Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 April 15

15 April 2007

List of songs containing covert references to real musicians

List of songs containing covert references to real musicians (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD|AFD2)

I object strongly to the recent deletion of List of songs containing covert references to real musicians. It would appear that in the process of discussing it, no effort was made to contact those of us who objected in the previous debate, nor were the many arguments attached to the "strong keeps" there addressed.

Thus, if nothing else, I think this should probably be reversed on a process basis: at least two of us consider ourselves to have been blindsided.[1] [2] and at least one other has expressed surprise at not being notified.

Krimpet apparently feels the deletion was correct, so I am bringing the matter here.

(One more process matter: I would like an undeletion rather than merely permission to start from zero, so that the article history is restored, but would expect that most of the content would be deleted immediately after a restoration.)

But, aside from process questions:

• One of the votes for deletion asks, "How can anyone qualify that a particular reference in a song is a covert reference to a real musician?" Answer: the same wasy as one can say this about pretty much anything else in literature. Citation. Ideally from the person themself, or acknowledged by that person after someone else has raised the point, though recognized authorities (e.g. in this realm, Rolling Stone) should also be perfectly good sources.
• Another says "Vague, potentially endless, unreferenced". I don't see what's vague, except for the almost inevitably vagueness in all lists. The fact that a list is potentially long has not traditionally been an argument against including it. As for "unreferenced", it probably had more citations than the average Wikipedia article, even if there was also problematic material.
• Another post suggested that this material would be better distributed to articles on individual songs. I disagree. Most individual songs don't deserve an article. Nor does this lend itself to a category, for similar reasons and also because each of these requires an explanation and a citation.
• The other objection seems to be that it is an "indiscriminate collection of information". Unless I am mistaken, "indiscriminate" here is roughly the same as "vague": a lack of a means to discriminate whether something does or does not meet the criteria. As long as people are adding only material that meets our usual standards for citation, I don't see how this should be an issue. If there is a further issue here, I think it should be explained.
• On my talk page (Krimpet's remark linked above) he says that the article was potentially libelous. I would appreciate an example of what he thinks is a problem on that order.

As is common in these matters, there was material in that article that merited removal. I would not have objected to the removal of most uncited information from the list (although I give examples below of some things so obvious that a request for citation seems absurd), but deletion of the article is another matter. We do not normally delete an article because part of it is poorly cited. I believe that over the history of the article I have either cited or removed every time there has been a specific request for citation: this is pretty much the usual. If people are not requesting citations, they should not be deleting for lack of citations.

Here are some examples of material there that I would say was solid, well-cited, and (at least to me) interesting; this is a representative rather than an exhaustive list:

• "Accident Waiting to Happen" by Billy Bragg references The Kinks": "a dedicated swallower of fascism" is a reference to "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"
  • Cited to Tannenbaun, Rob. "Don't Try This At Home". rollingstone.com (Oct 31, 1991). Retrieved on December 31, 2006.
• "Carrie-Anne" by The Hollies references Marianne Faithfull
  • Cited to Michael Ansaldo, Hearts and Bones, Rolling Stone, February 11, 2004. Accessed online 24 March 2007.
• "The Fat Angel" by Donovan references "Mama" Cass Elliot (the title, in fact, refers to her)
  • cited to Donovan's own autobiography.

There are at least a dozen others comparably well-cited. There was also a lengthy and well-cited discussion of covert references in Don McLean's "American Pie", including citations to McLean's own web site that referred to the other citation used as "mainstream" analysis of his lyrics.

Other things are so obvious as to make a request for citation almost absurd.

• "Everything Zen" by Bush references David Bowie
  • The song contains the line "Mickey Mouse has grown up a Cow" a quotation of a line from Bowie's "Life On Mars"; that's barely even covert, given what an "unlikely" sentence that is.
• "Death Singing" by Patti Smith references Benjamin Smoke.
  • Smith recites the lyrics in a documentary about Smoke.

I can't quickly see how many of these there are (they are, of course, harder to spot than overt citations, and I'm not going to look at every entry) but there are clearly quite a few. If citation is really needed for these, I imagine it could usually be found, but this is like citing for "To be, or not to be" being a reference to Shakespeare.

There are, by the way, many other list articles that can be looked at for comparison. Allow me to point at some:

• List of songs containing overt references to real musicians
• List of songs which refer to other songs
• List of doo-wop songs
• List of patter songs

All of these are completely without citations and, except for the first, they raise comparable issues of matters not being self-evident (who decides the boundaries of doo-wop? Apparently, whoever last edits the page) and hence comparable need for citation.

