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

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

You could easily subtract the Atricles for deletion/ header and get Foo.  freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ  07:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• AfD noms show up in watchlists just like everything else, so I don't see the need for this. However, if you want to determine who the handful of main contributors are to the article, and let them know, that's probably acceptable. Which article? android 79 19:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Part of my concern is that things can slip through watchlists. If someone makes a VfD edit and then another edit to the article occurs the same day, the VfD edit doesn't necessarily make the watchlist. Also, if someone worked on an article two years ago, they may have removed it from their watchlist later. I'm withholding the article name for now, because I want to get unbiased responses to my question - but I will let you know once I get an idea of the feelings out there about my question. thanks for your quick response. Kingturtle 19:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
• If the alert is presented neutrally, it's probably okay. The real question is whether the recipients will appreciate the alert or not. If I've taken the article off my watchlist or if I'm not watching it closely enough to run a diff on the edit history, then I really wouldn't consider myself sufficiently current on the article to justify an opinion. I'd probably ignore it.
  However, if we do formally decide that this is an acceptable practice, I feel quite strongly that it should never be required.
  I also feel strongly that such an alert should never be posted to an anon user's page. Too many anons come in from dynamic IPs but don't understand what that means. They will either be confused about alerts to articles they've never edited or will complain that they weren't notified not realizing that the notice is sitting on the IP userpage from their prior connection. If we try to make this a policy or even a guideline, it will set an unrealistic expectation for them. Rossami (talk) 01:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Very interesting points you've made. I too feel it inappropriate to alert IP addresses. I would only alert those registered users whom made non-minor edits to said article. I wouldn't want such notifications to be required - except for one....I think it should be common courtesy to notify via TALK the creator of said article (unless the creator was from an IP address). Kingturtle 01:40, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
• well, in my careful time to ask the questions here, the time in the VfD ended, and the article was deleted. In leui of that, I have made a post in Wikipedia:Deletion review. Kingturtle 21:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do votes like Merge and delete get counted by User:Dragons flight/AFD summary, as one of each? Also, if it is not voting (I find the avoidance of that word peculiar), what is the act of saving an edit with "merge" or "delete" called? "recommending" I guess. Still, seemingly all the closing admins do is count the "recommendations" the way one would count votes, so one might as well call it voting. Esquizombi 23:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agree, and I was just thinking this. Ideally the closing admin should only have to consider two or more competing meritorious rationales for Keep or Delete, not 99 'me toos'. This statement should be made more clear/prominent. KWH 04:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

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

This is a fundamental wikiproblem that I'd like to see discussed seriously by some people who know what they're doing. I've been involved in cases where both consensus and supermajority (separate cases) were obtained with less-than-pleasing results, and it's gonna take some hard thinking to think of a better solution than either of those.  freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ  08:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Third AFD subpage now created at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terminator 4 (3rd nomination) :) — sjorford (talk) 22:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I propose the following policy change:

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

Questions, comments, and suggestions are appreciated.

Regards, Carl Hewitt 01:33 22 January 2006

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

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

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

Requiring seconding for repeated AFD

I propose the following (amended) policy change:

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

Questions, comments, and suggestions are appreciated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have a clarification. My point above is that the current model leaves all substantive decisions in the hands of the users, super-users such as admins, arbcomm, even Jimbo are theoretically no more equal than regular users in the decision process regarding content. Superusers only become involved when due process consensus cannot be reached. Any process change that still leaves the content decision in the hands of the users will not address this issue of "crap nominations". This is because new policies such as WP:Criteria for speedy keep are still subject to interpretation, especially since the criteria will have to be primarily negative. This may adress a truly and egregiously bad faith AFD/CFD attempt, but those rarely occur anyway. Most are in good faith based on reasoning, perhaps incorrect, but still not without basis. In essence you will be adding one extra layer to the AFD/CFD process which would not have aborted the CFD for Category:Living people since it was done in good faith. That is unless you make such a WP:Criteria for speedy keep into essentially a criteria for undeletable articles. You could mandate at least x many days of discussion on the talk page of article or category prior to AFD/CFD, but again that adds another layer to the process.-- John^DO| ^{Speak your mind} 13:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

I mentioned 4 possible solutions above and their probable ramifications. The issue is analysis of those ramifications and making the appropriate choice. And a meta-issue if you will, or subtext of this entire discussion is the question of who decides something is (a) intelligence-insultingly crap (b) a problem. The choices are "the community consensus" or "a subgroup with more merit". I am inferring from several comments both here and the mailing list that the prevailing opinion is that there is a group that feels they have more merit with which to decide these issues. One corollary is that all of us, every single contributor feels that we belong in that subgroup. Most projects are hierarchical and the only way order prevails is with hierarchy. In that case, explicitly say within the AFD process that All decisions are subject to veto by arbcomm members or some other subgroup. Problem solved. Also, we need to ask Jimbo to clarify the problem. Was the problem that the article might get deleted? Solution, limit deletion rights. Was the problem that they were voting? Explicitly say no voting. Was the problem that the process was on the A/CFD page? make a mandatory discussion period on the talk page of X many days. Was the problem that a contribution by a "longtime contributor" was being disrespected? Make contributions by "longtime contributors" exempt from the deletion process. Was the problem that a new contribution was being nominated for deletion? Make all new contributions exempt from the deletion process for X many days. But I hope that everyone is aware that any change in this process will essentially be a shift within the inclusionist/deletionist axis or else a move away from the egalitarian concepts of wikipedia. -- John^DO| ^{Speak your mind} 13:35, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

"that there is a group that feels they have more merit with which to decide these issues." Not so much "merit" as urgent need. It's not a subtext, it's quite explicit: Jimbo and the Foundation saying "we're going to have to do something about this as soon as possible," and me noting it here because either it gets solved internally really fast or it gets "solved" from without. The latter presumably not being desirable. You don't have to like this, but it is the case. - David Gerard 13:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, what do you think of the proposed solutions?-- John^DO| ^{Speak your mind} 14:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

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

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

If the CfD was hamfisted then Jimbo's response to it was every bit as hamfisted. There were some silly comments in that CfD but there was productive sensible discussion there too and preserving an archive of it seemed to be completely reasonable. Blanking the discussion four times and shouting at people (well, me :) for a "show of bad faith" was not necessary. No-one was disputing that Jimbo could close the CfD by fiat - it was the blanking of reasonable on-topic comments which rubbed some of us the wrong way.

And saying "This category is not optional." + "This AfD is closed." doesn't make you feel like better solutions are welcome. For the record I was for the category solution and expressed that in the CfD discussion.

But that I got promoted to admin in the same week that I was having a row with the boss seems to speak well for the project ;) - Haukur 14:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I was personally disturbed that Jimbo had that little faith in the process. There was absolutely no way Category:Living people was going to be deleted. The CFD process takes at least 5 days. There were plenty of people who said keep. If he had weighed in and just said "Keep" that would have snowballed and created more keep votes. Even without his input, it was highly unlikely a consensus of delete would have occurred. And if it had, he could have vetoed at that point. I think we can assume that the problem is not the actual deletion of articles/categories. The problem is the listing of said things for deletion. -- John^DO| ^{Speak your mind} 14:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

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

Do you really want the ArbCom to start reprimanding people for following the rules? Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. We're here to write an encyclopedia, not play silly bloody games. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 08:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Having rules and then reprimanding people for following them seems like a pretty silly game to me. If the rules are getting in the way of building the encyclopedia then change the rules. - Haukur 09:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

We're not talking about "following the rules", we're talking about "following rules" so blindly that WP:SNOW is an abomination because it dares suggest that it might be possible to short-circuit a lovingly-constructed and excessively-tortuous system. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 13:35, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Any process that relies on consensus will be extremely tortuous and torturous. The only way to "shortcut" process is to have authority above and beyond the process. After all, imagine yourself shortcutting the process. Now imagine the RFC and the mediation and Arbcomm. Now that wouldn't happen if you were "undeletion czar" or somesuch.-- John^DO| ^{Speak your mind} 13:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

With reference to WP:SNOW, I am worrying about another snowball effect here if we start allowing people to break rules by speedying things which don't meet the speedy deletion criteria. Except for a very limited range of cases (such as blatant attack pages), there is no urgency in getting rid of poor articles. The WP:CSD are deliberately narrow to avoid speedying articles which actually shouldn't be deleted. We give the AFDs at least five days to make sure that anyone who is reasonably active will get a chance to view the article (and sometimes a single discovery of something which establishes notability can turn a unanimous "delete" with 10 votes to a "no consensus" so we should not just say "it has no chance in hell".)

One scenario I don't want is admins who don't bother asking for permission at WP:AFD and instead speedy delete things and then hope for forgiveness on WP:DRV since a 50%+ is needed there to overturn a speedy. Some time ago I saw one administrator vote "keep deleted" on a speedy deleted userbox and openly said he thought it would be kept if sent to TFD.

