[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:21 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree that either before or now -- indeed, any possible rule, an
> admin is more likely to succeed with an unchecked deletion if the
> articles actually turn out to be unsourceable, than if they turn out
> to be notable and sourceable. But it is reckless to delete without
> checking first unless immediate harm is apparent, and arb com actually
> used "commend" to describe the act of doing just that sort of
> single-handed thoughtless deletion.
>
> I mention an earlier proposal that single handed deletion is only
> possible for G10 G11 and truly routine administration. At least then
> there will be a second admin involved.
>
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, but there's some value in
seeing this from the perspective of your opponent.

I would label myself as an "inclusionist" if I would label myself as
anything, but I think the inclusionist defense against deleting bad
articles (You should be improving it, not deleting it!) is really not
where we want to go, because this is a charge that could be made in
either direction. For instance, in this case, some of these unsourced
BLPs have been sitting there unsourced for months! (or longer).

So then, maybe one way for you to put a stop to this is to go into the
unsourced BLPs and find some sources for them? If you can't do that,
or won't because the sources are too hard to find, then that's a
nagging source of doubt that the sources will never be forthcoming and
therefore that the articles really should be deleted.

But this is an argument that inclusionists always make to anyone who
tries to delete an article that is missing something crucial -- they
put the burden on other people, rather than themselves. So as an admin
who is looking out on a sea of unsourced BLPs, most of them harmless
but some of them maybe very, very harmful -- it might not be very
persuasive to hear from someone that, "You can't delete these
articles, you can only improve them painstakingly one at a time-- it's
YOUR responsibility to fix them, not the person who originally
uploaded the content. But I won't help you of course, though I will
accuse you of deletionism if you try to fix this."

Surely, there's a way we can cooperate about this-- and that has to be
adding the sources ourselves.

- causa sui