Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion/User:Surturz/AdminWatch

Voting breakdown

 * Comment. Just curious about how the voting was breaking down by status (admin/non-admin). Here are tallies as of Aug 9th (5pm NY time). These are rough numbers subject to change. 46 voted; of these, 67% voted delete and 30% voted keep and 2% were undecided (total > 100% because of rounding). Of the 31 persons voting delete, 55% were admins. Of the 14 voting keep, 29% were admins, and 71% were non-admins. It suggests that persons vote differently based on status here, that is, if you are an admin, you are more likely to vote delete. And, it will be an admin who decides how to interpret this vote and make a decision.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:16, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: Status based on this list -- if the spelling of a username is incorrect and led to wrong data please change this -- thanx) I would have posted this on a user talk page but feared it might have been interpreted as a "s---list" and deleted. :) --Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:16, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Total                       46
 * Admins voting Keep         4
 * Admins voting Delete      17
 * Non-admins voting Keep    10
 * Non-admins voting Delete  14
 * Undecided                  1


 * This pattern is approximately similar to that at Community de-adminship/RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:42, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I moved this over to the talk page because it is meta-discussion about the MFD, rather than about the page being discussed. Plus the page is almost 100K without this. But feel free to carry on with your analysis, and if you believe it is relevant as an argument for or against the deletion of the nominated page, you can reference/link to it in a comment there. --RL0919 (talk) 23:03, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree, good call. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I feel left out. Can I be put in there under "discussed and made suggestion but didn't !vote"? Or you could work out what I think should happen based on what I said. Hint: whether the page is deleted or not isn't really the key issue here. The key issue is that people come away from this with an understanding of how to approach dispute resolution properly (regardless of whether you are an admin or not, and regardless of whether your dispute is with an admin or not), and the difference between dispute resolution and meta-discussion on how to improve various things around here. Oh, and realising that admins are really only editors with extra buttons, they are not super-editors. Those are things that people only 'get' by discussion, and no number of delete or keep !votes or results of deletions will replace discussion. It would be far, far better to summarise the points made in the discussion (i.e. people's comments) than to count !votes. Carcharoth (talk) 23:49, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * If you felt left out, why didn't you vote? And whichever admin decides to keep or delete, they'll make their own analysis of the points -- this is a particular analysis just looking at two variables -- vote, and status -- to see if there was a relation.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you missed my point. I thought it was obvious I was being sarcastic when saying I felt left out. The point is that discussion is what oils processes on Wikipedia, not !voting. Hopefully the closing admin will summarise the points raised here, but my point was more that the participants in a discussion can often do that summarising themselves. You don't have to wait for an admin to do that summary. Which feeds back to my point about people seeing admins as some kind of elevated super-class, when they are not. What you need to do is find a similar MfD to this one, but one that concerned the deletion of a list about other editors (not admins). And then see if the admins-editor !voting is any different there to here. It might be that admins are not defending admins, but are more sensitive to overall criticism than editors. I'd also look less at who is an admin or not, and more at how long people have been editing for. I find !voting tends to split more along 'generational' lines, with each Wikipedia 'generation' being about 2 years. You will probably find that those from similar generations have similar interpretations of policy and guidelines, and more broadly, newer editors tend to differ in opinion from more established editors, at least until they internalise how things work around here. Admins tend to be more established, so anything that is due to that can sometimes appear to be admins grouping together, when it isn't really. Carcharoth (talk) 00:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I understand and agree with what you've written above, about the importance of discussion. I wasn't trying to over-emphasize voting but rather to shed light on one aspect of this. Isn't it interesting? And I like your hypothesis about "generations" interesting too. It may be that my own perceptions are colored by being an outsider, a non-admin, as well as memories of past disagreements in which I may not have fully grasped all of the rules but which I felt pushed around. Still, I think there is a kind of all power corrupts principle at work here, but perhaps only slightly, since what I'm sensing is the vast majority of people here, admin and non-admin, are basically reasonable (my POV).--Tomwsulcer (talk) 08:54, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * If you want to look for previous discussions of similar pages, this search might help. It returns discussions of other stuff, such as inflammatory userboxes and political rants, but there are several past "attack page" discussions. For example, I closed this one and this one in the second half of last year. Here is an interesting non-userspace example from this year. --RL0919 (talk) 01:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I also think that admin status is a furphy. I tried looking at the table of votes by age of the user account, but the only thing to stand out is that accounts from the northern summer of '06 are seriously over-represented (15 June - 17 September '06 account for 26% of all !voters).  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:30, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * So it takes Wikipedians five years to figure out what an MFD is? Crazynast 00:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Just noting a few things. Tide rolls is not currently an admin, but he did resign his adminship in uncontroversial circumstances less than a month ago (not sure if that's worth noting or not). There are two actual inaccuracies, though: you have Beetstra down as a non-admin, which is incorrect (he's been an admin since '07). Also, you have "Elle" (User:La goutte de pluie) down as a non-admin, when in fact, Elle has been an admin since '05, although she's had a username change since her RfA, which could have been what confused you. Jenks24 (talk) 08:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Updated, thanks.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 09:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