Remember, speedy deletions are not open to review by non-admins because they don't have access to the content. I find it unfortunate that people who in good faith protest out of process speedies on bad articles can get told off for doing so. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:59, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Sjakkalle, you ask above if we "really want the ArbCom to start reprimanding people for following the rules" — I'd like to point out that Jimbo has often described Wikipedia as a game of Calvinball. The ArbComm's job is not to enforce the rules. The ArbComm's job is to protect the encyclopedia. That end necessarily and sufficiently justifies the means. In short, if someone is harming the encyclopedia by following the rules, then, yes, we will reprimand people for following the rules. ➥the Epopt 14:59, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Although I can't speak for the 2006 AC, I can tell you that the 2005 AC (and Jimbo in discussions) regarded *FD as a festering pit with no easy solution and no-one wanted to go within a mile of it if avoidable. So it's bounced up to the Foundation - David Gerard 18:57, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I would like to mention this experiment as an attempt to draw order to AFD and focus attention onto AFDs that have had either few votes or represent marginal cases. I would like to think that it helps to mitigate against the growing size of AFD, though perhaps it creates its own set of problems as well. Dragons flight 19:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Article creation

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

I'm extremely impressed by your examples of the "unreferenced" template saving articles. I also didn't even know Wikipedia:Articles for creation existed! Looks very useful but seems badly backlogged.

My personal attempt at deletion reform is Template:Needs-verification. My idea was to let dubious articles have a few days chance for improvement before nominating them for deletion. Probably tries too hard to be friendly, though. - Haukur 13:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Public relations

I did an interview yesterday and got a taste of the effects of AFD on Wikipedia's relations with the outside world. The guy's a podcaster of minor notability - http://bicyclemark.org/ . (Though he has listeners, so is doing better for notability than a lot of podcasters.)

The thorny bit was talking about WP:AFD and its ... little ways. He sprung on me in the interview that he had created an article on himself, it was deleted as "vanity", several of his readers recreated it, it was deleted all those times too, and apparently some of the deletion discussion comments were more than a little spiky. I think I talked my way past that one OK ("this user is a native speaker of Bullshit"), but it was a tricky moment. I explained that if he got referenceable notice from third parties, that may show that he was notable enough to probably rate an article; that next month he might become vastly popular and clearly rate an article; and emphasised that the edge cases are always the painful ones.

(He says the podcast should be up tonight or Saturday morning.)

This is a minor podcaster, not broadcast media. But the point remains that this sort of thing causes real problems. Many think we shouldn't care about media image, but those dealing with our sometimes shaky relations with the outside world are understandably sensitive to potential PR disasters of this sort. It would be almost no effort at all to go through AFD and find a hundred diffs "proving" that Wikipedians are rude bastards, for example.

So please: FOR FUCK SAKE, COOL IT IN YOUR COMMENTS AND TREATMENT OF OUTSIDERS. AND PEER-PRESSURE OTHERS TO DO SO. Thanks. - David Gerard 11:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that policy pages, guidelines, categories and templates not use "vanity" and similar words, when possible. Also, the AfD page should remind nominators and voters that those who created or worked on the page might be reading it and that their comments will affect how these people, usually newcomers, feel about Wikipedia. It does somewhat now, but it could be made more explicit. Another warning could be put on the nominating instructions, AfD2 specifically. -- Kjkolb 11:48, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The word "vanity" in particular needs to be abolished. Even if it's the correct word for most of it, in the cases where it turns out not to be, it's vastly insulting in the real world. (This is a real case - an author whose article was nominated as "vanity" contacting the Foundation considerably aggrieved. The author had been published by Fawcett and Playboy Press, but the nominator hadn't heard of either, or bothered doing a dot of research. That's the sort of thing I mean by a damagingly crap nomination that needs to be dealt with internally by AFD or it'll be dealt with externally and with a heavy hand by the Foundation.) - David Gerard 12:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The word "vanity" isn't going away; it's just too useful. It very accurately describes a large class of articles that appear on Wikipedia. I do agree that we should be more cautious about using it in marginal cases. Incidentally, what do you think the Foundation is going to do and on what basis? They can't, after all, get rid of AFD entirely, or else the disks would fill up with nonsense. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 13:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It can be done away with, and quite easily (we just write a bot that periodically looks at all the AfD pages and deletes the word). Not only is using the term "vanity" spiteful (when either it's an article not written by the subject or is an article written by a newbie or someone editing in good faith who isn't aware of the details of our policies), it's entirely unnecessary. Either an article should exist in the namespace or it shouldn't - who wrote it is irrelevant to that discussion. David's right that we should abolish the word on AfD as no good can come of using it, jguk 13:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

By saying it can't be done, I mean that there is no way you are going to get a consensus to abolish the word "vanity" on AFD discussions or to run this hypothetical bot. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 14:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I assume you read the bit at the top of this section where I note that if AFD can't fix itself, it'll get "fixed" from outside? - David Gerard 15:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

You grossly overestimate the effects of AFD on Wikipedia disk space (which isn't running short any time soon). We get 4000 new articles a day, 2000 of those are killed on sight, and 200 of the survivors are sent to AFD. Even if all of those were killed, that would be 1800 new articles a day versus 2000.

The Foundation runs the servers, of course. And you confuse the current AFD with deletion mechanisms in general. One serious proposal (that I made) is to just switch off AFD entirely for a couple of months to work out another deletion mechanism, as buckets of band vanity, bad jokes and original research may well be less damaging to Wikipedia than AFD's present operation - David Gerard 14:07, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks#Non-contributing personal attacks for suggested changes to policy. -- Rob 11:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

My 2c, worth not a cent more, is that we could try not voting. Nominator must give reasons concordant with the policy. Anyone who disagrees should give reason. Anyone with something to add should add it. "Delete, nn" is not "something to add". It's a vote. No one disagrees after a couple of days, bin it. Use judgement instead of rules. Loosen up a bit (a lot) about article re-creation. I'm interested in the pure wiki thing. Decentralising debate might help, because the temptation to sit in AfD deleting content would be somewhat lessened. And the articles we all agree on could be soft-speedied in that way, without much fuss.

I'm also with David Gerard on this one. I steer well clear of AfD, bar rare cases, because it's a pit. Queues of editors smash into articles. There isn't much wikilove going down. But you have to try to remember, the people who wrote those "vanity" articles are human beings. This is often their first sight of Wikipedia. I have sometimes looked over AfD debates and felt quite angry at the treatment meted out to people who have committed no worse crime than create content. I think that atmosphere has been very much fuelled by the tacit acceptance of just turning up, voting on articles with one word comments and being quite unconscionably rude about contributors. James James 12:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that if you get rid of these kind of votes, then it will put a serious dent in edit counts. You may say "who cares", and you'd have a point - but it is a very big deal on WP:RFA. I've seen people not get promoted specifically because of an edit count perceived as being "too low", or even for not having enough participation (read: edits) on xFD. Thus, there will be a lot of resistance to getting rid of " Me too" votes. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 13:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

WTF? What are you here for? Keep AfD bureaucratic and spiteful so editors who are not making any meaningful contributions of content to the encyclopaedia have a bigger edit count for when they try to become Administrators? This is the [SUSPECTED GROSS PERSONAL ATTACK EDITED OUT] suggestion I've seen in a long time, jguk 13:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

You're missing my point. Contributions to articles aren't considered enough for adminship any more by many contributors to WP:RFA. I'm saying that this change would punish a lot of new users. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 14:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Then use other means to lower the standards. I think it sucks that people are so pedantic about this crap (I was one of those rare guys who got to be an admin mainly through editing articles a lot) and that adminship should be no big deal, so I see no reason to feed these "OMG THIS USER MUST HAVE X EDITS TO THE WIKIPEDIA NAMESPACE" people. And I still think your argument is specious. RfA should adjust its expectations as Wikipedia evolves. Johnleemk | Talk 14:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I would say "too bad for them." I can state with just about absolute certainty that any such objection will be ignored, as anyone so edit-count obsessed as to lessen their Wikipedia involvement over reducing the spite and bureaucracy of AFD because they think they need more edits would probably be perceived as better gone - David Gerard 14:07, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

That's got to be one of the most hilarious excuses I've ever heard to oppose a particular policy change. Seriously, this needs to be archived at BJAODN or LAME. Johnleemk | Talk 14:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm just saying what a lot of people are thinking. Please note that most of my own contributions are not to AFD, and of those that are, very few are "Me too" votes; I generally try to cite a specific policy as a rationale. I'm saying that edit counts are very important on Wikipedia and that anyone perceived as messing with them is going to get a lot of opposition, whether it is phrased in those terms or not. Personally, I'd prefer to not deal with AFD at all, but if everyone took that attitude, what would happen to Wikipedia? Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 19:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The majority of nominations to AfD present a slam-dunk case for deletion. All that's required is for a couple of people to sanity-check them. Read the nomination, look at the article, maybe try one Google search and then write a terse comment like "Delete per nom." or "Delete, nn." People writing short recommendations like that are contributing usefully to the process as it is currently conceived. If those who agree with a deletion nomination but have nothing in particular to add don't comment then the nomination may get no comment at all - except perhaps from the creator of the article, eager to keep it and clueless of policy. Then if the article is deleted with only the recommendation of the nominator people will scream bloody murder :)

