Wikipedia:AFD 100 days

A computer script designed by Dragons flight was used to parse 100 days of AFD logs from June 1 2005 - September 8 2005 searching for bolded keywords (e.g. delete, keep, merge, redirect, kill, cleanup, etc.) in signed comments. This has allowed a large statistical sample to be generated from which important patterns in voting and article deletion behavior might be identified.

Methodology

A computer script was produced that parsed 100 days of AFD logs extracting votes and usernames from lines of the following kind:

* ... '''Vote text''' ... [[User:Some name|...]] ... {end of line}

These were broken into groups by searching for the === Nomination Headers ===. The first link to User space after the nomination header was assumed to belong to the nominator and was recorded in a separate category.

Obviously, there are many ways that this script can be fooled if people format things in unusual ways (or even some fairly mundane variations), but the hope is that by capturing a large enough sample it will be possible to derive meaningful patterns even if people who forget to bold their vote or sign in an unusual place are ignored. (Note: if more than one link to User space was present, the last one on the line was assumed to be the signature.)

The "vote text" was interpreted by removing a long list of modifiers (e.g. strong, weak, super, borderline, massive, etc.) and creating lists of common synonyms (e.g. delete = kill, nuke, destroy; keep = cleanup, revise, expand, don't delete). In this way it was possible to categorize 96% of all vote text as either: keep, delete, merge, speedy, speedy keep, redirect, bjaodn, rename, transwiki, or comment. The remaining 4% consist of a variety of ambiguous statements that could not be interpreted and rarely used phrases (e.g. "grind into a pulp") that were not considered frequent enough to be worth teaching to the parser even though their meaning may have been clear. If someone used multiple keywords, e.g. "delete or merge", the vote was usually recorded based on the first occurring recognized word. Some inversion terms (e.g. "don't" in "don't delete") were also processed to handle exceptions where the keyword wasn't assigned its normal meaning.

Obviously, this can never be as accurate or as complete as someone processing the AFD votes by hand, and it is likely a variety of mistakes and misinterpretations were made, but I believe this methodology is more than sufficient to get a broad understanding of AFD patterns.

Overview patterns

Number of days:	100
Range of days:	2005 June 1 - 2005 September 8
Number of nominations:	11211
Number of voters:	7202
Number of votes:	86773
Number of closers:	170
Percent deleted:	75.2 %
Empirical threshold:	63.5 %
Consistent with threshold:	93.8 %

• Percent deleted includes content removal outcomes (delete, speedy, bjaodn and redirect) as compared to content retaining outcomes (keep, no consensus, merge, speedy keep, move, and transwiki).

Full voting patterns

Category	# of Voters	votes	delete	keep	merge	speedy	sp. keep	redirect	bjaodn	move	transwiki	nominate	comment	other
All Users	7202	86773	47.5%	21.9%	3.9%	2.4%	0.3%	2.9%	0.2%	0.7%	0.4%	12.9%	3.7%	3.1%
At least 250 votes	51	27957	59.4%	16.6%	4.2%	2.8%	0.3%	3.4%	0.2%	0.6%	0.4%	6.5%	3.2%	2.6%
Between 100 and 250 votes	129	21055	47.8%	19.2%	3.7%	3.0%	0.4%	3.3%	0.3%	0.5%	0.4%	14.4%	3.9%	3.0%
Between 20 and 100 votes	451	20500	44.9%	20.2%	3.8%	2.5%	0.4%	2.7%	0.3%	0.8%	0.4%	16.6%	4.3%	3.1%
Less than 20 votes	6570	17261	31.3%	35.7%	3.6%	1.1%	0.3%	1.9%	0.2%	0.8%	0.3%	17.1%	3.7%	3.9%

Condensed voting patterns

Category	# of Voters	votes	delete	keep
All Users	6912	79077	70.6%	29.4%
At least 250 votes	46	23343	76.0%	24.0%
Between 100 and 250 votes	121	19615	74.0%	26.0%
Between 20 and 100 votes	430	19578	72.7%	27.3%
Less than 20 votes	6314	16541	56.2%	43.8%

• Content removal options (delete, speedy, nominate, bjaodn and redirect) consolidated under "delete".
• Content preserving options (keep, merge, speedy keep, move, and transwiki) consolidated under "keep".
• Comments and unparsed options are ignored and removed from counts.

