I have an article I wrote that is currently under consideration for deletion. I wrote an article about a writer I think has great merit and who was deserving of an accurate record of his accomplishments and recognitions in his field. But I admit, it's not a huge author or anyone known by the person on the street. But there are a lot of authors like that similarly recognized by Wiki articles.
I guess my worry is that I see that the first person to vote for its deletion isn't even a registered user, just a name added to the end of their terse note. And when I did a search for this person, the only reference I find for them is on the article of another author who is a known and vocal critic of the person I wrote about.
It just seems kind of transparent that with recent vandalism of my stub and now, after months since I wrote it, suddenly a request to delete from someone who isn't even willing to register and log-in with some integrity like other members of the community, that maybe Wiki should be more actively using the vandalism-blocks and other tools to ameliorate these issues prior to outright considering removal. We already have some pretty comprehensive policies about reversion, editing, expanding if you think an article is incomplete, warnings for contributors who are just adding nonsense, etc.
I really think a clearer definition of some of the more vague aspects of what is 'vanity' or deletion-worthy could help, and maybe not "jump the gun" straight towards deletion just because a small determined mob of internet jerks have decided they want to abuse the Wiki system for their own "fun." -- Zeppelin85
My greatest concern IS the five pillars of Wikipedia are slowly being changed to make it easier to delete by Vfd. This will allow "blocks of users" to delete and control.
-- Poorman
These will be removed unless someone provides evidence that this is actually a problem and occurs frequently enough that we should actually do something about it. This is the place for discussing broad issues, not for anyone's personal pet peeve.
Most mainstream Wikipedians who have been around a while are sufficiently fed up with VfD that they do not participate. That's not a reason, that's an assertion -- one for which I'd like to know how it was arrived at, short of demonstratable psychic powers. -- Calton | Talk 02:36, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
Most articles are deleted unanimously. - That's a comment about the quality of the articles generally submitted to VfD, not a comment on the quality of the process itself. Peek into VfD on any given day and this becomes self-evident. Fernando Rizo T/ C 02:38, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Most articles are deleted unanimously. I added yet remain cluttering up the VfD pages for the full week - I presume this is the problem? Besides, just because the vote was unanimous does not mean that it should be under WP:CSD. r3m0t talk 12:16, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
Also under the topic of Cons, I take issue with this: Hurts new editors with rough comments about articles. I'm sorry, but bullshit. The current process does not hurt new editors. Old editors with little patience, diplomacy, or courtesy hurt new editors. I cannot possibly imagine any community-based process that does not leave open an opportunity for crotchety, callous editors to brush off newbies. I am myself often impetuous and vituperative, but I make a particular effort to keep it in check when dealing with new users. (I hope my contribution history doesn't betray me here!) — HorsePunchKid→ 龜 05:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
My comments on the proposed cons. Because others may like to place counterarguments piece by piece, I've signed all my comments.
I'm going to continue moving proposals to userspaces and wikipedia namespace articles. If all the proposals that are springing up were discussed on this page., then we'd get buried by them. humble fool ® Deletion Reform 20:06, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
I've written up a short essay on my views of deletionism at User:Malathion/deletionism. Maybe it would be of some use to consider what I wrote there. -- malathion talk 20:09, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Is this about Wikipedia:Deletion policy? So it should be discussed there. Nabla 22:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that the single easiest way to fix VfD is to stop worrying about it quite so much. Its existence vexes the inclusionists (thus they deleted it), and they in turn vex the deletionists (who are presumably not vexed by VfD's existence). It is what it is: it serves a purpose that an encyclopedia must, imo, necessarily undertake. Rarely do the votes reach a wildly inappropriate decision — although they can be 'interpreted' by a creative admin — and a deleted article can be (and frequently is) recreated in no time. Indeed, deleted articles can be and frequently are restored by an admin with no harm done. If an editor doesn't like VfD, they can just get on with writing an encyclopedia (yes, we really are) and leave VfD to those it vexes less. - Splash 03:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
It was driving me a little nuts that the same debates were taking place between different people over different pages. Therefore I've had a bold stab at centralising this debate.
I know the page is now huge, but isn't better that we're all "reading from the same page"?
I didn't move anything from other pages - I only copied - but left pointers on the pages I copied from alerting people to this central debate.
I hope people understand why I did this, and I apologise to those who will not like it. Dan100 ( Talk) 10:21, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
I think VfD could be reduced by a substantial proportion if non-encyclopedic articles could be made ubto redirects when possible. The inane content would be out of WP and no admin would have to spend time deleting. Therefore I propose to remove the word merge from the VfD template, and add to the page: if you convert the article into a redirect, put a link to the previous content on its VfD page.
Ideally vapid articles would be made redirects instead of coming to VfD, but that's not being done, Septentrionalis 02:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
See my pre-emptive merge proposal. That an article listed on VfD can be merged with another and removed from VfD. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 16:20, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Not sure this has been mentioned, so I'll give my 2 cents.
While VFD is swamped with requests on a daily basis, Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion is rarely visited (or at least gets a lot less requests and is quite scalable. I'd say we could give admins a little more freedom in deleting pages. After a while, we'll notice what pages absolutely need to go through VFD to reach a conclusion (those would end up on VfU with a concencus to keep).
Of course, this isn't as simple as I make it out to be with this post, but I think we should pay more attention to taking load off VFD as has been tried in the recent CSD expansion. - Mgm| (talk) 16:00, August 6, 2005 (UTC)
I remade the page to look a little better (basically I put everything into subpages). Everybody fine with how I did it? Please improve it, especially the short summaries on each proposal if you aren't happy with them. Is it kosher? gkhan 17:00, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
I think you did a good job. NoSeptember 18:46, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I'm going to have to vote against any and all changes to the VfD process because with the way that the deletion reform page is organized, I can't make heads or tails out of any proposal. Can't have consensus sans comprehension. Almafeta 08:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
But why does a wiki need a deletion tool? Except for occasional pages that are illegal, imoral in some serious way etc, can't most of this be dealt with by page blanking? A brief look at the things that are being proposed for deletion leads me to think that most of them could be quickly blanked by regular users. Others could check it, and, if necessary, discuss it on the talk page. Am I missing something? Trollderella 23:55, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
1, 2 and 3. The process would be as transparent as editing is now, since the blanking could be reversed by anyone (I am thinking that the history would stay, just with a blank page). Page blanking is a possible type of vandalism now, and I don't think it would become much more common or difficult to detect. Disputes would take place on the discussion page as they do now, and 3 revert rules would apply as per any other deletion. Contentious issues could still be taken to vfd or some other process to get a ruling. 4. Users already pretty much have this ability, except that links don't change colour when you blank a page. Like any wiki action, it would be easily reversible. Perhaps a couple of extra steps to slow down the process of page blanking might detter massive use. 5. Libelous, illegal pages should be deleted using the regular tool. 6. Erm, no, you wouldn't... It's obviously not a total solution, but it seems to me that at least a substantial portion of the massive load on vfd could be dealt with in this way - do you disagree? Trollderella 16:21, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
I may be opening up a can of worms here, but I think since this article is here, it's worthwhile to see whether the community wants to tackle some of the issues raised by User:Tony Sidaway's recent RFC over VfD closures and how some votes are interpreted by admins (see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway). Tony, who is a self-defined inclusionist, seems to prefer to count votes of merge and delete and merge and redirect as keep. But to me, the vote is clearly saying "this article doesn't belong, but the information does -- somewhere else." (See comments here specifically: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway#Outside view by User:Texture). FWIW. · Katefan0 (scribble) 20:19, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Merge results are sometimes tricky. Sometimes it is a simple copy and paste job, then go back and make a redirect. Someimes, it needs a little bit of accurate editing to avoid the "seams" showing. Two examples:
Some VFD closers, the ones which take on 30 or more debates in one go, often don't perform any merges at all, but satisfy themselves with just slapping on merge tags when that is the result. The administrerial role of the VFD closer is after all to either delete the article, or to not delete the article. Any other things which the closer does is done as a regular editor. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:38, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Two points from a self-described deletionist:
The upshot of all this is that I agreed with every VfD that Tony Sidaway closed. There is just no other rational way to go about it that I can see. -- causa sui talk 14:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
It makes sense to me that articles that do not exist are null articles, as are blank ones. This is not the only way to address the problem, though. e.g. articles could be restored to another server by (automated) request for review to avoid cluttering up the namespace. This seems to solve nothing as the voting mechanism for deletion and restoration is kept in place. However, it removes the urgency of participating in discussions to save or ensure the removal of an article, objections can be spread over time and crucialy decisions are fairly easily reversible.
