Doom Wiki talk:Criteria for people articles

This is a draft for the timebeing. Consider it my views on how people articles should be written. Any feedback or criticism is welcome. Fraggle 14:02, 6 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * I've made a few minor changes/clarifications; I'm still not sure how to link to a category properly (instead of accidentally putting the page IN the category) . Bloodshedder 16:04, 6 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Concerns
I'm a little concerned that people who have an inflated opinion of themselves are putting together User articles which, whilst they might meet the criteria (haven't checked thoroughly enough), are pretty scant on information. Naming no names, there are a few user accounts which have edited their own descriptions (note: not User: pages) and scant else.

I would like to know what you think of the proposal that articles about someone are not contributed to by the person in question. I know that sounds pretty radical, and not easy to police. I also know that in many cases, the person is perhaps best versed in what they've done. A solution to the latter might be dumping a list of things which need incorporating into the User article into the Talk page for it.

-- User:Jdowland


 * It's not all that surprising that people want to be immortalised, as it were, in a wiki. But, provided that they meet the criteria and that the information they do provide is factually accurate and not exaggerated in any way, there shouldn't be much of a problem. Other users will almost certainly notice if something that has been submitted doesn't sound right, or isn't suitable for inclusion and will edit/delete accordingly. - DooMAD 21:36, 27 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with DooMAD. In most gaming forums, whenever somebody makes inflated claims in a supposedly "factually accurate" context, for every user that supports him/her there are three who want to bring the posting back down to earth &mdash; so, inadvertently, the community as a whole ends up exercising restraint. Also, considering that Wikipedia does such a good job with NPOV, when there are far too many articles for a small group of admins to make sure that everything is balanced, I can't help thinking that we, with 100 articles per admin, won't let anything get out of hand here. Ryan W 00:15, 29 Sep 2005 (UTC)

for when an article doesn't meet...
I've created the following template :

 ''This person article is not believed to meet the criteria for people articles and shall be deleted pending further discussion. Please voice your opinion on the talk page.''

opinions? -- Jdowland 13:46, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * Does that imply that some admin must agree to search for such entries every once in a while, look at the discussions (if it's been a week or two), and erase the pages where no serious objections have been voiced? If not, what would be the good of a non-admin using this template?   Ryan W 00:22, 29 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * I suppose we need a more formal procedure, outlining precicely who can nominate for deletion and how long things have to be left. -- Jdowland 09:06, 29 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * After looking over an incredibly long deletion protocol and an even more complicated procedure for changing existing protocols, I would make the following suggestion.
 * [a] Change the text of the template to something like, "This article has been nominated for deletion. If you disagree, please voice your opinion on its talk page &mdash; or better yet, improve the article sufficiently that no one wants to delete it.&lt;BR&gt;This article may be deleted at any time, at the discretion of the administrators, starting on [ date ] ."  (Where [ date ] is maybe a week after the template was applied.)  Then it makes a little more sense for any user to be able to apply it.
 * [b] Make it so that applying this template puts the page in a new category, called "Pages marked for deletion" or something.
 * [c] Make it so that nobody except an admin can remove the template once it has been applied (that way, if somebody decides to sprinkle it around at random, the admins will notice sooner rather than later).
 * [d] Add "Review pages marked for deletion" to the "Things to do" list on Entryway.
 * Obviously, totally ridiculous pages will still tend to get deleted right away, and I don't mind that (we have enough admins in any case that they can keep an eye on each other).
 * A better question might be: do people actually use "Things to do" as it is, or are stubs (for example) expanded only when someone notices them on Special:Recentchanges? I am not sure.  I suppose that when we have 10 or 20 times more eager editors, "Things to do" will become more popular.  ;>
 * What do you think?  Ryan W 19:54, 29 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with all of that, except [c] which I can't imagine becoming an issue (the proposed solution is technically impossible with the current software, in any case). - Fredrik 20:54, 29 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * Me too ; and I agree re: point (c). I'll start sorting the templates out :-) -- User:Jdowland
 * Any progress or new bolts of insight on this one yet? (Hmm, I seem to be getting on your case a lot today.  It's not on purpose!   :>    Ryan W 07:18, 17 Jan 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, excuuuse me for trying to make the admins' lives easier. :>   I guess if anyone sees the template applied somewhere where it really doesn't seem to belong, they can look at "Contributions" and see if it's a pattern.  But you're right; we haven't exactly had epidemics of users attacking each other individually (AFAIAA), just recurring spam and the occasional graffito.   Ryan W 23:10, 29 Sep 2005 (UTC)

