Talk:Islamic languages ( talk| | history| logs| links| watch) ( restore)

Deleted per WP:G8 despite being marked as {{ g8-exempt}} (the page has since been recreated by an IP with what looks like useless placeholder content). It contains a broad discussion that provides the background for the AfD of the article, and that should be required reading for anyone who tries to create any other sort of article at this title. – Uanfala (talk) 14:21, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply

• Comment Given the page was already present as the unhelpful IP recreation, I've restored the history for review too. Note also the precursor to this DRV at the deleting admin's talk page User_talk:Scottywong#Islamic_languages. ~ mazca ^talk 15:19, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Overturn and restore, I don't think this was a good use of CSD G8, which is a very broad speedy criterion with a correspondingly broad exception - "any page that is useful to Wikipedia". The presence of {{ g8-exempt}} really should be sufficient to indicate that it's controversial, and that it would be better sent to MfD. I can totally understand Scottywong deleting it routinely as part of the AfD closure, as the closer script doesn't listen to that tag and it's unusual, but I don't understand the reticence to restore it when it was raised. G8 really shouldn't be a replacement for a deletion discussion when there's good-faith disagreement over the utility of a dependent page, even if the article itself had a good deletion consensus at AfD. ~ mazca ^talk 15:37, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Comment from admin who closed the AfD related to this talk page: - I closed the AfD on Islamic languages and deleted the article. I also deleted the talk page of the article, because that is what is usually done with talk pages of deleted articles. User:Uanfala politely asked me to restore the talk page because they believed that it contained significant discussions that applied more broadly than just the article that was deleted. I considered the request and inspected the history of the deleted talk page. I found a talk page that had a grand total of 17 edits (only 9-10 of which actually contributed discussion to the page) over a 3-month period. There were two discussions on the page: the first was titled "What is an Islamic language?", which attempted to define inclusion criteria for this disambiguation page. The second discussion was a user arguing that this page is not a legitimate disambiguation page, which eventually lead to the successful AfD. I concluded that these discussions were not "significant", and also disagreed that these discussions were broad, or that they applied to more than the deleted dab page. Additionally, the extremely strong consensus at the AfD made it very unlikely that this article would ever find consensus to be recreated, and thus the discussions on the the talk page (which were constrained to the inclusion criteria of a dab page that will never exist) were not likely to be useful to anyone in the future. Therefore, I ultimately concluded that these pages were not "useful" enough to escape G8 deletion, and I declined to restore them. If the community disagrees and believes that I've misjudged the usefulness of the discussions on this page, then I have no problem with them being restored. ‑Scottywong | [spout] || 19:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• What's useful about this page, specifically? I'm not seeing it.— S Marshall  T/ C 19:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It's useful, in my opinion (as the person who started the AfD and who's been whining for the talk page to be restored), because it contains broad discussion about what kind of page could conceivably be located at this title. The AfD was for a dab page, but someone could try creating an article or a list (as actually happened shortly before the AfD concluded) and there isn't much in the AfD discussion that would tell them this wouldn't be a good idea. If a new article is created at this title, we'd have to go through AfD all over again, whereas if the talk page discussion were at hand we could just point to it and say "article doesn't make sense, discussed before". Of course, that doesn't make it supremely useful, but it makes it more useful than a non-existent page. – Uanfala (talk) 22:13, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Comment I don't see what's useful here either, but it's certainly more useful than many of the pages tagged G8, such as Talk:Jin Li (violinist) or Talk:Raquel Reyes (model). power~enwiki ( π, ν) 21:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  Well, Talk:Raquel Reyes (model) contains the extended rationale for the PROD that got the article deleted. I don't think it is any less useful than an AfD discussion. It makes sense to keep this talk page for the same reason that it makes sense to refrain from deleting an AfD discussion page upon the conclusion of a discussion. – Uanfala (talk) 01:03, 13 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  I'm not personally convinced as to how useful this specific one is either, but I feel fairly strongly that if someone tags something with {{ g8-exempt}} in good faith, then we, well, shouldn't be G8ing those pages. We have perfectly good deletion processes that can handle any disputed cases, and I really don't like the idea of G8 being basically a single admin deciding that, contrary to another editor's opinion, this page is not "useful". ~ mazca ^talk 21:46, 8 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  I'd be very surprised if many admins who close AfDs would catch a {{ g8-exempt}} template on the talk page of an article that is being deleted at AfD. Most of us use scripts to automate the process, and those scripts don't (yet) recognize that template. Ideally, yes, we'd examine and fully read the talk page of every article deleted at AfD. But practically, the