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Change in policy

I'd like to propose a change in Wikipedia's policy.

Sometimes a new editor can put hours, and sometimes even days, into researching sources, checking for the sources' reliability, writing the main content of the article in the most professional way they know how, and tediously inputting the Wiki markup language so that everything falls into place, only to have their hard work deleted completely five days later because the entire article itself is something that Wikipedia isn't, instead of being transferred to the most appropriate wiki. This can discourage many authors, and may lead them to say "Ah, screw this. I don't care anymore." The last thing we want is to scare potential editors away.

My proposition is this: If a good faith article has obviously been worked hard on (signs include a large amount of content, plenty of sources, however unreliable, and professional style of writing), rather than just apparently thrown together in a matter of minutes (an hour at max), should never ever be completely deleted, but rather transwikied. This will ensure that the author's hard work does not go to waste, and will encourage them to continue their editing. Effortless articles can still be deleted, but deleting articles that the author went to great lengths to create will only encourage them to retire from editing.

Please discuss.Dstebbins (talk) 15:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It sounds reasonable to me, but the implementation details may prove problematic. Would you be OK with moving the articles out of mainspace into a "to-be-transwiki'ed" queue as the result of an AfD debate, from which they would then be completely deleted once confirmation of a successful transwiki had been received? Jclemens (talk) 15:57, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • This would not be possible as policy for a number of reasons, perhaps the most obvious of which being that not every deleted article has another wiki it can reasonably be transwikied to. We also can't directly transwiki to any wiki that isn't GDFL compliant, for legal reasons. Additionally, we must remember that outside wikis have their own rules and policies, and it wouldn't be very nice of us to simply dump our unwanted articles on them. For these reasons and others, transwiki is used only sparingly as an AfD action. However, keep in mind that most admins will happily forward good-faith deleted articles to the author if the author wishes to transwiki the material themselves. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:04, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
    • How about, instead of having to go through an admin to get their articles, they have access to all the articles they wrote without going through the edit history (edit history doesn't let you copy and paste beyond a single paragraph at a time), so they can easily get their article for self-transwikiing without having to bitch to an admin. How's that?Dstebbins (talk) 18:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
      • That was proposed not long ago and pretty soundly rejected. Asking an admin is easy and if you don't feel like doing that you can always ask at WP:DRV for a copy of a deleted article. So long as it's a good-faith request you'll have it back within minutes. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Agreed not a good idea, because just what wiki would you think most of the well worked on articles for totally non notable people and organizations belong in? As for making it available, the proosal for non admins to have access to deleted articles in most cases continues to be discussed elsewhere.I favor it for editor in good standing. DGG (talk) 23:47, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed guideline: Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion

There is a proposed new guideline at Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion gathering together image deletion processes currently spread through other pages. Please provide feedback if interested. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I have added a "seealso" to this guide from the processes section, since that guideline gives specific information about how to follow through with some of the image deletion processes. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggested policy revision

I suggest modifying the proposed deletion section to require that some explanation be given for the removal of the PROD tag, especially in the case of an anonymous IP editor. Given the high rate of vandalism perpetrated by IP editors, there is no way to know whether they actually disagree with the deletion of the article or are simply vandalizing, or if they simply do not understand the process. It seems like a waste of the community's time and resources to go through an AFD on the basis of possible vandalism. It seems reasonable to require at least a basic explanation. Otto4711 (talk) 08:05, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Redirect prodding

Just checking, can article redirects be prodded? I have a fairly large number of questionable cross namespace redirects and the rate of 4 a day at RFD is getting a bit slow. MBisanz talk 16:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

No. Redirects just don't get enough attention or traffic to get noticed the same way that a prod tag gets noticed on an active article. RfD works fine. Rossami (talk) 19:39, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, it doesn't say that in the current policy, either here or at Proposed deletion. MBisanz talk 19:45, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
That's odd. It used to. Though I'm having trouble remembering exactly which page held that prohibition. Give me a few days to dig around, please. Rossami (talk) 19:48, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I'll hold off for a bit. MBisanz talk 19:58, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
As the proposed deletion policy states, only articles are eligible for proposed deletion. Redirects are not articles and so are ineligible. The policy used to explicitly state that redirects are not eligible, but this language was removed in one of the innumerable rewordings of this policy page. Spacepotato (talk) 20:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
It really ought to say that somewhere. AFAIK the {{prod}} template would work on a redirect without generating the error text. MBisanz talk 20:19, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Rossami on this one, so I'm going to go add some specific language back into the policy. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)


