Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

All right, now it seems that we are getting somewhere. It sounds like
you're saying that PWD would make over-aggressive blanking of BLPs
less harmful, but not completely harmless. I think that's right, and
it's true of all bad edits that they damage the project. The error
that PWD corrects is that whereas bad edits are easily reversible, bad
deletions are not easily reversible. Most of the time we can easily
recover good content that was deleted simply by reverting or going
into the edit history and restoring it, but we can't do that with
deletion.

So yeah, we'll still have debates about how exactly to interpret the
BLP policy in the context of deletion, and we're bound to get it wrong
some of the time. The point is that when we do get it wrong, we'll be
able to put it right again more easily. I think that's something we
could all be on board with.

- causa sui

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 5:29 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
> The proposed deletion, and tagging of articles asserted to be
> unsourced included a large number of articles that were in fact
> sourced. The most common reason was that suitable sources were put in
> the external references section, and merely had to be moved. Next most
> common was that they had been inserted in the text, but without using
> reference tags.
> And then there are the articles being prodded because the sources are
> not inline, even when they are adequate.
>
> Blanking does less harm than deletion, but it still does harm
> 1. the usual naïve viewer will not realise there;s an article in the
> history, no matter what notice is placed. Only the editors know about
> the page history, and almost nobody reads notices.
> 2. in the time spent to see if there are sources, a source could be
> added about half the time.
> 3. there is no reason to think the unsourced BLPs have more actual
> problems than the sourced ones, whether minimally sourced or even
> reasonably sourced. Apart from unsourced statements that are actual
> problems, many BLP violations (and NPOV violations generally) come
> from the   failure , sometimes the deliberate failure, to include
> relevant material. Therefore, concentrating on these distracts us from
> the actual problems here. We don't know how to deal with the demands
> of doing accurate work in any sort of article, and this project is an
> irrelevant anodyne.
>
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 4:43 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
>>> I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt
>>> do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the
>>> last week or so of deletion nomination has done.
>>>
>>> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>>
>> I've read this five or six times and I can't figure out what you're
>> trying to say. Could you rephrase please?
>>
>> - causa sui
>>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

The proposed deletion, and tagging of articles asserted to be
unsourced included a large number of articles that were in fact
sourced. The most common reason was that suitable sources were put in
the external references section, and merely had to be moved. Next most
common was that they had been inserted in the text, but without using
reference tags.
And then there are the articles being prodded because the sources are
not inline, even when they are adequate.

Blanking does less harm than deletion, but it still does harm
1. the usual naïve viewer will not realise there;s an article in the
history, no matter what notice is placed. Only the editors know about
the page history, and almost nobody reads notices.
2. in the time spent to see if there are sources, a source could be
added about half the time.
3. there is no reason to think the unsourced BLPs have more actual
problems than the sourced ones, whether minimally sourced or even
reasonably sourced. Apart from unsourced statements that are actual
problems, many BLP violations (and NPOV violations generally) come
from the   failure , sometimes the deliberate failure, to include
relevant material. Therefore, concentrating on these distracts us from
the actual problems here. We don't know how to deal with the demands
of doing accurate work in any sort of article, and this project is an
irrelevant anodyne.


David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 4:43 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
>> I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt
>> do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the
>> last week or so of deletion nomination has done.
>>
>> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
> I've read this five or six times and I can't figure out what you're
> trying to say. Could you rephrase please?
>
> - causa sui
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 4:43 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
> I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt
> do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the
> last week or so of deletion nomination has done.
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

I've read this five or six times and I can't figure out what you're
trying to say. Could you rephrase please?

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

I would be uncomfortable with about blanking articles, if it couldnt
do better in telling whether or not something is referenced than the
last week or so of deletion nomination has done.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
 wrote:
> At 11:06 AM 1/28/2010, Samuel Klein wrote:
>>On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>> > On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers
>>  wrote:
>> >>  Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
>> >> that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
>> >> will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
>> >> hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
>> >> theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
>> >> to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).
>> >
>> > You're right that these are all very bad problems.
>> >
>> > Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many
>> > other similar snafus.
>>
>>You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.a  While PWD is simple and
>>effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less
>>satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind
>>passionate bulk actions).  I wonder if there is some way to get the
>>best of both hard and soft solutions.
>
> Thanks. As far as I can see, blanking the article content,
> particularly with appropriate tags, would satisfy both approaches. It
> isn't something strange and new, it is how Wikipedia already deals
> with unsourced information in articles of all kinds, including
> biographies, it is simply deleted or possibly moved to Talk (by any
> editor). This is simply applying it the same principle to an article
> as a whole.
>
> "Satisfying for frustrated editors"? Sure. But deletion must be done
> by an administrator, and the dubious pleasure of deletion (take that,
> fancruft!) is not quite respectable for admins, and ordinary editors
> (or bad-hand accounts for "frustrated" administrators) tend to get
> themselves banned for indulging too much or too openly in this
> pleasure I'd think that blanking would be reasonably satisfying,
> while doing much less damage in terms of eventual growth of the
> project. If a deletionist wants to indulge his or her frustration at
> cruft and unsourced BLPs by blanking the articles, I'm not offended.
> It's actually much better and much simpler and much less disruptive
> than speedy tags and AfDs and all that.
>
> In fact, that was part of the point of WP:PWD, to eliminate the often
> silly contention over notability at AfD, and instead convert
> "deletion" into an ordinary editorial decision that can, if conflict
> arises, go through the gradual escalation of WP:DR, which can, in
> theory, resolve disputes less disruptively than holding a community
> discussion right at the outset. For sure, with BLPs with no reliable
> sources, the content should go, immediately, as long as it goes in a
> way that makes it easy to recover.
>
> And a bot can do it, very quickly and efficiently. The community is
> almost certainly not going to allow bots to delete articles! I'm a
> radical inclusionist, actually, but would have no trouble accepting
> mass blanking under decent conditions. Particularly conditions where
> the article, as-is, would not withstand AfD!
>
>>PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles
>>are sometimes speedied because they are blank.
>
> That problem would not get worse with PWD as an approach. As
> unsourced BLPs, they are already totally vulnerable to speedy deletion.
>
> First of all, blanking would create an intermediate option that
> addresses the BLP issues as well as notability issues. I'd really
> encourage looking at how PWD could be made effective for all the
> legitimate purposes behind the various factions in the present flap.
> The article might not be blanked, it could be redirected to a page on
> the kind of blanking that was done, giving instructions for how to
> bring the article back. If problems developed with articles returning
> without sourcing, the page could be semiprotected and that could even
> be bot-assisted.
>
> Placing speedy tags should not be done by bot, at least not merely
> for lack of sourcing, and I see no harm in a blanked article
> remaining indefinitely; deletion would be requested by a blanked
> article reviewer who finds that the blanked material was actually of
> no use whatever, a hoax, or so radically incorrect that it will waste
> the time of someone who wants to recreate the article. In that case,
> deletion is exactly appropriate so that a new article starts fresh.
> But an article where it is easy to verify that the topic exists and
> some information can be found that is independent, though not
> necessarily of high quality? The only difference, really, between PWD
> and standard deletion is the reservation of the ability to read t

Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:06 AM 1/28/2010, Samuel Klein wrote:
>On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers 
>  wrote:
> >>  Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
> >> that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
> >> will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
> >> hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
> >> theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
> >> to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).
> >
> > You're right that these are all very bad problems.
> >
> > Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many
> > other similar snafus.
>
>You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.a  While PWD is simple and
>effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less
>satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind
>passionate bulk actions).  I wonder if there is some way to get the
>best of both hard and soft solutions.

Thanks. As far as I can see, blanking the article content, 
particularly with appropriate tags, would satisfy both approaches. It 
isn't something strange and new, it is how Wikipedia already deals 
with unsourced information in articles of all kinds, including 
biographies, it is simply deleted or possibly moved to Talk (by any 
editor). This is simply applying it the same principle to an article 
as a whole.

"Satisfying for frustrated editors"? Sure. But deletion must be done 
by an administrator, and the dubious pleasure of deletion (take that, 
fancruft!) is not quite respectable for admins, and ordinary editors 
(or bad-hand accounts for "frustrated" administrators) tend to get 
themselves banned for indulging too much or too openly in this 
pleasure I'd think that blanking would be reasonably satisfying, 
while doing much less damage in terms of eventual growth of the 
project. If a deletionist wants to indulge his or her frustration at 
cruft and unsourced BLPs by blanking the articles, I'm not offended. 
It's actually much better and much simpler and much less disruptive 
than speedy tags and AfDs and all that.

In fact, that was part of the point of WP:PWD, to eliminate the often 
silly contention over notability at AfD, and instead convert 
"deletion" into an ordinary editorial decision that can, if conflict 
arises, go through the gradual escalation of WP:DR, which can, in 
theory, resolve disputes less disruptively than holding a community 
discussion right at the outset. For sure, with BLPs with no reliable 
sources, the content should go, immediately, as long as it goes in a 
way that makes it easy to recover.

And a bot can do it, very quickly and efficiently. The community is 
almost certainly not going to allow bots to delete articles! I'm a 
radical inclusionist, actually, but would have no trouble accepting 
mass blanking under decent conditions. Particularly conditions where 
the article, as-is, would not withstand AfD!

>PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles
>are sometimes speedied because they are blank.

That problem would not get worse with PWD as an approach. As 
unsourced BLPs, they are already totally vulnerable to speedy deletion.

First of all, blanking would create an intermediate option that 
addresses the BLP issues as well as notability issues. I'd really 
encourage looking at how PWD could be made effective for all the 
legitimate purposes behind the various factions in the present flap. 
The article might not be blanked, it could be redirected to a page on 
the kind of blanking that was done, giving instructions for how to 
bring the article back. If problems developed with articles returning 
without sourcing, the page could be semiprotected and that could even 
be bot-assisted.

Placing speedy tags should not be done by bot, at least not merely 
for lack of sourcing, and I see no harm in a blanked article 
remaining indefinitely; deletion would be requested by a blanked 
article reviewer who finds that the blanked material was actually of 
no use whatever, a hoax, or so radically incorrect that it will waste 
the time of someone who wants to recreate the article. In that case, 
deletion is exactly appropriate so that a new article starts fresh. 
But an article where it is easy to verify that the topic exists and 
some information can be found that is independent, though not 
necessarily of high quality? The only difference, really, between PWD 
and standard deletion is the reservation of the ability to read the 
history of the article to administrators only, which, in fact, 
increases the load on administrators without a corresponding benefit.

Bots should only do things that are relatively harmless and that can 
be easily reversed. Deletion cannot be so easily reversed, and 
overwhelming the speedy deletion system with piles of speedy tags 
isn't a great idea. Blanking (or blanking with redirection as I'm 
suggest

Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Samuel Klein]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>>  Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
>> that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
>> will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
>> hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
>> theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
>> to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).
>
> You're right that these are all very bad problems.
>
> Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many
> other similar snafus.

You and Abd ul-Rahman are right about that.  While PWD is simple and
effective, its very lack of process means that it can be less
satisfying for frustrated editors (an important engine behind
passionate bulk actions).  I wonder if there is some way to get the
best of both hard and soft solutions.

PWD also gets harder as speedy deletion criteria expand; now articles
are sometimes speedied because they are blank.

SJ.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of
>> finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit,
>> and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page?
>>
>> I mean, what's the point?
>>
> Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time
> editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with
> someone who is not in your time zone.

Thanks, Charles.

I did add the stuff I found, but clearly more is possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Corell&action=historysubmit&diff=340496552&oldid=340442133

One problem with people rushing around adding sources to BLPs that may
be deleted is that other stuff gets missed.

Compare this:

http://sustsci.aaas.org/content.html?contentid=471

With the initial version of the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Corell&oldid=76775195

Our article started on 20 September 2006.

The aaas sustsci forum doesn't give a date for their article (which is
unhelpful).

So it is not clear which came first, but portions of each are identical.

"Prior to joining the NSF in 1987, he was a Professor and academic
administrator at"; "Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by
background and training, having received". The facts are not
copyrighted, and it is sometimes difficult to avoid standard
biographical phrasings, but the wording is too close there. I haven't
changed it yet, because I'm not sure which text came first.

Taking an unreferenced block of text and working out if any portions
of it are straight copy-paste copyvios is a nightmare to do. Many
people don't bother, or just stick in a reference. The point here is
that the sequence:

i) Unreferenced text by anonymous or drive-by contributor
ii) Wikified and tidied up by Wikpedians and left unreferenced for several years
iii) References hurriedly added to save from deletion

Will lead to a lot of situations like this.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Andrew Gray]

2010/1/27 Carcharoth :

> * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate
> inline citations.
> * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious
> omissions or inaccuracies.
> * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or
> more sections of content.
> * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
> * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an
> infobox, images, or diagrams.
>
> Should all BLPs meet that standard?

I think it's an excellent goal. A B-rated article should, in theory,
be something we are happy to print and to leave untouched because,
well, it's enough. It could be better, but it's not incomplete, we
don't have to think of it as a work in progress, and it's not wrong!

