Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I got blocked by Kim Bruning - until 21:08 today, a very specific time.
No good deed goes unpunished: I had just finished apologizing for the VFD deletion, and was just beginning to make some progress with Uninvited Company when I got the shock of my young (Wikipedian) life.
Well, at least now I can say I know how it feels to be blocked (and without warning, to boot).
I guess this is a bigger deal than I thought. Not that I really understand it all, I'm too simple and naïve. I guess I fit the liberal stereotype of Christians being "ignorant and easily-led", because I'm going to do just what I was told to do, i.e., shut up until the block expires.
Your obed't servant,
Ed Poor
What good dead? Well, atleast you got us talking about vfd!
On 8/3/05, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I got blocked by Kim Bruning - until 21:08 today, a very specific time.
No good deed goes unpunished: I had just finished apologizing for the VFD deletion, and was just beginning to make some progress with Uninvited Company when I got the shock of my young (Wikipedian) life.
Well, at least now I can say I know how it feels to be blocked (and without warning, to boot).
I guess this is a bigger deal than I thought. Not that I really understand it all, I'm too simple and naïve. I guess I fit the liberal stereotype of Christians being "ignorant and easily-led", because I'm going to do just what I was told to do, i.e., shut up until the block expires.
Your obed't servant,
Ed Poor _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I don't want this mailing list to degenerate into a flame war here, but I really think you have no cause to be acting indignant. A simple "I'm sorry about the trouble I caused, it won't happen again" would have made me, and a lot of other people, forget about this entirely. But what you're saying here makes me think that once you are unblocked, it very well might happen again. That prospect scares me, and makes me think you ought to be blocked a lot longer. Your crack about "liberal stereotypes" is just a bitter, bigoted jab that is icing on the cake.
We're trying to make an encyclopedia here. You disrupted it -- _enormously_ -- just to make a point.
- Ryan
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I got blocked by Kim Bruning - until 21:08 today, a very specific time.
No good deed goes unpunished: I had just finished apologizing for the VFD deletion, and was just beginning to make some progress with Uninvited Company when I got the shock of my young (Wikipedian) life.
Well, at least now I can say I know how it feels to be blocked (and without warning, to boot).
I guess this is a bigger deal than I thought. Not that I really understand it all, I'm too simple and naïve. I guess I fit the liberal stereotype of Christians being "ignorant and easily-led", because I'm going to do just what I was told to do, i.e., shut up until the block expires.
Your obed't servant,
Ed Poor _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Ryan Delaney wrote
But what you're saying here makes me think that once you are unblocked, it very well might happen again. That prospect scares me, and makes me think you ought to be blocked a lot longer. Your crack about "liberal stereotypes" is just a bitter, bigoted jab that is icing on the cake.
We're trying to make an encyclopedia here. You disrupted it -- _enormously_ -- just to make a point.
Ed manages to be a prat, without really making (many) enemies. Which means he 'gets away with it'. Things would be improved by his not acting the fool periodically.
Charles
Ed manages to be a prat, without really making (many) enemies. Which means he 'gets away with it'. Things would be improved by his not acting the fool periodically.
Charles
Actually, ed has pissed me off about as often and thoroughly as he was able, and I ''still'' say he did the right thing here, and has nothing to apologise for. VfD deserves deletion, and I seem to remember Jimbo considering deleting it himself about a year ago. The '''worst''' aspect of the wiki is its "wiki-democracy", and all its ugly manifestations. The majority has no claim to the truth, esp. when its a majority of those who happen to know about some obscure vote, failing to announce it to anyone other than their partisan cronies.
Jack (Sam Spade)
Jack Lynch wrote:
Actually, ed has pissed me off about as often and thoroughly as he was able, and I ''still'' say he did the right thing here, and has nothing to apologise for. VfD deserves deletion, and I seem to remember Jimbo considering deleting it himself about a year ago. The '''worst''' aspect of the wiki is its "wiki-democracy", and all its ugly manifestations. The majority has no claim to the truth, esp. when its a majority of those who happen to know about some obscure vote, failing to announce it to anyone other than their partisan cronies.
The problem with the proposals to do away with it is that none so far has proposed anything better (or at least people haven't been convinced the alternative proposals are better). There is plenty of stuff that goes through VfD that ought to be deleted; only a small percentage of the stuff on VfD is contentious in any way.
If VfD is done away with and no alternative deletion process is provided, then those types of pages will simply be speedy-deleted. In itself that would be fine, since the majority are obvious, but having a VfD process helps sometimes IMO, because occasionally an admin will mis-identify something as an obvious deletion candidate when it really shouldn't be, and others will point out his error before the page is actually deleted.
