Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Private Correspondence (etc.)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was Closed as defective. There is also no consensus below for any marking (given the dispute between historical and rejected) and now the nominator admits this nomination was not initiated for deletion. While MfDs will sometimes end in a consensus to mark a certain page historical, this cannot be the primary goal of the nomination -- the first place to seek consensus for the rejection/historical tagging of such a page is its own talk page. For a group of pages which originate from a centralized discussion, seek consensus at that discussion. MfDs like this often promote confusion, and sometimes wiki-drama. In this case, it is clear that the first undesirable consequence has resulted. If an editor believes any or all of these discussions is historical, he should so tag, and see if he is disputed. If he is legitimately disputed, the discussion is not yet historical: this is an editorial question of a very simple sort. Xoloz (talk) 16:23, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Private correspondence (etc.)
This has been an utter trainwreck. mark all historical and no more proposals on this issue for six months. We all need a cool-down period. —Random832 22:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, this is not a nomination for deletion, I do not think the pages should be deleted. There is, as far as I know, established precedent for going through MFD to mark pages as historical. —Random832 04:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you explain why it's an "utter trainwreck", I don't get the point of an MFD to tag those pages as historical, I'm tempt to speedy close it. Secret account 22:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought it was established practice that an MFD was needed to do something like marking as historical with highly controversial pages such as these. And, it's also needed in this case because the structure of the talk page for WP:PRIVATE, at least, has mainly consisted of people talking past each other; so if I suggested it there I'd likely only get responses from people who agreed with me, and that's no way to gauge consensus. —Random832 22:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * and, by "utter trainwreck" I mean that with duelling proposals (four on one page, two on another, and if I remember correctly I one of the two original proposals was started as a counter-proposal against the other one) nothing's going to get done but a lot more bytes being wasted. This has been a poorly structured debate from the beginning. —Random832 22:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Normally those conterversal pages are first asked for deletion before being marked as historical like esperanza, it's recommended first to get consensus on the talk page or the village pump for the historical tag. Thanks Secret account 22:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You wish consensus on a talkpage of a proposed policy which has had to be fully protected only yesterday for a week because of a viscious edit/wheelwar? The reason for the MfD request is that consensus is not an achievable option, and that time spent on that space is time wasted. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FYI, I've self reverted the split to WP:Correspondence off-wiki, per request. Although I still think this is the smart idea. -- Kendrick7talk 22:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, "train wreck" is far too mild. The page has become a source of animosity that is doing much more harm than good. Both sides are firmly dug in; after nearly a month, it is clear there is no realistic possibility of consensus. If anything the opposing camps are even farther apart than before. Raymond Arritt (talk) 22:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Two experienced admins went to 3RR within just over half an hour yesterday, and that includes a thirteen minute protection on the page - and were only stopped by an outside party placing a week long lockdown on the page. No attempt is being made to achieve consensus, and no reasonable expectation of one being achieved in the next week (or month) is currently possible. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Just mark as historical, no consensus ever formed from this proposal, the edit warning is beyond silly. Secret account 23:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Burn to the ground and sow with SALT Nothing useful will ever emerge from this gigantic cauldron of spaghetti. Jtrainor (talk) 23:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark historical It seems the only purpose of the pages is to create animosity between two factions. That hardly furthers the goal of unity. Master of Puppets Care to share?  23:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete None of the proposals have a chance of becoming policy, and all of it just serves to create ill-will. SirFozzie (talk) 23:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Do those !voting "delete" in fact mean "delete" or simply, as the nominator suggests, "mark as historical"? We generally do not delete policy proposals that failed to earn the support of the community (or records of discussions, for that matter, of those proposals), and we generally don't delete rejected proposals on the grounds of their, by the virtue of their very existence, promoting disruptive edit warring and unnecessary agitation and discussion; the historical tag, after all, forecloses (at least in principle) discussion of the exact proposals, and unproductive discussions undertaken elsewhere about the underlying issues are properly dealt with by the community through other means.  