Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/April 2005 Part Two

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One group nomination or many single nominations?

User:DaveTheRed made five nominations of planned towers which I later consolidated into one entry (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Planned towers). When I asked on his talkpage why he had not made a group entry his answer was that group entries are discouraged (check my talkpage.) The reasoning is fair enough, what if one or two of the articles are more notable than the rest?

However I have seen many others discourage a barrage of individual entries as well since they force people to vote the same way many times over, once for each entry. Also, one large entry rather than many small will be less clutter on the already burdened vfd-page.

I am posing this question here for lack of knowledge of a better place to discuss this. Do you think that a number of similar entries should be listed as individual entries or grouped together in one big entry?

Sjakkalle 06:20, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Generally I think group nominations are fine where in your opinion poeple are likely to want to vote on all of them, e.g.
If people want to vote differently on members of the group, they can make this clear in their comments. Alternatively you could make separate sections on the VfD page. Thryduulf 14:37, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How do you group nominate? The instructions at the bottom of the vfd page don't explain. Dave the Red (talk) 04:27, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

The way I did it was by creating a VfD-page with a different title. This "big" VfD-page had a list of all the pages nominated for deletion, and a reason for deleting the whole lot of them. As for the "this page's entry" links on the individual VfD-tags, I redirect them to the to "big" VfD-page. Then I added the big VfD-page to the vfd-listing in the regular manner. That is how I did it anyway, and for what I know it might be the utterly wrong way, but it has worked. Sjakkalle 09:32, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've only done double nominations, but I've done them in different ways. The first method was using redirects:

  1. Add the VfD tags and create the VfD sub-pages for ArticleA and ArticleB, etc in the usual way
  2. Create a VfD sub-page called Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleA and ArticleB or some other logical title.
  3. List and link to each article in the title, e.g. ===[[ArticleA]] and [[ArticleB]]===
  4. Add your reasoning for both.
  5. Redirect the ArticleA and ArticleB sub-pages to the joint sub-page.
  6. Add the joint page to today's list in the normal way.

The second method, which is the way I now prefer is:

  1. Add the VfD tags in the normal way
  2. Edit the "this article's entry" link from [[wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleX|this article's entry]] to [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleA and ArticleB|this article's entry]]
  3. save the articles, and then follow the "this article's entry" link to the joint page
  4. List and link to each article in the title, e.g. ===[[ArticleA]] and [[ArticleB]]===
  5. Add your reasoning for both.
  6. Add the joint page to today's list in the normal way.

Obviously you can expand this to however many articles you want to nominate. Also remember to choose a logical name for the joint page as my suggested name wouldn't scale well. As with Sjakkalle's method above, these might be the wrong way to go about doing it, but I know they both work. Thryduulf 09:59, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • The major problem with group nominations is that although the nominator thinks that the articles may stand and fall together, others may not. The administrator who had to deal with Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Quinquagenarian had my sympathy, for example. Group nominations should be used sparingly. As Starblind said, individual nominations (even if the rationale is simply "same reason as I gave at [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleA]]") are best, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. Uncle G 11:35, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)
  • A minor problem with group nominations, especially in either of the forms given above, is that if ever in the future someone creates a [[ArticleA and ArticleB]] page which is then nominated for deletion, there's an existing, but possibly entirely unrelated, discussion page in the way. Similarly, if [[ArticleA]] is ever re-created and re-nominated, there's no automatic indication to the nominator that it has been discussed before. A better way to perform a group nomination is with redirects:
    1. Add the VfD tags to [[ArticleA]] and [[ArticleB]] in the normal way
    2. Edit [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleA]] entirely as normal, but add something such as a bulleted list of "Also:" entries in the nomination listing [[ArticleB]] and so forth
    3. Edit [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleB]] to simply be #REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleA]]
    4. Add [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/ArticleA]] to the per-day page
  • There's no need to manually muck around with the VFD notice with this method. Moreover: This way, it's relatively simple to split off the discussion of [[ArticleB]] if necessary, and there are no discussion pages with the wrong names left hanging around to cause future conflicts. Uncle G 11:35, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)
  • I imagine most people reading this probably already know how I feel about consolidated nominations, but here we go anyway: though there's no specific policy against them, they should be used as sparingly as possible. Though one can reasonably conjecture that the nominator feels that all articles are of equal notability, this is often not the case, and it can be very confusing to vote for some but not others. Probably the most extreme example I can remember was when three internet companies were nominated at once sometime around February I think. The first two were of borderline notability at best, but the third was very famous and had several million Google hits, so it appeared rather like a case of throwing the baby out with the dishwater. More recent examples include just last week when an author and a blogger with the same name were nominated together, and even yesterday's VfD of a gaming centre and its two founders. While they are undoubtedly related, they are clearly not of equal notability (the centre being considerably more famous than its founders). My point is that I would reserve consolidated nominations for only the most extreme of circumstances, and even then a Policy Discussion might be a better way to accomplish the same thing. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 13:11, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
    • I concur. Consolidated VfDs only create trouble for an admin who has to sift through several Keep A, B, D Delete C votes. Not to mention such VfDs can only be closed by an admin because of the Delete (as opposed to non-admins who can close Keeps). Saving a few seconds (or minutes) to consolidate several VfDs together means wasting the time of many VfD Wikipedians, and wasting a lot of time for the WP:VFD/Old closer who has to close the vote. --Deathphoenix 15:33, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Format of VfD pages

