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A link to http://toolserver.org/~sql/afd.php for each user will give a rough estimate of AfDs that resulted in redirects (one way or another). I suspect that if we group "redirected" with "deleted", that the percentages for some of these folks will increase a bit, especially guys like TTN. there may be some discussion was to whether or not "merge" goes with "keep", but that's another element of subjective analysis. [[User:Protonk|Protonk]] ([[User talk:Protonk|talk]]) 17:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC) |
A link to http://toolserver.org/~sql/afd.php for each user will give a rough estimate of AfDs that resulted in redirects (one way or another). I suspect that if we group "redirected" with "deleted", that the percentages for some of these folks will increase a bit, especially guys like TTN. there may be some discussion was to whether or not "merge" goes with "keep", but that's another element of subjective analysis. [[User:Protonk|Protonk]] ([[User talk:Protonk|talk]]) 17:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC) |
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::Again, I am certain that the majority, up to 95% of the nominations no one followed [[WP:BEFORE]]. I will study JohnCD's keeps, who posted above, to test that theory. There is no way to satisfactorily answer the question: Was it worthy of deletion, was it worthy of being kept? This is subjective. johnCD, and I only bring him up cause he is on the list, and he posted here, of course thought that all the AFDs were worthy, and still does. |
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::I think Randomran's comments sums up the majorty of people's feelings here on this policy page: |
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:::''"Moreover, even if there are a few sloppy nominators -- which there always have been and always will be -- I think this actually shows how the system is working just fine."'' |
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::It is the same opinion I hear over and over again on this page, no matter what evidence is presented. When I posted [[User:Ikip/AfD on average day]], which showed that 76.5% of articles deleted were created by editors with 350 contributions or less, this was the same reaction. |
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::The challenge is too show that these are more than a couple of "mistakes", but their are fundamental problems with the entire AfD system, and not present it here, but present it to the entire wikipedia community. |
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:When PC Pro editor had the article [[The Political Quarterly]] speedy deleted, the nominator went on to apologize, then the deletor went on to delete deleted an additional 2585 images and pages. The same it was a "mistake" argument was given, and Cameron Scott, stated today, "Great job with the table - I'm a strong deletionist and would delete half of the wiki if I got my way, which is why oversight is important", closed the discussion. Giving a distinct message, simialr to Randomran's, Move on, there is nothing to see here... [[User:Ikip|Ikip]] ([[User talk:Ikip|talk]]) 18:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC) |
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Proposal to discourage early "delete" closes
This is something I have been thinking about for a while but after reading a user talk page discussion about AFDs being closed as "delete" in 1-2 days, I decided to go ahead and propose it.
No AFD discussion should be closed as Delete unless 96 hours have passed except under the following circumstances...
1. The article qualifies for speedy deletion.
2. It quickly becomes apparent during the course of the debate that the subject is completely unverifiable. (WP:HOAX, WP:MADEUP etc.)
I picked "96 hours" as an absolute minimum to keep people from wikilawyering in DRV over a few hours. Discussions should ideally run for 5 days. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 20:03, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- There is no need for such a limit. If the result of a debate is blatantly obvious (cf. WP:SNOW) there is nothing wrong with closing it prematurely. Also, just such debates are closed prematurely. — Aitias // discussion 20:44, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- One minor problem is that different parts of our deletion docs specify different time-lengths...WP:AFD says up to five days but the linked WP:GTD says usually no less than five days. However, I don't think "1 -2 days" can reasonably be considered an "up to five day discussion" unless there really is no possible way an article could be redeemed. AfD is explicitly several days and designed to force fixable articles to be fixed, not just to thumbs-up/down the existing article. I also think a premature-closer has the responsibility to investigate to make sure the AfD has been advertised properly to avoid AfD echo-chamber or merely "early election returns" problems, rather than just saying "we have 48-hr strong consensus, that's good enough for WP:SNOW". Further, if premature-closure (or SNOW) is truly a standard or common part of the AfD-closure arsenal, it needs to be documented in the WP:*D pages. Otherwise, we wind up with exactly this concern (or worse, appearances of non-GF or admin-fiat) again in the future. DMacks (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) "up to 5 days" is good-working common practice, I think. On the other hand "at least 5 days" is not. Most of the debates at a log page are closed before 5 days have expired — a minimum stays for full 5 days (or even longer). And, as explained above, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If there was significant participation (not only one or two participants) in a debate and there is a clear consensus, there is nothing wrong with closing that debate prematurely. Thus, there is no reason for changing the current situation. — Aitias // discussion 22:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with the part where you said "at least 5 days" is not a good working practice. That's why I chose "96 hours" (4 days). It would allow an admin to review the "closable log" (If it's the 6th, the log for the 1st would be the closable log) without worrying about closing a debate "early" ie a debate started on the 1st at 23:59 UT and closed on the 6th at O:00 UT would have ran for 96 hours and 1 minute. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 22:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- There was a somewhat recent discussion at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive174#AfD closure regarding whether 4+ or 5+ days minimum was intended. Flatscan (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- That's all very well but there is simply no need for it — it would be more bureaucratic however —as explained— without any good in return. — Aitias // discussion 22:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with the part where you said "at least 5 days" is not a good working practice. That's why I chose "96 hours" (4 days). It would allow an admin to review the "closable log" (If it's the 6th, the log for the 1st would be the closable log) without worrying about closing a debate "early" ie a debate started on the 1st at 23:59 UT and closed on the 6th at O:00 UT would have ran for 96 hours and 1 minute. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 22:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- @DMacks: There is absolutely no offence meant (not at all), but regarding “Further, if premature-closure (or SNOW) is truly a standard or common part of the AfD-closure arsenal” may I respectfully recommend having a look at some old AfD logs? Doing so you'll discover that it is “common part”. :) Best, — Aitias // discussion 22:15, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) "up to 5 days" is good-working common practice, I think. On the other hand "at least 5 days" is not. Most of the debates at a log page are closed before 5 days have expired — a minimum stays for full 5 days (or even longer). And, as explained above, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If there was significant participation (not only one or two participants) in a debate and there is a clear consensus, there is nothing wrong with closing that debate prematurely. Thus, there is no reason for changing the current situation. — Aitias // discussion 22:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- I do understand why AFDs (that don't otherwise qualify for speedy something) are closed early. Most AFDs get their !votes quickly (if they get any at all) and then die and it may seem that a consensus forms early. It's tempting to just close them and get it over with. This may be fine for "keeps" (but see my comments in the NAC thread above) but if we are talking about making an article go away, I think it's best to let it run its course even if a "delete" outcome is virtually obvious. A kept article can always be nominated later but there are hoops to jump through to get an article undeleted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- I would recommend "consensus formed at least 24 hours prior and is stable" rather than a firm time limit. If 6 deletes and 0 keeps or redirects showed up in the first hour, and 24 hours after that there were still no opposes, then I'd call that an early consensus. But if 2 showed up the first hour, then 4 more a day later with no keep/merge/redirects, you should wait until the 49 hour mark before calling it a stable consensus to delete. The same goes if it's 95-5 to delete after 2 hours vs. after 26 hours. You wait 24 hours after the consensus is clear to make sure it's stable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:34, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
- The usual reason against shortening the period is that a number of Wikipedians are only around on the weekend or on week days. I'd much rather extend the normal period to 7 days than shortening it (Speedy and SNOW closures excepted of course).
There are a number of topics where it's not easy to judge if they meet WP:NOTE, e.g. a WP:PROF biography from a non English speaking country, and I'd rather let those stick around for 5 days to give the noticeboard watchers of the respective language (of which there might only be a few) a chance to review it than to delete it prematurely, even if a number of editors found nothing on google and agreed with the nom. We're in no hurry. --Amalthea 20:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
- The usual reason against shortening the period is that a number of Wikipedians are only around on the weekend or on week days. I'd much rather extend the normal period to 7 days than shortening it (Speedy and SNOW closures excepted of course).
