Wikipedia:AfD Grace Period

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[edit] AfD Grace Period

For my broader proposal that AfD should also be viewable through a few basic categories, see Wikipedia:AfD reform

If a minimum set of requirements will be set for AfD listings of relatively established articles, by placing a notice on the article's talk page for a few days, this will help prevent tension and allow for an interim discussion rather than going straight to vote.

  • This will bring more substantive notability discussions back to the normal editorial discourse: article talk pages first, AfD second.
  • Because these requirements will also involve a minimum duration, the majority of articles listed on AfD (new articles), will not be affected.
  • Thus, this should not prove too demanding for nominators, who in the vast majority of cases could safely ignore this clause.

Contents

[edit] Support

  • The minimum requirements have yet to be worked out beyond these broad strokes. Ask yourself, if it is worthwhile to take this idea further. El_C 15:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I like the general idea. It seems strange for a heavily edited article to have to go through AfD just because one person decides so. Perhaps one requirement for these articles to be listed should be that their nomination to AfD must be supported by at least 2 other editors (who aren't probable sockpuppets). HKTTalk 16:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • That sounds like a useful way to avoid unilateral AfD nominations in relatively established articles. El_C 16:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • As long as it doesn't have to do with the time since the creation of the article, it's ok. Tons of articles in CAT:NN were tagged with {{importance}} months ago and forgotten, so this shouldn't be interfering with AfDing those. --Rory096 07:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - Articles are often not given time to improve before being listed on AfD. Improvements made after being listed on AfD are often ignored. Not sure about requiring two editors to list on AfD - unless we created a separate page for AfDs requiring a co-nominator - since many articles don't get enough attention for more than one editor to list it. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 16:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

  • Neither the amount of edits to an article nor the time said article has been on Wikipedia are sure factors that it is a keeper. First of all, some users have been known to make many, many edits to an article, because of not using preview, making code errors, or just editing in small portions rather than large chunks. For time, plenty of articles "slip through the cracks", as it were, lent a bit more legitimacy by the odd bot edit and tucked-away categorization. Once there, they are basically forgotten about, and few people will bother to read their talk page or second/third their AfD request. It all seems like overcomplicating things for comparatively little benefit. Crystallina 17:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • No need for this. AFD is not hopelessly clogged up, this appears to be instruction creep. Stifle (talk) 23:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The system works fine as it is, and I'm not sure what this extra complexity has to offer. Bad-faith nominations of good articles are already speedily kept, and our guidelines already make it clear that where an article is salvagable, people should bring issues up on the talk page and tag it for cleanup before proceeding to deletion if nobody does the necessary work. So it's unclear what purpose a grace period would serve; by definition, an article should only be nominated for deletion if either no grace period could help it, or if it has already had one!
    A better way of achieving the goal of minimising disruption to articles that should be cleaned up rather than deleted would be to expand the speedy keep system, to allow more AfDs with an overwhelming "keep" consensus to be closed early. This would also not disrupt the equally important task of deleting established articles that need to go in cases where, for example, they have been exposed as hoaxes. — Haeleth Talk 18:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Afd is already a discussion, not "direct to a vote". Articles in which there isn't at least some contention are rarely listed for deletion, and are speedily kept when they are. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 20:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Not sure what's so wrong with the current system. A vast majority of AfD debates are civil and I'm not sure there's much to fix in this direction. The 3-step+debate AfD process is complicated as it is, why make it even more burdensome for editors who do a valuable task of cleaning up the mess? Pascal.Tesson 21:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Only a small proportion of AfDs will be affected by this, and it probably isn't worth the extra complication of explaining it to people. --ais523 14:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. AfD is already a fairly onerous three part initiation with considerable time allowed for comment and a provision for extension of the comment time for a number of reasons. If there are problems with AfD making editors feel unwelcome or creating a hostile editing environment, I would suggest changing the afd1 template to soften it. Erechtheus 22:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

  • Doesn't {{prod}} serve this, or a similar, function? -- Avi 16:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Perhaps it does or it should , but this proposal centres on actually adding these as clear guidelines to AfD, in the nomination stage. El_C 16:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, but prod is often unused. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 16:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Perhaps the better proposal would be to require any article submitted to AfD be sent through prod first. The problem with that comes when there is a single motivated editor who will remove a prod for no good reason. It would be nice if all non-speedy deletes started as a prod and automatically became an AFD if somebody removed the prod template. Erechtheus 22:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minimum set of requirements

  • If there is support for this proposal, let's try to figure out what these minimum set of requirements should be. Time duration + number of edits + minimum number of edits by author, and so on. Is there interest to bring some notability discussions away from AfD, to article talk pages? El_C 15:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)