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On October 2, Snowspinner, an admin, speedily deleted seventeen ongoing AfDs on the ground that the AfDs were invalid. He considered them to be so due to the AfDs all being based on notability, which he did not consider to be a criterion for deletion, and his rationale was being bold. These pages were deleted due to Snowspinner's own personal belief that they were invalid (which is not a reason to delete an AfD, whether or not they were), was completely ungrounded in policy, and wound up disrupting Wikipedia.
I disagree with these actions strongly. I believe that the appropriate action would have been to create a proposal allowing the speedy deletion of AfDs not grounded in policy, an action that was not taken. I also find it strikingly hypocritical that Snowspinner so blatantly violated policy in the name of defending it.
I do not think that any admin has the right to speedy delete things that are not covered under WP:CSD, especially not an ongoing discussion, as is AfD, and absolutely not based on such controversial ground as whether or not notability is a criteria for deletion. Speedy deletion is a last resort, not a first one. We don't delete things because we disagree with them, we talk about them.
On WP:ANI, Snowspinner encouraged other admins to follow his lead (diff: [1]). He doesn't seem to understand the problem, and later asked if simply unlisting them as speedy keeps would be better (diff: [2]). Though the greatest problem is his deleting pages, it would also be a problem for him to end AfDs as keeps just because he thinks so, or because of his interpretation of policy. As was said on WP:AN/I, Wikipedia policies are not our straightjackets. We can do whatever we want with them, we made them. If today notability is a criteria (which, de facto, it is, for many) then it is policy, even if it's unwritten.
Note: I'm adding this after some people have endorsed this, but I want to clarify: I do not, nor ever did, believe that Snowspinner was acting in bad faith. This has come up, so I figured I should be obvious about it.
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I find the irony of deletionists accusing an inclusionist of violating the deletion policy according to a bunch of principles he laid out ( m:descriptivism) rich.
Beyond that somewhat pithy summary, I will say only that if process creates policy, by extension one cannot move to put someone up against the wall for a first offense. Which is to say, if you're holding that notability has become a deletion criterion because it's gained popular acceptance, you are presumably also holding that we should not have arbcommed the people who first began using notability as a deletion criterion, back before it had gained popular acceptance, for disrupting Wikipedia or violating deletion policy. Saying that process forms consensus means that you have to tolerate good faith attempts to change process. I find it curious, then, that you have no reservations about desysopping someone who tried to change how fast-closed AfDs are handled. An interesting approach, to be sure.
Which leads me to believe this RFC to be more sour grapes than content.
A few more broad points - popular assent and consensus do not trump an understanding of the project. This was made clear with Jimbo's response to the hypothetical "What do we do if a thousand neo-Nazis show up and try to force consensus by sheer numbers" of "We don't let that happen." Frankly, the same approach ought apply should we get flooded by people who willfully ignore many of the principles on which this project is founded.
The fundamental misconception that people have is in understanding the word "Encyclopedia." Because, while we are an encyclopedia, we're also a radical redefinition of what an encyclopedia is. We are not the modern conception of an encyclopedia - collecting only the worthy knowledge. We are the original conception - the compendium of all knowledge. All knowledge. Ranging from Immanuel Kant to Exploding whale. Or to Greenlighting or Elf Only Inn or Cyrus Farivar, to deal directly with three deletions I vehemently opposed on the grounds that they were simply wrong, no matter what.
To be clear, I don't really care if Random Garage Band gets an article. I'm certainly never going to write one for them. But, and here's the other thing, I don't care enough to delete them either, assuming they can meet the policies of NPOV, verifiability, not being a dicdef, and the rest. They don't hurt me. They shouldn't be included in the Rock and roll article unless they're an exemplar of something that is in that article. (i.e. the Rock and roll article should mention the Beatles. Probably the Rolling Stones too. Maybe U2. Not so much Deep Blue Something. Definitely not Random Garage Band.) On the whole, my relationship to Random Garage Band is total apathy. What blows my mind - what completely melts my brain - is the people who make arguments like "This article exists on Comixpedia, so we should junk it." Or who claim that published, peer-reviewed academic articles shouldn't get articles (Or, at least, that their authors should, with all their articles mentioned and summarized). Or who want to delete something that got coverage on a major news site. It blows my mind that there are people applying the "is it worthy for inclusion" model of thought.
No article EVER has to prove its worthiness for inclusion. Some articles have to show that they are so useless that they/re worth holding an extended AfD debate, burdened with tons of stupid rules, just so we can get rid of them.
