I don't think that "implied discretion" is a good idea long-term - it's better to codify it in policy so that everything is consistent and in the open. Apart from anything else, it's kind of inadvertantly biting the newbies when stuff happens for reasons which aren't explained.

If admins are going to operate outside the system it hardly seems acceptable to comunicate to those they effect as if they were part of such a sytem. No statements about personalised deletions should be personalised in term.

> That's begging the question. In what way is deleting uncited, > unverifiable, unimportant, often vanity content "working outside the > process"?

Who are you to judge what is unimportant? We have verious processes for deletion for exactly that reason.

As long as that is the case, we're in the unfortunate position where it's entirely likely the god-given common sense a user comes to the project with is going to do them more good than our policy pages.

Or, rather, we're in the unfortunate case of trying to have policy pages replace that common sense.

On 10/1/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Okay. Given that line, I cannot resist the following. (so sue me, some straight lines really need to be punched on) Please (pretty please, with cherry on top) go on the record saying that undeletion is no big deal. I dare you, I double dare you. Glossing on... (you may want to disregard the following, the point is all above, what follows is just driving it into the ground; pounding a dead horse, choose your metaphor for explicating things plain as pikestaffs) Just because one *can* do something (or in this case _undo_) it does not mean that doing that is easy/costless/(or likely to happen in any significant majority of cases). Undeleting articles does happen, but it does not make deleting articles a trivial act. "Big deal" really needs to be deprecated around wikipedia, as a term in general. Because it gives out the appearances that wikipedia is still a Ben&Jerry operation, when clearly it is not. (And yes, I could go on and on on this subject, but I think the point is made.) -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

As far as not biting the newbies, well, of course I agree. A kind and loving template which says "Thanks so much for your submission to Wikipedia, but it was deleted. Before submitting again, please read <this>, <that>, and <the other> policy, and if you have questions, please raise them at <an appropriate page>."

> OK, I'll nibble at this particular bait. How should I improve this > template: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Nn-userfy which I use > when userfying autobiographies tagged for speedy deletion?

A link to your talk page, preferably an "add a section" link?