User:Milowent/Essays/Insights

On What The Hell Encyclopedic Means
From Articles_for_deletion/William_Swanberg_(2nd_nomination):


 * Comment: What is the encyclopedic value of ANY article? The reason people keep "creating this type of article" is a form of consensus - evidence that people think these articles should exist.  There is sufficient sourcing available for a verifiable and accurate article.  The judgment of lack on encyclopedic significance is quite subjective.  Luckily for us, the Father of History, Herodotus, was careful in making such value judgments.  E.g., he passed on reports of Phoenician sailors that were roundly dismissed as myths at the time, yet were later invaluable to proving ancient circumnavigation of Africa.  Perhaps this is not the most noble article on which to state an inclusionist manifesto, but why is the LEGO bandit truly less uncyclopedic than the 1922 Denver Mint Robbery, the 1983 Perth Mint Swindle, or 1998 Bank of America robbery?  Is Mr. Swanberg less worthy because he stole massive amounts of a child's plaything instead of gold bars?  His canvassing of 5 states and elaborate scheme of switching UPC labels, use of electronic communications, etc., should not be excluded simply because the topic of Lego theft also makes us chuckle. --Milowent (talk) 19:09, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

On The Psychology of AfDs
Wikipedia_talk:AFD


 * GTBacchus, thanks for inviting my thoughts since one of my comments on an AfD apparently helped spur this discussion. You wrote in part, "the easiest way to defend an article against deletion is to just improve it, ignoring any deletion discussions that may be going on."  I'm not sure I agree with that.  Now my experience with AfD is limited, but I'm not sure that every admin looks to see if an article is really improved (and some of the discussion above makes me think i'm not alone in this view).  People are lazy and time is finite - frankly, its easier to dig up a few good sources and plop the links into an AfD discussion than actually do the real work needed to integrate that information into the article (ideally someone should do both-that is the gold standard).  But an ill-advised AfD is the easiest thing of all to do - you take one half-assed blinders-on google search and a personal assessment of "this seems like crap", and off we go to AfD.  I spent some time fixing up an article last week that was nominated for AfD 12 minutes after it was created -- it didn't take me much time to know this was a worthy subject, and i actually improved the article as well as discussing it in the AfD. (ETA: Nathan Rosenberg )  But it still takes much more time to improve articles than to improperly send them to AfD.  I know some editors are loathe to edit an article they think will be deleted because they don't trust the AfD process to strike the balance of consensus where they believe it really is.  Now, I never really considered that an admin might be able to reinstate an article after its deleted; I think lots of people assume that once something is gone, its gone for good (unless there's some change in the status of the article subject to make it more notable).  Maybe the AfD template can be modified to reflect this option, though i wonder if it will really change behavior in AfD discussions.  I've wondered whether people who nominate AfDs should get a "rating" associated with them to see their success rate on AfDs, so you can see whose AfDs rarely reflect consensus, BUT having such a system would encourage those nominating AfDs to defend that at all costs, even after articles are improved (though maybe they could delete their AfD nomination in those cases to save their percentage)--Milowent (talk) 03:58, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * some comments on this: nobody however reckless really does repeated afds that totally lack consensus--the difference is whether 70% or 90% of them get consensus. The check on bad nominations for AfD is that if the nom runs for admin, this is a good reason to oppose--people always look at it. The only practical  solution to the AfD problem is to get more participants in ones they're not particularly involved in to get a more general consensus.  As for looking to see if it is improved, most admins do--for those who don't, failure to do so is one of the more common grounds for reversal at deletion review--and in fact most closing admins will revert their own close if this is pointed out to them.    DGG ( talk ) 19:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Question - Regarding the "check on bad nominations"... doesn't that assume that (1) everyone wants to run for admin, and (2) only non-admins will make bad nominations? //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 19:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes (1) is a limitation--except that a fairly large proportion of those who make many nominations at speedy or AfD do in fact intend to run for admin sooner or later. And it can be effective--there are a few people who have been repeatedly turned down on this basis.  As for (2), they are relatively less likely--there is a screen, imperfect though it is, though I am not sure how good the screen was 4 or 5 years ago. With respect to simple errors, I think admins as a group make fewer mistakes in this--they are not  totally inexperienced newbies who do not yet even know the rules. With respect to getting carried away by strong feeling on a particular point, they are as susceptible as anyone else, but this is not the main cause of bad nominations. With respect to erratic or persistent refusal to follow the rules, I think this applies only to a small number of admins. In these cases, the problem is not nominations, which do relatively little harm--it does much more harm in closing and in speedy deletion.  We need to re-educate them, if we can. How to deal with them if we cannot re-educate them is a harder question. . I think I'll ask the arbcom candidates.     DGG ( talk ) 19:32, 14 November 2009 (UTC)