It seems the points made on this page are clear and do not presently need further discussion.
Rather than discuss a group of articles, this page is for discussing a certain manner of behavior on WikiPedia in general and VfD in particular.
Usually, VfD is an ordered process. Many nominated articles get deleted by unanimous vote because they have no place in Wikipedia. Many others get kept because the nominator was mistaken or uninformed, or because the article was significantly improved after receiving its nomination. However, sometimes, heated arguments ensue, where people who contributed to or associate with an article insist it should be kept, and other people vehemently argue that said article is pointless, or worse.
The problem is that in these heated arguments, some people start attacking the people who disagree with them, rather than simply countering their arguments. Luckily there are few people who behave like that, but their offensive behavior can be destructive. In one of today's VfD discussions, a very simple remedy for this was proposed.
A vote containing a personal insult to someone in the same discussion should be discounted. Just like votes from sock puppets are ignored by the Mods when deciding what to do with a page after its discussion finishes.
Of course, there are subtle remarks that could be treated as an insult, or simply as vehement disagreement (e.g. "John Doe is obviously wrong"). For these, it is important to assume good faith and not treat them as insults. However, any votes containing remarks such as "John Doe is a moron" should be discounted. This seems like an elegant solution, and would serve to convince such people to make civil votes without insulting people.
This is not an official policy proposal of any kind, but it would be nice to discuss this and see if we can get decent guidelines out of it. Do people think this is a good idea? Or a bad idea? Do people have other suggestions? Discussion welcome! Radiant! 10:10, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)