Wikipedia:Deletion review/Cool (African philosophy)

The following discussion is preserved as an Archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.

closure endorsed, but the point is moot given that the page now is a redirect. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cool (African philosophy)

The AFD (found here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cool (African philosophy)) was closed by Mailer Diablo as "uhhhhh...no consensus". After reviewing the discussion, I would have closed this as a delete (with a slight merge into Cool (aesthetic)), as the 19 editors who actually cited Wikipedia rules (it's an acknowledged POV fork, it's basically unverified, it's original research) agreed, with the reasons to keep consisting of 2 unfounded and rude speedy keep votes accusing the nominator of bad faith (no actual reason to keep the article), and 4 other fairly unconvincing keep votes (in order: creator of the article, someone who doesn't really get WP:NOR or WP:V, one with no actual reason to keep (just an attempt to defend the two who voted speedy keep), and one that states "worthy of an article", but doesn't say why). Oh, and a joke vote from an anon that says "Such a delightful example of very impressive and quite meaningless gobbledegook should not be lost to mankind".

I would have deleted this, and I think it really should have been closed as such. I'd like to suggest overturn the original 'no consensus' decision and delete. Proto||type 11:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• Can I suggest it's pointless running this debate separately from the below debate about African Aesthetic? David | Talk 12:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

  Am I being dim or isn't this a different article that POV forked its way from the one you mentioned? Proto||type 12:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

  Same article, different article, merged article or whatever, it's essentially the same debate. David | Talk 14:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

