Wikipedia talk:Guide to deletion

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[edit] Easing server load, shortening the notice, and consolidating the guides

  • I've seen the following concerns expressed in various quarters:
    • The {{vfd}} tag is too long, and is suffering from instruction creep.
    • The VFD notice directs users to WP:VFD, which is slow to load, and mainly comprises raw VFD discussions, with a few notes at the top and nomination instructions at the bottom. This places a load on the servers that is unnecessary, when in the main people looking at VFD notices will be more interested in each specific article's own discussion and a guide to the jargon and what it all means, and not all of the currently outstanding VFD discussions in toto.
    • The explanation of VFD is scattered across the VFD notice, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases, the notes at the top of WP:VFD, and several talk pages. And there is some good advice and information that is simply VFD "oral tradition", that would benefit from being written down elsewhere than in various specific VFD discussions.
  • Therefore, as promised at the end of last week, here's my idea, which I will put in place in the absence of reasonable objections:
    • A short VFD notice, containing the bare minima of instructions, and hyperlinks pointing to three places:
      • The article's VFD discussion entry
      • The deletion policy
      • A guide to VFD
    • The elimination of much of the explanatory text from the top of WP:VFD, leaving just the navigational items. WP:VFD becomes "the page that you visit only if you want to see all of the outstanding discussions at once, navigate to a particular day's VFD log, or perform a nomination", and not "the page that you visit for anything to do with Votes for Deletion" nor "the page that novices first see when they try to find out more about a VFD notice applied to their article".
    • The aforementioned Wikipedia:Guide to Votes for Deletion (WP:GVFD), comprising a merger of the (secondary) instructions from the VFD notice, the instructions and warnings at the top of WP:VFD, various comments on various talk pages, and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion phrases.
  • Uncle G 18:06, 2005 Feb 23 (UTC)

[edit] Some thoughts

Wow! You have done some incredible work. I think this consolidation of our rules and traditions makes a great deal of sense. Thank you. I do have a couple of thoughts that I'd like to get a reaction on before I am bold. Rossami (talk) 05:31, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  1. I can't find a single topic that I think can be dropped but we should work on tightening up the wording over time. It's a long read.
  2. I do not consider a merge of content during the discussion period to be inappropriate. An attempted merger of good content can make subsequent votes much easier since it has shown whether or not a successful merger was possible. The merger can always be reverted (by any editor) if it turns out to have been a bad idea.
  3. I would like to bold the sentence Votes without rationales may be discounted.
    • Done by UncleG
  4. Should we add a comment to this general effect? "Every so often, someone will refactor a vote into "keep", "delete" and "other" sections, thinking that they are helping the process. Please refrain. The context and the order of the comments are essential to understanding the voters' intent. Refactoring actually makes the deciding admin's job much harder."
  5. Even though the BEEFSTEW guideline on schools is still in Dpbsmith's user space, is it getting enough use to be considered a viable guideline to include in the list in Rationales?
  6. On a purely stylistic note, the Xe (pronoun) style isn't working for me. I'd rather have the traditional (and I think still grammatically preferred) he/she.
    • I've reworded the neologisms to avoid the issue entirely; see the rant on my user page. (And echo the "wow". I'd been considering something similar (the past few 14-hour days of mindless work leaves plenty of room for such mulling), though I hadn't much progressed past "link Template:VfD header inside Template:vfd". This works much better.) —Korath (Talk) 12:43, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, it's a long read. But I did try to put the information that novices were most likely to need, or at least strong pointers to it, at the top. I've approximated, although not slavishly followed, summary style in the relative positioning of the sections (i.e. the detailed lists of shorthands are at the bottom), and within the sections. Uncle G 15:37, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)
  • The caution against merger was taken from a discussion on merger during deletion, and its effect on GFDL compliance, on one of the many talk pages. See the following section. Uncle G 15:37, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)
  • Upon re-reading the article yesterday, I wasn't convinced myself that I'd been positive enough on the topic of rationales. I've improved the wording, and emphasized that very sentence. I've also added a note about the refactoring. See what you think. Uncle G 15:37, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)
  • I looked at Dpbsmith/BEEFSTEW. I left it out because it doesn't yet appear to have the widespread support that the WikiProject Music, biography, and Web comics guidelines have. This is not to say that I wouldn't like to see guidelines on schools. Radiant! seems to be working on this. See User talk:Radiant!/Schools. Uncle G 15:37, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)
  • I see that Korath and I disagree on xe. I use it because, having discovered it (as something that fills what I've long seen to be a hole in the language), that now is my grammatical preference. (I used to use "him/her" and, on occasion, "they".) I find it most amusing that Korath's edits aimed solely to eliminate "xe" and "xyr" have in fact altered the meaning in several places, and thus make a good case against the oft-propounded argument that this deficiency in the set of pronouns can be worked around by rephrasing. I'll try to fix this. Uncle G 15:37, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)


[edit] Anons making nomination

The following text has a problem:

Anyone can make a nomination including anonymous users. The nomination, however, must be in good faith. Nominations that are clearly vandalism may be discarded.

Now that anons can't create a page, they can't complete a nomination. Either we should:

  • a) Tell anons they can't make a nomination (my preferred choice)
  • b) Explain how they can, which means telling them to put a tag, and have User:Crypticbot do it for them, or suggest some other approach, I might not be aware of.

