Wikipedia:Deletion reform/General Comments

Initial comments

Too many people have been abusing vfd. It was okay, while we had too few admins, but now that there are over 100 active ones, a simpler system is called for.

Everything about the article should be discussed in one place: the article's talk page. If you want it deleted, merged, improved, or whatever: just discuss it there - instead of hiding the discussion on some power-tripping, hard to read, listed-by-date-only, cumbersome den of disruption! Uncle Ed 19:53, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

So we should instead discuss deletion in the place where only the authors, who have a self-proclaimed interest in keeping their poorly written POV-laden pieces of promotional crap will see them? Even a category list won't fit everything listed on VfD on a single page. How the hell is this supposed to work? -- Cyrius|✎ 21:58, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, if a m:DynamicPageList was used, it would be easy to get everything on one page. Dan100 (Talk) 07:11, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with templates? I started using them on my other MediaWiki encyclopedia website. You can place a discussion on two pages at once, by turning it into a template and starting it with a header. Then you get an "edit" link on the right side of the page which goes directly to the template. And the finished product appears in both places. In fact, in any number of places. Uncle Ed 01:23, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Retain edit logs

It would be helpful for edit histories of deleted articles to be retained so one could contact the authors to see what they were trying to do. Understandably, a lot of sysops just want to delete and go. Even better, if one could see the old versions of the article that would be fantastic (bar those revisions with copy-vios in, of course). This would be a big step towards preventing deletion being or becoming a form of censorship. Mr. Jones 12:09, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

A good principle of government is transparency, to avoid giving too much power to the governors. These histories should be made available to nonadmins as well. It is too easy for an admin to delete pages that no admins are looking at, but that users are looking at. Without public review of admin-discretion deletion, this will create two classes of users, which will inevitably lead to power trips. With public review, users can review articles deleted to see if low-traffic, but decent-quality articles are deleted without cause. This will help in the removal of abusive admins. — 131.230.133.185 04:09, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

An inspiring post on wikien-l

This was from David Gerard [1]

VFD performs a useful function about as damagingly as it could possibly be performed. It's being used as a substitute for cleanup, wikify, and copyvio. It's being used to push agendas of all sorts. It's constantly creating increased animosity between editors.

The VFD regulars are openly hostile to non-regulars. One of the arguments against breaking up VFD from the all-on-one-page to day pages a couple of months ago was that it would attract too many people to vote if the pages were more usable! I mean, what the fuck?

VFD the idea is one thing. VFD the present reality is pathological. More rules on it won't fix it - it needs to be taken out and shot.

MOTION: That while VFD nominally performs a useful function in clearing crap out of Wikipedia, its current operation and subcommunity is so pathological and damaging to the Wikipedia community that it should be removed entirely. Remove it completely. Then talk and think how to come up with something that works without becoming an engine for rancor.

Sorry, but it's not "inspiring". It's all been said before. It would be useful if people would propose an alternative solution that might actually work instead of vandalizing the site and inciting others to do so by carrying on the inclusionist "VfD is broken" claims. Angela. 21:29, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Well I did propose If you need a page deleted, add the Category:Delete tag to it, and present your reasons for wanting it removed on the article's discussion page. Did you think that wouldn't work? Uncle Ed 21:56, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

As a newbie trying to create a collaborative entry for an elderly and influential internet forum (BotF), I have to agree with the criticisims of your VfD policy. Our website easily meets the criteria listed on your discussion of Website Notability, you we've been flagged for deletion with arguments that have nothing to do with any of the formal policy criteria pertaining to deletion. It's hard to understate the aggravation that this kind of behavior causes to new users. Certainly, the role of VfD in driving away contributors damages the core mission of the wikipedia. Since I started my entry, I've been acquainting myself with this debate, and wiki's policies, and I have to agree with the assessment that VfD is deeply dysfunctional.--70.33.127.116 15:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

There are roughly 725 articles on VfD right now. Nearly all of them need to be killed with a very large axe (to borrow a David Gerard-ism. A category page will only display 200 articles, and cannot be ordered chronologically. There is no way of knowing whether something is newly-listed, or whether its 5 days are up and it needs evaluation without going through and checking each and every single one individually. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:03, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

This could be done with a m:DynamicPageList Dan100 (Talk) 07:40, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Without supporting the proposal (for reasons that I will raise elsewhere) the category can be sorted by using a tag with a sort key like [[:Category:Delete|2005-08-01]] using the ISO format date. When was the voting period reduced from 7 days? Anything less is far too short for people whose habits restrict their editing to one specified night of the week. Every item SHOULD be chcked individually without your proposed shortcut. Eclecticology 00:26:23, 2005-08-02 (UTC)

Can our template system do this automagically? i.e. could a template that was as simple to include as "{{rfd}}" instantiate into containing something like "[[:Category:Delete|2005-08-01]]" ..? --Stormie 01:20, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

If it can't do it today, let's ask the MediaWiki programmers to change it. It's not a very complicated change; I bet Magnus or Tim could knock it out in much less time than this vfd rfc debate has taken any one of us! Uncle Ed 01:27, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Looks like we probably can, by using templates such as {{CURRENTDAY}} inside the template. Here is a test: 2024-11-30. (source: "{{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{CURRENTMONTH}}-{{CURRENTDAY}}") --Stormie 02:29, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

As I understand, this would only cause them to be sorted by date; it wouldn't actually display the dates. Not what we want. Nickptar 02:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

How about [[:Category:Delete 2005-08-01]], so we'd have one category per day? --Stormie 02:29, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it inspired Ed ... um. If I had a point with any freshness to it, it was not merely that the current mechanism is broken, but that it's actively poisonous to the Wikipedia community, to a degree that should not be tolerated - David Gerard 23:45, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

As your link to Erik's proposal from the beginning of last years shows, people with deletion tendencies of all kinds have been suggesting all sort of improvements to the VfD for a long time. A shortage of ideas for change is emphatically not the problem. It is just that the sheer number of people involved has made change difficult. A dramatic stunt like Ed's is a good way to facilitating a discussion that can succeed on such an important of the 'pedia. Pcb21| Pete 12:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I am pleased to note that Angela's deletion tidbits page includes a quote from the infamous Louis Kyu Won Ryu, and that it matches nearly verbatim some similar nonsense I was spouting just a few hours ago. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 02:01, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• I think the VfD weapon promotes systematic bias on Wikipedia, especially an anti-US bias. For example, there are a huge number of pages on US "imperialism", critiques of US policies, racism, dubious "lists" about US actions, etc. but when someone tried to make an article on Chinese imperialism it was immediately VfD'ed. VfDs are slapped on any topic which is seen as "POV" against some Non-American entity, while if a topic is POV against the US, it gets defended as acceptible ("the topic may be POV but the article is not"). Even if an article survives VfD, it is a form of harrassment which discourages such articles very strongly. During VfDs, sometimes there is campaigning (leaving messages on user pages rounding up votes) which makes it hard to get an objective vote. (The big problem here is that the vote is decided by who shows up not really the merits of the debate...) Other areas I see this are anythintg related to Islam: Islamophilia was deleted, while Islamophobia kept. Again and again, the VfD weapon is used to eliminate topics that don't fit in a general ideology Leftism and of blaming the US. If articles were allowed to survive, perhaps bias could be addressed by contributors, but the VfD ensures that anti-US topics simply outnumber other articles. VfD is used as a weapon of censorship and enforcing systematic bias. Willowx 06:58, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Categories and deletion reversability

• As long as deletion is not reversible to editors (non-sysop), developing a consensus with time for discussion is needed. If we adopted the Pure wiki deletion system or something similar that is reversable by any editor, then the vfd process would not be needed. Disputes about deletion could be resolved in Article Talk pages as other disputes are. We could reduce "real" deletions to specific types of cases (copyvio, porn, etc.) where having the former content in the history is not acceptable. NoSeptember 01:57, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I still like the idea of having a centralized place where I can go to see all disputed articles - if not vfd, they should be in a category. -- BD2412 ^talk 02:08, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
    • Yeah, I agree that we need to have someplace central for disputed articles. AlbertR 02:12, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• We could have a log that automatically picks up page blankings, plus a category(ies) for deletion disputes that any editor could add an article to. NoSeptember 02:16, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• The category idea is good, but I still favor the current VFD page format. AlbertR 02:23, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• We can preserve a vfd-type page (allowing a public nomination of an article for deletion, as is done now) but with discussion being directed to the article's talk page instead of a separate vfd discussion page. Plus we can add a template on the article itself to direct people to the talk page to discuss deletion. NoSeptember 02:36, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• That way of formatting would eliminate all the "Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/X article" pages, which could be good or bad. AlbertR 02:43, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• What about transcluding the VfD debate on the article talk page? Or, alternatively, putting the discussion on an article subpage and redirecting the VfD subpage to that? (Of course by itself this wouldn't change much). -- Visviva 14:55, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

If it ain't broke

• First off, big kudos from me for having the stones to bring something like this forward from whole cloth. Great initiative. That said, I'm not sure I see the widespread chaos and havoc you're talking about.

Asking for the author of the article to comment on a VfD would be ideal, but that's rarely possible. Many of the articles on VfD have anonymous hit-and-run authors never to be seen again on Wikipedia. The current system encourages authors to come and comment with the boilerplate text in the {{VfD}} tag.

Fanatics at VfDs like GNAA are more difficult to deal with, but with the current VfD schema the relative chaos is confined to one place: the VfD for that article. Admins still tally up votes, decide if consensus was achieved and act appropriately. Sock puppets are a hassle but generally easy to identify.

Voting is done essentially in binary logic. Redirect and merge mean keep, but they offer guidance on the next step after VfD. BJAODN means delete, with similar post-VfD instructions. It's nowhere near as byzantine as your proposal suggests.

