This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | → | Archive 20 |
The policy says the following regarding renominations for deletion: "After a deletion debate concludes and the page is kept, users should allow a reasonable amount of time to pass before nominating the same page for deletion again, to give editors the time to improve the page. Renominations shortly after the earlier debate are generally closed quickly. It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hopes of getting a different outcome."
I want to nominate a page for deletion that was last nominated by someone else two and a half years ago. At the time, it received "no consensus" as the result, but since then, hardly anything has changed for the article, the information on there seems less relevant than it ever was and does not seem like appropriate content for Wikipedia, in my opinion. It seems like a vanity page. I have left a number of comments in the Discussion page for the article advocating for deletion, to which no one has made any follow up reply comments. However, I don't want to be considered "disruptive," so I'd like to know if two and a half years is "a reasonable amount of time" for opting to renominate it for deletion. Webmacster87 ( talk) 02:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Why was it deleted when it is just coming out? Why can't I start a discussion??????-? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Check77 ( talk • contribs) 00:42, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Image:Benzene resonance.png is a duplicate of an image on commons. I think it should be deleted and its history transposed to commons if necassary, but I'm not sure what policy says about such cases so I'll let you handle this. Shinobu ( talk) 12:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Is there a deletion policy for articles like List of Fairfield County, Connecticut Related Wikipedia Articles that is completely self-referential? As it is, the article is simply a list of Wikipedia articles that is related to a topic. The two categories it is currently in and their subcats do the exact same job. I've prodded the article for now but I was wondering if this falls under some kind of speedy deletion criterion. -- Polaron | Talk 01:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
What is the process/policy for rewriting a deleted article? Ladder golf was speedied because it was a bad article and kind of an ad, but this could easily be a real article - it's got a number of news articles about it, and it's played at many sporting event tailgates. It's also got other names, all of which have reliable sources, like hillbilly horseshoes [1], hillbilly golf [2], ladder ball, [3] etc. To me, it seems like a game that passes notability requirements. Can I just rewrite a new article with those refs and such, or should I go to deletion review? It doesn't quite seem to fit the deletion review guidelines. -- AW ( talk) 19:07, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
As an on again, off again Wikipedia article creator. I've come to notice that the majority of the articles I write tend to get the "non-notable artist" card without considering the fact that the article has very reliable links attached to them. In some cases, when an article which I created gets put up for deletion, I state my opinion in the discussion, and no one even replies back. I believe some administrators here need to actually "try" to look for sources (when the fact is there's sources linked on the article) themselves and post them onto the article. Sometimes I believe they are being deceptive toward the policies, which is the main reason why I rarely create anything here. Many individuals feel the same way as I. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.153.235.46 ( talk) 01:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I've restored a very longstanding principle to this policy: if in doubt, don't deletes.
Obviously this does not apply to biographies of living persons. If somebody is saying nasty things, kill it first and then argue about it. But most of the time, a stub article is acceptable. -- Jenny 23:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Hello Aaron. Excuse me but aren't you the same person who was told off for being a naughty boy here for removing the exact same words without consensus [4]?
It will be noted here now that, before I made the above comment, I had diligently searched the whole of the talk page and its archives, and have found no discussion in which it was agreed to remove this fundamental principal, which was recorded in the arbitration case that I have cited above
Obviously I could be wrong about all this and there might somewhere be a discussion wherein the community reached a decision by consensus to remove the fundamental expression of deletion policy from this page. In that case, let's see it, and we can go about our business. Or else let's see in what circumstances, and without a discussion, the policy was traduced. It makes a difference, you know. -- Jenny 00:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Since, as my edit verifies, this snippet has been in policy for an eon in Wikipedia-time, there really should be consensus to remove it, not add it. I am not connected to whatever conspiracy it was that got blocked over adding it, but I do think it's a generally good concept to keep in mind. Increasingly people say stuff along the lines of "confusing case? arguments either way? defaults to delete" but that is out of step with tradition. Just my opinion, trying to keep deletion policy balanced. -- Rividian ( talk) 00:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Then let's think the implications of this change through. Putting the clause here moves the burden of surety from the closer to each individual discussion participant. Under the current rule, I as a discussion participant should honestly believe that the project would be better off without a page in order to express a "delete" opinion. I only have to be 51% sure that the project will be improved by deletion to say that, though. Hopefully, I will express my reservations clearly in the comment and will have my facts in order so that the closer can weight my opinion appropriately but I can honestly express my opinion that I believe that the project would be at least slightly better off. If others are more sure than I that the page should be deleted, the closer can make the aggregate call that the page should go. The closer must determine only that the aggregate opinion of the community is no longer in reasonable doubt.
