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Proposed change to closing templates

Trialsanderrors has created a good pair of templates for closing deletion reviews ({{drt}} and {{drb}}), and I propose that the code from these templates be merged into Template:Afd top and Template:Afd bottom respectively.

The key benefit is that the text of closed debates is wrapped in a show/hide box and hidden by default, so:

  1. Closed discussions will not occupy so much visual space on the daily logs.
  2. It will make it easier for admins closing old discussions to spot unclosed ones.

The key disadvantages I forsee or have been raised are:

  1. Might not work for non-Monobook skins? Workaround: Make separate includeonly and noinclude text but with the same parameters so that the show/hide magic is reserved for the daily log but the regular closing text is displayed in the AfD subpage itself. People using non-Monobook skins can still view the full discussion in the subpage.
  2. Might mess up section editing. Possible workaround: Fake section headers (not sure).

But I think it is worth discussing the merits of merging the code from the DRV into the AfD closing templates.

For those who can read Chinese and wish to see how it might look like, the Chinese WP does it this way: see their AfD page and sample closed discussion. Regards, Kimchi.sg 07:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. How much pre-transclusion space do those new templates occupy? We only have 2MB of transclusion memory available per page, so any changes from a simple template to a more complex template should be double-checked for server impact. Titoxd(?!?) 08:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
They're all supposed to be subst'ed (both the DRV templates and the current AfD closing templates) so there should be no transclusion problems. None of them use any meta-templates either. Kimchi.sg 08:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm wrong... the noinclude section of template:drt includes {{la}} but that's a small meta-template though. Kimchi.sg 08:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

If anyone changes {{at}} as a result of this discussion, please let me know on my talk page, as I may have to change Bot523's code. --ais523 09:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea. AfD log pages are huge, they don't need to be filled with loads of confusing code. -Amarkov blahedits 05:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Hiding the closed discussions is useful; I've been doing that in my own monobook for awhile now. Although it would be better to avoid transcluding them to begin with, hiding them will at least speed up rendring a bit. I do think it would be better if the boxes were open by default on the discussion pages, and closed when they are transcluded. -Steve Sanbeg 19:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
The system as used by DRV does not reduce the amount of text downloaded - it's something like {{hide}}, but done with CSS classes. So the main advantage is that closed discussions take up less visible space. Kimchi.sg 10:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
  • While I don't like the amount of mark up text, it does seem that something should be done to make it easier to find active discussions and skip over closed discussions. I rather prefer the approach used at MfD, which is to move the closed discussions to another section on the page. —Doug Bell talk 19:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Oops, I didn't see this discussion until now. There would be no additional code on daily logs. The code is entirely on the AfD page, the log page would look identical to the one we have now. I also added two proposals below, one would make use on <noinclude> to remove everything but the result from the log page. If the concern is mostly that the log pages take too long to load, that would be the solution to go with. Additonally, the AfD can simply be transcluded on the article talk page (during or after the discussion), which would kill the need for {{oldafdfull}}. ~ trialsanderrors 06:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Nomination vs Voting for Deletion

When you nominate an AFD do you also get to vote against it? Or is that double dipping? Or is that part of the process? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 04:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If an admin does a strict count of votes they will count the nomination as one deletion vote. JoshuaZ 04:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
It is not actually a vote per se, it is a discussion and the closing admin will decide based on the points raised. If only 1 person votes keep but it is a very good reason then it outweighs delete votes, especially if they are "per nom". James086Talk | Contribs 05:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
That may be the way it's supposed to work, but the admins almost always seem to treat it like a vote. I've never seen any evidence of "delete per nom" actually being given less weight than an real argument on the subject. 71.203.209.0 05:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Trust me, it happens. If anything, that happens too much. requests for undeletion (at least, the ones which actually suceed), almost exclusively provide new evidence, and have no issue with the closing. -Amark moo! 05:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Deleted article recreated

Quick question, where do I go to list a page that was previously deleted but has now been recreated? This is in reference to the Listal article and the AFD can be found in the "What Links Here" link.--NMajdan•talk 22:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Just edit the article and add the following to the top, including a link to the AFD:
{{subst:db-repost|Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ArticleName}}
It will then be tagged for speedy deletion. Make sure you get the AFD title exactly correct. Fan-1967 22:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
If you're copying and pasting that, just note that it should be db-repost, not dp, that's a typo.---Fuhghettaboutit 22:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Picky, picky, picky. OK. I fixed it. Fan-1967 23:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
No really, I wasn't trying to be. It was just that in this instance, a copy and paste was likely, and would lead to problems. Now stop staring at your giant fingers with that evil gleam in your eye.--Fuhghettaboutit 23:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Ya know, you could have just fixed it. And how did you know about my giant fingers? My typing skills (or lack thereof) give it away? Fan-1967 23:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I am always loathe to edit other people's talk page posts. Seems to be a hot-button issue with some people. Feel free to delete my posts entirely, and just leave you first post corrected:-)--Fuhghettaboutit 00:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
As a general rule, I would be (and have been) the first to attack anyone significantly modifying or removing someone else's Talk comments. However, I usually feel comfortable fixing minor typos or links. Don't know if there's a policy that says that's wrong. Fan-1967 15:39, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
One modification. The "repost" speedy-deletion criterion only applies if the reposted content was essentially identical to the deleted version. If the new version is substantially different, it should be re-discussed through a second AFD discussion. Tag the article with {{afdx|2nd}} to open a second discussion. Be sure to add a link to the previous discussion in your nomination. Rossami (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Since non-admins don't have access to the deleted version to check whether they're basically the same, unless I specifically remember the earlier version, I usually go by whether the Delete comments in the AFD look like they apply to the current version. If the new version doesn't address the reasons for deletion, I'll assume that the AFD is still applicable. Fan-1967 16:51, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The content may have been different that before, but the object of the article is still non-notable, the reason for the original AFD.--NMajdan•talk 16:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for speedy close

I am hoping to have the AfD on Law in Star Trek ended as a keep since the article has not only been renamed into a much broader topic, but it now undergoing a major rewrite with mergers of other mateiral into it, active editing in progress, and research of sources with discussions on real world legal influences both into and out of law in Star trek. It is 180 degrees fro the Starfleet Judge Advocate General and is perhaps no longer even the same article. A keep conclusion, please, the whole situation has been very tiring. -Husnock 06:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

A speedy-close would be inappropriate in this case. Good participants in AFD discussions will return to the discussion and may (or may not) modify their opinions and concerns based on the rewrite. If they agree with you that the original problems have been resolved, then the article will be kept. On the other hand, if they do not agree that the changes were sufficient to address those concerns, the deletion discussion should continue.
You've already noted in the discussion that the rewrite occurred. That is enough to alert the closing admin. He/she will weight the opinions posted before the rewrite appropriately. Rossami (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

User keeps removing AFD note on article

Twice now, Cominoverdahill2 has removed the AFD notice from Master Exploder. The first time, I let them know that they can't just remove the notice, which I said in both my edit summary and on their user talk page. They have since removed it again. I just put it back up. My question is, what should be done in this situation? Joltman 13:44, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Warn the user on there talk page with the templates {{subst:drmafd}}, {{subst:drmafd2}}, {{subst:drmafd3}}, {{subst:drmafd4}} (Not all at the same time). If they have done it several times, the drmafd4 may be appropriate to start with and directly report them to WP:AIV. Otherwise, if they continue, report them to WP:AIV. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 13:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Re-nomination of Koara (disambiguation)

Hmm, I think I did something not completely right in the process of my re-nominating Koara (disambiguation) for deletion. Could someone take a look and let me know what I'm not doing correctly? (deletion page) Thanks. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 21:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

As a re-nomination, you should have used {{afdx}} with the format {{subst:afdx|2nd}}.
However, I'll also note that this has since been turned into a redirect. Redirects are discussed at WP:RFD and follow a related (though slightly different) process than articles. I'll move the nomination for you.
Having said that, you should probably look at WP:R and specifically at the suggested reasons why not to delete a redirect. That may lead you to reconsider the text of your nomination. Rossami (talk) 22:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I got advice from others on re-nom; thank you. The reason I did not take it to RfD is that this would surely raise ire ... the notion of being accused of subterfuge by changing to a redirect a former article then taking to RfD does not appeal to me; I've seen that happen to others in the past. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 22:58, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Looking more carefully at the page history, this has been a redirect since it was first created as the result of a page-move. That was almost a year ago now. I'm not sure how anyone could accuse you of subterfuge in this case. I think RfD is the right place for this discussion. Rossami (talk) 23:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Very well. I'll remove the entry from the AfD page and switch paths. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I see the work has all been done for me. Unfortunate waste of your time. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:12, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

This subject is not well enough known

Could someone please delete Summit School? I put it up but then I realized that no one knows about it and its not a big enough topic. Please delete it. Thank you Ilikefood 02:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Printing

Can anyone tell me why, when I print out this whole section as a reference, paragraph 5 (How to list pages for deletion) refuses to print? It comes out blank, with all the other paragraphs printing as one would expect.--Anthony.bradbury 19:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Referring to versions during AfD discussions

This suggestion might have been discussed in the past - I did not consult the archives. During an AfD discussion, persons who have an interest in the article staying will sometimes (often) rewrite sections or modify the article in some way to help it survive and remain in Wikipedia. I don't recall ever seeing people refer to the version of the article that they are commenting on, but I've sometimes seen heated discussions where it is clear that the 'combatants' are talking about two different versions or arguing over the fact that a change was made at a critical time. My thinking is that there should be a recommendation added to the guidelines for AfD that suggests it is a good thing to indicate which version (with a permalink) is being commented on during a discussion; I've implemented an example of this at the AfD discussion around 'Brothers Cider' where re-writing the article is being discussed as an option. Thanks for considering this. Regards, --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 22:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

The Guide to deletion (where we put most of the general advice on etiquette and participation in deletion debates) does strongly recommend that you comment in the deletion debate when you've made a significant change to the article under discussion. That way the rest of the participants can reevaluate their earlier comment. A few people use the permanent links to keep track of the different versions as the page changes but most people just compare the edit time-stamps. Permalinks are easier for the reader but are an extra step for the editor. Either way can work. Rossami (talk) 06:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed tweak to some templates

I've figured out a way at User:Amarkov/afd2 and User:Amarkov/REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD to make the AfD categories timed, so they automatically remove themselves 7 days after listing (the extra days to allow for closing time). Is this a good idea, so people don't have to manually remove the templates, or is there a problem I'm missing? -Amarkov blahedits 02:23, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

The only problem I can see is if people miss that AfD and it isn't properly closed so it disappears without anyone noticing and ends up inconclusive. Or am I missing something? Otherwise it sounds good. James086Talk | Contribs 06:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
It would still show up in log entries, which I assume admins do the closing from. -Amarkov blahedits 16:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Bot523 looks for categorized AfDs over 7 days old; it decats the closed ones and outputs a list of the unclosed ones (which I place on the wiki here in case anyone finds it useful; I can't update it very often at the moment). Generally speaking, there are quite a lot of entries on the list, which would mean a lot of prematurely decatted AfDs; relisted AfDs make up the biggest proportion (your proposal would require an edit to resubst the template whenever an AfD was relisted, and I've also caught quite a few malformed AfDs (most common seems to be AfDs that were never listed because the article was speedied between the Afd2 and Afd3 stages). All this, however, isn't necessarily an argument against the proposed change, it just means that we need to think carefully about this. --ais523 09:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change in policy

It seems to me that as of late, Wikipedia's editors are getting more zealous about marking articles for deletion.

While copyright, libel and falsity may merit deletion, I would say that it is counter-productive to delete articles based on the idea that they are not notable or well-known. First, the fact that the item in question is notable to at least one person makes it notable to at least one person; where can a line be drawn? Second, as a repository of knowledge anyone can edit, deleting pages because they do not meet the criteria of the elite seems to be against that goal.