I can't see the harm in allowing prods for redirects, the people who patrol the prod nominations would pick up any bad ones, and anyone who misses the prod and find the redirect deleted would be free to recreate it. Plus, when the prod expires, the admin does not HAVE to delete it, he can decline it. OK, so there would not be quite as much scrutiny as with an article, but then there's a lot let loss if some get deleted. Remember a prod is contestable at any point even after deletion.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 01:31, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

"Procedural keep"

Are these votes on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Texas Railroad Museum (2nd nomination) valid? The nominator said there are no reliable sources, and I took a look and agreed. If it had been taken to DRV, the no consensus probably would have been upheld. If the votes are valid, how long does one need to wait? --NE2 03:31, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Generally waiting a month or so is good. It keeps everyone happy. I've closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Texas Railroad Museum (2nd nomination) as the nominator took the issue to deletion review. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:10, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

courtesy deletion for a friend

I hope the question is in ther right place: A friend of mine who had an academic position got an article written on him by a student of his. After a clear non-notability AfD discussion it was deleted, but the archived page is easily googled. My friend is a bit embarrased by this and prefers the whole story disappear, and blanking will just leave it on google. 2 questions: Is this grounds for a deletion request (it not a severe "emotional distress" case)? Second, assuming a no, is "courtesy blanking" (using Template:Afd-privacy) an act a friend can do, or am I ethically expected to ask a 3rd party to do it? DGtal (talk) 21:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for answering the 2nd question. What is the answer to the first one? DGtal (talk) 21:32, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
When you say the "archived page", are you talking about the archived AfD discussion? If so, the answer is no, that is not grounds for deletion of the AfD debate. We've found too much need to refer to those pages again and again. Courtesy-blanking of the debate has always been sufficient to meet people's privacy concerns. And as Protonk said, pretty much anyone can courtesy-blank a discussion as long as there is some good-faith reason spelled out in the edit summary. (If you're talking about the google cache or any other archive outside of Wikipedia - and there are many, there's unfortunately nothing we can do.) Rossami (talk) 21:46, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion -- a loophole giving carte blanche to admins?

I recently changed the policy to some disagree. I was reverted citing a "legal issue of copyright and libel". The thing is, Wikipedia has never been sued, and AFDs usually end quickly. On Wikipedia we err on the side of group consensus in major things like deletions. Speedy deletions are intended to be uncontroversial, and if they aren't, then clearly the libel or copyright is not so obvious.

An example is Simple Green. I helped to write this article and added a couple references. It was recently deleted, carte blanche, by [User talk:Akradecki]], an admin who seems to abuse speedy deletions to destroy articles, citing "copyvio" when in fact there is no copyright violation. A user disagreed with Akradecki, who directed that user to Deletion review, but the user said he was too tired/busy to write up the report. This is not uncommon.

