Forum:Revenge of the Encyclopedic Standards - man your battle stations

Some of us have been thinking recently. Yes, I know. Thinking? Here? On SWF? That’s unheard of in the realm of super cool mega Grievous Mary Sue spinoffs and uber cool Jedi savior and Sith destroyer awesome bad guy people! Nevertheless, we have been thinking quite a bit about something. That something has to do with the fact that this wiki is, for lack of a better terminology, filled with suck and fail. You know it. I know it. Even knows it! The fact is, this wiki is littered with garbage. And no, you can’t cite me for personal attacks there, because I’m not citing anyone specific.

At this point in the great span of time that I’m taking up from your day, you’re proposal wondering something – uh, what’s he going on about? Is this just another rant about how certain things are “@#$% horseshit”? No, it’s not. My longwinded introduction is actually leading to something important. This something has been nearly four years in the making. This something is going to be blow your mind away.

This something is the epic mass deletion of our garbage articles. - Brandon Rhea (talk) (contribs) 00:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The idea
Now what do I mean by this? Well, I’m not talking about deleting articles with stupid storylines. That just wouldn’t be fair or objective. After all, canon has some  too, but Leeland Chee and Wookieepedia, regrettably, aren’t blasting that information from existence. If an author writes a storyline that we all deem to be terrible, but has perfect grammar, perfect spelling, perfect everything else, etc. then it would stay. It’s the unfortunate reality of “imagination is more important than knowledge” and “write what you want because you want to”.

So how do we determine if an article gets bahleeted? Basically, it needs to fail a significant amount of our policies. If an article just has a few spelling errors here and there, then it wouldn’t be deleted. That’s just absurd. I’m talking things like, well, this. No offense to the author, but it’s rattled with POV errors, grammar errors, spelling errors and every error you can possibly think of. It comes down to spelling, grammar, POV, structure, formatting, etc. Basically, take storyline out of the mix, and what you have left is whether or not something fits encyclopedic standards and the standards of the Manual of Style and other relevant policies.

The execution
Alright, so here’s what I’m proposing. Over the next few weeks (I’d say about four weeks/one month would be good), any user who is interested will use the Special:Random feature (also shown as the “Random page” button) to look for articles that meet the “fail” criteria. Depending on what the issue(s) is/are, they will tag the article with a template that I have created here. This template would likely be called something like MassDelete if this whole thing is approved. HOWEVER, other tags would need to be added as well. Tags would be things such as:


 * CleanUp
 * Fanonify
 * NPOV
 * Intro
 * Onlyinfobox
 * Tense

I’m sure there are more that I’m forgetting, since those are just off the top of my head, but I trust that you get the idea. Anyway, once MassDelete and one or more of those tags is put onto an article, it’s subject to deletion. If someone objects to the tagging of the article, they can contact the person who tagged it and they can work it out together. They can call in a neutral administrator to help them decide whether it remains tagged or if it becomes untagged.

After this one month process is over, we would put out a general wiki-wide announcement saying that authors of all tagged articles have TWO MONTHS to correct the issues in their articles. Once they correct the issues (assuming they do), they need to present their corrections to the person who tagged their article. If that person and AT LEAST TWO OTHER USERS are satisfied with the corrections, the article will be untagged and will NOT be deleted. However, if the satisfactory corrections are not made at the end of those two months, the article will be deleted (articles that would be deleted are articles in categories such as Articles to be cleaned up, Articles to be fanonified, etc). No ifs, ands or buts about it. I also strongly suggest that we don’t have a restoration page like we did with the category deletions in the summer of 2007 – adding a category after an article is restored is a hell of a lot different than rewriting an entire article after it’s restored.


 * CAVEAT: If you come across an article that clearly seems to have had a lot of effort put into it but still has issues with spelling, grammar and the like, I strongly suggest that you help to clean some of that up. Please use common sense and proper discretion - this mass deletion is for epic failures, not things that have a few issues here and there.

