Wikipedia talk:Exceptions should leave the rule intact

An interesting essay, but despite all the general principles it purports to advance, underneath, it's little more than a rather one-sided attack against inclusionism. This is more characteristic of a user essay than something that belongs in project space.--Father Goose (talk) 06:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I certainly didn't write it to be an attack on inclusionism! I said that the problem is not inclusionists (who have had enough of an impact on policies and guidelines that they can point to them in AfDs), but rather creators of articles about their blog trying find some justification for why it should be kept. I've never actually heard the bit about common-sense exceptions from anyone else: slick inclusionists cite guidelines, or get them changed. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 17:56, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

My view on that is that if you're going to suggest an exception, you have to do it convincingly. I agree that just saying "this should be an exception" without explaining why is empty. But your essay, in its current form, doesn't say this; instead, it seems to assert that anyone who begs to differ with some aspect of a guideline is either disingenuous or an imbecile.

Expand it beyond a "these people are wrong" focus, if you can.--Father Goose (talk) 20:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but the essay does not say that anyone who differs with a guideline is either disingenuous or an imbecile. It lays out a rationale for what a convincing argument for an exception to the rule in a particular case should do, viz. it should be an exception to the rule, not a rejection of it. If it is the latter, it is merely an attempt to circumvent the consensus that forged the rule in the first place. But again, saying this is not a disparagement of people who have problems with the current guidelines, because I've never seen them argue this in an AfD or other forum: they push their changes on the guideline talk pages. While the essay reads like "these people are wrong," the editors whom this essay is about are wrong (and it does make fun of them), and wrong in an uncontroversial way — I believe that we are in agreement when it comes to empty claims. But I don't think there will be any confusion that it also refers to valuable editors who happen to have a different philosophy about Wikipedia than I do, especially after some of the edits I made earlier today in light of your concerns. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 21:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

All right, that actually makes sense. But the essay strays into absolutism at certain points that contradict that. I've made a number of changes where I think it errs. There's a reason we have the "occasional exception" language in the guideline template, and if certain editors (mostly newbies) wrongly interpret that as "my exception", that doesn't vitiate the genuine need for an occasional exception. They're a lot less rare than the essay was implying -- although when common sense is employed instead of existing guidance, one tends not to notice it as an exception.

I've left the "double standard" section in place, even though I think most of it is erroneous, even smug. There are plenty of deletionists people who ignore the stipulation that "coverage in multiple independent sources" makes a subject "presumed notable". Deletionists can be just as talented at disregarding or manipulating policy as inclusionists. We obviously won't delete the Dalai Lama, but there are plenty of other individuals who get put up for deletion (sometimes successfully) despite their prominence in the media.--Father Goose (talk) 01:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay. I made some small changes to your final paragraph, but I tried not to prejudice the issue too much. My original version was a bit tongue-in-cheek, especially given where some of the links led, but it probably did come across as a bit absolutist. As to notable people deleted despite prominent news coverage, are those cases of WP:ONEEVENT? RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 03:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm almost completely cool with the essay now, except for the "double standard" section -- I'll remove that if you don't object.

As to the deleted bios -- it's not always under BLP1E or BLP in general. There are plenty of people with long-term notability in a specific field or geographical region, enough to satisfy WP:N, but who fall afoul of our systemic bias. I don't spend enough time on AfD (thank god) to remember a specific bio that got deleted for this reason, but if you want to follow up, I'm sure User:DGG, an AfD fixture, could identify many for you. Given that you can't view an article to see whether it actually did meet WP:N after it's been deleted (unless you're an admin), it's hard to find them after the fact.

The best example I directly witnessed involving complete disregard for WP:N (and other policies) by those trying to delete a plainly notable subject was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Generation Z (4th nomination). Those who got it into their minds to delete it were resorting to arguments against what the sources themselves had to say about the subject. Ultimately, a person can display just as much irrationality and policy-blindness as someone who is trying to save an article they created, when "their baby" is instead a deletion nomination.

