[WikiEN-l] Cruft

[Michael Snow]

Jesse W wrote:

> On May 3, 2006, at 2:12 AM, Pete Bartlett wrote:
>
>> Given the existence of automated listing tools, adding a note to
>> a creator's talk page might not be a heavy burden and can only
>> be helpful for those who are not heavy watchlist users.
>
> That gives me an idea - what about a bot, that would go through AfD's, 
> identify the "major contributors" (somehow) and, unless they had 
> already commented on the page, drop a short note on their talk page.  
> I would have not objections to that. (Except for the minor sadness of 
> having *even more* bot-created talk page messages, but that's not 
> really an objection... ;-) ).

This would be immensely better than imposing another procedural hurdle 
on nominators, especially one that's likely counterproductive from the 
nominator's perspective. Requiring human volunteers to do work they 
don't want to do is not usually a good idea, and in these circumstances 
would likely lead to grouchy nominators making _more_ comments about 
"cruft", which we all seem to agree is a bad idea. We spend entirely too 
much energy trying to fix broken processes by adding more process.

--Michael Snow