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Should Anon Votes be Considered?

One of the principles of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit. Another editor pointed out that deletion is editing. Therefore, I feel that anons should be alowed to vote on VFD and the like.

Hear me out. Although there is a problem with verifying that anons are not double-voting, this is a problem with registered users as well. It is possible to see the edit history associated with an IP address, just as it is for a registered user. Although verification is still slightly more of a problem with anonymous users, not counting them is worse:

  1. It is anti-wiki, because it treats anons as second-class users.
  2. It is against the principle of assuming good faith.
  3. It is specifically unfreindly to newcomers.

This policy should be changed, and anon votes should be considered as much as those of registered users. --L33tminion | (talk) 16:42, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

This is a misunderstanding of how the system currently works. Votes for deletion, despite its name, is not a simple vote. It is a way of getting consensus on whether an article should be deleted. If there is no clear consensus, then eventually an admin must take it upon themselves to "decide" the discussion one way or the other. In doing so, they do take account of the raw vote totals, but, more importantly, they take account of what people have said and how they have said it. If an anon comes up with good reasons for keeping (or deleting) and article, then the admin will take that into account. Admins are not robots, blindly counting some opinions and ignoring others.
In fact, the "policy" that anons can't vote doesn't seem to be written down anywhere - not on VfD, Deletion policy or VfD/Precedents. I think those users who like saying "anon votes don't count" should stop it, because it continues to foster this belief that VfD is just about voting, which in turn encourages people post to things like "Keep. Notable.", adding nothing to the discussion. sjorford 17:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Anons are allowed to vote on VFD and elsewhere. There is no policy (that I know of) that says that anons can't vote or that their votes don't count. Admins can, however, discount anon votes if there is "strong evidence of bad faith". For the relevant policy see: Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators. Also, it is helpful to keep in mind that decisions are made in Wikipedia by "rough consensus". Voting takes place only to help determine whether such a consensus exists. Paul August ☎ 17:19, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
(The above was written and added at the same time as sjorford comment above, before I had read his comment, so it repeats some of what Sjorford says Paul August ☎ 17:30, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC))
Anons are allowed to vote, and very valuable information and comments sometimes come from anons. However, 90% of the time anon votes show a marked lack of understanding of the deletion policy and of how Wikipedia works. With the added risks of sockpuppets I thus rarely count anon votes when assessing whether a deletion debate has the two-thirds consensus necessary for deletion. - SimonP 17:48, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators, you should only discount anon votes if there is strong evidence of bad faith. Paul August ☎ 17:56, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
The deletion guidelines state that "administrators can disregard votes and comments if they feel that there is strong evidence that they were not made in good faith. Such "bad faith" votes include those ... being made anonymously". - SimonP 18:56, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
Are you reading this to say that all anon votes are made in bad faith? Paul August ☎ 20:21, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
Also where is it defined that "rough consensus" equals "two-thirds" of the votes? Paul August ☎ 18:01, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
It has long been an accepted convention that an article cannot be deleted if less than two-thirds of voters are in favour of deletion. - SimonP 18:56, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
Our policy is that decisions are determined by a "rough consensus". If an exact quantitative definition of "rough consensus" like "two-thirds" is going to be used, then this should be made specific in written policy. Paul August ☎ 20:21, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
It isn't an exact quantitative definition, it's a rough guideline. Gah, whatever happened to letting people exercise some judgement around here!? -- Cyrius|✎ 20:26, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Fafblog was deleted in the last 24 hours with, I believe, 6 or 7 votes to 4, but two of the 4 to keep were anon votes. There was no evidence of bad faith on the part of the anon's. Incidentally, this was a case where strong evidence of notability (201,000 Google hits) came at the end of the 5 day period, and most of the final votes were keep, including the anon ones. I'm not sure the people who voted for deletion would necessarily have stuck with their original vote if they were following the discussion to the end; so one could even say that the anon votes should have carried MORE weiWikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive3#Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion_and_speedy_deletionsght since they had the notability information and the previous votes didn't. On the other hand, I was recently involved in the VfD for Universism, where probably 25 or more of the 30+ votes for deletion were anon's who had obviously been rounded up by the person who had written the article about his new religion. Obviously, judgement is required on the part of the admin who counts the votes. Unfortunately, deletion is a pretty final, although I guess "undeletion" is a theoretical possibility. --BM 12:16, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have no problems with anons voting on VfD's, but they should provide good reasons for their votes, and show some generally good edits in their history. Anon article creators saying: "This is important to me, please keep" should generally be ignored. Mgm|(talk) 16:20, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps our policy should be to ignore such anon votes, if so then we should change our policy to reflect this. Currently the only valid reason for ignoring a vote is if there is strong evidence of bad faith. Paul August ☎ 17:08, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
In my experience, the anon votes to keep are often initially cast by the anons who created the article in the first place, followed by a couple of their buddies if they can get them to vote as well. Jayjg 16:32, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, would you disqualify a person who wasn't an anon for the same reasons? Do anons have a different threshold to satisfy than registered members? Would you disqualify a registered member for not giving a reason, and not having "good" edits in their histories? That seems like a slippery slope. Pretty soon you have the person counting the votes deciding what is a good enough reason, and what are good enough edits in the voters histories for them to qualify. That ends up meaning that on any controversial VfD, the person counting the votes basically decides the question, because he decides which votes count. Why have the VfD at all, in that case? It is better just to have a bright line criterion and stick with it. For example, votes by users who were not registered before the vote started cannot vote and if they do, it is considered a comment only and is not counted. More than two thirds "Delete" votes required to delete. Period. End of story. Clear. The person counting just counts and checks registration dates. No discretion exercised or needed. --BM 16:36, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The current process is: a) admins make a judgement as to whether there's consensus to delete; b) there is strong guidance to admins, which is usually adhered to, that consensus means at least a two-thirds vote; c) admins judge which votes are to be counted; d) there is a well-established custom that anonynous votes, and votes by accounts created after start of the VfD discussion, are not counted.

This is fine as it stands. Enunciating some formal policy that anon votes are generally to be counted will do nothing but increase the number of VfD decisions that are disputed and generally contentious.

Throwing out anon votes is occasionally unfair, but an article that can't get enough "keep" votes from registered users is a pretty bad article. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:11, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If it is generally agreed that anon votes should not count then lets change the policy to say this. Having "customs" of practice that are in conflict with written policy doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Paul August ☎ 22:26, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
  • I feel that anons should not be permitted to vote on VfD. Voting is a policy area, and like in Votes for Admin, the recent arbcom votes, and other wikipedia voting areas, IPs have been blocked from voting. Continuation of that policy is sensible for many reasons, to block sockpuppets, to keep the histories clear (when I edit from home, work, or elsewhere, I have a solid identity everywhere), to stop people from gathering support from people outside Wikipedia to influence our policies, to let us know how much exposure to policy people have when they vote on VfD (that is, we can tell freshly-created accounts from established ones), etc. Specific reply to BW -- no, the admins are bound by tradition, and anyone can see the result of their judgement and complain if they just delete an article despite a clear mandate, or vice-versa. It may be possible to replace the tradition with a solid policy, and provided its done well, I may support such a policy, but the current reliance on tradition is not, I think, a bad thing. The admins who manage VfD tend to do a good job -- it's been rare that they've been accused of rigging the vote, and I suspect rarer still that they actually have. --Improv 23:01, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The ArbCom appears to be of the opinion that anons can't vote. In general, anonymous IP addresses are not allowed to vote on Wikipedia., which is fine by me. --fvw* 17:22, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Help

I just messed up adding Lemon ice box pie to VfD. Either this process is a bit error-prone, or I'm an idiot. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Lemon ice box pie exists as a subpage but the text doesn't appear on the main page VfD page and the text I wrote seems to be appended to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Guitar god. --BM 22:16, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

To see how this happened, read step #6 of the VFD instructions carefully. On VFD, you must not use the subheading edit link. —Lowellian (talk) 15:20, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Current backlog

The 'current votes' has 7 days of votes listed! I'd clean it up & move stuff to the /old pages myself, if I knew how. Right now, the page needs some tender lovin' care to clear off the old stuff. hfool 01:59, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Figured it out. hfool 02:40, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pages on Star Trek, TNG episodes

Have I, NoPetrol lost my mind? I have recently made some additions to the Votes for deletion page, and I am well aware that the additions that I made will most likely result in my execution at the hands of rabid Star Trek Fans. I just got done listing several pages about Star Trek, The Next Generation episodes for deletion, because I value Wikipedia over my own life. There are some editors here whose goal is to create an article for every Star Trek, TNG episode ever made. They do not care that this is an ENCYCLOPEDIA. I am afraid that if this trend is not stopped, then it will eventually destroy Wikipedia. There will come a time when every query you enter into the "search" bar will give you an article about an episode of some television show, with a link at the bottom to the thing you were really trying to find.

I have read every page that I listed on VFD individually, and none of them has any potential of becoming encyclopedic. They are all merely synopses of episodes.

To those of you who would vote to keep these articles: should Wikipedia contain a description or synopsis of everything anyone has ever created? If Gene Roddenberry writes his name in some snow with urine, should there be an article about that? I wrote a short story in Kindergarten about my pet hamster. Would anyone be so kind as to write an encyclopedia article about that story?