• I believe it's useful to discuss this Afd closure, here. It's related, but really a seperate issue. I personally don't agree with closing it as a "no consensus"- consensus was clear that this should not be a seperate article. However, as one involved in the discussion, I realize I'm not neutral on this issue. I'd like people's inputs on whether there is something there other than a "no consensus". Friday (talk) 14:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• PS. My "vote" is overturn and redirect or (less good) delete. Friday (talk) 14:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn and delete. Consensus was there and clear. —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 14:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn and delete, per Proto. The balance of substantive discussion was that this article is straight original research; removing the unsourced text leaves an empty article. It is an acknowledged POV fork, and the only bit worth keeping is the intro, which could go in BJAODN. I can't say I blame Stifle, mind, since the debate was a mess. Just zis Guy you know? 15:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse Closure I'm going to assume, in closer's favor, that he found reason to discount several delete votes. My perception of this request is also altered by its having arisen in response to the related one below. Xoloz 15:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure. AfD may not be a vote but there was clearly no consensus to delete. If in doubt, don't delete. We should rightly be reluctant to throw out the good faith opinions of editors on the grounds that they did not cite a particular rule to justify their decision. David | Talk 16:17, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: Maybe the closer was discounting delete votes for some reason, but we cannot tell this from looking at how it was closed. In tricky cases, I'd really prefer people to explain their reasoning as best they can. Also, due to specific implementation details of the MediaWiki software, deleting and redirecting aren't technically the same thing. This should not mean that we always count delete and merge votes differently - here the reasons given by the merge crowd and the delete crowd had some overlap. I myself am a fence-sitter on the merge/delete issue - ideally, I want the history to be kept in case there's merging to be done. (I already attempted some merging) The thing there was clearly no consensus for was this continuing to be an independant article, and it would be a shame to close it by keeping it seperate. Friday (talk) 17:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete both, of course. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:11, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure. There were also the ones who wanted this merged, and unless they say otherwise they count against deletion. This was a messy AFD, and a "no consensus" closure does seem within reasonable bounds. Sjakkalle (Check!) 05:54, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure Computerjoe's talk 07:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn and delete based on WP:V and WP:RS issues. FCYTravis 16:59, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure Guettarda 02:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure because I think the "no consensus" finding is pretty reasonable, and because I think there should be a much higher standard to overturn a "no consensus" or "keep" decision than to overturn a deletion.Cheapestcostavoider 03:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn and delete per Proto and JzG. I should say that I disagree with Cheapestcostavoider; I think deletion review ought only to bear out what the community thinks ought to have been the disposition of a given AfD (in view of the comments already made at the AfD page), irrespective of what decision the community contemplates overturning and irrespective of the discretion of the closing admin (that is, except in such cases as DRV is unclear, the decision of the original closing admin ought to be wholly discounted). Dbiv, inter al., is certainly correct that our presumption is generally toward "keep", and that we ougntn't to discount "keep" "votes" that raise valid arguments but fail to include an otherwise pro forma WP:XYZ reference, but I think that it is eminently clear that the "delete" position is supported, in any event, by stronger reasoning. I do think a "no consensus" closure seems reasonable (and I'd expressed prior to the close of the AfD that I was altogether happy not to have to be the one to sort through the mess), and, so, were the standard of review abuse of discretion, for example, I would endorse closure. It is my belief that DRV ought to constitute a de novo review (not of the actual deletion question, in most cases, but only of the proper adjudgment to have been made apropos of the consensus developed in response to that question), and so I think it is appropriate for us to conclude that "delete" was in order here. Joe 03:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
  • It's interesting that you believe DRV should involve itself in de novo review, but ample precedent provides that this is not what we are here to do. DRV is not to be used to reargue a deletion debate. Xoloz 17:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I think the deletion review should absolutely be conducted under an abuse of discretion/clearly erroneous standard for decisions to keep with deletions reviewed de novo. As I've said in the past, this would allow for a decision to be overturned where the administrator did something like overlook a demonstrated copyvio or ignored a unanimous consensus in favor of deletion. Otherwise the presumption in favor of keeping an article means little to nothing and we may as well let people re-nominate articles immediately after closure, which would obviously be a terrible policy. You should only get one bite at the apple for deletion.Cheapestcostavoider 18:28, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment With respect to Xoloz's comment, I intended to make clear that I do not believe DRV should recapitulate and open anew the deletion debate; it should open anew how properly the deletion ought to have been closed (perhaps a distinction without a difference, but I think not). We should review the initial AfD in order to determine what consensus, if any, had developed, irrespective of the decision of the closing admin (although Cheapest certainly raises valid arguments in favor of the contrary position; in the end, I think our assumptions of good faith must lead us to believe that DRV would not be abused in the fashion of which Cheapest writes, though certainly this may be pie-in-the-sky thinking on my part). Joe 20:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Joe's argument here is much better than Xoloz's, for practical reasons. If we don't use DRV to try to find the best answer to an afd, it's not very useful. The "no consensus" is not unreasonable- it's definitely the easiest answer. But, the question here is, can we do better? Can we analyze more carefully and find a better answer? By saying DRV is only about blatant mistakes in closing, we're not doing the best we can for our content. By placing a high burden to changing an Afd closure, we're making the whole system far more random than it ought to be. We're basically saying, whichever admin happens to come along at the right time and close the debate gets far more weight to their opinion than to anyone else's. I fail to see how anyone could argue that this randomness is a good thing compared to closure by consensus of multiple editors. In this case, it may not matter- this DRV looks like a "no consensus". But as a matter of principle, I do not believe for a second that the opinion of the person who happened to close the Afd should get more weight than anyone else's. Friday (talk) 14:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure christ this is turning into a fucking clown parade. - FrancisTyers 16:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

  Hmm. The closest thing I see here to clowning are unhelpful comments like yours. Is there any meaning we can glean from your remark? My best guess is that you appear to be saying "This is complicated and time-consuming, let's not bother with it." If that's how you feel, fine, nobody's making you participate in the deletion review. But why make disparaging remarks about people who think there might be a better answer here than just slapping on a "no consensus"? Friday (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

