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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cowding Soup (talk | contribs) at 02:53, 19 May 2018 (thank you). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Request for explanation for deleting Criticisms of medicine

  • You wrote: "The length of the discussion disguises the fact that, in terms of headcount, there is a relatively clear consensus that this is not a useful article topic because of the disparate nature of the content assembled here." Please provide some clarification. The length of discussion was partly due to several editors worrying that an article about criticisms of medicine would be pro-alt-med; the original poster accused me of bad faith, that is, having a "problematic agenda", by which I think he meant an alt med agenda. This accusation is false, and I tried to make the case that the article is not pro-alt-med (for example, I and some other editors pointed out that its sourcing is consistent with WP:MEDRS and it has no alt-med sources).
  • I asked for references to Wikipedia policy concerning breadth of the topic, but no one supplied any. Can you point me to Wikipedia policy concerning what you call "the disparate nature of the content"? In connection with "disparate nature of the content," please compare the Criticisms of medicine article with the two related articles Criticism of science and Alternative medicine. What would you say about which of the three has more "disparate content"?
  • From my reading of Wikipedia policy, I don't see how "in terms of headcount" establishes consensus (From WP:Consensus: "consensus is determined by the quality of arguments (not by a simple counted majority)"; from WP:WMD#Deletion discussions: "they are not `votes'. The weight of an argument is more important than the number of people making the argument"; and from WP:AFTERDELETE: "Remember that deletion discussions are not votes, and opinions are weighed according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines.").
  • In the AfD discussion what argument grounded in Wikipedia policy did you see for deletion?
  • Editors supporting deletion cited several, including OR/SYNTH and NPOV. I'm not saying that they're right, necessarily, but these are arguments based on policy. Sandstein 09:25, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • In situations as here, where there's no side that has the clearly stronger arguments (both sides made defensible arguments), a clear headcount is usually determinative for consensus. Sandstein 09:25, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:DELAFD says pointblank "These processes are not decided through a head count" and also in WP:DEL "If in doubt as to whether there is consensus to delete a page, administrators normally will not delete it."
  • The trouble with a headcount in such a situation is that it makes it possible for a group of like-minded editors to delete an article that they find offensive or threatening to a strong viewpoint of theirs. I have tremendous respect for the other editors in the AfD discussion, several of whom have devoted a lot of work to WikiProject Medicine. However, it was clear from the discussion that some of them felt that the very idea of a "Criticisms of medicine" article was improper because it would play into the hands of CAM ("Complementary and Alternative Medicine," i.e., non-science-based treatments). Even if this were true (which I and some other editors argued that it wasn't), according to WP:Censor material should not be removed from Wikipedia because some (in this case possibly a majority of participating editors) thought it would be detrimental to a cause they believe in. (In this case it is a cause that I strongly support, namely, combating fraud and pseudoscience.)
Declined, sorry. I do not think that the policies you cite apply to this situation where there is a reasonably clear consensus to delete something. Sandstein 05:27, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is your decision?

You didn't write an answer. I provided a link to the draft above. Is your decision not to un-salt Kelly Sadler? Thank you. Cowding Soup (talk) 02:45, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote above: please post this as a separate draft page, it can't be seriously evaluated otherwise. Sandstein 09:16, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Per your request, here it is on a separate page. User:Sandstein/Draft for Sandstein to see per request Cowding Soup (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Moved to User:Cowding Soup/Draft for Sandstein to see per request. The draft is reasonably sourced. I have unsalted Kelly Sadler. Sandstein 05:30, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the unsalt. I plan more work on it before using the unsalted page. Are you planning to delete the article if it is in article-space? Cowding Soup (talk) 02:52, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Civility in infobox discussions: request for clarification archived

A recent request for clarification that you were involved in has been archived. The committee have clarified that the topic ban you imposed is within the scope of discretionary sanctions. GoldenRing (talk) 08:53, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Special Counsel investigation (2017–present)

You'll notice that I "liked" this edit, but I see that it ended up being something quite different than what I thought you intended to do, and unlike at Facebook, I can't "unlike" that "like". I thought you were going to move each ref(s) to its logical spot after some name(s), but instead you appear to have just deleted all of them and used only one reference to Politico for all of those names. Normally mass deletion of references is frowned upon. Now we have a bunch of redlinked refs. What gives? -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 14:44, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what the point of this block of refs was? Each entry in the list was already referenced. And without knowing which name each ref refers to, they don't seem to serve much of a purpose. Sandstein 16:03, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
All but one was being used elsewhere, so I've gone back and restored them in better locations. Now all the red linked refs are fixed.  Done -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:16, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BullRangifer: I see, thanks - normally bots quickly fix this sort of thing, I think, but perhaps not here because the page is protected or something. Sandstein 05:25, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Mass killings under Communist regimes

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes&diff=841763890&oldid=841762004 appears to me to indicate a problem when one editor accuses another editor of "bad faith" because they ask that WP:CONSENSUS be followed. I rather feel that asking that WP:CONSENSUS be followed is not "bad faith" as a rule, but the attack shows that the problems found previously on this article abide, which included such personal attacks on others in the past, as well as massive posts on the talk page which do not elicit discussion and which are seemingly not framed in a manner calculated to elicit discussion. Collect (talk) 22:23, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And how do you think this concerns me? Sandstein 05:26, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You have acted on this article's status recently, and I rather felt that you should be apprised of the current state thereof. It does not concern you as a person, but it appears to likely concern you as the administrator who made the recent change to the status of that article. Collect (talk) 13:08, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion review for Criticisms of medicine

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Criticisms of medicine. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. NightHeron (talk) 13:42, 18 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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