Wikipedia talk:Don't overuse shortcuts to policy and guidelines to win your argument

Rationale

Brilliant! I'm not a big fan of essays on Wikipedia, but I think this essay hits the nail on the head quite nicely. Too many people have been using shortcuts to convey information in a way that seems to refer to established policy or a guideline, when in actual fact either not that many people like the essay (which is usually what it is) or failed policy. Either that, or they use a shortcut to a policy where it either doesn't say what they think it says, or it can be directly contradicted by another part of the policy (the best example, of course, is WP:ILIKEIT, which was later countered with WP:IDONTLIKEIT). - Ta bu shi da yu 23:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, see WP:WOTTA (The only Very Extended Three Letter Acronym that I can live with ;-)), and also Wikipedia:Don't cite essays or proposals as if they were policy which sort of only helps halfway though. Maybe we should go for the opposite, to prevent talking about putting beans in peoples noses ;-). "Wikipedia:Use english"? :-) --Kim Bruning 05:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a personal essay written in the first person. Why is it in the project namespace rather than a userpage? Eluchil404 06:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you opposed to the content? --Kim Bruning 06:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

In point of fact, yes. While I agree that WP:ILIKEIT is overcited and used to dismiss arguments that it doesn't really cover; I disagree that bare Keep or Delete votes are usefull (since they don't progress the discussion), that encyclopedic is a useful term by itself (since it is tautalogical without a seperate agreed upon definition), that "I like it" is an acceptable argument in deletion discussions (since people can and do like things that don't belong on Wikipedia), that arguments from analogy are presumptively valid (since consensus can change), that useful list should be kept (since lists are inherently unencyclopedic ;-). However, that's not really the point. As written this essay expresses a personal opinion which seems to belong in userspace. If it's meant to reflect a wide spread (but not necessarily consensual) view the first person should at a minimum be removed. My own view is that essays in the Wikipedia namspace should reflect widespread views, or discuss common occurences and that polemical and minority essays should be userfied, but I do not believe that there is any clear guideline or consensus in that area. Eluchil404 07:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah see! You're a bit biased, of course. :-)

(Note that I don't quite agree with this page either, nor with some of the others I've mentioned here)

Ok, let's see. Hmmm, what I've done before when I was biased like that, was that I'd at least tidy up the worst parts, and then stand back and look at it again. If it still sucked, I have another shot at editing it, maybe more could be fixed. Typically people then came to fight over my edits again, etc etc.

If after a couple of days it still sucked, well, then I'd start slowly moving towards things like userification or misc for deletion or etc.

Does that sound like a good plan for here too? --Kim Bruning 07:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like the most appropriate plan to me. A prime case of {{sofixit}}. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a fine plan. I was just hesitant about editing something with I in the first sentence. The style quibbles (which is all I would change) are actually fairly minor and I will be bold and makes some edits in a moment. As I said at the end of my comment, I would actually like to see a fair number of essays moved to userspace (though still tagged as essays), but as you say it's no fair to pick on ones I disagree with in that regard. Eluchil404 08:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Constructive Criticism

While I mentioned above that I ultimately disagree with every bullet in section two, I do find that section well written and reasoned. However, the first section regarding concensus (which I think makes the stronger point) is rather confusingly structured. It says that Bad Things follow appeals to authority. But the bullets aren't themselves the bad things as the sentence structure seems to imply. But rather arguments butressing the main point. It might be better to rewrite the section without bullets or to rephrase the bullets so each is a Bad Thing (The role of guidelines is distorted; Newbies are bitten; People get the idea that valid arguments must have WP links and write unnecessary guidelines). I am not myself sure of the best form and am afraid of distorting the point so I don't want to do it myself in this case. Eluchil404 08:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I understood, and I will try to rearrange the section, or at least take it out of the bulleted list format.

FWIW, a bit of background. My admittedly unscientific impression is that the XfD process has become a bit more rancorous recently, and specifically hostile to "keep" opinions. These opinions seem to be frequently contested there with argumentative and querulous responses.

This came to my attention as a result of my participation in an AFD on the Intelligent dance music article (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Intelligent dance music). I try to keep good humour about my participation in these things, and I posted a comment meant to point out that I was aware of this label being used to identify a genre of music well before seeing a Wikipedia article on the subject. (Easily meets the "I heard of it before seeing the Wikipedia article" test.) This drew a rejoinder from User:Proto that I found mildly uncivil, not enough to raise a stink about, but it did get me thinking about making the XfD process more welcoming to a diversity of opinions.

