NSK wrote:
Perhaps WP could disallow anonymous edits and require by people who
open an
account to read a short policy and agree to it, for example with an "I Agree" checkbox.
I can't imagine that that would make any difference. People create stuff without reading the policy now - you can force them to scroll over a page of policy and click a checkbox at the bottom, but you can't force them to read it (ever read an EULA when installing software?) and you certainly can't force them to follow it.
Anons that create useful content *will* create an account if they are serious in their wikiwork.
..and..
I think you need to make account creation a bit more difficult: 0. Anons aren't needed; disable anon editing.
- People will be required to validate their account through an e-mail
address. 2. New account holders will be denied editing until after 1-2 days. 3. To make anons open an account you could make some pages readable
only by
account holders, et cetera.
These ideas have been suggested before, but are so far out of alignment with the philosophy that Wikipedia was founded under that they will never be implemented. A "no anon editing" Wikipedia can only be done as a fork, I think.
Cheers! David...
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On Friday 22 October 2004 06:26, Carson, David wrote:
(ever read an EULA when installing software?)
I do and I think it's a Good Thing (tm) to do that. Do you know that by just submitting content to a site you can give to the site's admin the copyright of your work? This may happen with some auction sites and some ISP userpages, for example.
But I know most people don't read these things; So that's why the basic policy needs to be short.
These ideas have been suggested before, but are so far out of alignment with the philosophy that Wikipedia was founded under that they will never be implemented. A "no anon editing" Wikipedia can only be done as a fork, I think.
Wikinfo does not allow anons, I think, neither my wikis. Allowing anons is more appropriate for "anything goes" wikis where they don't expect quality work, but for wikis where good organised content is desired, allowing anons is not a good idea IMO.
Forcing people to have accounts in the wiki is useful to me because it provides: 1. Better privacy: Users' IP addresses don't show up in the wiki. I really don't understand why MediaWiki publishes IP addresses to everyone. That's a "bug" IMO: It should display "Anonymous No. 48367" to users and the IP only to sysops. Anons should get a distinguishing number based on their IP, so that users can recognise whether an anon is the same as another anon, but the IP should be restricted to sysops. That's a very important privacy issue. 2. Better copyright management: I have zero chances of contacting an anon and asking for permission to publish his or her edits under another license. With user accounts it is more easier to switch licenses because I might be able to contact them and ask whether they agree. 3. Better antitrollness: Abusive users seem to love anon editing, but the requirement for an account could keep them out of the wiki, especially if the account needs to be validated from an email address and we require them to give us their real names. 4. Better reputation: Readers would be more happy to know that articles are edited by a united community rather than by random anons who don't know each other and don't conform to a policy or some standards.
This has been discussed a thousand times. I'm sorry to say this, but in essence, you've been proven wrong. Wikipedia's been in existence for two or three years already. It hasn't collapsed. On the contrary, our policy of assuming good faith and constant optimism that good editors outnumber the bad has led to a great degree of success. For example, I got a scoutmaster to edit [[Persekutuan Pengakap Malaysia]]. He was reluctant at first, but gladly corrected several factual errors after I informed him that anons are permitted to edit. There are dozens, nay, hundreds, nay, thousands more such stories like these out there, if you bother to ask.
I used to patrol recent changes regularly. A good deal of anons edit there. Sure, some are bad, blanking or vandalising pages. But several are good, some contributing a great deal of specialist information on Eastern European and West Asian geography and history (this was based on my observations from the diffs of several edits made by anons while on RC patrol some months back).
I guarantee you, if we forced people to register before being allowed to edit, we wouldn't be half as succesful as we are today. This debate has gone on many times before. The resolution is always the same: Forcing anons to register before editing is not a tenable idea.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
NSK wrote:
Wikinfo does not allow anons, I think, neither my wikis. Allowing anons is more appropriate for "anything goes" wikis where they don't expect quality work, but for wikis where good organised content is desired, allowing anons is not a good idea IMO.
Forcing people to have accounts in the wiki is useful to me because it provides:
- Better privacy: Users' IP addresses don't show up in the wiki. I really
don't understand why MediaWiki publishes IP addresses to everyone. That's a "bug" IMO: It should display "Anonymous No. 48367" to users and the IP only to sysops. Anons should get a distinguishing number based on their IP, so that users can recognise whether an anon is the same as another anon, but the IP should be restricted to sysops. That's a very important privacy issue. 2. Better copyright management: I have zero chances of contacting an anon and asking for permission to publish his or her edits under another license. With user accounts it is more easier to switch licenses because I might be able to contact them and ask whether they agree. 3. Better antitrollness: Abusive users seem to love anon editing, but the requirement for an account could keep them out of the wiki, especially if the account needs to be validated from an email address and we require them to give us their real names. 4. Better reputation: Readers would be more happy to know that articles are edited by a united community rather than by random anons who don't know each other and don't conform to a policy or some standards.
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:21, John Lee wrote:
The resolution is always the same: Forcing anons to register before editing is not a tenable idea.
Then, perhaps anon edits should be moderated.
That was tried with Nupedia, Wikipedia's forefather. There's a reason why Wikipedia exists today and Nupedia doesn't, you know...
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
NSK wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:21, John Lee wrote:
The resolution is always the same: Forcing anons to register before editing is not a tenable idea.
Then, perhaps anon edits should be moderated.
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:36, John Lee wrote:
That was tried with Nupedia, Wikipedia's forefather. There's a reason why Wikipedia exists today and Nupedia doesn't, you know...
IMO the open "anything goes" model of WP is more suited for non-serious sites that just accept anything. This kind of sites attract mostly the popular masses that just want to push POVs or do something creative in their weekends (i.e. they work just for their own satisfaction and not for the common good).
Sites that claim to be serious and wish to compete with Britannica need motivated committed editors, proof readers, maintainers, sysops and policy makers, i.e. organisation and structure. Serious sites should not be very friendly to the uneducated masses (i.e. disallow anon editing) and rely mostly on a small but very effective group of well-educated volunteers who do their work for a greater good and not just for themselves. For example, editing of scientific articles could be limited to university students or holders of a B.Sc. degree. However, I do recognise that it is extremely difficult to find this kind of volunteers and maintain a huge site only by their own work.
NSK wrote:
Sites that claim to be serious and wish to compete with Britannica need motivated committed editors, proof readers, maintainers, sysops and policy makers, i.e. organisation and structure.
WP has all that already - try to mess up one of the articles I maintain, I'm going to be all over you. A lot of the social structure is not obvious to casual onlookers, so they think it's not there.
Stan
NSK wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:36, John Lee wrote:
That was tried with Nupedia, Wikipedia's forefather. There's a reason why Wikipedia exists today and Nupedia doesn't, you know...
IMO the open "anything goes" model of WP is more suited for non-serious sites that just accept anything. This kind of sites attract mostly the popular masses that just want to push POVs or do something creative in their weekends (i.e. they work just for their own satisfaction and not for the common good).
Sites that claim to be serious and wish to compete with Britannica need motivated committed editors, proof readers, maintainers, sysops and policy makers, i.e. organisation and structure. Serious sites should not be very friendly to the uneducated masses (i.e. disallow anon editing) and rely mostly on a small but very effective group of well-educated volunteers who do their work for a greater good and not just for themselves. For example, editing of scientific articles could be limited to university students or holders of a B.Sc. degree. However, I do recognise that it is extremely difficult to find this kind of volunteers and maintain a huge site only by their own work.
As was already pointed out, if we implemented this then Wikipedia would not exist. And who's to say that it MUST be a degree holder who is the foremost expert in a field? What about, for instance, history? Should only a University educated person be allowed to contribute? If so, say goodbye to most of the articles on the Kings of England - they were editted by Lord Emsworth who's still in school.
The other thing I ask is: who's going to make sure that one "expert" remains accountable? How are we going to counter that expert's biases? How do we make sure we do not become elitist? How do we have many people contribute to the piece?
I hate to say this: your suggestions here running entirely counter to Wikipedia's stated goals and the reason for its success.
TBSDY
On Saturday 23 October 2004 10:14, csherlock@ljh.com.au wrote:
How are we going to counter that expert's biases?
That's a good observation. Many experts have extreme biases and could hurt WP.
How do we make sure we do not become elitist? How do we have many people contribute to the piece?
The idea of Elitism is not to have many people, but few hard-working excellent contributors who produce state-of-the-art work.
your suggestions here running entirely counter to Wikipedia's stated goals
Perhaps I overstated some of my suggestions.
NSK wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 10:14, csherlock@ljh.com.au wrote:
How are we going to counter that expert's biases?
That's a good observation. Many experts have extreme biases and could hurt WP.
Yes, they do. Thus, we avoid becoming a community of experts.
How do we make sure we do not become elitist? How do we have many people contribute to the piece?
The idea of Elitism is not to have many people, but few hard-working excellent contributors who produce state-of-the-art work.
It's that core group of dedicated hard workers that is most at risk of becoming elites. The first thing that they need to do is become aware of that risk both as a group and as individuals. If a newbie asks a dumb question, or in good faith adds a stupid article you need to approach the situation from his perspective of it being the first time he has done so, and not the perspective of it being the hundredth time that you have dealt with it. Elitism is overcome by appropriate acts of humility.
Experrts are a form of elite. If you depend too much on experts (and hence their biases you become elitist. The solution is in more, not fewer, editors.
Ec
NSK (nsk2@wikinerds.org) [041023 01:57]:
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:36, John Lee wrote:
That was tried with Nupedia, Wikipedia's forefather. There's a reason why Wikipedia exists today and Nupedia doesn't, you know...
