Future events

Withdrawn, archived here.

Per WP:NOT a crystal ball, most people tend to agree that speculation on future events doesn't belong here. Would this make a suitable speedy? R adiant _* 10:58, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Disagree. Take a look at Potential Bush administration nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States. That article was kept after an extremely contentious VfD debate, and if there are cases where future events should have an article the articles on them should not be speedily deleted. Sjakkalle 11:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Quite some work has gone into defining the intricacies of when a future event is and is not acceptable. It isn't easy and for that kind of decision I think oversight is required--so VfD or something like it is best. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:56, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. Maybe a reasonable difference is "articles on some event that may or may not happen" (as a CSD) and "articles that speculate on how a guaranteed event (such as the 2006 olympics or the 2008 election) will turn out". Or would that be instruction creep? R adiant _* 13:29, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
I think you already know my answer to that last question. :) But yes, I can give good counter-examples of events that may or may not happen but which are regarded as encyclopedic. We could write encyclopedia articles about global warming projections, ozone layer depletion predictions, predicted properties of transuranic elements that have not yet been isolated or synthesized, the nuclear winter, and so on (actually the current article on nuclear winter is woefully inadequately referenced but that's not the point).

Also the criterion of an event that "may or may not happen" is not suitable for speedies because opinions on which events will happen vary considerably. Over the next 100,000 years or so, many scientists would tell you that there are likely to be more deaths due to large meteor collisions than all other causes of violent death, but laypeople may well not even perceive large meteor collisions to be a potential billion-killer, and some editors might even outright deny that it's possible. This is the kind of difference of opinion that could be picked up and resolved in discussion. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:04, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Future fiction

Okay, let me try again... CSD proposal for "any work of fiction (book, game, movie, etc) not yet published". This probably needs refining though. R adiant _* 14:36, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is most definitely not a speedy candidate. Also Catch Without Arms has been kept (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Catch Without Arms (album)). Yeah, I know, I'm just sitting here criticizing all the suggestions and not making any constructive ones. Sjakkalle 14:43, 24 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Okay, bad idea then. Just brainstorming :) R adiant _* 08:43, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal (withdrawn as well)

Votes for Deletion has tripled in size in the past year, and there is no reason to suppose it will shrink back again. Because deletion of an article is a drastic measure, it is important to be able to get feedback from as many people as possible, to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus. However, the sheer size of each day's VfD page makes it impractical for people to join the debate.

Looking over VfD nominations of the past couple of weeks, it is obvious that about two-thirds of them are not controversial - they are deleted after a number of unanimous votes. It seems, then, that most nominations are made appropriately, and require no debate. On the other hand, there is a significant number of disputed nominations that do need discussion to establish consensus.

Therefore I would propose to split the VfD into two sections, labeled "non-disputed" and "disputed". Whenever an article is nominated for deletion, it is added to the non-disputed list, along with the nominator's reasoning. If after five days, nobody has disputed the VfD, the article can be deleted by any admin. However, if any user (even if anonymous) disagrees with the nomination for any reason, it is moved to the disputed list, and stays there for debate and consensus as per current VfD policy. The VfD is kept for five days after the dispute arose, after which it can be closed and kept or deleted as appropriate.

To make the process more user-friendly, I would like to reword the VfD template (and non-disputed page) to indicate to new users that, if the article is something unencyclopedic but important to the user (e.g. WP:VAIN), they may save the page by moving it to their user space. Then, there would be no need for further processing (other than removing the redirect). Of course, articles on the non-disputed list are still subject to speedy deletion criteria if applicable, and to the copyvio process.

To make the process easier, it would be possible to employ a bot that runs once per day, that will examine all non-disputed nominations to see if they have been edited since their creation, and if so, move them to the disputed page.

If used well, this would save work for a lot of people. VfD regulars can look over the non-disputed page and see if there's anything that shouldn't be there; by disputing a nominaton, they ensure it will receive fair debate. Other people can casually look at the disputed page and give their opinion on any issues at hand, without having to wade through dozens of non-disputed calls.

Comments on and amendments to the above

Straw poll: is this a good idea in principle?

THIS IS NOT an official vote. Just a quick gauge of public opinion.

Yes, good idea (but may need rewording)

Good idea. I'd love to see non-disputed VfDs cleaned up much quicker, and would also prefer to see contentious ones in their own section where they receive full consideration. Harro5 10:27, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but hopefully people will start being more descriptive in their reasonings for deletion. Simply saying "NN" doesn't tell me anything. A better text would be "17-year old high school student, doesn't claim notability. Vanity.", which would enable me to know if I wanted to contest the nomination without looking at it. But overall, a good idea. Meelar (talk) 13:54, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
- But then some of these articles don't contain enough information to say much other then NN. Vegaswikian 17:22, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure, maybe we should hold a test run?

As per my comments/summary below (in "A suggestion"), I think there is a problem w/VfD load, I'm just not sure if it's a problem that requires an "official" policy/procedure solution - yet. 2 possible problems I see w/ proposal as it exists:

Uberinclusionists, vandals, sockpuppets, disruptive users, newbie article creators that get really worked up if their golden prose/favorite subject is up for deletion, can de facto eliminate the "non-disputed" page simply by running down it and voting "keep."
"Bot" idea is good in theory, but I could see that force of habit or misreading or misunderstanding the "non-disputed" instructions would cause editors to add "delete" votes to pages listed on "non-disputed", which would cause the bot to move the page to "disputed", even though there's no actual dispute. I think moving a page to "disputed" should be under human control.

