Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 64

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot II (talk | contribs) at 09:56, 26 February 2012 (Archiving 2 thread(s) from Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archive 60←Archive 62Archive 63Archive 64Archive 65Archive 66→Archive 70

Geriatric AfDs

Just thought I'd make a note here about this. Last night, I discovered an AfD, from the July 31 page (and it had been relisted to it), that was still open. I closed it (it was a no-consensus), but it made me wonder if there could be any other "hangers-on" that were somehow missed? - The Bushranger One ping only 18:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I try to double-check the daily AfD logs before removing them from WP:AFD/O, to make sure that nothing has gotten messed up. We try to avoid having things like these, but they do happen sometimes. I encourage other admins to do the same, looking over the AfD logs, since MathBot's count isn't always accurate.
If we want to solve the problem, we could have {{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}} use a 2nd parameter which dates the AfDs, which would make it easier to see when ones have been missed in a closing cycle. Or, alternatively, have a bot crawl Category:AfD debates every week or two to find AfDs that haven't been closed and aren't on a log at WP:AFD/O and relist the dates there. Perhaps we could just include it in MathBot's functions? Anyway, just throwing out ideas. Cheers. lifebaka++ 20:07, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Is it possible this edit accidentally mangled part of the relisting template? I noticed the template doesn't have a line above and a line below as usual. BusterD (talk) 20:53, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
No, they're still there. They're generated by the <hr style="width:55%;" /> HTML tag, and what happened was people commented between the template text and the lower line. As none of {{relist}} got removed, that wouldn't be it. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
I think the bot idea might be a good one, even double-checking sometimes misses things (trust me, I know ;P ) so having the bot providing a final line of defense, as it were, sounds reasonable to me. - The Bushranger One ping only 16:45, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Fgetws

why did the page on the fgetws is selected for deletion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yashdatt (talk • contribs) 16:09, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

why did page on the fgetws is selected for deletion ? Yashdatt (talk) 16:11, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd assume because the nominator believes it's overly specific. His reasoning is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fgetws, where you should participate if you disagree with the deletion. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Christopher Stasheff

This article already passed AfD, but I'm not satisfied with the results. I think the author is probably not notable, and none of the keep votes indicated any actual notability. The current biography has one source, this. The media section of Stasheff's site has little on it. There are small mentions spread about the web, for instance here, [1] slightly more here, and this. But I don't really see that it meets the general notability guideline or the notability policy on creative professionals. I didn't click every single link in the google news search.

At the least, I feel that the "keep" consensus on the deletion page was unsupported. I'd like to know what others think, and particularly if anyone feels that we need stricter standards on deletion proposals, such as "if notability has not been established by the end of the deletion discussion, the closing administrator should close as "delete""

Cross-posted to WP:N/N#Christopher Stasheff Be——Critical__Talk 18:27, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Heck, he's notable -- I used to have a whole bunch of his books. This is why we don't need hard and fast rules like the one proposed above.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:34, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
What does having written books have to do with notability? Notability for BLP is having enough sources to base an article on. Be——Critical__Talk 18:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Considering his primary series has its own article, I really don't think there's an issue here.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:39, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Don't see it. Where are the sources ? This is a BLP, not about his work. Be——Critical__Talk 18:44, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
"The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." If it's notable enough for its own article, that establishes his notability. Now if you want to go AfD that one, feel free.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:47, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't see any books, and I don't see any periodical articles/reviews. Do you? This is the same thing that happened at AfD. Lots of assertions, no sources. Be——Critical__Talk 18:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

This is not the right forum to complain about an AfD result. If you think it was wrongly closed then try taking it to Deletion review. I know exactly who he was when I saw the name as I also recall reading his books, along with the fact that his books sell well and his prolific production, this makes me suspect there is every likelihood that sources can be found in the near future. Fæ (talk) 18:55, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm taking it here, because as the responses here demonstrate, there is a much larger issue to discuss here: keeping articles, in fact BLPs on the assumption that sources exist somewhere or other, even though no one has found any. Be——Critical__Talk 18:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
School Library Journal; Dec2004, Vol. 50 Issue 12, p174-174, 1/5p -- This volume presents new stories set in several series of proven and lasting popularity, by some of the best writers in the genre. They include Mercedes Lackey ("Valdemar"), Andre Norton ("Witchworld"), Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye ("Myth Adventures"), Alan Dean Foster ("Spellsinger"), Christopher Stasheff ("Warlock"), and David Drake ("Isles"). There, you can no longer say "nobody found any".--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:01, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Doesn't meet the general notability guideline. Coverage must be significant. Be——Critical__Talk 19:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
There's no absolute requirement that all articles must demonstrably meet the GNG in order to be kept. From WP:N: A topic is also presumed notable if it meets the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline. There is an absolute requirement from WP:V that there must be a reliable source on the topic of the article, but the significance of the coverage doesn't enter into that. Hut 8.5 19:57, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Right, it doesn't meet the subject specific guideline [2] Be——Critical__Talk 20:28, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
According to the source cited above he has created a "series of proven and lasting popularity" and he is "one of the best writers in the genre". That is IMO enough to show that he is "regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors". Hut 8.5 20:36, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

And here. Well, again, if he's widely cited, there ought to be RS, right? But no one can find any. This whole discussion is me saying "show the sources," and others saying "there ought to be some." So okay, there ought to be, but show me. We ought to remember that as editors, we should exercise judgment, and not make an article on a person when we don't have enough sources to round out said article to at least some extent. It's an encyclopedia, and should have the potential to read like one. I was involved in another of these cases here, see the closing admin's remarks. Be——Critical__Talk 20:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

But it is enough to show he is "regarded as an important figure". Neither the notability guideline nor our policy on verifiability require that an article on this person be deleted. I suggest you take this discussion to WP:DRV, this really isn't the place for it. Hut 8.5 20:48, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
The AFD for this article was closed on 6 August 2010. Therefore, another AFD would make more sense then DRV if he really feels that the article should be deleted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 21:09, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Minor note, I've added 10 inline citations to the article. Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:30, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Lol, yes, I guess maybe you have established importance. I think per Off2riorob's suggestion [3] there should be a WP:Loopholes essay. Be——Critical__Talk 22:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Damian Slater deletion

Can a registered user complete this nomination? The reasons are covered in the multiple issues template below the nomination template. 101.173.101.94 (talk) 08:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Who is the audience of this project page?

This article is very confusing for those who are only interested in following one particular Article For Deletion discussion. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:20, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The audience of this page is the community at large. So, no one in particular. If you're finding a specific part of the page confusing, point it out so that we can explain it to you or simplify the page. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:42, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Mathbot vs 1.18

Is there a way to turn off Mathbot? It's borking up the numbers on /Old, presumably because of the 1.18 change. - The Bushranger One ping only 05:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pangs Theater Ensemble

This nomination, from 4 September, appears never to have appeared in the list for that date. Jezhotwells (talk) 18:57, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Monty845 listed it. Cheers. lifebaka++ 19:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Could someone check Puppeteer (comics) and advise me what course of action to take?

I proposed for deletion the article Puppeteer (comics), but the article creator apparently nominated it for deletion removing the PROD tag, but without completing the AfD nomination. What do I do in this case? Do I restore the PROD tag or do I wait until the nominator completes the process? I suppose that I cannot do anything, as removing the AfD tag would be against the AfD procedure, but it seemed to me that the article creator simply wanted to contest the PROD. I'm not sure what to do here. Jfgslo (talk) 05:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

By the way, I just noticed that the same editor did the same with these other articles:
Jfgslo (talk) 05:48, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
You shouldn't restore the PROD tag, as we can safely assume that the removal means he contests it. As for the AfD tag, I'd suggest pinging the user on his talk page to see if he plans on completing the nominations, and removing the AfD tags if he does not or doesn't respond after a day or so. Cheers. lifebaka++ 06:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I will do so. Thanks for the quick answer. Jfgslo (talk) 06:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
@ lifebaka,
Actually this is the second time Rtkat3‎‎ has misused the AfD template. I've bulled them off and left them a note that there either need to follow through with the AfD or just de-PROD as contesting the proposed deletion without discussion of the article(s). - J Greb (talk) 16:53, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Chalk it up to a good faith mistake about how to contest a PROD. The correct move was to remove the AFD template. If you want to contest the contested PROD the next step is to complete a proper AFD nomination. Dzlife (talk) 15:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

KEEP anonymous (street meat)

Dear friends -- the image of the eye was restored (gun image was not) -- all images are available in "anonymous (street meat)" Google images, please, take a look. https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/132e812637a7fb8e

However, the file was truncated. Here's an example of different treatment -- the short "Saturday Evening Special" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Special_(film).

Meranwhile, I was interviewed by someone from the Huffington Post yesterday. The interview centered on my inspiration for "anonymous (street meat)" -- a 2-year ordeal with Bank of America.

Since this wiki space is being used as a plug to promote activities outside of Wikipedia, may I be allowed a plug to promote something inside Wikipedia: Talk:Bank_of_America#The_suicide_of_Kevin_Flanagan ? Ottawahitech (talk) 12:41, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

With demonstrations and movements like "Occupy Wall Street" going on against Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail banks, thet script for "anonymous (street meat)" was ahead of time by having a plot that dealt with bank abuse with harrowing images. That's why the film has been well received at festivals abroad -- in Seoul Korea, for one, it was screened in over 14,000 monitors throughout the city. The HP article will link up to "anonymous (street meat)" and it's schedule for publication on November 1st, or earlier.

The articles on the Daily Bruin and the upcoming one on the Huffington Post are of relevancy socio-politically, so it's not without importance. The Bruin article itself is not quoted, but if anyone reads it, they can see that the short has social significance because its conception came out of issues that are being experienced in the country's political sphere right now -- events that occurred to me. But it appears that people delete without first reading or considering. The fact that I'm a Hispanic woman is alone of some note because I'm part of a tiny minority of filmmakers. That I'm a female professional screenwriter of Hispanic background who returned to UCLA for a Master's after working as a professional for years may also be interesting to some historians. I, personally, would be interested in reading a Wikipedia page about a notable Eskimo female filmmaker with a short in 24 film festivals and in some similar circumstances, for example. If there are any.

Here's one instance used as an example of editorial bias: The Saturday Night Special Wikipedia page, for one, doesn't have any references -- it is instead laudatory of that film to the point that when I happened upon it, I was surprised to see that and tried to flag it for an edit, not a deletion, an edit. Some people here have defended that film and reinstate it. Additionally, that page quotes from articles that are not linked. And even if they were linked, why quote stuff that reads like a publicity page.

"anonymous (street meat)" is important and should be maintained for the reference of other Latino and/or women filmmakers, as well as the general public at large.

Thank you for your support in this endeavor --

Kind regards, Mig (talk) 16:26, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Wrong venue, please post at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anonymous (Street Meat). Hut 8.5 16:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Underscoring

Shouldn't this article just be a Wiktionary entry? -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

A merge to film score would make the most sense. Dzlife (talk) 16:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Mergers, BTW, don't require any special discussion or process. Any user may undertake one at any time, though controversial mergers should be discussed. Feel free to boldly merge the articles per WP:MERGE, though you may want to tag the articles for prospective merge and start a discussion to see if anyone objects. Give it a week, and if no one does, have at it! --Jayron32 17:51, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Just wondering why mergers/re-directs do not require discussion.
I started an article today, and I just found out that it was re-directed (without notifying me) to another article. It is the proper article to re-direct to, the problem is that the person who re-directed it did not merge the new contents into the existing article. Had I not noticed this re-direct the content I contributed to Wikipedia would have been lost. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:01, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Because unlike deletion, replacing content with a redirect is reversible by any user and leaves the previous version available in the article history. VQuakr (talk) 00:23, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes redirects are reversible, but only if the original contributor:
- Knows the article has been redirected
- Knows how to find the redirect page Ottawahitech (talk) 17:10, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
True, but that's not hard to do, and if they don't notice or think that it needs to be WP:SPLIT, then they're not going to care. If we implemented a formal process, the vast majority of merges would proceed as speedies without any change in the outcome, and we want to empower our WP:BOLD editors rather than weigh them down with bureaucratic procedures. For intermediate cases, tag the pages with {{mergeto}} and {{mergefrom}} and start a discussion on the talk page. If you think a given merge is likely to be controversial or would benefit from wider community input, then you follow the process at WP:Proposed mergers. You've got options for managing this process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Why are you so sure that BOLD editors are encouraged to continue contributing when they find out that their contribution disappeared when the article they started was re-directed with no notice? (btw the usual thanks for providing all the links to useful stuff - I don't think I knew {{mergeto}} and {{mergefrom}} existed) Ottawahitech (talk) 15:20, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Why am I working for Google?