The legal issue is bogus. A week, usually two days, is not going to matter in terms of legal liability. We need to err on the side of group consensus in deletions. II | (t - c) 22:11, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Wikimedia has been sued. Anyhow, if an article is speedy deleted, contact the deleting admin and if you still feel it shouldn't have been deleted, visit Deletion Review. It's the current process and I don't see any reason to change it. - Rjd0060 (talk) 22:14, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
(ec)It was actually deleted as advertising, if you check the log. Jennavecia deleted some of the revisions of the page as copyvio, but not all of them. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:15, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
(ec)Akradecki is not 'destroying' anything - (s)he's simply carrying out what should be carried out, as per the policies which have been decided by the community. They might be controversial from time to time, to a few users - but this was only controversial to the people who edited the article, not to anyone else who's looked at the case. WP:DRV is the correct way to ask for a deletion review - and if the article is deemed fine, then it can be put back up. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 22:19, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
The problem with deletion review is that 1) all the people who had Simple Green on their watchlist can't see the review. That's why we have AfDs, so that people who are watchlisting the article can weigh in. Deletion review gets a lot less traffic. So let's walk through the process. Akradecki suddenly speedy deletes the article without even putting up a template for people to weigh in. There's a decent chance that people don't notice it is gone -- Simple Green was edited heavily for years, so it was noticed, but newer articles have only a couple editors. Then, when people do notice, half of them are too lazy/busy to ask for it back. When a couple do, they get directed to Deletion review, which is another hurdle. Half of them make it to deletion review. When it does go to deletion review, there's a chance that nobody will even comment on it aside from the deleting admin.
It's just a plain bad process, and it doesn't make any sense. AfDs and consensus do not take that long to resolve. The Seigenthaler incident was up for MONTHs, and we didn't get sued over that. The legal defense really doesn't make any sense.
Yes, it was deleted as "copyvio". As I said, I edited that article, and I didn't copy anything. So clearly the admins aren't reading very carefully there. Also, the proper way to handle copyright violations is to delete that text from the article in an edit, not delete the article. Also, User_talk:Akradecki has a history of bypassing the AfD proces for controversial deletes, as you can see on the talk page. This is not acceptable. II | (t - c) 22:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
It's time to start the article from scratch. The previous one was grown from a bad seed... and there is no way to preserve the the article without violating our own GFDL. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I looked at the article history and there were two sections that were taken word for word. In the history section, 90 percent of the text was taken from [1] and this was present in the many reversions of the article. Second, the health information/hazards was taken from this page, however, since it is a website hosted by the United States Government, this information can be considered public domain. But, once again, this was not cited in the article text in the last version, nor in various edits earlier. I do not know who added this information, but I honestly believe that if this has to be written about, this needs to be done with a new article, started from scratch. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 22:34, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
What are you talking about? If I'm to believe your reasoning, if someone adds a copyright violation to an article, it must be deleted? This is really just astounding to me. I didn't realize how huge of a deletion loophole CSD presented. The article and its history should be preserved. If anything, keeping the copvio in the history of the article prevents it from happening again. Could someone userfy the article for me at User:ImperfectlyInformed/Simple Green, since the deleter is away on vacation? Regardless of Simple Green, the fact remains that libel and copyright violation, if disputed, need to be decided by group consensus. The very small extended liability of a few days is far outweighed by the importance of maintaining our consensus approach to deletion. II | (t - c) 22:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
As a rule, if a fair bit of the article is copyrighted, then yes, we delete it, so that ordinary users can't access the copyright violation. The article and history are preserved, but only administrators etc can view it. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 22:40, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Is that rule policy? It seems quite poorly thought out. II | (t - c) 22:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Policy is to consider other alternatives to deletion. If a "fair bit" of the article is copyright, then first remove that fair bit, and see if what remains can be justified as an article.--Kotniski (talk) 22:45, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
If not, then delete and start again. There are many ways to deal with a copyvio, and all of them are either written down at Wikipedia:Copyright violations or been common practice. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 22:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Often times we can delete back to the "most recent good version" and salvage much of the work. In this case there are no "clean" versions. Yes, I know it sucks. It sucks the chrome off a trailer hitch. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course, it's really up to the admin to decide what is "a fair bit". It's also up to the deleting admin whether or not to userfy, or which version to userfy. So the "regular users" are really left at nothing when they decide whether the article could be recovered, based on the past versions and history -- since the past versions and history aren't available. And when a user goes to appeal at deletion review, they appeal to a very small, busy audience, most likely with no experience with the article. If people at deletion review are lucky enough to be admins, so they can look at the article, they probably also have a bias for the "common practice" of deleting articles which have "a fair bit" of copyright violation. The admins will state their opinions that the article was "90%" copyright -- based on the one version they glanced at, most likely. Of course these statements cannot be verified by regular users. What an interesting process. II | (t - c) 23:01, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

