Proposals for closing projects/Radical cleanup of Volapük Wikipedia

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The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived: result:keep. MF-Warburg 14:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I propose to close this discussion within 7 days from, i.e. on 28. January, and to announce the result then. --MF-Warburg 15:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Contents

This is not a request about closing the Volapük Wikipedia. This is a request about deleting all minor bot generated articles in Volapük Wikipedia and moving it back to the Wikimedia Incubator.

Detailed rationale:

  • There had been a request closing Volapük Wikipedia, which has resulted in a keep decission for the time being out of various reasons such as the historical impact of Volapük.
  • Mainly people were simply upset by the massive robot generated articles (more than 100'000 in a very short time frame) of the virtual single Volapük Wikipedia contributor Smeira and were angry about a flood of new mainly useless interwiki links in their Wikipedias, cheating of edit statistics compared to their non-primarily bot generated Wikipedias, abuse of Wikimedia ressources, no use of the bot articles for interested readers and many more (see the old closing proposal for more points). Furthermore a Wikipedia driven by a single person is not in agreement with our principles such as the Neutral point of view.
  • In contrast to every other Wikipedia that used bot generated articles to a larger extent, almost 100% of Volapük Wikipedia content (page numbers and bytes) were generated by a bot and therefore almost every article contains the same sentences with just different numbers. Wikipedia is not a database of uniform entries (such as numbers). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which predominantly incorporates summary texts describing the unique features of its items in indvidual texts.
  • The Lombard Wikipedia had among other things a similar problem with bot generated articles (and therefore also had a request closing it). All minor bot generated articles of Lombard Wikipedia were deleted in order to make room for a healthy Lombard Wikipedia (the number of articles therefore dropped from 117'000 to 23'000).

I therefore ask for adminship rights in Volapük Wikipedia or any other appropriate measure in order to remove the articles from Volapük Wikipedia, which were not written or substantially expanded by humans. Furthermore I ask to move Volapük Wikipedia to the Wikimedia Incubator until it has a steady community of contributors. e I think this is a fair and balanced request, which should be adapted to similar cases in future if it works out. Arnomane 22:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Support request

  1. Support. Arnomane 22:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
    May I ask why you don't want to close it, but want to move it to the Incubator? It's a little bit ... --OosWesThoesBes 11:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    ...to small in real encyclopedic size and too small in community (see above I answered this prior to your question in my request). Arnomane 11:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    I hope you have considered MF-Warburg's and Slomox's points below. There are thousands of human-created stubs on vo.wp that you presumably would not delete. The final size would still be too big for the incubator (where the average project has only a few tens of articles). How do you propose to solve the problems MF-Warburg mentions? --Smeira 00:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    ...exaggerated, since you haven't even discussed this question within the vo.wp community itself (you, Arnomane, haven't addressed this question yet). --Smeira 12:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  2. Support Petar Marjanovic 01:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  3. Support DaB. 03:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC) Fewer then 3% of edits are made by humans the last 30 days
    Note that 95% of these edits improved quality by correcting erros, adding new information, etc. --Smeira 12:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  4. Support Ureinwohner 10:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  5. Support --Aphaia 11:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  6. Support --APPER 11:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  7. Support Liesel 11:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  8. Support, but better close Spampedia altogether. Fossa?! 15:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    The arguments you mentioned in the closure proposal were answered. Would you happen to have anything new to add -- other than offending labels like Spampedia? --Smeira 01:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    I didn't even vote in the closure proposal, as it appeared futile to do so, let alone put forth some arguments. The flooding of Volapuek-Interwikis is certainly not my high priority amelioration project. So, Death to Volapuek will do for now as my argument. Fossa?! 14:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    I didn't say you voted in the closure proposal, I merely said the arguments you mentioned there had been answered. It's good that you've come out of the closet as a Volapük hater. That makes it easier to guess the kind of arguments you probably have. You're right: better not mention them. Have a good time working on the other items of your priorities list! --Smeira 23:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Fossa please consider that your strong words aren't exactly a help for this request. Arnomane 02:39, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  9. Support, or even better close vo-WP. Chaddy 22:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    A comment: someone with this username (Chaddy) has just vandalized five pages on vo.wp (check the dif links from his "contributions" page here). Do you happen to be the same person? If so, you must be aware that this is not appropriate behavior. As for closing: do you happen to have any good arguments? Please take into account the answers given in the discussion of the closure proposal. --Smeira 01:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    I did not vandalize, I only proposed these articles for speedy deletion (e. g. [1]). This isn´t vandalism. But your removal of this requests without any comment (e. g. [2]) is. And that you have blocked my account after that is abuse of your admin rights. I did not want to discuss about this here, but after your comment I feel impelled to comment about this topic too.
    I discuss you case below, Chaddy. Considering the occurrence of cases of real vandalism that started exactly like yours (see the proposal for closure for further documentation), I think my mistake is understandable. Now your account has been deblocked, you are a full member of the Volapük community, and you can start helping us make it a better project. There's a lot of work to do, and we sure could use some help. That's why you opened the account, isn't it? --Smeira 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    @555: Stop spamming, please. Chaddy 16:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    You have the right to vote, I have the right to know why you have voted for deletion, sorry. 555 16:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    I agree with 555. Arguments, please! --Smeira 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    And what did that IP wrong? Achates 21:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Oh, was that you? Same mistake here; read the description of Chaddy's case in the section about it below. When I read the comment, I immediately thought I had yet another de.wp vandal (there were tens of them during the closure proposal; I was really surprised with the level of aggressivity these people had). If you look at that page, you'll see that I immediately realized my mistake and restored the interwiki link (and even added a picture). --Smeira 00:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Does that really matter? It seems to me, that your half-baked vo-policy is "Germans are bad", isn't it? Cos you act that way... :-( Achates 05:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    No, Achates. Actually we have German contributors as well. Smeira behaved that way because of the edit summary that you (was it you?) wrote which was, let's admit it, a not very nice one. True that he didn't realize it was a good edit at first but he promptly realized it and restored it. Malafaya 10:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Precisely, Malafaya. Here's an example: consider the edits of User Zifs, all also about links to German Gemeinde: none of them has been reverted, despite the fact that he was German. There were many other anynonymous edits on German Gemeinde (presumably also by Germans) who corrected details and were not reverted (here's an example; notice that this anonymous user corrected the population figure). For an example of my welcome to another German -- note that I was polite to him, even though he had voted in favor of the closure proposal, and is here now voting in favor of this proposal -- see vo:Gebanibespik:Liesel). So, there is no anti-German policy at vo.wp, even though it is true that most vandals on vo.wp come from de.wp (not all, of course; there are vandals from other places too.vo:User:St. Anger started by vandalizing my home page, then had a discussion with me, calmed down, and became a normal user. He lives in Israel.) It looks to me like you're trying to invent a discrimination case against me, and used the provocation of that IP-address (I think I can safely say the edit comment was a provocation?). If this is the case, it does matter whether or not you are that IP-address, don't you think? If you are, then you behaved improperly, and with bad intentions. --83.85.142.49 11:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC) --That was me: Smeira 11:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  10. very strong support (if not close). This language has 20 (sic!) speakers - not only natives and had less than 10 popular years between 1880 and 1890. There is not even a small use ("market") for such a WP version (not comparable with "dead languages", which have _way more_ speakers) and it's a private project of a far to small community to have even a small chance to be NPOV (Volapük has _20_ speakers, out of which only a part will be WP users, I guess. Compare: Klingon has 16.). In short: make this a Wikia-Project at most. --TheK 23:01, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    You're confusing this with a proposal for closure; since this Wikipedia will still exist regardless of the result of this vote, why are talking about "market" and making comparisons to dead languages and Klingon? But since you want to discuss the viability of Volapük instead of this proposal... Can you name the number of speakers of Old English (the Englisc Wikipedia), which you implicitly considered worthy of keeping unchanged? There are no native speakers of Volapük, but the "dead languages" that you say have _way more_ speakers also have no native speakers. How are they better than Volapük as a language? Private project: again, how many contributors does the Old English Wikipedia have? Haven't you noticed that most of the WF projects (there are so many in small languages) have very small communities, with the same POV problem you mention? Again, how is Volapük worse? And, about POV: can you mention any page on vo.wp, article or even talk page, where this potential problem -- NPOV -- is exemplified? Is this more of a "theoretical threat" that's not really real in the case of vo.wp? --Smeira 01:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  11. support --Histo 00:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  12. Support Too many articles for such unpopular language. Most articles aren't necessary for this language.