User talk:Cirt/Gutting

Created as an index page

Created as an index page for the two possible motivations of Gutting:

1. User:Cirt/Gutting/Possible motivations of constructive Gutting: discusses some possible motivations of Gutting that may stem from constructive intentions on the part of the user removing the content.
2. User:Cirt/Gutting/Possible motivations of nonconstructive Gutting: discusses some possible motivations of Gutting that may stem from nonconstructive intentions on the part of the user removing the content.

— Cirt (talk) 20:23, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Changed "bad faith" and "good faith" to "nonconstructive" and "constructive". — Cirt (talk) 14:38, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Shortcuts

{{Deletion essay|WP:GUTTING|WP:Gutting|WP:GUT|WP:GUTTED|WP:Gutted}}

These shortcuts should be added back, as now this is only an index page.

— Cirt (talk) 20:26, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

@Cirt: Forgive me for saying so, but all of these redirects should be deleted. You created eight redirects, from Wikipedia space, to a draft essay in userspace that is nowhere near ready for public consumption. I think you should request that these redirects be deleted, to be recreated when the essay is ready. If you don't, I will. Sorry but this just isn't right. --MelanieN (talk) 22:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

@MelanieN:, thank you for your advice. My goal is to try to take input and implement suggestions and get these pages ready to be moved to Wikipedia space, so that the Wikipedia community may feel free to edit them as they see fit at that point in time. I'd like to do that soon. That way, we can keep the redirects intact. I'd like to hear more suggestions from you as to how to further improve these pages? — Cirt (talk) 22:38, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

@MelanieN:, please just give me a teensy weensy bit more time, I've been working constructively with yourself and Jytdog and others and we've made some major modifications that have greatly improved these pages. I think they're getting ready. Jytdog understands I'm trying to take into account suggestions from multiple users, see comment: "i know you are working toward providing help for everybody. Jytdog (talk) 22:33, 18 October 2014 (UTC)" Please just allow a little more time for us together to work collaboratively and politely to improve these pages a bit further, then I'd like to revisit and see in a short period of time if they're ready for regular essay space, maybe 36 hours or so. — Cirt (talk) 22:48, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, I think the "bad faith" commentary is way excessive, but I don't care to rewrite it. And I think there are way too many "see also" links, many of which are only marginally related to the topic. --MelanieN (talk) 23:19, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, MelanieN, for your specific suggestion about the See also sect. I've immediately directly implemented your recommendation about the See also sect. I've gone ahead and trimmed the See also sect down by half (1/2), so it now has fifty-percent (50%) less links. I understand you feel the sub-page for "bad faith gutting" is too excessive — I feel it should certainly at the very least exist as a page in some form, but if you have any specific suggestions about how to reduce it in size, I'd most appreciate them! — Cirt (talk) 00:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

am curious

i don't participate in a lot of deletion discussions. does bad-faith gutting actually happen a lot? i don't reckon there is any actual data on that :) but i am guessing you must have witnessed some pretty bad examples, to lead you to want this essay, cirt. can you maybe provide some anecdotes or links? am curious what is driving this and i am aware that my experience is limited. thanks! Jytdog (talk) 01:33, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Jytdog, I've witnessed it occur multiple times over the years, yes. The order of sequence (for some), sometimes, not all the time, may be: (1) Happen upon an article they don't want to exist on Wikipedia, for various reasons. (2) Gut the page, perhaps edit-by-edit, of sourced content. (3) Only after having gutted the page, start an WP:AFD and go on in the nomination or in comments at the AFD about how the article is quite poorly sourced and hardly has any sources at all on the page. I'm not going to get into specifics because I don't want to mention specific users or specific examples. If you find some, feel free to let me know. Perhaps we could do a case study. — Cirt (talk) 01:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

i've never seen it so i cannot provide an example. like i said it is rare for me to participate in deletion discussions. (although i have found myself in a slew of them in the past couple of days, which has been strange!) am learning a lot. see the discussion here for most of that activity: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Lists_of_ebola_patients_and_articles_on_individual_ebola_patients) Jytdog (talk) 01:40, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Fascinating discussions, Jytdog, but not directly related, unless you've experienced Gutting at those AFDs. — Cirt (talk) 01:50, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@Jytdog: I've seen it. An experienced editor, who, judging from past edits, had a beef with a particular group, gutted well referenced content from an article about an organization on the basis that it's name and executive board had changed. They then sent the almost-stub to AFD, saying the "new" organization wasn't notable. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:26, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

hm! thanks. i am sure this causes lots of drama... how do they tend to come out? Jytdog (talk) 00:03, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

@Jytdog: A lot of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT with respect to WP:NTEMP. However admins have a clue and can see what's going on. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:19, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Well yeah, and that's the curious thing here. This kind of so-called "gutting" tactic won't work because AfD discussions are mostly about the topic rather than the text that happens to exist in an article, and because the discussion will be closed by a competent admin who will spot anything amiss. Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 01:54, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Alexbrn, I've seen time and time again in AFDs you can cite your sources at the AFD til the cows come home, but the consensus doesn't change (at least in some cases), until you actually go and improve the quality of the article page, itself. — Cirt (talk) 01:56, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

More often what happens is unsourced but sourceable content is gutted. Actual deletion of sourced content will be noticed and reverted by anyone paying any attention at all at AfD. Actual bad-faith gutting of sourced content is rare, because it's WP:POINTy and may result in sanctions, while unconstructive but often "reasonable-faith" gutting is frequent, a form of failure to take WP:BEFORE to heart. Those who are sure that an article should be deleted (for whatever personal reason) are rarely inclined to try to source the target article better, but have a vested interest in removing everything that doesn't already have a source or which has a questionable one, rather than find a missing source or replace a poor one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Target audience?

