User:GRuban/Lugnuts Olympic microstubs

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_201#RfC_on_draftifying_a_subset_of_mass-created_Olympian_microstubs Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive352#Close_of_RFC_at_Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RfC_on_draftifying_a_subset_of_mass-created_Olympian_microstubs: 2) Bradv misapplied the close of the 2020 RFC, which stated that "moving articles to draft space is generally appropriate ... if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify..." a case that clearly applies to this RFC which was in every wise a deletion discussion other than not taking place on the AFD page and going on for longer than 7 days, including there being multiple votes for deletion.

Bradv's close:

The discussion resulted in no consensus.

While the majority of commenters are in favour of draftifying these ~1000 articles, there are sufficient concerns raised about the process that have not been adequately addressed. Of particular concern is that this proposal would violate key aspects of our deletion policy: these articles are not new, many of them cannot be improved, and there is no clear route for them to get out of incubation and back into mainspace. Furthermore, the policy states that incubation must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion", an argument that was not adequately refuted by the supporters of this particular proposal.

In a previous conversation regarding draftifying articles as an alternative to deletion, the closer concluded, in part:

Instead of unilaterally draftifying an unsuitable-for-mainspace article that is not newly created, editors should instead nominate the article for deletion, e.g. via WP:PROD or WP:AFD.

There was an alternative proposal to redirect all of these articles, and while again the majority were in favour, there are problems raised with this proposal that were not adequately addressed. In particular, there was no consensus on how to establish the correct redirect target for these articles.

The second alternative proposal, to create an Olympic stub cleanup project, also failed to reach consensus.

As this discussion has not reached a consensus, editors are free to handle these articles in accordance with existing policies and practice. For example, articles may be nominated for deletion, either through PROD or AFD, either individually or en masse. Articles that meet the requirements at ATD-I may be draftified. And articles with a suitable redirect target may be redirected as per our usual practice.

I understand this outcome will be frustrating to many of the people who commented here. But it is important to remember that, by design, it is supposed to be easier to create content than to destroy it. The side effect of that design is that we occasionally have to deal with large quantities of poor quality content. I look forward to further discussion on creative ways to deal with this issue. – bradv 15:29, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

My close

The motion carries, WP:Consensus to move the listed articles to Draft space. Note that the motion allows, and even encourages, editors to edit and improve the articles so they can be returned to main space. Not mass, or batch, or automated moves back to main space. As long as the editor sincerely believes they have improved a given specific article enough to pass Wikipedia:Notability, they may move it back to main space; at worst, that way it will face an individual WP:AfD, not 900+ all at once! Until then, or even instead of that, editors may make similarly individual and considered redirects in main space to replace some articles. Redirects will generally need to pass a lower bar, the main concerns are that the redirect will be a reasonably likely search term, and there is an obvious target article. Again, at worst, that way they will face specific WP:RfDs.

TL;DR:

I'd like to thank all those who participated in this discussion, over 100 people, all of whom remained civil, and many of whom brought up very insightful points. I'd also like to thank User:BilledMammal for making the proposal, User:Bradv for closing it the first time, and User:FOARP for convincing him to reopen. I'm trying to fill some pretty big shoes here; I'm an experienced editor, and have closed maybe 100 RfCs, but Bradv is not only an experienced editor, but also an experienced administrator, so it takes quite a bit of hubris to think I can do a better job, and I won't be surprised if there is another thread on WP:AN after this asking that my close be also reopened. But I am still trying hard so that there is not.

So, the decision. I counted a noticeable majority of voices in support of this proposal than opposing it here; something like 68 to 45, and even more if we consider the ones who agreed that the articles should be removed from main space, but wanted redirects instead of draftification (which, as above, will generally be individually allowed). I might be off by one or two in my count, but I am not off by 10. Now as people say, correctly, RfC is a matter of stating arguments, citing policies and guidelines, not a matter of counting votes. The closer does not just count votes. But when I close and judge arguments, I try to remember that the editors stating them are as much editors as I am, many even more experienced than I am, and if many experienced Wikipedians are all saying something, it's definitely worth considering that they just might be right.