Besides all that, though, I'm going to reiterate what I said about this article over a year ago. Although anyone who reviews my edits will easily see that I am not one to spend any large part of my working time on trivia, nonetheless I am firmly of the opinion that we need articles like this as well. They make Wikipedia fun. Certainly they are of more interest than our ponderously dull article on Charmander whose plodding tone is relieved only by the inclusion of fair use images. If we have so much of a stick up our collective arse that we would rather write leaden articles about matters even more trivial (I would hope that Patti Smith and David Bowie will still be fondly remembered when Pokémon is consigned to the dustbin of history), then that represents a serious enough problem to raise doubt about whether I belong as part of the project.

I have no illusion that I'm so important to Wikipedia that the article should be saved as sort of a referendum on my presence, but I do think it is sort of a referendum on whether Wikipedia is going to remain capable of any lightness at all. Which I think it should, and that spirit is/was a lot of why I got involved here in the first place.

Again: let's remove the uncited material. Fine. But why remove material that meets our standards for citation, in an article that several dozen people have worked on, and where clearly there are a lot of people who really like the article? - Jmabel | Talk 19:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment The process issue you raise is to not notifying all participants in a previous debate as to the new debate. I'm not aware the deletion process mandates such a notification. (And "a lot of people who really like the article" is not amoungst the standards for inclusion) --pgk 19:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• It doesn't; it's just a good faith move. At any rate, endorse my deletion per the second, unanimous AFD. --Coredesat 20:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion. Like the closing admin said, the arguments in the first AfD were really weak. If you think that there are some other articles that need to be deleted, too, you are perfectly free to nominate them, but the fact that they aren't deleted yet doesn't mean this shouldn't be. -Amarkov moo! 20:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse unanimous AfD. Lightness? We do it all the time. Hell, every Pokemon article has to be nailed down to sotp if floating away, they are so light on intellectual content. The problem here was cruft, not lightness. There is no encyclopaedic topic "song with covert reference to a real musician". There is not even an encyclopaedic topic "song with reference to a real musician". Listcruft, plain and simple. Guy (Help!) 21:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Overturn per User:Jmabel's argument. There is nothing inherently wrong with this list which violates any Wikipedia policy. Unicited material should be cited or removed. IPSOS (talk) 22:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem is that all of that is based on the first AfD, which was withdrawn. This was known in the second AfD, which was a unanimous delete. --Coredesat 22:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion per above. Rockstar (^T/_C) 23:07, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn From the Instructions part of this page:" 4. Nominations to overturn and delete a page previously kept should also attach a {{subst:Delrev}} tag to the top of the page under review to inform current editors about the discussion." .It would seem a good idea to extend this to second AfDs as well.

As the first AfD ends as: "The result was Nomination withdrawn. People have provided convincing arguments to keep this article" (22:10 with 7 merges) , and a second AfD ends as a unanimous delete (8) it would appear that there is a real contradiction.

And, comparing the names, it appears to me that not a single one of the 39 people expressing opinions at the 1st AfD were among those expressing opinions at the 2nd--including the noms and the closers. Either serious injustice is being done, or we have such inconsistent opinions that the result of an AfD depends on chance.DGG 23:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Restoration I enjoyed this article, added many citations, including the first one, and I support User:Jmabel's argument. Had I realized there was a second W:AFD, I would have voted keep again. Modernist 00:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. Nearly all of the "keep" and "strong keep" arguments from the first AfD were flimsy: "it's useful," "it's interesting," "lots of people put hard work into this," and Jmabel's threat to leave Wikipedia altogether if this article was deleted (not really an argument at all, though there were plenty of "Keep per Jmabel" votes). None of these arguments trump the extremely important requirement of no original research. As obvious as it may seem that "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" is a reference to David Bowie, it needs to be verifiable to ensure Wikipedia's informational integrity; "obvious" is a completely subjective term, and we could have any anonymous contributor adding references that are "obvious" to them. As I tried to point out, libel is also an issue: what if someone added the "obvious" statement that the song "Midnight Rambler" was about O.J. Simpson? The Wikimedia Foundation could potentially get in trouble with the Stones or O.J. for publishing such defaming allegations. (And yes, I know the song predates the case by over 20 years, it's just a silly example.)

  There's also the problem of the indiscriminate nature of the list. As I stated in my AfD nomination: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and Wikipedia is not a directory. Allusions, references, and "namechecks" to other musicians is extremely common in popular music. If this information can be sourced, it should be placed in context, in the article on the song or album containing the song in question. And if a song or the album it's on is not notable enough to have its own article, information on what it "covertly references" is not notable either.

