User talk:Aaron Brenneman/Scratch/Am I in a cabal?

Technical comments

Data gathering

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Data cleansing

• Appropiateness of variable.

• Pseudo-code

General comments

The Initial quote

You write: "A common statement on votes for deletion of schools is "Schools are almost never deleted, thus showing that the majority of Wikipedians favour the inclusion of schools."

I've never seen this argument made. Do you have some examples? --Tony Sidaway^Talk 03:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Revision as of 18:18 11 August 2005 Tony Sidaway
brenneman^(t)(c) 03:58, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

No, that obviously isn't it. What I say there, and I quote in full, is:

If there is no agreement, how can we have a schools policy? In general I think it's fair to say that school discussions have been going more like 55/45 against delete for some time now (with particularly interesting articles getting 60/40 and more). I think it's quite possible that there could be substantial change in the long term future, and if this happens then we can talk about a schools policy. Meanwhile it's probably a bad idea to list schools articles for deletion; it's much, much easier to just clean them up.

So what I'm referring to are specific voting patterns, in the recent past, which I acknowledge could change "substantially" in the long term future.

Looking for instance at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Maurice_Hawk_Elementary_School , just chosen because it's the last of July, we see oh about 13 delete votes and 17 keep votes. The next-to-last one, Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Prince_Albert_alternative_education_programs, showed made 5 deletes against 5 merges, 1 keep or merge and 2 keeps. Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Kulachi_Hansraj_Model_School, according to the closer, went 10 keep, 7 delete. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/North Sydney Girls High School got about 6 deletes and about 25 keeps, and that article was a single line stub when nominated! I was significantly understating the degree by which non-delete votes outnumber delete votes, in fact.

So my point was specific and well supported, and also bore no resemblance to the initial quote that you make in your introduction. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 06:11, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I suppose the fact that you're focusing on this rather than the actual question at hand is lost on no one else?
I really can't be arsed picking through every school VfD to try and find a quote that will satisfy you, so I'll change the introduction. Now, perhaps you could comment on something else. For instance, the big section just under this one?
brenneman^(t)(c) 06:29, 12 August 2005 (UTC) Which you have! ^_^

What is it supposed to show?

You seem to be suggesting that there is some "block voting" going on, but I'd like to know a bit more about how you see this block voting occurring. Do you think people are being coerced into voting, or do you believe there is some secret inducement being offered? Or is it just that some people (quite a lot of people, apparently) feel strongly one way or the other? If you establish the latter, what do you think it says about how important people think the presence of school articles is on Wikipedia? --Tony Sidaway^Talk 03:27, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Tony,
I'll ignore the fantasies about coersion and payola you're implying I have. Let me try and explain this as simply as possible:

• Pretend there are ten people in a village.
• Pretend further that two of those people really hate cats, and one really loves cats.
• This leaves seven people who don't have a strong opinion on cats.
• Imagine that the animal shelter in this village, for obscure historic reason, decides whether
  of not to kill any particular stray animal in the public square, with a debate.
• Every week the two crazy cat haters and the one psychotic cat lover shout it out, and
  perhaps one or two other people who are walking by have a word or two.
• Every week the cat survives - mostly a 2/1 vote, but sometime 2/2 or 3/1, sometime
  even 3/3 if it's market day and an extra three people happen to be about.
• Would this then mean that the majority (or 55%, to use your figure) of this village were cat lovers?

Now, do you understand what I am saying? I'm sorry, but this doesn't seem that complex to me.

You may also have noticed that I'm being very careful on these pages. I'm trying to avoid the wild-eyed rhetoric that accompanies the freak show that school VfDs have become. The main page (beyond its title which I suppose those totally devoid of humour may not appreciate) has no suggestions on it. I'll leave for another day discussions of what affect claiming people should be "drawn and quartered" for proposing schools go to VfD.
brenneman^(t)(c) 04:25, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

You're still smashing the life out of what is clearly a straw man. Wikipedia isn't a democracy, we don't attempt to take a representative vote on everything, much less deletion. In the scenario above, it's only the people who care about a subject who choose participate in the discussion. And this is precisely how discussions on Wikipedia work. With Schoolwatch we do a lot to try to make it easy for people who are interested in schools one way or another to find VfDs involving them, but we can't really do much more than that. If people aren't interested they don't participate.

Of course it doesn't mean that the majority are cat lovers, and I find it odd that you keep focussing on a claim of a kind that is irrelevant to the point. I do however believe that there is every possibility that in twelve months time we'll look back and scratch our heads, wondering that anyone would ever propose a high school article for deletion. Or it could go the other way, nobody knows.