--Certh 04:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  13. support --Hillock65 05:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  14. Support. As I stated in the closing request, I consider hundreds of thousands of practically useless interwiki edits in all WMF projects the biggest problem with this project. Note that this was not a side effect: these interwikis seem to be the main goal of the bot owner, and the rationale behind is simple: maybe some people will notice and will join Volapük Wikipedia community. This idea of attracting maybe a couple of new users with millions edits in WMF projects is exactly what makes this strategy a spam ∴ Alex Smotrov 06:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Actually, Sasha, I had never thought about interwikis (as I made clear in the discussion of the closure proposal); I was thinking more in terms of the List of Wikipedias at Meta. It sincerely never occurred at me that someone would click on an interwiki link to Volapük just out of curiosity... There's no "maybe"; new active contributors have joined, actually. A question: why are interwiki edits useless? Because the vo.wp articles are stubs? But think: most interwiki links are to stubs, even those that are not to vo.wp. If you don't believe me, get any article with lots of interwiki links from ru.wp and then click on all the interwiki links that you see there: most of them are to small projects, where the articles are usually short or stubs. The real truth is: There are millions of short or stub-like articles in all Wikipedias, and most interwiki links are to them. If I had to guess, I'd say links to Volapük stubs are less than 10% of the total; en.wp, fr.wp, pl.wp have a lot more stubs than vo.wp, and are responsible for most of the interwiki links to stubs -- or even to bot-stubs, since there are more bot-stubs outside of vo.wp than inside of it. Would you like to check the numbers? (And there is of course the question of why you think interwiki links to stubs are useless -- what's the reason?) --Smeira 00:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  15. Support --Dapeteばか 07:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  16. Support Yann 14:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Support --Cometstyles 15:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Well the Proposal is about deleting all minor bot generated articles in Volapük Wikipedia and moving it back to the Wikimedia Incubator to which I agree to because its very similar to the recent clean-up of the Lombard Wikipedia where thousands of articles which were created by bots were deleted and the mess taken care of..--Cometstyles 17:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    A proposal in the terms of Slomox (see below) is acceptable. Even with 1 or 2 active users, Lombard Wiki did not move to Incubator. Moving it there means losing all the 'community work' (non-articles) and rewriting all that part from scratch (How would it be if all those support pages in en.wiki suddenly had to be rewritten?). Moreover, why would it be in the Incubator? vo.wiki has enough community to stay as a Wikipedia (remember there are projects accepted with just 2 participants; Volapük has at least that). As this proposal is, it's worse than closure because it will have the same effect (shutdown and moving to Incubator) but at the expense of losing most articles which wouldn't happen with simple closure. Malafaya 18:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Yes, I agree with Malafaya. The differences between this proposal and the Lombard one, in my opinion, are:
    a. bot-stubs were a smaller problem for lmo.wp, and "the" problem for vo.wp;
    b. The transfer-to-incubator part makes this proposal equivalent to closure, because of the technical problems that MF-Warburg mentions below; in the lmo.wp case, the closure was more clearly stated.
    c. some of the supporters of the Lombard closure proposal were from lmo.wp and were actually interested in improving the quality of lmo.wp (they are right now working on that there); none of the supporters here has ever done anything to help vo.wp, and even Arnomane, the proposer, does not seem to want to do anything positive to improve vo.wp -- at least s/he made no propositions other than deleting stubs. I don't think anybody here, supporter or opposer, really thinks Arnomane's proposal will do anything to improve vo.wp. --Smeira 23:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  17. Support Achates 21:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  18. Support --Jeroenvrp 03:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  19. Support. Projects of questionable legitimacy need to be kept on a tighter leash. -- Visviva 10:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  20. Support --Meldor 19:02, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  21. Support. Any speaker of Volapük can speak at least one other language with a real speaker base. I can't see why a group of 20 or so people are granted the privilege of having a Wikipedia just for themselves. The fact that Smeira is the only user in Volapük Wikipedia and that most of its articles are bot-written just gives further evidence that Volapük Wiki is utterly useless. Bring Volapük back to the incubator and let it try to grow - fair and square. -- Leptictidium 19:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Hi again Leptictidium. As I said on your talk page, there may be reasons for Wikipedias for small communities (see also the appropriate sections in the first closure proposal). But this is not so important: if this proposal is not about whether or not Volapük should have a Wikipedia, but merely about whether or not stubs should be deleted, then your reason is beside the point (i.e. you're arguing that vo.wp shouldn't exist, since it has too few speakers, and this is not the point of this proposal, as Arnomane made clear in the first sentence of his rationale). --Smeira 03:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
    Hello Smeira. I am arguing that vo.wp shouldn't exist in its present state, but that it should be given a chance to improve. And I think Arnomane's proposal is a good chance and way of improving. -- Leptictidium 13:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  22. Support. It's the perfect road for this problem.--Carles 19:43, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  23. Support--Dúnadan 22:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  24. Support deleting the articles generated by a bot. Otherwise the project can continue to create high quality content. --Jannex 01:47, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
    Please be aware that by voting "support" you're voting in the proposal as a whole: deletion of articles AND move to Incubator. Malafaya 01:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
    I think all this disgusting votation could be avoided if mass-created bot stubs would be deleted, as happened in lombard wikipedia, but it should come as a personal initiative from the administradors in Volapük, after seeing how it is rarifying the whole Wikimedia community. Even Jimbo Wales has asked it not to appear on the List of Wikipedias classification. --Meldor 15:39, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  25. Support. --Remulazz 08:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC) I don't want to see every bot article deleted. I just think that the ratio bot articles/total articles should be kept quite low, if possible much less than 1, and not, like vo.wiki and the former lmo.wiki, equal to 50, 100, 200, etc... --Remulazz 14:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC) No. I have just read what Warburg wrote below. Moving to incubator is too heavy, and I think that wo.wp doesn't deserve that. But I would like to point out that bots must be used cum grano salis, and not used to inflate the number of articles beyond the environmental limit. My vote is suspended. --Remulazz 14:40, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  26. Support --Reinhard 17:45, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  27. Support --RR 00:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  28. Support --Thialfi 02:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  29. Support --Kawana 21:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  30. Support. efforts like that make more sense in other wiki-projects - even for bots! --ulli purwin 13:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
  31. Support --Sailko 15:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
  32. very strong support (if not close). -- Fruggo 23:17, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
  33. Support Remove all articles which are only bot-generated --Lou Crazy 04:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
  34. I Support cleaning vo.wp up, since I agree that it current position is artificially inflated and is bad for the WP image. On the other hand, I strongly Oppose closing the project or moving it to the Incubator. Even if we delete all bot-generated articles, still the number of remaining articles considerably exceeds these on smaller wikipedias, the language is real (though artificial), and the community is interested in continuing editing the project. In addition to the arguments below that moving it to the incubator is technically impossible, I would like to add that with the current policy of opening new projects vo.wp will never have a chance of getting out of the incubator again. If the majority (not me) is against the existence of the project, it should be closed as ru-sib, not moved to the incubator. --Yaroslav Blanter 20:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
    But couldn't it be that the 'bad effect' on wp image comes actually from believing the number-of-article parameters measures quality? It's like measuring the surface of a rectangle by the length of one of its sizes: it's clearly insufficient. Doesn't vo.wp rather show that number of articles is not a good measure of quality, and that it should be replaced by something else (see e.g. the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles)? After all, Wikipedia is not the Olympic Games. Why persist in using a flawed quality parameter when there are better ones available? --Smeira 22:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
    Because the "bad effect" is not on us, users with some experience and possibly administrators in some of the Wikipedia projects, but on media and on possible new users. Everybody gets to the list of wikipedias pages, finds vo on position 20 and says "What a junk this wikipedia is". Not on the level of Seigenthaler controversy, but still. And unless we want to launch a big-scale media campaign explaining that the number of articles is not the same as quality it is much better to downgrade vo.wp to its natural size.--Yaroslav Blanter 08:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