-Mark
Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [050804 06:01]:
The problem with the proposals to do away with it is that none so far has proposed anything better (or at least people haven't been convinced the alternative proposals are better). There is plenty of stuff that goes through VfD that ought to be deleted; only a small percentage of the stuff on VfD is contentious in any way.
I sincerely believe the current VFD process and culture is so poisonous to Wikipedia that, at least for the moment, we would be better just letting the disks fill with band vanity, original research and poo jokes.
If VfD is done away with and no alternative deletion process is provided, then those types of pages will simply be speedy-deleted. In itself that would be fine, since the majority are obvious, but having a VfD process helps sometimes IMO, because occasionally an admin will mis-identify something as an obvious deletion candidate when it really shouldn't be, and others will point out his error before the page is actually deleted.
I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism - no-one's who's done Special:Newpages patrol could possibly disagree IMO. And over 95% of what hits VFD needs a sudden and painful death.
But VFD as it exists is sick and diseased and a powerful net negative.
- d.
On 8/3/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [050804 06:01]:
The problem with the proposals to do away with it is that none so far has proposed anything better (or at least people haven't been convinced the alternative proposals are better). There is plenty of stuff that goes through VfD that ought to be deleted; only a small percentage of the stuff on VfD is contentious in any way.
I sincerely believe the current VFD process and culture is so poisonous to Wikipedia that, at least for the moment, we would be better just letting the disks fill with band vanity, original research and poo jokes.
I tend to agree. We have all the time in the world to remove crap from Wikipedia. I think that paying too much attention to deleting things at this early stage is a mistake.
If VfD is done away with and no alternative deletion process is provided, then those types of pages will simply be speedy-deleted. In itself that would be fine, since the majority are obvious, but having a VfD process helps sometimes IMO, because occasionally an admin will mis-identify something as an obvious deletion candidate when it really shouldn't be, and others will point out his error before the page is actually deleted.
I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism - no-one's who's done Special:Newpages patrol could possibly disagree IMO. And over 95% of what hits VFD needs a sudden and painful death.
But VFD as it exists is sick and diseased and a powerful net negative.
The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or no-brainer merges.
My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem article tag for a week gets deleted.
I also think that vanity pages should be redirected to [[WP:VAIN]] and band pages, maybe, to [[WP:MUSIC]]. We could easily set up a way for these redirects to be batch-deleted once a month.
Comments? Recommendations of which talk page to put this on? (I've never made a policy proposal before...)
e. [[User:Rebrane]]
On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein rebrane@gmail.com wrote:
The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or no-brainer merges.
My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem article tag for a week gets deleted.
Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and dealt with on an individual basis.
I like that idea.
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein rebrane@gmail.com wrote:
The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or no-brainer merges.
My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem article tag for a week gets deleted.
Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and dealt with on an individual basis.
I like that idea.
I don't see how this idea will be able to deal with the case load. Almost a thousand articles are nominated to VfD each week, and for the vast majority of them, rightly so. More likely, the tagged articles would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think.
- Ryan
Where are the inclusionists in this discussion? Silly me, I was worried that simply placing a tag on an article for the next admin to delete violates the recent consensus ''against'' such an increase in speedy deletion? Not to mention all the stubs and articles sure to be lost in such a maelstrom of deletion? That said, I don't think were too far off from a good idea ;)
Jack (Sam Spade)
My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem article tag for a week gets deleted.
Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and dealt with on an individual basis.
I like that idea.
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now, without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated, is just to blank the article.
We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links red thing in later.
Dan
PS: "More likely, the tagged articles would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if they had a category on them and we had a DPL.
I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to mind, and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example). Keeping inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles artificially inflate the total article count? Ben/Bratsche
On 8/5/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now, without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated, is just to blank the article.
We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links red thing in later.
Dan
PS: "More likely, the tagged articles would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if they had a category on them and we had a DPL. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
With the PWDS, they wouldn't show up as existing. Why can't we just redirect ones that aren't encyclopedic to something live WP:VAIN for vanity pages?
On 8/5/05, Ben E. bratsche1@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to mind, and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example). Keeping inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles artificially inflate the total article count? Ben/Bratsche
On 8/5/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now, without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated, is just to blank the article.
We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links red thing in later.
Dan
PS: "More likely, the tagged articles would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if they had a category on them and we had a DPL. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Bratsche-It means "viola!" _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
That would make sense, I think. But we'd have to keep those articles out of disambig pages. Think of the confusion someone would have if they clicked on a person's name, and ended up on [[WP:VAIN]]? A category for these pages would help, too, in case someone wanted to improve some to a point past a pure vanity article. Ben/Bratsche
On 8/5/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
With the PWDS, they wouldn't show up as existing. Why can't we just redirect ones that aren't encyclopedic to something live WP:VAIN for vanity pages?
