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Soliciting WP:Essay feedback

Please see Wikipedia:Categories are different from articles. -- Kendrick7talk 20:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

"Add a new entry" is broken

When I click on "Add a new entry", it takes me to the May 12th page and doesn't open it for editing. It should be taking me to the May 13th page and should automatically open it for editing. Corvus cornix 21:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Done, an anonymous changed the link to goatse, and the one reverting it did not put the right link. -- ReyBrujo 21:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Corvus cornix 23:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

Dear Administration,

I am seeking help for the last 20 days. I wrote an article on renowned Spiritual Personality Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi but it was not just deleted but also been protected to prevent re-creation.

Please be informed that I am the office bearer of Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam an international spiritual movement founded by His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi in 1980 in Pakistan and being an office bearer I am responsible to propagate and preach activities on Internet. His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi is an internationally renowned spiritual personality with hundred thousands of followers in Pakistan and across the world. We have several online website to serve this purpose and I am officially authorized from His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi.

I take full responsibility of the content placed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gohar_Shahi by me. Therefore, may I request you to kindly restore my article on His Holiness Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi?

Look forward to your positive response.

Regards, --سگِ گوھرشاہی 08:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe you are in the wrong area for this request. Jmlk17 07:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Shortcut for AfD listings?

The steps required to list an AFD seem cumbersome. Is there a utility that shortcuts through the process? Please reply to my talk page. Thanks—Gaff ταλκ 08:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Replied on user's talk page. --ais523 09:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Take care with public relations

AFD is still the source of some of our, ah, trickiest public relations problems after living bios (and it would probably be bad for it to necessitate a similar Foundation smackdown). Could I please strongly suggest you stick to verifiability, not "notability" in nominations? Note that "notability" was invented as a Wikipedia jargon word right here on VFD AFD as a euphemism for "I don't like it" - this is why it's so hard to get across to outsiders (a) what we mean by the term and (b) why it's supposed to be a good idea - David Gerard 11:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

What is the problem with saying that an article doesn't assert notability as defined by Wikipedia. "The subject of the article is not notable" is hardly comparable to "you are a criminal" (to paraphrase the BLP problems). Verifiabilty (or attribution) has the same problems of misunderstanding between Wikipedia and the real world. I have just nominated a few MMORPGs: while some of them are verifiable (in the general sense: look, I have a website, you can play my game or at least look at some screenshots!), they are definitely (maybe) not notable. Saying to someone that we will delete your article because it is unverifiable is equally insulting to some people, and is not equal to what consensus currently is. "Yes, you are a professor, but you are only a run-of-the-mill professor, not a notable one, so we delete the article": the problem isn't that we can't verify that X is a professor, but that X isn't a notable professor. Notability is not a euphemism for "I don't like it", I like myself, but I'm not notable. "Notability" is a shorthand for "We (consensus) think that this subject is not important enough (with "important" being "verifiably discussed in whatever we deem notable or reliable enough sources") to be included in Wikipedia". If you want to suggest a different name for "notability", be my guest, but don't just forbid it. By the way, when you threaten with Foundation action, is that you speaking in an official Foundation role or just your personal opinion? Fram 12:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
My personal opinion, based on what's happened before and how problematic AFD is in practice. It's not just a private organisation's internal mailing list. Same reason "vanity" is considered an unsuitable term to use in an AFD - David Gerard 12:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Would it be good enough if we changed WP:NOTE to Wikipedia:Inclusion standard (WP:IC) and gave the AfD rationale "subject doesn't meet the general or a specific inclusion standard for Wikipedia" or something similar? We can disagree on what these standards have to be (just like people disagree about the notability guidelines now), but I don't think anyone can have a problem with the fact that Encyclopedia X determines on its own what standards are used for deciding which subjects are suitable and which aren't, as long as it is expressed in such a way? While it may take a while before I drop the habit of sying 'non notable', I have no objections against such a terminology change. Fram 12:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Might help. Then there's the problem of getting everyone to do so, because changing words on a guideline page doesn't actually change behaviour. It's a tricky issue all the way down, caused by the unfortunate interaction of regular people colliding with overworked AFD regulars dealing with the FIREHOSE OF CRAP that hits Wikipedia every day. (I find explaining that we get 11,000 articles a day and shoot 6,000 of those on sight helps a bit. But that's cleaning up after the problem rather than solving it.) The problem is that jargon is fundamentally newbie-hostile, even when it arises for very good reasons - David Gerard 13:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'm glad you agree that deletion is often needed, I at first feared that you somehow wanted to keep a lot more articles by removing "notability" alltogether :-) Getting everyone to do so is mainly a case of repeating it often enough on AfD's (and ProD, I use and see it there all the time as well). We have largely gotten rid of all uses of Xcruft, so getting rid of "notability" should be possible as well. However, renaming the pages (notability and so on) should probably be discussed on the WP:NOTE talk page, with enough announcement (WP:AN, village pump, ...) to get consensus for it. If I just start saying on AfD that "notability" should be avoided, I'll get probably laughed away for going against consensus. Will you do a proposal on the talk page, or do you prefer taht I do it or that we proceed in some other way? Fram 13:27, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Might help, even if it's just cosmetic ... I suspect a lot of the problem is the application of "notability" and AFD determining inclusion standards that just don't make obvious sense per the fundamental core policies of Wikipedia - either to outsiders or to other Wikipedians. "Verifiability" is a fundamental unchangeable, "notability" really did start as a euphemism for "I don't like it" on VFD as was. The actual problem is trying to justify things that are good in theory but problematic in practice. With living biographies, we can set harsher standards for inclusion because (a) we have a spam problem (b) it helps protect people from attack "biographies" to some degree - so we can set duelling policies, and WP:BLP is quite deliberately phrased as a restatement of the core content policies of neutrality, verifiability and no original research ('cos I wrote the second draft of it that way). "Notability" doesn't obviously and evidently follow from any of these, or at least I haven't seen a formulation of it that does. (Most justifications of "Notability" I've seen frequently speak of "Not an indiscriminate collection of information", but the articles this is being applied to are in encyclopedic format - just that the justifier is using "indiscriminate collection of information" as a euphemism for "cruft" in the derogatory sense, i.e. he doesn't like the subject.)
So, the actual solution: explain really simply how "notability" follows obviously and evidently from neutrality, verifiability and no original research. Looking at the way WP:BLP is a particularly harsh application of these might provide ideas.
I realise I'm asking for something that no-one including me has come up with a formulation for in three years ... - David Gerard 14:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this section of WP:V should either be removed or expanded to solve this problem (note, oh Irony, that it mentions "notability"...): "Self-published and questionable sources in articles about themselves
Material from self-published sources and sources of questionable reliability may be used in articles about themselves, so long as:
* it is relevant to their notability;
* it is not contentious;
* it is not unduly self-serving;
* it does not involve claims about third parties, or about events not directly related to the subject;
* there is no reasonable doubt as to who wrote it. "
If you keep this and remove WP:NOTE, then everything is "notable" or at least fit for inclusion. I write an article that I have a band, and my MySpace page is a verifiable (everyone can check it) self-publsihed source establishing the existence of my band. There is no requirement to have third party sources as well. As long as this requirement is not included in WP:V, we need WP:NOTE. Fram 14:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
But here's the problem, David. Sometimes something is verifiable, but it isn't notable. Say I go write the article "Seraphimblade (Wikipedia editor)". Now, can you verify that I exist? Well, you're talking to me right now, right? It's in a published, tangible form that I can cite as a source, directing readers to, so no problem there? That's as verifiable as you get. But I'm not notable. Now, I'd be all for changing "notability" to "encyclopedic suitability" or "inclusion standards" or anything like that, and I argued for that months ago, for precisely this reason. But what we need is a name change, not a reasoning change. We shouldn't have articles on subjects that there's little or no third-party, independent material on. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and as to the cleanup there, let's get rid of the highly-subjective subguidelines (WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:PORNBIO, WP:PROF, etc., etc.). If we've got plenty of sources, and it doesn't fail WP:NOT, it's suitable. If there's very little sourcing, it's not, regardless of how many pornos the person was in or how many national tours or gold releases the band had. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh hell yes. All the subjective guidelines are pretty much spurious (and a minefield of US POV and hideous systemic bias). The "what about my hairdresser" or "what about me?" objection is dealt with by those being living bios (or indeed bios at all) and the reality of us dealing with floods of spam. Records going gold would be verifiable by the organisation who certify gold records in that country. I can hardly think of a national tour that didn't generate some press trail. Etc. Etc.

Rather than "notability" I usually think in terms of "third-party verifiability". e.g. (from actual podcast interview) "Yes, your podcast may get 1000 downloads a week. But is there any mark on the world? Do third parties talk about it and care about it? Will anyone ever actually look up this article?" They usually get it then.

OK. Now we just need to convince 4500 editors* this is a good idea! %-D - David Gerard 16:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

* 4330 editors with >100 edits in Oct 2006, 43,000 editors with >5 edits in Oct 2006. Source - not third party, but good enough for this page.

Where on earth did I get 11000 articles/day? Special:Newpages shows 2101 mainspace pages created in the last 24 hours. Special:Log/Delete shows ~6000 deletions in the last 24 hours, but across all namespaces. Grah ... - David Gerard 21:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
And I just counted up the results from each namespace in Special:Newpages and got 11,871 articles across all namespaces in 24 hours, and ~6000 deletions across all namespaces in 24 hours. Really wish I had the deletion stats just for the article space ... - David Gerard 22:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
From January, but take a peek at User:GRBerry/Deletion Log Stats. On January 24th, 49% of deletion log entries were for the article space. In article space, 1% of entries were restores and about 7.5% were redirects (instead of articles). So for that day about 45% of the log entries were article deletions. I haven't analyzed any other day; that one took too much work for the interest expressed in the stats. GRBerry 04:13, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I have seen the 'notability' rationale used to say that if something has been 'noted', i.e. reported, that it is notable. One example that comes to mind is an article about a 30 year old murder (unsolved) that had been reported in the press. This reportage was used to justify an article about the victim. This person was in no way 'notable' in my interpretation of the term. I take 'notable' to mean 'worthy of note' in a general sense, and worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia in the specific. Due respect to the family, but from the point of view of an encyclopedia, who cares?
Yes, WP is not paper, but the resources needed to cleanup, source, verify and update are human resources and are most definitely limited. The amount of time spent on AfD's and endless debates about whether some musical group that disbanded in the 80's after one self-released EP is notable, or if some specious 'award' by the DOE makes an elementary school notable, are a drain on the human resource that could and should be devoted to writing and improving articles on subjects that are 'worthy of note', not just 'noted'.
As far as systemic bias goes, a recent AfD claim for keeping List of Philippine Presidents by longevity was that we have the same articles for US pres's, British PM's, etc., and to delete this would violate precedent and show bias. The answer is not trivial articles about non-Western topics, it is to research and write articles about encyclopedic topics for these countries. But we have no time to do that because we are in endless debates about how many fuck films equate to notability for porn stars!
(end rant)
Having said all that, I can't think of any policy or guideline that will not be attacked be either the Inclusionistas or the Deletionieros to resolve this dispute.
To reverse a great Zen saying...When everything is special, nothing is special. --killing sparrows (chirp!) 02:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Oddly I don't think I ever had a problem with notability per se even though many of my problems were with AfD. I don't think everything and everyone that can be verified by Google News should have a Wikipedia article. I can verify enough from News Archives and a webzine to create an article on myself, but I'm not sure I buy that I should have an article. However I think in too many cases people go the opposite and think a lack of Google hits means a subject doesn't merit an article, which I don't agree with. Many things in Africa, Asia, or from before 1920 won't get many ghits. Or worse they think "I've never heard of it" makes it non-notable. For example the Celestial Church of Christ is on a notability warning even though it actually gets thousands of ghits[1] and is a large religion.--T. Anthony 13:59, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

How large? The article has to assert notability. As written the church could have 4 members. jbolden1517Talk 13:28, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I admit I didn't do a great job when I created it, but the links and article said tens of thousands or even a million. A simple search would have proven the matter. It was the subject of a World Council of Churches ruling nine years ago,[2] which stated it has hundreds of parishes.--T. Anthony 23:22, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It strikes me that the thing that spooks people first is the phrase 'Articles For Deletion'. Maybe it should be renamed 'Inclusion Review' or some such. Ajb 15:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I suspect the feeling is that it wouldn't get attendance if it weren't a battleground. (smile) DGG 22:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

""notability" was invented as a Wikipedia jargon word right here on VFD AFD" citation needed. Outsiders appear to frequently spontainiously use the word.Geni 03:04, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Warning that WP:N is currently disputed.

