Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/April 2004

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New format bad, a suggestion for a better one

I really don't like the MediaWiki set-up here.

  1. It adds two additional steps for listing (creating the MediaWiki page and then creating a msg ref to it along with an edit page link).
  2. It creates a bunch of MediaWiki pages that will later have to be deleted.

A better idea would be to just link to the talk page of the page nominated for deletion (ala Wikipedia:Requests for comment). That would reduce the size of this page (both real and load size) and put the talk where it can be most easily found by the readers and authors of the nominated pages. And in cases where the page does not get deleted, the talk is already where it should be archived. --mav 20:55, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree Mav, but last time something very similar to that was tried (last September) several people had a fit and the page was changed back to the status quo. (Which was less of a problem back then since the page averaged around 70k at the time.) - Hephaestos|§ 21:01, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal. In fact, if you look above, I've already suggested it :). The only argument I can see against it is it makes adding new entries slightly harder, though if you use Talk:whatever/delete, even that point is no longer true. Some nice features besides the edit conflict one is that it makes it easier to see what is being added/removed from VfD, it makes it easier to notice people changing the policy text surrounding the votes, and it makes it easier to add specific vote pages to your watchlist which you are particularly interested in. anthony (this comment is a work in progress and may change without prior notice)
It's been proposed many times; the earliest reference I can find is almost a year ago. What's needed is a way to overcome the (imo irrational) fear of any change whatsoever displayed by many people. Because if something doesn't change, VfD will eventually be a megabyte or more in size. It grows in proportion to the growth of the 'pedia. - Hephaestos|§ 21:09, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I created User:Hemanshu/Vfd Interface some time back. --Hemanshu 23:07, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think the current set up is a lot more useful than moving everything to a talk page. It lets you see the discussions without having to open 120 different pages (which is how many pages were listed yesterday). This needs to be tried for longer before it is scrapped to see if people can learn to create the mediawiki things. Once they get used to it, I'm sure it will not seem as bad, and as suggested above, there are plenty of people willing to convert normal listings to the mediawiki namespace listings for those who don't want to learn the new system. If this does not work after a couple of weeks, I suggest we use day-pages instead, as was tried last year. Checking 7 pages would be a lot more practical than checking 120. Angela. 04:16, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
How about one page for 3.5 days? That is, you have to check only two pages. I still hate the new version. It's too complex to be useful. -- Taku 05:28, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)
Because splitting it in two would still lead to a page that is too long. Angela. 16:38, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Why not put the day pages in the mediawiki namespace? You'd only have to make a new page once a day rather than for every each nomination, and you would still be able to view them all on the one page. - Lee (talk) 22:56, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That's an excellent idea. Angela. 16:38, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Section editing

If we're going to have mediawiki pages for each individual entry, what's the point of creating a section header for each entry? Let's save some space. --Jiang 05:43, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good idea; probably would make sense to use a noeditsection tag on the page rather than do away with the headers, because that would also get rid of the table of contents, which is useful. Also we probably don't want to do it yet, as at the moment about two-thirds of the page still isn't using the MediaWiki method. - Hephaestos|§ 18:15, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Actually, the section editing is quite useful. It's easier to change a VFD item from the old syntax to the new using section editing, and the same is true of commenting on items posted in the old way. Since a slew of items are posted every day in the old format by the nay voters below, keeping section edits turned on is a good idea. --Ben Brockert 03:18, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Boilerplate text

Wait, when did it become official policy to put {{subst:vfd}} instead of {{msg:vfd}}? - Woodrow 19:57, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Since at least December. See Wikipedia talk:Boilerplate text. Angela. 04:07, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

Voting on the "experiment"

Could we start a vote on this new format? Nobody's given it a yea or a nay, it's just been imposed. RickK | Talk 06:23, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yea:

  1. "Edit this page". There's no 32k warning any more! Are you saying you want to go back to the way it was? Endless edit conflicts? Some say they won't add to the page any more because it's "too hard". I say I didn't bother with the page before because it was IMPOSSIBLE. It's been said time and time again, if you don't know the format, just leave it on the page and someone will fix it. All I'm asking for is an option to make the page smaller. Am I asking too much? - Hephaestos|§ 06:51, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  2. I like it. It may not be perfect but it's a whole lot better than before. Let's not forget that as wikipedia expands VfD will continue to grow. It was very very bad before, what would it be like in a years time? It's not difficult at all to vote, it is a bit more difficult to list new entries but people will soon get used to it. theresa knott 10:31, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  3. I like the fact that the conflicts are lessened but I can still browse all the votes on one page. - Texture 15:22, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  4. I sympathize with Dysprosia's sentiments expressed below, but I think the Mediawiki workaround is preferable to the high probability of edit conflicts inherent in the previous setup. -- Cyan 04:00, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  5. Ryan_Cable 05:06, 2004 Mar 31 (UTC)
  6. Kudos to whoever rewrote the instructions. They're much clearer now (and no offense to the original author). Meelar 05:23, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  7. I like the new format. Edit conflicts no more. It would be better if an easier way of adding pages to VFD could be created, but considering how difficult it was previously due to edit conflicts, I'm not too worried. Ambivalenthysteria 05:51, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  8. The page is smaller and quicker loading. There are no edit conflicts and it is easier to maintain. The only negative point is that it is harder to create new pages, but people will get used to this soon enough. It needs to be tried for longer. Angela. 16:26, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
  9. I haven't had an edit conflict since this new system started. Wow. - Fennec 18:44, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  10. I was confused at first, but I like it now. It used to be impossible to track down anything in the VfD history. Now there are no edit conflicts, and it's easy to use the history. I'm not saying there couldn't be further improvement, but this is certainly better than what we had. Isomorphic 21:46, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  11. Newbie has the hang of it. Today makes three weeks since I discovered Wikipedia and fell in love. Just this morning I realized that everything on my talk page should have been on my user page. Clearly, I'm still learning. Maybe it is because I'm in learning mode, and everything is new to me, but the new system didn't seem complicated at all. This morning I saw some entries that weren't in the new format and decided to change them. I read the directions once, then ghost-edited a couple of examples (clicked edit to look at the wikitext, then hit the back button on the browser). I was able to easily change those entries to the new format. Yes, it has a couple more steps than the old way, but no edit conflicts. Anything new is confusing at first, but once you do it a couple of times it's really quite easy. SWAdair | Talk 11:32, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  12. I think this is a really good way to solve the edit conflicts. The "help text" could be clearer, though. As it is now it takes thorough reading of it to realize that it is neither required nor, indeed, in most cases allowed that the VfD- message title be identical to the article title in question. (It's not an ill-posed text, it's just that it's counter-intuitive, so people will continue assuming the opposite if it's not made clearer.) But the system works fine. -- Jao 16:18, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  13. Better than the old method, but currently too difficult to do. Better would be to have all these discussions on the talk pages and then just link them from here. — Jor (Talk) 17:35, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  14. I added over twenty pages from cleanup with no edit conflicts. - SimonP 23:21, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
  15. I like the new format, but obviously there is room for improvement. If someone can find a way to make it a one-step process (while maintaining the protection against edit conflicts and the huge page size) that would be ideal. Still, it's much better than the previous way. -- Friedo 02:48, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  16. It took me a while to accept this change, but I have to admit it's good -- even if more complex than before...and as someone with deletionist tendencies, it's actually good to be slowed down a bit. -- BCorr|Брайен 23:56, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
  17. I like it mostly, but needs improvement. No edit conflicts, good history, but now Vfd is longer than ever. ugh.
  18. Keep. Sander123 07:24, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  19. Keep; the New Method is a fiddly system that only a propellerhead could love which reflects an improvement over the Old Method that nobody could love. We await the long-heralded meta:Deletion management redesign. UninvitedCompany 20:17, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  20. I like it. Clear instructions are crucial, though. Cribcage 05:28, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  21. I LOVE the new system. I can put the meta page in my watch list and know when action has been taken or more votes have gone through. With Vfd on my watch list, it's just always there, and I have to look at history to see if issues I care about have been addressed. Other benefits above too... --ssd 15:12, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  22. Keep, and change details (maybe a sub-namespace in MediaWiki for vfd msgs, or something, so cleanup will be easier). -- till we *) 22:18, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  23. Making an entry is complicated, but everything else is much easier. This is the best so far. Rossami 13:11, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  24. Don't disagree with anything written above. -- Cimon 03:34, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)
  25. It works well for anyone who is willing to use it, and everyone else can just put stuff on the page the old way and it gets magically fixed. Short of integrating a deletion procedure into the software, this seems like the best way. --Ben Brockert 03:15, May 1, 2004 (UTC)
  26. I am not sure whether I figured out how I should deal with the messages when listing a new page for deletion. I think the page is by far too long, why is it not archived every day? If users do not care to go back they do not care enough to vote, and it would shorten waiting periods significantly. I have DSL and Vfd still always blocks my system for a while every time I use it. What I like very much is that with this page's layout it is possible to watch every single article discussion separately. That would be useful at Request for adminship or Request for comment as well. Get-back-world-respect 00:34, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
  27. I like the new format. I even don't mind putting "plain" entries into the new format. - UtherSRG 12:34, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
  28. Much better than before. I used to not bother much with VfD because I got so many edit conflicts. Keep until someone comes up with something better. The main thing that's needed is a way of making it easier to add new entries. Dpbsmith 19:22, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Nay:

