Wikipedia:AFD 100 days

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shortcut:
WP:AFD100

A computer script designed by Dragons flight was used to parse 100 days of AFD logs from June 1, 2005 - September 8, 2005 searching for bolded keywords (e.g. delete, keep, merge, redirect, kill, cleanup, etc) in signed comments. This has allowed a large statistical sample to be generated from which important patterns in voting and article deletion behavior might be identified.

Contents

[edit] Methodology

A computer script was produced that parsed 100 days of AFD logs extracting votes and usernames from lines of the following kind:

* ... '''Vote text''' ... [[User:Some name|...]] ... {end of line}

These were broken into groups by searching for the === Nomination Headers ===. The first link to User space after the nomination header was assumed to belong to the nominator and was recorded in a separate category.

Obviously, there are many ways that this script can be fooled if people format things in unusual ways (or even some fairly mundane variations), but the hope is that by capturing a large enough sample it will be possible to derive meaningful patterns even if people who forget to bold their vote or sign in an unusual place are ignored. (Note: if more than one link to User space was present, the last one on the line was assumed to be the signature.)

The "vote text" was interpreted by removing a long list of modifiers (e.g. strong, weak, super, borderline, massive, etc.) and creating lists of common synonyms (e.g. delete = kill, nuke, destroy; keep = cleanup, revise, expand, don't delete). In this way it was possible to categorize 96% of all vote text as either: keep, delete, merge, speedy, speedy keep, redirect, bjaodn, rename, transwiki, or comment. The remaining 4% consist of a variety of ambiguous statements that could not be interpreted and rarely used phrases (e.g. "grind into a pulp") that were not considered frequent enough to be worth teaching to the parser even though their meaning may have been clear. If someone used multiple keywords, e.g. "delete or merge", the vote was usually recorded based on the first occurring recognized word. Some inversion terms (e.g. "don't" in "don't delete") were also processed to handle exceptions were the keyword wasn't assigned its normal meaning.

Obviously, this can never be as accurate or as complete as someone processing the AFD votes by hand, and it is likely a variety of mistakes and misinterpretations were made, but I believe this methodology is more than sufficient to get a broad understanding of AFD patterns.

[edit] Overview patterns

Number of days: 100
Range of days: 2005 June 1 - 2005 September 8
Number of nominations: 11211
Number of voters: 7202
Number of votes: 86773
Number of closers: 170
Percent deleted: 75.2 %
Empirical threshold: 63.5 %
Consistent with threshold: 93.8 %
  • Percent deleted includes content removal outcomes (delete, speedy, bjaodn and redirect) as compared to content retaining outcomes (keep, no consensus, merge, speedy keep, move, and transwiki).

[edit] Full voting patterns

Category # of Voters votes delete keep merge speedy sp. keep redirect bjaodn move transwiki nominate comment other
All Users 7202 86773 47.5% 21.9% 3.9% 2.4% 0.3% 2.9% 0.2% 0.7% 0.4% 12.9% 3.7% 3.1%
At least 250 votes 51 27957 59.4% 16.6% 4.2% 2.8% 0.3% 3.4% 0.2% 0.6% 0.4% 6.5% 3.2% 2.6%
Between 100 and 250 votes 129 21055 47.8% 19.2% 3.7% 3.0% 0.4% 3.3% 0.3% 0.5% 0.4% 14.4% 3.9% 3.0%
Between 20 and 100 votes 451 20500 44.9% 20.2% 3.8% 2.5% 0.4% 2.7% 0.3% 0.8% 0.4% 16.6% 4.3% 3.1%
Less than 20 votes 6570 17261 31.3% 35.7% 3.6% 1.1% 0.3% 1.9% 0.2% 0.8% 0.3% 17.1% 3.7% 3.9%

[edit] Condensed voting patterns

Category # of Voters votes delete keep
All Users 6912 79077 70.6% 29.4%
At least 250 votes 46 23343 76.0% 24.0%
Between 100 and 250 votes 121 19615 74.0% 26.0%
Between 20 and 100 votes 430 19578 72.7% 27.3%
Less than 20 votes 6314 16541 56.2% 43.8%
  • Content removal options (delete, speedy, nominate, bjaodn and redirect) consolidated under "delete".
  • Content preserving options (keep, merge, speedy keep, move, and transwiki) consolidated under "keep".
  • Comments and unparsed options are ignored and removed from counts.