"Age" of user and votes
Just out of pure curiosity, some other data - votes and date of first edit. This isn't a rigorous analysis, at least one user had an extreme gap between their first edit and their first real activity. To do this scientifically it'd be best to weight edits against when they were made, and I honestly don't care that much, I'm just curious if there's a trend. I shamelessly borrowed Tom's table format.

This is only data mining, I've no analysis, and the only trend I see is the 2006 thing. SDY (talk) 00:55, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I caved to my inner geekiness, some analysis because I'm just goofy about these things... the mean and two standard deviations on each side for "age" of users voting delete is 541-2766, and for users voting keep is 265-2898. Statistically, there is no meaningful correlation between "age" and vote since the two intervals overlap. (Caveat: statistics are not certainty.)

Some further numbers:

Admins voting delete: 838 to 2598 Admins voting keep: 1781 to 1861

Non-admins voting delete: 250 to 2920 Non-admins voting keep: (-22) to 2992

The things I do for fun when sitting bored in a hotel room... SDY (talk) 01:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Interestingly enough, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz and I apparently started editing on the same day. Parsecboy (talk) 02:58, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * A classic Birthday problem result!!
 * Thanks to Tom and SDY for the breakdown, I was thinking of doing that myself and you've saved me the effort. Not sure if the samples are big enough to generalise, but as one would expect, the skew from admin WP:COI is pretty strong, enough to push it over the line. I'm not sure the non-admin 15-11 (58%) would count as consensus, but even if one assumes there is a non-admin WP:COI skew the other way, the result is pretty discouraging. One could theorise that non-admins wanting to become admins are more likely to post in MfDs such as this, I guess. What surprises me is the number of people voting. I guess the page name grabs attention. Thanks again, knowing the numbers makes me happier that there is actually genuine consensus against the page, rather than this being an admin beat-down. I think there is a strong argument that we should add a caveat to Surturz (talk) 07:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The point you are missing is that most admins (hopefully most of them) are able to look at things objectively and comment in discussions and other places as editors, not as admins (I'm certainly commenting here as an editor, not an admin). The admin 'hat' is something that should only be put on when using the tools or closing AfDs and similar discussions. There are cases of admins getting too big for their boots and going on power trips, and there are cases of admins blindly backing up other admins without checking what happened, but if you have a genuine case there are enough fair-minded people out there that there will nearly always be someone willing to listen to you. When you get a lot of people voting, it tends to be because it got mentioned on a user talk page with a lot of watchers, or it got mentioned at a place like AN or ANI (the latter was how I became aware of this). Also, once a discussion reaches a critical mass, it starts attracting other editors merely because of its size. Anyway, interesting though the discussion has been, have you considered what I suggested? Which is copying the top half of the current page (i.e. not including the diffs), starting that as a new page with a new title aimed at turning it into an essay of some sort, and asking for the current page to be deleted? That would be a show of good-faith on your part and go a long way to helping things move on here. Many people come up against perceived deficiencies and injustices in the system, and the most useful thing is usually to write an essay detailing the general principles that you think need changing. Carcharoth (talk) 08:50, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Essay writing works as therapy, perhaps, but without a little bit of cage-rattling these issues won't be fixed, and they aren't just "perceived" deficiencies and injustices, though some people may have had a run of bad luck with the experience they've had and not have a representative sample. In just editing, I haven't seen a whole lot of problems, but honestly I don't run into many admins in that context.  On the other hand, even attempting to discuss policy seems to result in immediate defensive and sometimes hostile behavior from some of the admin corps (a la WP:OWN).  I was particularly curious if there was some sort of trend with older admins being more in favor of defending the system-as-it-is and newer ones less enthusiastic about it, but that's not borne out by the data.  Sample size is too small to come to any rigorous conclusion, of course.  SDY (talk) 13:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I've been hanging round Wikipedia for quite a while, and I can't say I've seen that sort of reaction to trying to discuss policy, but if you have any diffs then please do pass them over and I'll have a look. I'm open to change and willing to work towards positive ones  WormTT   &middot; &#32;(talk) 13:19, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Eh, when I get into one of those situations I tend to try and forget it rather than take notes. Life's too short to get too worked up over Wikipolitics, and I have enough stress in my offline reality anyway.  Usually I end up feeling guilty over wasting time on "unsolvable" administrative problems and force myself to actually contribute some content, which is probably better for the encyclopedia in the long run anyway.  SDY (talk) 19:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