IMO the open "anything goes" model of WP is more suited for non-serious sites that just accept anything. This kind of sites attract mostly the popular masses that just want to push POVs or do something creative in their weekends (i.e. they work just for their own satisfaction and not for the common good).
The common good is the source of my satisfaction on Wikpedia. I think that's true of almost any Wikipedia editor.
As far as seriousness versus quality, note de: recently won a single-blind comparison with several competitors. Wikipedia can beat the leaders of the field without trashing the Wiki model; you are arguing from personal incredulity, but this recent evidence suggests there isn't actually an irreparable problem, if there is in fact any problem.
I'd like to see Wikipedia articles being better-referenced. The reference markup language proposals would be damn fine things to see going into production. This would make better referencing *easy*. It would let the wiki do the heavy lifting, which is essential to any radical policy change working.
- d.
At 04:35 PM 10/22/2004 +0300, NSK wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:21, John Lee wrote:
The resolution is always the same: Forcing anons to register before editing is not a tenable idea.
Then, perhaps anon edits should be moderated.
They _are_ moderated, after-the-fact, by everyone else on Wikipedia.
It used to be easier when Wikipedia was smaller, but now RecentChanges flies by so quickly I don't bother to monitor it any more. There have been proposals for ways to ake it easier again, I guess we'll see how those turn out in the long run.
They are, just like everyone elses. Banning anons would only have the effect of reducing contributions. Most problematic edits actually come from logged in users. Mark
--- NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 16:21, John Lee wrote:
The resolution is always the same: Forcing anons
to
register before editing is not a tenable idea.
Then, perhaps anon edits should be moderated.
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On Friday 22 October 2004 22:39, Mark Richards wrote:
Most problematic edits actually come from logged in users.
Probably because the account registration process does not require valid email addresses and other info.
I think the registration process should be a bit more difficult to discourage disruptive users.
Why do you think this would discourage disruptive users? Most of the most disruptive users are long time Wikipedians who have accounts and about whom we know quite a lot. A huge number of valuable contributions come from anons browsing, who pick up a typo, or make a link because it is easy to do it fast. They would not do so if they had to register. Mark
--- NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 22:39, Mark Richards wrote:
Most problematic edits actually come from logged in users.
Probably because the account registration process does not require valid email addresses and other info.
I think the registration process should be a bit more difficult to discourage disruptive users.
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NSK wrote:
On Friday 22 October 2004 22:39, Mark Richards wrote:
Most problematic edits actually come from logged in users.
Probably because the account registration process does not require valid email addresses and other info.
I think the registration process should be a bit more difficult to discourage disruptive users.
They would not be the only ones discouraged. The first people discouraged would be the timid ones who are not completely comfortable making any kind of live edits. The disruptive individuals are more thick-skinned than that and might last a little longer.
Our time is better spent in making the timid ones feel at home.
Ec
On Saturday 23 October 2004 04:15, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Our time is better spent in making the timid ones feel at home.
I notice mediawiki does not have a facility for informing you about new user registrations via the wiki, although an SQL query does the job. Perhaps something like this could be implemented in the wiki to allow you welcome new users more promptly. Welcoming and briefing new users is very important.
NSK wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 04:15, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Our time is better spent in making the timid ones feel at home.
I notice mediawiki does not have a facility for informing you about new user registrations via the wiki, although an SQL query does the job. Perhaps something like this could be implemented in the wiki to allow you welcome new users more promptly. Welcoming and briefing new users is very important.
Welconing, yes. But what kind of briefing. Sometimes the best way to proceed is by recognizing the good things in their early contributions. You don't want to talk down to them by introducing a lot of rules from the beginning. Useful tips (like using four tildes as a shortcut for signing posts) give a more favorable impression than an immediate lecture about POV.
Ec
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When I see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I don't list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think most other people do either (or even read this list or the millions of policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but if an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's not like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If there are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you could leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted" VfD articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's still appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article at that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by people doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who are doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy mumbo-jumob. I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there are literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long and intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore: there must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to replace it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
1. Noone is questioning your right to revert (or maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently deleting articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus to delete all school articles, and so are listing every school individually, counting on the fact that noone can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact that each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make the case that there is precident for deleting more schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because not only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only admins can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When I see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I don't list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think most other people do either (or even read this list or the millions of policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but if an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's not like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If there are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you could leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted" VfD articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's still appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article at that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by people doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who are doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy mumbo-jumob. I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there are literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long and intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore: there must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to replace it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
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Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point to it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each of these non-notable school stubs needs to be listed individually on VfD. If you can get a consensus which says that school articles are to stay, then all of these schools will no longer be listed on VfD. But until there is such an article, so long as people continue to make articles about non-notable schools and don't indicate anything in the article which indicates that they ARE notable, they will continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote: 1. Noone is questioning your right to revert (or maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently deleting articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus to delete all school articles, and so are listing every school individually, counting on the fact that noone can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact that each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make the case that there is precident for deleting more schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because not only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only admins can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When I see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I don't list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think most other people do either (or even read this list or the millions of policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but if an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's not like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If there are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you could leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted" VfD articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's still appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article at that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by people doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who are doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy mumbo-jumob. I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there are literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long and intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore: there must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to replace it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
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Rick wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point to it, because it does not exist.
You don't need a consensus not to delete something, you need a consensus TO delete something. VFD should be a sanity check to ensure deletions conform to established consensus, not a forum for making up policy.
VfD has the consensus support of the community. Articles about schools listed on VfD have, for the most part, consensus support to be deleted. QED.
RickK
Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote: Rick wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point to it, because it does not exist.
You don't need a consensus not to delete something, you need a consensus TO delete something. VFD should be a sanity check to ensure deletions conform to established consensus, not a forum for making up policy. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Saturday 23 October 2004 21:31, Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community. Articles about schools listed on VfD have, for the most part, consensus support to be deleted.
Probably because the masses enjoy destroying things. 18th century encyclopedists didn't allow the uneducated masses to destroy the knowledge.
NSK wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 21:31, Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community. Articles about schools listed on VfD have, for the most part, consensus support to be deleted.
Probably because the masses enjoy destroying things. 18th century encyclopedists didn't allow the uneducated masses to destroy the knowledge.
If we're going by this standard, 18th-century encyclopedists also didn't have lots of articles about high schools in their encyclopedias. I think you'll find Diderot's encyclopedia to have significantly fewer articles on schools than even this deletion-happy Wikipedia does.
-Mark
On Saturday 23 October 2004 21:48, Delirium wrote:
If we're going by this standard, 18th-century encyclopedists also didn't have lots of articles about high schools in their encyclopedias. I
Diderot et al had limited resources and couldn't write about anything.
You would be able to create something much more powerful and wonderful if you were not limiting yourselves by 18th century standards.
Can I ask a completely straightforward question, because I don't know. What ID do you post under on the Wikipedia? I don't recall having encountered your edits. This could be solely because you edit in areas that I don't have any knowledge in (math and sciences, for example). What's your User ID? This is not an attack, just a request for knowledge.
RickK
NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote: On Saturday 23 October 2004 21:31, Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community. Articles about schools listed on VfD have, for the most part, consensus support to be deleted.
Probably because the masses enjoy destroying things. 18th century encyclopedists didn't allow the uneducated masses to destroy the knowledge.
I think it's more accurate to say that VfD is tolerated but not liked. A lot of material gets deleted that I think should be kept, but if I spent as much on VfD as some people do, I would a) not get anything else done in my limited WP time, and b) come to hate dealing with WP in general. I know there are a bunch of other people who feel the same way. It's a spectacular exaggeration to say that a 10-4 vote out of 10,000 editors represents anything like a "consensus", particularly when so many have been driven away by combative, nasty, and histrionic VfD campers.
Stan
Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community. Articles about schools listed on VfD have, for the most part, consensus support to be deleted. QED.
RickK
Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote: Rick wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point to it, because it does not exist.
You don't need a consensus not to delete something, you need a consensus TO delete something. VFD should be a sanity check to ensure deletions conform to established consensus, not a forum for making up policy. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community.
This is demonstrably false. Just look at this list.
As it is operating currently, I oppose it. It's been turned into an insane perversion of its original purpose by a handful of people playing some twisted political game among themselves.
Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community.
This is demonstrably false. Just look at this list.
If VFD does not have the consensus support of the community, then why not stop bitching here, and go write up a proposal to get rid of it?
And lets see how far it gets.
Of course, you won't do that, because you know what the odds of success are - which reflects the feelings of the community on this issue.
-- ambi
Rebecca wrote:
Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community.
This is demonstrably false. Just look at this list.
If VFD does not have the consensus support of the community, then why not stop bitching here, and go write up a proposal to get rid of it?
And lets see how far it gets.
Of course, you won't do that, because you know what the odds of success are - which reflects the feelings of the community on this issue.
Stop ascribing positions to me which I do not hold. I don't want VFD to go away, I want it to operate according to ALREADY ESTABLISHED policy. If anything, I want the extremists on both sides abusing it to further their own agendas to go away so actual work can get done.
What established policy do you mean? The deletion policy? In any case, I definitely agree. I don't know how anyone thinks removing listings from VFD is somehow furthering the building of an encyclopedia. And in any case, VFD operates on community consensus. If some users want every article with the word "green" deleted, they're free to make the frivolous listings, and make frivolous votes.