  Finally, I'm sorry if Jmabel and others from the first AfD feel that they should have been notified; I know that it is courteous to notify the primary contributors to an article when nominating an AfD and I didn't mean to be discourteous or anything, but they were amongst dozens of contributors to the first AfD and over hundreds of contributors to the article, I didn't know that they in particular wanted to be notified. Nevertheless, the page displayed a prominent AfD notice for the full five days inviting anyone to contribute to the deletion discussion. A valid, unanimous consensus was reached that this article is not suitable for Wikipedia due to problems with original research and indiscriminate information, and it was thus deleted. Krimpet (talk/review)

• Let me respond to some of this:

  Please don't misrepresent me here. I'm not saying this is a particularly good article. It's not. I believe it is a salvageable article, and we don't normally delete articles because they need cleanup.

  More importantly, I did not "threaten" to leave. What I wrote was "It looks like this will be a very sad week for me. I always said that if Wikipedia became so tight-assed as to delete this article, then it was time for me to leave. Looks like that day has arrived. Sad. It's been a great three years." If that leads like a threat to you, I'd say that you are a person who has never been threatened.

  What I am saying is that the desire to delete this article (and the un-collegial way it was approached) is symptomatic of a change in the nature of Wikipedia that has left me feeling less and less invested in the project. Also symptomatic of that problem is the sophistry in some of Krimpet's remarks above, and the fact that this community has started to mistake such sophistry for scholarship and good sense.

  • Krimpet's links from "flimsy", etc. are to a page that "is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors." So it has no more standing than if he made those remarks himself. He is backing his individual opinion with someone else's individual opinion.
  • WP:NOR is a straw man here. We are agreed that the uncited material can be removed.
  • While I imagine I could find a solid citation for "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" being a reference to David Bowie (I am not the person who added it), and while if the article is saved I'm willing to see it removed if it cannot be cited, I think that questioning something so obvious is games-playing and time-wasting. I am comfortable in asserting that at any time since I've participated in Wikipedia, my own work has met a considerably higher standard of citation than what prevailed on Wikipedia at that time (a moving target, as that standard has been rising), and I've added hundreds of citations, maybe thousands, to support other people's inadequately cited statements, including in response to requests every bit as frivolous as this. But demanding citation for the truly obvious is petty, at best. I haven't looked at Krimpet's own edits, and I'm not going to stalk him, but (assuming that he occasionally writes articles and doesn't only remove material) I would be astounded if his own edits consistently meet the standard of citation he is demanding here.
  • The remark about libel is, indeed, a silly example. I asked for a real one. If the hypothetical possibility of someone adding a libelous statement to an article were a basis for deletion, we would have to delete all articles. Are we having an honest discussion here, or are you just interested in "winning" by any means available?

  The article namechecking is a near-stub, by the way, and could be much expanded. However, none of the examples in the deleted articles are namechecks (that would be overt references); otherwise, I'd propose that merging with that would be a decent solution to this.

  As I promised earlier, I will contact people who were involved in the earlier debates on this (skipping those who have already weighed in here).

