Deletion Considered Harmful
Deletion Considered HarmfulDeletion may not be such a good idea on this Wiki. Perhaps the Wikizens can come up with a better convention on how to delete pages? Some mechanism that incorporates clear rules on when and why a page needs to byte the dust?
This wiki's topic is software development and patterns. Off-topic pages should be deleted. StarTrek too. Perhaps moved to another, movie related wiki.
It has been established over and over again that pages like StarTrek are of interest to the community and have a place here.
In the past, pages that got restored after being deleted were allowed to stay. Only recently has someone started ignoring that convention. The attempt to impose their vision of what is or is not okay on the entire community has not been well-received.
WikiOnWiki pages are generally dull as dishwater. In fact, the WikiOnWiki page itself was created to suggest the deletion of WikiOnWiki pages. MakeSignalNotNoise.
Wiki is not free speech, and is not a democracy.
As a meritocracy, authors here should strive to write content with merit, so nobody wants to delete it. -- PhlIp
[As a side note, PhlIp, what about your very own HarryPotter page? Does that have any merit, according to your system of evaluation? Should we start deleting that one, too? I would hope not. -- MartySchrader]
Oh my. Someone thinks that I started HP, and that it's the only off-topic page I ever launched and sustained. How quaint!
[How nicely you sidestep the issue, though. Have to remember that technique.]
I'm the author of BoogerClub and I strive to write content with merit. BoogerClub has merit. That hasn't stopped people from deleting it. I respect their right to delete it, although I'm curious about their motivation.
Do you really want a wiki where every author strives to contribute material that nobody might want to delete? Is that a rule here? -- EricHodges
Yes, that's the original premise of Wiki. It's WhyWikiWorks. It's encoded in Wiki's highest ideal on WikiMasterOriginal. It's the one and only source of signal in this place.
But you don't have to like it. If you want a wiki that works differently, there's nothing stopping you from setting up a WikiWikiClone of your own. You could call it BoogerClubWiki and define its focus as the creation of potty humor. I can think of several children who'd be delighted to contribute to such a place, and believe it's a project that's never been attempted in WikiDom before. Actually, it was called LiquidPoop, and was deleted with regularity by one and all.
But it'll never survive here unless you keep it out of RecentChanges. It's like the banana joke on your home page. But repeated about 90 times with no orange. I think that at first people deleted it because they thought it was noise. Now I think most of them are deleting it just to demonstrate their displeasure with you for spamming RecentChanges. At least, that's why I delete booger* when I see it. -- PeterMerel
Oh really - nothing to do with your own wiki, then?
Of course Eric is welcome to come contribute along with the rest of our prize-winning gaggle of loons. So long as he sticks to GC Etiquette, I think he'd be a valuable addition. -- Pete
[As a side note, Eric, I'm undergoing a major refactoring of this page. There are a lot of point/counterpoint items here I'd like to reduce to thesis/antithesis/synthesis. <sigh> It's a never-ending struggle to bring enlightenment to those who don't understand the Tao of Booger. -- MartySchrader]
"Do you really want a wiki where every author strives to contribute material that nobody might want to delete? Is that a rule here? -- EricHodges"
"Yes, that's the original premise of wiki. It's WhyWikiWorks. It's encoded in wiki's highest ideal on WikiMasterOriginal. It's the one and only source of signal in this place."
Second that, Peter. Every contribution should add signal - before page deletion came around, it was possible only to delete or overwrite the content of pages, but the effect was the same: Content adding value to this wiki was cared for and evolved through combination with existing valuable content. That with less value in this wiki was sidelined and eventually removed. It never meant the content was valueless in itself, but that it belonged in a more suitable medium. It's important to separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat is generally considered the value, if you're making bread. But the chaff has uses too - animal feed, stove fuel, - please don't put it in my sandwich, though! Strive for WikiMastery -- StevenNewton
I don't see that rule on those pages. The intersection of meaningful information and universally agreed upon information is small and contains little that most people don't already know. It isn't worth the effort to post content like "air is good to breathe" and "sometimes cats scratch you".
Think harder.
There are several pages here about the ugliness of OO compared to the beauty of relational databases. It think this content has no merit and might mislead novice developers. Should I be deleting them? I'd rather not, if that's WhyWikiWorks I will.
"But it'll never survive here unless you keep it out of RecentChanges."