Joe 23:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was thinking the same thing, and thus was hesitant to add any comment to this MfD. I would not want to completely close off the possibility that at some point in the future there might be a proposal for either of these subjects that does receive the consensus support of the community; if the pages are actually deleted, then the majority of the community (i.e., the non-admins) will not be able to effectively comment on future efforts to reach consensus. Risker (talk) 00:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally I mean delete as in destroy, eradicate, expunge, demolish, annihilate, raze,  subject to herem, put an end to, terminate, and do away with. If the idea comes up again, better to start from a clean slate. Others can speak for themselves. Raymond Arritt (talk) 00:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as  Historical Rejected It is overwhelmingly obvious that concensus formation is not a possible outcome from these pages. Trainwreck in slowmotion, painful to watch.  JERRY talk contribs 00:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC) Changing recommendation per GRBerry. JERRY talk contribs 00:34, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Lumping all the proposals together in this MfD isn't helpful.  It's a bad idea to delete pages simply to remove temptation and protect admins and other editors from the expectation they exert some self-control.  And it's a really bad idea to use MfD to clean-up these kinds of messes.  Editors will feel hushed, and when does that ever help?  The messiness is merely a manifestation of the underlying conflicts, not the source of them.  Professor marginalia (talk) 00:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark both as Rejected. No consensus is going to form here anytime soon.  Neither of these ever was a policy or guideline in any form, nor has either ever had a consensus version, so Rejected is more accurate than Historical.  I can't see sufficient reason to actually delete, but making it clear that these both failed to obtain community consensus in any form is a good idea.  GRBerry 00:29, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete (first choice) or mark rejected (second choice). A series of editors appear to have been attempting to overide copyright law.  Such an effort is futile.  Activism of that type should be conducted via letters to one's elected representatives, or possibly attempted at one's private website, but not foisted upon WMF without proper legal advisement.  Additionally, I have found it quite painful to watch a series of statements that unfairly malign my actions and even my character.  I have erred and am sorry.  It does no good to drag an editor through the mud in such a forum.  Durova Charge! 01:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. These proposals have absolutely no chance of gaining consensus, and they have caused nothing but trouble. Maybe in a year the issue can be discussed again, but the existing cesspool is completely worthless. These pages aren't a part of the encyclopedia and they very obviously are not in any way helping us build the encyclopedia. Get rid of them. *** Crotalus *** 01:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Close this MfD. No viable reason has been proposed to delete these discussions.  We don't delete pages just because people don't like them, or people are misbehaving on them.  That sets a terrible precedent and would certainly create more wikidrama than it cures.  Deleting policy proposals you don't like is an end run around the legitimate process.  Better to let this evolve as it's supposed to, through consensus, and deal with any misbehavior in the usual way as it arises.  If people are edit warring they can be blocked temporarily, and if people add personal attacks they should be warned and the attacks removed.  The "confidential evidence" proposal seems to be dead so it might be time to mark it rejected (personally I would wait another week or two).  The other two proposals are under active debate so it seems premature to reject them.Wikidemo (talk) 01:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Marking historical is fine if there is clearly no consensus, and none is going to form, but deletion? If we delete the pages, prior mistakes might be repeated (the same thing will just be proposed again by someone unaware of this). I'm unconvinced as to why the rejected proposals should not be viewable to non-admins (which is what deletion is, remember). Picaroon (t) 01:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:NOT is my reasoning. Some may disagree.  Durova Charge! 01:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That refers to trying to solve real world political fights with Wikipedia articles. This edit war is close to a violation of BATTLEGROUND, as the people involved are bringing in their personal ... vulnerabilities and histories, let's say ... but that's an argument against all the proliferation.  I don't think that any page can achieve the goal, but I'd rather we had a single place where people can talk and work out some basic principles than that we pretend that there is no issue.  This presupposes that there is only one conversation going on and that nobody tries to trick the rest into thinking it's a done deal or "policy already, but I can't cite it."  