My impression, basically, is this: the XfD process has become more biased than usual in favour of "delete" opinions. You'd expect some measure of this to exist from the outset, since XfD pages are going to be monitored largely by folks who are interested in policing the project, but it has gotten out of hand. The practice of posting rebuttals to "keep" opinions, and especially, rebuttals that quote chapter and verse of some policy, guideline, or essay is part of the problem. Again, my unscientific impression is that "keep" opinions draw comments much more frequently than "delete" opinions. It is intimidating and discourages participation. Many of the comments and the essays or proposals they cite, including the essay that this attempts to be a rejoinder to, seem to contain at least some element of trying to preemptively reject certain opinions as illegitimate. Implicitly, they invite closing admins to devalue those opinions. This makes the ascertainment of "consensus" even more difficult, and leads to further litigation on WP:DRV, etcetera ad infinitum.

This essay was meant partially as a response to that trend, as well as a partial rebuttal to the more divisive parts of the WP:ILIKEIT essay. It may be that essays of this sort belong on user subpages; but if this does, I would respectfully submit that its opposite number, and a host of other deletion related essays, also belong there. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

"Shortcuts to policy and guidelines"

The problem here is that WP:ILIKEIT is neither, and it mostly rags about ILIKEIT's arguments. The title itself is confusing; on a literal reading of the title, it seems to imply that people should not use shortcut redirects like WP:V or WP:RS to argue for an article's inclusion or exclusion.

Also, "perenially litigious notability guideline" is very confusing; are you saying people could sue because they aren't featured in an encyclopedia?

While the ILIKEIT essay does try to invalidate more keep arguments than delete arguments, that's because delete arguments tend to be boring; they're either "has no reliable sources" or "is not notable" or some variant.

Finally, I disagree strongly with consensus being a headcount; headcounts tend to be easily subverted if one puts an effort into doing so; one example would be to get friends from a forum to votestack an AfD nomination. ColourBurst 05:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

"Perenially litigious notability guidelines" is used mostly metaphorically. It means that the concept of notability remains rather vague, and as such frequently draws arguments.

I'm not saying to never use shortcut redirects to argue for an article's inclusion or exclusion. I'm saying, don't beat other folks over the head with them, and don't cite them in argumentative rebuttals to other folks' opinions.

There are worse things that can happen here than getting strangers to the project to visit here and offer an opinion on a deletion debate. Zealous exclusion of these readers and new editors, and publicly belittling their admittedly partisan contributions, is indeed a case of biting newbies. - Smerdis of Tlön 17:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

From an author of WP:ILIKEIT

As one of the early, original authors of Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (I never cared much for the WP:ILIKEIT shortcut), I must admit that the essay has been quoted overly enthusiastic in deletion discussions. With regard to the fact that the essay dismisses more keep than delete arguments I just want to state that in general keep arguments are more diverse then delete arguments. The essay was meant to encourage people to realize that AfD is about discussion with sound arguments , not voting or shouting hollow phrases and acronyms. Unfortunately, people have been using exactly this essay to shout WP:ILIKEIT, a type of argument that is explicitly dealt with in the WP:ILIKEIT essay itself (Just a policy or guideline). Its good to see these counterarguments and, although I do not agree with all of them (e.g. I still stand behind the Just a vote argument in the essay), I might just use some of the ideas here to improve the essay. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 21:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

This is interesting... perhaps you, as one of the original authors, could make a note in the essay to this effect? - Ta bu shi da yu 04:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

As a starter, I just added a sentence or two explaining what I stated above to the Just a policy or guideline section and the introduction of Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern with sound arguments. Simply quoting a policy or guideline, without attempting to explain how it applies to a problem article, or even giving any impression that the commenter read the article in question is not particularly convincing.

One of my concerns, noted above, has to do with the general tone or culture of AfD, which strikes me as having slowly become more hostile to inclusion. Canned rebuttals to "keep" opinions is one bit of evidence of that hostility. At least some contributions that are nominated for deletion are good faith attempts to write about worthy subjects. In general, the approach to these should not (IMO) be to remove these flawed contributions, but to improve them. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I almost completely agree with you. The original idea behind WP:ILIKEIT (as I saw it at the time of writing) was to encourage people to make solid, sound arguments. Unfortunately, the essay has been used mostly by people to vigorously fight the arguments of others. Proof of that, in my view, are the many shortcuts that have been generated to the essay. Currently, I am consulting others on the talk page of WP:ILIKEIT on what to do about it, but so far most people like the mulitude of shortcuts. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 00:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

(mostly) sound counsel

As an inclusionist, I heartily agree with you that the tone of AfD discussions (at least the ones I've participated in) have been more uncivil than not. Especially in the AfD's of so-called "crufty" articles. This was exactly the kind of reasonable rebuttal that was needed in the recent Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Burger King menu items AfD, where the nominator User:Jaranda cited to WP:ILIKEIT with impunity.