There really needs to be a warning flag somewhere in the AfD process to notify people that at the moment the parts of WP:N that determine notability are currently disputed pending a re-write. Deletions on notability grounds should be handled very carefully, and not predicated on the disputed sections of the guideline. --Barberio 09:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

However, "disputed" doesn't mean invalidated, and AfD has its own historical precedent to rely on until a change of consensus has been demonstrated.zadignose 11:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
A change of consensus has already been demonstrated Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archive_10#Straw_Poll. Only 25 out of 65 comments to support the status quo. --Barberio 11:32, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • That would really be pointless, since we base guidelines upon common practice, not the other way around. WP:N is not a "law" that is being changed, it is a description of actual practice, that attracts people who believe they can change actual practice by changing the description. >Radiant< 14:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Only 25 out of 65 want the status quo, but of the other 40, there seems to be about a twenty-twenty split between those wnating it gone and those wanting it to become stronger, policy, ... I think it still reflects the middle ground between the opinions of most Wikipedians, and is obviously used all the time at AfD and Prods, indicatng that many people feel that if not prefect, at least it is useful and in some form needed (in a small parallel discussion, it was recently proposed to keep the idea, but rename it to something less dubious like "inclusion standards": these are the currently accepted Wikipedia inclusion standardsn, and articles which fail those (and have no other exceptional strong arguments) have no place on Wikipedia and should be deleted. We no longer tell people that there favourite band, book, teacher, webcomic, or (pseudo-)scientific concept is not notable, but just that it fails our standards. Less subjective (in name), less confrontational, but still the same result. Fram 14:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • That would be the case if Wikipedia guidelines were some kind of prescriptive rule instated by a majority vote. But in fact they are none of the three. >Radiant< 14:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
My interpretation of WP:N has always been that articles must have substantial (not "X is a thing which exists") content that can be reliably sourced, and that follows from WP:V. A significant number of other people share that view, so does it really matter if we call it "notability" or "ability to be substantially described by reliable sources"? -Amarkov moo! 14:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
This would only work if [[WP:V] is substantially rewritten to make it clear that primary sources can be used for additional info, but not to determine if a subject has enough reliably sourced content. Currently in WP:V primary sources are considered acceptable, even to establish notability (I have never understood why that's there, everyone can claim what they want about their own notability). WP:N can only be abolished if WP:V clearly states that every subject must have at least multiple independent reliable sources with substantial coverage to be acceptable for Wikipedia. If we don't have that, every band with a mySpace page, every webcomic, every online game, ... will have a Wikipedia page without any policy or guideline to argue for deletion left. Fram 14:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that would be a substantial expansion in the scope of the long standing consensus at WP:V, and I, for one, would not support such a new consensus. This is exactly the root of the controversy at WP:N, and the reason it has been disputed for its entire sad tenure. This does not mean that we have to retain articles on every local fad and garage band. We just don't need to expand WP:V to delete them. We have WP:OUTCOMES that summarizes the community consensus regarding these things quite well, without setting arbitrary universal standards.
As for "X is a thing which exists" articles, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, especially if it is something I can hold in my hand or reach out and touch. If it exists, and I can post a picture of it to the article, then I can write a description of it, and one primary source is sufficient to verify it (the object itself is a second primary source, if you like). That should be enough for inclusion. Whether we merge the article with like items or leave it to stand alone is an editorial decision based on content. We don't need a Gong Show panel sitting in judgment of worthiness.Dhaluza 23:26, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't quite follow you: you agree that articles on your local garage band should be deleted (good), but then you state that articles on "objects" should be kept. So the article for the garage band should be deleted, but the article on their demo-tape or self-published CD should be kept? I can touch it, listen to it, write a description about it (post it on a website if you want to have it "verified" that I wrote that description). How is that enough for inclusion? Fram 08:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
WP:NOT covers these things fairly well, and WP:COMMON fills in additional detail. So, no, I'm not saying we should have an article on every grain of sand on the beach. But assuming the subject meets policy and generally accepted standards, and is a real thing that exists, any arguments on notability should be moot. Dhaluza 09:57, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
WP:COMMON in AfD's will almost always be shot down (except hoaxes and so on). What is common sense to you ro me is not common sense for someone else. It was common sense to me that a list of the individual locomotives of a certain type was excessive detail and should be deleted, but the AfD ended in a keep. As for WP:NOT, the only item there to keep out self-published CD's is not for self-promotion (but what if I write about someone else's CD?), and not for advertising (but what if I write in a neutral, encyclopedic tone?). It is not obvious to me that WP:NOT is sufficient to get rid of such articles. As for generally accepted standards, that is a bit of circular reasoning: notability is a generally accepted standard, so if it meets that standard, of course it becomes moot to discuss its notability. However, if you remove all notability standards, there are no "generally accepted standards" left for things like self-published books and CD's with minimal (blog-like) coverage. Fram 11:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about the confusion over the wrong link, I meant to link to WP:OUTCOMES not WP:COMMON, and that does cover the cases you cite. Dhaluza 01:04, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedians should be able to create profile pages, why should a peoples dictionary restrcit the people who help create it?

I feel that if people registered on Wikipedia have profile pages that contain a blank space, they should be allowed to edit thier page just as long as it fits with the encyclopedia's guidelines (not putting up false info or pictures). Just because one has won no awards or has no notable accoplishments they should not be told by some everyday joe editor that they cannot exert their first amendment right.

Landonjones 19:59, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but your userpage was deleted because it re-directed to a non-notable biography. You can't write about yourself on here anyway. See WP:BIO. // Pilotguy radar contact 20:12, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

In addition to what Pilotguy said, you're 1st amendment right allows you (among other things) to express yourself without repercussions from the state, not from private entities. You can yell and scream and say whatever the heck you want in a public place. But, for example, in my house you would play by my rules alone and if I didn't like what you said, I could tell you to shut up and kick you out of my house. Furthermore, if this were a public forum where your freedom of expression were guaranteed, so would the freedom of expression of "some everyday joe editor" would be. May I suggest you read up on the US Constitution (which applies to the US only, by the way). --Kimontalk 02:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

New users?

"Note that if you are editing under an IP address because you have not yet created a user account, you will not be able to complete the AfD process, as anonymous contributors are currently unable to create new pages (as required by step 2 of "How to list pages for deletion," below). If this is the case, consider creating a user account before listing an article on AfD."

What should a user do during the four-day cooling off period between signing up and performing step II? Except for alleged defamation, is the answer always "it can wait"? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 19:31, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Such new users can use the {{prod}} with the test "Requesting AFD because..." - it's a simple trick, and any person who sees this text can easily bump it to an AFD. Alternatively, they can post a message to another page (e.g. Help Desk) to request assistance in tagging the page for deletion (especially if it can't wait). --Sigma 7 20:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph Ryan

Could someone please create a separate subpage for the new discussion? YechielMan 16:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussing Afd's

After participating in this discussion, apparently, I just learned that a vote entitled Delete and merge cannot be counted in an afd vote. In this article we should make it clear that these types of votes should be avoided.--Sefringle 23:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

New Religion

Do the Wiki standards about advertisements and notability apply to articles purporting to be about a religion? If a new article on a religion only relates to its own website, and lists its beliefs, does the "advertisement" tag apply. And, in case you are wondering, this is a real question. I've just come across something on Special:New Pages Bielle 03:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

If they have a real existence and there's any references at all to them, they are sometimes kept,so I'd tag it unsourced. But if they've just imagined it, & you yourself can find no refs, please nominate it for AfD. I think such a deletion may always be controversial, so I don't think it fair game for a speedy unless it's really absurd. DGG 05:36, 23 May 2007 (UTC).
The world does tiptoe around belief, doesn't it? Thanks for the answer. I shall be circumspect. Bielle 05:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

who can close?

are non-admins permitted to close deletion debates? (no intention of doing so myself, was wondering about another user. & if not should i just, politely, inform that user or what?)  ⇒ bsnowball  02:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes. See here, and the discussion here. --Ezeu 02:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
That's a pretty common question actually. Jmlk17 05:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Corporate libertarianism

An interesting discussion regarding the proposed deletion of an article has arisen. I propose that the article Corporate libertarianism be deleted, but I have been overrulled on the following grounds: --Gavin Collins 21:58, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I declined your request that the instant article be speedily deleted as spam inasmuch as it doesn't facially serve only as blatant advertising and because we interpret criteria for speedy deletion, including G11, narrowly; that the article had been edited by several users but had theretofore not been tagged as blatant spam, further, suggests that there existed at least some belief that the article might serve some encyclopedic purpose (covering, for instance, an economics concept advanced in a[n ostensibly notable if relatively insignificant] book). I am not at all sure, though, that the concept/phrase is sufficiently notable as to merit encyclopedic inclusion (I don't know, in fact, that even a redirect thence to When Corporations Rule the World would be appropriate), and so I would encourage you to suggest that the article be deleted, either through AfD or PROD, in order that the community might consider the notability of the concept and the propriety of our covering it in a standalone article or even referencing its tenets more-than-cursorily in the article about the book. Should you have any questions or should you think me to have erred here, you should, of course, feel free to write me at my talk page. Cheers, Joe 19:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Your arguments against the speedy deletion are eloquent, but I put it to you that the article was indeed created with the intent to promote the commercial interests of an individual. Promotion of individual or organizational endeavour (as in this case, a book), is not necessarily self-seeking or can be categorised as spam in itself. On the other hand, nor does the fact that the article has been edited by several users (related parties perhaps?) make the article encyclopaedic. By extending your analogy that the article does not facially serve as blatant advertising, once the veil of intent is formality is lifted, it is clear that this article purporting to be an encyclopaedic article is in fact an example of self-promotion similar to an author writing a review about his own book on Amazon. Proof, I would suggest is apparent in the fact that the contributors of the article did not see fit (or find time) to include reference to the book to any other article would lead me to the (cynical) conclusion that this article is indeed self serving spam.--Gavin Collins 21:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
Nothing interesting about this - put it up for Afd like the man says. Johnbod 23:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Standardizing deletion process

Since the XfD talk page has been pretty dormant, I've decided to post here.

I'm a regular closer of AfD discussions, and I am thinking of "brodening my horizons" by participating and closing in image, stub, cat, and other deletion debates. The problem I find is that there are different ways of nominating and closing discussions. I know that these are different media and have various criteria, but standardizing would make the process much simpler. Also, this is a small suggestion in change of process, so it wouldn't be much of a problem if change need be made. Thoughts? Sr13 02:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I participate in image deletion discussions and would love separate pages. Or at the very least that the templates actually pointed to the right entry. On the other hand most images for deletion get almost no discussion. Most articles get 10 comments or so. jbolden1517Talk 11:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

2nd Time Nomination

I wish to nominate 2000s in American fashion for deletion. It barely survived a previous AfD with minimal participation, and it's gotten weaker since then. I tried following the steps for nomination (which I have only done once before) but of course, I get the old AfD page discussion archive. What do I do? Unschool 08:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the help. The point is now moot, as an editor has wisely ended the article's existence through a merge of the microscopic material that was in it into another article. Thanks anyway! Unschool 03:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Article I want to delete *already has* an AfD

I was about to nominate Plod as a dicdef (in English and Bulgarian(!)) but after I'd inserted the template on Plod, I found that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Plod was already an existing page! It seems that the page was deleted once, and someone created it again. The AfD template says I shouldn't change it now, and really I don't know what to do. What should I do? And can someone add instructions to WP:AfD to explain what to do in such situations? Thanks. The Wednesday Island 16:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

This is still not fixed. Could an admin compare this article to the previous incarnation to see if it can be speedied as recreation? Article has had wrong AfD tag for a bit over a week with no reaction. Also, I am removing the AfD tag, this does not imply that I think the article should be kept, merely that I think it's the wrong tag. Taemyr 04:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Creating an AfD now automatically links to previous nominations if the standard naming scheme is followed. --ais523 13:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
The content it used to consist of was "Plod (noun)- A nickname given to an extremely influential and intelligent person", so it can't be speedied as recreation. — MalcolmUse the schwartz! 14:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Social Boston Sports

Please re-instate the article on Social Boston Sports. If there is something you feel is missing, or would like to see changed, please inform me, and I will update; rather than full out deletion.