  I gather this is most likely headed toward deletion, so I gather I am most likely headed toward departure. I'm not saying that if I leave I'll never come back: I honestly haven't made that decision. But it would certainly be a while. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse AFD2 No process failures (no, there is no right to receive notice; that is why we have watchlists people...) on the unanimous delete AFD. Looking at it, it was approximately 80% unverified (10 of the first 50 entries claim a citation, whether or not that citation would stand up...), and the only convincing keep arguments I see in the first AFD are those that the list could be sourced. Invalid AFD1 If there is a failure involved here, it is in the closure of the first AFD as nomination withdrawn; the nominator loses that right if there are any other delete opinions, see WP:CSK. Since that AFD was not validly closed, it carries even less than the normal precedent value, which is minimal. GRBerry 01:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure of AFD2. I also find no process problems in that discussion. The assertions made above were available to the discussion participants and failed to convince them. The article itself was properly tagged with the AFD notice for the requisite 5 days (and had been tagged for cleanup for a much longer time with no significant cleanup occurring). As a practical matter, we have to assume that people truly interested in a page either have it watchlisted or edit it regularly. The AFD template at the top of the page is hard to miss. The argument that "I didn't get to participate in the debate" is insufficient to reopen a debate, especially when there is no new evidence to consider. Rossami (talk) 04:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I had it watchlisted. I was backed up 19 days on my 4000-article watchlist, so I did not see this. If the arguments from the prior debate had been engaged, then the lack of notice might not be a big issue, but they weren't. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, the consensus in the second AfD was clear and correct. Also as a note to whoever closes this, Jmabel has been engaged in a pretty significant amount of canvassing. Looks like Jmabel did indeed contact everyone, which is probably in line with WP:CANVASS, so I retract that part but still endorse deletion. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • As stated above, I have contacted everyone who voted on this either way, in either of the prior debates. That is to say, I have contacted considerably more people who disagree with me than who agree with me. But thank you for the implication that I have been doing something in bad faith. It's a good reminder of the atmosphere around here lately, amd if I leave it will make leaving easier. - Jmabel | Talk 05:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, Jmabel contacted me, and I voted to delete, so that accusation is unwarranted. --Ezeu 06:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion. Clear consensus. The opinions of those who participated in the second AfD is valid, we should not undelete the article because some people missed the discussion. That would be setting a bad precedent. --Ezeu 06:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion per all the above. I'm also with Ezeu in that I'm not sure that all those who were involved with the original AfD should have been canvassed because they're not participating now... I would assume their views are clear in the AfDs. Rockstar (^T/_C) 06:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure. It's usually "nice" to notify authors/other interested editors but it's by no means a requirement and failing to do so hardly constitutes a failure of process, or a reason to overturn a deletion. Arkyan • ^(talk) 06:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Vehement overturn per Jmabel. As he likes to ask, whatever happened to that bedrock principle, WP:IAR? This article does improve Wikipedia, so all other rules should be ignored. Biruitorul 07:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • IAR isn't a reason to keep an article, and is not a reason to ignore consensus unless there's reason to (and there isn't in this case). --Coredesat 07:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Out of curiosity, how does this article improve Wikipedia? WP:INTERESTING? WP:ILIKEIT? WP:USEFUL? WP:INDISCRIMINATE WP:OR LIST? Rockstar (^T/_C) 07:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn. I was against deletion in first debate, I see no reason to change my mind. No new argument for deletion appeared in this second AFD nomination. It was not cool that when second nomination for deletion was made nobody informed people who participated at first debate. Why are some people focusing in deleting content in Wikipedia instead of adding?--MariusM 07:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Per that last question: if people just let everything slide in Wikipedia and deleted nothing, Wikipedia would not be nearly as good as it is today. Actually, it would be completely destroyed by now. There are policies and guidelines for a reason. Rockstar (^T/_C) 07:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see any danger of Wikipedia's distruction from an article like this.--MariusM 13:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Hey, folks, I accidentally linked Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_containing_covert_references_to_real_musicians_(2nd_nomination) instead of this on all the notices I placed on individual user talk pages. Sorry. I really don't want to go back and correct myself on 40 user talk pages, especially because I don't want to ping everyone yet again with a "new message" notice. I've put a note about this on my own user talk page. Since my good faith has already been questioned, and since Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_containing_covert_references_to_real_musicians_(2nd_nomination) is closed, I won't place a notice on that closed page referring people here, but I would greatly appreciate if someone else would, preferably someone on the "other side" of this issue. My apologies. Yes, I am a bit upset over this, and I screwed up. - Jmabel | Talk 07:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I went through your recent edit history and fixed all the links for you. Krimpet (talk/review) 15:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse, proper AFD on what appears to be original research. Why is this such a hot issue? >Radiant< 09:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion blatant original research, an indiscriminate list of songs, absolutely no encyclopedic value what so ever. -- Nick ^t 10:55, 16 April 2007(UTC)
• Endorse deletion, but only if there is no prejudice towards recreating a well-cited replacement article. I think Jmabel makes some very good points. I'd be happy to provide the text of the deleted article to anyone who wants to work on a new version in their sandbox. I have been involved in maintaining Films considered the greatest ever which survived 2 AfDs by removing all uncited claims. It still needs work, but I'd much rather see people collaboratively working towards correcting problems than having battles over deleting articles. The big problem that I see is that there are many people who want to delete articles spending time at AfD, and the people who don't want to delete them don't spend much time there, and don't want to spend a large chunk of their time reviewing what is being proposed for deletion. Deletion should be for articles which are impossible to fix. Considering all the effort involved in 2 AfDs and this DR, it would have been much easier to just move all the uncited material to the talk page, or liberally adding {{fact}}. -- Samuel Wantman 11:17, 16 April 2007 :(UTC)

