[WikiEN-l] Can anything be done about Deletion Review?

Mon Sep 11 14:31:33 UTC 2006

On 9/11/06, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd agree. I don't know what the solution is, but there has to be something
> better than have a small group of people discuss/vote (the latter despite
> the use of newspeak) on deleting articles, when those who are involved on
> AFD are either an uninvolved and usually ignorant (of the subject) group, or
> an involved but biased group brought there by message-spamming/vote-rigging.
> In fact, having the latter group represented as fully as possible is
> entirely reasonable.
>
> However, it's laughable to suggest that AFD reflects the consensus of
> Wikipedia editors, and further than that, that would not even be sensible
> either. It is not sustainable to suggest the majority would be correct.
> Finally, having such random groups of editors discuss/vote makes little
> reference to what readers would like.

Well, yes.  AFD and its ilk are designed precisely to maximize the
ability of the "uninvolved" to !vote on as many nominations as
possible, as efficiently as possible.  (Hence the emergence of
WikiVoter, or whatever they're calling it this week.)  This is not a
function of the particular details of the process, incidentally, but
rather the fact that a rigidly centralized process like the current
AFD necessarily encourages people to participate on topics of which
they are mostly ignorant (and about which they couldn't care less,
usually -- except for the fact that they happened to come up in that
day's deletion listings).

(The obvious consequence of this is that we can expect any fundamental
change to AFD will be rigidly resisted by those whose heavy
participation in the deletion process might be curtailed by such a
change.)

-- 
Kirill Lokshin