Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway 1

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In order to remain listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this sysop and have failed. This must involve the same dispute, not different disputes. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: {insert UTC timestamp with ~~~~~}), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 21:46, 26 December 2024 (UTC).

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protecting and unprotecting pages
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Statement of the dispute

This adminstrator has subverted the intent of VfD on numerous occasions. While the Deletion guidelines for administrators are deliberately vague, it does urge "attempting to be as impartial as is possible." This administrator has had considerable input (see below) regarding this, but has continued to stretch closure votes like Silly Putty picking up Spiderman.
brenneman 15:53, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Description

Um, yeah. The template has summary in both these spots?

Powers misused

Deletion (log):

{list page or pages not deleted}

Applicable policies

Deletion policy

Decision Policy - while Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators#Rough consensus is by definition "rough", this is contravention of consensus. If users voted as per Guide to Votes for deletion, keep is not the result they wanted.

Evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute

Tony's actions in the midst of these discussion:

Misplaced Pages:Votes_for_deletion/Arab_hacker

My edit counts and date of first edits for this vote:

User:Aaron Brenneman/Scratch#Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Arab hacker

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

(sign with ~~~~)

User:Aaron Brenneman (presumably, since he wrote this)
Ambi 16:15, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this statement

(sign with ~~~~)

James 16:44, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
] 17:38, 1 August 2005 (UTC) (see also below)

Response

This is a summary written by the sysop whose actions are disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the sysop's actions did not violate policy. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.

Disputed VfD closings

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Flood fill example in C
- 3 merge-redirect, 2 delete, 3 transwiki. No consensus (38% merge, 38% transwiki)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Arab hacker
- Tricky one. DavidH (talk · contribs) (delete vote, 28 July) only had one month experience and 15 edits in article space. -asx- (talk · contribs) (delete vote, 29 July) only had 5 edits prior to 29 June. Xaa (talk · contribs) (delete vote, 29 July) made 5 edits prior to 27 July. It's is not a genitive (talk · contribs) (delete vote, 29 July via anon IP but signed) had only 14 edits prior to 23 July and to date has made only 13 edits in article space. JamesBurns (talk · contribs) (delete vote, 16 July) has voted in literally thousands of VfDs, but has fewer than 100 article space edits, about a score of which are insertion of VfD tags. Cuervo (merge vote, 15 July) just about scrapes home. Dcarrano (talk · contribs) (merge vote, 14 July) had no edits prior to 27 June. Harmil (talk · contribs) (merge vote, 14 July) had 7 votes prior to 21 June. That leaves harro5 (talk · contribs), binadot (talk · contribs) and texture (talk · contribs), for delete and cuervo (talk · contribs) for merge. I could have justifiably called delete here on what I consider to be a borderline consensus, but chose to let it slip because of the large proportion of questionable votes. If it needs to be deleted it will be deleted in good time, on votes by people known to the community and without the taint of impropriety that this would have had. --Tony Sidaway 16:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Calvary Christian High School
- See closer's comments.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/KarlSchererRevisited3
- 4 deletes, 9 merges (to different targets), 2 keeps. No consensus.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Theta Theta
- 1 delete, 4 merge-and-redirects but evenly split between 2 targets. No consensus.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Not pron
- 2 delete, 4 merge-and-redirect. No consensus (67% merge-and-redirect)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Tory Belleci
- 3 deletes, 3 redirects. No consensus (50/50).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/CSE Revue
- 2 deletes 2 merges and a move/rename. No consensus (40% merge, 40% delete).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/River City Theatre Company
- See the comments I made at the time. Uncle G's comments were also very much on the money in my opinion.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Blaze (Pokémon)
- 11 delete, 7 merge, 1 redirect, 2 keep. No consensus (52% delete). A couple of days later someone redirected to Pokémon Abilities, something that didn't need a VfD to do.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Aage Neutzsky-Wulff
- 3 delete, 1 merge. Borderline (75% delete). I could have gone either way. The article has been cleaned up by a couple of people and is now rather a pretty little thing. Remember this is why we're here: to make good encyclopedia articles.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/DKU
- The extreme paucity of android79's article edits may have counted against him here, as certainly did the newness of the proposer, Chill Pill Bill. In any case it was either 1:1 or 2:1, I can no longer remember which. No consensus (50%/50% or 67%/33% split)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Festa no Apê
- 2 deletes, 2 merge-and-redirects. No consensus. (50% delete).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/List of Applied Mathematicians
- 4 merge-and-redirects, 3 deletes. No consensus (57% merge-and-redirect)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Folio (Company)
- Ignoring the keep votes of various interested parties who were probably not regular editors (I'm not going to do a full check again now), there were 2 deletes and 4 merges. No consensus (67% merge).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Indiana Jones 4
- 7 deletes, 6 redirects (to different targets), 1 keep. No consensus (50% delete).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/List of names for the human penis
- 7 deletes, 4 merges (to various targets), 1 redirect, 1 keep, 1 transwiki. No consensus (54% delete).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Absynthe Magazine
- 4 deletes, 2 merge-and-redirects. No consensus (67% merge-and-redirect).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Triple Penetration
- 3 deletes, 2 keeps, 5 redirect-and-merge. No consensus (50% redirect and merge). There was also some mucking about and merging with Triple penetration. Someone later redirected to Group sex which was fine with me. You don't need a VfD to do that.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/FactBites
- 3 deletes, 1 keep. Borderline (75% delete). I could have gone either way. 2 more delete vote would have sealed its fate, but the fact is that all three delete votes came in the first 15 minutes, and there were no other votes to delete in the following 5 days it was on VfD. It seemed to me that Misplaced Pages was not fired with a massive enthusiasm to delete this article.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Phenotypic freedom
- 2 deletes, 2 merges (to different articles). No consensus (50% delete).
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Isv Kraan
- 3 deletes, 7 merges, 2 keeps. No consensus (<60% merge)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Mandalis
- 2 deletes, 1 transwiki, 2 merge-and-redirects, no consensus.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Chhatrapati
- 6 merges, 2 deletes, 1 transwiki. It's just 2/3. I don't even consider calling a consensus without appreciably more than 70%. I could have been bold and merged on my own account, but I decided not to.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Gobar
- 3 deletes, 2 merge-and-redirects, 1 transwiki. No consensus (50% delete)
- Made personal decision (ie: not as a result of VfD votes) to be bold and redirect to Gobar Gas.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Krayt pearl
- 3 deletes, 2 merges. No consensus (60% delete)
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Samples of Baltic: Old Prussian, Latvian, Lithuanian compared to Slavic: Polish Language
- 5 deletes, 4 merges, 1 keep. No consensus (50% delete).

