[WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

Wed Sep 7 21:48:20 UTC 2005

The issue raised regarding backlog and tagging instead
of action are quite valid, and quite to the point. But
some background on the cleanup is needed. As one of
the people who jumpstarted WP:CU along with Cimon
Avaro, Angela, and others, I have a bit of a different
view on "hopelessly broken" and the like.

Cleanup was a purpose-driven fork of VFD, which at the
time was extremely overused --a differnt type of
backlog. VFD's overuse violated the basic laws stating
limits on Wiki page use and possibly the law of
thermodynamics as well. Its the basic problem of
Wikipedia using a platform which served us fine till
now, but doesnt quite scale in certain areas than
others. Theres some finite limit on how much
high-traffic editing a particular page can handle,
though that has greatly been improved with section
editng, etc. This reminds me of the quote about
supercomputers being 'machines for turning computation
problems into I-O problems.' As WP probably has more
direct human processing power ever assembled for focus
on a single project, (aka a supercomputer) its always
a question of handling the output data. 

That requires a proper means to handle the processing
(people programming) through policy and process. These
need to scale up --not down, and these social
processes (i.e. people protocols) need to be broader
in their intelligent application, not narrowed in
accord with red-button clearance models. 

Summing up, there are technical limitations imposed by
the nature of wiki for cross-article (and cross-wiki)
applications. There are social limitations imposed by
our current (flexible but non-definitive) social
policy-making structure, and process limitations
imposed by our current (small core) administration
structure. These have always been problems and the
only thing the community can ever really do is play
catch-up.

Anyway, thats some generalized background.
SV

--- Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com>
wrote:

> On Sep 7, 2005, at 11:37 AM, Fastfission wrote:
> 
> > I think it is worth reiterating that it is the job
> of the *article 
> > content* to establish
> > notability, not the job of the voters. In an ideal
> VfD world, one would
> > blame the articles for how they were voted, not
> the voters.
> >
> > In this case, VfD was actually a positive process
> in article 
> > improvement --
> > something not too uncommon, I think, and an aspect
> of VfD which has 
> > been
> > somewhat underemphasized in the calls for deletion
> reform.
> 
> In fact, I personally think this is the *only* way
> to call attention to 
> such questionable articles. As I've pointed out on
> Talk pages, there is 
> a backlog of something like 30-50,000 articles
> tagged for {{cleanup}}. 
> Simply tagging something questionable for
> {{cleanup-importance}} only 
> adds to the hidden pile. If an article may not be
> important enough, 
> putting it up on AFD brings it to the attention of
> hundreds of 
> Wikipedians - "Hey, look, there's this article I
> can't make heads or 
> tails of and it may not be encyclopedic. What do
> y'all think?"
> 
> Is this is the *best* way to do that? Probably not.
> But as long as the 
> {{cleanup}} process is hopelessly broken, AFD is the
> only effective 
> means of getting a questionable article in the
> limelight.
> 
> -FCYTravis
> 
> 
> Travis Mason-Bushman
> Public Relations Director
> GAINSCO/Blackhawk Racing
> travis at gpsports-eng.com
> 
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