• There is a crucial difference here: there are books, TV shows, annual spectaculars and all sorts devoted to debating the greatest films ever. AFI has several lists by genre of what they consider the greatest films ever. Halliwell and Ebert both discuss it. Where are the books on "songs containing a covert reference to a real musician"? Even if the "covert" weren't an open invitation to original research and blatant editorialising, the entire basis of the list is a concept whihc does not appear to have any significant existence outside of Wikipedia and a few idle discussions on Teh Internets. Guy (Help!) 11:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. The first AfD was validly closed as "nomination withdrawn", and the nominator has the right to do this. (As far as I know, anyway. An admin could have come along and reopened the debate, and later closed it with a delete decision.) The second AfD was a unanimous decision to delete the article. There's nothing in the procedures that says that the previous participants in an AfD need to be contacted for a second AfD -- in fact, Wikipedia:Canvassing addresses this topic. There's no evidence that any procedures were violated or misapplied in either AfD, so the second AfD should stand, res judicata. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 13:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion - procedurally fine. Metamagician3000 13:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion' - valid AfD, and with a page-title that unencyclopedic the page was hardly going to survive long anyway. It's not just potentially long, it's potentially infinite and subjective. Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 15:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

50 Greatest Cartoons

50 Greatest Cartoons (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)

Deleted as copyright violation (WP:CSD G12). But the article was about a book (see Google cache). How can it be considered a copyright violation? If the rankings part was copyright violation, it should have been removed. The deletion of article on a book as CSD G12 looks weird. 220.227.179.4 15:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. The list is copyright, and that was most of the article. Guy (Help!) 15:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn and remove the list. Problem solved. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • That would be speedied as empty and filing to assert notability. Feel free to write a sourced article, though. Guy (Help!) 18:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Not legitimately, no. The article without the list is a perfectly valid stub, and books cannot be speedied for non-notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • You say. I say that commercial things with no claim of notability are covered by A7. But there you go; you appear to want ot rules-lawyer, whereas I want to make sure that no article hangs around without at least some kind of evidence of significance. Guy (Help!) 21:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Sorry, I'm merely protecting the consensus that is keeping A7 as limited as possible. "Commercial things" do not meet the A7 criteria, but you're welcome to try and change that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, content that violates any copyright will be deleted. To start a non-copyvio version, just go here. --Dragonfiend 17:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn and remove the list. The list is copyrighted, but an article about the book is not. Corvus cornix 20:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn and remove the list. In 1998, Jefferson Graham from USA Today wrote an article about an eight-hour Cartoon Network series that was based entirely on this book. That seems to satisfy criteria #3 of WP:BK. Unfortunately, the USA Today archives aren’t working so try seeing the article here. If that doesn’t work, I can cache it onto a subpage on my userpage if you want. Furthermore, per a simple LexisNexis search, there have been many non-trivial articles about the book published. The problem is that many of them were published a long time ago (1994, 1995, etc.), and their websites don’t have a good enough archive to provide a website address. But we don’t need websites to prove notability. We just need published articles, and there are definitely plenty of those. Rockstar (^T/_C) 23:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion and recreate without list The list was in the very first version, which means that the first version was a copyright violation, and hence we can't keep it. We can't keep any later versions without the GFDL compliant history, including the first version. GRBerry 01:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that's true... can you show where you found a policy stating we can't keep any later versions, even after the copyvio is removed? I can think of plenty of articles which originally had copyrighted material in them but were kept after the copyrighted material was removed. Rockstar (^T/_C) 01:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse speedy-deletion as a confirmed copyright violation. The proportion of the page that was about the book was trivial compared to the proportion that was dedicated to the list. While we do sometimes recover articles where the copyright violation is a small part of the edit history, in this case the ratios run the wrong way. If someone wants a temporary undeletion of the non-copyvio text, I think we could oblige them but in this case we ought to start with a clean edit history. We can satisfy GFDL with a note on the article's Talk page. Rossami (talk) 04:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • A silly end around, but sure - drop it in my userspace, and I'll move it in once this completes if need be. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't understand the problem. Per Wikipedia's own copyright violations page, "If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the talk page, along with the original source." If the entire page is copyvio, then it should be deleted. In this article's case, only the list is copyvio, the rest of the article isn't, so the list should be removed and a note left on the talk page. Rockstar (^T/_C) 05:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, given that there isn't a whole lot left after the copyvio is removed (see the cached version). Starting over from scratch isn't really a big deal. --Coredesat 06:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. To all those who have endorsed deletion, giving reason that re-creating article without copyrighted content is no big deal: I could've re-created it myself copying content from the Google cache, but GFDL compliance is required even if the content is two paragraphs, right? 220.227.179.4 08:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I think the point is that so little of the article is include in those couple of paragraphs and at a glance the article doesn't stand up just being those two paragraphs, you can start again from scratch. i.e. No one is suggesting taking a cut and paste of those. --pgk 09:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • The two paragraphs are certainly a valid stub. Considering the extreme action taken that was unnecessary, the point is reversing that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - the list might not be covered under copyright law - if it's a poll for instance, if you, me and the publisher asked the same question to the same people, one would expect to receive the same answers, so there's no element of creativity in the work and it's mearly a list compiled in much the same way I could recreate the list of the top 100 Wikipedians by edit - it would be identical to the list on Wikipedia but I would have created it myself, so it wouldn't be a copyright violation. -- Nick ^t 14:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

South Australian general election campaign, 2006

South Australian general election campaign, 2006 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)

The majority of editors commenting on the deletion supported keeping the content, either by keeping the page or by merging the page with South Australian general election, 2006. Because this page is locked from editing, no merge took place after deletion.