Long diatribes on why an article should be deleted are far more damaging than a simple "Delete per nom". We should never be rude but we must be allowed to be terse. - Haukur 13:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying but in effect all you're doing is endorsing voting. People writing short recommendations are adding nothing but a vote. They're not clarifying anything, or adding anything, just piling on. And Haukur, one person's "long diatribe" is another person's "bothered to talk about it". If editors had to write considered opinions rather than cursory votes, they might vote less, and consider more. I don't think we'd lose out by that. James James 13:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The fifth "Delete per nom." is overkill which doesn't add anything but the first two or three are valuable in confirming that the nominator did not make an obvious mistake. Sanity-checking five nominations may be as valuable as adding a detailed argument to one nomination. The process must be reasonably efficient, we've got to keep deleting articles. We don't have the manpower for multiple essays on each nomination. "Delete per nom." can be a considered opinion based on a careful study of a case. - Haukur 13:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

AfD is more about the debate and less about voting, but it's a hybrid system because it still includes elements of voting. Voting is especially useful in cases where there is nothing to debate; as Haukur noted, it shows that yes, people did look at the article and agree it needs to go. A lack of votes can either indicate the latter or that nobody noticed the debate. Turning AfD into a pure debate system is just too impractical to work, because it assumes that each nomination is debateable when, as David Gerard has noted, much of what goes into AfD is pure junk that needs to go as soon as possible. Johnleemk | Talk 14:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

A couple of days is not enough if the article could be deleted after that. Five days is a hideous rush. Also, may I suggest again that nominators MUST make a good-faith attempt to contact the original author if there's a clear main author. Look at the idiotic debate on deletion of Danese Cooper - a classic "I haven't heard of it so it must be vanity" nomination and several votes. I first noticed it a few weeks after the nomination - David Gerard 12:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

David, I'm saying a couple of days for the stuff that's not going to be contested in good faith. I'm not in favour of deleting any content, just stuff that isn't. I'm sorry that wasn't clear. I agree that dragging content to AfD without talking to the creator is bloody rude. It must be ultra hurtful for a newbie to have their contribution to Wikipedia, maybe their first, treated with such contempt. James James 13:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. AFD as Wikipedia hazing is a bad idea - David Gerard 14:07, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

AfDers don't haze -- they just happen to be unintentionally rude because, as I said, one's sensibilities tend to be dulled by repeated truckloads of junk that anything remotely resembling the junk happens to be insulted as badly as the real crud. Johnleemk | Talk 14:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

AFD (and the language used on it) is not the root cause of the problem - it is a symptom. The problem is that too many people are creating junk. If the statistics above are right that we get 4000 new articles a day and over half are deleted, then we need to immediately rethink the article creation process. Let's start using some of the principles of soft security to defend the encyclopedia by putting some hedges around the article creation process - something that makes it far more obvious that the encyclopedia doesn't want and can't use your autobiography or fan page. I agree that we should all be more civil but rather than get irate at the people attempting to protect the encyclopedia from junk, let's fix the root problem. Rossami (talk) 14:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Per the discussion on wikien-l (see right up the top), Jimbo considers the current standard of civility on AFD unacceptable and that's where the suggestions of smackdown are coming from. That's actually orthogonal to the amount of crap coming through. Essentially, if you can't maintain civility when going through AFD, you shouldn't be going through AFD - David Gerard 15:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Rossami is making the same point I am -- see this and this for why I feel tackling the volume of AfD will help reduce civility problems. Johnleemk | Talk 16:02, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to delegate more work to WikiProjects? At the moment most WikiProjects have some sort of system whereby they "adopt" the articles which fall within their purview. Would it be possible to make this more "official"? Maybe we could be more systematic in sorting articles and assigning them to WikiProjects; we could create more projects to cover areas which aren't currently managed. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 13:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

There's no reason this couldn't work; see WP:SFD for an example (there were other reasons for its creation, obviously, but it has effectively become a WikiProject-run deletion forum). Having said that, there are questionable projects created on a regular basis (the various censorship/decency/whatnot mess from last year being a good example); perhaps some RfA-like process via which the community could approve particular WikiProjects for such tasks might work. — Kirill Lok s hin 14:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Unnecessary bureaucracy. WikiProjects are just voluntary collaborations of groups of editors who wish to coordinate their efforts on related articles. If you make them hard to create (by requiring some kind of Wikipedia:Proposed WikiProjects process) they'll just do it via talk pages or something instead, even for unsavory projects. If you want to clean up the Wikipedia: namespace, a better effort might be to find dormant projects and list them at WP:MFD. — Wahoofive ( talk) 16:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Ehh, I didn't mean requiring approval for creating WikiProjects, only for giving a particular project authority to conduct its own deletions (to whatever extent would be appropriate). — Kirill Lok s hin 16:47, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Mmm. Some WikiProjects are more ... sensible ... than others - David Gerard 18:58, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I misunderstood you the first time. I wonder how it would be decided how to categorize proposals for deletion under this scheme? Could article creators appeal if their article was put into a WikiProject for deletion instead of AFD? Stub types are a pretty clear-cut case. — Wahoofive ( talk) 21:54, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking of something like WikiProject Biography: are the chaps in there sane enough to manage the strain of keeping track of vanity articles and stuff? — Phil | Talk 11:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

By all means delegate all cricket-related nominations to WP:Cricket, and it's a nice idea when we do have a well-established, responsible WikiProject to delegate such decisions to it. However, this would only account for a very, very small percentages of nominations for deletion that we currently see, jguk 13:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Every little bit will help. I envision the debates being both listed at AfD (a meta holding pen for debates) and the Wikiprojects' various deletion pages. I already know some WikiProjects do this. We should probably publicise Dragonflight's tool that identifies controversial debates and debates lacking votes, as this is very helpful (even if it's often behind in updating itself). Johnleemk | Talk 14:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

• I'm afraid that most WikiProjects are too small or too non-active for this to have a point. Also I should point out that some WikiProjects have been known for knee-jerk vote spamming on related AFD nominations, and I don't really want to encourage that. Finally, requiring further notification of anyone about an AFD is instruction creep (people will call "invalid nom because X wasn't notified). Interested parties are supposed to have those articles watchlisted. R adiant _>|< 14:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • There are, however, a number of projects large and active enough to do this. As for vote-spamming projects, we can require community approval for this (as mentioned above); any projects that misbehaved could be dealt with. — Kirill Lok s hin 14:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this what Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting and the list of deletion category subpages is for? I think we should just link each Wiki project to the related sorting subpage, and encourage people interested to visit it. I think certain topic areas, especially non-English countries, are in great need of this. Its quite frustrating having an AFD of something where nobody can read any of the sources. -- Rob 14:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

A short time ago on the wikien mailing list Jimbo brought up the problem of old AfD discussions showing up in Google and doing harm. The solution most people seemed to prefer was to institutionalize the blanking of old AfDs. We're already doing this on a case-by-case basis, I've even done it myself. Shouldn't we add this to some policy page? - Haukur 14:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Morwen - Talk 14:35, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

At least for living bios. It's not onerous, it doesn't destroy the discussion (it should have a link to the pre-blanking version) and it's for a good reason. (The reason can be mentioned there.) - David Gerard 15:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Is there anything wrong with modifying robots.txt? I seem to recall there being some prior discussion to this, but I don't remember the end result of the discussions. If the concern is that mirror pages still retain AfDs, I have no objection to blanking AfDs per DG. -- D e ath phoenix 15:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Assuming the mirroring issues can be solved, just modifying robots.txt would seem to be a much better idea... old AfDs are of minimal interest at best to the web searching public anyway. -- W.marsh 16:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Modifying robots.txt is a good idea and I haven't seen anyone object to it. Of course there are some badly behaved spiders out there so it might not always be enough and we may want to blank some discussions anyway. But I still can't see any reason not to do it. - Haukur 16:08, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Robots.txt is the best option. Blanking is not good, as one can link to old versions of the discussion (so its not really gone). But, really, we also have to stop the large number of often needless and viscous attacks on bio article subjects. It seems people feel free to make the most viscous attacks on suspected vanity authors. It doesn't occur to some, that these same people might actually be reading what's written. If somebody makes baseless and/or pointless put-down of a bio subject, that comment should be removed from the discussion on site. WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA should protect all people, not just Wikipedians (of course its still ok to report factual but negative things about a bio subject, if the statements are relevant and verifiable). -- Rob 16:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I more or less agree. It should be noted that Jimbo's original suggestion was to delete the discussions but that met a lot of opposition. No-one seems to really mind blanking, though, or changing robots.txt. Any reason not to do both? I just don't want this issue to die because everyone seems to agree that we should do something and we should do it fast. Blanking the discussions is maybe not the optimal solution but it helps a lot and it's something we can start implementing right now, without even talking to a dev. - Haukur 16:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think I brought this up before: why don't we simply modify the instructions so that instead of topping/tailing the discussion with {{ at}} and {{ ab}} we replace the discussion with those templates. Then the result is displayed, as normal, and the discussion is hidden in the history. Or am I misunderstanding what is meant above by "blanking": is it being used to mean precisely this? HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 17:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I kind of like Phil's proposal. We could turn it into a single template then, and the actual votes would be available to anyone in the edit history. — Wahoofive ( talk) 21:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Me likey; this gives more of a clue to what's happened to the debate, and could become standard procedure, rather than a subjective "well, maybe this one should be blanked..." -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixing robot.txt is the right answer but we could also change the templates and the closing process. No reason not to do both. I'll go write up a draft on the Talk page. Rossami (talk) 03:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

