Slim inconsistency on BLP? Options

[Doc glasgow]

I'm wondering what SlimVirgin's game is.

She's objecting strongly to the "default to delete" close on the [[David Shankbone]] afd. Indeed she dresses down the closing admin stating: "The policy and best practice is default to keep on borderline notables, unless the subject has requested deletion". Apparently default to keeping is "best practice".

This is really strange.

Because I worked with Slim not that long ago to argue for a "default to delete".

Indeed, she took my ideas and made a concrete proposal that: "When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the default presumption in favor of retention is reversed. That is, if there is no consensus to keep the BLP in the opinion of the closing admin, the article will be deleted. See here.

In that debate she stated that "I believe we have a responsibility to do this, both to the project and to the people affected by it".

Now, I suppose one might argue that her proposal never actually became policy. But how can she now say that a "default to keep" is "best" practice?

Why is she now seeking to enforce a practice she once held to be irresponsible?

Sarah, I'm guessing you read this, so I'll be interested in your response?

[anthony]

I'm wondering what SlimVirgin's game is.

She's objecting strongly to the "default to delete" close on the [[David Shankbone]] afd. Indeed she dresses down the closing admin stating: "The policy and best practice is default to keep on borderline notables, unless the subject has requested deletion". Apparently default to keeping is "best practice".

This is really strange.

Because I worked with Slim not that long ago to argue for a "default to delete".

Indeed, she took my ideas and made a concrete proposal that: "When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the default presumption in favor of retention is reversed. That is, if there is no consensus to keep the BLP in the opinion of the closing admin, the article will be deleted. See here.

In that debate she stated that "I believe we have a responsibility to do this, both to the project and to the people affected by it".

Now, I suppose one might argue that her proposal never actually became policy. But how can she now say that a "default to keep" is "best" practice?

Why is she now seeking to enforce a practice she once held to be irresponsible?

Sarah, I'm guessing you read this, so I'll be interested in your response?

This is a relatively rare situation where the subject of the biography has explicitly come out and told us that he is not opposed to the article being kept. Thus, I don't see how BLP concerns are relevant to the deletion question. "Shankbone" knows what it means to have a BLP on Wikipedia, and he's fine with it. Why bend over backwards trying to protect him when he doesn't want the protection? Let all the vandals and other miscreants waste their time fighting a battle royale on the one article on Wikipedia with a subject who's okay with having an article. If nothing else, at least they'll have less time to spend vandalizing other articles.

"SlimVirgin"'s wording is a bit troubling, in that it suggests defaulting to keep for a biography on someone who has not "requested deletion" because they don't know they have one (or don't know they can request its deletion). But I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that this is just careless wording, since it contradicts what she has said previously.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Doc glasgow]

I'm wondering what SlimVirgin's game is.

She's objecting strongly to the "default to delete" close on the [[David Shankbone]] afd. Indeed she dresses down the closing admin stating: "The policy and best practice is default to keep on borderline notables, unless the subject has requested deletion". Apparently default to keeping is "best practice".

This is really strange.

Because I worked with Slim not that long ago to argue for a "default to delete".

Indeed, she took my ideas and made a concrete proposal that: "When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the default presumption in favor of retention is reversed. That is, if there is no consensus to keep the BLP in the opinion of the closing admin, the article will be deleted. See here.

In that debate she stated that "I believe we have a responsibility to do this, both to the project and to the people affected by it".

Now, I suppose one might argue that her proposal never actually became policy. But how can she now say that a "default to keep" is "best" practice?

Why is she now seeking to enforce a practice she once held to be irresponsible?

Sarah, I'm guessing you read this, so I'll be interested in your response?

This is a relatively rare situation where the subject of the biography has explicitly come out and told us that he is not opposed to the article being kept. Thus, I don't see how BLP concerns are relevant to the deletion question. "Shankbone" knows what it means to have a BLP on Wikipedia, and he's fine with it. Why bend over backwards trying to protect him when he doesn't want the protection?

"SlimVirgin"'s wording is a bit troubling, in that it suggests defaulting to keep for a biography on someone who has not "requested deletion" because they don't know they have one (or don't know they can request its deletion). But I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that this is just careless wording, since it contradicts what she has said previously.

The original policy proposal, that Slim supported, made the desires of the subject irrelevant. See the "whether at the request of the subject or not" bit.

The point was that wikipedia ought to remove marginally notable BLPs, unless there was a consensus to keep them, because wikipedia was structurally incapable to protecting and maintaining such subjects. The policy had nothing to do with what the subject of a particular article wanted -because that got us into a subjective mind field, and left the door open for people saying "I'll demand deletion unless you whitewash". Consistently, Wikipedia has always ignored people who have a desire or willingness to have an article on themselves.

Subjects should not be treated to the BLP horrorshow, and they should not have to opt out, opt in, or be personally involved in any way. As the Danny Brandt demonstrated, that type of interaction is not healthy for Wikipedia or its subjects/victims.

I've never encountered Shankbone, have no quarrel with him, and care little what he wants. Wikipedia is structurally incapable of maintaining BLPs of the marginally notable, and therefore morally and pragmatically should not keep them - particularly if there's not a consensus of users thinking they are needed.

Slim once believed this too - or so I thought.