Would it be possible to set up VfD pages like requests for Adminship, or RfCs? That is, have one section for (numbered) Keep votes, one for (numbered) Delete, votes, etc.? It would make the final task of counting easier, I'd have thought, as well as making redundant the deprecated tally boxes (see above). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • This has been discussed before. Go to the WP:TFD archives and read why the tally boxes were deleted. Read WP:GVFD#Discussion. The votes are not the end in themselves. Uncle G 23:39, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
    • Oh, I quite understand that — nevertheless, on long and complicated (for which read 'rancorous', usually) it can be difficult to see who's for deletion and who'd for keeping. This format doesn't divorce the votes from the reasons, it just organises reasons (and votes) for and against into clear sections. (Incidentally, WP:TFD is long, and I might have missed it, but the only discussion I can see of what turns out to be precisely my suggestion – Template:New TFD – was added this morning. Is that what you were referring to, or have I missed something?) Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:41, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • I'm seeing more of you since your RfA! Nice to see you take up extra responsibilities :-). Like Uncle G said, VFD is actually not about voting (it's a misnomer we have to live with for some reason), and statements made on vfd are actually not limited to "keep" or "delete". The proposal you've come up with is a common one. You'll find several variants on it and the related discussion in the archives of this page. Kim Bruning 10:17, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC). Some people have actually already summarised much of the discussion and turned it into a guidebook here: WP:GVFD. Kim Bruning 10:28, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • The TFD side of things is now at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted/Archive/Feb05#Template:vfd votes. As the boxes saw continued, non-template use even after the template was deleted, a second discussion was held at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus/Regarding tally boxes. The best solution for very long votes that I've seen is the table Rossami sometimes uses, for example in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/La Shawn Barber. Unlike separate sections, this doesn't destroy dialogue. —Korath (Talk) 11:05, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
        • There is also some discussion at the old Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Maintenance (a page about maintenance of VfD, not a dicussion about deleting the Maintenance article) where we say that the use of such tables should be limited to only the very longest discussion threads - threads so long and confusing that they should also be untranscluded from the list. Rossami (talk) 14:42, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Automated VFDing

The following was on WP:HD, and I'm moving it here now, where, I suppose, it has belonged all along.