I've been wondering for some time about the way deletion discussions formally use Google as the default search engine for the "find sources" line at the top of discussions. Why do we not offer similar links to other search engines? Are we down to one? Who made that call? Aside from sheer facility, why do we favor one over all others? Has this previously been a discussed topic? BusterD (talk) 22:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I won't argue that Google is the best search engine available (that debate could go on forever without resolution) but it is by far the most prominent, the search engine has about a 2/3 market share. The term "google" is in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (as a verb). That ubiquity makes it the obvious default search engine, and frankly for a quickie search it's fine to just have one search engine. -- Atama頭 22:37, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Doesn't that put Wikipedia in the position of picking winners? Is that what we should be doing as a community? Has this EVER been discussed? I'll concede that other search engines haven't built the same massive collection of raw searchable data (I use googlebooks constantly), but I'm starting to chafe at the obvious COI between the most powerful internet company in the world and the most powerful user-built encyclopedia. Hence the title of this section. I myself could certainly use another method, and I'm sure other editors are sensitive to this issue, but IMHO to have formalized use of one company in procedures seems a poor course, long-term. BusterD (talk) 23:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
When it comes to AFD discussions, the ability to quick switch search venues from the web, to news, to journals, to books, and so on just by clicking on one button is beyond invaluable. This doesn't prevent any other search site from being used, but google's toolset is so complete specifically to help resolve AFD in the right manner. --MASEM (t) 23:06, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
So it's mere facility. And why isn't Google contributing for all this free linking and SEO? BusterD (talk) 23:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Because they don't have to? Wikipedia is essentially taking advantage of free services Google is providing, and if Google indirectly benefits then it's a mutually advantageous arrangement. Also, I think you'll have to explain what COI there is with Wikipedia using Google for the basis of convenience links for search engines, it's not nearly as obvious as you seem to think. -- Atama頭 23:51, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
While I agree with Atama and Masem, I am curious as to your proposed solution. How would you propose changing the "Find sources" line - while still being able to keep the list of links compact, simple (ie: one-click), and reliable. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a solution; I have a valid concern. Wikipedia doesn't have to choose one particular search platform over all others, just because it's the most popular and high-performing as of this datestamp. It will be difficult to find an appropriate comparison, but I'll attempt one, albeit imperfect. Let's say that some important Wikipedia function, let's say the admin bit, only functioned with editors using Microsoft operating systems as a platform. For some particular technological reason, the only way blocking and protecting worked was with editors running Windows. Much like the situation I've described above, Wikipedia would be choosing a market winner. In this case of search engines there's only a superior advantage of functionality (at the current time), yet the community has sanctioned this favoritism of a company in a particular formal way. Google takes advantage of Wikipedians' voluntary contributions to make money. Wikipedia gets the same thing every Google user gets: free links to information. I ask for the third time, has this ever been discussed? Where? Who made this call? BusterD (talk) 00:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I might not ever have been discussed (I don't know of anywhere it has been, anyway), but WP:SILENCE applies. No one's objected until now, so it's assumed not to be controversial. So... Unless you think there's an issue with using Google, I don't see what there is to do here. lifebaka++ 00:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
In the case of my example above, in such an obvious case of dependency, we'd have technological solutions constructed. No longer silent, someone has to raise an issue for the first time. While I don't doubt the good faith of the editors in this discussion, I have every reason to believe that a company like Google has many paid employees who monitor the quantity and type of links between the two internet institutions. Sure would like an answer to my question about discussion. I might link to this discussion on Jimbo's talk. BusterD (talk) 00:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
BuseterD, check out User:Kim_Bruning/Lost_functionalities for some added insight. Your fellow unpaid Google employee, Viriditas (talk) 01:23, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks very much for the link. I'll read. I'm not trying to stir crap, I just thought while my title was somewhat provocative, I've raised a legitimate issue. And since Google knows my real name and address, I suspect I've signed my own death warrant. (that's a joke, actual Google employees, ok? Really, a joke.) BusterD (talk) 01:28, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I think basically it's because WP:We don't care what happens to your website. It just isn't important. Also, the links at AFD are on pages that pretty much only a handful of editors (rather than our millions of readers) see. The typical AFD page gets 30 views in the course of a full week's discussion. Only a small number of those page views will result in someone clicking the link. Google is unlikely to even notice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:06, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
You mean, WP:We don't care what happens to your website (unless it's Google). We certainly don't care about Yahoo, Ask, or Bing. Google, we seem to be defending (as an institution) in several formal and informal ways. BusterD (talk) 02:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
BusterD, the best thing to do is write an essay about your concerns. Make sure you provide alternate proposals for consideration. Then, present it here (or elsewhere) as a link for discussion. Viriditas (talk) 02:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Sound advice. I'm certainly not trying to put anyone on the defensive. I hope nobody takes it unkindly if I use the redlinked title above (but in my userspace, not project space). Still am nervous about those black helicopters circling in the rainstorm above. BusterD (talk) 03:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I actually think BusterD's proposal is a great one. I won't argue that Google is the best service, but I will argue that all of the search engines have different algorithms and you have a good chance of finding different results on each.--v/r - TP 13:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

What about abbreviate the searches? G for google, B for Bing, Y for Yahoo. We don't need the full names. Example: 

(Find sources: "Subject" (G:B:Y) – news · books · scholar · free images)

What do you think?--v/r - TP 13:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

A number of alternative templates exist with links chosen as the most useful rather than just Google. Compare at Category:Search templates. It would be easy to have a random choice too, not sure how acceptable this would be for most users though. It might be an idea to think of designing an extension to the current template (i.e. the only change would be a "more..." button) that then optionally opens up to show a selection of alternates. We could then think of a poll for swapping links once users have a while to play with other sites. Fæ (talk) 13:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I think random would be a bad idea, editors should know what to expect when they click the search links. I don't see a problem with adding more options though. Monty845 15:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I totally agree that random doesn't suit the nature of searches. Searches are about choices. It's somewhat revealing that the only templates categorized by company are the Google ones. This belies the assertion "we don't care what happens to your website." I think the approach User:TParis makes is a useful one, like tabs across the top of a WikiProject space. One click gives a different set of options. More choices is good, so long as (pointed out by editors above) the whole thing doesn't become cumbersome and slow anyone down. The effort to find and apply sources should be as effortless as possible, IMHO. The simpler and more elegant the technological solution, the better for now and for later. (After all, we're merely ten years in; imagine what the search engine options will be as more institutions digitize their existing resources.) BusterD (talk) 15:43, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
After thinking about it, I realized this issue is pretty comparable to the ISBN solution used to present links to multiple book sources. However, for practical purposes, I still think it's better to keep the links simple (ie: one-click, not needing to navigate through a sub-page as is done for ISBN links).
Ideally, I believe the best solution would be to have the "My Preferences" menu include a drop-down to allow each user to select a preferred search provider ... then a template able to utilize that preference to present custom links to each user who views a link formed with that template. But, that would be time-consuming to develop once proposed to the Village Pump. Barring that, as an interim solution, I have no major objection to providing multiple links as long as the presentation of multiple links can be kept compact (perhaps via a collapse/expand toggle for the search template).
It would still remain to decide which ones to link. Maybe Google, Bing, Ask, and AOL? Last I heard, Yahoo uses Bing as its search engine - so those results would be redundant to a Bing link - although I could see an argument if some users prefer the layout of those results in Yahoo over Bing.
Also, the proposal above only presents alternates to the main search ... but the additional links in that template would have alternates possible (ie: news · books · scholar · free images). Once alternates are provided to all of these, any template could quickly grow to a rather bulky header block. I would want to see proposals for how to manage all of the links in an easy to navigate and compact format. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:24, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I would very much support removing the link to web searches entirely. We should be encouraging users to default to Books, News archive and Scholar before bothering with a web search, since the former three concentrate reliable sources, and we have lots of problems with people using web only, or at least going there first, and the current setup fosters this by placing the web link first (it's not as if people don't know how to do a web search afterwards, if they want to). If we are to include any web links then they should appear after the others. I would have no problem in placing others there as a matter of "sheer facility" but only because it might be a benefit to our users. This may seem slightly tangential but it's not. Google is the only game in town for what we really need. This has nothing to do with allegiance or favoritism to Google and everything to do with usefulness for ourselves and our users. Whether it's fair to other search engines doesn't enter the equation because the reason we link to Google is completely unbiased. If Wikipedia was a free hostel and AfD was where scrambled eggs were served, Google would be a fork manufacturer and other search engines would provide only steak knives. Yes, it's "sheer facility", and what's wrong with that?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
IMHO, in an internet where nothing stays the same for long, putting all your eggs in one online basket would be a poor choice indeed. I wouldn't do it with a grocery store, I wouldn't do it with a pizza parlor, I wouldn't do it with an operating system. I certainly wouldn't do it with a web browser. Getting in bed with one vendor exclusively not only gives the vendor an initial advantage, but it gives the vendor leverage which can be used against you when they make changes in policy. And policies will always change. The recent New York Times paywall is one such policy change which could have a long-term negative effect; since many history cluster editors have been regularly linking to Times articles as historical news sources. When the vendor decides to put more books or more scholars behind a paywall or some other profit-based change (which seems likely if not inevitable), then all the links we're putting in to cite pagespace will have a larger effect to advertise one vendor exclusively. That's what's wrong. Today is fine; it's ten years down the road I'm concerned about. Maybe I'm concerned about nothing; maybe I have a point. Jimbo seems to take a bit of both sides, and that's perfectly fine with me. BusterD (talk) 01:43, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
But the problem I'm getting at is that the only real "eggs" for these search engines are books, news archive ans Scholar, which happen to be Google services. Web is the last search anyone should try, and I don't see any reason we shouldn't include links to others for web searches, but web searches should be put in the back room, put at the end as an afterthought. Meanwhile, there is no free search service that has any useful comparative tool to news archive, books and scholar. Worldcat is near useless for what we need. NYT.com is just one newspaper that is already searched by Google News. Again, there is no allegiance to Google, it's all about utility, and nothing else provides the utility. So I don't care what the name brand is, and if another brand pops up that provides a better utility not only would we switch without qualm, but doing so would be a few minutes work. Accordingly, I think the concern over "ten years from now" is a red herring.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:58, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
To use another example, why aren't we linking to WorldCat in "find sources"? IMHO, it's a way more reliable search engine for books and authors than Google; the difference is that Google links to actual content, where WorldCat merely gives extremely good information on where to find the works in a library. BusterD (talk) 01:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Another example of internet policy creep and effects thereof: Like many, I enjoy watching "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" online. I preferred online viewing because of the fewer commercials than cable TV. At first, I watched these shows on their respective Comedy Central websites linked from Viacom, and they inserted one commercial between the clips. Then they moved to two commercials. These days, there's a Comedy Central commercial at the top of the show, then a couple of commercials, then several (often as many of four) between the segments. Of course, I could watch on Hulu, and if I pay for HuluPlus, I can even watch on my mobile device. These days, the Viacom sites work less reliably, so I'm stuck with Hulu. I'm not saying Viacom is forcing me to use HuluPlus, but the trend is obvious, and not accidental. Let's apply this anecdotal analysis to my concern here: In my view, when Google has Wikipedia lined up exactly the way they like it, they could conceivably drop a paywall down, and our only option would be to remove the links we've applied on millions of articles, or put our users in the position of paying for access. Now one strategy for dealing with this is to "relax and enjoy it", and another might be to protest the Google campus, but the wrong approach would be to hold our hands over our eyes and ears and sing la-la-la. IMHO, ignoring the inevitable can't be considered a reasonable strategy. I'll concede my examples aren't precisely applicable, but close enough to demonstrate my concern. BusterD (talk) 02:42, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, if it works today, I'm not certain why we'd need to change it today. When things change, we can change things, this isn't controversial. Now, we still might want to change the way we're doing things, but the possibility of circumstances outside of our control changing in the future isn't a good thing to base changes here off of.
As for GBooks vs. WorldCat, generally the former is going to be more immediately useful in an AfD, where users might not be able to locate a copy of the book (suppose, for instance, that it's checked out) and a relevant passage in it within an AfD's seven day time limit. I'm also unsure of how useful WorldCat would be if I didn't already have a good idea of what I was looking for (i.e. book title, author, etc.). We should certainly make WorldCat more prominent and encourage its use to find sources (I wasn't aware of it until just now, for instance), but I'm not at all convinced of its utility for AfD specifically. We also ought to look into how both platforms choose their results, as two searches for the text "wikipedia censorship" (without quotes) returns 10 hits on WorldCat and about 1600 on GBooks, with none of the first page GBooks results being the 10 WorldCat results. Cheers. lifebaka++ 02:50, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Wow. I disagree violently that we should wait to respond to change even if we can see it coming down the road. To paraphrase R. Buckminster Fuller (I think from the beginning of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth): "Imagine you're on a boat at sea, and the boat sinks. Swimming around, you come across a piano lid, and you climb on. When the rescue comes, you're fine. You may feel strongly about your survival, you may even grow to have an attachment to the design. But just because the piano lid was successful in your situation doesn't mean it's the optimal design for a life preserver. That's what we do every day; we latch onto piano lids as we're swimming by. What we should do is think hard about such situations BEFORE they arise." (Sorry, Buck, if I've misinterpreted you. You know you're my main guy.) I don't disagree that Google provides a better product, but WorldCat is a valuable professional research tool available for free as well (at present), and shouldn't be disregarded as an essential search tool. Putting all our search eggs in one corporate basket is just foolish, given the history of the internet. (I'll confess to watching James Burke's Connections series on YouTube the last few weeks, so I've been thinking hard about the way the future will change the internet.) Hey, I may be wrong; but I could be channeling Willie Stark, too. BusterD (talk) 03:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
But... We don't see anything coming, right? That's rather the point. Of course, if we know something is likely to happen, we should prepare for it, but I don't see the point in making changes based on vague possibilities. I'm not aware of anything coming up that we'd need to adapt to, and I haven't seen you point out anything specific either. The OMfSE example is disingenuous, because on a seafaring ship you're perfectly aware of the possibility of falling into the water (for one reason or another), whereas you are asserting we should prepare for some vague and undefined possible future. I'm sorry if I didn't make my point clearly before. lifebaka++ 04:52, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
I'd say disingenuous is a poor choice of words, because (with no evidence but my own 22-year experience with the internet) I do imagine at least one Google profit-raising policy change coming in the next ten years, and probably more than one. That's what my NYT/Daily Show experience examples represent, a patient corporate ramp-up of profit-intended practice. Fuller's point was that we never consider these things at all until it's too late, then we grab onto the first available solution, or hang on more tightly to the ones we've used in the past, even if impractical. If consensus doesn't agree with my position, I can handle that. For my part, I'd prefer to be candid about what I see as red flags down the road instead of saying "I told you so" afterwards (my Willie Stark metaphor). Even now I'd say the mere appearance of gfavoritism improves their stock value. Are you saying we shouldn't consider investing in a poncho or an umbrella just because the weather looks fine today? BusterD (talk) 11:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
The search links are made by Template:Find sources which is also used in other places. There is a discussion from 2010 at Template talk:Find sources#Why only Google links? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:40, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Hasty nomination of new articles.

