Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion

• Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/Archives

Notability proposal

Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES ^(talk) 23:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Policy question

When an admin is closing an AfD discussion that they have nominated or voted in themselves, should they count their own vote towards the consensus? — JIP | Talk 08:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

In fact, the only guideline I have found is that administrators should not delete articles they temselves nominated. Personally though, I will only close a debate which I have participated in if the result is clearly opposite of what I voted. (For example if I cast one of 4 "delete" votes in a debate which finally garners 4d/6k I have no qualms about closing that as a keep). Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:27, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Question

I created a page on or about September 22, called "List of military ambushes" or perhaps just "List of ambushes". When I went back to edit it today I couldn't find it - either by direct link or by doing a search. Was it deleted? I couldn't find it by searching the delete log or by scanning the AFD list or by scanning the delete discussions either. - Unsigned by anon IP

Howdy, and welcome to wikipedia! First of all, the article exists as List_of_military_ambushes. Second, please consider creating an account. You can 'watch' pages so that you don't lost them like you just did. Finally, sign your comments with ~~~~ so people know who they're talking to, it really cuts down on confusion. Best regards! CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

AfD-dictated merger templates

I've created a pair of new templates: {{afd-mergeto}} and {{afd-mergefrom}}. They're intended for use by a sysop who closes an AfD debate with a consensus to merge the nominee into another article, but does not intend to perform the merger (or by a different user acting on such a decision).

Instructions

• Upon removing the {{afd}} notice (if still present), add the {{afd-mergeto}} tag to the top of the nominated article. Use the following format:

{{afd-mergeto|destination article|debate name|debate closure date}}

For example, assume that a debate was closed on 30 May 2024. If the consensus is to merge the nominated article into an article called Topic X, and the debate is located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Topic Y (second nomination), the tag should be configured as follows:

{{afd-mergeto|Topic X|Topic Y (second nomination)|30 May 2024}}

This will generate the following notice:

• Add the {{afd-mergefrom}} tag to the top of the talk page of the destination article. Use the following format:

{{afd-mergefrom|nominated article|debate name|debate closure date}}

For example, assume that a debate was closed on 30 May 2024. If the consensus is to merge an article called Topic Y into the article associated with the talk page, and the debate is located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Topic Y (second nomination), the tag should be configured as follows:

{{afd-mergeto|Topic Y|Topic Y (second nomination)|30 May 2024}}

This will generate the following notice:

—Lifeisunfair 17:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

orphaned afd?

The article Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ontology and methodology of evolutionary alternatives, was nominated for deletion over a month ago. The votes were unanimous to delete it, but the article is still there a month later. Did something fall through the cracks? FuelWagon 20:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

But it seems to have been relisted on October 6... --AllyUnion (talk) 03:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 January 9

January 9 is a mess. Can someone take a look and fix it? Thanks. --AllyUnion (talk) 03:33, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• I've tried to clean it up. It seems that User:Boothy443 was adding {{subst:at}} templates at the top but not adding {{subst:ab}} templates at the bottom, causing all subsequent AfD discussions to appear as part of the current AfD discussion. — JIP | Talk 07:59, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Question from a newbie:

What is the value of a weak keep vote other than to leave the administrator who gets stuck making the final call feeling like they are out on a limb? Shouldn't votes be either keep, delete, or abstain?--Gaff 22:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Qualifiers such as "weak" and "strong" are meant not so much to affect the final decision, but rather to influence subsequent voters. When I vote "weak delete" or "weak keep" it means I'm unconfident of the evidence that led me to make my decision. Ideally we are not voting; rather, we're trying to establish a consensus by discussion. —Wahoofive (talk) 03:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, when i say "weak keep" or "weak delete" I mean to imnply that I think it not improbable that future arguemtns might change my vote, or that changes to the articel could do so (particularly for a weak delete). In part it is saying "Come on, persuade me". But in the final tally, if the vote is not later changed, the closer should usually, IMO, read a "weak" vote the same as a "normal" one. DES ^(talk) 17:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

As to a "strong" vote, i mostly agree with Wahoofive above, buit it also usually means "I can't think how I could ever be persuaded to change this vote, so don't bother". AfD is supposed to be about discussionas much as about voting (that was why the name was changed from VfD) and these qualifiers are part of the discussion aspect, IMO. DES ^(talk) 17:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bobby Rickman-Smith for a case where the closer decided to count "weak keeps" as half a keep. (The VFU to have this overturned failed). Later the guidelines at WP:GD were updated to say such votes don't count any more or less than a "normal" or "strong" one which is the norm now. DES is right, weak keeps mean that you are uncertain about your argument and(or that you have serious concerns about the article, but they shouldn't count less. Ironcially, they often wind up counting more since a "weak" vote is often a vote with reason! Sjakkalle (Check!) 17:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

And yet it failed undeletion? I don't see the point of undeletion when things like that fail - or the two that I nominated today. That's a really obvious case where it should have been undeleted - at a bare minimum to give it a new AFD vote. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:06, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Is it ok to add articles to groups of articles that are up for deletion?

Sometimes it is sensible to list more than one article on a AfD subpage, a current example is Indo-European root word articles where the future of a set of pages is being discussed. The user who sugested that we consider deleting these articles has added to the list of pages that should be included in the discussion. Now I'm sure this does not matter in this case (it looks like the words will be merged into a single article), but I can't find a policy on this. The debate is about the type of article but only the listed articles would be deleted if the consensus is to delete, so should we add articles after a "vote" has been cast? I don't think this is a good idea as we can not just remove a page because it is like a page that was deleted after a AfD consensus but others may have other views. Can we reach a consensus on this before this becomes a real issue?

Any views? Andreww 08:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

It depends. If the articles are similar just in subject, but are vastly different in other aspects (notability, completeness, etc), it may not be appropriate to group them. An example of this is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fake color articles, which was reversed and relisted because of that. Titoxd^(?!?) 16:42, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

It also may mnatter when in the debate the addition occurs. if many people expressed views before a page is added, the situation can become confused. DES ^(talk) 16:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting Conundrum Regarding The 100

If this book was an article here on Wikipedia, it would probably be deleted as a POV List since apparently there is no real formula to the influence seen by Hart as it sounds here other than his subjective opinion.
I wonder if there's some inclusionist non-vanity press book publisher out there who would take deleted POV lists, find a way to publish them with commercial feasibility and then reintroducing the article with a focus on the book, which would probably be notable due to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Precedents. Karmafist 20:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Gigantic gen y link

I don't wanna step on any toes here, so I'm not just going to delete it, but it strikes me that the gigantic link to the discussion about the "generation Y" categories is a bit outré. There are loads of more important and interesting discussions going on in AfD and elsewhere, and this link is like ten times bigger than even the links to the centralized discussions about general issues that follow. These two categories only really affect the approximately 50 editors who appear in them. — brighterorange (talk) 21:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

These have been very controversial CFD discussions in the past. As per policy, listed here, I posted the banner ON AfD to encourage others to comment on the discussion. «»Who?¿?^meta 22:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I see. Perhaps this policy comes from a time before VFD was split into multiple subpages? My feeling is that the invitation to participate should be inlined with all of the other AfD listings, rather than in a big box above them all. Based on its placement now, it seems like it must be the most important discussion on what is one of the most active pages in the Wikipedia: namespace. It's easy to find more controversial topics (say Albert M. Wolters or Speedy keep proposal) with way less dramatic placement. — brighterorange (talk) 22:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree there, but am not as familiar with the new AfD setup, so was at a loss for where to properly place it. As for controversial scale, hehe, you shoule see the debates the last ones drew, you would think we were putting up half of WP for deletion. I wouldn't mind if it were moved, or even scaled down, as I am unsure where else to put it. «»Who?¿?^meta 23:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Everybody thinks their issue is the most important one. Everybody wants their issue to be noticed on the high-traffic AFD page. Just put it in the "centralized discussion" box, and list it on Wikipedia:Current surveys. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:27, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

This isn't personal, I could actually care less about those particular categories. I just help administer cfd, and I posted it per policy. However, those are some of the most controversial categories on CFD. The centralized discussions box did not seem like the appropriate place for it, so I put it there. «»Who?¿?^meta 23:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Organising discussions alphabetically

A bot run by a Wikipedia admin seems to be organising AfD discussions in alphabetical order. I don't see any reason why it should be done, but neither do I see any reason why it shouldn't be done. What I am curious about is when this started, and why? Was there ever any discussion about it? — JIP | Talk 06:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Gone without trace

The subpages of the Portal:Artificial intelligence I have been working on seem to have been deleted without a log. Could anybody assist me in finding out how and why and how to retreive them?--moxon 12:41, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• It would be helpful to have the names of the subpages. android79 12:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

All of them, but problem was fixed, thanks

Subsetting AfD

With the AfD pages running so long, spliting up the AfD into subsets based on article topics might be a good idea. Biographies are a readily identifiable subset of the articles, tho they only run to around 1/4 of the load so {{bfd}} Biographies for Deletion is one possibility. Another possibility would be {{lfd}} Lists for Deletions. There aren't many lists nominated for deletion, but for some reason, list articles uniformly generate much nore discussion than is usual. Unfortunately I can't think of any other easily definable subsets to propose. Caerwine 17:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Schools for deletion is an obvious possibility. That way both the inclusionists and deletionists can just run little bots to automatically add their vote to every entry and everyone else can just ignore them. —Wahoofive (talk) 21:25, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This has been suggested before. It's even been tested using the category feature. In my opinion, the test was a failure. It did nothing that I could see to lighten the load or to simplify the process. If you want to seriously propose this, I'd ask you to look at the last test and either tell me why I should change my interpretation of the results or tell all of us what should be done differently from the test. Rossami (talk) 21:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

"tested using the category feature"? If I understand correctly, there are objections specific to that which don't apply to subsetting per se. We could, for instance, create section headings within the daily deletion page: Biographies, Lists, Schools, Other. No need to be bureaucratic about it - they can be ad hoc as needed. Or we could go in the direction that RFC did - split into several subpages by topic. There are obvious advantages to subsetting in terms of efficiency and consistency (similar cases, guidelines, etc). Rd232 ^talk 14:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

However, personally, I think one of the most obvious things to aid AfD is to separate closed from open discussions. All it would take is to use, let's say, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/YYYY month DD open as the day page, and the closing admin (or non-admin if keep) then moves the transclusion reference to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/YYYY month DD. Bingo - closed discussions are out of the way, and older open ones get more attention. Or have I missed a downside? Rd232 ^talk 14:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

The downside is little or no oversight of "speedy" actions. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

So keep the article title and the result when the transclusion is moved. Rd232 ^talk 17:13, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

If all you really want to do is get the closed discussions out of the way, you can make one small addition to your profile using the instructions here. Doing so will use the tags in the header and footer and will hide the closed discussions from you, letting you more quickly find and focus on the discussions which are still open. Rossami (talk) 19:59, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Whilst that's useful for me, it does remove closed discussions entirely. Perhaps the template could be modified so that a link to the article subpage and discussion result is outside the .vfd-tagged div, and therefore still shows up. Also, shouldn't this trick be more prominent? (Or perhaps it is and I just missed it?) Finally, this trick is (a) somewhat user-unfriendly, especially if you sometimes want to look at closed discussions and (b) still loads the entire, pretty big page - which for people on dialup is surely an issue. All in all there's something to be said for my suggested approach, I think. Rd232 ^talk 12:44, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Getting back to subsetting, I think this is essential, longer term. For instance, I'm never going to vote on music-related articles, because on the sort of articles that appear that might get deleted I know I'm never going to care either way. If they were in a different section (or page), it would help me avoid them - and others who want to to focus on them. Such specialisation should aid in consistency and efficiency. Rd232 ^talk 13:02, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I would definately support a "Biographies for Deletion" and maybe a "music-related articles" group. Non-notable biographies are often contested, which is the reason they usually go to AfD rather than AfSD. To have them all grouped together would probably make the length of current discussions a little shorter. -Nameneko 09:02, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

AfDs and copyright infringement

I have posted a response to another editors question on Copyright problems that pertains to how Copyright Infringements are handled in AfD. (I.e. whether once an article is discovered to by copyright infringement, the voting should stop.) I would love for folks to read and comment on this discussion over there. Thanks! --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 01:35, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Close discussions when Speedying nominees

Recently there have been a bunch of articles speedied by admins after being listed on AFD, without the discussions being closed. I'd like to encourage all admins to use the proper templates to close the discussions whenever they speedy something, to make life easier for those of us scanning AFD. —Wahoofive (talk) 15:43, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I second that request. if I speedy an item listed on Afd, I close the Afd discussion with a result of "Speedy delete". I do the same when i notice that soemone else has speedy delted an article currently on Afd without closing. DES ^(talk) 16:49, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Just be careful closing discussions when you didn't speedy the article yourself - about once a week, I find an article pointing at an afd debate with a redlink in the header, but not the article in question (whether due to a typo on the afd, or a multiple nomination). Twice these have been prematurely closed as having been apparently speedied, and in at least one other case the debate had been removed from the daily subpage entirely. —Cryptic (talk) 04:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

"Real" as a reason to keep

I've noticed that people have been voting/arguing to keep articles because the subject is real, such as a "real band", "real game" or "real food". Essentially, they're saying that the article isn't a hoax or based on a fictional person or thing. This is not very helpful in determing whether an article merits inclusion because there are real things that don't belong in an encyclopedia. A penny you found in the street would be real, but it shouldn't have an article. There are usually valid reasons to keep an article on AfD, use those instead. Even voting "keep" with no comment would be better than using a nonsensical reason. -- Kjkolb 12:21, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

• I agree. Existence is often a necessary criterion for inclusion, but nearly never a sufficient one. Just because you have been born, gone to a school, formed a band, started a website, or started dating someone, doesn't mean you suddenly become notable. — JIP | Talk 12:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Logically it's a sufficient reason if the nomination is based solely on the premise that the subject is a hoax. Practically, if someone thought it was a hoax, there's usually an implied issue of notability as well, which "real" doesn't address. So rather than end up with a potential renomination for non-notability, responses should really (excuse the pun :) be "real and notable because..." Rd232 ^talk 13:22, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

A good point, but these are almost always cases where the subject's existence isn't in question. -- Kjkolb 13:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, see especially User:Trollderella whose comments of "Keep and stop AFD Spamming", "Keep. As usual, no deletion required." sound like a broken record. These aren't on the "hoax" type AFDs, either. The main question that seems to be debated is "Is non-notability a criterion for deletion?" I haven't seen any consensus on that, except in the cases of nn-bios.--Kewp (t) 16:55, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

People are very free to choose any personal criteria for inclusion or deletion. If somebody thinks that anything real and verifiable is worthy of inclusion, they are free to do so and vote accordingly. Personally, I disagree with the view that notability is not a valid reason for deletion, but I'm OK with people disagreeing with me on that. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but some users seem to think that when people vote to delete because of non-notability, that their vote is invalid or even that it's "AFD Spamming." I agree that people are free to choose personal criteria for voting. Not everyone seems to agree, though.--Kewp (t) 09:20, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• It would be m:instruction creep to disallow votes because of the reasoning behind them. If you think someone's vote is illogical, inappropriate or poorly reasoned, please discuss it with them. Besides, there's strong precedent to delete articles on non-notable bands, websites, tiny companies, memes, and numbers. Radiant_>|< 11:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
• I wasn't suggesting that votes be discounted or that any of this be policy, just that people use a better reason or just say "keep". Radiant said that disallowing votes because of reasoning would be instruction creep, so I guess there isn't a policy yet. However, at least one user has been threatened with blocking because of illogical votes, so perhaps there should be a policy of whether illogical votes are valid, discounted, or justification for blocking (I'm not sure I'd be for any of those). -- Kjkolb 20:24, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that it depends on the article. In some cases, there are no assertions of notoriety - in that case there is no choice but to delete. In other cases, however, there are assertions to notoriety, and the only reason why it is listed on AFD is to question whether the assertions are true. In cases like that, asserting that it is real is a very valid reason to vote "keep". One example of this, which I can recall offhand, was a case where a woman was a natural conductor of electricity (think Fester Addams from The Addams Family). It was listed for AFD because the nominator thought it was a hoax. Whilst a google search only had 10 hits, and only 2 of them were talking about her, the fact of the matter was that it was a real person, who really does have that condition, something which was verified. In a case like that, in my opinion, it is notable because of its unusualness and general interest - the fact that it is not widely known is irrelevant.

