Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 20

message: I know I'm going to regret this bit of stirring I'm about to do, but here goes anyway...I was bored recently (for about a fortnight) and produced some VFD stats. This table shows how many nominations were made per user from December 25 (the start of day pages) to February 18. I've divided everything into a basic keep or delete outcome (merge/redirect/no consensus = keep, copyvio/transwiki = delete). The top 7 users account for a remarkable 25% of nominations, and the top 35 account for 50%.
Nominator        	Delete	Keep	Pending	Total	Delete %
Radiant!         	75    	56  	70     	201  	57%
Fvw              	122   	25  	       	147  	83%
RickK            	93    	41  	6      	140  	69%
DCEdwards1966    	85    	48  	       	133  	64%
Uncle G          	69    	28  	2      	99   	71%
GRider           	12    	46  	38     	96   	21%
Niteowlneils     	73    	12  	       	85   	86%
Hoary            	46    	13  	1      	60   	78%
Curps            	44    	12  	       	56   	79%
LeeHunter        	42    	13  	       	55   	76%
Thue             	47    	1   	5      	53   	98%
JoaoRicardo      	30    	19  	1      	50   	61%
Gadfium          	39    	7   	       	46   	85%
Jni              	41    	2   	2      	45   	95%
BM               	17    	19  	5      	41   	47%
Kelly Martin     	35    	4   	       	39   	90%
Smoddy           	18    	15  	       	33   	55%
Cdc              	26    	4   	       	30   	87%
ZayZayEM         	15    	12  	       	27   	56%
Antaeus Feldspar 	22    	2   	1      	25   	92%
Michael Ward     	22    	2   	       	24   	92%
Thryduulf        	15    	9   	       	24   	63%
Xezbeth          	16    	7   	       	23   	70%
R. fiend         	14    	8   	1      	23   	64%
Woohookitty      	18    	4   	1      	23   	82%
Rje              	21    	1   	       	22   	95%
Sjorford         	20    	2   	       	22   	91%
J3ff             	21    	1   	       	22   	95%
Scott Burley     	17    	3   	1      	21   	85%
InShaneee        	16    	4   	1      	21   	80%
Ta bu shi da yu  	11    	9   	       	20   	55%
Tregoweth        	6     	14  	       	20   	30%
Brookie          	4     	6   	10     	20   	40%
Inter            	15    	5   	       	20   	75%
Deb              	16    	3   	1      	20   	84%
Total (684 users)	2387  	963 	209    	3559 	71%
I'm not passing judgement on any of this, because I know you'll all do it for me. Or can we all learn to live together in peace...? (ow! OW!) sjorford →•← 23:29, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to make friends and influence people 

message: Keep	Delete
0   	25
I've noticed that little boxes are starting to spring up on some VfD entries. (A sample is to the right.)  I wonder about their usefulness for a few reasons.  First, they're manually updated, and most editors don't...so the count is usually incorrect.  Once or twice I've noticed more votes recorded in the box than appear in the commments.  Second, I fear that they encourage a militant us-against-them sort of mentality on VfD...more of which is not required there.  It seems to run counter to Wikipedia's consensus-building philosophy.  Third, the count doesn't address conditional votes, or distinguish between votes for redirection, merging, and keeping.  Finally—and perhaps most importantly—it may discourage people from reading through the entire discussion.  Editors may be inclined to say, "I don't see what's important about Article X, but it has a lot of keep votes; I better slap a delete on it" without looking to see why the article has accumulated so few negative votes.
Vote counting is something that's handled by an admin at the end of VfD, and the admin should be exercising judgement anyway.  Any thoughts on these curious little boxes?  I'm inclined to suggest they be excised on sight. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 20:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Little tally boxes...? 

message: Little boxes on the right side, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes all the same
Malvina Reynolds,
There's a green one 
where are you
And a pink one 
when we
And a blue one 
really
And a yeller one 
need you?
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same. 
Let's stop the übercommentary-in-sidebars that amounts to continuous editorial judgement on the VfD process, illustrated by punchy graphics, hey? Wikipedia is not a Powerpoint presentation. Let's make our points in good old inline ASCII text. If people don't pay attention to them on the merits, putting them in pastel boxes to call attention to them isn't going to help. I don't truly believe that adding a ton of boxcruft to VfD is going to make it load faster or be more manageable. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:23, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoops, didn't mean to be US-centric. Good old inline ISO 8859-1 or Unicode text is fine, too. Sorry. As penance, I promise to use nothing but SI units in Wikipedia for the next 24 hours. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:21, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: In case I didn't make myself clear enough, I really think this madness should stop. cesarb 19:17, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Little boxes