User talk:Posiduck

Hello Posiduck and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

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On your list of lists

Several Wikipedians want to talk with you on the possible deletion of List of all Wikipedia lists that do not contain themselves. Here's the discussion page: -->here. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:08, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Association of Inclusionist

Hi, I'm Roachgod, I have been notified that I am anhonorary member of the Association of Inclusionist. I have no problem with this, though I am curious as to why I was given this membership? ZaQ 15:41, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It would appear that everone who was listed as an "inclusionist" on the m:Inclusionism page was made an honorary AIW member by Merovingian when he created the page. Posiduck 18:13, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. Mark Richards 16:31, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Deletionists!!!!!!

I find the deletionisnts are getting out of control :o). I voted against deletion on a highschool article that is going to be deleted, and i noticed you did as well. I see NO harm at all in having many interesting and esoteric articles on wikipedia. If these people dont want to know about that highschool then they dont have to search for it.

This is my reply on deletion articles:

Keep I am becoming somewhat disturbed at the level of deletionism occuring for what I think are worthy articles. There little, if any, harm in keeping interesting and esoteric material on Wikipedia. If you do not want to know about this topic then you do not be subjected to it. However, if it is kept it will be here for people who do want to know about it.--ShaunMacPherson 18:35, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Should we make a wikiproject for inclusionists? I find deletionism is destroying good articles, and time spent deleting could be spent creating better articles. Deletionism is destructive by its very nature. See you, --ShaunMacPherson 18:35, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• I've joined this organization as I feel it is a noble cause. I only wish I was aware of this organization last week when I found my articles under some sort of strange attack (and subsequently a sleu of retaliatory attacks for defending myself) by Meelar and RickK. -- RaD Man / talk 22:05, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Deletionism 2

Can you vote on this article [[1]] it is a school article that is up for deletion.

Should we make a group of wikipedians that will try and do schools? --ShaunMacPherson 19:34, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My thoughts on schools, and deletion in general

Please, by no means take this to be the opinion of the group - these are my thoughts, and my thoughts only. I'm not the most radical deletionist around.

There's very few subjects that I'll vote delete on if you hand me a really good article - with the exception that if it's a vanity biography, garage band, micronation, conlang, antipope, or some other form of vanity that's really non-notable, then I'm likely to vote delete regardless.

But then we get to areas that are distinctly borderline (in my opinion, anyway) such as schools, hospitals and major streets. With these things, I tend to judge them on a case-by-case basis. The odds of them being expanded aren't very good, so I'm prepared to err on the side of inclusion only if the article meets a basic standard. If there's some reason that makes it obviously notable, then good. If there's something there that anyone could find interesting (i.e. not just stuff that could be said for any school in the Western world), and there's more than a paragraph or so, I'll probably vote keep too. I don't judge each case specifically using it, but Dpbsmith's BEEFSTEW criteria are very close to my own.

The problem with the vast amount of school submissions lately is that they've been complete garbage. Substubs and short stubs. "Anyton High School has 1000 students and a principal and some teachers. We have lots of buildings and a carpark." If it was a clearly notable topic, I'd tolerate something of that length, but on something so borderline - and on something that's so uninteresting (to anyone) and so unlikely to be expanded, then I'll vote delete. And FYI, I created Fitzroy High School. Ambi 04:40, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I guess my question would be, if they are so uninteresting, why is it that there are so many of them created? It seems like there is plenty of interest in having school articles. Posiduck 06:43, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, we just about all went to school. My view, FWIW, is that the school articles should not be routinely deleted until a broader consensus has been reached on this issue, if it can be. However, I think a lot of the Manaloa article is spurious. It may well be factual what sports it competes in but it's dull. Yes, you can readily pad out articles on every school there is, but that doesn't make for a particularly interesting read. I think in Manaloa what has been created is a long article, not a good one. Does a great encyclopaedia include everything? I think RickK is right. This agenda does end up in including every last atom of our world in Wikipedia. That isn't what was intended by its founders. Nor, I believe, did they intended that "notability" should be a function of how many people attended an institution. And, I'm absolutely certain, they did not wish the encyclopaedia only to cover those areas people show "plenty of interest" in. Having said all that, I don't think that there is any standard here that is being applied reasonably. There are articles on Hong Kong's metro stations, towns with one inhabitant, baseball players of absolutely no note whatsoever, the third episode in the second series of South Park, the characters in Harry Potter, and what have you. Are schools more or less notable than any of those? Why? Dr Zen 23:55, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My opinion on your question above, and one of the main reasons behind my decisions on deleting schools, is that they are a form of vanity. Just like non-notable bands, non-notable Usenet groups, non-notable web sites. Somebody feels pumped up that this unimportant thing gets put into an encyclopedia, and it makes them feel important. I don't vote delete on all schools, just on most of them, because they are as non-notable as articles about their student body presidents and their principals. If we have an article on the school, then surely we should have one on every teacher there, right? Inclusionists say that schools are important because they're an important part of the lives of hundreds or thousands of people. Well, surely those teachers are, too, right? And then what? Articles on every prison guard? After all, they're important in people's lives. Besides, I think it's a camel's nose in the tent thing -- once schools are accepted, then the argument goes on to the next granularity of trivia -- the local post office, the local city hall. And like I said on the mailing list, then we should have articles on every building and every tree in the world. RickK 18:47, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Indrian comments (annotated by me)