On shitlists
Other shitlists we need to make sure and take off Wikipedia


 * 1) The Ninety-Five Theses
 * 2) Magna Carta
 * 3) United States Declaration of Independence

Its not an exhaustive list yet, but I'm sure we have some people who can make sure we get all such shitlists off the site. -- Avanu (talk) 12:12, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Lol. I think it was the Ninety Five Feces to constitute a true shitlist. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Up until this point, I have generally accepted your point of view Avanu, I disagree, as I mentioned in my vote, but have not felt the need to say anything against your comments. However, this rhetoric is un-needed. You know full well these are articles, not user space collections of mis-deeds. Even if they were, we have WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.  WormTT   &middot; &#32;(talk) 12:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, in part, but so many of our editors simply are denouncing criticism without providing something to balance it. Enric's comment just a few minutes ago gives me a bit of hope, but we have to treasure thought and speech, and in many of the responses, I only see hard-edged rejection of the same. -- Avanu (talk) 12:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Moved from main MFD. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:53, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, now you're just destroying your own arguments with this over-the-top hyperbole. This has nothing to do with freedom or civil liberties (and less still with a schism over religious dogma, ffs!). Nobody is arguing that complaining about perceived misbehavior by administrators in a proper venue is inappropriate; or that collecting evidence is somehow wrong.  What is being argued is that a sundry list of grievances has no place on-wiki unless it's for actual dispute resolution.  Your implication that consensus veers towards deleting the page is caused by administrators "sticking with each other" to stifle dissent is not only unjustified, but downright insulting. For that matter, I feel that this list is not appropriate to keep on-wiki and I am not only part of the one group who does sanction misbehaving administrators, but the committee is historically target to the most vicious and persistent "criticism" by unhappy editors &mdash; and we have unfailingly allowed such criticism to stand even when it veers deeply into malicious attacks and personal aggression out of a desire to go above-and-beyond freedom to criticize.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 17:21, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I felt this should have been left on the main MfD page to just fade away, I'd have removed it already, but people responded. Ed didn't need to draw attention to it by moving it here. -- Avanu (talk) 18:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle generated CSD and PROD lists
If this page is an attack page how is this acceptable? It is essentially a list of articles the user doesn't believe belong on Wikipedia and automatically links to the article and user in question. If the creation of this shitlist is permitted by simply checking a box in the Twinkle user interface... what is the rationale for deleting this?Crazynast 20:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Tagging an article for deletion indicates you think the article meets the criteria for deletion, regardless of who edited it. Articles can have multiple editors, so the relationship between a tagging and an editor is not definitive. There's also (usually) no implication that the article's failings were willful; it may just be that the article-writer didn't understand our criteria for inclusion. A more comparable case would be keeping a list of XFDs where you thought the consensus of the discussion (contributed to by multiple editors) was wrong, as opposed to a list of XFDs where you think the admin (one person) willfully misrepresented the consensus. --RL0919 (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Like this one (assuming it gets closed the way consensus is leaning right now) :P ? The twinkle interface links both the creator of the page and the page in question.  