chris blanked his talk page on wikipedia. here's the content he removed: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Christop...
Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
61–70 of 138 posts
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#62Trying 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 harshne…
Hey, come on. I thought in many cases my nominations DID make sense -- most of the languages I nominated had neighborhood-of-zero information available about them on the web, and some of them were blatant advertising. Alice ML and Nemerle were more borderline than I thought, but a lot of people (less so on this site than on reddit) seem to think that I singlehandedly deleted the articles in question, when I instead just nominated them for deletion. If these languages were as important as one would be lead to believe from this whole fiasco, you'd think that the discussion on the AfDs would be more than strawmans and personal attacks. It appears to me that the biggest (constructive) complaint was of my personal threshold for citations. This is precisely the kind of defense I would have expected to receive in the AfD, but unfortunately, the root of the issue was only brought out after the deletions.
Regardless, I misunderstood Wikipedia policy and I apologize to those I have offended. I honestly didn't think a couple of deletion discussions was so grave, and I ask that those who abhor me so try to imagine what it's like to make a mistake and have it go viral.
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why he's actually a good candidate for being an editor. He is probably the personality type I like to call "football referee". Sticks to the rules even if he thinks they are unfair. I think such people are indeed very necessary for the world to function (or we'd only have corruption and worse) and there's no reason to be annoyed about them. Or to put it another way: Don't hate the player. Hate the game. (But:…
That's exactly why he's a horrible candidate for being an editor, actually. Football referees don't have the flexibility or responsibility to alter the rules of the game. They have one and only one duty: to make their calls in accordance with the rules of football as closely as they can. Wikipedia does not operate under football rules. The fifth pillar of Wikipedia is "Wikipedia does not have firm rules." Editors sho…
It's worth pointing out that even football referees have a good amount of discretion when making a call. They don't change the rules, but they selectively apply them.
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deletionism is the reason Wikipedia has only a moderate shortage of editors curating content, rather than an utterly insoluble maintenance nightmare. If this farce means the inclusionists are winning, it's the beginning of the end for Wikipedia. They will get what they seem to want—a mirror of the entire web hosted at wikipedia.org, with just as much outdated, useless, and actively misleading crap.
Deletionism is also one of the major reasons that I only contribute to the Hackety Hack and Shoes articles on Wikipedia, and nothing else. (oh, and I fear the day when I have to try to prove Hackety Hack 'notable.' I'm pretty sure that it isn't by the letter of the law.) They'd have more help if they didn't go around deleting things.
Does deletionism cover the way editors love to revert completely legitimate changes if they didn't come from other editors?
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deletionism is the reason Wikipedia has only a moderate shortage of editors curating content, rather than an utterly insoluble maintenance nightmare. If this farce means the inclusionists are winning, it's the beginning of the end for Wikipedia. They will get what they seem to want—a mirror of the entire web hosted at wikipedia.org, with just as much outdated, useless, and actively misleading crap.
If the issue is with maintenance and proper curation of content then that is what should be discussed. I'd far prefer in the case that an article is not well maintained that it be flagged for deletion in X months due to absence of proper care. If there is a strong community presence the article can be resurrected and recovered and Wikipedia ultimately improved and only otherwise the article deleted. I've seen deletio…
>I've seen deletionism creep into articles that were very well written, very well cited and overall a great source of information.
These characteristics are not the measure used for inclusion. Which is absolutely right IMO - one could create a well written article, well cited and be the best source on what hair products some actor uses but it wouldn't make that information more notable.
I think that maintaining as high a quality as possible is important for Wikipedia. Like someone said, making Wikipedia a mirror of the web is not beneficial.
Someone here could probably do all right by making a mirror of all pages being deleted though¹.
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¹ all ready done it seems http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page.
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#66If anyone thought what I was doing was wrong, they could have just sent me a friendly message and I would have politely discussed the issue. I guess he missed all the subtle indicators people left all over the place saying "Christopher, we are upset".
No, my understanding was that a small, but vocal, special interest group was upset for nominating their favorite programming language. The vast majority of angry people seemed unable to come up with a rational reason for saving the article. The vast majority of calm people seemed to agree with the deletions, and agreed with me for labeling the others as a small-but-vocal-minority. If you felt you were doing something right and no one who thought you were wrong had a convincing case (as convincing as "nazi dickwad deletionist we're gonna e-mail your professor" is), wouldn't you try to push through the intimidation? It wasn't until the wider reddit and HN communities caught on that I understood that it wasn't an annoyed minority, yet I would have caught on earlier if someone had actually tried to reason with me (and maybe brought up the citation argument).
I regret that I am unable to reply to each comment individually, HN's software stops me from making too many posts.
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#67Trying 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.
He missed this rule: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#68Trying 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…
Excuse me, but the thing that proved him to be an idiot in my eyes is not his blind adherence to the rules (which can be discussed), but that, even after all this discussion he is soo sure of himself, i.e. "I think that ALL articles I nominated for deletion fail to meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline."
"The best way to know you have a mind is to change it"!
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#69Stack Exchange process for deleting content > Wikipedia process for deleting content.
Having nominations be anonymous until a consensus is reached stops this kind of issue arising. Sometimes complete transparency isn't the best policy.
Re: Christopher Monsanto gives up trying to delete PL articles
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deletionism is the reason Wikipedia has only a moderate shortage of editors curating content, rather than an utterly insoluble maintenance nightmare. If this farce means the inclusionists are winning, it's the beginning of the end for Wikipedia. They will get what they seem to want—a mirror of the entire web hosted at wikipedia.org, with just as much outdated, useless, and actively misleading crap.
Deletionism is also one of the major reasons that I only contribute to the Hackety Hack and Shoes articles on Wikipedia, and nothing else. (oh, and I fear the day when I have to try to prove Hackety Hack 'notable.' I'm pretty sure that it isn't by the letter of the law.) They'd have more help if they didn't go around deleting things.
With the current model there needs to be some line because editors are a finite resource and people do occasionally deface articles etc. I would suggest having Wikipedia’s deleted articles end up on another website (using the same backend) which is then ignored by the editorial community to avoid annoying people.
PS: There are already plenty of other wiki's with different focus. There is little need for ex: naruto.wikia.com content on en.wikipedia.com.