Due to the contentiousness that surrounds what is neutral and what is not (despite, and in the case of "original research", I would suggest because of, the guidelines), and the possiblity of rogue admins, it is important that one can review previous versions of articles by some means. This is obviated to some extent by the deletion log, though the fact it only covers relatively recent deletions is unfortunate. However, it would be much better if old versions could be reviewed.
It would be useful to be able to search the text of all revisions of deleted articles. I include all revisions, because it is possible to arrange for an article to be filled with junk, say "this article is junk" and speedily delete it before an objection can be raised.
This is particularly relevant in the sphere of politics, for instance, where proponents of a particular viewpoint may make somewhat subtle efforts, to promote a particular POV by selectively enforcing rules with respect to their selection of titles (as well as which source material can be used, what topics can be presented without direct citation, etc), for instance by claiming "not relevant enough" when something is ignored by well-known media organisations, and "original research" when the article has not yet developed to the level where citations are provided, and so on. I say this just to illustrate why one might be concerned about what is deleted. More charitably, one might simply believe people to be mistaken in their actions and wish to check them.
A possible exception is copyright violation. But here, specific revisions should be deleted, not the entire article. Nontheless, rogue admins are still a potential problem unless there is a non-time critical verification process. I believe that the terms of fair use would allow alleged CV versions to be provided for review. Further, IIRC, the point of removing CV material is to ensure that the wikipedia is covered by the GNUFDL, not for fear of imminent legal prosecution per se. (I'm not entirely confident about the points in this paragraph, so I'm interested in others' opinions).
So deleted articles, and thus the deletions themselves, should be reviewable as any other edit history is, and further their histories searchable.
Many of the items that show up for deletion are new articles, and many of them get nearly unanimous delete votes, but would not strictly fit the criteria for speedy deletion.
Furthermore, Vfd are used for two different kind of reasons, either: there should not be an article on the subject, or there should be an article on the subject, but this content is not salvagable
Therefore I would like to suggest a cleanup deletion option, which would apply to the latter case, for any article that seems to fit the ordinary reasons for deletion, where the speedy deletion criteria do not seem to apply.
And let Vfd be for making decisions when a controversy arises -- in other words, a cleanup deletion would be the default.
If someone objects to a deletion, other than the author of the article and/or any sockpuppets, then the article has to go to a full Vfd.
--- Step 1: Nominator for cleanup deletion, places a cleanup-delete tag, similar to a cleanup-rewrite, etc, but called cleanup-delete, with a message explaining the reason.
Step 2: [3 days pass]
Step 3: If the tag is still on the article, and the article was younger than 3 months when cleanup-delete was added, then any admin has the option of deleting the article (except the nominator, if the nominator is an admin).
Anyone who objects to a cleanup deletion other than the author of the article may replace the cleanup-delete tag with a vfd tag.
Cleanup-delete tags would not be allowed to be removed, except by a person nominating the article for Vfd.
In this manner, less time is wasted -- if noone objects to the
deletion, obvious deletes just happen, like they should.
It should be possible to categorize Vfd, too, if needed, but is there no way to stick with a simple solution to deletion that doesn't involve massive code changes or institution of pages and pages of new rules? -- Mysidia ( talk) 17:09, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
I have seen dozens of VfD votes where people vote to keep because they value the topic of the article, but they condition it with something like "if cleaned up". They don't plan to do the work themselves and so the article is kept but in an unacceptable form. We need a real "cleanup" vote and a "cleanup" outcome which says that the article will have 14 days to be cleaned up and then be subjected to VfD again. The second time, it's either voted up or down. – Shoaler ( talk) 14:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Someone must have thought of this before, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so... Why not give everyone some form of deletion/undeletion powers, effectively bringing deletion into line with everything else people can do to an article? Of course, it's not quite so simple, and I'm certainly not proposing that the current powers be given to everyone. What I propose is this:
Although at first glance it might seem that spurious deletions would be a problem, they really wouldn't be; they'd be no more of a problem than random blankings today, and just as easily fixed. The real impact of this change would be to eliminate all of the current methods attached to deletion, and instead channel them into the existing Wikipedia dispute resolution process. Yes, there would be deletion-wars and troublesome editors who make it difficult to reach consensus; but I would argue that Wikipedia has survived those problems with regard to everything else related to articles, and that the same dispute-resolution methods we use for any other dispute can be just as effectively applied to disputed deletions. Aquillion 22:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
This is essentially a more complicated version of the m:pure wiki deletion system (proposal), which I happen to think is a great idea. Your ideas are good. I'd suggest backing the PWDS proposal because it's been discussed longer and has more momentum. RSpeer 22:58, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
An issue where an article's editors and their friends gang up and vote vanity "keep" votes (often unexplained or laced wit hthreats or insults), and the resulting vote ends in "no consensus". See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (Mariah Carey song), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Do You Know Where You're Going To? (Theme from Mahogany) (Mariah Carey song), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Billie Frank. The AfD process is worthless if we've got little Mafias preventing the deletion of unneccssary articles, and moderators not working around such. -- FuriousFreddy 07:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
see discussion Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested_deletions#Uncontested_deletions_vs._Pure_wiki_deletions.
there... ∴ here… ♠ 08:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, there should be set criteria made for what qualifies an article to either be kept or deleted, and voting should be *ONLY* in cases where the article in question does not automatically either meet or not meet the criteria. I think that this would make things a lot easier. I believe that the process for determining qualification should be based on a legal process, in that examples of prior decisions made through voting can be used as precedents and hence be used to determine the changing in the rules.
