Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2006 September 7

Full reviews may be found in this page history. For a summary, see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Recently concluded (2006 September)

7 September 2006

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Esoteric programming languages

I do not think this "pseudo-AfD" was closed correctly, with all due respect to User:Yanksox who made a heroic effort. The AfD was arranged in a very peculiar fashion:

1. Descriptions of a large number of "esoteric programming languages", only some of which were actually nominated for deletion
2. Section for general comments on deletion or keeping these articles
3. Individual entries for some of the languages (about two dozen of them)

What happened was that a lot of editors—a majority, though not an overwhelming one—voted some variation of "keep most" in the "general comment" section. However, a small number of editors (i.e. four) voted "delete" in every individual entry, or in nearly every one (all of them also voted delete in the "general comments" area). A few individual entries had other votes, but basically it was this "block of four" for all of them.

On closing, it appears that Yanksox went through the individual entries, more-or-less ignoring the much larger number of editors who made general comments, and roughly counted votes in each entry. In most of them, that was 4/1 for delete (I cast a similar "procedural keep" in each entry, since I did not think "AfD en masse" was proper procedure). A small number of the entries had extra keep comments, and a couple of those general led to "keep" for the entry generally; but all the block-of-four entries were closed as "delete".

I don't particularly disagree with any specific result of all this, I just think the process is wholly and fundamentally wrong. Not least because a number of the programming language articles closed as "delete" had themselves survived AfD in the past... in fact, the nominator specifically stated that he did the mass nomination to avoid "interested" supporters of specific language articles. LotLE×talk 15:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

