[WikiEN-l] VfD relistings are not a deletionist conspiracy.

Mon Dec 27 12:07:58 UTC 2004

>> Ya, I know. But if it's officially sanctioned that GNAA can go onto 
>> VfD
>>  as many times as people want, then that's not disruption, right? So
>> then  a precedent is set.

What does occur to me is that it would be a really good idea to have a 
nice, conspicuous template that could be used to tag Talk pages of 
articles that have survived VfD, saying something along the lines of 
"This article survived VfD on (date)." And good practice to put such a 
notice at the TOP of the Talk page for relisted articles.

Now. As for the flaming... couldn't we have a little bit of "assume 
good faith?"

Hypothetically, systematic VfD relistings _could_ be used as a 
deliberate strategy by some deletionist conspiracy trying to impose 
their beliefs against the consensus of the community. But I don't think 
there's any evidence at all that anyone has yet done such a thing 
intentionally.

I believe there's a good working consensus that once an article has 
survived VfD it should not relisted for a decent period of time, three 
to six months. And because of the _possibility_ of abuse I believe 
that's a good custom. But I don't think there's any actual abuse, I 
don't think there's any need for formal mechanism or policy, and the 
solid string of "keeps" I've seen on inappropriately relisted articles, 
is more than enough to keep any problem in check. There is a 
significant segment of the Wikipedian population that will vote "keep" 
on inappropriately relisted articles _even if they voted delete_ on the 
original listing.

--
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
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