[WikiEN-l] Proposed: stop all deletes for 6 months, then reconsider

[user_Jamesday]

James Duffy wrote:

>> Wikipedia finds it hard enough to keep up with the deletion of articles continually. A ban for six months would leave a back log of hundreds if not thousands of 
articles that have no place on an encyclopedia but end up surviving by default, or else leading to a /massive/ period of deletions unprecedented in 
wikipedia history.<<

Well, it would if you ignored the purpose I gave for suggesting it, which was improving how we do things. I didn't propose stopping all cleaning up work for six months. Instead of deleting:

o tag the article with a link to a help page for the expeditious deletion reason or a page covering the reason why something is considered a VfD candidate.
o after six months, run the few SQL commands it takes delete any article containing those tags which hasn't been changed for a month or more.
o run another SQL command to list those containing the tags which have been changed, so people can look them over.
o repeat once a month if it seems to be working out.

This has several advantages:

o anyone can do it, not just admins. That's a quick expansion of the cleaning up workforce.
o those making silly mistakes are pointed to a page which explains what they did wrong and/or which may encourage them to participate instead of vandalizing
o those who are vandalising may think they have succeeded and not notice things vanishign a month later, after their attention span has expired.
o it's a completely open process, for everyone, including non-admins. A much more wiki way of working.

>> The ''deletionists'' against ''inclusionists'' argument is utterly bogus.<<

I agree. I see it as a size of wikipedia argument, not an inclusion or exclusion argument. I'm a deletionist. With a different threshold than some other deletionsists.

>> It is a case of those who take the idea that wikipedia as an encyclopedia seriously and basic standards below which an article is deleted and those who see wikipedia as some sort of scribblebox where any sort of rubbish, not matter how bad, has a 'right' to be left undisturbed. <<

Fortunately, I didn't advocate that view. Instead I proposed a way of:
o identifying articles which are poor
o automatically deleting the irretrievable ones after some time has passed
o a way of identifying and searching to find the ones which need most work, so they can be fixed
o a way (tagging) which will let us run an SQL command to tag every article which makes the 1.0 cut, then sort them by quality, so we can concentrate on improving what will be in 1.0, or in adding and removing to that list.

I agree that the Wikipedia isn't, and shouldn't be, a scribblebox. That's why I'm suggesting ways to help identify the scribbles and take care of them more efficiently.