Outline of Florence – The "delete" closure from 2019 is endorsed. There is no consensus here as to whether recreation of this article (or, I guess, any article of the "outline" type) should be allowed, or whether the deleted article should be undeleted to that end. Sandstein 08:32, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Outlines are an acceptable page type, along with navigation templates, indexes, glossaries, lists, portals, and timelines. That includes the Outline of Florence. Its deletion was essentially a personal attack on me, as an extension of the portal deletion war of 2019, and the nomination was not in good faith. Waggers sums it up best in the deletion discussion. The perpetrators of that war eventually turned on each other, and the nominator of the deletion was indefinitely blocked for bad behavior. Another outline that was similarly trolled around that time had its deletion overturned at DRV in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2019_June_6#c-Sandstein-2019-06-14T16:55:00.000Z-6_June_2019 The main premise of deleting the Outline of Florence was that it was a content fork. However, the term "content fork" is a classification that includes acceptable and unacceptable forms, but the term wasn't used that way. Unfortunately, at the time, some well established page types were missing from that guideline, and the guideline itself was very poorly written and structured. Disclaimer: I updated the guideline about a year ago to reflect the status quo, and recorded the missing de facto standard page types, without opposition by the guideline's watchers (the page is closely monitored). It has had plenty of time to season, and has been tested via application in multiple deletion discussions since. Please take a look. (Here's a before/after diff). Outline of Florence was created to be part of a set and compares favorably with the outlines of other cities in and around Italy, including Outline of Rome, Outline of Vatican City, Outline of Milan, Outline of Naples, Outline of Palermo, Outline of Turin, Outline of Venice, and Outline of San Marino. Please overturn its deletion. Thank you. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist11:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. If the deletion was a "personal attack", this belongs in AN/I, not DRV. Or rather, belonged, seeing as this drama took place five years ago. The subsequent banning of the AfD nominator does not invalidate the result of the AfD ex post facto. I see nothing improper in how Jo-Jo Eumerus closed it. There was a rough consensus to delete, even if we ignore the nomination itself.
The appellant is arguing on policy basis, so this appeal doesn't qualify under DRVPURPOSE#3. We are presented with a long list of OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but unlike, say, Outline of Rome or Outline of Turin, the deleted article contained a grand total of 64 words of prose before the long list of wikilinks, much of which is already covered in Template:Florence landmarks. And by the way, Outline of Turin has received 80 pageviews over the past 30 days, and Outline of Venice - 36. Hardly the useful navigational tool it was purported to be. Of course, the appellant doesn't need our permission to submit a fresh draft to AfC, and I have no objection to REFUNDing to draft or to a new AfD, hopefully without the interpersonal drama. Owen×☎12:50, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse (I voted in the AfD and gave actual reasons why this timeline was bad). The other stuff reason given here is interesting: based on that perfectly valid AfD and looking at e.g. Outline of Venice, I see more reasons to delete that outline based on the AfD, than to restore the Florence one based on the existence of the Venice one. Fram (talk) 13:09, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy moot, a five year old AfD isn't going to be overturned. If you want the text to work on a new version, just ask an admin. If someone feels it needs a new AfD once in mainspace (or Venice needs deleted), it can be filed. StarMississippi14:20, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Allow recreation if it is believed that something is needed fom DRV. WP:NOTDUP applies to outlines. The section I'm linking to fails to mention outlines by name, but the start of the guideline does. Glossaries, indexes and timelines are also not duplicative to whatever, i.e. not redundant. Outlines can be good or bad. Good outlines can become featured outlines and these exist, believe it or not: Category:FL-Class Outlines articles. Florence was a country and a capital of a significant modern era power, and it's just a big topic with a bunch of stuff going on. That should increase the suitability of this outline topic and not lead to a conclusion that an outline with a lot of information is duplicative to the article. I protest this invalid rationale. Ultimately, WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. So if there is a perception that it is duplicative, try doing something about it editorially, and see if there's consensus for making the outline more abstracted etc.—Alalch E.15:46, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I participated in that AfD, but that was an AfD where the I don't like it's trumped the I like it's. There's no reason to keep it deleted if we have other outlines of other similar pages. SportingFlyerT·C22:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - It is not entirely clear whether the appellant is asking to overturn the AFD to No Consensus or Keep, or whether the appellant is asking to recreate an outline in draft form subject to review.
This is an unserious appeal that consists of too many insults. The appellant says that they were personally attacked or trolled by this nomination, and claims that the nomination was part of the "portal wars" of 2019. The appellant did not raise any issue about a personal attack within the past five years.
To refresh anyone's memory, the appellant started the portal wars by creating thousands of low-quality portals by an automated technique. This prompted a review of both recently created (2018 and 2019) portals and existing portals. Certain types of portals, including those created by automation, have been deprecated.
The ArbCom case was inconclusive about portals because, as an ArbCom case, it focused on conduct. The ArbCom case resulted in one administrator desysopped for personal attacks, which was a Super Maria effect. The ArbCom case also resulted in an RFC on portal guidelines which fizzled out. We have no portal guidelines because it was discovered that the long-existing guidelines had never been properly ratified. An RFC to ratify the long-existing guidelines failed, probably because there was and is division and polarization in the community over portals.
The original nominator of the AFD was indefinitely blocked for personal attacks (on a now-banned user), not for flawed nominations.
Endorse the original close as Delete. The closer was correct and the appellant has not established any error.