  I find Francis Tyers' comments more enlightening than Zoe's somewhat glib "of course" comment accompanying her vote -- as though it's a no-brainer, when, clearly, the votes thus far indicate otherwise. "Clown parade" in my book in the sense that the "African philosophy" "African aesthetic" DRs on this page are because a group of editors decided to make a mockery of the AfD process and Wiki procedures, completely circumventing both to accomplish illegal obliterations of two articles and, in the second case, making the title of one a redirect to a wholly inappropriate subject. The result is a title related to a complex aspect of traditional African cultural values redirects the reader to an article on Western pop culture. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. From the look of things (including the vote so far, which seems to support FT's view), I'd say his assessment is certainly closer to the mark. deeceevoice 16:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure I almost wrote, "At this point who cares?" But I've come to believe this is an important matter on procedural grounds. The precipitous deletion of this article by User: Zoe -- just as in the case of "African aesthetic" -- should not be upheld. It was accomplished without discussion or proper process, in defiance an AfD finding. Admins should not be encouraged to do as Zoe has done -- defy the official result of an AfD, going on to delete the contents of the page -- and then, in this case, making it a redirect to a wholly inappropriate article. Bad business that. Endorse closure. Deeceevoice 17:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

  Deeceevoice, I don't understand - you want Cool (African philosophy) and African aesthetic to both be kept, as separate articles? I can't agree with doing anything on purely procedural grounds - procedures exist to serve the goal of writing an encyclopedia, not to supersede it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say that. The article should not have been deleted, and it certainly should not have been merged with "Cool (aesthetic)." Ideally, IMO, the article text should be merged with "African aesthetic," once the undelete is accomplished. It certainly has no business being merged with an article on Western pop culture. deeceevoice 18:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

So, if it should be merged "once the undelete is accomplished," why not skip the undelete, and just merge the text? Do you just need a copy of it? I don't care at all about what should have happened, only about where we go from here. Let's not stand on ceremony. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

• We already know for sure that the deletion of this by Zoe is not going to stand, no matter how the DRV comes out. That's a done deal. Shortly after she deleted it, I asked her to undelete, and she did, remember? Bringing up what you see as past wrongdoings isn't helpful to us moving forward. Friday (talk) 17:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

  Zoe may have undeleted the article, but it is still blanked. Further, it continues as a redirect to "Cool (aesthetic)." Nothing whatsoever has been done to correct that egregious act. deeceevoice 18:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

