User:BeanieFan11/olympicclose

From the beginning of March until just being closed, a discussion was held on whether to move to draftspace a group of nearly 1,000 historical athletes who had competed in the Olympic Games from 1896 to 1912 created by Lugnuts. After around two months of discussion and a count of approximately 68 support–45 oppose (60%–40%), it was closed by Bradv as no consensus; his close was taken to the administrators' noticeboard for discussion and eventually he re-opened his close. It was re-closed by GRuban with a consensus to draftify. I disagree that this was the correct closure, and am bringing it here for review as such. Below is GRuban's close, with notes containing my commentary on why its wrong:

"The motion carries, WP:Consensus to move the listed articles to Draft space. Note that the motion allows, and even encourages, editors to edit and improve the articles so they can be returned to main space. Not mass, or batch, or automated moves back to main space. As long as the editor sincerely believes they have improved a given specific article enough to pass Wikipedia:Notability, they may move it back to main space; at worst, that way it will face an individual WP:AfD, not 900+ all at once! Until then, or even instead of that, editors may make similarly individual and considered redirects in main space to replace some articles. Redirects will generally need to pass a lower bar, the main concerns are that the redirect will be a reasonably likely search term, and there is an obvious target article. Again, at worst, that way they will face specific WP:RfDs.--GRuban (talk) 01:40, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to thank all those who participated in this discussion, over 100 people, all of whom remained civil, and many of whom brought up very insightful points. I'd also like to thank User:BilledMammal for making the proposal, User:Bradv for closing it the first time, and User:FOARP for convincing him to reopen. I'm trying to fill some pretty big shoes here; I'm an experienced editor, and have closed maybe 100 RfCs, but Bradv is not only an experienced editor, but also an experienced administrator, so it takes quite a bit of hubris to think I can do a better job, and I won't be surprised if there is another thread on WP:AN after this asking that my close be also reopened. But I am still trying hard so that there is not.

So, the decision. I counted a noticeable majority of voices in support of this proposal than opposing it here; something like 68 to 45, and even more if we consider the ones who agreed that the articles should be removed from main space, but wanted redirects instead of draftification (which, as above, will generally be individually allowed). I might be off by one or two in my count, but I am not off by 10. Now as people say, correctly, RfC is a matter of stating arguments, citing policies and guidelines, not a matter of counting votes. The closer does not just count votes. But when I close and judge arguments, I try to remember that the editors stating them are as much editors as I am, many even more experienced than I am, and if many experienced Wikipedians are all saying something, it's definitely worth considering that they just might be right.

So, those arguments. The 'support' side mainly said that these articles are stubs that are essentially database entries, and cited only to one or two specific databases, violating WP:GNG, WP:SPORTCRIT, and WP:NOTDB. I looked at a randomly selected subset and they were all of the exact form: '(Name) (born–died) was a (nationality) (sportsman). He competed in the (sport) event at the (year) (season) Olympics.' Exactly those two sentences, no more text, and cited as stated. The support side has a point. There are a number of people on the 'oppose' side that said that the articles aren't hurting anything, there is WP:NODEADLINE, so they might be expanded, Wikipedia is WP:NOTPAPER, so we have the space, and that at the time that Lugnuts wrote the articles, WP:NSPORT said that just participation in an Olympics, even without winning a medal, was an indicator of notability. Unfortunately, I have to discount those arguments; we have a long and time-honored precedent of deleting articles that are not actually hurting anything, but just because they don't meet Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability; and those policies don't have a 'grandfather clause' that say that articles that were made before the policies were written are forever acceptable. We can work on not-harmful articles that don't quite meet standards in our user spaces, or in draft space, but until they do, we don't allow them in main or article space.

Many others of the 'oppose' side, maybe even most of them, said two related things: that mass moving articles to draft space is basically deletion, as very few people will ever find them there; and that deletion is not something that can be decided at the Village Pump, that's what we have WP:AfD for. That is basically the argument that Bradv found in his close that there was no counter-argument against; he cited WP:DRAFTIFY and this previous Village pump discussion that articles shouldn't be moved to draft space as a back door to deleting them via AfD. Now Bradv had a good point as well; he's a very experienced and respected editor. Many on the 'support' side, at least implicitly agreed that moving these articles to Draft space would be close to deletion; some said they were only supporting draftification because they really wanted the articles deleted, and while others said they supported draftification to avoid deletion, and that the text would still be there for people who wanted to improve them, they admitted there would be a real possibility that no one ever would. However, the 'support' side said that that this many articles would be too much for AfD, which only handles one or at most a few articles in a single discussion, not hundreds as here, and especially not the thousands of Lugnuts's similar stubs, which many on both the 'support' and 'oppose' sides agreed would likely soon be brought up a similar discussion. In questioning Bradv's close, FOARP said that this Village pump discussion was essentially similar to WP:AFD, so should be allowed to draftify articles if the decision went that way, and this was eventually successful enough to get Bradv to withdraw his close. This similarity to AfD was actually brought up in this discussion earlier, by PerfectSoundWhatever: 'Wikipedia isn't a burocracy, so I don't think its a problem to do this process here instead of AfD if enough editors come to a disagreement. Different room, same discussion.' Now I wouldn't always agree with that in many cases, AfD is where it is for a reason, it's a high visibility forum, many editors specifically go there to decide the fate of articles, if this were a lower visibility discussion I would not consider it a sufficient substitute for AfD. But in this case, there were over 100 editors actively participating, including many very experienced ones. Very few AfDs get that level of participation. I think per WP:IAR, and WP:NOTBURO, we can consider this a sufficient venue, as PerfectSound wrote.

Finally, the redirect option. A noticeable number of people were opposed to draftification, for all the above reasons, but preferred replacing the stub articles with redirects to existing articles on the Olympics of that year or the competitors' countries, because that way at least the redirects could be found by readers; even more would accept redirects equally with draft space, or as a compromise. However, several were explicitly opposed to redirects, because it wouldn't be always clear which article to redirect to, and in any case, over half the participants didn't mention redirects one way or the other. So I can't see a consensus for redirect, even as a compromise. However, I can point out the initial term of the proposal, '5: Editors may return drafts to mainspace for the sole purpose of redirecting/merging them to an appropriate article, if they believe that doing so is in the best interest of the encyclopedia'. So if someone believes they know a good redirect target, they can feel free to make a redirect; if others disagree, they can discuss or at worst nominate it for WP:RfD. As long as it is one thoughtful redirect at a time, and not a mindless batch or automated process, I believe the community will accept it. User:Valereee even suggested doing draftification and redirect replacement simultaneously.

Personal note: Personally I'm not much of an editor of articles about Olympic competitors (arguably if I were I wouldn't be a suitable closer here!). However I've run into Lugnuts here and there - with all his edits it's hard to imagine an experienced editor who hasn't. I had always looked at his many short articles, not just on sportspeople, but on the many, many topics that he wrote about, and thought: these are not my cup of tea, but I'm glad we have him. I'm sad that he's gone. I'm even more sad that he went like this, with a statement that he intentionally added copyright violations and incorrect information. That several people in this conversation think he was lying about this, and just saying it 'to piss off all of those who did not like him' doesn't really make it much better. What we're doing here by building the Wikipedia is a 90%+, maybe even 99%+, a very good thing. If I'm ever this angry at the <1-10% of what this project does that I don't agree with, I hope I can leave without deliberately acting to damage the project as a whole. A sad thing all around."

In conclusion, based on the notes above, I believe that closing this discussion as having a consensus to draftify is incorrect and suggest that it be overturned to no consensus.