We get asked to view deleted articles all of the time, so it is not a problem if you ask me or the other 1000 or so admins that crawl around here. I was told about this article from another admin, who wondered why is this a a copyvio. So, I looked at the text and I did a few Google searches to find the problem sites. Anyways, in the near future, I really think that if people want to delete the article for it being a copyvio, cite the website where it comes from. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 23:20, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
(e/c) And the audience at AFD is going to be so much more knowledgeable and have more time to spend reviewing the article? An average day usually has 3-5 DRVs and 90-120 AFDs - which process is more likely to attract well thought-out, well-researched answers, and which is more likely to attract a cookie-cutter response based on a quick review? DRVs almost always get more comments than AFD. Many AFDs close with only 1-2 comments. And heaven forbid people are biased toward proper application of policy. Please remember that WP:AGF applies to dealing with admins. In the time spent arguing with the deleting admin and trying to change policy, the article could have easily been rewritten to use sources properly - summarizing and paraphrasing instead of direct copy-and-paste. Mr.Z-man 23:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
I certainly agree with citing the website -- I presume you mean in the log, if there's space? And actually, the article wasn't deleted for copyright violation. It was deleted for being "blatant advertising" after it was stripped of copyright violations so that it could be built up again with what existed. I know that this can't be the whole story because I added sourced material which was the opposite of advertising, and certainly not copyright, sometime about a year ago. Somehow this was missed. Anyway, I know there was a material safety data sheet referenced in that article which you haven't pointed out. It's going to be a hassle to track it down again. There may have been other references related to its possible toxicity. That's why deleting articles which have been around for a while and heavily-edited by users who are not inserting copyright violations is bad form. I took an interest in this article for the exact same reason that Neil916 did: it is a product is probably greenwashed, and I wanted consumers to have the rundown on the product at hand.
Relying on individuals to be right is directly contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia. Individuals push agendas, and admins have itchy trigger fingers and short attention spans like anyone else. That's why the powers granted by CSD for sudden and difficult-to-reverse deletions are extremely alarming. If admins were forced to restore contested CSDs, then the problem could be resolved out in the open without having to jump through hoops and go through lengthy explanations. As it is, I have to trust that admins aren't missing the edit where the copyright violation is inserted over the genuine article, and I prefer to verify things myself. Subjective criteria, as was used to justify the speedy of Simple Green, is even worse, and I've raised the issue of the CSD page Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Subjective_criteria.
Also, the stated policy on "only if the history is unsalvageably corrupted should it be deleted in its entirety; earlier versions without infringement should be retained". Since I, and I know several others, added referenced content to this article, it cannot have been unsalvageable. II | (t - c) 23:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Err, no, assuming people have "itchy trigger fingers" and are pushing agendas is contrary to the collaborative nature of Wikipedia. Note that just because you added referenced content does not mean that its salvageable. If you added the content to a version that contained copyright violations, without removing the copyright violations, its still unsalvageable. Mr.Z-man 00:35, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm a bit late to the party, I know, but I'd just like to say one thing. In my experience, the vast majority of editors who work at DRV are admins. There's always a non-admin or two who are regulars, and as non-regulars appear often enough, but generally the audience you'll get there is capable at reading consensus and knowledgeable about the various deletion policies. We also tend slightly towards the "process is good" side of things. So, generally, if you bring a deletion to DRV that you think is wrong, we'll either agree and have it overturned or tell you why the deletion was correct. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Can someone remind me whether deletion of a page automatically causes it to be removed from watchlists? If not, then it seems we can make a slight improvement to the process, by saying that when a deletion comes up for review, the page is temporarily recreated (and re-deleted) with an edit summary informing those watching it that a review is in progress. (And similarly for the AfD entry, so that those who are watching that are informed of the review as well.)--Kotniski (talk) 23:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but I think the article remains watchlisted. I suggested some sort of code for notifying people of a DRV a few months ago, and people at the pump agreed with me, but none of us were programmers and as usual, nothing happened (my fault as much as anyone else's). I found out today on Akradecki's talk page that userfication can contain the history -- I'd only seen userfied articles of the most recent version. So that's good. Probably the easiest thing to do is restore the actual page while a DRV is happening so people can view it, and slap a tag on it, rather than userfying. I expect people would object to that for "legal reasons", although it really is a silly objection. II | (t - c) 00:19, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
It appears in your watch list as a red link. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 07:47, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
In that case, then, my proposed solution should work. Can we add this as a step in the deletion review process? --Kotniski (talk) 08:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Legal reasons are not a silly objection. Why you seem to think Wikimedia is immune from legal issues I do not know. Wikipedia does receive DMCA takedown notices – we quickly delete the offending content, everyone is happy, few people notice. In 2006, the French Wikiquote project was completely deleted and restarted due to copyright problems. The reason we don't have more problems is because we are so quick to remove copyright violations. The only thing that's going to make an angry copyright holder more angry is seeing material, that he thought was deleted, restored so it can be discussed for 5 days. Mr.Z-man 08:09, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it any better if it is restored as a userfication? An exception for the case of copyright violations in which a DMCA notice has been given can easily be made. II | (t - c) 21:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
No. Copyrighted content is not allowed. Period. End of story. It's called Federal (and in some cases International) Law. Hersfold (t/a/c) 21:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Fine. An exception for copyrighted articles. But I'll remind you that if the copyright is disputed, then the question remains as to whether there actually is copyright. And in a world where Wikipedia is increasingly copied, this problem will become larger and larger. The benefits of letting people view an alleged copyright openly for a few days (or even a few hours -- since obvious copyright issues will be decided quickly) far outweigh the risks. And I highly doubt anyone would win a legal lawsuit over such a small issue. You seem to think that the law is fundamentally unreasonable, super-fast moving, ect, and that people are just waiting to pounce on Wikipedia. It's just not the way the world works. II | (t - c) 21:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm very sorry if this seems blunt, but you are completely wrong. Under US Law (which we follow because our servers are in Florida), everything is automatically under copyright unless it is explicitly released by the creator (such as what happens when you make any edits here - you "irrevocably agree to release your contributions under the terms of the GFDL."). Law does often appear to be quite unreasonable, and in some cases has the swiftly-moving vengeance of a woman scorned. In case you were wondering, there are people waiting to pounce on us as well. We do get legal notices. We do block people who make legal threats - much more often than you may think. Copyright is non-negotiable, and we will always investigate cases where it is disputed carefully. You may want to see WP:COPY for our procedures on that. You may learn something in the process. Hersfold (t/a/c) 22:15, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
What are you talking about? I didn't say that written work is not automatically copyrighted. What was I wrong about? As far as your beliefs about the threats of lawsuits, you can believe what you want, but the worst thing to happen to Wikipedia was the Seigenthaler incident, and we were not sued over that. The liability (in terms of dollar damages) of putting up a copyrighted work would not be large. The chances that a jury or a judge in a civil court would even award damages for a copyrighted work being put up for a few hours to a few days is slim to zero. As I said, an exception could easily be made for those instances where a DMCA notice is given to Wikimedia by the copyright holder. Until that happens, there is no major legal pressure -- in fact there is no real legal pressure at all. Read up on the DMCA. It is unfortunate that your paranoia leads you to advocate a less transparent and efficient Wikipedia process, but don't presume that you are stating facts and I am not, or that you understand the law and I do not. II | (t - c) 22:30, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
  • I tend to agree with II here. Wikipedia's Fair Use and copyright policies are written not to allow editors to barely skirt the bounds of copyright law but to be safely and comfortably clear of any possible violations. As such, they tend to be really, really stifling in comparison to what could be policy were we to be more realistic about copyright law. He is also right that DMCA takedown actions are evidence that wikipedia is only an OTRS request aware from avoiding legal trouble. However, this discussion is not likely to change the copyright policy (and it is written the way it is for good reason, IMO) and does not change the reasons why G12 is a speedy criteria--single copy/paste copyright violations from other websites are both against the stated policy and inimical to the construction of a reliable, free reference work. If G12 is observed scrupulously, the deletions made under it should be relatively uncontroversial. G11 is a touch more subjective, though (IMO) not enough to warrant changing it. Advertisements, like copyvios hurt our ability to build a reliable reference work. They taint public perception of wikipedia and provide the implication that we may be used as a venue for promotion. These two speedy criteria are acceptable if they are read narrowly, applied consistently and subject to review. I don't think that either of these need to be remanded to AfD or some other long term forum simply because we get too many of them. The volume of AfD is roughly 100 pages a day. That's 3,000 pages a month. The average, in 2007, for pages deleted per month was about 40,000. The vast majority of those were speedy deletions, either for images or articles. We simply don't have the capacity to intelligently review 1,300 articles per day in a community fashion. So we leave a subset of explicitly non-controversial deletions in the hands of administrators. These deletions are easily reversed (Simple Green will probably b reversed at DRV) and control of the bit is something that is up to the community. If you think that administrators are being too loose with CSD decisions, hang out at RfA and support candidates who will interpret CSD narrowly and properly. Hang out at CAT:CSD and decline speedies (anyone other than the creator of the article can do it). Watch Special:Log/delete (though that isn't really an edifying experience) and talk to deleting admins who seem to delete well meaning pages. But I don't think that inveighing against admins as a suspect class will get us anywhere. Protonk (talk) 22:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment Protonk, although it probably is a bit more directed at the concerns raised over at WT:CSD. Hersold and I are arguing over whether copyright violation speedy deletes can be temporarily restored when they are contested at deletion review so that non-admins can verify the problems. Hersold says the legal liability makes that impossible; I say that making things open and transparent is the way that Wikipedia is supposed to work. I'm a bit disturbed that over at DRV, 9/10 of the deleted articles being discussed have not been userfied. I see several comments like "I can't review this, but I guess it was OK ..." or "Thank you for the admin for telling me what the article looks like". That's unacceptable. We shouldn't rely on userfications. Temporary restorations should be a standard, mandatory practice for articles in deletion review. And I think that copyright violating articles should be included in this (unless there was a DMCA notice) because if the copyright violation is contested, then it is obviously not such a simple matter. II | (t - c) 00:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
They almost always are, just not on Wikipedia. Click on the "cache" link. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 00:23, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Eight of the nine that I mentioned earlier did not have caches. Plus, caches don't have the history of the article, which is sometimes relevant. II | (t - c) 03:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
As far as DRV is concerned, I don't see a legal problem with a history only undeletion during the discussion. Most admins will do that if people ask (or, a la the Winner's curse, at least one admin will be willing to do so). The problem is one of degree, so a balancing rule is an appropriate prescriptive response. Allowing non-admins to view all deleted material is unacceptable and has been rejected by the foundation and the community multiple times. Forbidding admins from restoring deleted material when a good faith request is posed is likewise considered unacceptable. I think that discussions at DRV are well served by history only undeletion and the negative implications of doing so are minimal. I'm not sure that we need to mandate it. My guess would be that castigating people for "voting" on the basis of a hunch or an admin telegraphing the content of the article would be more acceptable. Protonk (talk) 00:30, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