My first contribution to this encyclopedia was an article about a concept car that my friends and I were designing for a school project. That article was deleted, and rightfully so, because it was about something that I just made up, and it was not relevant to anything. These Star Trek articles should be deleted for the same reason. --NoPetrol 07:06, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Rather than tell us the heartwarming story about how your school project article was deleted (and rightfully so) I would like to hear more about exactly how you think articles about Star Trek are going to, as you put it, "will eventually destroy Wikipedia". GRider\talk 18:01, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I want to point out two differences between Star Trek episodes and your kindergarten story or your car. 1. They are part of a undisputably notable phenomenon. To a very great extent, the more you know about a subject, the better you can understand it and enjoy it. 2. They are are verifiable. So I think my ideal encyclopedia would include everything which is verifiable and either interesting or important, about every notable topic. But secondary level things would be hidden from search somehow, if they really were getting in the way. My votes are likely to be "merge or keep". Kappa 08:20, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, Star Trek is notable, but to warrant the amount of detail about it that Wikipedia has, Star Trek would have to have had a greater impact on society than World War II. Therefore, until someone builds a replica of the USS Enterprise and uses it to end world hunger and establish communications with the Borg, the amount of devotion that this encyclopedia has to spreading the gospel of Trek is inappropriate. Also, going to high school is a notable part of many people's lives, but Wikipedia has a policy against pages about specific high schools. --NoPetrol 12:31, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A, that's ridiculous. The impact of WWII on society is not the bar of suitability here. And I dare say there is probably already more material here on or related to WWII than there is on Star Trek. B, I'm not sure how you would measure "impact on society". Such a determination is tenuous at best and POV at worst. I dare say the cultural impact of Star Trek is pretty big, and if it doesn't reach WWII levels, it's certainly pretty far up the list. Now, if you were to ask today's general population which has had more of an impact on their lives, I'm guessing it would at least be a close race. Call me blasphemous, but your distaste for sci-fi isn't any more valid as a motivation behind your amount-of-detail criteria. - Keith D. Tyler [flame] 19:23, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
      • If Star Trek pages were competing with WW2 pages, I would say "more WW2, less Star Trek", but I how cutting Star Trek coverage would help to grow other more significant topics. On the contrary fan coverage attracts new contributors, and once they've begun contributing many may turn their attention to more deserving topics. (I should investigate this hypothesis.)Where is the policy about specific high schools stated? I have the feeling it would be based on vanity and unverifiability, which don't apply in this case. Kappa 16:39, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
NoPetrol, would you agree that listing one of these to see how the community thinks about them would have been more effective than listing almost a dozen right off the bat? Even if they should be voted on separately, listing multiple and forcing the incredibly repetitive arguments and votes upon us doesn't seem the most appropriate course of action. I'm sure both the hardcore deletionists and the hardcore inclusionists are going to have a ball, but I for one am "not amused". :-) JRM 12:21, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
If only one episode had been listed, people would have wondered why I was picking on that specific episode. --NoPetrol 12:31, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ahem. Is there a reason why you couldn't have explained that you were, in fact, using one as a case study, listing all the rest inline? I'm not arguing that this is not a completely unambiguous way of doing it—just that it's, shall we say, less than elegant. And now I'll just shut up about this because the damage is already done, and there's no point going on about it. JRM 13:46, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
I'm not really a Star Trek fan, but I'm a member of the WikiProject Holmes which aims to have an article for every Sherlock Holmes short story ever written. If you start banning the Trek articles, how long before we're next? Face it, the fact that these were good enough to be made into episodes and broadcast, or published in the Strand magazine, or whatever, makes them notable compared to all the rejected story ideas in the world. Let's encourage articles like this, not delete them. Save the deletion for the real fancruft. P Ingerson 12:44, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I second this. I'm working on a project to create articles for every James Bond novel up to the most recent ones. If Trek episode articles are banned, I must assume similar articles for Doctor Who, etc. will also be banned. How long before Holmes or Bond or Modesty Blaise (another project I'm working on) are next? Someone made the comment that Wikipedia "is not a general knowledge base" - to which I reply, then what the heck is it? Someone tried to get all TV show listings removed from Wikipedia which I just couldn't understand. Don't make this an elitist place where only Shakespeare plays and General Relativity can be listed. One's person's classic is another person's garbage; the name of the game here is NPOV and unless there is compelling reason to suggest that an article has been created for crooked, misleading, or stupid reasons, I don't see where any of us have the right to declare something invalid. BTW I guarantee that replacement articles for the Trek, Who, Enterprise, etc. episodes will appear within days of them being deleted because new people are coming to Wikipedia all the time. In my keep votes over at VfD I said that it's up to Wikipedia admin to make the rule to ban such articles, and enforce it. 23skidoo 17:12, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I didn't have time to read all of the comments on this subject but I have had an idea about this debate for a while. Why not move episode guides to wikibooks? A comprehensive book about Star Trek episodes. This solution (assuming wikibooks will accept this kind of content) could work for many types of content like our extensive pokedex (I believe there allready is a pokedex in the works at wikibooks) or animaniacs. My only worry is that wikibooks will turn into a repository for information that wikipedia rejected. BrokenSegue 17:11, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think some of the problems that many Wikipedians have with articles like these are perhaps because of a false assumption. That is, that the proportion of space devoted to various topics is somehow a measure of the relative importance that Wikipedia attributes to them. While this is true for reference works like say Britannica, it is most definitly not true for Wikipedia. The reason for this is that Britannica has, essentially, a fixed set of resources to allocate. It has only so much space, only so many editors. So it must pick and choose, making decisions about relative importance. Moreover it has mechanisms for doing so. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a very different beast. Its resources are considerably more elastic than Britannica's, and so it has little need to make such choices, and no mechanisms for doing so. The editors of Wikipedia are volunteers, writing for free. If they choose to spend more time writing on Star Trek, or Sherlock Holmes, than World War II, there is not much we can or should do about it. Is World War II more important than Star Trek? Yes. Should we add considerably more to our WW II coverage? Yes. Does another Star Trek article somehow diminish the importance of our the WW II articles, or make it less likely we will expand our WW II coverage? No. Paul August ☎ 17:33, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

No. While I appreciate you telling us all what the Wikipedia is and isn't, apparently, others disagree with you. I suggest you take a look at Wiki is not paper. Michael L. Kaufman 18:02, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think NoPetrol has violated any policy, and as such they deserve no censure, although I found this quite annoying.

But I've thought for a while that there should be a policy aimed at avoiding this sort of thing. Perhaps simply restrict people to nominating three articles on any one day? Or perhaps a more elaborate system that allows people whose nominations are successful more latitude to nominate, and restricts the nominations of those whose previous nominations were unsuccessful?

Of course Wikipedia:sock puppets will still be a problem, but some sort of guideline might help editors who list many articles in good faith to avoid becoming unpopular if their opinions are rejected. Andrewa 18:57, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I don't think a policy is needed, just some advice on the lines of "If you want to list several items of the same kind and you think there might be controversy, consider nominating just one of them first". Kappa 19:28, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • I think the advice should at least read, If you are going to propose to delete a number of very similar articles, then for Pete's sake test the water first. Nominate the one or (at most) two of them that you think are the clearest, best supported, most obvious candidates for deletion. If the consensus for these is to delete, by all means then go for the others too, and thanks for the hard work. But if you just list the whole lot and there's opposition you hadn't expected, you run three risks. Firstly, it may turn out to be a great waste of everyone's time, including yours. Secondly, if some cases are clearer than others, these clear deletes may be lost in the melee of what others see as borderline cases. Thirdly, once you are perceived to waste their time, people are more likely to vote against things you propose (we're all human) and again votes that might otherwise have been won will be lost. Andrewa 21:28, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Perhaps a policy on episode guides should be developed. At what point is a plot summary of an individual TV episode encyclopedic? There are several episode guides for Star Trek shows out there. There's also online episode guides for West Wing, M*A*S*H, the list goes on. Would it be better for us to link to already existant episode guides, rather than creating Wikipedia episode guides for every television show that has a cult following? Satori 20:09, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
  • Would an unabridged encyplopedia on Television programs have such information? Yes. It belongs here - if written well and with useful content. The study of modern culture and television dramas as an art form is a valid area for encyclopedic coverage. DAVODD 21:19, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
    • I don't know... would it? Studying television as an art form is definately encyclopedic. A breif synopsis of hundreds of episodes, though? I don't know. Perhaps certain key episodes that are important to the development of the story arc and characters, such as TNG's The Best of Both Worlds warrant a page. But does Lonely Among Us (TNG episode) need one? I'm not sure. Satori 22:22, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree, only an unabridged encyclopedia on Star Trek would include this level of detail on every epsiode (maybe not even that). That is why I suggest we create a sperate epsidoe guide (people still want to make these articles and they shouldn't be turned away). Apparently the one we have now has a copyright issue so I think we should be moving all of this stuff to wikibooks. BrokenSegue 01:41, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just wonder why the people writing Trek articles aren't over at Memory Alpha. That's where I would go to look something up, not here. —Mike 02:44, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

Memory Alpha uses Creative Commons while we use GFDL. Text can't be moved across the copyright standards. That's the issue, the articles would have to be re-written. BrokenSegue 02:58, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I really dont see a problem with having episode guides/plot synopses here - if we're going to delete things like these, then we might as well go through all the film articles (very generous to use that word for a two line plot description and cast list) I've noticed on Wikipedia and remove them as well - a lot of them a directly ripped off from IMDB anyway - and when I point that out, no-one seems to bother about it. -Zaphod Beeblebrox 11:54, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My suggestion is that all articles that this person has proposed to be deleted should be kept. Other people who found this page before myself have provided excellent reasons for why this article should not be deleted. I would like to further add that I hope this type of request for widespread deletion will be restricted in the future. Apparently, many people (with nice writing skills) thought that Wikipedia needed such articles and decided to create them, and for one person to come along and propose to delete them all is a little _______ (OK, it's a lot ________ :), in my opinion! KJen74 00:20, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Need to undelete an image but can't remember how to do it...

Appologies if this is posted to the wrong place, but I've been away for a while and things seem to have changed alot around here since my last visits... Anyway, Image:Permaculture mandala.png seems to have been deleted, I'd like to put it back as it's my own picture. In the old days I would have simly done this through the recently deleted log, but it seems I can't access this anymore (or if I can I've no longer got any idea how...) Can anybody advise???? quercus robur 11:46, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well there is advice for administrators on how to delete an image at Wikipedia:Administrators'_how-to_guide#Deleting_an_image, but as it says there, I don't think there is a way undelete an image without locating someone with the original copy and re-uploading it. On the other hand I can't find this image in the deletion log, and part of the reason may be that it doesn't seem to have been deleted - at least I can still find it at Image:Permaculture mandala.png. I did notice a server glitch half an hour ago, that prevented me seeing a different picture I was working on. -- Solipsist 12:16, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes indeedy- it seems to be back- must have been a glitch, come to think of it wiki more or less ground to a halt on my PC at the same time which I put down to my system being overloaded by all my kids gams that had been open earlier... quercus robur 13:39, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Does anybody apart from User:JRM actually use the link to the VfDed article in the edit summary? If this is how the majority of people read VfD I'm happy to type a few extra characters, but if this is rarely used it seems like a bit of a waste of effort, the list of actions required for VfDing is quite long enough already. --fvw* 14:20, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

I don't terribly care either way since I usually don't refresh my watchlist every 5 minutes (unless I'm in a state of terminal boredom:) , but yes, in principle having a link to the added article in the edit summary is useful - makes it easier to jump to th elatest discussion instead of having to wait for the whole Vfd page to load -- Ferkelparade π 14:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You're free to reword it to sound more optional, Fvw, if that's a concern. I don't want anyone to feel obligated by something I unilaterally instated. JRM 14:30, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)
  • Since my method of creating a VfD includes copying the article title, it's easy enough to paste it into the edit summary -- and it's helpful to them of us that do watch our watchlist obsessively. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 17:36, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why do I have to edit the wrong link?

