Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Proposals/UninvitedCompany's suggestion

How to fix VfD

1. Come to a community consenus on deletion policy, however difficult that may be. Certain groups of articles already have policy, e.g. WP:MUSIC. Broaden this. For most categories of articles, there should be some fairly clear rules about whether or not the article should be kept. These can be objective, even though no objective measure will reflect the actual merits of any one article. (See #3 above)
2. Make VfD be a discussion not of "whether the article should be kept" but rather "whether the article meets the inclusion criteria." Disallow attempts to legislate policy on an article-by-article basis. Disallow votes based on the premise that the policy is wrong.
3. Use technical measures to deal with socks.
4. Make it clear that VfD is an up-or-down vote. Actions to be taken at conclusion of the vote (redirect, merge history in the event of deletion, etc) should be addressed on the article's talk page.
5. Add a discussion section to the vfd2 along with instructions to use it. Disallow discussion in the voting sections.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:50, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

In response,

1. Agree. WP:MUSIC and WP:FICT work.
2. Not a bad idea per se IMHO, but many areas do not have 'inclusion criteria' and some people object to the very existence of 'inclusion criteria'.
3. I see no harm in restricting Wikipedia namespace to logged-in users.
4. Ah. This is the difficult point. VFD started out as a binary vote. However, plain fact is that it isn't any more. A plethora of different votes exist, and 'transwiki', 'merge' and 'redirect' are frequent outcomes of VFD debates. We should either 1) take that into account, and let the closing admin take whatever action is deemed consensual (or add an appropriate tag) even if it's not a simple keep or delete; or 2) cut this tendency short by stopping people from voting in this way.
5. Not a bad idea but it isn't going to help much, people have a tendency to react to votes.

I believe that several of the problems of VFD could be solved by making it a simple up/down vote once more (e.g. it prevents the fact that the outcome of the discussion depends heavily on the closing admin, and it cuts down the amount of Violent Factionalizing Debate). However, this has the undesirable downside that it cuts down on discussion and consensus-forming. Radiant_>|< 11:48, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

My 5 cents...

1. I completely agree. WP:MUSIC and WP:FICT help tremendously and are often cited in VfD debates; if other types of articles that are seen frequently at VfD have policies or semi-policies hammered out to determine guidelines for inclusion, that would only continue to help us.
2. I disagree with this, with regards to policies or proposed policies pertaining to particular types of articles as they are handled in VfD (even WP:MUSIC and WP:FICT). For example, with schools I have my own guidelines for notability outlined on my user page, just as I - and some other users - do with RfA criteria; I do not follow WP:SCH because I am not in favor of including all schools, only those which meet my criteria for inclusion. On the other hand, if somebody is saying a widely-accepted Wikipedia (not just VfD) policy, such as WP:NPA, WP:NOT, etc., are nonsense policies, or is disrupting VfD with Iasson-like votes and the like, then definitely disallow those votes.
3. Like Radiant!, I strongly favor restricting the editing of the WP: namespace to logged-in users. In case any logged-in users abuse this, I would suggest moving sock votes to a "Disallowed votes" section (see the 6th VfD of GNAA).
4. I would suggest just using an "other votes" section (as indicated in some other users' proposals), but distinct from the "disallowed votes" section. Votes like transwiki are necessary; if something is better for inclusion in another Wikimedia project, it would be in our best interests to send it to the appropriate project, rather than just deleting a contribution which is potentially useful/appropriate on another wiki entirely. However, I would support the suggestion of the user who said we should have the vote tally in the listing header. Then we could even take all of the discussions off of the page list anyway, and just have a list that looks like the VfD log for the day (alter the vfd3 template to just put a link in to the VfD entry). The VfD page itself would then be much shorter (voters would not have to load discussions in which they were not interested), and furthermore, voters would have the vote tally very conveniently without having to count up the votes themselves.
5. A comments section would do fine here, like we have at WP:RfA.

I agree with the summary that Radiant! posted at the end, as well. --Idont Havaname 04:20, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

My $.02: It seems to me that a relatively small number of articles cause most of the ill will. One reason for this is that {{cleanup}} tags get no action, but putting an article of VfD often gets it improved. So...

1. Whoever proposes deletion should have the responsibilty to either list the article for improvement, or show why (spam, libel or blatant vanity) we should not wait for that.
2. If the article can conceivably be transwikied or partially merged, the person proposing deletion should have already done the copywork, or else have tagged the thing for a reasonable time if he lacks the expertise. Do what can be done boldly and only then propose for deletion.
3. If the above two are not done, the VfD may be closed as premature.
4. If an article is about an encyclopedic topic, but the article is just plain terrible, and it has been given a decent interval to be improved, it may be deleted in the hope of inspiring someone else to start over.

I said all this very badly elsewhere, which got moved to god-knows-where in one of the reorgs of this discussion -- so I hope that I have said it better here. This will not help VfD scale, but if we get the no-brainers off to one side, I am sure it will help. Robert A West 06:33, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

A "bad" article is a better place to start a better article than "no article" Intersofia 15:15, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Again, this seems to be a proposal to reduce editor involvement in deleting articles. Every proposal which further automates the process makes it harder for an individual article to stand on its own merits. It also makes wiki more monolithic and unable to change. It entrenches the position that 'administrators' run this organisation. Once all the inclusion criteria are settled, who will stand a chance of changing any of them as circumstances dictate? VfD allows people to have their say. It does allow a vote to be made which contradicts official policy. Sandpiper 22:36, 20 August 2005 (UTC)