[WikiEN-l] VfD is broken

[Christopher Larberg]

Are you posting on this mailing list for no reason other than to troll? Looking through my inbox, I see nothing constructive coming from you; only accusations that RickK is involved in some plot to harass users and this lunatic, invective-filled rant in which you exhort your belief that any article that falls short of putting Wikipedia in legal danger or consists of a halfway-coherent sentence belongs on Wikipedia, and that anyone who disagrees with you should be banned.

VfD needs work; it's by no means a perfect system. However, removing it is much, much worse. If articles about some guy's pet dog and bands that have existed for two weeks and haven't even written a song are allowed to remain, Wikipedia will only become a dumping ground from random crap from the Internet, something that its critics have been predicting for years. It will turn into another Gaia Forums or Neopets. Both of these sites are avoided like the plague by sensible and mature Internet users because they have next to no control or moderation. A lack of control encourages people to post inane drivel. What frightens me is that if ideas such as getting rid of Vfd and automatically suspecting every action taken by an administrator are instituted, Wikipedia will be going down the same path. You are proposing to disenfranchise the Wikipedia community by removing its control over what remains in the project, which is completely anti-Wiki.

--Slowking Man
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Eric B. and Rakim<mailto:eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> 
  To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org<mailto:wikien-l at Wikipedia.org> 
  Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2004 6:56 PM
  Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] VfD is broken


  Agree wholeheartedly, the page is a stupid waste of time and troll bait. 
  Noone in their right mind gets involved in it unless they have to cause the 
  deletionists is trying to delete a page you have created / authored. The 
  freaky things you see there are just disgusting.

  1. There is no reason to delete any of the pages there at all. Copyvios 
  already has a special page. And there is also already candidates for speedy 
  deletion and simple vandalism that is deleted on sight.

  2. Everyone using that page to delete articles is sabotaging Wikipedia and 
  should be blocked.

  3. The page itself should be deleted since it just can't be fixed.

  4. Articles about "non-notable" stuff does not hurt Wikipedia. Since noone 
  cares about the stuff, noone will link to it and noone will search for it 
  and NOONE will ever see it!

  5. Except for people that actually  GO AND LOOK for useless articles. But if 
  you do, it's your own fault that you find them. Casual surfers and 
  non-wikipedians wont find them.

  6. And cause those articles are never read by anyone it doesn't hurt to 
  remove them from Wikipedia. But that's not why vfd is sabotaging Wikipedia. 
  It is because 50-80% of the articles listed there should not and will not be 
  deleted. The authors of those articles are forced to defend their work to 
  people that just haven't got a clue and never will. Then they have to engage 
  in more pointless arguing with the deletionists just to prevent them from 
  destroying Wikipedia!

  7. The Wikipedia concept is that anyone can edit a page and that only those 
  who edits a page gets to determine what information goes into a page. Its 
  like "do it yourself cause you can't tell anyone else what to do cause there 
  is no way to force them to do it." Now that concept doesn't work with vfd 
  cause someone can say "uuuh.. delete unless it is improved in a week.". That 
  person basically forces those who care about the article to write what they 
  know about it or it will be killed. It is not fair at all.

  8. As an example:

  NASA Project Gemini Familiarization Manual -- Add to this discussion

  The flight manual for the Gemini spacecraft - excellent Wikisource material. 
  Transwiki and delete --Rlandmann 00:33, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

      * Transwiki and delete. Geogre 00:54, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      * Transwiki and delete. GeneralPatton 00:55, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      * Have moved article to Wikisource. Please Delete DarylC 2 Sep 2004

  Which of these comments is a total waste of everyones time? Rlandmann's is 
  because despite the fact that he had an excellent idea he was to damn lazy 
  to carry it out himself as he easily could. Geogre and GeneralPatton just 
  seem to show off their excellent talents in agreeing. Finally, DarylC, the 
  primary author of the page actually does some work and moves the article. 
  Very good DarylC.

  The problem with this is that atleast thousand people have been forced to 
  read this meaningless junk because Rlandmann didn't place the suggestion to 
  transwiki on the article's talk page which would have been the right thing 
  to do.

  9. Example2: SimonP decided to list Puchland. Puchland seem to be a minor 
  webforum that nobody cares about. Because of point 4 above, this listing 
  too, is completele useless. And as in point 8 the proper way would have been 
  to propose deletion on that articles talk page. Noone but those concerned 
  should be the ones taking the decision.

  10. The only way to fix vfd would be to allow people to cast the identical 
  vote on range of articles listed there.  Then you would be able to vote 
  "keep doesn't hurt wikipedia" (or whatever) on each and every article.  
  However, the deletionists would never allow such an option because it only 
  takes a handful of people to vote in that way for the whole system to break 
  down.

  IMHO, IANAL, etc, w/e