I shudder to think what would happen to knowledge if libraries burned the books that were checked out only infrequently on niche topics.

May I suggest a "not notable" or "niche" tag, instead of marking for deletion and, eventually, deletion? To me, this seems like Wikipedia Vandalism under another name.

-- Brian Boyko -- brian.boyko@gmail.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.129.167.114 (talk) 15:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC).

I think Wikipedia:Notability#Rationale offers some good arguments. Foremost among them, IMO, is "In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that it will not be monopolized by partisan or fanatic editors." Non-notable subjects tend to be single-editor (sometimes SPA), POV, occasionally OR, and, quite frankly, frequently COI. If an article is not notable enough to attract multiple, significant, impartial editors, I think that's a major red flag. That one person thinks a subject is notable is certainly insufficient, as witness the hundreds of autobios that get deleted every day for teenagers who believe themselves to be worthy of an article. Fan-1967 16:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
The line is drawn at publication in reliable sources. Notability is not a function of whether we or you have heard of the subject but whether the world at large has deemed a subject notable by writing (or addressing the subject in other forms of publication) about it in a non-trivial manner in sources independent of the topic. That a subject is notable, as that term is vernacularly defined, because one person thinks so, is not a standard that can work for an encyclopedia which is inherently a tertiary source synthesizing primary and secondary sources already in existence. The analogy of libraries burning infrequently checked out books is false. If a library analogy lies, it is: "if libraries were such that anyone could print a book on any topic and place it in the library without any control, then that library would very quickly need a mechanism for determining what books should be removed because they were not actually published." A bit unwieldy but far closer to the state of affairs here if articles are to be compared to books.--Fuhghettaboutit 19:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
If only that were true! I have seen well researched and referenced biographies deleted as not-notable, based on the number of Ghits the person has, and that number of Ghits required is creeping upward. The excuse given is that the person wont be of interest in the future. Who knows why someone will be searching for information in the future, and the more ephemeral someone's fame is the more reason to preserve it. I have been looking for websites from just a year ago and they are gone, and the cached version at Google dont have all the scanned documents, and don't have the formatting that was in the original PDF. Sadly libraries do discard books that are no longer needed. I think they should bury them in Arizona under the desert sands. Remember nothing is deleted from Wikipedia, except images (now they are archived as of a few months ago). Every article deleted from Wikipedia is still available, but you have to be an administrator to retrieve it. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 23:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Apparently well-researched and well-referenced articles can still be less than fully accurate if the subject is not notable enough to attract multiple editors. The vast majority of articles I've seen deleted for lack of notability have been overwhelmingly the work of a single editor. Even if every word in the article is true and sourced, there is no guarantee that relevant facts on the subject have not been selectively included. Only multiple pairs of independent eyes can do that. Fan-1967 23:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the post two above, can you give some examples to articles for deletion debates? Though I have been a bit absent of late at afd, I have participated in around 1,000 give or take and though I have come across a few articles for which reliable sources existed which were deleted, I have not once seen a well-researched articles which cited to reliable sources (non-trivial, independent, etc.) deleted. There are articles of the "this street exists" variety which can cite to reliable sources for their existence, but that is more of a "Wikipedia is not a tech manual/yellow pages/atlas/game guide/etc.--Fuhghettaboutit 00:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Article deleted?

I was wondering why the article Kevin Wilson was deleted? First off, I know it existed as I uploaded an image to it (that in hindsight probably violated WP policy, but thats another issue). Granted it wasn't a long article but I was hoping to remedy that. I'm not seeing any deletion discussion on the article, either. Any help would be appreciated.--NMajdan•talk 22:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The article was deleted for not asserting notability, per WP:CSD A7. The entire thing consisted of "Kevin Wilson is the offensive coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Sooners football team." If you want, you can create an article more than that one line that makes a better case for notability. --Sam Blanning(talk) 22:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, thought I remember it being longer than that. Thanks.--NMajdan•talk 22:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

relisting?

I have noticed that often an editor will "relist" an AfD on a subsequent day in order to generate more discussion. Can someone explain the procedure for that? I nominated an article 5 days ago and it didn't generate a single comment, so it seems like it should be relisted before the 7 days are up.--Dmz5 01:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The closing admin will normally relist if it doesn't get enough comments, but if you do relist be sure to remove or comment it out of the previous day log, and add the {{relist}} tag below the last comment, so everybody knows why it is reappearing in the new day's log. Yomanganitalk 02:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

3 articles up for deletion at once

There are 3 articles up for deletion at once, which is probably against AfD policy:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America

Can an admin look at this? thanks Travb (talk) 14:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with nominating multiple related articles at the same time - there's even a section on how to do it in the instructions. Yomanganitalk 14:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, my mistake. Travb (talk) 14:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Snowball keep?

Can someone close the: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America snowball keep?

There is 5 deletions and 22 keeps. Thanks. Travb (talk) 02:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

That shouldn't occur. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
  • When admins have assumed a result before the 5-7 days and closed an AfD "per WP:SNOW", there have been loud protests, even from some of the people who felt the eventual closes should have gone the same way. Especially on controversial topics like the one Travb is working on, there will be people claiming "out of process", "biased admin", "we didn't get a fair chance to respond". If any of this case's 5 "delete" votes shows a good reason why keeping the article violates WP policy, then it would be especially out-of-line to speedy-close the AfD. Barno 15:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Unless the outcome is obvious, as in there is no reasonable opposition, or policy dictates a decision, then we should not close early. As for people complaining, that happens no matter how you close. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Useful template

I created this template for myself: User:HighInBC/Old AfD Link, it can be called by entering {{User:HighInBC/Old AfD Link}}.

It links to 5 day old AfD's and 6 day old AfD's, and should automatically change as the date changes. Handy for people who close often. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 23:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't work right for the first 5 or 6 days of the month, hehe. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Now it works anytime. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 20:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't add tally boxes

The following is listed:

Don't add tally boxes to the deletion page

I am asking when this consensus came about. Two years ago, it was common practice in more controversial discussions to keep a tally just to let administrators know what it was. Is there something inherently evil about tally boxes I'm not seeing?

--ScienceApologist 12:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Part of the same reason we don't call it "Votes for deletion" anymore. In most AFD's, the reasons behind the "votes" are more important that the votes themselves, so tallies are frequently misleading. Fan-1967 16:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Is there anything wrong with keeping a running tally of the votes, just for fun? Does this prejudice the closing arbitartors too much? Is it appropriate for another user to remove a tally statement inserted by another user and is it appropriate for an admonishment to be made on the other user's talkpage regarding the placement of a vote-tally statement? --ScienceApologist 06:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
The practice was never "common" but it did happen more two years ago than now. It's not that it necessarily prejudices the closers of the discussion but it does tend to inflame and prejudice the participants of the debate. It also reinforces the (false) impression that "votes" matter. This is a common misperception by new editors. We should be doing everything we can to lead them to the realization that strength of argument and facts matter far more than any mere "votecount". So I would say that no, we should not be keeping those running tallies even "just for fun". And yes, it is often appropriate to politely remove the tally and to tactfully explain why they generally do much more harm than good. Rossami (talk) 21:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Which leads to another problem. When you have a socknew editor-filled AFD, the last thing you want is to give them the impression that more socknew editors casting more votes will swing the result. Fan-1967 21:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Semiprotection

Wouldn't it be a good idea to automatically semiprotect AFD debates? Everyone must be tired of the horde of IPs and sock/meat puppets that likes to invade deletion debates such as this one screaming STRONG KEEP DO NOT DELETE OR ELSE at the top of their virtual lungs? - ∅ (∅), 16:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

What about the IPs with a valid point. I have seen anons come by a give citations that helped the debate alot. Protection should not be used for preemptivly, only once a problem has occured. The anons who spout nonsense are pretty easy to ignore. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with HighInBC, no semiprotection until a problem hits a given article's debate. Wikipedia has many frequently-editing experts in some subject areas; and it has no experts, or only one or two who rarely log in, in other fields. One of the ways I occasionally contribute is to tell someone WP needs good help on a topic they know better than I do. Sometimes one will find the AfD and give some perspective (such as importance within its niche) or cite a good source. They're more likely to do this as anons than to set up an account. Most of us can ignore the obviously non-policy fanboy noise, and sometimes we can point those users to policy pages and get them to become legit contributors. Most admins who do AfD closings can judge based on policies and sources, and the worst the anons can do is turn a "delete" into a "no consensus, keep until fixed or found unfixable". Barno 00:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

To semiprotect all AfD debates would be so overly beaurocratic, its fairly easy to tag comments submitted by IPs/new users who have not contributed to anything but that debate. We got to be slightly fair in the process and allow them to have a voice too. Also HighInBC brings up a valid point that protection is appropriate after the fact not to prevent a submission or an edit.¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 21:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It is a very strong principle of Wikipedia to not be hostile towards new users/anons without reason since locking pages runs counter to the concept of an open site. Beside, we should be more concerned with what is said than who says it. I see just as many registers non-new users voting based soley on personal interest in the topic as I do new users. There is a template notice for discussions being "voted" on by single purpose accounts, and considering how infrequent it gets used, I'd say it really isn't a problem. Koweja 23:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree here, I frequently have to remind myself that this project is about being open and allowing anyone to edit, not just building an encyclopedia - if that were all, there would be education requirements and all sorts of other hurdles.--Dmz5 09:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Moving comments

It says "Don't reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other." Today a user moved discussion entirely off the page because it was "long". Can the guidelines please explicitly address this as well? — coelacan talk — 18:33, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

While rare, there is precedent for moving exceptionally long tangents and rants off the AFD page. If I remember right, it's already discussed in the Guide to deletion. (And if not, that's where it should be mentioned.) Rossami (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
It shouldn't be moved without leaving a link on the project page though. ~ trialsanderrors 21:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikiprojects

This was removed from the article page, I think it should be discussed: "Please also consider leaving a notification on the project talk page of any WikiProjects identified by colored boxes at the top of the article's talk page." I think it is good form to follow, do we have to vote on it? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 19:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

No it's not good form to follow, it's instruction creep and it creates the impression that WikiProjects have a right to be informed. Intermittently we get WP:DRV requests basically saying a closure was invalid because WikiProject X wasn't informed. There's about five gazillion WikiProjects, 85% of which are functionally inactive (I just removed a "WikiProject Country Music Collaboration of the Month" tag from the Hank Williams article because zero collaboration was going on). It's an unnecessary burden to expect a nominator to add WikiProjects to the list of parties to be notified. ~ trialsanderrors 20:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Writing an online encyclopedia is difficult too, but here we are. I don't see it as burdensome at all, and it can easily be handled by a transclusion process, if more people think its worthwhile. Too much deletion is done by small groups of people, and not enough Wikipedians come to the AFD pages to vote. The more eyes on the process the more useful the process becomes. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 20:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't see why an active WikiProject is onerous to "consider" notifying. Most do not have enough volunteers to keep up with tracking the level of XfD nominations themselves, and an increased level of intelligent discourse at XFD can only be a good thing if we're not voting, right? If there's a problem with a biased WikiProject always voting Keep (or Delete, or whatever), then take it up with them, but this is a much more reasonable proposal than the perennial "inform all editors" or "inform creator" suggestions. -- nae'blis 20:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Because an active WProject does the monitoring itself. What is onerous is to expect the nominator to sift through the list of WProjects, decide which ones are 1. relevant, and 2. active, and follow their notification procedures. Your assumption that this knowledge is readily available is flawed. The issue about WProjects as internal meatpuppet collectives is an additional one, but that's not what I'm aiming at. So why don't you, for the next ten AfD's you create, add notifiers to the relevant WProjects and report back how it went? ~ trialsanderrors 20:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Deal. As soon as I make another 20 AFDs (10 for control of course), I'll get back to you. Probably after the holidays. -- nae'blis 22:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

questioning intentions of nominators

I understand articles being written NPOV but what about being nominated NPOV what I mean is. If you have personal issues with articles. How could one know this. Looking at a user page for one. Assuming (yes I know i used the evil word assume) a member puts they are a vegan on their user page and then suddenly they seem to be nominating just about every meat related page. Or someone who's a userpage admitted white power believer starts nominating lots and lots of non white race pages on each and every nit picky thing? Is this frowned apon in some way? should it be? Or is this just the bad that comes with the good of it? --Xiahou 01:21, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

It's frowned upon to question nominator's ulterior motives, unless the nomination is really stupid. But if they say "This has no reliable sources", nobody likes it when people say "Oh, but you hate article X, your nomination is invalid." -Amarkov blahedits 03:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I've seen nominations that were clearly in bad faith. I've also seen article authors who assumed it to be true just because they couldn't imagine an impartial editor wanted the article deleted. Unless it's so blatant that you can't avoid it, it's always best to just stick to the merits of the article and nomination, and avoid drawing any conclusions about motives, if possible. Fan-1967 03:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. If the nomination is in bad faith, then there obviously aren't going to be reasons to delete the page, so you can just point to that. -Amarkov blahedits 03:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Why can't we transwiki to wikinews?

