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User:Milowent/History of the Article Rescue Squadron

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This page is a work in progress to document the history and background of the Article Rescue Squadron.

Pre-history

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2007

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Sources:
Unwanted: New articles in Wikipedia, Andrew Lih blogpost detailing the story of Pownce (July 10, 2007)
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-16/Blogger rescue
July 13 2007 Yates blogpost announcing group
The Pownce Update, Andrew Lih blogpost (July 19, 2007)
ARS page, Day 1
  • September 12, 2007. Chris Crocker AfD commences. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris Crocker (internet celebrity). It closes on Sept. 16 as no consensus. ARS helps to rescue.
  • September 17, 2007. The famed Mzoli meats AfD commences, ARS helps to rescue the article. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mzoli's Meats, Wikipedia wars erupt (LA Times, Sept. 30, 2007) (discusses Mzoli's and Crocker, Ben Yates helps the author with article); Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_2#LA_Times_article.
  • September 19, 2007: First attempt to delete ARS, nomination is withdrawn the same day. The nomination stated criticisms about ARS that have often been voiced:

    This isn't any different from Wikipedia:WikiProject Inclusion or meta:Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians, aside from the fact that it promotes votestacking. It's a "rescue squadron" that encourages its members to add a {{rescue}} tag to an article that is nominated for deletion but should (according to them) not be deleted, so they can vote "keep" in an AFD nomination en masse. If you disagree with an article's proposed deletion, then make your case on the AFD page and try to convince others of your argument. Don't try to recruit editors with the same viewpoint to "rescue" your article. According to WP:CANVASS, votestacking is sending mass talk messages only to editors who are on the record with a specific opinion. In this case, you are notifying editors who are on the record with a specific view (inclusionism) by adding articles to a category that the members of the Squadron check regularly. It also says messages that are written to influence the outcome rather than to improve the quality of a discussion compromise the consensus building process and are generally considered disruptive. These messages (templates/categories) are meant to influence the outcome, otherwise it wouldn't be called a "rescue squadron". Ergo, delete.

  • September 22, 2007: A 2nd nomination is closed as a speedy keep.
See Clowning Around, blogpost by Kelly Martin (Sept. 26, 2007): "The ARS was inspired by Andrew Lih's indignance at Wikipedia's decision to delete its article about Pownce, which I blogged about here some time ago. In the past week, there have been two attempts to delete the ARS's project page, and also an attempt (still ongoing, although unlikely to succeed) to delete the "rescue" template it uses to tag articles that it thinks can be saved by appropriate editing. In all three cases, assertions that the group is engaging in "votestacking" (see also my previous complaints about Wikipedia's canvassing policies) feature prominently in the arguments for deletion, even though there is absolutely no evidence of this, and in general the arguments for deletion seem to me mainly to be petty annoyance at the existence of a project that interferes with the rapid deletion of content deemed unsuitable by a small subset of Wikipedia editors by the totally egregious method of making such content encyclopedic! In short, a significant fraction of Wikipedia's community believes that encouraging people to improve the encyclopedia by improving borderline content is bad and must be stopped."

2008

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  • March 2008. Squad is mentioned favorably in NY Review of Books Article by Nicholson Baker, who joined ARS. The Charms of Wikipedia. (ARS also mentioned on NYTimes blog in connection with Baker article:[1])(WSJ mention of ARS, August 2008: [2])
  • July 2008. Third deletion nomination, made by Husond, ends in snowball/speedy keep after two days with no "delete" votes.
  • July 2008. 100th member signs ARS member list.
  • Late July 2008 Ikip unilaterally merges ARS with Wikipedia:Intensive Care Unit, Wikipedia:WikiProject Inclusion, and meta:Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians See here for his reasoning. The Intensive Care Unit, a short lived project to improve articles, was moribund at this point. Concern is expressed, not so much over the merger of the projects, but the fact that the member lists are combined without consultation–

    An editor's support for one project should not be automatically counted as support for a separate project without consulting them. It's a illegitimate way of support via proxy - where the editor is not aware that the proxy is occuring: - Prisongangleader

and the merges are reverted after a discussion.