[edit] Expanded low voter count

Category Voters Votes Delete Keep
Voted 20 to 49 times 276 8837 68.3% 31.7%
Voted 10 to 19 times 369 5020 66.0% 34.0%
Voted 5 to 9 times 591 3855 61.1% 38.9%
Voted 2 to 4 times 1476 3787 54.8% 45.2%
Voted once 3878 3878 40.2% 59.8%
  • Same as above but for the very infrequent voters. Done on request of User:Fubar Obfusco.

[edit] Deletionist vs. Inclusionist tendencies

Expressed in terms of how often they vote delete, this table summarizes the tendencies of AFD regulars.

Deletion Percentage 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
Users with more than 250 votes 1 1 0 1 1 6 0 13 12 11
Users with more than 100 votes 4 3 2 3 7 13 9 39 53 34
Users with more than 20 votes 17 9 13 17 28 48 71 126 170 98

[edit] AFD outcomes

Outcomes Number Percentage
delete 6721 60.0 %
keep 2201 19.6 %
merge 296 2.6 %
speedy 805 7.2 %
speedy keep 27 0.2 %
redirect 360 3.2 %
bjaodn 8 0.1 %
move 36 0.3 %
transwiki 42 0.4 %
uncertain 715 6.4 %
  • "uncertain" represents all of the AFDs whose outcome the program was unable to parse.
  • no consensus results are included under keep.

Note: Combining the content removal options (delete, speedy, redirect, and bjaodn) and discounting the 6.4% of "uncertain" conclusions, indicates that 75.2% of AFDs result in content being "deleted", versus 24.8% with content preserving conclusions (keep, speedy keep, merge, move, transwiki).

[edit] User patterns

The voting patterns for the top 30 participants on AFD.

See also: An expanded list for all participants averaging more than one vote per day.

[edit] Full voting pattern

User votes delete keep merge speedy sp. keep redirect bjaodn move transwiki nominate comment other
1 JamesBurns 3645 86.3% 6.3% 3.4% 0.0% 0.0% 2.4% 0.3% 0.2% 0.4% 0.4% 0.2% 0.1%
2 Etacar11 1857 92.1% 3.0% 0.7% 1.5% 0.1% 0.8% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0% 0.8% 0.4% 0.5%
3 Splash 1400 65.5% 8.9% 2.0% 3.8% 0.0% 2.4% 0.0% 0.5% 0.1% 10.9% 1.7% 4.1%
4 Kappa 978 5.1% 83.2% 5.3% 0.7% 0.1% 1.6% 0.0% 0.7% 0.2% 1.6% 0.4% 0.9%
5 Capitalistroadster 956 27.3% 54.8% 2.2% 3.7% 0.2% 3.2% 0.2% 0.3% 0.0% 0.0% 7.4% 0.6%
6 BD2412 916 52.1% 14.8% 7.1% 5.1% 1.0% 4.1% 0.9% 0.9% 0.4% 3.3% 4.8% 5.5%
7 Dcarrano 895 69.4% 6.3% 7.4% 1.9% 0.0% 7.3% 0.6% 1.2% 1.6% 0.4% 2.1% 1.9%
8 MacGyverMagic 882 55.4% 11.1% 5.8% 4.3% 0.3% 6.3% 0.2% 0.8% 1.7% 7.9% 2.7% 3.3%
9 Radiant%21 728 57.7% 8.4% 15.4% 1.0% 0.0% 1.9% 0.4% 1.4% 0.7% 10.0% 0.1% 3.0%
10 Scimitar 554 58.1% 15.7% 4.0% 4.5% 0.0% 2.7% 0.2% 0.2% 0.5% 4.3% 4.2% 5.6%
11 DS1953 514 42.4% 41.1% 2.3% 1.9% 0.6% 2.5% 0.0% 0.6% 0.2% 3.9% 3.1% 1.4%
12 Tony_Sidaway 511 5.5% 49.5% 5.7% 0.8% 0.0% 4.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.7% 28.2% 3.5%
13 Starblind 509 53.6% 13.8% 3.1% 12.4% 0.2% 2.8% 0.0% 0.4% 0.0% 0.2% 2.2% 11.4%
14 Carnildo 491 72.5% 4.1% 8.6% 2.6% 0.2% 3.5% 2.4% 0.4% 0.0% 2.2% 0.6% 2.9%
15 Wiki_alf 473 55.4% 17.5% 3.8% 0.0% 0.4% 4.2% 0.8% 1.9% 1.1% 0.8% 8.0% 5.9%
16 Hamster_Sandwich 470 66.0% 10.2% 3.0% 4.5% 0.2% 1.9% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0% 1.3% 6.6% 6.2%
17 Sjakkalle 465 38.1% 31.0% 7.5% 2.2% 0.2% 3.9% 0.2% 0.2% 0.2% 13.1% 2.2% 1.3%
18 Dottoreso 450 82.9% 7.1% 1.6% 4.0% 0.2% 1.6% 0.0% 0.2% 0.0% 0.0% 2.0% 0.4%
19 Jaxl 437 83.3% 6.2% 2.5% 1.4% 0.0% 2.3% 0.0% 0.7% 0.0% 0.5% 2.3% 0.9%
20 RJHall 435 43.2% 33.1% 11.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.8% 0.0% 1.1% 1.4% 2.1% 0.2% 3.0%
21 Pburka 429 29.8% 40.1% 5.8% 5.6% 0.5% 7.5% 0.0% 1.4% 0.5% 3.0% 4.7% 1.2%
22 Nandesuka 428 69.4% 14.0% 6.8% 1.9% 0.0% 2.6% 0.0% 0.9% 0.7% 1.6% 0.5% 1.6%
23 Android79 412 63.1% 9.0% 6.8% 3.9% 0.5% 3.9% 0.2% 0.7% 0.2% 7.8% 2.4% 1.5%
24 Doc_glasgow 406 31.3% 8.4% 2.5% 4.9% 0.5% 2.5% 0.0% 0.7% 0.7% 36.9% 9.1% 2.5%
25 Xcali 405 50.9% 2.2% 2.7% 15.1% 0.0% 0.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 22.2% 4.4% 2.0%
26 Sdedeo 394 49.7% 17.8% 2.3% 2.3% 1.8% 4.3% 0.0% 0.8% 0.0% 7.1% 11.2% 2.8%
27 Fernando_Rizo 393 59.5% 13.7% 4.8% 1.8% 0.0% 2.8% 0.3% 0.5% 0.5% 7.9% 4.8% 3.3%
28 Denni 390 32.8% 6.9% 0.5% 1.0% 0.0% 1.8% 0.0% 0.0% 0.5% 54.6% 1.0% 0.8%
29 Pavel_Vozenilek 378 77.2% 4.8% 2.4% 7.4% 0.0% 3.7% 0.0% 0.3% 0.0% 1.9% 1.3% 1.1%
30 Proto 377 54.1% 9.8% 5.0% 5.3% 1.3% 12.7% 1.1% 0.8% 0.0% 4.8% 1.3% 3.7%

