CZ Talk:Cold Storage

Login required?

Possibly people will try to use these pages for reference, despite us telling them not to. Perhaps access should be disabled without CZ login? John Stephenson 22:12, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Hmmm. Good point.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 22:24, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Isn't this a plugin--one that would allows password access based on namespace? --Larry Sanger 22:32, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Wasn't a consensus reached?

Does CZ plan to use this or not? There was some question as to what should go here. Robert Winmill came up with a list that was never discussed:

The Cold Storage criterion:

1 - Not noteworthy person as of now
2 - To small geographically to be maintainable as of now
3 - Stubs that were started and abandoned
4 - Strange stuff that has no place in CZ as of now--David Yamakuchi 22:53, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There has been a forum discussion recently on this - the subject title mentions Ormus, a piece of pseudoscience about which there was briefly an article, now deleted - the suggestion was to put it and similar here. Ro Thorpe 23:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep. I think I followed that one. It was long and painful tho. So can we redirect {{speedydelete}} to {{coldstorage}} or some such? --David Yamakuchi 23:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

There should be a difference between "speedydelete" (no or almost no content) and "delete" (if there is content, even though doubtful). Moreover between deletion and Cold Storage there is also the means of blanking (or almost blanking) a page. This should best be discussed "theoretically", in a quiet atmosphere, independent of any "current" case with personal involvements. --Peter Schmitt 00:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll sure drink to that! There have also been a number of discussions on the actual Talk pages of a number of articles that were, I think, mostly moved to Cold Storage eventually. Some of them were fairly heated. I have a dim memory that Howard was involved in many of them (in a non-heated way) because he was trying to make some sense of these articles and having a hard go of it. Or maybe they were moved to Userpages. So it would sure be nice if a "one policy covers all" formulation could be agreed upon sometime.... Hayford Peirce 00:25, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Theoretically, what is wrong with/missing from Robert Winmills list above? This appears to have been discussed, a consensus reached, and then simply left unused...unless I'm missing something.--David Yamakuchi 00:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Where precisely was the consensus reached on the Winmill list? Offhand, I doubt very much if there were a consensus about the very first item, for instance. Defining "non-noteworthy" is gonna be difficult, I would say, as almost everyone in the world would have a different view on that. Unless it's something like trying to create an article about every single person in the United States armed forces. But I could easily be wrong and a consensus *was* reached somewhere.... Hayford Peirce 01:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Anyone who points a gun at you is noteworthy. :-)

The list is a good start, but needs language work. If Hayford is talking about the group of articles that I think he has in mind, some of it applied (not noteworthy person), but there were other problems. A number of these articles dealt with people in U.S. extrajudicial detention. Indeed, some of the detentions were indeed ruled unconstitutional by courts up to and including the Supreme Court, in detailed legal rulings.

The articles, however, used opinion sources to describe the original arrest and subsequent detention, such as a reporter mentioning that another reporter thought that screams from an unknown person, reported by other prisoners, was a given individual--as I remember, a tabloid daily, when reports on the same topic were available from Human Rights Watch, the government of Pakistan, etc. There was no mention that the case had moved into the courts, that evidence had been presented, and, generally, there was nothing but a first impression. He listed people as imprisoned when they had been back in their home countries for a couple of years, freed by a court ruling.

When dealing with living persons in real situations, my opinion, especially if you are to judge national policy based on them, is that you use the best available sources, and keep the article updated, or don't bother. Also in this context, I believed that the policies and orders issued were more important than individual anecdotes, or data dumps in anecdotes that had no real conclusion. I was unable to get the author to update articles, but instead received complaints that he should be free to add more preliminary articles. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:11, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Howard: huh? I read the "list" as basically everything that isn't going to cause a lawsuit....--David Yamakuchi 01:54, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Hayford, I was thinking of the discussion here: http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,785.15.html I thought the "consensus" was why there were any articles in Cold Storage in the first place. Jason Scott, Stephen Ewen, Tom Vogt, all endorsed it in the forum thread, and Larry Sanger has *moved* several articles there. No one seemed to _not_ be in favor of using it as an alternative to deletion...are you?--David Yamakuchi 01:54, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

No, no, I'm not at all against the notion and have, in fact, as a Constable, moved some articles to CS. When it was generally agreed that *that* particular article should be moved. It was not always a smooth discussion. There were articles about child abuse, as I recall.... BUT, your so-called consensus occurred 3 to 2 years ago, in a single *short* Forum discussion among *people who are no longer here*! Except in the most marginal sense, perhaps. Even Larry. If there were a Forum discussion of the last 6 months among all the present-day regulars I would give it a lot more weight. As it is, I don't give any weight at all to the old one. Hayford Peirce 02:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I don't think liability is the only reason, and, if we claim to be expert-guided, seriously out-of-date articles on ongoing topics don't belong in mainspace. Articles that have a bias AND use less-than-authoritative sources don't belong in mainspace. Articles whose title is that of a sound bite, at best, need to be redirects to a thorough treatment of a topic. Howard C. Berkowitz 03:02, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Geez, guys, don't you think that this has expanded enough that it ought to be a Forum topic? Hayford Peirce 03:27, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Will a funny thing happen if it goes there? Howard C. Berkowitz 03:38, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The current consensus is: Currently there is a Cold Storage and it may be used. There is also a consensus that this topic has to be reseloved, best in a wider context, by the community together with the future EC. I also hope that there is a consensus that it is not the most pressing issue at hand, and that it therefore may rest in "hibernation" for some more time. --Peter Schmitt 12:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)