Wikipedia utilities/Old Page titles to be deleted talk

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Pre December 2001 Talk

  1. Heimatvertriebenen - we don't use this term in English, and it's got its own place in Diaspora and Diaspora studies and we could even add it to Genocide if we want, but it really just doesn't fit, plus it's providing a place to put the views of right-wing German nationalist POV

I'm not convinced this one should be deleted. Anyone want to convince me? - Tim

Hi Tim -- other than the reasons above, what would you like? I took all of the NPOV information from this entry (which was initially repeated in several articles including Prussia, KdF Wilhelm Gustloff, Pommern/Pomerania, and placed in in the context of Diaspora studies. We don't use the term in English, so that it's unlikely anyone will look up Heimatvertriebene. If they look at some of the other articles (where some links to the diaspora stuff should probably be added, once we clean up the badly written pseudohistory that tries to make unsupportable links between Germanic (and often Celtic) tribes of several centuries BC and Germany's (or rather, the Volksdeutsch) right to most of the Baltic and much of Eastern Europe)), they should get a much more relevant look at the whole problem of refugees in postwar society. Please read entries on Franconia, Nuremburg, Prussia, Old Prussian language, Gdansk, Truso, etc., to see where all this comes from.
Please understand that I'm not saying that the issue itself is unimportant, but that it should be treated the same way as we treat other such issues. Even the Holocaust, a sacred cow in much of Western society, is treated contextually in the Wikipedia -- there are links to Genocide and mention of other Genocides. To give this issue its own special place supports the idea that it was somehow more atrocious than, say, the murder of Armenians by the Turks (insert favorite group here). It wasn't. Moreover, this particular string of articles is regularly rewritten to remove any references to how Germans were settled in the areas to begin with -- some of them were actually sent in as "colonists" under the German Empire and the Third Reich. I'll stop ranting now -- I think the information deserves mention in several places, but not its own page. I think many others might agree. J Hofmann Kemp

I might suggest we keep some mention of Heimatvertriebenen. Of course we couldn't call the page that, more like something like German diaspora, but then redirect Heimatvertriebenen to that. Also, the article should note that that is what it is called in German. (Is that what most Germans would call it, or is it just some right-wing propaganda term?) -- SJK

I just wanted to say thanks a lot to Manning and the others who have been keeping on top of bad page titles! --Larry Sanger

Re: The script link, it was a page set up in error by a newcomer who didn't know that copyrighted material was verboten. I think he was copying the way certain source text (i.e., Shakespearean plays) have been put up; in that case, since the source can't be uploaded, I think the page may be useless. The movie itself already has its own page, so I can't picture what would go here.... --Paul Drye

That's a good point. One reason we might simply redirect some of these rather than delete them is that they are perhaps likely candidates for future newbies and trolls, and undoing a redirection is a bit tricky for newcomers. So this keeps them from doing it again.  :-) So, redirecting PORN to Pornography helps to keep the next jerk from doing the same thing again.

However, in many cases, of course, these pages should just be deleted, period. I agree with your reasoning for the star trek link here. -- Jimbo Wales

Ha! And here I was just blaming my suspicious mind for thinking "I wonder if Jimbo redirected PORN because redirects are so confusing to undo".... --Paul Drye

This page is a great idea... --LMS

Muslim language - Can anyone give me a reason to keep this page? (Some people will look on the Internet for 'Muslim language' -- they will find this page, and be cured of their misconception, thus furthering our educational mission. :-) Jimbo Wales

It follows, then, that there should be pages for Christian langauge, Buddhist language, etc. I think that would be silly. - Tim

Don't know, re the above question, but see [1]. --LMS

Maybe we should keep it but rename it Languages of Muslims or Languages used by Muslims -- SJK

A quick recap of the current controversy (by AV):

TimShell wrote:

Do not redirect pages to be deleted. They must be reviewed before they are deleted so people can't just put good page here. Links below should link to the pages to be deleted.

except he wrote that in all caps. Tim, I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but WRITING IN ALL CAPS is extremely impolite behavior. Please reconsider. Moreover, your point is not well thought-out: first, this list hasn't so far been so abused, and secondly, if the page is redirected here, it's trivial to see its previous contents back through the other revisions link, and change it back if necessary.

Tim, please stop deleting things people write without addressing them. It's rude and it drives people away. Thank you!

ManningBartlett wrote a list of pages to be deleted, but later deleted this page and his own personal page because of perceived rudeness on Tim's part. Manning, please reconsider leaving! Here's the list: (left on main page)

Folks, let's please stop this ridiculous edit war!

Desperately, --AV.

Only the personal dispute is very difficult here--the source of the problem is very easily overcome, I'm not sure I see what the difficulty is, here. Tim, an administrator who actually does the deletion, very reasonably asks that articles not be simply redirected. This simply makes it a bit more difficult to check the contents of the alleged page-to-delete. Since he's doing the work, we should defer to him about this. So, rather than redirect them, you could simply delete their contents. Then Tim (or another administrator) can go to that page, make a quick check in the history that it isn't actually a legitimate page, and delete it when he sees that it's really just about my flatulence. So, to move forward, I'm going to move this discussion to a /Talk page, write up a notice of the sort Tim wanted, and beg Manning to come back. --LMS

Should we delete entries which are spelling errors (like Hanse Cronje) instead of redirecting to the correct spelling? It's a nice tool for allowing people who don't know the proper or preferred spelling of an entry to find it. --TheCunctator

This is an interesting case. Perhaps the wrongly spelled page should not be redirected but rather state something like "[Joe X] is a misspelling of [Joe Y]; please jump back and correct the error" - in order to get wikipedia semi-automatically spellchecked? --css

If I write a page and link to Chcago, when I save the page I will notice this is not a link, because I misspelled Chicago. If this page Chcago exists as a redirect to the Chicago page, then it would be harder to notice the misspelling. That's the only reason I can think of for deleting rather than redirecting misspelled pages. - Tim

The perfect answer is to be able to mark entries such as Chcago as misspellings, e.g. #MISSPELLING_OF Chicago, so that we can have our misspelling redirects (useful for browsing), and also either manually or automagically fix entries which include such misspellings (useful for editing). I'll always advocate Better Living Through Technology (instead of through Asceticism). --TheCunctator

On wonderful Old Prussi Land -- to be fair, I think that Helga saw it on an Early Modern German version of a Claudius Ptolemy map...but it's still not valid! J Hofmann Kemp]

Just a comment - after all the controversy that happened with this page, it now appears that it is not even being used for the purpose for which it was created! Some of the pages mentioned on this list have been here for weeks. If contributors are decent enough to give directions to bad pages, it would be nice to see the advice utilised by those with admin powers.

Don't worry, somebody'll get around to it. Is there a rush? --LMS

Should only "real" admins, like LMS & Jimbo &c, delete pages, or can "ordinary" Wikipedians who've been given the admin password do it? -- SJK

To my knowledge, whenever Jimbo has given out the password, he has asked the recipient not to use it to delete pages. I agree with this policy. --LMS

These are still useful as redirects, etc. What Google Likes and Page titles to be deleted has been around long enough that I suspect there are several links to it. And their histories might be valuable or at least useful--since deletion is so final, let's not do so yet. Let's not delete them yet...

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