Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion/Archive 1

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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.

Contents

Answers to expected objections

Won't this make it too easy to delete anything?

No, because if a single person disagrees with the deletion, the article won't get deleted.

Won't this make it too hard to delete anything?

Simple analysis of AFD shows that 80% of nominations are not controversial, and are either clear-cut deletes or clear-cut keeps. This page simply does the same with less overhead. It's possible that someone will go veto-ing every nomination, but that's hardly a constructive approach.

So how do we deal with controversial deletes, or socks?

Good question. For the present, I'd suggest to throw those on WP:AFD after this process fails to handle them. I'd be happy to hear other suggestions. Controversial deletes are, by definition, controversial, so a good process to handle them is going to be tricky.

Isn't this redundant or m:instruction creep?

It's not instruction creep because it's significantly simpler than just about anything else I've seen proposed. It's a bit redundant, but there are substantial objections to AFD as it is now, so offering a simple alternative would be a good thing.

Isn't it out of process to use PROD to delete things?

See, that would be instruction creep. Wikipedia isn't about process. This page deletes articles if nobody objects to the deletion. As such, it will not delete worthwhile articles. If you see an article listed here, judge it on its merits, not on whether the process is valid.

Isn't this new process being implemented too fast?

No. It's been discussed to death several times for at least half a year. There are at least three older proposals that in essence are the same as this one, only somewhat more complex. We can discuss for another half year, or we can go for a test run for a chance.

Discussion

  • I think this is a possibly good idea. I would favor this proposal, and I would be willing to watch the log files. However I think there needs to be some showing of consensus behind this procedure before it goes live. if there is none I will undelete any page deleted via this process as an out-of-process deletion, and brign the matter to WP:DRV as an unsantioned speedy delete. DES (talk) 17:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • As an impementation detail I think {{prod}} should apply a category to pages tagged,a s another way to find all such pages. DES (talk) 17:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • It does. Feel free to edit the template. Radiant_>|< 17:26, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I should have checked. This looks good. Before a live test there should be some text on the category page explaining its purpose, IMO. DES (talk) 17:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I have posted pointers to this page from the village pump's policy and proposals sections. DES (talk) 17:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Thank you. It's also on CENT and RFC/P. Radiant_>|< 17:37, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Looks good; it should decrease the load on AFD, at the least. (It'll probably also decrease the signal-to-noise ratio there, since a greater portion of AFD noms will be controversial bloodbaths). —Kirill Lokshin 17:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Should a person who objects to the reason for deletion specified, but feels that no change to the article is needed (for example a dispute over notability) be encouraged to register that objection on the log page in addition to (or instead of) simply removing the template? Should the template provide a link to the log page for that purpose? should it perhaps provide a link in any case so that someone adding the template can then just follow the link to log the reason for the proposed deletion? I know you want to keep this bare-bones simple, do you think this adds too much complexity? I don't think so. Alternatively, an objection could be noted on the article's talk page. DES (talk) 17:38, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • (should they register objection on the log page) Yes, I'd say that's useful. Also, noting anything on the article's talk page is good. (should the template link to the log) Would be nice; this requires a bot to modify the template at midnight, but that shouldn't be a problem. Radiant_>|< 17:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Or the link could be to a central page that trancludes or links to all current log pages, then no need to alter the template, just the central page. If the template is not to use subst: altering it every day could add server load. if it is suppose to sue subst, someone will mess that up, but not too often I hope. DES (talk) 17:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Created a link to the log, from the template. Radiant_>|< 17:49, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Good. I think this will work well. DES (talk) 17:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I love this idea. I'll be glad to take part in its test. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 17:44, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I like the idea too - hopefully as many people will watch this as watches AFD, so that articles don't drown. Seems worthwhile to try, though. Sam Vimes 17:48, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I note that Template talk:Prod currently redirects to this page. Before this goes live that page should have usage notes for the tempalte, with a link here, IMO. DES (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I see that has been changed. Thank you. DES (talk) 18:25, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Question: I realize that we do need to assume good faith here, but what prevents an article's creator from removing the tag in bad faith? --Andy Saunders 18:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Nothing. It just means that if you still want the article deleted, you have to go through a full afd. —Cryptic (talk) 19:00, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Then I don't see how this new process will help any. If anything, I think that it will cause users wanting delete to be more annoyed due to having to go to AfD because of another user's acting in bad faith. --Andy Saunders 19:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
        • If you look over WP:AFD you will note that in by far the most cases, the original author of a page does not vote against its deletion. Radiant_>|< 19:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Go for it. I'm sure the idea isn't perfect, but what we've got now is completely broken and this can only be an improvement. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This is similar to Uncontested deletions and I'm very much in favor of a live trial. The point is that a significant amount of deletions are uncontested even by the articles creator, so the more we can do to reduce the amount of work it takes to delete articles that will not receive any support at AFD the better. Rx StrangeLove 20:40, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I like this idea and, as long as there's any spark of contestement, the article goes to AfD, this should streamline things nicely. I support a live trial of this. Reducing AfD volume would give people more time to think about the harder cases. Strong support of this idea, I'm willing to help by tagging some new articles this way, (not an admin so can't delete anything...) and by working to improve some that might be on the list that I think are savable or mergable, and... major kudos to those that have been working on this idea! ++Lar: t/c 21:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This is a nice idea since it would hopefully reduce the clutter over at AfD. I think having a log system of some sort would be smart in order to check for articles were people remove tags maliciously/without reason. I'd support a trial run of this proposal. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 22:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I liked the idea at first, but then worries began to creep in. In many cases, I think, the fate of an article would depend wholly upon the self-appointed people who scan the logs (I'd probably be one of them, but the same applies to me). Many editors edit irregularly and less frequently than every five days, and they're often the editors who are interested in less well-known subjects. Now, that can affect AfDs, of course — so that the effect of this proposal will boil down to this: the AfD system defaults to "keep", this system defaults to "delete". As an inclusionist with regard to articles on people and a mergist/deletionist with regard to many other types of article, I'd be worried about the shift of emphasis. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • It really defaults to "keep" in a way: anyone, for no reason at all, is allowed to remove the {{prod}} and keep it off forever. If they like, some prod-scanners can err on the side of removing the tag if they're in doubt. But if numerous people come by and all of them think there's no reason to save an article, I think it should be pretty clear it should be deleted. --Interiot 22:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Good point, but we already have people scanning the deletion logs to restore and improve speedies with potential. I don't think a lack of watchers is going to be problematic; this proposal has been up for scant hours and we've already got five. Radiant_>|< 23:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Mel Etitis writes, "Many editors edit irregularly and less frequently than every five days, and they're often the editors who are interested in less well-known subjects." I agree and would be more comfortable with a longer window or this proposal in conjunction with Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system. --Craig Stuntz 17:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It seems like one of the selling points is that it'd remove the clutter from the AfD log. Isn't there a better way of removing clutter, say having two categories, "obvious deletion" and "deletion", but both having the same process? The best way of verifying that someone is watching is by having them voting. Andjam 00:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • First off, AFD is not a vote. And second, if something is "obvious deletion" then no debate is needed, we can just delete it. On AFD, one "watcher" is not enough to save an article. On PROD, it is. And we have several watchers already (on mainpage), not including the tagger and the bagger. Radiant_>|< 01:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This is a great proposal. I personally have some articles in my watchlist that I have meaning to put in process for deletion. I haven't yet because AfD is such an ordeal and was waiting to gather a few more so I only have to keep track of the AfD disscussions for seven days instead of spreading it out. I will now wait for Feb 4th! --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • You probably know I've been a fan of simplifying deletion. Thank you for taking the initiative and coming up with a proposal that it looks like people will support. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:37, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This seems like a very good idea. Something has to be done to save AfD and reduce the mindshare obvious deletions take up. Thinking long-term, this is really only a first step towards dealing with an ever-increasing influx of junk pseudocontent. For instance, articles that consist only of a single external link ought to be zapped by bots, because even the speedy deletion process still requires the attention of multiple human users. I would like to spend more time creating needed content, but my sense that all hands are required to bail out the ocean of crap washing over the gunwales keeps me on newpages patrol a lot.Ben Kidwell 04:53, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I appreciate this project, though FWIW I choose to stick with {{db-copyvio}}, {{db-nonsense}}, {{db-empty}}, {{notability}}, {{merge}} and, for obvious spamvanity, send it immediately to AfD. Regards, --Perfecto 17:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Oh wait. Wow, I'll try this instead of {{importance}}! --Perfecto 17:33, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the log page

  • I expect that some experienced SEO people might wise up, and will make it a habit to check back 6 hours later to remove the template (and will do so without giving any explanation why their article might not fit the deletion criteria). But this proposal would still greatly lessen the burden on AfD.           Regarding Step #2 (appending the reason and article to the relevant deletion log page), it would be even easier if that could be automated somehow. I could (and probably will) write a toolserver page to track new additions to Category:Proposed deletion, that extracts the reason from the original page. But the toolserver isn't always up, and one of the monobook.js people could probably write an on-wiki version too (though a js on-wiki version wouldn't automatically remove items from the list). --Interiot 18:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Hm. I think we should certainly try this, not least because it isn't too contentious. I still wonder that it does not save a lot of time. You still have to tag, list, and give reason - only one less action than AfD - and if the thing becomes contested then you still have to go through AfD all over again. I much prefered my simpler proposal at Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Proposals/Uncontested deletions. However, if we all wait on consensus for our favoured scheme, we'll do nothing. Try this, if it roughly works, I'd like us to revisit my proposal. --Doc ask? 18:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Like Interiot and Doc, I also think steps 2 and 3, implementing a centralized logging page, are misguided - their afd equivalent, steps II/III at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#How to list pages for deletion, breaks very very frequently (I clean up about fifteen per day with Crypticbot, out of about 200 total nominations). Why have this central log page at all? We keep the centralized AFD pages to deal with people who remove the tag, but that's enough to end a proposed deletion in itself. Articles using this process should be tagged with their reason in the edit summary or as an argument to the template (or both). Then the article's talk page can be used to discuss the reason if someone removes it, or if someone's leaning toward removing it.

    The purely mechanical task of finding which articles are ready for deletion can be solved by sorting either Category:Proposed deletion or a secondary Category:Proposed deletion by time by, er, time. This can be done using a sort key of {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}}-{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTMONTH}}-{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>Twodigit {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTDAY}}}} {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTTIME}}; this makes it so that the template has to be substed, but I think that's a far lesser evil than having pages being tagged but unlisted for weeks or months as used to happen with afd.

    (I also think this would work well for afd as a whole—most things that happen to an article get discussed on the talk page... but if deletion is to be on the table, it has to go to a different page in the Wikipedia namespace, which is maintained through a very clunky, instruction-creep-riddled process, and where nothing except whether to delete is officially on the table; it forces people to look at the article at least once before tacking on a "delete per nom"; and if the article's changed after someone comments on deletion on the talk page, it'll show up on their watchlist—but that's another matter entirely.) —Cryptic (talk) 18:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

    • That is a good point. I have no objection to simply having a daily category instead (which after all is self-updating). Another advantage is that this forces all discussion regarding the article to the article's talk page, as there isn't any other place. More judging the articles on their merit. Radiant_>|< 19:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • The suggestion is to have the category sort key be the date, rather than a separate category for each day. And I strongly support this suggestion as well. --Interiot 19:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Though if the sort key is "2006-01-27" (see User:Interiot/Sandbox/deleteme1), then in the category view, it shows up under the heading "2", which is much less optimal than I'd hoped for. However, it does make toolserver tools significantly easier to write (because the sort key is easily queried), and the toolserver view would of course display the full sort key. --Interiot 19:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Then shall I propose Wikipedia:Proposed deletion/Log for deletion? :) — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 19:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Sort key should probably be per day of the month; pages aren't going to be in this category for a month, let alone a year. Radiant_>|< 19:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
          • (via two edit conflicts) At best, that'll leave them displayed under "0" for the first ten days of the month, then "1" for 10-19, "2" for 20-29, and "3" for 30 and 31. It'll also break slightly when the month changes; articles listed as "01" and "02" will be sorted as if they were older than those listed on "29" and "30".

