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Flawed

This process is damaging to Wikipedia because of the fact that some editors lazily go about plastering tags on articles and confuse lack of content with lack of notability and admins take their judgement at face value. I strongly object to "If anybody objects to the deletion (usually by removing the proposed deletion/dated tag—see full instructions below), the proposal is aborted and may not be re-proposed." as a rational criteria. So basically we only keep articles people care about saving? What about all of the old film articles etc from non anglophone countries which simply don't have the interest and exposure on here to be developed? Admins seeing an article with tags for notability and a one line stub are going to assume that articles have been corrected identified and delete them when in a lot of cases they can be expanded but we simply don't have the the editors and people willing to put in the time to improve them. Now I'm not saying that there's not a lot of cases when articles really should be deleted but the way it works is deeply flawed. † Encyclopædius 16:55, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Is there evidence of a pattern of reviewing Admins just going along with the Prod? I see cases where the Admin declines the Prod on grounds that a full AfD is needed. Sometimes that AfD is initiated, other times the article just defaults to remain. And if the article does get deleted by Prod, after sight by the proposer and an Admin), it can be reinstated via WP:REFUND. AllyD (talk) 17:23, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
There is no way to collect any such evidence or reverse any wrongs without somehow identifying and WP:REFUNDing articles deleted here. ~Kvng (talk) 20:03, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Is there a log of PROD-deleted pages somewhere?
Template {{Proposed deletion}} gives search links for the article name. Perhaps we could automate execution of those searches and analysis of results to score the PROD. It would probably have to be project-specific. A non-notable web company might get more hits than an automatically notable village in Bhutan. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:52, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Here is a snapshot of current PROD articles : 4-Methylenedioxy-4-imidazoline, 498A: The Wedding Gift, 942 Dakar, historia de una familia, 1880 CCNY Lavender football team, 1895 CCNY Lavender football team, 1908 Chicago Physicians and Surgeons football team, 1908 Franklin Baptists football team, 1908 Wabash Little Giants football team, 2012 Iowa Democratic presidential primary, 2020–21 CSM Bucovina Rădăuți season, 90210 magazine, Aag (1967 film), Aaj Ka Samson, Aaj Ki Taaqat, Aakhri Cheekh, Aan Aur Shaan, Aasmaan, Aastik, Ab To Aaja Saajan Mere, Adata Vediya Heta Hondai, Adavi Kaachina Vennela, Agla Mausam, Aisa Bhi Hota Hai, Ajnabi Saaya, Akela the Alone, Akiba (film), The Albino Code, Alice in Russialand, Aliens are to Blame for Everything, All American Orgy, Alladin Ka Beta, Almost: Round Three, Alternate Future of Europe, Amar Ma Amar Beheshto, Amar Praner Swami, The Amazing Feats of Young Hercules, Ameer Aadmi Gharib Aadmi, Ammaavanu Pattiya Amali, Amour, sexe et mobylette, Ananda Ashru (2020 film), Angarey, Anjaane Rishte, Anmol Sitaare, Anomalías eléctricas, Anti-Phishing Act of 2005, Anwara (film), Anza, Imperial County, California, Apna Desh Paraye Log, Apne Begaane, Apocalypse, CA, Aprad, L'Arbre aux esprits, Army Elements Fleece, Atagoal, Au-délà de Cap-Noir, Aulad Ki Khatir, Aviv 613 Vodka, The Awakening (2006 film), Awara Abdulla, Awara Zindagi, Ayul Regai, Baaje Ghungroo, Baat Hai Pyaar Ki, Bad Moon (2005 film), The Baldwin Brothers (film), Bank Manager, Bantrotu Bharya, Banyu Biru, Roland Bartetzko, Basanti Tangewali, Basra (2008 film), Bawyrym, The Be All and End All, Be My Teacher, Be Sure to Share, Beaks: The Movie, Beau Fermor, Before the Vigil, Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club, Bewaffa Se Waffa, Bhagya Chakra (2005 film), Bhagyawan, Bhai Bahen (1959 film), Bhakla, Bhemaa, Bhula Na Dena, Bicycle (film), Bikini Chain Gang, Bikini Pirates, Bite the Dust (film), Biwi Aur Makan, Biyer Phul, Black Cobra (film series), Black Starlet, The Blackout (2013 film), Blitz Attack: The Andrea Hines Story, Blodsbröder, Blood Hook, Blood Is Not Fresh Water, Bloodmatch, Bloodstone (2009 film), Blue Island (film), Blue Ridge Acres, West Virginia, Samuel Blumenfeld, Bolti Bulbul, Bopha Puos Vaek, Brahma Nayudu (1987 film), Bratz: Starrin' & Stylin', Brecha (2009 film), Brenda Namumba, Brian Lumley deities, Browns Corner, West Virginia, Budak Lapok, The Bulkin Trail, Burlesk King, The Burning Moon, Bus Conductor (1959 film), Butch Camp, Café Bom Dia, The Call (2002 film), Campane di Pompeii, Canopy Forum, Cantaniño cuenta un cuento, CAOS Linux, El Caradura y la millonaria, Carl Alan Awards, Carne inquieta, CaseCruzer, Mario Cassem, Center West Campus, Centre for Rural Management, Chinese ambient music, Clyde Christian Church, The Constitutional Club, Corbin Park, Course:Introduction, List of current National Women's Soccer League broadcasters, Danpite Chhele, Dark industrial, Robert Dart, Michael Thomas Victor Denine, Devdas (1965 film), Amanda Dewey, Dhan Daulat, Dharam Sankat, Dher Chalaki Jinkara, Dhobi Doctor, Diep, Digitalmint, Dinotopia: Quest for the Ruby Sunstone, Dulla Vaily, Draft:Dungeons & Dragons (2022 film), Daniel Dye, E-Commerce Asia, Ebru Sanci, The elegy of James Purcell of Loughmoe, European Center for Advanced International Studies, Eyad Reda Law Firm, Ezerzeme, Familiar Linux, Faux (film), Nicholas Flair, The Fluff Constructivists, Fugue (2011 film), Game King-II, Gladstone Homes, Global City Innovative College, Francisco Gonzales, Gordon, California, Scott Greenall, Matthew Greenbaum, Robin Gross, Hamilton Palace (film), Dean Hamilton, Susan Harney, Adam Henderson, Henry Kuttner deities, Hepatitis Country, High Times Freedom Fighters, Lorraine Hilton, Ilayathu, Indian Institute of Ecology and Environment, IntelePeer, Invisible (video series), Peter Isaac, Iskolinux, Jagga Jiunda E, Janardan, Jayakumar Varkala, Jupiter, California, Christian Delton Kacher, Kansas City Mystics, Jacob Karlsen, Katrak Mansion, Keyes Ferry Acres, West Virginia, Steve Kidwiller, Kim Ha-young, Kuki Linux, List of cemeteries in Montana, List of Malay Muslim Dynasties and Kingdom, List of Malay Muslim Empire and Kingdom, List of Revelation Space characters, Logan Square Chamber of Arts, M. Habibullah Khan, Donncha Mac Con Iomaire, Machine-pop, Making Rounds, Larry McCoy (actor), Mega Conglomerate Limited, Meridian Institute, Mitti: Virasat Babbaran Di, MLCAD, Mobilinux, Moler Crossroads, West Virginia, Robert Morgan (actor), Morgenstern (Mittelalter band), Nepalis in Norway, New World Disorder (film series), New World Disorder I, New York Interschool, Harry Newcombe, Nina Mirembe, No me pidan que sonría, Nobleworks, Nodir Buke Chaad, Rory Nugent, Omar Nuño, Nuyorican soul, List of NWSL Championship broadcasters, O2 Global Network, Ahu Obhakhan, Redmond O'Donoghue, Tomin Oleksii, Omnisport.TV, Opare Chondraboti, Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians, Perineodynia, Pitco, California, Powerful Music, Presentation pro, Production and Operations Management Society, Project on Middle East Democracy, Project Zambia, Psychai, QloApps, Ramsey Campbell deities, Freddie L. Rankin II, RatchetSoft, Raulo Christ, Raymond hushpuppi, Regent Theatre (Arlington, Massachusetts), Benjamin D. Reynolds, Roll on Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Columbia River Songs, Rosha (subcaste), RTV Armakedon, Samaanta, Samtia, Santo Banto, Sektou, Darain Shahidi, Shell, California, Shipan Mitra, Sichuan Lantian Helicopter Company Limited, SimpleLinux, Soaring on Invisible Wings, Some Gade words and Meaning, Sorcerer (Linux distribution), Sous l'Emprise des esprits, Squabbletown, California, Start Up Sports, Sur les murs de la ville, Suswagatam Khushmadeed, Tassavvur, Tech dance, Le Temps d'un film, Tensilica Instruction Extension, The Prince's Youth Business International, The Institution of Engineers, Pakistan (IEP), Tiga guérisseur, Stacy Heather Tolkin, TrappermanDale, Tropical fusion, Tumbhi, Turbulence (2011 film), Two-part episode, Ultraman Fuma, W29 (nuclear warhead), Wah Fu station, Wahan Ke Log, Jasmin Walia, Walnut Valley Sailing Club, Willy Verginer, Bruce Wilson (American journalist), Wintervogel Airfield, Woh Din Yaad Karo, Wolvix, Yesterdrive, Zakhmee Insaan, Zimbo Ka Beta, વહાણવટી માતાજી મંદિર સિધ્ધપુર.
The skin I am using shows them all as pink. We could wait until they all clear to blue or red, then do some spot-checks on whether the deleted articles had titles that seem to be valid topics. I don't know if I have the energy for that. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:05, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, that might work but it does seem a bit exhausting. If we are able to identify a pattern of inappropriate deletions, what's next? Do we go after administrators that are making these mistakes? Do we try to shut down WP:PROD? My sense is a good portion of the community sees removing cruft as an important means of improving the encyclopedia. They will not want to have to run everything through AfD. ~Kvng (talk) 16:19, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
@Kvng: if we can see common characteristics of articles on topics that seem notable enough but were PROD deleted, then perhaps we could improve the guidelines for nominators or administrators, and perhaps something could be done with bots. Let's wait a week or so. Again, I am not sure I have the energy to investigate more than a small sample. I glanced at one, I forget which, and it seemed a fairly well-sourced article on a company, but the claim was that none of the sources were independent: more an AfD argument than a PROD argument. But the effort of tracking that one down would be about the same as the effort of recreating the article. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:16, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Aymatth. Donaldd23 is exactly the sort of problem I'm talking about, goes about the site prodding film articles, even if they have plenty of hits in Google books. Basically "it's short" is being used as a deletion rationale and through this leaky process we're losing lots of notable subjects. I've surveyed the system myself, when I've been prodded I've not expanded them and they almost always get deleted. A lot of them I recreated as a start class entry which nobody would have dreamed about deleting. If you have a problem, take an article to FAC and get a fairer assessment. I think it's time this prod template was deleted. Check the deletion log of articles deleted from a prod and you'll be shocked at how much we've lost that could be improved. Prodding is also pointy at the article creator, inferring that only they can expand it, which is contrary to the spirit of collaboration here.† Encyclopædius 06:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
From the way I see it, PROD is a valuable tool used to get rid of unnecessary clutter on Wikipedia. Articles can be created by anyone, and certain users, like User:Encyclopædius, create these one line stubs for obscure foreign films and then leave them. They sit around for 10 years as just a one line stub, with neither the author (or any other collaborator) making any improvements to them to warrant their existence. At some point during those 10 years, another user comes along, sees this one line, non cited article, and adds a (warranted) notability tag. Another 5 years pass with that tag, and the creator (and no other user) comes along to add anything to this article in an attempt to remove said notability tag. Is Wikipedia really better off for having 1000 articles for obscure foreign films that say basically, "This is a 19xx film from xxxxxx. Here is the cast. Here is a random list of songs in the film. And,oh by the way, and I labeled it as a "stub" so you shouldn't PROD it because it is an important film that needs to be kept on Wikipedia." Most of these articles don't even have plots! How about NOT creating one line entries for EVERY film ever made and actually picking one of those films and making it into a valuable addition to Wikipedia? User:Encyclopædius seems to want to treat Wikipedia as IMDB and create a page for every film whether it is noteworthy or not. He is calling me out for PRODding his stub articles, yet he fails to see that these articles have been stubs since creation 10 years ago! If neither the user or any other user in 10 years can't find the time, "in the spirit of collaboration" to improve these articles, then I (and others) have every right to try and make Wikipedia a better place by getting them removed. Not every article I check with a notability tag I PROD. I add citations to ones that I find and remove the tag. Others I PROD when nothing can be found of substance. User:Encyclopædius seems more upset that I PRODded some of their articles for being 10+ year old stubs (that no one collaborated on with them) than they care about actually fixing these articles. If they were notable, they would have been improved upon by someone in 10 years of creation/notability tagging, but yet, here they are 10 years later...still stubs that are being questioned. Instead of blaming the PROD process, look to yourself and ask, "Does this article I created 10 years ago really still need to be here if no one else can make a meaningful addition to said article?" The problem isn't PROD, its users that create stubs and then abandon them. Donaldd23 (talk) 11:18, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Your use of the word "foreign" betrays a lack of understanding that this is a world-wide project. The US is foreign to hundreds of millions more people than India. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:22, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
My apologies. I have stricken the word. I look at all films with the "notability" tag, regardless of which country they were made in. And, User:Encyclopædius claims that the films they created have "plenty of hits in Google books". Instead of coming here and complaining about the PROD process, perhaps they should go to said films and add these citations they claim to have found, then we can check to see if these films have enough discussion in said books to warrant notability, or if they are just passing mentions in said book which don't provide notability. Donaldd23 (talk) 11:30, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
I don't much like 1-2 line stubs, but they are mostly harmless. Even a stub may help someone who wants to find out about the topic. It has long been accepted that articles on notable subjects should be kept, regardless of quality. The question here is whether the PROD process is working as intended. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
@Donaldd23: I hope you appreciate that WP:BEFORE applies at least as much for PRODding as it does at WP:AFD. PROD is for uncontroversial deletions. You need to do a WP:BEFORE search and it needs to be obvious from that that no sourcing is available. If you don't do the search and the results are not overwhelmingly negative, you should not be using PROD for these topics. ~Kvng (talk) 13:17, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Donaldd23, no guideline calls for or permits the removal of articles for being "unnecessary" or "clutter". If an article's topic is notable and its content doesn't disqualify it (being about something else entirely, being false or unverifiable or gibberish, being defamatory or a copyright violation or an advertisement or an unsourced BLP), it stays. If you feel an editor is creating numerous articles about topics that aren't notable even after having had this explained to that editor multiple times and after numerous such articles have been deleted for that reason, maybe the ongoing creation of multitudinous articles destined for deletion, wasting many editors' time in the process, merits a report at WP:AN. But, otherwise, there's no action for you to take. Largoplazo (talk) 13:38, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