[edit] Condensed voting patterns

Simplified keep/delete count (see overview for description)

User votes delete keep
1 JamesBurns 3635 89.7% 10.3%
2 Etacar11 1841 96.0% 4.0%
3 Splash 1318 87.8% 12.2%
4 Kappa 965 9.2% 90.8%
5 Capitalistroadster 879 37.4% 62.6%
6 Dcarrano 859 82.9% 17.1%
7 MacGyverMagic 829 79.0% 21.0%
8 BD2412 822 73.0% 27.0%
9 Radiant%21 705 73.3% 26.7%
10 Scimitar 500 77.4% 22.6%
11 DS1953 491 53.2% 46.8%
12 Carnildo 474 86.3% 13.7%
13 Sjakkalle 449 59.5% 40.5%
14 Starblind 440 79.8% 20.2%
15 Dottoreso 439 90.7% 9.3%
16 Jaxl 423 90.3% 9.7%
17 RJHall 421 51.8% 48.2%
18 Nandesuka 419 77.1% 22.9%
19 Hamster_Sandwich 410 84.4% 15.6%
20 Wiki_alf 407 71.3% 28.7%
21 Pburka 404 48.8% 51.2%
22 Android79 396 82.1% 17.9%
23 Denni 383 91.9% 8.1%
24 Xcali 379 94.7% 5.3%
25 Pavel_Vozenilek 369 92.4% 7.6%
26 Fernando_Rizo 361 78.7% 21.3%
27 Doc_glasgow 359 85.5% 14.5%
28 Proto 358 82.1% 17.9%
29 Tony_Sidaway 349 19.2% 80.8%
30 R._fiend 348 82.8% 17.2%

[edit] Most nominations

User Nominations
1 Denni 213
2 Splash 153
3 Doc_glasgow 150
4 Dmcdevit 149
5 DragonflySixtyseven 117
6 Zoe 109
7 Gwalla 104
8 Xcali 90
9 Petaholmes 86
10 Bmicomp 86
11 Aaron_Brenneman 77
12 Weyes 76
13 Joy_Stovall 76
14 Radiant%21 73
15 MacGyverMagic 70
16 PhilipO 67
17 Sjakkalle 61
18 Duncharris 61
19 RickK 61
20 Niteowlneils 61
21 Sasquatch 60
22 Mikkalai 58
23 Jasonglchu 56
24 Cdc 56
25 Lotsofissues 56
26 DESiegel 55
27 TheMidnighters 54
28 Humblefool 54
29 Groeck 54
30 Icelight 53

