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For discussions that have not been well-archived (before 2004), the page history of the Articles for deletion page has to be used as a contingency archive. One can look in the Deletion log to obtain date and time of a deletion, then look in the page history of VfD near that time to see which edit regards the unlisting of the page, then view the previous version.

Renamed Articles for deletion about this time.


This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.


The Economist on "deletionism"

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789354

As usual, I ask all AFD participants to please conduct themselves as if they are in the public eye and every cough and fart will be quoted out of context by the general media ... - David Gerard (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  • What's quite amusing is that they cite the difference in cover between the Solidarity movement and Pokémon as being down to inclusionism vs. deletionism, but the trivia being deleted is not, as far as I can tell, biographies of dull-but-worthy Communist-era activists, the crap that's being deleted is actually a lot more like the Pokémon. Cause of the week seems to be the absurdly inflated in-universe articles on minor D&D characters; I don't see how keeping those would encourage the authors to go on to write about the tens of thousands of important missing subjects. What people actually want to wrtite about is their garage band, their favourite website, themselves, and of course Jimbo getting caught with his trousers down. Guy (Help!) 21:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • David's admonition that we should always be professional in our discussions is always good advice. But I didn't see anything in that article that Wikipedians should be ashamed of. To be quite blunt, the Economist article came across as sour grapes by someone whose pet article got deleted. Rossami (talk) 00:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • No, I think it's that the project is generating enough interest now as a social experiment that some news organizations look in from time to time, that's all. This is a big thing here now, so it gets covered, as opposed to pinpoint topics like the images on Muhammad debates, which used to be about all we'd get coverage of. We went from THE scandal, to the Essjay scandal, to the images, which was progress ,because at least the third showed we had a 'better' side, to this, which is far more about the internal workings. Oddly, I must've missed the article in print, in this week's issue. I'll go look. ThuranX (talk) 01:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I read it on the way home this evening. It seemed a bit dated - you won't find good articles on Pokemon if you look currently. My impression was that the main source was the author who has been working on a book about Misplaced Pages. Anyway, its points are good ones. The Economist is one of the best English-language newspapers - famous for its informative and well-written style. Any criticism it makes should be taken seriously.
I am myself an AFD regular. When I first encountered Misplaced Pages, I happened to read an interesting article that was being proposed for deletion and I was outraged at the proposed destruction of knowledge. Since then I have been checking the proposals daily and my imression is that the mechanism is poor. Few discussions seem to engage more than 10 editors and lately AFDs have been cycling round two or three times to try to attract comment. It seems that many of the participants see the process as an extension of Speedy Deletion and they consequently have a bias towards deletion. Nominators rarely seem to make a proper effort to search for sources and it is often easy to shoot them down just by making a simple Google search. Material which is out of Google's reach is tough to save because it seems that almost nobody is prepared to exert themselves enough to research paper sources. I occasionally go look in a book or magazine myself but the effort involved is so disproportionate that I only save it for last ditch defences.
So, by being so dependent upon Google searches, Misplaced Pages is effectively becoming an extension of Google. The Economist makes the point that Google is now entering the field with its Knol idea. It will be interesting to see the balance of power in another 5 years time...
Colonel Warden (talk) 22:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
  • BTW, as a fresh example of deletionism in action, I offer Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Unsolved murders in the United Kingdom. This seems like quite a good topic to me - the sort of material that The Economist might put into its Christmas issue or a special feature on forensics/policing. And yet we have a horde of deletionists wanting to destroy this article on a variety of specious grounds - that the article is hard to maintain; that other countries might want one too; that the murdered people don't deserve such fame. I am quite amazed at the negative and hateful attitude on display in this discussion. These are the instincts of petty bureaucrats not of inquiring minds. Tsk. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Uh... I noticed that the closing admin said "this article can be improved, let's keep it." So... who is working on improving the article? Nobody. Absolutely nobody. If you want to keep such an article so badly, you should contribute to its improvement. Will it sit there in the same condition for another year before someone else comes by and takes it to AfD yet again? AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 21:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
One good point is "To create a new article on Misplaced Pages and be sure that it will survive, you need to be able to write a “deletionist-proof” entry and ensure that you have enough online backing (such as Google matches) to convince the increasingly picky Misplaced Pages people of its importance. This raises the threshold for writing articles so high that very few people actually do it." I have multiple times now seen a day or two old stub nominated for deletion only to have myself and/or others rapidly improve it during the ultimately unnecessary AfD. One error though: "“regular” deletion, which means the entry is removed after five days if nobody objects"--I wish!  :) Obviously articles are (many times unfortunately) deleted even when there are objections. Anyway, have you checked out the comments? Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles 21:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Somebody edited Unsolved murders in the United Kingdom just the other day. If the article had been deleted, they would have either given up or had to start from scratch again. Deletion would clearly have been an act of mindless destruction in this case. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I agree with the Colonel above that the mechanism is poor. It almost seems purposeful the way that the Articles for Deletion page takes 3 links from the main page: Community Portal--->Quick Directory--->Articles for deletion (way down the list), then they are separated by day for some strange reason. It'd be better if they were all listed on one page, at least as an option. Plus, 5 days is entirely too short of a time to discuss these things. It should be changed to 2 weeks or so. Deletion in general is often a case of mindless destruction; many of these articles could clearly be spruced up rather than deleted. And that's what should happen. OptimistBen (talk) 05:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
The fact that "many of these articles can be spruced up rather than deleted" is the reason that "If an article can be fixed or improved through the normal editing processes, then it isn't a good candidate for deletion. Unfortunately, many people still seem to hold the view that AfD is some kind of forced cleanup mechanism rather than something to be used to determine whether or not something is verifiable/notable enough to deserve an article. Celarnor 06:05, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah. I'm not sure what the solution is; I'd hope that with more people, the results would be more reasonable. More people would keep track of them if the AfD link was displayed more prominently. Also, more inclusionists need to keep track of AfDs. The people who do track AfDs seem to be generally more deletionist. Also, there is trouble with the notability guideline: some organizations which are important receive a relatively small amount of third-party coverage because they are in unexciting areas; the attention just isn't uploaded on the WWW. Just because there's not a huge amount of Google hits for something doesn't mean it's not notable. Note CRU Group, an article I recently recreated -- it's highly important in the fertilizer industry, but you have to dig rather deep to find substantial third-party coverage. To me the fact that it was founded in 1969, publishes an academic journal, and hosts leading conferences seems notable, but apparently
Taking a look at the log indicated, it was deleted by WP:PROD instead of WP:AFD. If it's cached, the PROD tag might be there. Otherwise, taking it to WP:DRV gets it undeleted in a hurry. As far as including all the AfD's on a single page, I'd really hesitate to do that. It already takes a while for a single AfD log page to load, simply due to the size of the pages. Including more would be a very bad idea. Maybe someone can write a tool to do it. Searching for "Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/<page name>" should work most of the time, at least. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 15:25, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
How do I find old PRODs? I want to see what that page looked like. I searched for PROD CRU; nothing. And aren't they just sneaky ways to delete articles? I doesn't seem like many people even browse through them. OptimistBen (talk) 17:43, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

I suggest, to make it a tad easier, we keep score of the votes, like in the RfA. I see on some pages, a bunch of deletes and a bunch of keeps and oh, how to compare? Do you think we should do this? --Alisyn 23:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

