Sign up to help those articles unable to help themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Sign up to help those articles unable to help themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
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I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
It's the Wikiproject for radical Inclusionists; the counter-point to Wikiproject Deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Sign up to help those articles unable to help themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
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On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
It's the Wikiproject for radical Inclusionists; the counter-point to Wikiproject Deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Sign up to help those articles unable to help themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
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It's yet another army-fantasy like project (think of countervandalism unit). But it's a good place where they can gather the terminal patients so we can go and help them die in peace instead of lenghtening their suffering instead of looking them by ourselves. Thank you for that
generally, it seems to be a project built to do what user:Alasnohn has been doing for high school AFDs; dredging up a large amount of references from non-independent sources and local sports coverage to try and salvage articles that, because they are nn and useless except as draws for student vandals, were unsourced previously and rightly nominated for deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
It's the Wikiproject for radical Inclusionists; the counter-point to Wikiproject Deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Sign up to help those articles unable to help themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
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It's yet another army-fantasy like project (think of countervandalism unit). But it's a good place where they can gather the terminal patients so we can go and help them die in peace instead of lenghtening their suffering instead of looking them by ourselves. Thank you for that
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Steven Walling wrote:
generally, it seems to be a project built to do what user:Alasnohn has been doing for high school AFDs; dredging up a large amount of references from non-independent sources and local sports coverage to try and salvage articles that, because they are nn and useless except as draws for student vandals, were unsourced previously and rightly nominated for deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
It's yet another army-fantasy like project (think of countervandalism unit). But it's a good place where they can gather the terminal patients so we can go and help them die in peace instead of lenghtening their suffering instead of looking them by ourselves. Thank you for that
What heaping boatload of bad faith you guys are assuming.
The described purpose of the project is not "keep everything at all costs!", it's "make things that might be deleted due to bad quality into things that will be kept due to good quality." It explicitly limits itself to topics where the _topic_ is a valid one to have an article on. Is this not a worthy goal?
Exactly -- this is not an inclusionist project (and certainly not a "radically inclusionist" one); it has nothing to say about what topics should be included and what should not. It is about improving articles about topics that are uncontroversially encyclopedic and includable because lately some people have been deleting them.
See Andrew Lih on the topic (and you don't see him pissed off very often): http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/
On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
generally, it seems to be a project built to do what user:Alasnohn has been doing for high school AFDs; dredging up a large amount of references from non-independent sources and local sports coverage to try and salvage articles that, because they are nn and useless except as draws for student vandals, were unsourced previously and rightly nominated for deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
It's yet another army-fantasy like project (think of countervandalism unit). But it's a good place where they can gather the terminal patients so we can go and help them die in peace instead of lenghtening their suffering instead of looking them by ourselves. Thank you for that
What heaping boatload of bad faith you guys are assuming.
The described purpose of the project is not "keep everything at all costs!", it's "make things that might be deleted due to bad quality into things that will be kept due to good quality." It explicitly limits itself to topics where the _topic_ is a valid one to have an article on. Is this not a worthy goal?
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G'day Ben,
Exactly -- this is not an inclusionist project (and certainly not a "radically inclusionist" one); it has nothing to say about what topics should be included and what should not. It is about improving articles about topics that are uncontroversially encyclopedic and includable because lately some people have been deleting them.
See Andrew Lih on the topic (and you don't see him pissed off very often): http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/
He makes a good point late in his post about the changing attitudes to inclusion/deletion: newbies are far more deletionist, and further, do so without any real clue of what they're talking about.
I have become more inclusionist over time. However, the community --- by which I mean the squeaky wheels --- have moved much further back than I've moved forward, so that it now seems that I am massively out of step. I've noticed that a lot of the old-timers whom I respect have seen their attitudes shift similar amounts relative to "the community".
There are plenty of crap articles out there in this wide, brown, wonderful encyclopaedia of ours about important topics. Unless these articles are improved, they will be deleted. It is a sad reflection on the Wikipedia community today that those who dare to write good articles are looked upon with suspicion.
Wikipedia is not a project to write an encyclopaedia. It's a project to attack those of us who have the temerity to try to produce something worthwhile, in the name of "increasing quality". If you make an article better, then it can't be deleted ... and if you spend all your time here doing dodgy things like that, well, all that can be said is: we don't want your filthy kind here. Get out, you unconscionable bastard, before Steven and Pedro and the hundreds like them throw you out.
Long post ahead, but constructive suggestions at the bottom :)
On 7/14/07, Mark Gallagher fuddlemark@gmail.com wrote:
G'day Ben,
Exactly -- this is not an inclusionist project (and certainly not a "radically inclusionist" one); it has nothing to say about what topics should be included and what should not. It is about improving articles about topics that are uncontroversially encyclopedic and includable because lately some people have been deleting them.
See Andrew Lih on the topic (and you don't see him pissed off very often):
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/
He makes a good point late in his post about the changing attitudes to inclusion/deletion: newbies are far more deletionist, and further, do so without any real clue of what they're talking about.
I have become more inclusionist over time. However, the community --- by which I mean the squeaky wheels --- have moved much further back than I've moved forward, so that it now seems that I am massively out of step. I've noticed that a lot of the old-timers whom I respect have seen their attitudes shift similar amounts relative to "the community".
I think this is often true -- a personal shift towards inclusionism the longer one is around -- and I wonder why. Is it because the longer one is around the more articles you're likely to see that you care about that have been deleted unnecessarily (e.g. Andrew's examples, where as a long-time contributor he is shocked to find that articles he knows are notable have been deleted?)
Or is it because you're more likely to have your own work deleted? (I just noticed that an article of mine had been prodded back in Nov. '06; I wasn't checking my watchlist at the time of deletion, and there was no notification on my talk page, so I didn't notice at the time. I can give you half a dozen reasons why the topic was notable, and I'm sure I had extensive references. I left a polite note for the deleting admin asking what the reason was on the prod, and am waiting to hear back.)
Or is it simply that the longer one is around the longer a timescale you have to see how articles can change and improve over time? From what I can see, the idea that "Wikipedia is not a race" seems to have gotten lost in many cases; I see people complaining when speedy deletions aren't taken care of in hours, for instance, which is just silly. Eventualism may win in the end (it always does!) but it's certainly not well represented in small, every-day debates.
The middle example concerns me the most, actually -- not for my sake, but for the sake of casual contributors. If I see a deleted article with a history of "expired prod deleted by xxxx", I know exactly what that means. I know the article was probably tagged by some well-meaning editor who didn't think to notify me; no one else checked it, and the prod expired; and it was deleted somewhat mechanically by the admin. I know that I can leave some polite notes in various places, or else call on one of my admin friends, to at least look at the history and tell me what was up. I know that I can probably defend having it recreated because I have good sources and am confident in my ability to interpret content policies. (Does DRV apply to prods? would a recreation of the article with more sources be summarily deleted as a recreation? I'm not sure on these points, but I think I could figure it out and defend myself). I think that I even still have my notes in my userspace for that article. In other words: it's a pain in the neck, but I know approximately what's going on.
Expecting a casual contributor who sees their (notable! sourced!) article mysteriously deleted to know what is going on, and to not get completely burned out on Wikipedia and even angry when this happens, is probably expecting too much. All the talk page welcome messages we give out point people to the really basic core principles -- NPOV, V, NOR and civility, and sometimes even tell the newbie to "be bold" -- but they don't say a word about what to do when you think you've followed all these principles and someone else with more power (because they're an admin, or they know policy inside and out) disagrees with you and takes issue with your work. In other words, the standards that the "regulars" consider important -- "does it follow subsection a) of policy B4? it does? I guess we can delete it then" are sometimes *very very different* from the polices and practices we proclaim to the rest of the world and our newbie editors as being important, and therein lies the rub.
To go towards fixing this, we should make notifying the original author about deletions mandatory; we should hold admins to a higher standard in writing descriptive edit summaries when they delete an article; we should encourage *all* regular editors to review prods and afds (not just the "afd regulars"); we should rewrite the help pages on deletion so it is *really obvious* what is going on (since that is where normal people get sent, and the pages are a clusterfuck of contradictory documentation currently); and we should seriously consider a proposal like SJ's where articles are shunted into a "what do we do with this" queue instead of automatically going to deletion when there are serious concerns.
best, phoebe
On 14/07/07, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
To go towards fixing this, we should make notifying the original author about deletions mandatory;
The AFD regulars have consistently held this to be far, far too onerous. I suspect there's some presumption of bad faith in there as well, because monitoring for crap does produce a bit of a siege mentality.
(Remembering that most of what gets deleted really is *complete crap*. We're concerning ourselves on this thread with the false positives.)
we should hold admins to a higher standard in writing descriptive edit summaries when they delete an article;
I shall try to be more flowery in my deletion summaries.
we should encourage *all* regular editors to review prods and afds (not just the "afd regulars");
I urge all those here who have not done so to go through [[Special:Newpages]]. Read one day's load of the thing, and remember that those are the articles that *survived*. THE HORROR. THE HORROR.
we should rewrite the help pages on deletion so it is *really obvious* what is going on (since that is where normal people get sent, and the pages are a clusterfuck of contradictory documentation currently);
As far as I can tell, the stage of trying to get one's way on Wikipedia by playing WikiNomic kicks in between three to nine months in. Some never get out of it.
AFD has long been the site of WikiNomic trench warfare. We're talking Belgium early 1918 here.
and we should seriously consider a proposal like SJ's where articles are shunted into a "what do we do with this" queue instead of automatically going to deletion when there are serious concerns.