And, to clarify, I don't think the above is my personal opinion. I think the above is the very foundation of what Wikipedia is. I think the above is our mission. I think that people who do not understand the above are wrong, and that they absolutely must be stopped from having their way regarding inclusion debates.
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I don't know Snowspinner personally all that well, but I have very little reason to believe the admin was acting in bad faith. One thing I that the admin should realize is that by speedying discussions like this it can be rather offensive to the people on AfD who take time out of thier days to carefully review each and every article put there and give thier opinion on the matter, which include Blackcap, me, and spinboy, as well as many other AfD regulars. Also, it can be disruptive to the process as well. However, I do not believe the admin should be desysopped, at least not yet. The process does have its flaws, and I think rather then simply trying to take charge of it this way the admin should instead try to articulate why the articles in question should be kept on the applicable AfD pages.
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This verges on RFC abuse. AFD needs a dynamite enema in general. The fetishisation of process over product is a great part of what makes AFD such a bad idea in practice. (Note that I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism. It's this one that's sucking.) As such, I find it hard to consider this any sort of great offense in the context of the general AFD wars. I've given Snowspinner an
Ed Poor barnstar, FWIW.
Note: Blackcap's responses in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Large_scale_AfD_unlisting are an excellent example of process over product. This is not to question in any way Blackcap's good faith. But it's still the real problem IMO.
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I should also note: for Blackcap to seriously think for a moment someone would deadmin themselves on request over an issue such as this shows less understanding and feel for the project than one should really have to discuss such matters in a serious and weighty manner - Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
"Process over product" is a red herring. The brokenness of AFD, or lack thereof, is irrelevant. This is a simple case of an admin thinking he's above policy, resulting in reckless, disruptive actions.
Admins should not be allowed to unilaterally act, in contravention of policy, on their personal views. All this does is disrupt the project and piss people off. I think there are a few users Wikipedia would be better off without, even though they haven't committed any direct policy violations; should I block them and try to purge evidence of their existence? I think AFD works fine and the "deletion reform" proposals are a bad idea; should I unilaterally delete them? If I did either of those things, wouldn't I be in hot water, and quite possibly lose my adminship? The only difference between those actions and Snowspinner's, that I can see, is that "AFD is broken" is such a popular viewpoint that many people are willing to support anti-AFD disruption.
"Process" vs. "product" has nothing to do with this case. Snowspinner's actions were indisputably of line and disruptive. Speedy-keeping and delisting alone would have disruptive (though much less so), but his deletion of the AFDs smacks of a bizarre attempt to suppress discussion. I'm not for desysopping, but I do think this RFC should be a sort of "final warning" to Snowspinner that he can't cross the line again.
BTW, see the statements by myself and others at WP:AN/I#Consensus creates policy. Fubar Obfusco has much wisdom. Essentially, this is like the debacle on RFA when GordonWatts thought he was entitled to adminship and people violated policy by opposing him. Nowhere does policy say that AFDs can only be valid for certain reasons - if we could only delete articles in certain well-defined classes, there would be no point in the discussion that is AFD.
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It is my view that there is general consensus that a subject must be notable in order for it to have an article on Wikipedia. I point to the recent discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Brainstorming#Remove notable requirement where it was suggested as part of proposed reforms of the deletion process that this requirement be removed. The overwhelming agreement on those who have commented is that notability is now a requirement and that it should remain one. And I note that these discussions, as part of the deletion reform proposal, are likely to be disproportionaly viewed by people who think the entire current deletion process is "broken" -- but of course they are even more disproportionatly likely to be viewed by people who have a significant interest in the deletion process and deletion policy.
I cite additional support for my view that there is a consensus that non-notable subjects should not have articles, even if they are verifiable. There is a general agreement that bands not meeting the WP:MUSIC criteria should not be the subjects of articles, and that such articles, when they are created, should be deleted. Such articles are almost always deleted at AfD, and a proposal to make this a speedy delete criterion got majority supoort (but not consensus, in significant part due to issues about definition and explicit reliance on a non-policy page). Many such bands are verifiable, but the issue of verifibility pretty much never comes up in AfD debates on such bands, it is always an issue of notability.
The subject of WP:CSD A7 have been discussed elsewhere including on AN/I. It is new, and it has been somewhat contentions, and it IMO needs clearer support standards. But when there have been disputes they have been over what is or is not notable, or over what consitutes a "claim" of notability. No one has been arguing that biographies of non-notable people ought to be retained.
