[WikiEN-l] Re: Rebranding VfD

Thu Aug 26 04:29:28 UTC 2004

Andrew Lih wrote:

>I'm all for reevaluating how VfD works, but I'd like to oppose the
>name "Editorial Review."
>
>Not only does it sound Nupedia-ish, but I have a strange image of a
>salon with leather chairs, Ivy League professors smoking cigars and
>sipping cognac while deciding the fate of articles from commonfolk.
>The name "votes for deletion" makes the barrier high, meaning an
>article stays unless you put yourself on the record for endorsing a
>destructive act.
>
>This may come as a surprise to those who've found me a "deletionist",
>but I think adopting the "Editorial Review" moniker makes Wikipedia
>less wiki-like. It makes Wikipedia sound really stuffy and formal,
>which it really is NOT.
>
I share at least some of Andrew's concerns about the choice of name, 
though perhaps not so much that I would say "Votes for deletion" is 
necessarily better than "Editorial review". But at a minimum, we would 
need to do something that doesn't confuse the process with "Peer 
review", which we already have a page for, and which is very different 
from the deletion process.

I also agree with RickK, in that I think most of the problems can be 
addressed by improving the atmosphere, through renaming the page and/or 
providing better instructions on what the process is for. If this is 
done, I think the existing process can handle the issues just fine. For 
example, I definitely disagree with the suggestion that all new pages 
should be sent into a special editorial review process; they get that 
already with the wiki system and recent changes. Whatever we call it, 
VfD is for special cases that need something beyond that.

--Michael Snow