I think you people are going overboard with your "what if"s. Remember assume good faith? Remember our perennial optimism in how the good users will always outnumber the bad? That has to be applied in this case. Sure, lots of us avoid VFD. I got sick of it after handling the deletion of entries everyday (see my user page for why). But if somebody was to go around listing every article containing the word "green" for deletion, I'd vote "keep". I'd file a case with the arbitration committee.
See, we all agree we want to build an encyclopedia. But some of us disagree on how to build it. Some think we should use bricks of only one colour. Some think we should take out a few defective bricks and replace them with better ones. Some think we should repair the defective bricks instead. Some think we shouldn't use bricks at all and use old-fashioned wood. The thing is, if we let anyone do what they damn want, will the encyclopedia be an architectual masterpiece? Doubtful. It may not even be an encyclopedia. But if we structure things around a blueprint, and have foremen to oversee the process, while still allowing any Tom, Dick and Harry to build the encyclopedia, things will turn out far nicer.
My point? Maybe the builders can't agree on the blueprint - is it something to stick exactly to or something flexible? In the case of guidelines such as [[What Wikipedia is not]], it does not claim to be a definitive guide of what should be criteria for inclusion - "Please feel free to continue adding to this list as we discover interesting new ways of not writing encyclopedia articles." So I think that this is why we have VFD. If not covered by existing policy, VFD is where we debate the article's inclusion. I propose articles clearly invalid under policy should go onto the proposed Purgatory page (see [[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]]) if it is agreed upon, or moved to speedy deletes if it's a clear candidate for such.
Just because an article doesn't fall under any existing criteria in policy for inclusion/deletion does not render it invalid from deletion. VFD exists to serve the community, not policy. Policy and VFD are the means to an end, not an end in themselves.
And if people really are committing mass transgressions of policy, I see no reason to huff and puff about it in private where they can't hear us. Explain to them directly how they are violating policy - "Ok, while you think an article having the word 'green' isn't encyclopedic, the article's topic is certainly listed under Policy X as a valid encyclopedic topic. Maybe we should discuss this on the article's talk page, but the usage of the word 'green' isn't an excuse for utter removal." That's how things should be going (IMO).
If they don't listen, bring it up on RFC, mediation or arbitration. If the word "green" really isn't an excuse for deletion, there will be many who agree with you.
In case my opinion of VFD isn't clear enough yet, I think it's a necessary evil. Sure, the whole community isn't involved, but if there's a spate of articles unfairly being deleted, there will be an outcry, and they will make themselves heard, and the whole community will be up in arms. That's one good thing about extremist inclusionists - they have a way of drawing people to something.
And for those who are constantly moaning about how evil VFD is and how we don't need it, I have one question - what do we do with articles that aren't obvious copyvios, speedies, etc.? Do we keep a twenty-page long article on George Washington's underwear? How do we decide its worth for inclusion? I do understand that these are few, but they do exist (the prime example being Eric B. and Rakim, who's been surprisingly quiet recently).
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
If VFD does not have the consensus support of the community, then why not stop bitching here, and go write up a proposal to get rid of it?
And lets see how far it gets.
Of course, you won't do that, because you know what the odds of success are - which reflects the feelings of the community on this issue.
Stop ascribing positions to me which I do not hold. I don't want VFD to go away, I want it to operate according to ALREADY ESTABLISHED policy. If anything, I want the extremists on both sides abusing it to further their own agendas to go away so actual work can get done.
Perhaps it would help if someone deleted the blueprint? Or, after everyone had agreed to use bricks, someone started pulling them out, because a small group of builders decided that, although bricks were on the blueprint, they would rather not have them. Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
What established policy do you mean? The deletion policy? In any case, I definitely agree. I don't know how anyone thinks removing listings from VFD is somehow furthering the building of an encyclopedia. And in any case, VFD operates on community consensus. If some users want every article with the word "green" deleted, they're free to make the frivolous listings, and make frivolous votes.
I think you people are going overboard with your "what if"s. Remember assume good faith? Remember our perennial optimism in how the good users will always outnumber the bad? That has to be applied in this case. Sure, lots of us avoid VFD. I got sick of it after handling the deletion of entries everyday (see my user page for why). But if somebody was to go around listing every article containing the word "green" for deletion, I'd vote "keep". I'd file a case with the arbitration committee.
See, we all agree we want to build an encyclopedia. But some of us disagree on how to build it. Some think we should use bricks of only one colour. Some think we should take out a few defective bricks and replace them with better ones. Some think we should repair the defective bricks instead. Some think we shouldn't use bricks at all and use old-fashioned wood. The thing is, if we let anyone do what they damn want, will the encyclopedia be an architectual masterpiece? Doubtful. It may not even be an encyclopedia. But if we structure things around a blueprint, and have foremen to oversee the process, while still allowing any Tom, Dick and Harry to build the encyclopedia, things will turn out far nicer.
My point? Maybe the builders can't agree on the blueprint - is it something to stick exactly to or something flexible? In the case of guidelines such as [[What Wikipedia is not]], it does not claim to be a definitive guide of what should be criteria for inclusion - "Please feel free to continue adding to this list as we discover interesting new ways of not writing encyclopedia articles." So I think that this is why we have VFD. If not covered by existing policy, VFD is where we debate the article's inclusion. I propose articles clearly invalid under policy should go onto the proposed Purgatory page (see [[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]]) if it is agreed upon, or moved to speedy deletes if it's a clear candidate for such.
Just because an article doesn't fall under any existing criteria in policy for inclusion/deletion does not render it invalid from deletion. VFD exists to serve the community, not policy. Policy and VFD are the means to an end, not an end in themselves.
And if people really are committing mass transgressions of policy, I see no reason to huff and puff about it in private where they can't hear us. Explain to them directly how they are violating policy - "Ok, while you think an article having the word 'green' isn't encyclopedic, the article's topic is certainly listed under Policy X as a valid encyclopedic topic. Maybe we should discuss this on the article's talk page, but the usage of the word 'green' isn't an excuse for utter removal." That's how things should be going (IMO).
If they don't listen, bring it up on RFC, mediation or arbitration. If the word "green" really isn't an excuse for deletion, there will be many who agree with you.
In case my opinion of VFD isn't clear enough yet, I think it's a necessary evil. Sure, the whole community isn't involved, but if there's a spate of articles unfairly being deleted, there will be an outcry, and they will make themselves heard, and the whole community will be up in arms. That's one good thing about extremist inclusionists - they have a way of drawing people to something.
And for those who are constantly moaning about how evil VFD is and how we don't need it, I have one question - what do we do with articles that aren't obvious copyvios, speedies, etc.? Do we keep a twenty-page long article on George Washington's underwear? How do we decide its worth for inclusion? I do understand that these are few, but they do exist (the prime example being Eric B. and Rakim, who's been surprisingly quiet recently).
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rebecca wrote:
If VFD does not have the consensus support of the
community, then why
not stop bitching here, and go write up a
proposal to get rid of it?
And lets see how far it gets.
Of course, you won't do that, because you know
what the odds of
success are - which reflects the feelings of the
community on this
issue.
Stop ascribing positions to me which I do not
hold. I don't want VFD
to go away, I want it to operate according to
ALREADY ESTABLISHED
policy. If anything, I want the extremists on both
sides abusing it to
further their own agendas to go away so actual
work can get done.
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Then that's wrong, obviously. I don't really understand what point you're trying to make here.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
Perhaps it would help if someone deleted the blueprint? Or, after everyone had agreed to use bricks, someone started pulling them out, because a small group of builders decided that, although bricks were on the blueprint, they would rather not have them. Mark
We have criteria for deletion (the blueprint). A small group of people have decided that we want to delete things that don't meet the criteria. They are steadily going through, listing 20-30 articles per day (most of which don't meet the criteria), knowing that a percentage of these will get deleted anyway because no one else is willing to spend as much time as they are (it has taken me about an hour today alone to try to vote on all of the school articles). Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Then that's wrong, obviously. I don't really understand what point you're trying to make here.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
Perhaps it would help if someone deleted the blueprint? Or, after everyone had agreed to use bricks, someone started pulling them out, because a small group of builders decided that, although
bricks
were on the blueprint, they would rather not have them. Mark
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I suppose it would be needlessly redundant to point out once again that the deletion criteria to which you refer do not actually exist?
-Snowspinner
On Oct 25, 2004, at 12:48 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
We have criteria for deletion (the blueprint). A small group of people have decided that we want to delete things that don't meet the criteria. They are steadily going through, listing 20-30 articles per day (most of which don't meet the criteria), knowing that a percentage of these will get deleted anyway because no one else is willing to spend as much time as they are (it has taken me about an hour today alone to try to vote on all of the school articles). Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Then that's wrong, obviously. I don't really understand what point you're trying to make here.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
Perhaps it would help if someone deleted the blueprint? Or, after everyone had agreed to use bricks, someone started pulling them out, because a small group of builders decided that, although
bricks
were on the blueprint, they would rather not have them. Mark
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No just redundant, but wrong - there are clear deletion guidelines that have criteria. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
I suppose it would be needlessly redundant to point out once again that the deletion criteria to which you refer do not actually exist?
