Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron

Welcome to the talkpage of the Article Rescue Squadron. If you are looking for assistance to rescue an article please follow these instructions.

This page has been mentioned by a media organization. The mention is in: James Gleick (8 August 2008). "Wikipedians Leave Cyberspace, Meet in Egypt: In Alexandria, 650 Devotees Bemoan Vandals, Debate Rules; Deletionists vs. Inclusionists". Wall Street Journal. Nicholson Baker (20 March 2008). "The Charms of Wikipedia". New York Review of Books.

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 Main page Rescue list Content menus Article Rescue guide Newsletter Members Awards Talk page 

For articles listed for rescue consideration, see Article Rescue Squadron Rescue list

There are currently 427 articles tagged for deletion at Articles for deletion.

If you are looking for assistance to rescue an article please refer to tips to help rescue articles and ARS Guide to saving articles.

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Articles

Articles currently tagged for deletion

• Main page: Category: Articles for deletion

Articles currently proposed for deletion

• Main page: Category: Proposed deletion and Category: All articles proposed for deletion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Language Creation Society (2nd nomination) Notability. Alleged WP:COI. Acerbic discussion. Counting merger discussions, a previous deletion, etc., looks closer to a 4th nomination. Sourcing was poorly done. I've fixed references and links. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:35, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Biographies of living persons

• Wikipedia: Article Rescue Squadron - Biographies of living persons
• Article Rescue Squadron – BLP rescue volunteers

Articles with topics of unclear notability

• Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability – lists topics that are unclear regarding their notability.

Content

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Miscellany for deletion

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Article alerts

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Article alerts for ARS
The Article alerts for this page are no longer delivered, because this project does not employ a banner or category that the bot can use to find relevant articles.

Recognition of efforts

Barnstars project

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I'm not suggesting that every rescue should get a barnstar but it does seem like honoring those who have saved an article could use some recognition. I think the first step might be expanding the list of articles rescued, which, of course, means we figure a good way to track those. Then list them and possible evaluate if someone(s) greatly improved the article vs, the AfD discussion was generally for keeping. Along with the list would be our suggested guideline for issuing barnstars as well as the barnstar gallery. Banjeboi 22:49, 28 July 2008 (UTC) Rawr. I want MOAR barnstars! I think this is a good idea. I know User:Ecoleetage hands them out now and again for people who rescue his nominations from deletion (he's very open about being proven wrong when it means an article will be saved and improved), you should see if he wants to help. Protonk (talk) 00:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC) I'll look at clearing up the barnstar section above first then proceed from there. Banjeboi 00:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC) Well as often happens the timing was rather dismal, User:Ecoleetage just went on wikibreak due to RfA drama but, assuming he returns, (I hope), we can invite him in. I've set-up the barnstars on the mainpage and the current system of listing articles currently tagged seems the best way of tracking. In addition to the list of rescued articles there's at least two dozen awaiting to be added - all could get barnstarred. Banjeboi 06:55, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

PROPOSAL: Past successful deletion debates Sub article

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I was thinking of creating a sub article of this article which lists great AfD debates, as examples for future editors attempting to save articles. For example: Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Past successful deletion debates I have been trying to teach editors how to debate in Articles for Deletion. I realized that Articles for Deletion examples would be very helpful for new editors, but I think I need help. travb (talk) 12:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC) Ultimately, ARS is not about the debates. It's about the articles. The best rescues are those that makes the debate moot. Taemyr (talk) 14:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC) I feel uncomfortable going down that road. We should find ways to encourage editors to understand the threshold of notability and also how to reolve real concerns of article creep. For instance, many of the fictional item AfD'd would be fine in a list format rather than separate articles. While I don't tend to delete items I also am concerned that we are getting a lot of articles that aren't notable because we are advertising ARS in your tips talkpage postings. There are already some good resources along the lines of what you're asking about but before they go in guns blazing they should take a breath and consider if an article is indeed appropriate at this point. A cleaned article about a non-notable subject is still an article in trouble. Having stated all that it may not be a bad idea to start up a thread on what works/what doesn't and see if any ideas pop from that. -- Banjeboi 03:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Hi Benjiboi :) I started a general article: User:Inclusionist/Del. I am trying to teach new editors how to survive in an AfD discussion. RE: "Past successful deletion debates" I will do something unaffiliated with this project, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. Maybe I can solicit advice from editors to share some of their most incredible war stories. I already checked all of the AfDs involving WP:NALBUMS, WP:NSONGS, which is on User:Inclusionist/Del. But would like more specific success stories travb (talk) 01:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

New idea to recognize efforts

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Please see and help with User:A Nobody/Article Rescuers' Hall of Fame, which I have created in my userspace for now. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 05:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC) Good job, I think it should be a subsection in the list of Article Squadron members. Maybe instead (or also) have the list by article, not by person because Its about the articles, not the editors Often several Article Rescue Squadron editors Tag team to save an article, not just one editor. travb (talk) 00:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC) I agree with this. We had something similar to this at DYK, which later resulted in some very heated discussions. It'd be better to list them by articles, since otherwise it might look like attention seeking (which some people would not like that much). Chamal talk 04:28, 14 January 2009 (UTC) Here's the problem that I have with listing this by article, and not editor (and I write this as someone who has had next-to-zero involvement in AfD, so I'm not trying to get in the "Hall" myself): From a practical standpoint, listing by articles will likely yield a list of incredibly awkward length. I mean, what if the Football Hall of Fame listed all the "Great Plays", or even just the "Great Games"? Can you imagine how huge the number of "members" would be? And that's another thing: It just doesn't feel right. I mean, Halls of Fame have members. Doesn't it seem silly to have "Great Plays" in a Hall of Fame rather than players? Of course, they're related, (the greatest players make great plays more often than others) but we create Halls to honor people, not things. Unschool 03:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC) Comment. Personally I'm conflicted on this. Many many articles are rescued without our involvement, that is not true for DYK, which is a more vetted process with defined parameters. Some feel a merger, or perhaps anything that isn't a delete, is a form of a rescue but I'm not sure I agree with that. Also this list will be huge and I'm not sure that makes sense. Perhaps we could simply have a list, not call it "Hall of fame", and use it to note when someone has been recognized for rescue work. I'll point to DGG who has undoubtably been instrumental in many saves but usually doesn't get credited as they mainly present sound perspective in AfD. Perhaps ditch the Hall of fame and treat more NPOV as just a list of note. What it is used for can be sussed out after more discussion. -- Banjeboi 22:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Fifth formerly deleted article recreated and advanced to GA-Class

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With John W. Rogers, Jr. yesterday being promoted to Good Article, and counting Manny Harris, Nate Parker, Toni Preckwinkle and Tory Burch, I have created articles for five formerly deleted articles and taken them to WP:GA-class. I am making the announcement since I only have one rescue barnstar and there seem to be several different ones.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC) I have been told that some WP:ARS purists might be a bit taken aback by my claim. I should clarify my recovery involvment. I have successfully saved Thomas Wilcher at WP:AFD. I was unsuccessful with Toni Preckwinkle on its second AFD. However, I took both articles to WP:GA status. All of the other articles were deleted without my involvement mostly through CSD prior to my recreation and promotion to GA.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC) I don't know which barnstar would be appropriate, but very nice job. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC) Congratulations! That is wonderful. Three cheers for Fisher! You are an inspriation and a model for all wikipedians to follow. travb (talk) 22:02, 14 January 2009 (UTC) I created a new category Category:Deleted article recreated and advanced to Good Articles Class and template Template:Rescued for use on recreated good articles talk pages. I added this template to the five articles of TonyTheTiger, and I am going to solicit whether other editors know of any other articles which were deleted then reached good article status too. Ikip (talk) 09:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC) And I have removed it again from Nate Parker, since the deleted article was about a different person and was correctly deleted. The Tory Burch article which was deleted was pure spam, with the wonderful closing line "Information provided by Brandhabit.com", and so was also a perfectly correct deletion. Only one of the other deletions was after an actual AfD discussion, so really relevant here. Fram (talk) 11:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC) Also, Dragon kill points, which was previously deleted with much fanfare, is now a Good article. Protonk (talk) 02:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC) I am glad that you brought this up Protonk, I was about to mention this here. Ikip (talk) 12:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Example

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Tunnel Running was a logn ago (but very visible) rescue - see its AFD for how this evolved (if examples are needed). FT2 (Talk | email) 07:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Recognition of embattled users

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I have found in my work with new editors, that the majority of new editors are welcomed with warning templates and impersonally nasty messages, saying subtly, and not so subtly, that "your contributions are not welcome" In other words, veteran editors can be real &*&(^ to new users. What I love about this project is we are not only about saving articles, we are about, indirectly, retaining new users. I just created a new template/barnstar morph: User:Ikip/t which can be placed on new editors talk pages: ==Welcome== Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar Hello, Article Rescue Squadron, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like wikipedia and decide to stay. I am sorry that there are so many impersonal warning messages on your talk page. There are many editors who feel that your hard work here is important and valuable, especially me. Need help? If you are looking for help, you can just type: {{helpme}} ...and your question on this page, and someone will show up shortly to answer. Or, please visit New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! If you have any questions at all, please [message me]. Again, welcome! Ikip (talk) 11:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC) {{Subst:User:Ikip/t}} The template signs your name for you. It is part of: Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar message Ikip (talk) 11:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC) {{subst:Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar|message ~~~~}} Ikip (talk) 11:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Medals

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I started awarding Article Rescue Squadron medals to those people listed on Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron's Hall of Fame, the coding is here: {{ARS|ArticleTitle}} You don't have to add a name to this list to award someone or yourself this medal. Ikip (talk) 16:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC) (Inspired by User:Piotrus/Top which is hanging above his talk page). Ikip (talk) 00:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

ARS tools and possible tools discussion

AFD summaries

A dust-covered AfD tool that categorized open AfDs by a number of parameters; very useful for "ARS Search and rescue" possibilities
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Any chance of someone taking over these AFD summaries to get them working again? This may help us find those article in more of a need to rescue. -- Suntag ☼ 17:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC) Holy crap that actually has potential! I consider my weak point actually combing through AFDs to find ones that deserve rescuing but this may help exponentially! -- Banjeboi 00:41, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Candidates for Speed Deletion

CSD and rescue tag discussion; possible food for thought for "search and rescue" at CSD and Prods
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I have been watching the CAT:CSD portal and have found that about 25% of the articles there have either been marked incorrectly (which I guess an admin should catch) or just need a little work. On most of the articles that deal with a person, they are notable under WP:BIO but no one (including the db tagger) has taken the time to check for notability references. If you're interested in finding more articles to save (as if there needed to be more to go through) I'd suggest check it out. OlYellerTalktome 20:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC) I think you misunderstand the obligation of A7. If there's no assertion of notability, the article goes *pfft*. If there is an assertion of notability, then the speedy tag gets declined and the article sent to Prod or AfD. Whether or not an A7-tagged article is notable is irrelevant to the CSD-A7 process, because speedy does not evaluate anything outside the article itself. Does it claim notability? Speedy declined. Does it NOT claim notability? It's gone. Jclemens (talk) 21:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC) Problem is that some admins think it's different and delete under A7 what does not belong under A7. Checking CAT:CSD and removing overeager taggings is thus something helpful. See also Pedro's comments on WT:RFA on that matter[1]. Regards SoWhy 12:34, 6 March 2009 (UTC) OK, that makes sense. I was curious as to whether or not an admin checked for references. So when I find an article in CSD that's worth saving (has sources for the info but doesn't cite it) what should I do? Generally, I add links to the sources in the talk page or just add the citations myself and removed the db. I know that the {{rescue}} is specifically for articles in AfD but would it be wrong to use it on an article that's tagged for speedy deletion? Sometimes I don't have time to add the citations on articles or could just generally use some help. I feel like it wouldn't be wrong to use it on CSD articles but I don't want to go against what the description of the tag specifically says it's to be used for. OlYellerTalktome 05:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC) My own view on that is the time frame. An AfD lasts around five days... give or take... and a Rescue tag night be added at day one or day five. If a resuce is to be mounted, we have to move fast and hope a closing admin makes notes of post-nomination improvements. When something is tagged for speedy, any improvement must happen within hours, minutes, or sometimes even seconds... not days. Even with the few days offered by an AfD we can be quite swamped, as there are so few of us and so much to do. So please continue as you are. If you find something being speedied that you can improve enough to address the reasons for the tag so that the tag can be removed, please do so. Perhaps we will one day have an "Emergency Rescue Squad", made up of editors who live on Red Bull, whose only task is to attempt rescue of articles that have been speedied. I do not mean to sound flippant, as you asked a very valid question. Simply put, ARS works at AfD, not CSD. Thank you. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 09:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Where do I go to make an alert?

ARS and Prods.
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I do a lot of review of PRODs, and just recently came out of a 10 day snit (the typical steamrolling of over twenty grouped articles because of faulty logic on one. And no, they weren't my articles), where all I was doing was reviewing prods and CSD's, leaving notes as an IP user. But, I'm back reviewing. So, where do I go to alert others of articles that could use some work? I recently did some work on Leah Horowitz, declining the speedy, before turning that over to the Judaism wikiproject, and now have concerns about Gottfried Honegger. I found there is a of info one the subject, but most is not web acessible. I did find one book reference, and modified the article, but don't know the intent of the PROD'er (if they want it gone, they'll find a way), so i didn't de-PROD it yet. Anyway, let me know where to put article alerts as I find stuff that I can't fix myself or give to a WikiProject. Vulture19 (talk) 13:25, 25 March 2009 (UTC) 99% of articles have yet to reach GA/FA status and so are in need of work. This is too wide a scope for the ARS which has enough to do just looking at the ones in immediate threat of deletion. If there's an article which has promise and you can find a reference then you shouldn't hesitate to deprod it. In most cases, there is usually a better alternative to deletion per WP:BEFORE. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC) I think it will remain a case by case approach. Sometimes there are active appropriate Wikiprojects so alerting them is effective. Some of the same strategies you employ is what we do so your experience is quite familiar. Certainly if an article you work on then goes to AfD, like often happens with prodded articles, you should consider if adding the rescue tag makes sense. When we start to develop a guide for how to look for rescuable articles in the prods i hope you'd be willing to offer guidance. -- Banjeboi 14:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC) In general, I handle saves by attempting the edit myself. Dependent on time, I will at least put one solid ref in. After that, I try to get 1) the article creator, 2) an appropriate WikiProject, 3) ??? to help out. It appears that the ARS jumps in primarily when the article goes to AfD? That's cool. I generally try to get the article at the CSD or PROD stage. So, given that this group definitely has the AfD covered, I will continue to plug along the CSD and PROD route. If you see an article show up at AfD that was contested by me, make sure to check the discussion page for links. That should save you time, and it gives me assurance that, in the extreme case, the ARS will be my #3 if the article gets nominated. Vulture19 (talk) 15:16, 25 March 2009 (UTC) I too watch CSD for misplaced speedy tags and I also wish sometimes that I could add the rescue tag or mark the article in some way to show that it needs help soon. I started a discussion on it before (see here). Someone pointed out that we'd have to have editors who are essentially injecting Red Bull into their veins to keep up with the CSD Rescue tags. I think the best thing you can do is basically what you're already doing; put in a strong reference or arguement, tag the article with known issues, and talk about the issues on the discussion page. Otherwise, you can always hit me up for help. OlYellerTalktome 16:59, 25 March 2009 (UTC) Did you know that ANYONE who hasn't worked on the article can remove a speedy tag? There's nothing at all wrong with removing a speedy tag and replacing it with a PROD or AfD, to give you some time to work on it, if it's not a G10 (attack) or G12 (copyvio). ARS folks nominating things for AfD may seem counterintuitive, but it buys time. Jclemens (talk) 17:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC) (edit conflict)Actually you don't have to replace it with anything, as far as I know. If an article is tagged A7 (for example) yet contains an assertion of notability, it's perfectly legitimate for an editor to remove it. Ideally, the removing editor would then do some work to improve the article. pablohablo. 17:26, 25 March 2009 (UTC) Also, anyone who has a motivation and willingness to improve an article can add a {{hangon}} tag. If someone besides the article creator has tagged an article with a note on the talk page that says "Give me X hours--I think this can be sourced and am actively working on it." I really expect that most admins would honor that. Jclemens (talk) 17:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC) While I can only speak for myself, yes, I knew you could remove db tags. I usually do when I work on rescuing a CSD article (as well as a hangon). I don't add a prod because if I'm saving it, I believe it shouldn't be deleted and I don't put it into AfD because AfD isn't for cleanup (see WP:BEFORE). That's basically the issue that Vulture and I run in to. To get the help from ARS, we need an overzelous editor who places a CSD tag on an article that can be saved, then attempts to put it into AFD after we make a mvoe to save it. OlYellerTalktome 17:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC) In general, I will not remove copvio's or patent nonsense. But I regularly remove CSD's, though I will only do so if I add to the article. In one case, as an IP, I encouraged someone whose CSD I removed to send it to AfD (it's an inherited notability case, and I think the AfD discussion will help establish/reinforce precedence). Now, one of my pet peeves (shared by the kindred spirits here) is having an article tagged for the wrong reason. It irritates the hell out of me that editors who insist on factual accuracy in articles completely disregard it when it comes to deletion. And it is important, as if the article is deleted for the wrong reason (e.g. WP:HOAX (another misused rationale, I could go on and on...)), recreation can be exceedingly difficult. The CSD and PROD processes scare me for the simple reason that hard work can be wiped out by, and this is a worse case example, a flawed nomination and a tired admin. So, without increasing the burden on anyone else, as I get to know bailiwicks of people here, I can shoot a direct request (and by all means, if I can be of help, let me know). Vulture19 (talk) 18:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC) There are times when I will remove a speedy tag & substitute a prod: when the reason given is not one of the speedy criteria, but would be adequate for deletion otherwise & the article itself is uncontroversially deleteable. DGG (talk) 19:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

{{findsourcesnotice}}

Hi ARS. I created {{findsourcesnotice}} as a way editors can quickly tag non-ARS talk pages to suggest where those interested in the article may find reilable source material for the article. -- Suntag ☼ 21:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding the list of articles to be rescued to your talk page

{{ARS/Tagged}}
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User:Casliber had a brilliant idea: adding the list of articles which currently have the rescue tag to your talk page: Coding: {{ARS/Tagged}} This list is dynamic, and the list of articles will change as the rescue template is removed or added from articles. Ikip (talk) 14:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC) This crosses a line. I am unhappy with an automatic tool to canvass AFDs to anyone with a self-professed agenda at AFD, especially with no criteria other than someone not wanting the article deleted. When it's a project's cleanup tool in the project's space, that's one thing, but this is too much. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 23:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you know...

