- Wikipedia:Delegable proxy (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|MfD)
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Delegable proxy was inappropriately closed early with an inappropriate result. There was overwhelming consensus to delete this page, but it was ignored. Wikipedia:Delegable proxy is a horribly bad idea that is STILL being pushed on the talk page. It was created by a farm of sock puppets and leaving it around even as a rejected policy serves only to give credence to the idea. Under Wikipedia:MFD#Prerequisites, "if a proposal is not serious or is disruptive ... it can be nominated for deletion". This proposal is obviously disruptive and thus a nomination for deletion is procedurally appropriate. I ask that the close, which was obviously against consensus, be overturned and the page be deleted. Thank you. B (talk) 05:00, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Restore debate and allow consensus to be reached I think that the debate was prematurely closed, and people should be allowed to continue to discuss this article until a consensus on how to act upon it is reached. The page continues to be a source of disruption even AFTER the proposal was marched as rejected with impunity. The nomination, as noted above, was not out of procedure, and should be allowed to reach its natural conclusion. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Overturn. Overturn premature closure. This page should be deleted as per consensus. I do not agree with closing admin's rationale for closing the debate. There are serious issues w.r.t. disruptiveness, sock-puppetry, promotion of WP:FRINGE, and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX that warrant the page being deleted (see MangoJuice's comment below for more details) Ronnotel (talk) 06:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Comment closing admin doesn't seem to realise that consensus can change and that binding decisions are not made. A previous agreement on MFD or previous form is no bar to the community doing something different, in this case it appears that a large part of the community agreed to the process in this case --81.104.39.63 (talk) 07:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
The request to overturn here is based on a misunderstanding of MFD policy. We DO NOT DELETE proposals except in exceptional circumstances, which are far from being met here. Use of MFD is inappropriate in that situation. Consensus in an MFD debate does not alter policy. Consensus for a clearly inappropriate action does not make the action appropriate. Deletion review also does not alter policy, therefore deletion review is equally inappropriate. Alteration to MFD policy can be made by normal wiki-editing, or use of Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion. Proposer is warned to review policy before further using any of the deletion or deletion review systems in future. The correct venue for further debate on the delegable proxy proposal is -> Wikipedia_talk:Delegable_proxy --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:51, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Proposer warned here --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I have reverted this inappropriate non-admin close. --B (talk) 18:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Seems reasonable, Kim seems to have set himself up as sole arbiter as to if the is such an "exceptional" circumstance as listed above. Indeed if community consensus is as Kim states that we don't delete this stuff, then the MFD would have shown that. Policy is descriptive not prescriptive and all that. --81.104.39.63 (talk) 18:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Ok, this was closed by Kim and reverted by B. Fortunately, Kim consented to allowing me to reopen the DRV, as far as I know without having seen that B had already reopened it. The three prior comments should be disregarded as solely part of this process hiccup (but Kim's substantive comment should stand, possibly with revision). Hopefully we can shut off this act of the drama. And hopefully you two can make amends sometime soon... GRBerry 19:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
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- I'd certainly suggest moving these comments to the talk page, since they are more meta comments about DRV than part of the review, though Kim may like to refactor some of his comment for DRV's purpose. --81.104.39.63 (talk) 19:55, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Overturn. Closer seems to place policy over consensus, when in fact the reverse should be true. Wikipedia is a fairly lenient encyclopedia. Policies are shaped like Amendments in the United States Constitution, rather than stringent codes such as the rules to chess or the Ten Commandments. Just because the consensus disagrees with policy, we don't throw out the consensus as a result. We change the policy. That's the ideology of Wikipedia.--WaltCip (talk) 19:37, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Heh, you're mostly correct. Even so, an MFD discussion can't for instance decide to delete wikipedia (or, on a lesser scale, it can't decided to delete consensus discussions about the future of wikipedia, as is the case here).--Kim Bruning (talk) 20:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Your example of deleting wikipedia is just firvolous, we are exteremely unlikely (to say the least) to get to the state where that occurred, even less likely any admin would be open to implementing it, and ultimately it's a foundation issue, we couldn't override it, and if we tried the foundation is likely to step in and stop it. Your broad assertion that deleting discussions about the future of wikipedia being the same are just laughable. If the community decides to delete this I wish you luck in getting the foundation to stop in to stop it. (Note this isn't to say there aren't good reasons to keep this and indeed those reasons maybe generally applicable, but a mere declaration that we must always do X, when a reasonable amount of the commenters so far are either unaware of those reasons or disagree with them, is simply a non-starter) --81.104.39.63 (talk) 10:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Overturn and delete. WP:MFD's instructions allow for deletion of bad-faith, disruptive proposals, and that's what this was in the view of many who commented at the MfD. The proposal was created and pushed by two users who are closely linked. One, User:Sarsaparilla/User:Ron Duvall/User:Absidy (and several others), created