-Snowspinner
On Oct 25, 2004, at 12:48 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
We have criteria for deletion (the blueprint). A small group of people have decided that we want
to
delete things that don't meet the criteria. They
are
steadily going through, listing 20-30 articles per
day
(most of which don't meet the criteria), knowing
that
a percentage of these will get deleted anyway
because
no one else is willing to spend as much time as
they
are (it has taken me about an hour today alone to
try
to vote on all of the school articles). Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Then that's wrong, obviously. I don't really understand what point you're trying to make here.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
Perhaps it would help if someone deleted the blueprint? Or, after everyone had agreed to use bricks, someone started pulling them out,
because a
small group of builders decided that, although
bricks
were on the blueprint, they would rather not
have
them. Mark
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Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community.
This is demonstrably false. Just look at this list.
That's not a demonstration. I would posit that the people most annoyed with the system are the ones most likely to be posting in this discussion. Most of us who think it works fine just use it and don't discuss it too much.
-Mark
Two questions, then.
1) Would Anthony be willing to make a promise not to use any admin rights for anything other than viewing and exporting deleted pages? (Barring, of course, an RfA that gives him the authority to do so)
2) Would people vote for an RfA for Anthony were such a promise made by Anthony?
Also, in practical terms, how many pages are we talking about here? If it would settle things, I'd be happy to send Anthony a weekly e-mail with the text of any deleted pages he wants to see, assuming that the number of pages a week that we're talking about is such that this wouldn't provide a huge time drain for me.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 24, 2004, at 6:28 PM, Delirium wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Rick wrote:
VfD has the consensus support of the community.
This is demonstrably false. Just look at this list.
That's not a demonstration. I would posit that the people most annoyed with the system are the ones most likely to be posting in this discussion. Most of us who think it works fine just use it and don't discuss it too much.
-Mark
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The point is that there is no policy that says that notability or not is a reason for deletion. I might just as well get a group of morons to vote to delete any article with the work 'green' in them. If there was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because it's stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get five or six people to consistently do it doesn't make it right. That's why there is nothing on the deletion criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point to it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each of these non-notable school stubs needs to be listed individually on VfD. If you can get a consensus which says that school articles are to stay, then all of these schools will no longer be listed on VfD. But until there is such an article, so long as people continue to make articles about non-notable schools and don't indicate anything in the article which indicates that they ARE notable, they will continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
- Noone is questioning your right to revert (or
maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently deleting articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus to delete all school articles, and so are listing every school individually, counting on the fact that noone can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact that each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make the case that there is precident for deleting more schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because not only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only admins can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When I see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I don't list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think
most
other people do either (or even read this list or the millions of policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but
if
an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's
not
like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If
there
are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you
could
leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted" VfD articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's still appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article at that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by
people
doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who are doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy
mumbo-jumob.
I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there
are
literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long and intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore:
there
must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to replace it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
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http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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It also says nothing in the deletion policy about criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that must be VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an exhaustive list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards wrote:
The point is that there is no policy that says that notability or not is a reason for deletion. I might just as well get a group of morons to vote to delete any article with the work 'green' in them. If there was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because it's stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get five or six people to consistently do it doesn't make it right. That's why there is nothing on the deletion criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point to it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each of these non-notable school stubs needs to be listed individually on VfD. If you can get a consensus which says that school articles are to stay, then all of these schools will no longer be listed on VfD. But until there is such an article, so long as people continue to make articles about non-notable schools and don't indicate anything in the article which indicates that they ARE notable, they will continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
- Noone is questioning your right to revert (or
maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently deleting articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus to delete all school articles, and so are listing every school individually, counting on the fact that noone can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact that each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make the case that there is precident for deleting more schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because not only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only admins can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When I see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I don't list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think
most
other people do either (or even read this list or the millions of policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but
if
an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's
not
like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If
there
are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you
could
leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted" VfD articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's still appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article at that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by
people
doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who are doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy
mumbo-jumob.
I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there
are
literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long and intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore:
there
must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to replace it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
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This is lunacy. You are arguing that, although there is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added to it because there is no concensus, this does not in any way indicate that non-notablity is not a reason for deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then I don't think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested in community concensus building. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
It also says nothing in the deletion policy about criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that must be VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an exhaustive list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards wrote:
The point is that there is no policy that says
that
notability or not is a reason for deletion. I
might
just as well get a group of morons to vote to
delete
any article with the work 'green' in them. If
there
was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because it's stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get
five or
six people to consistently do it doesn't make it right. That's why there is nothing on the deletion criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point
to
it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each
of
these non-notable school stubs needs to be listed individually on VfD. If you can get a consensus which says that school articles are to stay, then all of these schools will no longer be listed on VfD. But until there is such an article, so long
as
people continue to make articles about
non-notable
schools and don't indicate anything in the
article
which indicates that they ARE notable, they will continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
- Noone is questioning your right to revert (or
maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently
deleting
articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus to delete all school articles, and so are listing
every
school individually, counting on the fact that
noone
can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact
that
each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make the case that there is precident for deleting more
schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because
not
only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only
admins
can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When
I
see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I
don't
list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think
most
other people do either (or even read this list or the millions
of
policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but
if
an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's
not
like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If
there
are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you
could
leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted"
VfD
articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's
still
appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article
at
that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by
people
doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who
are
doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy
mumbo-jumob.
I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there
are
literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long
and
intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore:
there
must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to
replace
it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
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No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, although there is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added to it because there is no concensus, this does not in any way indicate that non-notablity is not a reason for deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then I don't think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested in community concensus building. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
It also says nothing in the deletion policy about criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that must be VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an exhaustive list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards wrote:
The point is that there is no policy that says
that
notability or not is a reason for deletion. I
might
just as well get a group of morons to vote to
delete
any article with the work 'green' in them. If
there
was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because it's stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get
five or
six people to consistently do it doesn't make it right. That's why there is nothing on the deletion criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't point
to
it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each
of
these non-notable school stubs needs to be listed individually on VfD. If you can get a consensus which says that school articles are to stay, then all of these schools will no longer be listed on VfD. But until there is such an article, so long
as
people continue to make articles about
non-notable
schools and don't indicate anything in the
article
which indicates that they ARE notable, they will continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
- Noone is questioning your right to revert (or
maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently
deleting
articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus to delete all school articles, and so are listing
every
school individually, counting on the fact that
noone
can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact
that
each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make the case that there is precident for deleting more
schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because
not
only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only
admins
can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When
I
see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I
don't
list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think
most
other people do either (or even read this list or the millions
of
policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion, but
if
an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted, it's
not
like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If
there
are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you
could
leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted"
VfD
articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting all possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the one that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no useful information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's
still
appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article
at
that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by
people
doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who
are
doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy
mumbo-jumob.
I've taken to not even reading policy pages anymore, because there
are
literally thousands of them, and most of them are incredibly long
and
intricate. I don't know what the hell deletion policy is anymore:
there
must be at least 10 pages on the subject, and 100 proposals to
replace
it with a new set of policies.
-Mark
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy me, or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to gain consenus for it. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, although
there
is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added to
it
because there is no concensus, this does not in
any
way indicate that non-notablity is not a reason
for
deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then I
don't
think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested in
community
concensus building. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
It also says nothing in the deletion policy about criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that must
be
VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an exhaustive list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards
wrote:
The point is that there is no policy that says
that
notability or not is a reason for deletion. I
might
just as well get a group of morons to vote to
delete
any article with the work 'green' in them. If
there
was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because it's stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get
five or
six people to consistently do it doesn't make it right. That's why there is nothing on the
deletion
criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't
point
to
it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each
of
these non-notable school stubs needs to be
listed
individually on VfD. If you can get a
consensus
which says that school articles are to stay,
then
all of these schools will no longer be listed
on
VfD. But until there is such an article, so
long
as
people continue to make articles about
non-notable
schools and don't indicate anything in the
article
which indicates that they ARE notable, they
will
continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
- Noone is questioning your right to revert
(or
maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently
deleting
articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus
to
delete all school articles, and so are listing
every
school individually, counting on the fact that
noone
can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact
that
each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make
the
case that there is precident for deleting more
schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because
not
only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only
admins
can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I
think
people proposing policies upon policies are missing what
actually
makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done.
When
I
see a crap article that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I
don't
list it on a page and request permission to delete it. I don't think
most
other people do either (or even read this list or the millions
of
policy pages).
It's true people should exercise discretion,
but
if
an article that has about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted,
it's
not
like Wikipedia has lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no prohibition against creating a new article in its place (and while you're at it, if you made it better it wouldn't even be a question). If
there
are specific people consistently deleting questionable things, you
could
leave a message on their talk page asking them about it.
Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted"
VfD
articles seem to have a similar misconception that we're deleting
all
possible articles at that location, while we're only deleting the
one
that's actually there. If there's an incoherent article with no
useful
information at a location of a famous person or entity, it's
still
appropriate to delete it. Someone can later create an actual article
at
that location, which then wouldn't be deleted.
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by
people
doing what they think is reasonable, and talking to people who
are
doing things they disagree with, not by a bunch of policy
=== message truncated ===
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No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy me, or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to gain consenus for it. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, although
there
is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added to
it
because there is no concensus, this does not in
any
way indicate that non-notablity is not a reason
for
deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then I
don't
think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested in
community
concensus building. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
It also says nothing in the deletion policy about criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that must
be
VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an exhaustive list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards
wrote:
The point is that there is no policy that says
that
notability or not is a reason for deletion. I
might
just as well get a group of morons to vote to
delete
any article with the work 'green' in them. If
there
was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because it's stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get
five or
six people to consistently do it doesn't make it right. That's why there is nothing on the
deletion
criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Where is the policy consensus which says school articles are not to be deleted? You can't
point
to
it, because it does not exist. Therefore, each
of
these non-notable school stubs needs to be
listed
individually on VfD. If you can get a
consensus
which says that school articles are to stay,
then
all of these schools will no longer be listed
on
VfD. But until there is such an article, so
long
as
people continue to make articles about
non-notable
schools and don't indicate anything in the
article
which indicates that they ARE notable, they
will
continue to be listed.