I do agree with the reform's grievances on some points. VfD is highly factionalized, and as undoubtedly regrettable as that is, it's probably inevitable. The current system is not pretty, but it works. --Fernando Rizo T/C 02:27, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that author comments are a non-issue: there are some authors who just hit and run, and there are some who defend their articles relentlessly. The VFD tag seems to work well enough in this regard. As for sockpuppets, we can just deal with it on a case-by-case. AlbertR 02:32, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

If discussion is done on the talk page, this will mean keeping talk pages for deleted articles. Is this a problem? --SPUI (talk) 03:00, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

You could organize all the orphaned VFD talk pages with a special category, perhaps "Category:Deletion archive". AlbertR 03:02, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." as the saying goes. The only truly major problem with VfD is it's increasing size/clutter, which will improve as folks get used to the new Speedy criteria (of the 12 articles on today's VfD at the moment, about half probably could have been speedied without objection). Other than that, VfD pretty much works as advertised... rarely if ever does a wonderful article get deleted, or a terrible one kept. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:45, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

To an extent, I agree with that. I think the focus for policy changes should be on finding ways to reduce backlog and clutter. AlbertR 03:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• Total agreement with Andrew Lenahan - Starblind. Fernando Rizo T/C 03:54, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• I likewise am pretty much in agreement with Andrew Lenahan - Starblind. As for the cases in which the wrong decision is made, that's what re-nominations and RFU are for. The only change I can think of that would improve the process would be mandatory re-nomination of inconclusive VFDs after a set time period. The Literate Engineer 05:16, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Then why not call for a speedy on them to end discussion, especially if the votes in place are for delete? If they meet the CSD criteria, why do they need to be discussed on VfD? Vegaswikian 20:01, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

The system is fine. There is no better way to handle deletions than to have votes on the individual candidates as subpages collected on a central page. The real drive for this, I suspect, is in nothing more than the "voting is evil" argument, that tired old refrain with no connection to reality. The only reform I would be fairly confident in supporting would be to set a standard threshold to require 67% delete votes to delete (presently it varies from a little over 50% to 75-80%), and to make this mandatory, so that a sysop can't decide to keep an article if there's anything higher than two-thirds. This would be a bit of a step towards firming up the process and taking some of the subjectivity out of it, which would in turn most likely reduce the controversy. Everyking 05:41, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

unfortunetly subjectivity is needed from time to time (at the most basic there is the sockpupet issue)Geni 09:37, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

If there is a mandatory threshold at an exact number, I predict that there will be many votes which will never end, because no admin will want to close them. At the moment, it is not really necessary to have to decide for each single vote if it counts or not. Just do a rough count, and if it ends up in the grey zone, weigh in the quality of the arguments and your general impression of the discussion and who voted (new editors, trusted admins, etc.). If there is an exact threshold, there will be endless discussions on close calls, which votes would be valid, and whether the admin counted right. Eugene van der Pijll 16:36, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I said some of the subjectivity. Everyking 18:38, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I tned to feel that the main problem with VFD is that not enough of the communty gets involved. Much of the community avoids the place completely.Geni 09:37, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• I think the notion that we should have notability guidelines for most areas is a brilliant one, and we should start to build one drawing on the precedent library held within the VfD archives and at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Precedents. In fact, can we not make the latter policy, since it contains a lot that would help smooth the vfd process. Hiding talk 10:30, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

People have made a stab at such guidelines before - have a look at Wikipedia:Notability , Wikipedia:Importance and (my personal favourite, apparently "rejected") Wikipedia:Informative/Old. Dan100 (Talk) 13:56, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

I've had a look through the old discussions on those pages and read Jimbo's view: basically, we need nothing beyond verifiablility and no original research because if someone or something has been not been written about by someone else in the appropiate media, then it's not worth an article. Dan100 (Talk) 20:38, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Totally agree with Starblind. Also, we might have better luck working out notability guidelines for individual subjects each on their own page, per WP:MUSIC. Meelar (talk) 14:30, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. I'll see if I can whip up a little something along those lines. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:06, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

• Moving VfD to talk pages would reduce the already small number of people interested in VfD to almost nil. I miss existence one large list of VfDed article names (w/o discussions) so I can skim though it and select what I may know something. Current separation to days reduces this chance. I also like CrisG proposal - article no one cares would be deleted, not left hanging out as they are now. Pavel Vozenilek 19:02, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• IMHO there is very little that's actually wrong with the current system. The fact that all the articles being voted on are listed on the same page is a good thing, as they are easy to see there. If the votes were on talk pages, confusion would ensue, and it's highly probable that only people who are interested in the topic of the article would ever stumble there (even if the articles were listed in a category) - leading to a much higher proportion of 'keep' votes. Speedy deletion should be practised more often with obvious vanity and otherwise useless articles, which would reduce the strain placed on VfD. On the other hand, people should take a more relaxed stance on deletion in general - not everything you yourself are not interested in (or disagree with) should be deleted. Finally, technical measures should be taken to prevent sockpuppetry - maybe preventing anonymous IPs from editing on the Wikipedia namespace altogether. All this would allow keeping the old system, but improving it a great deal. - ulayiti (talk) 20:10, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• I would like a "middle ground" between "regular articles" and deletion. We should allow "locked stubs" , which means some non-notables, minor places, etc, would have a stub, with a message telling people they can't change it. Comments for "unlocking" would go on the discussion page. This would avoid "red links" which often invite attempts at undeletion. Currently, wiki "invites" people to create articles, that are simply going to be re-deleted. It also avoids the problem where what's initially an unfamous name becomes famous. Such stubs are useful to future editors to determine if links using the name (person,place,company,etc) is supposed to point to something or not. It avoids non-standard naming of "red-links" (which is a huge wiki problem). Also, "locked stubs" give an ongoing place for discusion of new information, that may change the consesus. This idea would only apply to names of real people, places, products, things, etc... that are easily verifiable, and have a conceivable hope of a future "normal article". These "locked stubs" would be quite helpful in disambiguation, present and future, for editors and readers. Generally names (person,place,thing,whatever) are not unique identifiers, and one funciton a valid link serves, is to "precisely" identify(qualify) who/what the name refers to. No external links would appear on these "locked stubs", so they would not be exploitable by link spammers. --rob 20:51, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

• The thing that strikes me looking through vfd is that multiple people waste a lot of time saying something needs to be deleted. In the majority of cases there are no keep votes, so why do people waste their time putting down delete votes and explaining? The burden should then be on someone to justify the article should exist, since someone else has already put the effort in to justifying deletion. So I would suggest that (1) An article is added to vfd and the reason(s) is given. (2) If after 7 days it has attracted no keep votes it is deleted. (3) If a single keep vote is given and the reason(s) is given, then voting starts. (4) Normal processes apply. The benefits would be that only one person criticises an article which will be less painful for new editors. The page length will be substantially reduced. Looking at the historic vfd pages I would guess by 50 to 75%. Unanimious deletions will happen without people wasting effort. Attention is focused on those articles that someone has voted to keep and has justified why that should be the case; which should result in better peer review. :ChrisG 21:48, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • This is a good idea. I think it has merit becuase it would'nt require any drastic changes to the process, but would also reduce clutter on the VFD page. AlbertR 22:21, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Interesting twist. The only problem I see is for editors like myself who only browse VfD once for each days entries, at least as a general rule. We may miss the Keep a few days later and not vote. On the other hand, this would reduce the size of the article and make it quicker to browse through it, so more people might be tempted to look on a regular basis. Vegaswikian 22:56, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I do not think that the physical length of the page is much of an issue. It has a TOC, and each debate can be read individually, if you really want to, by clicking on the edit link that takes you to the subpage, and that is all you see if you arrive from the article. This proposal is an interesting twist, but would quickly fall foul of a single sockpuppet. There'd have to be an impartial admin/editor responsible for watching each debate to remove them (hands up). Equally, the hardest-core inclusionists could easily force a debate on every single article, and we'd be back where we are now, only with a longer time lag. Alternatively, debates would effectively need 'closing' twice: once to determine the validity of any keep votes, and once as usual at the end. -Splash 03:10, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • The issues of sock puppets is a seperate issue, which requires technical solutions and hard work outside of any voting procedure. But under this idea, to keep an article you have to provide a reason; and that is going to require that person to write something convincing. Whereas notability, importance etc. have been unsuccessful as required criteria for an article in themselves; in order to to justify an article you have to appeal to some such criteria. The burden is effort is put on the person to justify the article, which would be easy if the article is potentially encyclopediac. If a person just writes keep, then that would not trigger voting, and if the reason is inadequate, then it should not trigger voting. I take your point about time delay and period in purgatory could be reduced somewhat; but you have to give interested parties time to access an article, most people don't go on Wikipedia every day.:ChrisG 09:47, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Also the length of the pages is a problem for a lot of people, especially those without broadband. :ChrisG
• With almost 10 discussions going on over deletion, it is impossible for anyone to understand the issues involved and it will be difficult to reach concensus. About all that you can say for sure is that the issue of deletes needs to be looked at. Vegaswikian 02:37, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

• As to the particular suggestions here...well...the category idea is flawed as has been pointed out: it has no time-structure to it and would at present contain about 700 articles, at 200 per screen. It also fails to change anything about the VfD process, apart from its mere cosmetics (what's the difference between a talk page and a transcluded subpage linked to from the article?), and would not have avoided the particular issue that inspired the deletion of VfD.
• I think the 3rd bullet point in the Ideas list is great (2 days of discussion first): it will stop the bludgeoning effect caused by racking up delete votes, and there'll be little discussion of the obvious keeps. The voting can take place in the remaining 3 days; it doesn't need longer as casting a vote is a quick action.
• Some bureaucracy could be avoided if we set a time-and-vote threshold. If an article has a majority of X%, e.g. 80%, either way after Y days, e.g. 2, then the debate may be closed appropriately. If it reaches that majority at any later point, the debate may be closed. If that threshold is not reached, the debate may be closed after the usual 5 days.
• I think some of the bad-blood would be avoided if the threshold for deletion were hardened, to some value or other. Clearer rules are less painful. Those VfDs that are dead-on-the-threshold, and only those (and perhaps those within 1 vote of it) would be handed to the Bureaucrats for their expert, and final, decision. That is why we made them into Bureaucrats, after all, not just to promote admins. -Splash 03:10, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

• • I'm wary of the point about reaching a majority of x%, because it could lead to ballot stuffing. I'd also like to see voting extended back to a seven day period, to allow more voting. However, I would like voting to be closed after seven days.
  • I agree with the other points, and I notice there are a few others who agree that notability issues need to be defined.
  • Is it not possible to have a bot close all vfd's to voting after seven days, which would then mean an admin only has to reach a decision on the consensus formed, and if no consensus is formed, have a month limit before another vfd is allowed? I'd also suggest that maybe decisions split between 45-55 either way should probably have a template of some sort attached to the articles talk page. Hiding talk 14:43, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's a thought...