It is a very nice suggestion. Now to make it fly.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 14/07/07, phoebe ayers wrote:
To go towards fixing this, we should make notifying the original author about deletions mandatory;
The AFD regulars have consistently held this to be far, far too onerous. I suspect there's some presumption of bad faith in there as well, because monitoring for crap does produce a bit of a siege mentality.
Yeah, having to spend time with such notifications, or investigating the history of an article detracts from the efficient operation of deletions. I would take it further than Phoebe to include notices to all significant contributors to an article. For a silly nomination like [[Chess strategy]] this would include notices to many established people who made contributions a long time ago, and have gone on to other things -- like me who made a few small edits in April and May 2002.
(Remembering that most of what gets deleted really is *complete crap*. We're concerning ourselves on this thread with the false positives.)
That too. And those false positives get more attention than they deserve. How they handle these borderline cases becomes the basis on which we judge all the work of the AfD gang. When they exercise poor judgement or become confrontational over borderline articles people begin to question their judgement on everything, and even the pure crap gets more scrutiny.
we should hold admins to a higher standard in writing descriptive edit summaries when they delete an article;
I shall try to be more flowery in my deletion summaries.
Be careful of the thorns in that bed of roses.
we should encourage *all* regular editors to review prods and afds (not just the "afd regulars");
I urge all those here who have not done so to go through [[Special:Newpages]]. Read one day's load of the thing, and remember that those are the articles that *survived*. THE HORROR. THE HORROR.
Gee thanks!!!!! I just went there and wasted 5 hours.
we should rewrite the help pages on deletion so it is *really obvious* what is going on (since that is where normal people get sent, and the pages are a clusterfuck of contradictory documentation currently);
As far as I can tell, the stage of trying to get one's way on Wikipedia by playing WikiNomic kicks in between three to nine months in. Some never get out of it.
AFD has long been the site of WikiNomic trench warfare. We're talking Belgium early 1918 here.
The [[Battle of Messines]] did a good job on that.
and we should seriously consider a proposal like SJ's where articles are shunted into a "what do we do with this" queue instead of automatically going to deletion when there are serious concerns.
It is a very nice suggestion. Now to make it fly.
I was encouraged by what happened when there was a common sensible mind about what to do with the spoiler warnings.
Ec
On 7/17/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 14/07/07, phoebe ayers wrote:
To go towards fixing this, we should make notifying the original author about deletions mandatory;
The AFD regulars have consistently held this to be far, far too onerous. I suspect there's some presumption of bad faith in there as well, because monitoring for crap does produce a bit of a siege mentality.
Yeah, having to spend time with such notifications, or investigating the history of an article detracts from the efficient operation of deletions. I would take it further than Phoebe to include notices to all significant contributors to an article. For a silly nomination like [[Chess strategy]] this would include notices to many established people who made contributions a long time ago, and have gone on to other things
-- like me who made a few small edits in April and May 2002.
I know wikipedia traditionally shuns automation, but this seems like a perfect candidate for it. Why not just send an automatic message to everyone who's ever edited the article at all? AfD people won't have to worry about sending a million notices, etc.
Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
On 7/18/07, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
I know wikipedia traditionally shuns automation, but this seems like a perfect candidate for it. Why not just send an automatic message to everyone who's ever edited the article at all? AfD people won't have to worry about sending a million notices, etc.
Because the effect of sticking an afd tag on [[George W. Bush]] or [[wikipedia]] would be kinda interesting to watch.
Well, maybe just articles that don't have more than a certain number of contributors.
On 7/18/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/18/07, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
I know wikipedia traditionally shuns automation, but this seems like a perfect candidate for it. Why not just send an automatic message to everyone who's ever edited the article at all? AfD people won't have to worry about sending a million notices, etc.
Because the effect of sticking an afd tag on [[George W. Bush]] or [[wikipedia]] would be kinda interesting to watch.
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On 17/07/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
AFD has long been the site of WikiNomic trench warfare. We're talking Belgium early 1918 here.
... so soon the spring offensive will smash the line open, one side will be pushed back in utter rout, stabilise, and shortly win a complete and crushing victory? This may not be the analogy you intended :-)
On 0, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com scribbled:
On 17/07/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
AFD has long been the site of WikiNomic trench warfare. We're talking Belgium early 1918 here.
... so soon the spring offensive will smash the line open, one side will be pushed back in utter rout, stabilise, and shortly win a complete and crushing victory? This may not be the analogy you intended :-)
--
- Andrew Gray
Careful with that line of thought there! If you continue too far, you'll Godwin this thread.
-- gwern Hackers Encryption ASWS W68 Espionage USDOJ NSA CIA S/
This is a great initiative. I've run across a few excellent articles that were deleted -- by finding them through google searches and web links, and discovering the target article was gone -- because they had "only N ghits" and were on prod for 3 days --- or worse, rewritten with more information and deleted speedily as recreations.
There should be a clear exception in the speedy policy on recreations that exempts anything that is an attempt to improve on an article deleted for lack of sources or non-notability.
SJ
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates bluephonic@gmail.com wrote:
Exactly -- this is not an inclusionist project (and certainly not a "radically inclusionist" one); it has nothing to say about what topics should be included and what should not. It is about improving articles about topics that are uncontroversially encyclopedic and includable because lately some people have been deleting them.
See Andrew Lih on the topic (and you don't see him pissed off very often): http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/07/10/unwanted-new-articles-in-wikipedia/
On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
generally, it seems to be a project built to do what user:Alasnohn has been doing for high school AFDs; dredging up a large amount of references from non-independent sources and local sports coverage to try and salvage articles that, because they are nn and useless except as draws for student vandals, were unsourced previously and rightly nominated for deletion.
On 7/13/07, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
It's yet another army-fantasy like project (think of countervandalism unit). But it's a good place where they can gather the terminal patients so we can go and help them die in peace instead of lenghtening their suffering instead of looking them by ourselves. Thank you for that
What heaping boatload of bad faith you guys are assuming.
The described purpose of the project is not "keep everything at all costs!", it's "make things that might be deleted due to bad quality into things that will be kept due to good quality." It explicitly limits itself to topics where the _topic_ is a valid one to have an article on. Is this not a worthy goal?
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-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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On 7/15/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
This is a great initiative. I've run across a few excellent articles that were deleted -- by finding them through google searches and web links, and discovering the target article was gone -- because they had "only N ghits" and were on prod for 3 days --- or worse, rewritten with more information and deleted speedily as recreations.
There should be a clear exception in the speedy policy on recreations that exempts anything that is an attempt to improve on an article deleted for lack of sources or non-notability.
The problem is identifying articles which have been deleted because of content, and articles which have been deleted because of the topic. Virtually all speedies fall under the former; PRODs lie somewhere in between; most AfDs deal with the latter. But even then, finding out why an article was deleted is something most admins are clearly too lazy to do. A lot of people being promoted these days seem to clearly lack clue.
Johnleemk
On 7/14/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
There should be a clear exception in the speedy policy on recreations that exempts anything that is an attempt to improve on an article deleted for lack of sources or non-notability.
Wholly agreed. Also, it is NOT, IMO, valid to delete an article as a recreation if it was speedied or prodded before, and I've seen admins do it.
-Matt
On 14/07/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/14/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
There should be a clear exception in the speedy policy on recreations that exempts anything that is an attempt to improve on an article deleted for lack of sources or non-notability.
Wholly agreed. Also, it is NOT, IMO, valid to delete an article as a recreation if it was speedied or prodded before, and I've seen admins do it.
Of course not.
If it was prodded, *the policy explicitly says* it can be unmarked for deletion, or undeleted, if anyone objects.
If it was speedied (correctly or incorrectly) it can be recreated. If what you end up with is still a deletion candidate, then it can be deleted again on its own merits, not for being a recreation...
(I went three rounds over this with someone before - speedied in error, then every recreation speedied "per earlier"...)
On 7/14/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
If it was speedied (correctly or incorrectly) it can be recreated. If what you end up with is still a deletion candidate, then it can be deleted again on its own merits, not for being a recreation...
Indeed. But never simply because it was deleted before; the previous deletions don't count for anything.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On 7/14/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
There should be a clear exception in the speedy policy on recreations that exempts anything that is an attempt to improve on an article deleted for lack of sources or non-notability.
Wholly agreed. Also, it is NOT, IMO, valid to delete an article as a recreation if it was speedied or prodded before, and I've seen admins do it.
We are justified in being concerned about recreational deletion. ;-)
Ec
I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
I'm willing to block you for being disruptive if you delete an article on a notable topic that could have been improved just to oppose people trying to fix them.
-Phil
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being brought up for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature. A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would be more in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes. But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as unnecessary deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's not a resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project for making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
On 7/13/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
I'm willing to block you for being disruptive if you delete an article on a notable topic that could have been improved just to oppose people trying to fix them.
-Phil
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Au contraire: there are uncontroversially encyclopedic topics whose articles are being brought up for deletion. That is precisely what prompted the formation of this group.
My bigger point is that the Rescue Squadron sidesteps the usual talk-page bickering and goes straight to the heart of things -- fixing the article. If, once the article is fixed, it still gets deleted, then so be it. The point is to demonstrate that some of these "borderline" articles are actually mainstream articles that happen to get parsed as nonencyclopedic /because of the way they're written/.
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being brought up for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature. A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would be more in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes. But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as unnecessary deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's not a resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project for making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
On 7/13/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
I'm willing to block you for being disruptive if you delete an article on a notable topic that could have been improved just to oppose people trying to fix them.