  1. Too difficult, makes it cause people to avoid using VfD because of the difficulty. Right now, a VfD entry and its votes are currently unavailable because of a screwed-up msg link to the supposed vote location. RickK | Talk 06:29, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  2. Something needs to be done, but such an abstruse and confusing method is not it. If the creation and deletion of the MediaWiki pages can be automated, then it can probably be kept, but otherwise, let's look for a better method. Please? Dysprosia 10:34, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  3. Agree with Dysprosia. As to the 32k limit, use section editing. I would actually rather more discussions were moved to [[Talk:Some page or other/VfD]] or similar. --Phil | Talk 11:14, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)
  4. too confusing. should not have separate sections for each entry either, maybe every 5 entries... --Jiang 04:50, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  5. Taku 07:49, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
  6. anthony (this comment is a work in progress and may change without prior notice) 11:02, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  7. Agree with RickK and Dysprosia. I know this has been discussed before and rejected, but maybe it's time to reconsider moving vfd discussion to the talk page of the article. moink 16:39, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  8. It seems rather an awkward kludge to me, since it essentially only solves one problem (edit conflicts), which will hopefully become much less of a problem once the next edition of the software is rolled out. However, perhaps it is worth continuing the trial for now. I'd also like to point out that, contrary to Angela's vote above, any change in the size or loading time of the page is either coincidence or an illusion - the rendered version in fact contains slightly more text (the extra edit links); only the wiki-source has become smaller. - IMSoP 17:43, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  9. Dori | Talk 18:45, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
  10. Terrible, overengineered solution.—Eloquence 21:47, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
  11. I liked it the way it was just before better. This setup removes edit conflicts entierly which is a good thing but adds extra clicks to voting and adding which is a bad thing.
  12. Confusing, esp for new users and those unfamiliar with the Wiki markup. I just use section editing. LUDRAMAN | T 18:42, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  13. Too much work required. I'm in favor of making VfD look like Cleanup and putting discussion in each article's talk page. Fredrik 20:38, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  14. It's better than what we did before, but I think a better solution would be the oft-mentioned one-line entry with a link to talk page. That helps the length problem and we don't have to worry about server overhead parsing all of these future wanna-be orphans. CHL 23:24, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Additional comments:

  • I agree with folks who would rather have deletion discussion on the talk page of the article in question. This has always been the logical choice I think. However given the failure of such a setup in the past, I strongly recommend staying with what we've got here until we can convince people to go with that setup. What we have now is an order of magnitude better than what was there before. - Hephaestos|§ 18:40, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • You know, with this system, you could include the appropriate MediaWiki page on the talk page, as well as on the VFD page... -Fennec 18:44, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • This whole argument over talk pages would be solved if there were a <mirror> tag, that would function as follows: anything inside the tag would be mirrored to any pages listed within the tag. For example on the vfd page you would put <mirror|vfd|page to be deleted> discussion </mirror> Anything put in the discussion section would automatically be mirrored on both pages. This tag would also work great for user talk pages, since its annoying to have a one sided conversation listed on your talk page. This would have to be implemented in the wiki code of course, but I think that this sort of tag would be a large benefit and would completely solve the long vfd page issue.Theon 03:55, May 1, 2004 (UTC)
As a newbie I found that confusing. I didn't know whether to answer responses made to me that appeared om my Talk page on there, or go over to their Talk page and respond. I intuitively felt that people would look at their OWN Talk page and that seems to be working out. But, yes, you get a sense of dissatisfaction that there's ONE conversation split into TWO bits.
But quite how a mirror tag would intelligently know where on the other page to place itself I don't know... --bodnotbod 14:36, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

VfD-Hayawic

Can somebody fix this entry in the VfD page? RickK | Talk 06:29, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? - Hephaestos|§ 07:00, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It seems fine now, but when I made the request, all record of it had been deleted from VfD and instead of a link, it had text surrounded by "<"">". RickK | Talk 01:41, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That's what happens when a {{msg:}} points at a non-existent page. == Cyrius | Talk 17:19, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Language links

There's two copies of the links to other langauges at the top of the VfD page. Someone w/ a faster connection than myself should track down where in the page the two are and delete one. --zandperl 15:10, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There was two copies of the whole page! not just the language links. I think I fixed it but everyone please check that I didn't accidentally delete anything I shouldn't have. theresa knott 15:46, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is very confusing