- I would prefer a 7 day timeline (assuming we unify timelines to 7 days, including PUI), but I have no idea (good or bad) what consensus lies out there on the subject. Protonk (talk) 20:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
- I would agree on 7 days. Many people come here once a week. But the first step should be to establish 5 days as the fixed minimum, and then we should consider extending it. . There is in my opinion no reason to remove a good faith afd unless its withdrawn or there's a copyvio or blp problem apparent before the full closing time. There are many reasons to go the full week: Very frequently there are arguments that are not pointed out immediately that change the nature of the discussion. The rapid closing gives a great incentive to pile on keeps and deletes, and discourages rational consideration. Additionally it discourages improvement of the article under discussion. Even if we do not go beyond 5 days, I think the simplest rule is 5 days minimum except in the stated circumstances, or as a rare exception --and that if they are challenged in good faith, then it should automatically be reopened. We've dealt altogether too much in Deletion reviews of early closings that could have been avoided if the full time had been given. DGG (talk) 05:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
- What is the flaw in the deletion process that this will fix? Are there regularly deletion discussions being closed early as "Delete" which don't have a strong reason? All I see other than pre-emptive CSDs and blatantly obvious WP:IAR cases is the occasional application of WP:SNOW. Is there some other kind of case you are thinking of? gnfnrf (talk) 05:24, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
- While the AfD page says the deletion discussion lasts "up to five days", and current common practice is to close discussions after 4 days of discussion, this practice is contrary to current policy. Wikipedia:Deletion policy says that the discussion "lasts at least five days; afterwards, pages are deleted by an administrator if there is consensus to do so". I find it troubling that the AfD discussions over recent months have been shortening. Two reasons: One is as noted above by DGG and by Amalthea—some editors check only on weekends, or only once a week, and therefore might not have opportunity to discuss if AfDs are closed after four days. If everyone says "delete per WP:N no sources" it is still possible that the whole consensus gets reversed when someone comes in with "I've found several sources; here they are." The second concern I have is the subtle potential problem that it is currently only the admins who do not follow policy to the letter who get to close AfDs. Admins who want to wait the full five days (as the policy asks us) are not closing AfDs because pretty much all AfDs are already closed by then. So it is those admins who operate a little outside of policy who are now determining what constitutes "consensus to delete". I'm not saying there's anything deliberate going on; I think it's probably quite unconscious actually. It's concerning, though. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 02:34, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
- thanks for bringing up that last point--very true, and I must have been aware of it, but I never quite had it worked out in words. There should be no advantage given to the admins who don';t follow the rules and close early--whether to keep or to delete. A good example in this sense is PROD, where the articles are automatically marked as being subject to deletion after the necessary time.DGG (talk) 05:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
- As a start, would it be reasonable to change this page? For ages it has read, "Articles listed here are debated for up to five days." As noted, this is contrary to what policy actually says. I'd like to change it to "Articles listed here are debated for at least five days." Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 22:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
- Done. Also, just to note: I've made reference to this discussion in another section further down the page, #Timing of the clock. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 05:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
- I don't read AFD as much as I used to, but I noticed for Friday Jan. 23, several AFDs were closed with 2 deletes, unless nonsense or spam, it seems that these fast closes are harmful to the occasional editor who might not be on every day, which is why we have a 5 day process. It's likely that they'll still be deleted, but there's no harm in someone having the time to research or notice the article. On an unrelated note, it would be preferable if a closing admin would give reasons when they close, as readers would know why without needing to read the entire debate.205.200.79.114 (talk) 01:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I concur that we first need to strictly enforce the current deletion policy, which says that deletion debates must run for at least five days. The only reason to close an AfD earlier, really, is if the page is actively harmful (such as a WP:BLP violation). Sandstein 09:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
- Ron Ritzman, I see a pattern on these policy pages, there are exceptions, like all generalizations, but this seems the pattern:
- The editors who enforce the policy are the most active editors on the policy. This makes sense. So in this case, the editors who delete the most, are the most active editors on this policy talk page.
- Editors on these policy pages are incredibly resistant to change.
- On controversial pages such as this one, editors constantly bring up problems, and they are quickly dismissed.
- The majority of editors who edit these policy pages are veteran editors, and many are adminstrators, who are loathe to put any restrictions on their existing power, in this case, to delete and keep articles.
- The only effective way to change these policies is to create a RfC, making sure as many people as possible know about the RfC, without breaking canvas rules.
- Posting suggestions for large scale change (and even most small scale change) on this page is worthless and a waste of time. Ikip (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Ongoing DRVs
As a notice to people who are interested in this issue, I've listed nine bad premature closures from January 29 at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 February 1 after the closing administrator in question declined to relist them. Sandstein 09:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
- See User:Balloonman's extensive observation on Speedy deletions:
- See my study on AfD's showing the vast majority of editors who have their pages deleted are new users:
- See the universal disdain that journalist have about our deletion policies:
- Hope this helps, please let me know where this observation is listed. Ikip (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
yu gi oh the abridged series
This IS notable or aleast a lot more notable then a lot of things that have a page.
I am ironbatman (talk) 05:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- This has been discussed before. If you think you can write up a version that won't have the same failings as the AfD'd versions, please feel free to do so on a subpage in your userspace. Say, at User:I am ironbatman/Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series, then take that version to deletion review. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- Ironbatman, under what criteria do you claim it is notable? Sephiroth storm (talk) 17:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
- Regarding "more notable then a lot of things that have a page," see Wikipedia:Other stuff exists. Dcoetzee 20:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I just mean to start an article to get the ball rolling, then other people will edit the page and before you know it there will be a perfectly good article. And regarding your "more notable then a lot of things that have a page," It says there is stopping anybody from creating a page, but the dillema is I can't create a page and that's why I am complaining. The criteria I claim that it is notible is that if you search on youtube "yu gi oh the abridged series" there will be many different videos (32 episodes with a movie, 2 council of doom episodes and 2 christmas specials) which combined have millions of views (unlike cloverfield but that has a page). This is just part of the systematic bias against internet based subjects.
I am ironbatman (talk) 05:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- YouTube isn't considered a reliable source for some things. For others - ehhh. ArcAngel (talk) 14:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- This was supposed to be the first answer in this section. Then I had classes, the house flooded, that sort of thing. It's possible that the series has more right to an article than some of the stuff we cover. When you get down to it the notability rules are an arbitrary cut-off point, one that most people here seem to consider necessary but it's still going to cause problems.
Notability's relatively recent, though. I think the abridged series runs into a more serious rule that's stood for as long as long as the site: Verifiability. We have to be able to provide the readers with something more reliable than our word. Yes, Wikipedia and reliability, har har har, but what we have is because of that. Worse, Having nothing to check statements against also kneecaps the editing process: it can be impossible or unreasonably difficult to do maintenance, resolve disputes and distinguish between vandalism and valid changes. Worse, this is one of the ten most popular websites in existence and the target of every self-respecting scammer and con man on the planet. Yu Gi Oh the abridged series is legit, but there's no way we could judge these things on a case-by-case basis.
There you have it. There's an infuriating amount of get-off-my-lawn-ya-kids elitism around, but the most basic problem with covering Internet-based subjects is that they're underrepresented in the usable external sources that bring value to articles. --Kizor 00:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)- Some pinhead violates copyright on youtube, we should cover it? Is there rampant external RS for this? Or just internet fanboy love? ThuranX (talk) 00:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- Case in point. --Kizor 06:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks for that Kizor it explained a lot of things, and also to thruanX your contribution was... err.... umm.... noted. But i'm pretty sure youtube is a valid source because Yu gi oh the abridged series exists on youtube, it's not like i'm saying diet coke can be used as rocket fuel because i saw it on youtube. And isn't there some rule against bad mouthing people??? or is that just for some people the "man" doesn't like, well any way if i was a fanboy i would be too busy writing horrible fan fics to do this. I am ironbatman (talk) 08:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- (Trolling above removed). No, YouTube is not a reliable source. Any video uploaded there can be edited beforehand, removing or redubbing key elements, which is exactly the case with the above series. Google gave me back one page of results for the topic, and all of those were Youtube videos or blogs to it. Not one wp:rs has anything about it. It's a fanboy thing, or an anti-fanboy thing. either way, who cares? ThuranX (talk) 06:11, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, there is. Sorry about that. Our fair compatriot has been banned on five separate occasions for failure to play nice. Smarter people than me now seem to be working out what we're supposed to do with him.
(Strokes beard) He's right, though. The contents of YouTube videos would never be accepted as references. They're too easy to edit (heh) and have nothing but the submitter's word to back their authenticity and accuracy. I remember wanting to source details about a WWII destroyer using a contemporary newsreel on YouTube, a couple of years ago. A way of getting around the unreliable format (a way I did NOT use because I was young and stupid) would've been tracking down the original's details and giving those as a reference, like one'd do with a book, instead of the YouTube version. For obvious reasons the same is not possible here. --Kizor 16:57, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks for that Kizor it explained a lot of things, and also to thruanX your contribution was... err.... umm.... noted. But i'm pretty sure youtube is a valid source because Yu gi oh the abridged series exists on youtube, it's not like i'm saying diet coke can be used as rocket fuel because i saw it on youtube. And isn't there some rule against bad mouthing people??? or is that just for some people the "man" doesn't like, well any way if i was a fanboy i would be too busy writing horrible fan fics to do this. I am ironbatman (talk) 08:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- Case in point. --Kizor 06:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- Some pinhead violates copyright on youtube, we should cover it? Is there rampant external RS for this? Or just internet fanboy love? ThuranX (talk) 00:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
- Hold on, its been a few days since i last checked this AfD, but allow me to insert something. I am ironbatman, I asked under what criteria do you claimed it is notable, and you stated youtube. Wikipedia has certain criteria for articles, They can be found Here. Check that out as well as This and tell me if you think it qualifies. Sephiroth storm (talk) 13:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Advice re premature AfD closure
