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Discussion has been quite lively here of late. As can be seen by the figures below, this discussion has been very successful indeed in improving consensus on schools, in the face of quite a marked increase in school VfD nominations. What it doesn't show is that quite a number of articles are being quietly merged. A lot more "merge" votes are also showing up on the VfD listings; although they are unlikely as yet to overtake "keep" votes this does show that there is growing consensus in favor of retaining whatever significant information on schools may exist in smaller stubs.
These are my personal figures derived from Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Votes for deletion archive and omit tertiary education institutions that sometimes appear on Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch. Only primary and secondary institutions are included here.
The one pending discussion for May is expected to be closed with a "keep" result, meaning no school articles listed for deletion in May will have been deleted as a result of a VfD discussion.
A total of 27 school articles were listed for deletion in the first twelve days of June. One article is about a political association started by a student and is heading for deletion. The other 26 all seem to be following the pattern of the May listings. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 23:50, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Since when did "overriding all objections" become "improving consensus"? Rick K 07:15, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
In reply to Radiant!, I'll make the following remarks: to say that school articles were kept because of "a lack of consensus, rather than a consensus to keep" is both a banal factual statement (all articles kept after VfD are kept because of an absence of consensus to delete) and a misrepresentation of the decision-making process on Wikipedia.
We have a strong and longstanding rule, supported by consensus, that with a very few exceptions ( WP:CSD) we don't go around deleting properly formed articles without a discussion and a consensus to delete. To suggest that a consensus to keep is required or implied by a keep vote is both simply wrong and mind-bogglingly misleading. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 14:19, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The end result is that the article is kept because of our consensus to keep all VfD'd articles without a rough consensus to delete. The "no consensus" thing is vastly overplayed, emphasizing the particular consensus and ignoring the general consensus to keep. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 15:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I concur with JYolkowski (although I personally don't close school VfDs, for obvious reasons). But the "consensus to keep an article" standard isn't the way to judge consensus on Wikipedia. You have to remember that by consensus we keep all articles that don't meet WP:CSD unless there is a rough consensus to delete. If we consistently get "no consensus" for more about ninety school article VfDs in a row, that tells us something about the strength of consensus on Wikipedia with respect to schools. As JYolkowski says, the vote ratios by which school VfDs are being kept are quite pronounced, in general. This isn't a matter of just a few editors managing to squeak a "no consensu" vote, it's usually a convincing majority to keep.
Looking at school VfDs, the majority over the past couple of months have been campaign listings. In May, around 50 out of the 75 listings were made by one single editor in a three-day spree, and two-thirds of all school VfDs this month have come from another editor also engaged in a campaign of deletion. These two campaigns alone account for the much higher rate of school article VfDs for May and (so far) for June. The rate of school article nomination is three times normal because two editors have accounted for two-thirds of all deletion nominations in May and June.
You write: What I don't see is an effort by most to avoid having schools nominated for a VfD.
The number of nominations isn't something that can be controlled because there are still many editors who think that the solution to a poorly written article is to delete it. I agree with JYolkowski that the continued overwhelming rejection of school VfDs is not a bad thing. Those engaged in these campaigns to delete schools may find something else to do--cleaning up school articles to a level that they find satisfying, perhaps. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 22:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One item of trivia doesn't refute the fact that these articles are being edited, even where you personally do not like the material being produced.
And let's look at older VfD survivors. This is the table of school articles that survived VfD in February.
You'll find a few articles in there that have not been edited in the three or four months since VfD, but most are being regularly edited. More to the point, there is nothing about the articles that aren't undergoing regular editing that suggests that they cannot be expanded in the same way as the others.
I want to take issue with that snide, dismissive tone that enters into discussion of these articles. An item about a school student urinating on a member of hockey team "doesn't sound encyclopedic." How exactly not? The news made the Patriot Ledger and resulted in a police report. This is neutral and verifiable information. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 03:14, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think there is a trail of false assumptions at the heart of this. Firstly a school stub is falsely represented as unencyclopedic. Secondly a school article that (like many other perfectly good stubs on Wikipedia) is not edited every few weeks is falsely claimed to be unlikely ever to expand. Thirdly items that are added, even though neutral and verifiable, are falsely represented as unencyclopedic. With bad assumption you will end up with bad conclusions, and then you'll wonder why none of the articles you nominate for deletion are ever deleted any more. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 03:20, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC}
In May and June 119 school articles were listed for deletion. One was referred as a copyright violation, three were redirected or merged.
Three are still waiting to be closed but look like keepers.