I haven't been putting it in RecentChanges for days. Someone complained that it "pollutes" that page, so I've been restoring it with MinorEdits. Deleters are putting it in RecentChanges. -- EricHodges
Ah, you've managed to generate a community of antagonists, and now they're dogging you. By keeping the deletions of your page on RecentChanges, they know they increase their number. So the question devolves to a matter of strategic approach. A popular exponent of this skill is SteveIrwin?, who handles deadly animals as if they were kittens. How does he do that?
Heck, it's easy. First, Irwin doesn't try to contend with the animal. Any direct approach to a cobra is not going to work out well for you. And if you want to get close to a tiger you're going to want a tiger-trap. See CalvinAndHobbes #1 for instructions ;-) Irwin approaches animals from directions and with approaches that don't look like the animal's predator or prey.
So an Iraqi who actually thought about how to approach an American soldier without getting shot would bleach their hair blonde and scratch an American flag into the paint on their car. We've talked about this elsewhere on wiki - OnlySayThingsThatCanBeHeard.
Next, Irwin doesn't defend himself. Defensive behavior is literally a red flag to a bull. This is why you must never try to run away from a bear. Bears think running people look very tasty. Deleters think your pages look tasty for the same reasons.
Last, Irwin treats the animal with compassion. If it's hungry, he feeds it. If it's stuck down a well, he pulls it out. He wants the animal to survive, so he thinks about what's good for both himself and it, and acts accordingly.
So the way forward is clear. First, don't get into a deletion war in the first place. If someone deletes a page of yours, you just let 'em. There's lots of other ideas in your noggin - express one of those instead. If the idea that was on your deleted page has merit, someone else will re-express it for you soon enough.
Second, MakeSignalNotNoise and generally be a GoodWikiCitizen. People will give you a lot of latitude then because they'll come to expect you to help their own edits, and return courtesy, and avoid impropriety. Then you won't have to defend your edits; they'll defend you.
Last, contribute stuff that relates to what other people are talking about; you can create pages as dopey as EndOfWiki, VeryGoodSeats, or RulesOfGeelf if you just relate them to your audience.
So BoogerClub isn't getting deleted because people here don't recognize merit; it's getting deleted because you don't understand SteveIrwin?. Crikey! -- Pete
They key to survival in any community is to get your agenda considered the wheat.
See GroupThink.
Let's try to stick to the topic at hand, eh? What mechanisms can we ask Ward to put into place that will clean up this problem of deletion warring? Wiki can't go on like this; it's too much like Slashdot, Usenet newsgroups, etc. Except that it's interactive in real time.
Actually, I don't think any mechanisms are necessary.
This event has shown that the deletion mechanism is really very weak. It takes two people to fully delete a page, but even then lots of people keep backups, so the page only stays deleted if everyone agrees for it to. The "wiki ecosystem" is already biased towards page preservation.
This is incorrect: it is vastly easier to delete a page than to restore one.
How so? Restoration is just a copy-paste by a single person. A full delete takes two people. Until the deletion is seconded, the system itself provides you with a copy of the page through the LastEdited? feature. You don't even need your own backup copy. But plenty of people have those.
This is particularly true if you compare the efficiency of two (or more) deleters working in tandem with that of two (or more) restorers.
The fact that a deletion war can break out is actually a good thing. If two groups feel strongly enough to enter into a deletion war, there is obviously some sort of tension between those groups that needs to be worked out. Putting in place some ham-handed rule like "Pages can only be deleted and restored 3 times. After that, no more deletion of that page is possible." effectively locks out one side of the debate. The software would terminate the debate before the people were ready for it to end. Such a thing would leave lasting tensions among wikizens. No good could come from that.
Since page deletion is implicitly something that the whole community has to agree to, the rules surrounding the process need to be community-based. We'll eventually come up with a rule like "If a page gets restored, it gets to stay", this brouhaha will fade into wiki history, and the community as a whole will end up stronger for it having happened.
This is a people-issue, not a software-issue. -- RichardRapp?
[Oops! There already was a convention in place that restored pages were to be left alone. Now that convention is not being followed. I agree that this is a people issue, but identifying exactly what the issue is might be problematic. In the mean time, if the WikiVandals would just leave the Booger pages alone, the whole issue would slide into obscurity. It is exactly because they insist on deleting these pages that the conflict continues.