...that there are Brownie points for newly-expanded articles which are available at WP:DYK? I just tried this for the first time on an article that I expanded to save it from deletion. The process wasn't too bad - easier than nominating an article for AFD. By doing this, you can get some kudos for the hard work of adding references and text as well as the warm glow of saving an article from deletion. This seems a good twofer and we can share the credit if we work together on a rescue. Colonel Warden (talk) 01:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

ARS project development

Wikiads

See: Template:Wikipedia-adnavbox. Any creative editor willing to make a wiki-ad for Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron? I will ask the creators of the existing templates if the can create one.Ikip (talk) 18:36, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Newsletter

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Would anyone here be interested in starting a newsletter with me? The best example and most popular newsletter is: WP:POST. There are several examples: Category:WikiProject Films newsletters Category:WikiProject Cats newsletters Category:WikiProject Hawaii newsletters Category:WikiProject Biography newsletters Category:WikiProject India newsletters Category:WikiProject Led Zeppelin newsletters Category:WikiProject The Beatles newsletters Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter ...and several bots: Category:Newsletter delivery bots. Ikip (talk) 22:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC) I think a semi-annual one may be OK, lets coordinate this once we get a few other kinks worked out. I'd like to see a How-To rescue subpage be created and sort out a few of the present drama so if we get an influx of energy it is directed wisely. -- Banjeboi 23:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Mottos

Motto ideas, collapsing thread to be mined for when Wikiad effort ensues.
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Hey everyone, what do you think of this as a motto for our project? “ ...Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy... ” — Barack Obama, President of the United States of America TomCat4680 (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2009 (UTC) and equate some editors with terrorists? Jack Merridew 15:52, 17 April 2009 (UTC) If the shoe fits... Actually, I'm pretty sure most Wikipedia editors would identify some others as terrorists. The identity of said alleged terrorists might vary depending on the perspective of the editor in question, however. :-) Jclemens (talk) 16:59, 17 April 2009 (UTC) I like the motto, but being from a politician it is automatically partisan, so it may turn off republican editors. Ikip (talk) 19:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC) Wikipedia is not a battleground. Jack Merridew 02:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC) I never said it was a battleground nor did I say anything about biased politics or terrorists. I'm just saying its always better to build things than destroy them. Isn't that the whole reason this group exists? TomCat4680 (talk) 07:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC) To whom was Obama referring? Terrorists. And both of the other editors above are making snarky personal attacks. Is this project about rescuing articles from a process or from opponents? And why a motto at all? If I can offer one from the peanut gallery; “ To Divide and Conquer ” Jack Merridew 15:25, 18 April 2009 (UTC) Knock it off. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 10:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Stricken. Jack Merridew 12:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Good thought, TomCat, but the context and the political baggage are problematic. There's also the unfortunate equation of deletion to willful destruction, which is troubling. Personally, I favor making up a motto on the spot and attributing it to Oscar Wilde. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 10:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Okay is this one more neutral and less of an attack on deletionists?: “ Don't point a finger, lend a hand ” It may be simple and maybe sound like something from an elementary school classroom, but I think its applicable here too. TomCat4680 (talk) 11:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Better, but deleting something is also lending a hand in solving the problem, and the project page advises people who don't know enough about a subject to fix it to add more-specific cleanup tags or alert specialist editors. Pointing a finger can be good, lending a hand can be bad. (Plus the fact that most of the people who put things up for deletion aren't deletionists, any more than most of the people who comment to keep a given article are inclusionists. The vaaaaaaast majority of people do not have a general philosophy of inclusion at all, let alone one of either extreme. Be careful about labeling your opposition on a specific topic - keeping this or that article - as part of a cabal to oppose you in general.) Simple and direct are both good. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 11:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Here's a similar sentiment which comes from another great politician. His hobby was brick-laying, which is a nice analogue of our activity here - building a great work, one brick at a time. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC) To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day. — Winston S. Churchill I like that one. TomCat4680 (talk) 11:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC) The others are also inherently adversarial; not about the articles, their issues, or the possibility of their rescue. I'll try again: “ Some things can be fixed ” Jack Merridew 12:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC) I love TomCat4680's Churchill quote, I think that would be a great motto. Ikip (talk) 15:23, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Actually I didn't suggest that one, it was Colonel Warden's. TomCat4680 (talk) 15:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC) How is that motto relevant for here, and not antagonistic? ARS is about article deletion discussions, hardly thoughtless or a single day. And to build an encyclopedia, you may have to remove things which don't belong there. Deletion is a minor but essential part of building. Of course care must be taken that not too much is deleted, but that is not really what the motto suggests. Fram (talk) 10:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC) You know what I've been considering to be our motto? “ Don't count on us. ” The whole point of ARS is that it should not be necessary. --Kizor 21:56, 22 April 2009 (UTC) Lol! Luv it. -- Banjeboi 02:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC) Word, I like this one. OlYellerTalktome 04:36, 24 April 2009 (UTC) Comment: We could take the ones we like best and have a run off and use the top placers in some wikiads that serve them up randomly. -- Banjeboi 02:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC) Want to setup a runoff? I still have no idea how to propose things officially. OlYellerTalktome 04:36, 24 April 2009 (UTC) For stuff like this, there's no real official way of doing it nor any need for officialness. Do it however. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 04:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC) I wonder if we should start over and instead of a motto per se just solitic advert slogan suggestions since that's the only application we have potentially available. I would want to cast the net a bit to get more imput and it may make sense to wait til the RfC closes as theis could then be the main community discussion and would arguably be more inspiring. -- Banjeboi 13:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC) Here's my offering, modified from my userpage motto. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 01:26, 6 May 2009 (UTC) “ We'd rather fix the damn pipes than complain about having wet feet ”

WP:PRESERVE

Collapsed for navigation. This is excellent material on policies on preserving content.
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This long-standing and useful policy is under attack at Wikipedia:Editing policy. Members of this project should take an interest since its statement that we should "endeavour to preserve information" is in harmony with our mission. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:21, 7 February 2009 (UTC) thank you for the heads up, there are several other guidelines and essays which echo this policy, see User:Ikip/Del#Strong_arguments: WP:PRESERVE Policy Preserve information. Whatever you do, endeavour to preserve information. Instead of removing... Wikipedia:Notability Guideline states: "If an article fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject, look for sources yourself." Most editors who put an article up for deletion fail to do this. This is something you can bring up in the deletion discussion. Wikipedia:Deletion Policy Decorum and politeness. Wikipedia urges any contributor to read the Wikipedia:Deletion policy before deleting or nominating an article for deletion. "When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page...If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion" (Discussing on the talk page before flagging for deletion is rarely done.) Wikipedia:Introduction to deletion process WP:INTROTODELETE Essay Remember that deletion is a last resort. Deletion nominations rarely improve articles, and deletion should not be used as a way to improve an article, or a reaction to a bad article. It is appropriate for articles which cannot be improved. Wikipedia:Potential, not just current state WP:POTENTIAL Essay In most cases deletion of an article should be a last resort Wikipedia:Articles for deletion WP:BEFORE Before nominating a recently created article, please consider that many good articles started their Wikilife in pretty bad shape. Unless it is obviously a hopeless case, consider sharing your reservations with the article creator, mentioning your concerns on the article's discussion page, and/or adding a "cleanup" template, instead of bringing the article to AfD. If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD. Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion#Nomination "consider adding a tag such as {{cleanup}}, {{disputed}} or {{expert-subject}} instead; this may be preferable if the article has some useful content." Ikip (talk) 17:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC) Indeed - thanks for this fine summary. It is quite remarkable how blind some editors are to these numerous encouragments to save material and build upon it. The fact that WP:PRESERVE comes as a surprise to them is telling. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:36, 7 February 2009 (UTC) As a comment, "under attack" is a poor choice of words to describe a discussion where all concerned have the best interests of Wikipedia at heart but disagree on the detains of how to achieve this. Whenever I feel that a comment is an "attack", I think it indicates that I have become emotionally involved in a discussion, and should try to look at it from the other person's point of view. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:40, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to set up auto message for those who apply {{rescue}} template

The latest rounds of alleged abuse did spark an idea that may help. Perhaps an auto message that posts to any editor who adds {{rescue}} that prods them to try improving the article themselves and points them to some ideas about and resources for rescuing. This may in effect help them help themselves.

I think it would be helpful to concurrently develop a subpage with some steps that ARS has found useful in improving articles (finding sources, better writing, appropriate categories, etc.) finding those with more experience in the subject (finding wikiprojects or editors that may know more in a given field) and how to respond to concerns raised at AfD (these seem to exist already so we could simply summarize and link. The target audience is newbies et al who may not get wikipedia's policies and now feel "their article" is being picked on. We offer some welcoming advice and a more neutral stance that all articles have the same requirements but perhaps some work and research may help the article they have rise to the standards. Our preliminary research noted above and elsewhere shows that a lot a wobbly article are created by newbies so i think this may help. If nothing else it installs a reasonable and friendly message on their talkpage - perhaps the first one they've gotten - that clearly sets forth that articles that don't come up to standards are deleted. As part of that message we could encourage them to draft their next article and ask for more eyes before launching it. In this way I think we might help slow down repeat frustration on all fronts and may help conserve community resources. Does that sound like a promising concept? -- Banjeboi 02:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

• A Nobody had a similar welcome template that may be helpful for soem of the resources, also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes seems a good resource. -- Banjeboi 02:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • And when he returns from "break", and if we can keep him focused (chuckle), Ikip had some terrific help pages for new editors that would serve very well for those being advised how best to affect a rescue. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 09:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Ikip is around now. I agree that specific help pages dealing with the deletion process would be nice. I think a large part of it, though, is that there is no punishment for overly aggressive people who nominate weak pages left and right, even article stubs that were just created. It's frustrating dealing with such aggressive deletionists; if they fail consensus on AfD, they don't actually lose anything and will simply try again later. Deletionism is a widely accepted philosophy, so they can't be accused of acting in bad faith either. -moritheil^Talk 05:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I already wrote User:Ikip/Del which helps new editors with arguing policies, anyone is welcome to edit and expand that page.

I also regularly post messages to new editors with promosing articles, for example: User_talk:Otomo#An_article_you_created_maybe_deleted_soon:_Tools_which_can_help_you

I remember Ben said that we need some way to review all of the articles which are put up for deletion. That is what I try to do everyday. I would like to create a web scrapper which takes all of the articles on WP:AFDT and then compares them to goolge news (archive) and google books. But thus far this has been difficult to program. Ikip (talk) 15:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd personally find an auto message very annoying. Anyone doing a lot of rescue work would get a lot of spam. The constructive recommended steps for article development are a great idea, however. Skomorokh 16:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with skom, there would have to be an opt out option. Ikip (talk) 17:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I'd rather not have an opt out for a couple of reasons. We can condense the content into drop-down format - "Click here for details" - thus mitigating issues of talkpage space. If someone gets ten in a row it still won't be that horrid. This bot is to present any up-to-date resources so even if someone didn't want one currently they easily may in the future but reality is that people opt out and rarely re-opt back in. I also see this as helping note if the tag is being "abused", that is if someone is misapplying the tag and they get multiple messages at least we'll have a record of that without having to investigate each AfD to confirm. In short the hassle of getting multiple messages can be somewhat addressed and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. -- Banjeboi 22:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Userfication notice when editors attempt to create a new article

Discussion on background and concepts collapsed for navigation.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Currently when an editor attempts to create a new article, they get this message: Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article, or search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title. To experiment, please use the sandbox. When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references will likely be deleted quickly. Some editors here mentioned a really good idea, to add one sentence which encourages editors to create a userfied article first. Userfication works like this, instead of making: ham sandwhich band a new editor would make user:ikip/ham sandwhich band. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how this can be worded. And do you support this idea? Ikip (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2009 (UTC) I love the idea; I think it's a great way to channel newbie enthusiasm into a place that won't get either overwritten, or jumped on too fast. Jclemens (talk) 05:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC) I was planning to make a this a proposal at the village pump—indeed, I still am—but I'm still trying to think through some issues. My main concern is that we don't want editors to waste effort building new articles in user space which then get promptly deleted when they are moved to article space. Drafting in user space doesn't help if the new article's subject matter is already covered in an existing article, or if the subject genuinely isn't notable enough. Won't we need some sort of support system (e.g. my outline below) on top of the basic idea? Feedback would be very helpful. - Pointillist (talk) 11:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC) New article support In a nutshell: help inexperienced editors to develop new articles with acceptable quality and notability, by (a) creating articles in user space by default, where they can be polished without time pressure, and (b) giving advice and support tailored to avoid the main causes of article failure. Possible elements include: General injunction (with explanation) not to create pages about yourself, your company, your friends or your band, pages that advertise, personal essays etc. Advice on searching to see whether the subject is already covered, and help on creating a redirect if appropriate. Easy access to notability advice for this category of subject matter: navigating the whole of GNG and SNG is a bit overwhelming for an inexperienced editor. Ditto for the basics of reliable sources and how to use them without duplicating copyright material. Hints, like "find your first two references before you start writing", "copy the structure of a similar article" (maybe that could be automated for some popular categories?), etc. Technical features might include: Easy way(s) for editors to find their draft articles, e.g. "My drafts" tab or link. Drafts in user space being tagged {{NOINDEX}} automatically. Technique for telling new page patrollers and other potentially helpful editors whether to examine user space drafts. Possible need for cleaning up abandoned drafts by inactive user accounts. As you can see, this is going in the direction of a guided workflow ("wizard")—going beyond normal wikipedia editing. It might work best if it was category-specific, e.g. there'd be one version for films, others for bands, albums, performers, MMORPG clans, etc. Each wizard would contain embedded best practice for structure, subject-specific notability, categories, advice on known reliable/unreliable sources, and a pre-flight checklist before moving the page into article space. Right now, I'm a little lost trying to work out how much of the support system is essential and how much is feature creep. The question is whether the editors we are trying to attract and retain (i.e. reasonably well-educated good faith contributors) actually need this level of support. - Pointillist (talk) 11:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Just a passing comment, it's very-late/very-early for me right now. We've tried to address some of this at WP:YFA. There's also a nascent "create article" script but I can't find it right now. And I just recently posted to VPT and got some good details on how to get a name and create a uspace subpage. I'll check it more tomorrow. Warning though - that's a whole lot of technical details which are difficult enough as they are. Combine that with the newer users' tendency to not read everything, it will always be a problem. People are generally goal-oriented (as opposed to rule-oriented), if your flow doesn't suit them, they will surge over the banks. Franamax (talk) 12:53, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Another passing comment, and supplementary qquestion - as many, many new articles by new users are copyright violations or attack pages, encouraging new users to create articles in userspace would therefore mean there would be more copyvios and attacks in userspace. Would this not create patrol problems? Currently when monitoring recent changes I tend to ignore userspace. pablohablo. 13:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC) I am really glad there is positive feedback about this idea, since 76.5% of articles put up for deletion were created by editors who had 350 contributions or less, this seems like a problem. I moved the discussion to refactored out. which is the talk page for the text every editor sees above a brand new article. I encourage everyone here to lend support to this proposal. Ikip (talk) 13:56, 26 March 2009 (UTC) I don't see why the fact that most deletions (or deletion debates) are about articles from relatively new editors is supposed to be a problem. It would be really amazing if most deletions were about articles from experienced editors, since these probably know better the do's and don'ts. I have no problems obviously with trying to help new editors write better articles (and find more suitable subjects), but the repeated suggestion that the fact that most deletions are for articles by newbies is somehow a problem is bizarre. Fram (talk) 20:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Yeah, really there are three strands here: The notice that encourages contributors to create new articles in user space. The policies for draft articles in user space, e.g. do they get patrolled, are they indexed by search engines, is copyvio a concern, etc? Technology to help get articles right, e.g. breaking WP:YFA into bite-sized chunks like a wizard/checklist. Ikip is re-starting the first strand on (struck) Where should we discuss the other two? - Pointillist (talk) 14:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC) I would bring up policies for draft articles in user space in WP:VPP, asking where to ask. The WP:Your First Article question can be asked on the talk page, and also on WP:VPT. Ikip (talk) 20:42, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Followup: The new article wizard is at (who woulda thunk? :) WP:Article wizard. User:Mr.Z-man created it and from the looks of it, it hasn't been worked on for a long time. The (long) discussion leading up to the creation of WP:YFA can be found here and in the following section. A section at VP (technical) discusses how to create a user sub-page. I certainly would like to see a process where new users had an easy way to create their own subpage rather than crash onto the rock of deletionism. However noindexing, copyvios and content proliferation are all serious concerns. Franamax (talk) 23:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Thanks. Looks like copyvio in user space might be the first major hurdle. What's the right place to discuss that? - Pointillist (talk) 23:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Glad to see this getting some attention as I had given Pointilist a brilliant idea barnstar when this concept came up in a discussion on another matter. First let's see if there is some way to have it only pop up for new user accounts and/or accounts with a small number of initial edits, with an option that it can be bypassed in those cases where the account is one belonging to an established editor who has opened a new account. It should be then obviously written in a very simple manner so as to not confuse newcomers, unlike most of guideline and policy. We all know how confusing it can be for even seasoned editors. The warnings about copyvio should be repeated politely several times, as well as stressing the importance of decent sources... with a simple explanation that blogs and personal websites are not suitable except in vey specialized cases. It could include a link to members of welcoming committee or ARS and include a very encouraging note to seek input and advice before sending to mainspace. with our respects and apologies... We're here to help. And a very pointed warning that sending something to mainspace before it is ready will likely result in deletion... We're a volunteer organization, and I do not think there will be a lack of editors willing to offer advice. Count me among the names heading that list! Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC) Yeah, I didn't mean to sit on that nice barnstar for ever (!), and I 100% agree that this should be encouraging and very simple to use (that's why I tend towards category-specific wizards). However, I'd like our proposal to be bullet-proof before we send it into battle, and it looks like copyvio is a big issue for some people. Given that one of the main advantages of userfication is that articles get enough time to discard their early problems, I'd like to avoid policing for copyvio in user space. IMO where a user space page is marked {{NOINDEX}} with some sort of {{Construction}} notice, a reasonable amount of copyright material should be permitted under the usual academic terms "for private research and comment". The contributor would then have time to rework the concepts into non-copyvio form (I don't know whether CorenBot would get involved at this stage). What do you think? Where should this aspect get discussed further? - Pointillist (talk) 00:23, 27 March 2009 (UTC) It WAS a brilliant idea. And is copyvio in userspace/construction already being patrolled? WIki encourages the use of userpace to work out just such problems. All we need let new editors understand that the waters are deeper than they think and the should not wade in without their floaties. If an established editor messes up... well, he/she should know better. But as there are already processes in place to assist newcomers, all we need do is make it less confusing and more (new)user friendly. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:42, 27 March 2009 (UTC) I refactored out the link to the other page, and removed my proposal on the other page. I don't think we are ready yet to present this to the larger community. Ikip (talk) 01:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC) (e/c) I would tend to disagree on the "private research" bit for copyvios. For one thing, private can be much more easily done on your own computer, for another because mirror sites won't necessarily respect the noindex tag in the same way search engines do. Mostly because the end result will likely be copyvios sitting forever in uspace and because we just plain have to eliminate copyvio. This was recently discussed at WT:NPP (here) and the best suggestion for copyvio seemed to be immediate blanking of the copyvio part with an appropriate message. The text would still be available in history but not shown in public display. As far as finding copyvios, Coren would be able to confirm whether CSB scans uspace and how it responds. Putting the big black copyvio notice onto uspace pages would probably not be too friendly, but maybe Coren could work out a way to blank the text? For wider discussion on the issue, I'd suggest WT:C and WT:NPP. As far as who sees the wizard, one solution I could think of is to have it as a gadget in Preferences. Newly registered users would have it enabled by default and it would stay on until they figured out how to turn things off in their preferences - and by then they've probably gained some clue, right? The MediaWiki software would need to check the pref and instead of going to the URL with "&edit&redlink=1" it would use "&edit&redlink=2", which would invoke the wizard. This is something a dev would have to do of course, perhaps Werdna would be interested. Franamax (talk) 02:09, 27 March 2009 (UTC) Proposed new addition to new articles Pointillist had a good idea for the userfication noticfication, which I will move here. 1 to 3 is the original, which everyone sees when they create a new article. 4 is the new section: Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article, or search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title. To experiment, please use the sandbox. When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references may quickly be deleted. You can start your new article first here: Special:MyPage/Article Rescue Squadron. This allows you to get the article in shape, take your time with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and only move it into the "live" Wikipedia once it is ready to go. When your new article is ready, you can move it into the main area. The biggest priority is to make the new userefication section as short and concise as possible. The beauty of this new sentence is: [[User:{{REVISIONUSER}}/{{FULLPAGENAME}}]], which allows a user to simply click the link to start a new userfied page. Ikip (talk) 01:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC) Ikip, have you tested this with a blank page? I'm not sure REVISIONUSER will be magical when no revision has yet been made. I switched it over to Special:MyPage for now, 'til you can confirm it works. Franamax (talk) 02:17, 27 March 2009 (UTC) RE: [[Special:MyPage/{{PAGENAME}}]] good idea, I didn't know that was possible, the only problem with [[Special:MyPage/{{PAGENAME}}]] is it creates an extra step, the editor has to then press "create this page". Ikip (talk) 02:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC) It works. Try any page, like this one, djaklshgkjshaj then put in {{REVISIONUSER}} It also works for previously deleted articles, like Obama effect. Remember to only click show preview. Ikip (talk) 02:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC) MyPage could maybe be made to work by adding &edit&redlink=xx&preload=yy. xx would be 1 for now, 2 when the wizard gets going. yy would be for use when userfying an existing article and for new articles would preload a preamble including noindex and the underconstruction template. Your way of using a magicword is simpler though, if it will work in the editnotice. Franamax (talk) 02:40, 27 March 2009 (UTC) Wow, wonderful, you are quite a genius. Anyway to tighten and shorten the text even more? Ikip (talk) 14:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC) Careful... the over-worked and quite dedicated Franamax does not recieve as much praise as he rightly deserves for his tireless efforts to improve wikipedia... else he'd be constantly running out to buy larger sized hats... and that would get expensive... (grin) Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 03:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC) Heh, MQS you have burst my bubble. I truly took that as a compliment - now I see how it could be interpreted differently. lol. :) Perhaps the fact that I have linked several other places where this has been discussed has caused some resentment? Or someone new showing up casting ideas among the regulars? Dunno. Anyway, topic of longstanding interest to me, I only came back here to consider the best text - but we do need the right technical backing so new editors have a "short path" to what they want to accomplish. Franamax (talk) 15:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving forward