• Aarrgh, what a mess We need to find a way to deal with mass deletion nominations. The test case followed by list approach isn't good, as it is subject to biased selection of test cases. The mass nomination with single discussion approach sometimes ends up with trainwrecks, as it did at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caridee English, and now people are grumbling about a mass nomination with split discussions. Since it is legitimate by process to do a mass nomination with a single dicussion, it is absolutely legitimate to do a mass nomination with individual discussions. I therefore disregard all of the "keep all" general comments based on process issues, as I don't see a process problem. (Some of these were second (and later) opinions by the same person, and hence should be struck anyway.) Keep/Delete Most with no specification of most should be interpreted as Keep/Delete All. I then have the following general opinions: Keep All: 5 Delete All: 3 Delete most (all non-bold): 2 Delete most (all without a non-procedure based keep vote below): 1 Delete most (all except where the same user opined keep below): 1. (The nominator opined individually, so is not included in the preceeding count.) As the K1:D4 nose-counts below all qualify for all three delete most types, I'll summarize the general discussion as K5:D7. Below, the K1 is a procedural complaint that was not legitimate, so should be disregarded also. The arguments are generally weak; in my eyes stronger for deletion but not enough so to be very significant, so I'll ignore that. We then have a K5:D11 outcome among those opining on the merits of the articles, legitimate consensus for deletion. That is enought for me to endorse the closures of the group with no prejudice against individual DRVs for individual closures. GRBerry 21:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• What GRBerry said. Most were unequivocally delete-worthy, please list the ones you think were not. Guy 22:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse general process, individual languages (especially those with prior "keep" AfD's) should be reviewed individually here. ~ trialsanderrors 22:43, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse process. And I will support restoration of any individual languages brought to DRV with a decent argument. Themindset 22:46, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse closure. The introduction above says it all - Yanksox undertook a heroic effort in what was a complexly organized AfD. I doubt any admin who tackled that one would come out unscathed for doing so. As for the AfD nomination itself, I feel for the nominator. There is no "good" way to do a nomination for a group of articles that are all closely related and are subject to the same considerations. It's stated at How to list multiple related pages for deletion, "However, for group nominations it is often a good idea to only list one article at afd and see how it goes, before listing an entire group." That is nice in theory, but it has happened where the "test" case goes through and then the follow up comes to a completely different and inconsistent result. That only encourages bulk nominations, so as to avoid inconsistent results. The downside to bulk listing is that there may always be a reason to oppose the AfD because of the bundling of nominations. Given those problems, and the task facing the closing admin, I don't see any problem with how this proceeded or how it was closed. No prejudice to anyone wanting to ask for a DRV on a specific article that was included in this lot. Agent 86 23:49, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse. This was a heroic listing, and closing was always going to be difficult. I think the listing was excellent - just bundling them together is almost invariably problematic, and listing seperately would have been impractical. --kingboyk 08:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse general closure, although I have listed Ook! separately above, and we should consider any other individual languages for review if there is a good argument for them. the wub "?!" 12:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
• argh! the problem in this case is that most of the language entries were to be merged into list of esoteric programming languages and then have their articles deleted. So the conclusion of delete is appropriate, yes. However the nature of the AfD placed an unusual time pressure on the attempts to merge, in a manner inappropriate for casual volunteer editors. I am looking the have the deleted articles restored to my namespace, so that I can continue the merging process. At the end of this process it will be apparent which languages truely deserve to have articles. LinaMishima 13:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
  • If an article is to be merged, it shouldn't be deleted - it should be replaced with a redirect. The edit history of the article being merged is the list of authors required for GFDL compliance. (Although a list of authors in the edit summary would probably suffice, as happens when a category is renamed and deleted). --kingboyk 13:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
  • clarification I'd like to clarify that I felt that the closing comment of 'argh' was entirely correct, and the majority of deletions were indeed correct. Any issues lie not with the closing, but with the unusual, special, and unique procedural element in the running of this AfD. The closure was probably valid and I ensdorse it, but not the unusual procedural nature of the AfD LinaMishima
• Overturn - severe procedural problems exist here. For one thing, the overall votes were 8 keep, 7 delete, which means that almost all of the individual languages failed to have a 2/3 margin. For another, the AfD included votes from six months ago when the idea of deleting was being circulated semi-privately. This essentially meant that those in favor of deletion were organized for months, whereas those opposed had a five day window to notice the debate - astonishingly unfair. As for the proper way to handle mass deletion of articles, may I politely suggest "not" is a good start, and "by consulting carefully with the people who contributed them" as a second. AfD is a bad place to try to eliminate substantial parts of a topic's coverage on Wikipedia. Phil Sandifer 17:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
• Undelete. This wasn't organized in a way that was going to get a helpful result -- the articles were treated as a group in every way, except that reasons for keeping them (as a group) were seemingly ignored. Aside from that, it's unclear why merging these to a list, which seems like an obviously better solution, was not discussed or addressed. I also agree with LinaMishima's comments on the AFD. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:11, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn. I said from the beginning that this was a screwed up AFD. --maru (talk) contribs 19:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn - I disagree with group AFDs where not all the group are listed in any case. I even more disagree with the way this was done - where there were both general votes and specific votes for the test cases, and disagreement about how the general votes should apply to the specific cases. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 20:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC) (Don't respond to me that "AFD is not a vote". It is a vote; we shouldn't kid ourselves. It's a vote but with a "we can ignore certain votes" rider.
• Overturn and relist insufficient consensus on all/most. -24.237.22.168 21:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn Good gravy, what a mess. The combination of group voting and individual voting has left this thing virtually impossible to interpret. Overturn, undelete everything, and then perhaps renominate each one for deletion individually - there are only 61 of these things, doing just two per day will work through the whole list in just one month. Bryan 03:28, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

