User talk:DGG/Archive 0.9

DELETION. DELETION REFORM, AfD, and DELREV

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            DO NOT ENTER NEW ITEMS HERE--use User talk:DGG . Can I know why it is nominated for deletion?

2019

Hi Editor, last year you made the decision to keep Kathmandu Tribune (including Arun Budhathoki, and yet again some people have nominated for deletion. Can you please check?

thanks

2008

Wikipedia:Deletion reform study group

Hello DGG. Along the lines of the ongoing discussion we have been having on my talk page, I have created a project page that I would like to use to provide a discussion space for a small group of concerned editors to try to fix the deletion problems. Please accept my invitation to join, and please help decide who else we should invite. I was thinking around 6 to 10 people would be a good size, at least intially. I think that the people should know deletion very well, and be aware of deletion reviews and the underlying factors that make them necessary. I do not think that they would necessarily have to be current or former administrators, but the people who I imagine would likely provide the most insight into the problem would probably be admins or editors with a significant presence in AfD and DRV. Please see Wikipedia:Deletion reform study group. My first crack at a definition and desfription are there, please feel free to discuss needed changes... nothing is set in stone, and I would like this to be a very collaborative effort. Thanks, Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 02:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

before deciding to organize an invitation only group on WP, please read the history of Wikipedia:Esperanza. I think this all happened before you joined WP; I had just come to WP at the time it was closing down. DGG (talk) 04:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thank-you. When I first got here, there was a bunch of wikidrama about green "e"'s in people's signature... but I had no idea what it was about... I suppose it is this. I can see the concern with it, but my intention was not to exclude others, just to try to keep the rotating door from having people waltz-in without knowing the purpose for the discussion and causing distractions and drama. I suppose it could just be open... but my expectation is it will involve alot of discussion about how we shuldn't do whatever it is we haven't decided to do yet, and less about doing it. I will reword it as open. Can we at least minimize the advertising and purposely invite a few people? Actually, first, are you even interested in doing something like this? Jerry talk count/logs 05:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I know I'm jumping in here, but could I add that I think this is a bad idea. We just had the experience with Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Bots/BetaCommandBot and NFCC 10 c of what happens when people create non-standard pages in the projectspace with a goal of deciding something. Wikipedia:Motto of the day @ Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive175#Ranks_and_hierarchies and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Bots/Approvals group shows what happens when users try to limit those who decide, without the entire community's consensus on who should decide, like WP:ARBCOM or WP:Featured Articles. Below are some similar examples of self-selecting groups or projects that went outside the standard processes and got dinged for it.

IMO, the standard process would be to start a page such as Wikipedia:Deletion debates/Deletion policy reform and list it as a Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies. It should be linked to Wikipedia:Centralized discussion, WT:AFD, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and WP:AN. If your thinking of Wikipedia:WORKINGGROUP as the model, that is a group formed by arbcom to advise it on user conduct matters and wouldn't apply for several reasons. I really think if this done through "at least minimize the advertising and purposely invite a few people", it will immediately violate WP:CANVASS and probably go up to MFD within a day of someone spotting it and mentioning it on ANI. That or users will come in and through consensus, change it to something similar to an RFC (as was done with WP:ANB). But this is just my $0.02, so I'll leave it to your judgement on how best to proceed.

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Gp75motorsports/Wikipedia Users' Alliance
• Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject WikiPoints
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject WikiStandards
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:R/Single Letter Group