112 out of the 119 have been kept (in addition to the 3 merge/redirects).
In two straight calender months, no school deletion listing was successful in deleting the article except the one case where the article was a copyright violation.
Only two deletion listings in April were successful.
In addition, there has been no discussion on this page for weeks. I've listed this page as "recently closed". I think we've taken it as far as we can; even quite stubby school articles seem to be virtually undeletable. If you encounter one just merge it. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 4 July 2005 23:59 (UTC)
I've done some very rough analyis to try and separate out the influence of people (like me!) who are voting on schools a lot from the people with more useful things to do with their time. I'd welcome comments. Specifically:
Anyway, I'm pretty sick of the poisonous atmosphere in school VfDs, and also believe there is a
chilling effect. I'd like to do some analysis on that as well, but only if anyone is willing to either help out or listen to the results.
brenneman
(t)
(c)
07:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
On the supposedly "poisonous" atmosphere with respect to schools deletion discussions, the atmosphere in my opinion has undoubtedly improved since May, and can only continue to improve as fewer and fewer good school articles are listed for deletion. Insults are hurled on both sides, but still the most common one is the patently false and disingenuous claim that keep votes are unrepresentative. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 13:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
While I do appreciate the input, it seems to me that we're now re-stating existing arguments. As this has not been resoundingly succesful to date, I was (and still am) proposing another way to approach the problem. Let me posit a possible result and ask how it would be interpreted:
Additionally, can we try to avoid extreme POV like "patently false" and disparaging comments like "disingenuous"? They do nothing to progress this discussion. Although it does raise an interesting point:
Personally, I'd like to understand what's currently happening before making plans for how to change it. Again, thanks for the continuing input,
brenneman
(t)
(c)
06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
brenneman (t) (c) 06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Radiant! has marked this summary as "rejected". Somehow I don't see it this way. I've removed it but if it's replaced I won't remove it again.
The principal recommendation is for avoidance of VfD listing, and this has been overwhelmingly successful. From a high of 74 school-related nominations in May, the number was down to 44 in June and 28 in July. Nominations are slightly up this month on the same time last month, but still less than half the rate at the same time in June.
Notability continues to be a very controversial matter, and so remains a "bad bet" as a rationale for deletion. In short, this initiative has been overwhelmingly successful in improving the environment in which school articles are developed on Wikipedia. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 14:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Radiant!, I quote your words: the reason why it's pointless listing school articles for deletion, you say ,is "because a large number of people will put on a de facto keep vote (regardless of the fact that only a few of those voters actually work towards improving school articles)." Now I don't know which people you mean, but I reasoned that if I took some fairly recent VfDs and identified those people who always seemed to vote keep in those, then I'd find at least some of these people who you say "will put on a de facto keep vote", but dont improve school articles. It stands to reason that they must be doing so in all or most votes, surely. Well those are the people that I found. There may be other people you're thinking of--in which case identify them.
You deny that you've implied that these people's votes carry more weight than anybody else's. But here I've listed the half dozen fairly regular keep voters I could find, these people must have a tremendous effect on the vote because of their number and the fact that they've voted frequently. But they also improve school articles. So we're looking for some people who also always vote keep and outnumber this half-dozen or so (because you say most of these de facto keep voters do not improve school articles. Otherwise I don't know how to interpret what you say. You couldn't perhaps be just saying something which you haven't checked because you already know it's true, surely?
I also endorse what Blue said, although I'd really like to get to the bottom of this claim, because you aren't the first person I've seen make it, but I can never find any evidence to support it. Ideally I'd like to convince myself that it's true, or get enough evidence so that in future if it's raised again (and it will be, I've no doubt) I'll be able to point to abundant evidence to the contrary. Listing all the people I thought you might be talking about was a start. If we can eliminate these people we can move on to any other people who regularly vote to keep schools and see if it is true that their votes make it pointless to list schools for deletion. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 18:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
You may ask "why is Tony paying so much attention to this?" Well I'll explain. For a long time now we've had school article deletion listings abjectly fail to make a deletion consensus. Being a straightforward chap, I naturally assume that this is all there is to it--that deleting schools isn't a popular move and a lot of people will vote against it. But here I'm being told that it's all a matter of Cabals (Aaron, but people have said this before), "overstated majorities" (Aaron again, but apparently only changing the name to avoid the problematic word "Cabal"), and people who are claimed to be voting on principle without showing any real interest in school articles.