Willing to give this idea a try, though. Radiant! makes an excellent point that it is important that we get as many editors as possible involved in/aware of VfD. Soundguy99 14:44, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yea doing a test would be one way to see if you could work out an improved process. I still have some issues:

If all of the votes are comment or delete and no new votes have been added it 24 hours, the vote closes. This reduces the time clear deletes stick around and it reduces the need for me to votes. Yes, 24 hours seems short, but then if anyone wants it kept they can easly extend the time.
I'd be willing to ignore anon votes. A comment in the top page text could explain the reasons for this (stacking the ballot box). It's easy to set up an account and if someone cares enought to improve the quality wouldn't you expect them to have an id? Vegaswikian 17:30, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I feel that this is more a significant increase in people nominating pages that shouldn't be nominated, rather than a significant increase in pages that should be deleted. As such, I feel that changing nominator habits might be a better idea than changing the process. However, maybe a test run of this might be useful nonetheless. JYolkowski // talk 01:37, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, not a good idea (and please tell us why not)

I don't see how it helps. It just makes two places that need to be reviewed. Maybe if the "undisputed" got deleted faster (say 3 days or so) I could agree. I think Vegaswikian makes a good point in his #1. I'm not against the proposal, per se, I just don't think we'll be any better off. --Xcali 00:33, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid the non-contested section would get looked at a lot less, and thus items on it have a smaller chance of getting contested than currently. --W(t) 00:57, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
Serves no purpose. An individual has to make their own mind up about any one vote; ie the list of pages listed need to be scanned personally. Just because no-one has voted differently at some point in time does not mean no-one will. Dan100 22:11, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
Keep them all on a single page. The non-controversial ones will get only delete votes. There is no need for a splitwhich would only make VfD *more* difficult to use. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:31, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I do not see how the proposal above reduces the process or the demand on a reader/editor by even a single step. Every interested reader will still have to scan the list, review the article and do some background research to make sure that they agree that the nomination was non-controversial. This feels like instruction creep to no clear benefit. Rossami (talk) 04:19, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Won't work. We've got too many sockpuppet voters. Article creators and those who agree with them will contest the deletion and cause nearly everything to be disputed. Mgm|^(talk) 13:38, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
This is a growth problem exacerbated by flawed perspective, a clash between the real nasty world, and an ideal that was summed up above by this quote: "to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus." Fact is that Wiki has grown too large, too fast to keep to such metaphysical ideals. They are impractical in a situation where 100 plus articles are cropping up per day. Like playing Russian Roulette with Five Bullets and one blank chamber - somethings going to give 'Real' soon. I just don't believe it's gonna be one of the bullets.

- There are good people, lots of good folks donating their time to this project and they are getting buried because some one group wants to hold onto some mythological moral high ground that never can exist. It's time for some sound management, not platitudes. There are time-wasters and time-stealers out there deliberately sabatoging all the good that Wiki wants to be. You can choose to let 'them' continue running you over, or give over to sound management principles and delegate authority to the editors to make the hard calls. Have them reviewed by an Adminstrator afterwards, or a committee to salve your ideals you call consensus, but don't peddle it to me. I'm Polish, and consensus requirements cost my ancestors their freedom too many times.

- Regardless of how you do it, you first need to make a decision of whether you will do something effective (re: the immediately preceeding post). I don't see that happening, that resolve, that determination. You've got people in denial on the other page. People saying you have the correct 'how to's already in place, people saying that the problem is minor. TAKE YOUR TIME, ONE EVENING, and see how many VFD articles you can read, vote on, and process in say three hours. I was shocked when I saw how few votes things were getting, and then again that there wasn't some mininum number of votes needed before things were decided one way or the other. Perhaps, that's another answer. Move these articles into a forum page like the 'Project Tab' with the votes to be tallied underneath of each. Leave a template notice in place of the alledged article. (Busted!) Ten votes, twenty votes, whatever but get the junk out of the article space immediately (see below) by putting it into this purgatory until St. Peter grants us all 500X more free time to deal with it, or someone with power sees the scope of the problem, or enough volunteers to wade through it for the minimal number of votes to deal with it. This would be more helpful than you might imagine.

(Technical digression: At least one can see the offending subject material without flipping back and forth to different
pages. A Next | Prev linked list format would be even better. Put 'quicklinks' into the header page and into the article
space as part of the move. Automating that should be almost trivial... The Next Page/Prev Page shouldn't be all that 
challanging either. The 'edit' boundaries in such pages should offer a handle for the software to grab the right text.)

- You can manage by consensus all you want until the organization gets demoralized... then the team will be abandoned in favor of the self. Look HARD at the weary comments in Vfd. Those contributors are FED UP with the crap masquerading as an new article. Going on much farther down this permissive path will only lead to organizational septisemia. Start taking into account the wear and tear on the volunteers and start respecting their time they so graciously donate to Wiki If this crises of inaction continues, the heart and soul of Wiki will start to walk, or go through the motions because someone is afraid to take a stance and deal with crap as crap should be. Please flush it soon.

- In this sense, with this change, I endorse the idea above into splitting Vfd. Empower the editors to Speedy Delete/Move the vanity and other time wasters into a seperate catagory - Wiki Votes to Keep. Let's see how many Keep votes that page gets! I want to reiterate one point I made in the other (Project Tab) page. These inflictions ('Death by a 1000 cuts') are being created by Juveniles and they are rewarded every single elapsed minute one of these articles passes w/o being removed, never mind unchallanged. Leaving them sitting around to gloat over their victory is just going to lead to their circle of associates trying to one up them. Call Purgatory "New Articles Needing Justification" or something else that sounds high minded to you, but get them out of article space, and manage the matter without frustrating the people you want working on Wiki.

Also, give some thought to adopting top down managing, there has to be one person in charge for an enterprise of this scope to succeed. 'Trumans Buck' has to stop somewhere! Fabartus 05:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)