It's amazing how much discussion can pile up when you take a weekend off... I'm late to the discussion and don't have anything useful to add to the comments above about copyrights. But the rule for all other speedy-deletions is quite clear and has been since the speedy-deletion was first proposed. If a speedy-deletion is disputed in good-faith, the page is to be immediately restored and sent to discussion for the community's decision. This was an essential condition that the community placed upon the speedy-deletion process when it was first approved. That requirement has been often overlooked but never revoked.

Some notes about that requirement:

  1. A random request or a cry that "my golden prose is not advertising" is not sufficient. The deleted page must fail to have qualified as a speedy-deletion candidate in the opinion of someone who actually has some experience with the speedy-deletion criteria - that is, the admin who will decide to hit the undelete button.
  2. I can't think of a time when a request to restore a confirmed copyright violation would ever be considered a good-faith dispute. For those rare situations where permission can be sought, WP:COPYVIO already has detailed procedures.
  3. WP:BLP violations are sometimes disputed. Because of the sensitive nature of these topics, the community has generally decided that those should be discussed at WP:DRV prior to restoration.
  4. WP:OFFICE actions (which did not exist when the speedy-deletion process was first developed) would also be above review or dispute through this process.
  5. Some of the speedy-deletions that deal with images may also have some special cases. I know there was a special sensitivity about image copyrights a year or two ago and some rules were changed to allow easier and more permanent removal of suspect violations. I don't work with images much though and am not familiar with all the specifics.