Case. A new editor creates at 12:30, in his first edit on the English Wikipedia, a new article. His next edit, also to the article, is at 12:32, adding an interwiki link. At 12:33, a second editor nominates the article for deletion, stating that "this is not a encyclopedic content". This case is not alone; I see such hasty nominations by new-page patrollers all the time. Although this article will probably kept (most recommendations are to keep it as being notable), such a hasty reaction is obviously demoralizing to most newcomers. Nominators should give new articles that may well still be under active development, especially if created by new editors, a fighting chance.

Currently, the page Wikipedia:Articles for deletion says, under Before nominating an article for deletion / C. Be aware that some pages should be improved rather than deleted:

2.  If the article was recently created, please consider allowing the contributors more time to develop the article.

Should, perhaps, this gentle exhortation be phrased more sternly? And might a generalization of {{uw-hasty}} to other forms of deletion be in order? It currently only covers speedy-deletion tagging.  --Lambiam 23:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be good if AfD nomination were made into a user right, a user right that wasn't too hard to acquire, but could be removed by an admin.  Right now there seems to be no feedback into the system for a variety of nomination issues.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I completely agree with the feeling that articles are being too agressively removed from Wikipedia. I was surprised to see that many of those nominating material for deletion have not contributed anything themselves. Looks like many here get their kicks from destroying contributions made by others? Ottawahitech (talk) 13:41, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I also came across an example recently where a lot of work had gone into the article, but the editors had not added it to any relevant wikiprojects (probably from lack of experience). The editors who are best qualified to assess the article may have no idea that it exists, let alone that it is being nominated for deletion. Nominators for AfD's should be required to make an effort to find appropriate projects and notify them. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:37, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

AfD templates and non-Latin names

A couple of recent AfDs have changed consensus recently from delete to keep once a speaker of the native language of the topic was above to provide the name of the topic in the native language for us to find references. The most recent example was Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Case_of_Arakcheev_and_Khudyakov, but I've seen them for Hindi and Arabic topics too. The issue seems to be largely restricted to names in non-Latin languages. Would it be possible to update the AfD templates so that alternative language names specified as per MOS:BOLDTITLE could be lifted out of the first sentence and placed in the google search query? If that's not possible, would it be possible for a bot to add extra google search queries? I'm aware that not all foreign topics include their local names and not all of those that include them have them formatted correctly, but I'm hoping for a virtuous circle of reinforcement here. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe articles proposed for deletion (not only AFDs) should be categorized first? Ottawahitech (talk) 12:17, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Linking proposal

You know how you open an individual AFD and at the top there's a link to the main AFD page? I was wondering that, since many people come to AFDs from the date page, if there should be a link not only to the main AFD page, but to the date page on which the AFD is posted Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 16:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Try the View log link: (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log). It uses <includeonly> and <noinclude> to switch between View AfD (on the daily log) and View log (on the individual AfD). Flatscan (talk) 05:27, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Movember is not part of No Shave November

Movember is its own entity, a 501 (c) (3) charity and not any part of No Shave November, a facial hair growing contest. Movember became an official charity in Melbourne Australia in 2004, and moved to the US, UK, and Canada in 2007. Although the Washington Post article mistakenly puts the two together, the two have never been connected. Movember is part of the Movember Foundation, which has no business or charitable connection to No Shave November. (96.251.72.119 (talk) 18:59, 2 November 2011 (UTC))

That may be a good point, however this is the wrong place to make it. You should instead raise these issues at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/No-Shave November. --Jayron32 19:08, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

B.2 says 'See "Sourcing search" below', but no such section (or text) exists. Ideally, this should be linked to something appropriate. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 09:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

At the top of every properly filed AFD should be a collection of links to various google searches. You can find it there. --Jayron32 15:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Mostly copy of another article?

Suffolk University Madrid Campus appears to have been done as a copy of Suffolk University some information changed that is unique to the main US campus but not much. Should this article be viewed as salvagable or is an AFD (or even a speedy) make sense?Naraht (talk) 02:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

You don't have to delete it. Just propse a merge to the parent article, per WP:MERGE. Less mess of a process. --Jayron32 02:14, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
Suffolk University Madrid Campus is indeed an unattributed copy of Suffolk University, with very small changes (cross-page diff). My opinion is that deleting to remove the attribution dependency and rewriting a stub if desired would be best. In terms of speedy deletion, A10 (duplicate article) doesn't seem to fit (the Madrid Campus is a distinct topic), and G12 (copyvio) will be accepted or rejected depending on the reviewing admin. Flatscan (talk) 05:46, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Converting to disambiguation page

From time to time, a participant in an AFD discussion will suggest converting the nominated article into a disambiguation page in lieu of deletion; and, sometimes, this suggestion will be implemented by the closing admin. Some of these proposals are appropriate; but, unfortunately, sometimes the proposers are unfamiliar with the disambiguation guidelines and don't realize that the disambiguation page they are proposing is inconsistent with those guidelines. WikiProject Disambiguation generally isn't aware of these proposals until after they have been implemented. Is there any way that the Disambiguation project could be notified whenever a proposal is made in an AFD discussion to convert an article to a disambig page? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:16, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

problem with AFD template/twinkle

Im noticing a problem with some of the AFDs I create via twinkle. It appears that somehow there are two AFD discussion pages getting created (or rather, a link may be pointing to the wrong page, so that a second one is later created by clicking the link?)


Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Body_Sensor_Networks (created automatically by twinkle, including my comment for nomination. Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Body_Sensor_Networks (apparently created by the user somehow, Im assuming via one of the links in the template. but I cant find where. )

Gaijin42 (talk) 05:13, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Ack! Sorry about that – blame me and Steven Walling. We're running an A/B test on PROD and AfD notices sent by Twinkle, and in the process of slashing some of the excess verbiage in the templates, I think we pruned one too many curly brackets and took out the {{{order|}}} code. Will put back in. Thanks for your vigilance and let me know if you experience any more problems! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 06:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I've updated the two current TW templates being tested -- {{AfD-notice-rand/new}} and {{AfD-notice-rand/default}} -- to match the linking syntax at {{AfD-notice}}. Please let me know if there are any further issues, or drop a note at WT:TW. Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC) I've just double checked the cases you're talking about, and it looks like the user just did that because they were confused. The only links back to that AFD talk page are from here where you linked to it, so it's not a template linking error. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
Ive had this happen to me on several previous AFDs. I cant believe there are that many people trying to create AFD pages manually to respond, when the link is right on the page. . Is it possible the link destination is changing somehow? Gaijin42 (talk) 23:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay so I just saw this happen on one of my AFD noms. However, I am still unsure because once again, when you check what links there, there is nothing... so I don't think it's a template link error. I suspect these editors are just confused because they're being invited to edit the AFD, but are used to leaving comments only on talk pages; they don't understand. If you want to look at the two templates in use they are link in comment above. You can also see live examples of their use if you look at what links to {{z81}} and {{z82}}, which are invisible tracking templates. If this continues, I may add a note in the new template that explicitly says not to go to the talk page. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Bot to correct new AfD's that weren't added to the log

I've been noticing a lot of AfD's being created recently that haven't been added to the daily log. Most of them are probably the result of a Twinkle bug that has been around for quite awhile, and seems to have flared up again. I'm looking for some input on whether it would be useful to have a bot which patrols new AfD's and checks that they've been added to the log page for the day. If not, it would add the AfD to the correct log page, and post a brief message on the AfD. Would that be useful? Are there any other useful tasks the bot could perform while it's patrolling the AfD's? —SW— chatter 18:12, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems like a useful idea, but I have some questions.Which day's log would it add the AfD to, the current one regardless of date of creation? (if so, then it should make a note in the AfD about the time of listing, particularly if it is on a later day's log) What will it do with AfD tags that lack discussions, AfD tags that point to old, closed discussions, AfD discussions for articles that are not tagged, and malformed AfD discussions? It could be more useful to create a tracking reports of newly created problem AfD discussions for human review, rather then just automatically transcluding them. There are already some reports, but they don't identify newly created discussions that are not transcluded, only old AfDs generally, and new ones that have a problem with the discussion, but that doesn't check transclusion status. Monty845 19:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
I think you bring up some good points. Initially, when the bot first starts running, it would likely find a number of AfD's that were not transcluded, and have been around for far longer than 7 days. These should probably just be added to the current day's log and given another 7 days, with a prominent note added to the AfD. However, after the bot has dealt with these AfD's and starts running continuously, this situation shouldn't happen anymore. Instead, the bot would patrol CAT:AFD, and check that any new articles which appear there have been transcluded to the appropriate log.
Your other comments bring up some other interesting tasks that the bot could perform. Here's what I would propose for the full task list of the bot so far:
Bot would automatically fix:
  • For AfD pages in Category:AfD debates which haven't been transcluded to the appropriate log, it would automatically transclude them.
  • For AfD pages in Category:AfD debates whose article hasn't been tagged with a deletion notice, it would automatically add a deletion notice.
Bot would compile a report for:
For the problems that the bot would automatically fix, the bot would wait some time (5 or 10 minutes, most likely) after the AfD page was created before attempting to fix the problem, to avoid stepping on the toes of a human that is just taking a bit longer than usual to complete all the steps.
Does anyone see any problems with any of these tasks? Is there already a bot out there which performs any of these tasks? Any other tasks that should be added? Thanks. —SW— express 22:16, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
As I wrote at AN/I, I think that User:DumbBOT used to fix the listings and leave a note on the AfDs. It hasn't done this for a while: see User:DumbBOT/IncompleteAfD (last updated July 2011) and User talk:DumbBOT#User:DumbBOT/IncompleteAfD. Flatscan (talk) 05:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
If Tizio is willing to restart his bot, then I'm ok with that. If not, I'd be happy to perform the task in DumbBOT's place. Someone has already left a question on User talk:DumbBOT about this task but hasn't received a response yet. —SW— confess 23:00, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Out of process AfD discussion

I believe this requires the attention of an administrator who is familiar with WP:Deletion policy. There is an out of process deletion discussion on-going at Talk:Dominik Halmosi/AfD discussion. Will somebody please close this discussion and then open AfD's for the 10 affected articles. Thank you. Dolovis (talk) 22:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I've closed the discussion and linked to the instructions for how to do it properly. Hut 8.5 22:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Page Deletion

I have already nominated page Basant Bhattarai for deletion. Why hasn't it come here and no one else is responding on the page ? KS700 (talk) 09:31, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

See WP:AFDHOWTO. You appear to have carried out step I, but step II does not appear to have been followed properly, and step III has not been followed at all. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:34, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Could you or anyone do all the remaining steps for me as i am having difficulty in doing it. KS700 (talk) 09:48, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done --Redrose64 (talk) 19:02, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Unneeded redirect

Hi, no big deal but someone might want to get rid of Earth's palarity. I don't think we need redirects from random typos/misspellings... 86.181.169.8 (talk) 03:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done. In the future, you can tag such redirects as {{db-r3}}, db (delete because) tags are used to tag pages for speedy deletion. A complete list of db tags and their rationales are listed at WP:CSD. --Jayron32 04:00, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

A serious discussion on Articles for Discussion?