A second, similar, case was an example where a person found a large shipwreck. Again, the contention was that it was a hoax. It was verified with only 50 google hits, only 1 newspaper report. But it was real. And it was a topic of incredible interest, because of what he discovered.

In cases such as these, discovering that they are real is, in my opinion, a very valid reason to vote "keep". Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:11, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

question from beginner

I'm new at this deleting stuff. I requested an article to be deleted and I followed the three steps as indicated. However, the third step doesn't appear to be correct. Am I supposed to put the reason I requested it for deletion? Was I supposed to create a header? Also, is this the correct method for a speedy deletion? My request was simply a duplicate article. BTW, I requested Dysfunction (Staind Album). Gflores 22:30, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

• The third step is right. The {{subst:afd3 | pg=whatever}} that you insert gets turned into one of the other things you see in that list (that's what 'subst' does). The reason that you requested deletion goes in the second step (afd2), after the text=. Everything else, like the creation of the headers, is done for you.

In this case, you would have been better off just redirecting the duplicate page to the better one. (Just replace the contents with #REDIRECT [[destination page]].) You can do this without people having to vote on it.

See WP:CSD for instructions on speedy deletion. Only administrators can actually do the speedy deletion, but you can tag pages to bring them to administrators' attention. Happy hunting! — brighterorange (talk) 01:31, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Question from new admin

What do you do when all the AFDs on a given day are closed? Do you just delist the day's subpage from the WP:AFD page, or do you have to do something more? Titoxd^(?!?) 22:42, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Doublecheck that all the afds have been properly closed (e.g., that no unanimous deletes have been closed "keep" by anons, and that none have been blanked), and remove it from both WP:AFD and WP:AFD/Old. —Cryptic (talk) 02:21, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think an afd list needs to be removed from WP:AFD, AllyUnion's bot does that when it moves that list from WP:AFD to WP:AFD/Old. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

You do have to remove it from AFD/Old and add the link (in non-transcluded form) to the top of the Archived delete debates page. See the Wikipedia:Deletion process#Articles for Deletion page for specifics. Rossami (talk) 01:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

CrystalCherry

Could a more experienced admin please look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CrystalCherry? It's next on my list to be reviewed but it's still generating discussion almost by the minute. As I have never before heard of CrystalCherry, but then I haven't heard of a great deal of actresses, I don't feel qualified to gauge whether this is a real article or a hoax. — JIP | Talk 18:42, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

afd helper

Although I can foresee some small problems with it, and despite the proposed reforms, I have created a script to help voting on AFDs.

The idea is that AFDs have a fairly universal structure, and so manually editing a page is a waste of time. This script lets you click a vote button for each AFD, which then prompts you for a vote and a comment, and then submits your vote in another window, while you've already moved onto deliberation of the next case.

If you're brave, please check it out at afd helper and give some feedback.

Thanks! jnothman ^talk 01:53, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a Grade A (not 'C', not even 'B', but 'A'!) Bad Idea. People need to start putting more time and thought into their discussion points, not less. If you aren't prepared to take the time to go through the usual effort to record your opinion, why are you voting at all? fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 13:02, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I strongly agree with fuddlemark here. As my computer systems lecturer told me, "the first rule of optimisation is: Don't. The second rule of optimisation is: even if you know what you're doing, don't." Alphax ^τεχ 13:52, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Your CS lecturer was talking about optimising code; not about optimising human processes. jnothman ^talk 07:59, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

A large number of articles nominated for deletion are obvious deletes: Bandity, nn-bio, advertising, etc. The script just makes running through those more efficient. It's a tool that doesn't need to be used for all nominations. I've been using it to great effect for obvious deletes and going through the normal edit process for those that require more thought. I can see how it might encourage people to give less thought to an article, but I don't think that's reason enough to not offer it to those who will use it properly. --howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 19:05, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

BTW Alphax, optimization is actually the third step of the software development process: Make it work, make it work right, make it work fast. --howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 19:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

So why jump to the third step when the first two are still in doubt? —Wahoofive (talk) 06:53, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

You're conflating the use of the script with the AFD process, which are two different things. I agree with you that the procedures governing AFD aren't the best and should be improved, but that has nothing to do with the script which only makes voting more efficient within the current process. --howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 16:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to see this script inserting a particular edit summary for automatic votes, at least; better still, also have it insert a little small text indicating that the vote was automatic. Rob Church ^Talk 02:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in reply. I don't think that this script exacerbates the problem. It's not any more automatic than what I would do otherwise: click open the edit link, write a * and three 's and my verdict and my comment and sign and write a summary and click save. Only it does that process faster and with less RSI-inducing activity on my part. It so far has not caused anyone to go on a spree through the AFD logs. Users can not take care in voting with a script or without a script. No difference there.

As to Rob's request, it's very easy to put such a thing in, but some peoples' actions on AFD are more automatic than mine or others' using the afd helper. And besides, anyone who was intelligent enough to install the script and to use it for vandalism of the AFD pages would be intelligent enough to modify the script and remove the words 'automatic' or 'small'. And I would feel offended if my votes, after many minutes' consideration, were counted or read less than those of people who pass through themselves on automatic, without the aid of a script.

If when I choose to spend valuable hours going through the AFDs I am not prepared to take the time go through the usual effort to record my opinion, but rather wish to take my time to deliberate on my actual opinion instead, I think that's much much much more valuable.

-- jnothman ^talk 07:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Google hits as proof of NN

I think the practice of quoting number of google hits as "proof" of NN should be strongly discouraged. Although one would assume that wikipedia editors will research themselves, it should be remembered that its easily possible to construct a seemingly relevant google query that returns very few results for even the most notable subjects. --Pypex 01:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

A good point, but I'd like to suggest an alternative. Instead, why not try to make a point of having people include the exact search they ran? That way, if anyone wants to dispute the NN assertion, they can provide a search that makes a better showing. Transparency makes things better, except maybe privacy curtains. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

The exact search is better than nothing, but it is still not proof of NN - the onus is on the searcher to say why, in each case, few google hits means it is NN. Andreww 03:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Notability isn't everything, and Google isn't the be-all and end-all. Rob Church ^Talk 02:21, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

ComCat's "NN, D"s

Am I the only one who's getting a little concerned with ComCat's AFDs? Every two or three dats he seems to nominate a whole block of 15-20 articles, with his only comment being "NN, D". Likely as not the article being nominated is quite notable, as a quick glance at it can tell (I'd guess that 1/3 of these nominations ends up being deleted). it just seems too... arbitrary. And "NN, D" is hardly a detailed explanation of why these articles are considered non-notable. It's probably all being done in good faith, but I'm a little uneasy about it. Grutness...wha? 00:58, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/ComCat. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:07, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

rôle of the nomination on AfD

When listing articles on AfD, we ideally explain why we nominated the page for deletion, and what we want people to consider when making their not-allowed-to-call-it-a-vote-votes, right? In my view, we're basically plonking an article down in front of AfD, and saying "here you go, lads (and ladettes), I think this should be deleted because ..." Nominations are recommendations to delete (unless otherwise specified), but they are not votes. I'm not voting, I'm nominating. The distinction is important because nominations ideally require more thought than votes. It's also important because of the reasoning behind the recent "nominators also voting" phenomenon.

I asked about this the other day, and was told by a couple of very helpful users (thanks, guys!) that the practice began because certain admins weren't counting nominations as votes when closing deletions. To me, the only possible response to this is a resounding well, so what? If an AfD debate is so close that whether the nomination is counted as a vote or not will decide its result, it should not be closed as delete. Why the eagerness to get in that extra "vote"? Clear deletes will be deleted on the basis of other votes (which is where the persuasiveness of your nominating argument will come to the fore; take note, ComCat); not-so-clear deletes should not be deleted solely because the nominator shouted loudly enough. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 13:31, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I've deleted the recommendation that nominators add an explicit delete vote from the footer. This change was made by Chairboy (talk · contribs) as discussed here; he proposed the change, got two objections and proceeded to implement. This is not how we write policy on Wikipedia, people. Kelly Martin (talk) 14:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Kelly! Actually, I originally proposed that the Afd2 template itself be changed to put the first 'vote' in by default. There were two objections, so I asked if, as an alternative, perhaps the suggestion could be put in the instructions instead. The only response to that was a "Go for it!" by the admin Android79, so I made the change mentioned. Frankly, I resent the implication in your text above that I made a policy change against objections, as the change I made (after conferring with the objectors to the original suggestion) was very different from my initial proposal. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 18:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

You really need more input than that to make a policy change. Frankly, I'm tired of people playing loose with policywriting with respect to AfD. A lot of "policy" here is getting written and rewritten without significant community input, which is why AfD is so far divorced from the rest of Wikipedia in terms of policy. You people must stop doing this. Kelly Martin (talk) 23:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't really think a reccomendation on the AfD page about how to format a nomination constitutes a "change of policy". There is no policy agaisnt including an explicit vote now, nor does the edit in any way make it mandatory. many people do it now, indeed i think overwhelming majority of afd noms now include an explicit vote or option. I don't see how advising people, presumably newcomers to the afd process, to do what most people are already doing, adn what is clearly allowed by existign policy, constitutes a policy change. It also seems to me to be a change supported by most who are commenting here, and by good inherent reasons. I think your commetns above are not justifed by this situation. DES ^(talk) 23:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't see that as a policy change, just some helpful reminder text. I understand that it would have been good to have more discussion on the matter, but your objection is over the top, Kelly. "You people"? android79 15:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

However, I think the suggestuion is a good one. When I nominate a page on afd I always include an explicit choice of action. I don't want to rely on an implication/default, and i don't want my view discounted because I wasn't explicit, and if I take the trouble to explain my reasons, and to nominate, i generally have a view. So let's restore that suggestion it is what most experienced users do, and we should clue newcommers in.DES ^(talk) 01:02, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

You should state your views – your arguments for why the article should be deleted – in your nomination. If it's so close that one vote could make all the difference, the article should not be deleted. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 06:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally I think the nomination should be counted as a delete vote unless otherwise noted (such as listing orphaned nominations or completing the nomination on behalf of a newbie), as articles aren't supposed to be nominated for deletion unless you actually think they should be deleted. I'm all for making the implied vote explicit -- anything that introduces more clarity is good. --howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 19:26, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Just make it explicit to prevent any confusion. The nominator should, and most of the cases, does give arguments for its deletion, and indicates that he wants his opinion heard by voting delete also. When I just nominate something for deletion for which I particularily don't care about (such as when cleaning out CSDs), I ask for my vote not to be counted by saying no vote. I've even listed articles with a keep as the nominator, so to prevent any confusion, it's better just to say how my listing of the article should be construed. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:39, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• fuddlemark says above: "If it's so close that one vote could make all the difference, the article should not be deleted" but by that argument no one should ever add a delete vote, because if that one vote makes the difference, ther articel shouldn't be deleted, and if the article is a clear delete without that vote, the vote is redundant. To put it another way, consider an AfD that is 20D/5K. Pretty clear cut delte, right? Now look at a 19/5, 18/5, etc. At some point (depending on the opnions involved, and the standards the closer uses, the result will shift from a delete to a no-consensus keep. It is always possibe for one vote to make a difference, but if you say "don't delete if within one vote" then you just shift the boundry by one vote, unless you then say it again at the new boundry. To put it another way, the nominator is surely at least as free to express an opnion and vote as anyone. If the nom choooses to make a separate explict vote, oit should be counted the same as anyoen else's, right? so whay insit on two seperate edits. Givign an explicit vote in the nomiantion statemet makes things easier for the closer, and is the way that many people post AfDs. So lets suggest it in the instructiosn. When there is a clear conssnsus it won't matter, but it won't hurt. Abd on a close vote, it make make things celarer one way or the other. DES ^(talk) 22:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• AFD is not about the votes. If it is clear from the nominator's wording that he wishes the article deleted, then it counts as an opinion to delete, regardless of whether he used the word 'delete' or boldfaced it. Very simple. WP:NOT a bureaucracy. Radiant_>|< 00:18, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Back in the days when I closed VfDs, I generally assumed that the nominator wanted the article deleted unless the nominator indicated otherwise. For the nominator to actually cast a vote as well has generally struck me as silly. Kelly Martin (talk) 05:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

• We're really chewing on the wrong end of the pencil here. It's not a vote, I think we all agree on that. Thus the closer is really only going to have to fall back on the word "foo" written in the nominator's initial entry if a) the rest of the sentance is ambigious, and/or b) there is some external pressure on the decision.
• a) is fairly straight forward to address, and I've seen Fudd working on this. Social pressure on nominators to make proper initial statements. A good nomination is no more done by writing "NN D" any more than it is by simply writing "NN".
  • Someone writes that *cough* cat *cough* then we tell them off. Someone writes "Not notable, no google hits, no all music" we let it pass. Someone writes "Not notable. no google [link to search], no all music [link to search]. Unless evidence of notability provided, I recomend that this article be removed" we heap effusive praise upon them.
  • Note - I've said the opposite on the NND RfC because we haven't done this in the past. I would still support a change in our collective behavior, regardless of my statements there.
  • Those who are feeling especially bold could even remove afds with no votes that are poorly constructed and place a note on the nominator's talk page pointing to this discussion.
  • A nomination that clearly explains what the editor is thinking but is outside of policy should be treated as it would now. That is to say, left as it is unless obvious bad faith.
• b) is much more difficult, and is the source of many of the cries that afd is broken. It's a vote in practical terms because votes are easy.
  • I always put Delete on my non-procedural nominations because discussion on an RfC made it clear that if I didn't, it was possible for the closer to "ignore" this opinion. That's one source of pressure. Following a close and contentious close, there will certainly be howls of "this was 15/20, how could you keep!" etc. Here most closers will want to fall back upon some nice solid numbers to defend themselves, rather than having to explain that they thought the nominator was only completing and orphaned nom, etc. This is a second source of pressure.
  • Closers who make hard decisions are going to catch hell, and there do exist some ideological agendas driving both closures and examination of closures.
  • Strengthen deletion review, and put the same social pressure on closers to explain themselves. Support closers who make clear decisions based upon well thought out and well presented reasonings even if it's outside the bounds of normal consensus. Get them to ask for more feedback from each other and to engage the people involved in the discussion. Greater autonomy coupled with stronger review reduces both sources of pressure.
• We have all the tools in place to make a healthy, robust deletion system that everyone can have some level of comfort with here. We just need to tune it up slightly and ride it right.
  brenneman^(t)(c) 06:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Notifying the article creator

I'd like part of the AFD nomination procedure to include a note on the talk page of the article creator, where possible.