Is there something about the licensing, or is there another policy. There isn't anything I want moved over, I'm just curious. Koweja 04:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Licensing. Wikinews is Creative Commons, Wikipedia is GFDL. -Amarkov blahedits 04:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't realize that. Thanks. Koweja 05:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Page move query

Shouldn't this be Articles for discussion? Often, many pages are not deleted, instead merged or moved. Or would that make the scope too large? Simply south 12:02, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

It's only supposed to be deletion, although it usually isn't. It would be too much work to rename everything, and there's not an incredibly pressing reason to do so. -Amarkov blahedits 15:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Also, merges and moves have their own pages (as do cleanup, copyright violations, and a bunch of other things AFD is hijacked for, but...). This would just lead to greater confusion on process, I think, and in any case the reason TFD and CFD changed I believe is there's not enough volume to justify separate process pages for merges and moves there (in my opinion). -- nae'blis 17:46, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Actually, everything that gets nominated here is an attempt to delete. Discussions just result in moves/merges/cleanup discussions because the people involved in the discussion find it to be the best course of action. Sure, we could vote keep, then in a separate discussion get it handled, but why bother? This just streamlines the process. That said, Articles for deletion is still the right name for it since these are attempts to delete. Koweja 18:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
There aren't seperate pages for say WP:CfD but from WP:TfD i would guess there are. Simply south 14:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New old stock

Could somebody take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New old stock. Something was done wrong when it was created and it's not linked into the daily lists. I'm not enough of a template wizard to figure out what went wrong. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. ~ trialsanderrors 22:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The Simpsons Archive

I've never submitted an AfD - can someone help me prepare the AfD submission, and let me know if copyvio is a valid reason for AfDing an article? The Simpsons Archive is the product of a Usenet newsgroup, and appears to be one large copyright violation.

Is this a valid reason for AfD, and if so, can someone please prepare the nom on my behalf? Thanks, Sandy (Talk) 18:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I also asked the question at media copyright. Sandy (Talk) 18:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
OK, since it appears not to meet WP:WEB, I'm going to figure out how to nominate this myself. Sandy (Talk) 19:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletions

Please see Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_December_18#Chase_headley. Am I really going to have to bring hundreds of articles which fail WP:BIO, WP:BAND and WP:NOTABILITY to AfD instead of using my common sense and deleting them? User:Zoe|(talk) 18:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Just the ones that don't meet the standard of speedy deletion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
As determined by you. User:Zoe|(talk) 18:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
As determined by policy and guideline, Zoe. If I contested each one of your speedies, you might have a point in this fit of rage, but I didn't because most of your speedies are fine. Just read the damn policies and guidelines, that's all I'm looking for. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Policy says minor league ballplayers fail notability. If someone else, anyone else, had deleted the article, you would have not cared. It's only because I did it that you turn it into a crisis. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Which policy are you citing, then? You haven't cited one yet. Meanwhile, I challenge plenty of speedies when I catch them. I noticed this one because he's been listed on some Red Sox boards recently. Believe it or not, it has very little to do with you - I disagree with some of your A7s, but you don't see me challenging all of your speedies. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
CSD A7. Being a minor league ballplayer is not a claim of notability. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Then you're not interpreting it properly. WP:BIO says that people who play in a fully professional league are notable. Thus, minor league ballplayers have an assertion of notability. You're putting your own opinions into the CSD criteria again, that's not good. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Mass Deletions

This AfD contains a mass deletion. From the comments posted, mass deletions appear to be a valuable Wikipedia tool, but guidelines or at least an article on Mass Deletions should be developed. Please post your thoughts and provide links to any prior mass AfDs here. Thanks. -- Jreferee 19:17, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

      • I disagree. Sometimes two articles might be completely different in terms of their notability even though they look similiar in terms of a defining thread. Just H 02:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I would suggest the main criteria for a mass deletion is that any comment made on one item would be equally valid of all others. It seems important that they are the within same subject e.g. a collection of articles about masts or churches etc. objected to for the same reasons. A collection of unrelated topics all accused of being OR should not be acceptable as there are likely to be sperate arguments for each. I would prefer it if deletion only resulted if there has been a consensus to delete all. If an individual entry is generating discussion but others are not, there should be a procedure for severing it to its individual AfD and the mass AfD can continue without it. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 19:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Example AfD. A notable recent example of a mass deletion was the CAT1-X Hyperion Gundam series AfD which involved apparently 59 separate articles for deletion and a mammoth 150K+ discussion. The result was no consensus on some and delete the rest. Too much of the debate concerned the merits of mass nomination so it seems like a good idea to sort out the problem in the abstract rather than have it dog the discussion everytime many articles are nominated at once. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 19:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Merger might work in some cases. If there were anticipated resistance to merger, reproduce the relevant subject matter from the articles to be deleted in one article, then propose the articles to be deleted in a mass AfD or a mass speedy AfD.-- Jreferee 20:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that mass deletions are often the only way to deal with the C&P trainspotter. The system is stacked in favour of such non-notable articles anyhow. It's so easy to create an article by cutting and pasting, and changing one or two small details. These should clearly by mass speediable. Another problem is that, upon seeing somebody creating [useless] stubs for masts (as an example), another editor ignorant of our policies and guidelines might think that's the way to go, thereby channelling their efforts inefficiently.
Mergers are very time consuming for the editor, and all of this could have been avoided if the original creator had followed wiki policies to start with, (ie by creating articles then spliting off sections which get too large). In the case of the many stubs linked to the list of masts, you may see that I indeed merged info and made some external links direct, so that no information is lost. It has been going smoothly till now when I started getting bolder with larger numner of articles.
From the debates, I believe there's no fundamental issue with the stubs to be deleted, but the large number of items in one go appear to causes unease, as in your particular case. However, I feel that there are few downsides as the process is sufficiently transparent (all the information is there to be verified, audit trail etc). Too many carbon copy AfDs, will result in complaints, not to mention the workload involved for the nominator(s), and the use of kb of disc storage whihc would have been liberated by the deletions. I would favour a clear deletion guideline for speedy deletion for such stubs, per WP:CSD#A1, so that administrators would feel empowered. Ohconfucius 02:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that mass AfD will solved all problem. IMHO, CAT1-X Hyperion Gundam series AfD only discuss a few subject. I, myself, as one who against the AfD, are only able to talk a few. Basically because there was another mass AfD related to the AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cosmic Era vehicles. Basically, defendants only defend base on attackers, and we only talk about few problems and defend according them. The CAT1-X Hyperion Gundam series AfD resulted deletions of relatively few discussed articles, including the important ones of the series. Draconins 12:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Mass Deletions share properties with the consideration of massive appropriations bills in the United States Congress: an omnibus spending bill is put through and tucked into the work are a few things that if they were considered separately would never pass muster, but they get enacted into law because passage is an all-or-none proposition. In American politics, one proposed solution has been the line item veto, which might find applicability in the AfD mass deletion context. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Respondents are welcome to advocate entirely different outcomes for individual pages listed together (in any *fD process). —David Levy 13:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Repeated attempts at AFD

Should there be a limit at how many times an article can be nominated for AFD?? We've had:

I'm not sure if this is good myself.... it's a suggestion only! --SunStar Nettalk 01:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

No, and your arguments, ironically, gave the reason why. Both have been deleted, so obviously, restrictions on AfD nominations would serve to make bad articles get kept. I don't see any big advantage to balance that out. -Amarkov blahedits 01:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
My mistake, Amarkov. sorry! --SunStar Nettalk 01:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess if you vote on something multiple times the vote will eventually go your way, and you will get your deletion. Its just a matter of gaming the system, and choosing the right time to put something up to a vote, and starting a "get out the vote" campaign to the right people. Once it is gone its doubtful anyone will relist it to be resurrected, since only administrators can see deleted entries. Just my humble opinion. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 23:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Gap between nominations

I agree with Amarkov completely that there should be no cap on number of nominations. I was wondering, is there any feeling as to how much time should have to elapse between nominations. Should there be a policy that an article cannot be nominated until X months have elapsed since its last nomination? WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I tried that already, it was pretty unceremoniously shot down. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I just found the discussion in the archives of the Speedy Keep Talkpage. The proposal was 6 months I gather. Has it ever been tried with something shorter e.g. 3 months? WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
The vibe I got was that any limitation was a bad idea. I still disagree, but I can't imagine this being approved. I'm behind you if you want to try again, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
At the moment I just wanted to get a feel for the mood. There must be some period of time (however short) when the appropriate response to a keep result that is disagreed with is deletion review. Otherwise articles could spend time perpetually in AfD. Logically a keep vote as a concensus of the community of the validity of an article should have consequences. To renominate it within a couple of months in the hope that different users will contribute to the debate, seems improper. It is analogous to starting a court case and losing, suspecting that another judge might take a different view, and relitigating the case. I would hope that such nominations could be treated as an abuse of process. At the very least a new argument for deletion not raised at the previous AfD should be needed. This would serve as the counterpart for WP:CSD G4 (recreation of deleted material). I shall ponder the form a new proposal might take. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
There's no "X months before renominating" because different cases require different time periods. A candidate who is going up for election next Tuesday may be eligible for re-nomination in a few weeks, whereas a failing micronation might be better reviewed in several months. To lay down some sort of hard and fast time limit begs for rules lawyering, IMO. I think in most cases articles that come up for renomination too soon get sympathy keeps, which is not exactly proper but a self-correcting balance on most abuses of the system. Personally, I usually wait at least a month or two, even for something like Carlsbad grimple which was pretty clearly a hoax. -- nae'blis 16:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Time shouldn't be the criterion ... content change should be, in my opinion. If an article survives an AfD and a month later is a) unchanged and b) re-nominated at AfD, it should be speedy kept based on the previous result. If, however, the article has substantially changed, then another trip to AfD could be justified very soon after survival the first time around. The comment above ("Repeated attempts at AFD" section above) in support of 'gaming the system' with appropriately targeted 'get out the vote campaigns' until the desired result is achieved is exactly how the system is not supposed to work, and predicating acceptance at AfD on content change would help to reduce the influence of 'system gamers'. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Thoughtful and well stated. I agree 100%. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 00:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I would argue that it's not necessarily change to the content but change to the circumstances. If the content got worse, then the page should be reverted, not AFD'd. On the other hand, if the consensus opinion of the original decision was "keep pending rewrite" and after a month or three the article remains unchanged (that is, still unimproved), that would be reasonable grounds for a renomination - the fact that no one has been able (or willing) to fix the concerns raised during the discussion is a new fact that may be considered by a subsequent discussion. Likewise, if the decision was "no consensus" because the facts being argued in the discussion were unclear, a renomination may be in order as soon as the relevant facts become known.
Premature nominations and attempts to game the system are bad for the project and should be shouted down when they occur. But I do not think that the project would be best served by attempting to impose time-based criteria on renominations. Rossami (talk) 05:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
"Keep pending rewrite" shouldn't happen, because AfD isn't cleanup. Something shouldn't be deleted simply because nobody has cleaned it up. -Amarkov blahedits; 05:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
There are some limited cases where that might be in order; for instance, if notability is not established in the article, but evidence is presented during AfD or on the talk page that establishes notability, retention of the article contingent on inclusion of such information wouldn't be out of order. However, I tend to agree that 'unclean' is not in general a good reason for deletion. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 05:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
"Keep pending rewrite" happens when the community is skeptical that the article can be cleaned up (without, for example, violating NPOV, NOR or one of our other core policies) but is willing to give the "keep" voters the benefit of doubt. I've argued for a number of articles that way. Sometimes I've been successful with the rewrite and turned them into usable articles. Other times, I had to admit defeat and ended up renominating the page myself. "Keeps" are often contingent. That flexibility of outcome is part of why we are so insistent that this is a discussion, not a vote.
Unfortunately, it seems more common that AFD participants argue "keep - it could be cleaned up" then abdicate any responsibility for actually helping with that cleanup. But that's really a separate discussion. Rossami (talk) 05:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Multiple nominees

