Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion

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Why does prod cover only articles? Why not any page? It's faster than starting a IFD, MFD, etc. 72.139.119.165 22:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be a very bad idea for images. People rarely go look at the actual image page, and the image deletion tag wouldn't show up on pages where the image is used. Mangojuice^talk 00:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The bug was fixed, images can now be undeleted. 72.139.119.165 00:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

No, no, what I mean is, if someone happens onto an article page where the article is proposed for deletion, they notice, because of the obvious notice on the top of the page. If someone happens onto an article that includes an IMAGE that is proposed for deletion, they wouldn't notice at all. But in any case, prod is rather unnecessary for images, since WP:IFD debates hardly ever get any participation; basically, when no one comments, unlike an WP:AFD debate, the image is deleted and no further time is wasted. Mangojuice^talk 02:20, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I know this, I once nominated an image for deletion, and there was no responce, and it was deleted. However, there is no point wating time on two edits, one putting the tag up on the image and the other on the ifd page, it is in fact not so easy to fill out {{ifd2}}. Using prod will make deleting pages simpler. 72.139.119.165 18:12, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Hm.. I dunno, it might be a reasonable idea. I for one would like to see copyvio-based deletions replaced with a PROD-like process. I might bring this up on Wikipedia talk:Images and media for deletion; folks there are more familiar with the pros and cons of the IfD process. Oh, and registering an account would probably be a good idea. :) Mangojuice^talk 23:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Make that 3+ edits, you are supposed to notify the uploader on his talk page and put a notice in the image caption of articles that use the image (if any) when you list on IFD too. The caption thing is usualy treated as optional, but if you fail to notify the uploader the closing admin will usualy do it and re-list the image rather than deleting. Anyway for copyvios I generaly just strike out the false license tag with an apropriate explanation and tag it as "no license and drop a note on the uploaders talk page (and if I forget OrphanBot will usualy do so after a few days), it works pretty much like prod after that. --Sherool (talk) 16:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I usually do not, and I suspect most users would not as well notify the uploader (unless it is a controversial case or the uploder needs to be notified). 72.139.119.165 19:35, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

PROD on categories

I've noticed a recent trend toward applying PRODs to categories. As these are not articles, it doesn't seem to be an appropriate procedure. (C.f. WP:CfD.) But there are some categories that are warded by bots, so if you try to remove the prod from the category it does a revert. What approoach would you suggest in this case? Thanks. — RJH (talk) 15:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

We should consider whether we wish to allow prodding of categories. Meanwhile though I don't think it's a good idea to prod them. I don't know what you mean about bots automatically reverting the category - why would they do this, how are people supposed to edit them, and how'd they get the prod tag on it in the first place? Deco 19:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I cant reacall any bots that have been approved to remove PROD tags, if you see this please elave me a talk page message with the difs. Thanks from the Bot Approvals Group. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As for PROD'ing categories, off the topic it seems ok to me for sparsley populated categories (maybe under 5 pages, no sub cats), but would need a lot more discussion before implementing. The major downside is that either bots will be requried to process the change, or editors will be required to do it so we dont leave redlinked categoreis on pages. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Prod was originally proposed to reduce the grown of AfD, which was considered excessive. As far as i can tell, there is no such problem for CfD. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 11:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, categories get a lot less traffic than articles. Even on highly used, good categories, no one might notice a prod. —Centrx→talk • 00:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Bots seem to revert tag removals on categories, because many categories lack much of any bytage, and the subbed PROD tag greatly increases the size of them, but removing it will cause a vandalism alert due to the massive size reduction. Should bots process categories the same way as articles? If you tried to clean up a category with an excessive article sized header, the same thing would happen. 132.205.44.134 02:47, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I would not support PROD on categories. As it is, few people notice maintenance notices on categories. If you don't generate some noticable events to categories, no one will notice. As for sizes of categories, I've noticed that some WikiProjects promote the use of categories down to two entry (with no possibility of growth) ones... As WP:CFD is not overloaded, there would be no need for it. Besides we already have a CSD for empty categories. 132.205.44.134 02:45, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Easiest way to prod a category is empty it. If it stays empty four days it can be speedied per WP:CSD. Slightly quicker than a prod and amounts to the same thing. If someone refills the category you know it needs discussion, a la removing the prod. Steve block Talk 20:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

