Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons/Archive 13

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Gavin's reverting {{importance}} tags

This discussion is continued for archive 12. --Drilnoth (Talk) 14:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Get over yourselves

The entire tone of this thread (and the others, recently) is wholly inappropriate. If you disagree with an editor's position, raise an RfC or take it to ArbComm. Do not invent your own procedures (such as the WIP rebuke), and do not sit around on a WikiProject talk page whining about it. It is highly unlikely that your actions will be seen in a favourable light by the community as a whole. Speaking as someone who has done quite a bit of work in the D&D domain in here, but also as someone who is generally opposed to fancruft proliferation, I have to say that while the editor in question may have behaved in an inappropriate manner I broadly agree with the actual intention.

Anyone who thinks that persecuting this particular editor is going to earn the D&D project an exception to our general rules on notability is sorely mistaken, and a far better use of everyone's time would be to continue the work discussed earlier in the year in directly addressing notability in articles and condensing / merging / deleting those which could not establish notability to the satisfaction of our guidelines. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:49, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I agree with you; quite a few of the D&D articles do need to be merged, and many more need serious work. The main problem that I, personally, have with Gavin's recent actions is that he isn't giving us the time needed to effect the cleanup. Additionally, anytime that we do try to fix up an article, he rebukes our every arguement as to how the changes fixed the article and continues to tag the articles. At the very least, right now, the only thing that I really want is for him to stop using {{notability}} and using {{importance}} and {{primarysources}} in their place. That's it. -Drilnoth (talk) 13:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Drilnoth. That's the main concern I have is the manner in which is "helping". ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 18:16, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Chris, I appreciate where you're coming from, even if I don't agree personally. Other members of the project have in the past actually had very similar attitudes to Gavin regarding notability of many D&D articles and whether or not they should be deleted, such as Jeske Couriano and Percy Snoodle; however after interacting with him their opinions soured enough to strongly support the mediation effort we put out earlier this year. Percy, in fact, offered to help Gavin refine his approach, but I'm sure he could tell you himself how that worked out when they disagreed on very minor points. I don't know if you've had much interaction with Gavin personally or had a chance to disagree with him strongly about something, but your opinion of his methods might be different if you had. You'll notice that our written complaint, although an inappropriate approach as you have correctly pointed out, deals not with "we don't like the notability template!" nor do we try to apologize for the fact that most D&D articles lack apparent notability, but rather it deals with the tone of Gavin's interactions with project members since his involvement began over a year ago and his tone in general with any editor who disagrees with him. We don't seek an exemption to the notability guideline; whether we like the guideline or not, it's here to stay and we just have to deal with that. The issue with the {{notability}} template is that, unlike the {{importance}} template, there is that inherent threat of deletion built into the template; it is not an execution, but you can think of it more like being on death row, as a stay of execution until someone comes along to flip the switch. The way to deal with that is to find sources, and where that's not possible we will condense and merge in the mean time as we had been doing before Gavin came back. What we are asking is that Gavin give it a rest in the meantime, and assume a little good faith on our part. Although he may feel that we are persecuting him, I assure you that the rest of us feel it is the other way around (what's with the singleminded pursuit of only D&D articles when there are plenty of other genres out there?) and wish only to seek a way to be done with all the negativity. If Gavin is unwilling to change the way he interacts with us (remember, it's him seeking out D&D articles, not us seeking to interact with him), then these negative feelings may persist into perpetuity. And that would be a shame, because I had a lot more fun on Wikipedia when Gavin was busy on the notability talk pages. BOZ (talk) 04:05, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Boz here - while I've gained respect for Gavin, and I understand (I think) where he's coming from, the difficulty is that multiple notability tags which are then strongly defended against all arguments is that it damages the community. I think we tend to focus on the articles too much, to the cost of the people who write them. Wikipedia doesn't work becaue of the notability guidleines - it works because of editors and their willingness to volunteer their time to build content. So while Gavin may often be technically correct, the process by which he tends to make his points is damaging to the community who try to build the articles and who might be willing to overcome any problems with them. That aside, I also agree with Chris - the plans to come up with new, special "warnings" was horribly flawed, and I'm glad to see it die. In addition, the desire to fight for articles which really don't meet the current standards may be strong, but we should acknowledge that many articles Gavin tags really don't meet the standards, and should be tagged.

