Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-08-29/Roll with the changes
Procedural changes this week
A number of procedural changes were made in different areas of Wikipedia this week.
Votes for Deletion naming debate
A debate has ensued on the renaming of VfD to PfD (Pages for Deletion) or AfD (Articles for Deletion). The main problem with the name, according to name change supporters, is that VfD is not actually a vote; rather, it is a discussion on whether to keep or delete. As of press time, the name "Articles for Deletion" seems to have caught on, with non-article namespace articles going to Wikipedia:Non-main namespace pages for deletion.
Collaboration of the week
Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week reduced its scope from two collaborations down to one collaboration, after many readers complained that the number of edits had dropped dramatically since the project split. SimonP noted that over a month, none of the eight COTWs had come close to becoming a featured article. Particularly, SimonP noted the article History of South America, which only received 11 edits during its COTW period, and "saw virtually no improvement during the week."
No objections were received on the talk page, and so the change was made. The first collaboration after the merge was Militarisation of space, which received 60 edits during its period as a COTW.
Reference desk
Wikipedia:Reference desk was split into four sections this week. The sections are: Humanities, Science & Mathematics, Language, and Miscellaneous. Each of these sections has discussion in its subject area. Discussion on the talk page about splitting into sections began in May 2005. Originally, the idea was to break the page into as many as nine sections; however, it was generally agreed that any more than four sections would not be beneficial, making it harder for editors to watch the pages and answer questions within a reasonable time frame. HappyCamper said that the whole process of sorting questions that had already been answered, as well as tidying up pages took about 24 hours and a flurry of editors.
Discuss this story
Vote vs Consensus
While I think Wikitruth might be overdoing the paranoia a tad, they've brought up something I'm unsure of. Is it really not a vote? If so, why do people write Keep or Delete at all? Seems like a vote... if it's not, we really should emphasize the consensus concept. In this, wouldn't the debate only end when every single person involved has changed their vote to delete? I've had some articles deleted before when I made good arguments for why they should stay around.
There is always a way to reach a stubborn person, by explaining things to them. They will no longer make the mistake, and also serve to enforce that type of informing others so the person who explains once will have in effect explained hundreds of times. So, what actually resolves the VfD/AfD? I never actually looked into it, I assume a mod or something looks at the discussion and decides? Might they be influenced by just counting the numbers? I certainly would feel the urge to count it up. Even if you ignore irrelevant or unsupported opinions, that doesn't really broach a consensus. I'd only ignore a voice if they stopped contributing to the debate. Tyciol 19:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]