Indeed, does anyone really argue that verifiable but admittedly non-notable subjects should have articles here? To borrow an example recently used on VfU, my left shoe is verifiable, (I can send you a picture if you like) but does anyone really want an article about it? Consider a thunderstorm that occured in New Jersey in 2004. It is easily verifiable -- I can produce newspaper reports. But should there be an article on Wikipedia on every storm that got newspaper coverage? Or to be a little more reasonable, consider me. I was, earlier this year, an unsuccessful candidate for local elected office. This is verifiable -- there were quite a number of newspaper stories local and regional about the campaign. I have previously been the chair of a professional sub-orgianization ( ACM's SIGAPL) and have published professional papers and edited professional conference proceedings. This is easily verifiable. Still I am probably not notable (I wouldn't meet my own standards on AfD) Should there be David E. Siegel? Would you vote to delete it on AfD? If not, why not?
I would argue that if a subject is not notable, an article about it is not encyclopedic, because an encyclopedia only has articles about notable subjects. It is is certianly policy that Wikipedia includes only encyclopedic articles. Notability is really just a shorthand for encyclopediacicty, or more accurately, it is one criterion for encyclopediacicty (verifibility is another, as is a factual tone).
So I think that notability is a current requirement for being the subject of a Wikipedia article, and it should be -- even though there is not always clear consensus on what constitutes notability, and like any other critierion of inclusion or deletion, it can be abused. Thus I feel that unilaterally deleting AfD pages where non-notability was cited as a reason for nomination, or ignoring AfD votes that site non-notability as a reason, is against consensus and therefore violates policy.
Therefore Snowspinner's actions are a violation of policy, in that the AFD pages did not meet any speedy deletion criterion, but more importantly that taking unilateral action to change policy or solve a policy problem, rather than acting through discussion, violates basic wikipedia policy.
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Snowspinner's actions were disruptive and against speedy deletion policy. However, the actions were in support of the actual greater overall deletion policy, instead of established guidelines. And there is a growing view that AfD has become a forum where a small group of regulars enforce their view regarding deletion, calling it "consensus" even when only as few as three of the 450,000 editors participate. Enforcement of these guidelines, which are formed by in one small corner of Wikipedia by a small but very interested minority, must not be permitted to override the actual specific policies or lack thereof in the project as a whole. The overriding consideration we must apply is that there is no consensus to delete articles for lack of notability. Snowspinner was bold and he ignored all the rules but he was too much of a dick to deserve thanks for what he did. Please don't do this again.
Blackcap's response was obviously in good faith, and directly in line with policy regarding when to call a "Request for Comments". We should thank him for responding in the proper manner. However, everyone should note that the offense committed is not delisting AfD nominations made for lack of notability. The offense in question is speedy deleting discussions already in progress.
We need to have this discussion, especially as the interested minority that frequents AfD has started considering the precedents of the interested minority to be of nearly the same importance as the official policies (and lack of official policies) themselves. Un focused 16:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Well. We can spend all week bickering on whether we should blame Snowspinner, or blame the people who blame Snowspinner, or blame those who blame those... - well, you get the idea.
Or, we could consider that AFD is unwieldy, bureaucratic, factionalizing and generally unpleasant, and find some way to fix that. Looking over AFD it is obvious that the vast majority of nominations don't need the debate - many end up as unanimous deletes; many others get a plethora of keeps because the nominator overlooked something, or the article had a source added; and yet many others are actually nominated for NPOV'izing, merging, or renaming and don't need AFD.
In the spirit of the latter, I would suggest this extremely simple deletion system...
To ensure that this works, the template should add the article to Category:Deletion 4-10-2005, and a bot should update the template each day to point it to the new date. Advantages? Less bureaucracy. Less room for violent debate. Less chance of a cabalistic subculture. Less backlogs. And it requires no software upgrade. Disadvantages? It doesn't work on articles that are sock-supported or controversial, and it may be necessary to have some process to get rid of those. That process should not be invoked until this simple process has been tried and failed a couple of times.
Similar processes have been proposed in the past, but to my knowledge none as simple as this. It makes deletion easier if nobody objects, and makes it harder in case of controversy. Both seem like a good thing to me. So this is my view of what is going on between AFD and Snowy, and what should be done about it. Anyone who concurs should feel free to turn this into an official proposal on some other page, and discuss and advertise it. R adiant _>|< 22:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Policy exists for a reason, and the reason AfD policy exists is to provide an inclusive and transparent method for discussing the merits of including or not including a given article in the encyclopaedia. Whether or not the policy is broken is irrelevant, just because some (but not all) people agree that a law is wrong or unjust does not mean breaking it is acceptable.