Currently, the wording implies that anon nominations are no different from others, but this is clearly not the case. Regardless of how it should be reworded, it clearly does need rewording. --Rob 19:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I prefer the first, personally. We shouldn't encourage people to make broken nominations. I did a quick correction on the guide itself [1]: , so it's at least accurate now; we could possibly put in the usual 'registration is free, do it here' line as well. --Malthusian (talk) 19:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Anons have been permitted to nominate pages for deletion since at least the very first version of this guide. I see no reason to prevent them merely because of a side effect of a largely irrelevant policy change elsewhere. (Inspection of Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Archives shows that I'm hardly alone in that.) Trying to speedy-keep autobiographies of bit-part actors merely because an anon found it first is putting process over product to an unacceptable extreme. —Cryptic (talk) 19:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
The policy is that anons can't make new articles, right? Why not just see if developers are willing to implement this more precisely? A project-space page is not, after all, an article. Friday (talk) 19:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Or they can put their nomination on the article's talk page. (I have moved many such to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ subpages.) The restriction on anon page creation was to prevent low-quality material from being added to the encyclopedia, not from being removed. —Cryptic (talk) 20:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Redirect" option

Your opinion please in Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#"Redirect" option. Mukadderat 23:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why does this have to be so complicated?

OK look I made a page within my user space that needs to be deleted. It's "User talk:Nerd42/talk", which was replaced by Talk:User:Nerd42. So I have looked at, like, seven different pages and none of them seem to have a simple way to tell admins to delete the page. They're all about "the deletion process" and full of irrelevent links to "be nice to newbies" policy pages and all have more templates for dofferent reasons for deletion than a swiss army knife has blades. I just want to get a page deleted quick - and the "speedy deletion process" looks like it takes longer than the regular one. It's like, way too many lawyers hang out on Wikipedia, you know? A simple task like this has to become so complicated! :( --Nerd42 (talk) 04:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Add the text "{{db|Mistakenly created by user}}" at the very top of the page and an admin will hopefully delete it within a day or so. --Rob 05:26, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Rob, it's nice that you told Nerd42 that. BUT the point remains - I came here for the same reason and I found the answer in a talk page, which is subject to being archived. There should be a better place to go to for advice on how to remove pages from user space (specifically, your own user space). I know - I can ignore the page for ever... but really it would be nice to be able to find the answer to how to get your own user subpages / talk subpages deleted!Garrie 23:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
It is covered in the deletion policy through reference to speedy deletion criteria. See: WP:CSD#U1 by "{{dbuser}}". Seems straight forward enough to me. JERRY talk contribs 00:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] While Google section is absolutely necessary

The deletion template points specifically here to give me advice on deciding the fate of articles. Add to that the fact that a whole lot of people use google hits as their sole decision whether to vote delete or keep, and that signals me that a google section is absolutely necessary here. People are not adhering to this advice. Since the template points here, it should be here.

The arguments against the google section are all flawed. The only real argument that has been made is that google hits already has it's own article. But so does sockpuppets. So does assume good faith. Yet you are not deleting those sections. So, my question is, why is google hits less deserving of a section in this article? --MateoP 02:11, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency and clarity

I understand the position we're in now resulted from the above 2005 discussion about instruction creep. As a new Admin and a user since 2004, I have found it massively unclear how to navigate the AfD process. A new user above mentions the same thing, visiting three or more pages about about about AfD but not really explaining what to do. I have been editing the instructions at WP:AFD for brevity and I have found an enormous amount of duplication here. I am trying to cut that down, hopefully making the whole process much more transparent and easy for the new user to understand. Kaisershatner 16:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFD notice removal

Can someone point me to the policy and proper action for an author removing the AFD notice? TIA. - Keith D. Tyler (AMA) 17:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The proper action is to revert the removal and add a notice to the user's Talk page. The escalating templates {{drmafd}}, {{drmafd2}}, {{drmafd3}}, {{drmafd4}} and {{drmafd5}} can be helpful. They can be found at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace along with an equivalent series for the inappropriate removal of speedy-deletion templates. I don't know of anyplace where the practice is formally documented. Wikipedia works as much through tradition and social controls as through formally documented procedures. Rossami (talk) 19:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why is deleting articles so hard?

Why is it that any fool can create an new article in 30 seconds, but to delete an article takes a week of discussion? I understand that erasing an article and it's entire edit history should be hard. But why isn't there a simpler delete process that would leave the edit history in place? For example, why don't we simple blank inappropriate articles, or replace them with a template that would say something like 'Wikipedia does not currently have any such article. Click here to add content."? The closet we currently have (So far as I can tell, the closest current procedure would be to replace the page with a redirect, but that's only useful for redundant pages.