I would very much like for a few thousand articles to be deleted in this mass deletion. We all know that there are thousands upon thousands of articles out there that would qualify for deletion under this proposal, so let’s just get rid of them. This will put the quality of our wiki leaps and bounds above the quality of today. Look at what we accomplished with bringing some credibility to the good articles and featured articles. We don’t let garbage through there anymore, so garbage shouldn’t be allowed to remain anywhere on SWF in general. It’s time to take a stand. Not only that, but while some people will always be opposed to the idea of fanon in general, it’ll also go a long way in terms of PR, perception and credibility for our wiki.

The future
One of the questions I would ask were someone else proposing this was how we would work to make sure these same types of articles don’t just get recreated, or new articles with the same problems get created. In terms of the former, if an article is recreated and no changes have been made, that’s an automatic deletion. That’s just gaming the system and disrupting the wiki to make a point. Now, in terms of making sure it doesn’t happen with newer articles, that’s actually really easy.

Considering we’re going to basically be clearing out maintenance categories like Articles to be cleaned up, Articles to be fanonified, Articles with the wrong tense, etc., those categories will have a blank slate. This affords us the opportunity to clear all of those categories out every month or every two months on a regular basis. Everything in there is already in violation of the Manual of Style, so why not enforce our policies by regularly deleting the stuff in there? Makes sense to me. We just need to be a tad more liberal in our tagging of these articles, aka. tag them more and do something about them more so than we are now.

The epilogue
Yes, this is a radical new idea, but it’s a necessary one. If a step like this isn’t taken, we’re never going to be able to improve the quality of this wiki. As I said, “write what you want because you want to” only covers stories – ideas like that don’t translate to “write with crappy spelling, poor formatting, lots of POV and general encyclopedic failures because you want to”. We need to be a little more strict about this.

Look, it’s all well and good that we want to be as inclusive as possible. Some members of this wiki have, for quite some time, wanted to include as much as possible, but that unfortunately has led to a neglect in the quality of the encyclopedic nature of this wiki. Sure, we can never actually be an encyclopedia since the point of this wiki is basically to come here and make up whatever you want, but we can, must and should enforce basic encyclopedic guidelines such as spelling, grammar, NPOV, structure, formatting, etc. Write a terrible storyline if you want, just make sure that it’s up to snuff in terms of standard encyclopedic conventions. If you don’t like that, Wikia has decided to be much more lenient in their wiki creation process, aka. go make your own wiki where this sort of thing is enforced. We’ll look forward to welcoming you back when it crashes and burns.

So that’s my proposal. - Brandon Rhea (talk) (contribs) 00:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Do NOT turn this into a giant forum thread with twelve different discussion headings. That is NOT what this is for. If you want to do that, start another forum. If you do it, I’ll remove everything from here and put it in another forum. I’m just getting sick of topics turning into these giant consensus discussions that solve nothing and serve no purpose other than to derail a discussion and produce no results due to the entire thing being one confusing mess.

Vote to approve
Users must meet the requirements of the voting policy to cast a vote in this section.

