Academic Kids talk:Deletion policy

Talk from 2002 -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/2002
Talk from 2003 -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/2003
"seven day rule" -> Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/lag time
policy for redirects -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects
feature suggestions -> meta:searches and redirects
Various points from the Village pump in September 2003
use of the word "unencyclopedic" -> Wikipedia:Unencyclopedic
Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools
Should VfD be renamed? -> Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/title
Case studies: wikipedia:archived deletion debates
speedy deletion: Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion
Archive November 2003 to October 2004
Archive October 2004 to December 2004

Unlisting a page from VfD

There appears to be confusing about the meaning of this section of the policy. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Unbibium. I think that section should be revised for clarity. Eric119 18:12, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What's your suggested rewording, Eric?Dr Zen 00:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The purpose of this topic was to make the policy clearer. Not being sure of the intent, I don't know what the wording should be. Eric119 04:26, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would be in favor of this if the time limit were changed to 72 hours, to account for those of us who don't check in every day or take off for a weekend. --Stevietheman 22:44, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I sometimes go for weeks between checking VfD, but I don't think a time limit of weeks would be a good idea. A 24-hour time limit sounds good to me because it would allow a reasonable sampling of VfD-active people to take a look at the proposal. If the system is set up right then I shouldn't have to approve every VfD proposal personally. Bryan 16:37, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But three days is reasonable compared to "weeks". Some active VfD people don't take weeks off at a time, but still need to feel comfortable with taking some reasonable breaks. --Stevietheman 07:15, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But you do not need every listing or unlisting to be viewed by every editor. If you did, we would be arguing that the lag on VfD needs to be more than a fortnight to allow for vacations! Do you personally need to endorse all actions on VfD? Do you not take that to be the responsibility of the community as a whole? If you were away and felt something had been delisted wrongly, why would you not be able to put it back on the list?Dr Zen 23:32, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Proposed wording change

From: "To request that a page (or image) be permanently deleted, the request made on VfD, and any votes or comments relating to a listed page must be made in good faith. At the end of five days, if a "rough consensus" (what a rough consensus is is not set in stone, a few do consider a 2/3 majority a "rough consensus") has been reached to delete the page, the page will be removed. Otherwise the page remains. The page will also remain if it has been improved enough since the initial listing that the reason for the listing no longer applies. This requires a reason to be given initially when requesting that a page be deleted."

To: "To request that a page (or image) be permanently deleted, the request made on VfD, and any votes or comments relating to a listed page must be made in good faith. At the end of five days, if a "rough consensus" (what a rough consensus is is not set in stone, a few do consider a 2/3 majority a "rough consensus") has been reached to delete the page, the page will be removed. Otherwise the page remains. The page will also remain if it has been improved enough since the initial listing that the reason for the listing no longer applies. This requires a reason to be given initially when requesting that a page be deleted. If a page is listed without a reason or without its listing being signed, its listing is liable to be removed by any editor."

(My emphasis solely to point up my addition.)

This suggestion is prompted by considering Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Lewis Moody, in which it seems an editor stuck on the VfD message, but did not list the page, which often happens (most usually because, one presumes, the lister is a newbie who isn't sure of the process). I am not suggesting these listings should always be struck out. I am suggesting we have wording that allows them to be if an editor feels they are incorrectly listed, as this clearly was. Niteowlneils does a lot of really good work converting this type of listing, and I'm not wanting to denigrate his effort, but rather to allow him and others to use their judgement and simply remove the listing (or the tag) without being challenged for going against policy.

Any comments?Dr Zen 01:06, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That seems like a good addition, though it doesn't fully address the issue of early delisting. Do you think this is the only case when it should be allowed to delist? Eric119 04:26, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

- Sorry, probably wasn't too clear. I'm not suggesting a rewording for delisting section here because I'd rather see that from you and then maybe comment. This is a quite separate issue, in the same area. I think this is a case where there should be delisting allowed. However, as you know, I think Unibibium fit the bill too for the reasons I gave on that page. This is less controversial, I think.
- Personally, I feel the delisting section is clear enough. The five days is to gather a consensus to delete. If there is an overwhelming consensus to keep, and no particular discussion going on within a couple of days, I think it's fair to delist an article. This is because there is a presumption to keep and if there have been several votes to keep already, there will be no consensus to delete anyway. (I do not believe a consensus is the same thing as a majority vote.) I think this only applies to articles that are for other reasons uncontroversial to keep though -- perhaps very quick relistings of articles that had absolutely no sign of a consensus to delete would be a good example or articles that are very clearly companions of articles that passed VfD (for instance, if one Polish family's coat of arms passes, and others are listed, and the latter have only keep votes after a couple of days... well, you see what I mean). I do not believe there should be a charter for listing wars and I wouldn't support policy that encouraged that.
- In any case, this is a wiki. We should be able to delist articles anyway. If anyone really wants them gone, they can reinstate the listing. I'm only suggesting a policy change to minimise disruption and make this explicit in the particular circumstances I suggest.Dr Zen 04:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Okay, I hope this wording makes things clearer. I am beginning to think your interpretation is correct. Here bold indicates changes from the original paragraph.

If there is overwhelming consensus for another action than deletion, leave the page listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion for a short while, so the original poster can see why it wasn't deleted, and what did happen to it. This will prevent needless reposting of the same item. After the original poster has seen the explanation, or in any case after about a day, the page can be delisted from VfD. If another user thinks the early delisting was appropriate, the page may be listed again until the lag time is completed.

- Do you agree with this? In any case I think we should get more support before changing the policy. Eric119 16:42, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - Yes, I like it a lot. But how about my change to the other paragraph? Would you be willing to endorse both changes and seek consensus on them?Dr Zen 00:07, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deletion unlisting mechanism

See also Wikipedia:Deletion unlisting and of course Wikipedia talk:Deletion unlisting. Andrewa 00:29, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Proposed "no futures" policy

We have a policy on Wikipedia that we do not permit autobiographies, no matter how notable the autobiographer. The reason is that large numbers of autobiographies are submitted, the probability of there being vanity is overwhelming, and if we had to debate each one seriously we would waste huge amounts of time.

We have a number of other similar policies, such as ignoring votes for adminship by users whose first edits are to debate; again, we can't prove they're all sockpuppets, but the likelihood is overwhelming.

In both cases we use a simple rule that is correct most of the time, because the harm created by insisting on careful deliberation of these issues far outweighs any harm done by the rare possibility of losing a valuable biography because nobody but the notable person is willing to write the article.

Along the same lines I'd really like to see a strong, simple "no-futures" policy about books/movies/games/software that are just about to be released. I think it should be policy to delete such articles even if the topic of the article is arguably notable, because:

a) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper, and there should be no rush to include things;

b) Barring such articles from Wikipedia prior to the book, movie, game, or software's release does Wikipedia little if any harm, while allowing Wikipedia to be used as a publicity medium does a great deal of harm;

c) a "no-futures" rule is relatively simple to understand and relatively uncontroversial to apply, whereas any criterion involving "notability" is highly contentious.

I'm not crazy about silly articles like 6939, but that's not nearly as important. Articles like that aren't the greatest thing in the world for Wikipedia but they don't do a great deal of harm, either.

If, however, would-be promoters perceive that it is relatively easy to use Wikipedia as one way to create "buzz," and that countering such efforts is slow, laborious, and ineffective... that does hurt Wikipedia. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 21:28, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This would also disallow discussion of upcoming elections and the like, wouldn't it? I have to say I'd be broadly in favour of a no-futures policy for artefacts, but some are culturally important (for example, when they cause a stir, such as The Passion of the Christ did). But your argument is rather persuasive. A descriptive Wikipedia is a good thing. A predictive one is asking to be used by people with an agenda. I think that it would be very unpopular if it was extended to elections etc but I think it's broadly supportable if restricted to artefacts and caveated to allow controversies *about* artefacts to be included (I realise of course that this would allow fans of Galactic Strike to claim that version XV has caused enormous ructions in the Galactic Strike "community" but we could happily define "controversy" to include "makes it to a newspaper".Dr Zen 00:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I strongly support this suggestion. To me, the benefits far outweigh the costs. I do not think it needs any exceptions, either (not even for elections or for The Passion of the Christ). Wikipedia is not WikiNews. An encyclopedia loses very little by choosing to discuss the controversy after the fact rather than attempting to discuss it during. Rossami (talk) 01:05, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

~~What no Second Coming?~~ Kappa 01:31, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC) (lol)
How about Unbibium? Clearly disallowed under this policy as it stands. Also, any predicted particles are strictly disallowed.Dr Zen 02:19, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Even though I have a passion for science and would be sorry to lose it, I would sacrifice those articles for the sake of a simple, enforcable rule. Rossami (talk)

I intend the policy to apply to books, movies, games, and software.