I rant because I keep running into pointless, obscure pages, and the entire AfD process is a pain. (Add this template here, then that template there, create this page, add that text, wait a week...) Nonsuch 22:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, Wikipedia:Transparent_deletion, Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system, and related discussions. There are many who wholeheartedly agree. ∴ here…♠ 20:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bullet re considerationof speed and prod before AfD nomination

I have added a bullet to the nomination section requesting people pleasee strongly consider if speedy or prod would be a better option. This is based on discussions raised on the AfD talk page about the ever increasing number of AfD that could/should have been done through one of the other processes. There are, on a regular basis, over 200 AfDs per day.--Gay Cdn (talk) (email) (Contr.) 12:58, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Interesting point. When in doubt, I usually go straight to AfD because I know people will actually look at what I put there. When I see people nominating AfD and writing "contested ProD", I wonder, why bother going through ProD? I'm not saying ProD shouldn't exist, but I don't find it useful. (YechielMan) 129.98.212.69 23:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge Wikipedia:Help, my article got nominated for deletion! here?

On Wikipedia talk:Help, my article got nominated for deletion! there is a discussion about merging that page into this one. // Habj 08:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


I think it would be a good idea to merge it, because the few times I've been trying to get around to editing anything, it's been a real headache. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mercynre (talk • contribs) 00:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Informing the creators is being ignored

This was crossposted and has little to do with the specific workings of this page. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Informing the creators is being ignored. The comments have already been moved. Please do not spam such complaints across multiple pages. Rossami (talk) 18:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't use the word "vanity"

I put in this edit per the discussion at WT:AFD and WT:BLP - in short, deletion discussions now get media attention, and despite robots.txt they seem to show up in searches anyway. Please rephrase less clunkily - David Gerard 11:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need a request for admin help in AFD closure template

Hypothetical: Suppose I am the creator of the The New Way Forward article. It gets put up for AFD, and as the discussion happens at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The New Way Forward, a consensus emerges to keep. Do I have to wait around for an administrator to come by, or is there a way to request an admin's help? The guide to deletion needs to address this. Incidentally, this wasn't really a hypothetical. Will somone please help? MPS 21:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Be patient. Except in a few exceptional cases, deletion discussions run for 5 days. At the end of the 5 day period, the discussion is moved into a closure queue where it may wait for a few more days until an admin volunteer comes along to close the discussion. Most times, that's fairly short but sometimes we get a backlog. Either way, there is no pressing need to prematurely close any given discussion. You can continue to edit and improve the article, link to it from other articles, etc. If the decision really was an unambiguous "keep", it will get closed out soon.
By the way, the Guide already says all this. See the Closure section. Rossami (talk) 01:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TOO COMPLICATED

Too many long pages to read when one simply wants to propose a deletion. Can't some expert rewrite this mess? Gbnogkfs 19 January 2007, 1:56 (UTC)

This guide isn't specifically focused on the process of starting an AfD, more on the general policy and process behind deletion. Instructions for starting an AfD can be found at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. --Sam Blanning(talk) 22:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do not delete the socom 4 page please

[edit] Absurdity is often complicated and ridiculous

This is absurd:

You may edit the article during the discussion You and others are welcome to continue editing the article during the discussion period. Indeed, if you can address the points raised during the discussion by improving the article, you are encouraged to edit a nominated article (noting in the discussion that you have done so if your edits are significant ones).

There are, however, a few restrictions upon how you may edit an article:

You must not blank the article (unless it is a copyright infringement).

This is being interpreted to mean that any sort of crap that might wind up in a Wikipedia article, must remain if the article is proposed for deletion. If it's not proposed for deletion, apparently I can blank anything that isn't appropriate for Wikipedia, but any sort of worthless garbage, calling other users name, posting a personal address on Wikipedia, posting my resume for a few days, as long as it is proposed for deletion, it cannot be blanked. Only copyright violations must be blanked. This is just crying out for WP:POINT. KP Botany 01:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it would be helpful if you gave some specific examples where you think this clause is being misused but I'll tell you that it was added to stop abusive edits.
Let me also clarify that pageblanking anything in Wikipedia other than a copyright violation or personal attack is almost always considered a form of vandalism. This clause does not prevent you from cleaning up the article. In fact, that's what the first section is intended to encourage. But complete pageblanking is almost never in good faith and is prohibited regardless of whether the page is under an active deletion discussion or not. The clause was specifically added because pageblanking is a frequent problem for nominated pages. Rossami (talk) 14:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned AfD page

An inexperienced user tried to nominate an article for deletion. He/she managed to make its AfD page, but not properly. It lacks the general structure of a typical afD page and is not transcluded, although the nominated article has an AfD template. I don't know how to deal with this case. Should the AfD page be deleted or should someone finalise the nomination? The nominator's argument are hardly met anymore, since I did edit the article and is now in much better shape than before the AfD template was was placed on it. Julius Sahara 18:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

A bot fixed it, so this is not an issue anymore. Julius Sahara 08:23, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivial Articles for Deletion Nominations

There should be an easier way to remove Articles for Deletion notices if a "Keep" consensus quickly develops. What's to stop vandals or annoying curmudgeons from nominating numerous articles for deletion and forcing everyone to view the notices for the long discussion periods? All these unhelpful and unsightly banners in Wikipedia seem like a way for power trippers for complain -- instead of fixing the articles. The "stub" notice at the bottom of short articles is nice because it is discrete and useful for categorizing: imagine if all short articles had an ugly banner at the top saying, "This article needs to be longer". Anthony717 21:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cruft in Shorthand

I'm concerned about the presence of the term "cruft" in the Shorthand section. I think it should either be removed, or modified to note that many people object to the use of the term as biased opinion, or otherwise do not find it acceptable. FrozenPurpleCube 15:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New suggestion:

I suggest the inverse: that Wikipedia:Help, my article got nominated for deletion! be merged with Deletion.-Marcus 17:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] help

hello guys, my article 2 years old is suddenly about to be deleted i read but i couldnt understand why or what to fix. if anyone could help me, i'll be grateful. my article is Beirut_IRC. thanks. stef —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Douaihy (talk • contribs) 11:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

Actually, your article has not yet been nominated for deletion. It's been tagged with a question about whether or not the subject meets our generally accepted inclusion criteria. In this case, I think the relevant criterion is WP:WEB.
If after reading up on that page you are sure that the subject meets our inclusion criteria, explain why on the article's Talk page (and maybe improve the article to make that clearer to future readers). If no one objects after a few days, remove the "notability" tag.
If you can't find evidence or if others dispute your evidence (or interpretation of WP:WEB), the article might then be nominated for deletion. You'll still have a chance to present more evidence during the deletion discussion if it gets that far. Good luck. Rossami (talk) 15:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion without discussion?

Several of the Max Headroom (TV series) episode articles were deleted. These are pages that I watch; however, I don't recall ever seeing a debate take place before the were deleted. Can articles be deleted without debate? How can I find if a debate occurred so that I can review it?--P Todd 22:49, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, pages that meet the Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion may be deleted on sight. The deletion reason should be logged, see Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted? on how to find out what happened. Femto 14:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editing during {{afd}}

This document currently has a section entitled: You may edit the article during the discussion.

IMO this section has a serious weakness. IMO it should warn the wikipedians who actually nominated the article they should keep their hands off, for the duration of the {{afd}}.

This last year or so I have participated in several {{afd}} where, after nominating an article for deletion, the nominator then went and made significant editorial changes, reverting my attempts to improve these articles.

I tried to point out to a few of these wikipedians that their nomination was a signal that they thought the article was beyond fixing, so further attempts to fix it could be perceived as bad-faith attempts to sabotage the efforts of those trying to improve the article.

Those nominators who made extensive edits after making their nominations, who were willing to respond to civil queries, claimed Wikipedia:Guide to deletion didn't proscribe their editing, or even recommend against it. This is, IMO, a weakness.

I raised this issue on WP:AN/I a couple of months ago. Most respondents repeated that the policy didn't explicitly prohibit nominators from editing. Some respondents suggested that I merely provide a link to the version of the article I favored. There are a couple of problems with this:

  1. This suggestion is totally unworkable for people who are trying to makes new changes to address the concerns expressed by those favoring deletion.
    • To follow this suggestion they would have to revert the article back to the last version they liked, then make their change, then record that diff in the {{afd}}. This is a lot of extra work. It would appear to be a violation of the 3RR.
    • And how would interested readers who were waiting to see how the improvements turned out know which version is the one they should look at? Far better if those who nominated the article for deletion refrained from making "improvements".
  2. This suggestion overlooks the extra level of effort this requires of {{afd}} respondents. And it overlooks that many {{afd}} participants don't read most of the other comments.

I am not questioning that nominators are entitled to delete personal attacks, or similar. But, IMO, they should not be making "improvements" to articles they gave up on. I have no problem with nominators who change their mind about whether an article they nominated for deletion can be improved. But, in that case, shouldn't they then withdraw their nomination to delete?

My suggested wording:

Remember, you should only nominate an article for deletion if you think the article cannot be improved. So, please be very careful about making edits to article being considered. Those edits can look like vandalism; like attempts to subert the efforts of those who have made efforts to change the article to a state that clearly merits preservation. If, after making a nomination for deletion, you change your mind, and see ways in which the article can be improved, consider withdrawing your nomination prior to making those improvements.

Cheers! Geo Swan 19:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion request notification

Currently, this guide states:

It is generally considered civil to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion.

This wording makes it dependent on each nominator's goodwill. Consequently, particularly the nicest editors end up spending the most time with menial tasks. (From my experience, depending on where you draw the border between "main" and non-main contributions, this can take more than an hour for a medium sized article.) I don't think that's fair. More importantly, we are creating a detrimental contradiction: If any deletion requests need notification, it would be the hasty ones. The current wording just achieves the opposite: It ensures that the more hasty a notification is, the less it will be reported!

I thought a bot could solve this dilemma, but when I brought it up on WP:BOTREQ#Deletion request notification, one of the bot specialists pointed out that "since it is [only] an optional step [...], I'd like to see more of a community mandate for such a bot before considering working on it." How does the comunity feel about it - Does the community agree on such a mandate?