Interestingly, one field where milhist anecdotally finds problems with
getting articles to B-class is biographies, albeit usually of dead
people rather than living ones. It's point B2 - no obvious omissions -
and it ties in to some comments upthread.

Unless someone's actually gone and written a conventional biography,
we don't tend to know much about most military figures - we can
construct a robust chronology of their career from public sources, and
fill in the major points where they "intersected with history", but at
the cost of an almost complete gap covering their personal life. It's
often very hard to find things like marriage or children, and god help
you if you want to write about what they did after retiring to
civilian life, or include any of the "colour" we like in biographical
articles.

In other words, we can write a pretty good example of what you call
"biographical newspaper clippings". There's some synthesis, sure, some
editorial commentary we can draw on about one aspect of their life -
but in some ways it just highlights the gaping void of stuff we don't
even manage to address with primary sources.

(You have a similar problem with a lot of sporting articles, I believe
- Y competed in the 1924 Olympics, he got a silver in the
pole-vaulting, which we can tell you all about... and then he
presumably went back to Poland, end of article.)

As such, it's quite easy to fall down on "obvious omissions" - if you
can look at the article and say, we stop talking about him at 45, he
died at 70, what happened?, then it's clearly got omissions; it's a
cruder test than the "reasonably comprehensive" rule we use for GA
ratings, but it's a pretty effective one.

I suppose an interesting "hardline" position would be to say that, for
someone where we can't actually fulfill this sort of
comprehensiveness, we should be asking if they should have an article.
If someone is public in such a limited way that writing about them
makes it clear how little we know - and that isn't itself a point of
interest because it's obscured - then it's an interesting flag. I'm
not sure I support this idea at all, but it's one way to help
distinguish that old question of how we determine public figures!

Still, that's beyond the scope of this discussion...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
>
> Fascinating. Didn't they have the same name and birth and death year?
> You aren't going to make us guess which person this was, are you? I'm
> guessing 16th century and Huguenot.
>   
Not far off. [[Ralph Baines]] and [[Rudolphus Baynus]].

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:



Those B-class criteria would need modifying for BLPs.

> a case of a BDP

Ah! Biography of a Dead Person? :-)

> but I actually created two articles about the same person once, who had been a
> professor on both sides of the Channel, as was pointed out by someone
> looking over my shoulder from frWP).

Fascinating. Didn't they have the same name and birth and death year?
You aren't going to make us guess which person this was, are you? I'm
guessing 16th century and Huguenot.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Carcharoth  
> wrote:
>
> 
>
>   
>> I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum
>> standard).
>> 
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/B-Class
>
> * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate
> inline citations.
> * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious
> omissions or inaccuracies.
> * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or
> more sections of content.
> * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
> * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an
> infobox, images, or diagrams.
>
> Should all BLPs meet that standard?
>
>   
Simpler: they should be good stubs, not bad stubs. B5 is out-of-focus, 
anyway. B2 is almost impossible to assess (a case of a BDP, but I 
actually created two articles about the same person once, who had been a 
professor on both sides of the Channel, as was pointed out by someone 
looking over my shoulder from frWP).

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

All articles should meet that standard, eventually, however, we will
always be receiving articles that do not, most of which  can be
improved to that point. What you give is the goal, not the starting
point.

By including basic information we encourage the addition of more. By
including basic information about  people we encourage editors here to
improve them. Many more of those who come here will, in practice, be
able and willing improve an existing Wikipedia article , than are able
to properly start one. The continued existence of Wikipedia depends on
the continued recruitment of new editors, and this will be primarily
from students. Very few active editors remain for more than three
years--they very reasonably develop other interests--writing for
Wikipedia is rarely a career. If we do not replace those who leave, we
will die; if we merely replace them, we will be static.

There is very little here that will not be greatly improved by wider
participation--this focus on wide participation is the basic idea
behind open editing, what made Wikipedia worth starting and makes it
worth continuing. Working on local topics is the ideal way of getting
started, and what we have always recommended to beginners. Wikipedia
is not harmed by the inclusion of borderline topics: it is harmed by
the inclusion of spam and prejudice and error. The way of preventing
these is to have more individuals working here, many of them
inevitably very unsophisticated at least at first. The way of working
here effectively is to add good material. It is more valuable doing
this than focusing on the deletion of harmless articles. In the time
it has taken to have this discussion during the last few weeks,  we
could each of us engaged in it have started or improved many articles.
I will now return to doing that, and so should all of us.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Carcharoth
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Carcharoth  
> wrote:
>
> 
>
>> I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum
>> standard).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/B-Class
>
> * B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate
> inline citations.
> * B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious
> omissions or inaccuracies.
> * B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or
> more sections of content.
> * B4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
> * B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an
> infobox, images, or diagrams.
>
> Should all BLPs meet that standard?
>
> Carcharoth
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:21 PM, Carcharoth  wrote:



> I would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum
> standard).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/B-Class

* B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate
inline citations.
* B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious
omissions or inaccuracies.
* B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or
more sections of content.
* B4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
* B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an
infobox, images, or diagrams.

Should all BLPs meet that standard?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:59 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
> I re-copy edited it. It was rescued in a rush, and improved in a rush.
> The next step is to collate with the original article., and then to
> look for good additional material.

Thanks.

> Some of the above discussions imply much too high a standard, both for
> what should be in Wikipedia and for what the quality of the content in
> Wikipedia should be. We are not producing a definitive scholarly
> resource, nor are our basic methods adapted to doing so--scholarship
> requires critical evaluation and editorial control, two things we are
> unable to provide.

Good points. There should still be a quality control endpoint, though.
Clearly not "featured article" in cases where the information is
minimal or incomplete, but still some definite minimum standard (I
would say the MilHist B-class criteria would be a good minimum
standard).

> What we can provide is a rough-and-ready general
> reference work, and our strength is the potential for of a large group
> of amateurs to be extremely comprehensive  , and include a wider range
> of material than any conventional method of work has ever provided.

Indeed. But the question is whether the *process* of producing that
will end up with a distorted view of someone's life and career. Kind
of like WP:UNDUE. When these mini-bios are produced for websites or
conferences, they deliberately don't try and cover everything, but
Wikipedians, when aggregating disparate sources, can go too far.
Judgment in editing is still needed.

> It can neither make true judgments of importance, nor will it  be
> guaranteed accurate--those who want to read such have the full range
> of conventional sources at their disposal, and another goal of the
> free scholarship movement --different from ours-- is to make these
> more widely available. Those who want to  write a this level need to
> write in the more conventional way, a way that requires qualified
> researchers with access to the full range of relevant sources, and
> trained editors with professional standards.

WP articles will only ever be a starting point, never an endpoint,
that's the way I describe it to myself. In some ways, Wikipedia
articles try and be the best online resource there is for a topic, but
that is all it is, at the end of the day: a *resource*, a starting
point to go on and read more about the topic.

Many FAs I've looked at are nowhere near comprehensive. It is easy to
find stuff that has been left out, either through ignorance, or
something being considered trivial. I used to worry about that, but
now I tell myself that the WP article is only a starting point, a
usually rather comprehensive overview, but in no way the final word on
anything.

> The goal for BLPs --or any other topic--cannot be the complete
> avoidance of error, for not even the most professional of resources
> have the ability to do that. Not even the most carefully edited
> publications have succeeded in being free from hoaxes and libel. The
> goal is to be as reasonably correct as possible, to remove obvious
> error when pointed out to us, and have working policies that will
> exclude the worst blunders and discourage the use for libel,
> propaganda, and promotion.  The only way to avoid these entirely is to
> include nothing at all about anything involving anyone living or any
> living writer-- some of our worst BLP problems involve our comments on
> living authors.

But do you think that something like as "approved article" status for
BLPs might help?

> The easiest thing is to write nothing. The second easiest to is
> eliminate material without thinking. The third easiest, is a little
> different, for it  is to write without thinking. We  can not exclude
> the thoughtless from working here, either to make foolish positive
> contributions or foolish negative edits, and only the most reckless of
> all or the most obviously biased can actually be rejected.

But about the timescale? What should be done with *any* backlog when
it builds up beyond the resources of the volunteer workforce to deal
with or to maintain existing articles?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

I re-copy edited it. It was rescued in a rush, and improved in a rush.
The next step is to collate with the original article., and then to
look for good additional material.

Some of the above discussions imply much too high a standard, both for
what should be in Wikipedia and for what the quality of the content in
Wikipedia should be. We are not producing a definitive scholarly
resource, nor are our basic methods adapted to doing so--scholarship
requires critical evaluation and editorial control, two things we are
unable to provide. What we can provide is a rough-and-ready general
reference work, and our strength is the potential for of a large group
of amateurs to be extremely comprehensive  , and include a wider range
of material than any conventional method of work has ever provided.
It can neither make true judgments of importance, nor will it  be
guaranteed accurate--those who want to read such have the full range
of conventional sources at their disposal, and another goal of the
free scholarship movement --different from ours-- is to make these
more widely available. Those who want to  write a this level need to
write in the more conventional way, a way that requires qualified
researchers with access to the full range of relevant sources, and
trained editors with professional standards.

The goal for BLPs --or any other topic--cannot be the complete
avoidance of error, for not even the most professional of resources
have the ability to do that. Not even the most carefully edited
publications have succeeded in being free from hoaxes and libel. The
goal is to be as reasonably correct as possible, to remove obvious
error when pointed out to us, and have working policies that will
exclude the worst blunders and discourage the use for libel,
propaganda, and promotion.  The only way to avoid these entirely is to
include nothing at all about anything involving anyone living or any
living writer-- some of our worst BLP problems involve our comments on
living authors.

The easiest thing is to write nothing. The second easiest to is
eliminate material without thinking. The third easiest, is a little
different, for it  is to write without thinking. We  can not exclude
the thoughtless from working here, either to make foolish positive
contributions or foolish negative edits, and only the most reckless of
all or the most obviously biased can actually be rejected.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of
>> finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit,
>> and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page?
>>
>> I mean, what's the point?
>>
> Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time
> editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with
> someone who is not in your time zone.
>
> Charles
>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

The Cunctator wrote:
> Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of
> finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit,
> and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page?
>
> I mean, what's the point?
>   
Um, maybe email is OK in the working environment, but spending time 
editing WP not so? Just a thought. You seem a little impatient with 
someone who is not in your time zone.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

Oh, I will, just not right now. Wrong computer.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 1:09 PM, The Cunctator  wrote:
> Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of
> finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit,
> and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page?
>
> I mean, what's the point?
>
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Carcharoth 
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Sarah Ewart  wrote:
>> > On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert <
>> george.herb...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> >
>> >> Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
>> >> inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell
>>
>> And no-one has yet created a redirect?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell
>>
>> He also received the [[Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit]] (I got
>> that from "what links here", and then went looking for a source to
>> confirm that).
>>
>> http://www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/11199.html
>>
>> And from here (IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, November 1968):
>>
>> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04043245
>>
>> You can get his birth year (1934) and day (4 November) and other details.
>>
>> But that is a lucky find. Most sources don't say when he was born, and
>> that is generally an indication that comprehensive biographical
>> material is scarce, which in turn implies that no-one else has yet
>> really written a comprehensive biography.
>>
>> Which comes back to the point of whether Wikipedia should be the first
>> to do so (we can produce something similar to the mini-biographies
>> already out there, such as the four that The Cunctator found, which
>> are either institutional bios, or conference bios, but we can't go
>> beyond that until other sources do, which is generally towards the end
>> of someone's career, or at the point when obituaries are written).
>>
>> It also looks like it was rescued in a rush, six errors in grammar or
>> composition:
>>
>> "is prominent climate scientist"
>> "and he formerly as a"
>> "to ManyOne Networks, the and Chair"
>> "funding global change research"
>> The "sustainable development" header has stray formatting
>> "and international partnership"
>>
>> I wonder how many years it would have been before someone copyedited
>> it to fix those problems? I guess we will never know now. But this
>> feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a
>> minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of
>> others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people
>> doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles?
>>
>> My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have
>> been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced,
>> and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from
>> who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press
>> release) is found and used as a reference.
>>
>> Carcharoth
>>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[The Cunctator]

Sometimes I don't understand people. Carcharoth goes to the trouble of
finding his birth date, learning he received the Brazilian Order of Merit,
and lists out some copy errors, but then doesn't fix the page?

I mean, what's the point?