Redrafts and discussion collapsed for navigation
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Has this proposal died or just stalled? Or has it progressed somewhere without a link to it here? In any case I'd suggest adjusting the original points to introduce the idea like this: Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article, or search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title. When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references may quickly be deleted. To experiment, please use the sandbox, or create your own Special:MyPage/sandbox. Or start your new article here instead: Special:MyPage/Article Rescue Squadron. You can get the article in shape, with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and only move it into the "live" Wikipedia once it is ready to go. Mark Hurd (talk) 05:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC) It is no bad idea to encourage users to work up articles in userspace until they are ready to be pushed out of the nest. However … A lot of articles that are rightfully speedy-deleted are unsourced/negative BLPs or copyright violations. A lot of these are created by new or inexperienced users. Such pages would, I understand, still be eligible for deletion even in userspace, therefore userspace would have to be patrolled more rigorously - many recent changes/new pages patrollers currently ignore, or pay less attention to, userspace. pablohablo. 08:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC) Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article, or search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title. To experiment, please use the sandbox. When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references may quickly be deleted. You can start your new article first here: Special:MyPage/Article Rescue Squadron. You can get the article in shape, with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and only move it into the "live" Wikipedia once it is ready to go. Here are some changes I made, incorporating many of Mark's sections. Ikip (talk) 17:48, 25 April 2009 (UTC) So is this going somewhere as a proposed change? -- Banjeboi 22:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC) I like that text, but it's not fair to imply that you can get your new article into shape in user space without saying something about potential libel and copyvio issues. As Franamax said in NPP Cautious approach "some editors may use the technique of copy-pasting in a copyvio to start an article, then progressively rewrite the whole thing into an original presentation." I'd hoped NOINDEX would help, but that didn't fly, so how about adding a fifth bullet something like this (below)? - Pointillist (talk) 23:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC) Bear in mind that anyone with an Internet connection will be able to see your draft version while you polish it, so your unfinished article mustn't make libellous claims or infringe other people's copyright, even if you intend to fix these issues before you move it. For advice on this, see [some compact advice page that might not exist yet]. If this was said concisely perhaps combine the two like: You can also draft a new article here: Special:MyPage/Article Rescue Squadron. You still must avoid libellous claims and infringing on copyright material. You can work on the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help on it, and then move it onto the "live" Wikipedia once it is ready to go. Does this help? -- Banjeboi 23:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC) The current template has no such warning for regular pages, so I don't see why this one should. The idea was to make this as short as possible. Each one of the existing lines is short. Ikip (talk) 04:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC) I'm not bothered either way, if it's not needed just drop the sentence. Can it be launched as a proposal whever it's to happen? -- Banjeboi 10:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC) Well, that sentence was to address Franamax's concern about copyvio—it isn't essential on day one (I was just thinking it might smooth the path for the proposal). Once the feature is implemented we'll soon see how well it is working: if copyvio/libel in user sandboxes turns out to be a significant problem, then we can adjust the wording. - Pointillist (talk) 11:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC) I suggest then propsing without the copyvio sentence but mentioning it as a possible addition. Can this go forward now? -- Banjeboi 18:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposal text:

“ You can start your new article first here: [[Special:MyPage/{{PAGENAME}}]]. You can get the article in shape, with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and only [[Help:Moving_a_page|move]] it into the "live" Wikipedia once it is ready to go. ”

Note: Proposal at MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext#Suggestion to add new line. Please comment there. -- Banjeboi 11:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

RfC: Should templates be within the scope of the Article Rescue Squadron?

• Should templates be within the scope of the Article Rescue Squadron? In particular, should the {{rescue}} tag be applied to templates currently at templates for deletion? 13:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Collapsed for space. Discussion closed.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Statements by editors previously involved in dispute Templates are simply a different form of content and ARS can certainly offer help on Templates for deletion (TfD)s - an area that is generally less busy and contentious than AfD - I see little harm in getting more eyes on TfD discussions. (Note: I've had to re-edit this statement due to the RFC being changed after posting.) Templates are well within the spirit of what ARS does, that our name doesn't state Article and Template Rescue Squad is rather silly. We work to save content worth keeping and advise when something should likely be merged, redirected and deleted. ARS members look to solve problems and serve our readers, templates often need rescuing as much as articles do. TfD, generally, concerns more experienced editors so I see little downside to ARS being involved in this manner for now. -- Banjeboi 13:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Is soliciting comments directly to a deletion discussion from a project that exists to prevent the deletion of articles appropriate? This project was never "getting more eyes on [deletion] discussions." In fact, "The Article Rescue Squadron (ARS) is not about casting keep votes[...]. ARS ensure that articles about notable topics do not get deleted when they can be rescued through normal editing" not by selectively notifying a group which had a major recruitment drive based on having an "inclusionist" userbox on your userpage. Even if good faith is intended, the damage has been done. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 13:20, 9 April 2009 (UTC) (ec)Benjoboi, "which is technically able to be used on TfDs": What is that supposed to mean? Whether it is "technically able" or not isutterly irrelevant, I can add template:BLPunsourced to an article about a plant species, but that has no further importance. Please try to keep the question focused and don't add unrelated stuff. Furthermore: do you mean all templates or only content templates? It makes no difference to my opinion, but it may influence other people one way or the other. I would prefer also if everything beyond AfD's was included somehow in this RfC, so that we don't have to discuss categories, mergers, redirects, ... all separately. In general: is the ARS only intended for articles which are up for deletion through AfD, or does it have a wider scope, and if so, howwide should it be? My personal opinion on that question is that the ARS should only be for articles on AfD, as it is basically intended to rescue articles (hence the name) through a combined effort at sourcing and major cleaning, not through a combined effort at voting keep, which would be the intended effect on most other deletion discussions (and which is evidenced by the canvassing for mergers and templates which has happened already). A template (or a category or a redirect) is not content, but a way of presenting content, which is completely different and should not be grouped under this rescue project. Fram (talk) 13:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Comments Note the distinction between "improv[ing] articles flagged for rescue by adding sources and otherwise cleaning them up" and "offer[ing] help on Templates for deletion (TfD)s". One is a call for article improvement. The other is a call to comment at a deletion discussion. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 13:35, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Your opinion on this project, the {{rescue}} tag, and the work of the project members here is painfully apparent. I'm unclear why you choose to insert yourself continuously in a project you seem so at odds with. In any case this isn't part 2, 3 or 4 in an effort to characterize all editors here as inclusionists. It's to stop the edit-warring regarding templates being within the scope of ARS. How the project page is reworked to reflect that articles and other content worth rescuing would have to be worked out just as we've worked out every other concern in the past. This RfC concerns scope not re-accussing an entire project of canvassing, inclusionism, etc concerns which have been addressed and dismissed every time. -- Banjeboi 13:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC) This RfC concerns scope not your opinion of Mr. In Black's opinions. pablohablo. 14:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Because I like the idea of improving on AFD to prevent them from being deleted. The idea of a "come and comment on deletion discussions to save things from deletion" is what I'm not so hot on. When you outright say that, I have a major problem. Characterizing that as a problem limited to me is a mistake. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 13:54, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Again, this RfC concerns scope not accusations of canvassing. -- Banjeboi 14:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC) How do you propose this project clean up non-article content in response to qualms raised in deletion discussions? Almost all tools at XfD are at risk of deletion because they are ill-conceived or abandoned, not incomplete. (Also, bear in mind my comments are addressing your call for members of this project to "offer help on Templates for deletion (TfD)s". That's advocating the same kind of canvassing I've been criticizing all along, and I'm only repeating myself because the canvassing hasn't stopped.) - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC) < boggles > I think your characterizing my posting a link to a TfD discussion as canvassing is wholly innapropriate and a leaping pile of bad faith. I'll echo OlYeller21's concern that I can't believe I have to spell that out to an admin. We don't tell people how to vote we ask them to participate in the discussion - you should know better. ARS has always worked to save content worth keeping and advise when something should likely be merged, redirected, renamed and deleted. TfD just concerns content in a different format. Likely the project page would have a section added pointing to a subpage regarding TfDs with handy links; i think the main premise to get accross is that templates morph greatly over time and often become obsolete, renamed, repurposed, etc while articles once established generally just grow. The {{rescue}} template would likely be tweaked to display template-appropriate content and our ARSBot tweaked to display the correct links for our current list subpage. -- Banjeboi 15:02, 9 April 2009 (UTC) "How dare you, sir!" isn't an argument. Yes, everyone knows all you want is to help the encyclopedia. Understand that you don't necessarily have a monopoly on it, and that I can ascribe to you all the good faith in the world and still have a problem with how you try to help the encyclopedia. Anyway. Noise aside. ARS has always worked to save content worth keeping. I don't want to see that branding turned into "Please keep this template I think we should keep." Instead, I think the template and associated tools are only for content that needs revamping/rewriting/cleanup in order to be saved. I'm not strictly opposed to {{rescue}} on templates per se, but it needs to be clear, {{rescue}} needs to be "Please clean this up in order to clearly show its value" not "Please keep this, I think it helps the encyclopedia." If you want to say "Please keep" we have XfD discussions for that. If you want to have more people come and back you up and say "Please keep", please don't. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 15:10, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I am unhappy with a proposal that amount to the abuse of the audience of 200+ members. I'm not suggesting malfeasance on the part of the group, but that it's inappropriate to solicit that group to skew a debate with the force of their presence, by soliciting their input directly to debate. You suggested that this project should come and comment on selected TFD discussions. Solicitation from a group with an avowed stance (in this case, the prevention of deletion of content) is harmful. What benefit do we gain by making this project noticeboard for template deletion discussions when we have that noticeboard already? And before attacking the assertion that the project has an avowed stance, note that there are even a link to a WSJ article describing this project as stridently opposed to deletion; ARS is notably inclusionist! - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 04:17, 10 April 2009 (UTC) Your, IMHO, shrillish "concern" has been soundly rejected every time this project has been targeted with these generalized attacks and yes, this RfC is all about your edit-warring. As an admin you should be alarmed by your own behaviour. -- Banjeboi 23:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC) You attacked me instead of answering my question. Again. We have a noticeboard for templates for deletion. How do we benefit by having another? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 02:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC) To me the answer to that seems apparent, we have a noticeboard for AfDs as well yet hundreds of editors have found ARS to be helpful in recognizing content that shouldn't be deleted or otherwise can be used for our readers' benefit. Likewise ARS can be helpful on TfD discussions, identifying issues, proposing solutions and offering more eyes on a deletion discussion. -- Banjeboi 01:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC) Why can't ARS members simply watch TFD, like all editors? Why is their input so valuable it needs to be solicited directly? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 05:11, 12 April 2009 (UTC) Outdent. Well I guess I can answer that with my habits as an example. I don't watch AfD at all, if an AfD is brought to my attemtion here or one of the wikiproject talkpages I watch ... then I have a look. Same with all other XfDs, I simply don't pay any attention to them at all. My hopes are that editors who are experienced in those areas will be able to raise the alert if they feel something is being deleted in error. Obviously it would be ideal if nothing was ever created or deleted in error but that's unlikely to happen so we work with the systems we have - not the ones we hope for. -- Banjeboi 11:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC) That's the problem, though. You're wanting to make this the "Come save this from deletion" noticeboard, and that's exactly what I've been trying to stop it from becoming and exactly what people have been worrying that it would become. This is an article improvement noticeboard, not a save this from deletion noticeboard. The important part of "improving articles so they aren't deleted" is "improving articles." When yandman talks about coopting this board, or I talk about canvassing, this is what I mean. It's a good faith effort, but it's harmful to consensus building. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:34, 12 April 2009 (UTC) You may have us mistaken with all other clean-up projects. We only work on items marked for deletion. We specialize in making quick assessments and improvements including recommending if something likely should be merged, renamed, reworked, deleted, etc. And your continued assertions/accusations mischaracterizing us all as inclusionists etc. are only serving to prevent the project from moving forward to building tools to help improve those very items we're here to do. Sorry, I see your profound, unsubstantiated and repeated criticism as unproductive and toxic. You quote "improving articles so they aren't deleted", where is that from? We "ensure that articles about notable topics do not get deleted when they can be rescued through normal editing". You may want to also note we don't punish people for tagging items that really should be deleted, we may try to work with them so the do better editing in the future but many items that are simply not rescuable are tagged and, yes, get deleted. We help as we can. -- Banjeboi 19:00, 13 April 2009 (UTC) This project only works on items marked for deletion. It does not work on deletion discussions, and you've called for people to come and get involved in template deletion discussions. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 00:34, 14 April 2009 (UTC) OK, you really are pushing the absurd here. Do you honestly think or have any evidence that ARS restricts its members from taking part in the AfD discussion, in any way? For that matter we don't tell people how to vote or even vote. We do instruct to read the AfD to know what the issues stated are, accurate or not. So no, you're mistaken on this one as well, we certainly do take part in the AfD as well as look to improving the article if appropriate and possible. There's no logical reason this wouldn't carry over to templates as well - the skills are just less used by most Wikipedians. -- Banjeboi 01:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC) It's not absurd, it's the distinction that allows this project to exist. If this project exists to clean up content up for deletion, that's good and should be encouraged. The project being a board for soliciting people to come to deletion discussions, that's a problem. That's the problem. And the fact that you haven't yet suggested what the project would do for templates, let alone other non-article content, and talked about "getting more input at TFD discussions", seems to say that you're wanting to solicit people to come to deletion discussions. Selectively soliciting people to deletion discussions is the problem. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 05:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC) Well you are indeed mistaken as the items primarily addressed by this project are ones at deletion so it's disingenuous to claim surprise or object that memebers take part in deletion discussion. It's our primary work, we try to understand the issues that brought content to XfD and offer our perspective and often talents to fixing problems or suggesting what is best for Wikipedia. And despite your assertions I have already explained how we would help at TfD a few times in this RfC. I'm sorry you're assuming something else is at play. -- Banjeboi 01:13, 17 April 2009 (UTC) Templates, categories, images, sound files and anyting that is not an article are outside the scope of the Article Rescue Squadron. The point of the squadron is to collaboratively source and improve articles listed on Afd. There is no reason, however, why there shouldn't be a "Template Improvement Team" to go with ARS. pablohablo. 14:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC) It's all content though, we don't compartmentalize our content that only images go in one pile and only templates are here. It's all information, visual, auditory etc and it works together to communication the vast sum of human knowledge to each other, freely. Templates are simply a different way to organize content. And a "Template Improvement Team" would likely be a sub-team of ARS using ... the {{rescue}} tag with links helpful to template issues. -- Banjeboi 14:14, 9 April 2009 (UTC) No, it's not content, it's presentation. An article has content, a template (anda category and so on) has no content but is a method of presenting it (there's a reason that they are called "navigation" templates). When you delete e.g. the NY representatives template, no content is lost, only a method of navigating. Fram (talk) 14:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Fram has a good point. We're supposed to be saving things (articles, templates, pics, etc) from deletion when there's a reason not to (i.e. more references are needed and out there). If we're adding the {{rescue}} template when the only thing that can be done is vote in the TfD, then there's a problem. But if the template is broken (for example) and it can be fixed, then adding the {{rescue}} tag makes sense. OlYellerTalktome 14:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Actually templates are content. A list of kinds of Italian bread is standardized in {{Italian bread}} and posted to relevant articles. At Tfd the core issues tend to be, is this needed, should it be merged, renamed etc. These are quite similar to AfD discussions. Sourcing is rarely an issue but the rest of those issues seem relevant. I was involved in a TfD regarding a group of "fringe" articles - was the template applying undue weight to those theories - so the core issues and the spirit are nearly idecticle. -- Banjeboi 14:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Comment - I tend to be a deletionist but I also believe in saving SAVABLE articles from deletion even when they're in AfD or CSD. Being a deletionist and wanting to save articles aren't mutually exclusive. The line on what's "savable" is drawn by each member. Saying that everyone in a group is the same is about as close to bigoted as you can get and I'm personally sick of being personally attacked by an administrator because of the alleged actions of others. That being said, I don't see ARS as being just for articles. I think the {{rescue}} tag can be used for anything on wikipedia that may be in danger of being deleted when a measurable amount of work can be done to keep it from being deleted. OlYellerTalktome 14:10, 9 April 2009 (UTC) That a group can be composed of a majority does not deny that a minority exists. My problem is with "Come comment on this discussion" and less "OMG INCLUSIONIST CABAL" because we already have a general-purpose "come comment on this discussion" noticeboard for deletion discussions. This is a "come fix these articles" noticeboard, and is for articles that need to be fixed; turning it into "come comment on this discussion" will rapidly turn it into "Partisan Battleground Project". - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:19, 9 April 2009 (UTC) This is the first time I've read a response from you on this page that I wasn't offended. If it makes any difference, if people are doing that, I ignore it to the point where I can't remember that even happening. As to not offend others and assume good faith of the "minority", please address specific people when they do something like that. Why am I having to tell this to an admin? OlYellerTalktome 14:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I am operating from the assumption that advertising a discussion to an audience which chiefly sympathizes with one side of that discussion is bad. It's not bad because the audience's contribution is bad; it's bad because partisan canvassing skews discussion inordinately. I don't know how I could more directly call out Banjeboi or Ikip (in reference to the last two canvassing messes) without overly personalizing things. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. I'm suggesting that you talk about it with them on there talk page as when you do it here and don't use specific names, you're calling out the entire ARS community for the actions of 2 people. OlYellerTalktome 14:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC) That doesn't get any wider input (as amusing as the juxtaposition is, the only place for a representative mix of people with an opinion on the operation of this project is its own talk page) and it doesn't solve the problem of the canvassing directly. If it's up for a week while wider input is solicited to a talk page, then the damage is done even if the canvassing is removed later. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Until this RfC was stated, by me, I had no clue you were accusing me of canvassing. You never stated it to me, that I know of, and your edit summaries were, IMHO, shrill. I'll agree again with OlYeller21 that canvassing issues need to be addressed on a user level, and admins should be well aware of that. You've used the canvassing board before so maybe that would be a better alternative to keep this wikiproject focussed on our work rather than your perception of some editors actions. -- Banjeboi 19:00, 13 April 2009 (UTC) Again, this RfC concerns scope not accusations of canvassing. -- Banjeboi 14:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I see your proposal as "Should this project canvass its members to participate in TFD discussions?" Also, you just repeated the same argument twice in one discussion, which is what that WP:ATA spinoff is talking about, whereas I've been repeating the same argument over many different related discussions. But we've both been articulating new parts of our own positions and gaining at least some light in the discussion, so it's not as though either of us is doing anything useless. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Oy vey, sadly I see you've been accusing me of canvassing for several hours now. I'll echo OlYeller21's concern that I can't believe we have to spell this out to an admin. We don't tell people how to vote we ask them to participate in the discussion - you should know better, there is a big difference. Maybe re-read WP:Canvassing. -- Banjeboi 15:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Why here? (And please, the "I can't believe this, you should know better" is very tiresome.)- A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 15:11, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Your blanket statement disparaging a group of 200+ members is wrong. There, is that more clear? You're an admin but your poor behaviour belies that. Clear enough? Admins are expected to act a bit more civil, follow policies at least a little better. I hope this explains why your edit-warring accross this project and related discussion is unwelcome, uncivil and unbecoming and admin. -- Banjeboi 03:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC) Response above, this is sprawling out of control. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 04:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC) My patience with your concerns is rather run out at this point. You seem to be ready to argue and threaten, edit-war and accuse then register another concern when your actions have generated "sprawl". I find that disingenuous at best. -- Banjeboi 11:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC) Um. Okay. I moved my comment above because I thought this back-and-forth was starting to dominate the page. But go go gadget accusations! - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:34, 12 April 2009 (UTC) Commment I'm with OlYeller21, even though I'm probably a mergeist, if you have to nail me down. ARS exists to rescue stuff, primarily articles, and people who want to help by improving things facing deletion are welcome here. If someone wants to post notices in the hopes of canvassing for keep !votes, that's their problem, and if people read this page looking for places to cast keep !votes, that's their problem. I've had the experience of posting an article for rescue and Benjiboi has shown up and strenuously argued that it be deleted. I know I've looked at articles tagged for rescue, and either shaken my head and walked away (not wanting to pile on in an obviously appropriate deletion trend) or argued for deletion or merge. So I don't care if people put up TfD, IfD, or the like for rescue--If I know or strongly suspect that the target is notable, I'll use the resources (ProQuest, EBSCOhost) and knowledge (CITET, etc.) at my disposal to fix it. I personally don't see how I can help with those other non-article deletion spaces, but I also don't see the traffic in such non-AfD XfD's to be high enough to be a distraction to the rest of the ARS. Jclemens (talk) 16:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Yes, people know me as a strong inclusionist, but even I don't blindly argue to keep every rescue templated article. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 16:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I believe the comment you linked there speaks more to my argument than Banjeboi's. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 17:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC) By and large, templates are only deleted if they are a) redundant, b) unused and totally neglected or c) obviously not in the best interests of the encyclopedia. The one general exception to this is navboxes, and frankly navbox TfDs do not need more input from the more fringe elements of this WikiProject, for the reasons intimated by aMiB. I don't see any positive impact to involving ARS in template discussion. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC) Characterizing any editors as fringe isn't civil. If you have an issue with a particular editor(s) take it to them directly please. And your assertion that having more eyes on a TfD not likely to have any positive impact, seems counter to the spirit of consensus. We want more participation so we are more likely to make the right decision. -- Banjeboi 03:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC) "We want more participation so we are more likely to make the right decision"... I don't believe I am the only one who is deeply disturbed by statements such as this. The reason ARS has survived various formal (MFD) and informal (ANI) deletion discussions is that it has always been claimed that it was about editing articles where lack of content/structure/sources threatened deletion, not block-participating in XfDs. And I think that the vast majority of editors in this project follow that philosophy. You clearly have another opinion, and I'm sorry, but an important project such as this one cannot be hijacked by a handful of editors who want it to take another direction. yandman 07:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC) I think you have implied meaning to a statement that isn't there. The right decision isn't to keep or delete but what is best for Wikipedia. Consensus discussion is to involve better judgement by a group to make the best decision possible - any idea why we wouldn't want more participation in discussions that affect us all? As an aside this RfC is to help us make the right or best decision as well. Please AGF that the exact same thing I've been doing here all along is working to improve Wikipedia. -- Banjeboi 15:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC) Consensus is indeed the best thing. Which is why we have a page called WP:AFD on which all the deletion discussion are listed. "better judgement by a group" is exactly what we don't want. We don't want a group to decide they are making the best judgement by block-voting in XfDs. We don't want a group that has been allowed to use an official-looking articlespace template suddenly decide that they don't want to play by the rules that were set down. When did this project abandon the whole "stick to improving the articles, let others notice our work and participate in the discussion" ethos? Since this project was hijacked (and I choose my words carefully, the attempts to merge this page with WP:Inclusionism being the most blatant example), that philosophy has pretty much evaporated. yandman 15:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC) And consensus is what ARS has always advocated. Accusations of block voting are simply false and no credible evidence has been shown to sustain that blanket bad-faith accusations. You can stop now. And that attempts to merge this page with WP:Inclusionism was stopped by me at ANI. Every other concern about inclusionism blah blah blah has also been addressed. ARS has been continuously supported by the community, despite generalized and unsubstantiated accusations. -- Banjeboi 23:16, 10 April 2009 (UTC) As a very general comment, the more light we get on the various non-AfD XfDs the better, and what we need to do is figure out how to encourage it, not worry about whether it falls into any particular remit. TfD in the past has been really problematic, because most of it is very uninteresting, but on occasion something is proposed where the deletion actually means changing or editing a Wikipedia project of procedure. Any such discussions of importance should be taken elsewhere, like the VP, but they do show up at TfD -- and MfD. There are lots of ways to delete material that avoid the publicity of AfD; this Project has a wider role than just being an AfD talk page, or thinking its title means a prohibition against doing whatever is relevant and permissible and acceptable to the community. DGG (talk) 05:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC) Yes, we should be able to be called to attempt to rescue anything under an XfD process (i.e. not PROD, CSD or other non-final discussions). If this means we must change the name of the project to just Rescue Squadron, just to avoid spurious arguments, so be it. Mark Hurd (talk) 08:06, 10 April 2009 (UTC) What are the rescue template actually doing on a template? Essentially all TfD debates focus on usefulness and/or appropriateness of a template. While there are cases where a rewording of the template can address the concerns that is raised on the deletion debate, in most cases those debates deals with the idea behind the template. As such there is nothing to rescue, either the template is appropriate, or it is not, and the only way to figure which is to reach a consensus. On such cases the template serves no purpose. Taemyr (talk) 09:30, 10 April 2009 (UTC) ARS has always worked to save content worth keeping and advise when something should likely be merged, redirected, renamed and deleted, etc. TfD just concerns content in a different format. Likely the project page would have a section added pointing to a subpage regarding TfDs with handy links; I think the main premise to get accross is that templates morph greatly over time and often become obsolete, renamed, repurposed, etc while articles once established generally just grow. The {{rescue}} template would likely be tweaked to display template-appropriate content and our ARSBot tweaked to display the correct links for our current list subpage. -- Banjeboi 15:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC) The point is that the rescue template exists in order to recruit people into improving the content under discussion. For templates at TfD it's difficult to see how that purpose can be served. Taemyr (talk) 05:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC) That is only an aspect of what we do. We also offer our insights on other options as well as looking at issues from our various perspectives. And templates are content there to help our readers - we can surely offer an opinion if something is fixable, useless, etc. And for basic templates we might even be able to address the issues directly by editing them. -- Banjeboi 02:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC) Yes or No - I'll say "yes" if this moves to an "all or nothing" sort of outcome. As has been said above, anything under the XfD process should be included. This should not only apply to AfD and TfD, but also to CfD (Category for Deletion) and even IfD (images). Otherwise, count mine as a "no". Everything under XfD = "yes". Articles and templates ONLY = "no". - ✰ALLST☆R✰ echo 09:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC) That would likely be a yes as the logical conclusion would be that other XfD would also be allowed. Templates just happenned to be at the heart of the edit-warring so I decided wider community input would help show a consensus of how to proceed. Personally, dealing with creating another ANI thread was not helping lift my spirits to contribute and even if one editor is blocked another could quickly pop up to further disrupt things. Better to RfC and see where the community stands. -- Banjeboi 15:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC) as a card-carrying occlusionist (i.e., someone who prefers to see issues like this get closed) I have to say: WTF??? if someone thinks a template is salvageable and useful, and wants to rescue it - let 'em rescue it. there's just no reason to be hasty about deleting a template (short of it constituting a violation of WP core principles, or being created for some kind of vandalism). Wikipedia has plenty of space, and a template can sit in the background, unused, while people play with it. if you're worried about it being used, wrap the whole thing in 'noinclude' tags so it can't transclude anything. what a silly debate... --Ludwigs2 04:04, 14 April 2009 (UTC) I am one who has called the ARS to help me attempt to rescue two templates. It looks like Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 April 6‎#Template:NYRepresentatives is going to be unsuccessful as was the first attempt. Nonetheless, I think ARS should be invovled in rescue attempts of any form of content.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC) I think the ARS should be disbanded entirely, as an equivalent organization designed to rally deletionists to an article in support of its removal would be very quickly MFDed. However, in the knowledge that that won't happen, I believe templates should be out of scope of the ARS. What does the A stand for? Stifle (talk) 14:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC) Stifle, what are YOU here for? If I can speak for the ARS as a whole, we're here to build an encyclopedia.' That means adding encyclopedic content and preventing the removal of encyclopedic content, most often through fixing bad/marginal articles on appropriately encyclopedic topics. ARS is not inclusionist, although ARS attracts inclusionists, and good faith editors can differ over the definition of "appropriately encyclopedic topics" without undermining the encyclopedia-building process. Jclemens (talk) 16:36, 15 April 2009 (UTC) You're engaging in codology if you expect me to believe that ARS is not an inclusionist project designed to canvass editors to keep articles that aren't always approaching notability. You're also the only project which has managed to get license to leave your project tag on an article page, rather than a talk page like all the others. One of the main methods of keeping an encyclopedia high-quality is the removal of inappropriate content, and the ARS hampers that. Stifle (talk) 08:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC) The community disagrees with your blanket assertions and bad faith accusations that you feel it's OK to spread your antagonistic views shows a lack of civility toward fellow editors and is generally unhelpful and unwelcome. If you've nothing constructive to offer here it's likely this project is not a good match for your particular POV. There are plenty of projects out there so let me hereby encourage you to explore the wikiverse in hopes you find a more collegial envirnment for your take on things. -- Banjeboi 10:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC) If by "the community", you mean "Some other people and I", then yes. There is, however, room for all of us in Wikipedia. Stifle (talk) 15:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC) I support Ben's proposal to formerly include templates. Ikip (talk) 15:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC) Yes The ARS may properly concern itself with any content which is threatened with removal. If this gets complicated we might introduce subdivisions like International Rescue and its specialist craft such as Thunderbird 4... Colonel Warden (talk) 15:32, 15 April 2009 (UTC) Yes - If the content of article, template, file, picture, etc. is savable (requires some sort of maintenance like adding refs or fixing code) then yes, it should be tagged with the {{rescue}} tag. If people are that worried about symantics, change ARS to RS or WRS (Wikipedia Rescue Squadron). I don't think that artciles should have the {{rescue}} tag added if the articles, templates, etc. that are currently as complete as they can be. In other words, if an article has all the refs added that can be found and its notability is in question or if the template is working perfectly and can't be changed so that it's not redundant, the tag should not be added. OlYellerTalktome 16:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC) If this is the proposal, I'm amenable. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 03:08, 16 April 2009 (UTC) Just as we don't punish people tagging articles that really can't be rescued we simply would educate folks regarding the proper use regarding any other XfD. The concerns, IMHO, are a bit blunted as non-AfD discussions tend to attract more experienced editors so I don't see quite the same misapplying concern. -- Banjeboi 01:13, 17 April 2009 (UTC) Ya, I'm not saying that people who tag incorrectly need to be warned or reprimanded in any way, just educated. OlYellerTalktome 01:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC) IF only this would be applied in practice, there would perhaps be less opposition and criticism. However, when a template like the NYrepresentatives is tagged and people here are canvassed to come and keep it at the TfD, this is considered perfectly acceptable by members of the ARS, even though no content changes have been proposed or suggested, and the tag and message were clearly not in line with what is the proposed scope of the ARS. So I don't believe in this proposal at all, and continue to oppose any change of scope for the ARS. Fram (talk) 07:19, 17 April 2009 (UTC) As someone who has participated in that discussion and despite your claim, has made content suggestions, you have this one wrong. The original poster asked for help which is far from canvassing which entails not only telling people how to vote but where to do it. This was not that. Another canvassing accusation down the drain <gloop> <gloop> <gloop>. -- Banjeboi 10:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC) "It seems to me that {{NYRepresentatives}} should be kept if the rest of Category:United States House of Representatives delegations navigational boxes, but it is at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_April_6#Template:NYRepresentatives. I know you don't put rescue tags on templates, but this should be kept." How is this not "not only telling people how to vote but where to do it"? How to vote = it should be kept, where = TfD discussion. Fram (talk) 10:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC) As I stated the original poster asked for help, they stated their opinion but never said "everyone needs to vote to keep this". You inventing conversatios which didn't happen. Most of us are adults here and know how to register our opinion on a XfD, it's rather rude to presume we would be swayed by a canvassing request or even follow it. I wouldn't say we are immune to the concept but certainly haven't seen this effectively employed either. If we can help, we do, if not we don't. -- Banjeboi 10:41, 17 April 2009 (UTC) You claimed that no canvassing had happened, which is patently untrue. Now you claim that no one would be swayed by it, which may be true, but is a completely different discussion. I did not invent any conversation, I quoted it. Fram (talk) 11:02, 17 April 2009 (UTC) Outdent. The issue remains the same, we don't punish an editor for misusing this or any other teplate, we work to ensur ethey dont do it again. Likewise we don't accuse an entire Wikiproject for something that one editor may or may not have done. The rest is just bickering and it seems only to show emnity against the many editors here. It's unhelpful and you can consider your concern duly noted. -- Banjeboi 01:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Motion to close