Why do I have to click on the December 28 link in order to put a new article under December 29? 172.172.35.229 22:10, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A possible reason is that in one of the subpages there is a section that is commented out with <!-- ----> markup. It is a problem of wiki softare. I tried to search for the point where the sectioning broke, but gave up. Anyway, after a couple of days the problem will hopefully go away, as the older dates become deleted. Mikkalai 22:57, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

VfD change

All the sections for the days have been placed in subpages. When adding a new day, please create it under Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Archive 19/Log/YYYY Month Name DD. Example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Archive 19/Log/2004 December 30 or use: {{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/Log/{{CURRENTYEAR}}_{{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}_{{CURRENTDAY}}|action=edit}}. New VfD sections should be placed into the individual days. This helps a lot, adding a new VfD section makes a lot easier. Please make sure you update the template for the footer for the edit link to correspond to the current day that is being added. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:25, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Plus, the bonus for this is you can simply look at today's VfD stuff on one short page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:27, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Er, scratch editing the VfD Template. I just made it automatic. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:39, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This makes it impossible to effectively watch VfD with the watchlist, short of adding each new day by hand. I'm not sure whether I object yet, though. —Korath (Talk) 07:08, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Could we have the VfD page for today be at a fixed location ("Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion/Current"), which is moved off to the date page at midnight? That would fix both Korath's problem as well as mine, which is that I have a bookmark to edit VfD in my bookmarks bar which saves me a lot of time. --fvw* 13:11, 2004 Dec 30 (UTC)
I don't see how that would work other than moving it in by hand every day, which kind of defeats the purpose. Your difficulty's easily fixed, though; pop a copy of the templated link above (edited to fix the namespace and page name) onto your user page, or fiddle something similar into your skin with javascript (see my standard.js for a general idea how). Hrm. I wonder if redirects and templates mix. Even if not, setting up a watchlist page with the templates and using Related Changes will. —Korath (Talk) 14:07, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Even easier solution - put a copy of Template:VfDFooter on your user page. —Korath (Talk) 14:11, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ah, it's all entirely automated now, I hadn't seen that. Having to go to my user page for this kind of thing is an extra effort, but now that I don't need to add a link to the article in the edit summary anymore because the VfD subpages will load fast enough (*sticks tongue out at JRM*) it all balances out. Nice work AllyUnion! --fvw* 11:34, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)
Hey, I saw that! :-P JRM 02:42, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)
Did you read the old debates about day-based pages before making this change? Specifically, the one at the top of Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/March 2004? The system worked very well when it was all templates on one page. silsor 23:23, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
The new format has also made clearing out VfD/Old more difficult. Since the new system was implemented pretty much nothing has been removed from that page. - SimonP 23:36, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
I also find this format very difficult to deal with, and it seems to add absolutely nothing. The switch to day-based pages has made a bad system out of a good one. The only legitimate reason for switching to day-based pages before was the critical editing overload of VFD, and that problem has been solved with templates. Was this a unilateral decision? I think we should go back. silsor 00:09, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
I am finding the opposite. (I'm actually doing more work on Old now than I used to. Not as much as SimonP but a lot for me.) Many of the discussions have been processed. Four day's worth have been fully processed and many discussions have been completed within other days. The closed discussions just don't get taken out of the page anymore until the entire day's worth is finished.
May I ask what makes the new format harder for you? Rossami (talk) 01:26, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The main problem is that I find it harder to tell what has already been done, Also moving items to the transwiki queue and pages to be merged is more annoying. However, it is also likely that I just haven't gotten used to the new system yet. - SimonP 02:05, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
If the {{subst:vfd top}} and {{subst:vfd bottom}} templates are added correctly when the discussion is closed out, those discussions should now show with a light blue box around them. The only ones that need processing are the ones still in white. (It's not perfect though. Right now, the blue box extends to the bottom of the page anytime someone forgets the {{vfd bottom}} template.)
As a side note, I've asked Cool Hand Luke if there's a way to apply the "censoring" code he wrote in order to hide the closed threads from the VfD/Old page instead.
You are right that moving entries back to the transwiki queue is harder. Any suggestions? Would that be better as another transcluded page which you could open in a separate browser window? Rossami (talk)

VfD Today

Modem users, celebrate! You may find a clean VfD page with only one day on it, automatically updated , VfD page here: WP:VFD/Today. Some script hacking, like determining the size of the page, would be able to do the trick for new VfD discussions. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:58, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Thanks very much! Mgm|(talk) 12:59, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal:VfD early removal

a) If a page on VfD gets M keep votes, with the only opposition being the nominator, the discussion shall be archived and the page kept.

b) If a page on VfD gets N delete votes, not including the nominator, with no opposition, the discussion shall be archived and the page deleted.

c) If a page is nominated in obvious bad faith, the VfD subpage shall be deleted and the page kept.

d) The usual vote exclusions for sockpuppets apply.

Some feedback would be greatly appreciated. My preferred values of M and N would be 5 and 3, but I've left that open intentionally. Vacuum c 17:11, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

Re a)+b), I think it is common sense (and certainly used to be common practice when I contributed to this page a lot) that obvious keepers (i.e. those with a string of keep votes) and obvious deletes (those that should've really been speedied) should be dealt with expeditiously. Its to no-ones advantage to keep them around. Pcb21| Pete 17:25, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I feel the need to remind people that not everything trolls suggest is inherently wrong, we have no agreed definition of what a troll is, and so troll votes are not excluded. Also, sock puppets accounts are often used legitimately and with good intentions, though we don't count their "votes". -- Netoholic @ 17:33, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

I've modified clause C and D. Vacuum c 01:35, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Copied comment from the village pump:

Generally concur, but with a minimum of H hours (I suggest H=24), so people can't just gang up and overwhelm the consensus process by voting fast. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:09, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
I strongly agree with removing articles that have overwhelming support to keep. I disagree with removing those that have many delete votes. I have seen many articles radically improved and be kept, and there have been a number of cases where new information changed a unanimous delete to a keep. - SimonP 05:03, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
I'm planning, if this makes it to the polls, to have each of a, b, and c voted on separately. Vacuum c 05:07, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

I think there should be a separate vote for "remove from vfd", otherwise what's the point of vfd in the first place? :-) Kim Bruning 13:48, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Then all the inclusionists would vote 'remove from VfD' instead of Keep. Vacuum c 16:15, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
Ideally VfD should only be used in borderline cases, where established policy is not clear. (Admittedly, the borderline would be pretty broad). VfD should also act as forum for policy to shift (in the past, VfD has always shifted ever more towards the deletionist camp). Those cases where a strong precedent has been set should be removed and kept or deleted as appropriate.
That gives VFD a very good reason for its existence, a better one than the current crapshoot where the same tidy old debates are had again and again with nothing learnt from the past four years of VfD. Pcb21| Pete 14:22, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to make sense - are you saying that if page x gets, say, three delete votes in a row, it should be deleted straightaway? That's obviously flawed. Dan100 20:52, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

You're biasing decisions to early votes. Early votes will be cast by people stalking "dedicated to" VfD, who will be biased themselves, and they have a strong tendency to base their decisions on how convincingly the first arguments for deletion are worded. VfD votes turn around if the article is improved or someone thinks of a good but overlooked reason why the article should be deleted/kept after all. You would achieve far more than your original goal of eliminating "obvious" cases (which I have no doubt this proposal would deal with), you would short-circuit the process on cases that are not so obvious beyond a small circle of fast voters.
There's a reason VfD isn't just an instant vote among a fixed panel of judges (though it looks enough like that now as it is). As much as you'd like to unburden VfD, you can't speed up the process too much without breaking it, and the speedup you're suggesting is insanely high. (Yes, I know it's just your personal suggestion and these numbers could be adjusted, but still.) Three delete votes? Does that include the nominator? Why not make it two and call it a "speedy by VfD"? The current process typically involves one person tagging it and one admin deleting it, that's two people. You're suggesting one more is good enough for VfD? And five Keep votes may sound good to me, but I'm an inclusionist. If I were a deletionist, I'd be seriously worried about people blasting quick "faith-based" Keep votes and then pointing out that the article can't be renominated for a long, long time. This is just going to inspire "killer" attitudes and hostility. VfD is not a deathmatch. As much as we all hate the time-wasting obvious candidates ("no, this three-line grammarless advertisement isn't a speedy according to criteria, sorry" and "this article is terribly POV, it must be deleted!") you can't have the good without the bad. The time is better spent educating people about VfD, and consciously turning away when you see an article getting enough Keep or Delete votes. It's about consensus, not amount of votes — above a certain threshold, this should be clear enough to the admin responsible. Do not try to solidify this threshold in policy, this will just encourage people to seek out the borderline. See also Wikipedia:How to create policy, which explicitly warns against this sort of thing. JRM 17:05, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)

If it is a subject that tends to arouse VfD troll activity (e.g. schools) then the deletionist and inclusionist trolls will cancel each other out. Besides, most VfD regulars aren't trolls. Vacuum c 02:07, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Notability of actors vs. notability of their deeds/accomplishements

Here, actor should be understood as having the broader meaning of 'doer'.

I have noticed extreme inconsistencies in VfD policy/votes in that context. We have dozens and dozens of pages about people who were merely key witnesses in a notable criminal affair, yet every week pages about programmers who authored famous pieces of software are put on VfD. I think we should have a clearer policy on the question: do obscure people who are known primarily for their involvement in a famous project/affair/event have their own page?

When does an actor deserve a separate page, as opposed to only a mention in the article about his famous deed? Is page length the only issue (ex.: substantial information about the person is available and adding that information to the article about the deed would make it too long)?