This post has been edited by Doc glasgow:

[anthony]

The point was that wikipedia ought to remove marginally notable BLPs, unless there was a consensus to keep them, because wikipedia was structurally incapable to protecting and maintaining such subjects.

I've never encountered Shankbone, have no quarrel with him, and care little what he wants. Wikipedia is structurally incapable of maintaining BLPs of the marginally notable, and therefore morally and pragmatically should not keep them - particularly if there's not a consensus of users thinking they are needed.

By that argument they should remove everything.

I'd go one step less. They should remove everything except articles on subjects who have opted-in. I see nothing morally wrong with that.

Alternatively, they could build a structure that's capable of maintaining articles. You know, one with accounts and usernames and trust mechanisms and hierarchies.

I'm sure an article on [[David Shankbone]] would have vandalism fixed a lot quicker than one on the vast majority of "more than marginally notable" individuals. This has the dual advantage of wasting the time of both Shankbone proponents and Shankbone opponents. Shankbone might only be "marginally notable" (*), but he draws a lot of editor interest. I'm sure the watchlist on [[David Shankbone]] is 10-20 times as big as that of the median BLP.

(*) Which I'll agree to for the sake of the argument, as I have no idea whether this is true or not.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Kelly Martin]

Slim's actions here are plainly political. She has no real care for what Wikipedia's policy is, and will, without a moment's thought, alter her position, no matter how strongly felt previously, if doing so will gain her political favor.

That's all there is to see here. Anyone who is surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.

[CharlotteWebb]

Ought to fix the first url as it has two "http://" at the front.

Even if there is a generally accepted policy to default to delete on "no consensus" BLPFD's, I'd argue that there is no practical reason to apply it when the subject has unmistakably and ad nauseum gone on record to say he doesn't really care.

While I realize he didn't say "yes, keep it" (at face value at least, putting aside all speculations and second-guessing as to his thoughts)... he does seem to have opted out of any prerogative he might have had to opt-out, or at least given sufficient opportunity he has declined to exercise it.

In most cases we don't know what the subject wants because most people don't have (or have but do not take) the opportunity to make their thoughts known while they are up for deletion, and even if they do register an account and say "yes, delete me", we usually cannot be sure they are who they say (remember the Rod Dreher shenanigans).

So WP might just use the principles of "if we aren't 100% sure they're 'OK with' having an article, we assume they don't want an article", and "if there is a protracted disagreement about what to do with the article, their opinion (or presumed opinion, in absentia) will take precedence", hence "default to delete" for most BLPFD tie-breakers would be a reasonably fair solution.

However as most of Shankbone's exploits (okay maybe that's a distasteful choice of words) have been on WP using the same account, and he has uploaded more than enough photos to prove the rest of them, there is no reasonable doubt that he speaks as the subject of this article... however he has not objected to it, and in fact offers no clear preference which might otherwise trump a "no-consensus" deadlock.

So given this level of apathy I would honestly and with a straight face say let's ignore the special BLPFD procedures for the time being and treat it as any other article (though this advice might be a bit too optimistic given his status as a polarizing figure, but whatever...), at least until he and/or the WP "community" reaches some clear position regarding the article.

I realize this isn't what Slim said, and neither do I mean to claim this is what she meant.

I'm just saying "default to what the subject wants" (when there is otherwise no consensus) is not much more revolutionary than "default to delete because we presume that's what the subject would want if had some idea how bad WP really is".

"Don't default to anything when even the subject doesn't know what the subject wants" shouldn't be terribly earth-shattering either, I don't think.

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb:

[gomi]

Sarah, I'm guessing you read this, so I'll be interested in your response?

The "last active" date and time of any member is available in their profile. In Hell/Slim/Sarah/Linda's case, it was 5 October. So she reads regularly, if not frequently, even when she's not posting. However, she only takes on arguments she thinks she can win, and I'll guess this isn't one of them.

[Cedric]

This is really strange.

No, it isn't. Not even remotely. As Kelly Martin suggests above, you simply have not been paying attention. Any alliance or collaboration with Stroynaya lasts only as long as she deems it useful, or deems that it has that potential.

Why is she now seeking to enforce a practice she once held to be irresponsible?

Sarah, I'm guessing you read this, so I'll be interested in your response?

Expect Linda to respond on or about the 12th of Never.

[Random832]

This is really strange.

You're new here, aren't you?

(That said, I do think the BLP delete arguments here are specious. He clearly wants the article; so in that regard it can be his problem. The arguments about self-promotion and bias are a bit more genuine)

This post has been edited by Random832:

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Slim's actions here are plainly political. She has no real care for what Wikipedia's policy is, and will, without a moment's thought, alter her position, no matter how strongly felt previously, if doing so will gain her political favor.

That's all there is to see here. Anyone who is surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.

While I generally agree, it should also be remembered that in addition to simply clawing her way up the WP hierarchy, SV is also interested in pushing POV, so she may have an agenda here that relates to that. Check to see what recent BLPs she has authored or edited.

[Jon Awbrey]

Moderator's note: In the original title of this thread, the word "inconsistency" was misspelled. We apologize for any confusion that may result.

"Slim inconsistancy [sic] on BLP?"