That would clearly allow discussion of future elections and Unbibium and predicted particles.

There's a category of article which I will call "extrapolative vanity." 6939 is a good example; so, arguably is Unbibium. So would be an article on the nonexistent binary prefix "nobibyte." I dislike these articles myself. In my opinion, which others will not agree with, topics like these are vanity because they are created for the personal pleasure of creating an article, rather than to serve a useful purpose. But they're just "cruft," and they don't need any special policy. List them in VfD and debate them under existing policy.

I want to exclude articles that are about forthcoming books, movies, games and software. Perhaps I can go further and say "books, movies, games and software that are to be released within the next six months."

Yep, if it's so vaporous that there's no date, it wouldn't fall under the policy. That would not mean it's automatically included, just that there's no special policy about it.

What I want is a nice, clear, restricted category that lets us quickly knock down the people who get the bright idea of using Wikipedia to publicize their product launch. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:06, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I support this idea, but I think it still needs some work. And I think you've overstated the existing policy on autobiography, it's not a ban at all. And several sysops simply ignore any policy that doesn't suit them, which complicates things a bit. Andrewa 15:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I support this idea, and suggest adding TV series' to the list. Niteowlneils 01:51, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Question: Imagine notable actors A, B and C are all currently involved in a movie project, which would seem to make this project of some interest to readers. What if anything should be said about this project, and where?

If the project is a sequel to an existing movie, there could be a note about it in the article about the existing movie. If it is an adaptation of a well-known existing source (book, stage musical, video game, comic book), there could be a note about it in the article about the source. Even if several actors are involved, it is very likely that one of them, or some other person, is more closely connected with the project that the others. For example, if it were rumored that certain actors were being considered for a seventh episode, it could logically go in the article on George Lucas. Links are our friend here, as the articles about the actors could contain a brief mention of the project and a link to the article with the fullest account. And links are necessary, unless you're going to put copies of the material in the article about each actor.

Note that this would serve Interested readers perfectly well. Regardless of how the information is organized, the most likely way a reader would find it is by using the name of one of the actors as their entry point. An actor's name is short, familiar, and a reader would be more likely to know the exact form and spelling that for the title of a forthcoming movie, which is subject to change anyway. The second most likely is text search. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:31, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith

Yep, I support this one. Let future books, films, games, etc. be briefly mentioned in related articles before a seperate article is created. No info lost, but it still stops the creation of a lot of little questionable articles. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 19:03, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

I definitely support. Strongest argument I think is that an encyclopedia doesn't have to function as a newswire or other news service. It's hard to imagine, say, Britannica writing an article about something ongoing instead of just waiting until it had finished. I think there is some room for discussion about whether it ought to apply to matters of national or global importance, but in general I think a policy applying to entertainment media would go a long way toward enabling everyone to quickly get rid of these cluttering entries. Katefan0 20:03, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Oppose. I believe, however, that the article-writer (hopefully not a person connected with the item in question, but even if) will be honest about the matter and declare that it's a future item. I think, just as I've seen a "this describes a current or ongoing event" tag, there should be a "this describes a future event" tag.

If the future item is verifiable and will be released with high probability, I think it's reasonable to maintain an article on it. "I will write this book when I have time" is not acceptable. An in-progress version of Windows, or a complete-but-not-yet-released book or movie is.

It's true that Wikipedia doesn't lose much by expunging futures, but why debate, then delete a page if you know it will have to be remade when the book or movie comes out? EventHorizon 04:04, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

- Yes it seems like this should be a "merge" policy rather than a "delete" policy, then relevent information could be re-extracted when the time came. Kappa

Support. The policy that futures may be discussed in a related article, but may not receive their own article until they're actual, seems to handle most of the problematic cases rather well. -- Antaeus Feldspar 05:21, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I believe existing policy already covers this, as speculation is unencyclopedic. — Gwalla | Talk 06:40, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Requiring seconding

A proposed 'graph added at Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Unlisting a page from VfD would remove VfD entries that don't get additional support within 24 hours. --Jerzy (t) 08:13, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

This superficially appealing idea should be defeated, as it offers insignificant benefit in return for costs that would be significant and do not have dependable upper bounds.

It was put forward on the basis that

seven pages would be bumped from VfD

apparently as of 21:52, Dec 11, 2004. (The 7 come from the 6th, 7th, 9th, and early on the 10th, which were then all over 1 day and up to 5.92 days old -- bear in mind that in practice, for efficiency and in order to ensure each listing gets at least its full 5 days, the oldest 1-day section is removed as soon as convenient after midnight, and at midnight, the removable entries range from 5.0 to 6.0 days old. Thru the course of each day, the list starts containing about 5.0 days' worth and expands to about 6.0 days' worth ) Without trying to count the entries present at that time, surely it would be comparable to the present

35 under Dec 10th
47 under Dec 11th
40 under Dec 12th
39 under Dec 13th
49 under Dec 14th

totalling 210 for a 5.0-day range.

So the justification is that this plan will permit discarding 3.3% of the listings. But it's not even true that that reduces the size of VfD by 3.3%:

When would these removals be done? Either

continuously, with each entry under "Dec 10" being checked on Dec 11, as soon as convenient after passing its 24-hour point, or
in a daily batch, with all the entries under "Dec 10" being checked at the same time early on Dec 12, as soon as convenient after midnight.

In the first case, the saving is reduced by a factor that ranges from 1/5 to 1/6 (.20 to .17, or an average of about .18) over the course of the day, reflecting the not yet eligible 24 hours' worth (that represent a decreasing share of the 5 to 6 days' worth); in the second, the saving is reduced by from 1/5 to 2/6 (.20 to .33, or an average of about .27), reflecting the not yet eligible 24 hours' worth, plus 0 to 24 hours' worth of eligible but deferred lisings (which together represent an increasing share of the more slowly increasing total).

Is 24 hours an acceptable time limit? The least efficient time to read VfD listings is when the date on their section is the current date. The section is being edited an average of at least 42 times that day (corrections, including repairs necessitated by edit conflicts, add to that, and ed-confs are more common than 24/42 (= one edit every 34 minutes) suggests, because a disproportionate share of edits are done at popular times of the day when the danger of edit conflicts is higher. The high number of edits requires either reloading the list repeatedly (and rescanning, if not the whole list, at least both the start and end, since no clear instruction about which end to add to is well established, nor likely to be fully adhered to even if it should become well established). Without trying to identify the personality traits involved, there is every reason to believe that first-day readers are not typical of all VfD readers. A 48-hour window may well be required to give 24 hours of effective availability. That would change the reduction factors to 2/5 to 2/6 (average .36) for continuous review and 2/5 to 3/6 (average .45) for once-per-day batch review.
Objective costs of review.
- For continuous review: In the absence of marking every VfD "needs second" at the end of its section's day, or of marking every VfD "seconded" when that occurs, review teeters between too many editors checking already seconded VfDs for lack of second, and so few checking that some unseconded VfDs survive beyond the normal review period. Such survival further lowers the savings in VfD-entry count; it may induce more early checking in the future, but only if editors' attention is being wasted by their making subconscious late checks. Further, each scan must check all the day's entries, unless (presumably around midnight) someone sorts, by nomination time, the 40-ish-item list that has been appended to at both ends throughout the day; note that this sorting requires manipulating an edit window guided by what is seen in a rendered window, and/or (depending on mental agility and levels of compliance with an add-only-at-end standard) repeated manipulations followed by fully rendered previews of the section.
- For batch review: unlike with the current daily VfD maintenance, where almost a glance suffices to detect the built-in signals (no heading with the current date, earliest heading being 6 instead of 5 days earlier than the day of month), either an artificial signal ("This section has been checked for un-seconded nominations") or multiple checks are required. Unless the page is in some sense "locked" before starting checking, two checkers may duplicate the effort.
Subjective costs. The policy is complicated, for reading and recalling, by a nearly worthless rule. Those who don't trust the policy will sabotage it by voting Del and changing their vote near the VfD's close date. Claims of identifying sockpuppets will have to be fought out early in each VfD's life cycle, or allowed to defeat the policy.
Summary: this can o' worms ain't worth eatin'.
--Jerzy (t) 08:13, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

