With more and more people participating in the VfD process (which is good) we need a clear and well defined policy for what to do when the 7 days are over and a sysop needs to decide whether a page should be deleted or not. The current deletion policy describes the process of a page listed on VfD as follows:
It will remain there for a time, giving other users the chance to comment on whether they think deletion is in fact appropriate. At some point an administrator will come by the page and decide to remove it for you. Unless someone else comes by and decides not to agree with you, of course!
This is a woefully inept description of the deletion process -- it does not even mention the word "consensus", let alone define it. Several pages have been deleted on the basis that a large majority (70-80%) voted for deletion, in spite of the fact that a minority (20-30%) strongly protested. I think we can agree that this is not consensus by any reasonable definition.
I see two possible solutions:
1) Set a formal threshold for deletion, maybe 75%.
2) Allow sysops to ignore votes by people who a) are not regular Wikipedia authors (less than 20 edits)
There seems to be a lot of ballot stuffing, going so far that some people post to Usenet and ask people in a group to support non-deletion of a page. We can prevent this by allowing only people with a track record to participate.
b) have not expressed any opinion beyond "keep" or "delete" and have not made any edit to the page in question.
This might help to address the problem that some people oppose almost every deletion on priniciple, making consensus very hard to reach.
I would like to ask Jimbo to make a formal declaration of policy so that sysops won't be accused of overstepping their bounds when deleting pages. Solution 2) would making deleting considerably harder than it is now (because right now, although we *say* we work by consensus, we often do not), whereas 1) would largely formalize what is currently going on. I have no strong opinion either way, but we need to have clear rules.
Regards,
Erik
That is incredibly similar to what I just wrote on [[Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion]]. Repeated here for those who prefer to discuss these things on the list:
There are two choices - change the page or change the policy.
1) Change the page - daily subpages, or split some other way, like by what the problem is (we already have copyvio and foreign split off, why not other topics?)
2) Change the policy
*Reduce the waiting time (there is vast support for this idea)
*Delete things after three days where no-one has objected.
*Stop anyone with less than (for example) 200 edits from commenting. This might get around the issue of a huge number of supposed users voting whose only contribution ever is to the VfD page, and once the page is deleted or kept, that user is never heard of again. I strongly believe ballot stuffign is becoming a real problem here. Without it, there would be way less discussion and a much smaller page.
*Stop attacking people who try to help on the page. I don't deny that I have made controversial deletions, but I am attacked for absolutely non-controversial ones
*Give up on the idea of attaining consensus and set an actual percentage of votes required to delete (75% sounds good). This makes everything more clear-cut and more people will be willing to take action if backed up by a policy that isn't interpreted differently by everyone reading it.
Angela
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On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, [iso-8859-1] Angela wrote:
- Change the policy
*Reduce the waiting time (there is vast support for this idea)
Agreed. Of course, decisions that have not reached a stable state by that many days are obviously too complicated for discussion on VfD and should go off somewhere else.
*Delete things after three days where no-one has objected.
Agreed. There's a stage just above 'obvious junk' but that are uncontroversial.
*Stop anyone with less than (for example) 200 edits from commenting. This might get around the issue of a huge number of supposed users voting whose only contribution ever is to the VfD page, and once the page is deleted or kept, that user is never heard of again. I strongly believe ballot stuffing is becoming a real problem here. Without it, there would be way less discussion and a much smaller page.
Well, maybe not COMMENTING, but certainly having anything tallied in a final count?
*Stop attacking people who try to help on the page. I don't deny that I have made controversial deletions, but I am attacked for absolutely non-controversial ones
After all, all deletes are undeleteable. It's not the end of the world if someone deletes an article over-hastily -- a better route would be simply to vote for undeletion.
*Give up on the idea of attaining consensus and set an actual percentage of votes required to delete (75% sounds good). This makes everything more clear-cut and more people will be willing to take action if backed up by a policy that isn't interpreted differently by everyone reading it.
Given the presence within the community of those philosophically opposed to deletion of anything on any grounds, and those who will always vote for certain categories of stuff to be deleted -- I think any attempt to get 100% consensus is impossible on the vast majority of articles placed there. 75% sounds as good as any.
-Matt (User:Morven)
I agree we need clear policy here.
