Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/Archive 47

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Draft/Incubation policy RFC

Currently under discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Clarification_over_main-space_to_draft-space_moves.

Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Incubation and Wikipedia:Drafts states that users may move articles into the draft space. But the article incubator explictly disallowed "articles which have not gone through a deletion process". Current deletion policy allows the movement of any article deemed to "not yet meet Wikipedia's quality standards", does this mean CSD candidates, or can other cleanup candidates be removed from the main space? - hahnchen 22:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Draft deletion discussion

I started a discussion on draft deletion policy at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review#Policy_discussion:_When_is_it_appropriate_to_delete_stale_drafts.3F. It has been pointed out to me that this page might have been a better place to start that, but it's already ongoing, so let's continue it where it is. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:50, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Recommended deletions

Given that IP's can't create AfD's there needs to be a more formal process to recommend deletions for users to act upon if they agree to do so. The following articles should be going to AfD; Hartley Jackson, Amy Action, Steve Rackman, WrestleClash, Explosive Pro Wrestling, Melbourne City Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Alliance Australia. 101.182.144.48 (talk) 09:43, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I think that IPs could create drafts for these, and then use AFC or a willing user to finish the move. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:09, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
Are you proposing that the IP create Draft:WP:Articles for deletion/Hartley Jackson (2nd nomination)?  How would they do that?  Thanks, Unscintillating (talk) 02:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I was thinking about this exact concept just minutes before discovering this subsection.  The editors who move IP nominations into AfD-space without adding value seem to think they are relieved of responsibility to prepare the community, so we end up with low-quality AfD noms in the current situation.  Yet it seems entirely possible that experienced editors willing to do WP:BEFORE would volunteer to provide high-quality AfD nominations based on the request on a request page.  Further, such a page provides a working vehicle to topic-ban AfD-nomination trouble-makers from directly creating new AfDs, without the POV-deletionists being able to argue that the right-to-delete was being impaired.  Looks like a win-win to me.  I'd suggest a page something like [[WP:.../Requests for AfD nominations]].  Unscintillating (talk) 17:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Interesting that many of those articles have been deletion targets of IPs involved in past and current sockpuppet investigations. GaryColemanFan (talk) 17:11, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • My view is that as long as the nomination is being made in good faith, and would not result in a WP:Speedy Keep close, we should facilitate unregistered users who wish to make an AfD nomination. In the past, I have created the AFD page and transferred the deletion rational when I have found AfD templates added to an article by an IP editor, that either had a message on the talk page, or a sufficient edit summary to explain why it should be deleted. Honestly, I think this is a better approach, as it wont involve the creation of additional pages (such as in AFC space) until a registered editor has reviewed the reason for the nomination, while at the same time, respecting the contributions of IP editors who act in good faith to improve the encyclopedia. If the nomination rationale is made in good faith, but insufficient to justify deletion, it can be dealt with through the normal AfD process, just as when a registered editor makes the same type of nomination. Monty845 17:21, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
    • "In good faith" being key words, as several of these are articles targeted by IPs who were then blocked for a year as sockpuppets of a banned user, and others are targeted by a user who is currently the subject of a sockpuppet investigation involving the IP who initiated this thread. GaryColemanFan (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
    • By definition, the [[WP:.../Requests for AfD nominations]] page would be used by people who cannot create new pages, so there would only be the one new project page.  Unscintillating (talk) 17:38, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I fear that any "Request for AfD" page is likely to be flooded with large numbers of bad requests, and to result in large numbers of bad nominations, so I don't support this. My provisional preference is to further restrict the right to make AfD nominations (in cases that do not have special considerations, such as BLPs) by creating a new "AfD nominator" user right. James500 (talk) 18:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Registered users are already flooding AfD with large numbers of bad nominations, even without the help of anonymous users. Contrary to what is said below, this is a serious problem. What we need is a way to restrict nominations. James500 (talk) 11:22, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • It's objectively untrue that AfD is being flooded with bad nominations. The majority of nominations end with consensus to delete the article. Anyone can verify this for themselves. I picked a day at random, (Feb 1 2015), and found that of the 58 nominations only 10 ended as keep. Of the 58 discussions on that day I counted 34 deletions, five redirects, and four merges (and five No-consensus). Thus about 75% of nominations ended up with consensus that the article should not remain, and the maximum possible rate assuming all keep decisions were bad nominations, is about 17%. It just is not true that AfD is full of bad nominations. Reyk YO! 11:50, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • So 24 out of 58 nominations failed. My reading of that data is that 41% of the nominations did not match the result and could be regarded as "bad" on that line of reasoning. Even 17% is far too high. That number should not exceed, or even approach, 1%. In any event, there are far too many bad deletions, because AfD is also being flooded with bad delete votes, so the fact that an article was deleted does not mean it should have been. James500 (talk) 12:05, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • That's a very unreasonable interpretation. It would be more correct to say that 43 out of 58 agreed that there was a problem and fixed it. Another five were undecided. A proposal isn't bad or unreasonable just because it fails to gain consensus. If you require proposals to have a 100% success rate, I would need to remind you of your own bad track record of proposing guidelines- you're batting .000 with unanimous opposition at the moment. Of course you claim, without evidence or reasoning, that AfD is being flooded with bad delete votes, but that's only because you disagree with them, not because they are wrong. Of course you feel the need to try to restrict or ban people from AfD, because they keep making persuasive and successful arguments to delete crappy articles, and you can't handle it. That's how we get woeful proposals like WP:DELREF2015, where you advocate restricting everyone except an elite squad of hardcore inclusionists from AfD. Fortunately, everyone knows you're always wrong and your bannathon has no chance whatsoever of being enacted. Reyk YO! 16:13, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • (1) Please stop violating WP:AVOIDYOU. (2) I have no intention of responding to the substance of your inaccurate and irrelevant off topic comments. (3) The page you pointed to is a 'brainstorming' exercise that attempts to list everything that could be done, to facilitate further investigation, not a list of positive recommendations as to what should be done, as I think you are well aware. (4) The only editor to disagree with my comments above in this thread is you. (5) In nine of those nominations, the problem agreed on was one that can be solved without an AfD, thus constituting a waste of time. But, more importantly, that problem was not the one alleged by the nominator. In another five, everyone's time was wasted because there was no agreement. What concerns me is people making awful arguments that are only 'persuasive' to people who lack the intelligence or education to see through them, or who regard AfD as some kind of computer game the object of which is to rack up as many kills as possible. (6) Deletion is a special case because it is the cause of the editor retention emergency. James500 (talk) 17:48, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • (1) How does one stop doing what one hasn't done? (2) You're demanding perfection of AfD nominators but you accept a 100% failure rate for yourself. This is neither inaccurate nor off-topic. (3) Riiiiiiight. :rolleyes: (4) And you're going to interpret that as everyone agreeing with you? (5) You're going to call the majority of AfD participants and closing administrators unintelligent and uneducated? (6) [citation needed]. Reyk YO! 18:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • (1) You did do it. (2) I have no intention of responding to the substance of your misleading and irrelevant off topic comments. (3) I have no idea what you mean by that. (4) I didn't say that. (5) I did not say that those characteristics were possessed by the majority. (6) WP:BLUE. (7) AfD nominations are not proposals. They are so dissimilar that any comparison would be invalid. I do not propose to restrict the right to make proposals. I am not aware that there is a problem with proposals. There is certainly nothing to compare with the scale of thousands and thousands and thousands of bad AfDs. James500 (talk) 21:10, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • What is wrong with the system we have now? Currently, IPs who want to start an AfD need to request a registered user to complete the last step. This stops the obviously invalid nominations because they need to go through another editor. Anyway, there does not actually seem to be a huge demand for this service. Maybe a couple of times a month, tops. I have done this on behalf of an IP before, and I'll do so for any nomination I think sounds plausible whether I agree with it or not. My impression is about ten or twelve times, and about half the time the article ends up deleted, and I have not yet had to decline one for being obviously ridiculous. So I do not think there is any serious problem with flooding AfD with really poor nominations. Reyk YO! 22:00, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm only talking about AfDs that an IP has requested someone to complete. That was an unusual situation since the IP editor didn't ask anyone to complete the nomination. If they had, I would have said no. What they actually did was create the talk page of the nonexistent AfD. One of the article's editors asked for someone to do something about it. To clean up, I created the AfD and immediately closed it. I don't remember now why I didn't speedy tag it under WP:CSD#G8, which would also have been OK. Nobody objected to my close so it must have been the right one. Reyk YO! 07:28, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • If IPs want a more convenient way for them to nominate articles for deletion, then we already have one: they can register for an account and nominate them like anyone else. Requests for registered editors to complete AfD nominations are just that, requests, and registered editors are perfectly entitled to decline them. The volume of these requests is in any case pretty low. While I certainly wouldn't go as far as saying registered editors have to agree with requested nominations to start them, they should decline any cases where the request is obviously frivolous or disruptive or where the AfD would be speedily closed. Hut 8.5 11:10, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Rather than comment at length, repeating what others have already said, I endorse 100% what Hut 8.5 said immediately above. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:31, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Agreed, Hut puts it well and I ahve nothing to add except to note tha the IP who proposed this has now been blocked for all sorts of obnoxious disruptive editing. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:05, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
  • IPs (editors who have habitually been editing as IPs) can register. Registering has benefits that easily outweigh not registering. Also, the changing natures of IPs, and the lack of implied single identity, means that IPs does fit well in meta discussions. IPs are most certainly welcome to participate in deletion discussions on articles they have a history editing, but IPs wandering the project attempting broad managements is uncomfortable due to their lesser accountability. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:42, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree with Hut 8.5, those who want to take part in the community (rather than just editing) should register an account. I can't really see the advantage of this proposal, it still ends up with the IPs nomination needing reviewing and the process completing by a registered editor. That's pretty much what we have already. SpinningSpark 15:46, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Sandbox pages