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote:
- Noone is questioning your right to revert
(or
maybe even delete) 'Peter is gay'. 2. There are specific people consistently
deleting
articles that have real content. For example, schools. They have consitently failed to gain concensus
to
delete all school articles, and so are listing
every
school individually, counting on the fact that
noone
can be bothered to vote on every one. The fact
that
each one is often a stub at this stage makes it easier still to delete them, and allows them to make
the
case that there is precident for deleting more
schools.
The point is that this is contentious, because
not
only is real information about real things (not 'Peter is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only
admins
can even see what is was that was lost. Mark R.
--- Delirium wrote:
> I've only been skimming this thread, but I
think
> people proposing > policies upon policies are missing what
actually
> makes wikipedia work: > people just do things that need to be done.
When
I
> see a crap article > that says "peter is gay", I hit 'delete', I
don't
> list it on a page and > request permission to delete it. I don't think most > other people do > either (or even read this list or the millions
of
> policy pages). > > It's true people should exercise discretion,
but
if > an article that has > about 8 words in it was "unfairly" deleted,
it's
not > like Wikipedia has > lost an irreplaceable masterwork. There is no > prohibition against > creating a new article in its place (and while > you're at it, if you made > it better it wouldn't even be a question). If there > are specific people > consistently deleting questionable things, you could > leave a message on > their talk page asking them about it. > > Some of the arguments over "unfairly deleted"
VfD
> articles seem to have > a similar misconception that we're deleting
all
> possible articles at > that location, while we're only deleting the
one
> that's actually there. > If there's an incoherent article with no
useful
> information at a > location of a famous person or entity, it's
still
> appropriate to delete > it. Someone can later create an actual article
at
> that location, which > then wouldn't be deleted. > > But the main point is that Wikipedia works by people > doing what they > think is reasonable, and talking to people who
are
> doing things they > disagree with, not by a bunch of policy
=== message truncated ===
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This is just pants. It is clear that these are the reason for deletion, not just some 'ideas to use as a springboard for your deletion antics'. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy
me,
or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to
gain
consenus for it. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing
makes
NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list
you
cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort
of
declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards
wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, although
there
is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added
to
it
because there is no concensus, this does not in
any
way indicate that non-notablity is not a reason
for
deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then I
don't
think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested in
community
concensus building. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net
wrote:
It also says nothing in the deletion policy
about
criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that
must
be
VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an
exhaustive
list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards
wrote:
The point is that there is no policy that says
that
notability or not is a reason for deletion. I
might
just as well get a group of morons to vote to
delete
any article with the work 'green' in them. If
there
was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because
it's
stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get
five or
six people to consistently do it doesn't make
it
right. That's why there is nothing on the
deletion
criteria which says anything about notablity. Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
> Where is the policy consensus which says
school
> articles are not to be deleted? You can't
point
to
> it, because it does not exist. Therefore,
each
of
> these non-notable school stubs needs to be
listed
> individually on VfD. If you can get a
consensus
> which says that school articles are to stay,
then
> all of these schools will no longer be listed
on
> VfD. But until there is such an article, so
long
as
> people continue to make articles about
non-notable
> schools and don't indicate anything in the
article
> which indicates that they ARE notable, they
will
> continue to be listed. > > RickK > > Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote: > 1. Noone is questioning your right to revert
(or
> maybe > even delete) 'Peter is gay'. > 2. There are specific people consistently
deleting
> articles that have real content. For example, > schools. > They have consitently failed to gain
concensus
to
> delete all school articles, and so are
listing
every
> school individually, counting on the fact
that
noone
> can be bothered to vote on every one. The
fact
that
> each one is often a stub at this stage makes
it
> easier > still to delete them, and allows them to make
the
> case > that there is precident for deleting more
schools.
> > The point is that this is contentious,
because
not
> only is real information about real things
(not
> 'Peter > is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only
admins
> can even see what is was that was lost. > Mark R. > > --- Delirium wrote: > >> I've only been skimming this thread, but I
think
>> people proposing >> policies upon policies are missing what
actually
>> makes wikipedia work: >> people just do things that need to be done.
When
I
>> see a crap article
=== message truncated ===
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I am not sure how to respond to this, beyond to note that you seem to be demonstrating comparable skill in reading my posts that you are in reading the deletion policy.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 25, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is just pants. It is clear that these are the reason for deletion, not just some 'ideas to use as a springboard for your deletion antics'. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy
me,
or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to
gain
consenus for it. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing
makes
NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list
you
cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort
of
declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards
wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, although
there
is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added
to
it
because there is no concensus, this does not in
any
way indicate that non-notablity is not a reason
for
deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then I
don't
think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested in
community
concensus building. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net
wrote:
It also says nothing in the deletion policy
about
criteria for deletion on VfD. It lists some deletion criteria that
must
be
VfDed, but it makes no claims anywhere to provide an
exhaustive
list of valid reasons for deletion.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:11 AM, Mark Richards
wrote:
> The point is that there is no policy that says that > notability or not is a reason for deletion. I might > just as well get a group of morons to vote to delete > any article with the work 'green' in them. If there > was a vote to do it, why not? Well, because
it's
> stupid and damaging. The fact that you can get five or > six people to consistently do it doesn't make
it
> right. That's why there is nothing on the
deletion
> criteria which says anything about notablity. > Mark > > --- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote: > >> Where is the policy consensus which says
school
>> articles are not to be deleted? You can't
point
to >> it, because it does not exist. Therefore,
each
of >> these non-notable school stubs needs to be
listed
>> individually on VfD. If you can get a
consensus
>> which says that school articles are to stay,
then
>> all of these schools will no longer be listed
on
>> VfD. But until there is such an article, so
long
as >> people continue to make articles about non-notable >> schools and don't indicate anything in the article >> which indicates that they ARE notable, they
will
>> continue to be listed. >> >> RickK >> >> Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote: >> 1. Noone is questioning your right to revert
(or
>> maybe >> even delete) 'Peter is gay'. >> 2. There are specific people consistently deleting >> articles that have real content. For example, >> schools. >> They have consitently failed to gain
concensus
to
>> delete all school articles, and so are
listing
every >> school individually, counting on the fact
that
noone >> can be bothered to vote on every one. The
fact
that >> each one is often a stub at this stage makes
it
>> easier >> still to delete them, and allows them to make
the
>> case >> that there is precident for deleting more schools. >> >> The point is that this is contentious,
because
not >> only is real information about real things
(not
>> 'Peter >> is gay') is being lost, and furthermore, only admins >> can even see what is was that was lost. >> Mark R. >> >> --- Delirium wrote: >> >>> I've only been skimming this thread, but I
think
>>> people proposing >>> policies upon policies are missing what
actually
>>> makes wikipedia work: >>> people just do things that need to be done.
When
I >>> see a crap article
=== message truncated ===
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis. Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an end in themselves.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I am not sure how to respond to this, beyond to note that you seem to be demonstrating comparable skill in reading my posts that you are in reading the deletion policy.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 25, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is just pants. It is clear that these are the reason for deletion, not just some 'ideas to use as a springboard for your deletion antics'. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies are out.
The question is not 'are people within their "rights"' to delete things that don't interest them, but does it serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis. Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an end in themselves.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Phil Sandifer wrote:
I am not sure how to respond to this, beyond to
note that you seem to
be demonstrating comparable skill in reading my
posts that you are in
reading the deletion policy.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 25, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is just pants. It is clear that these are the reason for
deletion,
not just some 'ideas to use as a springboard for
your
deletion antics'. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say
that
the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking
policy,
which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into
account
invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing
about
invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to
you.
If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for
it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards
wrote:
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But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind these American geeks deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the rest of Wikipedia are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do geeks make up a substantial amount in our community? Yes. However, the ratio of geeks to non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.
While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most people would agree that our goal of building an encyclopedia is not drastically hurt by the deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually we will be able to have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to serve our audience, which does not appear to mind the lack of school articles much, if at all. Currently, few people are really worried about school articles. That may change in the future, but until it does, we must work with the community, even if you think it's an unreasonable one.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies are out.
The question is not 'are people within their "rights"' to delete things that don't interest them, but does it serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis. Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an end in themselves.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real places. This would be fine if they simply ignored what they were interested in, but when a minority of people who are interested in real places start writing articles, and the majority of geeks insist on deleting them (while keeping articles about Tolkein places) it seems destructive. Carrying out this culture war on vfd is extremely disruptive. Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind these American geeks deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the rest of Wikipedia are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do geeks make up a substantial amount in our community? Yes. However, the ratio of geeks to non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.
While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most people would agree that our goal of building an encyclopedia is not drastically hurt by the deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually we will be able to have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to serve our audience, which does not appear to mind the lack of school articles much, if at all. Currently, few people are really worried about school articles. That may change in the future, but until it does, we must work with the community, even if you think it's an unreasonable one.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't
care
about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care
about
a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out.
Obscure
varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong
companies
are out.
