[WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea

Tue Sep 13 15:40:50 UTC 2005

On 9/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions
> are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to
> be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the
> deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles
> harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that
> survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.

I'm simply suggesting that admins should be more willing to use
judgment in making the decision deletions they are already empowered
to make.  This isn't about giving new powers to admins, it's about
expecting admins to exercise their existing powers with judgment and
discretion instead of mechanically.

AFD is swarming with professional deletionists, and many deleted
articles were deleted with input mainly from editors whose main
contribution to Wikipedia is to vote to delete things.  I question
whether this group of individuals fairly represents the Wikipedia
community, and therefore whether AFD actually arrives at community
consensus, except in obvious cases, and therefore call for admins to
exercise their judgment in evaluting AFDs for whether they reflect
true consensus, and also for admins to feel free to boldly undelete
articles that were clearly deleted in a manner which harms the
encyclopedia.

I know that it has become popular to grill admin candidates on their
criteria for "consensus" at AFD, and candidates who fail to meet the
standard that the deletionists have established as "reasonable" get
dogpiled with oppose votes.  Frankly, I'm worried about this emergent
mob mentality, which I think is encouraged by having a caste of
professional deletionists, which is itself a consequence of having a
centralized deletion mechanism.

Kelly