[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Adam Koenigsberg wrote:
>> I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to
>> say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of
>> process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This
>> reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see
>> RFC/Kelly Martin
>
> It reminds me of spoiler warnings.  It's amazing just how much spoiler
> warnings turned out to be a template for all sorts of...  suboptimal...
> activities.  Once you delete tens of thousands of things, you've won,
> regardless of whether you've followed the rules or not.

It is easier to attack than defend. If you want to justify high
standards and removal, there are easy arguments: 'what if this could
be another Seigenthaler?' 'what if this is fancruft Wikipedia will be
criticized for including?'

If you want to defend, you have... what? Even the mockery of _The New
Yorker_ didn't convince several editors that [[Neil Gaiman]] should
cover Scientology. There is no beacon example of deletionism's
grievous errors.

-- 
gwern