Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Archive 6

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Conservative Underground discussion

I submit that, had we been aware that we were up for deletion, there would have been much more discussion/participation, and the "consensus" of 70% would not have been reached. Under the undeletion criteria, we have a very valid case for undeletion. (I have requested that the deletion review page be unprotected so you don't have to keep moving these posts) crockspot

Who is the "we" you're talking about, and why weren't you aware? · rodii · 02:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
The actual discussion page was never protected. Please participate in the discussion there so I don't have to keep moving these posts. This page is for discussions about the proper functioning of the Deletion Review page and process, not for discussing specific cases. Rossami (talk) 02:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I bet to differ, sir. There was a banner stating that the page was protected from anons and new users, due to vandalism, and there were no "edit" features. There is also a request other than mine to unprotect it. It has either now been unlocked to new users, or enough time has elapsed that I may now edit. I don't appreciate being called a liar. crockspot

I am not calling you a liar but you are mistaken. Your first request was correct in that you could not at that time initiate a request. You placed your request here. That request for review was moved to the sub-page Wikipedia:Deletion review/Conservative Underground. Your subsequent comments were also moved to that sub-page. That sub-page was never protected. Protection is not automatically "inherited" from the parent-page. You could have edited the sub-page at any time after it was created. Rossami (talk) 04:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Archiving undeletion debates?

Shouldn't records of undeletion debates be kept, in the same way that deletion debates are archived?

Like Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Archives or Wikipedia:Archived_delete_debates?

It all seems a bit unorganized. Odd how Templates for deletion archiving is done differently to Articles for deletion for example. Shouldn't it all be standardized? --Col. Hauler 12:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Agreed. It's just as important to keep DRV results as it is to keep AFD results, if not moreso since DRVs tend to be more contentious/controversial. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I too would like to add my agreement with this as well. --Siva1979Talk to me 08:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I like the subpaging--it is weird to do it without telling anyone though--but we really should have a diff or a link to the subpage on recently concluded so that you can find reviews easily from whatlinkshere. As it is now, I have to wade through the history to find a DRV that is relevant to other issues. Kotepho 15:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Provide a temporary copy of deleted article for reference?

It would be good if it was process to make a temporary copy of the article that has been deleted available for reference by non-administrators so that we can make an informed decision on whether to undelete or keep deleted - it is very unfair how the rest of the community is excluded from knowing what was actually deleted in this way. --Col. Hauler 18:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

In theory at least, the content of the article should have no bearing on whether or not it is to be deleted- just the topic counts. But practically, I believe that making available a copy of the article will be useful, so ppl not connected to the topic may have some idea what's it about. Admins have access to deleted history, so this shouldn't be to difficult. Borisblue 19:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that it would depend largely on what exactly the article was deleted for. I'm against this if it means bringing back copyvios and slander/attack articles, even temporarily. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this would be better decided case by case. Admins can have a look at the deleted article, and if someone sees something worth noting, they can paste the article or part of in on DRV. - ulayiti (talk) 11:16, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
  • It should be decided case by case basis. Some of the deleted articles contain very, very, offensive material as well. --Siva1979Talk to me 17:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
This would have been very useful to me. I got very pissed off at the deletion of the Shohé Tanaka, and part of that was not being able to see what had been in the article or to view the article history. It's very abusive to non-administrators, who are not second-class editors, but who seem to be treated as such sometimes. Gene Ward Smith 18:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is NOT censored, so it doesn't matter how offensive the content is/was. Oh, and I am in favour of this proposal. Foolish Child 18:58, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • This is currently handled on a case by case basis, ask for it in the discussion and if an admin reviews it and feels it's not unsuitable to provide it, they will. I'd hate to see it be made mandatory. Often it's not necessarily necessary, in my view. I'm not sure I'd characterise it as "abusive to non administrators". ++Lar: t/c 19:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I've added a lot of content to Wikipedia over the years, and so I speak as a content-producing editor, who has made numerous edits and added a considerable amount of quality material. From the point of view of someone who has worked hard on pages such as my recent work on algebraic number field or algebraic curve, the thought that someone who knows zero about mathematics might come along and delete the page without checking to see if it was worthwhile is upsetting. That is an extreme example, of course, but in milder form it seems to be happening--people are deleting pages where there seems to be no good reason for it. Moreover, if you can't check the deleted article or the article history, how can you help correct the process? It seems to me the views of the people who spend time actually creating content are at least as valuable as anyone else's. I am NOT a second class Wikipedian, and I resent being treated as such. Gene Ward Smith 22:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

To answer your excellent question, Col. Hauler, there is already a process in place to enable editors who lack sysop permissions to view deleted articles that are being appealed at Deletion review. Simply place a request under the section "history-only undeletion": an administrator will review the request and temporarily restore the history logs of the article (barring important reasons not to). The article page itself will be locked, so that deleted material cannot be restored to the page before a decision is made at DRV. These request are virtually always looked at quite rapidly, such that only rarely is the history unavailable to interested editors within an hour or two—often sooner. Saving copies of articles on-wiki, or automatically restoring them simply when an appeal is lodged at Deletion review, are very poor alternatives: most of the deleted articles appealed here have undergone an open discussion for at least 5 days at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, and were deleted only after Wikipedians of some experience and at least one administrator considered the matter. To simply restore a copy of the article merely on the initiation of an appeal is to disrespect the consensus of Wikipedian editors; similarly, an article which received a "keep" consensus at AFD should not simply be deleted the moment someone lodges an appeal to overturn that decision at DRV, for exactly the same reason. The point of DRV is to provide an appeals forum where parties can have a thoughtful discussion about the merits of the article and the process which brought it here. —Encephalon 23:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

  • This sounds good, but in my experience it doesn't work. I've requested the history of the Shohé Tanaka page several times now, to no effect. I requested the page be restored, and it was, and was thereafter immediately deleted again before I could even view it. The system only works if people behave responsibly and follow up on requests, and that does not seem to always be the case. Gene Ward Smith 23:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
    • I think what may have happened in this case is that the original article was tagged as a speedy delete (as it only contained two lines of info). An admin looked at it, and deleted it. It was then requested to be restored, which it was. However, I'm guessing that it was restored with the speedy tag intact, which would explain why another admin spotted the article so quickly and deleted it again only 9 minutes later. So, yes, there is a 'glitch' in the process, when a article is restored, care must be taken to remove any afd/db tag on the article to stop a repeat of this situation. Regards, MartinRe 00:00, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

How about just making it available UNLESS it contains libellous material? WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_censored --Col. Hauler 11:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

How to list blah blah blah...

The recent addition of subpages to DRV has been removed. This has been discussed many times by the people who actually maintain this page and been rejected. There's the monthly archive now, and if people include the diffs (which is being done inconssitantly) then there is no need for subpageing. 203.214.19.79 10:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Semiprotection

I presume this page is semiprotected to keep the sockpuppets and anons off, on the grounds that they don't have anything useful to add to debates. This is largely true; but it also makes it more difficult for anons to appeal a deletion, as in the present Conservative Underground case.

Often the deletion is correct, and the appeal worthless (and it sounds like it was about CU). But we should hear and answer complaints, even if we then teject them unanimously; that's how newbies learn. Septentrionalis 23:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the semiprotection. This is an appeals page, and should be accessible to all editors, including—especially including—completely new editors with little or no experience contributing to Wikipedia. A susbtantial number of the articles Deletion review considers are contributions from very new Wikipedians, and we do them great disservice if we make it difficult or confusing to discuss questions concerning the deletion or restoration of their contributions. If there is vandalism, we deal with it in the usual fashion. —Encephalon 00:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you; the same should apply to the subpage at WP:UBD Septentrionalis 03:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. —Encephalon 16:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Backlog

Is there a special reason why DRV is running so far behind? Everything up to May 3rd should already be closed. Please don't take offense to me saying this: but maybe before any admin comments/votes on a new DRV case, they should first close off an old one. This is especially true in a case, where an article has been "protected deleted", but the a large majority supports undeletion. I would love to help out, but obviously, I can not, as I'm not an admin. --Rob 00:59, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Thivierr here. I would also love to help out but I am not an admin yet. I hope an admin would look into this as soon as possible. --Siva1979Talk to me 06:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for this note, Rob. It bears mention, firstly, that part of the reason that DRV discussions seem to take a long time to close is simply that they really are meant to be open longer. DRV has the longest open period of any deletion-related forum in Wikipedia—discussions are generally only closed after at least 10 days, unless there is a large, usually unanimous or near-unanimous, majority in favor of a particular outcome by about 5 days. This is a deliberate policy, the idea being that any interested party ought to be afforded fair opportunity to comment in the discussion, in what is often the final say on a particular contribution. I share the observation, however, that discussions are sometimes left open for considerably longer. This seems to happen, I think, because most of the experienced Wikipedians who patrol DRV also usually comment in the discussions; where contentious or complex subjects are under discussion, the wish to maintain an impartiality in the proceedings results in a reluctance to close debates in which one has participated substantially. I know this has stopped me from closing quite a number of times. One other point you raise bears comment. You do not necessarily have to be an administrator to close DRV discussions, or for that matter any discussion on Wikipedia. If the result will not require the use of administrative permissions, any experienced, knowledgeable Wikipedian, whether administrator or not, may close the debate (note that this is subject to administrative review). Now, it is generally advisable that controversial discussions in particular are closed by people who know what they're doing, but we have generally not had a problem with editors closing debates when they really shouldn't be. I would have no objection to someone such as yourself closing DRV debates not requiring use of sysop permissions, Rob. Regards —Encephalon 19:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. The thing is, in cases where a non-admin can "close", it doesn't matter really. Such cases aren't really "holding up" anybody. If an article is going to be kept deleted, it really doesn't matter how long it's listed here. It's not like AFD, where we want to remove the message box. The only cases where prompt DRV action is needed is where an undeletion is called for, so editors can get to work improving the article. --Rob 19:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Shohé Tanaka