I don't understand what's going on. I tried skimming the preceding dicussions. I haven't been to this page in a few days and now when I clicked a link to "add my comments to this discussion" for Ryan's Password Protection System I apparently updated an entirely different page--looks like that's what it's supposed to do, because I think everyone else's edits are there,too, but now mine don't show up on this main page. I don't understand how the comments get there from the apparently duplicate subsidiary page. There are no instructions or explanations at the top of VFD. Is it broken and was supposed to happen automatically? If there's some magic to all of this, I don't like it. Elf | Talk 01:08, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Here's what happened. In an effort to cut down on edit conflicts, Pete began an experiment in which the discussion of particular listings go on a Mediawiki page whose text is made visible on VfD via the {{msg:mediawiki_page}} syntax. All listings remain visible on VfD, but no edit conflicts occur when people update different listings. This workaround has been met with mixed reviews. For more info, start reading at the heading "Maintainability experiment". -- Cyan 03:52, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
you need to hit the refresh button on your browser to see your updated comment on VfD theresa knott 09:14, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Instead of having this confusing format, why don't we split vfd into Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/0-3 days and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/over 3 days to reduce edit conflicts? Having no votes take place at vfd itself might encourage people to also pay attention to the various daughter articles. --Jiang 04:53, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Splitting it in two will still make it much too big. It was 150kb before the new system was tried. Splitting into seven would make the individual pages about 20kb, which would be acceptable, but it's only a short term solution. In a few months, those seven pages will be regularly beyond 32kb as well. Angela. 16:35, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Modest proposal

I have another modest proposal. This page is way too huge and is only going to get larger. I don't just mean the length of the Wikitext, which it seems efforts are being made to keep below 32kb, but also in terms of it being an unwieldy length on people's browsers and a slow download. So, I was thinking, how about we have a format similar to Wikipedia:Requests for comment, with a one-line description of the issue involved in deciding on deletion, and a link to a Talk page, e.g.,

  • Jimbo Wales - vanity page, non-famous - discuss at Talk:Jimbo Wales/Delete.

Or, we could also just use the normal Talk page instead of a special one; that would mean we could just have

(with wikitext [[Talk:Page_name|]]) and then we wouldn't need both links since the user could find the page with "View article" (or we could put a linkback on /Delete; many possibilities). Then VfD would just be a bulleted list of links and descriptions, which I expect will prove much more scalable. -- VV 02:00, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Legality of move to Wiktionary/etc.

I'm wondering about the legality of many of the proposals made (and probably carried out) on VfD, such as "Move to Wiktionary", or to Wikibooks, or Wikisource. If the GFDL requires us to provide full attribution and copies of the old versions, wouldn't copying the text over and deleting the page here be a violation? Or is the whole page's edit history somehow exported? I'm sure this issue has been brought up by someone before, so if so forgive the repetition. -- VV 07:45, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If the text is properly transwikied, then the edit history is copied, albeit to the talk page rather than the history page. anthony (this comment is a work in progress and may change without prior notice) 11:01, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
All authors are attributed in the edit summary made in the move, or on the talk page, which would seem to fit the requirements of the GFDL. When the Special:Import feature is ready (it's due to be operational in the next update of MediaWiki), the pages can be undeleted and moved properly, which will retain the exact page history. This is why a log is kept of which pages have moved. Angela. 16:29, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Okay, so I see this concern has indeed been brought up and addressed. Thanks, Angela, Anthony for the clear and quick answers. -- VV 20:27, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What to do with the mediawiki pages after VfD

I propose:

  1. If the article is deleted, keep the mediawiki page and link it to Wikipedia:Archived delete debates so it is not orphaned.
  2. If the article is kept, move the VfD discussion to the talk page and delete the mediawiki page.

Any objections/suggested improvements? Angela. 18:17, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

  • Good idea. Why not add all votes to Wikipedia:Archived delete debates instead of kept ones going to talk page? That way the talk page isn't cluttered up or confused as a current active vote (as some in the talk page are). - Tεxτurε 18:31, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I just wondered if having too many mediawiki pages was a bad idea. Also, if it's on the talk page, it can be refactored, and removed if it's useless (which some of these discussions are). Is there a need to keep them in their original form? I don't really mind either way. Angela. 18:52, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
    • Agreed. I just worry that people continue to vote on resolved issues because they see a vote posted on the talk. (I've see people in the past vote on completed votes.) You have a point, though. How's this for a suggestion? Move to the talk page with a clear summary then remove from the talk page. The vote would remain in the talk page history and no one would be able to add a late vote. You could even link to it in the talk page to the history entry of the vote. - Tεxτurε 19:03, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think whatever is done, all mediawiki deletion discussion pages should be kept and not deleted. Maximus Rex 19:46, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Merging, collapsing long pages

Code for merging in case of edit conflicts is currently being tested at test.wikipedia.org. Please read the instructions and try it out for yourself. This will be the first step to address the issues that have plagued this and similarly large community pages.

As for editing/loading the page, we could make it possible to show large pages in collapsed mode. This could be a user preference, e.g. "Collapse pages larger than 30KB", but you could also have a list of bookmarks to collapsed versions of pages you frequently visit. In collapsed mode, the table of contents would not point to sections inside the same page, but to "separate pages" (in reality just a filtered view of the page in question), which could be edited like any other page. You would not have to load the whole page after saving but just the section you're editing. Thanks to merging you would not get into edit conflicts unless someone edits the exact same few lines in the same section.

There would still be a combined page history, long diffs etc. It might be possible to solve this, but that's far more difficult.

What do you think? Should I add this to my todo list or are people happy with the current system? I personally have mostly stopped using VfD because I find the current system so cumbersome.--Eloquence* 07:27, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

From the poll above, a sizable number of people seem being not happy with the new system. -- Taku 06:20, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Move IamSexy debate

I know VfD is always huge, but when, oh when, is someone going to split off the IamSexy debate (vote: Delete)? Niteowlneils 19:15, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Unsigned Entries from Clean-up

I move a number of entries from cleanup each day, like most listings in Cleanup, these entries are unsigned. I personally have no idea if something like Exotic probability should be removed. What was on Cleanup is not my opinion and I do not want to put my name to what others have said. My solution is thus to leave these entries as unsigned additions. This has attracted some complaints, but I can think of no better solution. - SimonP 22:10, Apr 17, 2004 (UTC)

