Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Pros and cons of current system

Pros

• Articles are sometimes rewritten or merged into other articles and come out much better than they went in.
  • It is obvious from VFD pagesny nominated pages are edited (generally in a constructive way) while the process runs. Rough analysis of the overly large Category:Wikipedia cleanup (see here) indicates that articles in that category aren't generally cleaned up any time soon. Of course, the disfunctioning of the latter is not good, but the fact that VFD articles are frequently improved if savable, is good.
• All discussions are visible on one page, allowing editors to quickly identify and ignore articles for which a consensus has already been reached
  • This is obvious from the fact that no VFD participant votes on every nomination, or even on most of them. Most articles don't get a score of "me too" votes, and many people only vote if they have a useful comment to add.
• Most articles are deleted unanimously.
  • This is obvious to anyone who looks over recently closed VFD listings, "most" articles being about 80% of them.
• Consensus is often hammered out.
  • Again, it is obvious to anyone who looks over recently closed VFD listings, that about 90% of them end up with a consensus (which on VFD is defined as supermajority). The remainder ends up with no consensus, thus default to keep.

Alleged pros

These will be removed unless someone provides evidence that the current system is particularly good at promoting them

• The deletions are all listed chronologically in one place, giving editors the ability to view pages they may be interested in "saving".
  • For me, this is quite important. When I have time to look at Vfd I do not want to have to be flicking between pages. I do not have time to read all the articles, so it is likely I will skim the list and only look at ones which concern me or I might know something about. Re-categorising articles for deletion on different pages might help me, but I suspect it might end up just making the task worse if articles are listed on different pages and I end up looking at all of them. Sandpiper 20:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Articles are saved from deletion by editors who just haven't heard of the subject.
  • This is in fact the case; suspected vanity / band vanity articles are frequently listed in good faith by editors who haven't heard of the subject and are kept by those who have.
    • I disagree with this. I believe that the notability of a band or any other topic can be verified using Google by anyone, whether familiar with the subject or not. I am not too active on VfD, so I don't know if it is regularly done that way, but I think it should. — Timwi 19:12, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Yes, it can and should be verified by the nominating user. But the fact is, this sometimes doesn't happen, and the feature helps provide community review.Cpaliga 16:53, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
• Provides logic of process based on community consensus to justify deletions.

(The essential elements of these pros appear to be a) Time for discussion and b) People are made aware of the discussion, often resulting in article improvements. These should be retained in any reform.)

Cons

• VfD promotes factionalism and strife among editors. It encourages distinctions and epithets like "inclusionist" and "deletionist," and political-party-like organizations to push for the inclusion or exclusion of certain types of articles.
• Most articles are deleted unanimously, yet remain cluttering up the VfD pages for the full week. The VfD process re-hashes, badly, the same old debates about what we want to delete again and again, wasting everyone's time. Precedent and policy is never allowed to prevail.
  • I still do not see why delay is a problem. Is there a space problem, or is it for the convenience of one person who has proposed something for deletion and wants it gone rapidly? I do not see why a month's delay would hurt unless it was an issue of infringing national laws somehow. Why must deletion be accomplished within a short length of time? it only needs to be easy to operate. A slow process increases the chance that someone who knows about the subject will happen to see it and may spot an article worth rescuing. Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem is that leaving verifiably false articles up for significant time is bad, because it puts the Wikipedia name on information which isn't true. Many AfDs are complete lies made by people on a lark, which can only be made true by blanking them. Even blanked articles can contain lies when their titles are false. Huadpe (talk) 05:18, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
  • An important aspect of VfD is that it allows precedent to be overridden when editors think that an article has merit. Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • It is important for precedent to be overridable, or else one precedent would set the rules in stone, and the community would stick to it for too long without ever re-assessing its validity or currency. — Timwi 19:16, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
• It is too large to facilitate discussion between a wider variety of users - the current system cannot grow with Wikipedia, and as as result, there is usually a massive backlog of discussions waiting to be closed out.
• VfD is centralized, which is unwiki.
  • however inviting as many people as possible to take part in the debate is very wiki.Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The issue is not so much that it is centralised, as that it is taken away from the group of people concerned with a particular page and transferred to a group interested in 'tidying up' wiki. VfD should especially be the concern of people who have contributed to a page, perhaps those who have had occasion to refer to it. Sandpiper 08:43, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

