Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Purgeusdhs (talk | contribs) at 16:43, 22 December 2006 (refactor project author's obscenity). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Initial Project Outlines

First of all, I want to stress : This is not the Deletionist Cabal. That's down the hall, to the right.

Secondly, and seriously, I created this project because I feel right now Misplaced Pages has three problems. The first is that POV is increasingly beginning to affect deletion efforts. There is increased deletion of pro / anti articles on everything from alleged massacres and torture allegations to abortion to political figures and 9/11 consipiracies. Several administrators have been stripped of their power, and dozens of long-standing users and editors have left the project forever. POV has the potential to truly make deletion a cabal, and we cannot allow that to happen.

There are other problems, and unfortunately, no one is trying to fix them. There is too much reliance on civility, and gentle consensus, and passing around the buck, to be bold. No one is asking WHY these problems exist.

I will list the outline of my thinking out, and I would like feedback from anyone who wants to do so. Please state your thoughts in a sectioning started with "thoughts by User" .

Problems

• The political infection of POV into deletion debates, and in deletion rationales.
• The effects of continual reverts and alterations to articles that weaken their quality and nature, and the resulting degradation in sourcing, until a once well sourced article becomes disjointed and seemingly OR.
• The long-term effects of minor edits and so-called "clarifications" to WP:N, WP:V, and WP:RS, that continue to further mudddy the water rather than actually clarify

Issues

• Deletion has become a complete partisan battleground between the roughly 800 or so active members of the Inclusionist-Deletionist War. Outsiders who do not consistantly take a positition do not take part in enough XfD to realize the only people consitantly voting on deletions are the two camps (Inclusionists and Deletionists) who probably shouldn't be voting on them.
• Deletion policies are coming under increasing outside pressure as external media mocks and belittles Misplaced Pages's exclusivity and resistance to original research, with the result that the consensus for looser, weaker deletion policy may result over time.
• Deletion review has a huge upswing in participation since more and more admins are not relying on policy to close debates.

Analysis

• The primary problems we need to analyze are the effect of policy changes on deletion. Does adding new notability guildlines like WP:SCHOOL lead to better articles, or just more deletion? Are increased deletions wiping out things that shouldn't be?
• There is a complete fucking lack of any initiative to source and expand articles. I can literally hit the random article button ten times and be guarnateed to find an article I could get deleted. This is ridiculous. Deleting these articles won't help, too many new ones keep pouring in.
• There is a need for better automated tools to identify, classify, tag, and sort articles that meet deletion criteria.

Solutions

• We must find a way to augment policy to maintain the spirit of verifiability, notability, NPOV, and no original research while resisting the POV attempts of people to use deletion as a way to remove the opinions of their enemies.
• We must find a way to turn deletion into a tool to encourage expansion and sourcing of articles so that the number of eyes we have doing NP Patrol and Speedy Deletion Patrol can also be a Sourcing Patrol and Wikifying Patrol.
• We must find a way to automate both the way we can look at deletion information and process deletions, as the volume of crap being put on the Wiki is beyond the capacity of even a human gestalt like Misplaced Pages to analyze. --Elaragirl 23:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts by NeoFreak

• Admins that are either unfamiliar with or apathetic about the application of policy while closing an AfD. Admins often simply look at a "vote tally" to close an AfD is unacceptable. Standards for adminship need to go way up; they are the public face and the keepers of wikipedia and its policies.
• The very nature of open source. Any time any one can add anything at the snap of a finger that then requires a lengthy process to remove results in a back log of crap. Only registered users should be able to edit.
• Sources tags: they're all bark and no bite. Placing a problem tag helps attract a little attention and serves as a notice to parties interested in the article but they don't actually do anything. Any article that has a sources/notability/etc tag because the article is totally lacking in those categories for a specific amount of time, with no fixes, should be subject to a speedy deletion. Otherwise everyone's time is wasted fighting protective editors or explaining policy over and over again in a unneeded AfD.
• Subjects with only internet sources: they are a huge problem esp with subcultures, trends, obscure sexual inclinations and the such. People need to get serious about WP:V and WP:RS and delete these articles on sight. Even though they no doubt exist in some form they are not verifiable by encyclopedic standards and need to go. NeoFreak 14:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts by Elaragirl