There should be a discussion of policy and mechanism for an editor dleting pages in his sandbox. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

There is already such a mechanism: pages in userspace can be speedily deleted under U1 by any admin if the user they belong to requests it. This includes user sandboxes. Hut 8.5 20:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Page mover user right proposal

A proposed user right, Wikipedia:Page mover, would expand the ability to move pages without leaving a redirect behind to non-administrators. This, in effect, is a speedy deletion. Interested editors can express their opinion at Wikipedia talk:Page mover#RFC - Proposed: "Page mover" permission to be created.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 19:11, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Why do we delete the talk pages of deleted articles?

Typically when an article is deleted, the talk page is also deleted under WP:G8 at the same time. I've been wondering why we do this. Some have many good faith talk page posts, and we ought to preserve editor's contributions. I can't see any harm in having orphaned talk pages, and it might help other editors to see why the article was deleted. Thoughts? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:12, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

That's a good question. I wonder if it would make sense to leave this to the admin's discretion: if there's anything interesting on the page or significant discussion, leave it? One drawback is that if the page is recreated in a totally different form the discussion might be irrelevant to the new page, which could mislead/confuse. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:21, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
There are a few reasons I can think of. Having an existing Talkpage complicates the process if somebody wants to move an existing article to that title; a history merge is annoying to carry out a routine move. The second reason is that the sole purpose of a talk page is to discuss improvements to the article it is attached to. If there is no article, then there is no need to discuss improving it. If the article is recreated, the talk page can easily be restored if necessary. The WordsmithTalk to me 20:30, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Most talk pages do not include information that still needs to be retained without its parent page existing. If an article or page is "draft-ified", then the talk page goes with it. If it is deleted, in most cases, the content of the parent page is not retained, meaning that the content of the talk page is almost useless. For everything else, we have {{G8-exempt}}. Worse case scenario, the talk page can be restored if its parent page is. Steel1943 (talk) 20:36, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Is it inadvisable to relist and at the same time participate in an AfD?

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Is it inadvisable to relist and at the same time participate in an AfD?. Cunard (talk) 08:00, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Rename incubation

Is the Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Incubation heading appropriate anymore? I don't think "Incubation" is a term used anymore. The way I've seen the discussion at AFD (and at MFD with userspace ones) is to "Draftify" which probably isn't as clear an idea as "incubation" is. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:54, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

NPP / AfC

Just a reminder that in just over a week at Wikimania there's going to be a cross-Wiki discussion about the systems of control of new pages. This is a round-table rather than a presentation or a lecture. On the agenda are reforms to the new article reviewing systems and ways to help new users better understand our content policies. If you are going to Italy and would like to take part, please check out the conference schedule, and we look forward to seeing you there. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:44, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Bad nominations

Is there anything about frequently making bad nominations, such as such as repeatedly making nominations that results in snow keep? If not, I propose adding the following sentence; "If you the vast majority of your nominations result in snow keeps or unanimous keeps, please fully read our policies and guidelines on deletion". 92.9.158.191 (talk) 13:46, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

RfC

There is a discussion now taking pace at the village pump that may be related to the subject of this policy/guideline page. Interested editors are encouraged to join the discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:03, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to keep dabs with two entries

Please consider participating in proposal to eliminate one kind of AFDs, at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#‎Proposal: keep two-item dab pages. The proposal is to always keep two-item disambiguation pages, like keeping redirects, rather than allowing deletion under current wp:TWODABS policy/guideline. --doncram 17:23, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: new "Merging to a list" section

I suggest renaming the current Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Merging section to "Merging to another article" and adding a new section "Merging to a list", with shortcut WP:ATD-L. Proposed wording:

An AFD may create unnecessary conflict between supporters of two extremes: eradicating everything on a topic vs. keeping a separate article on the topic, when merging the material to a list-article item might be a good compromise. This seems to have happened for articles on buildings or businesses where separate articles tend to attract overly long, promotional coverage, while list-articles on the type of topic seem reasonable. Deletion is an extreme that eliminates edit history (sometimes all of a new editor's contributions), discussions about sources, and even links to past AFDs. A compromise is to cover the topic in a list-article item, expanding or creating a section or table row as necessary. The redirect and its Talk page left behind preserve edit history and past debate. If no suitable target list-article exists, consider creating one with the topic as its first list-item. If the new list-item would be longer than others merely enumerated, consider creating a table in the target list-article with the topic as the first expanded table row. When a topic is naturally covered in more than one list-article, however, keeping a separate article to hold expanded content (avoiding duplication) becomes more reasonable.