Expanded low voter count

Category	Voters	Votes	Delete	Keep
Voted 20 to 49 times	276	8837	68.3%	31.7%
Voted 10 to 19 times	369	5020	66.0%	34.0%
Voted 5 to 9 times	591	3855	61.1%	38.9%
Voted 2 to 4 times	1476	3787	54.8%	45.2%
Voted once	3878	3878	40.2%	59.8%

• Same as above but for the very infrequent voters. Done on request of User:Fubar Obfusco.

Deletionist vs. Inclusionist tendencies

Expressed in terms of how often they vote delete, this table summarizes the tendencies of AFD regulars.

Deletion Percentage	0%	10%	20%	30%	40%	50%	60%	70%	80%	90%
Users with more than 250 votes	1	1	0	1	1	6	0	13	12	11
Users with more than 100 votes	4	3	2	3	7	13	9	39	53	34
Users with more than 20 votes	17	9	13	17	28	48	71	126	170	98

AFD outcomes

Outcomes	Number	Percentage
delete	6721	60.0 %
keep	2201	19.6 %
merge	296	2.6 %
speedy	805	7.2 %
speedy keep	27	0.2 %
redirect	360	3.2 %
bjaodn	8	0.1 %
move	36	0.3 %
transwiki	42	0.4 %
uncertain	715	6.4 %

• "uncertain" represents all of the AFDs whose outcome the program was unable to parse.
• no consensus results are included under keep.

Note: Combining the content removal options (delete, speedy, redirect, and bjaodn) and discounting the 6.4% of "uncertain" conclusions, indicates that 75.2% of AFDs result in content being "deleted", versus 24.8% with content preserving conclusions (keep, speedy keep, merge, move, transwiki).

User patterns

The voting patterns for the top 30 participants on AFD.

See also: An expanded list for all participants averaging more than one vote per day.

Full voting pattern

	User	votes	delete	keep	merge	speedy	sp. keep	redirect	bjaodn	move	transwiki	nominate	comment	other
1	JamesBurns	3645	86.3%	6.3%	3.4%	0.0%	0.0%	2.4%	0.3%	0.2%	0.4%	0.4%	0.2%	0.1%
2	Etacar11	1857	92.1%	3.0%	0.7%	1.5%	0.1%	0.8%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%	0.8%	0.4%	0.5%
3	Splash	1400	65.5%	8.9%	2.0%	3.8%	0.0%	2.4%	0.0%	0.5%	0.1%	10.9%	1.7%	4.1%
4	Kappa	978	5.1%	83.2%	5.3%	0.7%	0.1%	1.6%	0.0%	0.7%	0.2%	1.6%	0.4%	0.9%
5	Capitalistroadster	956	27.3%	54.8%	2.2%	3.7%	0.2%	3.2%	0.2%	0.3%	0.0%	0.0%	7.4%	0.6%
6	BD2412	916	52.1%	14.8%	7.1%	5.1%	1.0%	4.1%	0.9%	0.9%	0.4%	3.3%	4.8%	5.5%
7	Dcarrano	895	69.4%	6.3%	7.4%	1.9%	0.0%	7.3%	0.6%	1.2%	1.6%	0.4%	2.1%	1.9%
8	MacGyverMagic	882	55.4%	11.1%	5.8%	4.3%	0.3%	6.3%	0.2%	0.8%	1.7%	7.9%	2.7%	3.3%
9	Radiant%21	728	57.7%	8.4%	15.4%	1.0%	0.0%	1.9%	0.4%	1.4%	0.7%	10.0%	0.1%	3.0%
10	Scimitar	554	58.1%	15.7%	4.0%	4.5%	0.0%	2.7%	0.2%	0.2%	0.5%	4.3%	4.2%	5.6%
11	DS1953	514	42.4%	41.1%	2.3%	1.9%	0.6%	2.5%	0.0%	0.6%	0.2%	3.9%	3.1%	1.4%
12	Tony_Sidaway	511	5.5%	49.5%	5.7%	0.8%	0.0%	4.1%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	2.7%	28.2%	3.5%
13	Starblind	509	53.6%	13.8%	3.1%	12.4%	0.2%	2.8%	0.0%	0.4%	0.0%	0.2%	2.2%	11.4%
14	Carnildo	491	72.5%	4.1%	8.6%	2.6%	0.2%	3.5%	2.4%	0.4%	0.0%	2.2%	0.6%	2.9%
15	Wiki_alf	473	55.4%	17.5%	3.8%	0.0%	0.4%	4.2%	0.8%	1.9%	1.1%	0.8%	8.0%	5.9%
16	Hamster_Sandwich	470	66.0%	10.2%	3.0%	4.5%	0.2%	1.9%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%	1.3%	6.6%	6.2%
17	Sjakkalle	465	38.1%	31.0%	7.5%	2.2%	0.2%	3.9%	0.2%	0.2%	0.2%	13.1%	2.2%	1.3%
18	Dottoreso	450	82.9%	7.1%	1.6%	4.0%	0.2%	1.6%	0.0%	0.2%	0.0%	0.0%	2.0%	0.4%
19	Jaxl	437	83.3%	6.2%	2.5%	1.4%	0.0%	2.3%	0.0%	0.7%	0.0%	0.5%	2.3%	0.9%
20	RJHall	435	43.2%	33.1%	11.0%	0.0%	0.0%	4.8%	0.0%	1.1%	1.4%	2.1%	0.2%	3.0%
21	Pburka	429	29.8%	40.1%	5.8%	5.6%	0.5%	7.5%	0.0%	1.4%	0.5%	3.0%	4.7%	1.2%
22	Nandesuka	428	69.4%	14.0%	6.8%	1.9%	0.0%	2.6%	0.0%	0.9%	0.7%	1.6%	0.5%	1.6%
23	Android79	412	63.1%	9.0%	6.8%	3.9%	0.5%	3.9%	0.2%	0.7%	0.2%	7.8%	2.4%	1.5%
24	Doc_glasgow	406	31.3%	8.4%	2.5%	4.9%	0.5%	2.5%	0.0%	0.7%	0.7%	36.9%	9.1%	2.5%
25	Xcali	405	50.9%	2.2%	2.7%	15.1%	0.0%	0.5%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	22.2%	4.4%	2.0%
26	Sdedeo	394	49.7%	17.8%	2.3%	2.3%	1.8%	4.3%	0.0%	0.8%	0.0%	7.1%	11.2%	2.8%
27	Fernando_Rizo	393	59.5%	13.7%	4.8%	1.8%	0.0%	2.8%	0.3%	0.5%	0.5%	7.9%	4.8%	3.3%
28	Denni	390	32.8%	6.9%	0.5%	1.0%	0.0%	1.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.5%	54.6%	1.0%	0.8%
29	Pavel_Vozenilek	378	77.2%	4.8%	2.4%	7.4%	0.0%	3.7%	0.0%	0.3%	0.0%	1.9%	1.3%	1.1%
30	Proto	377	54.1%	9.8%	5.0%	5.3%	1.3%	12.7%	1.1%	0.8%	0.0%	4.8%	1.3%	3.7%