• A proposal: I think there should be an RfC on "esoteric programming languages" to allow discussion of what may or may not be the criteria for inclusion of these languages, and at the end of that discussion there should be a list of unambiguous dletes, a list of unambiguous keeps, and hopefully a short list of those which require a wider discussion. There is no doubt that most of these languages have no currency, are simply intellectual exercises by a single individual, and many of the articles read like vanity. Guy 09:41, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Little need This is effectively happening already, actually. First step is the reformatting of list of esoteric programming languages into a style which allows more information to be given on each language. Once that's done, those languages which have been significant influences upon other languages (ie, appear in the "Based on" column a lot) should get articles, and we will be able to see which languages have a glut of good references (another reason to give them an article), and which languages actually only ever had the author's homepage and the esolang wiki entry. Most languages will end up either happily merged into the list, or deleted. No need to add any additional process, to be honest. LinaMishima 11:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse per GRBerry. —Ruud 11:52, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 10:43, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse Two points to make here: first, the closing of the AfD was probably correct; most were closed with consensus, and any that were mislisted can probably be DRVd, and second, this DRV looks to me at the moment like no consensus, default relist, which would be an incredibly bad result as the whole messed-up AfD process would probably be gone through again. I agree that a better process would have been to AfD them a few at a time than the mass nomination, however. --ais523 11:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn and give Yanksox a beer for his headache, but per LinaMishima we need to just make these redirects if they're going to be merged, for GFDL purposes. Any that absolutely don't get merged in any way can be brought to prod/afd. This was too complex/unorthodox to represent a true consensus process, sorry. -- nae'blis 15:39, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn. If I were in Yanksox's position, I would have had no patience for the blatantly inappropriate format of this AfD and simply closed the whole thing as badly-formed without a decision (and I've been there, it sucks, man!). The articles are not sufficiently identical to be included in one big debate, and are not sufficiently different that we can ignore the votes at the top. I say, just undelete all of this, cancel this AfD completely, and new ones can be started. Mangojuice^talk 16:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse myself I have read this whole discussion, I followed it since it's birth on AfD, and I believe that I have acted in the best fashion that I could. At first, I was ready to speedy close as a possible train wreck, however, I stepped back and watched something real devoulp, I didn't just examine every little discussion, I looked at the whole AfD. The comments on the top regarding deleting or keeping all negatated each other in regards to strength or argument, therefore, the individual discussions helped tip how everything went out. I believe that I did the best thing that I could have done. I also closed this AfD in a somewhat timely fashion, when noone else was willing to take it on, I don't know how long it would have stayed up there if I didn't act. Consensus stretched out and brought the judgement for the whole discussion. It's time we closed this whole case, and move back on to making an encyclopedia. Yanksox 23:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • comment with regards to the individual discussions, several editors, myself included, did not feel that they had the time availible to properly consider each and every one, and so only commented on the general discussion. But as I've already said, I endorse the closure as being generally proper. That's the problem with this, there's too many here to not have to say 'generally'. I suggest we close this DRV, with an endorse, leaving the restoration of articles to the community itself as it feels the need to, and a recommendation against similar styled AfDs in the future.
• Overturn. The deletion discussion/review mechanisms we use do not give us the authority to violate the terms of our GFDL licensing agreement, and this AFD was a horrible, horrible mess. RFerreira 04:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Roberta Trias-Kelley

I would like to have an article that I wrote undeleted. The article is about Roberta Trias-Kelley, who is a major pioneer in Martial Arts for women. Specifically Shuri-Ryu Karate. She has been featured in Black Belt Magazine. She was the first woman to receive a Blackbelt in Shuri-ryu, as well as, one of the first American women to receive a black belt. She inherited the system from her father, pioneer Robert Trias (who many call the father of American Karate). She did NOT inherit a dojo! She inherited a system! She was head of the United States Karate Association, Inc. for 10 years, the largest martial arts organization of that time (1989-1999). She is one of a handful of Menkyo Kaidens in the world of martial arts and has known and trained with many of the greats. She did exhibitions in martial arts in the 1960s with Bruce Lee. She is the Grandmaster of Shuri-ryu. She competed at a time when there were no divisions for women and won! She is one of the few women who has ever become a 10th degree blackbelt. That is as high as it goes. She is known for her ranking in Okinawan Kobudo and as well and coauthored a book on the subject with her father. She is a role model in the area of martial arts and continues to enjoy teaching. She doesn't charge for teaching, so this isn't any sort of advertisement. She travels, teaches and mentors Karateka all over the world. In Wikipedia, you have a lot of the people that are listed as Chief Instructors-which she is also, and they are still on...because it is a historical item. I would like her put back on, especially since she is the head of the system and one with a good amount of notoriety. Thank-you, Lesshadow