MBisanz ^talk 06:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

You do not seem to understand the purpose for it. It is certainly not intended to decide anything. It is intended as a place to pre-chew and pre-digest a variety of ideas and filter and process them into an appealing product that can then be offerred for the community to decide in a standard existing venue. It is intended to remove the emotion, bias, and chaos from the initial phases of the disucssion, and to keep the end-goal out of the way of the process while it is in its infancy. My hope is that it will be a rational objective look at the deletion processes, will identify opportunities for improvement, refine many possible ideas into a proposal that stands a chance of being accepted, and is implementable, and has a liklihood of suceeding at some definate goal, all while not creating new problems that are worse. Prior to proposing anything, a logical plan would be in place already to follow its progress and determine its effectiveness. So, to sum up, it is a brainstorming group intended to take a very structured approach to developing potential proposals. I see no corrolary whatsover to the examples you provided or to the problems you mentioned. Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 17:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Jerry, it's not only what it is; it's also what it would appear to be. I fear that having this group as suggested would prejudice any proposals it might make. DGG (talk) 17:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, well let me just say that it is terribly frustrating to me to try to get anything done on WP that is rational and devoid of useless drama and overemotional reaction, as well as drop by naysayers who do not understand or care what the discussion is about. (No, I am not referring the the above user in any way). I wa hoping that a solid group of wikipedians who had experience with the processes could put their collective heads together and actually do something in a logical fashion. It seems people want to rush everything half-assed to a vote before anyone even understands the actual problem. I will drop the whole idea and just move on to more productive, less frustrating persuits. Heck, I might even edit some articles! Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 17:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Jerry, please don't over-react here. There is a need for discussion focused not on individual changes and with a general focus. But solid wikipedians, just as for editing, does mean anyone sufficiently interested. The nature of the discussion will effect the necessary selection. DGG (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

What MBisanz says is one way of doing it. I was going to suggest simply letting one of the existing discussions develop. See a little above my reply to another question from MB--my view about multiple discussions. We have about 4 or 5 places for these discussions already on VP and the talk pages for the various processes. The problem with these is that they get used for complaints about particular articles.

The actual problem is not in my opinion the deletion process, it's the disagreement over WP:N. If different people want to go different places, it's hard to get rational procedures for just how to get somewhere. The deletion processes now are oriented towards deletion. Those who are oriented towards deletion in general will want to keep them as close to the present as possible. Myself, as a practical matter, I find it convenient that we have inconsistent rules, for it permits arguing using whatever fits the purpose & it's always possible to find something. There's an opportunity to win by being the better at the argument. Those who prefer to appeal to the pathos or distinctiveness of an individual case prefer using IAR, a method I dislike because it's totally inconsistent. Read the NYRB article above also; its written by a inclusionist researcher who can get around any process by always finding material.

WP:WORKING GROUP can succeed, because there's something 90% of the people here will agree on. The chauvinist warriors are all of them put together in a clear minority, and the rest of us want to stop the disproportionate harm they do. We know what we want to do. We'll find a way to do it.

Myself, I am not actually an inclusionist. I want quality, which I define as including uniformly good coverage. I came here to improve the quality & extent of academic coverage, and i realised that I would only get it by letting everyone have their own hobby fully represented,--for that's how most WPedians would always regard the topics I'm interested it. I want a long article on every pope, and on every protein, and every chapter if not verse of the bible, and every character in classic fiction, & every medieval magnate. If it means getting the porn stars & the pokemon, I'll put up with that. Perhaps 30%-60% of the people here would agree with me, and that's not enough.

There's an even more basic problem: our focus on the article. One benefit of hypertext was supposed to free us from that. But having an article represents perceived importance--and article title are ranked much more heavily than text in google.

So this gets us to making small improvements around the edges. Even that is hard. Some deletionists actually oppose notification of authors & workgroups, and other elements of basic fairness, because it might encourage more borderline articles to stay in.

The discussions of bots has given me an idea though. The deletion process is a compromise between getting the junk out, & not discarding potentially good articles. The problem with the junk is that if you dont catch it right away, it stays there--and patrolled revisions has done only a little bit to help this. The longer I'm an admin, the more I focus on the junk being submitted--and as you can see from my page I am beginning to get complaints over throwing out too much at CSD. Its an inevitable progression. If we had a reliable way of looking at everything a second time 1 week later, we could deal with the empty articles then. A bot could do that.