ALso, the reasons given be some editors for deletion were suspect. one thought an FA shouldn't be edited, another incorrectly identified the page as a duplicate fork. ChampagneComedy 07:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Orderinchaos

Endorse closure Summary: The original decision was sound, took account of both the consensus and the unusual and arguably disruptive actions of a small minority, and should be allowed to stand, or alternatively replaced based solely on the consensus with a decision to delete and redirect. As presently stands the page has *not* been deleted, so a deletion *review* is unnecessary. Below is a more detailed account of the events leading to this point.

The page was indeed a fork, created on 22 February 2007 [3] by User:Joestella entirely from content from the article South Australian general election, 2006 [4], which was featured in a near-identical form on 10 January 2007 (changelog 10Jan-21Feb FA discussion) on its 3rd attempt. The basis of this was a discussion on the talk page for WikiProject Australian Politics initiated by Joestella on 3 February 2007. [5] There was no real discussion of the proposal, with a single comment opposing the move as "overkill". After its enforcement, I raised an issue about it on 11 March 2007. The discussion was quickly derailed into an unrelated conversation about an infobox. End result - no consensus, although the originating user clearly supported it and two clearly opposed. No attempt was made to contact any of the individuals involved in featuring the SA article, especially Timeshift, who was responsible for creating nearly 80% of the original article's content, for thoughts or ideas on how to best do this. It should be noted that at this time, Joe was involved in proposing a number of controversial actions, many of which were being publicly opposed at WT:AUSPOL, and that at the time of the discussion, the campaign section was *well* removed from the key sections of activity at the bottom of the page. Version on 11 March

On 6 April, Timeshift restored the campaign section to its previous position. [6] The following day, User:DanielT5 nominated the article which is the subject of this DRV for deletion. It seemed fairly uncontroversial - two versions of exactly the same page, one which acknowledges the editors who created it prior to 10 January 2006, the other which only acknowledges the cut and paste by Joestella on 22 February 2006. Apart from Joestella's keep vote, consensus was pretty firmly on the delete side. On 11 April, the AfD proceeded to turn into one of the most bizarre events I have ever seen on Wikipedia where, at just after midnight local time, Joestella blanked the parent article then attempted to rewrite it from scratch. In the ensuing hours, as probably the only person insane enough to be up at that hour, I tried to engage Joe in discussion both at his own talk page and at the talk page for the article. The end result was well over 5 screens of discussion, but a continuance of the rather aggressive editing behaviour which had caused both disputes in the first place. I feel that this behaviour was a failure to show good faith - no edit that major is so urgent that it can't wait for consensus, the result was the near-total demolition of an article that had been featured by the Wikipedia community (despite some flaws, which I think everyone involved have agreed can be worked on), and some of the edit summaries were blatantly misleading. As soon as other editors became aware sometime the next morning, several editors weighed in and suggested that a more collaborative process was required - Joe actively refused to acknowledge this, and with user ChampagneComedy (who has been a reliable ally of Joestella's on a number of seemingly unrelated disputes and had no prior involvement in this one - [7]), started work on the Campaign article [8] in apparent contravention of the emerging consensus on the AfD.

As one would expect, the behaviour of the user in question resulted in some changed votes. Several community members, now aware of the details, either changed their vote to "Strong Delete" [9] or added new votes reading "Delete and merge". Several users weighed in with other opinions - stating that the changes on the page had rendered it inferior to the original, or simply noting that it was a fork rather than a duplicate in its present state. [10] Bizarrely, Joe modified a user's "Strong Delete" vote to "Comment" [11], provoking a strong reaction and some community concern as to what exactly was going on. Finally, an admin who was completely uninvolved in Australian politics articles, and who exercised what I believe was careful judgement, closed the discussion after 8 full days of debate, only to receive abuse and "demands" on his talk page. [12]