If not, then I feel we should cut that step from our guide altogether. It simply doesn't make sense to ask a menial chore of our editors if we don't do our part to make that chore easier, fairer and more effective. Please let's discuss this here. — Sebastian 03:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I do not like the idea of bot-notification but that's on general principle - other than the reversion of extremely obvious vandalism, I see more problems with bots than good generally. On your more specific point of making the notification effectively mandatory, we've avoided that requirement not because it would be hard or time consuming but because it can have very negative effects on some discussions. For one thing, it reinforces a sense of ownership in the article, a tendency which we are strongly advised to resist as much as possible. It also brings into question the fairness of notification for any article with more than perfunctory edits after the first draft - do you notify the first drafter or the subsequent editor who added lots of detail. (Some have proposed solving that by notifying every editor to a page when it's nominated but that annoys the editors who made trivial wikification edits but who don't otherwise have a stake in the article and who don't want to be bothered by the subsequent edits.)
Relying on edit history also fails in that some people reading the page may feel they have a stake in the article even if they didn't make major edits to it. What makes the original author's opinion any better than theirs?
Then there's the mechanical question of anon editors - do you notify them or not. If not, the ones who edit from a stable IP cry foul. But if you do, you confuse the subsequent editors to shared or dynamic IPs.
Ultimately, however, all the prior discussions about notification boiled down to one observation. If you care that much about an article that you want to have a say in its fate, you should watchlist it. Watchlists are one of the first things new users learn and they're heavily "advertised" within the Wikipedia system. If you don't care enough to watchlist the page, why would you care any more with a Talk page notification? If you care enough about the page to have it watchlisted, then whether you authored, edited or merely read the page, you'll be automatically notified of any normal deletion tagging. Rossami (talk) 03:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Relying on watchlists is an attitude very unfriendly to new users, who may very well not know about this system--and it is them in particular who are the problem. It is truly incredible to me and has been since the say I joined WP, that WP has a policy that does not absolutely automatically notify everyone when action is being taken to delete an article they have written via any process. Basic fairness requires notifying people of advice actions against them. Failing to do so is BITE, and i urge the community to disavow to require at least this very minimal level of politeness.
I would be perfectly willing to support absolutely required manual notification.. The wording to should immediately be changed to require it, and the simplest way to require it is to have the failure to do so lead to invalidation of the afd nomination. . Any editor who fails to notify people when he is taking actions they affect their work adversely does not have enough consideration for other editors to remain on wikipedia.
The various tools for placing afds could easily be adapted to do this. But some people think it too much work, and if that is the general feeling, then we need a bot, and will learn to tolerate its occcasional excess and inconvenience. Details about anons, many multiple authors, etc. could be worked out later.

The first step is to immediately change the wording to replace "It is generally considered civil to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion." with "It is absolutely necessary to notify.... Failure to do so invalidates the nomination. The only reasonable question is to we prefer to require it manually, or must we use a bot.

And I would say just the same for all other deletion processes. DGG (talk) 04:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
You raise one interesting point: WP:BITE. IIRC, then our default for newbies is indeed that both "Add pages I create to my watchlist" and "Add pages I edit to my watchlist" are turned off. I think we should solve problem at the root by changing these defaults, rather than by adding yet another layer of complexity. — Sebastian 20:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Having examined the technical aspects involved in coding such a bot as well as the "applicability" of such a bot, I've come up with a few thoughts for your consideration regarding this matter.

First, I look at what is likely the most important question: Is an AFD notification bot acceptable or unacceptable? There are a couple of "compromise" answers to this question. In all, I can think up the following responses to the question:

  1. A notification bot is not only acceptable but it is necessary.
  2. A notification bot is acceptable but not necessary.
  3. A notification bot is unacceptable.

If the consensus of the community follows the first answer, then it naturally follows that the wording of our deletion procedures must be changed to reflect the fact that notifications are mandatory and automatic.

If the consensus follows the last answer, then nothing need change. —This is part of a comment by Arkyan , which was interrupted by the following:

I disagree. In that case, the wording needs to change, since it is counterproductive, as pointed out at the beginning of this section. — Sebastian 20:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I bring up the second "compromise" possibility because there are a couple of other approaches. A bot could be written to do AFD notifications with an opt in/opt out feature. If the bot were set to run by default, a nominator could place an opt-out template in the nomination instructing the bot not to issue notifications, to allow the nominator to do it manually or to skip it altogether. The bot could also be set to not notify by default, but allow a nominator to place an opt-in template in the nomination and instruct the bot to issue automated notifications.

Naturally, if a bot is made to do this, it must include a global opt-out "blacklist" to which a user could add their name and request not to be notified of AFD's via bot at all.

Finally, if there is consensus for such a bot, it needs to be decided as to what scope the bot will notify people. Shall it be anyone who has made a non-trivial (not marked minor) edit? Should it include IP contributors? Should it just be contributors from the last 500 edits? Should it always include the original author?

Adding this functionality to my bot would not be difficult and I'd be up to the task if there is consensus as to its utility. If it hasn't already been done, those interested in such a bot should consider bringing this up at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process, Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy and/or Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) to generate a broader dicussion - I'm not sure how many watch this talk page. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 18:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again for your thorough reply. I brought it up on the various locations. — Sebastian 20:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't see much point in having this bot-operated. How will the bot determine who is a "significant contributor?" What if the original author hasn't touched the article since? What about a new user who just did some work on the article? There's going to be a lot of variables there. And would the "opt in/opt out" process be on a per-user basis or a per-page basis? The former would generate a lot of "false hits" for notifying, while the latter might be a more heavy burden on the bot/servers -- Kesh 20:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Why is notification required for the creator or major editors? If they are interested in the article it should be on their watch list so they are already informed about the deletion request. Vegaswikian 20:15, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you, personally - but the request had been made so I brought up some thoughts about it here. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Android Mouse used to run a bot that would inform article creators of speedy-deletion nominations. Unfortunately, he's left Wikipedia.--Father Goose 01:36, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Making it deliberately harder to request deletions