            The reason I had the full date and time in my proposal above was so that people could always find the newest articles added to the category by going directly to the end. If we don't mind sacrificing that, we could use categories like [[Category:Articles proposed for deletion on {{CURRENTYEAR}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}]] (with the appropriate includeonly/subst magic so that it gets substed when the main template does); this lets us sort by day for the deleting admins on the back end, while maintaining an alphabetic sort order with proper headers for the folks watching the category for articles to rescue. I still think a double-category solution (one sorting by PAGENAME, the other by date and time) is best, though, in which case the header name doesn't matter. —Cryptic (talk) 19:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

            • Showing "0" for the first ten days, "1" for the next ten, etc. still is very suboptimal, and makes it a pain to search for the cut-off point where admins can start deleting pages. The only way is to guess at a point, go into the article, edit the article and find the date at the bottom. Like I said, toolserver tools can display the entire sort key easily, but finding a way to do it on-wiki would be much better. Unless there's another way, I currently support having a separate category for each day (either 31 rotating categories, or a scheme where one category is created every day, and one old category is deleted). --Interiot 19:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
              • They're still sorted by the full key, even if the headers only show the first character. The very first article displayed in the category would always be the oldest. I have no objection to separate categories by day, though, so long as there's a way to see the articles sorted by time somewhere (whether it's the sort key, as in my proposal, or through a toolserver script). —Cryptic (talk) 20:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Another option might be {{CURRENTWEEK}}. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
            • Weeks aren't good, separating out by days is much better. How about having 31 separate categories, eg. Category:Proposed deletion by day 30, and have the template place them in the right one with {{CURRENTDAY}}, and then reusing them in a circular fashion? As Radiant says, articles shouldn't remain in the category for an entire month. --Interiot 19:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
            • (via two edit conflicts) CURRENTWEEK would force us to have a widely-varying lagtime on deletion, at least a week and as many as two. Condider two articles: Article A is tagged on Saturday, January 14; CURRENTWEEK is then 2. Article B is tagged on Sunday, January 15; CURRENTWEEK is then 3. But we can't delete either until Sunday, January 22, when CURRENTWEEK is incremented again to 4. —Cryptic (talk) 19:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • DOH, forgot that sort keys were ASCII, not numerical. Maybe we should get a dev to implement {CURRENTDAY_LETTER} to return A-Z depending on the day of the month :) I think rotating cats would work, as Interiot suggests, it's also easily understood by n00bs. Radiant_>|< 20:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Haha, {CURRENTDAY_LETTER} wouldn't work because there's only 26, but adding numbers would work (making 36 possibilities). This could be implemented the same way Cryptic's suggestion about Template:Twodigit 3 works. But that would be n00b-unfriendly, as you say. --Interiot 20:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • So long as we're wishing for stuff that needs developer assistance anyway, a way to make category headers display an arbitrary number of characters (__CATHEADER_4__?) would solve this problem better, and have plenty of other uses besides. —Cryptic (talk) 20:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

^^ Agree with that, and I'd think it would be easy to implement? For now, I wrote a quick prototype of a category sortkey lister on the toolserver. Once the data is in the script, it's trivial to sort it by anything, print out a substring of the sortkey, etc. --Interiot 20:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I think the log page is highly desireable. it allows watching articels added to and removed from the lsit, soemthing not esaily doen with a category alone. Infact i will go so far as to say that I oppose the existance of this system without the log page, and will not participate in watchign the category in its absence, unless soemone can convince me that I am mistaken here. Remeber that we must cater to admins who do NOT ahve toolserver accounts. i want to be able to but a single ling on a personal tools page, adn follow that to a page where all relevant proposed deeltions are listed, sorted by day. I really don't think the few who fail to log will be that large a problem, and properly doen a bot can add the log entries on behalf of those who don't make them properly. DES (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • You won't need a toolserver account to use the tool, just go to a given http address. —Cryptic (talk) 21:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • A decent initial version can be found here: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/queries/en_proposed_deletion. The issue with the toolserver is not that others can't access it, it's that there is sometimes a multi-hour replication lag behind real-time, which could cause problems (though bots lag behind to some extent too). On-wiki pages are always going to be more reliable, and perhaps should be prefered, especially for core policies like this. That said, I'm always willing to implement feature requests (even relatively small tweaks) to make people's work easier. --Interiot 21:54, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Given the fact that an article won't get deleted for days, a lag of hours is not going to be a problem. Radiant_>|< 23:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I am still strongly opposed to this entire proposeal in the absence of a log page. i think it will be far more opaqe for typical users. the tool is a fine alternate means of findign the pages, buit ithould not substitute for the log page. DES (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Sure, but why not have a log page on the toolserver? Or one that is bot-generated? Both give less potential for mistakes, which Cryptic explains are common. You said above that you'd prefer nominating to take less time, and your preferred proposal doesn't have a manual log either. Radiant_>|< 23:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm not sure what you mean by "my preferred proposal" I don't recall supporting any version of this that did not include an on-wiki log page. If an automated process can reliably create an entry on such a page, fine. Failing that, if the template can be so designed to make this as quick and painless as possible, fine. Consider {{copyvio}} for example, that includes text right in the tempalte to be cut and pasted ontot eh log page, plus a link to the proper page. Soemthing of that sort ought, IMO, to result in far fewer errors than the current AfD process, adn to take significantly less time. If a user script could be developed to speedy up the process, also fine. But I really think that there should be a compelte on-wiki log of all nominations made via thsi process. For one thing it would allow after-the-fact analysis of how many noms resulted in direct deltion, how many in an AfD, and how many in a keep, wth or without an edit fixup. It isn't manual log cretion i care about -- it is the existance of the on-wiki log page. DES (talk) 23:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Sorry, confusing DOC with DES here. Darn TLAs. Anyway. I think that copyvio is a more specialized process than AFD, and I am not convinced (for the lack of any statistics) that less mistakes are made with it. I think the best way to go would be to have the automated log page Interiot suggested, for the sake of userfriendliness. The toolserver can also make backups and create statistics of that, if desired. If we want logs on-wiki, it would be an easy job to get a bot to make a daily or weekly log dump. Radiant_>|< 00:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
          • That's ok. I said that the copyvio template is set up to make things easier, and that we might use similar methods. I can't say what the error rate is with that, but there are fewer steps and they are IMO easier for the user to follow. If the automated log page could do a dump on ther order of hourly, that might be reasonable, but i think a reasoanbly up-to-date on-wiki log is essential. I honestly think that the diffuculty of simply addign a single entry to a specifed page are beign exagerated -- AfD requires creating a new page, puttign an entry on it in a specified format, and then transcludign it via a link found on yet another page -- i think we could make things far easier than that and in all probability drastically reduce the incidince of missed noms. Let the bot scan for and add any missing entries. But if you still think that is too much burden for the nomiantors, or too much risk of errors, then a bot-generated log is fine ifg it can be up-to-date on-wiki, say on the order of a hour's delay. DES (talk) 00:25, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Yeah, automated logs can be generated from the toolserver, independent of whatever human tracking process is used, and these would be especially useful for the Feb 4 trial run, so I'll try to get these going. --Interiot 18:49, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

"unless a single person objects"

This phrase kills the proposal. I am a "mergist", so I personally object to almost any article deletion, since any title could just be merged/redirected. I'm sure the true inclusionists will just trash this. -- Netoholic @ 20:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

If we started seeing twenty or thirty afd nominations a day all reading "This was tagged {{prod}}, but User:Foo removed it without comment", where Foo doesn't later object on the afd, I imagine that we'd find other methods to deal with him. No way to tell how often it'll happen without trying it for real. Most of the true inclusionists have been driven away from don't comment on afds for the truly horrid articles. —Cryptic (talk) 20:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Netholic, I encourage you to monitor all proposed deletions and, if you think they should be merged or redirected instead, do so immediately yourself. I think that's the beauty of this proposal. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 20:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Better yet, rather than tag an article with {(prod}} and then list it on this page, you merge and/or redirect the article and see if anyone objects (by un-merging/un-redirecting). -- Netoholic @ 20:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I already do that when I can, but my point is, instead of voting "merge" or "redirect" you can actually do it and save us all the time and space. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 20:50, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • If the risk of failure was incentive not to try, we would still be living in caves. Radiant_>|< 22:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Agreed, I think we should be a little more flexible in trying new ideas, I think we'd learn a lot more a lot faster about what works and what doesn't. Short trials don't hurt anything. We should be doing more of that in appropriate situations. Rx StrangeLove 23:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Question: If an article is deleted-by-prod, will {{db-repost}} still apply? I'm just making sure. --Perfecto 04:01, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I'd say that counts as an objection, so no. >Radiant< 11:48, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I've definitely seen several obvious merge or redirect candidates, which I have of course just gone ahead and merged (FF7: All About Random Battles, Ferai, Figgin, Bar B, Curious Pastimes, True Star). Also after I expanded Beauty Contest Paradox someone suggested a merge to Keynesian beauty contest, which I then performed. PROD works very well for this kind of article.

Template wording

Overall, I think the policy is good. However, I would recommend re-examining the wording of the template, keeping in mind that someone might read it who was not an experienced editor. The concept of "templates" is not immediately obvious to a new user, so telling someone "remove this template if you object" might be unfathomable. I would recommend adding wording like, "or add your objection on the <link>Discussion page", to make it easier for a new user or casual browser to express their concern. Elonka 22:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I like but...

What stops this scenario:

  • I tag article A with prod
  • The creator removes prod, but the article really is trash.
  • The admin going through the log sees that the template has been removed and the article isn't deleted (I suppose at this point it would be the admin's responsiblity to AfD, but that isn't mentioned in the proposal)
  • I don't know the article wasn't deleted, so the trash remains.

That's a problem. No? (besides that I like the way this system works) Broken S 22:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

  • That is a problem, in that controversial cases (or sock-supported cases) must be dealt with in some other way, which for the time being shall have to default to WP:AFD. However, I do expect PROD to take away most of the load from AFD, as well as redirecting effort now spent in arguing to 'keep' an article into effort actually spent in improving the article. I have been known to stick {{merge}} tags on AFD debates because they contained more information than the article itself. As a side point, if you wish to keep track of this, watchlist it. I believe most people watchlist deletion debates they're involved in. Radiant_>|< 23:01, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • If you tag an article you really should watchlist it also. then you will see the removal of a tag when/if it happens, adn can AfD it yourself. The admin may chose to AfD, but may not bother, and should not if s/he does not think it should be deleted, or at least that there is a serious case for deletion IMO. Besides, this probalem also applies to speedy deltetion, wher the tag can be simpley removed. For the matter of that if you AfD an article but never look at it again, you may not realize that it has been kept -- and ill-advised keeps do happen from time to time. DES (talk) 23:02, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • If we have to, we can change the rules so that the article's creator can't remove the tag by himself. He'd need to get a second opinion from a registered user with over 200 edits. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 23:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Registered user? 200 edits? Starting to sound like instruction creep. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
      • If you've ever seen AfD sockpuppets you'll understand why. It's a perfectly reasonable requirement. Besides I'm saying we do this only if necessary. And besides, it'll STILL be a LOT simpler than the AfD process. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:19, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Maybe we should try it out first and see if this actually is a problem. If it turns out that it is, we can e.g. allow people to revert removal of a PROD tag if (1) done by an anon or sock, or (2) the article wasn't improved. Radiant_>|< 00:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I definitely agree with that. I'm only suggesting a possible future rule change if we do, in fact, encounter this problem. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:49, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
            • The nice thing about this proposal is that it's fail-safe. The worst that could happen is you tag an article for deletion, some sock comes along and un-tags it, and you end up having to bring it to AfD. You're in no worse shape than you are now. If sockpuppets turn out to be a problem, we can deal with them, but let's not hold up this proposal for fear that it won't work. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:53, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

What does "delete" mean?