Although less applicable in PROD cases in CSD cases where (generally) the only contributor is the creator how does that not violate the (strict) interpretation that the !vote Delete editors in this discussion appear to have regarding POLEMIC specifically  including the recording of perceived flaws. and Users should generally not maintain in public view negative information related to others without very good reason.?Crazynast 21:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I won't speak for anyone else's interpretations (nor have I participated in the MFD), but I would note a couple of things. Twinkle logs the name of the editor that was notified automatically, which is the person with the first non-deleted edit to the page. These logs mechanically track your Twinkle tagging actions and the associated notifications, without any intentional selection beyond turning on the logging feature. There is no intentional focus on any person or dispute. So it would be hard to infer that you hold the notified editors personally in disregard; you may not even know who they are before Twinkle does the notification. A manually created log that was similarly indiscriminate -- say, a record of every XFD you participated in, what position you took, and what the outcome was -- would probably be inoffensive. What concerns people is the notion of being targeted, of having dossiers kept and then brought forth to make attacks. That may or may not be a rational concern, and you may or may not think it applicable to the page nominated in this MFD, but that is the heart of why there is a policy against such lists. Lists that do not have any sort of personalized targeting (other than the self-targeting of a user recording their own actions) are not likely to trigger that concern. --RL0919 (talk) 21:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I understand what you're saying... but see my response below where I try and clarify how they're the same. Crazynast 22:12, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * And what if this is also not acceptable (in this format)? I think that a plain list of pages which were prodded by the twinkle user, without noting who created it is more than enough, and does serve its purpose.  Whether User:Crazynas/PROD_log is acceptable or not should not have an effect on the discussion whether User:Surturz/AdminWatch is appropriate.  For me this is a WP:WAX-argument.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you're saying... that page was automatically created when I checked the Keep a log in userspace of all pages you tag for PROD in the Twinkle Preferences. My Keep rationale stands on it's own.  Honestly you're Delete rationale WP:STICK seems to fall more under WAX, then this does (since you seem to want to go there). Back to the point, I have a record in my userspace of users I think erroneously created pages with rationale (the CSD criteria), link to the page, and link to the editor in question.   Surturz has a record in his userspace of pages where he thinks an admin acted out of policy, with rationale, a link to the debate, and a link to the admin in question.  They are functionally identical except that my list is generally of users with little or no equity and his of established editors.  If one has to go so does the other (and every one like it).Crazynast 22:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I know. But comparing User:Crazynas/PROD log with User:Surturz/AdminWatch and suggesting to keep the latter since Twinkle makes a similar page is a WP:WAX argument.  Maybe also that PROD log is not appropriate (in this format).  I must also say, I agree with RL0919 here, that log is of every PROD (since activation), it is not a list specifically generated on one page, because you over and over disagree with the negative decision - your prod list is not on one page, which you have on different venues tried to prod, and where different people have decided negative about.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Crazynas, have you actually reviewed the contents of the list and the situation behind them? Surturz included GorillaWarfare for nominating a userpage (one of Surturz's friends, apparently) for MfD, an action anyone can do. In no way did GorillaWarfare user her tools to do that. He also included Lear's Fool, apparently for pointing out that the MfD would be closed after 7 days by an uninvolved administrator (he did not vote or make any additional comments in the MfD, incidentally). Again, no use of the tools. The only admin in the original listing who actually used the tools was Timotheus Canens, who closed the MfD as "Delete" and deleted the userpage - Canens himself requested the MfD be reviewed at DRV, and the deletion was upheld. This is not the same as keeping a list of articles that violate our policies and require deletion, and the editors who created them. Parsecboy (talk) 13:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I have reviewed everything that can be reviewed as I always exercise my due diligence before weighing in. As I stated in my original !vote every user without the bit is at a disadvantage because they cannot review the administrative deletions which started the whole thing.  That was my rationale behind holding administrators to a higher standard of accountability.  Meaning no disrespect but I don't know what GorillaWarfare's bias' was in nominating that page for deletion. I also AGF that when the Surtuz said he didn't know why he put Lear's Fool on there and removed him, he meant it.  