Wikipedia talk:Deletion and deletionism

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I was passing by The Tranhumanist's talk page, and I noticed this. Hope you don't mind me adding this comment. I have participated in a number of AfDs, though I'm not a regular there. I might sit in on this classroom as it could be interesting. Have you or TH considered getting the views of other AfD regulars, such as Uncle G?

About editing the page, can we correct typos? :-) Carcharoth 00:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Correct away! As for getting the views of others, I am unsure of the neutrality of their viewpoints. :/ --ElaragirlTalk|Count 14:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I stumbled onto this page the same way - it made for a very interesting read, I like your work. One question - I like the fact that you emphasize "In many cases, an article can be improved by adding sourced, rewriting, or other corrective measures rather than deletion." I think that another way an article can be improved is by deleting questionable sections of it, since these sections bring down the credibility of the whole article. I've seen a couple of instances where an article with good and bad sections gets deleted due to a stack of "Delete, contains X" !votes, and some good material ends up being lost in the process.

The way I see it, "contains OR/copyvio/etc" shouldn't be a criteria for deleting the whole article - it should be a criteria for deleting the revelant sections. After that, the article can be re-evaluated, based on its size:

  • If there's still enough good material left to justify an article, leave it. (The remaining material might need work, as you've suggested above, but it can be improved.)
  • If there's only one or two short paragraphs left, not enough to justify an article, a merge & redirect to a "higher topic" article would by my suggestion, e.g. merge "Bob Doohickey (character)" into "The Doohickeys (TV family)" If enough good material on Bob turns up in the family article to warrant spinning him off onto his own article again, great.
  • If the article is practically nothing but OR/copyvio/POV rants, then the whole article should be deleted, so the next editor can have a fresh start.

I'm still making this up as I go, to be honest, but I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on the matter. Quack 688 22:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

THe problem with copyvios is the editing history. Since it has to remain, and since it still contains the copyvios, the liability remains. What I prefer to do is save any parts that aren't copy vio, get the thing deleted, and create a fresh stub with sources for expansion. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 13:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I believe there should be a difference between an article that is expanded from a copyright stub, versus one which contains a copyright section. The one based on copyright might carry "traces" of copyvio all the way through, "fruit of a poisoned tree" and all that, and might need the full wipe. But imagine a comprehensive article on Bob, which contains a copy-vio paragraph about his pet goldfish. This copy-vio's been sitting there for a year and no-one's noticed, but no-one's used it elsewhere in the article.
According to this section from WP:CV, we don't have any liability problems just from having a copyvio in a page's history:
Revert the page to a non-copyrighted version if you can
The infringing text will remain in the page history for archival reasons unless the copyright holder asks the Wikimedia Foundation to remove it.
I still think it's a waste to revert a year's work on the Bob article just to get that one copy-vio out. As I understand it, this is necessary right now because the copy-vio paragraph might have been referred to elsewhere in the article. But copyright works can still be listed as a source, right? If so, can't we just change the copy-vio paragraph, and add the original source of that copy-vio paragraph as a reference?
Also, all those legal issues only apply to copy-vios. Do you have any objection to my "amputating an article in order to save it" idea for things like OR and POV? Quack 688 00:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


One other question - I was doing the tourist thing, browsing through a few policy pages when I found WP:CLEANUP. By its description, it was originally intended for formatting or clarity issues, but quite a few of the nominations there are for articles that need more significant problems fixed.