Thank you.

BDShaw 18:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC) May 30 BDShaw

Has the AfD page ever itself been subject to a (presumably joke) AfD?

I've recently browsed the history page of Weasel, and seen at least two occasions when some joker has slapped the {{weasel}} tag on that. :-) I presume that this page is not immune from such shenanigans. Korax1214 13:21, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

On countless occasions, since its inception as Votes for Deletion. It got old fast. :-) Sometimes it was intended as a dumb joke and sometimes as a political statement by people protesting the process or by extreme inclusionists who oppose deletion altogether. Dcoetzee 14:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
VFD actually was deleted once during a discussion about whether it ought to exist. Supposedly, the server lag from deleting all those linked pages caused Wikipedia to shut down for fifteen minutes. 69.201.182.76 21:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Can someone close?

Hey, the deletion debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Scrubs cast members has been up for nearly 10 days and all discussion has seemingly died down. I understand if there's a backlog and it's just taking a while, but just in case it fell through the cracks. Thanks! --MPD T / C 05:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Deletion Suggestion

(Literato 05:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC))

A bug?

I'm seeing a lot of redlinks on the AFD log page, apparently a template malfunction. Can someone investigate? YechielMan 21:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Deleting articles

What is the point of deleting articles? Are you competing with Wikia or something? Hallpriest9 (Talk | Archive) 23:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Reasons_for_deletion. --Sigma 7 03:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
But to give a simple answer, our claims to present a reasonably trustworthy source of reliable information about important things are compromised were we to also present unreliable information, or cover clearly unimportant things. DGG 06:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that the article on Noah Lindsey Cyrus has been deleted. Would it be a good idea to merge the contents of a deleted article into a related article (for example, the aforementioned deleted article could be merged into either Miley Cyrus or Billy Ray Cyrus)?
It has been deleted seven times, so that may give a clue... She is mentioned as a daughter in the Billy Ray Cyrus article, and that's enough, nothing more needs to be merged or mentioned. Fram 19:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

New nominations

The article Puffercookie says its about a new drug that does not have any online links. No sources. -Yancyfry 02:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Early closure by WP:SNOW

Is it possible to close an AfD early, if its a snowball case, such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Winter laake? I ask because its obvious what the outcome of the debate will be, yet the contributor and one IP (either the contributor or some other conflict of interest hanger on) persists in making disruptive/repetative comments on the AfD and the article. —Gaff ταλκ 00:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in fact I'll close it. Definitely evident that the consensus is to delete, and the only opposer is disruptive. Sr13 02:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Early closure should only occur for a Keep, not Delete. There is no rush to delete. --Barberio 00:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
There's no rush to keep either. But if a discussion will be disruptive, why allow it to continue once consensus is obvious? -Amarkov moo! 01:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Early closure can (by policy and precedent) be done both for keeping and for deletion, if and when appropriate. >Radiant< 08:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Strangely, precedent here seems to show that early closure to delete has a high risk of causing disruption. Are you suggesting it's okay to risk causing disruption because you're following your interpretation of the policy and "precedent"?
Actualuy, I'm going to just come right out and say it. If you think 'early', 'per WP:SNOW' or other 'speedy' closure of an AfD to delete the article is appropriate, you should be removed from being an administrator as your actions lead to disruption and create more work on DRV. Administrator Zeal can be much more destructive to the Wiki as it erodes from within to the point where we accept stupidly crazy multi-page rants and rambles of discussions from Mighty Protectors Of The Wiki. Put down that sword and douse those flaming brands. --Barberio 10:17, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
  • O RLY. Got any evidence to back up those assertions? I am aware of a handful of early closings (to both keep and delete) that were controversial, and of a boatload of early closings (again, to both sides) that caused no problems whatsoever - as such, you appear to be severely overstating the problem. You have the right to your opinion, but your opinion is not at all shared by community, consensus, policy, or ArbCom. I suggest that your, well, zeal and flaming brands against such admins are out of place. >Radiant< 10:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Missing AfD?

I have an issue. Sometime since June 14 or 15, the article titled "Maximum-Energy Pro Wrestling" was deleted. There is no AfD on this and no reason given for it's sudden disappearance. It did not fulfil any speedy deletion category that I am aware of, and even then there should have been an AfD. Can someone tell me what happened? If someone has circumvented WP procedure with article deletions, this needs to be resolved quickly. Mal Case 05:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

According to the deletion log for the page [3], the article was deleted two times. The first time through an AFd, and the seconf through speedy deletion. I would suggest you contact the deleting admin to discuss the deletion and for a more thorough reason as to why it was deleted. --Hdt83 Chat 05:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

New noms to top or bottom?

Awhile back on wikien-l (see January 2007 archives, the "not so broken, after all" thread), it was brought up that sending new nominations to the bottom of the AfD log page tends to mean that discussion input comes on a "first come, only served," basis -- the later discussions are further towards the bottom, and don't seem to get as much attention. A few people mentioned the possibility of adding new nominations to the top, instead, giving each discussion a turn, however brief, in the limelight at the top of the page. I'm not sure if this ever got discussed, on-wiki, so thought I should bring it up, here. What do people think? Would that help balance out the attention various discussions get? – Luna Santin (talk) 22:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a very sensible idea. Tyrenius 22:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree. —Quarl (talk) 2007-04-16 00:47Z
It's been suggested before. There were no objections that I remember but also no one who felt strongly enough about it to do the scut work of rearranging all the currently active lists (so users would see a consistent list) and changing all the instructions pages. If you're willing to volunteer, have at it. Rossami (talk) 03:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It would save work by announcing a date from which new lists would be in the new order. After a few days of dual systems, it would right itself naturally. Tyrenius 04:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Would it be possible for a bot to handle the shuffling of the log entries? --Coredesat 06:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Let's just do it and fix what breaks. Guy (Help!) 12:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • One of the things that you need to do is talk to the owner of LDBot (talk · contribs) so that the HTML comment that it adds is "Add new entries to the top of this list" instead of "Add new entries to the bottom of this page". Uncle G 13:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Since the 'bot wasn't around, when I added the heading to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 May 21 I changed the HTML comment as above. Nothing appears to have broken. (I think that there isn't anything to break.) We'll see what happens at 00:00 UTC and whether this will improve the attention garnered by articles that would previously have ended up at the bottoms of per-day pages. There has been some inertia. Many editors are still adding articles to the bottom, but quite a few are being added to the top. I think that we ought to continue this for at least a week. Uncle G 14:20, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Old habits die hard... but I'll try if consensus is for this. I, and a lot of other closers, I notice, relist lack-of-participation AFDs at the top of pages already to spur discussion... the first 5-10 items essentially always get loads of comments, so it's a great way to solve the problem of an AFD that got 0-2 comments during its first 5 days. What would be best, honestly, is that if Dumbbot could run every 5 minutes or so and auto-list new nominations, so there's no need for step 3. Ideally AFD would be a 1-step process (just write out the nomination) and no template-juggling, but we're not there yet technically. --W.marsh 14:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Damn it. Now the old "nominate at midnight for maximum damage" trick doesn't work anymore :( --- RockMFR 04:45, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • So far, the only other things that have required attention are User:AzaToth/twinklexfd.js, which I've told AzaToth about, and several editors who needed some friendly nudges. Uncle G 22:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I got gently scolded for putting a listing at the bottom, but I'm using an AFD script and it's on a new machine (therefore can't have been cached for very long). Please examine my monobook if this isn't a known issue :) --kingboyk 21:04, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

number of participants

There are always discussions where only 2 or 3 people have participated other than the nom and the closer. I think this is fine when everyone agree on a delete, or when everyone but the nom agrees on a keep. I do not think its desirable when the opinions are divided, because with such a small number, random fluctuation will affect the results. I don't know if we need just general agreement or a firm rule, but I'd suggest that there have to be at least 4 participants other than the nom & closer, unless the result is unanimous as defined. I'd rather 5, but we should first see if 4 is practical. If fewer, there should be a automatic relist. DGG 18:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment I concur with this proposal, as I've noticed numerous AfD's that languish in the queue for five days with only one or two (sometimes no) responses. It does not seem to me that this is sufficient discussion to merit the term "consensus."
On a related note, I've noticed an oddity in order of listing in which at some times, the newest AfD's seem to be placed at the top of the screen queue (which is the most logical method) but other times, the newest ones are placed at the bottom. Anyhow, the AfD's nearest the top almost always get the most discussion. I think consistently placing the newest at the top would increase the chances that each one would get sufficient information. The other obstacle we face is that there is such a deluge of new AfD's at times that many get shuffled to the middle or bottom of the pile very quickly. Perhaps proposed AfD's could be sent to an automated queue that would release them in small spurts periodically at regular intervals throughout the day (regardless of submissions time), thereby giving each small subset of AfD's sufficient time near the top of the list to receive attention. This would alleviate the "rush hours" that occur at certain times of day, spreading submissions out more evening evenly over the 24-hour period. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement. Wikipedians are so used to seeing their contributions take effect in real time that they might find a system like this disturbing. --Nonstopdrivel 12:56, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem with the proposal is that it implies a numerical vote. I don't think there should be a number specified, and it should be up to the closing admin to evaluate whether the debate needs to continue/be relisted or whether the arguments put forward are sufficiently cogent to make a decision, despite the low numbers. Tyrenius 16:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit conflicts at close

A few times I have started work on a clsoe, only to find that another clsoer had finished first. in some of these cases, I actually got an edit conflict on the close edit itself. In hopes of reducing the incidence of this, and avoiding the frustrating and wasteful duplication of effort when two editors work on closing the same afd at once, i have created {{Closing}} (based on {{inuse}}). The idea is that a closer will put this at the top of the sub page before starting to assess the discussion. It will probably not be worth using for short and obvious cases -- the chance of conflict is small and the amount of possible waster work even smaller. But fgor large and compelex AfDs, or even for moderate sized ones, I think it may be useful. What do people think of this idea? DES (talk) 07:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Having experienced a closing edit conflict only yesterday, I think it's a great idea! Tyrenius 16:42, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Using AfD in lieu of dispute resolution

I have seen a few articles on AfD that are really editing disputes, where one side has decided to go directly to the "nuclear option" without using diplomacy first. I think we need to address this here by stating that AfD should not be used to settle editing disputes, and refer to the available options for DR. Dhaluza 10:44, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

One way of dealing with this issue is to make it a subset of Wikipedia:Speedy keep, as a bad faith nomination. It's best to see how the debate progresses: if the first three commenters say "speedy keep, bad faith nom", you can go with that. Otherwise, just let the discussion run its course. 13:45, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Hiding an AFD

Hi, I just nominated an article for discussion. But I must have done something wrong, the next AFD is somehow tied into my nomination. Could somebody take a look at it and figure out what went awry? I might be able to do it, but I'm at work and can't play around that much.Balloonman 15:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

You didn't do anything wrong and the list looks fine now. The problem was due to the previous entry being misspelled which has been corrected meanwhile. --Tikiwont 15:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Policy change on withdrawn nominations