I personally think actors should have a separate page. For contemporary people, I agree that Google-testing/general notability is a good measure to determine wether a person deserves an article or not, but there a lot of obscure scientists and backroom people who had an enormous influence despite not being well-known. Many of those have always had their place in encyclopedias and I think they have theirs in Wikipedia too. Phils 15:45, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here is one random person's (mine) take on the question.
  • Is it reasonable to believe that anybody would look up this person by name? That may be enough to justify an article, but it could also call for a simple redirect or disambiguation entry.
    • Would anybody who isn't friend, family or acquaintance be looking up the person by name?
  • Was this person a significant factor in more than one topic covered in the encyclopedia? It might make sense to have a separate article simply to avoid duplication.
  • If this is a person associated with a single topic, is there so much relevant information that it wouldn't fit in the parent topic's article?
None of these really touch on the idea that a person is "important enough" or "deserving" of an article, because I don't believe those ideas are useful. iMeowbot~Mw 16:28, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not have a notability requirement, and such a requirement has been rejected in polls on more than one occasion. We do have an accepted Verifiability requirement and many people who might be important do not have enough verifiable information for an article.- SimonP 17:25, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
There is a de facto notability requirement in the form of VfD. If the importance of the information is considered before it is added, it stands a better chance of survival. iMeowbot~Mw 17:51, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • I would say that, in a theoretical "perfect" Wikipedia, every actor credited with a speaking role in a commercially-released motion picture should have their own page, as would equivalent parts in higher theatre (Broadway, West End, etc.). This might not happen in my lifetime, or my children's lifetime, but it would be nice. Obscurity would not be a factor, as there's plenty of film buffs in the world, and sooner or later just about everything is bound to be looked up. Just last night I watched The Abduction of Figaro again and found myself checking IMDB to see if any of the actors were also in anything else (sadly, they weren't). As for other areas (witnesses, programmers, etc.), maybe a good criterion would be whether anything could be said of them beyond merely "Jimmy was one of the guys who worked on [x]". Did they make an impact on their field? Did they attain any level of celebrity, notoriety, or infamy? A fair amount of programmers have, quite a few more haven't. Too often, I think, there is a tendency to think of the existance of an article as a gift to the subject ("Hey, you made it, you're notable enough!"). Instead, each article should be a gift to the reader. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 13:32, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

from the main page

Please delete this redundant image as I am replacing it: [Image:Alexander Tilloch Galt.jpg]. Thank you. JillandJack 14:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Merge and Delete

Recently, a lot of new participants to VfD have been voting "Merge and Delete". You should know that many of us who close out the discussions are forced to interpret that as a "keep" vote (specifically, "keep as redirect").

  1. GFDL requires that we preserve the attribution history of our articles. If the content is merged, I must preserve the history of the page where it was merged from. (Now, that can be done by copy-pasting the history into the merged article's Talk page but it's clumsy and takes several more steps. It's much easier to make the old article into a redirect.)
  2. According to the Deletion process, I'm supposed to go through "What links here" and update any links before deletion. That's an error-prone process - very easy to miss one. Leaving the redirect in place gives me some slack. If a link doesn't get updated, it at least gets pointed to the right place instead of leaving a redlink behind (which just invites the eventual recreation of the deleted article).
  3. Redirects don't show on most views or on the mirrors. Even if it's a biased title, the fact that it points to an NPOV article shows that we don't endorse the POV. About the only way you'll find the redirect is through the search engine - and you're unlikely to search for the biased title unless you also share that bias.
  4. Redirects are cheap.

If you really want the content preserved and want the original article deleted, you are going to have to make a very convincing argument over and above your "merge and delete" vote. Rossami (talk) 22:32, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Moving back to the previous VfD format

Can we PLEASE go back to putting all the deletion templates in Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion instead of having subpages for each day? This was by far the best solution ever used for VfD. The current scheme is hard to use and unnecessary. The process of listing an article for deletion is already complicated enough. silsor 05:53, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Automating VfD process?

The process documented at the end of WP:VFD is open to misinterpretation and allows for bad entries to be made on the page.

Can this not be automated through a Special Page?

Anyone?

Peter Hitchmough 10:12, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"contains block-compressed revisions"

I don't know how many people have seen the following error message:

Can't delete this article because it contains block-compressed revisions. This is a temporary situation which the developers are well aware of, and should be fixed within a month or two. Please mark the article for deletion and wait for a developer to fix our buggy software.

I've created Template:Pending deletion for articles that should be deleted, but can't. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:25, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Allow or prohibit peculiar votes inside Vfd

A peculiar vote is a vote of type: [poll option, decision rule used to extract the decision, how long decision should be valid, minimum partication that turns the poll legitimate]. Some people dont like those votes to be casted inside Vfd, some others think that they are ok. What do you think? Shall we prohibit peculiar type votes or not?

The Wiki way is to prohibit as little as possible. However, I'd like to discourage the sort of comments you have been making. VfD has an important purpose, and it needs to be done efficiently. You have tested the waters, and the result is that several of your fellow Wikipedians have urged you to use the existing channels rather than clutter VfD with your policy proposals. I think you should follow their advice, but as I'm one of them that's not surprising. I also point out that nobody has spoken up in support of the way you have been discussing policy in VfD nominations.

I have myself often raised policy suggestions in VfD nominations, and intend to continue to do so in brief comments such as borderline speedy IMO or similar.

Congratulations on finding this place, and in leaving a pointer here from VfD, I think that's fine. Even better is to make the pointer a Wikilink, such as to this discussion (that's just to show one possible syntax). I hope to see more policy proposals from you, but be warned that my experience is that it's very hard work getting them adopted. Have a look at Wikipedia:how to create policy, and Category:Wikipedia policy thinktank (and note carefully the syntax of that last Wikilink if ever you are linking to categories, if it's done naively you create an unintended category member). Andrewa 13:22, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hard for my changes to get adopted in deletion policy? I dont think so.... I added the following phrase in deletion policy. "Peculiar votes of the type [opinion, decision rule to follow in order to extract the decision , how long the decision should be valid, poll's minimum participation] are prohibited." Do you think it will get adopted or not? If not adopted, I will continue casting my peculiar votes, and nobody can ask me to stop. If adopted, at least it is not hard to get changes adopted, isnt it? :-) Iasson 17:29, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Indeed. You have added these unilateral and unauthorised changes four times now, and you've been reverted by four different users (and I haven't been one of them). Please stop and do some reading of existing policies and procedures. A lot of time and effort has gone into them. You are just wasting a lot of people's time and making yourself justifiably unpopular. Andrewa 02:01, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So I am allowed to cast peculiar votes until you change deletion policy to prohibit them. thank you. Iasson 07:40, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
No. Wikipedia does not work like this. Andrewa 18:56, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Policy Talk: pages are the place to discuss policy. Vote pages are the place to discuss votes. If you want to reform the VfD policy, you should try to get it done here. Please use the VfD pages for their intended purpose, that is, to vote on deletions, and to explain your reason(s) for voting that way. Jayjg | (Talk) 16:07, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Prohibit, although I think that's the wrong word. Iasson should simply recognize the consensus that his peculiar comments in VfD are mildly disruptive and counter-productive, and voluntary stop making them.
I continue to be utterly bewildered by Lasson's comments in VfD. I don't know what point he thinks he is making. They baffle any "non-regulars" in VfD, and make it difficult to be sure which way he is intending to cast his vote, and tend to obscure policy in an area that is emotionally charged to begin with. A newbie whose article is nominated for deletion has enough problems without getting conflicting and puzzling indications of policy.
I am also baffled by 'this discussion, which seems to be discussing some general phenomenon of "peculiar comments" whereas the only instances of this phenomenon I've seen are Iasson's own comments.
I think it would be bizarre to establish a general policy whose sole purpose is to govern the behavior of one specific user. lasson, if it becomes clear to you that there is consensus that people do not think this comments are helpful, will you stop? Dpbsmith (talk) 21:14, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Another consensus confused! Is this place full of them? Please define consenus. If it becomes clear to me with a vote that people do not think that peculiar votes are helpful, I will stop. Iasson 07:37, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
1. An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole: “Among political women . . . there is a clear consensus about the problems women candidates have traditionally faced” (Wendy Kaminer, Atlantic Monthly July 1992). See Usage Note at redundancy. 2. General agreement or accord: government by consensus.
Works for me. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:20, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This may even be progress. Without wanting to bypass the RfC, would you like to spell out here how you we could hold this vote so that you would respect and abide by it? You are a talented and creative individual. It's a great shame to see you wasting so much of your time and that of others like this. Whatever your theology, most people agree that time is precious and limited, and that it's important to spend it well. Andrewa 18:56, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A talented individual? hahahahaha. Is this a flattering trick you are using? Anyway what I am asking for all of you is defined in the poll inside my RFC. The question of the poll is : "shall Iasson stop or continue to cast peculiar votes?" and I am asking you to answer not with a simple yes or no but with a peculiar vote of the type [yes or no or whatever, decision rule that should be used to extract the decision, how long the extracted decision should be valid, minimum poll participation that will turn it legitimate]. Thats all. Go there and cast your vote. To make you life easier and your peculiar vote more easy, I have split the peculiar vote to relevant questions that you are about to answer. I am commited to the result of this poll, and I assure you that I am going to respect poll's decision. Iasson 20:59, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Fair enough, done. Only two votes on the yes/no/whatever question so far, including mine, and the other is embedded in the discussion of the fourth question so you could easily miss it. Andrewa 02:42, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I thing the majority of the people here want peculiar votes to be prohibitted. Also some of them, (ex. user Rick), wants to punish everyone who is going to cast similar votes. I think its time to put the prohibition to Deletion policy, in order to prevent newcomers to be punished if they fall to the same mistake I did. Iasson 11:34, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Nobody else is going to fall to the same mistake you did. Anyone else who tried something like that would respond quickly to the reactions that it evoked in others. There's no need for special policy covering this. Newcomers don't read through the whole policy, anyway. All that would happen to a person who was sincerely trying to comment on VfD procedure is that they would say somethiing like "In order to be valid, shouldn't there be standards for what constitutes a quorum?" Someone else would reply briefly explaining what rough consensus is, linking to Wikipedia:Deletion policy, and saying that VfD is a place for acting on the current policy, not proposing changes in policy. And for almost anyone else but you, that would be the end of it.
A newcomer could include the Pledge of Allegiance in every VfD vote and could probably do it about six times without getting more than some strongly-phrased advice. If he did it a hunded times and refused to stop doing it, he would find himself in an RfC discussion.
That doesn't mean we need to have a policy forbidding the use of the Pledge of Allegiance in VfD.
Regardless of the merit of your case, you have now articulated it well enough and often enough that anyone whom you are going to convince is already convinced. Harping on it over and over again does nothing but aggravate people. A little of that can be taken in stride. But the cumulative aggravation and your continuing insensitivity to others' wishes, or —or your willingness to pursue some personal agenda regardless of the clearly expressed wishes of others—has raised serious questions about your ability to work within the Wikipedian community.
That is what this is about, not whether newcomers need to know that there is a policy against peculiar votes or whether we need a bright-line definition of "peculiar votes." Dpbsmith (talk) 14:04, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A vote in an RfC isn't ipso facto a new policy. This one was held because you said you would abide by it, which would help address the immediate problem (but see my new summary). Question 1 is about you. It may or may not affect anyone else, that's addressed by question 4, but rather obliquely, and several people may I think change their votes now that you have clarified what you meant to say.
But IMO it is time to close the poll on question 1. Agreed? If so, I think we can consider it done. If not, can I foreshadow question 5: When should the poll(s) close? Andrewa 21:18, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Note that an RFC is currently in progress over this behavior. —Korath (Talk) 02:57, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