Would something like this, perhaps dropping the first two sentences for brevity, be acceptable? --doncram 18:45, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

  • I like it a lot. I think what I'd prefer to term "curationist" is the appropriate middle ground between inclusionism and deletionism: Lots of stuff may have a valid home in Wikipedia without meriting its own article. Some stuff should just be nuked from orbit, to be sure, but that's not what this is talking about. I find that for overly-detailed fictional elements, this has become the most positive and effective approach. Jclemens (talk) 22:34, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Yes, I think this works with many problem areas: TV-anchors and on-air reporters, inactive baseball players, Miss USA state pageant winners (although it is not clear that all states should have such), high schools in Rupandehi district Nepal, General Authorities of the Mormon church, and publishers in Italy.  The basic problem is that the list can be challenged as not notable.  The other is that without the centralized discussion forum for content/redirect/merge, AfD will be misused to argue to merge articles to the list pages.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:10, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
    • The corollary to that, then, is that we should make it more difficult to delete lists of not individually notable items. Jclemens (talk) 04:01, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
      • Thanks User:Jclemens and User:Unscintillating! I like the curationist term. Offhand I don't think AFDs about the lists themselves will be too much of a problem. I happen to think that a list of the very most notable X's in the world is almost always valid, whatever X is (or at least where X = any of the areas mentioned above), either as a standalone list or as a section in an article about X. Note if some X's have separate articles, then there will naturally be a category of X's, and then almost always wp:CLT justifies there being a list-article (which can include redlinks, sources, illustrations, text). Unscintillating, can you expand on what kind of misuse you envision? Is it about a topic not meriting a separate article that also doesn't meet a reasonable inclusion standard for the list-article? --doncram 19:19, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
        • Eh, there have been a few character lists deleted from the videogames Wikiproject that you should look at. I engaged in discussion on the project talk page with a few who simply didn't see a problem with deleting lists of otherwise NN characters from a notable fictional franchise. Jclemens (talk) 00:25, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
          • Hmm. A list of X's can be valid even when every X on its own is non-notable. It's an editing decision, about when it is useful to split out a list of X's from the page on X. But nor is every list of non-notable X's automatically valid. The fictional franchise character lists should go through AFD like all other articles. There's no problem with the proposal from this, right? --doncram 16:49, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
        • (edit conflict) I'm thinking about all the cases of significant topics where deletion is not a consideration under our WP:Deletion policy.  Such topics can't accidentally be deleted at a central discussion forum for merge/redirect.  For example, all candidates for Miss World are included/significant in the encyclopedia and all of these candidates as topics have at least some reliable sourcing, but at least one AfD exists where such a topic was deleted.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:27, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
          • The essay wp:INSIGNIFICANCE can be updated with this ATD-L reasoning. If I understand correctly, the issue suggested here is that an AFD about a topic (an individual Miss World winner) that is also a list item (in a list of Miss World winners) might sometimes be closed "Delete" or "Redirect to the list" in the central AFD forum. When the topic is nonetheless valid as a separate article. The proposal won't change anything here. Invalid closures to "Redirect to list" will happen from time to time, as do invalid closures to "Delete". Normal processes are to be followed, which I think are: 1. respect the consensus decision, or 2. if you find significant additional content/sources, the article can be recreated (and it is easier to do this if it has merely be redirected), or 3. appeal the deletion decision. --doncram 16:49, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
            • Significant topics are not necessarily notable topics, and for the purposes of this discussion, we are interested in non-notable but significant topics.  There is no theoretical case to delete a significant topic, because the topic is covered elsewhere in the encyclopedia, and deletion is guaranteed to do damage to the encyclopedia and violate the policy WP:ATD.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:01, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
              • So what I think you're saying is that sometimes a topic is "significant", i.e. should have an article because it will grow or otherwise, and then the article should not be deleted (even though we may create a list and include it as a list-item). If so, I agree 100%. What I hope is this proposal should address cases where the decision would be to delete an article (i.e. this would encourage "merge and redirect to a list-item", saving an article's edit history at the redirect). It is somewhat possible, I guess, that some marginal cases will end up with that outcome when they would previously have been "Kept" instead, if this this proposal brings more focus to the task of building lists (with or without deletions). But I am not sure that should be a big concern. Is that concern what you are getting at? --doncram 00:15, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
                • I'm using the phrase "significant topic" because I think we lack sufficient common technical terms that apply to the WP:ATD.  A redirect is a part of WP:Editing policy, whereas delete and redirect is a part of WP:Deletion policy.

                  In the general theory, non-notable and insignificant topics get deleted.  A non-notable but significant topic with an article should in the general theory be converted to a redirect to a parent topic, with reliable material merged to the parent article.  So a non-notable but significant topic is also suitable for a redirect and merge to a list, as I understand the concept.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:58, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

  • Comment. This use of "template:afd-merge to" by AFD closer User:SSTflyer is a good example of what should be done, when implementing a "merge to a list-item" is not easily done. I just chose to implement that merge&redirect to List of hotels in Spain (plus implement 2 more merge&redirects for 2 other hotels); this involved creating tables within the target list-article and setting up anchors for the redirects by use of "id=" to name specific table rows. --doncram 00:15, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


--doncram 00:15, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned Talk Page

Abondon since 2013 how to delete? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 22sep (talk • contribs) 07:21, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Rfc on upgrading the NAC essay to a guideline

Interested editors can comment on the Deletion process talk page. Thanks. Lourdes 05:52, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

What is "a reasonable amount of time" for AfD renomination?

