- Yes, this is a rant, but please bear with me... it becomes less rant-like ;)
See also the recent thread "Dartmouth follies".
Votes for deletion have gone through the roof. At the start of August, the average number of pages voted for deletion per day was two. Now it is somewhere between 25 and 30, and I see no reason to expect this to stop increasing.
Most of the articles are listed there for the wrong reasons. For instance, someone sees a badly written article - they list it on vfd. This page is useless without major expansion - vfd. A topic I've never heard of, and think is obscure - vfd.
Articles are often voted for with little or no reason. Here's an example: "Simply not notable enough, I'm afraid."
So what? As an example, one page being VfDed at the moment is about a club established in 1888, with many thousands of members (don't look for it, this is just an example). Why should the votes of 7 deletionists matter more than the thousands of people who may potentially look up the article? For that matter, why should the votes of even 100 Wikipedians matter, if the article is likely to be looked up by many people?
The inherent bias of this page towards deletionism has been previously discussed on this list.
It's pretty clear that VfD is going beyond it's original purpose, is wasting a lot of time for no good reason, and in many cases conflicts with other principles of Wikipedia. For instance, stubs are being deleted just because they are stubs, even though they are very expandable.
I think it is clear that we need some tighter guidelines on reasons why something should be voted for deletion. I've originated a policy, Wikipedia:Importance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Importance), which attempts to establish some, and isn't doomed to failure like the previous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance. Feel free to disagree with me, comment (*not* vote) and propose changes etc. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia talk:Importance.
I'm not so much trying to push my personal viewpoint here, as trying to establish consensus and stop people wasting their time. If the community decides "no articles about obscure topics", that's fine, but let's make that policy and not argue about it in a hundred different places over and over again. Let's not waste people's time by encouraging them to start articles on the one hand, and on the other deleting them because some other people think they're not important. Let's establish some common ground, and stop driving people away.
-- Chris Wood
Good luck!!!! It requires teaching people common sense. Ec
Chris Wood wrote:
- Yes, this is a rant, but please bear with me... it becomes less rant-like
;)
See also the recent thread "Dartmouth follies".
Votes for deletion have gone through the roof. At the start of August, the average number of pages voted for deletion per day was two. Now it is somewhere between 25 and 30, and I see no reason to expect this to stop increasing.
Most of the articles are listed there for the wrong reasons. For instance, someone sees a badly written article - they list it on vfd. This page is useless without major expansion - vfd. A topic I've never heard of, and think is obscure - vfd.
Articles are often voted for with little or no reason. Here's an example: "Simply not notable enough, I'm afraid."
So what? As an example, one page being VfDed at the moment is about a club established in 1888, with many thousands of members (don't look for it, this is just an example). Why should the votes of 7 deletionists matter more than the thousands of people who may potentially look up the article? For that matter, why should the votes of even 100 Wikipedians matter, if the article is likely to be looked up by many people?
The inherent bias of this page towards deletionism has been previously discussed on this list.
It's pretty clear that VfD is going beyond it's original purpose, is wasting a lot of time for no good reason, and in many cases conflicts with other principles of Wikipedia. For instance, stubs are being deleted just because they are stubs, even though they are very expandable.
I think it is clear that we need some tighter guidelines on reasons why something should be voted for deletion. I've originated a policy, Wikipedia:Importance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Importance), which attempts to establish some, and isn't doomed to failure like the previous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fame_and_importance. Feel free to disagree with me, comment (*not* vote) and propose changes etc. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia talk:Importance.
I'm not so much trying to push my personal viewpoint here, as trying to establish consensus and stop people wasting their time. If the community decides "no articles about obscure topics", that's fine, but let's make that policy and not argue about it in a hundred different places over and over again. Let's not waste people's time by encouraging them to start articles on the one hand, and on the other deleting them because some other people think they're not important. Let's establish some common ground, and stop driving people away.