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Carcharoth wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Sarah Ewart  wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert <
> george.herb...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
> >> inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell
>
> And no-one has yet created a redirect?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell
>
> He also received the [[Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit]] (I got
> that from "what links here", and then went looking for a source to
> confirm that).
>
> http://www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/11199.html
>
> And from here (IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, November 1968):
>
> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04043245
>
> You can get his birth year (1934) and day (4 November) and other details.
>
> But that is a lucky find. Most sources don't say when he was born, and
> that is generally an indication that comprehensive biographical
> material is scarce, which in turn implies that no-one else has yet
> really written a comprehensive biography.
>
> Which comes back to the point of whether Wikipedia should be the first
> to do so (we can produce something similar to the mini-biographies
> already out there, such as the four that The Cunctator found, which
> are either institutional bios, or conference bios, but we can't go
> beyond that until other sources do, which is generally towards the end
> of someone's career, or at the point when obituaries are written).
>
> It also looks like it was rescued in a rush, six errors in grammar or
> composition:
>
> "is prominent climate scientist"
> "and he formerly as a"
> "to ManyOne Networks, the and Chair"
> "funding global change research"
> The "sustainable development" header has stray formatting
> "and international partnership"
>
> I wonder how many years it would have been before someone copyedited
> it to fix those problems? I guess we will never know now. But this
> feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a
> minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of
> others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people
> doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles?
>
> My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have
> been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced,
> and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from
> who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press
> release) is found and used as a reference.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[The Cunctator]

JustFixIt.

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:18 AM, Carcharoth wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Carcharoth
>  wrote:
>
> > And no-one has yet created a redirect?
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell
>
> PS. I forgot. "Bob Corell" gets a lot of hits as well, and should be a
> redirect also.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
> The interesting thing is noting at what point someone reaches some
> critical mass of *real* notability (i.e. not Wikipedia's definition of
> it) and they start to gain widespread recognition from their peers,
> and then start receiving awards and whatnot, and also how competent
> those writing biographies and obituaries are, and whether someone
> makes the cut for being included in Who's Who and things like the
> Dictionary of National Biography, or specialised biographies.
>   
As you say, not our definition, and more like an old-fashioned attempt 
to distill out "distinction" in a field.
> There are many people we have biographies for who will never reach
> that standard, and for which there will not be comprehensive
> biographical material unless some researcher goes and writes a
> biography (which does happen more often than you might think).
>
> It would easily be possible in some cases for Wikipedians to scrape
> together material, but there needs to be some "verdict from history",
> from a reliable authority in the field, for such articles to be
> anything more than biographical newspaper clippings.
>   
The current situation, applying to say businesspeople, is that they may 
well be interviewed but are unlikely to be the subject of serious, 
archival research in "real time" - while they are in business. (Example 
of interest to me - I realised a few days ago I have may have met Sergey 
Brin of Google, when he was six years old, since I certainly met his 
father shortly after he left the USSR. I probably can't know whether the 
rest of the family was around at that date in 1979, until a biographer 
goes over the whole ground.)
> The final verdict on whether an article on someone is sustainable is
> sometimes not clear until several decades after they have died - or
> even longer - there are people publishing biographical material about
> World War I generals today (there were over 1000 of them in the
> British Army alone), but consider someone in 2050 considering who to
> write about from our time - unless material gets deposited in an
> archive and there are enough reasons for someone to study that
> person's life in detail, many of those we have articles on will have
> nothing more written about them. Ever.
>
> Most people get nothing written about them. Some only get a bit
> written about them, and an obituary. Only a very few get their lives
> pored over in great detail with multiple biographies published about
> them. We should draw the line somewhere, and in a way that is easy to
> assess.
>   
Well, your last sentence combined with the first one certainly sums up 
the problem: we operate with WP-notability, not (say) ODNB-distinction, 
and in our tradition notability is supposed, like everything else, to be 
defined in simple abstract terms. No matter how often one points out 
that the notability concept we have is actually broken, and always has 
been, the thing won't lie down and die. Because there is nothing slick 
to replace it with.

And people want slick. The actual editorial process is not slick, and/or 
things go wrong on the site all the time. I don't find it helpful that 
WP:V is used as a sufficient as well as a necessary condition for 
inclusion, given WP:NOT, and I do sometimes wonder if the people I'm 
arguing with have even got that far. WP is supposed not to be an 
indiscriminate collection of information, but the line-drawing involved 
in being discriminating is not easy.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:
> Carcharoth wrote:
>>  But this
>> feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a
>> minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of
>> others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people
>> doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles?
>>
>> My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have
>> been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced,
>> and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from
>> who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press
>> release) is found and used as a reference.
>>
> But I don't think the issue will be resolved by more "guidelines". This
> is an interesting example where the web material is largely of the kind
> of self-validating, not really third-party stuff that can be
> problematic. (I don't think having the biography is problematic, but the
> critical approach is quite helpful here, in indicating what it should
> contain.) There is a great deal of point in being selective: much of
> academia has to be taken on similar terms, and I don't think we should
> slide too far into rejecting departmental home pages as references.

The interesting thing is noting at what point someone reaches some
critical mass of *real* notability (i.e. not Wikipedia's definition of
it) and they start to gain widespread recognition from their peers,
and then start receiving awards and whatnot, and also how competent
those writing biographies and obituaries are, and whether someone
makes the cut for being included in Who's Who and things like the
Dictionary of National Biography, or specialised biographies.

There are many people we have biographies for who will never reach
that standard, and for which there will not be comprehensive
biographical material unless some researcher goes and writes a
biography (which does happen more often than you might think).

It would easily be possible in some cases for Wikipedians to scrape
together material, but there needs to be some "verdict from history",
from a reliable authority in the field, for such articles to be
anything more than biographical newspaper clippings.

The final verdict on whether an article on someone is sustainable is
sometimes not clear until several decades after they have died - or
even longer - there are people publishing biographical material about
World War I generals today (there were over 1000 of them in the
British Army alone), but consider someone in 2050 considering who to
write about from our time - unless material gets deposited in an
archive and there are enough reasons for someone to study that
person's life in detail, many of those we have articles on will have
nothing more written about them. Ever.

Most people get nothing written about them. Some only get a bit
written about them, and an obituary. Only a very few get their lives
pored over in great detail with multiple biographies published about
them. We should draw the line somewhere, and in a way that is easy to
assess.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
>  But this
> feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a
> minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of
> others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people
> doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles?
>
> My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have
> been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced,
> and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from
> who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press
> release) is found and used as a reference.
>   
But I don't think the issue will be resolved by more "guidelines". This 
is an interesting example where the web material is largely of the kind 
of self-validating, not really third-party stuff that can be 
problematic. (I don't think having the biography is problematic, but the 
critical approach is quite helpful here, in indicating what it should 
contain.) There is a great deal of point in being selective: much of 
academia has to be taken on similar terms, and I don't think we should 
slide too far into rejecting departmental home pages as references.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Carcharoth
 wrote:

> And no-one has yet created a redirect?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell

PS. I forgot. "Bob Corell" gets a lot of hits as well, and should be a
redirect also.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Sarah Ewart  wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert 
> wrote:
>
>> Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
>> inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell

And no-one has yet created a redirect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Corell

He also received the [[Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit]] (I got
that from "what links here", and then went looking for a source to
confirm that).

http://www.mct.gov.br/index.php/content/view/11199.html

And from here (IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, November 1968):

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04043245

You can get his birth year (1934) and day (4 November) and other details.

But that is a lucky find. Most sources don't say when he was born, and
that is generally an indication that comprehensive biographical
material is scarce, which in turn implies that no-one else has yet
really written a comprehensive biography.

Which comes back to the point of whether Wikipedia should be the first
to do so (we can produce something similar to the mini-biographies
already out there, such as the four that The Cunctator found, which
are either institutional bios, or conference bios, but we can't go
beyond that until other sources do, which is generally towards the end
of someone's career, or at the point when obituaries are written).

It also looks like it was rescued in a rush, six errors in grammar or
composition:

"is prominent climate scientist"
"and he formerly as a"
"to ManyOne Networks, the and Chair"
"funding global change research"
The "sustainable development" header has stray formatting
"and international partnership"

I wonder how many years it would have been before someone copyedited
it to fix those problems? I guess we will never know now. But this
feeds into my point about whether such articles should be brought to a
minimum standard, instead of roughly referenced along with a lot of
others ones being worked on at the same time, and then the people
doing this rough-and-ready referencing moving on to other articles?

My standards would be to ensure minimum copyediting standards have
been met, that the birth year has been found and securely referenced,
and that a standalone biography (even if only a mini-biography from
who they work for, or a conference biography, or some form of press
release) is found and used as a reference.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
> It is easier to attack than defend. If you want to justify high
> standards and removal, there are easy arguments: 'what if this could
> be another Seigenthaler?' 'what if this is fancruft Wikipedia will be
> criticized for including?'
>
> If you want to defend, you have... what? Even the mockery of _The New
> Yorker_ didn't convince several editors that [[Neil Gaiman]] should
> cover Scientology. There is no beacon example of deletionism's
> grievous errors.
>
>   
Deletions can be wrong, negative, thoughtless, whatever you want to call 
them. The whole inclusionism-deletionism row boils down, though, to the 
idea that _sometimes_ there is a tension between quality and quantity. 
Book authors know this. Non-paper hypertext authors probably have to 
learn it.  You can attribute bad editing to bad faith, or to a  bad 
wikiphilosophy, all you like. The discussion becomes sensible round 
about the point where the abstract ideas start to relate to the concrete 
realities of our "production process". The more we understand that, the 
more intelligent a discussion we can have about it.

The process does exhibit an asymmetry. The many, many thousands of cases 
where articles are wrongly deleted and then restored, or big cuts made 
and then reverted, are less damaging to Wikipedia's reputation than the 
specular examples where something was included wrongly? You bet. Ask 
[[Taner Akçam]].

Charles





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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Sarah Ewart]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Sarah Ewart wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert <
> george.herb...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
> >> inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...
> >>
> >>
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell
> >
> As of 28 September 2009 when an IP number tagged it for AfD, it was
> unreferenced and CV-like. It was untagged but no further work was done,
> despite it being an unreferenced BLP. The subsequent history doesn't
> show up an actual deletion? Am I supposed to be able to see that it has
> been deleted?
>
>
Yes, it does, check the page log. It was deleted for about five days.


* 14:07, 27 January 2010 The
Cunctator
(talk  |
contribs
|
block )
restored "Robert
W. Corell " ‎ (19 revisions
restored: Adding references

* 03:56, 22 January 2010 Scott
MacDonald
(talk  |
contribs
|
block ) deleted
"Robert W. Corell " ‎ (
biography  unreferenced for
nearly 3 years)




> Charles
> **
>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Sarah Ewart wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert 
> wrote:
>
>   
>> Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
>> inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...
>>
>> 
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell
>   
As of 28 September 2009 when an IP number tagged it for AfD, it was 
unreferenced and CV-like. It was untagged but no further work was done, 
despite it being an unreferenced BLP. The subsequent history doesn't 
show up an actual deletion? Am I supposed to be able to see that it has 
been deleted?

Charles
**


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Sarah Ewart]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 3:46 PM, George Herbert wrote:

> Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
> inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Corell
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[George Herbert]

Where was Robert Corell's article previously?  Perhaps my search was
inadequate but I didn't find it looking quickly...


-george

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 7:07 PM, The Cunctator  wrote:
> Sheesh. I was on a press conference call today with one of the deleted
> people as a speaker.
>
> *Robert Corell* is the Director of the Global Change Program at The H. John
> Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment and is a Senior
> Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological
> Society,
> and he recently completed an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow
> in the Belfer
> Center for Science and International
> Affairsof
> the Kennedy
> School of 
> Governmentat
> Harvard
> University  which began in
> January 2000. He is currently actively engaged in research concerned with
> both the science of global change and the interface between science and
> public policy. He is particularly interested in global and regional climate
> change  and related
> environmental issues, and in the science to facilitate understanding of
> vulnerability and sustainable
> development
> .
>
> Dr. Corell is the co-chairman of an international strategic planning group
> that is developing the strategy for and the programs and activities that are
> designed to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable
> development. This planning effort is sponsored by the International Council
> for Science 
> (ICSU),
> the Third
> World Academy of
> Sciences(TWAS),
> and a major international initiative, supported in part from a grant
> from the Packard
> Foundationentitled
> “An International Initiative for Science Technology, and Innovation
> for Sustainability (ISTS).” He is the leader of an international partnership
> intended to better understand and plan for a transition to
> hydrogenfor several nations,
> entitled the “Global Hydrogen Partnership,” currently
> focused on Iceland ,
> India,
> and the eight Arctic nations seeking to address this important new
> energystrategy and economic
> policy.
>
> Dr. Corell is leading a research project to explore methods, models, and
> conceptual frameworks for vulnerability research, analysis, and assessment.
> The current focus of which is on vulnerabilities of indigenous communities
> in the Arctic. Further, he currently serves as the Chair of the Arctic
> Climate Impact 
> Assessment;
> an international assessment of the impacts of climate variability, change,
> and UV increases in the Arctic Region, and the Chair of an international
> planning R&D effort for the Arctic region and with a time scale of a decade
> or two ahead. He is also the Senior Science Advisor to ManyOne
> Networks,
> a Silicon Valley  team
> designing the next generation of Internet Web Browser, the initial focus on
> planet earth and Chair of the Board of the Digital Universe
> Foundation
> .
>
> Prior to January 2000, Dr. Corell was Assistant Director for Geosciences at
> the National Science
> Foundation(NSF)
> where he had oversight for the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences
> and the global change programs of the NSF. While at the NSF, Dr. Corell also
> served as the Chair of the National Science and Technology
> Council’s
> committee that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research
> Programand
> was Chair of the international committee of government agencies
> funding
> global change research. Further, he served as Chair and principal U.S.
> delegate to many international bodies with interests in and responsibilities
> for climate and global change research programs.
>
> Prior to joining the NSF, Dr. Corell was a Professor and academic
> administrator at the University of New
> Hampshire.
> Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training,
> having received the Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at the Case Western Reserve
> Univ

Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[The Cunctator]

Sheesh. I was on a press conference call today with one of the deleted
people as a speaker.