Looking through the various pages I am still unhappy with this essay. One big question: who is the intended audience for this essay? To whom is it addressed? At times it appears to be addressed to someone whose article has been gutted, but at other times it seems to be talking to the world at large about the people doing the gutting and their motives. I think a much shorter and simpler approach would be 1) define gutting (I believe you intended to talk specifically about gutting in relation to AfDs; if so please say so, it would make the article more focused). 2) Explain briefly why people may gut an article before or during an AfD: good reasons, bad reasons. 3) Explain your own position, which I think is that gutting in the face of an AfD can be a bad thing, and why. 4) To me, the comments to the person whose article has been gutted are out of place here and inconsistent with the thrust of the essay.

Also, about the illustrations of people gutting various creatures: I understand why you put them there, for color and a bit of humor, but I'd like to see other people's opinions about whether they add to or detract from the essay. (No need to ping with replies, this page is on my watchlist.) --MelanieN (talk) 14:09, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I added them for color and a bit of humor. As for the rest, that was all done at the specific suggestions of Jytdog, including for example why I added the comments to the person whose article has been gutted: "likewise, it would be useful to provide guidance on what to do if you are confronted with a gutting editor whose behavior matches the signs provided. this is really important, because this essay should help people get through a gutting without losing their heads, and appropriately using noticeboards and other dispute resolution mechanisms." So it's difficult to add something to the essays in response to me trying to be responsive to one user while then another different user doesn't like that. Quite difficult to please everyone. :( — Cirt (talk) 14:14, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I've removed several photos, per above suggestion by MelanieN, now there is still one (1) photo of Gutting but you can't see the actual Gutting process, but you can see several cute kittens waiting for the scraps of the Gutting. Hopefully that adds more color and a bit of humor. — Cirt (talk) 14:23, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

It can be tough trying to please everyone! 0;-D You have taken every suggestion here as something to be acted on at once; that is a commendable attitude on your part, but as you see it doesn't always result in consensus. If you think the section is helpful, fine. I was a little amused to find this in that section - a warning against leaping to assumptions about malicious motivations of the "gutter" - because the earlier iterations of this essay seemed to do just that. In any case, think about my comments, particularly examining your own intention with regard to this article - which I think may have shifted somewhat during discussion - and considering how you can best make whatever point you were trying to make. Can you nutshell that point? and then see that the article is focused on it? --MelanieN (talk) 14:35, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

The essays are meant to be descriptive and instructive, for both those that wish to engage in Gutting to think about, first, and those that experience Gutting. And that was due to suggestions I've taken to heart including for example from yourself and from Jytdog. Make sense? — Cirt (talk) 14:51, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Can you put in one sentence (a nutshell or topic sentence) what you are trying to say? Ignoring the material addressed to those whose articles get gutted, what are you trying to say about gutting? For example, would it be "Deleting large amounts of material from an article (gutting the article) can be problematic, particularly when done in conjunction with an AfD discussion." ? Or what? It's a great mental exercise to try to force yourself to try to sum up your point in one sentence. If you can't do that, maybe you don't really have a essay. (I mean "you" in the sense of "one", generic person - not you specifically.) --MelanieN (talk) 22:09, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

The example nutshell sentence you gave is a good one that I agree with. — Cirt (talk) 23:27, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Back to one essay page

Back to one essay page, per suggestion of Future Perfect at Sunrise. — Cirt (talk) 19:12, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

My next step

Next I'll try to go through and both copy edit and work on reducing redundancy.

Will update back here after I've gone through a pass or two of trying to do that.

— Cirt (talk) 19:24, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

when is this going live? I want to be bold and make this a regular article. Wafflesmatter (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Not ready yet. Staying in userspace. I need to work on it a lot more. But I just don't have time to devote to it right this moment. Perhaps will work on it more in a few weeks. — Cirt (talk) 00:22, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Focus

This needs, I would think, to focus on the gutting of unsourced but sourceable content, not on deletion of sourced content, which doesn't really happen all that much. I.e., I think the real problem has been misidentified. When sourced content is removed and the removal is constructive, it's almost always because it's not properly sourced per WP:CORE, i.e. is original research based on misuse of the source, is not a reliable source, is being used in a PoV pushing way, etc. Even many of these deletions can be fixed without removing the source, but using it properly. It's much more common (as I detailed in a thread higher up the page) for the deletion-minded to remove everything that doesn't already have a reliable source, rather than source what has no source or find better sources for things with poor sourcing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:04, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

The focus was always intended to talk about deletion of sourced content, typically during an ongoing articles for deletion discussion. — Cirt (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The opposite: "stuffing"

It would probably also be worth mentioning something that could be called "stuffing" - rewriting an article wholesale, often including a scope change, to get around problems like:

• Lack of notability (novel not notable? maybe the author is!)
• An inappropriate WP:DICDEF approach (my "stuffing" of the article Shrew (stock character) this year is a good example)
• Unsourceability and vagueness (e.g. changing an article about a nebulous concept with unclear definitions into one or more articles about concrete approaches, methodologies, instances, etc., that are easily reliably sourceable. This is probably what will have to happen with Music community which very, very narrowly escaped AfD and probably will not a second time if it is not drastically changed.)
• Etc.

The process is one of identifying the problems making the article a target, identifying what something(s) along these lines would look like without these problems, and then filling the page(s) with new, reliably sourced material that transforms the crap page from a deletion target into a viable encyclopedic article (or set of articles).

Stuffing can also be done non-constructively, by adding irrelevant or questionable material, most often in the form of a WP:COATRACK.

You could even recycle much of what I just wrote as a small section on this. Someone might later develop into a side essay.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:04, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Sure, you could write a separate essay on that. — Cirt (talk) 16:44, 18 September 2015 (UTC)