I'd like to suggest that AfD nominations not be closed automatically if the original proposer withdraws his or her nomination. In effect, this gives the proposer's opinion more weight than other editors, who may have raised entirely valid arguments for deletion. Furthermore, the nominator changing his mind does not affect issues (e.g., notability) raised by other editors during the AfD discussion. (It also means a lengthy, in depth discussion can become entirely moot by a single editor's actions.) Yes, an article may be resubmitted for AfD, but that requires all previous respondents take the time to again voice their opinions. --RandomHumanoid(⇒) 00:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with handling this on a case by case basis--i.e. Don't automatically close, but don't automatically keep it open either. I think generally, if the nominator withdraws for a valid reason, continuing the discussion is pointless, because the basis for the whole discussion has changed. This is a real problem at AfD, too. I have seen too many nominations started with a vague or invalid premise that evolve over time, so that as each point for deletion is refuted, a new one is raised until the final result is delete anyway, because hardly anyone changes their delete votes, and new people sign up for each new idea. So if the discussion has materially changed resulting in withdrawal, it should be resisted. But only if the discussion is on the same track, and the nominator has just changed his mind, there is no need to relist. Dhaluza 01:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I think we're in agreement here. I would simply like for nominations not to be withdrawn solely because their proposer changes his or her mind. That doesn't preclude an admin ending them earlier for some other reason. --RandomHumanoid(⇒) 15:33, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
If the nomiantor withdraws and there is no one else who has favored deletion, a speedy keep seems pretty obvious. If other editors have made principled arguemnts for deletion, and particularly if they have endorsed the original nominator's reasoning, i see no reason why the debate should be speedy closed. it might be worth droppign a note to all such participants suggesting that they re-read the debate and reconsider their views in the light of the nominators change of opnion. If the articel itself has been so changed/improved that the original reasons simply can't apply (for example if it was nomianted as "completely unsourced" and several clearly rel;iable sources have been added) and the nomiator withdraws because of those changes, a speedy clsoe might well be appropriate. If in doubt, a speedy close is IMO usually unwise -- what's the rush? DES (talk) 18:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Under the current deletion process, withdrawn noms are only speedily kept if nobody agreed with the nomination, so there should very rarely be a problem with an article being kept against policy due to withdrawal.
Additionally, in most cases if the nominator has withdrawn it's because they made an erroneous nomination or didn't understand the deletion process, and it would have qualified for a speedy keep per WP:SNOW or been closed as "no deletion reason given" anyway. For instance, they messed up a page move and were nominating at AfD because renaming the page properly would require a maintenance deletion, or they didn't understand what the policy they were nominating under meant (e.g. nominating an article about a notable historical hoax under WP:HOAX), or the article was vastly improved by the early respondants and the nominator is satisfied with the results. --tjstrf talk 18:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Lists of every high school in a state?

Somebody please do something about the waterfall of entries on every single high school in a given location, such as List of high schools in Oregon. These go nowhere in establishing notability - most of these entries list a few facts about each school. I have no problem with adding specific high schools that are indeed notable per Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), but probably 95% of high schools do not fall into that criteria.Tatonka79 23:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh boy, you just hit a minefield... for background, please go read WP:SCHOOL, its talk page, its talk archive, the various rejected proposals on the subject, their talk pages, their talk archives, several RFCs, and probably a bunch of village pump threads. Those lists were created as a compromise, with the previous position being that we would have an article on every single highschool in the world. --tjstrf talk 23:21, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
That's funny, because if you use the same criteria that would allow you to include every high school in the world, or in a certain location, then you could go further and list every public building, public park, post office, office building, etc. etc. Tatonka79 23:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Not exactly, since schools are required to submit certain reports and the like that mean there will be some information about all of them which is available online, and if you wanted to go digging through newspapers you could probably find historical information about all of them as well. I'm not saying I support the view of every school getting an article though, I'm saying that's what the established rule was for quite a while, and that you probably don't want to go mess with the compromise solution. Also note that pretty much every human community (city, village, etc.) is notable by Wikipedia's standards as well, and we have an article on every census-recognized location as a result. --tjstrf talk 00:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. So if we did follow the WP:SCHOOL criteria, most high schools would still fail. This should be looked at some more. Tatonka79 00:28, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Cantate Deletion Objection

This was a contructed language made by me (the creator of the page), I have seen many people put their languages on wiki and nothing has been done there. Please tell me specificly what changes I have to make. This is a legitimate language I made up and it does not present and vandalism. When talking about if it is essential or not well I have seen many of these "contructed languages" put up in articles, in wikipedia. Thank you, and please do not delete this page. MosMusy 23:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)MosMusy

No one should create a page for their own constructed language. The fact that yours has been deleted while perhaps others have not, is not because yours is worse or anything, but because we didn't spot the other ones. Many thousands of articles get created every day, and some of them get unnoticed (some harmless, some very malicious a well). We should only have pages about things which are notable, as evidenced by reliable independent sources, and articles that don't meet these standards can be nominated for deletion through speedy deletion (in special cases only, see WP:CSD), proposed deletion or articles for deletion. Anyone is free to nominate articles for deletion if they genuinely believe they shouldn't be on Wikipedia. Fram 13:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Limits on AfDs?

Is there a limit to the number of AfDs? In the past year a particular controversial article has been up for deletion 6 times. A couple of times within the same month. 68.90.165.237 00:37, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

No, but there probably should be. In practice if you repeatedly nominate the same article and there was a consensus against you previously you'll probably end up getting shut down early, but if it's a controversial case it usually means we waste a few hundred perfectly good volunteer manhours bickering in circles. --tjstrf talk 01:48, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the response, I just found the Daniel Brandt article, which took 14 AfDs before it was deleted. 68.90.165.237 13:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
It was actually deleted due to a policy change, not the repeated AfDs. --tjstrf talk 05:24, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Quick question

Last year I got into some trouble for adding icons to my deletion !votes (and briefly starting a craze of doing the same). I was wondering if this:    is okay. It's purely HTML, so I don't think it would cause any problems... Morgan Wick 18:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a yellow rectangle to me. Are you sure that was intended? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree, what does a yellow background symbolise? The Sunshine Man is now Qst 20:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I just want to make sure that, if I start putting it down on AfD, it won't lead to complaints that it's screwing things up for some users or something like that. It will appear only in the form you see right now, a rectangle made in the form of two non-breaking spaces; I won't use it on the entirety of my votes opinions or anything like that. Morgan Wick 01:11, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Addendum: My chief concern is whether coding for a background color appreciably increases the load time for pages. Morgan Wick 10:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
It seems to be standard practice to allow such coding in signatures. Unless done really extensively it probably would not substantially increase load times for pages. But, the use of colors, even if HTML coding, could still be something that many editors find annoying, depending on why you're doing it. It could clutter pages with distracting colors, or make already confusing debates even more difficult to follow. I think that's why people above asked why you want to use yellow boxes on AFD pages. If you want to highlight all your comments, for example, I think many people would really prefer that you not do that. --JayHenry 16:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Images in voting

I noticed a number of AFDs in which people have been using "+" or "-" or check icons and templates in their voting. Although it looks sort of nifty, I find that the AFD pages already load pretty slowly (because of their enormous size) and that if everyone started using meaningless templates, the page would really grind to a halt. I recently removed the images from an RFA in which somebody had added a 100px checkmark to their vote. But am I right that plus and minus images should not be used in votes? I don't want to remove these if it's perfectly acceptable but, as I said, I find this page already loading very slowly. --JayHenry 02:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please get rid of them, by commenting or escaping (that's my take, anyway). These icons are used properly in places (mostly other projects like Commons and Wiktionary) where outright voting is an accepted part of the culture. Since that's not the case on Wikipedia, and certainly not the case on AfD, their use here is inappropriate and frankly inimical to the spirit of dialogue. -- Visviva 13:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
... of course, this whole process is inimical to the spirit of dialogue, but the best idea anyone ever had for dealing with *that* problem was soundly rejected by the community. So we do what we can... -- Visviva 13:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

If you understand that AfD isn't a vote, but like the way the icons look anyway, there's a script User:ais523/votesymbols.js (with a tongue-in-cheek name) that you can install in Special:Mypage/monobook.js, which adds icons to everyone's comments to your own view only. I created it at least partly in the hope that people would keep their voting icons to themselves and not inflict them on others. --ais523 17:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Announcement

AfD closers should add this script to their monobook.js; it makes closing loads easier! Sr13 02:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

New AfDs listed at top, part II

Further to this thread, I notice that many editors are still listing new articles at the bottom. Perhaps the explicit "Add new entries to the TOP" notice could be added to the {{Afd}} box for a short period. As well, I added a hidden note "" to the bottom of today's (July 9) log. Maybe this could be incorporated into all new page logs. -- Flyguy649 talk contribs 15:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiPun

I just realized that the title Articles for Deletion is kind of a lame/funny double entendre. It of course generally refers to a group of articles up for deletion, but it could also carry the meaning as in "articles of impeachment". VanTucky (talk) 04:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

request tool

Unfortunately, a lot of editors are proposing Articles for "Deletion", in stead of improving the articles or trying to find consensus on how to proceed with it. I feel that is sometimes a cheap and easy way out to avoid working hard and making wikipedia better and richer.

Since sometimes the same article is proposed several times a year, and it is hard for me to keep track of this, I would welcome any tool to see if articles which are on my watchlist are being proposed for deletion. I would greatly welcome any help on this! &#151; Xiutwel (talk) 10:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your first point: AFD is not perfect. We try our best, and we get it right most of the time.
Regarding your second point: Try doing a search (using your web browser) for "afd", "prod" and/or "deletion" on your watchlist at least once every five days. A responsible editor will use one of those three words when listing an article for non-speedy deletion. Shalom Hello

Mark when closed

As each day's list gets older it becomes increasingly harder to find the articles that still require closing (I appreciate that when it gets down to a handful then these are separately listed). What would be very useful would be if (closed) could be added to the contents as they are, ermm, closed, as is already done at WP:DRV. TerriersFan 22:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Abolish wp:notability

I see lots of good effort going to waste because people are either cloaking their true motives or acting far too capriciously in the very subjective concept of notability.

I propose that for a year we try eliminating Notability as a reason for deleting a page and see if it results in a serious measurable negative impact on wikipedia.Litch 16:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Thats a very central policy of this website, it will never be abolished. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate place for information. If it was, you'd also see a page "Howard Johnson Junior III" who's a homeless guy 2 blocks away from me. You have to limit the information. Stuff that has a page here, has to be deserving of a page otherwise this website would be an infinitely bigger mess than it is right now. If something is really notable, its never deleted. Were you involved in an AfD? Whatsup with that? --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 00:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
There is an subjective element in notability but it is the best we can do. To make it as objective as possible we determine notablity through verifiability and reliable sources. And if notability was abolished, what do you suggest we replace it with? GizzaDiscuss © 00:29, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

There was a very, very long discussion about two years ago about whether Wikipedia should maintain the notability criterion for keeping and deleting articles. I don't know where to find it, but it is rivaled in emotion and length only by the more recent poll on the proposed incorporation of WP:ATT into policy. I believe that notability is mostly incorporated into other WP policies, but provides a clear test about whether those policies (especially WP:ATT and its derivatives) are fulfilled in a particular article. Shalom Hello 17:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC) morena chickita Notability is a bad thing because it produces a bunch of self - righteous pricks on this website who get a kick out of determining what gets on the site and what doesn't. Don't pull out your WP:ILIKEIT to respond to this post because after my experiences trying to participate in this site and being shut down I don't believe in it anymore. Sfrostee 13 July 2007

If you want a site where you're free to add whatever you please, you are free to download Mediawiki and create one. Wikipedia never was intended to be such a site, and complaints that there are restrictions to what is allowed on it will thus get nowhere. -Amarkov moo! 03:55, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Search (copied from here)

Since most AfDs are about whether there is enough WP:RS material, I think we should add the search template (

) as part of Template:Ln or revise Template:Ln to include search strings. I added the search template to Michael Bilsborough AfD to give an example of what a revised Template:Ln may look like. We also could revise the search string to look in more or different places. -- Jreferee (Talk) 16:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea. I think it would encourage more people to look for sources during AfDs rather than just say that the article is unsourced without trying. Leebo T/C 16:08, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better if people looked for sources before AfD's, so wo don't waste so much wikiresources on unnecessary BS? Dhaluza 07:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Aspergum

The nominator for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aspergum has withdrawn the AfD request. I think it's ready to be closed. I'm DYKing the article, so a AfD close would be appreciated. -- Jreferee (Talk) 00:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Non admin closures

Are non admins allowed to close afd debates?--SefringleTalk 01:51, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. See WP:DPR#NAC on guidelines on when such editors may close these debates. The instructions for closing a debate are also listed higher up on the page. --Sigma 7 02:32, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

And I would give special weight to these two points from that link:

  • In cases when an administrator has deleted a page and overlooks closing the discussion, their name and deletion summary should be included in the closing rationale.
  • Closing discussions in which you have offered an opinion or for a page that you have edited heavily presents a conflict of interest and should be avoided. The sole exception is if you are closing your own withdrawn nomination as a speedy keep and all other viewpoints expressed were for keep as well.