VFD frequently becomes unpleasant because people start making hostile remarks towards one another over disagreements over what should and should not be deleted. We could alleviate this by taking a stronger position against personal attacks - just as a procedure was once created for blocking people for excessive reverting, so could one be made to block for excessive hostility. Radiant_>|< 14:32, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

An excellent idea. I've seen some recent votes where the "discussion" got ugly and it was really needless. There's no reason that the voting cannot be simple and brief. An interesting deterrent to personal attacks might be to invalidate the votes of anybody doing it. Presumably since they are on the VfD page they want their vote counted. I really value the civility found here most of the time and any changes to VfD that further promote that would be a good thing.Tobycat 22:51, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

And another thought...

The largest share of abuse regarding VfD is in people nominating articles for deletion in bad faith. Often this is done to prove a point, and often it is done out of simple malice, which severely damages Wikipedia's credibility. "Bad faith" nominations are, really, a form of vandalism - and as such, those who make them (particularly those who make "bad faith" nominations repeatedly and consistently) should be treated as vandals, as they are essentially gaming the system to damage the wiki. As such, it may be appropriate to consider the same punishment for them as for any other vandal - temporary or even permanent bans. Another, lesser alternative is to block them from being able to nominate an article for deletion, termporarily or permanently as the case warrants. Xaa 16:35, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

This is why I agree with "Sparky" (i.e., David Gerard) that vfd is poison to the community. I say, establish criteria, enable discussion, and empower any admin to take prompt action. Prompt can be anywhere from immediately to over a week - it depends on the page, which requires judgment, and sysops are supposed to be trusted with this judgment. Uncle Ed 20:10, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

With all due respect, Ed, you've already shown what happens when admins are "empowered". I'm not sure most people here really want to give you more "power". Chuck 20:31, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Ed, I think you should interpret Xaa's words as: people proving a point are poison to the community. Think about it. Eugene van der Pijll 22:15, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you should, because that's what I meant. =) People who use VfD to prove a point or out of malice to disrupt the wiki should be treated as any other vandal. If the concensus of opinion is that the VfD was made in bad faith, then the nominator should be treated as any other vandal would be treated. As it stands, VfD is being "gamed" by those who wish to disrupt the wiki and/or prove a point but want to have absolutely no chance of being punished for their actions. Come on - people have nominated *feature articles* for deletion, folks. That type of activity is vandalism - and it's my opinion that if it's treated as such, a lot of the VfD abuse will be curtailed. Xaa 03:15, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm all for admins taking prompt action on narrowly defined categories of problems -- more or less, the ones laid out by speedy deletion criteria after the recent revision. I don't think that admins (or any other individual) can be expected to suppress their biases enough to render unnecessary the consensus-gathering role of deletion votes. Moreover, I don't think non-admin contributors should have to suffer the slings and arrows of sometimes outrageous admin behavior -- finding an article unexpectedly deleted is no good.

FWIW, while I think that Ed Poor's recent actions have been unnecessarily disruptive, I don't think they've caused too much damage -- precisely because other administrators enforced the preëxisting consensus, rolling back the radical change until there's been time to discuss it. We wouldn't want to have to apply that level of scrutiny to every deletion, would we? --FOo 00:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Fixing VfD: A Word From Andrew Lenahan

First off, as I said above, I don't feel that VfD is very seriously broken, and it's a rare thing indeed for a truly "bad" decision to come from VfD consensus. However, I do feel that the current system is somewhat bloated. In my opinion, this will become less and less of a problem as admins become comfortable with the new Speedy criteria. I do have a few small proposals which would lighten the load. Note that these ideas should not necessarily be considered "original", and may have been proposed before by myself or others... Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:24, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

• 24-hour adjustable discussion time A VfD gets by far its most attention and discussion within the first 24 hours. I honestly cannot think of any examples of when a vote has completely turned itself around after this point. Since most VfDs show a very clear consensus (often unanimous) within the first 24 hours, a VfD with unanimous or almost-unanimous result should be closed after 24 hours. If a consensus has not formed in 24 hours, the debate can continue until one does form, up to a week. This would cut VfD down to size considerably. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:24, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy overrides VfD if an article on VfD is actually a speedy candidate, it should be speedied and the VfD closed. This is already done in practice, but I don't believe there's a policy saying so yet.Andrew Lenahan - Starblind
• Cut the nonsense if a VfD nomination can reasonably be shown to be a joke, attack, WP:POINT or otherwise bad faith, it should be removed from VfD immediately. A good example is the downright silly VfD of IMDB last week [2] Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:24, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep the socks in the drawer where they belong Unfortunately, VfD is an absolute magnet for sockpuppets of all types. Some of them think that by voting many times, they can swing a vote, others just like to show up and wreak general havok. To stop the socks in their tracks, we should establish a sufferage requirement for VfD. The current policy states that sock votes are discounted if they are made "in bad faith", but this isn't enough to discourage most of them.Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:24, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Establish more guidelines like WP:MUSIC WP:MUSIC has done us a world of good in combatting all sorts of garage-band vanity. The same basic format could be used for other types of articles, and not only make VfD easier, but also prevent some deletion-bait articles from being created in the first place, as well as preventing VfD nominations for subjects almost guaranteed to be kept. I've started a very rough, very incomplete general idea of how this may look here: User:Starblind/Inclusion Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:24, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

So there you have it. I fully expect at least some of this to be controversial, but I welcome any and all discussion and suggestions. Thanks for reading this far. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:24, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

I think Starblind is basically right on the money here. VfD is big, but not broken. The new speedy criteria have not noticeably cut down on its size, but I have seen less high school vanity type articles, which is an improvment. People talk about "abuse", but I see that as a very limited problem, unless people see any VfD that results in a keep as a bad faith nomination, which I would hope they don't. Examples like the IMDb one Starblind mentioned are pretty rare, and usually closed quickly, and he's right, an official policy on this should be drafted. As for other "cons" like "strife" and "hurting newbies", well, you know, cry me a river. Particularly nasty commens should be avoided (and there's policy against them) but when some 11 year old writes an article on hismelf, it's going to get deleted, and if he's hurt, too bad. We're an encyclopedia, not a support group. Most of the cons can't be fixed through any real proposal. As long as people are allowed to express their opinions on the future of an article (which is essential) there will be sockpuppets. I'd be all for some sort of countdown deletion policy, but it's been proposed and it always narrowly fails. Besides, some of the articles countdowns were supposed to deal with are now speedies, so it isn't as pressing as it once was.

Starblind is right that the first 24 hours is the most important part of any VfD, but there are sometimes significant changes after that. It's not uncommon for all the votes to start going one way, then someone brings a new fact to light and all the subsequent votes go the other way (an example: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/THIS MOURNING AFTER).

I think the biggest problem is one of consensus. A lack of consensus defaults to keep, but this means sometimes article in which no keep vote was was cast become keepers. And with so many options (merge and redirect; merge and delete; tranwiki; userfy; BJAODN; etc) a consensus for one of them can be very difficult to achieve. VfD is not back/white-keep/delete as some people say it is. If something is questionably deleted it can go to VfU. If something is questionably kept it can be nominated again, but there are always people who vote keep based not on the article, but on the fact that it's already been "decided". These are the bigger issues. -R. fiend 16:49, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

R. fiend brings up a point. One of the few things that bothers me about the VfD process is that people interpret a vote of "merge" as a vote to keep. Maybe it's just me, but I feel that when I vote "merge", I'm voting to delete the article unless it's merged (to me, "merge" means "keep iff it's merged"). Likewise, I see "redirect" and "transwiki" as varients of the "delete" vote, not the "keep" vote. Which is why while I agree with keeping inconclusive vfds until renomination occurs, I can't help but feel that while there may be no consensus about deleting or just blanking the article and redirecting somewhere, there was a consensus not to keep the article in its existing form - which is what ends up happening.

Thing is, too, I guess I should be up-front about this. I don't think VFD's broken. It certainly doesn't need replacement, and I don't think it needs "fixing", either. Some tweaking, maybe. Expansion of CSD, yes. But looking at the list of "cons" up there, I can't say I agree with even half of them actually being cons. 129.59.77.241 17:51, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it could use some fixing in some regards, but not overhaul. Not that anyone cares, but my opinions on the cons are mapped out: User:R. fiend/Why VfD isn't seriously broken. -R. fiend 18:31, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with almost all of what Starblind says (I have a few quibbles with the 24-hour proviso, but nothing unsolvable)--Vfd is not broken as such. More specific topic guidelines along the lines of WP:MUSIC would be welcome. Meelar (talk) 17:05, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
• Agree as well. Not totally broken, should be policy on removing from VfD if a bad-faith nomination, and policies (WP:MUSIC) can help with bloat. The only "rule" change I support would be votes by anon users or users with fewer than 50 edits; this may be considered very drastic and very unWiki by many. Easier templating of candidates sounds like a need also, and simple speedy process can weed out a lot of the non-contentious vanity and garbage. If a new user and his two buds can't vote and create sockpuppets to argue against deletion of the their latest neologism as an article, would that help? Haven't been here long enough to know all the agony of VfD, and don't do admin chores on it, but I do know I'm reluctant to nominate for VfD because of the coding and multiple postings required. Maybe the biggest thing would be to clarify: all merge/transwiki, etc votes are delete, only KEEP is a leave alone vote. Also, clarifying what an an "assertion" of notability is would certainly help. To sum up, no whole new board game of rules will solve it, but tuning, and tuning out some noise, should be considered. DavidH 02:07, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
• I also agree with Starblind with one qualifier. I have seen votes that changed radically late in the discussion. Not many, but enough that we should be extremely cautious about prematurely "deciding" that the votes are done. It usually happens when a new participant brings hard evidence to the discussion - facts that the rest of the community didn't have. 5 days is not too long to wait. Rossami (talk) 05:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

  Sidenote: I have also noticed this trend toward the voting drop-off after 24 hours. It really accelerated when we moved away from listing all VfDs on a single page. I understand the performance issues that led to that decision but I increasingly believe that it has created a disincentive to return to prior votes and has reduced the quality of our decision-making. Rossami (talk) 05:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that these proposals come close to the mark...closer than some of the others. The reason why is that they are more measured and less drastic. There's no compelling reason to make a massively drastic change to the process all at once. This is something that can evolve. I am not ready to give up on the current aggregation of all of the VfDs on a single page. The process works, it is just slow. A few thoughts about the specific suggestions...