I am glad you have a window into all of our souls. (I don't understand what you mean by this Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

To put it simply, I think that Moanalua High School should be deleted. (That's fine, I think you can hold that position, and in fact, need to to be consistent Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

I also think it does not have a good chance to get deleted. Why? Because you are right that many wikipedians will keep an unworthy article as long as the information is factual and the article is well-written and of decent length. (I think most people wouldn't consider it unworthy, but yes, I agree with you, it would survive deletion Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

I think this is unfortunate, but I will not list an article for vfd just to grandstand. I will vote for its deletion, however, if it would happen to be listed. (That's a fine position, I don't think you need to nominate everything you would vote for. Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

As for your formal arguement, it is flawed because your assumption is flawed. The lack of a vfd notice does not inherently imply that an article should be kept; it just means that no one has brought it up for a vote yet for some reason. (I think that the reason it hasn't been nominated is because the majority of users don't think it should be deleted; but this is, in fact speculation. As I said before though, my argument was meant to illustrate that you either have to be against Moanalua (conceptually), or can't use the non-notability argument Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

Even if such an article were to be put up for deletion and survive, it would not automatically make it encyclopedic based on a standard other than popularity. My standard is my own; your standard is your own; it is all subjective. (Wikipedia policy is determined by majority opinion. Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

Majority rule in this case does not lead to what is "right" (if such absolute truth even exists in regards to what should be in an encyclopedia), only to what the most people believe is the correct path. There is no fundamental truth involved in deciding what is notable, and it would be arrogant for anyone to claim that their idea of what is notable has some higher value. (That's true, but, logic requires that people at least have consistency for their own opinions Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

The vfd process is just a way to see which viewpoint is embraced by the community as a whole, not a way to discover a greater truth. If the majority finds that a school is notable, I will accept the will of the community because it is a community project. I would hope you would do the same if the opposite occurred, though sometimes I doubt it. (While I vote for schools to be kept, argue vehemently for their support, I do not interfere with the wiki process, I do not recreate deleted articles, and I do not disrupt the process, I just try, as hard as I can, to get people to come around to what I see as the only reasonable stance to hold regarding wikipedia. I don't think that there is any evidence to support the accusation that I would not accept the will of the community. Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

Finally, Trying to catch me in a contradiction based on your formal arguement does not work because it is possible to both believe an article should be deleted and not actually bring it up for deletion. Indrian 22:40, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC) (Again, as I said to Intrigue, I do not think that you have to nominate everything you would vote to delete for deletion. My point, and I think this still stands, is that you all know that if every school article was like Moanalua, you'd never get enough votes to delete. Because people want articles like that, its part of the unique service that wikipedia can provide, a reason to use wiki instead of Britannaica. And I don't understand why you are all so vehemently against making wikipedia compete with actual encyclopedias not just in price, but in scope of coverage as well. I cannot imagine why you wouldn't want wikipedia to eventually contain every piece of factual information it can. And that was all I was saying. Posiduck 00:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC))

