Most editors are familiar with the existence of Articles for Deletion (AfD), the process by which we determine the suitability of articles for inclusion in Wikipedia. Indeed, many of us have had direct experience with the process, whether we liked it or not: working your ass off on an article only to see it flushed down the drain is close to an official rite of passage around these parts. That said, there are plenty of articles that have no place on Wikipedia, and plenty of subjects that have no business getting an article written about them. Love it or hate it, AfD is one of the most publicly-known processes on Wikipedia; it's referenced often enough in mainstream publications for us to have an article about it. And it looks like the largest AfD of all time has graced us with its presence this month.
But what do we really know about it? Statistical analysis is rather hard to come by. Earlier in 2021, I wrote a piece of software that analyzes AfD logs, from which I was able to create a live dashboard of current deletion discussions. I was also able to analyze all 480,000 AfDs (statistics on which can be found here). There were some interesting revelations, including a sortable list of the longest AfDs of all time for the drama-minded.
The topic of this report, however, is what was going on with AfD in November 2021, including the monthly statistics and sortable tables of each AfD.
There were 1,767 AfDs listed in November, of which 1,172 have closed and 595 remain open. This is slightly below the 2021 average of 1,794 per month (and well below the 2005–2020 average of 2,400 per month).
This comes out to an average of 63.1 per day, with the least on the 5th (35) and the most on the 27th (92); the average for 2021 has been around 54 per day.
205 of the November AfDs were relists from October, meaning 1,562 new nominations have been made since the beginning of the month. Additionally, 15 were closed without a !vote being cast (one was withdrawn, one was deleted, four were speedily deleted, and the rest were closed as no consensus).
The most common outcome was "delete" (as has been the case for all months since August 2005); "delete"s and "speedy delete"s combined made up 61.8% of closes. Meanwhile, 19.2% closed "keep" or "speedy keep", slightly below the 2021 average of 20.5%. There was only one type of close that didn't happen a single time in November — the elusive unicorn of deletion, the "transwiki" close to move content to another wiki, has occurred only 324 times in nearly 500,000 AfDs.
"I just want to offer my thanks and appreciation for all of the advice on my article. This is the first article I've ever written for Wikipedia and I am grateful for all the suggestions you have provided! I am going to look into contributing to other related articles -- thank you for including me in this valuable discussion!"
Most editors are familiar with the existence of Articles for Deletion (AfD), the process by which we determine the suitability of articles for inclusion in Wikipedia. Indeed, many of us have had direct experience with the process, whether we liked it or not: working your ass off on an article only to see it flushed down the drain is close to an official rite of passage around these parts. That said, there are plenty of articles that have no place on Wikipedia, and plenty of subjects that have no business getting an article written about them. Love it or hate it, AfD is one of the most publicly-known processes on Wikipedia; it's referenced often enough in mainstream publications for us to have an article about it. And it looks like the largest AfD of all time has graced us with its presence this month.
But what do we really know about it? Statistical analysis is rather hard to come by. Earlier in 2021, I wrote a piece of software that analyzes AfD logs, from which I was able to create a live dashboard of current deletion discussions. I was also able to analyze all 480,000 AfDs (statistics on which can be found here). There were some interesting revelations, including a sortable list of the longest AfDs of all time for the drama-minded.
The topic of this report, however, is what was going on with AfD in November 2021, including the monthly statistics and sortable tables of each AfD.
There were 1,767 AfDs listed in November, of which 1,172 have closed and 595 remain open. This is slightly below the 2021 average of 1,794 per month (and well below the 2005–2020 average of 2,400 per month).
This comes out to an average of 63.1 per day, with the least on the 5th (35) and the most on the 27th (92); the average for 2021 has been around 54 per day.
205 of the November AfDs were relists from October, meaning 1,562 new nominations have been made since the beginning of the month. Additionally, 15 were closed without a !vote being cast (one was withdrawn, one was deleted, four were speedily deleted, and the rest were closed as no consensus).
The most common outcome was "delete" (as has been the case for all months since August 2005); "delete"s and "speedy delete"s combined made up 61.8% of closes. Meanwhile, 19.2% closed "keep" or "speedy keep", slightly below the 2021 average of 20.5%. There was only one type of close that didn't happen a single time in November — the elusive unicorn of deletion, the "transwiki" close to move content to another wiki, has occurred only 324 times in nearly 500,000 AfDs.
"I just want to offer my thanks and appreciation for all of the advice on my article. This is the first article I've ever written for Wikipedia and I am grateful for all the suggestions you have provided! I am going to look into contributing to other related articles -- thank you for including me in this valuable discussion!"
Discuss this story
AfD
The lack of mention of immense canvassing across the internet and even by media articles being written seems rather wrong. Not only 4chan, but also people like Larry Sanger have been canvassing to get the article kept. Isn't all of that something that would be appropriate to mention, especially as a reason on why the AfD is so big? Silver seren C 18:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC) reply
There is an open discussion (started by yours truly) of an idea to address this, at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Adding "AfD closer" status, in which participation is here invited. Herostratus ( talk) 22:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC) reply