Seems there is consensus to allow templates and issues how to proceed forward have also been laid out. Can we close this and move on? -- Banjeboi 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support as nom. 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC) -- Banjeboi

• I second the motion. OlYeller^Talktome 04:19, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Could you explain what you mean by "issues [on] how to proceed forward"? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 04:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

  That tweaks to; the project's mainpage and the template page should take place; template-specific parameters created so when {{rescue}} is added it displays not only the correct link (that works already) but also template-specific content rather than article-specific content. Also this is a good excuse to create the subpage on how to rescue content and templates would have its own section. -- Banjeboi 10:12, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• I don't really see that consensus. Users opposed include me, Pablo, Chris Cuningham, and Stifle. Users supporting include Benjiboi, OlYeller, JClemens, Mark Hurd, TonyTheTiger, Ikip, and Colonel Warden. Other comments came from DGG, Taemyr, AllStar, Ludwigs2, and AMiB. That's not really a consensus, and certianly not one to be decided by an involved editor. Perhaps it would be better if some examples of TfD's were given where people would want to add the rescue tag (the one example we had was not rescued), so that we can see if there would be a need for this, if this would give us any potential benefit, or if on the other hand it would only bring more rescuers to the discussion without actually doing anything about the templates (the "content", if one can call it that). Fram (talk) 11:59, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

  It may be more constructive to see if an uninvolved editor could see if my read on consensus is accurate or not and if not suggest a way forward. Given the acrimony I'm hesitant to start quibbling over examples and hypotheticals. -- Banjeboi 12:10, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

  Wouldn't it be constructive if at least one example of a recent or current TfD was provided where you consider the addition of the ARS tag to be relevant, needed, useful, ...? Now, we have a discussion if templates are "content" which can be "rescued" somehow, or are just navigational tools, or something else. Furthermore, it is absoluetly unclear if the RfC was in the end about TfD or XfD (including MfD, i.e. userpages and so on? What would the ARS do with userpages?). I don't believe the RfC has a consensus or that it could be clear what the conclusion was in the end. Fram (talk) 13:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

  TfD vs. XfD, this was technically regarding TfD a seperate discussion likely should take place to see if this speaks to XfD in general; in spirit I think it does but I'm also in no rush to use it elsewhere as we have a lot of housecleaning first. And no, if there is disagreement that there is consensus here I think it would just serve to cloud the issues to quibble on example X vs example Y. ARS' involvement in TfDs was questioned and answered so either that answer is accepted as reasonable or not. -- Banjeboi 14:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

•  Doing... currently reading the discussion. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 13:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• In general, I agree with Benjiboi's assessment in that there does seem to be a rough consensus for including the templates within the project scope. That aside, the potential benefits of doing so outweigh the concerns, in my opinion as an uninvolved administrator. Fram raised a good point above; an example or two would indeed be useful. As well, it is disappointing that the discussion was bloated with back-and-forth arguing, for lack of a better word, but when it boils down, consensus here seems to be on Benjiboi's side. Hope this helps, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:12, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Evaluation - I spent quite some time reading the discussion, condensing the arguements, and weighing people's rationale. The signal-to-noise ratio in the comments and replies could have been better, but I think I have a clear picture of consensus. Note that the original proposal concerned TfD, but the majority of the arguments discussed XfD. In my opinion, as an uninvolved administrator, there is rough consensus for the following:
  1. All items (XfD) that are "rescuable" (can be improved, cleaned up, sourced, notability demonstrated) should go to the rescue squad (get tagged with {{rescue}}).
  2. Items (XfD) that are not "rescuable" (cannot be improved, cleaned up, sourced, notability demonstrated) must not be tagged with {{rescue}}
  3. Using {{rescue}} (or other means) to canvass for !votes in a deletion discussion must be highly discouraged.
  To implement this, perhaps {{rescue}} should be modified to emphasize that it is only to be used for content that is notable/rescuable and needs cleanup/sourcing/improvement, and using it on "non-rescuable" content, or as a last-ditch effort to bring in "keep" !votes is forbidden. — LinguistAtLarge • Talk  16:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Seconded. Re-evaluation in a couple months is not a bad suggestion though. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 14:49, 25 April 2009 (UTC) +note 14:51, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Appreciate this and bit by bit we'll work through this. In reality we have learned that no matter what we do, all templates are abused and misapplied at times. To cause the least disruption we encourage ARS members to simply focus on rescuing items they can and don't stress on the rest. So if someone adds {{rescue}} to something we can't help on? It's ignored or maybe we'll comment on alternatives to why we can't help. One of the efforts that was stalled here because of the edit-warring was creating a "so you've used the rescue tag" as an auto-message for whoever places the tag. This should help in the case of a potential repeat "abuser". Our goal woudld be to get them to add the sourcing and notability or at least understand why an item likely would be deleted (it's not personal). As well as helping them understand wikiways and policies. I know, admirable, but I think it's worth a try. It's also worth noting that when folks make poor comments at XfD, regardless of the nature, they should be address and summarily weighted by the closer. -- Banjeboi 17:46, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: As an uninvolved but invited commenter, I couldn't put it better than LinguistAtLarge's analysis.
  (But I will ramble, in case it is helpful...) Any system if abused will start to break, so don't abuse it else ARS will stop being useful altogether. As a side-suggestion, it might be a good idea to offer alternatives for cases where it might be disputed whether something is "rescuable" or not - if you think another editor will seriously doubt the applicability, then instead use the following methods: [list alternatives at the {{rescue}} /doc page and at the WP:ARS mainpage]. Such as, a pointer to one of the WikiProject Deletion sorting lists, so that additional eyeballs can be gathered in an appropriate way. Lastly, if it starts to become an insurmountable problem, agree to reevaluate the change in a few weeks or months. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:13, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
• Comment As another invited but uninvolved administrator, I'll agree that there is a rough consensus. I think A Man In Black is correct to have concerns though. If these TfD alerts only translate into "keep" votes and no actual content improvement, then their purpose would appear to be canvassing only. I'd also caution against the dismissive and even biting treatment AMIB's criticisms received. His views aren't contradictory to this project, but his criteria does seem to be more strident. That's not a bad thing, and I'd argue that his responses here show that he has really thought through what needs rescuing far beyond just voting keep at every AfD. AniMate^talk 22:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
  • AMIB has shown a rather persistent disdain for this project and has been causing, IMHO, stress to the project for a long time. They do have some valid concerns but that is seperate from the regular accusations. -- Banjeboi 17:46, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Replying with more disdain isn't really addressing this. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 21:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
      • Well I was in the process of trying to address the last set of accusations when you started edit warring to remove a link to a TfD. I think it's clear you don't approve of this project, sticking around to poke and warn us to not break rules seems like a really bad idea. You've offered some constructive criticism at times but that is harder to hear when added with the more divisive issues. Let's agree that you have some valid points but if no one is hearing them it doesn't matter. -- Banjeboi 01:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
        • Attack, attack, attack, archive. I am "accusing" your proposal of not being a good one, based on your stated goals and reasoning, as well as existing Wikipedia policy. I'm not impugning your good faith or the good faith of the project as a whole; but I don't approve of this proposal. There is tremendous potential for abuse in what this project is allowed to do and in this project's tools, however, and as such a certain level of justification of the good that can be accomplished versus the risk of abuse is necessary. I'm "sticking around" to see that good work done, and "warn" that the tools should not be misused. (Do you have an argument that doesn't involve attacking me?) I'm still uncomfortable with your (lack of) an explanation of what good adding the {{rescue}} tag to non-articles will do, and "bringing more eyes to deletion discussions" is exactly the abuse I've been protesting. That's what canvassing is; bringing a group of like-minded editors to a discussion. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 01:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
          • It's really hard to accept anything you have to say when it's delivered in this way. We've had an RfC and consensus has been reached with agreement that {{rescue}} can indeed be used on TfD's. This is what you were edit-warring over and the consensus has gone against your take on the issue despite your repeated assertions of canvassing and abuse - potential or otherwise. Your alarmist approach is unhelpful and now you seem prepared to simply disrupt. I doubt that you can find I've attacked you at all, if you feel i have I apologize. I'm simply trying to do the work that this Wikiproject does which apparently you don't approve. It is also your belief that {{rescue}} doesn't belong on non-article XfDs but this RfC has shown consensus against you there as well. I also accept you may sincerely believe that having more eyes on a XfD is harmful in some ways - perhaps that's a more theoretical discussion for various XfD boards to take up? These beliefs are yours to have and hold as you see fit but how you behave is impacting this project negatively and needs to stop. You threatened me if I posted a TfD link here so I started an RfC to put the issue to rest, consensus has sided that rescue tags can be used on TfDs and this is directly attributable to your helping the community have a discussion centered on this issue. Every question you have stated and every generalized "concern" has also been addressed. Belabouring this further suggests an interest not in improving this project and the work we do but in disrupting the work we do. -- Banjeboi 22:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
            • You didn't address my argument. You can call me a gaptoothed baboon if you like, but you need to actually address my arguments instead of attacking my person.
              Bringing editors sympathetic to your viewpoint to a discussion is canvassing. You've proposed bringing more eyes to deletion discussions, but the fact is that those eyes are almost always sympathetic to someone who would tag an article for {{rescue}}. (A Nobody saying "Much as I hate to vote for deletion on an article tagged with {{rescue}}..." is an especially clear example.) Bringing this project's eyes onto the deletion discussion, instead of on content that is up for deletion, is not appropriate. A number of closers here have pointed out that this needs to be kept in mind.
              Now, there are some decent arguments for good that can be done on templates that are up for deletion; I respectfully disagree on how many templates are deleted because they are badly implemented versus how many are deleted because they are bad ideas. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 09:39, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• Outdent. Despite your claims I still haven't attacked you. I may disagree with you but I respect your right to have and voice your opinion and you seem to be doing so repeatedly. Perhaps we're talking past each here, I'm personally not invested or interested in arguing with you or anyone else. You seem to be holding onto a theory that rescue tag equals canvassing yet the community has generally agrred to allow things to move forward at this time suggesting that if problems appear then perhaps re-address the issue with solid evidence. As for which argument you feel I haven't addressed, I actually have. I think I even repeated it because you asked again. You'll find that informatin in the RfC discussion itself. I'm not sure anyone will ever convince you the rescue tag on TfDs isn't canvassing but luckily there is consensus to allow it so it seems no one has to win you over at this point. -- Banjeboi 10:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment - I too was invited, and have no previous involvement. I slogged through the discussion, and found there to be consensus. Here's my take on the canvassing dilemma: The project's name is misleading, focusing on the save, rather than the fix. I think that editors pulled in for a rescue should edit the article without voting in the deletion discussion. That's the purpose of the rescue squad: to fix articles, not be a vote-wielding special interest group. Though the rescuers should be allowed and expected to report in the discussion on what they fixed. Then the closing admin can decide if the changes made address the concerns raised. To avoid conflict of interest, the closing admin should not be on the ARS. The Transhumanist    00:00, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Reasonable sounding; the easy part first is that closing admins need to be impartial and handle those calls on their end. I wouldn't support restricting how ARS members are involved on the AFD except that policies are followed. The name issue is being discussed but I disagree rescue is more about keep than fix but it's worth noting the concerns. -- Banjeboi 17:46, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
• Note: the concerns are quite important. The "rescue" group should possibly be retitled to "fixup" (or that their role would be fully clarified) as to their role for fixing-up salvageable content rather than "rescue" anything up for deletion. Maybe "Salvage Review Crew" would be a good re-title.. just sharing my 2 cents. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 14:58, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