Putting something on AfD certainly generates a lively discussion, but I think it'd be good for both "sides" if some articles that need significant work, but are about a notable topic, were listed on WP:CLEANUP instead of straight on AfD. Inclusionists caould have a chance to improve on the articles without getting paranoid about the "deletionist cabal out to destroy them (and their kittens)". If no-one bothers improving it for a while, then it can be taken to AfD, and the nominator can show that they've put out a good faith call to improve the article, but no-one picked up the phone. Would you consider mentioning its existence somewhere in your essay? Are there other versions of this list somewhere for more serious problems that might deserve a mention? If not, would you support using this list as a prelude to AfD, or do you believe it should be kept just for formatting/clarity issues, and a new "fix this now or it's going to AfD" list should be created instead? Quack 688 06:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem with WP:CLEANUP is the backlog. A lot of stuff goes in there and never gets touched. A good deletionist is also usually an immediatist, someone who judges reality as it is now, not potentiality as it might be at some unspecified point in time. There are too many backlogs, too many new articles being created that really don't belong and people keeping them just on the off chance that they can be improved. I think that if an article can be QUICKLY cleaned up then you should do so. I did that yesterday, a book called Postcards from the Grave was up for deletion, sourceless and nonnotable. So I found evidence of notability, sourced it, added a photo, and voila, all good. Took 5 minutes. If you can fix it like that, why bother putting it off? It's just , to me, hypocracy from some people who can't be bothered to fix anything yet expect someone else to do so.
I understand what you mean with the idea of a 'fix or it's going to AfD' but that is why AfD lasts five days. If you can't fix it in five days it ain't getting fixed. I think making lists of things to fix before AfD is adding a step that will only get backlogged, and putting off the problem. I would rather see an end to votes like "keep and cleanup" since the cleanup is never actually done. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 13:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess it depends on why an article's being brought to AfD. I don't think a major rewrite can always be done in five days, especially if it's part of a mass-nomination. However, a fair proportion of AfD articles I've seen are there for notability or sourcing issues - if you can't show something's notable in five days, or find some proper sources, I agree that it should be deleted.
Re: lists like WP:CLEANUP - The policy page WP:DELETE provides two great lists on problem articles where deletion may be needed and problem articles where deletion may not be needed, and they specifically mention several alternate places to send questionable material:
Wikipedia:Copyright problems
Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English
Wikipedia:Cleanup
Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
Both "sides" should share some responsibility for not using lists like these, IMHO. Deletionists know that the fastest way to get what they want is with with a "fix this now or it's gone" approach. Meanwhile, inclusionists can forget about articles listed on cleanup lists, since they're not currently facing deletion, and as long as the article's online, inclusionists get what they want.
I suppose I should ask what you want this essay to become. Is it an outline of current policy, or is it an argument for ditching some broken policies and adopting a more immediatist approach? If it's an argument for change, that's fine, you can argue your case as much as you want, but then it's not exactly NPOV. If it's an outline of policy (which it seems to be), it shouldn't point out ways to go around existing policy - at the very least, those two lists from WP:DELETE should be mentioned in step one of your five step process, since the examples given directly reflect what the current policy is. Quack 688 00:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
It was designed for the Transhumanist's Virtual Classroom. The main reason I don't list those pages is that this is not an article about alternatives to deletion. I plan to write a second article about undeletion, cleanup, and alternatives. A secondary reason I don't write about it is that there are serious backlogs on those lists, particularly translations and cleanup. Nine times out of ten, when people say Keep and Cleanup you can't clean the article up. It has no good sources, it's not verifiable and it needs to go. Trust me, I've tried. Sometimes you can, and sometimes you can't, but most articles that get to AfD with this kind of problem are better off gone no matter if you belive in deletionism or inclusionism or immediatism or eventualism or whatever. I think that there are a lot of articles where deletion isn't the answer, but I think ther are also equally lots of issues where deletion IS and instead the article is simply allowed to rot. I'm trying to present all the deletion stuff here and save alternatives for the alternatives article. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 16:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough, I'm looking forward to seeing that second article. There could be quite a bit of duplication if you structure it the same way as this one, though. What if you split up the topic into three separate articles:
1: IntroToXfD - Provides an outline on how the deletion process works, how to conduct yourself honourably throughout the process, and, most importantly, how to decide if a questionable article should be improved or deleted.
2: DeleteArticle - If you've decided an article should be deleted, this gives some real world advice on how to use each of the tools listed in Problem articles where deletion may be needed. Also includes any other methods available to delete articles (including DRV).
3: ImproveArticle - If you've decided an article should be improved, this gives some real world advice on how to use each of the tools listed in Problem articles where deletion may not be needed. Also includes any other methods available to keep and improve articles (imcluding DRV and userfication).
(PS. Any other thoughts on what I mentioned previously re:amputating dodgy bits from an article to save it?) Quack 688 07:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Some comments

  • This is just too long still and too much detail.
  • I would suggest a very short and punchy introduction with links to lower in the page.
  • I would suggest that it be reorganized with methods for getting things undeleted above methods for getting things deleted. People are more likely to come to these pages to get stuff undeleted than deleted. Only experts are interested in deletion. Newbies who are new to Wikipedia will probably encounter this policy first in trying to keep things from getting deleted or get them undeleted.
  • I will try to move it to another page and maybe edit it a bit for your inspection.--Filll 04:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A rough draft

That shows some of what I am suggesting is at User:Elaragirl/DeleteArticle2. There are three main pieces to the article:

  • an overview (abstract)
  • an outline of deletion: This in very short point form describes the content of the article and hopefully familiarizes the reader with the terminology
  • the detailed description:I just cut and pasted your text in. I think it is too long and confusing however.