• As with most Wikipedia voting processes, the votes of others are visible before the final decision is made, somewhat tainting the neutrality of the process. A process like this should capture the opinions of participants without influencing them. The Hokkaido Crow 16:40, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
  • This is one of the greatest strengths of the system. It allows people to make a special effort if they think a vote is going the wrong way. Or to skip voting and move on to the next candidate if they see it is going the way they want. It allows people to see the comments made by others and to be convinced by them. There is no process for people for and against an article to create a manifesto for each side before the vote starts. This all gets done during the votes. Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• Integrity of voting systems and discussion systems is suspect due to revision history model of auditing, and this is a disincentive to participation. Specifically, I mean that the integrity of discussion on Wikipedia depends on users watching the page to ensure that their votes haven't been changed, or other users examining the cartesian product of all votes on all versions to ensure integrity of each vote. This may be a disincentive to integrity checking and possibly to even participating at all. Why participate if it's an inordinate amount of work to ensure that your vote is counted accurately? This could be easily achieved through automation. The Hokkaido Crow 16:40, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• Present system is tyranny of the majority - whoever can get out the most votes wins.
  • Not necessarily. Articles are only deleted if there is a large majority to delete. Many articles are kept as "no consensus" even if they get more (and in some cases, many more) delete votes than keep votes.
  • What is the alternative? Surely it would mean a 'tyrany of the minority' where just a single person could arbitrarily delete something. Or are you suggesting an alternative where it would be very much harder to delete anything?. But I agree, I have noticed 'block voting', and it is a problem in a system where few people are likely to see an article before a 'block' has been able to zap it. Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

See also: m:Strengths and weaknesses of the current deletion system.

• • • A small number of people with a POV can work together to tag pages vfd, vote against them and at the same time repeatedly revert them, removing content including images, wikification and references so that the article is presented in the worst light possible. One such gang has recently worked together to gang delete almost 30 pages of cross linked articles on mensuration. They can then continue to work together to vote against undeletion making it impossible to protect Wikipedia from the destructive efforts of such vandals.
      • a proposed fix to this would be to count pages that are tagged in any way as reverts and limit the number of pages any one user can mark for deletion to 1 per day, 7 per month, and 12 per year.Rktect 15:07, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
        • This would render the work of those on RC patrol and CSD exceedingly difficult, unless it was deleting only reverted pages that that triggered a delete count (assuming such a thing is even technically feasible). Denni☯ 00:08, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
          • I agree with what Denni said. We have a large number of articles that go to VfD every day, so if we have several editors that are willing to take care of a lot of those, more power to them. --Idont Havaname 01:10, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
            • In the situation of a number of people working together, 1 VFD a day is likely to be more than ample for a block to nominate quite a raft of pages at once Sandpiper 07:34, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
              • How do you propose to solve the problem then?
                • If the goal is for the article to improve how about giving any article proposed for deletion a right to choose improvement over abortion.
                  • This is a great idea. Why discourage contribution? --noösfractal 06:13, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Alleged cons

• Constructed languages are a thorny subject, though Wikipedia:Conlangs is trying to figure out what to do about that.
  • This isn't specifically aimed at Wikipedia:Conlangs, but specific narrow subjects often end up being arbitrated based on guidelines written primarily by the people who are interested in that subject, resulting in "islands" of specialized information of interest only to the authors. The current VfD process encourages this, by empowering bloc voting.