Chris Wood wrote:
Votes for deletion have gone through the roof. At the start of August, the average number of pages voted for deletion per day was two. Now it is somewhere between 25 and 30, and I see no reason to expect this to stop increasing.
I don't tend to involve myself much on VfD, but my gut feeling tells me that this can be easily counter-acted by simply removing inappropriate VfD listings.
So what we need is a policy that defines what VfD listings are appropriate.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Chris Wood wrote:
Votes for deletion have gone through the roof. At the start of August, the average number of pages voted for deletion per day was two. Now it is somewhere between 25 and 30, and I see no reason to expect this to stop increasing.
I don't tend to involve myself much on VfD, but my gut feeling tells me that this can be easily counter-acted by simply removing inappropriate VfD listings.
So what we need is a policy that defines what VfD listings are appropriate.
That's nice in theory. Still, there is a clique that tends to scream bloody murder if you remove things before they feel the time has come. Some of us would be glad to remove such items from the list as soon as they appear, but are not prepared to face all the bitching without backup.
If a member of the deletionist clique puts something on VfD he has immediate backup from his colleagues based on their mutual trust. For the rest of us the amount of time required to properly deal with these issues is a huge distraction from positive contributions.
I don't know if more policies will help. A fair and consistent applications may be more beneficial. Maybe anyone who has been around for at least a year should feel free to remove anything from the VfD without having to run the gauntlet.
Ec
Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
Maybe anyone who has been around for at least a year should feel free to remove anything from the VfD without having to run the gauntlet.
Maybe we should, but we would still encounter violent opposition. I've been around almost since the beginning (user number 30, if I recall correctly), yet criticisms of VfD -- and even jokes about VfD -- are eagerly adopted as personal attacks by RickK. I don't know what he would do if someone actually removed something without his approval.
Sean Barrett wrote:
Ray Saintonge stated for the record:
Maybe anyone who has been around for at least a year should feel free to remove anything from the VfD without having to run the gauntlet.
Maybe we should, but we would still encounter violent opposition. I've been around almost since the beginning (user number 30, if I recall correctly), yet criticisms of VfD -- and even jokes about VfD -- are eagerly adopted as personal attacks by RickK. I don't know what he would do if someone actually removed something without his approval.
The Prince of Whine would be in his element.
Ray
Why don't we encourage whoever listed the item in the first place to remove the item if it was inappropriate? Leave a note on the person's talk page asking them to remove it or remove it yourself and then allow the person the option of relisting it if he still disagrees. Of course, if we have a good number of people voting "delete" then the listing should obviously not be removed, but when consensus overwhelmingly to keep, what is the point of keeping the item listed?
Jiang
On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 10:35:28 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
That's nice in theory. Still, there is a clique that tends to scream bloody murder if you remove things before they feel the time has come. Some of us would be glad to remove such items from the list as soon as they appear, but are not prepared to face all the bitching without backup.
If a member of the deletionist clique puts something on VfD he has immediate backup from his colleagues based on their mutual trust. For the rest of us the amount of time required to properly deal with these issues is a huge distraction from positive contributions.
I don't know if more policies will help. A fair and consistent applications may be more beneficial. Maybe anyone who has been around for at least a year should feel free to remove anything from the VfD without having to run the gauntlet.
Ec
Why don't we encourage whoever listed the item in the first place to remove the item if it was inappropriate? Leave a note on the person's talk page asking them to remove it or remove it yourself and then allow the person the option of relisting it if he still disagrees. Of course, if we have a good number of people voting "delete" then the listing should obviously not be removed, but when consensus overwhelmingly to keep, what is the point of keeping the item listed?
Jiang
A good number of people may and do vote "delete" on inappropriate listings. A cadre of deletionists aren't always right.
-- Chris Wood
This doesn't mean the few listings that are voted outright and almost unanimous "keep" shouldn't be removed.
A cadre of inclusionists aren't always right either. If it's controversial, then it stays. This doesn't stop the non-controversial items from getting removed.