This might have been dealt with over and over again, but I just want to point out some inconsistency in the way the multiple nomination procedure is applied. The suggested criteria on the main AfD page gives such examples as "a non-notable book and articles about all its characters", or "a non-notable band and articles about its members". What I don't see is "a non-notable mall and every other article about a mall on wikipedia". But this is how many users (in perfectly good faith) apply the criteria; for a current example, look here. This is not egregious but it is symptomatic. I would like to emphasize that in the past month, during which I have been particularly active on AfD pages, I have not yet seen a mass nomination that hasn't resulted in conflicts and debate over the procedure rather than the article(s) at hand. See, for example, this. It also leads to users going on mini-vendettas (which is fine IMO) against perhaps non-notable churches, schools, etc, but then nominating them all in a huge bundle with the explanation that "these are all non-notable churches." Does this perhaps suggest that a tweak to that part of the AfD procedure guidelines might be in order? Has this topic already been done to death, and no one even wants to talk about it anymore? If so I apologize, but if not, I'd like to see other opinions.--Dmz5 09:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

What's your proposed remedy? ~ trialsanderrors 09:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Ahh I was just about to add a message suggesting something. Since the examples I cite are counter to the given guidelines, perhaps an additional bullet in that section to clarify that multiple-nominating is not intended for x,y,z purpose - so then editors and admins can refer to something concrete in asking that the mass-nominees be un-bundled. Or something like that. So far, I have not seen such an action occur without additional excessive debate (such as the second example I link above). --Dmz5 09:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Hmm this thread at least partly overlaps with "mass deletions" above, which is odd because I swear I did not see that thread when I created this - otherwise I might not have done so! --Dmz5 16:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Question about policy

In a recent afd that I started, a fellow editor wrote the following

This is an AfD discussion, though, so the important question is not whether the current article is good, but whether there should be an article about this in the Wikipedia

I'm not sure that I agree, I think that an afd should remain about the article.

I'm not sure that this is the right place to ask, but are there any policy pages where the gist of this statement is discussed?

I did not find anything on this page regarding that statement.

The afd where the statement is made is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/11:11 phenomenon

If there is a more appropriate place to ask this question please let me know.

TheRingess 20:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I am misinterpreting your comment, but as it is written above it appears you believe he is suggesting that the article should not be deleted. The statement makes no such claim. He's simply saying that quality of an article is not a consideration for AfD. He further states that the real concern for an AfD is whether or not the article should be on the wiki. Both of these statements are basic policy. Yes, in the full discussion he does indeed give reasons for a Keep, but these arguments are based on notability, as they should be. Am I missing something here? Maury 22:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt response. I do not believe that he is suggesting the article should not be deleted. To me, the quality of the article is not in question (as you point out and has been pointed out on this page, poor quality is not grounds for deletion, but improvement). Quality and original research are not necessarily linked. A well written article can still be original research. The point I made in the afd is that the article is original research (and I outlined the reasons why I believe it is), which according to this page, is grounds for deletion. Is the question of whether or not an article is original research and therefore should be deleted, overridden when the purported subject of the article is decided to be notable? The answer is still not clear to me. TheRingess 23:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
If sources exist, but simply aren't in the article, notability overrides OR, yes. But if no sources exist, it will always be OR, so it should be deleted. -Amarkov blahedits 05:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, I figured that about sources.TheRingess 06:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Search engine

Here is a google coop search engine for Afd, Tfd (etc ...) archives. It doesn't seem to be reliable, however. [1] ([2]) --Fasten 13:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It does seem to be improving. So the "google algorithm" (awed voice) appears to be working on it. --Fasten 14:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
AfD discussions should not be indexed by Google because of robots.txt. Don't know about the other *fD. Tizio 16:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Transcluding WP:AFD/Old

I the last few days I reverted two edits that increased the number of days in the "Active discussions" section. This number shouldn't be changed from the standard six days though since technically only discussions not older than 120 hours are considered active. Open discussions older than 120 hours appear in WP:AFD/Old. I asked Oleg who runs the Mathbot whether transcluding the links to the old discussions from WP:AFD/Old to the main page would interefere with bot operations, and he said No. So I'm throwing this out here to gather consensus. Currently the transclusion would look like this: 

Current discussions
----------------------------------------------
* 22 December (Friday)
* 21 December (Thursday)
* 20 December (Wednesday)
* 19 December (Tuesday)
* 18 December (Monday)
* 17 December (Sunday)

Old discussions
----------------------------------------------
* Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 December 15 (70 open / 92 closed / 162 total discussions) 
* Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 December 16 (76 open / 40 closed / 116 total discussions)

I gather the bot script can be tweaked to change the formatting of the old links to match the current ones, but transclusion would create a simple way to access old discussion logs with open discussions (if the number is small enough they can even be accessed directly). Any feedback is welcome. ~ trialsanderrors 06:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The old discussions already show up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, see section 2 there. That section transcludes Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/old, I think that one needs to be merged with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old, and then one could follow your suggestion above. As you wrote on my talk page, WP:AFD/Old would need to have a bunch of <noinclude> statements so that only the links to the discussions are transcluded and not everything else from it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
From the edit history, this looks like it's being updated by hand (infrequently), which is certainly not a satisfactory solution. ~ trialsanderrors 06:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
That's right, and there is no good reason for that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/old page to exist if Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old is updated by the bot every day. I think if we get no comments in the next day or two, you could implement your suggestion with the transclusion and perhaps you could redirect Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/old to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old (I will be traveling and won't be around to do that). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I set it up and it seems to work properly. ~ trialsanderrors 19:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Just spotted this. Good job, I was thinking something like this should happen (as one of the infrequent updaters) but had no idea how to accomplish it. Trebor 21:31, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The Game (game) 6th AFD

Just an FYI, I renominated "the game" for deletion here. KnightLago 02:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

If you nominate it another 10 or 20 times, Jimbo will probably delete it anyway, per the Gay Nigger Association of America article. Just H 02:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

help?

Hi, I tried to fix the afd for Rachel Marsden, the third, on the log page, but I can't seem to make it work right. The subpage is Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rachel_Marsden_(third_nomination) Bucketsofg 21:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Lemme check. Just H 02:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
ok, never mind....Just H 02:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

help 2

My nomination for Neutomic Keyboard is screwed up. I don't know how it got that way or how to fix it. I fixed it so my text shows, but there is no header. Please see my text under Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 December 27#Danasoft Signatures. -Freekee 05:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I figured it out. I missed adding the header template when I created the deletion discussion page. -Freekee 05:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's plan a new template?

So I read some stuff and I thought it's a great thing to put on talk pages when articles get deleted and people complain about it but don't understand notability requirements.

Something like this:

This is not a forum! Please read new topic of discussion at the Virtual classroom is Elaragirl, about deletion and deletionism. Comments, questions, and new sections are welcome.

It could probably use revising. The main thing is the virtual classroom article is very easy to read and comprehendable as opposed to the longer, more detailed things on the policy page. What do you think? Anomo 20:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

This should probably be spun out as an essay before we put it on the top of all talk pages. And the template needs some serious toning down. My eyes are bleeding now. ~ trialsanderrors 21:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
How about
Please read the topic by Elaragirl about about article deletion at the Virtual classroom. Comments, questions, and new sections are welcome.
Less eye-bleeding, and smaller. There is no need to make that topic 10x more visible than any other on Wikipedia. Koweja 22:10, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Definitely improved. The other problem is that it's one Wikipedian's opinion on a topic, and even if it's a reasonable one I don't see why it should be elevated over others' who have offered their opinion. If it's an essay in WP space it can be edited by anyone. ~ trialsanderrors 22:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
It isn't any different than other essays on Wikipedia. Anyone can discuss, edit, and help revise it, and it isn't going to be treated like a guideline or policy. It isn't trying to be one, elaragirl is just explaining existing policy and procedure. Koweja 22:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Well it's in her name and signed by her, so I'm not going to just change her wording. ~ trialsanderrors 22:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Trialsanderrors, this goes against the "wiki way" and should be de-owned if were advertised. —Quarl (talk) 2006-12-31 00:33Z
I like the idea of directing people to the virtual classroom. But many other people contributed to it, and it is the syntethesis (zomg OR!) of concepts from a wide range of pages and policies. Might I suggest:
This is not a forum! For some discussion on basic deletion related concepts, please the Virtual classroom topic regarding common questions about deletion and deletionism. Comments, questions, and new sections are welcome.
Thanks Anomo, but it's more about the community than me. :) --ElaragirlTalk|Count 01:00, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Elaragirl's new version is better. As for style issues, I would also suggest removing or replacing the "!" icon, since this may look like a warning or aggresive/authoritarian rather than the friendly pointer I think you want it to be. Also, how much does this overlap with Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?? —Quarl (talk) 2006-12-31 02:40Z

Elera's is more easy to read then the Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted and the policy pages, which both sound like reading the Encyclopedia Britanica. To make it more of a public thing, I'd recommend to copy it someone else and have more people edit it -- it just needs to stay very easily readable. Anomo 08:11, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Switched the icon to Image:Information icon.svg. ~ trialsanderrors 09:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Much better. I think it's perfect as is. Koweja 14:20, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

How about a widening of the template so the last line does not include a single word, 'welcome?' Keesiewonder 22:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a result of your browser setting and differs by user. The width is set to match the boxes that usually go on top of talk pages. ~ trialsanderrors 22:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Sockpuppet deletion efforts by banned user

I'd like to make closing editors aware of an ongoing problem. I recently banned several sockpuppets of JB196, who has been on a disruptive campaign for the greater part of 2006 to aggressively delete non-North American professional wrestling articles. The sockmaster had been banned since September 2006 and has returned to evade multiple blocks, most recently at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_December_27#Chuck_E._Chaos.

