[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[David Goodman]

It's not quite that bad: I find that about 80% of the articles that I
know enough to tell and think ought to be kept are kept, and another
10% are debatable. 90% is doing rather well, by WP standards. The ones
that get unfarly deleted are primarily the passable ones that nobody
care to defend or improve, and I see no way to have a process that
will protect in such cases. What we can do:
1/ is prohibit placing an article on Afd without notifying every
editpr who has been substantially involved-- and similarly on
sfd--everyone who has used a category or a template, or commented in a
discussion on them.This can be done by a bot.
2/ prohibit nominating an article unless one has made at least a
preliminary search, and found nothing usable--with a report of the
search and a link to the results.
3/ to find a way to indicate approval of short articles.
4/ to prohibit placing a second AfD within at least  6 months after a
keep decision and 3 after a  no consensus, unless new negative
evidence can be demonstrated at Deletion Review, and then to require
individual notice to everyone present at the first AfD
5/ To require continuing the debate if fewer than 5 WPedians have
participated; after two additional periods, to automatically make the
closure no consensus
6/ to automatically restore history for examination on request to
anyone who asks, and to the entire community during an XfD*
7/ to prohibit speedies during the discussion except by the
concurrance of 2 admins. Everything that gets there should stay the
full time.This will apply to speedy keeps too--those stupid enough to
nominate them wil have their work visible.
8/ to track those repeatedly proposing deletions that are rejected,
and display the results.
9/ to track those making closures overthrown at Deletion Review, and
to post the results.
10/ to change the time period to 8 days to accomodate less frequent editors.
and involving other processes:
11. that in cases of proven copyvio only the copyvio material be
removed. If this leaves a page empty, that's a separate step.
12. The relevant parts of these provisions apply to speedies and prods as well,
*with exceptions of true cases of blatant copyright violation, BLP, or
other specific harm to individuals. The level of this should be the
level required for office actions or oversight.
I know a few of these have been rejected at various times.

This still leaves the basic problem of which KP complains--uninformed
editors and stupid actions. Those will always be with us.

DGG

On 6/6/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/6/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On  0, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> scribbled:
> > > This is quite common on AfD, though, that articles are deleted because
> > > they are too short or stubs.  Truthfully, I doubt there are many other
> > > editors who are deleting stuff to make sure they are too short then
> > > nominating them for deletion, but there are organism and botany
> > > articles that I have written or watch that are a single line of text.
> > > Was there really no material to preserve after the copy vios were
> > > deleted?  Could folks who edit pulp fiction have been asked?  Could it
> > > have been left alone after the copy vios were deleted if you simply
> > > didn't know enough about the topic?
> > >
> > > KP
> >
> > 1) I didn't see anything - the H.P. Lovecraft was literally more comprehensive than any non-copyvio stuff. (Besides, wouldn't the non-copyvio stuff be tainted as a derivative work?)
> > 2) I don't know anyone who works on pulp fiction. I know of a Fiction WikiProject, but that's about it.
> > 3) As a blank page or sub-stub at best, I guess. Doesn't sound appealing.
> >
> > --
> > Gwern
> > Inquiring minds want to know.
> >
>
> I see lots of ways around this, like popping a sentence in the
> article, or asking the Lovecraft editors to look it over, or a dozen
> other things that would have taken less collective Wikipedia work than
> an AfD.
>
> Another problem, imo, is that there ARE deletionists.  That's why SCA
> and Rock climbing get nominated in the first place, and many other
> credible topics, simply because some editors are looking for something
> to delete.  Then we get nominations like
> idon'tknowanythingaboutitsoitcan'tbenotable..
>
> There is seldom a single nomination among the ones I look at that is
> compliant with AfD procedures--they're nominated for the wrong
> reasons, they're nominated by people who don't know anything about the
> topic, they're nominated because they're stubs (stubs aren't
> disallowed on Wikipedia), they're nominated because the nominator
> thinks it might not be notalbe (it is Articles  For Deletion).
>
> It is frustrating, and it's degenerating and getting worse.
>
> KP
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.