  The redirect is not a matter to discuss here. It's being discussed on the talk page. Friday (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn and delete (1) Out of 29 votes, only 6 voted for "keep". (2)Article is a POV fork & original research (3) There is no need to keep two articles with the same content. Deeceevoice admitted that she already created African aesthetic with the informations from Cool (African philosophy) "The information from "Cool (African philosophy)" is now it in its proper context, in an article on dealing with the underlying cultural ethos of many traditional African societies. ... Further, I intend to use additional information from this article (in addition to the material that was gutted from it) to continue build the framework for "African aesthetic." (Deeceevoice) [1] CoYep 23:44, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I could not make heads or tails of this AFD debate. It was refactored, discussed on the article's talk page, the talk page of the AFD. Deeceevoice was arguing for merging then for keeping. If the content is going to be in African aesthetic we should at least keep the history (redirect/history merge). Kotepho 01:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure. Lots of confusion and acrimonious discussion on this one here, at the AfD, and on the talk page. A fairly large number of people who seem extraordinarily virulent about wanting to delete this. This is exactly what a no consensus keep-by-default AfD conclusion should be. Flag it with a tag if you think it needs one, let things quiet down, edit it as need be, and revisit in some months once everyone is calm again. Whatever good encyclopaedic content there is (and I have not read it in enough detail to have an opinion on that), let's give it a chance and let's see what it leads to. There is no need to rush. Martinp 22:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC), who voted No-consensus-keep, which I guess is one of the so-called "unconvincing" keep votes that Proto refers to.
• Endorse closure JoshuaZ 02:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn and delete, per Proto et al. Tasteless Humor Comment (no extra charge): Does FrancisTyers' comment above mean that clowns having sex while on parade in Africa would be cool? KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure noting of course that there's nothing to stop anyone performing a merge if they can obtain consensus to do so. --Tony Sidaway 14:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - Can I just point out that there is no content other than a redirect in the history of this article. We're arguing about an empty URL. All the content has been moved, not cut-and-pasted, but moved, history and all, to Cool (African aesthetic). It happened on April 17, before this discussion began. So... we're actually discussing what to do with that article, or what are we actually discussing here? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. This page is a remnant of a very messy series of creations, recreations, deletions, moves, and redirects. The important thing is that the content is now at African aesthetic, having been duly restored following a recent Review. Cool (African philosophy) is currently a (recreated) redirect to African aesthetic; it was previously a redirect to Cool (African aesthetic), which is a page that was created when the content of Cool (African philosophy) was moved there. Cool (African aesthetic) is itself now a redirect, to Cool (aesthetic), which is a page with different content than the text here under dispute. I propose the following:
  • Delete Cool (African philosophy), for the following reasons: 1. It is a poor redirect, as no one searching for the content at African aesthetic is likely to type into the search box "Cool_(African philosophy)". 2. The history of the page relevant to the content at African aesthetic is not anymore at Cool (African philosophy) but at Cool (African aesthetic), where it had earlier been moved. The only history at Cool (African philosophy) is the revert war over which way the page should redirect. This is only important if the redirect itself is preserved; it is of no consequence if the page is deleted. There is no GFDL textual content of any kind anymore in the logs of Cool (African philosophy), and therefore absolutely nothing in Cool (African philosophy) that could be merged into African aesthetic (or, for that matter, that could possibly be merged into any other page). I must wonder whether the few individuals above who speak of merges from this page have actually read it. What is mergeworthy from here?
  • Redirect Cool (African aesthetic) to African aesthetic. The history preserved in the former is the early version of the text now at the latter (the latter does not record that because it seems to be a copy paste of one version of the text done during the deletion/recreation circus). Cool (aesthetic) is a different article. The sole use of Cool (African aesthetic) is as a placeholder for the history logs containing GFDL text now found at African aesthetic. Regards —Encephalon 20:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC) NB. I wrote this, and could have sworn seeing it posted, some 20 hours ago.
• Good idea, Encephalon. Of course, at that point, there's no reason not to do a history merge, and get the whole history over at African aesthetic. I'm willing to do the legwork if we can agree that's the solution. It certainly makes sense to me to decide which two articles are going to exist, get the histories there, and make everything else either a redirect or gone. I recommend delete Cool (African philosophy) (in all its no-content, no-history glory), merge history from Cool (African aesthetic) to African aesthetic. -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Hello GTBacchus. Do note that I am not proposing that Cool (African aesthetic) be "history-merged" with African aesthetic. That seems to me to be unnecessary, given that it's perfectly adequate for the purposes of the GFDL to simply redirect the page. As to Cool (African philosophy), the thing ought to be deleted for the reasons stated above. —Encephalon 00:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

"African philosophy (in all its no-content, no-history glory"? Note -- again -- that the structure of the article was gutted by those who complained about cool being traced back to Africa (but could offer no scholarly rebuttal, just carping), and the criticized and brought up for deletion because people claimed they didn't understand what it was about. deeceevoice 09:49, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I fear you mistake my meaning, Deeceevoice. Please inspect each version here. You'll find that the content you're talking about, gutted or otherwise, every version of it, is actually here. You're talking about a different article than the one named in the header of this discussion. "Cool (African philosophy)", on the Wiki, is a location. It's the location where you made those edits. Now it's an empty location, and your edits are, counterintuitively enough, in the "history" of Cool (African aesthetic). -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

• I am surprised that this discussion has not been closed. While I would prefer an uninvolved administrator to close it, I will, despite substantial comment above, do it myself in 24 hours should it still remain open at that time; I believe the solution is straightforward once the issue is understood. —Encephalon 00:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• OK, I'm not uninvolved, but observing that this page now redirects to African aesthetic, I think this discussion is rather moot. Vote count which is decisive in DRV discussions gives 10 votes to overturn, 11 to endorse closure. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an Archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.