Please exercise special scrutiny with new and low edit count comments on these topics due to the high probability that these are new manifestations of one persistent vandal. DurovaCharge! 22:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Archiving AFD debates

(thread bumped for further debate —Quarl (talk) 2007-01-01 00:49Z)

I posted two different ways of archiving AFD debates at User:Trialsanderrors/AfD. They're based on the new archiving system we just implemented at WP:DRV. There are two advantages for this sytem: For one, it removes the discussion (but not the result) of closed debates from log pages, so it becomes easier to look for open debates; and for two, instead of creating a {{oldafdfull}} (or as I like to call it, "Old awful") box on the talk page, as the discussion can simply be transcluded to the talk page. The two versions differ by whether the discussion can be viewed by uncollapsing the archive box (easier to access, but more load on the log pages) or whether the discussion can be viewed only by clicking on the "AfD" link (harder to access, but reduces load on the log page). One thing I haven't implemented is a field for closers to explain their reasoning. The proposed system would be based on templates similar to {{drt}} and {{drb}}, which are currently used to close deletion review debates. Any feedback and modifications are welcome. ~ trialsanderrors 02:55, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Moving this down because I'd like to get some feedback on it. Also, the templates {{aft}} and {{afb}} are now implemented and ready for field testing (revert to the old {{at}} and {{ab}} after testing on actual AfD's). The process is a bit different from the old one, mostly it wraps the top template around the header:
===[[Header]]===                                      → Replace with {{subst:aft|[[Header]]|DECISION}}
  Header (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) — (AfD) ← If this is missing from the discussion it should be included for archiving.
DISCUSSION                                            ← Body of the discussion stays unchanged
                                                      → Close the box with {{subst:afb}}
Transcluded it looks like this:

User:Trialsanderrors/AfD/Amy Loftus

Click on the AfD link to see the full discussion in new format. Again, feedback is always welcome. It's pretty much up and running now at WP:DRV. ~ trialsanderrors 06:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Both of Trialsanderrors' proposals look great to me. It obsoletes a bunch of Javascript I wrote but who cares about that :) If I were to choose between the two I wouldn't focus on downlod time as it isn't much of a problem for me and it's really only a hack to save download time anyway since a page of unclosed debates is still just as long. But I don't have a strong preference between the two, both are improve on the status quo. —Quarl (talk) 2007-01-01 00:39Z

What was your proposal? ~ trialsanderrors 04:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Huh? I'm just approving of your proposal(s), whether you call it one proposal with two alternatives or two proposals. —Quarl (talk) 2007-01-01 04:48Z
No, I was interested in what you tried to do to cut down on the clutter, using Javascript. ~ trialsanderrors 10:48, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, it adds a button to toggle showing or hiding all closed discussions (and instead just show the heading and closure statement). Source is at http://www.cubewano.org/wpt/scripts/xfdhideclosed.js. But your solution is better since it immediately works for all users (for future closures at least) without editing user javascript or even site javascript. —Quarl (talk) 2007-01-01 21:58Z
If you're interested in AFD-related scripts, this is much more interesting: xfdclose.js automates a bunch of stuff with 1 click each: close afd, delete articles, tag oldafdfull, remove afd tag, noting merge on target talk, relist afd. —Quarl (talk) 2007-01-01 22:01Z
This looks very interesting. So do I copy-and-paste the code into my monobook.css? ~ trialsanderrors 04:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Copying-and-pasting it into your monobook.js might work better. --ais523 14:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
D'oh! Thanks. ~ trialsanderrors 21:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Although WP:IDONTLIKEIT isn't a guideline or policy, I believe every AfD consensus voter should read this essay. The best way to do this is to post a link to it at the top of the main AfD page and the AfD logs. Is this in any way possible? Sr13 (T|C) 09:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think adding a link to the top of the page will convince people to read it - it'll just increase the clutter. A better way to deal with fallacious arguments on AfD is to challenge them personally and show why they're wrong. Trebor 21:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree people won't read it any more than anything else. An article just proposed for deletion (Palaeos) even has a link to its brief write-up in Science (journal), it's been written up in other peer-reviewed journals, something not said for many user written websites, and its demise was the subject of intense discussion by scientists over the past few months, yet the assertion was made that it failed notability--in all fairness, it's a crummy article, but clicking on the link to Science should have given the proposer some pause. A world famous translator (sorry if you haven't heard of him) was proposed for deletion because he failed the google test--look him up in Barnes and Noble, people with fewer book listings are all over Wikipedia, and this guy doesn't even write in English! The arguments will still be offered, no one will read the link, and it will just clutter the page. Yeah, just challenge. But coming here worries me that plenty of good articles and necessary articles are being deleted simply because they are outside of someone's venue. I don't speak Albanian, or know any Albanians, but I've heard about this cool dude who translated Antony and Cleopatra into Albanian! KP Botany 21:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

A couple of ideas

As we all know, debates added towards the end of the day attract less attention than those added at the beginning. I commented on this on the mailing list and a couple of really good ideas came up.

  • Add new debates at the top. Yup, very simple. We do it with some discussion pages, it's simple to do and it means that people won't lose interest before they get to the newest debates.
  • Transclude the previous day's debates at the bottom of a new day's debates. Do this in a <noinclude> in case people forget to knock it off during maintenance. Or do it only at /today.

What do people think? Guy (Help!) 20:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we should try to standardize top- or bottom adding over our forums. Top-adding seems to makes more sense because it gives the newest additons the most attention. On transcluding yesterday's debates to today's log, I don't think that's feasible since we're already running 150+ debates per day. We could possibly create a "last 100/150/200" log page though. ~ trialsanderrors 21:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Both those proposals make sense to me. Top-adding should be done ASAP in my opinion, the first AfD always gets a lot more comments than the last few and this is a simple way to try to correct that. A last 150/200 page log would work pretty well I think (adding all the previous day's debates would bloat today's log). Trebor 21:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Standardizing Wikipedia pages on top-down or bottom-up would be helpful, but I'm pretty sure the momentum is with top-down, based on the impetus provided by the [+] button. -- nae'blis 23:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
That works fine for discussions, but I think newest first makes more sense in xFD type pages. Guy (Help!) 14:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I also see quite a couple of late additions that are sneaked in on the top spot of the day. I assume that happens accidentally, but it's another reason to switch to top adding. ~ trialsanderrors 11:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Close/withdrawn nom for 100-Hour Plan

I nominated this for deletion earlier, and I have now withdrawn my nomination. It is now, or will be a notable current event shortly. So deleting it now is useless. I would ask that an admin close the debate if possible. Thanks. KnightLago 20:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Article deletion history

Once an article has been deleted, how can I view its History and previous Talk page? --Iantresman 15:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

You can't - that's rather the point of deleting it. It's only viewable to admins (although the talk page is not always deleted). Trebor 15:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Request a history restore at WP:DRV. ~ trialsanderrors 21:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Determine if a new account is the same person?

I'm sure this isn't the right place, but as it's related to something happening at an AfD, I thought I'd put it here. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kielbasa (song) there are two accounts that, the first edit they did was comment on the AfD. The one has that as it's only edit and the other has one other edit of their own user page. Is there anything I can do to determine if one of the previous people who voted for the AfD just created these new accounts to get more votes on their side? Joltman 18:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a group of admins that check for sockpuppet accounts. As for those two, it is quite possible that they are two independent single purpose accounts. In any case, their "votes" won't mean much, just mark their comments as being made by accounts with few or no other edits. Koweja 18:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Soliciting votes?

Is there a general guideline on soliciting votes? It appears that QuackGuru is visiting user's pages to request they bring in others to swing the vote on an AfD.[3]

I don't know of any guideline for or against this, but it strikes me as a bit... off. -- Kesh 23:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been feeling for some time now that this sort of thing is a major problem for wikipedia. It is very easy for bias and censorship to jump in here: wikipedia votes for deletion are usually only voted on by a few dozen editors, out of the hundreds of thousands of people who might read an article. It does not take much soliciting to go on to swing a vote. Votes are generally not vetted for honesty: it is trivial for someone to give a bogus rationale for their vote (e.g. declare that they are voting for an article to be deleted on the basis that it violates a wiki policy, when in fact it does not) - who checks? who decides the number of votes cast was representative of a sensible cross-section of the wikipedia community? --feline1 17:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
The closing admin vets the comments and decides all those issues. This is exactly why 1) we are discussing the article, not voting and 2) we restrict the closing of AFD discussions to experienced administrators in almost all cases. By the way, to answer the first question, solicitation of "votes" is strongly and actively discouraged and, when discovered, will almost always backfire, resulting in a raft of comments that the solicitor acted in bad faith and causing those solicited "votes" to be discounted (to some degree) by the closing admin. See Wikipedia:Guide to deletion for more. Rossami (talk) 20:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
WP:SPAM#Canvassing is the current guideline. WP:CANVASS which is a spin-off of that section, is in proposal stage. ~ trialsanderrors 21:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Really? This all surprises me. In the past, for instance, I had my editing rights locked for 24 hours under the 3 Revert Rule: what happened was that an admin solicited other users to revert my edits, so that they could effectively revert me more than 3 times, and push me over the limit, then temporarily ban me! I see much the same strategies going on in deletion votes. I've basically given up bothering to edit on contentious/political/pseudoscience type articles because of this kind of behaviour.--feline1 22:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • "Wikipedia:Deletion policy" in the section "Abuse of deletion process" tells us that "It should also be noted that packing the discussion .. meatpuppets (advertising or soliciting of desired views) does not reflect a genuine consensus". In other words, it is against policy. --Iantresman 23:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Are these articles appropriate for Wikipedia?

The two following articles are both theories of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a "self taught" artificial intelligence researcher:

The articles do not appear to be supported by citations outside of Eliezer's own self-published writings hosted on Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Eliezer has no peer-reviewed publications describing these speculative theories, thus I am not sure why they deserve to be featured in an encyclopedia. Also many of these four articles (the two theories and the person and organization) read like advertisements, not true encyclopedia articles. Thoughts? --70.48.69.136 00:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

These are good articles, but maybe Eliezer Yudkowsky's role in Seed AI should be made clearer. - Peregrinefisher 00:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Quick cite search tells me that Yudkowsky has two papers listed on ISI, with one citation each. Two articles on Newsbank. I'm hard-pressed to say that he meets WP:PROF. The Kurzweil link might be considered notable, but I'm not sure if it is independent. On the other hand those articles are stone old and were heavily edited. ~ trialsanderrors 11:16, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Just now someone added to Bayesian probability a link to an on-line tutorial by Yudkowsky. I am sometimes tempted to shoot these things on sight but the tutorial isn't half bad. Will perhaps try to engage the anonymous contributor in a conversation. (WP:EL appears to say that external links should be explained and justified in the text of the article). There is an online paper by Yudkowsky that is said to be a forthcoming publication in a book called 'Global Catastrophic Risks'. The content of that paper looks like standard science, and it appears appropriately scholarly. If someone really thought the Eliezer Yudkowsky article and the two AI articles mentioned above were inappropriate, I suppose they could take them to AfD, but if enough disclaimers are included as to the (small) influence of this work I think this stuff might be OK. These ideas do not appear to be pseudoscience (at least, from what little I've checked). Some merger might possibly be considered, because with so little peer-reviewed discussion, having three different articles might be excessive. EdJohnston 21:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed policy re-wording

Semiautomatic deletions and inadvertent anti-Third World systemic bias

This just came through on wikipedia-l. Nominators are asked to take especial care to remember that not everything is on Google - David Gerard 14:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC) 

From: "Frederick Noronha" <fred@bytesforall.org>
To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third World

Hi all, I'm from India, a contributor to the Wikipedia. In recent
times, the 'mortality' of new Wikipedia entries seems to be higher
than usual. While one can understand the need for abundant caution,
it's also important to allow for a diversity of concerns and issues in
this space.

Should we presume that because an initiative is not very visible in
cyberspace (okay, we are under-digitised societies!) that it is not
prominent or noteworthy? See as one example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikalp This is a campaign against
censorship of documentary film in India, one which has the
participation of about 250 documentary film-makers.