O swear not by the moon, th'inconsistant† moon
That monthly changes in her circled orb …

[Picture removed, no one needed to see that - Selina]

I'm sure there's a m☺☻n i c ☼ n out there somewhere, but I didn't have time to go looking for it.

Ja Ja (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif)

† Sorry, Bill …

This post has been edited by Selina:

[grievous]

Slim's actions here are plainly political. She has no real care for what Wikipedia's policy is, and will, without a moment's thought, alter her position, no matter how strongly felt previously, if doing so will gain her political favor.

That's all there is to see here. Anyone who is surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.

While I generally agree, it should also be remembered that in addition to simply clawing her way up the WP hierarchy, SV is also interested in pushing POV, so she may have an agenda here that relates to that. Check to see what recent BLPs she has authored or edited.

Slim extensively edited much of the puffery that was in the Shankbone article. This is what has primarily precipitated her participation in this discussion and whose deletion has given her "pause for thought" about her original support for the "default to delete" change in policy.

Scratching Shanker's back seems to be more evidence for the conspiracy theory that she's part of the propaganda effort on Wikipedia by the Israeli government.

This post has been edited by grievous:

[gomi]

"Slim inconsistancy [sic] on BLP?"

O swear not by the moon, th'inconsistant† moon
That monthly changes in her circled orb …

Let me be he first to say that it's nice to have Jon back.

[Lar]

"Slim inconsistancy [sic] on BLP?"

O swear not by the moon, th'inconsistant† moon
That monthly changes in her circled orb …

Let me be he first to say that it's nice to have Jon back.

You're (at least) second. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) Plus, I already got insulted back. Top that, bobbleheaded one. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[Doc glasgow]

"Slim inconsistancy [sic] on BLP?"

O swear not by the moon, th'inconsistant† moon
That monthly changes in her circled orb …

What shall I swear by?

Do not swear at all;


(Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

"Slim inconsistancy [sic] on BLP?"

O swear not by the moon, th'inconsistant† moon
That monthly changes in her circled orb …

Let me be he first to say that it's nice to have Jon back.

You're (at least) second. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) Plus, I already got insulted back. Top that, bobbleheaded one. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Insult?

How wikli they 4get wut a real insult is like …

Anyway, the only thing that really drug me bak — aside from the OC need to comment on wut pour spielers u r — is the fact that some Staff Infection seems to have killed all the links bak to WR that I've posted allover the Web by way of signature links to my WR ³icle.

Wut's ↑ with that?

Have you WeiRdos gotten even more para-nerd than you used 2 bee that someone might be Board Enuff to bee tracking your online beehaviour?

Siriusly !!!

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[Somey]

Wut's ↑ with that?

Have you WeiRdos gotten even more para-nerd than you used 2 bee that someone might be Board Enuff to bee tracking your online beehaviour?

Sorry about that - we were having a problem with Spamborgs, or human-assisted spambots. At one point we were getting about 20 per day, and one of the best tell-tale signs of spamborginess is the new member's signature, which (for a spambot/borg) always contains a link to a dubious commercial website of some kind. So, we decided to reduce the problem by hiding the user profiles from non-members.

It might be time to reconsider that solution, since the problem does seem to have subsided, and I can't prove conclusively that hiding the profiles was the key factor. However, if you've got a lot of external links to your profile, another thing I could do is set up a server redirect from that URL to some other page on the site - and I could do that for anyone else who is similarly inconvenienced. (Within reason!) Just let me know the preferred destination URL - and if you want to get fancy with it, you could send me a simple HTML page that we could keep in a separate folder, subject to approval of course (i.e., no porn, libel, adverts, viruses, or references to the Nazis).

[Lar]

(i.e., no porn, libel, adverts, viruses, or references to the Nazis).

Libertarian references are OK though????

Insult?

I'm sorry! It was a slow news day so I made shit up. (you know, kinda how I make CU stuff up, or so they say)

[Somey]

Libertarian references are OK though????

Only if it's to point out how awful they all are... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

Seriously, though, it depends on how you define "libertarian." There are political, social, and cultural "flavors" of libertarianism, and we're mostly concerned with the last of those three, right? And of course, there's also the Randroid problem, but (for example) we've allowed Kurt Weber to keep Randroid links in his signature for months without complaining too bitterly. After all, it's important for people reading his posts to know where he's coming from.

Another possibility for someone like Jon here would be to simply save the member profile page (which you can see whilst logged in) as a static HTML file, upload it to a public/profile folder of some sort, and then redirect to that. We might have to upload new versions every time he changed something, of course, but hopefully that won't be a regular occurrence. We could also redirect offsite, but then people would get "suspicious redirect" warnings, which are annoying.

[everyking]

I think this is a strange discussion to be having. Shankbone is officially neutral about having an article, and of course we all know he really wants the article--either way, there's no basis for BLP concerns. Personally, I think it's worth considering a "default to delete" provision for the handful of people who actually complain about their articles, but why would anyone want to apply it to someone who is fully aware of his BLP and completely unconcerned about it? What I see here is simple deletionism dressed up as a BLP fixation. I don't think Shankbone should have an article because I think he's non-notable, but I would rather see his article kept than see people abusing the BLP policy to advance a deletionist agenda.