These comments, up to and including Fang Aili's post at 21:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC), were originally posted to the Content review section of Wikipedia:Deletion review, and moved here to free up that space. —Encephalon 22:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I'm not feeling particularly polite about the atrocious deletion of the article on "Shohé Tanaka", deleted on 17 February 2006 by Marudubshinki. Shohé Tanaka was an important music theorist and easily qualified for inclusion. Obviously the deletion was by people who didn't have a clue about the subject matter, and didn't bother to check. It looks to me like the deletion process is broken and needs fixing. I think checking before deleting would be a good plan; for instance, before requesting a deletion on an article not obviously stupid, the people who worked on it might be notified. In any case, polite or not, and in fact I'm afraid I am pissed off, I would like to see the deleted article. Gene Ward Smith 00:15, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
    • The complete contents of the article (excluding the deletion tag, a stub tag and a broken cross-wiki tag) was "Shohé Tanaka is a Japanese physicist and music theorist. He graduated Tokyo University in 1882 as a science student. He went to Germany in 1884, together with Mori Ogai. He is known as a music theorist, but continued to study physics at the same time." Looking at the edit history, it was given three weeks for expansion without success. The only user to have added any content to the article was subsequently banned for misbehavior. Notifying users generally is infeasible. Notifying a banned user is pointless. Feel free to start a new article but getting upset over this deletion is probably not worth it. Rossami (talk) 02:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
      • Thanks. However, User:Hyacinth restored the article, and it was promptly deleted again. Moreover, User:Arthur Rubin apparently withdrew the request it be deleted. In other words, the article has been deleted, and now deleted again, even though there never was an actual request for deletion, and even though it clearly fails to fit the requirements of an article for speedy deletion. This is very bad; it suggests that other valuable articles are likely to have been deleted. If no one who actually knows something about the subject matter is even contacted, and no one checks to see if there is reason for the article, this is pretty likely. Another point to bear in mind is that an article which is linked to is likely to have some value. Still another point is that you can't improve a deleted article. I don't know now whether to wait for the article to be restored, with its history, or to try to recreate it. None of this needed to happen, and would not have happened if a little care had been taken. Gene Ward Smith 04:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
        • I think you are misreading the edit history. Arthur Rubin added the speedy-deletion tag on 16 Feb. The article as it stood at that time did qualify for speedy deletion under case A7 (and possibly A3 as lacking the context necessary for further expansion). The available evidence suggests that due care was taken and that the process was correctly followed. False positives are unfortunate but inevitable. I suspect that you may be seriously underestimating the volume of junk that Wikipedia volunteers have to sift through every day. All that said, your recent rewrite is a much better article. Thank you for starting it. Rossami (talk) 13:52, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I think the article was recklessly and thoughtlessly tagged, and then deleted without due consideration. The same is true about its redeletion after it was undeleted. Some administrators are obviously way too ready to delete articles which should be kept and expanded, or at least stup-tagged, rather than deleted. The article linked to two other Wikipedia articles, indication a priori interest in the subject matter. It also linked to the WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments and Scales. That meant there was an obvious place to go to get comments on the article from people who might actually know what the article was about, but no attempt was made to do that.
  • When the article was recreated, it was instantly reldeleted without giving anyone time to look at it or improve it. According to User:Fang Aili, it didn't have enough content. So rather than letting whoever wanted it undeleted add content, she deletes it again. The Deletion Police are clearly behaving irresponsibly in some cases, and saying the article as it now stands is good misses the point. I went looking for the article, to see if it needed improving, only to find some idiot had deleted it. I can't very well start a new article under such circumstances, because how do I know said idiot will not delete it again? This could have been avoided by the simple expedient of looking at what the page links to, and if it was a stub, adding a stub tag. I still don't know the article history and can't look at the various versions, and so can't tell if anything useful was ever there in any of the versions. Gene Ward Smith 18:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Please see our communication here and here. --Fang Aili 說嗎? 21:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I think what may have happened in this case is that the original article was tagged as a speedy delete (as it only contained two lines of info). An admin looked at it, and deleted it. It was then requested to be restored, which it was. However, I'm guessing that it was restored with the speedy tag intact, which would explain why another admin spotted the article so quickly and deleted it again only 9 minutes later. Admin Q - does the article content automatically appear when you do a restore, so you can remove tags? Regards, MartinRe 00:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Skip redundant process for a7 cases (if no AFD occurred)

I propose we eliminate the need for a vote in cases of an article speedy deleted as A7 with no AFD *if* any admin feels there is a serious claim of notability, or trust one can/will be added promptly. It should be possible to promptly undelete the article, and immediately relist it on AFD. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Reverend and The Makers is an example of needless process (April 26 to May 9). We now are spending more time with the AFD discussion (which is really the only discussion needed). A serious flaw of DRV delays, is that it discourages interested editors, who can't add to the article, until it's undeleed. Some aren't preapared to wait, and won't be around to add what they can, when they're finally allowed to. What I say applies just never-AFD'd articles. If something is deleted by AFD, then its appropriate to demand a DRV before undeleting/relisting (as we don't want unlimited AFDs, or disrespect for community consensus). --Rob 19:10, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

There's already the "article deleted out of process" loophole if something is a screamingly bad "no claim of notability" deletion, and there is also already the "go ahead and create your own better stub" loophole for non-admins. I don't see it as taking that much extra work for us to review these speedies. If an editor is so impatient that they can't be contented with working on something in their subspace for a couple of days, I'm hardly going to cry a river. If the subject of the article is so obscure that only that editor is going to write about it it sounds like the A7 cluase was probably spot on. So, I'm not seeing any advantage to this personally. - brenneman{L} 01:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
This, of course, assumes that they have it in a subspace, which is generally not true. Experienced editors can ask for a private copy for review, but most of the editors who come here don't know how to do that. (And even that takes a while.) Septentrionalis 01:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Reverend and The Makers. I filed it on April 26. Before that, the creator asked for an undeletion. That didn't happen, not even to user space (as it aught to have). On April 27, I requested the page, at least be undeleted to user space. That request was ignored by admins. On May 2, I again asked why was it protected deleted. No admin response. On May 9 Sjakkalle (bless him) undeletes the article. That was much more then a "couple days". This is beaurocratic process, that's fundamentally unwiki. I find it humorous, that there's active debates about whether making people take 30 seconds to register is an unfair obstticle to article creation, but making people wait weeks is considered dandy. --Rob 22:08, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I also encourage people to NOT use the A7 tag, and use prod instead. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 01:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. For now at least, DRV is small enough that we can review all cases without creating a bunch of exceptions, and I'm sure that any totally-obviously-completely wrong A7 speedy would probably be restored without a DRV anyway (like if any admin went nuts and deleted George W Bush as an A7 speedy. We must remember to avoid instruction creep. There's no reason to create rules upon rules and then exceptions to each and exceptions to the exceptions. Not necessary. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I would argue that minimizing instruction creep would take us in the other direction. The understanding has always been that if a speedy-deletion is contested in good faith by an editor in good standing, it is immediately reversed and sent to AFD for full discussion by the community. DRV didn't change that. What DRV adds is a place and process so we can discuss requests where the "good faith" part is not obvious. Rossami (talk) 01:55, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

An administrator already has the ability to undelete under the exception clause in the undeletion policy; this would cover bad A7 cases. So we don't need to hold a big discussion on this, it's already policy and has been so for ages. --Tony Sidaway 22:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

So, why the long delay in the Reverend and The Makers (I described above). Undeletion and the current AFD, were largely uncontested. But it still sat "protected deleted" for all that time. --Rob 22:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed closing of Userbox subpage

WP:UBD has only four discussions on it, but they are important tests of whether the (just changed) wording of WP:CSD is consensus. There has been a proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review/Userbox_debates#Deletion.2Fclosing_of_DRVU to merge that page back into this one. Please discuss it there. Septentrionalis 05:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Subpages

Where has this come from? I hate it, and it seems pointless. I can't find any discussion supporting the change. - brenneman{L} 05:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Ta bu shi da yu set it up like that and people for whatever reason appear to have followed suit. I've subst'd the two newest debates (with little history) into the main page, in the hopes that if people don't see subpages when they go to edit, they won't create them. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Just thought I'd clarify that I have no stance either way on this. But with it having been rejected before I think it's better to discuss it here before arbitrarily implementing it. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:39, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
  • It's a far FAR BETTER way of doing things. See here: #Archiving_undeletion_debates.3F. --Col. Hauler 11:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Personally, I prefer the sub-pages because:
    1. they make finding the old discussions easier (and we are unfortunately needing to do that more lately)
    2. it gives the person closing the discussion a place to record their reasoning in more detail than the "kept deleted" at the bottom of the page - often unnecessary but sometimes very important
    3. it makes finding and fixing vandalism within the discussions far easier (see, for example, the vote-tampering in the history of the myg0t review)
    Rossami (talk) 15:22, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. With the monthly sub-pages, the old discussions can be found from the article's "what links here" or a text search. Perhaps having a transcluded "All" of the old discussion lists wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't see how it makes finding them any easier.
  2. I see that it's more transparent to look at a subpage instead of a diff, particularly when the closer doesn't provide the diff.
  3. I also concede the point about space for closing rational.
  4. However, in the balance between ease of maintanence and the ease of use, I'm soundly on the side of ease of use. It should be noted that the editors who do the bulk of the work on closing discussions don't like the subpaging.
  5. The vast majority of deletion reviews are uneventful. By creating subpages for everyonw we're using a steamhammer to crack a walnut, really.
brenneman{L} 02:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, I agree with Brenneman, especially on point #5. The problem is that determining which DRVs are worthy of the sledgehammer treatment before the discussion actually commences is a bit difficult. Johnleemk | Talk 09:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
To illustrate a problem with keeping all discussions on this one page, please look at the current contents of the Content review section. That section includes what appears to be a good faith request for a copy of a deleted page. The request is unsigned. I could guess who made the request. Or I could slog through the page history trying to find that particular edit. Neither is worth my time. When discussions are segmented off, searching the page history to help new users becomes feasible again.
Aaron, you have been very clear that you dislike the subpages. I must admit that I still don't understand why you hate them so. When I time myself, the effort to close a discussion is the same either way. What are we doing differently? Rossami (talk) 14:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
My contrary nature alone isn't explanation enough? Seriously though, I have a very slow browser. If I right click in the [edit] tab (having already examined the debate on the main page) I can CRTL A + Del, put my close in the edit summary, triple click in the summary line CTRL V, and enter without having had to use preview. Paste the edit summary into the "recently closed" change /* to [[. Pasting the diff is just a right click + choose "properties" highlight and CTRL V again, still nothing extra downloaded. With the subpages there's a lot more dicking around: I have to make sure the template is right, I have to go back to the main page and remove the transclusion. Mostly it's just me being a grumpy old man and not liking change. - brenneman{L} 06:24, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to attempt a comparison between our techniques as an intellectual exercise. Please correct it if I'm misrepresented anything.
Aaron's technique How I just closed the discussion about "ghey"
  1. study the debate on the main page
  2. right-click the [edit] link
  3. CTRL A then Del
  4. type my close in the edit summary
  5. triple click in the summary line then CTRL C then Return
  6. scroll to the bottom of the DRV page and right-click the [edit] link for "recently closed"
  7. add "# " then CTRL V to paste in the edit summary
  8. change /* to [[ and add ~~~~~ for the datestamp
  9. right-click to open the main DRV page history in a separate window (or tab)
  10. right-click the "last" link and select Properties
  11. select the address, CTRL C, return to "recently closed" window and Ctrl V to paste in the link to the diff
  12. Tab and Return
  1. study the debate on the main page
  2. right-click the [edit] link
  3. add the top template and my closing reasoning
  4. hold down the down-arrow then add the bottom template
  5. hit Tab and Return
  6. highlight the sub-page title and hit CTRL C, then CTRL W to close the subpage
  7. scroll to the bottom of the DRV page and right-click the [edit] link for "recently closed
  8. add "# [[" then CTRL V twice
  9. edit the line, removing "Wikipedia:Deletion review/" from the first link, adding closure and the datestamp in the middle and piping the second link with the word "Review"
  10. Tab, Return, CTRL W
  11. find the date row on the DRV page and click the [edit] tab
  12. delete the subpage link
  13. Tab and Return
Well, it's pretty clear that I had way too much time on my hands tonight. And that Aaron's technique may be shorter, though I still don't understand his last step. The differences in effort seem small to me compared to the loss of the ability to evaluate page histories but I'm still thinking about it... Rossami (talk) 23:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I had actually started to make this exact same table but then got embarrased and didn't do it! What I didn't make clear was that I never open the diff. Since I'm all about trying to minimise how much I load, I keep the history open in a (firefox) tab the whole time I'm closing DRVs, and the main page in another. Then I right click on [last] and choose 'Properties' which is the bottom item. A box appears that has the address of the diff without me loading the page. Then I copy/paste that, and when I've done another one I just his "refresh" on the history page. I'm starting to feel like it is just me that's being obstructive, and forcing us to do it a certain way based upon my anemic browser is a bit rude. So I've made my pitch (overkill, simplicity of creation and closing, existing recently closed makes them easy to find) but I hear there are advantages (Google-able old discussions, space for fuller closes) and I'm ready to hear more from other people who close out DRVs and follow the herd.
brenneman{L} 00:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Very clever. I've never paid much attention to the "cur" and "last" links before. I'll amend the table above. Thanks for the new trick. Rossami (talk)
Minor nitpick about the table: you don't need to hold the down key to scroll to the bottom of the form. Just the page down key is enough (and it's much faster too). Just thought it might help. :p Johnleemk | Talk 02:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I can't see why it's pointless. I wanted to keep track of the Gordon Cheng DRV, so transcluding was a very good idea. We transclude AFDs, and there are plenty of unnecessary AFDs. Why can't we transclude here? - Ta bu shi da yu 15:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Errr... why is that labeled "comment" as if we are voting? Anyway, if I balance out the extra maintanence, the creation of a whole bunch of other pages (which can be vandalised, etc) the extra difficulty in closing discussions, and the extra hurdle to creation of reviews VS. you being able to keep track of one particular discussion that was important to you...
brenneman{L} 07:22, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
I won't label my view but I like subpages. It reduces edit conflicts to use them. There are arguments both ways but that's what I like. ++Lar: t/c 12:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Undeletion

