[WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.

Fri Jan 12 23:01:30 UTC 2007

On 1/12/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 12, 2007, at 16:11, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> > I suppose now might be a decent time to trot out an old idea: what
> > about giving WikiProjects a greater role in the deletion process?
> > They are already (for the most part) the natural gathering places for
> > people with some interest in a particular topic (and, by association,
> > some degree of knowledge of it); presumably, we could therefore expect
> > that the consensus of participants in a WikiProject would thus be a
> > little more informed on topics within that project's scope than the
> > consensus of randomly selected editors.
>
> I wonder if holding deletion debates within WikiProject space would
> be a feasible or good idea. The idea would be creating consensus over
> whether something was notable/verifiable enough among those familiar
> with the topic, so as to create a more nuanced debate. A time limit
> would probably be not such a great idea, but once consensus was
> reached, deletion could be requested. Of course there isn't a
> WikiProject for every topic, and not every nominator knows where to
> find relevant WikiProjects. However, this would curb uninformed drive-
> by votes and make deletion discussions hopefully more debate and less
> polling. It'd also be a huge reform to deletion process, which is
> entirely unwanted if I read community feeling correctly. Oh well.

 I find the WikiProjects feel they own the articles and don't want to delete
anything in their area.  This can be problematic also.

A couple of times when articles have come up for discussion in areas in
which I have a lot of expertise, the other editors agreed with what I
suggested by done based on this.

The problem, imo, is the number of seriously contentious editors who know
nothing about a topic, but want the article deleted because there were few
google hits or they didn't understand the article.  Google simply isn't the
source for everything, especially in the sciences.  One concept with few
google hits was a major climatic term.  Another issue that arrises is that
contentious editors want poorly sourced or unreferenced articles deleted for
OR rather than tagged requesting it be references properly (Rock climbing
being the extreme of that one).  One article on a major topic was up for
discussion because the editor posting the AfD had never heard of the term.
He/she didn't bother to do a Google search and get the 1.2 million hits,
apparently.

Yes, it seems that there are a lot of editors with limited knowledge who
consider that anything they haven't heard of should be deleted.  Someone was
arguing on a page today/yesterday that because he had never heard of Lech
Walesa, Walesa might not be very notable.

There are just too many uninformed drive-by votes for me to continue in AfD,
though, it's too contentious, the guidelines are ignored, editors make up
reasons for deletion, and well-sourced articles on major topics are liable
to be deletely simply because a small group of editors have never heard of
some obscure world-leader Nobel laureate.

KP Botany