Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiDefcon (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Delete. Essjay ^{Talk • Contact} 02:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiDefcon

Note: Why the hell do I have to jump through six thousand hoops to list something for deletion these days?

I've stated before that I think this is harmful. It's a violation of Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose and a number of editors agree. See discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiDefcon. A number also disagree, however, judging by certain comments on Wikipedia talk:Counter Vandalism Unit, this appears to have been noticed by people at large, so a lot of the arguments made by those people (which include, e.g. "well, no one's noticed it yet") lose some of their weight.

Personally, I don't see the need for Wikipedia to have this militaristic and rather lame page knocking about in our official namespace. There's no reason to imply any kind of formal affiliation between Wikipedia (or any Wikimedia project) and this.

Time to knock the CVU back to what it should be. Something useful. Rob Church (talk) 07:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete this. It serves no possible useful purpose; as near as I can tell, nobody actually agrees on what it's for, anyway, other than as an open challenge to vandals. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 08:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. However, I disagree with the way Rob Church has been acting lately. As a former admin, he should be above vandalizing the WP:CVU page, even if in jest. It's time someone knocked him back to what he should be: a lot less irresponsible in his actions. --nihon 08:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per A Man In Black. Thryduulf 14:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or Userfy. This is confusing and unnecessary in the namespace; if one of the folks at CVU really wants, let him/her keep it in userspace. Xoloz 16:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep. Nominator seems to have some issues about this template and the CVU. I also object to something being listed for deletion on the grounds that it's "militaristic". --Aaron 16:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- In Rob's defense, I think what he means is that this quality is inappropriate for the Wikipedia namespace, the sole purpose of which is to further the building of WP; obviously, the abstract question of "whether militarism is bad" is outside of the competence of this forum. Xoloz 16:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, or userfy if someone wants it. More fool them. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 16:51, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete (or userfy). Per above. Including the militaristic part - if you want to dress up your Wikipedia activities in military-speak, don't do it in the Wikipedia: namespace. FreplySpang (talk) 17:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I usually would say keep, but this tool has outlived its usefulness. Right now, it is updated subjectively, which is not what it was intended originally. And yes, I'm a member of the CVU. Delete. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 02:29, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