I've been going through recent changes (live) a little lately, and keep having to go through the tedious process of VFDing pages. It would be much easier if I could just insert the pagename (PAGENAME) and my reason and vote (TEXT) into a form and have a script take care of the rest. I've written a pseudocode at User:msh210/Sandbox; I'd like to translate that into JavaScript (if possible), put it on a page (either local on my computer or on some site other than WP, since WP doesn't seem to allow scripts), and use it. So I have two questions: (1) will Javascript allow it? and (2) will MediaWiki allow it? —msh210 18:16, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I should think that's doable in JavaScript. And it would certainly be jolly useful, given the ever-changing awkwardness of adding to VfD; if you can find an appropriate server, it would be great to link to it from VfD itself (if it's well-enough written, you might persuade the devs to host it on Wikimedia servers).
You're basically right that you can't host script directly on a wiki page (for security reasons); the only exception is that you can create a page called User:<username>/<skinname>.js (e.g. User:msh210/monobook.js), and it will be treated as part of the site's skin, just for you. But that's not really the most appropriate here, since this is more like a utility for lots of people to access.
Well, I don't feel like hosting it elsewhere, so maybe I'll try add it to my monobook.js (assuming, of course, that I ever get around to figuring out how to do it in JS, and doing it). Then anyone who wants can copy-paste it. Heck, it'll be easier to use if it's right on the page, anyway. Is there a help page on skinname.js pages? —msh210 00:20, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I see there is a help page on skin.js pages: m:Help:User style#Javascript. But it's not much of a help page; it doesn't explain, in particular, how to add something like this. —msh210 00:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Myself, I think I'd be tempted to do it all server-side (i.e. using Perl or PHP) - just have a form to fill-in the PAGENAME and TEXT, and then submit the requests bot-style - but that's just personal prejudice. And come to think, client-side probably is good here, because then the attribution (and the ~~~~ sig) would be "correct". - IMSoP 18:48, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd support such a form. Putting something up for VFD is sometimes to time consuming, so if I'm short on time I may let something VFD-able slide because I want to spend my time differently. Of course, this makes it theoretically possible for trash to slide by our detectors. Everything that makes submitting vfds easier get's my support (as long as it works properly). Mgm|(talk) 19:45, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Please continue any further discussion here now. —msh210 13:56, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's a great idea, and I've been giving it some thought as well. Another possibility is to list the pages on a certain VfD page and have a bot run regularly on that page to go through the VfD process. There are a couple of ways I can think of to do this:

Manual listing
This more closely follows the original process, but there's a lot less things to do.
  1. A user wishing to list PAGENAME can put a {{subst:vfd}} tag on it, then go to a temporary VfD reporting page and list the page with reasoning and signature.
  2. A bot runs periodically on the temp VfD reporting page and lists the page through normal VfD procedures.
Category listing
This sounds kind of complicated, and given my lack of knowledge of bot programming, I'm not even sure if it's possible, but it would be a LOT simpler from the user's point of view.
  1. A user wishing to list PAGENAME can put a {{new vfd name|reason --~~~~}} (no subst) tag on it. This new template links the page to a new Category (say Category:New VfDs Category:Unlisted votes for deletion), and also contains --~~~~ so the reasoning contains the reporting user's signature.
  2. A bot runs periodically on the new category page and lists the page through normal VfD procedures (including replacing the {{new vfd name}} tag with {{subst:vfd}}). I don't know if this is possible with a bot.