-Phil
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Ben Yates wrote:
Au contraire: there are uncontroversially encyclopedic topics whose articles are being brought up for deletion. That is precisely what prompted the formation of this group.
My bigger point is that the Rescue Squadron sidesteps the usual talk-page bickering and goes straight to the heart of things -- fixing the article. If, once the article is fixed, it still gets deleted, then so be it. The point is to demonstrate that some of these "borderline" articles are actually mainstream articles that happen to get parsed as nonencyclopedic /because of the way they're written/.
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being brought up for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature. A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would be more in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes. But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as unnecessary deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's not a resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project for making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
On 7/13/07, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
I'm willing to practice euthanasia on them
I'm willing to block you for being disruptive if you delete an article on a notable topic that could have been improved just to oppose people trying to fix them.
-Phil
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"Uncontroversially", says who? By definition, any article at AfD is having its suitability called into question simply by virtue of being nominated. If several people argue to delete, you can hardly say it's "uncontroversially encyclopedic".
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being brought up for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would be more in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why are you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed? Last I checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as unnecessary deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's not a resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project for making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone should indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides, whether an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often be debated.
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better. On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being
brought up
for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would be
more
in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why are you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed? Last I checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as unnecessary deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's not
a
resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project
for
making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone should indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides, whether an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often be debated.
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Th other thing that I notice about this project is that they neglect to notice that completely unencyclopedic or original research topics are often chock-full of good writing and cobbled together citations. It's not just, or even primarily, poorly written articles needing improvement that are nominated as unencyclopedic. automatically going about and improving articles under consideration for deletion as unencyclopedic assumes that not only nominators possess poor judegement, but that the community at large is so stupid as to not be able to recognize when a small or poorly written article is worthy of encyclopedic treatment. The project's motto might as well be "Let's help the morons with no vision!"
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better. On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being
brought up
for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would
be more
in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why are you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed? Last I checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as
unnecessary
deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's
not a
resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project
for
making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone should indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides, whether an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often be debated.
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Excuse me for trying to encourage change.
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Th other thing that I notice about this project is that they neglect to notice that completely unencyclopedic or original research topics are often chock-full of good writing and cobbled together citations. It's not just, or even primarily, poorly written articles needing improvement that are nominated as unencyclopedic. automatically going about and improving articles under consideration for deletion as unencyclopedic assumes that not only nominators possess poor judegement, but that the community at large is so stupid as to not be able to recognize when a small or poorly written article is worthy of encyclopedic treatment. The project's motto might as well be "Let's help the morons with no vision!"
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better. On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being
brought up
for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would
be more
in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why are you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed? Last I checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as
unnecessary
deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's
not a
resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project
for
making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone should indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides, whether an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often be debated.
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This attempt to encourage change is based on your personal point of view that a shift in the majority consensus on what is acceptable for encyclopedic treatment, which might create the temporary wave of deletions now occuring, is a bad thing inherently.
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
Excuse me for trying to encourage change.
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Th other thing that I notice about this project is that they neglect to notice that completely unencyclopedic or original research topics are
often
chock-full of good writing and cobbled together citations. It's not
just, or
even primarily, poorly written articles needing improvement that are nominated as unencyclopedic. automatically going about and improving articles under consideration for deletion as unencyclopedic assumes that
not
only nominators possess poor judegement, but that the community at large
is
so stupid as to not be able to recognize when a small or poorly written article is worthy of encyclopedic treatment. The project's motto might
as
well be "Let's help the morons with no vision!"
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the
part of
all nominators. that's even better. On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being
brought up
for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or
nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance
about
the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination
would
be more
in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why
are
you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed?
Last I
checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as
unnecessary
deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then
it's
not a
resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a
project
for
making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone
should
indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides,
whether
an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often
be
debated.
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-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
This attempt to encourage change is based on your personal point of view that a shift in the majority consensus on what is acceptable for encyclopedic treatment, which might create the temporary wave of deletions now occuring, is a bad thing inherently.
It's pretty important to recognize that community consensus is important, and that it gets delegated to subgroups for lack of perfect information and infinite time. So subcommunities often come up with rules of thumb and local guidelines which, when they become more important and are visited by more people -- or when they become more disruptive and no longer a niche part of the site -- inspire a shift in consensus.
The observation that AfD regulars -- or more particularly *fD regulars for certain sub-deletion groups -- are not representative of the community as a whole has been true for a while, and community members who don't have the time or energy to fight about these things all the time, or who are eventualists and so let this slide, have been complaining for a while.
SJ
On 7/13/07, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
Excuse me for trying to encourage change.
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Th other thing that I notice about this project is that they neglect to notice that completely unencyclopedic or original research topics are
often
chock-full of good writing and cobbled together citations. It's not
just, or
even primarily, poorly written articles needing improvement that are nominated as unencyclopedic. automatically going about and improving articles under consideration for deletion as unencyclopedic assumes that
not
only nominators possess poor judegement, but that the community at large
is
so stupid as to not be able to recognize when a small or poorly written article is worthy of encyclopedic treatment. The project's motto might
as
well be "Let's help the morons with no vision!"
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the
part of
all nominators. that's even better. On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being
brought up
for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or
nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance
about
the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination
would
be more
in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why
are
you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed?
Last I
checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as
unnecessary
deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then
it's
not a
resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a
project
for
making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone
should
indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides,
whether
an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often
be
debated.
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-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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It's not assuming the AfD regulars are stupid. It's acknowledging that reality that the subculture that hangs out at AfD is probably not representative. It's urging people who don't ordinarily look at AfD to do so. I hadn't looked at in years. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
AfD is not, in and of itself, the most interesting place to hang out, unless you view it as vitally important to the project. If you do view it as super-important, you're more likely to vote for deletions -- the demographics get skewed.
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better. On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
Articles are not "uncontroversially encyclopedic" when they being
brought up
for deletion because of their lack of encyclopedic content or nature.
Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article.
A taskforce improving articles that don't have an AFD nomination would be
more
in line with your flawed vision of what the project constitutes.
That's what the rest of Wikipedia is already working on. Also, why are you so sure that it's Phil's vision of the project that's flawed? Last I checked there were only four edits on the project's page, it's still quite nebulous and open to interpretation.
But when the project extensively mentions comabting what they see as unnecessary deletions in its intro and includes a direct link to AFD, then it's not
a
resource for improving articles that need help the most, but a project
for
making sure borderline articles get kept. That's inclusioism.
Not all AfDs result in delete, some result in keep. This alone should indicate that not all nominations are "necessary." And besides, whether an article is "borderline" or not is itself a subject that can often be debated.
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Steven Walling wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
The project isn't urging people to check every AfD. We seem to be talking about two different proposals.
Actually, the project as it now stands directly enourages users to check through the AFD list at large.
On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project
assumes
good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
The project isn't urging people to check every AfD. We seem to be talking about two different proposals.
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Steven Walling wrote:
Actually, the project as it now stands directly enourages users to check through the AFD list at large.
On 7/13/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project
assumes
good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
The project isn't urging people to check every AfD. We seem to be talking about two different proposals.
And encouraging users to check through AFD list is a bad thing because...?
On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, the project as it now stands directly enourages users to check through the AFD list at large.
Wow! Dangerous and subversive, encouraging people to check through the top-secret society's AFD list....
I don't understand what's so damning about encouraging editors to check through the AFD list at large--maybe I'm misreading your tone (always possible in e-mail), and you could elaborate on the dangers of encouraging editors to check the AfD list?
KP
On 7/14/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
Imagine asking people to check an AFD!! Every prod and AFD is a direct statement of bad faith: all effort put into the article to date has been wasted, and the contributors were crazy for starting the article. It is hardly a novel concept that some people assume that the nominator is completely wrong until proven right. The default at AFD is keep, in theory.
This is merely a stab in the dark based on my experience, but I think that only a third of Afd nominations are clearly correct, and they are usually closed within a day or two; many of these articles could have fallen under prod or CSD. A third of the nominations are about topics that are inappropriate or borderline, and serious thought is required by Afd participants. The rest of the nominations are unnecessary; the article topic and content are both clearly appropriate and could be rescued or merged into another article if only someone would assume good faith and try to build on what the contributors had been trying to achieve with the article. But that takes time. Rescuing one article could take one person an entire week, including trips to the library or even learning a little of a foreign language in order to verify some disputed facts.
On 7/14/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Th other thing that I notice about this project is that they neglect to notice that completely unencyclopedic or original research topics are often chock-full of good writing and cobbled together citations. It's not just, or even primarily, poorly written articles needing improvement that are nominated as unencyclopedic. automatically going about and improving articles under consideration for deletion as unencyclopedic assumes that not only nominators possess poor judegement, but that the community at large is so stupid as to not be able to recognize when a small or poorly written article is worthy of encyclopedic treatment. The project's motto might as well be "Let's help the morons with no vision!"
As far as I can tell, the projects motto is more like "Lets put in a concerted effort where other people have demonstrated over a long period that they prefer to vote delete rather than spend four hours working on an article that is probably going to be deleted anyhow." Pretty noble intention if you ask me. The project has done nothing wrong so far; why try to sink it while it is still in the shipyard?
-- John
I'm not trying to sink it, if I wanted to try and do that I'd nominate it for deletion. This is a discussion list, so I vetted my opinion of the project. But me thinking it's a crap inclusionist's wet dream isnt a reason to actually scrap it. that's just my personal gripe.
