Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Talk:Ambition (card game)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was - kept

[edit] Talk:Ambition (card game)

Note Well: This VfD process continues into Thursday, December 9th. See this and several other procedural matters discussed after the VfD discussion on this page --Jerzy(t) 08:00, 2004 Dec 4 (UTC)

This page is a Talk page for a long-deleted article on a semi-obscure card game that was a lightning rod for stupid, puerile controversies (at the fault of both sides). This page has also been a flamewar-magnet. It's best for Wikipedia that the page be deleted and the matter completely forgotten. 259 16:50, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Comment: the matter was forgotten until the nominator attempted to hide its contents by substiting their own PoV for its entirety. --Jerzy(t) 20:13, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Delete

  1. [Jerzy notes that nomination signed "259 16:50, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)" counts, in absence of contary statement, as Del vote.]
  2. Why keep a talk page for a defunct article? Cribcage 00:04, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • So that there will be a record of what was said before if anyone tries to re-create the article? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:52, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • So that there will be a record of what was said before when someone tries to re-create the article, as the nominator has stated is a future near-certainty. (And as many who favored its deletion believe is a certainty.) --Jerzy(t) 20:13, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Keep

  1. It is not our policy to delete talk pages, and even if it were, this one should be kept. See comments below. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:32, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  2. Talk pages should not be deleted. It describes an old controversy, but that shouldn't matter much, since very few users will ever see this page unless they are familiar with and had an interest in the old controversy. Actually, I'm wondering how 259 even happened to find it. By default, searches don't include Talk pages, and they are tagged so that search engines won't index them. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:15, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  3. This page is important for the following purposes:
      • Evaluating claims that someone is a sockpuppet of User:Mike Church. Nominator has claimed prove as a non-sockpuppet based on what they describe as a markedly different style, implicitly appealing to this page. (Beyond our intuitive understanding of that, according to nominator, WP contribs, presumably including these, can be used in determining identities; they also have intimated (link on my talk page) that this is legally admissable evidence.)
      • Documenting the background of the previous deletion, whenever future attempts are made to return such an article to the article space.
    • --Jerzy(t) 20:13, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
  4. Keep, for the record. Eugene van der Pijll 10:05, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  5. Keep -- These types of records are important where hard-banned users are concerned. Definite keep. SWAdair | Talk 10:56, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Unless i am far more ignorant than i realize, this reference to being "hard-banned" (and the more explicit one in the comments section) are mistaken: it is implausible that he was banned only after 2004 Oct 30, and likewise implausible that he was banned for his two much more defensible edits of that date. It appears, rather, that his sincerity in "going away" was given the benefit of the doubt.
      • My bad. You're right. He was not hard-banned. Would "disruptive" have been a better word? I believe there is ample evidence to support that. SWAdair | Talk 04:12, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  6. Keep. Not only because of the policy of keeping talk pages, but because it clearly serves as proof of User:259 disrupting anti-wiki behaviour. --Regebro 12:21, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  7. Keep --PilotPrecise 22:09, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  8. Keep. This is a talk page, not an article. Even though I supported the article's deletion, the maintenance of a talk page on =any= topic is relevant. Denni☯ 01:41, 2004 Dec 5 (UTC)
  9. Keep and Protect. Deletion would violate wiki policy. Wyss 23:52, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  10. Keep. We always keep talk pages as a historical record, and this page is particularly important given the possibility that the Ambition article will be re-created. Isomorphic 19:01, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  11. Keep - Keep talk pages. --Key45 23:12, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  12. Keep. What Dpbsmith and UC said. —No-One Jones (m) 02:16, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  13. Keep - One of the great things about Wikipedia is its history. Mike Church may one day grow up and learn that the universe is not solipsistic. (Okay, I grant this is a long-shot...) --Tagishsimon (talk)
  14. Keep - Mike Church's card game has been proven to cause cancer in lab rats. We cannot allow him to explode explore expose this to children!!!!!!1111 Blue This 17:37, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    Sock puppet. —No-One Jones]] 00:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  15. Question Can I vote twice? Or no. I'm new to this thing and it would be nice to get some calamity Claritin clarification. Or do I have to give up my tesseract telemetry television privileges for just asking? Your friend, Blue This 04:16, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The answer is no. Please disregard the above double-vote as the error of a new user.

