Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2020_April_14 References

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14 April 2020

Corona in X – Bundle. I think a straight merged relist of both discussions would be a bit muddy, so what I am going to do is start a fresh discussion with all current "Corona in X" redirects, and ping all participants from both discussions. -- Tavix ^(
talk) 13:16, 24 April 2020 (UTC) reply

The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.

This DRV is a bit unusual, in that I am not asking for a review of the closer's decision (in fact I am one of the closers), but rather a review of the consensus formed in two of the discussions involved because they are inconsistent with each other. I recently closed an RfD which had a clear consensus for keeping "Corona in X" style redirects, despite a previous RfD being closed by BDD with a clear consensus to delete. I don't really care what happens, as long as we maintain consistency (or plausible arguments are presented as to why consistency should not be maintained). King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:06, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply

I think that the disparity in results can be explained as a result of different editors participating in either discussion. While there were some edge cases, for the most part all editors, whether voting for keep or delete, intended their vote to apply to the entire class of Corona in X redirects, rather than one batch versus the other. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:12, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Yes, which is why we need to bring everyone together for one big discussion. This result cannot stand. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:13, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Overturn deletions Although DRV is not supposed to be for relitigating the XFD, we really have no choice here. Both closures interpreted consensus correctly, yet those consensuses are clearly inconsistent with each other. In such a case, we do need to relitigate the RfDs to determine which one reached the correct conclusion. In this case, I think it was the one that was closed as keep. As others have mentioned, these redirects are cheap and useful, and it's really implausible to suggest they could refer to anything else. If there is another vaguely plausible target (someone suggested Corona, California as a stretch for the US one) that can be indicated by a hatnote, since this is clearly the most plausible target. Smartyllama ( talk) 19:29, 14 April 2020 (UTC) Changing !vote to Bundle all and relist more as a procedural thing than anything else, to get it to the proper venue. Smartyllama ( talk) 17:21, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply

I'm still not buying that the key piece of evidence raised in the keep argument in the discussion, the high pageview count for these redirects, is actually indicative of anything. If the data was from searches for the term before the redirects were created then I would agree that it's evidence that they are useful, but right now we're in a situation where these redirects are crowding out all of the redirects and articles with the correct titles. I think that crowding out the more correct search terms is a detriment to our readers beyond the question of whether the redirects are cheap or plausible. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:39, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply

bundle all and relist I don't think DRV is the right place for this. I'd say group them all and list at RfD. Consistency isn't required, but it is nice. I'm personally mixed on this. My understanding is there is some evidence the redirects are used, but I suspect in 5 years it's unlikely people will all just assume that the redirect goes to where it does. Hobit ( talk) 21:09, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Serious question: Why does it matter if we're inconsistent? Wikipedia specifically chooses to be inconsistent in deletion decisions: that's literally what WP:OCE means.— S Marshall T/ C 21:26, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply
A frequent misconception of WP:OCE is that inconsistency should be allowed to happen for no good reason. Rather, the point of OCE is that you shouldn't make arguments based on another case even though there are substantive differences between the two. But here there is no difference between the two batches other than the !voters who happen to show up. We can't be making decisions simply by luck of the draw, of which pages get nominated in which batch and which !voters show up to each discussion. Therefore, consistency is a valid argument in deletion discussions that must be refuted by an explanation of why the cases are not comparable (which is usually easy to do in "what about X" AfD discussions). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:07, 14 April 2020 (UTC) reply
I'm afraid that don't agree that it's a misconception. I think inconsistency is specifically allowed even where there aren't substantive differences between cases, and we specifically say so, a couple of paragraphs below OCE (at WP:AON).
I'm entirely sympathetic to what you saying here: I agree that our decisions should be predictable and consistent. The fact that they aren't consistent is a matter that I've found quite difficult in the past. But we absolutely do make decisions by the luck of the draw and based on the !voters who happen to show up. We totally do. And we have our John Pack Lamberts who usually vote to delete and our Andy Dingleys who usually vote to keep, and sometimes, the JPLs outnumber the ADs and sometimes it's the other way around.
This is a feature of the way we make decisions, and what you're seeing is how Wikipedia looks to a complete newbie.
I also think that Wikipedia as a community hasn't decided how to respond to COVID-19. We probably need a great big centralized discussion on how to handle it, and if we'd had that we'd have some principles to inform our decisions.
But if I was Supreme Dictator of Wikipedia we'd have kept all those redirects, because how the hell is deleting them supposed to help anyone? Therefore if the closer of this DRV finds that inconsistency is a factor in deletion decisions, then they should understand my !vote as an "overturn all to keep".— S Marshall T/ C 00:17, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
I think the difference between this case and your JPL/AD example is that when participants in these two RfDs were not !voting to keep or delete specific redirects; they clearly intended for their rationale to apply to all "Corona in X" type articles. In the spirit of WP:NOTAVOTE, we can pretend like all the participants in the first discussion also participated in the second discussion and vice versa. While you might be able to predict with high confidence how certain AfD participants will !vote, you can't literally copy-paste their rationale like you can here. You can think of a mass deletion nomination of a cleanly defined set as a less WP:BURO version of proposing a new WP:CSD criteria: if consensus is achieved, then everything in the category becomes delete-on-sight. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:39, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
I'm also a bit concerned that inconsistent decisions seem to matter when they're raised by someone with a signature we recognize, but aren't an issue at all when they're raised by someone who registered their account the week before last.— S Marshall T/ C 16:13, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
I think that's a fair concern. That said, these two, more than almost any discussion I've seen, really do stand at odds with each other. There is nothing I can see about the specific redirects in any of the discussions. And in this case, we have a fairly simple solution--send it back to RfD to get a consistent answer. I think I'd have !voted the same way no matter who brought this forward. Hobit ( talk) 15:21, 16 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Relist All - My first thought was to Endorse the more recent Keep closure and Overturn the less recent Delete closure as consensus can change, but on further thinking the best answer is to Relist All, in a bundle, and possibly request Centralized Discussion. Robert McClenon ( talk) 00:05, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Bundle all and relist. Consistency is important. Not absolute, but important. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 02:49, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
I'm on the undelete, bundle, and relist train as well. This is not an instance where we should ignore inconsistent closes, as the deleted and kept redirects are functional equivalents. SportingFlyer T· C 03:19, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Bundle and relist (I'm the delete closer.) I guess I'll just echo others and say that while consistency is valuable, it's not a requirement. Let's give it another shot, keeping in mind there's a possibility that there will be some sort of split decision, and that that's ok. -- BDD ( talk) 14:11, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Bundle and relist- Consistency, although not mandatory, would be good. And a centralised discussion would be better than, say, picking one of the AfDs to nullify arbitrarily. That would be insulting and annoying to all the participants. Reyk _YO! 17:21, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Bundle and relist the reason we aren't usually keen on arguments that something should be kept/deleted because something else was deleted/kept is that there may well be differences between the two cases. Here there are none, the issues are exactly the same, and it makes sense to deal with them in the same discussion. Hut 8.5 17:49, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply
Close this futile discussion. What will happen to redirects that have not been previously considered like Corona in America (or if it is later sent to RFD)? What will happen in a month's time if I create Corona in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines? We'd need three teams of three admins following a centrally advertised RFC to sort it all out. Thincat ( talk) 21:03, 15 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Eh, we'd have pretty good precedent to fall back on in that situation if we go with the bundle and relist option. Not a slippery slope, and, arguendo, even if it is, it's not a very important slope. SportingFlyer T· C 04:06, 19 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Indeed. The first RfD failed to achieve precedent, as the second RfD clearly showed. However, with all the attention it's getting now, third time's the charm... honestly I expect any future cases to just cite precedent and the closer to disregard any comments that refuse to drop the WP:STICK, whichever direction it may be in. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:29, 19 April 2020 (UTC) reply

The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.