• Admins can be broken down into three camps: Admins that close AfD's based on policy, good. Admins that close AfD's based on vote numbers, bad. Admins that close AfD's based on personal opinion, fuckery. Increasingly, admins that are seen as too deletionist are being slapped around and overturned at DRV and then the AfD's are mobbed. Some of this is WikiProject listings and organizing through backchannels to "save their articles". (IRC is rife with this bullshit, and we can expect email is too.)
• Cleanup is completely fucked, with a backlog that is growing. When people see an article that needs a LOT of work and is hard to find easy online sources for they just skip it. These are zombie articles, neither alive nor dead, and while possessing not a jot of useful information they clog up the cleanup queue. We need to kill the deadwood.
• Subjects such as internet memes, with no paper sources and no offline credability or notability, are hard to call. Certainly some struggle to meet WP:V. But so did "All your base are belong to us" at one time. --Elaragirl 17:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts from Moreschi

• DRV is becoming increasingly unlovable. There are too many "I don't like the result" noms that waste time and space.
• CAT:CSD IS 95 PER CENT OF THE TIME HORRIFICALLY BACKLOGGED. FOR SOMEONE WHO DOES A FAIR BIT OF NP PATROL, THIS IS VERY, VERY, ANNOYING. It would be nice if there were more admins who kept on top of CSD.
• Too many AFD votes are ILIKEIT votes - often quite literally. Cruft is quite often justified on the basis that it is useful to the fans of that piece of cruft. The question of encyclopedicness is too often completely ignored.
• Page protection. Even after 3 recreates, admins still won't salt. Is there a reason for this, or do people not just look at the page logs?
• The concept of what actually does and does not constitute "reliable sources" needs to be greater popularized, and that if something has no reliable sources it should be deleted is not understood. WP:V and WP:RS are too often taken as negotiable. They aren't. Moreschi 17:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts from TheronJ

• Need for clean-up/verification as a ground for deletion: A lot of people respond on AFD that AFD is not a request for clean-up. I used to agree, but now I say, why not delete pages that are currently worthless, or even very nearly worthless? If there is literally nothing in the page that is verifiably sourced, then what use is the page? I say stubbify to anything worthwhile, or, if there is nothing worthwhile, delete it and let someone write a good page in its place. Maybe we need some policy innovation, like Delete and re-list at WP:Requested_Articles or Delete if not substantially improved in N days. There is no purpose in keeping worthless junk around for a year just in case someone eventually decides to write a worthwhile article with the same name.
• WP:ILIKEIT: On the other hand, I don't think "I like it" is necessarily an invalid vote. If the subject of the article is verifiable by reliable sources, then, IMHO, a substantial base of loyal editors should be one fact that is relevant to the more nebulous concepts of notability and encylopediosity.

Thanks, TheronJ 21:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Goals query

I applaud the creation of this project and like the statement of purpose quote from Heller, but I'd like to see the goals section beefed up to be more deletionist rather than merely about deletion (which is what it comes across to me at the moment). While I understand the disinclination to be antagnostic with Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Inclusion (though I would note that Wikiproject Inclusion is very vocal about its apparently outright opposition to exclusionism and deletionism), I don't see the need for WikiProject Deletionism's goals to worry about inclusionist sensitivities too much. Goal No.2 could be part of Wikiproject Inclusion, for instance: "To review the outcomes of WP:AfD for inappropiate deletions to more correctly identify articles that should and should not be nominated.". But this statement implies that incorrect deletions/nominations are the key problem - surely incorrectly undeleted articles (due to keep/no consensus/reluctance to nominate/restoration through DRV) are just as big or even bigger problem?. More on this theme, later. Bwithh 17:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes and no. The main problem with WP:Inclusion is that it is inclusionist to the point of absurdity. In my opinion (and yes, we can discuss this freely and change it if we have a consensus of as low as 25%) Deletionists want proper deletion. Remember, while we want to take out the trash, we cannot accept collateral damage. Some articles are put up for deletion that don't need to be. What I fear is twofold. One, that inclusionists, eventualists, and ilikeitists (who are all growing more rapidly than deletionists and exclusionists) will use these improper AfD's to loosen policy and allow in more crap.

But more important than that is that we are here to build an encyclopedia, and if AfD is killing off articles that can be fixed, it's not doing it's job. I want Deletionists to have the moral and policy high ground here. I am not sure WHAT the key problem is, that's why I started the project. Deletion discussion is usually overrun with people who want to score points, and no one is looking at the results. Still, I look forward to your thinking, and if even a few people think we need to change course we can. There won't be any bullshit extranous "executive councils" or that garbage.--Elaragirl 17:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Opinions wanted at AFD suffering from neglect

At Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Mingo ambient musician - I nominated this a while back and there's one proper vote so far and a whole load of socks. Honest opinions, please - yeah or nay, I do not wish to votestack. Thank you. Moreschi 18:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Voted weak keep after I found a few possible sources. Should we have a subpage for this kind of thing? By the way, that article is the kind of borderline case that worries me. --Elaragirl 19:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Subpage doesn't sound like a bad idea - also could be for people to come and get feedback on what to do and likely outcomes before they nominate articles for AFD, which could save a lot of time and bother. Moreschi 19:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