The entire process has been abused, as far as I am concerned, by a couple of minority editors who want to hijack the Australian Politics WikiProject for their own ends, and are unconcerned about or even actively disregarding consensus of views on a range of issues, including this one. It is not an intractable dispute - the infobox one, while still controversial, has been largely fixed with moves by Joestella on 10 April to integrate some of my concerns raised back in February into what he was doing, the end result being Template:Infobox Election Result which I hope will be a positive contribution to Wikipedia. Also, ChampagneComedy's edits on the same date to an unrelated set of articles relating to the 2005 WA election, which had reached a similar impasse between two competing and inferior POV versions, resulted in a better article which we can actually work with rather than fight over. For the simple act of doing what I believe was right, I have copped a fair bit of abuse from one person (I even got called a "misguided left-winger" yesterday, which quite amused me), but numerous emailed and other supports from a wide range of people concerned about the editing style reflected in the above articles, and the seeming determination of some users to push other positive, contributing users to the point of leaving the entire project (a sideshow was Joe's attempt to have a userpage deleted which criticised him) rather than cooperate with them. Accusations of POV bias which have been introduced into some of the articles (see for example Talk:New South Wales general election campaign, 2007), and even a rather strange statement by Joe on this AfD that matters relating to elections need to be sourced back to the conservative-leaning Liberal Party of Australia [13] as well as uncivil edit summaries such as "poor research", which *are* seen by the initial editors who carefully researched the material, lead me to believe there are other issues beyond the mere (unnecessary) separation of two articles. Orderinchaos 09:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion as noted this misses large amounts of editing history due to it being a cut and paste of another article (creating potential attribution problems). Creating forks is not a dispute resolution technique. The inability to merge back is due to a dispute concerning if the content is appropriate in the article and hence the article is currently protected, again looks like a dispute resolution issue. --pgk 11:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose deletion I'm in a bind here. I can't very well write my own version of the above Orderinchaos essay and address the misrepresentations I can see within. And I think it inappropriate to recreate the debate at this page: editors can read it for themselves. Safe to say that OIC was a full partner in this dispute and his summary of my actions shouldn't count for much.

In response to Pgk, the original article was a duplicate fork and condemned as such. As in the past, I used the AfD nom as a spur to make the article better. Over the course of a week, South Australian general election campaign, 2006 changed almost 100% — rewritten and brought up to the standard of New South Wales general election campaign, 2007. The article is not a duplicate fork. The edit history is not, given the comprehensive rewrite, an issue.

I would suggest to whomever makes decisions on things like this that:

1. South Australian general election campaign, 2006 be reprieved until a discussion of the desirability of campaign articles in general can be concluded. At present, three recent elections have them, one of those saw an amicable resolution to POV disputes, the other survived a recent AfD vote, the third is subject to an ongoing AfD. As OIC mentions, a general discussion began at WP:AUSPOL. It continues here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics#Separate campaign articles.
2. AfD discussion on Western Australian general election campaign, 2005 be suspended for the same reason.
3. Failing that, South Australian general election campaign, 2006 be reprieved until South Australian general election, 2006 is unblocked and a merge can take place. A majority of editors voting on this supported the retention of the now-deleted content via a merge. The closing editor missed or ignored this; the content is no longer available to readers.
4. Either way, Orderinchaos and his supporters be encouraged to flag and/or edit biased sections in the South Australian general election campaign, 2006 text itself; or discuss specific change proposals on the article's talk page.

Irrespective of the offence I may have caused (and I apologise if I have), Victoria shows that the content exists to write substantial, notable, verifiable campaign articles. New South Wales shows that it can be done well. I ask that all editors of Australian politics articles be given the opportunity to have their say on the general campaign-article issue before the article in question is forever removed. Joestella 15:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

You should note all the edits are still visible in the article history so merging etc. can happen when any disputes are resolved without problem. You seem to be asking for things not within the realm of deletion review, again this is not dispute resolution --pgk 15:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the points raised by pgk - the solution as provided allows the edits to stand in the edit history, while acknowledging the redundancy of a campaign article. As an aside, most of the above proposals by Joestella fail the reasonableness test anyway, as a clear majority of Australian politics editors have now spoken about these articles during the AfDs and articulated a lack of need for them except in certain circumstances - essentially it is a barrow being pushed by two individuals, one of whom has a documented history of supporting the other across a range of disputes, against the entire flow of the WikiProject, in the hope that the WikiProject will eventually concede the point through sheer fatigue. In a community where consensus is the status of a policy, denying the majority to spite a tiny, often disruptive minority is like mob rule in reverse - the Naming conventions ArbCom case had a very similar behavioural issue at its core and was resolved clearly in favour of consensus. Between those who have emailed, those who have expressed an opinion at the pages, and those at the AfD, I see almost anyone with an opinion - including many valued contributors who have written well-researched articles on these subjects - on one side, and 2 at the other. The sad point is that I am genuinely curious how many of these supporters have arisen as a result of solidarity due to opposition to past edits and behaviour by Joe on utterly unrelated disputes, rather than a genuine feeling on the topic at hand. I sense on this one that it is the latter, although the former increases the number of people who would have an opinion on such an esoteric topic as whether campaigns deserve their own articles. (My personal feeling, as expressed at the AfDs, is that some do and some don't). To be frankly honest, I would use Victoria as precisely an example of why these articles *shouldn't* exist sometimes. That sort of content belongs on a site like pollbludger (a site for whom I have the deepest respect) but not on Wikipedia. I would much rather (as would many) that Joe start to acknowledge the presence and views of fellow editors and accord them with the respect he desires for his own, and these disputes would simply not occur, and we could all go back to doing what we came here to do - writing articles. Orderinchaos 16:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

