Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/2002

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Old talk

I do not want to see this list of "deleters" expanded. I do not wish to see a hierarchy develop at the Wikipedia and certainly having a select group of people with this authority will create one. Additionally the decision to bestow this right on a given person could fuel dissent from those who feel "entitled" for whatever reason but have been "overlooked".

The three people with deleting authority (at present) are all Bomis Inc employees. The rule that "Bomis employee = deleting privileges" is simple and non-controversial. Three people should be more than adequate to handle the responsibilities. Anyone else can use wikipedia:Votes for deletion to direct admin people to these pages. - MMGB

I agree wholeheartedly, Manning. I would tell 'em to earn their keep, except that we're not paying them. -MichaelTinkler
I completely agree as well. Having some volunteers with deleting powers and others without would be disasterous, IMO. Leave such powers with the official administrators. --Stephen Gilbert

What you say makes a lot of sense. Right now, the deleting workload is minimal. By the time it's too much for Bomis employees, we'll be able to pay more people to work on the project, I imagine. (Right now the project doesn't even pay for me. :-) ) --LMS

Is it okay if we have Wikipedia policy/Pages which have been permanently deleted (or maybe Wikipedia/Page titles which have been permanently deleted)? It would be useful (and interesting) to know what's been permanently deleted; note that Magnus's software will give us this log automagically, if we want. --TheCunctator

I'd rather such a log was kept off-site, and where miscreants couldn't easily find it and simply ressurrect the deleted pages. - MMGB

I tend to agree, MMGB. I don't feel very strongly about this, but the risk of abuse by admins in deleting pages is far smaller than the risk of abuse by vandals of the information of what pages were deleted. The only reason to have the "deleted pages" list displayed is to let people know that everything is above-board, which is a really excellent reason. I don't really care if sober adults see what pages I've deleted, and indeed it might help the sense of openness the community naturally has, some small amount, if they can see what pages I've deleted. But, again, I'm not sure that is more important than removing the incentives to vandalism, which such a list might be. --LMS

Why don't we try it, and if it becomes an incentive to vandalism, we can take it down or change the situation? I'm glad you can see the merits of the proposal. --TheCunctator
I actually don't think the proposal has much merit. I really don't see what purpose the list would have. I also don't think that your personal page on Meta-Wikipedia is the place for such a list, Cunctator. Eh? --LMS
I do. Eh? --TheCunctator
I'm sorry you feel that way, C. I'm going to have to insist that you not use it for that purpose. --LMS

What about other Wikipedias? Who´s going to perform a "good practices code" on our pages? As we're quite "forgotten sons", who will take care of us? I mean, the Spanish one on which I´m working now, for instance, had suffered from vandalism on Basque Country pages, obviously related to the political status, and the evidence is still there. Are you going to look after our pages?.--Edgar

The problem with the other Wikipedias is that we don't speak those languages well enough to help; I think the best we can do, until we raise enough money to hire people to lead those projects, is to lead by example. I wish it could be different. --LMS

For each non-English Wikipedia, you could assign a Wikipedian or two who speaks that language fluently and who you can trust to delete pages there. -- SJK
If someone trustworthy wants to volunteer, sounds good. Could someone make appropriate changes to the non-English Wikipedias page and other relevant pages? --LMS

I think I want to strike rule number three:

Do not delete anything that might in the future become an encyclopedia topic. Hence, just because someone has written a completely worthless article about John Doe, that doesn't mean we should permanently delete the topic, John Doe, from the database.

Someone (I think Jimbo, at least) has made the point that, if we do not permanently delete blank articles from the database, others, working on topics that link to the blank article, might think that an article exists. Moreover, there really isn't any particularly good reason to save many archives for presently blank articles. Perhaps we could make a rule to the effect that if, in our opinion, the archive is for some reason valuable, we won't delete the blank article; otherwise (which means in most cases), we should.

What do you all think? Shall we strike it? I think we should. --LMS

I agree Larry. If the page is blank, I say delete it. However, I'd make an exception for blank pages which can sensibly be redirected to another page which has content. -- SJK

Hm, I just posted to wikipedia-l about that asking for a clarification. Koyaanis Qatsi, Saturday, April 6, 2002

Wouldn't Wikipedia:Policy on permanent deletion of pages be a better page title? I really don't care for the double wikipedia. This will be changed over by me if nobody objects. --maveric149

Well, I object -- this is a discussion of policy, not the policy itself... JHK 08:27 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

The main page certainly has the appearance of more or less settled policy — it's even protected. I agree with maveric149.

— Toby 11:08 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

(I'm separating the two distinct issues for clarity of presentation.)

Yes, the "Move page" feature's still resticted to sysops. — Toby 11:38 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Should it be? Some of these massive renaming projects would go a lot smoother using it; for one thing, edit histories wouldn't be divided over two pages. --Brion VIBBER 11:59 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I think the main reason it was originally restricted is that it was buggy and dangerous. If it proves to be more safe and reliable, I think unrestricting it would be fine. I'll ask the list, though. --Lee Daniel Crocker

It's certainly had some exciting bugs in the past, but seems to be safe now. Any additional bugs are only going to turn up if it gets used, so... --Brion VIBBER

Well, I just reported a bug with it. Not one that would have caused much harm if even an anonymous user had been involved, but we may want to gamma test (if that's the correct word) more first. In theory, however, I see no objection to Brion's implicit suggestion to open things up. — Toby 12:28 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Noted; I've submitted a fix for the bug, as yet untested. I dunno about anonymous users, but we might 'gamma test' it by opening it up to all logged-in users (just like image uploads). Keep banging on it and yell when it breaks... --Brion VIBBER

Suggestion for non-existing pages

I have a suggestion for deleted pages. After all, most other sites feel free to rearrange their content and have Googlers occasionally land on 404 pages. However, other sites usually give helpful links, whereas Wikipedia gives a cryptic "Describe the new page here".

With that in mind, I suggest that we alter the behaviour of the software when pages that don't exist are browsed. This would be just for pages accessed with a regular URL, "ghost" links and "edit new" pages are not affected. This would allow us to keep our database clean of redirects from old page names.

Text of requested page would read:

The page you have requested from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia does not appear to exist on the system.
It may have been moved to:
< insert results of a page title search on the URL text here, if the load on the server allows it >
You can try a search :
< insert search box here >
If the page does not exist, you can write it yourself ( suitable quick intro to the wiki concept & link to "welcome newcomers" )
Tarquin, please submit this to the Feature Requests tracker; it's a good idea and less likely to get forgotten there. --Brion VIBBER
Will do. -- Tarquin 09:10 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Bullet 6

This policy is vague, especially bullet 6. I think the policy should be the inverse: "Do not delete pages that can become an encyclopedia article in the future." Jeronimo

Second that opinion. There has been some movement to delete stubs, but I tend to expand more stubs than I create new articles, so it'll be hard to convince me of their redundance... -Ato
I think there must be some useful content to even consider a page an stub. If i go to the most wanted list, follow the first 100 titles and create pages that say "This is a most wanted article" i will eliminate them from the most wanted list, and create hundreds of links with no information. Those should be permanently deleted immediately, without even listing them in the votes for deletion page. However we should make sure that in the whole history of the page there is no information either. Newly created nonsensical pages would qualify to summary deletion. If this is discussed somewhere else,please point me there. AstroNomer
I agree. Delete no content entries on sight. --mav
discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/lag time

Mimos Berhard was deleted. It is not listed as being deleted on the deletion log but it is gone. (?)

I believe you mean Mimos Berhad, which is alive and well. --Brion 10:31 Oct 23, 2002 (UTC)
misspellings -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects