Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 April 15

Talk page of Category:Economy of mainland China. Michael G. Davis 22:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Economy of mainland China (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|DRV|CFD)

Survived DRV and CFD last month. Michael G. Davis 21:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Overturn Given the recent DRV and CFD there is no way that this ought to have been deleted. --Xdamr^talk 21:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn. Possibly an innocent mistake on NawlinWiki's part if s/he didn't realize there had been a DRV/MFD on the matter. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

List of songs containing covert references to real musicians (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD|AFD2)

I object strongly to the recent deletion of List of songs containing covert references to real musicians. It would appear that in the process of discussing it, no effort was made to contact those of us who objected in the previous debate, nor were the many arguments attached to the "strong keeps" there addressed.

Thus, if nothing else, I think this should probably be reversed on a process basis: at least two of us consider ourselves to have been blindsided.[1] [2] and at least one other has expressed surprise at not being notified.

Krimpet apparently feels the deletion was correct, so I am bringing the matter here.

(One more process matter: I would like an undeletion rather than merely permission to start from zero, so that the article history is restored, but would expect that most of the content would be deleted immediately after a restoration.)

But, aside from process questions:

• One of the votes for deletion asks, "How can anyone qualify that a particular reference in a song is a covert reference to a real musician?" Answer: the same wasy as one can say this about pretty much anything else in literature. Citation. Ideally from the person themself, or acknowledged by that person after someone else has raised the point, though recognized authorities (e.g. in this realm, Rolling Stone) should also be perfectly good sources.
• Another says "Vague, potentially endless, unreferenced". I don't see what's vague, except for the almost inevitably vagueness in all lists. The fact that a list is potentially long has not traditionally been an argument against including it. As for "unreferenced", it probably had more citations than the average Wikipedia article, even if there was also problematic material.
• Another post suggested that this material would be better distributed to articles on individual songs. I disagree. Most individual songs don't deserve an article. Nor does this lend itself to a category, for similar reasons and also because each of these requires an explanation and a citation.
• The other objection seems to be that it is an "indiscriminate collection of information". Unless I am mistaken, "indiscriminate" here is roughly the same as "vague": a lack of a means to discriminate whether something does or does not meet the criteria. As long as people are adding only material that meets our usual standards for citation, I don't see how this should be an issue. If there is a further issue here, I think it should be explained.
• On my talk page (Krimpet's remark linked above) he says that the article was potentially libelous. I would appreciate an example of what he thinks is a problem on that order.

As is common in these matters, there was material in that article that merited removal. I would not have objected to the removal of most uncited information from the list (although I give examples below of some things so obvious that a request for citation seems absurd), but deletion of the article is another matter. We do not normally delete an article because part of it is poorly cited. I believe that over the history of the article I have either cited or removed every time there has been a specific request for citation: this is pretty much the usual. If people are not requesting citations, they should not be deleting for lack of citations.

Here are some examples of material there that I would say was solid, well-cited, and (at least to me) interesting; this is a representative rather than an exhaustive list:

• "Accident Waiting to Happen" by Billy Bragg references The Kinks": "a dedicated swallower of fascism" is a reference to "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"
  • Cited to Tannenbaun, Rob. "Don't Try This At Home". rollingstone.com (Oct 31, 1991). Retrieved on December 31, 2006.
• "Carrie-Anne" by The Hollies references Marianne Faithfull
  • Cited to Michael Ansaldo, Hearts and Bones, Rolling Stone, February 11, 2004. Accessed online 24 March 2007.
• "The Fat Angel" by Donovan references "Mama" Cass Elliot (the title, in fact, refers to her)
  • cited to Donovan's own autobiography.

There are at least a dozen others comparably well-cited. There was also a lengthy and well-cited discussion of covert references in Don McLean's "American Pie", including citations to McLean's own web site that referred to the other citation used as "mainstream" analysis of his lyrics.

Other things are so obvious as to make a request for citation almost absurd.

• "Everything Zen" by Bush references David Bowie
  • The song contains the line "Mickey Mouse has grown up a Cow" a quotation of a line from Bowie's "Life On Mars"; that's barely even covert, given what an "unlikely" sentence that is.
• "Death Singing" by Patti Smith references Benjamin Smoke.
  • Smith recites the lyrics in a documentary about Smoke.

I can't quickly see how many of these there are (they are, of course, harder to spot than overt citations, and I'm not going to look at every entry) but there are clearly quite a few. If citation is really needed for these, I imagine it could usually be found, but this is like citing for "To be, or not to be" being a reference to Shakespeare.

There are, by the way, many other list articles that can be looked at for comparison. Allow me to point at some:

• List of songs containing overt references to real musicians
• List of songs which refer to other songs
• List of doo-wop songs
• List of patter songs

All of these are completely without citations and, except for the first, they raise comparable issues of matters not being self-evident (who decides the boundaries of doo-wop? Apparently, whoever last edits the page) and hence comparable need for citation.

Besides all that, though, I'm going to reiterate what I said about this article over a year ago. Although anyone who reviews my edits will easily see that I am not one to spend any large part of my working time on trivia, nonetheless I am firmly of the opinion that we need articles like this as well. They make Wikipedia fun. Certainly they are of more interest than our ponderously dull article on Charmander whose plodding tone is relieved only by the inclusion of fair use images. If we have so much of a stick up our collective arse that we would rather write leaden articles about matters even more trivial (I would hope that Patti Smith and David Bowie will still be fondly remembered when Pokémon is consigned to the dustbin of history), then that represents a serious enough problem to raise doubt about whether I belong as part of the project.

I have no illusion that I'm so important to Wikipedia that the article should be saved as sort of a referendum on my presence, but I do think it is sort of a referendum on whether Wikipedia is going to remain capable of any lightness at all. Which I think it should, and that spirit is/was a lot of why I got involved here in the first place.

Again: let's remove the uncited material. Fine. But why remove material that meets our standards for citation, in an article that several dozen people have worked on, and where clearly there are a lot of people who really like the article? - Jmabel | Talk 19:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

ATTENTION! If you came here because someone asked you to, or you read a message on a forum, please note that this is not a majority vote, but rather a discussion to establish a consensus among Wikipedia editors on whether a page is suitable for this encyclopedia. Wikipedia has policies and guidelines to help us decide this, and deletion decisions are made on the merits of the arguments, not by counting votes. Nonetheless, you are welcome to participate and express your opinions. Remember to assume good faith on the part of others and to sign your posts on this page by adding ~~~~ at the end. Note: Comments by suspected single-purpose accounts can be tagged using {{subst:spa|username}}

• Comment The process issue you raise is to not notifying all participants in a previous debate as to the new debate. I'm not aware the deletion process mandates such a notification. (And "a lot of people who really like the article" is not amoungst the standards for inclusion) --pgk 19:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• It doesn't; it's just a good faith move. At any rate, endorse my deletion per the second, unanimous AFD. --Coredesat 20:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion. Like the closing admin said, the arguments in the first AfD were really weak. If you think that there are some other articles that need to be deleted, too, you are perfectly free to nominate them, but the fact that they aren't deleted yet doesn't mean this shouldn't be. -Amarkov moo! 20:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse unanimous AfD. Lightness? We do it all the time. Hell, every Pokemon article has to be nailed down to sotp if floating away, they are so light on intellectual content. The problem here was cruft, not lightness. There is no encyclopaedic topic "song with covert reference to a real musician". There is not even an encyclopaedic topic "song with reference to a real musician". Listcruft, plain and simple. Guy (Help!) 21:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Overturn per User:Jmabel's argument. There is nothing inherently wrong with this list which violates any Wikipedia policy. Unicited material should be cited or removed. IPSOS (talk) 22:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem is that all of that is based on the first AfD, which was withdrawn. This was known in the second AfD, which was a unanimous delete. --Coredesat 22:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion per above. Rockstar (^T/_C) 23:07, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn From the Instructions part of this page:" 4. Nominations to overturn and delete a page previously kept should also attach a {{subst:Delrev}} tag to the top of the page under review to inform current editors about the discussion." .It would seem a good idea to extend this to second AfDs as well.

As the first AfD ends as: "The result was Nomination withdrawn. People have provided convincing arguments to keep this article" (22:10 with 7 merges) , and a second AfD ends as a unanimous delete (8) it would appear that there is a real contradiction.

And, comparing the names, it appears to me that not a single one of the 39 people expressing opinions at the 1st AfD were among those expressing opinions at the 2nd--including the noms and the closers. Either serious injustice is being done, or we have such inconsistent opinions that the result of an AfD depends on chance.DGG 23:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Restoration I enjoyed this article, added many citations, including the first one, and I support User:Jmabel's argument. Had I realized there was a second W:AFD, I would have voted keep again. Modernist 00:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. Nearly all of the "keep" and "strong keep" arguments from the first AfD were flimsy: "it's useful," "it's interesting," "lots of people put hard work into this," and Jmabel's threat to leave Wikipedia altogether if this article was deleted (not really an argument at all, though there were plenty of "Keep per Jmabel" votes). None of these arguments trump the extremely important requirement of no original research. As obvious as it may seem that "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" is a reference to David Bowie, it needs to be verifiable to ensure Wikipedia's informational integrity; "obvious" is a completely subjective term, and we could have any anonymous contributor adding references that are "obvious" to them. As I tried to point out, libel is also an issue: what if someone added the "obvious" statement that the song "Midnight Rambler" was about O.J. Simpson? The Wikimedia Foundation could potentially get in trouble with the Stones or O.J. for publishing such defaming allegations. (And yes, I know the song predates the case by over 20 years, it's just a silly example.)

  There's also the problem of the indiscriminate nature of the list. As I stated in my AfD nomination: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and Wikipedia is not a directory. Allusions, references, and "namechecks" to other musicians is extremely common in popular music. If this information can be sourced, it should be placed in context, in the article on the song or album containing the song in question. And if a song or the album it's on is not notable enough to have its own article, information on what it "covertly references" is not notable either.

  Finally, I'm sorry if Jmabel and others from the first AfD feel that they should have been notified; I know that it is courteous to notify the primary contributors to an article when nominating an AfD and I didn't mean to be discourteous or anything, but they were amongst dozens of contributors to the first AfD and over hundreds of contributors to the article, I didn't know that they in particular wanted to be notified. Nevertheless, the page displayed a prominent AfD notice for the full five days inviting anyone to contribute to the deletion discussion. A valid, unanimous consensus was reached that this article is not suitable for Wikipedia due to problems with original research and indiscriminate information, and it was thus deleted. Krimpet (talk/review)

• Let me respond to some of this:

  Please don't misrepresent me here. I'm not saying this is a particularly good article. It's not. I believe it is a salvageable article, and we don't normally delete articles because they need cleanup.

  More importantly, I did not "threaten" to leave. What I wrote was "It looks like this will be a very sad week for me. I always said that if Wikipedia became so tight-assed as to delete this article, then it was time for me to leave. Looks like that day has arrived. Sad. It's been a great three years." If that leads like a threat to you, I'd say that you are a person who has never been threatened.

  What I am saying is that the desire to delete this article (and the un-collegial way it was approached) is symptomatic of a change in the nature of Wikipedia that has left me feeling less and less invested in the project. Also symptomatic of that problem is the sophistry in some of Krimpet's remarks above, and the fact that this community has started to mistake such sophistry for scholarship and good sense.

  • Krimpet's links from "flimsy", etc. are to a page that "is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors." So it has no more standing than if he made those remarks himself. He is backing his individual opinion with someone else's individual opinion.
  • WP:NOR is a straw man here. We are agreed that the uncited material can be removed.
  • While I imagine I could find a solid citation for "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow" being a reference to David Bowie (I am not the person who added it), and while if the article is saved I'm willing to see it removed if it cannot be cited, I think that questioning something so obvious is games-playing and time-wasting. I am comfortable in asserting that at any time since I've participated in Wikipedia, my own work has met a considerably higher standard of citation than what prevailed on Wikipedia at that time (a moving target, as that standard has been rising), and I've added hundreds of citations, maybe thousands, to support other people's inadequately cited statements, including in response to requests every bit as frivolous as this. But demanding citation for the truly obvious is petty, at best. I haven't looked at Krimpet's own edits, and I'm not going to stalk him, but (assuming that he occasionally writes articles and doesn't only remove material) I would be astounded if his own edits consistently meet the standard of citation he is demanding here.
  • The remark about libel is, indeed, a silly example. I asked for a real one. If the hypothetical possibility of someone adding a libelous statement to an article were a basis for deletion, we would have to delete all articles. Are we having an honest discussion here, or are you just interested in "winning" by any means available?

  The article namechecking is a near-stub, by the way, and could be much expanded. However, none of the examples in the deleted articles are namechecks (that would be overt references); otherwise, I'd propose that merging with that would be a decent solution to this.

  As I promised earlier, I will contact people who were involved in the earlier debates on this (skipping those who have already weighed in here).

  I gather this is most likely headed toward deletion, so I gather I am most likely headed toward departure. I'm not saying that if I leave I'll never come back: I honestly haven't made that decision. But it would certainly be a while. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse AFD2 No process failures (no, there is no right to receive notice; that is why we have watchlists people...) on the unanimous delete AFD. Looking at it, it was approximately 80% unverified (10 of the first 50 entries claim a citation, whether or not that citation would stand up...), and the only convincing keep arguments I see in the first AFD are those that the list could be sourced. Invalid AFD1 If there is a failure involved here, it is in the closure of the first AFD as nomination withdrawn; the nominator loses that right if there are any other delete opinions, see WP:CSK. Since that AFD was not validly closed, it carries even less than the normal precedent value, which is minimal. GRBerry 01:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure of AFD2. I also find no process problems in that discussion. The assertions made above were available to the discussion participants and failed to convince them. The article itself was properly tagged with the AFD notice for the requisite 5 days (and had been tagged for cleanup for a much longer time with no significant cleanup occurring). As a practical matter, we have to assume that people truly interested in a page either have it watchlisted or edit it regularly. The AFD template at the top of the page is hard to miss. The argument that "I didn't get to participate in the debate" is insufficient to reopen a debate, especially when there is no new evidence to consider. Rossami (talk) 04:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I had it watchlisted. I was backed up 19 days on my 4000-article watchlist, so I did not see this. If the arguments from the prior debate had been engaged, then the lack of notice might not be a big issue, but they weren't. - Jmabel | Talk 05:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, the consensus in the second AfD was clear and correct. Also as a note to whoever closes this, Jmabel has been engaged in a pretty significant amount of canvassing. Looks like Jmabel did indeed contact everyone, which is probably in line with WP:CANVASS, so I retract that part but still endorse deletion. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • As stated above, I have contacted everyone who voted on this either way, in either of the prior debates. That is to say, I have contacted considerably more people who disagree with me than who agree with me. But thank you for the implication that I have been doing something in bad faith. It's a good reminder of the atmosphere around here lately, amd if I leave it will make leaving easier. - Jmabel | Talk 05:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, Jmabel contacted me, and I voted to delete, so that accusation is unwarranted. --Ezeu 06:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • There appears to have been 49 editors who are on the record with a specific opinion about the article through AfD#1 and AfD#2. Of these 49 editors, there appear to be 24 editors who are on the record with a keep opinion, 4 with a merge opinion, and 21 with a delete opinion. Since the opinion of all 49 editors who voted on this either way was overtly solicited on their talk pages, this DRV may have an unfair bias through canvassing towards overturn. -- Jreferee 14:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion. Clear consensus. The opinions of those who participated in the second AfD is valid, we should not undelete the article because some people missed the discussion. That would be setting a bad precedent. --Ezeu 06:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion per all the above. I'm also with Ezeu in that I'm not sure that all those who were involved with the original AfD should have been canvassed because they're not participating now... I would assume their views are clear in the AfDs. Rockstar (^T/_C) 06:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure. It's usually "nice" to notify authors/other interested editors but it's by no means a requirement and failing to do so hardly constitutes a failure of process, or a reason to overturn a deletion. Arkyan • ^(talk) 06:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Vehement overturn per Jmabel. As he likes to ask, whatever happened to that bedrock principle, WP:IAR? This article does improve Wikipedia, so all other rules should be ignored. Biruitorul 07:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • IAR isn't a reason to keep an article, and is not a reason to ignore consensus unless there's reason to (and there isn't in this case). --Coredesat 07:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • So say you. IAR doesn't say that. Biruitorul 15:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Out of curiosity, how does this article improve Wikipedia? WP:INTERESTING? WP:ILIKEIT? WP:USEFUL? WP:INDISCRIMINATE WP:OR LIST? Rockstar (^T/_C) 07:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I will not be cowed by "gotcha" questions. Yes, it is interesting, fun, useful, and I like it. And another reason the deletionists hate: we have Feraligatr and Gheorghe Falcă, so why not this? (Just to be clear, I am committed to building a professional, serious, scholarly encyclopedia. That doesn't, however, preclude the retention of some more light-hearted items.) Biruitorul 15:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I hate to do this again, but just because other stuff exists doesn't mean we should keep an article. I just have yet to be convinced that we should keep the article based on some of our policies or guidelines. Lighthearted items, by the way, do exist on Wikipedia, are kept in WP:BJAODN. Rockstar (^T/_C) 15:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
        • I anticipated you'd make that argument - no need to repeat it. And there are other lighthearted items in the mainspace. The point is, it's an article that a lot of people have worked on for a long time, it's entertaining, and it has some scholarly value too. It needs work, of course, but that's not reason enough for deletion. Biruitorul 16:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
          • But none of those are reasons to keep the article per any Wikipedia policies. Rockstar (^T/_C) 23:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn. I was against deletion in first debate, I see no reason to change my mind. No new argument for deletion appeared in this second AFD nomination. It was not cool that when second nomination for deletion was made nobody informed people who participated at first debate. Why are some people focusing in deleting content in Wikipedia instead of adding?--MariusM 07:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Per that last question: if people just let everything slide in Wikipedia and deleted nothing, Wikipedia would not be nearly as good as it is today. Actually, it would be completely destroyed by now. There are policies and guidelines for a reason. Rockstar (^T/_C) 07:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't see any danger of Wikipedia's distruction from an article like this.--MariusM 13:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Hey, folks, I accidentally linked Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_containing_covert_references_to_real_musicians_(2nd_nomination) instead of this on all the notices I placed on individual user talk pages. Sorry. I really don't want to go back and correct myself on 40 user talk pages, especially because I don't want to ping everyone yet again with a "new message" notice. I've put a note about this on my own user talk page. Since my good faith has already been questioned, and since Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_containing_covert_references_to_real_musicians_(2nd_nomination) is closed, I won't place a notice on that closed page referring people here, but I would greatly appreciate if someone else would, preferably someone on the "other side" of this issue. My apologies. Yes, I am a bit upset over this, and I screwed up. - Jmabel | Talk 07:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I went through your recent edit history and fixed all the links for you. Krimpet (talk/review) 15:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse, proper AFD on what appears to be original research. Why is this such a hot issue? >Radiant< 09:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion blatant original research, an indiscriminate list of songs, absolutely no encyclopedic value what so ever. -- Nick ^t 10:55, 16 April 2007(UTC)
• Endorse deletion, but only if there is no prejudice towards recreating a well-cited replacement article. I think Jmabel makes some very good points. I'd be happy to provide the text of the deleted article to anyone who wants to work on a new version in their sandbox. I have been involved in maintaining Films considered the greatest ever which survived 2 AfDs by removing all uncited claims. It still needs work, but I'd much rather see people collaboratively working towards correcting problems than having battles over deleting articles. The big problem that I see is that there are many people who want to delete articles spending time at AfD, and the people who don't want to delete them don't spend much time there, and don't want to spend a large chunk of their time reviewing what is being proposed for deletion. Deletion should be for articles which are impossible to fix. Considering all the effort involved in 2 AfDs and this DR, it would have been much easier to just move all the uncited material to the talk page, or liberally adding {{fact}}. -- Samuel Wantman 11:17, 16 April 2007 :(UTC)

• There is a crucial difference here: there are books, TV shows, annual spectaculars and all sorts devoted to debating the greatest films ever. AFI has several lists by genre of what they consider the greatest films ever. Halliwell and Ebert both discuss it. Where are the books on "songs containing a covert reference to a real musician"? Even if the "covert" weren't an open invitation to original research and blatant editorialising, the entire basis of the list is a concept whihc does not appear to have any significant existence outside of Wikipedia and a few idle discussions on Teh Internets. Guy (Help!) 11:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Since Jmable has created a sourced version, I now Endorse restoration of sourced material. This means that I think the original should be restored so that the history is complete, and then the new version can be copied over. The only question that I see is whether the history should exist or not, as there is nothing against policy about posting a new version of a page that attempts to address the reasons why the page was originally deleted. The value of keeping the history, is that you can see how a deletable article can be improved, and if there are future discussions that reference the AfDs, people will be able to understand what the issues were, and how they were dealt with. -- Samuel Wantman 06:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. The first AfD was validly closed as "nomination withdrawn", and the nominator has the right to do this. (As far as I know, anyway. An admin could have come along and reopened the debate, and later closed it with a delete decision.) The second AfD was a unanimous decision to delete the article. There's nothing in the procedures that says that the previous participants in an AfD need to be contacted for a second AfD -- in fact, Wikipedia:Canvassing addresses this topic. There's no evidence that any procedures were violated or misapplied in either AfD, so the second AfD should stand, res judicata. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 13:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion - procedurally fine. Metamagician3000 13:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion' - valid AfD, and with a page-title that unencyclopedic the page was hardly going to survive long anyway. It's not just potentially long, it's potentially infinite and subjective. Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 15:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn I commented on the last AfD, making a point entirely relevant to AfD's (that enough of these references to make up a short article were indeed sourced). I was informed of this after this discussion was closed, and have had no chance to see the article to see what has happened to it. Krimpet claims that most of the Keep voices are flimsy are rabblerousing; some were, as were some of the delete voices; together the AfD's are not consensus. To have started another AfD so soon, especially after several comments that ckeaning this up would be a long project. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Note to closer: If this remains deleted, I would like a copy in my user-space to see what is attributed. Please let me know you have done this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion deletion per Amarkov, Radiant, Metamagician3000, and Moreschi. Plus, as was said in the last AfD, it was an indiscriminate list of information; and there was a strong chance of the page being nothing more than original research. Acalamari 16:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn as per first AfD. --Asterion^talk 16:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, no reason to overturn based on either procedure or content. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 17:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion nothing wrong with past AfD. JuJube 17:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Sorry to chime in again, but looking at the above I see a lot of straw man arguments, especially the claim that this is difficult or impossible to reference. I suggest that people look at User:Jmabel/songs, where I've placed a stripped-down version of the article containing only what I think was adequately cited (in one case - "Pork Pie Hat" - I tracked down the citation just now. (By the way, our two existing articles pork pie hat and Lester Young that mention that the song is an elegy for Young do not currently cite for that claim.) We could easily disagree over whether a few items have adequate citation - that's part of the normal process here - but that is not a reason to remove an article. (By the way, some of the weaker remaining citations are among the A's, so please skim down a bit.)

Also, I see that several people here have been saying "delete it because the process was OK." Even if the process was OK, I believe that there is enormous precedent for overturning a deletion if there is now a decent replacement article, regardless of the fact that the process for deletion may have been acceptable. And thank you, Biruitorul, for reminding me of "ignore all rules". It has been so in abeyance lately that I forgot it was still official policy (not even a mere guideline). It seems to me that if it is now trumped by a page that "simply reflects some opinions of its authors", so that we must remove a well-cited article that many people have worked on, like, and find interesting, then WP:IAR should be removed as policy. It is misleading to have a policy that we never follow. - Jmabel | Talk 18:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Deletion review is very much pitched at being about process. So overturn suggests there was a problem with that process. But here like the AFD isn't dictating that there can never be such an article, you can rewrite from scratch of get the content userfied if you are going to address the issues which led to the deletion (assuming they can be addressed), provided what ends up at the page isn't substantially the same as the original then it should be exempt from G4 deletion. Of course the nature of such pages are they can be high maintenance to maintain the standards which if not maintained may lead to deletion again... As to IAR, I guess it's the improving the encyclopedia part of IAR why people don't believe it would apply in this case. --pgk 19:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion - article, in the previous form, was totally unencyclopedic. It's totally okay to make a new one, though - with proper references. --Haemo 20:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Strongly Support Overturn and Reinstatement of article - as per JMabel's 18:19, 16 April 2007 comment (3 up from here) and DGG. Had I been directly notified of the 2nd Afd I would have commented there as well- and I think that people who commented on the first indeed should have been notified of the 2nd, lest it appear that this is being rushed through in the darkness of night. (I have many hundreds of items on my watchlist and didn't notice this one. It's more than a matter of discourtesy - the response to the original afd should have indicated that there was a lot of interest in this article and the just action would have been to be sure interested editors were informed.) But this is really not an argument about process - I believe this article should be reinstated - with its history - on its merits. It happened to be pretty well-referenced already, and as JMabel said above, since when do we wholesale delete articles that need cleanup? More to the point, JMabel has already offered an edited version. Overturning the deletion preserves the history, and gives editors the opportunity to go back in their copious leisure time to research other songs that were in earlier versions but not yet fully referenced, and re-add them when they meet standards. Deleting all of that three year history deprives editors from the ability to easily improve on other editors' work - at the core of what Wikipedia is about - and undoes over three years of hard work by dozens of editors. This article isn't perfect (how many are?) but it is an excellent example of the greatness of a collaborative project, as I said in the first AFd. Summarily deleting it is a rigid, and I think incorrect, application of rules which has no place here, and there is an easy solution: reinstate the article and its history, and let JMabel and other editors make improvements to it. This is not about defending the action taken, it's about reconsidering it with more input. Tvoz |talk 22:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Strongly support overturn! - as per my posting on afd1 and jmabel and mariusm PaulLev 23:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Can someone please show how this article fits in with WP policies/guidelines? That is how this article will be kept. I'm still not convinced that this article goes past WP:INTERESTING, WP:ILIKEIT, and WP:USEFUL, and no one has made any noise to prove otherwise. Rockstar (^T/_C) 23:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse restoration of sourced material (i.e. restore then remove all unsourced line items; needs close review of content right after restoration). There are quite a few sourced items, certainly a minority but still enough to support a list. I don't think that the second nomination at AfD or its closure were out of order, but a number of the Delete comments ignore the notion that any of the material was salvageable. The best course in my opinion would in fact be to follow a recommendation from the first nomination at AfD, to merge into List of songs containing overt references to real musicians. I think that a number of the persons supporting deletion of the list during the 2nd nomination were not making a distinction between speculation by Wikipedia editors and speculation by writers in the public domain; the first is disallowed as content, the second is supported as content (up to a point and not without reservations, certainly). Granted, covert references need to be held to a higher standard of verification than overt references by their very nature; however, once that higher standard is applied, the reference remains a reference. Allusion remains a valid literary device. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment I think a streamlined list, with citations, and plenty of references, would be an outstandingly interesting article, the idea of drawing artistic parallels between artists, through works of art or musical works is neither new or unknown - I think this article can work well. Modernist 00:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

But can it conform to Wikipedia's standards, especially WP:OR? Rockstar (^T/_C) 01:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

How can you pre-judge that it won't?DGG 02:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

a) Because I saw the original article, and b) Because the article itself is a breeding ground for WP:OR. Show me an independent, reliable, third-party source about covert song references and I'll change my tune. Finally, c) the only reasons given for keeping the article have not been in compliance with Wiki guidelines and standards. I've asked for a basis on an existing guideline at least three times now and have gotten nothing except for "it's useful," "I like it," and "it's interesting." Rockstar (^T/_C) 03:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. The tribe has spoken, unanimously. DRV is not AFD 2.0. MER-C 04:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

And that, indeed, is part of the problem - this is not an episode of Survivor where we vote off an article each week because the producers require it. And since when are decisions that are made by a very small group not subject to review and overturn? That is very much not the way I understand things are supposed to be done here. If the parties involved in the 2nd afd had looked at the list of supporters of the article in the 1st, shouldn't they at least have wondered why they were not speaking up in the 2nd? Tried to contact them, regardless of whether it is required to do so? Would that not have been the fair thing to do? Maybe no one thought of it, but then this process we're in right now should be welcomed by the "tribe" if they are confident that their decision was fair and just. I support Modernist's point and that is apparently what JMabel has already done some work on. I'm not opposed to Ceyockey's suggestion either,depending on the length of the two pieces, and was one of the people who said so in the first Afd. Properly referenced, this article adds to our understanding of the interrelationship of songs and artists, and their subtle impact on one another. Covert references of course are harder to support by sources - harder, but far from impossible. There is a lot written on intertextuality and allusion - they are hardly being invented here. I am not aware, though, of any Wikipedia "rule" that one has to justify the idea of an article's existence by third-party sources - the content of the article needs to be verified by reliable sources, which much was already and everyone agrees is needed here. I also concur with DGG about pre-judging. Overturn the decision, reinstate the article and its rich history, and let the editors improve it. What harm will be done? Tvoz |talk 05:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: Pgk writes above "Deletion review is very much pitched at being about process. So overturn suggests there was a problem with that process." If so, news to me. This is the first time in my 3-1/2 years here that I've ever requested restoration of a deleted article, so it's not like I know my way around this part of the process. I was under the impression - and please correct me if I'm wrong - that if AFD had reached the conclusion that an topic was "an indiscriminate collection of information", "not even remotely encyclopedic", etc., that I would be quite out of line to recreate any version of that article without coming here first. If that is not the case, then I will move my version to article space. Still, even if it is my version that is restored, I believe that the history should be there. There's probably not enough prose in the article by anyone other than me to raise an issue about GFDL and licensing if the history weren't restored, but I still think the history should be there to show who has worked on this in the past and who added what citation (since less than half of the citations are my additions). - Jmabel | Talk 06:05, 17 April 2007
• That is how I understand it, we don't automatically protect every page of a deleted article we leave it and it may be recreated in the future. We have a speedy criteria for deletion of recreated material, but the material has to be substantially similar to the original. As I said though any new article needs to address the issues of the AFD, if the AFD found it to be "not even remotely encyclopedic" then you would be quite likely to have a hard time addressing that issue. But DRV isn't a process for contradicting the AFD, DRV has to the best of my knowledge about the process of deletion, not AFD round 2. --pgk 18:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Per the instructions at the top of the page "Remember that Deletion Review is not an opportunity to (re-)express your opinion on the content in question. It is an opportunity to correct errors in process (in the absence of significant new information), and thus the action specified should be the editor's feeling of the correct interpretation of the debate." --pgk 18:04, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: Re: "the tribe has spoken": would you please clarify that? The way it reads to me is that a unanimous decision has been made by a tribe of which I am not a member, and that because that tribe used correct process there is no appeal. If I read you correctly, I have to say: pretty lousy way to approach writing an encyclopedia, and an even worse way to run a community. But please correct me if I have misread you. - Jmabel | Talk 06:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he was referring to the second AfD, and then responded in a "if there was an obvious consensus in the second AfD, why relist it on DRV?" sort of mindset. But that was just my interpretation. Rockstar (^T/_C) 06:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that is what he meant, but that's the problem - the "tribe" in the 2nd afd didn't bother to wonder why supporters from the original afd weren't voicing their opinions in the 2nd. The 1st afd had a larger "tribe", and after a lot of back-and-forth the nomination for deletion was withdrawn. If you're setting up a 2nd, don't you have an obligation - moral if not literally the rules of afd - to seek out the people from the 1st? I'll say it for the 3rd time, the 1st being in the 1st afd - this isn't Survivor where the tribe is required to vote someone off every time they meet. We should be looking for reasons to keep, not reasons to delete. Tvoz |talk 06:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's nice to let the original voters know about a second AfD, but a second nomination is a separate nomination. Those who participated in the first discussion do not own the article in question and if they missed the debate then they missed the debate. That's just what happens. Furthermore, we are looking for reasons to keep. We're also looking for reasons to keep it deleted. That's the point of a DRV. Rockstar (^T/_C) 06:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

There is only one Wikitribe. A villager asked for a decision regarding an issue, and those tribesmen who were around at that time sat under the baobab tree and discussed it. Based on the discussion, a village headman issued a fatwa. Now, those villagers who were absent have requested that the fatwa be overturned. However, since the tribal bylaws do not require that every interested villager must by sought after and asked to sit under the baobab tree when the issues are being debated, the fatwa must prevail. But that is just my interpretation.--Ezeu 06:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I hope you didn't just make that up. But I agree with you. :) Rockstar (^T/_C) 07:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

And in most cases that's exactly what happens. But in this case objections are being raised by quite a few tribespeople who were busily fighting vandals and writing articles and celebrating birthdays and living their lives, and they missed one tiny line in their watchlists, some of which are huge, and the edit summary line may or may not have been illuminating enough to catch their attention. So when they found out about the meeting they missed, they've come to talk about it and re-open the discussion - because obviously they are very interested. Sticking out your tongues and saying "nyah-nyah, you missed the meeting" isn't exactly community building. And erring on the side of delete is far more destructive than erring on the side of keep, especially when the keep group is agreeing completely with the major objection of the deleters, which was about referencing. PS Do we really want to come down on the side of fatwas? I know Wikipedia is not a democracy or anarchy - I hope it's not a theocracy. Tvoz |talk 07:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Fatwa was a bad choice of word. --Ezeu 08:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No it wasn't. Wikipedia is totally a theocracy. When all else fails, appeal to God. Rockstar (^T/_C) 09:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's take this argument to its logical extreme (Socrates, anyone?): every time an AfD occurs, do we want to tell everyone who worked on the article about it? And if they miss the AfD, then, do we put it up for deletion review just because they didn't comment? I think it's a dangerous line we're crossing when we say it's okay to submit everything to a deletion review if the editors who voted on the first AfD missed the second AfD. It has to be the responsibility of the editor to keep tabs on articles; and yeah, sometimes real life intervenes, but that's the name of the game we're playing. The point of an AfD is to come to a consensus, and taking a look at that second AfD, it was a pretty strong one. We can't underplay those who voted on the second AfD just because they weren't part of the original discussion. And that's exactly what we're doing with this DRV -- we're spitting on the voters in the second AfD (which passed unanimously), saying their votes count less than those of the original AfD. That's not good community building either. Rockstar (^T/_C) 07:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say we should discount the 2nd afd. And I didn;t say anything about everyone who worked on the article. What I said was that everyone involved in the 1st afd should have been contacted, and when no one of the 23 people who indicated support for the article, plus 4 merge, out of 37 in the 1st afd said anything in the 2nd, someone could have realized that maybe they didn't know about the 2nd and contacted them. By the way, I'd like to see the edit summary that announced the 2nd afd - out of curiosity. WOuld like to know why I missed it. Tvoz |talk 07:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say you said that. I was just saying that we're going down a slippery slope (and giving an example of what could happen) when we're DRVing something that passed unanimously, simply because people weren't contacted to vote (which is not a necessary action for AfDs). That's all. And yeah, by having a DRV after a unanimous vote, it really does discount the second nomination's voters. We're concerned with who's offending who but have overlooked that group completely. Rockstar (^T/_C) 08:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The edit summary was:

16:20, 2 April 2007 . . Krimpet (Talk | contribs | block) (nominated for deletion: see 
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of songs containing covert references to real musicians (2nd nomination))

--Ezeu 08:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Ezeu. One other question about that - was it the last edit summary for the article (or its talk page)? Tvoz |talk 08:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

There were several edits after, the first one about four hours later. --Ezeu 08:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

So unless people were checking their watchlists during those 4 hours, they would never have even seen the edit summary that announced the 2nd afd - am I wrong? If that's the case, I wonder if someone can tell me how I could have known to participate in the 2nd afd. Perhaps the 2nd would not have been a unanimous "vote" (of course we're not voting, are we?) after all. I change what I said above - I guess this is about process as well as content. And I'd like to recall to your attention DGG's insightful comment (amended here) from Sunday, especially his last points. Tvoz |talk 08:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

At this point of time, the rights or wrongs of AfD2 are water under the bridge and endless postmortem argument over it is unlikely to reach a conclusion. What I suggest is: (1) Jmabel recreates the article in the most rule-compliant form he can manage, (2) If anyone still thinks it should be deleted, let them start AfD3 and inform everyone who was involved in either of the previous AfDs and this discussion. This should be enough to render obsolete all present arguments about process and consensus. In order to allow step (2), we need to disallow speedy deletion. Are we agreed? --Zero^talk 09:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and we should restore the history. If the new article fails a future AfD it will be deleted. If the new article survives, it would be beneficial to show how how it was improved. In either case, it will be helpful in discussions to understand the history. -- Samuel Wantman 10:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion without prejudice to a new and better article. I don't see any process issues regarding the second AfD, and the reasons stated in the deletion review do not appear to me to be sufficient for an overturn or even a relist. My reasoning for deletion in the first AfD was on the basis that the list was unverifiable. I think WP:V is important. If a new article can be written that consists of sourced, verifiable information--then let's make a new article about this subject. It certainly seems like it could contain useful and encyclopedic information if done right. I'd recommend that an admin restore the article the userspace of User:Jmabel since he seems most interested in the subject. However, a new article would probably need to be written from scratch to meet verifiability requirements; don't simply submit a lightly edited version of the old article with a few references added. Tarinth 10:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment I agree with Sam's comment above. I think the article needs rewriting, and careful watch, but the original history is important as documentation. By the way with all due respect "The tribe has spoken, unanimously"[3] - a total of 10, just doesn't seem like the whole tribe, to me. Modernist 12:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Endorse deletion - From above : "How can anyone qualify that a particular reference in a song is a covert reference to a real musician? Answer: the same way as one can say this about pretty much anything else in literature. " This argument itself already clashes with WP:NOT#PUBLISHER. Wikipedia is not opinion. Do NOT rewrite from scratch. The title is confusing and is not acceptable. On the other hand, List of songs containing overt references to real musicians, is okay. OVERT is okay. Tonytypoon 15:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Overturn per Jmabel & IPSOS. It's getting like Conservapedia up in this bitch, y'all. Deletions like this are driving editors like myself to seek less restrictive pastures. -- weirdoactor ^t|c 15:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. People which are now voting can not see the article, as is currently deleted. I wonder how many people who are voting now had read the article we are talking about?--MariusM 15:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Article is now restored and protected from editing until this DRV is closed. As usual, if the DRV endorses deletion, the article will be deleted again. -- Nick ^t 15:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you for restoring the old version. It is now protected. Since no one is suggesting the preservation of that particular form of the article - we all agree that much of it is inadequately cited - would there be any objection to moving this forward by replacing that text with the version currently in my user space (with the appropriate tags added to the top) so that, as the argument continues, we are not arguing about a straw man? - Jmabel | Talk 16:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It's been about 5 hours since I asked this; no one has commented. If it becomes 12 hours, and there is no comment, I will assume that there is no objection, since I can't see any harm (just wanted to make sure I didn't blindside anyone). - Jmabel | Talk 21:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No objection - it's a good idea. Tvoz |talk 23:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. - Jmabel | Talk 07:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment - If you expect to post a new article after the present one is deleted via this DRV, you will need to provide a diff between the delted article and the revised article to show significant new information added to the article that was not available on Wikipedia at the time of AfD#2. Otherwise, your new article may get speedy deleted and/or get deleted at AfD#3. -- Jreferee 15:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Overturn per Jmabel. It seems to me that all arguments brought against the list actually mean to allude to the status of pop culture and its relation to wikipedia. The very fact that there were so many pop musicians complimenting each other means that the list centers on a relavant topic inside pop culture. That is to say, if pop culture is relevant (and it is), then this list itself is: 1) not irrelevant (meaning everything from "not particularly relevant" to "quite relevant"); 2) not problematic (i. e.: if fully referenced, it is not subjective, it is not chaotic, it is not inexhaustable). Dahn 16:32, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn per Jmabel. Rarely is a deleted article the focus of such effort, I think that this more than passes muster as encyclopedic. AFD is flawed in many ways: one problem is inherent bias. It depends on who is looking when. We get articles that are subjected to multiple (often immediate) AfD's because who is looking this week is different than who looked last week and maybe a majority or consensus can form around deletion, then it's done. All you need is deletion to win once, then re-creations are speediable. So under WP's own arcane rules, if the community isn't looking, a small few can delete an article and one admin can enforce a permanent deletion by speedying any attempt at recreation. WP AFD needs reform: perhaps a waiting period for all renominations - longer if consensus to keep rather than no consensus reached was the result - perhaps notifying users on their talk pages who commented in a prior nomination so that nothing gets slipped by (although since many of these get closed in far less than their one-week run and not every WP editor checks in every day, this may not always work). Pardon my rant, but this process is broken and the community should fix it. Carlossuarez46 16:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• AfDs are up for five days. That's plenty of time to come to a consensus. The WP community should act as one, and, in this case, did. There's nothing inherently broken about any of it. I think the real problem here is that people aren't able to look past their own contributions or the fact that this page has "been up for a while" or that it's "useful" or "interesting." We need to focus on the article's encyclopedic merits and how it fits in the vision of Wikipedia, not whether or not we like it. Because the fact of the matter is that no one has yet to prove that this page should be kept per our standards. And if that upsets people, then maybe there should be a new website created for all the stuff that doesn't belong on WP's standards but that we like anyway. WP is an encyclopedia and has guidelines, policies, and standards for a reason. Rockstar (^T/_C) 18:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion: This endorsement is not meant against any future versions of articles. This list of links is unencylcopedic and does not talk about well-established patterns that are related and honestly more interesting and encyclopedic, like parody, mashups and inspiration. I'd love to see an encyclopedic article that talked about blatant parody versus subtle homage, and other degrees of references in between. I know there's tons of references handy and I think that sort of article could go far, but Wikipedia is not a list of links, it is no one's pet project, and AfD happened once, then twice. Effort on articles like these is appreciated and wanted, but the article itself never seemed to get off the ground except as a list of links, a relatively few citations and some vague OR hand-waving. There's a huge body of literature in the music industry and music academy about similar phenomena that would, I think, be almost as fun to work on, and would fit in Wikipedia's guidelines. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 20:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion - closing admin correctly interpreted the unanimity in favor of deletion as a delete. People who participated in a previous AFD feel "blindsided" at not being notified? That's too bad, but not a reason to overturn a unanimous AFD. It is considered a courtesy to notify people who create or heavily edit articles of AFDs; it is not a requirement. The notion that there is some process reason to overturn a unanimous AFD because people who participated in a previous AFD were not specially notified is ludicrous. There is no such requirement and as far as I know it's not even suggested anywhere as a courtesy. Otto4711 23:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse Closure per my past reason at AFD1, and per reasons stated by others at AFD2. --Arnzy (talk • contribs) 01:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse the original closing decision - There are only two purposes to deletion review: (1) The requestor thinks the AfD#2 debate was interpreted incorrectly by the closer or (2) the requestor has some significant new information that has come to light since a deletion and the information in the deleted article would be useful to write a new article. Here, the requestor thinks that the AfD#2 debate was interpreted correctly by the closer but disagrees with the outcome. DRV should not be used simply because of a disagreement with a deletion debate's outcome. See Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Purpose Also, the requestor has not provided any significant new information that has come to light since AfD#2. Most of the information presented in this request pertains to things outside the debate or is information pertaining to the debate that was available on Wikipedia during the AfD#2 debate, such as through AfD#1. Thus, I endorse the original closing decision. -- Jreferee 15:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. There seems to be a lot of discussion here about the appropriate use of Deletion Review. I think the general consensus among those arguing for restoration above is that the article shouldn't stand as it was at the time of deletion, but be severely and aggressively reviewed so that OR is scrubbed out with bleach and steel wool. One of the comments above specifically relates to the article being undeleted in order for it's content to be so reviewed. I think it would be productive to set aside the rancor around accusations and counterpoints related to improper use of Deletion Review and recognise that, in fact, Content Review should have been invoked instead. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 21:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  • comment' If any AfD debate was not interpreted correctly because of the closer improperly weighing some arguments more than others, or , perhaps, failing to weigh the correct arguments more than others, it was improperly closed. In effect this means that that the deletion or keeping must be reasonable in terms of the the merits of the actual article. DGG 00:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  • If the requestor wanted Content Review, then the request should not have been posted at Deletion Review. Also, if some significant new information has come to light since AfD#2, the way to present it in deletion review is to compare the deleted article with the significant new information actually added to a copy of the article. The article was undeleted, so where is the significant new information? Making promises to add significant new information to the article usually does not cut it at deletion review. -- Jreferee 19:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn deletion. There were many passionate supporters of this article -- okay, at least one, who was Jmabel. And a glance at the now-deleted article's history shows that he was working on it as time & resources permitted; from my knowledge of Jmabel, he has been an active participant in Wikipedia. Yet when this article was nominated for deletion, no one bothered to notify him -- which obviously has offended him. Forget WP:OWN -- how would you like it if an article you cared about was sent thru AfD & deleted without anyone making the effort to inform you about it? Is it that important to delete this article that someone was willing to overlook Jmabel's interest in this article? It's an unadvoidable topic on his user page; I'd expect anyone interested in forming a solid consensus would have dropped him a note. Articles are deleted on as a result of consensus, which means inviting all parties to the discussion, & I find it hard to believe that everyone who had an intererest in this article was invited. And when we fail to seek such a consensus -- which includes minority opinions -- Wikipedia becomes a creation of whoever can play the best game of Nomic. -- llywrch 01:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment And not just Jmabel - to my knowledge none of the 27 people who recommended keep or merge in the first afd (out of 37) were notified of the 2nd proceeding or their views solicited. Yet when informed of this current DR, quite a few have stepped in to discuss it. I think that should tell you something. It's not about ownership - I didn't edit that article, but I read and referred to it, and was and am in favor of its being improved and kept. Whether or not the letter of the procedure, the rules, were followed properly, clearly the spirit of consensus and informed discussion was not. Tvoz |talk 07:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment - the very first article that I ever wrote just got AFDed last week. Not only was I not notified, the only reason it was even nominated was because the nominator was mad at me for nominating some article of his. And I was out of town while the AFD ran so I didn't even get the chance to voice my opinion. Other articles I've worked on extensively and even articles whose first AFD I'd commented on have been put through AFD and I wasn't notified about them. Yet I didn't come running crying to DRV claiming that it was somehow unfair to delete the article without telling me about it. Again, it is a courtesy to personally notify the contributors to articles of an AFD; it is not a requirement. The only required notice to the creator is the AFD notice on the article and the listing at the day's AFD page. Not only is it not a requirement that participants in a previous AFD be notified, it has to my knowledge never even been suggested as a requirement or a courtesy outside of this DRV. If an AFD goes through and an editor misses it, too bad so sad. It's not an excuse to overturn a unanimous AFD. Otto4711 22:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment to closer The spirit of consensus and informed discussion may not have been followed in this DRV. Informing the 27 people who recommended keep or merge in the first afd (out of 37) of this current DRV (see this post) may be unacceptable votestacking and, if so, may be taken into account in closing this DRV. -- Jreferee 19:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

  Clarification to closer re Jreferee above - sorry if I was not clear: although to my knowledge none of the people who participated in the first afd were notified that the second afd existed, all 37 of them - all of the people who favored delete and all of the people who favored keep - were notified of this current DR after it began by Jmabel and amended by Krimpet. Please see this above. So I don't believe there's a canvas or votestacking issue, as per Seraphimblade. Tvoz |talk 20:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

  Votestacking includes a partisan element and I am unsure whether that is present in this case. To add clarification for the closer, from AfD#1, there were 10 delete, 24 keep, and 4 merge specific opinions about the article. From AfD#2, there were 11 delete specific opinions about the article. Overall, the 49 editors who are on the record with a specific opinion about the article through AfD#1 and AfD#2, there are 24 keep, 4 merge, and 21 delete. Also, it appears that none of the participants in AfD#1 participated in AfD#2. -- Jreferee 22:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Overturn deletion. Not much to add that previous people seeking to overturn haven't already said.--Alabamaboy 13:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment As of now the original article, which has been edited and notated considerably by User:Jmabel (who has nearly 58,000 edits) looks very much like a verifiable and reasonable list, people wanting to close it down might give it a new look now. Modernist 18:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Overturn per my repeated failure to find a reason this article should not exist. It is the deletion of articles, not the creation, which must be defended in such an open-content encyclopaedia. The arguments against this article's restoration - the ones that are not simple strawman arguments in any case - run along the lines of "This version of the article is uncited/it is impossible to cite", a clearly false assertion given Jmabel's current revision. It is also obvious from the list of atheists that even lists of very poor quality can be cited and organised - in a few months, the list of atheists has gone from completely uncited and poorly organised to being near FL status. We've also seen "I don't like it", [[It's unencyclopaedic" (WP:5P states that Wikipedia includes elements of "specialised encyclopaedias and almanacs"), and "There is no literature written specifically on this exact subject", which drastically fails to be either a policy or relevant. There is no literature written on the specific subject of, say, the All persons fictitious disclaimer, or on many of the geographical features with articles, or on many other subjects with Wikipedia articles. Without reason to delete, restore. ~ Switch (✉✍☺) 00:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• List of atheists, at least, is in reference to and an offshoot of an article, atheist. What is this list referencing? Covert songs? Covert references? Well, the answer is that it references nothing. Rockstar (^T/_C) 00:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

