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Improv's War
From Wikitruth
[edit] The Cookie Monster
When Brad Patrick encouraged the following situation to be a good reason for "Speedy Deletion" (removal without any verification or discussion), he opened a can of worms:
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(You can read the full document here.)
Bear in mind, of course, that the "official policy" on Speedy Deletion has dozens of "minor" changes made to it across a given week, with people "tuning up" the language as they go. If you don't constantly reload the policy pages, you may find that what you thought was being quoted as scripture is in fact yesterday's news. Imagine if all policies and laws worked this way.
So speaking of shifting interpretations, an administrator named Improv decided to read this criteria (often called "G11" or "General 11") to mean one thing: FUCK ALL COOKIES.
[edit] The War on Cookies
We'll save you the pain of going through his deletion logs on Wikipedia, but here's some of the subjects that Improv decided were below Wikipedia's relevance, and not worth having any record of:
- A List of all Nestlé brands
- Anna's Swedish Foods
- Break Away
- Bruddels Cookies
- Chips Ahoy!
- Chips Deluxe
- Coco Leibniz
- Crème de Pirouline
- Duberry Cookies
- Dunk-A-Roos
- Famous Amos Cookies
- Hydrox
- Iced Vovo
- Magic Middles
- Milano Cookies
- Nilla Wafers
- Nutter Butter Cookies
- Pepperidge Farm
- Pirouline
- Wagon Wheels
- Whippet Cookies
In two days, Improv decided to delete weeks and weeks of work by hundreds of Wikipedians. Bear in mind, again, that these were not "nominations for deletion", where an arbitrary set of users get to debate as to whether a subject heading should exist; these were wholesale deletions out of Wikipedia, with no evidence they ever existed.
The deletion summary let him list why each one was being deleted: '"Exists only to promote a product or group"'. This is quite debatable, since an encyclopedia often mentions items that happen to also be for sale, and if people are giving histories of cookies, products or companies, there's a strong incentive to list items that still exist instead of being totally extinct.
Naturally, much of this was undone, and these products then put up for a Deletion discussion. But here's the thing: Even if you believe these articles are worth saving, you would now have to spend hours discussing, debating and defending cookies from being deleted. And hope others thought like you do. And that they'd discuss it during the limited time afforded before someone uses the noxious Wikipedia Policy WP:SNOW to stop the discussions early.
In other words, some of these won't survive. Not because they shouldn't, but because a Cookie Monster named Improv decided he wanted to make Wikipedia better by torching pieces of it.
We're singling Improv out today, but idiots like him get their butter-stained fingers on the controls of the Wikipedia machine every day, every hour, and undo work that takes others days of their lives to put together.
Jimbo Wales has stated on multiple occasions that he sees this all as a good thing, this constant destruction and uproar and not-always-successful rebuilding of what some foolish tot decided wasn't worthy. Destruction of articles is considered as rewardable an action as creating them. It's not Jimbo's time being wasted, so the King's fine with what his subjects do "Down There".
Our only question to those who would love cookies: Why are you still there?