*Robert Corell* is the Director of the Global Change Program at The H. John
Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment and is a Senior
Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological
Society,
and he recently completed an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow
in the Belfer
Center for Science and International
Affairsof
the Kennedy
School of 
Governmentat
Harvard
University  which began in
January 2000. He is currently actively engaged in research concerned with
both the science of global change and the interface between science and
public policy. He is particularly interested in global and regional climate
change  and related
environmental issues, and in the science to facilitate understanding of
vulnerability and sustainable
development
.

Dr. Corell is the co-chairman of an international strategic planning group
that is developing the strategy for and the programs and activities that are
designed to harness science, technology and innovation for sustainable
development. This planning effort is sponsored by the International Council
for Science 
(ICSU),
the Third
World Academy of
Sciences(TWAS),
and a major international initiative, supported in part from a grant
from the Packard
Foundationentitled
“An International Initiative for Science Technology, and Innovation
for Sustainability (ISTS).” He is the leader of an international partnership
intended to better understand and plan for a transition to
hydrogenfor several nations,
entitled the “Global Hydrogen Partnership,” currently
focused on Iceland ,
India,
and the eight Arctic nations seeking to address this important new
energystrategy and economic
policy.

Dr. Corell is leading a research project to explore methods, models, and
conceptual frameworks for vulnerability research, analysis, and assessment.
The current focus of which is on vulnerabilities of indigenous communities
in the Arctic. Further, he currently serves as the Chair of the Arctic
Climate Impact 
Assessment;
an international assessment of the impacts of climate variability, change,
and UV increases in the Arctic Region, and the Chair of an international
planning R&D effort for the Arctic region and with a time scale of a decade
or two ahead. He is also the Senior Science Advisor to ManyOne
Networks,
a Silicon Valley  team
designing the next generation of Internet Web Browser, the initial focus on
planet earth and Chair of the Board of the Digital Universe
Foundation
.

Prior to January 2000, Dr. Corell was Assistant Director for Geosciences at
the National Science
Foundation(NSF)
where he had oversight for the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences
and the global change programs of the NSF. While at the NSF, Dr. Corell also
served as the Chair of the National Science and Technology
Council’s
committee that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research
Programand
was Chair of the international committee of government agencies
funding
global change research. Further, he served as Chair and principal U.S.
delegate to many international bodies with interests in and responsibilities
for climate and global change research programs.

Prior to joining the NSF, Dr. Corell was a Professor and academic
administrator at the University of New
Hampshire.
Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training,
having received the Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at the Case Western Reserve
University and MIT and has held appointments at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution,
the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography,
the University of
Washington,
and Case

Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:45 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:



> Agreed with David G. on this point. The general sentiment to keep up
> with BLPs is ok, I think; but most of the time sources can be found
> for most bios. (And yes, I do make an occasional hobby of sourcing
> random BLPs

I do this sometimes as well, but not random ones. I pick ones I know
will have a plethora of sources. I guess that is cheating, but I don't
have the time or motivation to scrabble around for sources for some
random stubs, when I know in my heart of hearts that some articles
just aren't really suitable for Wikipedia (the question is whether to
allow others a chance, and for how long).

> it's hard work and takes at least a good hour or two
> per bio to do properly, and that's with access to a full university
> library).

To be fair, it only takes time if you allow yourself to get
distracted, and aim for relatively high standards (which you should do
for BLPs as a matter of course).

I took half an hour to do this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ronald_Urwick_Cooke&action=historysubmit&diff=340263275&oldid=306734087

Clearly, there is still more work both possible and needed.

But I could have just thrown in the "won the Gold Medal of the RGS"
statement and the accompanying reference, both to this article and to
two others I spotted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drewry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Holdgate

Indeed, I will now go and do just that for the other two (actually, I
will likely get distracted again - one source will lead to another,
and I will keep going until I've done the best I think I can do in a
half hour or so for each one - clearly, this amount of time is reduced
if you find yourself unable to find any suitable sources).

But the question is whether it is better to pass through all the
unsourced BLPs quickly (a "rough and ready" approach), or to take the
time to do each one to a higher standard, at the cost of taking
longer.

Ideally, someone would both set deadlines, say how much effort to
spend per BLP, work out how long it will take to clear the current
backlog, and cut off the incoming flow (or delegate a separate task
force to do rough-and-ready sourcing of newly created BLPs).

But that requires both leadership, organisation and a dedicated and
committed workforce.

Does Wikipedia have that? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Depends on the workflow and the nature of the work.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Ken Arromdee  wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Adam Koenigsberg wrote:
>> I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to
>> say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of
>> process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This
>> reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see
>> RFC/Kelly Martin
>
> It reminds me of spoiler warnings.  It's amazing just how much spoiler
> warnings turned out to be a template for all sorts of...  suboptimal...
> activities.  Once you delete tens of thousands of things, you've won,
> regardless of whether you've followed the rules or not.

It is easier to attack than defend. If you want to justify high
standards and removal, there are easy arguments: 'what if this could
be another Seigenthaler?' 'what if this is fancruft Wikipedia will be
criticized for including?'

If you want to defend, you have... what? Even the mockery of _The New
Yorker_ didn't convince several editors that [[Neil Gaiman]] should
cover Scientology. There is no beacon example of deletionism's
grievous errors.

-- 
gwern

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

I appreciate being listed as an honorable exception, but I'm not an
except. I see a lot of other people doing just the same as as I--about
3/4 of the articles I see on prod and  put aside to be worked on later
in the day, are in fact sourced by the timer I get there. sometimes,
rather superficially, sometimes better than I could do.  I think many
of  the people trying to deal with the deletions are doing as much as
we can--but it is obviously 10 or 100 times faster to tag on the basis
of impressions than to actually look for sources.

What we need to see is   other people first  trying to source,   and
tagging for deletion afterwards if needed. this gives both better
articles to keep, and more secure deletions. The latest unhelpful
variant  of people not even looking is people looking only in Google,
not google news or Books or Scholar.  If we are to remove the
worthless or the unverifiable, and there is quite a lot of both of
them,  the best way is for people listing for deletion to do as full
and honest a job of trying to source as is reasonable , and say where
they have looked, and let others who think it might be worthwhile
carry ti further.

The change that would make the biggest difference is that each person
who looks at an article for any reason , such as fixing typos or
adding categories or disam links, actually try to spot any serious
problems, not just do the routine task they came for. There are too
many BLPs that have been looked at twenty times, but none of them
carefully.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:
> Emily Monroe wrote:
>> Can anybody explain what PWD is?
>>
> Surely. But in another thread, I hope.
>
> Charles
>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Emily Monroe wrote:
> Can anybody explain what PWD is?
>   
Surely. But in another thread, I hope.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Emily Monroe  wrote:
> Can anybody explain what PWD is?

Pure Wiki Deletion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pure_wiki_deletion_system

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Emily Monroe]

Can anybody explain what PWD is?

Thanks,
Emily
On Jan 26, 2010, at 1:24 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard   
> wrote:
>> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney   
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>>
>>
>> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
>> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
>> think they came up with any at all.
>>
>> Are there any?
>>
>> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
>> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)
>>
>
> Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I
> want to carry that reasoning forward. I think there are two compelling
> reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a
> wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an
> encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that
> basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it.
> (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates
> intractable problems like this one.
>
> Because of the terrific success we've had with making all /other/
> kinds of content edits subject to the Wiki model (and our almost
> religious faith in the dispute resolution process), I think the burden
> ought to be on everyone else to explain why pure wiki deletion
> /wouldn't/ work. It doesn't introduce any new problems that we don't
> already have extensive experience and process in place to solve, since
> deletion would be treated as any other kind of edit (and so edit wars
> over deletion could be treated like any other edit war) -- it
> increases transparency and makes it easier to restore content in cases
> like this one, so that we ALSO wouldn't feel so bad about temporarily
> deleting marginal BLPs until they can be improved (and by anyone, not
> just admins) -- and it massively simplifies deletion process in the
> case of 99% of deletions which are absolutely uncontroversial.
>
> The only software changes we would need would be that blanked pages
> should show up as redlinks and should not be indexed by search engines
> or show up when someone hits Random Page. That's pretty much it. The
> software changes are easy and minimal, but the cultural change would
> be massive.
>
> I appreciate everyone's trepidation over this, really-- big changes
> are scary. But I really wonder how many of these catastrophic snafu's
> we'll have to go through before people get fed up with the problems
> that inevitably result from this deletion system and look for some
> kind of major overhaul. That's not pie in the sky -- it's in order. We
> ought to get started now.
>
> - causa sui
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ken Arromdee]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Adam Koenigsberg wrote:
> I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to
> say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of
> process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This
> reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see
> RFC/Kelly Martin

It reminds me of spoiler warnings.  It's amazing just how much spoiler
warnings turned out to be a template for all sorts of...  suboptimal...
activities.  Once you delete tens of thousands of things, you've won,
regardless of whether you've followed the rules or not.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Ryan Delaney wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>   
>> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>>
>> 
>>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>>>   
>> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
>> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
>> think they came up with any at all.
>>
>> Are there any?
>>
>> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
>> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)
>>
>> 
>
> Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I
> want to carry that reasoning forward. 
Choose your allies with care, though.
> I think there are two compelling
> reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a
> wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an
> encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that
> basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it.
> (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates
> intractable problems like this one.
>   
I was thinking that the "meme that spreads like wildfire through a crowd 
of one person" deserved a name, and of course it has one as Dickens 
knew: [[wikt: King Charles' head]] (no relation).

There is certainly another perspective entirely on the current furore, 
which is that the absence of enough deletion has created the situation 
where people (David Goodman being an obviously honorable exception) 
volunteer the time of others by voting to keep articles, on the same 
rather anxious principle, that anything temporarily "lost" from 
Wikipedia is permanently lost from the world. Which is clearly absurd, 
stated in that way. The reason this matters, and maybe why this has come 
to a head now, is that we realise more clearly as time goes by that we 
have finite human resources to work with.

The goose and the golden eggs has always been a good fable to quote 
against those (outsiders usually) who say "Wikipedia would be great if 
only..." and then suggest something that obviously isn't going to work. 
Perhaps cleaning up after the goose also deserves a mention. In other 
words the vibrant business of article creation cannot be decreed to be 
an unmixed blessing. That has to be proved in practice. If too many of 
our good people are trying to source obscure biographies, then they are 
not doing something else which might suit them and the encyclopedia better.

Anyway I voted for the Jehochman RfC proposal, which has the mild 
sophistication of stealing one aspect of you want (I think).

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>
>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>
>
> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
> think they came up with any at all.
>
> Are there any?
>
> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)
>

Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I
want to carry that reasoning forward. I think there are two compelling
reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a
wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an
encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that
basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it.
(2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates
intractable problems like this one.

Because of the terrific success we've had with making all /other/
kinds of content edits subject to the Wiki model (and our almost
religious faith in the dispute resolution process), I think the burden
ought to be on everyone else to explain why pure wiki deletion
/wouldn't/ work. It doesn't introduce any new problems that we don't
already have extensive experience and process in place to solve, since
deletion would be treated as any other kind of edit (and so edit wars
over deletion could be treated like any other edit war) -- it
increases transparency and makes it easier to restore content in cases
like this one, so that we ALSO wouldn't feel so bad about temporarily
deleting marginal BLPs until they can be improved (and by anyone, not
just admins) -- and it massively simplifies deletion process in the
case of 99% of deletions which are absolutely uncontroversial.

The only software changes we would need would be that blanked pages
should show up as redlinks and should not be indexed by search engines
or show up when someone hits Random Page. That's pretty much it. The
software changes are easy and minimal, but the cultural change would
be massive.

I appreciate everyone's trepidation over this, really-- big changes
are scary. But I really wonder how many of these catastrophic snafu's
we'll have to go through before people get fed up with the problems
that inevitably result from this deletion system and look for some
kind of major overhaul. That's not pie in the sky -- it's in order. We
ought to get started now.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:05 PM 1/23/2010, David Gerard wrote:
>On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>
> > Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>
>Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
>any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
>think they came up with any at all.