Can we clarify this a bit? Two weeks? Two months? Half a year? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:51, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

The real question is "what changed?" If nothing, then probably a year; anything less arguing that an AfD outcome was wrong (based on the evidence at the time of AfD) should probably go to DRV. Jclemens (talk) 04:56, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
  • It always depends on context. If something is a clear keep it probably shouldn't be renominated for a few months at least. A poorly-attended non consensus could probably be discussed again within a couple of weeks. And if a keep outcome seems contingent on the article eventually becoming properly sourced, and nothing of the sort happens, it should be re-nominated sooner rather than later. Obviously procedural closes that don't go into the article contents could be re-opened right away. I wouldn't want to put exact numbers on it, but time scales of weeks to months are generally appropriate. Really all we're trying to do is avoid the extremes; I recently saw someone peevishly renominate a clear keep minutes after it closed, and also saw someone rolling his eyes and yawning "speedy keep- NOTAGAIN" on a non-consensus from 2008. As long as we avoid similar absurdities, we're all good. Reyk YO! 12:08, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
  • As this is an old, recurring, question, I wrote an essay: Wikipedia:Renominating for deletion. Originally, it suggested two months for "no consensus" and six months of a concensus to keep close. User:DGG changed "no consensus" renomination default wait period to one month. These suggested defaults are not intended to conflict with Jclemens and Reyk's valid points above, but there are many non-experienced editors who want rules, and they seem to coincide with people who cannot asses the question "what changed". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:25, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
My specification of time was meant as a suggestion, not a rule. WP needs fewer absolute rules, and more use of good judgment. What is wrong is repeated renomination to force something which does not really have consensus. What is right is trying to achieve consensus. DGG ( talk ) 08:40, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
I agree in general, but some people benefit from rules of thumb to work with. Some even need some rules. People such as people who don't seem to have good personal judgement. Think Lie-to-children if you like. In other cases, autistic-tending editors, a group that includes some of the most valuable and productive, tend to benefit from explicitly stated norms. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:54, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
I think that essay words it quite well enough "as a suggestion". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:56, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Afd process proposal submitted to Village pump

I submitted a proposal for use of a checklist, like the {{DYK checklist}} for the Afd process at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Afd process. I wasn't sure where to post it - here, Articles for deletion talk page, other, so I took it to village pump.

It would be great to get your input on this idea!--CaroleHenson (talk) 18:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Adding an item about articles or pages created in violation of the terms of use to DEL-REASON

There is currently a discussion underway on WT:CSD#Proposed new criterion about having a speedy deletion criterium added for pages or articles that were created in violation of the terms of use, namely these about undisclosed paid editing. Some people there have opined that such a provision works better as a general deletion criterium (i.e one that is applied through discussion) rather than speedy deletion, hence bringing the discussion here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:48, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

  • Support. Deletion directly counteracts the reason why undisclosed paid advocates are here -- no "article", no payment. At the very least, undisclosed paid editing is a good reason to have a deletion debate. I've noted this discussion on User talk:Jimbo Wales#What more the community can do. MER-C 06:39, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support in principle but please propose a wording first. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:42, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
    To get things started, I'll recycle the CSD proposal: "Any page created in violation of the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use that prohibit undisclosed paid editing (and with no substantial edits by others)." The bit in brackets is an option for discussion. MER-C 07:42, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support- This is a good idea, and necessary to guard Wikipedia's integrity. I like the proposed wording. Reyk YO! 08:01, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Needs rework - there is a fundamental disconnect that sank the last RfC. The problem is that as written you're trying to evaluate a user in the course of deciding whether to delete the page. That's just back-asswards. Any policy actually written has to suppose that there is some mechanism, which it should specify, whereby a user is found to have been doing undisclosed paid editing. A decision can be made in the course of that mechanism how much of his content to delete, and at that point, the actual speedy or regular deletion is merely implementing that decision. And if there is no mechanism, as some say, then this is all mental masturbation. Wnt (talk) 21:02, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
  • King of Hearts has closed the proposal over there. New speedy deletion criteria should be proposed over there, not here. The top of page New Criterion Criteria should be addressed, or you are just wasting time. Documenting paid editing reasons and rationales for AfD is probably a better idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:32, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

File deletion RFC

You may be interested in this RFC. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:15, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Elections for New Page Patrol/Review coordinators.

The election is now open for voters. Voting has now begun for two NPP/NPR coordinators and will remain open until 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. All registered, confirmed editors are welcome to vote. Please vote HERE. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:17, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

A7 - still a viable reason?

Based upon a discussion with Ritchie333, it seems that A7 is not considered to be a reason for viable reason for a CSD -- even if there are no reliable sources or if the article was previously deleted per AfD because the source was not considered notable. Discussion at User talk:Ritchie333#Andrée Algrain.

It seems that both the NewPagesFeed patrol and AfD process are overburdened, but if CSDs for A7 are going to be unilaterally deleted, that would be good to know and perhaps the deletion policy should be modified accordingly.—CaroleHenson (talk) 16:57, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

User:SoWhy/Common A7 mistakes has useful background reading. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 16:59, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
I see this as an applicable point for Abigail Keam, but not Andrée Algrain. There is zero indication of notability and no reliable sources. If that's not a viable use of A7, I cannot see what would be.—CaroleHenson (talk) 17:10, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
A7 is supposed to be a lower standard than notability - you can easily have significance without notability (or even necessarily indication of notability). Furthermore speedy deletion isn't meant to be used as a process for judging the reliability of sources-- that's for PROD and AFD. Therefore it's common practice to decline A7s which cite sources unless they're very obviously not reliable (or not significant, or not independent). Anything which looks like it might have the slightest chance of being credible evidence of notability should be enough to get an article past A7. Hut 8.5 18:44, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Very well said, Hut 8.5. There is a reason {{db-notability}} has been deleted back in 2009. Regards SoWhy 10:13, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
@SoWhy: The problem is that there's no consensus amongst admins as to where the level of acceptability for A7s actually is, and the policy only actually works if all admins enforce it evenly. For example, in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Holcombe, a longstanding admin and arb clearly has a different view to me on what you would pass and fail through A7. And I don't need to remind you of a certain admin who likes saying "Kindly wait until someone with no COI thinks"..... Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:48, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
The funny thing is, there is consensus for a number of subjects, it's just not documented. As someone who follows WT:CSD closely, I know we discuss some issues over and over again. To take your example: There have been three different discussions at WT:CSD that all resulted in consensus that professors don't meet A7 but it's not written down in WP:CSD, thus such comments. You kindly mentioned my essay above and I know that I wrote it based on my experience and less on discussions. As such, I have started WP:Common claims of significance or importance (WP:CCSI) as an analogue of WP:OUTCOMES to collect such discussions and I invite all interested editors to add more references. If this became an accepted tool to judge A7 noms by, it might make things easier for all of us. Regards SoWhy 11:00, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the input here. I have a better understanding of when not to use A7 - but still wonder about Andrée Algrain. I am not seeing how "Andrée Algrain (1905–1999) was a Belgian artist influenced by Impressionism" shows an indication of importance. (And I could not find reliable sources as I mentioned on the talk page). The article is now tagged with {{Proposed deletion/dated |concern = No evidence of notability, either in article or online. Could have been speedied, but has been declined for unclear reasons, so ProD it is. |timestamp = 20170306163958 |help = }}. If this is not a valid case for A7 for a person, what would be? Thanks!–CaroleHenson (talk) 12:50, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
See also this discussion, where an experienced editor says quite clearly "Just going to point out that having sources is not a valid reason for declining an A7, especially when one is merely an acknowledgement and the other is basically social media puff." and dismisses SoWhy's essay as "not policy" Obviously I didn't agree as you can see from the discussion, but it does raise the legitimate question of who is right? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:18, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
While one might wonder how someone who has been on the project for a mere two years can really argue they are more experienced than someone who has been here for 12 years in your case (or 13 years in mine), the point is of course correct. As I have acknowledged before, my essay is merely a collection of what I have seen other (experienced, policy-focused) admins do, not a policy. Which is why I started the aforementioned new essay to try and collect those discussions that support such claims as being sufficient. Another way might be to have an RfC about all those claims to establish consensus but that would be a lot of work and I'd prefer to simply collect past discussions. I might start an RfC later for those claims no one can find any previous discussion for. Regards SoWhy 13:37, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
@Ritchie333 and SoWhy: From this discussion, I am getting that there is information published in several places, including essays, about application and administration of CSD tags. And, I am getting that there are also previous discussions that informed admins about when to apply CSD tags, like professors. For me, the information is not always clear - at least about when A7 could be used. I am having trouble sorting out what qualifies as "importance or significance" and the criteria "Has received coverage of any kind in possibly reliable sources" in the User:SoWhy/Common A7 mistakes#Common indications of importance or significance. I'm not sure even what a possibly reliable source is. My basic thinking is that if someone is said to have a career, but without anything to state why they are important (no published works, no awards, no association membership, etc.) and no one in mainstream media or other reliable sources writes about them, they're not significant.
Is there a way that I could help pull some of this information together - with your assistance - so that there is documentation that more fully provides information about apply CSD tags that might help clarify this for people unlike yourselves who don't have 12/13 years of experience? Would this be a helpful thing to do?
As an FYI, I did a major rewrite of WP:CP awhile back and have years of experience researching and documenting guidelines, policies, procedures, training manuals.–CaroleHenson (talk) 15:03, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Your troubles are precisely the reason I created WP:A7M and WP:CCSI with a handy list of claims that are usually sufficient to indicate why a subject is important or significant. As for coverage in RS, the reasoning is simple: Per GNG, any subject is presumed notable if it's covered in reliable sources in a non-trivial manner. As such, having been covered in any reliable source means there is a strong chance that there is more coverage to be found. Basically, the whole point of A7 is to weed out those articles about people like you and me, not about subjects that might actually be of interest to people beyond their family and friends. As such, anyone who has achieved some level of recognition by their peers in a professional capacity usually passes this test. "Bob Bobson is a professor of Law at Harvard" is a (easily confirmed) claim of significance, even without any mention of publications or such, since Harvard is not known to give out professorships to just anyone. "Ben Chang is a Spanish teacher at Greendale Community College" on the other hand is not, since community colleges have a lot of teachers and the bar of becoming one is really low. In the end, it is a matter of experience though, so if you are clueful and working in this field, you will soon manage to weed out the real A7s. Regards SoWhy 15:17, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

