[WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD

Tue Jun 20 20:27:06 UTC 2006

From: Mark Gallagher
> its only *current* problems can be
> cured if we're 
> willing to put in the effort.

Well, always one to be clever-clever, I thought I'd
put Mark to the test and spend 24 hours policing AfD.

And you know what? He's right. A little less moaning
on about AfD here and a bit more work on AfD itself
and you can start seeing a change.

1) Cut down the size of AfD by removing the malformed
ones as they appear.

2) Cut down the size of AfD by spotting the speedy
ones mistakenly nominated for the full process in good
faith and killing them off immediately.

3) Reverse those who would tag a disputed AfD for
speedy delete anyway and administer a slap for it so
they don't do it again.

4) Make those who shout "speedy delete!" state a
[[WP:CSD]] criterion for it. Don't listen to squirming
on the subject.

After doing those four steps - easy and satifying -
you're left with an AfD process that makes more sense.

Also, you immediately see a change in user behaviour.
Screams for out-of-process speedy deletions have
quietened a little since this morning. A day or so
more of sharp slaps to those advocating them and the
problem will be in abeyance.

The nominations left are, broadly:

1) Ones that have a snowball's chance of surviving but
deserve to go through the process

2) Ones that have a snowball's chance of being deleted
but deserve to go through the process

3) Those where people have completely grasped the
wrong end of the AfD and CSD stick

4) Those that are content disputes pretending to be
AfD cases

Of those, 1 and 2 can be left to get on with it. 4 can
be watched to see if the AfD process can produce a
better article or solve the dispute by proxy, with no
need to get involved other than to remove the speedy
notices also tagged to the article by the people
discussing the article.

That leave the sticky problem of 3, where the AfD
process is most broken. For instance,
[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John-Hedley Desmond
Lucy McConnell]] deserved to be deleted under existing
AfD precident. But it didn't deserve speedy deleting
and certainly not under CSD-G4, having never come to
AfD before, having attracted robotic "G4 speedy and
edit protect" votes (and they were votes) from the
clueless, and having altered in format since the first
CSD deletion.

So that helps narrow down the problem with AfD
(although it gets us nowhere nearer a solution).

So, as I said, Mark is right and less complaining here
and more work on AfD is the best course of action.

If nothing else, an hour spent on "AfD Patrol" gets
more done and gets us closer to understanding what the
future for AfD is than an hour spent emailing this
list.

IMHO.

->REDVERS

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