My opinion for criteria should, essentially, be quite simple:
If an article meets any one of those criteria, then in my opinion it should automatically be kept, and should not be able to be deleted. Thus, I believe that articles on topics that have been proven to have met this criteria should be blocked from being able to be deleted.
Conversely, if the topic does not meet any of these criteria, then it should be automatically deleted.
The issue of "verifiability", "notoriety" and "original research" should not be a factor in the deletion process - the topic should be the only criteria, not how it is written. If an article is poorly written, or is factually inaccurate, then it should be improved - it should not be deleted.
In cases where there is some debate about an article's ability to either meet or not meet these criteria, then and only then should a Vfd take place (thus meaning that an awful lot less Vfds take place). However, if an article is proven to be of the same type as another article that has passed a Vfd (or failed) and a confirmed precedent is set, then I believe that the article should be automatically either kept or deleted, thus making this a legal process.
My case in point was an article that I wrote as part of a history of talkers, which was about an influential and important talker, planes of existence. The page was nominated for deletion after 30 seconds, with a note that it was a "non notable dead talker". Yet no assertions were made as to what qualifies it as being non notable. It easily meets WP:WEB per its Alexa rating alone, influenced society outside of its core user base (indeed, outside of talkers generally) in at least 4 major areas, and was both the most popular of its type as well as the first of its type. It is also of historical importance because it was a big part in the death of talkers, and why talker users moved to instant messenger programs like ICQ.
So per the criteria above, could it be used as part of a research project? Answer is yes.
Consider the question that a teacher might ask students. "We all know that instant messenger services are what people use today on the internet, and before that IRC. But 10 or 15 years ago people used talkers. Investigate what they were, how they came about, and how and why they ended". Answering that question, you could feasibly just say "ICQ came" and end it there. But if you want extra credit, you'd include the above article.
It also meets criteria 2, in that it is important with regards to the history of talkers, so a person who had an interest in talkers, or who used them, would learn something from it.
And of course if an author was going to write about the internet generally, or about say the security of using the internet, they would probably want to include talkers, which are the most secure method yet invented for chatting on the internet (no chance of hacking, you were totally anonymous, etc).
And then of course there is a precedent set, with the voting for the Star Wars MUSH which passed, on a similar kind of article.
So if we used simple rules like that, then Vfds would not be required. As it stands, the Vfd for that article has focussed around assertions about whether or not the references are able to be used, whether they were personal homepages and so forth, but really that is not relevant to a vote for whether or not to delete it - arguments like that are relevant with regards to cleaning up the article. Thus the article should have had a cleanup tag added to it rather than a Vfd.
The problem is that a lot of people who vote do not know what they are doing. Some of them are deletionists who just like to delete things as some sort of exclusiveness uppity manner. Some of them will do things like check new articles created and randomly delete them if they don't automatically agree with them - just seconds after creation, as was the case here. Some of them will start reeling off wikipedia rules, without any kind of verification that they actually apply. So they will write down - "doesn't meet WP:WEB" yet refuse to say why not, and then influence other votes.
The voting thus becomes a matter of who can argue the best and who can manipulate voters the best. It should not come down to this. It should not be a matter of us all being required to spend a long time looking at the article and researching everything before voting. Nor should it be a matter of us writing so quickly.
If we had a simple case of law, whereby rules could be directly applied, then things would be a lot simpler. We could still argue things if we liked, but then it would take a lot of the pressure off and we wouldn't have to worry about spending so much time voting. Zordrac 19:17, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I received a talk message today from someone accusing me of vandalism, because I had edited the votes on 3 articles, where users had written "Do Not Delete" and were being incorrectly counted as "Delete" by administrators. I changed their text from "Do Not Delete" to "Keep". Now, "Do Not Delete" and "Keep" are exactly the same thing, yes? I do not see how there is a problem with doing so. I was disambiguating things to avoid confusion.
Many times closing administrators have incorrectly counted votes because of this. There is one case recently where a vote was closed as "delete by consensus" when in fact it was 1 keep, 1 delete - but the 1 keep was written as "Do not delete".
A lot of people make poorly worded votes and it can be confusing at times. We should encourage people to be clear, and write "Keep" or "Delete". However, just because they write a confusing entry, we should not ignore it. "Do not Delete" and "Delete" are NOT the same thing. Nor is "Do Not Delete" a "comment" vote - it is entirely different.
I would also like to say that I do not for a moment believe that this counts as vandalism on my part, as I was accused of. For one thing I commented to say what I was doing. It was done purely for the purpose of cleanup. I was not changing anyone's vote - I was making it clearer for people quickly skimming through it.
The alternative to doing this kind of thing is to either go around every admin who counts poorly and advise them of their errors, or to go through the laborious undeletion review every time that someone makes a blunder. Why not just help out our fellow people?
Why is helping someone seen as the equivalent of vandalism?
I would like to hear a bit of an official response on this.
By the way, the user who accused me of vandalism, User: Splash AFAIK is not an administrator on Wikipedia, yet seemed to be pretending to be one in making the threats/accusations towards me. Is there some way to confirm whether or not he is an administrator? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 00:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, now it is getting ridiculous. I just had User: Peyna put in a newbie tag [3], and User: RoySmith "revert" my comments [4]. Now, if it is said that we are not allowed to revert comments, then what the hell is Roy Smith doing there? This is just turning in to a circus. So why are you guys saying one thing then doing the opposite? Its nice to see that all admins stick together, but come on now, this is ridiculous. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 01:10, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't quite sure where I should post this, but I just wanted to voice my opinions on the whole "only users can create pages" thing that just got put into effect. I'm not entirely sure that's going to help too much, because although less bogus new pages might crop up, I think it'll be harder to catch them. For instance, I often scour through the edits made only by IP users when I look at "Recent Changes." Sorry I'm not articulating myself too well, I haven't slept in a day and I've got three finals tomorrow before driving 12 hours the next day. I hope you understand what I'm talking about. Adios JHMM13 ( T | C) 08:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I've been going over all of the AFDs that I've voted on to see how they go, and I've noticed the odd error made by the closer. Now, I've taken the liberty of writing to admins when they've made errors. Most admins have appreciated this. Once or twice I made an error in saying it was an error too. But then we get to the point of 2 admins, who I will mention by name here User:Splash and User:Johnleemk. Now, I am sure someone will say "No no! You are attacking admins! You should boil in oil!" but just listen for a moment before you jump up and down. These two closers have consistently got it wrong with closing. Now, I am not going to say outright that they don't know what they are doing or anything, because my point here is to look at the process, not at individual examples. I think that the process needs to be improved in order to deal with individual issues. There may well be quite a lot of other closers who are bungling along like these two.
Some really bad closing:
Those were the ones I picked up as really bad in the last few days.
Now, I asked Johnleemk on his talk page about why he was making these decisions, and he told me that "Consensus is 80% or more", yet Wikipedia:Consensus says quite clearly that it is 2/3 or more majority for AFDs (66%). But not only that, but he has admitted to doing them arbitrarily. Whilst he sees no problem with deleting something "by consensus" after a 6/5 vote in favour of delete, he thinks that getting "only" 10/4 in favour of keep isn't enough for a consensus.