If there was any doubt that AfD, at the moment, is a joke, the recent closure of the iOS version history AfD has removed it. It shows how bereft of actual discussion AfD is; of the thirty or so "keep" votes, about 80% of them used "keep, it's useful" or similar variants as the only reason for keeping an article that unquestionably violated WP:NOT at the time of its nomination (and would still fail under the proposed change to the guideline) and could not be reasonably edited to a state where it wouldn't fail NOT.

Part of the reason why AfD doesn't work as well as it should do is because, despite the process page saying it's not, it's more or less an up-or-down vote on retention, and not focused on article improvement. The point-scoring attitude is probably one of the more toxic things about the current AfD, and would be greatly reduced by a move to a more discussion-based AfD. There's also a potential problem with people claiming that a "keep" at AfD means that all content in the article must stay in that article; if I were to attempt to pare down the iOS version history page to better satisfy NOT, I'd probably meet a lot of resistance for that reason.

I'm aware that this is a perennial proposal, but I feel that we should seriously discuss how to improve AfD, especially as the last serious discussion was actually in favour of doing such a thing. I've posted specifics below so as not to break RfC. Wikipedia is nearing 11 years of age, and I think we should depart from what has degraded back into VfD-lite in favour of actual article improvement. Sceptre (talk) 01:21, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Basically, I envision combining the merge and deletion processes, as most of these proposals do, along with some minor processes such incubation. All of the standards of the current AfD would remain in place, but editors could then make actual specific comments of required improvements; incubation, a source check, merging, et cetera. Of course, deletion would still require a concrete majority consensus to do so. Added 00:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC): Non-administrators, where a solid consensus existed and admin tools weren't needed, could close discussions after a consensus was needed

I'm not convinced that there will be too much of a workload, either. Current-AfD constitutes around 90% of the deletion-and-merging process discussion, so bringing the remaining 10% in wouldn't make a drastic change; indeed, by removing the toxic AfD voting culture, it would inspire more people to participate. Sceptre (talk) 01:21, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

  • The AFD which led Sceptre to make a proposal for modifying the AFD process is an example of what belongs at deletion review. Did he take it there? It was full of "It's useful" and "People worked hard on it," which should have been ignored by the closing admin, along with "It's full of info you can't find elsewhere," which is in fact a strong reason for deletion. The closing admin does not generally announce a vote count as determinative of the Keep or Delete decision, and I have seen AFDs with evenly split !vote count closed as delete if the keep arguments are as weak as in this case. It also was not kept open for the full period. Placing a "merge" tag on an article sometimes works, but such an action does not draw very widespread attention and is easily thwarted by a couple of editors who like having a separate article about some minor aspect of something. "Merge" is a common outcome of AFD as is, without any "fix" of AFD. Not all merges should have to go through AFD. If the system is not broken, then instruction creep is not needed to fix it, so I say leave well enough alone. The AFD instructions already mention the possibility of listing a controversial proposed merge at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers. The instructions also mention outcomes of redirecet, rename, userfy, or transwiki. Edison (talk) 02:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
    My concerns with the current structure of AfD, however, go beyond that AfD. It's an endemic problem. Sceptre (talk) 16:45, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Sceptre, have you considered that the problem with that AFD was not in the !votes or the close but by a lack of strong nomination? You linked to a policy and said "This is what the article is" and then proceeded to nominate two other articles. Had to written a well thought out, heavily policy backed, thorough nomination statement, you might've received a different result. As it was written, it appears to me you expected folks to agree with a "Per nom" and you didn't think anyone in their right mind could disagree with you.--v/r - TP 18:59, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
It's not just that AfD. Too often, AfD is seen as an up-or-down vote on existence and articles which violate policy often get kept but the content that violates policy remains because a lot of people aren't bothered to actually fix problems (this is actually where Conservapedia has a decent principle (which they don't follow, natch) in the 90/10 rule: less navel gazing on ANI, more article writing). For example, Chronology of the Doctor Who universe is at AfD for the second time, after the first AfD was closed with "keep, but the sourcing problems need to be sorted out in the medium term". After nearly two years, the article hasn't been improved; if anything, the quality has got even worse. An "Articles for discussion" process would be better served to article improvement than "Articles for deletion" ever would; surely, we can have quality as well as quantity. (Also, that article violated the letter of NOT in such an obvious way it's not funny; you wouldn't delete a solely libellious article until someone showed exactly where it was, you'd just delete it) Sceptre (talk) 23:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I love the idea of Articles for Discussion. Let's do it this way. We'll create these things we'll call "Discussion" pages for every article and whenever someone wants to discuss the article they can use this hidden discussion page. Even better, if they need input from more users, we'll create an RFC template for them to add to draw users into a discussion. We'll even create a "ref improve" template to place at the top of the article so folks browsing know it needs refs.--v/r - TP 00:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Cute, but not helping. Discussion pages are sorely underused, and a red/purple-fringed template is going to help more than a talk page. Articles for discussion should be a community process that recommends deletion, merging or community cleanup, like the various other XfDs have done since going the "for discussion" way. Votes for Deletion hasn't existed for six years, because the community didn't like the idea of voting to delete an article (and still doesn't). However, "X for deletion" in any form encourages voting, which is why a lot of processes went "for deletion" in the first place. Sceptre (talk) 00:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Just as a note, when an article has zero deletion !votes, it doesn't matter how many are "It's Useful" (which is part of an essay, not a policy, I'll also note), it's not going to get a supervote to delete. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
The correct thing to do would be (in order of appropriateness) to relist, to close as "no consensus and cleanup", or to close as "keep but cleanup". "Speedy keep" was completely inappropriate for AfD. Sceptre (talk) 00:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
It's not just about merges. In practice,we already do resolve the major merge problems at AfD. It's also the general atmosphere. The proper question most of the time is "what are we to do with this article", about which we then collect opinions, and find something most of us can live with. Making this a dichotomy hinders the attempts at compromise. It encourages unreasoning me-toos. It encourages the complementary attitudes of keep/delete everything. It causes false conflicts between the ideas of following consensus, and of following policy, which ought in a proper discussion to be identical. It encourages bitterness and divisions within the community. I suspect some of those who want to keep this a dichotomy might consciously or unconsciously do so because they positively enjoy the conflict. If there's two things we need less of at Wikipedia , it's conflict -- and spam. Spam gets mostly dealt with at Speedy. We can handle that, and have standards we all generally agree with. The ones that need to come here are the ones where there are several reasonable views on a matter, and there are two goals in dealing with them: protecting the integrity of Wikipedia article content, and encouraging proper editing, good editors, and civility. Personally, I think trying for compromise each time will lead to clearer deletions of what must be deleted, and perhaps fewer non-consensus, because we should generally be able to agree on something. DGG ( talk ) 02:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I've also noticed that merge discussions, even for articles which have a large throughput, don't attract that much discussion. The article YouTube (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) had a merge-from template for two weeks but the discussion only had one comment. On the other hand, AfDs get a load of discussion: the aforementioned iOS version history AfD had about thirty comments from newbies and veterans alike. Sceptre (talk) 00:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
  • There are three of fundamental questions that we try and use one process to address, to the detriment of either:
    • Should this be in the encyclopedia at all? That is, does it fail WP:NOT in some way, or otherwise violate our standards in such a manner that saving, rewriting, or merging is inappropriate.
    • If so, does this material meet our content standards? Here, we find the discussions centering around V, N, the GNG and triviality of RS'es. Somewhat in parallel, the answer to these informs the third question:
    • How should this be presented? Assuming the answer to the first two questions is yes, it then becomes a more nuanced question of how we should present things: List, category, both? Standalone article or merged into a bigger topic? Does one section need to be trimmed per UNDUE, or can the rest of the article be beefed up to match it? These are the editorial questions. Jclemens (talk) 06:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
  • In general, I oppose funneling all merges through an AFD like process. Merges can be done and undone (reverted) by any editor, even anonymous editors. The process is therefore part of what I would term "regular editing" and we should avoid wrapping that process in red tape. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
    I agree. In fact, one wonders why deletion is treated differently from other editorial decisions. If we're going to radically overhaul deletion process, then the WP:PERENial proposal we should be considering is WP:PWD. :-) causa sui (talk) 23:34, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Open AfDs

  • There are a lot of post 7-day open AfDs just sitting around for an admin to close. Some may be "controversial," but the calls aren't really that hard. I could start IAR NAC closing them if we want extra drama?--Milowent • talkblp-r 14:27, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
If they can be closed without the use of tools, I've personally always supported NACs.--v/r - TP 14:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Is it possible that the reason for the backlog is the (too) large number of AFDs that are being started in the first place. Does anyone have any statistics on the number of AFDs over time? Ottawahitech (talk) 13:45, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
  • I have statistics on the number of articles deleted through AfD. Apart from a large spike in mid-2009 the number has stayed roughly constant at 1500-2000 deletions per month since early 2008. This is surprising since the total number of deletions of all types declined considerably over that period. If it's taking too long to close AfDs then I would blame a lack of closers since the number of active administrators has been in decline for some time now. Hut 8.5 15:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I see some statistics posted at User:Hut 8.5 - but it is not clear if those statistics are general to Wikipedia or only to this particular administrator. Shouldn't these types of statistics be available for scrutiny to the general Wikipedian public? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:20, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing the numbers split by type of process, i.e., AFD vs CSD vs PROD vs none of the above (admin nuked on first sight). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, me too, not only a breakdown by AFD/CSD/PROD but also other deletions such as admin nuked at first sight AND re-directs that are sometimes being used as a sneaky way to get rid of information. Ottawahitech (talk) 12:55, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Request for Deletion/Merger - Don Hickman

There seems to be two pages for the same person named "Don Hickman". There is the first page, Don Hickman, which was set for deletion and was contested. There is also a second page Don Hickman (newscaster) which was approved as an article. Can either the first article be removed or be merged into the other article? Mr Xaero (talk) 18:31, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that you mention that at the existing AFD, which is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Don Hickman. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:56, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

New Template

Hello, I've designed a very useful (it is of course also space-efficent and visually pleasing) new template that displays links to recent AfD logs. To see of an example of what it looks like, see the 11/21 log here (it's the first one on the page). I am looking for a consensus to put this template on the top of all log pages of AfD's for a particular day. I encourage people to take a look at its code (I've triple-checked it but new eyes are always good). I hope others agree with me that this template would be a valuable addition to the log pages as an added, unobtrusive convenience. Thanks,  M   Magister Scientatalk (21 November 2011)

Looks good. My only beef with it is the improper apostrophe in "AfD's", which should be "AfDs" because it's not a possessive. Other than that, I like it. jcgoble3 (talk) 04:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Good to hear. Thanks for spotting that error, I promptly changed all the wording to "AfDs" and moved the name of the template and its subpages (including its documentation page). The template is now called Template:Recent AfDs. Cheers, Magister Scientatalk 22:05, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

First name disambigations - deletion of

Please see my comments at Template_talk:Given_name#Too_much_disambiguation.3F. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 23:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Srivatsa Ramaswami proposed for deletion

The article Srivatsa Ramaswami appears to not meet the notability criteria for a Wikipedia article. Please consider this for deletion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KeithS77 (talk • contribs) 03:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Please follow all the steps listed at WP:AFDHOWTO. I see that you've previously tried to do this but only completed step I (adding {{subst:afd1}} to the article page), which was reverted after three hours because the remaining steps had not been carried out. You'll need to do that again, and then steps II and III must be followed as well. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Sierra McCormick

I believe that this actress is notable, and was deleted a bit too hasty. She does pass WP:ENT, as stated by several others. Tinton5 (talk) 16:00, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:DELETE#Deletion review. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
The subject has already been put through deletion review: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 June 23. Tinton5 simply feels that the subject was unjustly deleted. Furthermore, the original AFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sierra McCormick, clearly shows a consensus was not met. Wizardman (talk · contribs) (the deleting administrator) deleted it from his discretion when "no consensus" should have been the final answer, not deletion. Perhaps putting it through Deletion review, yet again is needed now. If it is overturned, I recommend using this draft: User:Jaxsonista/Sierra McCormick. QuasyBoy 18:45, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
If you have a sourced draft which you believe determines notability then take it to deletion review and try to get a consensus there to unprotect the page. Posting here isn't going to help you at all. Hut 8.5 18:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
DRV is not necessary, when additional improvements have been made such that the editor placing the content back in mainspace believes in good faith that, due to subsequent improvements, deletion rationale no longer applies. We don't do prior restraint on article recreation except in a rather limited set of circumstances. Jclemens (talk) 05:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Article Belén Estévez

