Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Proposal IX (Deprecation)

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The talk page Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD was split into individual talk pages for each proposal, to limit the size of the talk page and facilitate individual discussions on each proposal. The history and attributions for the comments made before the split can be seen by following the history link on the /General talk page.

[edit] Proposal IX ("deprecation")

I encourage everyone to vote against proposal IX ("deprecation") to have the negation of proposals that are shot down to the CSD policy.(No, superseded by comments below.)

I assume the motivation behind it is as follows: if a proposal does not gain consensus, it cannot represent policy (agree) and therefore adding an explicit "this is not policy" to the policy will make it better (disagree).

This assumes that if something does not have consensus, its negation therefore does have consensus. This is a false dichotomy. There is a lot of room for interpretation in all of these proposals. Saying "this particular proposal does not have consensus, so if you think an article might match these criteria, don't SD it" seems very fishy to me.

What this proposal entails is that we modify the CSD policy, even if no proposal should gain consensus and none of them can be added to the current policy. This is bogus: what if people think the current CSD policy is fine, wording included? Do they get to vote on that? No, except indirectly through this very proposal, a subtlety I suspect will be lost on many. After all, "didn't pass the vote" means "mirror image would have passed the vote", right? No.

"Deprecation" is a meta-proposal, voting on something still contingent other votes. I strongly, strongly disagree with such proposals on principle. Don't tangle things up even more than they already are. If you want some criterion to be explicitly excluded from CSD, then put that up for a vote (after this vote, of course). There will be no ambiguity in that. This seems like a convenient fast-track to make CSD "clearer", but I don't think it works that way.

Note that this is, of course, just my opinion. That I think such proposals are Bad Things don't make it so. JRM 22:41, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

Update: the proposal was amended to explicitly specify that "not passing" is not sufficient; a "70% reject" (that is, a negative majority) is required for the negation to be added to policy. I like this proposal a lot better, because it gives a genuine mirror image of the vote.
This doesn't completely fix it, however. For one thing, it's still a meta-proposal, and as such not independent; people's votes on this could be influenced by how the other votes are going (i.e. if it doesn't turn out "my" way, I will vote "no" on proposal IX to limit the "damage"). I want to assume good faith, of course... But I'd prefer it if I didn't have to in the first place.
So, summarized: I still dislike meta-proposals, but, keeping the caveats mentioned in mind, I think the proposal can stand. I will still abstain, but I'm no longer diametrically opposed to it. JRM 00:42, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

• Logic doesn't really follow here as noted above... just because we don't like the proposal does not mean that we would always support the negative. Enochlau 03:18, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I personally am a great believer in judging most deletions on a case-by-case basis. I believe this allows for the best decisions. The rules for SD therefore need to be clear and focused on ensuring the best deletions. SD only requires two people to agree. VfD appears a lot safer. As a relative newcomer to Wikipedia, I would have liked to have seen the policy spelled out as explicitly as IX does. That would have made life easier (and far less embarassing) for me. Smoddy | Talk 00:35, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)