Both methods are a little more complicated than simply running a JS file, but if I could learn how to create a bot, it would certainly be doable. Thoughts? --Deathphoenix 15:48, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like your "category" idea better than my idea. I, too, have no idea whether it's possible. Your "manual" idea doesn't save enough steps to make it very worthwhile, and the temp page will just confuse people, I think. A variation on your "manual" idea:
Manual listing (variation 2)
  1. A user wishing to list PAGENAME can put a {{subst:vfd}} tag on it, then make Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/PAGENAME as usual.
  2. A bot runs periodically on new VfD subpages and lists them on VfD.
This is better, imho, than your "manual" idea, as, relative to the latter, it saves work (on the bot's part) and doesn't increase it (on ours). —msh210 17:02, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, like you, I think I prefer the category idea. Now, is it possible? I hope so... --Deathphoenix 03:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No opinion on the bot-assisted variations, but the javascript solution is quite doable (at least if you allow popups). I'll see what I can put together this weekend. —Korath (Talk) 05:24, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
As promised: User:Korath/autovfd.js. You need to let popups through for it to work (grrngh), it's currently set up for the Classic skin only, and I haven't tested it yet here. Please don't try it out quite yet unless you already know vaguely what you're doing, both with vfd and with javascript (the latter only because I have to leave and can't write up any documentation or even installation instructions at the moment). —Korath (Talk) 15:36, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks much, Korath. I tried modifying that for actual use — see user:msh210/monobook.js — but it doesn't work. Can someone please tell me what's wrong? —msh210 14:17, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If you were getting a "There's an old vfd here" warning when you shouldn't have, it's because I pasted in test code instead of a final version; here's a diff that fixes it. Otherwise, could you be more specific? I've just tested it (though only in Opera), and it seems functional. —Korath (Talk) 15:21, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Hm. I was getting simply that the "vfd" link did not appear on Editing pages. That was IE version <something> for Win. I don't usually use that, though, and the link appears just fine on the versions of Moz and IE that I do typically use, so I'm satisfied. (Of course, I haven't yet actually tried to click that link, so maybe I'm not satisfied...  :-) .) Thanks much, Korath! —msh210 16:38, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Probably a caching issue; MediaWiki sends headers that make your browser reluctant to redownload the css and js files. —Korath (Talk) 16:54, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
In IE, when I click the "vfd" link, it puts "{{subst:vfd}}" in the textarea and "vfd" in the summary box, and IE6 then tells me there's an error on the page; looking for details yields that IE thinks there's an "invalid argument" at line 63, character 3. Being MSIE, it doesn't indicate what file the error is in, but I assume User:msh210/monobook.js. Line 63 reads
 'Vfd ' + unescape(target),
and is the second line of
window.open('/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/' + pagename + '&action=edit&fakeaction=vfdsub&faketarget=' + target,
 'Vfd ' + unescape(target),
 'status,toolbar,location,menubar,directories,resizeable,scrollbars');
and MSDN says IE's window.open is used as
oNewWindow = window.open( [sURL] [, sName] [, sFeatures] [, bReplace])
so the bit of JS above seems just fine. Anyone have an idea? —msh210 17:03, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It's improved a little by changing it to 'Vfd_' + unescape(target), and IE seems to insist that a full url be used in window.open(). I can't, however, get it to stop encoding the & character instead of leaving it bare, so I'm giving up on IE support for now. —Korath (Talk) 18:09, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
Fair enough. (Shame, as I often use that copy of IE to do my VFDing. I guess I'll just have to use Mozilla from now on. My problem, incidentally, with using Mozilla is that the display of the RC live page jumps a lot when I do so.) —msh210 20:30, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Shall we add these scripts to the VFD footer? —msh210 16:28, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That should wait until it's properly documented; I'll do so today or tomorrow. A better solution for the case where there's a pre-existing vfd would be nice, too, though I haven't thought of anything better than the current "stop and do it by hand" popup. —Korath (Talk) 16:54, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
  • I support anything that makes VfD faster. -Litefantastic 15:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Decubitis

Oh, so complicated. Can someone please put Decubitis on VfD, as it is just a spelling error for "decubitus", and there is a lovely "Bedsore" page which covers the issue? NuclearWinner 03:38, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You don't need any of that for this particular case. Just be bold and change the article to a redirect to bedsore. (Which I just did.) While we don't actively create redirects just because someone might misspell the title, once someone has made the mistake, we generally keep the redirect because "redirects are cheap." Rossami (talk) 12:56, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I just can't take it anymore

The VfD is so bogged down with junk articles that it's no longer possible to edit without extreme patience. When I started (Nov 2003) there was only about one-third the VfDing that there is today. I think the VfD page has simply become outmodled: it wasn't designed for this level of traffic.

Since the WP is broken up in topics itself (Science, History, Culture, etc.) why ddoesn't someone break up the VfD so that it simply links to a bunch of VfD subpages, one for each major topic. Someone with regular access to broadband.

The overall speed rate would go back up to something approaching usefulness, and the ease of use would suffer only slightly. We'd have to fix all the VfD templates, too, but let's look at the positive aspects just now. For the sake of sanity. -Litefantastic 15:50, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categorized Deletion. —Korath (Talk) 21:19, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
And though it has nothing to do with your complaint directly, it is also a deletion proposal that abbreviates to CD, so I'll plug it: Wikipedia:Countdown deletion. JRM 01:27, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)