• Such ideas are impractical because AFD is open to all and there is no way to identify and allocate specific roles to the participants. One might wish that all participated in the manner of User:Uncle G who often makes very helpful observations without expressing a Keep/Delete vote. I suppose that he is trying to encourage collegiate research and editing rather than adversarial voting but his is a lone instance of such exemplary behaviour, alas. Current practise is that both the nominator of an AFD and the article's authors are encouraged to participate. The ARS seem more qualified to comment than drive-by per-nom voters, as the process of rescue usually involves careful study of the topic and its sources. Colonel Warden (talk) 16:57, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

• • (ec)Renaming ideas are helpful but realistically I think rescue is fine. We are, after all the last layer of emergency help for content that will be deleted. Salvage is after an item has been thrown out. Fixup applies to all clean-up projects whereas we specialize in XfD. I think it's a bit of a stretch to infer rescue=vote keep and generally no group should base its naming decisions on a small but persistent group of critics. The LGBT community would be the "We're not all diseased and depraved freaks coalition." Not suggesting you're a critic - you may be I don't know - but these issues have been discussed rather extensively over many many months and all issues of canvassing have been thoughtfully and methodically address til recently when this RfC was enacted to help stop edit-warring. -- Banjeboi 17:46, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
    • "all issues of canvassing have been thoughtfully and methodically address"? Yeah right, they have been either ignored or supported by the members of the ARS, and only addressed by the "critics". Fram (talk) 07:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
      • Your opinion is duly noted. -- Banjeboi 09:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

A discussion of interest.

“ Be aware of alternatives to deletion and only delete an article when another measure (e.g., merging) is not appropriate. ”

Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Deletion_is_to_be_a_last_resort In this, I argue that even when an AfD outcome by numbers is delete, administrators should be expected to close a discussion as merge when a reasonable merger target has been identified. That is, when we bust our butts making something verifiable and reliably sourced and enough people still think (or thought once and then never revisited the article after our improvements) it's not notable, the content we've added/improved can be expected to go to a reasonable merge target. Jclemens (talk) 19:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

great idea, but based on my experience at the deletion pages, I already know what the response will be, before I click on your link.

But hey, if the AfD can be increased to 7 days anything is possible, right? Ikip (talk) 23:32, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

It was suggested to take this to Wikipedia:Deletion Policy. Do you have plans to rewrite and do so? -- Banjeboi 18:42, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Poll: Do you support a bot which informs major contributors of an AFD?

• How many people believe we need a bot that does the following:

Bot sends an editor out an automatic message that an article which an editor has previously contributed to is up for deletion, and link to where to find the AFD at. This is done by:

1. The bot reads the AFD today page a couple times each day, and adds any new AFD to an AfD list.
2. The bot goes to each article's page, checks through the edit history, listing which editors did the most contributions (this tool already exists, also), and the amount of contributions to the article, and/or the number of edits to it, adds them to a list to be contacted. Exact number to be determined later.
3. Makes certain the person has not signed up for any, "don't send me any automatic messages like this again" list, removes names from the contact list as appropriate. The bot message also has a link to where to sign up to not get any more messages, if for whatever reason, an editor doesn't want these messages.

• Support Its not possible to have every article you worked on and care about on a watchlist, since it'd be so filled up each day from constant edits, you wouldn't be able to sort through it. If anyone spent the time and effort contributing significantly to an article, they surely want to know their work is up for deletion, and work at finding a solution to fix whatever might be wrong with it. Dream Focus 17:14, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support brilliant idea, if it is possible, have you ask on WP:VPT if this is possible? I off and on contact new editors by hand who have their articles up for deletion. This could be expanded to other contributors. Ikip (talk) 17:28, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support, does not look like a bad thing at all and may resolve several AfD related problems. --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord² 17:39, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support - couldn't hurt, although an article articles with various tags on it them should be worked on before someone catches them and nominates them for deletion. Radiopathy •talk• 18:06, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
• Does not concern the ARS - this has little bearing on the tasks of our article editing suicide squad, so I take no position. --Kizor 18:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sounds like an offer of resignation after the James Burns orchestra is no more... --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord² 22:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sounds entirely relevant to the ARS, as it would have the effect of bringing more editors to the AFD who would !vote keep. Isn't that what you do? Stifle (talk) 13:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Not related to the function or goal of ARS But go right ahead. Enough of this sort of thing and people will come to realize that ARS isn't about rescue. Protonk (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
  • ARS is not related to AFD at all? I'm happy someone pointed this out... --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord² 22:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
• Comment, query I would think there would be huge problems coding this, the main problem being who the bot will identify as a major or significant contributor. Often the biggest changes in terms of bytes, text added or deleted are vandals. Number of edits to an article is also problematic, although I suppose that you could take the number of edits to be evidence of an interest in the article. What is the aim of this bot though, and how does it benefit the project? pablo_hablo. 22:21, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is a huge, maybe insurmountable obstacle. Maybe start with an automatic notice to the creator? Ikip (talk) 01:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

• "Why not?" support Agree with the others that this isn't really an ARS-centric topic, but I don't see why every article (even the ones I would never try and rescue) shouldn't get this sort of notification. Jclemens (talk) 01:16, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support. This needs some clarification as number of edits and volume of content (added or deleted) does not always equal quality but this is certainly do-able. I suggest the template employed be compacted as likely some editors will get multiples and have a show/hide section - for newbies - that includes content on what AfD is as hints for participating as well as rescue mantras of adding sourcing and demonstarting notability. Articles tagged with {{rescue}} could serve as a testing ground. -- Banjeboi 10:04, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
• support No such bot will be perfect, but it's better than relying on manual notification. I point out that major contributors is not a biased group, as it will include those who are quite dissatisfied with the article.
• Support - What Jclemens said. OlYeller^Talktome 21:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support as those who are actually knowledgeable about the topic under discussion and willing to work on it should be heard. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 01:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

  ...are you suggesting that they be solicited directly to the AFD to comment, or encouraged to improve the article and offered resources to do so? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 01:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

  Same thing. They go to the AFD to see the reason someone nominated it for deletion, since that is where it'll be listed at. Discuss it there, and work on the article as necessary. Dream Focus 01:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

  They should do both; i.e. work to improve the article and note their improvements and what else they plan to do in the discussion as well. Best, --A Nobody^{My talk} 01:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

  Hm. I'm not happy with that for a reason I can't place my finger on, but your argument is so convincing that I can't currently refute it. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 02:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support. Looks like an effective way to improve the AfD process by making it more likely that editors familiar with the articles will enter comments. No significant downside as far as I can tell. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 01:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support surprised it doesn't exist yet Nicolas1981 (talk) 03:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support anything that helps save valuable articles cant be bad. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• My reservations aside, whoever proposes this wherever it ends up being proposed should probably find out why notifying all editors of an article up for deletion is up at perennial proposals as a routinely rejected and re-proposed proposal. There's no links to any discussions or history for that, though. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 12:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
  • It states the answer right there: Excessive bureaucracy; people are expected to keep pages important to them on their watchlist. The "first creator" is meaningless for many articles, as this person may have long since left or made few contributions; "everybody" can number several hundred people, including those who have made trivial edits to the article and aren't concerned whether or not it's deleted. This is somewhat addressed by my comment - This needs some clarification as number of edits and volume of content (added or deleted) does not always equal quality - part of the bot set-up will have to be a reality check within reason, like editors who've touched the article in the last six months and aren't bots and aren't minor edits. This still isn't foolproof but the goal is to get those who are keen on the content existing to help demonstrate sourcing or if a merge is to happen, the best target, etc. -- Banjeboi 18:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The difference between past perrinial proposals, requiring the nominator for deletion to contact the creator, and this one, is that a bot will notify editors.

Currently any editor can find who created an article by adding the name to this link (with _ or + for spaces):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NAME&dir=prev&action=history&limit=1

For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Article+Rescue+Squadron&dir=prev&action=history&limit=1

I say we find someone to create the bot, such as the editor who made the WP:ARS bot, and ask them to make it, then we get approval to use it on the bot page.Ikip (talk) 14:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Qualified Support, I agree with Dream Focus that it's not possible to have every article you worked on and care about on a watchlist, and the general sentiment that AfD should prompt concerned editors to make improvements or repairs. But I don't think it is practical to work out which editors once cherished an article vs. those who merely touched it, and I don't think this distinction is necessary anyway. When an article enters AfD, why not just generate a watchlist event for everyone who has ever edited it or commented on its talk page? There could be a "Hide automatic AfD notification" command on the watchlist page for editors who don't want to know. If some new page creators get a load of messages, well, that's valuable feedback, isn't it? - Pointillist (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support as a bot will be both neutral and impartial... neither deletionist nor inclusionist... just buzzing along doing its job. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 01:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot has already been made and approved

Found it: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Jayden54Bot

"This bot will automatically notify article authors when "their" article is up for deletion in an Article for Deletion discussion."

User:Jayden54Bot bot created and approved in January 2007.

More details: User:Jayden54Bot/AFDNotify

Opt out coding: User:Jayden54Bot/ignore.js

Currently not active, Bot was deactivated by the request of the creator, because he was "taking a very long wiki-break"[2]

Author talking about a speedy deletion bot.[3]

"I haven't given out the source code for the AfD task"[4] So no one has the coding for this bot.

Past comments on this same idea, other bots

Bot requests page: AfD Notification bot "bot could automatically notify the talk pages of Wikiprojects that are associated with articles that have been nominated at AfD that the article has been nominated" 01:11, 27 November 2006: Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_8#AfD_alert_bot, created Jayden54Bot Our suggestion (short): Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_14#AfD_notification_bot, Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_21#Afd_notification 09:26, 29 September 2007: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_43#Notification_as_part_of_deletion_process Our deletion process would suck less if http://wikidashboard.parc.com/ was used to identify the main contributors of an article put up for deletion and they were notified. WAS 4.250 09:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC) ...It is altogether absurd that creators of articles are not notified. Unlike speedy, many if not most articles that come here have long histories, and it's difficult to program a bot with the intelligence necessary to notice whom the main contributors are -- and this is really the only reason against having it totally automatic. I however do not see why a first step could not be made by having a bot that notifies at least the original creator. Even if it was 3 years ago and the person is no longer around, no harm would be done. I've never learned how to program these--any volunteers? This won't deal with the problem of notifying all significant contributors, but that can be discussed a little later on. DGG (talk) 03:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC) A bot that notifies the creator, at worst, wouldn't do any harm. I'd support that. Randomran (talk) 18:46, 14 December 2008 (UTC) Other bots User:Jayden54/WPDead Source.js

Ikip (talk) 06:05, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Automatically adding references to articles

Most of my work on wikipedia involves adding references to articles which are about to be deleted.

I found it is ESSENTIAL to have the cite tool. Here are easy instructions: User:Ikip/ref it is really easy to install. Ikip (talk) 02:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Most abused acronyms in an AfD

I have thought a lot about this list, and am finally putting it down in print, what would you add to this list and why? Is my numbering correct?

1. WP:IINFO WP:INDISCRIMINATE "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information". This section names: "Plot summaries" "Lyrics databases" "Statistics" and "News reports", but editors often quote it for any list.
2. WP:ONEEVENT and WP:BIO1E "People notable only for one event". Used for any event, no matter how signifigant.

Ikip (talk) 20:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, for WP:BLP1E, see my recent update to WP:OUTCOMES. :-) Jclemens (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Lovely. After it'd been discussed elsewhere and in place for several days, one post here and it gets reverted[5] without meaningful comment within 10 minutes of this post. Jclemens (talk) 21:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

That's not a closely watched page. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 23:35, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

No, but I would presume that WT:BLP is both more relevant and more closely watched than here, which is where the discussion actually took place. Something's wrong if describing a new consensus on an unrelated page immediately results in a reversion without discussion. Jclemens (talk) 05:23, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Eh. It was reverted by Fritzpoll, who barely edited in the intervening two days. Plus, FP is active on BLP topics, but to my knowledge has never edited this talk page. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 12:24, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

None of those are acronyms except for BLP1E, hehe.

On a more serious note, cruft is almost always used exactly the way it means, but bear in mind that if you're arguing that the level of detail is excessive you're going to at least be able to justify that claim if challenged. If not, well, making conclusions you can't support is blowing hot air.

As for WP:BLP1E, be very careful about this, but you can almost always rewrite the article, disposing of the affectation of a biography. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 23:33, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinking about it, and after AMIB comments, I removed WP:Synth and WP:CRUFT. I still think that WP:IINFO is really abused though...Ikip (talk) 23:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

AMiB, if you're going to be pedantic, BLP1E isn't an acronym either. It's an initialism. Ha! yandman 09:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Ack! Hoist by my own petard. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 10:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

1Es the one I encounter most frequently. They use all sorts, Some seem to grasp at the first policy that comes into their heads. When you look at the wording its clearly inapplicable , and it can be so obvious you feel almost like you’re insulting them to point it out. Grrrrrr! FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

You mean: WP:BLP1E? Ikip (talk) 13:40, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep thats the one. I dont yet have a seasoned ARS campaigners precision of expression :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The sad fact is that all Wikipedians use these initialisms as a crutch, some much more than others. My advice is to always be able to explain the policy or guideline in your own words before you use it, so that if challenged you can successfully defend its relevance. (And this might be a way to discourage their abuse -- get the other party to explain how a given acronym/initialism applies.) -- llywrch (talk) 16:21, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I have been toying with a way of making templates, that instead of typing WP:BLP1E, you would type: {{WP:BLP1E}} and the name of the policy would be listed fully, with a link to the page. Ikip (talk) 16:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure where I turned it on but my browser does that for me. If I mouse over any internal link, it shows me the first few lines (including the full title) or the page the link points to. It's very useful. OlYeller^Talktome 17:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• Question. Is this all regarding the common outcomes page or something else? -- Banjeboi 00:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It is not regarding the common outcomes page. I just posted my ideas, and Jclemens then mentioned the outcomes page. Ikip (talk) 00:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• WP:NOTPAPER (not an acronym) is often cited as a blanket policy to justify any article, despite saying "This policy is not a free pass for inclusion: articles must still abide by the appropriate content policies, particularly those covered in the five pillars" pablo_hablo. 08:28, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• On WP:IINFO, while that section names a few examples, the page does point out earlier that "[t]he examples under each section are not intended to be exhaustive; see WP:BEANS". Just because it's not specifically mentioned doesn't mean it's indiscriminate, although some analysis of what is and isn't indiscriminate is overdue. Stifle (talk) 13:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. This seems somewhat useful info but I'm unsure where it could be directed to? Arguments to avoid or ? -- Banjeboi 10:48, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Archiving methods

Isn't it time automated archiving was set up for this page? The current method is that one editor archives what he doesn't like any more, and keeps here anything which gets his approval. Sections are simultaneously archived and kept here, other sections are archived less than a day after the last post in it... I can give examples if people would prefer those, but I think the general point is more important, that we either get a bot to do it (impersonal, more reliable), or continue to do it manually (more flexible) but with better care or some basic rules. Fram (talk) 06:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It does appear that the archiving as of late has been irregular and contentious. I suggest we take advantage of one of the bots and set up automatic archiving. Jclemens (talk) 06:43, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually that would screw up prior threads that are still relevant but have been collapsed. And Fram, I've been trying to archive threads to minimize IMHO unneeded drama. I've gotten quite a few offwiki complaints about it and Wikiproject's aren't soapboxes for or against deletionism/inclusionism so I've been trying to focus purely on the work here. That the accusations and disruption has been from two admins is probably the most alarming part but if you're unwilling or unable to work with other editors here we can look to some alternatives. I've been moving and collpsing threads, appropriately, or so I thought but AMIB wanted to say something more in one and for some reason also brought back the one about the sock farm. I'll post a note to that one and see if we can't archive it as well. The other outstanding threads were generally stalled in place because of the TfD RfC which I was hoping we could move on from. -- Banjeboi 22:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ben. There are a couple of editors who regularly edit here who contribute absolutly nothing to the Article Rescue Squadron project (ironically this is how they approach most articles up for deletion too--they are only there to complain about everyone else's efforts, adding nothing of any value to the article itself).

One in particular has tried everything in his power to derail this project, and harrassed several Article Squadron members.

