User talk:Davidwr/Deleting GA+ articles

Input welcome

This is currently a user essay. Please feel free to edit it and discuss it. I hope it eventually gets promoted to Wikipedia: space. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is unlikely for a GA/FA to be eligible for speedy deletion. For example, a hoax needs to be blatant for the article to be speediable. If the GA/FA reviewer(s) missed it, it is probably not blatant. As for a copyvio, the article should remain as long as there is an acceptable version to revert to. I have attempted to reword the essay to reflect this. Regards, decltype (talk) 14:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Are recently exposed hoaxes speedy-able? I would think so, under WP:IAR if nothing else. As for copyvios, yes, revert if possible. However, if the original article was based on a book and all subsequent versions are clearly too derivative, and the copyvio is newly discovered, then we must rewrite or delete. Depending on the subject, a speedy or a quick-replace-this-with-a-stub-and-flesh-it-out-later replacement is the right thing to do. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, both the WIAFA and the WIAGA demand that the article be reliably sourced / verifiable. If this is not the case, the article should not have been promoted. A well-crafted hoax is generally not speediable. Only the most blatant of hoaxes, so much so that they constitute vandalism, can be speedily deleted under criterion G3 for vandalism. If it passed the review, then there is reasonable doubt, and it should be taken to WP:AfD. As for unambiguous copyright violations, yes, they should be removed ASAP, but as long as there is an acceptable version in the history, even the very first version, reverting to that would be preferable to deletion. Simply removing everything but the lede sentence is another possibility. Regards, decltype (talk) 14:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As for IAR deletion: Speaking for myself, if I came across an FA that I was 100% sure was a hoax, I would still want more eyes on it to be 110% sure. It's still better to err on the safe side. decltype (talk) 14:43, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Hoaxes: I'm thinking of a contrived case where someone, or maybe even a team of people, used phony paper sources to write a hoax article about some plausibly-significant event hundreds of years ago, and gets it up to FA status, then they brag about it on their web site. Such a thing probably couldn't happen today but there may be some old hoaxes lurking, waiting for the author to start bragging. Plausible? Probably not any more. Possible? Yes. There was a similar hoax a few years ago that AFAIK never made it to GA much less FA. It got userfied when it was exposed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I also think you could take out the last two sections about demoting the articles out of process. Dont encourage them! Otherwise good essay, i hope it gets promoted to. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:38, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I guess I'm more of a "constant reviewist" when it comes to FAs and GAs. If it were up to me, all FAs would be required to be re-reviewed when the content changed by more than a certain amount or the FA criteria changed significantly. As a practical matter, that's not easy to do, so I would just have FA status expire after, say, 3 years after the most recent FAR. I would do something similar for GAs. However, I don't run Wikipedia, the community does.

What do others think? Should those two sentences be toned down a bit or eliminated? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the section where you list the usual reasons why good or featured articles are taken to AfD. It seems to me the concern is often that the subject either isn't notable despite being well sourced for verifiability, or that it would be better presented as part of another article rather than as a standalone article. The examples I'm thinking of are Xanadu Houses, the articles on individual cricketers from the 1948 Australian team in England, and the articles on invididual Pokemon that have since been merged into lists (Bulbasaur and Torchic). For Xanadu Houses, the person who started the AfD really thought the subject wasn't notable. The FA process mainly considers whether the references in the article back up the statements in the article, and not whether they prove the subject is notable. In this case, I think the person who nominated that artilce at AfD was concerned that the sources were mainly first party sources, and that while they verified the information in the article, they didn't really show notability because they weren't independant. For the cricketer artilces, my concern was that the information in those artilces was mainly stuff I thought should be left out of the Wikipedia artilces on those subjects, and that the remaining content of those articles would be better in the main articles on the cricketers. Basically, there are several books written about that cricket team, but in writing Wikipedia articles on the team members, we need to condense those books down to the most important pieces of information. My concern was that these spin-off articles from the main articles were information that should have been left out as not important to our coverage of the topic, even though the information is clearly verifiable and the performances were clearly notable. It really had nothing to do with either the deletion guidelines or the FA process, but with what was the best editorial decisions for covering these topics. For the Pokemon articles, the issue was kind of a combination of the two above issues - the subjects were both of borderline notability and it seemed like the articles, while including verifiable information, mainly included information that should have been left out when condensing all the information on the subject into a good encyclopedia article. Note, however, that it was probably a mistake for those articles to go to AfD, as I don't think anyone wanted the articles outright deleted but instead either kept or merged into the lists. Anyway, I would possibly add the following two cases to the list of reasons good or featured articles are brought to AfD:

Articles that may be well sourced in terms of verifying the information in the article, but where on closer inspection there is doubt that the sources prove notability of the subject.
Cases where there is disagreement over whether the subject of an article would be better covered as a section of a larger article, rather than a stand-alone article. Note that such cases might have been brought to AfD in error, as AfD is not for merge discussions.

Calathan (talk) 19:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of pages

One thing that I think would add to this essay would be a list of GA/FCs that have been taken to AfD (particularly a list of ones that have been deleted, as these would be the best examples of what the essay is talking about). I assume deleted GA/FCs are rare and this list would probably be difficult to compile, but if possible it would be nice. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cited in DRV

This user essay was cited by Jclemens (talk · contribs) at 18:15, 12 October 2009 in Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_October_9#Doctor Who campfire trailer. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:36, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]