And the point I was making wasn't that it's bad to encourage participation in AFDs, but that this is canvassing for AFD work that begins with the presupposition that the whole system needs double checking and that deletions as unencyclopedic are more often than not flawed. It thumbs its nose at the validity of the results of the regular AFD process by saying we need to build a task force to go about sweeping up. While this might be in order if there really was big problems with a certain type of deletion going on, I simply don't agree. I have faith in the usefulness and veracity of the AFD process as it stands, without any outside interference or lobbying.
On 7/13/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/14/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project
assumes
good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
Imagine asking people to check an AFD!! Every prod and AFD is a direct statement of bad faith: all effort put into the article to date has been wasted, and the contributors were crazy for starting the article. It is hardly a novel concept that some people assume that the nominator is completely wrong until proven right. The default at AFD is keep, in theory.
This is merely a stab in the dark based on my experience, but I think that only a third of Afd nominations are clearly correct, and they are usually closed within a day or two; many of these articles could have fallen under prod or CSD. A third of the nominations are about topics that are inappropriate or borderline, and serious thought is required by Afd participants. The rest of the nominations are unnecessary; the article topic and content are both clearly appropriate and could be rescued or merged into another article if only someone would assume good faith and try to build on what the contributors had been trying to achieve with the article. But that takes time. Rescuing one article could take one person an entire week, including trips to the library or even learning a little of a foreign language in order to verify some disputed facts.
On 7/14/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Th other thing that I notice about this project is that they neglect to notice that completely unencyclopedic or original research topics are
often
chock-full of good writing and cobbled together citations. It's not
just, or
even primarily, poorly written articles needing improvement that are nominated as unencyclopedic. automatically going about and improving articles under consideration for deletion as unencyclopedic assumes that
not
only nominators possess poor judegement, but that the community at large
is
so stupid as to not be able to recognize when a small or poorly written article is worthy of encyclopedic treatment. The project's motto might
as
well be "Let's help the morons with no vision!"
As far as I can tell, the projects motto is more like "Lets put in a concerted effort where other people have demonstrated over a long period that they prefer to vote delete rather than spend four hours working on an article that is probably going to be deleted anyhow." Pretty noble intention if you ask me. The project has done nothing wrong so far; why try to sink it while it is still in the shipyard?
-- John
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On 7/13/07, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
And the point I was making wasn't that it's bad to encourage participation in AFDs, but that this is canvassing for AFD work that begins with the presupposition that the whole system needs double checking and that deletions as unencyclopedic are more often than not flawed.
I don't see why the system should not need double checking. It's that kind of thing that keeps things honest & above board, in both directions. Deletions as unencyclopedic often at least have the potential to be flawed; for one thing, 'unencyclopedic' is simply a way of saying 'I want it deleted' in a long word.
It thumbs its nose at the validity of the results of the regular AFD process by saying we need to build a task force to go about sweeping up.
The average AFD process involves under a dozen people voting, most of whom are either "AFD regulars" or people involved with the article itself, positively or negatively. This seems like a very poor pool of people to be deciding what gets deleted in our vast project, doesn't it?
While this might be in order if there really was big problems with a certain type of deletion going on, I simply don't agree. I have faith in the usefulness and veracity of the AFD process as it stands, without any outside interference or lobbying.
I'm glad that you do. Myself, I have little faith in its results being predictable, repeatable, or indicative of very much at all.
-Matt
This post gave me an interesting idea.
On 7/13/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
Imagine asking people to check an AFD!! Every prod and AFD is a direct statement of bad faith: all effort put into the article to date has been wasted, and the contributors were crazy for starting the article. It is hardly a novel concept that some people assume that the nominator is completely wrong until proven right. The default at AFD is keep, in theory.
We've renamed VfD this once, to get rid of the 'votes', since it shouldn't be about votes. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the D, since it isn't really about deletion -- which involves an initial assumption of bad faith -- but about review: what is the author thinking? If the author is really trying to convey useful information about an encyclopedic and notable subject (good faith), how can we help them improve their work / extract better information from them / guide them to reasonable style guidelines? "Articles for Deletion" could be something related, very specific, and altogether different.
It might be sensible to have a cleanly generalized "Articles for Review" page that decides what to do with articles that have trouble. Does it get pushed off to a subgroup, say via {{delete}} or {{cleanup}}? perhaps there are niceties to be followed when deleting something -- check in with the main authors, decide whether or not to delete the talk page as well, archive as appropriate, update inbound links, doublecheck that the authors aren't serially doing something they shouldn't be. This could go to an "articles for deletion" project -- at which point it is not about WHETHER to delete, but HOW. Then it would make sense for the deletionists and people who care about keeping the encyclo clean to run that shop.
Is it decided that the topic deserves an article, but not this one? Then there are niceties too. salvage what is mergeable, identify the best place to redirect the article -- perhaps one of the options is a page about how to create a new article -- and again update the main authors to date. In this case the talk page should surely be preserved. If there is a contentful merge, decide whether to merge page histories or simply preserve them on the target talk page.
Is it clear that the topic deserves an article, but it really isn't any good yet? different levels of {{cleanup}} are possible; one might be a {{rescue}} template to help stave off merging or redirection.
Finally, do we need a variant of #REDIRECT that clearly identifies that the original title should have its own separate article someday, but doesn't now? something that allows links to still show up as red in MediaWiki?
SJ
On 14/07/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
We've renamed VfD this once, to get rid of the 'votes', since it shouldn't be about votes. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the D, since it isn't really about deletion -- which involves an initial assumption of bad faith -- but about review: what is the author thinking? If the author is really trying to convey useful information about an encyclopedic and notable subject (good faith), how can we help them improve their work / extract better information from them / guide them to reasonable style guidelines? "Articles for Deletion" could be something related, very specific, and altogether different.
It might be sensible to have a cleanly generalized "Articles for Review" page that decides what to do with articles that have trouble. Does it get pushed off to a subgroup, say via {{delete}} or {{cleanup}}? perhaps there are niceties to be followed when deleting something -- check in with the main authors, decide whether or not to delete the talk page as well, archive as appropriate, update inbound links, doublecheck that the authors aren't serially doing something they shouldn't be. This could go to an "articles for deletion" project -- at which point it is not about WHETHER to delete, but HOW. Then it would make sense for the deletionists and people who care about keeping the encyclo clean to run that shop.
:-O
:-D
Brilliant!
- d.
On 7/15/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/07/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
We've renamed VfD this once, to get rid of the 'votes', since it shouldn't be about votes. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the D, since it isn't really about deletion -- which involves an initial assumption of bad faith -- but about review: what is the author thinking? If the author is really trying to convey useful information about an encyclopedic and notable subject (good faith), how can we help them improve their work / extract better information from them / guide them to reasonable style guidelines? "Articles for Deletion" could be something related, very specific, and altogether different.
It might be sensible to have a cleanly generalized "Articles for Review" page that decides what to do with articles that have trouble. Does it get pushed off to a subgroup, say via {{delete}} or {{cleanup}}? perhaps there are niceties to be followed when deleting something -- check in with the main authors, decide whether or not to delete the talk page as well, archive as appropriate, update inbound links, doublecheck that the authors aren't serially doing something they shouldn't be. This could go to an "articles for deletion" project -- at which point it is not about WHETHER to delete, but HOW. Then it would make sense for the deletionists and people who care about keeping the encyclo clean to run that shop.
:-O
:-D
Brilliant!
I recall Kelly Martin was once pushing this heavily, and a number of people (including, *cough*, yours truly) have pointed out these problems in the past. We really need to move beyond the blowing hot air stage and, you know, try to push this through consensually. Assuming we can get a consensus on this at all.
Johnleemk
On 7/14/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/15/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/07/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
We've renamed VfD this once, to get rid of the 'votes', since it shouldn't be about votes. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the D, since it isn't really about deletion -- which involves an initial assumption of bad faith -- but about review: what is the author thinking? If the author is really trying to convey useful information about an encyclopedic and notable subject (good faith), how can we help them improve their work / extract better information from them / guide them to reasonable style guidelines? "Articles for Deletion" could be something related, very specific, and altogether different.
I recall Kelly Martin was once pushing this heavily, and a number of people (including, *cough*, yours truly) have pointed out these problems in the past. We really need to move beyond the blowing hot air stage and, you know, try to push this through consensually. Assuming we can get a consensus on this at all.
Link? I remember a red haze of conflict, but not a specific suggestion; if there's one in place, perhaps we can just modify it a bit to make it a matter of separation and not confrontation (there is still room for an AfD with clearer purpose), and see how it works.
SJ
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:55:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Brilliant!
And one of the outcomes should be: expedited cleanup. If not performed, it can be stubbed or deleted after a week.
Guy (JzG)
On 7/14/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:55:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Brilliant!
And one of the outcomes should be: expedited cleanup. If not performed, it can be stubbed or deleted after a week.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Yeah, nice. I agree with the expedited cleanup. Sometimes there is dreadful crap that really needs to get off Wikipedia ASAP. Just because someone contests a PROD doesn't mean pure crap should be granted a 1 week reprieve, like that moron who decided to write a piece of crap article about beach chic to honor his bride (God help her), then contested the prod so the piece of crap would stay up for the week of his wedding.
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
KP
There is almost always a way of removing real junk immediately. 99% of the time it fits speedy-- and gets deleted. (I do my share, and have very little tolerance for self-advertising and pranks, and this is also true of KP and all similarly inclined people I know). Challenges to speedy that are clearly not in good faith get rejected, and the articles removed none the less (I do my share of that, also, and I know what to do with schoolboy gaming the system when I see it.) .The few times it gets to AfD it doesn't usually wait the 5 days. Don't confuse honest disagreement about the contents of wikipedia on particular topics --or even a somewhat different view of it in general -- with the lack of a desire to keep it clean, and keep the contents worthy.