Under this new interpretation, I as an individual discussion participant must hold myself to a substantially higher standard before I can honestly express my opinion that I have no doubt that the project would be better off without a particular page. Not only must the closer have no doubt, each individual participant must have do doubt. If people applied this standard honestly, it could create a situation where every single person in the discussion is mostly sure that the page would be better off deleted yet the page would be kept. Is that truly your intent? Under the current rules, if 10 participants unanimously recommend "weak delete", the closer would properly interpret that as a clear consensus. Under this new interpretation, even though there was not a single "keep" opinion offered, the page could have to be kept.
(Yes, I know my example sounds a bit extreme and tests the margin of this interpretation. Obvious cases don't need rules like this in the first place. If the new rule doesn't work at the margin, it's not worth writing down.) Rossami (talk) 21:11, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I think Rossami has summed it up pretty well. "If in doubt, don't delete" is not a statement of Wikipedia's deletion policy, it's guidance to administrators in interpreting consensus and implementing that policy. As such, it is appropriately placed on Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators (where it has long been), and not appropriate on this page. -- Stormie ( talk) 01:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Digging further into the history, in the earliest version of this page accessible through the page history tab (earlier versions available through diff from it), at a time when the entire content of this page was addressed to those individuals with the password to the administrative account (i.e., when this page was what now is WP:DGFA) that phrase was here. The page split occurred in September 2003. [5] [6]. At that time, this phrase moved with all of the other administrative specific guidance to the page that is now WP:DGFA. It was immediately prior to the split the time the fourth bullet point in a section entitled "Guidelines for admins". (#3 on that list was "Use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of Wikipedia participants.") I am now 100% convinced that the version Tony attempted to insert was actually a change in policy, by moving wording from one context to another. I suggested above ways of wording this here that would be reasonable and not change policy - namely wording it as guidance to closing/backlog clearing administrators rather than as guidance to Wikipedians who are opining in an XfD. Those who are opining in an XfD should be making sound arguments in line with communal norms, but those norms definitely don't include "you must have no doubt to opine delete" - the actual norm is "make sure your opinion reveals and explains your best judgment about what to do, including any doubt that you may have." GRBerry 05:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
(this was prompted by my recent discussion with PhilKnight)
Sometimes, a decision in an AfD is made to "merge and redirect", but nobody actually carries out the "merge" part. Perhaps because the job is too intimidating for everybody involved in the discussion, and requires an expert on the subject. If such is the case, I propose that it be policy to add a notice on the talk page of the article which the page is to be merged into.
What currently ends up happening at times is that a page is, for all intents and purposed, removed from view, and the only person who ends up realizing this is someone curious enough to look through old deletion discussions or the histories of redirection pages (and I think there aren't very many such people). Esn ( talk) 19:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
There's already a template for this (notifying on a target talkpage the merge result of the deletion debate of the other article); can't think of what it's called right now. Skomorokh 16:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I have some concerns about the changes made by AMIB to this policy page and would like to see what others think.
"Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia" has been in there for ages and ages; I simply moved it to the bottom.
Being a neologism used to be its own reason for deletion, but now it's mostly because most neologisms fail WP:N. I merged the line about neologisms to the "Can't be verified in reliable sources" because of this gradual shift in practice. The line still links the neologism guideline, which helps clarify what a reliable source is in the context of sourcing an article about a neologism. Neologisms are pretty uncontroversial nowadays anyway.
