[WikiEN-l] Re: Topic warriors

Sat Sep 17 16:57:13 UTC 2005

> From: Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com>
>
> I think that any article nominated for deletion should include  
> reference to
> the applicable deletion criteria, otherwise the noms should be  
> deleted as
> spurious.

I think that's a really bad idea. Who gets to decide which  
nominations get deleted? This is an open invitation to edit warring  
over AfD nominations. And legalistic wrangling. (The main effect it  
would have is that all nominators would soon learn to include the  
magic words "Article is not suitable for Wikipedia," which is an  
official "problem that may required deletion" according to the policy  
page).

The right thing to do when you see a spurious nomination is to point  
out that it is spurious and why. (In an ordinary text comment, of  
course. Big honkin' garish colored boxes don't add credence.  
Hypothetically, of course).

If your argument carries weight, it will influence other voters to  
vote "keep." This will have three effects. First, the article will be  
kept. Second, nominations that get a near unanimous string of five or  
six "keeps" don't waste much time because most people can see how  
things are going to go and won't bother commenting. Third, even if  
all the voters remain civil, such an occurrence is pretty  
embarrassing for the nominator and is likely to influence their  
future behavior. Much moreso than having their nomination vanish from  
the page with an edit comment like "I'm unilaterally deciding to keep  
this article because I happen to think the nomination was spurious."

Finally, yes, badly reasoned votes, or votes with no reason at all,  
are IMHO a problem, but I'm not at all convinced that there are  
enough spurious nominations to constitute a problem.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/