May I rudely offer my $0.02 on a semi-related subject? I think that it would be a good idea for pages under discussion on DRV to be temporarily undeleted, so that we can see what we're commenting. --David.Mestel 17:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this is the other perennial topic. along with sub-paging. We should probably make an FAQ section or something. After epic battles in which the rivers ran with blood and the lamentation of the women rose up in great clouds and blotted out the sun, it was decided not to undelete as a matter of course. If someone asks, or if the discusion seems to require it for informed participation, it's usually done. There is the content review section and the restoring admins crew who will also chip in. - brenneman{L} 08:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Talk Page with 29 archives deleted

Somehow, Talk:Christianity up and disappeared. Can an administrator fix this?

KV 19:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Musical Linguist was doing a delete and restore of selected revisions to remove some personal information. It's back in operation now. --GraemeL (talk) 19:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

DRVU

For reasons not well understood by me or anyone I know, template review discussions were once redirected to a sub-page. As there doesn't seem to be any extant sensible discussions I've moved them back to Deletion review --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tony Sidaway (talk • contribs) 2006 05 260 6:37:36.

I think it might have been created because userbox-discussions were highly heated, especially some (*cough*user review*cough*admins ignore policly*cough*) and someone felt it would be better to keep them on a seperate subpage. Still, I think the move was a bold, but good idea, as it ensures userboxes DRVs get as much (or litte) viewtime as any other DRV item. 84.145.227.194 10:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Still I think I have to ask you regarding the two still ongoing reviews there that you closed. Both were removed with the comment "Close, silly", and you seem to neither added them to the archived discussions there not on DRV. May I suggest a merge with the DRV archives? Also I cannot tell if you simply removed the discussion or removed them and tried to carry out consensus. Link to archived page. Especially the discussion regarding Template:User iamafish-en seems to have ended 15-9 in favor to undeletion/relist at TfD, but there was not noticable action from your side. I suspect that the same would be with Template:User sumofpi had it not been restored weeks before as an out-of-process deletion. CharonX 11:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, from what I can tell, Tony began to label his speedy deletions as "silly" after a discussion about some talk page comments he "erased" that basically called the closings "silly" for the simple reason that consensus was often ignored. Tony likes irony very much. --70.218.7.80 02:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia talk:Votes for undeletion/Vfu mechanics

The following content was on this out-of-the-way talk page, which now redirects here. - brenneman {L} 08:17, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Fixed content to match policy

I've removed the following section:

Remember that Deletion Review is not an opportunity to (re-)express your opinion on the content in question. It is an opportunity to correct errors in process (in the absence of significant new information), and thus the (action) specified should be the editor's feeling of the correct interpretation of the debate.

It's simply incorrect. Bad content should be deleted at deletion review. Good content should be kept at deletion review. To say that deletion review is a review of process is to miss the point. The encyclopedia is comprised of articles and we must strive to ensure that the encyclopedia does not wrongly lose good articles or wrongly retain bad articles. --Tony Sidaway 06:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

  • This change to a long-standing header should be discussed first. I'm reverting to the previous version.
    brenneman {L} 08:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The header has been around for a while, but I wouldn't call it concensus. Sometimes people talk about process only, sometimes people talk about content, sometimes you need to talk about content because it is relevant, and sometimes people call anyone only discussing process 'process wonks'. I have to agree with Tony though. If an article is deleted through AFD because people think it is a hoax, and it turns out it isn't we don't really need people saying "keep deleted valid afd." but process does need to be reviewed some times. Kotepho 08:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • With all due respect to you both, there was a huge amount of discussion invloved in the creation of these templates. In fact, I explcitly asked Tony to be involved in those discussions, shortly before he and I were both blocked for disruption over it.
  • Further, it says pretty clearly "in the absence of significant new information" which means that it's about both content and process. I have never seen a case where something that wasn't actually a hoax had any push to be kept deleted. There have been several cases where tepid new information was found that impressesed only whomever restored it a few times before it failed AfD again, however.
  • We review both process and content several times a day here, every day. We've done almost exactly what this template said since October, with very few problems. There aren't many places as highly trafficed as this that work as well as this, actually.
brenneman {L} 09:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I haven't really formed an opinion on the change to the template, I was agreeing with his statement of Keep good things, delete bad things for the most part. I cannot recall a case off of the top of my head but clearly the possibility for AFD screwing up is there. If AFD screws up even when it has the relevant information, should we prevent someone from reviewing the deletion just because there is no new information? Yes I know it is a corner case, but someone reading the template that does not understand that our policies are not straight-jackets might believe that they could not contest deletion in such a case. Kotepho 09:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I believe that any such failures will be short-term. There are enough experienced users who understand the Wikipedia culture and traditions that inappropiate decisions will get challenged. Remember that AFDs are discussions, not mere votes. Any patently bad decision is, by definition, a process failure of one form or another.
On the other hand, I worry regularly about the sustainability of our processes in the face of potential abuse by "latrine-lawyers". If we ever get to the point of accepting nominations for reconsideration just because one person disagrees with the outcome, the system will crash under the sheer volume of nominations. The existing wording seems to me to strike a reasonable balance between allowing controlled reconsideration while discouraging frivilous nominations. In particular, I think that the existing wording does a very good job of driving the nominators to be very specific in their reasons for requesting reconsideration. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rossami (talk • contribs) .
I agree with Rossami. A major AFD screw-up is relevant new information, at least for me, and I can say many other level-headed admins agree with that. It also stops superfluous DRVs from ocurring. I think that the change is a solution looking for a problem: could we have examples of cases where DRV took the wrong decision?
Kotepho, the "not-straight-jacket" point you bring up is good, yet many recent DRVs are from new users, so it hasn't really affected that, at least by the numbers. Perhaps a "DRV is flexible" statement can help, but I'm not sure the section should be removed at all. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 21:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Transclusions

Fellas, this is getting absurd. I've tried to comment on several DRs, and I'm getting more than a few edit conflicts. I would like to have another shot at transclusion. What are the concerns? It's really not that much harder to add articles via transclusion: people have done this fine on FAC, peer review and on AFD. I can't see how it is difficult on DR. - Ta bu shi da yu 14:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Day pages (created by a bot) is the way to go I think. Most of the benefits without people having to change how things are done too much. Kotepho 14:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, one thing is that transclusion of a per-debate subpage is a fairly advanced thing to do. Very many of the requesters here are spanking new users who have almost no chance of guessing the right procedure. This is particularly true of second, third nominations of which DRV sees many. See the regular mistakes on AfD nominations, particularly before they were cleared up by Cryptic(bot) for proof. I suppose daily subpages would be alright, though, as long as we can get a bot to do them for us. -Splashtalk 16:29, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Also, subpages won't help you with an edit conflict, will they? Section editing and all, or am I missing something? - brenneman {L} 23:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
It shouldn't matter. MediaWiki merges edit conflicts on every occasion it can. The only problem is when more than one user tries to edit the same line. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Unless you're doing something that requires you to have the entire day-section open such as making a nomination or moving an inappropriately placed nomination. It also makes responding to the edit conflict slower since the edit-conflict page loads both versions of the entire page, not just the conflicted section.
But I still think that's the lesser reason. I want sub-pages so I can investigate the page history more easily. I'm seeing a disturbing trend of abuse that can only be uncovered by looking at the history of edits. That's very difficult on such a diverse and frequently edited page. Rossami (talk) 01:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
As I stated above, I'm now mostly just whinging. And the transcluded day is enough of a happy medium to satisfy me, but for the concern about making it harder for people to raise a DRV. Could we make it so that new requests get just slapped in as they do now, but that when one of the regular maintainers comes along they move it to a daily subpage? Also, we could easily make the "history" and "content review" sections in to single subpages as well, since there would be no extra overhead with that. - brenneman {L} 03:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of the history and content review and contested prod being a subpage too, and whatever we do I'll try to fix bad noms whenever I see them. With day subpages I haven't seen that many screw ups but we should make an instructions section like CFD/TFD with a link for those that do not use section editing, but no matter what people will (they screw up noms now even). Besides the paperwork and minor changes, we still need a bot though. Didn't someone make an offer in the archives? Kotepho 13:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
"History only" and "Content review" done. Rossami (talk)
Started making per day sub pages. Can we please not make this part of the instructions, though? I want this to be as clean as possible for new users. - brenneman {L} 01:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

An Article on "Maine Guides" a minor league baseball team

I am a new user. I saw the article on Wikipedia a while back, but now it is gone, with absolutely no reference to it anywhere. I wrote the article on "Maine Guide" and wanted to reference the Minor League team, which formerly was here on Wikipedia.