I'm trying to wrap my head around a way to merge the rest of the "no reliable sources" lines without stepping on any of the notability controversies. Haven't done anything with it yet. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire | past ops) 01:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
There is an article Luka Magnotta which was first cleaned up due to the multitude of unreferenced claims in the biography of a living person, and then the article was nominated for deletion, and then it was deleted due to the fact that he is a person of no notability, and now someone has re-created it with what appears to be a copy and paste of the original article. Does this have to go through the entire process of deletion again, or can the entire article be deleted straight up by an admin? 65.96.67.105 ( talk) 12:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I've proposed that user and user talk pages should not be eligible for PROD. See WT:PROD#Prodding user pages -- Ned Scott 06:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I feel that notability is too restrictive a guideline for deletions and too subjective.
I propose a more pragmatic criterion for deleting articles: Usefulness.
The encyclopedia is a tool. Each article should be judged by whether it provides a marginal enhancement to the usefulness of the encyclopedia to its users. Some articles may not be notable but they still provide useful information to many people. For example the article on github is not about something very notable but is definitely very useful to many people. The pragmatic criterion of usefulness is I think better than notability. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.229.186.246 ( talk) 23:11, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
As I was reading through the deletion policy, I didn't see info about deletion of article talk pages. When an article is deleted, is the talk page of that article also deleted (assuming there has been discussion on the talk page)? I can see that in some cases, you'd keep the talk page in the event that the article comes up again and is legitimately valid later as an article. However, I can also see that nonsense articles (e.g an article of Nvenaidifasveni) with discussion can have their talk pages deleted. 71.243.218.126 ( talk) 17:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. As a regular participant in AfD and frequent closer of debates, I often see discussions where an article on a topic of questionable notability that has a clear potential merge target whose notability is not in doubt. Some examples:
Typically, the articles are of poor quality, and the debate focuses on whether the outcome should be merge, redirect or keep. As is often the case in deletion discussions, the discussions can be very acrimonious and taken personally by participants. In light of this, I propose that we should start enforcing the directive on our current AfD page ( WP:BEFORE) to "[c]onsider making the page a useful redirect or proposing it be merged rather than deleted" before nominating for AfD, as "[n]either of these actions requires an AfD". Doing this would have two main positive effect:
The need for the first is widely called for by those of us despairing at the WP:BATTLEGROUND nature of AfD, and is reflected in the great tension and fighting over notability guidelines like WP:FICT, disruptive wars over "cruft" and several top-level mediation processes. The need for the second positive effect is what has motivated the introduction of WP:PROD and WP:CSD amongst other developments.
So, if this proposal is a good idea in principle, the next question is how it would be implemented. As it would be a not-insignificant change, I propose that it would be implemented conservatively, at least at first. An uninvolved administrator ( or non-admin?) should speedy close deletion debates which meet the following conditions:
The closing admin should then replace the Afd notice on the article with a {{ mergeto}}, tag the target article with {{ mergefrom}} and start a heading on the appropriate talkpage with a standard merge proposal heading and a short explanatory note linking to the closed Afd (this process could be easily automated). What does the community think? Skomorokh 16:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Update I forgot to cover how the merge discussion would play out; time limits are certainly important as Protonk noted. So how about these stipulations:
I wouldn't want this sort of thing to be used as a tool by inclusionists; and if nominators address why the AfD should not be speedied as a merge proposal, it should not be. Hope this clears up some of the problems with the proposal. Skomorokh 17:46, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Second update Protonk makes a good point about the problems of scope w.r.t. "merge targets". I think we can address this with a simple and intuitive marker:
This severely restricts the scope of the AfD's this proposal would pertain to. I'd also like to mention that this proposal is not for articles which are likely redirects; merges only. Skomorokh 18:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Protonk, thanks for your insights, very helpful. I've made two updates to the proposal to address some of your concerns if you'd like to respond to them here. Skomorokh 18:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | → | Archive 20 |
The policy says the following regarding renominations for deletion: "After a deletion debate concludes and the page is kept, users should allow a reasonable amount of time to pass before nominating the same page for deletion again, to give editors the time to improve the page. Renominations shortly after the earlier debate are generally closed quickly. It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hopes of getting a different outcome."
