Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Log/2006 December 6

An additional side comment on the Gundam AfD
I'd like to take this opportunity to explain why I would wade into this monster AfD when I have no stake in the articles themselves. In my time here I have noticed a certain inability to resolve complex issues, with the result being that much debate occurs but nothing changes—what I'll call the "train wreck mentality". I saw this AfD after it had been listed a couple of days and noted both the care with which the nominator had made his arguments and reasoning to delete the articles, and the subsequent sense of futility that regardless of strength of arguments and areas of agreement, once enough people wade into the stream from opposing sides that the water becomes sufficiently muddied that the discussion is doomed to result in no consensus and no progress.

I have observed a disturbing manifestation as a consequence of this, which is that any status quo can be maintained not on the strength of position and reasoning, but simply by getting enough people to wade in that the water is muddied. On more than one occasion I have seen comments (usually on talk pages between participants on the side of the status quo, not in the discussion itself) discussing this as a strategy for defeating change.

So being a glutton for punishment, when I saw this AfD after it had been going for a few days, I decided to see if I could:
 * 1) Mediate the discussion so as to reveal the points in common between the sides; and
 * 2) Take the time to actually digest the entirety of the discussion to distill the consensus; in order to
 * 3) Attack the "train wreck mentality" and muddy-the-water strategy so that people regain faith in the process to tackle complex issues.

That I happened to pick the Gundam articles is simply chance, although a fortunate one in that I was entirely neutral on the subject matter. I became an admin only a couple of weeks ago and this was the first opportunity I saw to see if this approach was possible.

So what are my conclusions? Well, that will depend to a degree on how this DRV goes, but initially I am both encouraged that this approach can work to resolve some of the more contentious debates that occur here, and discouraged that the amount of effort required is going to rightfully prevent many other admins from taking this approach. It was a daunting level of effort, and I certainly have sympathy with the view that 59 articles is a big bite to take. I'm still not sure, tho', how you would best go about accomplishing this in a piecemeal fashion. However this DRV turns out, it has been a positive learning experience. —Doug Bell talk 22:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * If you want to run a successful mass AfD, you discuss it ahead of time and build a consensus, or run a test case or two and then nom the whole mess citing the previous discussions and AfD's as precedent. Mass AfD's never go well because they do not build consensus, but rather polarize editors.
 * If the nominator had instead picked 2 or 3 articles from the batch, nominated them (separately or together) and focused his arguments on the article content of those specific pages, then there would have been a much higher likelihood of an actual consensus being built for those pages. Then, after this, he could run a second afd on the group as a whole, or better still simply work through the category in batches of 3-5.
 * Is this slower? Yes. Does it satisfy the desire to instantly rid the Wiki of cruft? No. Does it result in content-focused AfD's that are proper in method, don't break down into idealogical dispute and flamewars (as much), give you a better opportunity to weigh 3rd options, and generally operate in a much more smooth, civil fashion and give decisions governed by the principle of consensus? YES. --tjstrf talk 23:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that there are lessons to be learned here and that there are better ways to facilitate a large deletion discussion—I intend to attempt to create a guideline for how to conduct not just massive (in terms of number of articles) but generally tough or contentious discussions that tend to get muddied. I think there are definitely better ways to structure both the nomination and the discussion, and I think Articles for deletion/Cosmic Era vehicles is a definite improvement.  However, I disagree that the correct way to discuss the deletion of a bunch of related articles for a common set of reasons is to repeat the discussion many times spread over a smaller number of articles.  I think the correct way is to do it as a single discussion, but structured to easily allow the articles in the discussion to achieve different conclusions.  I think another important step in addition to structuring it to make it easy to provide targeted opinions to subsets of the articles is to have an impartial mediator (or two) in the discussion to try and steer the discussion towards some kind of consensus. —Doug Bell talk 23:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The structuring of the Vehicles nom is a vast improvement since it allows for a piecemeal addressing of the listing, but I think it's still overwhelmingly large. Seeing as I intend to write the same guideline, see you there. (Can we give it the WP:TRAINWRECK redirect?) --tjstrf talk 23:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll tell you what, if this deletion is overturned, we'll use WP:TRAINWRECK, if not I get to pick the name. :-) —Doug Bell talk 00:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sure. I can always make WP:TRAINWRECK go to the Warcraft AfD if that happens anyway, so it's no major loss for me. --tjstrf talk 00:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Good job! I had almost lost faith in the system in this regard, but you come to the rescue! I suppose WP is worth staying in after all. Fledgeling 01:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The fact that you ignored the compromise that was being hashed out by User:Mythsearcher and others is disturbing. This AfD was well on its way to actually improving these articles and your blatant deletionism is disturbing. I also am saddened by your decision to 'weigh' the comments on the page based on the posting history of the 'voters'. Wikipedia should not be an elitist group where your opinion is judged by the number of edits you have made. Kyaa the Catlord 07:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I find it hard to reconcile your comment here. Mythsearcher's tireless contributions to the discussion were responsible for forming a large part of my decision.  His proposed compromise is largely intact in my closing decision—without his valuable contributions to the discussion, this likely would have been closed as delete all. —Doug Bell talk 10:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I also meant to repond to your other concern regarding how the posting histories of user's impacted my decision. The point of determining potential single-purpose accounts is to identify people whose interests and knowledge may lie more with subject matter and who may not be familiar with nor concerned with Wikipedia's policies.  However, as it turned out there was very little substantive discussion from these contributors, so the issue of their contribution history had virtually no impact on my decision. —Doug Bell talk 10:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Which does not negate the fact that the bias against low post counts does exist. This betrays the core of wikipedia, NPOV, by inserting more weight to those who edit over those who simply use the encyclopedia. Shouldn't more weight be given to those who benefit from the encyclopedia than those who edit it? Isn't the point of being an encyclopedia to provide information to those who use it as a reference? Kyaa the Catlord 12:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I think you miss my point. It is not to give less weight to their opinions on the subject matter, but rather to understand that their comments may be primarily considering the subject and not Wikipedia policies.  I didn't give any less weight to their views on the notability of the articles. —Doug Bell talk 18:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that many editors, myself included, have praised Doug for a great AfD closure. -- Ned Scott 02:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)