Well to me it seems that these are probably just rationalisations, ways to avoid thinking about the unthinkable: that Wikipedia doesn't like deleting schools. But I'm faced with apparently intelligent, thinking people who say these things as if they mean them, as if they had evidence and reasoning that supported those opinions. Well, if that's the case, let's have a look at the evidence, and the reasoning. And then I'll know, and everybody else will know, whether there is anything to it, or if it's just all hot air. That's why I ask you to be as specific as possible, and why I ask Aaron to explain precisely what he means when he says he thinks schools VfD results are unrepresentative. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 18:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
To a certain extent we're seeing a resurgence of such campaigning, this time from User:TimPope and so far to a much, much smaller extent.
Campaign? Please explain exactly what you mean, do you mean the attempt to merge some schools? Ok I tried that, I would have thought someone listed on the Wikipedian association of mergists might have endorsed it. Please stop exagerating everything. -- Tim Pope 20:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, someone has just written 1,653 words in response to a few fairly simple questions, so I'll try to be brief.
It does not further discussion to misquote others. Please use as much care as possible.
While we aren't a democracy, we should try to work together.
To be frank, I'm pretty happy with the evidence I have presented. It could use some expansion, and it's to early to say anything definite, but the trends are clear. If anyone does not understand what I'm saying or does not agree with this method, please either ask questions or make suggestions. Don't just ignore it and then say, "where's the evidence?" ot that I "don't elaborate".
If it were shown, using methods as described above to examine previous SVs, that:
Could everyone concede that this was a bad thing?
A non-compulsory vote is a sampling method. Any "cost" may distort the sample, even if it is only the time it takes to vote. Wikipedian interactions are purely social, thus the cost of any action is measured mostly by this. And there is a cost - being drawn and quartered.
To use an (admittedly extreme) example, would we accept it if an active, organized, and fundamentalist religious group began systematically deleting by consistant voting all references to homosexuality from Wikipedia? Because, if we define consensus as "whomever wins the vote", that would be consensus. And please, let's not see a dissertation on how "Aaron equates inclusionism to homophobia". This discussion seems to have a fairly narrow audience right now, and hyperbole has little affect on those who are currently taking part.
As DoubleBlue has correctly pointed out, the one has no bearing on the other. This is a topic that we should stop right now. Well, right after this at least. However, since Tony has made some claims without providing evidence, I submit:
In Radman's last 1000 edits, I found eight edits to schools, and one substantive edit, bolded below.
In that same 1000 edits I see over 60 votes to keep schools.
On the comment about radman, I don't see what point can be made by singling out the edits by one particular editor, and I don't see what legitimate point can be made about a particular editor by saying that he doesn't often edit school articles. I've voted keep on articles of kinds that I wouldn't dream of editing in a million years--so what? Radiant! made an unsupported, and indeed unsupportable, statement: that schools were undeletable because of a de facto keep vote by people who mostly don't improve schools. That just isn't true.
The past sixteen weeks has seen well over 150 school articles nominated for deletion, and the school-related articles actually deleted during that period comprise the following:
And, uh, that's it. If Team Schools were a baseball team it would be in the Hall of Fame.
And there are signs of possible changing trends. Deletion nominations have begun to focus more on K-8 and even preschools--it seems evident to me that preschool institutions are unlikely to have a place on Wikipedia. The last high school deletion was April 15.
Why are schools almost undeletable? I think it's simple: there are a good number of people who don't want schools deleted from Wikipedia. They've looked at the arguments for deletion and don't agree with them. Some day they may change their minds, but meanwhile it would be better to address the facts than seek to depict this diverse set of people who aren't in communication with one another as a Cabal, or a block vote. They're real people with different opinions and those opinions are united solely, and for the time being, by being opposed to the deletion of school articles. They're not statistics. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 16:56, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I do think it's a bit much to make false claims: in particular the false claim that I made claims without evidence. I refuted Radiant!'s own patently false claim, which he made without evidence. My refutation stands. Even the purported counter-example demonstrates that radman has improved school articles--of which I'm absolutely sure Radiant! was aware. I still don't know who these non-editing block voters that Radiant! referred to were, but I suggest that they don't exist; I have looked and found no evidence to support the claim. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 17:37, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Please correct my misunderstanding. I'm currently interpreting that:
brenneman (t) (c) 02:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
In answer to the question "Why are schools almost undeletable?", I htink it is more to do with respect for newbie editors who are trying out their skils in writing about something they know. Further, once the stub or article is written ,the information therein is verifiable and usually through the internet.-- AYArktos 00:23, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Discussion has been quite lively here of late. As can be seen by the figures below, this discussion has been very successful indeed in improving consensus on schools, in the face of quite a marked increase in school VfD nominations. What it doesn't show is that quite a number of articles are being quietly merged. A lot more "merge" votes are also showing up on the VfD listings; although they are unlikely as yet to overtake "keep" votes this does show that there is growing consensus in favor of retaining whatever significant information on schools may exist in smaller stubs.