Support

 * IMO, this doesn’t really need a vote to approve since this is all routed in policies (aka, if you’re opposed to this, you’re basically opposed to the enforcement of our policies and had better come up with an alternate solution and/or new policy proposals), but since this is such a radical new idea I’ve decided to propose it just to be on the safe side and because I know there will be discussion. I know many other users are behind me with this, so this isn’t just my crazy out-there idea. Tl;dr version: “As the proposer.” - Brandon Rhea (talk) (contribs) 00:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Normally, I would oppose something like this, but dog crap doesn't left itself off the floor, and if there isn't anybody to pick it up, the entire house ("wiki") would be filled with crap (*cough* "Mary Sues") and crappy smells (*sigh* Lords of Dorkness). --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 00:59, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 2) *As I said in my proposal, this has nothing to do with Mary Sues. Sure, a benefit of this is that Mary Sues will likely be deleted because most Mary Sues have severe issues with things like this, but we can't delete things just because we don't like the story. That's subjective, whereas things like spelling, grammar, POV, etc. are objective. That's only fair. - Brandon Rhea (talk) (contribs) 01:08, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 3) omg finally. But two months? I'd recommend one to fix up (the sooner the better), but I still support this. ABOUT TIMEZ. –Victor  [[Image:Redstarbird.svg|15px]] ( talk page ) 01:59, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 4) *I set it at two because there might be people who will have a lot of articles to clean up, and we need to give them as much time as reasonably possible. One month might not cut it. - Brandon Rhea (talk) (contribs) 02:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 5) This will get the ball rolling to make our wiki a more professional place.-- Nightmare 975 03:27, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 6) "I have waited a long time for this moment, my little green friend." Atarumaster88  [[Image:Jedi_Order.svg|20px]] ( Talk page ) 03:58, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 7) I've been looking forward to this for a long time...  Trak Nar  Ramble on 05:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 8) Yes. This is a great proposal and a bit bold. I have some articles that fall under the minimum standards and deleted some of my Mary Sues already (Arav was the first). I have read the whole proposal and not blindly followed the rest of the flock. Also, Category:Articles to be cleaned up is a good place to find fail articles. --<font color=#B22222>Arav <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Ancient Grove ) <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Lost Archives ) 07:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 9) Have at it, gentlemen. -- Joe Butler   (Talk to me) 11:50, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 10) Nacen (Talk) 14:02, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 11) Yes. To anyone who's afraid that this might reduce our article number to a pitiful amount, we must bear in mind that the majority of our articles are quite short (or year articles) and could easily be cleaned up by their authors or someone who can be bothered to do so. And while you can still write a Mary Sue if you want to, at least now you have to make it presentable.  Unit 8311 [[Image:1110 Big small.jpg|20px]] Talk!  14:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 12) Not that this vote really matters, per Brandon above, but at least you know I'm on the bandwagon. Now, if only I can put my egotistical biases aside and actually write articles, not editorials. --  Tesh  162  15:36, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 13) Unnecessarily long title for an unnecessarily long explanatory post. But I suppose that holds no relevance on whether or not this is a good idea. Let's do it. What say you? &mdash;  JM ' 76 ' Ask Archives [[Image:Sabersmilyjm76.jpg|18px]] 18:16, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 14) I LURVE DESTRUCTION! - Solus  (Bird of Prey)  22:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 15) Count me in. [[Image:NKsig.png|70px]] Jesus Freak NK says NK's 'mazin' articles [[Image:sabersmilygreend.jpg]] 01:18, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 16)  Darth Wylind [[Image:Presidentialseal.gif|25px]] ( Conference Room ) 01:19, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 17) I'm sure most of you are aware how I feel about these articles; but for those who aren't&hellip; i'll stamp my name here to clarify ;) Darth Abeonis Sith Council Sith Campaign 02:21, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 18) Deletion is normally not something I would like, but there are only so many times you can stamp "Fail" before you just throw it away. Hey in College if you don't meet MLA they don't even read it. So lets do this. -- Soul Reaper 079 (Requiem) 05:44, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 19) Master of Puppets, I'm pulling your strings...--  CurrentBigThing  ( Speak ) 19:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 20) This is what I have been waiting for. In fact, just a week ago, I clicked the Random Article button and I landed on an article that was...well, you know what I mean. Well, I will think about joining the "MASS DESTRUCTION!" In case I don't, GOOD LUCK!!!- JEDIMASTERAUST [[Image:Jedimasteraustsigpic.jpg|25px]] ( Boardroom ) ( Community Service ) 04:00, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 21) I'm in full support of this as long as it sticks to the guidelines proposed, simply because it's not that difficult to find someone around here who will help you clean up an article. I've had plenty of help from both Vic and Rhea in my time.  N.Y.N.E. Comlink[[Image:era-inf.png|30px]] 19:49, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 22) I liked the idea =] Momergil (Talk) 21:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Neutral

 * 1) The blue or red pill…. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 00:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) I think three users having to ok the corrections is a little overkill. I don't dislike the idea, but I think it may need a few modifications. Call this a half oppose... ''' Darth Taikin (Talk to me) (My work)(Become a Jedi) [[Image:Verslinden.JPG|25px]] 12:59, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 2) *There's a high number of people needed to approve the corrections because one person might miss something. Three is just making sure we're covering all of our bases and not missing anything. - <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea <font color="#1A2BBB">(talk) <font color="#1A2BBB">(contribs) 13:44, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Sign-up
If you’re interested in helping with the tagging of these articles, sign up here. Bear in mind that just because you sign up here doesn’t guarantee that anything will happen, as whether this moves forward depends upon the Vote to approve section. Should this be approved, please bear in mind the responsibility that putting your name here entails. If you haven't read the proposal thoroughly, I suggest you don't yet sign your name.