• 24-hour adjustable discussion time: this suggestion I'm open to but would like to see the minimum at 48. I've rescued several articles by re-writing them and it took more than 24 hours to accomplish that.
• Speedy overrides VfD - absolutely the right thing to do.
• Cut the nonsense - I agree strongly that common sense should prevail. If an article is obviously a joke/attack/WP:POINT and a few editors concur, then an admin should be able to just remove the article at any time in the process.
• Keep the socks in the drawer: the notion of suffrage requirements is no doubt a controversial one. Many editors already accept the notion that new accounts and non-logged in IPs carry less voting weight. Certainly anybody should be permitted (encouraged even!) to participate in the voting discussion, but I can see sound reasoning behind not counting IP address votes. I think this is a worthy discussion to have.
• Establish more guidelines like WP:MUSIC: this makes excellent sense. The guidelines at WP:MUSIC have been extremely helpful at making judgments. It would be nice to have additional criteria for companies, individuals, academics, actors, commercial products, etc. I recognize that this is hard, though. Reaching consensus on such things will take hard work and some categories may never get criteria, but I think this is worth attempting.

In sum, I find these proposals to be a middle ground of incremental change that seems less risky. I fear that the proposals that scatter the voting to individual pages will dramatically reduce needed deletions due to lack of participation. Tobycat 23:09, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with this proposal for the most part. I think 48 hours of unanimity would be safer than 24, and this could be easily extended by someone saying "wait, I'm working on this". Officially discounting IP votes may be an unpleasant necessity (it'd at least be preferable to the current vague "officially anonymous votes may be counted but in practice they almost never are" pseudo-policy). Speedy overriding VfD is already done in practice. In the spirit of "cut the nonsense", I think nominations that do not suggest deletion (such as those that say they think an article should be merged), or whose only rationale is based on the quality or length of prose (stubs or messy articles) or POV in the text (rather than the title or topic), should be speedy keeps: this would (hopefully) discourage people from abusing VfD in place of cleanup/adding stub notices/discussing merges on talkpages/etc. I'm definitely in favor of notability guidelines hashed out through discussion between people actually interested in and knowledgeable about a general topic. I don't think there's any need to scrap the whole process in favor of goodness-knows-what. — Gwalla | Talk 05:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup not Deletion

Here's a thought. Abolish speedy deletion. Make criteria for a listing on VfD be that an article breaks policy, i.e. not verifiable or original research, and include current speedy criteria. Limit discussion to two days, to catch anything not meeting the criteria, but reduce discussion. Anything not meeting new vfd criteria goes to cleanup. Hiding talk 17:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

• That unfortunately wouldn't work. Most of what gets speedied is primarily random characters ("adasdasdfqw") and quickie attack pages ("Jim Bob in my math class is a homo!!!!!!") that can't possibly be cleaned up. To send every single one of them to VfD would not only be a waste of time (who's going to vote keep on "adasdasdfqw"?) but would also bloat VfD beyond any usable size. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 17:55, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Okay, so keep speedy deletion for patent nonsense. And attack pages. How does it work now?Hiding talk 18:14, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
    • And what about articles that have no content? We could go on lik ethis for a long time. All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? -R. fiend 18:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Yeah, I guess we could. So keep speedy deletion and have VfD as a place to debate articles thought to be original research, since unverifiable is now covered at speedy under An article about a real person that does not assert that person's importance or significance. Everything else goes to cleanup. Otherwise we end up arguing over what constitutes notability. Hiding talk 19:11, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
        • Resticting speedy is dumb becuase a)speedies don't cause that many problems. and b)admins would ignore the restictions anyway (the first time the criteria for speedy deletion were inlarged in simply legitimised what admins had been doing for ages).Geni 05:54, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
• Regarding the criteria for listing: much of the discussion that goes on in VfD is about whether the article in question breaks those very policies. (Does this article constitute self-promotion? Is this list a repository of useless internal links?) How are you supposed to list an article whose adherance to policy is merely questionable? Flowerparty ^talk 19:19, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't follow your examples. If an article is thought to be self promotion, it should be verified. If it is verifiable, it stays and shouldn't be listed, but rather cleaned up if the text is badly written. If it is unverifiable it is listed under that criteria. If it is vanity, it goes to speedy. If a list is thought to be a repository of useless links, improve it or redirect it or send it to clean up or ignore it. Hiding talk 19:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I should have pointed to WP:NOT for the reasons for my examples. Flowerparty ^talk 19:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Okay. So dic defs should be cleaned up or transwikied and speedied, and the rest are covered likewise by speedying for vanity, original research or transwikying. Hiding talk 21:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
    • So I'm assuming you're of the opinion that anything verifiable belongs in wikipedia? Obituaries, chatroom discussions, laundromats, fire hydrants, etc? Needless to say many of us do not agree with that. There's also the question of what "verifiabliity" is. A reference on a website is the most common thing we use, but not all websites are reliable, as we all know. Unverifiability is also not a speedy criterion, as it is not the same as no assertion of notability. -R. fiend 19:55, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • You assume incorrectly. However, the idea was suggested in line with Jimbo's notion that the only bars to inclusion are of verifiability and original research. As to chatroom discussions, fire hydrants and laundromats, aren't they vanity if there is no notability asserted? Maybe we should broaden An article about a real person that does not assert that person's importance or significance to include things, that would solve that. Obituaries, if of famous people, should be cleaned up, if of non famous people they are vanity. Hiding talk 21:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Also, you misread me. I misread myself. If it is fekt that verifiability is not covered by the non notable clause, then verifiability would become a criteria for listing at VfD, the other being Original Research. This would enable sources to be provided for verifiability issues, or for deletion to occur, and for discussion on an article's qualification as original research to take place, with a simple keep/delete outcome. Hiding talk 21:05, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Sure, those things could count as vanity, but vanity can be verifiable. So if anything verifiable (and not original research or a copyright) is wikipedic, then clearly some vanity is; that's how I read it, and that's why i don't think verifiability is the sole criterion for inclusion (though it is an important one). Also, when you say "VfD" above, do you mean to say CSD? Original research and unverifiability are already criteria for VfDs. Expanding speedy to cover them would be tricky, as what exactly is original research is the sort of thing that generally warrants discussion. -R. fiend 23:57, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
        • As I read the article on verifiability, the source needs to be reputable and NPOV, and the mention should be of the sort that indicates that someone did some actual research. Thus, a dedication to, "The loveliest woman in the World, my wife Lisa," in a book on Ancient Troy would not constitute a reference. Nor do we need to take a puff-piece in the local paper seriously. Most obituaries are unresearched: just a list of POV claims by the next-of-kin, and therefore no suitable sources. No one said we need to leave our common sense at the door. Robert A West 20:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

My rational inclusionist agenda

The current system stinks -- VfD, TfD, CfD, yatta-yatta-yatta. FAC is the flip side of the same coin, and RfC another aspect of the same confrontational, clique-y, castle-jumping attitude. It takes many hours of real work and thought to build something and only a few moments for some fool to attack it. Then it takes as much time to defend as it took to build.

Yes, a great deal of garbage is created -- so much so that a formal trial-by-jury is inappropriate. At either extreme, the community is ill-served: Trash is not removed speedily; good work is dragged through the mill needlessly.

Voting is Evil and driven by the deletionist agenda. Wiki is not paper and in most cases, any article, template, category, or other page found useful by any 2 or 3 members of the community is prima facie worthy of remaining in the database. We need to recognize that even liberal-minded people find it difficult to tolerate that which is outside their own circles of interest. We must not allow petty prejudice to crowd out the novel, the mysterious, the controversial, and the diverse.

Thus, Xiong's deletion reform proposal:

• Solutions to be coded in the engine -- dramatically downscale admin makework
• Socks are a problem in this and other areas:
  • Restrictions on new user editing -- liberal and scaling up with time and contribs
  • Threshold for passage from new user to regular user: low, but sufficient to discourage socks (an empirical, not ideological, point)
• All regular users to have speedy deletion privilege
• Speedy cannot be exercised until 24 hours have passed
• Any regular user may flag any page as valid
• Three valid flags eliminate the possibility of speedy deletion
• In the event that a page manages to acquire valid flags, yet still outrages an overwhelming majority of the community, admin may delete -- by "overwhelming", I mean 10 to 1, at least -- here, human discretion is applicable.
• In either case -- speedy or admin -- there is only one correct way to perform deletion within the context of the wiki ethos.

Similar solutions apply to other cases, such as FAC. If a sufficient number N of regular users deem an article not worthy of Featured Article status, then by definition it is not. No debate is required. The engine merely counts "thumbs down" flags for nominees and queues those which pass under the limit N. This limit is set by the engine, dynamically -- if the queue of articles waiting for appearance on Main Page is growing, N is lowered; if the queue shrinks, N is raised. Main Page structure demands one Featured Article every day; thus this approach is both efficient and realistic -- geared exactly to the needs of the project.

Freed of petty politicking and vote-whoring, RfC might then be restored to usefulness as a forum for constructive criticism and improvement of articles.