Uh, Wikipedia? For information in articles, and using redirects for 
articles. Also, in effect, Wikipedia was this way with articles too, 
at the beginning, but then, if I've heard the history correctly, 
certain privileges became restricted to administrators.

WP:PWD was perhaps not well-expressed because it implied a software 
change was necessary. That change is optional, it was a proposal that 
blanked pages would show up as redlinks when linked. It might be 
better if a particular category were dedicated to that. (I.e., if an 
article has the category, it would be redlinked just as if it did not 
exist.) In this way, the page might not be totally blanked, but might 
contain bot-generated text on why the article was blanked, and a link 
to a page that covers, for the uninitiated, how to see the blanked 
article, how to restore it, etc. The redlink would then encourage 
actual article improvement through making the deficiency noticeable 
again. (This is an improvement over the present situation, where the 
existence of the article suppresses the redlink, even if the article 
is really inadequate even as a stub.)

But that's optional, simply a further improvement, not a necessity.

>Are there any?
>
>(Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
>might not be the best place to make the very first one?)

M. The biggest wiki probably needs to figure some things out for 
the first time, because only the biggest has the severe problems of 
scale that are the difficulty here, but PWD is actually, in essence, 
the way it was at the beginning, roughly. If everyone is an 
administrator and can read deleted articles, isn't PWD and 
non-oversight deletion the same thing? Both require an extra step to 
read the allegedly inadequate text. Both are easy to fix, for 
administrators. PWD, however, makes fixing a problem blanking 
available to every editor, and, most importantly, every editor can, 
by looking at the history, read what was deleted and may then be more 
easily able to find references.

(Or to complain about illegal text, which might then call for 
revision deletion, requiring an administrator.)

If the proposal involved some new risk or hazard, sure, caution would 
be entirely in order. But blanking and replacement with a neutral and 
informative page that invites improvement? This is very close, only 
one step further, than stubbing, which is done all the time, and 
which can also be done by anyone.

Doing this by bot would be simple, and would quickly resolve the BLP 
problem with all those unreferenced articles, while doing no harm. If 
it turned out to be a problem, each of those articles would have a 
category on it that would make identification and bot-reversion easy.

Any editor -- or any registered editor if semiprotected -- could, in 
a flash, restore the article the way it was. But then this editor 
would be responsible for restoring BLP information without sourcing. 
And the editor, as well, would now, by default, be a watcher of the article.

What, exactly, is not to like? Perhaps administrators would rather 
fight over this?


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Adam Koenigsberg]

>As I understand it, a bunch of adminstrators deleted a bunch of
>articles that they felt violated BLP aganist community consensus.

If the community was in consensus, there would be a specific deletion
criteria at Speedy Deletions.

I oppose this mass deletion but support the theory behind it, that is to
say, I would support this deletion criteria but believe this to be out of
process. Being Bold doesn't extend to administrator tools, IMHO. This
reminds me of the Userbox mass deletion fiasco of January 2006, see
RFC/Kelly Martin

-CastAStone

P.S. hi.

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Emily Monroe  wrote:

> As I understand it, a bunch of adminstrators deleted a bunch of
> articles that they felt violated BLP aganist community consensus.
>
> On one hand, it is quite important that we don't say something that
> isn't true, controversial or not. We ARE used as a source, like it or
> not, and of course, anything false that is stated on Wikipedia can
> damage reputations, both of Wikipedia and other people.
>
> On the other hand, BLP is supposed to apply to only *controversial*
> information, and deletion is supposed to be a last resort.
>
> Emily
> On Jan 21, 2010, at 10:59 AM, The Cunctator wrote:
>
> > Just restored a former prime minister.
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Carcharoth <
> carcharot...@googlemail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 4:03 PM, David Gerard 
> >> wrote:
> >>> 2010/1/21 Gwern Branwen :
> >>
> >> 
> >>
>  silent mass deletions are now an acceptable admin tactic.
> >>>
> >>> That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first.
> >>> Perhaps a
> >>> {{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
> >>> OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
> >>
> >> I'm not going to say much in this thread (I'm in the group that's
> >> been
> >> asked to arbitrate this dispute), but I would urge a list be made of
> >> where discussion is taking place on-wiki about process related to
> >> this, and for people to help form a workable consensus there.
> >>
> >> I would add that one part of the problem is bagging and tagging these
> >> BLPs when they are created. If someone can demonstrate that BLPs
> >> currently being created are getting enough attention, that would
> >> ensure that things are reasonably under control from that end (the
> >> BLPs that have been unsourced for years are technically a backlog -
> >> the ones being created now should also be dealt with, otherwise the
> >> problem grows again). The lessons from the past are that if you turn
> >> away for even a few months from situations like this, the creation of
> >> new articles returns you to square one.
> >>
> >> Overall, a discussion on whether Wikipedia has the volunteer
> >> resources
> >> to maintain articles of a certain type to a minimum standard, is
> >> needed. Plus whether technical measures (flagged revisions) will help
> >> that or not. Another part of the problem is that some of these
> >> discussions have been had before, and some people are assuming
> >> everyone knows the stats and figures involved. Pointers to summaries
> >> are helpful. There is one here:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080415/the-biographies-of-living-people-problem/
> >>
> >> We also have:
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_essays_on_BLP
> >>
> >> Carcharoth
> >>
> >> ___
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> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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-- 
Adam Russell Koenigsberg
MBA Candidate 2010
The Ohio State University
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Anthony]

> >> 2) Delete all unreferenced BLPs - or BLPs referenced only to own website
> or IMDB etc
>
> What's the rationale behind this?
>

And why only BLPs?
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[SPUI]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> 
>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
> 
> 
> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
> think they came up with any at all.
> 
> Are there any?
> 
> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)

OpenStreetMap (the map database itself, not the support wiki).

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[geni]

2010/1/23 David Gerard :
> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>
>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>
>
> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
> think they came up with any at all.
>
> Are there any?
>
> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)
>
>
> - d.


I don't think anyone is proposing such a change for hoodong.
-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney  wrote:

> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.


Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
think they came up with any at all.

Are there any?

(Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
might not be the best place to make the very first one?)


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:14 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> 2010/1/22 Ryan Delaney :
>
>> You probably won't be getting that evidence, since the way the policy
>> is in place, the burden of proof isn't on the person removing the
>> content-- it's on the person adding it. That's not just how BLP works,
>> but the verifiability policy as well, and that's a Good Thing(tm). If
>> people want to add content to Wikipedia, they ought to be providing
>> sources for it. We're somewhat lax about enforcing that when it's
>> inanimate objects, but we aren't lax about it when we're talking about
>> real people. That seems to me to be the right balance.
>
>
> It does really suck that this is trashing what are mostly likely
> perfectly okay pieces that people put work into. This needs to be
> acknowledged and we need to work to alleviate the suck from it.
>
> the_wub's list will help recover stuff, and hopefully things will
> proceed in a less axe-crazy manner henceforth.
>

I agree, it does suck a lot. In this case, as in so many others, the
suck is a direct and inevitable result of the deletion system.

Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

Sorry -- what I was replying to did not get included; I was relying to
a suggest by David Gerard that [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a
counter- example.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:35 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
>  He was not in this group, having been dealt with years ago.
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 4:18 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> 2010/1/22 David Goodman :
>>
>>> Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of
>>> BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for
>>> evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done
>>> harm by being there.
>>
>>
>> [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a good example member of this group.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

  He was not in this group, having been dealt with years ago.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 4:18 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> 2010/1/22 David Goodman :
>
>> Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of
>> BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for
>> evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done
>> harm by being there.
>
>
> [[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a good example member of this group.
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Nathan wrote:
> The new arbitration case is an utterly predictable outgrowth of the
> BLP mass deletions and their endorsement by the arbitration committee.
>   


What price reduction of arbitrators' terms, so that a January ArbCom 
might have even less collective memory and experience?

Actually nothing much about all this is "utterly" predictable, except 
the volatility.

As the title of the thread shows, some people do not "assume good faith" 
any more. As the events themselves show, "be bold" is not dead. As the 
proposal to request arbitation shows, there has grown up a culture of 
disregarding the RfC route, to get "action" rather than a structured 
discussion. (As for any reliance on AN for admin discussion, that is an 
unchartered institution.)

What our history books show is that the ArbCom has to pick up the pieces 
after a "wheel war", and that forcing the issue is the basic crime. 
"Forcing the issue" does not equate to "be bold" at all (you need to add 
a stubborn, self-righteous approach).

Charles



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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Nathan]

The new arbitration case is an utterly predictable outgrowth of the
BLP mass deletions and their endorsement by the arbitration committee.
The committee didn't see it coming, apparently, which means the
candidate field in the last election was far worse than we thought.

Nathan

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Bod Notbod]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Peter Coombe
 wrote:

>> 2) Delete all unreferenced BLPs - or BLPs referenced only to own website or 
>> IMDB etc

What's the rationale behind this?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[James Farrar]

On 22 January 2010 13:31, David Gerard  wrote:
>
> 2010/1/22 James Farrar :
>
> > Some people won't be satisfied until Wikipedia has no BLPs.
>
>
> No true Strawman will be satisfied until authority reassures him
> Wikipedia has no BLPs.

I'll admit to an exaggeration, but not mas much of one as I would like.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[George Herbert]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Ian Woollard  wrote:
>> a) 'challenging' and removing any references
>> b) instantly deleting the article for being unreferenced
>>
>
> In theory, an administrator "could" do this. "Technically".

This did happen at least once in the leadup to all this.

And, at least one case of a referenced article, which was in the
category anyways apparently by accident (not maliciously) getting
removed in the removal sprees.

The removals were sloppy.  That helped kick off the protests at the beginning.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

2010/1/22 Ryan Delaney :

> You probably won't be getting that evidence, since the way the policy
> is in place, the burden of proof isn't on the person removing the
> content-- it's on the person adding it. That's not just how BLP works,
> but the verifiability policy as well, and that's a Good Thing(tm). If
> people want to add content to Wikipedia, they ought to be providing
> sources for it. We're somewhat lax about enforcing that when it's
> inanimate objects, but we aren't lax about it when we're talking about
> real people. That seems to me to be the right balance.


It does really suck that this is trashing what are mostly likely
perfectly okay pieces that people put work into. This needs to be
acknowledged and we need to work to alleviate the suck from it.

the_wub's list will help recover stuff, and hopefully things will
proceed in a less axe-crazy manner henceforth.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:59 AM, David Goodman  wrote:
> Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of
> BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for
> evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done
> harm by being there.

You probably won't be getting that evidence, since the way the policy
is in place, the burden of proof isn't on the person removing the
content-- it's on the person adding it. That's not just how BLP works,
but the verifiability policy as well, and that's a Good Thing(tm). If
people want to add content to Wikipedia, they ought to be providing
sources for it. We're somewhat lax about enforcing that when it's
inanimate objects, but we aren't lax about it when we're talking about
real people. That seems to me to be the right balance.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

2010/1/22 David Goodman :

> If this does not meet the standard for "disrupting Wikipedia   to make
> a point", I do not know what would.


Evidently. WP:POINT is about doing something you *don't* want to have
happen to make a point, not about doing things spectacularly in
general.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

2010/1/22 David Goodman :

> Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of
> BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for
> evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done
> harm by being there.


[[John Seigenthaler]] would have been a good example member of this group.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Peter Coombe]

2010/1/21 David Gerard :
> Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present
> blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of
> the general type of BLP deleted?
>
> I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the
> last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that
> [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed.
>
>

Here you go,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_wub/Lazarus

It only includes deletions by one admin so far, but I plan to add more
tomorrow. Also useful things like google cached versions for
non-admins.

Pete / the wub

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Peter Coombe]

2010/1/22 David Gerard :
> 2010/1/22 James Farrar :
>
>> Some people won't be satisfied until Wikipedia has no BLPs.
>
>
> No true Strawman will be satisfied until authority reassures him
> Wikipedia has no BLPs.
>

Doc Glasgow/Scott MacDonald's position is actually not that far off. Quote:

> Wikipedia simply has to admit it cannot maintain BLPs unless they are in the 
> "highly notable" category.
> What they should do is:
> 1) Ban the creation of new BLPs. It is highly unlikely that anyone currently 
> without an article is going to be notable enough to be maintained. Any 
> exceptions can be created only after discusion on "BLPs for creation".
> 2) Delete all unreferenced BLPs - or BLPs referenced only to own website or 
> IMDB etc
> 3) Delete any BLP where there is not an overwhelming consensus that it is 
> notable. (Afd default to delete)
> 4) Semi-protect all BLPs who are not "A-list"
> 5) Delete any BLP if a violation of the BLP policy is allowed to stand for 
> over 24 hours - it is obviously unmaintainable.
> 6) Flag all remaining BLPs.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=28263&view=findpost&p=216970

Pete / the wub

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[The Cunctator]

Jimbo has never been an active editor.

The BLPs aren't being deleted for being shoddy, they're being deleted for
not having references.