I don't get this. We can either endorse or overturn the afd - I don't have a strong opinion on that, I don't find outlines at all useful as a reader even compared to the minimal usefulness of categories, but I'm willing to accept that other people do - but I can't imagine a new version of this that wouldn't be a G4. There isn't enough room in the format to make a substantive change. Sure, you can rewrite the three sentences of prose at the start, or use different illustrations, or pick a different subset of articles to link to, but it'll essentially be the same thing we deleted. If we tell the appellant here that we're not going to just undelete the old version like he demands (and I'm using that word advisedly), but we'll let him have it back only if we arbitrarily make him rewrite it for the sake of making him do more work and no other reason, that's a rotten thing to do. —Cryptic11:35, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Closing admin) I don't buy the claim that the nomination was a personal attack on anyone, there is no evidence for one thing. From what I remember, there was a major dispute back then on whether portals and outlines were actually useful or not, but I don't think that the existence of this dispute automatically invalidates an AfD on an outline page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:43, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
endorse This page would have been part of the ‘outline of knowledge’ that was a vanity project of the nom from the very early days of the project, where they hijacked or copied pages intended for other purposes to create a series of pseudoarticle/forks that thankfully never caught on. Fundamentally they all retold information already contained in existing articles so there is no loss in it being expunged. SpartazHumbug!19:31, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Regretfully, growth and refinement requires some culling, and a lot of dedication into experiments that didn’t work out means it has to go. I am thinking of Portals and Outlines. Both should be archived. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:12, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Allow recreation: per Cryptic's very pragmatic and sensible comment: I can't imagine a new version of this that wouldn't be a G4. (...) If we tell the appellant here that we're not going to just undelete the old version (...), but we'll let him have it back only if we arbitrarily make him rewrite it for the sake of making him do more work and no other reason, that's a rotten thing to do. (i.e. allow moving the Draft to Main; if someone wants to take it again to AfD then, they can).-My, oh my! (Mushy Yank)21:01, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's... practically the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. If we're going to allow recreation, we should just undelete the old version. If we're not willing to undelete the old version, we shouldn't allow recreation. Or is there already a complete draft recreation that I'm not aware of? —Cryptic00:37, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I found that. It's objectively worse than the deleted version, while at the same time I'd've acted on a G4 tag on it in mainspace absent this DRV. If we want this, we want the best version of it we can manage - everyone agrees on that, right? - and I guess I don't see the point of getting there in anything but the most straightforward, least-effort way possible. Unless it's just spite. The only thing we could do that would be worse would be to not make up our minds until he finishes the rewrite and then decide to redelete it. —Cryptic01:39, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
if we want this, we want the best version of it we can manage - everyone agrees on that, right absolutely.
I personally think regardless of our personal opinion on this outline or outlines as a whole, this isn't even a case where DRV is needed. We're not overturning an AfD this old and it's probably time for a new discussion based either on the restored, the draft or a combo thereof. Maybe consensus is the same and maybe not. StarMississippi01:50, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Without DRV's intervention, one of three things happens: A) TTH does nothing (further) and we never have an outline at this title. Equivalent to a "Endorse, disallow recreation" outcome here. B) TTH finishes his draftspace reconstruction of the old version and it gets moved into mainspace and nobody speedies it. Unnecessary waste of labor, and we probably end up with a worse version. Equivalent to "Endorse, allow recreation". C) TTH finishes his draftspace reconstruction of the old version and it gets moved into mainspace and it gets speedied. Worst case scenario. Just as unnecessary a waste of labor, and we don't even end up with anything to show for it. Nobody's happy.With DRV's intervention, we either eliminate the possibility of C, or at least TTH knows that the version he's working on will get speedied when it's moved to mainspace, so he'd have no one to blame for the extra work but himself. And we add option D) undelete the old version, which is the same as B but without wasting the labor of manually rebuilding the outline. If we're not sure, we could even undelete the old version and immediately run a new AFD. That's still superior to making him rebuild a new version and AFDing that when he's done.I'm not seeing a path where "DRV does nothing at all" is better. The only one where it's not any worse is scenario A. —Cryptic02:20, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes,@Cryptic I understand "allow recreation" is practically the opposite of what you proposed. But permit me to quote your sensible comment, all the same! (:D) Now, if you prefer, for the sake of consistency, I am not opposed to overturn. But I was trying to be pragmatic myself. Undelete it, sure, I would be in favour of that, but as long as there was a Draft, I thought we could start there, close this and allow work on it (and let it to be moved to Main) and make sure that that will NOT be G4ed (whatever "that" is: a recreated page/a moved Draft/a refunded/an undeleted page). If you think I should have suggested overturn, then consider I did, and strike my "Allow recreation", I don't mind, as long as the page exists again in the Main sometime later. -My, oh my! (Mushy Yank)20:28, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting you again (:D) If we want this, we want the best version of it we can manage - everyone agrees on that, right? - and I guess I don't see the point of getting there in anything but the most straightforward, least-effort way possible. Absolutely. -My, oh my! (Mushy Yank)20:41, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Allowing recreation without undeleting is just about the most-effort way possible. And most pointless. That's the only outcome here I object to (and strenuously). The deleted version looks like the draft, but with a prose intro half again as long; about twice as many headers; roughly four times as many total list items in those headers; and about 30 images compared to the draft's 3. —Cryptic00:03, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I thought I had clarified my position (more or less your "D" is the best outcome). And firstly, please bear in mind that I have and had personally no access to the deleted version. But secondly, since you say the deleted article was much better, again, consider I suggest overturn and undelete. (and, also again, feel free to strike my "Allow recreation" if you think that is confusing). I will probably make no further comments here. -My, oh my! (Mushy Yank)07:39, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