Technical problems demand technical solutions. These are technical problems. — Xiong熊talk* 19:36, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

The way I see this, this is basically The Pure Wiki Deletion System plus what is really an unnecessary bar against speedy deletion. What you propose could be done with the P.W.D.S. + a policy that blanking a page twice without a "discussion for deletion" discussion on the talk page is vandalism + a policy that you don't blank pages that have existed for less than a day. Sirmob 01:31, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

"Speedy cannot be exercised until 24 hours have passed" I take it you have never done RC patrol?Geni 05:46, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Also, I would suggest that Xiong look over two or three days' worth of VFD nominations (particularly the ~80% of them that end up deleted) and consider if he actually finds all that encyclopedic. Additionally, he should look over WP:VIP (and WP:RFC) and consider how much disputed actions are performed by 'regular' users, and what would happen if they all had deletion privileges. All in all, this is not a very practical idea. Radiant_>|< 08:11, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Hence the Pure Wiki Deletion System's provision that - vandalsim "deleting" a page becomes no more damanging than vandalism blanking a page - and that already happens, and it is dealt with! I disagree completely that this system - or a pure wiki system - that hands everyone the ability to undelete is more prone to vandalism than the current system. Sirmob 12:40, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• I take issue with the proposal insofar as "* Three valid flags eliminate the possibility of speedy deletion". The Cabal will still speedy what they (dis)like, and once deleted, they can enforce that deletion within policy by citing 're-entry of previously deleted material'. So that part won't work. --Simon Cursitor 14:14, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• I don't like policies -- I don't like labeling people vandals -- I don't like any discussion of "enforcement" of "rules". This is a technical problem and requires a technical solution. An efficient technical solution does not demand human energy be wasted, nor serve as a fount of guilt, accusation, punishment, and drama. If a page is not objectively objectionable, let it stand; if it is, then the engine can be trained to exclude it.
  • I refer doubters to the heuristic spam filter of the Eudora email client. My email addresses are many and some of them are very public; I receive dozens of spams daily. (I'd get more, but Mochamail has its own heavy-duty filters.) Each spammer has solid financial incentive to imitate valid content and do everything possible to evade Eudora. Yet on average, I see no more than one of these per day -- and only then because I set my threshold liberally; I don't like to poke through the Junk bin.
  • It appears nobody has paid the slightest attention to the possibility of making the machine do the work.

• What is it than drives people to make rules? I have just sworn off (for at least the fourth time) the online game 1000 AD, which has more rules than the Social Security Administration. Near as I can tell, every one of those rules could be hard coded into the game engine; in most cases, the undesirable actions could simply be made impossible. But it suits petty human pride that all these things remain forbidden, yet possible; and that a tiny tyrant must squat over the game, distributing threats, beatings, and occasional bans.

• "Speedy cannot be exercised until 24 hours have passed" -- This is common sense. I create a page, you delete it a minute later. Nobody has had a chance to see it, judge it, or otherwise put in his two cents. Who gave you unerring powers of judgement? After the obvious trash has been automatically removed, nothing that remains can possibly bring the whole house of cards down in a day.
  • Oh, did I just try to make a rule? No! -- at least, not in the sense of adding to the stack of greasy little guidelines and Swiftian no-nos. The engine shall exclude obvious trash and simply not make the delete button available until 24 hours have passed since creation.

Now that I've divested myself of those little rants, let me open another can of worms. It's a beautiful thing that community members are finally coming close to discussing something of substance. But this discussion is not it -- not yet.

"In general, there is no agreement on what sort of things we want to delete and what sort of things we want to keep." Ain't it the truth. Discussion of methods must stall absent concensus on this point. The question is not how to delete things -- not even what to delete and what to keep -- but:

• What belongs in this Project? and Who gets to say?

Those who wave this question away with a snippy pointer to their chosen "foundation" document ignore the basic flaw of Project and Community: We have no foundation document. We have many pages that purport to limit and control; some of them have survived a few years; doubtless Jimbo and the Board are ready and willing to enforce some. But we have no single, clear, unambiguous, independent statement of what we are about, our ends, and the means and structures we may employ.

It is not time to draft a foundation document; it is far past time. We ought to be working on this yesterday; failing that, now. When we become able to speak with a united voice and say who we are, then debate on deletion mechanisms will quickly resolve.

Until then, all such discussion (especially including my own remarks) is bullshit. — Xiong熊talk* 09:41, 2005 August 6 (UTC)

Categorized deletion

I'm all for the Wikipedia:Requests for deletion system outlined by Ed above. However, since I'm not sure how to add my comment there without making a bigger mess, I'll put it down here.

I think that the basic problem with VfD is its centralization. There is no reason to have all deletion debates in one place, except to encourage mindless voting. Those who vote rarely have any knowledge of the article's topic area; likewise, those who know the topic area are unlikely to vote. Therefore, why not break down Category:Delete -- not by date, but by topic? This creates the problem of how to break the topics down. So why not:

1. Break down Category:Delete by topic.

2. Start a Deletion WikiProject, along the lines of the Stub-sorting project, to maintain and police the subcats. This would allow the VfD trolls to do something useful for a change.

3. Establish a ground rule that deletion debates cannot be closed until X days after they have last been placed in a new deletion category. Extend the time period of VfDs from 5 days to 10, or perhaps some other number.

If an article asserts notability or verifiability, that provides a basis for categorization. If it does not, it's a speedy.

I waste a lot of time just patrolling for Korea-related deletion debates, which I occasionally post on the Korea-related message board. It would be so much nicer if we just had a Category:Korea-related deletions. Or even Asia-related deletions.

• This was suggested before. The problem is, however, that by far the most VFD nominations are about articles on persons, bands or websites considered unremarkable, neologisms, and articles considered inherently POV or pointless forks by some. Topicality generally doesn't come into it. Radiant_>|< 10:02, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

So, in the first instance, we would have Category:Websites for deletion, Category:People for deletion, Category:Music-related deletions, Category:Neologisms for deletion (or Category:Language-related deletions). Also Category:Education-related deletions. That's already a start. However, I think there is more potential for topicalization than generally realized. I'm tempted to experiment with this by categorizing the existing VfD subpages... -- Visviva 10:44, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• Analysis wouldn't hurt. I'd suggest you take some of the recent daily VFD pages and copy the links to their subpages somewhere, and categorize them. Please don't alter the daily pages themselves, as they're heavily in use. Radiant_>|< 10:49, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Per your suggestion, I have started User:Visviva/Deletion. A rather messy draft at the moment, I fear. Thanks for dissuading me from immediately trying this idea in practice. However, just from my initial sweep of the August 3 log, it seems to me that categorization has a lot of potential. Especially if (as this would make possible) the wait time for VfDs were extended. -- Visviva 13:38, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• It's a good start, but I'm somewhat worried because most articles fall in two or more categories. Sometimes three or four, even. What if the keepers of both disagree? Radiant_>|< 13:44, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Well, categories shouldn't have "keepers," so I'm not sure if that would be a problem. In general, we would want to get as many informed judgments as possible... thus we would put each VfD in as many non-overlapping categories as possible. Any category placement that can be defended on the basis of the article's claims should be OK. Of course, the question of whether X is really Y-related enough is bound to come up. But I doubt if it would get out of hand very often. (Maybe I'm too optimistic). -- Visviva 14:28, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• Categories will have keepers. Count on it. For instance, we already have three or four pages dedicated to getting 'keep' votes on any school article nominated for deletion. But if an article is supposed to fall in 3 or 4 categories, doesn't that kind of defy the purpose of categorized deletion? What if the nominator doesn't know by heart what the categories are (happens a lot for adding stub-templates, for instance)? What if people edit war over the appropriateness of a cat? Radiant_>|< 14:42, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. 1. Well, yes, in that sense, but since all the discussion would be on the talk page the normal rules of consensus would apply. 2. No, I don't think so, since each category would be fairly small and could be monitored by those with an interest in it. 3. Then the next editor can make the category placement more specific, or add a category. 4. That would be a problem. I'm not sure how to fix it, but in general we would want to encourage deletions to be placed in as many categories as possible; thus, the general policy should be to err on the side of inclusion. -- Visviva 23:30, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a VFD that would have been improved had categories existed? The point of sub-categories seems to be to attract experts to discuss their expertise. But, most VFD articles require little expertise to assess. As for the proposed categories above, there aren't (really) experts in fields like "People" or "Neologisms". What purpose is served by point #3 of your plan? Christopher Parham (talk) 18:55, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

1. All of them.  :-) The real problem with VfD isn't that it doesn't work, it's that its current structure is poisonous to reasoned consensus-building. 2. Actually, specific knowledge is always helpful. Most VfDs seem to require little knowledge to assess, because the articles are terrible. Votes often change after an article has been improved. Those with local knowledge are best placed to do that; this may include people with a general interest in people-coverage or neologism-coverage, even if they aren't experts. 3. Point 3 was ill-considered. I've changed it. Lengthening the time period would a) allow more time for new arguments to come forward and b) ensure that there would be adequate time for all appropriate categories to be added. -- Visviva 23:30, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

About a third of them. SOC Mark V was a bunch of gibberish added by a clueless newbie who observed that the article didn't exist. The Mark V is a Special Operation Craft used by U.S. Navy SEALs and should be a redirect to that article - partly so it doesn't get recreated again. I had to google to find what it was; and will be rewriting it into a stub. Someone who knew the field could have done it faster.