On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Cool Hand Luke <
failure.to.communic...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
>
> > "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I
> > reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind
> > me." eh?
> >
> > You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
> > are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.
> >
> >
>
> This is a radical misunderstanding of what I said.  This isn't an old
> editor
> vs. new editor issue.  David Gerard is hardly an arrogant upstart, and
> Jimbo
> Wales (one of the original Wikipedians) surely is not.  Both are firmly on
> the side of change with regards to retaining shoddy BLPs.
>
> It's a question of what policies would be best for the project right now.
> Policies that were good in 2001 no longer strike the right balance in 2010.
> Originally, our goal was generating content, but we now have tons of
> content--so much that readers are more concerned about reliability.  BLP
> subjects are most especially concerned that we get their entries right, and
> our project's credibility suffers most when they are harmed.  At this point
> in time, retaining shoddy BLPs is bad for subjects and frankly bad for
> Wikipedia.
>
> Cool Hand Luke
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

Chicken Little is a fairly good comparison. I see in this group of
BLPs only the possibility of potential problems. I am waiting for
evidence that any of those deleted without checking so far has done
harm by being there. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that out
of the 500, 1 or 2  of them was a potential problem;. Based on my
running work with this, for about half of them there was both the
ability to source enough to lose the unsourcedBLP status very easily,
and the  potential to become a acceptable articles after reasonable
work. The project thus has been wrong several hundred times more than
it has been right. A yield rate of less than 1% and a damage rate of
50% is unacceptable quality.

I would feel quite differently if either 90% of the articles were
truly unsourceable or unsuitable, or if  even 5% of them had been
actual problems. BLP violations are serious, and I agree that we ought
to risk making a few  errors to remove them--a 5% error rate is as low
as any Wikipedia process can reasonably attain-- but this was a
process 99% of which was either wrong or unnecessarily hasty.

If this does not meet the standard for "disrupting Wikipedia   to make
a point", I do not know what would.  True, they made the point. There
were so many ways to have done it better. They would have made the
point just as well with 50, not 500 deletions. They would have made
the point just as well and contributed something to the process if
they actually checked for even the most obvious and easily sourceable
notability.  They would have been less foolish if they had not deleted
the 5 or 10% of articles that did have sources, though not in the
usual places.

In the month or so that this plan probably took shape, each of the 50
people involved or strongly defending them   could have checked
properly 10 articles a day  while still doing their usual work. That
would have cleared 10,000 articles. In the years that people have been
complaining about the situation, if they had worked instead of talked,
the whole problem of the old articles could have been dealt with--even
by themselves alone.  And then we would be able to concentrate on the
much bigger problem of all the sourced articles in Wikipedia that
nonetheless contain major errors.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
>> You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
>> are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.
>>
>> Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project,
>> so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our
>> old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess
>> when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just
>> reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every
>> day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by
>> their heroic daily efforts.
>>
>> --
>> gwern
>
> This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone.
> I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email.
>
> - causa sui
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Ian Woollard  wrote:
> On 22/01/2010, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
>> This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone.
>> I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email.
>
> Tone is one thing, but I'm more concerned about the complete lack of
> process here.

Thanks for getting this back on track.

>
> Am I correct in thinking that a lone admin can technically delete
> *any* BLP article at all by:
>
> a) 'challenging' and removing any references
> b) instantly deleting the article for being unreferenced
>

In theory, an administrator "could" do this. "Technically".

> While that's a somewhat contrived scenario; I've seen admins do things
> a bit like that before, and they could probably argue that a) was what
> they truly believed (even if everyone else considers the references to
> have been good).

The solution to that is to follow dispute resolution and clean up the
mess. We don't add rules to cover every possible eventuality. We have
common sense for that.

> So is it right that there's a rule, but no process for these kinds of 
> deletions?

Pretty much. What you're describing, if it is happening, does sound
like a problem deserving of attention. But I wouldn't jump to creating
a new bureaucracy to handle this problem any more than I would
another.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ian Woollard]

On 22/01/2010, Ryan Delaney  wrote:
> This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone.
> I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email.

Tone is one thing, but I'm more concerned about the complete lack of
process here.

Am I correct in thinking that a lone admin can technically delete
*any* BLP article at all by:

a) 'challenging' and removing any references
b) instantly deleting the article for being unreferenced

While that's a somewhat contrived scenario; I've seen admins do things
a bit like that before, and they could probably argue that a) was what
they truly believed (even if everyone else considers the references to
have been good).

So is it right that there's a rule, but no process for these kinds of deletions?

> - causa sui

-- 
-Ian Woollard

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
> are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.
>
> Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project,
> so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our
> old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess
> when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just
> reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every
> day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by
> their heroic daily efforts.
>
> --
> gwern

This is really not the attitude that we want to project toward anyone.
I'm very disappointed by the tone of this email.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Cool Hand Luke]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:

> "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I
> reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind
> me." eh?
>
> You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
> are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.
>
>

This is a radical misunderstanding of what I said.  This isn't an old editor
vs. new editor issue.  David Gerard is hardly an arrogant upstart, and Jimbo
Wales (one of the original Wikipedians) surely is not.  Both are firmly on
the side of change with regards to retaining shoddy BLPs.

It's a question of what policies would be best for the project right now.
Policies that were good in 2001 no longer strike the right balance in 2010.
Originally, our goal was generating content, but we now have tons of
content--so much that readers are more concerned about reliability.  BLP
subjects are most especially concerned that we get their entries right, and
our project's credibility suffers most when they are harmed.  At this point
in time, retaining shoddy BLPs is bad for subjects and frankly bad for
Wikipedia.

Cool Hand Luke
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Bod Notbod]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:35 PM, Carcharoth  wrote:

> Those people who have been safely dead for a while, it tends to be
> easier to establish notability and find sources (they are also less
> litigious).

There's an idea. Some people assert that Elvis is still alive. Why
don't we put a whole section in his article saying he was a
paedophile. If he doesn't sue we can assume he's properly dead and put
an end to the debate.

I feel this would be an excellent use of charitable funds.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Gwern Branwen]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Cool Hand Luke
 wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, The Cunctator  wrote:
>
>> At the same time,
>>
>> *Always leave something undone.
>> **Give the author a chance.*
>> *Build the web.*
>> *Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.*
>>
>> and
>>
>> *If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular
>> editing,
>> rather than deletion.*
>>
>>
>
> These maxims were very good in the formative stages of our project.  You and
> other early editors were right (maybe even prophetic) to adopt them.  The
> fledgling project needed hands, eyeballs, and content.  By zealously keeping
> and expanding content--even shoddy content--we grew dramatically.
>
> But this debate has come to a boil because we've been too slow in realizing
> that the balance must change because conditions have changed.  We are no
> longer a small project, but one that places in the top three google search
> results for almost any topic in our encyclopedia.  We have succeeded because
> of our formative policies, and with our success comes responsibility.
>
> In an era when any living subject can have their life harmed by a poorly
> vetted biography, we should strike a new balance.  We should not bite off
> more than we can chew.  In this area, we ought to weed out BLPs that we can
> no longer maintain at appropriately high standatds.  As a happy consequence
> of this process, many notable biographies will be improved.  I hope that
> this improvement and re-examination process is continual.
>
> In this way, we will effectively shoulder the responsibility we have for
> maintaining one of the top ten sites on the internet.
>
> Cool Hand Luke

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind
me." eh?

You older Wikipedians run along now; you've had your day. The adults
are talking now - I are serious editors, this are serious website.

Funny how BLPs have been the most serious threat facing the project,
so serious that mass mutiny is justified and the jettisoning of our
old ways and practices - and have been since at least 2006. I guess
when I look cynically upon the Chicken Little BLP warriors, it just
reflects my own ignorance of how Wikipedia teeters on the brink every
day, how countless suicides and ruined lives have been averted by
their heroic daily efforts.

-- 
gwern

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Cool Hand Luke]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, The Cunctator  wrote:

> At the same time,
>
> *Always leave something undone.
> **Give the author a chance.*
> *Build the web.*
> *Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.*
>
> and
>
> *If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular
> editing,
> rather than deletion.*
>
>

These maxims were very good in the formative stages of our project.  You and
other early editors were right (maybe even prophetic) to adopt them.  The
fledgling project needed hands, eyeballs, and content.  By zealously keeping
and expanding content--even shoddy content--we grew dramatically.

But this debate has come to a boil because we've been too slow in realizing
that the balance must change because conditions have changed.  We are no
longer a small project, but one that places in the top three google search
results for almost any topic in our encyclopedia.  We have succeeded because
of our formative policies, and with our success comes responsibility.

In an era when any living subject can have their life harmed by a poorly
vetted biography, we should strike a new balance.  We should not bite off
more than we can chew.  In this area, we ought to weed out BLPs that we can
no longer maintain at appropriately high standatds.  As a happy consequence
of this process, many notable biographies will be improved.  I hope that
this improvement and re-examination process is continual.

In this way, we will effectively shoulder the responsibility we have for
maintaining one of the top ten sites on the internet.

Cool Hand Luke
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Cool Hand Luke
 wrote:

> period for unsourced BLPs, but any tagged biography that does not become
> sourced must be scrapped.



biography != BLP
BLP = biography of living person

Those people who have been safely dead for a while, it tends to be
easier to establish notability and find sources (they are also less
litigious). Let not mix up the term BLP with the broader term
"biography".



Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[The Cunctator]

At the same time,

*Always leave something undone.
**Give the author a chance.*
*Build the web.*
*Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.*

and

*If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing,
rather than deletion.*

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Cool Hand Luke <
failure.to.communic...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Roger Davies has posted an excellent comment on the "civil disobedience"
> aspect of these events here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&diff=prev&oldid=339367826
>
> I've seen much talk today of doing the right things the right way and doing
> the right things the wrong way. I suppose the lesson of history is that
> determining which is which is usually possible only with the advantage of
> considerable hindsight. Think of some examples: the barons at Runnymede,
> the
> Roundheads, George Washington et al, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the sailors on
> the Potemkin; the suffragettes, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther
> King, Nelson Mandela The core of civil disobedience is the principle
> that people should do the right things the wrong way when trying to do them
> the right way failed or is not possible. And that's pretty close to the
> underlying principle of WP:IAR.  *Roger Davies* *talk* 16:39, 22 January
> 2010 (UTC)
>
> This was only the beginning; it was precipitated by the pressure of
> repeated
> failed attempts to reach elusive consensus on the matter.  This is not
> anarchy, but a brief transition point.  The RFC shows the way forward.
> MZMcBride's summary deletion proposal does not have consensus and will not
> reign.  The  processes proposed by Jehochman and David Gerard, on the other
> hand, are doing very well.  Under these proposals, there will be a review
> period for unsourced BLPs, but any tagged biography that does not become
> sourced must be scrapped.
>
> Cool Hand Luke
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Cool Hand Luke]

Roger Davies has posted an excellent comment on the "civil disobedience"
aspect of these events here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&diff=prev&oldid=339367826

I've seen much talk today of doing the right things the right way and doing
the right things the wrong way. I suppose the lesson of history is that
determining which is which is usually possible only with the advantage of
considerable hindsight. Think of some examples: the barons at Runnymede, the
Roundheads, George Washington et al, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the sailors on
the Potemkin; the suffragettes, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther
King, Nelson Mandela The core of civil disobedience is the principle
that people should do the right things the wrong way when trying to do them
the right way failed or is not possible. And that's pretty close to the
underlying principle of WP:IAR.  *Roger Davies* *talk* 16:39, 22 January
2010 (UTC)

This was only the beginning; it was precipitated by the pressure of repeated
failed attempts to reach elusive consensus on the matter.  This is not
anarchy, but a brief transition point.  The RFC shows the way forward.
MZMcBride's summary deletion proposal does not have consensus and will not
reign.  The  processes proposed by Jehochman and David Gerard, on the other
hand, are doing very well.  Under these proposals, there will be a review
period for unsourced BLPs, but any tagged biography that does not become
sourced must be scrapped.

Cool Hand Luke
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:34 PM 1/21/2010, Ryan Delaney wrote:

>Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Pure Wiki Deletion.
>
>- causa sui

Pure Wiki Deletion.

Well, I'd add a note to the article. PWD deals with the problem 
without destroying the work that was done on the article, it is there 
for anyone to recover. The note would provide a link to clear 
instructions on how to replace the article, with a request not to 
restore it without adding sources. Done by bot, this would 
immediately deal with the BLP problem, en masse, without the harmful 
effects of deletion. Adding a cat to the article, maybe "Blanked 
BLP," would make all such articles easy to find, for people who want 
to restore them with sources. The instructions for restoration would 
ask the restorer to remove the category.

If some such article is repeatedly restored without sources by IP, it 
could be semi-pro'd. But, otherwise, this action requires no admin privileges.

Pure Wiki Deletion. 


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Nathan wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>
>   
>> And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. 
>>
>> -- phoebe
>>
>> 
 >I don't think Gwern was saying that sourcing is irrelevant, only 
that"unreferenced BLP" is a blunt measurement that doesn't return much 
real information about the status of any given article.

