User talk:Fresheneesz/Don't Destroy

History preserving delete?
Is there any facility deleting an article but preserving its history? It seems that many contentious deletes could be handled this way, so that those who care about the article can still view it in the history and (perhaps) copy it off somewhere to fix it. This would be less destructive (histories would be accessible to ordinary users) but would still achieve the goal of removing questionable material.

For sensitive cases like WP:BIO violations, destructive deletion would still apply.

I'm guessing this could be done with page blanking and/or redirect, with page protection if someone tries to revert the blanking. Is there a reason why this isn't done today? Just curious. ATren 04:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's called Pure wiki deletion, but apparently no one likes it. I really don't understand why. 66.82.9.81 06:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Excuse me 66.82.9.81, are you impersonating a user, or are you actually a user not logged in? Just wondering. Yuser31415 06:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was me, and I remind you to please assume good faith. -- Chris is  me 07:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * At first glance, this looks quite promising. I would think it could solve a lot of problems, as a sort of middle ground between delete and keep. ATren 08:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Genius. I like it. Fresheneesz 10:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

There ain't no such thing....
as an inclusionist or a deletionist. Just different degrees of inclusionism. Anyone who thinks they are an inclusionist and anybody who nominates articles for deletion is a deletionist, should spend some time at Special:Newpages and CAT:CSD. The number of articles deleted with absolutely no controversy whatsoever outweighs those where there is legitimate debate by, in my estimation, at least an order of magnitude. Top of the newpages list when I posted this: Mejda: The word mejda is Maltese for table. Enough said. Guy (Help!) 16:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I got Jake Oliver - "Jake Oliver (born November 25, 1987) is an English hero and stoner." I've gotta start checking Newpages more often! -GTBacchus(talk) 19:33, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with the different degrees of inclusionism. However, this essay wasn't suppost to advocate no deletions. But it is supposed to advocate no deletions of content that is legitimately argued for keep. Fresheneesz 04:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, sure; that's what everyone thinks. We just have different meanings for "legitimately argued for keep".  Surely you don't think someone's advocating ignoring arguments that they consider legitimate? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There are the easy keeps, and the easy deletes. And then there are the fringe cases, maybe 5-10% or less, that cause the most trouble. Even the most ardent "inclusionist" wouldn't argue that British stoner/hero Jake Oliver deserves an article, but I don't think this essay is targeted at the Jake Olivers. It's focus is the articles that people have spent a lot of time on, that maybe aren't 100% perfect (or perhaps lie on the fringes of notability), but which are nevertheless subject to the same blanket treatment as the Jake Oliver article.


