Phil,
The problem under discussion isn't created by the words "keep" and "delete" on AFD pages, it's about the tenor of the discussion itself. This solution doesn't fix the base problem.
K.
On 1/17/06, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
- At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted. If
there is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the history gone. In the event it is needed, the history can always be resurrected by some admin.
Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice, perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought to be able to go back and look at the debate.
Indeed - with the number of debates that close with two or three votes - many of which are deeply flawed closes - I would be wary of making it so fewer people can find bad debates.
I think another important thing here would be to do away with voting on deletion. We supposedly did that when we called it AfD instead of VfD, except we kept the vote structure. Why don't we just stop with the bulleted list of boldfaced keep and delete votes and have it be an actual discussion. You know. "This guy doesn't seem like a very important figure in his field - I can't find any publications," says one person. "I just found one in Journal X." "Oh, yeah, but he's third author, and that's his only publication - he's probably a grad student." And people who just want to chime in with "me too" delete votes, well, don't have to.
Then closing admins can just read the discussion, read the arguments, look at past precedent and make a call, remembering things like "when in doubt, don't delete."
Best, Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l