But then it seems your view is that we're !voting on the worst version of the page, need I remind you that this whole thing is a work in progress?  As far as keeping a list of users, it seems far more Polemic to keep a list of users for things they did wrong (ie. create a page that is patent nonsense) then things they did right (close a MFD or DRV).  Or maybe you're saying it's ok to record actual flaws of other users, but not percived flaws.  As someone !voted, said if the administrators used their tools correctly it just makes the user look like a fool, if they didn't it's important to document.  Crazynast 18:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * There's no disadvantage, as Surturz's page has been restored, so everyone can see it. Timeshift9's userpage is irrelevant to this discussion, apart from being the root cause, and its content should not factor into whether we decide to keep or delete Surturz's. As for Gorillawarfare's supposed bias, that too is irrelevant; she did not use her tools to nominate Timeshift9's userpage, so she should not have been included. That she was included speaks to the real point of the page: to record admins who have done things Surturz disagrees with. This is significantly different than what others&mdash;Avanu being the most vocal&mdash;have suggested, namely that the purpose of the page is to neutrally document misuse of administrative tools. Parsecboy (talk) 19:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The using, or not of the tools has no bearing on weather one has a COI, although using the tools with a COI is considered bad form, I don't claim that GorillaWarfare had a COI per #2 and personally I extend the benefit of the doubt to her that she didn't, but then I extend the same courtesy to Surturz on his creation of the page. How can the root cause of something not be relevant?  Since I can't see Timeshift9's deleted page and since Surturz is claiming a misrepresentation of consensus (which remember is not strictly numerical) I can't review it because it was deleted.
 * On a related note, and only becuase I was looking at the logs for Timeshift9 it is interesting that the user was subject to a wheel war and one block that was almost immediately <15 minutes overturned. (which says something about abuse of power... but I'm not sure quite what). Crazynast 20:55, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Cost benefit analysis
Does anyone think the amount of admin time so far expended on policing my userspace has been worth it? With 21 admins contributing, even if we assume 10 minutes each, that's over three hours of admin time. --Surturz (talk) 22:21, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm still scratching my head over time spent discussing account ages. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Most definitely not worth it, of course, although I expect you and I reach different conclusions from that observation. &mdash; Coren (talk) 23:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Well is doing anything in Wikipedia worth it? We must admit: there's an element of fun in all this bickering.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:41, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Considering that simply ignoring the page would have not caused any problem to the space-time continuum, I think we need to reprogram Arnold Schwarzenegger and send him back to a few days ago to fix this. -- Avanu (talk) 00:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Or everyone could have just ignored...you, and the MFD would have been about half the size it is now. Perhaps we should drop the "just ignore a problem and it goes away" mentality, it is rather demeaning to those who have weighed in with honest policy concerns on this matter. Tarc (talk) 01:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be obvious from my discussion points that I don't advocating ignoring policy. You seem to have no problem insulting me then talking about how to demean people.  Maybe you could work on that.  I'm not anti-admin, but thoughtless comments like I've seen from you might encourage such behavior.  Honest policy discussions start with us actually having a discussion, and a few reasonable people have tried to do that by explaining how Surturz (or any editor) could have 'done this right'.  -- Avanu (talk) 03:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I called you out on your callous calls to just ignore the person's page if they don't like it. That is not a valid response to those who have weighed in to delete.  You have responded to virtually everyone who wants to delete this page, and such behavior in a XfD is sometimes viewed as tendentious.  Maybe you could work on that. Tarc (talk) 03:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It wasn't callous. Its just a suggestion, and there is no requirement that you or Ed ignore the page.  It is a valid response, because I'm not convinced that the page hurts anyone. Again, if you're just after insults, you need to stop now.  