[Jon Awbrey]

Wut's ↑ with that?

Have you WeiRdos gotten even more para-nerd than you used 2 bee that someone might be Board Enuff to bee tracking your online beehaviour?

Sorry about that — we were having a problem with Spamborgs, or human-assisted spambots. At one point we were getting about 20 per day, and one of the best tell-tale signs of spamborginess is the new member's signature, which (for a spambot/borg) always contains a link to a dubious commercial website of some kind. So, we decided to reduce the problem by hiding the user profiles from non-members.

It might be time to reconsider that solution, since the problem does seem to have subsided, and I can't prove conclusively that hiding the profiles was the key factor. However, if you've got a lot of external links to your profile, another thing I could do is set up a server redirect from that URL to some other page on the site — and I could do that for anyone else who is similarly inconvenienced. (Within reason!) Just let me know the preferred destination URL — and if you want to get fancy with it, you could send me a simple HTML page that we could keep in a separate folder, subject to approval of course (i.e., no porn, libel, adverts, viruses, or references to the Nazis).

Huh? I was trying to do WR a φavor by φunneling more φlies by way of its parler — it's no skin off my gnosis if they get a WAKE UP buzzer and WARNING away klaxons when they get here.



(IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif)

[Somey]

Personally, I think it's worth considering a "default to delete" provision for the handful of people who actually complain about their articles, but why would anyone want to apply it to someone who is fully aware of his BLP and completely unconcerned about it?

Because people change their minds, once they see what can actually happen?

What I see here is simple deletionism dressed up as a BLP fixation. I don't think Shankbone should have an article because I think he's non-notable, but I would rather see his article kept than see people abusing the BLP policy to advance a deletionist agenda.

I wouldn't call it a deletionist agenda - it's a maintainability agenda. If you personally believe that Wikipedia will always have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit, and reverting the preponderance of those that are malicious, then yeah, maybe you're right. But they're not going to, or at least the history of the internet so far strongly suggests that they're not going to.

[anthony]

What I see here is simple deletionism dressed up as a BLP fixation. I don't think Shankbone should have an article because I think he's non-notable, but I would rather see his article kept than see people abusing the BLP policy to advance a deletionist agenda.

I wouldn't call it a deletionist agenda - it's a maintainability agenda. If you personally believe that Wikipedia will always have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit, and reverting the preponderance of those that are malicious, then yeah, maybe you're right. But they're not going to, or at least the history of the internet so far strongly suggests that they're not going to.

Maintainability is the usual argument used by deletionists. But in this case it falls hopelessly short. Wikipedia will have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to [[David Shankbone]] longer than they'll have vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to, say, [[Ben Cardin]], "the junior United States Senator from Maryland".

If you're going to delete everything that's not maintainable, fine, but then you've gotta delete everything.

Or just have a select group of trusted (and identity-confirmed) individuals designated as "maintainers" who are responsible for approving or disapproving every edit before it becomes viewable to people who haven't logged in. Any article with zero "active maintainers" gets deleted, at least temporarily until a few "maintainers" show up.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[everyking]

Personally, I think it's worth considering a "default to delete" provision for the handful of people who actually complain about their articles, but why would anyone want to apply it to someone who is fully aware of his BLP and completely unconcerned about it?

Because people change their minds, once they see what can actually happen?

Well, if David ever changes his mind, I promise I'll still vote to delete his article then.

I wouldn't call it a deletionist agenda - it's a maintainability agenda. If you personally believe that Wikipedia will always have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit, and reverting the preponderance of those that are malicious, then yeah, maybe you're right. But they're not going to, or at least the history of the internet so far strongly suggests that they're not going to.

I don't think theories of future maintenance capacity should influence our decisions about what to do now. If I'm going to look at the long-term, I look at the future benefit of recording things now and consider the possibility of a "ghost town" Wikipedia to be basically irrelevant. The history of the internet suggests that Wikipedia and sites like it will only become even more popular and important in the future, although of course an individual project like Wikipedia could be eclipsed by another with similar aims. In that case I would imagine that enough people would still hang around Wikipedia to cope with the vandalism--consider that vandals are the least committed Wikipedia editors of all, and therefore if the site sank in popularity the vandal population would likely suffer the most. You'd only have a problem if the number of highly committed editors dropped more than the number of vandals--then you might have to disable anonymous editing or something like that.

[Jon Awbrey]

On Indefinite Maintainability, see here.

They may not have a clue why it's happening, but they sure see it happening clearly enough.

My guess — the foxes can munch the bunnies faster than the bunnies can hunch.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Lar]

Maintainability is the usual argument used by deletionists. But in this case it falls hopelessly short. Wikipedia will have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to [[David Shankbone]] longer than they'll have vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to, say, [[Ben Cardin]], "the junior United States Senator from Maryland".

Volunteers will work on what they want to work on. But if we can only maintain a limited number of articles, we should maintain the important ones. Somehow, in the grand scheme of things I have this sneaking suspicion that "the junior United States Senator from Maryland" might be slightly more important than David Shankbone. Could be wrong, of course.

But as long as that article is around, it will be competing for scarce resources. Nuke it and all the other marginally notable stuff likely to need heavy attention, so they're not on the menu of choices(1) when volunteers choose what to work on.