Proposal to add policy to VfD

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Bhili_language. The article was originally a translation request, and thereafter, a VfD because it was written entirely "In Arabic" (although I suspect it was more likely Urdu, but that's really neither here nor there...) Within 2 days of its VfD status, everyone who had looked at the article agreed that, now that the article has been translated, its old content discarded as rubbish, and a thorough rewrite completed, that it should be kept...including the person who originally nominated it for deletion. Now, because it hasn't been 7 days since the VfD tag was added, a perfectly good stub is marked with the smirch of a VfD tag, indicating that it has dubious content to one and all, when that is not, in fact, the case--nor does anyone who's actually taken part in contributing to the article think it is the case... If a policy change cannot be instituted to change the VfD rules, can a sub-category perhaps be made to the VfD template such as, perhaps VfD-withdrawn or something, that indicates clearly that the VfD tag is just hanging around the required 7 days as a formality? Tomer TALK 21:36, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with this, jusst as long as the VFD is properly closed at that time (i.e., the {{subst:vt}} and {{subst:vb}} are added). – ABCD 00:28, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Patience. In the grand scheme of things, 7 days isn't very long. Rather than creating a lot of complicated rules that allow some VFD's to be removed early, just let them stay the seven days. It doesn't do much harm for a article to have the VFD tag on it for a few days. As for your specific rule change proposal that the nominator should be able to "withdraw" his nomination, I don't in general agree with it. What if other people, having had the article drawn to their attention, don't agree with the withdrawal because they aren't as impressed as the nominator by the changes? Do you have a vote on the withdrawal? Too complicated. The occasional article that gets completely rewritten, changing everyone's mind, is rare enough, and the harm of a few extra days on VFD is small enough, that it isn't worth bothering with. --BM 00:41, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
We have a rule for this already! Ignore all rules. You're depressed by a silly rule, so it applies here. :-) You have your consensus already. Mark the vfd discussion as closed. And remove the tag already. I'll take any flack if anyone dares say anything :-P
Out of politeness, do watch the vfd discussion and the page for the full 7 days, just in case anyone disagrees, Kim Bruning 00:48, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Requesting Help...

Well, since we've certainly decided that transwikied dicdefs can't be speedied just because they were transwikied, I'd like to request some help. I'd love it if some charitable VfD'ers could help me go through Wikipedia:Transwiki log (where transwikied articles, mostly to wiktionary, are listed). Many of these need to be listed at VfD as dicdefs, but there are hundreds, and it's slow-going. Others need to be merged and/or redirected. This is looking like a monumental task, so help is greatly appreciated. --Dmcdevit 05:13, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

subst:vfd -- why subst?

Why should one add {{subst:vfd}} instead of {{vfd}} to pages? —msh210 19:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What it effectively does is replace {{vfd}} with the actual template text (enclosed with <div> and </div>). The reason why we prefer this is that template substitution reduces load on the template. If you just add {{vfd}} to the article, the original template is still linked to the article, but if you use {{subst:vfd}}, it just substitutes the contents of the template and there is no longer any link between the template and the article. That reduces the number of articles linking to the template and helps for performance issues. --Deathphoenix 19:31, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It also makes things easier to fix when someone moves an article despite the big, shiny "Please do not... move this article while the discussion is in progress" notice. (See also [[Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/September-December 2004#{{vfd}} vs. {{subst:vfd}}]].) —Korath (Talk) 19:56, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

nominations with no votes?

What happens to a page that is nominated for VFD but receives no votes besides nomination? I was assuming that nomination=1 vote to delete, so that if nobody stood up to defend the page it would be deleted after its 7 days. Now a conversation has arisen over this point at WP:TFD's talk page, and I wonder if I was mistaken about this. The deletion policy is (deliberately?) vague on this point. FreplySpang (talk) 04:23, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you find any that haven't had any votes, then vote on them yourself - if you agree with the nominator it should be deleted, then that makes it an easy decision for the /old administrator. If you disagree, then it will probably be kept trough no consensus.
Following on my from my comments at TFD talk, I am thinking of making a list, possibly at Wikipedia:Watch, of deletion requests that have received no votes, or only a small number that doesn't look like a consensus, after 5 days to bring attention to them. Thryduulf 08:18, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
To answer the orignal question, if a nomination receives not votes at all, no consensus has been demonstrated that anything should be done. Typically, that ends up being treated as a keep. --iMb~Meow 08:54, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! Glad I got straightened out on that. FreplySpang (talk) 14:28, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Note that on some of the smaller language wikis, a nom with no votes might count as a delete, since there was no opposition (and the articles are often rather more clear-cut :-) ). Kim Bruning 14:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, what I did was to relist the nomination again, and consider the discussion still "open".-- AllyUnion (talk) 06:02, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What we should have is a specific section that links to all discussions that are left open or considered continuing on the main page as a list. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
see Wikipedia:Watch#Deletion debates needing votes. Its not yet populated but if you want to make a start on it feel free. Thryduulf 15:45, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)