[WikiEN-l] Re: Afd "votes" with no real reasons given

Thu Sep 15 14:31:50 UTC 2005

Ryan Delaney wrote:
> On 9/15/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> It frosts me when people on EITHER side make short, curt, 
>> dismissive comments in AfD that consist simply of a vote and a 
>> _generic_ remark, like "Delete, nn website," or "Delete, 
>> [whatever]cruft," or "Keep, all [whatever] are inherently notable,"
>>  or "KEEP! Of course. Why would anyone want to delete this?"
>> 
>> It's lazy, it's polarizing, and it tends to push AfD in the 
>> direction of being a vote (bad) rather than consensus-building 
>> discussion (good).
> 
> 
> Count the number of articles that go up to AFD every day, and ask 
> yourself if you think its reasonable that everyone write a paragraph 
> - or even a short explanation - on everything they vote for. Simply 
> *voting* on everything would take an hour a day at least.

I think I tried that once :) Something far more productive IMO is voting
for Featured Picture Candidates (easy on the eyes, doesn't get you into
flamewars - the only downside is that it burns bandwidth like coke in a
furnace).

> Demanding a detailed explanation from every vote would only reduce 
> the amount of communication because people would stop voting.

Oh, and typing a paragraph for everything you vote on will give you RSI.

> If you want to fix that, you either expand the CSD, so stuff that 
> doesn't need deliberation won't waste everyone's time,

That puts the power squarely in the hands of a select few whom many
already mistrust. People in positions of authority must be beyond
reproach in the actions that they take. Acting on consensus helps to
ensure that.

> or you implement pure wiki deletion, so this whole problem goes away
>  entirely.

And you get a whole /other/ set of problems.

> Right now, if band and business vanity, link spam, personal essays,
> and neologisms were all covered by CSD (which they aren't), you could
> cut the amount of articles going up to AFD by up to 1/3.

Link spam is already covered by CSD. Band vanity is covered by
[[WP:MUSIC]]. Business vanity mostly turns out to be spam. Neologisms
are unverifiable and violate [[WP:NOR]] and [[WP:NOT]], as do personal
essays. Quite a few other things which go to AfD end up being
transwikied as appropriate or turn out to be copyvios.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the way that AfD works. It's just
that a lot of people have the wrong attitude to it - they see it as some
kind of competition. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see
[[meta:AIW]], [[meta:ADW]], and [[WP:EAD]].

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