• I really do see where you are coming from and I think it is a good goal to strive towards in principle. The problem is that it is impossible to include everything, both for space reasons (limitations are slight, but the project probably could not handle five billion articles) and because too much passes by that is not recorded by anyone for posterity. Circumstances force us to be selective; even if we keep every school article there is stuff that we will not be able to record. As a result, I choose to draw the line at a more selective point in the belief that wikipedia is more useful if it is not bogged down with factual information that is unlikely to be useful to many people. It is important to remember that an encyclopedia's primary purpose is as a reasearch aid; it is meant to summarize and to distill and serve as a starting point for greater discovery and is not meant to be a substitute for other sources. Other people are probably more selective than me; plenty of people are less selective; that is fine. My only problem with you, Shaun and Anthony is that you refuse to accept that we have this position and move on. Instead, you attempt to make formal arguements showing why we are being idiots. I do not think you are idiots for your position; I hope that you can come to realize the same thing about us. Indrian 02:20, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
  • The thing is that, in many cases, this so called "useless information" does not "bog down" Wikipedia. It is accurate and easy to find for those looking for it, but in a place where it would not cause confusion to those not looking for that information. Deletion should be used as a tool for improvement, but I believe that Wikipedia should not be improved towards some aesthetic standard of what is "worthy" for an encyclopedia, but rather a usefulness standard of the greatest usefulness for the greatest number. If an obscure article does not provide confusion to those who do not care about it or misinformation to those who do, it is a benefit to Wikipedia, and deleting it would not improve Wikipedia. --L33tminion 17:16, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if I've fully understood the lengthy arguments above, but it doesn't look as though Posiduck is attempting to show that people opposed to including schools are idiots. His summary says "Either you (deletionists in general) oppose the current Moanalua Entry as non-notable or you stop using notability as a claim on VfD." It seems as though you fall into the first category, and that he recognizes that position as perfectly consistent. Neither of you are meaning to call the other an idiot, and I'd hate to see this sort of misunderstanding continue. If I've misunderstood either of your positions, feel free to correct me. Factitious 04:43, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
    • First, just to make things perfectly clear I am not calling anyone names (and I am not saying you accused me of that, because you did not). "Idiot" may have been to strong a term, but Posiduck did seem to be intent on discrediting some people. I think Posiduck has been very civil throughout, however, and that our dialogue has been meaningful; I hope he agrees. Shaun has been quite a bit less hospitible, and I do believe that he may consider some deletionists idiots. I suppose the above comment was more directed at his actions than Posiduck's. Indrian 04:55, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
      • I proudly admit that I make formal arguments designed to show flaws in general deletionist reasoning. Because there are some topics on which I think reasonable people cannot disagree. I think that if you start from the a set of premises, and are consistent in your reasoning, there is but one reasonable stance to take. Now, many deletionists and I differ on one crucial premise; should an informative, NPOV, verifiable article about a subject of admittedly very limited interest/importance be included in the wikipedia. They say, "No" and I say "Of Course." Now, I can have a certain sort of respect for the stance that wikipedia ought to exemplify some sort of quality standards. I think it would reflect poorly on us if many of our articles were stubs and vanity pages. However, I don't think deletionism will solve that, and I think, if anything, it will hold us back. You want a compromise solution; here's a suggestion: Let's create a page to list school stubs on, before people nominate them for VfD, and I (and many other inclusionists, I imagine) will go through that list, and try expanding those stubs into the beginnings of a real article. And instead of having school stubs all over VfD, people will only be nominating schools in general on the grounds that they are not notable, and I think that, given a well written school article, very few schools would actually get deleted for non-notability. I also have a different suggestion on my user page, though I'm not sure how much work it would take for the software to support this idea. Basically, have a single wikipedia with two tiers of articles. One tier will contain only those articles that succeed in putting the right kind of face on wikipedia, and that tier can have severe notability requirements, and stringent format specifications (i.e. no stubs would be on this tier). The other tier would be all of the rest of wikipedia, from stubs to B-movie actors, etc. And thus, rather than forking the project, or asking anyone to give up their idea of what wikipedia ought to be, we could have all of us working together on a common goal. posiduck 16:49, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On Schools

I apologise in advance for ripping your reasoning to shreds - pulling things apart and putting them back together again is something of a hobby ;-) I have added comments in bold. Posiduck 06:13, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

1. Articles about schools would contain factual verifiable NPOV content.

   Ultimately, the phrase "William Hague is male" contains facutal, verifiable, NPOV content. Most articles that don't can usually be changed to fit as such. This is no more than one of the baseline requirements for an article.