So the question then is that if it is entirely up to the closer, then what is the point in commenting? Why not just say to people - hey you're an admin, with closing powers, so you can delete or keep whatever you like and whatever anybody else says doesn't matter. Why not say that?
Now, I know that most admins for the most part go by what people say, and follow the standard guidelines. However, clearly not all admins do. There seem to be at least a few admins who are going about just doing whatever they like, and are not just using "discretion" but making up their own rules to suit themselves.
This of course is associated with the argument about the difficulty of being able to be made an admin. Once you are an admin, you are an admin for life, for all intents and purposes. It is next to impossible to ever go down, as it has to go through ArbCom and then you have all of your friends to help you out to make a very biased decision in your favour. I'm not going to go over specific examples of this for obvious reasons.
And as for deletion review, it quite simply doesn't work. I put up 2 terrible deletion decisions up for deletion review, and they were steamrolled by the self same people who steamrolled the original deletion - but on top of that, because I had tried to get the process right, I got attacked by people, who then decided that they had a god-given right to attack me because I dared to question their decisions.
So this kind of thing is highlighting a major problem in the process. In my beliefs, a closer's job should be automatic. Count up the votes, dismiss repetitions, and then occasionally use discretion. The discretion should be occasional, only in exceptional circumstances. The discretion shouldn't be just every single time where you do whatever you personally feel, as if your vote is the only one that counts, and you can disregard the rules.
And closing AFDs after 1 vote? What's with that? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 11:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
It has been noted that you believe that you are beyond reproach. I will not bother to try to help you ever again in the future. I think that it highlights the problem with this kind of belief, however, because certain personalities will believe that they are perfect. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 23:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
See my note at the top. LOL. This is just so stupid. It is not the first time that I have raised valid issues and instead of answering them, it has turned in to an excuse for personal attacks and abuse against me for daring to raise the issues. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 00:46, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I am a new user to Wikipedia, and I wished to voice concern that having started work on a few inserts, the first thing I find is "Deletion". Now if I knew how to complain, I wouldn't be writing here!
I don't believe it serves Wikipedia for new users to receive notices of deletion without as the very first feedback from Wikipedia - I at least expected an email to say hi - and if someone didn't like a post - perhaps they would do the courtesy of contacting me to say! In particular I felt it was wrong not to:
1. Any reason given for deletion (or at least difficult for new users to find)
2. Advise actionable help - just saying "improve" isn't helpful if you don't know how you have infringed someone's idea of what is "right" - much better to point to another insert and suggest using that as a template!
3. Give any contact details to contact those who have made the request for deletion
Remember You may think it is rubbish - but the author has spent time and effort to try and put together something they think others may be interested to read. Rubbishing an article by simply pressing "delete" is bound to be detrimental to Wikipedia in the end
(unsigned comment left by User:Haseler on Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Uncontested deletions, 11:30, December 10, 2005)
It has been pointed out to me many times that Wikipedia is not a democracy. Obviously, this is true. Otherwise, how could we have cases where a vote for AFD had 6 votes for keep and 6 votes for delete, yet it was "deleted by consensus" after the closer disregarded all of the keep votes?
The reality is that policies regarding voting, whether it be for RFA, AFD or anything else, are just that - policies. In the end, the rules can be totally ignored, and the admin in charge can do with it whatever the hell they want to. And, in response, the only people who can do anything about it are other admins.
When we are "voting" at the AFD, we are not really "voting". What we are doing is to try to convince other voters to change their mind. Indeed, this encourages bullying, harassment and a lot of personal attacks. And then, ultimately, what we are really doing is trying to convince the closing admin to agree with us.
So ultimately what is really happening is that all of the votes are meaningless other than to try to sway the closing admin. So perhaps, rather than trying to convince each other to change our votes, opinions instead should be directed towards the closing admin.
To make this fair, of course, we would have to have a closing admin assigned from the very moment that the AFD began. This could be achieved by having a "nomination for deletion" be unofficial until an admin opted to take it on, to be the closing admin. Then, if the closing admin disappeared for some reason, then they could be replaced by a new admin. Their name could appear at the top of the AFD - for example "Closing admin for this AFD is User:Splash." That would then prevent the chance that one admin with a totally different POV could come in halfway through and change the result.
This option would be totally fair and transparent, and represent a Wikified example of the heirarchical business model. Rather than pretend that we are a democracy, as Wikipedia seems intend on pretending to be, we would instead make it much more transparent, and fair.
The alternative to this, however, is to apply strict guidelines of the type put in Wikipedia:Consensus with only minor discretionary powers that were strictly enforced. But as it stands, it is clear that the discretionary powers are having more weight than the strict guidelines, with no repercussions for admins who go against the set rules, hence meaning that it isn't working. Therefore, this is why I suggest this more transparent model (the whole point of my earlier post). Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 05:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I've collected what I could find on the history of wiki deletion process at meta:History of wiki deletion process dating back through c2, usemod, pre mediawiki, etc.. comments and expansion much appreciated. ∴ here… ♠ 08:44, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
I propose that Communities get formed such that only people from those communities can Vote on pages for deletion. It may still be open to anyone to propose deletions, but if there is a Yu-gi-oh! community, a Magic the Gathering community, a Star Trek Community, a Star Wars community, etc. so there doesn't appear to be a consensus that originate from, for example, those who hate Trading card games and those who hate Yu-gi-oh! and those who think MtG is the One True Trading card game. for deleting articles in a given category. This could also be fashione in a manner so as to prevent admins that normally make good admin decisions, but have a pet peeve to scratch from abusing their power. Hackwrench 20:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that nominations made in the last couple hours of a day (UTC) tend to get fewer votes than those made earlier in the day because they're not listed on the "today" list (which gets a lot more browsers than the yesterday list) for very long. So I propose (if it would be technically feasible) that the nominations from say the last three hours of the previous day be listed in a section of the "today" list (though not in the archives). I think if this could be done without too much difficulty, it would reduce the need for nominations to be re-listed several days later. In the mean time, I think it would also be a good idea for the "today" list to have a prominent link to the yesterday list with a note suggesting that people browse through that list too. Blackcats 01:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I realize that this debate has been going on for a while and I am new to it. It is my belief that there is some gathering of consensus around Wikipedia:Proposed deletion as a way to go -- even if details are still being worked out. I was surprised to discover a page the other day that had been XDed, and when I looked at the proposed experiment it seems to be 6 months old but is still being used by only a handful of people. What is the status of this experiment from the point of view of the community, and should people be continuing to use it without consensus? (What is the definition of an experiment anyway, is there anything official on that? Blanking pages is not allowed, after all, except according to policy, which this experiment is not.) cmh 16:36, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I still use XD, for the reasons explained at User:Friday/XD. I see no reason to stop using it, but I'm always open to new ideas. Friday (talk) 18:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I have an article I wrote that is currently under consideration for deletion. I wrote an article about a writer I think has great merit and who was deserving of an accurate record of his accomplishments and recognitions in his field. But I admit, it's not a huge author or anyone known by the person on the street. But there are a lot of authors like that similarly recognized by Wiki articles.