The question is not 'are people within their
"rights"'
to delete things that don't interest them, but does
it
serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply
because
(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those
who
are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case
basis.
Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I
doubt
their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the
community
couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost
certainly
be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an
end
in themselves.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Mark Richards wrote:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real places.
I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is making here, and add to it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online about technical subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to finding information about real places that aren't ultra-famous and other non-technical subjects.
If I'm looking for information on a technical subject, I head to google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out to be hard to find (at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any useful information on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
If I'm looking for information on a country or a person, I go straight to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me started, at least. If it had information on every local school in the world, it'd be even more useful.
I won't touch the school issue anymore because it's so damn controversial, but...
I'd like to note that any deficiency in information on locations on Wikipedia does not stem from most deletionists. Even RickK votes to keep articles on places, no matter how small in terms of area or population. Rather, the problem stems from a lack of contributors from other countries.
Addressing issues such as deficiencies in several non-geek areas is beyond the purview of any deletion debate (except, maybe on schools). It's more of an issue about attracting non-geek contributors.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Mark Richards wrote:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real places.
I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is making here, and add to it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online about technical subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to finding information about real places that aren't ultra-famous and other non-technical subjects.
If I'm looking for information on a technical subject, I head to google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out to be hard to find (at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any useful information on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
If I'm looking for information on a country or a person, I go straight to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me started, at least. If it had information on every local school in the world, it'd be even more useful.
Well, the problem is that contributors are writing articles on schools, and people who are not interested in them keep deleting them. Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I won't touch the school issue anymore because it's so damn controversial, but...
I'd like to note that any deficiency in information on locations on Wikipedia does not stem from most deletionists. Even RickK votes to keep articles on places, no matter how small in terms of area or population. Rather, the problem stems from a lack of contributors from other countries.
Addressing issues such as deficiencies in several non-geek areas is beyond the purview of any deletion debate (except, maybe on schools). It's more of an issue about attracting non-geek contributors.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Mark Richards wrote:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure
maths
and computing subjects more interesting than real places.
I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is
making here, and add to
it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online
about technical
subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to
finding information
about real places that aren't ultra-famous and
other non-technical
subjects.
If I'm looking for information on a technical
subject, I head to
google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out
to be hard to find
(at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any
useful information
on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
If I'm looking for information on a country or a
person, I go straight
to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me
started, at least. If it
had information on every local school in the
world, it'd be even more
useful.
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Nicholas Knight wrote:
Mark Richards wrote:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real places.
I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is making here, and add to it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online about technical subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to finding information about real places that aren't ultra-famous and other non-technical subjects.
If I'm looking for information on a technical subject, I head to google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out to be hard to find (at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any useful information on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
If I'm looking for information on a country or a person, I go straight to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me started, at least. If it had information on every local school in the world, it'd be even more useful.
A fascinating perspective. The "Guinness Book of World Records" is one of the most popular books ever, and yet it's full of nothing but trivia. "Ripley's Believe It or Not" was in the same league, and, in the 19th century, "Haydn's Dictionary of Dates". That should tell us something. At one time some people wanted to delete the multitude of lists found on Wikipedia, but these have enormously attractive powers.
There is more to an encyclopedia then stuffy narratives. If we're lucky it may even have the information we're looking for.
Ec
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 04:24:21 -0700 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Mark Richards wrote:
You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real
places.
I *would* like to emphasize the point Mark is making
here, and add to
it: Finding solid, *accurate* information online about
technical
subjects is *incredibly* easy in comparison to finding
information
about real places that aren't ultra-famous and other
non-technical
subjects.
If I'm looking for information on a technical subject,
I head to
google, and only look to Wikipedia if it turns out to
be hard to find
(at which point Wikipedia doesn't usually have any
useful information
on it, but sometimes I get lucky).
If I'm looking for information on a country or a
person, I go straight
to Wikipedia. It usually has enough to get me started,
at least. If it
had information on every local school in the world,
it'd be even more
useful.
A fascinating perspective. The "Guinness Book of World Records" is one of the most popular books ever, and yet it's full of nothing but trivia. "Ripley's Believe It or Not" was in the same league, and, in the 19th century, "Haydn's Dictionary of Dates". That should tell us something. At one time some people wanted to delete the multitude of lists found on Wikipedia, but these have enormously attractive powers. There is more to an encyclopedia then stuffy narratives. If we're lucky it may even have the information we're looking for.
Ec all right how much more must i get insulted for my
mistake?when am i going to be forgiven?
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Has any of the email admins asked Mark Richard to rein in his POV pushing on this issue as was done to me and a couple of others? If so, could they please re-admonish him? If not, why has he been left off the list of admonishees?
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote: You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real places. This would be fine if they simply ignored what they were interested in, but when a minority of people who are interested in real places start writing articles, and the majority of geeks insist on deleting them (while keeping articles about Tolkein places) it seems destructive. Carrying out this culture war on vfd is extremely disruptive. Mark
--- John Lee wrote:
But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind these American geeks deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the rest of Wikipedia are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do geeks make up a substantial amount in our community? Yes. However, the ratio of geeks to non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.
While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most people would agree that our goal of building an encyclopedia is not drastically hurt by the deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually we will be able to have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to serve our audience, which does not appear to mind the lack of school articles much, if at all. Currently, few people are really worried about school articles. That may change in the future, but until it does, we must work with the community, even if you think it's an unreasonable one.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't
care
about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care
about
a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out.
Obscure
varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong
companies
are out.
The question is not 'are people within their
"rights"'
to delete things that don't interest them, but does
it
serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply
because
(mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those
who
are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case
basis.
Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I
doubt
their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the
community
couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost
certainly
be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an
end
in themselves.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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?? POV Pushing? List of adminishees? Re-admonish him?
Are you off your meds? Mark
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
Has any of the email admins asked Mark Richard to rein in his POV pushing on this issue as was done to me and a couple of others? If so, could they please re-admonish him? If not, why has he been left off the list of admonishees?
RickK
Mark Richards marich712000@yahoo.com wrote: You're right, the majority of users find obscure maths and computing subjects more interesting than real places. This would be fine if they simply ignored what they were interested in, but when a minority of people who are interested in real places start writing articles, and the majority of geeks insist on deleting them (while keeping articles about Tolkein places) it seems destructive. Carrying out this culture war on vfd is extremely disruptive. Mark
--- John Lee wrote:
But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind these American geeks deleting them. And if you're going to claim that
the
rest of Wikipedia are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do geeks make up a substantial amount in our community? Yes. However, the ratio of geeks to non-geeks has been going down in the past few
years.
While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most people would agree that our goal of building an encyclopedia is not drastically hurt by the deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually we will be able to have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to serve our audience, which does not appear to mind the lack of school articles much, if at all. Currently, few people are really worried
about
school articles. That may change in the future, but until it does,
we
must work with the community, even if you think it's an unreasonable one.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't
care
about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care
about
a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out.
Obscure
varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong
companies
are out.
The question is not 'are people within their
"rights"'
to delete things that don't interest them, but
does
it
serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply
because
(mostly) American techies think it is
unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I
quoted
[[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list
by
any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus
to
delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those
who
are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case
basis.
Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to
this
list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I
am
of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I
doubt
their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the
community
couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost
certainly
be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I
mean,
would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD
exist
to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an
end
in themselves.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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John Lee wrote:
But apparently the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind these American geeks deleting them. And if you're going to claim that the rest of Wikipedia are made up of American geeks, I must disagree. Do geeks make up a substantial amount in our community? Yes. However, the ratio of geeks to non-geeks has been going down in the past few years.
While it's based mostly on opinion, I think most people would agree that our goal of building an encyclopedia is not drastically hurt by the deletion of school articles. Hopefully, eventually we will be able to have more school articles, but Wikipedia exists to serve our audience, which does not appear to mind the lack of school articles much, if at all. Currently, few people are really worried about school articles. That may change in the future, but until it does, we must work with the community, even if you think it's an unreasonable one.
I have no objective data about our proportion of "American geeks", and I would say that your asserion that the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind being deleted by them is not evidence based.
While there is some element of truth to the belief that "an" encyclopedia is not "drastically" hurt by deleting school articles. The conclusions that you extrapolate from that are little more than sophistry. Yes, eventually we should have more school articels, but meanwhile they need to be subjugated to a deletionist gauntlet which then turn around and says that the paucity of such articles justifies the deletion of additional ones. This may be hypocrisy as well as sophistry. You have purported to reflect the community, but have you tested your hypothesis, or are you just engaging in pseudoscience? And to close by saying, "WE must work with the community, even if YOU think it's an unreasonable one." Is this rhetorical flourish or what? It's a clever change from first to second person in the sentence. Where do you get the idea that the rest of us consider the community unreasonable? We may consider you unreasonable, but you are not the community.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I have no objective data about our proportion of "American geeks", and I would say that your asserion that the rest of Wikipedia doesn't mind being deleted by them is not evidence based.
Yes, there are people who mind, but the average user won't notice the deletion of articles on a Hong Kong handbag company or a school. They will notice if you delete an article on, say, Gucci, or Eton, because those are indisputably encyclopedic. Where there's a grey area, the only people who actually make a big deal about it are inclusionists and deletionists, because most of them lack an ability to accept "in between" things, like most extremists.
Although I sound like a deletionist, in reality, like Dpbsmith, I am a strong neutral on much of this - I don't see how Wikipedia gains or loses from the creation or deletion of any of these articles, unless indisputably encyclopedic. And though there is no hard evidence, I think it's suggestive how there are never any complaints about the deletion or creation of these articles except from the article's author(s) and the hardline inclusionists/deletionists.