Can someone get this article undeleted??? mitchsensei 12:59am, EST, May 30, 2006

There's nothing in the deletion log for a Maine Guides article. Are you sure that was the name of the article? Powers 12:23, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I think perhaps he/she is referring to Maine Guide, an article he/she created on 22 Apr 06 and which has never been deleted. Rossami (talk) 13:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Maine Guide is the article he wrote. He wants to link to Maine Guides, a minor league baseball team. Powers 19:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Whoops...I didn't find it on Wikipedia afterall...sorry...but I hope you can forgive me for thinking I had, it is on a lookalike site. the link looks very much like wikipedia. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Maine_Guides mitchsensei

Closing discussions you've participated in

Template:User Republican, Template:User Democrat
Template:User UKIP, Template:User UK Conservative
Template:User Chinese reunification
Can we apply a little peer pressure to not close debates, however obvious, that you've participated in? It's no different from AfD, is it? - brenneman {L} 23:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

    • Tony has agreed that someone else should do it next time. But, really, defending boxes through process wonking is a little sad ;). Save it for good content. --Doc ask? 00:18, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad Tony has come to that conclusion. I want to find a way to convince people that the advocacy/T2 boxes don't belong in template space, but we have a much better chance of winning hearts and minds on that issue if we always try to be fair and courteous. Insistence on that isn't "process wonking". Metamagician3000 00:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I should like to dissent a little. I think that closing a DRV is a little different from an AfD. The rules, if they are followed, are fairly mechanical. This was, to the distaste of some, by design (as I am sure Aaron recalls) so that DRV can serve as pretty much a forum of last resort. (It sends things back to xfD regularly, but it is hard for them then to return to DRV.) Thus, if one is following the (possibly distastful) rules, it shouldn't matter much if you participate since you don't have a great deal of discretion to exercise, unlike when closing an AfD. This said, userboxes coupled with certain admins (Tony undoubtedly among them) are a bad mix. It is hard to claim a properly-effected handling when such a closely involved admin closes so very early. If Tony were closing in line with the debate after 5 days, it would hard to impossible to criticise. And I don't see the need to hurry this along, either. -Splashtalk 00:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Splash, I mostly agree. But our careful checks and ballances are designed to protect encyclopedic content against being erased improperly. These processess were never designed to protect myspace crap and insist that it passed the same hurdles before being consigned to oblivion. Let's not allow process to be brought into disrepute for userboxes. --Doc ask? 00:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
A little late for that I feel.Geni 01:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Not if people stop trying to use DRV process to rescue their toys from the trashcan. --Doc ask? 01:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Always was used like that. Eventualy the process wonks were out numbered and people started suceeding. Things change.Geni 01:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Nevertheless, there is usually one way to go that makes people scream and another that makes them merely grumble. Anti-userbox admins seem invariably to choose the former. I must confess to being entirely unclear on why the silly debates on these boxes have cast their cancer back onto DRV's main page. Most people really don't spend any significant portion of their waking moments fretting about them and they just get in the way of useful work. They were nicely located on a page where those who did fret could go and fret and those that didn't, didn't have to trawl past it all. -Splashtalk 01:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Splash is right. I'm no lover of userboxes, but sometimes fanatic insistance on deleting them is far more disruptive than the boxes themselves. For purely practical reasons, we're better off nudging them away than bludgeoning them away. Friday (talk) 01:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

A little perspective might be useful here. We can all agree that we have a compelling interest in keeping unencyclopedic junk out of article space. The case for keeping it out of user, project, or template space is far less compelling. Many of us have silly pictures (or even pictures of ourselves) on our user or talk pages. This doesn't help the project, but it's widely tolerated. Being unhelpful to the project is not automatically a license to delete. Yes, many of us agree that some or all userboxes are harmful in theory, but let's not pretend there's a good consensus on how and when to apply this in practice. Friday (talk) 01:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Back to the original question - I agree that you should not close a contentious or close decision if you have strong opinion on the case. There is no rush. We can afford to wait for someone with some impartiality and perspective to volunteer to clean up the page. But the majority of our DRV decisions are fairly straightforward and non-controversial. It would be an over-reaction to make an absolute rule that you can not close any discussion if you participated at all. Assume good faith. Rossami (talk) 01:56, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. There also is no problem with admins who have made limited or balanced contributions closing even very controversial debates. The Land 12:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely. We do get a lot of relatively low quality reviews and it's appropriate to close them when it's obvious they're not going to prevail. It is better to close a debate than to let it fester when the end is obvious. --Tony Sidaway 13:01, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest two guidelines. Some users only log in once a day, if that often, so closing a deletion review less than 24 hours after it starts denies them an opportunity to participate; civility would encourage waiting at least a day unless the case is a clear "keep deleted" that nobody who has been around a while would disagree with. This wouldn't be as relevant to an "overturn and send to XfD" closure, because they get to comment there. And second, if the review is generating mixed comments, wait until the frequency of update has declined. The best rationale could be yet to come, but the odds of that decline as more users have already commented and fewer new are arriving. GRBerry 02:27, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The real issue is, of course, that any "guideline" or "rule" we make up will be only some text, and if someone *cough* decides to ignore that and just do what they'd like... then what? We've never had to have this talk before because we've mostly conducted outselves with decorum. So, can we instead just use talking? Tell whomever we see doing it "Please don't," and I mean including this time. I've already done so, but it might be better coming from someone else. - brenneman {L} 11:18, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
That's a very good argument for avoiding rule creep, Aaron. I'd take issue with your suggestion that we tell people to stop doing useful work around the place. That would be silly. But you're right that a guideline would be pointless. unsigned comment by Tony Sidaway (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves)--13:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant guideline in the sense of "rule of thumb" rather than in the sense of formal instruction. What Aaron said is what I meant. GRBerry 23:33, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


Ex-Template Inclusion in Debate

The content of the (userbox) template(s) under consideration is/are very important, as T1 is one of the reasons most often cited for deletion. "This user is a Satanist" might fall under T1, but "This user is interested in Satanism" probably doesn't. Seeing the template, in my opinion, would help users distinguish there. For example, after I saw the userbox about organ donation, I decided that it did not fall under T1; without seeing it, how would I know? I am asking here because I wanted to avoid an edit conflict, as Rossami has removed it, stating "→Template:User satanist - removing the template. we do not routinely include the contents of a deletion discussion onto the review page"; This may be true, but just because something is not routinely done, does not mean it is inappropriate here. Penny for your thoughts? --Disavian 05:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, as in the case of a speedy, there is no debate to go on. Stephen B Streater 08:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Then I think we need a less intrusive way to solve the problem. This page is already very large and slow to load. Asking it to load images as well (even the relatively small images used on the templates) burdens the page further and makes it harder to use. The link at the top of each discussion thread already takes you to the deleted page where admins can review the page history. For non-admins participating in the discussion, I would urge us to use the existing process of requesting a temporary undeletion for the duration of the debate where and when that is appropriate. If you feel the need to review it, you should also be reviewing the full page history, not merely the most recent version.
Alternatively, I would support moving all the userbox template debates back to a dedicated sub-page where the people most interested and informed on this topic can continue the debate. That would reduce the respective page sizes to a workable level even with the templates pasted in. That segregation seemed to be working a few weeks ago. I'm not sure who decided to reinclude those debates here or what the rationale was at the time. Rossami (talk) 13:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I think back to a subpage is the way to go, then. Please stop removing stuff without a policy or statement that you removed it, if you would. I've put source in for several now, on request of users involved in the debate. If something was speedied, I feel it proper to show what it was that was speedied. So while I prefer not to revert others, I do find myself feeling that my helping users out was wasted effort. I'm not opposed to switching to temporary undeletion but I actually think showing the source and NOT undeleting it is a better approach. ++Lar: t/c 22:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


Overriding a "Transwiki" decision

See the case of Transwiki:List of tongue-twisters. Community consensus was Transwiki to Wikibooks and it was moved there but User:Jguk has deleted it. What is to be done now? Adam78 15:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That deletion happened on Wikibooks, right? You'll need to complain about it over there. -Splashtalk 15:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I didn't know that Wikibooks admins have complete sovereignty and independence from Wikipedia... Adam78 15:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That they do. Moreover, admins are only admins on wikis on which they have been so created. Thus, you need to go to Wikibooks and find an admin there. -Splashtalk 15:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that was my fault, it should have gone to wikiquote. The people in the AFD said wikibooks, but wikibooks is not for that. Wikiquote has q:Category:Tongue twisters though. Undeleting it here and transwiking to wikiquote seems like the best idea. Kotepho 17:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
  1. Doesn't Wikiquote require attribution of source for the individual sentences? I'm afraid they'd propose deletion again because of the lack of sources.
  2. And what about Wikisource? Wouldn't it be a better place?
Adam78 18:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
The ones on wikiquote aren't cited now, but I don't frequent there so I don't really know. Same goes for wikisource. Kotepho 18:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I am more than happy to do a transwiki for you, but it's boring and I only want to do it once. So if you decide where, post a note here or something and I'll see to it (or someone will). Note that wherever it goes, it's then entirely up to that wiki what it wants to do with it. The English Wikipedia has no authority over the content policies of other Wikimedia Foundation projects. -Splash - tk 03:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource says: "Wikisource collects digital editions of previously published texts. (...) Wikisource does not host original books or documents produced by its contributors."

So I'm afraid the only remaining option is Wikiquote. I'll thank you if you do the transwiki. User:Jguk was kind enough to send me the content of the page (so I can send it over to you) but I can't restore its history with the modifications. You may have access to that, too. Anyway, it's secondary.

If they discard it, my faith in the Wiki project will be gone. Earlier I thought the greatest danger for the Wiki was trolls and vandals but now I see that these are a piece of cake as compared to the small-mindedness of certain admins who are unaware of their responsibility...