At this stage, it seems clear that Gavin's stance is well established, is unlikely to change, and, in many cases, it is technically correct - so I'm not sure that an RfC or similar will help, and I'm certainly not sure I would like that path. (Anyway, the best you could argue is disrupton). Thus if we are going to move forward, it will be through a mixture of ignoring his points (which I don't recommend), addressing them, or by tackling them from WP:NOTE and WP:FICT, (although I'm concerned that Wikipedia has too much inertia for real change in those areas).- Bilby (talk) 08:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

BOZ, you summed up my views perfectly. Bilby, I agree with you in that Gavin is, technically, correct in what he tags in many (but not all) articles. The problem, in my opinion, is not his tagging as much as his staunch and unwavering defense against any removal of incorrect tags and tags which are no longer needed due to cleanup. Technically, the {{notability}} tag is correct for many, but not all, of the articles that he puts it on; the problem with that is the "death row" clause. With only a few really active members left in the project, cleaning up, or even merging, articles would take long enough that some would start getting deleted. At this point, I think that the vast majority of project members agree that the articles need the cleaning or merging, and we will start working on that. Unfortunately, that is almost impossible with Gavin's continued difficulties and argumentative tone, especially when you consider just how much time the project has put into discussions like this one when they could be actually working on the articles. -Drilnoth (talk) 12:19, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

A new proposition

After reading Chris Cunningham's statement above, I've been thinking about other ways that could help solve this situation. I think that Gavin is trying to do the right thing, but just hasn't been going about it properly. In truth, articles such as Barghest (Dungeons & Dragons), Quori, and Ice Barbarians really shouldn't be on Wikipedia unless they are significantly improved. There are other wikis for primarily in-universe articles like that (including the PathfinderWiki (which also has information on converting material from Wikipedia), and a wiki for all things D&D (I'd provide a link, but the site seems to be down)).

Now, some in-universe articles, such as Beholder, Drow (Dungeons & Dragons), Drizzt Do'Urden, Elminster, Faerun, etc. definitely deserve a place on Wikipedia, as do (in my opinion) all articles about authors and artists, books and modules, and the game itself. My proposal, then, is that we start really working on fixing the D&D coverage; make deity lists with one or two sentence description similar to what BOZ did for monsters and redirect all but the major deity entries there, moving the other material to a more appropriate wiki. At the PathfinderWiki and D&D Wiki, there won't be any problem with the notability or in-universe design of the articles, and it will allow the WikiProject to focus more on what needs to be focused on: Articles about Dungeons & Dragons in the real world. Such a change would also need help from Gavin; something like an agreement that, once such a process begins, he stops putting tags on the articles that have been deemed as "important" without good reason. Many such articles are already tag-free because of their quality, but some (most recently things like Die Vecna Die!, Erik Mona and Paths of Darkness) would need cooperation between the project and Gavin to bring them up to a better quality, something which the tagging probably wouldn't acomplish. BOZ, shadzar, Web Warlock, Chris Cunningham (not at work), Masem, ColorOfSuffering, Gavin, Nihonjoe, everyone else, what do you think? -Drilnoth (talk) 14:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