  I had a similar idea, but under WP:CSD it only works if the category does not contain any descriptive text (beside parent categories). Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 20:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

{{importance}}

Would there be a way to have article marked with the importance template for 6 months automatically switch to prods? --Peta 06:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

How many articles are in the respective category? Wait, let me count: 200, 200, 200, 200, 200, ... still C... OMG! Seriuosly, tagging prod requires IMO a change to the template, as deletion could not be the original intention of the taggers for the articles currently in the category. I could generate a list of articles in that category ordered by the last time they entered the category, so that tagging can be done manually. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 11:35, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I've spent a lot of time sifting through importance tagged articles, some just need improvenemt, but there are lots of cases where people have put the importance tag on it rather than a speedy or prod tag. There are so many there that its almost impossible to shift the backlog. If you could generate a report of anything that has had the tag for more than six months or more I can try and go through the (hopefully) smaller batch and sort them out. --Peta 00:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps making it a sort of "pre-Prod" so that after 6 months the template changes to something that says "This article will be deleted unless it is improved, etc.", and then a month after that change it to a 5-day prod. That would give plenty of warning and they could be in their own category for a month and only after all that would it go to the regular prod. These do require extra care because the tagger may not have intended for the article to be deleted, but the tagger certainly did question the notability of the article and, if after 6 months of the article not being improved by regular means, and then after a month (or maybe 2 weeks?) of the article not being improved while under a warning spotlight and then still going through the regular 5-day prod, that is a long period of time and a lot of eyes in which any concerned party could remove the tag (or 'reset' it to the original importance tag). After all, someone could just go through the category and prod them all right now if they wanted to, and most of them would be deleted, but this is a proposal for an automated process. —Centrx→talk • 00:46, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Although it's what I originally suggested an automated process might get rid of ok article and people have always been reluctant to support any kind of automated deltion; I'd be quite happy if there was a way just to sort the really old articles into a category so that they could be dealt with. I've also asked User:Dragons flight if he could work out a way to track the old ones on his backlog tracker. --Peta 00:57, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
  • By automated process I do not mean that they would be automatically deleted, only that they would be automatically prodded. Whereas with prod someone decided they thought it should be deleted, with this someone only decided it didn't have an indication of importance, but they may or may not think it should be deleted depending on the importance. The waiting period is to allow time so that someone, anyone at all, interested in it can do something about it. If, after 7 months no one improved it or even angrily untagged it as their favorite "celebrity", then that is good reason that someone such as the original tagger would now nominate it for prod, and then it goes through the normal prod system. —Centrx→talk • 01:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
    • It's a sound idea. And six months is a fair amount of time. If someone can work out how to do it, I'd support it. --Peta 01:11, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The list is at User:DumbBOT/TimeSortedImportance. There is a problem, however: the category (with its current name) was created on June 20, 2006, so the oldest articles in the category have this date. As for an automated conversion from {{importance}} to {{timebomb}}, and from {{timebomb}} to {{prod}}, this is technically feasible (and also quite easy IMO). Whether doing this will be approved, that's another story. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't much like the idea of automatically escalating {{importance}} to prod. It would make the importance tag into a badly veiled threat of deletion, and leave no good way to ask nicely for importance to be clarified without implicitly claiming that the importance does not exist at all. For example, I once added an importance tag to Hester Adrian, because the only information it gave (and still gives) about its subject is that she has been decorated. She has presumably done something noteworthy to get that decoration, so it would be wrong to delete it for lack of notability, but the article does not say what that noteworthy thing is. The creator of the article reacted extremely aggressively to the importance tag, as if I had marked it for CSD. Such behaviour would only be encouraged if importance tags automatically turned into prods. Henning Makholm 21:51, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

You have misunderstood the concept we are discussing and the acutal problems with having these article languishing unattended indefinately. The idea is to have the tag changed to prod if the importance tag hasn't moved in 6 months (which is a long time! and there are probably very few articles that have the tag on them that long). We should also accept that importnce isn't only applied to articles that don't demonstrate notability, it is stuck on all sorts of articles. There are number of very good reason for this:

• Removing potentially libelous BLPs that haven't been identified due to lack of categorisation
• Removing content that is technically speedy deletable anyway
• Moving a giant cleanup backlog that there is no practical way to clear