To paraphrase something I mentioned on the wikipedia-en list: There are three reasons for deleting:

Bad topic
The topic is simply inappropriate for Wikipedia and nothing could possibly be done to the article to fix it. Examples: Non-notable people or groups, non-notable crackpot theories. Solution: Remove article from Wikipedia.
Excessive prominence
The topic belongs somewhere on Wikipedia, but not as its own article. Examples: Less well-known songs of notable groups, minor characters of fictional series. Solutions: Merge content back to main article.
Bad content
Topic deserves its own article but this article is crap. Examples: Copyright vio, truly awful writing, substub, dictionary def. Solutions: Rewrite, trim back to stub, remove totally (if no one volunteers to rewrite)

So, which of these categories is this proposal intended to deal with? Is there any guarantee that excessively prominent articles will not be removed (rather than merged, as would be appropriate)? If the article is being nominated under the first category, appeals for rewriting are pointless. If the article is being nominated under the third category, deleting it may be a worse idea than trimming back to a stub.

I suggest that the nomination process should explicitly state which category of deletion is required, and possibly use different templates for each. Comments welcome. Stevage 00:22, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Excessive prominence and bad content can be dealt with by editing, without any need to vote. Andjam 00:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This is not a vote, and neither is AFD. Radiant_>|< 00:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok ok, it's a discussion, not a vote, but what I mean is that AfD and PROD are bureaucratic measures, so editing is preferable to AfD or PROD. Andjam 01:37, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The point is that many people in many cases are unable to tell the difference between the three cases you cite. Hence, a single template must suffice. However, unlike AFD, this process specifically requests people to edit/source/merge or otherwise improve the page. Thus, if you see a type-2 or type-3 on PROD, you can fix it instantly. That's the whole point, fixing articles.
  • Thus, to answer your question, this page is intended to delete type-1 (thus fixing them), and is likely to get its share of type-2 or type-3, and encourages people to fix those (thus also fixing them). Note that deleting a type-3 is not a big loss (a vocal minority complains on the principle, but consensus has it that if an article has to be rewritten from scratch anyway, deleting it is no big deal). Radiant_>|< 00:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Deleting it is actually an improvement because it clears crap out of the history. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
      • If an article is deleted for bad content reasons, should it be noted thus so that new contributors don't have to worry they are violating consensus? Andjam 01:37, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
        • If such an article is repeatedly recreated, we delete again and protect against it (Category:Protected_deleted_pages). Or we redirect it some place sensible. Radiant_>|< 01:49, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Buit if an articel is deleted due to poor content, but wher the topic is not inherently unworthy, do we need to indicate this so as not to scare people off from writing a different articel on the same topic, adn invioting incorrect G4 speedies? DES (talk) 01:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
            • They're frequently recreated soon by people involved in the deletion, and/or put on Wikipedia:Requested articles. G4 does state "substantially similar" recreation, so writing a different article on the same topic is safe. Judging by WP:DRV, this is not often a problem (despite frequent unsubstantiated allegations by two or three people who don't like DRV). Radiant_>|< 09:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Good idea

I thought as an inclusionist I would hate this idea, but the proposal appears to be quite well thought-out, the FAQ above addresses every question I could think of, and well, you've done your homework. Perhaps my only objection is that, if this is used as a "gate" to decrease the number of articles hitting AfD, then the total time required to delete an article that is not a clear delete will go up (5 days on PropDel, 7 days on AfD). It could help to have an "emergency deletion process" for serious copyright issues, content actively receiving negative PR, and so on. Normally we'd just blank such pages while the deletion process goes on, but even blanking might not suffice if a permalink is made public (not that I'm aware of this ever happening). Deco 08:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I would guess that some large percentage (>50% perhaps) of PROD that move on to AFD would so in the first ~12 hours, due to attentive authors or patrollers. Also, the goal really isn't to delete articles in a shorter amount of time, instead the point is to let patrollers be more efficient in their work, to not have to investigate an article 6 times over when it's more or less an obvious delete. --Interiot 06:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Besides, AFD is also five days. The only reason it appears longer is backlog. Radiant_>|< 09:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a wonderful idea, and wholly support it. Great job, everyone! JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy for this to be given a whirl, and I'll even wish it good luck. It's a good idea, and I hope it finds its feet. Hiding talk 21:57, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Anyone can always move an article to AfD at any time, no need to wait 5 days on PROD. If a copyvio is discoverd, the text can and should be instantly repalced with {{copyvio}} even if the article is on PROD or AfD, again no need to wait. DES (talk) 22:38, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Editors of nominated article

I agree with this proposal, with the following alteration:

Not all editors have the time or inclination to monitor Wikipedia articles they have created or edited. I therefore suggest that every person who has contributed an edit to an article nominated for deletion under this guideline be credited with a Keep vote. This follows naturally from Wikipedia:Assume good faith; we must assume that if the editor(s) in question had not intended for the article in question to be present in Wikipedia, they would have refrained from creating or editing it. -Ikkyu2 08:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems you're implicitly opposing the policy, since one keep vote is enough to prevent its deletion. It's reasonable to assume good faith, but usually these articles are created not out of malice but out of ignorance of our standards for inclusion (well, quite a few out of malice too). What is relevant is not whether the originator would vote keep, but whether that same originator would vote keep after these were explained. Deco 08:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
You're right, those things are relevant. Unfortunately, WIkipedia is not a crystal ball, and there's no way to know. Again, I think we must assume that good faith edits were intentionally placed by good faith editors. You're also right that I am opposing the policy, on the grounds that it violates the assumption of good faith prima facie; and also on the grounds that I could trivially rig a bot to object in my name to every single article proposed for deletion under this method. I personally wouldn't violate WP:POINT, but some other yobbo is sure to do so, wasting everyone's time. -Ikkyu2 09:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, to oppose this on "good faith" grounds would be an argument against CSD as well, which is pretty well-established and at least some of its clauses are even accepted by most inclusionists. The "no crystal ball" comment cuts both ways - it may be that most of these cut-and-run article creators either are malicious or would realise they made a mistake after things are explained to them, if we could ever track them down.
As for the method's fragility, well, presumedly we have the discretion to ignore votes made in bad faith, solely to interfere with the process. We certainly do that with sockpuppets and such on AfD. Deco 09:21, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
The difference between this proposal and the criteria for speedy deletion is that the criteria for speedy deletion are criteria - official policy, at that - by which all good-faith Wikipedia editors are expected to abide. Some good-faith Wikipedia editors may not know this, but that fault lies with those editors, not with their articles. In contrast, the current proposal allows deletion of articles which are faultless - i.e. in violation of no criteria. This appears to me to be a mistake, because it violates the assumptions of good faith, and for other reasons. -Ikkyu2 10:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
You assert that most of these cut and run article creators are either malicious or would realise they made a mistake. Let us assume that they are malicious (a violation of AGF). Therefore, you can assume that they would vote Keep on an article that violates standards. Now, let us assume that they are not malicious. They created the article, but you expect that they would realize that they made a mistake and agree with the deletion. Therefore, you are implicitly asserting that their vote would, at all times, be 'Delete'. Well, I assert otherwise. I assert that such people would in good faith instead suggest that your interpretation of the standards are in error, and would always vote 'Keep', preserving the article. Since the preservation of the article is not contingent on whether it can meet WP standards, but only on whether it can garner a single 'Keep' vote, all articles submitted under this proposal must be kept. In other words, unless you believe that all nominators for deletion must always be correct, and all article editors must always be wrong, you will admit that this proposal must necessarily result in the deletion of articles that should have been kept. -Ikkyu2 10:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • "Assuming automatic keep votes" is a perennial proposal at AFD, and it's simply not a good idea. One should not speak for others, and one cannot assume that if a person edits an article, that person would therefore want it kept. First, the person writing an article may well have been ignorant of Wikipedia standards. Second, if we cross that line, we could similarly assume that other people exist that want it deleted, for instance because of having expressed a related opinion in the past. And third, that suggestion would make any article supported by a sockpuppeteer impossible to delete. We must judge articles on their merit, not on assumptions or bureaucracy. Radiant_>|< 09:19, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
You have eloquently explained the sound argument against assuming automatic keep votes at AfD. It does not apply here, because this proposal nowhere proposes to judge articles on their merit. -Ikkyu2 10:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, it does. You must assume the good faith of the people reading it. Radiant_>|< 10:36, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
      • No, you have to assume more than their good faith; you have to assume that they'll apply the standards with good faith, and also that they'll catch every article that is a good article, every time. In other words, you have to assume that someone will be infallibly right in preserving good articles. The current Wikipedia deletion policy says, 'When in doubt, don't delete'. What if every editor who reads the page thinks, "in good faith, I'm not qualified to cast a vote on this article?" The result is that the article gets deleted. Bad juju. -Ikkyu2 10:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, taking the principle esposed by Ikkyu2 to it's logical end, the removal of any text from a page is a violation of AGF, as, according to Ikkyu2, we must assume the original author meant for every jot and title to be in Wikipedia, so we cannot remove it. (Possibily, we could remove it if two people stated on the talk page that the word should be removed, but only then.) I hope it is clear that this is not how things are done on Wikipedia. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:32, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
What's clear to me is that Wikipedia has rules and guidelines that would-be editors can follow in good faith, presuming they will be able to create an article that adheres to them and won't be deleted. The process of consensus editing, as you know well, involves a lot of back and forth along the lines of: "your text is good, but this update to it allows it to more closely adhere to Wikipedia standards." The current proposal allows deletion of any article for any reason. Anyone can make the distinction between improving an article, and deleting it: a deleted article is not improved thereby, and cannot be improved thereafter. Therefore, the current proposal suggests that all Wikipedia standards may be discarded willy-nilly, in favor of deleting any article for any reason, unless someone - some hypothetical editor - casts a Keep vote in time. -Ikkyu2 10:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • AFD already allows deletion of any article for any reason. Some articles are improved by being deleted, and most deleted articles can be rewritten anyway, thus improving them. Nor does this proposal suggest discarding of any standards. In other words, your logic is unsound. Radiant_>|< 10:36, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, such a presumption (that would-be editors can create an article that adheres to Wikipedia rules and guidelines and be sure it will not be deleted) is not valid. As was said above, articles can be deleted, at any time(following an accepted procedure), for any (or no) reason. What would-be editors can rely on is the general sensability of most people, and most people's ability to recognize competent, good work when they see it. That's the Wiki way, that's the principle that underies Wikipedia, and that's the same principle that is being applied in this proposal. JesseW, the juggling janitor 12:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


  • As for the perennial bot threat - it would be a violation of WP:POINT, and thereby not an issue; even if someone went through and, in clearly good faith, forced 90% of the Prod'ed articles onto AfD, we wouldn't be any worse off than we are today, no more effort would be wasted - so the bot threat is a non-issue that way also. JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:32, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it out of process to use PROD to delete articles?

Here's my suggested revision of this paragraph:

Wikipedia isn't about process. This page deletes articles if nobody objects to the deletion. As such, it will not delete worthwhile articles, unless no one is willing to go to the trouble of ensuring that a nominated article is worthwhile. If you see an article listed here, you must read it in its entirety, judge it on its merits, and ensure that it either does or does not violate Wikipedia policies; otherwise, the process can fail, and worthwhile articles can be deleted by negligence.

For example, if a perfect 60 kB article from a specialized, highly technical field is referred for deletion on the grounds of verifiability and incorrect factual content, an editor with competence to review the entire article and verify every fact in it MUST review the article and vote to keep it, within 5 days.

This editor is expected to materialize out of thin air. Other editors, who do not have the expertise necessary to judge such an article, must in good faith abstain from voting; otherwise they will be casting Delete or Keep votes without a basis of competence to do so. They might as well be flipping a coin.

If the editor does not materialize out of thin air, the article is deleted. Oh well, tough tiddy. Maybe someone will come along and replace it someday - it's a wiki, after all! -Ikkyu2 10:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

  1. A perfect article would have references, the existance and content of at least some of which would be checkable by any editor - if such an article was {{prod}}ed for unverifability, any editor could look at the existance of references, say "Oh, obviously invalid {{prod}}", and remove the tag - they would not need to know anything about the subject at all.
  2. "incorrect factual content" is also an obvious invalid reason for {{prod}}ing. The material should be excised from the current version, but there's no need to delete it. And, again, any editor, without knowing anything about the topic, could identify the nomination as invalid and remove it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 12:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


Em, 'fuck process'? --Doc ask? 11:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh, I'd be happy to discuss any aspect of process. But Ikkyt is just repeating himself from the above couple of sections, and the flaws in his reasoning are already pointed out there. Repeating a fallacy doesn't make it right. Radiant_>|< 11:11, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Someone is confused here. Factual inaccuracies should never be a reason for deleting a page. There are only three reasons:

  1. The topic doesn't belong on Wikipedia - you don't need to review the page for that.
  2. The topic doesn't deserve a whole article - someone should just merge it and redirect it. No need for a process.
  3. The article is nothing but copyvio or incomprehensible horseshit. Anyone can quickly glance at it and make that assessment.