From the standpoint of being the self-proclaimed expert on where notability stands on WP (self-proclaimed, if anyone can really say that...) this is very very reasonable. Most D&D elements are probably based only on primary sources, and having articles for each will weigh WP down, but there is no reason why 1-2 paragraph descriptions of these cannot be arranged into lists with redirects to help with searching, and the use of off-side wikis linked in via ELs to go for additional information. See what the Pokemon project did when it brought down the number of articles by merging an individual article for each pokemon monster into a series of lists, with only 4 (maybe 5?) individual pokemon notable enough for their own article. All that is perfectly within line. --MASEM 14:55, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I've posted a notice of this new section on Gavin's talk page, but he has still been adding the {{notability}} tag to articles since then. I will continue replacing them until a logical conclusion is reached here. -Drilnoth (talk) 15:07, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

lists with one or two sentence description *cough* you mean "lists with appropriate length descriptions (mostly one or two sentances, except were longer is justified)", right? I really dislike length-prescriptive suggestions, which could discourage sensible and highly effective list creation. Masem is spot-on, there is no reason why list entries could not be longer if justifiable. In the most part, were the subjects are rarely used or talked about, this is unlikely, but we may come across information about the development of a subject, and a comprehensive list would be preferable to a minimal list linking off to loads of stubs. LinaMishima (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Yah, that's basically what I meant. I'm basically assuming that any D&D article that would deserve a longer description on Wikipedia would be worthy of having its own page, rather than being in a list. -Drilnoth (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like the D&D Wiki (Link) doesn't contain that kind of stuff; it's all either OGC or homebrew. -Drilnoth (talk) 16:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

That's good, then! :) I would personally prefer a more detailed list, rather than stub entries, that's all - and it makes any list look so much better! Interesting to hear of the D&D wiki not containing details of official material, we probably will need to converse with them regarding any content to be transwikied in that case, rather than just do it. LinaMishima (talk) 19:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

This sounds fine to me. The only issue I see is getting Gavin to agree as this has been the sticking point in the past. If he wants to begin being actually helpful, then this sounds excellent. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 18:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Gavin doesn't need to agree; the notability tags are perfectly justified right now. It is unlikely that any admin would summarily delete an article just because it had a {{notability}} tag on it, so why not just leave them be while the cleanup is done? Cleanup tags are not a death sentence, and this continual focus on getting rid of the tags isn't helping anyone. The tags will be unneeded if and when the articles they belong to can clearly demonstrate notability through discussion of the subject from a real-world perspective in mutliple independent sources. At that point there will be no controversy in de-tagging them. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:28, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The pattern of behavior in the past has been tag hundreds of articles while we try to make the changes on a few. Then come back and say "this article has been tagged for X months now, I am nominating it for AfD." We have been doing this dance a long time now. There are many tags though that are not justified. Given he tagging articles at the rate of dozens an hour at times it is impossible to determine how much reading he is actually doing. Web Warlock (talk) 19:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention the past RfC as well the Mediation basically went you must agree with Gavin and consensus doesn't matter. He refuses to work with people for the sake of Wikipedia. He feels it is his right that all articles must be "cleaned" within his timeframe, and all the discussion, edits/reverts, and time lost are only costing everyone including the foundation on the talk, while no articles can actually get worked on. Many have left various projects because of Gavin, because of needing time, and because of general Wikistress. Gavin's unwillingness to work with other editors rather than force his opinion over consensus is only causing Wikipedia to be a stressful place for many. That can not be the intent of this place, and what many would like to see end, so that decent articles CAN be improved, like a few recently reaching GA status that Gavin did NOT really take part in. The more Gavin does on an article, the less some others want to do on it because they feel that any effort will be thrown by the wayside by Gavin and his dictions of how Wikipedia should be done and on his time schedule. If Gavin would try to work with consensus. then the disruptive editing he starts over notability vs importance tags would end. As mentioned previously, both tags when in action state the article needs work for notability, but the importance tag does not carry his threat of immediate deletion is the article is not improve within his time schedule. That is my feelings on the matter, and why I personally have not done much on anything of late except what BOZ has asked for information on. I don't need Wikipedia, and Wikipedia does not need me. But if I am going to be here to help work on articles for ALL readers, then I will not be dictated by some other nobody user like myself as to some timeframe or anything else. If an admin sets a timeframe something I am working on, then I will adhere to it, but Gavin has no such power, so his opinion to me is equal to that of any other registered user. Meaning to me that consensus of all editors involved in an article results in a majority wins type of situation. That is what consensus is, is it not? The decision agree upon by most or all parties concerned. Something which Gavin will fight anyone within the project about without regard, and refuses to actually participate in the project or gain knowledge of the subject matter for the articles, and those who have knowledge of the subject matter for articles he tags as disputed with when his tags are cleaned? I still feel he has an agenda, and just want him to find somewhere else to work on Wikipedia, so that the 1000+ articles on D&D can be fixed and watched for vandals to maintain them without him trying to rule over it, the editors, or the articles themselves as if he owns any of them (editors, articles, Wikipedia). shadzar-talk 19:41, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Consensus, remember, is not about the majority, but rather the most reasoned argument. Unfortunately, as one can see over on Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction), Gavin really does not care for reason, only their own personal ideology. I completely agree with your other points, however, Shadzar, I have stopped editing wikipedia regularly for the exact same reasons. LinaMishima (talk) 19:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

