[WikiEN-l] AFD courtesy problem

Tue Jan 17 21:50:24 UTC 2006

On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:

> On 1/17/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> 2. At the close of all VfD debates, the discussion is deleted.  If  
>> there
>> is a need to have a stub page left there to guide people to the fact
>> that there was a prior debate, then create that stub fresh, with the
>> history gone.  In the event it is needed, the history can always be
>> resurrected by some admin.
>
> Why delete (instead of just replacing the debate with a notice,
> perhaps even protecting it that way, without deleting the existing
> history) unless there's some compelling reason? Non-admins also ought
> to be able to go back and look at the debate.

Indeed - with the number of debates that close with two or three  
votes - many of which are deeply flawed closes - I would be wary of  
making it so fewer people can find bad debates.

I think another important thing here would be to do away with voting  
on deletion. We supposedly did that when we called it AfD instead of  
VfD, except we kept the vote structure. Why don't we just stop with  
the bulleted list of boldfaced keep and delete votes and have it be  
an actual discussion. You know. "This guy doesn't seem like a very  
important figure in his field - I can't find any publications," says  
one person. "I just found one in Journal X." "Oh, yeah, but he's  
third author, and that's his only publication - he's probably a grad  
student." And people who just want to chime in with "me too" delete  
votes, well, don't have to.

Then closing admins can just read the discussion, read the arguments,  
look at past precedent and make a call, remembering things like "when  
in doubt, don't delete."

Best,
Phil