These are my personal figures derived from Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Votes for deletion archive and omit tertiary education institutions that sometimes appear on Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch. Only primary and secondary institutions are included here.
The one pending discussion for May is expected to be closed with a "keep" result, meaning no school articles listed for deletion in May will have been deleted as a result of a VfD discussion.
A total of 27 school articles were listed for deletion in the first twelve days of June. One article is about a political association started by a student and is heading for deletion. The other 26 all seem to be following the pattern of the May listings. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 23:50, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Since when did "overriding all objections" become "improving consensus"? Rick K 07:15, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
In reply to Radiant!, I'll make the following remarks: to say that school articles were kept because of "a lack of consensus, rather than a consensus to keep" is both a banal factual statement (all articles kept after VfD are kept because of an absence of consensus to delete) and a misrepresentation of the decision-making process on Wikipedia.
We have a strong and longstanding rule, supported by consensus, that with a very few exceptions ( WP:CSD) we don't go around deleting properly formed articles without a discussion and a consensus to delete. To suggest that a consensus to keep is required or implied by a keep vote is both simply wrong and mind-bogglingly misleading. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 14:19, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The end result is that the article is kept because of our consensus to keep all VfD'd articles without a rough consensus to delete. The "no consensus" thing is vastly overplayed, emphasizing the particular consensus and ignoring the general consensus to keep. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 15:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I concur with JYolkowski (although I personally don't close school VfDs, for obvious reasons). But the "consensus to keep an article" standard isn't the way to judge consensus on Wikipedia. You have to remember that by consensus we keep all articles that don't meet WP:CSD unless there is a rough consensus to delete. If we consistently get "no consensus" for more about ninety school article VfDs in a row, that tells us something about the strength of consensus on Wikipedia with respect to schools. As JYolkowski says, the vote ratios by which school VfDs are being kept are quite pronounced, in general. This isn't a matter of just a few editors managing to squeak a "no consensu" vote, it's usually a convincing majority to keep.
Looking at school VfDs, the majority over the past couple of months have been campaign listings. In May, around 50 out of the 75 listings were made by one single editor in a three-day spree, and two-thirds of all school VfDs this month have come from another editor also engaged in a campaign of deletion. These two campaigns alone account for the much higher rate of school article VfDs for May and (so far) for June. The rate of school article nomination is three times normal because two editors have accounted for two-thirds of all deletion nominations in May and June.
You write: What I don't see is an effort by most to avoid having schools nominated for a VfD.
The number of nominations isn't something that can be controlled because there are still many editors who think that the solution to a poorly written article is to delete it. I agree with JYolkowski that the continued overwhelming rejection of school VfDs is not a bad thing. Those engaged in these campaigns to delete schools may find something else to do--cleaning up school articles to a level that they find satisfying, perhaps. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 22:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One item of trivia doesn't refute the fact that these articles are being edited, even where you personally do not like the material being produced.
And let's look at older VfD survivors. This is the table of school articles that survived VfD in February.
You'll find a few articles in there that have not been edited in the three or four months since VfD, but most are being regularly edited. More to the point, there is nothing about the articles that aren't undergoing regular editing that suggests that they cannot be expanded in the same way as the others.
I want to take issue with that snide, dismissive tone that enters into discussion of these articles. An item about a school student urinating on a member of hockey team "doesn't sound encyclopedic." How exactly not? The news made the Patriot Ledger and resulted in a police report. This is neutral and verifiable information. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 03:14, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think there is a trail of false assumptions at the heart of this. Firstly a school stub is falsely represented as unencyclopedic. Secondly a school article that (like many other perfectly good stubs on Wikipedia) is not edited every few weeks is falsely claimed to be unlikely ever to expand. Thirdly items that are added, even though neutral and verifiable, are falsely represented as unencyclopedic. With bad assumption you will end up with bad conclusions, and then you'll wonder why none of the articles you nominate for deletion are ever deleted any more. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 03:20, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC}
In May and June 119 school articles were listed for deletion. One was referred as a copyright violation, three were redirected or merged.
Three are still waiting to be closed but look like keepers.
