This sort of behavior is not acceptable on Wikipedia (at least, according to everyone who comments on ridiculous AfD stories). As for teaching him a lesson: he was caught live. The harshness of the lesson was proportional to the amount of rage such behavior induce.

Regardless, I misunderstood Wikipedia policy and I apologize to those I have offended. I honestly didn't think a couple of deletion discussions was so grave, and I ask that those who abhor me so try to imagine what it's like to make a mistake and have it go viral.

I'll allow that you might have been in the right on all of your AfD flags, under some interpretation of WP policies. But I think you were wrong to do what amounts to jabbing a stick into a hornet's nest, and then wonder why you're getting stung. You stuck a %!#@ng stick into a hornet's nest, that's why.

In the case of Alice ML, it was just you and SarekOfVulcan (the admin who closed the discussion and deleted the article). Every single vote in the discussion was to keep. I'm not going to attribute false motivations to your actions as I have no idea what your actual motivation was (care to fill us in with something other than "it is consistent with WP policy"?).

As an aside, I agree that deletion was appropriate for a number of the stub articles; they had been stubs for a long time and didn't contain anything beyond "this language exists". Such articles didn't add anything to Wikipedia. Articles on languages like Alice, Nemerle and Joy might need improvement, but probably shouldn't be summarily removed.

If I go and nominate "Ball-peen hammer" for deletion, I'm probably going to get [called] ignorant in the AfD discussion. That doesn't mean that "Ball-peen hammer" should then be deleted.

I'm very sorry, but this is what they call "Taking things too personally." You can say that "Faux," my JS framework, is not notable. How is this an insult to me? You can say that I'm not notable. Again, how is this an insult to me?

"Notable" is not a synonym for "worthwhile," it's related to the word "popular." Saying that a language doesn't meet Wikipedia's guidelines is not a statement about the language's fans, users, or authors. It's a statement about a particular test you apply by searching the world's existing information storehouse for mentions of the subject.

(Not to have the debate implied by my question here -- but that's the thought process, and I don't think it's unreasonable.)

The notability guidelines, as you can grasp from the name, speak to whether something has been noted, not whether it is useful. Example: My last bike used something called a Hammerschmidt crank. It was a two-speed planetary gear device that behaved like a two chainring front crank, but had all the mechanics inside a drum.

It is very useful, was featured on many OEM bicycles, and people love them. There is no Wikipedia page for it right now, just a mention on the Crankset page.

Is the Hammerchmidt notable? If we do a search, we find reviews, the manufacturer's page, and classified ads for them. It isn't notable yet by Wikipedia's rules. If you think it ought to be notable, your issue is with the rules, not with their application.

Now, I just discussed Hammerschmidt cranks and their notability or lack of same. Nothing I said says anything about their manufacturer, distributors, users, reviewers... The damn things are useful and I admire the people who make them and sell them. But once we grasp that useful != notable, we grasp that a statement about their notability != a statement about their users or inventors.

The presence of an ad hominem does not make the rest of a comment worthless.

Well, no, it isn't. Many things are notable that are not "popular", or even common. Leprosy, flesh-eating bacteria, progeria, Jeffrey Dahmer.

There's also a vicious cycle here: the existence of an article on Wikipedia may lead people to not post related articles elsewhere on the web, instead relying on the WP article. That may lead in turn to the article's subject being considered insufficiently notable.

And, well, ball-peen hammers are quite notable. They probably have quite a few more practicing users than many of the languages this guy nominated. The problem with someone saying, "ball peen hammers aren't notable," is not that the creator of ball peen hammers might feel insulted. The problem is that the statement is incorrect.

I disagree, that sort of behavior is absolutely par-for-the-course in almost every dealing I've seen with WP's self-selected editor class.

Let's consider the logic of that statement by taking a different example. A young child is in a shop and is told by its parent it cannot have some candy. Young child "I want candy! I want candy!". The child becomes enraged, more and more enraged, by the behavior of the parent. Should the child now teach the parent a harsh lesson? Since the parent's behavior has induced a great deal of rage a very harsh lesson seems entirely appropriate.

I do not approve the harshness that we saw tonight, but it is easily understandable.

I can't imagine any rational person holding that viewpoint, and so in discussion with a rational person, I'd be very unlikely to argue against it without first verifying that they're actually making that claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules

Chris seems to be really decent. even if he had a lapse in judgement, he embraces pleasant discussion. i'm embarrassed by the juvenille response: the meanness most of all, but also the unwillingness to see someone else's perspective or view efforts as a collaboration rather than a fight.

if a teammate messes up, you help them, you don't shoot them down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Christopher_Monsanto

Lesson not learned. He's still seeking self-justification for removing knowledge from the public sphere. It's almost 1984-esque.

If a teammate (WP editor) deliberately sabotages the team (by deleting useful information instead of creating it), what do you do then?

When he said "fixing" I don't get the feeling _he_ thinks it's broken but rather is acknowledging other people's take (as evidence) and lead him to believe that there could be room for improvement.

To me this shows that he believes things are ok, but he would agree to any changes if the community thought changes were necessary. That's quite reasonable to me.

That's quite different from the allegation. (That he thought they were wrong but just followed the guidelines anyway. Or have I missed another quote where the allegation is true?

I think such people are indeed very necessary for the world to function (or we'd only have corruption and worse) and there's no reason to be annoyed about them.

Or to put it another way: Don't hate the player. Hate the game.

(But: Exceptions do apply.)

Football referees don't have the flexibility or responsibility to alter the rules of the game. They have one and only one duty: to make their calls in accordance with the rules of football as closely as they can.

Wikipedia does not operate under football rules. The fifth pillar of Wikipedia is "Wikipedia does not have firm rules." Editors should enforce the spirit of the rule, even if the letter says otherwise. This is the diametrical opposite approach of football. Someone with a "football referee" attitude is decidedly inappropriate for the role of Wikipedia editor.

1) Those who have the power to delete the articles perhaps weren't knowledgeable enough to make a judgement, or for some other reason gave too much weight to his decisions, and the AfD process didn't provide (enough time, a good environment) for reasonable discussion, and so he had more control over the process than he should have. Many seem to believe he was willfully taking advantage of that position.

2) His tone gave the impression that he wasn't taking the situation seriously. I really get the impression that people were upset about his attitude, maybe even more than his actions, but completely failed to articulate that, at least in a civilized and constructive way.

I'm not at all surprised that he was treated as if he was trolling, but I do agree that we should be better than that, and I have that much more respect for those who tried to mediate.

And the open discussion clearly showed a consensus not to delete the articles.

The process, even if followed, is broken. This debacle is a joke.

Chris should have edited the articles, or ignored them, instead he flagged them for deletion. He positively asserted that they did not belong in wikipedia. None of the respondents to the AfD agreed with him. Yet they were deleted. Semantically, flagging them as AfD was the same as deleting them since that was the outcome in every case.

I agree that he doesn't deserve the entirety of the blame, the horrendously broken editorial process of Wikipedia does. It's so bad that it's virtually impossible to become a new contributor to wikipedia in any meaningful way without become immediately embroiled in WP's editorial shenanigans.

"The best way to know you have a mind is to change it"!