True. I was pointing out that school articles would meet that baseline requirement.

And I was pointing out that said requirement is not a major thing - I imagine it's there to stem teh bias and the nonsense, nothing more.

It is there because it is a fundamental aspect of being a repository of information.

1. There is evidence of how robust an article about a "non-notable" school can become.

   Wrong. That school has achievements which make it notable, unlike other schools branded as "non-notable" which really don't have any, and whose "extended" article is no more than "X is a school in the Y area of Z" coated in a few hundred words of bullshit. Rather like some biographical pages which turn out to detail a perfectly normal person with a perfectly uninteresting life.

Many other deletionists have confirmed that they consider Moanalua non-notable. I think that all but one or two of the things about Moanalua are not-specific to Moanalua, and save a couple of alumni and it's rank as one of Hawaii's leading schools, I'm not sure how you'd ground a notability claim. If "top school in state X" is a good enough reason, then there are at least 49 more schools notable enough in the U.S. alone, not to mention schools in other nations and provinces.

As I have said elsewhere, I am not a deletionist. For its main achievement to have been as significant as that (Remember the joke? How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, and lots of it.) I consider the school to be notable. It's not radically different, but it can claim to have dome something a good many other schools haven't. My old school orchestra never managed to play the Royal Albert Hall, so in that respect, Moanalua beats it.

You favor the deletion of a broad range of potentially informative, factual NPOV articles, I consider anyone with that view a deletionist.

1. Many, many newcomers seem to create articles about schools.

   Substitute "schools" for "themselves", "clubs", "websites", "specialist fields", or indeed anything you like, and the statement still holds true, even the bit about staying and becoming more active. I've seen poorly-writte ntechnical articles turn up on VfD simply because the author didn't know that we had an article already (at a slightly different name).

I see that you've ignored the point which is that, when combined with reason 1, we might be able to draw new editors by allowing school articles.

Well, I hate to be the one to say this, but that would be equally true of the other things. Take the Dartmouth fratcruft for instance. In many cases, the information would be verifiable, and if not NPOV then at least NPOVable. The same goes for obscure individuals - it just takes a little more work to verify in those cases.

I've noticed the Dartmouth Fancruft Problem myself, it seems as though I can't read any article without some dartmouth fancruft creeping in. But I jest. My point is, I have no problem with every episode of gilligan's Island having its own page, or a page for every professor and teacher in the country (maybe there could be a page of teachers from each school rather than an individual article, but that's splitting hairs really). My point is, if someone adds a page on their high school, and it gets fixed up instead of deleted, maybe that person will be more inclined to go around fixing up other articles, and I'm not one to turn away potential editors, since the project depends on its ability to attract volunteers.

1. ... but given practically any stub, someone can add a little bit to it at a time;

   Indeed. So much so in fact that it will reach the point where 6-12 months later it's still formed of "X is a school in Y" and its address.

I believe these comments come from a fundamental lack of faith in the wiki process.

Well excuse me for being an atheist ... Actually, this comes not from a lack of faith in wiki, but from proven case history. Annoyingly, the evidence has been deleted, but then stubs which haven't grown in a year tend not to survive VfD.

This Wikatheism (for lack of a better neologism) is very disturbing. A stub on High School X is about on par with the "This page doesn't exist yet, would you like to create it" page in terms of how it looks when someone tries to go to the page. It's way easier to add a sentence to a stub (especially if you're a newbie) than to create an article.

1. A growing number of wikipedians consider schools to be, on the whole, notable merely in virtue of being schools.

   So, I am notable just by virtue of my being a person? How can a school in and of itself be notable, especially when there are millions like it around the world? People become notable by doing things differently. Companies become notable by getting rich, and they get rich by doing something other companies can't. Societies become notable through making something of their members (not to be confused with their members making something of themselves independently). Products become notable through common use in the household. Schools are merely entities on the same level as people, societies, products, companies, etc. There's no reason why they should not have to meet the same notability criteria as everything else. Towns and villages are on the same level as countries, regions, etc. as geographical entities that should be documented.

Here's where I say, Wikipedia is not paper. Also, see my argument against the use of the notability claim.