Geogre (talk) 20:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Support templating as "rejected" but not deleting I concur with Picaroon's comments above. Risker (talk) 01:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Tag historical We're not close to a consensus, and I don't think we need a clear policy on this issue anyway. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 03:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * note: a clarification on my reasoning: sorry, I had somewhere to be shortly after making the nomination so I couldn't explain this earlier. The problem is people are talking past each other. Instead of trying to reach a compromise/consensus version of one proposal, people are just making counter-proposals that have no greater hope of getting consensus. proposal risks becoming the new essay if this continues. This is not how a consensus can found, anyone can see that. I'm not saying they should be deleted, but they should be marked as historical/rejected/whatever. —Random832 04:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: I agree with you. Obviously, I agree that people have been speaking at each other and never to each other.  My own comment on the talk page shows how I believe that people have been so committed to a point of view and so averse to discussion that nothing was moving.  That said, the forks should be deleted point blank, the creators of the forks warned, and the page with a serious arbitrator.  A "serious" arbitrator means one willing to agree that there is an issue that has to be addressed and one that wants to be conservative about it.  Such a thing is possible, but only if the "no, never, none at all" and the "there is no privacy, so there's no reason not to reveal things" editors both accept the judgment of the arbitrators.  Then, when done (if ever), we can see if the thing is accepted or rejected.  (By the way, the "mark as rejected" is quite literally a lie.  There is no "rejected" until we have an approval process.  No one should be trying to mark their personal essays as policy without approval (as I think David Gerard has done with his IRC description), but we also cannot be marking them as rejected pages without an approval process.)  Geogre (talk) 20:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Lets not decide the fate of these pages on MfD. Some things take more time than others. -- Ned Scott 06:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark historical: this is better than deletion as it makes the pages stand as Warnings to Others. &mdash;Ashley Y 08:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark rejected historical . A trainwreck, indeed. henrik  • talk  10:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark historical. At first, I thought that this was a bad MfD. But then I read the talk page and the history. Yikes! --WoohookittyWoohoo! 10:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as rejected or alternatively as historical, or alternatively delete. A huge waste of blood, sweat and tears all around. Sandstein (talk) 14:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical/rejected. There is clearly no consensus in support of these proposals, therefore they are rejected; but I don't see the need to delete them altogether right now. It's useful to keep old policy proposals like these, even though they've failed, so newbies can see what's already been discussed in the past and will think twice before proposing it again. Terraxos (talk) 16:31, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical or rejected. It would be nice to have a guideline on the topic these multiple proposals are attempting to address. However, it's clear that none of these efforts will result in one at this time. Do not delete - as I said, it would be nice to eventually have a guideline in this area, and any later attempt to craft one needs a clear and detailed guide as to how easy it is to fuck this up. — Gavia immer (talk) 16:48, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: "Rejected?" "Historical?"  Be aware that I have said from the start that trying to fix the mercury here is useless, but be aware also that all the forking is obscene and all the deletion is useless.  The problem with the pages lies not in our stars but our selves.  So long as people are running amok in name space, there is nothing to be done.  There have been some extremely aggressive and inappropriate editors at work -- many making threats, invoking their power and prestige, etc. -- and there have been many who know that the root issue remains and have tried to keep writing to hit the nail on the head.  If there is a problem, then there has to be some page describing best practice.  We don't use deletion to stop edit wars, and we don't use it to stop bad tempered people from being bad tempered.  We do stop all the forking, and we warn the forking editors, but we don't eliminate all pages.  Geogre (talk) 20:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In light of the above: Keep one page. I recommend keeping the oldest of them, and then tell everyone to work it out like Wikipedians or take a break.  That means getting an uninvolved and blind arbitrator, if the involved groups can't make a move.  