"If they were notable, they would have been improved upon by someone in 10 years of creation/notability tagging" is laughable. You just don't get the extreme systematic bias on English Wikipedia which exists against non Anglophone countries, particularly older subjects. There's still very notable African towns I created stubs on 12 years ago with 50,000 inhabitants which haven't been touched. Of course we want the stubs expanded, they were created that way at a time when stub creation seemed the best thing to cover the world more evenly. What might appear "obscure and foreign" to Donald might actually have been very mainstream in the country at that time in history, films starring Dharmendra for instance would hardly be obscure. Donald is prodding films starring notable actors in their respective countries which have multiple hits in Google books. If the films genuinely have no sources which can be found and none of the actors have articles, then it might be valid but articles which have coverage in books shouldn't be getting deleted, however stubby. † Encyclopædius 17:14, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Then add the citations. Donaldd23 (talk) 18:11, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Add them or else what? Of course, if instead of your summary command, you'd asked, "If you have found sources in books, would you please cite them?" you wouldn't have subjected yourself to my "or else what?" Largoplazo (talk) 19:56, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Did you not read my comment above where I said, "perhaps they should go to said films and add these citations they claim to have found, then we can check to see if these films have enough discussion in said books to warrant notability, or if they are just passing mentions in said book which don't provide notability." Or did you just read my last comment and decide to interject your opinion? Donaldd23 (talk) 20:35, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Please stop digging. It can only end in tears. If citations can easily be added to an article to show notability then it is not an uncontroversial candidate for deletion. I have seen other editors act as you have done, i.e. proposed whole categories for deletion at a rate that shows that only very minimal checks could have been done, and get blocked for it. Don't join them. I see from your talk page that you were encouraged by an editor who thinks that Wikipedia would be a better place if all articles about the largest film industry in the world were deleted. Didn't that statement make you realise that you you should not follow such advice, which is nothing short of racist? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
I agree that I have been a little hasty is nominating a lot of films in a short amount of time. I was simply hoping to help reduce the number of pages included in the Film_articles_with_topics_of_unclear_notability category. It appears, however, that this is a sensitive category and I (probably incorrectly) thought that eliminating the films from this category by either finding citations and adding them or having them deleted would be for the benefit of Wikipedia. Clearly that was not the right approach, as this conversation has proved. I will therefore go through my PRODs of the past few days and remove them. Going forward, if I come across a film that I genuinely think lacks notability, I will propose it for AfD so that a clearer consensus can be made. I would like to add that I do not think the PROD process is flawed, as the original poster stated. Yes, the PROD tag can be added by anyone, but it can also be removed by anyone. When the PROD tag is added by me using Twinkle, a notification is sent to the creator (unless they specifically told me to STOP posting to their talk page), so that editor can come along and remove it...no questions asked. That action might be the only flawed part of the process, because only the creator is notified (and anyone following the page). Perhaps the only modification that should be made to the PROD process is that anyone who has contributed to that particular article also gets notified that a PROD tag was put in place. This would give more editors a chance to either agree with the PROD tag, or disagree with (and thereby removing it or improving the article.) Could that be something that is discussed? I genuinely want Wikipedia to be a better place and I hope that this discussion can be the beginning of how to improve PROD. Thank you for your time. Donaldd23 (talk) 23:26, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Well it clearly is flawed if it allows people with a "If they were notable, they would have been improved upon by someone in 10 years of creation/notability tagging" outlook to prod anything they want and not bother with AFD. Most of our Brazilian municipalities are short stubs and have been for up to 14 years. Do we start prodding those because they're unedited so can't be notable?. You're also mistaken if you think this is purely about you, there's a worrying number of editors who wrongly prod or nominate articles for AFD, that 99% of articles created by me end up kept says it all. I simply ask you to search in Google books, stop thinking of the world with an American-centric view and imagine how an article subject would look to somebody in the given country at that period of time, India 1955 or Argentina 1979 etc. If you avoid prodding articles which have multiple book sources and genuinely only root out the real bad eggs it's not a problem. † Encyclopædius 07:46, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that any further purpose is served by discussing Donaldd23's specific edits. Occasionally we get an enthusiastic editor who, in quick succession, proposes deletion of articles that have had notability tags on them for a long time, but only occasionally. That is simply a by-product of our "anyone can edit" philosophy which is responsible for this being the world's foremost encyclopedia rather than Citizendium or any other such failed project. The remaining important issue identified here is whether admins check topics properly before deleting articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:22, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
@Encyclopædius:, what you just said amounts to "It is clearly flawed if it does this thing that in reality it doesn't do." It doesn't allow people to do that. If people have been doing that, then the problem isn't the guidelines, it's a lack of adherence to them by one or more people, and this isn't the place to address that. Largoplazo (talk) 10:52, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Well it's more than one editor though. The template is being abused and misused in some cases and a cop out from bothering with a full AFD. Most articles of mine which have been prodded were or could have been easily expanded, so something is wrong somewhere. It is a direct criticism of the template because I don't think any editor on here should be allowed to simply mark any article they want for deletion (which isn't spam or controversial) without going through an AFD. For editors who are mass prodding articles I think they should have to earn that right through formal approval like rollback or whatever only when they can be trusted. † Encyclopædius 11:03, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Again: they aren't "allowed to simply mark any article they want for deletion". WP:PRODNOM already requires editors to perform a proper evaluation of an article before proposing it for deletion. If they aren't doing that, seek remedies applicable to those users' behavior.
The fact that people do drive over the speed limit doesn't mean they are "allowed to simply" drive that fast. The appropriate remedy is to penalize speeders, not to eliminate driving. Largoplazo (talk) 11:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Random break

Are you stating that you've observed it happen a lot or you're just concerned that it could happen that administrators are deleting pages without assessing the rationale given? If it's just a suspicion, it seems to me that you might have run your above experiment on your own to see whether it corroborated your conjecture before presenting your concern here. Largoplazo (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: it was me who sort-of suggested the experiment above, not User:Encyclopædius. Before undertaking this tedious task, feedback from editors such as you who are interested in the subject would be valued. Maybe there is a history of prior audits that show the process is working as well as can be expected? Maybe there is a more efficient way to conduct an audit that would give more accurate and useful results? Aymatth2 (talk) 02:38, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Oh, sorry about that! Largoplazo (talk) 10:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
Sorry to disrupt the experiment but I think one thing that's clearly going on here is a lull in WP:PRODPATROL participation. After reviewing some of the current batch of PRODs, I will be resuming up my suspended PROD patrolling. ~Kvng (talk) 14:24, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
If more patrolling is the solution, and if we have volunteers, that is worth doing. But somehow this reminds me of the stop-again, start-again Hydroxychloroquine trials. It might be interesting to take a random sample of PROD-deleted articles from the list above, have them restored, and then submit them for AfD. So far the deleted ones are: 2012 Iowa Democratic presidential primary, Anti-Phishing Act of 2005, Aviv 613 Vodka, Michael Thomas Victor Denine, Digitalmint, Daniel Dye, E-Commerce Asia, Faux (film), Fugue (2011 film), Kim Ha-young, List of Malay Muslim Dynasties and Kingdom, List of Malay Muslim Empire and Kingdom, MLCAD, Omar Nuño, O2 Global Network, Ahu Obhakhan, Presentation pro, Raymond hushpuppi, Sichuan Lantian Helicopter Company Limited. Superficial searches suggest that several of these may be notable topics. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:18, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
See Wikipedia deletes profile page of Raymond Hushpuppi. It must be unusual for a PROD to make the news. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:58, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Oh, my. But it was a WP:CSD A7 deletion, not PROD. Still, is User:DESiegel now famous in Nigeria? Does this confer sufficient notability to include an article on DESiegel? Largoplazo (talk) 15:30, 22 June 2020 (UTC),
It is in the snapshot list above taken from Category:All articles proposed for deletion as of around 20:40, 17 June 2020 (UTC). It must have been changed to CSD later. The subject is a Nigerian Instagram celebrity, in the news for being arrested in Dubai on 10 June 2020. The PROD may be connected in some way to the arrest. Hushpuppi, aka Aja Puppi and Aja 4, Raymond Igbalode and Raymond Abbas does seem notable.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Sadly, DESiegel does not. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
I find the list at User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary, which seems to be updated every few hours, more useful than the category because it puts PRODs in chronological order. I glance through new PRODs most days but only have the time to pick up a few articles that take my fancy. I'm sure there are others that are notable but I miss. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:32, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

I say run a test for a month and see how many articles which are notable get deleted!† Encyclopædius 17:30, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

PROD was originally created because there was a sense that AfD was overwhelmed. Does anyone have an estimate of (a) how many articles are nominated via PROD, (b) how many articles are deleted via PROD, and (c) how may articles are nominated via AfD? I'd be happy to see PROD eliminated if it wouldn't have unintended consequences such as reducing scrutiny on other deletions. pburka (talk) 17:43, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

PROD seems to get about 40 nominations a day. The snapshot above seems to show more are decided as Keep than as Delete. AfD lists have about 90 per day, but maybe 40% are relists, so perhaps 50 new AfDs per day. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:35, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
  • It strikes me that the level of AfD participation is at a particular low, with items churning through multiple 7-day period in search of discussion input (and with neo-Prod closure as a frequent outcome as a result of low participation). An extra load of cases seems like the last thing that is needed there, and unlikely to provide a strong evidence base for such an experiment. AllyD (talk) 17:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
  • The snapshot of about 300 PROD nominations given above may be "contaminated" by the numerous movie nominations that triggered this discussion, and by later clean-up by participants in this discussion. Even so, it seems to indicate two distinct and real issues:
    1. Many of the earlier links have turned blue. The PRODs were rejected. The nominators did not understand or chose not to follow the guidelines
    2. A number of the links have turned red, with the article deleted. At least half of these deletions appear to be on notable subjects covered by plenty of independent sources, meaning the closing admins did not check notability of the topics.
I can run a less visible test some time in the next few weeks, and report back results. Right now it looks as though the instructions need an overhaul. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
No test necessary—you can easily use the history of User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary (mentioned above) to determine the success rate of PRODs listed in any given period. czar 21:37, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Understood, and that gives a measure for the first issue. But I also want to check deleted articles. My preferred approach would be to check a sample and see if I can create reasonably well-sourced short articles with the same title. I would not waste time on any but the most promising. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:00, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how good our instructions are, there will always be editors who do not follow them for whatever reasons. The checks on bad proposals are WP:PRODPATROL and the administrator who performs the deletion. Per instructions, administrators are not checking whether the article deserves to be deleted but simply that PROD processes were correctly followed. WP:PRODPATROL works well when there are enough volunteers manning it. This is not always the case. I have previously proposed that the prod period be extended to two weeks to allow WP:PRODPATROL to be more effective but this was rejected. ~Kvng (talk) 14:55, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Maybe bad nominations could be discouraged by the patroller sticking a big pink box on the nominator's talk page saying "This PROD was rejected because a quick internet search showed the subject is clearly notable. Before submitting more articles for PROD, please first check notability." Something like that. But of course there will always be editors who just ignore/delete the warning and carry on anyway.
Looking at the 17 June 2020 snapshot of PRODs it seems that someone took a shot at patrolling the first 100-odd articles, many of which turned blue, while more of the remaining articles have turned red, presumably unchecked by anyone. It still seems worthwhile to get some statistics. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Here's a list of the PRODs I've canceled this month in my patrolling. ~Kvng (talk) 13:58, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
With regards to discouraging bad nominations, placing {{Old prod}} on the articles talk page with the nom's username and explanation of what they did wrong does seem to reduce future bad noms. I am not convinced that a less subtle approach would be more effective. WP:PRODPATROL is contentious enough as it is. ~Kvng (talk) 14:54, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
When we have some stats, we can discuss various possible remedies. I wonder if we have serial bad PRODers? The nominator does not show on {{Proposed deletion/dated}} or in User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
When deprodding, I often have to dig into article history to figure out who prodded something. Though I haven't noticed any obvious patterns, I've decided the work is worth it. Maybe if we added a required user name field to {{Proposed deletion}}, it would make noms more accountable and improve the quality of nominations. ~Kvng (talk) 21:08, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
I think {{Proposed deletion}} just has to include a substituted (?) message like "Submitted by {{REVISIONUSER}}". Then maybe User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary could show that. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:59, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: Do you want to propose something at Template talk:Proposed deletion? ~Kvng (talk) 16:29, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Done, at Template talk:Proposed deletion#Identify nominator on submission Aymatth2 (talk) 17:56, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Few thoughts. One, there is a lot of data in the prod logs of people using Twinkle and this feature, see User:Piotrus/PROD log. It could allow for some statistical analysis, but the problem is the logs are not categorized, so unless you know of some search tool that would list them I would suggest submitting a feature request to Twinkle so that they become categorized somehow. Second, as someone who has been prodding for many years, the issue of whether the PRODs are reviewed is a complex one. I am sure some of my prods were just deleted because the reviewing admin was tired and 'trusted me', some were carefully reviewed before deletion, others were declined on various grounds by admins and non-admins, with declines ranging from very good reasons that convinced me I was in the wrong, to unjustified deprods by clearly COI/SPA creator or POINT-like disruption by hardcore inclusionists deprodding everything in sight just because they can. If I had any comments on how to improve the process, well, I like the idea of more statistical data (including who's prodding, who's deprodding, who's deleting, outcomes, and longitudinal graphs) as well as a feature that would notify editors when their prod is removed, and a public log of deprods as well. Also, deprods should require a rationale; deprods with no rationale IMHO should be auto-reverted by a bot. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:04, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure you appreciate that prod is set up slanted towards keep for a reason. If a bad prod goes through the article is unlikely to be recovered. If a good prod is canceled, there's always WP:AFD. I'm glad to hear that some administrators are giving more than a cursory review before deleting. The problem with doing analysis on how well prod is working is that, unless you're an administrator, much of the useful data ends up in a black hole. It does sound like you're supportive of changes that make it clear who has prodded or deprodded something. That should help us address both inclusionist and deletionist disruption. ~Kvng (talk) 16:00, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
@Piotrus: It could be useful to see who has deprodded an article. In theory {{Old prod|con=userid}} on the talk page gives the information. It would take a non-trivial bot to ensure that this template is present and the parm is filled. We could have the template populate a maintenance category like "Past proposed deletion candidates with unknown contestor", for manual attention. There are 14,705 total articles in category:Past proposed deletion candidates, presumably many with no |con= specified, so to be useful the new category would have to exclude prods before a certain date.
My sense is that a few users sometimes review a sample of articles in the PROD list, de-prodding some with good reason. But most de-prods are by the original author, and may or may not have good reason. And most PROD articles are never reviewed and just get deleted on the expiry date. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:16, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I think the category for "Past proposed deletion candidates with unknown contestor" would be worth reviewing, as would be "Past proposed deletion candidates with no decline rationale" and ""Past proposed deletion candidates deprodded by the author". But I don't think we have proof for the claim that "most prods who get deleted are never properly reviewed". Per AGF, we should assume most admins do their job... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:18, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Piotrus: I will follow up on the change to {{Old prod}}. The admin job, per Wikipedia:Proposed deletion#Procedure for administrators, does not include confirming that the topic fails notability. They just have to check that the process was followed correctly. If you look Christian Welde for example, prodded by Cardiffbear88, you will see the closing admin Explicit has simply deleted after 7 days with comment "Expired PROD, concern was: Non notable musician". This is procedurally correct, but suggests only Cardiffbear88 has looked at the article. I think this is the typical scenario. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:22, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Aymatth2: I'm not quite sure what you mean when you suggest only the user who PRODed an article looked at it. I can't speak for other admins who deal with PRODs, but as far as my own actions are concerned, I don't just delete an expired PROD as evidenced here, here, and here. ƏXPLICIT 13:35, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Explicit: I worded that poorly. I mean that the closing admin does not usually research the subject to confirm lack of notability, and is not required to. They will look at the article and its history. With David S. Levinson the history showed the PROD was ineligible. With Air Jordan Retro XII a redirect to parent seemed more appropriate. With Inez Bjørg David the sourced material showed notability. But Adam Karol Czartoryski, for example, a poorly written and completely unsourced BLP, was deleted with no attempt to find sources. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:05, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Kvng: I agree, my only real issue is when prods are removed in either obvious trolling or pretty obvious COI/POINT or such, and then the necessitate a 'speedy delete' or such AfD due to the technicality that regardless of who challenged them, they have to to AfD. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:18, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Piotrus: You've had issues with my prod patrolling. Also, you should not be surprised that an author (typically unfamiliar with deletion policy) will try to keep their work. It's not necessarily a COI with the subject but an attachment to the work they've done. I assume there are many cases where the author will be the only active editor on an article's watchlist. If prod patrol doesn't catch it, the nom, author and deleting admin will be the only ones to review the prod. I think it is better if these to go through AfD and author deprods are the path for this. ~Kvng (talk) 13:59, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
@Piotrus: The list of Twinkle PROD logs is easily available through a search like this. There's also the super-secret User:SDZeroBot/PROD grid which stores snippets of PRODed articles, so that even after articles get deleted, non-admins can still use the page history to access the snippets, which should be enough to get the context of what an article was about. It does not however store the sources used, which may have been useful. SD0001 (talk) 20:45, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
The 19 June version has the snippets for most of the pages Aymatth2 has linked in the comment above. SD0001 (talk) 20:54, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Another example of a poorly judged prod by Koavf For the Freedom of the Nation enough for a start class article, and that director is really quite notable, and it's missing. I guarantee that the article would have been deleted if I hadn't been around and it's potentially highly productive as it identifies a ton of notable red links.† Encyclopædius 11:47, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Koavf's PROD rationale, which was included as well in their AFD rationale, was "No assertion of notability". There is no such basis for deletion. It was no more valid a reason than "Spelling errors". Largoplazo (talk) 13:06, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Largoplazo, No, it's not. See Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Reasons_for_deletion #8. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:01, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Koavf Wherein we learn that Koavf has failed to distinguish two distinct things: an article's subject lacking notability (which is what the cited provision is about) and the failure of an article to make an assertion of notability for its subject (which is not what the cited provision is about). Largoplazo (talk) 01:55, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
@Encyclopædius: Though ... what do you mean by "Another example of a poorly judged prod by Koavf"? Until you wrote that, there'd been no mention of Koavf in this whole discussion. Are you confusing two different editors (the other one being Kvng) whose names happen to begin with K and have a V followed by another consonant in them? Largoplazo (talk) 13:10, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
I mean it's another example of the template being a threat to content because it's not being used correctly.† Encyclopædius 13:45, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Encyclopædius, Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Reasons_for_deletion See #8. You don't know what you're talking about. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:00, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Another break