What is all this crap about reviewing with the word MUST in capital letters? Stevage 22:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I disagree with User:Stevage here -- while in some cases it is obvious that a topic does not belong, or that an article should be merged, or that the current contetns are garbage, all three of his cases have borderlines which need judgement calls. in those cases reasonable editors can and will disagree, and the question nmay well be impossible to decide withotu carefully examing the article. For example many AfDs hinge on notability, particualrly for bands, websites, and individual people. Whether a subject is notable enough, and jsut how notable is notable enough is not always obvious from the title of an article. DES (talk) 22:34, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • As for the concerns of User:Ikkyu2 I think they are poorly expressed but have soem merit. Steictly speaking if enough people have supproted a test of this form of deletion to constitute a consensus for a temporary change of policy then any such deletion is in-process, otherwise it is out-of-process. That says nothing about whether the process is well-advised, or is likely to lead to good articles being deleted. If 1) many articles are tagged with {{Prod}} so that it is hard for anyone to look at all of them, or even to know which ones have been looked at by a trusted editor; and 2) a good but far from perfect article on an obscure topic is so tagged, perhaps because soemone thinks it is a haox, or is full of POV; then it is at least possible that such an articel would be delted under this system, when it probably would not have been if listed on AfD -- fo the matter of that god articels do sometimes get delted under AfD. This system makes it soemwhat easier to delete articles that not many people are watchign or intersted in, and whose titles are not obviously "important". That may leed to soemwhat more unwise deeltions in such cases -- we will have to see. Raisng the possibilty is not inappropriate. That may particuarlly be a problem with highly technical articels or soemwhat specialized historical artilces or the like -- articels where many people cannot easilyt tell a hoax from solid scholarship, and where many people don't care that much anyway. If one person, either in bad faith or in eroror, makes a persuasivbe sounding nom of such an articel, there is a chance that no one who feels qualified and intersted will review the matter within 5 days, and that the articel will consequently be deleted. If this becomes a problem, we may need to recise this process -- but ther is n way to tell in advance, IMO. DES (talk) 22:34, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think the primary hole in Ikkyu's logic is "Other editors, who do not have the expertise necessary to judge such an article, must in good faith abstain from voting". They may not be in a position to judge whether the content is verifiable, but they may certainly vote keep to contest the reason for nomination, based on the reasonable belief that the article just needs to be looked at, not deleted, particularly if the deletion period has not already attracted enough attention from the original contributors. Deco 01:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, they certainly may. What if they don't? The article could be deleted even though it shouldn't have been. Some articles have thousands of hours of work in them. -Ikkyu2 01:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Okay, so you're arguing that apathy about an article can result in article deletion without proper consideration. How about just requiring a deletion vote from a person other than the nominator to ensure that somebody's bothered to look at it? Deco 02:07, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Articles never get deleted automatically, they always require a closing admin to perform the delete. The proposal says "If the closing admin disagrees with an article's deletion, the admin should simply remove the template". Also, WP:DGFA says in large bold text "if in doubt, don't delete". This ensures that there will always be at least one semi-reputable person who looks at an article before it's hidden from view. Deletions can also of course be contested at WP:DRV if a problem is discovered afterwards. --Interiot 02:15, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
          • In this case, articles that were deleted should probably be undeleted immediately on request, rather than going through the normal DRV process. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:56, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
          • My mistake, actually....this is already in the proposal. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

It is effectively a nil probablity that an article with "thousands of hours of work" involved in it's creation would be so totally ignored that no-one who worked on it, or found it useful, would look at it in five days, or contest it's deletion at DRV. This is not a plausable claim. If an article had thousands of hours of work put into it, it would be pretty much guarneteed to have been worked on by a large number of editors; or it would have been on the pedia for many days (2000(i.e. "thousands") hours, approx. 3 months), thereby also nearly guarneteed to have been seen by a number of editors. Also, if an article was deleted, and someone later came across it and wanted it back, it would be deeply easy to do so; a mere request on WP:DRV and it would be back. We lose nothing. This is a totally invalid reason to oppose the proposal. Thank you for your time. JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

If nothing else, as noted by Interiot, the closing admin would probably say, 'hey, this is a good article', and not delete it. Deco 10:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Can we get this started?

Can we get this started already? I've just run across a unsourced biographical substub that seems tailor-made for running through the "proposed deletion" process. It makes a plausable claim of notability (so it can't be speedy-deleted), but gets zero non-Wikipedia Google hits, so I can't verify the guy's existance, much less the claim. I'd really rather not go through the effort of a full VfD on something that's a slam-dunk deletion. --Carnildo 22:18, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Stay your hand, my friend. We start next Sunday :) - Haukur 22:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Some people have already started using this process and {{prod}}ding articles. I think that's perfectly fine and will only serve to draw more attention or interest. However, it should be understood that the test run begins on February 4th, and that no articles shall be deleted via this process until five days after that, i.e. Feb 9th. Radiant_>|< 15:43, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

Maybe I'm missing it somewhere, but can proposed deletion be used for redirects? Deli nk 16:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

  • While I don't have any particular objection to that, it may turn out to be kind of confusing, and I should note that WP:RFD already works on this principle (no objections = delete) and is not particularly backlogged. Radiant_>|< 16:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Before proposing deletion of any redirects (and I know which ones you may e thinking of, Deli nk) be sure to read the guidelines for deleting redirects in WP:RFD. Notice that "humorous" is not a reason listed for propsing deletion of resdirects and possible usefulness is a reason for not deleting redirects. Thus, my redirects, which are based on widely used, nonambiguous and non misleading slang terms do not seem to fit the bill of the type of redirects that merit deletion. There is a method to my madness -- some content is relevant even though it is humorous or gross because it reflects common usage of terminolofy. My redirects and contirbutions fit this bill -- although they may be a bit silly-seeming, they are at least as well known as other synonyms floating around redirect and disambiguation pages throughout wikipedia. Interestingstuffadder 17:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good

I support this proposal. --Improv 08:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Logs again

I see that the proposal has been changed to remove the on-wiki log. I repeat that I very strongly object to this. Indeed I object to the proposal running without on-wiki logs. I don't feel that any of the ressons why such logs would be 1) highly desireable and 2) not overly burdensome to create were really addressed above. Please, please reconsider this choice. DES (talk) 23:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I understand that, but the automated logging is indeed two steps simpler (KISS principle), and the reasons you cited earlier for having a wikilog (that it allows one to see what articles were added or removed, and gives post facto analysis of how many noms are deleted) are also possible with the toolserver log. Note also that the toolserver log is a page where all relevant proposed deletions are listed and sorted by day, and it is also fully accessible to anyone without a toolserver account. Of course this wouldn't work with a plain category, but we're not suggesting that any more.
  • That said, this is a test run, and it may become necessary to tweak the system a bit after the first two weeks or so. From that point of view, it's always easier to add complexity later on if it proves necessary or desirable, than it would be to remove it. >Radiant< 23:46, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Seeing the history of what pages were added or removed does not seem to be possible with the toolserver log yet. I believe that adding this feature to the system is very important and should be done ASAP, or we should go back to an on-wiki log. 134.10.12.42 02:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC) (actually User:JesseW, just logged out)

Would it be sufficient if a bot updated an on-wiki log once an hour or so from the data on Interiot's toolserver app? (Alternately, and this would be much easier - on the order of about ten minutes to do - I could make something that would dump the current contents of a category to a specific page. This wouldn't be sorted by date, though, unless the category was.) —Cryptic (talk) 02:19, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

While that would not be ideal IMO, It would be sufficent for me not to object strongly. i want 1) the ability to see the history of changes to the log, and ideally who made them (I don't get the last with the copied log, but I'll live with that) and to watchlist the log to note changes (again thsi is less useful with teh copied log than with a one-at-a-time updated log, but I can live with that). The category based version would be enough for the test, at least, IMO DES (talk) 02:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see a copy of the log on-wiki also, for reference purposes, but I wouldn't mind a delay in posting it. On the other hand, I like the idea of keeping the "live" log automatic, and would like to see this page eventually moved to an official URL. Wiki just isn't suitable for everything, and we too often stretch it to fit purposes it does not suit. Deco 02:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
How long a "delay" do you consiser OK? I have not problem with 10 minutes or so, and not much with a once-an-hour update. Once a day or once a week is another mattter, IMO. DES (talk) 02:39, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd be fine with once a day, but in the spirit of compromise an hour sounds good, if the script's originator is comfortable with that. Deco 02:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Crypticbot's now dumping a copy of the toolserver output to User:Crypticbot/Proposed deletion at 45 minutes after the hour. It should be reasonably resilient to formatting changes, but let me know if you notice it breaking. —Cryptic (talk) 18:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you very much. I at least will find that quite helpful. DES (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
  • There are a number of features that I'd like to add, some should be done before Feb 4, some can probably wait a little longer, especially since PROD procedure isn't solidified yet, and it's not accepted policy. My current priorities are: 1) record everything that shows up in the category, and record when it leaves. 2) along with displaying that historical log, display what happened to it after {{prod}} was removed (currently unmarked, is deleted, or has been added to one of the *FD categories), 3) find the exact diff of when when {{prod}} was removed (I'll have a +- 5 minute window, possibly less), and list the edit summary for the removal, 4) post that data to the wiki on a semi-regular basis, if there's demand for it. #1 should be done before Feb 4th, just because IMHO that makes this a better experiment. I'll probably store this in the MySQL database on the toolserver, and can produce queries on it as needed. I think that having machine-parsable data like this is much better than having pure wikitext history. --Interiot 02:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Thewn can we please in the meantime have at least cryptic's suggested dump of the category membership to an on-wiki log, to be replaced when you get to number 4 above? And I think there will be a demeand for that. DES (talk) 03:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Based on my projected amount of free time, my understanding of what's important for Feb 4, and my lack of experience with bot code, I probably won't be the one who implements #4 by Feb 4. --Interiot 03:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
        • Thanks. I think we should stick with #1 for now; once this is running we will get lots of suggestions and will have to tweak the process anyway, and possibly produce more data in certain organizations. I mostly see demand for a list of when articles get removed (I'll second that, too), but DESiegel seems to be the only one who insists that the list must be on the wiki instead of on the toolserver. >Radiant< 16:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

repeated prods

I'm generally in favor of this, but I have a concern about good-faith prods. If/as this becomes more popular, articles that fall within its scope are likely to receive prods, have them removed by boosters, and then be prodded again by someone on RC patrol or other well-meaning folks. Yes, they should check the history before prodding, but I can forsee bad feelings over this. Perhaps a process requiring a note on the talk page similar to {{oldafdfull}} when it gets removed, even though that adds another step? Another option is an HTML comment on the article page when the prod is removed, but that's a rather non-wiki way of doing things, and not exactly intuitive to boot. The rest of this process looks good, although I agree with DES about the on-wiki log, if it's possible later. -- nae'blis (talk) 22:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Good question. I think the burden should lie on the deleting admin. It's really not a problem if an article is prodded multiple times, especially if the people removing the tag also improve the article to address the concern given. But a repeatedly prodded article shouldn't be deleted because of that; controversial deletion should be discussed on AFD instead. Also, it would help if people used clear edit summaries when adding or removing the tag. >Radiant< 00:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • We don't want an absolute ban on re-proding though - a measure of common sense. If a piece of obvious near-nonsense gets tagged and the tag immedately removed, but no-one sends it to afd, and then much later (even weeks) somone re-taggs it, and it sails through prod, it would be crazy for the admin to send it to afd on a technicality. --Doc ask? 16:41, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Yeah, something like not being able to re-prod it without a) significant changes to the article or b) a certain period of time passing - a week, since that's longer than the AfD would take? Ideally even a second prod should probably take it to AfD unless the first one was removed in bad faith (page blanking by vandal is the only thing that comes to mind, or the proverbial bot-making-a-WP:POINT). -- nae'blis (talk) 18:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion Has Begun

It's February 4th according to UTC. Am I to assume that the proposed deletion era has begun? — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 01:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I've alredy tagged soem pages. DES (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't work, as a test I nominated two articles from the shortpages list, Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Albania and Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Algeria which I presumed would not be controversial deletions because they had zero content and were superceded by other pages, but this was kicked back for not being in the proper namespace. And guess what? I'm not going to play this game. Ruby 21:29, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • That's because we're keeping it simple and only using it on articles (which is the most important part of the 'pedia, and the most often debated part). Templates, wikipages etc aren't usually a problem. I'll throw those two on MFD. >Radiant< 22:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

rm prod, add afd???