I also would suggest using <ref> and </ref> tags and and make footnotes using <references/>to put some important caveats and tips in footnotes so they do not break up the flow of the text. I also think that instead of just linking to the instructions for putting an article up for AfD/XfD, also include a very stripped down set of steps such as 1. 2. 3. for what to do. Then the reader already can understand the procedure before they have to fight their way through the excess verbiage. It always helps to understand the procedure before you try to learn it in detail. Otherwise it just seems like a blizzard of crap. Actually even with this it will still seem like a blizzard of crap, but I hope it will make i seem a little clearer this way. --Filll 05:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts from Moreschi

Bellissima Elara! - sorry, I've got Giulio Cesare on the CD player! I think it should be explained that it is pretty pointless whacking a PROD tag on top of an article a newbie has just created. If you can't speedy it, then in practice - even if it is egregiously promotion for someone semi-notable, then take it to AFD, bypassing PROD, as the newbie will be guaranteed to fight tooth and nail and remove the prod. Nobody likes having their stuff deleted, least of all newbies.

Also, pardon me if I missed this, but one should always notify the creator if you PROD or AFD an article, and usually for CSD as well. Is this mentioned? There are plenty of appropriate templates. Mind you, if someone creates something you just tagged with db-nonsense or db-vandal, then - others may disagree - there is little point in wasting your time on what is basically a glorified vandal. Cheers, Moreschi 15:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

To the first, that's why I put in Tips for Prods ": Prods are best used on articles that haven't been edited in several months, have a single editor, and appear inactive. An active article that is inappropiate for Wikipedia should be taken to AfD instead, since a prod can be undone legally by removing the tag." To the second, I left a thingy stating "ALWAYS make sure you leave the user notice when you speedy delete. Since speedy deletion can happen quickly, not doing so leaves you open to charges that you are not following process correctly." I shoud add it to AfD, too , I guess, but I usually don't for AfD. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 16:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on deletionism vs inclusionism

I think the section on inclusionism and deletionism is a pretty skewed depiction of the state of affairs. Take for instance the statement "Deletionists bitterly dislike the principle of rules like WP:IAR and statements that Wikipedia is not Paper". That's simply not the case and is a fairly lame way to present the issue. This is not so different than saying inclusionists bitterly dislike the principle that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information because it prevents Wikipedia from really being the sum of all human knowledge or that they loathe the guidelines on reliable sources because it leads to removal of content.

In any case, nothing is to be gained by presenting the issue as if deletionists or inclusionists are acting like ideological crusaders who spend all their time on AfD without reasoning. Not only is that counter-productive, I also find it to be completely out-of-touch with reality. I have a deletionist userbox on my user page (which by the way, or so I learned, is enough to disqualify me as a potential admin) yet this simply represents the way I tend to lean on in AfDs in which I choose to participate. There is no Great Struggle of Inclusionism vs Deletionism. There are simply different editors, with various thresholds in mind of what they consider as acceptable and valuable content on Wikipedia, they are all acting in good faith and they all have the best interests of the project at heart. That section is ruining an otherwise interesting page. Pascal.Tesson 06:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you're wrong. I had another person on an AfD today claiming that deletionists were evil, lazy, and only out to destroy other people's work. Certainly deletionists do not see the issue as anything but how to include articles, but more and more inclusionists are turning this into some kind of stupid crusade. WP:IAR was intended to stop bureaucracy and WP:NOTPAPER was there to allow for non-mainstream but notable articles, and both of these have been very badly twisted out of their original intent. And yes, I have seen more than one inclusionist say that things like notability and even RS need to be rewritten or even removed. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 17:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Well there's always the occasional wacko who believes he has a superior understanding of the project's goals. Also I think that people that want an article deleted and see it kept tend to shrug it off as a bad decision. People who think an article should be kept and see it get deleted are often (and not so surprisingly) bitter and angry. Most of them know how to cool down but it can't be reasonably expected that all will. With all due respect (and in fact the same applies to myself) it's also likely that since you lean towards deletionism, the lame arguments of rabid inclusionists strike you as lamer than the lame arguments of rabid deletionists. :-) Pascal.Tesson 17:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I don't fully understand this dichotomy