2009

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It had a very lengthy nominating statement by A Man In Black. He linked to some strident ARS member comments about "deletionists" at the outset, suggesting that the project was the cause of bad blood, regardless of whether it actually was selective examples of how the inclusionist-deletionist debate rhetoric was high on 'both sides, which is how I found the project a few months later. Not sure what his backstory was, but he hasn't edited since June 2009, and had an arbitration case against him, and appeared to do the nomination to create drama before being blocked. ("A Man In Black, the nominator, has been blocked 9 days for edit warring. His final act of edit warring was putting up this project for deletion, 2 hours after his 3RR violation.")
The nomination also asserted that the ARS wasn't actually saving articles, which was not attempted to be proven. An analysis later in the discussion estimated that about 30% of tagged articles had been rescued, and that maybe 1.5% of all articles nominated for deletion get "rescued"--DGG proposed that it made eminent sense that 1-2% of nominated articles could be rescued through sourcing.
It was a very very lengthy deletion discussion, with mostly keep votes, and some "mark as historical" votes as a proxy for deletion.
See also Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_34#Other_wikiprojects_are_conducting_themselves_the_exact_same_way_as_ARS_is.2C_with_absolutely_no_criticism; Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron/Archive 36 (huge discussion)

2010

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  • January 2010, mass deletion of unsourced BLPs occurs on project. See, e.g., Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_47#restoring_unsourced_BLPs; (need additional cites)
  • March 2010: RfA for ARS member Michael Q Schmdit is withdrawn by nominee whilst in progress (87-60 favorable vote at time of withdrawal), primary complaint leveled is that editor is too inclusionist, even called part of the "Inclusionist Taliban" by one editor. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/MichaelQSchmidt
  • June 2010: Wikipedia:Unreferenced BLP Rescue is founded to source unsourced BLPs, joining others working in other ways, in response to renewed threats of mass-deletions. A key point here is that the asserted main concern of those in favor of deleting unsourced BLPs is that they were most prone to vandalism. Wikipedia:Unreferenced BLP Rescue finds no evidence that unsourced BLPs are farms of slanderous statements. They are primarily articles that need help, and some non-notables that do merit deletion. BLP Rescue is a separate project from ARS, but it was formed in alignment with a key ARS concern: that articles should be improved, not deleted, whenever possible.

2011

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  • September 2011: Wikipedia:Unreferenced BLP Rescue eliminates the backlog of wholly unreferenced BLPs. In January 2010, this had been about 60,000 articles, which this group and many others worked to rectify to avoid the mass deletions of BLPs which had occurred in January 2010.
  • December 2011: Michael Q Schmidt is renominated for admin, and passes, 109-6.

2012

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  • 13 January 2012 ARS member NorthAmerica1000 nominates the ARS rescue template for Template for Deletion, in response to a recent ongoing ANI discussion complaining about ARS, and primarily copious tagging activity by NA1000. ANI discussion later moves to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Proposal_regarding_Article_Rescue_Squad by January 15, but TfD continues. TfD draws a lot of attention, including large number of delete !votes within first 24 hours of nomination. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_13#Template:Rescue.
  • 21 January 2012 Admin Ironholds closes the TfD as delete. Ironholds states that he discounts the allegations of canvassing made in the discussion as wanting and needing more detailed evidence, but concludes that the "template serves no useful purpose due to the presence of other, more relevant, deletion tags." He notes dicussion comments that the template "creates controversy while seemingly adding nothing of value to deletion discussions," apparently disregarding all cases where ARS has been the sole reason an article has been improved or topic shown to be notable and thus saved from wrongful deletion. The raw vote is noted to be 34 to keep and 53 to delete (87 votes, not sure why close says 89) (39% keep / 61% delete). Conclusion is that this represents a "consensus" to delete.
  • 27 January 2012. CallwayRox initiates futile Deletion review.
  • February 2012: A new wholly new system, a "rescue list", is created is created by ARS. It survives deletion discussion in a snow keep, with early endorsement at DRV. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Rescue list; Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 February 10
  • March - June 2012. Massive RFC on the ARS, Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Article_Rescue_Squadron, is initiated by The Devil's Advocate. It lasts for three months because no one wants to close it. The conclusions at the end of the long summary close were: "(1) ARS is used for canvassing, but not frequently; (2) The project is biased towards inclusion, but this is not regarded an issue; (3) Any problem lies with a small number of members, not the group as a whole; (4) The project is designed to improve articles, not participate in AfDs, and members who forget this should be reminded; (5) Editors who believe that the group has bias are welcome to join it to make it more neutral; (6) Michael Q Schmidt’s suggestion of setting up a proper delsort should be taken further."
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