    I have to disagree. Wanting to keep a bad parameter just because "the people is uneducated" is not a good reason, and it comes dangerously close to showing disrespect to the public. It's like supporting superstition just because many people happen to believe in it. Anybody who thinks number-of-articles measures quality is simply falling prey to a en:misuse of statistics (or even of mathematics -- as if s/he were thinking that the area of a rectangle can be found my measuring the length of one side), and if we support that, we're failing in our purpose ("repository of knowledge"). As for the media campaign, I don't see the need for it (at least yet); surely placing an explanation in the List of Wikipedias itself -- the place where the misunderstanding starts -- would be sufficient. (Note that I have seen good reactions from the press -- as I in the case I mentioned on Aphaia's talk page: the Dutch channel RTL-4 wants to interview me (for 30sec-1min) for a short thing on the Volapük Wikipedia, which praises WMF and the Wikipedia projects for its good effects on endangered languages.) Finally, note that the en:Seigenthaler controversy affected one of Wikipedia's most important features: its trustworthiness, its reliability. (Note also it happened on en.wp. If it had happened, say, on the Georgian Wikipedia, would it have received so much media attention?) The "vo.wp incident" wouldn't do that. All one can say is that it has an enormous number of small stubs: this in itself doesn't affect its reliability, the depth of coverage, or the trustworthiness of this or any other WMF project. --Smeira 09:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
  35. Support move of project. Because it seems from the discussions here that it could us some more time to spent in the womb before it is allowed to start the journey to full independence.--Nived 90 03:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
    Do you appreciate that the requirements for approving the Volapuk Wikipedia were met at the time? The Volapuk localisation is being improved at the moment. When it has, it conforms to the requirements and the language committee would have to recommend for the project to go life. It would be a petty and useless excercise. GerardM 09:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
  36. Stongest Support Almost all pages are stubs, useless even. A Wikipedia should have the goal of giving information not raise its number of articles. And please don't oppose because Wikipedia English was also like the Volpuk years ago. As I have told you Wikipedia and its articles are to give information. And it doesn't mean that the English has done it, it is already most correct. I come from the Tagalog Wikipedia and such is happenning also to us, around 5,000 of our articles, or even more, are stubs. And I myself can say that they are entirely useless in giving information. -- Felipe Aira 11:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
    The argument against the proposal is not that it was like the English Wikipedia years ago, but that bot-created stubs aren't bad. They also help disseminate information, even if by little bits. If you don't like the information they give in Tagalog, OK. You can always add more. Note that there are people who expressed thanks that they could find a stub on vo.wp about their native towns; they would certainly disagree with you. --Smeira 11:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
    Smeira could you please stop commenting about just everything? Arnomane 13:07, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
    I'm commenting/reacting on arguments, which is what a discussion is. Nothing irrelevant in what I say. Could you perhaps do the same, Arnomane? --Smeira 14:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
  37. Support I am switching my vote after much consideration. I AGREE STRONGLY with either the suggestion of Jimbo Wales, below, or my own analysis at Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias: In essence, a steward should be assigned to trim back Volapuk's bot-mania. They are out of control. I've found literally hundreds of Volapuk articles which still have vast amounts of English text in them, due to bot-copying errors. -- Yekrats 08:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Yekrats, you're ignoring the consistent corrections that are correcting these errors, which should sove them all in a couple of months. There are thousands of problematic stubs with all kinds of errors in all Wikipedias; these are dealt with by the community. Why are you ignoring this? Just check the statistics, on (Malafaya's user pages for example, or do you own searches; compare the results after a couple of weeks, for instance. As for me, I think I have a point, and I argue for it. Is that a sin? If you have counter-arguments, I'll be glad to listen. Who is "out of control" here? :-) --Smeira 09:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    I think the Wikimedia community has been more than patient. Yes, if you are anything like me, you have several "ordinary errors" in your Wikipedia: the odd grammar gaffe here and there, I'm sure. But in addition to those ordinary minor errors, and this point is particularly damning, you have articles in ANOTHER FRIGGIN' LANGUAGE! Not just one or two. HUNDREDS. And not just for a day or two; they been like that since mid-July. That is UNACCEPTABLE. -- Yekrats 13:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Hadn't we had these 2 proposals of closing and cleaning up vo.wiki, those errors (~500 out of 100K articles) would have been history by now. Unfortunately, this argument of "months" tends to win based on the consecutive proposals that stall the people who work at vo.wiki. Basically we just spend our time argumenting here and there. :(. Malafaya 14:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Yekrats, honestly, if we agree to delete those around 500 articles that contain the aforementioned mistakes, do you think this whole problem would be solved? Do you think all this is because of some 500 articles? Because, if it is, I think the problem can be solved really soon. Just I have the strong feeling that it (having 100% articles in Volapük) wouldn't solve a thing... Malafaya 15:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    I don't think so, because the ~500 articles is a symptom of a greater problem. We keep talking about the symptoms, but the problem is SmeiraBot uploaded more articles than the community can deal with. Growth was too fast, and we must deal with the consequences. -- Yekrats 15:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Exactly, Yekrats! These articles are not the problem; they're being solved. Just consult the statistics! As for dealing with the articles: there are some answers to that in my comments to your proposal. I suggest we can deal with these articles, and that the fact that these ~500 errors are disappearing is evidence of this fact. Do you have evidence to the contrary? --Smeira 15:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Please don't be so naive to suggest this bunch of English articles is the only problem you have there. These are just one example of the problems that I've uncovered with practically no effort. I've seen scores of other errors, too, but it seemed like accidentally writing articles in a foreign language -- and then leaving it like that for six months -- is one of the most egregious to me. You've got multiple pervasive problems throughout your entire Wiki. It stems from you relying too much on the bot beyond your ability to maintain the stubs in a timely manner. -- Yekrats 16:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Naive? I've named whole categories of errors here, and the strategies for dealing with them on this page, Yekrats. Look at my answer to Hillgentleman in the "Two Questions" section below. And I insist: there is no "writing" in a foreign language, just as you're not writing Indonesian when you misspel "the" as "teh"; there are "copying erros" that are being dealt with. As for time: Six months? In most cases, what was there six months ago was a simple 3-line stub with no errors; most of the copying errors are much more recent. Also note that we've been "distracted" for a whole month at least twice in the period... How many do you think there would be left by now otherwise? Maybe 200? Maybe 100? Maybe none?... What's 'reasonable reaction time' to you, Yekrats, and how do you measure it? --Smeira 17:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    And how is that capacity of dealing with as much as X articles measured? I have to mention one of the biggest Wiktionaries that with 125K articles is one of the best there are. Yet, it's maintained by solely 2 active users. Aren't we led to say that it's beyond their "capacity" too? How can one objectively say some specific article count is beyond a community's capacity to "maintain" it? Malafaya 17:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Also consider that error-correcting is a never-ending endeavor; hence the General disclaimer. Finding pages that contain errors -- and have contained them for quite a while -- is quite easy. Consider e.g. en:Roscoe, Illinois: the coordinates in the Infobox are not the same as the coordinates in the prose. Another example (found by Malafaya): en:Leopold, Indiana, in which a population of less than 100 is mentioned in the text, but 720 in the infobox. And this difference, in both cases, has existed since the infoboxes were created, nearly three months ago. There are hundreds of pages with similar inconsistencies; I found them all the time in the English Wikipedia when I was correcting the corresponding vo.wp pages. Consider also en:Steilacoom, Washington. I found it today, when checking the reason for copying errors in vo.wp. The second paragraph in the Demographics section had been wiped out by a vandal (IP number 24.22.239.233; check the history) more than two years ago (in Oct. 2005); despite the many human editors this page had since then, this action was only noticed and reverted... by me, today (here's the diff link). Besides showing the usefulness of my endeavors for en.wp -- I've reverted this kind of vandalism dozens of times in the last few months --, this shows that months, even years before errors are corrected is not to be found only in vo.wp; the English Wikipedia has them, too... Another example? Here's one from the Esperanto Wikipedia. Check eo:Amerika bizono, which I found as one of the first hits by simply looking for the English word "has" in eo.wp; it was hit number 14). Besides having a large English text (hidden by the comment markers <-- -->, presumably because the translator wants to continue translating the text into Esperanto; but where has he been since Sept 2006?), there is a template translation error that generates display errors in the first references: {{{atestantoj}}}{{{jaro}}}, {{{elŝutdato}}} are shown instead of the actual values. This happens because the template was translated, but in this particular article, the fields were kept in English: if one opens the article and looks at the infobox Taksonomio, one finds template IUCN2006 with fields "assessors=", "year=" and "downloaded=" still in English. (I note that, after I mentioned this fact, Yekrats went on and corrected the template: here is the diff link. Well done!) And this has been so since the beginning: September of 2006...