I have no problem with the Proposed Deletion process in general, but it is alarming when it's just the same one or two users prodding as many C-class articles as they can find within a narrow topic area within a very short timespan, clearly without doing any assessing and using the same copy/paste rationales on each and every one. Particularly when this, in turn, leads to a copious amount of AfD pages within a short time span. Which in turn leads to them being closed within a short period of being open. Which leads to it mainly being the same rotating cast of people voting on each one, which later gets used as an illusionary "success rate" to justify continuing the same process.
It's even more concerning when you point out an objective factual error in one of the rushed nominations, find significant third party coverage, or express genuine concerns with the way the AfDs are being handled, and are met with deflection, aggression, dishonesty, and are blatantly strawmanned and aspersed simply for doing so. Something like this actually happened not too long ago and it's not the only case like it. Darkknight2149 07:56, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

  • I've been patrolling prods for some time and certainly agree that the process is flawed. But, in this, it is like everything in Wikipedia which follows Sturgeon's Law quite well as "you get what you pay for". Wringing our hands about this is not productive. What I'd find useful is tools to help triage the tags. Currently, I use CAT:ALLPROD but this just lists the article titles alphabetically without any context or clues. I scan the list looking for titles which are self-explanatory and which seem to have merit. But some titles, such as people's names, are not much help and it would be quite a chore to click through and check them out, so I only do this when the name strikes a chord with me. The NPP has a new page feed which provides context and info about the new pages in its queue. The prod patrol could use something like that and maybe it already exists? Andrew🐉(talk) 13:12, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I looked around and found there's a good tabulation of the open PRODs at WP:PRODSORT. This includes the short description and prod reason and, in most cases, that's enough information for triage. I'll try using that rather than CAT:ALLPROD for a while and see how it goes. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:42, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm generally not a fan of PRODs, since I'd prefer to have only speedy delete and AFD. However, it seems like AfD participation is quite low at the moment, so PROD could be an alternative for relatively noncontroversial ones. Still generally not a fan, since I've seen several PRODs who were in fact notable. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 19:38, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Divisive topics

As another topical example of the abuse of this process, see Sarafina Nance. The deletion of this topic is clearly not uncontroversial, as one can see from the following AfD. The editor who placed the PROD has limited experience of the English Wikipedia and so perhaps misunderstood the process. There should perhaps be a confirmation and warning process to ensure that people who place PRODs understand that they are only supposed to be used in uncontroversial cases and so they are not appropriate for debatable or divisive topics. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:17, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

It is not hard to identify and address bad PRODs. The problem is that someone has to take the initiative to do it. There appear to have times when there are not enough active WP:PRODPATROLers to do this. Although we understand that some go above and beyond, administrators are not required to assess the merit of a PROD before deleting. ~Kvng (talk) 17:41, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Donald continues to make poorly judged prods

[7] [8]. If he continues to abuse this template I think he should be banned from using it. Phil Bridger and AllyD were fortunately around to salvage them. I wish he'd stop editing so many articles, slow down, and work on just a few and deal with the issues himself instead of plastering tags all over them.† Encyclopædius 11:49, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Donaldd23 nominated two more films: Famila and Harga (film). A pattern with these and some previous films is that their Talk pages show they originated in a Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge project utilising material from the African Film Festival of Cordoba which had been released under an OTRS ticket, but where that original source is not longer accessible online. I don't know whether any collateral is preserved through the OTRS process, but it seems strange to accept material from a source and then deem the articles as liable for deletion for lack of citations? AllyD (talk) 07:06, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
    • So, you suggest that I be banned because I point out poorly sourced articles that I cannot find new/better citations for, but it brings the articles to other's attention and they actually find citations and improve that article? Doesn't that make the article, and Wikipedia, a better place? Encyclopædius seems to have a vendetta against me and has been making the rounds hurling accusations at me for weeks. Instead of accusing me of "making poorly judged prods", maybe they should take a look at themselves and ask why they create "poorly cited articles"? A quick search [[9]] shows that user has created 95,000+ articles (many poorly written/sourced). Maybe instead of judging my choices they should slow down and spend their time fixing their poorly cited articles instead of creating articles...then users like me wouldn't stumble across them, not find any information about them online, and request they be deleted? I am really tired of getting accused of things by this user (and one other one) when all I am trying to do is make Wikipedia better. These 2 articles they pointed out are prime fact that Wikipedia has been improved because of me. The articles were terrible, had no viable citations, I couldn't locate any, and I PRODed it. The users that "stalk" me came along and actually improved the articles. Isn't that what the PROD and AfD processes are for? Donaldd23 (talk) 12:28, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC on limiting de-PROD to confirmed editors

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There no was support for this proposal. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:46, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Non-confirmed editors, or IPs, will often be unfamiliar with Wikipedia's policies and conventions, and may not understand when removing a PROD is appropriate. This is to propose that removal of a PROD by a non-confirmed user should not be allowed. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:18, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure it's productive to have this many different RfCs on more or less the same topic, on the same page, at the same time. The opening statement is also not neutral, as it includes endorsements. signed, Rosguill talk 20:19, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I tidied up the opening statement. These RfCs originated in a lengthy discussion about ways to improve PROD. It seems efficient to debate the individual ideas separately, so we can easily see which are actionable and which are not. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
[Extended discussion (unrelated to the subject of limiting de-PROD to confirmed editors) moved to the section #Extended discussion below. SD0001 (talk) 06:49, 17 July 2020 (UTC)]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC on Limiting PROD to new / low activity articles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There was no consensus on this proposal or on Alternative 1, but the general feeling was against it. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Articles should automatically be rejected from PROD if they are older than 5 years or have been edited by more than 10 editors, since any article which has survived inspection for such a long period or by so many editors should never be PRODed. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:30, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Here's a recent example – recreation room – which was prodded because "The article has been unreferenced for 16 years and has been flagged as requiring citations for 13 years." You'd have thought it would be obvious that it just needed some attention but we had to do it the hard way too. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:34, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY For the reasons given. Aymatth2 (talk) 22:17, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY as there is A7 for non notable one line stubs Atlantic306 (talk) 00:50, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY with a few tweaks, e.g. bots don't count towards editors. pburka (talk) 19:55, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN Certainly not for older articles. The fact is that a lot of spam, walled garden cruft, and buzzword salad created in Wikipedia's early years is still around. Reyk YO! 20:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY This is a potentially controversial proposal. I have seen prod used by experienced good faith editors to delete WP:PERMASTUBs. The fact that we're likely to argue about this indicates that AFD, not prod, is the correct venue for them. ~Kvng (talk) 20:10, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY PROD is an expedient, conveniently used for recently created articles that clearly don't pass muster. But it's just a nice-to-have, not essential, so it doesn't take much for me to lean toward a presumption of the level of doubt that would require AFD to delete an article. If an article's been around for years or if many people have edited it without questioning its value, then require AFD. Largoplazo (talk) 12:03, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN I'm not sure why we would assume that an old article is a good article, nor how the number of editors who've worked on it is pertinent if their edits have not qualitatively improved the article, especially if they are editors who were excited about the article at inception but have since abandoned it. DonIago (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Oppose the fact an article is old means nothing, it's still perfectly possible for an old article to be a good PROD candidate. I've seen articles which survived for years despite being clear A7 or G11 candidates. It just means that nobody noticed. Being edited by ten different people also means nothing as most articles get occasional edits from people reverting vandalism, fixing template syntax, and other minor changes. If an article is actually being regularly edited then the existing policy already implies that PROD is a bad idea, as opposition should be expected. Hut 8.5 18:11, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
    • Being old does not mean an article is worth keeping, but we can assume that a fair number of people will have come across it over the years, and so far none of them have thought it should be deleted. Deletion may therefore be assumed to be controversial, so PROD is the wrong approach. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't assume a relationship between the age of an article and the number of people who've read it, much less the number who've read it and would be inclined to set up a PROD. I see lots of (what I consider) junk articles, and junk in articles, that I don't address for one reason or another. DonIago (talk) 18:50, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
        • Most old articles, even on obscure topics, are viewed by a surprising amount of people. Deletion of an article that has survived a long time is not clearly uncontroversial, even if the article as it stands is junk. It can be submitted to AfD. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:24, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
          • I have to disagree, the mere fact an article is old does not mean a number of experienced editors have seen it and decided not to delete it. If you doubt this then have a look at the number of articles which have survived for years despite the subject not existing, which would surely be an excellent reason to nominate something for deletion. Obscure articles simply don't get much scrutiny here. Hut 8.5 19:49, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
            • It would be useful to have some statistics. I checked Balmaclellan, an article on a tiny village in Scotland I started long ago, and found it averaged 129 page views per day this year with 29 editors since 2008 not counting IPs and bots. Roadkill cuisine also gets 129 views per day with 106 editors since 2009. Sadly, Haggis pakora gets only 16 views per day, although it has had 12 editors since 2015.
            The point is not that all old articles have been scrutinized, just that a lot of them have. The 5 year / 10 editor test would cut out a lot of PRODs that really are controversial, at the expense of forcing some that are not to go the AfD route. There would be a significant reduction in incorrect deletions. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
            • Reader counts don't mean anything because the vast majority of people who read Wikipedia don't edit it, and most of the people who do edit it wouldn't know how to nominate something for deletion or what our inclusion standards are. The fact someone's edited something also doesn't mean they're likely to object to a PROD. Your "29 editors since 2008 not counting IPs and bots" includes fiddling with image syntax, adding an authority control template and fiddling with date formats, for example. There's no reason whatsoever to believe those people would care in the slightest. What does reduce the chance of PROD being appropriate is whether an experienced editor has reviewed the article and decided that it isn't appropriate to nominate it for deletion, but that's a lot harder to tell and a lot less likely to happen. Hut 8.5 07:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
              • Exactly. I have done quite a bit of maintenance work- typo fixes, grammar cleanup, and the like. When I do this stuff I don't always read the whole article or evaluate any other problems it might have. I would not want the fact that I visited or edited an article to be interpreted as evidence that the article is A-OK. Reyk YO! 08:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, concur with above opposes. MB 19:08, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The age of an article has no bearing on how many people might have seen it during its lifetime. There are some corners of the project where a nearly orphaned article might not get any non-automated page views for extended periods of time. Number of editors might be a better criterion to use for restriction, assuming it were limited to non-bot, perhaps auto-confirmed editors, but one would also assume that active editors on a given article would see the PROD and vet it appropriately. "Just because nobody thought to delete it yet means that it's not worth deleting" is an assumption I dislike baking into a policy. –Darkwind (talk) 01:59, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment - What we are trying to do here is identify some feature of an article that indicates its deletion is WP:LIKELY to be controversial. Longevity and number of editors are being considered here as indicators. Another indicator I use frequently in WP:PRODPATROL is the number of incoming wikilinks. The deletion of an article with even one link to it is much more likely to be controversial than deleting an orphaned article. ~Kvng (talk) 17:49, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
    • The RfC as worded isn't suggesting using longevity and number of editors as indicators of whether a PROD is appropriate; it's pushing for summary rejection of PRODs based on those factors. If the proposing editor intended to discuss what indicators we should look at to determine whether a PROD is likely to be controversial, they could have done so without an RfC and with language that encouraged discussion rather than action. DonIago (talk) 18:18, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
      • @Doniago: This started with a long discussion at #Flawed (above), followed by #Sample study (above) to get some facts. The study showed about 25% of PRODs turn out to be controversial, while a number of articles on notable subjects are not checked and get deleted. The study was followed by an invitation for suggestions at #Recommendations (above). This proposal came from Andrew Davidson and gained enough initial support to seem worth turning into an action-oriented RfC. Several contributors are looking for properties of an article that indicate deletion may be controversial, so AfD is the appropriate route. There will be cases where the properties are misleading and there will be no controversy. It is a balancing act:
        Tight rules = fewer incorrect PRODs, higher AfD costs, including some AfDs where PROD really would have been suitable
        Loose rules = more incorrect PRODs, lower AfD costs
      To me, the AfD cost for an uncontroversial deletion should be low. It is more important to avoid deleting articles on notable subjects where possible. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:30, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN Oppose With over 6,000,000 articles, there's a lot of complete junk that goes unseen (WP:ORPHAN) and ignored for a decade or more, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's any more notable or encyclopedic than a newer article.

  • Comment: Here's a concrete example of an article that was PRODded yesterday that would have been protected by this rule: Elba Ramalho. The page is nearly 14 years old and has about 30 non-bot, non-IP editors by my count. A page edited by so many people over such a long period of time shouldn't be deleted without discussion. pburka (talk) 16:57, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Both proposals. PRODs can already be challenged and removed by any editor. I do not see what this would accomplish. Maybe if the proposal was "Years-old articles with more than 10 editors, but less than 30 watchers", but even then... Darkknight2149 20:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Opppose There is a lot of garbage that is unreferenced, fails GNG and needs a prod, but is so old it has a bunch of technical edits in their history. Bad idea. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:25, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Alternative 1

Articles should automatically be rejected from PROD if they have been edited by more than 20 editors (other than IPs and bots), since deletion of any article which has survived inspection by so many editors can never be uncontroversial. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:56, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY For the reasons given. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:56, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN As I said earlier, I often do spelling and punctuation fixes. When I do, I don't always look at the whole article. The idea that fixing a typo amounts to a seal of approval is actually pretty insulting. I'm also concerned that all these proposals seem geared towards taking away editor discretion and replacing it with rote, stupid, bright-line rules. Anything that removes human thought from the process should be opposed. Reyk YO! 13:16, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Note that the proposal says "20 editors", not "1 editor". The idea is that once 20 different editors have been through an article, there's sufficient reason to assume it's been through the scrutiny of enough people for a deletion proposal no longer to be assumed to be uncontroversial. PROD is a convenience. It's hardly a hardship to make it unavailable in cases like this. Largoplazo (talk) 13:30, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
It's still a stupid idea. Most schemes to replace human thought with mechanised rules turn out to be stupid, and this is no exception. No doubt the idea is to count the article creator, hopefully multiple times if they edit under multiple IPs, and count bots fiddling with categories and maintenance templates, and count vandals and their rollbackers among the 20. The more people you can get into the snout count without the article contents ever passing through a human brain the better. Reyk YO! 13:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm sure if consensus goes against this proposal we'll get an "Alternative 2" for auto-rejecting PRODs that have had 50 editors, then 100, then 200, ad infinitum. Reyk YO! 15:26, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
You've undermined your own argument with "most schemes to replace human thought with mechanised rules turn out to be stupid". The point of the alternative here is that at least 20 humans have had the opportunity to think about it. You're insisting that even after those 20 humans have had the opportunity to think about it, we should allow a single person to trigger an article's deletion, in the event that no one contests it, rather than submitting the matter to formal discussion, to find out whether many human thoughts are expressed agreeing with you on deleting the article despite its apparent staying power. Largoplazo (talk) 16:36, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
I thought we'd gotten past the silliness that is "an edit is a keep vote!!!! a page view is a keep voet!!!1!" a decade ago when most of the old guard ARS chuckleheads got themselves banned. As I keep saying, fixing a typo or changing a category says nothing about the editor's intentions or thoughts except to fix that typo or fiddle with that category. Imagine the absurdity when article has had exactly twenty editors. Are we going to tell someone, "Welp, if not for this one guy changing 'doe snot' into 'does not' back in 2016 it could have been PRODded. But too bad, now we have to deprod it!". There is no getting around the fact that this is a stupid idea. Reyk YO! 19:07, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
This does not mean the article is worth keeping. It just means that if 20 or more editors have made changes to it, and none have proposed deletion, a PROD may well be controversial and AfD would be the better route. If deletion really is non-controversial, it will fly through AfD. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:20, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Again (and reread this as many times as necessary): We aren't talking about an edit, we're talking about edits by a lot of editors.
We aren't even talking about any of 20 editors touching a page amounting to a keep vote. We're talking about it amounting to doubt that a deletion request can be assumed to be uncontroversial (which is a requirement for a PROD nomination)—in the way that sometimes somebody who doesn't deny the non-notability of a topic removes a PROD tag anyway owing to a sense that the situation isn't clear-cut enough to justify evading a discussion. Largoplazo (talk) 21:49, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Drop the condescension. Reyk YO! 22:10, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
"Condescension" implies telling someone something the person likely already knows. It isn't condescension to address the issue of someone repeating arguments that the other person has already dispensed with when that person actually has repeated an argument that was already dispensed with. Largoplazo (talk) 23:01, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
It's clear that you are neither understanding a word I've said, nor arguing in good faith. Do not ever contact me again, about this matter or any other. Good day. Reyk YO! 23:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN Assigning an arbitrary number of editors after which an article can't be PRODed is...well, pointlessly arbitrary. If nobody substantively edits an article for ten years, I don't care how many people edited it before that. DonIago (talk) 02:12, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Oppose For all the reasons above, plus the many practical difficulties: the count would have to be done manually, do you also exclude edits by socks, edits that are reverted, edits that are hidden? A nightmare. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:40, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Oppose, there is a ton of old garbage that receives drive-by minor edits (stub tag, categories, typo, etc.) But it doesn't mean that any of these editors care to evaluate notability of the subject. Plus logistical/practical difficulties as pointed out above. Renata (talk) 08:41, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sample study

See Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion/sample2020-6-26 for a list of articles that were in Category:All articles proposed for deletion as of about 21:01, Friday, June 26, 2020 (UTC). All have now (July 4, 2020) been resolved one way of another. The list gives the article name, the userid who nominated it for PROD, the outcome (e.g. kept, deleted, moved to draft, merged, redirected), the closing admin, the PROD concern, an excerpt from the article lead, and notes.