112 out of the 119 have been kept (in addition to the 3 merge/redirects).
In two straight calender months, no school deletion listing was successful in deleting the article except the one case where the article was a copyright violation.
Only two deletion listings in April were successful.
In addition, there has been no discussion on this page for weeks. I've listed this page as "recently closed". I think we've taken it as far as we can; even quite stubby school articles seem to be virtually undeletable. If you encounter one just merge it. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 4 July 2005 23:59 (UTC)
I've done some very rough analyis to try and separate out the influence of people (like me!) who are voting on schools a lot from the people with more useful things to do with their time. I'd welcome comments. Specifically:
Anyway, I'm pretty sick of the poisonous atmosphere in school VfDs, and also believe there is a
chilling effect. I'd like to do some analysis on that as well, but only if anyone is willing to either help out or listen to the results.
brenneman
(t)
(c)
07:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
On the supposedly "poisonous" atmosphere with respect to schools deletion discussions, the atmosphere in my opinion has undoubtedly improved since May, and can only continue to improve as fewer and fewer good school articles are listed for deletion. Insults are hurled on both sides, but still the most common one is the patently false and disingenuous claim that keep votes are unrepresentative. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 13:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
While I do appreciate the input, it seems to me that we're now re-stating existing arguments. As this has not been resoundingly succesful to date, I was (and still am) proposing another way to approach the problem. Let me posit a possible result and ask how it would be interpreted:
Additionally, can we try to avoid extreme POV like "patently false" and disparaging comments like "disingenuous"? They do nothing to progress this discussion. Although it does raise an interesting point:
Personally, I'd like to understand what's currently happening before making plans for how to change it. Again, thanks for the continuing input,
brenneman
(t)
(c)
06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
brenneman (t) (c) 06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Radiant! has marked this summary as "rejected". Somehow I don't see it this way. I've removed it but if it's replaced I won't remove it again.
The principal recommendation is for avoidance of VfD listing, and this has been overwhelmingly successful. From a high of 74 school-related nominations in May, the number was down to 44 in June and 28 in July. Nominations are slightly up this month on the same time last month, but still less than half the rate at the same time in June.
Notability continues to be a very controversial matter, and so remains a "bad bet" as a rationale for deletion. In short, this initiative has been overwhelmingly successful in improving the environment in which school articles are developed on Wikipedia. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 14:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Radiant!, I quote your words: the reason why it's pointless listing school articles for deletion, you say ,is "because a large number of people will put on a de facto keep vote (regardless of the fact that only a few of those voters actually work towards improving school articles)." Now I don't know which people you mean, but I reasoned that if I took some fairly recent VfDs and identified those people who always seemed to vote keep in those, then I'd find at least some of these people who you say "will put on a de facto keep vote", but dont improve school articles. It stands to reason that they must be doing so in all or most votes, surely. Well those are the people that I found. There may be other people you're thinking of--in which case identify them.
You deny that you've implied that these people's votes carry more weight than anybody else's. But here I've listed the half dozen fairly regular keep voters I could find, these people must have a tremendous effect on the vote because of their number and the fact that they've voted frequently. But they also improve school articles. So we're looking for some people who also always vote keep and outnumber this half-dozen or so (because you say most of these de facto keep voters do not improve school articles. Otherwise I don't know how to interpret what you say. You couldn't perhaps be just saying something which you haven't checked because you already know it's true, surely?
I also endorse what Blue said, although I'd really like to get to the bottom of this claim, because you aren't the first person I've seen make it, but I can never find any evidence to support it. Ideally I'd like to convince myself that it's true, or get enough evidence so that in future if it's raised again (and it will be, I've no doubt) I'll be able to point to abundant evidence to the contrary. Listing all the people I thought you might be talking about was a start. If we can eliminate these people we can move on to any other people who regularly vote to keep schools and see if it is true that their votes make it pointless to list schools for deletion. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 18:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
You may ask "why is Tony paying so much attention to this?" Well I'll explain. For a long time now we've had school article deletion listings abjectly fail to make a deletion consensus. Being a straightforward chap, I naturally assume that this is all there is to it--that deleting schools isn't a popular move and a lot of people will vote against it. But here I'm being told that it's all a matter of Cabals (Aaron, but people have said this before), "overstated majorities" (Aaron again, but apparently only changing the name to avoid the problematic word "Cabal"), and people who are claimed to be voting on principle without showing any real interest in school articles.