I was subsequently able to use the sources unearthed during the AfD to rewrite the Generation Z article into the current, fairly good article. But the article had been deleted once before on the basis of essentially identical arguments. We don't delete the Dalai Lamas of the world -- such subjects have an "are you kidding me?" level of notability -- but there are plenty of subjects with plenty of notability that still fail to make it through the pachinko machine that is AfD.--Father Goose (talk) 07:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: latest reword: good enough.--Father Goose (talk) 19:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks for your help. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 20:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

And thanks for not flipping out while I gave your baby a haircut. ;-) --Father Goose (talk) 23:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Eh, what the fuck? "Once it becomes apparent the guidelines clearly indicate that the article should be deleted, some editor (commonly the page's creator) urges that common sense demands we ignore the guidelines. This is mistaken." "Calls to use common sense and ignore all rules more frequently turn out to be desperate cases of wikilawyering." Who the FUCK wrote this? First off, you're fucking poisoning the well by claiming that we're just mistaken, self-serving desperate bastards trying to keep our pet projects alive by overriding everyone else. (I realize this privilege goes to the administrators.) Do you even realize that sometimes articles have perfectly good and valid information that ought to be stated and not deleted for lack of "notability"? Notability guidelines are a big kick in the face to anyone who's actually interested since it's like saying "there aren't enough people who'd care about and discuss this so we should just get rid of it for the few who do." (The proper solution to an article without any citations, btw, is to use the standard "THIS ARTICLE NEEDS MORE CITES" markup.) The one time I actually used it to justify deleting a page, I only used it because I just wanted to delete the article because I didn't like it and because I actually felt like kicking that small portion of people who were interested in it and did like it in the face. There's a reason why most of the half-brained yet depressingly effective rationales used to delete articles earn you points for Wikipedia:Extreme_article_deletion, whose stated goal is to reduce the number of articles on Wikipedia as much as possible. Anyhow, even neglecting the fact that some of us think non-notability is an insane, arbitrary criterion... Sometimes... just sometimes... an article will clearly pass requirements for deletion, and yet for the sake of... just being informative... some of us would rather it not get deleted, and so we justify it, by saying Wikipedia would be better off with the article than without it and by pointing out that if doing what's best for wikipedia means ignoring then rules, then ignore we should? This article pisses me off because it's a commentary on WP:IAR which tells people basically to disregard WP:IAR. See, WP:IAR, by definition, tells us to "IGNORE ALL RULES" and yet your horribly skewed interpretation of it is essentially that we can only ignore a rule if we can do it by satisfying some other rule. In other words, actually ignoring all rules is not tolerated. Moreover, if a candidate who has never successfully campaigned for public office, but is running again and has written one book on a prostitute, published by a vanity press, and his accomplishments cannot be verified except through his personal website, for what earthly reason is it bad for Wikipedia to document him or his book? Give me one reason why Wikipedia would be worse off if it offered information about the book for the odd person who would like to know information about it and one reason why Wikipedia wouldn't be worse off for deleting it. I can tell you how it A) improves Wikipedia (It informs people more, which is what makes Wikipedia useful.) and B) how deleting it hurts Wikipedia (Conversely, you are now informing people less, which makes Wikipedia less useful.). Sue me for saying such an article should get included anyway. Even aside from article deletion, it really sucks when a list gets marked with style tags, which, although appropriate, are NOT HELPING, like the "TRIVIA LISTS ARE DISCOURAGED" tags which constitute a reason to remove perfectly good and useful information unless we somehow devise a method to work the trivia information (commonly by nature extraneous and therefore, albeit useful and pertinent, not organically workable into the main article). Commonly, with these tags, what happens is that the information gets deleted or is otherwise worked into the main article very obtrusively. If we can prognose that enforcing the policy does more harm than good, it is better for us to pretend it doesn't exist. Of course, some silly people like to believe that somehow by definition enforcing policies is good, viewing it through a biased perception that policies (and upholding them) are somehow inherently good as opposed to measuring policies through a cost-benefit analysis, where we pick the obvious choice when the costs outweigh the benefits and when the benefits outweigh the costs. My rant in a nutshell: This article and the opinions it expresses is a load of crap and I have good reason for believing this.