Only a tiny minority of AfD listings are made in bad faith, even if the nomination does not correlate exactly with policy the nominator might not be aware of the policy or alternative article improvement methods. In my opinion there should only be two occasions when articles should be speedily kept.
In both these situations, the AfD page should be closed and kept. It would be up to the discretion of the closing administrator whether or not to make a record of the debate on the talk page of the article. They should mention it was speedily kept in the edit summary when removing the AfD tag though. I can see no situation where the deletion of AfD pages has any benefit to anybody. It also allows for accusations of cabalism by leaving adminsitrators wide open to accusations of trying to hide things. To my mind, Snowspinner acted improperly on this occasion but he did so in good faith. If he, or anyone else, repeated the actions before consensus on this issue is reached - whether the consensus is with my suggestions or not - would imho be a bad-faith breach of WP:POINT. Thryduulf 00:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
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I have now made this into a formal policy proposal at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Speedy keep proposal. Thryduulf 20:11, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Although there are still open concerns about the quality of Snowspinner's judgement in deleting discussion pages (rather than a more easily undone speedy keep), this RFC should be closed because the parties involved have successfully taken it completely offtopic: This has become a discussion of AFD policies overall. Such discussions would be better held in the appropriate place so that they can reach the wider interested audience.
This is getting to be a complex issue, largely because people are using it to comment on lots of the usual perpetual gripes. I'm going to see if I can get some relatively simple points out:
Or, in brief, for those who've been affected by PowerPoint:
I think that about wraps it up. -- FOo 02:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
This dispute is a symptom of a number of enormous diseases that will eventually affect the credibility and reputation of Wikipedia in a very negative way. No wonder why many long time contributors such as RickK have left in droves. If we cannot get a clear consensus of our deletion policy, if we cannot stop admins from taking controversial actions, if we keep on bickering at each other, I fear this project will be doomed. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:01, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
As much as I cannot suport Snowspinner's actions, they like Ed Poor's, evidence a frustration with the deletion process that we ignore at our peril. The criterion 'notability' is contentious, and that is unlikely to change. However, the notability criteria is not afd's main problem. Snowspinner deleted 16 'notability-based' nominations out of 130 that day. (And some of the 16 nominations could have been made on other grounds - OR, verifiability etc). My anecdotal conclusion is that over 80% of afd's work has nothing much to do with notability. If afd cannot upscale with Wiki-growth, then we have a problem. Deletion reform is essential - notability is largely a sideshow. Consensus on reform might be possible, consensus on notability is not. We need to spend a little less effort on tribal point-scoring, wiki-lawyering, and unilateral action (all well evidenced in this debate), and more on trying to work together to constructively solve the problems. -- Doc (?) 12:48, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
The deletion of the AfD pages was a poor call; it removes the ability of non-admins to review the action fully, and it breaks the practice of usual practice of retaining discussion pages even when the actions they propose are soundly rejected. A speedy keep and delist would have also drawn attention, and not involved the use of administrative actions to handle an "invalid nomination" (whether or not they actually were invalid isn't the issue here: there does not seem to be consensus there and this incident has not resolved it). Ignore All Rules, yes, but not in order to perform an action that one can assume with some reasonable forethought will generate ill will and inflame arguments rather than provide a quick and elegant solution to them. Disruption is not necessarily bad (whether to prove a point or not), but the costs to the community of his actions outweighed the benefits and it was partially the use of administrative powers to do so that caused that. Be bold in actions that anyone can do; be conservative in using admin rights.
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Most all that needs to be said has been already, so my comment might be seen as piling it on. But I would like to make one point that isn't made often enough (and it's about more than just this case, so oh well...)
The only time I really see people invoke WP:BOLD is when they have done something destructive. That is not what the policy is about. You're bold when you feel that something needs to be changed, and you do something constructive, if perhaps unconventional about it. This was not constructive. Unilaterally deleting a number of discussions is not bold, it's arrogant. What wikipedia needs is not another (to borrow Gerards excellent, if rather graphic, phrase) dynamite enema, no, what wikipedia needs is for all of us to sit down and hammer out a policy that we can all find reasonable. The power of inertia is a strong one, but this is not the way to fight it.