I disagree with you assessment. My primary concern is the amount of time and effort wasted by these votes. Assessing, closing, and archiving a page listed VfD/Old takes me at least two minutes. Finding the nine pages that could currently be removed under this rule (Bash.org, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Tightlacing, Electroactive polymers, Robart's library, Chimichurri, Lemon Party, Portia, and ]]) took me only two or three minutes. Removing them would only take a few minutes more generating a net saving just for the admin clearing out VfD. The time saved by VfD loading faster, and by other readers of VfD not having to asses and vote on pages that are definitely going to be kept is all net profit for Wikipedia. That the VfD page will be some 3% shorter is another added benefit. The net improvement is marginal, but it is still improvement. - SimonP 09:11, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

It also gets some of the most most controversial nominations - ones that are credibly accused of being "abuse of the VfD process" - out of the discussion stream. I want them out because as editors, we have a tendency to respond to them in flamboyant and emotional terms. I've noticed that this emotional language has a negative effect on our ability to remain objective during the analysis and discussion of the serious nominations. (Side note: We have been better than average the past few days. Are the upcoming holidays mellowing us?) Rossami (talk) 14:52, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A recurring objection to proposed changes with time limits is that it will be hard to check every item. But this supposes that one single person will do so. Of course they won't. There are lots of people who access VfD at different times. It just needs one to spot a lack of seconding and whoosh, it's delisted. If one is missed, it's not a big problem.Dr Zen 23:42, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

images, categories, templates in CAT:CSD?

Am I alone in thinking that the speedy delete tag should only be used for articles, and not images, categories or templates? So far, I have skipped images, categories and templates because I am not sure that they are covered by any of the criteria for speedy deletion. Is there an existing policy on this? Right now the wording in CAT:CSD makes it seem like it's only for articles. Any ideas? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:06, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion includes specifications for redirects, categories, images, and user and talk pages. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 01:21, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Should there not be a reference to precedents?

I would've thought examination of the precedents page would form part of the VfD process at some point. Why is it not referenced on the deletion policy page? Dan100 17:28, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Counting User votes who choose 'invalid' reasons

There are many situations where users haven’t read the ‘deletion policy’ thoroughly and site reasons which make articles candidates for operations other then deletion. Like I have seen that some articles are merely voted for deletion, because they are some what ‘NPOV. Instead of giving ‘disputed banner’ to them they are voted for deletion. So if a user see ‘NPOV’ as problem but votes for deletion, instead of improvement, should it be counted equal to another voter who sees a valid reason not to delete?

Zain

No. Votes for delete are votes for delete. We don't through ought delete votes without a rationale, and theres no reason to second-guess the votes as somehow based on invalid reasons. We only need some rough consensus to delete the article. If we also needed all users voting to have an identical understanding about what qualifies for deletion, we could never delete anything. Cool Hand Luke 20:36, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have to disagree. We may not throw out delete votes that don't give a rationale but such votes are in fact in contradiction of deletion policy, where we specifically instruct people to explain their reasoning even in cases where it seems obvious. If a vote is a vote is a vote no matter what the reasoning behind it is, why are we putting people through the useless bother? The entire voting process is an attempt to tap the best judgement of our experienced Wikipedians; to count a vote even when it provably represents bad or the worst judgement is only an administrative convenience. -- Antaeus Feldspar 22:13, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I find no list anywhere that pretends to be an exhaustive list of rationales for deletion, so why should we pretend there is such a thing? Granted, POV is one of the things not requiring deletion, but I charitably interpret these votes as "No potential to become encyclopedic." That's the reason I see many POV votes: they believe the topic is inherently POV (unencyclopedic). Cool Hand Luke 22:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not going to take the time to check now, so if I'm wrong let me apologize in advance, but I thought that while POV was not grounds for deletion, a topic that is intrinsically POV in itself and "cannot be made NPOV" was. You know, articles that are the equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife?" Like...trying to think of a harmless hypothetical here... "List of reasons why Brahms is a greater composer than Wagner." [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 03:50, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ironically, the problem I'm seeing more of right now is not users advocating deletion on the false grounds that POV is a reason for deletion, it's users advocating "keep" on the false grounds that POV is a reason for keeping. Admittedly, most of these users also tend to be run-in voters, obviously recruited from outside to show up and cast a vote, but the fact is that many of them announce straight-out that the article should be kept, not because it does or could be made to discuss a subject in an NPOV fashion, but because it does or could be made to advocate their own POV above others. Saying that an admin can't weight such votes that are openly and explicitly against Wikipedia's goals seems just crazy. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:30, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What wikipedia is not and wikipedia:deletion policy both seem to be lists of grounds for deletion, although I'd contend that the deletion policy is the more relevant of the two, purely because I'm inclusionist. I also concur with Zain that delete votes need to be justified by that policy, or should be given less weight when an admin decides on the consensus. Dan100 23:21, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

I was basically interested to find what is the 'official policy' and how does 'deletion process' actually works is it simple counting with only checking 'sock puppets' or the arguments given by the users are also given weight. Actually I was voting first time for Deletion (or opposing deletion). You also voted for that particular article and suggested merge and delete It is Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/List_of_Palestinian_children_killed_by_Israelis_in_2004 Although there are some legitimate reasons to delete them like 'memorialism' making contents non-Encyclopedic. That can be fixed by changing the content to some thing like List of incidences of deaths of Palestinian children, involving Israeli military operation equitant to List of terrorist incidents. This will reduce POV and will add encyclopedic value. If you want to see, which incidences (how many and when) involved children death during military operation? I think it is quite reasonable to say that people will be interested in seeking such information, for research and other purposes. So page should be marked for cleanup. So I believe it is more a cleanup then delete. But of course I might be wrong.

The only thing which I wanted that is it mere 'counting' or 'weighting and counting'.

Zain 23:34, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Voting is only one component of a deletion debate. Any admin making a deletion decision is expected to read the discussion and the arguments, and take these into account when deciding if an article should be deleted. One element of this evaluation is whether or not the votes correspond to current Wikipedia policies. - SimonP 00:13, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

What If some one suspects that the Admin who put it on delete, did because of 'POV'. So he or his fellow Admin won't do the justice? Zain 01:14, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Admins are discouraged from making the final decision if they are personally involved in the discussion. Also any Admin or user is free to check them on it. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 01:21, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The general principle that I operate under is that while, occasionally, articles can be kept with more than two-thirds of the votes in favour of deletion no article can be deleted if it doesn't meet that criteria. - SimonP 01:27, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, that would be my standard too. It's a minimmum, and 2/3rds does not require deletion, especially if good reasons for retention only emerged toward the end of a debate. Cool Hand Luke 01:54, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well No personal attack but I found such example while voting, there is a person who is on the list of admins Wikipedia:List of administrators, on the voting page of Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/List_of_Palestinian_children_killed_by_Israelis_in_2004. Now there is an admin voting for deletion because of POV in the article but this is not all. Now more interestingly he points to another article for deletion. (not relevant to the discussion) but still he does. Let me quote him exactly " Get rid of Operation Days of Penitence Fatalities while you're at it" Now when I clicked it, It was encyclopedic because It had 133 deaths, But of course I can think that may be I can say that he thinks because of his Opinion that it is non-Encyclopedia. But that's more when I saw history and talk page, He was one of the Most Active Editors and Talker on this page. Although I according to wikipedia guide line, should try to have 'good faith' but in situation like this as you can see it is very difficult to have 'good faith', in situation like this when 'admin' acts like this, what can we expect? I explicitly said on one stage that Wikipedia is being used to Hiding information instead of share. There are some times when it is difficult to assume 'good faith'. I tried to explain about editors on Talk Page of WikiProject Countering systemic, but after this incidence I found that such phenomenon also exists with in the Admins. As I am relatively new to wikipedia, I don't know, do I have to live with such things on wikipedia, Or can I do some thing to 'counter' it.

