The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Speedy keep. per consensus and snow. Please take concerns to talk page for reform. I do not suspect a bad faith nomination, however, there is no reason to just delete the process and not fill in the gap. Also note, I am not a member of BAG. — _Maggot^Syn 08:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Update - please note that post-closure comments occurred. These were reverted by the closing editor. I've noted this on the talk page. If people want to comment on the closing, or add further comments, please use the talk page. Carcharoth (talk) 08:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group[edit]

It is my belief that BAG members are now routinely ignoring consensus and pushing their own preferred systems over community consensus. Various discussions at WT:BOT (the Bot policy talk page) have stalled even after consensus has been reached over certain aspects of Bot policy. BAG members then proceed to make edits to Bot policy ignoring this consensus. It's clear that BAG has turned into a "club" which uses its status to try and push their own agendas in discussions. We need to come up with something better than this, and definitely something that loses the cabal-like grouping which exists now. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Co-nomination to address concerns stated elsewhere. To address concerns that this is a bad-faith nomination, I am prepared to add my name here as co-nominator. This is not a step I am taking lightly. I do not think that outright deletion is the answer, but I do think that the reform efforts have stalled and something needs to be done to restart them (particularly related to how people are selected - get true consensus for what should be in the policy). WP:MFD, whether we like it or not, is sometimes used to draw attention to an issue. Whatever issues people have with Locke Cole, I would ask that this discussion be allowed to run the full 5 days, to clear the air if nothing else. Carcharoth (talk) 05:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Mark as historical and suspend as nominator. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep BAG has reformed greatly even in the last couple of month, with a new membership and a more open process. The fact that I, someone who wrote an RFAR against a bot and has blocked Betacommand in the past, was accepted as a member shows it is clearly not an exclusive club. MBisanz ^talk 05:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Sorry, two tiny groups of users fighting each other can't form or ignore "consensus". BJ^Talk 05:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • (double ec)See this diff, and then look at the edit war by BAG members on WP:BOT to try and insert their preferred language in to the page. There's something wrong with BAG and it needs to be addressed before it gets worse. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I see the debate but unless I'm missing something it is just a back and forth between the reform camp and the BAG camp. I'd love to see a full proposal voted on by at least the same number of people that have voted on past proposals. BJ^Talk 05:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Keep per BJ. Where I'm from if I need to replace something, I usually have something to replace it with before I throw it away. Q ^{T C} 05:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per above. Soxred 93 05:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. "It is my belief that BAG members are now routinely ignoring consensus" (emphasis mine) =/= a global belief. I, for one, believe the BAG is working well. giggy _(:O) 05:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Giggy. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 05:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep. Just because one person is unhappy with a process is not a reason to discard it. --Carnildo (talk) 05:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would urge against a Speedy close of this MFD, letting it run a full 5 days and having a normal close will serve to make a useful point of reference for continued discussion of the matter. MBisanz ^talk 05:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Look at WT:BOT, there's more than just me that is unhappy with BAG. Another editor nominated this page for deletion (then withdrew) less than a month ago. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep This nom is roughly equivalent to putting the arbcom elections page up for deletion. J.delanoy^gabsanalyze 05:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, that was borderline uncivil. Either way, I think that Locke Cole needs to come up with a viable alternative before attempting to remove the old process. J.delanoy^gabsanalyze 05:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Per all of the above. SQL^{Query me!} 05:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Keep Enigma ^message 05:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • This isn't a vote... —Locke Cole • t • c 05:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I fail to see your point. Is a rationale really necessary in this case? Enigma ^message 05:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - I recently suggested to Locke Cole on his talk page that an MfD might gauge opinion better than limited policy talk page discussions. I did say that it would be best if someone else brought the MfD, and I did urge him to stop edit warring (and that implicitly included edit warring over tags). The way in which WP:BAG is appointed is a small part of Bot policy, but it is an important part and it does no credit at all to WP:BAG members that the discussion stalled and they are reverting Locke Cole instead of trying to sort the situation out. Carcharoth (talk) 05:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well,either way it's getting comments. I'd like to see this stay open a bit, if possible please, per MBisanz's reasoning. SQL^{Query me!} 05:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, per above. — E ↗^TCB 07:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, but I have been very frustrated with the BAG in the last little while. After commenting multiple times, on various pages that a well-known user was running unmonitored scripts from his main account, no action was taken by the BAG, which I see as the root cause of the later wikidrama. In my opinion, one of the major problems with the BAG is the large number of members, which means that most regular operators of bots are on the BAG, leading to constant conflicts of interest. We've seen this lately from ST47 and BC, but I think it's one of the root problems with the BAG. Although I don't agree with Locke's methods, he and Carcharoth are probably the only non-BAG members who are regularly involved in discussions. I realise that there is some frustration with Locke, but BAG members have to realise how bad this edit war to removed a "dispute" tag looks, especially since it's the BAG lining up on one side and non-members on the other side. It is certainly tempting to label Locke as disruptive, but piling on and rejecting comments from outside the BAG is one of the major problems from the other MFDs which has not been addressed. In reality, the BAG probably needs no more than 3 active members, since the BAG admits of no duties outside the 1-week bot-approval process. I would like to see the BAG scaled back to 3 members, by whatever method necessary. AKAF (talk) 07:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I thought all the complaints have been that BAG is such an elite cabal and doesn't listen to community input? How will reducing the number of members help that? As you've pointed out, despite numerous pleas to get community input on the BRFA process, only two have shown interest. I really don't feel it's right to punish, for want of a better word, the BAG because they did not find some way to force the community to provide input. Q ^{T C} 07:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Because there are quite a number of people who comment on BAG topics, just that (to pick some random numbers) 12 are BAG members and 2 are non-members. Various attempt to increase the number of non-member comments by a factor of 12 or more, to get a healthy proportion of BAG to non-BAG comments have been rejected by the BAG (see for example the discussion over RFA-style approvals). The other option is to put more BAG members into the pool of community participants. I would hope that those ex-members could accept that their contributions are valued for their thoughtfulness and expertise, rather than their BAG membership. One attack on the BAG is that members are inactive until they want something approved, and then become active, which leads to conflicts of interest. Could the current BAG accept it if Werdna, Tawker, and ST47 (to pick the bottom three off the BAG list) were the only members, and contribute through discussion? AKAF (talk) 07:53, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I looked for your "commenting multiple times" on WT:BOT, WT:BAG, even WP:BON and WT:BRFA, and did not see anything related to your alleged statement above. So what unmonitored script are you talking about, and where did you solicit BAG help with it? And please stop this "we" vs. "they" framing; it's rather misleading. Gimmetrow 07:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• He's talking about the recent issue with Betacommand. Enigma ^message 07:48, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Still, I don't see where BAG help was solicited. Further, in the discussion about Betacommand, certain BAG members suggested things that would have avoided the deficiencies in the Sam Korn solution, and it was exactly those deficiencies that led to the later issue/drama. So don't blame it on BAG now. Gimmetrow 08:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that BAG isn't to blame in the Betacommand matter but disbanding the whole process isn't the right solution. BJ^Talk 08:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.