While there is some element of truth to the belief that "an" encyclopedia is not "drastically" hurt by deleting school articles. The conclusions that you extrapolate from that are little more than sophistry. Yes, eventually we should have more school articels, but meanwhile they need to be subjugated to a deletionist gauntlet which then turn around and says that the paucity of such articles justifies the deletion of additional ones.
It depends on how they use the deletion of an article to justify the deletion of another. Articles under a grey area of encyclopedic value should be decided on a case-by-case basis. The last thing we need is for everything to be handled in a cookie cutter manner.
This may be hypocrisy as well as sophistry. You have purported to reflect the community, but have you tested your hypothesis, or are you just engaging in pseudoscience?
My hypothesis is based on my experience that it is only the hardliners and those who have nothing better to do complain about the deletion or creation of such articles. Most users couldn't care less.
And to close by saying, "WE must work with the community, even if YOU think it's an unreasonable one." Is this rhetorical flourish or what? It's a clever change from first to second person in the sentence. Where do you get the idea that the rest of us consider the community unreasonable? We may consider you unreasonable, but you are not the community.
It was 1AM when I wrote that, so maybe I wasn't paying attention to my writing, but what I was trying to say was that even if you think it's unfair that much of the community doesn't care very much about the inclusion or deletion of certain articles, trying to subvert the process isn't helping your cause (this applies to both deletionists and inclusionists).
Ec
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Mark Richards wrote:
encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
*cough* I'm an American techie, and I very much disagree with some of the stuff that's getting deleted, thank you. I daresay experienced techies are probably among the least likely people to advocate deletionism, having an inherent predisposition toward being packrats and a great appreciation of the fact that modern technology renders concerns about storage space and related issues largely moot.
On 10/26/04 1:32 PM, "Nicholas Knight" nknight@runawaynet.com wrote:
Mark Richards wrote:
encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
*cough* I'm an American techie, and I very much disagree with some of the stuff that's getting deleted, thank you. I daresay experienced techies are probably among the least likely people to advocate deletionism, having an inherent predisposition toward being packrats and a great appreciation of the fact that modern technology renders concerns about storage space and related issues largely moot.
That description accurately describes some techies. Other techies have an inherent predisposition toward being neat freaks and a great appreciation of the fact that modern technology allows people to be completely disorganized and can make effective, efficient communication and knowledge compilation extremely difficult without proper constraints.
Let's just call it the sysadmin vs. the hacker mentality.
Both mentalities are correct. In my opinion, the proper application to Wikipedia is to put constraints on the complexity of individual entries but not on the scope of the overall project.
The Cunctator wrote:
Both mentalities are correct. In my opinion, the proper application to Wikipedia is to put constraints on the complexity of individual entries but not on the scope of the overall project.
That makes sense to me. The biggest problem with "non-notable" entries is when they're basically advertised/spammed onto notable entries as "see also" types of links, or even added to running text where they wouldn't normally be important enough to warrant a mention. Orphaned or semi-orphaned non-notable things are relatively benign, so long as they're reasonably verifiable (which a lot of the stuff being deleted isn't).
The biggest remaining problem is search, which could eventually be fixed by a weighted sort of search that trades off closeness of text matches with some sort of measure of notability/popularity, so that "Some guy's theory of physics that was verifiably published in an obscure book in 1933 but which absolutely nobody else agrees with or has even heard of" doesn't come up equally with our "real physics" articles, or even our "famous physics crackpot" articles.
-Mark
You're never going to be able to correct for stupidity. We don't delete all the other 'London' articles just because we don't want someone to be confused when they type in 'London' and get somewhere in Canada. Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Both mentalities are correct. In my opinion, the
proper application to
Wikipedia is to put constraints on the complexity
of individual entries but
not on the scope of the overall project.
That makes sense to me. The biggest problem with "non-notable" entries is when they're basically advertised/spammed onto notable entries as "see also" types of links, or even added to running text where they wouldn't normally be important enough to warrant a mention. Orphaned or semi-orphaned non-notable things are relatively benign, so long as they're reasonably verifiable (which a lot of the stuff being deleted isn't).
The biggest remaining problem is search, which could eventually be fixed by a weighted sort of search that trades off closeness of text matches with some sort of measure of notability/popularity, so that "Some guy's theory of physics that was verifiably published in an obscure book in 1933 but which absolutely nobody else agrees with or has even heard of" doesn't come up equally with our "real physics" articles, or even our "famous physics crackpot" articles.
-Mark
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Mark Richards wrote:
You're never going to be able to correct for stupidity. We don't delete all the other 'London' articles just because we don't want someone to be confused when they type in 'London' and get somewhere in Canada.
This has nothing to do with stupidity, but usability. If I type in "London" and I get on the order of 500 results equally ranked, Wikipedia will be a useless waste of space.
-Mark
Mark Richards wrote:
You're never going to be able to correct for stupidity. We don't delete all the other 'London' articles just because we don't want someone to be confused when they type in 'London' and get somewhere in Canada.
It's consistent with Canadian humour to love it when that happens. :-)
More generally people in a less famous place like Hollywood, FL love it when they are mistaken for their celebrated namesake.
Ec
It bothers me too, profoundly. The need that some people have to delete what they deem "unencyclopedic" is characteristically obsessive, even after allowing for the behaviour to be in good faith. When a stub whose contents are trivial generates controversy that is completely out of proportion with its size it suggests to me that maybe it would have been better left alone.
John seems to ignore the fact that the term, "I don't care," is itself ambiguous. "I don't care about the topic," does not mean, "I don't care if it's deleted." If I say that I don't care about John's [[Allerton High School]] it reflects that I probably never heard of it, or that further information about it would have no effect whatsoever on my life. But I at least presume that it's probably real, and that being real it must have had some number of students over the years to whom it would have more significance.
In another current thread the question is posed about what to present about Wikipedia to a conference of teachers. One of the suggestions was to have a live link, and let conference participants write something. A teacher could then bring that experience to a classroom, and generate a classroom exercise, a hands on teaching moment. We end up with the Dartmouth (College not High School) experience where the students were treated with incredible rudeness just because they did not meet someone's inflated Point of View about what is encyclopedic.
People write best about what they know best. One's high school is an excellent starting place for a beginner, as would be other things in one's own community. A classroom activity could include having everyone in the class write something, and then a week or so later having others in the class review and edit that article for inaccuracies without knowing which classmate was the original author. They could even report how strangers had changed the article. If all that that second wave of students can report is that the article was deleted it will certainly discourage further "useful" activity.
Do we want new people?
Ec
Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies are out.
The question is not 'are people within their "rights"' to delete things that don't interest them, but does it serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an exhaustive list by any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either. Thus, I'd say those who are listing them are acting within their rights, because schools aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a case-by-case basis. Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was a real miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community doesn't care we're deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag companies or high schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there was true consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as important articles are unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent post to this list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE a "strong neutral" on these; they don't care whether these articles stay or go. I am of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is unfair, they'd either pack up and leave (those who have done this are so few, I doubt their existence) or complain. So far the only people complaining are those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore, much of the community couldn't care less about the fate of school articles. Delete all articles with the word "green"? If they found out, they'd almost certainly be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably would care (I mean, would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those posh prep schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High School]]? Most wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember, policy and VFD exist to serve the community. They are the means to an end. Not an end in themselves.
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 03:19:05 -0700 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It bothers me too, profoundly. The need that some people have to delete what they deem "unencyclopedic" is characteristically obsessive, even after allowing for the behaviour to be in good faith. When a stub whose contents are trivial generates controversy that is completely out of proportion with its size it suggests to me that maybe it would have been better left alone.
John seems to ignore the fact that the term, "I don't care," is itself ambiguous. "I don't care about the topic," does not mean, "I don't care if it's deleted." If I say that I don't care about John's [[Allerton High School]] it reflects that I probably never heard of it, or that further information about it would have no effect whatsoever on my life. But I at least presume that it's probably real, and that being real it must have had some number of students over the years to whom it would have more significance.
In another current thread the question is posed about what to present about Wikipedia to a conference of teachers. One of the suggestions was to have a live link, and let conference participants write something. A teacher could then bring that experience to a classroom, and generate a classroom exercise, a hands on teaching moment. We end up with the Dartmouth (College not High School) experience where the students were treated with incredible rudeness just because they did not meet someone's inflated Point of View about what is encyclopedic.
People write best about what they know best. One's high school is an excellent starting place for a beginner, as would be other things in one's own community. A classroom activity could include having everyone in the class write something, and then a week or so later having others in the class review and edit that article for inaccuracies without knowing which classmate was the original author. They could even report how strangers had changed the article. If all that that second wave of students can report is that the article was deleted it will certainly discourage further "useful" activity.
Do we want new people? Ec
Mark Richards wrote:
The problem boils down to one of POV. No, I don't care about a school in west nowhere, and I don't care about a foreign handbag company. I care about Pokemon characters, I don't care about Indian villages. Slashdot jokes are in, high schools are out. Obscure varients of Linux are in, obscure Hong Kong companies are out.
The question is not 'are people within their "rights"' to delete things that don't interest them, but does it serve the creation of a neutral and wide scope encyclopedia. We are removing content simply because (mostly) American techies think it is unimportant.
That's what really bothers me.