Geogre (talk) 20:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Seconded (aka Merge and Keep). The general idea is a good one, but we don't need this many different places going on simultaneously. If that's not viable, then Mark as Historical/Rejected without prejudice to starting a new proposed policy. -- Kesh (talk) 22:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as rejected I had some input earlier on (before this started going sideways), and after stepping back, it doesn't seem likely that the community is going to accept a proposal. I'm not saying this because of any recent developments, rather because I don't think its likely that there we'll achieve a consensus on allowing confidential/secret evidence. -- B figura (talk) 23:02, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It was mentioned to me at a certain RFArb that I should bring some points to the discussion at WP:PRIVATE. Immediately on viewing the page, the term "trainwreck" came to mind.  Delete or historicify or just blank everything an start afresh.  There does seem to be a general consensus over there, but a loud minority are preventing any sort of closure.  Let's just stop it now... Martinp23 23:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe that was me that suggested Martinp23 give input at WP:PRIVATE. I hadn't read WP:PRIVATE before either. I went to have a look just now, and my screen was filled with four tags (including the MfD tag), and the words "ALTERNATIVE #1" at the bottom of the screen. I didn't bother scrolling down to read any further. Mark as trainwreck. Start again at some future point when things are clearer. Carcharoth (talk) 02:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It can be done, but only if people who believe there is a problem get to explain, work it out, and then have "rejected: there is no problem" or "rejected: has wide license" or anything like that. Instead, though, we had one group that wanted, from the start and ever more, "Nothing anyone considers private may ever be posted" and another saying, "Sometimes things you think are private need to be posted, and this is a page about whistleblowers."  The second group never even got a chance to write before the first group began to bully, saying that there was already a policy that covered it all, and yet, paradoxically, wanting to write the page to suit their needs and merge it to policy without the approval process.  If we don't allow people to edit enough to even state their case, we're not Wikipedia.  The first editors should have appealed to more interventionist administrators than me, I guess.  Geogre (talk) 03:31, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I lied. I did read further down the screen (though I haven't read the confidential evidence page yet). Having two alternatives like that is not really workable, and I agree with your merge suggestion. But why not try something else? If it is only ArbCom that would receive such private evidence, why not let them write something as a subpage of the Arbitration policy pages, with community input and approval (up to a certain extent)? That might keep things under control. Or is there other use for private evidence on Wikipedia? One thing that is needed is a process where receipt of the evidence is acknowledged. Carcharoth (talk) 10:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical. Please, do it quickly before any more madness erupts. >< Richard  Ω6  12  11:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical and rejected - for alternative 1, and take alternative 2 and formulate it into something different regarding the protection of whistleblowers specifically rather than something that gets the copyright people up in arms.  DEVS EX MACINA  pray 13:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Private correspondence either has to be deleted or kept in the version from a few weeks back. It can't be marked rejected because that would give the impression that posting private data is acceptable, which it clearly is not, per copyright, GFDL, WP:CIVIL, foundation privacy policy (especially in respect of header information), the potential for fraudulent misrepresentation (as with a recent post of IRC logs) and several previous ArbCom rulings based on same.  There is no doubt that posting of private data is considered seriously problematic, and the main thrust of this policy before the recent nonsense was explaining what steps are available to people who consider that something in private data needs to be brought to the attention of arbitrators.  There is no obvious way of getting away from the fact that posting the contents of private emails and IRC logs is generally considered an extremely bad idea, but whether we need a policy page where people who don't like that can try to weasel in their wishful thinking in place of policy is debatable. The various POV-forks should just be nuked. This is an excellent example of "hard cases make bad law", and was prompted almost entirely by Giano's posting of a private email which ArbCom already had, and explicitly for your entertainment. Some people thought this email exonerated user:!!, but this was always false; !! was exonerated long before and by quite different evidence. I have yet to see any case where the posting of a private email on Wikipedia has been considered anything other than problematic and unnecessary, and we should be very wary indeed of giving any impression contrary to that; marking these historical gives the risk we have with BADSITES, where some people assert that "BADSITES failed therefore you may never remove links to harassment", which is a misreading of community consensus - gratuitous acts of harassment or privacy violation are not acceptable, and there is every reason to give clear and sensible guidance on how to bring things to the proper attention without engaging in privacy violation.  