An example is Danese Cooper, which I created and which was AFDed. I had no idea this was going on. As it was it was kept, but I would really like to have been able to explain on the AFD why it should be kept. (And to answer the thoroughly bogus and off-the-wall accusations it was a "vanity" piece. WTF?)

(No, I don't pore over AFD daily; it's far too depressing an experience. Despite tagging myself a broad inclusionist, I think almost everything that lands on AFD deserves a quick and brutal death as soon as is feasible. Combing through the festival of stupid deletables every day is not my idea of anything I'd want to do regularly, ever.)

I realise this looks like a further bit of instruction creep, but I suspect it would help a lot in getting good information into AFD discussions - David Gerard 17:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• It is a good idea to put all articles which you create to your watchlist so you can catch it if someone tries to nominate it for deletion. Then you can march over to the AFD and add some sense into the debate. :-) I don't think requiring that the nominator inform the creator is always such a good idea, often the article has been edited by a slew of users, the initiator may not even be the main contributor. However, I think that a template to inform newbies who wind up seeing their article on deletion might be a good idea, at least to calm their nerves when they see a huge deletion tag slapped onto their article. I think most newbies will notice when their article gets nominated, I remember seeing the first article I created up for deletion, and it wasn't the most pleasant of experiences (but it was exciting in a way, and it was pleasant when I saw it was not deleted) Sjakkalle (Check!) 18:05, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Watchlisting your articles is something everyone ought to do, but I'm guessing David has on the order of half a trillion pages on his watchlist. I only have a couple hundred and I still miss important changes. (The watchlist seems incredibly under-featured; I think it needs some reworking!) That said, how does one determine the "creator" of an article? The editor who writes a two-sentence stub or the editor who fleshes the article out into a multi-section beauty over the course of several edits? android79 18:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• I share the concerns about identifying the "creator" of any given article. On some, it may be easy. On others, it is functionally impossible. In addition to the example of the heavily-edited article, I would be very reluctant to put that notice on any anon user's page. There is no guarantee that the anon user will reconnect using the same IP. If a different new user logs on, they are going to see the "you have messages" link and be very confused. Furthermore, saying definitively that we will notify sets up an unreasonable expectation for anon users. Someone who is still editing anonymously is unlikely to have figured out the technical limits of the system. To answer Sjakalle's concern about a template for new users, that what the Guide is supposed to be. The Guide is prominently linked right in the AFD template. Rossami (talk) 22:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I say "where possible" about telling the creator. In this case it was just me. It would be something that would work better IMO than blaming the creator for not watching AFD closely enough - David Gerard 00:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Request for backlog

Could people either nominate more articles for deletion or close AfDs slower? AfD has had no backlog at all for over two days, and whenever I have free time enough to close AfDs, I find that there are no AfDs left to review. Now that I have AdministrativePower@, I wish to get to use it, too. — JIP | Talk 20:56, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to nominate more articles or to come around UTC 00:00. Oh! AllyUnion should be updating AFD right around now... goes and closes AFDs... :P Titoxd^(?!?) 23:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I suppose I could nominate more articles, but UTC 00:00 (EET 02:00) is when I sleep, and I can't edit Wikipedia in my sleep, despite what I seem to think at the time. — JIP | Talk 06:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

You want a backlog? I'll show you a backlog! :) --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 23:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Category:Wikipedia backlog. Plenty of things to do, but if you want I'll nominate your user page for deletion :) Radiant_>|< 14:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Given that such a nomination would go on WP:MFD, it would not help create a backlog at WP:AFD. :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

That's my fault, sorry. I've been supposed to work on an essay for the past few days, so I've just been procrastinating by closing all the AfDs... :) - ulayiti (talk) 16:34, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Is it time to change the deletion threshold?

Its becoming painfully obvious that having a super majority determine the fate of articles is doing nothing to stop people from nominating and renominating articles over and over and over... And frankly it is also very bias toward the "inclusionist" viewpoint. Why should Wikipedia be any different then politics where simple majority usually rules?Gateman1997 21:50, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

• First, Wikipedia is not a democracy. Reasons for this are to discourage sockpuppetry, and vote stacking, and to encourage discussion. Second, the AFD system is loaded somewhat against deletion for at least one very good reason. If I want to delete an article and it is not deleted, what have I lost? Not much really, if I really hated that article I could simply decide not to read it. If I want to keep an article and it winds up deleted, then I have lost access to it, and that is more serious. (OK, for an administrator that is not all that serious, since I still have access to deleted material, but Wikipedia was made for readers, not administrators.) If a sizable minority of regualr Wikipedia users find that an article has some merit, then the article probably has some value to at least a sizable number of people, and we should not deprive them of accessing that information. That is why I would rather keep a few articles which ought to be deleted, rather than delete an article which ought to be kept. That is why one of the deletion guidelines is "When in doubt, don't delete". Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:17, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia governance is by consensus, not by majority rule. The very act of voting is contrary to our principle of using consensus to make decisions. I realize that there is a great deal of pressure within AfD to make Wikipedia—or at least AfD—more "democratic", but such pressure is not consistent with our foundational principles. You are free to attempt to change Wikipedia's foundational principles, but this page is not the place to do that. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:15, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Just a question

So, say I nominate an article for deletion. During its stay on the AfD votes page, it receives a major overhaul that completely eliminates the rationale for deletion. Many people who originally voted "delete" change their vote, and all following voters vote "keep"...

as the nominator, can I just say, "well, I'm withdrawing my nomination" and delete the deletion notice on the page?

Lolita (orca) (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tokitae)is the page in question, by the by. (If an admin sees this, could he/she/it please close the vote for deletion?) I realize that the vote will get closed momentarily now, but just for future knowledge... Matt Yeager 07:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I would recommend that you don do so. There is always the possibility that some of those who did not change their vote may not be as impressed by the rewrite as you are. In general letting the AFDs run their 5-day courses leads to fewer arguments. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:49, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Sjakkalle is correct. Strike through your nomination (using <s>Delete</s>) and explicitly change your opinion but otherwise let the discussion run its course. Good closing admins carefully check the edit history to see if and how many opinions changed as a result of the rewrite. The nominator changing his/her mind generally is given considerable weight in the decision. Rossami (talk) 18:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Joona Palaste

I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I saw the "keep" vote added by an anonymous possible sock puppet at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joona Palaste. It was the only "keep" vote in the entire debate, and the user didn't even know anything about me. The absurdity of it all was too much to ignore. — JIP | Talk 09:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Can the nominator retract an AfD before it has run its course?

Archived here from village pump Steve block talk 11:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

In the past week, I have seen two occasions where an article was tagged with {{AfD}}, then the nominator saw that several users voted to Keep, and then changed his/her mind and removed the AfD tag before the nom has run its course. Is that permitted? In one case I retagged the article, even though I agreed that it needed to be kept, and voted so. --Rogerd 03:27, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

If pretty much everyone agres that a page should be kept, and particualrly if the nominator has withdrawn the nomination, and admin can and often will clsoe the AfD early as a speedy keep. The nominator should usually withdraw by strinking out the parts of the nomination he now does not agree with, and inserting a comment/vote in which he changes his view to keep (or whatever). The nominator should not, IMO simply remove the afd tag -- leave that for the closer, who should not be a person deeply involved in the discussion, as the nom clearly is. DES ^(talk) 03:44, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, if it's not the case that "pretty much everyone" has voted to keep it, then the nominator shouldn't have any special power to kill the discussion. Other editors who favor deletion have refrained from listing it because it was already listed. It wouldn't be fair to them if the first person to list the article were given a preferred position. JamesMLane 05:13, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Quite true. But the nominator publicly changing his or her view often has a powerful effect in persuading others to do likewise. Not always of course. DES ^(talk) 16:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, it sounds like both of you are saying that the AfD shouldn't be removed by the nominator, regardless of how the voting is going, but should be removed only by an admin, either at the end of the voting or if he/she deems it worth of a speedy keep or speedy keep. Thanks for the input --Rogerd 05:21, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Correct. Strictly speaking, to close an Afd as keep one does not need to be an admin. But one should be an experienced wikipeidian, and not involved in the particular debate. I would advise leaving speedy keep decisions to admins. I have seen people vote "speey keep" as a sugestion to a potential closer. DES ^(talk) 16:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Due to the sheer numbers of articles listed in Afd, many editors are trying to hurry things along. I sometimes see articles deletes after a day or 2 rather than 5, if consensus is already clear. You now see speedy keeps done sometimes too, also presumably to save time. IMO, if the nominator withdraws and there's not much serious opposition, closing the Afd is fine. However, there should be no prejudice in such cases against another Afd- if any editor feels there's a legit reason to delete, he should not be silenced just because there was a speedy keep. In general, this probably won't happen much - if controversy is anticipated, the Afd should be left open. Friday (talk) 17:19, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I am getting conflicting opinions here. Friday is saying that what I saw may be OK. Others are saying it has to be an admin. In both of these cases, there was clear consensus that the article should be kept, including the nominator (who changed his mind). --Rogerd 21:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Please take my remarks as my own personal opinion, not an attempt to explain policy. However, policy may be a bit grey here. The reason admins primarily close afd's is that deleting of the article is often required. Non-admins can and do close Afds sometimes when a deletion is not required. In practice, if consensus to keep is clear, it's unlikely there will be any controversy, no matter who closes it. Friday (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Friday here. Howver, closing an AfD, even a pretty clear speedy keep, is probably not something someone on his first month of editing should try. Besides, speedy keeps are relatively easy, someone will grab one pretty quick. It is the really tricky cases that sit unclosed. DES ^(talk) 02:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The nominator is not a sponsor. Retracting an AfD nomination only retracts the nominator's own opinion. If a consensus hasn't begun forming at the time of the retraction, the AfD discussion is still active. — JIP | Talk 09:13, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Expertise counting extra on AfD's

Archived here from village pump Steve block talk 11:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I have recently seen it contended, for the first time in my experience, that being an "expert" on a topic should give someone's opinions additional weight in an AfD. This claim was made here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Able and Baker (2nd nomination). (Note that the outcome of the AfD is irrelevant here; I might end up changing my vote anyway.) The claim was supported with this quote from Jimbo, which I don't read as having anything to do with expertise. Rather, I tend to assume "credibility" and "reputation" refer to having a track record of editing in good faith—which means doing enough research to "vote" in an informed way. I can't see how giving special emphasis to "expert" editors on AfD's makes any more sense than giving them special rights in the article namespace—which, I understand from WP:NOR#The role of expert editors, we don't do.

Obviously, of course, experts will likely be able to cite reputable sources, and sway people to their opinion in AfD's. I am referring only to the contention that the admin closing the debate should give the single "expert" user's opinon extra weight in the debate.

I'd like to hear other views on this, or maybe be referred to previous debates/discussions that shed light on this. It doesn't make sense to me at all, but I could be wrong. -- SCZenz 22:52, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

It has to be done on pure numbers, IMO. How are we to judge whether any particular voter on AfD is an "expert" or not? Until we have a system of assigning expert users in the way that we do admins I can't see how this is workable as it would mean that action could no longer be taken on weight of votes alone, you would have to go in and research who was making each vote. --bodnotbod 22:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

As the would-be expert in question, I prepared User:Snowspinner/Webcomics prior to asserting my expertise, and I am happy to back up any part of that with evidence via e-mail as needed. Snowspinner 23:07, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I count the numbers, but I also look to see what people are saying. I think common sense still has to come into play. After all someone may post a very good point at the end of an AfD that runs against the fall of the votes (the previous voters may voted without the knowledge of this late info). I don't think we can have experts, but I think we do have to listen to convincing voices. After all, if some truly is an expert, then they should be able to convince us of the encyclopaedic worth of something. If they can't do that, then they probably aren't experts in the first place. --Gareth Hughes 23:10, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

That would work better if there were reason to believe that everybody actually read deletion debates while voting anymore. Snowspinner 23:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Assume good faith. There doesn't have to be reason to believe it. -- SCZenz 23:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Bad faith has made itself more than apparent. Snowspinner 23:46, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

But I don't think verification is the issue here, or at least it's only part of it. Regardless of whether expertise can be verified (in general, I'm not sure it can) it's not clear that it should count more even if it can be verified. I think we all know it doesn't in the article namespace, so the question really is why information that's inadmissible in articles would be admissible in AfD's. -- SCZenz 23:13, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I just read what Jimmy Wales said about it. I think the issue now has to be whether one wishes to challenge Jimmy on his "trust the expert / admin instincts" view. Because I see little value arguing here when, ultimately, those who take the "expert / admin instinct" side of the argument can point towards Jimmy's pronouncement as policy. I have to say, I was rather surprised at his view. I can understand it, but of the flaws inherent in either course of action, I would have thought abuse is far more likely in the hands of the few than of the many voters. I struck out my comment as ill-founded. --bodnotbod 23:53, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. Jimbo's statement is a completely separate issue; there's nothing there about expertise. It refers to the "judgement and credibility" of wikipedia editors, which I take to refer to their history of editing in good faith and making sensible decisions—not to external expertise they claim. -- SCZenz 23:56, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. He doesn't mention expertise. Um... I'm too much in need of sleep to now add anything useful. But I'll strike out my previous comment as unhelpful in this debate. --bodnotbod 00:15, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I think there is a role for expertise, but it very rarely will come into play. For instance, let's say that someone sporting an IP address for a name steps up and says "I think that you can't delete the article Fastidius Ungerus of Rome; I am an expert in Roman History and that person was KEY to moving the Senate forward on Point X". In a situation with an anonymous user, that just has to be laughed at, I think; but in the event where someone is verifiably a scholar of Roman History and has penned books and articles on which Wikipedia would draw as reference material .. that should (must) be taken into account in the decision making process. Like I said, rarer than a long-tailed manx, but still to be considered. With all deference to other folks here, I wouldn't invoke this type of mantle of expertise for someone who has only authored faithfully, long, and well on Wikipedia; they must demonstrate that their expertise extends beyond Wikipedia, into the "real world". This, by the way, is a criteria for promotion beyond a certain level in some types of organizations (particularly research organizations), demonstration that people outside of the company see the candidate as an expert in their field. Courtland 04:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Why wouldn't the expert in your example have to cite an article somewhere? Surely he could. -- SCZenz 04:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

It depends; verifiability is not always dependent on ability to support by citations. However, being a recognized expert doesn't suddenly lead to suspension of Wikipedia guidelines regarding citations. Courtland 12:26, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

But it does seem like some rules for use of sources in article-writing are suspended for evidence given in AfD's (esp. to determine notability), or at least a large fraction of Wikipedians think so. Are there any relevant policies/guidelines on this, or discussions somewhere? -- SCZenz 16:16, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

One thing that should be mentioned in this discussion is time. When providing an edit to an article, we have an attitude of "eventually." If I, as an expert, am busy, and do not have time to go do research to find a great quote, and it waits for a week or two, no harm is done.