I disagree with this point of view. If you list something for deletion it should be because you believe it should be deleted, either because it's rubbish or because it's been on cleanup for a long time with no improvement. Either way I believe all listings for deletion should be signed. -- Graham :) | Talk 14:38, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately that method has been tried and it failed. It seems that people are not willing to move items from Cleanup to VfD regularly enough, and it thus gets much too long. Before I started doing this Cleanup was over 90KB, now it is always below 32KB. I have been moving entries for two or three weeks now at the rate of three or four per day and no great problems have resulted. Despite being unsigned they have been debated and kept or deleted as with any other entry. - SimonP 14:49, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
Could you at least sign them as coming from cleanup, so that it's possible to differentiate between those and new entries that aren't being signed? --Brockert 15:01, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
I have been, each and every one begins by clearly saying its "From Cleanup". - SimonP 15:12, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
I've moved things from cleanup to VfD. I do sign them, but I also write that it was from cleanup and should not be regarded as a vote from me. Angela. 15:39, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
And I think that's the appropriate thing to do. Unsigned items should be discounted and possibly deleted. RickK 20:54, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Why? Can you point to a single problem that has resulted from the forty to fifty additions I have moved from Cleanup? - SimonP 20:59, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)
Because there's no reason for them to be there if somebody doesn't have the courage of their convictions and sign their names to them, even if they disavow that the listing is their own vote. RickK 00:39, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
No, that's not right. The tradition on cleanup is to make comments as terse as possible and not sign them so that lots of entries can be put on one page. Thus you should expect entries to be unsigned. I think the comments should stay, with the usual "moved from cleanup" comment, and admins exercise their usual judgement when deciding what weight to attach to each vote. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On Cleanup it's not as important, because that page is about first impressions only, the comment that you make should be fairly obvious when someone opens the article, and cleaning something up isn't as drastic as deleting it. Listing something for deletion has been used as an act of vandalism, and it could be very easy for an anon to list something saying it's from cleanup if they don't have to sign it. You and I know how to check who's listing that page, but who's to say everyone else who is voting for that page to be deleted does? Also I still think that you have to own your listing on deletion and say it's yours, even if all you're doing is listing it because it's been on cleanup for more than a month without improvement. -- Graham :) | Talk 14:10, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am fine with adding a disclaimer like the one on GRAM, even if it adds unnecessary text to a page that is already too long. In terms of the general principle of the matter it isn't in the rules that every submission to VfD has to be signed, and it shouldn't be. Anonymous votes shouldn't count because of the problem of ballot stuffing, but we have many good anon contributors and I see no reason why they are not allowed to nominate articles for deletion. It's just as easy for an account with not other edits to list the main page on VfD. Every deletion request is, and should be, judged purely on the merit of whether it is encyclopedic, not on who submitted it.
- SimonP 14:57, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

New Proposal?

Apologies if this has been proposed before (I haven't followed the discussion around here), but couldn't every article whose deletion is being voted on get its own temporary vfd page (deleted after the vote)? Votes for deletion would then simply become a list of links. -- Dissident 23:29, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)


(Yet another) Proposal

Don't laugh...

Day-pages.

I've tried to be thorough with this, and it got a bit wordy, so I've put it onto a sub-page /Day-page proposal. I hope that doesn't offend anyone's sensibilities. It uses some stuff from test, so it's more of a replacement for the current system when it becomes redundant because of edit merging.

Obviously, I wasn't around the last time day-pages were tried, so any similarities are purely coincidental, and should probably be highlighted by someone who was there. Thanks. - Lee (talk) 18:17, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Autovote

I've had a splendid idea on how to reduce the effort it takes to vote on vfd for a while. The problem is that currently, it takes an (comparatively speaking) enormous amount of time to participate on vfd. Depending on how fast you read and what kind of connection you have, I estimate that it takes between 5 to 10 minutes to correctly estimate worthiness or noneworthiness and cast your vote. Each day 10 to 20 new articles get listed which means that you have to spend between one and two hours daily to keep up. It's a gargantuan task not many are able to stomach. So first I figured that you could easily employ a script to cast your votes. That would reduce the time spent voting alot. But it would be better if the problem was sovled once and for all for all users, even those who don't know how to use scripts.

Therefore I propose that users would be able to register one vote at vfd which would count as that persons vote for all articles listed on vfd. I.e, Johnny thinks most or all articles are chaff so therefore he registers "delete" as his standing vote on all articles. In that way, he earns alot of time that can be spent elsewhere. Odds are that sometimes there will be articles listed that if Johnny had voted manually he would have voted "keep" on. But that problem would correct itself because other users votes would balance his out. And for Johnny this option is obviously better than nothing as it would be likely he wouldn't participate at all otherwise. Since this labour effective idea would be as much appreciated by different kinds of people, it wouldn't effect the decisions taken very much. But it would make the process much more enjoyable and get many more users involved in it. BL 08:51, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

I don't like it at all. There are often times when I cast different votes on different articles, some to keep, some to delete, some to merge, some to redirect, etc. What would be useful would be to be able to select from a list of current articles listed for deletion and choose one vote for all of them, as in "articles A, B, D and G: delete. Articles C, E, F and Y: keep." You'd still have to read them all of course... Exploding Boy 09:14, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
The point isn't to force anyone to use the new option. Instead it is meant to allow people to cast one vote instead of multiple ones. In that way I predict that many would find it much more comfortable to participate. Ofcourse, noone would be forced to abandon their "old ways". BL 09:40, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
The admin making the final decision on keep/delete is going to attach little weight to a "keep all" or "delete all" vote regardless of topic. It would be better to devote a substantial amount of attention to a few votes than a tiny amount of attention to all votes. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:00, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think you are using the wrong angle. Administrators do not take the final decisions, they mereley interpret the community opinion and carry out the action. The communitys opinion is formed by many individuals opinions taken together. How those peoples opinions is gathered is irrelevant. More important is instead that they are gathered from a as large number of people as possible. The more that participate the better. BL 12:16, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
Having a standing vote isn't participation. -- Cyrius|&#9998 12:32, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
Admins don't apply a dumb algorithm to determine the consensus - They use their common sense - I've seen articles that were 7-1 in favour of "delete" being kept for example - article got rewritten after the first seven voted. That one vote got a tremendous amount of weight. Autovotes would get little or no weight at all. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 13:16, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
But Pete, doesn't that mean that the seven persons that took their time to assess the article basically made a mistaken assessment? The time it took them to evalute it was basically wasted since one persons rewrite invalidated their opinion. Neither do I understand why someone using a system to automatically register their votes would get less weight than someone going through the process manually. BL 14:43, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
People who use script to automatically vote should be prohibited from voting. If you can't be bothered to figure out what you're voting on and type a vote into a textbox, then you shouldn't be voting on the subject. -- Cyrius|&#9998 12:13, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
The point of VfD is that individual pages need to be considered on their own merits - voting without even reading the nomination is no consideration at all. Now I look at your history, I can see where this is coming from - you voted on 58 nominations in 75 minutes earlier today, that's little more than a minute each. Every single one was "keep", and most had no further reason (other than "keep - famous" or something similarly brief). If you want to cast your vote on everything under the sun, at least spend a few minutes reading through the facts first. Hell, I've spent more than 10 minutes just putting together this message! sjorford 13:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Just to say I agree with those who have said that this would be non-participation. IMHO, the solution to not having time to vote on everything is not to vote on everything. I glance over VfD every now and then, and if I see something listed where the topic or discussion interests me in some way, I add my opinion. I guess this is what comes of still calling the page votes - what we actually want is people to add opinions. A long list of bullet points saying "Delete, Delete, Delete, Delete..." is just a waste of space. - IMSoP 13:49, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It is indeed a splendid idea. Hell - why didn't we apply this wonderful labour-saving invention more widely? The possibilities are endless. For example, last year 7 different candidates in my town stood for office. 5 of them were basket cases, one was a good man, and the last one only so-so. With one easy tick I could have voted against all of them! (OK, there was one I actually wanted to vote for, but that's fair enough: 6 out of 7 is pretty good on average.)