Re Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hamnet Shakespeare: the debate has been closed, citing (incorrectly I believe) WP:SNOW, after less than a day while debate was still underway and without unanimous agreement. It seems to me that the WP:IAR solution would be to simply reverse the closure so the discussion can run its course - can someone uninvolved do this, or should it be taken to DRV? Thanks, EyeSerenetalk 09:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Addendum I have no objection to letting the closure stand; this is a procedural question more than anything else :P EyeSerenetalk 09:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- The nomination for the AfD is rather unusual. There seems rather lack of clarity on how exactly this article fits inclusion. Now, looking at the AfD objectlively, I agree that the closure was somewhat premature and an improved closing summary which would clarify that there is no inclination on deletion would have been more appropriate. But all in all, I'd say that there is wasn't anything particularly wrong about the closure in terms of final result. LeaveSleaves 11:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- Fair enough, and thanks for your thoughts. As I understand it, the AfD was listed because there was some doubt about whether the subject's notability was enough for a stand-alone biography article. I don't think there was any doubt about keeping the information in some form or other, but the article's notability had to be tested first. I don't believe the AfD has really settled anything as it wasn't allowed to run for long enough, but no big deal ;) EyeSerenetalk 12:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree with EyeSerene. The premature closure of this AfD means that nothing has been resolved. A complete waste of time. --Malleus Fatuorum 12:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- LeaveSleaves is correct here, there's no issue letting the closure stand. In AfD's eyes, a "merge" closure is simply a variation on a "keep" closure, and the closure of an AfD does not preclude an editorial merge discussion, so there's little point overturning what seems to be a clear snowball keep. If Pastor Theo modifies his closing statement to say as much, I think everyone would be happy(-er than they are now). Also, I've notified Pastor Theo of this discussion. Cheers. lifebaka++ 15:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- I understand, but was disappointed that an ongoing debate to test the article's notability (one of the purposes of AfD) was cut short before, as Malleus notes, anything had been resolved. A less 'by the book' application of the closure criteria would have been helpful in this case. However, we are where we are and, as I said, no big deal. EyeSerenetalk 18:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- Well, I tried to read the the prior discussion a bit more in detail. The oddness in this case is that while the article clears GAC, there is confusion on its stand-alone notability. Frankly, in my opinion, if the the subject has sufficient coverage to clear GAC, it is notable enough for inclusion. In any case, the article isn't worthy of deletion. Further, a merger, possibly with William Shakespeare (correct me if I am wrong here), would only strain the latter article's existing structure. Bottom line, AfD is really not an ideal venue to solve the issue. May I suggest putting forward a possible merger proposal or even an RfC (which I know sounds rather extreme) if you are looking for wider audience? LeaveSleaves 19:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- Very true, it is an unusual case :P The GA criteria are very specific and don't actually mention notability at all, so GA status is not a confirmation of notability. You're right to imply that issues that might affect the notability of a subject would probably be addressed during a GA review, but only as a by-product of the process, so it's perfectly possible (theoretically!) for a Good Article to end up deleted on notability grounds. The WT:GAN thread was started because there may be issues with the article's GA pass, but it's notability was questioned and, as the more fundamental issue, we felt that needed settling first - so AfD seemed the logical place to come. Maybe, as you suggest, another venue would have been better. EyeSerenetalk 19:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- The article didn't actually meet the good article criteria, but that is an aside. Geometry guy 22:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- Very true, it is an unusual case :P The GA criteria are very specific and don't actually mention notability at all, so GA status is not a confirmation of notability. You're right to imply that issues that might affect the notability of a subject would probably be addressed during a GA review, but only as a by-product of the process, so it's perfectly possible (theoretically!) for a Good Article to end up deleted on notability grounds. The WT:GAN thread was started because there may be issues with the article's GA pass, but it's notability was questioned and, as the more fundamental issue, we felt that needed settling first - so AfD seemed the logical place to come. Maybe, as you suggest, another venue would have been better. EyeSerenetalk 19:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
This was not at all a "by-the-book" application of WP:SNOW! SNOW is not a guideline at all, but styles itself as a consequence of WP:IAR. However editors quoting SNOW seem to think IAR means "ignore the rules when you don't see the point of following them". IAR doesn't say that. It says "If a rule prevents you improving or maintaining Wikipedia, then ignore it." Cutting short a productive discussion that had only been going only one day emphatically does not improve the encyclopedia. SNOW itself is not explicit enough about that, but it does imply that its should be used primarily for unanimous decisions and that "if somebody later raises a reasonable objection, then it probably was not a good candidate for the snowball clause."
I do not wish to reopen this AfD, as the moment has been lost. Further, I am disheartened to see AfDs on delicate articles like this determined by votes "per WP:N" by editors who show no signs of having read WP:N recently and thinking about how it applies in this case, or reflects consensus at AfD. AfD is not a vote. A bureaucracy we may not be, but with every passing day we seem to be turning into a democracy where consensus is being equated to percentage support in a vote. How sad. Geometry guy 22:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- I don't see the problem. Was there a snowball's chance in hell that we would have deleted Hamnet Shakespeare? If so, then the SNOW close was wrong. If no, then the SNOW close was right. It's not a risk free undertaking. Some people make snow closures when they shouldn't. And they rightly get burned. Some people happen to guess correctly. and they help us avoid pointless debate. In my opinion, there was no way we would delete that article. Just off the top of my head I can think of two sources that mention Hamnet significantly which aren't cited in the article and the sources cited in the article allow it to more than meet the GNG. Protonk (talk) 22:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- "Keep" and "delete" are not the only possible outcomes of an AfD, yet apparently you think it is right to snowball an AfD when there is no chance that the article will be deleted. I hope you will rethink. Many editors are taking the snowball close as meaning that AfD has endorsed the right to an independent existence, no merger, no renaming. There are plenty of sources mentioning Hamnet. There are also plenty of sources mentioning Romeo Beckham. How do we decide to keep the former as an article but leave the latter as a redirect? Is AfD competent to address that question? Apparently not, and your comment adds to my sadness. Geometry guy 23:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- While AfDs are often closed as "merge" or "redirect", they really are flavors of keep in that any editor can come along and revert to an earlier version. (Not so with delete). Besides the fact that I wouldn't have closed this one this early, if the full five days had run and I was closing it, I'd add a comment saying that the consensus was clearly not to delete, that "keep", "merge" and "redirect" are all flavors of the same thing, and therefore it's an editing issue, not a deletion issue.
- Would it be nice if AfD became something that could also enforce merge and redirect decisions? IM(NS)HO, heck yeah. But that's not the way AfD is set up currently. Right now, it's pretty much "delete" and "flavors of keep".--Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sorry my comment "adds to your sadness". In my opinion, AfDs are places where a deletion discussion occurs, primarily. this doesn't stop us from discussing mergers, but anything more complicated than merging an article that doesn't meet our inclusion criteria into one that does doesn't belong at AfD. It doesn't have the format nor the attendance to handle it. We don't handle splits, mergers of two equally important articles into one, mergers to multiple parents, or any other sort of complex merge. And that is just practice. Policy says we don't do mergers at all. So people come to AfD to have an article deleted. If an editor determines that a discussion about deleting Hamnet is a waste of time, then s/he is welcome to take the risk and halt the discussion. I have no control over what people think AfD has endorsed. I'm of the opinion that AfD endorses no state of an article save cases where the closing decision was made expressly for the purpose of enforcing a specific state (and "keep" is not one of those cases). But my opinion doesn't impact people who choose to interpret the AfD in such a fashion. All the AfD does is determine whether or not an article meets the guidelines and policies for inclusion. If it does, then the editorial decision to merge/ redirect/ smerge/ whatever the content can be made elsewhere. And, for the case of Hamnet, should be made elsewhere. Protonk (talk) 23:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- "Meet the guidelines and policies for inclusion" as a separate article, not a redirect, right? That's what the guidelines discuss. Geometry guy 00:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- Whether or not it becomes a redirect is still largely an editorial decision. This discussion isn't settled by any means. See the Episodes and Characters RFARs and dozens of debates on this subject. Protonk (talk) 00:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- Then all such AfDs should be closed as "Keep, merge, redirect, or rename, as you like, but do not delete the content". Geometry guy 00:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- That strikes me as unnecessary. All closes should be treated as non-binding on editorial decisions unless the closer explicitly decides that making a decision like that is necessary. Closes like that should be fairly rare. Protonk (talk) 00:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- Nevermind. Diminishing returns. Not your fault that no one else can be bothered to read guidelines. See you at WP:FICT. Geometry guy 00:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- That strikes me as unnecessary. All closes should be treated as non-binding on editorial decisions unless the closer explicitly decides that making a decision like that is necessary. Closes like that should be fairly rare. Protonk (talk) 00:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- Then all such AfDs should be closed as "Keep, merge, redirect, or rename, as you like, but do not delete the content". Geometry guy 00:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- Whether or not it becomes a redirect is still largely an editorial decision. This discussion isn't settled by any means. See the Episodes and Characters RFARs and dozens of debates on this subject. Protonk (talk) 00:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- "Meet the guidelines and policies for inclusion" as a separate article, not a redirect, right? That's what the guidelines discuss. Geometry guy 00:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- People don't want an article on Romeo Beckham because they don't like BLPs of minors. Hamnet has been dead for centuries and has been discussed by prominent scholars in peer reviewed journals, so it's a much different situation. Zagalejo^^^ 02:57, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sorry my comment "adds to your sadness". In my opinion, AfDs are places where a deletion discussion occurs, primarily. this doesn't stop us from discussing mergers, but anything more complicated than merging an article that doesn't meet our inclusion criteria into one that does doesn't belong at AfD. It doesn't have the format nor the attendance to handle it. We don't handle splits, mergers of two equally important articles into one, mergers to multiple parents, or any other sort of complex merge. And that is just practice. Policy says we don't do mergers at all. So people come to AfD to have an article deleted. If an editor determines that a discussion about deleting Hamnet is a waste of time, then s/he is welcome to take the risk and halt the discussion. I have no control over what people think AfD has endorsed. I'm of the opinion that AfD endorses no state of an article save cases where the closing decision was made expressly for the purpose of enforcing a specific state (and "keep" is not one of those cases). But my opinion doesn't impact people who choose to interpret the AfD in such a fashion. All the AfD does is determine whether or not an article meets the guidelines and policies for inclusion. If it does, then the editorial decision to merge/ redirect/ smerge/ whatever the content can be made elsewhere. And, for the case of Hamnet, should be made elsewhere. Protonk (talk) 23:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
← On the initial procedure question, I would attempt to contact the closer first. Any uninvolved admin may reopen any NAC, but I've seen few such reversals, and only for blatant errors.
- While I personally favor the "stand-alone article" interpretation of AfD, this nomination, with no recommendation to delete, is probably unacceptable by current norms. I'm surprised that no one closed as WP:Speedy keep per Xover, ignoring Sarcasticidealist's request to leave it open.
