We have too many crucial, urgent pages about articles and people. I can't follow all of them. I can't even figure out how to use half of them.
All we need is vandalism in progress and pages requiring attention.
The [[Wikipedia:Pages requiring attention]] article should be for problems that YOU can't solve but want US to solve for you:
* What was the name of the guy who said X? * Could someone please speel czech this? * Mediator needed at [[talk:Y]] (Heckle and Jeckle are at it again) * Please help me describe Z neutrally. * Someone posted their resume, and I'm not a sysop; please delete it for me.
If an article has a problem that is so unclear that we want to debate it or vote on it, that's usually because there is a genuine Policy Disagreement. It's not really about the article in question; rather, the article is only one example of a class of similar articles. So, let's take it to the mailing list and hash out the /issue/.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Sorry to send so many replies in one email but as all are related to VfD, it seemed silly to send them separately. This is in reply to Danny, Jimbo, Erik, Optim, Rick, Ed and Theresa.
Danny thought that "[[Palestinian views of the peace process]] was placed on Votes for deletion and deleted."
It was never deleted as two people on VfD suggested that at least some of the content was salvageable and ought to be merged elsewhere. Please see [[Talk:Palestine]].
Jimbo wrote "I think that was obviously a mistake and is a good example of what's broken about the VfD concept."
Had it been deleted, that might have been a mistake, but as it wasn't, perhaps it's a sign that VfD is not as broken as many people seem to think. VfD brought new ideas to the problem, with people previously uninvolved suggesting potential solutions which are now documented on the talk page. This often happens at VfD with poor articles being saved as a direct result of being listed. I can't understand why people keep overlooking this huge benefit of the page and doing nothing but criticising the process.
Erik wrote some very sensible things regarding the role of VfD in eliminating the articles which reflect [[What Wikipedia is not]] and suggested "communicating with users in cases where their pages have been listed"
Contacting the author(s) of a listed page is important, but not absolutely essential. The deletion process does not have to be final. There is [[Votes for undeletion]] should someone find out later their page was deleted without their knowledge. I think it would be nice if people were informed, but I don't think people should start ranting if it doesn't happen.
Erik also proposed "solidifying certain policies"
This is an excellent suggestion and would largely eliminate the need for VfD, which at the moment is being used to debate the same policies every single week.
Optim proposed "a new VfD system which uses Scientific Management principles".
So instead of training newbies to understand the deletion process and how our policies apply to articles to be deleted, you want to punish them for not already having this information? An article wrongly listed is not the end of the world. It won't be deleted, so no harm done, and hopefully the person who listed it and others that read the resulting comments on why such an article ought not be deleted will have learnt something.
Rick wrote "I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia."
Rick, please stop saying this. I believe you are doing a great job defending Wikipedia from vandals and listing something on VfD that others think should be kept is hardly a crime.
Ed suggested "we have too many crucial, urgent pages about articles and people...All we need is vandalism in progress and pages requiring attention."
Such a page would very quickly become hundreds of kilobytes long and unusable. You might find the "Things to watch" and "Problems in need of fixing" sections of [[Wikipedia:Utilities]] useful.
Theresa said "let's have [[newbie tests]] so that non sysops can bring "hello! Paul is gay!" type pages to a sysop attention. And [[Pages that need to be moved to other wikis]] for wikionary quotes.
We already do. Please see [[Wikipedia:deleted test]], [[Wikipedia:Pages to be moved to Wiktionary]] and [[Meta:Transwiki]].
Angela.
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Angela wrote:
It was never deleted as two people on VfD suggested that at least some of the content was salvageable and ought to be merged elsewhere.
My mistake. I was told that it was deleted, and found the redirect but didn't realize that the page had not been actually deleted.
I would edit the last revision prior to the redirect and restore it, but I wouldn't want people to think that this is some kind of "official action" -- I already edited once today, which is scary enough. :-)
But perhaps if someone else did it, no one would freak out? It seems clear to me that this is a valuable topic. I don't think that the version that was there when the redirect happened was at all bad, certainly much better than a lot of our articles. Certainly, not so bad that it had to be removed!
--Jimbo
I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong. And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I thought was right. Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong?
RickK
Angela sloog77@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Rick wrote "I will no longer list anything to be deleted, and I will stop deleting any garbage that any vandals want to add to Wikipedia."
Rick, please stop saying this. I believe you are doing a great job defending Wikipedia from vandals and listing something on VfD that others think should be kept is hardly a crime.
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Rick-
I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong. And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I thought was right. Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong?
You're beginning to sound a lot like User:Zoe. Not everything is directed at you personally. If you take everything as a personal attack, you will not be able to endure Wikipedia much longer.
Regards,
Erik
Rick wrote:
I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong. And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I thought was right. Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong?
Rick, how am I attacking you? I fully support your work. I don't really know what you're talking about.
Let me repeat -- my complaints about VfD are not complaints about all deletions, nor are they complaints about most of what goes on there.
Allow me to give a very inexact analogy. Imagine a court system in which 99% of the time defendants are given a fair trial, but in 1% of the cases they are not, perhaps due to some loophole in the process.
A person can say that the process is broken, because in a small but important number of cases the wrong thing is done, without thereby criticizing in any way the other 99%.
You're solidly in the 99%.
I have no complaints about people working to clean up vandalism and my concerns should not be taken as a slight against anyone doing that.
--Jimbo