[WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion and due process

Mon Aug 18 21:06:15 UTC 2003

Nicholas Knight wrote:
>This latest effort at increasing the amount 
>of work one has to do to get anything useful 
>done is just helping that perception along. 
>Every time I turn around there's another 
>largely political detail I have to be aware of, 
>and  it's doing anything but encourage me to 
>contribute to Wikipedia.

So who is most harmed; the person who has to paste a small boilerplate message 
into an article, or the person who wrote that article or helped improve it, 
have the article mysteriously disappear one day without any obvious reason 
why? 

Not placing proper notice on an article falling under the 7 day rule and 
marked for deletion, is akin to trying a person without bothering to tell 
them about the trial! Yeah sure it is on a publicly viewable page, but then 
so are court records; should society expect ordinary people to periodically 
check those records just to make sure they are not on trial for something? 
This lack of due process is very unwiki. 

The tiny bit of extra work is also a technical detail that can be fixed by 
semi-automating the Votes for deletion process (as it was in Phase II). 

>I've had to put up with pointless procedures on 
>volunteer projects before. I'm not about to do it again.

Sorry, but the deletion of anything that falls under the 7 day rule is a big 
deal and needs to be discussed. Providing the boilerplate gives the author of 
the article and its readers a chance to properly argue their case. Not 
providing the boilerplate, IMO, is a bit sneaky.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)