• I strongly object to any blanking that would make it harder for non admins (or indeed moderately inexperienced users) to find and link to previous AfD discussions, which come up in cases of repated or related debates, and are useful as precedents. Modifing robots.txt seems like a good idea to me. I don't see the need to act so drastically fast that we do more harm than good. DES ^(talk) 17:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Linking to an old version of an article found in that article's history should not be an advanced exercise: we're not proposing to delete the article history after all. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 17:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • It would still mean that out internal search would fail to find the discussion, it would not turn up on what-links-here, and the like. I think this is not desirable, and I don't see that it gains us any benefits that changing robots.txt does not. An ill-constructed spider could traverse history pages, after all. It also would meant that things would be different in the archives before and after the effective date of the proposal, or else require significant work changing old logs DES ^(talk) 18:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

      • Sorry, you're right: we should obviously retain the link to the page under discussion, otherwise the sectionising will go all awry, and the back-linking will break. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 08:21, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

      • Not necessarily. As long as whatever template we use explicitly says "look in the page history", blanking only adds two clicks to the process of finding or linking to the discussion. Non-admins will still be able to review the full discussion because the page is not deleted, just archived a bit differently. Second, it will still show up on what-links-here and through the internal search engine as long as we leave the link to the article name visible (unless you are suggesting that people normally search for keywords from inside the discussion rather than just the title).
        While you're right that a spider could crawl through history pages, so far, none do. Lastly, I'd suggest that there is no compelling reason to immediately rework all the old logs. Lots of our archives are inconsistent with current forms and practices. We can fix the problematic ones as one-offs when they're found. Rossami (talk) 19:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • DESiegel is right, and what xe says applies to administrators as well. Preventing a "what links here" search from turning up old AFD (and VFD) discussions would be counterproductive, and as one who regularly makes use of this in order to link current discussions to prior ones I strongly object to such an idea. Uncle G 11:18, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
• Do not blank old debates in which the article originator did not participate. Otherwise they can never discover why their article was deleted, leading to frustration and confusion; one such post appeared on Village Pump. This is especially relevant for contributors who don't use watchlists. This is why I added links to the AfD debates to the two "this article does not exist" MediaWiki pages. Deco 20:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

New namespace

A perennial suggestion is to create a new namespace to hold admistrivial stuff like deletion debates: if we created a namespace like "WikiDelete" then we could easily fix it so that robots couldn't scan it, and maybe notinclude it in the default downloads. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 09:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

• This also seesm like a possibly good idea to me. DES ^(talk) 17:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I propose one change in procedure that might speed up the process of AfD.

The change is:

If a nomination after x hours has less than y endorsments of deletion, or the current consensus is against deletion, the nomination is regarded as speedy kept.

For example, x could be 24 hours and y could be 5 endorsements. _{→ Aza Toth} 19:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

See here. There are many AFDs with fewer than 5 deletes well after 24 hours that are still entirely in favor of deletion. Dragons flight 19:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The 5 was just an example, it could be for example 3 or 2 etc... _{→ Aza Toth} 19:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• IMO 24 hours is not long enough -- too mamny poeple do not log on to wikipedia every day, much less visit AfD every day. This will also lead to nomintors notifing people to try to get "co-sponsoers" for nominations. If this must be done, then 48 hours is I think the minimum time that should be considered. DES ^(talk) 19:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the current process on this is working fine. -- nae'blis _(talk) 19:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think the current process is fine, and this new one adds needless m:instruction creep. -- D e ath phoenix 19:57, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• The problem is that how many people comment in an AfD varies widely. Usually the nominations with the fewest votes are the ones that clearly need to be deleted, not kept, as there just isn't much argument to be made against deletion, often no one bothers commenting at all. I've seen lots of clear-cut hoaxes and clear violations of WP:NOT go 5 days without a comment... your proposal would speedy keep them? That seems like a very bad idea.

The vast majority of AfDs aren't controversial and don't get a lot of comments, they're procedural and boring, and the lack of comments means no one really objects to deletion. Until something better exists, it's the only way that non-admins have of dealing with articles that need to be deleted. In practice, AfDs that get an overwhelming consensus towards keep are closed early anyway. So uh, sorry to keep opposing, but I don't see how this proposal would help in its current incarnation. -- W.marsh 20:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• I'm new here but I have to agree with W.marsh. I just read over AfD because a page I was looking at was marked for deletion and I wanted to explore the process. I considered voting to delete nearly all of today's candidates, but then I read this in Section 2 of AfD: "consider not participating if . . . you agree with what has already been formed." So I didn't vote for any. I don't think the rule change would improve the process. -- Wtwilson3 01:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
• Sorry, but this idea falls under m:instruction creep as a needless layer of bureaucracy. Also, it encourages people to be hasty because after X hours, the matter is dropped. R adiant _>|< 14:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
• Remeber, there is no urgency in getting these things processed. Except for a very small number of cases, it does not matter if a bad article stays for a few days before being deleted or if a good article stays on AFD for a few days before being kept. If a hoax article appears and is tagged, readers will se that our processes for getting rid of such things work. A "speed up AFD" proposal is not needed because the speed of AFD is not a problem. At the moment we have several admins willing to close debates and the backlog is short now. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • As an admin who closes most of the last AfDs of the day, I can tell you that the backlog is kept short only because of three or four dedicated admins closing debates, with a few dilettantes joining in. Just take away one or two of those dedicated admins and the backlog will pile up again. While I'm not saying that this justifies drastically speeding up the AfD process (I think that wouldn't solve the basic problem of excess volume), I do think it should be made clear that the more admins joining in to help close AfDs, the better -- as far as I can tell, we're precariously close to returning to the time when WP:AFD/Old has three or four days backed up on it. Johnleemk | Talk 16:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

We've been discussing the merits and suggesting changes to AFD for at least half a year now. So it's about time we stop talking and actually do something. The simplest variant to AFD would be to list all proposed deletions, and delete all that nobody objects to within several days. Since about 80% of AFD are obvious keeps or obvious deletes, we can accomplish the same with far less bureaucracy and negativity. Wikipedia:Proposed deletion does just that, and is intended to go for a test run very soon. Please join the discussion there. R adiant _>|< 17:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I've written a script that helps reduce the burden on admins when it comes to closing debates. I don't know if anyone other than me uses the script, but I've recently updated it to automate the usage of {{ oldafdfull}} on Talk: pages, something which pisses me off more than the {{ at}} and {{ ab}} templates (which I've already automated). Any regular AfD closers are invited to try out this script. Johnleemk | Talk 18:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Most of the discussion above, initiated by David Gerard on the mailing list and brought here for further analysis, takes for granted that there is something major that is wrong with AFD and needs to be fixed. But I'm not at all sure that this is the case. Yes, Jimbo has some concerns about the process. But Jimbo, as important as he is to the project, is still only human and can (gasp!) be wrong. So the fact that he believes that there's a problem is not the end of the story.

Jimbo is, understandably, frustrated that he has received a bunch of irate e-mails from people whose articles were AFD'd, and to whom the shop talk on AFD sounded abrasive and harsh. I absolutely agree that AFD discussions should be kept off Google for precisely that reason. I have no objection to removing it from robots.txt and/or blanking the debates (as long as people can view them in the history) when they're closed.

But, in the big picture, is this really the serious "PR problem" that people are claiming it is? From my perspective, the most common criticisms of Wikipedia regard its reliability and accuracy. Major media isn't complaining that we're deleting as "vanity" a tiny handful of articles that really aren't. They're complaining that our open editing process is flawed or that Wikipedia has been used as a venue for libel. Of course, these criticisms are often misguided, and even when legitimate (as the Siegenthaler issue) they are hard to address, but they are the criticisms that are out there. I'm concerned that this AFD issue is a case of "letting the squeaky wheel get the grease". To put it bluntly, some people are upset that their NN-bios got deleted as vanity, so they're complaining about it. Why should that be surprising? We need to take such criticisms with a grain of salt. I don't see that happening. Individual bad deletions can be handled on WP:DRV (though, ideally, I'd prefer to allow administrators the discretion to undelete instead). I'm not convinced we should radically restructure Wikipedia because a few people got their feelings hurt. Crotalus horridus ( TALK • CONTRIBS) 19:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I consider the issues with content forks related to AFD (mentioned by David Gerard on the mailing list some time ago) rather more serious, in the long term, than NN-bio complaints. — Kirill Lok s hin 20:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Debates should absolutely not be blanked - at least in the case where the article originator did not participate. They deserve to see the reasons why their article was deleted, whether spoken in a kindly or a not-so-kindly manner. I've seen people on the Village Pump who were very upset and confused because their article "vanished" while they were gone for a couple weeks and they don't know what happened. This is the reason I added a link to the VfD debate (if it exists) to the two "this page does not exist" MediaWiki messages. Do not blank debates - but do feel free to clean them up for politeness ("Vanity page" -> "Seems intended to promote its subject", something like that.) Deco 20:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