• Sometimes (often?) too few people vote on an article.
  • This is not a problem as articles can be restored.
    • Trawling through the deletion logs to find such articles takes far too long: It should be possible to see that a deleted version of the article was present and the details of its history, at least.
    • If it is difficult to spot an article in VfD, it is doubly difficult to be aware that someone has organised a vote to undelete, and the presumption is to stay deleted. Undeletion is very hard.Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree. If you have time please follow up this link: Wikipedia:Lists_in_Wikipedia/Alternative_version#Literature_lists. <KF> 22:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
• The project-wide problem with sock puppets is particularly troublesome at VfD.
  • This is also the case with vandals and sockpuppets renominating articles for deletion, such as Gay Nigger Association of America, which has (as of August 2, 2005) been nominated for deletion 6 times.
  • This allegation is tricky to prove: sock puppets may be controlled through multiple IP addresses if someone has access to, e.g. multiple servers with port-forwarding facilities.
  • The allegaition could be partially disproved by sysops (I presume they have the access required) to produce a list of users who use the same IP address. This has not been done yet AFAIAA Mr. Jones 12:46, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I have seen this stated frequently. Aside from ther creation of new IDs, what is the evidence for it? It might be that previously unregistered editors are specially registering so as to vote on a subject to which they have contributedSandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• VfD voters tend to make confusing votes, such as "delete and redirect," "merge and delete," "keep and merge," that by their sheer diversity make it difficult for the closing admin to ascertain exactly what should be done.
  • The Guide to VFD already lists votes that are unworkable. Perhaps this should be made clearer to users to avoid confusion.
  • Entering a clear cut vote may not be appropriate. Editors may wish to enter a conditional vote, and use additional terms to express how strongly they feel about something. This gives the admin more information to decide a consensus. Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• Bad-faith VFDs often appear, and waste everyone's time.
  • These can just be ignored.
    • They still clutter up the VfD pages.
• Perhaps these could be declared as bad-faith and voting halted immediately.
  • By whom? Even admins argue over which nominations are bad-faith. Except in the most obvious cases, such VfDs cannot simply be halted based on one person's decision to close them. This is akin to a type of speedy deletion not currently allowed by WP:CSD.

• A successful VfD makes it difficult to create a new article in the future. An unsuccessful VfD can potentially make a bad article undeletable.
  • There is now a description of criteria for speedy deletion of previously deleted articles that are not substantially identical copies of the deleted versions.

• Hurts new editors with rough comments about articles.
  • Keeping histories of deleted articles would help other editors get a better feel for the actions of the creator of deleted article, and should facilitate greater sympathy and allow support to be given to users to better direct their efforts.

• Double standards are applied to which articles are "unnecessary" "unencyclopedic" etc.
  • Articles can be restored.
    • This is fiddly to do (see above)
  • Malicious and careless deletion of articles could be watched for and punished by unsysoping.

• The "keep" side automatically wins if a "no consensus" is determined. This is seen as unfair by some wanting to delete the article.
  • This is a "pro" of the system actually. Keeping an article is the safe option in the absence of a consensus, as reversing the decision later is easier.
    • The "pro" is assuming that every keep adds to improve the quality of Wikipeia. A single decision to keep generally results in the article being more or less immune to future VfD attempts. Precedents that should exclude an article are more likely to be ignored while precedents to keep are more or less always supported.
      • It should be hard to delete something, and harder still to try again if the first attempt fails. But new attempts will still be judged equally if someone has new reasoning. A pro.Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
        • Agreed. This is a pro. --noösfractal 06:24, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

• The VfD process has become a mind-numbing series of pure votes and proceduralism. The original purpose was to invite debate about poor articles and encourage improvement of them. Now improving articles is actively discouraged by some VfD users because it disrupts the votes because people look at different versions of the article. This is tail wagging the dog at its worst and must be stopped.
  • This is a matter of procedure. If this happens (discussion is discouraged) in a VfD debate, the decision or at least the vote of those stating that discussion must not happen should be rejected.
  • This may be so, but if the alternative is a system which deletes even more rapidly, then there will be less chance to improve an article.Sandpiper 20:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• VfD is so large that some users spend all their Wikipedia time on it, getting things deleted. They lose perspective on what it is the real goal of Wikipedia is - to create an encyclopedia.
  • This could happen with any system.