[edit] Most frequent closers

Name Closed Del % Est. Threshold Adherence Est. Deviation
1 Sjakkalle 932 72.8 % 70.1 % 95.8 % 7
2 Allen3 923 89.3 % 58.8 % 97.8 % 2
3 Splash 827 43.3 % 58.6 % 94.0 % 4
4 Woohookitty 584 84.3 % 62.4 % 94.3 % 0
5 Golbez 551 90.1 % 57.0 % 97.7 % 2
7 Redwolf24 500 79.1 % 61.1 % 93.4 % 0
8 ABCD 381 97.6 % 47.3 % 99.0 % 4
9 FCYTravis 324 76.4 % 60.4 % 91.9 % 0
10 Mailer diablo 306 82.5 % 58.3 % 98.4 % 1
11 Xezbeth 284 83.0 % 58.5 % 99.0 % 1
12 Ryan Delaney 277 78.5 % 66.3 % 93.0 % 0
13 Tony Sidaway 230 46.0 % 80.2 % 88.5 % 16
14 Essjay 194 82.0 % 64.3 % 90.7 % 0
15 Trilobite 191 92.1 % 54.6 % 97.8 % 1
16 Francs2000 178 53.3 % 66.2 % 88.1 % 0
17 Dmcdevit 169 80.8 % 57.0 % 94.1 % 1
18 SimonP 164 53.4 % 73.8 % 92.2 % 5
19 Joy Stovall 158 87.0 % 66.0 % 97.1 % 0
20 Postdlf 158 89.2 % 64.2 % 99.6 % 0
21 Eugene van der Pijll 138 63.8 % 67.0 % 90.4 % 0
22 Malathion 131 82.2 % 70.6 % 91.1 % 1
23 Paul August 129 79.8 % 67.2 % 94.0 % 0
24 Cdc 128 86.6 % 59.8 % 97.0 % 0
25 Zzyzx11 122 70.0 % 74.7 % 89.5 % 1
26 JeremyA 118 82.9 % 43.9 % 99.1 % 3
27 Jni 117 100.0 % 30.0 % 99.9 % 2
28 Humblefool 110 79.4 % 65.3 % 92.0 % 0
  • Estimated threshold is the percentage of delete votes this person most usually requires before closing an AFD as a deletion. This threshold can be significantly distorted for closers that avoid controversial votes (see deviation below).
  • Adherence is the fraction of closes performed that appear consistent with this admin's threshold.
  • Estimated deviation is the estimated number of AFD results that would have to be changed if this admin adopted the 63.5% threshold which is the average. Admins who rarely close controversial votes (e.g. nothing in the 50-80% range) may have a deviation of 0 even if their estimated threshold is substantially displaced.

[edit] Article voting patterns

Category AFDs Percentage
Unanimous delete 6523 58.2%
Strong delete (>80%), not unanimous 855 7.6%
Others (50-80% delete) 1932 17.2%
Majority keep (>50%), not strong 803 7.2%
Strong keep (>70%), not unanimous 463 4.1%
Unanimous keep 635 5.7%

[edit] Deletion as a function of vote percentage

Delete % occurrences Deleted Percentage
0 - 5 % 18 0 0.0 %
5 - 10 % 138 0 0.0 %
10 - 15 % 188 2 1.1 %
15 - 20 % 318 9 2.8 %
20 - 25 % 248 6 2.4 %
25 - 30 % 134 3 2.2 %
30 - 35 % 279 14 5.0 %
35 - 40 % 237 17 7.2 %
40 - 45 % 120 6 5.0 %
45 - 50 % 344 46 13.4 %
50 - 55 % 64 9 14.1 %
55 - 60 % 289 82 28.4 %
60 - 65 % 102 48 47.1 %
65 - 70 % 320 208 65.0 %
70 - 75 % 417 328 78.7 %
75 - 80 % 328 307 93.6 %
80 - 85 % 249 245 98.4 %
85 - 90 % 431 420 97.4 %
90 - 95 % 135 130 96.3 %
95 - 100 % 6137 6014 98.0 %
  • No compensation for sockpuppets / anon votes
  • Some of the more perverse results also reflect parser error. For example, some of the 2% of AFDs that were kept despite apparent unanimous delete resulted from strangely formatted or labeled keep votes that the parser was unable to count.