Deletion debates are completely different. They have a five day window, after which it is inordinately difficult to overturn them. Which means that experts are expected to do all necessary citation and sourcing work on a deadline, or else the article will be deleted forevermore. That's not reasonable. If deletion debates are going to have a deadline, we have to also be more permissive in giving people who know what they're talking about preference, citations or no. Snowspinner 19:05, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll buy that. I just think it should be reflected in other users' agreement with the expert (as is happening in the AfD I cited above), and not—except in extraordinary circumstances, like a new, list minute expert opinion—counted extra by the closer of the debate. -- SCZenz 19:13, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm an academic, and perhaps an "expert" in a few areas -- but it's important to remember that university expertise is highly specialized, and professors have a tendency, sometimes, to overstate the breadth of their expertise. Personally, I think that Wikipedia is exciting precisely because it permits the co-production of knowledge by experts and the public. The process can get sloppy, of course, but it's revolutionary. Don't forget that many crucial advances developed outside universities; academic rigor seems, sometimes, to develop into rigor mortis. -- Bryan 16:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

AFD template error

Zondor (talk · contribs) made a change to {{afd}} that broke it, causing the ending div not to work. This means that all articles onto which the template has been subst'd since the 10th of November are messed up, appearing contained within the template. I'm fixing some of the recent ones now (todays nominations) but there are probably too many for me to do. violet/riga (t) 22:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Fixed all of the ones for today, but none before. violet/riga (t) 23:01, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

The ones listed on the 13th are all fixed. I did notice, however, that my signature broke part way through. Is this related to the HTML Tidy issue? Rossami 03:01, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

:: I would say so. Did you have a customized signature? If you had, you might want to check your preferences to see whether the HTML code is valid. Titoxd^(?!?) 03:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: add inclusion guidelines to WP:YFA

Before I go ahead and do it (and avoid being said WP:POINT), I propose to mention our WP:AFD's favourite inclusion guidelines to Wikipedia:Your first article, which what a new user reads before creating his first article.

We keep on sending articles to AfD until the cows come home, but we don't tell newbies what our inclusion guidelines are. What happens? He clicks a red link, clicks "start a new article" and writes about a new buzzword he read on the paper, his hometown band, his hometown employer, an lesser-known war hero or a soon-to-be-launched website. He won't know he's wasting his time.

Shall I go ahead? -- Perfecto  05:36, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. It would definitely send a chilling message to a new user. What proportion of the new users are having this problem? I ask because when we've checked before, we found that the vast majority of new users were successfully contributing new articles on valid topics. Only a very small minority were contributing articles which were deleted. The number of users who would benefit from such an admonition was thought to be less than the number of users who would be discouraged by it. On the other hand, we are much larger than we were the last time the question came up. Maybe all the easy articles have already been started. Certainly a politely worded mention would be less chilling to the new user than having his/her "golden prose" nominated for deletion. Looking at Wikipedia:Your first article, there are already a few cautions and admonitions there. The recommendations you have above would not be inconsistent. I guess it couldn't hurt to add it. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect too much of it either. Obviously, lots of new users are ignoring what's already there. Rossami (talk) 06:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I didn't even know that page existed, so I doubt newbies will read it, but go ahead if you think it'll be useful. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• Seconded. The TLA YFA in this edit summary made me go "eh?". I'd eat my hat if more than 1% of the contributors looked at that page prior to creating their first article. Would it be terrbily un-wiki to suggest a software solution that forced gently guided any user who hadn't contributed before to this page before they could create an article? And IPs could get sent there every time.
  brenneman^(t)(c) 06:09, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Muaeio

I am surprised no Finnish-speaking person provided any comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muaeio. — JIP | Talk 10:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

How to add to list

I nominated an article for deletion and clicked add new entry on this page and used: {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Article name}} (within 2 {} brackets) yet it doesn't seem to work as it doesn't get included in the list. What am I doing wrong?--Kalsermar 20:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You hadn't included the header in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kara Borden. (See step II.) I've added it for you. —Cryptic (talk) 21:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the pointer regarding the header and for adding it.--Kalsermar 22:15, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:AfDClosing

I've removed this template, and its entire section "How to close pages for deletion", from the main AFD page. The overwhelming majority of people who look at WP:AFD don't need to know how to close afds, and many of those who view WP:AFD directly at all are already confused by the instructions there. Consider that on an average day, at least 10% of the nominations are either improperly listed due to the ridiculous m:instruction creep-ridden complexity of the process and need to be fixed with my bot, or are speedy deletes and didn't need to come to AfD at all. Most of those who list articles properly have done so before in the past and don't need to consult the instructions again.

Furthermore, the process is already explained properly at Wikipedia:Deletion process. (Perhaps we could use a link to that page, but not an entire section.) Probably half of my edits over the past two months have been to follow up on afds where the process has not been correctly followed, primarily orphaning titles that should never have an article, and tagging talk pages and redirects for speedy deletion - a step that was omitted entirely in the template. And nonadministrators certainly should not be closing debates as delete; this actually creates work. The administrator who deletes the page himself has to look at the afd himself and determine that it was correctly closed, or he has no business pushing the delete button. See Wikipedia:Deletion process#Non-Administrators closing discussions and Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted/Archive/February 2005#Template:Vfd delete. —Cryptic (talk) 22:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I would have nuked the "non-admin delete" provision myself, so good job. While we are talking about simplifying the process, how about getting rid of {{afd3}}? I see no benefit to it, and makes the job more complicated, compared to the way I nominate articles:

1. Tag the page with {{subst:afd}}
2. Copy the code for {{subst:afd2}} from the "Maintainance use only" section of the tag
3. Click the redlink, paste the subst code and make my nomination
4. Higlight the page's title (which will be "Articles for deletion/Page") and copy it
5. Go to the current day's AFD page, and add {{Pasted title}} to the end of the page
6. For the edit summary, enter "Listing [[Pasted title]]"

As you can see, I didn't use {{afd3}}, because its extra parameters make it much more instruction creepish than the other method. So, would it be a good idea to simplify the process that way? Titoxd^(?!?) 22:52, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Why did I make it? We have a bureaucrat who, about two weeks before becoming a bureaucrat, didn't know how to close AfD's. I told him how to myself, he thanked me as he couldn't find anywhere to close it. Redwolf24 (talk) Attention Washingtonians! 23:39, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

LOL I hear you with that one! I bungled the Mamnuts AFD nomination after having 15 goes at it. It turned out that I had used the wrong type of brackets - its squiggly brackets rather than regular brackets. )})} - can you tell the difference? Without it being explained properly, I couldn't. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

nominators again

I see that someone's re-added a bit in the AfD instructions to say Nominators Should Vote. At least the silly "to begin consensus-building" phrase is gone, I guess. Now it's "to avoid ambiguity", which makes a lot more sense but is still a Bad Thing.

Quite apart from the sheer unnecessary inelegant redundancy of the idea, there is a major reason not to have nominator voting: it encourages bad nominations. We're so concerned about having our vote counted that once we know for certain that our "Delete per nom" is safe, we don't bother putting effort into the nomination anymore. We've all seen nominations that consist entirely of "nn delete" or even "delete per nom" (!). That's not a nomination. It's barely a vote!

A good nomination should consider:

1. Is it verifiable? (What steps did you take to attempt to verify it?)
2. Is it notable? (Why not?)
3. How will deletion affect Wikipedia? (quality, age, and number of links pointing to the article)
4. Is there some other reason to delete? (e.g. dictionary definition)

It doesn't have to. Many of my nominations don't (whoops). But keep this in mind next time you consider saying "'''delete''' per nom ~~~~" as your nomination. Remember that (hoaxen and spam aside), we're deleting someone's good-faith contributions here, and we at the very least owe the page creator an explanation as to why. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 04:00, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Beautifully put. I raised this as an argument for why an article that first survived a Vfd with 4-0 keeps was then deleted with 4-1 deletes on the 2nd nomination with absolutely 0 discussion, other than the unverified assertions by the nominator. If you would like, you can raise this point in the undeletion review. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:01, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems unnecessary for the nominator to state his or her position. If it's anything other than "delete", they've come to the wrong place. Other people may vote to merge or redirect, but if that is the nominator's vote, he or she should not have brought it to AfD. -- Kjkolb 05:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

• mmm. I'm not so sure. There are times when I've brought articles here that I've thought are borderline. Or might mean something to someone, but not me. Or might be better merged into another article. Or might be better transwikied. It doesn't take much effort for the nominator to include that sort of comment into their nomination, though. A nomination should, IMHO, explain what is wrong with the article and what should be done with it. At a pinch, "NN, D" covers that. "Delete per nom" doesn't (it literally translates as "delete because I said so"). Better though is a nomination where it's clear the nominator knows what (s)he is talking about. "This article makes no sense because xxx, and there are only 10 google hits for a combination of yy and zz. Delete". Or "This is probably an important subject, but what's here at the moment is worthless. Unless it is thoroughly rewritten it should be Deleted". There's no need for a separate voting line - the vote itself should be obvious in the nomination. The current problem may partly lie in the lack of instruction on what constitutes a valid nominator's explanation for nomination (at the moment, the instructions for afd2 simply say "include a reason") Grutness...wha? 06:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I will once again state my support for admins to remove really crappy nominations that have not yet recieved any participation. A nice note on the user's talk page explaining why to accompany, of course...
    brenneman^(t)(c) 06:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

But after how much time? And what constitutes a "crappy" nomination? A bad-faith nomination would attract a lot of attention, a flood of speedy keeps, etc. --Idont Havaname 07:15, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. It's less annoying for nominators to vote on a separate line or give little explanation than it is to remove a nomination, or worse, vote "keep", because someone doesn't like the way it's nominated. They can just add a note to the nomination or the user's talk page about making better nominations in the future, without disrupting the current nomination. That said, I try to make my own nominations as best as I can and I don't use abbreviations, in case other users don't understand them. -- Kjkolb 09:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

• I wasn't talking about bad faith nominations, I was talking about the ones that are either so terse or so rambling as to make it unclear exactly why we need to delete an article. I've revised my opinion on this, by the way. Now I simply re-write the crappy nominations. - brenneman^(t)(c) 03:34, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

While I have a lot of sympathy for the badly-crafted noms point, there's no reason why nominators shouldn't vote on a separate line. Everyone seems to, why change it? The Land 15:35, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Nomination of Talk pages for deletion

Consider the article Transfer RNA and its talk page Talk:Transfer RNA.

A non-logged in anonymous user first vandalized Transfer RNA, then thought better of it and removed the vandalism but left a "biology is fun" statement as the only item on the Talk:Transfer RNA. There are a number of cases I've come across where the article is ok but someone has left a calling card on the talk page. Is it appropriate to nominate talk pages for deletion here without creating confusion about whether the main page should be deleted or not? In other words, if I were to nominate Talk:Transfer RNA for deletion, would I be tossing a spanner into the works or would it pass through the system like any other nomination? Thanks for your input. Courtland 16:01, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Just blank it. —Wahoofive (talk) 18:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Wahoofive. No reason to go through the cumbersone AfD process for a little talk page. Just remove the offending comment.--Alhutch 07:12, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Appeal to people who speedy delete AfD candidates

Again I see deleted pages on AfD with the AfD debate still nominally open. Would administrators who speedy delete AfD candidates please use {{subst:at}} and {{subst:ab}} to officially close the AfD discussions? — JIP | Talk 08:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

• I would surely endorse that. If it is clear that this is not an obvious candidate for speedy (like e.g., nonsense, copyrighted material, etc), and if a discussion started, please let it run its course, even if the vote seems to be unanimously in favor of deleting the stuff. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think that is what JIP meant. He wants admins to close the AFD nominations after they speedily delete articles. You'll usually see several nominations for a red linked page whose nomination has not been closed on any given AfD day. -- Kjkolb 21:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Yes you are right. So, if it absolutely obvious that this is a speedy, one should indeed speedy the article but not forget to officially close the afd debate. It is kind of pointless to have an open afd debate with a redlink for the article to be deleted. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
• There is one way where, unfortunately, this can happen. It is when someone nominates an article for speedy deletion and the AFD notice is removed or obscured at the same time. For an administrator doing speedy deletion patrol, it's thus not immediately obvious that there even is an AFD discussion in progress. If you look at FightBadGuys.com (AfD discussion) and Davey Morgan (AfD discussion) from yesterday's AFD discussions, for examples, you'll find that the AFD notice was either obscured by speedy deletion notices or removed before the speedy deletion notice was applied. Uncle G 02:08, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Good point. We should instruct people to leave the AfD notice when they nominate it as a speedy deletion, perhaps on the speedy deletion criteria page and/or the AfD main page. How do people obscure the AfD notice? As long as it's near the top, it seems like it should be easy to spot (as a non-admin, I can't see the content of the deleted pages). -- Kjkolb 18:42, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
    • It was below four speedy deletion notices, and easily missable as simply more of the same. Uncle G 07:29, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Wow, I've never seen four. Three yes, but not four. I guess someone really wanted it deleted. -- Kjkolb 16:53, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

• I've been closing quite a few of these in the past week. Some of them appear to be understandable. Occasionally one editor will nominate the article for AfD while another will find it and delete it. Occasionally, though, I'll find that the last entry in the article's AfD entry is "Speedied!" While this is all well and good, and while I don't exactly mind closing the debates (since it allows me to be all ADMIN-Y and stuff!), shouldn't whoever speedies and lets the AfD people know they speedied it also be kind enough to put in a subst:at and ab while they're there? (I realize I'm being redundant here, bear with me) Mo0[talk] 18:43, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Improper CSDs

Pepe Remey, Neal Chase, Daniel Hirst - that's three articles I've spotted tagged for speedy deletion, which I've declined to speedy delete and sent to AfD instead, and have gathered only "keep" votes. The CSD tags must have been in bad faith. Was it vandalism or does someone have a personal vendetta against these people? — JIP | Talk 21:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Two of the three speedy tags were applied by a logged-in user within minutes of each other. The same user has a history of working on a closely-related article and appears to be a reasonable editor. The third was applied by an anon user two hours later and following a different format. I do not believe it to have been the same person. I think that the conclusion that "The CSD tags must have been in bad faith" is not yet supported by the facts. Have you asked MARussellPESE about the tags he/she applied? Rossami (talk) 22:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

We must consider the possibility that the user is not familiar enough with the criterion for speedy deletion and simply made a mistake.--Alhutch 06:52, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

This kind of thing should be raised in WP:AGF. i.e. how far are we supposed to go in assuming good faith? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 06:59, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Proper process?