So, Wikipedia is not paper, so I can go create a page about myself. I've done lots of things other people haven't, and evidently you're against the idea of "non-notable" as a reason for deleting, so that should mean I get to stay in, right?

I don't think my other reasoning commits me to that claim. I think that my argument against the notability claims is based on the existence of the Moanalua article, a well written article on a school of what I consider to be limited notability. There is no equally well written article about a non-notable person, and even if there was, I'm less sure that wikipedians on the whole would support its inclusion. Thus, my argument is limited to schools. However, I personally have no objections to factual NPOV articles on any individual person.

1. There is currently no better place for articles on schools than Wikipedia.

   "I've got nipples, Greg. Can you milk me?" Compare "There is currently no better place for terrorists than Afghanistan." That doesn't mean that we in the Western world or the Afghans themselves want them there.

Yes, because school articles are perfectly analagous to terrorists. Fine, let me change the claim to suit you. The type of articles on schools I would like to see are very well suited to wikipedia.

I would agree, though perhaps "articles you would like to see" has a broader scope than "articles I would like to see". Again, subjectivity contaminating a good argument.

Subjectivity has yet to ruin any of my arguments. I think there has been some misunderstanding in what I was saying. Imagine if every school article was as complete and well written as the Moanalua article. That is how I envision ideal school articles. Those articles are formatted as encyclopedia entries and contain factual information. Therefore, articles of that sort are well suited to wikipedia. Now I've removed the deceptive use of the "articles I would like to see" which merely meant to pick out a certain style of article writing, and not introduce a subjective element of my personal anything.

1. unless there are very good reasons to eliminate an article on a school, it should be kept.

   Given that we probably have articles about generic types of school, why do we need articles on instances of those schools that are no different from the generic? Anyone can get an article on Wikipedia, but to get it kept in, they have to get of their proverbial and do something different which gets them in. For schools, "educating generations of children" is on a par with me "eating lots of food over my lifetime". Who (famine victims excepted) doesn't? Similarly, what school doesn't educate people? Now that would be notable - a school where people come out knowing less than when they went in.

This statement above, I think is true for any X. Unless there are very good reasons to eliminate an article on X, it should be kept. And I haven't seen good reasons to delete most school articles.

So, are the usual reasons which apply to everything else not good enough, then? Are schools somehow above deletion policy?

I don't understand what you mean by this. All I was saying was that for all articles, there is prima facie justification for them to stay in wikipedia, and they ought only be removed if there is sufficient reason. Some possible reasons are listed on that page. I don't consider any of them as applying to school articles.

Any fact-based reply is welcome. Pointless conjecture, however, will just end up in /dev/null. Oh, sorry. That appears to be full already. 8-) Chris 04:24, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) Please identify one of my statements as pointless conjecture. Note: Not all conjecture is pointless, so that would be a statement that is both conjecture, and uncontroversially pointless.

I didn't say that any of your statements were pointless conjecture, only that I would likely ignore or put down any reply which consisted solely of such.

ok

Further material

again, me in the bold. Posiduck 06:13, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) Oooh, I love playing with formal arguments. Your argument is flawed. Point 4 is a tautology, since "relevantly similar" is subjective. Ooh, I love playing with flawed responses to my argument. A) If point 4 is a tautology, the reason for that is not that "relevantly similar is subjective" it is that it is uncontroversially true. Since in logic we often allow uncontroversial truths, that isn't really a problem.

OK, perhaps I'm mixing my terminology. The statement does not follow with the law of bivalence. A proposition should be either "true" or "false", and not "subject to interpretation". Given it is 31/10/2004, the statement "Today is Sunday" is evidently true. Pick up a 2004 calendar, or an appripriate perpetual calendar, and you see that 31/10 is indeed a Sunday. The truth values of point 4 are not based on fact, but on interpretation, depending on what you think "relevantly similar is" - this is not defined, and therefore the statement is "true because I say so".

Eureka - "law of non-contradiction". "One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time." With such a subjective statement, this can happen. Two people can reach the opposed results with the same situation. Hence the argument is not ... something (valid? sound? complete?). I hope you understand what I mean here.

the objection you want to be saying is "I think this premise is vague, because you don't define specific parameters for "relevantly similar." I then respond, "give me what you measure school notability by (age of school, number of famous alumni, accomplishments of student organizations, etc.) and I will suggest that "relevantly similar" picks out all schools who have at least that level of notability. Voila, now the claim is not vague, and all I did was insert the common sense meaning for the vague phrase.