For the moment, I think one of the suggestions of your page is a good and reasonable one: statistics. I have some, but they are very tedious to collect if you want to substantiate them, rather than just count. I have considerable RL experience with this. I'll discuss this in a day or two, if someone wants to start a page on deletion statistics. DGG (talk) 14:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd be interested in offering my input. I am not a regular patroller of these fora. But I have participated in something like 100 discussions. And it is my impression that my familiarity with the policy issues is at least comparable to the average administrator.

Moreover, I have been trying to engage various respondents in these fora with my ideas as to some necessary reforms for ages now, without finding any real interest in considering the issues at stake.

There are some policy ambiguities I would like to see addressed. But, over and above those issues I am concerned that while the wikipedia aims for a culture of civility and collegiality, it seems to me a subculture has grown up in the deletion fora diametrically opposed to this. It seems to me that breaches of WP:CIV and related policies are so routine that they pass without comment, or even possibly without notice. Unfortunately, among the worst offenders have been some long time administrators.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 20:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

not just in the deletion fora, unfortunately. It affects the editing even more; it is one of my complaints here also that it seems to be not just permitted but encouraged, as the free conflict of ideas, or the need to keep important contributors. My view is that major contributors who cannot work cooperatively should remain major contributors, but to some other project. I'd like to do away with BOLD entirely as now used: its a recipe for continual near-disaster. I know how I would decrease it in deletion discussions--by limiting everyone to two contributions per AfD. If that's not enough to be convincing, more won't do it. I know every time i start responding more than that, I get tempted to lose my temper. Of course, AfD is where all of it gets generally visible. DGG (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I support some kind of comprehensive deletion reform. I see there are some somewhat inactive discussions that coule be taken into account: Wikipedia:WikiProject proposed deletion patrolling, Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system, and Wikipedia:Deletion reform. My biggest suggestions would be 1) Twinkle not used for mass nominations that flood AfD; 2) excessive repeted nominations halted; and 3) non-admins being able to see deleted pages for articles that are NOT copy vios or personal attacks. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 22:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd be warm to reactivating the Wikiproject (if its currently inactive). And I also wouldn't mind limiting Twinkle tagging (as I've seen problems with scripted work in my image stuff). And the 2-edit limit to AfD would be great, the number of times I see super-threaded discussions that are rather pointless has probably made me less likely to contribute to AfD (knowing that there is a good chance of having my !vote challenged as "Explain in detail, with at least 10 diffs and 6 policies why you believe what you do"). I dont know about non-admins viewing deleted pages. I'm thinking it could lead to increased edit warring over restores (and more protected pages, a bad thing). And I do agree that BOLD is used frequently in situations where the initiator knows it is a divisive action and still does it, under BOLD. As to excssive nominations, maybe something as to excessive similar nominations (like making the second nom specify the policy reason for the first AfD and how their second is based on a different policy reason). I'd only support a WORKING-GROUP to brainstorm this if, it was done through some community/random process. As in the community saying "We want these 10 people to think and formally propose this to us) or (10 random active editors, 5 admins, 5 non-admins will be generated and asked to participate). MBisanz ^talk 05:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I asked for adminship so I could do two things--throw out the junk when i encountered it instead of needed to ask for help in it, and examine deleted articles to see if they were worth saving, and both were considered good reasons, and I've been dong both about equally, and not all that much else involving the buttons. Others can be encouraged to do likewise. There should be an easier way of seeing deleted revisions as read only access--but perhaps this merely takes coordination with one of the repositories which tries to do this for deleted articles, or, if necessary. the establishment of a suitable fork for the purpose. As long as copyvio and NLP and other libel were removed, there would not be any harm in it if it were distinct from WP. I would provide a gentle landing for new views with rejected articles, it would help detect & encourage the reform of the few admins who make unjustified deletions--and it would confirm public confidence in the great majority of our decisions. there are lots of possible tweaks. It would not induce excessive inclusionism--things would still require the usual consensus.DGG (talk) 07:56, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

{{subst:DRVNote|My Tomato Pie}

Criteria for deletion at afd (Church of Google)