I wanted to have a ARS poll to topic ban this editor for ARS, and maybe we should still do this. Ikip (talk) 03:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Off-wiki complaints are irrelevant, if they have a problem, they should tell so here. And if you want to minimize drama, then don't start throwing "drama" and other uncivil remarks out every time a discussion isn't to your liking, and instead of archiving threads where just prior your incorrect statements have been corrected, it would be better to either acknowledge your errors or just do some research before you make them. Furthermore, there is no reason why the RFC is archived and still on this talk page at the same time, or why the active discussion "Is it appropriate to put a rescue tag on a guideline page?" is removed here and archived twice on the same page, or why there is absolutely no order in the archives, neither in the individual pages (e.g. Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron/Archive 27) or between the pages, making it very, very hard to find an older discussion again. Of course, when the same discussion starts Archive 25 and Archive 26, then it becomes easier again. And Ikip, if you want to discuss an editor, please start a new thread instead of derailing this one. But I don't think that a project that wants to silence its critics will give a very good impression. Fram (talk) 06:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Generally items are archived as the discussion warrants. It's generally peaceful enough around here minus your and A Man In Black's input that things would be discussed, discussion would die down and we'd mve on. This project's work concerns a tighter time frame s many threads were about a XfD r discussin that was nly active for a short time. The concern of finding something in our archives is the first I think I've ever heard. All the archives link to each other and are generally in a chronological order. A few items were double posted because somene unarchived them and then that discussion was rearchived. In short if you have something to say perhaps saying it once will do the trick, if you are repeating yourself it may be that the issue is much less important to other editors than you. -- Banjeboi 10:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Why archive something if not to be able to find it again in the future? As for chronological order? Archive 24 has a discussion from 16-17 March 2009, 25 Feb - 21 March 2009, 1-6 March 2009, 23-25 March 2009, and 23-27 September 2008... Archive 27: 10-24 April, 29 January, 29 March-4 April, 16-23 April, 17-19 April, 22-23 April, and 13-20 February. The rest of your comments are mostly irrelevant or ironic. Fram (talk) 11:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

So um. This fighting is super amusing and all, but the bot archiving? Anyone care? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 09:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, don't do it per discussion above. -- Banjeboi 10:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Which part? It's easy to keep a discussion from being archived, just by tagging it with {{unresolved}}. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 22:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

An archiving bot sounded good but Im not sure after reading Banjebois comments. On the other issue, I would support a topic ban for anyone who goes about blocking ASR members for no good reason, regardless of any constructive criticism and friendly banter they have to offer the project. Unless of course they undertake to give a lot more thought before issuing any further blocks! FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have moved a number of permanently kept discussions to Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron/Background. Having too many of these makes this page too big and too cumbersome, but having such useful discussions and information gathered in one place instead of over thirty archives is obviously beneficial. This way, this page can be automatically archived, and all good info can be kept together anyway. This probably needs refining, but it's the way most projects work, and creates better archives which much less hassle. Fram (talk) 13:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Anything that saves time and hassle cant be bad! FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

In this case it was. These are issues that are still open and ongoing, those of us looking at long-range planning are still sorting the best way to handle many of these more complex issues. Those threads were collapsed so except for minimal space, the only concern was size and those were pretty small. All in all not an improvement and making things harder for keeping things organized. -- Banjeboi 14:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Then bring back the ongoing ones. There were two sections with posts from March, and there were no posts from April 2009 at all. "Harder for keeping things organized"? At least in this way we could have decent archives. Fram (talk) 14:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

We've been archiving manually since the project began and this is the first I've heard that anyone couldn't find something, which is the point of archiving - that you can reference something when you need to. Almost all archiving is inherantly chronological. Threads are generally archived by stale date not start date. This haven't been concerns until recently and once a few of these more voluminous threads die down things should be quite reasonable again. Perhaps adding an archive indeax would make sense so it's easier to access the threads? -- Banjeboi 19:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

As shown above, it is not chronological, neither by start date not by stale date, but more or less randomly. Why would you manually archive things in a haphazard way and then add an index so that people can find anything back in that mess, when you can have a bot doing the same things much better? Your care above was "keeping things organized", but things are not organized now, and no good reason is given why an archive bot is not acceptable. That I am the first to raise this issue is not really indicative of anything: these archives are only read a few times a month, so the less effort is put into them (to create them and to search them afterwards), the better. Fram (talk) 12:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Since there are demonstrably problems with the current archiving, and solutions for all remarks which lead to opposition against automated (bot) archiving, I have attempted to set up Miszabot to archive this page automatically (discussions without new posts in the last 7 days). All discussions at the top of the talk page will not be automatically archived, as I have added a hidden timestamp in the far future. Once you think these discussions may be archived, you can simply remove the hidden comment. Likewise, new discussions you want to have around for a bit longer can be kept here in the same way. This is the first time I have set up the archivebot, so if there are errors in how I did it, just let me know and I'll try to fix it. The auto-archives should start with #31. If people prefer a longer archiving time, no problem, but since 7 days is the time of AfD's and Prod's as well, it seemed logical. Fram (talk) 12:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but your fix creates its own problems. The only "problems" seemed to be early archiving of some threads which you seem to agree can now be aged seven days before archiving. I've added a search option to the archive box to help the stated issue of not being able to find items. Perhaps this will address the assumptions of other editors motives and help us all move forward? -- Banjeboi 23:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

How cooperative to state that my fix creates its own problems, without then listing even one of them, while at the same time misrepresenting the current problems (it's not only "early archiving of some threads", but also "late archiving" of others, which gives us archives without any order, which then has to be fixed through a search box). Anyway, could you, perhaps, please, state what the problems with the archive bot are, so that people can discuss them and see whether they are truly a problem and/or can be fixed? Fram (talk) 07:27, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we're missing each other's thoughts here. You posited that there was a problem and others agreed that waiting a week to archive stale threads seemed a reasonable solution. I've agreed to that compromise. You stated that you feel you couldn't find something? in the archives and we've added a search box to also adddress that. Now you seem concerned that we aren't archiving certain threads fast enough. Sorry, I don't see the problem with that. Not all threads are created equal and it would be foolish not to point out the obvious that your main and possibly only contributions here have been to disparage this project. Hanging around just to help us see how seemingly bad we are seems like a terrible idea and one whose only net result is to cause more disruption. The old system worked fine until yourself and AMIB came along, IMHO, filling up thread after thread with rather pointy and uncivil comments. Valid points - that is, anything constructive - simply got lost in unhelpful "drama". This is not a soapbox or the wild west frontier where we wage battles as Wikipedia is not a battleground. All this non-stop prickliness has gotten in the way of actually addressing some solutions to issues that others have been working on while simultaneously making this talkpage rather toxic and unwelcoming. There's a common saying that can apply to the archiving concern, if it ain't broke don't fix it. You've pointed out three concerns and others have agreed and I've fixed two of them. The third, essentially archiving all threads exactly seven days stale doesn't work here as many of these items are on hold. I see no reason to further change what had been working up until recently and your other stated concerns have been addressed so I'm left feeling you wish to simply engage as you have done on seemingly every other thread and that holds little interest I'm afraid. -- Banjeboi 17:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

"I've agreed to that compromise"? I must have missed that agreement then, last I noticed was that you denied any problems, and only added a search box, which is helpful but insufficient. There are disputes over when to archive things: you state that the bot would archive some things too early, I state that you archive some things too soon and some too late, but that the bot at least can be made not to archive any section pretty easily, with future timestamps. This system works for every other project talk page I know of, from the contentious ones like WP:ANI to the more mundane ones. I can't help but feel that it is you who wants to object, simply because I made the proposal, and even though other people like Jclemens and FeydHuxtable have no problems with this. But I'm glad you've brought the old "drama" up again, that's really helpful. This page now is 250Kb long, so perhaps we do have some archiving problem after all...Fram (talk) 19:21, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have poked at a sore subject. I would like to archive some of the itms that seemed to have run their course but a rough consensus is that we should wait a week to let things go stale. Up until recently this really hasn't been an issue. I'm hoping it won't be again as the recent events have delayed actions, and thus archiving other items. I pretty much would have the same response to the general idea of auto-archiving regardless of who presented it. Personally I see the volume n this page as a symptom of larger issues beyond ARS but I'm choosing to work on teh areas that I am best able. -- Banjeboi 10:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Large numbers of country relationships articles nominated for deletion in a short period of time

I see some of the articles have Rescue tags, and have been worked on, and plenty are there to have them saved. However is it possible to save all of them in time?

Some editors have nominated a vast number of these types of articles within a short time period.

In one of these articles, Algeria and Cyprus relations the president of one nation mentioned to the other his people wanted to reunite the countries. Now obviously, that makes it notable. I'm wondering how many other articles out there might be deleted, because of the fact that it is far easier to simply nominate something for destruction, instead of searching for some facts. Most of these articles I have seen thus far, are obviously worthy of keeping.

My case is this:

• Any relationship between two countries is notable.
• If you speak the language of either nation, you can easily search their newspapers, it highly unlikely that not a single notable event happened between them throughout their history.

So I'm asking for any who speak another language, to please look over this rather large collection of articles nominated, and briefly search for newspaper articles about them. It shouldn't take long to do. Dream Focus 03:16, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to talk to User:Marcusmax one of the more active new ARS members. He and I have worked on several of these articles.

There is: Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Bilateral international relations now. In which editors attempt to rewrite these articles.

This is the reason why WP:BEFORE and WP:PRESERVE need to be enforced. 99.9% of the time these editors who put up articles for deletion make no effort to improve the article first. I could prove this easily with little research on my random day of deletions page, here: User:Ikip/AfD on average day, but I know it would persuade no one, as no amount of research has. Ikip (talk) 03:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with both of you 100%, I am possibly starting to see these Afds violate WP:POINT, as some of the reasons for the afds are just trying to get the articles deleted without even checking for content. Me along with Ikip and a few others have rescued a fair amount of these articles, and I know for a fact that about 75% of these have verifiable material however many look right past it and before you know it a salvageable article is lost. Not only are these afds sometimes uncalled for but they are also harming the afd system. -Marcusmax(speak) 13:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

it is not WP:POINT and you're not assuming good faith here. I don't nominate most X-Y bilateral relation articles that I come across (although there are probably 100s if not over 1000 in existence) but I would say over 70% I've nominated have been deleted. those that have been saved have proven notable relations from sources. having said that I've also created about 6 new bilateral articles and plan to create more when I have the time. I strongly disagree that "Any relationship between two countries is notable." using some guidelines I've been using Wikipedia:WikiProject_International_relations#Bilateral_relations. LibStar (talk) 14:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I never once mentioned you in particluar were arguing a point there are plenty of users who might be arguing a point. I am one of the most civil wikipedian's around and in no way am I blaming you nor any one person as arguing a point. It should be noted that I have taken, I believe 4 days off of wikipedia so I can remain a civil person as obviously some of these afds are turning me into somweone I don't want to be. So no hard feelings, Thanks -Marcusmax(speak) 14:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem. no hard feelings, I certainly think you are doing a good effort in AfD providing valid reasons for keep. Some (and it's a minority) editors are not backing their claims for keep with reliable sources. My goal is that we have a good concise set of X-Y country articles, but that does not mean all combinations. LibStar (talk) 14:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I also agree with this rescue of the many country relations articles being proposed for deletion, and I also don't think you said any type of personal attack to anyone Marcusmax (some editors just happen to take things too personal). I'd be available to help out with any Spanish-language relations that might need verification; recently, I was able to find Spanish-language information that helped save the Peru-Bulgaria relations article that was about to die due to the lack of search that the people proposing and supporting the delete did.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 16:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

User:MarshalN20, I am going to post the relevant portion of this message at:

Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Bilateral international relations

Thanks. Ikip (talk) 16:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Can we please begin by killing three memes? First: no, not all bilateral relations are notable; that is well established by dozens of discussions already. Second: no, saying "sources might be out there in Swahili in a Mombasa warehouse or in Thai somewhere in Bangkok" doesn't help at all, and ignores the fact that the burden of proof is on "keep" voters to supply evidence of notability. Third: no, there is no one arguing for deletion of "all" such articles, just the ones lacking notability. - Biruitorul ^Talk 17:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a flip side to those three statements Biruitorul. On the central discussion its been said that if consensus was there at least one would "support deleting all bilateral relations articles". As you say each time an AfD ends in deletion it establishes a precedent that makes further deletion easier to achieve. Yes the burden of proof is on those who want to keep these artilces and it takes a long time to search for sources especially when you know they're going to under close scruntiny. Counter wise its takes very little time to nominate large numbers of articles for deletion. This is why we need some kind of new guideline to help protect these entries, otherwise many will inevitably lost as its too much work to save them considering the rate they're being nominated at. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

If potentially notable articles are being lost - a very big if indeed - recreating them at a later date is hardly an insurmountable challenge. - Biruitorul ^Talk 18:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It's much easier and considerate to our volunteer editors to have the foundation there to begin with rather than to have to keep starting over. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 19:47, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

That statement assumes there's something worth expanding, which in the great majority of the cases that went through AfD, is not true. By that logic, nothing would ever get deleted, on the off-chance it might get improved "someday". - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Only libelous and copy vio materials should be deleted. Anything that can be verified through reliable sources, even if only enough for stub form are sufficient for a paperless encyclopedia, just as Britannica has the Micropedia and Macropedia volumes. So long as the information is factual and relevant to someone, it is worth keeping. A legitimate research question for people looking in a reference guide is "I wonder if X country has any relations with y country" and even if the article essentially only shows that the relationship is minor, it is still providing a valid service for our readership. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 20:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

To the extent that's notable, can't it be covered in, say, "Diplomatic missions of..." articles? In other words, if there's nothing other than to say "X has relations with Y", surely we don't need separate articles for all the possible permutations. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Even in that case, i.e. where it can be covered elsewhere, then we would merge and redirect. There is a convenience factor for our readers to have as many probably redirects as possible. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 20:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Going back to the "paperless" argument, another factor is that it is undesirable to have articles that no NPOV editor is watching in the long term. Unlike Britannica's Micropedia we generally don't lock a specific version of an article, so we need to be sure knowledgeable readers will read each article often enough to detect the introduction of doubtful or wrong material. IMO this isn't quite the same as notability. For example if Bulgaria has really maintained an Embassy in Luanda since 1976, I can accept there is/was something notable (at least from Bulgaria's point of view) about Angola–Bulgaria relations. But I find it hard to believe that the article will be sufficiently monitored in the decades to come. If anyone PRODed it in 2011, who would notice? - Pointillist (talk) 22:12, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You don't seem to be understanding the "paperless" argument, or at least not in your final words. This is the Internet, and just as you are afraid that anybody could show up and edit an international relations article incorrectly, you can be sure that there will also eventually be someone who will fix the article either towards a better direction or simply put it back to the way it was. Things such as these could not happen in a long paper/book encyclopedia; if errors were found, it would take the next edition to fix them. It only takes the click of a button to fix them in the Internet.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

MarshalN20, I understand more tedious detail about collaborative version/verification issues than you would ever want to discuss. It's been an issue for intermittently connected data synchronization scenarios (e.g. in CRM and ERP) for well over a decade, and the solution is usually some sort of data quality team to review changes. In Wikipedia, that layer is provided informally by knowledgeable readers being able to read/correct articles, and slightly more formally by editors' watchlists. My point is that when an article is so obscure that neither of these models will correct errors reasonably quickly—much quicker than "eventually"—it can't be relied on and probably shouldn't be in an encyclopedia, even though it is in fact notable. - Pointillist (talk) 23:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Good points, Pointillist; let me also note that many of these articles fall afoul of WP:BTW, in that there's no place from which to link to them. Take, for instance, Bulgaria–Peru relations. Is there any article that could possibly link to this one? Of course not - it's destined to sit there in isolation, at least until a future AfD takes care of it. - Biruitorul ^Talk 23:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

See below, it is obvious that no reference is adequate enough for you Biruitorul. Ikip (talk) 01:38, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Pointillis, you make mention of a problem that has been around for "well over a decade," and yet you expect to fix this problem by massively deleting articles that are notable and important for an encyclopedia to pick? Like I mentioned earlier, I am sure that there are indeed certain articles that are not notable, but it's not all of them. Considerin the lack of research people proposing and supporting the AfDs give, this matter becomes further disgusting as a way to simply delete articles for the sake of allegedely "fixing a problem" that will continue to be rampant for several more decades. I understand your point, however, about the obscurity of certain articles, but, once again and at the stake of being redundant, not all of the x-y relations articles are obscure or pointless.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 11:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Biruitorul, Pointillis only made "one" point (Not "Points"), and your obsession with the Bulgaria–Peru relations article is becoming a little bit worrying.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 11:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Ikip, please mind WP:NPA and focus on content, not contributors, and do not make false accusations. MarshalN20, you are free to worry - no one's stopping you. Bulgaria–Peru relations was, is and is destined to be rubbish; delenda est! - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Good then, you're entitled to your opinion. I suppose that just as you know more about the Wikipedia policies than I do, you also know more about rubbish than I do.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 02:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Very questionable AfDs

Currently there are 77 country relationship articles up for deletion, posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Bilateral relations, put up for deletion by a handful of editors. There is absolutly no effort at WP:PRESERVE or WP:BEFORE in any of these articles.

User:LibStar admits above that "only 70%" of his AfDs are being deleted.

Biruitorul, despite disingeously saying

"If someone does find significant coverage for one or more of these pairings, I'll be glad to strike them out as that happens."[6]

...No matter how many references are provided Biruitorul never reconsiders his deletion. User:WilyD provided 36 references for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bulgaria–Uzbekistan relations and 15 references in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Romania – Saudi Arabia relations and Biruitorul dismissed them. He also calls an editor "disruptive",[7] another's edits "annoying and irrelevant "[8]

In addition, there is a JamesBurns type of sock involved in many of these article deletions. (I am contacting the editor who exposed JamesBurns. Maybe he can expose others)

A couple of issues:

1. Where can I report this to get results? WP:AFD will give me the regular response. WP:ANI maybe the same.
2. Are WP:PRESERVE, WP:BEFORE just words? 99.9% of AFD nominators never follows this. How can WP:PRESERVE and WP:BEFORE be enforced?
3. When does an editor cross the line between constructive editing and senseless deletion of other editors contriubtions?

I am really not interested in our two critical admins comments, but I will inevitably get them. Ikip (talk) 01:38, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Please comment of content, not on contributors. You've shown no independent, significant coverage at that AfD (where I generously offered to strike entries for which you found sources); not assuming good faith on my part will not bolster your argument one bit. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:39, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Calling other editors "disruptive"[9] and another's edits "annoying and irrelevant "[10] is commenting on the content?Ikip (talk) 03:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Like I said before, please stop hounding me - this is getting to be too much. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:05, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

The place to report it is in the AFD. The way to enforce WP:BEFORE is to do the work yourself, and WP:PRESERVE is already enforced by no consensus favoring keep. There is no "senseless deletion of other editors' contributions" line because it can't happen without forming a firm consensus to delete. If you want to defend something, the burden is on you to defend it with evidence.

Ultimately, this sort of article is why this project needs to exist, and rescuing them by improving the articles is laudable work. Poorly conceived, poorly executed, but potential notability. Remember, the job is to fix these articles so that they're useful to readers, not to make policy to ensure they aren't deleted. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 07:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Note Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Bilateral_relations#Article_copy_and_pasting editor has copy and pasted the same text in over 100 AfDs. Ikip (talk) 09:21, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

This has been deleted twice by A_Man_In_Black. Ikip (talk) 13:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

No, you canvassing people to come support you in your call to have an editor banned has been deleted. Thrice. WP:ARS is not your personal army. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Just as quick note, I don't think anyone could seriously regard the ARS as Ikip's "personal army" as the members of this group do not always agree with each other in AfDs; even I have argued to delete rescue templated articles. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 19:01, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

An issue we're facing recently is the mass nominating of clearly valuable articles. These bilateral relations articles are time consuming to improve – there will often be hundreds of results from searches for sources, but only a few of them will be suitable for use in the articles. We at the ARS have high standards for our work, we dont just dump sources on articles without carefully review and selection. As things stand we’re overwhelmed, especially as some of us only have limited wiki time. Ikip is right to raise these policy related issues, the encyclopaedia will suffer if valuable content keeps getting deleted because we dont have time to rescue all the worthy cases sent to AfD. A change to policy may be the only effective solution.

Also Man in Black, please stop deleting ikip's posts, we're quite capable of doing our own housekeeping. And please dont make false accusations against members of this project - no ones trying to get anyone banned that I can see, allthough it may be neccessary to pursue dispute resolution if certain administrators aparently hostile to this project dont stop throwing their weight around.FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Then save the ones you can, and the ones that can't be saved can trivially be undeleted when you do find something. The important work is not the fighting; the important work is the writing. If you want a whole slew of them for userspace, I'm game, as are dozens of admins. It's not like anything is lost forever, and there's no harm of offending the article creator because said creator is no longer with us. There's no failing to keep up, because most of the ones which are deleted have no useful information not contained in the title (and let me know the ones that do have useful info and I can undelete).

As for the rest, "we" includes me. This is not the place to advertise discussions of editor conduct. WP:RFC, WP:ANI, WP:AN, and WT:AFD are all more appropriate. I am hostile to attempts to use this project as a personal army, but eminently sympathetic to editing articles so that they don't suck. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 15:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with A Man in Black's removal of the notifications. The ARS is an a rescue squadron, and ought to be concerned with developing articles to an acceptable standard in a short space of time, not investigation matters internal to AfD, which is a separate project. We have enough issues with public perception as it is. Skomorokh 14:58, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

User:LibStar admits above that "only 70%" of his AfDs are being deleted I'm happy to admit that, I stand by my nominations are respect the final decision reached by the AfD process. Ikip, I feel that you have issues with the whole AfD process, perhaps you need to ask that the AfD process be totally revamped, I heard of one editor ages ago who believed there should be no deletion except in the case of hoaxes. where is the proof that "99.9% of AFD nominators never follows this [WP:BEFORE]" LibStar (talk) 07:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Motion to close Bilateral international relations thread

Opinions have been expressed and some good points raised. However there is both a task force and a centralized discussion where constructive input should be taken and possibly used;

• Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Bilateral international relations
• Wikipedia:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force

There is a very large number of these articles (hundreds, I believe) and a rough consensus was to not bundle multiples in one AfD. Ergo dozens will be flowing through and each will have it's own due consideration. Some may be tagged for rescue and when they appear this project will do what we can. If there is credible evidence of abuse by editor(s) AN or ANI is the most logical place if not WT:AFD. Also Wikipedia:Translators available may be able to help find/translate sources although I suggest that route as a cumbersome and slow solution.