I guess my worry is that I see that the first person to vote for its deletion isn't even a registered user, just a name added to the end of their terse note. And when I did a search for this person, the only reference I find for them is on the article of another author who is a known and vocal critic of the person I wrote about.
It just seems kind of transparent that with recent vandalism of my stub and now, after months since I wrote it, suddenly a request to delete from someone who isn't even willing to register and log-in with some integrity like other members of the community, that maybe Wiki should be more actively using the vandalism-blocks and other tools to ameliorate these issues prior to outright considering removal. We already have some pretty comprehensive policies about reversion, editing, expanding if you think an article is incomplete, warnings for contributors who are just adding nonsense, etc.
I really think a clearer definition of some of the more vague aspects of what is 'vanity' or deletion-worthy could help, and maybe not "jump the gun" straight towards deletion just because a small determined mob of internet jerks have decided they want to abuse the Wiki system for their own "fun." -- Zeppelin85
My greatest concern IS the five pillars of Wikipedia are slowly being changed to make it easier to delete by Vfd. This will allow "blocks of users" to delete and control.
-- Poorman
These will be removed unless someone provides evidence that this is actually a problem and occurs frequently enough that we should actually do something about it. This is the place for discussing broad issues, not for anyone's personal pet peeve.
Most mainstream Wikipedians who have been around a while are sufficiently fed up with VfD that they do not participate. That's not a reason, that's an assertion -- one for which I'd like to know how it was arrived at, short of demonstratable psychic powers. -- Calton | Talk 02:36, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
Most articles are deleted unanimously. - That's a comment about the quality of the articles generally submitted to VfD, not a comment on the quality of the process itself. Peek into VfD on any given day and this becomes self-evident. Fernando Rizo T/ C 02:38, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Most articles are deleted unanimously. I added yet remain cluttering up the VfD pages for the full week - I presume this is the problem? Besides, just because the vote was unanimous does not mean that it should be under WP:CSD. r3m0t talk 12:16, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
Also under the topic of Cons, I take issue with this: Hurts new editors with rough comments about articles. I'm sorry, but bullshit. The current process does not hurt new editors. Old editors with little patience, diplomacy, or courtesy hurt new editors. I cannot possibly imagine any community-based process that does not leave open an opportunity for crotchety, callous editors to brush off newbies. I am myself often impetuous and vituperative, but I make a particular effort to keep it in check when dealing with new users. (I hope my contribution history doesn't betray me here!) — HorsePunchKid→ 龜 05:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
My comments on the proposed cons. Because others may like to place counterarguments piece by piece, I've signed all my comments.
I'm going to continue moving proposals to userspaces and wikipedia namespace articles. If all the proposals that are springing up were discussed on this page., then we'd get buried by them. humble fool ® Deletion Reform 20:06, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
I've written up a short essay on my views of deletionism at User:Malathion/deletionism. Maybe it would be of some use to consider what I wrote there. -- malathion talk 20:09, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Is this about Wikipedia:Deletion policy? So it should be discussed there. Nabla 22:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that the single easiest way to fix VfD is to stop worrying about it quite so much. Its existence vexes the inclusionists (thus they deleted it), and they in turn vex the deletionists (who are presumably not vexed by VfD's existence). It is what it is: it serves a purpose that an encyclopedia must, imo, necessarily undertake. Rarely do the votes reach a wildly inappropriate decision — although they can be 'interpreted' by a creative admin — and a deleted article can be (and frequently is) recreated in no time. Indeed, deleted articles can be and frequently are restored by an admin with no harm done. If an editor doesn't like VfD, they can just get on with writing an encyclopedia (yes, we really are) and leave VfD to those it vexes less. - Splash 03:01, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
It was driving me a little nuts that the same debates were taking place between different people over different pages. Therefore I've had a bold stab at centralising this debate.
I know the page is now huge, but isn't better that we're all "reading from the same page"?
I didn't move anything from other pages - I only copied - but left pointers on the pages I copied from alerting people to this central debate.
I hope people understand why I did this, and I apologise to those who will not like it. Dan100 ( Talk) 10:21, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
I think VfD could be reduced by a substantial proportion if non-encyclopedic articles could be made ubto redirects when possible. The inane content would be out of WP and no admin would have to spend time deleting. Therefore I propose to remove the word merge from the VfD template, and add to the page: if you convert the article into a redirect, put a link to the previous content on its VfD page.
Ideally vapid articles would be made redirects instead of coming to VfD, but that's not being done, Septentrionalis 02:52, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
See my pre-emptive merge proposal. That an article listed on VfD can be merged with another and removed from VfD. -- Tony Sidaway Talk 16:20, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Not sure this has been mentioned, so I'll give my 2 cents.
While VFD is swamped with requests on a daily basis, Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion is rarely visited (or at least gets a lot less requests and is quite scalable. I'd say we could give admins a little more freedom in deleting pages. After a while, we'll notice what pages absolutely need to go through VFD to reach a conclusion (those would end up on VfU with a concencus to keep).
Of course, this isn't as simple as I make it out to be with this post, but I think we should pay more attention to taking load off VFD as has been tried in the recent CSD expansion. - Mgm| (talk) 16:00, August 6, 2005 (UTC)
I remade the page to look a little better (basically I put everything into subpages). Everybody fine with how I did it? Please improve it, especially the short summaries on each proposal if you aren't happy with them. Is it kosher? gkhan 17:00, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
I think you did a good job. NoSeptember 18:46, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I'm going to have to vote against any and all changes to the VfD process because with the way that the deletion reform page is organized, I can't make heads or tails out of any proposal. Can't have consensus sans comprehension. Almafeta 08:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
But why does a wiki need a deletion tool? Except for occasional pages that are illegal, imoral in some serious way etc, can't most of this be dealt with by page blanking? A brief look at the things that are being proposed for deletion leads me to think that most of them could be quickly blanked by regular users. Others could check it, and, if necessary, discuss it on the talk page. Am I missing something? Trollderella 23:55, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
1, 2 and 3. The process would be as transparent as editing is now, since the blanking could be reversed by anyone (I am thinking that the history would stay, just with a blank page). Page blanking is a possible type of vandalism now, and I don't think it would become much more common or difficult to detect. Disputes would take place on the discussion page as they do now, and 3 revert rules would apply as per any other deletion. Contentious issues could still be taken to vfd or some other process to get a ruling. 4. Users already pretty much have this ability, except that links don't change colour when you blank a page. Like any wiki action, it would be easily reversible. Perhaps a couple of extra steps to slow down the process of page blanking might detter massive use. 5. Libelous, illegal pages should be deleted using the regular tool. 6. Erm, no, you wouldn't... It's obviously not a total solution, but it seems to me that at least a substantial portion of the massive load on vfd could be dealt with in this way - do you disagree? Trollderella 16:21, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
I may be opening up a can of worms here, but I think since this article is here, it's worthwhile to see whether the community wants to tackle some of the issues raised by User:Tony Sidaway's recent RFC over VfD closures and how some votes are interpreted by admins (see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway). Tony, who is a self-defined inclusionist, seems to prefer to count votes of merge and delete and merge and redirect as keep. But to me, the vote is clearly saying "this article doesn't belong, but the information does -- somewhere else." (See comments here specifically: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony Sidaway#Outside view by User:Texture). FWIW. · Katefan0 (scribble) 20:19, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Merge results are sometimes tricky. Sometimes it is a simple copy and paste job, then go back and make a redirect. Someimes, it needs a little bit of accurate editing to avoid the "seams" showing. Two examples:
Some VFD closers, the ones which take on 30 or more debates in one go, often don't perform any merges at all, but satisfy themselves with just slapping on merge tags when that is the result. The administrerial role of the VFD closer is after all to either delete the article, or to not delete the article. Any other things which the closer does is done as a regular editor. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:38, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
Two points from a self-described deletionist:
The upshot of all this is that I agreed with every VfD that Tony Sidaway closed. There is just no other rational way to go about it that I can see. -- causa sui talk 14:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
It makes sense to me that articles that do not exist are null articles, as are blank ones. This is not the only way to address the problem, though. e.g. articles could be restored to another server by (automated) request for review to avoid cluttering up the namespace. This seems to solve nothing as the voting mechanism for deletion and restoration is kept in place. However, it removes the urgency of participating in discussions to save or ensure the removal of an article, objections can be spread over time and crucialy decisions are fairly easily reversible.