So, those arguments. The "support" side mainly said that these articles are stubs that are essentially database entries, and cited only to one or two specific databases, violating WP:GNG, WP:SPORTCRIT, and WP:NOTDB. I looked at a randomly selected subset and they were all of the exact form: "(Name) (born–died) was a (nationality) (sportsman). He competed in the (sport) event at the (year) (season) Olympics." Exactly those two sentences, no more text, and cited as stated. The support side has a point. There are a number of people on the "oppose" side that said that the articles aren't hurting anything, there is WP:NODEADLINE, so they might be expanded, Wikipedia is WP:NOTPAPER, so we have the space, and that at the time that Lugnuts wrote the articles WP:SPORTS said that just participation in an Olympics, even without winning a medal, was an indicator of notability. Unfortunately, I have to discount those arguments; we have a long and time-honored precedent of deleting articles that are not actually hurting anything, but just because they don't meet Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability; and those policies don't have a "grandfather clause" that say that articles that were made before the policies were written are forever acceptable. We can work on not-harmful articles that don't quite meet standards in our user spaces, or in draft space, but until they do, we don't allow them in main or article space.

Many others of the "oppose" side, maybe even most of them, said two related things: that mass moving articles to draft space is basically deletion, as very few people will ever find them there; and that deletion is not something that can be decided at the Village Pump, that's what we have WP:AfD for. That is basically the argument that Bradv found in his close that there was no counter-argument against; he cited WP:DRAFTIFY and this previous Village pump discussion that articles shouldn't be moved to draft space as a back door to deleting them via AfD. Now Bradv had a good point as well; he's a very experienced and respected editor. Many on the "support" side, at least implicitly agreed that moving these articles to Draft space would be close to deletion; some said they were only supporting draftification because they really wanted the articles deleted, and while others said they supported draftification to avoid deletion, and that the text would still be there for people who wanted to improve them, they admitted there would be a real possibility that no one ever would. However, the "support" side said that that this many articles would be too much for AfD, which only handles one or at most a few articles in a single discussion, not hundreds as here, and especially not the thousands of Lugnuts's similar stubs, which many on both the "support" and "oppose" sides agreed would likely soon be brought up a similar discussion. In questioning Bradv's close, FOARP said that this Village pump discussion was essentially similar to WP:AFD, so should be allowed to draftify articles if the decision went that way, and this was eventually successful enough to get Bradv to withdraw his close. This similarity to AfD was actually brought up in this discussion earlier, by PerfectSoundWhatever: Wikipedia isn't a burocracy, so I don't think its a problem to do this process here instead of AfD if enough editors come to a disagreement. Different room, same discussion. Now I wouldn't always agree with that in many cases, AfD is where it is for a reason, it's a high visibility forum, many editors specifically go there to decide the fate of articles, if this were a lower visibility discussion I would not consider it a sufficient substitute for AfD. But in this case, there were over 100 editors actively participating, including many very experienced ones. Very few AfDs get that level of participation. I think per WP:IAR, and WP:NOTBURO, we can consider this a sufficient venue, as PerfectSound wrote.

Finally, the redirect option. A noticeable number of people were opposed to draftification, for all the above reasons, but preferred replacing the stub articles with redirects to existing articles on the Olympics of that year or the competitors' countries, because that way at least the redirects could be found by readers; even more would accept redirects equally with draft space, or as a compromise. However, several were explicitly opposed to redirects, because it wouldn't be always clear which article to redirect to, and in any case, over half the participants didn't mention redirects one way or the other. So I can't see a consensus for redirect, even as a compromise. However, I can point out the initial term of the proposal, "5: Editors may return drafts to mainspace for the sole purpose of redirecting/merging them to an appropriate article, if they believe that doing so is in the best interest of the encyclopedia". So if someone believes they know a good redirect target, they can feel free to make a redirect; if others disagree, they can discuss or at worst nominate it for WP:RfD. As long as it is one thoughtful redirect at a time, and not a mindless batch or automated process, I believe the community will accept it. User:Valereee even suggested doing draftification and redirect replacement simultaneously.