In the future, can we all try to be less Malcolm X and alot more Dr. King. (note: I have nothing against Malcolm X, I'm a huge fan, but you get my point)
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On October 2, Snowspinner, an admin, speedily deleted seventeen ongoing AfDs on the ground that the AfDs were invalid. He considered them to be so due to the AfDs all being based on notability, which he did not consider to be a criterion for deletion, and his rationale was being bold. These pages were deleted due to Snowspinner's own personal belief that they were invalid (which is not a reason to delete an AfD, whether or not they were), was completely ungrounded in policy, and wound up disrupting Wikipedia.
I disagree with these actions strongly. I believe that the appropriate action would have been to create a proposal allowing the speedy deletion of AfDs not grounded in policy, an action that was not taken. I also find it strikingly hypocritical that Snowspinner so blatantly violated policy in the name of defending it.
I do not think that any admin has the right to speedy delete things that are not covered under WP:CSD, especially not an ongoing discussion, as is AfD, and absolutely not based on such controversial ground as whether or not notability is a criteria for deletion. Speedy deletion is a last resort, not a first one. We don't delete things because we disagree with them, we talk about them.
On WP:ANI, Snowspinner encouraged other admins to follow his lead (diff: [1]). He doesn't seem to understand the problem, and later asked if simply unlisting them as speedy keeps would be better (diff: [2]). Though the greatest problem is his deleting pages, it would also be a problem for him to end AfDs as keeps just because he thinks so, or because of his interpretation of policy. As was said on WP:AN/I, Wikipedia policies are not our straightjackets. We can do whatever we want with them, we made them. If today notability is a criteria (which, de facto, it is, for many) then it is policy, even if it's unwritten.
Note: I'm adding this after some people have endorsed this, but I want to clarify: I do not, nor ever did, believe that Snowspinner was acting in bad faith. This has come up, so I figured I should be obvious about it.
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I find the irony of deletionists accusing an inclusionist of violating the deletion policy according to a bunch of principles he laid out ( m:descriptivism) rich.
Beyond that somewhat pithy summary, I will say only that if process creates policy, by extension one cannot move to put someone up against the wall for a first offense. Which is to say, if you're holding that notability has become a deletion criterion because it's gained popular acceptance, you are presumably also holding that we should not have arbcommed the people who first began using notability as a deletion criterion, back before it had gained popular acceptance, for disrupting Wikipedia or violating deletion policy. Saying that process forms consensus means that you have to tolerate good faith attempts to change process. I find it curious, then, that you have no reservations about desysopping someone who tried to change how fast-closed AfDs are handled. An interesting approach, to be sure.
Which leads me to believe this RFC to be more sour grapes than content.
A few more broad points - popular assent and consensus do not trump an understanding of the project. This was made clear with Jimbo's response to the hypothetical "What do we do if a thousand neo-Nazis show up and try to force consensus by sheer numbers" of "We don't let that happen." Frankly, the same approach ought apply should we get flooded by people who willfully ignore many of the principles on which this project is founded.
The fundamental misconception that people have is in understanding the word "Encyclopedia." Because, while we are an encyclopedia, we're also a radical redefinition of what an encyclopedia is. We are not the modern conception of an encyclopedia - collecting only the worthy knowledge. We are the original conception - the compendium of all knowledge. All knowledge. Ranging from Immanuel Kant to Exploding whale. Or to Greenlighting or Elf Only Inn or Cyrus Farivar, to deal directly with three deletions I vehemently opposed on the grounds that they were simply wrong, no matter what.
To be clear, I don't really care if Random Garage Band gets an article. I'm certainly never going to write one for them. But, and here's the other thing, I don't care enough to delete them either, assuming they can meet the policies of NPOV, verifiability, not being a dicdef, and the rest. They don't hurt me. They shouldn't be included in the Rock and roll article unless they're an exemplar of something that is in that article. (i.e. the Rock and roll article should mention the Beatles. Probably the Rolling Stones too. Maybe U2. Not so much Deep Blue Something. Definitely not Random Garage Band.) On the whole, my relationship to Random Garage Band is total apathy. What blows my mind - what completely melts my brain - is the people who make arguments like "This article exists on Comixpedia, so we should junk it." Or who claim that published, peer-reviewed academic articles shouldn't get articles (Or, at least, that their authors should, with all their articles mentioned and summarized). Or who want to delete something that got coverage on a major news site. It blows my mind that there are people applying the "is it worthy for inclusion" model of thought.
No article EVER has to prove its worthiness for inclusion. Some articles have to show that they are so useless that they/re worth holding an extended AfD debate, burdened with tons of stupid rules, just so we can get rid of them.