just to butt in for a moment, but is this the sort of thing you're getting at, Lina? 71.194.32.252 (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Essentially, yes. Important backstory for this is Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise, which is the basis of the proposed revisions (as far as I can tell), and this and other community consensuses (including AfD) are disagreed with by Gavin, or interpreted in an obtuse manner. Generally he seems to have failed to respond to the specific points raised against him, although it may be true in this case that more could have been done to counter him back. LinaMishima (talk) 20:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Personally, all that I'm asking is that he stops using {{notability}} and stops arguing his viewpoint every time that someone tries to honestly clean up an article. The D&D articles do need immense amounts of cleanup; he can tag them with {{importance}}, {{primarysources}}, {{context}}, and whatever else for all I care BUT, once a member of the project believes that the article has been cleaned up he should not argue or attempt to restore the tag. The problem, in my opinion, is the timer on the {{notability}} and his unwillingness to give in even if a tag was obviously placed incorrectly or when someone has cleaned the article up. I also find it annoying that, as LinaMishima said, he does not respond to specific points, for example this. He also is much to quick to accuse other editors of bad faith, COI, etc. (which can be seen in that same article). I can come up with a list of places where he has done those two things if anyone wants evidence, but it could take some time to slog through the sheer number of arguments he's been involved in. -Drilnoth (talk) 20:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure all of those things are true, but it doesn't negate that a notability tag is not a death sentence for an article and that it is by no means clear that the Project is capable of self-policing at this stage. If there are indisputable examples of articles being incorrectly tagged then the issue should be raised on ANI - not discussed on here for weeks on end. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:02, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

-removed indent-Actually, the {{notability}} tag is a death sentence if it isn't removed. As to the project policing itself, I think that we need to be given the chance; we are well aware of the issues and will fix them in time. For example, I just merged Araumycos into Underdark, because Wikipedia really doesn't need a separate article on a giant fictional fungus. -Drilnoth (talk) 21:10, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

No, it isn't. A {{prod}} tag is a death sentence - nothing happens if a notability tag is left on an article, save for it being potentially used as a rationale for deletion at a later date. It is trivial to contest an AfD by finding a source.

