-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales
Sent: 12 January 2004 20:27 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] My view on deletions
At least one person has privately expressed to me the opinion that my
position on deletions is that nothing should be deleted. That's absolutely not
true, and I thought that this misunderstanding might be widely enough
shared that I should speak to it for a moment.
I think that the vast majority of deletions are perfectly fine.
Deletions for vandalism seem to be pretty well not abused. Borderline cases, with a
fairly open policy, are sent to VfD now, and that almost always works
out just fine.
But I'm unhappy with some deletions (and redirections) that happen on
VfD. I call the process broken by analogy with hypothetical (and virtually all
real!) criminal justice systems that get the right answer most of the
time, but for various procedural reasons sometimes do exactly the wrong thing.
But in no way am I saying anything even remotely supportive of the idea
that vandals should be given free hand, nor that deletion or redirection should
always be avoided at all costs. They are important tools, but we need
to improve how we use them.
In my experience mistakes occur much more frequently over "instant deletion" pages rather than the VfD page. It's not a coincidence that VfD decisions are made collectively and instant delete are made individually. VfD mistakes are so few and far between (I think only the Palestinian views... article has been cited in this discussion as a VfD mistake and that is only debatably a mistake - given all our policies on page-naming) that it is probably not worth your worrying about too much. Instant deletion mistakes (in the sense that the page should've gone to VfD or even cleanup rather than instantly deleted) are made on a (I estimate) daily basis. A timely reminder to work the VfD process rather than bypassing it by insta-deleting may be in order.
Pete/Pcb21