Zain 11:59, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Votes should be votes. And, in the end, the acting sysop's judgment should be the sysop's judgment. (And when we lose, we should try to be good losers...)

The role of policy is that it should, and does, have a strong influence on votes. But it's the votes that count.

Really, policy is just a codification and predictor of the way people are likely to vote. A lawyer consults the lawbooks because a competent lawyer's understanding of the law is a good predictor of how a competent judge will decide in court; but that's all it is.

And really, everyone should relax a bit because VfD outcomes are not all that important. Articles that have been kept can still be edited mercilessly, turned into redirects or whatever by the ordinary editing process. And, conversely, when an article is deleted it doesn't really stop anyone from writing an encyclopedic article on the same or a similar topic, just so long as it isn't a re-creation of the deleted article.

We have votes for deletion and votes for undeletion. We have a VfD process that works as well as it works. When there is consensus, it works. When there truly isn't consensus, layering more and more process isn't going to create consensus. We don't need to have meta-discussions and meta-votes on which VfD votes should be counted.

In cases where there isn't policy, people should just vote their opinion and their best judgement—and not yell too much at others whose opinions differ. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 03:44, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What If article is Encyclopedic but some people may not like it (as we know that ‘systemic bias’ does exist in wikipedia), and they may communicate within them self to increase delete votes (using email or chat or phone). If you check the ‘user contribution’ section of these users and their ‘favorites pages’ you will find that they have same POV. And they normally don’t get into deletion process (looking at their contribution) but for this particular instance they have all ‘grouped up’ to increase delete vote. So because of such a phenomenon which basically gives statistics against particular group, in this case it is difficult to say thing like ‘4 year child was holding a rocket launcher, when he was killed’. Number can be reduced but can’t be eliminated except deleting the page. If it can’t be done no matter how many edits you may do article will still have a ‘sting’ in it. So deletion of such articles under such situations should not be done by ‘counting vote only’ system. We should have some ‘countering’ mechanism.

Zain 12:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Encyclopedic is a subjective term. There is no way to determine objectively whether or not it is valid to claim that an article is not "encyclopedic". If it's a POV concern, obviously the administrator who handles the decision will want to consider that. (And if he or she doesn't handle it in a way that you consider proper, there are plenty of other administrators who can check it. The entire debate and decision process is public. For that matter, you can check it whether or not you're an administrator.) -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 15:01, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please see the example of an 'admin' which i gave earlier and click on the link and then follow links to see why I see a problem. Zain 15:04, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's why I pointed out there there is more than one administrator. In fact, there are lots of administrators. Someone else can take care of it. If you have issues with a particular administrator, you should discuss them with him or her. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 20:59, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A vote is a vote is a vote. Consensus building (and democracy) can't be bogged down by endless examinations of where people's votes come from. It just isn't worth it. --Stevietheman 06:07, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. A consensus ought to be a concord. (It's nothing to do with democracy -- a consensus means the majority take account of the minority, not overrule them because they have the numbers!) People should discuss why they think an article should be deleted or not, in detail if necessary, in an attempt to find a resolution that all are happy with. Read the NPOV policy, which expresses very well the idea of resolutions that satisfy all.Dr Zen 06:25, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A vote is a vote is a vote within consensus (unanimity minus a specific number, usually), not just democracy. Certainly, if someone wants to engage with others and explain their vote, they will. But if someone doesn't want to explain their vote, I defend their right to vote and that be the end of it. We don't all have the time for the happy, puffy world of concord. But we will act responsibly in participating in votes, whether we explain our vote or not.

--Stevietheman 06:46, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you do not give a reason for your vote, which you are requested to do by the deletion policy, it ought to be ignored.Dr Zen 23:34, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's downright crazy and mean-spirited. And if that's the policy, it ought to be changed. --Stevietheman 16:15, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Extracts from 'Official policy guidelines'

Deletion policy is not very clear on it. Wikipedia:Deletion policy says in section Commenting on a listing for deletion

" When someone has listed an article for deletion on one of the lists, anyone else may comment on the request. When expressing an opinion, please include your opinion, your reasoning, and sign with ~~~~ "

I doesn't say whether reasoning is optional or must. It uses the world 'please', which keeps the question open. If it implies any of these believes, it is too vague.

But this is half of the story if user gives reasoning but these reasoning are not valid another question arises. It is also vague in Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators it says in its section Rough consensus.

" administrators can disregard votes and comments if they feel that there is strong evidence that they were not made in good faith. Such "bad faith" votes include those being made by sock puppets, being made anonymously, or being made using a new userid whose only edits are to the article in question and the voting on that article."

Now if some body simply doesn't want an information offending his believes will it be considered 'good faith' this is very questionable. Second thing is that almost gets no mention of invalid reason.

Zain 00:05, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Some older discussions about votes: Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion/title Dan100 09:26, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Conclusions. Wikipedia has no clear 'official policy' on it

Well I think it is clear from the different point of views in above discussion. Wikipedia does not have any 'clear official policy' on 'votes with invalid reasons'. If there is a 'clear official policy', at least it is not clear to voters and to admins.

Zain 10:55, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RFC

Does this page still need to be listed at WP:RFC? Maurreen 01:03, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm removing this page from RFC. Maurreen 08:03, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Inherently" POV pages

While I suppose we all know what you mean, I'm not sure it's a good idea to include this. Some would argue that "childlove movement" is "inherently POV" for example. This inclusion would encourage its listing for deletion at the expense of other solutions. I don't think this actually is a loophole. A page that is "inherently" POV needs to be moved to a new title and NPOVed. That solution exists and should apply. We are cautioned that bias is not a reason for deletion. Please don't try to make it one.Dr Zen 04:26, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But it is if nothing can be done to fix the POV. For example "Atrocities committed by walruses against baby seals" can never be NPOV. So by careful literal application of what I wrote to adjust the policy, we can avoid having to keep articles that cannot be fixed. The current policy allows keeping problem material like that. Inherently POV=cannot be fixed. - Taxman 05:03, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

The page is moved to "Interaction between walruses and baby seals" and the page is edited to meet NPOV. Sorry, I just don't agree that this should be in the policy because people will use it to try to delete pages they don't like and claim that because it's in the policy it must be supported by the community as a whole.Dr Zen 05:07, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

imho, we need more emphasis on the point that the decision for deletion is based upon the article title, i.e., if the title is irreparably pov, vfd it. If it's just the content, remove it, but leave the article (at least a stub) in place. For example, battle-axe was vfd'd because somebody had inserted nonsense. This was just spamming the vfd page, it could have easily been made into a redirect to axe (tool). The same goes for "original research": if there is original research in an article with a reasonable title, just remove the original research part, don't add it to vfd! dab (ᛏ) 14:49, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A good solution to this is to ensure that broken links stay in and that an entry is made to Requested articles. Doing a deletion followed later by a recreation is an advantage for several resons

the article history is shorter and easier to read
the copyright attribution is clearer and doesn't seem to add needless people
clear credit is given to the person who actually starts the page, not to vandals
the average quality of the articles for readers is improved since they don't come across sub-stubs.