That being said, I share User:ColourBurst's concern about headcounts. I would also ask you to clarify what you mean when you say "Being encyclopedic — encyclopedicity? — is a much more satisfactory label. Let's not pretend that these expectations are irrelevant." Are you saying that we should be aware of what those expectations are and therefore avoid its ad nauseam usage? Or are you saying that, because we have some idea of what "encyclopedic" means, it should be safe to use in AfD's? I would suggest the former, since in AfD's the charge of an article being "unencyclopedic" crops up much more often than support for an article being "encyclopedic." Wl219 01:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The AfD you show there really shows how it has gone wrong. That AfD links to WP:ILIKEIT, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:INTERESTING, WP:USEFUL and WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. Its makes perfectly clear that many people have misunderstood the original essay. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 08:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

RfD of redirects to WP:ILIKEIT

Input is appreciated at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2007 February 6, where I nominated several redirects to WP:ILIKEIT for deletion. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 15:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhapes this essay should be renamed?

I'm wondering if the name of this article is really fitting. A portion does refer to over quoting policy pages, but the majority appears to be a more-or-less direct rebuttal of WP:AADD. The only problem is, I'm not exactly sure what a good title would be. Anybody have any thoughts?--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm certainly open to suggestions. Don't pre-emptively discount editors' opinions might cover half of it, and Avoid aggressive or dismissive rebuttals might be another. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Superb

I posted a number of critical comments to the WP:AADD talk page before coming across this essay, which puts across broadly the same points far more succinctly and eruditely than I ever could have. Excellent work. AdorableRuffian 16:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Uh, strongly mixed opinion

• While many of this essay's criticisms of how editors are misusing WP:AADD are perfectly valid and appropriate, I feel that many parts of it show either a misunderstanding or disregard of WP's core principles. For example: "consensus is, or ought to be, the source of most policies and guidelines." No. Wikipedia's founders and the Wikipedia Foundation created the core policies, and if a hundred or a thousand people swarm one discussion and claim a "consensus" to eliminate WP:V, for instance, that doesn't mean that Wikipedia must suddenly adopt "anybody can add anything and it's just as good as facts that can be verified through reliable sources." If you don't like the core policies, you should instead go start your own encyclopedia project, like Larry Sanger has done with Citizendium. Another example: "if it pleases our editors to expatiate at obsessive length on comic books or 1970s TV shows, they should be encouraged to do so provided their contributions are verifiable, sourced, and original." No. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to provide a factual, unprejudiced overview of the most significant aspects of a topic, not to indulge obsessive fannishness nor to treat something that mildly entertained a few hundred people as more important than events that killed hundreds of thousands and changed how tens of millions of people lived. I also feel that this is more a reaction to deletion debates that angered the author, and not so much a reasoned attempt to give clarifying and helpful advice. Certainly it isn't disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, but it needs considerable revision before I would support it remaining in the space that editors can point to as the third level of "established policy > guideline > essay". (The essay would be improved if it pointed out that people treat essays as policy even though the box on each essay says not to.) As it now stands, anyone who uses this essay to support their keep/delete argument will be viewed as making the same sort of error that it complains about. This is just my opinion but I think a substantial number of established editors and admins hold opinions closer to mine than to the author's. I've noticed this trend in a number of deletion/undeletion debates where the author was involved, so it's not a completely unsupported assertion. Barno 00:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• Whoops, I see that WP:V has been "superseded", sort of, by WP:ATT. However, that was a matter of merging two of the existing policies and improving phrasing; it claims not to include any "innovation" of policies, so my point stands: the core policies can't be reversed by a group claiming consensus. If people tried, the Wikipedia Foundation would have the right to shut down the servers or to ban people from the project and reinstitute the policies which are the basis for the project. Consensus rules only to a point. Barno 02:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• This isn't really about the core policies, the ones that reflect the founding principles of Wikipedia and can never be changed without an official edict. In my view, it's more about the way in which the the finer details of policy documents, and especially guideline documents, are given more weight in deletion debates than is actually warranted. You often see the phrase "end run around policy", when in fact the result of a deletion debate could help create consensus to amend a policy. I think we're reached a situation where, to the newcomer, the AfD pages resemble a game of Mornington Crescent or something - you get people saying "Delete per WP:WEB" and then answering back to all of the Keep comments saying "nah, your argument Does Not Count because of WP:RS and also, per..." In the worst case, this is just a form of filibustering, and it is completely unfriendly to less established users. AdorableRuffian 14:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I similarly object to this paragraph:

Similarly, the Wikipedia admin who chooses to delete an article in the absence of clear consensus to delete it, on the grounds that in his opinion those who wanted it deleted argued more eloquently; or that their citations of policy, guidelines or essays were more convincing, is misconstruing the nature of consensus and the role of policy and guidelines.