That's not a deletionist argument, it's a pragmatic one.

1 - Imperfect analogy to menus but most of you will get what I'm saying I am sure.

[Doc glasgow]

I think this is a strange discussion to be having. Shankbone is officially neutral about having an article, and of course we all know he really wants the article--either way, there's no basis for BLP concerns. Personally, I think it's worth considering a "default to delete" provision for the handful of people who actually complain about their articles, but why would anyone want to apply it to someone who is fully aware of his BLP and completely unconcerned about it? What I see here is simple deletionism dressed up as a BLP fixation. I don't think Shankbone should have an article because I think he's non-notable, but I would rather see his article kept than see people abusing the BLP policy to advance a deletionist agenda.

Everyking, you should know better.

Accusing people of knee-jerk deletionism does not wash here. I am not a deletionist on issues outside BLP. (Indeed, how could I be, when I wrote such a non-notable trivial article as this.

Consider further that many who would be called fairly radical inclusionists have been among the BLP concerned (including your old pall Phil Sandifer and Tony Sidaway).

No, we actually have real moral concerns that go beyond what we want to see on a website.

What Brandt or Shankbone personally want is beside the point. Asking people does not upscale, is inclnsistant, and fails to answer the "why should we wait until someone objects to stop opening them to libels" question.

Wikipedia has tens of thousands of low notability bios. Wikipedia can't maintain them to an acceptable level and thus people get hurt. Wikipedia needs to reduce the number of low-notability bios because Wikipedia cannot offer adequate protection and quality control to these people.

Disagree with that by all means, but stop thinking you can assume bad faith, tar people with a deletionist label, and win the argument by default.

[Lar]

You'd only have a problem if the number of highly committed editors dropped more than the number of vandals--then you might have to disable anonymous editing or something like that.

You do a lot of work on unpopular wikis with small numbers of users that want to maintain them, do you?

Didn't think so.

Many small wikis nowadays have turned off IP editing completely. The small ones I help with, I have a script that nukes stuff I think is bad and blocks the person who posted it, indef, in one key stroke.

AGF my ass.

Disagree with that by all means, but stop thinking you can assume bad faith, tar people with a deletionist label, and win the argument by default.

You're talking with Everyking. Just in case you forgot.

[anthony]

Maintainability is the usual argument used by deletionists. But in this case it falls hopelessly short. Wikipedia will have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to [[David Shankbone]] longer than they'll have vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to, say, [[Ben Cardin]], "the junior United States Senator from Maryland".

Volunteers will work on what they want to work on. But if we can only maintain a limited number of articles, we should maintain the important ones.

No argument there. You should only maintain the most important articles to you. I (if I were feeling Sisyphean) should only maintain the most important articles to me. Each person should only maintain the most important articles to that person (if they feel like engaging in the Sisyphean task, anyway).

In fact, I think the biggest problem with your argument is you're expecting people to do otherwise - to maintain articles that *aren't* important to them. Like the one on [[Ben Cardin]], "the junior United States Senator from Maryland". I can think of a million articles more important than that one to me. Including quite a few that have been deleted for lack of notability. I'd rather have an article on each one of my Android apps.

Somehow, in the grand scheme of things I have this sneaking suspicion that "the junior United States Senator from Maryland" might be slightly more important than David Shankbone. Could be wrong, of course.

Do you think *everyone* feels that way? Do you think "the junior United States Senator from Maryland" is more important than David Shankbone, to *everyone*? What about [[Enos Nkala]], "one of the founders of the Zimbabwe African National Union"? Or [[Fort Carillon]], "a large 18th-century fort built at a narrows near the south end of Lake Champlain in upstate New York in the United States"?

Is the "importance" of an article something that's globally definable? How would one go about calculating it? Who counts, just people who speak English (since it's the English Wikipedia), or should the English Wikipedia have articles on things that are important to Mandarin speakers, because there are more of them than there are of us?

Do you think there are enough resources *right now* to maintain the article on "the junior United States Senator from Maryland"? If not, should the articles on [[Enos Nkala]] and [[Fort Carillon]] be deleted to make way for it? You're going to have to do an awful lot of deletion if you want anything approaching maintainability. Maybe I slightly exaggerate with "delete everything", but not by much. Wikipedia would certainly become a lot more "US-centric" (or maybe China-centric if you want to measure "importance" on some sort of utilitarian grounds without regard to language).

But as long as that article is around, it will be competing for scarce resources. Nuke it and all the other marginally notable stuff likely to need heavy attention, so they're not on the menu of choices(1) when volunteers choose what to work on.

I'm sorry, I completely disagree with that. Very few people hit "random page" to find an article to give their attention to. Further, you neglect the fact that most of the "resources" devoted to the [[David Shankbone]] article are the kinds of "resources" other articles are better off without.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Somey]

I don't think theories of future maintenance capacity should influence our decisions about what to do now. If I'm going to look at the long-term, I look at the future benefit of recording things now and consider the possibility of a "ghost town" Wikipedia to be basically irrelevant.

That's the problem right there, isn't it? Once the real encyclopedias are driven out of business by freeware, and once people lose interest in doing it for free themselves, what's left? Opinion, innuendo, advertising, propaganda - exactly the things most people who call themselves "Wikipedians" claim they despise.