On 7/14/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/14/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:55:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Brilliant!
And one of the outcomes should be: expedited cleanup. If not performed, it can be stubbed or deleted after a week.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Yeah, nice. I agree with the expedited cleanup. Sometimes there is dreadful crap that really needs to get off Wikipedia ASAP. Just because someone contests a PROD doesn't mean pure crap should be granted a 1 week reprieve, like that moron who decided to write a piece of crap article about beach chic to honor his bride (God help her), then contested the prod so the piece of crap would stay up for the week of his wedding.
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
KP
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On 7/14/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
There is almost always a way of removing real junk immediately. 99% of the time it fits speedy-- and gets deleted. (I do my share, and have very little tolerance for self-advertising and pranks, and this is also true of KP and all similarly inclined people I know). Challenges to speedy that are clearly not in good faith get rejected, and the articles removed none the less (I do my share of that, also, and I know what to do with schoolboy gaming the system when I see it.) .The few times it gets to AfD it doesn't usually wait the 5 days. Don't confuse honest disagreement about the contents of wikipedia on particular topics --or even a somewhat different view of it in general -- with the lack of a desire to keep it clean, and keep the contents worthy.
On 7/14/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/14/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:55:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Brilliant!
And one of the outcomes should be: expedited cleanup. If not performed, it can be stubbed or deleted after a week.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
Yeah, nice. I agree with the expedited cleanup. Sometimes there is dreadful crap that really needs to get off Wikipedia ASAP. Just because someone contests a PROD doesn't mean pure crap should be granted a 1 week reprieve, like that moron who decided to write a piece of crap article about beach chic to honor his bride (God help her), then contested the prod so the piece of crap would stay up for the week of his wedding.
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
KP
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-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
Next time I see obvious schoolboy gaming then I'll bring it to your attention, as the beach chic thing was spit-in-your-face level.
That's one issue about Wikipedia that I find leads to some of the biggest problems, imo, is that editors and admins won't stop and pause and think, "does this incidence need to be looked at independently?" Okay, the article gets a prod, and the creator objects, so it has to go to AfD. But, in this instance, editors should have looked at again at the article, the creator, the prod, and the protestation--at least for the dignity of the future bride in this case.
It's part of what leads to name-calling (troll, whatever you want) and instant dismisal.
An example of a case where I think some pause should be given was my request to have this remark deleted from the edit history of an article. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prostitution&diff=next&old...
I really haven't seen much at this level on Wikipedia, and it seemed to me that something this vicious about another human being (she's apparently a dancer who has had a few spiffs on the Internet with other people) has no place on an encyclopedia. Apparently I'm wrong, and this is pretty typical Wikipedia stuff.
I wish editors and administrators would pause a moment before issuing the old stand-by declaration that everything in the known universe is the same, which leads to things like successful schoolboy gaming of AfD, and successful abuse of Wikipedia for personal real-life battles. Is there really a place on Wikipedia for graffiti about your enemies?
KP
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:33:10 -0700, "K P" kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with the expedited cleanup. Sometimes there is dreadful crap that really needs to get off Wikipedia ASAP. Just because someone contests a PROD doesn't mean pure crap should be granted a 1 week reprieve, like that moron who decided to write a piece of crap article about beach chic to honor his bride (God help her), then contested the prod so the piece of crap would stay up for the week of his wedding.
Ugh. And in the past we have had issues when we speedy such crap and get oddballs calling it an "out of process deletion" at DRV. But let's not get started on that route, I think we are broadly in agreement that what is needed is a funnel of some sort, that problematic articles get fed in, and which then triages them into unambiguous crap for nuking, unambiguously good subjects for keeping, and the stuff in the middle that needs something between a complete rewrite and a bit of extra sourcing.
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
We are all inclusionists, otherwise we would not be here in the first place. The difference is just where we place the bar for inclusion - or perhaps our view of what constitutes an encyclopaedia or an encyclopaedic subject.
There is too much strife at present, and I don't know why. I suspect that the recent backlash against "tabloid" stuff is partly to blame, but I don't really know.
What I have noticed is that there are more people out there who are prepared to bolster trolls and shout from the sidelines. Maybe that's just the disputes I get involved in, but it does appear to me that there are more, and more aggressive, POV-pushers and trolls these days. Yes, my personal experience does inform this, I currently have a problem with some utterly baffling "overturn" advocates on a deletion review for a laundry list of grudges against me by an editor with fewer than 100 mainspace edits; the grudge list sat unedited in his user space for nearly six months, and no RfC is ever likely to be brought because his complaint is clearly and unequivocally baseless, but the troll-enablers are out in force. Which goes to reinforce my current disaffection with the whole project.
Guy (JzG)
On 7/15/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:33:10 -0700, "K P" kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with the expedited cleanup. Sometimes there is dreadful crap that really needs to get off Wikipedia ASAP. Just because someone contests a PROD doesn't mean pure crap should be granted a 1 week reprieve, like that moron who decided to write a piece of crap article about beach chic to honor his bride (God help her), then contested the prod so the piece of crap would stay up for the week of his wedding.
Ugh. And in the past we have had issues when we speedy such crap and get oddballs calling it an "out of process deletion" at DRV. But let's not get started on that route, I think we are broadly in agreement that what is needed is a funnel of some sort, that problematic articles get fed in, and which then triages them into unambiguous crap for nuking, unambiguously good subjects for keeping, and the stuff in the middle that needs something between a complete rewrite and a bit of extra sourcing.
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
We are all inclusionists, otherwise we would not be here in the first place. The difference is just where we place the bar for inclusion - or perhaps our view of what constitutes an encyclopaedia or an encyclopaedic subject.
There is too much strife at present, and I don't know why. I suspect that the recent backlash against "tabloid" stuff is partly to blame, but I don't really know.
What I have noticed is that there are more people out there who are prepared to bolster trolls and shout from the sidelines. Maybe that's just the disputes I get involved in, but it does appear to me that there are more, and more aggressive, POV-pushers and trolls these days. Yes, my personal experience does inform this, I currently have a problem with some utterly baffling "overturn" advocates on a deletion review for a laundry list of grudges against me by an editor with fewer than 100 mainspace edits; the grudge list sat unedited in his user space for nearly six months, and no RfC is ever likely to be brought because his complaint is clearly and unequivocally baseless, but the troll-enablers are out in force. Which goes to reinforce my current disaffection with the whole project.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
There seems to be a lot of troll enabling at AfD AND a shocking number of accounts created to simply participate in one AfD. I keep stumbling over there and finding myself in a different cyber space than Wikipedia.
In the meantime, getting some sort of funnel that keeps the obvious crap from being kept for 7 days would be good, or any system that says, "look you moron, you could hardly be lamer, let's be decent to you and erase all evidence of your loserhood," would be great.
And what's with all the editors who tell me I can't clean up an article while it awaits the trash heap? If it's up for deletion, and it's going to be hanging around for another week as a certifiable piece of crap, the first thing I do is edit the article to the least offending version possible.
If we create a funnel, let's make sure it gives no indication that the article has to stay looking like crap all the while it's up for deletion, whether 2 days, or 1 hour.
I even edited 2 attack BLPs before I put the attack label on them. They were deleted in under 15 minutes, but no one needed an effortless view of the crap in those 15 minutes.
Yes, funnel.
KP
There has been increasing frequency of persuading writers of clearly unsatisfactory items to blank them or as ask their deletion with {{db-userreq}} --Guy and KP do it, and many others. I have learned from them-- I tell the authors that withdrawing an obviously unsatisfactory article will be to their advantage when they write a good one, either on the same subject, or on another more notable one, & I'll often suggest a topic. I did not think of this myself; I learned it from the more experienced who were already doing it when I came. There are two good outcomes from an AfD: the article gets improved and the nomination withdrawn, or the article gets withdrawn (when appropriate, with a statement that there is no prejudice to re-writing of a proper article.) In spite of the work required for an AfD, AfD can still be the best way to do this--a person who does not accept this from myself may well accept it when several other people say the same. This is also part of the reason against single-handed Speedy deletions. If I can say that not just I, but another editor think it should undoubtedly be deleted, it deflects many a protest. The effect can also be seen at prod -- in many cases the author lets it be deleted. When I notify them, I suggest that if they do not have the opportunity to delete it now, such is the wiser course. The intelligent ones without too much invested COI understand.
Good deletions can lead to good inclusions. But deleting improvable articles via speedy without allowing a chance for improvement leads to justified resentment. And deleting borderline articles via speedy when the deletion is debatable rather than AfD can multiply the eventual work and leave bad feelings all around.
DGG
On 7/15/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/15/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:33:10 -0700, "K P" kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with the expedited cleanup. Sometimes there is dreadful crap that really needs to get off Wikipedia ASAP. Just because someone contests a PROD doesn't mean pure crap should be granted a 1 week reprieve, like that moron who decided to write a piece of crap article about beach chic to honor his bride (God help her), then contested the prod so the piece of crap would stay up for the week of his wedding.
Ugh. And in the past we have had issues when we speedy such crap and get oddballs calling it an "out of process deletion" at DRV. But let's not get started on that route, I think we are broadly in agreement that what is needed is a funnel of some sort, that problematic articles get fed in, and which then triages them into unambiguous crap for nuking, unambiguously good subjects for keeping, and the stuff in the middle that needs something between a complete rewrite and a bit of extra sourcing.