How can I delete my own sandbox?

I've made a sandbox for a future article, I discovered an existing article Samsung Galaxy S8, so I want to delete my sandbox for that article. Click here to see the sandbox I want to delete (WARNING: It's not the main sandbox, it's a subpage called GalaxyS8). Is there some administrator that can delete the sandbox? TheWikiContributor (talk) 00:28, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

on it. I the future you can just at it with {{db-user}} which is for exactly this sort of thing. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:02, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

What is the motivation for Wikipedians to take it on as their duty to scour Wikipedia for articles to delete?

With the amount of human knowledge that exists, I would expect that the primary reason someone would want to contribute to Wikipedia would be to add information to existing articles, or create new articles. Interestingly enough there appears to be a significant number of editors who instead prefer to remove information and/or delete articles. I'm not talking about removing spam, vandalism, bigotry, etc. I'm talking about deleting articles (often without first tagging them, or proposing them for review) because the articles were not "good enough", or perhaps not considered notable enough (in their opinion). Is there some magic threshold of articles that we are trying to stay under? Have we decided that the easiest way to improve the ratio of Good articles is to simply delete the ones that don't measure up? This seems like a poor policy to me, and I find it demotivating as a Wikipedian, and as well as a past contributor. Why should I invest my time into making contributions (time and/or financial) to Wikipedia when editors are seemingly encouraged to delete the hard work of others, or suggest that they relocate the content to some other wiki? --Thoric (talk) 19:25, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Though I've racked up almost 20,000 edits as a writer on Wikipedia, I consider myself more of a reader than a writer. I often use WP to look things up. And I can tell you that the main thing detracting from its usefulness as a reference work is the difficulty of finding useful information among a mountain of garbage. Reyk YO! 21:13, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
Me too, often using Wikipedia for technical things, and interesting things, usually historically interesting things. I never have trouble with any garbage. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:22, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
I'm not talking about "garbage" content within articles. I'm talking about editors taking the Wikipedia guidelines as law, and forcing the letter of the law to such a point where large parts of articles are removed due to claims that the sources aren't reliable enough until the article is nothing but a stub, and then deleting the article because it no longer has useful information. Many of these guidelines make a lot of sense for protecting accuracy of scientific fact or POV of a person or topic, but make no sense for information taken from a technical reference manual from the manufacturer of a product. --Thoric (talk) 22:46, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
My experience is that the community does a very good job on the line of inclusion for both content and articles. It is very rare that independently sourced content is rejected from an article. But practice can vary. Can you point to some examples? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
There will be many motivations. Some are honourable, some are not. The worst cases are paid editors that when they don't get their maintenance pay use a G7 to delete the page they were paid to write. Then we may get editors from companies that nominate their competition articles for deletion. Then there may be people on a power trip that enjoy the sense of power. I myself am quite happy to press the delete button on people that write about themselves and shouldn't, musicians and bands, hip hop people. I have a higher threshold tolerance for advertising than some others, but a lot of people want to use Wikipedia for advertising. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:33, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
The largest documented case of paid editing was Orangemoody, where the network would shake down companies to pay to not have their article deleted. Wnt (talk) 12:04, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
Hm, I guess you live in a house or an apartment, and on occasion you clean it, tidy it up and take out the trash? Same idea.  Sandstein  06:38, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
This. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:47, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
See also Compulsive hoarding for what happens if the cleanup is omitted in real life. We do see the digital equivalent in Wikipedia on occasion, and the deletion process helps us deal with it. Good writing is as much about what to omit as it is about what to add, and our editing and deletion processes are frameworks for arriving at a consensus about that.  Sandstein  11:04, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I would also add that for a long time we had a group of radical inclusionists who tended to frame deletion as an us-vs-them situation, which it never was except in their minds. They often described it as war, or a battle for Wikipedia's soul. It didn't end well, their project is basically dead and most of their supposed leaders ended up blocked for various kinds of shady things they did in service to their cause. Just mentioning it in case the real question being asked here is "aren't people who delete things basically evil?" We've already had that discussion and the answer is definently no. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:51, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