• Did you write the piece yourself or copy it from somewhere? (It's been deleted once as non-notable - which I think is debateable - and once as a copyvio). --kingboyk 15:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Deleted - She does not appear notable, unless she has more than one name she goes by. For example "Roberta Trias" or "Robert A Trias-Kelley" or something. Only 119 google hits and some of those are to wikipedia. However, you could request the content be posted to your user space. Wjhonson 15:34, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Gee, her again? Seems like this was reviewed just last month. -- Fan-1967 16:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• I wrote the piece myself. Some of the info was on our webpage (written by me) and that is why it was deleted as a copyright violation. She is notable...is notability just based on the amount of hits you get on google? I think that is a poor measure of notability. The woman is very notable in the world of martial arts and is well-known. The things that she has done were done as a pioneering effort. This is part of the history of martial arts. Does it have anything to do with her being a woman? Does that make a difference? I would think that the groundbreaking accomplishments that she has had in the world of martial arts for women would make her a very notable person. If you don't agree then I would ask you to compare the other wikipedia entries through Shuri-ryu Karate that are people who have had less to do with the style than she has...though they are notable in their own right but not as in my opinion. I know that you have reviewed this before and I am trying to remain a contributor and follow the guidelines that have been set down for creating a piece. It is frustrating when something appears to be worthy of publication...she was in Wikipedia for a long time and then was deleted. I guess I don't understand why that would change. Please advise. Thank-you, Lesshadow
  • Comment Many articles remain a long time because nobody notices them. That doesn't mean they should continue to remain. Many articles still exist which shouldn't. That's not an argument to keep others. If you can name specific articles we'd love to take a look at them. Fan-1967 19:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, uncited, unwikified, unencyclopaedic in tone. Content fails to establish importance. Guy 22:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Overturn if, and only if, the assertions of notability above can be verified with proper citations; it is true, some people may be perfectly notable without getting a lot of hits, and if she's done all that's written above I would consider her notable. But, alas, none of it is cited. Themindset 22:51, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted, none of the supposed notabilities that the author is listing seems notable to me. What does it mean to be a "the first woman to receive a Blackbelt in Shuri-ryu"? How many men are there in that discipline? The notability is not established until the subject in which they are notable is also proven to be notable. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy close AfD endorsed only a month ago. Editor can create a new article in userspace and we can review it here. ~ trialsanderrors 05:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Template:User Nogus

I speedy deleted this new userbox under CSD T1 (divisive and inflammatory), and placed a notification on ANI.

The text of the userbox was "This user sleeps poorly when German Solutions are imposed." with this image: Image:Nogus.png. I felt and feel that the wording was intended to allude to the Final Solution, making it hugely inappropriate. Unfortunately I also made a mistake in thinking that the image was the Nazi flag and not the current German flag, for which I have apologised. I've told the creator (John Reid (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)) more than once that I won't restore the userbox, and no other admin has volunteered to restore it, and I've also directed him to DRV. However, he persists in harassing me over this issue (see e.g. [1]) at a time when I'm trying to reduce my onwiki work to concentrate on programming. Since he clearly isn't going to allow this issue to go away, I present this to the community.