I believe that the article Belén Estévez should be deleted because in the Spanish page was deleted for being irrelevant. Is falsely called a professional dancer. She's just a disco dancer and contestant --MarioNone (talk) 00:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

See WP:AFDHOWTO for instructions on how to nominate an article for deletion. —SW— talk 00:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like to request the deletion of the page "Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs"

I would like to formally request the complete deletion of the page "Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs" as it is completely filled with blatant lies and half truth's and is not written from a NPOV and I feel that this page is in such bad shape that it cannot be realistically corrected. The information it pretends to attempt to provide is readily available from other, more reliable sources and to simply battle those with an agenda against Jehovah's Witnesses in a constant battle of reverting the page is a fruitless endeavor. The page is well beyond inaccurate and therefore provides no real meaningful information that could be of benefit to those seeking accurate information and should therefore be deleted immediately72.152.65.231 (talk) 19:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

While the IP's assertions may be a bit over the top, I am concerned that this page is sourced mostly to WP:PRIMARYSOURCES, rather than secondary analyses. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
The sources this IP user is complaining about come overwhelmingly from his own religious beliefs. I have yet to see him address any potential solutions, even though I EXPLICITLY asked him too. Vyselink (talk) 20:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
On a separate issue, is it necessary for this to be a separate page from Jehovah's Witnesses? Most other pages have a description of the belief system embedded within the main page on the religion itself (e.g. Lutheranism#Doctrine, Roman_Catholicism#Doctrine, Buddhism#Buddhist_concepts, Shia_Islam#Beliefs). I know this sounds like an other-stuff-exists argument, but it seems more appropriate on the main page, and does not seem too large (relative to the other pages) to merge it there. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 20:54, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I would be fine with a merge when/if that subject comes up (it is a great idea). For this page, I still have yet to get any rational, reasoned response from the IP user as to why the article should be deleted, other than some vague references to the "group" that I am supposedly a part of, and the "lies and innuendo" that are on the page. I have a feeling that as soon as the IP user discovers the main JW page, we are going to have some serious problems there. Vyselink (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

A deletion nomination along the lines of "this page is biased" is extremely unlikely to succeed unless the nominator can demonstrate that any article at this title is also biased, which here is obviously not the case. Deletion is for problems that cannot be fixed, not problems that can. From their comments at the article talk page the IP seems to believe that the article is strongly biased against Jehovah's Witnesses and that a neutral/accurate article would simply link to the official website, and I suspect that their objections are rooted in religious beliefs. Such objections are unlikely to be taken into account. Hut 8.5 22:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

This editor has made few or no contributions

Is there any particular reason for adding this note after people sign their posts properly in the discussion of an article for deletion using the four tildes? If you don't mind my saying so (and even perhaps if you do) it seems like the very sort of elitist snobbish behavior Wikipedia is being accused of around the net. "Well, you're not a regular contributor, so your opinion doesn't count." Well who would want to become one with an attitude like that? It doesn't seem like Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, it's the encyclopedia anyone can contribute to, but only some people can edit, and most likely your contribution will be judged to not be relevant by people who think their college degree is worth more than yours (even though some of today's most successful business men don't even have one) and deleted. It almost seems like you might as well just close up shop and not ask people to contribute, because if you're not part of the Wiki editorial elite, no one cares what you think or write. 68.225.171.64 (talk) 17:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

See WP:SPA. It explains the purpose and reasoning for its use. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that it's the sock infested Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bellator 55 that prompted this. I've looked at it and it appears that the SPA tag on 68.225.171.64,s !vote was the only one that wasn't justified. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:55, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

People only call other users a sock to justify the rationale for their unpopular decisions. If something gets the notice of the public and the public objects, oh, well we can't be individual human beings with our own informed opinion on a deletion - we must be sock puppets. Wikipedia arrogance once again. 68.225.171.64 (talk) 23:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
I'll speak frankly and avoid wrapping these things in public relations smokescreens. The fact is that we tend to discount votes coming from people with few or no contributions to Wikipedia because such contributors are more likely to have a vested interest using Wikipedia as a mere means to some other end. That is, their contribution to the discussion is very likely seeking to influence it for some purpose other than improving the encyclopedia. If you're not contributing exclusively for the sake of making Wikipedia better, your contributions get extra scrutiny, and may have less weight. causa sui (talk) 19:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
And... unless the contribution is policy based anyway, its extremely unlikely that any closing admin will take account of them anyway. Its the policy based arguments and established users that influence the outcomes. Sorry but we aren't here to be hijacked for special/minority interest groups who are not part of the effort to build an encyclopaedia. Spartaz Humbug! 19:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Well said, 68.225.171.64! "...you might as well just close up shop and not ask people to contribute, because if you're not part of the Wiki editorial elite, no one cares what you think or write"
With respect, I disagree. Some ips do fine work, and some new editors do as well, and we have editors who have been around for years who are pretty marginal, likely myself included. But someone inexperienced has less of a chance to be successful in AFD discussions--those discussion are often rather heated arguments, and more attention is paid to arguments informed by policy. If you feel rebuffed there, my suggestion would be to do some work in less contentious venues to get a feel for the place, or just lurk until you see how it works. FWIW. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:30, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Or just register an account. It's really not that difficult. It would prevent your posts from being marked with {{spa}}, and it actually provides you with more privacy when compared to editing anonymously. For instance, when you edit "anonymously", I can tell from your IP that you're editing from a DSL connection provided by Cox Communications, and you're probably located somewhere near Omaha, Nebraska. The only information you get when I edit is that my username is "Snottywong", and anything other info you find out about me is what I choose to reveal. —SW— spill the beans 02:53, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Response to: "If you feel rebuffed there, my suggestion would be to do some work in less contentious venues to get a feel for the place or just lurk ...":

Yes, I could become a professional wiki-politician by spending most of my precious free time (lurking and learning) in these endless deletion discussions, but I prefer to spend my time building content on Wikipedia, sigh... Ottawahitech (talk) 21:10, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Notice after AfD closing

When an AfD closes, the following message is posted on the AfD page:

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

After a discussion I was involved with, I wonder if it might be better to clarify the parenthetical phrase as follows:

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page if the article still exists, or in a deletion review if the article has been deleted). No further edits should be made to this page.

By adding "if the article still exists" and "if the article has been deleted", this notice will be less ambiguous for readers unfamiliar with our deletion process. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Have we done that yet? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Request for Deletion - Star pirates

To comply with the process outlined in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion this is a request that someone else complete the process (subst:afd1 was added and reasons were given on the talk page of the article). Thank you. Article in question is Star_Pirates. Also to note from the article history: <a href="/enwiki/wiki/User:%CE%A3" title="User:Σ" class="mw-userlink">Σ</a> already questioned for deletion, but no discussion was strated and the AFD was removed unproperly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.217.109.248 (talk) 16:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Improving AFD debates

I have been concerned for some time that the quality of AFD discussions hasn't kept pace with a clearer enforcement of our inclusion standards and this leads to a lot of unnecessary relists and will result, as participation continues to decline, in the process becoming even more arbitrary and confusing. That's if AFD doesn't end up breaking from a lack of policy based contributions. My view is that we need to improve understanding of what is or is not a policy based vote to improve the quality of debate. This will result in fewer relists, more consistent outcomes and allow the process to continue to work in the future. I'm proposing that AFD regulars who close and relist discussions explain which votes they counted and why and offer direction when they relist to make what's needed clearer. I started (yeah, its awful and needs lots of work) an essay to explain the process as above and would welcome any comments or feedback that anyone has on this. Spartaz Humbug! 18:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Not to throw a wrench in the gears, but isn't policy supposed to be a reflection of what people have found persuasive at AFD, and not the other way around? If people in AFD are forced to make arguments rooted in existing policy, then this may create a feedback loop where the AFD discussions are seen as a tacit reconfirmation of static policy that cannot be changed because any alteration in practice will be seen as invalid since it deviates from policy, and any alteration in policy will be rejected because it deviates from practice. causa sui (talk) 19:11, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
No I don't think that's going to be the case. We have already seen a shift away from SNGs toward the GNG for BLPs as a result of wider community views on the need to source BLPs and I think this happened because admins were sensitive to the wider discussions on this. This could have been an issue 4-5 years ago but our inclusion standards are pretty well established now and I doubt that we can expect any significant seismic shifts in policy that don't reflect wider community concerns. My personal view is that the next direction of change will involve further deprecation of the SNGs where sources haven't been found and this is going to follow from the continual drift towards hardening our referencing and that's going to follow policy based arguments from users about why they feel the sngs don't match wider expectations. The depreciation of PORNBIO - which DRV now refuses to enforce - was a direct result of users putting up stronger policy based arguments that refuted the SNG in favour of BLP/Sourcing and arguing that previously cited sources were in fact worthless. I think admins can still weight competing policies properly in this way and documenting which votes reflect policy and which were discards will, if anything, accelerate the process by making it easier to document where policies are competing. Spartaz Humbug! 19:23, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the considered reply. While your view has some considerable experience and thought behind it, I am not comfortable with deciding beforehand that future discussions on policy should be pre-empted by us through a practice that prevents them from even taking place. There is no room for IAR here, which is a crucial backdoor to breaking up and reforming policies that have grown stale and no longer reflect deeper sophistication.
I feel like it's useful to have the expectation that people will base their arguments in policy, because this helps ensure some consistency from one subject to another. But people who step outside policy should be taken seriously if they can, at the same time, provide a good argument for why an exception should be made in a particular case. This practice seems to not only close that door, but weld it shut. causa sui (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
My intent is not to change the way that we close AFDs but to demystify the process and enable users to understand the weighting of the votes more easily so that they next time they participate they can focus their contribution more effectively. I do personally tend to follow straight down the GNG so maybe the way I have expressed this lacks nuance but the last thing I would want to do is remove the closing admin's ability to weight competing arguments. Maybe we need to reflect this in the essay and make it clear that its the weighting of the arguments that we are after rather then using the term policy so pointedly. I'm away to bed but will think on this and I'm happy for you to make changes/propose alternative wordings if you think that would make the intent clearer. Spartaz Humbug! 20:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm in full agreement with causa sui on the idea that the possibility of using WP:IAR in a reasonable manner feels near-impossible. I tried to argue using WP:IAR in this AfD recently, and I felt essentially laughed off the AfD, like the idea of using WP:IAR seriously is a complete joke and waste of everybody's time. You can argue that I didn't use it in an optimal circumstance, but I argued my case as best as I saw it. I don't have any particular opinion about whether the WP:GNG or WP:SNG should be treated with more weight, but seems harmful that 1) There is a general reluctance of AfD participants to ignore rules when they seem inappropriate in a given situation, and 2) That the need to make policy-based arguments seems to overshadow WP:IAR so much that it is hardly considered an option. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 20:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
I can understand your point of view but wouldn't you want to explain in the close that you closed under IAR against policy because of whatever the reason was? If you don't, I guarantee a quick trip to DRV which is a pretty unsympathetic audience when it comes to perceived supervotes and the policy based voters whose votes you discarded also deserve an explanation of why their contributions were given less weight. Spartaz Humbug! 05:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Also, Spartaz, I'm not an admin, but would be more than happy to look over your essay, because AfD is where I find myself spending most of my time when editing. If you would prefer that I not change anything, that's fine, but I would like to see what direction you are heading in and can give you my own feedback. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 20:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Spartaz seems to focus upon the notability guideline. Note that this is not a policy, despite multiple attempts to promote it. Changes to AFD should therefore not be made with this particular object in mind. As for relisting, this seems to happen too often nowadays. My impression is often that articles are relisted to try to achieve a result for which there is not currently consensus. If admins only close when they get the result they favour, then this would be an abuse of the process. For a fresh example of debatable relisting, see List of allergies. This is a topic which has massive notability and the discussion so far does not indicate that there is likely to be a consensus to delete. That discussion should have been closed so that ordinary editing and talk page discussion could take place without the constraints and chilling effect of AFD. What seems to be needed in that case are some structural changes and AFD gets in the way of such change because some editors freak out if you try changing the title of an article or take other bold initiatives while it is at AFD. Warden (talk) 23:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
    I can't speak for others, but 99% of the time I'm working AFDs, I'm just mopping the floor and could barely care less what result comes through. Often I will relist an article when there have been fewer than two or three !votes, or when someone near the end of the discussion has made substantial improvements or offered a persuasive rationale that should be taken into account. This may create the appearance of "relisting to get the right result" when I am only trying to get more opinions on a plausible and interesting line of thought that was added near the end of a discussion.
    In this particular case, recall that Spartaz could have closed the debate as delete instead of relisting, if he found the keep side unpersuasive. Instead, he extended the discussion. Since it had not been previously relisted, I don't think this is something to make much hay over. I would suggest that since you want the article to be kept, you may be disappointed that the discussion was not closed as keep at the time when it seemed to be tilting that way. Your disappointment is understandable, but getting more opinions doesn't seem like a terrible thing there. In fact, it looks like some editors have chimed in with significant viewpoints since the relist, which would not have been available to the closing administrator had he closed it right away. causa sui (talk) 00:07, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
  • The conventional wisdom is that this process is not a vote: that it is the quality of argument which counts. WP:DGFA states emphatically, "When in doubt, don't delete." If a discussion has some significant contribution which is sufficient to provide enough doubt that the matter should be relisted then this seems sufficient to just close the discussion instead because that doubt will remain. The worst outcome is to keep the discussion open for an extended period. In cases of doubt, you will then get the Keeps and Deletes lining up against each in an adversarial way which is contrary to WP:BATTLEGROUND. This is what is happening in the allergy case where we now have absurd delete !votes coming in claiming that everything is an allergen. Me, I'm allergic to AFD - it's a bad process and that's why it is in decline. The best plan is to get discussions closed swiftly and then interested parties can take the matter forward on the article talk page. If that doesn't work out then editors have the option of relisting at some future date by nominating the article again (the allergy case is nomination #2). Warden (talk) 11:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, I'd say the real disease causing the symptoms you describe is the binding nature of an AFD. Contrary to your analysis, I think that it's critical to get the AFD right, and spend as much time as necessary to get it right, because once the debate is closed it is quite hard to get it reversed. I think this is what motivates the endless relisting at AFD, not any nefarious motive to "rig the election." No other editorial content discussions are held to bind future interested parties in the way that AFD does, which puts us in this double-bind of (a) not wanting to let AFD debates drag on forever and (b) wanting to get it right every time. It's another argument for pure wiki deletion in my view, but I'm in a big minority there. It seems that we at least agree that radical reform is needed, but since it doesn't seem to be in the cards, we have to work within the system as is. causa sui (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