Adam78 19:12, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I have undeleted it here --Henrygb 23:03, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Please don't. An AFD decision has already determined that the content was inappropriate for Wikipedia. It can be transwiki'd from the deleted history if that becomes appropriate. It should not be restored to Wikipedia without a Deletion Review discussion. Rossami (talk) 04:52, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
I have transwikied it to q:Transwiki:List of tongue-twisters. I hope you fare better there. -Splash - tk 13:26, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! Adam78 15:54, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


From recently concluded

In response to Template:User no notability:

  • Who closed it? It appears to have been closed improperly. --BlankFlank 02:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree it has been improperly closed. Reviews don't reflect majority, they reflect consensus. So if 10 people want it deleted cause they don't like it, but 8 people list reasons and propose a milder version, it doesn't always lead to the 10 side. Besides, isnt there supposed to be 5 days, then restore if there's a supermajority, THEN wait 5 more days and check for standard majority?Ő -- Chris Ccool2ax contrib. 02:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
    • It would appear to have been closed by user:Can't sleep, clown will eat me. Have you contacted him/her yet? Rossami (talk) 05:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Global Reserve Bank Deleted..

Hi, Somehow this article was deleted and I dont understand how it could be with so relatively many Keep votes and so poor arguments for delete?? Do you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Global_Reserve_Bank --Swedenborg 20:01, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Is the DRV process broken?

Deletion review appears to be one of the few places where the result is based on simple numbers. In most cases, this wouldn't matter, but it can lead to unstable situations if applied to material that, while popular, is against policy. if such material goes to *fd, arguments should be made based on policy, and the closing admin has discretion to make a decision that is not the same as the majority. However, once it's been deleted (either by *fd or speedy) if the decision gets "appealed" to DRV, then it boils down to just numbers. So, for extreme cases of material that's very popular, but not in keeping with policy, it ends up being deleted by *fd/speedy and undeleted by drv repeatily, if process is followed, which to me is a clear sign that the process is broken. But what (if anything) should be done? Allow the closing admin discretion to discount votes that are re-arguing the afd again or which aren't based on policy? Nice in theory, maybe, but would lead to the question of where to appeal the appeal (ad infinitium) Regards, MartinRe 10:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Calling processes "broken" is rather more fashionable than meaningful. "It's broken" has become a way of saying "I disagree with a particular part or parts of how this works". On the substance, though, it is not the case that AfD always deletes material that 'violates' policy, as evidence by long lists of dicdefs, idioms, and things that are very clearly WP:NOT, usually on a "oh but random-editor-who-turned-up found it useful once". We certainly wouldn't have retained List of Internet slang if we'd taken a hard view of policy. In that example, there is no possible means for DRV to meaingfully overturn AfDs decision without somehow magically managing to exclude all editors who hold a sympathetic view of policy; by the very nature of a community process that's just not possible. Admins discounting notvotes during an AfD is a matter for their judgement, and relies on their interpretation of our often-imprecise content policies; allowing them to do the same in DRV would be unlikely to materially alter many outcomes and would, without a doubt, result in circular appeals where it did. This circularity is one of the reasons why DRV is more numerical than other places but often this doesn't make any difference (and a number of admins conveniently overlook the fact anyway). Requiring a 3/4 support to overturn demands a higher standard than most AfDs, and, usually, when DRV is overturning, it manages to do with rather more than 3/4 - there is usually something substantially wrong with something for that to happen. To relist is common as a result, and that's a comparatively harmless outcome. -Splash - tk 10:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't mean to be fashionable, but by broken I meant "has difficulties in fringe cases where popularity and policy may be at odds". In your example, you point out that there's no way of DRV to overturn an afd without excluding editors who share the sympathetic view of policy, which is as expected, but what happens if instead of having a sympathetic view, they have an incorrect view? For a very contrived example, take a person who writes up a pet theory in a wikipedia article. Many of his friends (who are wikipedia editors) like it, but it goes to afd, and despite many keep comments, gets deleted as OR. It then hits DRV, and gets overturned or re-listed due to weight of numbers. As wikipedia grows, I believe there will be editors joining who understand the processes, but disagree with policy, and if that increases too much, then processes that rely on pure numbers will have increasing difficulty. Maybe not "broken", but definitely worth keeping an eye on. Regards, MartinRe 11:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Are you thinking of an episode in particular? --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:11, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
[Edit conflict, response to prior discussion Deletion is (pretty much) forever. Recreation is possible, but the article needs to be significantly different or it can be speedy deleted. Keep is temporary. If the AFD (or xFD) had clean-up type comments, and they aren't addressed after a decent interval, that will count against the article in a subsequent AFD. Deletion review is the nearly final court of appeals on overturning deletions, and in my limited time watching it I have yet to see popularity overcome clear established, unambiguous policy.
Userboxes are another case - there is massive popularity, there is strongly held opposition, and there is no clearly established unambiguous policy. T1 is the only thing that rises to the level of policy, and there is vehement disagreement about what T1 covers. (See Wikipedia:T1 and T2 debates for a long summary of that debate.) The problem we see here on DRV isn't that popularity is overwhelming established policy, it is that the community hasn't been able to establish a policy that is clear enough to govern this subject. We have 21 separate pages in Category:Wikipedia Userboxes discussions, about half of which have been policy proposals, and none of which have become policy. I think in the long run we will have a clearly established policy, that WP:GUS will given time defuse the strong emotions so that that policy can be formed. My crystal ball isn't clear enough to see what the policy will be. But we'll probably have a few more rounds of userbox deletion reviews GRBerry 13:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Moved from main page

The consensus of the community in multiple DRVs and TfD is quite clear. This template, and others simply expressing affirmative belief in a major world religion, are not divisive and inflammatory according to the meaning of that phrase as interpreted by most Wikipedians. It is pointless and tiresome to continue to speedy delete these templates. They will be eliminated only on the day when a consensus against all userboxes is firmly adopted, not before. Until then, targeting simple religious userboxes for speedy deletion is foolish, a waste of effort, and truly disheartening for those of us who would like to focus on building an encyclopedia. There are myriad bizarre, relatively unimportant, and idiosyncratic templates out there to speedy -- and several are created every day that are truly vicious. Speedy those. Leave earnestly religious templates be, until the userbox matter is firmly settled, once and for all. Making these templates the frontline of the userbox conflict will only alienate people of faith -- considering their number, this is profoundly not in Wikipedia's interest. Template will be restored according to consensus, not sent to TfD. I suggest humbly that any administrator speedying this template, and other comparable simple statements of faith, be blocked for disruption. Xoloz 16:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC) (who is, incidentally, not Christian -- nor a fan of userboxes). Review

  • I repectively disagree - we should treat the "Christian" box and the "Satanist" box consistently. Both should be userfied by people who want them, and both should be deleted from template space. I have no intention of speedying any boxes at the moment, but I object to the comment about blocking admins for disruption if they act in good faith in an effort to achieve consistent practice. The kind of inconsistency shown in these two outcomes is the problem that needs to be overcome. Metamagician3000 11:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
    These two positions are not inconsistent; Yes, Template:User Christian and Template:User Satanist should be treated consistently - simply don't delete either one until the userbox war is settled. Xoloz is exactly right when he advocates that admins speedying userboxes such as these should be blocked for disruption, because at this point in the saga, such deletions are disruptive, and can only be deliberately so. "Consistent practice" is a thin excuse for deliberately sowing the seeds of more discord. Jay Maynard 11:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
    Hmmmmm, really? Yes, I guess that must be what I meant. It's most unlikely that I might actually want a consistent practice, after all. Of course, I'd be using that as a "thin excuse" to cover up my fiendish plan of "deliberately sowing the seeds of more discord". I'm well known for being like that. It's also well known that uncivil accusations about people's ulterior motives are acceptable behaviour around here. Not. Metamagician3000 15:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
    If the goal is to reach a policy that is widely supported to end a drawn-out, contentious dispute, and there are significant efforts being made to reach such a policy, what possible benefit is there to consistency that makes it outweigh the harm that taking action in contravention to those efforts to resolve the dispute? Is the inconsistency more destructive than the dispute - so much so that it demands resolution now, rather than waiting for the resolution process to run its course? Is that true especially in light of other admins deliberately trying to torpedo the compromise at the heart of the resolution? Is it unreasonable, in light of other admins deliberately trying to torpedo the compromise, to believe that someone taking such precipitous, disruptive action is not working toward the same destructive goal? If not, why not? Jay Maynard 18:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

You're not getting the point, are you? Just state your case as to what should happen and stop speculating about other people's motives, accusing them of bad faith etc. I may not even disagree with you on what the solution should be - I've long supported something like the German solution, or whatever it's called, though I only recently learned that it had a name. But your continued emotive attacks on people who disagree with you, your rhetorical questions about how we should view them, etc., are a distraction and will end up giving you a bad reputation in these parts. Just a word to the wise. Metamagician3000 02:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

People have been accusing me of that kinfd of thing ever since I got involved in the userbox war. Why should the other side be exempt? Jay Maynard 02:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
No "side" (and I don't actually think there are two sides here - there are multiple viewpoints) is exempt from the requirement to be civil. Metamagician3000 11:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Misguided DRV

I recently posted a DRV that I have since withdrawn, realizing that it was misguided, at best. Do I delete it? Does an admin delete it? This end of the 'pedia isn't really my stomping grounds, so any help will be appreciated. Cheers. youngamerican (talk) 02:46, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Just let it sit for a while so that others can catch up on the discussion. You've changed your mind but others may still agree with your original point. They deserve a chance to read the replies, too. After a day or so, someone will remove the discussion and make a note at the bottom of the page so we can find it again later. No worries. This is how we learn. Rossami (talk) 02:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
(Edit conflict on main with the prior response here). I just delisted this as a withrawal, no consensus (default keep) afd result upheld. A no consensus keep is not a keep and it can always be relisted for afd. — xaosflux Talk 02:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Image undeletion now possible

Oh wondrous devs. They maketh image undeletion possible with immediate effect. And it worketh, too, I just testeth it. -Splash - tk 14:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

They were forced to eat Robin's minstrels, and there was much rejoycing. Syrthiss 14:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Looks like we've had our first case of an image brought here, onyl to find out it's not a en: image at all. I've added a header section Wikipedia:Deletion review/Multimedia Information explaining the file undeletion process, with warnings about commons' files. Please have a gander at it, and see if it needs anything else. AFAIK commons doesn't have a DRV (wouldn't have had any use for it before undeletion was possible) yet. — xaosflux Talk 16:46, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think this is necessary. We have reams and reams of instructions at the top of this page as it is. We've always had images come here, the one you mention was very far from the first. It was just coincidence that it happened also to be on Commons. I removed the section to keep the overweight down to something bearable. We can just refer people to Commons on the exceptionally rare occasion they actually come here. -Splash - tk 16:19, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Early closure of User:Dtm142/User no evil boxes and Template:User Gangster

I have reverted this closure as it was done by someone emphatically involved in the debate, being that they were the petitioner. Their definition of "undelete" is also apparently "cut + paste the content back". Kotepho 06:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

The closure may not be right but I don't believe a non-admin can revert a closure. This is especially the case because you are not an disinterested party (You participated in the vote and the apparent result is against your vote.) You should have sought help from an admin. --WinHunter (talk) 06:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm an admin and he did the right thing. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh ok, never faced this kind of situation before. Btw, I just checked that Dtm142 is an non-admin but he proceeded with closing the DRV, is that inappropriate (other than the fact that he is not an dis-interested party)? Closure by Dtm142 --WinHunter (talk) 06:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
If so, what should be done? --WinHunter (talk) 06:52, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I do not claim to be unbiased in any regard, only that it should be closed by someone that has been uninvolved, or at the very least someone that can actually undelete if that is to be the result. Kotepho 06:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I do feel that the closure by Dtm142 is inappropriate. Originally I thought the closure was done by an admin therefore I have had my 1st reply. Now I feel your action is justified (on the discovery that Dtm142 is an non-admin) and probably Dtm142 should be warned or reported somewhere? For that I have no idea how to proceed though since I never faced this kind of thing before. --WinHunter (talk) 06:59, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't think that we needed a sysop to close it, because I already knew the code for the deleted page. Maybe it wasn't right to close it, but it had a restore consensus, and it had been 5 days. Dtm142 18:40, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Gotchi entry

Please review the rather hasty, inappropriate, even dirty language deletion demands for the entry Gotchi. I am a professor for 26 years and teach new media at Germany's leading design school. My mail is for serious inquiries.