- A SNOW NAC in under 12 hours is not appropriate, especially with the current interest in discouraging early closes. That said, I don't support reopening at this time. I would like to see a Talk page discussion first.
On the general merge issue, there is a fairly recent discussion at WT:Articles for deletion/Archive 48#Mergers at AfD. Flatscan (talk) 05:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
There has been a number of incidents recently of closing AfDs very early, and of non-admins using the WP:Snow clause as though it were part of the AfD process. This is inappropriate, and may be traced to Wikipedia:Non-admin closure which until a couple of weeks ago was urging inexperienced editors to close early after six keeps as a WP:Snow close. There is no hurry to close an AfD; indeed, it is better to let them run the full 5 days as discussions sometimes turn round after three or four days, or even on the last day - when they may need a bit longer. This particular AfD was closed after less than 12 hours exposure, and with a mix of merge and keep statements.
I feel we should have a general discussion on the pros and cons of closing AfDs early (before the 5 days), and on how appropriate it is to use the WP:Snow clause in an AfD, especially by those who don't have proven experience of reading Wikipedia consensus. WP:Snow is there to cut through having a process for the sake of it. However, at AfD we have a simple 5 day rule for a specific purpose - to allow time for a considered response and to provide a chance for a range of views. There is rarely anything to be gained by cutting an AfD short, and much to be gained buy letting it run the allotted 5 days. SilkTork *YES! 00:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
What is the point of Template:afd3?
I mean, couldn't people just write (or copy and paste) {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NominationName}}
by hand? How would that be worse than writing {{subst:afd3 | pg=NominationName}}
? Yes, the latter are 16 fewer characters, but people would just copy and paste them, in both cases. --A. di M. (talk) 13:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
- The number follows the three steps in the nomination process. It's for the sake of consistency. Dcoetzee 07:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
A rather more radical idea for AFD
Given that there's a sufficient amount of resistance against trying to change the scope of AFDeletion to AFDiscussion, I had another possible thought. What if AFDeletion was tightened up as to its purpose, while a separate process (Articles for Comment? AFC?) was created to handle other cases?
Specifically: AFD is to only be used when the article and its history should be completed deleted because the content or topic is not appropriate for WP - sort of the "slip through the CSD cracks" if you will - based on good faith assumptions from the nominator. This relegates it to things like copyvios, COI articles, and the like. But more importantly articles where notability is the primary reason for deletion should not be covered in AFD. AFD should still result in keeps, deletes, and possibly merges and redirects, but the last two possible actions should be used less frequently; AFD really needs to be more black-and-white and should only be reserved for cases where the edit history of the article really needs to be wiped if the article were to be deleted.
That brings us to the AFC process, which in terms of how it would go, should be similar to AFD. However, as with the previous AFDiscussion standpoint, AFC can include merges, issues with cleanup, and the like. More importantly, AFCs can have a longer timeline, on the order or 7 to 14 days (I think 10 would be good). While deletion may still be a possible outcome from AFCs, it should only be considered if there's no point in saving the edit history or the topic is not a valid search term, or the like. Most of what we've previously discussed could go on at the proposed AFDiscussion would be the same for AFC otherwise.
What this process changes emphasizes is that there are certain things like copyvios and other things that do need deletion and deletion in a quick manner but otherwise have been contested from CSD or PROD, or otherwise missed. That leaves AFD for that. But as most AFDs are presently used to challenge the notability of an article, a large number of times when the article is nominated for deletion, they really could be merged and redirected instead, nor is the presence of the article in the short term liable to hurt Wikipedia. Thus, AFC can be more relaxed (the longer time frame), and the results aimed at retention of data over deletion.
The only annoyance is that AFD and AFC would be very very similar process that could be confusing but I think with enough warning templates on both pages to make sure the submitting editor is at the right would help there. But AFCs should enjoy the same benefits that AFDs have with deletion sorting and the like. --MASEM 12:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
- To some extent, this is why we have RFCs. On top of that, it's hard to force people to use a process on Wikipedia. Merges and redirects are common outcomes of AFDs, and I think it's healthy to promote those compromises rather than pigeon-holing things into delete/keep. I doubt we'd have much luck stopping people from !voting merge / redirect. Although I suppose we could re-train our admins, but to what end? Randomran (talk) 15:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
- Although you present a novel idea, I think you would face protest for creating a new instruction creep, just as some of previous proposal received. The deal is how does a person decide where to go, AfD or AfC? I think the criterion of retention of history etc. is very subjective, where there would always be editors who won't agree on certain redirects and would believe that the article be simply deleted. In such cases we might have to devise a new vote in AfD where editors could suggest creating an AfC for article in question. The problem here would again be that people would complain on creation of an adjunct process when the existing process somehow, though poorly, is useful in solving the situation. LeaveSleaves 18:14, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
LeaveSleaves has it right. The two ideas cannot be separated, because the editors who review the nominations may find different things. Making it a straight Del/Keep, without options for merges, redirects, and so on, will make many, many people unhappy. AfD already functions, in part as an AfC situation, but with the weight of deletions behind it, which creates pressure to implement redemptive changes to articles, or flat out demonstrate failures in an article. AfC would, by definition, be a step before AfD, and would, almost certainly, be a repeating step before AfD. Bring to AfC, which has no consequences, then it gets minor cosmetic work, then sits fallow till it's AfD'd, involved editors then demand it should've been brought to AfC again ,because, after all, they DID make SOME of the changes the last AfC asked for. AfD gets closed to send to AfC again, lather, rinse, repeat. AfD works much more efficiently for such things, because the consequences are greater, and the time period generally is narrowly defined, though recently i've seen way too much relisting. ThuranX (talk) 19:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
- Masem, I'm not sure that I understand your proposal. Let's say that the dry cleaners down the street decided to create an article on Wikipedia. It's not an awful abuse of Wikipedia, but the mom-and-pop storefront is simply not (ever) going to meet WP:CORP. So it gets taken off to WP:AFC as a non-notable outfit... and then what? And then it gets deleted anyway, so we've complicated the process with no practical benefit? Or then it gets kept in violation of WP:N and WP:CORP, so we've gutted the enforcement mechanism for a widely supported policy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
- I like the idea of having a place to get attention drawn to an article and to suggest what needs improvement or whether it should be merged or redirected, even if the nominator does wish to delete it (which would be a bad-faith nom and speedy keep at AfD). I think RfC probably suffices here though. Dcoetzee 07:19, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
82.6% of articles put up for deletion are by new users
After a couple of months of compiling data, I finally finished the first section of my research: User:Ikip/AfD on average day, thanks to a dozen admins who gave me a copy of the deleted material. I found what many article squadron members already know, that our current deletion policy overwhelmingly affect new users:
- 31 out of 98 articles, nearly one third, which were put up for deletion were created by editors whose very first contributions was the new article.
- 66 out of 98 articles, 67%, which were put up for deletion were created by editors who had 100 contributions or less when they created the article.
- 81 out of 98 articles, 82.6%, which were put up for deletion were created by editors who had 1000 contributions or less when they created the article.
Any ideas how I can figure out if there is a definite link in the drop in editing since October 2007 to the treatment of new users? Ikip (talk) 05:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- Well, it won't really be easy. You would have to show somehow that without the deletion policy written as it was that the userbase would have grown. Otherwise you are stuck. The userbase of wikipedia could show a pattern of growth fitting a Logistic function (which is what is suspected). It could have been some other event (the Seigenthaler incident or the Essjay incident or anything else). Some other internal problem could have pushed users away. In order to dispense with those explanations you need to show both a causal link between deletion and users being discouraged or not signing up in the first place (probably not too hard) and show somehow that this is significant among elements impacting the size/growth of the userbase. The biggest thing to worry about is endogenous variables. For example, towns with stiffer penalties for speeding probably also have a police force that patrols for speeding more closely than towns with more minor penalties. As such, it would be improper to compare the rate of traffic violations in the two towns and conclude that stiffer penalties lead to reduced speeding. You would have to control for the increased enforcement. For wikipedia the argument may go that a culture of editors which brought about Notability may have driven away contributors as much as the deleting itself may have. So we couldn't just look at that decline and say "deletion created this", even if we could factor out other changes. Protonk (talk) 05:40, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- Wow, thank you Protonk, you are incredibly intelligent. I really appreciate you taking the time to write. I figured there was no way to pin the drop in editing on one factor. I just needed to here it from someone as eloquent as you are. Ikip (talk) 06:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- It's not that there is no way. Just that it is hard. Talk to User:Dragons flight. He runs a number of scripts gathering data on wikipedia for various reasons (he even has an old "votes in AfD" breakdown). The big glaring question is "what model best fits wikipedia's growth in area XYZ?" (be it users, edits, pages, and so forth) Once that is answered, the smaller questions of "the model predicts that wikipedia should be at 15,000 active users on July of whatever but we are at 10,000. Is this a significant difference? What may have caused it?" Here is a good (short) paper on general questions of growth. It is out of date (the data they use comes from the August 2006 dump) and newer studies will still be out of date because we haven't done a database dump since 2007 (I think). Protonk (talk) 06:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- Wow, thank you Protonk, you are incredibly intelligent. I really appreciate you taking the time to write. I figured there was no way to pin the drop in editing on one factor. I just needed to here it from someone as eloquent as you are. Ikip (talk) 06:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- This survey has alternate interpretations; I interpret it as being intuitive in that it reflects new editor's lack of understanding of our policies, and as they become more experienced less of their articles get nominated for deletion because they're more careful to follow policy. To support your argument, I think a far more basic question to answer would be whether editors whose articles are nominated for deletion quit significantly more frequently than those who don't, as established by some kind of statistical significance test. Dcoetzee 07:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- Assuming that 80% of all wikipedians have less than 1000 edits (a not-too-outlandish assumption), and 80% of the deleted articles are from editors with less than 1000 edits, then your numbers would indicate simple scalability, and the deletion policies wouldn't affect newbies any differently than established editors. – sgeureka t•c 09:41, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Alternatively, when WP was "wide open" and all the users were "new" the number of deletions was minimal, even though they would have been deleted in droves by the now old-timers. If they used the same criteria all through WP history, we might have a vastly different view. I do know, however, that some people seem to go out of their way to bite newcomers, usually because the newcomer brings a new view to the "owned" articles. And this undoubtedly causes a huge "door slammed on my foot" effect. Collect (talk) 11:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- FYI, I posted this message at: WP:VPP. It is facinating how both postings take a different path. Ikip (talk) 14:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
- Please refrain from multiposting - it fragments discussion. Dcoetzee 20:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Ikip, you really need to put those numbers in context. Right now, it's not much more useful than saying that breastfeeding might reduce the risk of leukemia in children -- without mentioning that even if it's true, you'd have to exclusively breastfeed four million babies to prevent a single case of childhood leukemia.