I hope that little tidbit of history helps. Rossami (talk) 02:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Seems like a good addition. So you're saying this procedure used to be in place, but it got deleted sometime a while ago? II | (t - c) 03:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
incidentally, the most frequent case of mistaken G12 deletions is when the copy is the other way round, from WP, and it shouldnt take going to drv to reverse them. Any admin can easily make a mistake on not catching something like that.DGG (talk) 05:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
And this is where our logs of edits and the wayback machine can help in figuring things out. That, I think, it is just admins not doing their homework. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 06:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Changes to restoration section

Rossami, this change is not what I intended, but I can definitely see that my change could have been clearer. What I think the policy should say is that good faith requests for restoration of CSD's should almost always be honored without question, but that even apparently good faith requests for restoration of BLP/Copyvio/other important classes of deleted materials should be discussed. The deletion of those items may not be controversial in any sense (excluding the article author's desire to not have the article deleted), but the restoration may be. Contrast that with your average A7 band deletion, a restoration of which would probably never be controversial. I just wanted to make that clear without saying that requests to restore a G10/G11 page are bad faith requests. Thoughts? Protonk (talk) 02:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I see your point. How's this? Rossami (talk) 03:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, that seems much better. That's what I get for trying to get my point across in 200 characters. :) Protonk (talk) 03:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
It might be worth including in there to ask the deleting admin first. The DRV instructions include that step, and though it is often ignored, generally I'd think it's best to ask the deleting admin than another. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Courtesy notifications and requests are always a good idea. I'm not sure how best to add the thought to the page given its current layout, though. The concept of talking to the deleting admin first would apply to speedys, prods and deletion discussions. Do you have an idea where we could insert the thought without needing to duplicate it in each subsection? Rossami (talk) 17:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
It already says it in the DRV section, so I'm not sure. Probably it's fine as is, and we just need a massive header on DRV telling people to ask the deleting admin first, so it's hard to miss. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't have an issue with providing a copy of a deleted article to someone who asks for it, in their user space where it's not sitting out in article space live as part of the encyclopedia. But restoring something that has been determined to be a speedy candidate by an admin back into article space seems very wrong to me. Why would we do that? I mean, can someone explain the benefit that would provide, to have an article that someone has determined should not exist suddenly pop back into the encyclopedia with no improvements? Tony Fox (arf!) 21:42, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Remember that this scenario only kicks in after another admin with presumably equal experience looks at the deleted content and determines that it was not a valid speedy-deletion. That is, the speedy-deletion was so clearly in error that the undeleting admin is willing to put his/her own repulation on the line to repair the error and get the page into the proper process. Since the vast majority of admins are justifiably reluctant to participate in anything that looks like wheel warring, this rarely occurs. But when it does, repairing the error is the right thing for the project.
That's not to say that the page won't be ultimately deleted. Many things are deletable that just are not speedy-deletable. Rossami (talk) 22:19, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
As Rossami said, it's exceedingly rare, but I've done it a couple of times. Article names escape me at the moment, but they've been cases where the speedy deletion reason was clearly wrong, such as something being marked a hoax and deleted just because the parties involved hadn't heard of the topic and didn't check the refs in the article, or an article deleted as no context when there was definitely context and content there. (Yes, I've always left a note for the deleting admin, with an invitation to clue me in on anything I might be missing.) --Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I guess I can see where you're coming from. This seemed to be a rather major addition to the policy that was being campaigned by a couple of editors elsewhere, but if it's been part of the policy originally, I guess it's one that I wasn't aware of. I disagree with the concept, to be honest; this is exactly what DRV should be for, and if we codify it "officially" (as opposed to unofficially, as it's been so far), I see drama ahead. Tony Fox (arf!) 23:47, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
The whole point of speedy deletion is that it's for uncontroversial cases; it's not a steamroller to override good faith objections to a deletion (with the possible exception of some BLP issues). If a reasonably experienced user with a moderate level of clue objects to a speedy, then it's obviously at least somewhat controversial, and should go to AfD instead. As for DRV, I think there are too many occasions when we spend five days at DRV deciding that something didn't fit the speedy criteria, undelete it, list at at AfD, then spend another five days deciding that it's not worth keeping anyway. So I reckon we should just restore disputed speedies and send them straight to AfD - at worst it's no more effort than a DRV would have been, at best it halves the amount of work needed, and even if the speedy was in fact correct in the first place, Wikipedia won't suffer irreparable harm because an article on a non-notable band hangs around for five days longer than it had to. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 00:35, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I would suggest continuing to rely on judgment, but also making it explicit that reversing a speedy is not considered wheel warring, and that any admin should be free to do so, and sending it to afd is at his discretion--or of course, an option for anyone else also. Recall we do not want to add to the workload at AfD unnecessarily. As for DRV to reverse speedies, that should be kept for when there is actually a problem between admins that would otherwise involve ANB or the like. Most times I & another admin disagree, we don't disagree to that extent. The real purpose of DRV is reviewing XfD closings and granting permission for items deleted as BLP violations--that last was forced upon us by arbcom, but we're stuck with it. DGG (talk) 05:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  • I've reverted this back to the version of November 1 until a proper consensus is gained here. I am not at all sure that there is a consensus that any admin may reverse (almost) any speedy deletion without further reference. Stifle (talk) 16:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry but you're doing this one backwards. Policy, precedent and practice are and always have been that out-of-process speedy-deletions are to be immediately overturned and sent to [then VfD, now XfD] for discussion. Speedy-deletions which are not clearly out of process may be reviewed at DRV but that is not a requirement. I challenge you to find consensus that that policy was changed. Rossami (talk) 16:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I know that it has been almost two years since I checked the deletion log statistics, but last time I looked we were doing about an order of magnitude more undeletions every day than we were even having cases filed at DRV (closer to two orders of magnitude more undeletions than DRV determined undeletions). What I've never known is what fraction of undeletions were of admins reversing their own deletion versus somebody elses. But I can guarantee you that most undeletions do not happen through DRV. GRBerry 21:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Allowing any admin to reverse a speedy deletion because they disagree with it is a recipe for wheel warring. Deletion review absolutely is the right place for speedy deletions to be challenged. Stifle (talk) 09:45, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
    • And yet in the roughly five years that the CSD process has been in place, that just doesn't happen. It doesn't because the process won't let the cycle go on more than once. A deletes out of process, B restores and immediately sends it to discussion where the larger community makes a decision. That's a very long way from a wheel war.
      Users can elect to use Deletion Review but the process does not and never has required it to send a disputed speedy to discussion. Rossami (talk) 14:17, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of list articles is much more like deletion of categories: proposed fixes