Hi David - Please look at this AfD close Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Church of Google (3rd nomination) and some other conversation links User talk:The Placebo Effect#The Church of Google and User talk:Becksguy#Re:Church of Google, and offer some advise, if you would. Do you agree that the closing did not follow consensus as established in the AfD, or not. And do you advise a DRV or not. I think that every item in the nomination and all the delete arguments were successfully answered and refuted. The closer did not take my complied list within the AfD into account, a list that was in far better shape than the article references and that had been pruned and shaped based on input during the deletion discussion. — Becksguy (talk) 01:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I second Becksguy's concerns. Wikipedia may not be a democracy, but that one was clearly a no consensus at worst. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 01:12, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I thought, LGRdC. No consensus at worst. — Becksguy (talk) 01:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

A very surprising closing. A good admin, who merely made a mistake. Can't figure out why he simply didn't choose to correct it.DGG (talk) 02:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, what are you all saying? He just applied wikipedia's notability rules, after all wikipedia is not a WP:DEMOCRACY. Vote counting and claiming consensus are not substitutes for following policies that have had huge amount of community consensus thrown at them for a long period of time until they adquired their current shape.

Also, notice the very first paragraph from Wikipedia:Deletion_policy consists of a single sentence: "The Wikipedia deletion policy describes how pages which do not meet the relevant content criteria are identified and removed from Wikipedia.". On the deletion discussion section, this gets hammered upon "Here, (on the nomination debates) editors who wish to participate can give their opinion on what should be done with the page. These processes are not decided through a head count, so participants are encouraged to explain their opinion and refer to policy.". A bit later, it talks about consensus, but then it links to Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Rough_consensus where it says "Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted" (the word "not" is emphasized on the policy page, I didn't add any emphasis).

I'm afraid that the consensus on a nomination for deletion is about how the article complies with deletion criteria or not, and not about wether many people thought that it would be OK to keep the page. In this case, the article failed notability criteria, so it was a clear delete, and the admin acted correctly. Going to deletion review without providing additional sources would be gaming the system by faking victimism: "the bad admin deleted my page against consensus". No, he deleted the page following wikipedia policies, and he would have acted wrongly if he had done otherwise, and he would have failed his duty as admin.

Finally, if you think that these policies are wrong and that there are better ways to decide deletion, then you should go to the policies talk pages and suggest improvements. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The whole "democracy" versus "consensus" thing is actually somewhat contradictory. You cannot have consensus without some kind of majority of support. Thus, if a majority of editors want to keep an article on a website billed as the one that anyone can edit and the sum total of human knowledge, we should not appeal to some minority or narrow viewpoint of the project. That is just illogical and inconsistent with what "consensus" actually means. More editors believe the article merits inclusion. Thus, the consensus of the community is that the article be kept. Those advocating inclusion tend to actually work on improving the article. Those voting to delete did what to help the article? Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 03:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion decisions don't use "consensus" in the sense you seem to give to the term, they use rough consensus, which I quoted on my comment, and which says clearly that some arguments, the ones going against policies among others, "are frequently discounted". Please see my quotes and read the linked page before trying to say again that "consensus" is on your side on a deletion debate, since wikipedia policies say that it's not, and admins know it. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Enric, I think you misunderstand the proper, limited, role of administrators. We do not judge articles, just evaluate the results of a discussions. We do not decide if an article meets notability criteria, we decide if the consensus at the article thinks it did. Our discretion is just to disregard irrelevant arguments, such as I like it. When I became an admin, I was asked to promise I would not close on the basis of what I personally thought notable; it had not occurred to be that I would ever want to do so, for I would surely be reversed at Deletion Review. Let's continue this there. DGG (talk) 04:14, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