I have answered all the reasonable objections, which were few, and I have tried to defend my entry on the King of Hearts discussion page. That is a lot of time and there seems to be trigger happy deletion going on. It is as if an entry is guilty until proven innocent, no benefit of the doubt, and no discussion of merit concerning language.

I have as well entered objections to each of those who 'voted' to delete my entry Gotchi. No response. If consensus is the method how is silence and noncommunication able to help that along.

Please undelete Gotchi. All objections have been fully answered, and no rebuttable. Power is not a will. It is a responsibility, and as such, communication is essential. I believe the objections have been forfeited by lack of proper communication. If those with the power to delete haven't the time to respect an entry's author enough to discuss the matter, they have no business having access to push button deletion.

I hope to see my entry back later in the day or tomorrow. If there are any new objections, that havent been addressed by me at length on the Gotchi discussion page or on King of Hearts Gotchi discussion page, then I support that form of representative democracy online. I have been a pioneer in net culture and have had my students working with zope wiki since 1998. I introduced mediawiki to design students in kabul in 2004. Please show mutual respect and uphold serious discussion levels. What came in as objections for my entry are simply unacceptable. Knowledge deserves better.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.163.231.86 (talk • contribs) 11:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Most of the above information is irrelevant, unless you believe, as this editor (who is User:SpacePlace apparently) seems to, that it is "his" article. The fact that he has been online since the year dot, that his students used zwiki, that he did blah in Kabul, these are all facts about him rather than the article. But articles don't get kept on the basis of authorship, or "respect," and they don't get undeleted on the basis of the langauge used in the AfD. The fact is, the article went through AfD, 11 people argued for deletion, mostly on the basis of non-notability or neologism, the only objection was exactly the kind of rambling, posturing, self-promoting diatribe you see above. His arguments proved ineffective and the article was deleted according to process, and that should be the end of it until the encyclopedic value of "Gotchi" can be demonstrated. The process wasn't "trigger happy," and there was no presumption of guilt, whatever that would mean, it's just that the only outcome that would satisfy this person is for the article could be kept, because he's not interested in the encyclopedia, he's interested in "his" article--he has a project and a concept to sell and he insists that he be allowed to use Wikipedia to do it. Endorse closure, keep deleted, obviously. · rodii · 13:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, I just realized this was the talk page. Move to the project page? · rodii ·

Be bold

Why was this closed early when there was a near-unanimous consensus to revert? This stinks of foul play. jgp (T|C) 22:31, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I also am confused. This discussion was closed after only 3 hours by user:Drini with the comment "bah, crossnamspace redirect. Use WP:Be Blod if you like, don't revert" and with the comment "Not even a deletion issue. Crossnamespace redirects are not allowed." on the Recently Concluded list. The discussion up to that point is here. I know of no policy forbidding the use of cross-namespace redirects. Deletion Review is, as far as I know, the proper forum for reconsideration of all xFD discussions, not merely those which ended in a deletion decision. If there is a better forum to request a review of the decision, please point us in the right direction. Closing the discussion without explanation, however, is inappropriate. Rossami (talk) 05:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Add me to the list of people puzzled by this, actually even more by the way it was closed (wholesale removal of listing). ~ trialsanderrors 05:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I can see neither the harm in allowing a nomination to sit for five days, nor the benefit of impatience on a Wiki. On the other hand, Drini is right, no doubt. There's really nothing to talk about except a chorus of people who know that we don't do cross-namespace redirects saying "keep deleted - cross-namespace redirect". In other words, it was a perfectly valid WP:SNOW candidate, for admins who are disposed to snow. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Chorus? There was exactly one person who voted not to revert. IMO, this is a gross abuse of Drini's sysop powers. jgp (T|C) 05:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirects are not allowed for technical reasons. We have debated this a hundred times before, believe me. His conduct was in order. Sorry. --mboverload@ 05:42, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Uh, no. We have probably more than a thousand of them. Everything beginning WP:, CAT:, T: is cross namespace, things like AFD, CFD, TFD were until very recently when someone thought up yet another useles job for a bot etc etc etc. Then, there are things like Wikipedia is not a dictionary, Wikipedia is not etc and even Wikipedia is not a democracy (all the preceding are not piped in my wikicode here). There is no technical problem with most crossnamespace redirects. The reason they are to be avoided out of article space is because it makes reuse of content by mirrors more difficult, as they have to figure out which redirects to not include. Drini's move was unnecessary and impatient given the obscene lack of harm it was causing. -Splash - tk 05:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Those should all be deleted, I would think. I've been hearing for months - maybe years - that we just don't do cross-namespace redirects. I've always thought it had to do with those pages not making sense when someone mirrors the main namespace for the encyclopedia content - cross-namespace redirects break if you just copy the main namespace. I certainly can't see Drini as being all out of line here, because he was following the rule I've learned about cross-namespace redirects. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
He forgot about the bit where, when someone asks for review of a deletion, we calmly think about it for a few days rather than diving in and dismissing the request. But I simply do not believe that you are suggesting we delete every last WP: shortcut. -Splash - tk 05:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
No, not the WP: shortcuts. It's easy to program scrapers to skip those. The others though, like the democracy one, should go. As for Drini, I said he was following the rule I learned about cross-namespace redirects, not the one I learned about patience. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
So where exactly have we "debated this a hundred times before"? Where did you get your understanding of the cross-namespace redirects? I think I've been around for a day or two and I've never seen a policy decision that cross-namespace redirects are inherently bad. In fact, my experience says the opposite. We have lots of cross-namespace redirects and have had them for a very long time. I can find very little downside to them. If something has changed, will someone please point me to that actual decision. Thanks.
By the way, if the only argument is mirrors, I'll be blunt that I don't really care about their problems. We are writing the encyclopedia and need the best possible tools for our own use. I don't feel a need to do even more of their work for them. Rossami (talk) 06:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know where I got my ideas, I probably just saw "no cross-namespace redirects" thrown around as a truism on AN/I and DRV and RFD and wherever. I also don't know if mirrors are the only problem, but I think that's the basic type of problem we're talking about. Clean distinctions among namespaces makes for greater modularity, right? -GTBacchus(talk) 06:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, it comes up on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion from time to time (I've proposed it as a speedy criterion once, others have too), and I'm sure I've seen it go by on the Village Pump. FreplySpang 14:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say they are absolutely prohibited, but they are strongly discouraged: [1] (this one being a redirect out of article namespace).
The point is that it breaks the namespace convention. Self-referential pages, that is, pages about wikipedia, must carry Wikipedia: or WP: before their titles. Now, you may argue that Be bold was conveniently short, but WP:BOLD is as well, and if you don't like how it looks, you can do Be bold and get the same results.
So, please reserve wikilinks without prefix only for encyclopedia articles, use the Wikipedia: or WP: prefix to mark wikilinks that are not articles but are entries about wikipedia itself. Use the redirects WP:BOLD or Wikipedia:Be bold or use the pipe syntax if you want to hide the prefix as in Be bold (done as [[WP:BOLD|Be Bold]]).
I know the discussion was only 3 hours old, and it was a bit confusing, but Hey! I was being bold! -- Drini 17:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
While it's possible to use the new WP:BOLD shortcut, the change was made in this particular case without fixing a very long tail of existing uses of the old redirect. If there are no objections, I would like to restore the Deletion Review discussion. There are good arguments being made on both sides and I think this deserves more than the 3 hour discussion it had or the relatively low-participation RfD discussion it had last week. 9 participants isn't bad for an ordinary RfD discussion but this isn't an ordinary redirect. With your collective permission, I'll also merge in these comments. Rossami (talk) 23:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The closure was valid; DRV is not RfD version 2. Since one of your concerns was the 3000 incoming links, if you want me to orphan the redirect, I'd be glad to. --Rory096 07:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

You are correct that DRV is not xFD round 2. However, I believe that there is a reasonable case that evidence was overlooked in the RfD decision in this case. That is an appropriate DRV review. Anyone is free to argue in endorsement of the RfD decision but so far no one has presented any grounds for a refusal to allow the DRV discussion to continue. I've restored the discussion.
To answer your specific question, no I do not want you merely to orphan the redirect. I think that running that bot would be pointless and potentially error-prone. I want a solid discussion on whether or not this was a good idea in the first place.
Note: I said above that I would merge in the very good arguments made here. When I attempted to do so, I didn't think that I was doing the participants justice. May I invite everyone to rejoin the main debate and to copy over any relevant comments? Thanks. Rossami (talk) 13:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
This is becoming the most annoying canard at DRV. DRV can be used if editors feel a deletion was incorrect, which requires us to revisit it. Does that make it XfD round 2? No, but it does mean that DRV's role in the deletion process involves reviewing deletions that editors believe were incorrect. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Notification, etc.

In the few times my decisions have been discussed here, no one's ever told me... I've just had to be watching this page to find out about it. And in some cases, I've felt like if they'd just come to me on my talk page, we could have reached a good resolution without DRV. I see nothing in the current instruction/information (which is quite long) about talking to or even notifying decision makers that their decision is being reviewed.