Meanwhile, the idea that people who want "maintainability" are really "deletionists" in disguise is probably valid in many cases, but let's face it, that's only because AfD's are often the only feasible avenue for getting rid of anything. Wikipedia doesn't do mass-deletions, hardly ever does mass page-protections, removal of significant amounts of content within an article is usually reverted (no matter how obscene, politically damaging, culturally-insensitive, etc. it is), and the "notability" standards are ridiculously low compared to a real published encyclopedia. So what else are you gonna do?

The history of the internet suggests that Wikipedia and sites like it will only become even more popular and important in the future, although of course an individual project like Wikipedia could be eclipsed by another with similar aims.

Or better aims...

In that case I would imagine that enough people would still hang around Wikipedia to cope with the vandalism--consider that vandals are the least committed Wikipedia editors of all, and therefore if the site sank in popularity the vandal population would likely suffer the most.

How are you measuring "popularity"? If you're measuring it in terms of number-of-edits, that's not what vandals care about. As long as WP gets preferential Google rankings, there will be "vandals," whether or not there are WP'ers willing to sit around all night reverting them.

You'd only have a problem if the number of highly committed editors dropped more than the number of vandals--then you might have to disable anonymous editing or something like that.

That would be a practical certainty for a website that understood the meaning of the word "responsible."

[everyking]

Maintainability is the usual argument used by deletionists. But in this case it falls hopelessly short. Wikipedia will have a vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to [[David Shankbone]] longer than they'll have vast army of admins and RC patrollers looking at every single edit to, say, [[Ben Cardin]], "the junior United States Senator from Maryland".

Volunteers will work on what they want to work on. But if we can only maintain a limited number of articles, we should maintain the important ones. Somehow, in the grand scheme of things I have this sneaking suspicion that "the junior United States Senator from Maryland" might be slightly more important than David Shankbone. Could be wrong, of course.

But as long as that article is around, it will be competing for scarce resources. Nuke it and all the other marginally notable stuff likely to need heavy attention, so they're not on the menu of choices(1) when volunteers choose what to work on.

That's not a deletionist argument, it's a pragmatic one.

1 - Imperfect analogy to menus but most of you will get what I'm saying I am sure.

Oh, analogies! Imagine a community with lots of unused farmland. Some enterprising farmers want to start utilizing the extra farmland, but the authorities drive them away and have fences built around the unused farmland. After all, if the farmers exploit the new land, they might not sufficiently care for the more productive land they already have... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

I can't look at this as a serious argument. You're assuming scarcity of resources, but having more content does not diminish resources--actually it creates resources by encouraging people to participate (it brings new people in, and it encourages existing contributors to work more, which is analogous to the expanded economy you'd get in the above scenario if the farmers were given access to the land). Limiting the content to preserve resources will in fact discourage people, thereby diminishing the resources. You're viewing this in terms of time-availability, when you should be looking at it in terms of volunteer incentive. If you cut the incentive, you cut the time-availability too, because the volunteers will say "to hell with you".

[Somey]

Oh, analogies! Imagine a community with lots of unused farmland. Some enterprising farmers want to start utilizing the extra farmland, but the authorities drive them away and have fences built around the unused farmland. After all, if the farmers exploit the new land, they might not sufficiently care for the more productive land they already have... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

That's not a very good analogy. It would be more accurate if the "unused farmland" was a big field of gravel, and the "enterprising farmers" who want to utilize it are all complete strangers and outsiders, and the authorities aren't really building fences around the gravel but are simply saying "play nice and we'll leave you alone." And then most of the enterprising farmers figure out that gravel isn't arable and say "to hell with it," and the rest use the gravel field to build stink-bombs which they then throw at the "community."

You're assuming scarcity of resources, but having more content does not diminish resources--actually it creates resources by encouraging people to participate (it brings new people in, and it encourages existing contributors to work more, which is analogous to the expanded economy you'd get in the above scenario if the farmers were given access to the land).

But that's not what we're seeing in reality, though. Nobody sane would argue that Wikipedia has significantly limited its own content over the past 8 years, but participation is decreasing nevertheless. The maintainability problem is based on the completeness of existing coverage. Eventually you reach the point where everything but the most obscure topics are already covered, people are discouraged from rewriting articles (for obvious reasons), and so people lose interest because they can't contribute - they don't have enough knowledge of obscure, uncovered topics. The people who are still interested for the purpose of defending their existing content from changes made by new entrants will eventually lose interest too - we're seeing that now, in fact.

Limiting the content to preserve resources will in fact discourage people, thereby diminishing the resources. You're viewing this in terms of time-availability, when you should be looking at it in terms of volunteer incentive. If you cut the incentive, you cut the time-availability too, because the volunteers will say "to hell with you".

True, but is there only one way to provide "incentive," namely make it possible for everyone who wants a WP biography to have one? And what happens once everybody has one? WP strongly discourages people from editing their own biographies, remember?