This argument that there isn't a time limit keeps coming up, and I can't understand why - if there's no time limit, then there is no requirement for Wikipedia to have an article on X at a given time. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:19, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If you put it that way, I see your point. -Drilnoth (talk) 21:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

"if there's no time limit, then there is no requirement for Wikipedia to have an article on X at a given time", conversely, however, there is an energy limit - only so much content work will happen over a given period of time, and the deletion of articles forces energy by editors to be spent again in recovering. Similarly, the energy that must be spent in finding sources at AfD for out-of-restructure-process nominations is at the cost of effort that could be spent performing the restructuring. However, to be honest, you are entirely right - the {{notability}} tag is not a death sentence, and I was surprised that this entire matter was not handled more strongly by places like ANI already. However, in contrast to other article page tags, {{notability}} adds little useful information to the reader were it is used, when the article is sufficiently WP:V, yet suggests a far more negative approach should be taken to reading the article than when it is labelled with {{importance}}, so the upset here over Gavin's actions are understandable. The crux of this matter really comes down to how the notability template is often used to justify an AfD, and there exists 'hardcore' editors who tag and nominate for deletion, without ever looking to actually improve upon the articles themselves, even when this can be trivial (and see how technically one should do that before nominating for AfD). LinaMishima (talk) 22:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

And if you put it that way, I see your point. -Drilnoth (talk) 00:06, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

From their descriptions, it appears that a {{notability}} is not a death sentence, but it is also not a clean-up tag (it's more of an early step on the deletion path. Unfortunately, Gavin has been placing the notability tag on articles that actually need deleting/merging as well as legitimately notable articles. Clean-up tagging should never be indiscriminate, and the tags should certainly be used correctly when applied. In his edit summaries, he copy-pastes the phrase "there are no reliable secondary sources to demonstrate notability," when the description of the {{notability}} tag states (in no uncertain terms): "Use {{Importance}} instead when the subject probably is notable enough, but the article fails to establish notability." He added tags to the following articles with clearly established notability: The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Hunter's Blades Trilogy, Paths of Darkness (I should know, I added the references myself). That's a clear violation of, not only the spirit, but the letter of the notability policy...and is not at all helpful. But the part that gets me is the hypocrisy -- he seems to place himself above doing and work or research [1] then lectures others about not putting in any work or research [2]. That's just bad form, in my opinion. I'd give this subject much more effort, but my DGAF sensibilities are slowly setting in...like they always do in the face of a long-standing dispute... ColorOfSuffering (talk) 02:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

You know, if we have enough instances of placing (and especially reverting) to the notability template when it is an obvious case of using the importance template instead, we can bring that up to AN/I and see what they have to say about that. It's only been mentioned a few times already. :) BOZ (talk) 04:20, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, good idea. Here are a few: [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], and...finally...the one that started it all...Gavin's first RPG-related edit: [11]. Now, of course I'm being picky, the edits that are undoubtedly notable (and one could easily determine notability via a cursory Google search). Anyhow, that's it for me until after Thanksgiving. Keep fighting the good fight, chaps. ColorOfSuffering (talk) 08:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Excellent examples, but it's worth mentioning that this project should only use D&D-related articles for examples of Gavin's edits; other articles should be dealt with by WP:WikiProject Role-playing games. So of the above links, only Paizo Publishing, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Faerûn, and The Temple of Elemental Evil are valid examples, although they are good ones. -Drilnoth (talk) 12:35, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Strong examples help, but we might want to have some less obvious examples to throw in there as well, to give a better idea that he hasn't just done this on four articles. :) I would disagree that including Car Wars is not helpful. His current dispute is by far with the D&D project more than just general RPGs, but he was attacking them long before he randomly encountered us. ;) Maybe "He tagged these obvious 4 examples, and these several others of likely notability, and has even added the notability template when it already had the importance template (I have seen this). And, although this complaint comes from the D&D project, it's not just us, it's Car Wars and..." Keep in mind in our argument that Gavin is a very demanding judge of what is a reliable source, that is the source has to be damned unquestionable to be a reliable source. BOZ (talk) 15:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

