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Posted at 20230101034516

Hello Sandstein. It appears my advice isn't being heeded (by a few) at Trump's RFC. Perhaps a word about WP:BLUDGEON (and maybe WP:BADGERING) from you, may have more effect there. GoodDay (talk) 17:45, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Well, Trump or anything related to him has a tendency to bring out the best in people, so I'm not sure that any advice from me would be more helpful. It's probably better to look for another closer once there are no more new opinions coming in. Sandstein 07:23, 31 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Could you explain how this is not a WP:SUPERVOTE ? I do not follow how the passage that you quotes from WP:V allows for the deletion of the page overriding a legitimate consensus from editors that a particular topic is notable. Sohom (talk) 18:50, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, there was consensus that the topic is notable. But notability is a necessary, not sufficient criterium for inclusion. An article can be about a notable topic and still be deleted because its content violates core policy - e.g., copyright violations, original research, or, as here, failing verifiability. This means that anybody is free to write a new article about the topic, just with new (and policy-compliant) content. Sandstein 19:46, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"WP:N's requirements of substantial coverage in reliable source" .. WP:N has no such requirement for "substantial coverage". Nowhere does the word "substantial" even appear on the page. Can you clarify specifically how and why it failed N? Yes, many people in the AfD said it fails N, but I also replied to them, why they are incorrect in their understand of N. -- GreenC 14:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What I meant to say was "significant coverage" (WP:SIGCOV). I did not determine that the topic is not notable. Rather, I determined that the arguments of those taking this position were more thorough and therefore more persuasive, such that we have rough consensus for this view. I myself have no opinion about the notability of the topic. Sandstein 14:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

FWIW, I was preparing to !vote delete on this AfD, and specifically wanted to address the absurd claim GNG's "significant coverage" does not require a volume of words. It can also mean the quality of the words ie. coverage which demonstrates notability. It can be a single sentence in length: "First man on the moon" is five words of significance towards notability. That GNG doesn't explicitly say "significance is measured in length only" does not mean it is reasonable to twist "significant coverage" into an illogical and unwieldy construction wherein "significant" is not actually modifying "coverage", but rather is supposed to imply the content of the coverage asserts or suggests the topic is significant. The sole examples listed for SIGCOV are clearly distinguished by length rather than what the content says about the subject; the example of obvious SIGCOV doesn't even quote anything from the source but does emphasize that it is "book-length", while "trivial mention" would be another bizarre and opaque term to use if "trivial" was supposed to be interpretable as "the source's opinion of the subject or the unstated implications it conveys". No one fluent in English describes a source about deodorant as being "deodorizing coverage".

But the best evidence that "amount of quality encyclopedic content" is the sole intended meaning of "significant coverage" is the explanation at WHYN that SIGCOV is required so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page. This completely invalidates the idea that mere implication by a source that a subject is significant can contribute to GNG, as it would be OR to extrapolate a passing characterization of importance into multiple sentences. JoelleJay (talk) 02:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Everything in the article was sourced, and it was a fairly long article with a lot of sources. I don't want to keep arguing here though. The point is, even taking your narrow view of significant coverage (which many don't share, see the talk page of NOTE), it still had plenty of coverage for creating an article. I wish I could literally count the number of words, across all the sources. Some may prefer statistics over knowledge. -- GreenC 02:48, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

SIGCOV says "sources vary in quality and depth of coverage". That is, every source has both quantity of words, and quality of information. The deleters mostly focused on the quantity and discounted the quality of the information. This is a common problem on AfD, and Wikipedia in general. It's anti-intellectual to say the number of words is more important than what information the words impart. It's like a AI algorithm that isn't very smart, counting volume of text on a page.

As I noted in the AfD, if a source listed his name as a conspirator in the assassination of a US President, no one would disagree that information is of high quality but low volume. It's the same here. So really, the arguments against SIGCOV were blind to the information. The real argument they had was that his role in starting Avon was not important, enough. There were a few attempts at arguing that position, but they were not very thorough in explaining why not. -- GreenC 02:29, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I interpret quality and depth as measures of the encyclopedicity of a source's coverage, not of its significance (which is why it's not in the SIGCOV section). Those considerations would factor into how many pieces of coverage that have already been deemed significant are needed to actually meet GNG. So two sources that are significant in length but which only cover non-encyclopedic aspects would not reach GNG, nor would those two sources plus a significant source that does have depth and quality in its coverage (because then the article would be based on a single source), nor would two significant sources that provide identical coverage of just one aspect of the subject (because the sources lack depth both individually and in aggregate). JoelleJay (talk) 03:34, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You have been unable to address the hypothetical example of a name of a list that has great significance. People have tried for 20 years to add a length requirement and it never works. For that reason, it makes no sense. You have to use common sense and judge the source, which will be a combination of "quality and depth of coverage". Always ask yourself, what information is the source conveying. Start there. If it's significant information it is (can be) significant coverage, even if a short length. -- GreenC 05:42, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

? What hypothetical example? You haven't addressed how your interpretation of "significant coverage" makes any grammatical sense or why there are zero references to the "importance" implied by a source being a factor in determining source significance. A name on a list, no matter how "significant" appearing on that list is, is never SIGCOV. It would not support more than a single sentence on the subject and thus would fail WHYN, among other things. Two such sources would not work either. No number of simple directory listings would lead to a GNG pass because there is no way to write an intelligible, NPOV encyclopedia article from sources that don't actually discuss the subject and certainly do not do so in detail. What you seem to be thinking of is verification that a subject meets the presumption of notability afforded by ANYBIO #1, which is strictly separate from meeting GNG (although per N, the subject does still need to have been the topic of SIGCOV in IRS to actually be notable).

The fact that people haven't come up with a specific length cutoff in no way suggests that length is not the intended and practiced interpretation of "SIGCOV". From the last several times I've seen length criteria floated, the proposals failed at least partly because people recognized settling on any specific number would lead to tendentious editors insisting two sources of significant length but no encyclopedic value were sufficient for notability, ignoring WHYN and NOT. This already happens with "multiple sources" being interpreted as "2 is always enough" at AfD. JoelleJay (talk) 07:44, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh and also, since most of the contention surrounding a length requirement rests on the fact that sources vary in how dense they are in encyclopedic details, sources that have neither length nor an abundance of detail wouldn't factor into the discussion at all, regardless of implicature. JoelleJay (talk) 08:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"What hypothetical example"? The one I posted earlier in this thread, and posted multiple times during the AfD. Look, I don't want to keep hammering away on Sanstein's talk page it's not going anywhere. -- 15:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC) GreenC 15:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Would you be willing to restore to my userspace Bouriema Kimba as you said at the DRV? Thanks. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry, I don't undelete articles, but you can ask at WP:REFUND. Sandstein 13:20, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry for my misclick.[1] — kashmīrī ^TALK 19:06, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A well thought-through closing statement BTW. Thanks. — kashmīrī ^TALK 19:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

So is the optimal AfD strategy then to just do a high school level rewrite of someone else's vote, with no new information? By the time I arrived at the discussion, literally everything I would've said had already been said by Aquillion and Jebiguess, who you admit makes a compelling case of policy non-compliance. They were correct, and it didn't seem worth my time to waste the closers time by simply repeating all of their points. I'm not super familiar with AfD, but it's disheartening to know that my vote was essentially discounted because I didn't pad it out. Parabolist (talk) 00:41, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]