User:The Noon Thing (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD)

I'm a contributor to KCWU, and some of the information on User:The Noon Thing would be useful in the KCWU article. I agree that the deleted article doesn't belong as it was, but I'd like to request to userfy it into a subpage of my name. Thanks. EndlessVince 17:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion it was a user page when deleted as spam, it would still be spam if restored into your userspace. Wikipedia is not a free webhost. --pgk 18:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Feh. I userfied it to User:EndlessVince/Noon Thing, Vince, please copy what you need and then tag it for deletion again. Wikipedia's not a free webhost, but the request is not unreasonable. Sorry, pgk, but I had already started before you posted the above. Guy (Help!) 18:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Not a problem. --pgk 18:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Consider this a review of the deletion review. The purpose of deletion review is to provide "an opportunity to correct errors in process (in the absence of significant new information), and thus the action specified should be the editor's feeling of the correct interpretation of the debate." With no discussion in a proper forum on the article in question, and a clear breach of process, the review simply did not come to a proper conclusion. Per strength of argument alone, this should have been restored and listed at AfD, so I'm requesting that the original DRV be overturned and list the article at AfD. Out of respect for people involved, consider this a test case and don't close this down early - if we can't appeal deletions properly, or improper deletion reviews, we have a bigger problem on our hands in terms of a proper content appeal. badlydrawnjeff talk 16:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment A deletion review of the deletion review? I looked at it and it appears there was a not enough support to overturn the original deletion at the deletion review number one.--MONGO 17:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Which is the problem - at what point can a simple majority ignore the greater consensus of the majority that things like this shouldn't be speedied? --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment and if this review returns the same result, are you going to declare this improper too and repeatedly list until you get the "right" result? --pgk 17:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • We'll cross that bridge when it comes. If we can't appeal an improper deletion, or ensure that DRV gets the correct result (and in this case, there is a correct result), then there's a fundamental flaw in deletion review that needs to be addressed. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes I agree there is a correct result. The result which helps us progress building a verified NPOV free encyclopedia in an efficient manner. I belie ve the correct form of appeal is to Jimbo, though I personally doubt he'd support process for the sake of process. --pgk 17:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • If we can come up with a good way to show that there's a way to appeal a DRV at DRV without escalating it further, it's going to be very beneficial. The result at the previous AfD, however, did not help us progress building a verified NPOV free encyclopedia, however - it endorsed the control of objectionable content to the hands of the few rather than the community, who have long already spoken and said that they don't want that to be controlled by the few. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:33, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • We'll have to differ on the nature of the outcome. As to getting DRV to futher review DRV I disagree, the building of the encyclopedia is not served well by perpetual process and review on top of review, there has to be a stop point. The whole setup of wikipedia not a bureacracy, WP:IAR etc. is setup to keep the process lightweight. --pgk 17:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
          • Right here may not be the place to address the latter statement in your comment, but that may not be beneficial anymore. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - The article was unsourced OR, and close to violating WP:NOT#IINFO. What is the point of undeleting it? I would simply remove the protection and create a stub that explains what that compound is, with a proper source. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • None of which were speedy deletion criteria, which was the point of the exercise. Recreation doesn't address the issue, and while the article should not have been deleted, I'm not entirely happy with trying to let people off here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:16, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Jeff, I agree the article should not have been speedily deleted and that the DRV didn't come to the right conclusion. However the outcome was what the outcome was. Your opening of a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review#Completely moronic was a good way to express your concerns. Your opening of this discussion is a bad, WP:POINTy way of expressing your concerns and is itself an abuse of process. DRV isn't for review of DRV's, as I'm sure you know; otherwise we admit the fascinating but disruptive possibility of an unending series of DRV's each reviewing the prior one. Speedy close. Pan Dan 17:20, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • As I understand it, a DRV of a DRV hasn't been attempted. This isn't a disruptive request - it's an appeal of the deletion review process. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • You are seeking to overturn the original DRV. So the present discussion is a DRV of a DRV. To "appeal the [general] deletion review process" here is improper. A general discussion of the deletion review process should take place at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review#Completely moronic. Pan Dan 17:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Is the talk page binding? Not for this content. This review is a bit of a test case for later as well as a review of a closure that ended up with an improper result. The discussion at the talk page is about how we can avoid issues like this in the future. Two separate issues, really. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Yes, there are two separate issues, and the one raised in your nomination is closed. DRV's are not appealable. Feel free to wait a month and re-appeal SlimVirgin's deletion. Pan Dan 18:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Is this an issue about process, rather than about the specifics of this article? Then, why don't you address that issue rather asking for a second deletion review? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • It's about both, really. The article didn't meet the speedy deletion criteria, so that still applies, and the deletion review discussion did not come to a conclusion that's in line with our consensus-driven policies. It's about the whole thing. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Agree with this request to overturn original DRV closure: majority is not equivalent to consensus, article's suitability is not at issue, this is about whether proper procedure was followed in original speedy delete, article does not/did not qualify for speedy deletion. Wikipedia should avoid the appearance of 'cabals'. I opened the original DRV with an appeal to find out why the article had been speedy deleted and protected, and it evolved that the article had been wrongly speedy deleted and protected, never listed on AfD, but still the DRV was closed because of majority, not consensus feeling that because the article would have been deleted AfD it was okay to wrongfully speedy delete it now. Do we actually have effective policy/procedure, or is it just majority rule now? ---MalcolmGin
• Overturn. It was there since 25 February, and the admin who deleted it knew that. If it wasn't dangerous enough to be speedied then, it's not now. -Amarkov moo! 17:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse original deletion as well as Deletion Review, encyclopedic content must be verifiable. --Dragonfiend 17:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • If it is not verifiable, what process allows for speedy deletion of it? --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion and endorse original DRV per all of the endorse deletion arguments on the original DRV. That said, the idea of reviewing a DRV is an interesting one. Bravo! Rockstar (^T/_C) 17:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion and endorse review. A redirect would be acceptable iff we can show widespread use of the term in the literature. Which we can't. Guy (Help!) 18:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Not that any of those address the deletion. Can you address the deletion? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I think Uncle G already did a pretty good job on the original DRV. Rockstar (^T/_C) 18:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • He did - he noted that it should have gone to AfD. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Actually, I don't think he said that. I believe he said "We don't need this rubbish" and that even if there were an AfD, he would vote delete. Rockstar (^T/_C) 18:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion and endorse deletion review, per SlimVirgin's reasoning, and per Dragonfiend. Musical Linguist 18:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Neither of those reasons were actually legitimate given the situation. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion and DRV, and speedy close per above. This was just endorsed a couple days ago, no need to bog down process with this. --Coredesat 19:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy close, there was nothing wrong with the AfD deletion or the DRV. Corvus cornix 20:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Exactly the problem - there was no AfD, and the DRV did not reflect the community's desires in regard to CSD. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Note that badlydrawnjeff's comments are based on my misworded comment. I have reworded my comment. Corvus cornix 20:26, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Well, that's the entire point, though. There's still a problem with the DRV and the deletion, I don't know how you come to a separate conclusion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • If we're going to appeal every DRV to another DRV when we don't agree with the outcome, we're going to have problems. This is a very slippery slope, one that is just begging for WP:POINTers. Rockstar (^T/_C) 20:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
          • It's worth a try if we can't get the correct result upon appeal the first time. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse review - The closing admin correctly determined that no consensus can override our basic verifiability policy. As the content of the article was completely unverifiable and even the article's supporters admitted that no sources could be found to support its existence, I fail to see how anyone can come to any conclusion other than that the article should not exist. I repeat my offer to immediately unsalt the article name if and when a source is found. FCYTravis 20:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - reversing Blanning's closure ("Original review endorsed by overwhelming consensus; closed as DRV is not a court of infinite appeals – Sam Blanning^(talk) 20:49, 15 April 2007 (UTC)"), someone so involved in the first discussion shouldn't be closing this one, and DRVs traditionally run for five days anyway. I've explained why this isn't an "infinite appeal," and it was a one-off edit, so i'm reversing for now. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Jeff, I have the utmost respsect for your beliefs, but I truly believe that what you just did was inappropriate. And yes, DRVs should generally be open for five days, but the original DRV for this article was. This current DRV should be speedy closed now or just reverted back to its closed state. Rockstar (^T/_C) 21:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • If someone uninvolved thinks closing this down is a better idea than trying to fix the problems, I won't reverse it. But not someone who was involved in the prior discussion and has a history of closing discussions early regardless of what's proper. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

