Wikipedia talk:Deletion principles poll/Archive

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

Contents

Looks good

Looks good. It's simple, it's NPOV, and people can take it whichever way they like (wow, the first comment? Weird). Master Thief Garrett 02:53, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Neutralitytalk 04:13, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Suggest rewording the polls

An example: In order to be accepted as valid articles, all articles, including schools... I see a gap. Among some, it seems a substub is less than a stub, a stub is less than an article, which itself is less than a featured article, which is less than a perfect article. Which article level are you expecting a vote on? If you clearly and explicitly define what level of development you're referencing, you'll have a much better measure of opinions. --Unfocused 03:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I've wikilinked Wikipedia:Substub for clarity. See also the "differences between a stub and a substub" section. Neutralitytalk 04:13, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

III vs. IV

I can hardly take issue with the given definition of notability, since it includes mine. However, I think this renders III and IV compatible, or not mutually exclusive, which I think was Neutrality's intent. In other words, I think my definition of notability is a surrogate for verifiability (or likely verifiability) and not for significance or importance. Thus my vote might appear schizophrenic (since I appear to be voting against my own position), except for the fact that I consider "significance" not that important; my definition as linked in proposal III as a suggestion under the rubric of "significance;" and also because I don't necessarily agree we need an extension of policy on these matters. Demi T/C 04:38, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

I merged III and IV and created a guideline page from Wikipedia:Notability based on your text. Neutralitytalk 05:05, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Approval voting?

I would much rather see this "poll" structured as a survey with some sort of approval voting, instead of the current either/or, First past the post voting. I suggest that instead of the current Propositions I, II, III, and IV, Proposition I should be turned into "1a: Inherent notability of primary schools", with a one or more alternative propositions for primary schools. For example, Proposition 1b could be: "All primary schools should be kept, but merged into an article on the town or school district unless they have some "outside" notability (major court cases, significant news events, state or national academic or sports notability, etc.)". Proposition 1c might be "All primary schools should be merged", and for the deletionists, 1d would be "Primary schools are not inherently notable and require some "outside" notability for inclusion on the Wikipedia". BlankVerse ∅ 06:37, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Approval voting failed miserably on the prefixed styles issue - leading to a lot of unnecessary acrimony. Remember WP works by consensus rather than majority voting, and approval voting does not help us achieve consensus (which can usually be taken as being 75-80%+ support for a measure). Any consensus (or potential consensus) will shine out by normal support-oppose voting, particularly if accompanied by comments. Also, if no consensus is going to be possible, that will also be obvious. Kind regards, jguk 12:19, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Substubs

I've removed my name from the "substubs" option. I've also changed the word "substub" to "stub", as the character of a substub is apparently "The term implies the information in the stub is insufficient or hard to interpret". I do not accept that substubs are valid Wikipedia articles--if an article does not enable the reader to identify a school with ease it doesn't belong on Wikipedia and may be deleted if not converted to a stub--yet a minimal stub is acceptable. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:15, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

References to notability

As David Gerard said, notability was rejected. We can't use that as a synonym for "acceptable as an article on Wikipedia" because that's an utterly false correspondence. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:28, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

  • He's got a point there. A poll on whether schools are notable is irrelevent until we first hold a poll on notability. Which is another can of worms. Radiant_* 07:52, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Why a vote?

m:don't vote on everything. I don't see anything covered in this poll that doesn't appear on VfD on a regular basis. Instead, we should use sensible discussion to get consensus. Radiant_* 07:50, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

  • Also, m:instruction creep. And also, this poll is misnamed since it isn't about deletion principles, it's specifically about schools. Also, you left out universities. And (V) is redundant with the definition of stub. Radiant_* 07:54, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • This poll is designed, obviously, to be more general and policy-focused than a single VfD, which is very specific and article-focused. A Wikipedia-wide poll also allows us to find out consensus among users, which doesn't emerge on VfD where many users do not participate. Saying that "voting is evil," "don't vote on everything," etc. does nothing to help a consensus emerge. Why derail the poll now? We're not rushing anything, we've got a one-week review period and then two weeks of ballots. --Neutralitytalk 13:32, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
    • Because "The aim of this vote is not to ascertain majority opinion, but to garner consensus." is a contradiction in terms. One creates consensus through discussion - one polarizes the issue through voting. There presently is a discussion elsewhere that is coming close to getting a compromise on the whole issue. It would be far more productive to contribute to that. If you look at the VfD votes on the schools you nominate, it will be obvious that there is no consensus on the issue. This has been tried several times before on VfD, and the end result is the same. Radiant_* 14:06, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree. One week is far too little time to get some meaningful, reasonable propositions on the table, which is what is needed if we have any hope of consensus. Lupin 14:16, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposition III seems content-free

In order to be accepted as valid articles, all articles, including schools, must have some degree of significance or notability in addition to verifibility and neutral-point-of-view.