I have been talking in various places about Deletion Reform, but a number of people have pointed out to me that I am not 100% aware of all of the intricacies of the process. For example, there was a case recently where the final vote was 6/6 yet the closing administrator chose to close the debate as "delete" purely on the basis that he personally felt that the argument to delete was stronger than the argument to keep. Is this an actual policy that a closer has that much power? Note that I nominated it for undeletion and it was upheld unanimously that the closing admin did the right thing, and indeed they told me off for daring to nominate for undeletion! They told me that I should get used to it because Wikipedia is not a democracy.

I secondly had an issue whereby a second article was deleted after a 4/1 vote in favour of delete, with absolutely no discussion whatsoever by any of the 4 people who voted delete - and yet on its original nomination a year earlier there was a wealth of explanation as to why it deserved to keep. Put simply, the article in question was proven to be notable, but it was stubby. Yet a year later, the assertion made by the nominator was that it was not notable - with no evidence whatsoever to back up the claims. If Wikipedia is not a democracy, how is it that people with no arguments are able to vote in that way?

The two cases in effect are mutually exclusive of each other. Either 1 is fair or else the other is fair. They can't both be fair. I cannot comprehend any form of logic that suggests that both articles deserve to be deleted.

The only possibility that I can comprehend, whereby both articles deserved to be deleted is if we think that "Admins can do whatever the hell they want to do". Now, if that is an actual policy, well, urp, I think that I'd like to know about that one! LOL. Wikipedia might not be a democracy, but it makes a lot of claims to being fair, something which I doubt they could do if they said that admins can do whatever the hell they want to do.

I would dearly love to be directed to a comprehensive list of rules for such things, if one exists. I can see no holes in any of my arguments, yet am being told that I am wrong. The arguments put forward, are, in my opinion, quite illogical and cannot be true. Yet they are fought vehemently as if they were true, and indeed both votes for undeletion lost unanimously.

There's a lot of side notes to this kind of topic, but I really think that we need to have some kind of clarification of where we stand. In essence, before we are able to adequately reform the deletion process, we must first know what the deletion process actually is. In as explicit a detail as possible.

Thanks. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Try reading the Guide to deletion, the Deletion guidelines for administrators, and the page about the Deletion process. The first case was rejected due to Sockpuppetry (or Meatpuppetry. Also, the name of Articles for deletion used to be Votes for deletion, but it was changed in August to emphasize that these are not votes, but discussions. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 07:42, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the second article, it was kept on the condition that it be cleaned up. Since it wasn't, and someone stumbled onto it who thought it was of sub-par quality, it was renominated (a perfectly acceptable thing to do, unless it is done right after a concluded AfD). One year between nominations is forever in Wikipedia, so there were no process problems on that article either. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 07:48, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

This is not the place to argue on the specifics of that case. As I said, if one was fair, the other wasn't. They are mutually exclusive. Either both are unfair (for different reasons), or only one was unfair. It is not possible for both to be considered to be fair, unless we take the view that admins can do whatever the hell they want to. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:13, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I should point out that the first case was NOT rejected due to sock puppetry - because there was no sock puppetry - something that has been admitted. LOL. Tripped yourself up there! Had it been rejected due to sock puppetry, then correct process DEFINITELY would not have been followed, since they were proven not to be sock puppets! Can't get much more obvious than that one! Had the closer said anything about sock puppetry as the reason for it to be deleted, it would have been a very simple case for reversion. Prove that they weren't sock puppets (proven and admitted in article that they were not) and the case is simple as pie. Definition of steamrolling. You will never in your entire life get a more obvious case. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course, if they were meatpuppets, that is a suspicion, not a fact. And it is something that the closing admin did not take in to account. They wrote that their judgement was purely based on the arguments, and that they decided on a hunch to delete it. If they thought that there were sock puppets, they would have said so. Once again, more lies being spouted to try to justify an indefensible notion that the article in question deserved to be deleted. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like they didn't follow the simple advice of "when in doubt, don't delete"...they must not have had any doubt, or simply didn't care.--MONGO 08:26, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

While you're there, go and have a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Absolute Boyfriend. I won't link to the article above because I want this to be a hypothetical discussion (although it will most definitely be used as an example of steam rolling, as will the undeletion comments). But go and have a look at that one, and then tell me that deletions are fair. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

On that last one, without looking at the revisions/article in question, it's entirely possible that a speedy-deletable/pure advertising "article" can be written about something notable in and of itself. The fact that something's notable doesn't mean any article about it should be kept - in many cases, it's better to have a redlink than an poor-quality stub, since you're less likely to have someone notice that it needs an article that way. That or, as you did here, an improvement during the AFD can save it (while I know it's not encouraged, I've actually nominated a couple of particuarly crappy articles for deletion before on the basis that an AFD will often cure or kill it). - SoM 01:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Minor or major edits when voting?

This question has probably been asked a bajillion times, but I'm currently on a library computer that uses IE and has a less-than-desirable connection speed, so I can't easily find the answer. I'm wondering what the preferred standard on using minor/major edit is when voting on an AfD. I've been doing both recently, and I see people doing both, but I'd like to know what y'all think about that. Thanks in advance, Mo0[talk] 18:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Putting newer AfDs at the top

I was reminded by a recent deletion review discussion of a practice that has been bugging me: putting new articles at the bottom. (Apologies if covered before: found nothing in a quick glance of the archives). I think this tends to disadvantage articles appearing later in the day, as not only are they exposed on the "current" page for a shorter period of time, but they appear at the end of a very long page. Any reason we can't reverse the order, as is done on the RfA page? Turnstep 23:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I hope someone will take the the time to look at the last week or two of AFD pages and compare the number of votes received by, say, the last ten nominations of the day with the number received by the first ten, to see if this is a real problem. I, for one, always start at the bottom of the page and work upwards. —Wahoofive (talk) 00:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

When I'm doing voting, I'll actually mash on the Page Down key until I see something with only a few votes, and vote on it. Or I'll start at the bottom, or start at the top... basically I personally randomize how I do it. Also, when I'm checking for non-closed speedied AfDs, I tend to vote on articles that are right next to the ones that I close. Personally I don't see much of a difference, as when people nominate an article they go to the bottom, therefore they see all of those articles at the bottom as they are nominating. Mo0[talk] 03:54, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Concern about notability and porn stars

I have noticed somehting very interesting. Apparently, University professors are often deleted, while porn stars are kept on Wikipedia. What exactly are our criteria for a notable porn star? You do realise that half of the porn-stars on that list are by the site operators? I was not aware that we were a porn weblist.

Are we going to do something about this? - Ta bu shi da yu 09:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Do you have a recommended correction to WP:BIO? Rossami (talk) 14:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps people are mistaking fame for notability. I've seen many articles about famous porn stars here, but I don't think many of them are especially notable. — JIP | Talk 14:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that one issue here is that most people never watch porn, and those that do don't like to admit it! :) Secondly, the other issue is that porn sites tend to spam a lot (and make up well over 50% of all spam) hence meaning that the google test for porn stars is irrelevant. I think that a solution is to make a separate place for pornography criteria (not just for porn stars, also for sites, producers and so forth) that reflects consensus. For example, the biggest internet porn site on the web, milf hunter was nominated for deletion with comments that its Alexa rank of 1,000 was not good enough (in spite of the criteria being 10,000), and in spite of it being far more popular than places like bang bus - and if anything the Alexa criteria should be lessened for porn sites since they always have 10 or 15 mirrors (usually for spamming purposes) and hence their actual popularity is much higher than Alexa suggests. Hence I would suggest for porn sites to have a combined Alexa ranking. Such things as them having published videos, an IMDB site, and so forth are also relevant. There are examples, for example, where Tawnee Stone was considered notable yet Tori Stone was nominated for deletion (and passed) in spite of them being pretty much exactly equally notable. Similarly, Vicky Vette was considered to be notable whilst Milf hunter, where she started, was nominated for deletion. The criteria are being moved around a lot.

We should note that a lot of people view Wikipedia as G-rated, and have a bias against including porn of any kind. Thus most of the votes are related to their disgust of pornography rather than any rational argument, and hence perfectly legitimate notable people/sites/etc are deleted because people don't personally like them.

I think that we should start a new discussion to form consensus of what to do with porn. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 01:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree but, again, this discussion should be initiated at WP:BIO. Rossami (talk) 03:44, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

A MILF site is number 1? That's just gross. Anyway, I think non-notable professors and porn stars should be deleted. Both may get a fair amount of Google hits now, but that doesn't mean they'll be remembered in 50 years. On the other hand, if a porn star is as notable as someone else who should be included in Wikipedia, their job should not be used as an excuse to delete them. -- Kjkolb 18:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

CDThieme sockpuppetry

As well as running the impostor Jguk. (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (note dot on the end), CDThieme has been multiply voting in AFDs and RFAs using: No Account, Tree&Leaf, Longboat, Uncarved Block, Quintusdecimus and Via Egnatia - and none of those were created recently, so CD probably has a pile of other accounts in the wings. I've also blocked CDThieme for 48 hours' reflection - David Gerard 08:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

December 5 Penthouse Pet articles

Could someone help me in closing all the discussions of the non-notable 1970s Penthouse Pet articles? I've closed two as redirects to List of Penthouse Pets, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time to close all the rest. — JIP | Talk 10:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Users asking about deleted articles

Sometimes users ask me why I deleted an article that they were involved in. Most often I deleted the article as the result of an AfD discussion that I was reading objectively without a personal interest. Often I don't even myself know that much about the subject of the article. I don't make Wikipedia consensus, I carry it out. Why can't the users ask the AfD voters instead? — JIP | Talk 13:33, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia articles that might be vanity

the articles in this category can be safely listed on AfD after a certain period of time? --Melaen 18:10, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• That depends on whether the article is POV (in which case no, just clean it up or rewrite it, or re-tag it as {{pov}}) or if its subject lacks notability or verifiability (in which case yes, you can list it on AFD or tag it with {{nn-bio}} in extreme cases). Waiting a certain period of time is not actually going to accomplish much in either case, to my knowledge there is nobody systematically improving the articles in this cat. Radiant_>|< 00:31, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

GNAA deletion debate of December 15, 2005

Exactly why is GNAA a speedy keep? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gay Nigger Association of America (8th nomination) The voting shows if anything overwhelming consensus delete. 132.205.45.148 19:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

See discussion here as well: [1] PJM 20:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

advise please

Could someone please take a look at article Pádraig. This article seems to be nothing more than a self advertisement by a young person who is not yet sufficiently know to have an article done about him. Is it suitable for Wikipedia or should it be deleted. If kept it may result in a flood of similar pages from millions of people? NB: I live in the area concerned and have never heard of him. 86.2.136.146 13:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

For one thing, if this were a well-known artist, he would not have to resort to a webcam shot for his picture. So: not of much interest. Bessel Dekker 15:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Serbophobia

Your opinion on following discussion would be appriciated: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Serbophobia. Or can someone direct me where can I list this link to get more users present their opinon on this issue. Thank You --Dado 00:59, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Relisting AfDs

I've noticed that recently, myself and a number of other Wikipedians have been relisting old AfDs in order to generate more discussion. Usually, those cases have no more than two votes and may or may not have much consensus. User:Gateman1997 brought a good point to me, which is that in doing so, we're really cluttering up the latest AfD log page, pushing the number of discussion way over 200 and making the log page unwieldy. So I wanted open a discussion here as to what we as a community can do to either limit this practice, or find some other alternative. My first suggestion is that people could make an effort to vote on anything that's sorely lacking in votes. Any other ideas? howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 22:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I suppose those of us who go through the old logs could set up a clearinghouse for AfD nominations in need of votes. Sometimes I ask IRCers to vote so I can close a debate. Johnleemk | Talk 09:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

A small bit of history... Before the day-to-day subpages, nominations were kept on VFD and left on VFD until they were closed. Then subpages came, and just the nominations of the subpages were kept until they were closed. Then it changed somewhere along the lines to simply leave only 6 days of discussions on VFD. About one year ago, votes for deletion was converted to the day to day subpages you have today. When we changed to day to day archiving, somehow that was lost. We began archiving pages per day, meaning the nominations stayed where they were, and day pages were yanked in an older than 6 day fashion. Open nominations on anything older than 6 days began to be listed as "no consensus" where it was left alone... and left undeleted. In an attempt to revive an old set precedence, I began relisting nominations where I felt that it was necessary because I was uncomfortable of the fact of leaving a nomination without a clear consensus. As a suggestive alternative, we could just make listing of pages with little or no consensus... --AllyUnion (talk) 05:48, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Probably the best thing to do here is to stop being in such a hurry to close the daily pages on WP:AFD/Old. Nobody's in a race here. Adding so many relisted discussions every day (I've seen some daily pages where fully a quarter of the discussions were relists) is exacerbating the root problem - that the ratio of sane commenters to afd nominations is steadily dropping - not helping it. If you see a discussion on /Old that you don't feel comfortable closing because not enough people have commented, take a moment to look at the article and add your own opinion. —Cryptic (talk) 19:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Increasing vandalism?