On 8/5/05, Ben E. bratsche1@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to
mind,
and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example).
Keeping
inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles artificially inflate the total article count? Ben/Bratsche
On 8/5/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now, without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated, is just to blank the article.
We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links red thing in later.
Dan
PS: "More likely, the tagged articles would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if they had a category on them and we had a DPL. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Bratsche-It means "viola!" _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- signature _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 05/08/05, Ben E. bratsche1@gmail.com wrote: . Keeping
inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles artificially inflate the total article count?
I see where you're coming from - just the title itself existing could be seen as an endorsement - but I don't think it's a problem, because who would ever find them? Stuff that deserves blanking/deletion is unlikely to be searched for, and probably has no incoming links.
Dan
I agree, if it gets searched for theres a good chance it belongs here. Oh, and i meant that message got sent to BEN, not dan. hah.
On 8/5/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/08/05, Ben E. bratsche1@gmail.com wrote: . Keeping
inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles artificially inflate the total article count?
I see where you're coming from - just the title itself existing could be seen as an endorsement - but I don't think it's a problem, because who would ever find them? Stuff that deserves blanking/deletion is unlikely to be searched for, and probably has no incoming links.
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think the idea of blanking the article and redirecting is a brilliant one. It is easilly reversable, and allows quick decisions to be made by anyone, which can just as easilly be discussed and reverted, or not. The only thing we would need is a handful of pages to redirect to. I strongly endorse this idea and suggest it be brought before the community to '''discuss''' (rather than instantly vote on ;)
Jack (Sam Spade)
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now, without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated, is just to blank the article.
We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links red thing in later.
Dan
On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Stephen Bain wrote:
On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein rebrane@gmail.com wrote:
The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or no-brainer merges.
My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem article tag for a week gets deleted.
Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and dealt with on an individual basis.
You've just described how the present works -- in theory. Vanity pages, spam, articles with negligible content all get listed as Speedy Delete. The rest go to VfD.
VfD will always be a contentious forum, if for no other reason than we are discussing whether to knife someone's baby; in effect, a vote to delete an article can be perceived by its original contributor as a criticism that their work is "unimportant." Add to that the diverse philosophies present on Wikipedia, & that the size of the Wikipedia community has grown to the point where cliques or factions have begun to emerge, & Wikipedia has come to the point where VfD will always be a hotly controversial topic unless we agree to accept all articles that do not meet the criteria of a Speedy Delete -- in effect, removing it entirely.
Although it wouldn't help to streamline the process for actually deleting an article; last time I looked at the instructions, I found them so intimidating that I gave up & went back to just contributing material.
Geoff
From: fun@thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism - no-one's who's done Special:Newpages patrol could possibly disagree IMO. And over 95% of what hits VFD needs a sudden and painful death.
But VFD as it exists is sick and diseased and a powerful net negative.
Maybe I haven't been there enough recently, but what exactly is making it so "sick and diseased" that, even though 95% of the stuff it deletes is garbage, it still needs to be done away with?
Jay.
JAY JG (jayjg@hotmail.com) [050804 06:42]:
From: fun@thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard)
I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism - no-one's who's done Special:Newpages patrol could possibly disagree IMO. And over 95% of what hits VFD needs a sudden and painful death. But VFD as it exists is sick and diseased and a powerful net negative.
Maybe I haven't been there enough recently, but what exactly is making it so "sick and diseased" that, even though 95% of the stuff it deletes is garbage, it still needs to be done away with?
The other 5% is making it a truly poisonous source of acrimony in the Wikipedia-writing community. IMO. See further up the thread.
- d.
JAY JG (jayjg@hotmail.com) [050804 09:03]:
The other 5% is making it a truly poisonous source of acrimony in the Wikipedia-writing community. IMO. See further up the thread.
Deleting the page seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.
I'm not sure the current operation of VFD could fairly have been predicted early enough to strangle it at birth. We need a deletion mechanism, but not this one.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I'm not sure the current operation of VFD could fairly have been predicted early enough to strangle it at birth. We need a deletion mechanism, but not this one.
It seemed to work well enough for the 8-10 months I was actively involved in voting/discussing/closing entries there. There were still complaints, but mostly from "inclusionists" who disliked it simply because it was a venue for deleting articles.
Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly, or have the inclusionists simply gotten louder voices? I must confess I haven't messed with it in 6 months or so just because I lost interest in most meta-pages and went back to writing articles. =]
-Mark
On 8/3/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly, or have the inclusionists simply gotten louder voices? I must confess I haven't messed with it in 6 months or so just because I lost interest in most meta-pages and went back to writing articles. =]
It has scaled badly enough that it no longer gets a good cross-section of Wikipedia opinion, IMO. Most editors find it just too much work to keep up on it.
-Matt
On 04/08/05, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
It has scaled badly enough that it no longer gets a good cross-section of Wikipedia opinion, IMO. Most editors find it just too much work to keep up on it.
I used to read every VfD entry, though I'd only comment on a handful. That'd be pretty much a full-time job, now, an hour or so a day at least... it's hard to get the time to do that and anything else.
Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [050804 11:18]:
It seemed to work well enough for the 8-10 months I was actively involved in voting/discussing/closing entries there. There were still complaints, but mostly from "inclusionists" who disliked it simply because it was a venue for deleting articles.
I think this paragraph exemplifies the current VFD's work in generating acrimony in the Wikipedia-writing community.
- d.
On 04/08/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly ...
Some numbers:
31/07 - 102 30/07 - 121 29/07 - 137 28/07 - 130 27/07 - 130 26/07 - 132 25/07 - 108
ie, 860 over a week at the end of July, versus
31/01 - 58 30/01 - 69 29/01 - 76 28/01 - 67 (one of which I remember, sigh) 27/01 - 65 26/01 - 69 25/01 - 63
at the end of January, a mere 468. Numbers don't included cases where many pages were listed together (there was one last week with over 20!), but I suspect they scale to the rest of VfD - so almost doubling in six months?
It's trickier to get numbers for a year ago, so I won't try it now, but I'd guess at maybe 250/week? In a few months, the day-at-a-glance VfD page will get to the length it was a year before, week-at-a-glance... when it was already straining.
Leaving aside the inherent problems of the VfD process, there's an obvious scaling issue there. The recent WP:CSD expansions will stem the tide a bit - a lot of VfDs are "playing safe nominations" of speedy candidates anyway, but...
I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, so I'm glad someone seems to have enough suggestions to get a debate going :-)
If VFD were kept, how about un-inlining the closed vfds, and giving links to them instead? Would make the CSDs clutter it somewhat less.
On 8/4/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/08/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly ...
Some numbers:
31/07 - 102 30/07 - 121 29/07 - 137 28/07 - 130 27/07 - 130 26/07 - 132 25/07 - 108
ie, 860 over a week at the end of July, versus
31/01 - 58 30/01 - 69 29/01 - 76 28/01 - 67 (one of which I remember, sigh) 27/01 - 65 26/01 - 69 25/01 - 63
at the end of January, a mere 468. Numbers don't included cases where many pages were listed together (there was one last week with over 20!), but I suspect they scale to the rest of VfD - so almost doubling in six months?
It's trickier to get numbers for a year ago, so I won't try it now, but I'd guess at maybe 250/week? In a few months, the day-at-a-glance VfD page will get to the length it was a year before, week-at-a-glance... when it was already straining.
Leaving aside the inherent problems of the VfD process, there's an obvious scaling issue there. The recent WP:CSD expansions will stem the tide a bit - a lot of VfDs are "playing safe nominations" of speedy candidates anyway, but...
I have absolutely no idea what to do about it, so I'm glad someone seems to have enough suggestions to get a debate going :-)
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160
Phroziac wrote:
If VFD were kept, how about un-inlining the closed vfds, and giving links to them instead? Would make the CSDs clutter it somewhat less.
Several people use combinations of Javascript and CSS which allow this to be done. With one click they can hide all closed VFDs.
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
hmm, sounds cool. but wouldn't cut the load time down..
On 8/4/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160
Phroziac wrote:
If VFD were kept, how about un-inlining the closed vfds, and giving links to them instead? Would make the CSDs clutter it somewhat less.
Several people use combinations of Javascript and CSS which allow this to be done. With one click they can hide all closed VFDs.
Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFC8h33/RxM5Ph0xhMRA0GGAKCuDAQKaxsdGhQZ8epJJjhRTkNQ5gCdGVLW 1bnsi26CuWmSzFfuTgi0TQI= =8io7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On 8/4/05, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/08/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly ...
Some numbers: ... ie, 860 over a week at the end of July, versus ... at the end of January, a mere 468. Numbers don't included cases where many pages were listed together (there was one last week with over 20!), but I suspect they scale to the rest of VfD - so almost doubling in six months?
Remember the good old days when the whole of VfD fit on one page?