And, to clarify, I don't think the above is my personal opinion. I think the above is the very foundation of what Wikipedia is. I think the above is our mission. I think that people who do not understand the above are wrong, and that they absolutely must be stopped from having their way regarding inclusion debates.
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I don't know Snowspinner personally all that well, but I have very little reason to believe the admin was acting in bad faith. One thing I that the admin should realize is that by speedying discussions like this it can be rather offensive to the people on AfD who take time out of thier days to carefully review each and every article put there and give thier opinion on the matter, which include Blackcap, me, and spinboy, as well as many other AfD regulars. Also, it can be disruptive to the process as well. However, I do not believe the admin should be desysopped, at least not yet. The process does have its flaws, and I think rather then simply trying to take charge of it this way the admin should instead try to articulate why the articles in question should be kept on the applicable AfD pages.
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This verges on RFC abuse. AFD needs a dynamite enema in general. The fetishisation of process over product is a great part of what makes AFD such a bad idea in practice. (Note that I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism. It's this one that's sucking.) As such, I find it hard to consider this any sort of great offense in the context of the general AFD wars. I've given Snowspinner an
Ed Poor barnstar, FWIW.
Note: Blackcap's responses in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Large_scale_AfD_unlisting are an excellent example of process over product. This is not to question in any way Blackcap's good faith. But it's still the real problem IMO.
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I should also note: for Blackcap to seriously think for a moment someone would deadmin themselves on request over an issue such as this shows less understanding and feel for the project than one should really have to discuss such matters in a serious and weighty manner - Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):
"Process over product" is a red herring. The brokenness of AFD, or lack thereof, is irrelevant. This is a simple case of an admin thinking he's above policy, resulting in reckless, disruptive actions.
Admins should not be allowed to unilaterally act, in contravention of policy, on their personal views. All this does is disrupt the project and piss people off. I think there are a few users Wikipedia would be better off without, even though they haven't committed any direct policy violations; should I block them and try to purge evidence of their existence? I think AFD works fine and the "deletion reform" proposals are a bad idea; should I unilaterally delete them? If I did either of those things, wouldn't I be in hot water, and quite possibly lose my adminship? The only difference between those actions and Snowspinner's, that I can see, is that "AFD is broken" is such a popular viewpoint that many people are willing to support anti-AFD disruption.
"Process" vs. "product" has nothing to do with this case. Snowspinner's actions were indisputably of line and disruptive. Speedy-keeping and delisting alone would have disruptive (though much less so), but his deletion of the AFDs smacks of a bizarre attempt to suppress discussion. I'm not for desysopping, but I do think this RFC should be a sort of "final warning" to Snowspinner that he can't cross the line again.
BTW, see the statements by myself and others at WP:AN/I#Consensus creates policy. Fubar Obfusco has much wisdom. Essentially, this is like the debacle on RFA when GordonWatts thought he was entitled to adminship and people violated policy by opposing him. Nowhere does policy say that AFDs can only be valid for certain reasons - if we could only delete articles in certain well-defined classes, there would be no point in the discussion that is AFD.
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It is my view that there is general consensus that a subject must be notable in order for it to have an article on Wikipedia. I point to the recent discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Brainstorming#Remove notable requirement where it was suggested as part of proposed reforms of the deletion process that this requirement be removed. The overwhelming agreement on those who have commented is that notability is now a requirement and that it should remain one. And I note that these discussions, as part of the deletion reform proposal, are likely to be disproportionaly viewed by people who think the entire current deletion process is "broken" -- but of course they are even more disproportionatly likely to be viewed by people who have a significant interest in the deletion process and deletion policy.
I cite additional support for my view that there is a consensus that non-notable subjects should not have articles, even if they are verifiable. There is a general agreement that bands not meeting the WP:MUSIC criteria should not be the subjects of articles, and that such articles, when they are created, should be deleted. Such articles are almost always deleted at AfD, and a proposal to make this a speedy delete criterion got majority supoort (but not consensus, in significant part due to issues about definition and explicit reliance on a non-policy page). Many such bands are verifiable, but the issue of verifibility pretty much never comes up in AfD debates on such bands, it is always an issue of notability.
The subject of WP:CSD A7 have been discussed elsewhere including on AN/I. It is new, and it has been somewhat contentions, and it IMO needs clearer support standards. But when there have been disputes they have been over what is or is not notable, or over what consitutes a "claim" of notability. No one has been arguing that biographies of non-notable people ought to be retained.
