Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy

I do not want to see this list of "deleters" expanded. I do not wish to see a hierarchy develop at the Wikipedia and certainly having a select group of people with this authority will create one. Additionally the decision to bestow this right on a given person could fuel dissent from those who feel "entitled" for whatever reason but have been "overlooked".

The three people with deleting authority (at present) are all Bomis Inc employees. The rule that "Bomis employee = deleting privileges" is simple and non-controversial. Three people should be more than adequate to handle the responsibilities. Anyone else can use the Page titles to be deleted page to direct admin people to these pages. - MMGB

I agree wholeheartedly, Manning. I would tell 'em to earn their keep, except that we're not paying them. -MichaelTinkler

I completely agree as well. Having some volunteers with deleting powers and others without would be disasterous, IMO. Leave such powers with the official administrators. --STG

What you say makes a lot of sense. Right now, the deleting workload is minimal. By the time it's too much for Bomis employees, we'll be able to pay more people to work on the project, I imagine. (Right now the project doesn't even pay for me. :-) ) --LMS

Is it okay if we have Wikipedia policy/Pages which have been permanently deleted (or maybe Wikipedia/Page titles which have been permanently deleted)? It would be useful (and interesting) to know what's been permanently deleted; note that Magnus's software will give us this log automagically, if we want. --TheCunctator

I'd rather such a log was kept off-site, and where miscreants couldn't easily find it and simply ressurrect the deleted pages. - MMGB

I tend to agree, MMGB. I don't feel very strongly about this, but the risk of abuse by admins in deleting pages is far smaller than the risk of abuse by vandals of the information of what pages were deleted. The only reason to have the "deleted pages" list displayed is to let people know that everything is above-board, which is a really excellent reason. I don't really care if sober adults see what pages I've deleted, and indeed it might help the sense of openness the community naturally has, some small amount, if they can see what pages I've deleted. But, again, I'm not sure that is more important than removing the incentives to vandalism, which such a list might be. --LMS

Why don't we try it, and if it becomes an incentive to vandalism, we can take it down or change the situation? I'm glad you can see the merits of the proposal. --TheCunctator

I actually don't think the proposal has much merit. I really don't see what purpose the list would have. I also don't think that your personal page on Meta-Wikipedia is the place for such a list, Cunctator. Eh? --LMS

I do. Eh? --TheCunctator

I'm sorry you feel that way, C. I'm going to have to insist that you not use it for that purpose. --LMS

What about other Wikipedias?

Who´s going to perform a "good practices code" on our pages?

As we're quite "forgotten sons", who will take care of us?

I mean, the Spanish one on which I´m working now, for instance, had suffered from

vandalism on Basque Country pages, obviously related to the political status, and the evidence

is still there.

Are you going to look after our pages?.--Edgar

The problem with the other Wikipedias is that we don't speak those languages well enough to help; I think the best we can do, until we raise enough money to hire people to lead those projects, is to lead by example. I wish it could be different. --LMS

For each non-English Wikipedia, you could assign a Wikipedian or two who speaks that language fluently and who you can trust to delete pages there. -- SJK

If someone trustworthy wants to volunteer, sounds good. Could someone make appropriate changes to the non-English Wikipedias page and other relevant pages? --LMS

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I think I want to strike rule number three:

Do not delete anything that might in the future become an encyclopedia topic. Hence, just because someone has written a completely worthless article about John Doe, that doesn't mean we should permanently delete the topic, John Doe, from the database.

Someone (I think Jimbo, at least) has made the point that, if we do not permanently delete blank articles from the database, others, working on topics that link to the blank article, might think that an article exists. Moreover, there really isn't any particularly good reason to save many archives for presently blank articles. Perhaps we could make a rule to the effect that if, in our opinion, the archive is for some reason valuable, we won't delete the blank article; otherwise (which means in most cases), we should.

What do you all think? Shall we strike it? I think we should. --LMS