Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ChrisO~enwiki (talk | contribs) at 08:00, 8 August 2007 (Policy trumps consensus - and a meta-analysis). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

WP:SYNTH == WP:OR. Also WP:OR and WP:NPOV are both core policies, and if an article inherrantly fails the core policies and a large part of the !voters agree that they do (not not necessarily a majority) then there article should be deleted. Full stop. Viridae 05:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

There is a big IF there -- IF the article "inherrantly" fails a core policy. It is a matter of opinion whether this particular article was OR. That being the case, it should have required a consensus of those opinions to delete the article. Instead it was deleted based on a majority. That is not what the deletion policy allows. Oh and by the way, do you think adding "Full stop" to your opinion changes it from an opinion into a fact? 6SJ7 06:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oooh, still equating consensus with !vote counting, are we? — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 06:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• It's a pointless analysis because it's faced on a totally false premise: "Both these admins - who acted independently of each other - must base their determination on the preponderance of views expressed in the discussion." No they don't. As Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators#Rough consensus says, "Some arguments can override all others", even if they are minority views. Policy trumps consensus. Now, let's offer my own meta-analysis of this mess:

ChrisO's meta-analysis

• Most of the "allegations of apartheid" articles, including this one, were created by Urthogie and expanded by Jayjg in two waves following two separate failed AfDs for Allegations of Israeli apartheid (and in obvious reaction to the AfDs). Urthogie, Jayjg and many of the most vocal editors who have supported this article - including Leifern, Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg, Humus sapiens, 6SJ7 and IronDuke, who have all !voted to overturn its deletion - are political activists who make aggressive use of Misplaced Pages to promote a pro-Israeli POV. Not surprisingly, they've consistently opposed Allegations of Israeli apartheid but have so far failed to persuade the community to agree with their position. Consequently they embarked on a strategy of creating multiple "allegations of apartheid" articles. In all, 11 such articles were created.

• This was intended to serve two purposes. Sefringle, one of the activists involved in these articles, explicitly spelled out one purpose: "You clearly don't understand why we created other apartheid articles. All allegations of apartheid articles are meant to antagonize people of that culture; the Israel one included. They are all POV forks. Their existance on wikipedia is proof that WP:NPOV does not apply to article titles or afd's. Since these articles cannot be balanced on their own, the only way to balance them is to create similar articles about other countries, thus making the attack page have less effect since country X isn't the only one being alleged of being an apartheid state. There is nothing encyclopediac about accusing somebody or some culture/country/religion of apartheid. It is all an attempt to push a POV."

• A second purpose was clearly to mobilise editors into deleting the entire "allegations of apartheid" series of articles in one go. Many of the activists have couched their "keep" !votes in terms such as "Keep (2nd choice - as long as we keep other Allegations of apartheid in X articles)" (quoting Humus sapiens in Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Allegations of American apartheid). There is, of course, nothing in policy to support such an approach and the WP:ALLORNOTHING argument is a classic argument to avoid.

• In the course of this campaign, multiple Misplaced Pages policies were systematically violated: most obviously WP:POINT, WP:OR (as WP:SYNTH) and WP:NPOV, but also WP:WAX, WP:SOAP, WP:BATTLE and so on.

• Not surprisingly, many of the articles were nominated for deletion by editors who objected to the policy violations. The activist editors systematically voted as a bloc to keep them, even though many of them had equally systematically voted to delete Allegations of Israeli apartheid. The rationales in each case were diametrically opposed to those used for the Israel AfDs - Israel was not notable, every other article was; Israel was an attack article, every other article wasn't; Israel was badly sourced, every other article was fine.

• By the start of this month, more than 300 editors had participated in around a dozen AfDs and DRVs regarding these articles (excluding the Israel one) and a great deal of conflict, drama and bad feeling had been generated in the process. However, the activists' campaign backfired badly. Instead of mobilising neutral editors to take down all the articles including the one that they had failed to delete through AfD, they exposed their own serial violations of policy and failed to convince anyone that an "all or nothing" solution was valid. The individual "allegations of apartheid" articles have been killed off one by one over the past few weeks. Five have been deleted, two renamed and one more is likely to be renamed. I don't know what will happen to the original Israel article; personally I don't care, since I'm not involved or interested in it. But considering it's already survived six AfDs (!) with two speedy keeps, I suspect it will probably stay around.

• The failure of this campaign and the public exposure of their tactics has led to the activists becoming increasingly vitriolic, as exemplified by 6SJ7's hysterical (and rather funny) claims of cabalism in this DRV.

• The lesson I draw from this is that systemic policy violations may work for a time, but eventually the Misplaced Pages community will push back. The curtain is coming down on this sad and unnecessary chapter; its outcome is a credit to Misplaced Pages. -- ChrisO 08:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)