My feelings on the matter are pretty well elucidated at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Iasson. I am against the posting of these policy suggestions in pages about the potential deletion of individual articles. I have no idea if I am for or against the policies Iasson is promoting, because as far as I know, he has never actually proposed a deletion policy. Tuf-Kat 03:22, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

  • I consider your "peculiar votes" to be deliberate disruption of the VFD process, and intend to strike them out as I see them. —Stormie 06:03, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Unprocessed deletions?

Daniel Maycock is still in limbo even though it was proposed for deletion nearly a month ago. -- Antaeus Feldspar 21:23, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It looks as though that page slipped through the cracks. I have deleted it. - SimonP 23:35, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 21:59, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)) Also Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Consensus science

Consensus science was nominated for deletion on the 21st. As you can see on VfD/Old, we are still working through entries which were nominated on the 19th. We will get to it. Please be patient. (Or, even better, read the Deletion process and come help clean them out.) Rossami (talk) 22:44, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
(William M. Connolley 18:51, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)) OK, I'm not in a hurry, just curious as to what had happened.

missing vfd voices

I dunno about anyone else, but I find myself paying a lot less attention to WP:VFD these days. Not because I'm not interested in participating in the process -- it's simply that because the change to the by-day format, changes to WP:VFD (new entries, usually) don't show up on my watchlist; and since my watchlist is always the first place I look for "what's going on of interest"...well, you get the point. Wonder how many others have fallen away because of this? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 04:29, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have all the individual day pages on my watchlist, including those which haven't been created yet. So I can go to my watchlist and click on the latest day's worth of VFD, which is always near the top, which saves time loading. (Links to automagically watch the pages here.) sjorford:// 10:54, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VFD One Page a Day

There seems to be some complaint over to the system, and some people would like to revert how it was before. I suggest that we put it to a vote. -- AllyUnion (talk) 20:40, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Any vote on this issue should occur on the Village Pump, I suspect. Note also that your options should be better explained so people have a good chance of understanding the two systems better. Old-timers like myself are certain to, but it still could be better done. --Improv 21:16, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Copied from the Village pump:
A roughly a month ago, the votes for deletion process was changed in how the VFD pages were handled. At the current moment, when an article is nominated, it is put at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name. Where on that page, === Article name === is placed and all the information as to why it should be deleted is placed on that page.
Then it is placed on a VFD day page, a subpage which goes by the UTC date, like today's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2 and tomorrow's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 3, and yesterday's would be found at: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 1 and so on.
So, on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2, a transinclude is placed there, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}} under the section where the date is placed. In this case, under the section label: == February 2 ==.
Then, from there, transincludes are placed on the main Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page, containing only the pages linking to the dates, thus only having a list of days like: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 2}}
This allows automatic linking using the variables in the MediaWiki system, and a direct way to link to the current day to place a VFD vote.
Prior to this system, everything was placed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (main page). This meant that all the subpage transincludes, specifically, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Article name}}, was placed on the main page VFD. So you'd have the section dates on the main page VFD, and each section date would contain the transincludes for each VFD nomination. The only problem with this system was that it could not provide direct linking to the appropriate section to add the VFD nomination to the page.
  • Just to note, new system refers to the day to day transincludes. You can see the difference between the two systems through this diff: diff -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:56, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Option 1: Keep the new system in place

That is, have all the VFD subpages to be listed on a day to day basis. See: [2]

  • To further explain, the current system has a direct link to page with the current day, month and year. This direct link is automatic, and does not require any updating. All that is required is for someone to click on the direct link to add their subpage vote, {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Some Article}}, on to the automatically created daily subpage which must be added to the VFD main page like so: {{Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 February 1}} -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:59, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes

  1. Jmabel | Talk 04:21, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
  2. Mgm|(talk) 12:57, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
  3. Smoddy | ειπετε 17:16, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  4. Carnildo 23:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  5. Rossami (talk) 23:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  6. Joyous 23:44, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
  7. —Korath (Talk) 12:29, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
  8. Mozzerati 19:42, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

No

Neutral

  1. RickK 01:17, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
    —Korath (Talk) 16:15, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Comment

  • If the process is changed, could we please get some warning before implementing it? I'm tired of coming to list VfD things only to find out that the process has changed without warning. RickK 01:17, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Seems to cut down on articles nominated on the wrong day, but I'd really like to hear from the good folks doing the bulk of the work on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old. —Korath (Talk) 16:15, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
    • It works slightly faster for me since I no longer have to edit two pages each time to move the link from the /Old page to the Archived deletion debates page. The new process lets us just leave the discussion thread where it is and move the link for entire day-page to the archive page when all the discussions are closed. Rossami (talk)
      • I find the new system a lot faster, especially when I'm doing a speed-run taking care of lots of obvious "deletes." Not having to move the discussions one at a time is wonderful! Joyous 23:54, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • I would also like to draw the attention that there is a page used solely for today's entries only: WP:VFD/Today, this is very useful for modem users who don't want to load the whole VFD page... or broadband users who's patience with the VFD page is lacking. -- AllyUnion (talk) 16:50, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Or for those of us who have browsers that freeze for ten seconds while laying out the full VfD page. --Carnildo 23:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I find the new system ten times easier, especially when it comes to the new day listing. Smoddy | ειπετε 17:16, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Option 2: Return the old system: VFD subpages on one page

That is, have all the VFD subpages to be listed on the main VFD page. See: [3]

Yes

  1. On main page list days with articles to delete but no discussion on the main page. It's the pile-up of discussions that make it prohibitively large. Cburnett 21:26, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    In regards to that, that sounds like the hourly VFD list, really. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:01, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No

  1. Mgm|(talk) 12:57, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
  2. Carnildo 23:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  3. —Korath (Talk) 12:29, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
  4. Deathphoenix 14:20, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  5. Mozzerati 19:42, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

Neutral

  1. Jmabel | Talk 04:21, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
    —Korath (Talk) 16:15, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Comment

  • The only disadvantage is load time, and it's hard to really add new pages without a direct link. -- AllyUnion (talk) 20:40, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Load time, layout time, and for those unfortunate enough to be running on a slow computer, the big page doesn't scroll very well. --Carnildo 23:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Option 3: Find a way to fix problems with current "new" system

Yes

  1. Mozzerati 19:42, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC) if pos. make a way to see a list of new VFDs. preferably in the watchlist with more than one at a time

No

Neutral

Comment

  • What are the problems with the current system? I've had no trouble with it. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:21, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
    • One of them is that you can no longer keep track via watchlist. Other problems, I am not fully certain. Anyone else care to elaborate? -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:35, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • In my opinion that's only a minor inconvenience. Isn't load time more important than a watchlist. Mgm|(talk) 12:57, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
        • It is, actually. Well... the closest thing to an updated watchlist, as soon as I get it running, would be a VFD lists of discussion. Technically, we could run both systems at the same time, with the secondary system updated by the bot only. -- AllyUnion (talk) 15:55, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Find a compromise

This section is to discuss possible compromises between the two systems.

Thanks to Sjorford, I have discovered how to make an automatic watch link for today's VFD day: Add today's VFD to watchlist -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:11, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia namespace cleanup - help needed

A bunch of pages which should be nominated for deletion are now listed at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization/Wikipedia_namespace. If anyone would care to second these nominations, we could really use a hand or two with the logistics of posting them to VFD. Some of the "unsorted" pages are probably also candidates for deletion; feel free to help weed out the good from the bad, if you're so inclined. Thanks! -- Beland 04:29, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VFD List of Discussions

I have a list of vfd discussions which is currently being manually updated. See User:AllyUnion/VFD List. I will attempt to update it as best I can. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:23, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Putting the procedure in the footer doesn't seem to make it any easier to find. Is there a more than historical reason for the placement? RJFJR 04:29, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

I think the idea is to draw someone's attention to the nomination process without any VfD votes below it. Also, traditionally, you add your votes to the end of the page anyway. -- AllyUnion (talk) 15:49, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How about having a link to Images for deletion on WP:VfD? Maybe in the "see also" section? Joyous 02:27, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

VFD List Bot

Please please please... if you remove a discussion off the page because of size issues, please please please... make a notice as a sub-subpage of the VFD. My bot assumes that the VFD day sub-subpage only has transincludes. Including any other text gives it habit of screwing up. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:52, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How to permanently prevent recreations of VfD'd articles

