8) With more than a full day still remaining on the AfD, and almost every new vote going KEEP, a "closing admin" showed up and closed the AfD. The final vote was 17 delete, 22 KEEP, and he somehow concluded that was a consensus to DELETE. Another reason he listed for deleting it was a (paraphrasing since they have taken it down) "Furthermore, those voting to keep did nothing to improve the article during the AfD." Three problems with that last part.
- We DID try to improve it. Every time we tried to add more references, one of the deletionists removed it.
- Why kill yourself working on an article when it is clear you are being railroaded and the article will be deleted no matter what?
- According to Wikipedia policy, that is absolutely NOT a valid consideration for ruling on an AfD. In short, the closing admin completely ignored or violated almost every principle of the AfD process.
10) A deletion review (DRV) was opened. In that discussion, most of the deletionist's argument centered around accusing KEEP voters of being "sockpuppets" who showed up because of "canvassing." This ignored the fact that many of the KEEP voters were not part of the gaming community in any way. Canvassing is apparently a catch all excuse they use whenever a side gets more support than they expected or hoped. To make it worse, there was actual evidence of canvassing by the deletionists. WA's user page had references to him emailing former negative editors of the Threshold article (like one editor who repeatedly added a link to a site with stolen Threshold IP), and requests for people to join #irc channels to discuss the AfD. WA's cherry picking of former editors is specifically forbidden by Wikipedia's rules, but you know the drill by now: rules are ignored when it suits the inner cabal types.
I should note that starting around #3 of that list, the issue started to get attention from the gaming media - first blogs, and then later gaming news sites. Here are a few links to blog entries and stories about the situation:
1) Wikipedia is broken - possibly beyond repair.
2) Wikipedia has too many people desperate to become administrators for all the wrong reasons. It is not about the "project" as they like to call it, but about the power, recognition, and perceived (in their own minds) status. The system is designed so the only way to move up is tons and tons of edits, and negative edits (and deletions) are easiest. You also need to be involved in a lot of administrative actions (getting people banned, blocked, or otherwise scolded) to prove you understand the way administrative policy works. The system encourages deleting things and either bullying people into getting censured or inciting them enough that they do something you can tattle on them for.
3) Many Wikipedia "editors" are horrendously full of themselves, and believe they possess skills they actually do not. The fact that they call themselves editors is the first problem. They should be called users. Being an editor requires some kind of actual knowledge about writing or research. Most of these people have neither.
4) Many Wikipedia "editors" are perfect examples of the expression "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." They read through Wikipedia policies, master a few buzz words that sound official and sophisticated, and then believe they have a PhD in journalism, English, or some research related field. The truth is, they have almost no experience with formal research methods, professional writing, journalism, editing, or even basic composition. Since they do not understand the reasons for a rule, they are woefully unable to apply the rule properly. They misquote rules, they cite rules while only paying attention to 5% of the rule's actual text, and they ignore rules that would make a situation go against them.
A perfect example of this is the way they interpret "Conflict of Interest" or "COI" as they call it. They do not understand the reason for this rule, so they just assume any input from someone connected to the subject matter is forbidden. What they fail to grasp is the reason for this rule (and NPOV: neutral point of view) is to avoid self-serving, inaccurate statements. For many articles, the ONLY possible source for the information is the subject himself or herself. To use a gaming example, if an important part of an article is knowing what specific action was taken by developers of a game, the only source would be those developers. But if you seek those people out for the information, it would be deleted for being "COI", "NPOV", or "original research." Absurd.
Next: Continue to page 4 for the conclusion of the evaluation on Wikipedia and recommendations to improve the current situation.