Is it just me, or has there been a notable increase in vandalism recently based on the number of AFD nominations per day? This is based on no research, just a slice of memory. JHMM13 (T | C) 08:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Rachel Brown sockpuppet army in AFD discussions

Wikipedia is ridiculously tolerant, but we're not actually stupid. Rachel Brown has been leading several Wikipedia admins (notably Dan100 and Zordrac) a merry dance. Kelly Martin and Jayjg checkusered the bunch and found notable links and a lot of lies about locations and grossly inconsistent "explanations". I had a look just now and have blocked the lot. 1 week block on Rachel Brown for gross sockpuppetry, and indefinite on the Poetlister, Newport, Taxwoman and Londoneye accounts. Note that these have been pretending to be different people on many AFD discussions. If anyone can credibly dispute this sockblock, please leave me a message or email me and we should ask for an official AC clarification, because that would beat a wheel war. Merry Christmas and DELETE! - David Gerard 17:36, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Lessons learned (learnt)

Review where lessons learnt is cited (internally)
Business Process Improvement
Cambridge-MIT Institute
History of rail transport in Great Britain
RJBurkhart 00:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

AFD Traffic

I think the AFD traffic is too high. Almost half of what I post ends up in an edit conflict. Could the page be separated into different categories to ease the flow of nominations and votes? -- King of Hearts | (talk) 01:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The problem of such a proposal is that articles would be sorted by subject matter or something like that... and not every portion of the separated AFD would be carefully watched. --AllyUnion (talk) 05:35, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Although, if you like, we could create half-day archives but that would be a hassle in itself.. --AllyUnion (talk) 05:36, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Formerly Votes For Deletion

Do we really still need "formerly votes for deletion" at the top of the page? It's been 5 or 6 months. If no one answers soon, i'm killing the wording on the account of it serving no useful purpose anymore.--CastAStone 06:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• I still see people using the abbreviation "VfD" when they mean "AfD". — JIP | Talk 10:40, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed changes to {{afd2}} and {{afd3}}

I'd like to propose the following changes to {{afd2}} and {{afd3}}:

Replace the current {{afd2}} text:

===[[{{{pg}}}]]===
{{{text}}}

with the following new text:

===[[{{{1|{{{pg}}}}}}]]===
{{{2|{{{text}}}}}}

Replace the current {{afd3}} text:

{{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/{{{pg}}}}}

with the following new text:

{{Wikipeda:Articles for deletion/{{{1|{{{pg}}}}}}}}

This eliminates the need for typing "pg=" and "text=", making the AfD process just a little quicker while keeping the legacy code so those used to those parameters can continue to use them. If there are no objections, I'll make these changes to the template code. --Deathphoenix 15:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Might want to go even further with afd2 and give it a blank default if neither {{{2}}} nor {{{text}}} is given, so people who put, say, {{afd2|SomeStupidWebsite}} Alexa rank 17 quadrillion, 2 registered users. ~~~~ don't get an ugly bunch of braces at the start of their afd. (I've cleaned up several nominations like this.) —Cryptic (talk) 15:28, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, doing that creates unformatted text the next line. Most people add a space between the template and the text. Here's what I mean (using the sandbox template:)

{{subst:X1|User:Deathphoenix}} Some text. --~~~~ leads to (after getting rid of the Sandbox chaff)

User:Deathphoenix

 Some text. --Deathphoenix 17:54, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I propose getting rid of {{afd3}}. I have written how it can be done without it just a few sections above. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 00:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, for reasons that have been explained at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:afd3 and Template talk:AfD in 3 steps.--Srleffler 22:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Technically speaking, because all uses of the two templates are suppose to be subst:, you can just use 1 and 2 respectively without pg or text. Therefore, don't need to be backwards compatible. The only reason why it was included was that it is merely suggested, at the time when I created them, variables should use names. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying I can just use {{subst:afd2|some article|some text}} right now without using pg= or text= and it would work? I tried it and it doesn't work that way. Or did you mean something else? Thanks, Deathphoenix 21:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I meant if you changed it, you could use it as what you suggested it. As: {{subst:afd2|some article|some text}} You wouldn't have to have pg= or text= after the fact, simply because all uses of the template are suppose to be subst: so... there should not be a use where it wasn't. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:40, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that some people may continue to use the template with the old syntax. It's hard enough to get new users to read the instructions, much less to get someone who already knows how to do an AfD to go back and see that the syntax has changed.--Srleffler 22:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Closing Discussions

I'm not an admin, but would I be able to close discussions as described here? At least how many "keep" votes must there be? -- King of Hearts | (talk) 22:41, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Essentially all of them. I don't think anyone would argue if you ignored a "delete" vote made by a patently obvious vandal but other than that, it should be near-unanimous. The reason is that this is not really a "vote". It's a discussion which must be balanced and interpreted in light of Wikipedia's policies and traditions. It's entirely possible for a discussion to have almost all "delete" votes and only one "keep" yet be closed as a "keep" decision if, for example, the "keep" is exceptionally well-reasoned, founded in policy or presents new information which was ignored or unknown to the other discussion participants. The closer has an obligation to carefully review all the comments and other evidence when making the decision and may have to exercise his/her discretion to override the strict vote count. We've found that such judgment calls are best left to people who've had more opportunity to learn about the various policies and practices - people who've seen them in practice enough to know where the exceptions are. Hope that helps. Rossami (talk) 04:18, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Another Question

How long since the initial nomination do I have to wait until I can close it, if it's not an obvious "Speedy Keep" throughout the entire debate? 6 full days? Or is it less than that? -- King of Hearts | (talk) 05:33, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Each AfD nomination gets five days, so you can close keep decisions on the fifth day if you like (I was actually doing a few before the five days were up, but when it was like 20/0 or 20/1 + nominator withdrawn -- WP:IAR, you know, but it's best to leave them alone until you get a good feel of how AfD works). Feel free also to close out copyvios (those that are sent to WP:CP) and articles that have been speedily deleted but where the deleting admin forgot to close the AfD as soon as you notice them. howcheng {chat} 06:35, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BrotherWalfrid%28AndrewKerrins%29.jpg

Could someone please delete this image as I have uploaded it twice by mistake, I do apologise for this. The other name that I uploaded it into is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BrotherWalfrid%28AndrewKerins%29.jpg, could you please delete the one in the title, and not the other one?

Thank you. Paddy :-) 23:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. Next time, slap a {{db-author}} tag on it. howcheng {chat} 06:37, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, I will use the {{db-author}} tag next time. Paddy :-) 00:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Google Test

By a rough estimate, how many results on Google would be considered enough to be notable? -- King of Hearts | (talk) 00:21, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

A concrete number is a bad idea. An influential theologian and writer from 1630, for example, is quite lucky to get 300 results... whereas I have logins from web forums that get over 5,000 results. You just have to apply it logically in every situation... 1,000 hits for a blogger's name doesn't really mean a lot, but for an obscure (to me) Brazilian folk legend, it's nothing to sneeze at. You also have to make sure the results actually have to do with the article in question... 50,000 hits is meaningless if none of them are talking about what the article is about... it just means the article's title is a relatively common term. --W.marsh 04:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is no firm answer. The problem is one of the inherent bias in the google test. 100 unique hits may represent phenominal representation if the topic is an offshoot of a highly technical topic like, say, quantum chromodynamics. On the other hand, tens of thousands of hits or even more may be insignificant if the topic is related to pornography. You really should read Wikipedia:Google test and the related Talk pages for a much more detailed discussion. Rossami (talk) 04:37, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Automating...

Is there a reason Step II of the three-step process does not automatically include the page name? It does at the top of the page when you're editing, so clearly the server is aware of the name. Maury 15:53, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

That is because there is no way to separate the subpage from the title. When you do, Articles for deletion/Foo, that is the full title, so attempting to use the variable PAGENAME fails. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:16, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Once Moore AFD

I think this article should be deleted. No verifibale evidence that Mandy Moore's next album is to be entitled Once Moore and plus it has yet to do anything notable. Parys

Nomination completed. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Once Moore (2nd nomination). I abstained. Rossami (talk) 20:49, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Is vote for merger binding on destination article?

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Sigma_Chi_Cal_Poly_Pomona ended with the recommendation to merge with Cal Poly Pomona. Angr added a paragraph to Cal Poly Pomona, which I reverted, because it was POV and because no other student organizations are currently included. JJay restored it (twice), stating that I do not own Cal Poly Pomona (duh!) and implying that the AFD vote required the merger.

I'm really puzzled by this. In my view, a decision was made about an article that was not originally part of Cal Poly Pomona, with no notice on the Cal Poly Pomona discussion page, that in effect forces a paragraph of content into the Cal Poly Pomona article. How can this be?

I have no intention of starting an edit war, so I plan to encourage other student organizations to add their bit, but I still don't think it is encyclopedic, even if it were made NPOV.--Curtis Clark 01:12, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, the only decision an AFD can make that is binding is to delete an article. Merging and/or redirecting is not binding, nor is even keeping. A kept article can be unilaterally merged and redirected. A redirected an article can be recreated. JJay is wrong here, IMO. The AFD is not binding, even more so on an article that was not the subject of the AFD. Johnleemk | Talk 03:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Johnleemk is correct that AFD is basically limited to just the "keep/delete" decision on the article in question. All further issues should be sorted out through our normal processes on the respective article Talk pages. However, AFD discussions do get a fair amount of visibility and attention from the community at large. Most AFD participants carefully evaluate the article(s) before making their recommendation. In many cases, it's more attention than the article's ever had before. We have traditionally given AFD decisions a certain deference in proportion to the degree of serious thought and consideration that went into the discussion. Rossami (talk) 07:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I've run into similiar issues. Many people seem to believe that a prior Afd prevents normal editing of the article after it's over, specifically with respect to merges. At Talk:Mootstormfront and Talk:Brian Chase (Wikipedia hoaxer), I've seen people argue that a merge cannot be done, since the prior Afd did not result in a "merge" decision. This is bizarrely incomprehensible logic to me, and I assumed most experienced editors would not agree with this reasoning. I decided to get more opinions on this here, and I see it's pretty much the same issue already brought up above, only in reverse. Friday (talk) 19:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Cannot recreat Doosan article for long?

Dear administrator, I wanna write an article on Doosan, but the 'doosan' page informs 'cannot be recreated without a good reason'. But I just want to talk about the Korean top 10~12 company Doosan with other users, and get more information and oppinion of the others. So, please let me create the 'Doosan' page(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doosan). Thank you. Sincerely, truism77

The old article was deleted as a copyright violation. Rather than rewrite the article, a number of users (apparently including you according to the edit history) kept reposting the copyvio text. The page had to be repeatedly deleted and was finally protected to prevent further abuse. If you want to create a completely new version with no copyright violations, you may do so but but given the history, I believe we are justified in some skepticism.

I recommend that you create a completely new draft as a sub-page of your user page - user:Truism77/Doosan. When you have a completely new page that is not a copyright violation, bring your petition to Deletion review to have the page unprotected and your draft moved into the main article space. It does not have to be a perfect article, but it should be more than a mere placeholder. And given the history, please assume that other readers will scrutinize it very carefully for a recurrence of copyright violations. Rossami (talk) 15:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

etiquette and VfD

When an article is added to VfD, contributors to that article do not necessarily know of the VfD nomination. If the contributor is busy with other wikitasks or is otherwise distracted from visiting said article, that contributor might not be able to chime in.

I have come across on article in VfD that is nearly 3 years old and has close to 1000 edits. I feel compelled to contact many of the contributors and alert them of the VfD nomination - but I also wonder if such solicitation is considered poor etiquette in Wikipedia. My messages to these contributors can be phrased in a way so as not campaign - such as "I just wanted to inform you that the article insert article name here has been nominated for VfD. I saw that you made contributions to this article, so I thought you'd like to know. Kingturtle"

Is such action wrong? Is it considered campaigning? Are there any rules preventing this? I think it is important that contributors to an article have the right to know that their work is under review.

Please advise, Kingturtle 19:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• AfD noms show up in watchlists just like everything else, so I don't see the need for this. However, if you want to determine who the handful of main contributors are to the article, and let them know, that's probably acceptable. Which article? android79 19:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Part of my concern is that things can slip through watchlists. If someone makes a VfD edit and then another edit to the article occurs the same day, the VfD edit doesn't necessarily make the watchlist. Also, if someone worked on an article two years ago, they may have removed it from their watchlist later. I'm withholding the article name for now, because I want to get unbiased responses to my question - but I will let you know once I get an idea of the feelings out there about my question. thanks for your quick response. Kingturtle 19:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
• If the alert is presented neutrally, it's probably okay. The real question is whether the recipients will appreciate the alert or not. If I've taken the article off my watchlist or if I'm not watching it closely enough to run a diff on the edit history, then I really wouldn't consider myself sufficiently current on the article to justify an opinion. I'd probably ignore it.
  However, if we do formally decide that this is an acceptable practice, I feel quite strongly that it should never be required.
  I also feel strongly that such an alert should never be posted to an anon user's page. Too many anons come in from dynamic IPs but don't understand what that means. They will either be confused about alerts to articles they've never edited or will complain that they weren't notified not realizing that the notice is sitting on the IP userpage from their prior connection. If we try to make this a policy or even a guideline, it will set an unrealistic expectation for them. Rossami (talk) 01:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Very interesting points you've made. I too feel it inappropriate to alert IP addresses. I would only alert those registered users whom made non-minor edits to said article. I wouldn't want such notifications to be required - except for one....I think it should be common courtesy to notify via TALK the creator of said article (unless the creator was from an IP address). Kingturtle 01:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
• well, in my careful time to ask the questions here, the time in the VfD ended, and the article was deleted. In leui of that, I have made a post in Wikipedia:Deletion review. Kingturtle 21:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

TFD on template:afd3

This template is useless instruction creep cruft. It makes it more difficult and confusing to nominate an article for deletion. All you need to add to the AFD log page is {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Whatever}}. This is exactly what that template looks like after it's subst'd. So, it doesn't take much for a new user to figure it out from the other nominations, if they're confused. I changed the reference to it on the main afd page to the simpler form, and have tfd'd this. --Phroziac _. o º ^{O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!)} 21:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• I reverted your edit on {{AfD in 3 steps}}. Let's wait for the TfD process to finish before editing the instructions. howcheng {chat} 22:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Sorry to say, but people have a tendency to get confused when it isn't the same thing, even if it is that simple, as you say. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

AFD List update

A new feature has been recently installed on the AFD List. See User:AllyUnion/AFD List. I hope this helps anyone who is closing AFDs. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:47, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

AFD summaries

I am experimenting on the possibility of using a bot to generate an alternative interface to AFD. I would appreciate feedback on what people think of this idea and suggestions for what would be useful. Dragons flight 11:48, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. A grouping of nominations that have received few votes might be especially helpful, as fewer AfDs may have to be relisted. -- Kjkolb 14:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I like that. I suggested some kind of grouping of things based on the number of delete/keep votes a while ago at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Old but my idea was not accepted. But yours is better thought, and I am defininitely for. Besides, you are offering it as an alterntative of the existing way, not a replacement, so I guess people won't object.