(deindent, change of discussion focus) As for going forward from here, I have to suggest that we simply ignore Gavin's tagging. Rather than spending editing time swapping tags back and forth, we should be forming an effort to restructure, merge, and source articles as appropriate. Once this is underway, prior Arbcom verdicts would suggest that a request that a moratorium on AfDs for the articles would be successful. Let's actually deal with the problem, rather than the politics (as the later is just depressing, and I'm sure has upset too many of us already) LinaMishima (talk) 22:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I would love to do that, the only problem being that then when the project tries to effect cleanup, Gavin typically responds by saying that whatever new sources were added are primary, even if they're not. Additionally, if the {{notability}} tags start being used as grounds, in and of themselves, for deletion, then that becomes a problem. -Drilnoth (talk) 00:06, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

If gavin blocks valid attempts to improve articles (reverting changes), then we switch to userspace rewrites and then move the revised version in place.
If he simply insists that the notability tag must stay, we let him play that game for a short while. Whilst it runs the risk of an AfD nomination, if we focus on specific article series improvements we should be able to eventually do a de-tagging that would be harder to contest.
By remembering that lists can contain detailed entries, we can eliminate much of the issue - any articles which seem to have weaker sources and are generally short can be moved wholesale into a list, which in an of itself can be far more notable.
If Gavin finds this list page (why do I get the feeling that they trawl the relevant categories just for this purpose?), we can if need be move it to userspace to work on if he causes problems with the editing itself, and otherwise he can simply be ignored until a later de-tagging pass.
If we already have an effort underway to improve articles, contesting mass AfDs shouldn't be too hard, and lone AfDs could be entirely thwarted.

Seriously, I think this would work quite nicely, we just need a plan as to what needs to be done LinaMishima (talk) 01:27, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The most recent example of the several "it's been tagged for notability too long so let's delete it" AFDs I've seen was Sharn (Forgotten Realms); note that the result was "keep", pending merge considerations. Note that at the time, there was a concerted effort on our part to merge less notable articles into a more cohesive whole; it may be wise to reassume this, per Drilnoth's prior model. Note that this will not actually deter Gavin; if you read his arguments on lists with elements of unproven notability, he feels that these should not exist at all and will likely pursue them. The advantage is that the community is more sympathetic to list/compilation articles on subjects of unproven notability than they are on single articles; in addition to that, it will mean fewer articles for us to maintain, and fewer articles on which we need worry about the dreaded "go ahead and delete me!" notability template. BOZ (talk) 01:37, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

As someone involved with the WP:FICT revisions, I am sadly aware of Gavin's dislike of lists (he even seemed to only favour single line bullet point lists, too). However, you are spot on - the community as a whole seems supportive of them, they can easily reach featured status, and the consensus seems to be to keep them. So yes, I think we should move on from this and resurrect the merging and cleanup process. LinaMishima (talk) 01:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. How should we plan what lists to make, an order of priority, etc.? -Drilnoth (talk) 02:10, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I've created a separate section for discussion regarding lists, below. -Drilnoth (talk) 02:20, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem with citing AfDs is that what often takes place is people suggesting a merger. Well, AfDs are for deletion, hence the name, and hence why they often end in "keep". BOZ is correct when they say that we are much more likely to approve of, and even suggest, list creation as a way of compromising with those editors that want individual articles for every character, episode, fictional element, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone is, and thus, you have editors that don't want any compromise (on both sides mind you), and will fight to the death to get it that way. We all have to realize that the people who live in the middle (who accept the compromise of allowing list articles of subjects of unproven notability) out number those on either side combined. We are the community, but we need to act like one if we want to make real change and stop all this bickering. BIGNOLE (Contact me)

The problem with "acting like a community" is that there are some that would prefer to act like a dictator to all and take all the time there is that people have to edit wikipedia, and force them into wasting it on AfD's and such rather than affecting corrections to articles. That is why earlier, I suggested we start to follow the procedures outlined in "disruptive editing" and when the warnings are not enough, then take the vandalism to administration for resolution so we CAN work on articles without the disruptive editing. shadzar-talk 16:22, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