It's unclear if this was the intent of how this is supposed to work, but I removed the prod template from List of notable Veterans of other conflicts and moved it to AfD. While I think the article should be deleted, I didn't think it was so totally without merit that getting voted down in AfD was a fore-gone conclusion. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Well...the idea is that if anyone *actually disagrees* then, and only then, do they move it to AFD. Proposed Deletion is like, "if there are no objections, delete", and if anyone has an objection, it goes to a full discussion on AfD. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 02:55, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
That means you have to FIND such a person... removing and AfDing just means you BELIEVE such a person almost certainly exists. I think the latter may be safer. ++Lar: t/c 15:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
No you don't. You just sit and wait for them to come along, ideally. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Policy creep

I've removed the statement, Please don't remove "prod" tags because you think other people might disagree with them. Feel free to remove them if you disagree with them, though. As far as I can tell, this was never part of the policy until I raised the issue here as a question. I don't believe there is any consensus that such a statement should be part of the policy. I think it's a perfectly legitimate thing to say, I, myself, think the article should go, but I can certainly see why other people might not agree, and try to engage a larger collection of people to make the decision. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

  • That was a friendly request, not a binding mandatory statement. The idea is that I hope that people judge articles on their merit, rather than on general principle that somebody might exist that might disagree. We do far too many things on this wiki based on hypothetical situations that don't actually occur. >Radiant< 16:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

There's no way to see if someone has already looked through the nomination

If this thing really gets off to a good start, you'll end up seeing over a hundred articles a day added to the category. After that, anyone who's interested in saving good articles from deletion will have to look at every one of them to see if there's any merit. However, there's no way to actually make a comment in the effect of "I don't think it has any redeeming qualities" and instead everyone else will have to check through the exact same nominations, since there's no way to tell that someone else has actually went through the trouble. In the end, you'll have a ton of people having to wade through all the articles. I just don't see how it can work in practice. - Bobet 12:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there is a way to make a comment. Just go to the article's talk page and say "I've checked this and it really doesn't seem to have merit". 12:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
So instead of looking at every discussion on an afd page, you'll have to go through every talk page? How is that an improvement? It will end up just the same, except the discussion will be separated into hundreds of different pages. - Bobet 12:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The difference is that if someone does think the article has redeeming qualities, it is unlisted. People can tell a lot from the article titles, and summaries given on the prod list. It's simply not true that everybody has to wade through all the articles (nor, in fact, do people do that on AFD). >Radiant< 12:36, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, if someone thinks there are redeeming qualities, the article is unlisted and after that probably goes to afd anyway (since the person who originally tagged it will probably still contest that it should be deleted). I'm talking about things that really are obvious deletions. In afd you wouldn't have to wade through all the articles, since it's easy to see when people have commented on them (on the afd page or on User:Dragons flight/AFD summary/Few votes) but in here, how do you easily tell that someone actually agrees with the nominator (or indeed, has even looked at the article)? - Bobet 12:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
You don't. The only safeguard is that the nominator shouldn't perform the actual deletion so you need at least two people to agree. But AfD already has a lot of pointless duplication of work (pile-ons). - Haukur 14:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If they're speedies, speedy them. Other than that, a possibility that comes to mind is creating a "prod-2" tag, that indicates that somebody has agreed with the request to delete, but is otherwise identical. The toolserver log could add a check mark to all those articles, and of course people are still free to "veto" them. But I'm not sure if that's worth the trouble. >Radiant< 14:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't think it is worth the trouble of a {{prod-2}} tag. If it's not going to be redeemable, it should be fairly obvious from a cursory glance. People "wade through" a ton of articles all the time on RC/new articles patrol, and if they're speediable or proposable, they should be fairly quick. The minute someone disagrees with the prod, it's removed from the list and goes to AfD (or is just removed in the case of bad-faith noms) and it failsafes out of this system. -- nae'blis (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • That's not the issue discussed here. The point is that if something is not redeemable, there's no way to tell people that you agree with the nomination, or show that someone has gone through the trouble and looked through any nominated article. When there eventually are hundreds of articles on the list, there will be bound to be some that could be improved, but won't since they'll get lost among the mass of really worthless articles. The only way to currently stop that is by each individual involved with this to look through every nominated article, which just leads to a ton of redundant work being done. - Bobet 13:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Once it's up and running fully, there won't be as much need for people to be watching a central list, because there will be more eyeballs on the project as a whole. This entire encyclopedia is predicated on the concept that you do what you know, and what you're interested in, rather than being assigned tasks like a 9-5 job, IMO. -- nae'blis (talk) 16:48, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I think a {{prod-2}} tag, or soem other way to say "I agree" that could be refelcted on the central log, would be a good addition to thsi concept. Peopel could then concentrate on looking first at articles that had been proposed and which no one had endorsed. No one has to use the prod-2 tag. In fact I think i may create it. DES (talk) 15:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

A very good start

This is off to an excellent start. Most of the articles listed are appropriate, and the procedure of cleaning up and removing the tag is simple and intuitive. No more pointless, acrimonuous battles over stuff that shouldn't have been listed for deletion in the first place. Just add a few references, or turn it into a redirect, and off you go! --Tony Sidaway 13:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

When PROD tag is removed

I'm wondering whether it is possible to keep a list of articles (say in the last 48 hours) where the prod tag has been removed. My one small worry with this system is that an NP partoler spots a POS article and tags it, and then the author later untags it. If the patroler hasn't watched it, or has gone off, it may not get AfD'd. If we had a log of de-tagged articles, someone else can check through it and send any obvious junk to AfD. --Doc ask? 15:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

My feeling on this is that if it doesn't eventually get AfD'd, it probably didn't need to be AfD'd. If an article is potentially defamatory, a copyright infringement, an attack, or otherwise damaging, it should be removed from the wiki as soon as possible, but this isn't the mechanismto use for that. --Tony Sidaway 15:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I removed one from Emma Shea because it struck me as a notable topic... but then I did some digging and couldn't find a single reference! So I put the article up for AfD. In hindsight I should have dug first before removing, but based on how the process works, I couldn't just put the prod tag back... I've also been putting small plugs in various AfD's that maybe that particular AfD could have been PRODded but I think putting info in the main WP:AfD, as was also done (by Radiant?) is probably as effective or more (Not all voters review it but presumably people about to AfD something might...) ++Lar: t/c 15:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's a problem with reverting yourself. Likewise, if someone entirely blanks an article that happens to have a prod tag stuck to it, I plan to rollback just like with any other article blanking. —Cryptic (talk) 15:48, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I thought the policy was that if it was removed for any reason that was it, doesn't count. I guess it would be commonsensical that the policy doesn't apply to self removal-reinsertion (er, sorry for that image there, folks). ++Lar: t/c 17:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/queries/en_prod_history --Interiot 17:32, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Note that you're assuming "the author" is the person removing the prod tag. In fact wikipedia doesn't have article ownership, and anyone can equally remove a tag, when they think it's inappropriate. Kim Bruning 23:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm assuming the hinted problem here is with someone who just started an article about eg. his personal nn website and checks through his article every day, removing the prod tag in the process. In that case, every objective person would think the article isn't useful, but it would still have to end up on afd because one person has a vested interest in keeping it. New pages patrollers necessarily won't add everything they prodded to their watchlists, which might lead to articles generally considered worthless getting kept. - Bobet 13:15, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If someone removes the tag, adn soemone else re-adds it, the clock starts over, but there is no rule agaisnt that, although edit-warrign over the tag is at least as bad as any other kind of edit warring. DES (talk) 16:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
    • The clock starting over is simply a technical restriction, and not related to policy. PROD says "If the template was removed and replaced, the article will not be deleted", and otherwise plainly says that articles shouldn't be re{{prod}}ed. The previous nominations page lists pages which were previously on {{prod}}, and didn't go on to AFD or CSD, and users are encouraged to scan for these and move them to AfD as necessary. An alternate solution, I presume, would be to add prods to your watchlist if you strongly feel they should go on to AfD if the tag is removed. --Interiot 16:18, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
      • You are correct, i was in error above. the prod tag shoulds not be simply replaced after a removal, either leave the articel, fix it, or take it to AfD. If an artilce is prodded and unprodded again, another user who encounters it, say, a month later should be free tro re-prod, IMO. DES (talk) 18:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

What an invitation to edit wars

I put the template on an article. The original author comes along and deletes it. What is my recourse?

And how are we supposed to find what articles have the template on them? Click on "what links here"? How long is this "discussion" supposed to last? Where do we discuss the merits of the template being added to an article? On the article's talk page? So we have hundreds of places to look instead of one central place? Gee, what an improvemen. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

And when does deletion take place? Who deletes? How long is the tag supposed to stay on an article? User:Zoe|(talk) 19:42, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

And why is the proposed deletion log on the German language Wikimedia page? Why isn't it where it belongs on the English language Wikipedia page? User:Zoe|(talk) 19:43, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

All of these questions are answered at Wikipedia:Proposed deletion -- RoySmith (talk) 19:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
The log is on the toolserver (http://tools.wikimedia.de/), which services (nearly) all of the Wikimedia servers, not just de. --Interiot 19:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

If the author removed the template, it means that he disagrees with your assessment and it cannot be deleted by this form of deletion. If you really think it should be deleted, you could always try to form a rough consensus... --Tony Sidaway 20:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

If the author removes the template, it can be sent to AfD then, right? Deco 23:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
You can, or you can talk with the person who removed the template and ask them if they agree the template can be put back. You could even use that as an alternate to AFD, to a degree... (but you need to be good at negotiating and talking with people! Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle) Kim Bruning 23:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Answering Zoe's questions, via quotes from the project page:
  1. I put the template on an article. The original author comes along and deletes it. What is my recourse?
    "If someone removes Template:Prod from an article for whatever reason, don't place it back. ... If you still believe the article needs to be deleted, list it on AfD." (I had to add that last sentence; thanks for asking the question.)
  2. And how are we supposed to find what articles have the template on them?
    "A log of all articles proposed for deletion is automatically generated, and can be found HERE.
    There is also a category: Category:Proposed deletion
  3. Click on "what links here"?
    See previous answer.
  4. How long is this "discussion" supposed to last?
    I assume you mean the "discussion" of wheather the page should be deleted, in which case: "The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for five days." should answer that. If you meant another discussion, please clarify.
  5. Where do we discuss the merits of the template being added to an article?
    See section How to discuss if an article should be deleted; basically, either list it on AfD or comment on the talk page. In any case, remove the prod tag as this process is not for deletions that someone wants to discuss. I had to add this section also; thanks again for your questions.
  6. On the article's talk page?
    See previous answer.
  7. So we have hundreds of places to look instead of one central place?
    I'm not sure exactly what you are asking here, so I'm not sure how to answer. "one central place" for what, exactly?
  8. And when does deletion take place?
    See question #4, above.
  9. Who deletes?
    Like all other deletion processes, "Closing guideline for administrators". I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, here.
  10. How long is the tag supposed to stay on an article?
    See question #4, above.