I think the whole deletionism-inclusionism debate is a false dichotomy. Wikipedia, as a non-paper encyclopedia, ought to include all established and verifiable human knowledge. This clearly excludes incoherent pages, spam, things made up in school one day, and bands that have released no albums; at the same time, it clearly includes things like webcomics, bit-part actors in films, and minor fictional characters, all of which I have seen nominated for deletion. The problem is that the 'deletionist culture' is becoming too prevalent; I now spend more time on XfDs and speedy deletes than I do actually writing articles, as it's now virtually impossible to write anything without someone slamming it as original research or fancruft, while deletion nominations seem to be welcomed with open arms. At the moment, sadly, it seems to be that the burden of proof is on the author of an article to prove that their contributions are worth keeping, rather than on the would-be deleter to prove that their contributions are invalid/a waste of space. As a result, the encyclopedia is poorer. I wouldn't call myself an inclusionist: I spend a lot of time tagging nonsense pages for speedy deletion, nominating AfDs, and reverting vandalism, and all of these things are valuable (the encyclopedia needs to be 'pruned' at times). But we need to get back in sight of the goal of Wikipedia; to be a resource that contains as much information, albeit organised, sourced and well-written, as possible. Walton monarchist89 16:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I know the above completely contradicts what I stated on the Village pump yesterday. I'm allowed to change my mind. Walton monarchist89 16:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Be careful when you talk about "deletionist culture" as if is was blatantly contradicting policy. Wikipedia is not paper, sure, but it's also an encyclopedia and not a directory. It's not IMDb, it's not a provider of free advertising and so on. The spectrum of attitudes towards deletion, which more or less ranges from rabid inclusionists to rabid deletionists corresponds to the various ways of balancing the respective weight of Wikipedia is not paper and Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. You might find that your own preferred balance does not correspond with rough consensus adopted by the community but it doesn't mean that you understand policy and the rest of the community does not. Pascal.Tesson 17:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Contradiction is fine, but allow me to retort. When I can go clicking on random article and find things like Free Spirit Gathering, PC Abe Lyttleton, and Sumpak, I worry. It is very easy to claim that the encyclopedia should be the sum of established and verifiable human knowledge. That's a catchphrase. It's not going to be a reality. We can't verify and organize most of what we already have in place. To you, things like bit part actors need to be included. To me, it's a matter of importance. I don't want to read about Bob's Webcomic, which is made in MS Paint and has a readership of 300. It's important to Bob. It may be important to Bob's readers. But I'd rather spend my time trying to fix up Economics rather than creating non-sourced stubs. No one is ever going to spend hours looking up Bob's Webcomic. The entry will sit there, uselessly. It's not an encylcopedic topic. An encyclopedia should educate you , or be used as a reference for information. The sum of all human knowledge is NOT , I repeat, NOT an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a limited, factual collection of mutually agreed upon definitions and explainations for a large number of notable, verifiable topics of importance. People need to change the name from Wikipedia. --ElaragirlTalk|Count 17:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I kinda like that last idea. How about spinning off a WikiSumOfAllEstablishedVerifiableKnowledgeAndFactoids? :-) Pascal.Tesson 18:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I apologise if I came across as implying that I understand policy and the rest of the community does not - this was not my intention. Rather, I was trying to suggest that the policy itself is wrong and should be changed. Please don't interpret this as an attack on the rest of the community, or deletionists in particular - I'm sorry if it seemed that way. I also understand what User:Elaragirl is saying about the relative importance, or unimportance, of certain pages, and I absolutely agree that Economics is more important than Bob's Webcomic, and that expert editors should focus their time on editing and improving the most important articles. I just don't necessarily think there's a contradiction between the two priorities. Wikipedia is unlimited in physical size, i.e. there is no limit to the number of articles that can be included; so if "Bob" (or his real-life equivalent) really wants to create an article on his webcomic (as it may, quite plausibly, be the only thing he has expert knowledge about), where's the harm in that? I totally agree that it would be a waste of time for expert editors to spend their life categorising/stubmarking/extending articles such as "Bob's Webcomic". But isn't it just as much of a waste of their time to AfD/prod/speedy delete "Bob's Webcomic", when they could, as you say, be improving Economics or another major article that people actually read? (Sorry I keep repeating your theoretical examples, but I don't have the imagination to do otherwise). Once again, I'm sorry if my ideas came across as arrogant/an attack; that wasn't the idea, and I don't necessarily think that I'm "right" and everyone else is "wrong". I try to be open minded; I recognise that some other users have been working here a lot longer than I have, and if other people put forward good points, I'm quite willing to modify my opinion. Nor am I seeking to force anyone