The prod tag also means that someone will have to review these articles and they could recommend other remedial action (like merging and so on), it does not mean that they will necessarily get deleted.--Peta 00:19, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't really see how your reply addresses my misgivings. Could you elaborate, please? Henning Makholm 22:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Because the importance tag would be on a footing equal to or less than prod, anyone so inclined can reset the timer on the importance tag by re-tagging it. The deletion is for the hundreds of articles that have no one interested in them; where, not only will the article languish for 6 months without any improvement, but there isn't even anyone angrily brooding over it in that time. Also, someone being annoyed about something does not mean it shouldn't be done. AfD annoys article creators a lot more and they can't do anything about it. —Centrx→talk • 01:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

In the past day, I took a look at some of the articles in the list. As far as I can see, they fall more or less in three categories:

• articles that should have been tagged prod, merged, or redirected from the beginning, but the newpage patroller was "feeling nice"
• articles for which importance is unclear (these should go to AfD, except that of course you will be blamed as a destroyer of the wiki if you turn out wrong)
• articles that appears important, but the tagger was unable to include it.

An example of the former category is Inada conditions. A quick Google/Google search reveals that these conditions are widely used; they appear to be necessary to guarantee a theoretical result in macroeconomics; however, I could not add an explanation of notability because I am not an expert of the field. This article should be probably left tagged {{importance}} for as long as it necessary. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

{{hangon}} revamp / somewhat major {{db-meta}} modification

(snip)

Support this. However, I'm not sure why this discussion's on WT:PROD; make sure nobody objects on, say, Template talk:Hangon and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion before you make the change. --ais523 14:44, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Why did I put it here? -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 15:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion; sorry for the confusion/waste of space, and thanks for the help, ais523. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 15:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

AntiVandalBot reprods

AntiVandalBot reprods by reverting things... I don't see why this should happen. 70.51.10.144 08:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

This is one of the unusual bot interactions that comes up from time to time. If a prodded article is blanked (for instance), one of the TB2 clones will revert the blanking, restoring the prod tag (which many editors will argue is correct behaviour anyway; vandalism is often seen as not an attempt to deprod). Then DumbBOT will notice that the date on the prod tag doesn't match the time it was added (the time of the revert, from its point of view) and complain... --ais523 08:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

In fact, I had the feeling someone was actually monitoring these "date mismatch" articles! Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Useless Talk pages

I've noticed on occasion some Talk pages that appear to have been created simply as an act of vandalism, i.e., the vandal clicks on the Talk tab, enters some gibberish, then saves the page. I've usually just deleted the entire contents of the page, with a comment like "removed entire useless contents as vandalism". Examples: Talk:Order of the Holy Spirit, Talk:My Left Foot (book). Is there a way to delete these pages entirely so that they can be properly created when the need arises? Or is simply leaving an empty page the appropriate thing to do? If so, will this confuse the bots? — Loadmaster 00:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

If 1) it is clearly and obviously not a genuine attempt to discuss the article and 2)there is nothing else in the talk page history then I'd propose it for speedy deletion under one of the WP:CSD criteria G1, G2, or G3, using {{db-nonsense}} {{db-test}}}, or {{db-vandalism}} respectively. GRBerry 03:38, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Or just blank it. Blanking articles is a bad thing because the lack of a redlink may confuse people.. but a blank talk page is no big deal. The worst thing that can happen there is that someone may feel they should check the discussion, click on it, and see nothing there. Frankly, deleting such pages is a waste of admin time -- there's really no need for it, and it's a burden on us. Mangojuice^talk 12:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Nozomi_online

I PROD'ed this article and it was immediately unPROD'ed by the creator and only contributor. Does this now go on to 'AfD'? Alternatively if you don't think it needs deleting at all I will shut up about it :) JPilborough 16:17, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a blatant advertisement. I have deleted it. See Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion for the sorts of things that can be deleted immediately. —Centrx→talk • 17:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Question from a new admin

LEts say an article was prodded at 16:00 on Oct 29. It is now something like 20:16 on Nov 3rd. Is it now ok to delete the article, or should I wait until 00:00 Nov 4? Thanks in advance for your help. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 20:17, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The discussion above at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion#120 hours? produced no obvious consensus. Normally, there is enough backlog on other administrative tasks (speedy deletion, AFD, etc...) that you could keep busy on those until any arbitrary cushion time limit was exceeded. But neither will anyone care if you go ahead and delete it, after all, more than 120 hours have passed, provided both times are UTC or both are your local timezone. GRBerry 20:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Delete it even earlier if it is complete crap. —Centrx→talk • 06:42, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

