[Flag] Re: [WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal to fix it

[Ray Saintonge]

Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
>
>> On 1/20/06 11:27 PM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:  
>>
>>> Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:  
>>>
>>>> I would vehemently disagree, especially when among those ten articles
>>>> are hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements and
>>>> other such content that has the effect of actively making Wikipedia a
>>>> *worse* and *less authoritative* source of information.  
>>>
>>> Since absolutely nobody is arguing to keep the kind of article you
>>> describe you are saved from you self-imposed obligation of vehemently
>>> disagreeing.  
>>
>> And we are saved from falling to the [[false dilemma]] [[strawman]] 
>> raised
>> by Mr. Nelson, that somehow you cannot rid Wikipedia of patently bad
>> articles without deleting good ones.  
>
> No he didn't. I quote Mr. Nelson:
>
>> If I were to set my spam filters to mark nearly everything as spam, 
>> I'd lose messages that matter. Maybe not a lot, maybe it works most 
>> of the time... but I'd lose some. Whereas if I set things so that 
>> messages are only marked as spam if they absolutely are, I can get 0 
>> real messages junked and only a few dozen bad ones slip through.
>
> He's using an analogy here, but basically what he's saying about 
> article deletion is "if we only delete articles as 'bad' when they 
> absolutely are, we lose 0 good articles and only a few dozen bad 
> articles slip through." The sorts of articles you're talking about 
> above (hoaxes, thinly veiled attack pages, vanispamcruftvertisements) 
> are the sort that are _obviously bad_, and so under Mr. Nelson's 
> preferences would still get deleted. 

I think it's really Travis that was raising the strawman argument with 
his comment.  The hoaxes and other deletion criteria that he raises 
receive very little dispute.  Notability, which he does not mention, is 
probably more disputed than all the other criteria put together.  Using 
arguments that are easily accepted for the listed criteria, and making 
them apply analogically to another criterion is a logical fallacy.

Ec