amount of time and effort required to do that doesn't justify the 1 in 10,000 chance that you might see a {{ g8-exempt}} template on a talk page. It's exceedingly rare that article talk pages are kept around after deleting the associated article. ‑Scottywong | [spill the beans] || 07:41, 12 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  @ Scottywong: Yeah, I really do appreciate that, I could totally see myself doing exactly the same in an odd corner case like this, there's no particular reason you would have even looked at the talk page. I really don't object to your initial deletion of this - it's the refusal to restore it afterwards that I'm not comfortable with. An individual admin making a decision, over the explicit objection of another established editor, that a page is not "useful" just doesn't feel like something that really works as a speedy deletion criterion. This is probably something that wants clarifying in G8, and I'll probably look into that after this DRV regardless of the outcome, but I'm not sure what the point of {{ g8-exempt}} is if it's just freely ignored. ~ mazca ^talk 23:29, 12 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  Perhaps there is no point to {{ g8-exempt}}. There is nothing in WP:CSD#G8 that says you can't delete a page under G8 if it has that template on it. Anyone can put that template on any page; to me, it's just a suggestion that an admin should take a second look at the page before deciding to delete it. I never even knew that template existed until this incident. I'm concerned about your discomfort with all of this. A user made a request to me, I looked into it and came to the decision that I should decline that request (which is my right, I'm not obliged to grant every request made of me), and the next step is to bring my decision to a discussion with the wider community (i.e. DRV) to see if I made a mistake. I'm not sure what's making you uncomfortable about my refusal to restore the page; I contend that everything is being done by the book, and I'd actually commend Uanfala for staying civil, polite, and cordial despite my refusal to do what they wanted me to do. This is the way WP is supposed to work. ‑Scottywong | [chat] || 23:49, 12 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  Absolutely, this is how WP is supposed to work, this DRV is absolutely the correct way to attempt to resolve this. I think we just disagree on the meaning of the wording of G8 - I think the "by the book" way of resolving this would have been restoring it as an ambiguous use of speedy deletion and encouraging an MfD for a discussion on the merits of this particular page. WP:CSD#G8 states that This criterion excludes any page that is useful to Wikipedia. [...] Exceptions may be sign-posted with the template {{ G8-exempt}}. The {{ G8-exempt}} template is explicitly mentioned in the speedy deletion policy as a means of flagging exceptions to what's usually one of the less controversial CSDs. It's entirely possible that there's no point to the template, but we really shouldn't be expressly encouraging its use if administrators view it as such. CSDs are for unambiguous cases, and deleting it through a template added by a good-faith editor makes it ambiguous, in my book. ~ mazca ^talk 00:32, 13 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  My experience here is very similar to what I've often seen when trying to query pages deleted by criteria like G6, G8, or G14. These are supposed to be the least controversial ones, but once a page is deleted, it paradoxically becomes really difficult to have it restored. And I don't think I see a very good reason for the disparity that exists between challenging a CSD before and after a deletion. If the page is CSD tagged, then anyone (including, for G6 and G8, the creator) is free to object by removing the tag. Then, if the user who originally tagged it, then tags it again, they will be rightly chastised and pointed to WP:FORUMSHOP. And yet, if an objection is raised after deletion, all of a sudden it becomes really difficult to do anything about it. In practice, the deleting admin will either ignore the request, or find themselves unwilling to grant it, with the only available path then going through the heavy machinery of DRV, a process that most people who don't have strong metapedian inclinations will probably try to avoid. – Uanfala (talk) 01:03, 13 November 2020 (UTC) reply

• Overturn and restore as a matter of policy and courtesy. The speedy deletion policy says frankly that If an editor other than the creator removes a speedy deletion tag in good faith, it should be taken as a sign that the deletion is not uncontroversial and another deletion process should be used. Now of course no CSD tag was ever placed since Scottywong has access to the delete button, but that's merely a technicality. The spirit of the policy is quite clear that speedy deletion is for uncontroversial cases, and if an editor objects to a page being speedily deleted, then the page is not eligible for speedy deletion. Using {{ g8-exempt}} amounts to a proactive objection, essentially stating an intent to remove any G8 tag. The purpose is to prevent a fait accompli where an admin summarily deletes a page without giving anyone a chance to object, and it serves as a check on administrator power by preventing first-mover advantage for deleting administrators. Now, of course we use automated tools which don't necessarily recognize {{ g8-exempt}}, but to me that means we should be more lenient with undeletion in these cases. We are still ultimately responsible for our edits with automated tools after all, and by my understanding of the CSD policy, this page was not eligible for deletion under G8 because of an obvious good faith objection. For that reason alone it should be restored. While we may disagree about whether to keep the page, those discussions are for MfD not DRV. — Wug· a·po·des​ 02:07, 13 November 2020 (UTC) reply