Yes, we can shorten the waiting time. 5 days would be fine, 3 would be too short, I think- easy to miss it on a weekend, for example. Votes are rarely added in the last couple of days.
I'd say 20 valid article edits to vote. 10's low-ish, but not out of the question. 200 is way too high, creating more issues about arbitrary "rank", plus at that size, it's hard to judge which are good edits and which are just junk... and we'd see people making an edit for each and every character they change, so as to boost their edit count. Yes, those do tend to show, but it leads to too many special rules to define what should and shouldn't be counted.
I'd allow simple Keep/Delete votes - if we (as I think is wise) go to a percentage system, it really is a vote like any other. Also, I don't believe having edited the article should in any way give someone's vote extra currency- quite the opposite. It means they're much more biased about it.
I'd prefer 80% to 75%. And if it passes the n days waiting time and doesn't have that many favoring deletion, it doesn't go to the undecided, it simply stays.
I'd also suggest that pages that were listed and kept cannot be listed again on VFD within a given time period: say, 2 weeks since the end of the last vote.
There are nontrivial issues involving policy and project goals involved in what seems like a simple procedural matter.
Most impassioned VfD discussions result from disagreements over the fundamental goals of the project, hence the general criteria for inclusion of material, and as something of a side effect, the impact on any particular article. Imposing a voting system will not solve that, and the trouble with ballot-box stuffing will only get worse. [[Meatball:VotingIsEvil]]
I believe that a healthy discussion of project goals, the sort of articles we want, the sort of articles that have no place --- would take us a long way towards building consensus on deletion matters generally.
As others have pointed out, some participants genuinely believe that an article with any information content at all belongs at Wikipedia, even those that have only a sentence or two; these people have a broad view of the project as an information source for most anything. Others see Wikipedia as closer to a print encyclopedia, to varying degrees.
I suggest that an attempt to better understand (if not resolve) these fundamental issues should occur before any changes to deletion policy.
Louis
Erik Moeller wrote:
With more and more people participating in the VfD process (which is good) we need a clear and well defined policy for what to do when the 7 days are over and a sysop needs to decide whether a page should be deleted or not.
I see two possible solutions:
- Set a formal threshold for deletion, maybe 75%.
I suspect that option 1 would exacerbate the ballot stuffing problem. If ballot stuffers advertising on Usenet (which is awful!) know exactly what goal they need to reach, then they'll be more motivated.
- Allow sysops to ignore votes by people who
a) are not regular Wikipedia authors (less than 20 edits)
There seems to be a lot of ballot stuffing, going so far that some people post to Usenet and ask people in a group to support non-deletion of a page. We can prevent this by allowing only people with a track record to participate.
If this is something that would often be relevant, then I think that we /definitely/ should adopt it. It seems like a no-brainer to me.
b) have not expressed any opinion beyond "keep" or "delete" and have not made any edit to the page in question.
This isn't a good idea unless it's well advertised and well understood; otherwise, people that might write a comment would instead be quiet on the grounds that somebody else has already given their argument. In it's not clear to all that this is imposed, then it's unfair.
OTOH, if we adopt this, then how do we stop people from simply adding some boilerplate opinion like "I agree with what [[User:---]] said." or "Deleting this would violate fundamental Wikipedia principles."? If it's clear to all that this is imposed, then they'll work around it.
So you're right that people should give more opinions! -- I just can't tell how to make it both fair and effective.
This might help to address the problem that some people oppose almost every deletion on priniciple, making consensus very hard to reach.
I don't pay attention to most things on VfD now (haven't for a long time). Thus I have no idea what the answer to this question is, so I'll ask: If you were to ignore violators of 2)a) and all opposers-on-principle, then how far would you be from consensus in the sort of situation that is now causing you to suggest these modifications?
I would like to ask Jimbo to make a formal declaration of policy so that sysops won't be accused of overstepping their bounds when deleting pages. Solution 2) would making deleting considerably harder than it is now (because right now, although we *say* we work by consensus, we often do not), whereas 1) would largely formalize what is currently going on. I have no strong opinion either way, but we need to have clear rules.
Summary: I suspect that 1) would exacerbate 2)a) and that 2)b) is unworkable, but 2)a) itself seems obviously correct, so let's start with that.