Technical salvation:
Voting on *article quality rank* will allow for some degree of handling. People might even be able to mass-delete entire ranks of low-quality articles, provided theyve seen enough votes. The difference being that its not from removed from the article at VFD, but part of the article's local aspects, just like discussion, watch, etc. This removes the need for executioners, and leaves only the trashtakers, who dont need to argue, if they follow the guidelines. Central lists would be viewable via sorted RC.
SV
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
I'm not sure the current operation of VFD could
fairly have been predicted
early enough to strangle it at birth. We need a
deletion mechanism, but not
this one.
It seemed to work well enough for the 8-10 months I was actively involved in voting/discussing/closing entries there. There were still complaints, but mostly from "inclusionists" who disliked it simply because it was a venue for deleting articles.
Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly, or have the inclusionists simply gotten louder voices? I must confess I haven't messed with it in 6 months or so just because I lost interest in most meta-pages and went back to writing articles. =]
-Mark
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The entire idea of "voting for deletion" seems problematic to me. It's like a reverse popularity contest -- the worst of grade-school elections.
"Discuss for deletion", "Nominate for deletion", "Propose for deletion", --whatever. But a rough and informal polling system seems to be the root of the difficulties.
...But I don't have an alternative.
FF
On 8/3/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
JAY JG (jayjg@hotmail.com) [050804 09:03]:
The other 5% is making it a truly poisonous source of acrimony in the Wikipedia-writing community. IMO. See further up the thread.
Deleting the page seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.
I'm not sure the current operation of VFD could fairly have been predicted early enough to strangle it at birth. We need a deletion mechanism, but not this one.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Its just not the way to do things which are systemic and process-related. These socially-based processes need to be looked at wholistically to see how they work in relation to what WP needs. Weve got Arbcom, Medcom, RFC, VFD, Cleanup, etc. etc. etc, but little general oversight powers to reform these. Perhaps even a VFD committee would be useful:
Ive noticed a lot of one-time registrants can influence a VFD - Lost Liberty Hotel should have been toast, but without definitive process, consensus wound up keeping it. (Thats an article which I think I'll delete unilaterally. Again.)
Single leader = definitiveness, closed debate Open democracy = open debate, lack of cohesion It's somewhat cyclical.
SV
--- JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
The other 5% is making it a truly poisonous source
of acrimony in the
Wikipedia-writing community. IMO. See further up
the thread.
Deleting the page seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.
Jay.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On 03/08/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
I sincerely believe the current VFD process and culture is so poisonous to Wikipedia that, at least for the moment, we would be better just letting the disks fill with band vanity, original research and poo jokes.
I agree (but the disks would never fill - see m:Wiki is not paper).
Ed deleted VfD then someone else undeleted it. Hardly a big deal. In the process he hit everyone right between the eyes with the fact that VfD isn't great.
Moving forwards though, there only appears to be only two schools of thought:
1. Those who wish VfD to stay as-is with all discussions about listings held in one place.
2. Those who think everything to do with an article should be discussed on that article's talk page (and a list of pages under discussion could be maintained with ease using a m:DynamicPageList, which we all kinds of places on Wikinews).
The former allows very much the same people to contribute to each VfD vote, with some 'interesting' concepts (eg. "notability", seemingly never defined). This could, I feel, be the root of the problems David and Ed are highlighting presently, the same ones that many have done so before.
The second would make it harder for the same groups of people to contribute to each VfD vote. It could quite possibly reduce it to only the contributors to the article and those who have in interest in the topic (picking up the discussion via the DPL).
VfD itself could easily be deleted again and no. 2 put in its place within minutes of the devs turning the DPL extension on on Wikipedia.
Should we though?
Dan
I don't want this mailing list to degenerate into a flame war here, but I really think you have no cause to be acting indignant. A simple "I'm sorry about the trouble I caused, it won't happen again" would have made me, and a lot of other people, forget about this entirely. But what you're saying here makes me think that once you are unblocked, it very well might happen again. That prospect scares me, and makes me think you ought to be blocked a lot longer. Your crack about "liberal stereotypes" is just a bitter, bigoted jab that is icing on the cake.
We're trying to make an encyclopedia here. You disrupted it -- _enormously_ -- just to make a point.
Oh, come off it, at least it was a good point :) Many people seem to think that it's VfD rather than EP that's "enormously" disruptive to Wikipedia.
He's been blocked and I'm sure that experience is humiliating enough. Let's try to f&f this and move on.
Regards, Haukur
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
I guess this is a bigger deal than I thought.
Well, the VfD deletion thing was... wow. You had a lot of support about that. I think it is safe to say that among supporters and detractors of the move there was at least universal admiration for the nerve it took to do it, and acceptance of the goodwill behind it.
Deleting the RfC, though, and unblocking yourself. That's a little different.
--Jimbo