the proposal and made grossly inappropriate attempts to promote it despite it's clear lack of approval, even going so far as to be blocked indefinitely for WP:POINT violation and sockpuppetry. The other, User:Abd, is actually the inventor of the delegable proxy idea, and has a major conflict of interest, and is not really interested in improving Wikipedia's decision-making process, but in experimenting with his voting system. See for instance this post and others in the same mailing list: Abd knew full well that this would be strongly opposed, and yet pushed the proposal anyway to try to use Wikipedia as an experimental testbed. Many comments from these two suggest they did not care what the community thought about the idea, they intended to implement the system and encourage people to use it. Since the system itself amounts to encouraging blind voting and canvassing, these goals are not merely misuse of Wikipedia, but actually disruptive. Mangojuicetalk 19:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- I object in principle to posting links to off-wiki material, particularly where the poster has taken efforts to conceal their on-wiki identity. However, MJ's link above clearly identifies the disruptive intent of the DP proposal. If there was any doubt in my mind, that post erased it. Ronnotel (talk) 21:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- One wishes that the objection in principle had translated to an objection in fact, for what do we call people with high principles and lower standards? I won't. Instead, I will make it moot. As the author of that post, I'm happy to make it a part of the record here. Not that it's relevant! I'm amazed at how careless a series of administrators are being in how they are conducting themselves. Where to begin? Do MfDs determine bad faith? MfDs are about proposals, not about users. Want to make a charge of bad faith: make it against a user, not an article or proposal. And be sure you can back it up, otherwise you are in clear AGF failure, which is ... disruptive. Absidy was not blocked for sock puppetry. Read the record. It's totally clear that he was indef blocked, by User:Jehochman, for dropping an image of an upraised finger on that administrator's Talk page, because what had happened before that deserved, at most, a warning. His first warning that I've seen in a very long record, when you look at the complete record (as far as I know it, back to 2005). He was also warned, then, for the image, by User:Mangojuice but then blocked shortly thereafter by Jehochman. This is a highly unusual response, and totally improper, see the desysop case of User:Physchim62. Absidy was a political opponent of work that I was doing, but actually read what I was proposing, and decided it was more important than anything else he could work on. He did countless hours of work on the proposal, learning about templates and transclusions and system variables and MediaWiki bugs, and he believed that it would improve Wikipedia. You want to charge bad faith? Be prepared for the consequences! I likewise believe that Wikipedia could benefit from this (would I be spending my life promoting something that I don't think would work? Have you ever actually thought about what you are saying?), but I did not consider the time ripe for an actual proposal. Absidy did all of that on his own, and then I started to comment on it and help out. As to the post to the list fa-dp@yahoogroups.com, I initially failed to see the evidence that the above editors so confidently extract from it. Perhaps, since I know that what they conclude is false, I was not able to see the language that has misled them. However, looking back, I can see something that they could, with a suspicious mind, searching for some proof of bad faith, intepret as they have. I knew, and said, that some editors would be opposed, and that others would favor. I also predicted that there would be higher opposition among administrators than among the general editor community, something which hasn't yet been proven either way, and, in fact, could be very difficult to prove. Is there something wrong with saying this? Should I not participate in someone else's proposal because I know someone will be opposed? Surely this would be a strange restriction! And these editors continue to misrepresent what the proposal actually was. Mangojuice, in particular, should know better, since he was active with the proposal and helped it develop.--Abd (talk) 08:00, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- 1st choice: Relist with instructions Kim is right that ordinarily we don't delete policy proposals or process pages. B is right that the MFD instructions do have that clause about disruptive proposals. The MfD nomination, however, did not clearly argue that the page was inherently disruptive even after being marked rejected. Some of the opiners did so argue, and it is difficult to discern what the consensus on rejection versus deletion is. Thus it should be relisted, with opiners told to be explicit on whether the page is so inherently disruptive that marking as rejected is inadequate and deletion is needed or in the alternative that it should merely be marked as rejected. If we do that, we'll have a clear decision that we can all live with. 2nd choice: Endorse closure because I think that this is the right outcome in the end, though I wouldn't object to a customized rejection notice of "rejected because..." GRBerry 19:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- I didn't use the word "disruptive" in my nomination, but I did say "This proposal is being pushed by a ring of sockpuppets who want to move it forward even though nobody has actually agreed with it. There's no good reason to leave it here, even in its rejected state, as it is merely an invitation to vote stack under the guise of an "experiment"." Both of those reasons - being pushed by a ring of sock puppets (although subsequently, one of the users was demonstated not to be a sockpuppet) and the potential that someone could use its existence as an excuse for vote stacking - are claims of disruption, even though I didn't use that word. --B (talk) 19:57, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'm going to leave things in the capable hands of GRBerry for DRV. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 20:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Overturn and delete. The argument that 'We don't delete proposals; we just mark them rejected' was made very early in the deletion discussion. Virtually all of the participants in the discussion had the opportunity to read and be aware of that position; despite that, there was an overwhelming number of editors who felt that the unusual circumstances surrounding the proposal warranted a departure from our usual process. Kim's closure ignored those arguments and ignored the spirit of flexibility with which we (wisely) approach the interpretation of all Wikipedia policies. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and we don't – or shouldn't – offer a permanent web presence to self-promoters of neologisms just because they couch their fringe notions as policy proposals. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:51, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Addendum: I also note that Kim Bruning is the only participant in the entire process to reach the conclusion that MfD was an inappropriate forum for discussion of deletion of the page in question, and that the nomination should be closed on purely procedural grounds. Many, many editors in good standing and long experience – including several admins and at least one member of ArbCom – saw fit to comment on the MfD; none raised a procedural objection on that basis. (Several observed that it was unusual to consider deletion of a policy proposal, and some argued against deletion, but none argued that the venue was inappropriate or that the MfD should be closed on that basis.) Historically, I've found that the community will consider issues wherever it damn well pleases; Kim's purely bureaucratic closure does not reflect the evident community consensus that MfD was an appropriate forum in which to consider the deletion of the page in question. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
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- For the record, my closure was not on purely bureaucratic grounds. If I had deleted or closed or otherwise halted the policy discussion that was MFD'ed, I would have caused more disruption, and been vilified even more thoroughly. This is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't . As actually deleting policy discussions leads to wonderful catch-22 situations, closing MFD discussions about policy discussions (And closing DRV discussions about MFD discussions about policy discussions) is typically the least of all evils. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC) Next time, you try to find a solution that keeps everyone -if not all equally happy- then at least all equally unhappy. ^^;;
- Relist with instructions as suggested by User:GRBerry and for the same reasons. Many rejected proposals could be seen as disruptive, some are in fact disruptive, but are still kept as a record of what we've decided we don't want. Kim is right that disruptiveness is the only issue, and as GRBerry points out it must be so inherently disruptive that marking as rejected is inadequate and deletion is needed. Also per GRBerry, the next best alternative is to endorse closure as supported by policy against deletions of proposals.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 21:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Disruptiveness is not the only issue - it is a prerequisite issue. In other words, once it is established that the proposal is disruptive, it can be deleted for any otherwise correct reason. --B (talk) 21:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Comment Users are reminded of WP:NOTAVOTE, and that the closer closed based on an understanding of the arguments, not on the number of votes, which are irrelevant. It's ironic that if we look at the original MfD, the predominant argument was that WP:PRX was proposing voting (not true, but also not relevant here), yet, when a closure occurs that was contrary to a strong majority, we now see the same users arguing that the majority should be followed. This DRV was improperly closed, that's true, due to a COI closer. However, it is also true that this DRV is out-of-process. Deletion Review is not intended as a deletion process; it has always been used, in my understanding, to reconsider deletion. Not not-deletion. The remedy for improper not-deletion is a second nomination. Why, then, this odd DRV? Well, it is because there has been a Rule 0 violation, and when Rule 0 violations are involved, very odd things happen, because such violations are intolerable, yet Rule 0 must not be described. To do so would be a violation of Rule 0. We must not mention that the emperor has no clothes.--Abd (talk) 21:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- You are incorrect - DRV is the place to reconsider the close of a deletion discussion, be it deletion or non-deletion. Please see the second sentence of the second paragraph of WP:DRV. That said, had I realized that the closer was not an admin, I simply would have reverted the inappropriate non-admin close rather than bothering with this formality. --B (talk) 21:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
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- There is nothing explicit there; given that another remedy exists (renom), the background of that paragraph would indicate that the assumption is that deletion review is about reviewing, well, deletions. There is nothing preventing a second nomination for deletion; however, there is a serious problem: For starters, the nomination made false statements about the proposal, statements which were then apparently swallowed in whole by many !voters (and if you read a false argument that is related to what is true, it's easy, then, to misread if you say, then read the proposal itself). Is the proposal disruptive? where is that defined? How is it determined? By intention? To assume, without clear evidence, that the intention is disruptive would be an ABF violation. Do we !vote on the intentions of an article creator? Or is it in the result, i.e., if someone proposes an idea and a firestorm of cries to "shut up" erupts and the proposer is ejected and, having a totally clean record for three years is now indef blocked from a single offense, rather unclearly stated, with numerous administrators taking actions that are outside policy and quite possibly worthy of loss of the admin bit, is this disruptive? Obviously, it is. But the energy of the disruption isn't coming from the proposer, rather, the proposer catalyzed its release, by violating Rule 0 Oops. Forgot. Rule 0 isn't a policy, to state Rule 0 would violate Rule 0. Instead, see, Rule 0 which doesn't state the rule except very indirectly and describes what happens when it is violated. --Abd (talk) 07:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Say it isn't so; because that would have been at least as bad as what Kim did! You were the nominator of the original MfD, being an administrator does not allow you to overturn a non-admin closing in which you have an interest; otherwise a non-admin would need to check everytime he or she closed to make sure the nom wasn't by an admin who would simply revert.