And tell complainers about [[WP:Votes for undeletion]]; it's their friend! ^_^
-- Toby
Toby-
I suspect that option 1 would exacerbate the ballot stuffing problem. If ballot stuffers advertising on Usenet (which is awful!) know exactly what goal they need to reach, then they'll be more motivated.
Maybe. But ballot stuffing isn't our only problem and there are reasonable ways to detect it. Sysops not having clear directions what to do is the other problem. Some delete when there is a 2/3 majority, some do not delete when the author of the page protests. It is absolutely important that everyone can follow the same standard, and I think the most reasonable course of action is for Jimbo to set such a standard.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
I suspect that option 1 would exacerbate the ballot stuffing problem. If ballot stuffers advertising on Usenet (which is awful!) know exactly what goal they need to reach, then they'll be more motivated.
Maybe. But ballot stuffing isn't our only problem and there are reasonable ways to detect it.
If you mean 2)a) -- length of contribution history -- then I agree. So if the problem with ballot stuffing nevertheless exists, then that suggests that some admins are reluctant to apply 2)a). Which brings us to ...
Sysops not having clear directions what to do is the other problem. [...] It is absolutely important that everyone can follow the same standard, and I think the most reasonable course of action is for Jimbo to set such a standard.
So I would advise Jimbo to start by setting the standard to apply 2)a).
This doesn't mean that no other standards can necessarily apply. That simply seems like an obvious place to start -- as I said, it seems like a no-brainer to me.
-- Toby
Erik Moeller wrote:
Maybe. But ballot stuffing isn't our only problem and there are reasonable ways to detect it. Sysops not having clear directions what to do is the other problem. Some delete when there is a 2/3 majority, some do not delete when the author of the page protests. It is absolutely important that everyone can follow the same standard, and I think the most reasonable course of action is for Jimbo to set such a standard.
Yes, I think that's right. On this narrow question, i.e. given the way we are voting now, what constitutes a threshold for action, we can all agree that it's very important that we have some sort of standard, while leaving open the possibility that over time the details of the standard might need to change, or that we might change the entire process in fundamental ways.
The process actually works reasonably well now, so it would be wrong of me to try to decree some huge change to the process. This is a process that has grown up 'organically' over time. All we need *right now* is just the tiniest bit of formulation of what the final decision rule should be.
As such, while I'm sympathetic to the notion of excluding votes from mysterious users who have only edited 1 time, I think that unless it's a huge huge problem, we can safely ignore it.
(Indeed, although I don't condone people making multiple accounts in order to cheat on a vote -- I would consider that as coming very close to a bannable offense, and certainly it's bannable if continued after warnings, etc. -- I *also* think that if someone is willing to go to that much effort, we should try hard to see if there's something we aren't seeing, something that can be accomodated.)
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
Maybe. But ballot stuffing isn't our only problem and there are reasonable ways to detect it. Sysops not having clear directions what to do is the other problem. Some delete when there is a 2/3 majority, some do not delete when the author of the page protests. It is absolutely important that everyone can follow the same standard, and I think the most reasonable course of action is for Jimbo to set such a standard.
Yes, I think that's right. On this narrow question, i.e. given the way we are voting now, what constitutes a threshold for action, we can all agree that it's very important that we have some sort of standard, while leaving open the possibility that over time the details of the standard might need to change, or that we might change the entire process in fundamental ways.
There seems to be a whole industry developing in the VfD issue. Personally, I don't waste much time there. My view on deletions is that as long as there is reasonable doubt, it should stay. Any percentage based threshhold is bound to be arbitrary.
Voting there is one big time-waster! Yesterday (Oct. 16) there were 11 items added to the list. If I am to give an informed vote on any of these, I need to go to and read the article. If that only takes an average 5 miniutes per article that's 55 minutes, much more on some other days.
There's also the [[Wikipedia:Pages needing attention]]. I often suspect that it's there for people who want somebody else to do their work for them. A person who puts something there on an unfimiliar topic should perhaps try to clean one up about something that he knows better.
As such, while I'm sympathetic to the notion of excluding votes from mysterious users who have only edited 1 time, I think that unless it's a huge huge problem, we can safely ignore it.