• TfD is especially wrongheaded, even more so than VfD. Templates are, in many cases, technical tools; the majority of TfD voters don't even know what these tools do or how they work; they clearly don't bother to read Template documentation before destroying what they don't understand. Most objections to templates nominated for deletion pertain to some use of the template -- observed, anticipated, or merely feared. This is like throwing out the screwdrivers because someone might stab somebody with one. There are silly templates created daily, but in this battle between witless creators and witless destroyers, building useful tools is a thankless chore.
  • Agreed. Also, I find the loss of the 'Lame' template to be particularly annoying. By the time I noticed it was up for deletion, it was gone. And in recent days, I've noticed the 'Lame' template has really been needed. =P Sometimes the templates perceived as 'Silly' do actually serve a valid purpose - in this case, by pointing out what people should NOT do on Wikipedia. Xaa 18:46, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• The mechanism for marking pages for votes for deletion is cumbersome, confusing (particularly to newcomers) and is prone to error. Several times I have attempted to place an article on vfd and failed (presumably some problem with cut-and-pasting {{subst:vfd2 | pg=PageName | text=Reason why the page should be deleted}} ) and some kind editor has patched up my mistake. Why can't the process be streamlined? One ought to be able to do it with a single edit, like one does for speedy delete. Best wishes, Robinh 19:48, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
  • This might be a Pro. It shouldn't be easy to nominate articles for deletion. Having a bit of a hurdle helps reduce the number of deletion nominations. Pburka 14:21, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
    • That's completely un-wiki thinking. We should be lowering the barrier as much as possible. Social cohesion, or at least mutually benficial co-operation and ostracisation, should prevent inappropriate action: persistent offenders should be chastised and eventually banned.
      • Absolutely agree that the mechanism is is too complicated even for some experienced users. (Maybe if I speedy someone will VfD fo me) hydnjo talk 17:49, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I absolutely agree - the process is way too complicated. It should be a single step process. After all, creating a page is a single step process too, and this would be just for the voting part and not actually delete an article. So the creators of nonsense pages still have an advantage. Groeck 19:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

• The VfD process discourages editors from improving articles that can be improved to encyclopedic standards.
  • Quoting BOTF from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/BotF: "The fact of the matter is, a VFD is detrimental to the article. Why would someone devote their time and effort to an article that begins with, “This article is being considered for deletion…”?" Almafeta 22:14, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
    • The template should be improved, and we should distinguish with different messages between articles that require improvement, but contain nonsense or copy-vio, those that are on nonsense topics and those that are not appropriate to the encylopedia. The first should say something like "A user or users have suggested that this article needs to be improved as in its present state it contains nothing of worth and should be deleted.", the second "this article is considered by a user or users to be on a topic that has no basis in fact", the third "this article is considered inappropriate for inclusion in the encylopedia becase..." and so on. Other boiler plates should be developed. The main point is that there should not be a single catch-all vfd message as it will invariably convey the wrong impression in some circumstances.
    • The BotF article was doomed regardless. On the other hand, Helena Carr was made into a proper article (by editors more proactive than myself, I regret to say) as a direct result of being listed on VfD.
  • I have seen a number of articles which were improved significantly as a result of the VfD vote. If anything, the VfD process shows if there is a real interest in the article or not. Above comment provides some good examples. Groeck 19:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
  • It takes surprisingly little effort to enhence an article to the point where vfd ends up in a keep. No need to bring it up to encyclopedic standards for a keep. Vfd is a motivation to enhence. Gtabary 19:09, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
• Many VfD votes on borderline articles appear to be more concerned with combatting a largely imagined threat of deletionism rather than actually judging the merit of keeping or deleting the article at hand. Votes also tend to be motivated with purely subjective argumentation ("it's useful", "the article has been around a long time", "This is a lovely article", "...out of respect of one's elders", etc.) with complete disregard to, for example, What Wikipedia is not or just general policy and is not limited to users with little or no experience. The goal to keep most VfDs seems in fact to have become an objective in of itself.

• The VfD process usually takes place before pages have blossomed to their full potential, perhaps a month of grace period for any article that has at least 10% keep vote should be given a grace period.
  • Correct. This is particularly problematic with regards to new articles, many of which start off as stubs.
  • This is a great idea. --noösfractal 06:24, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

• • • I've heard this claim before, and I'm going to dispute it. I doubt very much that most of these stubs "blossom to their full potential" anytime soon after they are left on Wikipedia's doorstep. I think most of them remain just as they arrived until something happens (like being brought to AfD) that gets them noticed by someone else. Often, being sent to AfD is the best thing that could happen to an article. On the other hand, a lot of articles that arrive at AfD are there for a very good reason, and you could leave them there for a year without significant improvement. The "10% keep vote" is problematic too. There are too many inclusionist who will vote to keep an article simply because it exists to use the 10% keep as a standard to determine whether or not an article actually has potential for growth. What a horrific backlog we would have if articles could hang around a month - we're already bursting at the seams with a five-day wait. Bottom line - what's the problem with getting rid of bad articles? If they're really worth space in Wikipedia, someone will come along later and write them again. If they're not, too bad, so sad. Denni☯ 01:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
      • If a bad article is not quickly improved after being put in AFD, it is likely to stay bad, and will be a bad seed for expansion, as most editors are insufifcently bold and/or creative to start fresh. It would be better to just delete the article and hope that someone else recreates it without a bad start to build on. --ssd 08:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