That won't solve anything. Look at all the crap that was caused when people were taking TTN to RfCs and other arbitrations. Not only did it degenerate into a bashing party against TTN (not condoning his actions), but it completely divided the community. Now, what we get is whenever someone does something we don't like we automatically want to take them before a board. You talk about disruptive editing, but the door swings both ways on that Shadzar, you know that. My suggestion is the passive aggressive approach. You want the time to work on articles w/out the disruption, then do it. Ignore what is going on behind the scenes of an article. Put in your 2 cents and then walk away and go work on the article. If the article gets deleted, save a copy of it in your sandbox and work on it there until no one can deny its existence. I created articles for Clark Kent (Smallville), Lana Lang (Smallville), Lex Luthor (Smallville), Lois Lane (Smallville), and rewrote Chloe Sullivan and Lionel Luthor. All of them I did in my personal sandboxes at my leisure, and when I put them in the mainspace (though they were not perfect) no one could challenge them. The same goes for when I created Characters of Smallville. There are always more peaceful solutions to these situations. The problems come when we get dragged into these debates that distract us for working on articles. Sometimes we have to admit that an article probably just does not deserve to have its own article, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be listed with detail somewhere else (see above Char. of Small. example). Stop trying to fight fire with fire, and just go grab a pitcher of water. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 16:42, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

While that may have worked for you for new articles you created, we are talking about existing articles, and ones in which no one editor has all the information on, nor the time to look all over 70 user spaces to find different versions. Look at the Gary Gygax article and you will see what resulted form the article being where everyone could find it and work on it together. So it wouldn't be that much trouble when creating new articles, but we are talking about articles that we are trying to work on in limited available time for the editors, but under one editors time schedule. I am also not talking about RfC because that and the RfM as far as I am concerned failed, even thought the Kender article was fixed over months of fighting for a few things, but the article is not really a decent article with just bland references as that one user would want them all to be with little context. I am talking the disruptive editing has gone on for over a year and is targeting one specific area of Wikipedia, and now it is pretty much just vandalism of the project as a whole. As such vandals should be handled accordingly. Check the disruptive editing section and you will note that all those things done are done by Gavin, and refuses to work with anyone. The only time any piece was had, was when he went to argue with people over the notability and BIO guidelines, and was in many cases, as usual, told he was wrong by admins. So something more substantial needs to be done. Giving him the Grawp treatment seems to be the only way to get anything done, since Gavin refuses to cooperate with anyone and push his own agenda by doing nothing by mass copy/paste tagging articles. Check his recent contributions and you will see many where he just copy/pastes tags, and then edits and reverts his own edits to get rid of some of the extra tags. This helps no one, no editor, no wikipedia reader, not the articles, not the Wikimedia Foundation with all the extra bandwidth/storage space for all the talk that has had to transpire to trying to get things done through his disruptive editing, and disruption of the D&D project. Which is why I equate it to vandalism, or some personal agenda in regards to RPGs or D&D, neither of which he has any knowledge about as he calls them just books, choose-your-own-adventure books, and cannot tell from the article about it that Kermit the Frog is a fictional character, and furthers that confusion with every article he tags. So AFTER you have read EVERY one of Gavin's edits/"contributions", then tell me something doesn't need to be done. shadzar-talk 18:14, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Before the main part of my discussion, I would like to say two things. A)Gavin's tagging is not vandalism, and should not be treated as such and B)A permanent ban is NOT the right answer. If anything a topical ban might be placed. Other than on those two points, I agree with you almost completely. We probably should do something because what he's doing IS disruptive editing (per WP:Disruptive editing#Signs of disruptive editing and WP:Tendentious editing#Characteristics of problem editors).

Now to deal with disruptive editing, see this. A request for comment has already been completed (and is viewable here), the discussion appears to have petered out before a consensus was reached. However, although the RfC itself did not reach a consensus, I think that the Wikipedia community as a whole has, with a decision that Gavin should stop. There are some opposed to that, and they have very valid reasons, but over the past year the sheer number of people who have found Gavin's editing disruptive would seem to indicate a consensus on the matter, and one which Gavin is quite aware of after all of the discussions that he has been in.

