[WikiEN-l] Re: Becoming more encyclopedia-like: 1: Encephalon's comments

Mon Oct 3 13:21:27 UTC 2005

Alphax wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>The underlying assumption is that the article proposed for deletion is a
>>bad one, and since everybody knows that it's guilty why bother with a
>>trial?"  Let's proceed directly to the execution.  I'm sorry but the
>>rest of us are not so brilliant as to understand this swift logic, we
>>still need to be shown why it's a bad unencyclopedic article.
>>    
>>
>Well, it's because it's listed at a page called "Articles for Deletion",
> isn't it!
>
>Time to rename AfD. AGAIN.
>
>When it was called "Votes for Deletion", people thought it was some kind
>of contest. Editcountitis crept into it and people would vote for the
>sake of voting. Extreme Article Deletion crept into it too. People would
>say "Damn! Pokemon is in! Better get rid of schools, bands, roads and
>all those Rambot stubs to make up for it! Double bonus points for
>deleting whole countries nobody's heard of!"
>
>The question is: What is The Bit of Wikipedia Formerly Known as AfD
>designed to do? Is it to get articles that you don't like deleted? Or is
>it to seperate the chaff from the grain?
>
>Hrm.... "Wikipedia:Article Threshing". I like it :)
>
I don't think that changing the tiger's stripes is going to make it any 
less vicious.

What could be useful would be to leave all deletion votes open 
indefinitely.  Even if the current trend is to delete with the relevant 
threshhold being met, additional opinions could lead to an automatic 
reversal of the deletion without having to go through a whole separate 
undeletion process.  There could still be a difference in the margins to 
prevent a rapid series of deletions and undeletions.  Thus if deletion 
requires 90% support, it could be undeleted automatically if the 
deletion support falls below 80%.

How did the deletion period get reduced from 7 to 5 days.  That seems 
far too short, especially considering that many other deletions still 
require 7 days.  A _minimum_ of a week seems most appropriate.  If 
Little Johnny's mother only allows him a limited amount of time on the 
computer after Sunday dinner when he has proven to her that his homework 
is done.  Little Johnny, who is an A student with no homework problems 
and a conscientious Wikipedian, will not have had the opportunity to 
defend his efforts from deletionist attacks.

The other recommendation that I would make is that any substantive 
change to an article after it has been nominated for deletion would 
reset the clock for the deletion timetable.  Perhaps all "votes" made 
prior to that change should be declared void, allowing those voters to 
cast a new vote.

Ec