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
We are all inclusionists, otherwise we would not be here in the first place. The difference is just where we place the bar for inclusion - or perhaps our view of what constitutes an encyclopaedia or an encyclopaedic subject.
There is too much strife at present, and I don't know why. I suspect that the recent backlash against "tabloid" stuff is partly to blame, but I don't really know.
What I have noticed is that there are more people out there who are prepared to bolster trolls and shout from the sidelines. Maybe that's just the disputes I get involved in, but it does appear to me that there are more, and more aggressive, POV-pushers and trolls these days. Yes, my personal experience does inform this, I currently have a problem with some utterly baffling "overturn" advocates on a deletion review for a laundry list of grudges against me by an editor with fewer than 100 mainspace edits; the grudge list sat unedited in his user space for nearly six months, and no RfC is ever likely to be brought because his complaint is clearly and unequivocally baseless, but the troll-enablers are out in force. Which goes to reinforce my current disaffection with the whole project.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
There seems to be a lot of troll enabling at AfD AND a shocking number of accounts created to simply participate in one AfD. I keep stumbling over there and finding myself in a different cyber space than Wikipedia.
In the meantime, getting some sort of funnel that keeps the obvious crap from being kept for 7 days would be good, or any system that says, "look you moron, you could hardly be lamer, let's be decent to you and erase all evidence of your loserhood," would be great.
And what's with all the editors who tell me I can't clean up an article while it awaits the trash heap? If it's up for deletion, and it's going to be hanging around for another week as a certifiable piece of crap, the first thing I do is edit the article to the least offending version possible.
If we create a funnel, let's make sure it gives no indication that the article has to stay looking like crap all the while it's up for deletion, whether 2 days, or 1 hour.
I even edited 2 attack BLPs before I put the attack label on them. They were deleted in under 15 minutes, but no one needed an effortless view of the crap in those 15 minutes.
Yes, funnel.
KP
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On 7/14/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
As much of an inclusionist as I am, compared to Guy certainly, there really is a lot of crap that gets a one week free ride, that I wouldn't mind seeing reduced to a 2 day free ride.
You might not realize it but you have just accurately described most of what can be found in the daily image deletion categories, each of which is horribly backlogged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:DailyDeletionCategories
—C.W.
That's a good one. One of the points of expedited cleanup should be : do we want the original contributor to return and edit again in the future? Will they be upset to find the article has moved or disappeared? How can we make them feel welcome in the community while critiquing and changing their work? which is one of the important aspects of review that gets lost in many AfD processes.
To your next post: agreed that this shouldn't be bureaucratic; just an implementation of polite interactions and good faith to improve and lend better context to deletion discussions.
SJ
On 7/14/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:55:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Brilliant!
And one of the outcomes should be: expedited cleanup. If not performed, it can be stubbed or deleted after a week.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:38:49 -0700, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
That's a good one. One of the points of expedited cleanup should be : do we want the original contributor to return and edit again in the future? Will they be upset to find the article has moved or disappeared? How can we make them feel welcome in the community while critiquing and changing their work? which is one of the important aspects of review that gets lost in many AfD processes.
To your next post: agreed that this shouldn't be bureaucratic; just an implementation of polite interactions and good faith to improve and lend better context to deletion discussions.
Yes. And the message to the contributor should be: thank you for contributing, we hope you will help us fix this article and in the process find out more about how we write and how we measure the quality of articles.
Guy (JzG)
On 7/15/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 13:38:49 -0700, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
That's a good one. One of the points of expedited cleanup should be : do we want the original contributor to return and edit again in the future? Will they be upset to find the article has moved or disappeared? How can we make them feel welcome in the community while critiquing and changing their work? which is one of the important aspects of review that gets lost in many AfD processes.
To your next post: agreed that this shouldn't be bureaucratic; just an implementation of polite interactions and good faith to improve and lend better context to deletion discussions.
Yes. And the message to the contributor should be: thank you for contributing, we hope you will help us fix this article and in the process find out more about how we write and how we measure the quality of articles.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
That would work for a lot of the good faith created crap. As David pointed out I sometimes just offer to fix an article, or create something related that more notable, when I suspect good faith on the part of the creator, and when it's a topic I can write about without much work. I really think it's easier to improve an article and requires less Wiki hours than an AfD. This would also get those nominating articles for deletion to actually look at the articles while they're up for review. It would stop annoying the hell out of those of us like CW and I who want to slap those idiots who put articles up for deletion who don't really think the article should be deleted. It could also bring some horrid articles up for attention. Overall it would be, imo, a better use of resources. (time resources)
(I've found that if there is a COI involved offering to improve the article backfires seriously--no one with a COI can see their own crap.)
KP
On 7/15/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
(I've found that if there is a COI involved offering to improve the article backfires seriously--no one with a COI can see their own crap.)
if it's good crap, nothing else matters. I never liked the "COI" buzzword any more than the "notability" one.
Overheard on Wikipedia (name the song and performer, be the sixth caller):
"in a nutshell: Comment on content, not on the contributor."
But if you try telling that to the self-appointed "COI police" and yes, you will most certainly be called a troll (not that most of them would recognize the above quotation).
—C.W.
On 7/15/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/15/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
(I've found that if there is a COI involved offering to improve the article backfires seriously--no one with a COI can see their own crap.)
if it's good crap, nothing else matters. I never liked the "COI" buzzword any more than the "notability" one.
Overheard on Wikipedia (name the song and performer, be the sixth caller):
"in a nutshell: Comment on content, not on the contributor."
But if you try telling that to the self-appointed "COI police" and yes, you will most certainly be called a troll (not that most of them would recognize the above quotation).
—C.W.
The problem with the COI police is they don't understand that having a COI doesn't make the article's topic non-notable--I have to comment on about 20% of the AfDs I participate in with the quote from the COI page about it not being a reason for deletion, yet many deletionists do offer up COI.
One reason they do wind up on AfD all the tim, is COI articles are oftentimes some of the most poorly written crap on Wikipedia.
It's all this extremism. I can't say to someone, look your COI makes this article pure crap, can you back off and let someone competenet write the article, because the COI cops will say, "See it should be deleted." What I want to be able to do is delete the COI editor for long enough to get the article up to snuff.
And when the contributor's content is pure-unadorned crap, they're not really able to understand comments like, "your article needs rewritten for a general audience, the content needs arranged in a logical and flowing manner for the reader, words should be spelled with a variant of the English language, you should use complete sentences (they must have subjects it's often difficult information to impart), this is a general audience, just because you wrote the technical paper on the subject doesn't mean you should be allowed to publish on Wiki, please use paragraphs, a set of 7 different lists does not an article make, the sources have to be related to what you claim they say, even if you can read the author's mind...."
I've had serious problems with COI editors, like the Leah01 Daniel Rodriguez sock-puppet family. It's a good article, I'd like it to stay that way, and it can, as long as this family of sock puppets keeps their mitts off of it.
COI isn't just a buzzword, it's a real problem with a lot of people intent on using Wikipedia as their promotional venue.
But the COI police aren't helping.
KP
On 7/15/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
COI isn't just a buzzword, it's a real problem with a lot of people intent on using Wikipedia as their promotional venue.
But the COI police aren't helping.
The same correlation could be drawn between happy-go-lucky vandals and the intense nimrods of the CVU or whatever it is now called.
People need to relax!
Of course that's what I'll still be saying when I create my top secret "counter-deletionism unit".
—C.W.
That is even potentially helpful--if a COI person responds that way, it's a good sign that the article may be very dubious indeed. If I remove the detailed product list as advertising, with an explanation that with it in, the article looks like advertising and is likely to be deleted, and the editor immediately puts it back, that does tend to show the purpose of the article, and I am much more likely to say G11.
On 7/15/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
(I've found that if there is a COI involved offering to improve the
article backfires seriously--no one with a COI can see their own crap.)
KP
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SJ schreef:
We've renamed VfD this once, to get rid of the 'votes', since it shouldn't be about votes. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the D, since it isn't really about deletion -- which involves an initial assumption of bad faith -- but about review: what is the author thinking? If the author is really trying to convey useful information about an encyclopedic and notable subject (good faith), how can we help them improve their work / extract better information from them / guide them to reasonable style guidelines? "Articles for Deletion" could be something related, very specific, and altogether different.
AfD really is about deletion: at least 75% (I don't know the exact percentage) of the articles brought to AfD are deleted. Naming it anything but "Votes for Deletion" misrepresents what is happening. That could lead to new contributors missing the point of the nomination, and that may lower the probability that the article is improved. (At least, that was an objection the last time this was proposed.)
It might be sensible to have a cleanly generalized "Articles for Review" page that decides what to do with articles that have trouble. Does it get pushed off to a subgroup, say via {{delete}} or {{cleanup}}? perhaps there are niceties to be followed when deleting something -- check in with the main authors, decide whether or not to delete the talk page as well, archive as appropriate, update inbound links, doublecheck that the authors aren't serially doing something they shouldn't be. This could go to an "articles for deletion" project -- at which point it is not about WHETHER to delete, but HOW.
So the decision to delete an article or not is taken entirely at the "Articles for Review" page? See above about misleading page names.
And what do you mean by "HOW"? There is only one way to delete an article: the "delete" tag at the top of the page. (Proposals to merge or redirect should not be brought to AfD, at the moment; those are just part of "normal editting")
Finally, do we need a variant of #REDIRECT that clearly identifies that the original title should have its own separate article someday, but doesn't now?
We already have that: [[Template:R with possibilities]].
something that allows links to still show up as red in MediaWiki?