Point 7 is a fallacy, since Moanalua has a number of notable achievements. Actually, point 7 is not a fallacy. One may take it to be false, depending on what one takes "a large number" to be, but I don't know what fallacy you think it is. I personally think the statement is true, since I would consider 300 high schools to be a large number, and I think that there are certainly more than 300 schools at least as notable as Moanalua.

Whoops! s/fallacy/contradiction (of sorts). It isn't false by its own definition, but it is always false in context. Otherwise, it's another case of "true because I say so". 300 is not a large number with respect to school entries in Wikipedia. There are at least that many schools in one county around this way. 300 is not a sufficiently large number to exclude on the basis of being too common. Now, 300,000 might be a large number in this respect. Remember that there are easily millions of schools (at all levels) around the world - in this context, 300 is small potatoes. Perhaps if the statement were clarified as a "significantly large number" thing rather than just a "large number" thing. You could call 20 a large number if you like - after all, that's more than you've got toes (or at least I hope you don't have 20 or more toes).

not a contradiction, again, the word you are looking for is "vague." It is my assertion that the number of schools as notable as Moanlua or more notable is sufficiently higher than the number of schools the school deletionists (using my broad definition of school deletionists as people generally against school inclusion) would want in the wikipedia to be considered a large number. So, in effect this claim boils down to: "If moanalua is sufficiently notable, then we have opened the door to way more schools than the deletionists seem to have claimed they would want in the wikipedia."

Thus your conclusion in point 8 is flawed - it does not logically follow from the arguments. Run it past anyone iwth a background in formal logic if you don't believe me. Chris 04:35, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) If an argument is Valid, than its conclusion follows logically from the premises. If it is sound, then it is valid and those premises are true. This argument is certainly valid. Run it past anyone with a background in formal logic if you don't believe me. What you've done is indicate that, based on the fact that you consider premise 7 false, you think it is an unsound argument. However, if you tell me what bar of notability the Moanalua article has overcome, I will try and find out roughly how many other schools meet that criteria of notability, and you can tell me if you think it is a large number of schools.

Moanalua High School is nationally recognized for its academics and music program — home of one of very few student orchestras to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City. They have been invited to return in 2005.

I am not a deletionist. Deletionists have objections to non-specific information. I have objections to articles containing nothing but non-specific information. Either way, I know what I'm saying, even if I'm not saying it correctly (I should go back over my logic notes to double-check terminology next time, though :-). The argument is "faulty" in some way. Be it flawed, invalid, unsound, fallacious, contradictory, falsely-assuming, or anything else - something about it isn't right, and I'll figure out the word I need here at some point later. 8-) Chris 07:08, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The argument is valid, you might still disagree with the premises. So what you've done is suggest my argument (on some disambiguations of premises 4 and 7) is unsound. However, you'll need to respond to the disambiguations of 4 and 7 that I outlined above in order to claim that the argument I was presenting is, in actuality, unsound. Or else accept my conclusion, as others who examined the argument have done.

Also, as a side note, I was a bit offended at the condescention in your original response in instructing me to run the argument by anyone with a background in formal logic. Given that I had to explain to you the concepts of validity, soundness, vagueness, tautologies, fallacies and contradictions, it would appear that my knowledge of formal logic was not the problem here, and the tone with which you objected was harsher than necessary. Posiduck 06:42, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your proposal

It still looks like a completely inclusionist proposal. You're saying keep all this stuff. It's just not justifiable. RickK 23:18, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

It is inclusionist in the sense that it does not support the deletion of school articles. It is, however, a compromise insofar as there would be a status inbetween inclusion and deletion (demoted articles, for instance), which still exist, and can be expanded at leisure, which are not presented to the general public as part of wikipedia. This way, it is not a choice between keeping the article or deleting it, it is a choice between whether the article is approved for the public face of wikipedia or not. The idea was, there would be a wikipedia that reflects a deletionist vision of what should be covered, but that the information, the stubs, can exist without fear of deletion until someone is able to make it suitable. And if some article is on a topic that is not suited for the public face of wikipedia, well, it can just continually exist in the wider tier. It seemed like a compromise solution to me, but if its not, then I'd be interested in hearing other compromise solutions. Posiduck 23:25, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