If Orderinchaos can't make his point in 1100 words, what use does he have for another 400? PGK, I don't think we need WP:DR just yet. I think by freezing and reversing the AfDs in line with Joestella's suggestion and letting editors discuss the general issues involved at the project talk page, this whole debate would be a lot less personal than I and others have been guilty of making it. It's a good compromise for now -- one that will give us a specific and comprehensive "consensus", not one that is merely inferred from selective quoting of talk pages. ChampagneComedy 22:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

"I think by freezing and reversing the AfDs"... You mean by ignoring the over side in the dispute and doing what you want. Sorry I cannot see this as an issue for WP:DRV --pgk 22:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse closure 1) History was already restored underneat the redirect prior to this review opening, so anyone asking to overturn or endorse a deletion knows not what they are speaking of. 2) Everything except this specific article is out of this deletion review's scope. 3) Normally, the regulars at DRV would easily decide unprotect a protected redirect, for the issue to be subject to discussion on the target article's talk page. However, that page has had to be protected due to an edit war. Get consensus there, and then we'll talk about how that consensus affects whether this should be an article. Adding fuel to an existing edit war would be a bad idea. GRBerry 01:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure I agree pretty much (with only minor differences) with the Orderinchaos summary of the situation. If the decision were to be overturned it would set a really bad precedent, that if one person is just disruptive enough that they can overrule consensus and Wikipedia to make a point, I think the closing admin made the best decision in trying circumstances. As I said in one of the related arguments to this, the attitude of Joestella and CC has been pretty much "This is what I want to do and stuff the rest of you, it's my way or the highway". That is wrong. Wikipedia policy clearly says so. They're unhappy because the majority, whom they look down upon, decided differently to themselves, even when actively canvassed (there was at least 4 people directly contacted - but I won't complain about WP:CANVASS because it kind of backfired on those doing it, as some strengthened their existing vote) DanielT5 03:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

  Just as a matter of fact, CC and Joe did not violate WP:CANVASS.--cj | talk 05:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Agreed. Those approached were well aware, or able to make themselves so, of goings-on and hence could cast an informed vote regardless of who brought the matter to their attention. Orderinchaos 06:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure per GRBerry.--cj | talk 05:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure per GRBerry and the points made by Orderinchaos. I'm with CJ though - Joe didn't canvass for my vote, he merely asked me to review based on his improvements, but I still thought it wasn't good enough, so I left my vote as delete. JRG 06:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose delete and closure: What disturbs me most about this debate is the loaded language being flung across Wikipedia. "Conservative-leaning", "personal agenda", "tiny disruptive minority", "barrow being pushed". When did we stop talking about the article and start talking about the author? And why?

The only relevant facts here are the words written by Joestella and ChampagneComedy in the article. Are they true? Are they independently verifiable? Are they objective? Everything else must be ignored, or Wikipedia will stop being about peer-reviewed articles and start being about peer-reviewed personalities.

Shame on anyone whose decision was based on "patterns of activity". it utterly ignores what Wikipedia is supposed to be. Wikipedia is not a popularity contest, and it's not a community. It is a hundred thousand invisible hands moving towards the same goal.

Apparently it's helpful to be an Australian politics expert in order to weigh in on this debate, and I'm happy to say that I am. After sifting for hours through various edits and revisions, I still feel strongly that Joestella's work was reasonable, fair, balanced and worthy of inclusion. As Australian defamation law teaches us, it was both true and in the public interest, so I consider it perfectly defensible.

In the strongest possible terms I support Joestella's revisions, I support keeping the revisions open for debate, and I oppose deleting his work.

(talk to) Caroline Sanford 14:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)