- Kari Ferrell (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
Putting aside that a majority of editors preferred to "keep" this article (11 "keeps" and 9 "deletes"), most of of those preferring to keep used arguments directly or indirectly relating to WP:NOTABILITY or WP:BLP1E. The closing admin's stated rationale for ignoring the majority preference was to label a "few" of the keep voters arguments as "remarkably weak," yet making no reference to delete votes that were either just a vote or just a policy.[1][2].
Whatever you might have thought about this topic, this kind of consensus ignoring decision making and selective argument choosing should not be condoned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oakshade (talk • contribs)
- I think DGG's argument is valid that the closer determined which argument they agreed with not the consensus of the discussion. I'm not sure either, but I think an overturn to no consensus would probably be better. ChildofMidnight (talk) 23:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Is this User:Faethon Ghost/Kari Ferrell a BLP violation? ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Possibly, but WP:MFD would sort that out. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 21:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Let's start with a note to the user asking if they have any plans... hasn't been edited by them in a few months. So I left such a note. We shall see. ++Lar: t/c 21:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- We don't count noses in AfD's, we evaluate strength of argument. The delete commenters successfully argued that this was a WP:BLP1E which the keep commenters did not successfully refute ("no it isn't" doesn't count as a successful refutation, for example). endorse deletion, and a wet noodle to whoever brought this here (I note that as of this writing it's not signed... ) for trying to cast aspersions on citing policy and on the closer for doing the work of analysis needed. ++Lar: t/c 21:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm curious how they "successfully argued" when all they did is say that a crime spree spanning years is a single event. By that argument, acting in 10 films is a single event. There was nothing to refute as I read the debate. Just waves toward the policy. Hobit (talk) 13:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. NW's weighing up of the arguments is reasonable, and as Lar says, the strength of arguments counts more than the bare numbers. Kevin (talk) 21:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse I believe NW has correctly given less weight to weaker arguments. Triplestop x3 22:57, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Not that sure. In general I do not think it is the business of the closer to decide between two conflicting policies. Their job is to discard arguments not based on any policy, or, sometimes, by SPAs, and then judge consensus. The questions asked at RfAdmin are enough to identify admin who know enough to tell what is policy and what is not, as long as things don;t get too complicated. It is not enough to identify admins who understand all policies well enough to judge which of conflicting ones to apply, or how to interpret them in difficult situations. Good thing, too, or we'd have no admins, because none of us agrees for all of that. The only people here competent to judge conflicting content policies or how to interpret them are the interested members of the community as a whole, acting in good faith. I recognize a limited exception, and one that might well apply in this instance, in that BLP and Copyright are usually considered to trump other policies if the situation is unambiguous. I consider this a borderline case--I !voted weak delete on the basis of BLP do no harm. DGG ( talk ) 23:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. Borderline notability + BLP concerns. BLP trumps. Close was sound. Lara 01:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn to keep reading the AfD I had no clue why people felt this was 1 event (a crime spree is just one event is as close as it came.) There is no way that anyone reading the AfD by itself could come to the conclusion the delete !votes were stronger in any way. No one spelled out why this was 1 event beyond the rather odd argument that a crime spree over a course of years was one event. Per our guidelines this should be kept (meets WP:N by a long shot and no one explained why BLP1E applied in any serious way). I saw a very strong WP:IAR !vote for deletion "just not notable even if sources exist" and I'd probably favor that view myself. But the question here is if the closer closed the discussion per the consensus and IAR should only be implemented when strong consensus exists that it should be implemented. That wasn't here. As I read the discussion the majority !votes for deletion were not based on policy in any serious way. So they should have been discounted. So we get to keep. Hobit (talk) 01:30, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Is this a straw man? "Not counting" wasn't the point of this DRV. It was the closing admin choosing to favor arguments he agreed with while ignoring those who articulated their position just as well, plus ignoring those who he agreed with that gave little or no arguments. --Oakshade (talk) 02:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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- I don't think anyone would disagree that AfD isn't about counting votes. But what, in this debate, made it so that the !votes to delete were stronger than the ones to keep? I personally don't think they made a case for BLP1E as there was no "one event" anywhere. But I'd like to hear your thoughts. Hobit (talk) 16:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll note first that the actual question whether in my personal view this is BLP1E is academic to my !vote here, especially since I did not !vote in the AfD. Either way, the close does not strike me as wrong "with the force of a five week old, unrefrigerated, dead fish". That said, I think there is nothing wrong treating this crime spree, even if lengthy, as one event. In my view, in the case of a lengthy crime spree, the question is whether she is notable for the individual components (i.e., individual crimes) of the crime spree, which would be multiple events, or if she is notable for the crime spree itself (i.e., for the circumstances under which those crimes, collectively, are committed)?