(Damn, I'm technically away, but I couldn't resist answering here) Yeah, that's what I meant, but I disagree on how the consensus is interpreted. He just judged the weight of the arguments behind the votes and decided not to take many of the votes into account because they were not valid keep reasons according to deletion policies, or based on false assumptions about the last nomination debate. He also decided the consensus by looking at the strenght of the remaining arguments, and not at the head count, just like the policies say. Let's make this clear (time to abuse the bolding again) Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Rough_consensus says that Wikipedia policy, (which requires WP:V, WP:OR, WP:COPYVIO, WP:NPOV) is not negotiable. The admin claimed that the article was in breach of the notability policy, and arguments from editors didn't convince him that this was not true, so he had to decide a delete. That's why I say that he appears to have acted correctly. Head count can not superseed policy. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Holy crap. The "non-negotiable" mutation is spreading. Well, thank goodness Wikipedia:consensus is policy, and Wikipeida:non negotiable does not even have a page. Said paragraph has been taken out and shot. --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

lol, Kim, please don't take this that I am going to tell you as an insult. How about if I tell you that you haven't actually read WP:CONSENSUS, because the you would have noticed that in the exceptions section it says exactly what I have been saying here. I quote "Consensus decisions in specific cases are not expected to override consensus on a wider scale very quickly - for instance, a local debate on a WikiProject does not override the larger consensus behind a policy or guideline".

As you see, a small consensus on a deletion nomination is just not going to override a policy or a guideline just like that. Saying that a certain idea has the consensus necessary to override a policy is an obvious fallacy, since if you actually had all that consensus then you could just go to the policy page and request that the policy be changed to acommodate the consensus.

If you look at WP:PILLARS you will also see that consensus is part of the "code of conduct" pillar, while verifiability is part of the "encyclopedia". As a rule of thumb, I consider that any user saying that a part of one pillar can override a part of another pillar is probably wrong. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

perhaps this discussion would be more productive elsewhere. its not as if we were likely to settle it between us. I'll end this thread by summarizing my general views on the most general issues: The difficult questions at Wikipedia are where policies appear to conflict. Though these conflicts could be regarded as productive of discord, I see them more as leading to flexibility. It is multiple discussions on detail that change consensus. Policy is explanatory of what we agree to do at WP, not forced on us from above. DGG (talk) 02:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, you are right, I got carried away trying to "win" the argument. Thanks for reacting so well and fairly. I guess we can go over these issues sometime on the future on some DRV, and they I'll watch my words more and try to be more respectful --Enric Naval (talk) 12:05, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Current project

Your third suggestion: I like. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC) P.S. As this is out of the blue, I am referring to the section on your userpage. "A good faith request by any established editor is sufficient for any administrator, whether or not the deleting administrator, to undelete an article deleted under speedy, except for BLP and copyvio. This should be automatic, and need not involve Deletion Review. it is polite to ask the original administrator first, but not necessary, and, even if s/he refuses, any administrator can undelete it without it being considered wheel warring. The article would normally be immediately sent for AfD. By definition, if an established editor disagrees, it is not uncontroversial and needs community involvement. "

Yes, that's the one. I think it would actually save a lot of drama and free up some wasted time for creators, onlookers & DRV contributors. It might increase the load at AfD, but I'm inclined to think not that much. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

AfD essay

Greetings, David. I have been playing around recently with the idea of writing an essay on an aspect of AfD you might be interested in. The idea behind the essay (stub version here) is that it would be admirable for inclusionists/eventualists who argue that articles could be improved to an acceptable level to take immediate steps in bringing that article up to scratch. Per this comment, I imagine that you are sympathetic to the notion. Would you be interested in collaborating on the essay or throwing around a few ideas on the subject? Sincerely, Skomorokh 11:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I hope you do not mean "immediate"--I dont see it in your proposal. --it is many times easier to nominate for deletion than to fix. I fix articles at Afd, yes, but i can only do 1 or 2 a week or so properly (I usually do another 2 or 3, but some of those fixes are minimal & dont really meet my standards for a decent article.) In that week, usually 1000 are nominated, of which probably 200 of the deleted ones could be fixed, and perhaps the same number of the ones that get kept need majpr improvements. But Wikipedia is too large to require fixing to save articles--many articles will not be worked on for long periods,--this is very unfortunate, but until we have more people prepared to work on the less widely interesting topics, it will remain the case. One thing we'll need to get them, is to not delete articles that they might be interested in. them. Incomplete articles are inevitable in a wiki like this.