And another

I have one that is sitting alone in the corner as well, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Associated Student Bodies. It's a NN and amateur furry comic book with no sources. The only people that care enough to vote on it are...furries. NeoFreak 13:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

An automated list of neglected (less than 5 votes) AfD's is generated by Dragons Flight, and is very useful. --Elaragirl 13:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

AFD isnt a vote

This wikiproject (at least that vote section) undermines afds reason. It used to be vfd (votes for deletion), it was changed to afd for a reason. --Cat out 20:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

How many pages are you going to spam with this? Naconkantari 20:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm hugely disturbed by the messages about the AfD process being put out by this page. Seriously, votes on XfD discussions are never counted on a "points" scale, and admins only very rarely use the vote count method. Misplaced Pages breathes consensus, and the "checking" process encouraged by this page completely undermines this. Comments are invaluable, and should always be taken into account, and a Strong delete bears no extra weight than a weak delete - it's the arguement behind the opinion which matter to the closing admin. Also, the page suggests that a "merge and delete" should have taken place on a page. Unfortunately, in most cases, such an action is illegal (in real life), as it violates the GDFL. Delete and merge is never a viable deletion opinion - when I'm closing an XfD and see a string of such opinions, I'll honestly ignore the delete bit and instead initiate a merge and redirect, with a sternly placed message about the GDFL in my closing summary. Consensus has to be fairly clear on wikipedia debates, and most debates, in the absence of consensus, default to keep (no votes in some discussions default to delete (TFD, IFD and CFD)), thus the "Keep (no consensus)" close by Shanel in the example cited on the page is perfectly correct, as there were hugely varying opinions on the discussion page. What the votes actually were makes no difference at all in their value to the closing admin! Martinp23 20:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

1. The rating has nothing to do with how the closing admin determines it. It has to do with consensus, and it's still being developed. The idea is to create a bot to generate a report. A bot cannot figure out comments. The main point of the bot is to examine contested AfD's and see if a quick overview of the voting process matches what the Admin did. If you think there are admins who don't just count votes and keep and delete, take a gander at some of the things deleted at DRV that were completely out of process. The bot would bring up such contested AfD's. For that reason, we need some way to review the process. I'm using differences in strong and weak for now to see how it models. In some cases, it models well. In others, it models poorly. When I figure out a way to make it model things accurately, I'll finalize it. But we do NOT go around rating deletions and taking them to DRV. I've never taken anything to DRV, and I've only taken a very few completely crap articles to AfD and except for one, they were all deleted by huge margins. I feel you are misinterpreting our intent, and I urge you to read ALL of the project page.
2. You use the example that Shanel closed. OPINION DOES NOT AND SHOULD NOT DETERMINE YOUR KEEP OR DELETE CHOICE. If you aren't using policy, you're using WP:ILIKEIT. Period. There isn't an option here. If you have 5 people voting delete with good reasons and 500 people voting keep with NO reasons, you would keep the article? There wasn't a single policy used in that vote, and that's why it's being reviewed at DRV and getting wrecked. Furthermore, you are missing the main point. It is just as offensive to have things deleted out of process as it is to have them kept out of process. I personally find it hilarious that you have no problem with WikiProject Inclusion and it's assertion that deletion is basically the domain of those who just want to delete, and yet want to attack the idea that we can examine the deletion process ourselves, simply because we are deletionists. --Elaragirl 21:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I am more deletionist than inclusionist. I mean, I created WP:NPW, to tag pages for deletion :)! I just tihnk that the whole idea of the vote scores is completely out of line, and so far from the truth of deletion debates that it scares me. I haven't really looked at the inclusionism project, and I'm sure I'd have similar concerns if they have such a scoring system. If you're looking to create a bot to do something like this, I'd suggest that you do something which shows the number of opinions placed (including comments) and that you strongly re-word that section in the page about scoring. WikiDiscussion Manager is a good tool for looking ast which AfDs might need more opinions. Martinp23 21:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I've moved it since it's being willfully misinterpreted, to userspace. Opinions, all too often, are either irrelevant or merely discussion. They play a very large role in an admin's decision but since they can't be interpreted by bot or used to decide whether an AfD is valid or not, they aren't my primary concern. A bot would have problems. A vote that had a bunch of deletions and then turned up a few good sources and was kept would come up as possibly improperly closed. But the bot wouldn't change any pages, it's mostly looking to create a table for me to examine, so I can see 1) if my suspicions of trends are correct, and 2) to identify the AfD's ( and by extention, the admins) who are deleting or keeping based on process that doesn't seem to fit consensus.--Elaragirl 21:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