 * Now, this is not my essay, and I'm not going to make massive changes to it, but what I take to be the "spirit" of the essay is that destructive delete should not be the blanket solution; that many of those fringe cases should be treated less destructively. Perhaps that means that the deletion debate has other options, Blank or Stub, either of which would preserve the history for those who wish to continue development of the article to the point where it's better sourced or less advertorial (or whatever). ATren 18:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The spirit of the essay, as I understand it, is that it's better to look at an article and think, "how can I improve this?", rather than thinking, "can I get this deleted?" That's an excellent suggestion.
 * The trouble is the choice of words. Characterizing the idea negatively, in terms of what not to do, generates negativity.  In particular, saying "Don't destroy" calls a bunch of people destroyers, and that's no way to open a dialogue.  It's a good way to shut doors and burn bridges.
 * Chances are, a "deletionist" doesn't think of herself as a destroyer. She feels she's helping keep the 'pedia clean and useful by removing junk.  Lots of the time, she's right, as in the case of Jake Oliver.  The goal, I would think, is to get people to appraise articles more carefully, and to give questionable cases more benefit of the doubt, to the point of investing a little bit of work in them.  That's a great goal.
 * The best way to achieve that goal doesn't start out by characterizing anybody's good-faith work as "destruction". Diplomacy is everything here. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:54, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I can't disagree with anything here. I'm all for a more constructive approach. I think Fresheneesz comes from a strongly held belief, and his wording may have been unintentionally strong. But the sentiment holds. It certainly struck a chord with me and others (see some of the comments in the deletion debate).
 * But, yes, certainly a more constructive approach would be better. That's why I had changed the nutshell line to "Focus on improvement, not deletion" (why was that deleted?) because that's a more constructive way of saying "don't destroy". ATren 19:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I put the nutshell back. BTW, feel free to edit this essay AS YOU WISH. I would love help on this essay as much as anything else. The only thing I will object to is a change of course in terms of the point of this essay (like what happened to WP:STRAW). I would also be very much open to changes of the name of this page and any other anti-demonizing that people suggest. Fresheneesz 00:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I posted some thoughts at User talk:Fresheneesz/Focus on improvement. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I Agree
Fresheneesz, I agree with you. Deletionists should really spend their time creating rather than destroying. If they are really bothered by certain articles, maybe they should just ignore those articles. Instead, they have to piss on the work of others. Obviously, they have nothing better to do with their time. I'm glad you were able to put this into more diplomatic terms than I care to take the time to. --Nelson Ricardo 20:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I wish that nobody had an out of control focus on deletion, and instead everybody kept a balance between adding content and removing content (obviously wish for more of the former, so that wikipedia will grow). Mathmo Talk 02:43, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Information vs Knowledge
The essay currently says: This fails to address the difference between information and knowledge. A telephone directory contains a lot of information, but it is more encyclopaedic to have fewer people but with useful information about each of them - ie knowledge. By adding arbitrary information, it could make it more difficult to root out the useful or relevant information, thus making the encyclopaedia less useful as an encyclopaedia.
 * However, more content means potentially more useful information - and thus Wikipedia is more useful with more content.

The improvements from pruning are only visible when lots of low level information has been pruned, whereas each deletion causes pain at the point of deletion. So pruning, which meets the long term goal of keeping the knowledge concentrated, creates more antagonism than letting all the weeds grow - after all, what harm does a single weed cause?

Although the essay does mention deleting some forms of content, I feel that some mention of what end goal inclusionists have, and why they differ from deletionists goals, would improve the essay. Stephen B Streater 19:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cultural references afd
you might be interested in the line of argument I just made there.DGG (talk) 00:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Highly dubious argument
I understand this is just someone's personal essay rather than policy, but nonetheless I feel compelled to argue against it. Specifically, the bolded line - "If those that delete content instead worked to improve content on Wikipedia, we might get featured quality articles twice as often than we do now." - is an extremely dubious argument.

It implies that there is some kind of either/or distinction between improving articles, and removing bad content, when in fact it is perfectly possible to do both (i.e. a false dilemma). Many so-called 'deletionist' editors also spend much time improving articles. Worse, the exact same argument can be turned around and used against 'inclusionists': "If those who spend all their time voting to keep articles instead worked to improve content on Wikipedia, we wouldn't get so many articles nominated for deletion in the first place."

I get the general point this essay is trying to make, which is that we should consider how to improve a substandard page up to acceptable quality before (or instead of) deleting it. But I think the tone of the essay really isn't helpful, and is unnecessarily antagonistic to people who often vote 'delete' in deletion discussions, by portraying them as ruthless destroyers hellbent on undoing the hard work other editors have put into Wikipedia.

One last thing - the whole 'inclusionist'/'deletionist' dichotomy is generally not a useful one, and particularly not when they are depicted as two sides of a war working to thwart one another at every turn. In reality, most editors are not simply 'inclusionist' or 'deletionist' but sensibly make a separate decision on each article based on its own individual merits; and if 'inclusionists' and 'deletionists' do exist, they are not enemies, but are both working to improve the encyclopaedia, simply through different approaches. I think if more people took this attitude, the inclusionism/deletionism dispute wouldn't be anywhere near such a contentious issue as it is today.