[edit] Votes per article

Votes received AFDs Frequency
1 391 3.5%
2 635 5.7%
3 1204 10.7%
4 1582 14.1%
5 1483 13.2%
6 1212 10.8%
7 994 8.9%
8 714 6.4%
9 528 4.7%
10 395 3.5%
11 352 3.1%
12 266 2.4%
13 206 1.8%
14 168 1.5%
15 126 1.1%
16 103 0.9%
17 111 1.0%
18 89 0.8%
19 74 0.7%
20 70 0.6%
21 62 0.6%
22 55 0.5%
23 44 0.4%
24 37 0.3%
25 29 0.3%
26 31 0.3%
27 24 0.2%
28 25 0.2%
29 18 0.2%
30 22 0.2%
31 11 0.1%
32 16 0.1%
33 13 0.1%
34 8 0.1%
35 9 0.1%
36 7 0.1%
37 5 0.0%
38 4 0.0%
39 8 0.1%
40 8 0.1%
41 6 0.1%
42 2 0.0%
43 7 0.1%
44 6 0.1%
45 4 0.0%
46 1 0.0%
47 3 0.0%
48 1 0.0%
49 5 0.0%
50 4 0.0%
51 1 0.0%
52 1 0.0%
54 2 0.0%
56 1 0.0%
57 1 0.0%
59 2 0.0%
61 1 0.0%
63 3 0.0%
64 2 0.0%
65 1 0.0%
67 1 0.0%
69 1 0.0%
70 2 0.0%
71 1 0.0%
73 1 0.0%
78 1 0.0%
79 1 0.0%
81 1 0.0%
82 1 0.0%
90 1 0.0%
96 1 0.0%
98 1 0.0%
114 1 0.0%
115 1 0.0%
167 1 0.0%
185 1 0.0%
192 1 0.0%
  • The nomination counts as one vote. Those AFDs with only 1 or 2 votes were typically speedy deleted shortly after listing.

[edit] Contested AFDs

Number of AFDs with at least the specified number of both keep and delete votes, and the percentage of such AFDs as a fraction of all AFDs

Votes occurrences Percentage
1 4688 41.8%
2 2643 23.6%
3 1614 14.4%
4 1062 9.5%
5 737 6.6%
6 515 4.6%
7 372 3.3%
8 273 2.4%
9 211 1.9%
10 167 1.5%
11 130 1.2%
12 110 1.0%
13 80 0.7%
14 65 0.6%
15 54 0.5%
16 46 0.4%
17 38 0.3%
18 29 0.3%
19 26 0.2%
20 25 0.2%
21 23 0.2%
22 21 0.2%
23 16 0.1%
24 14 0.1%
25 14 0.1%
26 12 0.1%
27 11 0.1%
28 10 0.1%
29 9 0.1%
30 9 0.1%
31 7 0.1%
32 6 0.1%
33 6 0.1%
34 5 0.0%
35 5 0.0%
36 5 0.0%
37 4 0.0%
38 2 0.0%
39 2 0.0%
40 2 0.0%
41 2 0.0%
42 2 0.0%
43 2 0.0%
44 2 0.0%
45 2 0.0%
46 2 0.0%
47 2 0.0%
48 2 0.0%
49 2 0.0%
50 2 0.0%
51 2 0.0%
52 2 0.0%
53 2 0.0%
54 2 0.0%
55 2 0.0%
56 2 0.0%
57 2 0.0%
58 2 0.0%
59 2 0.0%
60 1 0.0%
61 1 0.0%
62 1 0.0%
63 1 0.0%
64 1 0.0%
65 1 0.0%
66 1 0.0%
67 0 0.0%

[edit] AFDs with at least 2/3 delete

Shows the number of AFDs with at least the specified number of keep votes and those with at least twice as many delete votes as keep votes.

Keep votes occurrences With 2/3 delete Percentage
1 4688 1708 36.4%
2 3412 642 18.8%
3 2668 299 11.2%
4 2151 156 7.3%
5 1750 87 5.0%
6 1388 51 3.7%
7 1133 28 2.5%
8 914 16 1.8%
9 752 10 1.3%
10 632 7 1.1%
11 509 4 0.8%
12 423 3 0.7%
13 357 2 0.6%
14 302 1 0.3%
15 243 1 0.4%
16 209 1 0.5%
17 179 1 0.6%
18 144 0 0.0%