On the other hand Pulation square, which is a terse but meaningful mathematical article, was put on VfD by a 14-year-old (according to his user page) because he didn't understand it. It is only by chance that the mathematicians on the list saw this and saved it. Septentrionalis 19:29, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of creating a hierarchy of categories for deletion (shortcut: WP:CFD). Uncle Ed 13:54, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

• Er, you are aware that 'categories for deletion' has been in existence for a long time, and deals with the deletion of categories? Radiant_>|< 14:13, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
  • How about Categorized votes for deletion as the top-level. After all, the comment/voting method remains similar, we are just breaking it up into similarity classes. We could abbreviate it WP:cVfD. Robert A West
    • Well, if we could ever get community support to replace VfD with such a system, we would solve the abbreviation problem at one stroke: just keep using VfD. -- Visviva 10:40, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I have a major reservation about something like this because it would mean the article must be listed in the right categories. Not sure how you make sure that the assignment is accurate. If wrong do yu move it? Does that restart the vote time? You would also need to have a way of voting across categories since it is likely that some numeber of articles would fit in multiple categories. Vegaswikian 19:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Those are good points. IMO, category placement should be up to the participants in the discussion. Any category placement that can be in any way reasonably justified should be allowed. I had initially proposed that a new placement would restart the vote time, but I changed the proposal because I fear that would make gaming the system too easy. On the last point -- votes wouldn't be in categories, they would be on subpages (as they are at present) so "voting across categories" shouldn't be an issue. -- Visviva 10:40, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Announcement: Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting is now open for business. Please join and help show that this approach can work. And please don't put it up for VfD. Really. This reflexive-deletion behavior is getting truly annoying. -- Visviva 10:40, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Criteria for deciding deletion procedure

(This is not the same as "what's wrong with the current system" (above). It's "what do we want from an ideal system".) Rd232 19:44, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

1. Quickly delete uncontroversial nominations (based on "speedy" criteria or variations thereof)
2. Quickly delete obviously "bad faith" nominations (with noted guidelines to aid this)
3. Ensure appropriate treatment of cases that fairly obviously fall under non-speedy deletion criteria
4. Ensure appropriate number and range of contributions on genuine borderline cases, particularly if policy itself may be discussed
5. Ensure consistency of overall Wikipedia deletion policy

Number 5 is, in my opinion, the most important right now, and one where VfD is failing. Speedies are already taken care of pretty regularly, bad faith noms are infrequent enough not to be too disruptive, and the other two can be made to work, if people get involved. The last is a problem getting worse, not better. -R. fiend 02:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• I agree, but it's not an easy problem to solve. It would seem easy to just set a simple bar on voting (e.g. >70% delete votes = delete) but that doesn't deal with the idea that VFD is supposed to be about discussion, and that articles can be (and are) improved while on VFD (on the other hand, it would be much faster that way...) But any other criterion is going to be subject to admin's discretion (as it is now) and it has been repeatedly seen that this means that the outcome of a debate depends (sometimes rather heavily) on which admin closes it. Radiant_>|< 08:30, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Problematic and Abandoned Articles

One of the problems cited is that tags highlighting problems, such as POV, possible OR, etc., rarely inspire any action. I also have noted that a common thread of discussion is not whether an article is crap as it stands, but whether it could be made into non-crap. I suggest that we could reduce the number of VfD nominations, increase the perception of good faith and give some substance to the "can it be improved?" argument by a couple of small (well, maybe not so small) additions.

1. It is bad faith should be considered inferior practice to nominate an article if it could sensibly have been tagged as needing improvement, until the tag is 30 days old has been on a reasonable period of time.
   • Vanity, spam and cases that border on speedy deletion are presumed to be incapable of improvement and may be nominated on sight.
   • Proposals to Transwiki are also not subject to this guideline.
   • Use reasonable judgment if a tag is removed by a vandal. The important question is whether interested editors have been given a chance to notice and improve it.
2. Any bad-faith nomination should mention either that a tag was placed, and how long, and or else indicate why tagging is not indicated. Nominations that do not may be closed as keep on sight by any administator.
3. Once an article has been tagged, if there is no good-faith effort at improvement within a reasonable time, such as 30 days, and the problems are severe, it may be proposed for deletion as a problematic and abandoned article.
   • The criteria for deleting problematic and abandoned articles should be broad: any article that is not of at least mediocre quality and in which no one shows an interest can be recreated when someone actually cares enough to write it.
   • "Stub" and "wikify" tags are never considered severe problems in and of themselves, and nominating an article based on them is bad faith.
   • Promises to improve the article in the future should be taken as seriously as the track record of the Wikipedian or project making the offer deserves.
4. Abuse of this process is considered vandalism should be treated seriously by the community.

The idea is to get people to do something about articles first, and to motivate people to tackle the list of articles that seem badly in need of improvement. This should reduce the number of bad-faith nominations, or at least make it clear which ones are really in bad faith. Except for spam and vanity (which may drown us), I don't see the problem with slowing things down a bit before things get put up for deletion.

As to the time limit, I am not suggesting that all articles that have not been improved for 30 days be deleted, but that no article about which there is likely to be a serious argument be deleted until 30 days "probation" have passed. It would seem a perfectly valid vote to say, "Keep. Give it 60 more days."

As for this being additional work for the person proposing deletion, that is part of the idea. Maybe some editors will boldly merge the problem into nonexistence first.

Robert A West 20:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• This is a rather heavy handed approach. 30 days is a very long WikiTime. It would only reduce the number of VfD nominations for the first 30 days anyway, when these articles would become VfDable (and let's not pretend that there's going suddenly to be a surge in cleaning up). Calling something bad-faith is pretty serious around here: it implies deliberate, wilful and usually malicious behaviour. Think an article isn't worth of inclusion might be the first two, but isn't the last one. Calling it vandalism and implying punishment for it is going too far, unless it is repeatedly abused. With some neutralising, parts of this might be interesting, though. -Splash 03:37, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I apologize for the heavy-handed tone and have revised. I was trying to be blunt, not brutal. The lack of people willing to clean up articles strikes me as part of the problem. It seems that fixable articles often get nominated for deletion precisely because the nominator knows they won't get fixed otherwise. It reminds me of undergraduates who don't start their papers until the weekend before the due date. Robert A West 22:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Comments by Septentrionalis

I think there are four problems, which should be discussed separately:

Non-notable articles

Non-encyclopedic content should be removed from articles. This includes the cases in which this is the whole article. But that's not a cause for deletion. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Many of these articles ought to be redirects; that's why many of them exist: Someone looked up a topic, got a non-existent page, and put something (often something stupid) in, rather than searching WP or the Web. Septentrionalis

• Please read the deletion policy more carefully: "If it is truly unverifiable, it may be deleted." Also WP:NOT is a reason for deletion. Nearly all non-vanity articles about non-notables fall under one or both. The facts about them are either not reported in a reliable source, or there is only enough for an entry in a biographical dictionary, or, often, both. Robert A West 03:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• If the subject is non-verifiable or WP:NOT, shouldn't the links be deleted to reduce the temptation to create the article? Robert A West 03:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Also, if the whole article is non-encyclopedic, it should be deleted, or we'd let blank pages stand! Wanting most of the content gone from it isn't a reason for deletion, and will usually be turned down at VfD. -Splash 03:30, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Spam

Much of this has to be deleted on sight; because it is sufficient for the spammer to have his company's name on an article long enough for the mirrors to pick it up. My prefered solution is a list Spam for Deletion, which does ask the yes/no question "Is this spam?" and no other. If spam, always delete; if not spam, leave alone. (Articles on SFD can be added to other lists if they deserve it.) I see no reason for it to have more than a 48-hour deadline. Septentrionalis

• Or, add spam to CSD on the grounds that advertising is inconsistent with Wikipedia's not-for-profit status and is therefore a danger. Robert A West 03:09, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Vanity

As with non-encyclopedic articles, I'm not sure that vanity pages need to be deleted; they merely need to have their content removed. A {vanity} template would work, at least much of the time. (If it doesn't work, resolve as any other edit conflict; if that doesn't work, then take it to VfD [or speedy it, as appropriate Septentrionalis 19:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC)].) VfD has a purpose; if it were only handling a handful of really outrageous cases a day, we would not be having this discussion. Requested Move is non-controversial; because it's not being used for ten times as many articles as it ought to be. Septentrionalis

• Are you misreading the deletion policy again or proposing a change? Functionally deleting pages and then having them bluelink seems wrongheaded to me. If the page does not belong in Wikipedia, there is no reason for it to exist, unless one values form over substance. Robert A West 03:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Having blank pages is not sensible. I make "DJ Vain the Teenage Drummer", and you'd prefer to keep the page, but blank? No, they should be deleted. And taking vanity to VfD would undo the new CSD completely. VfD has quite enough to deal with without adding back in that which was already removed! -Splash 03:32, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

  I do not intend to suggest reverting the new speedy rules; I have amended my proposal, above. Septentrionalis 19:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Original research

This is much like vanity; but a categorization scheme would be particularly useful here. Category:Possible original research in astronomy would be small enough for the astronomers to keep up with it; and either replace the article with the Template:No original research or rescue the article. Septentrionalis

I hope these four heads will be useful. Septentrionalis 21:33, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I think splitting VfD by topic might be a very good idea. You are right that all these reasons are very different, and it is a definite cause of problems that we use the same method for dealing with all of them. Having an "Is this spam?" page would help focus the discussion on that question, rather than drifting off into debates over POV and quality. Most importantly it would also give us the flexibility to treat topics differently. Vanity pages are generally quite obvious and voting is usually a waste of time, as the result is obvious. By contrast, allegations of original research generally involve extensive and lengthy debates needing expert knowledge. These debates often last more than the five days VfD theoretically runs to. I would add a couple extra categories. It would be useful to have a general "should this be transwikied?" page to deal with disputes in this area. A nonsense category is also important. Nonsense pages can be speedied, but it often takes some investigation to determine whether an article is junk. VfD performs this investigatory task quite well. Splitting off copyvios a couple years ago was a great success, leading to a much more efficient way of dealing with them. This might be the path to solving our current VfD problems. - SimonP 02:12, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

In most cases, "Original Research" is an extremely polite name for what the article actually contains. Keeping things like The Coming Market Crash around as a blank (or functionally blank) page serves no purpose I can see except to tempt someone to recreate the article or link to it. Robert A West 03:19, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

The next discussion

I'd like to propose a straw poll to help move this process along. I'd like to better understand what everyone thinks we should tackle first. Please consider picking the topic you feel is most worthwhile to explore next:

1. Use of category tags or some other replacement for the centralized VfD pages
2. Mechanical changes to the existing VfD, such as changes to time periods, page organization, sufferage requirements
3. Creation of a clearer policy for what articles should be deleted and what should be kept
4. Changes to the process by which an admin closes a VfD discussion
5. None of these, VfD is fine the way it is
6. Other (specify)

This isn't intended to be binding or make policy or anything. I'm just proposing it as a means to guide the discussion. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 00:55, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

• Okay, why not. Should we run it for a week or so? Also, would there be any objections to people casting multiple votes, e.g. for both #1 and #3? Radiant_>|< 07:16, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
• I don't really see the point of a vote. Surely *all* of these are worth discussing, and "we" (the Wikipedia community) should take a close look at each one. Of course, that won't stop me from voting for my favorite.  :-) -- Visviva 10:46, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• On second thought, I agree with Viviswa. All of these are worth discussing, so I've set up a couple of subpages to discuss them. Radiant_>|< 13:08, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

• Where do we go to discuss changes to the nature of deletion itself, such as the Pure Wiki Deletion System? We can discuss proposals like that on their own pages, of course, but I think there also needs to be a discussion over whether or not we should change the basic mechanics of deletion, rather than just the petition process. Aquillion 05:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

To discuss "Use of category tags or some other replacement for the centralized VfD pages"

Please visit Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Decentralize.

To discuss "Mechanical changes to the existing VfD, such as changes to time periods, page organization, sufferage requirements"

Please create a subpage and start a discussion.

To discuss "Creation of a clearer policy for what articles should be deleted and what should be kept"

Please visit Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Generalize.

To discuss "Changes to the process by which an admin closes a VfD discussion"

Please create a subpage and start a discussion.

If you believe "None of these, VfD is fine the way it is"

Please wait until any of the above discussions generates a concrete proposal, and then consider if you find it useful.

If none of the above applies

Please include a few words about what you think we should be discussing instead.

Immediate merge by shifting to target's talk page

Here's an interesting technique that I've seen used a few times:

1. take the contents of article X and add to talk page of article Y
2. describe this material as something to merge into the text of article Y
3. redirect article X to article Y
4. optionally append the talk page of X to the talk page of Y

This approach would solve the problem of a VfD that ends in a merge consensus but no one carries out the merge operation. Then, die hards who really want that information from article Y can get busy transfering material from [[talk:Y]] into [[Y]]. If those voters are all talk and no action, then this material will be conveniently swept under the "talk page carpet" and no longer clutter the core Wikipedia.

As noted elsewhere, merge is an excellent way to reach consensus between deletionists and inclusionists. Maybe VfD boilerplate should include a list of suggestions beyond just keep/delete. Further, we could encourage mergists to vote for this "immediate merge" technique.

WpZurp 03:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I AM A WRITER AND RESEARCHER

(I DON'T NEED YOUR BUREAUCRATIC ADMINISTRATIVE BS)

In failing Wikistupidity (oops pedia) creates additionally to writing, research, thinking, and analysis, the additional vulgar crude and aggravating stressful vocations of administrator, politician, and bureaucrat apparatchik which I don't wish to have ANY part of especially since this is not my organization in any form whereby I have any real control. I do not cohvet what is not mine, I did not create this mess called "Wikipedia" and I do not want it. I am inclined to share what I write and know as I have different interests but in that the current policy is to delete entire articles without considering the contents of aspects of what is painfully worked on written edited and merely deleted in totality is the most obscene editional policy I have endured and suffered under in my 40 years of writing. I have written for a variety of publishers since approximately 1967 after which I wrote covertly for extreme left wing, right wing, and mainstream publishers.

I know when one of my articles or contributions faces deletion (think of it as my baby that some bastard is about to murder no worse wipe off the face of the Earth. I know what those bastards are screaming I can understand language including English but why should I have to waste my time in a bureaucratic process as as full time Wiki-bureaucrats (I don't need your stinking job, I don't want it, and resent your stupid abuse of it as a position). When my work faces deletion is is merely deleted so what is the due process afforded me? What is the time span in which I should act? What should I do? Who should I talk to in what appears as a system or arbitrary and capricious mob ad hoc justice? So guess what my dear bastards (illegitimate illegal bastards) if you wish to create a process as complicated you do in all fairness you will have to create additionally the infrastructure to support an entire process of due process that includes judiciary, advocates, prosecution, AND ASSISTANCE because I have no interest in arguing against the world I am not as much an idiot as some of you can be I don't need it.

If you want the substantive benefit of my experience good fine if not don't expect me to waste it on your ill conceived form for as far as I see it reminds me of another poorly conceived anarcho-liberatarian time wasters.

If you are iterested in this structure but don't provide assistance, time, patience, consideration, don't blame it on us who don't give you exactly what you want!! Oh you want $70,000 or $50,000 and you don't need my two cents then drop dead and die there plenty of failed ventures out there. IF you don't want to fail change the formula I don't need you as a place to publish I don't need the hassles I prefer faceless nameless rejection slips or self-publishing.

Oh did you forget since the internet's creation we don't need IDIOT PUBLISHERS of I cult of them, especially IDIOT PUBLISHERS that aggravate working people! IDIOT PUBLISHERS, and who waste our time with merely cute legalistic sarcastic oneliner remarks substituted for real dialogue, and a snip snip snip deletion for editorail solutions! PUBLISHERS that don't consider the REAL SUBSTANCE of matters but merely follow hack forms of what most often they don't even understand.

SCREW YOUR BLOODY RULES THEY SUCK as the best of rules SUK with little or nothing more and choke on your answer.

I am dying from sitting at a desk too much as if it were a ball and chain tight on my leg, and, if I live experience, reseach, write why should I be a bureaucratic apartratichik administrators also, and do you mean to say my life what ever you think means nothing because I don't conform to your form of programed standard of stupudity?

Andrew Zito 02:29, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Are we there yet?

OK, so these discussions have been going on for a while. Are we starting to reach consensus? Or are we still in the talk phase? Can someone post a synopsis of the status to Wikipedia:Deletion reform ? linas 01:09, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Cranky Arrogant Deletionists need policing

It seems to me that Wikipedia is to some extent out of control. We have deletionists, such as someone calling himself PhilipO, who see themselves as self-appointed arbiters of what is acceptable (or they simply don't like) and they announce a deletion of someone else's perfectly acceptable work. Why should this be permitted?

• Articles for Deletion are policed - that is why there is a discussion page associated with them and the community (including you) can decide what to do. The discussion in question can be found here. I will let the community judge the value of this user's comments there and suggest that Christchurch take a look at Wikipedia's policy on personal attacks :-) Cheers --PhilipO 19:10, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy of claiming not to permit bias is quite laughable in a great many of the historical articles. The articles on the German lands and cities annexed by the communists after the last war are brilliant examples of chronic bias rather than simple factual historical reviews. Corrections by fact rather than opinion are turned on their heads by those with an axe to grind and the corrections usually deleted as quickly as they are posted.

Yes, WIKI has a great problem. It seems to me an anarchic monster has been created. People and writers of articles simply do not have the time to sit all day long looking at the seemingly endless lists of instructions for Wikipedia. I know several brilliant British people who thought they would start writing articles but because of much of what I have outlined above they have already given up. Without some serious policing by the proprietors Wikipedia stands to be denounced as unauthentic, unreliable, and even a joke. Christchurch

At the moment, the article in question, Order of the Crown of Charlemagne, seems to be facing deletion primarily because it is a copyright violation. Wikipedia is policed, and one of the things it has to be policed for are violations of copyright law--we can't just add copyrighted material from other sources (outside of a few special cases like fair use that do not apply here.) Additionally, it should be noted that attacks on individual users or the idea of Wikipedia as a whole rarely helps your case when arguing over something like that. --Aquillion 18:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

See also

• Wikipedia:Deletion
• Template Talk:vfd

Analysis of User Geogre and Wikipedia Administrators

  (With regards to the deletionism problem)

DEAR MR. GEOGRE, this is written as constructive criticism with absolutely no malicious intent. Crticism brings about improvement and therefore human progression depends upon it. Furthermore according to Wikipedia, Users may settle matters with Administrators in a civil and orderly manner. We assure you, that this is most civil and orderly. We hope this is taken positively!

Dear Mr. Geogre, we understand that you are an administrator of Wikipedia. We would like to allude to your User article about yourself. To our recollection, there are 3 pertinent and disturbing issues we would like to raise. One is your incompetence, two is your arrogance and three, your useless and unbeneficial articles.

One: Your complete inability to accurately verify and assess articles should be dealt with severely. You are not fit to be a Wikipedia administrator and your terribly preposterous manner of deleting articles should be evidence enough for you removal as an administrator. We hope justice will prevail.

Two: You seem to think you are intelligent. I can assure you however, that you are an intellectually challenged individual. The fact that you received a "Nobel" prize in literature from Bishonen when you did not even win anything is an insult to Alfred Nobel, his will and everything he stood for. You desperately claim to be a descendant of the respectable Hugh Bigod, you are more like his degenerate. You are unqualified, unaccomplished and you are only capable of remembering(which requires minimum intelligence) literature. Merely remembering literature is pathetic. You do not know anything of Biology, Cosmology, Chemistry, Physics, other scientific fields, Philosophy and even your knowledge of Literature is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. Yet you have the nerve to be so proud? Who do you think you are? Your arrogance is dispicable. Mr. Geogre, you are insignificant and irrelevant. Your article(User) is a tremendous waste of Wikipedia's space, and serves no purpose but to display your immense stupidity. To our recollection you appreciate criticism in the form of sonnets. Bear this in mind when you plan to delete articles.(It might make you a slightly less useless administrator)

 Lao Tzu say: It is an obvious fact,
              To think before you act.
              But sadly those who ignore this,
              Will be denied eternal bliss.
               

Three: According to your article termed "Deletionism" you delete articles because you feel they are unbeneficial and do not provide important imformation. How egotistically HYPOCRITICAL! Your own articles are utterly worthless - they benefit nobody. The information your articles contain are quite frankly, valueless. This is in stark contradiction to your own beliefs. We feel the Wikipedia Administrators are very unobjective, and you Mr. Geogre, are a prime culprit.

The Wikipedia Adimistrators are the primary cause of the whole deletion problem, delete them.

Moving Forward

In an effort to move this potential reform forward, I propose we begin discussing precisely what the next steps will be. To facillitate this discussion, please avoid all references to which deletion reform policy you may prefer and whether you feel deletion reform is necessary. Discussion here should be limited to the method we will use to make these decisions.