On the subject of your belief that you've eliminated "wild-eyed rhetoric", really you haven't. You're misrepresenting a perfectly staid, almost matronly discussion as a "freak show". I do find your opinion extremely difficult to understand. It's as if you seriously believed that the "drawn and quartered" comment were some kind of threat. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 06:27, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• And it's as if you don't understand that it is. There is a reason we have WP:CIV, which I recently suggested you re-examine. The only way we can hurt each other here is with words, and when used in this way they are weapons to quell dissent.
• I find it odd that you use "Wikipedia isn't a democracy" as an argument for claiming what has become a straight-forward "make up the numbers" game is just fine. For, as I have tried very patiently to explain, a democracy is what it is being treated like. And not a very good one.
  brenneman^(t)(c) 06:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Aaron, one of the problems I have communicating with you is that you frequently make absurd statements as if you believed them. No, one does not amass 150+ failed nominations for deletion by being timid and running and hiding if an exasperated editor says you should be drawn and quartered, one does so by being imprudent and nominating articles for deletion when they obviously don't stand a chance of deletion, and doing so repeatedly.

I say Wikipedia isn't a democracy because it isn't. The reason school deletions fail repeatedly and over a protracted period has nothing to do with democracy, it happens solely because you can't get a consensus to delete schools. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 06:50, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Civility

I'm sorry Tony, Please explain to me how this

And it's as if you don't understand that it is. There is a reason we have WP:CIV, which I recently suggested you re-examine. The only way we can hurt each other here is with words, and when used in this way they are weapons to quell dissent.

leads you to respond with this

Aaron, one of the problems I have communicating with you is that you frequently make absurd statements as if you believed them. No, one does not amass 150+ failed nominations for deletion by being timid and running and hiding if an exasperated editor says you should be drawn and quartered, one does so by being imprudent and nominating articles for deletion when they obviously don't stand a chance of deletion, and doing so repeatedly.

? - brenneman^(t)(c) 07:15, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Non sequiturs

There you go again. Why do you keep making these utterly absurd connections? I ignored your attempt to sidetrack the discussion That is to say, I responded to this:

I find it odd that you use "Wikipedia isn't a democracy" as an argument for claiming what has become a straight-forward "make up the numbers" game is just fine. For, as I have tried very patiently to explain, a democracy is what it is being treated like. And not a very good one.

With this:

Aaron, one of the problems I have communicating with you is that you frequently make absurd statements as if you believed them. No, one does not amass 150+ failed nominations for deletion by being timid and running and hiding if an exasperated editor says you should be drawn and quartered, one does so by being imprudent and nominating articles for deletion when they obviously don't stand a chance of deletion, and doing so repeatedly.

I say Wikipedia isn't a democracy because it isn't. The reason school deletions fail repeatedly and over a protracted period has nothing to do with democracy, it happens solely because you can't get a consensus to delete schools.

That should have been quite clear, but again you want to side-track rather than discuss the issue. School deletion nominations fail, dismally, laughably, miserably, precisely because there are enough people on Wikipedia who think the idea of deleting them, on the arguments currently presented, is wrong. You will no doubt again avoid the issue and, in your own peculiarly disrespectful yet self-righteous manner, proceed to pound away at your obsession with my failure to be polite to someone who clearly doesn't know the meaning of the word. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 08:35, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Let's give it one more go

• You're saying, I think, that you think people are saying that the failure of schools to get deleted means that most people like school articles.
• You don't present any evidence, no quotes that will stand up, to support this claim.
• You then go into this analysis, which apparently finds that there are people with stronger views than others and that those with the stronger views tend to vote more than the others.
• You seem to think this proves something. What?
• You've said most recently that it means Wikipedia is being used like a democracy, and a bad one at that. What does that mean? Can we at least get beyond this question to the next one? --Tony Sidaway^Talk 08:45, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Down to basics

In that last section I felt, for a moment, as though we might actually be trying to communicate. ^_^;

• My comment has sections A and B. My section A is about civility, ie the "drawn and quartered" SV. My section B refers to "democracy".
• Your comment has sections A and B. Your section A has refers to being "drawn and quartered". Your section B also refers to "democracy".
  • Does it really not follow logically from what preceded to believe that your section A might be refering to my section A? Really?

• Let me make something as clear as I can - I'm not trying to claim much of anything right now. What this page was intended for was for detecting any underlying voting patterns, to discuss what those patterns might mean about this very small issue, to think about what (if anything) it might mean for larger issues.

• To that end, this whole discussion about the quotes really does nothing. I clearly interpret "don't nominate schools for VfD because you'll lose" a different way than you do. To me, it's a bit like the "probably violates GFDL" argument, in that it presents a very narrow view (either by design or not).

• So, let's limit our discussion to a one question at a time: Can we agree that the current SVs add very few, if any, new arguments? That is to say, that very little real discussion takes place?

brenneman^(t)(c) 11:58, 12 August 2005 (UTC)