I therefore propose we close this thread and direct those interested to invest energies in finding ways forward. -- Banjeboi 11:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• Support close. as nom. -- Banjeboi 11:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
• Polls, evil, etc. but I think we're done here. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 11:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
• Thirded - best that these are addressed by the specific taskforce mentioned by Benjiboi above: with a couple of hundred countries there are likely to be a lot more of these bitateral articles coming down the pipe. pablo_hablo. 12:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Old bot idea

I found this at AfD: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_42#Bot_Idea

"I have had an idea for a bot that would help out a lot on AfD's, esepecially those regarding notability, by providing references and information for new articles. See my ideas etc at User:TheFearow/RefBot".

I don't know what happened to this idea ... Ikip (talk) 05:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It was probably abandoned for {{find}}. -- Banjeboi 22:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Red cunt hair

Just a heads-up; the previously rescued Red cunt hair has now been deleted; I've taken it to DRV here because I don't see a consensus in the AfD - but it's not looking too good.  Chzz  ►  19:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Normally I'd pitch this as canvassing (hey guys, come back me up at DRV), but a comment made there bears discussion. "The project has been approved to assess the viability of content for the project and vote accordingly." Where did this attitude come from? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 21:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea where that came from. ARS is chartered to make improvements on articles that are salvageable. We're no more chartered to sit as judges on any article than any other editors are. Jclemens (talk) 22:57, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

If the article was rescued, and then got deleted anyway, against consensus, then it does affect all of us. You can't have rogue editor ignoring everyone in the AFD, and deciding on their own what to do, or the consensus system becomes irrelevant. Dream Focus 10:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

"ignoring everyone in the AFD", that is, except for those that supported deletion, I suppose? Anyway, this deletion review is already at the correct venue, i.e. DRV: the ARS has nothing to do with that process. Fram (talk) 10:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Ignoring the majority, I should've said. There was obviously no consensus for delete. Dream Focus 10:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

A majority of 11 keeps vs. 10 deletes. Of course, AfD's aren't a votecount and strength of arguments is more important than raw numbers, so it may well be that we have an admin who hasn't ignored anyone or any opinion, but given them all the weight they deserve, or it may be that we have an admin who has misjudged the closure, without being "rogue" and so on. But again, that's a case for DRV, not for ARS. Fram (talk) 10:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that in your reply to me, you for some reason included the edit summary ""Red cunt hair" 12,600 hits on Google". It's not really useful to make such arguments in edit summaries, and it is hardly relevant anyway, since "black cunt hair" also gives more than 10,000 hits[11]. Fram (talk) 11:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, this isn't clear: is there an opportunity and a need to improve a threatened article? If not, why is this section here? --Kizor 10:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

To canvass inclusionists, just like everything else on this page. Stifle (talk) 13:21, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

That's both incivil and untrue. If you want your move proposal to be taken seriously, such open and unjustified antagonism isn't helping. Jclemens (talk)`

The comments on that DRV suggest that he's right, however. Black Kite 17:00, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments to one DRV suggest that everything on this page exists to canvass inclusionists? For certain non-traditional interpretations of "everything", perhaps, but not in any meaning I routinely use. Jclemens (talk) 17:13, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Get bent. In the absence of anything relevant to the scope of the Squadron, I'm tagging this as resolved. Discussion about scope and scope creep could be topical in its own section, though. I'll personally stay out of it but will try to rescue a couple of articles instead. --Kizor 19:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. More accusations of canvassing of ARS yet DRV is in fact one area in which we can help. In this case I don't see what we can do without actually being able to work on the article but making blanket accusations against the whole project seems less than productive. If the article did exist we would apply the {{rescue}} tag and point to the DrV - which in turn points to the AfD. Potential rescuers would need to take in all the salient stated deficiencies and see if the article was indeed rescueable. I find the toxic approach of labelling all the work of the rescue project as canvassing uncivil and unproductive. Our members have rescued many many items and will continue to improve Wikipedia in this manner. Jumping on editors for stepping out of form seems likely over-reacting. If closers on AfD and DrV can't adequately weight the many facets of a discussion that is a different issue that ARS has no control over. -- Banjeboi 23:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Hey, one more incident where nearly everyone agrees that it is canvassibng, but you don't... DRV is about the AFD closure, not about the merits of the article, so imprvong an article during a DRV would have no effect on the discussion, as it is irrelevant. The only thing you can do on a DRV is argue that the closer interpreted the diuscussion incorectly, which has nothing to do with the ARS. Of course labelling all the work of the ARS as canvassing is incorrect, but when you have people who argue that nothing is canvassing, no matter how blatant, then some backlash is to be expected. Fram (talk) 07:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
    • (sigh) Did I state anywhere that I didn't see this as canvassing? Please stop mischaracterizing me or the work of this project which you apparently disagree at every turn. And you're wrong; ARS does improve articles at DRV even saving a few but more important helping others see that AfD's sometimes close in error and that notable subjects are deleted mistakenly. DRV is not AfD 2.0 but if, for example, the AfD stated no notability, etc but in process of the DRV new sourcing showed notability then the entire issue becomes moot. We don't delete an article just because the process said to, we keep or delete because it's that right result at the time. One reason DrVs are overturned is that opinions were presented with less information that we now have in hindsight. This isnt a battle to keep or delete. This is part of an overall project to serve our readers with the best articles possible. As to the canvassing warning sirens? My point has been confirmed again that by making a huge deal out of it has caused much more drama than simply handling it civilly. Ergo the complaints about the post caused much more divisiness than the post itself ever did. -- Banjeboi 18:01, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
      • "More accusations of canvassing of ARS yet DRV is in fact one area in which we can help. " certainly does not give the impression that you consider this canvassing. And where did I "mischaracterize the work of this project"? Creating a new, adequate article instead of a previously AfD deleted one is normal editing process and does not concern DRV (or ARS). Only when a page is salted can a trip down DRV lane be necessary to get it unsalted. As for drama, you are still the only one going on about this, just like you have not given even one example of an editor who canvassed here and was civilly adressed by you, thereby solving that problem. Fram (talk) 19:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. It may make sense to allow the DRV to finish but User:Chzz/Red cunt hair2 is the userfied article. Unsure how similar to the deleted article it is. -- Banjeboi 01:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Likewise for Hollie Steel

Why is there a Rescue tag on an article that's now at DRV? Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission? Just curious. Radiopathy •talk• 02:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

DRV is in fact one area in which we can help. By actually working on the article our members have rendered entire delete discussions moot. If an article exists we would apply the {{rescue}} tag and point to the DrV - which in turn points to the AfD. Potential rescuers would need to take in all the salient stated deficiencies and see if the article was indeed rescueable. I find the toxic approach of labelling all the work of the rescue project as canvassing uncivil and unproductive. Our members have rescued many many items and will continue to improve Wikipedia in this manner. -- Banjeboi 23:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Whoa! Easy Ben! I am a member of the ARS. My concern was that this would be seen as canvassing, especially since "What the Rescue tag is not for" does not say anything about articles that have already been through AfD. We need to talk about this some more. Radiopathy •talk• 23:58, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, I find the constant accusations by a small but persistent group toxic and impeding the work here. I re-added the rescue tag and DRVs are structurally just different from AfD. They aren't AFD 2.0 but speak to if the AfD closed properly. ARS in the past has rescued articles at DRV by improving the article itself and addressing the issues raised. If we show the subject is notable and sourcing available then AfD's can be overturned based on new evidence - even if the close at the time was ok or borderline. -- Banjeboi 00:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move

I propose that this is renamed to Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Rescue, for naming consistency with all other WikiProjects. Stifle (talk) 13:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• neutral I can be persuaded both ways. Ikip (talk) 13:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Support, after a bruising WP:ANI all day today posted by AMIB (because I posted a link here), I think that renaming would give the project more legitimacy. Other wikiprojects regularly post links to afds etc. on their talk pages, and no one seems to care. I really can be persuaded the other way, but I think it is a good idea for the project, and will blunt some of the criticism. How about Wikipedia:WikiProject Rescue Squadron? We wanted to get rid of "article" anyway, up above. Ikip (talk) 00:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• oppose Unlike many other projects we're not devoted to any one topic, our mission is to save valuable content for the encyclopaedia as a whole, so our unusual name seems appropriate. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:13, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Being a collaborative enterprise in the Wikipedia namespace does not a WikiProject make. Skomorokh 16:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  Using WikiProject banners kind of does, though. Stifle (talk) 08:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

  In form only. If it alleviates your worries, I've converted the header to a {{tmbox}}. Skomorokh 19:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of simple minds. Why don't we rename WP:AN to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Administrators Noticeboard? Because, like ARS, it's not a group of editors aligned to take care of one particular topic or issue, but an integral part of the maintenance of Wikipedia. Jclemens (talk) 16:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  Would you care to elaborate on what you mean by "an integral part of the maintenance of Wikipedia"? I never thought about it that way. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 17:00, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  Sure. Like WP:3O, it's a problem resolution service staffed by volunteers which doesn't need administrative tools to function. 3O deals with content disputes, ARS deals with articles nominated for deletion that at least one user believes are inclusion-worthy, by editing them to make them suck less. Also like 3O, ARS has no "to do" list, but reacts to issues as they are raised. Jclemens (talk) 17:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  Unlike a Wikiproject, 3O has no ownership. There are people who regularly comment at 3O, but it doesn't have any members or maintainers. ARS, on the other hand, has a clear membership, coordination of efforts, group projects, etc., much as a Wikiproject does.

  How would you respond to this? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 17:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  That the similarities between ARS and 3O (and similar maintenance efforts) outweigh the differences, which have been given WP:UNDUE weight in your characterization. Jclemens (talk) 17:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  NPOV doesn't really apply to policy discussions, heh. I'd be curious to know what your definition of a wikiproject is, and why ARS doesn't fit. My definition is a group of editors coordinating their efforts on articles to serve a common cause (in this case, improving articles up for AFD). - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 17:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  Something interesting I discovered... I'm not a member. Funny thing, I've done as much work for ARS as I have for 3O, which doesn't even have a membership list. Guess I haven't been that much of a joiner; that might color my viewpoint. Jclemens (talk) 00:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Support makes sense, and "squadron" is a silly name that furthers the already bad perception of this group. Verbal chat 17:38, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  What bad perception? Article Rescue Squad is the place to be, and to be seen at! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:07, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

  Man. If ARS is the Studio 54 of Wikipedia I'm going to have to get a sequined shirt. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 18:24, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

If it weren't for the "Squadron" in the name, I would have completely ignored the Talk Page message inviting me here. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 18:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. The name is fine and there really isn't set rules on naming conventions. WAR (Wikiproject Article Rescue) is a terrible idea for an acronym for this or any Wikiproject is we aren't a battleground despite some editor's interest in such activities. We just recently had a discussion on renaming so it may may sense to review what went on there. -- Banjeboi 23:04, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per Benjobi. Also WP:WAR is already widely used. PhilKnight (talk) 23:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose due to what has already been said. I do have to comment, though, that the "Squadron discussion" held above had its bit of funny.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 01:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose There has been mainstream news coverage under (I assume) the current name, which means they think it's catchy. As for "bad perception of this group" above, that was written by someone involved in major deletionist editing of an article about which I've inquired below. Those who remember the deletionist "Spoiler police" squad of 2007 may consider an inclusionist 'Fire & Rescue' analogy squadron entirely appropriate. Milo 19:21, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. This isn't a real WikiProject, and shouldn't pretend to be one. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • That's rather uncivil and unhelpful, perhaps striking through some of that would be more in keeping with our civility policies. -- Banjeboi 12:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Broda Otto Barnes

Resolved

 – Referred to Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard (WP:FTN). -- Banjeboi 21:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Is this the place to request help for an article that appears to have been given the trim-to-stub-and-AfD cheatment, barely rescued at AfD, restored, and now they're just starting it over again?

Summary: The discoveries of Dr. Barnes, MD, PhD, a now-deceased professor of medicine with a foundation web site,[12] have been continuously supported by a minority of licensed medical doctors for over 65 years. His JAMA and Lancet peer-reviewed work was eventually picked up by the alternative health community – yet it's not formally alternative. In the present weird situation, Wikipedia medical crusaders against alternative health have become idologically unable to distinguish between fringe and peer-reviewed medicine. Unencyclopedically using politics rather than science, if external alternative health advocates are for it, the anti-alternative editors seem to be against it – even though it's research done by a member of the group they support. During and after the AfD, agenda crusading devolved to obsessive denialism.

See the 10K restoration re-removed at the article [13], so far supported only by WP:IDONTLIKEIT reasoning at talk [14]. Milo 18:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

No, it is not such a place. The Broda Otto Barnes article does not appear to be up for deletion, and so is outside the scope of this squadron. Sincerely, Skomorokh 20:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You may wish to request outside involvement from relevant WikiProjects, such as WikiProject Alternative medicine. Regards, Skomorokh 20:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I've thought about this. The problem is that including BOB in WikiProject Alternative medicine sort of 'proves' that the crusaders are justified. Milo 22:38, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The Fringe theories noticeboard is also watched by people interested in problems of demarcation, weight, and appropriate sourcing. - 2/0 (formerly Eldereft) (cont.) 20:48, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe. There has been an unsupportable fringe accusation. But a noticeboard doesn't provide ongoing editor support the way a Wikiproject might.

←Thanks for the helpful referrals. What the article really needs is centrists like DGG who, like most librarians, believes in the right to read what others want to censor or slant. Is there another Wikiproject that could be helpful in that way?

Also, thanks to Ikip for restoring this post after A Man in Black went rogue and deleted it here. Milo 22:38, 6 May 2009 (UTC) 01:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Other wikiprojects are conducting themselves the exact same way as ARS is, with absolutely no criticism

I would suspect that editors in other wikiprojects are pretty much free to post whatever links they want. I have never been involved in other wikiprojects, but I think I may investigate this. I know Wikiproject videogame is a very vibrant and popular page...Ikip (talk) 00:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

DRV notices and discussions in other projects:

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Archive_RuneScape#Zezima "Just so everyone knows, Zezima (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) is up at DRV" (more) Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Archive_RuneScape/Archive_2#Rogue_subpage_patrol "Sorry to all the RuneScapeWikipedians out there, but Wookieepedia is on AfD/DRV every other week, and that has been featured in notable/reliable third party publications" Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Archive_65#Really_dumb_edit_war with A Man In Black telling editors that "Heads up, there's a bit of edit warring going on at Super Conflict: The Mideast over some game guide content. Some extra eyes would be appreciated." and another editor saying, "This should be a lot simpler than the current DRV we're going through." Question: So it is acceptable for the editors at WikiProject Video games to canvas editors to join edit wars in articles but wikiproject Article Rescue Squadron can't? Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics active discussion about whether to take an article to DRV. Announcment of DRV Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pokémon "The recently deleted Pokémon copyright templates are now on DRV here" Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_AFL#Ridiculous_new_category WikiProject_AFL: "I'd be taking this to WP:DRV", "I've nominated 17 of the 'nationality' categories for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 April 1"..."I wasn't aware of DRV, it looks like that may be the best way to go. I'll take up the issue at DRV tonight, unless someone wants to start up the discussion in the meantime." WikiProject Baseball "The Category:Knuckleball pitchers was deleted a few days ago as a result of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 April 6#Category:Knuckleball pitchers. I am planning to seek to overturn this decision at WP:DRV, in which several issues will be raised, including the fact that procedure was not followed in notifying readers of the category being up for deletion"..."The discussion is continuing, and it's been moved to Wikipedia:Deletion review/Infinite monkey theorem in popular culture. So far 16 favor "relisting" the article, which could result in restoring it, and 16 endorse its deletion." WikiProject_Mathematics WikiProject University of Cambridge "There is now a DRV on the categories for Wranglers, a travesty Cantabrigians will wish to remedy." Wikipedia:WikiProject_Lists "The debate is not getting anywhere - one keep verdict is leading to another delete-all proposal. I have been asked to go to DRV with this, instead of a second nomination...But, since it seems to be a bigger issue than a simple-minded DRV I think it should be discussed here first. It is highly possible that an editor with diligence and enough understanding of the policies can go article by article to get them deleted through the proper process. But, it is always better to have broader consensus on a class of articles that keeps harassing the intelligence of many editors....In this case I concur with the suggestion to take it to DRV, in particular per the difference between this outcome and this one...That's the easy way out. But, DRV may not be the right place to discuss the annihilation of an entire class of articles...DRV would only mean only a delete/no-delete verdict, without any scope for further discussion on other prospects" Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics "The 2nd wranglers cfd has been closed as delete and the closer has declined an invitation to re-open. Perhaps someone would like to start a DRV on both the wranglers categories." WikiProject IRC "not been able to work on the project to do list in a few weeks due to some AfDs and DRVs. It looks like I might have to deal with yet another DRV for two of the IRC-related user categories as well." WikiProject_Idol_series "DRV for Alexis Grace is at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_February_28#Alexis_Grace; procedural DRV to examine the issue of Wikiprojects determining their own notability guidelines. Black Kite" WikiProject Blogging "Was it speedied? You could take it to DRV and see the consensus? Right, I've posted it on DRV. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 April 26. This isn't lobbying, just mentioning it so all parties know." WikiProject_Psychology "Template:Emotion-footer seems to be a list of topics that may lend themselves with being dictionary definitions rather than articles. Now pending at DRV is the Disappointment DRV. Your comments at that DRV may help in resolving this Psychology(?) issue. Thanks." WikiProject Palestine WikiProject_Arab-Israeli conflict "Some editors are trying to delete the weapon systems list from this article. It is the main part of this article. Here is the last revision of the intact article: [15] This article already survived a recent AFD, a recent incident report, and a recent DRV.United States military aid to Israel (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs). See: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United States military aid to Israel. WikiProject UK Waterways "Two things seem to have been deleted here, firstly Association of Nene River Clubs and secondly, and more importantly, the fall-out seems to have lost us user:Renata. I can quite understand why 8-( If I take this waterways-related article to WP:DRV, will there be any assistance from this WikiProject? I'm happy to do some legwork over arguing the deletion process, but I know practically nothing about the subject matter and so cannot make promises to do anything about fixing it. Is this Association notable? Is this Association notable according to the standards of WP:N? Can anyone assist with the sort of referencing it needs added, so as to pass the attentions of people with this sort of attitude to content." WikiProject Cricket "I also suggested that if he just wanted to recreated the stubs to either go through WP:DRV or discuss the matter here first." WikiProject Football "I added a deletion review for the Abubakar Bello-Osagie article, as he has now played a fully professional league match (he played a Campeonato Brasileiro Série A match, check here), thus he now passes WP:ATHLETE. The deletion review is available here. Feel free to give your opinions." WikiProject_Comics "This category has been deleted and its subcategories have all been nominated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_7#Category:Fictional_characters_by_superhuman_power How do we get this reversed? This category represents several hours of work by multiple people and it would be a shame if future visitors to wikipedia could no longer benefit from it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Irate velociraptor (talk • contribs) See Contesting_after_deletion. That's your best bet. Honestly, remember that this isn't 'your' site. All of us have had hard work deleted, and while we don't always agree with it, if the majority comes down and says 'this goes', then it goes. Essentially you want a Deletion Review (see WP:DRV). Also, please don't forget to sign your posts :) -- Ipstenu (talk|contribs) 13:39, 14 March 2007"

• Over 150 more examples
• The word deletion in wikiprojects: 4984 times.
• The word AFD in wikiprojects: 2414 times.

What is amazing in all of these DRV and deletion discussions, some several pages long, is there is no argument that these discussions should or should not be taking place on these pages. These editors actively argue deletion strategies and tactics, with no repurcusions. What is also amazing is that many of these wikiprojects do the same thing we do: actively save or delete articles, the only difference is, is that their focus is much narrower.

I am tired of the blatant hypocricy of our critics. No other project gets as much scrutiny and nit picking as article rescue squadron does. No other wikiproject has been put up for deletion 3 times.