AIW

Hello Posiduck, thank you for the invitation. I really wonder how I got listed as a honorary member there since I consider myself a moderate inclusionist, but not in any way special. I won't join as a member, though, because I view the current establishing factions of inclusionists and deletionists as wrong. It only serves to hardening the fronts but it doesn't solve the underlying problems. Instead of fighting I prefer convincing people. greetings and sorry for the bad english, --Elian 00:46, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• As the Interim General Secretary of the AIW, I feel perhaps I should address this issue a bit. The AIW should be for "moderate inclusionists" too. I'd like to see a wide range of inclusionist opinions within the group. I'm not certain we've been merely "hardening the fronts", as members have been trying to explain their reasoning to people so far. Convincing people is definitely more important and productive than fighting, in my opinion, and I've added it to our list of goals. I hope you'll join and contribute your ideas to the AIW, but if you choose not to be a member, that's fine as well. Factitious 07:28, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

• Posiduck, I'd like to say well done for your work on inclusionism. I was alarmed at the amount of stuff getting VfD'd, and then found the Inclusionism stuff on meta (including the AIW, which I have joined), and realised I was as inclusionist! It's nice to know I'm far from the only one who feels this way. Keep up the good work. Dan100 22:28, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

VfD help

Hello, Posiduck! Wouldn't you be so nice as to help me in debates over Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ivan Cherevko? --Mykola Petrenko 11:29, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

More schools on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion

As of March 25, 2005, there are an additional (6) articles listed for deletion under the POV notion that schools are non-notable (even though this is invalid reasoning as per the Wikipedia deletion policy). Please be aware that the following schools are actively being discussed and voted upon:

• VfD: Blake Junior High School (renominated)
• VfD: Franklin High School
• VfD: Lake Dow Christian Academy
• VfD: Red Lake High School
• VfD: The Sage School
• VfD: Toowoomba Grammar School

In response to this cyclical ordeal, a Schoolwatch programme has been initiated in order to indentify school-related articles which may need improvement and to help foster and encourage continued organic growth. Your comments are welcome and I thank you again for your time. --GRider\^talk

issues about school articles

In November 2003, there was a VfD debate over Sunset High School (Portland). The debate was archived under Talk:Sunset High School (Portland). What to do with the article is still being contested and has been recently re-nominated for VfD at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Sunset High School (Portland).

I am writing to you because you have participated in such debates before. There still does not exist a wikipedia policy (as far as i can tell) over what to do in regards to articles about specific U.S. public school. My hope is that a real consensus can come out of the debate, and a real policy can take shape. Take part if you are so willing. Kingturtle 02:37, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Warning! Precedent for Speedy Deletion of School Stub and School Substubs!

The article here seems to be going up for SPEEDY deletion simply because it is a school! Deletionists cannot win in the VfD so this maybe a tactic to create a precedent for the speedy deletion of schools stub or school sub stubs! Please monitor this situation and the talk page at the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians to discuss this issue.

Im my opinion SPEEDY deletion of school stubs and school substubs is inapproperate! --ShaunMacPherson 07:02, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Important VFD

Please see the VFD for commons:List of victims of the 1913 Great Lakes storm. This is of vital importance. This list and others like it are being pushed off of the entire Wikimedia project. It started at Wikipedia, where they were VFDd in favor of moving to Wikisource/Commons. Now they are being VFDd off Wikisource (they don't really belong there, since they are not original source texts), with people there saying they should be on WP/Commons, and it is also being VFDd on Commons, where people don't realize that Commons accepts texts (says so right on the Main Page). This will set a precedent for any user-created lists. -- BRIAN0918  22:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Proposal on Notability

Because you're a member of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians, I'm notifying you that the inclusionist proposa Wikipedia:Non-notabilityl is in progress to define the role of notability in articles. Please help us make this successful! Also note the proposal Wikipedia:Importance is a deletionist proposla that seeks to officially introduce notabiltiy for the first time. Make sure this is defeated! --Ephilei 22:20, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikijargon listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikijargon. Since you had some involvement with the Wikijargon redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Wishva de Silva | Talk 03:09, 20 July 2016 (UTC)