• As I said above, I think "I like it" has at least some relevance to the subjective deletion grounds (principally notability and "not encylcopedic"), assuming that an article meets other baseline requirements. (Principally WP:V and WP:CITE). TheronJ 21:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

And as I've said elsewhere, when WP:ILIKEIT is used as the reason to keep, you will usually find articles that don't just fail but drastically fail WP:V and WP:RS. I understand the spirit of your meaning , and in some ways I can even sympathize with it. But unless and until there is a willingness on the part of more people to accept that not all things belong in an encyclopedia, I think it ends up causing more discord than consensus. --Elaragirl 00:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yawn. At least this isn't as bizarre as nominating WP:CIVIL for deletion. Check out the link, by the way. It seems to me that Elaragirl's explanation about what this prospective bot might be used for is perfectly satisfactory and should be left there. Moreschi 10:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I really think this is a bad idea

all it's going to do is to inflame passions. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Heaven forbid passions be inflamed. NeoFreak 23:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Possibly it is a bad idea, but considering there's a whole bunch of projects specifically aimed at keeping huge swathes of unencyclopaedic and non-notable crap, it's about time there was one aimed at getting rid of them, outside of those user subpages maintained by petty little people. Proto::► 23:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the founders of this are trying to take extra care not to be confrontational or inflammatory. I wonder whether "Deletion" rather than "Deletionism" would be a better name for the project, as it seems to be emphasizing the understanding and process of deletion? Bwithh 23:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Irony, mostly. --Elaragirl 00:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, Zoe, I'm trying very hard not to inflame passions. We're moving very quietly, and so far we're just examining things and , for my part at least, interpreting events and policy to try to figure out what is going on. Could you give me some ideas of changes you'd think that would be good?--Elaragirl 00:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

New Random Page Patrol Userbox/category

For those interested, I've just created this. Yeah, I know its just a badge and a category, but hopefully it will encourage more people to do this kind of patrol. You get less frequent hits (needs a bit more clickwork... on the other hand, you're not "competing" with other editors over the same small number of recent/new pages) that need tagging or fixing or nomination for afd than new pages/recent pages patrol but you do usually dig up pages which are old and obscure or fell through the cracks in the new page patrol net.

See Misplaced Pages:Random_page_patrol Bwithh 02:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

sidenote: Monobook Upgrade

Maybe I'm late to the party, and this is old news but for those who don't have it already, I really recommend installing the monobook script recommended at the top of the page here. I just found that when I was digging around creating the Random Page Patrol thingy. Its got way more features than the ordinary popups I was using before Bwithh 02:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Does Misplaced Pages really need its own political parties?

Heck, I'm as deletionist as they come ... I may not be overly active about it on the article side, but I really don't like having kazillions of articles about every two-word phrase that has ever been uttered twice in human history and I don't like having articles about every garage band that has ever put out a CD or mentioned by a local beat writer in need of a story. But really ... this kind of thing isn't a great idea. We're here to improve an encyclopedia, not advocate WikiPolitical objectives. Clean up an article. Tag an unused image for deletion. But do we really need something like this? BigDT 22:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The point of this is that it isn't political. The name is slightly misreading, and possibly should be changed to WikiProject Deletion. Read more of what is said on the project page and you will see it's about improving WP in the area of deletion, not to be a real-life Deletionist Cabal. Cheers, Moreschi 22:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Why not call it Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Article Standards or Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Article Quality? Honestly, I'm torn between nominating this page at MFD (a mind-boggling circular reference, I would admit) and embracing it as a great tool to rid Misplaced Pages of junk. But as it stands now, it's confrontational and it has the potential to be used for vote-stacking. BigDT 23:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think "political party" is rather misleading label. This is a project about bringing together people interested in the process of deletionism and how it is and should/shouldn't be applied. How it can be improved, changed and refined. Just like any other wikiproject this place can and should serve as a place for everyone regardless of their "school of thought" to come together and make the process of deletion better. I think the title might be inflammatory to some and that might deserve a second look but this is not a deltionist clubhouse. NeoFreak 00:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This is yet another effort to institutionalize conflict and to make conflict resoultion into a process of personal attack against perceived ideological foes. It is an effort, albeit ignorant and unintended, to drive off cooperative editors while recruiting and retaining conflict-oriented editors. Purgeusdhs 16:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"This is a project about bringing together people interested in the process of deletionism" The suffix "ism" implies an ideal, not a process. Perhaps NeoFreak's time would be better spent studying vocabulary instead of using his/her limited vocabulary to influence the literary endeavors of more competent scholars. Purgeusdhs 16:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)