There must be some way out. Your suggestions would be welcome. FN
-- 
FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
http://www.goa-india.org http://feeds.goa-india.org/index.php

Thanks for posting this. It is very true that several AfDs require rigorous research rather than relatively simple Google searches to ascertain verifiability. (You don't even need a language barrier or a less privileged country of origin to fall in to this trap.) While it is unfortunate that the original authors (some who may be relatively new, i.e. WP:BITE) of the article may not have done thorough scholarly research, their not doing so does not necessarily mean the article should be a speedy delete or even nominated for an AfD. Time permitting, I am willing to help editors who sincerely request a bit of scholarly research on any topic. Is there a good place for me to list my signature so people can ask for assistance? I understand that canvassing and advertising are not the way to go, and that is not what I'm talking about here. Maybe I'm talking about copyediting? Keesiewonder 14:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Dunno - mention it on the mailing list and go looking for portals for smaller countries, I suppose - David Gerard 17:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, David. I'll try that. But it applies even when everything is just between content, say, in Australia, USA and England. Please contact me via Talk or email if you would like a specific example or two or three ... Thanks. Keesiewonder 17:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The etiquette standard should be the same as RfC

Currently the AfD etiquette standard is

Don't reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other.

I think this should be adjusted so that the page follows the same "arguement for/arguement against" structure as the RfC's with the person calling for its deletion to have a few sentences explaining their position and a few sentences following by a person who wish it to remain. Both statements should be signed and neither signitor should be given a vote. If a person or admin is biased against a work their statement on top with a large gap between that and the oppossing arguement is unfair. Wikipedia does not allow this for the less controversal outcomes of AfD and insists on the structure I advocate here for Afd, as per

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Article_RfC_example

so it makes no sense that for the more drastic arguement around Afd that a lesser standard is accepted.--Wowaconia 17:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

But RfCs are not meant to enact something, they are meant to allow people to easily see the arguments for or against something, for which they have to be close to each other. Seperating !votes into seperate camps on an AfD only encourages vote counting as a substitute for rational argument. Look at RfA. It splits votes between "support", "oppose", and "neutral", and it basically is a vote; rarely will a bureaucrat consider the actual arguments made. -Amarkov blahedits 17:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
We've tried splitting the comments into "keep" and "delete" sections before. The experiment failed. It had the following adverse effects on the discussions:
  1. It became much much harder to match changing consensus when the article or the facts presented changed. In a strictly chronological discussion, it's easy to see that "all comments made after the rewrite were keep" or "all comments made after fact a was discovered were delete". When you presort the comments, you have to sort out every timestamped signature.
  2. Conditional comments became much harder to figure out. Where do you sign your name when you really mean "keep if X turns out to be true but delete otherwise"? How do you categorize "merge or delete"? It's confusing for the discussion participants and impossible for closing admins.
  3. It tended to polarize the "voters" into competing camps. We already have too much adversarial nonsense and emotion getting into these discussions. Presorting the "votes" made it worse.
  4. When AFD discussions are vandalized (and they frequently are), it made sorting out and fixing the vandalism much harder. Walking through the edit history is simpler if the discussion is still basically chronological.
Your proposal also goes beyond the previous experiments by limiting the arguments for and against to those made by two initial participants (who then may not "vote"). This shuts down the possibility that other participants in the discussion will have new facts to add to the debate. This would be a bad thing for Wikipedia. We are not voting. Rossami (talk) 04:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Any way to nominate LOTS of articles

I saw the thing on scripts, but basically none are feasible for me. I created a nom for an article here, but it seems that all the articles in {{Template:Universal Century Mobile weapons}} are fair game along the same grounds. Is there a way to nominate all of them in one fell swoop? (as far as I know they don't belong to a particular category.) Dåvid ƒuchs (talk • contribs) 00:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no "automatic" way, you need to follow the steps described here. If the AFD already started, maybe you should consider seeing if it is deleted, and then creating a massive AFD using the deletion result as precedent. -- ReyBrujo 03:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Or be bold and do it like this.--Ezeu 03:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

<grin> I'm flattered to be used as an example now, but while I haven't been struck by lightning (or otherwise warned or cautioned) for starting that AfD, I'll just point out that the articles are not deleted and that no conclusion on what type of discussion is needed for these has been made yet... If you want to mass nominate articles, you can a) start with one to set a precedent (make it clear in the AfD nomination that that is the objective, or you'll get "why did you single out this one" counterarguments) - if theis AfD is successful, nominate the other ones all at once or in batches of e.g. 20 (like is done with the towers AfD we recently had), or b) just go for it and nominate them all. Make fairly certain that they are very comparable (i.e. not some more notable than others), or people will start complaining (I wont, I like mass nominations, but I seem to be an exception). Fram 15:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Listing of all previous AfDs on a given one?

Question: on AfDs, why don't we make a procedure of listing all previous AfDs at the top of a page for review? For example, on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Nihilist Underground Society (5th Nomination), that article is up now for the 5th time. I put a comment just now in that copied the multi-AfD table from the Article's talk page. Wouldn't it make sense to just have someone put this by default at the head of each AfD page, for complete disclosure of an article's history? F.F.McGurk 18:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is to ditch the WP:AfD/Blablabla (5th nomination) format and to create subdirectories WP:AfD/Blablabla/1, /2, ... /5, etc. Simplifies using the {{afd}} and {{afdx}} tags too. The main page could contain the summaries of the previous AfD's or, if my proposal to reformat the closed debate boxes will ever get adopted, the transcluded discussion, and of course every individual subpage will automatically have a link to the WP:AfD/Blablabla main page. ~ trialsanderrors 08:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I think (hope?) that this would be unnecessary overhead for the vast majority of deletion discussions. What proportion really turn out to be repeat nominations/discussions? Rossami (talk) 01:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
The nominator should note any previous nominations under the current name when nominating, yes. If they have not read the talk page/deletion log, then they have not done their homework. However, failing that, I have to agree with Rossami that it's overkill to rework the entire structure to avoid this problem. Adding something to the instructions should be sufficient. The bigger problem I can't sort out is when you go to the deletion record and end up at the first one, with no indication that others have taken place. Would it be worth documenting future AFDs on the talk page of the prior ones? -- nae'blis 02:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
My proposal is actually to achieve the exact opposite, to simplify a whole number of steps. For instance, editors now need to know the difference between {{Afd}} and {{Afdx}}. For every repeat nomination using {{afdx}} the nominations have to be corrected manually to remove the "(Nth nomination)" from header and {{la}} template. The {{oldafdfull}}, which has to be written by hand, could simply be replaced by a transclusion of the main AfD page, etc. ~ trialsanderrors 17:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
The user should not have to manually correct the repeat nominations. {{afdx}} defaults to "2nd" but it's a parameterized template and can be used to enter any level of nomination. For subsequent nominations, the user types {{subst:afdx|3rd}}. If you follow the process properly, I don't know of anything you have to correct by hand. But I'm pretty sure you knew that so maybe I'm not understanding your concern yet. Now, I will concede that knowing the difference between afd and afdx is complex - but it only occurs in a small number of cases. If I understood the proposal correctly, we'd be adding a layer of complexity to all deletion discussions just to deal with a minority which are repeated incorrectly. Rossami (talk) 01:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually it was me who implemented "2nd" as default in {{afdx}}, but even then you still have to manually change the header from ===Header (2nd nomination)=== to ===Header (2nd nomination)=== and the {{la}} tag from Header (2nd nomination) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) to Header (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I do this all the time when I close DRV's and renominate overturned AfD's. We're not adding anything, even if we were to set the first discussions to WP:AFD/Header/1 (which isn't really necessary, it really only changes things from the 2nd nomination on). ~ trialsanderrors 02:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Disappearing AfD's in January 11 log

This edit by an anon seems to have screwed up the list of nominations at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 January 11. I noticed my two nominations disappeared, maybe others too? ~ trialsanderrors 07:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Another anonymous IP attacked two former AfD pages too that are on my watchlist: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Curtis Newart and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Immaculate Records. The odd thing is both of these AfDs are related. It would be one thing for a random IP to wipe out one or two AfDs but two related ones that were separated by other AfDs? Seems too much of a concidence to me. Ronbo76 07:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-admins closing debates

A discussion regarding is underway at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Disputed tag. Navou banter 02:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for de-centralization of debates

This proposal is largely dependent upon the following statements of fact and/or problems:

  • WP:CSD and WP:PROD are successful in dealing with unambiguous deletion
  • AFD therefore is meant to be used for more nuanced debates
  • AFD (in as much as the centralized page goes) does not involve users who are particularly interested in the topics they are discussing
  • Although AFD is not a vote, it is mostly a poll: look at this article, google, and the arguments - what do you think?
  • Closing admins are often not versed in the topic
    • Keep but cleanup and merge closes therefore are hard to enact
  • There is no clear-cut standard for notability
    • There are arguments which say there shouldn't be one
Proposal
Move deletion discussion into WikiProject space, i.e. Wikipedia:WikiProject project/Deletion discussion

What this proposal is suggesting:

  • Deletion discussions occur in topic-specific areas
    • One cannot watchlist a category
  • Deletion discussions do not close until there is consensus
    • Those participating are interested in the topic at hand and will be able to enact cleanup, merges, and nuanced debate
  • The main AFD page used for cataloguing the different areas
    • There should be a general area for topics which do not have a related WikiProject and/or for disputed PRODs

What this proposal is not suggesting:

  • WikiProject participants be given more say
  • Policies be applied less vigorously
  • Deletion discussion be limited to WikiProject participants/members
  • Deletion discussion be difficult to find

Perceived benefits:

  • Discussion will be more informed
  • Participants will be able to cleanup during/after debate
  • If a topic is deleted because it does not have sources, a noticeboard could be kept for such articles
    • If, say, a new book is published, the articles are all listed there and the encyclopedia benefits

The idea is creation of a process which puts the encyclopedia before deletion and is improve first and delete only if necessary. Additionally, discussions should be informed by the informed. Also, de-centralizing allows the inclusionism-deletionism dichotomy not to play into discussions as much (can't just go down the list: keep, keep, keep; or delete, delete, delete).

