[WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion and due process

Tue Aug 19 07:24:08 UTC 2003

Nicholas Knight wrote:
>a) Most people have their freedom abruptly denied 
>before recieving any notice. Cops show up, say 
>"you're under arrest", and cart them off to jail. The 
>analogy really doesn't work.

That is talking about probable cause for cops to make an arrest. My analogy is 
akin to providing proper notices to appear in court. The analogy is very 
sound and mentioning cops making arrests is a strawman. 

>b) Speaking of the analogy not working... The article 
>is on trial, not the author. 

Thus the notice goes on the article itself; the author may or may want to act 
in the article's defense. Your reasoning is weak.

>The article should have all the time in the world 
>to check vfd and prepare its defense 

You have any idea how odd that sounds? The article cannot be its own advocate. 

>"unwiki" means very different things to very 
>different people. To me, personally, "wiki" is 
>purely a TECHNICAL term, not a philosophy.

Wiki is a philosophy, a very radical one in which websites are open to 
contributions by complete strangers. Thus "unwiki" is anything which tends to 
make things less open (like listing articles for deletion without providing 
notice on the article itself). 

>What I have a problem with is being told I'll 
>have to go through yet another irritating step 
>that was never needed until somebody decided 
>for themselves that it was.

It became necessary once the volume of submissions to the VfD page became as 
large as it is today. Since so many things are listed there is less debate on 
each item. Thus the chances of something being unfairly deleted increases. 
Our policies have evolved this way; at first everything was very informal and 
lax, but as we have grown we have needed to develop written policies to make 
things run smoothly.

>Why wasn't this little "policy" decision advertised 
>far and wide? 

It was an extension of our current largely un-written policies of openness, 
accountability and fairness. IMO, the Admin that made the written change was 
just codifying these precepts to apply in this particular case.

>I never saw any mention of it until Saturday. 

You are well aware of it now.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)