I haven't been a part of any previous Wikipedia policy changes, so if there's a standard policy on how this is done, please let me know. Lacking such a policy, I'll try to outline what we need to accomplish. There are two main questions we need to answer:

1. Do we want to change the deletion policy?
2. If so, how do we want to change the deletion policy?

The first question could be put to a simple Yes/No vote. The second could either be answered by voting for a preferred policy from the proposed candidates, or we could use these the ideas therein to create a list of smaller potenial policy modifications and vote yes/no on each modification indepedently.

As these votes would affect a fundamental Wikipedia policy, they should both be widely advertised (a banner on the Community Portal), and left open for a significant length of time (2 weeks).

Once the voting is finished, any new deletion policy called for will be drafted. That page will presumably take some time to stabilise, and once it does can be brought into effect.

I've just thrown this proposal together and am very open to feedback and other suggestions. Please let me know what you think. —Jwanders 22:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Revisiting "patent nonsense"

The current definition of "patent nonsense" is too narrow, I fear. This came to a head for me when I nominated Shirley Temple Explosion! for speedy deletion as patent nonsense. Why? Because it contained foolish japery like this, verbatim:

I believe that is my duty as a majorly stupid individual to popularize the phrase, Shirley Temple Explosion. The thought randomly came to me while in American History class. ... I was excited with myself I introduced my new-found ridiculousness to my best friend. She is as random as I am, and she loved my new idea. So now every time something stupid or weird or bad happens, we'll whip out our famous phrase and weird everybody out!

I was then chided as possibly having "abused" the speedy deletion criteria by listing this, because silly articles are not irredeemably incomprehensible, and thus not patently nonsensical. If this be the case, then an article with text like "OMG OMG sally lookd at jimz p33n!!!!!11111 itz hella huge!!!111 OMG OMG" is not patent nonsense, because it could be "Sally" talking about how large "Jim"'s penis is - because, after all, AOL speak is not incomprehensible, right?

My point is that there needs to be a broader line drawn as to what is considered patent nonsense. Not speedily deleting junk like the Shirley Temple Explosion! article, in my view, encourages more vandalism and posting of garbage. Call it the Rudy Giuliani approach of reducing overall crime by focusing on quality-of-life crimes like graffiti. Why are we allowing nonsense to sit for five days or so while we beat back and forth whether it's nonsensical vs. patently nonsensical?

I'm not going to get into the notable vs. non-notable or inclusionist vs. non-inclusionist debate. I really don't care about that. What I do care about is what, to me, seems to be needless defacement of a fine encyclopedia. - Sensor 03:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the problem is just that you used the wrong criteria. Someone recently called to my attention the fact that G3, the "vandalism" CSD, is actually much broader than most people think it is. I always read it as "simple vandalism", but it actually says pure vandalism. That means that any article that is nothing but vandalism by any of the commonly-accepted definitions--in other words, any article whose content falls, entirely, under any of the criteria at Wikipedia:Vandalism--can be speedied under G3. In particular, joke articles like the one mentioned here can be speedied under G3 as silly vandalism. --Aquillion 09:20, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Vfds made too quickly

As stated elsewhere, most votes in a Vfd are made within the first 24 hours after a nomination is put up - indeed, I would suggest that it takes 6 hours or less. Therefore, I think that a logical conclusion is that, with the exception of articles created in bad faith (which are able to be speedy deleted), good faith attempts at articles should not be able to be nominated for deletion within a certain period of time after initial creation. I would suggest that a reasonable period of time is a month, or perhaps just a week. Articles are often created first in stub form, and, while the stub itself may not meet the requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia, the finished article does.

Case in point: Planes of existence (chat site) was nominated for deletion 30 seconds after initial creation. It was a good faith genuine article with reference, assertions as to notability and met all relevant criteria for inclusion as per Wikipedia guidelines. However, the person who nominated it for deletion disputed the validity of the references and the validity of the assertions to notoriety. This person in my opinion *should* have done this in talk, rather than immediately going to a Vfd. The article has since been proven to abide by criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia, yet it currently has 1 more vote for deletion than it has for keeping, because of the early 4 votes made in the first 3 hours that were, I believe, impulse votes by persons who misunderstood Wikipedia policy, such as misunderstanding WP:WEB and asserting that official websites of businesses equate to personal homepages, that a site that had 10,000 users per day average did not meet the requirement of 5,000 regular members, and that such things as it creating zoo code, and influencing popular culture with such things as Yahoo! messenger and Livejournal, which were in fact false assumptions.

I think that this problem could have been avoided if the policy for Vfd was such that it was not permissible for it to be added to brand new articles. I think that people should make questions in talk first, or else perhaps put in a request for it to be cleaned up, or something like that.

Also, when there are cases like this, if they are deleted, can they then be restored? I would like to petition for that article to be given a fresh Vfd vote on the basis that the original Vfd nomination was made too quickly and that this influenced decisions. Zordrac 17:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that 30 seconds is out of line in any case but obvious vandalism. In my short time here, I've seen admins leaving over controversy arising from extremly rapid speedy deletion of new article stubs (less than 10 minutes). Other than watching for quick vandalism, I recommend using a new pages list starting at 20,000 old, usually about a week. Looks like the vote was warrented in this case, nice work filling out the articles. Please do explore the deletion reform pages as well as Experimental deletion and help organize thoughts toward better deletion process! ∴ here…♠ 18:02, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

When an article gets 5 votes in the first few hours to delete, and less people vote to keep it after it has been cleaned up, the "actual" method for determining consensus shines through. More votes count! Why else would people advertise AfD's on user talk pages? Ansell 04:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Haiduc's request

Whatever you decide, please address two problems I have seen with the present system:

1. Admins pouncing on new articles in the process of being written. For any number of good or bad reasons, editors may choose to formulate an article on line, a process that may take a number of days. But I have had "attacks" made on brand new articles before I even got to the end of the first writing session.
2. Please do away with virtually monosyllabic arguments of the type "Unneeded" or "Irrelevant". These should be seen for what they are, authoritarian arguments, as are any that proclaim a position without defending it. If you are too busy to state why something is a certain way, then you are to busy to engage this process. Haiduc 01:31, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Ethnocentrism and its impact against Votes For Deletion

Since I started fully monitoring posts here, I have noticed a trend in articles for deletion and generally on Wikipedia: posts that concern English-speaking non-notable subjects tend to be got rid of far quicker than foreign nns. Take, for just one example, the article Abulaye that I put up for AFD earlier to-day. It is a character created by a pair of relative unknowns, both in Cuba and abroad. If 'Abulaye' were the invention of a couple of unknown Americans, it would have been speedily deleted unless it had some sort of outstanding cultural significance. However, because it takes longer for there to be a consensus, to gauge importance, or lack of it, many non-Anglophone subjects fall through the net, making what amounts to be an unfair distinction. Iinag 21:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

ASCERTAINING NOTABILITY OF A LIVING SUBJECT

For some time now I have been worried about the method followed to asceratin notability of a living subject.The prescribed method is googling.While I would not underplay the importance of gogling,I have on browsing noted some major problems.

Many people may have tha same name and I have noticed that even Wikipedia can fall prey.One subject was deleted because of the unfortunate coincidence of having a similar name to someone with less than savoury antecedants.

I shall therefore venture to suggest a rider.I have created a page on International Who's Who,by popular consensus the most authoratative text on 20,000 mos accomplished living.The sole criteria for inclusion is merit and is closely scanned by a team of expert editors.The names included along with the profession are available free of cost on line(without details).

I would suggest that in case of biographies of living,one should first use this line to find out if the subject merits an entry in the book before googling.This would make it more credible and cogent.I would welcome views.(Vr 06:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC))

Reckless file deletion

Some ogg files I uploaded for an article which I cannot locate were deleted. This is not because they were copyrighted, but because they were deleted speedily, with no email notification. Why I'm calling it "reckless" is that not only were these files deleted without finding out whether or not there was a copyright problem (there was not; I don't upload files which I don't have permissions for) but no notice was given me as to which article they linked to. Hence, Wikipedia suffered some completely uncessessary albeit minor damage which cannot be easily repaired, since I can't find out where it occurs. I think a better policy would be to retain the files for a longer period, and only break the link; but if not that at minimum, files should not be removed without telling the person who uploaded them where they linked to. That is simply irresponsible. Gene Ward Smith 20:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

No notification given to watchers of articles

I watch a fair few articles, but only just found out that an article I watch was deleted about a fortnight ago. The only reason I found this out was that I was cleaning up my watchlist a bit, and found that a blue link had turned into a red one. The deletion of the article was reasonable, however it would have been nice to have had a notification appear on the watchlist saying that the article was up for deletion, which would change into one saying that the article had been deleted - and a link to the delete discussion - after the event.

Also, the current system has no easy way to find the reasons for the deletion - I would have expected something like a redirect from the deleted page to the discussion, as a minimum. Instead, I had to spend a fair time googling to find the reasons. Mike Peel 14:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Tags should be admin protected

I recently list a page to be speedied, the tag was removed by the newbie editor. Someone else then, unaware, listed the page on WP:AfD, the newbie editor blanked the page and put the text 'deleted' at the top after realising the page would most likely be deleted. I suggest that a subpage be created for deletions that can only be removed by an admin. This would create a permanent notice at the top of the page until the debate reaches consensus. MyNameIsNotBob 07:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Enough people watch AfD pages to ensure that things like this will not be deleted for long. Note, even when articles get onto AfD, if they still fit into CSD criteria, such as blanking by the one and only author of a page (or the equivalent message "deleted") then they can still go through the CSD process. Ansell 04:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Anonymous editing Policy

• I'd like to know why people without accounts can edit Wikipedia. I like the whole idea behind Wikipedia except for this, which never made sense to me. It seems to be taken for granted, so I'm guessing there's a WP page that explains this. It seems a lot of problems with the deletion process could be at least alleviated by keeping users who won't even go through the trouble of making an account of messing with the process in the first place. Thanks in advance. :) Danny Lilithborne 01:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)