If this were ever to take place, a large amount of support would be needed. Therefore, I'm not getting my hopes up, but please do discuss and refine. :] --Keitei (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd decentralize even further, because centralised discussions generally do not scale along with the growing size of wikipedia. Even so, any kind of decentralization is an improvement! :-) Kim Bruning 01:21, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
WikiProjects tend to scale themselves more-or-less adequately (as, being largely social structures, they collapse if they don't); so splitting along those lines ought to work. Having said that, there are two points of interest here:
  • How to we deal with articles that fit into multiple project's scopes? (This usually happens when a topical project and a national project intersect.) Presumably we can double-transclude subpages, if we're still using separate ones for each discussion; but somebody needs to figure out how that'll work in terms of keeping lists synchronized.
  • To avoid people trying to do silly things with the creation of ever-more-specific sub-projects, it may be worthwhile to have some sort of benchmark before a project is eligible to have discussions funneled to it.
Kirill Lokshin 01:35, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Decentralization makes it nearly impossible to check if someone is tampering with the process since presumable less people are watching the debate. People in relevant projects tend to be biased on the subjects they like. An outside view can be very useful in a debate. Decentralization makes it hard for people to casually browse the list of debates to find a topic they can comment on, which could be subjects they don't "like" but might have valuable insights about. It only causes more work. However, "If a topic is deleted because it does not have sources, a noticeboard could be kept for such articles" is a good point. Before something gets deleted for lack of sources, people at relevant projects should be asked to try and verify it. That way everyone can still easily participate yet articles get the attention they need to be vetted by experts. By the way, I see no scaling problems yet. We had a massive increase in member numbers, but the number of "voters" in AFDs haven't changed much, it's only the controversial ones that draw out big numbers. - Mgm|(talk) 01:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
    • We could of course try to get the best from both worlds. Have all debates listed in a central place, but also relevant project deletion pages to attract the experts. Some projects already have relevant noticeboards. - Mgm|(talk) 01:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • This would balkanize the project, fragmenting it into a collection of only vaguely associated "WikiProjects". It would not only allow but encourage the creation of ever smaller specialty "projects" populated solely by those interested in keeping their little community of pages alive. It would become extremely difficult to reinject balance into discussions once a small community decided on a particular course even if that course was at odds with the will of the larger community or even at odds with the goals of the project. Deletion is one of the most important decisions which we make about an article. The AFD process puts that decision in front of the largest possible community of editors.
    By the way, there already is an experiment in the categorization of AFDs. The purpose of the categorization was to raise visibility among the "project" people but without disenfranchising the rest of the community. I haven't looking in on the categorization experiment lately. If it's not working then we need to know why before proposing another round of the same. Rossami (talk) 01:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
    • How do you expect people to manage this? Stub types come roughly 1 per Wikiproject, and the people who actually affix stub tags do not use them. Why? Because there are so many that you have to consult a list to pick one. So we use the generic stub tag, and people can categorize later if they wish. -Amarkov blahedits 02:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Commment "Deletion is one of the most important decisions which we make about an article." If it's so important why is it often carried out by people who know so little about the topic that their only comment on notability is the low number of ghits? KP Botany 02:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
        • The low number of GHits is often a fair measure of notability. Failure to produce reliable sources by article supporters is often even better. The two frequently go hand in hand. Fan-1967 02:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
          • I don't know about you, but sometimes I can't find the time to go to a "library" and get a "book" in any given 5 or 7 day period. That's not to say these "books" don't exist, no matter what Google says. --Keitei (talk) 02:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Why is everyone assuming that people who are involved in the topic are better? Yes, they know more, but Wikipedia articles are supposed to be built on actual sources that anyone can find, not just what some involved editors know. -Amarkov blahedits 02:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
          • I'm not saying better, just interested: i.e. more likely to research beyond just Google, more likely to not drive-by "nn d", etc. Standards should not be dropped: reliable sources, verified material, etc should still be required, but with editors who care more than your AfD regular. --Keitei (talk) 02:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
            • I've found google to lag a bit in the sciences and to have some surprising omissions, leading to debates that never would have taken place had one person in the field been consulted. For example Thermal optimum was nominated based on "Very few Google hits which are not ambiguous or Wiki mirrors." And other reasons which are not necessarily part of the AfD process. This would probably surprise biologists, ecologists, climate change scientists, paleontologists, and quaternary geologists that google has only a few hits on a basic term. But what is, is.
            • And any handy biologist or geologist would have known the functional use of the term, and how to research it, and would have said "huh?" they're questioning sea level rise with a thermal optimum as POV? I can't even quite think where the nominator is going with that. It's a thermal optimum, so there is less water stored in ice, what do they think sea levels do? Or are they questioning the amount of rise, because they know so much about the topic they know the expected rise is much greater or much less--in which case they know it shouldn't be deleted? "This is an unsourced one sentence stub (since August 2005)related to sea level and global temperature. Very few Google hits which are not ambiguous or mirrors of this Wikipedia article. In relation to current controversies of climate change, the article should be fleshed out or deleted. It seems POV to say the "Thermal optimum" would have the sea levels 5 to 6 meters higher than now. Edison 17:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)" The AfD started somewhere that someone with a small bit of knowledge on the topic never would have gone. Sea level changes are well-recorded phenonmena in the geological record.
            • You may be able to find all the articles you want on the phylogenetic systematics of the Laurales, but your ability to use them to know whether or not the embryology of the Nymphaeaceae is in any way related is limited if you do not have some functioning expertise in the topic. Should there be an article in Wikipedia on the endosperm of Nuphar if it discusses the embryology of the Laurales from an article on the phylogenetic systematics of that order? Probably. But I don't think that people who are knowledgable in the topic area are the soul source of whether or not an article should be in Wikipedia. KP Botany 02:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Which is why I have a problem with making AfD debates decentralized, and instead based around Wikiprojects. That encourages a "We're the experts, so we're right" mindset, while also directing articles to people who are most likely to have some bias. -Amarkov blahedits 02:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Serious problems with this proposal:

  1. Notability is defined unambiguously, people just ignore the guidelines or invoke it when irrelevant. Fixing debates to focus on policy and broader consensus guidelines, instead of serving as simple votes, is going to be harder under this, not easier.
  2. Projects have their own specific interests. Forcing debates to take place on their 'home territory' will hurt AfD's effect of shining light into dark corners of wikipedia where bad articles have been created. I've nominated several articles for deletion that would have never made it if only fans of the topic participated. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:25, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Two things:

There are usually 10 different current log pages; 15 topic-oriented pages would be only 5 more :].
Also, what is inherently wrong with a project of people devoted to preserving and improving encyclopedia articles? Is it so wrong that, say, the Military history WikiProject would want to discuss lesser battles and choose to merge them into organized groups versus deleting because 10 AfD regulars haven't heard of them and all the sources are in these "book" things and not online?

However, I am banking on these sort of debates not happening often. There are usually over 100 discussions on a log page, but I wouldn't expect more than five or so history related pages be proposed for deletion a month (I could be very wrong of course :]). And if a "WikiProject Green Day fan clubs" were to surface, I'm sure the community would be fully capable of MfDing and wouldn't let it try to impose ridiculous notability standards on clearly unencyclopedic articles. --Keitei (talk) 02:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't like this idea. Subject-related wikiprojects work well as they are, largely outside the centralized processes of Wikipedia bureaucracy. They shouldn't be co-opted into 'official' roles in the deletion process. Worse, this would only create another meta-process to decide if Wikiproject X is large enough/has enough members/etc. to host deletion debates. Under the existing system, wikiprojects whose scope includes large numbers of AfDs already often have deletion noticeboards, which seem to serve their function a bit too well; no need to reinforce those tendencies further. Opabinia regalis 05:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Why are we even discussing this? WikiProjects are invited to organize their own deletion sorting pages, but putting the discussions into their domain is not only impracticable, but also unencyclopedic. We're a repository of general knowledge, not a jumble of disconnected subject wikis. ~ trialsanderrors 06:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This is certainly one of the most positive initiatives for cleaning up the AfD, and the sooner it can be implemented the better. As it's currently designed it certainly insures that a small ignorant group will maintain control of the process, rather than a more sophisticated group that knows what it's talking about. Breaking this up into small parts will bring more eyes into the process because the lists will be smaller. Informed people will not need to wade through long lists of topics about which they know nothing. This will be especially helpful for biographical articles where a title in a person's name gives no clue of what that person does.

The arguments against have more to do with people protecting their turf than about making Wikipedia any better. The cries to have everyone participate in every deletion discussion show a deep disconnection from reality. Nobody can effectively do this. Nobody can be so diligent as to deal with all these nominations fairly; it's impossible. Eclecticology 10:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Because the solution to long lists of AfDs no-one will read is numerous small lists of AfDs no-one will read. --tjstrf talk 12:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Or, alternatively, about a dozen lists of AfDs which will be read mostly by people with a bias towards certain types of articles. And don't forget the impossibility of actually starting a discussion if you have to find the right place to put it, instead of just having a centralized discussion. -Amarkov blahedits 15:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Segmented within AfD

While I believe it is a good idea to capitalize on the social structures and specialized content guidelines of WikiProjects (all of their members are editors after all, even in good standing sometimes), perhaps segmenting by topic without branching out of AfD's corner of the 'pedia would be beneficial. In addition to the arguments stated earlier:

  • The current log pages are long to an unreasonable degree.
  • Categories cannot be watchlisted.
  • Organizing by topic will attract more interested and informed comments (hopefully).

This wouldn't be a radical revision of the deletion mindset or process, merely a reorganization. I do think that Wikipedia needs more nuanced ways to deal with its content which goes beyond keeping vs deleting, but any progress is good progress. --Keitei (talk) 08:25, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Except organization by topic will not work. First off, some things do not fit neatly into topics, so there are certain to be "no, this belongs in my AfD list, not yours!" edit wars. And second, arranging by topic, while it may attract more informed comments (which I still don't think is necessarily better), makes it hard to start a discussion, because you must know the topic you should put it under. With the current system, if it is not obvious, I can just say I'm unsure. -Amarkov blahedits 15:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't see that that's a bad thing that someone nominating an AfD must know enough about it to know where to categorize it--how could you otherwise know it doesn't belong in Wikipedia if you know nothing about the topic? And, getting some expertise in might, again, forestall some of the more ridiculous AfDs that are entirely based on the editor nominating because they don't know a thing about the topic. There is a lot of wasted energy in the AfDs. In addition, yes, the lists of AfDs are incredibly long.
There was an Albanian translator up for deletion (Cezar Kurti). The name looked slightly familiar after I had gone through the list a few times, so I checked it out. If it had been on a translators board or a linguists board, sure, a thousand Wiki editors would have freaked out at the thought of the deleting him. But so what? It's the type of information that belongs in Wikipedia, so that after dreadful night at the beer pub with your translator friends you can go to Wikipedia and look up Kurti and find out why they all want the privilege of kowtowing to this man in person--Wikipedia can do some small biographies that might not make it to Britannica, although Kurti may eventually. Should it be deleted by a group of people who don't know anything about translations or translators, simply because they don't know anything about translations and translators and since this translator failed the google test and must be non-notable? Or should a deletion process consider the input of folks who realize the world-wide acclaim, if in a finite group, of this person?
There still are things that aren't primarily on the Internet and in English that are known in the world. KP Botany 17:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
If there are no sources, there are no sources. It does not take an expert in the topic to not be able to find sources. If an article is deleted because people who have sources don't see it, then it can be created later with sources, and Wikipedia has lost nothing except some unsourced material. On the other hand, if military related AfDs are a seperate group, then you have a bunch of military experts commenting, and really only them. Now, they may be providing sources... but my experience tells me they're just as likely to be stubbornly claiming that they are the experts, and they know there must be sources, even if they have none. -Amarkov blahedits 18:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
But that's not what is usually argued, that there are no sources--and there is a tag already for articles without references, and it's not AfD. What's argued is the nominator can't find any information about it on google. And that is not the same thing as there are no sources. KP Botany 18:28, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
It isn't, you're right. The problem is, you're treating unsourced as a level of uncompletedness, which should be fixed, but isn't urgent. It's more important. Unsourced articles should be sourced as quickly as possible, or they should be deleted. If nobody can find sources, it doesn't matter that there might be some; since the article doesn't use them, we shouldn't have it. -Amarkov blahedits 18:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
(conflict) The fact remains, however, that it is the responsibility of the article creator/supporter to provide sources. If those sources are printed, we have many editors with access to academic libraries who can check them. If the claimed sources are not locatable, they have to be considered questionable. We have very frequently seen citations to printed works that, when actually checked, did not have the claimed material. Fan-1967 18:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
In fact, I've started checking sources lately on random articles and have yet to find a single source that is correctly interpreted by the editor and correctly referenced within the article. So, let's just say that sourcing and referencing doesn't impress me. So, Rock climbing should have been deleted? Okay. KP Botany 19:11, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
No, because you can find sources. -Amarkov blahedits 19:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
But the burden is on the editor of the article to provide them, and he/she had not. KP Botany 20:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Much of this discussion is assuming there are non-trivial numbers of AfDs for obscure military battles, science terms, and people in narrow academic fields, such that consulting an expert in the subject would seem useful, and that such an expert could easily locate sources. Looking at any AfD log suggests that the vast majority of deletions are for bands, companies, websites, and entertainers; allowing self-proclaimed internet experts on these things to claim deletion debates as 'theirs' seems like a self-evidently bad idea. Opabinia regalis 01:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't make this assumption. Most of the articles up for deletion appear to me to be an article somebody wrote about their best friend from high school (who got mentioned in a newspaper once), or their grandfather who once met someone famous. Heck, one of my grandfathers gets slightly over 400 ghits, and a credible number of references in scholar for his papers and books, with a couple of huge dedication biographies from prestigious scentific organization, and he's not in Wikipedia, although some images of his work, and some organisms he studied are. (The other one, thank God, isn't in Wikipedia, either, although he, too, gets more ghits than a lot of Wikipedia notable-enoughs.)
And, yes, I do see a problem with the WikiProjects owning articles. I knew if Unicerosauras or whatever it is called went to WikiProject Dinosaurs, someone there would want to keep that piece of crap, and, in fact, one of the most respected (by me) editors there wanted to keep it. But what harm is there in this, even though I argued against WikiProjects for this very reason, that we keep borderline articles on the basis of people with more knowledge arguing for keeping them? I just saved an obscure article from speedy deletion, about someone I didn't know, but who was connected to a lot of people I knew about. What harm transpired that this article wasn't speedy deleted, but was instead brought up to stub-snuff? If Wikipedia starts approaching the limits of its bandwidth/space, or whatever it's called, it becomes a different story, but if the article is about something notable enough, what harm to keep? KP Botany 02:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I think there's no harm in having a wikiproject noticeboard for AfDs and having people keep an eye out for relevant pages, possibly augmented by a bot that notifies wikiprojects when pages with their tag on the talk page are marked for deletion? That way, interested parties know about the debate even if they aren't watching the page. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea; though I still think that having people take articles they have problems with to a wikiproject first, and for deletion only if everyone agrees that it doesn't merit an article would do wonders for our overall quality. --Keitei (talk) 04:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Seems it'd do wonders for the amount of time invested in deleting articles on fictional weaponry. Again, I don't see the problem here of perfectly legitimate articles getting deleted via AfD because no one with an interest in/knowledge of the subject noticed the discussion. (Inappropriate speedy-tagging, I think, is a much more common problem.) My experience is the opposite; articles that are long and have references sections get default-keep votes from people who don't know anything about the subject and don't realize the sources provided are unreliable/misrepresented/irrelevant.
The idea of a bot-assisted deletion noticeboard isn't a bad one, though the projects that find themselves with so many deletions that they need a bot to keep track, might want to fix their articles themselves. Opabinia regalis 07:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Arguments not to make at AFD

