This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

IDK how to propose the merge/deletion of numerous articles all at once, but there are several which were discussed on the talk page here created by The Vintage Feminist.

• Gina Rippon bibliography
• Sabina Alkire bibliography
• Margaret Gallagher bibliography
• Liz Kelly bibliography
• Barbara Bergmann bibliography
• Melissa Farley bibliography
• Michael McCarthy professional credits

These all fail WP:GNG and the main articles for these individuals are fine on their own. If somebody can propose merge/deletion on my behalf that would be easier. Thanks. Sxologist (talk) 02:22, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

This is definitely the wrong place for that. The purpose of Deletion review is to judge past outcomes of deletion discussions, not to start new ones (in most cases). Glades12 (talk) 07:39, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it's clear it's outlived its usefulness. Nobody has updated it in four years. The theory is that people will refer to it before opening a DRV. I suppose it's possible somebody, somewhere, in some alternate universe, has ever done that. But I wouldn't bet on that. I propose we just delete it. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:33, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

• Seems reasonable. Hobit (talk) 19:13, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
• Certainly not! But you might be able to deprecate and archive it.—S Marshall T/C 19:33, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Yeah, that's probably a better choice. I don't think it is relevant, but I also don't see a need for deletion. Hobit (talk) 19:36, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi folks, I wasn't sure where to bring this, but DRV talk seems like the closest place. Maybe AfD talk. I also considered my talk page and pinging folks, but I wanted to bring a broader discussion.

I've been pretty frustrated with AfD and DRV for the last couple of months. I'm seeing lots of articles that meet all obviously relevant guidelines and policies get deleted. From my viewpoint I'm seeing a lot of !voting based on personal opinions about how people feel about topics rather than actual sources. I'm aware of the interaction of WP:GNG with things like WP:NOT and WP:BLP1E. But I'm finding it shocking that we are deleting articles that have coverage spanning months in literally the best news sources in the US. And a lot of it is coming from people whose opinions I haven't always agreed with, but I've always felt like their opinions were ones that I could at least see where they are coming from. But in AfD I'm seeing things like no one addressing sources at all. I mean, at all. I'm seeing one editor who !votes to delete nearly every biography (I think it's more than 95%, maybe 99%) and only rarely discussing sources. And at DRV I'm seeing people not only pushing for deletion of things over the !vote consensus, but over the actual written policies and guidelines (and in a way that a recent RfC had no consensus for). And none of those folks have been willing to start an RfC to see if there is consensus behind their views. I suspect because they know there isn't, but maybe there is another reason.

Maybe my real life is in a bit more of a mess than normal and that's bleeding over to my wiki-life. But I'm feeling frustrated with a lot of folks and with what I think has historically been one of the most fair places on Wikipedia. We've historically done a good job of having DRV reflect the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. I don't think we are there right now. And it's not just US politics. The most recent DRV on the draft for video game characters is also frustrating. I don't know that game hardly at all. But I know many of my college students do know those characters quite well. I've walked into the lab and seen them watching videos replays of tournaments. And the fact that there are actual academic papers covering that topic of the characters would seem to be more than enough to meet any reasonable policy/guideline based objections. But people are focusing on the process we got here by and perhaps that it's "just" a game, rather than the actual sources (I don't think I saw a meaningful discussion of sources at all by anyone who thinks the article shouldn't exist at any point). It's just not what I've come to expect here.

Sorry for the rant. Just realizing how much it's bothering me and thought rather than just taking a wiki-break for a while (as I've done in the past), I'd express my thoughts. Thanks. Hobit (talk) 19:35, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm sorry for contributing to your frustrations here, Hobit. Where I'm coming from is that I'm really, really, really, really, tired of promotional content on Wikipedia and I hate, loathe, and detest the amount of resources that get sucked into US politics all the time. I'm increasingly happy to get rid of it.
  There was a time when the main thing we could do to improve the encyclopaedia was to write it, and I was a major league inclusionist. But now we've got 6 million articles and about 500 active editors. Our various failures of editor recruitment and retention mean that most of the encyclopaedia isn't on any good faith editor's watchlist -- but whenever you google anything, its Wikipedia article is still the first substantive hit you'll get. And I find myself increasingly content, or even eager, to delete and draftify because of that.—S Marshall T/C 19:55, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I do understand that. I just think the right way to go about that is to get consensus behind you and change the rules rather than letting the court system make the rules. That's my sense of government no matter where it is. And I know I've added to your frustration over the years. I don't mean for it to be taken personally, I just wanted to express where I'm at. Thanks. Hobit (talk) 20:54, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

    I don't participate much there, but it's not clear what is being misconstrued in your view. I will note that inclusion has the advantage in no-CONSENSUS policy, but exclusion has the advantage that we have been able to agree on an exclusion policy in NOT, but never an inclusion policy (only a guideline). On top of that it seems, pretty clear that large swaths of the pedia are not improving. (And on a side note, I noticed recently that there is a true crime episode scandale! from the life of a famous person, which today the event alone would get a whole separate article in seconds but it happened long before Wikipedia so apparently no need - does that make the pedia a random collection of newsy stuff, I wonder (and don't ask me, I won't name, names :)) Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:48, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

@Hobit: I share your frustration, but from the opposite point-of-view: I feel like there are too many knee-jerk "keeps", rather than "deletes". The truth is probably that we're both right: there are too many knee-jerk !votes, both keep and delete. But I just !voted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georgetown Bagelry, and that's more in line with what I see at AFDs: advertisements for business being kept willy-nilly. I guess it's my own confirmation bias at play.

I've come to think the whole endeavor is folly, though. For all the editor-hours put into AFD and DRV, we are arguing over whether to keep or delete less than one-tenth of one percent (<0.1%) of the articles. If all the articles at AFD were kept, or all deleted, it wouldn't even be noticeable, one way or the other. When there are 6 million articles, the entire notion that we are going to discuss whether to keep or delete articles one by one is ridiculously unrealistic. I would support a radical overhaul of the entire system by which we decide the minimum standard for a stand-alone page, to something that is more effective at filtering out cruft from encyclopedic material. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 17:55, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I will be watching Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georgetown Bagelry intently as a real-world example of what we were arguing about at Wikipedia talk:Notability#Local coverage. I could see it either way, but we definitely want to have one standard which is applied evenly across all similar cases, not the currently ambiguously worded WP:AUD which doesn't make it clear at all whether The Washington Post should be considered a local source for DC businesses. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:45, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

See also: 1, 2. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 22:59, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• People keep trying to recreate Nupedia – the predecessor to Wikipedia which had lots of experts, process and careful reviews but, because of them, got very little done. Wikipedia is successful because it is accommodating and accepting of imperfection. Perfectionism and the corresponding deletionism is foolish and counter-productive. For some understanding of these issues, please see a book which I picked up recently: Messy – "a compelling case for the creative benefits of disorganisation, improvisation and confusion". Andrew🐉(talk) 18:35, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• I think of Wikipedia as an evolutionary process. It needs neophilia, improvisation, ad hoc decision-making, spur of the moment choices, like any other evolutionary process. But it also needs selection -- Wiki-predators that cull the weakest content, improving average article quality thereby. Deletionists might think of themselves as T-rexes; ARS members probably prefer to think of them as bubonic plague; but whichever they are, we need them too.—S Marshall T/C 22:48, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

My closing script seems to be broken. Is this just me? Does anyone else have a working script I could use if the need arises? `Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:06, 31 July 2020 (UTC)