NO! NO! NO! (Can you guess that I have strong feelings about this?) Voting is evil and anything that reinforces the misperception that we're "voting" in a deletion discussion is equally evil. The "score" has nothing to do with the final answer and any admin who makes a call based only on nose-counting is seriously abrogating his/her responsibilities. A single well-cited argument in compliance with established policy can outweigh a dozen unreasoned "me too" opinions. More than that, though, vote-tallies can be actively harmful because they tend to polarize and stifle discussion. The best discussions find answers are discussion and fact-based research. Deletion discussions are contentious enough without deliberately making the problem worse. The truth is that we've tried this before and I'll even admit that I did it a couple of times when I was new to the process. Every time it turns out to be far more harmful than helpful. Nose-counting is a bad idea for deletion discussions. Rossami (talk) 01:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Agree 100% with Rossami, make that 110% - we shouldn't be counting them in RFAs either! But in an XfD discussion the count is meaningless. We should have no interest in knowing the count, it has no bearing on the outcome and it can only make things worse for everybody. You compare by reading the discussion, evaluating the strengths of the policy arguments, and determining a rough consensus from that information; 1 policy based keep can overcome dozens of "per noms" if the nom isn't grounded in policy. (BTW, there is a template for summarizing the points but not the count - but the only times it's really at all useful are in discussions that are extremely contentious, and then it will inevitably be seen as pushing one side or the other and essentially disruptive, it's been used once, and it was removed from the discussion at least once).--Doug. 03:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Volume of Deletes and Keeps is useful for gauging overall trends in support - particularly if most of the keeps come after an article was improved significantly, or if most of the deletes come in after an allegation of copyvio. In those cases, the "counts" help to show the weight given to a particular argument, and are useful only in that context. In general, though, a small number of good, solid policy arguments for keeping will outweigh a greater number of "zomg I Don't like it" !votes, which is why a raw tally would probably not be helpful. UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 13:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I meant, like if an article had 312412 deletes and 384720 keeps, should an admin take time looking or should we put (384720/312412)--Alisyn 02:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If you don't have time to read them, you don't have time to close that discussion. The raw numbers have no relevance to anything.--Doug. 05:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, I was under the impression that the only thing that matters in AfD is which argument is most successful in demonstrating whether or not an article meets Misplaced Pages rules and/or guidelines. You can have an AfD with 7 deletes and 3 keeps which should be kept; you can have an AfD with 3 deletes and 7 keeps which must be deleted. IT all depends on whether or not the article has addressed the concerns raised about it, and not who's voting how. We're supposed to make the right decision, not the popular one. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 15:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
As well, I'll agree even more what Doug says: the very long, involved AfDs that I've seen went beyond your typical arguments about WP:RS and so on, into very important and complex discussions about Misplaced Pages ethics, editing standards, conflicts of interest, synthesis, problems with biographies of living persons, problems arising from the use of non-English language sources, political brou-hahas, and so on. And that huge type of AfD discussion will probably involve several editors successfully addressing many different complaints about the article, in sequence, or also bringing up newer more esoteric complaints that are still valid. No admin should close that size AfD unless they're prepared to impartially and deeply consider each issue that has arisen in the AfD. If you personally don't have the time, leave it for someone else to close: there's always a better admin who has more time. They don't all have to close in 5 days. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 15:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
QUOTING Rossami: "A single well-cited argument in compliance with established policy can outweigh a dozen unreasoned "me too" opinions." Please will someone point to actual examples where one or two arguments have persuaded the closing admin in the face of a dozen or more contrary opinions. CBHA (talk) 14:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
I know you want a specific example, which I can't think of off the top of my head, but I have had some of the "me toos" gripe at me for ignoring their !votes when I close an AfD. Frankly, if you find a case where the closing admin doesn't look at the strength of the arguments, but instead relies on vote counting, you should definitely talk to them about their reasoning. Either something was going on that you didn't see (in which case the admin probably should have left a bit more in the closing summary than 'delete' or 'keep'), or the admin needs a refresher course in deletion policy. If someone approaches me in a nice way (rather than "hey, you idiot, how could you close it that way???"), I'm always happy to talk about a close, because I might actually learn something. --Fabrictramp (talk) 14:42, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Where are all the AfDs

I know that the list of AfDs is way smaller than it should be. What's the deal? To make things easier, we need to structure at least one AfD that is unorganized -- one that lists all AfDs, so I can just use a CTRL-F to find the one I'm looking for. Also, I'm looking for this page. It's not in the organization category of AfDs, and it's not on the disambig page for CRU. OptimistBen (talk) 18:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Tools

Can someone point me to any tools / scripts to make admin closing of AfDs a bit easier? I'm definitely spoiled by Twinkle and Friendly. :)--Fabrictramp (talk) 21:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I found one. Thanks.--Fabrictramp (talk) 23:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

afd error

So i just tried to afd an article using twinkle. It did everything but create the AFD page. Just a redlink on the log. What's the best way to fix it?--Cube lurker (talk) 02:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  • It can be fixed by going to the article and clicking on "preloaded debate" in the template, which links to a page with the template, and the instructions for completing it. --Snigbrook 02:12, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion notice

There is a discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Biographies of living persons#Reversing the AFD default for BLPs about changing how AFD results are evaluated when the subject of an article is a living person. GRBerry 19:13, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Sinebot

I was just wondering if all AFD topics should be in the ] so that when someone adds a comment e.g. here. then they would be automatically signed :). This might be able to be added in the template or something. What do you other guys think? ·Add§hore· /Cont 20:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion versus vote

Dear fellow editors, I am increasingly seeing a real split among editors referring in Deletion review and even within AfDs about AfDs being "a discussion and not a vote", but also citing the "vote tally" or approaching the AfD as one would approach a vote. Now, if it is indeed a discussion and not a vote, then why do so many AfDs look like a vote, i.e. just a list of "deletes" and "keeps" with little actual discussion (interaction among the participants)? I have noticed quite a few AfDs where there may be the nomination followed by several rapid delete stances, but then the article is improved drastically and those editors never return to the discussion to comment one way or the other on the article's improvements/developments during the discussion, i.e. many seem to just go down the daily AfD list leaving deletes (or sometimes keeps) and then moving on without actually discussing the article. In other instances, such as here, some editors vehemently resist the AfD being a discussion rather than just a list of "votes" and aggresively criticize any who do attempt to discuss the article under question or who challenge others' arguments. So, I'm just curious on what the actual consensus is with regards to AfD? Are we supposed to engage each other in discussion, even if it's a spirited discussion/debate, and make attempts to resolve issues the nominator had as the discussion progressed and discuss those efforts during the AfD or is it really more of a vote? I guess I'm asking if there's a "right" way to approach these things? Thanks! Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles 00:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussing is good...but taking it too far isn't. Questioning *every* person who disagrees with you, even if they've said the same thing as those above, is rarely going to help your cause, and will probably give you less chance of convincing the closer that your side of the debate is the "right" one, if you will. My advice, Le Grand Roi, is to seriously consider if it's worth taking up a point with each commenter (or voter, or whatever...) who disagrees with you (obviously, discussion with the first view "votes" should take place), and to think about how this will look to someone who's grumpy, in a hurry, and generally not as passionate as you are (and there are a few too many of those around, unfortunately...don't ever let them tell you that discussing is bad, just remember that there IS a limit). dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 10:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply and advice. I will definitely reflect on it. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles 17:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

My own understanding, from the 100 or so AfDs I've started and others I've voted in, is that AfD is indeed meant to be a discussion. The nom provides a rationale for deleting; people either agree or disagree; there is supposed to be proper reference to Misplaced Pages guidelines; points should be made as to whether or not the article meets the guidelines; maybe the quality of sources (or complete lack thereof) should be mentioned; and so on.

If, say, there is an article sent to AfD for having a non-notable subject, and then Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles not only finds proof of notability but also adds that proof to the article with references, a good voter should either change his vote to keep, or provide some other reason for maintaining his delete vote (say, he feels the sources you added are insignificant, or don't otherwise satisfy WP:RS, or whatever). But some voters don't come back. Well, a good closing admin should take into account that the reason for their delete votes has since been addressed, and discount their votes.

Ideally, I think there should be a consensus; and really, if all editors agreed on their interpretations of Misplaced Pages guidelines, and if no editors had ulterior motives for participating in AfD discussions (as we so often see in the case of biographical or business articles), there would be consensus. So, failing consensus, I think a closing admin should be examining the arguments given for either side, seeing which arguments are the best, and closing based on that.