I think at least notification would be a good idea, since the less pages we have to watch obsessively to have a say in things, the better. People should also realize that many admins are willing to admit they were wrong, or at least compromise, if approached correctly... and DRV might not even be really needed after trying that approach. Thoughts? --W.marsh 18:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I raised a fuss about this quite some time ago, and we ended up putting a note in the DRV page to inform the closer about the nomination (there was even a template created for this purpose). I'm having a hard time navigating the incredibly-hard-to-follow DRV page to actually get to the instructions, but a simple text copy-and-paste gives the following note:
This page is about articles, not about people. If you feel that a sysop is routinely deleting articles prematurely, or otherwise abusing their powers, please discuss the matter on the user's talk page, or at Wikipedia talk:Administrators. If you nominate an article here, be sure to make a note on the sysop's user talk page regarding your nomination. A template, {{subst:DRVNote}} is available to make this easier.
Perhaps what we need is for someone (maybe the first person to vote on the particular DRV) to check and see if the DRV nominator has actually informed the closing admin of the DRV. If not, use {{subst:DRVNote}} to notify that admin. Maybe I'll also put in a parameter to DRVNote to include a link to the AfDed article.
I also have another question. Please do a search for the above note (maybe a text search to DRVNote will be sufficient). How the heck to I get to that particular piece of text? I've been trying and trying to get to that particular piece of text, but the DRV header page is so friggin' complicated that I can't get to the proper section to edit. Thanks! --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC) (never mind, I got to it)
Ah okay, so there's at least something about notification is there... I'm not confident that it's actually happening very often. The note also deals mostly with sysops frequently making decisions prematurely... which I don't think describes me, and most sysops hopefully. With more routine decisions, talking to the admin before bringing it to DRV just seems like a good idea... especially if it's one who can compromise. It shouldn't be required, but it's still a good idea to try it first. --W.marsh 18:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
You could give the text a tweak, but to be honest, I don't think anyone reads these things, so yeah, we'll try "patrolling" the DRV page and notifying each closing admin of the *fD in question. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, you're probably right. I just thought bringing it up here might raise awareness an iota or two. --W.marsh 18:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I hope so. Maybe we can do so by example. :-) I've notified a few admins who need to know for DRVs on June 19 and June 20. Some of the others don't need to know, or likely already know. It'll probably help to do this for any new DRV that comes up. --Deathphoenix ʕ 19:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Admins closing their own reviews

I'm still not happy with administrators who have done the deletion and/or taken part in the debate closing the debate. I felt that the above discussion showed clear consensus that this was a bad thing. While there was opposition to the idea of any instruction creep, I only see one voice defending the practice. --brenneman 01:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Discussions should not be closed by any involved admin. Paul August ☎ 01:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it's kind of silly to let people close reviews of their own decisions. Only on Wikipedia... --W.marsh 01:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
(conflict of interest) (edit conflict - duh, what a slip up!) It's not too hard to have one of the admins who normally close DRVs do this one. It's a conflict of interest to close something that one has commented extensively in, and in review of one's own actions. Xoloz closes a lot of DRVs. I haven't seen too many DRV closures by Tony in a while. What's wrong with having Xoloz close this? --Deathphoenix ʕ 01:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe that it is bad practice for an admin to close any matter - AfD, TfD, DRV, or whatever - on which he or she has also "voted" (shorthand), especially if s/he has expressed strong views. This does not need to be a formal rule, but it is common sense. Any such closure will always look biased and leave a question mark over the appropriateness of the outcome, unless it is absolutely clear-cut, as when there is a large number of virtually unanimous "votes". Metamagician3000 02:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Even in the case where it is utterly unanimous, there's no need for anyone to close something they have participated in, and most vitally not over a review of their own actions. We've got plenty of admins, the most sensible thing to do is leave it to someone else. --brenneman 04:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
While I agree that you should avoid closing discussions where you've expressed a strong opinion, I have to take exception to Aaron's last comment. In my experience, we do not have a surplus of experienced, articulate and interested admins with the free time needed to close discussions well. The backlog on some of our deletion queues has at times been quite long. Some days, we need every admin we've got and we still fall behind.
Furthermore, I think that most of the regular closers quite good at putting their personal feelings and biases aside when needed to make a call. And they generally recuse themselves when it's a close decision. An absolute prohibition against closing any discussion in which you've participated is overkill. I understand the frustration over a few specific cases but let's not overreact and create a strict rule that will have unintended consequences. Admins who stretch our traditions too far can and probably should be dealt with through other channels. Rossami (talk) 05:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
(Note: I don't want a "rule." What I'm looking for is a strong "Don't do that" blanket statement here to avoid wiggle room on what consensus is.) We're not discussing here complicated closes. What I hear Rossami saying is "If there is a totally staight-forward close that an adminstrator has participated in or that involves their own adminstrator actions, it might be ok for them to close it themselves." I'm happy to parse that into:
  1. Presuming we can split adminstrators into "well experianced and/or sensible" and "normal."
  2. Accepting that we are a bit short on closing admins.
If you're in the first admin group don't close a simple straightforward case you're involved in, close a more complicated one because you're a precious resource. If you're in the second admin group don't close a simple straightforward case you're involved in because you might be screwing up. Does that seem sensible?
--brenneman 06:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Is wikipedia really that short on admins to close discussions? (question to everyone in discussion, not just you aaron) Is wikipedia not educating admins in what is a very important field, because there seem to be a lot of admins around generally. Ansell11:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
We certainly shouldn't be creating rules that deter good administrators from making good calls. --Tony Sidaway 10:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
To me it is a basic case of neutral judgment needed. There are hundreds of admins, it is not handicapping the system at all to get a neutral admin making a good call. Ansell 11:29, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Sure, but we shouldn't be encouraging admins to close discussions they've been in, as it only inflates the appearance of abuse when they get it wrong. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
The right thing must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. Admins who close discussions they participate in do not create the appearance of doing the right thing impartially. Jay Maynard 11:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd feel more comfortable if a regular DRV closer had closed this one. Not being a regular and recent closer of DRVs, it just looks like you swooped in on a DRV on your own actions, one in which you commented on extensively (and with good reason, since this was a review of your actions), and just closed it like that. What is wrong with having a regular like Xoloz close this one? I really don't know. --Deathphoenix ʕ 13:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
You have been misled. The deletion review was not called with respect to any action of mine. See the log and the account of the deletion in the proposal for review, which was called by the same person who created the page and spammed over 50 pages of conservatives inviting them to join. --Tony Sidaway 03:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
That's fine. I can strike out the fact that it's a review on your actions and my question still stands. Why not let a DRV regular like Xoloz close the DRV? Why did you have to close this yourself when you haven't closed DRVs in quite some time? Why did you pick now to do it, and why did you have to close a DRV in which you were quite active? --Deathphoenix ʕ 05:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
It was the right time to close that DRV. I exercised my judgement. This is what I'm supposed to do as an administrator. --Tony Sidaway 12:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
And of all the times you had to suddenly swoop in on a DRV, you do it for one that you commented extensively in. Is it so hard for you to wait for an admin who normally does most of the DRV work? I don't generally have a problem with your judgement calls, but don't you see even an iota of a conflict of interest in this case? Is it so wrong to let a DRV regular close this? I doubt you'll ever acknowledge any wrongdoing, so I think I'll just cut my losses and quit this conversation before I blow my mind. --Deathphoenix ʕ 13:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
It's unduly pessimistic to assume that Tony and others have not taken your comments on board. Stephen B Streater 14:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
It would be unduly pessimistic for me to assume that the comments on this discussion amounted to the sum total of Wikipedia comment on this disgraceful attempt to suborn Wikipedia as a venue for political fights. --Tony Sidaway 00:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Tony's gotten a lot of comments on a lot of issues, with little evidence of taking any of them on board. Why should this one be any different? Jay Maynard 14:38, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Tony's opt out option from sig refactoring on most pages was a generous concession given the way the RfC went. And other people reading this will also shift their actions and you won't even know it. Stephen B Streater 14:53, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
It didn't last very long: he vandalized Aaron Brenneman's signature above [2], despite the latter's signing his opt-out page. Some concession. Jay Maynard 01:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
My cynicism aside, I sure hope he will, but to save myself some sanity, I'm not going to try and convince him anymore. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
If you want Wikipedia to house an openly political power-base, recruited as such, say so. It was my good fortune to close a debate started in bad faith by the creator of the page who had indeed attempted to assemble that power-base. It ended in an overwhelming defeat for that prospect. This was a historic moment. Wikipedia has rejected it. I imagine Xoloz is a little upset that he didn't get to record the fact. I beat him to it. --Tony Sidaway 00:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, your improperly shutting down the deletion review is evidence of abuse of power. Deletion reviews are to remain for 10 days. You were reversed [3] by admin, A Man In Black who warned you not to close the review. In spite of his warning, you closed the review a second time. --Facto 00:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Check the logs again, Conservative Log and Politics Log --Facto 05:03, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
The Politics notice board deletion was a routine G4. You had called the review before that deletion. --Tony Sidaway 12:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Meh. Does anyone but you actually think it was a good call? --W.marsh 16:04, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I think it's a good example of the flaws in Wikipedia's admin system, myself. DavidBailey 10:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure I agree that it's a good example of flaws. Lar 11:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

We don't encourage people to comment on their own AfD. Many admins choose to either comment in a XfD, or close it, but not both, and don't close XfDs they launched. We encourage people to seek consensus about blocks and other admin actions... We encourage people not to choose their own WP:DYK nominations when selecting articles for it (although there is some resistance to that idea right now, comments welcomed). These are all facets of the same underlying principle, it seems to me... and it seems natural to me that with 1000 admins, we should not encourage people to close a DRV that they either initiated, or that is addressing a XfD they initated or closed. Even the appearance of partiality should be avoided. Lar 11:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

While this may be a valid point, the deletion review in this case was not closed by anyone who initiated the xFD, who closed the xFD, or who performed any of the actions which the xFD was set up to review. If you believe it was, you have been misled. --Tony Sidaway 12:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
My apologies if I left the impression that I was saying it was, that was not my intent. I was speaking to the general principle. Lar 13:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
And you're selectively not acknowledging the fact that you were tightly involved in the discussion of the matter, Tony. Regardless of what "official" administrative actions you took, you were heavily involved in the review and should not have been closing something you were involved in. We have enough admins to manage without you in this one case, I'm sure. Now we have another big discussion about you instead... -- nae'blis (talk) 15:18, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I should hope that all Wikipedians of good faith were "heavily involved" in repulsing this blatant attempt to take advantage of us. When an editor openly creates a page about a politically ideology and openly recruits avowed supporters of that ideology, all Wikipedians must be intimately involved, for we all strongly support the Neutral point of view and are all engaged in defending our encyclopedia from that attack. The shame of Wikipedia is that the bad-faith call for review of a legitimate and requisite deletion of a naked attack on Wikipedia was not strangled at birth, that its progenitor was not blocked indefinitely (my fault, instead I allowed him to continue to make mischief). --Tony Sidaway 23:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Please stop with the drama and incivil behavior towards me. You cannot block people because they disagree with you. --Facto 00:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Tony, either please stop speaking ex cathedra or else reveal yourself as Jimbo's alter ego. You continually talk as though you alone are the final arbiter of what Wikipedia is and is not. Jay Maynard 01:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I see no reason to cease describing the state of Wikipedia. It is, I suggest, worth remembering that I'm not the person who created this attack on Wikipedia, nor am I the person who spammed 50 self-identified advocates of a political position. I was merely the person who summarised Wikipedia's comprehensive rejection of this blatant attack on our neutrality. --Tony Sidaway 02:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
The thing you continually refuse to admit is that your opinion is NOT the only one on what "the state of Wikipedia" is, or even the authoritative one. Jay Maynard 12:25, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
We certianly used to get requests on AN/I for someone to close an afd that all the regular afd closers had commented on.Geni 02:18, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Closer notes

