[WikiEN-l] Deletionism fails to serve the readers

[K P]

On 6/6/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

That's what you get when "Anybody can edit." But you also get
something else, you get some damn fine articles.

3/ to find a way to indicate approval of short articles.

I have a hard time understanding why people think that "short" is a
deletion criterion.  I've created a good number of one-liner articles,
and have never had  a single article I've created put up for AfD--even
my first one created almost as soon as I joined, when I a totally new
editor, with a red-linked user and user-talk page, was only edited for
style by another editor.

This is becoming one of my bigger pieves, the "too short"
deletionists, second to the mysterious demand that titles not be what
they are.

The first time I edited Wikipedia, by the way, people kept refering me
to an article's talk page.  I coudn't find it for the life of me,
because the tab is called "Discussion."   This drives me crazy--what's
the point?  To confuse folks who speak ESL?

It's rampant on Wikipedia, Jeff.

KP