One further note: I have stated quite clearly that I deleted this because of the imagery. If he wishes to recreate fundamentally the same template but with nicer wording he would have no problem from me[2]. If on the other hand the community wishes to reverse my decision, believing that it's not a valid T1, that's fine too - despite John Reid's efforts to make it otherwise, this is not a personal issue to me. --kingboyk 11:56, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep deleted. Text clearly alludes to the holocaust, and insinuating that the German Userbox Solution is similar to that makes this template a a very clear WP:CSD T1 candidate, (and I am restrictive about using that criterion). Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted T1 applies to templates that are divisive and inflamatory. Divisive? Clearly an wikiphilosophy advocacy userbox, so yes. Inflammatory? With allusion to the holocaust yes. That GUS has been somewhat renamed already to reduce the degree to which that allusion is drawn, this seems to be intentionally inflammatory. Meets both tests of T1, so valid T1. GRBerry 12:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted, in exceptionally poor taste. Guy 14:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep deleted.. Kingboyk wasn't as mistaken as he thinks; the eagle is the modern one, but a casual glance at images of Germany will quickly convince the viewer that, when shown within a white circle, it is never placed on a red background. I wonder why! Kirill Lokshin 15:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Red is the first choice of color for anybody creating an alert. UBX images need to be square, not round or eagle-shaped. Would you have been happier if I'd chosen an orange or yellow background? Somehow it needs to fill the 45px square at the end of the UBX. The color is unimportant -- although I think baby blue doesn't say "danger" or "caution" as well as red or amber. We can switch to a German flag (as seen on GUS itself) if you'd rather. John Reid 12:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted T1. Using the Bundesadler in a white circle on red background could get WP into legal trouble in Germany. ~ trialsanderrors 17:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted I recently apologized to Mr. Reid for (harshly) accusing him of trying to indirectly compare WP:GUS and The holocaust (I misread that he used Eagle atop swastika), but seeing this image I cannot assume good faith anymore. As Trialsanderrors indicated, Bundesadler in a white circle on red background, draws quite strong allusions to the Nazi Swastika. The text "sleeps poorly ... german solutions" is also an indicator for this, for right now the only "german solution" on wikipedia is the German userbox solution, so either the plural-s at the end of "solution" is either a mistake (which I can't honestly believe, given the context) or is meant to allude to the Final Solution. All in all, a very poor taste userbox and definitively inflammatory. CharonX/talk 19:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted. T1 was invented for this. Mackensen (talk) 22:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - Possibly the result of [3]? The userbox appears to be created one day after. - Mailer Diablo 08:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, I never read that page before you called it to my attention; I have no opinion on it yet. I guess if people are going to see a Nazi in every German and genocide in every German solution, then yes, we'd better not name policy proposals that way. John Reid 12:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted very bad taste -- Samir धर्म 10:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment -- I'm not going to demand the restoration of this UBX anymore; I dislike metafights. As I've already said, Kingboyk triggered Godwin's Law and, by longstanding tradition, has already lost this debate. I don't see anything Nazi-like about Nogus; I think people who leap to Nazi comparisons are bigots. The argument is circular and twisted: All Germans are Nazis; therefore anything that links Germans to anything bad is Nazi; and since the connection is odious, this is forbidden. Maybe it's high time to rename GUS to something less "dangerous". Certainly, posting the German flag on GUS is asking for trouble from those who see Nazis under their beds.

But that's another metafight I'm done with. Kingboyk has said he'll "permit" me to recreate the box "with nicer wording". Since I never thought the wording was ugly, I don't know what words will pass muster. I want to express -- in terse language -- the thought that endless bickering over UBX and specifically militant GUS-boosters keep me, literally, awake at night, annoying me and taking me away from both sleep and more productive pursuits. I will entertain any reasonable rewording or reimaging -- and as I've said, my permission is not required to edit this box; it's a templatespace UBX, therefore common property, therefore anybody can fix it to reflect his own concerns.

One way or another, though, I'm going to express my dissatisfaction with the way GUS is being imposed by bullshit and intimidation on the community. If you want this fight to end here and now, present your alternate content -- don't make me guess what innocent language is going to make you see spooks. All that's required is that you have the breadth of mind to permit me to have an opinion and to share it. John Reid 12:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a standard, mutli-national visual icon for "No" - the red circle with a slash across it. Place one of those atop the flag/icon used in the pro-GUSuserbox. Then be specific about why GUS bothers you. Don't forget to use the word "userbox". GRBerry 22:01, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure you don't want me to slash the German flag and suggest "No Germans". I don't know where this pro-GUS UBX is; I hope it's not in templatespace, ha ha. Link me. And -- keeping in mind brevity -- suggest acceptable wording. John Reid 09:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I expect he's referring to Wikipedia:German_userbox_solution/Userbox, which derives its location from WikiProject precedent, AFAIK. -- nae'blis 15:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

So which image do I slash again? There are two. Slash the UBX, which suggests "No UBX" (which I don't agree with, sorry) or slash the German flag? While we're at it, are you sure you want any kind of red circle in this, since that seems to have been the thing that made Kingboyk jump salty in the first place?

C'mon guys, settle this. And supply acceptable wording. John Reid 00:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion, without prejudice toward recreating a more neutrally worded version. If userboxes are keeping you up nights, I shudder to think what your blood pressure must be like. -- nae'blis 15:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Not to be rude, but I think it's kinda dumb to hope for a neutrally worded version. I intend to express a bias against GUS-boosting that ignores community consensus and I choose to make it personal -- it affects my life. John Reid 00:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)