Either call me tendentious or don't.  I'm actually concerned about the overall impact this has on the encyclopedia and how your average editors feel welcomed or not.  My impression of you is that you have no problem assaulting the individual here, and this isn't about you or me. -- Avanu (talk) 03:47, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not responsible for your thin skin, so please knock it off already. You have no right or no place to tell other editors to just ignore a page in userspace that they feel violates policy.  That is my problem with you, and if you are going to keep going with that angle, then I am going to keep knocking it down.  Period. Tarc (talk) 03:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's fine, but it shouldn't be your problem with *me*, but your problem with my suggestion. Honestly, I think a much better approach would be to help editors who have complaints by working with them to resolve the issues, or helping them organize complaints into a form that could generally be accepted by the community.  But failing that, William's suggestion of 'just let it be' seemed reasonable.  Sorry if that makes you mad, it seemed like a very practical suggestion to me, but you're always welcome to disagree. -- Avanu (talk) 03:54, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I came here to seperate you two, but Tarc, please remember to "comment on the content, not the contributor". I know that doesn't exactly work, but you know what I mean - I know I'd pause if I ever felt the need to accuse someone of having a thin skin. Avanu mentioned on the talk page that he thought it should have been just ignored, which is the summary of more than one of the keep votes. He was not telling anyone to, he was pointing out that he thought the page did no harm. What's more, even I, who voted for delete, can see that some of the voters are piling on and appear to have not actually looked at the page. Avanu is not badgering voters, he's discussing their comments. I note that he didn't comment on mine! Anyway, my point is, knock it off, both of you. There's enough contentiousness over this MfD and this thread need not go further.  WormTT   &middot; &#32;(talk) 04:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Um... "admin time"? I don't really spend my time doing "admin" stuff (Sacrilege! He has the tools and doesn't use them!) just because I'm an admin... this is why I'm having difficulty with the "Us and Them" mentality.  WormTT   &middot; &#32;(talk) 01:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Me either. I actually fixed up an article last night and nominated it at FAC. If you are interested in reviewing something... even if it's just reading through and correcting my writing... ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I think that establishing a line on negative material about others in userspace is a Camel's nose issue. I think that if such pages were allowed to exist willy nilly, they would inevitably become more pointy, leading to bitterness, negativity, and the cost to the community of editors could easily exceed the cost of this MfD.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The trouble with this MfD
is that silencing your critics doesn't make the bad feeling go away. It just moves the bad feeling offsite, which is why sites like the Wikipedia Review exist. Now, admittedly, the WR is a place for hilariously butthurt people to share their stories about how much Wikipedia sucks, but it seems to me that the last thing we want to do is drive legitimate criticism of Wikipedia off-wiki. Arguments about how Wikipedia should be governed do, absolutely, belong on our pages here.— S Marshall T/C 07:29, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: Votes and opinions are presented and welcomed on the main MfD page. Thanks     ~ AdvertAdam   talk  07:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Sure, but then it should also be worded as legitimate criticism and as arguments about how Wikipedia should be governed. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * AdvertAdam, my opinion has been on the main MfD page for quite some time. Beetstra, I accept that there's a need to rephrase, but that doesn't lead to deletion, does it?— S Marshall  T/C 08:24, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a Camel's nose or Fixing Broken Windows type of problem, S. Marshall. In the end there will be a huge number of pages which need to be rephrased, and where the editor says they are working on rephrasing, but which basically should not have been posted as that in the beginning, as they are not part of an active discussion, at best a beginning towards a proper dispute resolution (but many will never get there and just linger).  For some things it is better to start of off-wiki, and save it on-wiki when you have it properly worded.