speedrunners
As I read this policy, all these people could be included. Couldn't they? Ryan W 21:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Inadequacy
I believe the policy spelled out here is inadequate for a number of reasons which I'm going to spell out here using the article's own content as a guideline: Having a policy this poorly spelled out has, in practice, amounted to making who has a person article into a popularity contest. The people nominated for deletion since the fork have consistently been ones who are unpopular/perceived as community trolls, versus being based on hard criteria like their total output or renown (for good or bad reasons). This is not acceptable. It will ultimately lead to accusations that we're an extension of the Doomworld Forums community, in my opinion, and are just pushing the views espoused there onto what is supposed to be an objective collection of facts and history. --Quasar (talk) 17:51, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The person being written up should have done something notable.
 * When does something become notable? Not elaborated.
 * For example, contributed to successfully released projects (including WADs, source ports, editing utilities, and the like), won a well-known tournament, recorded a number of speedruns for Compet-n, etc. If they have not done anything of note in the Doom community, they should not be written up. Playing in a clan or having a forum account on Doomworld does not count.
 * Vague throughout. "Example" suggests is not exhaustive to begin with and leaves it infinitely open to interpretation. What is a "successful" release versus an unsuccessful one? Anyone can upload WADs to /idgames and that constitutes a successful release. Can't go off its star rating on /idgames because that system is corrupt and has been abused to death by the Doomguy2000 and Terry crowds. When's a tournament well known? How many speed demos? One or two? Five hundred?
 * The article should be about their contributions to the Doom community. Information about other interests (eg. "ÜberDooMer likes to play the guitar and play Counterstrike") is not appropriate.
 * Articles meeting this criteria have still been deleted.
 * Unfinished and unreleased mods should not be listed.
 * There can be exceptions to this in the cases of "spectacular failures" that people will remember forever.


 * Hi Quasar. All these criticisms would be 100% valid if people actually read this page and thought about it.  As I understand it, no one does.  It has barely been edited since 2005, so I hope no one is suggesting it reflects our notability discussions over the years.  (When I redrafted the policy outlines in 2010, I made it clear that this page had never gained consensus, but said draft remains unused.)


 * I'm not sure what the next step is &mdash; asking people to post one line to an image vfd is like pulling teeth, so I can't imagine revising and polishing a guideline with implications as broad as this one.   Ryan W (talk) 00:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd suppose it has to be trying to drill down on these points and come to as broad an agreement as can be mustered. That's how things are supposed to work, anyway, via an evolving consensus. If you have any specific suggestions, feel free to post them and I can bounce my own ideas off them. --Quasar (talk) 01:03, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Rehabilitation
This policy was earlier declared out of date and the above discussion remarks on several points as to why it was treated that way. I have updated and revised it to be current with our practices. Please review and comment if desired; I will declare this as official policy and add it to the policy portal template by Friday unless significant discussion takes place opposing it before then. --Quasar (talk) 10:45, 14 July 2015 (CDT)


 * Does this updated policy address the inadequacies that the article once had? Justice ∞ (talk) 19:48, 14 July 2015 (CDT)


 * Not entirely, but I have tried to make it more clear that it is a soft guideline and not a hard policy. I'd be happy to take any suggestions to get it further along in that direction, to avoid the kind of deletionism I was earlier criticizing. --Quasar (talk) 11:29, 15 July 2015 (CDT)


 * It's a significant improvement IMO. I've made small changes for clarity and grammar, hopefully without altering meaning, but I'm not married to them.
 * I don't know which article Justice Infinity refers to, but e.g. this might still have been cloudy &mdash; everyone seemed to agree that a variety of activities could contribute to notability, we just didn't know what quantity of output/attention was "significant", "noteworthy", "an achievement", etc.   Ryan W (talk) 16:15, 16 July 2015 (CDT)


 * Maybe the guideline could use more specific examples of notability? This article is also another example notability that's not specifically covered. Justice ∞ (talk) 17:34, 16 July 2015 (CDT)


 * I have closed the VfD on that article because the nomination was basically invalid when compared against our policies, and it has been unnecessarily open for an excessive amount of time. Just because some people object to the qualities or type of your work doesn't mean we aren't going to follow the rules. I did not close it earlier because I expected "keep" consensus to develop, but it was instead ignored by the rest of our users. --Quasar (talk) 10:20, 17 July 2015 (CDT)