Maybe from now on, if someone comes and complains about this project, we simply refer them to the now dormant Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion, and tell them to restart that project.Ikip (talk) 01:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• Good stuff. Thanks. Radiopathy •talk• 03:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I was thinking of creating a special FAQ page for this page, incorporating some of this information, whenever someone comes here to complain about, for example, canvassing, or that what we are doing is outside of our project, etc. We can simply refer them to this FAQ. Instead of having to deal with the same complaints repeatedly. Ikip (talk) 03:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Don't bet on it helping, but it's a good idea anyways. Jclemens (talk) 03:50, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
      • Thanks gentlemen, I appreciate it. Ikip (talk) 04:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
        • I've reached my limit on this subject but I can manage to muster a grunt of agreement. Personally, I'm moving towards just ignoring. OlYeller^Talktome 04:21, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• "These editors actively argue deletion strategies and tactics, with no repurcusions. [sic]" There are no such repercussions, because viewpoints aren't met with "Maybe from now on, if someone comes and complains about this project, we simply refer them to the now dormant Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion, and tell them to restart that project." If you went to WP:VG with a decent argument for dismantling WP:VGSCOPE, for example, you'd get criticism of your argument and ideas on how to use your ideas, not "Make your own project, you're not welcome in ours."

  Similarly, those projects have a topic, and as a practical matter include all editors interested in that topic, whether or not their names are on a "members" list or not. Their viewpoint is largely that of all editors interested in the subject. What's WP:ARS's subject? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 04:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

  • AMIB, I think you would be much more welcome at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion. Your continued disruption has been brought up here numerous times. Although this is a minor issue, your views on articles appear to be starkly counter to this project, for example see AMIB's new essay: WP:NUKE. That said, I can't emphasize this enough (and predictably you make this the main counterpoint), this is not about AMIB views, this is about your actions within this project.

    This has nothing to do with whether an editor is or is not on a membership list, this has everything to do with continued harrassment, hounding and disruption, at a level that no other wikiproject has to endure.

    For the past several months, AMIB has been the editor spearheading this disruption. ENOUGH. AMIB, you are welcome to go and restart Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion.

    Unfortunately, AMIB probably won't leave willingly. Ikip (talk) 04:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

    • I have added a FAQ tag, which links to this page, Wikipedia talk:Article Rescue Squadron/FAQ. I welcome good faith edits to this page, in fact, please mercilessly edit this page. Ikip (talk) 04:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
      • "Get lost, deletionist" would be exactly what I was referring to. And you linking to an old version of an incomplete, currently mostly tongue-in-cheek essay doesn't really show anything. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 05:14, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
        • Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion is that way >>> 05:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
          • I'll also thank you to stop separating people into "members" and "critics" and only allow for one group to edit things. If you call for good-faith edits, expect to get them. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 07:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

First, errors on other pages don't make it correct to do the same here, obviously. I can only speak for the Comics Wikiproject, and there neutral reminders (X is up for deletion) are accepted, "come and keep X" isn't. People on the project often disagree on what to keep or not anyway (on WP:FICT, Hiding and I are often taking opposite positions, even though we are both active members of the comics project). E.g. in the current archive, there are two such neutral messages. I can assure you that I would react against canvassing on the Comics talk page the same as I do here. Fram (talk) 07:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• LOL ERRORS? My lord, how can you call these "errors": it is the status quo. What the errors are, is the way that critics criticize this project. I appreciate many of your comments here. But, Fram, I think you would be more comfortable at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion. If you stay here, I think you need to accept that DRV notifications, AFD notifications, and deletion discussions are an acceptable part of all wikiprojects. Ikip (talk) 07:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I'll choose the projects I care to hang around for myself, thank you. I am quite aware that you are trying every way you can imagine to get people critical of some things here removed from this project and talk page, but that's not how it works. I notice that when uninvolved people come here or discuss it elsewhere, they often tend to agree when it concerns e.g. the canvassing aspect of some posts here. You are free to come to any project you like and react against canvassing that happens there (whether for keeping or deleting things), just like I am free to do the same here. But congratulations on you finding a canvassing post to the comicsproject from early 2007 where the first reply was to send the editor to the correct venue, i.e. DRV, with the additional remark "Honestly, remember that this isn't 'your' site. All of us have had hard work deleted, and while we don't always agree with it, if the majority comes down and says 'this goes', then it goes." Hardly a ringing endorsement of canvassing... But I admit it, one post from 2007 indicates that that project obviously has the same persistent problem as the ARS talk page has... Fram (talk) 08:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • The harrassment and disruption has reached its zeinth. I applaud Ben for being so patient for so long, but I think enough is enough.

      I am simply suggesting your views maybe appreciated more at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion. I don't have a problem with you continuing editing here, if you acknowledge that this project get the same benefits of all wikiprojects. I disagree with most everything you say, but thats okay. I applaud you for not participating in this harrassment and disruption. Thank you. Ikip (talk) 09:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

      • I am not interested if my views are appreciated or not, I am not here to discuss things with likeminded people only. Healthy projects need people with different points of view, to keep things balanced, and to better know the thoughts and opinions of other factions and individuals in the Wikipedia community. As for "this project gets the same benefits of all wikiprojects": no, only wgere applicable. You (plural) don't want to be treated like any other wikiproject (e.g. by putting your tags on the article page instead of the talk page), and sometimes with good reason. But this may also imply that in some situations, you don't get the benefits other projects have. But specifically for canvassing and so on: I have stated and state again that neutral notices about XfD's within the scope of the ARS are generally acceptable (e.g. "X is up for deletion. I wonder if it would be useful to tag it for the ARS?" is acceptable: however, if some people then would rush to the discussion to vote keep, without improving the article to address the problems, adn if this would be a recurring action, then this appraoch may have to be rethought). This is the same as I would state for any project. Fram (talk) 12:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
        • Every organization has social norms, rules, and ways they conduct business. If you don't like the way things are done at the ARS at this point, as far as what you call "canvassing", report it to an outside party. Because I suspect it will continue, and may even increase, despite your objections here.

          ARS should not have to continue to go through unprecedent scrutiny ad nasium by editors whose edit history shows they are opposed to the very spirit of the project. Of the hundreds of wikiprojects, no other wikiproject has had to endure the harrassment that this project has.

          Now that the line is drawn, its time to come up with solutions when it is crossed again. Ikip (talk) 12:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

          • I don't see anyone present who's opposed to the spirit of improving articles. I see lots of disagreement over how. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 12:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
          • It would be better if you stuck to discussing projects, rules, interpretations, ... and avoided discussing editors, certainly when you are again wrong about what I am or think. I have saved articles which were up for deletion, I have created quite a few articles, written DYKs and GA-class articles, improved other articles, and so on. I am not planning on changing my Wikipedia behaviour anytime soon. Fram (talk) 13:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
          • "… scrutiny ad nasium …"??? Dude, nobody's looking up your nose. pablo_hablo. 13:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
• I know I've clashed with WP:ALBUMS and WP:CFB before over (what I perceive to be) excessively inclusionist attitudes, so don't worry, you folks aren't the only project I don't get on with :) Stifle (talk) 08:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I said it at Deletion Review, and I repeat it here: Don't take the attempts by a battleground-seeking minority to pervert the ARS into something that it is not, as evidence that it actually is, or is intended to be by non-battlers, what it is not. And don't think that simply because you disagree with Ikip you therefore disagree with many people here. Uncle G (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Uncle G, your post gave me an idea. Maybe we should find out what the ARS members think about this discussion? Is it acceptable for this project to behave like the hundreds and hundreds of other wikiprojects? 15:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Simple rebuttal

Articles for deletion in other subject spaces (i.e. the real WikiProjects) are posted on the respective WikiProject pages because editors who are part of that project theoretically have knowledge of the subject matter, and thus are more qualified than most to judge it. Come to WP:FOOTY some time: almost anything posted as an AfD notice there is eventually deleted. Even on projects where more members are of the inclusionist bent (WP:DND comes to mind), deletion discussions are posted there to alert experts on the subject matter.

This is manifestly untrue of this page. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yet, we end up with how many AFDs in which most of the deletes come from those who have no knowledge or the subject under discussion, are unwilling to look for sources anyway, and don't care even if sources do turn up. It seems that in at least most of my experiences, a minority of experts (however we define that here) on the subjects ever comment in the respctive AfDs. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 08:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • If you want to encourage people to stick to deletion policy at AFD, AFD Patrol is thataway. We deal in article rescue here. Uncle G (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Same tired argument, ignoring the reality of, oh, nearly every single wikiproject. Ikip (talk) 15:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• I am glad that you acknowledge that it is okay to post Deletion discussion, AFDs, etc, on almost every wikiproject but this one. Is there any other exception on wikipedia but this page?

  Also, it seems that you and Fram need to sit down and discuss, why, in Fram's eyes, posting Deletion discussion, AFDs, etc is wrong: "errors on other pages don't make it correct to do the same here, obviously. I can only speak for the Comics Wikiproject, and there neutral reminders (X is up for deletion) are accepted, "come and keep X" isn't." Of course, Fram will argue that there is no contradiction. Ikip (talk) 08:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

  • Ikip, as you can read in the quote you just gave, I argue that posting deletion discussions and so on which fall under the scope of the project is not wrong, only that posting non-neutral notices or notices which do not fall under the scope of a project is wrong. Please don't misrepresent my opinion. Fram (talk) 09:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • What is the scope of this wikiproject? To save articles, again the only difference between our project and comic books, is ours is wider.

      Please clarify, can we all agree that any and all projects which have a narrow subject, can post AfDs, DRVs, etc?

      There is a pretty wide gray line between: "come and keep X" and "X is up for deletion". Ikip (talk) 09:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

      • The aim of the ARS is to improve articles (or "content", if you prefer) that is up for deletion in XfD. The aim of the ARS is not to save articles as such, but to save articles by improving them so that they meet the relevant policies and guidelines. As for the gray line: it is best to stay as far away from it as possible, to avoid even the impression of canvassing. And wrt posting AFD's: all AfD's posted for rescue are already listed on this talk page, and on the user talk page add-on many of you have, and on the category for ARS tagged pages, and on the main project page. Additional listing of this page here, certainly when enhanced by comments inviting people to help keep the article at the AfD, are unnecessary and canvassing. Listing pages outside the scope of the ARS (e.g. pages where a merge is discussed) is also canvassing. It's really not that hard: if a message is perfectly neutral and clearly within the scope of the project, then it is not canvassing. Everything else will have more and more shades of canvassing, sometimes explicit, sometimes more implicit, and should be avoided and discouraged. Fram (talk) 09:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
        • Again, can we all agree that any and all projects which have a narrow subject, can post AfDs, DRVs, etc?

          It gets rather draining to have editors whose edit history tends to be counter to this project goals and ambitions, telling us members of ARS what the aim of ARS is. I sincerely feel that your talents and intellect would be best utilized in a project that matches your views. This is not that project. 12:48, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

          • Us and you again. What does someone have to do to qualify to be a member? In most Wikiprojects, the mere willingness to watchlist the project page is membership. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 12:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
          • I have replied to your question over and over again, you'll have to ask a different question if you want a different answer. As for my edit history; I don't see how it is "counter to this projects goals and ambitions", since I have saved articles at AfD, sourced articles, written articles (including a number of DYKs and two GAs), ... That I have also deleted many pages and nominated a lot for deletion does not mean that I don't support the ARS in principle. "Only articles about non-encyclopedic topics should be deleted, not articles that need improvement." This is what I have tried throughout my years here, just like, I hope, everyone else. Fram (talk) 13:10, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

A Man in Black (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log):

Two 3rrs in the past couple of days on this page.

Removal of ARS tags from articles,

deletion of templates,

arguing against almost all initatives the ARS takes,

a bad block over posting notices on talk pages, which is perfectly okay. Ikip (talk) 15:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• ←(A Nobody 08:56) "It seems that in at least most of my experiences, a minority of experts (however we define that here) on the subjects ever comment in the respective AfDs." I think you're onto something. Deletionists of no special expertise hang out at "Articles for Deletion" because that function is in the name of AfD. But inclusionists of no special expertise have no 'Articles for Inclusion' to hang out at. That creates an imbalance of excess deletionism. Thus it's logical and beneficial for project neutrality to have a venue like Article Rescue Squadron for inclusionists of no special expertise. (Not that I'll admit to that :) Milo 09:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • That is nonsense, based upon a wholesale mischaracterization of who "hangs out" at AFD that I know several editors will laugh at for its erroneousness. Please stop trying to turn the ARS into a battleground with this namecalling nonsense. Uncle G (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• The ARS themselves could solve this problem at a stroke.
  • Identify those ARS members who aren't sticking to the ARS guidelines (i.e. never, or hardly ever, improving articles so that they survive AfD) and who instead are merely block voting "Keep" on AFDs (especially when those !votes are of poor quality), repeatedly canvassing for such votes, or agitating or wikilawyering over deletion related issues.
  • Remove them from the list of ARS members and tell them that their "efforts" aren't needed here.
  • Problem solved.
• Black Kite 10:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Wow, an unpreceded purging of members. I wonder if such a strict suggestion has ever, in the history of wikipedia, been suggested on any other wikiproject. but then again, ARS is unique in the level of scrutiny, criticism, and harrassment it recieves, to cite one of many examples, no other wikiproject has gone to MfD three times. Again, those editors whose philophy is counter to this project, there is an opposing project that has laid dormat for some years now. Ikip (talk) 12:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • You've suggested that two people leave in this very talk page section. Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion is not an opposing project. This project is about article rescue. It is not AFD Patrol, nor Deletion Sorting, nor an "-ism" advocacy medium.

      I suggest thinking long and hard about making further accusations against other people of "hypocrisy". I also suggest asking yourself a question that it is time everyone on this talk page asked xyrself: What was the last article that I actually did article rescue work on? Uncle G (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

  • That seems awfully unwelcoming and uncivil. In theory we would coach "problematic" editors to show them why empty !votes perhaps caused more harm than good. Unsure why this project would take a step to police its own members in such a way. Frankly this would seem a better WP:AFD overall issue to identify and target all editors who make empty !votes but even that may cause more problems than it solves. -- Banjeboi 13:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Another solution would be to select a moderator from the existing members who'll remove canvassing notices and counsel those involved about the correct role of the squadron. PhilKnight (talk) 13:14, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • It's not about the AFD discussion contributions. Black Kite is talking about ARS "members" who aren't actually doing article rescue, or even focussing upon it on this talk page. Uncle G (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Black Kite has identified the problem yet again. ☺ There is, in fact, an identifiable problem with the ARS' structure that I was going to bring up, here. It's exemplified by the recent red cunt hair (AfD discussion) débacle. The problem is that we have "members", who sign up at Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Members. One doesn't get to be an article rescuer by signing a page in the project namespace. One gets to be an article rescuer by rescuing articles. Nothing more, nothing less.

The RCH discussions are a striking example of what has, in recent months, gone seriously wrong with the ARS. There were two editors there who were real article rescuers, since they worked on the article to rescue it when it was at AFD. I worked on the draft (User:Chzz/Hair (unit of measurement)) when it was at Deletion Review. The two real article rescuers were LinguistAtLarge and Phil Bridger, both of whom have rescued articles in the past, and both of whom I've worked with on rescues in the past. (Heck, I'm working with LinguistAtLarge, discussing how to improve had had had had had had had had had had had (AfD discussion), now.) Neither of those people are ARS "members". I'm not myself. But we all three did some article rescue. In stark contrast, we had signed-up ARS "members" who contributed nothing to the actual rescue, but rather spent all of their time in the AFD discussions.

We seem to have a growing divergence between being an ARS "member" and being an actual, honest-to-goodness, article rescuer. And this divergence has been spurred on by the attempts of a few to turn the ARS into a battleground. The recent efforts (by Ikip, above) to drive away editors who espouse working on articles and who actually have done so in the past have crossed a line, and are unacceptable in my view.

This is not Wikipedia:AfD Patrol. It is not Wikipedia:Deletion sorting. This is article rescue. And it is time that it was reclaimed by article rescuers, from the people who are trying to turn it into a battleground and pervert it into something that it is not. Uncle G (talk) 13:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Umm, hmmm. First off let's not quibble on who is or isn't an article rescuer, that seems unproductive. I have done quite a lot but not on that article. And XfD doesn't require an editor make edits to an item to qualify on offering an opinion. It would be nice but that's not a rule. I'm also unconvinced it's helpful to determine blame for who turned this page into a battleground. Frankly we've have had many insightful threads which have impacted this project and Wikipedia positively. What remains, IMHO, is to offer constructive suggestions and actionable items to what holds promise. Everyone, as always, is ultimately responsible for what they post. -- Banjeboi 13:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Benjobi, I think you should recognize that recent conduct by members has caused a reaction. I'm suggesting you select a coordinator from the existing membership to prevent this happening in future. PhilKnight (talk) 13:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with Uncle G on this, watching this issue from the sidelines. ARS is a well-intended project, but that word "rescue" means an active participation in trying rescue articles that would otherwise be deleted through AFD. That doesn't mean just going to the AFD discussion and stating "keep"; that should only be done if the editor in question has made some attempting, even if just dropping a hyperlinked source into the article in question to help keep it. Thus, in terms of canvassing, posting requests here to get editors to help add sources or whatever else is necessary to an article up for rescue is appropriate (that's in the project's scope), but not for the purposes of adding !votes to an AFD without additional action. In contrary, the "canvasing" that listed above to specific Wikiprojects is appropriate because its implied that the project contains expert editors on the subject and thus can help guide the discussion particularly in light of that project's guidelines. That works both ways for keeps and deletes. --MASEM (t) 14:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

When an article's compliance with policy arguably falls below the threshold for inclusion, then ARS members ought to improve it before voting. When an articles been improved so that its now clearly worthy of staying, having a say on the AfD is sometimes all thats required.

Thanks to all non ARS members who have took the time to share their views on how we conduct ourselves – we'll certainly take your input into consideration. Ikip is to be commended for recognising that sheer scale of deletionists efforts against worthy topic areas needs a collective responce, and ideally a change to policy. We take on board the point that this page may not be the best forum, we'll investigate the possibility of setting up a sibling relationship with Wikipedia:WikiProject Inclusion . Thanks again for the input, perhaps for the sake of balance some of you will offer your wise council on the talk pages of deletionists who nominate multiple worthy articles and on some days cast upwards of 50 deletion votes , none of which are for obvious deletion candidates such as attack pages or hoaxes? FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Uncle G, there has been an active effort at disruption and harrassment on this page, most recently spearheaded by A Man In Black. It is really easy to come here and post a contuation of your "we are all wikipedians" unifying theme, (I am surprised you didn't bring up the idealistic garden analogy again) which completely carpets over the realities of different view points, and the harrassment that this project endured. I would post all the edit diffs and tactics, particuarly be A Man In Black, but that wouldn't change your mind one bit, would it?

My concern of who is or is not a member is secondary. Again, it is really tiring to hear what this project is and is not about by editors whose edit hisitories are clearly contradictory to this articles mission and editors who attempt to subvert everything ARS attempts to do (which all other wikiprojects actively do). You even went so far as saying there is a "pervertion" here. I think what is "perverse" and troubling ironic, is that the co-architect of many of the notabilty guidelines, which is the number one reason given for most of the deletions, is advising ARS on how ARS should or should not act.

Uncle G, Masem, and PhilKnight, don't address my original statment, how all of the other wikiprojects have not had to endure the fierce scrutiny that ARS has, for actions that are exactly the same.

150+ times wikiprojects have mentioned DRVs. 20+ examples are above, and yet there is a firestorm when one DRV is posted here. Unfortunately, that is the history of the project, everything that ARS members attempt to do, there is a firestorm of criticism, mostly from editors whose edit history tends to be contrary to the fundamental ideals of the project. That is why I am inviting editors to go to Wikipedia:Deletion sorting, which has the AFD tags, etc.

But the beahvior hisotry of many of these editors, particularly AMIB, is an incredibly confrontational one, so I know this will be ignored. Ikip (talk) 14:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Good points about the other wikiprojects ikip, we dont seem to have a level playing field here! FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

No one is being confrontational in this section. They are only saying "here is a problem which has been identified, the ARS can solve it themselves and immediately remove the source of most of the criticism of the project." Of course those editors involved are free to carry on spamming AfD with spurious Keep votes, but at least no-one will be able to turn round and say that they're doing it under the banner of the ARS. this editor would be a good place to start - 11 AfD Keep votes in the last few weeks, and every single one either just "Keep", "Strong Keep", or "Keep per (other editor)". If I was closing AfD I'd discount every single one of those, so what's the point? The focus should be on improving articles, not deletion votes. In fact, in a perfect world, the only comment that an ARS member should ever have to add to a deletion discussion is "Look, I've improved this article so that it now meets our policies, what does everyone think of it now?". Black Kite 15:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)