I agree
(Indeed, although I don't condone people making multiple accounts in order to cheat on a vote -- I would consider that as coming very close to a bannable offense, and certainly it's bannable if continued after warnings, etc. -- I *also* think that if someone is willing to go to that much effort, we should try hard to see if there's something we aren't seeing, something that can be accomodated.)
Certainly. If the amount of attention paid to any kind of cheating (not just voting) is out of proportion to its occurence, preventing it wastes a lot of time for no significant benefit. If the margin of victory in a vote is wide, a few cheated votes are of no significance. If the margin of victory is very small, we have a divided community whose problems won't be solved by tracking down those few cheated votes that would reverse the result. The unnecessary tracking down of cheaters runs contrary to the presumption of good faith.
Ec
Jimmy Wales wrote (regarding VfD):
The process actually works reasonably well now, so it would be wrong of me to try to decree some huge change to the process. This is a process that has grown up 'organically' over time. All we need *right now* is just the tiniest bit of formulation of what the final decision rule should be.
Are you sure? I think it's true that VfD works well in the clear-cut cases. Probably 80% of the cases are clear-cut, in that there is a clear consensus in favor of deleting or retaining the article.
For the other 20% it works poorly. These are cases where we end up discussion what Wikipedia is, or how the article space should be organized. Most of these conversations end up deadlocked, and the outcome is that the articles are kept. The many "List of," "Slogan," and "biography" discussions are examples of this. The quality of the decision making was low, and the number of Wikipedians made upset in the process was high.
A good deletion process should meet three goals: it should produce high-quality decisions, it should require minimal effort, and it should stress out Wikipedians as little as possible.
As such, while I'm sympathetic to the notion of excluding votes from mysterious users who have only edited 1 time, I think that unless it's a huge huge problem, we can safely ignore it.
It is only going to get worse, and if we actually have _votes_ rather than a consensus system, we will have to address the matter of who is entitled to vote. The project has greater public prominence than it once did, making such questions more relevant than they once were.
Louis
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote (regarding VfD):
The process actually works reasonably well now, so it would be wrong of me to try to decree some huge change to the process. This is a process that has grown up 'organically' over time. All we need *right now* is just the tiniest bit of formulation of what the final decision rule should be.
Are you sure? I think it's true that VfD works well in the clear-cut cases. Probably 80% of the cases are clear-cut, in that there is a clear consensus in favor of deleting or retaining the article.
80% sounds like pretty good results to me. :-) There's no need to become obsessive about deleting the others. If there is any reasonable argument for keeping an article, it should be given the benefit of the doubt.
For the other 20% it works poorly. These are cases where we end up discussion what Wikipedia is, or how the article space should be organized. Most of these conversations end up deadlocked, and the outcome is that the articles are kept. The many "List of," "Slogan," and "biography" discussions are examples of this. The quality of the decision making was low, and the number of Wikipedians made upset in the process was high.
The "List-of" articles certainly have a place. As much as there are people who like to create these, there is likely a similar proportion of viewers who are fascinated by simply reading lists. What harm is done by keeping them?
Who judges the quality of the decision making? I agree that it is often low, but getting Wikipedians upset by deleting their contributions isn't going to solve that.
A good deletion process should meet three goals: it should produce high-quality decisions, it should require minimal effort, and it should stress out Wikipedians as little as possible.
Yes and no. High-quality decisions are an ideal. If you perceive that someone is making low quality decisions, simply deleting his efforts is a decision of equally low quality. You need to begin from the position where that person is, and respecting it. If you accomplish something with User:A you also need to accept that on the day after tomorrow when User:B appears you'll have to start the whole process all over again. We would all like every article to be perfectly accurate and consistent with NPOV, but it ain't gonna happen so easy. If one starts using his status as a university professor to justify an action that won't be broadly acceptable. Much of the educational process is geared to developping that good citizenship skill called conformity with accepted views. Those who have left the sysstem somewhere along the way have never had to write examinations about it. They sometimes have unique ideas about a subject. Some of the ideas are downright goofy, but others can also exhibit the creative genius that conformity suppresses.
As such, while I'm sympathetic to the notion of excluding votes from mysterious users who have only edited 1 time, I think that unless it's a huge huge problem, we can safely ignore it.
It is only going to get worse, and if we actually have _votes_ rather than a consensus system, we will have to address the matter of who is entitled to vote. The project has greater public prominence than it once did, making such questions more relevant than they once were.
