Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-07-18/Folksonomy and GNAA

The Gay Nigger Association of America (GNAA) article was placed on votes for deletion a sixth time this week. It was placed on VfD by Ta bu shi da yu (author of this article), mainly after Tony Sidaway pointed out that the last vote for deletion had not been closed properly.

The GNAA is a highly controversial article, because many Wikipedians believe that they are either not notable, or they should not be recognised for their activities — ordinarily, trolling is frowned upon on Wikipedia and if it is bad enough may lead to temporary blocking of the editor who is doing the trolling. The GNAA, however, has been restrained in it's editing of Wikipedia, and in some cases GNAA members have contributed useful edits to various articles. For instance, Timecop, who on his user page claims to have formed the GNAA in early 2003, has contributed several edits to Internet Relay Chat that have enhanced the article [1] [2], and also removed some vandalism from Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting [3].

There had also been discussion about to list the GNAA article on the talk page of the first vote for deletion, led by Who, who stated that a new VfD should be held to:

have a fair and objective vote on what truely constitutes notability of this group and prove, without doubt, any accomplishments. No activity from slashdot should be included, as that would be part of the slashdot article, as at that point they are slashdot users, not GNAA. Trolling and vandalism on Wikipedia should not be counted as notable activity in the debate, as then we have to create an article "Anonymous Vandals", which is just as absurd. The really sad thing about previous Vfd's, are how many were tired of the process and gave into the consistent vandalism. If the Vfd was to be done correctly and unequivocally, and consensus was delete, then the page should be blanked and permanently protected.

Ta bu shi da yu immediately responded that the article should not be placed on VfD again, because it would be disruptive and unfair to those who previously voted on the previous five votes. This led to a fairly heated argument, which was later settled amicably between the two editors, and convinced him to run the vote again in a controlled fashion.

As the article had been added to VfD five times already, with each time some irregularity that made many editors doubt its validity, Ta bu shi da yu set up the vote in a manner slightly different to normal votes for deletion. The page was divided up into 5 sections: Delete, Keep, Redirect, Comments and Discounted (later Disqualified) votes. No anonymous editors or editors that had under 100 edits at the time of voting were allowed to add a vote to keep or delete — though they were still allowed to add comments — and those who added their vote had their number of contributions checked by Kate's edit counting tool. If they did not have enough edits, their vote was moved to the discounted votes section.

Another rule set by Ta bu shi da yu was one already in place on Wikipedia: no personal attacks. Any comments deemed a personal attack were immediately removed without comment from the vote. This was only done several times, as most editors were civil and well behaved — even the ones whose vote was disqualified.

The vote rules were disputed by several editors. Gmaxwell objected to Ta bu shi da yu moving votes to the disqualified section and remerged the disqualified votes into the relevant sections [4]. After Ta bu shi da yu locked the page, put back the votes into the disqualified section [5] and made a note of this on the talk page, Gmaxwell wrote:

TBSDY, you are moving perfectly valid votes out of the VFD. I have as much right as any other editor to disagree with your vote reclassification and to propose changes. The judgment of a VFD is a task for the closing admin, and not for you. Because of your previous involvement with this subject it would obviously be inappropriate of you to close this VFD, and it is just as inappropriate for you to go inventing policy right now. By telling users with low edit counts that they can not vote you are creating a bias and denying the closing admin the ability to see all the votes. The current protecting of the page is needless and inappropriate, if there were consensus to keep the previous policy I would have gladly changed it back to the previous version myself. As it stands no such consensus exists, and I am not frightened by your threats to block me on my talk page. Please stop disrupting Wikipedia to push your voting agenda, and please have respect for those who just recently supported your readminship discontinuing threats of administrative action against editors who have disagreed with your unilateral imposition of new policy.

(Ta bu shi da yu had sent a message to Gmaxwell warning him not to alter the vote as he was not an admin, and warned that this was a blockable offense.)

The changes were merged back by Ta bu shi da yu and Theresa Knott [6]. However, Gmaxwell made one last vote move [7], which was not discovered by any administrators for some time.

As with most things about this article, the vote closure was controversial. It was finally closed by SPUI at 12:39, 14 July [8] and immediately reverted by User:Calton [9] who believed that Ta bu shi da yu should close the vote. Meanwhile, the {[tl|vfd}} tag had been removed from the Gay Nigger Association of America article by SPUI, but as it had been reverted by Calton the tag was readded by Ta bu shi da yu [10]. Pile0nades reverted this change [11] and Ta bu shi da yu reverted again [12] and locked the page [13] while this was being sorted out. Ta bu shi da yu had asked Lupo, a well respected administrator who was not involved in the article, to close the vote in order to reduce the chances that accusations of bias would cause the vote to become invalidated. However, after realising it didn't really matter who closed the vote, he accepted SPUIs closure and unlocked the article.

Many Wikipedians are concerned about the number of times this article has been submitted to votes for deletion. There is a large comment at the start of the article itself that details all the VfDs and that states that "It has survived all of these VfDs, each one with more Keep votes than the last. Please do not relist it, you are only wasting your time and everybody else's." In order to register their concerns, they have created a proposed policy in the Wikipedia namespace called Wikipedia:Kick the ass of anyone who renominates GNAA for deletion before 2007. The policy states that "the renomination of the article Gay Nigger Association of America for deletion causes unnecessary disruption every time it repeats. Those who want it gone argue that it is a waste of bits and glorifies a bunch of worthless vandals. Those who want it kept say it describes a noteworthy internet organization. People who are sick of the whole thing are either ignoring it, or in many cases voting to keep just because they feel that the ideals of fair play have been violated" and that the though the "wording is tongue-in-cheek, but the intent is serious". The policy proposes that if the article is relisted that the article be delisted from VfD, the tag removed from the GNAA article's page and that the nominator be informed of the policy. If the editor "persist[s] in their attempt at renomination: kick their ass. Suggested alternate consequences include public flogging, tarring and feathering, or crushing by elephant." The policy is also clear that "Supporting this policy does not constitute a statement that one belives the article should exist, or that the GNAA deserves commendation or whatever the hell it is that they want. It merely means you're sick of the amount of time being wasted on the whole thing and want a reprieve." At the time of writing, this policy had been agreed upon by 40 editors and opposed by 6 editors.