This post, in a nutshell: Deletionism isn't damaging Wikipedia; it's the ongoing inclusionist/deletionist conflict that's damaging Wikipedia. Terraxos 18:22, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * "in fact it is perfectly possible to do both (i.e. a false dilemma)"
 * Well the point of the bolded text you cited is not about any "dilemma" per se. Obviously most deltionists will also spend their time improving articles. However, that fact is not at issue - time is. I'm sure you can agree that if someone spends less time deleting, they have more time to potentially do other things (like improving articles). That is the line of thought that bolded line addresses. The flipside you propose about inclusionists is true, but without people fighting for articles, we would lose hundreds of hours of peoples hard work during the inevitable unjustified deletes that would happen without debating against deletes.


 * "unnecessarily antagonistic to people who often vote 'delete' in deletion discussions"
 * I understand. I wrote this at a time when I was particularly passionate about this topic. Please feel free to tone it down - i would love for this to become a guideline if people can come to an agreeable wording. Personally, I have seen many users who come close to being "ruthless destroyers hellbent on undoing the hard work other editors have put into Wikipedia". Sometimes they are very frustrating to deal with - especially when its your hard work at issue.


 * "[they] are both working to improve the encyclopaedia, simply through different approaches. "
 * I agree with that. And that is all i mean when i talk about inclusionists and deletionists. I, however, think that the deletionist approach *is* harmful. I feel that deletions should only happen if there is no question that it should be deleted. If theres a giant debate about it, it should probably just be kept. Fresheneesz 22:31, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Do you know of a reliable list of deletionists?  Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 06:14, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't, but I could probably make a very small one myself. Fresheneesz (talk) 22:02, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion Nomination Process
There needs to be better checks and balances in the process of how articles are currently nominated for deletion, to prevent notable topics from being deleted without actual qualification per Wikipedia article deletion guidelines. This is a significant problem, because it is very likely that notable topics are being injustly deleted. It's easy to nominate an article for deletion and then type five or six words and wait to see if an article will be deleted, whereas it takes more time to refute nominations. Perhaps there should be more sophisticated criterion to nominate articles for deletion. As it is now, anyone can nominate any article without providing a just rationale for doing so, and can instead simply base the nomination upon basic, generic and inspecific statements such as "doesn't pass general notability guidelines", while not specifically stating which parts of the guidelines they are supposedly referring to. If nobody comes along to correct an injust or baseless nomination, the article is then deleted based upon unqualified, general statements that don't actually correspond with the required source searching per WP:BEFORE prior to nominating an article for deletion. This definitely makes it very easy for people to censor Wikipedia, for whatever subjective reasons. Here's how it's done: an article is nominated for deletion and an AfD entry is created, a generic rationale is provided to misqualify the deletion without actually checking for reliable sources to establish topic notability. Afterward, if nobody comes along to correct the faulty nomination, the article is deleted. It's also easy for people to message one-another to delete articles, often per an "as per nom" rationale, while disregarding the actual notability of topics. If nobody comes along and provides an objective analysis to refute the deletion of an article in which the topic is actually notable, nominated per generic statements and without the required source searching prior to nomination, then the article disappears. Hopefully Wikipedia can introduce better checks and balances to prevent this type of easily accomplished, simple censorship. One idea is to include a requirement prior to article nomination for deletion in which the nominator has to state, or check-box on a template, that they've performed the required minimum search in Google Books and in the Google News Archive required by WP:BEFORE, and in Google Scholar for academic subjects, as suggested in WP:BEFORE. This would be a simple addition to the AfD nomination process that would add significant integrity to the process, and would also encourage users to follow the proper procedures.

Please place responses regarding this matter here on this User talk:Fresheneesz/Don't Destroy Discussion page below, rather than on my personal talk page. In this manner, other users can view and respond to responses. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 08:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Please refer to: Wikipedia talk: Articles for deletion— Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion Nomination Process. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 17:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Please avoid pejorative linking
This essay raises valid points, and while I do not necessarily agree with every argument made, I respect the point of view. However, I kindly request to this essay's proponents this: please do not link to it from pejorative terms as an Easter egg. I discovered this essay from following a disparaging label that was directed at a specific user, and that made it difficult to remain respectful and open-minded about the views expressed here. Please receive this in the civil tone it was intended; I have not linked diffs or named names, nor do I wish to shame anyone. BigNate37(T) 01:16, 24 July 2012 (UTC)