This is a small sample, so any conclusions drawn from it must be considered tentative.

Statistics

Total articles: 146
Kept: 35
Deleted: 108
Merged or redirected: 3
Moved to Draft: 1

Typical article quality

  • Almost all the articles were poor quality, with few or no cited sources and with little indication of notability. Many were no more than stubs

Nominators

Pattern of actions

Quality of PRODs

  • As stated above, most of the articles were poor quality, so little would be lost by their being deleted. However, if the subject was notable, an editor starting a fresh version would be confronted by a forbidding warning like:

A page with this title has previously been moved or deleted.

If you are creating a new page with different content, please continue. If you are recreating a page similar to the previously deleted page, or are unsure, please first contact the user(s) who performed the action(s) listed below.

This could discourage creation of articles on notable topics that were incorrectly deleted.
A random sample of deleted articles that seemed as though they could be on notable subjects turned up several. Whatever one's views on notability of aristocrats, Adam Karol Czartoryski, Grand Duke of Lithuania, is covered by various sources. The Grand Henham Steam Rally is well-covered by the local newspapers. The International Congress on Tuberculosis drew extensive commentary from international medical journals. The Bulgarian version of Kamelia, w:bg:Камелия (певица) has 42 citations, some of which must be enough to prove notability (this may be an example of poor results with searches where the script is not Latin. Nandini Sidda Reddy (w:te:నందిని_సిధారెడ్డి) may be another). And so on.

Aymatth2 (talk) 17:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Recommendations

Following is a first cut list. Please vote Green tickY, Red XN or Not sure, comment, and add more ideas.

Improve instructions on "Before nomination"

Formalized and moved to #RfC on improving PROD instructions in "Before nomination" section Aymatth2 (talk) 16:19, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Require notability check on BLPPROD

WITHDRAWN
As pointed out, WP:BLPPROD is a separate process. In fact, the instructions already say "Before nomination: ... Consider finding reliable sources yourself (See also WP:BEFORE)." Aymatth2 (talk) 11:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people has special rules: the BLP deletion template may be removed only after the biography contains a reliable source that supports at least one statement made about the person in the article. The instructions should state that WP:Before applies. If a source for the biography can be found, it should be added rather than nominate the article for BLPPROD. This does not preclude nominating for standard PROD.

Green tickY WP:Before should apply to all PRODs to ensure articles on notable subjects are kept. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:15, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN BLPPROD is really a separate process that is outside of the scope of this discussion. pburka (talk) 18:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY support as it makes it clear what is best practice, Atlantic306 (talk) 00:37, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN As Pburka points out, BLPPROD is different enough from normal PROD that this discussion doesn't pertain. Reyk YO! 20:14, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Improve reports

User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary, User:SDZeroBot/PROD sorting and User:SDZeroBot/PROD grid should be upgraded to show the user who submitted the PROD.

Green tickY This may help improve accountability. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY I support editor accountability and stuff that's already been implemented. ~Kvng (talk) 19:56, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Require de-PROD rationale

REJECTED
There is clearly no support for this suggestion. If discussion is needed, AfD is the place for it. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:44, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A bot should review edits that removed a PROD template, and automatically revert them if they have no edit summary. Where there is an edit summary, it should be added as |conreason= to the {{Old prod}} template on the article talk page, with the de-PROD editor added as |con= to this template.

Not sure. It seems like a difficult thing to do accurately. Yes if it can be done easily. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN Deprodding should be as simple as possible. This will have the effect of penalizing new editors for technicalities. pburka (talk) 18:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN This is an amalgam of two proposals - the 1st to forbid Prod removal without an Edit Summary, the 2nd storing that Edit Summary. The question of whether a rationale should be required has been discussed before (for example in archive 18). Desirable as a rationale is, as indeed is an Edit Summary for any edit, any contestation indicates that a Prod is not uncontroversial. It is also possible that substantial content and references added in the same edit would be reverted: an undesirable effect. AllyD (talk) 20:38, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN PRODs are only for uncontroversial deletions and so do not provide for debate. Per WP:REVTALK, we should "Avoid using edit summaries to carry on debates or negotiation over the content" as "This creates an atmosphere where the only way to carry on discussion is to revert other editors!". If editors want a debate or discussion, they should start an AfD, which is designed for that purpose. Bots should be kept right out of this as they are mindless automata. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:40, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN as mentioned it could remove content added in the same edit Atlantic306 (talk) 00:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN a pattern unjustified deprodding should be handled as WP:DISRUPTIVE. Otherwise WP:AGF and initiatiate discussion at WP:AFD - the D in AFD, does stand for discussion, doesn't it? ~Kvng (talk) 21:01, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I don't see why this was closed? I missed it initially, but I have very strong feelings on this and I think this is very important issue. I fully support this - dePRODs should have a rationale, otherwise we open ourselves to easy vandalism and pointless disruption. IIRC speedies have a requirement of a rationale for their removal or such, so why not PRODs? If this is ever discussed in another thread please ping me. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:19, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Limit PROD to CONFIRMED editors

Formalized and moved to #RfC on limiting PROD to CONFIRMED editors below. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:13, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Limit PROD to new / low activity articles

You often find articles which are 10 years old being nominated for PROD. During those many years, you commonly find that the articles have been read by many people and edited by numerous experienced editors. Any article which has survived inspection for such a long period should never be PRODed. This is where some mechanical device would be appropriate. The prod template might be coded to self-destruct in such cases, perhaps. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:03, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Not sure I've certainly seen 10 year old articles that would be uncontroversial at AFD, but I think they're probably fairly rare. I'm leaning towards supporting this, but need to stew on it. I might make the criteria 'or' instead of 'and': older than n years, or edited by more than m people, ... pburka (talk) 00:19, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion formalized and moved to #RfC on Limiting PROD to new / low activity articles (below) Aymatth2 (talk) 16:09, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

New category from PRODs with no talk page

Change {{Proposed deletion/dated}} to check whether the article has a talk page, and if not to add it to Category:Proposed deletion with no talk page, a maintenance category. Interested editors could check articles in this category and create talk page entries with suitable projects. Bots such as AAlertBot would then update WikiProjects with alerts about articles within their scope proposed for deletion. (Suggested by Pburka)

Green tickY Seems easy to implement, and if it helps improve review of PRODs, it is good. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:57, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Clarification. It's not just the absence of a talk page. It's the absence of WikiProjects, or too few WikiProjects. Obviously an article with no talk page is in no WikiProjects, but the talk page might exist and still have no or few (e.g. only WP:Biography) WikiProjects. pburka (talk) 19:57, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • It is easy for {{Proposed deletion/dated}} to include a check like {{#ifexist:{{TALKPAGENAME}} | | [[Category:Proposed deletion with no talk page]]}}, but considerably more difficult to check that there are no or "few" WikiProjects on the talkpage, probably something that would require a bot. I think some projects are usually added when the talk page is added, although obviously this is not always true and there may well be missing projects. Perhaps we should go for the easy one first, then add the harder one after? Aymatth2 (talk) 21:44, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
@Pburka: See Category:Proposed deletions without a talk page, populated automatically. A lot better than nothing. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:38, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Disqualify PRODs of articles which exist in other Wikipedias

If a topic exists in the Wikipedias of other languages too then this is a good clue that it is likely to be valid. For a fresh example, see the nomination of beer hall for deletion when the topic exists in 10 other languages too. Of course, it's not a sure sign but it seems enough to take us out of the "uncontroversial" zone. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:51, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Red XN Bad idea. Other wikipedias have different inclusion requirements and standards to ours, some of them very lax. You might as well say we shouldn't PROD something if it's on Wikia or TVtropes. Reyk YO! 11:06, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Red XN However it might be worth improving Template:Find sources to include links to other versions of the page. While the simple existence of a page in another language doesn't mean much, the pages are good starting points for finding sources, especially for non-English topics. pburka (talk) 16:04, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Not sure I think this needs to include the idea of "non-trivial, sourced versions in other wikipedias". If an unsourced 2-line stub on a Greek singer has a matching unsourced 2-line stub in the Greek wiki, that does not prove much. But if editors in other language versions have made the effort to develop o.k. articles on the subject, deleting it from the English wiki is not uncontroversial and at least deserves an AfD. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:22, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@Andrew Davidson: That would certainly have worked for Kamelia, which has significant sourced articles in several wikis but was deleted anyway. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion of study

@Pburka: the idea of notifying the projects makes a lot of sense to me. I cannot see an easy way to require the twinkling prodder to make a talk page and assign the article to the correct projects, when they think it is uncontroversial to delete it. We could add the article to "Category:PROD articles with no talk page" though, and perhaps a bot could add project notifications for PROD articles that do have talk page projects. Maybe other editors could chime in with ideas? Aymatth2 (talk) 00:46, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
@Pburka: I have made a suggestion at #New category from PRODs with no talk page. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:59, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment. Since my name was mentioned in the study: I do try to patrol the prod queue using WP:PRODSUM on a faster-than-weekly basis (often enough to see all prods before they expire) but only with specific classes of articles in mind (biographies of academics or articles about mathematical topics) and I skip over most prods where the article title or prod reason makes it obvious that they are not in that class. Most of the prods I see are appropriate but a noticeable fraction of them are bad (subject obviously notable or WP:BEFORE turns up sources easily) and I unprod those when I see them. On occasion the prod queue has articles a day or two past expiration and when I see this I will handle the expired prods without regard to topic. When I do handle them, I check the history for previous attempts at deletion and generally also do some WP:BEFORE in the form of superficial Google searches for available sources for improvement instead of deletion; nevertheless, most end up being deleted. I have no idea whether the admins who handle expired prods more frequently than I do it more or less thoroughly than that. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:16, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
As far as I know, the closing admins do not research whether the articles are about notable subjects, but just check that the process has been followed correctly. It would not be reasonable to ask them to also do a complete WP:Before check. In theory the nominator has already confirmed that the deletion is non-controversial, and nobody has objected after 7 days, so it gets deleted without any further review. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:37, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

I've opened a thread about respecting WP:BEFORE at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion . It should be drilled into everybody who either prods or nominates articles.† Encyclopædius 06:53, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Here's a section link: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#WP:BEFORE_is_not_a_core_content_policy ~Kvng (talk) 20:56, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Question- are people expecting the results of this "discussion" to be binding? If so, formulate it as an RfC and announce it properly at the relevant noticeboards. Reyk YO! 20:25, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
    • @Reyk: Some of these ideas are going nowhere, but some seem quite promising. I would prefer not to start all over again elsewhere without the context of the discussions and sample study that preceded the proposals. Most people interested or involved in the PROD process will be aware of these discussions. What do you suggest as the most efficient way to proceed? Aymatth2 (talk) 22:03, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
One step, perhaps, would be to move the more promising sections down, including current comments, make them L2 sections, then add {{rfc|policy}} after each heading. Would that be sufficient? Aymatth2 (talk) 22:16, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I call shenanigans- there's quite a bit misleading about this "study", particularly the statistics on articles that were "kept". Several of these were BLPPRODs, which is a different process. Others have since been deleted at AfD: usually uncontroversially, so I would argue that deprodding them was unjustified. These are now being used as "evidence" that a lot of PRODed articles get retained on Wikipedia. I say it's a misleading and skewed use of statistics. If this is the evidence that PROD has a "problem" that can be solved by removing human thought and replacing it with a proddeclinebot, then anyone voting in favour has been hoodwinked. Reyk YO! 14:04, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
    • @Reyk: PROD is for articles where there will be no controversy about deletion, and AfD is for articles where some discussion is warranted. The study showed that about 25% of PRODs are in fact controversial, so should have taken the AfD route. Some of the deleted articles were on notable subjects, so should not have been proposed at all. The discussion is about ways to improve the process and reduce the number of errors.
    If we removed the PROD process altogether, articles could still be deleted via AfD. The truly uncontroversial ones would not take much effort. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:32, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
      • LOL. A spammer taking a PROD off his own advertising billboard, or some IP completely misunderstanding the process, in no way makes deleting the article "controversial". What absolute nonsense. The fact that PRODs can be removed for any reason no matter how daft, or no reason at all, means that there's always going to be some number of unjustifiable deprods. That in no way reflects badly on the person who placed the PROD originally, or on the process, and is certainly no argument to restrict who can place them. PROD has for years kept large numbers of hopeless articles from clogging up AfD, it's a necessary maintenance mechanism that works well, and none of this misleading statistical argumentation changes that. Reyk YO! 15:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Ravenswing influx

Ravenswing has been busy prodding articles with longstanding notability tags. I assume this is legitimate backlog work and not intended to be disruptive. It has, however, created a big bulge in our prod workflow and I'm not sure these are receiving adequate review - I certainly won't have time to review them all before they are (presumably) deleted. ~Kvng (talk) 21:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Thank you for the assumption. (Although why one would even imagine it might be intentionally "disruptive," I'd be interested to know.) Indeed, following a mention on two of the project talk pages I follow, it was revealed that the notability backlog was over sixty-five thousand articles. Popping over to CAT:NN, I saw that several thousand were ten years older or more. While I'm prodding fewer than at the start (I believe it was Kvng who pointed out that redirecting when there was an obvious target was by far the better option, with which I agree, since it saves the edit history should someone come up with adequate sourcing down the road), and certainly a goodly number are notable or have a reasonable presumption thereof, there's quite a lot still. After ten years, enough is enough.

    Granted, I have a solution. If the pace of prodding is troubling, anyone can work from the same lists I'm working from. Go and take five or ten minutes to see if you can source the articles. That's a win-win all around. Ravenswing 22:27, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Boleyn is another editor doing similar work of going through the oldest end of the relevant notability category. I don't find it too much as I usually go through all of WP:PRODSORT on a daily basis and so every item tends to get scanned repeatedly. If other editors like Kvng are doing prod patrol too, then we've got it covered. From what DGG said recently, there isn't much being missed as he's not finding much to deprod when he does prod patrol.
The main issue seems to be that regular prodders often take it badly when their prods are removed. As it's supposed to be a lightweight, easy-come-easy-go process, they should be more relaxed about it. It's AfD which is more significant and so I save my energy for that. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:28, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
I certainly take it badly when it's plain that the deprodders make no effort themselves to gauge the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the prodders' rationales; they should be more diligent and constructive about it. When I see a deprodder voting at AfD to delete the article they deprodded, that just suggests that this is some manner of online tennis match where the prod's just the first serve, ready to be reflexively batted right back. It certainly contributes, I expect, to the mindset of "Screw it, let's just take them all to AfD, "uncontroversial" or not."

Whether or not this is the "main issue," I suppose, entirely depends on your POV. Ravenswing 18:11, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I am compelled to !vote to delete stuff I have deprodded after seeing evidence from other AfD participants that I did not see from the prodder. Also, I sometimes make mistakes. I try to correct them and learn from them. ~Kvng (talk) 18:23, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
@Ravenswing: I just noticed did not answer your (paranthetical) question about disruption. If you read through recent activity on this talk page you'll see complaints about patterns of bad prods and bad deprods. I didn't want anyone to get the impression that this new section was a continuation of that discussion. ~Kvng (talk) 22:30, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Nope, that seems reasonable, looking back over things. Ravenswing 00:09, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
@Andrew Davidson and Kvng: Indeed, when I deprodded an article, Ravenswing thought it would be productive to just start bludgeoning me. I respect Ravenswing putting time into the project, but collaboration is very difficult when you treat Wikipedia like an online bowling match and get irritated whenever you don't make a strike. I don't feel too motivated to look at any prodded article because if I object, Ravenswing is just going to be pestering me. I would be surprised if I was the only one. - Alexis Jazz 23:03, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I've also experinced hostility from Ravenswing. ~Kvng (talk) 23:41, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
@Ravenswing: Do you acknowledge that this kind of approach isn't inspiring collaboration? - Alexis Jazz 00:40, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
I certainly acknowledge that "When did you stop beating your wife?" style questions aren't going to get any kind of answer from me. Feel free to take it to ANI, if you're unafraid of boomerangs. Ravenswing 01:07, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion: link. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:48, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC on limiting PROD to CONFIRMED editors

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This proposal is unsuccessful. Many editors expressed skepticism over the extent to which the problem presented is actually a problem, commenting that new editors do not frequently submit PROD nominations, and when it does happen, the appropriateness of the PROD will always be reviewed by at least one other editor: if not a passing editor, then the administrator that reviews the PROD after it expires. Mz7 (talk) 04:53, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

PROD assumes some familiarity with Wikipedia's policies and conventions, and users are expected to be able to judge whether or not a deletion would be non-controversial. IP editors and new editors should be limited to AFD, which guarantees some level of review. PROD should be limited to autoconfirmed/confirmed, or perhaps extended confirmed editors. (Not sure how this would be enforced, technically.) Proposed by pburka (talk) 18:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY Either prevent the edit from saving, or have a bot remove the prod. pburka (talk) 18:43, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY Same reasons as Pburka. Given the general lack of notability review, PRODs by unconfirmed users are risky. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:01, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN There are some experienced editors who prefer to edit anonymously using an IP address and, like it or not, this is well-established as valid. As PRODs are supposed to be completely uncontroversial, there is no reason to discriminate against particular classes of editor. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:46, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: PRODs are supposed to be completely uncontroversial, but in the sample 35 out of 148 were contested, and it seems likely that more would have been contested if anyone had checked them. The reality is that they often are controversial. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:56, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. If a prod is actually controversial then it should be rapidly removed by any feasible mechanism. For example, you often find articles which are 10 years old being nominated for PROD. During those many years, you commonly find that the articles have been read by many people and edited by numerous experienced editors. Any article which has survived inspection for such a long period should never be PRODed. This is where some mechanical device would be appropriate. The prod template might be coded to self-destruct in such cases, perhaps. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:03, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
I like that idea a lot. See next item, below, which you just wrote. Aymatth2 (talk) 22:17, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
@Andrew Davidson: Veteran editors who choose to edit as IPs give up a number of privileges: they can't create article, move articles, or edit semi-protected articles. I don't see an obvious reason why proposing articles for almost-unscrutinized deletion is substantially different than these other things. They'd still be able to delete articles; just not through the deletion process with the least oversight. (In fact, even in AFD, the opinions of IP or unconfirmed editors are often given less weight. We even have a template to call attention to them: afdnewuser.) pburka (talk) 00:14, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
I was mistaken: IP users can't create AFD pages. pburka (talk) 13:26, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY as it is currently easy for sockpuppets to nominate hundreds of articles with no rationale and no notice to the page creator. Last year there was a dynamic ip nominating about 60 prods a day over about a fortnight all on the same topic - Saudi Arabia, Atlantic306 (talk) 00:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY If IP editors are not allowed to use AFD, it is reasonable to prevent them from using PROD. Prod patrollers could deprod these until we figure out a way to do it automatically. A quick look at WP:BEFORE should convince anyone that this is not something a new editor should start with. ~Kvng (talk) 20:02, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN Nah. Not unless we also forbid non-confirmed editors from removing them. Reyk YO! 20:04, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@Reyk: We could start a separate RfC on restricting PROD removal to confirmed editors. I do not see that this RfC should be acceptable only if that RfC is accepted. There are a lot of other things that non-confirmed editors can and cannot do. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:33, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY Support, though it may be difficult to enforce this through technical means. If anonymous users can't create AFD pages, why would we let them use a process that has more restrictions and less scrutiny? –Darkwind (talk) 02:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

There must be a way for a template to find out if a user has confirmed/autoconfirmed rights. Assuming there is, {{proposed deletion}} could put the article into a maintenance category, "Proposed deletion suggestions by non-confirmed users", and render a warning message: In effect, a confirmed user would have to review the non-confirmed user's suggestion before the process starts. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:45, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN Oppose per Reyk, unless they are also disallowed from removing them. Regardless of who makes the prod, the same admins, page watchers, and general editors can oversee the removal or actual deletion. Notice within the tag may be useful. Reywas92Talk 01:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I have started an RfC on this below, #RfC on limiting de-PROD to confirmed editors. I see this as a separate proposal, but editors who have an opinion on this PROD creation proposal may have opinions on the PROD removal proposal. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:23, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Red XN PROD patrol and guidance on patterns of misplaced nominations should be the focus rather than inhibiting a particular editor group from nominating. AllyD (talk) 07:09, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Oppose Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. which includes IPs and new users. But when it comes to maintenance, they are kicked out of the door? The Banner talk 14:42, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support - I support the idea, for largely the same reasons I opened this thread about greater restrictions on AfD over at VPP. A question, though: how is this going to be implemented? Edit filter? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:09, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
    @Rhododendrites: See above. A simple approach would have {{proposed deletion}} check if the user has confirmed/autoconfirmed rights (not sure how), and if not put the article into "Category:Proposed deletion suggestions by non-confirmed users", and render a warning message: So a non-confirmed user could suggest PROD, but a confirmed user would have to endorse the suggestion before the process starts. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:56, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
    I saw that, but the crucial part is "not sure how". :) I don't think there's any way for the template to do that. It would need a bot to check/amend, or an edit filter (which wouldn't affect the category but would flag it for others). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:03, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
    Maybe a module would be needed. Special:UserRights/Rhododendrites gives the information for a user, so it is available. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:40, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose absent any evidence that this is actually a problem. I doubt the number of PROD nominations by very new users is very high, and any which do happen should be subject to review anyway. New users are frequently able to identify unsuitable articles. Hut 8.5 06:47, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Note - Edited the RfC statement to clarify that Pburka is almost certainly talking about autoconfirmed in addition to confirmed, and linking to the user access levels. Confirmed, of course, is when someone is manually given the same rights as autoconfirmed. I imagine this doesn't change much. Also, this seems like a big enough question that I added it to T:CENT. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support for the reasons already mentioned, anons can easily cause drive-by damage with prods and it’s a burden to add that specialty work to all the other vandal work. Gleeanon409 (talk) 19:29, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose -- It doesn't take all that long to take deprod an article as needed. If there is a pattern of inappropriate prods, appropriate action can be taken against particular editors. -- Dolotta (talk) 21:52, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose all PRODs are reviewed by at least one other user (the deleting sysop) prior to deletion. I would not oppose advising admins to take additional care with PRODs by new editors, and send them to AfD if at all controversial, but IPs and new users should still be able to list articles. Danski454 (talk) 22:54, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose restricting the ability of anonymous editors to improve the encyclopedia absent a clear and insurmountable problem. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:48, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment. Is this really a problem? How often new editors even PROD? Frankly, if a new editor PRODs, it is almost certain they are not a new editor but a returning sock... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:30, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

 No. You can't assume that someone is an inexperienced editor because they're not logged in. I've prodded things from random computers that aren't my own before.  — Scott • talk 10:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Comment Modify the template so that for the first 24 hours it does nothing and after that it categorizes the page into Category:Articles marked to be moved to draft space by bot. (I can do the template magic for you, just ping me) - Alexis Jazz 20:52, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose No reason to limit to confirmed users as PROD is always reviewed by other users such as Administrators and other experienced users 🌸 1.Ayana 🌸 (talk) 23:51, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Wikipedia may be the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, but I don't feel it should be the encyclopaedia that absolutely anybody can delete articles from. Leave the PROD process to at least auto-confirmed users. I would, however, be relatively happy for non auto-confirmed users to be able to remove a PROD notice. Once an article is gone, it's gone. But an article that is still there can always be PROD-ed later, if necessary. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:25, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support PRODs are not monitored as close as AfDs. I'd be okay with new users creating AfDs, but I like restrictions on PRODs. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 00:52, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Being a confirmed user does not make them better qualified to determine if an article should be deleted. I have seen IPs that give better rationale for deleting pages than some confirmed users. If the rationale is bad it is simple to stop the PROD process, just remove it. ~ GB fan 10:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose This type of policy shouldn't be implemented preemptively, and there is no evidence of a significant issue with IPs and PROD. Since the four XfD venues open to IPs receive almost no bad-faith edits, I would instead recommend opening AfD and MfD to IPs if that is technically possible. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 03:44, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose You don't need to judge whether a PROD is non-controversial. If it's controversial, someone will revert it (and even if it's a super low traffic page, at a minimum, the admin who handles it will see it). Also, not all IP editors are newbies. (Side note: I agree with Reyk that it would make a lot more sense to restrict non-autoconfirmed users from removing PRODs than adding them. Given that didn't seem to go over well, there's no way this is a good idea.) Jackmcbarn (talk) 06:14, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose A solution in search of a problem. I've never heard of this being an issue before, and it doesn't seem like its breaking Wikipedia. If a new user prods a page, and its bad, the whole point of a prod is...it can simply be removed by someone else. Also, I don't see a clear way to implement this change anyway, unless we use an edit filter (which I oppose) or a template (which doesn't actually stop people from doing it...it just bites newbies and anons). CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 07:51, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, solution looking for a problem. Stifle (talk) 11:39, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Neutral. Some of the poorest proposed deletions come from experienced editors. While this change might stop a few prods from newbies who don't yet understand how the project works, I don't see it making a huge difference. --Michig (talk) 15:57, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • PROD is great because it's the simplest and most straightforward thing around. Putting aside BLPPROD, there's no need for a reason to start or end one. The only real restrictions are no prior PROD/AfD and that's it unopposed. No need to complicate things. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:20, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose PROD is arguably the lowest form of deletion. There's no discussion, one user says "maybe we should delete this" and all that has to happen to stop that is for literally any other user, registered or not, to say "nah, let's keep it" and that's that. I also feel the proposal fails to make a case that there is a real problem that needs solving here. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever of this being a problem at rates any higher than registered editors causing problems with PRODs. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 02:15, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Leaning Support, but collect some data first. Flag and categorize PRODs by the confirmed or not status of the PRODder. Leaning support because that would be the more cautious route. Some mentions of evidence are above, not necessarily bad PROD deletions per se, but failure of accountability because someone is not using their main account to do PRODdings. A genuine newcomer wanting to clean mainspace should be encouraged to use AfD first. AfD is a very good learning environment for newcomers; if they make a mistake someone else is there to tell them, before they make unilateral errors. PROD patrolling admins should not be over-relied upon, I think only confirmed PRODder will help, as well as help confidence in the system. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:18, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Granted, I'm with Reyk, and think that no one should be allowed to deprod an article who isn't allowed to prod one. But that being said ... is this really a problem? (And just think, how many articles could have been adequately researched and sourced with the time spent arguing this?) Ravenswing 22:58, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose A solution in search of a problem. Yilloslime (talk) 18:28, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This is classic WP:CREEP, making up a new rule for no good reason. ~Swarm~ {sting} 17:19, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggest new process mirroring proposed deletion: Proposed redirect

Occasionally, as an active PRODDer, I hear criticism 'just redirect it'; this is also related to the ongoing discussion on whether prods/deprods are a big deal or not and whether a redirect outcome of a prod or deletion means that the deletion proposal was valid or not. Well, following a recent short but insightful discussion I had with User:DGG and User:Aymatth2, I have a proposal. Redirecting is a good idea in some cases (WP:SOFTDELETION), and a non too uncommon result of many PRODs or AfDs, and I agree it is used too rarely. From my perspective, one of the reasons I don't redirect as often as I can, instead of going to PROD/AFDs, is that it is too 'sneaky'. First, if I prod something (with Twinkle), there's a log record and notification on talk and creator's user pages, and even without those (which I think are optional), the PROD will get reviewed by another editor. AfDs, of course, get even more scrutiny. But a redirect can be a form of 'sneaky, hidden deletion', with nobody the wiser unless they notice it on a watchlist (and DGG noted that 'sneaky deletions' by redirecting have been a problem in the past). Likewise, redirects can be restored, with no notification generated (whereas at least a list of prods I have thanks to twinkle can be monitored to some extend, and I can check what has been recreated...). This is why personally I very rarely redirect articles, instead, I prod/AfD them and let another person or the wider community make the final call. But this is not ideal, and in some cases I do believe I have suggested a redirect as an option in the prod, only to see the article hard deleted (or weirdly, hard deleted and then recreated as a redirect). The fact remains that redirecting as a form of soft deletion is often a good alternative to hard deletion, which is what prods generally are about. But while prods have a growing infrastructure to support them (also see recent discussions above), redirects do not, and I think this is a major reason why redirecting and soft deletion are not used as often as they could be. As such I think we should either:

  • create a system of proposed redirects, mirroring prods, where editors could propose a redirect-like soft deletion, have it logged, a notification issued, and this would be subject to the same review as a proposed deletion or
  • simply acknowledge that PRODs can be used for redirecting, and encourage soft rather than hard deletion as the final outcome in the PROD process, and revise wording and guidelines for PROD procedure.

Frankly, I think it would be better to go with the first solution (create a Wikipedia:Proposed redirect system), to avoid confusion.

Thoughts? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:40, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

This is unnecessary bureaucracy and already covered by WP:BOLD. GiantSnowman 08:30, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I like this idea. Presumably bold redirects are still allowed and encouraged under this proposal, but it gives editors an option to request a second opinion before redirecting. pburka (talk) 10:56, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • A few stray comments:
    • Introducing a whole new process seems a bit extreme
    • AfD and PROD are just alternative methods of deleting articles. I think the PROD instructions should point to WP:Before, as stated in #RfC on improving PROD instructions in "Before nomination" section (comments welcome). That is a good place to put a discussion of redirects.
    • (Possibly WP:Before should be split out as a separate guideline, shared between PROD and AfD, but that is a separate question.)
    • Redirects are mostly useful for variant names for the same topic, but may be useful as links to sub-topics of a notable topic where the sub-topic may or may not be notable, but at this stage does not have an article. There may be something wrong if a redirect is not a variant name but does not link to an article section.
    • A sub-topic may not be notable, while the main topic is clearly notable. A book title can redirect to a section in the author's article, or vice-versa. Notability can emerge over time. Perhaps the book or the author become famous because of later events.
    • A redirect can be expanded into a full article without the editor hitting the red wall of death: A page with this title has previously been moved or deleted. So redirection is much better than deletion for a topic that may later become notable, if there is a reasonable target.
    • It would be easy enough to have a bot maintain logs of articles turned into redirects (other than via moves) and redirects turned into articles. How would we encourage editors to monitor them?
    • If a sizable page is turned into a redirect with no discussion, other than a move, that may be worth investigating. "Good" redirects like this could then be tagged to show they had been checked.
    Aymatth2 (talk) 15:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • This seems like unnecessary bureaucracy. There is already a mechanism in place for uncontroversial redirections: just redirect the page. Anyone who wants to contest this can just revert the edit. There's no need to force people to follow a process. The reason we have a process for uncontroversial deletions is because deletion/undeletion is restricted to admins and even admins are very heavily restricted in what they can delete. The only advantage of this process would be increased scrutiny, but there are less bureaucratic ways of achieving that, e.g. create a report listing pages which have recently been redirected. Hut 8.5 18:23, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Can we modify the existing PROD template to add a parameter for redirection? It would be useful, actually, to give some indication that once the article is deleted, the title can usefully be redirected to some relevant article, perhaps at a higher level of abstraction. BD2412 T 18:39, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
That sounds like what Piotrus calls weird: hard deleted and then recreated as a redirect. It seems simpler as Hut 8.5 says to just change the page to a redirect. The history is kept and if someone wants to expand it into an article again that may be useful. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose: What purpose would this serve? Any redirect can be easily reverted if it doesn't meet consensus and redirecting can also be suggested at a AFD if the community feels that is more appropriate than outright deletion. If people say to "just redirect" certain articles, it is mostly likely due to their being another article of a similar topic or with information pertaining to the topic. Otherwise, there would be nothing to redirect to. Redirects serve a distinct purpose from deletion, so there are cases where deletion is more appropriate than redirection and vice versa. Personally, I don't find redirects particularly sneaky, because it will directly say "Replaced content with #REDIRECT..." with a tag (which will show up on anyone's watchlist) and can still be reversed when challenged. If someone hasn't edited in years, such retirees rarely respond to AFDs either. "Proposed Redirection" is pretty much already covered by talk page discussion and AFD. Darkknight2149 01:48, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I think this is silly. If you think a page should be redirected, WP:JUSTDOIT, and if someone disagrees, they can revert the redirection just like they'd revert the addition of a PROD tag. Jackmcbarn (talk) 06:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Unnecessary and doesn't solve any demonstrated problem. Articles created from redirects do get into the NPP queue. Articles sneakily deleted by turning them into redirects can be restored at any time without administrator involvement. This all represents a more functional process than we have with Prod which you've modeled your proposal from. ~Kvng (talk) 14:56, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • this is unnecessary. If you don't want to boldly redirect an article, you can start a talk page discussion laying out why the article should redirect. Then you can notify the creator and anyone else you want either indirectly by pinging them in the discussion or directly on their talk page. We don't need an additional process to accomplish this. ~ GB fan 20:15, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
    • The problem is that many pages don't have active watchers. If we had dated categories (Category:Proposed redirect as of 27 July 2020) anyone who wanted to volunteer to patrol redirects could easily find the articles that have been proposed. There's no bureaucracy required; just some technical work to create and populate the categories. Again, there'd be no requirement to use this mechanism. It would be a way for anyone to request a second opinion about soft deleting an obscure page. pburka (talk) 22:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
      • That suggests an interesting line of thought. We do not want to publicize pages that have no active watchers, but maybe there would be value in filtering out PROD reviews of pages that have plenty of watchers. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
        • I would be okay with what Pburka is suggesting if the "proposed deletion" occurs after someone has reverted the redirect (similar to PROD), and the category links to whatever talk page it is being discussed on. If need be, we can create a category for redirects that used to be pages or just create a policy that tells you to notify someone when you redirect a page they created (again similar to PROD). I don't believe we need a completely separate process. Darkknight2149 21:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Quite aside from adding another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy, if the complaint is now that there aren't enough right-thinking editors out there to oversee the process, how in the merry hell will there be enough editors to supervise every redirect on Wikipedia? Because anything short of that, and all you're doing is requiring one more click before a redirect. Ravenswing 22:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The PROD procedure is simply an application of BRD to deletion. Non-admins can't delete articles, so they can do the next best thing and propose deletion without discussion. This procedure should only be used when bold editing would otherwise be performed, which can be done with redirection. If a second opinion is needed then a discussion should be started. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:33, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose - pointless guideline creeep. If someone comes across an article they would like to propose for redirection, they are already encouraged to just do it. An article redirected this way can be reverted by any editor with one or two clicks; edit-warring over such a redirect is already forbidden and articles/redirects can be protected in case of disputes, and talk pages are available for controversial decisions (plus dispute resolution, etc.). There's just absolutely no reason at all to create a whole formalized process for this; it's extra bureaucracy for no conceivable benefit whatsoever. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Extended discussion

Moved from within #RfC on limiting de-PROD to confirmed editors above
  • Commet. In my experience, majority of prod abuse comes not from the occasional newbie defending their article or misunderstanding the policy, but from hardcore inclusionists who deprod everything in sight, forcing AfD discussions over very clear cases because they can (WP:POINT). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:21, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
    • This. Reyk YO! 07:24, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
    • @Piotrus: I think you are ignoring the results of the first #Sample study. About 25% were contested, and most of these were not deleted. I am more interested in the ones that were deleted. I did some rescue work on Adam Karol Czartoryski, Grand Henham Steam Rally, International Congress on Tuberculosis, Kamelia and Nandini Sidda Reddy, which had obvious potential. The nominator on International Council of Jurists, Russian Rocky, said "... not that I didn't try to expand it, but my efforts have been futile so far." Presumably their efforts did not include a web search. The process is not working well, and we should be looking for ways to make it work better. It is worth thinking of a AI-type bot that would evaluate PROD submissions and rank them by probability of being valid. The alternative is to scrub PROD and fall back on AfD for all non-CSD deletions. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
      @Aymatth2: What did you say? "Presumably their efforts did not include a web search"? Don't make a fool of me by your baseless claims. I was one of major contributors to that article, SpacemanSpiff can confirm it.--Russian Rocky (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
      • No, it's not "easily enough to clearly establish notability". Talk with administrator SpacemanSpiff (as I did before). When I expanded the article by adding the above-mentioned coronavirus info, it was removed as based on an ICJ press release. It's also worth noting that, despite its name, it's a privately held company based in London, and its founder and long-term president is Adish Aggarwala. Last time I checked, it was a hopeless tiny stub with an infobox and one sentence (all other content was removed by SpacemanSpiff).--Russian Rocky (talk) 21:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
      • It's clear what the point of all these proddeclinebot proposals is. It's more and more obviously becoming a campaign to take human thought and editor discretion out of the process. Naturally, I oppose. Reyk YO! 21:58, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
      • @Russian Rocky: I apologize. The topic is clearly notable, but it seems that SpacemanSpiff had a problem with the article, and you only proposed deletion after it had been reduced to a meaningless stub. I will restart it. I personally think the conspiracy theory is daft but notable, whether or not it originated with a press release. I will stick to what the many reliable independent sources have to say about it. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:27, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
      • As you may or may not have noticed, I actually requested that the AKC article is undeleted on REFUND, and did a bit of work on it too. Certainly some PRODs can be rescued, and some are deleted instead of rescuing. It is a problem. Frankly my solution to this is rather drastic: I think deleted content should be viewable by non-admins (just make them click through promts and display a major warning or such). This way we could always judge what 'went' and we could rescue it. But while I think your sample study is valuable, I think we need more studies on the patterns of people who are 'serious deprodders', and what happens with their deprods. I think people whose record would show that majority of their deprods ended up, after AfD, as hard of soft deletes, need to revise their behavior. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:58, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
        worth thinking of a AI-type bot that would evaluate PROD submissions and rank them by probability of being valid @EpochFail: does this sound feasible to you? SD0001 (talk) 07:42, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
        • Some of the possibly relevant attributes that have been mentioned here are article age, number of editors, number of confirmed editors, number of other language versions, presence of talk page, number of project tags. Possibly also relevant are nominating userid, length, number of citations, number of inbound links. Of course, a true AI bot might find unexpected but relevant attributes. Data could be taken from articles at time of PROD, comparing deleted to kept articles after 4 weeks had elapsed to let AfDs clear. PROD patrollers could focus on articles the bot considered most likely to be invalid. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
          • It might be possible to model this, but there's a lot of relevant signal that it is hard to use. E.g., I imagine notability will be a common reason for de-proding. That would be hard the assess algorithmically, but a lot of the things that Aymatth2 methods are easy to gather. How would we identify valid de-prod events and is there a nice way we could get a sense for the *reason* for de-prod'ing? I've created Phab:T258082 to start gathering details about how we might train such a model. (Note, filing a task doesn't mean we're going to *do* this. I just want to capture technical requirements in case we do end up wanting this.) --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 16:19, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
            • @EpochFail: A very crude way to assess notability would be counts of Google general, news and books search results. I would say a de-PROD may be assumed valid iff the article was not deleted within 4 weeks of the PROD. The nominator did not care to follow through with an AfD, or if they did it was rejected. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:05, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
        drastic: I think deleted content should be viewable by non-admins While we may not agree with its front-page motto (radical inclusionism), the deletionpedia is a good resource for finding content to rescue. The project is still active and the bot is still importing AfD'd articles. That's where the problem is, though - it does not pick up PRODed articles, which is perhaps more important. Might be worth a request to the site operators. SD0001 (talk) 07:42, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
        I strongly suspect any bot sophisticated enough to accurately judge the odds of an article getting deprodded- probably it would need some sort of deep learning algorithm- is just going to end up following the habits and interests of our clique of serial deprodders. I think that would be both creepy and missing the point. Reyk YO! 07:52, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
        • @Piotrus: I saw you asked for Adam Karol Czartoryski to be restored. I recreated Grand Henham Steam Rally and International Congress on Tuberculosis from scratch, and recreated Nandini Sidda Reddy and Kamelia using Google Translate from the bg and te wikis. These five articles stood out as being likely to be notable topics among the deleted articles in the sample study. The sample study identified five editors who made more than one de-PROD. Kvng (4), Pburka (4), Atlantic306 (3), Andrew Davidson (2) or David Eppstein (2). If you sort the table in Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion/sample2020-6-26 by closer, you can see from the colors which articles were kept, deleted or are in AfD. I would say these five users all have good track records. In some cases their de-PROD comment did not say the article must be kept, just that it deserves discussion. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
          • I think four of those users have a good record, and one should be banned from deprodding for very bad track record, including repeated complaints on their talk and even at ANI. Not that I expect it to happen. But a study based on a sample bigger than 2-4 deprods per user would be useful, we can't really draw any conclusions from such a small sample. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:07, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
            Piotrus, at least part of the problem is that some people are confused about whether PROD is a big deal or not. They seem to want simultaneously that prods can be removed because they don't like PROD itself, or they don't like the PRODding editor, or any other trivial whim-- but then also turn around and say that if you get too many declined it's evidence of disruptiveness on your part. "It's a big deal for thee but not for me" in other words. Reyk YO! 10:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
            @Reyk: Good point. Deprods should not be a big deal, but IMHO the fact that they don't require a summary allows plenty of abuse/laziness. When I do a BEFORE search and conclude that something is PRODDABLE, I may be wrong, and I don't mind if someone deprods it, that's no big deal - but if they do it without rationale, again and again, and then subsequent AfDs ended in SNOW DELETE with nobody voting keep, again and again, then I feel we have a problem, as it suggests that person just thinks nothing is eligible for PDOD. Then this is a bigger deal... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
        Okay, after quite a bit of struggle in accounting for the myriad of different scenarios, I have come up with a fairly comprehensive automated version of the page created by Aymatth2. It's at User:SDZeroBot/ProdWatch presently containing PRODed articles from June 30. Interestingly, only a handful of the articles that were de-prodded have been taken to AfD. (The code is here in case anyone is interested.) SD0001 (talk) 20:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
        • That is interesting. I thought there was a bug at first because it does not match Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion/sample2020-6-26, but then I see it is as of 30 June rather than 26 June. The number of challenged de-PRODs was much lower than with the 26 June batch, perhaps because the sample was so much more visible. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:34, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
          @Aymatth2: I updated the code so that it shows these things clearly, and just ran it for the 27 June 03:00 UTC articles (which is close to your 26 June 21:00 time) so that we can figure out any potential discrepancies: User:SDZeroBot/ProdWatch/2020-06-27. But I don't see any change in pattern? I see that there were 10 contested deprods, vs 12 for the June 30 batch (of course many articles would be in both batches). SD0001 (talk) 09:25, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
        • Hope we can see this adapted as an ongoing tool. One thing I'll note is the potential confusion of redirects. For example, some definitions of 'kept' include articles that have been just redirected, whereas for me it is pretty much a form of deletion (just 'soft'). But a while ago I remember seeing a misleading list of 'kept deprods' where many where in fact just redirects, so prod/AfD worked well, effectively removing the articles from the mainspace. But unless someone installs the script to color redirects (I love it, very easy, see User:Piotrus/global.css), they won't easily see that those articles were soft-deleted. Anyway, I just want to stress that any analysis needs to distinguish not just between blue kept and red deleted, but also between green (for me) redirects. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:12, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
          @Piotrus: in the bot analysis, all articles in the "de-prodded" section are actual articles, not redirects. The ones that were redirected are covered in the "others" section at the bottom. As an aside, redirects can be made to show up as green for all users by using TemplateStyles on the page. SD0001 (talk) 07:56, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
          A redirect may indicate that the article already exists under a different name, or that the topic is covered by a section in the target article, in which case it could perhaps later be expanded back into a stand-alone article. Both of these are very different from saying that information about the topic has no place in Wikipedia. If a PROD evolves in a redirect, why was it a PROD in the first place? For example, I restarted the deleted Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse as a redirect to the existing Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse Act. Some future editor may well decide to make the centre the main topic, with the act redirected to it. They will not hit the red wall of death. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:41, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
  • The OP's comment has attracted a variety of tangential responses so we need to repeat it for clarity

    In my experience, majority of prod abuse comes not from the occasional newbie defending their article or misunderstanding the policy, but from hardcore inclusionists who deprod everything in sight, forcing AfD discussions over very clear cases because they can (WP:POINT).

Let's unpick this to highlight core issues and misunderstandings:
  1. "prod abuse". The main abuse of prod is when it is used controversially. WP:PROD explains the process fairly clearly: "Proposed deletion (PROD) is a way to suggest an article or file for uncontroversial deletion. ... PROD must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected." The abuse arises when nominators expect opposition but prod the article anyway. It's not clear why some regulars do this. They must surely see that prods for controversial topics will be opposed but they continue to nominate them regardless. They seem to suppose that, if they persist and complain in forums like this, that their nominations will be accepted without scrutiny. Their expectations seem unrealistic.
  2. "the occasional newbie defending their article" PRODs are sometimes used by the new page patrol when they don't like an article but can't think of a suitable speedy deletion criterion. This seems like abuse too because, if someone has just created an article and it doesn't fit the speedy deletion criteria such as test page, then opposition should be expected. The speedy deletion criteria have been carefully crafted over the years to cater for all the standard cases. If a page doesn't fit them then surely it requires discussion, rather than unopposed deletion. I suppose that the prods are unopposed in some cases because the newbie is baffled or discouraged and so gives up. This will then be a violation of WP:BITE.
  3. "hardcore inclusionists who deprod everything in sight" This is a myth because nobody deprods everything in sight. It might be simpler if they did because the process would then become defunct. What we have are deletionists who complain when their prods are removed. They just don't seem to understand the process. Prods are not opposed by debate or discussion; that's what AfD is for. WP:PROD explains it clearly: "Any editor (including the article's creator or the file's uploader) may object to the deletion by simply removing the tag;". I suppose that the confusion arises because, in other cases of tagging, removal is not such a simple process. For other tags such as {{NPOV}}, there's usually a long discussion required to clarify and address the issue in question. But a prod tag is, by design, a flimsy thing, and so users should not be surprised if they do not hold.
Andrew🐉(talk) 07:52, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  • For a fresh example illustrating these points, see my most recent deprod, Hamilton McWhorter III. A new editor, User talk:Danimal57, made a reasonable start on this article about a notable flying ace and their talk page has now been bludgeoned with deletion templates but no welcome, advice or assistance, until now. The deletionist is now going down in flames at AfD but I suppose that they would and will do exactly the same thing again. It's puzzling. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:31, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  • That was a good deprod. But for another fresh example, let's consider a few examples of your deprods that I can recall. First, your recent DEPROD of Bêlit. You did not choose to participate in the resulting AFD which ended up in 3:0 delete close at the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bêlit. Or older Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/EAS Pollux, same case. Why did you make us jump through the hoops in this case? We don't know since as usual, you didn't attach any meaningful rationale to your deprod nor did you explain your reasons in the AfD (note that in the latter one I even pinged you in the AfD opening post - to no avail as you did not join the discussion, you just deprodded it and moved on). Or consider another recent deprod of yours, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Miraz's Castle, where the AfD was 6:1 with your voice being the only dissenting. Or, again, a but older, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Teens Against Crime where the vote was 6:0 since you didn't participate despite the DEPROD. Do you still think that 6 people there were wrong and you are correct? You say "The abuse arises when nominators expect opposition but prod the article anyway". I, for one, can easily predict that such articles will be deleted at AfD, but I can't predict whether you will feel like deprodding them or not, since you can't even bother to tell us in your edit summary why you think PROD is wrong or controversial. You may not deprod everything in sight, but whatever criteria you use to deprod them are a mystery, at least to me, and this will not change until you will start using informative edit summaries. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:50, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Just like we have good prods and bad prods, we also have good deprods and bad deprods. I don't think we should assume either is disruptive editing. We all make mistakes and sometimes we even learn from them. I think it is helpful for deprodders to explain their rationale but we've affirmed that there is no requirement to do so. Whingeing at them is unlikely to change behavior. ~Kvng (talk) 21:14, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
That's a false equivalence because PROD and DEPROD are not symmetrical. The essential point about a prod is that it should be "uncontroversial" because it "must only be used if no opposition to the deletion is expected". A deprod is necessarily controversial because it is a reversion of the prod; it is inherently a dispute. So, every time a deprod is done, it means that the prod is likely to have been improper because the opposition should have been expected. The process is only working as it should when the prods are not reverted and so there are no deprods. If editors find that their prods are regularly being removed then they are not doing it right. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
What you say would be correct if we all had the same expectations. I frequently take flack for my deprods from prodders who did not expect their prod to be controversial. I am sometimes able to convince them that it was and sometimes that even changes behavior going forward. But really the same happens in the other direction too. I deprod something that looks controversial to me and then it goes to AfD and I'm unable to make a policy-based keep argument and it gets unanimously deleted so then it's my turn to adjust my expectations of what's controversial. ~Kvng (talk) 17:00, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
Very well said. A prod is not controversial until it becomes controversial :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:28, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
As long as we allow PRODs to be removed for literally no reason we cannot also infer a "controversy" that the PRODder should have been able to predict beforehand. Caprice is by definition unpredictable. There's a symmetry here: if it's no big deal to decline a prod, it is also no big deal to get a prod declined. Reyk YO! 07:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
  • About 10 years ago I made a point of looking at every prod (within my sphere, which amounts to everything except athletes, popular performers, and video games. For a while I seemed to be the only person regularly doing this. After a while i stoped doing this mainly involving myself in AfC. Lately I have been looking again--I find it fast enough without categories just hovering over each item. I do not find as many errors as 10 years ago--I suspect the reason I find fewer errors now is that it's apparent from this discussion that others are watching also. I have had some disagreements, mainly between Pietrus and myself. Typically my reason for deprodding is "needs to be looked at by the community"--sometimes I send it to AfD, but usually I leave it up to the prodder to follow up if they wish to. I do not find prods is the main place where we lose potential articles--the main place is clearly expired drafts. DGG ( talk ) 16:51, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
My WP:PRODPATROLLING is also irregular and I also find a lot of variation in prod quality. I think this is due to thin WP:PRODPATROL staffing and intermittent prod campaigns by editors of varying competence. I believe WP:PRODPATROL is critical to keeping prodders honest but I don't have any ideas about how to make that project more robust. Keeping projects robust is an ongoing struggle on Wikipedia. ~Kvng (talk) 17:30, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Extended extended discussion

  • "hardcore inclusionists who deprod everything in sight"?
    Is this real? If articles that should be deleted are de-prodded, then they should go to AfD. The de-PRODder should be expected to defend the article at AfD. AfD stats should reveal whether there is a long running large scale systematic problem, and such a problem should be able to be corrected when brought into the light, or the disruptive editor topic-banned from de-PRODding.
    Alternatively, are many de-PRODded articles not subsequently deleted? If so, the PROD process is broken, or the bad PRODder needs education or a topic ban from PRODding. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    • It obviously isn't a real thing, because plenty of articles get PRODded and not de-PRODed, resulting in their deletion after the PROD period has run. BD2412 T 03:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
      • Good. I like to think it isn't real. I am aware of some hyper-inclusionists. I think they are limited by weak hyperinclusion arguments being a lot more work for them than for others in rebutting. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:39, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @SmokeyJoe: See #Sample study far above, which started this discussion. A snapshot was taken of all articles in PROD on 26 June 2020. Out of 146 total,
This is not a particularly scientific study, but indicates the process is not working perfectly. PROD is meant be only for non-controversial deletions, but about a quarter proved controversial. Some were deleted that should not have been. Some of the PRODs go through to deletion only because nobody bothers to check them, so we are losing a steady trickle of articles on obscure but notable subjects. Not a big deal, but this discussion is about ways to plug that leak, and perhaps reduce time arguing into the bargain. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:17, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Mmm. I likewise have little use for the hardcore inclusionists who wield deprodding like cutlasses, especially when it's clear that they didn't do a lick of examination of the article and/or sourcing before their kneejerk action. (Damn it, if those seeking deletion need to follow WP:BEFORE, I bloody well expect those who oppose deletion to do the same, and I admit to being staggered by the deprodders who go on to advocate deletion on the articles they prodded.) That being said, they're not breaking the rules even for the most frivolous of deprods, since WP:PROD allows them to do so at will and with no rationale. Ravenswing 23:11, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    • Exactly. One clarification I would add to my comment that is quoted above is that the mass deproders are not a regular occurrence. Perhaps even the most 'serious' ones learned that if they they DEPROD everything, they will get taken to ANI, and although the past incidents have as far as I know ended with just slaps on the wrists, they got the message that this is not good. As such, these days while I do see an occasional clearly bad DEPROD, where BEFORE clearly wasn't followed, and yes, from the usual parties who should have k known better, they are not 'mass', as in - they don't go over dozens of deprods, mine or others, or Twinkle logs, etc. So... while still annoying for the reasons stated (no evidence of BEFORE, not engaging in discussions) they are not very common, which is why the also-mentioned one-day sample (study...) is not picking up the problem. Bad dePROD (defined as DePRODs where there is no rationale and BEFORE) happen to me know maybe twice a month, with several dePRODs at most (compared to few instances in the past I've seen some users dePROD dozens of articles in single day). Still annoying, still IMHO a problem to be solved, but at least not as POINTless as they could be... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:52, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Let's stay balanced. The small "study" showed bad prods and bad de-prods.
    • A prod means the proposer thinks there will be no controversy about deleting the article. They were wrong in 35 cases out of 146. In at least 6 cases there was no controversy but the article should not have been deleted, a more serious concern to me. Any random editor, including an IP, can prod an obscure article on a notable subject, and if nobody spots it, the article gets deleted.
    • A de-prod means a reviewer thinks deletion needs discussion. 9 out of 35 of the de-prods in the sample were in fact deleted, with two still being discussed. That seems like a reasonable ratio. But if a de-prod went to AfD and the de-prodder did not defend it, there probably is a problem.
My sense is that Piotrus is more careful than others in checking that a prod is justified, and more energetic in following up at AfD if it is challenged. Some of the prods are drive-by "I don't like it", with no follow-up if the prod is challenged. Some of the de-prods are "looks ok to me", again with no follow-up. We could perhaps generate statistics on follow-up rates and success rates of habitual prodders and deprodders. Not sure what we would do with that. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:04, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your assessment (and I'll be the first to note that I make mistakes too - to err is human, etc.). Anyway, more statistics could help develop better practices, through I still fail to understand the opposition to requiring a rationale for a deprod. Heck, we could make it as simple as just having people choose from a list of default deprods rationale like 'article is notable as it passes criteria x of NSOMETHING policy', 'article is notable because I found source [x]' or 'article is notable because good sources exist on foo-language Wikipedia' etc. Sigh. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:41, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Reasons to delete include copyvios, nonsense, hoax, threats, blatant advertising and lack of notability. Most of these go through Speedy, but lack of notability goes through Prod or AfD. There is only one reason to keep: "notable, and no valid reason to delete". We should be able to take that as a default de-prod rationale. It would be good if the de-prodder identified sources, and better if they improved the article, but we cannot enforce that. There may be cases where the topic seems notable but is hard to research, perhaps because most sources would be in a non-Latin script. The de-prodder thinks deletion deserves an AfD. That is the other valid de-prod reason. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:00, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Actually, PROD is explicitly the correct mechanism for dealing with hoaxes. Speedy can be used for obvious-at-a-glance hoaxes, PROD for anything else. This makes sense, really. It might take a little bit of work to confirm something is a hoax but, once I've done that work, I expect deletion to be uncontroversial. Reyk YO! 13:52, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC on improving PROD instructions in "Before nomination" section

Proposed improvements to Wikipedia:Proposed deletion#Nominating: Before nomination

  1. The instructions should point out that if the article is about a notable subject it is not eligible for PROD, however poor the article quality.
  2. They should recommend checking for sources on the internet (WP:Before)
  3. They should recommend checking other language versions, which may show notability.
  4. They should caution about searching for topics where the primary language does not use Latin script.

Proposed by Aymatth2 (talk) 16:19, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY This is basic. Editors may not read the instructions, but we have to try. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
Not sure WP:BEFORE already contains many steps and detailed instructions. These are routinely ignored by the editors who tag articles for deletion. Typically this happens because they use WP:TWINKLE which makes tagging the easiest thing to do, while the actions suggested by WP:BEFORE tend to require more care, attention and detailed execution. So, the issue is not the instructions; it's the mechanical way these things are done. Enforcement is another issue. If there's no enforcement, then the instructions are a dead letter, whatever they say. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:23, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
See my more detailed comments below, but there is currently no link to WP:BEFORE in the PROD policy. –Darkwind (talk) 02:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Green tickY As it makes things clear for new or newish editors who are unaware of WP:BEFORE, Atlantic306 (talk) 00:33, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
There's nothing in the proposal that will help raise awareness of WP:BEFORE. ~Kvng (talk) 19:54, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Green tickY These are good improvement suggestions. What we really need is for more PRODDERS to familiarize themselves with these guidelines. Making the guidelines longer probably won't help. What apparently does help is to DEPROD where there is no indication that WP:BEFORE has been observed and give the PRODDER the link when doing so. ~Kvng (talk) 19:54, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Question? Mu. The actual purpose of BEFORE, a vehicle for ripping in to AfD nominators, doesn't pertain to PROD. Reyk YO! 20:12, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
If the topic deserves coverage in Wikipedia, the article should not be deleted (whether via Speedy, PROD or AfD) unless there is some legal concern like copyright violation, threats, etc. An article may be badly written and unsourced, but it takes very little effort to strip out unsourced puff, tag plausible statements with {{fact}} and add sources as "==External links==". Maybe not as much fun as launching an AfD, but more constructive. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Comment: this RfC is about the "before nomination" section of the PROD policy, not WP:BEFORE. Despite Reyk's (IMO) sarcastic tone above, they are correct in that WP:BEFORE is not technically related to this policy. I would support adding a link to that page from the section under discussion. –Darkwind (talk) 02:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Green tickY Broadly agreeing with Kvng's comments above. Reviewing WP:PRODNOM I was surprised that it doesn't suggest lifting your eyes from the current article state to consider the potential availability of evidence of notability elsewhere. AllyD (talk) 07:00, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

ACTION TAKEN. From the above discussion, adding a pointer to WP:BEFORE seems uncontroversial. I have changed Wikipedia:Proposed deletion#Nominating (Before nominating) to say

  • "For articles, review the checks and alternatives at WP:BEFORE and consider alternatives to deletion like improving the page, merging or redirecting." (bolded text indicates the addition.)

I will open separate discussions at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion on enhancing WP:BEFORE to include checking other language versions, which may show notability, and to caution about searching for topics where the primary language does not use Latin script. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Support change - There is a clear consensus for it and this will ultimately do more good in the long run. Really, there's no practical reason to oppose it and even if there was, there is no sense in keeping this going by giving in to obvious filibustering. Nearly everyone here has supported it except for a few. Articles have been deleted and redirected on more controversial standing than this, and there is no policy dictating that someone who proposes something cannot enact the change. Only that consensus needs to be gained beforehand. Darkknight2149 22:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't mind a link but reckon that there's some confusion about the nature of WP:BEFORE. WP:BEFORE is not a freestanding policy; it's part of the the process for AfD. Each of the deletion processes says something similar. WP:BEFORE just seems to get attention because it is lengthier and has a shortcut. Consider:
  1. Speedy deletion: "Before nominating a page for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere, reverted to a better previous revision, or handled in some other way (see Wikipedia:Deletion policy § Alternatives to deletion)."
  2. Proposed deletion: "Before nomination – Is there a valid reason for deletion? For articles, consider alternatives to deletion like improving the page, merging or redirecting. ..."
  3. Articles for deletion: "Before nominating: checks and alternatives "WP:BEFORE" redirects here. ..."
It would be sensible to have a common guideline to cut out the duplication but these rules and regulations are not drafted in a coherent and clever way. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:35, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Not to mention that, on top of it being part of the AFD process, WP:BEFORE essentially just says to make sure the article you want deleted actually isn't notable before nominating it. Not only should this be common sense, but every policy and guideline is consistent with the same principle:
  1. According to the guideline WP:NEXIST: "The absence of sources or citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that a subject is not notable. Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate presence or citation in an article. Editors evaluating notability should consider not only any sources currently named in an article, but also the possibility or existence of notability-indicating sources that are not currently named in the article. Thus, before proposing or nominating an article for deletion, or offering an opinion based on notability in a deletion discussion, editors are strongly encouraged to attempt to find sources for the subject in question and consider the possibility of existent sources if none can be found by a search."
  2. According to the policy WP:ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page. Vandalism to a page's content can be reverted by any user. Disputes over page content are usually not dealt with by deleting the page, except in severe cases. The content issues should be discussed at the relevant talk page, and other methods of dispute resolution should be used first, such as listing on Wikipedia:Requests for comments for further input. Deletion discussions that are really unresolved content disputes may be closed by an uninvolved editor, and referred to the talk page or other appropriate forum. If an article on a notable topic severely fails the verifiability or neutral point of view policies, it may be reduced to a stub, or completely deleted by consensus at WP:AfD. The Arbitration Committee has topic-banned editors who have serially created biased articles. Disagreement over a policy or guideline is not dealt with by deleting it. Similarly, issues with an inappropriate user page can often be resolved through discussion with the user."
  3. According to the policy WP:PRESERVE, "Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them if you can't. Preserve appropriate content. As long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Likewise, as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability and No original research. Instead of removing article content that is poorly presented, consider cleaning up the writing, formatting or sourcing on the spot, or tagging it as necessary. If you think an article needs to be rewritten or changed substantially, go ahead and do so, but it is best to leave a comment about why you made the changes on the article's talk page. The editing process tends to guide articles through ever-higher levels of quality over time. Great Wikipedia articles can come from a succession of editors' efforts."
Without pointing to anyone specifically, the reason radical deletionists have an issue with WP:BEFORE is because it means they actually need valid reason to nominate something before mass-proding. Darkknight2149 23:20, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Support with the caveat that ' for articles nominated for lack of notability' as articles can be nominated for promotionalism, copyvio, duplicating other articles and other reasons not connected to notability, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 22:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

  • @Atlantic306: The caveat may be over-complicated.
    • There are various reasons for deletion. SPEEDY is used for the most urgent cases and AfD may be used for all others. PROD and BLPPROD are alternatives to AfD for uncontroversial cases.
    • BEFORE gives a good overview of the checks and alternatives, which are relevant whether the AfD or PROD/BLPPROD process is selected, whatever the reason for deletion.
Sdkb has pointed out we should not replicate content in WP:BEFORE. I would rather keep the PROD instructions simple, with the pointer to BEFORE. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:06, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Rhododendrites and Reyk said almost everything I'd say. As far as caveats go, err, no. I've seen a few too many deletion discussions hinge on editors screeching "Aha! That one element of the nomination is flawed!!!! It's all no good!!!" while ignoring NOR, SYNTH, CORPDEPTH, etc ... Ravenswing 23:03, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
"while ignoring NOR, SYNTH, CORPDEPTH, etc" @Ravenswing: Per WP:ATD and the policies above, none of those are valid reasons to delete an article (unless the article is almost nothing but that, or its existence hinges on that). Those are reasons to improve on an article. Just because something is poorly sourced or contains original research does not make it worthy of deletion, hence the existence of WP:BEFORE in the first place. Failing to establish notability is not a valid reason for deletion, but a lack of notability definitely is. When it comes to not checking for sources before nominating, it often seems to be overzealous deletonists jumping to conclusions about the article not being notable and then making uncivil assumptions about whoever opposes it. Darkknight2149 08:32, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Mmm. Perhaps you should reread ATD, which includes "If an article on a notable topic severely fails the verifiability or neutral point of view policies, it may be reduced to a stub, or completely deleted by consensus at WP:AfD." (emphasis mine) Or WP:NOR, which holds, "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research." and "If no reliable independent sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it." Ravenswing 09:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
(ec) I think you're missing the point, which is that people often try to shut down well-argued nominations on procedural, rather than substantive, grounds. Some of us would like to evaluate and discuss article topics on their merits; some inclusionists want to prevent that at all costs and use wikilawyering to put up fortifications of red tape. Reyk YO! 09:39, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Shutting down AFD's on procedural grounds is something I rarely actually see work, even if people try to do it. Typically where it does work the person doing it is really flying off the handle (i.e., mass-nominating articles). FOARP (talk) 12:04, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
Ravenswing - Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that these procedures should only be used as a generalised rubric to determine if an article should be deleted, and not as blockades to keep trivial or not keepable articles from being deleted. The main point I was making is that a lack of sourcing and original research are things that can contribute to whether or not an article should be deleted, but are not reasons for deletion in their own right (for example, "The absence of sources or citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that a subject is not notable."). There is a difference between an article that contains original research and an article whose very existence hinges on original research. The latter of which obviously having no place on Wikipedia. Darkknight2149 10:51, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this, since I don't believe there's any bright-line policy declaring that verifiability/notability are the only grounds upon which an article can be deleted, and that there is bright-line policy to the contrary. Ravenswing 18:01, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Ravenswing is correct here. Reyk YO! 08:54, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
"since I don't believe there's any bright-line policy declaring that verifiability/notability are the only grounds upon which an article can be deleted" - Except nobody actually said that. I said that the inclusion of original research or a lack of sources alone are not grounds for deletion, which is what every policy and guideline explicitly says. Darkknight2149 09:01, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Folks, by the time you get to the point where you're arguing about whether something is original research or whatever, we're already way past what can be PROD'd because you're clearly talking about a controversial deletion unless it falls under a different heading. FOARP (talk) 12:04, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose change as proposed, and oppose the addition of the link to WP:BEFORE in WP:Proposed deletion as executed (since reverted). BEFORE is part of the instructions for the AfD process, and it tells you to consider whether a PROD is a better solution before nominating it - linking to it from the PROD instructions seems circular. The PROD instructions already tell you to check that there is a valid reason for deletion with a link, to consider alternatives to deletion, and to check the article's history to see whether their is an older, better version that could be reverted to. I would not be averse to reorganising the instructions somewhat - it is potentially problematic that the technical instructions on how to add the template come before the more detailed guidance on how to do a proper job of it. GirthSummit (blether) 12:26, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I would add another: they should check the article history to see if someone vandalized it and it can be restored to a former non-prod-able state. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:05, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment - I came here because I regularly work on AFD articles and have been seeing way too many articles nominated there in terms of "I PROD'd this article and it was declined so I came here to delete it" when even a very quick WP:BEFORE shows that it should never have been PROD'd, let alone AFD'd. Here's an obvious example - a clear WP:GEOLAND pass that the nom had tried to get rid of through PROD. Another case of a clearly controversial deletion being proposed for PROD by a highly experienced editor can be seen here. My concern is that the people nominating these article are often surprised to fail at AFD because they had succeeded in deleting so many articles via PROD, which tells me that they have probably been deleting lots of articles via PROD that shouldn't have been deleted.
I get that WP:NPP is like a fire-hose of vandalism, advertising and so-forth and it is not surprising that people who do it might get a bit trigger-happy about deleting stuff, but WP:BEFORE really should be done if the issue is notability. I'm glad the NPP community are moving to add it to the guidelines (EDIT that's SUPPORT in case you're wondering). I hope in future PROD really is saved for articles that can be uncontroversially deleted and not those that can be saved simply by the editor in question doing some actual editing.
I think this also comes down to a basic issue of civility and WP:BITE - the stuff that is PROD'd is often articles by newbie editors who don't know the rules. Excessive use of PROD means that their first interaction with someone else on Wiki is to have their article that they spent their time trying to contribute deleted for reasons that mean nothing to them. FOARP (talk) 11:56, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Village pump discussion on PROD and AfD

See a new discussion commencing at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Proposed_Deletion_of_Previously_Deleted_Articles. AllyD (talk) 06:57, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Copy edit; various

Here's a space to discuss the changes I just made. I hereby declare any functional changes brought on by my copy editing to be unintentional, and you should feel free to revert or at least discuss any perceived changes. I also looked at the various editor notes (HTML comments) and would like those given the once over. Thx CapnZapp (talk) 09:41, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

You had a sentence fragment there. I touched it up. ~Kvng (talk) 12:54, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

DEPROD

I think there are 2 issues with the "undeletion" part, namely it says about moving to draftspace a page that has been undeleted but per WP:ATD-I the consensus seems to be that in general old articles aren't moved to draftspace (since I don't think an expired PROD would change that unless maybe it was deleted a long time ago). Personally I don't really have a problem with articles being moved to the draftspace as long as they aren't blindly deleted under G13 but the consensus seemed to generally be against that anyway. The other about the username policy and paid disclosure, while an inappropriate username would likely be blocked I don't see how that would allow someone to decline a RFUND though admins can obviously use their common sense, similarly although paid disclosure is required, that again probably shouldn't automatically result in a decline. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:47, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

PROD process / redirects?

I think the PROD process is pretty much broken in its current form. I PRODed an article for an episode of TV and an IP untagged it, so I went to AfD only to be told I should have just redirected the article to begin with. When anyone gets to be the sole arbiter of whether an article is controversial and is under no obligation to explain themselves, they have no reason to hesitate to de-tag. Now, if redirecting isn't considered a form of deletion, maybe that's something else, but to me intuitively redirection is a form of deletion. DonIago (talk) 15:09, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Redirection differs from deletion in a critical respect: The original content is still in the history and anyone who disagrees with the redirector can restore it. Then the matter can be discussed if there's still disagreement despite the respective editors' edit summaries. Largoplazo (talk) 15:27, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
So, you would say that redirecting summarily (assuming one judges it likely to be uncontroversial) is entirely acceptable? I just want to make sure I'm reading you right, as I typically would shy away from something like that. DonIago (talk) 15:39, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I, for one, would find that much preferable to deleting an article summarily. Redirection is simply an editing process that can be handled by WP:BRD, as the previous content is still visible in the history to anyone who thinks it should be reverted. Deletion procedures are for deletion of content so that only admins can see it, and WP:PROD and its reversion are simply applications of BRD to them. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:55, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
By "summarily" do you mean without explaining why? I always explain my reason when I replace an article with a redirect. If I can identify a clear and useful redirect target, and if the redirect would meet the criteria under WP:Redirects, then redirecting is always preferable to deletion unless the existing content shouldn't even be kept in the publicly visible history (such as copyright violations, defamation, divulgence of personally identifiable information). If I expect that the chances of pushback are low once I've explained myself, then, yes, I'll do it without discussion. (Unless there's useful information in the article at hand that ought to be added to the information in the destination article and that I'm not competent to add myself: in that case, I set up a merge discussion.) If someone reverts me, then WP:BRD: time to discuss. Largoplazo (talk) 16:29, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Comment: Whether PROD is broken or not is a worthy topic, but a distraction in a section named "DEPROD and explaining why". I have boldly spun you off to a section of your own, so the discussion about my proposal can continue on-track. Feel free to edit the section title (or even revert me if I misunderstand the lack of connection between the two topics). Thank you and please continue. CapnZapp (talk) 17:09, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments everyone. I guess to me being able to redirect without being required to go through any consensus-building process is akin to allowing someone to unilaterally delete an article in that to a casual reader the article will appear to no longer be there, and it seems a bit abusable were one inclined to do so (I think I may have witnessed that), but if that's currently a valid process, then I'm not going to be the one to rock the boat on it. DonIago (talk) 01:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Replacing content with a redirect might feel like an operation similar to a delete, but really isn't. It's just a regular edit. You can simply undo it, just like when an IP wp:blanks a page for instance. Community consensus is still a part of the process, you just don't need more special protection than for any other normal edit. CapnZapp (talk) 06:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

How about this one? PRODed, preemptively redirected with an edit summary asking why I didn't just redirect it to begin with, then restored with no useful edit summary or improvement of the article. Is the next step an AfD? DonIago (talk) 19:59, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

How about going to the person who reverted the redirect and ask them why? ~ GB fan 23:13, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
This is a person who takes great pride and delight in not feeling answerable to the community. Reyk YO! 10:07, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
I see a number of editors involved, and nobody is talking to each other. This is likely the problem here.
As for your original question: yes, anyone can remove your PROD for any reason. If that happens, simply accept it and move to the next stage (whatever that is).
As for you recent question: you PRODded an article, it was removed (by the redirect), somebody contested that redirect - it appears everything is working as intended. Proceed using normal channels (I see you reapplied the redirect). CapnZapp (talk) 23:44, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
The problem is that people who are removing the PRODs don't ever seem to allow for discussion on their talk pages about it and then any attempt to discuss it in places like this are met with the same kind of resistance to discussion and obfuscation of facts, what the problem is, and what the solution would be that you and other people on the side of indiscriminate PROD removal have displayed repeatedly. Not to mention the whole tendency to lecture people instead of have an actual discussion. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:49, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

DEPROD and explaining why

There's a clear disconnect here.

The lead says this

Any editor (including the article's creator or the file's uploader) may object to the deletion by simply removing the tag

I'm making the core assumption this is our guiding star.

Now then, under Objecting, it says You are strongly encouraged, but not required to explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion. This language is repeated later on: It is strongly encouraged that when either endorsing or removing a prod to give an explanation. What does "strongly encourage" mean? I'm not trying to be thick - are you or are you not free to just remove the PROD without comment? It would appear the answer is yes. If anyone, including the creator, removes a proposed deletion tag from a page, do not replace it, even if the tag was apparently removed in bad faith. is very clear that even if you remove the PROD simply just because, that counts as a valid DEPROD.

The last time this was discussed (at least as far as I could see) was here: WT:Proposed deletion/Archive 17#Require de-PROD rationale. Making an explanation mandatory was proposed, and the consensus was clear: There is clearly no support for this suggestion. If discussion is needed, AfD is the place for it.

Assuming this is an acceptable summary of consensus, the language has been tweaked too far. Let me first make it clear that I agree with "Any editor may object to the deletion by simply removing the tag" and have no intention of changing our policy. However, I come across editors who strongly believe DEPROD-ing without a cause is vandalism or at least that by not following "strongly encouraged" recommendations, editors don't follow best practices. I can actually see their point. I agree the language can easily be interpreted as you doing something wrong when you DEPROD without comment. This means we have editors treating "silent DEPROD-ers" as obstructive. This needs to stop. As long as we agree you can remove a PROD for no reason, it needs to be clear no reason needs to be given.

We could spell it out - if you find that anyone removed the PROD, don't hound that user. Simply accept that the proposed deletion wasn't as uncontroversial as you thought and go to AfD. But the best way to combat this, I think, would be to slightly tone down the language of You are strongly encouraged. If we were to remove "strongly", it would help making it clear that while you can politely ask for an explanation, you can't demand one, or accuse the "silent DEPROD-er" of not following best practices.

Suggestion: replace "You are strongly encouraged" with "You are encouraged" in appropriate places.

Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:49, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  • If you look at the history of the PROD process, the entire point of it was to set up a streamlined process for uncontroversial cases without argument, rebuttals and the like. If people are nominating topics that require discussion then they are not doing it right and they should be using AfD instead. The onus for starting such a discussion should be on the person who wants action to be taken as they are the initiator of the issue. This would be consistent with our other processes such as RfC; BRD and other cases where there's a dispute to be settled. And we have a ready-made process for deletion discussions – AfD. Having some lesser, one-to-one discussion would usually be a waste of time because the typical prodder is unlikely to accept counter-arguments so easily; they wouldn't be prodding the topic if they had any doubts about it. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:23, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I see both sides: I do agree with Andrew Davidson that PROD should be uncontroversial and not require discussion. That said, when reviewing the PROD log, I sometimes find borderline cases and then comment on the article Talk page to seek consensus on whether the PROD should stand, so, as in all human affairs requiring judgment, discussion is sometimes useful. I can also appreciate the irritation some feel when they place a PROD notice and it is simply removed without comment. Making that kind of removal is not displaying "civility, collegiality". Not only is it desirable to provide some kind of explanation, it can also reduce downstream noise and clutter if the explanation suffices to make the nominator decide not to take things further by opening an AfD. As to CapnZapp's proposed wording change, I think "You are strongly encouraged" is clearer and more direct. AllyD (talk) 12:04, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Heh. Since the resident serial deprodders are also usually the ones to throw around personal attacks at AfD maybe we should be happy when they only silently deprod. I mean, what do you expect them to say beyond what we already know? Would you be happier hearing, "I deprodded because I don't like the PROD process"? Or "I deprodded for shits and giggles"? Or maybe "I deprodded because I know it annoys you"? Those are typically the reasons. Reyk YO! 12:38, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I agree with User:Andrew Davidson and am not arguing against this in any way. But it's kind of off-topic, if you see what I mean? Unless what you mean to suggest is making this much more clear in the DEPROD section? CapnZapp (talk) 13:44, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
User:AllyD: just to be clear, I don't consider myself to be on a different side from Andrew Davidson. I just want our text to not prompt good-faith attempts from editors to coerce explanations out of deprodders. Please note I'm not arguing there's something unclear or indirect with our current messaging. I'm arguing this clear and direct message can - and is - being "overinterpreted"! If you have an alternative way to fix this issue, without reducing the clearness and directness of the message, I'm all ears. CapnZapp (talk) 13:45, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
User:Reyk If you disagree with current consensus (that you can deprod for any or no reason), please start a different discussion. Right now, I'm interested in your opinion on the specific problem discussed and its possible solutions. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 13:46, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't know how you read that into anything I said. All I'm saying is that mandating that people explain why they took a PROD off would be futile because you wouldn't expect a sensible answer anyway. Reyk YO! 14:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
CapnZapp, my reading of the discussion above is that everyone commenting supports, or at least doesn't oppose, your proposal. Please don't read opposition into comments where it doesn't exist. Anyone who can get both Andrew Davidson and Reyk agreeing with them (although for different reasons) on a deletion matter must be doing something right! Phil Bridger (talk) 14:58, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
Ah, apologies for not catching your sarcasm, User:Reyk. CapnZapp (talk) 17:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support CapnZapp's proposal is that the word "strongly" be removed. I'm not sure that this will make much difference but it wouldn't hurt to try. As background, it may help to see when and how that word was added. It seems to have been this edit, which was made in 2017 following a proposal that files should be prodable, as well as articles. The word "strongly" seems to have been slipped in alongside that update without any specific discussion or consensus. We should start by reverting it. Apart from anything else, unnecessary intensfiers are thought to be poor style – hyperbolic and inflationary. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support removal of strongly to avoid unnecessary splitting of hairs on this. ~Kvng (talk) 13:38, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Done. CapnZapp (talk) 09:15, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Just as a final observation, the edit notice for this page {{Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Proposed deletion}} does use the phrase "strongly encouraged", and I think it provides educational contrast. I'm not inherently opposed to the language. It is not always an unnecessary intensifier or splitter of hairs I mean. But as the edit notice shows, using "strongly encourage" should be restricted to the times when we really mean to say "don't do that" but also "...unless you really really know what you are doing and can justify it if asked". This case just isn't like that. But how can editors know that when we use identical language? That's why I think this change (now implemented) is more significant than it might seem at first blush. Thank you and good night CapnZapp (talk) 09:51, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

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