In light of the discussion at WP:CLN it is apparent that lists and categories complement each other on Wikipedia, and are often used to do many of the same things. There is much overlap and duplication between them, and that's good. It is not good when deletion discussions involving them are not handled by the same people. Which is occuring now.

When somebody has a problem with a category they don't like, they come to category-for-deletion WP:CFD, because the criteria are not the the same as for articles (we also have separate deletion discussion boards as you see in WP:XFD, eight in all, for other things). However, when people want to delete a list article (list of ships, List of trees, List of birds), which is essentialy the same thing as a category, but in list-form, they go to the article deletion discussion page, WP:AFD. That's not good, because the criteria for notable articles are not the same as those for list-articles. The latter only need a header paragraph to explain themselves (see WP:LIST), and then elements which are individually notable. As in List of birds. But other kinds of wiki-articles normally put up for deletion have more stringent notability requirements, and their verifiability methods are not of the same type (a list article many only have hyperlinked elements and nothing else).

All this produces very WP:LAME edit wars, as you see on the WP:DRV page. For example, List of bow tie wearers has been up for deletion 4 times, and has only survived by now having many, many in-article cites, which makes it look very much unlike List of birds. All that because nay-sayers demanded article criteria for what is essentially a category in list-form. You can see much the same type of problem with List of notable people who wore the bowler hat, which is now up for deletion review on WP:DRV on the grounds that some people are arguing that the existence of the list itself needs defending as a point of WP:V, when in fact, this is really a "what categories are natural?" discussion.

  • I propose that a separte page be created for proposed deletions of list-articles.

Comments? I'm going to repost this around on the several TALK pages which deal with this matter. SBHarris 01:25, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

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