Personal note

Personally I'm not much of an editor of articles about Olympic competitors (arguably if I were I wouldn't be a suitable closer here!). However I've run into Lugnuts here and there - with all his edits it's hard to imagine an experienced editor who hasn't. I had always looked at his many short articles, not just on sportspeople, but on the many, many topics that he wrote about, and thought: these are not my cup of tea, but I'm glad we have him. I'm sad that he's gone. I'm even more sad that he went like this, with a statement that he intentionally added copyright violations and incorrect information. That several people in this conversation think he was lying about this, and just saying it "to piss off all of those who did not like him" doesn't really make it much better. What we're doing here by building the Wikipedia is a 90%+, maybe even 99%+, a very good thing. If I'm ever this angry at the <1-10% of what this project does that I don't agree with, I hope I can leave without deliberately acting to damage the project as a whole. A sad thing all around.

Simple Support/Oppose count

• Support: 68
• Oppose: 45

More detailed

• Support without mentioning redirect: 48
  • Support draftify or redirect: 15
  • Support draftify and don't redirect: 5
  • Oppose: delete, don't draftify: 2
  • Oppose draftify, support redirect: 11
• Oppose: 32

Support

1. BilledMammal - bringing hundreds or thousands of articles through AfD is not practical. These are articles that took minutes, sometimes seconds, to create
2. Not worth the time to individually delete. Galobtter
3. These have not been shown to meet the basic notability requirements of NSPORTS - dlthewave
4. IMO the ideal final result would be to have each of these end up as one line in a table in a broader article. North8000
5. Ixtal
6. Non-notable stubs are of no benefit to the reader in their current form, and AfD can't handle this amount. Avilich
7. Lugnuts' highly unusual article creation justifies the movement of so many of those articles out of mainspace at once. Jogurney
8. this procedure is flexible and allows editors plenty of time (five more years) to deal with these titles as they see fit (redirect, merge, draft, expand, userfy, WikiProject). Levivich
9. little more than a name, birth date, death date, nationality and a sport they have competed in, they should not be kept as articles Terasail
10. casualdejekyll
11. ample time to shepherd some draft stubs. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs
12. S Marshall
13. No reasonable expectation of notability. ... "deliberate errors". Cbl62
14. GoodDay
15. You can personally take them out of draft space and work on them in your user space, thereby avoiding the extremely overly-lenient 5-year deadline. Or you could redirect them. Or put them in project space. JoelleJay
16. competing in the Olympics is not an indication of athletic greatness. Schierbecker
17. If anyone wants to create a well-sourced article on one of these individuals, these stubs will be of no help at all. Ajpolino
18. they should really be deleted after the normal 6-month period. Zaathras
19. deliberate errors had been introduced, better to have no articles than hundreds of faulty articles.✠ SunDawn ✠
20. many of these articles could be improved to pass notability, but they should not be in mainspace until this has been done. EdwardUK
21. Therapyisgood
22. to many articles that are only notable because of topic specific notability rules. Such rules only serve to formalize the systemic bias of Wikipedia. — BillHPike
23. starship.paint
24. After reading Lugnut's final goodbye post where he admitted to leaving false statements in article for years, ... I would prefer deletion, and if not, then a normal 6 months draft. Regardless, redirects from the person to a relevant article is always helpful and I would support mass redirect (but not with the same content deleted, that invites reverting the redirect and leaving the bad content there). --Gonnym
25. well-thought-out solution to a complex problem. Renata
26. If any of these people pass the GNG, editors can expand them --In actu (Guerillero)
27. ProcrastinatingReader
28. five years is way too long not to autodelete. That really should be just one year or two years at the very most.Tvx1
29. If anything, the proposal should be even broader. SnowFire
30. just regurgitation of database entries.  — SMcCandlish
31. I've always hated the low bar set for including sports figures GenQuest
32. Ealdgyth
33. microstubs are not a value-add to the encyclopedia. Chris Troutman
34. mass automated deletion or userification,--Aquillion
35. Virtually useless to man and beast. scope_creep
36. Draftifying this many articles is pointless; just delete them. Oaktree b
37. evidence of low page views dictating that drafting articles will have minimal impact. BluePenguin18
38. to discourage future mass creation of stubs. Paradise Chronicle
39. would also prefer deleting them outright FWIW. SWinxy
40. I find the "articles shouldn't have to satisfy Wikipedia standarads" argument extremely amusing. ~~ AirshipJungleman29
41. -Indy beetle
42. Support It is clear that these articles should never have been created. A vote to oppose is simply a middle finger to our basic concepts of notability Reywas92
43. I don't see why we can't draftify the articles and then create redirects. Valereee
44. We don't need to waste more community time debating them individually. Nosferattus
45. outright deletion (not draftification) of any remaining articles on the proposed list that remain unsourced and are now non-notable (as per WP:NSPORT). This mass deletion will still demand a manual, individual human review of each Loopy30
46. unlikely these will ever improve if left in mainspace, so the potential copyvio and inaccuracies are troubling. DFlhb
47. I would, also, highly support mass deletion. Mr.weedle
48. I think maintaining these database entries as stubs does cause sufficient harm Suriname0