drive-by !votes

I ran across an interesting pattern of !voting that is related to this discussion. See this diff and this diff.  100 AfD !votes, 97% rate of delete !votes.  5 AfD nominations all resulting in keep.  Whatever is going on here (a psychology experiment?), can we agree that this is a problem for the community?  What should be done to detect such patterns of !voting earlier?  Unscintillating (talk) 05:11, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

  • The point of this exercise is to highlight weak/low weight votes to give contributors a chance to learn how to do them better. Naming and shaming a user on a high traffic talk page is not a good way to help educate that user to increase the weight of their contributions. This process is not the ceremonial AFD ducking stool so perhaps you should find a more appropriate venue. Maybe using the user's talk page with a less aggressively critical tone would be better? Spartaz Humbug! 05:20, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Actually, what we are talking about is not a user but the community response.  I respect you and I have told you so repeatedly.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure where I implied that I suggested you didn't respect me but thanks for the vote of thanks. The point I'm obviously struggling to make today is that this is essentially a light-touch process designed to gently chivvy editors towards better contributions but one possible outcome as the process develops could be for closing admins to provide more direct feedback to users persistantly making weak arguments and that could address the kind of thing you have raised here. Spartaz Humbug! 07:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Rethinking "AfD"

I tend to think that we're asking the wrong question--"should this be kept or deleted?" is often a clearcut argument only when certain CSD criteria apply. "How should the information that the article authors are trying to convey be presented within Wikipedia?" is a better, intentionally non-boolean, approach. This is the essence of WP:ATD--if it belongs somewhere, we should put it there, often by (up-) merging, removing inappropriate content, etc. The easy decisions are the obvious keeps and speedies; the rest of the decisions can often benefit from non-boolean discussions and outside-the box thinking, because the best way to improve the encyclopedia is often something other than "keep" or "delete". That is, we should be thinking of systemic improvements rather than fine tuning a process designed to answer an only occasionally appropriate question. Jclemens (talk) 05:34, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The first step towards accomplishing this would be to rename, Articles for discussion, and to provide it specifically as the step for resolution of merges where it proves impossible to get clear consensus on the relevant talk pages. There's an interesting current case at Deletion Review here of an appeal from RfD, which illustrates the confusion between the different ways to deal with article problems, and shows how a unified approach would be better. It's the binary nature of keep.delete which causes the problems. For about one quarter of the material that comes to AfD, there really would be another solution if we really wanted a solution, not a binary decision. For non-notable people and businesses, there will often be no other solution than deletion, but for non-notable products and nonprofit organizations there's usually the potential for a merge or redirect somewhere, and for almost anything more abstract than those, there's almost always such a potential. DGG ( talk ) 00:10, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Link to daily log: WP:Deletion review/Log/2011 December 7#Duff (d.967). Flatscan (talk) 05:13, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Renaming the venue seems like more of a semantic change than a substantive one. Each article already has its own discussion page, why would anyone need to start another "Articles for discussion" page for the article? Adding merge discussions and renaming discussions to AfD would just bloat it with a lot more nominations, stretch the already limited contributors (both voters and closers) even thinner, and just generally make it more difficult to maintain. Considering that deletion is the fate of more than 50% of articles brought to AfD (see these recent AfD stats posted earlier today), "Articles for deletion" seems an apt name.
I agree, however, that articles can often benefit from a non-Boolean decision. This already happens with some regularity, but could be improved. The problem is that sometimes this requires someone who has some familiarity with the topic. If you have no idea what (2+1)-dimensional topological gravity is, chances are you also don't know of a good place to merge it to. Many experienced contributors will often look for places to merge material or possible redirect targets before voting to delete. The goal should be to encourage less experienced contributors to do the same, and to encourage closing admins to look for such suggestions and seriously consider them, even if a minority of voters didn't specifically state that they agree with the alternative idea. I think this is a place where closing admins have some room for creativity.
If we're looking for more thorough and thoughtful participation at AfD, one way to create favorable conditions would be to reduce the number of articles that are nominated for deletion. If regular AfD contributors weren't continuously drinking from the fire hose, they'd be more likely to take a bit more time investigating the article. The hard part, of course, is figuring out how to reduce the number of AfD's. One idea was to reduce the number of poor quality articles which are created on a daily basis, but that idea was shot down by individuals above my pay grade. —SW— confer 00:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
The biggest thing about being at AFD is twofold: you get a unique subpage for that discussion that is usually easy to find, and thanks to the volunteers of the sorting project, the discussion is posted at one or more categorized discussion pages. Discussions about upmerging, splitting, trimming, and various other aspects that technically require no admin bit to complete normally are discussed at the article's talk page but often lead to discussions of only people interested in that specific topic. If there was a way to have "Articles for Discussion" to have the same sub-page nature and have those categorized into the deletion-sorting pages, there would be a lot more input into how best to collect information into a topic. I don't know how best to do that without disrupting the core AFD process, but this is a possibility. --MASEM (t) 01:07, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
We should be careful about making assumptions like that. With the current pool of voters at AfD, today's AfD currently averages less than 4 votes per discussion. If we added an extra 20 merge/renaming discussions to AfD every day and didn't increase the number of voters (or the amount of time they spend voting every day), then that average will go down, which is counterproductive to our stated goals of improving the quality of discussions. There's a valid school of thought which says that merge/move/split/trim discussions should be undertaken primarily by editors who are interested/knowledgeable in that specific topic. —SW— comment 01:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with User:Snottywong's comments. The question being asked at AFD is whether to delete or not. That's a simple question because a topic has to be quite worthless to be deleted and this is usually easy to decide. Keep is the converse of this but is much more complex because there are so many options when we choose to keep a topic as topics are commonly interwined with other topics and so issues of merger and scope are somewhat arbitrary. For an example of how editors can exhaust themselves arguing about the detail of a notable topic, see Yogurt/Yoghurt/Yoghourt. AFD has a lot to do — ~ 100 article/day — and is poorly attended. Its scope should therefore be tightly constrained to the question of whether to delete or not, i.e. is the topic completely worthless? Warden (talk) 12:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

From the /FAQ, which all of you ought to have read several dozen times by now: Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 64/FAQ Basically, unless you're willing to merge the enormous volume of AFDeletions with the substantial volume of merge proposals and page move discussions—something that I'm personally not willing to contemplate—then a name/scope change is a bad idea. Furthermore, renaming it to "articles for discussion" is likely to result in newbies confusing it with RFC, Peer review, and general discussion processes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The thing is, it's not an unpopular proposal. Most people agree that the "X for deletion" concept is outdated, hence why this is one of the only processes that keeps it, it's just that changing it comes up against inertia. Looking at the other two processes, AfD outnumbers the other two combined. And really, part of the problem with AfD is the culture that's been bred due to the process being shaped in recent years to refuse to discuss content problems. Widening the scope would remove this culture. Sceptre (talk) 13:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carter-Ruck

Non-notable person. Article should be deleted or merged with the article on 'Carter-ruck' as Peter_Carter-ruck started a law firm so does not need two articles. Hes not notable for any other reason than being a lawyer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.96.46.187 (talk) 00:12, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Wrong venue, please comment here. Hut 8.5 11:49, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
(...and he's pretty notable!) Rich Farmbrough, 14:13, 11 December 2011 (UTC).

Advertisment

Illyriad is an advertisment, but they have people reverting nominations. ViezeRick (talk) 11:47, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Miss Hannah Minx

I discovered this page yesterday and it clearly does not meet the notability guidelines. I initially tagged the article, but decided today to nominate it for deletion, as it clearly did not meet the criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia. The article is about a non-notable YouTube personality, and the only sources listed are the persons YouTube page. However, after I added the deletion tag, I discovered that the article was already nominated and deleted 2010 with full consensus, and has apparently been re-added. Anyone know what to do about this?--Metalhead94 T C 19:52, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Pages which have been deleted through AfD and subsequently recreated can be tagged for speedy deletion using {{db-g4}}. I've sorted this particular case out. Hut 8.5 19:55, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Iraq withdrawal benchmarks

This article was supposed to be constantly updated over time but was abandoned in 2007. Now that the war is officially over, it is essentially useless. Speedy delete or AfD?--Coin945 (talk) 10:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It can't be speedied: it doesn't meet any of the criteria for speedy deletion. If you want it to be deleted you'll have to AfD it. Hut 8.5 11:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't necceserily want it to be deleted... I just think it is worthy of AfD.. :)--Coin945 (talk) 11:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
If you nominate at AfD without wanting it to be deleted, then it will likely be speedily kept per WP:SK reason 1. If you are asking for others opinions on whether the article is still worthwhile, then the article talk page and or the talk page of a relevant WikiProject (in this case Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Iraq) are the best places to get such feedback. Thryduulf (talk) 13:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks--Coin945 (talk) 23:47, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Pink Panther Mass Deletion

So, I have been involved in two previous AFDs resulting in the redirection of quite a few animated episodes.


both of these processes resulted in redirecting all of the episodes to either the show or "list of episodes" as non notable, all episodes using the same single source, and all having copy and paste content.

The first AFD completely redirected all episodes for The Inspector and The Ant and the Aardvark, and a handful of episodes for The Pink Panther (The panther episodes in particular were nominated in both AFDs, as some other editors were of the opinion that the first AFD process did not have consensus to redirect those particular episodes)

In general these AFD processes went very smoothly, with unanimous decision, except for the editors who had created the pages, and who are hardcore fans of the shows.

Now, I plan to nominate the remaining Pink Panther episodes for redirection/deletion as they are all copy and paste content, with just a plot summary.

There is at least one episode which does have pendant notability The_Pink_Phink which would be excluded from the process, as well s any other episode which shows good notability.

Drmies one of the administrators who handled the previous process redirects recommended I come here for advice regarding such a mass change, so I am doing so.

Preferably, I would be able to nominate the category, minus individual episodes, rather than having to go through and subst 100ish pages, but if required I will do so. Further, I was advised to neutrally canvas (including previous editors who voted against) to ensure a large consensus on such a move.

I will nominate after some sort of consensus/advice is reached here.