Better yet, we could use it to clear up the dreadful delays in our legal system. Let's see ... today in the Magistrates Court, there were 3 cases of theft, 1 murder, an indecent assult, 4 frauds, and 17 assorted traffic offenses. Guilty? Or not guilty?

Tick! Next 28 cases please.

What a great timesaver! With this new high-speed democratic method, we could eliminate the entire accumulated delay in the justice system by ... er ... about next Tuesday, if I've got my sums right.

Hmmm ... We could use it for international policy too. Much more efficient. Think of a country .. let's say Poland. Speaking generally, are the Poles decent, honest people? Not too many terrorists or communists or anything? Government does the right thing most of the time? Yes? OK, we will vote yes, and sign a new trade deal, or make a state visit or something.

Tick! Next country please.

How about Afganistan? Got a few too many ragheads over there? Nasty speeches? The odd murder, possibly a terrorist hideout or two? Yes? Right! Tick no to the whole bloody lot of them, and we will send the B-52s over to bomb the bastards back into the stone age.

Oh wait. We already did. Damn it, BL, for a minute there I thought you'd come up with a great new idea.

Tannin 13:54, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't know how you get real life American international politics into the discussion... But anyway, that is quite similar to how real life parliaments are run. Now politicians deal with hundreds of topics daily. For them, it is impossible to keep an informed opinion about each and every one of them. Therefore one person is assigned to research that topic and form an opinion that is in line with that persons party. Next, that person tells all other parliament members in that persons party what to vote. It might seem crude at first because most will obviously vote without having a clue about what the subject is about. And it it crude, but the alternative, that only a select few is allowed to have an opinion, is even cruder. Imagine your everyday representative democracy. What would happen if you were not allowed to vote on parties but only on specific propositions? Voting would then become a matter of the more time the more power.That's the reason why there is parties. Most of the time they do the right thing, sometimes they screw up but thats OK because the alternatives are all so much worse.

That said, my proposal is not earth shattering. It is merely a tool to allow people who cannot participate to participate in the best way possible. BL 14:43, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

The key difference is surely that in party politics, you have a set of general beliefs - you don't vote for an MP that will simply walk into the noes lobby on every vote, you vote for one who broadly agrees with your views. [As it happens, I'm not a great fan of party politics anyway, but that's beside the point.] So the equivalent here would be to say something like this (note that this is an example, not necessarily my opinion):

I think that non-notable people and things shouldn't be kept, but stubs on a worthy subject should be kept as well-wikified stubs; I also oppose lists that are there only as "reference material", especially where the items listed are not themselves worthy of articles...

I could go on: you could write a whole manifesto if you wanted, but it would gain very little, and require a lot more effort than saying "I agree with anyone who lists something on VfD". The best way of dealing with general views like this is to formulate consensus policies, like we do, with very inclusive debates, like we (try to) do. People also use past discussions as precedents when making new decisions, thus implicitly including the opinion of those who took part in the previous debate. In short, and to paraphrase, I think this would be a tool to allow people who cannot participate to participate in the worst way possible. - IMSoP 16:01, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You are correct that there could also be a system in which more nuanced votes are cast. But that would be many times much more difficult to implement. Even if your stated opinion is "keep all noteworthy persons, delete all unworthy persons" how is the one doing the tallying supposed to decide whether your vote on John Blow is for keeping or deleting? Therefore you would need an interpretator, a person you trust to vote according to your manifesto. It would work if you could in a secure way allow one user to administer more than one persons votes. Currently, the only "manifesto" one user who cannot partake in VFD is allowed to chose is "i agree with whatever those who voted on VFD decided". It is akin to not have elections to parliaments because it is assumed that people in general is happy with what the politicians do. Like you, I'm not a great fan of party politics either. But I'm much happier living in a democracy than a dictatorship.

The problem with consensus policies is that (almost) everyone has to agree on them. Not only those who voted for or against them at the time they were proposed but every involved individual. On VfD there doesn't exist very many consensus policies as can be proven by how people work on articles. After all, if there exist a consensus, people do not have to vote. :)

You still haven't explained why you think that this idea is bad. Certainly, if people wish to vote in a specific way, they have to be allowed instead of ignored? My proposed addition isn't the end of the world. It doesn't force anything upon anyone it would only allow more people to vote in a very time-efficent way at absolutely no costs. BL 01:14, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'll spell out to you why the ability to say "delete everything" is bad: it is completely meaningless. Anybody can list anything they want to on VfD, and there is no way of predicting what will be listed next. So until a listing is made, there is no way of knowing whether you agree with it or not. So say you leave a standing vote to delete, and somebody lists KVA_PAGES, which you actually want to keep; if you spot it, fine, you can over-ride your autovote. But then, if you've got the time to go through and spot it, then you might as well just have voted normally! The way I see it, you have three options for each debate:
  1. no opinion - you agree with the current consensus, or are willing to let others reach one; this requires no action on your part.
  2. delete - you agree with reasons given for deletion, or wish to add some of your own; this requires you to state your viewpoints in the debate.
  3. keep - you think a page should be kept, and have reasons you are willing to state, as above.
The intention is not to have a quantified vote that will produce robust statistics, but to guage the general opinion of users. Autovoting isn't expressive of any opinion - unless you want to delete the whole of Wikipedia; or, alternatively, allow anyone to use it for whatever they like, which is equally contrary to its raison d'etre IMSoP 14:18, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC) [sorry if this comes across as frustrated: I am, but not with you, or indeed anything Wikipedia-related]

Vote for the list of links proposal

I (Dissident) see multiple people DID made the suggestion I make before, so I think this deserves a vote of its own:

Should Wikipedia:Votes for deletion simply become a list of links to article specific pages (either the article's Talk page or a separate Vfd one)?