• Kirill - could you please provide a link to that? Thanks.
• What we should be asking ourselves is not whether AFD is "broken". What we should be asking ourselves is how can we improve it.
• For instance, it's likely possible to purge Wikipedia of the "vanity" meme, even if it'd take several months (trust me on this one, I'm personally responsible for the creation and downfall of several other memes here).
• Robots.txt should be an easy fix to prevent Google from finding AFD pages, but of course this won't invalidate their listing of pages already found. Then again, given the Google cache, neither will blanking those pages.
• R adiant _>|< 23:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Here is the start of the thread; it goes on for quite a while. There might have been an earlier one as well, but I can't find it at the moment. — Kirill Lok s hin 00:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Okay, reading up on it now. I just wanted to point out that this remark (incidentally, by you) hits the nail right on the head... "there are certain portions of the Wikipedia population which LIKE the culture of AFD ... so long as AFD continues to operate, they have no incentive to negotiate over the issue." EXACTLY. Wikipedia is supposed to work by consensus, but any sufficiently large group of people that isn't strictly into POV-pushing or vandalism (and sometimes even then) can and do force their will on the community, with admin support and bullying if necessary, and get away with it. And I should note this goes for both inclusionists and deletionists. R adiant _>|< 00:18, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Also, frankly, most of the problem lies in large assumptions. I'm willing to accept that ComixPedia and DollPedia started out of incivility with AFD. But note that PokemonPedia and WookieeePedia already started for a variety of other reasons. I've seen numerous assertions that AFD people are always like that, or that DRV doesn't work (or that WP:MUSIC is bad, or that WP:COMIC turned out evil), but when questioned people never seem to cite an iota of sourcing for those statements. As such I'm not inclined to believe those statements.
    • The problem, then, is not in that new wikis are created, but in that we lose good contributors as a result of incivility. This is indeed a problem, and the Wiki could benefit from being more civil. But this goes for both sides. As far as I've followed the Webcomic debate, it mostly turned into a revert war and flame war between Snowspinner and Aaron Brenneman, both parties being at fault. I believe WP:COMIC has now stabilized to a useful form, thanks to other parties. However, there's now a few people that say "I am right and will do my way regardless of what consensus says". That's also incivil, and also drives off people.
    • So the problem would be lack of discussion, lack of cooperation, lack of civility, and FUD. Other than giving people a daily dose of WP:FAITH pills, does anyone have a good solution? R adiant _>|< 00:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
• While I admit that there are problems with AfD, I do not consider it "broken" at this time. Improvements and supplements are probably needed, but IMO a total replacement is not. I agree with User:Crotalus horridus at the start of this thread, and with User:Deco that blanking debates is a very bad idea --no matter who participated, aomeone did not, and any such person should be entitled to see after the fact what was done and why. Debates should be open to our internal search tools when looking for precedents or prior uses of particular arguments, or for the matter of that prior participation by particular users, all of which is significantly harder if debates are blanked. The search result issue can be dealt with perfectly well by a change in robots.txt, no more is needed or IMO desirable. DES ^(talk) 00:36, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

• Simple logic can tell you that AfD is borked -- it isn't going to scale. On a technical basis, note how fast AfD has grown from just a year ago. Preliminary Deletion documents an "astonishing" 71 new nominations on AfD in one day. Today, we'd be lucky to get twice that number in a day. A year ago AfD was somewhere between half to two-thirds of its current size. As the community keeps growing (exponentially, mind you), we're eventually going to find ourselves with four or five hundred nominations in a day. Last time I expressed concern for technical reasons, i.e. dial-up users. But now I see that this huge volume has more repercussions than just that. The huge amount of crap encourages a trigger-happy knee-jerk "delete" reaction to anything resembling the mountains of junk we get everyday, even if buried under that facade there's something worth keeping. The need to spread out one's "voting" time over dozens of debates also makes people work fast, leading to abrupt and (to outsiders) rude statements like "delete vanity bio". Is AfD borked? I have no doubt about it. It's not just the culture -- as Rossami has said, that's just a symptom of the larger problem. It's the fact that this sort of thing isn't going to scale for much longer. Johnleemk | Talk 04:32, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The above is a very good point. One problem (and possible avenue of solution) is that we currently have all kinds of articles thrown together into AfDs. Garage bands, stuff that barely escaped a speedy, all the way up to articles that have been around for three years and edited by hundreds of people, but up for AfD because of POV / unmaintanability /etc. issues. It would be nice to categorize these a little. Most of the controversial and/or most active AfDs are for articles that have been around for a while. Some sort of separation would be a great start to reducing the page size and hopefully increase the overall scrutiny of each article. Turnstep 18:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I wonder why List of SWIFT codes has been deleted while the corresponding AFD-page said keep because of lack of consensus? -- Donar Reiskoffer 11:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Because it was renominated here. — Cryptic (talk) 16:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been in email contact with this user. It's a real person, that's the name he wants (even if it has some confusion value) and I'm unblocking the autoblocks too - David Gerard 22:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I submitted an AFD2 a few weeks ago and it only received one vote. I don't think it was spurious. What should be done? One vote isn't consensus. What happens when you hold an AFD and no one comes? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 17:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

If it's reached "Old", it needs to be relisted. If it hasn't, it's best to wait for it to reach "Old" before relisting it. What's the AFD that you submitted? I'll take a look a it and let you know. -- D e ath phoenix 17:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, it looks like it was already "relisted" on the 26th: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Exopolitics. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 23:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think if no one cares enough to dissent, there's a consensus ;-) James James 02:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I created a new template:

{{uncyclopedia|name}}

This way, when you tell someone "please don't post your jokes here, there are other sites for that stuff," you can also give them a shiny box to click on so that they know where to go to post their nonsense in peace. -- M @ r ē ino 20:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I can tell you bluntly, Uncyclopedia does not want this fuckwittery. Don't do this, thanks - David Gerard 12:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I have two suggestions for the AfD etiquette section. I noticed that some editors are again using "speedy delete" as if it means "strong delete" and others are using criteria that don't exist. If recommending speedy delete, I think that the reason for speedy deletion should be given. Here is the suggested text:

If recommending that the article be speedily deleted, please give the criteria that it meets, such as "A7" or "non-notable biography".

Another issue is people saying "keep" or "delete" more than once. I've noticed two situations where this happens. Sometimes an editor thinks that he or she must reaffirm their position if they make another comment. Other times the editor thinks that each argument for or against an article can be given a separate keep or delete suggestion. For example, they might say that an article should be deleted because the subject is non-notable, and after considering it further, say that it should be deleted because it is unverifiable, too. Here is the suggested text:

Editors usually state their suggested course of action in bold. Giving it more than once makes the nomination seem to have more or less support than it actually has. If you change your mind, modify your original recommendation.

-- Kjkolb 11:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, but since most people starting AFD simply jump in instead of reading all the rules, the real best way to convey matters of etiquette is to simply tell them on their talk pages. I like the speedy description idea. JHMM13 ( T | C) 21:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It's probably true that most people just jump in, but after I have informed users about things like this, they sometimes say that they did not see it on the main AfD page, so I guess some people read it. We should probably try to keep the size down by not mentioning every little detail, at least on the main page, otherwise even fewer people will read it. I'm going to make the change. If anyone wants to revert or modify it, please do. -- Kjkolb 02:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Let's hope it solves some problems :-D JHMM13 ( T | C) 07:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

A number of deletion discussions have involved Ruy Lopez also using his sockpuppet, Mr. Know-It-All; editors may wish to review said discussions and see if apparent consensus was distortied and a deletion is in need of review - David Gerard 23:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Are we related to Wikiclassifieds? I stumbled upon it today and I figure it's a fine dumping grounddrop off for spamvertisement articles. Are the licenses compatible? -- Perfecto 00:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

They are not a WikiMedia project but they are licensed under GFDL so, yes, we can pass material off to them. See their Main Page. Whether we should dump things on them is a different question. This appears to be a very new project with somewhat unclear goals and inclusion criteria. Rossami (talk) 01:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Yellowikis, an apparent competitor, is affiliated with a certain Wikipedian who runs a bot that automatically dumps spamvertisement into it. — Quarl ^{( talk)} 2006-02-07 03:05 Z

Hey, I am the founder of Wikiclassifieds. Someone has created an article about it! I need to find the time to improve it. It shall be very much non-profit but there may be revenue for advertising. It's licensed under GFDL. -- Zondor 04:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC) Its not exactly a competitor because it has product advertising. I can forsee an integraton between the two. -- Zondor 04:08, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

This morning I began the process of writing cart00ney (with two zeros). I saved my work when I got up to refill my coffee, and when I returned, User:Savidan had nominated my incomplete stub for deletion with the cryptic reason "apparent nn selfref neologism." The article had existed for a grand total of nine (9) minutes. Savidan made no attempt to contact me, and made no effort to discuss the obviously in-progress article on its talk page.
— More AfD toxicity on wikien-l, 2006-02-10

The obvious response is to say that a deletion nomination is no big deal. But content creators frequently don't feel that way about their work.

I suspect it's really not going to be optional for nominators to make a good-faith effort to contact the article creator and/or last substantial editor. Is there any good reason not to require this that doesn't boil down to "that'd be too much like work" or bringing up an obscure edge case where it would be difficult (hence the "good-faith effort" bit)? - David Gerard 16:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

That happened to me not long ago, although the article wasn't nominated for deletion, it was just deleted. No contact from the deleting admin, no comment on the article talk page, nothing. After I reached out to the admin, a compromise was made, but I was left wondering why I needed to make that effort. -- Kbdank71 16:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

We need to stress that articles have no owner. Even so, they sure do have contributors! Kim Bruning 16:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Yep. Although many AFD regulars do create content, really quite a lot don't and have AFD edits as a significant chunk of their entire contribution history. More sensitivity to those who actually write stuff may be appropriate in some cases - David Gerard 16:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

When I started out on WP I got upset at some deletions too, and I nominated some of my own, but soon I learned that there's a dynamic community process within AfD that "rewards" good noms and "punishes" bad noms (chiefly by stroking or bruising the ego of the nominator) so that over time the traditions that build up are constantly improving. If you don't believe me, wade right in to AfD help us out for a while. Ruby 17:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've done my time on AFD, thanks ;-) And I really don't have an hour or two a day to wade in trying to fix the attitudes. I've tried that before. What I'm saying now is that current thinking is that AFD's attitude needs to change, and I'm posting this stuff to point out problems so it can be dealt with internally before a nonoptimum solution is imposed from without. (That's a very important point a lot of people in this discussion and the one above don't seem to be taking in.) - David Gerard 17:14, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think calling the Afd nom bad faith was inappropriate. You may or may not agree that this is slangcruft, but why assume the nomination was suspect? When I saw this on new pages, I had half a mind to delete it myself. Friday (talk) 16:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but do you now repent from your sinful thoughts? :) Kim Bruning 16:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I suppose it depends at what point does an obviously grossly negligent nomination may as well count as actual bad faith - David Gerard 16:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

(ec) I've repented, yes. Why delete when you can turn it into a redirect? ;-) Seriously tho, we hardly need individual articles on every phrase made up in a certain newsgroup. This is just an ordinary content disagreement, I see no need to hastily modify the Afd page because of this. This happens all the time. If the article had been created by a new contributor, it would probably already be gone and we'd never have heard about it. Friday (talk) 16:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I read that as "most people don't know how or where to fuss so we should ignore this one too." Which is possibly not the best response to a strong symptom of trouble. Also read the stuff higher up on this page about AFD's relations with the rest of Wikipedia (and the outside world). I've suggested notifying the creator before and most of the objections were that it would be too much like work or might involve effort. Do you have other substantial objections? - David Gerard 16:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

(And yes, I realize that some people will respond to the last sentence by saying, "Aha! That's exactly the problem!" ) My point is that this is completely normal, as anyone who's looked at Afd can tell you. The author feels their work is the Best Thing Ever, and other people see it as cruft or junk. In this case, because the author was an established editor, folks are running around changing Afd procedures. This is silliness. We shouldn't care WHO made it, we should judge it based on the merits of the content. Friday (talk) 16:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

That deletion is symptomatic of the attitude. And if it was a newbie, it applies even more - we have two known contributor forks from Wikipedia which are due to AFD's way of comporting itself. There's an attitude problem here that needs solving internally lest it have a (probably non-optimum) solution imposed from outside - David Gerard 16:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, wikipedians must know their place, and all bow down equally to the power of Articles For Deletion! Kim Bruning 16:50, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

AfD. Think of WP as a company too cheap to contract for janitorial, so we have employees step up to clean the restrooms. Ruby 17:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

That's fine, if everybody takes a turn and the situation remains friendly. What has happened is that a little group of "employees" who have hunkered down in the "restroom" and have taken to roundly abusing anybody who dares actually use the toilets for their intended purpose, which "ruins all the nice cleaning they've just done". Thing is, some visiting dignitaries tried to freshen themselves up and received a bucketful of abuse too, which is embarrassing to the company: said "employees" will need to smarten their act up, or the MD will smarten it up for them. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 18:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

That puts it pretty well - David Gerard 18:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem isn't having a deletion mechanism at all (that's not in question), but the current operations and culture of the current one. See above: #Jimbo_on_the_warpath_re_.2AFD - AFD has been causing external and internal problems at the Foundation level - David Gerard 17:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

As for the actual concern here, I frequently express concerns on article talk pages if I think the article might be a candidate for deletion, rather than jumping straight to Afd. I try to avoid Afd whenever possible, through the use of any and every alternative way of dealing with problem articles. And yes, I think that avoiding the use of Afd should be highly encouraged. I would say that bringing it up on the article talk page is more useful than on the author's user talk page, though. Friday (talk) 18:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I go both ways on this. If an article is very short and has a single anonymous or new user contributor, and is obviously deletable, raising it on the talk page is silly, as it's unlikely you'll even get a timely response. If Wikipedia:Proposed deletion is permanently adopted, this should help take care of this kind of article, to the point where I wouldn't mind mandating that the remainder be discussed on the talk page prior to AfD nomination. Deco 18:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I was the one who actually nominated the article in question. Having read this discussion, I will make a better attempt to contact the creator of the article in the future before proposing articles for deletion and encourage others to do the same. However, I think we need to get away from the idea that an article creator owns their articles or has a right to be notified about changes to them. Theres a similar discussion occuring at Template_talk:Maintained. If the article creator in question had not been an administrator, I doubt anyone would have questioned my actions. In fact, I find it hard to believe that an administrator would find my rationale for nomination "cryptic". Non-notable neologisims are deleted all the time, and should continue to be. This one happened to be self-referential because half of the content was talking about how this term was used on Wikipedia. Given these warning signs, I believe that most people who patrol Special:Newpages would have seen this as a likely candidate for deletion. In fact, several other editors in good standing voted to delete. I don't think there is any need to assume bad faith on my part, as David Gerard has. I had no reason to believe that this article was any more "obviously in progress" than the thousands of such stubs which are createdly every day. Every article on wikipedia is in-progress. In fact, I still believe that this article should be deleted or at least merged. There is no way there will ever be more than five notable sentences to say about this. I think that its possible to have a discussion within the current framework of AfD about this without assuming bad faith or making ad hominem attacks. Savidan 20:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but cryptic to a newbie. Deletion reasons have two audiences, the voters (experienced Wikipedians), and the contributors, often clueless newbies. Avoid jargon or use links to describe them in more detail. Consider making a set of reasons you can copy paste together to save keystrokes. This should be some kind of guideline in my opinion. Deco 20:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I and most other AfD regulars use links when possible and will try to increase my use of them in the future. However, this should not be seen as a substitute for reading the deletion policy which is linked from every AfD notice. Newcomers to wikipedia are generally given little to no weight in votes because of concerns over sockpuppetry. At the very least, a "newbie" should familiarize his- or herself with the guidelines before participating in AfD. But, yes, I agree. Savidan 21:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

"There is no way there will ever be more than five notable sentences to say about this." -- Savidan You almost sound like you're sure of that. How much do you want to bet? ➥the Epopt 21:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll be the first to agree that Afd sucks. However, this particular case sure looks to me like it's been way overblown, possibly even intentionally in an effort to drive home the point that "something must be done". Someone nominated the article for deletion. Big deal; that happens to "normal editors" all the time. The nomination was reasonable, WP:NOT says Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang guide. Friday (talk) 21:59, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Have a look. So far 52 people have signed up to watch it closely. Only objection I can think of is that it still doesn't involve notifying the article creator. But it strikes me as a damn good idea for getting the obvious off AFD and helping alleviate AFD-fatigue. - David Gerard 20:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

For those who like lightweight, some of the experimental deletion methods are even lighter. For those who want transparent deletion, some of the XD methods do not call for an actual "hard delete" at the end. I personally think that a lightweight, transparent process would go far to fix some of the major problems people currently see with Afd. Friday (talk) 22:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

A lot of the problem is that AFD has an culture of stalemated trench warfare between notional "inclusionists" and "deletionists". Having somewhere else to take the obvious 95% would be a damn fine thing as it would set up a new space for a hopefully less embittered culture to emerge, and also takes a lot of the strain off AFD so people here have more time to take more care. Win-win-win - David Gerard 16:59, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to create a page that lists all open AfD votes? Currently, users have to click on the listings by day which causes listing which were created more than 24 hours ago to receive far less traffic, with most of what they receive coming from users who were directed there by the article's main page or by a third party. "AfD regulars" are much less likely to click on older pages because many of these debates have closed and thus it is more time consuming to wade though them. This appears to create a moral hazard because disinterested parties are less likely to find the vote just when they are needed the most. It's possible that there is such a page and I just haven't been able to find it. If so, would it be possible to create a link to it in a more prominent place (i.e. near the links which lists AfD by day) so that other users with my level of competency would be able to find it. ;) Savidan 02:45, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

The time of disinterested parties is a scarce resource, however. How about we just list stuff that's in its last day somewhere so they can take a last look? Deco 02:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

It's at User:Dragons flight/AFD summary/All. Just keep in mind that the whole thing is experimental and in development. - Bobet 11:12, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Woohoo! That's a fun-looking page, must check that out more thoroughly when I have some time. — Phil | Talk 10:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

A single page used to be the practice. I argued strongly against segmentation of the page both for your reason and because it made it less likely that participants would return to the discussion to check for new facts or opinions which might affect their decisions. We lost that argument because the sheer size of the page made it very difficult to load and use. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that objection still exists. We are trying to strike the right balance between usability and optimal decision-making. Rossami (talk) 21:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

You might also want to take a look here which simply lists the current discussions, and is updated "every 15 and 45 to the hour". HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 10:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Previously, copyright violations were listed on copyright problems when they are discovered after being nominated for deletion and the nomination was closed. However, I've seen several speedy deletions of such articles recently. An example is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Woodford. Has there been a change in policy? -- Kjkolb 21:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, there is the abject failure of a policy that is CSD A8. I imagine Capitalistroadster decided that the site amounted to a commercial content provider. Or, he may have decided that we can't keep copyright violations whether we want to or not and removed it accordingly as one that self-confessed to not being the owner of the material. (Trust me on that; it did.) - Splash ^talk 23:30, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

There have been others, though. Anyway, we should do something about A8, either get rid of it, clarify it, or delete all copyrighted material unless permission is asserted, which is my favorite. I did try to clarify it, but people seemed to think I was changing its meaning instead because it is so misunderstood. -- Kjkolb 10:17, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I think there are many cases in which material which is not clearly copyrighted is put on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Such claims are often made with little knowledge of copyright law. Many articles are taken directly from government websites and other sources that make them look like copyvios when they're not, and some content is contributed by the original author, which legitimately donates it under the GFDL. I don't think there should be any expansion of the already too-expansive right to delete copyrighted material. Deco 05:48, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

My experience may not be representative, but out of the hundreds of copy and pastes that I've found, very few were from public domain sources or posted by the copyright owners. Some were from government websites, but the majority of those were from a government that does not make its work public domain. The number of mistaken deletions is further reduced by the fact that for the content to be deleted, the poster must make no assertion that it is public domain or that they have permission to post it. Finally, an admin has to confirm that it is a copyright violation whether it is speedied or listed on copyright problems and there is undeletion if mistakes are made. Given the amount of copyrighted material that is posted on Wikipedia, I would rather occasionally delete article by mistake than let a large number of copyright violations go uncaught. -- Kjkolb 23:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Can someone with all the stats confirm for me the suspicion that there have been far fewer articles on afd recently (down to only 100-120 per day from over 150) - and that this trend started long before the introduction of {{ prod}}? Grutness... wha? 01:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that it was around 180 to 200 for most days until recently. I suspect that prod has a lot to do with it. However, there are other possible factors. A big one that I can think of is not allowing anonymous users to create articles. Some of those users are probably just signing up for accounts to create bad articles, but new articles have been noticeably better on the whole. There was probably a big backlog in deletion candidates, and there still might be. However, the drop was sudden and occured around the time prod got going, so I think that it is probably the main reason for the reduction. -- Kjkolb 10:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I haven't seen any drastic reduction in AfD noms, and I still see a number of articles that should've gone through PROD (i.e. unanimous delete) instead of AfD. Johnleemk | Talk 10:52, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I ended up doing my own analysis - just a purely day vs number one, no pre-post t-tests or anything fancy. The graph shows the figures for the first 46 days of 2006. The red dots are a day-by-day figures, the blue dots are a seven-day moving average. It looks like there was a major decrease in the number of articles on AFD happened at the same time as the introduction of {{ prod}} (the vertical yellow band) or just after and is quite a sizable (though not necessarily statistically significant) reduction. {{ Prod}} may be working after all! Grutness... wha? 06:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

My proposals (please respond/discuss/vote on sub page so as not to disrupt regular discussion here)

1. I am quite satisfied with the m:9/11 wiki move proposal argument style and I propose it here for all deletions.
2. I also propose the merging of Wikipedia:Requested moves and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (Articles for deletion). Perhaps a system that takes care of both moves (renames), deletion and keeps would be more productive.
   • Articles for deletion is misleading, this is not a page where only deletions are determined. Many (if not most) end up as keep or move/rename as well as delete. Also the process is more like a vote which is easily infested by "vote only accounts" and other nonsense

-- Cool Cat ^{Talk| @} 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to make alternative proposals. Also please explain why you support or oppose a particular view point. -- Cool Cat ^{Talk| @} 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Patch

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Contact-field microscopy seems to be orphaned. I can see it in the edit screen code for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 February 15, but it doesn't appear on the page. 86.143.208.102 02:11, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Why is this listed on today's log even though it was closed in December and has not had any edits since? User:Zoe| ^(talk) 03:56, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

• It appears to be a renomination by someone who didn't know how to correct the nomination page. Fixing... Rossami (talk) 07:39, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

To work alongside something like User:Dragons flight/AFD summary, and solve a couple other problems along the way, I propose a simplified AfD script that will standardize the following:

• Voting terminology (a pulldown with a list of 5 or 6 options will help to automize the vote counting process, and largely eliminate votes like keep and rewrite, or delete)
• Terms used in justifying votes (e.g. nn, vanity, cruft, and other terms which may offend the public should be automatically instituted by a script in a way so as not to offent the public, such as "Notability is debated", "Article may not justify claims of notability", "Scope of popularity is debated". Such lubricated terms will never make it into common use if they are being input manually, and thus a script that can be used universally would be a huge plus)

Many of the functions could be shared between the adding and voting procedures, and it would save time, face, pain, and also make the AfD much more welcoming for bots and scripts to analyze, as well as other projects such as WikiProject Deletion sorting. The script could build on AutoAFD.js and afd_helper, though I don't know how much of a help that would be.  freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ  08:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I think I would prefer people to apply a little effort, to be honest with you. - Splash ^talk 21:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

If I understand your proposal correctly, I agree with Splash. This would seem to lock us into true "voting" and basing our decisions on pre-established positions rather than discussion and consensus-seeking. It might work for the simpler discussions but often the best solution is one which can not be reduced to 5 or 6 preset options. The complicated decisions require nuance and thought. Our current process requires effort both on the part of the participants and on the part of the closer. That seems appropriate for a decision as important as whether or not a topic should be included in the encyclopedia.
As to your second bullet about automatically re-editing comments so as not to offend, frankly, that seems like a slippery slope. No matter what wording you choose, some people will decide to be offended. Readers who choose to be offended today are already ignoring what we've written many different places about how specific terms are defined and used here. We should all strive to be more civil but I'm skeptical that technology can do it for us. Rossami (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Could someone have a look at Owens_Park. I have been watching that article after another article that was linked from there was deleted. If you look through the history you'll find that the menue on there gets updated weekly, which is kind of odd for an enclyclopedia article. Agathoclea 14:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

University buildings, including dorms, seem to usually fail AfDs but it's hardly guaranteed, a good argument will usually sway enough people to want to keep it. However this could just be a content dispute without any need for AfD... WP:NOT would seem to preclude lists of upcoming events like this, schedules, etc. under the "indiscriminate collection of information" clause. -- W.marsh 15:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I deleted the menue now and made mention of it on the talkpage - I can just assume that the canteen owner won't be too happy with his advert gone. Agathoclea 16:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I stayed at Owens Park (Mall 8-1-6) during my first year at university and, although sometimes I thought the scrambled egg might be of interest to archeologists, in general the menu was not of encyclopedic value. Architecturally, I always felt that the nearby catering college, called the Toast Rack because (believe it or not) the main building was designed after a toast rack and the hall was shaped like a gigantic fried egg, were more interesting architecturally. It's a couple of decades since I visited Manchester so I do not know whether those buildings are still there. -- Tony Sidaway 12:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

After three "keep" contributions, the nominator decided to withdraw the AfD, and removed the notice from the article. I've replaced it, and explained that things aren't that easy — but what next? Does the AfD have to finish its course, or is it permissible to close it early? -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 17:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

• We've generally held that the nomination may not be withdrawn but that it may be permissible for the deletion nomination to be closed early. In this case, that seems appropriate. I think you did the right thing by letting someone else close the discussion. Rossami (talk) 21:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
• As far as I know, pretty much anyone can close an afd and remove the tag from an article when the nominator withdraws and there are no votes to delete, per Wikipedia:Speedy keep. But having someone besides the nominator do it is probably good. - Bobet 17:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• If everybody is voting keep, I see no reason the nominator can't just close the thing themself. Anybody wishing ot pursue deletion is free to either re-open, or launch a new AFD (as a speedy close, doesn't set a precedent in such cases). Surely, this is a nice time-saver for everybody. Often, people make nominations, having no idea of the level of support for an article. Or they make mistakes, like nominating, when they want an unconsented merge/redirect (like a duplicate article, with a misspelling) or just some general cleanup. Let's just make things easy. -- Rob 18:44, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, nominators have been known to attempt to control "their" discussions. I've seen too many where the nominator tried to close the discussion in a fit of pique rather than as a result of reasoned discussion. That just creates more work and dissension when the other participants have to reopen the debate. I would not say that a nominator closing a discussion is automatically a bad-faith action but I would say that our general advice should encourage letting someone else speedy-close it. Rossami (talk) 20:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• In this case the problem was in aprt that he simply removed the boiler-plate text from the article, without closing the discussion, etc. Anyway, thanks to all who helped and opined, and I've added the Closed-AfD template to the Talk page. -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 22:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I removed the following sentence from this section: "*Make a good-faith effort to notify the creator and/or main contributor(s) of the article before nominating, as they may be able to address concerns raised." I have nominated many articles for deletion, using AfD, prod, and the speedy deletion tags, and never notified anyone. I find the whole process of getting articles deleted to be cumbersome enough without the extra step of notifying the author and then, presumably, waiting around for days for them to respond or whatever. If the original authors should be notified, then Wikipedia's software should do this automatically. I assume someone will revert my change, but please discuss this here after you do so. -- Xyzzyplugh 02:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