(Headline was inserted after the following message)

I concur with mandatory notification, though with some limits to keep the task manageable. There are too many users out there making ill-considered nominations, and requring them to spend a little extra time can help weed out the frivolous nominations. As an option, we can require the nominee to inform just the creator, one or two major contributors from recent months, and then the projects involved. THis will only be about 4-6 notifications total, which should be manageable for anyone serious editor. Re: the watchlists, I lost my entire watchlist a couple of months back, and have still not foud all the articles I was originally watching before the inadvertant list clearing. Also, there have been times where I've cleared a watchlisted page by accident, and then realized it afterward, so it's possible there were some I never caught. Still, my experience in the deletion process is that courtesy is generally extremely lacking among many regular deleters; if it were not, this wouldn't be an issue. Anyone who lacks the courtesy to discuss a matter before proposing a deletion that affects a well-edited page, or a template on 4000 articles, or who AFDs an article 2 minutes after its creation (I have seen all these examples, and can provide proof), is not likely to voluntarily take the time to notify anyone if they are not required to do so. - BillCJ 23:43, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea, to deliberately not use a bot in order to weed out the frivolous nominations. I'm inserting a subheadline before your reply to highlight it. I think it deserves discussion, and I'm afraid that discussion could get complicated, since there are two groups of questions:
Detail and execution questions such as
Who will check this for every deletion request? What are the sanctions if someone doesn't do it? Will we simply delete the request or warn the editor, or are there better ideas?
There are also bigger picture questions, such as
Do we really want to make it hard to request normal deletions? (Some people may say we already have too many bad articles.) Should they be harder to request than speedy deletions, or should speedy deletions also become harder to request? If so, will they remain speedy? Are there other ways to achieve the same goal? Maybe we could demand something else from the requester that's less of a boondoggle, such as research where text comes from, or spending some time backing up the case for deletion.
— Sebastian 00:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I oppose mandatory notification. AfD is an open discussion for the whole community. An article must be judged on its own merits. Notifying the creator, major contributors, and/or involved Wikiprojects, is far more likely to create a one-sided number of participants (those with a predefined interest in keeping the article), instead of attracting a number of uninvolved, more neutral editors. For a process that is based on consensus building, having mainly non involved editors in the discussion is a plus. If people want to take the effort to notify the creator and so on anyway, I'll not stop them of course, but I don't see the need to do so, and I don't think making the deletion of articles any harder (and every step added will stop some people of making nominations, both the frivolous and the very worthy ones) is the way to go. For a ProD, notification is the right thing to do because there is no open discussion of these articles, and the chance is that no one takes a look at them except the nominator and the closing admin. An AfD is open for everyone to see, and that should be enough. Let's not make this any more bureaucratic. Fram 07:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I've seen a bot create user notifications for speedy deletions. That appears sensible, because the article usually has only one contributor, and they could be new to Wikipedia. Bots for AfD notifications seem excessive and unwise. Keeping an article on your watchlist says that you care enough about it to monitor it. If you don't, why should you be notified? I'm also concerned about the possible vote-stacking effect mentioned above, that contributors may be summoned back to defend something they had lost interest in. Also, this is going to fill up a lot of people's Talk pages with AfD notices. If you are tired of wading through zillions of image notices in other people's Talk pages, wait till this bot starts its work. EdJohnston 15:05, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I'd still support a mandatory notification of the article's creator during an AfD, but no other authors. The initial contributor may be new and doesn't know how to watchlist pages; nobody should be blindsided by the disappearance of their contributions. If we notify page creators of a speedy or prod, we should do the same for an AfD.--Father Goose 17:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I assume your last sentence was not meant as a logical "if ... then" clause, but as a mere figure of speech. You can very well do one without doing the other, as Fram just pointed out nicely in their undisputed point above. However, I think your point about newbies merits further consideration; let's start another section for it. — Sebastian 18:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I am strongly opposed to any mandatory notification of creator, major contributor, etc. It just opens up a silly process loophole if people forget to notify. The creator, if not notified, even if they know about the AFD can just wait until its over, the article gets deleted and the creator goes to DRV - "I was never notified" - the article gets undeleted and we have to go through the whole AFD again or we have to go through a DRV debate. This is a volunteer project, we can't make people do anything; we have a hard enough time getting people to not do things. Also, as far as a notification bot goes, that would be a good idea and I believe we had something like that in the past but it broke or its creator left. Someone may want to check the list of bots and their tasks to see if the creator can be contacted to get the code to save time in making a new bot. Mr.Z-man 18:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
The bot, as I noted above, was User:Android Mouse Bot 2, but Android Mouse has left the project. As for the "if...then", what I'm saying is that if we think it's reasonable to notify page creators of speedies and prods, we should notify them of AfDs as well. But no auto-notification of anyone besides the page creator -- everyone else should just watchlist the page if it's important to them.--Father Goose 20:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I stand in strong opposition to any mandatory requirement for notification. It is just an invitation to wikilawyering. Encouragement of notification is fine. Community consensus as demonstrated by practice is that there is no requirement to notify anybody. Until the community actually starts demonstrating routinely notifying people, it simply is not a policy or guideline, regardless of any pages that may now or in the future say otherwise. Civility is a guideline, but the practicality of figuring out who the main editors are makes notification of principle editors impractical of implementation for many articles. (On the other hand, the "SPA removed the PROD" sub-category of AFD noms it is both fairly obvious that 1) the SPA is the main editor and 2) they are watching the article and don't need a notice.) Projects that want to monitor pages in the project can do what Wikiproject Mathematics does, namely have a bot that monitors articles in their topical area and logs the nominations on a central page. Editors (and read only users) can watchlist. GRBerry 20:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Android Mouse Bot was for speedy deletion, that bot has since been taken over by one of ST47's bots. Jayden54Bot was the bot I was thinking of, inactive since May. Mr.Z-man 21:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Ah, good. Would there be opposition to extending User:CSDWarnBot's mission to notifying creators of AfDed and prodded articles? (Or running a similar bot which would do just prods and afds?) This would take care of the newbie-biting issue without creating extra bureaucracy.--Father Goose 22:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I remain uncomfortable with it on the philosophical grounds that it incorrectly reinforces a false sense of ownership. Creators of the article have no greater (or lesser) say in the fate of the article than any other editor. Singling the first editor out for special notification seems inconsistent with the philosophy of a wiki. I also think it would be unnecessary if we changed the watchlist default as was previously suggested. (I suspect that the watchlist approach would have the added benefit of consuming fewer system resources than the notification approach.) Rossami (talk) 00:27, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
WP:OWN is I not think relevant--people should have a chance to defend their work. At AfD, the community decides. More important, the ideal Afd results in a challenged article being substantially improved. Usually for the sort of articles that show up at Afd, the best person to do that is the original creator. Do we want primarily to get rid of articles, whether or not they are improvable, or to give them the best chance for improvement? And failing to find sources after a challenge and fair opportunity is the best way to make it clear that deletion is necessary. Every reasonable way to involve editors should be encouraged. DGG (talk) 01:28, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Hear, hear.--Father Goose 03:11, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
"Reinforces a sense of ownership"? I'd have to describe that as speculation. Is there even a means by which that would happen?
It would be ridiculous to inform all editors, and difficult to consistently determine who the "primary contributors" were. So informing only the first editor is a practicality. In cases where there was only one primary contributor, the first editor is exactly the person we want to inform, as other editors are not likely to have the page watchlisted, and it also helps to avoid biting the newbies. In cases where there were many editors, informing the first editor will be less necessary, but it still won't hurt.--Father Goose 01:41, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BITE

