This page is currently inactive and is retained for
historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump. |
The ideas and wording of this proposal have been discussed at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load, and on this page's talk page.
This proposal is no longer open for voting. Voting closed on July 19, 2005 15:11 (UTC). Please do not change the wording of this page.
For easy reference, these are the results of the earlier CSD proposal in January 2005.
These suggestions were proposed in the earlier discussion or on this proposal's talk page, but were never put to a vote because there was significant objection to them from the start and/or the author withdrew the suggestion.
Votes for Deletion has tripled in size in the past year, and there is no reason to suppose it will shrink back again. This is a logical result from the growth and increased popularity of Wikipedia. Because deletion of an article is a drastic measure, it is important to be able to get feedback from as many people as possible, to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus. However, the sheer size of each day's VfD page makes it impractical for people to join the debate.
There has been discussion for the past month on Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load to see if this load could be reduced. One of the suggestions was to convince people to make fewer nominations, and effort has now been made to make inexperienced users aware of alternatives such as merging and common dispute templates. However, looking at past VfD results shows that about 70% of the nominations end up deleted per consensus. It follows that most nominations are appropriate.
Further looking at recent VfD discussions, it has become apparent that certain categories of articles appear frequently on VfD, and always get unanimous or near-unanimous votes to delete. Since the consensus about these articles is obvious, it would make a significant reduction in VfD load if they could be speedily deleted. The main question is whether a definition for the category can be cleanly worded to avoid false positives. The intent of this proposal is to do just that.
June 1st | 115 nominations | 22 kept | 80 deleted | 13 other |
June 3rd | 117 nominations | 24 kept | 81 deleted | 12 other |
June 5th | 105 nominations | 17 kept | 79 deleted | 9 other |
(for comparison, January 1st has 50 nominations, January 3rd has 64, and January 5th has 62).
(more statistics, at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load/Analysis)
Vanity pages are among those most frequently nominated for deletion. Each day, there are up to several dozen articles about obscure people, bands or websites appear on VfD. The vast majority of these end up deleted. However, these are precisely the kind of articles that attract sockpuppet keep votes ( example). Also, the fact that a vanity page will remain on Wikipedia for at least a week, and can attract a lot of attention in the process of removing it, could well serve as an incentive for people to create more vanity pages, which is hardly beneficial.
However, the term 'vanity' is ambiguous at best, and downright controversial at worst. There is not, nor should there be, a proposal to speedily delete vanity articles. There is, however, a proposal below using a far stricter wording than that.
An important concern would be whether these criteria would be abused. To answer that, one should look at the current speedy criteria. It happens occasionally that the Template:Delete is wrongfully applied. However, it is exceedingly rare that an admin actually deletes something inappropriately, as the deletion log indicates. We have the Votes for Undeletion process to deal with errors, and VFU gets less than one request per day, on average, and in most of those cases the deletion is deemed valid.
Presently, CSD criteria are somewhat bent by some administrators, and this bending of the rules is seldom contested. The problem with bending rules is that it blurs the border between what is and is not covered by the rules. This proposal is meant to put an end to that, by putting a strict definition to cases that are currently vague or borderline. It is drawing the line. Anything not covered by the strict definition is off limits, and any administrator crossing it should be censured.
People are expected to use common sense before deleting anything, and it is expected that editors made administrators will display more common sense than most. If an article may be speedily deleted by these or any other criteria, that does not mean that anybody must do so. If the subject is noteworthy, it can instead be tagged for improvement.
An oft-asked question is, what would happen if someone created an article of which the content would fall under one of the proposed criteria for speedy deletion, but of which the subject is notable. People may be afraid that deletion will keep the subject out of Wikipedia. There are a few things to consider here...
Those who follow Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (WP:VFD) may notice listings for pages which should obviously be deleted, and faster than the five-day VFD process allows for. This proposal is an attempt to expand the cases in which a page can be speedily deleted.
To view the current situation, you may want to visit Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Log/Yesterday.