  • The topic is covered on Wikipedia at Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia. Both creation and deletion is happening on a large scale all the time on Wikipedia -- about 1000 articles a day. Overall, Wikipedia continues to grow. It doesn't seem long since we passed the 5 million mark and about 330,000 articles have been added since then. I created an article myself just yesterday and it's here to stay because I know the ropes now. Many articles encounter trouble because they are written by comparatively new, inexperienced editors. Our policy is to assist them rather than driving them off. One recent development was to introduce new standards for patrollers so that those who are not constructive and helpful can be restrained. It's perhaps too soon to say if that's making a difference but I expect we'll see some reports about this in 2017. Andrew D. (talk) 08:30, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Although I do not monitor new articles, I routinely nominate articles for deletion where sufficient reliable sources do not exist to write an informative and fair article. Take a primary school for example that was mentioned in passing in a local paper ten years ago because a contract agency cleaner working there was charged with working in the country illegally. The outcome of the case was never published. Otherwise, there are no other reliable secondary sources. So following reliable sources policy, the only information in the article is about the arrest of the contract worker. Better to have no article at all. TFD (talk) 05:47, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
  • My inner deletionist always likes the Antoine de Saint Exupéry quote: perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove. TigraanClick here to contact me 13:54, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

1 Day gap between speedy nomination and deletion

I am proposing that a 24 hour gap be given to CSD nominated articles between their nomination and deletion.This will give newcomers from all time zones(most of the speedy deleted articles are made by this category of users) adequate time to challenge the deletion or improve their articles to make the clause for deletion void .During this time article can be made visible only to the nominator , exteended confirmed users and admins. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Forceradical (talk • contribs) 08:07, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I think this falls under WP:PERENNIAL#Grace period for deletion, except for the "only visible to", which is just impossible. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:25, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
This is dead on arrival, but just to sum up the various problems for your edification:
  • Everything Arthur Rubin said, for starters
  • Copyright violations, vandalism, attack pages, complete nonsense, blank pages, none of that needs a 24 hour period for review.
  • What it needs is to be deleted as quickly as possible, not a pointless layer of bureacracy
Hope that clarifies matters, and I suggest you just withdraw this proposal because there is a 0% chance of it being approved. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:17, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
No. My CSD log showed I tagged G10 at least 140 times in the last 15 months. Suffice to say I see no reason why there needs to be a time gap between tagging and deletion.--Cahk (talk) 20:35, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: May I ask all of you how many requests to userfy the deleted articles come to you?If you answers are really low then may be I may be really wrong and Ill then withdraw my proposalFORCE RADICAL (talk) 09:29, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose The idea of speedy delete is that is can be quick. Challenging is always possible through several venues. Most do not try. Some attempt re-creation, and if they address the problem, another speedy delete may be averted. Asking the deleter or at WP:REFUND is another way, and WP:DRV is also there. But there are some persistent askers at WP:REFUND with no hope of having their creation as an article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:07, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • No. Aside from attack pages, copyright violations, etc., I frequently handle the G11 (advertising) queue. We get enough spam without giving the incentive that your ad gets to stay up for a guaranteed minimum of 24 hours before it goes away; the whole purpose of speedying ads is to disincentivize creating them. Rather, we should be better about directing new editors to create drafts rather than trying to handle putting a new article directly into mainspace. That alone would eliminate a lot of what we see in, for example, the A7 queue, and give them some breathing space to learn how to write an article and find appropriate references. And if they then determine their subject isn't actually workable, they can quietly abandon it rather than having someone else speedy nominate it. But issues in mainspace must be handled quickly. Seraphimblade Talk to me 13:13, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • If speedy deletion criteria are used appropriately, this is not an issue worth discussing. Good speediest are speedy, bad speediest are poorly done but remain speedy. Jclemens (talk) 22:28, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

 Request withdrawn05:45, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Question about voting eligibility requirements on French Wikipedia

On the French Wikipedia page called "Liste des visites à l'étranger du 14e dalaï-lama hors de l'Inde (translated to: Discussion: List of visits abroad by the 14th Dalai Lama outside India / Deletion)", I voted to oppose deletion, but my vote was moved to another section called "uncounted notices" (where it will not be counted) without notifying me by a ping or on my talk page. The English translation said, "Notices of contributors who are not registered or have fewer than fifty contributions in the articles at the time the debate is initiated are moved to the section entitled Uncounted notices, with the exception of the creator of the article." I have more than 50 contributions at the time of this debate, but the majority are on English Wikipedia. This notice on did not say contributions on the French Wikipedia only.

Question 1.

Wikipedia is a global effort by volunteers that can contribute in multiple languages, so why would French Wikipedia not allow for editing in non-French language Wikipedia articles for qualification to be eligible to vote on a deletion request?

Question 2.

Is this a valid eligibility requirement on French Wikipedia or any other language Wikipedia to require "more than 50 contributions at the time of this debate" on registered users?

Thank you/ Merci A ri gi bod (talk) 22:52, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Each project is free to make its own rules. We have a variety of user access levels here, a number fo which are unique to this project. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Beeblebrox answer Q2. You will have to ask the fr-wp community to answer Q1.
As for Q0 that was implicitely asked, the process page on fr-wp (which is more precise and likely takes precedence on transcluded notices) is at fr:Wikipédia:Pages_à_supprimer/Aide. It says Les avis formulés par (...) des comptes (...) ayant effectué moins de 50 contributions dans l’espace encyclopédique de Wikipédia en français au moment de la création de la proposition de suppression peuvent ne pas être pris en compte (...). Emphasis mine; a loose translation is: Comments by users whose accounts have made less than 50 contributions to the mainspace of the French Wikipedia at the start of the deletion discussion may not be taken into account. TigraanClick here to contact me 15:22, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
  • As a general, broad statement, activities on other Wikipedias don't count for much elsewhere. For example, someone who has become an admin on another Wikipedia would essentially have to start from scratch if they wanted to become an admin at EN as well. The reason is as Beeblebrox stated, each project is different and has its own rules and standards, and experience doesn't really transfer between them in any meaningful way. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:36, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Growing amount of failed nominations on current and future events

The amount of failed nominations on articles about recent and current events has risen to plentiful. WP:NOT#NEWS has been cited for deletion, yet multiple "keep" votes keep going and going. How do we limit the amount of failing nominations on such articles? --George Ho (talk) 22:15, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Don't know whether future events also apply, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brazilian general election, 2018 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samsung Galaxy S8 were closed as "kept". Cited rationale for deletion was WP:CRYSTAL. I'm still trying to find failed noms on current events. --George Ho (talk) 02:58, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Found Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2017 Paris machete attack (closed as "kept") and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shooting of Jiansheng Chen (closed as "no consensus" ;came after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jiansheng Chen, which resulted as "delete"). Contrast those with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Not My Presidents Day (closed as "merge") and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2017 DCC market fire (closed as "redirect").