Hiberniantears 19:14, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what happened, but...

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Malware Spread Mitigation was closed delete, but the article still exists. JulesH 07:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, never mind, I see there's an article tag that's appropriate for this situation. Will apply it. JulesH 07:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Multiple AfD nominations

I was looking at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cleveland steamer (8th nomination) and thought it would be nice to have a list of articles sorted by number of AfD nominations. I believe those with 8 or more nominations just need some extra research attention to hopefully end the continued AfD nominations. Is there such a list or can someone generate such a list? -- Jreferee (Talk) 22:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I do not know if there is such a list, nor do i know how to create one, but I think it's a jolly good idea. Lradrama 19:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I suggest someone does a huge trawl through the archives and generates some stats (eg. how many deletion debates there have been). You could also use the special prefix index and look at all the pages starting "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/" - that will theoretically give you all the properly formed AfD debates (you could do the same for VfD as well, if you wanted), plus the normal subpages of this project (which should be categorised separately so they can be eliminated from such lists), plus the redirects. It is theoretically possible to set up an index so people can dip into such a list. There are a lot though. It took ten clicks to get past the 'A' section. Anyway, once you have the list, search for things like "second", "nomination", "first", "1st", "3rd", " 2", "(4)", and so on. I'm guessing that no-one's done this before because of the sheer tediousness of searching for the different format of multiple nominations. A better method might be to get some program to pick out AfDs that have the same starting string. Good luck! :-) Carcharoth 12:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Alternative way to browse (mostly) old AfD debates

Have a look at User:Carcharoth/List of AfDs compact index. Click on a few of the links to get the idea. Does anyone think this could be a useful way to access the list of Wikipedia's AfDs that is available at Special:Prefixindex? It doesn't do anything you can't already do at the prefixindex, but it does provide an alternative starting point. If it is useful, I could move it somewhere and link it from Wikipedia:Archived delete debates and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, since as the entire index, it contained links both to old debates and current ones. Carcharoth 13:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Dang. I forgot the special characters and numbers. Stuff like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/207 Mafia and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/"Big" Dave Morine and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/$pread. Maybe I should use Special:Allpages instead? You can see the ones after Zz here. Things like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Çiçek Izgara and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/싱하형 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/¡Tchkung!. Also, Allpages will pick up combinations like T$ and F% and so on. Carcharoth 13:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Finding AfDs from a topic list

I'm interested in finding all the deletion debates relevant to articles edited by a WikiProject, and have a list of current articles and an incomplete list of redlinks for deleted articles. Is there a way (other than going through the AfD archives) to use "what links here" to find all the relevant AfDs? And what is the best approach when I get back to the days of VfD and then even further to the days when discussion took place on talk pages (that hopefully still exist)? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Carcharoth 12:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh wow. Wikipedia:Archived delete debates/2003. Did people not delete stuff back then? What happened back in 2002 and 2001? Also, any advice for the other XfD areas? TfD, RfD, MfD, CfD? Carcharoth 12:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I would also be interested in sifting through AfDs from a topic list. Anyone? Lradrama 13:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I think your best bet is to gather a list of articles in your topic area, generating a huge combined list of "what links here" for all the articles, and filtering that by Wikipedia namespace, and then manually scanning the list. I think AWB can help you do that sort of thing. Some WikiProjects will have kept records as well. You can also create a page with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PAGENAME for all the articles on a topic (and similarly for MfD - the other systems operate differently, I believe). I'll demonstrate this for a topic list I have, and link from here. Those methods only work if the article was kept, merged or recreated. For deleted articles, unless you know the page name, there is no option but to go through the AfD archives. There is also the option to go through the entire Wikipedia deletion log - which is immensely big. I once asked how many pages had been deleted. I think there is an answer, but I haven't found it yet. Carcharoth 14:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • OK, have a look at what I did at User:Carcharoth/Finding AfDs. That helped me find several AfDs in that topic area - again, only the ones where a redirect or article still existed, but if you have a more comprehensive list that includes redlinks, you should be able to find AfDs if any took place on genuine titles. AfDs of nonsense articles and titles can't be found this way, as we don't know what the nonsense title might be, and in any case, such article may have been speedy deleted or prodded. Indeed, WP:PROD and WP:SPEEDY leave almost no traces. Special:Log is the only hope there. Carcharoth 16:20, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Old VfD categorisation problems

Some old VfD archive pages have acquired categories because they transclude talk pages of kept articles that later had WikiProject tags attached. What is the best way to deal with this? Archive the VfD discussion to a subpage and transclude that instead? Some examples:

All transcluded on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 January 11. That is just one example, as many of the older log pages at Wikipedia:Archived delete debates have this problem. Someone tried to 'fix' this by removing transclusions from the VfD archive page! I reverted that. In general though, what should be done here? Carcharoth 11:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Probably, just <noinclude>the categories that are there now, and double check from time to time. -Steve Sanbeg 18:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that works. Where are you suggesting I put the 'noinclude' tags? Carcharoth 00:04, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Geography guidelines for deletion?

(as posted to WikiProject:Geography} Over at WP:AFD, specific notability guidelines (WP:BOOK, WP:BIO, etc} are frequently cited in keep and delete votes. Just recently at one article's debate, here, a geographic location was up for debate. I was surprised to find that although geography is one of the largest portals on Wikipedia, currently there does not exist official policy guidelines for keeping/deleting place-related articles. Perhaps this could be rectified if your project banded together and started brainstorming a set of policies? Although I have not contributed significantly in the geography area, I would be more than happy to help. All the best, Eliz81(talk)(contribs) 01:29, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Cities and shops and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Transportation and geography, and the historical page Wikipedia:Places of local interest. They describe what we actually do well enough. GRBerry 02:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Is there a list of all the subpages of AfD that are not deletion debates? Carcharoth 02:37, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
None that I've ever heard of. Common outcomes is listed in {{Notabilityguide}}, and the historical page is linked therefrom. Special:prefix is definitely not much help, even when applied to the Wikipedia talk namespace instead of the Wikipedia namespace. GRBerry 02:43, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
That presumes all subpages have a talk page. Still, that list is at least a magnitude of order smaller than the other one. It is only about 600 talk pages. Carcharoth 14:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Closely spaced nomination of large numbers of similar pages

There have this week been the nomination of a great many articles of the type ABC in popular culture, and related lists. It is so much easier to repeat the same argument for deletion than to give an adequate defense, that one might be excused for thinking that there is an effort to overwhelm the defenders of such lists. As I assume GF, I urge the noms to not encourage such a mistaken impression, and to proceed in a more reasonable way, as I am sure they want a good discussion on each one of them.

I note that the same exact arguments are in general being given by the same people, and that some of them have admitted a desire to delete all of the ones of that type as rapidly as possible. I have been defending some of them. I have only been defending some, because I do not consider a stereotyped response suitable for AfD, and am writing out with a different emphasis each time and with attention to the actual contents of the article. There has been a useful discussion about some of them in response, but the process ought to go slow enough that there can be a useful discussion about all.
In some cases I have !voted for delete--I do not support every such article, and some are trivial or indiscriminate, or too small to worth keeping. But I look at each one that I comment about, whether to support or oppose.
It might perhaps be argued by those opposing the lists that there is no need to really have a custom argument, because the policy against them is clear. This however has been challenged, for WP:NOT talks about trivia sections in articles, not lists devoted to cultural references; the pillars have then been mentioned, which certainly say that WP should not be predominantly Trivia, but never say that a discussion of trivia is necessarily wrong. the latest argument has been IAR. But this is not the appropriate page for a general discussion of the issue, which should probably be visible more widely. If the community consensus is actually against these articles, then a guideline can be adopted.
I am not suggesting a rule about how to handle these, for I cannot think of one sufficiently flexible. I am just calling it to attention in the hope that common sense will prevail so we can have better discussions at AfD. The point of AfD, after all, is to improve when possible. DGG (talk) 17:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Well said. Bearian 18:02, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I've been troubled with them myself, though I've not participated in any, I do think there may be a touch of overzealousness involved. However, in terms of things to fret over, I don't consider it especially bothersome. I do think it'd be best to have more discussions with people, on the overall subject, rather than a piecemeal approach, but I don't know that their is a serious problem going on. Oh well. FrozenPurpleCube 21:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Old deletion debates being deleted?

I'm not sure (I can't see the deleted pages), but from the look of the redlinks at Wikipedia:Archived delete debates/2003, some old deletion debates have been deleted because people think they are orphaned talk pages (well, they are, but they should be kept if they contain deletion debate). Can someone check this and politely tell the deleting admins if they were wrong to delete. Carcharoth 13:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is the lack of information in the edit summaries. Compare "G8 content was: '#REDIRECT Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pelastration' (and the only contributor was 'Awyong Jeffrey Mordecai Salleh')" with "Admins: help remove more orphaned talk pages at User:R3m0t/Reports". The former makes clear that the page was deletion of a redirect, while the latter only says how the orphaned talk page was found, not why it was deleted. Carcharoth 13:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Also, have a look at what links here for that redirect. The redirect got deleted but that has created redlinks that were never fixed. If I recreate the redirect though, it will pop up again as a blue link in that project for orphaned talk pages (User:R3m0t/Reports/1_15). This is the sort of thing that happens when someone deletes without checking this sort of thing. My next question would be - have the admins who did this learnt not to do it yet? Carcharoth 13:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I have dropped notes on all the deleting admins talk pages. 4 pages have been restored thus far between two admins, and I restored 8 for an admin who has left the project and another for one who hasn't edited in over two months. Multiple requests are pending (two for admins that edit relatively rarely). I also found about five pages where the page existed but the link was bad because of a move and the redirect had been deleted; I fixed the links. This was no small task. I vetted all of the red links in all the archives prior to introduction of the current system of log pages. There are still about ten pages that I just can't figure out. The deletion log shows a redirection, but then the redirect page deletion entry shows a link back to the original page and has no history—a dead end loop.--Fuhghettaboutit 04:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for all this! I did noticed that one of the pages you fixed the link for has links pointing towards the redlink: here (one reason why just recreating a redirect can sometimes be easier). I would fix those, but wanted to leave it visible on that list first so you can see what I mean. The other were only linking to User:R3m0t/Reports/pages. Could you list the ten pages you can't fix? Carcharoth 10:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I also updated the instructions at User:R3m0t/Reports and notified the founder of the project and the user who joined it recently. I haven't notified the other members. Carcharoth 10:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Found another one. See here and then here. Same admin, deleted an orphaned talk page and then (several days later) deleted the redirect that had led from the VfD to that talk page. (Deleting admin now notified.) Also, someone blanked one of the archive pages after failing to track down categorisation problems. I've reverted that and am trying to track it down. See here. Carcharoth

I don't have time right now to properly respond, but I just tagged the pages with

This page is preserved as an archive of the associated article page's "votes for deletion" debate (the forerunner of articles for deletion). Please do not modify this page, nor delete it as an orphaned talk page.

which should go some way towards preventing this from happening in the future.--Fuhghettaboutit 11:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The following are current red links I have not requested restoration of:

  • Talk:List of multiracial people. Result of vfd was keep; active talk page for years after vfd, article deleted later through afd (red link in 2003 archive).
  • Talk:Predicted effects of invading Iraq. The deletion summary implies that the result at vfd was to delete and not keep the archive page (red link in Jan to Apr 2004 archive).
  • Votes for deletion/The Invisibles. No pages is found through the deletion log (red link in July 2004 archive)
  • Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Band geek vote 1 No pages is found through the deletion log (red link in November 2004 archive
  • Deletion debate I am not naming. The deletion summary lists that the person who was the subject of the biographical article requested deletion, as even though her page was deleted, she was still finding the deletion debate hrough google. This is a BLP issue so no restoriation should be done, and I am not listing her name here which also might get spidered by Google.
  • Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Hacjience Yukona. Was speedy deleted after two comments, no debate really, should just be removed from the August 2004 log.
  • Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Jack Turnbull. Same as above or even more so but in the December 2004 log.
  • Talk:Santorum/delete. Undeleted but maybe should be redeleted. Havent puzzled out where the vfd debate went. There a mix-up of refactoring edits and redirections going on.