Condensed voting patterns

Simplified keep/delete count (see overview for description)

	User	votes	delete	keep
1	JamesBurns	3635	89.7%	10.3%
2	Etacar11	1841	96.0%	4.0%
3	Splash	1318	87.8%	12.2%
4	Kappa	965	9.2%	90.8%
5	Capitalistroadster	879	37.4%	62.6%
6	Dcarrano	859	82.9%	17.1%
7	MacGyverMagic	829	79.0%	21.0%
8	BD2412	822	73.0%	27.0%
9	Radiant%21	705	73.3%	26.7%
10	Scimitar	500	77.4%	22.6%
11	DS1953	491	53.2%	46.8%
12	Carnildo	474	86.3%	13.7%
13	Sjakkalle	449	59.5%	40.5%
14	Starblind	440	79.8%	20.2%
15	Dottoreso	439	90.7%	9.3%
16	Jaxl	423	90.3%	9.7%
17	RJHall	421	51.8%	48.2%
18	Nandesuka	419	77.1%	22.9%
19	Hamster_Sandwich	410	84.4%	15.6%
20	Wiki_alf	407	71.3%	28.7%
21	Pburka	404	48.8%	51.2%
22	Android79	396	82.1%	17.9%
23	Denni	383	91.9%	8.1%
24	Xcali	379	94.7%	5.3%
25	Pavel_Vozenilek	369	92.4%	7.6%
26	Fernando_Rizo	361	78.7%	21.3%
27	Doc_glasgow	359	85.5%	14.5%
28	Proto	358	82.1%	17.9%
29	Tony_Sidaway	349	19.2%	80.8%
30	R._fiend	348	82.8%	17.2%