    Now, what does this prove? That the English and Esperanto Wikipedias are too big for their small communities? :-) That texts in OTHER FRIGGIN' LANGUAGES and uncorrected templates are UNACCEPTABLE after over a year without corrections? NOOO... it proves that error-finding and correcting is a never-ending task, and that Wikipedias shouldn't be judged bad because there still are uncorrected errors -- there always are -- but by whether or not they are making consistent efforts to correct them, and how successful these efforts have been (what's the percentage of remaining errors? how has it been decreasing? etc...). --Smeira 16:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
    Smeira get your facts straight. A bot can fix certain formal errors very well but a bot can never create well articles. Thee are two totally diffeent things. But you will proceed writing cloudy words and you will proceed doing inapropriate comparisons with everything under the sun as long as you can protect your little own world where you are the ruler, regardless if it makes sense or not... Arnomane 11:13, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
    Arnomane, get your facts straight. A bot can fix certain formal errors very well and also create articles well, according to a template. The two are very similar things. But you will proceed making unsupported claims and not answering questions or commenting arguments and proposals with everything under the sun as long as you can protect your own belief system where you are James Bond, regardless of whether it is real or not... --Smeira 14:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
    As long as you proceed with your simply plain wrong claim that a bot can create articles well there is no way working with you but against you. Sad but true. Arnomane 15:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
    Arnomane, Interesting point. Please define "article" and explain the difference between "create" and "generate" or else explain how you are not blatantly contradicting yourself. :) Hillgentleman 19:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
    That's true, Hillgentleman :-D... Arnomane: as long as you proceed with your simply plain wrong strategy of refusing to answer questions and present arguments, there is no way working with you but against you. Sad but true. --Smeira 19:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
  38. Support I think, that bots should be used only for minor tasks, such as interwiki linking, fixing double redirects and others, but not creating an article (unless it's AI). And not only in VoWiki. In every Wikipedia, bots should not be allowed to create articles (in our Wikipedia, we've shut down article-creating bots). Abdullais4u 12:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
  39. Support--Daniel73480 10:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
  40. Support. Drop the garbage and focus on a few usefull articles. --TM 10:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    How do you define "garbage"? Notice that stubs are not bad (see e.g. good stub) and that all the data in them is found in other Wikipedias -- they're relevant and encyclopedic. Would you claim the same data are "garbage" in en.wp or de.wp? --Smeira 14:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    Thousends of machine generated texts, all the same with a few different numbers? Some people tend to call this "spam" (which is wrong, of course), I call it "garbage" in this case. The subjects of the articles may be relevant and encyclopedic (Viagra is relevant and encyclopedic, for example), but the articles are not (a billion Viagra mails is send each day, all the data in them is found in other mails). --TM 21:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    I think this is based on prejudice. Note: exactly the same data are found on en.wp, de.wp, etc., both in the text and in infoboxes, and there they are not called garbage. I don't see the relevance of the Viagra example: there's an article on it at en.wp: en:Viagra. Note also that the stubs at vo.wp are not all about the same place, unlike your example of billions of Viagra mails. Each stub is about a different place, as the different numbers show; for each article, the information (population, area, etc.) is found nowhere else on vo.wp except on that article; no "billions of pages with the same information" here. Note that "standard text" is not "same information". An ID card has standard text, but the information on each card is different, or else you could never tell Mr. Smith from Mr. Jones. There is no reason to call this information garbage; a standard text does not make it so. (I note that this has been discussed elsewhere on this page; see also GerardM's text: providing information when there's none, and also the opposing viewpoints of Yekrats and me on Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias). --Smeira 00:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
    I will not discuss something that was discussed a hundred times before on this page. If you are not able or willing to understand, that's your problem, not mine. --TM 11:12, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
    OK, suit yourself. You haven't read this page carefully then. Every time I raise these problems, supporters of this proposal just get angry and refuse to argue further. Frankly, I think it's you who's not willing to understand: I've presented logical arguments, and you didn't. It's not my fault. --Smeira 13:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  41. Support. Generating tenthousands of useless articles by bot can't be healthy for any Wikimedia project. -- J budissin 12:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    Why? --Smeira 14:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  42. Support - Robotje 08:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  43. Support --Nina 17:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  44. Support for the deletion of bot-generated articles (but don't send to incubator) and the reboot of vo. as a real wiki (collaborative website, remember?) and a real encyclopedia. As it is, it's only a bot generated database, of questionable quality/content. Also paving the way for this to become a fashion, as (nearly) happened with lmo, and with others I see trying to hit a "highscore" the article "scoreboard". The "list per number of articles" is there because thousands of people put thousands of workhours into making millions of articles-it is a reflection of this reality, and it's not right to take advantage of it, or discredit it entirely as a bluff. Smeira's intentions apart, mass-creation of thousands of articles takes the life away from a wiki and, unless there is a 'strong' community or serious planning from the start, lots of hair will be pulled in despair when the time comes to turn the "content" into content. Delete the bot-articles, and start from scratch (that's how we all started). - Badseed 05:11, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
    Hi Badseed. A "collaborative website" needs a community, which is what we are now beginning to have (I hope): instead of taking the life away from this wiki, mass-creation of articles has brought life to it. Just check the recent changes, or the new articles. "Database" in this case means information that was never available in this language before -- a leap forward. It's arrogant from people of bigger language communities, with thousands of works of reference in their language and a large number of dedicated Wikipedians, to decide what information smaller-community Wikipedians can or cannot have. Quality and content are comparable to that of other Wikipedias: the information is found in them, and has the same level of quality. (I note that, in the process of correcting bot errors in vo.wp, many cases of vandalism -- often unreverted for months, even years -- were reverted in other Wikipedias: i.e., other Wikipedias are benefitting from us.) It would seem that the ones who care about "highschores" are exactly those who support this proposal: they want their "highscores" back. The "List of wikipedias by number of articles" masks a lot of good work: the Hebrew Wikipedia, for instance, is better (has more creative work) than the Romanian Wikipedia; the Russian Wikipedia also seems to be better than the Polish Wikipedia (check the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles). Lots of workhours go unnoticed because of that. Both facts are masked by the List of Wikipedias, where a stub counts the same as a featured article. It would indeed be better to classify Wikipedias by number of featured articles (why don't we do that? it would give everybody back their "highscores", and it would allow vo.wp to keep its information content). Number-of-articles is a flawed parameter that hides work rather than showing it. You all started this way -- which doesn't mean it's the only way, especially not for small-community wikis, which by their very nature have different goals. --Smeira 15:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose request