Gaijin42 (talk) 18:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Any article that is part of a bundled deletion nomination absolutely needs to have a {{subst:Afd}} template on it. If you're nominating hundreds of articles for deletion, you'll unfortunately have to add hundreds of AfD templates. Maintainers of these articles must be notified that the deletion discussion is taking place, and they may not be watching the category page. Besides, the category page would get nominated for deletion at CfD, not AfD, so it would be strange to see an AfD template on it. —SW— speak 21:31, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Also, if the outcome of the AfD is redirect all like it was last time, whose responsibility is it to actually redirect the articles? The closing admin? The nominator? Last time, no one redirected the articles and I happened to find them with AfD templates still on them despite the AfD having been closed, and I redirected all of the articles myself (some 2 weeks after the AfD had closed). If a similar AfD is imminent, there should be a plan in place for who is going to actually do the work to redirect the articles. —SW— express 21:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Please note: if you are arguing for redirection of articles, do not use AFD. Start a central discussion at a Wikiproject or other place to gain consensus for that. AFD should only be used if you believe deletion is the right outcome. Here it sounds like people agree that the titles are searchable terms, and thus deletion is not the option to use. --MASEM (t) 21:41, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if I agree with that. Redirection is a form of deletion. It involves deleting all of the content of the article, and replacing it with a redirect. The existing content of the article is not being merged. Wikipedia:Guide to deletion#Recommendations_and_outcomes lists redirection as a valid outcome of an AfD, and in some cases the article is actually deleted and then a redirect is created, so that the article history is no longer accessible. You'd have a point if you say don't use AfD for merge discussions (since in that case, no content is being deleted, it's only being moved from one article to another). —SW— soliloquize 00:26, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
While redirection is valid outcome, if you are entering into the AFD with the express desire to simply make redirects and get consensus, that's out of the admin process that AFD is meant for. Yes, you may want to intentionally start an AFD to get an article deleted, and consensus may end up suggesting a redirect at the end of the day, that's an acceptable close.
I don't think it is good form to start an AFD with the intention of having old page content deleted by admins and replacing it with a redirect, save when the material is a copyright violation or against our policy on living persons (eg I create a complete fake article about a real person that's a potential search term; the right action would be to delete, recreate with a redirect, and go from there). When the material itself is not contentious, there is no reason to delete it before making it a redirect. Potentially any of these episodes could be notable in the future, and thus the old article can be restored w/o admin action and built on. That's why this type of redirect is preferred, and further one that should not be discussed at the nomination action at AFD. --MASEM (t) 00:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
So what's the proper procedure then? Boldly redirect the articles, and then when they all get reverted (which they will), start hundreds of individual discussions on the talk page of each article (which won't get noticed by anyone except the article's creator)? Or start an RfC on it (which would waste the time of more editors than a simple AfD)? —SW— gab 17:10, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately, yes. The RFC is likely the better route as if you get an uninvolved admin involved, that decision can be used to prevent recreation without a check of notability or the like for the new version. The fact you're seeing AFD as the quick and painless route is an emphasis of why its not the right tool for what needs to be done. --MASEM (t) 17:15, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
There's really very little difference between a bundled AfD and an RfC to redirect a bunch of articles. A valid argument could be made for either, and I don't think it's inappropriate to use AfD in this case, with a nomination statement like "None of these individual episodes are notable, they should either be deleted or redirected to the parent article." AfD is by far the most frequent venue where discussions about the notability of a subject take place. —SW— squeal 23:38, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm a strong supporter of moving AFDeletion to AFDiscussion, but I recognize there's strong consensus against that and for one specific reason: AFDeletion is targeted where the nominator's goal requires administrative action, and hence the situation is put into a forum to valid the need for that action before an admin does it. Redirection does not require admin action - unless you insist that the original articles be deleted to make way for the redirects (but that doesn't seem to be the case here). Yes, AFD is a great venue to get a lot of eyes on a lot of similar articles at once, but given that the consensus is for doing this only in the case of admin action, we can't weaken it by using it for mass redirection. (or the tl;dr version: I completely agree with you, but there's strong resistance to make AFD work like that, and thus we need to stay within those lines until they can be changed). --MASEM (t) 20:35, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
We did once gain consensus for AfD becoming Articles for Discussion, but inertia and the complications of completing the change prevented it happening, and people afterwards kept perpetuating the myth that consensus was against it. Fences&Windows 20:52, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
If there was consensus for AFDiscussion, the top of this page says something else and points to wrong arguments then. The last discussion on this that I remember being involved in was probably more than a year ago, and I know decidedly it was against the change, but there could have been one in between. --MASEM (t) 21:09, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Question on AfD Policy

I've have a multitude of endless discussions in a variety of AfD's about this particular concept, and I want to know the answer once and for all. My query is, as Hobbes Goodyear concisely put it: is "..."notable but not good enough"...really an argument for deletion"? If a stub on an encyclopedic article consists of a few lines - a few good lines (that is, a few lines of verifiable etc. information), essentially, who cares? There are more important things (like working on improving articles) to worry about than wasting so much time filling up loads of AfD's on such trivial nonsense - trying to delete articles which are helping Wikipedia regardless. As a work in progress, anything which helps Wikipedia grow shouldn't be a problem at all. Well that's my view anyway.. and I have always used the argument that AfD's should be purely based on a concept's sum potential as a encyclopedic article. Apparently there are those who do not share my view. Well I want to know once and for all what the consensus is from the wider community? What do you think about the previous statement - the philosophy I have followed passionately throughout my entire Wikipedia experience?--Coin945 (talk) 04:56, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE I have found it: Wikipedia:Potential, not just current state--Coin945 (talk) 06:11, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

  • No, the argument that an article is not good enough is deprecated as rubbish: "In the Wiki model, an article which may currently be poorly written, poorly formatted, lack sufficient sources, or not be a comprehensive overview of the subject, can be improved and rewritten to fix its current flaws. That such an article is lacking in certain areas is a relatively minor problem, and such articles can still be of benefit to Wikipedia. In other words, the remedy for such an article is cleanup, not deletion.". Warden (talk) 12:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
  • We shouldn't really be deleting articles due to their current state. However, sometimes an article is irredeemable due to its current state and would require rewriting from scratch to be kept - despite being about a topic that would otherwise meet our inclusion criteria, there is currently policy support for deleting such articles in certain cases, e.g. copyvio, blatant advert, unsourced bio. It would be better if such articles were rewritten rather than being deleted, despite there being the option to delete them - in particular, I think Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion like G11 and A7 are overused to delete articles on notable topics. AfD is less of an issue here. Fences&Windows 18:13, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned page appears junk

Hi, FYI someone might want to wipe Talk:Uranus explorer 1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.210.251 (talk) 04:09, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done. In the future, you can tag things like that for "speedy" deletion per the instructions at WP:CSD. --Jayron32 06:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I hate WP:BEFORE

I do like the purpose behind it, but I absolutely hate how it is misused. In multiple AfDs where I couldn't find significant coverage and someone else could, that person has accused me of not following WP:BEFORE. I say in all of my nominations that I searched for sources so I'm not sure if I'm being called a liar. SL93 (talk) 00:06, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Do not be bothered by it. The accusation is just proof that the other one has no proper arguments. Night of the Big Wind talk 00:23, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
  • If other contributors find good references that substantiate that a topic is, after all, notable, that is a supremely "proper argument" for keeping the article. So, sorry, if SL93 routinely finds they failed to find good RS other contributors could find I suggest worrying about this is valid. Geo Swan (talk) 07:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
If you couldn't find stuff after trying, but someone else could, maybe you should ask 'em how they did it. There's an art to searching, and if you're trying, you should be encouraged to try better, not griped at for failing. Jclemens (talk) 01:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Though BEFORE is not meant to require a detailed search of every possible index. A good BEFORE search hits the various Google facets and tries a few approaches. If searching for topics for an article require specific search terms or an atypical search engine, that's not the nominator failing BEFORE, nor expected for the nominator to improve their search habits. Remember, BEFORE is not required, and we cannot put specific onuses on a process that can require a lot of trial and error. --MASEM (t) 01:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I am going to disagree, in part, with User:Masem and User:Night of the Big Wind. No one should imply bad faith on your part if you did your best to search for references that would substantiate that a topic was notable, prior to nominating an article that seemed weak to you. But a contentious {{afd}} can use up dozens of hours of other volunteers time. Individuals who can't be bothered performing a web search, prior to nominating an article for deletion, really do impose a costly burden on the project. And I am afraid that if you have routinely made good faith efforts to find good references, only to find your good faith efforts failed, and other contributors were able to find good references you missed that established topic's notability, then sorry, that implies you too have imposed a considerable and avoidable burden on the project.

    If you really are finding your good faith efforts to search for the references that would support that a topic was notable have fallen short, then let me ask you if you really think continuing to nominate articles is a good idea -- at least until you improve your web searching skills?

    I'll offer you a couple of simple pointers. Forgive me if I am repeating things you already know.

  1. Google and other search engines allow multi-word terms to be grouped together with quote marks -- so the words in the term only trigger a hit when they occur in that sequence.
  2. The keyword OR, or a pipe symbol, is used as the boolean operator "OR" -- allowing searches with alternatives.
  3. preceding a term with a dash reverses the meaning of that term. So -wikipedia', for instance would filter out hits to pages that include the word "wikipedia".
  4. You can use the "site:" keyword to restrict a search to a domain. "site:nytimes.com" directs google to only search pages under the nytimes.com domain. Similarly "site:mil OR site:gov" is useful for searching for public domain images. Geo Swan (talk) 07:04, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Its far too easy to nominate something for deletion. Most people who send things to AFD, go around nominating a lot of things in a short period of time. At Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Haunt (video game), once you found a lot of things appearing in a Google news archive search results for "Haunt" "and "video game", instead of nominating it for deletion, you should've tried to narrow down the search to find what you were looking for. Add in the name of the company that produces it, or the name of anyone notable attached to it, or check the Wikiproject for video games and use their search through reliable sources for video game articles, as someone of course did, easily finding significant coverage in them. I'm going to go request a bot for that, so that AFDs will check the type of article being nominated, and add in a link to the RS search for the relevant Wikiproject. Dream Focus 07:28, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I have seen user nominate articles for speedies and then at Afd while with the smallest effort they could have found some good sources and additional interesting facts. And in my opinion an editor has the obligation to check such things before nominating an article for deletion. In other words, there are editors for whom deletion is the default, and that is why we need WP:BEFORE. Such editors should be WP:TROUTed with that guideline a few times, until they get the point. Nominating for deletion is easier, but The Right Thing To Do is to do your homework first. Debresser (talk) 08:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Every single thing that every editor does here ought to be for the purpose of improving this encyclopedia. Following our BEFORE recommendation helps reduce the chance that articles on notable topics will be nominated for deletion inappropriately. Of course, various editor's skills will differ in finding reliable sources. That is why tips about how sources were found, and how sources may be found in similar future cases, are so useful to productive editors. In my experience, simply reconfiguring Google search terms to a variety of plausible possibilities often yields a far wider range of potential reliable sources than a search based only on the current article title. No reasonable editor ought to advocate deleting an article on a notable topic when sources can be easily found and added to the article. I expand, reference and improve articles all the time, but I also advocate deleting articles on non-notable topics. Keeping is always better than deleting whenever keeping is a viable option. BEFORE is a tool that helps train all editors participating in deletion discussions about the reasonable alternatives to deletion, so that AfD debates are less acrimonious and based more on genuine consensus. Take time to search, and improve and expand articles as the first option. If you truly believe, based on a sincere and skilled search, that the topis isn't notable, then nominate the article for deletion. If other editors rapidly discover source showing notablity, then please refine your search skills before nominating other articles for deletion. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 08:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Why should I refine my search skills? Most articles that I nominate for deletion are deleted. Most times the keepers throw trivial mentions in my face, but sometimes they are significant coverage. SL93 (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