What's wrong with VfD and what to do about it

Some Thoughts

There is no one thing that we can do to fix VfD. I believe that VfD suffers a number of afflictions which must be addressed seperately:

1. In general, there is no agreement on what sort of things we want to delete and what sort of things we want to keep. Debate on general policy on deletion is frequently rehashed when borderline articles are placed on VfD.
2. Most mainstream Wikipedians who have been around a while are sufficiently fed up with VfD that they do not participate. As a result, most voters at VfD are either new, or are at the extremes of inclusionist or deletionist thinking.
3. There is a lack of appreciation overall for the fact that most things listed on VfD are borderline and it really doesn't matter much whether they are kept or not. Most, if kept, will be rarely visited and therefore not affect Wikipedia's reputation. Most, if deleted, were unlikely to become brilliant prose, and even with their absence, Wikipedia will remain the broadest collection of articles in the history of the written word.
4. The project-wide problem with sock puppets is particularly troublesome at VfD.
5. VfD voters tend to make confusing votes, such as "delete and redirect," "merge and delete," "keep and merge," that by their sheer diversity make it difficult for the closing admin to ascertain exactly what should be done.
6. There is a lack of discipline in seperating votes and discussion, making it difficult for the closing admin to identify the unique votes.

Rebuttal

I agree with some of the above, but I'll rebut two comments that I regard as particularly egregious misstatements. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 09:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

1. There is no widespread problem with sock puppets--and particularly not on VfD. Simple techniques are applied to decide which votes are by likely socks and these can be excluded at the administrator's discretion.
2. What is described as "lack of discipline in separating votes for discussion" is not a bad point at all. The key word is discussion. Consensus cannot be reached by straw poll. Separating votes from discussion would turn VfD into yet another divisive straw poll

I also agree with some of the above, but am surprised at the comment that Most mainstream Wikipedians who have been around a while are sufficiently fed up with VfD that they do not participate. As a result, most voters at VfD are either new, or are at the extremes of inclusionist or deletionist thinking. Most of the voters I see on VfD are, indeed, long term wikipedians, and one who are neither inclusionist or deletionist in general, but are willing to work out which articles are worth saving and which ones are not. VfD as it currently stands is an excellent way of sorting out which articles can be improved, and ensuring that those articles actually are improved. There is a small problem with sockpuppets on a very small minority or vfd votes, but to say that this is a major disadvantage of the current system is making a mountain out of a molehill. Grutness...wha? 11:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• Along these lines it should be noted that VFD performs its stated function extremely well. Few articles that should be deleted survive, and few that should survive are deleted. We shouldn't make changes that would substantially reduce the effectiveness of the system. Christopher Parham (talk) 14:27, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

Perhaps many VfD-watchers are long-term Wikipedians, but most long-term Wikipedians are not VfD-watchers. Presumably they have better things to do, like work on articles, but I suspect that many people (like me) avoid VfD because of the attitudes of the "regulars".

An inherent problem, then, is that it will be difficult to change VfD, because the regulars play a large part in the discussion, and (by self-selection) many of them don't see anything wrong with VfD.

RSpeer 20:17, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I'm a medium-term Wikipedian and an irregular participant in VfD, and I "avoid" it(when I do), because it seems to be working fine, and participate when I have something to say. I suppose I am a evidence against the idea that "most mainstream Wikipedians ... are sufficiently fed up with VfD." I'm not fed up with it, I think it works fine. JesseW 00:24, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

It may well be correct that most votes are uncontentious. The problem is that some are not. And more, that those which are obvious deletes to one person may be the ones which are contentious to others. So if it is to work at all, you are rather stuck with a load of votes on straightforward decisions. If you change the rules to make it easier to delete those, then you make it easier to delete anything. Sandpiper 07:54, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Problems of Growth

I read much of this stuff. What is wrong with VfD is that the number of articles on wiki is increasing and the number of people using wiki is increasing. The result is that the number of articles proposed for deletion is expanding to the point where it is impossible for any single person to even know what pages are up for deletion unless they spend all their time checking. Whatever the regulars say about people having the posibility of checking pages they are interested in, or reading VfD lists, the reality is that there is not enough time in anyones life to do this properly. Wiki contributors are supposed to be part time volunteers.