 * 1) <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea <font color="#1A2BBB">(talk) <font color="#1A2BBB">(contribs) 00:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 2) --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 01:00, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 3) Gives me something to do at night...-- Nightmare 975 03:27, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 4) Ditto to that.  Trak Nar  Ramble on 03:44, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 5) I would love to help out. Per Nightmare. --<font color=#B22222>Arav <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Ancient Grove ) <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Lost Archives ) 07:29, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 6) Nacen (Talk) 14:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 7) JediCommando (Talk) 22:00, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 8) My schedule's supposed to open up soon, allowing me to be more active than I've been lately, and this seems funz. - Solus  (Bird of Prey)  22:12, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 9) As I said above, you know how I feel about these articles. Whenever I can get online I'll click the ranodom article button a few dozen times to help out. Darth Abeonis Sith Council Sith Campaign 02:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 10) Sounds good to me. Maybe I'll find some good articles too. It's always nice to get new ideas, even from the bad articles. -- Soul Reaper 079 (Requiem) 05:41, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion
Please keep all discussion in this section. Please remember to be civil. - <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea <font color="#1A2BBB">(talk) <font color="#1A2BBB">(contribs) 00:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Year articles
Since it was mentioned above, would year articles that contain absolutely nothing fall into the category? There are so many of 'em that I could make a drinking game outta it: each time a blank Year article comes up while hitting "Random Page," take a drink. Guaranteed to leave you hammered or with alcohol poisoning before midnight.  Trak Nar  Ramble on 05:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You could see what links to it and place whatever information you find, like births, deaths, etc.-- Nightmare 975 05:12, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