The next listed step is to add something here about the issue. Some administrators have already been involved in the situation, although there hasn't been a formal request for a review. Since I am relatively new here and have only been in the "Gavin discussions" for two or three weeks, I don't think that I'm qualified to really make a case, even though I've seen plenty of the results of his past behavior. If this is the avenue that needs to be pursued, then someone else should initiate it, although I will assist however I can. Also, I think that we should wait until there has been another tagging spree to do anything drastic like that. -Drilnoth (talk) 20:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I find that to be a copout. Chloe Sullivan and Lionel Luthor were existing articles. This is what Chloe looked like, and what Lionel looked like before I ever got there. I also rewrote Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers (Halloween) (here is what they looked like before I got there Jason and Mikey). So please, don't tell me that it cannot be done. Yeah, it could be difficult, but if it's easy then it isn't worth it. Being difficult isn't a valid reason not to do something. Also, I didn't hide the sandbox. I left a note on respective project pages letting people know what was going on so that they could help. Just because it is located in a sandbox doesn't mean that it makes it more difficult to operate on. Also, I didn't say you had to go immediately to a sandbox, what I said was if the page gets deleted you can work on it in a sandbox until it is ready to go back on the mainspace. If you a know a topic can conform to whatever guidelines and policies exist, but it gets deleted because it has yet to prove such a thing, then that's your perfect opportunity to work on it in a sandbox until it is ready. Do what you can while it is in the mainspace. Stop focusing on the events of the AfD, RfC or whatever is going on. Like I said, give your 2 cents and then go work on the article. When I come across an AfD, or some other dispute do you know what I see? I see editors spending all of their time bickering over whether the article really deserves to be there or not. They think they need to counter every single argument, and it's only doing a disservice to themselves, the article, and the community. What I have also seen is people working harder during an AfD to get an article up to shape and saving it because, before it could close, the involved parties retracted their statements because the article was "fixed".

To be frank, who the hell cares about a damn notability tag? From what I've seen in the community, no one. It isn't a death sentence. If you get prodded, or AfD'd, then care enough. If someone tags an article as not showing notability, then ask them to elaborate on what would help (ask for specifics) and then try and do what you can to satisfy the criteria. The tag is supposed to alert editors of the article to a problem with the page. You guys fuel the fire when you get into stupid edit wars about the existence of the tag. WHO CARES? You're right, it does nothing to help the reader, because the reader doesn't care. The tag most certainly helps editors, because it lets editors know that someone feels there is a problem with the page. Notability is clear, and there is no number of editors that can be used to just deem an article "notable". That isn't how it works. Though I don't agree with this mass tagging, I also don't agree with swapping out objective tags with subjective tags. Either you meet the notability guideline or you don't. If you do, then the article DOES NOT lack information "on the notability" of the subject. If you don't, then you cannot just say "this is notable, we just don't have the information to prove it". It doesn't work that way. If the subject is notable, then show it with information. Don't claim it is and then say, "but I don't have the info to back up my claim". 20:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC) This comment was added by Bignole; it was not signed. -Drilnoth (talk) 20:47, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

-removed indent- I just simplified it, and removed myself from this project. Youa re right. Who the hell cares about being a part of something for someone else to just come along and destroy and waste peoples time with, just like the entirety of Wikipedia in general. shadzar-talk 20:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey Shadzar, you're always welcome around these parts even if you're not a member of the project. Hey, I've never listed myself as a member despite everything I've done around here. ;) I wouldn't worry about the opinions of one user. BOZ (talk) 15:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Yah; even if you're not an "official" participant, please don't stop helping out around the articles! It's nice having more than just three or four people working on them. -Drilnoth (talk) 16:21, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

This discussion continues in archive 14. --Drilnoth (Talk) 14:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)