Really, Large King of Orange Gourdlike Squash, it should generally work out that way. If it doesn't, and you're concerned Misplaced Pages is losing content, remember we're getting something like 5000 new articles a day and only 100 a day are going to AfD. It will all work out in the end. The best to do is just add sources and improve articles - and not be afraid to take an unfavourable result to DRV, where the real pros hang out. :-) AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 21:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Plus, in the case of e.g. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Ernie (Family Guy), where external sources apparently were found but the article was still deleted - would you consider asking the closing admin what his reasoning was? If there were indeed third-party sources added to the article to assert notability, I can see your concern in the article's deletion - and in any case, I get really steamed when a closing admin closes without a proper explanation. He's expected to take the time to read the arguments pro and con; why, then, can't he take the time to put the reason for the closing decision in the AfD, so we can all know? I'm anti-pop-culture and a deletionist, and even I think that AfD result fails the smell test (I haven't figured out how to find the article to see how good it was before deletion). AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 21:43, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

JG-E

I'm the creator of JG-E. It has been put under the articles of deletion. Well I just wanted to say that I am in favor of deleting this page. I don't even need it. It's very unreasonable so I suggest you just delete it. I will even speedy delete it myself. Anfish (talk) 21:33, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Been deleted. Tagged the redirect at JG-E for speedy. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 23:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Templates for single use accounts

Are there templates we can add in to an AfD to indicate that an editor has not commented outside of an AfD, or that an editor has not commented outside of the article and AfD in question? Is the use of these templates encouraged/discouraged? Many thanks, Gazimoff Read 12:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The only one of which I am aware is {{spa}}, which produces this (which I'll tag myself with for example purposes). UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 13:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC) — Ultraexactzz (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
I've seen users take offense about being tagged in this manner, especially if they feel strongly about the topic. In many cases, such accounts will be obvious without being tagged, so sometimes it's not worth the hassle. Often, a larger notice at the top of the page is more useful than individual tags. UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 13:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

What happened to alternative AfD interfaces

Whatever happened to alternative AfD interfaces, such as User:Dragons flight/AFD summary or User:ArkyBot/AFD summary/all? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Bots playing up, I'm guessing. There is a new alternative one, I think, but I've got no idea where... dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 11:07, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

In the meantime, the AfD pages are huge, making them virtually inaccessbile for dial up connections, and something about these pages in particular seems to cause my poor computer to grind along very slowly. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I might recommend looking at User:ST47/AfDC, which shows the total (and open) cases by category. It's not good for linking to each debate, but the category pages are just lists of debates, so it's better for browsing topic areas and items of interest. Should probably work for low-bandwidth users, at least in the absence of the other trackers. UltraExactZZ ~ Evidence 14:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Redirect

There seems to be a systemic issue with editors suggesting "Delete" when they mean redirect. I think this may sometimes affect outcomes. For example, look at Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Force_lightning. Some editors said redirect, some said delete, a couple said keep. It was non-admin closed as delete. Why delete a term that users might search on? It doesn't meet any reasons for deleting a redirect given at Misplaced Pages:Redirects_for_discussion. The closing editor stated that the commenters had "determined that the content should not even be merged". I think that editor was led astray by the "Delete" opinions from editors that most likely would have been happy with a redirect. I believe that Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion#How_to_discuss_an_AfD needs to make the options available more clear. It should describe options of "Keep", "Delete", and "Redirect", and state when each option is suitable. It's sometimes said that AfD is not the place for redirect discussions, however if articles are being deleted that should have been redirected then it's clear that in practice redirect decisions are taking place in AfDs, so the options available should clearly reflect the real practice, by clearly defining terms to avoid ambiguity. Otherwise misunderstandings like the one above will continue to take place. Ryan Paddy (talk) 23:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added a suggestion to this effect:

If you think the article should be disambiguation page, or a redirect to another article, then recommend "Disambiguation" or "Redirect". Do not recommend deletion in such cases, because deleted pages cannot be redirects or disambiguation pages.

I think there is a lot of miscommunication going on around this at the moment and a little more clarity would make AfD discussions easier to read and decide on. Ryan Paddy (talk) 00:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Diana Mercado

Hvrhon (talk) 01:56, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why you would consider removing this article. Diana Mercado is a great singing talent and she has proved this by reaching the semi-finals on a nationally televised singing contest.

I wrote this biography to enlighten her fans on her background and her climb to stardom.

That's just it though - making the semis on a television program isn't enough for notability. Now, if she would have WON the show, that's entirely different. As of yet though, she hasn't done anything of note. ArcAngel (talk) 13:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Speedy-keep mechanism for bad content/notability articles that lack requests for improvement

There's a large discussion at WT:NOT over the WP:PLOT clause, ultimately that if an article who's content fails NOT, or lacks notability through NOTE or other sub-guidelines, it will be deleted. (per WP:DEL). However, this issue is causing strong concern for some because basically, this means that editors may only be given 5 days to take an article that completely fails content/notability policy to get it to spec. Ideally, even suggested by WP:DEL and other areas, deletion should only be considered after other editing improvement avenues have been explored, and thus I wonder if we should consider codifying this better here at AFD.

Specifically, when an article is AFD presently, we assume good faith that the nominator has tried to work with editors to improve the article, at minimum leaving one of the normal cleanup tags to be dealt with in a reasonable amount of time before bringing the article to AFD. However, it may be necessary to actually make sure this practice is done, or that if it has not been done, the AFD for the article is removed for the time being to give editors more time to correct the problem. There are three possible avenues to approach this that could be done:

  1. The AFD submitter, if deleting an article for bad content or notability issues, needs to show that attempts to request improvement have been made at least two weeks prior to the AFD, via diffs or whatever other mechanism, and that no good faith attempts have been made to improve the article since that point. If the AFD request lacks this, and others discover by investigating histories or the like that no such requests for improvement have been made, the AFD should be speedily closed as kept, though this in itself should be taken as a notification to request improvement of the article (eg, in two weeks, a new AFD can be submitted for it)
  2. Any editor should be able to mimic the same {{holdon}} functionality that is there for CSDs, asking for a speedy close to work on improvements in the article. As above this should be taken as a request to improve the article, starting a time frame
  3. Sorta in conjunction with the above, the closing admin, after 5 days, should consider whether there has been notification for improvement made on the article, and if he feels there has not been, should close the AFD as keep, but again,

Regardless of this case, the result will likely merit a new tag on the article page, stating something to the extent that "This article was recently proposed for deletion on DATE but was kept to allow further improvements towards (list of issues) to be made. If, after two weeks from DATE, these issues are not resolved, this article may be brought again for deletion.", making it rather imperative to the editors that while they can stall once a deletion, they need to make good faith efforts to improve the article to avoid it a second time.

I use two weeks as a generally reasonable length, but this could also be up to one month. Of course, such articles are tagged and categorized so that they can be tracked as needed.

Mind you, deletion of patent nonsense still should be done without this approach. Additionally, if the AFD is a result of a content dispute (an article's notability has been questioned in discussions somewhere prior to the AFD), this method cannot be used since notification has been done already.