DLJessup had a great suggestion, after I had dealt with yet another recreation of U.S. presidential election, 2012—after deletion, recreate the verboten article as a redirect to its VfD discussion page and then protect it. We should do this as a matter of course after every VfD, and then we'd never have to deal with vandal recreations of properly deleted articles, and it would also be clear to anyone who was unaware of the VfD why the article is no longer there. Should we put this to a vote to make this an established step in the VfD procedure? Postdlf 16:16, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • The idea has plusses and minuses -- it does tend to clutter the article space with a graveyard of dead articles, but at least would keep people away from recreations. Hopefully people would not see it as an invite to vandalise the VfD, or to keep voting (I've occasionally reverted edits to archive pages like that). Do we even keep the VfD discussions for deleted articles? If so, I wonder if it should be kosher to protect the VfD archives as well. --Improv 16:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • My first reaction is that this seems like overkill. Some articles are deleted "without prejudice" - that is, the current content is judged so bad that we decide we are better off with a redlink than the current mess but that a future article on the topic would be accepted. A protected redirect would get in the way of good editors and lower the probability that they'd take the time to write the article. It would also add two steps to the Wikipedia:Deletion process. The backlog is pretty bad already. Before we go adding steps, is there any way to find out how often the problem really happens? Maybe it could be an option reserved for articles which prove to be problems? Rossami (talk) 16:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • The only reason the 2012 page is constantly recreated is because it is still linked from a number of other articles, and even appears on Most Wanted Pages . Simply removing these will greatly reduce the chances of a non-malicious recreation. A permanent protection of pages like this is not a good idea and is nowhere permitted by the Protection policy. - SimonP 17:03, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)


  • 1)I don't like the idea of a main-namespace page redirecting to a VfD discussion. 2) What I really would like is an easier way of determining whether a suspect page is a re-creation, since do to various changes in VfD practice it's not trivial to locate an archived discussion, nor trivial to search for close matches. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:06, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree with this idea because there will be many instances where an article was rightfully deleted but then at a later point in time could be properly recreated with new and appropriate content. This is overkill. I do, however, think that protecting closed VfD discussion is a good thing (tm). But that's not what is being proposed here. —RaD Man (talk) 17:15, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree. That would be a licence to kill. If somebody wants an article never to be written, he will malevolently write it as a troll, being sure that it will be deleted. And then it will be censored for ever. --Pgreenfinch 17:46, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I likewise think this is a well-intentioned idea that would ultimately do much more harm than good. It would, Dpbsmith pointed out, create a bunch of cross-namespace redirects. While I am not opposed to these when they are extremely useful (the "wp:" pseudo-namespace, for example) or when it's absolutely clear that the user wants something in the wikipedia namespace (new pages comes to mind), I think created hundreds of these when neither is actually the case is a bad idea, and is antithetical to the community's goal of keeping the main namespace clear of clutter. Additionally, it locks us into having more administrative overhead whenever someone wants to create an article with that name (not necessarily a re-creation of the same article). - RedWordSmith 17:56, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • How about providing a link to the VfD into the deleted article's talk page? It won't prevent the new article from being created, but it makes it easier for admins to see that the article *has* been deleted before. AFAIK, a deleted article can still have a talk page (see Talk:Javanoir), and if someone recreates the deleted article, its talk page (with the archived VfD debate) is still preserved. --Deathphoenix 18:27, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • While I think that a practice like this could be used in cases of repeated page recreation, I think that it is unnecessary and even unadvisable in most cases. Just recently, I created a page 43 Things, an article that had been previously VFD'd. At the time, it seemed that 43 Things was a non-notable bulletin board site. However, Salon.com and BusinessWeek took an interest in the site, as it was secretly funded by Amazon; now the site gets over 18 million google hits, and has an alexa ranking around 35,000. Had this article been protected, it would have stopped a legitimate contributor from creating a valid, encyclopedic article. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:13, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • Let's not go overboard on that objection. Note that I disagree with the proposal. But I wish to point out that it would not really "stop a legitimate contributor from creating a valid article." It might baffle a true newbie, but even a relatively inexperienced user would know enough to ask about it at the Village Pump. The likely advice would be to create a draft of the new article, in their user space or perhaps at 43 Things/temp and request unprotection, which would surely be granted promptly. Another likely scenario is that the baffled user might create the article using some slight modification in the name, 43 Things website. After a while other contributors or naming-convention mavens would object to the name and propose a move, the original contributor would say "I wanted to but for some reason I couldn't," and the situation would rapidly become clear and get taken care of. Sure, it puts up a barrier, but hardly a insurmountable one. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:59, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree that's the main problem with this idea. Is there any way that some streamlined system can be used, perhaps a link placed at the top of the VfD page, through which such requests can be made and the case presented for a valid recreation? After VfD, there really should be some kind of review or approval required for recreation, even if it's just the occasional admin monitoring a request page and making a unilateral judgment that, "ok, this article can be done properly now." I know this is starting to sound like a lot more work, but how much time do admins already waste speedy deleting such articles? How much time do users waste trying to find out why their articles are no longer there, if they somehow missed the VfD period?
While we're at it, why don't we discuss whether closed VfD discussions should be protected too? I can't think of a reason not to. Postdlf 21:08, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • IMHO, if a specific article is having a recreation problem it should be protected with some kind of template on it. Then later, when the vandal has grown bored of recreating it the template and protection can be removed. As for this specific election page. I think it should redirect to the 2008 election page (the latest presidential election page in exsistance). How big of a problem is this really? It's easy to redelete articles and ban users who keep recreating it (unless it is different people. Which it may be.)BrokenSegue 02:40, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Can not be a general policy. Users are allowed to repeatedly nominate articles for deletion, so users must also be allowed (in general) to recreate articles. If we are allowing Double Jeopardy, it has to cut both ways. This technical solution would seem to be fine for specific problem articles though. Pcb21| Pete 12:03, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • But they're not allowed to recreate VfD'd articles: see Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion #5. Obviously that's reasonably interpreted to only mean recreations that are substantially similar to the original deleted article rather than just having the same name, so we're just back up to the issue as discussed above. And while I can't find a clear policy against constant relisting of an article for VfD, I know in practice that it is at least severely disfavored, and that some period of time (six months?) should pass. Postdlf 22:31, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I see two problems with it: first it effectively puts the VfD discussion into the main article space, and most of the discussion contributions are not written with that in mind. In general, I don't think main article space articles should redirect to Wikipedia namespace articles, or even link to them. Ditto links or redirects to Talk or User space articles. The article namespace should stand on its own. Otherwise, the policy against self-reference is violated. Second, it means that any dangling references to the deleted article are not redlinks. Today, if an admin blanks/protects a page in order to prevent it from being recreated, this is also a problem, but it is only done after a repeated invalid attempts to recreate an article. So its impact is limited. Redirecting deleted articles to the VfD votes would not be a good thing to do as a general rule. --BM 15:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletions

Anything that has been already deleted because it meets deletion criteria should be immediately closed. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:26, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If it is a speedy candidate, and it did meet deletion criteria, and it was deleted already.... there is no sense in continuing the VfD debate. Therefore, the debate should be immediately closed because it is no longer a VfD candidate. Use: {{subst:vfd top}} '''speedy delete''' --~~~~ and {{subst:vfd bottom}} to close a speedy candidate's (which has already been deleted) VFD subpage. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Wikipedia:Votes for deletion and speedy deletions -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:43, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Request: Some kind of deletion macro?

Okay, I was reading through 'dead end pages' today. At least half of those pages shouldn't be in here, for a variety of reasons (move to wikipedia, translate, etc). Now these two are easy - click on edit, paste in the //move to wikipedia// tag or something similar, and you're done.

However, many of these pages should be deleted for a variety of reasons (lack of content, lack of credibility, vanity pages, etc). In order to do this, you have to follow the nine steps displayed at the bottom of the vfd page, which takes longer than it took to write those dead end pages to begin with. Can we get a macro for that please?

OTOH, speedy deletions can be added simply by doing //db|reason//. I propose that there be similar simple tags for some of the more common reasons for deletion, e.g. //vanity//. (then again it may be that that already exists :) in which case sorry). This would make cleanup a lot easier.

212.206.63.108 16:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC) (userid Radiant but cannot log in from here)

What do you mean by macro? If you mean an easier way to archive off in VFD/Old, I'm working on something to that extent. -- AllyUnion (talk) 20:13, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion guidelines

We seem to be building up a fair list of recommended inclusion guidelines. I just saw a new one this evening about web comics. I know that most are mere proposals so far and they are not universally accepted. However, I believe that they are a useful attempt to bring some consistency to our decision-making. The ones I know of are listed below. Is there a comprehensive list of these recommendations anywhere? If not, would everyone please add to the list below? Thanks. Rossami (talk) 04:09, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Clarifying vote policy

Currently, at the top of the VfD page, we have this text:

Votes by suspected sock puppets or votes which do not seem to reflect the opinion of Wikipedians may be ignored. In particular, votes from anonymous persons and accounts that did not exist prior to a nomination are typically ignored on strong suspicions of sock puppeteering or being cast by biased outsiders unfamiliar with our policies. If you are the primary author or otherwise have a vested interest in the article, say so openly, clearly base your vote on the deletion policy, and vote only once, like everyone else.

I don't remember all of this being there before. I appreciate that it's trying to clarify vote counting policy, but it's got some big problems:

  • It equates new users with sock puppets, which is inaccurate and very elitist.
  • It's excessively wordy, and not really quotable.
  • The rules are thrown together in one paragraph, in no coherent order.
  • It's under the heading "VfD etiquette" when most of it is about vote-counting policy, not etiquette.

If we make this part less jumbled, we can give people something to clearly quote during VfD discussions. My ideal rewording of the paragraph would be to separate it out into bullet points:

VfD etiquette:

  • (the first two points that are there)
  • If you are the primary author or otherwise have a vested interest in the article, say so openly, clearly base your vote on the deletion policy, and vote only once, like everyone else.

Vote counting policy:

  • For your vote to be counted, you should be logged in with an account that already existed when the nomination was made. Votes from anonymous users or newly-created accounts may be ignored.
  • If there is evidence that someone is using sock puppets (multiple accounts belonging to the same person) to vote more than once, those votes will not be counted.

Any objections? RSpeer 01:02, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

So... how would it look? I'm not so clear on what you're trying to do. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:49, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This big paragraph is currently found as the last bullet point in the "VfD etiquette" section; I'm moving most of it to a new section called "Vote counting policy", where it would consist of a list of bullet points like the other sections. RSpeer 06:39, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
Remember that "Votes" for deletion isn't (supposed to be) a vote. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:59, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What in the world does that mean? Sure, it's a consensus vote and not a majority vote, but I think it'd be news to most people if you told them they aren't really voting.