Support

  1. Yes, because, the experiment never addressed the fact that the page isn't just too large for editing, but for VIEWING and going with the date based proposal has its own problems, will break the Vfd discussions up anyway and will only postpone the problem. You know it makes sense. -- Dissident 12:10, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC) -- P.S. Also remember that it's important to prevent a technology gap here that will lead to biased voting results. -- Dissident 12:48, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  2. The Anome 13:27, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  3. Absolutely. And the article specific pages should be the talk pages - that way if someone gets the idea of deleting the article in the future they can simply check the talk page to find out if it has been discussed before. It's also good to have the suggested improvements that may pop up during a VfD debate on the talk page. By the way, I don't think mere links should be used on the VfD page, short descriptions like on cleanup would be useful. Fredrik 14:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  4. GrazingshipIV 15:25, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
  5. Yes! Importantly, this will also make deleting/keeping/other easier for the sysops, and we need to do something to get vfd back on track and scedule. Today there is lots of discussion moving and such in the deletion process; we need to simplify this. I propose the debate to take place at Talk:Article/deletion alternatively Deletion:Article (new namespace, name it however we want). ✏ Sverdrup 15:32, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  6. Fennec 16:24, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC) - Too many edit conflicts the old way, too much work the current way... this way sounds more reasonable, particularly with a good tabbed browser.
  7. ugen64 20:24, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC) - as long as there is some summary method. At the least, have a toctally next to the article name, to show whether a certain article is obviously trash, obviously keep-material, or being heavily debated. Of course, there is some (unreasonable, in my opinion) debate over toctallies, but... it would certainly make it easier to figure out what to look at, vote on, and would probably make it easier for VfD maintainers (and sysops, as well) to clean up VfD daily.
    • [heh, toctally, what a wonderful piece of WikiJargon!] In some ways, I guess having a tally (toc or otherwise :-/) would actually be harder than summarising the main arguments raised, since it would need updating every time someone voted, even if they didn't add much to the debate. - IMSoP 20:58, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  8. Cgranade 23:53, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC): This format is just to unwieldy to find anything useful. With all of the VfD discussions concatenated, it becomes hard to distinguish them from each other.
  9. Bkonrad | Talk 00:53, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) I generally avoid the VfD page unless I'm really bored and have time to kill waiting for the page to load and the inevitable edit conflicts.
  10. Hephaestos|§ 00:55, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) This type of format has always made the most intuitive sense, even before VfD had its current problems. - Hephaestos|§ 00:55, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  11. Merovingian ↕ Talk 04:11, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
  12. Bryan 04:47, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) The current VFD page is way huge, and the MediaWiki method of editing discussion is needlessly confusing and non-standard. Strongly in favour of this.
  13. Pfortuny 06:59, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC). Lately I have been prevented from going there just because "Oh my! it's huge!". Maybe too simple but reason enough.
  14. Arvindn 12:36, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  15. +sj+ 12:58, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC) Solves a lot of minor problems, like remembering to transfer discussion to talk pages, remembering to *check* talk pages before deciding a page can't be cleaned-up, etc.
  16. Seth Ilys 13:29, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) -- if for no other reason than that we need to try something different. VfD is *extremely* intimidating.
  17. yes, if short summaries are included, like in cleanup. --ssd 03:21, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  18. Ok. Support for a trial period only. The current system seems to be putting people off clearing up the page and the backlog is growing much too fast to let it go on any longer. Perhaps a simpler method would solve that. Angela. 10:42, Apr 22, 2004 (UTC)
  19. VV 06:49, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC) Support, of course (I proposed it myself above). But, I do want to specify that by "list of links" I do think should be included a brief explanation as to the reason for VfD'ing. Like, as the RfC ones.
  20. Rholton 00:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC) Support. I like this plan. The VFD notice on the page in question could then direct the viewer to the local talk page to discuss the vote, and it could also point to the VFD page for others pages under consideration. If some are discouraged from voting on a page in this method, it will at least be somewhat based on their interest in the article, as opposed to the current method where the dis-insentive comes primarily from the load-time issue (i.e. based on the user's technology)
  21. anthony (see warning) Yes, on the talk page (or a subpage thereof). But I strongly oppose toctallies unless they are implemented automatically, at which point I only weakly oppose them.

Oppose

  1. Peharps in the future, but for now the current system is still quite functional. - SimonP 14:31, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
    Not for me, it isn't. -- Dissident 14:34, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    Switching to the "list of pointers" method will obviously dramatically decrease involvement in the deletion process, as we saw before, because it becomes substantially more laborious to view every debate. The real question is whether having fewer "vfd trawlers" would effect WP in an adverse way. My instinct is that it wouldn't. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:49, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  2. I want to be able to read all the debates on one page, and not have to shuttle back and forth to read debates I may not even choose to vote on. - Lee (talk) 14:41, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    And I want to be able to load the page at all without it practically locking up my browser. -- Dissident 15:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    I'm not saying you shouldn't. If there was an option to show/hide transcluded elements, we could both get our way. - Lee (talk) 15:11, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    A show/hide option would need to pump just as much text at you, but now with added Javascript... see e.g. EnhancedRecentChanges... so wouldn't solve Dissident problems.
    Actually, I was meaning it at a more fundamental level, a logged in user would have the option of seeing {{msg:VfD-Page_name}} either as a translusion or a link to the page mediawiki:VfD-Page_name. Of course I have no idea as to the feasibility of that. - Lee (talk) 16:15, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    Note it would be perfectly possible to have two pages 1) the current page as it is now. 2) and a "list of pointers to talk pages". The MediaWiki msg: would then transcluded in this VfD page as it is now, and included on the article talk page as some people want. This would keep everyone happy in the sense that you could view VfD the way you wanted to. However it would be even more work to list a page than it is now :( ... probably a show stopper. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:46, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  3. One of the things I monitor actively is deletion debates. (I figure that a bad deletion hurts Wiki more than just about anything short of heavy vandalism) It is very convenient to have all debates on one page. Snowspinner 15:39, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • On the other hand, apparently I can't get the current form to work right, so that might want to mitigate against my vote somewhat. =) Snowspinner 16:06, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. Creating of the VfD links is cumbersome and too confusing. RickK 04:40, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  5. I agree with the prevailing sentiment, that VfD must include some information about the article or why it should be deleted. The current system isn't perfect, but it's far superior to "simply...a list of links." Cribcage 06:32, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  6. I agree that the current system isn't perfect, but with the recent changes, it works well enough. I'm on dialup, and I don't find it too bad to load. And I agree with Cribcage, it is far superior to a list of links. If this page does get too long to view, then consider an alternative then. This is addressing an issue that just isn't there yet. Ambivalenthysteria 08:05, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    It's not only a question of bandwidth, but also that of CPU power/browser rendering. Remember what I said about a technology gap. -- Dissident 08:11, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    I have this problem too. Page downloads fast but takes 15 seconds to render. Arvindn
  7. I like the ability to browse under the current system. - Tεxτurε 18:25, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  8. The current structure puts the debate in one place. For most issues, I can scan the debate, decide that I agree with the consensus (and do not need to vote) and scroll down. Moving the debate to the talk pages will force me to look at every page just to decide whether or not I can add to the discussion. To make matters even worse, I will likely have to go to each talk page multiple times to see if the debate has evolved, if my earlier comments need clarification or if new evidence should cause me to change my mind. I worry that moving the debate to Talk pages will weaken the debate and result in poorer decisions. Rossami 22:37, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  9. The ability to skim all debates in progress would be lost, I think having everything on one page works fairly well. --Ben Brockert 03:27, May 1, 2004 (UTC)

