[WikiEN-l] The heart of the deletion problem

Mon Dec 12 00:50:58 UTC 2005

On Dec 11, 2005, at 7:27 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>  The deletion problem will still be there,
> because the heart of the deletion problem is that people have a
> fundamentally different idea of what should be in the encyclopedia.
> And that wont go away.
>

This wasn't always the case, though - at least not on the level we're  
seeing now. And as evidence, note that it's still not a problem on  
articles. Why? Because "cite sources," "verifiability," and "NPOV"  
are principles. And so our article editing still gets done. It's our  
administrative facilities that are grinding to a halt.

We don't need massive checklists and rules for article editing. Just  
for deletion. Because they "bring order to the system." Except they  
bring a bad order - an order marked by playing to win, terrible  
decisions, hostility, and suspicion. And by ignoring policy and  
principles in favor of process. We would be better off without them -  
we'd be better off with admins capriciously and arbitrarily deleting  
what they want and undeleting what they disagree with. Because that,  
at least, would be a decision making process instead of a game.

We settled what should be in the encyclopedia ages ago. [[WP:NOT]] is  
an ancient page. Our deletion policy is ancient. We've had that  
settled. But then we got rules. And this belief that the rules trump  
our long-established policies.

It's very, very bad.

-Phil