So what does this have to do with clarifying that section, anyway? Do you want to make other changes to it so it doesn't refer to "votes" at all? What do you want to call them instead? RSpeer 18:23, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Cyrius is exactly right. What we are doing on VfD pages is not a "vote" at all. The intent of the page is to arrive at concensus through discussion. The "votes" are merely a way of gauging the current degree of concensus achieved.
Regardless of the "vote count", the final keep or delete decision is the responsibility of the deciding admin. That admin is allowed and expected to exercise discretion when evaluating the comments. The comments are far more important than the simple "keep" or "delete" votes.
In addition to the more widely known caveats about discounting of votes by unsigned, anonymous and very new users and proven or suspected sockpuppets, the admin may also have to make hard choices to discount certain votes in other circumstances. For example:
  • If the article is substantially rewritten during the discussion in such a way that the early comments no longer apply (This is why many experience contributors periodically return to the discussion and either change their vote or explicitly comment no change of vote.)
  • If new facts are presented late in the discussion which invalidate the reasoning that early voters used to make their decision (Another common reason why experienced folks return to the vote.)
  • Opinions of experienced users who have demonstrated over time that they understand Wikipedia's standards and conventions may be weighted over the opinions of users who through their comments clearly demonstrate a lack of such understanding.
  • If the conclusion is completely unsupportable by any reasonable interpretation of policy and precedent, the deciding admin may have to completely override the decision. (A common example is when the vote count says "delete" but material was merged. In order to preserve attribution history for GFDL, we "keep as redirect" instead.)
  • Comments determined to be trollish or abusive of the process may be summarily ignored.
  • Comments presented without reasoning or rationale may also be ignored at the admin's discretion.
The bottom line is that it's the deciding admin's decision. The "vote" advises the decision but only that.
Now before anyone starts talking about "abuse of admin power" and "elitism", remember that we do have several established checks and balances. An inappropriate decision can be challenged at Votes for undeletion. Users can appeal to other admins. A pattern of misconduct can be addressed through Request for comment, etc. It's not a democracy. It's not a tyranny. It's not anarchy. And somehow it all works.
Now I'll get off my soap box and admit that none of that really answers your question - "How should we reword the instructions?" I recommend omitting the intermediate header (Vote counting policy) and changing the wording of the next bullet from "vote" to "opinion". That also carries the implication that while we may have to discount an anonymous person's "keep" from the count, any facts they can bring to the discussion are still welcome. Rossami (talk) 00:13, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Just wanted to say bravo for that explanation. We should keept it somewhere if we don't already. Pcb21| Pete 12:27, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay - thanks for that explanation. How about this revision:

VfD etiquette:

  • (the first two points that are there)
  • If you are the primary author or otherwise have a vested interest in the article, say so openly, clearly base your vote on the deletion policy, and vote only once, like everyone else.
  • Your opinion will be given the most weight if you are logged in with an account that already existed when the nomination was made. Anonymous and new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion, but their votes may be discounted, especially if they seem to be made in bad faith.
  • Please vote only once. If there is evidence that someone is using sock puppets (multiple accounts belonging to the same person) to vote more than once, those votes will not be counted.

RSpeer 03:57, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

I think Rossami has explained the theory, and perhaps it works that way sometimes. However, from what I can see, most of the time the administrators do simply tally the votes, exercising their discretion only in unusual circumstances such as a lot of sock-puppet/new user votes, which becomes a decision on which votes to tally. In fact, if there weren't a very good reason for the admin to do other than tally the votes, then questions would be raised about whether the admin wasn't exercising his/her discretion simply to obtain the outcome that he or she favored. I think it might be better if the administrators did actually exercise their discretion more than they apparently do because sometimes a simple tallying of votes results in rather strange outcomes. --BM 15:52, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay. I'm not trying to start a discussion on how to change VfD policy; I'm trying to clarify an ugly, writhing, newbie-biting paragraph of text that's at the top of the page, and to hopefully clarify it to what it meant to say in the first place.

I'll just be bold and make the change. This is Wiki, after all - if someone has an amendment they want to make, they can do it. RSpeer 17:27, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Why am I not able to see the February 18 page?

I have refereshed repeatedly, but none of the February 18 list is showing up. I CAN see it when I click on the "Add new VfD section", when it puts me in Edit mode. RickK 05:52, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

  • I just clicked on "Purge page cache" and that didn't do any good, either. RickK 06:12, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
    • The bot didn't update the page. I've just done so. —Korath (Talk) 06:50, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
      • What bot? RickK 07:00, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
        • For the last couple of weeks, Allyunion's been running a bot to do the date stuff automatically. It's listed in the history. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why so eager to delete duplicates?

Quite a lot of nominations on VFD seem to argue that this is a duplicate article, and that it should therefore be deleted. Many seem to vote delete with that same reason. Why use such a drastic measure? Why not use the less drastic measures of redirect and/or merge. Often the title is plausible enough to merit at least a redirect. 129.177.61.124 09:41, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can you give some examples? RickK 09:44, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Wrestling Champions 2005. I don't care much about wrestling, I just wondered why it was on the nomination list.129.177.61.124 09:55, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
More examples:

You probably ought to ask the voters why they made the votes they did. RickK 10:04, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Early votes vs. Late votes

Should one weigh votes late in the Vfd debate more than early votes? My rationale for this is this: A dreadful article which ought to be deleted gets nominated and receives 20 unanimous delete votes. Someone decides to repair the article and creates a fair article. Now the article receives 4 unanimous keep votes. The administrator will count 20 delete votes and 4 keep votes, conclusion: clear consensus to delete a fair article. My point is, should delete votes before a major edit which may have repaired the article be disregarded? 129.177.61.124 10:23, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion for that purpose. -- AllyUnion (talk) 13:03, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Votes for undeletion is loaded against recreation. Kappa 13:05, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Provide a good reason why it should be undeleted, maybe it will be. And if you convince the majority of voters who originally voted to delete to change their minds to vote at VfU, perhaps they will ask the article to be restored. -- AllyUnion (talk) 13:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Tactically it appears better not to fix an article, but to let it be deleted first and then recreate a fixed version, not burdened by old 'delete' votes Kappa 13:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This is another of those situations where the deciding admin is expected to exercise his/her discretion in the evaluation of comments. As we have been discussing three threads above, "Votes for deletion" is not really about "voting" at all. Rossami (talk) 14:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This is not a situation that will be improved by trying to define bright-line policy. I don't think this is a situation that arises very often. I have seen many VfD discussions that began delete, delete, delete, then someone improved it, and ended keep in present form, keep improved version, keep. IIRC the disposition in all such cases was to that the article was kept. I honestly don't remember what the vote tallies were. I think most Wikipedians really like to see articles improved during VfD if the improvements are substantial and really meet the obvious objections.
Don't worry about "tactics." Worry about why the article was voted for deletion, and what the consensus really was and what its basis was. If you think that there was consensus for deletion but that the consensus was a mistake, it's probably best to just accept it as a fait accompli and let the matter drop.
Personally, I am reasonably receptive to what I consider to be a good article on virtually any topic. I am, however, very unreceptive to attempts to game the system or "win" through pitbull determination (flogging dead horses through VfU, etc).
Incidentally, regardless of topic or reasons for their votes or deletion policy, VfD voters are strongly influenced by the quality of the article. If there is a poorly-written substub on VfD and you want it kept, it is well worth the effort to expand it into a decent paragraph or two. One sentence of actual expansion in the article is worth three sentences of discussion about the topic's "potential for expansion."
I have seen many articles be undeleted as a result of VfU, by the way, so I don't know what you mean when you say it is stacked against re-creation. The biggest misconception people have is that VfU is not intended for reconsideration on the merits, and attempts to re-argue the case in VfU for articles voted for deletion generally fail. On the other hand, articles that were improperly speedied are often undeleted in VfU.
Did you have a specific article in mind? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:32, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Take a look at U.S. presidential election, 2012 and you will find that voting pattern. 129.177.61.124 07:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Seriously I advise against trying to fix things which might still be controversial afterwards. "the original should have been speedied" is explicitly used as an argument for deleting fixed versions. If you lose, not only is the content lost, but it sets a precedent against the fixed content as well at the orginal. Kappa 06:20, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rewriting or cleaning up articles whilst they are being discussed

From Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Cleo:

  • People voting on VfD should either leave the articles alone until they are deleted; or else clean them up on the subject on which they were originally written. Entirely wrong, and counterproductive to boot. I refer you to the final sentence of the {{subst:vfd}} notice. The only restrictions upon what edits one can do to an article on VFD are technical ones that are required in order to maintain the VFD notice on the article. Uncle G 06:32, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)
    • Uncle G, if someone wrote an article on the Animals, the band, and someone else submitted it to VfD because they thought it was band vanity, do you think it would be OK to come along while the VfD was in progress and people were considering this argument, and change the article to one about animals (as in lions, tigers, and bears). That seems like a unilateral decision to delete the topic to me, since the VfD isn't over, and not really proper. This article is no different. You say the current article is vanity, and I agree with you, but that is what the VfD vote is deciding. --BM 12:37, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • It's OK to do it when the article is not on VFD and it is OK to do it when the article is on VFD. If you are under the impression that rewriting an article is deleting it, then you are labouring under a false impression. Rewriting is part of Cleanup. Edit history is retained, unlike with deletion. (And, just as if the article isn't on VFD, after a rewrite the prior article can always be restored.) If you are under the impression that VFD nomination is an implicit article freeze, then you are labouring under a false impression. There is a long tradition here of rescuing articles from VFD by modifying, and in cases completely rewriting, them; vanity ones especially. Moreover, seeing a whole load of crossed-out delete votes replaced with "keep after rewrite by X" votes is part of the fun of WP:VFD. ☺ If you are worried about your vote being counted against the "wrong" text, then remember that your votes are signed and dated. There's also a proposal afoot to encourage the good practice, that I for one have tried to stick to, of noting in the VFD discussion with "modified article" or "rewritten article" whenever one cleans up or rewrites an article. Even without that, though, administrators can tell what's what. Uncle G 19:53, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)
        • You are completely misinterpreting my point. I am talking about a rewrite which shifts the article to a completely different topic. In my example, the Animals article is about the band. Someone submits it to VfD claiming it is band vanity. In the middle of the VfD, editors turn it into an article about lions, tigers, and bears. I'm not talking about rewriting/cleaning up articles on the same topic. I'm talking about creating a new article on a new topic, that just happens to share the title of the old topic, in the middle of the VfD. To me, that seems not on. If people think there should be an article on lions, tigers, and bears, they should just write it, not invade an article on a different topic that happens to be nominated on VfD before there is a consensus to delete it. This isn't a good place for me to making this argument, because this article was pretty pathetic. But the process point is nevertheless valid, and there is not such a big rush to create a List of miscellaneous people and things called Cleo article under the title Cleo that you need to shanghai this article before it is properly deleted. You hinted above about turning Samuel Stoddard into an disambiguation page between a couple of other Samual Stoddards that you had turned up. That wouldn't have been correct either. If the article was not on VfD, one would move the existing article to Samuel Stoddard (webmaster), then write the other Samuel Stoddard (whatever) articles, then create a disambig page at Samuel Stoddard. Just because the article is on VfD doesn't make it fair game to have the content essentially blanked and the article turned into the disambig page. Don't you see what I am driving at? --BM 03:06, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
          • You are completely misinterpreting my point. — No, I saw your point, but you didn't listen to my answer. I'm talking about creating a new article on a new topic, that just happens to share the title of the old topic, in the middle of the VfD. — As I said, It's OK to do that when an article is not on VFD and it is OK to do it when an article is on VFD. there is not such a big rush to create a List of miscellaneous people and things called Cleo article under the title Cleo that you need to shanghai this article before it is properly deleted. — Your description is exactly what a disambiguation article named Cleo should contain. And why do you seemingly care so much that an old article's content and edit history be thoroughly expunged before a new article is put in place? You hinted above about turning Samuel Stoddard into an disambiguation page between a couple of other Samual Stoddards that you had turned up. That wouldn't have been correct either. — Actually, it would have been. It's type 1 disambiguation. (Eventually, after further research, I went for type 3.) Read Wikipedia:Disambiguation to learn about the different types of disambiguation. Just because the article is on VfD doesn't make it fair game to have the content essentially blanked and the article turned into the disambig page. — As I said, that can happen to articles not on VFD and it can happen to articles that are on VFD. Uncle G 21:11, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