Indeed, does anyone really argue that verifiable but admittedly non-notable subjects should have articles here? To borrow an example recently used on VfU, my left shoe is verifiable, (I can send you a picture if you like) but does anyone really want an article about it? Consider a thunderstorm that occured in New Jersey in 2004. It is easily verifiable -- I can produce newspaper reports. But should there be an article on Wikipedia on every storm that got newspaper coverage? Or to be a little more reasonable, consider me. I was, earlier this year, an unsuccessful candidate for local elected office. This is verifiable -- there were quite a number of newspaper stories local and regional about the campaign. I have previously been the chair of a professional sub-orgianization ( ACM's SIGAPL) and have published professional papers and edited professional conference proceedings. This is easily verifiable. Still I am probably not notable (I wouldn't meet my own standards on AfD) Should there be David E. Siegel? Would you vote to delete it on AfD? If not, why not?
I would argue that if a subject is not notable, an article about it is not encyclopedic, because an encyclopedia only has articles about notable subjects. It is is certianly policy that Wikipedia includes only encyclopedic articles. Notability is really just a shorthand for encyclopediacicty, or more accurately, it is one criterion for encyclopediacicty (verifibility is another, as is a factual tone).
So I think that notability is a current requirement for being the subject of a Wikipedia article, and it should be -- even though there is not always clear consensus on what constitutes notability, and like any other critierion of inclusion or deletion, it can be abused. Thus I feel that unilaterally deleting AfD pages where non-notability was cited as a reason for nomination, or ignoring AfD votes that site non-notability as a reason, is against consensus and therefore violates policy.
Therefore Snowspinner's actions are a violation of policy, in that the AFD pages did not meet any speedy deletion criterion, but more importantly that taking unilateral action to change policy or solve a policy problem, rather than acting through discussion, violates basic wikipedia policy.
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Snowspinner's actions were disruptive and against speedy deletion policy. However, the actions were in support of the actual greater overall deletion policy, instead of established guidelines. And there is a growing view that AfD has become a forum where a small group of regulars enforce their view regarding deletion, calling it "consensus" even when only as few as three of the 450,000 editors participate. Enforcement of these guidelines, which are formed by in one small corner of Wikipedia by a small but very interested minority, must not be permitted to override the actual specific policies or lack thereof in the project as a whole. The overriding consideration we must apply is that there is no consensus to delete articles for lack of notability. Snowspinner was bold and he ignored all the rules but he was too much of a dick to deserve thanks for what he did. Please don't do this again.
Blackcap's response was obviously in good faith, and directly in line with policy regarding when to call a "Request for Comments". We should thank him for responding in the proper manner. However, everyone should note that the offense committed is not delisting AfD nominations made for lack of notability. The offense in question is speedy deleting discussions already in progress.
We need to have this discussion, especially as the interested minority that frequents AfD has started considering the precedents of the interested minority to be of nearly the same importance as the official policies (and lack of official policies) themselves. Un focused 16:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Well. We can spend all week bickering on whether we should blame Snowspinner, or blame the people who blame Snowspinner, or blame those who blame those... - well, you get the idea.
Or, we could consider that AFD is unwieldy, bureaucratic, factionalizing and generally unpleasant, and find some way to fix that. Looking over AFD it is obvious that the vast majority of nominations don't need the debate - many end up as unanimous deletes; many others get a plethora of keeps because the nominator overlooked something, or the article had a source added; and yet many others are actually nominated for NPOV'izing, merging, or renaming and don't need AFD.
In the spirit of the latter, I would suggest this extremely simple deletion system...
To ensure that this works, the template should add the article to Category:Deletion 4-10-2005, and a bot should update the template each day to point it to the new date. Advantages? Less bureaucracy. Less room for violent debate. Less chance of a cabalistic subculture. Less backlogs. And it requires no software upgrade. Disadvantages? It doesn't work on articles that are sock-supported or controversial, and it may be necessary to have some process to get rid of those. That process should not be invoked until this simple process has been tried and failed a couple of times.
Similar processes have been proposed in the past, but to my knowledge none as simple as this. It makes deletion easier if nobody objects, and makes it harder in case of controversy. Both seem like a good thing to me. So this is my view of what is going on between AFD and Snowy, and what should be done about it. Anyone who concurs should feel free to turn this into an official proposal on some other page, and discuss and advertise it. R adiant _>|< 22:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Policy exists for a reason, and the reason AfD policy exists is to provide an inclusive and transparent method for discussing the merits of including or not including a given article in the encyclopaedia. Whether or not the policy is broken is irrelevant, just because some (but not all) people agree that a law is wrong or unjust does not mean breaking it is acceptable.