Hope this is helpful to you; it certainly improved the project page, as there were two questions you asked that had not been clearly specified. Thanks. JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

What a crock

The Prod people kicked back a nomination for a run-of-the-mill undergrad student from someone kind enough to take the time to help clean up WP from all this mounting crud just because the asteroid people requested the article? So now we throw out all the accumilated experience of those users who frequently participate in AfD and create another layer of management to approve or disapprove their requests. Ruby 21:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

If you think the article shouldn't be deleted, just remove the {{prod}} template. Simple as that. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:53, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't want to step on the prodpeople's authority (there's a new sheriff in town I guess). But so far we have have nothing but delete votes on Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tzveta_Dmitrieva_Pokrovska as I predicted. Ruby 14:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Well to be fair, that undergrad student did have an asteroid named after her; I personally don't think that's very notable, but I can see how people may disagree with that. Remember that 80% of AFD is not controversial. >Radiant< 22:41, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
See above. Ruby 14:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I proded that article and I don't understand your complaint. Do you think I should have speedied it (maybe I should have)? I thought about that, but I thought I would test out prod because the person has some level of notability. BrokenSegue 16:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I withdraw my complaint, BrokenSegue; from reading the histories I thought you were compelled to AfD it after getting your Prod request shot down, and that set me out of orbit. There have been some subsequent comments that have ruint the whole project for me, however. Ruby 16:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

How do we stop this?

Gah, what a mess. With virtually no notice or attempt to even ask, let alone seek the consensus of the rest of the community, this has been thrown onto the project at large. This is the sort of thing that really needs a proposal and actual vote before the beginning of a crock "trial", seeing as it cannot be stopped without the consensus that it should have had to begin in the first place. Ambi 01:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

It's a trial. If it doesn't work out, it's not going to be pushed forth. There has been, I would say, a fair bit of discussion, notice, etc, if a newbie like me was able to find out about it.... What do you think is the major issue that makes it a "mess"? Anything that reduces the volume in AfD and gives people more time per article actually there will improve AfD, I think. ++Lar: t/c 01:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Who decides if it isn't working out? It's already being pushed forth. It wasn't advertised anywhere, there wasn't any attempt at seeing if there was any wider agreement that this should go ahead (despite pure wiki deletion systems having been oft-rejected in the past), and as far as I can see, the only people who really seem to know about this are its proponents. Ambi 01:26, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you are in error on the claim of it having not been advertised anywhere. As of now, it is linked to more than 875 pages, so it's clearly publicized at this point. As for wheather it was advertised sufficiently when it was first announced, I present an except from Radiant's contribs, in which e lists the page on the following places:

  1. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies
  2. Template:Cent
  3. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard
  4. Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion.

While I could think of some other places this could have been listed, i.e. the Village pump(on 17:27, 27 January 2006, minutes after it was first annouced), I think it is simply wrong to claim that this "wasn't advertised anywhere". Thanks for your time. JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


I've gone a step further, and marked it as proposed. This has massive implications for the broader project, and there's absolutely no way it should be going ahead without a) asking the wider community, and b) asking Jimbo. This was an attempt to slip pure wiki deletion in by the back door, despite it having been largely rejected before. Ambi 01:26, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for discussion, but we've discussed deletion reform endlessly and it is pretty futile. This isn't a new idea, an earlier version was listed for discussion for weeks, and this has been here for some days now. What do you want, a poll first? Experience shows that if you put things to votes and polls, few changes gather 70% - everyone is saying 'yes change, but why not this other idea'. Whilst if you make well thought out changes, and are willing to revert if they fail, things might actually happen. The question is not, have we have enough pages of discussion or the requisit big poll, it is, is there substantive objection to this? And do people think a trial run will do substantial harm? Sometimes a little less talk, and a little more boldness might take us forward quicker. Wikipedia is becoming inately conservative in regard to change.
It was futile because there never has been, isn't, and never will be consensus for PWD. Hence this attempt to slip it in by the back door. I'm all for being bold, but this has the potential to create the mother of all messes, so it's hardly a good candidate for that. Ambi 01:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually this has fairly wide consent from a variety of differently-opinioned wikipedians. What are your actual concerns, or is it the process you are objecting to? --Doc ask? 01:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Where? I notice all the regular advocates of PWD here, and very few of its critics. I notice no straw poll, vote, or any attempt to seriously ascertain consensus, and I notice basically no attempt to advertise this until after it had supposedly gone live.
This proposal is a disaster from the get-go. It throws out a process that we all know has issues but kind of gets the job done, and replaces it with a dogs breakfast from hell. Ambi 01:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
This is not pure-wiki deletion (which incidently I oppose). --Doc ask? 01:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
This is exactly the same as every other PWD proposal that I've ever seen. How is it not PWD? Ambi 01:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
This is much more like Uncontested Deletions than PWD; you may have them confused. In PWD, the page gets blanked immediately (with history available), instead of being deleted (including its history) after N days. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:01, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What the heck? Virtually no notice? Check the whatlinkshere, you'll see this has been advertised all over the wiki. It got a wide amount of support. Besides, as you well know, we are not in the habit of voting on things. >Radiant< 01:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Where has it been advertised? No one even tried to hold a straw poll, and no one bothered to advertise on WP:GO, as with most major policy changes. Ambi 01:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
This was advertised in wide public forums. I can understand you'd be upset if you didn't notice, but well, lots of people did. I don't see what else they could have done. We certainly don't need Jimbo's approval just to refine deletion policy. Deco 01:29, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Deletion policy is probably the most controversial area on Wikipedia, and if you had advertised it, there would be a lot more people here. Ambi 01:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

This was advertised on WP:CENT which is how I found it. If you don't keep track of that page, where do expect these sorts of things to advertised?--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 01:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, WP:GO for starters. That page is really obscure - it doesn't appear to have been in regular use until very recently. Ambi 01:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Most policy changes aren't put on GO, they're put on RFC/Policy and on the village pump. As this has been. {{cent}} is displayed all over the wiki, in particular in any process related to deletion. So yes, any user involved in deletion is aware of this. Might I ask what exactly is your opposition to this, except that you think it should have been discussed longer? And might I point out that this and similar proposals have been discussed for half a year already? >Radiant< 01:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
    • If this was discussed in such depth, why is it such a mess? I've just been through the associated category, and approximately 60% were complete crap that were obvious speedy candidates, and about 20% were stuff that would most probably survive an AfD. This is a very, very flawed attempt at replacing AfD, with an error ratio that is way too high. Ambi 02:07, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
    • 1)It is not replacing AfD, it is aimed at taking away the stuff that gets unanimously deleted there. 2)You can't say that it is flawed. Articles lie here for five days, in which time people can speedy them or remove the tag, or afd them. It only fails if articles that would have otherwise been kept/or speedied are still tagged after five days. It has been running just a few hours, give it a chance. If your concerns are right, then it will evidently fail. 3) It isn't pure wiki - because it actually deletes things in the end. --Doc ask? 02:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
      • It's been going what, a day, and there's already an absolute mess. From going through the category, about 80% of this stuff was either a) speedy candidates, or b) stuff that would most likely not be deleted unanimously, if at all, on AfD. It's badly thought through, very difficult to review properly, and leaves buckets upon buckets of crap around on the 'pedia for several days until someone gets around to cleaning up the backlog. (It isn't even sorted by date - how do you people think someone is going to clean out the articles that have been there for five days unless they go through each and every one in the category and check their edit histories?) Ambi 02:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
        1. By reading the log.
        2. I've been going through some of the articles you deleted, and have yet to find one that was a CSD. Is there a reason I shouldn't blanket undelete all of them? —Cryptic (talk) 02:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

It's a test run. Calm down. The fact that you didn't know about the log suggests you are talking and acting too quickly. If the proposal doesn't work out (defined by the opinions of people like you) then it will not become policy. Having tests and experimenting can never be a bad thing if it is done in good faith. I have known about this proposal for a while (Jan) it's probably just bad luck that you didn't run across it. BrokenSegue 02:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Ambi above 1000%. I never even heard of WP:CENT until having read this thread! User:Zoe|(talk) 00:09, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

It was listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion, as well as the VP(a few minutes later), the day this page was created.(See my longer comment, above, for details and citations.) I assume you have heard of one or more of those, right? The claim of it not having been advertised is just not credible. JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:35, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I never heard of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies until just now. I do not recall having ever seen it on the Administrators' noticeboard, and I usually don't read Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Cent. I am wondering what kind of notification pages you do subscribe to? I have attempted to streamline that in the past, but the fact is that there are five or six different "news" pages on Wikipedia, and there is strong resistance to merging them even if they're all redundant. >Radiant< 01:03, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
(via edit conflict) It was added to WP:AN on 17:18, 27 January 2006 and removed on 00:13, 6 February 2006. I will resist checking if your contrib list shows any edits to the page between those times, as that would not be assuming good faith. Instead, I will ask: where would you have posted this, if it had been you doing it? (Besides, WP:GO, which I agree, would have been a good place to put it.) JesseW, the juggling janitor 01:11, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Ambi uncovered a basic flaw to the whole process, PROD articles are either speedy candidates or AfD candidates, with no middle ground. If they are speedy candidates, the PROD process has the negative effect of making them linger for days after they should go. If they are AfD candidates, the process has the negative effect of bypassing consensus when some articles are not forwarded to the AfD page. If they are deemed to be "non-controversial" they are effectively being speedied without complying to the WP:CSD. Ruby 12:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it's a flaw, actually. Some CSD candidates *shouldn't* be CSD candidates for whatever reason, I can think of the expansion of CSD A7 as an excellent example of this. Whether it gets deleted today or Friday doesn't especially matter if there's no chance of it being resurrected, but having a bunch of eyes look at it helps, not hurts. As for them being AfD candidates, I was under the impression, perhaps mistaken, that this was a way to reduce the load on AfD by weeding out the articles that would be deleted with minimal protest on AfD anyway. So... --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 15:14, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The bigger the load on AfD the better. There are pop-up tools to make voting a snap, and we're only catching a fraction of the crud that's being created every hour. Ruby 15:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
You should realize that many Wikipedians do not agree with that opinion. That's why there have been so many proposals for deletion reform. I, for example, would say that huge loads on AfD means that only those who are obsessed with AfD can keep up with it. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:25, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with Rspeer's opinion. While pop-up tools can make voting very quick and easy, they don't really improve the quality of the AfD process. Ideally people who vote on AfD candidates will examine the discussion, review the article–and improve it, where appropriate–and then make a reasoned comment. Articles that are good candidates for a one-click cookie-cutter pop-up vote are often excellent candidates for PROD; this would leave more time to consider/improve/discuss borderline deletion candidates. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 21:38, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If anyone thinks that articels are speedy candidates, that perosn can always repalce the {{prod}} with a speedy tag -- most of the ones I ahve looked at are not speedies. Anything that soemnone things should be delted is an AfD candidate (injcluding a fair number of speedies, enough that I have User:DESiegel/A7V just to subst onto AfD pages of things i think are A7 speedies. Lots of stuff on AfD wooshes though with no dissent. This process is intented to make that eaasier and quicker, reservign AfD for things where theree actuall is (or at least might be) some dicussion to have. PROD lasts as long as AfD, so no nothing on this is "effectively being speedied" and no consensus is being bypassed when anyone who objects halts the prod process.
  • The reason why some people think lots of CSDs are being proded is that people have been using a very liberal definition of speedying. All admins will admit to it. A trashy article that you know will get deleted in AfD is before you and will fall of new pages soon. Do you AfD it and waste yours and everyones time? Or do you speedy it out of process. CSD rules are quite rigid (although they have loosened recently). For example if an article said, "Johnny is a cool American wrestler who won the National championships in 1991 and is married to Serina Carlson" it would not be a CSD even though the claim that he is a national champion is ridiculous (google turns up nothing) and nothing notable is stated. That article would be a perfect prod candidate. BrokenSegue 22:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Suppose there were a thousand articles on AfD every day instead of 200. All that would mean is that people surfing for an article to vote on would be inclined to let the ones with nothing but six or seven "KEEP" votes or "DELETE" votes go and concentrate on the ones with no consensus or the ones with only two or three votes. There's always a batch of stale articles that don't get enough votes one way or another to develop a consensus and they are sometimes re-posted to fish for more votes. Those articles should be the ones to be PROD'd Ruby 22:13, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Most respectfully I must say that you are entirely wrong. The articles with no concensus need discussion and more careful consideration, thus AfD. The ones with 6 or 7 Deletes need little thought and thus should be proded. If there were 1000 nominations every day AfD would be unmanigable about 500 would be clear deletes. That would mean that (3 to 6) times 500 (1500 to 3000) votes would be casted each day, a huge number. I think templates for keep or delete are exactly what we don't want. It's not a vote, it's a discussion. We shouldn't waste our time discussing the obvious, thus prod. Having all of these clear votes on AfD lowers the quality of the other debates because people like me don't want to wade through all of the obvious votes. BrokenSegue 22:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, then I will offer one more suggestion. After 24 hours on AfD, if an article has nothing but Deletes, move it from AfD to PROD without waiting the full five days. This will reduce the size of the rolls on the older days so people can revisit them without having too much to wade through, and it will preserve the integrity of the debate. Ruby 23:35, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
No, let's not move anything from AFD to PROD. We have enough articles listed for this test trial. Feel free to advertise PROD in pointless AFD debates so the nominator knows about it. Deco 00:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Why the panic?