Well to me it seems that these are probably just rationalisations, ways to avoid thinking about the unthinkable: that Wikipedia doesn't like deleting schools. But I'm faced with apparently intelligent, thinking people who say these things as if they mean them, as if they had evidence and reasoning that supported those opinions. Well, if that's the case, let's have a look at the evidence, and the reasoning. And then I'll know, and everybody else will know, whether there is anything to it, or if it's just all hot air. That's why I ask you to be as specific as possible, and why I ask Aaron to explain precisely what he means when he says he thinks schools VfD results are unrepresentative. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 18:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
To a certain extent we're seeing a resurgence of such campaigning, this time from User:TimPope and so far to a much, much smaller extent.
Campaign? Please explain exactly what you mean, do you mean the attempt to merge some schools? Ok I tried that, I would have thought someone listed on the Wikipedian association of mergists might have endorsed it. Please stop exagerating everything. -- Tim Pope 20:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, someone has just written 1,653 words in response to a few fairly simple questions, so I'll try to be brief.
It does not further discussion to misquote others. Please use as much care as possible.
While we aren't a democracy, we should try to work together.
To be frank, I'm pretty happy with the evidence I have presented. It could use some expansion, and it's to early to say anything definite, but the trends are clear. If anyone does not understand what I'm saying or does not agree with this method, please either ask questions or make suggestions. Don't just ignore it and then say, "where's the evidence?" ot that I "don't elaborate".
If it were shown, using methods as described above to examine previous SVs, that:
Could everyone concede that this was a bad thing?
A non-compulsory vote is a sampling method. Any "cost" may distort the sample, even if it is only the time it takes to vote. Wikipedian interactions are purely social, thus the cost of any action is measured mostly by this. And there is a cost - being drawn and quartered.
To use an (admittedly extreme) example, would we accept it if an active, organized, and fundamentalist religious group began systematically deleting by consistant voting all references to homosexuality from Wikipedia? Because, if we define consensus as "whomever wins the vote", that would be consensus. And please, let's not see a dissertation on how "Aaron equates inclusionism to homophobia". This discussion seems to have a fairly narrow audience right now, and hyperbole has little affect on those who are currently taking part.
As DoubleBlue has correctly pointed out, the one has no bearing on the other. This is a topic that we should stop right now. Well, right after this at least. However, since Tony has made some claims without providing evidence, I submit:
In Radman's last 1000 edits, I found eight edits to schools, and one substantive edit, bolded below.
In that same 1000 edits I see over 60 votes to keep schools.
On the comment about radman, I don't see what point can be made by singling out the edits by one particular editor, and I don't see what legitimate point can be made about a particular editor by saying that he doesn't often edit school articles. I've voted keep on articles of kinds that I wouldn't dream of editing in a million years--so what? Radiant! made an unsupported, and indeed unsupportable, statement: that schools were undeletable because of a de facto keep vote by people who mostly don't improve schools. That just isn't true.
The past sixteen weeks has seen well over 150 school articles nominated for deletion, and the school-related articles actually deleted during that period comprise the following:
And, uh, that's it. If Team Schools were a baseball team it would be in the Hall of Fame.
And there are signs of possible changing trends. Deletion nominations have begun to focus more on K-8 and even preschools--it seems evident to me that preschool institutions are unlikely to have a place on Wikipedia. The last high school deletion was April 15.
Why are schools almost undeletable? I think it's simple: there are a good number of people who don't want schools deleted from Wikipedia. They've looked at the arguments for deletion and don't agree with them. Some day they may change their minds, but meanwhile it would be better to address the facts than seek to depict this diverse set of people who aren't in communication with one another as a Cabal, or a block vote. They're real people with different opinions and those opinions are united solely, and for the time being, by being opposed to the deletion of school articles. They're not statistics. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 16:56, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
I do think it's a bit much to make false claims: in particular the false claim that I made claims without evidence. I refuted Radiant!'s own patently false claim, which he made without evidence. My refutation stands. Even the purported counter-example demonstrates that radman has improved school articles--of which I'm absolutely sure Radiant! was aware. I still don't know who these non-editing block voters that Radiant! referred to were, but I suggest that they don't exist; I have looked and found no evidence to support the claim. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 17:37, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Please correct my misunderstanding. I'm currently interpreting that:
brenneman (t) (c) 02:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
In answer to the question "Why are schools almost undeletable?", I htink it is more to do with respect for newbie editors who are trying out their skils in writing about something they know. Further, once the stub or article is written ,the information therein is verifiable and usually through the internet.-- AYArktos 00:23, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
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