Due to the contentiousness that surrounds what is neutral and what is not (despite, and in the case of "original research", I would suggest because of, the guidelines), and the possiblity of rogue admins, it is important that one can review previous versions of articles by some means. This is obviated to some extent by the deletion log, though the fact it only covers relatively recent deletions is unfortunate. However, it would be much better if old versions could be reviewed.
It would be useful to be able to search the text of all revisions of deleted articles. I include all revisions, because it is possible to arrange for an article to be filled with junk, say "this article is junk" and speedily delete it before an objection can be raised.
This is particularly relevant in the sphere of politics, for instance, where proponents of a particular viewpoint may make somewhat subtle efforts, to promote a particular POV by selectively enforcing rules with respect to their selection of titles (as well as which source material can be used, what topics can be presented without direct citation, etc), for instance by claiming "not relevant enough" when something is ignored by well-known media organisations, and "original research" when the article has not yet developed to the level where citations are provided, and so on. I say this just to illustrate why one might be concerned about what is deleted. More charitably, one might simply believe people to be mistaken in their actions and wish to check them.
A possible exception is copyright violation. But here, specific revisions should be deleted, not the entire article. Nontheless, rogue admins are still a potential problem unless there is a non-time critical verification process. I believe that the terms of fair use would allow alleged CV versions to be provided for review. Further, IIRC, the point of removing CV material is to ensure that the wikipedia is covered by the GNUFDL, not for fear of imminent legal prosecution per se. (I'm not entirely confident about the points in this paragraph, so I'm interested in others' opinions).
So deleted articles, and thus the deletions themselves, should be reviewable as any other edit history is, and further their histories searchable.
Many of the items that show up for deletion are new articles, and many of them get nearly unanimous delete votes, but would not strictly fit the criteria for speedy deletion.
Furthermore, Vfd are used for two different kind of reasons, either: there should not be an article on the subject, or there should be an article on the subject, but this content is not salvagable
Therefore I would like to suggest a cleanup deletion option, which would apply to the latter case, for any article that seems to fit the ordinary reasons for deletion, where the speedy deletion criteria do not seem to apply.
And let Vfd be for making decisions when a controversy arises -- in other words, a cleanup deletion would be the default.
If someone objects to a deletion, other than the author of the article and/or any sockpuppets, then the article has to go to a full Vfd.
--- Step 1: Nominator for cleanup deletion, places a cleanup-delete tag, similar to a cleanup-rewrite, etc, but called cleanup-delete, with a message explaining the reason.
Step 2: [3 days pass]
Step 3: If the tag is still on the article, and the article was younger than 3 months when cleanup-delete was added, then any admin has the option of deleting the article (except the nominator, if the nominator is an admin).
Anyone who objects to a cleanup deletion other than the author of the article may replace the cleanup-delete tag with a vfd tag.
Cleanup-delete tags would not be allowed to be removed, except by a person nominating the article for Vfd.
In this manner, less time is wasted -- if noone objects to the
deletion, obvious deletes just happen, like they should.
It should be possible to categorize Vfd, too, if needed, but is there no way to stick with a simple solution to deletion that doesn't involve massive code changes or institution of pages and pages of new rules? -- Mysidia ( talk) 17:09, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
I have seen dozens of VfD votes where people vote to keep because they value the topic of the article, but they condition it with something like "if cleaned up". They don't plan to do the work themselves and so the article is kept but in an unacceptable form. We need a real "cleanup" vote and a "cleanup" outcome which says that the article will have 14 days to be cleaned up and then be subjected to VfD again. The second time, it's either voted up or down. – Shoaler ( talk) 14:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Someone must have thought of this before, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so... Why not give everyone some form of deletion/undeletion powers, effectively bringing deletion into line with everything else people can do to an article? Of course, it's not quite so simple, and I'm certainly not proposing that the current powers be given to everyone. What I propose is this:
Although at first glance it might seem that spurious deletions would be a problem, they really wouldn't be; they'd be no more of a problem than random blankings today, and just as easily fixed. The real impact of this change would be to eliminate all of the current methods attached to deletion, and instead channel them into the existing Wikipedia dispute resolution process. Yes, there would be deletion-wars and troublesome editors who make it difficult to reach consensus; but I would argue that Wikipedia has survived those problems with regard to everything else related to articles, and that the same dispute-resolution methods we use for any other dispute can be just as effectively applied to disputed deletions. Aquillion 22:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
This is essentially a more complicated version of the m:pure wiki deletion system (proposal), which I happen to think is a great idea. Your ideas are good. I'd suggest backing the PWDS proposal because it's been discussed longer and has more momentum. RSpeer 22:58, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
An issue where an article's editors and their friends gang up and vote vanity "keep" votes (often unexplained or laced wit hthreats or insults), and the resulting vote ends in "no consensus". See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (Mariah Carey song), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Do You Know Where You're Going To? (Theme from Mahogany) (Mariah Carey song), and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Billie Frank. The AfD process is worthless if we've got little Mafias preventing the deletion of unneccssary articles, and moderators not working around such. -- FuriousFreddy 07:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
see discussion Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested_deletions#Uncontested_deletions_vs._Pure_wiki_deletions.
there... ∴ here… ♠ 08:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, there should be set criteria made for what qualifies an article to either be kept or deleted, and voting should be *ONLY* in cases where the article in question does not automatically either meet or not meet the criteria. I think that this would make things a lot easier. I believe that the process for determining qualification should be based on a legal process, in that examples of prior decisions made through voting can be used as precedents and hence be used to determine the changing in the rules.