Does anyone see an immediate reason to think the deletions done by this method will be any less reasonable than those done at Afd? I don't see how this can really introduce any problems that we don't already have, and there's always deletion review. Instead of assuming problems and trying to stop this, why not just keep a close eye on it so that any problems that actually arise can be dealt with? Isn't this what people are already doing? I don't see a reason to get excited. Friday (talk) 02:07, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Wise words. Seconded. >Radiant< 02:26, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
It hasn't been well thought through. So many articles are being tagged with this - many of which are obvious speedy candidates - that it's virtually impossible to give them any sort of review unless a) they're already on your watchlist, or b) you spend all your time on the encyclopedia monitoring this category, which IMHO is not helpful. It's already not working - it may be able to in not-too-distant future, but it would vastly help if people thought this through then acted. Ambi 02:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
So many articles are being tagged with AFD - many of which are obvious speedy candidates - that it's virtually impossible to give them any sort of review unless a) they're already on your watchlist, or b) you spend all your time on the encyclopedia monitoring AFD, which IMHO is not helpful. It's already not working - it may be able to in not-too-distant future, but it would vastly help if people thought this through then acted. — Phil Welch 02:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Oh, so funny. Please actually contribute to the discussion or go away. Ambi 02:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I was contributing. Please learn to understand reductio ad absurdum arguments or go away. — Phil Welch 02:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
AfD defaults to keeping an article. You don't have to monitor it; if no one participates thoughtfully in the discussion, the article is kept. In this it differs from PROD, which requires no thoughtful discussion before deleting an article. Can you understand why I don't think your reductio with respect to AfD is analogous to Ambi's point with regard to PROD? Ikkyu2 02:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Is that actually true, though? In principle an article could be deleted through AfD with only the nominator's vote and the closing admin's decision—just like PROD. No discussion required, and the nominator's explanation can be quite concise. Practically, this happens very seldom, and PRODworthy articles from AfD typically get a couple of desultory Delete per nominator votes because a) AfD has more traffic right now, and b) we don't want a single troll to be able to push an obviously deletable article into no-consensus territory. There are already several very dedicated editors watching the PROD category, and I expect that there will be even more eyes in the future. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Most articles being tagged are arguably not obvious speedy candidates. CSD rules are worded very narrowly, and proposals that attempt to use wording that can be interpretted more liberally have not gained wide support. --Interiot 03:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It was thought through. It was discussed for half a year. So what if people are tagging speedies with {{prod}}? Plenty of admins watching it, and one of them will speedy it. That has about the same effect as tagging it with {{delete}}. Of course many articles are going to be tagged with this - have you looked at AFD lately and seen how friggin' huge it is? >Radiant< 02:26, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If articles that fulfill WP:CSD are tagged with {{prod}} simply inform the editor that tagged it about this. The speedy tag is just as easy to use and once you educate the editor this will not happen again. This can hardly be seen as a long-term drawbrack to this proccess! If anything I have tagged fullfills something for speedy please tell me. I would love to use speedy if appropriate.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 02:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I think the proper progression should be: Speedy -> Prod -> AfD. You can start at any of those three, but moving backwards should be strongly discouraged, especially from AfD to Prod. An article being listed at AfD implies contentiousness. An article being listed at Prod implies that it does not meet CSD criteria in the opinion of that editor. Peyna 02:41, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Can I add fuel to the fire? How?

I apologize if this has been answered, so please feel free to move this question to the topmost FAQ by Radiant: If I see a prod tag and found even more reasons to delete, can I add these reasons? Where? --Perfecto 02:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I'm looking at Category:Wikipedia articles that need their importance to be explained and I'm diving right in.

  • Either on the article's talk page, or edit the page and add more text to the reason in {{prod|reason}}. Or leave it be, we can hardly delete the article twice. >Radiant< 02:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Does that mean {{prod}} should never be subst'd? —rodii 03:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • It currently confuses my script, so preferably people don't subst it. I might be able to add more logic to my script, but as far as I know, there's no benefit or use for substing {{prod}}. --Interiot 03:48, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Radiant. I realised that, yes, you're the best person to lead a project such as this. I've tagged a dozen neglected articles with no claim to importance, and I'll see if WP:PD could be the slow version of CSD:A7. --Perfecto 03:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Sign?

Should we sign our reason for deletion with our username? Some people are doing that. BrokenSegue 02:43, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

"No signature necessary." But I can't particularly see that it hurts. JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:50, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer if people didn't, because we should focus on the article and not on the user who nominated it. >Radiant< 02:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
What people are doing in explaining their reasoning is really the kind of comment that traditionally goes on the talk page. I suppose if someone wants to make a long statement, they should do so on the talk page and sign it. If the reason is short, it could go in the template and not be signed. Friday (talk) 04:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
We wouldn't normally sign an AfD template on the article page. As a rule, I don't think there should be user sigs on article pages at all. —Whouk (talk) 10:22, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
The history shows who tagged. DES (talk) 18:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
It would be useful if the user who tagged showed up in the logs, I think. I, for one, like to check up on progress of articles I've nominated for deletion, and being able to search the log for my username would be the easiest way of finding them. JulesH 21:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Taggers, I suggest you randomise your reasons...

Nevermind. I'm merely paranoid today. --Perfecto 05:01, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

  • That was probably I: I've prodded a bunch of pages categorised as being of questionable notability, to give the process a test run. A generic prod template seemed to serve well for these cases. -- In the meantime, I've learnt that some people prefer merging and redirecting wherever possible, even if the redirect is somewhat less than intuitive - but I guess that's the sort of rapid problem-solving outcome that this process is supposed to generate. Sandstein 07:57, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Archives

Will there be a better history of PRODs that what's currently served up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxxxxxxxxxx (talk • contribs)

Visibility

The list of PRODs needs to be more prominent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxxxxxxxxxx (talk • contribs)

  • It's right at the top of the page, and on the template. >Radiant< 19:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

{{prod-2}}

I have created prod-2, so that anyoen who reveiws and endorses a proposed deeltion can easily indiacte that s/he has doen so. Can the log note pages where prod-2 has been appllied? Can wwe incorporate this as an optional part of the process? DES (talk) 01:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Is this meant to be used additionally or in replacement of {{prod}}? I'm wary that PROD is starting to replace the function of the talk/AFD page with the edit history —Quarl (talk) 2006-02-07 02:32Z
In addition. This is in response to thos who have said that they look at the log, adn ahve no idea which entries have been double-checked by anyone. If yopu double-check an entry, and agree with the tag, you may choose to add {{prod-2}}. This adds the page to Cat:Proposed deletion-endorsed. The log can (if it is altered to do so) pick up on the fact that prod-2 has been added, and put an X (or a username, from the edit history) into an "Endorsed" column. Failing that, anyone who goes to the page will see the double-box indicatign an endorsed deletion. look at the pages now in that category for exampels. DES (talk) 02:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with this template. A "second endorsement" does not improve or streamline the process. Articles endorsed once, twice, three times are no different to the one guy who contests.
If you ask me, if you agree with the prod, simply add it to your watchlist. So if someone contests, you'll know, so you can decide to send it to AfD yourself. --Perfecto 03:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
While I do appreciate the thought and effort that went into creating this, I find I agree with Perfecto here; people are nervous enough about removing prod tags; a double endorsement is muddying the waters with no benefit. The idea of adding the page to your watchlist if you agree it should be deleted is excellent, though, and ought to be mentioned on the page(and maybe even in the tag itself). JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with other comments. If someone decides not to look at an article because someone else thought it should be deleted, well, that's kind of missing the point - we might miss something we should keep or send to AfD. I wouldn't worry about focusing effort - just look at the article names and reasons in the log for something that you're more likely to vote keep on. Everything will get covered by somebody, if only the closing admin. Deco 03:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
The point is that it's not practical for everyone to look at the same article over and over again, especially if prod actually becomes popular and you'll end up getting a hundred articles a day here. This is just a way for people to voice in that at least someone has went over the article and couldn't make it into anything useful instead of having the closing admin make a total judgement call every time and having to guess if people actually looked at the article or just believed the description on the list. - Bobet 21:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, how about a "click through" count on the list then, indicating the number of times each prodded article was visited from that page? This could be done pretty easily and would give a more quantitative indication of which pages require attention. Deco 01:10, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea to me, as long as it doesn't make everyone too reliant on the toolserver. I don't know how many people look at the list in there as opposed to the archive or the category, but if a feature like that was added, it certainly couldn't hurt. - Bobet 01:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Rephrase

Can someone try this rephrase on for size?

This article is proposed for deletion for the following concern:

I found the books cited in the Reference section in the library and reviewed them: they validate nothing in the article. This is likely a hoax.

If you disagree, please edit this page and remove this message. Please consider addressing this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the article.

The article may be deleted if this message has stayed for five days. For more information, read Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. (log)

Thanks. --Perfecto 05:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You link to WP:PROD twice; under "deleted" and directly. You probably want to delink "deleted". I prefer the emphasis on improving the article, but I'd be happy with the following rephrasing of that sentence: If you disagree with this concern, or you can address it by ... please edit this page and remove this message."(with the ... being the same list as above). JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I see what you mean. I did, and as a bonus, saved two more words. You probably realise my rephrase reflects the "How to prevent an article from being deleted" section of the main page, that is, improving the article is optional. I also saved 14 words. --Perfecto 14:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
This is not a good idea. The focus should be on improving the article. Perfecto's version lies the focus on removing the template. The major problem with AFD is that it focuses people on debate rather than article improvement. >Radiant< 23:26, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Hmph. Then (1) change the "How to prevent an article from being deleted" instructions on the main page, since all my version does is reflect what it says. (2) I could go tonight and tag every {unreferenced} article and every article without reliable sources I see. Let's see how folks here will like the huge research assignments that's due in five days.  :P (3) Why people are nervous to remove the tag now makes sense to me. --Perfecto 02:31, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Radiant, can you reply? --Perfecto 13:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Speedy Delete policy?