Not a red link; people who want to know more about the subject will not click them, defeating the whole point of a redirect; and people who would want to create an article would arrive at an existing page...
Perhaps a normal blue link, but one which ends up at an intermediate page? "We have no article about this subject, but we do have one on this related subject: [[.....]]. If you want to start a new article with this name, click [here]." That could be done without changing MediaWiki, of course.
Eugene
Rummages through old moldy filing cabinets...
Heureka! Here it is, *cough*, *cough*.
Slaps folder a couple of times to get most of the dust and cobwebs from it...
*COUGH* *COUGH* *COUCH*
Tadaa!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cimon_avaro/workspace&old...
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 7/14/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
AfD really is about deletion: at least 75% (I don't know the exact percentage) of the articles brought to AfD are deleted. Naming it anything but "Votes for Deletion" misrepresents what is happening. That could lead to new contributors missing the point of the nomination, and that may lower the probability that the article is improved. (At least, that was an objection the last time this was proposed.)
Eugene
But it's not about improving the article. Oftentimes when I improve an article that has been up for deletion, the person who nominated it doesn't even notice the improvements, instead still proposing deletion based upon faults that have been corrected. The most recent time this happened the nominator did, when I pointed this out, go back and reread the article, agree it had been greatly improved, and removed the AfD tag. But, not until after he had responded to my vote for keep with a comment about how poorly written the article was, that showed he clearly was not watching improvements to the article.
Articles nominated for deletion are often there simply because, for whatever reason, someone is trying to get them deleted. This is creating things like the guy who edited the page, then nominated it for deletion because it was missing what he edited out, nominating Rock Climbing and Society for Creative Anachronism for deletion, nominating things for deletion in an an area where the nominator knows nothing about the area.
I keep thinking there must be a barnstar for most articles deleted that people are going after.
I don't think that missing an opportunity for improvement is going to be an issue, because it seems that articles are being nominated by people who are not willing to see any improvement in the first place.
KP
K P wrote:
Articles nominated for deletion are often there simply because, for whatever reason, someone is trying to get them deleted. This is creating things like the guy who edited the page, then nominated it for deletion because it was missing what he edited out, nominating Rock Climbing and Society for Creative Anachronism for deletion, nominating things for deletion in an an area where the nominator knows nothing about the area.
I keep thinking there must be a barnstar for most articles deleted that people are going after.
I don't think that missing an opportunity for improvement is going to be an issue, because it seems that articles are being nominated by people who are not willing to see any improvement in the first place.
Is it technically feasible to have a bot that records the time of the most recent edit of an article, and shows that time on the AfD page? Every new edit would then reset the clock before the article could be deleted.
Ec
On 7/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Is it technically feasible to have a bot that records the time of the most recent edit of an article, and shows that time on the AfD page? Every new edit would then reset the clock before the article could be deleted.
It may be worth considering that there are two general classes of articles which we often delete:
1. Subjects which might be worth writing about, but not the way the current article does so. A recent example I remember was the article [[Rendering water]]. (The article explained that rendering CGI water was "difficult", but said very little beyond that.) Allowing cleanup during AfD for these articles would often be helpful.
2. Subjects which should not have articles written about them, period. Many lists fall under this category (such as one that's currently up for AfD: [[List of movies broadcast by Nickelodeon]]), as well as a number of high-profile articles like [[Brian Peppers]]. No amount of cleanup will make such an article necessary or appropriate.
Allowing AfD to distinguish better between these two classes might be of value. Currently, the closest we get to making a distinction is occasional closes "without prejudice against a [sourced/verifiable/comprehensible] article".
zetawoof wrote:
On 7/15/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Is it technically feasible to have a bot that records the time of the most recent edit of an article, and shows that time on the AfD page? Every new edit would then reset the clock before the article could be deleted.
It may be worth considering that there are two general classes of articles which we often delete:
- Subjects which might be worth writing about, but not the way the
current article does so. A recent example I remember was the article [[Rendering water]]. (The article explained that rendering CGI water was "difficult", but said very little beyond that.) Allowing cleanup during AfD for these articles would often be helpful.
- Subjects which should not have articles written about them, period.
Many lists fall under this category (such as one that's currently up for AfD: [[List of movies broadcast by Nickelodeon]]), as well as a number of high-profile articles like [[Brian Peppers]]. No amount of cleanup will make such an article necessary or appropriate.
At this stage I'm more interested in the technical feasibility without getting into any of the criteria that are either used or misused for deleting articles. Articles that continue to be edited within the deletion period are at least alive. The high-profile articles of the type you mention don't have this problem, but they remain a very tiny proportion of all articles.
Ec
On 7/14/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
SJ schreef:
We've renamed VfD this once, to get rid of the 'votes', since it shouldn't be about votes. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the D, since it isn't really about deletion -- which involves an initial assumption of bad faith -- but about review: what is the author thinking? If the author is really trying to convey useful information about an encyclopedic and notable subject (good faith), how can we help them improve their work / extract better information from them / guide them to reasonable style guidelines? "Articles for Deletion" could be something related, very specific, and altogether different.
AfD really is about deletion: at least 75% (I don't know the exact percentage) of the articles brought to AfD are deleted. Naming it anything but "Votes for Deletion" misrepresents what is happening. That could lead to new contributors missing the point of the nomination, and that may lower the probability that the article is improved. (At least, that was an objection the last time this was proposed.)
You contradict yourself here -- yes, many articles brought to AfD are deleted, but you suggest that "the probability that the article is improved" is important; highlighting that AfD is not simply about "delete or keep" but about maintaining quality. And even the deleted articles should often not be deleted without any further action; catching up with the original authors, merging useful information from articles not notable enough to have their own keyword,The current formulation encourages the occasional bad faith discussion.
But we don't need to speak in the abstract. Take some of today's AfD entries, for instance: they include [[Bubbles the Clown]], [[Katie Hopkins]], [[Chess strategy]] and [[Chess tactics]] -- all of which (even the first) are well written, contributed to by many people, well to very-well referenced or linked, and in the latter two cases have been around for five years.
None of the AfD discussion about these articles had the subtlety of - considering original photos or illustrations created for them -- a PD photo of Ms. Hopkins, disgrams for the chess articles, an audio recording of the Bubbles article - considering the extent of the article's editing history and contributions - addressing discussions on their talk pages, some of which was about merging or POV; contacting WikiProjects committed to the articles that had templated their talk pages
Instead, while noone claimed that these articles did not contain useful information that was carefully put together to inform an audience, the discussions take an oppositional tone: Delete v. Keep, pushing to persuade in a sentence or two, not to find ways to make the contributions of the existing authors useful. [It occurs to me that having such debates and not transcluding them onto the article talk pages points to a deeper problem. None of the four articles mentioned had a peep of the AfD thread on their talk pages...]
A comment from the chess page AfDs: * Keep. If WP:NOT says this article should be deleted, WP:NOT is broken. JulesH 19:00, 15 July 2007 (UTC) ** It may be, but I dont think an AFD is the place to discuss changes to policy. Corpx 19:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Again, a reason these discussions should, in cases that are not claerly about 'how to delete', be active reviews, providing feedback to confused editors and broken policy as needed.
It might be sensible to have a cleanly generalized "Articles for Review" page that decides what to do with articles that have trouble. Does it get pushed off to a subgroup, say via {{delete}} or {{cleanup}}? perhaps there are niceties to be followed when deleting something -- check in with the main authors, decide whether or not to delete the talk page as well, archive as appropriate, update inbound links, doublecheck that the authors aren't serially doing something they shouldn't be. This could go to an "articles for deletion" project -- at which point it is not about WHETHER to delete, but HOW.
So the decision to delete an article or not is taken entirely at the "Articles for Review" page? See above about misleading page names.
You review an article that is causing someone trouble, to consider the best way to handle it. One possibility is deletion.
if a review points to deletion, an AfD discussion might decide it should not be deleted after all -- this might be a more friendly version of DRV, carried out by people who care specifically about deletion and deletion policy, but while the article is still public for all to view its content and edit history. (NB: this could also remedy one of the troubles with DRV, pushing the abstract idea of policy/decision review to a more universal forum for [[Policy appeals]].)
And what do you mean by "HOW"? There is only one way to delete an article: the "delete" tag at the top of the page. (Proposals to merge or redirect should not be brought to AfD, at the moment; those are just part of "normal editting")
I elaborated a bit before. One of the purposes of an AfD discussion would be about whether that was in fact suitable; people at AfD presumably knowing the most about deletion policy and tips. Then the question is how to properly carry out the admin and style guidelines for deleting something.
A meticulous process would notify the major authors of an article, and WikiProjects which are following it; looks for content in the article to merge -- this is no longer a part of 'normal editing' since once the closing admin carries out a deletion, normal editors cannot see content to merge it. Such a process could also check that any important talk-page sections and the deletion/review discussions are preserved, and cleans up any images or media that are orphaned as a result.... and it could offer contributing authors a way to get an archival copy of the article and its history for their records [since in the future it would both not be available to regular editors to view old permalinks, and not be exported in database dumps].
A crude process would delete article and talk page without further consideration. And an aggressive process would delete these, and work to prevent others from archiving copies of the text or edit history.
These last options happen now on occasion with large, long-lived articles, and can be deeply offensive. As an example, consider the deletion (and removal of copies from user-space) of [[Wikipedia:Eleventy-billion pool]], something I wish had not happened.
SJ
Thank you for your long answer; I understand your ideas a bit better now. Still some questions/remarks.