If, as part of a one-year crime spree, she committed crime A for which she received significant coverage; and then, subsequently, she committed a separate crime B for which she also received significant coverage, then she would be notable for two events: A and B. A search sorted by date, then, would reveal two peaks - one for each event (for an analogous example, see [3]). If, however, none of the crimes are independently notable, but the crime spree itself is, then it would be one event, and the search result would show only one peak. In this case, [4] suggests the latter. Tim Song (talk) 18:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks Tim. I do think that if you don't think that treating the spree as 1 event is reasonable, the close is pretty close to the 5 week old fish. Overriding the !vote consensus in favor of weaker arguments that were less numerous is pretty odoriferous I think we'd both agree. The difference is that you think the BLP1E !votes were reasonable in this situation. I have a problem with "one event" spanning years like this. One event is, to me, a single event rather than an on-going series of events. But now I understand where you are coming from, thanks. Hobit (talk) 19:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- "Reasonable" != I agree. Just as in this case, I happen to disagree with your position, but I think it is a very reasonable position to take. IMO, when neither side is particularly weak - as demonstrated by the diverse opinions in this DRV - it is the rare case when a close would be clearly erroneous. Tim Song (talk) 19:55, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh, I agree. I've endorsed a lot of closes that I would have closed differently. But I feel that deleting an article in a well-attended and argued AfD when the !vote majority was for keep requires a pretty high bar for the deletion arguments. And as I found them significantly weaker than the !votes to keep I don't think that high bar was met. Hobit (talk) 20:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Weak endorse as per DGG. There were some relevant arguments to keep, but I think in BLP cases we need to look at do no harm. Stifle (talk) 08:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Strong overturn to no consensus. I have four points to make here.
Firstly, if it was okay to close that as "delete", then I don't know why we bother to have debates about anything BLP-related. We might as well stick a big notice at the top of all the XfD pages saying "If anyone mentions the three magic initials 'BLP', do not waste your time presenting any arguments because your opinion will be disregarded and the matter decided by admin fiat." Secondly, I'm having serious trouble assuming good faith with this DRV. Please assure me that the appearance of such a large number of people who are (a) not DRV regulars and (b) strongly tend to !vote towards the deletionist end of the spectrum, all together and at the start of this DRV, is coincidence and not canvassing; or if (as I suspect) the matter has been raised in another forum, I should like to see the message involved. Thirdly, I do realise that "BLP concerns" is the fashionable excuse for rampant deletionism against consensus. But there were valid arguments to "keep" from established editors that it was not reasonable to disregard in the close. Fourthly, we do need some articles about living people, folks. "BLP concerns" does not mean "quick, let's delete the whole article rather than just cutting the BLP violation". Get a grip. Address BLP issues by all means but do it in a way that takes account of consensus (or lack thereof), rather than riding roughshod over what people say at XFD.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 09:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- weak overturn to keep or no consensus If there were a BLP claim that had not been refuted it might make sense for the BLP claim to override the consensus of the editors. But given that the BLP concern was addressed in the AfD and the majority of editors seemed to feel that it has sufficiently addresses, it is too much admin discretion to simply override consensus like this. (Disclaimer, I argued for weak keep in this AfD). JoshuaZ (talk) 17:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- No consensus BLPs should default to delete so if this is overturned to "no consensus" it should still be deleted. Per Jimbo. ++Lar: t/c 17:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Argumentum ad Jimbo is less than impressive. Policy is not that BLPs default to delete and even then, given that a majority of users favored keeping one can easily argue that this should be closed keep rather than no consensus. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- It's Argumentum ad Jimbonem. :) Tim Song (talk) 17:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- And the worst part is I actually took Latin at one point. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- BLPs do not and should not default to delete. Wikipedia's BLP provisions are fundamentally about removing unsourced negative information about living people, and the "unsourced" is important. If something's sourced to reliable sources, you can say it on Wikipedia.
So if I wrote "Barack Obama is a mass murderer" on a Wikipedia article, you would be correct to remove it on sight; but if I wrote "Harold Shipman is a mass murderer", you would be wrong to do so. When information is available from reliable sources to say something, it can be said.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 19:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Sorry to disagree witn you on this, but BLPs, when there is no consensus, SHOULD default to delete. It's called doing the right thing, being nice to the subject, being excellent to each other, as Jimbo has exhorted us to be. If a consensus to keep can't be formed, better safe than sorry, better nice than mean. If we start deleting them when there is no consensus, et voila, policy will have changed. I call on all admins to start doing just that, every time they close. ++Lar: t/c 11:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Please don't apologise for disagreeing with me. Reasoned debate is the way to reach an intelligent conclusion; there's a good reason why our two main routes to the truth--science and law--both rely on people trying to refute each other, and in cases where I'm wrong, I'm grateful to those who have the decency to tell me so!
In this case, I don't think I'm wrong. I think "doing the right thing" is about removing unsourced material from Wikipedia. I think writing an encyclopaedia is all about evaluating sources and giving them appropriate weight. I would characterise the argument that "BLPs should default to delete" as a simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach. I would also describe it as an overreaction based on a misconception about what Wikipedia is, and what it can ever aspire to be. Wikipedia's an enormous collection of user-submitted content and while we remain "the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit", we cannot eliminate problematic BLP-related material. I would say that the essential problem isn't with Wikipedia, but with people who uncritically believe what Wikipedia says. (These are often the same people who believe what they see on TV, what they read in the newspapers and what they hear on the radio.) I also believe that where there's a reliable source to analyse, there's an article to be written. I repeat that BLP policy is, quite rightly, about removing unsourced negative material concerning living people, not about eliminating all negative material about living people entirely.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 15:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Couldn't agree more with S Marshall. I just want to remind that WP:BLP contains WP:WELLKNOWN. It is often forgotten, unfortunately. --Cyclopiatalk 19:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse, correct interpretation of the discussion. –Juliancolton | Talk 18:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse I see no problem with an admin taking the strength of arguments into account rather then adding up the votes and BLP is policy so truumps BIO or GNG or N any day since they are just guidelines. Spartaz Humbug! 20:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus. I actually agree with the outcome here, and would have opined in that way if I had participated in the AfD. I also have previously deleted a no-consensus AFD involving a BLP. I strongly agree with "do no harm" spirit of BLP. Here, though we really aren't doing harm when the subject is giving jailhouse interviews to ABC News. In this case, where there really is no question as to notability, and no obvious harm, I think that it is too much of a push to delete when clearly there was no consensus to do so. Xymmax So let it be written So let it be done 13:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus (and possibly relist). While admins should rightly make up their mind on the arguments, it seemed pretty clear that many editors argued clearly that there was more than a single event involved, and Xymmax above rightly noticed that there is no obvious harm to be done. And BLPs, like every other article, should default to keep when there is no consensus. --Cyclopiatalk 19:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Weak endorse. A very close "delete" vs "no consensus". I recommend usefying/recreating, but only after six months, hoping that with time, some historical perspective will arise. Writing an article in rel time with the appearance of news reports is not a good way to build an encyclopedia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:41, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The crime spree happened in early 2009 according to the article; the AfD took place in October 2009. There already was a significant time gap. NW (Talk) 00:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- You must be young? I'd prefer to wait until after her death. I think another six months is a compromise for those who disagree. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- For a BLP1E, I frankly see no reason to recreate in 6 months or after her death. This of course, assuming that nothing else that would satisfy the notability criteria happens to her. NW (Talk) 00:59, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Um, you do know what the L in BLP1E stands for yes? I'm curious what you think about having an article about Mary Toft. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:01, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- As closer in this exercise, NW should keep his opinions in reserve, and rely on the content of the community debate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- There's no reason the closer can't give his opinion in detail in a DRV. Indeed it is often more helpful when the closer is willing to explain in detail what they were thinking in an otherwise controversial closure. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:08, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- To the extent that the close is affected by what the closer was thinking, as opposed to what was in the debate, a "delete" close decision is weakened with respect to a "no consensus". I think that NW did the right thing in a very close call, and I assumed that he did not on the basis of the community debate, and am concerned at a hint that the close reflects his personal opinion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:32, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Closers are allowed to hold an opinion. Expressing it in the DRV doesn't indicate that he ignored the discussion and closed based on his own opinion. You believe he did the right thing with the close, so that suggests to me that your opinion is that the article should not exist. Were you the closer, it would be no less appropriate for you to express that opinion here. Lara 01:40, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- For the purpose of transparency of process, I believe that when someone judges a consensus, that they refrain from any expression of personal opinion, either before, during or after the judgment. The closer should be able defend the close without reference to personal opinion. If the closer cannot defend the close without going beyond the content of the debate, or policy not brought into the debate, then he should not have closed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:53, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Humans are not autonomons. It isn't unreasonable that personal opinion have some weight into how an AfD is closed. A deletionist is more likely to delete than an inclusionist because they will see certain classes of arguments as more persuasive than the inclusionists will. Pretending otherwise isn't helpful. Now, if you want to argue that NW's position is extreme and he let his personal opinion weigh too much in this decision that's a very different sort of argument. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:01, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I tried to keep my personal opinions of the article while closing it, though I did not really have one. My comments here in response to you did not even go through my mind when I closed it; they were just something I thought of now. As JoshuaZ's comment: I believe it can just be recreated after her death, though something about the crimes themselves would be better. NW (Talk) 02:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to No Consensus - (1) The closing rationale that the crime spree was one event per BLP1E is incorrect. The pertinent part of WP:BLP1E is: If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a particular event, and if that person otherwise remains, or is likely to remain, low profile, then a separate biography is unlikely to be warranted. The word "event" in BLP1E is clearly singular, and the word "particular" emphasizes it's singularity as a separate event. The phrase "crime spree" means multiple crimes committed in a row, so the phrase necessarily includes separate events, by definition. The criminal justice system would consider them separate events and file multiple charges, one for each. If, on the other hand, a person commits multiple crimes with the same MO in a short period, and in the same jurisdiction, then for BLP1E purposes only, I could understand an argument that it could be treated as if it were effectually multiple instances of the same crime (although it's clearly plural grammatically and legally). If, for example, a person robbed multiple gas stations in a day, or over a weekend, in the same town, or if someone kited multiple bad checks in the same place over a short period, using the same MO, then I would probably not disagree with treating it under BLP1E. On a case by case basis, obviously. However, in this case, the subject allegedly committed different crimes in Salt Lake City, and was wanted on five different warrants there for passing bad checks, forgery, and retail theft. In New York, she allegedly committed personal theft, forgery, and scammed multiple people. Different alleged crimes, in obviously different cities, and at obviously different times. Clearly not one event and therefore the rationale that BLP1E trumps notability based on RS is also incorrect in this case, since there is no "one event" and she was not "low-profile". (2) The closer discounted some Keep votes as weak, but didn't indicate the there were weak Delete votes that should have been discounted as well and no indication that they were, including: "Delete, non notable" (which is essentially just a vote) and "textbook example of WP:BLP1E " (without any reasonable explanation of why), using the same examples as Oakshade. (3) I'm not going to argue that the 2nd AfD close should have been a Keep, as there really wasn't sufficient consensus. Therefore overturn to no consensus per arguments by Oakshade (in both AfDs and here), Cyclopia, Xymmax, JoshuaZ, and S. Marshall, and myself in the 2nd AfD. — Becksguy (talk) 11:53, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse I see no reason that this should be considered a bad close, the BLP policy covers the deletion of the article, looks like it was a reasonable close and should be kept deleted as such. We don't count votes we count the strength of the argument, to make truly sound consensus otherwise we'd be a pile of yes an no's. --Coffee // have a cup // ark // 03:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- It's a wrong close because it's a misapplication of BLP1E, which does not apply in this case. A good faith misapplication, but still a wrong closure. — Becksguy (talk) 03:58, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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