We haven't found agreement on what to do about the argument "The initial contributor may be new and doesn't know how to watchlist pages; nobody should be blindsided by the disappearance of their contributions." Indeed, since our default for newbies is that both "Add pages I create to my watchlist" and "Add pages I edit to my watchlist" are turned off, we get a lot of such disappointments. Wouldn't it be an easier solution if we changed these defaults, rather than working around the problem with additional policies or bots? — Sebastian 18:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I think at the very least flipping the page creation default to the opposite would be helpful, probably also the "pages I edit". It won't actually matter until they click on the "my watchlist" link, but at least the pages would be on the watchlist when they do. GRBerry 20:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
By "It won't actually matter", I assume you just mean that they have to be aware that they have a watchlist. This gives me an idea: I know the idea of a welcoming bot was not welcome (excuse the pun), but how about a "page creator notification bot"? This bot could add an unassuming, neutral message along the following lines: "This is an automatic message. You just created article X, and since you seem to be a new user, you may find the following tips helpful ...". This would serve two purposes: It could help newbies by covering such bits of information as a tip to check the watchlist and set the preferences accordingly, and, if the newbie's first creation was some vanispamcruftisement, it would alert other talk page visitors to that fact. (This would e.g. have helped me yesterday when I made a bit of a fool out of myself by first greeting a newbie, then cleaning up after their most recent changes (thus to some extend "legitimizing" the article) before realizing that the whole article was created by that same account, which was only created for that purpose.) — Sebastian 21:14, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
A new idea and a good one. why dont we try it--along with changing the watchlist default. (and without prejudice to other things, because notification is a boon to all occasional users)DGG (talk) 02:55, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusion

The discussion has died down, so let me summarize what I gathered from it so far:

  • There is no consensus for a deletion request notification bot; the majority opposes such a bot.
  • There is no consensus for mandatory notification; the majority opposed it.
  • The need to help newbies in some way has been stressed by several editors, with no objection.
  • A helper bot for newbies that just created a new article has been proposed; one supporter, no opposition. Since this is only indirectly related to the topic of this page, I will try and find a better place for it - how about WT:Wc/WEL?
  • There is no consensus for the current wording; it seems to be the result of a compromise between those who want mandatory notification and those who oppose it. To me, this seems a false compromise since it takes the worst of both extremes, so I would like to find a better solution. — Sebastian 06:09, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
I do not conclude from the limited discussion here that there is no consensus more generally. DGG (talk) 01:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Category:Guantanamo Bay detainees

Posted to Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion as well, simply because I'm not sure where this is appropriate.