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The Camel's nose is a variant of the slippery slope argument, and thus, is logical fallacy—specifically, a kind of informal fallacy.— S Marshall T/C 10:03, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand and know the problems with this logic (the camel may not like the smell in the tent and turn around) - question is, do we push the nose of the camel out of the tent, or do we wait and see whether the camel likes the smell and comes inside. To me, there is no reason to let the camel inside, whether it wants to or not, as there are enough alternatives.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The camel analogy brings to mind all sorts of interesting remedies for dealing with it. Maybe its time for a bigger tent, or a sign explaining to the camel that while he is a reasonable and well-liked camel in general, many of the patrons of the tent might just prefer if he worked on getting a job and getting his own tent. We could convince the camel to move in with his parents. Of course, we could get a specialized tent for camels and camel groupies, but is that just discriminatory, and what if a horse or two wanted to visit?  If nothing else, dealing with the camel certainly spices up the day, because the tent has no cable or Internet and this is kind of nice diversion. -- Avanu (talk) 14:26, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It's certainly an amusing diversion, but it doesn't get around the fact that a need to rewrite != a need to delete. In fact, our normal practice is spelled out in WP:BEFORE and WP:ATD among other places: if it can be rewritten, then rewrite it, don't try to delete it.  Sorry to focus you back on that point, but on Wikipedia, this is how it is.— S Marshall  T/C 14:58, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * But that is what it is, S Marshall, normal practice. Although many articles can be rewritten, some go through deletion and are rewritten from scratch, and those are possibilities that are there in WP:ATD and WP:BEFORE.  Some articles get a prod .. don't improve, and go.  But that does not mean that it would be totally impossible to rewrite them (apparently they are plausible enough to not go through a speedy ..).  To go back to the analogy, sure, many of the camels who stick their noses into a tent will enter, some will leave, and some will stay there forever just sticking their nose in the tent.  Of that latter group, some are worth a wait, but some exhale a bad breath from the bad weeds that they have been chewing, that they are better removed and come back after they brushed their teeth.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 15:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. What I said was, if it needs rewriting, rewrite it, don't delete it.— S Marshall  T/C 19:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * What I say is, that some things should not have been saved in the first place. Such things are better deleted, and then (maybe) restarted from scratch in an appropriate way.  A lot of things need rewriting, but a lot of those things never get rewritten, that material stays, but it does not have any place on Wikipedia.  This page, in its un-rewritten state, does not have a place on Wikipedia.  And if you now say "don't delete it, it can be rewritten", then that sets a precedent for other pages, which are just like that, waiting to be rewritten.  No need to set that precedent, don't save that stuff in that state on Wikipedia, rewrite it before you save it.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, we aren't going to agree about this. :)— S Marshall  T/C 21:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I think that basically we do agree, S Marshall, but maybe we do have our limits different. If someone posts a gross incivility on Wikipedia, we revdel that revision.  Sure, that can also just be rollbacked and it is gone, or it can be rewritten and it is gone (some people just remove all vowels from the text, or just blank it).  However, if someone writes reasonably good content, and it gets rewritten, we do not revdel the reasonable version.  Somewhere between those extremes is a line. Still, on each side of that line, pages can be rewritten, pages can always be rewritten. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

NPA
While I cannot deny that the existence of my nose is WP:V, there is absolutely no WP:CONS that it looks like a camel's. Furthermore some of my best friends are camels and I assure you they would be insulted at the comparison. If you must persist with this, please create a CamelWatch page. Hopefully Elen and Ed can get it right this time and speedy that page under G1 :-) ---Surturz (talk) 21:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually I'm not so sure that the existence of your nose can be verified using third party, reliable sources... ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)