Put another way, VFD should be about the material not title. If the title isn't good, it just needs to be moved and not VfD'd. That doesn't need any process at all since it is easy to reverse (just change the title back). Making actual material disappear does need a process since it is impossible for normal contributors to see if the material was worth having. WP:VFD should be about getting rid of spam/vandalism/unencyclopaedic stuff whilst preserving good work, even if the good work looks like spam/vandalism/ at first glance. Note that none of the standard reasons for deletion say anything at all about the title (although "no potential to become encyclopaedic" partly implies it). Mozzerati 22:08, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

I think whatever the policy is, It should be made clear. Currently it is not clear that what to do. I have seen this issue with Israeli violence against Palestinian children. It was on delete vote several times. Policy should be clear or else some pages might go for delete instead of cleanup/move.

Zain 23:29, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Improperly nominated for "Inherently POV"

How does one go about requesting that a VfD page be removed because the request is placed for "Inherently POV" when this is not a VfD policy? Does one have to place a VfD to delete a VfD? -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:07, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You don't "remove" a VFD listing, you vote on it. The answer above appears to be that renaming the article to an NPOV title and rewriting the material is a good solution. If you do that (as long as your move is not against consensus on the talk page) and point that out on the VFD page, people are very likely to update their votes based on an improved article. - Taxman ^{Talk</sup> 12:20, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, moving/renaming a page while it's on VfD is generally a bad idea (the VfD notice on the article even asks you not to do this) - too confusing for voters and too easily used for or viewed as "gaming the system." Edit or rewrite the article, note that you've done so on the VfD, and suggest that the article be moved to another title after the vote has closed. Soundguy99 16:05, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)}

Are you suggesting that a VfD page remain on the VfD list even if it does not follow VfD policy? --Philip Baird Shearer 14:43, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Generally speaking, yes. I know it seems really inefficient, but the consensus is that it's better for an improperly-nominated article to sit on VfD for five days accumulating an overwhelming chorus of "Keep. Don't be ridiculous" votes than to allow editors or admins to unilaterally remove an article from VfD, since that would establish a precedent allowing anybody to remove articles from VfD because they think "this doesn't belong here." Which would mean, in effect, that there would be no VfD, since everybody would just remove articles, and every rant, essay and vanity article would be kept. In the most extreme cases (like I think a few weeks ago someone nominated Godzilla to make a point), the nomination is so clearly in bad faith and it gets so many keep votes so quickly an admin may close the discussion early, and nobody complains, but it's got to be really extreme. In your case, I believe you're referring to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of tyrants. While the article may be considered to have been improperly nominated (although a few editors do make a valid point that "inherently POV" articles can be deleted by precedent, if not by actual stated policy, and some others have pointed out other ways that this list may be considered validly deletable), there has been some intelligent and well-reasoned discussion both pro and con, which is exactly what VfD is intended to accomplish; come to consensus by discussion. You may not like the outcome, but attempting to eliminate the nomination due to a minor procedural point is generally considered inappropriate. Soundguy99 16:05, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By whom? What is the point of having policy if its application is not clear and concise? -- Philip Baird Shearer 00:06, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why are you trying so hard to disagree with every explanation of policy offered to you? People experienced in the policies are offering explanation, and you appear to refuse to accept the explanation. He already explained the reasons why. Perhaps you do not intend to be doing this, but your responses appear like you just want to argue for the sake of it, and that you are not trying to be helpful. Thought you should know. - Taxman ^{Talk</sup> 02:45, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)}

The answer to your first question ("By whom?") could be; everybody, most editors, the Wikipedia community, a supermajority, a consensus of users, a lot of very vocal editors. The answer to your second question is essentially "Because it's Wikipedia." Almost all policies and guidelines have been "grown" from the actions of Wikipedians, not handed down from above, although the initial germ of a policy may be first established by either Jimbo Wales or the Wikipedia Foundation, especially if there are legal issues involved. Practice and useage establish precedents; these precedents might eventually become a policy or guideline, but since Wikipedians represent a very wide cross-section of humanity with a very wide range of opinions on a variety of topics, any policy or guideline will have to be very flexible to satisfy everybody. See also Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and Wikipedia:How to create policy.

I am familiar with how Wikipedia muddles along. Which is why I find it worrying that many people seem more willing to reach for a shotgun and let off two barrels of "Original Research", "VfD", and "NPOV" without any attempt to discuss the situation before, (and often after) making such a claim. They also tend to use these bludgeons in the form of weapons rather than as tools to find a consensus. Philip Baird Shearer

Dunno what to tell you on that one. There's been some discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load about ways to reduce the size of VfD, and it's been generally agreed that there are an appalling number of good-faith but ignorant nominations - nominations based on "I've never heard of him/them/this organization" without research to determine if the subject is encyclopedic. This seems to be a behavioral problem, and may not be "fixable" via policy or procedure, and so far nobody's come up with much of a solution besides making some posts at the Village Pump, on talk pages and maybe some minor rewording of policy pages to suggest that editors be more careful and do more reasearch before nominating articles. Soundguy99 15:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In other words, Wikipedia is far more concerned with the "spirit of the law" than the "letter of the law." The point is not that we have specific policies that must be followed to the letter; the point is that "written policies codify longstanding tradition." So if articles are being nominated for Deletion because of "inherent POV', it's not neccessarily a misapplication of policy - it's a precedent being established. If there is no "Inherently POV" criteria on the deletion policy page, it may be that nobody's gotten around to writing it yet, or nobody's been able to come up with a widely satisfactory wording of such criteria, or the precedent has not been widely established enough to be considered an acceptable addition to the policy page. Soundguy99 03:27, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think this your reply is well crafted answer :-) Of the reasons you give in the last sentence which do you think is the correct one?

There is already a section which states "Article is biased or has lots of POV" then "List on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention." It does not suggest deletion. I think it would be helpful to include an additional category "Article title is biased is written with a non NPOV" "Either place a request on WP:RM to move the title, or merge (if you can't figure out how to do the merge, list on Wikipedia:Duplicate articles and add the tag) and place a request at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion".
At the moment any request to delete "Inherently POV" is not within VfD guidelines. There ought to be a mechanism for removing VfD requests which do not meet policy guidelines or there is no point in having them. This does not mean that VfD pages should be removed unilateraly by an interested party, but that there ought to be the possibility to vote on whether the request is as phrased meets policy guidelines on the te Deletion Page, and the the VfD page ought to be frozen while the vote takes place. Philip Baird Shearer 14:19, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, judging from a variety of VfD discussions and some Talk Page archives, I'd guess that "nobody's been able to come up with a widely satisfactory wording of such criteria" is probably the most likely reason, which means that for practical purposes a lot of editors will accept "inherently POV" as a valid basis for nomination and voting for deletion, even though there's no stated policy. Your suggestion #1 seems very reasonable to me, although I might add that any logged-in editor can move a page themselves, and Wikipedia:Merge and Wikipedia:Redirect also give good information on how to merge a page. The big objection to suggestion #2 is that it's instruction creep, and adds a whole other layer of bureaucracy to an already-clogged process; if we have to have a vote/discussion of whether a nomination is valid before we can begin to discuss the actual VfD, VfD will come to a grinding, shuddering halt. I know I'm supposed to assume good faith, but IMHO such a process would be too easily abused. For now the only practical answer for improperly nominated articles is to let them stay and garner "keep" votes. Soundguy99 15:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

First: having a neutral point of view is a "non-negotiable" requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia. If you grant that it is possible for a topic or article to be "inherently POV," then it would fall under the rubric of "is not suitable for Wikipedia" which is a valid reason for deletion under policy.

Second: the way to deal with a situation like is to vote "keep," expressing your reasons for feeling the nomination was invalid, and hope that others will agree and vote likewise. There's no point in any special procedure for removing things from VfD, as the points that need to be discussed are basically the same as in the VfD discussion for the article. Voting "keep" effectively removes it from VfD... at the end of the VfD discussion period.