Mark
--- John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
I believe in one of my more recent mails, I quoted [[What Wikipedia is not]] stating that it is not an
exhaustive list by
any means.
In any case, Mark, while there is no consensus to delete schools, there is none to keep them either.
Thus, I'd say those who
are listing them are acting within their rights,
because schools
aren't covered by any policy; thus we decide them on a
case-by-case basis.
Democracy is always unfair to someone, but if there was
a real
miscarriage of justice, how come much of the community
doesn't care we're
deleting oh so important articles on Hong Kong handbag
companies or high
schools? (Of course, there's the issue of whether there
was true
consensus; in quite a few, there hasn't been any.)
It so happens that most people on VFD are deletionists. Inclusionists argue this is unfair as
important articles are
unfairly deleted. However, this calls to mind a recent
post to this
list by, if I'm not mistaken, Dpbsmith: Most people ARE
a "strong
neutral" on these; they don't care whether these
articles stay or go. I am
of the same opinion. If they really felt the system is
unfair, they'd
either pack up and leave (those who have done this are
so few, I doubt
their existence) or complain. So far the only people
complaining are
those from the extreme inclusionist camp. Therefore,
much of the community
couldn't care less about the fate of school articles.
Delete all
articles with the word "green"? If they found out,
they'd almost certainly
be livid. Delete all school articles? Lots probably
would care (I mean,
would you delete an article on [[Eton]] or one of those
posh prep
schools?). Delete an article on, say, [[Allerton High
School]]? Most
wouldn't and don't care.
The community is fine with the current practice, whether it's in line with policy or not. Remember,
policy and VFD exist
to serve the community. They are the means to an end.
Not an end
in themselves.
i must say personally i must agree with ray.they had no
rihght to do that.teachers input i deem as very important.i feel they do not get enough of a podium to talk freely about any issues because of parents,principals,other teachers,ect.the one place where they can freely do this is on this site.so why delete their input?>
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A non-exhaustive list does not imply that the absence of a concept means its automatic inclusion. I agree that assuming that a contentious item is included by its absence is indeed revisionism. Omissions from a non-exhaustive list should be treated conservatively. If additonal reasons are assumed they must not be so wide ranging as to make the original list pointless. If the guidelines "say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons", then we don't take them into account; they simply remain invalid and the VfD proposal is simply void. I also agree with you that adding a provision similar to the one found in the blocking policy would go a long way toward clarifying the problem.
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy me, or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to gain consenus for it. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, althoughthere
is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added toit
because there is no concensus, this does not inany
way indicate that non-notablity is not a reasonfor
deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then Idon't
think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested incommunity
concensus building.
Well, OK, let me clarify. They say nothing about the invalidity of reasons at all.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 26, 2004, at 7:26 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
A non-exhaustive list does not imply that the absence of a concept means its automatic inclusion. I agree that assuming that a contentious item is included by its absence is indeed revisionism. Omissions from a non-exhaustive list should be treated conservatively. If additonal reasons are assumed they must not be so wide ranging as to make the original list pointless. If the guidelines "say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons", then we don't take them into account; they simply remain invalid and the VfD proposal is simply void. I also agree with you that adding a provision similar to the one found in the blocking policy would go a long way toward clarifying the problem.
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
No. It is a list of "Problems that may require deletion." Nowhere on any deletion policy page, however, does it say that the list is meant to be exhaustive. Contrast with the blocking policy, which actually says "Blocking should not be used in any other circumstances." The deletion policy does not say that. The deletion guidelines for administrators say nothing about taking into account invalid reasons for listing. Votes for deletion says nothing about invalid reasons for listing.
You are citing policy that does not exist.
If you want to change the rules, more power to you. If you want to engage in an act of Wiki-disobedience, go for it.
But don't pretend the rules back you up on it.
-Snowspinner On Oct 25, 2004, at 3:05 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
Not at all, it is a list of valid reasons for deletion. I invite you to add 'things that annoy me, or that I'm not interested in' to it, and try to gain consenus for it. Mark
--- Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
No. I'm arguing that the list you are citing makes NO CLAIMS to be a "list of valid reasons for deletion." The list you cite is a single entry in a lengthy table in deletion policy about which page to send things to. It is less a list of critieria for deletion on VfD and more a list of things that are not speedy deletion criteria, and it's absurdly revisionist to present it as some sort of declaration of the only reasons one can delete an article.
-Snowspinner
On Oct 23, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Mark Richards wrote:
This is lunacy. You are arguing that, althoughthere
is a list of valid reasons for deletion, and 'non-notablity' has consistently NOT been added toit
because there is no concensus, this does not inany
way indicate that non-notablity is not a reasonfor
deletion? If that's really what you are arguing, then Idon't
think there is anything that will convince you, because you are clearly not interested incommunity
concensus building.
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On Saturday 23 October 2004 00:51, Delirium wrote:
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by people doing what they think is reasonable
This statement has a big assumption behind her: That *all* people who are in WP are reasonable, intelligent, good and can exercise their freedom in the right way.
Policy, law, leaders, etc are the partial solutions that society has found to help solving the problem of unavailability of reasonable, intelligent and good humans.
If you wanted WP to become a place run by reasonable people and not by policy, you would need to transform it into an "elite club" where only reasonable people can join.
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 01:23:22 +0300, NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
If you wanted WP to become a place run by reasonable people and not by policy, you would need to transform it into an "elite club" where only reasonable people can join.
You are proposing filter first, publish later.
The wiki way is publish first, filter later.
It may be counterintuitive, but it has worked, and by all indications, continues to work.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
The point is that deletion undermines this process by removing the review and improve function that makes wikis work. Mark
--- Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 01:23:22 +0300, NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
If you wanted WP to become a place run by
reasonable people and not by policy,
you would need to transform it into an "elite
club" where only reasonable
people can join.
You are proposing filter first, publish later.
The wiki way is publish first, filter later.
It may be counterintuitive, but it has worked, and by all indications, continues to work.
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On Saturday 23 October 2004 01:27, Andrew Lih wrote:
You are proposing filter first, publish later. The wiki way is publish first, filter later.
Perhaps the wiki way can be applied to articles but not to people. I see nothing wrong with filtering new applications for user accounts. Not everyone can be a good contributor to a wiki and most people care more about themselves and their private interests rather than the WP, it is makes perfect sense to filter people who want to join.
The wiki way doesn't need to be extremist: Centrist solutions work better.
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 01:43:26 +0300, NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 01:27, Andrew Lih wrote:
You are proposing filter first, publish later. The wiki way is publish first, filter later.
Perhaps the wiki way can be applied to articles but not to people. I see nothing wrong with filtering new applications for user accounts.
You may see nothing wrong, but then just don't call it a wiki. Call it Nupedia.
Not everyone can be a good contributor to a wiki and most people care more about themselves and their private interests rather than the WP, it is makes perfect sense to filter people who want to join.
Jimbo has said this many times - Wikipedia works on the assumption that most people want to be good contributors. Better to allow everyone first, and have mechanisms to filter out the bozos later.
The wiki way doesn't need to be extremist: Centrist solutions work better.
Wikis work primarily because they are extremely unconventional.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Oh good grief, I hope this never gains any traction - who would 'filter' applications? You? Me? (!) Having people wander in randomly and contribute is key to the success of WP. Mark
--- NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 01:27, Andrew Lih wrote:
You are proposing filter first, publish later. The wiki way is publish first, filter later.
Perhaps the wiki way can be applied to articles but not to people. I see nothing wrong with filtering new applications for user accounts. Not everyone can be a good contributor to a wiki and most people care more about themselves and their private interests rather than the WP, it is makes perfect sense to filter people who want to join.
The wiki way doesn't need to be extremist: Centrist solutions work better.
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Plus, reasonable people disagree on what is reasonable. I think an article about a school is a reasonable thing for an encyclopedia that has no space concerns, other people (who appear to me to be otherwise reasonable) think that this is totally unreasonable. We need policies to mediate so that things like vfd are not used as a battleground. Mark
--- NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 00:51, Delirium wrote:
But the main point is that Wikipedia works by
people doing what they
think is reasonable
This statement has a big assumption behind her: That *all* people who are in WP are reasonable, intelligent, good and can exercise their freedom in the right way.
Policy, law, leaders, etc are the partial solutions that society has found to help solving the problem of unavailability of reasonable, intelligent and good humans.
If you wanted WP to become a place run by reasonable people and not by policy, you would need to transform it into an "elite club" where only reasonable people can join.
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Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [041023 07:51]:
I've only been skimming this thread, but I think people proposing policies upon policies are missing what actually makes wikipedia work: people just do things that need to be done. When I see a crap article
Yes, it's [[m:instruction creep]].
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep
From that page:
Instruction creep is an insidious disease, originating from ignorance of the KISS principle and resulting in bloated pages that are harder to maintain. High traffic, interactive pages (e.g. Village pump, Featured article candidates) tend to be most susceptible. Over the long term, instructions balloon in size until they are unmanageable.
Instruction creep occurs when a well-meaning user thinks "Hrm ... this page would be better if everyone was supposed to do this" and adds more requirements to the instructions.
The fundamental fallacy of instruction creep is thinking that people read instructions. If people read instructions, we wouldn't have the problem the new instruction is meant to solve.
Instructions must be pruned regularly. Gratuitous requirements must be removed as soon as they are added.
Logging and archiving requirements are probably the most common form of instruction creep. Procedural steps are popular to add, but unpopular to follow. In the future, the Mediawiki software may automate some common labour-intensive tasks.
- d.