SJ schreef:
On 7/14/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
SJ schreef:
You contradict yourself here -- yes, many articles brought to AfD are deleted, but you suggest that "the probability that the article is improved" is important; highlighting that AfD is not simply about "delete or keep" but about maintaining quality.
I guess I meant something like: we should not scare away the newbies, and so we should give them the chance to improve the article, even though we know it probably won't happen. What I'm afraid of is something like:
New wikipedian: Hey, where is my article? Oldbies: We deleted it. N: Why didn't you tell me? O: You should have watched the article; it was clearly tagged for Articles for Review, because it needed to be cleaned up. N: I saw that, and I loved the idea of other people polishing up my article, but instead you deleted it! O: *shrug* 90% of all articles brought before AfR are deleted, so you could have expected it...
But I think that your two-phase proposal would not get these reactions, as long as the notices are formulated with some care.
And even the deleted articles should often not be deleted without any further action;
That is not true. If any further action should be taken (like merging useful content), most likely the article shouldn't be deleted; just redirected (and that means that there was no need for the article to be at AfD).
(I'm cutting a large part of your answer here; that is not because I don't appreciate it; as I said, it clarified your ideas.)
[It occurs to me that having such debates and not transcluding them onto the article talk pages points to a deeper problem. None of the four articles mentioned had a peep of the AfD thread on their talk pages...]
Transcluding the AfD page on the talk page... that wouldn't be a bad idea at all...
Again, a reason these discussions should, in cases that are not claerly about 'how to delete', be active reviews, providing feedback to confused editors and broken policy as needed.
(snip)
if a review points to deletion, an AfD discussion might decide it should not be deleted after all -- this might be a more friendly version of DRV, carried out by people who care specifically about deletion and deletion policy, but while the article is still public for all to view its content and edit history.
So, and I'm paraphrasing here, your suggestion is:
* Replace AfD with a two phase process, doubling the amount of work that needs to be done; * increase the quality of discussion in the first phase by asking contributors to put a whole lot more effort into constructive criticism; * and only allow a small part of our editors (the friendly, sensible ones) to comment in the deletion phase.
I agree that such a system, if it were possible, would solve a lot of problems with AfD.
A meticulous process would notify the major authors of an article, and WikiProjects which are following it; looks for content in the article to merge -- this is no longer a part of 'normal editing' since once the closing admin carries out a deletion, normal editors cannot see content to merge it.
See above: if content should be merged, it should be visible to normal editors (which is equivalent to: if normal editors cannot see any content to be merged, the content should not be merged).
Eugene
On 7/17/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
[It occurs to me that having such debates and not transcluding them onto the article talk pages points to a deeper problem. None of the four articles mentioned had a peep of the AfD thread on their talk pages...]
Transcluding the AfD page on the talk page... that wouldn't be a bad idea at all...
We already put a small banner on the talk page with an AfD result. Making that banner a collapsible box (default-collapsed) and transcluding the discussion itself, would be a significant improvement.
On 7/17/07, Michael Noda michael.noda@gmail.com wrote:
We already put a small banner on the talk page with an AfD result. Making that banner a collapsible box (default-collapsed) and transcluding the discussion itself, would be a significant improvement.
I don't think that would have any effect beyond making talk pages take noticeably longer to load.
—C.W.
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:51:56 -0700, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
It might be sensible to have a cleanly generalized "Articles for Review" page that decides what to do with articles that have trouble.
Yes. But not a bureaucratic system, hopefully, just a way of saying "hey, this article has issues" and getting more eyes, maybe a fix, and finally if there is an obvious consensus that the topic is silly, remove it.
Guy (JzG)
On 7/14/07, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
This post gave me an interesting idea.
<snip/>
Even speaking as someone who always got annoyed as hell at people who put an AFD tag on something and then openly admit they have no desire to see it deleted (usually they just want what they think will be a permanently binding "to merge or not to merge") I still kinda sorta agree with what you're saying about de-emphasizing the possible outcome of deletion.
We have "good article review" and "featured article review". Maybe the next step is to shut down the AFD process and replace it with some sort of "shitty article review" with the expectation that people actually familiarize themselves with the article content, and try also to familiarize themselves (as best they can) with the subject before commenting.
An added "learning curve" if you will could reduce the amount of derogatory drive-by "NN, delete" voters. For each article, rather than asking people whether they think something is "deletable", we should focus on less destructive options such as merging, removing unsourced material, finding new sources, adding new material, picking up the slack and actually trying to succeed where the original writer failed.
Finally, do we need a variant of #REDIRECT that clearly identifies that the original title should have its own separate article someday, but doesn't now? something that allows links to still show up as red in MediaWiki?
We do have various templates for categorizing redirects, such as {{R with possibilities}}.
I doubt it would be a good idea to make such links appear red (or even in a third color like purple or green) because for every dedicated wiki-gnome on the project there are at least 2.5 gremlins who will wander around at the same pace, silently removing removing the brackets from every red link they see. This group overlaps somewhat with the other people who systematically change all redirects to piped links because they think it makes the server go faster.
As a result, whenever somebody does write an article, but it will be low-hanging fruit for the AFD trolls (at least the ones who often patrol [[Category:Orphaned articles]]). Eager readers and editors interested in related subjects won't even notice that it came and went.
Later we might get a second draft (maybe 10-15 Kb) from somebody who is more serious about their editing and goes to great lengths to ensure that every article mentioning the topic also has the decency to link to it. This person might get blocked for "link spam" and the article will get a {{db-repost}} tag from some new-fangled automated script which checks each new page creation against the deletion log for that title.
Before anyone says I'm grossly exaggerating, I'm going to say no, not really. I've seen all of these happen. Not with the same article of course, but it's only a matter of time before Wikipedia finishes becoming its own worst enemy.
There's tons of room for improvement in every step of the game, however it's not an issue of technique but more of a cultural problem and I don't have any ideas on how to fix it.
Honestly, what can be done about people who have an overtly deletionist agenda from the moment they arrive, ones who ostensibly think they are helping the project by putting a {{prod-nn}} on every politician from Bangladesh or every actor from Argentina or every soccer player from Upper Whatchacallistan.
"this article is about a subject which may not be <span class="angry salad">[[WP:N|notable]]</span> enough to be included on Wikipedia"
Seriously who the comes up with this shit and why the hell do we still have it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_May_2...
What can I say, we've met our enemy and it is definitely us.
—C.W.
Guy writes:
We are all inclusionists, otherwise we would not be here in the first place. The difference is just where we place the bar for inclusion...
I like this :-) It should go right below a quote about how "the art of writing an encyclopedia is deciding what to leave out"
On 7/15/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
Even speaking as someone who always got annoyed as hell at people who put an AFD tag on something and then openly admit they have no desire to see it deleted (usually they just want what they think will be a permanently binding "to merge or not to merge") I still kinda sorta agree with what you're saying about de-emphasizing the possible outcome of deletion.
We have "good article review" and "featured article review". Maybe the next step is to shut down the AFD process and replace it with some sort of "shitty article review" with the expectation that people actually familiarize themselves with the article content, and try also to familiarize themselves (as best they can) with the subject before commenting.
An added "learning curve" if you will could reduce the amount of derogatory drive-by "NN, delete" voters. For each article, rather than asking people whether they think something is "deletable", we should focus on less destructive options such as merging, removing unsourced material, finding new sources, adding new material, picking up the slack and actually trying to succeed where the original writer failed.
Yes. Based on topic alone, one should be able to figure out which few articles are suitable for sending directly to an AfD discussion; if the topic could potentially have a good encyclopedic article, or a section or sentence in one, it should not go to AfD. If the topic might in itself be deletable - neologisms, OR, spam - then it could.
Treating a 3-year-old 5000-word article the same way as a one-day one-paragraph article ---- the idea that the former could possible be eligible for speedy deletion, or that a 5-day deletion discussion without actively tracking down original authors is appropriate ---- is poor form. While we don't want the typical AfD process to be made longer, we need to have a very different, longer-timeframe process for figuring out how to be good stewards of information and history that has been part of Wikipedia for a while... even when changing standards suggest such material may no longer merit main-namespace keywords.
++SJ
Steven Walling wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
That seems a strange way to put it.
From my perspective, one of the best things about Wikipedia is the way we continually check over each other's work. The belief that other people will catch and fix my mistakes helps me be bold. As long as people honor my good faith, I'm delighted when they catch my moments of poor judgment.
William
On 7/15/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Steven Walling wrote:
"Unfortunately this is not always the case. AfD nominators are not perfect and are sometimes operating at least partly in ignorance about the subject of the article."
So in other words, in urgin people to check every AFD, the project assumes good faith and poor judgement, intelligence (or both) on the part of all nominators. that's even better.
That seems a strange way to put it.
From my perspective, one of the best things about Wikipedia is the way we continually check over each other's work. The belief that other people will catch and fix my mistakes helps me be bold. As long as people honor my good faith, I'm delighted when they catch my moments of poor judgment.
William
I couldn't write for Wikipedia without my squadron of copyedit stalkers. I love them all.
KP
Ben Yates wrote:
Sign up to help those articles unable to help themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
Your example of Pownce is probably not the best one you could pick. I think it passes, probably, because of the Business Week and SFC coverage, but just barely. I can certainly see why people argued to delete the old version of it, and if it were at AfD now I'd give it a weak keep at best. "Notable founder" != "notable thing". (If only we could change "deletion culture" to unambiguously recognize -that-...). Right now, though, I'm more concerned with stuff that should be deleted that's still around, than stuff that got deleted and shouldn't have.