I don't believe that 2017 is too soon to discuss a 2018 presidential election. The article on U.S. 2016 election was being actively edited in 2012 (!): link.
That aside, some other articles, such as 2017 Rinkeby riots, seem to be in violation of WP:NOTNEWS. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:14, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
Now this: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United Airlines Flight 3411? When will this end? George Ho (talk) 20:24, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Have a similar experience with clearly not notable aviation accidents that would reasonable fail NOTNEWS and GNG but as it is in the news and millions of people have looked at it on (add favourite social media platform) we get a lot of attention from users that believe it must be notable despite any guidelines we have and are not likely to have ever visited AfD or the related policies before or after. Perhaps we need to have a think about how an online encyclopedia reacts to events where the users think it is just another social media site so everything is notable. MilborneOne (talk) 20:59, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I'm basically of the opinion that the main issue is people misinterpreting WP:NOTNEWS and frequently nominating notable events for deletion. NOTNEWS is regularly claimed as a deletion rationale for things that I think it doesn't cover. For example, United Airlines Flight 3411 is something that I would say clearly doesn't fit under NOTNEWS. NOTNEWS gives as an example that "routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities" should not be covered. For example, it means that we shouldn't have an article on every Major League Baseball game (of which a couple thousand are played each season) or about every revamp McDonald's make to their menu, even though those are things that numerous newspapers would cover. While a man being dragged off a plane might not sound important, it clearly isn't routine, and thus isn't the sort of thing NOTNEWS is about. Also, while lasting impact can be hard to judge when an event has just occurred, if an event is getting a lot more press coverage than similar events of that sort, that is a good indication it is notable. Something like a plane sliding off a runway with no one injured, where it is generally reported once without being followed up on, is likely to be non-notable, but something like United Airlines Flight 3411 that became a top news story with lots of continuing coverage is much more likely to be notable. The fundamental meaning of something being notable is that it garnered a lot of attention from the world at large, so the fact that a story has gone viral and is garnering a lot of attention is a good reason not to nominate it for deletion. In some cases after the fact we may realize that stories that seemed notable at the time really had no lasting impact, but nominating major news stories for deletion as they are happening just makes no sense to me, as they seem more likely than not to be notable. Calathan (talk) 22:00, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
"Routine" coverage is only one facet of NOT#NEWS. A burst of news that lasts for a day or two then disappears for all purposes is also what NOT#NEWS cautions against. It's also what RECENTISM and NEVENT also cautions against. One has to ask in 5-10 years will this be a significant event, and right now for UAF 3411, the answer is likely "no", though there is a slim chance that an interesting lawsuit or massive changes in US airline policy for overbooking to prevent the situation. There are things like disasters, attacks, shootings, etc. that will generally merit an article but editors should still be cautioned about jumping too fast in case the situation never developers beyond that burst of news. --MASEM (t) 00:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
As I said above, things that turn out not to be notable in retrospect can be deleted later. However, an event doesn't need to have lasting significance to be notable. WP:LASTING says that events that do have lasting significance are likely notable, but also says that events without a proven lasting effect are not necessarily non-notable. The main judge of notability is whether an event has received significant coverage in reliable sources, and an event that generates a flurry of news stories over several days seems to be well on its way to that. It's possible that coverage will quickly die down and an event will turn out to be non-notable, but that doesn't mean we should delete articles on recent events just because its notability won't be fully clear for some time. More importantly, news stories that receive a big spike in coverage (as opposed to just one or two initial stories) seem to generally be kept at AFD. If the majority of users believe these events are appropriate to include, then they are appropriate to include. Wikipedia's main guiding principle is consensus, and when the majority of users think we should cover something that means we should cover that thing. I basically see this thread as saying "things most people want to keep are being kept at AFD, what do we do", and my answer to that is to stop nominating for deletion things that most people want to keep. Calathan (talk) 02:10, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Hmm... Brings me back memories of my first block... a painful block due to my (formerly) deletionist behavior. That aside, I don't think a simple advice will prevent more AfD nominations on current events. How do you know this advice works often? George Ho (talk) 02:31, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
I personally think these types of articles a worst then those done by paid editors. All these article do is link news outlets topic of the day. Been here a long time and can tell you 10 years ago we had many of these types of articles......today there just filled with dead links to outdates news stories. Just horrible to see articles made of headline stories. Its embarrassing and puts a dent in Wikipedia's credibility.-- Moxy (talk) 02:43, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
You are entitled to your opinion, but this kind of articles may prove invaluable when 15 years from now, a particular incident is used as a passing remark for adding cultural flavor in the next Stephen King's novel, a popular song or a political speech. Hemerotecas are a valuable historic resource for research after all, even though they are composed of nothing else than old newspapers. Diego (talk) 15:15, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Deletion of articles on "spur-of-the-moment" events is very difficult to convince to editors that create them. It is also part of the larger epidemic that people do not take WP:RECENTISM in mind not only in creation of articles but in article content (WP:PROSELINE is becoming a worsen problem). We need editors to not pull the trigger so fast on events like this, rather than consider "Well, it's easy to delete afterwards." Or better, get more editors to use Wikinews which was created for exactly this type of situation; if the event proves notable, then we can transwiki back into en.wiki. --MASEM (t) 05:44, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
I thought WikiNews was an abandoned failure? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:50, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
The same question came up at WT:NOT in February (see [1]) and it's generally agreed that it may be low-volume relative to WP, but it isn't dead, and we should not act like it is dead, until the Foundation actually pulls the plug. Our goal should be to try to encourage editors to use that more if they have a strong interest in writing about current events (whereas en.wiki is better suited to established events that we can judge notability on). --MASEM (t) 13:54, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not paper; there is enough room to document incidents well-covered on multiple reliable media sources. Merely because an event is covered in Wikinews, it doesn't imply that it shouldn't also have an encyclopedic article on it. Wikinews articles should concentrate on updating readers on recent developments of ongoing events, while a Wikipedia article should provide an overview of the whole thing in a well-structured and pedagogic style, regardless of the recency of each newcoming information. As such, they are complementary, and don't replace the need to have each other. Diego (talk) 15:25, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
And the deletion talk doesn't die down yet: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 April 12. George Ho (talk) 20:17, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
To a lot of people GNG and the like is the gold standard, as it is a relatively easy call to make. NOTNEWS is not and relies entirely on a judgment call for the most part. That's my impression at least. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
@George Ho: WP:NOTNEWS is always misinterpreted when people use it to push for deletion. Not 99%, not 99.99%, I mean 100.00000% of the time. The policy actually says to treat breaking news the same as other events. That means that if you find a few good newspaper articles about a shipwreck in 1800 or a few good news articles about a shipwreck five minutes ago, it's the same standard. I understand, of course, that modern online references are low-hanging fruit and that we overrepresent them -- that's fine! If you have a group of volunteers and you want to document the world, you start with the easy stuff - that's the sensible way to do it.
The good news is that over the years a few AFD voters have apparently actually read the policy. And if more discussions actually go the right way than there used to... you should have no more recourse for that as we did for all the good interesting articles that were lost. Wnt (talk) 18:49, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
  • My experience matches WNT here. People cite WP:NOTNEWS as though it somehow invalidates an article subject merely because it has appeared in news sources; as though we should actively seek to remove any article merely because news sources happen to be covering it. It's perplexing. Its gotten to the point that I know an article is absolutely appropriate for Wikipedia as soon as someone cites NOTNEWS as a reason to delete. It's misused that much that it's usually a reliable indicator that the article is quite good. --Jayron32 02:06, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
  • Just in case, here are AfD nominations on events, including West Oaks Mall riot, Swan Aviation Sikorsky S-76 Crash, 2016 Quiapo road rage incident, and 2017 Jerusalem Light Rail stabbing. The riot article will be deleted via AfD, but the consensus is split toward each of the rest. --George Ho (talk) 03:15, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
And I re-read WP:NEVENTS, which is sometimes cited for deletion but also subjective. Edit: However, I didn't realize WP:RAPID until now. George Ho (talk) 03:52, 20 April 2017 (UTC); edited, 03:59, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

On Renominations

I'm wondering about the nature of article renomination. The relevant policy text is

  • "After a deletion debate concludes and the consensus is in favor of keeping the page, users should allow a reasonable amount of time to pass before nominating the same page for deletion again, to give editors the time to improve the page. Renominations shortly after the earlier debate are generally closed quickly. It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hope of getting a different outcome."