else to agree with me. Walton monarchist89 19:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm sorry if my own reply came off as more aggressive than it was meant. The problem I see with your analysis is that the argument relies on the notion that the only limit to Wikipedia is disk space. That is clearly unlimited. However editor's time is not and many routine time consumming tasks are made much worse by the bloating of Wikipedia with fringe stuff-o. It's also true that such additions have already rendered a number of categories utterly useless. Every minute we spend categorizing, referencing, cleaning up, protecting from vandalism Bob's webcomic is a minute wasted and the fact is that none of the 300 fans of Bob's webcomic will do that work. Moreover, Wikipedia's reputation suffers when it appears to be not the sum of all human knowledge but the directory of everything known to exist on earth. Just my 0.02$. Pascal.Tesson 19:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
That's true, and I think you make good points. In doing newpage and recent change patrolling, I see the worst levels to which Wikipedia can at times sink, and I certainly wouldn't advocate relaxing some policies (for example, one does get tired of business spam pages, with phrases such as "we are a dynamic and forward-thinking, fast-growing company", etc.). Not to mention the considerable effort we all devote to reverting vandalism (for heaven's sake, why does anyone think it's funny to replace articles with random profanity and references to the male anatomy? This is what happens when 13-year-olds gain access to unmetered broadband Internet access). But, to give you an example of my point, take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Space warfare in fiction. Admittedly the article is mediocre, but the title is absolutely valid. What I loved about Wikipedia when I first arrived here was that it did include articles like that, where a paper or CD encyclopedia wouldn't. This article is not comparable to "Bob's Webcomic". It isn't junk, nor is it about an obscure topic. And many users probably read and enjoy it on a regular basis; I discovered it long before it was AfD'd. Obviously, I would have to admit to some bias, in that I'm interested in military stuff and am a huge fan of all sci-fi; but I would make the same statement about comparable articles in other fields. Sorry I've taken so long to get to the point; I suppose what I'm trying to say is that both doctrinaire "inclusionism" and "deletionism" are detrimental to the encyclopedia. The problem I experience when I'm doing AfDs, for instance, is that all too often, regular editors will speedy-delete an article that ought to have been given a chance at life. My own tendency, on the other hand, is to give an article a chance with the formal AfD process, even when it has a 95% chance of being complete junk (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luke sagar). Would you say I'm applying policy incorrectly, and should be more prepared to use speedy-delete? (I do speedy-delete-tag a lot of new pages, in fact, but obviously they don't show up on my editcount once they're deleted.) Walton monarchist89 20:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, Space warfare in fiction has now been deleted, against the will of a significant number of contributors to the AfD - an example of how admins exercise arbitrary power. Walton monarchist89 21:26, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
It shouldn't be about what is enjoyable to read, that is the point of Wikia. The article had no sources, and just because people vote keep doesn't mean that the article meets policy. That isn't arbitrary. It's the policies. If you like, I'll rewrite the thing myself, but I'll do it with sourcing.--ElaragirlTalk|Count 22:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I kind of agree with you on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Space warfare in fiction and I think its straight deletion was indeed a case where the closing admin did a poor job. My own preference was to stubify the article so as to remove the original research but to incite editors to contribute. Of course, the risk then is that it gets expanded to OR again but I've always thought that stubifying was a good way to deal with OR on valid topics. In cases like Luke sagar though, I think speedy is the way to go because there's really nothing to be gained on AfD but I think PROD is a pretty good option when you have doubts: if the article is valuable, chances are someone will remove the prod and make the article barely good enough. Also comment for Elaragirl: I honestly think that you would make a number of people happy by recreating the Space warfare in fiction article as a decent, well-referenced stub. Pascal.Tesson 00:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please do recreate the article. Pascal.Tesson, thanks for explaining the purpose of deletion; as a result of your comments, I have now somewhat changed my view of deletionism, as I recognise that there are issues other than disk space that affect the retention of articles. I previously thought deletionism was all about aggressive deletion of articles that the majority of users were uninterested in; but from what you're saying, it seems that the position of deletionism is more along the lines of "it's better to have, say, 1 million well-written and accurate articles that people will actually read and use, rather than 5 million articles consisting mostly of unsourced statements, obscure webcomics, spam, fancruft and other assorted WikiFluff (did I just make that word up?) that no one ever reads, which also reduces readers' confidence in the overall quality of the encyclopedia." Anyway, I now see your point (assuming I've understood it correctly) and will, hopefully, use the deletion process better in future. Walton monarchist89 09:17, 25 January 2007 (UTC)