In this case, it has been a full 5 days, so go ahead and delete. But when it comes to processing the Oct. 29 *category*, I think it's better to wait until Nov. 4 so you don't have to check each one to see if it's been a full 5 days or not. Mangojuice^talk 19:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Or use User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary which is time order. -- JLaTondre 19:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, The above bot is exactly what I was looking for. Cheers. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 13:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Question about deletion of pages

I have started to use my own "namespace" to create a sandbox of sorts. Is there a way for me to delte those pages, User:Tecmobowl/bonus rule for example, when i am finished editing? // Tecmobowl 09:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You could use WP:CSD#U1 to delete a user subpage; place {{db-user}} on it. --ais523 09:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much. There were so many options on that page i just didn't know which one to choose.

Unable to contact creator of article

Does it matter too much if I can't contact the creator of an article I have just proposed for deletion? In the page history their username is redlinked, so I can't get to them. Is this a problem? The article I have proposed is Tom littler, in case you were wondering.--CarrotMan 16:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Post on their Talk page, regardless of whether it's blue or red. The 'new messages' banner works for both old and new users. --ais523 16:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, but when I looked in the list of pages I found the article in (so I could find out the creator), it had gone! I think that's because some admin carried out my proposal, so it no longer exists.--CarrotMan 19:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems to have been speedily deleted as WP:CSD#A7 and WP:CSD#G1. There's no need to give a warning now the article's been deleted. --ais523 10:51, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Extend PROD to other namespaces?

A suggestion to extend PROD to other namespaces was made by User:Tgheretfort here. Comments welcome. (Radiant) 12:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Prod tag on article versus talk page

If possible I would like to request that this page be completely clear about where the prod tag should be placed. I.e. whether it should be on the article page versus the talk page. Right now I read the text as inferring that the tag should go on the article page. However some users still insist on placing prod tags on the article talk page, with the likely result of hiding it from most visitors who wouldn't bother to read the discussion. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 22:30, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's fairly obvious that it should go at the top of the article page. The directions say that you should put the notice on the top of "it," where the antecedent is "article." But there's no reason we can't amend "it" to read "the article." (I'm sure some people put the prod notice on the talk page in good faith, not realizing they're hiding it, but certainly it's a bad idea.) NickelShoe (Talk) 23:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it should be on the article, because this encourages people to improve the article to address the concerns given. Feel free to clarify the page if you think it helps. (Radiant) 00:55, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's better on the article, as it's more likely to be seen by someone who would remove it if it deserves removing. New users often don't know about the talk page, and prod is meant to be non-controversial, not non-noticeable. -- nae'blis 05:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Well it's not obvious to everybody because I've received complains from prod-ers when I removed the prod tag from the talk page for precdural reasons. :-) Some people apparently need it in black-and-white. But I'll go ahead and modify the instructions. I just wasn't sure if that would be reverted. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 20:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Miscellaneous prods for miscellaneous pages?

Please see Template talk:Prod#Miscellaneous Prod for a discussion on expanding the scope of Proposed Deletions. -- nae'blis 05:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• Per that discussion, and precedent on WP:MFD (which recently focuses mostly on userpages of people who have no edits outside their userspace), I've added this clause: Pages in the User and User_Talk namespaces may be proposed for deletion if the user has no recent edits and has made little or no contribution to the encyclopedia. Simply put, if someone isn't here to work on the encyclopedia, we have no obligation to let them keep a userpage that is usually self-promotion. The 'no recent edits' clause is to avoid newbie-biting and should probably be thought of as a month or so unless the user is already permablocked. Comments please? (Radiant) 15:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

A portion to which I object

"*Any deletion via this process which is taken to deletion review is implicitly a contested deletion, and the article may therefore be immediately restored by any admin without discussion."

This statement was added a few months ago [1] by User:RobertG ( a great editor, btw) with what seems to be no discussion. To me, this seems to take some of the power out of PROD, especially as Wikipedia grows and grows and grows and more people try to dump articles about their non-notable whatevers on here. This could lead us to revisiting tons of deletions from whenever. If this comment is to be kept, maybe there should be an expiry time (perhaps one month). youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 17:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)