I'm proposing the following change to wiki policy:
- We no longer delete articles that do not meet their intended balance point, or the SGT if none is specified.
- We delete the Balance Assistance template. Talk pages again become the place where issues are brought up and discussed.
- We move the authority to delete articles for balance below monk level or above wizard level to the Rating's Committee, and only then with a majority vote with polling lasting at least one week. Alternately, we put it up to the general user base; really it just needs to not be something that any one person can do or threaten by putting up a template.
- Whoever brings it to the vote should not be able to participate in said vote, aside from arguing their position.
The reasons for these changes are straightforward. Balance levels are somewhat vague, and there is a consistent lack of agreement among members regarding content that falls in between. What is Rogue level for some is Fighter level for others, and neither of these positions can be wrong without more complete definitions of the balance levels (which we are actively avoiding). With neither of these positions being wrong, it is unreasonable to delete an article for having one or the other listed on it. This compromises our goal of providing accurate and easy to use balance levels somewhat, but as that goal seems completely unattainable without more complete definitions of said levels, I think this is as close as we can get.
The Balance Assistance template, which we currently use as a punitive measure against articles that someone feels do no meet their specified balance points, fails because of these edge cases. It largely serves to make authors suffer deletion threats for disagreeing with another user. It's other use, to notify a user of a balance concern, is more effectively realized by actually explaining the concern on the talk page instead of giving a terse note on the main page. Further, if we are no longer deleting pages for not rigorously meeting their indicated balance level, the template serves no notification / tracking purposes either.
I find the idea that one user can determine the fate of an article, regardless of how well respected, frankly repulsive. This was basically the case with the balance assist template, despite it's intentions, and another reason I would be happy to see it go at this point. We may still need to delete articles for failing to even be on our balance scales, however, and that is a part of the wiki policy I do not want to see compromised. Moving the authority to a group of users, either the Rating Committee or the general user base, mitigates the one user issue.
Lastly, by allowing anyone to bring an issue up but then disallowing them from deciding the matter we require participation and discussion from additional users. This makes it impossible for one user to determine the fate of a poorly balanced article, and even defaults to the author if there is insufficient interest in the article for the complaint to be taken up.
I'd appreciate thoughts, concerns, support, and whatnot on these proposals, because I can't actually change policy on my own. Well, I could just go and edit this in, but that's not really in the spirit of things. - TarkisFlux 18:31, December 7, 2009 (UTC)