And that's it. Every other red link has either been restored, the link fixed, or a request to restore is pending.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:41, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your post (to my talk page) about categorization, templating the header message I made, and moving these to more standardized names, there are not very many of these talk page vfd pages and there will never be any in the future, so I'm not sure that a special category is necessary; the listing in the archives seems enough. The same goes for making the header message into a template. I will tag all of them tomorrow and then making a template will be superfluous because there will never be any further use. Finally, I really like the fact that these early deletion debates show the evolution of process from informal on talk pages, to votes for deletion pages, to AfD; a piece of Wikipedia history. Moving them would seem to me to be like removing the old shellac and refinishing antique furniture. It looks nicer but any antique dealer will tell you the value goes way down. Not an issue I would go to great lengths over, but that;'s the way I see it.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:59, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Hey, thanks a lot for all that. I didn't think anyone else cared! :-) Carcharoth 16:23, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
:-) I think preserving the archives is important. In 30 years people will be looking back at this early stuff with a lot more interest I think.--Fuhghettaboutit 12:02, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

AFD Bias

There are a number of users who I could name if asked to that continue to vote according only to their gut feeling, with complete disregard for guidelines and policy. The most common argument on here, because people are too lazy to double-check them when arguing it, is WP:NOT. They seldom get more specific, and will typically just say, delete per WP:NOT. Excuse me but, that is not a rationale. That is complete bs. A great many lists are being deleted citing WP:NOT#LINK citing section 2, which states explicitly that LISTS are an exception. Once confronted, I have seen these users and even administrators acknowledge they hold their own opinion above guidelines and policy, and they continue to vote that way like robots over, and over and over again. One sentence rationales for deletion, then they are silent when prodded. This is a bs process that is a mockery of guidelines and policy, for people can vote against both and still get their way. This is extremely stupid. Why do we have policies or guidelines when someone can say a rock is a ball? Seriously. Why? Nobody follows them on here, because reasons for deletion are seldom adhered to. (Mind meal 06:51, 28 July 2007 (UTC))

The solution is for interested people to contribute to the discussions--each of them. to ensure there are sufficient people representing all views, appropriate WikiProjects should always be notified, and everyone who has contributed substantially to the article & is still active at WP. The notice , of course, should just give the link and say there is an ongoing discussion. Advocating a particular point of view or notifying only those who share it is a violation of WP:CANVASS.
Additionally, closing administrators are supposed to not count !votes, but evaluate the consensus of the arguments. Almost always that is the case, but in cases where one thinks the closing not supported by the consensus, Deletion Review should be used. DGG (talk) 19:23, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Votes by sock puppets should be deleted

Recently on an MfD (page history), someone (I'm positive who it is) made a sock puppet to discredit my Keep. After I removed the sock puppet's Keep vote, it was restored. Why doesnt this policy state that Keep/Delete votes should be deleted if they are made by sock puppets? Why do you allow sock puppets to easily mess up an AfD? More so, please give the reason for which these sock puppet's simple votes are allowed to stay in and how that improves the AfD discussion, when their votes are discounted by policy already. The only result these votes have is disruption to the AfD. Doesn't Wikipedia's policy ask to revert the edits of sock puppets on articles? If so, why are their edits allowed to stay on AfD/MfD pages? --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 02:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

why do you believe that the !vote was aimed at discrediting your `Keep`? looks like a DavidYork71 sock to me. ITAQALLAH 02:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Thats simple. When you see a couple of sock puppets coming in to attempt to bend the debate the way they want it to go, that spoils genuine votes too. Its like real life. If someone is standing up for president and later its found that 5% of the votes he got were rigged, that spoils it for him. Thats pretty much common sense. So do you agree with my proposal or not? --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 05:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Removing "votes" by "obvious" sock puppets is very problematic. First of all, we don't vote. Second of all, the question of who is "obviously" a sock puppet is bound to be abused. Any time people are encouraged to remove comments from by others, it leads to abuse. It happens on talk pages, it happens in many kinds of discussions, and it tends to escalate. Meanwhile, the contents of a discussion should generally be preserved. If you have a provable case that someone is using a sock puppet, then say so in the discussion, and it's far more effective than simply removing their comment. But you'd better have a provable case, or at least be prepared to answer when the accused party says "I'm not a sock puppet."zadignose 00:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Defining a sockpuppet here is easy: Any user account created after the AfD is not eligible to participate on the AfD. Anon IP's which dont have many edits or a clear user identity are not allowed. The problems you brought up are valid but they're there becuase it was not clearly defined as to who qualified for a removal. When the lines are fuzzy, thats when abuse happens. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 01:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like you're assuming bad faith. Morgan Wick 18:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Matt, where do you get such ideas? "Unregistered or new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion..."zadignose 00:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
You cant be a hippie and say "everyone is accepted, come and vote, we love you all". Some points to consider:
  1. How likely are new users to be familiar with Wikipedia policies on notability and the criteria for deletion etc? For example, unless you're a US citizen, you're not allowed to vote in this country. Thats all for good reasons.
  2. When an account is created after an AfD and comes to vote (vote or whatever, you know what I'm talking about) on the page, there's high probability that its a sock puppet - is that not true?
  3. Look at all the cases of an AfD, where new users voted. How many of the new users were really new people and how many were sock puppets? You'll find that in controversial articles, the new users are always sock puppets. The example being an AfD for a page I had started, where 2 sock puppets were marked.
  4. One thing is clear: One of the two options is better and has more advantages. Which option is that?
If you go over all my above points, you'll see that its only reasonable and practical to disallow new accounts created after an AfD (and new IP's ofcourse too), from participating in that AfD. This is not biting the new comers, this is being practical for all the reasons above and preventing disruption. I doubt I'm going to get agreement as our country cant even agree whom to elect for president so it would be a miracle if we agreed on this. But its still interesting to debate this and see what response you guys have. I look forward to a response to my last point atleast - please tell me which option is more advantageous and demonstrate it with some evidence (where new users gave some good reasons in an AfD and effected its rightful outcome), and I'll give you some more evidence where sock puppets were only a disruption in an AfD. I've given you one recent evidence already. ([4]) --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 00:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't semi-protection of the AFD pages automatically as part of the AFD-associated templating achieve this end.? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the removal of the clause. First, AfD is not a vote. Removing comments by sockpuppets creates the impression that it is. Second, the provision is bound to be abused. Third, the same effect can be had by simply noting which comments were made by suspected sockpuppets. No removal of comments is necessary. I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that we should not allow accounts created after an AfD started from participating in that AfD, but that's separate from deleting comments by suspected sockpuppets. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 04:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Leave the SRB article in and leave it be

I am writing to help keep the SRB page up. I see no reason it should be deleted at all. Gary was in the band so it makes sense he'd edit the page. He sites Vendetta as the reason for one mans desire to delete it, and giving our governments long standing fascist stance on all things, especially the conservatives I am inclined to believe him69.85.166.29 13:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Request for information.

Resolved
 – --Aarktica 14:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

In the event that the subject of an AFD discussion meets the criteria for speedy deletion (a la G12), can such discussion be closed without consensus? --Aarktica 12:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

An administrator can speedy delete the article under almost any of the CSD. After that happens, the AFD discussion should then be closed, preferrably by the administrator or alternatively by any other user as "speedy deleted under WP:CSD#XX by deleting admin's username". One exception is that speedy deletion under WP:CSD#A7 should not occur if there are good faith keep opinions in the AFD. The AFD close should reflect the fact that speedy deletion already occured, as admins can decline speedy tags. I know I've done so, but gone on to opine delete in the existing AFD, and it would be a waste to restart an AFD. GRBerry 13:26, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I only mentioned this because Articles for deletion/Music City Mystique‎ was recently relisted for additional discussion, after I provided a rationale for speedy deletion. I suspect that the relister (I know, I know, that is not a word) glossed over the remarks about the COPYVIO present in the subject of the AFD... --Aarktica 13:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC) (P.S. This scenario was one I thought of before the incident, but I lacked motivation to pose the question here.)
If you suspect that an article is a copyvio you should tag it for speedy yourself. That way an admin will come by shortly after and look into it. Articles are rarely speedy kept or deleted after 1 comment on the AfD, usually because obvious candidates for speedy deletion should be tagged as speedy deletion candidates and not taken to AfD to begin with. When you AfD an article for reasons otherwise covered by WP:SPEEDY it is supposed that you do so because they aren't obvious candidates for deletion. In such cases consensus and a chance for others to salvage the article is needed. One exception to this is hoaxes which cannot currently be speedy deleted unless they are patent nonsense. Articles that obviously fail A7 can and should be speedy deleted, especially when the AfD turns into a puppet theatre. If not then the fact that they were brought to AfD rather than being tagged for speedy implies that consensus is needed, in other words they aren't obvious candidates for A7 deletion. MartinDK 14:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Despite the appearance of piling on, applying {{db}} to an article which already sports the {{afd}} tag is permissible. Correct? --Aarktica 14:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
True but rarely successful since most admins will decide to let the AfD run its full course. Copyright violations should always be tagged as such even if there is an AfD tag. An admin will then come by, look into it, speedy delete the article unless it can be otherwise salvaged and then speedy close the AfD. MartinDK 14:47, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for all the feedback. --Aarktica 14:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
articles have been speedy deleted from a number of AFDs in the past week as not meeting A7, even though similar articles were being controverted. I think that is in general an abuse. Short of BLP and copyvio and obvious vandalism, once something is at AfD there is no reason it should not stay the course until the end in case someone does find something to say. Not all of us can monitor everything the first few hours it appears. I propose a rule change to that effect, that speedy delete during afd be limited to those three situations. DGG (talk) 04:55, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:DELT compatibility fix

Can whoever knows where the daily log page code "lives" please put a noinclude around the header/lead code so that when included, as at Wikipedia:Deletion today, nothing appears but the days listings, and not all the page-top navigation stuff? WP:DELT does this: 

{{Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/{{CURRENTYEAR}}_{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}_{{CURRENTDAY}}}}

so you can see how the lack of a no-include around the non-entry material is problematic over at WP:DELT. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:20, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyone, anyone? Beuler? Beuler? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

How is an article deleted?

