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 discussion was: Userfy to User:Incnis Mrsi/Voting for busy beavers. (non-admin closure) NasssaNser 14:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Voting for busy beavers[edit]

I don't even remember how I came across this essay, but I am a little dumbfounded by it. It advocates for keeping a list of trusted contributors (called the "White List") and a group of not trusted contributors (called the "Black List"). It then calls for !voting on RfAs/RfBs/RfCs based on how they were supported by people on the "White List"/"Black List", without considering the merits of the candidate/issue. If you are so busy that you cannot consider a proposal/candidate on the merits, ignore the discussion. Don't !vote a certain way because of how people on your "White List"/"Black List" !voted.

I don't necessarily think this needs deletion, but it certainly needs userfication. House Blaster (talk · he/him) 02:42, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Userfy as per nominator. But who are the Crowd People to whom the author refers? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:18, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Iserfy might be OK, but we would just be better off by deleting it. Bduke (talk) 04:13, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It is a valid essay about a real feature of the Wikipedia community, about what I would call the dramaboards regulars. I support the essay for addressing a serious issue. Such essays belong in projectspace. This is not to say that I agree with the proposed solution. I agree, it seems dumbfounding, but I think it is worth studying before probably editing away dumb bits. There is enough merit in the essay to keep it. To improve it, I would probably confine brainstorming ideas to a subsection, and put more effort into a study of the dramaboards regulars of the years. I have observed this behavioural oddity for many years, and believe it is significantly lessened. One can see, for example, that the compulsive “Oppose” RfA !voters who would nearly always !vote “oppose” with a rationale that did not vary with the nominee, are now virtually all blocked. If you install the gadget that reveals signatures of blocked editors, you can see it quite clearly in old RfAs. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:24, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is an old essay, from 2013, which more reflects Wikipedia in 2013 than 2024. It was written by a productive and respected editor, active from 2006 until retirement in 2014.

He later returned, and was a bit too grumpy, whether he was more grumpy than before, or whether Wikipedia in 2019 was less tolerant of grumpy productive editors (cf the unblockables) than in the older years. In any case, what happened in October-November 2019 has no bearing on the historical insights recorded in the 2013 essay. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:32, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have edited the essay, cutting harshly, and I believe it is now not a problem, and what’s left is a valuable historical observation. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think my problem with the essay is that—given its title, Voting for busy beavers, emphasis mine—it is explicitly about the proposed solution (!voting without learning about the merits of a dispute), not the problem (dramaboard regulars). House Blaster (talk · he/him) 13:34, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dramaboard regulars are not necessarily a problem. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:56, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Userfy. I wouldn't complain about SmokeyJoe making a new essay but... per HouseBlaster, I'm not sure that was really the point of the original essay? Meaning a clean slate might be a better approach. (The old essay was about "if you're lazy, just vote with the group you trust", which is exactly the kind of !votes we do NOT want and are basically just noise, since they haven't engaged with the fundamentals of whatever's under discussion.) SnowFire (talk) 03:00, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, I've culled the bad idea, which was most of the page, and left behind an interesting observation, more relevant to 2013 than 2024. The only problem I have with userfying for User:Incnis_Mrsi is that he might come back and db-u1 it. Maybe userfy to my userspace? But I don't claim it as mine, I just claim that it is an historical observation of some value. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What if we userfy to his userspace, but use a WP:DUMMY edit to save an edit summary requesting that it be moved to your userspace if it is tagged with ((db-u1))? House Blaster (talk · he/him) 12:42, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Probably the best course of action. thetechie@wikimedia: ~/talk/ $ 00:45, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Userfy. It's not patent nonsense. It's misleading, but not so grossly problematic that it has to be deleted from Wikipedia outright. We don't delete essays or screeds we disagree with. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:28, 16 April 2024 (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.