Does tagging an article for proposed deletion protect it from speedy deletion? If speedy deletion is too open to abuse/causing hard feelings then I can understand that. On the other hand, I'd hope that deleting/undeleting speedily deleted articles is No Big Deal.... --The Cunctator 14:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I have a view that one major problem with speedy deletion is WP:BITE. Creating an article about yourself is one of the more common newbie errors, I usually userfy them and leave an explanatory note rather than deleting them straight from CAT:CSD. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] 14:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
...which, if I may, I disagree. Wikipedia is not a collection of user autobios or self-written company profiles -- Wikipedia is not geocities or blogger. In my experience, new accounts who begin with autobios contribute nothing else, and sometimes, never even come back. JzG, you probably see me tag new-user autobios {nn-bio}+{nothanks-vanity} all the time. I expect {nt-v} takes away the bite. --Perfecto 15:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
As a frequent newpages patroller, my method is to userfy obvious non-notable autobios, since I figure they just intended to create a userpage anyway. I add {{badbio}} to the userpage and currently a note on the talk page explaining what I did. Yeah to me just deleting them outright seems too close to WP:BITE. --W.marsh 15:18, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Some autobios disclose far too much personal information though (eg. birth date, birth place, names of their children), and sound as if they're writing their own eulogy. I don't know, there seems to be something of a standard way of doing user pages on the internet... being less interested in disclosing personal information, and more interested in embellishing an online persona. I honestly think that nn-bios that disclose too much information are probably not what someone wants on their user page if they become an active contributor (or even something they'd want in the page's history), so I prefer to delete those instead. (I don't think this way about all nn-bios, just the ones that head in the direction of enumerating their children's names). --Interiot 16:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
To answer The Cunctator: No. Please tag articles for speedy wherever and whenever appropriate. We want them gone. Speedy tags are as reversible as the prod tag anyway. --Perfecto 15:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I have already speedy deleted at least one prodded article by nn-bio. Watch out for opportunities like this. Deco 20:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Date added

Right now the only ways to sort through the PROD'd pages are the 'what links here' on the template and the category. Neither of them have the date the page was tagged. There needs to be an easy way for people to check the articles being added (and an easy way to see what needs to be deleted). Is there any way to add the date as part of the listing in the category? -Ravedave 23:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

N/M I opened my damn eyes and looked at the 1st section (Deletion Log) on the article page. Sheesh - Ravedave 23:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Please be verbose

Just as a general reminder, I realise there are a lot of articles to get through, but please remember to avoid abbreviations and jargon (without explanative links) in your prod reasons. These reasons are reviewed not only by experienced Wikipedians but also by the original contributor, who is often a clueless newbie. I know we'll keep doing this anyway, but just try to keep it in mind. :-) Deco 02:57, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that nominations like 'dicdef neologism' and 'vanispamcruft' are going to be absolutely baffling to new users and lead to confusion. It would help if there were templates to make it easy to provide useful and well-referenced nominations every time, though I understand some people are strongly opposed to the idea. Still, it's frustrating to ask editors to spend an extra minute or two on every single nomination when a template would work so well. Some people do make an awful lot of nominations every day. What I suggest is that each editor make their own unoffocial pretyped messages for common deletion reasons, and either store it in a text file or some other easilly accessable place. --W.marsh 05:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

How deleted?

Perhaps I've missed the answer to this somewhere, but how are articles marked with the Prod template deleted? Are they automatically deleted, or do we need to go through and manually delete those that have been around for five days? If the latter, is there a page that lists ripe Prod pages? Babajobu 09:22, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Check the page again. If this is not mentioned in big red letters, please correct. It's manual. Has it been 5 days already? JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:28, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, it's mentioned under "Closing guidelines for administrators". No, it's not been five days yet. Babajobu 09:32, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It only works when...

...the person removing the prod tag lists a reason for doing so. I keep getting prod tags dropped without comment which forces me into AfD. Seems to me that that kind of defeats the purpose. James084 20:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

They're entitled to do so. A lot of them are clueless newbies or just don't feel any need to justify their decision. Just take it to AfD - even if a good percentage of them end up on AfD, I think a lot of them will still make it through the 5 day period. Deco 00:13, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
My point being that this is a waste of time. If the tag is going to be deleted without comment (without some guidance as to why the article needs to be kept) and it goes to AfD anyway, why not just start at AfD and eliminate this unnecessary step. As for me, I'm not bothering with this any more. I'll just put it on AfD and have a lively debate about it. At least that way I know where I went wrong and why the article should be kept. James084 01:00, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I assume when you list it on AfD you give a reason for it to be deleted? I don't get your complaint here. — Phil Welch 02:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
My complaint is actually on the opposite side of the equation. In AfD if you vote to keep the article you usually provide an explanation. In this process anyone can essentially vote keep without any comment. This, of course, forces the issue into AfD. As I said, this middle step is a complete waste of time. James084 02:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
It's a waste of time if someone removes the prod, but it saves time if no-one removes it. Zarquon 02:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes. The idea is that enough are not kept that the additional time for the ones going to AfD is justified. If you expect it to be contested, feel free to send it straight to AfD instead. I raised this objection above somewhere. Deco 03:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
One of the people James084 is complaining about is me. He "prodded" defeat in detail and I "de-prodded" it. Since I'm familiar with the term it was obvious to me that it shouldn't be deleted. I suppose it would have been better to have commented on the talk page explaining why It should be kept, but all I felt I had time for at that point was to simply to remove the tag. And frankly I was hoping that my removing the tag, might be sufficient for James to reconsider whether the topic deserved deletion. A simple Google search I think would convince most people that this is a legitimate term deserving of an article on Wikipedia. Paul August ☎ 03:16, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I think giving a reason in the edit summary more informative than "de prod" might have helped in getting him to reconsider. Maybe not, but even if you don't think it's worth going to talk, the edit summary is there calling to you. No reason anywhere doesn't help change anyone's mind. —rodii 03:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Good point. My edit summary should have been more informative. I will be more conscientious in the future. This process is new and we are all learning. Paul August ☎ 05:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Edit summaries are not as sexy as talk pages, but I have come to esteem them highly. They seem like a really useful tool in this process especially. —rodii 13:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Random observations

(Disclaimer: Numbers don't add up quiiite right. As such, these should be treated as rough estimates of what are probably highly misleading statistics) As when I took a sample (about when the two earliest proposed articles got deleted), roughly 883 articles have been prodded.

  • Of those, 290 articles are still prodded (about a third).
  • 599 articles have been de-prodded. Of those:
    • 227 have been speedied,
    • 198 have been de-prodded without further action,
    • 78 are on AfD,
    • 73 have been made into redirects,
    • 12 are copyvios, and
    • 6 have been re-prodded.

The number of AfDs for the past three days (6th, 7th, 8th) has dropped to 130/day.

I have no idea what any of these numbers mean, but these are what the numbers look like after five days of nothing but proposals. Nifboy 07:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

This is surprisingly more well-balanced than I would have imagined. It's good to see we're all looking for opportunities to take other appropriate actions with these articles. Deco 08:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you very much for doing this! What was the # of AfDs per day before, btw? JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Varies between 160-200, usually towards the higher end. Nifboy 16:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Does that 198 include articles which have been tidied up? I removed a few prods and improved the articles at the same time. —Whouk (talk) 10:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Nifboy 16:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Lots of PRODs should be speedys

It looks to me like a lot of the entries in the PROD queue are about eg non-notable bios, which can be speedily deleted. PROD should only be used where it isn't clear that a speedy delete would be more appropriate. — ciphergoth 08:42, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

A bio which is not notable is not automatically speediable, due to the subjective nature of such a judgement. To be speedy-deletable, it must itself fail to assert the notability of its subject. Something as simple as "John Dude is a guitar player known all over Hazard, Nebraska" could easily be construed as non-speediable. That said, I did find at least one speedy-deletable bio and deleted it. Deco 09:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the first statement, not the second. When a landlord wants a delinquent tenant out in California, she posts a "3-day notice to pay rent or quit the premises" along with a "30 day notice to quit the premises." Might as well just post the speedy template up along with the PROD template; that way, if speedy gets shot down, the PROD clock is already ticking. Ikkyu2 19:05, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
So tag them as speedies or speedy them yourself. You don't even have to worry about closing an AfD discussion! — Phil Welch 20:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Where are the red articles?

All these articles at 119 hours and I haven't seen one that I can delete yet. Are you guys just on top of them or are they being hidden for some reason? Deco 10:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Deco, looked at the bottom of the list? Best of the Dead and RedQuEEn! will be coming up any minute now... In any case, we need help at CAT:CSD - it's up to about 90 articles. Please take your deletion desires over there for a bit... JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I was just thinking, wouldn't it make more sense to put the article that have been at {{prod}} the longest on top, this way ensuring they are spotted first, since it is more important that they be dealt with before those that were more recently listed? Peyna 21:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
That's how Recent Changes get listed on WP (I've got CryptoDerk's doing it the other way around like you suggest). Ruby 04:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change to template: add AFD link

I don't want to encourage newbies to save their precious articles by immediately slamming them from prod to WP:AFD, but shouldn't there be a link in Template:Prod to AFD? I mean, if you're a serious user and you think the deletion should be debated, you'll want the link. Failing that, there should be a link off the auto-generated prod list, so the Prod Patrol can AFD articles. Alba 00:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be appropriate to strongly suggest to the person removing the prod tag to list the article on AfD instead; however, the problem is that probably most of the people that remove the prod tag don't think the article should be deleted and would see listing it on AfD as something they probably don't want to do. While some of us might have a sense of duty to the person that originally listed the article for prod, to then go ahead and list it for AfD if we decide to remove the prod tag, I doubt most editors would do so. Peyna 01:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
If a user makes an objection on the talk page it won't get prodded, I was saving a few articles this way earlier. Ruby 04:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I just have to note that this is not correct. While it would be nice if any admin clearing out the PROD log made sure to read the talk pages, and remove the prod link for any pages that mention an objection, it is not required. The way to record an objection is to remove the prod tag. Anything else may be noticed by the closing admin, or another user, but it may not be. I strongly encourage anyone who has conerns about the deletion of a PRODed article to remove the tag - that's the proper signal. Leaving an objection on the talk page is certainly useful, but it's not a substitute for removing the tag. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:11, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Already been through AFD?

I just removed the template from an article, Gary Scavone, which had already survived an AfD (I also expanded it). Shouldn't there be a general policy against such articles being listed here? These are only for articles that no one thinks are worth keeping, right? Obviously, several people had already voted to keep that one. I have a number of concerns about this idea (particularly that bios of academics and others in specialized fields will be more likely to be deleted), but a clear policy against listing AfD survivors would make me feel a little bit better about it. Chick Bowen 07:30, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree; if an article has gone through AfD, it should not be listed here; it might be good to add a link to the AfD page for the article, just to make it easy to check this... Feel free to add such a link. Thanks for bringing this up. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:07, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with this. The point of PROD is to streamline deletion of obvious deletion candidates, and one can safely say no article that we'd ever vote to keep is an obvious delete. Even if the article has changed significantly since the keep vote, the worst it deserves is reverting, not deletion. The only possible exception I can imagine is if for some reason our standards for deletion become much more aggressive in the future. Deco 08:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Backup system

Just the pragmatic side of me wondering whether the entire system falls to bits dramatically if the Wikimedia toolserver goes down for any period of time (so we don't have the central records), which it has been known to do? enochlau (talk) 09:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


AfD-survivors

In keeping with what was discussed above, I've added a sentence under What this process is NOT for to the effect that AfD-survivors should not be listed here. Feel free to adjust it as usual, but I really think something like that should be there. I did not put this in, but I also think it would be reasonable for admins to check the talk page, where an old AfD ought to be listed. Thanks. Chick Bowen 15:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, actually. Anything that's gone through an AfD and survived (even through no consensus) should have the necessary controversy to evade prodding. -- nae'blis (talk)

Copyvio

Would it possible to note on the main page that prod is not the appropriate tag for copyright violations? We have {{copyvio}} to deal with copyright problems, and while most of them probably are not contentious, they require more special attention than they may get being listed here. Peyna 15:27, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

It appears you went ahead and did this. Sounds good to me. Deco 18:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I figured it'd be more likely to get attention if I actually made the change than just posted a comment about here. Looks like I was right. Peyna 18:47, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

XD overlap

I'm finding a lot of previously XD'd articles showing up on the prod list, any suggestion on how to handle them? Peyna 20:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

What's XD? Deco 20:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
WP:XD. I'd say just handle them normally. Why not? BrokenSegue 20:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree. None of the XD proposals had nearly the support behind them that this one does. Deco 20:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

My question was whether it would be appropriate to remove the XD tag, restore the content and then place the prod tag on the page; otherwise it can be difficult for editors to judge the article without stepping through history, and increases the chances that if the article was worth saving, no one will because they didn't bother to look at what the content was before the XD was done. Peyna 20:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

This sounds good to me; I would also apply it to other articles that have been substantially vandalized or otherwise had content removed since their last good state. Although people examining the merits of an article up for deletion really should always be checking out the history, in practice we're always in a hurry. Deco 20:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

When do marked articles actually get deleted?

If this shouldn't go here, then I'll delete it with an apology. At any rate, I put up the template for a page to be deleted on 28 November 2006; it's now 5 December, well past the time during which the article should have been taken care of. Is there something else that needs to be done? Will nothing happen at all if an admin decides the article is not worth deleting? Magaroja 23:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It's normally five days, but it can be longer if a backlog occurs. It depends upon how many articles there are & admins available time. If an admin disagrees with the nomination, they would remove the prod template. -- JLaTondre 23:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)