As a participant in several AfDs (some unsuccessful, some not), I am still unsure as to what requirements must an article have to fail an AfD. Is it done by majority rules, is there a threshold it must cross...? ~~ THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 10:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy; as such, it is unlikely that an article is deleted by a simple majority decision.
Oftentimes, an article is deleted becauses it ran afoul of POLICY or was determined to have been lacking in notability. In any event, I have yet to see an article deleted using the IDONTLIKEIT argument.
Feel free to review the project page associated with this discussion for more information on the subject. The deletion policy of the project might be of use to you as well. Hope this helps. --Aarktica 12:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I've found notability to be used as a pretext for IDONTLIKEIT, or more accurately, "I haven't heard of it so it's not notable." Mathiastck 12:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Notability very clearly has nothing to do with "popularity" or "common knowledge". So if someone is saying something that sounds like that, tell them they are wrong. Leebo T/C 13:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
If you think of common knowledge as "what everyone thinks notable" then I think that is what we mean by notability, or should mean, and the rules are just a elaboration of that, to deal with the reality that what people know and care about differs, and we must accommodate them all. Or should, if we want to remain relevant. DGG (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Procedural nominations

Any thoughts to these, or should they be discouraged. I do not see any point in a deletion rationale of "Neutral, procedural nomination only". Thoughts? Navou banter 00:57, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

  • I've done several recently. There is a place for them, but they should not be done without a thorough explanation. One case is where an article has had a PROD tag and that tag has been removed and someone either a) puts on a PROD tag again (example) or b) believes the article should be deleted (example). Another case is where an article has been nominated for speedy deletion inappropriately (i.e. does not actually meet speedy criteria) and it is judged that the notion of deleting the article would be controversial, in which case the article should go directly to AFD, bypassing PROD (in my opinion) (example). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I do them also, for the reasons given. I also do them when I think deletion might possibly be appropriate, but simply cannot tell whether that is in fact the case because of the special subject or nature of the article, and think it will require a wider discussion. DGG (talk) 01:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Another reason for a procedual nom would be if the article was deleted but was sucessfully challenged on Deletion Review. For example an article may be deleted but it was determined that there was not enough imput in the AFD. In that case someone may nominate it again procedually to get a better consensus. --67.68.152.104 03:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Procedural nominations can be done well or poorly. A good one will have a reason for nomination, but that reason is not the nominator's opinion. When doing PROD patrol, if you encounter an article that is not eligible for PROD deletion but the current prod proposal has a discussion worthy rationale, it is just more efficient to create the AFD at the same time as the PROD is pulled. Similarly, a DRV closer may find consensus for a listing at AFD - so in implementing the consensus, they should list the article at AFD but they aren't obligate to support or oppose the deletion of the article. In each case, the procedural nominator can give another editor's reason for deletion as the nomination. A procedural nomination lets them do this and get the discussion going either without counting as weight toward consensus themselves or while reserving the right to opine later. However, if the only nomination statement is a neutral statement, they are just wasting time; they need to quote or reference an actual reason for discussion. GRBerry 13:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

" A Poet, A Teacher, A Politician Late: Mohd. Farooq Betab Azmi

Bold textAzamgarh: Mr Mohd. Farooq Betab Azmi born in a village: Khandwari in a simple and gentle family. He received his primary education in his village based religious school. He obtained secondry certificate from a Town area school: Middle Schoo, Saraimeer Azamgarh.

His father left for Berma (Menmar) in his early stage. He was having one brother (Mr. Mohd Juned) and one sister who passed away immediately after her marriage.

After completion his education he started working as Mathmetic Teacher in Madaiya High School, Khanpur, Azamgarh. in 1965 He joined Muslim Majlis party and presided over the party. There his fellows were: Molvim Masood Sahab, MP Alam Badi, MP Iliyas Azmi etc.

Beside of the above he was running a urdu academy: Idara Adabistan, Saraimeer, Azamgarh. He died in 2000 after a fortnigh suffering from minor illness.

His younger son M. Athar Azmi has a master degree from Jamia Millia Islam and presently working≠213.166.128.39 09:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)]] in the capacity of Operation Manager in a reputed shipping company in Riyadh Saudi Arabia : The Maritime Co. for Navigation.

And what is all that about? :-S Lradrama 09:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Instead of writing an article that would have ended up here, they just took the direct route? Tizio 09:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Quite possibly! ;-) Lradrama 09:51, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Or is this a way of asking for approval of the content as ok for inclusion? Odd. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Discussion closed, decision delete

What do you do when the discussion is closed and the decision is delete, but the article isn't deleted? I think there is a template for it, but I can't find it anywhere. Me5000 22:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Posting it at WP:AN or WP:ANI is probably best, an admin can quickly get to it. I was about to delete it but looks like it was taken care of. Wizardman 23:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
There is a template, {{db-xfd}}, that can be used to mark a page for speedy deletion if an admin has closed a discussion in favor of deletion, but hasn't deleted the relevant page. — TKD::Talk 19:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot Idea

I have had an idea for a bot that would help out a lot on AfD's, esepecially those regarding notability, by providing references and information for new articles. See my ideas etc at User:TheFearow/RefBot. Please direct comments/criticisms/ideas to that pages talk page. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 22:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Not all deletion log entries visible for List of tongue-twisters

I was in the process of conducting an edit where I wanted to reference the AFD discussion page in the edit summary and I found that the deletion log for the article List of tongue-twisters only goes back to May 2006, but according to what-links-here for the article, the AFD was closed and article deleted in April 2006. Is there a date horizon for individual articles and the logs that can be retrieved for them? Thanks for your comments. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The deletion log goes back to late December 2004, and AFAIK there aren't any breaks in the log. What happened at list of tongue-twisters is that the discussion was closed as transwiki in late April 2006, but the actual transwiki wasn't completed until a month later. The CSD A5 in the first deletion refers to criteria for speedy deletion A5 which refers to the speedy deletion of pages that have been transwikied. Graham87 12:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I suppose I'm still wondering where the history for the page prior to May 2006 might be found (apologies if the answer is obvious, it's not coming to me right now). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
The page edit history is still at that page. There are no missing deletion log entries. There is a delay between a transwiki close and the first deletion. The time length of the delay, being dependent on voluntary labor, is variable. GRBerry 00:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Umm, I'm going to slap a big "D'oh!" on my user page for the next day or two as penance. Thank you. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
sheepish well, the image was properly removed as being a violation of fair use ... I'm glad at least that the editor who did this good service left a link in place. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:15, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Nomination withdrawn

FYI, I've just withdrawn the AfD nom[5] for Lender's Bagels, which I mistakenly thought was created by the sockpuppet of a banned user. I was mistaken about the IP that created the article. I've removed the tag from the article and noted my witdrawal in the nom page. I discovered my error before there was any discussion, so maybe AfD page can just be speedily deleted or blanked?--Mantanmoreland 19:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

There's no need to delete it. It will be closed and archived so it can be accessed by other users. --Boricuaeddie 21:52, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed rule change, I. Required notification.

As frequently discussed, I think the consensus now is that it should be required that all substantial contributors be notified. Change While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion. Do not notify bot accounts or people who have made only insignificant 'minor' edits. To find the main contributors, ... to It is necessary to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion, for considerations both of courtesy and basic fairness, and to have an informed discussion. Do not notify bot accounts or people who have made only insignificant 'minor' edits. Include ip accounts if they have made good faith major contributions. To find the main contributors, ... DGG (talk) 04:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Nyet - I do not support this suggestion, I think it would make XfD absolutely untenable and would serve to reinforce the idea of OWNership. Also, there are plenty of articles that have been deleted as a result of XfD that have had hundreds of edits, this would make it a paperwork nightmare. The watchlist exists for this type of situation, and logically a big contributor would notice. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 04:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
  • also Nyet There might be a distinction to be made between articles that are under active revision and those that have lain undisturbed for an extended period; both types make it into the various deletion pipes. For 'inactive' articles, it's probably more important to do notifications. I've noticed recently that bots are actively adding notifications of some deletions (I think speedies mainly right now) to the talk page for the initial author of an article. Such bots can fulfill any 'required' notification activity. Personally, I think such notification bots should be smart and look at the # edits and size of edits done by editors as well as the status (e.g. indef blocked or no edits in past year) and base who to notify on that information - but I'm not in a position to create such a sophisticated bot myself. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:34, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • If accepted, this should be performed by a bot. I see no reason why dedicated contributors should waste huge amounts of time notifiying spa creators of bad articles. Tizio 14:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • OK a bot how shall it be programmed--last 25 major edits? we can probably find someone to write it if we think its a good idea. I've no objection to that. The regular WPedian can take care of themselves, the occasional one cannot. Do not assume everyone makes use of all the facilities. DGG (talk) 04:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
    Major defined how? Marked as major is meaningless. Sometimes that is mostly vandalism, reverts, and bots changing categories. Frankly, this had better be a bot that people can opt out of; I expect many people won't ever want to see anything from it. GRBerry 01:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Bad idea to begin with. Frequently discussed and frequently rejected. We do not want to reinforce ownership, we want to weaken it. Yes, watchlists are an imperfect tool, but they are good enough. More participants in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting would be far superior, as it sorts things topically, and that is more useful to the project than notifying those with a vested interest in an article. GRBerry 01:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I would disagree with a requirement that all main contributors be notified. How is main contributor defined? What happens if a good faith attempt is made, but someone gets missed? Does that negate the AfD? It puts too much burden on the nominator. If someone cares enough about a particular article, they will have it on their watchlist. - Crockspot 01:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • OK, I can sympathize with the notion that alerting individuals of an article being considered for deletion can be interpreted as encouraging ownership, particularly for early-stage articles that are created by infrequent / new editors. I do agree that better use of the Deletion Sorting process would help participation by knowledgeable persons. In some cases I have posted notices of articles being up for deletion on the talk page for the WikiProject that has branded an article's talk page with a banner. Another possibility to aid in participation might be to take advantage of underutilized Category talk pages: if an article is not categorized, cat it, then post a deletion notice on the talk pages for the primary category(ies) that the article falls into. Advertising this use of the category talk pages would be needed but might pay off; in fact, this could be an alternative or additional route that the Deletion Sorting WikiProject could explore. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Unpractical and unnecessary concept. Any users actively editing an article are prone to have it watchlisted, and will naturally be informed if it is nominated for deletion. No need for talk page spam, things are just fine the way they are now IMO.--Húsönd 00:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Experienced editors like you and I do this, and we can look out for our own interests perfectly well. Less experiences ones do not necessarily do this regularly or at all, and the number of complaints at not being aware of it shows this. We have an obligation to not turn away the relatively new editors. The basic unfairness of not ensuring notification really speaks for itself, and that;'s the argument. Details of how to do it are secondary. OWN is secondary--and I dot think even relevant--the guys will still have to show up to defend the article. The basic principle remains, that when you take action against something that someone has worked on, you tell him. Anything else is going behind people's backs, to use the most neutral term I can think of.
Let's start with two minimal suggestions. 1. All applicable wikiprojects MUST be notified, and for convenience a list should be available with links for where to post them. A bot to recognize the project tags should be able to do it, but unless someone can write one quickly, manually will do. it is not excessive burden, except perhaps on those who place dozens of afd nominations a day. 2. for second AfDs, all participants in earlier ones must be notified. period. Again, someone should be able to do a bot. Failure to do so is essentially asking the other parent--otherwise known as jury shopping. DGG (talk) 11:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
WikiProjects It might be useful to either a) approach the WikiProject Council or b) approach individual WikiProjects and suggest/request that they either create a subpage or a subcategory to handle articles of interest to the WikiProject which are being considered for deletion. I seem to remember from when I was actively working in that area of Wikipedia that some small number of WikiProjects had something similar in place, or used their main Talk page as a noticeboard for this. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Notifying Wikiprojects that have a nominated article within its scope might be a good idea indeed. I'm not sure though if notifying participants of the previous AfD of a specific article would bring any benefit to its new AfD. I can foresee a repetition of the same arguments by the summoned users but don't know whether that would be good or bad or simply useless.Húsönd 00:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I think notifying the Wikiprojects which are indicated on the article's talk page is an excellent idea. Presumably, they will be in a good position to give input on the article since they should be more generally familiar with the context of the article. I see a lot of AfDs where I simply have no basis for judging the article and would welcome input from editors who may be able to shed more light on the article. -- DS1953 talk 00:54, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I've started a page at User:Ceyockey/Notifying WikiProjects of Deletion Proposals to start surveying via notification how the WikiProjects handle deletion-notification. Most have an established mechanism for dealing with AFDs, but not for dealing with PROD or CSD. Feel free to contribute to this page; after and if it appears useful, it could be considered for movement into the Wikipedia namespace at some future time. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey all, there seems to be a movement within the afd community to rid WP of in popular culture articles. This is mentioned to some extent here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infinite monkey theorem in popular culture (second nomination). What are the thoughts of this community on this rather recent development? --Cronholm144 07:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