Most nominations

	User	Nominations
1	Denni	213
2	Splash	153
3	Doc_glasgow	150
4	Dmcdevit	149
5	DragonflySixtyseven	117
6	Zoe	109
7	Gwalla	104
8	Xcali	90
9	Petaholmes	86
10	Bmicomp	86
11	Aaron_Brenneman	77
12	Weyes	76
13	Joy_Stovall	76
14	Radiant%21	73
15	MacGyverMagic	70
16	PhilipO	67
17	Sjakkalle	61
18	Duncharris	61
19	RickK	61
20	Niteowlneils	61
21	Sasquatch	60
22	Mikkalai	58
23	Jasonglchu	56
24	Cdc	56
25	Lotsofissues	56
26	DESiegel	55
27	TheMidnighters	54
28	Humblefool	54
29	Groeck	54
30	Icelight	53

Most frequent closers

	Name	Closed	Del %	Est. Threshold	Adherence	Est. Deviation
1	Sjakkalle	932	72.8 %	70.1 %	95.8 %	7
2	Allen3	923	89.3 %	58.8 %	97.8 %	2
3	Splash	827	43.3 %	58.6 %	94.0 %	4
4	Woohookitty	584	84.3 %	62.4 %	94.3 %	0
5	Golbez	551	90.1 %	57.0 %	97.7 %	2
7	Redwolf24	500	79.1 %	61.1 %	93.4 %	0
8	ABCD	381	97.6 %	47.3 %	99.0 %	4
9	FCYTravis	324	76.4 %	60.4 %	91.9 %	0
10	Mailer diablo	306	82.5 %	58.3 %	98.4 %	1
11	Xezbeth	284	83.0 %	58.5 %	99.0 %	1
12	Ryan Delaney	277	78.5 %	66.3 %	93.0 %	0
13	Tony Sidaway	230	46.0 %	80.2 %	88.5 %	16
14	Essjay	194	82.0 %	64.3 %	90.7 %	0
15	Trilobite	191	92.1 %	54.6 %	97.8 %	1
16	Francs2000	178	53.3 %	66.2 %	88.1 %	0
17	Dmcdevit	169	80.8 %	57.0 %	94.1 %	1
18	SimonP	164	53.4 %	73.8 %	92.2 %	5
19	Joy Stovall	158	87.0 %	66.0 %	97.1 %	0
20	Postdlf	158	89.2 %	64.2 %	99.6 %	0
21	Eugene van der Pijll	138	63.8 %	67.0 %	90.4 %	0
22	Malathion	131	82.2 %	70.6 %	91.1 %	1
23	Paul August	129	79.8 %	67.2 %	94.0 %	0
24	Cdc	128	86.6 %	59.8 %	97.0 %	0
25	Zzyzx11	122	70.0 %	74.7 %	89.5 %	1
26	JeremyA	118	82.9 %	43.9 %	99.1 %	3
27	Jni	117	100.0 %	30.0 %	99.9 %	2
28	Humblefool	110	79.4 %	65.3 %	92.0 %	0

• Estimated threshold is the percentage of delete votes this person most usually requires before closing an AFD as a deletion. This threshold can be significantly distorted for closers that avoid controversial votes (see deviation below).
• Adherence is the fraction of closes performed that appear consistent with this admin's threshold.
• Estimated deviation is the estimated number of AFD results that would have to be changed if this admin adopted the 63.5% threshold which is the average. Admins who rarely close controversial votes (e.g. nothing in the 50-80% range) may have a deviation of 0 even if their estimated threshold is substantially displaced.

Article voting patterns

Category	AFDs	Percentage
Unanimous delete	6523	58.2%
Strong delete (>80%), not unanimous	855	7.6%
Others (50-80% delete)	1932	17.2%
Majority keep (>50%), not strong	803	7.2%
Strong keep (>70%), not unanimous	463	4.1%
Unanimous keep	635	5.7%

Deletion as a function of vote percentage

Delete %	occurrences	Deleted	Percentage
0 - 5 %	18	0	0.0 %
5 - 10 %	138	0	0.0 %
10 - 15 %	188	2	1.1 %
15 - 20 %	318	9	2.8 %
20 - 25 %	248	6	2.4 %
25 - 30 %	134	3	2.2 %
30 - 35 %	279	14	5.0 %
35 - 40 %	237	17	7.2 %
40 - 45 %	120	6	5.0 %
45 - 50 %	344	46	13.4 %
50 - 55 %	64	9	14.1 %
55 - 60 %	289	82	28.4 %
60 - 65 %	102	48	47.1 %
65 - 70 %	320	208	65.0 %
70 - 75 %	417	328	78.7 %
75 - 80 %	328	307	93.6 %
80 - 85 %	249	245	98.4 %
85 - 90 %	431	420	97.4 %
90 - 95 %	135	130	96.3 %
95 - 100 %	6137	6014	98.0 %

• No compensation for sockpuppets / anon votes
• Some of the more perverse results also reflect parser error. For example, some of the 2% of AFDs that were kept despite apparent unanimous delete resulted from strangely formatted or labeled keep votes that the parser was unable to count.

