[WikiEN-l] Deletion for its own sake (was MUD history)

[White Cat]

Please see the "To boldly delete what no one had deleted before" thread.
  - White Cat

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On Jan 11, 2009, at 8:56 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > Well, not really. If they don't believe a given item can have reliable
> > sources - the sort of rabid nutters who brag about deletion tallies on
> > their user pages - then they just won't accept anything. I speak here
> > from observation of the phenomenon.
>
> This has been one of the most toxic things I've seen in a long time,
> and it's a real problem. In the Threshold debate, I have seen, in all
> sincerity, the following.
>
> 1: The dismissal of a print source as "unverified"
> 2: The rejection of a source because of the possibility (with no
> evidence) that its author played the game in question.
> 3: The rejection of a third source because it allowed games to be
> submitted for review (even though it didn't review all games submitted)
>
> And, most recently, the article has been the subject of a second AfD
> where the nominator flatly lies about the sourcing in the article,
> asserting that it is sourced to things it isn't, and ignoring sources
> it does have. That particular glory can be found here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Threshold_(online_game)_(2nd_nomination)
>
> Meanwhile, an actually promising proposal for fiction notability that
> had multiple parties, both inclusionist and deletionist, onboard is
> now being derailed by two or three people who are holding the "No
> retreat, no surrender, no loosening of standards for fiction" line
> with no willingness to compromise, openly saying they'd rather treat
> each article as a battleground than loosen standards to something that
> approximates the practical consensus on fiction. One person compared
> the keeping of fiction articles by the community to Jim Crow laws. In
> all seriousness.
>
> I have spoken of the toxicity of deletionists, but this is beyond
> toxicicity. This is an active cancer - and one that the arbcom has,
> historically, been too chicken to take on.
>
> Just how much commitment to removing content for the sake of removing
> content needs to be demonstrated before we can say that it violates
> policy and just block the idiots?
>
> -Phil
>
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