Sorry...

Nominated Nelli Kim/Temp. Now it's February 19, but I placed it among February 18 nominations. Didn't know how to fix it. Sorry. Nelli Kim/Temp subsection should be placed into the VfD section February 19. Cmapm 00:18, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Transfer to user page

If an admin can move deleted pages to their user page, why can't I? (or can I?). And is it legitimate to use content from that moved/deleted page in other articles? Kappa 08:38, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What admin has moved deleted pages to their user page? Which deleted page have they moved? RickK 21:13, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I assume Kappa is referring to User:Ta bu shi da yu/Types of animals - RedWordSmith 22:02, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

What is different about the process?

I click on the link at the top of the page and it takes me to a description that reads like the exact same process we werer doing. What am I missing? RickK 21:13, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

The difference is that nominators are now supposed to say what they want done with an article. This is to assist in "vote counting" and comes with the added bonus of eliminating any ambiguity as to whether and how to consider the nominator's opinion. See the diff or the discussion for more details. - RedWordSmith 21:53, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
Also, a new alternative method has been added. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:18, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Easing server load, shortening the notice, and consolidating the guides

Merging articles with defamatory names

The article Pol Pot of Tamil Eelam, which is not about the Khmer Rouge, is being suggested for merging in VfD. As I understand it, if an article is merged, the original title must be kept as a redirect; however, in this case the original title is distinctly tendentious. Susvolans (pigs can fly) Did you know that there is a proposal to treat dissent from naming conventions as vandalism? 11:38, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This is not so much of a serious issue from a technical standpoint. The article with a defamatory name can be moved to a [[new name]]. The redirect with the bad name can be deleted, since its only history is that of the automated page move. The article history is now at [[new name]], and the merge can be performed without any reference to the original article name. I think we might even have directions along these lines somewhere in the Wikipedia namespace. - RedWordSmith 18:25, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Talk page deletion

Just noticed that Talk:Two Finger Test is still with us after deletion Two Finger Test in late January. Shouldn't the talk page be gone? hydnjo talk 19:54, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Talk pages of already-deleted pages are candidates for speedy deletion. Put a {{db|A5: talk page of already-deleted page}} at the top of such pages (I've already done so for Talk:Two Finger Test) to bring it to the administrators' attention. —Korath (Talk) 23:28, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
Please be very cautious here. One of the steps in the Deletion process is to explicitly decide whether the associated Talk page should be kept. Most times it is deleted and I'd guess that most of the non-deleted Talk pages are an oversight. But sometimes it is the deliberate decision of the deciding admin. If you have researched the pages and, in your judgement as an admin, you believe that it was an oversight, the Talk page can be immediately deleted as a continuation of the Deletion process. But it does not need to be and ought not to be a CSD candidate on its own. Those often are applied too quickly and without enough research. Rossami (talk) 01:49, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Then the case's entry on WP:CSD have more of a caveat than "unless the discussion is linked to Wikipedia:Archived delete debates". (It didn't, and I would assume, or at least hope, that an intentionally kept talk page would.) Maybe a "recently" would suffice. —Korath (Talk) 02:36, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I have a habit of not deleting the talk page, because I have no idea whether a discussion is still being held. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:19, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Separate votes for title and content?

I am wondering if we should ask voters to specify separately what they are voting on the article's title/existence, and what they are voting on the article's content. Leaving it ambiguous can create loopholes for "end-runs" around a consensus decision; if an article is turned into a redirect per VfD, with several votes against the content and none for it, is it legitimate for the author of the article to merge his content into the target of the redirect, deciding by himself to make the effect of the VfD into "merge and redirect" instead of simply "redirect"? -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have often thought about this. A lot of the ambiguity in VfD votes comes from not knowing if the voter is referring to the content, the title, or both. The extra layer of complexity this idea would add is problematic, however. - SimonP 00:38, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Don't feed the deletionists

It has come to a conclusion that Deletionists are very closely related to trolls. Many controversial articles have been wrongly deleted (and you know what they are) mainly because of deletionsm. It is therefore that legitmate non-deleitionst Wikipedians boycott VFD and do not feed the deletionsts until the VFD is reformed to stop the abuse. Like trolls, deletionsts waste your time, Deletionsts have too much time on their hands so arguing with them will only cause you pain and the deletionsts will get joy. Not only that, another article gets deleted! If every one spent time working on real articles instead of aruging with deletionsts Wikipedia will double in quality and deletionsts will get bored and go away, while truly deletable articles will naturally be filtered out. Summary, votes for deletion is flawed, as long as votes can be abused by deletionsts, more causities will occur and Wikipedia will be deleted! So, are you going to let Wikipedia get deleted or are the deletionists going to be deleted? Delete the deletionists, Keep the Wikipedia! This is the sole edit by Nutz (talk · contribs).

  • How will "truly deletable articles will naturally be filtered out" if they don't get deleted? Mr. Curious 02:49, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Look at your dictionary. There is a difference between the words "delete" and "filter". Asking for truly deletable articles to be filtered out, this may means filter them rather than delete them. You can filter them using a vote, and hide them in history or in the despicable articles place.
      • I would simply point out that this is how Wikipedia already works. Deleted articles aren't really erased, but moved into an archive (deleted images are really gone, though). Currently one needs at east sysop status to see those articles, but they do still exist. See Wikipedia:Viewing deleted articles for an old poll (now closed) about changing that. --iMb~Mw 11:20, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Exactly, and thank you for pointing to it. Wikipedia:Viewing deleted articles is an old poll voted by old wikipedians. We have to ask again the opinion of the wikipedians of today. And of course, according to consensus policy, at least 2/3 majority has to be reached in order to take any decision. Why the decision to prohibit wikipedians to see deleted articles is taken when only 54% asked for it?
          • Well.... "old" is relative, I guess, since that poll only closed in December! The reason 54% kept the status quo is that Wikipedia requires more than a simple majority to change policy. There needs to be an overwhelming majority (usually phrased as consensus) in favor of a change. Given how recently the poll was taken, it's highly probable that the result would be the same if it was proposed again today. --iMb~Mw 13:15, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
            • You said "Wikipedia requires more than a simple majority to change a policy". Could you also please tell me what wikipedia requires in order to create a policy? I have search about it, but I cant find the poll that shows how many wikipedians voted for deletion policy to become an active policy. Because if a policy has been created without a poll, then a strong majority or unamimity is required to be changed, this policy obviously is created to stay for ever intentionally.

Strange behaviour on VfD pages?

There are many voters on VfD whose voting is biased towards one area or another but still relatively predictable and mostly rational. Today I have noticed a case of odd behaviour, JamesBurns, who has voted "delete" with the argument "spurious notability" on the following:

  • Carl Meinhof, one of the founders of African lingustics, about whom there is an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica;
  • Howard Kester, a significant figure in the history of both the US workers' movement and the civil rights movement in the US south, about whom both articles in historical journals and at least one book has been written;
  • Katamori Matsudaira, an important political figure in mid-19th century Japan with hundreds of Google hits in English and 15,600 hits in Japanese;
  • Lloyd L. Gaines, who won a lawsuit concerning the access to education for blacks which is important in the history of the American civil rights movement.

JamesBurns also voted to delete:

  • Guo Bingwen, Chinese educator, because he "doesn't belong in the English section of Wikipedia", but as far as I know there is no policy that a person should be born in England to have a biography in the English Wikipedia (or whatever the vote is meant to imply).
  • Wang Junxia, Olympic gold medalist, with the argument that the article "looks like a CV" (which it doesn't).

OTOH, this user voted to keep:

  • Cathie Jung, whose only accomplishment is having an unusually narrow waist, because of wearing a corset for the last 40 years.

In the case of Lloyd L. Gaines, Megan1967, whose votes I also find strange at times, voted to delete this with the argument that he got "zero Google hits", a patently false assertion which she hasn't bothered to correct in spite of my pointing this out to her. The votes of Megan1967 and JamesBurns together constitute such a significant proportion of the relatively few votes on this article that there seems to be an actual risk of deletion. I hope whichever sysop handles the matter has sense enough to discount these votes.

Both the userpage and the first contributions of JamesBurns date from 26 February 2005, and since then (yesterday!) the overwhelming number of his contributions are to VfD pages. That is remarkable for a new user, isn't it? / Uppland 14:12, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

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