Wikipedia talk:Preliminary Deletion/Vote

message: ::"Consensus" is not defined. This is improper! Default result should be to the most restrictive, not least restrictive option. Where is the support for the proposed default. Eclecticology 12:05, 2004 Oct 29 (UTC)
Regarding Eclecticology's comment, having finished writing the questions, etc. three days ago, I posted to the mailing list requesting someone to go over the questions, etc. and fix them or notify me if anything was wrong or they had suggestions.  Neutrality copyedited the voting section; nobody said there was anything wrong with them. I tried my best to follow the Survey guidelines which do not include making a definition of consensus, so I think we'll just have to follow it; it uses our article on consensus as a definition. Johnleemk | Talk 14:16, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of consensus 

message: *"expand speedy deletions instead"
:Shall we rereview the results of Wikipedia:Managed Deletion? I'd love to expand speedy deletion criteria, but that proposal would get shot down easily. There's a reason why nobody's drafted such a proposal — nobody but a few deletionists (or centrists leaning towards the deletionist side) want it.
:The largest complaint about Managed Deletion was that it placed too much power in admins' hands. A good part of the community distrusts three admins to handle a deletion, so our alternative is to let one admin decide? That makes even less sense.
:There's another compelling reason not to expand speedy deletion criteria. We might expand them, but the inclusionists always whine about the deletion of prose. It's one thing to delete "ioshgohgoaghoeg". It's another to delete a paragraph or two which some inclusionists might actually claim to be notable; these are borderline cases which some admins delete, but some admins don't. Expanding the speedy deletion criteria destroys the beautiful, if flawed, process of VFD.
:Now, I'm going to discourse on why VFD is one of those genius-istic systems that some recognise and some don't, much like the U.S. Electoral College. VFD is not merely a place to delete articles. VFD is a place where borderline articles are placed when people don't know what to do with them.
:For example, take a poorly written article on some rather obscure subject, say, a 1920s Bulgarian actor well known within his home country only, for pioneering filmmaking there. Google probably won't yield too many results on him. It may look like vanity. So following our current system, an editor places it on VFD, which basically advertises to Wikipedia: "Hello, I'm an article which is so confusing, nobody knows what I'm about or whether I should even be here. Can somebody help sort me out?" Anyone who knows the actor can easily describe how he is encyclopedic and should be kept.
:Speedying full-fledged prose destroys this process, and as such, is probably not too feasible.
*"confusing bureaucracy" OR "instruction creep" OR "too many problem resolution pages"
:This is confusing? Then what's VFD? The heart of this proposal can be boiled down to one sentence; if you'd like one or both of the extra additions, they add at the most two or three sentences, total. How is this confusing? It's simply based on VFD.
:Wikipedia is growing. We're getting more visitors. The population always contains a few baddies. At first we had one or two baddies, nothing our system couldn't handle. But as we grew bigger and bigger, we got more baddies, because we got more visitors. The percentage of baddies remains fixed, but not the total population. So naturally, we had to expand our systems for handling baddies as we grew larger.
:Now, I'd say our current system is not scaling. Look at the debates on VFD. There are many contentious ones; however, there are always a few cases where practically everyone is for deleting the article; an obvious violation of policy, for example, such as irredeemably POV articles, or original research, or simply vanity pages. It's impractical to have them cluttering VFD, which is already damn bloody long to read, thank you.
:So, our system simply isn't scaling. We will need to tackle this eventually, because people on dial-up simply cannot participate in VFD. Categorising VFD (another proposal) is an excellent start. But we will need to add extra pages. There is no doubt about this at all. We will need to expand our system for handling these, because there will be more people adding vanity pages, which will lead to more listings on VFD, which will lead to an extremely long page that only those on broadband can even read.
:We have to cut down the size of VFD. The only way to cut down its size is to cut down the pages nominated, or move them elsewhere. The only way to cut down the amount of pages listed would be to loosen our policies, which surely a lot of people would oppose, or to develop other avenues for listing them, which leads back to "move them elsewhere". So it's your choice, folks. Either you centralise everything on one monolithic page, or you categorise deletions in some manner. Johnleemk | Talk 11:15, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rebutting some "no" voters' reasoning 

message: I am a fairly new user to Wikipedia. I initially resisted registration because I was (and remain) concerned about security issues. I recently registered because an administrator asked me to. It was clearly useful for him to know that I was editing certain articles that are in his field on interest. 
When Netoholic first added the my number of edits to my post, I inferred that my opinion was of less value than other regular users. Is this part of Wikipedia's policy? Now Johnleemk accuses me of being a 'sockpuppet'. While I am a little surprised that some users would feel so strongly about an issue as to employ such underhand tactics, it is not inconceivable.  I am left with the feeling that Netoholic, Johnleemk and probably other users as well, consider my opinion as less important, if not bogus. There should be an official policy (or at least a warning) for new users to follow with regard to voting. Axl 12:54, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We're not undervalueing your opinion; we're just highly suspicious as to the validity of your account. Although it seems rather unlikely, what immediately set my alarm off was that your first edit was to a user talk page, which is atypical of most new users. I'm sorry if I hurt you, but it's just convention to point out to other users that certain editors could be sockpuppets. We don't devalue your opinion; sockpuppets, like anyone else, can contribute valuable information. This doesn't change the fact that they're sockpuppets (not that you're one). Johnleemk | Talk 14:33, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Okay, I understand your point. [Actually 'my' first edit was in the Sandbox but I wasn't registered then.] I still think that it would be helpful for newbies if the reason for the addition of edit numbers was included. Axl 16:49, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  New users