We all know about "POV warriors." I'm fortunate or wimpy enough not to have been involved in articles with serious long-standing POV wars, but my impression is that _for the most part_ these things seem to stay under reasonable control.
On the other hand, I think we are developing "topic warriors" who feel that a specific subject area deserves very detailed coverage, systematically watch VfD for any cases where articles on their pet topic are nominated for deletion, and oppose deletion of _any_ article on their topic on principle, regardless of the quality of the article.
Unlike POV, a relatively small number of topic warriors CAN effectively achieve their goal. (And, of course, they are assisted by Wikipedians who do _not_ accept the premise that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.")
NOTE NOTE NOTE ---> topic wars are FAR, FAR less damaging to Wikipedia and FAR less of a concern than POV wars.
Some Wikipedians undoubtedly feel that topic wars do not damage Wikipedia at all. My feeling is that they do, because they deliberately _create_ systemic bias, and create an area in which the average quality of the articles is lower than the rest of Wikipedia.
They certainly damage the Wikipedia community by factionalizing it, creating an "us versus them" mentality, and, in some cases, publicly gloating over their "success."
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
We all know about "POV warriors." I'm fortunate or wimpy enough not to have been involved in articles with serious long-standing POV wars, but my impression is that _for the most part_ these things seem to stay under reasonable control.
On the other hand, I think we are developing "topic warriors" who feel that a specific subject area deserves very detailed coverage, systematically watch VfD for any cases where articles on their pet topic are nominated for deletion, and oppose deletion of _any_ article on their topic on principle, regardless of the quality of the article.
If you're talking about Wikiprojects, better get the asbestos underwear ready... However, I've also seen many articles on AfD improve immensely and end up being kept simply because someone knowledgable on the subject of the article came along and improved to the point where it was no longer suitable to delete the article.
Unlike POV, a relatively small number of topic warriors CAN effectively achieve their goal. (And, of course, they are assisted by Wikipedians who do _not_ accept the premise that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.")
It should be noted that many of these "topic warriors" feel that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" - merely that Wikipedia lacks decent articles in certain areas.
NOTE NOTE NOTE ---> topic wars are FAR, FAR less damaging to Wikipedia and FAR less of a concern than POV wars.
Glad to hear it...
Some Wikipedians undoubtedly feel that topic wars do not damage Wikipedia at all. My feeling is that they do, because they deliberately _create_ systemic bias, and create an area in which the average quality of the articles is lower than the rest of Wikipedia.
Hence we have a Wikiproject to counter systematic bias; also, the more topics which *are* covered, the less that are *not*.
They certainly damage the Wikipedia community by factionalizing it, creating an "us versus them" mentality, and, in some cases, publicly gloating over their "success."
If you mean inclusionists, yes. I still call for the public execution of the Associations of Inclusionist and Deletionist Wikipedians, and imposing mentorships upon all editors who still claim to be editors at the time that these projects are shut down. They are the primary cause of the angst associated with AfD.
On 9/16/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
We all know about "POV warriors." I'm fortunate or wimpy enough not to have been involved in articles with serious long-standing POV wars, but my impression is that _for the most part_ these things seem to stay under reasonable control.
On the other hand, I think we are developing "topic warriors" who feel that a specific subject area deserves very detailed coverage, systematically watch VfD for any cases where articles on their pet topic are nominated for deletion, and oppose deletion of _any_ article on their topic on principle, regardless of the quality of the article.
If you're talking about Wikiprojects, better get the asbestos underwear ready... However, I've also seen many articles on AfD improve immensely and end up being kept simply because someone knowledgable on the subject of the article came along and improved to the point where it was no longer suitable to delete the article.
We don't neccesarily need to keep a deletable article until it's improved. If people want to improve coverage by fixing deletable articles, all they have to do is go through old deletion listings and create valid articles.
Usually the content of deletable articles isn't needed to create a nice article/stub. If it is, temp undeletion or history undeletion requests can be placed.
On 9/16/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Usually the content of deletable articles isn't needed to create a nice article/stub. If it is, temp undeletion or history undeletion requests can be placed.
I've got some sympathy with that point of view. However I didn't have to search long to find that list of power ballads case. That was a case where deletion didn't make much sense; it just seems to have been a result of failure of imagination on the part of those involved in the debate. As a regular closer, I'd say this probably happens a lot more than you think.
Although I don't agree with everything Kelly says on the subject of AfD, and I am actually one of AfD's greatest cheerleaders, there is a strong tendency for people to congregate there whose views seem to be untempered by any knowledge of deletion policy. For them "if in doubt, don't delete" sounds like inclusionist claptrap rather than an accurate quote from the deletion policy. For them, the lists of "Problems that don't require deletion" and "Problems that may require deletion" might as well not exist. They'll ask for deletion because an article is a mess, or because the content has POV problems, or because it's deteriorated but was once good, or because the subject does not merit an article (for which the remedy is of course a merge) . There is a serious problem here, and saying "well we don't really need that content, we can always rewrite it/temp undelete it/whatever" isn't really an adequate defense for what is often a quite shocking miscarriage of deletion policy.
there is a strong tendency for people to congregate there whose views seem to be untempered by any knowledge of deletion policy. For them "if in doubt, don't delete" sounds like inclusionist claptrap rather than an accurate quote from the deletion policy. For them, the lists of "Problems that don't require deletion" and "Problems that may require deletion" might as well not exist. They'll ask for deletion because an article is a mess, or because the content has POV problems, or because it's deteriorated but was once good, or because the subject does not merit an article (for which the remedy is of course a merge) . There is a serious problem here, and saying "well we don't really need that content, we can always rewrite it/temp undelete it/whatever" isn't really an adequate defense for what is often a quite shocking miscarriage of deletion policy.
I agree with Tony - over and over I see things on AfD which do not meet the deletion criteria. More disturbing is the tendency to nominate an article for deletion with the admission "I don't know anything about this topic". IMO, if you don't know anything about a topic, then the impetus is on you to find out, not to AfD it and hope that someone knowledgeable will come along and educate you. Of course, THEN people come along and say "yeah, delete it" (without doing any research).
I think that any article nominated for deletion should include reference to the applicable deletion criteria, otherwise the noms should be deleted as spurious.
Ian