This has lead to increasing calls to 'speedy delete' just about anything, block voting of factions wishing to remove somthing they dislike before anyone notices, a breakdown of established wiki policies which were designed on the assumption that they would be interpreted 'sensibly' and always with the backup that there would be a vote on the specific case. Whatever the result here, VfD will become increasingly unrepresentative of wikipedians as a whole. Sandpiper 08:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

• I have not noticed any block voting on the deletionist side of Wiki. Quite the contrary - inclusionists have organized such things as Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch to ensure that no school article, regardless of how insignificant the school might be, ever needs to suffer the ignomy of deletion. It is this lack of sensibility, as you put it, is equally as hazardous to Wikipedia's good health as is unrestrained deletionism. Denni☯ 23:00, 2005 September 5 (UTC)
• The core problem with the deletion process is the concept of "noteworthiness". There is no possibility of ever reaching a consensus on what is or is not noteworthy. What is noteworthy to you may not be noteworthy to me and vice versa. The system could be both more manageable for admins and more democratic for contributors by simply dropping noteworthiness as a requirement. Once this is done, there could be a streamlined process requiring less discussion to quickly delete articles that have been submitted in bad faith, such as libels, nonsense, and misinformation. Biographical articles might require some specific criteria for inclusion to prevent overpopulation by kooks and teens. For example requiring that biographical entries must be supported by publication and media references. Arevich 21:01, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
  • These are precisely what constitute notability. Wikipedia is not a primary source; if something is notable to Wikipedia, it should be because it has been notable to someone else. There needs to be some accountability on the part of writers to show that person X or school Y has had the attention of medium Z. Failing to come to grips with criteria establishing notability, Wikipedia becomes an indiscriminate collector of string and tinfoil. Denni☯ 22:45, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

Suggestions

1. Perhaps what is needed is a total list of items to be marked for deletion and once a week or once a month all of them be listed and those that oppose deletion be given the opportunty to say so; as was pointed out here with so many articles going in it may be impossible to know which ones have been proposed and which ones have been decided not to be deleted, and someone might re-propose a deletion of a page which has already been defended. Paul Robinson 23:41, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
2. Perhaps rather than marking a page for deletion, it should be required to at least attempt a discussion on the appropriate talk page about what could be done to clean up the article and make it better. I had one experience where an article was marked for deletion, and in order for it to not be deleted I had to spend hours making it better because no one else would bother. I even asked several times, and while a couple tiny suggestions were made, but no one offered to help or just went and made the changes. It seems to me that things could be much more productive if, rather than marking a page for deletion as the first step, it was discussed a little before making the jump. --nihon 22:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

   One of the functions of AFD is to call attention to articles that should be either expanded or deleted. I agree a discussion is needed; that's why there is a one week waiting period. If you are not going to expand the article, why should we keep bad articles around for years waiting for nobody else to do it either? If you intend to expand it, but just not this week, I see nothing wrong with allowing it to be deleted, and then recreating an expanded version much later. If you manage to expand it this week, well, GREAT! Glad we could motivate you into volunteering your time, thanks! --ssd 08:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

What about those famous lists

For example. I found the article What Is There to Say?. This is an album and in the Category:Albums. I believe most articles in this category are anemic in information and are simply a list. A good example that I wouldn't consider simply a list and that I would vote to keep would be November's Chopin. So... Should we have a new policy for albums. A precedence exist for bootleg albums. (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Welcome to tha chuuch mixtape vol.1). If we are updating the pages for deletion policy or guidelines, I think it would be productive to

1. have a section we could easily move these list/album titles, (maybe even a wikipedia Music Discography section, like the wikispecies.) (It could have it's own set of rules not requiring, (in my mind) such an elaborate skeem of details and information on an album and hence many of the "list" type albums could be listed.
2. I think we could make it clear by adding precedences in the delete policy. --CylePat 01:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)