Other

  • I'm not going to outright oppose this, since it might be worth a try, but while writing my note above it occurred to me that I would want to see more than just a page's title to decide if I wanted to vote on it. It would be fine if there were some kind of summary like * [[page title]] - listed for reason, but debated for reason but otherwise I fear I wouldn't have the time to go through seeing what all the debates were. Of course maintaining these summaries would be a right pain, but I'm not sure it'll work without them. - IMSoP 14:15, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I completely agree with IMSoP. If a standard way of summarizing is developed, I support the proposal. -- Jao 14:23, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I find the current system hugely unworkable, but would want to see enough to know whether I wanted to vote on something, as IMSoP says. Is it technically feasible to offer both ways of doing things, and make it an option in Preferences? --ALargeElk 14:51, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • What precisely do you find hugely unworkable? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:52, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
OK, that was an exaggeration. It's fine for voting on existing candidates, but the one time I tried to add something to VFD, I couldn't figure out how to do it properly at all, and eventually gave up. Let me say instead that it is counter-intuitive.
I just read the Template:VfDFooter, and found it's way of adding an entry to be more complex than the way I had been doing it.. I have changed to the method I have used as URL-hand-crafting is minimized. (Note that having to handcraft URLs is part of the MediaWiki: namespace works, and is not specific to VfD... thus if adding a vfd entry too complex then may be the MediaWiki: namespace in general is too.)
Note that in any case, far more pages are being listed now than under the previous system (no Template:Msgs:), so in that sense, it has become more functional for most users.
  • Current system is borderline functional. VfD itself takes a very long time to load, presumably because of the inclusion of many messages. I want to make a short term fix suggestion, see below. DJ Clayworth 14:53, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, it takes me about 10 minutes to download the page to view. AndyL 20:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • While I admit that I've endured a number of problems in casting votes for articles listed on this page, I'd feel more comfortable voting if it was spelled out just what system would be replacing the current one. -- llywrch 21:33, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I like the current system, but I'm on a big fat data pipe. I can easily see where it would be difficult for others to use. Is it not possible that we could have both the current version and a "condensed" version that both point to the same underlying deletion discussion pages? Jeeves 23:28, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • What a biased question! Some links are appropriate and some are not. All encyclopedias have indexes and some have ToCs. - Tεxτurε 14:58, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • I think you've misunderstood the question: this is not about any kind of policy of what to delete, it is about the process by which pages are discussed when they are nominated for deletion. Currently, this is via one gargantuan page with lots of debates on it; the proposal is that each debate take place on a seperate page, with a central page merely listing the locations (and possibly main points) of these individual debates. - IMSoP 15:55, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • The vote above is invalid as a page containing a list of all pages on VfD is already available at Special:Whatlinkshere/MediaWiki:Vfd. Angela.
      • Well, but that is not what the proposal is about. The proposal is to have a list of links to both the articles and the deletion debates, which are not easily acquired from your link ✏ Sverdrup 18:20, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
        • If the discussions were linked to from the talk page, there would be no need to have a separate page including those links. You can find the article from "what links here", and then click "discuss this page". Angela. 18:24, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
          • Apart from not exactly being the simplest way of doing it, that wouldn't provide any of the additional summaries/comments that many of us think would be a pre-requisite of this system working. - IMSoP 19:05, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Run for a week or two as an experiment. I think that a list of links sounds like it might work, but I think that it should be done first as an experiment to make sure that it works, then discussed, and then an informed decision can be made. Jrincayc
  • The process can be made easier by just giving a vote without an explanation- like requests for adminship. Or by working out a shorthand without explanatory sentences- Reason 1- unencyclopeadic, reason 2 wiktionary, and so on. There can be an automatic number tally like vote for admin.KRS 16:22, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: VfD is 461.98 KB (473072 bytes). I don't know if making a list of links is the right answer, but something must be done. Dysprosia 09:36, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
    • The markup and text on page VfD come to 28,638 bytes as i start this edit, even tho it is quite plausible that the rendering of the page w/ its full transclusions is on the order of 15 times as long. The reduction to tens of K is of enormous value in the situations where editing the page rather than the section is necessary (e.g., VfD edit by IP user) or worth considering as an option to avoid multiple section edits. And the attendant shifting of most former VfD edits into MediaWiki-page edits helps the edit-conflict problem enormously. I consider that VFD was broken and is no longer, and assume there is a fair consensus to that effect. But i admit it still has some sharp corners.
For those who find waiting for the rendered version to load burdensome, there are workarounds, suitable to specific activities, that IMO stop short of standing on one's head to do the work. (E.g., several kinds are probably less tricky than fully setting up a MW-page-based nomination.) I use one that has become a comparative joy and ceased feeling tricky, in a somewhat analogous situation, daily on Wikipedia:Cleanup. (Some people who enjoy busting dumps or working cryptograms might enjoy viewing the page history and recapitulating my invention of the detailed method for that case.) Unless someone knows of a page where
  1. URL-editing tricks
  2. wise use of "open in new window"
  3. using "Show preview" on a section you haven't edited and
  4. building from a large page a personal or community extract, customized to specific tasks,
are already discussed, i'd be glad to suggest some ideas in response to your description of what you are interested in accomplishing when you link to VfD. (Following a small number of discussions, reading every nominated item once, catching up on the latest, whatever: give us a typical scenario w/ points where the size pinches you). Also, if there are multiple users with similar needs, one of them, or other users willing to include it in their non-article work on behalf of the community, could maintain some special VfD-related pages that would be useful to multiple users. --Jerzy(t) 19:17, 2004 May 17 (UTC)

Simple fix for improving VfD performance

I want to propose a simle fix that will, I believe improve VfD page load times. Part of the reason VfD is slow is that the deletion process is way behind the voting process; i.e. we still have lots of of pages whose time of VfD is up, but have not been deleted. This process is made worse by the fact that the time to load the VfD page is long enough to make deleting pages and removing them from VfD quite time consuming. I propose simply that we make a new sub-page to Votes for Deletion (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Time expired?) and copy all the contents of the VfD page to it for discussions which have expired. DJ Clayworth 14:53, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • I second that. System would load much faster with this proposal. I don't think just listing links would facilitate debate. Warofdreams 16:30, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • This would give non-admins something they could do to keep the page size down. -- Cyrius|&#9998 16:52, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
  • This won't solve much, the page will still be huge. Right now we have one date with 42 articles under it, and we'll see even more of that as Wikipedia grows. Fredrik 21:11, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • I don't think anyone is suggesting this is a long-term solution, rather it is a small thing which we could all agree to do now. Warofdreams 21:33, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • Sounds good to me then. Fredrik 21:35, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Response to 'simple fix'

Moved old items to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old. Also processed a double-handful of them... +sj+ 12:31, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

VFD could need your help

From the village pump

We could use a few more sysops on vfd. Lately we have been up to 5 days backlogged; articles should really only be listed on vfd for 5 days, but still we got entries as old as March 29 listed at the moment. I have done a little of the delisting and deleting myself, but I don't have that much spare time at the moment. Sysops please help bring vfd back on track. ✏ Sverdrup 01:23, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'll help, but what's the procedure on the MediaWiki messages? What do we do with them? Meelar 02:45, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If an article is kept, the msg format of the mediawiki deletion debate message should be moved to the article's talk page. If the article is deleted, post the mediawiki link at wikipedia:archived delete debates. Don't forget to delete talk pages and trailing redirects too! --Jiang 06:26, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, then, I'll start when I get back in a few hours. Meelar 13:51, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If anyone can, please clear it up to T minus 5 days. It still needs a lot of help.

