[WikiEN-l] Pointless deletions, bogus guidelines

Thu Jan 19 15:26:21 UTC 2006

Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:

>>The fact that nothing (except image deletions)
>>is permanent on Wikipedia makes [[WP:IAR]] work.
>>If someone doesn't believe that my [[WP:BOLD]]
>>invocation of [[WP:IAR]] was proper, they are free
>>to boldly revert it, or in the case of a deletion,
>>find one of those 700 admins to undelete it, in
>>which case a discussion can begin.
>>    
>>
>
>This last sentence is the important point. When people challenge your
>ignoring of established process you have to sit down and discuss things
>with them - not just keep reverting to the version you think is better and
>say that discussion is a waste of time. This goes even when you think your
>view is "common sense" or "obviously correct". If it really is, you will
>be able to convince other Wikipedians of it. Our hobby is building an
>encyclopedia - many of us are quite reasonable people :)
>
>Process is basically a way of facilitating discussion and cooperation in
>this large collaborative project. That's why some of us think it's
>important, not for its own sake.
>
>Regards,
>Haukur
>  
>
Strong ditto here. While process should never *ever* get in the way of 
common sense, once people acting in good faith start reverting your 
actions, it's time for process to step in. Process acts as a way to 
limit the anarchy of IAR. It may be evil, but it's very much a necessary 
evil. Also bear in mind that undermining one process often indirectly 
erodes other processes. If an admin wheel wars over the deletion of an 
article with other admins acting in good faith and gets away with it, 
pretty soon new admins will figure, "Why not apply to this to blocking 
wheel wars?" And so on.

Tony has been arguing that the deletion process is borked. That, I think 
we can all agree on, even if we disagree on how it's broken. However, 
that's not licence to wholly ignore it, unless you have no respect for 
the establishment of process at all. If you seek the replacement of this 
borked process by something better, once this goal is achieved, your 
actions in ignoring process will eventually be used as an excuse by 
other admins (no matter how well-meaning) to ignore the process you 
support because in their opinion, it's borked. And if you don't seek the 
replacement of this process, then you're just disrupting Wikipedia to 
illustrate a point (or no point at all, maybe).

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])