Guy (Help!) 10:54, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * We don't create policy by fiat. WP:BADSITES is a perfect example to support marking this policy as rejected; eventually, the community came to a consensus and created the WP:BADLINKS policy. Someday, we'll have a policy here too. -- Kendrick7talk 20:30, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Confidental evidence is about something different than the other pages, and even those have differences. How are we supposed to arrive at a blanket solution here? -Amarkov moo! 20:11, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Withdraw MfD. I take exception to this MfD. Private correspondence has not been formally presented to the community as a proposed policy. A version achieved some stability recently and I proposed that we move it for approval. There was a consensus on the talk page to wait for that effort until after the New Year. After that it was totlaly re-written, resuilting in an edit war, and now is being proposed for deletion and salting. That is unprecedented to my knowledge in policy formulation. When have we ever imposed a moratorium on policy proposals? That's a draconian suggestion. Instead of MfDing a slew of proposals during a holiday week, we should proceed openly and honestly, and approve or reject each proposal individually after publication at Village pump (policy). ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 06:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Mark all as on hiatus until march or something - let everyone take a break from these. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 18:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep so that we have a record of the prior discussion if this is brought up again. Sarsaparilla (talk) 21:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Do something other than what has been happening. I haven't been involved in any of this at all; I just learned about it from checking in at WP:CENT.  So I've skimmed the proposals and discussion.  I can't do more than skim, because there's almost 600 KBytes (!) of text in the current pages alone (I don't dare think about past revisions).  That alone tells me things are not working.  So I agree with the nom's reasoning that this has become a black hole from which consensus cannot emerge.  • I think a mandatory cooling-off period, with a prohibition on new discussion, would be a good place to start.  Let everyone think about something else for a month or three.  •  I'm not sure of the right thing to do with the current pages.  While I'm sure there's good stuff in there, it's so diluted and dispersed that I'm not sure it can be salvaged.  I'd suggest an attempt at refactoring, summarizing, and merging all existing proposals and discussion, so work towards consensus can be started fresh, except that I'm not sure that can be done without restarting the whole excrement-storm again.  So maybe the right thing to do is delete it all, and then start a new page for freshly written proposals and discussion.  Inefficient, but perhaps the least-bad solution.  •  Alternatively, how about archiving and locking all the existing pages, and starting a new page-pair, with the explicit mandate that interested parties first work on an approach for submitting and discussing the different proposals (before actually working on the content of said proposals).  — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 08:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur with DragonHawk I propose the following steps:
 * A mandatory cooling-off period enforced by edit protection for no shorter than a month.
 * In a month or two, start a new RfC or other means to calmly discuss the issue, preferably at a level that will solicit the widest participation possible.
 * All parties are urged to behave reasonably and calmly in their interactions with other users, to keep their cool when editing, and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct—including, but not limited to, personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, trolling, harassment, and gaming the system—is prohibited.  Users should not respond to such behavior in kind; concerns regarding the actions of other users should be brought up in the appropriate forums.
 * All parties are urged to work collaboratively and constructively with the broader community and the editors committed to working on the issues in question to develop and implement a generally acceptable approach to resolving the underlying dispute.
 * All parties are reminded that we do not need a guideline for everything and there is no deadline for resolving this issue. We have managed to make it a long time with just the informal "be polite and do not infringe on others privacy" tradition.  A few more months without some rigid policy will not make us implode. Ursasapien (talk) 10:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical Proposing a policy such as this seems to be an attempt to stir up a fuss and provoke certain people. Current guidelines seem sufficient, sometimes it's good to be vague. No more bongos (talk) 17:07, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical I highly doubt that this will ever become policy. Captain   panda  17:21, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Mark as historical and don't delete. My opinion has been sprinkled throughout the talk page, so that is all.  R. Baley (talk) 17:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.