Is there anything like "arguments not to make at AFD", something we can point new editors to read? I'm thinking of common arguments like "Article X is crap as well but that's not up for AFD!" --Larry laptop 17:10, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions KP Botany 17:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Heated AfD

Could an admin review Accusations against Israel of war crimes during the Al-Aqsa Intifada? It's past five days and starting to get more heated the longer it goes... F.F.McGurk 14:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Procedural nominations

I have today been the subject of censure by Doc glasgow for completing AfD's ([4], [5]) that other users have nominated, but for which the process has not been completed properly - this usually involves creating the AfD discussion and/or adding the AfD tag to the page. I've been doing this for several months without critisism; I quote the reasons given by the nominator from any source (edit summaries, talk pages) that I can find, and state that my opinion is neutral. Can I confirm that my behaviour has been incorrect, and what I should have done in this, and other similar cases, is to delete the entry from the log file? Tevildo 17:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem in those cases was that there wasn't a case for deletion, so it wasn't really a nomination. If they've just made a mistake in listing and there is some reasoning somewhere, then I think it's fine to list, quoting their reasoning and stating you're neutral. If there's no reason, however, then there's no need/point in listing the article for deletion. Trebor 17:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'll just delete any nominations that don't specify a reason, and advise the nominator appropriately, in future. The anon nominator of the 2Advanced AfD _did_ specify a reason, albeit a very short one; should this be re-activated, or shall we let it go as a glitch in the system? Tevildo 17:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I would say it should be reactivated. The anon did provide a reason to delete it, so it should be discussed. It would seem that the only reason 2Advanced was closed was because Gay icon was, which isn't a valid reason. Koweja 22:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
To me the crucial element is whether the original nominator's reason for deletion can be ascertained. If they can, then listing the incomplete AfD noms is fine. If not, then there's no way to know if its a genuine, trolling, or just a delettion request with no policy to support it. Nonetheless, we don't reopen closed AfDs. The correct process is either to seek deletion review or to start a new AfD. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 22:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Apologies, I misread the 2Advanced one and somehow didn't notice the reason (I'll blame tiredness). That one could have stayed open, in my opinion, despite the reason being fairly brief, but others might think differently. Not really worth a DRV, but someone could relist it with an expanded nom if they think it's worth deleting. Trebor 22:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Doc G's behavior is unsupported by WP:CSK, which allows speedy keeps only in cases of unambiguous vandalism. The prior Gay icon AfD survived on two delete and one keep !votes, so that's certainly not an unambiguous endorsement. I'm not sure about User:Knowpedia's motivation though, s/he tagged it for speedy deletion before without giving a reason. Since s/he's an established editor I would've removed the listing and guided him/her to the proper instructions. The 2Advanced article clearly suffers from a dearth of secondary sourcing, so that's a perfectly good call to nominate it for deletion, and certainly no reason whatsoever to cut the AfD short. ~ trialsanderrors 00:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

How long to wait before second nomination?

I can't seem to find this anywhere, so I'll ask here: What's normal ettiquette for how long you should wait after an article survives AfD before renominating it? There is an article which survived three months ago which needed some real improvement, and nothing has been done to improve it, despite its being tagged for improvement. I believe, now as then, that the article isn't needed, but I don't want to nominate it yet if the general consensus is that three months is too short. Heimstern Läufer 03:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The Guide has some background on this topic but the short version is that there is no hard-and-fast rule. It's been proposed several times but any hard rule is likely to do more harm than good and just subject us to even more wikilawyering than we already have. That said, premature nominations are generally shouted down pretty quickly. Here are the general rules I use:
  1. If the situation has changed (new evidence, different facts, sources found to be fraudulent, etc), an immediate renomination may be appropriate.
  2. If the "keep" decision was conditional (such as "keep because John said he'd clean it up") but John shows no signs of actually working on the article, a renomination within a few months is entirely reasonable.
  3. More generally, 3-6 months seems to be the accepted period for a reconsideration of an article.
  4. Decisions closed as "no consensus" can usually be reconsidered a bit earlier than decisions which were explicitly closes as "keep".
Regardless, be very sure to provide links to the previous discussion(s) in your deletion nomination and to explain why you think that a reasonable period has passed in this specific case. Rossami (talk) 06:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Will read the guide. Heimstern Läufer 06:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Someone please explain this unique google hits to me.

I had this conversation in an AFD

  • Question Please explain what you call "unique google hits". The link Mikkia gave http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Game+Freaks%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&lr=&start=60&sa=N shows 271,000 links. Anomo 10:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Google is acting really strangely! Try the search "game freaks 365". It returns 140,000, but then try to click on the 6th or 7th page- the results then reveal that there are only 77 unique hits. I definitely tried this search a week ago and it wasn't acting funny like it is now- it just returned 53 unique hits. johnpseudo 15:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Hmm.... I kept clicking and it got to page 30 and said, "291 - 296 of about 387". I don't understand the relevance of this. If you put wikipedia in google and go for unique hits, it gets "Results 21 - 30 of about 33", which is very little

Can someone explain the whole unique google hits? John had almost explained it to me and then I tried it on Wikipedia for unique google hits and seeing so few when it's I think the 3rd highest pageranked site really threw me off. Anomo 04:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... google for "wikipedia" gets "Results 561 - 567 of about 280,000,000". wikipedia.org gets "Results 821 - 829 of about 174,000,000". I'm not sure how I got the first one. Maybe google is acting strangely. Anomo 04:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

140,000 is the total hits, but Google by default shows only unique hits. So, you need to go to the last page, and click the repeat the search with the omitted results included link. -- ReyBrujo 04:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Huh? So which of those ways is the "unique" hits? Anomo 06:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
In the example above, "game freaks 365" returns 140,000, but when you reach the 6 or 7th page, there are only 77 unique hits, right? Well, the 77 are the unique hits, the 140,000 are hits that are found in the same sections of the sites (in example, in a forum you may get one hit, but when you expand the search results, you may get 50 or 60 hits in a single thread of the forum). -- ReyBrujo 06:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

What's the range of unique google hits to tell if a website is not notable vs. partially notable vs. clearly notable vs. super-notable? Anomo 06:20, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Search engine test for all the gory details. The short answer is that 1) the large number (280,000,000) is only an estimate, 2) the maximum possible returns from a google search are capped at 1000 and 3) duplications within that 1000 are suppressed by default. Rossami (talk) 06:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, but it doesn't say what is the right number that a google unique test should have to determine notability. Anomo 09:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Deliberately so for several reasons. First, the quality of the hits is far more important than the quantity. 5 hits in scholarly journals could be enough to establish notability but 1000 hits in blogs and other self-publications are probably not. Second, different topics are subject to different degrees of skewing in their on-line coverage. 1000 hits about a modern-day pop star says, well, relatively little. 15 hits about a 17th century musician, however, is significant. Third, the way Google returns results can skew the evaluation. That's why the google test must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and used with great care.
In my experience, the Google test is more useful as a negative test than a positive one. For example, if someone claims to be a notable pop star but google finds only a few thousand hits and most of them trace back to a few dozen blogs, that's clear evidence that the person has not yet achieved popular status. Rossami (talk) 00:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The answer is there is often *no* way of knowing the number of unique Google hits. Google gives the number of unique hits that exist within the top 1000 results. That produces absurdly low results for very some popular terms. It is also tied intimately with Google's ranking alogorithm, which happens to be a trade secret. So, for Google raw hit counts below 1000 we might say its "low" depending on certain factors. But if its over 1000, we really can't say much. In any event Google hit counts (unique or raw) never indicate (or disprove) notability. Anybody arguing they do, should read WP:N and also check a dictionary. It may be good to remind some people that notability and encyclopedias did exist prior to Google. And beleive it or not, there are high quality well researched publications that aren't given away for free on the Web to every person who's mastered Google. Seriously, there is. We want good articles, which require multiple independent reliable sources, that cover the topic non-trivially. That has nothing to do with Google hit counts. --Rob 01:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Rob comment that this doesn't matter. The thing to get notability is multiple non trivial sources. 10K google hits may be blogs and thus not reliable sources. 2 google hit may be Time magazine and the Guardian. Comments about Google is helpful in an AFD discussion if for no other reason as to prove you took a look rahter than agreeing with the previous commenters.Obina 16:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't agree completely. A new band which claims to be very popular but has no hits outside its MySpace page is very suspect, and in such a cse Google is a very good indicator of notability. A battle between two cities in 1438 with only 2 Google hits may still be very significant though. A low number of Google hits, tied with the topic of the subject (recent, pop culture), can be a very good indicator of lack of notability (but indeed, even then it can be overruled by other reliable sources). On the other hand, a high number of Google hits on its own is very rarely an indicator of notability, since they can not be adequately checked. And distinct Google hits are a good way of showing that while 400 Google hits can look impressive, they only come from 12 distinct websites or so. Google is a very useful tool, for providing sources, but also for a first indicator of notability, if used wisely and with caution. But all people saying that 'X may have 50,000 Google hits, but only 120 distinct ones' must be shown their error for this misuse to stop (or lessen). Fram 09:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • FWIW, This thread basically explains why I personally do not pay much if any attention to ghits when I am assessing the notability or verifiability of something. I've been in AfDs where the article's proponent had flooded the internet with their key word in preparation for claiming broad awareness on WP. Keesiewonder talk 10:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:DELPRO and extra "social" restrictions on non-admins

WP:ADMIN says that non-admins may behave exactly as admins, except for the extra capabilities that admins have. This is backed up on the same page by Jimbo's assertion that adminship is "not a big deal" and that he wants to "dispel the aura of "authority" around the position". Nevertheless, Wikipedia:Deletion process#Non-administrators closing discussions creates new, purely social, restrictions on how and when non-admins may close deletion discussions "keep", which of course they are capable of doing. I propose changing DELPRO to dispel the aura of authority around adminship per Jimbo and bring it into line with WP:ADMIN, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Social restrictions on non-admin behaviour. —Ashley Y 05:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

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