So: How does the experience level of the other Wikipedia editors compare with that of the people being sent to AfD? Do 80% of accounts also have fewer than 1000 edits? Were the newbie editors actually more likely to end up with a delete conclusion than the highly experienced editors? Looking things over, I don't see any evidence of that. The two most highly experienced editors both had their articles deleted or merged.
Did the AfD process actually change in (or shortly before) October 2007? (You can't blame October's decline in editors on December's change in process, after all.) Did something else change, like preventing newbie editors from starting articles? (This doesn't appear to be the current rule, but it might have been then.)
Also, I note that a remarkable number of those "less than 1000" editors are accurately described as "less than 350 edits." Perhaps there's a more natural way to present the limited information that you have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
- That is why I am here, to get clues on how to answer these questions:
- How does the experience level of the other Wikipedia editors compare with that of the people being sent to AfD? How can I answer this?
- Do 80% of accounts also have fewer than 1000 edits? How can I answer this?
- Did the AfD process actually change in (or shortly before) October 2007? (You can't blame October's decline in editors on December's change in process, after all.) That is what I am asking. Could there be a correlation? And how can I measure it. I have seen this argument before: Did something else change, like preventing newbie editors from starting articles? (This doesn't appear to be the current rule, but it might have been then.) There is a red link argument too.
- "less than 1000" editors are accurately described as "less than 350 edits." Perhaps there's a more natural way to present the limited information that you have. Good idea.
- Thanks for the good suggestions. Ikip (talk) 16:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Malformed AFD's
The following AFD's were malformed in some way and are still open long after they should have been closed:
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ernst Heinrich Landrock
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Queen of the Hours
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarus (language)
What should be done in these cases? relist them? ignore them? regards, ascidian | talk-to-me 18:56, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
- Interesting find. I will relist the two that are without (enough) !votes, maybe all three... SoWhy 19:04, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
- Done. Okay, relisted all three of them. The second one had some discussion, I wonder where that came from. That one looked like a try at DRV but I didn't want to reopen it there, so I decided to let it stay at AFD. Regards SoWhy 19:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks for the response/action. ascidian | talk-to-me 20:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
- Done. Okay, relisted all three of them. The second one had some discussion, I wonder where that came from. That one looked like a try at DRV but I didn't want to reopen it there, so I decided to let it stay at AFD. Regards SoWhy 19:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
A note about the process documentation
After placing the template on the article page itself, the editor should hit Preview to get the redlink to the AfD entry, click on it, perform step two (including saving the AfD) and then go back to the article and save. Because the template is substed, the redlink to the AfD discussion will still be unresolved unless the article page is saved again, which generates another (unnecessary) revision. Noes? Just a thought. §FreeRangeFrog 17:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
- Sounds very complicated. I could take this opportunity to point out again that the complexity of this whole process is totally unnecessary and we only do it because we (or rather a few regulars) have got used to doing it, but it won't do any good because everyone loves bureaucracy (sigh) --Kotniski (talk) 21:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed. But I think most AfD nominations are made using tools like Twinkle, which automates the process completely. I ended up following the instructions only after TW stopped working recently and I had to do it manually for the first time :) §FreeRangeFrog 00:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Simple solution to competing guidelines
I know that this has been discussed before but after reading a current AFD (I won't link it because this is not really about it) where an editor argued that the general notability guidelines didn't matter because the article fails "some other guideline", I make this proposal...
Apply whatever guideline that lets us keep the article.
I realize that there occasionally might be circumstances that would call for an exception to this but when evaluating an article for possible deletion, we should be looking for reasons to keep it and only prod/afd it if none can be found. Furthermore, it would eliminate a lot of wikilawyering over competing guidelines in AFDs. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 17:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
- GNG are only guidelines which means that each individual AFD has some flexibility in deciding the way that the articles will be dealt with. I have always been anxious about some stuff eg ATHLETE precluding against an article on a subject with multiple reliable sources but BLP1E and ONUS also require there to be sufficient sources to write a balanced article rather then a permanent stub. This tension is why we have the problem and since BLP is our most important consideration when we write bio articles I'm nervous about a blanket prohibition to keep. That said I am unimpressed by subguidelines that seek to overrule the GNG but, particularly with BLPs, we need a much more nuanced approach to this problem then this proposal offers. Spartaz Humbug! 17:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
- I see your point. A "guideline" shouldn't overrule WP:BLP which is "policy". What I was referring to are cases of "battling guidelines" such as WP:GNG vs WP:NFF or WP:GNG vs WP:ATHLETE (barring any other BLP issues). --Ron Ritzman (talk) 18:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I'll go ahead and link the AFD that prompted this idea. It's this one and the comment that concerned me was Whether this meets the GNG or not is besides the point; per the basic principles of WP:NFF, a few comments in the media about a film which may or may not go into production is not something tangible enough to warrant it's own article. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 19:08, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
multiple articles
I have found a handful of articles that are about the same type of software that I want to list for deletion. Do I need to list each as their own or is there a way to list them all in one. 16x9 (talk) 17:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:AFD#How_to_list_multiple_related_pages_for_deletion. Make sure you pay attention to the examples of articles which are a good idea to bundle together. If in doubt, list them separately. HTH!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 18:09, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Speedy close nominations
I see this again and again, editors put up articles for deletion for the wrong reason. Take for example:
- Mr. President (title) the nominator stated:
- "Completely and totally unreferenced for over a year. Claims of original research unaddressed for over a year."
- In twenty minutes I found abundant sources and added 8 references. If I hadn't added those sources this bad nomination would have succeed, and the article would have been deleted, because no editor made any effort to fix the article.
I think that we should write into the existing rules here that:
- 1. if an editor puts the article up for deletion citing only that the article is:
- a. Unreferenced,
- b. contains original research...and there are no BLP, Copyright, notability issues in the nomination, (list can be expanded)
- 2. and editors rewrite the article adding references, showing that the original research and referenced,
- 4. then an administrator can immediately close the nomination, because the reason for deletion is moot.
Again, this would only be in limited circumstances, were the nomination complains that the article lacks sources or is full of original sources.
Ikip (talk) 20:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
- Support Administrative immediate close of bad nominations. No waffling... just a simple note to the nom that policy has not been followed and a quick close of the bad AfD. The rules and essays shared above show the specific policies and guidelines far too often ignored without consequences. And conversely, there are no policies or guidelines supporting the validation of a bad nomination. Allowing a bad nom to remain up for AfD awards such sloppy practices and encourages more of the same. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 07:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Support But this is going to need a wider audience than just those who watch the talk page. First time someone does this to one of a group of editors who doesn't feel it's their obligation to improve things (and there are more than a few), there will be a howl. Jclemens (talk) 08:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Oppose This has been rejected before, in various forms. It is instruction creep, needlessly complicated and provocative.
- First the CREEP: WP:BEFORE isn't mandated for a reason. We have no way of knowing whether or not a nominator has completed all of the steps. Sure, there are the cases where someone sees something at NPP, speedies it, has the speedy declined, then takes it to AfD. In those cases, we can make a reasonable assumption that they haven't given an article some time w/ {{nn}} on it or "attempted to improve" the article. But even in that case, they may have made a good faith effort to search for sources and come up empty (many of the sources noted on the AfD are related to the organization). In less obvious cases, we have no idea. Should we require editors to rearrange deck chairs on the titanic for truly inappropriate articles? There is no meaningful way to verify that and we run the risk of messing up to many good nominations in order to provide some deterministic rule for the bad ones.
- Second, it is needlessly complicated. While I support the push to remove "delete, unreferenced" from the lexicon (too many people misunderstand notability to mean "has sources in the article" rather than "the subject has coverage in sources"), this is totally unrelated to an article comprised of original research. An article comprised of original research need not be unreferenced and an unreferenced article need not (though this is more common) be wholly original research (sources could just have not been cited, rather than not used--arguably we can't tell the difference sometimes, but that is another discussion). Why are both on this list of conditions? And what purpose does 3 serve? Rewriting the article is often a helpful outcome at AfD, but it isn't the purpose. In an ideal world, simply noting that references exist should cause editors (and usually does) to disagree w/ the nom and vote keep. Obviously, some people are of the opinion that the state of the article should matter in a run of the mill nomination (I firmly believe that people are swayed heavily by formatting errors, typos, etc. But that is just human nature), but the deletion policy should not be rewritten to make that policy.