I want to nominate a page for deletion that was last nominated by someone else two and a half years ago. At the time, it received "no consensus" as the result, but since then, hardly anything has changed for the article, the information on there seems less relevant than it ever was and does not seem like appropriate content for Wikipedia, in my opinion. It seems like a vanity page. I have left a number of comments in the Discussion page for the article advocating for deletion, to which no one has made any follow up reply comments. However, I don't want to be considered "disruptive," so I'd like to know if two and a half years is "a reasonable amount of time" for opting to renominate it for deletion. Webmacster87 ( talk) 02:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Why was it deleted when it is just coming out? Why can't I start a discussion??????-? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Check77 ( talk • contribs) 00:42, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Image:Benzene resonance.png is a duplicate of an image on commons. I think it should be deleted and its history transposed to commons if necassary, but I'm not sure what policy says about such cases so I'll let you handle this. Shinobu ( talk) 12:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Is there a deletion policy for articles like List of Fairfield County, Connecticut Related Wikipedia Articles that is completely self-referential? As it is, the article is simply a list of Wikipedia articles that is related to a topic. The two categories it is currently in and their subcats do the exact same job. I've prodded the article for now but I was wondering if this falls under some kind of speedy deletion criterion. -- Polaron | Talk 01:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
What is the process/policy for rewriting a deleted article? Ladder golf was speedied because it was a bad article and kind of an ad, but this could easily be a real article - it's got a number of news articles about it, and it's played at many sporting event tailgates. It's also got other names, all of which have reliable sources, like hillbilly horseshoes [1], hillbilly golf [2], ladder ball, [3] etc. To me, it seems like a game that passes notability requirements. Can I just rewrite a new article with those refs and such, or should I go to deletion review? It doesn't quite seem to fit the deletion review guidelines. -- AW ( talk) 19:07, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
As an on again, off again Wikipedia article creator. I've come to notice that the majority of the articles I write tend to get the "non-notable artist" card without considering the fact that the article has very reliable links attached to them. In some cases, when an article which I created gets put up for deletion, I state my opinion in the discussion, and no one even replies back. I believe some administrators here need to actually "try" to look for sources (when the fact is there's sources linked on the article) themselves and post them onto the article. Sometimes I believe they are being deceptive toward the policies, which is the main reason why I rarely create anything here. Many individuals feel the same way as I. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.153.235.46 ( talk) 01:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I've restored a very longstanding principle to this policy: if in doubt, don't deletes.
Obviously this does not apply to biographies of living persons. If somebody is saying nasty things, kill it first and then argue about it. But most of the time, a stub article is acceptable. -- Jenny 23:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Hello Aaron. Excuse me but aren't you the same person who was told off for being a naughty boy here for removing the exact same words without consensus [4]?
It will be noted here now that, before I made the above comment, I had diligently searched the whole of the talk page and its archives, and have found no discussion in which it was agreed to remove this fundamental principal, which was recorded in the arbitration case that I have cited above
Obviously I could be wrong about all this and there might somewhere be a discussion wherein the community reached a decision by consensus to remove the fundamental expression of deletion policy from this page. In that case, let's see it, and we can go about our business. Or else let's see in what circumstances, and without a discussion, the policy was traduced. It makes a difference, you know. -- Jenny 00:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Since, as my edit verifies, this snippet has been in policy for an eon in Wikipedia-time, there really should be consensus to remove it, not add it. I am not connected to whatever conspiracy it was that got blocked over adding it, but I do think it's a generally good concept to keep in mind. Increasingly people say stuff along the lines of "confusing case? arguments either way? defaults to delete" but that is out of step with tradition. Just my opinion, trying to keep deletion policy balanced. -- Rividian ( talk) 00:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Then let's think the implications of this change through. Putting the clause here moves the burden of surety from the closer to each individual discussion participant. Under the current rule, I as a discussion participant should honestly believe that the project would be better off without a page in order to express a "delete" opinion. I only have to be 51% sure that the project will be improved by deletion to say that, though. Hopefully, I will express my reservations clearly in the comment and will have my facts in order so that the closer can weight my opinion appropriately but I can honestly express my opinion that I believe that the project would be at least slightly better off. If others are more sure than I that the page should be deleted, the closer can make the aggregate call that the page should go. The closer must determine only that the aggregate opinion of the community is no longer in reasonable doubt.
