewhat lacking.
It's at least a little bit more deliberative than speedy deletion, I feel.
-Matt
On 1/21/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/21/06, Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com wrote:
I question whether AfD can be considered "deliberative" at this point. I think a deliberative process is obliged to listen to arguments presented and make a decision based on them, and the evidence that AfD does so is somewhat lacking.
It's at least a little bit more deliberative than speedy deletion, I feel.
We can give people the opportunity to hold a discussion; unfortunately we cannot force them to take that opportunity. Although I think AfD does an excellent job in most cases (how much discussion does a self-written article about garage band formed three months ago merit?) it fails us badly when facile arguments are made in favor of deletion of perfectly good articles about people who have obviously achieved something that has been written about in reputable, independent sources or companies that, though quite small, are obviously an important part of the infrastructure of modern business.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
On 1/20/06 11:27 PM, "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.
Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently disagreeing.
And we are saved from falling to the [[false dilemma]] [[strawman]] raised by Mr. Nelson, that somehow you cannot rid Wikipedia of patently bad articles without deleting good ones.
No he didn't. I quote Mr. Nelson:
If I were to set my spam filters to mark nearly everything as spam, I'd lose messages that matter. Maybe not a lot, maybe it works most of the time... but I'd lose some. Whereas if I set things so that messages are only marked as spam if they absolutely are, I can get 0 real messages junked and only a few dozen bad ones slip through.
He's using an analogy here, but basically what he's saying about article deletion is "if we only delete articles as 'bad' when they absolutely are, we lose 0 good articles and only a few dozen bad articles slip through." The sorts of articles you're talking about above (hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements) are the sort that are _obviously bad_, and so under Mr. Nelson's preferences would still get deleted.
I think it's really Travis that was raising the strawman argument with his comment. The hoaxes and other deletion criteria that he raises receive very little dispute. Notability, which he does not mention, is probably more disputed than all the other criteria put together. Using arguments that are easily accepted for the listed criteria, and making them apply analogically to another criterion is a logical fallacy.
Ec
On 1/20/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator.
At your service.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 1/20/06, Kat Walsh mindspillage@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator.
At your service.
I have a link in my toolbox called "Week old AfD" - sometimes when I'm really bored I go through and check everything that's still open, keeping / {{db|(link to AfD)}} / tagging for merging / relisting as appropriate.
"Kat Walsh" mindspillage@gmail.com wrote in message news:8e253f560601201327gbd28a80v3b8d847e9c0c0f3e@mail.gmail.com... [snip]
I also like the idea of "speedy keep" being more widely used; if someone comes up with a really strong justification for why something should not be deleted, particularly if it completely rebuts the nominator's reason for nominating it, why waste time arguing about it?
Hmmm.
Isn't this what SnowSpinner's {{user recovery}} template was esentially all about?
Or am I getting confused with his "expertise and deletion" notice?
Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator. I'd imagine anyone whose nominations were continually getting pulled for being inappropriate would eventually start to think about them more, no penalty necessary.
I'd think anyone who nominations were getting pulled that often should be considered for a WP:POINT time-out...
HTH HAND
On 1/23/06, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
"Kat Walsh" mindspillage@gmail.com wrote in message news:8e253f560601201327gbd28a80v3b8d847e9c0c0f3e@mail.gmail.com... [snip]
I also like the idea of "speedy keep" being more widely used; if someone comes up with a really strong justification for why something should not be deleted, particularly if it completely rebuts the nominator's reason for nominating it, why waste time arguing about it?
Hmmm.
Isn't this what SnowSpinner's {{user recovery}} template was esentially all about?
You may be thinking of some other template. The one you have named is placed on userpages by admins who are willing to brave the wrath of WP:DRV by actually undeleting and userfying (non-copyright infringing, non-defamatory) stuff for people who want to use it. It's based on a notice David Gerard put on his talk page a while back.
[...]
I'd think anyone who nominations were getting pulled that often should be considered for a WP:POINT time-out...
I suggest the we just point at them and laugh.
Phil Boswell (phil.boswell@gmail.com) [060123 22:25]:
"Kat Walsh" mindspillage@gmail.com wrote in
Perhaps this is what a "deletion cabal" could do: simply make the call to speedy pull a nomination, rather than penalize the nominator. I'd imagine anyone whose nominations were continually getting pulled for being inappropriate would eventually start to think about them more, no penalty necessary.
I'd think anyone who nominations were getting pulled that often should be considered for a WP:POINT time-out...
Well, yes.
- d.
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I'm afraid your casual dismissal of the issue will not make it go away.
Since you haven't been paying attention, I'll recapitulate: Jimbo receives e-mail messages /at least daily/ from outsiders wondering why "we" [the AfD gang] are so nasty and insulting as we delete easily-verified information about highly notable people. The AfD gang is actively doing damage to Wikipedia's reputation on a on-going, daily basis.
I recive (through the helpdesk) emails about this on a daily basis as well. However I also get a stunning number asking about link exchange. I also recive complaints about people reverting stuff. Should we start a comitte to regualate that?
-- geni
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geni stated for the record:
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I'm afraid your casual dismissal of the issue will not make it go away.
Since you haven't been paying attention, I'll recapitulate: Jimbo receives e-mail messages /at least daily/ from outsiders wondering why "we" [the AfD gang] are so nasty and insulting as we delete easily-verified information about highly notable people. The AfD gang is actively doing damage to Wikipedia's reputation on a on-going, daily basis.
I recive (through the helpdesk) emails about this on a daily basis as well. However I also get a stunning number asking about link exchange. I also recive complaints about people reverting stuff. Should we start a comitte to regualate that?