If we can accomplish things without votes, we can accomplish them without the problems that votes bring. If we need to determine who is qualified to vote, then we are setting up hierarchies. The challenge in the up-scaling process is how to maintain the same broad openness that got the project there in the first place.
Ec
*Buffer* Strange that nobody's mentioned the [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] page that Cimon had the good sense to start up. I dislike the layout that Cimon chose as well as the "required anonymity" but other than that it seems to be on its way to working --particularly to take a load off of VFD. And its getter far more ATTN than the clumsily titled Wikipedia:Pages needing attention ... (which Ive never seen on RC )
For those NITK, Cleanup was designed to be a buffer for everything. If youre a newbie, or just not in the mood to do deal with VFD you can throw it there, and someone else can deal with it. Its not just for VFD -- its there because the binary notion that an article needs thumbs up/thumbs down only applies to the minority. Most cases VFD is more akin to a battleground for NPOV disputes, or to get the attention of the person who didnt spend enough time on it. Usually these are anons, and rough VFD treatment is not a pleasant experience for a newbie. <strange analogy> You dont make your new hotel guests through the kitchen and by the trashbin to get to their rooms.</strange>
But the fundamental flaw of VFD --I'll point it out now: It takes a certain mentality to deal with VFD --Deletionists love VFD, and hang out there all the time. Anti-Deletionists tend to like to actually deal with articles, and as such dont have time to check VFD to make a defense for a particular article that someone wants to chop. As such, there may be a problem mentality associated with a thumbs up/down approach if its not mitigated by the use of a clearing house.
A placement on Cleanup can mean that the article gets some consensus attention *before* its submitted to the Ugnauts at VFD. <metaphor-analogy>Instead of sending something straight to the Scrapyard, you let people try to sell it at the Thrift Store first.</meta>
*Limits of Wiki* To me the fact that the Pump and VFD would get too crowded all seems quite basic, and is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding out the limits of traditional post-it style wiki to keep up to speed.
Wiki may work in the general sense, but for high-use pages like the Pump and such, wiki is far too slow -- I like someone's suggestion of using a chat forum like they have on craigslist. But this may be too easy --and does not deal with the problem of making a document of the discussion --though this may not be necessary for the Pump anyway.
In short, I think that for the pages that people might scramble to beat someone else to the submit button --there needs to be something better. It may be wiki or not. If something is not done about this in the next several months, this *may negatively affect the 30% upward curve Wikipedia has on Alexa.
~S~
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Stevertigo wrote:
<lots of snips>
mood to do deal with VFD you can throw it there, and someone else can deal with it. Its not just for VFD minority. Most cases VFD is more akin to a it. Usually these are anons, and rough VFD treatment But the fundamental flaw of VFD --I'll point it out now: It takes a certain mentality to deal with VFD --Deletionists love VFD, and hang out there all the Ugnauts at VFD. <metaphor-analogy>Instead of sending To me the fact that the Pump and VFD would get too
I just wanted to say that I love that a page with as much mystery, confusion, debate, and emotion is called V.F.D. Lemony Snicket would be pleased. In fact, I think we should rename the page "Very Fine Doilies".
- David [[User:Nohat]]
P.S. Hint: _A Series of Unfortunate Events_
You haven't noticed that there are many votes on Votes for Deletion to DELETE [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], have you? Nor the many voices against it on its own Talk page. Cleanup is a massive bureaucracy just waiting to impose itself on Wikipedia, and is not only incomprehensible, but unworkable.
RickK
Stevertigo utilitymuffinresearch2@yahoo.com wrote: *Buffer* Strange that nobody's mentioned the [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] page that Cimon had the good sense to start up. I dislike the layout that Cimon chose as well as the "required anonymity" but other than that it seems to be on its way to working --particularly to take a load off of VFD. And its getter far more ATTN than the clumsily titled Wikipedia:Pages needing attention ... (which Ive never seen on RC )
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Rick said:
You haven't noticed that there are many votes on Votes for Deletion to
DELETE [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], have you? Nor the many voices against it on its own Talk page. Cleanup is a massive bureaucracy just waiting to impose itself on Wikipedia, and is not only incomprehensible, but unworkable.