50 Greatest Cartoons (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD)

Deleted as copyright violation (WP:CSD G12). But the article was about a book (see Google cache). How can it be considered a copyright violation? If the rankings part was copyright violation, it should have been removed. The deletion of article on a book as CSD G12 looks weird. 220.227.179.4 15:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. The list is copyright, and that was most of the article. Guy (Help!) 15:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn and remove the list. Problem solved. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • That would be speedied as empty and filing to assert notability. Feel free to write a sourced article, though. Guy (Help!) 18:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Not legitimately, no. The article without the list is a perfectly valid stub, and books cannot be speedied for non-notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • You say. I say that commercial things with no claim of notability are covered by A7. But there you go; you appear to want ot rules-lawyer, whereas I want to make sure that no article hangs around without at least some kind of evidence of significance. Guy (Help!) 21:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Sorry, I'm merely protecting the consensus that is keeping A7 as limited as possible. "Commercial things" do not meet the A7 criteria, but you're welcome to try and change that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, content that violates any copyright will be deleted. To start a non-copyvio version, just go here. --Dragonfiend 17:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn and remove the list. The list is copyrighted, but an article about the book is not. Corvus cornix 20:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn and remove the list. In 1998, Jefferson Graham from USA Today wrote an article about an eight-hour Cartoon Network series that was based entirely on this book. That seems to satisfy criteria #3 of WP:BK. Unfortunately, the USA Today archives aren’t working so try seeing the article here. If that doesn’t work, I can cache it onto a subpage on my userpage if you want. Furthermore, per a simple LexisNexis search, there have been many non-trivial articles about the book published. The problem is that many of them were published a long time ago (1994, 1995, etc.), and their websites don’t have a good enough archive to provide a website address. But we don’t need websites to prove notability. We just need published articles, and there are definitely plenty of those. Rockstar (^T/_C) 23:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion and recreate without list The list was in the very first version, which means that the first version was a copyright violation, and hence we can't keep it. We can't keep any later versions without the GFDL compliant history, including the first version. GRBerry 01:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that's true... can you show where you found a policy stating we can't keep any later versions, even after the copyvio is removed? I can think of plenty of articles which originally had copyrighted material in them but were kept after the copyrighted material was removed. Rockstar (^T/_C) 01:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse speedy-deletion as a confirmed copyright violation. The proportion of the page that was about the book was trivial compared to the proportion that was dedicated to the list. While we do sometimes recover articles where the copyright violation is a small part of the edit history, in this case the ratios run the wrong way. If someone wants a temporary undeletion of the non-copyvio text, I think we could oblige them but in this case we ought to start with a clean edit history. We can satisfy GFDL with a note on the article's Talk page. Rossami (talk) 04:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • A silly end around, but sure - drop it in my userspace, and I'll move it in once this completes if need be. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't understand the problem. Per Wikipedia's own copyright violations page, "If some of the content of a page really is an infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the talk page, along with the original source." If the entire page is copyvio, then it should be deleted. In this article's case, only the list is copyvio, the rest of the article isn't, so the list should be removed and a note left on the talk page. Rockstar (^T/_C) 05:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion, given that there isn't a whole lot left after the copyvio is removed (see the cached version). Starting over from scratch isn't really a big deal. --Coredesat 06:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. To all those who have endorsed deletion, giving reason that re-creating article without copyrighted content is no big deal: I could've re-created it myself copying content from the Google cache, but GFDL compliance is required even if the content is two paragraphs, right? 220.227.179.4 08:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I think the point is that so little of the article is include in those couple of paragraphs and at a glance the article doesn't stand up just being those two paragraphs, you can start again from scratch. i.e. No one is suggesting taking a cut and paste of those. --pgk 09:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • The two paragraphs are certainly a valid stub. Considering the extreme action taken that was unnecessary, the point is reversing that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree. I still don't understand why we can't just remove the list and move on with life.. Rockstar (^T/_C) 16:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - the list might not be covered under copyright law - if it's a poll for instance, if you, me and the publisher asked the same question to the same people, one would expect to receive the same answers, so there's no element of creativity in the work and it's mearly a list compiled in much the same way I could recreate the list of the top 100 Wikipedians by edit - it would be identical to the list on Wikipedia but I would have created it myself, so it wouldn't be a copyright violation. -- Nick ^t 14:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • There is actually a grey area. The creative element can come in selecting who to ask and the questions to ask. Your example of number of edits which is purely factual isn't a good comparison. A closer match to your example would be if the list was cartoons by running length. The lists which don't come under copyright IIRC are polls based on random selection and statistical analysis, i.e. you'd expect the broad trends to be the same regardless of the participants, those where those being polled are selected aren't quite the same. I don't think that you can say definitively it is not a copyvio (nor can I say it definitively is), though the general view seems to have been in such grey areas to err on the side of caution. --pgk 16:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment, This is an interesting discussion, because I tagged as similar list, WGA 101 Greatest Screenplays, for deletion as G12 last week, but the tag was removed by someone claiming that a list of films is not copyrightable. The WGA don't appear to agree as they put © 2007 Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. on the webpage that this list was copied from. Even the brief descriptions of the films are copied word-for-word from WGA's website. I would have removed the list but then there would be no article left, as it's only a poll, rather than a book. I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I believe if an organization has spent their money and other resources carrying out such a survey, then the right to publish the results of that survey would belong the organization. Masaruemoto 21:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

without discussing the merits of this article or this list, what a publisher may claim is copyrighted is just an assertion. It's a warning, but nothing more. DGG 02:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

As per my knowledge, the rankings are copyrighted because the person(s) who decided the ranking used their time, effort and creativity to make the list (not sure about what happens in case the rankings have been decided by a poll). From Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service: "O'Connor states that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself." The list of cartoons can't be copyrighted, but the ranked list of cartoons can be, since it's a creative choice. 220.227.179.4 07:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

WGA 101 Greatest Screenplays is clearly a copyright violation -- it was decided by a poll, but voters were all WGA members. So, the rights to publish list belong to WGA. The WGA page has an explicit copyright notice. 220.227.179.4 07:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

South Australian general election campaign, 2006 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD)

The majority of editors commenting on the deletion supported keeping the content, either by keeping the page or by merging the page with South Australian general election, 2006. Because this page is locked from editing, no merge took place after deletion.

ALso, the reasons given be some editors for deletion were suspect. one thought an FA shouldn't be edited, another incorrectly identified the page as a duplicate fork. ChampagneComedy 07:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments by Orderinchaos

Endorse closure Summary: The original decision was sound, took account of both the consensus and the unusual and arguably disruptive actions of a small minority, and should be allowed to stand, or alternatively replaced based solely on the consensus with a decision to delete and redirect. As presently stands the page has *not* been deleted, so a deletion *review* is unnecessary. Below is a more detailed account of the events leading to this point.

The page was indeed a fork, created on 22 February 2007 [4] by User:Joestella entirely from content from the article South Australian general election, 2006 [5], which was featured in a near-identical form on 10 January 2007 (changelog 10Jan-21Feb FA discussion) on its 3rd attempt. The basis of this was a discussion on the talk page for WikiProject Australian Politics initiated by Joestella on 3 February 2007. [6] There was no real discussion of the proposal, with a single comment opposing the move as "overkill". After its enforcement, I raised an issue about it on 11 March 2007. The discussion was quickly derailed into an unrelated conversation about an infobox. End result - no consensus, although the originating user clearly supported it and two clearly opposed. No attempt was made to contact any of the individuals involved in featuring the SA article, especially Timeshift, who was responsible for creating nearly 80% of the original article's content, for thoughts or ideas on how to best do this. It should be noted that at this time, Joe was involved in proposing a number of controversial actions, many of which were being publicly opposed at WT:AUSPOL, and that at the time of the discussion, the campaign section was *well* removed from the key sections of activity at the bottom of the page. Version on 11 March

On 6 April, Timeshift restored the campaign section to its previous position. [7] The following day, User:DanielT5 nominated the article which is the subject of this DRV for deletion. It seemed fairly uncontroversial - two versions of exactly the same page, one which acknowledges the editors who created it prior to 10 January 2006, the other which only acknowledges the cut and paste by Joestella on 22 February 2006. Apart from Joestella's keep vote, consensus was pretty firmly on the delete side. On 11 April, the AfD proceeded to turn into one of the most bizarre events I have ever seen on Wikipedia where, at just after midnight local time, Joestella blanked the parent article then attempted to rewrite it from scratch. In the ensuing hours, as probably the only person insane enough to be up at that hour, I tried to engage Joe in discussion both at his own talk page and at the talk page for the article. The end result was well over 5 screens of discussion, but a continuance of the rather aggressive editing behaviour which had caused both disputes in the first place. I feel that this behaviour was a failure to show good faith - no edit that major is so urgent that it can't wait for consensus, the result was the near-total demolition of an article that had been featured by the Wikipedia community (despite some flaws, which I think everyone involved have agreed can be worked on), and some of the edit summaries were blatantly misleading. As soon as other editors became aware sometime the next morning, several editors weighed in and suggested that a more collaborative process was required - Joe actively refused to acknowledge this, and with user ChampagneComedy (who has been a reliable ally of Joestella's on a number of seemingly unrelated disputes and had no prior involvement in this one - [8]), started work on the Campaign article [9] in apparent contravention of the emerging consensus on the AfD.