[everyking]

But that's not what we're seeing in reality, though. Nobody sane would argue that Wikipedia has significantly limited its own content over the past 8 years, but participation is decreasing nevertheless. The maintainability problem is based on the completeness of existing coverage. Eventually you reach the point where everything but the most obscure topics are already covered, people are discouraged from rewriting articles (for obvious reasons), and so people lose interest because they can't contribute - they don't have enough knowledge of obscure, uncovered topics. The people who are still interested for the purpose of defending their existing content from changes made by new entrants will eventually lose interest too - we're seeing that now, in fact.

Participation may be decreasing, but I doubt the level of coverage has anything to do with it. Why do people stop editing Wikipedia? Do they often say "well, my work here is done, time to pack it up and go home!" Looking at Wikipedia's content, which to me appears alarmingly insufficient, I can't see how anybody could think there's nothing left to do, except perhaps the most superficial editor who can add only basic facts and is unprepared to do research. It seems to me most people leave Wikipedia because they have a bad experience with it: the administration is monumentally terrible, the community is generally cold and unfriendly, bickering and petty disputes are commonplace, and there are basically no structures to support and encourage editors and thereby create a better editorial environment (attempts have been made, but they were forcibly dismantled long ago). People either get banned or they get "burned out"--they don't run out of stuff to do.

Let's say we deleted all the articles on American politicians except the ones on presidents. Do you suppose the articles on presidents would improve? I think they'd get worse, or at least they wouldn't get any better--people would lose interest in the whole subject area. If you were paying them, you could require them to devote attention to one area or another, but if they're volunteers you need to give them a lot of freedom. The ability to develop a relatively obscure subject area is in fact probably the main hook that draws people deep into the project and turns them into contributors who are devoted enough to actually care about fighting vandalism on a broad scale.

[Milton Roe]

Meanwhile, the idea that people who want "maintainability" are really "deletionists" in disguise is probably valid in many cases, but let's face it, that's only because AfD's are often the only feasible avenue for getting rid of anything. Wikipedia doesn't do mass-deletions, hardly ever does mass page-protections, removal of significant amounts of content within an article is usually reverted (no matter how obscene, politically damaging, culturally-insensitive, etc. it is), and the "notability" standards are ridiculously low compared to a real published encyclopedia. So what else are you gonna do?

Yoiu mean if you were scientific and honest, and had integrity?

It's not like some of these questions could not be addressed epidemiologically. For one thing, there's a category "living people" which has 400,000 entries in a list,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people

As we've noted, these are still-breathing people who at any time were major and minor sports figures (anybody who ever played cricket at the national level anywhere on earth), major and minor entertainers (including actors who have had only bit parts, DJs, and the like), major and minor politicians (Uganda, etc.). Major and minor business figures. Major and minor royalty. Basically if you've ever stood in front of an audience in your life and done anything that was reported in the press anywhere, that's good enough to make you notable. Nevermind that this is most people of normal intelligence who have reached the age of 40.

What we'd like to know is: who watches these bios, including the stubs? The problem with the page-watcher tool is it has a cut-off of "below 30 watchers":

http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py

Otherwise we could use it to find pages not watched by anybody (or one or two people probably ar inactive). Gee, WP is constructed to hide its own vulnerabilities. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif) Okay, so we need to fix this to see how bad the problem is. Some bot needs to run this tool and get a real number for that entire 400,000 group of articles with this cat tag.

You can also use the "pageviews" tool on the people in cat:living people to see how many pageviews each one gets.

http://stats.grok.se/

When you do, you find that there are plenty of BLPs which haven't been seen (pulled up) for months. But this tells you nothing about how many active people are watching them on their watchlist.

Okay, so now what?

Well, a scientist would then do an active intervention-- a stress test. We'd use a compuuuuter to add a tag line to some fraction of all BLPs, which says, in effect, "THIS HERE IS A TAG TO SEE HOW CAREFULLY THIS PAGE IS WATCHED. WHEN YOU SEE IT, PLEASE REVERT IT." The same program collects statistics to see how fast all these changes are fixed. The line has to be something that Cluebot and the like do not "see", and you have to make sure of all this, so the reversion bots don't foul up your stats (since it's quite possible for vandals to spoof them).

This would give you immediate feedback on how well BLPs are protected against vandalism. It could be repeated a number of times (especially if you've only done 4000 BLPs at a time, to give you the standard statistical error) to find out how "true" and reproducable your figure is.

Now, here's the hard part. No matter what your results are, some fraction of Wiki-inclusion warriors will say (after the fact) that they're "good enough." So, in order to prevent this, we need a PRIOR debate on how bad such results need to be, to be "unacceptable." For that to happen, the BLP inclusions have to commit themselves beforehand, to some number (like 50% within 24 hours, and no more than 10% left after 3 days, or something). This weeds out the people who obviously will not pick a line of unacceptability, since they intend to accept anything. This smokes those people out.

Even that is instructive.

Once the people who really don't care have revealed themselves, and everybody ELSE has committed themselves to some quality-level, the line may be drawn. THEN we run the stress test. No ex post facto positions. Science is about making a priori stands and predictions. Place your bets on the table and nobody touches them after the roulette wheel of nature starts.

Now, all this is NOT a difficult thing to do, leaving aside the social conflict. Any developer with access to the MediaWiki software could probaby code it up in a couple of days. But the important part is not to run the test first, and the argument later. You must have the argument first and then run the test. That's how good science works, and it's always shocking.