Third, you may not feel that there can be such a thing as "inherently POV," in which case the argument against a particular nominations better made by showing how the article and title can be made NPOV than by worrying about the language used for the nomination. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:18, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

re-creation

Does anyone object to the removal of If an article is constantly being deleted and re-created, this should be seen as evidence for the need for an article? It only encourages vanity authors to keep re-creating their articles. --fvw * 20:13, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

How about if it read "recreated in different forms by apparently different people"? Kappa 20:30, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I would. Vanity pages are dealt with clearly by this policy. Common sense indicates that this comment - frequent recreation - refers to 'borderline' cases. Perhaps, however, it should be re-worded to say "...and re-created by different people...", although I doubt anyone would really read the existing statement to mean that constant recreation by one person somehow gives a page reason for inclusion. Dan100 21:54, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
- Agree. This is clumsy, but I think this addresses the problem, if there is one. I don't think the phrase should be removed altogether. When well-meaning people keep re-creating, it probably ought to be an article. Cool Hand Luke 22:59, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I can't object to that removal; I've seen that abused in exactly the way you describe. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to rephrase it that makes clear that "different people" means "different people who aren't connected to each other"; especially not to the kind of people who say "Oh, I'm losing this VfD so I'll put an all-call out on the message board telling everyone to go in and vote." -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:22, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I definitely think it should be removed. --Stormie 22:34, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
I too agree. I have reworded it to be a bit more precise, we'll see if it sticks. User:Brockert/sig 04:19, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

'Encyclopedic'

I propose that the page 'encyclopedic' links to in the table entry 'No potential to become encyclopedic' should be Wikipedia:Importance. (NB Wikipedia:What wikipedia is not is criteria number 7 on that page, so it will still be a fundemental part of Wikipedia policy). I believe this page will give us a much more helpful definition of what being encyclopedic is, rather just going straight to the list of things that Wikipedia is not. Further, this change would entail the page Wikipedia:Informative becoming policy (criteria number 4). This excellent page would finally give us firm guidelines for judging 'notability' etc. Dan100 09:40, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Importance is a proposal that died a quiet death many months ago. The definition of unencyclopedic is simply anything listed at What Wikipedia is Not. I don't see any need, or consensus, for a broader definition. - SimonP 17:00, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

SimonP's assessment is completely correct. Wikipedia:Importance is a dead end. -- Netoholic @ 19:16, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

It did not die, it was simply never moved on to the next stage, which is what I'm doing. There were no objections to the policies. Dan100 13:51, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Read above a little deeper. Your pushing of this will be reverted. -- Netoholic @ 19:07, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)

Have you read the talk pages of Wikipedia:Informative and Wikipedia:Important? Both are filled with largely unresolved objections. Very similar polices also failed to receive consensus in last year's Fame and importance poll. - SimonP 19:15, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Of course I did. I saw no 'show-stoppers'; no out-right objections. I am being bold, that is all. If Importance was a dead end, we'd never have arguements on VfD. So your statements are obviously incorrect. Dan100 21:25, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Lists of schools in X

There are currently several VfDs regarding lists of schools in various countries. See:

There is disagreement over whether the deletion policy supports nominating these pages for VfD. In particular, ArbCom member David Gerard commented that the nominator of these articles, Radiant!, should be "censured" [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/List_of_schools_in_Japan&diff=10485264&oldid=10477037) or "deleted" [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/List_of_schools_in_New_Zealand&diff=10478402&oldid=10477116).I would like to clarify whether the deletion policy supports nominating these articles for VfD. Personally, I think a category is much more appropriate than an article. Carrp | Talk 05:23, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There are several arguments which could be used to support the case that such lists are unencyclopedic and may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. They might include:

An analogy to Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. If that rule is appropriate for commercial enterprises, ought we to have a similar standard for public institutions?
Questions about the inherent difficulties in maintaining and protecting such very large lists from vandalism. (a logical extension of Wikipedia:Verifiable) Is it even theoretically possible to know whether a fake school was added to the list? Can we really assume that there will be enough knowledgable reader/editors to keep that specific page on their watchlist that every municipality in the country will be covered? You are talking about many thousands of municipalities after all.
Questions about the influence of the list on the creation of inappropriate spin-off articles. For example, if I see such a list, am I more likely to add a link and then create an entry for my very small elementary school (which our general concensus says is inappropriate) and, when my article is promptly deleted, do more harm than good to our reputation and relationship with a future editor?

I don't know that the arguments would win the day. There are equally good counter-arguments. But the question certainly can be tested through the VfD process. Reasonable people can disagree. As a community, we generally come to some pretty good decisions.

I will add that I consider such calls for "censure" to be inappropriate and unnecessarily hostile. Depending on the exact wording and context in the discussion, they may even be considered border-line trollish and weighted downward by the deciding admin. Rossami (talk) 03:30, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sock puppet protection

As we all know, sock puppets can be something of a nuisance on VfD. Now I had this wild idea that may be totally unfeasible, but it may also help against annoying puppets. Would it be possible to disallow users from posting on any VfD thread until they have made at least ten edits elsewhere? The number ten is arbitrary, and intentionally small - but it would prevent all those 'first post of user' things on VfD. Radiant! 22:38, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

It would also prevent annonying anons from contributing evidence of notability or other reasons for keeping/deletion. Kappa 08:09, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Not really. Wikipedia readers or guests rarely end up on VfD. Rather, often a page author (who happens to not have a login name) wants to comment on VfD about his page. That is, of course, entirely suitable. But since he wrote the page he's talking about, he should easily have those ten edits to his name.

Did you know that Wikipedia treats 'anons' just like regular users, and uses their IP address for tracking purposes? You can see the recent edits by an anon. You can even send a message to an anon's talk page. Radiant! 10:11, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Not worth fiddling with. A technical fix for a human problem. It probably wouldn't work; anyone deliberately creating a sock puppet could perform ten edits quickly, and ditto for friends brought in as reinforcement. In fact, it might make things worse. Now it is possible go to glance at a user's edit history and see that oddly enough the first thing they ran across in Wikipedia was VfD. WIth a ten-edit requirement it would be necessary to look over ten edits and the comments would be more subjective; "this user has made exactly ten edits, all today, and nine in the Sandbox, all trivial and for the apparent purpose of racking up enough edits to qualify for VfD." And we don't want to disallow posting. In many cases the main contributor to the article has made less than ten edits, and we certainly want to engage them and hear what they have to say. Disallowing people from editing in VfD would give the impression that VfD is a kangaroo court or star chamber. (Right now it sometimes resembles a gladiatorial arena or trial by ordeal, but at least its transparent and open). Dpbsmith (talk) 03:30, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I get your point. Never mind then. Radiant! 21:47, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Notability not a criterion for deletion?

I'm confused; please help me out here. On the VfD pages, just about the most-cited reason for deletion is that the subject (or even the article) is "not-notable". Fair enough. Yet in Wikipedia:Deletion policy, the words "notability" or "notable" aren't even mentioned, and in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, it only applies to memorials of people. What's going on here? Are we all suffering from mass delusions, or is there some unwritten policy that states "non-notability" is a valid ~~criterium~~ criterion for deletion? If the latter, wouldn't it be a good idea to turn it into written policy instead? Thanks. --Plek 20:21, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Dons asbestos suit)

It's not worth fussing about. ~~(Just as it's not worth fussing about whether "criterium" is an English word).~~

Wikipedia is the sum of what WIkipedians actually do. What actually happens is: sysops look at VfD discussions. For the most part, they base their actions on whether people vote "delete" or "keep." Written deletion policy is an effective tool that Wikipedians can use to influence the votes of other Wikipedians.

There was, last year, an attempt by a sysop to consider, when judging consensus, only those "delete" votes for which he judged the stated reasons for deletion to be in accord with the written policy. This attracted criticism, and as a result of the criticism he stopped exhibiting that behavior. So, I repeat, the de facto behavior of sysops is that a sincere expression by a non-sock-puppet user that an article should be deleted counts as a delete. Currently, in VfD a sockpuppet vote is invalid, but a real vote citing bad reasons or no reasons is valid.