What SL93's concern is exactly why BEFORE can't be enforceable. If an article fails to explain anything about its notability, and provides little information to make a narrowed or specific engine search for sources, there is no way we can expect the nominator to reasonably find any, even if, by doing one little tweak on search terms, the sources become obvious. Remember, anyone can nominate any article they believe fails notability, they need not be an expert in that field, and thus we cannot expect them to be expert searchers for information in that field. What might be easier for a well-versed editor in that field to find may be very obscure. Also remember: we're talking "reliable" sources, as well, and that adds complexity to a search that we cannot expect of a nominator: the nominator should be aware what consistutes for RS for the article's field, but it likely is more the problem of trying to identify any useful results from hundreds of blog posts and forum messages. Remember, if literally hundreds of reliable sources really do exists, and can be shown by explaining how to properly search for them, and everyone goes "obvious keep", you'll likely get a snow close on the AFD.
The only actually that we can take against an editor based on BEFORE if they have nominated dozens of articles where they claim there are no sources, but each time, they are easily found by a simple, non-specific search (eg plopping the name of the article into google without additional search terms); in otherwords, we can easily discount any AGF they had in making the nomination. When an editor, like SL93 here, claims to have made that simple search and not found anything, and this can be verified, that's a good-faith adherence to BEFORE, and we cannot criticize such editors for not taking that step. That's the only objective concept that we can make from BEFORE in terms of enforceable behavior, using that as a means to stop editors that refuse to do any type of BEFORE work from being disruptive. --MASEM (t) 13:36, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
"Why should I refine my search skills?" Because, while there are plenty of articles that ought to be deleted, deleting an article that shouldn't have been deleted is not cool. AfD is not an arcade game for which you're trying to get the high score. Burdening other editors with doing work you could have done yourself is a waste of resources. Granted, it doesn't seem as if you are nominating articles which end up being kept with any unreasonable regularity (only about a 5-10% error rate), but there's always room for improvement. —SW— babble 18:05, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
What should not be happening is putting the onus on finding sources on the person that wants to delete the article. In a good faith nomination, the editors sees the article, believes its on a non-notable subject, has done an initial search pass to find that sources are not prevailing to suggest notability, and then puts the article to AFD. If finding the articles requires somewhat specialized knowledge in that field, we cannot expect the nominator to necessarily take those steps. Take the above case of the Haunt video game. I know, from the VG project, that putting the name of a game with a developer is likely to narrow down sources fast, and that is certainly true here (I found at least one good source from gnews with that). But someone that never deals with contemporary topics may not know about that search. Failing to find the game's mention with a general google search across web/news/scholar is not failing anything; that's the minimum that we can reasonably expect. --MASEM (t) 16:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Every AfD nominator has failures. Did I ever say that it was cool to delete notable articles or that AfD is like a video game? SL93 (talk) 17:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Referring to other AfD participants as "the keepers" who "throw trivial mentions in my face" seems like an adversarial attitude to have, and gives me the feeling that you are at least partially trying to "win" something. —SW— babble 18:05, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
So you're assuming bad faith on my part. By keepers, I am only referring to people who !vote keep. It is throwing trivial mentions in my face when they are like "I found plenty of coverage. Follow WP:BEFORE." SL93 (talk) 18:21, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE is not a policy or even a guideline. There are several good reasons why it's not, and why bringing it up in an AfD debate is usually a crap argument. Firstly, it reverses the burden of evidence; I've seen "arguments" along the lines of "Keep- nominator hasn't explained how they followed BEFORE". But it's not up to the nominator to jump through hoops, it's up to the people defending the article to find the material that justifies it. Secondly, it actually punishes nominators who are diligent in evaluating sources beforehand. How often do we see things like "Keep- if nominator had followed BEFORE they'd have found this google search that matches some or all of the words in the article title", when in fact the nominator might have seen those same matches already and rejected them as junk. Thirdly, it's not clear how much thoroughness or specialist knowledge the nominator needs to have. Is "Keep- Per BEFORE, the nominator should have known to combine the article title with the manufacturer's name and year of release" really fair? Do you see the common thread running through all these criticisms? BEFORE is used as a weapon to attack nominators, to try to paint them as lazy and incompetent, and these attacks are seldom accurate or fair. Its contribution the the hostile battleground atmosphere at AfD far exceeds the value of the good advice it contains. That is why WP:BEFORE is not, should not, and will never be enforceable. Reyk YO! 01:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Trying to nominate for AfD

I have completed the first stage of nominating Twilight of the Dead for deletion, but cannot move on because there is already an unrelated page with the same name that was deleted in 2007 (see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Twilight of the Dead. I seem to remember that there is a procedure for nominating an article for a second time, but I can't find details. However, this is not strictly appropriate as this is not the same article or subject, just the same title. If someone can point me in the right direction (or better yet, complete the process for me) I'd be very grateful. (Incidentally, my grounds for nomination are that this appears to be a non-notable single with no evidence provided of notability either in the article itself, or in the article Misfits (band) and Misfits discography.) Emeraude (talk) 15:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Just create a new nomination page at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Twilight of the Dead (2nd nomination). The fact that the subject of the article is different from the one discussed in 2007 doesn't mean you have to do anything special. Hut 8.5 17:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks. I knew it was something simple. Job done. Emeraude (talk) 18:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Help requested with article on Robert California

I am nominating the article on the fictional character Robert California for deletion. This is done in response to one of the five {{PROD}}s contested on 13 January by 3:21:14:20: is key (talk · contribs); I have completed step I and request help with the remaining steps in the nomination process. Thanks in advance. 68.165.77.175 (talk) 06:53, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done Nomination page created. I will leave it to you to notify the authors. jcgoble3 (talk) 17:21, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout and AFD closures

I saw that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nancy Nasrallah was closed when it popped up on my watchlist. It was non-admin closed by User:Sprinting faster. Aren't these AFDs supposed to be extended by 1 day? -- Whpq (talk) 18:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)


Yes, they were supposed to be extended, but as there wasn't really any opposing view I dont think it matters. If you want to contest it, take it to DRV. Gaijin42 (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
It's pretty clear cut and an extra day won't likely affect the outcome. -- Whpq (talk) 20:45, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Bold, revert, discuss

Cunard asked today on WP:AN for an admin to assess the consensus on this proposal. Though it is a heavy decision to make, and one that will carry great weight in the future functioning of this encyclopedia, I believe I have the soundness of judgement required to make the optimal choice. To wit: I have intently analysed every word of the impassioned arguments presented in this section, both for and against, and have discovered that this discussion is pointless, and furthermore, that we all have better things to do than try to change a long-standing abbreviation that has presented absolutely no problems to anyone ever. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:32, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

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

Today I changed the capitalisation on this page so use "Afd" instead of "AfD". Yes, I know that it has always been "AfD, but let me present my case.

The title of this page is "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion". That akes for "Articles for deletion" = "Afd". Also, there is no reason Afd should be different from Cfd and Tfd. The fact that there the"d" stands for "discussion" obviously is of not import.

The "argument" that most people use "AfD" is a circular one, and can therefore not be accepted. People use "AfD", because that is what it used to say here.

It is more than likely that the capitalisation with a capital "D" is a result of the American tendency to capitalise all nouns in titles. But see Wikipedia:Article_titles#Article_title_format and compare Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Section_headings that on Wikipedia we should capitalise only proper nouns. This edit actually fixes this old transgession of these WP:MoS guidelines.

My proposal: to confirm my bold move and use the logical, correct, and consistent capitalisation: "Afd". Debresser (talk) 13:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no reason I can see to change the capitalization; both are equally sensible and logical. In general template names are more or less arbitrary strings that identify the template. Unless there is some genuine confusion about the capital D, we should just leave it as is. Template:Tfd has a redirect Template:TfD, so both work. Can you point to any complaints by users that the capital D in AfD caused problems? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:41, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
(ec) Actually, WP:Redirects for discussion is referred to as RfD. In any case capitalization doesn't seem to be the problem we have with this process (see above), the MOS won't apply in letter to our project pages, and looking at the spirit of it, there are passages where we try to more and more discourage people from continuously trying to fix and standardize usage in article space according to their own logic which invariably will collide with someone else's, so no problem in leaving the project pages inconsistent as well and do something else (fwiw, I prefer the double cap).--Tikiwont (talk) 13:55, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
The logical name would be "AFD" etc. (and moving is not out of the question, the whole AfD structure has been moved, I think, three times already, including changing namespace twice, and changing form VfD to AfD. Rich Farmbrough, 14:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC).
Reply to Tikiwont. Then perhaps Rfd should also be referred to as Rfd, not RfD. :) Thanks for your reply. I agree that capitalisation is not a problem, but I also think we should make an effort to do things the best way possible, and in my argumented opinion that would mean using "Afd". Debresser (talk) 14:43, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Leave at AfD. If anything, it should be "AFD" before "Afd". This isn't an article and doesn't need to follow any MoS or WP:TITLE guidelines. After all, you would use "afd" if you were to follow capitalization based on first letter, because it is "articles for deletion" and not a proper noun. We use "AFD" because "afd" is not obvious enough, especially if it matches a real word like "prod" or "gan". If this proposal wants to change the way we abbreviate all Wikipedia: discussion pages, then it needs to include them all, not just AfDs. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Dbresser is only suggesting that AfD follow the style of Tfd and Cfd. But certainly moving to XFD would be slightly wider ranging. Rich Farmbrough, 15:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC).
  • Contra Debresser, since we're all using specific idiomatic terms instead of standard capitalization anyways, I prefer to retain the difference in "for discussion" and "for Deletion". Jclemens (talk) 15:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
    As we have commented far and wide, the name is unfortunate, it should probably be "... for deletion discussion" since "deletion" pre-judges the issue, and "discussion" is too general. Rich Farmbrough, 18:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC).
  • Move to WP:SHeD (ok, not really). Anomie⚔ 15:44, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Leave at AfD or change to AFD. I alternate between the two myself, but have never used Afd, which seems counter-intuitive to me. AFD is the most logical, in that the vast majority of most initialisms are all caps, but if people would rather preserve the status quo, I'm fine with that as well. jcgoble3 (talk) 16:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Status quo per Anomie. It's a bit ridiculous that we're even wasting time on something like this. It reminds me of the US House of Representatives debating on whether to reaffirm that "In God We Trust" is the official motto while the country was a few days away from defaulting on their debt. —SW— talk 17:11, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Reply to Snottywong. If it is of so small importance, then why was my change here reverted twice with a few hours after I made it? Seems to be that people care about it more than they show. Or would it be a matter of WP:ILIKEIT? Btw, nice signature! Debresser (talk) 17:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
The same thing would happen (i.e. someone would revert me) if I replaced every instance of "AfD" with "Pork chop sandwiches". What's your point? The fact that someone reverted your silly edit doesn't prove that the capitalization is important, it only proves that your edit was silly. —SW— confess 06:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep as AfD. "AfD" is the abbreviation everyone uses, in discussions and in the project namespace, throughout the project. This is the de facto convention and I see no compelling reason to change it. Dcoetzee 17:23, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
It is convention only by force of habit. I see very little good arguments here, only WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The commentary after this one is the example par excellence of that. Do you, or anybody else, have any arguments? Debresser (talk) 17:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
You aren't making a strong case for yourself either, except WP:ILIKEIT (Which is an AfD argument, not a general Wikipedia guideline for everything). In fact, you are the one who changed CFD. And again, it should be "afd" by your arguments, because "articles" is not capitalized per se. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:46, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
It looks silly, unnatural, and has no upsides. That's all the argument necessary to show this is a contentious waste of time and therefore shouldn't happen. Your non-standard grammar crusade can stop now. --erachima talk 17:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Ban proposal

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

Because of the imminent 1/18 blackout...

There will only be a few AfDs listed on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2012 January 18 that day :) --MuZemike 12:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Note the blackout doesn't start until 05:00 UTC, so it will still be possible to nominate articles for five hours. Hut 8.5 14:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
And we still ended up with 47 - quite manageable, by most standards. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 16:31, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

deletion for a non article!!

this article here Obscenity the other side of Aisha has nothing to do to be an article in wikipedia with lack on sources and useless!. So would be better to delete it to keep wikipedia clean. thank you.

--Neogeolegend (talk) 01:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

If you want to nominate the page for deletion follow the instructions here. This page is not part of the AfD process. Hut 8.5 09:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Note that the user was blocked for edit warring on this very article. Nothing to see here. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 20:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Deletion discussions not transcluded to this page

This discussion does not seem to be listed here and has been open for over a month now. Is this a common problem? I am not a regular here, but recall something similar with this discussion. AIRcorn (talk) 22:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

here is the link to the deletion discussion: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Laos_women's_national_rugby_union_team. I am not sure where it is supposed to be listed, but I found this by using the search on this page. --stmrlbs|talk 23:11, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Should it not be listed under old discussions? AIRcorn (talk) 23:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) On the second one you link to, it appears that it simply wasn't added to the daily log. That's not the case with the first one, which is correctly transcluded and has been since the time of nomination. For some reason, Mathbot never recognized that it was there, leading to the bot showing 0 open discussions for that day on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old and the log subsequently being removed from that page with the discussion still open. I don't know what to do about it, though. jcgoble3 (talk) 23:19, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I meant to link to the AFD discussion on the first one, must have copy pasted the wrong tab. Would it be possible for a bot to search for pages with a title begining "Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/" which are not linked to from here and putting them in a seperate "Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/errors" page. I can ask an admin to close or relist the Laos discussion, but a bigger concern will be AFD's that get lost in the system. I am not sure how much of a problem it is. AIRcorn (talk) 23:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I pinged Mathbot's operator about the possible bug and searching for other lost AfDs. We'll see what happens there. jcgoble3 (talk) 02:06, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I relisted that AfD, and the bot added it correctly. If there was a bug in the bot, it was an old one.

There is little I can do now about identifying what went wrong. If we run into this again, and that bug is reproducible, I'll of course fix the bot. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Armored Fist 3

I wanted to start an AFD for Armored Fist 3 but can't create the page. I stated my reasons on the talk page. 108.67.153.215 (talk) 05:36, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Statesman

Statesman is currently a rather stubby article that probably belongs on wiktionary rather than here. There's no real way to make a distinction between 'statesman' and 'politician' in a NPOV way, and the article doesn't try to. Instead, it's a rather short and fuzzy article about it being a general term of respect. Perfect for a dictionary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.205.120.39 (talk) 05:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

SolidCAM

I nominated this for deletion, but initially failed to specify (2nd Nomination) in the NominationName. Although now corrected, my attempts to add it to the the current AFD log page don't seem to result it in being shown. Any suggestions?, Or can some admin fix this? Sorry. DaveApter (talk) 11:54, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

 Fixed [5]; you were capitalizing "Nomination", when the title of the discussion page had it in lowercase. jcgoble3 (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_64&oldid=478919810"