Indeed. I don't like the listing of it for deletion, VFD is far overtaxed as it is... but I found Cleanup entirely unreadable.
-- Jake
Rick (the Giants fan?) said: You haven't noticed that there are many votes on Votes for Deletion to DELETE [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], have you? Nor the many voices against it on its own Talk page. Cleanup is a massive bureaucracy just waiting to impose itself on Wikipedia, and is not only incomprehensible, but unworkable.
I dont see you answering my points -- by point, nor do I see you saying anything that: 1. I dont know already; 2. Is supported by any meaningful or thoughtful commentary. Correct these problems please. (Go Giants)
~S~
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Jake Nelson jnelson@soncom.com wrote: Indeed. I don't like the listing of it for deletion, VFD is far overtaxed as it is... but I found Cleanup entirely unreadable.
I agree.
FYI: The basic idea that Cimon Avaro on a Pogo Stick and I agree on is that comment needs to be limited. I think that sigs (without timestamps) should work fine. Cimon thought that the whole thing should work on anonymity. His idea was to de-politicize it by removing any names, so that people would'nt go quarrelling with each other --instead, they would just take care of business. I dont agree with him, but I now understand his reasoning, and I appreciate the depth to which he gave it thought. That said, I think that *that* aspect of our experiment failed --because its just not interesting if its not personalized. People like personally making contacts and such -- maintained and trusted identies facilitate progress.
To say that dealing impersonally with people would make things run smoother, is really not workable with human beings. Robots maybe. The sig represents a whole identity we can make up in our heads -- I have no idea how people here picture me, but you all do have a picture, nonetheless, though all youve seen is my words. so... First change on Cleanup -- allow sigs. no timestamp. (Three ~ only.)
Second, come up with some way to deal with headers -- as they are used for breaks. Maybe just a ===*=== between each entry. I dunno. If only there was a way to insert numbered breaks. If only there was a way to insert an *hourstamp ( no minutes) as a break header.
Third, a cleanup for the cleanup page process needs to be put into motion. We cant have week old stuff laying around. The original idea was to have it be there only a day. this may be too fast. Three might be better, and again-- each page can get the attn it needs -- limited the number sent to VFD to seriously controversial deletions.
Fourth: As for informal deletions --its always been controversial that sysops just go ahead and delete stuff -- even if its fairly nonsensical. In fact this is may be a typical cause of some grudges between old people and new people -- as newbies at first have no clue whatsoever. ( I didnt). Do we drive tender newbies away by running roughshod over their contributions? I dunno. I suggested making it a rule that *all* deletions with at least a plausible *title (that may stub a genuine article) be sent to Cleanup. It may simply need a redirect, or what have you --but these may in fact seed some development, and putting these on Cleanup would give these items a longer life than they have on Recent changes.
Didnt mean to go on so long.... ~S~
~S~
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Stevertigo said: [more than would make sense to reprint]
I agree with pretty much everything in that mail. I do see the point and idea behind Cleanup, it's a valid premise... it's just the implementation that's bad. I'm no fan of anonymity... I've got a strange and dodgy memory, and without identities to associate comments with, it becomes much harder to remember them. Hm. Three days on (a heavily remodeled) Cleanup, if it hasn't been rewritten, refactored, or merged enough to be satisfactory, it goes onto VFD for, say, another 3 days? Just a thought... I can see approval for anything with a decent title... too often, there's issues about articles on VFD because they're at the wrong title or because there's something that has no relevance but a good title... hm. It's something to think about.
-- Jake
Toby Bartels wrote:
- Set a formal threshold for deletion, maybe 75%.
I suspect that option 1 would exacerbate the ballot stuffing problem. If ballot stuffers advertising on Usenet (which is awful!) know exactly what goal they need to reach, then they'll be more motivated.
Why not just set the limit to be users whose accounts existed and had a first edit _before_ the page was listed on VFD? Then this problem essentially goes away as no one who wasn't around before it got listed can participate in the debate.
-- David [[User:Nohat]]
David Friendland wrote:
Why not just set the limit to be users whose accounts existed and had a first edit _before_ the page was listed on VFD? Then this problem essentially goes away as no one who wasn't around before it got listed can participate in the debate.
*blink* Hey, that's a damn good thought. Let's do that. (I might still say n (where n=10 or 20) valid article edits as well, however.)