Only a tiny minority of AfD listings are made in bad faith, even if the nomination does not correlate exactly with policy the nominator might not be aware of the policy or alternative article improvement methods. In my opinion there should only be two occasions when articles should be speedily kept.
In both these situations, the AfD page should be closed and kept. It would be up to the discretion of the closing administrator whether or not to make a record of the debate on the talk page of the article. They should mention it was speedily kept in the edit summary when removing the AfD tag though. I can see no situation where the deletion of AfD pages has any benefit to anybody. It also allows for accusations of cabalism by leaving adminsitrators wide open to accusations of trying to hide things. To my mind, Snowspinner acted improperly on this occasion but he did so in good faith. If he, or anyone else, repeated the actions before consensus on this issue is reached - whether the consensus is with my suggestions or not - would imho be a bad-faith breach of WP:POINT. Thryduulf 00:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
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I have now made this into a formal policy proposal at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Speedy keep proposal. Thryduulf 20:11, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Although there are still open concerns about the quality of Snowspinner's judgement in deleting discussion pages (rather than a more easily undone speedy keep), this RFC should be closed because the parties involved have successfully taken it completely offtopic: This has become a discussion of AFD policies overall. Such discussions would be better held in the appropriate place so that they can reach the wider interested audience.
This is getting to be a complex issue, largely because people are using it to comment on lots of the usual perpetual gripes. I'm going to see if I can get some relatively simple points out:
Or, in brief, for those who've been affected by PowerPoint:
I think that about wraps it up. -- FOo 02:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
This dispute is a symptom of a number of enormous diseases that will eventually affect the credibility and reputation of Wikipedia in a very negative way. No wonder why many long time contributors such as RickK have left in droves. If we cannot get a clear consensus of our deletion policy, if we cannot stop admins from taking controversial actions, if we keep on bickering at each other, I fear this project will be doomed. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:01, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
As much as I cannot suport Snowspinner's actions, they like Ed Poor's, evidence a frustration with the deletion process that we ignore at our peril. The criterion 'notability' is contentious, and that is unlikely to change. However, the notability criteria is not afd's main problem. Snowspinner deleted 16 'notability-based' nominations out of 130 that day. (And some of the 16 nominations could have been made on other grounds - OR, verifiability etc). My anecdotal conclusion is that over 80% of afd's work has nothing much to do with notability. If afd cannot upscale with Wiki-growth, then we have a problem. Deletion reform is essential - notability is largely a sideshow. Consensus on reform might be possible, consensus on notability is not. We need to spend a little less effort on tribal point-scoring, wiki-lawyering, and unilateral action (all well evidenced in this debate), and more on trying to work together to constructively solve the problems. -- Doc (?) 12:48, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
The deletion of the AfD pages was a poor call; it removes the ability of non-admins to review the action fully, and it breaks the practice of usual practice of retaining discussion pages even when the actions they propose are soundly rejected. A speedy keep and delist would have also drawn attention, and not involved the use of administrative actions to handle an "invalid nomination" (whether or not they actually were invalid isn't the issue here: there does not seem to be consensus there and this incident has not resolved it). Ignore All Rules, yes, but not in order to perform an action that one can assume with some reasonable forethought will generate ill will and inflame arguments rather than provide a quick and elegant solution to them. Disruption is not necessarily bad (whether to prove a point or not), but the costs to the community of his actions outweighed the benefits and it was partially the use of administrative powers to do so that caused that. Be bold in actions that anyone can do; be conservative in using admin rights.
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Most all that needs to be said has been already, so my comment might be seen as piling it on. But I would like to make one point that isn't made often enough (and it's about more than just this case, so oh well...)
The only time I really see people invoke WP:BOLD is when they have done something destructive. That is not what the policy is about. You're bold when you feel that something needs to be changed, and you do something constructive, if perhaps unconventional about it. This was not constructive. Unilaterally deleting a number of discussions is not bold, it's arrogant. What wikipedia needs is not another (to borrow Gerards excellent, if rather graphic, phrase) dynamite enema, no, what wikipedia needs is for all of us to sit down and hammer out a policy that we can all find reasonable. The power of inertia is a strong one, but this is not the way to fight it.
In the future, can we all try to be less Malcolm X and alot more Dr. King. (note: I have nothing against Malcolm X, I'm a huge fan, but you get my point)
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