Support draftify, don't redirect

1. I came into this expecting to support redirection over draftification, but I've explained below why I don't think this is practical. Sojourner in the earth
2. no reason at all, to redirect people to a list in which specific non-notable Olympian is possibly mentioned (many of the redirects will have the wrong name, because of the poor methodology used to create these articles) FOARP
3. it would fall afoul of WP:R#DELETE#1 and #2, by indiscriminately redirecting many common names with more notable targets to very brief mentions (if any) of very obscure sportspeople that no-one would be using the search function to discover anyway. — Bilorv
4. Redirect to what? And also, no one will search them Nononsense101
5. oppose systematic redirection as an alternate proposal on the grounds that there is no clear methodology for selecting appropriate targets for redirection. XAM2175

Support draftify or redirect

1. draftification seems like a suitably conservative approach; also support an alternative where these would be redirected Ljleppan
2. Support either this or mass redirecting.—Kusma
3. (and) strongly support mass redirection to the relevant Olympic page CMD
4. 5 years is ample time for any interested editor to expand on any of the articles. Redirect to the relevant pages would also be fine in my opinion. BogLogs
5. either draftification or redirection buidhe
6. preference for redirection over draftification. Donald Albury
7. no preference Sennecaster
8. either/both of just draftifying or dradftify-and-redirect, with a mild preference towards the latter Soni
9. I'd much rather see these articles redirected ActivelyDisinterested
10. draftification or redirection. Silverseren
11. Support redirecting, Neutral on draftifying. Wikipedia isn't a burocracy, so I don't think its a problem to do this process here instead of AfD if enough editors come to a disagreement. Different room, same discussion. — PerfectSoundWhatever
12. Either is fine, Dr vulpe
13. redirection of most of them is, on balance, the better approach, but either is better than neither. JeffUK
14. best to change these all into redirects Occidental Phantasmagoria
15. whether it's this proposal, outright deletion, or redirection. —Femke

Oppose draftify, support redirect

1. Draftification when the author of the page is blocked is just delayed deletion. (1) redirect them all to the relevant team/event articles. — Rhododendrites
2. At least that might help someone searching for them. Black Kite
3. redirected to the relevant Olympic article.-- Pawnkingthree
4. oppose in favour of redirecting where even remotely possible Blue Square Thing
5. Several editors have proposed redirection instead, and I agree that this would be better. Barnards.tar.gz
6. a better solution (as offered above) is to redirect these to the appropriate Olympic games. Rlendog
7. Redirects would lead the reader to an article where they can find out about the person. Schwede66
8. Redirects seem far more helpful. Toa Nidhiki05
9. would be open to a separate proposal to redirect Abzeronow
10. J947
11. then users are able to more easily navigate the encyclopedia --Nerd1a4i