I've now twice removed the words "Strong endorsement" from closing notes. I don't think we should be expressing opinions in the closing comments. - Aaron Brenneman 02:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Good call. Editorializing serves little purpose except to antagonize and polarize the issues. Rossami (talk) 03:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Please stop removing the words ""Strong endorsement" from closing notes. This was a strong endorsement. A blatant attack on Wikipedia's neutrality principle was trounced. --Tony Sidaway 03:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Does it even matter? It was endorsed, and there is no problem in having "strong". At the same time, there is no benefit, as a "deletion endorsed" with a link is enough, as editors can come to their own conclusions when looking at the diff. It does seem unnecessary clutter, though. Titoxd) 03:50, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
There is no benefit to saying more than that deletion was endorsed or overturned or resent to XfD. There can be a cost to saying more, if it means that someone thinks the closer was biased, and therefore we end up with yet another review. And, in one of those cases, some of the "keep deleted" comments meant "temporarily keep deleted", so to my eye not only was something harmful said, but something false and harmful was said. GRBerry 04:05, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I think there's a lot of benefit to us as a team if, when smashing, trouncing, crushing, wiping out, or creaming a blatantly bad faith attack, we say so. We work hard to keep this shit away from Wikipedia. We should loudly state how proud we are to have done so. --Tony Sidaway 04:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
But it also gives the appearance of impropriety or bias, as GRBerry says above. Giving trolls and policy wonks extra ammunition seems unnecessary to me. Titoxd 04:25, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
You could say that of any decision. Arbcom is about to ban Blu Aardvark for a year? "Don't give trolls and policy wonks extra ammunition!" Let's see some real arguments. --Tony Sidaway 04:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
The point is that it does nothing productive, but creates the impression of bias. In the absence of the former, the latter becomes pressing. - A Man In Black| 04:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it created the impression of bias against attacks on neutrality. Why is this a problem? --Tony Sidaway 04:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Reductio ad absurdum. You may not believe they're harmful, but I do see how a case could be made. Aren't we supposed to be neutral listeners of the community's will when performing administrative actions? Indicating opinions is just more hassle than it is worth. Titoxd 04:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
No, we absolutely are not supposed to be "neutral listeners of the community's will when performing administrative actions" Anybody who thinks that is what adminning is about should report himself to Doctor Jimbo for the operation to remove the bit.
Having an opinion about the neutral point of view is pretty much essential. Without that, at least, yer man might as well be just a machine. --Tony Sidaway 04:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Does anyone other than Tony object to keeping closings as neutral and factual as possible? And does anyone other than me and the other four people who have commented want to remove the twice replaced "strong endorsement?"
    brenneman {L} 05:42, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I really didn't want to wade into this, but I can't let the man stand alone. Tony is right. It may sound melodramatic, but the community beat off an assault against its core values. We can and should be proud of that. We can and should say so in the strongest possible terms. Let this be seen as a warning that WP is willing to defend those values against any group that tries this kind of crap. Go Tony. Doc Tropics 06:05, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
      Please do review the actual debate we're talking about: If this had been XfD, it would have been closed as no consensus. There are not facts to support the inclusion of the phrase "strong endorsement" in the close.
      brenneman {L} 02:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
It wasn't an XfD. You might as well say "if this was a duck, it would have quacked." It was a deletion review that stank and sank. Good riddance. Fuck process. --Tony Sidaway 02:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
And just how is this different from "fuck the users, I know what's good for Wikipedia, and I'm going to do it, come hell, high water, or opposing consensus"? Jay Maynard 15:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
brenneman, I know that you are a very well respected and respectable wikipedian with far more experience than I've got, especially when it comes to the fine details of WP. I agree with you on many topics, but we seem to disagree on this one. I think we're looking at it two different ways: You seem to be taking a straightfoward by-the-book approach to the situation which would, in other circumstances, be totally correct. On the other hand, I think it would be a mistake to treat this as a run-of-the-mill discussion with a conclusion of no concensus. I saw this as something that goes directly against the values that have built and guided Wikipedia since its inception. I repeat that if Tony created an impression of bias, it was the right thing to do. We should be biased against it. But despite our difference of opinion on this, I know that you and Tony and I are all working towards the same goal, we just see different paths. BTW - Thanks for not mocking my newbie-ness or how longwinded I am :) --Doc Tropics 03:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

But what's "strong?"

For the record, I have no problem with labelling something that actually was a "strong endorsement" a "strong endorsement". But this wasn't. I'm sure those who voted to endorse deletion endorsed it very strongly -- but note that even some of those who voted "keep deleted" specifically did not endorse the deletion. That's indicative that the endorsement overall was not strong at all. Powers 12:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Not to go all vote-counting here, but where in the spectrum does "strong" fit? Ok, so something with 50%+1 we can say "barely" and with 100%-1 we can say "near unanimous" but everything in between in grey. Even if you pick 80% at random, does 4/5 constitute "strong?" What about 160/200? It's messy, but more to the point it serves no purpose. - brenneman {L} 05:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
But to be clear, I'm through complaining about any particular past decision. I'd like agreement on what's appropiate for closing notes for future reference. - brenneman {L} 05:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there should be any "strong", "weak", or any other type of adjective. I preferred the way it was done before, as neutral as possible. --Deathphoenix ʕ 12:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Exception: "Unanimous" is fine, as long as it was definitely unanimous with no opposition. --Deathphoenix ʕ 16:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree with that, with the only caveat that perhaps there should be a minimum number of opinions registered (3? 5?) to count as a sufficient sample size. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Putting on my parliamentarian hat for a moment: Any DRV with no opposing votes qualifies as unanimous. A negative comment without an actual vote shouldn't count, and neither should an abstention. I don't expect the question to arise, but it never hurts to be explicit. In any event, there's a difference between "strong" and "unanimous": the latter can be determined objectively; the former cannot. It is that objectivity that is needed, especially here. Jay Maynard 17:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
My Parliamentary experience is different - no one opposed counted as nem con, with unanimous requiring all those present voting in favour. Stephen B Streater 18:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Just a little note--the page you linked to says "i.e. unanimously" in the "nem con" entry, implying that the two are synonymous.. jgp (T|C) 18:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
This is why I included the note about abstentions: An abstention is not a vote, period. It is not counted for any purpose when determining a voting result. If there are 50 people present, a vote of 25-0 is unanimous; the other 25 people are not counted, just as they would not be counted if the vote were 13-12 (a majority in favor) or 17-8 (2/3 in favor). This is according to American practice; British and Canadian practice may be different. I've also not encountered the term nem con. Jay Maynard 18:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Kelly Roberti

This is the third time this page has been put forward for deletion - first two times due to concerns over copyright infringement. On both counts I have made it quite clear that no copyright violation has taken place and that is proveable if necessary.

Now, on this third attempt somebody is suggesting that the Kelly Roberti article is for self-promotion etc. I debate this accusation - Kelly Roberti is a world renowned jazz musician and does not need to promote www.kelly-roberti.com.

www.kelly-roberti.com is copyrighted by myself and I was not instructed by Kelly Roberti to either make that website for him, or to make this wikipedia contribution. I have however, had permission from Mr.Kelly Roberti that I may do as I wish with any of his material, which is copyrighted by himself.

Mr.Kelly Roberti has many musical connections with many other legendary jazz musicians who have their own articles in wikipedia.

May I suggest that the person who has made two attempts at deleting this article - perhaps consider editing it instead ?

All facts within Kelly Roberti article are extremely accurate & of particular interest to a great many musicians and jazz enthusiasts. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Blastphemy (talk • contribs).

Hi Blastphemy, you might have noticed that Biographies of Living People can be a sensitive subject on WP. I think the major issue with Kelly Roberti was a possible copyvio which you seem to have taken care of. I expect you'll get your chance to keep and expand the article. Good luck :) --Doc Tropics 17:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Adding a new entry for the day

Ever since we started transcluding daily log pages, people have continued to add new days to the log page for the old day. I added a handy link to edit today's page similar to the *fD pages, along with text to copy and paste if today's page is blank. diff If you guys figure that there is a better place to put it, feel free to move it to the appropriate place. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I tried to make it more friendly by using preload (if the page does not exist, it automagically puts the contents of Wikipedia:Deletion review/New day in the edit box for them). I don't think enough people screw it up that it is a major problem and it is pretty easy to fix (given the low number of drvs/day), but instructions are always nice? Kotepho 16:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Sure, anything to make this easier is good. This "preload" option of which you speak solved that big usability problem I had with my hackjob about how the hell you fill in header text in a blank article. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
*death gargle* I even said "please." One of the objections to having any sort of subpaging was that complication was undesirable. The editors who bring issues here are often pretty inexperianced. I'd prefer an informal system where we let people make edits directly to the page as before, and when a more experianced editor comes along they create the subpage.
brenneman {L} 04:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
That would be my preference. I would have preferred everything to be kept on one page, but now that it's not, I've seen people making a lot of mistakes, so we might as well make it as easy as we can anyways. --Deathphoenix ʕ 12:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
IMO, a newbie would click on the section link (if they even know to click there and they don't have section editing turned off... I don't know if anyone does, but it will totally screw up subpages, but every process other than DRV uses/used them so it cannot be that common) they are presented with an html comment that they might not read or understand, and there is the difference between what is there ({{Wikipedia:Deletion review/blah}}) versus what they are told to type (===blah===) so that in and of itself might be confusing. I'm not sure how the instructions make it harder for someone unfamilar (usability testing always surprises me and is aggravating). Kotepho 20:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, usability testing is always aggravating for me too, especially because I can't say anything while the person is going through the instructions. I'd like to have newbies follow these instructions and see what they think (and what they end up doing), but alas, that's not too likely to happen. --Deathphoenix ʕ 21:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Follow?! Instructions?! -Splash - tk 17:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
If you don't follow instructions, don't come crying to me, because my answer will be RTFM. So nyah nyah nyah. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

In a bit of an "Easter egg" I added a Wikilink to the log for today. If it's a redlink, we know that the log hasn't been created yet. If, on the other hand, it has become a bluelink, we can check and see if the page has been transcluded on the main DRV page: if not, just add the transclusion. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

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