References to "notability" in VfD are the interplay of people trying to influence each other. Since many people, regardless of written policy, believes that notability should play some role in VfD decisions, votes are affected by that and it is a de facto criterion. Notice that there although there is a very wide range of opinion, it is very rare for things that are ridiculously non-notable to survive VfD. I could write a factual article about the fire hydrant on my street and I assure you it would be voted for deletion and deleted, even though it's not a biography, even though there are a few überinclusionists who would defend it on principle.

The big problem with notability is that nobody can come up with good objective bright-line definitions of what constitutes notability. People hate to admit that the content of Wikipedia is, in fact, the product of the consensus opinion and judgement of Wikipedians. So, absent a good definition for notability, some argue that it should not be considered at all.

The reality is that this is an area of no consensus. Therefore, judgements and behavior are consistent for extremely notable and extremely non-notable topics, but the zone in which there is argument and inconsistent behavior is wide.

Another reality is that many Wikipedians think that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and notability is a criterion for inclusion in anything else you can point to that calls itself by that name.

So, with regard to notability, I don't expect to see it turned into written policy. And I don't expect to see observations that it is not policy to change the behavior of people voting in VfD, or the behavior of sysops who act on those votes. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for that insightful reply. And I truly hate false friends: "criterium" in Dutch denotes both the standard of judgement and the bicycle race, whereas (according to Webster) in English, it's only used for the latter. --Plek 21:20, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even mentioned it. You Dutch... your command of English is so perfect that, in writing, I rarely recognize Dutch-speakers as not being native English-speakers. If you want to know the truth, I figured "criterium" was some mistaken bit of pedantry--like the people who think the plural of "virus" should be "virii."). Dpbsmith (talk) 21:52, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, some Dutch tend to think that the plural of euro should be euri, so you're not far off the mark. ;-) --Plek 22:14, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with Dpbsmith. Policy is meant to change with the community, not vice-versa. As much as some of us would like to avoid voting on highly subjective grounds like notability (which has different meanings from person to person; my idea of notability seems highly inclusionistic compared to some of the notability grounds used in voting today), the fact remains that a good deal of the community *does* use notability as a reason for deletion. If the community wants an article to go, we shouldn't disregard their opinion just because it's based on something subjective, since the resolution of the issue of contention — should the article be deleted? — has been agreed upon. Johnleemk | Talk 08:27, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In other words, while 'notability' is not part of the policy-as-written, it is a de facto criterium for deletion. Of course, this means that debates ensue over what exactly constitues sufficient notability. Radiant! 17:24, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Recommend Dpbsmith's observations be put in an annoying pastel-tinted box and posted by Rambot to everyone's talk page.

Just kidding. But it's very good stuff, and it's a good introduction for the newbies who don't get what the big notability shibboleth is all about. Put it in a prominent place somewhere. Note that Wikipedia:Notability redirects to Wikipedia:Importance, which (surprise) attempts to instate some definition as policy. We don't need copper-engraved policy at this stage, and possibly never; we need a good way to inform people what the whole fuss is about. I think Dpbsmith's observations get the job done very well. 82.92.119.11 01:14, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

cleaning MediaWiki namespace

There are still some redirects in the MediaWiki namespace as MediaWiki:Redir from US postal ab -> Template:Redir from US postal ab. Regards Gangleri | Th (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php?title=User_talk:Gangleri&action=history) | T 16:26, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Backlog

I'm not sure if this is the best place to address this, or if it's being addressed elsewhere, but the backlog of VfDs is potentially causing some problems, and at least one point needs clarification. VfDs are supposed to be open for 5 days (in general) then resolved. Well, we all know there are open cases going back weeks. I understand why, and I don't think that in itself is much of a problem, but the question becomes are votes made after the 5 day period (in some cases long after) but while the page is still "live", with no action taken on it, to be counted? I've seen it addressed in some votes; someone will add a comment stating that the above vote was made after the voting period was closed, but I don't know if they are ever discounted. How is this handled? -R. fiend 16:42, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Unless there is evidence that the vote was not made in good faith, I've always counted the "late" votes equally with the votes inside the official 5-day discussion period. The instructions at the top of VfD/Old specifically allow people to continue to comment right up until the deciding admin closes the page. Rossami (talk) 17:01, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- I agree that this is usually the best course, but perhaps there is something to be said for a "level playing field" for articles on VfD as well. I also sort of think that having votes open for weeks can skew results, partricularly since after a week many will ignore the nomination, leaving the voting open to infiltration by an organized minority who may go unnoticed until the vote is closed. Just some things to think about. -R. fiend 17:30, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Edit summaries

In my opinion we need to add an explicit requirement that one properly uses edit summaries when listing articles for deletion on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion AND on those articles. Otherwise the creators and contributors of those articles are not actually given notice. Perhaps we could go so far as to require the contacting of the creator of an article when it is listed on VfD? Hyacinth 00:54, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Consensus?

Why is consensus (large majority) necessary to make an article a redirect, but a small minority sufficient to keep it as a separate article? If the issue is notability, then this does no real harm. But what if the issue is NPOV? If a clear but not overwhelming majority in the community see that an article should not exist as an article but should be summarised within another, why does a minority get to subvert our will? Isn't this a systemic bias in favour of bad articles? :) — Helpful Dave 10:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The only thing here that requires a large majority (two-thirds, usually) is actual deletion of an article. That is because deletion cannot easily be undone. If you have a good reason for merging two articles, you can be bold and do so, just like you can add whatever information you want in regular editing. In the (relatively rare) case that conflict arises from either, that can be discussed on the relevant talk pages, and if necessary, the additions or merging can be undone. Radiant _* 13:17, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that is true in practice. If anyone ever turns an article into a redirect, there will always be someone who reverts that. That's why we see Vfd so often used as a way of going to the community to get a mandate to carry out an action such as merging a controversial article into another, or renaming it. I recently started a Vfd entry, stating that I wanted to merge a POV fork back into the main article. The majority of people agreed, but a minority was enough to make the proposal apparently fail. Is that right? It seems our policy is contradictory, because on one hand POV forks are discouraged, and on the other hand there is a systemic bias in favour of them since it requires more than 50% support to merge them back into their main articles.

Or should I just read the policy literally? That is to say, consensus is required for deletion, but since nobody was advocating deletion, should I take the 24-against-30-in-favour vote as a mandate to carry out the proposal? :) — Helpful Dave 14:05, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is inconsistent. But I would read the policy literally. We desire concensus for everything. For administrative reasons, we have chosen to define "concensus" for purposes of deletion as an overwhelming majority. The decision to make someone an admin is also a decision requiring an overwhelming majority. For almost all other decisions, the definition of concensus is left ambiguous and we put the principle of concensus in dynamic tension with the principle of boldness. I would interpret a simple majority as sufficient to support a decision to redirect but would strongly urge the participants to use mediation to resolve the controversy. That resolution, however, should happen on the respective article Talk pages, not through a VfD discussion. VfD is too cluttered as it is. Rossami (talk) 15:18, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is not true that 'if anyone ever turns an article into a redirect, there will be someone who reverts it'. What you should do is put the redirect on your watch list, so you will know when (if) it is reverted. At that point, contact the user who did that and talk it out. I've done a lot of merging and redirecting in the past week, and as long as what you're doing makes sense, people are unlikely to revert. For controversial redirs, it would be good to ask the related parties in advance, but otherwise simply be bold since it's faster, and Wikipedia is already too bureaucratic. Radiant _* 10:17, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit idealistic to say that it should be resolved on the respective talk page. That often reaches an impasse, and the matter needs to be taken to the community. At the moment, only Vfd offers that possibility. The article I have in mind has already been through Vfd, and the majority of the community wanted to get rid of it. That just needs to be implemented now. I think I shall just be bold do it, backed up by the fact that I have a majority vote on my side. :) — Helpful Dave 10:32, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Wikipedia is a bit idealistic. That's the whole point :) I'm sure it cannot always be resolved on a talk page, but it seems to work most of the time. However, should you need community input, the relevant process is WP:RFC, not VfD. By the way which article are you referring to? Radiant _* 10:54, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Once an article has been listed on VfD, you usually get a substantial discussion, hopefully a consensus, and probably a number of users who have the article on their watchlist. If, at the end of the VfD, there is no consensus to delete, no overwhelming consensus to redirect, and a reasonable number of simple "keep" votes, the situation is what it is. There are no special rules that I know of. If you know that a lot of people don't want the redirect and probably have the article on their watchlist, if you turn it into a redirect the chances that someone will revert it are pretty good.