My opinion for criteria should, essentially, be quite simple:
If an article meets any one of those criteria, then in my opinion it should automatically be kept, and should not be able to be deleted. Thus, I believe that articles on topics that have been proven to have met this criteria should be blocked from being able to be deleted.
Conversely, if the topic does not meet any of these criteria, then it should be automatically deleted.
The issue of "verifiability", "notoriety" and "original research" should not be a factor in the deletion process - the topic should be the only criteria, not how it is written. If an article is poorly written, or is factually inaccurate, then it should be improved - it should not be deleted.
In cases where there is some debate about an article's ability to either meet or not meet these criteria, then and only then should a Vfd take place (thus meaning that an awful lot less Vfds take place). However, if an article is proven to be of the same type as another article that has passed a Vfd (or failed) and a confirmed precedent is set, then I believe that the article should be automatically either kept or deleted, thus making this a legal process.
My case in point was an article that I wrote as part of a history of talkers, which was about an influential and important talker, planes of existence. The page was nominated for deletion after 30 seconds, with a note that it was a "non notable dead talker". Yet no assertions were made as to what qualifies it as being non notable. It easily meets WP:WEB per its Alexa rating alone, influenced society outside of its core user base (indeed, outside of talkers generally) in at least 4 major areas, and was both the most popular of its type as well as the first of its type. It is also of historical importance because it was a big part in the death of talkers, and why talker users moved to instant messenger programs like ICQ.
So per the criteria above, could it be used as part of a research project? Answer is yes.
Consider the question that a teacher might ask students. "We all know that instant messenger services are what people use today on the internet, and before that IRC. But 10 or 15 years ago people used talkers. Investigate what they were, how they came about, and how and why they ended". Answering that question, you could feasibly just say "ICQ came" and end it there. But if you want extra credit, you'd include the above article.
It also meets criteria 2, in that it is important with regards to the history of talkers, so a person who had an interest in talkers, or who used them, would learn something from it.
And of course if an author was going to write about the internet generally, or about say the security of using the internet, they would probably want to include talkers, which are the most secure method yet invented for chatting on the internet (no chance of hacking, you were totally anonymous, etc).
And then of course there is a precedent set, with the voting for the Star Wars MUSH which passed, on a similar kind of article.
So if we used simple rules like that, then Vfds would not be required. As it stands, the Vfd for that article has focussed around assertions about whether or not the references are able to be used, whether they were personal homepages and so forth, but really that is not relevant to a vote for whether or not to delete it - arguments like that are relevant with regards to cleaning up the article. Thus the article should have had a cleanup tag added to it rather than a Vfd.
The problem is that a lot of people who vote do not know what they are doing. Some of them are deletionists who just like to delete things as some sort of exclusiveness uppity manner. Some of them will do things like check new articles created and randomly delete them if they don't automatically agree with them - just seconds after creation, as was the case here. Some of them will start reeling off wikipedia rules, without any kind of verification that they actually apply. So they will write down - "doesn't meet WP:WEB" yet refuse to say why not, and then influence other votes.
The voting thus becomes a matter of who can argue the best and who can manipulate voters the best. It should not come down to this. It should not be a matter of us all being required to spend a long time looking at the article and researching everything before voting. Nor should it be a matter of us writing so quickly.
If we had a simple case of law, whereby rules could be directly applied, then things would be a lot simpler. We could still argue things if we liked, but then it would take a lot of the pressure off and we wouldn't have to worry about spending so much time voting. Zordrac 19:17, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I received a talk message today from someone accusing me of vandalism, because I had edited the votes on 3 articles, where users had written "Do Not Delete" and were being incorrectly counted as "Delete" by administrators. I changed their text from "Do Not Delete" to "Keep". Now, "Do Not Delete" and "Keep" are exactly the same thing, yes? I do not see how there is a problem with doing so. I was disambiguating things to avoid confusion.
Many times closing administrators have incorrectly counted votes because of this. There is one case recently where a vote was closed as "delete by consensus" when in fact it was 1 keep, 1 delete - but the 1 keep was written as "Do not delete".
A lot of people make poorly worded votes and it can be confusing at times. We should encourage people to be clear, and write "Keep" or "Delete". However, just because they write a confusing entry, we should not ignore it. "Do not Delete" and "Delete" are NOT the same thing. Nor is "Do Not Delete" a "comment" vote - it is entirely different.
I would also like to say that I do not for a moment believe that this counts as vandalism on my part, as I was accused of. For one thing I commented to say what I was doing. It was done purely for the purpose of cleanup. I was not changing anyone's vote - I was making it clearer for people quickly skimming through it.
The alternative to doing this kind of thing is to either go around every admin who counts poorly and advise them of their errors, or to go through the laborious undeletion review every time that someone makes a blunder. Why not just help out our fellow people?
Why is helping someone seen as the equivalent of vandalism?
I would like to hear a bit of an official response on this.
By the way, the user who accused me of vandalism, User: Splash AFAIK is not an administrator on Wikipedia, yet seemed to be pretending to be one in making the threats/accusations towards me. Is there some way to confirm whether or not he is an administrator? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 00:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, now it is getting ridiculous. I just had User: Peyna put in a newbie tag [3], and User: RoySmith "revert" my comments [4]. Now, if it is said that we are not allowed to revert comments, then what the hell is Roy Smith doing there? This is just turning in to a circus. So why are you guys saying one thing then doing the opposite? Its nice to see that all admins stick together, but come on now, this is ridiculous. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 01:10, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't quite sure where I should post this, but I just wanted to voice my opinions on the whole "only users can create pages" thing that just got put into effect. I'm not entirely sure that's going to help too much, because although less bogus new pages might crop up, I think it'll be harder to catch them. For instance, I often scour through the edits made only by IP users when I look at "Recent Changes." Sorry I'm not articulating myself too well, I haven't slept in a day and I've got three finals tomorrow before driving 12 hours the next day. I hope you understand what I'm talking about. Adios JHMM13 ( T | C) 08:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I've been going over all of the AFDs that I've voted on to see how they go, and I've noticed the odd error made by the closer. Now, I've taken the liberty of writing to admins when they've made errors. Most admins have appreciated this. Once or twice I made an error in saying it was an error too. But then we get to the point of 2 admins, who I will mention by name here User:Splash and User:Johnleemk. Now, I am sure someone will say "No no! You are attacking admins! You should boil in oil!" but just listen for a moment before you jump up and down. These two closers have consistently got it wrong with closing. Now, I am not going to say outright that they don't know what they are doing or anything, because my point here is to look at the process, not at individual examples. I think that the process needs to be improved in order to deal with individual issues. There may well be quite a lot of other closers who are bungling along like these two.
Some really bad closing:
Those were the ones I picked up as really bad in the last few days.