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 21:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- If I were to reverse the close and delete the page myself, that would be bad, but undoing a plainly inappropriate non-admin close and allowing an uninvolved administrator to make the decision on the outcome of the discussion is an action that anyone - involved or otherwise can take. There's a difference between making the decision and vacating an out of process close. If we don't permit involved users to vacate an out of process close, then all discussions are potentially held hostage to the tyranny of the heckler. In any event, I didn't, so this is moot. --B (talk) 21:30, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Overturn and relist discussion out-of-process close due to misunderstanding of policy. Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 21:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Overturn Policy is descriptive, not proscriptive and always has exceptions. I would think that a clear community consensus to delete would be one of them. On a related note, the text in question on WP:MFD reads: "Nominating for deletion a proposed policy or guideline page that is still under discussion is generally frowned upon. If you oppose a proposal, discuss it on the policy page's discussion page. Consider being bold and improving the proposal. Modify the proposal so that it gains consensus. Also note that even if a policy fails to gain consensus, it is often useful to retain it as a historical record, for the benefit of future editors." (emphasis mine) - its hardly a policy requirement that we keep it. Mr.Z-man 21:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Speedily overturn and reopen discussion, that closure rationale is no reason to close an active MFD. This closure was completely out of process. Alternatively, overturn and delete as there was a solid consensus to delete, and it is clear that the argument "we don't delete proposals" was refuted again and again, as further arguments were made in spite of that one. --Coredesat 23:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
- Proposal Above I call for overturn and delete. After further discussion with Kim, perhaps a stub can be left with something like the following. Ronnotel (talk) 00:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Delegable proxy is a rejected proposal to allow each user to designate a trusted user to speak on his behalf in debates in which the user does not participate personally. It was determined to be antithetical to Wikipedia's core principles and soundly rejected. Further, it was determined that the proposal was presented disruptively with the involvement of deceptive sock-puppetry. Although the main proposal has deleted per consensus, this stub has been left for posterity to document the community's decision in this matter.
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- Well, this would be new. The description does not match the proposal, which began as brainstorming and which ultimately settled, among those who favored it (two editors maybe a little more), as the development of a file format with then a proposal to announce that users could play with it, and nothing more. That is, there was no proposal to allow each user to designate a trusted user to speak on his behalf in debates. And, in fact, this interpretation was specifically denied. Indeed, had this been the proposal, I'd have been against it, and I said as much. As far as actually implementing this idea, I'd favor deletion, in fact. Because then the idea can be implemented under current policies without any fuss, not that it makes much difference. The rejection or deletion of a project page does not create any new policy, it prohibits nothing that was not already prohibited, and deletion is even less effective. MfDs do not set policy.--Abd (talk) 05:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- endorse close Yes, this should have gone the full time. However it is clear that regardless this is a highly rejected suggestion. I don't see what is gained by further discussion. And the issue of whether we should delete the page completely or not is simply a waste of time. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Looks like a very sensible close to me. Thanks, Kim, for your usual display of commonsense. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 05:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Do nothing. Silly proposal that never had a chance, keep it in case anyone ever proposes something like this again so we can hopefully dissuade them from making such a suggestion again. Guy (Help!) 10:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Relist and get a full correct decision that we keep such pages rather than hide them. Guy has it right about the result, though: this is better kept than hidden. When consensus is clear, but the matter is actively disputed or significant, its always better to do it according to the full procedure. Had this been done, we wouldnt be here. It does not save time in the end to close controversial matters prematurely. DGG (talk) 16:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- endorse close -- i.e., do nothing On the face of it, there is no emergency here. No significant amount of editor time was being wasted in continued discussion of the proposal, and, indeed, deletion would increase discussion, just as proposing deletion has generated quite a bit of traffic. I prefer to read arguments from all sides before !voting; since ! !votes don't count, right?, why are we debating something that can be avoided by a very simple step, with editors adding redundant arguments: if editors still think the proposal should be deleted, then renominate it for that! No wiki-fuss. An argument that it was properly closed should be sufficient to allow immediate relisting. DRV connot delete an article, it can only confirm or reverse a deletion, it is a deletion review. Review of deletion. Does anyone read what
God Kim Bruning wrote? He was there before the beginning, when all was formless and void. Pay attention! There will be a test. --Abd (talk) 18:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
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