PS I made an announcement about this at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Old which maybe on more watchlists than this page. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:56, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Page Broken?

Could an admin possibly take a look and see about fixing the page? Looks like user Sleepyhead81 messed up some of his/her nominations, and older closed AfDs are now transcluded in three places below their noms. First example is at the SuperOffice listing. Thanks. Turnstep 21:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• Fixed, I think. Let me know if I missed any. Rossami (talk) 03:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. There seems to be a couple more today - search for "Interflop". Turnstep 21:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

And again, look at "Bestsiteever.xoaonline.com". Turnstep 16:38, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

AFD review?

I know there's a deletion review, but I would like to know if there's some kind of AFD review for articles not deleted; i.e, a mistake in the tabulation or an inappropriate closure of debate. I know I could nominate the article again for that kind of review, but there are big warnings to NOT clutter AFD, and I have read WP:POINT. My issue is with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lueshi (2nd nomination). Three votes for and eight votes to merge or delete is NOT a keep, and I don't believe that any of the keep votes were for valid reasons. - Hbdragon88 22:51, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Deletion Review is actually set up to handle all reviews of deletion decisions - whether the decision was to delete or not. Please propose it there. Be warned, however, that "merge" votes are almost always interpreted as "non-deletion" - that is, even if the article is radically changed through a merge and redirect, the edit history behind the article is not deleted. It is a requirement of GFDL that we preserve the attribution history of any content that we keep or build from.
Please also remember that an AFD "keep" decision does not mean "keep as is". Normal editing including mergers, redirects and complete rewrites resume as necessary and as discussed on the relevant article Talk page(s).
Having said all that, you might still have some grounds for a DR request based on the apparent sockpuppetry in this discussion. Rossami (talk) 04:53, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I see. I interpreted "keep" as meaning that the article was notable, worthy of belonging at Wikipedia. Of course editing would continue afterwards. Technically, merge would mean non-deletion, but again I interpreted it as meaning that the article as-is was not notable enough and should be merged elsewhere. I will propose it at Deletion Review should I feel up for making another stab at getting the article deleted... - Hbdragon88 05:14, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

merge vs. keep vs. delete vs....

Wait; confusion reigns. Merge votes are seen as analogous to keep?? I generally put merge or delete or merge when I think the article has salvageable content to be used somewhere else, am I sabotaging myself here?? -- nae'blis _(talk) 21:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

delete or merge is a delete, plain merge is usually a keep unless the comment suggests otherwise WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 22:07, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

No, merge = merge and redirect for me. When I see merge and delete, I see if the article has any meaningful content that can be merged. If it doesn't, I take it to be delete. If it does, I merge and redirect. Johnleemk | Talk 05:57, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I meant more in context to the above discussion. Also, technically as I recall merge and delete means a merge without a redirect (obviously problematic due to the GFDL, but there are ways to get around that) - merge or delete means merge and redirect if something useful otherwise delete - merge means merge and redirect and do not delete (if that makes sense, it does after you've been doing it for a while...). So, rule of thumb to me is, if you want an article merged but would rather it be deleted then kept, merge or delete or plain merge and specify that you would rather the article not be kept - otherwise, if you want it merged but don't want it deleted use merge or merge or keep. Finally, if you want something merged but don't want a redirect (bad spelling etc.) then merge and delete and specify it as such (although many administrators probably just won't do this anyway and interpret it as a merge or delete). WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 06:58, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Holy christ, that was much more confusing than I expected. Thanks (I think)! I'll try to keep that in mind, but I may hack on the instructions section a bit to clarify this, as I can't be the only idiot out there to have been confused by how their vote was counted... -- nae'blis _(talk) 21:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

You are not the only one confused by this. Before you "hack on the instructions section", I'd recommend approaching the problem from a different direction. The problem is not the dozen permutations of "merge ..." but that many people are still confused about the requirement in GFDL to preserve attribution history. But the truth is that most people don't have to understand the intricacies of that policy. That's why we ask admins to close discussions - they've been here long enough to be familiar with the rule. For everyone else, if you take the time to write out your thoughts and your intent in plain english, it doesn't matter what codewords you put at the front of your comment. The absolutely critical thing to remember is that we are not voting. Rossami (talk) 23:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

With respect, right now we are 'voting', more or less (albeit in a supermajority way). I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen an admin go against the straight numbers. But I'll take what you're saying into account (and of course propose here before I start "hacking" on anything); I suspect what we need (as always) is more educated voters participants, and thus a simple clarification may be in order. -- nae'blis _(talk) 20:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:Oldvfd

NOTE: template:Oldvfd has been put up for deletion at TfD.

Update warning

"Please DO NOT try to update the AFD yourself, as it will confuse the AFD Bot." Does this refer to the AfD project page, or AllyUnion's page? If it is the project page, it should be moved or clarified to avoid confusion. It should also say what is meant by "update". I assume it means adding a new day to the list under "current discussions" and moving the bottom date to old discussions, but people may be afraid to edit the page if they don't know. -- Kjkolb 19:11, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

This confused me too and I asked about it on Template_talk:AfD_in_3_steps as well. I have tried to wordsmith the text here: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#Week_at_a_glance a bit to clarify what is and isn't to be manually updated. Comments or corrections welcomed! (I would have proposed it first as this is a high traffic page but it's just a tweak) ++Lar: t/c 20:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Much better. Thanks, Lar. -- Kjkolb 16:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Automating AfD closing

Regular debate closers, I have written a script that automates the closing of AfD debates. Please have a look and try it out, and let me know of any bugs or changes you would like. I'm a Javascript novice, but I'll do the best I can to help. :) Johnleemk | Talk 05:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

AfD closing headers

For people who close a lot of AfD discussions, you may also be interested in a number of headers that can be easily copy-pasted when closing. I find it most convenient to have them in two windows and dragging-dropping into the edit box. You may find these at User:Howcheng/afd. howcheng {chat} 17:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Disagree with don't vote statement

The page says: "You don't have to make a recommendation on every nomination; consider not participating if [...] you agree with what has already been formed." This doesn't seem like a good idea to me — often votes can drastically swing in the last day if a deletion gets a lot of last-minute attention for some reason. Regardless of what the current consensus appears to be, additional consensus may help to combat a dissenting faction that appears in the future. Deco 03:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• The idea of the statement is to avoid pileups, and to save people's time. An AFD with ten votes, all identical, is not intrinsically more valuable than an AFD with three votes, all identical. Radiant_>|< 14:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I am afraid your response totally tisregards the concern voiced by the previous person: three votes may be easily overriden in the last day of vote by a determined clique. Actually it is even easier: three votes to "delete" are beaten by a single last-second vote to keep. I'd say five votes are safe (i.e., with no opposite votes). Mukadderat 19:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Closing admins are expected to use judgement, and if they see a last minute surge, they can always relist, for extra input. A closing admin has to use their judgement. If the last-minute keep votes are based on a revised article, fixing the problems the nominator and early voters had, they may close as keep. If last minute keep votes are just a sneaky way of keeping a non-notable bio, then the admin can relist the AFD, or if they're sock/meatpuppets, they can disregard those votes entirely (deleting if there's consensus amongst valid voters). In many cases of the pile-ons, the article has been abandoned by the creator, and ther isn't a single person in all of Wikipedia who wishes the article kept. I think before anybody decides to be the fifth unanimous delete voter, they should first check all the other AFDs, which haven't had a single vote. --Rob 20:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Consensus or supermajority?

There is talk on Wikipedia:Consensus concerning the statement that certain Wikiprocesses, in particular WP:RFA and WP:AFD, no longer work on the principle of Consensus, but instead on the principle of Wikipedia:Supermajority, which seems to imply a more-or-less strict numerical limit. I would appreciate it if some AFD regulars would weigh in on the discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Consensus to comment on this. Radiant_>|< 14:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Pseudo-boothy on AfD

At what stage do we begin to take a contributor's "vote" less seriously? If we've got someone who participates in a huge number of AfDs but doesn't add much information to any one discussion, how is this interpreted from a point of view of "consesus", and how could the closer's commments reflect this in a sensitive manner?- brenneman^(t)(c) 06:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

If I see a pattern of delete/keep "votes" with little or no apparent reasoning, I start to discount them. I also give less weight to "votes" without any reasoning. Johnleemk | Talk 10:31, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

What about an editor who's major contribution was to AfD? Also, we accept "delete, per nom" or "keep, per Foo", these aren't far from "votes". - brenneman^(t)(c) 13:44, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but assuming Foo or the nominator provided valid reasons to delete, those "Votes" should be valid too, IMO. Johnleemk | Talk 16:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

When looking at AFD, one should remember that a person's main contribution to the AFD dicussion is not on the AFD subpage itself, but should be to the actual article, especially if they're voting keep. Adding relevent information, providing sources, removing unverified information, and generally improving accuracy is vastly more valuable then the usual monologue delivered in an AFD. Often, the talk page of the article, is also appropriate (sources are found, but not ready for the article). There is something seriously wrong wit some of the massive long-winded AFD discussion, which are many times the size of the article itself. Once the AFD is over, all the AFD discussion, though archived, provides almost no ongoing value. Comments/suggestions in it are almost never implemented. Sometimes references are put in the AFD, yet the article remains unsourced after the AFD! Frankly, I think one "keep per rewrite" vote, if given by the rewriter, should often (not always) outweight any *preceeding* delete vote, no matter how long-winded the delete voter is. I've seen many votes changed based on article improvement (usually towards keep, but also towards delete). We really don't need to encourage people to write more essays in AFDs (I get rather tired of reading the same arguements a hundred times, with the same link to WP:NOT thrown in, by the same person, over and over). --Rob 16:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

A hole in the policy

Please, take a look at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#"Redirect" option. The issue need clarification, since it has already led to a confusion. Mukadderat 18:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia vandal is sex offender

Wikipedia was mentioned in an article about a sex offender being unmasked.

"It was actually on a Wikepedia site. Wikepedia is sort of an online encyclopedia where users submit information. So it‘s basically a pool of knowledge that users submit. And we found an entry submitted for deletion actually for Caspian James Chrichton Stuart IV and the user who submitted it for deletion coincidentally submitted it because he suspected it was—quote—“largely nonsense” and next to the name Caspian James Chrichton Stuart IV was the name Joshua Adam Gardner in parentheses. So that‘s how we found his real name and that‘s what ultimately led us down the final stretch of our investigation."

-- Kjkolb 23:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's the link to the vote: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV (Joshua Adam Gardner), 5th Duke of Cleveland. A bizarre case of AfD archives having a notability of their own. :-) Deco 03:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the article should be brought back to life now in this event? (with major modifications). I would like to know what the article looked like at first also. _→AzaToth 19:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

There is an article about him at Joshua Gardner (now up for AfD). The older article Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV (Joshua Adam Gardner), 5th Duke of Cleveland looks like junk, it's a hoax. --W.marsh 19:40, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

To answer your direct question, the hoax article used to say: "Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, was born in Paddington London, on September 4th, 1983. He is the nephew of John Colum Crichton-Stuart the Earl of Windsor. He became the Lord of Dundee in 2003, when his mother passed away. He also abdicated from the throne of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in December of 2003. Her Majesty made him the 5th Duke of Cleveland in 2005." Deco 07:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Terminator 4

Could an admin dig into the deleted revisions of this article and check the chronology please? As fas as I can tell:

1. It was created around 30 September 2005
2. AFD created (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terminator 4)
3. Speedy deleted as an attack page (deletion log)
4. Recreated around 4 December
5. Second AFD created (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terminator 4 (second nomination))
6. Closed with no consensus on 11 December, and presumably not deleted
7. Deleted twice on 12 January 2006 as patent nonsense
8. Recreated today
9. Flagged for AFD as crystal ball (but with the original AFD subpage listed on WP:AFD)

I'm most interested in how an article can survive an AFD, and then be deleted as PN - was the article vandalised? Alternatively, if they'd just hurry up and make the damn film we'd be saved a lot of bother ;) — sjorford (talk) 00:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

• Third AFD subpage now created at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terminator 4 (2nd nomination) :) — sjorford (talk) 22:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Requiring seconding for AFD

I propose the following policy change:

An AFD by a Wikipedia user, will be automatically deleted in 1 week unless it is seconded by two other Wikipedia users that are qualified to second. The qualification for seconding an AFD is that the Wikipedia user must have done at least <x> edits at least <y> weeks before the AFD nomination was made.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are appreciated.

Regards, Carl Hewitt 01:33 22 January 2006

Uh...I don't see the point, really. Practically all AfDs last five days before being closed, so why bother deleting them when they're done? Johnleemk | Talk 10:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I'm not really seeing the point either. I've also observed that the AfDs that get literally 0 comments after 5-7 days are almost always ones where the nominator made a strong, well-referenced case for delete... so there was really no debate to be made, so the regulars don't bother commenting. We certainly shouldn't be closing those essentially as keeps. --W.marsh 15:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Both of the editors above make some very good objections to the original proposal. So I have ammended it as below. Carl Hewitt 15:31 22 January 2006 (PST)

Requiring seconding for repeated AFD

I propose the following (amended) policy change:

A repeated AFD for an article that has survived an AFD in the previous six months will be automatically defeated in 5 days unless it is seconded by two other Wikipedia users who are qualified to second. The qualification for seconding an AFD is that the Wikipedia user must have done at least <x> edits at least <y> weeks before the AFD nomination was made.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are appreciated.