Now, I asked Johnleemk on his talk page about why he was making these decisions, and he told me that "Consensus is 80% or more", yet Wikipedia:Consensus says quite clearly that it is 2/3 or more majority for AFDs (66%). But not only that, but he has admitted to doing them arbitrarily. Whilst he sees no problem with deleting something "by consensus" after a 6/5 vote in favour of delete, he thinks that getting "only" 10/4 in favour of keep isn't enough for a consensus.
So the question then is that if it is entirely up to the closer, then what is the point in commenting? Why not just say to people - hey you're an admin, with closing powers, so you can delete or keep whatever you like and whatever anybody else says doesn't matter. Why not say that?
Now, I know that most admins for the most part go by what people say, and follow the standard guidelines. However, clearly not all admins do. There seem to be at least a few admins who are going about just doing whatever they like, and are not just using "discretion" but making up their own rules to suit themselves.
This of course is associated with the argument about the difficulty of being able to be made an admin. Once you are an admin, you are an admin for life, for all intents and purposes. It is next to impossible to ever go down, as it has to go through ArbCom and then you have all of your friends to help you out to make a very biased decision in your favour. I'm not going to go over specific examples of this for obvious reasons.
And as for deletion review, it quite simply doesn't work. I put up 2 terrible deletion decisions up for deletion review, and they were steamrolled by the self same people who steamrolled the original deletion - but on top of that, because I had tried to get the process right, I got attacked by people, who then decided that they had a god-given right to attack me because I dared to question their decisions.
So this kind of thing is highlighting a major problem in the process. In my beliefs, a closer's job should be automatic. Count up the votes, dismiss repetitions, and then occasionally use discretion. The discretion should be occasional, only in exceptional circumstances. The discretion shouldn't be just every single time where you do whatever you personally feel, as if your vote is the only one that counts, and you can disregard the rules.
And closing AFDs after 1 vote? What's with that? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 11:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
It has been noted that you believe that you are beyond reproach. I will not bother to try to help you ever again in the future. I think that it highlights the problem with this kind of belief, however, because certain personalities will believe that they are perfect. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 23:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
See my note at the top. LOL. This is just so stupid. It is not the first time that I have raised valid issues and instead of answering them, it has turned in to an excuse for personal attacks and abuse against me for daring to raise the issues. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 00:46, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I am a new user to Wikipedia, and I wished to voice concern that having started work on a few inserts, the first thing I find is "Deletion". Now if I knew how to complain, I wouldn't be writing here!
I don't believe it serves Wikipedia for new users to receive notices of deletion without as the very first feedback from Wikipedia - I at least expected an email to say hi - and if someone didn't like a post - perhaps they would do the courtesy of contacting me to say! In particular I felt it was wrong not to:
1. Any reason given for deletion (or at least difficult for new users to find)
2. Advise actionable help - just saying "improve" isn't helpful if you don't know how you have infringed someone's idea of what is "right" - much better to point to another insert and suggest using that as a template!
3. Give any contact details to contact those who have made the request for deletion
Remember You may think it is rubbish - but the author has spent time and effort to try and put together something they think others may be interested to read. Rubbishing an article by simply pressing "delete" is bound to be detrimental to Wikipedia in the end
(unsigned comment left by User:Haseler on Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Uncontested deletions, 11:30, December 10, 2005)
It has been pointed out to me many times that Wikipedia is not a democracy. Obviously, this is true. Otherwise, how could we have cases where a vote for AFD had 6 votes for keep and 6 votes for delete, yet it was "deleted by consensus" after the closer disregarded all of the keep votes?
The reality is that policies regarding voting, whether it be for RFA, AFD or anything else, are just that - policies. In the end, the rules can be totally ignored, and the admin in charge can do with it whatever the hell they want to. And, in response, the only people who can do anything about it are other admins.
When we are "voting" at the AFD, we are not really "voting". What we are doing is to try to convince other voters to change their mind. Indeed, this encourages bullying, harassment and a lot of personal attacks. And then, ultimately, what we are really doing is trying to convince the closing admin to agree with us.
So ultimately what is really happening is that all of the votes are meaningless other than to try to sway the closing admin. So perhaps, rather than trying to convince each other to change our votes, opinions instead should be directed towards the closing admin.
To make this fair, of course, we would have to have a closing admin assigned from the very moment that the AFD began. This could be achieved by having a "nomination for deletion" be unofficial until an admin opted to take it on, to be the closing admin. Then, if the closing admin disappeared for some reason, then they could be replaced by a new admin. Their name could appear at the top of the AFD - for example "Closing admin for this AFD is User:Splash." That would then prevent the chance that one admin with a totally different POV could come in halfway through and change the result.
This option would be totally fair and transparent, and represent a Wikified example of the heirarchical business model. Rather than pretend that we are a democracy, as Wikipedia seems intend on pretending to be, we would instead make it much more transparent, and fair.
The alternative to this, however, is to apply strict guidelines of the type put in Wikipedia:Consensus with only minor discretionary powers that were strictly enforced. But as it stands, it is clear that the discretionary powers are having more weight than the strict guidelines, with no repercussions for admins who go against the set rules, hence meaning that it isn't working. Therefore, this is why I suggest this more transparent model (the whole point of my earlier post). Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 05:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I've collected what I could find on the history of wiki deletion process at meta:History of wiki deletion process dating back through c2, usemod, pre mediawiki, etc.. comments and expansion much appreciated. ∴ here… ♠ 08:44, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
I propose that Communities get formed such that only people from those communities can Vote on pages for deletion. It may still be open to anyone to propose deletions, but if there is a Yu-gi-oh! community, a Magic the Gathering community, a Star Trek Community, a Star Wars community, etc. so there doesn't appear to be a consensus that originate from, for example, those who hate Trading card games and those who hate Yu-gi-oh! and those who think MtG is the One True Trading card game. for deleting articles in a given category. This could also be fashione in a manner so as to prevent admins that normally make good admin decisions, but have a pet peeve to scratch from abusing their power. Hackwrench 20:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed that nominations made in the last couple hours of a day (UTC) tend to get fewer votes than those made earlier in the day because they're not listed on the "today" list (which gets a lot more browsers than the yesterday list) for very long. So I propose (if it would be technically feasible) that the nominations from say the last three hours of the previous day be listed in a section of the "today" list (though not in the archives). I think if this could be done without too much difficulty, it would reduce the need for nominations to be re-listed several days later. In the mean time, I think it would also be a good idea for the "today" list to have a prominent link to the yesterday list with a note suggesting that people browse through that list too. Blackcats 01:05, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I realize that this debate has been going on for a while and I am new to it. It is my belief that there is some gathering of consensus around Wikipedia:Proposed deletion as a way to go -- even if details are still being worked out. I was surprised to discover a page the other day that had been XDed, and when I looked at the proposed experiment it seems to be 6 months old but is still being used by only a handful of people. What is the status of this experiment from the point of view of the community, and should people be continuing to use it without consensus? (What is the definition of an experiment anyway, is there anything official on that? Blanking pages is not allowed, after all, except according to policy, which this experiment is not.) cmh 16:36, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I still use XD, for the reasons explained at User:Friday/XD. I see no reason to stop using it, but I'm always open to new ideas. Friday (talk) 18:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)