[WikiEN-l] I better shut up (was vfd RFC)

[Geoff Burling]

On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Stephen Bain wrote:

> On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein <rebrane at 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