Rather the author is misconstruing the nature of consensus. Administrators who fail to weigh up the arguments in favour of a head count are not doing their job properly. Consensus extends beyond the few people who participate in a discussion. If someone is invoking our policies and guidelines (which are usually formed and enforced by consensus), they are suggesting that there already is a consensus on disposing of a certain article, and any admin who fails to do the weighing up of arguments is effectively ignoring the wider consensus that already exists in favour of the noisy minority. Chris cheese whine 13:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the proper course of action for administrators is to base their decisions neither on head count nor how well they personally feel the points were argued; but rather to base their decisions on what it appears that a broad consensus of the community would decide, based on the arguments presented. If that consensus is unclear, then either a default action needs to be taken (e.g. to keep an article which is up for deletion), or a request for comment should be filed to get broader input. DHowell 01:55, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Perfect example

When over 50 articles which have existed for several years get deleted in one fell swoop, something is wrong. I found a perfect example of what is wrong with our current deletion process, and what this essay is trying to curtail: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of ZIP Codes in the United States by state. Notice the closing admin's statement, "Votes to keep were not taken as seriously in closing judgment as many tended not to cite policy". So if you don't "cite policy", your opinion will "not be taken seriously". Never mind that policies are supposed to reflect consensus opinion, not dictate it. See also Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 April 22. Nearly all of the deletion votes, and endorse deletion votes, merely "cited policy", i.e. WP:NOT, yet failed to explain why every one of these 50-some articles violated that policy. "Wikipedia is not a directory" is a nice curt summary, but it doesn't define what a directory is, or what separates an encyclopedic list from an unencyclopedic directory. Nor does it address the portions of those articles which were clearly NOT a directory. When several keep votes presented fairly reasoned arguments as to why at least some of the pages should be kept, they were summarily dismissed with yet more citations to policy. Notice that in neither the AfD nor the DRV was there any actual attempt at achieving true consensus. DHowell 14:50, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

"Policies are supposed to reflect consensus opinion, not dictate it" - this should be displayed in large text at the top of every AfD page. AdorableRuffian (talk) 00:05, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The canonical wording is "Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive" and why only afd pages, why not put that on every page? :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:22, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Good essay

I like it :) EJF (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC) Insert non-formatted text here

Not-so-mixed opinion

Kim, I love ya to death, especially as as mediator, but this whole piece just comes across as sort of whiny. It has an overwhelming feel of "I'm not getting my way, so I will criticize the system" about it. We're not here to kiss the precious little booties of noobs. WP is in many ways a survival of the fittest environment (and I mean that in the original Spencerian, not Darwinian, sense). WP:AADD exists for solid reasons, and it isn't really reasonable [hmm, can I use rea- one more time in this sentence?] to expect everyone to actually type out the full names of longwindedly-titled policy/guideline/essay pages that have shortcuts. Shortcuts exist for a reason. They are not particularly confusing to noobs, or to anyone for that matter, since just opening them in another tab self-explains what they are. They are mostly pretty mnemonic, too. It drives me kinda nuts when people won't use shortcuts in XfD blather, because it simply wastes my time, as well as the author's, to write all that crap out and make me read it. And running across an unfamiliar shortcut is certainly the #1 way that I end up reading new WP essays (in spelled-out form, I avoid reading most of them, honestly; the shortcut at least gets me thinking "what is this?" and actually looking at the page long enough to potentially get sucked into reading it. Anyway, nothing personal, I just don't agree with this essay at all, other than in its most general possible sense, e.g. that a really excessive string of [[WP:whatevers]] can be very annoying. The real reason to me that it's annoying is not the acronyms/abbreviations, its the over-citation to too many policies/guidelines at once without being specific about what exactly at each page is being cited. Completely different issue than the one you are addressing. PS: It strikes me as borderline hypocritical for this essay to have shortcuts any shorter than maybe WP:DONTOVERUSESHORTCUTS. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:19, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Instead of Just Linking to Policies, Also Quote Relevant Information

problem solved? From my experience, the majority of a policy article is irrelevant in arguments, so telling other editors to read whole policy articles is a dick move. XP Hell, if the argument is not about article deletion but say the inclusion/exclusion of certain information, a good chunk of this article is useless. MichaelExe (talk) 20:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I have made some changes in that direction. I have toned down the implication of incivility as well, because that is seldom the intent, I think. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 00:10, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Large off-topic section

The section titled "Some issues specific to deletion debates" unfortunately does not discuss the overuse of policy links in such debates, but rather rehashes a subset of WP:ATA, so it should probably be moved over there. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I see someone tried to make sense of it before [1] but others apparently like the mishmash, and have reverted. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 00:20, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

ILIKEIT

The section on it seems to assert that "someone likes it = notability." Frankly, it should be removed. Firestar464 (talk) 04:08, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Done. Firestar464 (talk) 08:53, 29 August 2022 (UTC)