Wikipedia talk:Deletion discussion archive cleanup and organization

Requested move 31 May 2015 - Delete 4 pages?

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Votes for extreme deletion → Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Votes for extreme deletion
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Requests for comment Jwrosenzweig → Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Requests for comment John Kenney → Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/WikiProject Medical Conditions → Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medical Conditions

– These moves were asked for (without stating a reason) in Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests by User:103.6.156.167 at 17:19, 31 May 2015 (UTC), but that is an IPA user and thus I better get these 4 moves discussed. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:51, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

All resolved by me: the medical conditions one never got going, so I've deleted it under G6, while I've moved the other three to appropriate titles. In general, VFDs on project pages should have been moved into MFD space, not AFD, so I've simply changed the parent page; it wouldn't particularly be appropriate to change the name of the page itself, e.g. "Requests for comment Jwrosenzweig" to "Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig". Nyttend (talk) 05:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Uh, there are just as many opinions as there are people. You say that its inappropriate to change the name of the page, when some users like Steel1943 are not just renaning the pages, but also putting up the leftover redirects for G6 deletion (here, here, see his move log for more). The arguement that these pages have misleading titles since Votes for extreme deletion and other pages never existed holds much weight. Also, adding the name of the namespace to the title is useful as it allows for the easy searchabilty of Mfd nominations by namespace, using either Special:Search or Special:PrefixIndex. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 15:05, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• Okay, since I was mentioned here, I think I need to explain how and why I have been doing this, as well as explain some flaws in some of the conversation I see here (which will probably be answered when I explain what I do):

  1) First off, after reviewing the IP's comment above, I do the same. However, there is one thing I do not see mentioned here: All incoming links to the inaccurate title have to be fixed prior to it being deleted. The only way to accomplish this without there being a snag is to have permission to move pages. (IP, you really need to use a registered account and username to perform these tasks without any breaking in the discussion archives.) The reasoning behind this is that the inaccurate title can serve as a functional redirect until all links to the now-redirect are removed.
  
  2) Nyttend, I agree with the IP: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Votes for extreme deletion is a bad title since an article by the name of Votes for extreme deletion never existed. Also, creating such a title breaks the ability of templates such as {{Priorxfd}} from detecting the previous discussions when a new deletion discussion is created. Also, at AFD and MFD, when a new discussion is created, the new page title uses the naming convention "Wikipedia:XFD FORUM NAME/Log/EXACT NAME OF NOMINATED PAGE". In order for the "(2nd nomination)" tag to be placed on the new nomination, the name of the previous discussion has to match this naming convention. (Granted, this also works if there is a redirect named as such, and if the page formerly had another title, it will not work 100% of the time, but that is something that is intentional, especially granted that the previous title could have become a article for a completely different subject.
  
  3)There's a few other miscellaneous fixes I make to ensure that doing this work doesn't break incoming links to either point at nothing or point to the wrong discussion (such as finding that the discussions have (2nd nomination) and (3rd nomination) tags, and realizing that they are out of chronological order), but I personally ensure that there will be no linking failures if the redirect is deleted per G6. By the time I'm done, the redirect has no incoming links anywhere, freeing up the title for the correct discussion, if it were to ever take place. (Such as someone nominating the article Votes for extreme deletion for deletion.)

  ...I hope this answers a bit, but in my honest opinion, this anonymous editor really needs to create an account so they can perform page moves in order to do this discussion archive cleanup work. Steel1943 (talk) 15:40, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
  • I did not make any other move requests other than the four that Anthony Appleyard has brought here (and I don't intend to make any more). I don't understand the reason why you insist that the redirect leftover the page-move should to be deleted. What's the harm in keeping it as a redirect? Not deleting it also eliminates the need of fixing all links to it. By the way, isn't this page that you created redundant in scope to the main backlog page? 103.6.156.167 (talk) 18:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Moving a page and then having the old title deleted is a blatant abuse of the criterion. They've been around for ten years in many cases: can you fix all the links in old revisions of pages? G6 is for housekeeping, not for creating linkrot. Nyttend (talk) 19:32, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I disagree that this is not considered housekeeping; also, any references to "old revisions" will be able to find our what happened to the page when they go to the deletion log to find out where the page moved to, in addition to the fact that the link on the most recent version should be fixed if the old title had been orphaned. I cannot recall what it was, but I did find a conflict where the title of the MFD discussion matched a title in the article space. So, IMO, deleting the orphaned redirect after the page is moved is necessary. Steel1943 (talk) 20:04, 2 June 2015 (UTC)