-- Jake
I agree with both of these proposals. These are both useful.
RickK
Jake Nelson jnelson@soncom.com wrote: David Friendland wrote:
Why not just set the limit to be users whose accounts existed and had a first edit _before_ the page was listed on VFD? Then this problem essentially goes away as no one who wasn't around before it got listed can participate in the debate.
*blink* Hey, that's a damn good thought. Let's do that. (I might still say n (where n=10 or 20) valid article edits as well, however.)
-- Jake
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David Friedland wrote:
Why not just set the limit to be users whose accounts existed and had a first edit _before_ the page was listed on VFD? Then this problem essentially goes away as no one who wasn't around before it got listed can participate in the debate.
[Note this is really about 2)a), although David's post quoted 1).]
Yeah, that's pretty smart!
-- Toby
I strongly oppose 2b. I don't see that that's particularly useful.
RickK
Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
1) Set a formal threshold for deletion, maybe 75%.
2) Allow sysops to ignore votes by people who a) are not regular Wikipedia authors (less than 20 edits)
There seems to be a lot of ballot stuffing, going so far that some people post to Usenet and ask people in a group to support non-deletion of a page. We can prevent this by allowing only people with a track record to participate.
b) have not expressed any opinion beyond "keep" or "delete" and have not made any edit to the page in question.
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--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
I strongly oppose 2b. I don't see that that's particularly useful.
RickK
I agree. Often, the opinions you have have already been written and it would be pointless to repeat them. LDan
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From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" littledanehren@yahoo.com
--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
I strongly oppose 2b. I don't see that that's particularly useful.
RickK
I agree. Often, the opinions you have have already been written and it would be pointless to repeat them. LDan
Here. Here. (or Hear, hear!)
It appears that 2 b) would be hard to enforce: what is an edit? If someone adds or subtracts a simple sentence? Or is a word or typo correction enough. If it is a content edit, who determines what relevant content might be? It seems this opens the door to the slippery slope that Angela mentions i.e. the policy will be open to interpretation and we'll be back discussing who decides what an edit is or is not and not dealing with the real issue. A streamlined process that clears out useless clutter is what is needed, not a Consitutional Convention dealing with the meaning of every possible way of reaching some kind of agreement on relatively uncontroversial deletions. The process should not be hijackable (is that a word?) by anyone who comes along with some kind of weird, idiosyncratic complaint about the process.
Alex756
If there is to be a new deletion policy workup, there ought be a focused community decision -- a front page blurb to the meta page, and some kind of temporary sanction for the Wikipedia:Cleanup page -- which is under attack on VFD simply because it was sort of "imposed on the community."
Again, wiki is limited in terms of what you can do on a single page, this is why its important to have a process by which pages dont go directly to the Dump/dump not to be fought over but instead go Cleanup or PNA. In some ways Cleanup might be PNA with a different name, but I think that PNA would better be used for longer term items, while cleanup (with extremely limited comment) can be used to draw some attention to something that should be on a track--either to the trash, for a redirect, etc. I can see how some see it as a bypassing of VFD -- but given that pages can be restored if they are deleted too quickly (ie nonsense pages), but thats not what its for-- again its to deal with articles in a general sense leaving VFD for those where there is actually some debate.
~S~
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Erik Moeller wrote:
I would like to ask Jimbo to make a formal declaration of policy so that sysops won't be accused of overstepping their bounds when deleting pages.
Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I will follow this discussion closely and try to see what people are saying, and propose a solution that addresses everyone's needs and concerns to the greatest degree possible. And then we can see if we can get consensus on that, the old-fashioned way.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
I would like to ask Jimbo to make a formal declaration of policy so that sysops won't be accused of overstepping their bounds when deleting pages.
Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I will follow this discussion closely and try to see what people are saying, and propose a solution that addresses everyone's needs and concerns to the greatest degree possible. And then we can see if we can get consensus on that, the old-fashioned way.
What bothers me about this is not the decision that Jimbo would make, but the request that he make such a declaration. It strikes me as an admission of failure on the part of those making the request. People need to be willing to apply WikiLove and WikiFaith in dealing with these problems rather than turning them into some kind of competitive battle with Crusader and Saracen alike looking for a sign that God will be on his side.
Ec