A redirect is just the same as any other edit, except of course that it's a rather major one. If you can't get consensus somehow, you will have an ongoing edit war, and most likely the majority of those who care and are watching the page will prevail.

No special permission is needed to turn a page into a redirect. I do it fairly frequently, and in the cases of "hit-and-run-anon-substubs" reversions are rare. It's effectively a speedy deletion that has the advantages that you don't need to be a sysop, it's open, its reversible, and in the case where the entry is reasonable adding the redirect improves Wikipedia, and sometimes adding the substub to the merge-target article improves the article. Because it's open and reversible, there's no harm in being bold.

However, it is always silly to make a controversial edit if you know that there are people who do care (and will oppose your edit). This is frequently the situation at the end of VfD. If there is a clear consensus for redirection, and the redirection is performed by a sysop, there's a fair weight of moral authority which will might make the action stick. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:35, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Corollary to "Wikipedia is not paper"?

One commonly used argument by inclusionists is meta:Wikipedia is not paper. Does this imply that if a subject has an entry in any general paper encyclopedia of any language, that the subject is notable of an entry in Wikipedia? I am not talking about extremelly specialized encyclopedias, like the "City Encyclopedia of Bergen, Norway" which has an entry about every street and road there, but traditional general encyclopedias. Nor am I talking about deletions due to copyvios and deletions due to the article containing mere nonsense. Sjakkalle 08:25, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Using WP:WINP is somewhat controversial, and often countered with lines such as [[Wikipedia is not toilet paper]]. But I suppose that wasn't your point. Yes, I would think that it's fair to say that anything covered in general 'pedias such as the Brittannica, is worthy of coverage in WikiPedia. I also believe WP is already bigger than all such encyclopedias combined, which means we're on the right track. Radiant _* 10:54, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Err. What? Wikipedia is not paper is not in any way "controversial", it's one of the core parts of the rationale behind most of our policy, and has been for at least the 30-odd months that I've been here.

James F. (talk) 12:00, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What I meant was that the WINP argument is sometimes used controversially, in particular when it's the only argument for a keep-vote on VfD (because, if WINP is the only reason why an article should be kept, arguably it should not be kept; by far the most articles that are kept, are kept for better reasons than this one). Radiant_* 12:09, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
- If "wikipedia is not paper" is the only reason given to keep, it's probably because the reason given for deletion would only be relevant to a paper encyclopedia. Kappa 13:02, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  - Well, by disagreeing on the usage we have just proven that it's controversial, have we not? (oh and for the record, there also are a number of invalid arguments spuriously used for deletion votes) Radiant _* 13:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Redirects

I would like past VfD article names to be redirected to the nomination page to avoid semi-accidental creation of articles with those names in the future; therefore the newcomers will find out that there are reasons for those deletions. --SuperDude 23:42, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This will only cause the recreation vandals to clobber the vfd discussions. Besides, cross-namespace redirects are considered harmful; they're self-references and complicate things for reusers of our content. (On the other hand, they'd probably stop our mirrors from keeping copies of our deleted pages forever.) —Korath (Talk) 00:54, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Adjectives for Encyclopedias

Many people who are casting VfD votes keep saying that the articles are unencyclopedic. But I have a new proposal; have Wikipedians say that they are "not Wikipedic" instead. --SuperDude 01:52, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding like Clippit, Wikipedic - Wikipedia:Wikipedic - wikt:wikipedic R adiant _* 08:15, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Renominations

I'm sure that I remember seeing something (policy or guide-line? I can't remember) on the minimum time between an article's surviving a VfD and being renominated — but I can't find it anywhere. Was I hallucinating?

I ask because Lorna Nogueira has just been nominated for the third time this year (the last time being less than two months ago), and it seems to me that there should be something to stop serial nominations. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:17, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

There was a lot of discussion but no final concensus. The general opinion in my interpretation was that renominations have to be allowed but that if the article is renominated too soon, it is likely to be shouted down as an attempt to game the system. Some argued that it would take as long as 6 months for a renomination could/would be assumed to be in good faith. The majority opinion was probably closer to 3 months. Inside that limit, the burden of proof is very strongly on the nominator to show why this renomination is appropriate and why the community should consider the question again so soon. Rossami (talk) 21:21, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks — at least I know that I'm not going completely crazy. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:30, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

And an exception to the above is re-nominating something immediately after the discussion closes, iff there was no consensus and it seems that some more discussion would actually form one. This isn't really a re-nomination then, but a continued discussion. And we should probably add this to the DP page. R adiant _* 09:38, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Reducing VfD load

There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load about ways that the size of VfD might be reduced. While there is still much discussion about possible new procedures and policies, there is a general consensus that one way to reduce the size would be to encourage editors to use other processes before or instead of nominating a page for deletion. Some of these other processes are:

Research the subject. A lot of articles are placed on VfD because of very little/poor content, but then kept because the subject is determined to be encyclopedic, even if the article in its current state is not. Nominators should put more effort into finding out if the subject of the article is keepable, and make sure it is correctly categorized/stub-tagged/cleanup-tagged.
Patience. Two applications of this -
1. Give an article at least a little time to develop; It is understood that some RC patrollers feel they need to take action before an article disappears off the RC page, but nominating an article for VfD within minutes of its creation is often inappropriate. Use the "Watch" button - it won't kill us if a questionable stub is created and sits around for at least a couple of days until the author gets a chance to work on it.
2. "A month" isn't exactly a long time either; many VfD's seem to be based on "this article's been around for a month (or 2 or 3) and nobody's worked on it!!!!!" Nobody knowledgeable about the subject may have found it (especially if it hasn't been categorized/tagged/listed) or had time to work on it. Not all editors are Wikipedaholics.
Categorize/Stub-tag/Listing on the appropriate "needs attention" page. In conjunction with the two points above, an article may not have been "placed" or linked to a place where an editor with knowledge of the subject can find it and fix it.
Merge and Redirect. Any editor can do this. See Wikipedia:Merge, Wikipedia:Redirect and Wikipedia:Duplicate articles. This would help with sending "cruft" articles/info to a place where the info will get attention from informed sources, and unnecessary/inappropriate stuff can get deleted without clogging VfD and requring admin attention. Also Move can be used by any logged-in user, when appropriate.
Use the article's Discussion page to raise questions about an article's appropriateness. Also, discussions on the talk pages of articles related to the subject can be especially useful in determining if an article should be merged with a larger article.
So fix it. While "write about what you know about" is certainly useful, it's definitely not a rule or requirement or anything. No reason that editors couldn't or shouldn't do some research (even if it's just online research) and make some improvements themselves rather than VFDing it.

Please note that this is not a suggestion about changing policy or procedure. This is simply "spreading the word" about some possible ways that we can reduce the size of VfD, and so this will be posted in several places around Wikipedia. Thanks for listening. Soundguy99 16:52, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Hoaxes

Wikipedia:Patent nonsense says that patent non-sense is not to be confused with... Hoaxes and to Check the Deletion policy policy for information on how to handle these things. But the deletion policy does not mention anything about hoaxes. What is the policy regarding hoaxes?--AI 16:24, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Articles which are hoaxes are deletable. (Articles about a particularly notable hoax may or may not be accepted by the community.) Hoax articles, however, are explicitly not speedy-deletable. We have had far too many cases where an article was nominated for deletion as a "hoax" but during the VfD discussion were discovered to be true (though very obscure). Because of this, hoax articles must go through the Votes for Deletion process so that they are scrutinized by multiple people. See my user page for an informal list of examples. Patent nonsense, on the other hand, is speedy-deletable and can be deleted without discussion by the first admin who happens to discover it. Rossami (talk) 18:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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