Jiang
On Sun, 5 Sep 2004 10:04:16 +1200, Chris Wood standsongrace@hotmail.com wrote:
Why don't we encourage whoever listed the item in the first place to remove the item if it was inappropriate? Leave a note on the person's talk page asking them to remove it or remove it yourself and then allow the person the option of relisting it if he still disagrees. Of course, if we have a good number of people voting "delete" then the listing should obviously not be removed, but when consensus overwhelmingly to keep, what is the point of keeping the item listed?
Jiang
A good number of people may and do vote "delete" on inappropriate listings. A cadre of deletionists aren't always right.
Chris Wood
This doesn't mean the few listings that are voted outright and almost unanimous "keep" shouldn't be removed.
A cadre of inclusionists aren't always right either. If it's controversial, then it stays. This doesn't stop the non-controversial items from getting removed.
Jiang
If there are 4 votes for deletion, and 2 for inclusion, the article is deleted. IMHO that's controversial, and not unanimous.
Life's not that easy. I at least agree with them that most of the articles in question are not candidates for a Pulitzer Prize. The most controversy seems to be rooted in whether the topic is important enough. There is a need to stop considering importance as an exercise in naval gazing. Articles about individual high schools are of absolutely no importance to me; I only went to one. No-one has yet written about it. I do not have the knowledge base to write about any other. How much time would I need to spend making myself sufficiently well-informed to pass judgement on somebody else's school? I know too that tomorrow I'll need to do the same thing over about some other school. I prefer to suspend my egocentrism long enough to recognize that the school that's put on VfD to-day may be important to somebody else, and have enough time left to make a positive contribution.
Ec
Uncle Jiang wrote:
Why don't we encourage whoever listed the item in the first place to remove the item if it was inappropriate? Leave a note on the person's talk page asking them to remove it or remove it yourself and then allow the person the option of relisting it if he still disagrees. Of course, if we have a good number of people voting "delete" then the listing should obviously not be removed, but when consensus overwhelmingly to keep, what is the point of keeping the item listed?
Jiang
Ray Saintonge wrote:
That's nice in theory. Still, there is a clique that tends to scream bloody murder if you remove things before they feel the time has come. Some of us would be glad to remove such items from the list as soon as they appear, but are not prepared to face all the bitching without backup.
If a member of the deletionist clique puts something on VfD he has immediate backup from his colleagues based on their mutual trust. For the rest of us the amount of time required to properly deal with these issues is a huge distraction from positive contributions.
I don't know if more policies will help. A fair and consistent applications may be more beneficial. Maybe anyone who has been around for at least a year should feel free to remove anything from the VfD without having to run the gauntlet.
You're really looking for an edit war, aren't you? If someone is so fired-up about an item being listed on VfD, they can make a reasoned argument for their case. What a surprise, it might just work. But just to delete the listing without discussion (or even with discussion) would not be a Good Thing.
RickK
Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote: I don't tend to involve myself much on VfD, but my gut feeling tells me that this can be easily counter-acted by simply removing inappropriate VfD listings.
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You're really looking for an edit war, aren't you? If someone is so
fired-up about an item being listed on VfD, they can make a reasoned argument for their case. What a surprise, it might just work. But just to delete the listing without discussion (or even with discussion) would not be a Good Thing.
RickK
Unless the listing is inappropriate.
-- Chris Wood
Rick wrote (polemics removed):
If someone is so fired-up about an item being listed on VfD, they can make a reasoned argument for their case. What a surprise, it might just work. But just to delete the listing without discussion (or even with discussion) would not be a Good Thing.
Maybe you missed the point that VfD is growing too large to be maintainable, which is not a Good Thing.
Timwi
"Timwi" timwi@gmx.net wrote in message news:chcgmk$f4f$2@sea.gmane.org...
I don't tend to involve myself much on VfD, but my gut feeling tells me that this can be easily counter-acted by simply removing inappropriate VfD listings.
So what we need is a policy that defines what VfD listings are
appropriate.
Enter Wikipedia:Importance.
-- Chris Wood