Policy

See Guide to Vfd. In particular: "The decision to keep or to delete the article is made according to the administrator's judgement of what consensus is", and "If a VFD discussion yields no consensus, the decision defaults to keep the article. Note that this does not preclude editing, renaming or merging the article, as those actions do not require a deletion vote."

When I close a VfD, I want to give the editors maximum control over what happens next; as VfD closer I have to make the important decision--whether or not to delete, but if I don't get a consensus to merge I don't think I need to consider whether to merge or keep--leave it to the editors. Sometimes I unilaterally, as an editor, take that action myself, but I do so after closing and I make a note saying that I am being bold; my action is reversible and is not part of the closing process. For instance if there is a substantial vote to merge but this doesn't amount to consensus, then I may perform the merge myself. I do not, however, pretend that I can read into the vote that which is not there.

If there really is a consensus vote to merge, however, I will perform the merge as part of the VfD closure, and enforce it as part of Misplaced Pages policy if attempts are made to reverse it (this has happened, Misplaced Pages:Votes_for_deletion/Jim_Robinson, merged on a 75% consensus, confirmed by subsequent vote in Misplaced Pages:Votes for Undeletion.

On making dispositional decisions

It is not the closer's job to second-guess the disposition of an article--a VfD discussion is not required for a page move, a merge, a redirect or indeed anything other than a deletion. Any editor can perform these tasks if there is a consensus for them. If a consensus emerges during VfD (see above) it should be performed as part of the closing. It should not be manufactured by the closer.

On conservatism

Smoddy suggests "I would define the result of a "no consensus" as being "do the most conservative option". The VfD guide agrees, and so do I. The most conservative option a VfD closer can make, if there is no consensus to delete, is to leave what happens next up to the editors.

Unilateral undeletions

As far as I'm aware, there is no limitation on the power of an administrator to undelete an article.

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/List of biomedical terms
- See associated talk page and remember that Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucacy. I don't war over stuff like this, but I will not hesitate to make a bold move that I think may gather consensus, and withdraw if it doesn't.
Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Langer 2
- Vote was to transwiki to dictionary, in November, 2004. Article was unilaterally deleted without VfD consensus. Restored by me because at the time of deletion there was no rule that a transwikied article could be summarily deleted. Article was subsequently correctly VfD'd and deleted. --Tony Sidaway 16:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

Tony Sidaway 17:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
This RFC is a ridiculous attempt to drive away dissenting admins from VFD. VFD regulars' insularity and hostility to non-regulars isn't actually a good thing. I know a lot of the VFD regulars would love to remove the bit of the deletion policy that says explicitly, "If in doubt, don't delete!" ... but, uh, it's still there. Those involved in this RFC should be ashamed of themselves - David Gerard 18:26, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Kim Bruning 19:07, 1 August 2005 (UTC) Guess why I stay away from vfd ;-)

Outside view by smoddy

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.

I signed above as well. Many of these VfDs are entirely divided between "merge" and "delete", "redirect" and "delete", or "BJAODN" and "delete". Yet, when a decision cannot be made between two votes which are clearly not keeps, "keep" is the effective outcome. This is all very well in a vote between "delete" and "keep". But in a vote where the options are clearly opposed to keeping the article in its current state, this is senseless. I would define the result of a "no consensus" as being "do the most conservative option". So merge/delete becomes merge, redirect/delete becomes redirect. BJAODN/delete clearly mean the same thing, but with a good number of suggestions that it be sent to BJAODN as well as being deleted. So I suggest that "no consensus" be defined as "be conservative".

Users who endorse this summary (sign with ~~~~):

] 17:38, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
James 17:55, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
Robert McClenon 18:20, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Carnildo 19:07, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
BlankVerse ∅ 19:17, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

All signed comments and talk not related to a vote or endorsement, should be directed to this page's discussion page.