If this proposition were accepted, it could only be used to reject articles which do not have some degree of significance or notability, or in other words, those articles which have zero significance and zero notability. I cannot think of a single topic which has does not have some significance or notability for someone, no matter how slight. So I don't see how this is a useful proposition. Lupin 13:38, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Can you propose an alternate wording? Neutralitytalk 13:47, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
No. The obvious solution to the problem would be to set some arbitrary threshold of notability and put that forwards as the proposition. Unfortunately, such a proposition (and any meaningful reformulation of proposition III that I can think of) is inherently flawed as it cannot be seen as being NPOV. Lupin 13:51, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposition IV: unclear and not a deletion principle

In order to be accepted as valid articles, all articles must include content that reasonably distinguishes them from other articles of a similar nature. There should never be any doubt over which item is being described. If an article is ambiguous, it should be edited in order to add identifying features so as to resolve the ambiguity.

Please define the word reasonably here. This is highly ambiguous. A proposed amendment:

In order to be accepted as valid articles, all articles must clearly identify their subject so that there is no doubt over which item is being described. If an article is ambiguous, it should be edited to resolve the ambiguity.

I'm not certain what the point of this proposition is, though. It says nothing about deletion principles, rather it is an entirely common-sense editing principle. Lupin 13:47, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposition IV is unreadable and I don't see how anyone can be expected to garner meaning from it, let alone vote on it. It reads as if it has been inserted into the poll in order to confuse people and deter them from voting. It urgently needs to be clarified, or else just deleted. Tannin 14:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Make these "deletion principles" deletion principles

These principles, purporting to be deletion principles, do not once mention deletion! Instead they adopt the nondescript term "valid article". Please make it much clearer how these propositions may be applied to deletions: "An article should not be deleted if.... An article should be deleted if...". Lupin 14:16, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Comparison

If this is put to a vote, I predict that the result will be similar to that in Wikipedia talk:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Voting never leads to a consensus. Voting can merely show an existing consensus, which is rare, and in this case there isn't one. As should be obvious to any VfD regular. Radiant_* 14:18, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Edits

Oh I've just been boldly jumping in and editing for clarity. I thinkt he word notable is too contentious here and think it should probably be replaced with alternate wording where it appears, because non-notability is not, in general, an accepted criterion for deletion. In the proposals about primary and secondary schools, for instance, I've edited to reword for inherent encyclopedic nature (a bit of a mouthful but I think it expresses the sense of the proposition without getting into arguments over notability).

Another problem with those two is that if (as I should expect) those propositions fail, what does one do with existing perfectly good articles that happen to be about primary or secondary schools? The prospect of another rerun of the recent mass-deletion listings is not one that I regard with pleasure, and the consensus hysteresis is such that those propositions could fail comprehensively and yet lining up primary and secondary schools for deletion would still have little success. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Wording of propositions I and II

Is it possible for anyone to agree with propositions one and two? I don't think anyone thinks that everything that calls itself a primary or secondary school is a valid topic for an encyclopedia. Rather than ask about all schools shouldn't we only ask about verifiable and NPOV articles on schools? Also why limit the question to only existing schools? We have several articles on closed schools that are no less controversial than those on existing ones. If a school closes it in no way affects its verifiability. - SimonP 14:54, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

As a matter of commonsense, I wouldn't agree with any proposition that "X type of article is inherently encyclopedic" because that seems to prejudge a lot of articles that might actually be rubbish articles, or would be better dealt with in aggregate (eg: "State schools in Waltham Forest, London"). On the other hand I'd disagree with the proposition that "X type of article can be deleted unless Y other criterion applies" (which seems to be a possible interpretation of a "no" vote). I think this is the kind of question that VfD exists to answer, and that propositions like I and II are unhelpful and divisive. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:08, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Which "existing policy" is meant? Wikipedia:Verifiability, I would guess; any others? —Charles P. (Mirv) 15:22, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

The current wording is much improved, good work. - SimonP 15:47, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Schizophrenic page: notability or deletion criteria?

Is this page about establishing notability or deletion criteria? These are not currently connected in wikipedia. The Propositions should talk about one or the other and not both in order to be clear and unambiguous. Lupin 15:31, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

"Please do not edit this page"

....unless you happen to be Neutrality. Hm. Lupin 15:34, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Well I think the edits are a useful way of working out what we mean. It's okay for Neutrality to add or remove stuff he thinks doesn't express what should be decided, and same goes for you and me. Hopefully one day soon (!) we'll arrive at consensus on what is to be decided. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)


A proposed new proposition

Proposition V: Schools and notability

Certainly we can agree that some schools are encyclopedic, though the reasons that we consider them encyclopedic cannot be entirely codified. Examples include but are not limited to measured academic excellence; being the first school established in a region; the first school to develop or adopt a new teaching method; a unique and significant curriculum; general significance in culture, academics, or athletics; architectural features of the school buildings; stories in the news sections of national print newspapers or their websites; use of the school grounds as a location for feature films, documentaries, or television shows; and famous or infamous alumni.

Personally I don't see what this adds to the page. Lupin 15:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)