This page is currently inactive and is retained for
historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump. |
The ideas and wording of this proposal have been discussed at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load, and on this page's talk page.
This proposal is no longer open for voting. Voting closed on July 19, 2005 15:11 (UTC). Please do not change the wording of this page.
For easy reference, these are the results of the earlier CSD proposal in January 2005.
These suggestions were proposed in the earlier discussion or on this proposal's talk page, but were never put to a vote because there was significant objection to them from the start and/or the author withdrew the suggestion.
Votes for Deletion has tripled in size in the past year, and there is no reason to suppose it will shrink back again. This is a logical result from the growth and increased popularity of Wikipedia. Because deletion of an article is a drastic measure, it is important to be able to get feedback from as many people as possible, to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus. However, the sheer size of each day's VfD page makes it impractical for people to join the debate.
There has been discussion for the past month on Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load to see if this load could be reduced. One of the suggestions was to convince people to make fewer nominations, and effort has now been made to make inexperienced users aware of alternatives such as merging and common dispute templates. However, looking at past VfD results shows that about 70% of the nominations end up deleted per consensus. It follows that most nominations are appropriate.
Further looking at recent VfD discussions, it has become apparent that certain categories of articles appear frequently on VfD, and always get unanimous or near-unanimous votes to delete. Since the consensus about these articles is obvious, it would make a significant reduction in VfD load if they could be speedily deleted. The main question is whether a definition for the category can be cleanly worded to avoid false positives. The intent of this proposal is to do just that.
June 1st | 115 nominations | 22 kept | 80 deleted | 13 other |
June 3rd | 117 nominations | 24 kept | 81 deleted | 12 other |
June 5th | 105 nominations | 17 kept | 79 deleted | 9 other |
(for comparison, January 1st has 50 nominations, January 3rd has 64, and January 5th has 62).
(more statistics, at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load/Analysis)
Vanity pages are among those most frequently nominated for deletion. Each day, there are up to several dozen articles about obscure people, bands or websites appear on VfD. The vast majority of these end up deleted. However, these are precisely the kind of articles that attract sockpuppet keep votes ( example). Also, the fact that a vanity page will remain on Wikipedia for at least a week, and can attract a lot of attention in the process of removing it, could well serve as an incentive for people to create more vanity pages, which is hardly beneficial.
However, the term 'vanity' is ambiguous at best, and downright controversial at worst. There is not, nor should there be, a proposal to speedily delete vanity articles. There is, however, a proposal below using a far stricter wording than that.
An important concern would be whether these criteria would be abused. To answer that, one should look at the current speedy criteria. It happens occasionally that the Template:Delete is wrongfully applied. However, it is exceedingly rare that an admin actually deletes something inappropriately, as the deletion log indicates. We have the Votes for Undeletion process to deal with errors, and VFU gets less than one request per day, on average, and in most of those cases the deletion is deemed valid.
Presently, CSD criteria are somewhat bent by some administrators, and this bending of the rules is seldom contested. The problem with bending rules is that it blurs the border between what is and is not covered by the rules. This proposal is meant to put an end to that, by putting a strict definition to cases that are currently vague or borderline. It is drawing the line. Anything not covered by the strict definition is off limits, and any administrator crossing it should be censured.
People are expected to use common sense before deleting anything, and it is expected that editors made administrators will display more common sense than most. If an article may be speedily deleted by these or any other criteria, that does not mean that anybody must do so. If the subject is noteworthy, it can instead be tagged for improvement.
An oft-asked question is, what would happen if someone created an article of which the content would fall under one of the proposed criteria for speedy deletion, but of which the subject is notable. People may be afraid that deletion will keep the subject out of Wikipedia. There are a few things to consider here...
Those who follow Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (WP:VFD) may notice listings for pages which should obviously be deleted, and faster than the five-day VFD process allows for. This proposal is an attempt to expand the cases in which a page can be speedily deleted.
To view the current situation, you may want to visit Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Log/Yesterday.