A place for miscellaneous stuff.
==How to patrol new pages==
Don't just automatically slap a delete tag on something, just because the content is junk. Some things could be become a useful redirect, if there's an appropriate article that already exists. Redirects are cheap. Sometimes a tiny bit of research (a quick google) can tell you what something's about.
==Having time for sysop chores==
Opposing an adminship on the grounds of the person not having sufficient time for sysop chores is silly and pointless. We're all volunteers here; we have no right o demand a certain level of contribution from anyone. A person doing RC patrol for 20 minutes a week is better than not having them at all, right? A trusted editor is a trusted editor; ''any'' amount of time they have to contribute to the project is appreciated.
==Cabal==
There is no cabal. We also don't really want people ''thinking'' there is, either. For this reason, ideally we should go out of our way to avoid the appearance of a cabal. Failing that, we should ''at least'' not go out of our way to give the appearance of a cabal. I would have thought this was obvious.
Related to this is the idea of a "two-class society". Many editors complain that this is the case on wikipedia, with admins doing whatever the hell they want while the "regular editors" are held to the rules. I don't see that this is particularly the case, altho I do quite often see surprisingly bad behavior from admins. I think we need to make a serious effort to de-emphasize the divide between admins and non-admins. We're all just editors.
==Newbies==
Maybe this already exists somewhere. There needs to be a welcome page for newbies that explains that even though ''anybody can edit'' Wikipedia, it doesn't really mean ''anybody can put anything in it''. Some kind of newbie-friendly introduction to the notions of verifiability and NOR is needed.
==Leet==
Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man or something, but IMO any edits made to any page using L33t-speak should be instantly reverted by anyone who sees them. ''Citation needed''
==Afd/Drv==
Any random person in the world can come along and blank a page or replace its content with "DICK CHENEY IS SATAN!!!!". We accept this. We depend on the wiki process to undo such vandalism. Why, then, do we attach bizarre rituals to deletion and undeletion?
==Bloc voting==
"Voting" (or otherwise wiki-ing) in a bloc is supremely stupid. People should not support their wiki-friends because they like the person. Individual issues on content should be decided ''on their own merits'', not because your friend wants it a certain way. Good, responsible editors should be able to disagree strongly on content issues without it becoming a personal problem. Taking content issues personally is a huge cause of wiki-stress.
==Out of Band communication considered harmful==
Maybe there ''is'' a cabal. Or rather, probably a handful of them. We should not have "wiki-friends". I mean, we should be friendly to other editors, but we should never give someone support on something as a personal favor. Every situation should be considered entirely on its own merits.
==Blogs==
Blogs, and other internet crap in general, are overrepresented on Wikipedia. We often disregard WP:V when it comes to such things, and allow the website itself to be used as a primary source, with no secondary sources at all. Individual flash cartoons and videos having their own articles is rather silly. If a reasonable number of third-party sources aren't talking about a given blog or website, it's a good indication it shouldn't have an article.
==ICS==
Between "Ignore All Rules" and "Use Common Sense", I think some people got confused. The idea is ''not'' "Ignore Common Sense", despite this being an apparently popular thing to do.
==Provenance==
I don't care if Satan himself suggests a good edit. A good edit is a good edit. (This statement is not intended to suggest that I literally believe in Satan.)
==Afds==
Afds seem increasingly incapable of producing consensus. Unfortunately, this often means that verifiability gets put into a corner and forgotten. Try Afd'ing an trivial politician or political group, and editors will come out of the woodwork claiming bias. The arguments seem to be increasingly "this person is important because..." and verifiability be damned.
==Weight of editors==
Should editors's "votes" or arguments be given more weight based on how long they've been around? Absolutely not. (However, very new editors who show up in unlikely places are rightly seen as suspicious.) But, I see nothing wrong with weighing people's "votes" based on the strength of their arguments. Of course, this is very subjective.
==Verifiability==
Can things verify themselves? For example, some would argue that a website article is verifiable as long as the site exists, because a reader can look at the site to verify the article. Books are treated like this sometimes too.
However, there's a problem. What if I write about some local bar, and include the address? Anyone could show up there and verify that there's a bar there, right? Well, going there yourself would be "original research", would it not? My opinion so far is that the subject of an article can never be considered verification of itself. If no one has written about the bar, it's unverifiable, even if it very clearly exists at a known location. If this is true for bars, would it not be true for websites?
==Significance==
I'm starting to believe that importance is a reasonable requirement, in addition to verifiability. Many think differently. If we had better standards for verifiability, I might think differently. But, considering a personal website a source for purposes of verifiability sometimes happens. This, to me, means we should ask for significance in addition to "mere" verifiability. Of course, if we had higher standards and actually required a number of reliable sources before a thing was considered verifiable, I would feel differently.
More thoughts on this:
Importance is important, I think. If verifiability were the only criteria, my car, my girlfriend, my church, my employer(s), my band(s), any one of a few schools I attended, and probably several other things related to me might all have articles about them. Then, I could easily assert that with so many important connections, I should have an article too, right? Some of the things listed above already have articles about them, and I bet at least a couple more of them could have articles and enough verifiability could be asserted that they would survive. I'm not sure that such artciles hurt much of anything, if they're neutral and verifiable, but this sort of thing sure does open up the door for vanity.
==Notability is a religious issue==
We should understand that, just like the FSM, some people believe in notability, and some do not. We are all obliged, however, to believe in (or at least observe) verifiability.
==Why Afd/Drv is bad==
It produces a terrible environment for productive discussion. Cases that are obvious deletes don't need it, and cases that will be controversial would be better off being discussed on the talk page, with no particular time limit. There are few cases I can think of where current Afd rituals actually make sense.
=="Black" v "white"==
I'm rather dismayed at the apparently "black v white" worldview that some people seem to have. Wikipedia does not have "black articles" or "white articles". There are only "articles". This is an encyclopedia, not a forum for racism. Everyone needs to understand that while editors with opinions are most welcome (we'd have no editors otherwise), using Wikipedia to push your opinions is ''not'' welcome.
==Binary Afd==
Afd should not be seen as binary, where everything is a "keep" (the article is just fine as it is!) or "delete" (everything is unsalvagable crap). If deletion discussions were on articelt alk pages nistead of Afd pages, maybe people wouldn't see it as binary. Sometimes the topic is encyclopedic but the article is bad. Binary Afd has no way of dealnig with such things.