As one would expect, the behaviour of the user in question resulted in some changed votes. Several community members, now aware of the details, either changed their vote to "Strong Delete" [10] or added new votes reading "Delete and merge". Several users weighed in with other opinions - stating that the changes on the page had rendered it inferior to the original, or simply noting that it was a fork rather than a duplicate in its present state. [11] Bizarrely, Joe modified a user's "Strong Delete" vote to "Comment" [12], provoking a strong reaction and some community concern as to what exactly was going on. Finally, an admin who was completely uninvolved in Australian politics articles, and who exercised what I believe was careful judgement, closed the discussion after 8 full days of debate, only to receive abuse and "demands" on his talk page. [13]

The entire process has been abused, as far as I am concerned, by a couple of minority editors who want to hijack the Australian Politics WikiProject for their own ends, and are unconcerned about or even actively disregarding consensus of views on a range of issues, including this one. It is not an intractable dispute - the infobox one, while still controversial, has been largely fixed with moves by Joestella on 10 April to integrate some of my concerns raised back in February into what he was doing, the end result being Template:Infobox Election Result which I hope will be a positive contribution to Wikipedia. Also, ChampagneComedy's edits on the same date to an unrelated set of articles relating to the 2005 WA election, which had reached a similar impasse between two competing and inferior POV versions, resulted in a better article which we can actually work with rather than fight over. For the simple act of doing what I believe was right, I have copped a fair bit of abuse from one person (I even got called a "misguided left-winger" yesterday, which quite amused me), but numerous emailed and other supports from a wide range of people concerned about the editing style reflected in the above articles, and the seeming determination of some users to push other positive, contributing users to the point of leaving the entire project (a sideshow was Joe's attempt to have a userpage deleted which criticised him) rather than cooperate with them. Accusations of POV bias which have been introduced into some of the articles (see for example Talk:New South Wales general election campaign, 2007), and even a rather strange statement by Joe on this AfD that matters relating to elections need to be sourced back to the conservative-leaning Liberal Party of Australia [14] as well as uncivil edit summaries such as "poor research", which *are* seen by the initial editors who carefully researched the material, lead me to believe there are other issues beyond the mere (unnecessary) separation of two articles. Orderinchaos 09:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion as noted this misses large amounts of editing history due to it being a cut and paste of another article (creating potential attribution problems). Creating forks is not a dispute resolution technique. The inability to merge back is due to a dispute concerning if the content is appropriate in the article and hence the article is currently protected, again looks like a dispute resolution issue. --pgk 11:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose deletion I'm in a bind here. I can't very well write my own version of the above Orderinchaos essay and address the misrepresentations I can see within. And I think it inappropriate to recreate the debate at this page: editors can read it for themselves. Safe to say that OIC was a full partner in this dispute and his summary of my actions shouldn't count for much.

In response to Pgk, the original article was a duplicate fork and condemned as such. As in the past, I used the AfD nom as a spur to make the article better. Over the course of a week, South Australian general election campaign, 2006 changed almost 100% — rewritten and brought up to the standard of New South Wales general election campaign, 2007. The article is not a duplicate fork. The edit history is not, given the comprehensive rewrite, an issue.

I would suggest to whomever makes decisions on things like this that:

1. South Australian general election campaign, 2006 be reprieved until a discussion of the desirability of campaign articles in general can be concluded. At present, three recent elections have them, one of those saw an amicable resolution to POV disputes, the other survived a recent AfD vote, the third is subject to an ongoing AfD. As OIC mentions, a general discussion began at WP:AUSPOL. It continues here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics#Separate campaign articles.
2. AfD discussion on Western Australian general election campaign, 2005 be suspended for the same reason.
3. Failing that, South Australian general election campaign, 2006 be reprieved until South Australian general election, 2006 is unblocked and a merge can take place. A majority of editors voting on this supported the retention of the now-deleted content via a merge. The closing editor missed or ignored this; the content is no longer available to readers.
4. Either way, Orderinchaos and his supporters be encouraged to flag and/or edit biased sections in the South Australian general election campaign, 2006 text itself; or discuss specific change proposals on the article's talk page.

Irrespective of the offence I may have caused (and I apologise if I have), Victoria shows that the content exists to write substantial, notable, verifiable campaign articles. New South Wales shows that it can be done well. I ask that all editors of Australian politics articles be given the opportunity to have their say on the general campaign-article issue before the article in question is forever removed. Joestella 15:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

You should note all the edits are still visible in the article history so merging etc. can happen when any disputes are resolved without problem. You seem to be asking for things not within the realm of deletion review, again this is not dispute resolution --pgk 15:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the points raised by pgk - the solution as provided allows the edits to stand in the edit history, while acknowledging the redundancy of a campaign article. As an aside, most of the above proposals by Joestella fail the reasonableness test anyway, as a clear majority of Australian politics editors have now spoken about these articles during the AfDs and articulated a lack of need for them except in certain circumstances - essentially it is a barrow being pushed by two individuals, one of whom has a documented history of supporting the other across a range of disputes, against the entire flow of the WikiProject, in the hope that the WikiProject will eventually concede the point through sheer fatigue. In a community where consensus is the status of a policy, denying the majority to spite a tiny, often disruptive minority is like mob rule in reverse - the Naming conventions ArbCom case had a very similar behavioural issue at its core and was resolved clearly in favour of consensus. Between those who have emailed, those who have expressed an opinion at the pages, and those at the AfD, I see almost anyone with an opinion - including many valued contributors who have written well-researched articles on these subjects - on one side, and 2 at the other. The sad point is that I am genuinely curious how many of these supporters have arisen as a result of solidarity due to opposition to past edits and behaviour by Joe on utterly unrelated disputes, rather than a genuine feeling on the topic at hand. I sense on this one that it is the latter, although the former increases the number of people who would have an opinion on such an esoteric topic as whether campaigns deserve their own articles. (My personal feeling, as expressed at the AfDs, is that some do and some don't). To be frankly honest, I would use Victoria as precisely an example of why these articles *shouldn't* exist sometimes. That sort of content belongs on a site like pollbludger (a site for whom I have the deepest respect) but not on Wikipedia. I would much rather (as would many) that Joe start to acknowledge the presence and views of fellow editors and accord them with the respect he desires for his own, and these disputes would simply not occur, and we could all go back to doing what we came here to do - writing articles. Orderinchaos 16:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

If Orderinchaos can't make his point in 1100 words, what use does he have for another 400? PGK, I don't think we need WP:DR just yet. I think by freezing and reversing the AfDs in line with Joestella's suggestion and letting editors discuss the general issues involved at the project talk page, this whole debate would be a lot less personal than I and others have been guilty of making it. It's a good compromise for now -- one that will give us a specific and comprehensive "consensus", not one that is merely inferred from selective quoting of talk pages. ChampagneComedy 22:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

"I think by freezing and reversing the AfDs"... You mean by ignoring the over side in the dispute and doing what you want. Sorry I cannot see this as an issue for WP:DRV --pgk 22:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse closure 1) History was already restored underneat the redirect prior to this review opening, so anyone asking to overturn or endorse a deletion knows not what they are speaking of. 2) Everything except this specific article is out of this deletion review's scope. 3) Normally, the regulars at DRV would easily decide unprotect a protected redirect, for the issue to be subject to discussion on the target article's talk page. However, that page has had to be protected due to an edit war. Get consensus there, and then we'll talk about how that consensus affects whether this should be an article. Adding fuel to an existing edit war would be a bad idea. GRBerry 01:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure I agree pretty much (with only minor differences) with the Orderinchaos summary of the situation. If the decision were to be overturned it would set a really bad precedent, that if one person is just disruptive enough that they can overrule consensus and Wikipedia to make a point, I think the closing admin made the best decision in trying circumstances. As I said in one of the related arguments to this, the attitude of Joestella and CC has been pretty much "This is what I want to do and stuff the rest of you, it's my way or the highway". That is wrong. Wikipedia policy clearly says so. They're unhappy because the majority, whom they look down upon, decided differently to themselves, even when actively canvassed (there was at least 4 people directly contacted - but I won't complain about WP:CANVASS because it kind of backfired on those doing it, as some strengthened their existing vote) DanielT5 03:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

  Just as a matter of fact, CC and Joe did not violate WP:CANVASS.--cj | talk 05:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Agreed. Those approached were well aware, or able to make themselves so, of goings-on and hence could cast an informed vote regardless of who brought the matter to their attention. Orderinchaos 06:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure per GRBerry.--cj | talk 05:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse closure per GRBerry and the points made by Orderinchaos. I'm with CJ though - Joe didn't canvass for my vote, he merely asked me to review based on his improvements, but I still thought it wasn't good enough, so I left my vote as delete. JRG 06:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose delete and closure: What disturbs me most about this debate is the loaded language being flung across Wikipedia. "Conservative-leaning", "personal agenda", "tiny disruptive minority", "barrow being pushed". When did we stop talking about the article and start talking about the author? And why?

The only relevant facts here are the words written by Joestella and ChampagneComedy in the article. Are they true? Are they independently verifiable? Are they objective? Everything else must be ignored, or Wikipedia will stop being about peer-reviewed articles and start being about peer-reviewed personalities.

Shame on anyone whose decision was based on "patterns of activity". it utterly ignores what Wikipedia is supposed to be. Wikipedia is not a popularity contest, and it's not a community. It is a hundred thousand invisible hands moving towards the same goal.

Apparently it's helpful to be an Australian politics expert in order to weigh in on this debate, and I'm happy to say that I am. After sifting for hours through various edits and revisions, I still feel strongly that Joestella's work was reasonable, fair, balanced and worthy of inclusion. As Australian defamation law teaches us, it was both true and in the public interest, so I consider it perfectly defensible.

In the strongest possible terms I support Joestella's revisions, I support keeping the revisions open for debate, and I oppose deleting his work.

(talk to) Caroline Sanford 14:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Speedy close The page is not deleted, it was made into a redirect. Joestella's text is available (in full, and the source can be copied from) here. At this point, there are two questions:

• Should the redirect be protected? (Probably, for a while)
• Should South Australian general election, 2006 be protected, or should Joestella's version be merged into it? (No opinion)

Neither of these questions belongs here, however. Take it to Talk:South Australian general election, 2006, and WP:RfPP. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse closure per OIC's statement. —Moondyne 14:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Q (Street Fighter) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD)

There seems to be a revived interest in restoring this as a full-fledged article instead of a redirect now that User:A Man In Black, the primary force behind making it a redirect, has left Wikipedia. This is procedural and I have no real interest in it either way, so there's No Vote on my part. JuJube 02:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Considering the article never was formally deleted (it just got turned into a redirect after some discussion, and the only AfD discussion was closed early since it discussed redirection rather than deletion), I don't think that DRV really applies here. NeoChaosX (talk, walk) 04:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • What he said. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Well, considering it gets changed back to a redirect whenever someone tries to re-add the content, I don't know where else to go. JuJube 05:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• A fictional character that has only appeared in one video game? Please leave it dead. His role, if significant to the plot, can be discussed in the SFIII article. When he appears in multiple games, he might have a shot, but otherwise it will remain as a small stub or a totally in-depth article that would violate WP:WAF. hbdragon88 05:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)