Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was keep as is (close appears long overdue, was requested at WP:AN/I). I'm leaving the essay tag in place as it is, for now, but I don't consider that a permanent decision of any sort. – Luna Santin (talk) 20:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia

[edit]

This page has devolved into pure and baseless attacks against my person. The current problem is a group of editors who have ALL been in personal conflicts with myself trying to poison the well in the essay boilerplate at the top of the page. To avoid WP:DRAMA and as the main contributor, I ask that this page be deleted. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Maybe you're being too hard on yourself, but I just read over this essay and it seems a perfect summary of the way we should work, as we strive to be a scholarly encyclopedia. I don't know what sort of drama this has induced, but if it has done so than I can't see that you were to blame. I would even support that this be increased beyond an essay into a guideline or policy. ThemFromSpace 02:07, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the vote of confidence, but as long as I've got a group of committed editors such as the one below following me around Wikipedia making proclamations there is no chance to have a reasoned conversation. He includes a pretty slanted summary of his own desires for how to interpret what happened at this trainwreck and continues to hound me. It'd be nice if he'd just leave me alone, but I guess I've pissed him off by pointing out some problematic stuff about him in the past and he'd like to keep things personal. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:35, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Proposed guidelines and policies are not MfD'd for reasons of posterity. For instance, see the history surrounding Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. This is so the community can have access to the previous discussion and consensus that was formed. This page began as a proposed guideline and was changed to an essay when it was determined that it had failed to reach consensus. Against policy, there were a number of attempts to hide the fact that the proposal failed consensus,[1][2][3][4]. I think this MfD request should be viewed in light of these attempts. Ronnotel (talk) 11:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Question... why is there a need to explicitly state that an essay originated as a policy/guideline proposal that failed to gain consensus? The fact that is an essay should tell us that it does not have complete community consensus. That's what essays are.
As for the essay itself, I think it accurately sums up the view of a significant number of editors, and so should be a KEEP. Blueboar (talk) 14:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't revert any of SA's edits after the page was turned into an essay. However, there are a number of other editors who have and that seems to be consensus. My preference would be that it remain marked as a failed proposal, but consensus was to change it to an essay. Ronnotel (talk) 15:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I strongly opposed this essay when it was a policy proposal, and I see no reason why the contributions of myself and many other editors on the proposal's talk page should be deleted. Let's keep these discussions for posterity, and then we might able to take some short-cuts next time we are led round this well-trodden block. Maybe. At least we will be able to show some background to new entrants to the debate. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana (And why, for the love of Mike, is SA unable to see that disagreement with his ideas and methods is not an attack on him personally ???) Gandalf61 (talk) 15:46, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I sometimes wonder if the profusion of essays is helpful or harmful. I know they all say prominently 'this is an essay' at the top, but I am sure folks still read them as if they are canon. I wonder whether there should be more of an effort to funnel amny of these debates into official guideline or policy pages or at least identify how various essays relate to the official policy as such. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as an essay and also keep the history/talk history for posterity. Comment While this originated as a policy proposal that failed to gain consensus, if this is kept, then should it be like other failed policy proposals and have some kind of notice that it failed community consensus. Another question that comes up is the userfied question? If it is userfied, is there a way to preserve the history and talk page history so others can see the history behind the policy? Finally, one more question: even though in it's current form it is an essay, this started out life as a policy proposal. Because it started out life as a policy proposal that did not reach community consensus and is currently an essay, should it still be treated as other failed policy proposals? Brothejr (talk) 00:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete (and then create redirect to SA's user page). So that we remove any trace of the disgraceful way in which this proposal was sabotaged. It started off as an essay a proposal by SA which nevertheless addressing a real problem. Instead of improving the proposal, a number of editors who were against this proposal blocked any attempts to make this more mainstream: attempts to incorporate views of other people, such as this edit paraphrasing the position of many esteemed members of arbcom was removed. If SA himself had taken ownership, he would only have himself only to blame, but the most destructive edits were by people who opposed the proposal. For example, this edit is just malicious; how on earth are those rulings not related to this proposal? And even if we assume that the position of the arbcom members are so distant from the wording of this proposal that they truly didn't fit, surely the right thing would have been to edit this proposal to reflect those position, rather than keeping this the isolated opinions of a single editor. (This is assuming the position of arbcom and SA are truly disjoint, which I don't think is the case). Again, the ridiculousness is that the ownership which preventing the proposal from growing was done editors opposing SA and not by himself. I guess it is fine for people opposed to proposals to edit if their intention is to make the proposal more acceptable to them, but to explicitly weaken a proposal?? Considering how this proposal was never even given a chance, the only fair thing to do would be to delete this mess and forget this embarrassing incident. Vesal (talk) 22:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This a misrepresentation of facts. The text originated as a Policy Proposal[5] MaxPont (talk) 07:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what I meant. Yes, it started off as a proposal for policy, but I meant ramblings like "Is this situation fair? Perhaps not. But it is the situation we must tolerate if we are going to take Wikipedia being a mainstream encyclopedia seriously." Hardly how a policy should be drafted. My point was that instead of improving the proposal, it was turned into a partisan struggle. Vesal (talk) 17:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Umm - those particular "ramblings" were in SA's very first version of this policy proposal, from November 12 2008. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I said that SA wrote an essay, but I was accused of misrepresenting the facts... Maybe I should have said that he wrote an essay-like proposal to avoid this nitpicking that is used to avoid addressing what I'm trying to say. I don't know if I'm so bad at expressing myself or people simply don't care. Vesal (talk) 13:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and perhaps add Template:historical as was done with WP:SPOV. Otherwise, the present version of the page, sans the deletion template, looks fair to me. The caveats given at the top are sufficient to explain that it isn't a policy or guideline. Also, SA, you might consider chilling out with the WP:OWN issues here unless you want the essay to reside solely in your userspace. (My perception that SA has WP:OWN issues with this did not originate as a policy proposal, nor may it reflect consensus -- heck, I might even be wrong. Since all of us can be wrong from time to time, why not lighten up a little bit?) --Middle 8 (talk) 23:39, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and mark as {{rejected}}. Since this began as a proposed guideline (the {{proposal}} tag was present in the earliest version), the outcome ought to be a tag as either an accepted or rejected proposal. This would also allow it to be taken into account for later proposals in the same area. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 00:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • As per JeremyMcCracken. Usually, proposals fail. --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC) I maintain that -afaict- the writing of proposals is not supported by consensus; as evidenced by years and years of this system being rejected. I am uncertain why a small contingent of people both try to write proposals, and still fight to keep the proposal process on the books, despite being proven wrong, time and time again. Use the consensus process instead.[reply]
  • Keep. We don't, and shouldn't, delete such things. I read it, and don't see the nom's concerns. But if I'm wrong, just fix it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    We even have a template for that! The notorious {{sofixit}} ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:13, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, it's a valid essay with a good point. --Triadian (talk) 19:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.


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