[WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed

Thu Oct 16 01:06:43 UTC 2003

Erik Moeller wrote:

>With more and more people participating in the VfD process (which is good)
>we need a clear and well defined policy for what to do when the 7 days are
>over and a sysop needs to decide whether a page should be deleted or not.

>I see two possible solutions:

>1) Set a formal threshold for deletion, maybe 75%.

I suspect that option 1 would exacerbate the ballot stuffing problem.
If ballot stuffers advertising on Usenet (which is awful!)
know exactly what goal they need to reach, then they'll be more motivated.

>2) Allow sysops to ignore votes by people who
> a) are not regular Wikipedia authors (less than 20 edits)

>There seems to be a lot of ballot stuffing, going so far that some people
>post to Usenet and ask people in a group to support non-deletion of a
>page. We can prevent this by allowing only people with a track record to
>participate.

If this is something that would often be relevant,
then I think that we /definitely/ should adopt it.
It seems like a no-brainer to me.

> b) have not expressed any opinion beyond "keep" or "delete" and have not  
>made any edit to the page in question.

This isn't a good idea unless it's well advertised and well understood;
otherwise, people that might write a comment would instead be quiet
on the grounds that somebody else has already given their argument.
In it's not clear to all that this is imposed, then it's unfair.

OTOH, if we adopt this, then how do we stop people from simply
adding some boilerplate opinion like "I agree with what [[User:---]] said."
or "Deleting this would violate fundamental Wikipedia principles."?
If it's clear to all that this is imposed, then they'll work around it.

So you're right that people should give more opinions! --
I just can't tell how to make it both fair and effective.

>This might help to address the problem that some people oppose almost
>every deletion on priniciple, making consensus very hard to reach.

I don't pay attention to most things on VfD now (haven't for a long time).
Thus I have no idea what the answer to this question is, so I'll ask:
If you were to ignore violators of 2)a) and all opposers-on-principle,
then how far would you be from consensus in the sort of situation
that is now causing you to suggest these modifications?

>I would like to ask Jimbo to make a formal declaration of policy so that
>sysops won't be accused of overstepping their bounds when deleting pages.
>Solution 2) would making deleting considerably harder than it is now
>(because right now, although we *say* we work by consensus, we often do
>not), whereas 1) would largely formalize what is currently going on. I
>have no strong opinion either way, but we need to have clear rules.

Summary: I suspect that 1) would exacerbate 2)a) and that 2)b) is unworkable,
but 2)a) itself seems obviously correct, so let's start with that.

And tell complainers about [[WP:Votes for undeletion]]; it's their friend!
^_^

-- Toby