As a side note, to the WikiVandals doing all this deleting: Why just BoogerClub, et al? Why not go after all content marked OffTopic? That way, we can have a repeat of the BigWikiFireOfDoubleOught and destroy most of the value of this wiki, eh? Wonderful. Why can't you guys just lighten up a little bit? -- MartySchrader]
So most of the value of this wiki exists in off-topic pages?!? I'm flabbergasted.
Why not go after all off-topic material? I actually wouldn't mind if someone did.
Most of that stuff should really be moved somewhere else. GreenCheese, MeatBall, Why, etc all provide wikis dedicated to specific types of material. If someone wants to set up a TV/Movie oriented wiki, I'm all for it, and it sounds like there's enough interest in those topics to support a community.
The canonical example of off-topic material that is allowed to stay is StarTrek. The reason given for keeping it is that it is "broadly accepted by the community." I think the truth is that this wiki isn't devoted to software development, as is often claimed, but instead to software development and "geek culture". (I consider myself a geek - no offense intended by that phrase.) StarTrek is a widely acknowledged part of geek culture, so it is actually on-topic.
If that is really the dynamic that is at work, can you say that eating boogers is a widely acknowledged part of geek culture? If not, the Booger* pages are still off-topic even under this broadened definition, and thus fair game for deletion. - Richard Rapp
I can safely say that parody is a part of geek culture, and BoogerClub is a decent parody of FightClub. So yes BoogerClub is on topic as much as any other humor page here is. Humor is on Topic. And humor is subjective. Even if you do not like a specific bit of humor, others may, and in this case do. Which is why the giant resistance to it being deleted.
You attribute motivations that do not exist. I didn't delete BoogerClub because it was or wasn't funny. I deleted it because it was far, far off-topic. What I do think is funny is that during this entire week-long (so far) event I am the only person to provide a clear rationale for why it should stay. -- Richard Rapp
If that is really the dynamic that is at work, can you say that eating boogers is a widely acknowledged part of geek culture? -- Richard Rapp
Could it be that BoogerClub was the target of so many deletions because there is an unconscious fear that eating boogers is or will become "a widely acknowledged part of geek culture"? The word "geek" originally meant a "carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken." We (geeks) tend to mean a "person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept" while they (non-geeks) tend to mean a "person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy." BoogerEating? might easily be associated with any of those. -- EricHodges
"...such as biting the head off a live chicken."
Or pounding a nail up your nose (ie. a "blockhead" act) or eating glass/lightbulbs. Backoff, junior, if you think you're talking to a newbie on the carnie stuff. :-) -- RichardRapp?
Just quoting the AmericanHeritageDictionary?. -- EricHodges
No offense taken. I did include the smiley.
I'm just somewhat surprised you came up with that definition of "geek". Is that the first definition, or a subsequent one you felt fit the situation better? -- RichardRapp?
Those are the 3 definitions given by the AmericanHeritageDictionary?. The carnie is #2. The techy is #1b. The clod is #1a. -- EricHodges
Keep in mind, folks, that simply getting rid of deletions would not have prevented the deletion war, merely changed it into a vandalization war. It's not clear that would be any improvement...
Wiki deleters are people who have appointed themselves as judges on what information can be discussed on the Wiki. If all OffTopic content was deleted, it would be different, but deleters are selective and that is the problem. Either delete ALL content that is not directly related to software development, or stop deleting content based on your own biases and preferences.
That's not a sound argument. It's been proven impossible to delete all offtopic content. So you do your best to keep new offtopic content from living long, but we're stuck with much of the existing stuff, that's wiki. Just because we're stuck with lot's of offtopic stuff, doesn't mean we don't keep trying to FixBrokenWindows.
OffTopic is open to personal opinion. FixBrokenWindows when applied to OffTopic pages to one person can be censorship to another person.
Exactly, that's why when everyone applies it, a consensus forms, if enough people delete a page, it stays deleted, if enough people restore a page, it stays restored, that's how it works, deleting is good, restoring is good, that's how the community works. Don't pretend deleting is bad, it's part of the natural life cycle of a page.
No, if one determined person wants a page gone, eventually the others will give up on restoring it.
Or, they'll write scripts to protect it.
And so do OffTopic pages, there's always going to be a struggle to keep the community focused on software, it's not censorship so much as trying to keep the focus on what matters, software.
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