Comments

Voters should be aware that User:259 is believed to be a sockpuppet of User:Mike Church, the creator of the "Ambition" card game rules. He also created the Ambition (card game) article, tried to control it, and then asked for its deletion. Church has putatively "left" Wikipedia, however a veritable army of probable socks and anons have continued his remarkably unique pattern of editing in the wake of his "departure." Church is simultaneously trying to reinsert mention of Ambition into Wikipedia articles (c.f. Talk:Carleton College and purge any record of the discussions that concluded that Ambition is not notable.
Moreover, it is not our policy to delete talk pages.
The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:32, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • User:259 is believed to be a sockpuppet -- Not by anyone without ulterior, often political, motives that have already been hashed out two hundred times. Stop with the sock puppet shit, because I'm not. Get over it.
Church is simultaneously trying to reinsert mention of Ambition into Wikipedia articles (c.f. Talk:Carleton College --This is patently false. User:Mike Church has not contributed since last summer. As well, there are no apparent efforts to reinsert Ambition into Talk:Carleton College; I wrote a summary of the controversy there in order to summarize, in a two-sided manner, the pages of noxious garbage I had trimmed from the talk page. 259 18:10, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Comment: Sockpuppet claims are notoriously hard to prove, and to disprove, but for many not difficult to judge to a moral certainty, so claiming they are "patently false" is just bluster. 259 states he has acted on WP with "permission" of Church. 259 is also, at this writing, blocked for having forged a signed msg on Talk:Carleton College, by removing the line
Unless there is new evidence about Ambition's popularity, the reference to Ambition should not be re-added.
from another editor's contribution. (The audit trail for confirming this is a complicated one, primarily as a result of 259's stated efforts to reduce the visibility of most of what has been said about Church and Ambition on WP. But i have thoroughly traced it, and certify that the charge of his altering a signed talk contribution is accurate.
It is irrelevant whether 259 IASPO Church, in light of
  • his agreement with Church's self-assessment as a genius, and
  • his peculiar confidence that a time will come for returning an article on Ambition to WP.
It would be naïve not to weigh this VfD in light of that, and of his determined, aggressive, and single-handed efforts to conceal the records of the Ambition and Ambition-at-Carleton discussions, and of the behavior of Mike Church and his anon and other new-user supporters in those discussions.
--Jerzy(t) 20:13, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
User:259 is not editing "with permission" of Church -- User:259 clearly is User:Mike Church. The writing styles are practically identical. There is no doubt in my mind that the person editing under the name of User:259 is a hard-banned user returning to continue his efforts at promoting Ambition. SWAdair | Talk 10:56, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I question (above, point 5 in Keep votes) whether he is "hard-banned". --Jerzy(t) 02:02, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)
    • My mistake. You're right -- he wasn't hard-banned. Replace with the word "disruptive." SWAdair | Talk 04:12, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Mike has been blatantly dishonest, and has constantly attempted to muddy the waters by using sock puppets. However, he was never banned as far as I know. Isomorphic 19:01, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Procedural matters

This VfD was apparently initiated two calendar days ago. Besides the quite common failure to comply with point 1 of the instructions by using {{subst:vfd}}, the nominator committed four violations of normal practice, common sense, and courtesy to colleagues:

  1. Not automatically creating the subpage with its proper name, by not carrying out the instruction
    Follow the "this page's entry" link to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/PageName
  2. Then creating an improper title of the VfD subpage (by manually embedding another, non-existent page's name in it), with the consequence that the nominated page's "this page's entry" link could never work.
  3. Not mentioning "VfD" in the summary of the edit that added the notice to the nominated article.
  4. Not only failing to limit the edit to adding the notice, but in fact combining that with an obviously controversial erasure of all content added by others, and of the archive link that the nominator might have plausibly argued could substitute for the text itself. (This deletion was done in the same edit with the VfD notice, in spite of
    • such removals on the same page having already produced reversion by two overwhelmingly more experienced WP colleagues, and
    • similar removals on Talk:Carleton College having repeatedly produced reversion by an overwhelmingly more experienced WP colleague, and
    • the failure for any reasonably experienced colleague to voice approval of such removals.)

Four foreseeable consequences ensued, several mediated by predictable reversion of the content deletions:

  1. A summary mentioning "VfD" in any way was the nominated page's most recent one for only 11 minutes prior to the completion of the edit that introduces this new section;
  2. The VfD notice appeared in the nominated page for only 36 minutes;
  3. During those 36 minutes, anyone attempting to link to the VfD discussion through the nominated page (i.e., anyone tracking it by automatic means) would reasonably conclude that no discussion was under way, and if they kept the window open & retried the link, that even 36 hours left that true and thus no action would ever occur;
  4. In the absence of corrective action, the sub-page title would continue misleading those with an interest as long as it existed.

I conclude that this VfD discussion is out of process, and i have taken the following corrective actions:

  1. Renamed this sub-page.
  2. Added a properly formatted VfD notice to the nominated article, with the summary
    Added proper VfD notice, reflecting nomination by User:259 (edit of 16:43, 2004 Dec 2, but effective only now)
  3. Corrected the sub-page title in the transclusion call in the (main) VfD file
  4. Moved the line containing that correction from the December 2 section to the December 4 one.


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.