The goal of this is to hopefully offload work from AFD and cut down the number of cases to those that only result from the end of dispute resolution. If the same editor keeps coming up with nominations for articles that have not had fair warning to be improved, this editor should be told that continually doing this is against policy and guidelines and could result in a block. --MASEM 20:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

  • We already have something like this (not a speedy keep criteria). There are templates like cite and verify, expand and prod that notify the editors. Most of the time, these templates remain for weeks, months, and even years before an AfD. If an editor cannot get an article together in 5 days, its unlikely that it will happen. I disagree with the assertion that the submitter of an AfD needs to ask the editors to correct the article to conform to guidelines (its common sense that this needs to be done in the first place). An AfD is telling you that in its current state, it shouldn't be here. And besides, when you create an article, it tells you to make sure it will be suitable. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 20:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
It takes more than 5 days to improve many of these articles, especially the ones requiring older print sources. This especially holds when many articles are nominated at the same time. I have great difficulty in retaining an assumption of good faith when people do such nominations, for they make rational work impossible and seem intended to prevent any real opportunity for improvement. Most good articles are madeincrementallyDGG (talk) 23:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Then I'd say hold off on creating an article until it meets wikipedia's standards! Theres also userspace and lets not forget recreation when it meets guidelines/policies. I think 5 days is adequate time to establish notability. I'd rather it be less actually, but I'm not going to suggest it or anything. SynergeticMaggot (talk)
my experience is that its much harder than that for many topics, but then of course i may not have the necessary background to know how to do research. DGG (talk) 03:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
5 days is plenty of time to find sources. A thorough Google search takes a couple of hours at the most. Epbr123 (talk) 00:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Five days is totally insufficient. Reliable sources do not only exist on the internet and many journals and magazines do not have their full publication histories avaulable online or if they are online they are not always available for free. There are all sorts of articles that would satisfy reliable sources requirements but exist in magazines and other publications that cannot be located through a website. Encyclopedia writers do not just rely on the internet, but also do research in published sources as well and so it is unacceptable to give people a five day limit, especially when our contributors have other work outside of Misplaced Pages. During a five day school week for example, I can be focused on teaching, and not have time to go to a library or look through back issues of magazines. Thus, the article is shampooed if nominated on Monday for sources I can say find on Saturday. Plus, for articles that editors worked on over a span of months might not even check it when it's on AfD, so say a week passes and they return to it intending to add sources only to find it inexplicably and unnecessarily removed. If the article is not a hoax, a copyright violation, or libel, then there is rarely any pressing need to delete it. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles 04:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
despite what I've said above, though, I do know enough to know that even for popular culture, there's a lot more in the world than is in google & its auxiliaries. DGG (talk) 03:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
In the very rare cases when print sources need to be found, the article author can request more time if they know the print sources exist. It shouldn't take too long for the print sources to be found if the article content was based on them; if the content wasn't based on any sources, the article would be better off deleted anyway. Epbr123 (talk) 09:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I rather like item 2, for several reasons. First, it isn't all that radical a change, and would be a reasonable solution at present (I doubt that anybody would insist on deleting an article in the presence of a good-faith and realistic offer to make it comply with WP policies & guidelines). Second, it would be beneficial to the encyclopaedia to make this option obvious, perhaps even mentioning it in the {{afd}} banner, since it is likely to result in improvement of a significant number of articles. Finally, if a previous AfD is closed as a result of such an offer, it provides strong evidence that efforts have been unsuccessful in making the article comply with encyclopaedic standards, thus making it easier to ultimately delete long-term problematic content, even if it is popular problematic content. Jakew (talk) 21:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I think this proposal (like most of the discussion that started this at WP:NOT) is based on a misstatement of the way the deletion process works. Editors who think the page can be improved are not under a rigid 5-day window to fix the page before deletion. They merely have to make a credible case that improvement is reasonably possible. As long as at least one editor in good-standing says that he/she will actually work on the page, the community almost always grants that person the benefit of doubt during the deletion discussion and the discussions are closed exactly as Masem proposes. The comment in the AFD by the person who thinks the page can be salvaged already serves the same function as the {{hangon}} tag on a speedy.
    In those cases where the process doesn't work exactly as it should, DRV is usually quite lenient about allowing the restoration of the page to a user's space to any editor in good standing who expresses a commitment to improve the page. This extra layer of bureaucracy seems well intentioned but unnecessary. Rossami (talk) 21:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea, as it will help to protect against a clutch of similar-topic AFDs being raised at the same time, stretching the resource of available editors to resolve the issues. It would also help to maintain the mantra that AfD is not cleanup. I do, however, have a couple of process concerns.
  • How do you see this working in practice? Do you see a process of maintenance tags, followed by prod, followed by AfD?
  • Are you looking at rigid timescales between the different process gates, or purely a minimum period?
  • Would you expect AfD patrol, in a similar way to the form that prod patrol works now?
  • How would you ensure that this reduces the overall workload involved in AfD processing, instead of migrating it from one part of the process to another? I can see how it would allow editor resource to be balanced more in terms of article repair, as well as giving impetus to editor teams to repair articles earlier rather than later, but won't it require extra resource at AfD check in order to make sure the article has not missed a gate?
  • How would this integrate with speedy deletes, particularly failed speedy deletes?
I'm all for making sure that articles aren't rushed through AfD, that articles don't end up in maintenance tag limbo and that cleanup actualy happens, but by the same token I'd also like to make sure that a process doesn't add to the overall workload on ediors. Also, it might be worth noting that there's some work at WP:COUNCIL in order to sweep for maintenance tags and group the output by project. A weekly sweep might help the project cleanup crews stay on top of this, as well as making the admin work for this process a lot easier. Hope this helps, Gazimoff Read 21:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Obviously we want to keep the overhead down, but some of what I'm thinking would be (point by point)
  • Tagging would be following by PRODing (in more ways than one) should no improvements be made. If editors insist improvements have been made but another editor disagrees, then it's AFD.
  • Purely minimum. No bots. And if there are people doing the same as sniping, hitting an article as PROD/AFD 2weeks to the minute after being up, well, this is a thing of spirit, not word, that should be followed.
  • Most likely yes on an AFD patrol. Exactly what to look for depending on the final shape this would take. (this leads to...)
  • The reduction in AFD workload will not be apparent immediately, and in fact might increase it initially (there's a bit of activation energy to get this in motion as suggested by an AFD patrol) It depends exactly which way it is taken, though to how much is involved and how fast it could be reduced.
  • I'd consider a failed speedy to be the same as the notification, starting the two week process. We'd need to make sure failed speedies are closed with the same notification suggestion so that editors don't sit on it.
And to hit a few other points others have brought above:
  • Right now, with the inclusions vs deletionists issue (many which I've seen in the middle of trying to rewrite FICT), the problem is that the 5 day AFD process can be rather WP:BITEy to new editors that may not understand notability or the like. It can be very frustrating to write your first article and see it nominated in an instant for deletion. Or even for experienced editors, while we advocate non-ownership, it's hard not to resent if someone AFDs an article you contributed significantly to. While articles are, from the start, supposed to be written towards our guidelines, most editors do not read them until they are thrown in their face, and a common first reaction is to say "well, that's bogus". Pushing for requesting for improvements before deletion (as already outlined per WP:DEL, just not required) is a much softer blow to newer and established editors alike. Mind you, we need to have weight behind these tags; I'm not proposing that someone partol all articles tagged as lacking notability over a month old and AFD them, but between such cleanup tags and edit histories showing that they've been pretty much ignored (such as in the case of the World of Warcraft character list), it will be clean when the cleanup/notification worked and when it didn't.
  • Based on input, I'm really thinking #2 of my suggested (the equivalent {{holdon}} tag) is the way to go, as it involves the least amount of work and creates a person(s) of responsibility to handle the article. AFD partol admits only need to spot this template, speedy close as keep but referring to the person that put up their hand. Now, arguably, I think if a person is representing a group (either a Wikiproject or something like the Article Rescue Squadran) when they do this, this should be noted. Now we can let the article show improvement, which can be by anyone, but if there are no improvements at all and no response from the one or group asking for the holdon after that minimum 2 weeks, then deletion can be called again. Mind you, this cycle could be repeated indefinitely by different people, so I propose that if holdon is used, you get 3 chances: after the first two holdons, if the article is up for deletion again for the same reasons due to any lack of improvement, a holdon no longer works. --MASEM 01:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
It's an interesting sugestion, and might well work to reduce the bite-ish tendencies of AfD. A couple of thoughts: (1) Is there a risk of an unintended consequence? viz. that we end up with a bunch of poorly-written pages that we think could be improved, but never are improved? That sounds like, effectively, creating another maintenance tag. (2) Instead of calling it 'speedy keep', how about 'temporary keep' or 'conditional keep'? This is because 'speedy delete' is somehow more emphatic than plain 'delete', but in the 'keep' context we wouldn't want to use speedy as an intensifier. --AndrewHowse (talk) 01:44, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, part of this suggestion is that we have a template that gets added to such articles, with a date stamp, so that, say, the initial AFD nominator will track it if he so wants, and then renom it for deletion. Technically if no one follows up after this, the article could stay in an unfixed state, but we have that problem already (plenty of article probably in the back corners of the 'pedia that may be in need of improvement), but likely if someone is intent on wanting improvements or deletion of an article, they will be following it. What we call it is whatever is the most comfortable/friendly/etc. --MASEM 03:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Andrew, in fairness we frequently have situations where we think articles could be improved but they aren't. The nice thing about this proposal is that (if carefully done) it a) encourages people to volunteer to actually improve them, and b) provides a more obvious route to deletion if/when it becomes clear that such improvement isn't going to happen. Jakew (talk) 11:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Masem, the solution is not to change AFD and create some new bureacratic process. The solution is to take portions of policy that do not have consensus and remove them from policy, specifically removing PLOT from NOT. --Pixelface (talk) 03:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
there will still be many, many instances where something of this sort might be useful. DGG (talk) 03:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should make Stubify a valid !vote option in AFDs. Stubify !votes are for articles which are about a notable topic but are in poor condition (for example, an article about a politician which contains borderline BLP violations). An admin closing an AFD with result Stubify would replace the article with a short, neutral and well-referenced stub, then follow the remaining steps for closing the AFD as Keep. This suggestion would help deal with articles that violate policy and help prevent articles on notable topics from getting deleted, without introducing much additional bureaucracy and process. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 06:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Since the current voting "options" are not listed anywhere, there is nothing stopping you from voting stubify on AfDs. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 06:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
How do I encourage editors to !vote Stubify when appropriate and admins to close AFDs with Stubify as the result when appropriate? Merely !voting Stubify on a few AFDs would not do so. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 12:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Leading by example can be effective. And don't just vote but edit down to a stub yourself. For example, see Wet floor signs. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd oppose this as written, as any 'keep' will be held up as precedent in future AFDs, thereby making the article much harder to delete if it turns out to be genuinely non-notable. I don't think any wording changes that retain the word 'keep' will be able to address that concern. "Speedy no consensus" I could perhaps accept, but really this should be "speedy postpone". Additionally, if an AFD is closed in this way, then tags should be added and the AFD should be reopened after sufficient time has passed - say, a month. Otherwise we lose the main benefit of AFD: it's the only stick that actually works for article improvement. Article tags get removed without discussion; talk pages are largely ignored. Only AFDs lead concerned editors to actually improve pages, and if they can filibuster the AFDs away then the articles will never improve. Percy Snoodle (talk) 09:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"Postpone" is the right way to think of this. If an AfD is postponed for improvement and that improvement does not occur, that itself is good evidence that the article is unlikely ever to conform to policy, and should hence be deleted. Jakew (talk) 11:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I support the idea of an AFD being closed as Postpone, which means that editors are given a month to improve the article and the article will automatically be relisted on AFD a month later to evaluate improvements, if any, to the article and determine whether it should be deleted. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 12:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Currently I vote Speedy Keep if the nomination seems frivolous or otherwise lacking. If there is a consensus that there is a reasonable doubt then it is open to us to be bold and close the AFD discussion as premature. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Revision/simplification of suggested approach