-- geni
geni, I wish you'd drop the straw-man arguments. As you know full well, those seeking and being denied link exchange are not comparable to million-selling authors whose internationally-published works are being falsely accused of being vanity printings.
Complaints about being reverted are not so easily dismissed -- by you or me. The same nasty personalities who are delighted by calling a renowed scientist a quack or a best-selling author a hack are just as delighted by reverting well-intentioned edits with hateful personal attacks. So: yes, we should have a committee to oversee on-article personal attacks. I think we should call it something like ... the "Arbitration Committee" or something like that. I'll be one of the first to volunteer to serve on it, and I'll even accept a three-year hitch. And furthermore, I'll bet you that I'll serve one of the longest spans in office of any Arbiter.
- -- Sean Barrett | I'm not a hero! I'm just an actor with a gun sean@epoptic.org | who's lost his motivation. --Bruce Baxter
On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
geni, I wish you'd drop the straw-man arguments. As you know full well, those seeking and being denied link exchange are not comparable to million-selling authors whose internationally-published works are being falsely accused of being vanity printings.
True there isn't a template for million selling authors. I wasn't being entirly serious in that part of the text.
Complaints about being reverted are not so easily dismissed -- by you or me. The same nasty personalities who are delighted by calling a renowed scientist a quack or a best-selling author a hack are just as delighted by reverting well-intentioned edits with hateful personal attacks. So: yes, we should have a committee to oversee on-article personal attacks.
Who said anything about personal attacks? For the most part the emails are along the lines of "my contribution was reverted. Why?".
I think we should call it something like ... the "Arbitration Committee" or something like that. I'll be one of the first to volunteer to serve on it, and I'll even accept a three-year hitch. And furthermore, I'll bet you that I'll serve one of the longest spans in office of any Arbiter.
I can't at short notice think of an arbcom case where a newbie sucessfuly complained about the behaviour of a slightly more long term editor.
-- geni
Sean Barrett wrote:
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David Gerard stated for the record:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people and existing companies*. "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
Jumping into VFD discussions with a reference to this email? Though let's see how many times the obnoxious have to be hit over the head with this before someone decides it's "spamming" and blocks them!
You see what I mean when I say that AFD/DRV consider themselves worlds unto themselves, and bitterly resist anything perceived as outside interference, i.e. the rest of the Wikipedia infrastructure.
Many of us have been saying for a long time that the *fD gangs are doing active and hard-to-repair damage to the reputation of this encyclopedia. Of course, every time we do, the reply is an accusation that we are mindless inclusionist, and no serious discussion can be held.
It seems as if Jimbo has finally installed electricity in the outhouse, and now he can see the light. :-)
Well, here's a serious proposal to encourage discussion:
I propose <sigh> yet another level of bureaucracy -- a Deletion Review Board (which would have nothing whatsoever to do with the useless WP:VfU). The Review Board would be empowered to penalize those who nominate and those who vote support such egregiously careless and /damaging/ deletions. Deletions of unpublished garage bands can continue just as they do today.
It's not the nominations or the votes that do the harm, but the decision based on those votes. We should be more interested in what happens to the article than to those seeking to delete it. A merely punitive role doesn't do anythng for us. I can forsee such a Review Board soon being taken over by the very people who are now giving everybody a headache.
No attempt to delete for lack of notability should be considered valid unless there has first been a good-faith attempt to discuss it with the contributor so that he can improve the article. Articles that have had improvements should not be on the same footings as one that is totally unchanged. Votes that are time-stamped before an improvement clearly do not reflect a review of those changes. Whatever timeframe is chosen before something can be deleted should start with the last vote rather than the first. Undeletion should not be seen as some kind of personal attack on those who deleted the article who then feels obligated to defend his deletion. Perhaps the act of undeletion should be on a par with one more keep vote that just starts the clock running again.
Even with all those safeguards I suspect that the vast majority of things that are deleted will stay deleted without much of a fuss.
Ec
On 1/20/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I do not know the exact solution to this problem, but this is part of an ongoing problem with have *most particularly with bios of living people and existing companies*. "I haven't heard of this" seems to be an instant excuse for "non-notable" and "AfD", which is offensive to the subjects, when the real approach should be _at a bare minimum_ and effort at dialogue with other editors *before* jumping to a "vote".
Jumping into VFD discussions with a reference to this email?
Yes, excellent idea. I've closed the AfD on Seth Ravin with a citation to this thread and started a dialog on the talk page.
There does seem to be substantial agreement that a chap whom the WSJ quoted extensively in an article that was primarily about his company's grabbing of a lucrative contract for the Georgia State Pension scheme from Oracle/Peoplesoft is not quite as negligible as some people seemed to think. But some people suggest that, really, the company he was with (which he has since left) is the more notable for that.
Well in that case we probably need to discuss things. But it's probably a good idea to remove the "ticking clock of bloodlust" element from the discussion, hence my decision to close the AfD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Seth_Ravin_2
(though I expect that by now you may have to guddle through the history and whatnot--this kind of bold action tends to attract equally bold reactions, blocks, page protects, fanfares, tickertape parade, etc).
On 21 Jan 2006, at 01:24, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Yes, excellent idea. I've closed the AfD on Seth Ravin with a citation to this thread and started a dialog on the talk page.
Well I have marked his picture as {{nosource}} for a start. Yet another gratuitous copyrighted "promo" image.
Justinc
On 1/21/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
On 21 Jan 2006, at 01:24, Tony Sidaway wrote:
Yes, excellent idea. I've closed the AfD on Seth Ravin with a citation to this thread and started a dialog on the talk page.
Well I have marked his picture as {{nosource}} for a start. Yet another gratuitous copyrighted "promo" image.
If it's a promo, I believe it may be fair use, but of course you're right to mark it if it wasn't already marked with some licence.