Votes per article

Votes received	AFDs	Frequency
1	391	3.5%
2	635	5.7%
3	1204	10.7%
4	1582	14.1%
5	1483	13.2%
6	1212	10.8%
7	994	8.9%
8	714	6.4%
9	528	4.7%
10	395	3.5%
11	352	3.1%
12	266	2.4%
13	206	1.8%
14	168	1.5%
15	126	1.1%
16	103	0.9%
17	111	1.0%
18	89	0.8%
19	74	0.7%
20	70	0.6%
21	62	0.6%
22	55	0.5%
23	44	0.4%
24	37	0.3%
25	29	0.3%
26	31	0.3%
27	24	0.2%
28	25	0.2%
29	18	0.2%
30	22	0.2%
31	11	0.1%
32	16	0.1%
33	13	0.1%
34	8	0.1%
35	9	0.1%
36	7	0.1%
37	5	0.0%
38	4	0.0%
39	8	0.1%
40	8	0.1%
41	6	0.1%
42	2	0.0%
43	7	0.1%
44	6	0.1%
45	4	0.0%
46	1	0.0%
47	3	0.0%
48	1	0.0%
49	5	0.0%
50	4	0.0%
51	1	0.0%
52	1	0.0%
54	2	0.0%
56	1	0.0%
57	1	0.0%
59	2	0.0%
61	1	0.0%
63	3	0.0%
64	2	0.0%
65	1	0.0%
67	1	0.0%
69	1	0.0%
70	2	0.0%
71	1	0.0%
73	1	0.0%
78	1	0.0%
79	1	0.0%
81	1	0.0%
82	1	0.0%
90	1	0.0%
96	1	0.0%
98	1	0.0%
114	1	0.0%
115	1	0.0%
167	1	0.0%
185	1	0.0%
192	1	0.0%

• The nomination counts as one vote. Those AFDs with only 1 or 2 votes were typically speedy deleted shortly after listing.

Contested AFDs

Number of AFDs with at least the specified number of both keep and delete votes, and the percentage of such AFDs as a fraction of all AFDs

Votes	occurrences	Percentage
1	4688	41.8%
2	2643	23.6%
3	1614	14.4%
4	1062	9.5%
5	737	6.6%
6	515	4.6%
7	372	3.3%
8	273	2.4%
9	211	1.9%
10	167	1.5%
11	130	1.2%
12	110	1.0%
13	80	0.7%
14	65	0.6%
15	54	0.5%
16	46	0.4%
17	38	0.3%
18	29	0.3%
19	26	0.2%
20	25	0.2%
21	23	0.2%
22	21	0.2%
23	16	0.1%
24	14	0.1%
25	14	0.1%
26	12	0.1%
27	11	0.1%
28	10	0.1%
29	9	0.1%
30	9	0.1%
31	7	0.1%
32	6	0.1%
33	6	0.1%
34	5	0.0%
35	5	0.0%
36	5	0.0%
37	4	0.0%
38	2	0.0%
39	2	0.0%
40	2	0.0%
41	2	0.0%
42	2	0.0%
43	2	0.0%
44	2	0.0%
45	2	0.0%
46	2	0.0%
47	2	0.0%
48	2	0.0%
49	2	0.0%
50	2	0.0%
51	2	0.0%
52	2	0.0%
53	2	0.0%
54	2	0.0%
55	2	0.0%
56	2	0.0%
57	2	0.0%
58	2	0.0%
59	2	0.0%
60	1	0.0%
61	1	0.0%
62	1	0.0%
63	1	0.0%
64	1	0.0%
65	1	0.0%
66	1	0.0%
67	0	0.0%

AFDs with at least 2/3 delete

Shows the number of AFDs with at least the specified number of keep votes and those with at least twice as many delete votes as keep votes.

Keep votes	occurrences	With 2/3 delete	Percentage
1	4688	1708	36.4%
2	3412	642	18.8%
3	2668	299	11.2%
4	2151	156	7.3%
5	1750	87	5.0%
6	1388	51	3.7%
7	1133	28	2.5%
8	914	16	1.8%
9	752	10	1.3%
10	632	7	1.1%
11	509	4	0.8%
12	423	3	0.7%
13	357	2	0.6%
14	302	1	0.3%
15	243	1	0.4%
16	209	1	0.5%
17	179	1	0.6%
18	144	0	0.0%