Hello, I've been looking through Category:Guantanamo Bay detainees, and I'm fairly concerned about it. Virtually all of these people are allegedly "notable" for a sole event: having been captured by the United States government for alleged terrorism or terror-related activities. Nearly every single article, hundreds of them, is the same. I sent three to AfD yesterday (I could have merged them all into one AfD but I wanted each reviewed independently in case I was mis-reading things):

I would venture, from reviewing at least 50 casually today, that

  1. WP:BLP1E applies in virtually all cases. The articles are not biographical in any real sense.
  2. Each is allegedly "notable" for having been captured by the US government.
  3. All sourcing is functionally primary-only.

I compared it on the AfDs to, "the article is functionally a reprinting of the US allegations towards this man who may or may not be a terrorist, who may or may not be guilty of something. We can't tell, since there are no 3rd party RS about him, just primary sources from the US government. In essence, this is the equivalent of writing an article about a crime suspect, sourced to nothing at all but official documents about the crime released by the prosecuting state attorney."

I think that per our policies as I've read them, we could conceivably delete hundreds of these BLP violating articles on non-notable people under AfD. However, I'm not sure how best to approach this. Virtually every single article was created by User:Geo Swan, and he already seems somewhat annoyed at me for having processed AfDs on a few of these articles. I'm not sure if launching an AfD with over 600+ articles is the right way to do this, but these articles seem to be inappropriate for us to have.

My questions: what should we do with this? Sending them off to AfD a few at a time each week would be pointlessly slow, repetitive, and just lead to hours of repeated statements (again, each article is the same basically--insert a new name, with a minority having different traits and sources). Speedy deleting out all articles in the category would be bad, as I would venture something like 5%-10% would certainly pass AfD and would require inspection. Should I just review each, make a massive list, and then send them all (easily over 200-400 articles) to one very long-running AfD? Any advice would be appreciated. • Lawrence Cohen 17:39, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Please keep the discussion in one place. This page is the discussion page for our guide to deletion, and your question is not about something in the guide, but about articles you want deleted. Therefore, Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#Category:Guantanamo_Bay_detainees is the more appropriate place. — Sebastian 17:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I looked at the three AfDs that Lawrence mentioned above. They are attracting the same comments from a number of editors. Opinions appear to be split. I think it would be better if you would extract the common concerns, summarize them, then start a Wikipedia:Centralized discussion that would be widely advertised, for example at WP:VPP and WP:AN. Ask people to respond to the concerns in detail and try to converge on a solution. If there is apparent consensus that all similar articles should be deleted, at that point you could ask on WP:AN how best to do it. If there is no consensus that the articles are inappropriate, then give up your plan and allow the articles to exist. EdJohnston 17:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll begin drafting up something along these lines this week. • Lawrence Cohen 15:54, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] All Too Eager

You harpies and vultures are in far too big a hurry to tag for deletion, to pounce on every infraction - even while someone is actively editing the story! In doing so, you create edit conflicts that cost us our efforts. (a flaw in the way Wiki's editing works, to be sure.) I suggest there be at least a day or two before you folks can even start in with your razors. This wouldnt' exist at all without our contributions, so back up a bit and give us some room to work, will ya? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Falc (talk • contribs) 00:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

While I concur with your sentiments, having seen a page nominated after existing only two minutes, there is a way to recover your work in edit conflicts. (It took me a few times to figure this out, and a bunch of lost work too!) On the edit conflict screen, there are two separate text/edit boxes - the first one is the other edit, and the second one has your work. Just go into the second box, and copy your changes, then go back to the main edit page, and paste in your work. Ta-da! THis may be a little more complicated if you made changes in several places, but at least all your work is thee. - BillCJ 00:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed template change

I'm proposing an additional category in the Template:Editabuselinks to reduce the number of posts at WP:AN and WP:AN/I, please feel free to comment here User:Mbisanz/TemplateSandbox. MBisanz talk 13:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Guide to deletion, or list of rules when to delete?=

This page does not give a clear guide for moving an article on its way to deletion. I found an article that clearly needed to be deleted but could not figure out how to go about doing it from this page, which was the first that came up when I searched through Wikipedia. I only learned bunch of classifications of when an article should or should not be deleted. Could someone please redo this article so it is more clear how to go about nominating an article for deletion. Either that or rename the article something more appropriate to its content like when articles should be deleted. I'm just saying this page isn't a guide to deletion. Mathman1550 (talk) 20:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

If you have already decided that a page clearly does not meet Wikipedia's goals and should be deleted, then you need the section titled Deletion process which will give you some sense of the three basic processes. I'm guessing that this is your first nomination and that you probably want the Articles for deletion process. The mechanics of starting that process are on the bottom of the AfD page.
This page was never meant to be a pure mechanics page. It's commentary about the deletion process that has grown up over time but which would overwhelm the page if you tried to cram it all back into the AFD page header. It covers everything from an overview of the entire process (of which the nomination is a remarkably small part) through what should or should not be deleted to proper ettiquette during deletion discussions. If you can improve it, be bold. But please don't cut content down to just the mechanics. For one thing, there are too many variations depending on which process you need. For another, those are already better stated elsewhere. Rossami (talk) 21:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
For a first-time deleter, this article is way too much to swallow, and yes all I really needed was the section 'deletion process'. I just think the title guide to deletion would make more sense as guidelines for deletion, since that is mostly what this page is about, IMO. Mathman1550 (talk) 23:39, 1 May 2008 (UTC)