strong keep as per the reason on the tempates talk pageBenon 02:33, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of parts of discussion on that talk page. Could you be more specific? Thanks. Rob Church (talk) 00:12, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
sure:-Here is a real scenario. Today I noticed willy and raised defcon to 2 as a result a number of users started taking action in channel. Hence the usage of defcon. It makes people join #en.wikipedia.vandalism or shoot up their CDVF. Willy was contaied. Although I was late. If I didnt adjust defcon willy would have been contained but would take a longer time and hence more clean work. Defcon warning is visible at whenever the template is used and more importantly on irc. --Cool Cat My Talk 20:35, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Delete; I think it gives vandals more attention than they deserve, and makes them seem more important than they are. Antandrus (talk) 02:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Only marginally more useful than the Homeland Security Advisory System --Carnildo 03:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral;We probally dont need a WP: page for this, but I do find the {{wdefcon}} template helpful. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 06:05, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - while not harmful, it's not useful, either for community-building or article writing. Per above, if someone wants it, just userfy. --Cel es tianpower ^háblame 08:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
delete I've expressed my reasons at several other places -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 20:20, 11 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - I've gone back and forth a few times when determining this vote. I did have the wikidefcon on my userpage, and I updated it a few times, but I agree with some of the comments being tossed around, claiming militaristic traits. However, the main reason I'm placing this delete vote is due to the fact that some vandals in the past (and no doubt there will be more in the future) have defaced Wikipedia with such messages as "WikiDefcon 1 or Bust!1!". This defcon number is giving the vandals a goal, to try and reach that number. It's just pointless, and unnessisary. --light darkness^(talk) 04:01, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Delete per the above. It's unnecessary, since most users who would use it are already active in countervandalism. Worst, I think that it's actually harmful to Wikipedia: it encourages vandalism by transforming the issue of vandalism into a militaristic vision of epic battle. This is one of many similar manifestations of this militarism that should be eliminated in favour of simple tools. A Defcon is not a 'simple tool'. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 05:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
COMMENT: I've nominated the corresponding template as well: [1] -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 07:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
mild keep I don't mind it. I don't nessacerily agree with the implications that this is a case of bean up nose either. Sasquatch t|c 07:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Amongst other things mentioned above, it'll de-sail the "wiki def-con1 or bust" vandal. --Alf ^melmac 07:54, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. What's the criteria for raising it or lowering it? What does "Drastic action recommended" mean? Is that the point where we block all anons? Presumably not, so does it just mean "let's revert more vandalism"? --Malthusian (talk) 10:29, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, "Drastic action recommended" used to be "Database lock recommended." A few weeks ribbing CoolCat on IRC got that changed. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:36, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Outlived any usefullness it had, now largely irrelevant --pgk^(talk) 13:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Ambi 17:19, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep. If we're going to delete everything "militaristic," we might as well get rid of CVU, since it's a play on CTU, the Counter Terrorism Unit. As for the "DefCon vandalbot," sure, he wants us at DefCon 1, but only because he thinks that having DefCon 1 would make us block anons from editing, which isn't true. He's stated blocking anons as his real purpose several times. So, if there were no DefCon, he'd just vandalize more, because he'd think that if there's no centralized system, it's harder to get our attention. --Rory096 18:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as substantially harmless. Fine if it's userfied too; it'll probably stick around regardless. Adrian~enwiki (talk) 02:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Ral315 (talk) 03:57, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I always found this stupid. Red Alert :) Gerard Foley 21:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because:
- I use it. I don't usually fight immediate vandalism, but I have jumped in a couple times at DefCon 3. Seems useful to me. If people don't like it, don't put it on your page, duh. The part about militarism is just silly. People who want the Army to go away because "they hurt people" are always the first to scream for protection when the balloon goes up. This general denigrating of people who are doing boring work fighting off vandals is insane. Also, I'm getting pretty fed in general with people deciding they want to delete other people's stuff. What, are you bored? Deletion is supposed to be for cruft and garbage, not decent work that you don't happen to like. If the nominator can document cases where this page has escaped its bounds at night and attacked other pages, or small children and pets, I'll change my vote.
- However, per lightdarkness's comment "...some vandals in the past (and no doubt there will be more in the future) have defaced Wikipedia with such messages as "WikiDefcon 1 or Bust!1!". This defcon number is giving the vandals a goal, to try and reach that number." -- If lightdarkness can please get some verification together, would he please relist ASAP (I know a relisting immediately after a keep is not usually proper, but this is a special case.) Seeing that in black and white would almost surely cause me to change my vote, and probably most others here. I think its too late for that info now as so many have voted, but perhaps not. Herostratus 09:38, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - The vandalbot Lightdarkness speaks about is real, and operates by editing through dynamic IPs and shared proxies. He has used many IPs, and look at the contributions of two of them: (200.4.196.122 | 129.255.210.50). There's several more, but those are the ones I found with a cursory search. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - Once again, his real goal isn't to get DefCon 1, he wants full semi-protection all across WP. --Rory096 05:01, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as vandalbaiting and not particularly useful. With no criteria and an extra edit just to get the thing going (not counting how long it takes to propogate the change), it seems like the time spent using this would be better served...fighting vandals? -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:BEANS. No need for it. Stifle 17:46, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As per my opinion on the Wikidefcon template. Whatever the result, the TfD and the MfD should share the same fate. –Abe Dashiell ^(t/c) 00:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Move to a subpage of the CVU to make clear its unofficial nature. the wub "?!" 01:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - useful. is this nomination a WP:POINT? --Phroziac _. o º^{O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!)} 19:23, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete barring that move to a CVU subpage. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.