Based on comments above, let me tighten down what I think this process could be, keeping it as rule-less as possible mostly based on #2 above,

  1. An article gets proposed for deletion through AFD
  2. Any (registered?) editor may put in the equivalent of the "holdon" template on the AFD page. This template puts the article's AFD in a category that can be patrolled, and asserts the adding editor to be the key responsible person that will bring the page out of the AFD request (though need not be the only one)
  3. AFD partroling admins review such requests to make sure that the article did in fact not get sufficient notification that it was in need of cleanup (erring on the side of caution if its not so obvious from the histories and talk pages), and then closes the AFD as "Postponed", tagging the article with a date-stamped template, including the AFD page and the oldid of the page when the tag was added. The template here adds the page to a another category for postponed AFDs tracked by date.
    1. Such holdon requests, however, should be denied if there has been sufficient notification recently (from 1 to 6 months) on the article, or if the article is as AFD as part of a normal dispute resolution cycle.
  4. After two weeks/one month, editors can renominate these postponed AFD articles for AFD, however, they should check against the old version of the article per the template above to see if good faith improvements have been made. If so, another template should be added to say that the article no longer needs to be AFD, tagging the holdon in a fashion to pull it out of the above queues, though keeping the fact it was at AFD albeit shortly.
  5. A article that was postponed once to AFD can only be postponed a second time by a different editor if the first editor showed absolutely no effort to improve the article (possibly due to being inactive on WP during that time). If after two postponements and no further improvements are made, this holdon mechanism can no longer be applied to the article.