- Third, it is provocative. Why does an admin close it as a "Bad" nomination? Why is there the immediate "because the nominator could not make the effort..."? Speedy keep used to be used only for bad faith nominations, but that has since changed as we find reasons to foreclose debate early without accusing the nominator of bad faith (or in this case, merely incompetence?). This policy shouldn't return us to that point. Do we brand the principal authors of a deleted page "bad editors" because they made an article which didn't meet the inclusion policies? No. This is distinct from having social norms about improper nominations. We should (and do) discourage repeat shoddy nominations. I think you will find that admin candidates with a spotty record of AfD noms do poorly more often than those with records of thoughtful and careful nominations. Likewise editors who make particularly egregious errors are usually corrected on their talk page or the AfD page. We don't need to mandate that AfD closes mark the nominator as "lazy."
I'll make another post with past discussions related to this. Protonk (talk) 08:45, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_48#WP:BEFORE, Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_48#Searching_before_nominating, Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_45#Proposal:_Speedy-keep_mechanism_for_bad_content.2Fnotability_articles_that_lack_requests_for_improvement. There are others at WT:SK, WT:DEL, and so on. Consensus can change, and the rejection of ideas like this was hardly unanimous, but those were the ones I found (I remember a few more, but I can't find them now). Protonk (talk) 08:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- I rewrote the proposal. I removed the term "closing as a bad nomination" which will avoid combativeness. Clarifying current policy is not WP:CREEP, there will be no new policy pages, just a clarifying of what should and should not be put up for deletion.
- Everyone of these discussions editors bring up WP:CREEP, I have too, and for good reason, WP:CREEP, along with WP:BURO is an effective, simple argument which sways other editors. No one wants to be seen as supporting more bureaucracy. But this WP:CREEP argument ignores the extensive WP:CREEP which led to the discussion in the first place. I see editors not necessarily arguing WP:CREEP as much as they are arguing, "There is no problem which warrants us fixing this, we prefer the status quo," and so nothing is changed.
- I think there is some major misunderstanding about what I am proposing here, and for that I apologize, because I was not clear enough. I am not proposing to force editors who put up an article for deletion to follow WP:BEFORE, that is the reason I have number 2 (previously 3), after the nomination "editors rewrite the article adding references", only after editors show that the article is not OR and is not unreferenced, an administrator can close the nomination. Ikip (talk) 09:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Ok. I'm still inclined to oppose this, though not as strongly as before. Here's a hash at explaining why. IMO, a nomination that says only "this article is unsourced, delete" is always inadequate. In a perfect world, such nominations would be met with a statement like "Keep, nomination does not state a reason for deletion." We don't live in that world, so we get plenty of "per nom" comments (I've talked about this in other venues...I can link as needed). We do have a strong community consensus against deleting articles simply because they are unsourced (This may not show up in practice, but every attempt to make a deletion criteria for unsourced articles, even unsourced BLPs goes down in flames). So we don't need that third step (the rescue). The second criteria (the OR bit) is still off base--articles which have so much OR that only deletion can save them are not the same as unreferenced articles. People conflate them sometimes, and there is a linkage, but the two are not necessarily the same. Lastly, I hope that any article where the reason for deletion noted in the nom is fixed would not be deleted in the end. In most cases, I see that this is not the case. where it is, those deletions are often overturned at DRV. There is a large interpretive problem here--some people have different thresholds for what qualifies as "having obviated the reason for deletion", but in cases where reasonable people agree that the deletion nom is moot, the article is normally kept. That's what makes this WP:CREEP. Protonk (talk) 22:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- I definitely see the issue and sympathize that there is a problem, but I'm swayed by the need to avoid instruction creep and avoid writing policies and guidelines that encourage people to be combative. If an AfD nomination, or anything else on Wikipedia, is truly ridiculous, you can do anything you want speedily per WP:IAR. If the person is truly out of bounds but sincere and in good faith, just be patient and have a word with them in a polite, supportive way rather than relying on bureaucratic process. If they're an out of control editor or acting in bad faith there's a different pathway for dealing with that. If you're within bounds nobody is going to object to your speedy close or simply reverting a ridiculous AfD nomination. If your IAR-ing tendentiously people will call you on it. I would hate to enshrine any of this as a policy or guideline, it's just an "apply common sense" kind of thing. Wikidemon (talk) 09:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose. People should still judge whether the added source(s) are adequate (reliable, independent, and really about the subject at hand). By your rule, would you have speedy closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Parallels in the Teachings of Christ and Buddha as a bad nomination? Fram (talk) 09:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Since I can't see the article, I don't know. But if editors were able to find good references for the article, which I assume they were not, the OR argument would be moot. Ikip (talk) 09:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- The first keep argument gave a source. It is not up to an admin to decide on his own that it is a good or bad source, and to close the AfD accordingly. More people should have a look at the rewritten article and the source(s) used to decide if it is sufficient or not. Fram (talk) 10:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Since I can't see the article, I don't know. But if editors were able to find good references for the article, which I assume they were not, the OR argument would be moot. Ikip (talk) 09:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose the on-going attempts by the partisan ARS (who now have the gall to proclaim they are saving wikipedia from the rest of us) to slant the project to their liking, so most certainly oppose this. --Cameron Scott (talk) 10:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Dude, aren't you busy with your white-wash? bit late, the cat is out of the bag. --Cameron Scott (talk) 11:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Ikip speaks for Ikip only, although others are free to agree with him. I'm proud to be both a member of ARS and to have deleted over 4,000 articles. There's nothing inherently partisan or inclusionist about ARS--I value improving marginal stuff as highly as I do getting rid of stuff that has no place in Wikipedia. Let's not bash the ARS with broad strokes here, please. Jclemens (talk) 16:16, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Dude, aren't you busy with your white-wash? bit late, the cat is out of the bag. --Cameron Scott (talk) 11:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Oppose along the lines of Protonk's excellent assessment- this is instruction creep. In fact, it may be superfluous to WP:DEL. While the incidents Ikip mentions are worrisome, they're most likely misunderstandings of deletion policy. And in any case, I ask you, why do we even need a "special case" to force a speedy close when there is a good faith, albeit faulty, nomination? Look at it this way:
- New system: Editor makes faulty nomination, while there are some "per nom" !votes before an administrator sees it, nobody makes a valid deletion argument. The administrator sees the faulty rationale and that there aren't any valid delete !votes. Administrator speedy closes.
- Current system: Editor makes faulty nomination, there are some "per nom" !votes, but nobody makes a valid argument for deletion over the course of the AfD. It's my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the administrator would be very likely expected to close as keep, or at least relist. I see the reason as being that any semblance of consensus established in the AfD is not sufficient to override the consensus described in the deletion policy.
- I believe the main difference here is that in the new system, an AfD established on faulty grounds doesn't run to term. I don't like this for two reasons:
- The entire purpose of the AfD process is to discuss whether an article should be included in Wikipedia. Speedily closing good faith nominations would in fact serve to suppress discussion, and make the AfD process even more difficult for newbies to understand than it already is.
- While the AfD process is not intended for article improvement, it does occasionally have that side effect. The reason being that AfDs, as they should, bring a specific problematic article to the attention of the wider community, potentially containing editors who can help improve the article in question. Speedily closing an AfD on a problematic article (and let's face it, a long-term unreferenced article is problematic) would serve to suppress that drive to improvement.
- But all this aside- generally when you disagree with a nominator's rationale (e.g., it isn't in line with WP:DEL) you should !vote "keep". That, and a quick explanation as to why the rationale is faulty, should be reason enough for the closing admin to keep the article when the AfD period ends. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 22:51, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Your assessment is largely correct for rescued articles, but it unfortunately doesn't well describe current conditions for articles that receive no treatment. Unfortunately, it is possible to have a relatively inadequate nomination, a few "per nom" or likewise unconvincing arguments (even "nn" would be better, assuming that the poster knew that that implied), and have an administrator close a unanimous discussion as delete. It happens quite a bit. I don't really know how to fix it, I just have a hint of what might not work. I have a guess that what fixes problems like that is constant vigilance by neutral editors willing to put in gobs of time and effort into shepherding "bad" nominations to an appropriate direction. Just like the BLP "problem", the orphan "problem", the sourcing "problem", the solution is not one that people want to hear. but any solution that isn't dependent upon loans of person-hours (in an environment that I have honestly lost my taste for) will have to be pretty clever in order to not fail. For an example of technical solutions which have simplified seemingly intractable problems on wikipedia, compare WP:SPI to the previously split RFCU/SSP, for an example of a case where architectural and rules changes help but are not sufficient without considerable human effort, see Wikipedia:Stub, which has some helpful processes and procedures but would be pointless without the folks from the stub sorting project. For an example of how an architectural change fails completely, see Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages--NPP is a great project and they do a lot of quality work. The physical code change to create "patrolled revisions"....not so much. Many revisions and pages expire from the queue (after a month) without having been patrolled, limiting the flag's effectiveness at differentiating between seen and unseen edits. Just a couple of thoughts. Protonk (talk) 23:10, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- As there is a current interest in discouraging early closes of all outcomes (WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive182#Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, #Proposal to discourage early "delete" closes), I think there would be general opposition to adding a new WP:Speedy keep criterion. Flatscan (talk) 04:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- Pretty much in the deletion guideline already. If the sources you added are indeed sufficient to support inclusion, and the nominator agrees that the sources you found are sufficient to support the article, s/he will typically withdraw the nomination, and the AFD will draw a bunch of "keep"-votes while any "delete"-votes are frequently changed; which allows a speedy keep according to criterion 1. I oppose making the addition of sources an automatic close, because sometimes the sources added are e.g. not sufficiently reliable, and some people may still want the article deleted. Sometimes this may be because of an obstinate nominator (for an extreme example, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ellen Hambro the nominator wasn't satisfied even when a traditional paper encyclopedia article on the subject was presented as a source), but usually, it is best to wait a few hours to see what course the debate takes after you have added the sources. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Modification to AfD template
Hi, I have requested a feature to be added to Twinkle but it needs consensus here. Basically this is a proposal to modify the AfD template to automatically add the {{firstarticle}} template to new user_talk pages along with AfD notification. Thoughts and comments are welcome. Thanks!—Magic.Wiki (talk) 02:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- So you mean that in the event that the user being notified has no talkpage (i.e., it's a redlink), they'll get
{{firstarticle}}
in addition to{{AFDWarning}}
? Why not just use{{AFDWarningNew}}
as the AFD page currently suggests, which somewhat combines both welcome and warning? Don't get me wrong though, I think it's a good idea in terms of minimizing the BITEyness of AFD and generally support this idea. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 21:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)- That'd be the logic, yes.
{{firstarticle}}
offers quite a bit more than{{AFDWarningNew}}
; I could actually see using both. There'd be a bit redundancy with the "please sign with four tildes" advice, but that could easily be removed from the AFD warning if they are used together.
The automatic welcome messages were added to the CSD warnings in late November 2008, and seem to have been recieved quite well. They are added automatically by both Twinkle and Huggle, and by some of the manual warnings. With the AfD warnings, I was thinking about changing{{AFDWarning}}
to add that functionality, which means it would leave the welcome message on a previously redlinked user talk page when added manually and when added through a tool. --Amalthea 04:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)- Yes please, I think it's a good idea. I usually add {{subst:welcome}} or a customised equivalent to an empty talk page before a warning (and was a bit surprised when the automatic CSD ones started adding a second welcome); but it would save trouble and help avoid BITEyness. JohnCD (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
- That'd be the logic, yes.
AFD nominator
I'm not sure what the prerequisites are for being an AFD nominator, but this user:
has less than 40 edits and has made 4 afd nominations. My question is are there some type of "requirements" for afd nominators? Smallman12q (talk) 21:39, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- I don't see any such edit count requirement in the policy. Even IP users can nominate articles for deletion. —Magic.Wiki (talk) 09:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- ...Although they can't complete the nomination, since you need to create a page for an AfD nomination, which IP's can't do. Apart from that procedural aspect, everyone can nominate articles for deletion (speey, prod or AfD), and everyone who does so correctly (not technically correct, but correct according to our content policies) is encouraged to continue doing this, even if it is the only contribution they make to Wikipedia. If we would e.g. have a user whose only edits were nominating hoaxes for deletion, and said editor was correct in most cases, then he or she should receive a barnstar for that work. Fram (talk) 09:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
It's possible that such nominations are long time IP editors who create accounts to nominate due to the previously mentioned technical barriers to completing such nominations. IMHO WP:AGF requires us to assume that this is the case unless we have evidence to the contrary. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 15:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Protecting closed AfD debates from further editing
I have encountered a few instances where, despite the red warnings at top and bottom, people have continued to edit the AfD debate after it has been closed. Would it be a good idea to have the AfD page routinely protected by the closing admin? JohnCD (talk) 17:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- Not unless there's a good indication that the after-the-fact edits make a widespread problem. If someone's going in and changing the outcome with no good reason, there's good reason to block the offender, not protect the discussion. Jclemens (talk) 17:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- But what valid reason could there be for anyone (except perhaps the closing admin) to edit the discussion after close? JohnCD (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- Adding an update or explanation for one's actions, apologizing for or striking an incivility added in the heat of the moment, and other minor notations, as an example. Further, I think there's a general preference not to protect things. A regime of automatically protecting archive pages would be a non-trivial amount of work. There are nonadmin closures and we don't allow admin-bots. Wikidemon (talk) 18:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- But what valid reason could there be for anyone (except perhaps the closing admin) to edit the discussion after close? JohnCD (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- I try to watchlist all the AfDs I close, and very rarely is there ever an edit after the fact. I think there have only been two that needed protection (actually, just semi-protection) because editors kept coming back and changing or adding after the close.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- Comment to Wikidemon: I can see those are reasons why people might want to revise, but I think there is a good reason for the red warnings: if the question is revisited, say at DRV or a later AfD, the record ought to show the actual debate which led the closing admin to his conclusion, not what people wish they had said or think they ought to have said. But I agree it's probably not a serious problem. Irrelevant aside: I'm reminded of the rhyme about the secretary writing the cabinet minutes, who "...strives to record and report, what he thinks they will think that they ought to have thought." JohnCD (talk) 22:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- I try to watchlist all the AfDs I close, and very rarely is there ever an edit after the fact. I think there have only been two that needed protection (actually, just semi-protection) because editors kept coming back and changing or adding after the close.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Occasionally there is a valid reason to edit a closed AFD discussion. The closer's rationale in this AFD referenced a WP:AN/I thread. I changed it to point to the archive.--Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
- One of my pet hates is that closers leave the {{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}} template on closed AfDs's, which includes them in Category:AfD debates and its related subcategories - these categories are for open AfDs. I have twice recently gone through all the AfD's in Category:AfD debates and removed this template from many that are closed (see my contributions on Feb 15th and Jan 23rd). I have no objection to closed AfDs being protected due to concerns over editing a closed debate, but it annoys me when I click on a link in a category to find the debate has already been closed. Could a bot check and fix this? Here are some closed Afds (which I have not fixed) currently affected by this problem:1 2 3 4 . Otherwise I would support a protection of closed AfDs, regards ascidian | talk-to-me 23:40, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
- The first one by MBisanz was likely closed using the Mr-Zman AFD closing script which is suppose to dot all the I's and cross all the T's but occasionally it leaves something undone. I probably should start checking my script closes to see if it's removing that template. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Help? So lost.
Been deleted before for non-notabillity. Would have done an AFD but apparently I need the previous article name? I only know an old bio about Owen had been deleted, but it might have had a different format for the title for all I know. So confusing. Lots42 (talk) 01:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
AfD nomination statistics
From the October 1 2008 through February 18 2009 AfD logs, here are statistics for nominators with 35 or more nominations:
Nominator | Nominations | Keeps | Deletes | Keep % | Delete % |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kww | 36 | 4 | 27 | 11.11 | 75.00 |
Epbr123 | 36 | 2 | 31 | 5.56 | 86.11 |
VirtualSteve | 36 | 11 | 15 | 30.56 | 41.67 |
The Rolling Camel | 37 | 9 | 22 | 24.32 | 59.46 |
Fvw | 37 | 5 | 30 | 13.51 | 81.08 |
Stifle/wizard | 37 | 21 | 11 | 56.76 | 29.73 |
NurseryRhyme | 38 | 10 | 23 | 26.32 | 60.53 |
Tnxman307 | 38 | 2 | 29 | 5.26 | 76.32 |
Roleplayer | 39 | 1 | 32 | 2.56 | 82.05 |
Sandstein | 39 | 3 | 28 | 7.69 | 71.79 |
Rtphokie | 40 | 16 | 3 | 40.00 | 7.50 |
Flewis | 40 | 10 | 22 | 25.00 | 55.00 |
Mattinbgn | 41 | 5 | 30 | 12.20 | 73.17 |
Mr Senseless | 41 | 6 | 27 | 14.63 | 65.85 |
Graymornings | 46 | 10 | 30 | 21.74 | 65.22 |
Ros0709 | 46 | 12 | 30 | 26.09 | 65.22 |
Suntag | 47 | 11 | 26 | 23.40 | 55.32 |
JohnCD | 47 | 1 | 43 | 2.13 | 91.49 |
JaGa | 49 | 8 | 33 | 16.33 | 67.35 |
Fabrictramp | 50 | 3 | 42 | 6.00 | 84.00 |
McWomble | 50 | 9 | 29 | 18.00 | 58.00 |
TheFarix | 50 | 2 | 40 | 4.00 | 80.00 |
Paul75 | 51 | 2 | 34 | 3.92 | 66.67 |
MacGyverMagic | 53 | 8 | 41 | 15.09 | 77.36 |
JBsupreme | 53 | 18 | 18 | 33.96 | 33.96 |
WikiDan61 | 54 | 5 | 40 | 9.26 | 74.07 |
KurtRaschke | 57 | 10 | 36 | 17.54 | 63.16 |
Oscarthecat | 57 | 8 | 42 | 14.04 | 73.68 |
SchuminWeb | 57 | 10 | 40 | 17.54 | 70.18 |
Roux | 57 | 8 | 39 | 14.04 | 68.42 |
VasileGaburici (page does not exist) | 59 | 11 | 32 | 18.64 | 54.24 |
Undead warrior | 60 | 4 | 37 | 6.67 | 61.67 |
THF | 61 | 20 | 28 | 32.79 | 45.90 |
Ecoleetage | 62 | 2 | 47 | 3.23 | 75.81 |
JzG/help | 63 | 30 | 25 | 47.62 | 39.68 |
Hello Control | 64 | 4 | 48 | 6.25 | 75.00 |
Biruitorul | 64 | 13 | 41 | 20.31 | 64.06 |
Michellecrisp | 64 | 22 | 21 | 34.38 | 32.81 |
Mufka | 66 | 11 | 39 | 16.67 | 59.09 |
Largoplazo | 66 | 8 | 49 | 12.12 | 74.24 |
Ironholds | 73 | 4 | 54 | 5.48 | 73.97 |
Gmatsuda | 74 | 17 | 42 | 22.97 | 56.76 |
Collectonian | 75 | 32 | 21 | 42.67 | 28.00 |
Timtrent | 77 | 15 | 45 | 19.48 | 58.44 |
Carlossuarez46 | 85 | 15 | 57 | 17.65 | 67.06 |
RHaworth | 90 | 12 | 70 | 13.33 | 77.78 |
Mr. Vernon | 90 | 10 | 71 | 11.11 | 78.89 |
Girolamo Savonarola | 91 | 16 | 61 | 17.58 | 67.03 |
Magioladitis | 98 | 7 | 64 | 7.14 | 65.31 |
Richardcavell | 114 | 7 | 93 | 6.14 | 81.58 |
Blanchardb | 115 | 6 | 88 | 5.22 | 76.52 |
ScienceApologist | 119 | 67 | 26 | 56.30 | 21.85 |
Bongomatic | 128 | 32 | 65 | 25.00 | 50.78 |
Tavix | 129 | 32 | 60 | 24.81 | 46.51 |
Mayalld | 133 | 19 | 86 | 14.29 | 64.66 |
Schuym1 | 237 | 33 | 131 | 13.92 | 55.27 |
TenPoundHammer/Country | 265 | 67 | 120 | 25.28 | 45.28 |
TTN | 465 | 64 | 103 | 13.76 | 22.15 |
(These results were obtained by scraping AfD results using an automated script; there are most likely errors arising from this process, but I believe the general results are valid. Nominations not resulting in a "keep" or "delete" are included in the nominations count, but not the keep or delete counts. Please let me know of any discrepancies. – 74 01:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC))
(Table updated to reflect removal of a few bugs that mildly over-counted nominations and mildly under-counted keeps and deletes. Signatures with a link to user's talk page are now also included, leading to moderate to large changes for those editors. – 74 12:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC))