My guess is that the social resistance would far outweigh the technical difficulty of the project. Else it would have been done already.

[anthony]

Let's say we deleted all the articles on American politicians except the ones on presidents. Do you suppose the articles on presidents would improve?

Hmm...probably. Almost definitely if you deleted all the articles except the ones on American Presidents.

But that kind of massive deletion isn't being proposed anyway.

What we'd like to know is: who watches these bios, including the stubs? The problem with the page-watcher tool is it has a cut-off of "below 30 watchers":

http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py

Thanks for the link. David Shankbone: 51 watchers. Ben Cardin: less than 30 watchers.

[Sarcasticidealist]

Let's say we deleted all the articles on American politicians except the ones on presidents. Do you suppose the articles on presidents would improve?

Hmm...probably. Almost definitely if you deleted all the articles except the ones on American Presidents.

There would certainly be more people involved in the ones on presidents. Whether they would improve or not is a separate question.

[anthony]

Okay, so we need to fix this to see how bad the problem is. Some bot needs to run this tool and get a real number for that entire 400,000 group of articles with this cat tag.

Or 30 bots could watchlist everything (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif).

Let's say we deleted all the articles on American politicians except the ones on presidents. Do you suppose the articles on presidents would improve?

Hmm...probably. Almost definitely if you deleted all the articles except the ones on American Presidents.

There would certainly be more people involved in the ones on presidents. Whether they would improve or not is a separate question.

I know. And I think they would improve. It's largely just speculation, but I think the people who would self-select to continue contributing would tend to be above average contributors. There certainly wouldn't be any real vandalism problems any more. I don't know, it would depend in large part on *why* everything else got deleted. Even that alone throws a wrench into the mix - the fact that such drastic action took place means that someone finally got off their ass and took charge of the situation, and that alone would do wonders.

But that's a nonsequitur. You'd have to delete millions of "less important" articles before you had a significant effect on the "more important" ones. How many articles would you have to delete just to bring the number of watchers of [[Ben Cardin]] to 51 (or, an equivalent to [[Ben Cardin]] which I haven't publicized here right now)? I don't know exactly, but I'm guessing "a whole lot".

This post has been edited by anthony:

[everyking]

Let's say we deleted all the articles on American politicians except the ones on presidents. Do you suppose the articles on presidents would improve?

Hmm...probably. Almost definitely if you deleted all the articles except the ones on American Presidents.

There would certainly be more people involved in the ones on presidents. Whether they would improve or not is a separate question.

I don't agree that there'd be more people involved in those articles, because I don't think people who are barred from editing other politician articles will say "yes sir" and march off to work on the president articles. A few people might, but so many people would quit that it would off-set any gain. If I were in charge, I'd set a goal to have at least three to five separate articles detailing different aspects of the life and career of each president, and I think the main articles would improve as people worked towards that goal.

[anthony]

Let's say we deleted all the articles on American politicians except the ones on presidents. Do you suppose the articles on presidents would improve?

Hmm...probably. Almost definitely if you deleted all the articles except the ones on American Presidents.

There would certainly be more people involved in the ones on presidents. Whether they would improve or not is a separate question.

I don't agree that there'd be more people involved in those articles, because I don't think people who are barred from editing other politician articles will say "yes sir" and march off to work on the president articles. A few people might, but so many people would quit that it would off-set any gain.

Which scenario are we talking about, deletion of all other American politician articles, or deletion of everything except American Presidents? In the former case, you may be right.

In the latter case, you still might be right that the number of participants on the President biographies might go down. But I can't imagine the quality of contributions would go down. If the site's editorship only consisted of people interested in writing biographies of Presidents, and nothing else, I can't imagine it'd be worse than the current hodge-podge of contributors.

There are probably too many contributors to the most recent President articles as is. 550 watchers of [[Richard Nixon]]? There's no way 550 people can contribute to a single article without stepping all over each others toes. That's another fallacy of the deletionists. Having Pokemon fans contributing to articles on important topics isn't even a good thing.

Like you, I don't usually apply inclusionism to BLPs. But this is a rare case where the subject of the BLP doesn't seem to mind. So I don't think the usual arguments for deleting BLPs applies. Yes, people other than David Miller might be libeled in the [[David Shankbone]] article. But then, that's just as likely with *any* article, BLP or not, notable or not, etc. Even moreso, really. As I pointed out, [[David Shankbone]] sported more watchers than whoever that US Senator was that I picked as an example (I don't even remember his name).

This post has been edited by anthony:

[everyking]

Which scenario are we talking about, deletion of all other American politician articles, or deletion of everything except American Presidents? In the former case, you may be right.

In the latter case, you still might be right that the number of participants on the President biographies might go down. But I can't imagine the quality of contributions would go down. If the site's editorship only consisted of people interested in writing biographies of Presidents, and nothing else, I can't imagine it'd be worse than the current hodge-podge of contributors.

There are probably too many contributors to the most recent President articles as is.

The former, although I think the same logic applies to the latter, only it'd be even more severe, because virtually everyone would leave. The quality of the average contribution might increase. If I have 10 workers, and the 8 worst workers quit, then the average quality of the work I'm getting per worker will increase, but the job will still take a lot longer to finish, so what good is that?