Under this new interpretation, I as an individual discussion participant must hold myself to a substantially higher standard before I can honestly express my opinion that I have no doubt that the project would be better off without a particular page. Not only must the closer have no doubt, each individual participant must have do doubt. If people applied this standard honestly, it could create a situation where every single person in the discussion is mostly sure that the page would be better off deleted yet the page would be kept. Is that truly your intent? Under the current rules, if 10 participants unanimously recommend "weak delete", the closer would properly interpret that as a clear consensus. Under this new interpretation, even though there was not a single "keep" opinion offered, the page could have to be kept.
(Yes, I know my example sounds a bit extreme and tests the margin of this interpretation. Obvious cases don't need rules like this in the first place. If the new rule doesn't work at the margin, it's not worth writing down.) Rossami (talk) 21:11, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I think Rossami has summed it up pretty well. "If in doubt, don't delete" is not a statement of Wikipedia's deletion policy, it's guidance to administrators in interpreting consensus and implementing that policy. As such, it is appropriately placed on Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators (where it has long been), and not appropriate on this page. -- Stormie ( talk) 01:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Digging further into the history, in the earliest version of this page accessible through the page history tab (earlier versions available through diff from it), at a time when the entire content of this page was addressed to those individuals with the password to the administrative account (i.e., when this page was what now is WP:DGFA) that phrase was here. The page split occurred in September 2003. [5] [6]. At that time, this phrase moved with all of the other administrative specific guidance to the page that is now WP:DGFA. It was immediately prior to the split the time the fourth bullet point in a section entitled "Guidelines for admins". (#3 on that list was "Use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of Wikipedia participants.") I am now 100% convinced that the version Tony attempted to insert was actually a change in policy, by moving wording from one context to another. I suggested above ways of wording this here that would be reasonable and not change policy - namely wording it as guidance to closing/backlog clearing administrators rather than as guidance to Wikipedians who are opining in an XfD. Those who are opining in an XfD should be making sound arguments in line with communal norms, but those norms definitely don't include "you must have no doubt to opine delete" - the actual norm is "make sure your opinion reveals and explains your best judgment about what to do, including any doubt that you may have." GRBerry 05:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
(this was prompted by my recent discussion with PhilKnight)
Sometimes, a decision in an AfD is made to "merge and redirect", but nobody actually carries out the "merge" part. Perhaps because the job is too intimidating for everybody involved in the discussion, and requires an expert on the subject. If such is the case, I propose that it be policy to add a notice on the talk page of the article which the page is to be merged into.
What currently ends up happening at times is that a page is, for all intents and purposed, removed from view, and the only person who ends up realizing this is someone curious enough to look through old deletion discussions or the histories of redirection pages (and I think there aren't very many such people). Esn ( talk) 19:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
There's already a template for this (notifying on a target talkpage the merge result of the deletion debate of the other article); can't think of what it's called right now. Skomorokh 16:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I have some concerns about the changes made by AMIB to this policy page and would like to see what others think.
"Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia" has been in there for ages and ages; I simply moved it to the bottom.
Being a neologism used to be its own reason for deletion, but now it's mostly because most neologisms fail WP:N. I merged the line about neologisms to the "Can't be verified in reliable sources" because of this gradual shift in practice. The line still links the neologism guideline, which helps clarify what a reliable source is in the context of sourcing an article about a neologism. Neologisms are pretty uncontroversial nowadays anyway.
