Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-09-30/Opinion

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• Um. Not to be mean, but is there any point to this other than the author realizing that long discussions are harder to summarize? I may be missing the message somewhere. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:11, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

There's nothing to miss. He's making a very valid point which some readers might not have considered or need reminding what hard work closing some AfD is. The backlog is full of ones nobody wants to touch. Sometimes I would spend an hour or more trying to reach a conclusion and I usually did, but I don't close AfD any more, for good reason. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:48, 1 October 2022 (UTC) .

• I'm not so sure the !vote count necessarily is related to page views as much as related to how many editors have an article on watch. The way our AfD process is set up, if there is no clear consensus for deletion then by default the discussion is closed as "keep". As one example I saw this in an AfD for a corporate CEO biography which (to me) appeared to have greatly exaggerated passing mentions and was full of vanity sources of questionable editorial oversight. His cavalry had already rode in for the rescue. Several editors, whose history suggested that bios are their line of work, came to its defense and bludgeoned the "delete" votes. And, with no clear "delete" consensus, the article remained. Sometimes these decisions are in the eye of the closing administrator. When there's a wall of text the path of least resistance is to just close as "no consensus" so as not to deal with yet more discussion at deletion review and/or talk page "Why did you do this?" pleas. Blue Riband► 13:00, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
• A different possible conclusion is you are likely to have a short discussion when consensus is within reach. You may still have a lot of editors see the discussion for a popular topic but don't bother to comment because they agree with the already evident consensus. A discussion may get closed before it gets too long due to WP:SNOW. You see long discussions for borderline situations where you were headed towards no consensus from the start. I actually wish administrators would try to recognize and close these non-converging discussions earlier. Avoiding long AfD discussions would conserve a lot of community goodwill. ~Kvng (talk) 22:18, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
• Relevant graph from the golden age of battles between deletionists and inclusionists: https://notabilia.net/ Altamel (talk) 04:24, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Altamel: Daaaaamn! There's some craziness there for sure. The one that really stuck out to me, though, wasn't because of the length of the discussion. No, the impressive thing to me is that the article (and some may find this title offensive, so I'll poor-man's spoiler-tag it by using white text on a white background, select if you want to be able to read it — if my text-color shenanigans fail you and the text is visible anyway, just know that I'm lusciously sorry) ...the article "Gay Nigger Association of America" bit the dust after a long discussion on its EIGHTEENTH nomination! FeRDNYC (talk) 07:16, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• I intensely dislike the shorthand "!vote" to mean, "we don't vote." That's not what registers in the brain, and based on the content of many of these purportedly consensus-driven discussions, many editors in fact do believe that voting is what's happening. Shorthand that fails to summarize a complicated concept should not be used.~TPW 17:26, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

  @True Pagan Warrior, do you have a suggestion? ~Kvng (talk) 13:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

  I think this is one of those cases in which using all the words is just better. "I shared my views" might be one appropriate phrase. Given that we don't have practical limits to the number of characters we write, and the shorthand saves only a second or two in most cases, taking the time to use words is a better option. It not only minimizes misunderstanding, it helps chip away at the ever-increasing barriers to editing. ~TPW 14:35, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

  @True Pagan Warrior: {{citation needed}} on the ever-increasing barriers to editing, BTW. I mean, this is a time when Wikipedia has gained not only the Visual Editor, but also the companion TemplateData system that attempts make the process of inserting template transclusions far more guided and intuitive (or at least, intuit-able). I'm not disputing that there are still barriers to editing, but if they're increasing then something is clearly wrong. FeRDNYC (talk) 21:30, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

  @True Pagan Warrior: The shorthand, if we're being literal, is technically "not-vote". "!" is a common syntax for negation (used in algebraic notations and some programming languages). When discussing someone's contribution to a consensus discussion, what you're discussing is not a vote (though it looks like one) — hence, not-vote, or !vote for (too?-)short.

  On one hand, as the Wikipedia community has grown and become less skewed towards the technically-minded, that association — and therefore the "obvious" common interpretation of the shorthand it would invoke — has probably become increasingly obscure and inaccessible to a greater percentage of the intended audience. I can see that argument.

  On the other hand, the fact that consensus discussions aren't votes is something new editors often struggle with on philosophical grounds, more than technical or definitional ones. They tend to duck-type the discussions: If it walks like a vote and talks like a vote, they assume it must be a voting process. I'm not convinced it's the "!vote" shorthand that causes that confusion, nor am I convinced their (mis-)understanding would substantially change simply because we stopped using the term "!vote". (Though, as I said on the first hand, there may be reasons it should be abandoned anyway.) FeRDNYC (talk) 21:22, 8 October 2022 (UTC)