User talk:TParis

SEMI-RETIRED

This user is no longer very active on Wikipedia.

BEFORE or not?

The references to BEFORE being non-mandatory you linked to in the soon-to-end RfA date from 2015 and 2011--that's seven and ten years ago. I've been pleasantly surprised to see AfD culture changing to the point that yes, BEFORE is a behavioral expectation. Wikipedia has this funny consensus thing, where if a bunch of people will object to an RFA pretty solely on the basis of the candidate's understanding of deletion policy... Well, it's splitting hairs to say it's not policy. Much like saying N is a guideline, not a policy--it may be technically correct, but it doesn't adequately reflect how Wikipedia works in practice. In the intervening years, the tools for searching have gotten much better, so the burden of BEFORE is substantially lower, which I suspect is part of what's driving the community expectation. Perchance, have you found any more current repudiations of BEFORE? Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 05:01, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not splitting hairs. We have a process for making it policy and it hasn't happened yet. The two discussions I linked are the most recent. If you feel the winds have changed, then take it to WP:VPP and propose it be made policy. If you cannot, it is not. I don't have to prove there isn't, the onus is on you to prove that there is support through a formal and widely disseminated WP:RFC. I know you know that, I recognize your name, you've been around for awhile.--v/r - TP 20:20, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Jclemens, the point that everyone is missing, especially when doing a character assassination of the one person NPP needs, is that whether you like 'BEFORE' or not, the issues in SoWhy's list (which did the most damage) are all edge cases. They do not represent a pattern at all. Within his permitted discretion, MB actually handled correctly in everyone one of them, and he is not an 'enthusiastic deletionist'. The 'crats will not bother to check , and there is no appeal to them to do otherwise, but it took other editors at least one hour to scrape the Internet for a couple of flimsy sources at those AfD. If that's what you expect New Page Reviewers to do every time they reject a new article, you can say 'good bye' immediately to the NPP process. Be careful what you ask for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:41, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Kudpung, Character assassination? Tone down the rhetoric a notch or six, please. I'm having a discussion about policy with TParis. You're welcome to interject, but you may not like what I have to say: 1) I suspect the overall bellicosity, to which you contributed in part, was the single biggest factor in the late oppose trend in the RfA--just go read the later opposes, obviously including mine, that highlighted it as a turn-off. 2) The candidate's answer to #12 was tone deaf. The correct response was actually in there--NPP deals only with new articles that no one has invested much time and effort into--but it was buried by a "BEFORE isn't policy" intro. I don't disagree that BEFORE is far more important when dealing with established articles, and THAT would have been a better way to approach it. Thus, my crystal ball says that if the nominators had spent more time plotting how to help your candidate answer questions and less time aggressively defending interpretations of policy, the RfA would have ended entirely positively. Remember, RfA is the one chance the community gets to assess how willing to listen to feedback and adjust course accordingly a candidate is. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 09:00, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Jclemens, I'll just say it again in case you missed it: If the community expects New Page Reviewers to do a 'BEFORE' every time they reject a new article, they can say 'good bye' immediately to the NPP process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

So now might be a good time to get consensus to a notation in BEFORE that longer-lasting articles get more consideration than brand-new ones. I'd happily support that. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 09:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)