Now that we've moved discussions to mediawiki msgs, we no longer move them to talk pages. Some of them, like Daniel C. Boyer, are very lengthy. Split vfd? --Jiang 18:18, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I expect someone is aware the VfD page has triplicated itself. On my poky server, it's now a three-minute load and editing is hopeless. In the event it's covered, thanks. If not, get the hoses out! Denni 03:49, 2004 Apr 15 (UTC)

A better proposal (terseness)

  1. For contentious topics (those not immediately trashable) require they go to Cleanup first.
  2. Condense discussion to limited terms (as with Cleanup) only the issue on VFD is wether to trash or send to Cleanup for treatment.
  3. Use a dump page, (as described above) for older links, which admins can deal with at the butt end. (That is all thank you -a Mere Cat|meow]] 01:46, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) )

Slow system

I've been (very slowly) working my way through the overdue listings from 11th April however for some reason the system isn't allowing me to delete articles. One article took me four attempts to delete it, Cris cheek still isn't deleting after eight attempts. I have to go now, consensus is to delete this article, can someone please do it or at least try to, I'll attempt some more cleaning up of the old listings when the system allows me to. -- Graham :) | Talk 01:54, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I tried several times. I also blanked it and then tried to delete, but no soap. Cecropia 02:16, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
According to Tim Starling, who had to do something to make it deletable, it was "a link which was from a blank title, i.e. l_from=''". Apparently, this won't happen once 1.3 is released. Angela. 04:31, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
The problem comes when there is a link registered from an invalid title, to the article to be deleted. On deletion, all links to the article are loaded in, and the "from" titles are converted to Title objects. This conversion fails if the title is invalid, and halts the deletion process. I fixed it using "delete from links where l_from=''", which apparently has to be done periodically. -- Tim Starling 11:09, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
Is it me, or does that links table have a life of its own? Multiple "what links here" entries, ghost links that show up after they've been changed, and now links from nowhere... Bizarre. - IMSoP 16:03, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC) (I hope this doesn't sound like I'm dissing the code: I'm really not, I just find all this kind of funny, in a very geeky way...)

Che gallery?

Does anyone remember a page or series of pages solely displaying artwork of Che Guevara, or some other revolutionary leader from the western hemisphere? I believe they were deleted under the VfD, were they not? -- user:zanimum

  • Funny thing is, there isn't. There is, however, a page of pop-culture images- is that what you refer to? -Litefantastic 00:28, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Yet another proposal

Everyone is complaining about the format and performance of VfD. I have become convinced that the real problem is not format or mechanics - it is our underlying assumption that voting is the best way to make these decisions. We end up with dozens of "I agree" votes that make the page unmanageably large. Eloquence and others have proposed a different approach to VfD that is based on logical arguments that can be expanded or disputed but which do not have to be signed. See Wikipedia:Deletion requests for details. Most of the VfD threads would boil down to just a few lines. Rossami 13:23, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

April 22

Why are people adding NEW entries to the TOP of the April 22 section instead of to the bottom? RickK

  • Cause I didn't know what I was doing. <Maxwell Smart> Sorry about that, Chief </Maxwell Smart>.Lefty 23:54, 2004 Apr 22 (UTC)

Section editing bug

OK, the bug where somebody clicks on one section to edit and another one pops up has infected the VfD page. Can somebody figure out if there's a section header commented out somewhere? RickK 23:33, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

  • Um, works for me - is it now fixed? If not, whereabouts were you clicking? (you can narrow down where the problem lies by which sections do and don't behave themselves...) - IMSoP 00:20, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I've noticed this before but eventually came to the conclusion that it depends on which monitor I'm using. One of the computers I use does this all the time, without exception. If I switch back to another computer, the problem disappears. I think the problem is with how some monitors handle the display, not with the page itself. SWAdair | Talk 03:16, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
    • No it's a known bug where there is a commented out section header somewhere. Appears to have been fixed. Your switich computers is surely a coincidence. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:55, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
      • Unless there's a second, unrelated, bug where some browsers render the links in slightly the wrong place, I suppose. (Note that this would be a software issue, and certainly not to do with monitors - they are "dumb" devices). - IMSoP 16:31, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • I've had this happen to me several times. When I checked it, it was a result of changes to the page between the time that I started loading it and the time that I hit the section edit link. I concluded that upstream changes were messing with the count of sections. Whenever it happens now, I hit "back", "refresh" and then select the section edit again and it works. Rossami 20:55, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • The problem also occurs if there is a transcluded MediaWiki page that contains section headers. NEVER use section headers on MediaWiki pages that are used for {{msg:*}}'s. It also will happen if you don't close your header like this: "== VfD" or you use an incorrect number of = signs like this: "=== VfD ==". Guanaco 21:08, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Duplication

I just realised that the whole of this page had been struck by that odd "entire contents repeated" issue (I'm not sure whether there's a bug involved, but it would certainly be nice to have a feature to avoid it!). The edit in question is from about 3 days ago, so I'm now going through re-adding comments from the half of the page I've just cleared away. So don't worry if they haven't reappeared yet. - IMSoP 17:08, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Right, I'm pretty sure that's all tidied up now - what a pain! All the comments that were in one half of the page and not the other should show up on this sandbox diff, and all those are now in the current version. But if you think something's still vanished, feel free to hunt it down yourself... IMSoP 17:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Comments not showing

On the entry Antonia Ruster it's only including the first comment, and I can't figure out why. --Brockert 19:20, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)

Also Give No Salutation (GNS) has comments that are not showing up. What's going on?

  • It could have been either of two things.
    1. The MediaWiki links don't seem to work with punctuation well. Underscores are okay but blank spaces and parentheses are not. If you have punctuation in lines 2 or 3, users can still comment but they do not show up. That does not seem to have been the case here because the links are set up properly now.
    2. The other problem I've found frustrates me but I'm pretty sure that it's a setup problem on my end. After making an edit in MediaWiki, I often find that my browser does not refresh the content even though I've hit the refresh button. Five minutes to an hour later, the content shows. Rossami
Just for your information, the second may be workable around by using shift-refresh, or control-refresh, which tells your browser "No, really, I want to refresh this page, even if you don't think it's changed." See Wikipedia:Clear your cache. - IMSoP 22:40, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In the particular instance of Antonia Ruster, it was neither of those two things. There was no punctuation, and not a refresh problem. It was an actual bug, but apparently a fairly rare one. --Ben Brockert 03:35, May 1, 2004 (UTC)