In this fashion, we only create a series of templates and some categories. The only extra work on AFD admins is to review the article's history before considering if the holdon is appropriate (something they should be doing during any normal AFD closure). The fact we track when articles are postponed allows a mechanism to review such articles after two weeks/one month to enforce that AFD was only a temporary postponement and that some improvements should have been made since. (Note, however, we should not expect perfect articles after this postponed period, only that the key cleanup issues have been reasonably addressed). --MASEM 12:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is entirely sensible - a single editor can override consensus. Perhaps the AFD should continue, but editors are encouraged to !vote postpone for articles with cleanup issues, and admins should close the AFD as postpone if that's what consensus requires? That's less added bureaucracy but much the same effect without giving ILIKEITs the veto? I also don't think that it should require an editor to reopen postponed AFDs - it should happen automatically, or else we'll end up with thousands of postponed AFDs in limbo. Percy Snoodle (talk) 13:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
It makes sense that the AfD should continue, but if a postpone !vote is reasonable and realistic, there's no reason why a consensus shouldn't quickly emerge to that effect. After all, encouraging ILIKEITANDIMGOINGTOBRINGITUPTOSTANDARDs can only be good for the encyclopaedia... Jakew (talk) 13:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, WP:SNOWBALL would still apply to postpones. Percy Snoodle (talk) 13:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict)The above assumes that cleanup is the only issue, and AFAIK, cleanup is not a deletion reason. I can see this quickly becoming abused by editors who want to "save" an article from AfD, just like the {{underconstruction}} template is becoming abused by editors to keep new articles from deletion. As much as I'd rather see a potentially good article saved, this doesn't seem like the way to do it.--Fabrictramp (talk) 14:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I oppose any such proposal. I have seen way too many articles and AfD's where the articles were going to be improved, and were actively worked on, and would be sourced, expanded, improved in the next weeks, but where eventually, after the AfD closed as a keep based on such promises, nothing happened. While this proposal may help to keep a few articles which can be saved, it will also help to keep loads of articles which have no place on Misplaced Pages either a lot longer or indefinitely here. Every additional bureaucratic step against deletion is helping those who want to keep every bit of no notable trivia on Misplaced Pages. An example: Lathwal was nominated for deletion in July 2006. Many editors said "keep, will be expanded". Was tagged for expansion in June 2007. No significant improvement has been made on this one line stub (or many similar ones from the same AfD, like Barjati, where a wiki source has been added, and that's about it). Similarly, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Abercorn Primary School was closed as no consensus because a.o. some defenders claimed that these were stubs to be built upon. A year and a half later, and e.g. St John's Primary School, Newry or St Mary's Primary School, Ballyward have seen no improvements. To make this the default result of AfD's where someone claims that they will improve it is not the way to go. Fram (talk) 14:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen that kind of thing, too, and I agree that it's a major problem. I think this proposal would actually help, because instead of closing as keep or no consensus, we're postponing on the basis of an offer to bring the article up to standard within a certain timeframe. If that request is made and no improvement is actually made, that's pretty strong evidence that nobody will ever fix the problems, and that makes the case for deletion much stronger. So yes, we make it easier to keep an article in the short term, but in exchange we also make it easier to delete in the medium term. Jakew (talk) 14:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This also gets rid of the "keep but will cleanup" outcome, replacing it with "postpone to cleanup". Even by choice of wording, this implies that cleanups are expected in order to rid the concerns that the article is deletion-worthy, and that this period of time is not indefinite. Ok, there's a case where someone may postpone an AFD, do a minimum amount of cleanup to satisfy the original concerns, and then no further improvement is made, but if we at least suggest that articles that have AFDs postponed should come out clearly showing that the original concern of the AFD is no longer present, then we prevent articles from simply festering over time in the AFD process. --MASEM 15:05, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
If articles get to hang around in stubby form, this is not a problem. Those who complain above that articles don't get improved are invited to improve the ones that they care about per WP:SOFIXIT. What is infuriating about AFD is that you get plenty of editors quite willing to pontificate and not so many prepared to roll their sleeves up and do some work. I have just added a source to the Lathwal article and it took just a minute. Those who have spent longer complaining about the article instead are wasting everyone's time. Our process improvement should put more onus upon the critics to do some work themselves. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
How about every deletion nomination is accompanied by a template that takes in a parameter and then provides links to a web search, an all dates news search, a book search, and a scholar search (if that's not to google centric). Maybe muptiple parameters so some searches could use quotes and whatnot. It wouldn't cause the nominator much effort and would probably prevent a number of bad noms and speed up the process for correct noms. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
You mean like {{subst:prod-nn}}? – sgeureka 08:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Similar to that, but on the AfD page not on the article itself. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 08:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
(ec) In general, having the AFD nominator perform some attempt to improve the work or show notability or whatnot before nominating is not a bad idea, as it would promote drive-by AFDs, however, that also rubs against WP's general spirit of volunteerism and that no one is forced to do anything anything they don't want, particularly if they are not an expert on the topic at hand. This certainly has been one of the sources of controversy of late. This is sort of why the first approach in my initial suggestion above points to having some responsibility on the nominator to show that they have tried to inform the article editors of the reason for failure; it's not the same, but at least makes it a tad harder for drive-by nominations to be accepted.
A fundamental point to this suggestion is that AFD should not be the first place where an article's merits and quality are brought up. AFD is part of the dispute resolution process, and typically the end of the road for such: if the editors and other involved parties cannot reach an agreement on how an article can be handled, one ultimate fate that the article should be deleted or merged, then AFD helps to get a wider audience to talk about it. But drive-by AFDs that simply find articles written badly or lacking notability is jumping the gun in resolving it, which is why some mechanism needs to be in place that if the AFD is truly the first time the editors of the page are aware of an issue with the page, they should be able to pull the article out from AFD to correct it, a more proper approach to dispute resolution. --MASEM 09:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
This may be a terrible idea, but it can't hurt to suggest it: would an (optional, at editors' discretion) pre-afd tag be helpful here, outlining the serious problems with an article, and stating that it will be listed, say, one month later (re Peregrine's suggestion, such a tag could include {{findsources}}, which would assist editors)? It would be fairly easy to scan categories and pick up articles that have (and have not) been edited since tagging, and list accordingly — indeed, some of this work could perhaps be done by a bot. Jakew (talk) 11:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)My suggestion on this is as follows:

  • Each project has (or should have) a cleanup crew. WP:COUNCIL, specifically B. Wolterding have been developing a bot to go through all maintenance tags and produce output lists by project. He's done it in the past for notability tags, which we're currently crunching through, so it's entirely feasible it could be done for other maintenance tags as well. The bot could be run daily or weekly in order to pick up articles that have been tagged. New articles should be project tagged by the project's new articles crew.
  • The cleanup crew should, after a set period of time, prod anything that can't be stubified/cleaned up to make it suitable to keep. If it's been prodded before, or AfD'd before, it should be AfD'd instead per WP:PROD. If the prod remains (and a large number do) then it is deleted. If it is contested, then we mention our concerns on the talk page, with a view to holding AfD further down the line if there is no change.
  • AfD process continues per Masem.

The key point being, with a few tools, the cleanup crews would have the mechanisms needed to respond to maintenance tags in a timely fashion. I agree that articles should not remain in maint-tag-limbo forever and that we do need a process that spits out eiter sourced, cleaned articles or deletions depending on what's possible. What it would also prevent is a collection of articles in the same field or special interest area being tagged for AfD at the same time, stretching the number of editors available to resolve issues. I agree with some of the earlier comments that it should be possible to resolve most articles within five days, but this relies on only having one article to repair. If there are five or six (as has happened in the past), then editors have a large amount of sourcing to do in those five days, something which is at best unreasonable to ask. The other result from this process will be that editors will understand that maintenance tags will lead to deletion eventually, as articles move through the process, and cannot be ignored indefinately.Gazimoff Read 09:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The only tag I could possibly support doing this for is {{notability}}, and then only if major contributors get notified far enough in advance to give infrequent editors a chance to figure out what they need to do. I can't think of any other common maintenance tag that would be a valid deletion reason. --Fabrictramp (talk) 14:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
I haven't seen cleanup tags really do much. Maybe tags like the episode version of {{notability}} would work better if it had {{findsources}} rolled into it and a link to a FA that's similar to the article. Personally, I didn't start adding references to articles until around my 5,000th edit. People usually replicate what they've seen before, and references arent' really that common yet. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 15:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Several maintenance tags that may express valid reasons for deletion spring to mind, for example {{originalresearch}}, {{unsourced}}, {{primarysources}}, {{hoax}}, and {{neologism}}. Jakew (talk) 16:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Everyone has a different experience with this -- one of my very first edits to[REDACTED] was because an article I was reading had a {{fact}} tag and I knew where to find the ref. It never would have occurred to me to add the ref if the {{fact}} tag hadn't been there. Soon after that, I came across an article with a {{wikify}} tag and I decided to figure out what that meant. Then I found the DEP and it all went downhill from there. ;-) --Fabrictramp (talk) 16:42, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What I've noticed is that the only time I see perpetual articles in poor shape being improved is when I happen to afd them. Speedying ones that need cleanup is a terrible idea, as it just leaves the article in a poor state for years. Wizardman 17:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've heard AfD isn't for cleanup but it really is. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 17:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, the problem is that there are multiple viewpoints about "bad" content. Most agree that it's undesirable for poor articles to remain that way indefinitely. However, some view the situation as basically harmless, and view deletion as more harmful than leaving it as it is. Others view the situation as damaging the credibility of the encyclopaedia as a whole, and view deletion as a reasonable fix. Under normal circumstances, the general approach at the article level is to leave it and hope that someone fixes it (interestingly, this is more or less the opposite of that implied by WP:BURDEN). But in an AfD, the situation is often reversed, changing the situation from "hmm, I see we have a tag on the article, how interesting" to "do I care enough about the existence of this article to fix the problems".
I'm not saying that this situation is right, or proper. I'm just saying that it's understandable when you think about the different viewpoints of those involved. Jakew (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Well said, Jakew.
Yes, I do understand that often an AfD is what prompts a cleanup. I just hate to see it encouraged. I'd rather encourage WP:SOFIXIT, but that view isn't shared by everyone. --Fabrictramp (talk) 19:22, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
It seems like deleting articles is addictive. I know from personal experience that saving AfD articles with references is addictive. I think it's because it's like a game and you can "win." I don't think cleaning up articles with tags is addictive, but if it is it isn't addictive enough to make a dent in the number of tagged articles. People just work on articles they're interested in unless prompted by an AfD. I wish there was some way to get some article improvement (adding content) out of the people who love to delete, but I wouldn't know how since it's volunteer work. This must have come up before, what were some previous ideas? Improving articles gives one a better sense of what should be AfD. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:25, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Do people get barnstars for article cleanup? We have barnstars for producing good quality work, or for deleting content, but I'm not sure if there's anything for for citing and sourcing an article but no more. Could be wrong though Gazimoff Read 23:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Yet another suggestion

In the above section, I suggested a kind of "pre-afd" tag. It may well be a terrible idea, but anyway here's a rough sketch of the kind of thing I had in mind:

This page may be considered for deletion at a future time, because: it is simply a plot summary of the novel, with no real-world context or secondary sources to establish notability.