(Table updated to remove the influence of another bug: nominations with links to other users' pages were being mis-attributed to those users. This was discovered when JohnCD pointed out his AfD nomination stats were missing. Now the last valid user link in the nomination line is used (which may still fail for multi-line nominations and oddly-formed nominations). – 74 16:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC))
Analysis
From the data, it would appear that some users take WP:BEFORE significantly more seriously than others. Now I would expect some variation based on the controversy of the nominations, but I think some of the excessive results above are a clear indication that process is not being followed in all cases. I believe we need a system to reign in those who are abusing AfD for their own purposes and limit the amount of effort wasted debating poor AfDs. – 74 01:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- I appreciate the work that went into this, but I'm not sure that the information presented here is sufficient to judge whether or not someone has followed BEFORE. I understand the connection, those with high rejection rates are probably less likely to have done their due diligence. But it could also come from types of articles they nominate, persuasive ability in the nomination or ability to search for sources. And also, if these folks are making bad nominations and the community is rejecting them by keeping the articles, then the system is working. I agree that some improvement can be made wrt to keeping the really bad nominations out, though. Protonk (talk) 01:19, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- The purpose of the system is not to churn endlessly—after all, we've got an encyclopedia to write. Every minute spent handling a poor/invalid AfD is one minute not spent improving Wikipedia. I'm not proposing we go ban the top X offenders; I'm simply proposing we come up with some type of control system to minimize wasted time in the future. The exact details of such a system are open for community debate. – 74 01:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- The problem with that is the assumption of some zero sum tradeoff. I submit that people don't edit AfD because there are lots of nominations there, but because they are looking for something to edit that isn't mainspace. It is honestly much easier to quick-check some sources and say "yes" or "no" to a deletion nomination than it is to find some subject where you have some expertise, get a source, summarize it and cite it. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be crapping on the bad nominators. But this list isn't sufficient to identify them. Protonk (talk) 02:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- The purpose of the system is not to churn endlessly—after all, we've got an encyclopedia to write. Every minute spent handling a poor/invalid AfD is one minute not spent improving Wikipedia. I'm not proposing we go ban the top X offenders; I'm simply proposing we come up with some type of control system to minimize wasted time in the future. The exact details of such a system are open for community debate. – 74 01:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Excellent stuff :) I pity we can't have merge statistics. --KrebMarkt 07:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- I was asked to detail more. What additional information we can't get is the number of merge discussion started and their results as most Afd nominators are also in the merge business. Yet again WP:Before somewhat apply and bad habits appear again. A personal example Talk:Wanted_(manga)#Merge. That issue doesn't concern just one editor. I truly regret we can have merge discussion numbers & statistics so we could get some input about Afd in the guise of merge practice. --KrebMarkt 08:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- I can see at least one OTRS volunteer in the list (not sure of a couple more and can't be bothers to log into OTRS to check) and you need to bear in mind that OTRS members often end up nominating articles on behalf of the subject. I think for any meaninful analysis we need a breakdown what type of article as well as the reason for the nomination were affected. Otherwise this is all headline but no context.Spartaz Humbug! 09:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- It need to be seriously scrutinized before any conclusion. --KrebMarkt 09:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- Wow, that is incredible, no one here will be impressed, and most people will downnplay or dismisse the results but I sure am impressed, you deserves a barnstar.Ikip (talk) 16:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with Protunk: "I'm not sure that the information presented here is sufficient to judge whether or not someone has followed BEFORE." to do this you would have to delve in to the realm of the "subjective".
- First you could find out if editors did any work on those articles before the AfD (I would guess that 95% had not). The subjective question, which requires access to all of those deleted articles, is, "Was the article worth saving"? Because WP:BEFORE is not necessary if the article is worthless. Wait, maybe you could study the articles that were saved, and see what percent the editor attempted WP:BEFORE before putting the article up for deletion? I would happily help you with this endeavor. Ikip (talk) 17:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- Wow, that is incredible, no one here will be impressed, and most people will downnplay or dismisse the results but I sure am impressed, you deserves a barnstar.Ikip (talk) 16:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) Before making too many conclusions (and it is indeed clear that some have a much laxer standard for what they consider deletable than they ought) we should try to categorize the AfDs in some way -- I would suggest "by reason given" as a suitable one -- and see whether any given reason ("notability" or any other reason) appears to be stronger or weaker than others. We should also eliminate clearly procedural ones from the counts (Misspelled titles and the like). My guess is that would reduce the number to analyze by at least a third. Collect (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- It's a bit too simple to make the equation, which is implied here, "AfD followed by Keep = bad nomination." I can think of cases where an absolutely nonsense, in fact probably hoax, article at AfD attracted a specialist who, recognising that the title was relevant to his subject, rewrote the article completely so that only the title survived. Without the nomination the nonsense article, perhaps tagged for cleanup, would probably have lingered on. It's unfortunate but true that cleanup tags don't give as much visibility to a problem article. JohnCD (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- I think this is an interesting starting point, but tells us almost nothing by itself. I'm sure that some of these editors failed to follow WP:BEFORE. But then others did follow WP:BEFORE. Maybe they failed to find a way to improve the article, but someone else did. Maybe the article didn't improve, and the nominator has a habit of trudging into subject areas that have fallen under the WP:OWNership of one or a few stubborn editors. Maybe the AFD closed as no consensus, and will be deleted later once people have had time to conclude that the article has no potential.
- Moreover, even if there are a few sloppy nominators -- which there always have been and always will be -- I think this actually shows how the system is working just fine. An AFD is really just the start of a discussion, and a nominator won't get too far without cooperation from the community. Whatever you're doing -- creating articles, nominating articles for deletion, adding alleged facts -- you need a consensus to make it happen. That's the way Wikipedia has always worked, and the system still basically polices itself. Randomran (talk) 17:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- Your comparison is all well and good, but we do have a process to handle users whose inputs are clearly against consensus: vandals get blocked, trolls get blocked, etc. We appear to have no such process for AfD, allowing users free reign to apply whatever standards for nomination they like. I believe "sloppy" nominations should be discouraged, not accepted as a necessary part of the system. Currently only the most flagrant violators draw enough wrath for sanctions—that's akin to not blocking a vandal because half his edits aren't bad. – 74 18:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
A link to http://toolserver.org/~sql/afd.php for each user will give a rough estimate of AfDs that resulted in redirects (one way or another). I suspect that if we group "redirected" with "deleted", that the percentages for some of these folks will increase a bit, especially guys like TTN. there may be some discussion was to whether or not "merge" goes with "keep", but that's another element of subjective analysis. Protonk (talk) 17:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
- Again, I am certain that the majority, up to 95% of the nominations no one followed WP:BEFORE. I will study JohnCD's keeps, who posted above, to test that theory. There is no way to satisfactorily answer the question: Was it worthy of deletion, was it worthy of being kept? This is subjective. johnCD, and I only bring him up cause he is on the list, and he posted here, of course thought that all the AFDs were worthy, and still does.
- I think Randomran's comments sums up the majorty of people's feelings here on this policy page:
- "Moreover, even if there are a few sloppy nominators -- which there always have been and always will be -- I think this actually shows how the system is working just fine."
- It is the same opinion I hear over and over again on this page, no matter what evidence is presented. When I posted User:Ikip/AfD on average day, which showed that 76.5% of articles deleted were created by editors with 350 contributions or less, this was the same reaction.
- The challenge is too show that these are more than a couple of "mistakes", but their are fundamental problems with the entire AfD system, and not present it here, but present it to the entire wikipedia community.
- When PC Pro editor had the article The Political Quarterly speedy deleted, the nominator went on to apologize, then the deletor went on to delete deleted an additional 2585 images and pages. The same it was a "mistake" argument was given, and Cameron Scott, stated today, "Great job with the table - I'm a strong deletionist and would delete half of the wiki if I got my way, which is why oversight is important", closed the discussion. Giving a distinct message, simialr to Randomran's, Move on, there is nothing to see here... Ikip (talk) 18:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)