  1. Oppose Nonsense. The articles of Volapük are different from those on lombard. Volapük's articles are not messy and contain useful information. I have used and am still using Volapük's articles to get information about villages, towns and cities all over the world. So I'm opposing this. --OosWesThoesBes 10:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    I have to question this... You seem to have excellent command of English, at the very least; why would you rely on bot-generated stubs when much higher-quality information is available elsewhere? -- Visviva 10:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Note that much of the original information in the English Wikipedia was also bot-generated; so if he wanted to transfer manually this information by translating the equivalent English articles/stubs, he would (a) be translating bot-created text, and (b) getting the same result a bot would give: pages with standard text and changing numbers. --Smeira 04:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  2. Oppose hard on the heels on a denied proposal for closing the project and without a practical project proposal, I think it is in bad taste. GerardM 11:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  3. Oppose It's hard to see my daily contribution/cleanup of the Volapük Wikipedia neglected by those who state there is only one contributor: Smeira. This Wikipedia has fought to increase its quality in the past month. The depth indicator has raised 2 points in that period already. The comparison with the Lombard Wikipedia is not valid because AFAIK the main reason for deletion of articles in that wiki relates to the supposed invented dialect of Lombard used by the previous admin and not because they were bot-generated (a bot's a problem? If I copy/paste 100,000 articles contents, is it ok then?). I strongly oppose this request. Malafaya 11:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    You don't get the point:
    1. Copy & pasting would be evil as well. In contrast it would be very cool if you'd translate 100'000 articles to Volapük by yourself. Arnomane 11:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
      I don't see why. If I had done those articles by translating them manually -- they're so easy that the work, although certainly harder without bots, would not be beyond the reach of a number of human contributors -- they would all still be short, 5-sentence stubs. In what way would this have made them any better? A point to ponder: articles should be judged by their quality, not by whether or not they are bot-created. --Smeira 12:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    That's exactly the point. Volapuk Wiki is full of small, useless, repetitive five sentence stubs. It is OK when there are a few, to be improved later on. It is useless when there are so many. You're right that the point is not that they are bot-generated. The point is that they are better removed. I call tehem "bot generated" so that anyone will understand what we're talking about. If they had been generated by a human, then they'd have to be removed too! --Lou Crazy 04:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Not really. Look up good stub: five-stence stubs are not "useless", they are "useful" (a useless stub is one from which you can derive no relevant information). They could be better, but they could also be worse. There are lots of five-sentence stubs everywhere (one example among thousands: de:Streator); they do not harm that I can see. How can many of them do any harm? They're simply sources of information. --Smeira 09:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    1. The Lombard Wikipedia had this bot article problem among others. Arnomane 11:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
      I did get the point: you just can't count how many copy/paste actions have been made in any Wikipedia. Therefore you just act on those where you can see bots, which on their own are not evil (or else let's just ban bots altogether). After talking to the current Lombard sysop some time ago, he explained that the article deletion is just related to the invented language. It's less costly to rewrite them. Malafaya 11:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    Another point: in suggesting that bot articles be removed, you're bypassing the opinion of the people involved: those who contribute to vo.wp. Please consider discussing your proposal and your arguments there beforehand! --Smeira 12:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  4. Oppose All reasons mentioned in the proposal have been discussed and answered in the previous proposal for closing vo.wp. If the proposer wants admin rights, s/he should request them at vo.wp (e.g. at vo:Vükiped:Kafetar, and s/he should discuss his/her intentions for vo.wp with the other contributors. Otherwise this is the wiki equivalent of a coup d'état. --Smeira 12:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  5. OpposeThis isn't going to work, instead of making you admin or anything else, you should expand those bot articles. 82.174.63.90 12:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    (= me Kameraad Pjotr 12:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC))
  6. Oppose. My home wiki is a smallish Wikipedia with a much larger neighbour Wikipedia. Many of the articles on nn.wikipedia are much smaller, more stubbish, than those on no.wikipedia, and there is a lot more users on no.wikipedia than there is on nn.wikipedia. Close to everyone that can read nn.wikipedia can read no.wikipedia too. Needless to say some people feel nn.wikipedia are just a waste of time and space. If Arnomane can get to be sysop on vo.wikipedia through this process, anyone/any mob can get to erase small wikis, and override the local small communities. That will make it impossible for me to continue using, and working on, Wikimedia projects. --Jorunn 16:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    I'm sure the Nynorsk Wikipedia has more non-stub articles than Volapuk. Still, if Volapuk is allowed to keep operating as they are doing now, then the image of other small wikis will suffer too. Would you like being thought of as a content-free wikipedia? I'm sure you're not, but if you join your fate with Volapuk Wikipedia then that's the image you're getting. --Lou Crazy 04:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    Well, for starters, good stubs are not "content-free", and Wikipedia has many hundreds of thousands of them over all projects -- just check how many stub categories any of the major Wikipedias has. They're useful and they add content. The problem is deriving conclusions about the quality of articles in a Wikipedia project from the sheer number of articles; anybody doing that is simply misinterpreting statistics. It would be like mistakenly deducing that all articles in en.wp are like the featured article mentioned on the main page just because this article is very visible there; in fact, 99% of them are worse (which means nothing bad -- it's just that FA level is very high, a fact which a casual visitor might not realize). We should offer them better measures with which to judge what to expect from a given project, not insisting on using a flawed measure. (By the way, have you checked what the activity of vo.wp has been over the last two months, before saying things about it "keep[ing] operating as they are doing now?") --Smeira 09:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    On image: I've gotten many positive reactions to vo.wp from outsiders. Are you sure that the "bad image" you talk about is something other than Wikipedians with a different philosophy? To the general public, I think the "anyone can edit" part of Wikipedia raises much stronger concerns ('can I trust what I see there?') than the "there are many stubs". To the normal, non-Wikipedian reader of Wikipedia, finding correct information is much more important than how articles were written or how long and detailed they are. --Smeira 09:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  7. Oppose Balko 18:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC) - This request is far from fair and balanced. The Volapük wiki does no harm.
  8. Oppose The small Volapuk Wikipedia community is the only one that have permission to judge about your own content. This isn't a Wikimedia issue. This proposal is a pure nonsense. 555 21:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    Well would you mind loosing the Volapük Interwiki? Would you mind being ignored and silenced by every other Wikipedia? I hope not and I do hope you now get the point that sometimes you have to listen to the others or you risk loosing all sovereignty over your wiki. Arnomane 22:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    The result on Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Volapük Wikipedia was keep, no vo.wikipedia is a bastard due to theirs bot-generated articles. You are misunderstanding a request to close with a request to get ride of bot generated articles. Bot generated articles on vo.wp are exactly the same thing as a bot generated articles everywhere. If you have troubles with these, you may have with all, so... Why not requesting to deleted all bot generated articles from all wikis?
    I don't have nightmares with a bot uploading text on a wiki. This don't generates any troubles with me. Simply it. 555 23:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
    Arnomane: I don't think vo.wp is risking being "ignored and silenced by every other Wikipedia". There were many messages in support of vo.wp from other Wikipedias. Look at fr.wp: there are many more stubs on French communes in vo.wp than on German Gemeinde, still I only had support and good ideas from fr.wp people. Aren't you confusing your own private opinion with "every other Wikipedia"'s? -- Smeira 01:47, 28 dec 2007.
  9. Strongly opposed to this proposal. Hégésippe | ±Θ± 00:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC) + Commentaires en français : les admins de MetaWiki devraient donner un avertissement sérieux à ceux qui, n'étant pas parvenus à obtenir la fermeture du wiki en volapük, cherchent un nouvel angle d'attaque, particulièrement sournois, et tout aussi injustifié (et injustifiable). Hégésippe | ±Θ± 00:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Could anyone translate this please? Chaddy 04:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Sure, Chaddy! Here it goes: (Hégésippe, s'il te plaît, vérifie ma traduction; on ne sait jamais...)

    The admins at MetaWiki should really give a serious warning to those who, not having been able to obtain the closure of the Volapük wiki, now try a new "attack angle" -- a particularly sneaky one, and equally unjustified.

    --Smeira 00:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Thanks. Chaddy 23:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  10. Strongly opposed. It's paranoya. Let be Volapuk Wikipedia. Project Wikipedia isn't Olympic Games. No problems for number of articles. --Pauk 05:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Just a note: this opinion was added after this request to come and vote here; same with the opinion below ∴ Alex Smotrov 06:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Just a note: asking people who care about the issue to vote is normal practice. In real-world elections, we all get reminded by mail and on TV of how important it is to vote and participate in the decision process. --Smeira 22:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Arnomane has also invited his friends from de.wikipedia 555 01:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    And I have also invited people from fr, it and es to come and vote for the choice they deem most appropiate] Leptictidium 13:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  11. Strongly opposed. Generated articles we can find in different wikis. Why we should delete all of them only from Volapük wiki? Only the Community of the vo.wp can make a desision to delete or to keep their articles. ОйЛ (OiL) 05:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  12. Oppose Let the Volapük Wikipedia be what it is: A beautiful project in a beautiful language! --HannesM 07:02, 27 December 2007
  13. Extremely strongly oppose. What is it with the Germans and their we want to delete everything mentality anyway? Waerth 10:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Nobody learn a langauage by a database. A language is learning by writing, spoking and reading. Volapük-Wikipedia is a sinless rpoject, written by a brainless bot. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Liesel (talk • contribs) .10:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    I'm glad you think Volapük is sinless (have you looked up the meaning of this word? sinless = sündenfrei, sündenlos :-)... But seriously now, you're talking as if this were a closure proposal again (which, as MF-Warburg and Slomox demonstrate below, it probably is...) And who is saying anything about learning a language? Why is this important? (Short "database-like" texts are, by the way, wonderful for beginners. If you ever want to learn, say, Albanian, I recommend trying to read the stubs at sh.wp first; the featured articles are too difficult. I know what I'm saying, I've been trying to study Albanian for a few months now.) --Smeira 22:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  14. Oppose Closing didnt make it, now you attack this wikipedia this way? Just leave this wiki alone. Multichill 12:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  15. Oppose the general nature of this request. The Volapük-Wikipedia needs to work things out for themselves. Can't everyone see that imposing deletions against community consensus is going to destroy this community? How are they supposed to develop policies, procedures, etc. when people are stepping in declaring their decisions wrong and overturning them? This is overall a very bad proposal for addressing a community that is doing something outsiders don't like. Do we need to start making a list of all the local policies that need to be "corrected"?--BirgitteSB 15:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    vo-WP doesn´t have a community. Or are a handful users and some bots newly a community? Chaddy 16:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Yes, it does; check the meaning of en:Community: a group of organisms (e.g. people) sharing a space and common interests, beliefs, etc -- no upper or lower limits on number. You're even trying to become a member of it yourself, or else I don't understand your request to have your account there de-blocked. Why don't you propose your policies there? (see vo:Vükiped:Kafetar for such requests). Notice also that you're straying from the discussion: you're discussing the viability of Volapük as a language for an encyclopedia, not the number of stubs, which supposedly is the rationale for this proposal. --Smeira 17:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Chaddy, as you can easily verify, there are lots of Wikipedias that have 1 or 2 users (in some, hardly none) and yet nobody is trying to shut them down for "not being a community". Malafaya 17:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    @Chaddy: If there is no community then it should be closed entirely. If there is enough of a community to prevent closure then that community needs to work it out. I can't believe that people wish to spend their time policing wikis they do not belong to for bot-generated articles. Seriously, I would understand if you were cracking down on copyright violations or non-neutral articles or improper restrictions on editing. I would still oppose the exact nature of this proposal, but I would be much more sympathetic. It is almost laughable (if it wasn't so serious) that so many people wish to cross the line of wiki-automony over bot-generated articles. --BirgitteSB 20:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Oppose I would be opposed to such a draconian measure against VO, unless it applied fairly to all Wikipedias. Take for instance, the Polish wikipedia with 450000 articles and a pathetic depth of 7. Would you suggest that we insert a non-Polish admin into the the Polish Wikipedia to delete soulless robot garbage, or to put it in the incubator? Crazy! That being said, I think the Volapukists should establish some guidelines about "what is an article" and try to stick to it. For example, at the Esperanto wikipedia, we say an article must have at least three complete sentences and one internal link. That way, if someone points out a subminimum article (like vo:Mäzul, vo:1 Decembrie, etc.) it can either be improved or deleted. Also, there should be notability standards: Not every human on the planet deserves a wiki article, and nor does every village of 50 people. Creation by robot shouldn't matter as much as general quality and notability. It should be fairly obvious when something is below the minimum standard. Volapukists, please establish minimum standards for quality (length) and notability!!!! -- Yekrats 18:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC) Because Smeira stubbornly refuses to see reason, attacks everyone with a different viewpoint and refuses any sort of measure to reel in his own bot, I am now leaning to support this measure. Smeira, stop disrupting Wikimedia to make a point and stop gaming the system. -- Yekrats 08:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
    It's curious you mention Polish Wiki too. I was deemed off-topic for mentioning it before. Yekrats, thanks for the suggestion. Actually we were working on that (standardizing & improving articles) when suddenly we had to put our efforts on this discussion rather than working on those articles. Malafaya 18:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Quote of myself: I think this is a fair and balanced request, which should be adapted to similar cases in future if it works out. This was written with other Wikipedias in mind (and I did think about ploish) but you cnnot honestly demand to do everything at once. This has nothing to do with injustice, just with limited ressources and working carefully (in order to minimize failures during the procedure). So plish wikipedia is off-topic now. Arnomane 18:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    First: "Fair and balanced" is probably not the phrase you want to use, because en:Fox News Channel often uses it, and they are known for neither being fair nor balanced. ;-) That aside, are we focusing on the problems of Wikipedias in general, or specifically picking on Volapuk? It seems like you are doing an end-run around the deletion vote, trying to move it to the incubator and force deletions from outside. Personally, I would like to see them delete a lot of garbage there. I made that pretty clear during the vote for deletion. I think many of those robot articles are an embarrassing blight, and probably should be deleted. And probably the Volapuk community should be more proactive to deleting that kind of junk. Furthermore, the Volapuk community should be less quick to judge requests for deletion -- like Chaddy's above, who proposed articles for deletion, but the Volapukists saw such a request as vandalism. Clearly Chaddy pointing out the substandard nature of the articles spurred Smeira to fix it, even if neither party was very friendly about it. -- Yekrats 20:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    As Malafaya mentions, we're trying to do that, Yekrats. Even though nobody at vo.wp still staid anything against these articles, I think it's a good idea to foster discussion; so I have right now started a discussion heading on bot articles at vo.wp (see vo:Vükiped:Kafetar#Geb elas bots ad jafön yegedis nulik). Now, Yekrats, I of course respect your right to decide for yourself what is "garbage" or "junk" and what is not; but in the absence of clear guidelines, please respect other people's right to think differently. The Germans, for instance, if I remember well their guidelines, say that any inhabited settlement is sufficiently notable. As for the Chaddy case: I fully agree. It's better to ignore provocations and assume good intentions. The amount of aggressive vandalism we had to deal with made me forget that. --Smeira 23:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Arnomane, nobody is saying you should have done the Polish wikipedia first (though it has more bot-created articles than vo.wp, and would probably set a much stronger precendent; but you decide what you do). But there are two points you're missing: (a) this proposal should be discussed within vo.wp first, and here only if this fails; you haven't even tried to do that, you jumped ahead and landed here first; (b) despite basing the proposal on other "problems" (which have other solutions that you don't want to discuss), you have already admitted (down below in one of the comments section) that the real problem is: you don't like many bot-created stubs. You haven't said why, you just keep repeating words like "crap" or "should never be done" -- as if everybody agreed with you. Obviously many people don't. And people from other small projects may well be afraid that you or others like you will go on to impose your view on what's an article/stub and what's not an article/stub to their wikis. Before you do that, you should initiate a broader discussion on when small articles or stubs should be immediately deleted. If there is no cross-wiki consensus, you're just imposing your opinions. I don't agree with you, and I'm not necessarily wrong. If the problem is larger, then you shouldn't start by attacking vo.wp; you should start by saying what criteria you use and why they are better than other people's criteria. (Why is vo:Febul bad but de:O'Fallon (Illinois) good? Why isn't Chaddy tagging de:O'Fallon (Illinois) for deletion?) Am I making this point clear, or am I being "cloudy" and using "long words" again? --Smeira 23:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    When I tagged vo:Febul, this page had been almost empty. There were only links to the other articles abouts months and a calendar. But there was no text. You can´t affirm that an empty page with no content is an article.Chaddy 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    But I don't affirm that. What I do affirm is: you didn't ask anybody at vo.wp what the right procedure is for dealing with such cases. There is a category (vo:Klad:Pads koräkabik = pages to correct) where such pages should be included for further improvement. You didn't know that, and you didn't ask. (If you looked at the history page, you'll have seen that the page was created long before I came to vo.wp, and by a human; I hadn't really seen it before. I hope you're not blaming me for it.) Note that I added some text, and placed it (or rather the entire vo:Klad:Muls, to which it belongs) in the vo:Klad:Yegeds no pefipenöls: articles to improve/complete. Please look around and ask for advice before doing something like requesting deletion in a wiki you have no previous experience with. This is what I was asked to do every time I opened an account in a new wiki. --Smeira 00:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Good idea. I just wanted to suggest it. Polish Wikipedia certainly needs cleanup and I think I can afford that task. I am going to file the same request for Polish Wikipedia.--Certh 01:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Go ahead, let's see what happens. Maybe someone will ask for the closure of the Dutch Wikipedia too, since they have tens of thousands of bot-created city stubs (e.g.: nl:Buchères). Hmm... you'll probably be opposed by the same people who opposed the first vo.wp closure proposal and this second one (per Slomox, this proposal is equivalent to a second closure proposal). Are you sure you wouldn't want to start a discussion about bot-generated stubs and whether or not they are evil first? Meta is a good place for that too. (Also, it seems you don't have a userpage at Meta yet -- I think you have to have one, with a link to your home wiki, in order to participate or to propose closures or "radical cleanups"). --Smeira 11:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    You cannot excuse your own mistakes with the mistakes of others. You cannot say: "Cause others did write 30% of their Wikipedia with a bot I have the right to write 100% of my Wikipedia with a bot". At some point there is the last straw and this here definitely is. Arnomane 11:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Arnomane, I am not excusing my "mistakes" with the "mistakes" of others. I am saying that I don't think this is a mistake -- at least not as bad as you think it is. You say writing many bot-created articles (say, 95% of the titles) is bad; but you don't say why. Once more, I challenge this idea. By doing this, I managed (a) to find new contributors (the community has grown from one to about five, and new users keep coming), (b) to openly demonstrate that article count is not a good measure for quality (see the discussion of the first closure proposal), and (c) to get a lot of -- true, correct, and relevant --information into Volapük that had never been available in this language before. Of course I agree that if these articles were improved by people, they would become much better. I have improved many of them, and other people are now doing this too. Yet I don't think even the "unimproved" ones are per se so bad as to justify your anger. You say this is the "last straw" (I suppose you mean "where you draw the line"; note that "last straw" has more to do with anger than with good reasons); can you explain why? Look: the articles that are your "last straw" satisfy the definition of a useful stub -- check it! And if these stubs are useful, why many of them (yes, even 95% of the titles) are so bad? The absolute number of stubs is not so high: there are more bot-created stubs outside of vo.wp than in vo.wp. And above all: why not discuss this within vo.wp first? Why violate wiki-autonomy over this, when (as BirgitteSB said) there are much more important problems to solve first? If you have a problem with stubs, then, before attacking the work of those who don't agree with you, please demonstrate that it is really bad. This can be done by starting a general discussion and inviting comments from all Wikipedias with bot-created articles. --Smeira 13:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Note: If this request was less draconian, I might support it. For example, if the request forced VO to delete SmeiraBot's additions with less than X number of bytes (250?), or add more useful content. I think many of the articles there now are not only un-useful, they are an embarrassment to Wikipedia in general; furthermore they put a vitriolic eye of scrutiny on planned languages. I am an admin at the Esperanto-wiki, where we are working very hard to make a high-quality and respectable wiki. Whenever these propositions about the Volapuk wiki come up, I wince. I know that inevitably people will question whether Wikis are justified in planned languages, and they use the poor quality and large number of articles at VO:WP (perhaps unfairly or unwisely) as the justification for that. So, although I am once again pensively supporting VO:WP, at the same time I am not condoning the large bot-loading of articles to advertise, and urging the VO:WP to clean up its own act. I'd like it to be done in-house (in VO:WP) and I'd like for it to be done more quickly than Smeira's 2-year proposal. If you do not, I fear we will be fighting this battle over and over again. -- Yekrats 18:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Yekrats, that would be a good suggestion, but I checked articles smaller than 250 bytes and, based on the Shortpages special page, I estimate around 6000 articles, and many of them seem to be disambiguation pages (not even fair to delete these). It wouldn't make a noticeable difference in the project nor it would fit I think the goals of the supporters of this voting. Believe me: it's not that easy to find a bot-generated stub in Volapük Wikipedia that you can delete on that criteria. And deleting articles with less than 2000 bytes is already asking too much, isn't it? Many articles in these conditions exist throughout Wikimedia projects and nobody is acting on them with speedy-deletions. Malafaya 18:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    The number 250 wasn't any fixed idea. I was just picking a number out of the air; naturally you wouldn't want to delete disambiguation pages nor the framework of Wikipedia. To be more specific, I'm talking about the 1 or 2 sentence articles which are all created by robot with very little content. I have deleted uncountable many of that kind of article out the Esperanto Wikipedia for exactly those reasons -- too small, too stumpy; extremely small stumps are (arguably) unhelpful. Generally, we feel someone should improve an article or delete it, and we give time for someone to improve it first. I'm talking about the thousands of articles that are two sentences: "Xxxxx is a city in Yyyyyy. It has Zzzzzz people living there." I wouldn't recommend speedy deletion on anything but patent nonsense or vandalism. On an unrelated note, I don't see why you were linking to the Esperanto Wikipedia in the paragraph above. Here I am: I try to support the VO:WP, against my better judgment, and yet I think you are moking me and my Wikipedia, which has thousands more useful articles than VO. Yet, there are still many of that kind of article still at EO:WP, so my crusade against useless crap continues. Maybe you were trying to make a point, but made it in a rude way. I'm not sure. However, you are making me reconsider my "oppose" vote. }:-( -- Yekrats 21:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Yekrats, not at all. I'm sorry if it looked like mocking: I just wanted to give examples you would feel comfortable evaluating, sincerely, so I picked them from your own Wiki like I could have picked in any other. I think those articles are perfectly fine as they are, no second intentions implied. I'm too a contributor of Vikipedio and would never mock of it. Sorry for the ambiguous linking. Malafaya 22:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  16. Oppose Another farce from wikipedians with too long of a nose to comfortably stick to their own projects. Vükiped has so many bad articless ― who cares!!! It's their language and their project, let them be the ones ashamed for the alleged lack of quality. I wonder why such suggestions keep coming from de wikipedians, is there some hidden profanity in volapuk the non-german speakers don't get?! That said, I do think meta users who don't have direct links to their user pages in their home projects should be banned from meta, especially if they are jumping over their heads to bring radical changes to other projects. ― Teak 18:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    I do care I care about the Volapük interwiki link crap flooding our other Wikipedias and the bad reputation we other Wikipedias get from this dirty kid. Arnomane 18:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Would you please, please provide at least one link to some page in which it can be seen that interwiki links to stubs are "crap" (most interwiki links to stubs are not to vo.wp) -- who ever said that? And why? Or to a page in which this "bad reputation" is documented -- other than you people's talk pages? Don't you think your words, your behavior and your obvious anger are more "crappy" and typical of a "dirty kid" than anything in vo.wp? Arnomane, your proposal was so well written, so carefully worded... why can't you go on speaking like that? --Smeira 22:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Because:
    • Inmediatly after my initial request (I did think quite a while about it and did read al lot of older discussions beforehand) you started to occupy this proposal with a huge flood of your comments in lenghty redundant words (you obviously just wanted to have the most words).