I'm trying to wrap my head around a way to merge the rest of the "no reliable sources" lines without stepping on any of the notability controversies. Haven't done anything with it yet. - A Man In Bl♟ck ( conspire | past ops) 01:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
There is an article Luka Magnotta which was first cleaned up due to the multitude of unreferenced claims in the biography of a living person, and then the article was nominated for deletion, and then it was deleted due to the fact that he is a person of no notability, and now someone has re-created it with what appears to be a copy and paste of the original article. Does this have to go through the entire process of deletion again, or can the entire article be deleted straight up by an admin? 65.96.67.105 ( talk) 12:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I've proposed that user and user talk pages should not be eligible for PROD. See WT:PROD#Prodding user pages -- Ned Scott 06:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I feel that notability is too restrictive a guideline for deletions and too subjective.
I propose a more pragmatic criterion for deleting articles: Usefulness.
The encyclopedia is a tool. Each article should be judged by whether it provides a marginal enhancement to the usefulness of the encyclopedia to its users. Some articles may not be notable but they still provide useful information to many people. For example the article on github is not about something very notable but is definitely very useful to many people. The pragmatic criterion of usefulness is I think better than notability. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.229.186.246 ( talk) 23:11, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
As I was reading through the deletion policy, I didn't see info about deletion of article talk pages. When an article is deleted, is the talk page of that article also deleted (assuming there has been discussion on the talk page)? I can see that in some cases, you'd keep the talk page in the event that the article comes up again and is legitimately valid later as an article. However, I can also see that nonsense articles (e.g an article of Nvenaidifasveni) with discussion can have their talk pages deleted. 71.243.218.126 ( talk) 17:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. As a regular participant in AfD and frequent closer of debates, I often see discussions where an article on a topic of questionable notability that has a clear potential merge target whose notability is not in doubt. Some examples:
Typically, the articles are of poor quality, and the debate focuses on whether the outcome should be merge, redirect or keep. As is often the case in deletion discussions, the discussions can be very acrimonious and taken personally by participants. In light of this, I propose that we should start enforcing the directive on our current AfD page ( WP:BEFORE) to "[c]onsider making the page a useful redirect or proposing it be merged rather than deleted" before nominating for AfD, as "[n]either of these actions requires an AfD". Doing this would have two main positive effect:
The need for the first is widely called for by those of us despairing at the WP:BATTLEGROUND nature of AfD, and is reflected in the great tension and fighting over notability guidelines like WP:FICT, disruptive wars over "cruft" and several top-level mediation processes. The need for the second positive effect is what has motivated the introduction of WP:PROD and WP:CSD amongst other developments.
So, if this proposal is a good idea in principle, the next question is how it would be implemented. As it would be a not-insignificant change, I propose that it would be implemented conservatively, at least at first. An uninvolved administrator ( or non-admin?) should speedy close deletion debates which meet the following conditions:
The closing admin should then replace the Afd notice on the article with a {{ mergeto}}, tag the target article with {{ mergefrom}} and start a heading on the appropriate talkpage with a standard merge proposal heading and a short explanatory note linking to the closed Afd (this process could be easily automated). What does the community think? Skomorokh 16:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Update I forgot to cover how the merge discussion would play out; time limits are certainly important as Protonk noted. So how about these stipulations:
I wouldn't want this sort of thing to be used as a tool by inclusionists; and if nominators address why the AfD should not be speedied as a merge proposal, it should not be. Hope this clears up some of the problems with the proposal. Skomorokh 17:46, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Second update Protonk makes a good point about the problems of scope w.r.t. "merge targets". I think we can address this with a simple and intuitive marker:
This severely restricts the scope of the AfD's this proposal would pertain to. I'd also like to mention that this proposal is not for articles which are likely redirects; merges only. Skomorokh 18:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Protonk, thanks for your insights, very helpful. I've made two updates to the proposal to address some of your concerns if you'd like to respond to them here. Skomorokh 18:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)