[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

Thu Dec 8 16:14:22 UTC 2005

Carbonite wrote:

>On 12/8/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 12/8/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Carbonite wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>On 12/8/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>By the way, I really hope the experiment of switching off anon page
>>>>>creation is followed up with an experiment in switching off AFD for a
>>>>>month.
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>Isn't that a bit like experimenting with not taking out your trash for
>>>>        
>>>>
>>a
>>    
>>
>>>>month? They're both fairly unpleasant experiences that no one really
>>>>        
>>>>
>>wants
>>    
>>
>>>>to do, but they can't be halted without some other way of getting rid
>>>>        
>>>>
>>of the
>>    
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>>>>refuse.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>If the volunteer garbagemen are driving people out of the town as hard
>>>as they can, it would probably be less damaging to the community and
>>>be a REALLY GOOD incentive to come up with something less socially
>>>toxic. See evidence in current RFAr.
>>>      
>>>
>>Right.  And "trash" is more akin to speedy deletes, which is
>>altogether different.  AfD candidates are rarely hurting anyone; just
>>out of place or against one or another content policy.
>>    
>>
>
>
>Looking at the huge number of articles on AfD that are unanimously
>deleted, I'm not sure how else to describe them other than "trash". These
>articles may not be as bad as speedy deletes (the decaying food that will
>cause a stench if not quickly removed), but that doesn't mean they should be
>kept. What we need is a process to efficiently remove articles that
>currently receive 100% support for deletion on AfD. If these articles no
>longer had to go through AfD, I think we probably could scrap the whole
>thing and send the volunteer garbagemen packing.
>
>Carbonite
>  
>

This might be a good time to plug my year-old proposal, 
[[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]] (the only one to have ever received 
support from a majority of Wikipedians). Of course I'm not saying we 
should put up for yet another vote. It might be a good idea to review it 
and cull some material for the ongoing process of deletion reform 
(that's as slow as ever, I might add). For the umpteenth time, AFD isn't 
scaling. It works, but it's not scaling. Plain and simple. We're already 
seeing almost 200 article debates in one day. If we're 10 times smaller 
than Google or MSN, what happens when we reach that size? 2000 debates 
in a day. We'll have to break it down by hour! This simply ain't gonna' 
scale, folks. We need to come up with something. It's alright to proceed 
slowly, but from what I can see, deletion reform is as slow and as 
stalled as it was a year ago when I mooted Preliminary Deletion.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])