[WikiEN-l] Pointless deletions, bogus guidelines

Thu Jan 19 18:14:49 UTC 2006

John Lee wrote:

> Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
>
>> 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. 
>
> 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).

When process must be the basis for a decision it must do the least harm; 
it should give the best opportunity for a real resolution.  In 
situations where sysops differ process shouold favour keeping in the 
general case.  A least harm approach could still favouur deletion in 
cases where legal problems such as copyvios, libel or privacy are a 
major factor.  When the only issue is notability we are talking abour a 
highly subjective concept; that explains why it has been such a 
perennial problem.  When undeletion depends almost completely on whether 
the deletion process was followed correctly rather than on content it's 
clear that process has become overly dominant.

John's argument is like that of any other politicians who like things 
the way they are.  I don't think that Tony is wholly ignoring the 
process; it's more like civil disobedience.  Civil disobedience is a 
perfectly acceptable way of opposing unjust laws.  I realize that the 
sophistry in John's arguments is more subtle than that.  He doesn't 
complain of disrespect of the process, but of disrespect of the 
establishment.  An establishment needs to repeatedly earn respect, or 
expect to be challenged.  There is also a black and white aspect to how 
John views process; it's either the way it is, or some completely 
different proces from what now exists.  In that view, just as the 
current process is something to be defended so too the hypothetical 
different process becomes a goal that would need defending if it were to 
succeed.  So, yes, others will ignore that new process just as much as 
they are ignoring the present process; that's a good thing.

Dealing with a single article should not need to involve a person in a 
broad unending discussion of general process.  If a person feels that a 
particular corporation is notable, that needs to be discussed on its own 
merits.  Falling back on general process ignores the fact that the 
financial pages form a larger part of daily newspapers than comic strips.

Ec