Please feel free to address these issues and then remove this notice. If these issues have not been addressed, this article may be considered for deletion in accordance with Misplaced Pages's deletion policy. This notice was added at 23:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC); the article will be reviewed approximately one month from that date.

Note: many issues can be resolved by citing reliable, secondary sources in the article. Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

My idea is that such a tag could be added, at the nominator's discretion, some time before listing at AfD.

My rationale is as follows. First, this would help to address the WP:BITEy issues of AfDing a recently-created article. It gives editors a reasonable amount of time for addressing the specific issues, and familiarising themselves with applicable policies and guidelines. Second, it allows the nominator to specify the particular issues affecting the article, which may be more explanatory than a standard tag. Third, if the possibility of deletion is an incentive to fix problems, then let's be open about that possibility before we even list the article at AfD. We might be able to avoid AfD altogether in many cases. Finally, this is a minimal suggestion, requiring the creation of a template and a category, and I'm not suggesting any far-reaching changes to the deletion process. Jakew (talk) 23:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That might instigate some cleanup. We don't need to change anything about the deletion process do we? What if someone wants to AfD before then. Someone besides the original tagger. I think a link to a FA would be a quick way to show someone what they're going for. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
No, we don't need to change the actual deletion process. It would probably be sensible to document the option in a few deletion-related pages ("consider whether adding a pre-deletion notice is appropriate"), but I can't see any changes to the process itself.
Hmm. What if someone wants to AfD beforehand? Well, it may be that there's a very good reason for doing so (BLP/copyright/hoax issues, etc), so I think it would be unwise to explicitly recommend against it. On the other hand, I would hope that people will honour the delay unless there is a good reason. I'm tempted to suggest that we can rely on common sense here, and there's no need for instruction creep; what do you think?
Finally, I like the idea of linking to an FA (as long as we don't intimidate new editors into thinking that it must be FA-quality or it gets deleted!), but I think it would only work if it were on a comparable subject, so maybe it should be an optional template parameter? Jakew (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

A good example of what this process would try to prevent

(In no way am I trying to support keeping or removing said article , or enforcing or discouraging any editor involved in this so far-- it just happens to be a convinent current example). This article was put up for AFD without previously having any tags to explain why it needed clearup or to be deleted. The AFD discussion is already rather heavy in anger. (However, I will note that there may have been prior discussion based on this WP Video Games discussion, and TTN to some degree appears involved.) Here's a case where I think a postpone suggestion would help a lot - those interested in keeping in would be able to go out and find sources (which I feel will be difficult to find here). --MASEM 16:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Applying a little creative (if not actually devious) thinking here, relisting is already a part of the AfD process, so — although unconventional — it wouldn't be completely inappropriate to !vote "relist in one month". I'm just wondering: what would happen if someone were to suggest it, and consensus were to back the suggestion? Jakew (talk) 16:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I like that last one of saying relist in one month as a possible result. It has the advantage of not adding any elaborate process or confusion. Everything else here is much too complicated.DGG (talk) 19:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
This would work, as long as 1) it's for cases exactly like there where there has been no attempt or notification of the article needed improvement or other similar cases and 2) the resulting closing admin drops a template to be made similar to the one above that identifies what needs to be fixed and that the article may be relisted after a month if these aren't addressed. --MASEM 19:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
In the event that we can get some consensus for this, I'll gladly volunteer to work on the template, categories, etc. Jakew (talk) 17:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Nomophobia was another good example. It was brought to AfD, I added a few sources, and the nominator withdrew. The fact that such nominations occur is a big problem with the AfD process. Something needs to be done to get people to improve articles rather than try to delete them. Celarnor 20:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


"Something needs to be done to get people to improve articles rather than try to delete them." - I agree with you. That's one of the great unsolved mysteries of Misplaced Pages - how to get better articles. "The fact that such nominations occur is a big problem with the AfD process." - I disagree with you. Sometimes an article simply has to go to AfD before the article's creators and advocates take its sourcing seriously. I personally started at Misplaced Pages because one article I liked got deleted for lack of sources. If people care for certain articles, and they have become familiar with the article guidelines, there's nothing stopping them from improving things here and there. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 22:52, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
If it was a little harder to start an Afd then less time would be spent doing them and therefore a bit more time improving articles. Most Afd's I reply to take about 10 minutes of my time(not counting those that take time but I don't reply to!), that's even without time on secondary arguments. I think if you multiple that by say about 6 people that reply then each Afd is consuming about 1 hour or editors time. I think anyone raising an Afd, should have to do some real checking before using that 1 hour of other editors time, which could be spent improving articles. SunCreator (talk) 23:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Further simplification

Ok, let me make this as simple as possible that does very little to change the current AFD procedure: simply that "Postpone" is a valid !vote to use for AFD debates. A "postpone" !vote should carry more weight than other comments during AFD, though the need to postpone should be reduced and/or ignored if

  • The article has been given sufficient warning (> 1 month) before about needed to cleanup before deletion, and thus postponing will likely not affect how the current editors will improve the article.
  • The article has been postponed from deletion once before (within the last 6 months)

Other editors should be free to respond and discuss if postponing makes sense, but barring the above two cases, postponement should always receive the benefit of the doubt over other arguments.

If an AFD closes with "postpone" , then the closing admin will put a template on the article page, stating that:

  • The article was proposed for deletion (linking to the AFD) but postponed to allow cleanup
  • The article needs these specific areas of cleanup (list as best understood from the AFD debate)
  • The article, after (afd closing date + 1 month), the article still has not been improved (permalink to this version provided for comparison), the article may be relisted at AFD. It should be noted that we are not expecting perfection in one month, just addressing the key issues from the original AFD to show they can be improved on.

Now, I will admit this doesn't solve the pipeline issue in that editors are still free to AFD things without notification, but it should be observed that if an editor continues to press non-notified articles to AFD which always end up postponed, and which always end up being improved on (not resubmitted or surviving the second AFD as a straight "keep" !vote), then this editor should be cautioned against sending articles to AFD without first attempting to work with the editors of it. I cannot see how this can be made into a block or other such enforcement, though I'd argue there's point where doing this too much is violating the assumption of good faith. --MASEM 16:39, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