In general, there are extremes on both ends. There would be those who would argue to keep Walls in popular culture (that better be a redlink) as a 5-gigabyte list of pop culture work in which a wall appeared in some way. There are also those who would delete even the good ones (and there are some good ones). In general, it should depend on sourcing. Is there a lot of sourcing out there that specifically discusses the subject's influence on culture? If we're talking about The Simpsons or Romeo and Juliet, there probably are, and a real article can be written from those sources. On the other hand, many of them are just "It got mentioned here, and here, and here, and here too...", and since no secondary sources actually discuss the subject's influence on culture, cannot be improved past that point. Those need to go. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
A good place for sourced discussion and commentary is The Journal of Popular Culture. From this page, we can see that it has been published since 1967. There is a free issue available at the moment to those who don't have a subscription to back issues (like me). It is the February 2007 issue. It has an example of Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular Culture. (Warning: after a certain time has elapsed, this 'free' issue will likely become 'subscribers only' again). Carcharoth 09:28, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
It's not recent, it has just increased in volume lately. Have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Popular culture and the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Popular culture articles, in particular, the suggested internal search that should give a comprehensive list of the AfDs. There is also a collection of userfied material at User:AndyJones/Deleted trivia (the plan is to improve (trim) and source (to secondary literature) the articles and move them back to article space when the meet the required standards). There are also plans to move stuff to something called the Wikipedia Annex (can't find a link right now). Carcharoth 09:28, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
That annex you mention seems like a great idea. I assume that it would catch all of the unencyclopedic lists that have/will be been removed from wikipedia. With such a mechanism in place, dissenters on both sides can(sort of) get their way. --Cronholm144 09:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Soft Deletion: The "Annex" idea sounds a bit like Wikipedia:Soft deletion, which is tagged as having been consensually rejected as an extension of deletion processes recently (June 2007). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:12, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
These in popular culture articles usually violate original research. For example, it appears that some read The Library of Babel, saw what they thought was a reference to Infinite monkey theorem, and then added that original research to Infinite monkey theorem in popular culture. In addition, they usually violate WP:V because the entries are not referenced. Further, these list usually have no defined membership criteria as described at Wikipedia:Lists#Criteria_for_inclusion_in_lists. The effect is to create an article that violates Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. And when they include biographical material, the raise WP:BLP issues. Essentially, these popular culture articles are likely to violate four of Wikipedia's five article standards policies. The community has already spoken on what it thinks by approving Wikipedia's five article standards policies. -- Jreferee (Talk) 15:24, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Not really so. In most cases, the occurrence of these themes is mentioned in reviews, and is therefore sourceable. It is however true that in many sloppily written articles the sourcing is neglected--a problem hardly unique to IPC articles. So there is no inherent problem, and not even a usual problem-- just the routine editing problem of sourcing. The community has spoken many times over the basic principle of WP;Deletion Policy, that sourcing is preferable to deletion. And this takes care of both V and OR.
The other "pillar" issues raised are also red herrings. any article can mention BLP, and it is rare for the sort of thing mentioned in popular culture articles to do so. WP:NOT isn't really relevant--it does not prohibit lists. The criteria for what sort of lists are permitted is a rather flexible policy, and it should not be assumed there are no membership criteria--they are usually given rather precisely, and if they need refinement, this is easy enough.
so far, the community at AfD has made it clear that good IPC articles are suitable for WP. For poor quality ones, it is also clear that some must be rewritten before they can stay. DGG (talk) 08:24, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Well said, DGG. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Responding here to what Jrefereen said above: "it appears that some read The Library of Babel, saw what they thought was a reference to 'Infinite monkey theorem', and then added that original research to 'Infinite monkey theorem in popular culture'" - that is even more reason to have an article that properly explains the difference between The Library of Babel and The Total Library - the former a short story, the latter an essay, both by the same person. The essay does talk about the theorem, and the short story uses the same themes. Someone could have read what you said, and thought that The Library of Babel was nothing to do with the infinite monkey theorem. Sure, The Library of Babel is about more than just the theorem, but the essential ideas are all there - infinity, books, random chance. The only difference is that we are seeing the product, not the process, and there are no monkeys or typewriters. Carcharoth 20:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Upcoming films

I am rather surprised by the entries in this category. It has films that claims they will be released even as far out as 2010. The films have not been released and mostly have not generated any press coverage. If the information comes from a source, it seems to come from the studio making the picture. Usually, the information seems to come from a fan or from IMDB, which does not seem to be in a position to verify upcoming film information. What I find disturbing is that if a director or actor is falsely claimed to be attached to an upcoming film project, others may pass them over for their own film project so that this person loses a business opportunity. Many of these articles seem to violate Wikipedia is not a crystal ball which states, "Individual scheduled or expected future events should only be included if the event is notable and almost certain to take place. If preparation for the event is not already in progress, speculation about it must be well documented." Merely because a film project is started, it is not almost certain that the film will be released. Because there is no press coverage, many of these articles violate Wikipedia:Verifiability and rely on original research for content. Also, because of their potential impact on the livelihood of people, these articles raise serious BLP concerns. Some of the upcoming films are legit. For example, Toy Story 3, to be released in 2010, is referenced. There are a lot of these upcoming films posted on Wikipedia. Anybody have an idea as to how to address this through AfD? The only thing I can think of is to list each film individually at AfD that does not meet policy. -- Jreferee (Talk) 15:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

PROD is also available, and discussion with creators may help. GRBerry 15:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi GR. If there is not enough WP:RS material available to support an article, no amount of discussion or PRODding is going to produce that WP:RS material. -- Jreferee (Talk) 15:48, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
right, and then it will be deleted, which is exactly the point of Prod or AfD. If upon fair notice and the interested people working on it, no support for notability can be found, then deletion might well be appropriate. when we support notification, we're not trying to preserve the articles that are not capable of being justified, just trying everything reasonable to save the ones that can. DGG (talk) 07:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Re-creation of a previously deleted article...

Not sure what to do here:

A short time ago, an article named List of Minor Students/Celebrities from My Gym Partner's a Monkey was created. Not long after creation, it was redirected to the "main characters" page for this show. A second article List of minor characters in My Gym Partner's A Monkley was then thusly created. Notice the spelling. This second one went thru AfD and was redir'ed to the "main characters" page. Today, List of Minor Characters from My Gym Partner's a Monkey appears again.

These are not the exact same articles, simply because of the title differences, but near as I can tell, the content between them was the same (I can't see the text of the one which was successfully AfD'ed). I've posted a note on the (new) talk page, but the editor who created this was unresponsive to my previous note on his talk page.

So, does this go back into AfD, or a new AfD? What policy applies here, if it's a (double) recreation of previously deleted articles. Possible useful information:

  • The first article I mention: [6]
  • The second article goes thru AfD, and is redir'ed: [7]
  • The third article: [8]

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Yngvarr (talk • contribs).

If the original article has been sent to discussion and it was determined that it should become a redirect, then you should, for the time being, convert new articles into redirects, informing the creators about the original discussion and why you are converting them into redirects. If the AFD deleted the article, you can use {{db-repost}} to speedy delete it. -- ReyBrujo 04:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Titus Books

Leave it on. Someone worked hard on it. They deserve to show their work to the world. Why be like the Corporations that people end up hating? I vote to leave it on let the man's work be seen. -Mykal Lakim —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mykal lakim (talk • contribs).

Please discuss it in the article's deletion page, not here. -- ReyBrujo 11:47, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Myspace

I've recently seen more than three AfD's (I only remember one; Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neon King Kong) where the subject's number of friends and page hits at Myspace are being used to prove notability, or lack thereof. Is this permitted? Because, last time I checked, Myspace was not a reliable, third-party source. --Boricuaeddie 01:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, in theory it's permitted, you could use the fact that you like someone's hairdo to argue to keep (or the fact that it sucks to argue delete). Of course, if I were closing the AfD, I would discount any such, and I certainly discount any "It's popular, so it's notable!" arguments. Notability is source coverage, not popularity or lack thereof. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I would think the more pertinent question is "has anyone successfully argued an article keep/delete based on MySpace 'friends' data?" Editors can argue any number of reasons why something should be kept or deleted, but as Seraphimblade said, I'd put zero weight behind any argument based on numbers of MySpace friends, song downloads, etc when closing AFD.--Isotope23 talk 20:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:AFDSUM

Is the bot that runs WP:AFDSUM suspended while Dragon's Flight is on WikiBreak? 70.55.87.43 06:17, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

RE: Alan DeBoer page.

What more do you require in the way of references. I thought the ones I provided were solid.

FAV47 01:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Deleted article history

Once an article is deleted, is there any way to look at its history? In case you're wondering, I'd like to follow-up Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mig Greengard, but it's hard to comment on it until I can see what was there and who/where it came from. Peter Ballard 07:53, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I think administrators are able to view article histories. Your best bet is to contact someone in Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Giggy\Talk 08:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Done. --Richard 08:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Québécois

One of the reference used by the authors is Claude Bélanger, teacher in a College . The problem is that Bélanger is using the word Québec for the nation. Québécois is the name for an individual.

"[...] the unifying component of the Quebec nation was the French language, a language eventually understood by about 94% of the population of the province. "

The social-democratic nationalism: 1945 to today , Department of History, Marianopolis College, Montréal, 2000 [website] [[9]]

I guess that we should write it the same way as the Scotland Article :

"Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Alba) is a nation in northwest Europe and one of the four constituent countries[3] of the United Kingdom. It occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain [...]"

T Y Pgsylv 03:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Listing pages for deletion

In nominating a page for deletion, when adding the discussion to the deletion log, there's a list to which the template (Subst:afd3) is supposed to be added. It is made very clear, multiple times, that the template is supposed to be added at the top of the page. Yet it seems that every day at least a small handful of articles are added at the bottom of the list. Now this is more of a nuisance than a serious problem, but is there anything that can be done about it? I mean, can it be changed so that it will be listed in the apropriate (chronological) spot? Or is it just something about which nothing can be done? Calgary 06:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

sure we can. We can write a smarter template that places these things automatically. There are some tools available for some browser, but not everyone does or even can use them. We need a way to make it automatic for people to start an afd with a single entry in a single place. (personally, I suspect there are people placing speedies because they can't figure out afd. I saw one of those today, in fact, which admitted it.) I've been asking since I came here but so far the people satisfied with the existing workarounds don't seem interested, and they're the ones who would know how to do it. DGG (talk) 04:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
BTW, I suppose it's worth noting that the old way used to be to put things at the bottom instead. FrozenPurpleCube 02:30, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
why dont we finally automate this once and for all? DGG (talk) 07:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Should step 3 be updated?

Specifically the part that says "Open the articles for deletion log page. At the top of the list on the log page (there's a comment indicating the spot), insert: {{subst:afd3 | pg=PageName}}" I don't think that is used anymore, I noticed everyone is adding the articles for deletion as {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PageName}} - Pocopocopocopoco 04:10, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the old template's used. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's all that's used. When you add {{subst:afd3 | pg=PageName}} to the deletion log, then save it, if you look back it appears as {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PageName}} (at, that's my experience). I've seen from time to time people either not reading the instructions, or not following the instructions, and adding {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PageName}} directly to the deletion log, and it comes up as a red link. As far as I know, the current step 3 is the only way to list a page for deletion (then again, there's a chance I'm completely wrong (but I'm pretty sure I'm right)). Calgary 12:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Every time I've seen a redlink, they had a typo in what they put in. I've never had a failure just copy/pasting the heading of the AFD page and surounding it by curly brackets. Actually, either way can be done by typing (with risk of typo) or by copying and pasting. I just find it smoother to copy only one thing than (the page header of the AFD page) than to copy the template call from one source and the PageName from a second. GRBerry 03:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
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