Regards, Carl Hewitt 15:33 22 January 2006 (PST)

I don't see the point, really. Practically all repeat nominations I have seen have at least three or four votes, making the minimum two delete votes (which is practically what this is) pointless m:instruction creep. If you think about it, all this is is a required quorum for deletion that would only apply to a very small number of AfDs which unnecessarily complicates the deletion process. Admins already discount (or at least weight less) suspect votes, and if the article is a copyvio, it doesn't matter how many people voted keep or delete -- it's got to go. This is a bad solution in search of a problem. Johnleemk | Talk 09:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Technical problem

Every time I try to add an article to AFD, it doesn't appear on the current day's list. I have nominated this for AFD and it doesn't show up. It should be in between Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/411 (band) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Islam in South Africa. Pc13 20:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

It's because you're not including the header. I've fixed it. (As an aside, this is exactly why hiding this step in an obscure template on the instruction page is such a poor idea.) —Cryptic (talk) 21:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Closed AfDs

Could someone with good knowledge of AfD templates take a look at the page for January 20th? It looks as though one of the entries has somehow "captured" all of the ones below it into the "this AfD is done" blue bordered box. Perhaps the template inside that AfD is messing things up? Thanks. Turnstep 14:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong. Johnleemk | Talk 14:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

That often happens if someone applies the "top" template and forgets to apply the "bottom" template. It takes both templates together to close the <div> box. It looks like it's already been fixed. Rossami (talk) 16:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

A possible candidate for deletion?

• Alejandro Armenta - I don't have time right now to investigate and go through this deletion process, but someone else might want to look at this article. Cheers. Ben Arnold 00:47, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedily deleted. It looked to be a test page. howcheng {chat} 01:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo on the warpath re *FD

*FD, AFD/DRV in particular, is causing noticeable problems for the Foundation, as Jimbo has noted of late on wikien-l. (See archive - there's a lot of posts on the subject this month.) The idiocy over Category:Living people's nomination was the last straw.

I realise AFD/DRV regulars don't like this sort of discussion happening outside WT:AFD and similar places, but it does happen and it will affect *FD — call this a notice to participate in the discussions that are happening.

So the question is how to better ensure (a) intelligence-insultingly crap nominations don't get in or can be killed quickly (b) better behaviour from AFD contributors (assuming better faith of non-regulars editing, and so forth) (c) cutting down the crippling weight of deletion/undeletion process which leads some admins (e.g. me) to go "fuck it".

Ideas? Assume for this discussion that nothing changing is not an option, because it isn't.

(Note: my personal opinion is that almost everything nominated on AFD does in fact deserve as quick, messy and painful a death as can be managed. But the edge cases are causing real and serious problems across Wikipedia and for Wikipedia.) - David Gerard 13:11, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to reduce the size of AFD before we do anything else. This isn't just a matter of scaling anymore. The way I see it, people are abrupt and brief (to the point of ludicrosity, i.e. "delete nn-bio") because there are so many AfDs to tackle. As a result, a disproportionate amount of time is spent on articles that nobody would argue should be kept. This creates a culture of insularity and impenetrable jargon and abruptness that can easily be misunderstood (for instance, words like "vanity" have a totally different meaning on AFD) and is carried over to serious debates (generally any debate where more than two or three people object to deletion and expound on why) where people need to mull their words carefully and a reasoned debate should be carried out. Allowing people more time to handle fewer articles would give people breathing room to ponder their words, behave in a civil manner, and carefully decide whether to delete or keep something. Johnleemk | Talk 13:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

"vanity" is one that really upsets outsiders and should all but be abolished as dreadful public relations. Because the worst of AFD is watched by the outside world (even if regulars think it shouldn't be) and makes problems for Wikipedia and the WMF.

What about crap nominations? Quite a lot would be solvable with a merge or a move — simple bold editorial work, not requiring a nomination for an action as drastic as deletion. What can be done about those? They're a waste of everyone's time. Close the AFD early if the obvious merge is done? - David Gerard 14:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason why IAR and being bold are invalidated just because an article is on AFD. I think it should be perfectly fine to speedy merge/redirect, as long as a link is provided to the revision directly before the redirect was made (for convenience of the readers). WRT early closings, I'm not sure -- the way I see it, we should be eliminating the need to have all but the controversial AfDs actually debated on AfD. Obviously those where the nominator meant a merge should be closed early (this can be easily done within the present system), but for other AfDs...? Johnleemk | Talk 14:35, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

You don't, but others do (c.f. Wikipedia:Process is Important) - David Gerard 14:48, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

To clarify: I don't mean what reasonable people would do. I mean how to get the observable unreasonable ones to behave in a way that isn't a discredit at best and damaging at worst to Wikipedia as they do now. Without making the deletion bureacracy problem even worse - David Gerard 14:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Let us take a look at one of these "crap" nominations. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jesus was allowed to run its course and sweeped up an awful lot of keep votes. OK, we can say that some time was wasted on that, but when the final result was clear, nobody complained nor did anyone have reason to complain. No lasting harm was done. Oh, perhaps a few of our readers wondered why we would seriously consider this article for deletion when they saw the AFD tag, but they would also see a system which works, properly flooding such an AFD with a load of "keep" votes. Keep in mind that trollish nominations like that are really very rare, and not a big problem on Wikipedia. If we ever get major trouble with such nominations, there will develop a consensus for a policy change the same way a consensus for expansion of the speedy deletion criteria emerged due to the number of vanity-bio articles on AFD back in July. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have to disagree on this. That was a blatantly obvious speedy keep. But the real problem is when AfD's get nasty and create problems for the project--AfD'ing a living (non-deity) person can be insulting and divisive. -- SCZenz 18:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, let's look at a straw-man answer. Alternately, have a look at the mailing list threads and look at the examples Jimbo actually gives which were real and contentious, and stop being in denial - David Gerard 18:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a way to tinker at the edges here? If there were less articles in the AfD process, perhaps people would be less terse. That suggests finding ways to reduce the number that make it to AfD. Expanding CSD seems one way. Another way would be introducing CSK (criteria for speedy KEEP). Another way is to offer more early exits, that is for closing AfD's early when it is obviously a keep. Yet another way would be closing early when it's obviously a merge (with the proviso that someone has to actually go off and do the merge (so yes, as DG says, close the AFD early if the merge is done). All those things might help people have more time to be more thoughtful on the ones that are borderline. I'd also support not using quite such terse abbreviations, and not (EVER) using strikeouts for comments made by others. Eoth those are offputting to newbies. ++Lar: t/c 15:37, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

We don't need CSK, we need more acceptance for obviously-sensible speedy keeps. -- SCZenz 18:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm a process geek (we ARE here to write an encyclopedia, but the ends do NOT justify the means, if in so writing we drive everyone away and convince the world we are unreasonable, to the point that the encyclopedia itself is spurned, we failed), so wouldn't CSK lead to more acceptance? Concrete criteria tend to cut down arguments, don't they? CSK is not incompatible with "more acceptance for obviously-sensible speedy keeps". IMHO as a newb. ++Lar: t/c 18:35, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

It could, but it would most likely make things worse. Now anything not on CSK would automatically be "invalid", no matter how sensible. Process here is generally used as a means of telling people what they can't do, not what they can; although we need a certain amount of that, I'm not certain we need more in this case. -- SCZenz 18:39, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that a lot of the problem is inexperienced users creating articles (though there's nothing wrong with that per sey). Yes there are links to guidelines shown when you create a page, but not prominently, and you can't really expect new users to read 20 pages of documentation before creating an article. If you look at newpages, something like 20-30% of new articles are by brand new users. I know 20-30% of all edits aren't by such people... so it seems obvious that new users seem to want to create new articles a lot. And a lot of these are obviously articles that won't survive AfD... while they vary from things made up in school to band vanity to attack pages to articles about some game their buddy made that 4 people have ever played, they are all unverifiable.

So what I'm saying is that we should have an article creation process (at least for new users) that stresses verifiability. I think a second window during article creation, asking for a third party source confirming the new article, would be a major asset here. It would help a lot of people realize "Hey maybe Wikipedia isn't the place for what I'm trying to do here..." and it would automatically provide a source for new articles. Articles with invalid or incorrect sources (e.g. linking to google results, the website being plugged, etc.) could be deleted. If the source checks out, that actually would mean the article probably shouldn't be deleted anyway.

Yeah yeah I know everyone has an idea for a new policy and no one wants to read all the new ideas for new policies, but trust me on this one... most of my work on WP has been dealing with this kind of stuff. --W.marsh 18:30, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

• To put it another way, sure we can create tons of new guidelines for dealing with the slew of unverifiable articles people create under the current process. But wouldn't it be a better use of our time just to have a good system to help them avoid the very common mistakes new users make? Creating lots and lots of rules is, at best, a reactive solution. Being proactive would lead to better articles and less hassle for us. It's win win. --W.marsh 18:53, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
• This entire discussion needs to be assessed based on the consequences of any change. Fundamentally, this is because this entire project is based on unclear and conflicting goals, inclusiveness vs efficiency. You can't base an entire project on consensus and respecting every editor as an equal and then characterize good faith efforts as intelligence-insultingly crap nominations or expect to deal with them quickly. By that statement, you are saying "My judgment is superior". As of now, we already have a process to identify "crap". Everyone has a different perspective, and what may be "intelligence-insulting" to you may not be so obvious to someone else. In fact the example given Category:Living people is still extremely unpopular and probably would not exist if Jimbo had not made his decree. Yet both the nominators and the people voting were clearly acting in good faith. If the idea of consensus is important, then let the process continue. If efficiency in dealing with "crap nominations" is what you want, you will have to abridge the rights of average editors in some way (limit afd rights only to admins, or assign individuals who have the right to deny afd without discussion). There is no way of both respecting consensus and "dealing with crap nominations". The current process is based on the consensus model, and consensus must be reached before deletion. You only have two meta-options, concentrate power in fewer people (appoint super-users of some type), or slow down the process with more bureaucracy (make all AFD's go through a talk page vote first). Either will have long-lasting and unforeseen consequences. --John^DO|^{Speak your mind} 19:21, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
  • • Is that a reply to me? Doesn't seem like it but you never know. I just think a clearer process, not inherently one with more rules, will lead to less stuff swarming AfD all the time. --W.marsh 19:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

We had a simultaneous edit. --John^DO|^{Speak your mind} 19:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have a proposal to go partway to solving this. We should have a policy page called Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy keep, where if any article meeting the criteria is nominated, its nomination can be immediately removed. Things that have in the past had overwhelming consensus for keeping, such as articles about real towns or widely-known fictional characters, etc., can be listed here. Deco 20:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I have a clarification. My point above is that the current model leaves all substantive decisions in the hands of the users, super-users such as admins, arbcomm, even Jimbo are theoretically no more equal than regular users in the decision process regarding content. Superusers only become involved when due process consensus cannot be reached. Any process change that still leaves the content decision in the hands of the users will not address this issue of "crap nominations". This is because new policies such as WP:Criteria for speedy keep are still subject to interpretation, especially since the criteria will have to be primarily negative. This may adress a truly and egregiously bad faith AFD/CFD attempt, but those rarely occur anyway. Most are in good faith based on reasoning, perhaps incorrect, but still not without basis. In essence you will be adding one extra layer to the AFD/CFD process which would not have aborted the CFD for Category:Living people since it was done in good faith. That is unless you make such a WP:Criteria for speedy keep into essentially a criteria for undeletable articles. You could mandate at least x many days of discussion on the talk page of article or category prior to AFD/CFD, but again that adds another layer to the process.

Also, keep in mind what criteria would have to be in WP:Criteria for speedy keep so as to prevent another Category:Living people CFD debacle. What was special about that category? and what could be used to populate Criteria for speedy keep

• It was new. Proposed Rule - New articles/Categories get a grace period? Con: Lengthens process
• There had been no discussion on the talk page. Proposed Rule - Must Discuss on Talk page X days before AFD/CFD nomination? Con: lengthens process for deletion.
• Creator is a long time contributor with lots of edits. Proposed Rule - Creators with X many edits get a grace period? Con: lengthens process for deletion, and how many edits?
• Creator is a "super user". Proposed Rule - Creators on a certain list get a grace period? Con: lengthens process and criteria for populating the list (bureaucrats+above?).

I think This could be addressed by any of the above. --John^DO|^{Speak your mind} 11:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

One small practical thing which would help is to have a possibility to flag items on the watchlist and sort according to flag, alternatively hide items with a certain flag. That way one could put things on the watchlist and be sure to easily get them up to the surface again in a few weeks to see if anything significant has happened. Too many articles are probably nominated for deletion or tagged for speedy just because people neither want to wait until they scroll off RC or Newpages and disappear into the sea of articles, nor contaminate their normal watchlist with various dubious items. Tupsharru 11:38, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that being in good faith does not make a nomination or (not-a-)vote (a) not intelligence-insultingly crap (b) not a problem. There is a problem, and claiming there isn't one or there shouldn't be one or that we should act as though there isn't one won't make it go away. I'm placing this here for discussion of real problems so that AFD won't have a solution imposed on it by the Foundation, because that's what's likely coming without some severe internal reform. They are pissed off - David Gerard 12:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Regrettably (and I understand why you would prefer an internal solution), I think we'll find this one needs to come from the top. If a Foundation-approved first draft of a new approach was put forward for comment (on the proviso that something will happen, but a draft is released to iron out difficulties, rather than for approval/rejection), we should hopefully have something workable. I'm concerned myself about how the Category:Living people issue has been dealt with - not because I disagree with the premise that something needs to be done - but more because I'm not convinced this is the best way to achieve Jimbo's aims (which I totally agree with) - however, I'm at a loss to know where to suggest better alternatives, jguk 12:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The issue with that category that raised Jimbo's ire was, I think, not so much the cat itself (better solutions would I think be most welcomed), but how some people's first response was to mob it out of existence on CFD, and to keep recreating the CFD without some better-faith discussion of the issue. Using *FD as a hammer will not be considered acceptable - David Gerard 13:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we just need a few words from the new Committee on the undesirability of bad process and the benefits of swift and bold action to end silly squabbles. On Wikipedia:Deletion review at the moment we've got a ridiculous debate about a crap article that was speedied while on AfD. Many of those on Deletion review are so tied to process that, even though they admit that the article is hopeless, they're prepared to insist that it be relisted so as to deter what they perceive to be the the real evil: actions taken outside process. We just need a few words like a splash of cold water in the face to dispel that kind of muddled, processbound thinking. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Article creation

an article creation process (at least for new users) that stresses verifiability — Have a look at Wikipedia:Articles for creation, where we endeavour to do exactly that. This same discussion is rekindled by the same few editors every few months on this talk page. Those editors always state that they don't actually participate in AFD at all (and thus make no effort whatsoever to set examples of the type and tone of AFD discussions that they would like to see — contrast this with MarkGallagher's approach) and I have yet to see any work done by them at Wikipedia:Articles for creation. I strongly recommend that any editors who want to rekindle this discussion yet again actually do some new pages patrol, participate in some AFD discussions presenting arguments in the way that they think they ought to be presented in order to set examples, and (especially) do some work in Wikipedia:Articles for creation, for a week or so first. I also recommend reading Template talk:Unreferenced#Effect_when_used_by_New_Page_Patrol and several other relevant discussions. Uncle G 10:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC)