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Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

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31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#31

Even after this "reversal", I'm not sure he understands why people were angry about his AfDs.

Judging from his comments, I'd wager this wouldn't have blown up if it weren't for his attitude toward the whole situation. His use of smileys coupled with his tone leaves the impression of condescension, obliviousness, or apathy toward the people he'd upset.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#32
post #27
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Isn't the most important thing that he's stopping?

The important thing would be restoring the articles. As far as I can see, that isn't happening (yet). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemerle I might just be seeing a cached version, though. edit: grr, I cannot reply to you, but yes, that was my point exactly: he could request a deletion review.

Chris is just another Wikipedian though. He has the same ability to undo the changes as you do.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#33
post #23

Trying to delete stories? He nominated them for an open discussion to be decided by an admin. But that doesn't sound nearly as malicious. There are valid criticisms about the AfD process, but most people are blaming Chris as if he just walked by and deleted the articles on his own. I fear that this issue has become less about fixing broken Wikipedia policies that encourage people like Chris to delete articles, and mo…

The AfD process is problematic, but Christopher was also problematic. He was strictly following the rules, even when it didn't make sense, and continued to do so even after other users were telling him, politely, that he was wrong.

This sort of behavior is not acceptable on Wikipedia (at least, according to everyone who comments on ridiculous AfD stories). As for teaching him a lesson: he was caught live. The harshness of the lesson was proportional to the amount of rage such behavior induce.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#34
post #23

Trying to delete stories? He nominated them for an open discussion to be decided by an admin. But that doesn't sound nearly as malicious. There are valid criticisms about the AfD process, but most people are blaming Chris as if he just walked by and deleted the articles on his own. I fear that this issue has become less about fixing broken Wikipedia policies that encourage people like Chris to delete articles, and mo…

The thing that does annoy me is that he seems to agree that the policies need to be changed, but he followed them anyway. Sure, the policies are what ultimately need to be changed, but we also need to discourage blindly following the rules without thinking critically about them.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power imbalances tend to produce that emotional response. Popular revolt follows, especial when food prices go up. Wait, scratch that last bit.

In this case I think it's more down to the fact that a "fan community" exists. The exact same response happens when a band gets proposed for deletion and someone posts about it on the band's mailing list. You get 100 posts about how this is in fact The Most Important Band In Genre In The Past Ten Years and Wikipedia's administrators must be knuckle-dragging cultureless slobs if they don't recognize that. Then semi-or…

I can see how the two are similar. However, the scale of the band page problem is, I'm guessing, at least 2 orders of magnitude worse, if not more, than the programming language clutter.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#36
post #4

"Here's a challenge, then, for the internet: instead of spamming my Wikipedia talk page (which I don't really care about), why don't you work on fixing WP's notability guideline for programming languages?" Amen to that. Others have said it many times before and it is still true: Wikipedia's notability guidelines would benefit from being fixed. It's rather annoying to note that what this guy was doing was within the l…

The most important rule of all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules i.e., if something seems to fit in with the "letter of the law" but has no real benefit and lots of reasons not to do it, don't do it!

Sadly the mostly widely mis-used rule :) IAR is for daily usage, no real application in this case (because unfortunately the wider community will probably agree with deletions)

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#37
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not interested in an apology... You don't care that he stopped. What exactly do you want from him then?

I am interested in an apology. He has not given one, despite this so called "reversal". A sincere apology would involve 1) apologizing/admitting wrong-doing and 2) undoing the damage. I could certainly settle for only the second.

Re your 2: it's not really up to Monsanto to restore the deleted articles. It's not his call, and if it went through Afd once, to recreate the articles would be to see them get redeleted.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power imbalances tend to produce that emotional response. Popular revolt follows, especial when food prices go up. Wait, scratch that last bit.

In this case I think it's more down to the fact that a "fan community" exists. The exact same response happens when a band gets proposed for deletion and someone posts about it on the band's mailing list. You get 100 posts about how this is in fact The Most Important Band In Genre In The Past Ten Years and Wikipedia's administrators must be knuckle-dragging cultureless slobs if they don't recognize that. Then semi-or…

If there is a band out there with an active online community numbering in the hundreds (which means their offline following is a few orders of magnitude greater), I don't see why they shouldn't have a wikipedia page.

Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles

#39
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case I think it's more down to the fact that a "fan community" exists. The exact same response happens when a band gets proposed for deletion and someone posts about it on the band's mailing list. You get 100 posts about how this is in fact The Most Important Band In Genre In The Past Ten Years and Wikipedia's administrators must be knuckle-dragging cultureless slobs if they don't recognize that. Then semi-or…

If there is a band out there with an active online community numbering in the hundreds (which means their offline following is a few orders of magnitude greater), I don't see why they shouldn't have a wikipedia page.

If there are good sources to write an article from, sure. But if there aren't any sources besides the band's website, their MySpace, and a few fans' blog posts, what goes in the article? The usual result is that fans just write a bunch of stuff about the band they like, which doesn't make for the best article. I don't personally care that much, but I don't think the world is greatly harmed by not having those articles, either; for that kind of stuff, there are always fansites and fan wikis, so they don't have to go on Wikipedia.
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