Oppose

1. These articles improve the scope and quality of the encyclopedia, they are often useful for every day users, and have little to no impact on how others view Wikipedia in my opinion. Ortizesp
2. what’s the harm in keeping all these? BhamBoi
3. deleting a thousand pages (which is what this amounts to) for drama-based reasons doesn't build the encyclopedia Randy Kryn
4. Many of these are notable and can be expanded BeanieFan11
5. doing nothing is perfectly fine --Jayron32
6. draftification must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion". Red-tailed hawk
7. Take them to AFD if you want them deleted or demoted to drafts. Steven Walling
8. Village Pump is not the place to mass delete articles Joseph2302
9. against policy to use draftifying as a backdoor for deletion. --Rschen7754
10. it is a false assumption that the articles involved need to be deleted at all. JuxtaposedJacob
11. there is no deadline, and it is much better to get the right answer slowly than the wrong answer quickly. Thryduulf
12. just a continued harassment campaign against Lugnuts. idea of an article not only having to pass current rules but also needing to pass future rules that didn't even exist is horrifying. KatoKungLee
13. nothing wrong with stubs. Many of these could be fleshed out and pass GNG, and many of these are useful to users. If you want to merge them to a list one by one, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed.--Ortizesp
14. determine notability for each article on an individual basis. —Scott5114
15. Anything that is truly not notable can be deleted via the standard AfD process, which the village pump is not an appropriate substitute for.
16. should be handled case-by-case They certainly aren't hurting anyone by being there Fyunck(click)
17. it takes time to write things, while deleting them is easy. Wikipedia is not finished and there is no deadline. 176.76.250.241
18. notability guidelines are not that big a deal. Hut 8.5
19. draftifying as a backdoor to deletion, which is against policy, and I think it's fairly harmless to have a bunch of borderline-notable stubs lying around, Mx. Granger
20. AfD-ing the worst 5%, and then review. —SmokeyJoe
21. I am not convinced that a problem actually exists --Enos733
22. NOTPAPER and, more importantly, NTEMP: if we remove what cannot be easily added to today, we skew the balance inexorably towards recentism. Kevin McE
23. backdoor version of deletion, which is an extreme remedy that should be reserved for content that is demonstrably harmful to the project.-- Visviva
24. not expanding the already-problematic process of using draftification as a way of getting rid of articles. —David Eppstein
25. These pass special notability criteria that we have for historical biographies. I like the idea of "draftify for 5 years, then delete if no one touched it" ... but not ... proposing it ad hoc here in this discussion Bluerasberry
26. it does mention that a WikiProject may "adopt" the articles to work on... such a suggestion was never made to the Olympics project; I would like to say that I think draftification with an extended deadline is preferable to redirection without discussion. Kingsif
27. --Dweller
28. should be about long term good for the encyclopedia, not revenge against an editor
29. mass deletion or redirection of 1000 articles is not the best way to go about resolving this. Anarchyte
30. We should be raising awareness about these stubs, not relegating them to forgotten drafts Tim O'Doherty
31. draft space is a horrible way to deal with pretty much any problem. Hobit
32. LEPRICAVARK

Oppose: Delete don't draftify

1. simple(st) solution is to delete all relevant stubs JMWt
2. shoving these articles into drafts for them to rot for 5 years and then be ultimately deleted is a pointless endeavor. skip the 5 years, why don't ya? lettherebedarklight

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Close_review_for_Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RfC_on_draftifying_a_subset_of_mass-created_Olympian_microstubs

Gentle editors. I love you all, really. I always remember that what we're doing here writing the Wikipedia, for everyone, for free, is a really good thing, and no one discussion, not even over a thousand articles, should overshadow that; we have a thousand times a thousand articles, after all. Two points, though:

1. I really appreciated that in the RfC itself, even though it was clearly important to over 100 participants, no one was personally attacked. I appreciated that when BeanieFan11 started this close review, he did it with diligence and care to address my reasoning in my close; as opposed to, say, personal comments about me, my lack of good faith, intellectual independence or courage. Can I personally request that we keep all that up? Thanks.

2. A number of people are saying this close was invalid because Bradv's first close should have been endorsed, if only he hadn't been bullied. Well - he withdrew that close. He had the right to do that. I'm sure his reasons for doing that were complicated, we're all human, we're all complicated. But if we're saying that the only reason he did that was because he felt bullied - well, I'm not him, but if someone said that about me, I'd feel they were attacking my (as above) good faith, intellectual independence, and courage. It takes courage to stand by your principles when you're attacked, and, admittedly, not everyone has that courage, but I am assuming that being a long term admin, Bradv does. It's kind of a requirement of carrying the mop: knowing that people are going to be mad at you for what you do, and tell you so, not kindly either, and still being able to do it anyway. Sure, at least partly Bradv vacated his close because he felt bad that people were yelling at him, he's not only an admin, he's human too. But I'm also quite sure that at least partly he did it because he genuinely thought there were real reasons to let the community take another shot at closing the discussion, the reasons that FOARP and others gave in their request to reopen the close; even if he didn't completely agree with those reasons, he at least thought they were sufficient to give the community to chance to decide again. I'm giving him credit that that was more important in his withdrawing his close than him being afraid of people yelling at him; specifically because I respect his good faith, intellectual independence, and courage. I think we should all do that here. --GRuban (talk) 13:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)