    • You never ever acknowledged any problems from your side, you just hide yourself behind your general comments on minorities on your souvereignty and so on.
    • Supporters of you do the same and do mass comments (isn't it strange that others do say I want the last word in every comment but do exactly that themselves in contrast to me?) in order to make a kind of denial of service to this very proposal.
    This sum makes me just sad and thus I have doubts on your honest intentions. Arnomane 00:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Arnomane, if the "supporters" is me, it's not a coincidence that I have the "last word" if you make me a direct question. Play fair and not with words. Malafaya 00:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Well, Arnomane,
    • The space I "occupy" is free for discussion; anyone can use it. I explain my points, I give arguments, I provide links, I express ideas, I ask questions. How exactly is this bad? Everything I wrote is relevant to the "problems" you mentioned in the proposal. Can you show anything I wrote that is not relevant? The space for voting is clear and free; have my explanations made voting here any more difficult? Has anyone felt threatened by me? Have I attacked without arguments, have I provided wrong information, have I used impolite words? You, on the other hand, have used impolite words ("crap"), have put words into other people's mouth ("you Volapük people ask for more time" when nobody here asked for more time so far), have made claims without a clear basis ("you'll loose the Volapük interwiki" -- to de.wp maybe, if you have consensus there; but elsewhere? why? what's your basis for saying this?), and you fail to answer direct questions (like: why are bot stubs worse than human stubs? how can you solve the technical problems with the incubator that Warburg mentions? why are interwiki links to stubs bad? etc. etc. etc.)
    • If there is a problem in discussion here, I still don't see it. As Pauk said, Wikipedia is no Olympic Games: article number doesn't matter for quality. I keep asking you why you think bot-created articles are bad, and why interwiki links to stubs are bad, and you simply don't answer, you just keep repeating "yes it is, it is, it is"! This is not my fault.
    • I explained everything I said. I had many arguments, so I needed to expand them. And you keep not answering, so I have to repeat them again and again. How exaclty explaining my opinion makes the discussion worse? The space for voting is clear and free; my clear expositions of my points are not jeopardizing that in any way. I don't know about you wanting the last word; what I see is: you keep not answering.
    I don't think you have a reason for getting so angry, Arnomane. I'm not trying to attack you; I'm merely trying to get you to defend your ideas. I don't agree with them (and I'm not the only one, as you can see in the "Oppose" section), and the "huge flow of words" says why. Read it, don't be afraid. Then, please, answer. It's much better than getting angry. --Smeira 01:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  17. Oppose Since when is Wikipedia about deleting information? BoH 19:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  18. Oppose as proposal is nonsense. Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias. --Millosh 20:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
    Hi Millosh! Thanks for your comment. Perhaps you'd like to join the Association Of Those Who Think Bot-Created Stubs Are An Acceptable Way To Add Information To A Wikipedia? Since the 'support' people apparently aren't going to do it, we probably should think about a way to start a general discussion on bot-created stubs at a higher level. --Smeira 10:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  19. Oppose And I do find statements like crap, dirty kid,... quite disconcerting and strongly resent such insults! --Manie 22:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  20. Oppose Sopho 00:17, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  21. I Oppose this nonsense. ----Anonymous DissidentTalk 00:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  22. I oppose this proposal even if I can understand the problem for Wikimedia to show as a big project a site mainly created by bots. I'm sure we can found a better solution than delete any article. Aoineko 02:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  23. Oppose as proposal is nonsense. See further above. Sonuwe 02:43, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  24. Oppose this is a threat. Where to stop? This is a communities decision and nobodys else. + Per Birgitte SB on foundation-I. --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 12:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  25. changed to Oppose - It seems more likely that a better solution can be found without actually deleting everything..and Insults and threats is not the way to do it !!!..--Cometstyles 12:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  26. Bot-created articles on towns are great and should be created in every Wikipedia for all towns in the world - why do manually what you can do automatically? Ausir 13:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    That's exactly my point (but I like more the idea of central database accessible to every project, something like Commons). I wonder why all the supporters of this proposal fail to see that? (And why they miss the fact that the vo.wp community is the one to decide what to do with their project)... --Smeira 13:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  27. Contra - again. --MF-Warburg 14:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  28. Oppose 91.77.182.144 15:15, 28 December 2007 (UTC). Dr. Fatman
  29. Oppose I would propose to make the interwiki botmasters not link to vo.wp any more since vo articles do not meet the quality standard most other projects underlie, but the quality of their articles itself is not our matter, it's a community decision. (Nevertheless, I don't like bot generated stuff at all, but in smaller languages it's better to have such stuff than nothing.) --Thogo (talk) 17:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    • "Quality standard" which doesn't deal with NPOV and references is a cultural bias. Imposing one cultural bias may lead to imposing other... --Millosh 18:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    I don't agree to this at all. --Thogo (talk) 18:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
  30. Oppose I don't see anything in the reasons for this proposal that wasn't countered in the vote for closure. The interwiki disruption has already happened - surely as much disruption would be cause by suddenly removing all those interwiki links again! I can't understand the logic here. The other arguments are general arguments that should apply to all Wikipedias - if stubs are bad, remove them from all WPs. If bot edits are bad, remove them from all WPs. If WPs for languages with few speakers are bad, close all WPs for languages with few speakers. If WPs with small (but active) communities are bad, close all WPs with small (but active) communities. If edit count is a bad measure of size then use something better! Also, Lombard does not set a precedent here - the situation was quite different (as has already been covered on this page). --HappyDog 19:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    Hi HappyDog! Perhaps you'd care to join the Association Of Those Who Think Bot-Created Stubs Are An Acceptable Way To Add Information To A Wikipedia? Since the 'support' people apparently aren't going to do it, we probably should think about a way to start a general discussion on bot-created stubs at a higher level. --Smeira 10:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  31. Oppose nonsense Mateus Hidalgo 20:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  32. Oppose - silly meddling, and terrible insults. I recently "translated" vo:Kosmopolan to en:Kosmopolan so there is definitely some useful pages being created on this sub-domain that do not exist on any other sub-domain. Its worth noting that oldwikisource:Category:Volapük is also very healthy.
    If interwiki links are the problem, simply request that iw links are not created to bot generated vo pages until they have been reviewed by a human. John Vandenberg 12:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  33. Oppose Robert, a contributer to the Volapük wiki, and proud of it!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.203.125.239 (talk • contribs) 555 14:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC).
    Glidis, o Robert! Ad givön vögodi olik is, mutol i labön kali su Meta; jafolös, begö! bali. (Su kal at, pladolös i yümi ad pad olik su Vükiped cifik ola -- Vükiped Volapükik cedü ob -- dat valans ökanons sevön, das ya äbinol geban Vükipeda bü mob at, e das labol gitäti ad vögodön. Danö! --Smeira 03:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC) Hi Robert! To vote here, you need to have a Meta account; please create one. (On this account, please put also a link to your home page on your main Wikipedia -- the Volapük one I think -- so that everybody can see that you were a Wikipedia user before this proposal and that you have the right to vote. Thanks!
    Here's my user page for the meta wiki [[3]] which contains a link to my user page at Vüki. Does this count as a vote?Robertvp 16:31, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  34. OpposeChabi 10:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  35. Oppose because project makas impossible that language extinct. --Mihael Simonic 21:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  36. Oppose Pali Wikipedia (an extinct language with zero na