[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:06 AM 1/28/2010, Samuel Klein wrote:
>On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers 
> <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>  Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
> >> that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
> >> will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
> >> hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
> >> theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
> >> to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).
> >
> > You're right that these are all very bad problems.
> >
> > Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many
> > other similar snafus.
>
>You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.a  While PWD is simple and
>effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less
>satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind
>passionate bulk actions).  I wonder if there is some way to get the
>best of both hard and soft solutions.

Thanks. As far as I can see, blanking the article content, 
particularly with appropriate tags, would satisfy both approaches. It 
isn't something strange and new, it is how Wikipedia already deals 
with unsourced information in articles of all kinds, including 
biographies, it is simply deleted or possibly moved to Talk (by any 
editor). This is simply applying it the same principle to an article 
as a whole.

"Satisfying for frustrated editors"? Sure. But deletion must be done 
by an administrator, and the dubious pleasure of deletion (take that, 
fancruft!) is not quite respectable for admins, and ordinary editors 
(or bad-hand accounts for "frustrated" administrators) tend to get 
themselves banned for indulging too much or too openly in this 
pleasure.... I'd think that blanking would be reasonably satisfying, 
while doing much less damage in terms of eventual growth of the 
project. If a deletionist wants to indulge his or her frustration at 
cruft and unsourced BLPs by blanking the articles, I'm not offended. 
It's actually much better and much simpler and much less disruptive 
than speedy tags and AfDs and all that.

In fact, that was part of the point of WP:PWD, to eliminate the often 
silly contention over notability at AfD, and instead convert 
"deletion" into an ordinary editorial decision that can, if conflict 
arises, go through the gradual escalation of WP:DR, which can, in 
theory, resolve disputes less disruptively than holding a community 
discussion right at the outset. For sure, with BLPs with no reliable 
sources, the content should go, immediately, as long as it goes in a 
way that makes it easy to recover.

And a bot can do it, very quickly and efficiently. The community is 
almost certainly not going to allow bots to delete articles! I'm a 
radical inclusionist, actually, but would have no trouble accepting 
mass blanking under decent conditions. Particularly conditions where 
the article, as-is, would not withstand AfD!

>PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles
>are sometimes speedied because they are blank.

That problem would not get worse with PWD as an approach. As 
unsourced BLPs, they are already totally vulnerable to speedy deletion.

First of all, blanking would create an intermediate option that 
addresses the BLP issues as well as notability issues. I'd really 
encourage looking at how PWD could be made effective for all the 
legitimate purposes behind the various factions in the present flap. 
The article might not be blanked, it could be redirected to a page on 
the kind of blanking that was done, giving instructions for how to 
bring the article back. If problems developed with articles returning 
without sourcing, the page could be semiprotected and that could even 
be bot-assisted.

Placing speedy tags should not be done by bot, at least not merely 
for lack of sourcing, and I see no harm in a blanked article 
remaining indefinitely; deletion would be requested by a blanked 
article reviewer who finds that the blanked material was actually of 
no use whatever, a hoax, or so radically incorrect that it will waste 
the time of someone who wants to recreate the article. In that case, 
deletion is exactly appropriate so that a new article starts fresh. 
But an article where it is easy to verify that the topic exists and 
some information can be found that is independent, though not 
necessarily of high quality? The only difference, really, between PWD 
and standard deletion is the reservation of the ability to read the 
history of the article to administrators only, which, in fact, 
increases the load on administrators without a corresponding benefit.

Bots should only do things that are relatively harmless and that can 
be easily reversed. Deletion cannot be so easily reversed, and 
overwhelming the speedy deletion system with piles of speedy tags 
isn't a great idea. Blanking (or blanking with redirection as I'm 
suggesting) fixes the serious problem immediately, and opens the door 
to improvement and invites it at the same time. Those who work on 
improvement will notice useless versions and if they don't have time 
to improve the article, they can place a speedy tag on it, and a 
special speedy tag might be created for this situation. The purpose 
there of deletion is clear: to avoid other editors wasting time 
trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

Note, however, that someone who finds old content to be useless could 
remove the content, or if it was partly useless, but something might 
be salvaged, remove the useless part, save the article, then reblank 
pending further work.

WP:PWD added an additional feature: redlink display of PWD'd 
articles. That would require a software change, and it might not be 
done exactly that way. But this is unnecessary, even if it is 
possibly desirable. I'm not actually sure which would be better, 
redlink display or something else, it's possible that redlink would 
be best. But a person following the redlink, inspired to fix it, 
would quickly find and be able to read the blanked article, and go from there.