But the way this reads is that it presupposes that the article has a problem or a shortcoming, that is "time to improve the page". What if there is no improvement needed or problem to address, if the deletion discussion results in a unanimous keep? If such a page is renominated, I would hope to see a part of the nomination devoted to what the nominator feels has changed since the last discussion. Perhaps this should be mandated. Disclosure; this came about after observances at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kat Blaque (3rd nomination) (05-2017) vs. (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kat Blaque (10-2015) (but note that afd 2 was an error withdrawn) so there's really only been 1 renomination despite the numbering). ValarianB (talk) 12:34, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Imho it should be clear but I don't think it would hurt to clarify this by adding a sentence like you propose (something like "When renominating a page that was previously kept, the nominator should explain why the previous reasons to keep the page no longer apply"). Regards SoWhy 12:44, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
This would rather contradict WP:CCC - we're perfectly entitled to come to the opposite conclusion even if nothing has changed. ValarianB does have a point about the wording though, I suggest we get rid of "to give editors the time to improve the page". Hut 8.5 21:14, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Of course consensus can change but if you initiate a discussion to change it, you usually explain why you think it should. To quote WP:CCC: "Editors may propose a change to current consensus, especially to raise previously unconsidered arguments or circumstances. On the other hand, proposing to change a recent consensus can be disruptive." (emphasis added) So why not apply the same standards to XFD? Regards SoWhy 06:45, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
This is a little bit covered in the essay Wikipedia:Renominating_for_deletion#Advice_on_renominating, which reads:

When you do renominate, try to make a better nomination statement than was made last time. Address directly the issues that caused the participants to not be persuaded last time. Emphasize the issues that were not sufficiently considered last time.
Be warned that some consider renominations to be disruptive, or gaming. Don’t exacerbate this problem by badgering the participants in the new discussion.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
I think the proposal goes rather further than WP:CCC. That page says that new arguments or circumstances are a good example of when consensus can change, but this doesn't mean that situations where consensus changes are all (or even mostly) due to changes in circumstances or arguments. I can think of several pages I've seen where multiple deletion discussions came to very different outcomes with no change in either. I think the second part SoWhy has quoted is already covered: users should allow a reasonable amount of time to pass before nominating the same page for deletion again... It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hope of getting a different outcome. Hut 8.5 20:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

unused file

Why unused or obsolete file should deleted? Why not keep it for historical record, or for tracking what happen in the past? What is the disadvantage of keeping it? --Ans (talk) 11:27, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

See WP:FAIRUSE. unused freely licensed files can and are kept and are usually transferred to Commons, but non-free files lose their claim of fair use if they aren't actually being used. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposed procedure for articles with many sources

Here I'm proposing a new way of dealing with AfDs for articles for which there appear to be many sources in existence.

In some cases articles are put up for AfDs despite many sources (i.e. news, studies and books) using the article's term. There can be reasons for the deletion of articles despite of that such as:

  • None of (or only very few?) of the sources actually describing the concept sufficiently (in-depth) and only "using" that term
  • The term being used with different meanings (most often this would be no reason to delete but to move)

For such cases I suggest a "discussion mode" of a specified duration (i.e. a few days) in which participants of the AfD are not allowed to vote but only allowed to discuss arguments for and against deletion, make counterarguments, cite relevant policies, research the article's topic (in the Web and in offline resources) and make suggestions for possible procedure (such as splitting, merging, renaming).

After this discussion phase is over the debate enters a new phase and participants are allowed to vote. I'd suggest creating a line (as below) under which members add their votes along with references to comments of the discussion-mode. To notify participants about the new phase they could be pinged. There could potentially also be a summary of arguments made/the debate earlier after phase #1 is finished. If this is successful it could potentially also be expanded to other types of (of AfDs & other) debates.

I hope this is clear enough - if not please ask. Maybe an exemplary discussion of this type would be useful.

Why this would be useful/needed:
Imo every article that took the time and effort of people to create deserves a proper argumentation/debate about its deletion and informed decision-making. By making sure that all sides are given time and space to make their arguments, research, cite relevant policies before the voting we can improve the decisions made and make sure that the votes are educated opinions and more in line with our policies.

For instance there is a problem with votes being made before specific points have been brought up (such as policies, counterarguments and sources) and with "peer-influence" (a general problem of Internet voting), see: Internet manipulation § Issues. Furthermore early participants may in some cases significantly swing discussions and sheer number of votes (e.g. due to canvassing, Internet trolls or sockpuppets) may manipulate or distort results.

Relevant to this is: WP:NOTDEMOCRACY

I think this could significantly improve and protect Wikipedia and can not overstate how important and useful I think this would be.

I got this idea during the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Integrative Intelligence debate.

What do you think of this suggestion and do you have any input on how it could be implemented best?

--Fixuture (talk) 22:04, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose. AFDs and other consensus-processes are not votes. The entire discussion is a presentation and evaluation of the available evidence. Evidence, arguments, or solutions presented near the end of a discussion can override the not-votes made at the beginning. Splitting the discussion into a "non-vote mode" and a "vote mode" should have no effect on the outcome. AFDs can only get a delete-close by admins, and any discussion which is complex, unclear, or had a significant shift in the discussion gets relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. This is exactly what happened[2] in the AFD which apparently inspired this proposal. It doesn't appear that this heavyweight policy/bureaucratic overhead would be solving any actual problem. Alsee (talk) 15:27, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This isn't needed because a closer can evaluate the discussion as a whole and close based on quality of arguments. This assumes that AFDs are ever treated as votes. They are not. ~ Rob13Talk 19:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to have option via user preferences to disable/opt-out cross-wiki search results

Recently, search results from selected sister projects—Wikivoyage (title matches only), Wikibooks, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote—are now active/live. Right now, an option via user preferences to disable/opt-out cross-wiki search results is proposed at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). --George Ho (talk) 01:47, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Re-proposal to include Wikibooks in cross-wiki search engine

Another proposal to include Wikibooks into the cross-wiki search engine is made (Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Should Wikibooks pages be displayed in search results). --George Ho (talk) 00:24, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

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