There's no extra "waiting around". You make the nomination, and notify the user, who has five days, like everybody else. It avoids somebody coming back after a weak break, to find an article gone for no reason. Often the creator is able to answer important questions, and fix the article. That's a good thing, especially for certain topic areas, such as with mainly non-English sources, or requiring specialized knowledge to understand. -- Rob 02:20, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I misinterpreted it slightly. As written, with the emphasis on "before nominating", it seemed to me that one was supposed to notify the person and then not nominate until they had a chance to respond, which would certainly have been cumbersome. Still, though, if it's so important that the original author be notified, why doesn't the software do this automatically? It's a waste of everyone's time making people do this manually. And is it really necessary for some vandal to be notified that his "bob johnson is a fag" article is about to be speedy deleted, or for some teenager to be notified that his garage band article is up for deletion? -- Xyzzyplugh 02:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I revised it, to be less demanding, in insisting "before". I think often talking to the creator before is good, but circumstances vary. I think even in obvious delete cases, like a kid's garage bands, its good to notify them, as it avoids them just remaking it when it goes "missing", it helps educate them about wikipedia, and it promotes good faith if worded properly. We might not want a particular article, but we still want them. I think you're {{ db-attack}} example is something to be addressed on WP:CSD, not here. I think in such cases, a message should be given to the creator, warning them not to repeat it. As for getting a bot to do the notices, that would be great. -- Rob 02:56, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

• To me this has always implied article ownership. No one owns an article just because they made the first edit... right? You shouldn't have to run deletion by the "owner" of the article. If you want to, fine... sometimes it does make sense... but only in situations where you aren't sure about something and think they can help. - W.marsh 03:01, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Notifying somebody you're going to try and delete something, is not conceding ownership, as the deletion will go forward regardless. Anybody who thinks they "own" an article, probably won't need notice, as they're probably watching "their articles" like a hawk. Notification is more for the person who made something and doesn't think about it every day since (but might still have helpful input). A common reason for AFDs, is lack of sources. The creator is almost always in the best position to add such sources, which can then be reviewed. Often, something isn't findable in Google, but once the sources are cited, it's easily verifiable by others. Also, if somebody made a really bad article, surely they should be told, before they proceed to make a slew more, each to be deleted. Why not prevent such articles from being created? -- Rob 03:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm not saying it's a bad idea to notify. Just the idea of forcing it rubs me the wrong way, and I still say it implies ownership (forcing it creates a right to notification, and why do they get special rights concerning "their" articles unless they "own" them?) I see it as optional, but definently strongly encouraged, to notify. -- W.marsh 03:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I put it in after the discussion above. The purpose is to get someone who might have a clue about the article, so it doesn't get nominated by one person on the basis of their own ignorance and voted "delete" by three others on the basis of their ignorance. If I'd been notified of the particularly clueless nomination of Danese Cooper I could have dealt with it quickly, for instance - David Gerard 12:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

See WP:AGF, you are assuming a lot of bad faith of AfD nominators in that paragraph. -- W.marsh 15:57, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I am not assuming bad faith: I am stating the obvious, that the nomination was sincerely clueless. That is, I am questioning the nominator's judgement, based on clear evidence it is defective

I see this argument a lot, that almost any criticism of AFD is somehow "assuming bad faith" even when it's clearly nothing of the sort. As far as I can tell, the clueless use it as an excuse not to listen. Unfortunately, I've yet to come up with a euphemism for cluelessness that gets through to the clueless - David Gerard 14:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Ascribing ignorance and cluelessness to someone to explain a wrongful deletion is the opposite of assuming bad faith. You could say "Tony Sidaway hasn't a clue about organic chemistry" and this would be a pretty valid criticism of my decision to say "nn del" in response to the listing for deletion of an article on phosgene. It's not exactly civil to use those words, but if it can be put nicely it's a very Wikipedian way of responding to otherwise inexplicable nominations and deletions. -- Tony Sidaway 16:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Ascribing ignorance when it occurs isn't assuming bad faith, but assuming ignorance still is. The assumption that lots of nominators are going to be ignorant seems like the assumption of bad faith. At the very least, as you said, it's not very civil. In practice, it's also an incorrect assumption - the dramatic majority of nominators know what they're doing and meet with little objection, their nominations are uncontroversial. -- W.marsh 16:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Assuming ignorance given gross evidence of ignorance is not. You seem to be bending over backwards here to look for something to take offence at so as to ignore what I'm saying - David Gerard 14:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but it's Assume Good Faith, not Assume I'm Right. David was specifically addressing that dramatic minority of fundamentally ignorant nominations that don't get caught by someone non-ignorant. The onus should be on the nominator to demonstrate the basis of knowledge, e.g.

" Phosgene - Delete - I'm an organic chemist at Foobar University and I know this is a crank fringe theory that's been going around." KWH

Is there any reason not to require somebody nominating something for lack of notability to actually explain how the person or subject is non-notable, and demonstrate some attempt to research the issue? u p p l a n d 08:46, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I always did that... check AMG, check Google, check IMDB, check webpages, make a common sense argument. Alas many people consider 'delete nn--~~~~' an okay nomination. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I last checked, about 95% of my nominations ended in deletes, so a good argument "helps". It boils down to how important people think it is to make a good argument... but I don't think trying to force people into it is going to work. Encourage it yes, but forcing it isn't practical. Are we going to delist all noms someone deems "not researched enough"? Who is that someone? Way too arbitrary to enforce. -- W.marsh 15:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

In one of the AfDs, one of the contributors to the article was voting to keep and had not signed his post. Another person noted he had a vested interest in the article, which was misunderstood to be a monetary interest. Possibly there should be a Wikipedia:Vested interest page created (or subsection to WP:OWN) to link from the sentence "If you are the primary author or otherwise have a vested interest in the article, say so openly, and clearly base your recommendations on the deletion policy."? In any case, I noticed there was a Vested interest stub and a Vested interests stub, so I suggested a merge on those. Schizombie 05:44, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Hm..I feel it's normally pretty obvious if someone's got a vested interest in the page, because the only people with said interest who usually come around to vote on an AfD are the article's creator or sockpuppets of that creator. However, I believe the AfD process is a process of consensus in which the bureaucrat who comes around to close out a discussion makes a decision on what the final result of the debate was. If the person with a vested interest makes a good point about the article, I think it deserves to be heard on AfD. JHMM13 ( T | C) 07:45, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The usual practice is to add a note saying "Comment: I wrote most of this and ..." near the top - David Gerard 09:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I think if somebody has a personal non-wiki interest in the topic, such as owning a business the article is about, or actually being the subject of a bio, then they should disclose that. However, if somebody is the author of an article, about something they're unattached to, its nice, but unnecessary to disclose that. It's readily available in edit history, which all AFD voters, and the closing admin, are supposed to look at anyhow. -- Rob 12:43, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

"edit history, which all AFD voters, and the closing admin, are supposed to look at anyhow" - *cough* *splutter* And how often do you think that's the case? - David Gerard 15:05, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I dunno...I look at that sort of thing most of the time if I see a debate going on. JHMM13 ( T | C) 21:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it's courteous to mention any vested interest, and it improves their argument, but if they fail to state their interest, any other contributor can note it. Deco 19:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Since one didn't seem to exist, I have created a template to notify people that an article they've editted is being listed on AfD. See Template:AFDWarning if interested. If we're going to try to encourage nominators inform various editors of AfDs, we might as well make it less tedius. -- W.marsh 15:52, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. Good one - David Gerard 08:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Several AfD have had subsections added to them by the use of multiple "equal sign" symbols. Is there a policy on that? Personally I think it confuses things - after it's done, which section are additional contributors supposed to add their comments to? Schizombie 06:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

• They are not supposed to occur since they create exactly this kind of confusion. Feel free to refactor the discussion into the standard, bulletized format. See WP:GAFD for more. Rossami (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the wording on Template:AfD footer to suggest but not require editor notification. As I stated above, I believe creating a "right to notification" implies article ownership. I don't think there's consensus to require notification before nominating. I mean, if I'm wrong, this is not something I want to go against consensus on, but I think we need to clear this up before adding mandatory rules to the process. -- W.marsh 16:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Guideline is fine. (Difference: policy is hard rules for everyone; guidelines are for clueful good-faith editors.) Making a good-faith effort is all we can ask, in practice. Basically, if they're a logged-in editor, they deserve the courtesy.

I've also added "If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, please do consider improving the article so that it meets the Wikipedia inclusion criteria." to {{ vfd}}, as I did to {{ prod}} (where it seems to be accepted). Despite rules on article ownership, having your creation nominated for deletion feels like someone's knifing your baby (even when it's well-deserved, which it usually is); there's no reason to fail to be polite about it - David Gerard 19:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The only thing I object to about this notice (on both vfd and prod) is that some topics just aren't suitable for inclusion, like vanity articles. Asking them to improve it and subsequently deleting it anyway might seem disingenuous. Deco 23:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Deletion counts as improvement in such cases, per the link ;-) - David Gerard 14:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if ""If you contributed to the article" might not be better. Creator makes sense if the article was recently created and no one else has worked on it, which is not always true of AfD. Шизомби 18:47, 6 March 2006 (UTC)