It's a blunt metric, to be sure, but Gwern's argument that some 
referencing looks like make-work (true) means that adding references to 
biographies is pointless (false) is pretty much flawed. Consider how one 
tests an article to see whether it is a hoax: one tries to verify this 
and that, and in the end nothing checks out, which is the "now I'm 
suspicious" moment. A proper reference in a BLP shows it isn't a hoax, 
and that is one criterion our articles should satisfy.

>I'm sure there are all sorts of other long backlogs of article problems, even 
>on BLPs.

This is also true. The people who worry about copyright are, well, 
worried. This is the most interesting comparison. Do we or do we not 
regard lack of sourcing in a BLP to be as serious as copyright 
violation? No consensus on that yet, clearly. One step is being taken in 
that direction, would be one way to explain what is currently going on. 
Even that much is not perhaps going to be accepted. But the two issues 
stand out from other things such as POV and writing problems because 
they have a legal dimension, or in other words could be threats to the 
whole project.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Nathan]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:

> And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. You can correct subtle
> mistakes, misunderstandings, and sometimes errors of fact in the
> process of sourcing (I sourced a bio the other day where the husband
> of the person involved had died in between when the bio was created
> and when I worked on it; someone has to change "is married to.."
> eventually and that's not the kind of thing you want to guess at). Not
> to mention all the implications for readers, the larger project, etc.
> etc. But personally I pick and choose, and only work on people whose
> lives I find interesting -- I give the footballers, the olympians, and
> the pop stars a miss. Those seem to be the bulk of BLPs, though, and
> it seems like there are ought to be a good way to source those en
> masse, maybe through the relevant wikiprojects.
>
> -- phoebe



I don't think Gwern was saying that sourcing is irrelevant, only that
"unreferenced BLP" is a blunt measurement that doesn't return much
real information about the status of any given article. In a two
paragraph stub, sourcing the date of marriage or birth to a particular
year (and referencing nothing else) exempts the entire article from
the category. It does not exempt the article from the same sorts of
severe problems one might find in a completely unreferenced article:
the distinction between one reference and no references is often
insignificant.

A better way to determine whether an "unreferenced" article should be
deleted might be to read it, but the administrators who decided to
mass delete these articles have been indiscriminate (c.f. Cunctator's
comment about restoring an article on a former prime minister).

I'm sure there are all sorts of other long backlogs of article
problems, even on BLPs. Should all articles tagged with a POV
template, a fact tag, or other 'problem templates' be deleted after a
certain period of time? Clearly there would be too many of them for
anyone to actually fix all of them in a reasonable period of time, say
a week?

Nathan

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

2010/1/22 James Farrar :

> Some people won't be satisfied until Wikipedia has no BLPs.


No true Strawman will be satisfied until authority reassures him
Wikipedia has no BLPs.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[James Farrar]

Some people won't be satisfied until Wikipedia has no BLPs.

2010/1/21 K. Peachey 

> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Cool Hand Luke
>  wrote:
> > Remember also that "The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain
> the
> > article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the
> > policy."
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff
> >
> > Cool Hand Luke
> Which people don't have the chance to when people randomly delete them
> compared to going though either speedy and prod and they have time to
> work on it, and discuss the matter at hand.
>
> -Peachey
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

It is not that 80% of the problem was the totally unsourced articles,
and we are objecting because the entire problem was not dealt with.
More likely, it's that only 10 or 20% of the problem was dealt with,
or less. Wikipedia articles, including but not limited to BLPs, are
full of unsourced or marginally sourced statements that are truly
dubious, or pure opinion. Some will be harmful to the subject of the
article, but many more to those who want good information. on the
subject, which is actually just as bad.

What we have seen is an attempt at solving problems in the manner of
the proverbial drunk looking for his lost wallet under the lamp-post
because there's better light there. The discussion above is full of
examples that any reasonable person would want to at least do one
quick check on before deleting. Given that we accept Olympic athletes
as notable, any  plausible article claiming someone to be such is
worth the check.

I resent the charge above that those of us who object to the
proceedings are not willing to do the work ourselves. Speaking not
just for myself but for almost all of the other people who are
concerning themselves, we certainly do source as much as we can. What
we object to is other people not helping, because a few of us cannot
do it alone. I know I have gone into that backlog of unsourced BLPs
looking for a few articles to work on that seem worth the trouble.
It's not effective for one person to throw out whatever he can and
another to rescue--it is much better for the same person to do both,
because the same search will do -- and to facilitate the removals is
one of the two reasons I asked for adminship.

While half the admins at Wikipedia have been discussing this in
various places, the backlog at speedy is building up to a level rarely
seen on a weekday. Some of those really do need to be removed, much
more than the old BLPs. (Yes, I've been trying to be there also).

I am now facing the decision of what work I will need to not do  in
order to go back and rescue  the worst among the bad deletions already
done. I've a suggestion here: the people who wished to make a point
about the problem have certainly made a point. Now let them--they
themselves--prove the sincerity of their efforts by retracing their
steps and seeing what they can rescue.


David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 3:54 PM, K. Peachey  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Cool Hand Luke
>  wrote:
>> Remember also that "The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the
>> article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the
>> policy."
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff
>>
>> Cool Hand Luke
> Which people don't have the chance to when people randomly delete them
> compared to going though either speedy and prod and they have time to
> work on it, and discuss the matter at hand.
>
> -Peachey
>

Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion. Pure Wiki Deletion.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:45 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Agreed with David G. on this point. The general sentiment to keep up
> with BLPs is ok, I think; but most of the time sources can be found
> for most bios. (And yes, I do make an occasional hobby of sourcing
> random BLPs -- it's hard work and takes at least a good hour or two
> per bio to do properly, and that's with access to a full university
> library). Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
> that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
> will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
> hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
> theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
> to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).

You're right that these are all very bad problems.

Pure Wiki Deletion would be an elegant solution to this, and many
other similar snafus.

Just sayin'.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
snip
> And what benefit was there *really*? I see a lot of mindless fetishism
> of sourcing here, but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and
> stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in
> 1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new
> information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? Is it
> better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder
> if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be
> relieved?
snip

This sounds a bit like the "other stuff exists" argument. That is, we
might argue that there are BLPs out there that have one
inconsequential citation whereas the rest of the biography (that may
contain lions, tigers, and bears) is uncited.

That's true, but in this case we are picking low-hanging fruit first.
This is not an argument that we shouldn't delete totally unsourced
BLPs.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[K. Peachey]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Cool Hand Luke
 wrote:
> Remember also that "The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the
> article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the
> policy."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff
>
> Cool Hand Luke
Which people don't have the chance to when people randomly delete them
compared to going though either speedy and prod and they have time to
work on it, and discuss the matter at hand.

-Peachey

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 8:03 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> 2010/1/21 Gwern Branwen :
>> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Apoc 2400  wrote:

>> silent mass deletions are now an acceptable admin tactic.
>
>
> That bit's not ideal, I'd think they should be listed first. Perhaps a
> {{BLP-prod}}, where someone has a few days to put the references in.
> OR THE ARTICLE DIES.
>
> - d.

Agreed with David G. on this point. The general sentiment to keep up
with BLPs is ok, I think; but most of the time sources can be found
for most bios. (And yes, I do make an occasional hobby of sourcing
random BLPs -- it's hard work and takes at least a good hour or two
per bio to do properly, and that's with access to a full university
library). Running a mass deletion does have the unfortunate effect
that there's no time for anyone to scramble for sources, which folks
will do at least some of the time if given a chance. On the other
hand, if *all* unsourced bios are deleted, at least no one can claim
theirs was singled out for deletion! And hey, it gives a clean slate
to start with (she says, somewhat tongue in cheek).

But unless you dive into the categories, it's a little hard to get a
sense of the scale involved here. There's 51,000+ articles in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs, dating to
2006; at my hour-a-bio estimate for decent research, that's 2125 days
or 5.8 continuous years of labor by one very tired librarian. Even if
100 people are working on it, that's still two months of 8-hour days
for each person. Since even that seems pretty undoable, I can
understand the impulse to do something with immediate and visible
consequences.

And to disagree with Gwern: sourcing matters. You can correct subtle
mistakes, misunderstandings, and sometimes errors of fact in the
process of sourcing (I sourced a bio the other day where the husband
of the person involved had died in between when the bio was created
and when I worked on it; someone has to change "is married to.."
eventually and that's not the kind of thing you want to guess at). Not
to mention all the implications for readers, the larger project, etc.
etc. But personally I pick and choose, and only work on people whose
lives I find interesting -- I give the footballers, the olympians, and
the pop stars a miss. Those seem to be the bulk of BLPs, though, and
it seems like there are ought to be a good way to source those en
masse, maybe through the relevant wikiprojects.

-- phoebe

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
>  I see a lot of mindless fetishism
> of sourcing here, 
Oh, and "mindless fetishsim" about content, too. Let's remember that 
there is a definite mission, which is to write a reference work. It is 
not a new idea that encyclopedic works should cite their sources.
> but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and
> stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in
> 1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new
> information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? 
It is different. It is certainly not worse. The information about where 
to find the information has been added. There is a certain 'presentism' 
about the argument, even though you've chosen a date before most 
Wikipedians were born. It is (a) not obvious that information about 
marriages is undisputed (one of my problem BLPs had just this issue 
about whether someone was a wife or not, and (b) not obvious that you 
can always find a published source for births, deaths and marriages.

> Is it
> better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder
> if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be
> relieved?
>
> Speaking from personal experience on the _Evangelion_ articles: I have
> on multiple occasions spent hours or weeks tracking down some fact
> widely accepted amongst Eva fans & academic commentators to its
> original source and found it.  And then felt a sick hollow feeling as
> I realize that all I have done is waste my life satisfying RS
> standards, when the fans and professors knew it all along because they
> trust each other and their forebears and can see for themselves the
> consilience of all those commonly accepted facts.
>   
So you have made available to 300 million-odd readers of Wikipedia facts 
that were available to the cognoscenti, now in a way that does not 
involve "trust". I would probably not spend time in such quantities 
fact-checking mathematics, where I have an idea of reputations in the 
first place; but I seem to be doing plenty of fact-checking right now in 
an area of history where I have little background and don't know whether 
the scholarship of what I'm working on is cast-iron. I believe scholars 
traditionally got these blues (as well as piles, perhaps not unconnected).

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Gwern Branwen]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Cary Bass  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> Just restored a former prime minister.
>>
>
> Hi!
>
> I just want to ask a question about this, and since I don't know the
> article of which you speak, I can't judge its specific merits.  This is
> my personal opinion, and does not reflect that of any organization of
> which I may be employed.
>
> Judging by your contributions, you've been restoring articles and
> providing sources.  Reading your email, I think, "The result of deleting
> this biography was that it get restored and provide sources, that's a
> good thing, right?  The quality of the project goes up one more notch."
>    I don't have an issue with the article of a former prime minister
> disappearing for a few hours.
>
> I want to get a full perspective, however.  If you see fault with my
> interpretation, please help me understand.
>
> Cary

That argument sounds like a broken window fallacy. Cunctator has been
irked and annoyed, and driven that much closer to leaving the project
forever. And he can only experience that joy because he's an admin.

A regular contributor will have different reactions. When he hasn't
been driven away already.

And what benefit was there *really*? I see a lot of mindless fetishism
of sourcing here, but suppose Cunctator resurrected an article and
stuck in a random newspaper article for the claim 'Foo was married in
1967.' Nobody disputed that before; nobody disputed that after; no new
information was added. How *exactly* is the article better? Is it
better because some hypothetical viewer might one day go, hm, I wonder
if he really was married in 1967, and will look at the cite and be
relieved?

Speaking from personal experience on the _Evangelion_ articles: I have
on multiple occasions spent hours or weeks tracking down some fact
widely accepted amongst Eva fans & academic commentators to its
original source and found it.  And then felt a sick hollow feeling as
I realize that all I have done is waste my life satisfying RS
standards, when the fans and professors knew it all along because they
trust each other and their forebears and can see for themselves the
consilience of all those commonly accepted facts.

Sourcing is orthogonal to quality. I would trade a thousand useless
citations for a single good administrator, or heck, even editor.

-- 
gwern

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Ryan Delaney wrote:


> But this is an argument that inclusionists always make to anyone who
> tries to delete an article that is missing something crucial -- they
> put the burden on other people, rather than themselves. 


Yes, there's something to this line of argument. Why are PRODs not being 
used to clean up "very neglected BLPs"? Presumably because (i) the PROD 
would fail, but (ii) the failure, either as a take-down of the tagging 
or an admin rejection, would not result in a clean-up of the article. 
So, while we are discussing processes and mechanisms, how to put the 
onus on someone who untags a BLP that has been prodded to make an 
improvement in sourcing (when the concern is poor referencing)?

I think no one has yet mentioned that a bot is reminding some of us (no 
way to know how far this has got) that we have in the past created BLPs 
that have remained unreferenced. If this bot has now done a full pass, 
it would explain to some extent why these deletions are happening. 
(Could be a complete coincidence, but I doubt it.)

It might be technically possible to have a BLP-PROD (one of the ideas 
being kicked around) such that the untaggers were logged, and prompted 
later in the case that there were still no references. In any case we do 
need to get off the OMG track to thinking about tweaking current methods.

Charles



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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:21 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
> I agree that either before or now -- indeed, any possible rule, an
> admin is more likely to succeed with an unchecked deletion if the
> articles actually turn out to be unsourceable, than if they turn out
> to be notable and sourceable. But it is reckless to delete without
> checking first unless immediate harm is apparent, and arb com actually
> used "commend" to describe the act of doing just that sort of
> single-handed thoughtless deletion.
>
> I mention an earlier proposal that single handed deletion is only
> possible for G10 G11 and truly routine administration. At least then
> there will be a second admin involved.
>
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here, but there's some value in
seeing this from the perspective of your opponent.

I would label myself as an "inclusionist" if I would label myself as
anything, but I think the inclusionist defense against deleting bad
articles (You should be improving it, not deleting it!) is really not
where we want to go, because this is a charge that could be made in
either direction. For instance, in this case, some of these unsourced
BLPs have been sitting there unsourced for months! (or longer).

So then, maybe one way for you to put a stop to this is to go into the
unsourced BLPs and find some sources for them? If you can't do that,
or won't because the sources are too hard to find, then that's a
nagging source of doubt that the sources will never be forthcoming and
therefore that the articles really should be deleted.

But this is an argument that inclusionists always make to anyone who
tries to delete an article that is missing something crucial -- they
put the burden on other people, rather than themselves. So as an admin
who is looking out on a sea of unsourced BLPs, most of them harmless
but some of them maybe very, very harmful -- it might not be very
persuasive to hear from someone that, "You can't delete these
articles, you can only improve them painstakingly one at a time-- it's
YOUR responsibility to fix them, not the person who originally
uploaded the content. But I won't help you of course, though I will
accuse you of deletionism if you try to fix this."

Surely, there's a way we can cooperate about this-- and that has to be
adding the sources ourselves.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Goodman]

I agree that either before or now -- indeed, any possible rule, an
admin is more likely to succeed with an unchecked deletion if the
articles actually turn out to be unsourceable, than if they turn out
to be notable and sourceable. But it is reckless to delete without
checking first unless immediate harm is apparent, and arb com actually
used "commend" to describe the act of doing just that sort of
single-handed thoughtless deletion.

I mention an earlier proposal that single handed deletion is only
possible for G10 G11 and truly routine administration. At least then
there will be a second admin involved.


David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:
> David Goodman wrote:
>> Arb Com at this point seems very willing to encourage arbitrary action
>> by administrators, when we really need to be be moving in the opposite
>> direction, of requiring greater admin responsibility and care.
> As far as I know, the principle remains that admins are personally
> responsible for their use of the tools, and (in effect) put their
> adminship on the line every time they make discretionary use of those
> buttons. The traditional principle is to give admins wide discretion,
> and hold those who make bad use of that discretion to account. Now this
> is a case where mistakes can be made; those mistakes can also be
> rectified easily enough by another admin. We'll have to see how it all
> works out. If my braglist started turning red, and I could see that a
> particular admin was acting unreasonably, I would discuss the matter
> (this is also traditional).
>
> So I don't really agree here: "arbitrary" can be the pejorative of
> "discretionary", but we'll have to see to what extent this is for the
> worse. (I'm babysitting two troublesome BLPs myself, and have failed to
> get deletions, one via AfD and one via PROD, quite recently. Both have
> serious problems with reliable sources, and real world enmities. It had
> not occurrred to me to delete them out of hand. The post I'm replying to
> is a bit WP:BEANS, therefore.)
>
> Charles
>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Ryan Delaney]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Michel Vuijlsteke  wrote:
> 2010/1/21 David Gerard 
>
>> Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present
>> blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of
>> the general type of BLP deleted?
>>
>> I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the
>> last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that
>> [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed.
>
>
> I don't get the entire controversy: is it not the case that only
> *statements* can be sourced, and not entire articles?
> Does that not mean that if  [[John Seigenthaler]] contained at least one
>  at the time, it wouldn't have been affected by this?
>
> So why not go the whole hog and delete all BLPs where not every statement is
> sourced?
>
> Michel

I'm not going to speak for others here, but after a quick gloss of
this, it seems that the admins in question are deleting BLPs where
*nothing* is sourced. Which, leaving "out of process deletion" issues
aside (ugh), is a view that at least has some inherent plausibility,
and is nothing at all like what you are describing.

- causa sui

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Michel Vuijlsteke wrote:
> 2010/1/21 David Gerard 
>
>   
>> Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present
>> blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of
>> the general type of BLP deleted?
>>
>> I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the
>> last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that
>> [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed.
>> 
>
>
> I don't get the entire controversy: is it not the case that only
> *statements* can be sourced, and not entire articles?
> Does that not mean that if  [[John Seigenthaler]] contained at least one
>  at the time, it wouldn't have been affected by this?
>
> So why not go the whole hog and delete all BLPs where not every statement is
> sourced?
>   
Nostalgia - so 2003. It's argument by reductio ad absurdum. Or by 
negation of "soft security" - same thing really. Just because a measure 
doesn't deal with 100% of a problem, doesn't mean we should be grateful 
for the 80% it does deal with. Everything has to be invented and tried, 
starting with [[Category:Living people]], to see if it can become part 
of the solution.

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Michel Vuijlsteke]

2010/1/21 David Gerard 

> Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present
> blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of
> the general type of BLP deleted?
>
> I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the
> last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that
> [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed.


I don't get the entire controversy: is it not the case that only
*statements* can be sourced, and not entire articles?
Does that not mean that if  [[John Seigenthaler]] contained at least one
 at the time, it wouldn't have been affected by this?

So why not go the whole hog and delete all BLPs where not every statement is
sourced?

Michel
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[geni]

2010/1/21 David Gerard :
> Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present
> blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of
> the general type of BLP deleted?
>
> I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the
> last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that
> [[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed.

It's the usual. Politicians from various countries countries (and the
EU). Olympic athletes. Singers who ceased to be significant some time
before 1990 or didn't catch on anywhere that spoke english. Oh and a
british civil servant although since they were in a fairly senior role
in 1906 I doubt they are actually living.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rdm2376/Unwatched

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monie_Captan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Anefal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Vian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Plumb,_Baron_Plumb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoushka


-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

Does anyone have a summary of the articles deleted in the present
blood-crazed axe frenzy? Is there a list up? And/or a description of
the general type of BLP deleted?

I understand many were hardly-viewed articles with no edits in the
last six months. Which sounds innocuous enough, but remember that
[[John Seigenthaler]] was one of those until the subject noticed.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[geni]

2010/1/21 David Gerard :
> 2010/1/21 geni :
>> 2010/1/21 David Gerard :
>
>>> not a personal playground enjoying
>>> something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so.
>
>> Your argument that anyone on wikipedia enjoys something akin to
>> parliamentary privilege should be interesting.
>
>
> Your reading comprehension appears defective, as I was saying the opposite.

Well in that case there was no need to try and take action to change
things was there?


-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[David Gerard]

2010/1/21 geni :
> 2010/1/21 David Gerard :

>> not a personal playground enjoying
>> something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so.

> Your argument that anyone on wikipedia enjoys something akin to
> parliamentary privilege should be interesting.


Your reading comprehension appears defective, as I was saying the opposite.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

David Goodman wrote:
> Arb Com at this point seems very willing to encourage arbitrary action
> by administrators, when we really need to be be moving in the opposite
> direction, of requiring greater admin responsibility and care. 
As far as I know, the principle remains that admins are personally 
responsible for their use of the tools, and (in effect) put their 
adminship on the line every time they make discretionary use of those 
buttons. The traditional principle is to give admins wide discretion, 
and hold those who make bad use of that discretion to account. Now this 
is a case where mistakes can be made; those mistakes can also be 
rectified easily enough by another admin. We'll have to see how it all 
works out. If my braglist started turning red, and I could see that a 
particular admin was acting unreasonably, I would discuss the matter 
(this is also traditional).

So I don't really agree here: "arbitrary" can be the pejorative of 
"discretionary", but we'll have to see to what extent this is for the 
worse. (I'm babysitting two troublesome BLPs myself, and have failed to 
get deletions, one via AfD and one via PROD, quite recently. Both have 
serious problems with reliable sources, and real world enmities. It had 
not occurrred to me to delete them out of hand. The post I'm replying to 
is a bit WP:BEANS, therefore.)

Charles


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Okay, I'm slightly inconvenienced, or relieved, due to being 
currently blocked, so I'll make this suggestion here. Pass it on if 
you dare be accused of "proxying for a blocked editor." Caveat emptor.

See WP:PWD. This is a general solution for unreferenced articles, not 
just BLP, but it would be extremely useful, and even helpful in this 
case, and shouldn't raise deletionist hackles as much as keeping the 
articles, and it shouldn't offend the inclusionists nearly as much as 
deletions, which damage the process by which new and referenced 
articles evolve. Indeed, this could stimulate the process.

Don't delete the articles. PWD suggests not deleting *any* articles 
that aren't positively identified as being illegal, but never mind 
that for now, just think about BLP, where policy does suggest 
removing such articles from the visible encyclopedia.

Replace the article text with a notice that an article on the topic 
existed but was blanked because of policy on Biographies of Living 
Persons and it was unreferenced. Place a cat tag on the article that 
allows quick finding of all such articles.

Additional information in the new article text would vary with the 
exact details of what was done and why.

Anyone who wants to see the old article can retrieve it from history, 
particularly if a link is provided.

If it is desired to salt these articles, to require a request to an 
admin to unprotect, then the blanked version is protected. If 
registered editors are to be allowed to delete, it's semiprotected. 
Both protections require admin attention to undo, of course.

This edit will trigger watchlists, if there is anyone watching the 
article. It will allow the article to be easily restored whenever 
someone pays sufficient attention to reference it. If there is 
semi-salting, it would allow any registered editor to undo it, which 
would decrease burden on administrators.

More sophisticated, if protection is used: a note is place on a Talk 
page for the article, and the addition of a certain category to the 
Talk page can bring the situation to the attention of a BLP 
wikiproject or a bot. How about "Articles referenced for review to 
unsalt." Make it quick, make it easy. All depends on how much effort 
the project wants to require to undo it.

Any illegal text should not just be blanked, it should be removed 
from history through revision deletion, so that's a separate process 
(and there should be a flag or category for that). What's described 
here is to be done by bot, and is legally equivalent for most 
purposes. Illegal text exists in many BLPs, and is routinely simply 
taken out, not revision-deleted. As an RCPer, I certainly didn't 
request revision deletion for all the crap I saw! In fact, for none. 
So it remains available in history routinely.


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[geni]

2010/1/21 David Gerard :
> "Community consensus" isn't a valid reason to violate BLP. en:wp is a
> top-5 website of massive impact,

Misuse of our BLP policy or any other is not a valid reasons for
admins to make a power grab.

> not a personal playground enjoying
> something akin to parliamentary privilege 'cos it says so.

Your argument that anyone on wikipedia enjoys something akin to
parliamentary privilege should be interesting.


-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Andrew Gray]

2010/1/21 Emily Monroe :
>> We're historically prone to having people (especially at CSD) assume
>> that an earlier deletion is itself a strong black mark - if an
>> article was deleted earlier, there must have been a good reason for
>> it, they figure.
>
> If, on NPP, I find that an article has been recreated, it's usually
> either a newbie or a troll (usually an incredibly persistent newbie)
> copy and pasting *the exact same article* and hitting publish. It's
> usually a speedily-deleted article. Just a possible explanation for
> that assumption.

I'm not saying it's not often warranted - I've done
delete-then-delete-then-delete-again a few times myself - but I have
had conversations like this in the past:

* Hi, you deleted X decent article, why?
* It was a recreation of a previously deleted article
* ...but that article shouldn't have been CSDed in the first place
* yes, but it was a recreation, and ...

[lather, rinse, repeat]

Getting rid of bad, problematic articles is, on balance, probably a
limited good. Making it less daunting to replace them with improved
articles - making the end result an *unarguable* good - is something
we should be actively looking out for.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Bod Notbod]

It would be rather good if a list of the deletions arising out of this
cull were listed somewhere so we can see the extent and details of the
damage/change/improvement.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Bod Notbod]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 6:05 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> Explain the situation on the talk page. Basically, you wrote the text
> on IMDB as well. There is nothing wrong with this.
>
> As a reference, it's now basically a first-party reference - it's a
> bio approved by the subject. Not enough for third-party, but good for
> e.g. resolving "innocuous", etc.
>
> If it ends up deleted, hey. See if you can recreate from third-party
> sources with the approved bio as is usable.

I've added a comment to the top of the article text (y'know, one of
those that doesn't display until you click 'edit') and also a brief
explanation in the 'references' section.

I'll put something on the talk page.

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