That's much better better, but I don't agree that a "postpone" !vote should carry any more or less weight simply because it's a "postpone" !vote - the weight it carries will be determined by the strength of the argument presented with the !vote. That said, there are already a lot of strong arguments for postponing, so they often will carry more weight in forming consensus. Additionally, I don't think articles should ever be left in the postpone limbo. What should happen is that 1 month after an AFD is postponed, the AFD is reopened and the participants notified. Percy Snoodle (talk) 16:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, I mean that "postpone" should carry more weight in that even in the face of strong "delete" !votes that someone is in good faith asking for postponement, due to the fact they're only been given the 5 days to fix it, it should be granted. As for opening up postponed articles for the second AFD, it will be simple to add articles with the suggested template to a category that can be tracked by editors who can review what improvements there have been and put the article to AFD again, as procedure (of course linking the previous AFD to compare again). Actually, I'd almost say we would need such a duty squad as the above template should not be removed until it is removed by someone on "postponed AFD patrol", either because it has improved and needs not to go to AFD, or that it is going back to AFD. --MASEM 16:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I didn't have much of a problem with a postponement in Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Fictional universe of Carnivàle, which was in late August 2007 (in the end, the AfD just forced me to think on the spot, instead of allowing me time to explore other options with the presentation of subtopic content). I'd argue that the problem is not postponement, but finding volunteers to improve the article. And I can't think of a case at the moment where no-one volunteered but the article still miraculously improved in the next month. So postponement requests should only counted in combination with a volunteer/group of volunteers. – sgeureka 17:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, postponement is only reasonable if it's likely that the article will be improved, not just if it can be improved. Percy Snoodle (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
What if it was stated that a "postpone" !vote would also be taken as responsibility for actually dealing with it? This shouldn't necessarily be a "pass the buck" situation, where someone !votes "postpone" and then lets, say, a WP or the Article Rescue Squadron deal with it. However, let's say I call "postpone", and it's granted, but for some reason over the month I can't get to it or any other editing on WP; on the second call to AFD, it would be fair for someone else to call "postpone" to step in. However, if the month passes, and I've been editing a mad fool elsewhere on WP and ignoring the postponed article, then calling a postpone again would not be appropriate. I would recommend that just as we do deletion sorting on entry in AFD, postponed AFDs should be sorted as well, hopefully altering appropriate projects to help step in to correct it. --MASEM 20:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree, we need to be thinking about "relist in one month to give me a chance to fix it, on the basis of (for example) sources that I expect to be able to find in 19th century newspaper archives". That's a perfectly reasonable suggestion, in my opinion, and I suspect that if someone were to make such a request, it would probably be considered. I can see three obstacles, however: 1) it's an unorthodox !vote, and people (including the closer) might not know how to respond; 2) people trying to save an article might not think of it, or might be intimidated by the process itself; 3) there's no infrastructure (templates, categories) in place for tracking postponed AfDs. Tackling these in reverse order, (3) is relatively easy to solve, (2) could be addressed with a little editing to WP pages and perhaps the AfD template, and (1) is the most difficult to address, because it involves changing process & associated policies & guidelines. I suspect that the "path of least resistance" to (1) will involve minimal changes, leaving decisions about the appropriateness of postpones, etc, to consensus in each AfD, at least for the time being. But I may be wrong. Jakew (talk) 20:53, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
The first obstacle is just a matter of getting the word out; if this idea is accepted, and we make sure to announce it to the usual places; as long as there's a regular crowd that patrols AFD, the use of "postpone" would be made apparent, along with helping to hint to users that may not know about it that it is an option available to them. (WP:POSTPONE is nicely free for this, this would be a good place to have the tracking and the like all grouped together.) --MASEM 21:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the onus should be on the postponing requester to either carry out the rework themselves or coordinate a team of editors to carry out cleanup. I also agree that a postponing request should carry more weight for out-of-the-blue AfDs than ones in maintenance-tag-limbo. Finally, I'm beginning to come to terms with the idea that maintenance-tag handling should be examined as a seperate piece of work that should dovetail into this one instead of loading it on to the front end. I still think that we could use some bots to help out with this and deliver some benefits in tracking and grouping articles with maintenance tags by project, but I'm willing to put that discussion on hold.Gazimoff Read 22:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I think that it's best to tackle the problem at both ends. If an article enters AfD too soon, then promoting a postpone option should help a lot. At the other "end", pre-deletion notices could help to reduce the likelihood of articles entering AfD too soon, and indeed may help avoid AfD at all. Jakew (talk) 22:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, writing and then promoting WP:POSTPONE, especially among admins, sounds like the way forward. Percy Snoodle (talk) 08:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding situations where you !vote "postpone" and then don't touch the article for more than a month, and as a result the article is deleted when the AFD is reopened: that's not really a problem. If the article is deleted, but you have the will and the means to improve it, then the thing to do is to contact the closing admin, get a userified copy, bring it up to spec, and recreate the article. If the issues that led to its deletion in the first place are resolved, then it won't be instantly redeleted. I don't see this as being so common an event that the overhead on the admins is prohibited. Percy Snoodle (talk) 08:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I have created Misplaced Pages:Postponed Deletion as a point to develop this concept further since there seems to be some legs to it. --MASEM 15:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks good. I still think that the AFDs should be reopened automatically, but since that would require a bot or considerable admin overhead, I'm happy to wait for v2. Percy Snoodle (talk) 15:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I like it. I have nothing to criticize in the wording or the proposed process. – sgeureka 15:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

AFD-BYRDIE GREEN

I am the youngest daughter of the above referenced artist and know for a fact that she did indeed record for Prestige Records. She also recorded on the Polydor and Polygram Label. Ms Green also recorded a Christmas 45 on a label she started entitled Penda Mungu Enterprises.

Please do not delete any info on my mother. I added some comments to her main page, just so as to give more information on her. If I handled it wrong, I am sorry. I just wanted to let people know of her passing.

Dharbee (talk) 06:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)Dharbee

Talk about deleting this article is done on the articles Afd page here. SunCreator (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for your loss and you didn't do anything wrong. One of the reasons why we advise not to write about close ones is the possible distress it can cause when the article gets changed, proposed for deletion or actually deleted.--Tikiwont (talk) 20:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Using a redirect as a method of deletion.

Folks, please look at this edit to the Divine Science article. This was not a merge, and the target article, New Thought, only mentions Church of Divine Science in passing, so there certainly was no duplication. The end result was that Divine Science was deleted. My understanding is that this sort of delete=thru=redirect manuever is not allowed, but I wanted to run it by you all here. Let me know, Madman (talk) 03:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I have restored the article and added a couple of references.

Here's another delete=thru=redirect manuever by our miscreant. He slapped it with {{notability}} + {{unreferenced}} tag on Feb 19 and deleted (er, redirected) it March 4. I myself am not sure the article had notability, but doesn't one have to nominate the article first? Madman (talk) 03:33, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Redirects are not deletions in the narrow sense that we use those terms here. Deletions remove the pagehistory. Deletions can not be undone without the use of special admin tools. Redirects, on the other hand, are ordinary-editor actions. They leave the pagehistory intact. Any future editor can review the prior versions in the pagehistory and can merge content back out as appropriate. Likewise, any editor can revert a decision to redirect without the need for special admin tools. So, no. Your assertion that redirect = deletion is untrue. This dispute needs to be sorted out on the respective article Talk pages. Rossami (talk) 05:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct that a redirect is not a deletion, thankfully in this case because I was able to recover the article. But it appears to me that that this sort of manuever is something of a mis-use of a redirect that has the effect of (at least temporarily) deleting the article. Madman (talk) 13:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Madman: Hard as it is to see sometime, Hrafn is honestly trying to improve WP by keeping unsourced and poorly cited articles offline. Yes, Hrafn's civility sometimes leaves much to be desired (too many angry!! outbursts) but I do believe his heart is in WP's best interests. Likewise I think you too are trying to improve the WP and add worthwhile content but you too need to be more careful on the matter of civility in your speech (like calling him a "miscreant" above). The discussions between the two of you are beginning to escalate and sooner or later one or both of you will get banned if you folks cannot control your sniping and shouting. Both of you need to cool off, dial the pissing contest back a bit, and look for meaningful -- non judgmental -- questions that will lead to productive discussions.

As an example please note the next subsection of this thread... -- Low Sea (talk) 00:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)


Rephrasing the question

I know and respect both of these editors (Hrafn & Madman) so I am trying to remain neutral as much as possible. I think the issue needs to be rephrased in terminology... Lets try this question:

Is it acceptable Misplaced Pages practice to take a stub or start level article created by multiple editors and blank the page except for a redirect without moving/merging the content into the redirect target page?

Please provided wikilinks to support your response either way. -- Low Sea (talk) 00:41, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2 dealt with something like that, although the redirects were enforced with edit warring. Resulted in a sort of topic ban. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:35, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Where the start-article/stub is unsourced, or sufficiently poorly sourced as not to meet WP:NOTE, it is clearly envisioned, both in template:notability and WP:GAFD, that redirection is an option. Where the content is unsourced or unreliably sourced, WP:V would forbid "moving/merging the content into the redirect target page". HrafnStalk 02:45, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Banjo-Kazooie: Sky's the Limit

My article I created has been put up in the articles for deletion. I agree that it should be deleted. It is un-notable and is only a rumor. If more info comes in on the rareware website though then i will re-create the page. But for now that's going to be a wait!!!--Anfish (talk) 23:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for deletion Add topic