On 9/9/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If the article is being edited and re-edited,
constantly being
improved enough to get certified by another user or two, I don't see
any problem at all with this type of gaming the system. In fact, I
think we should strongly encourage that type of gaming the system.
Well, I mean for articles which clearly ARE non-notable; i.e. some
vanity band page and the bassist keeps adding new information to the
article in an appeal to keep it alive. But needing another user (and
not a sockpuppet) to "certify" any requests would probably stop 90% of
that sort of "gaming".
Stubs expand only if they exist. This rhetorical
"someone else"
seldom writes fully referenced and cited articles in one fell swoop.
Well, true. But stubs don't expand by themselves, either. (Of course,
I have to admit, I enjoy writing new, uncreated articles in on fell
swoop, in part because then I can add it to the "Did you know?" list,
and having things on the front page is very satisfying to me; not so
much for the vanity aspects, but it's one of the easiest ways to get
some attention for your articles from other editors).
The problem is that article authors have an investment
in what they
write. VfD voters usually have no investment whatsoever; when I've
called for the most basic of research of notability before voting
"delete", a three second Google search, I've been accused of making
personal attacks against delete voters. VfD will always remain toxic,
especially to new users who aren't accustomed to it's climate, if we
cannot insist that delete voters put in at least some tiny effort into
research before voting.
Sure, but I don't know how you'd get *voters* to do that without doing
something like limiting the voting pool significantly. One alternative
approach is to make *nominators* work a bit harder -- i.e., not
allowing nominations which don't reflect some sort of attempt was made
to really assess the article or not.
Sometimes (maybe most of the time), I think this is the case: a
nominator comes in, says, "Look, this biography looks like a vanity
article to me. This guy's name gets no google hits. He apparently used
to own a baseball team. Big whoop. Let's axe it." Most voters wouldn't
even have to verify this -- if only a few voters DID check up on the
nominator, one of them would likely vote "Strong Keep -- what you've
written is just plain wrong, I ran his name through Google and found
out he's president of the United States!" which would hopefully
influence other voters as well.
(Of course, I haven't been taking part at all in the deletion reform,
so I shouldn't be so eager to be an armchair philosopher about it.)
FF