No, they shouldn't be deleted. Even if they have nothing in them, they're still linked to on other pages. - <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea <font color="#1A2BBB">(talk) <font color="#1A2BBB">(contribs) 05:15, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Special:ShortPages and Special:WhatLinksHere would be useful tools in that job. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 13:47, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Per Rhea. It would save time if someone chooses a random year for an article and tries to fill it in. Leave the year articles alone. Unit 8311 [[Image:1110 Big small.jpg|20px]] Talk!  14:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Nice work MDS for the shot pages link. That will help most participants in finding low standard articles. --<font color=#B22222>Arav <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Ancient Grove ) <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Lost Archives ) 01:48, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I never "found" it; that special page probably existed since MediaWiki software was first released. Really, giving credit to me is like saying Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 03:19, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * INDEED! Perfect analogy dude, honest. –<font color="#c00">Victor  [[Image:Redstarbird.svg|15px]] ( talk page ) 05:06, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Way to go and ruin your praise . Seriously, your comment makes sence. --<font color=#B22222>Arav <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Ancient Grove ) <font color=#801818>(<font color=#013220>Lost Archives ) 06:50, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've went through and added the things that I could find that weren't in the shortest of the year articles.  N.Y.N.E. Comlink[[Image:era-inf.png|30px]] 19:26, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Corron's thoughts/request
Giday everyone, hope all is well. I think the idea for a large scale article cull is a great one and will add to the credibility and high standards that I’m sure all avid fanon users strive and hope for. Some out there who have seen my articles (all three of them) might be asking “What the heck is this guy on about? His articles are littered with POV, encyclopedic and grammatical mistakes.” If you find that you’re asking yourself this very question, it’s a fair one to ask. I love fanon, I know I haven’t been part of the wiki scene (specifically the star wars wiki scene) for as long as some of you guys but I really appreciate the freedom of imagination that fanon allows it users. It’s taken me a while to suss out all the article structure guidelines and it’s only now that I’m starting to get a firm grip on the whole thing. I don’t normally have heaps of spare time up my sleeve but when I do have the occasional half hour or so I love jumping online to polish up my articles. I know this is longwinded and I do appreciate those who are hearing me out, my articles are Alpha Saber (my very first article and the one I’ve spent the most time on), Kentell Leknar and Order of Arrack. All the stories intertwine and I have had great joy working on them (as well as creating some of the pictures from scratch). Now, in short…. I need your help. I have struggled with the whole POV thing and need some assistance. Users like, <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea  have been great in helping me, in fact all the advice from the many users has been great. I would hate it if my articles were deleted; I am asking for some intervention, if anyone could spare some time to assist me in this it would be muchly appreciated. In the mean time I will endeavor to clean up as best as possible all my articles. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Regards, Corron Zenith (Talk) 05:26, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done a general tidy up on all three articles, although you still need to add any finishing touches yourself&hellip; especially on your "Alpha saber" article, which needs to be written in proper paragraphs. Darth Abeonis Sith Council Sith Campaign 17:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Sandboxes
I think we should encourage those users that are having problems in these areas to not only seek out assistance for users and Admin, but also that they keep those articles that they are working on in a personal "Sandbox" where they can keep it from cluttering the wiki. Many users including myself have utilized this concept to some amount of success. I myself have had problems keeping Neutrality in my articles, but welcome the idea of a big red "LAST WARNING" on those pages we make public. I hope that my idea is considered. -- Soul Reaper 079 (Requiem) 06:05, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If by LAST WARNING you mean something to put on articles that are being considered for deletion, I linked to a proposed template in my explanation above. You can find it here. - <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea <font color="#1A2BBB">(talk) <font color="#1A2BBB">(contribs) 13:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That is what I meant. Thus the "welcome the idea" part. It's a good plan, I just think we should encourage some thought be put into articles privatly before users decide to "publish" their work. -- Soul Reaper 079 (Requiem) 19:26, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

About "temporary half-articles"
Hello!

Well, in my opinion, the idea is very good, considering that it defends the policies of SW Fanon Wikia... But I have a question:

In my case (and possibly for other users as well), sometimes I create an article with just one introduction or something like so. It has a infobox (there are exceptions), a resume of the life's person, but not an history or something like that we could call "a good article". Even my most important article, Kundun, isn't finished yet! on this "temporary half-articles" I just create them, put something on them to make them valid ones and left them for a time. In the future, when I'll have more time to write, than I'll go there and make a special history for them. So, for example, I create in the Kundun's page that he dueled with the bounty hunter X. Than, I create the page of X and put something like "this was the bounty hunter with whom Kundun fought on xxx aby". Than, one month later, I remember of the article and create a real history for the character, considering his history from his childbirth till his death. For me that's a practic because it remembers me to write those articles and, if I have a new idea in some day and I don't have time to write it completely, creating a "temporary half-article" helps me to remember of the character's history for, later, write them completely.

I hope I put it clear, but my finally question is: those "temporary half-articles" would be considered good for deletion in the case of this "mass delete project"?

Thanks! Momergil (Talk) 19:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Those sorts of things wouldn't be deleted. It would take out some of my work as well. - <font color="#1A2BBB">Brandon Rhea <font color="#1A2BBB">(talk) <font color="#1A2BBB">(contribs) 19:36, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, no, those are just stubs. As long as they are well written (in the grammar and spelling sense, not content wise) they shouldn't be deleted. If not, then I'm going to have to expand a lot of my articles.-- Nightmare 975 19:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Uff! x) Well, than I just want to thanks Brandon, Michaeldsuarez, Vic and some others that are allways helping me in the grammar mistakes on my articles :P My grammar english is bad and the Google Translator doesn't help too much in this camp xD Momergil (Talk) 21:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, never trust online-translators. Completely unreliable when it comes to grammar. –<font color="#c00">Victor  ( talk page ) 02:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)