Lets try to generalize this--that people who nominate for deletion must demonstrate they did at least a minimal search, documenting where they looked.

Maybe it should be a how-to, not an exhortation.

Try a longer draft & I'll look in more detail. DGG (talk) 02:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Refining AfD outcomes

Hi. I read your comments at the AfD and DRV of List of Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters. In particular, I noticed your suggestion to alter AfD/DPR. I started a discussion WT:AFD#Merge outcome, based in part on my interpretation of your comments and concerns. Flatscan (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding at the discussion. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

54]] (T C) 12:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Speedy keep

Hi DGG. You may be surprised to see me championing anything regarding "keep" !votes, but you might find this discussion about this AfD discussion interesting. My conclusion is that WP:Speedy keep might do well to have at least one non-bad faith / non-nominator-generated reason, such as WP:SNOW. Thoughts? Bongomatic 18:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I have elsewhere commented just now [1] that the reason for speedy keep should be a "clearly mistaken nomination": or something of the sort, without implying anything about good faith. Except in extreme circumstances, we can't really judge people's motivations, and they are not necessarily relevant. for example, I readily admit that the motivation of one of my principal opponents in some recent discussions is their good faith and honest and forthright desire to reduce the Wikipedia coverage of fiction, which they in all honesty think excessive. That they are totally wrong and will destroy one of the key positive features of Wikipedia does not affect their good faith.

SNOW is a different matter, and I think we use it altogether too rapidly, because we should give a chance for people to say things that we might not have thought of at first. I think it would be a good idea if almost all afds ran a full 5 days =120 hours.

As for engadget, it closed before I had a chance to comment. I think the nomination was about was wrong as a nomination can be, and showed some inability to understand either the article, or a temporary lapse in understanding our guidelines. I think the nominator sometimes does interpret our guidelins in a way that i would not, but that at most is a persistent error, or non-standard viewpoint. Bad faith in a deletion nomination would be if someone wanted to delete the article of a competitor, or about an organisation that espoused a different ideology, or an article written by an opponent here or in the RW, or to make a POINT irrelevant to the merits of the article, or to do deliberate harm to the encyclopedia, or out of purely reckless vandalism. None of these were present here that i know of. DGG (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to reach a consensus (or at least spark further discussion) at Wikipedia talk:Guide to deletion#Summary up to now. Feel like weighing in? Bongomatic 02:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

2009

Deletion reasons (Prods)

You have lost me when you say that "unresolved issues is not a good enough reason to delete". Taking Manhunt (urban game) for example, the issues raised are as follows:

It does not cite any references or sources.

t needs sources or references that appear in third-party publications.
It may contain original research or unverifiable claims.
Its factual accuracy is disputed.
It may need copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling.
It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

Its lead section requires expansion.

In other words, it is an extremely poor article that is almost certainly providing misinformation to the readers. So why keep it? Are you perhaps being pedantic and trying to insist that I duplicate all of the above as the prod reason instead of merely referring to the loud and clear issues that appear immediately below the prod box?

We are supposed to be providing the readers with a credible encyclopaedia, not preserving patent rubbish. --Orrelly Man (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• In the case of the above article the prod wasn't correct as the article had previously had a prod removed, AfD therefore is the only way to go. RMHED. 19:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As for your question though,since it applies equally to Prod and AfD:
You should not nominate an article for deletion if it can be rescued: see WP:BEFORE and WP:Deletion Policy. It is an excellent idea to remove rubbish, but only if it cannot be improved. The mere failure to have improved an article is not a reason for deletion by itself, no matter how long it has been unimproved. Let's look at those reasons:

1. We do not remove articles for being unsourced. We remove them for being unsourceable. You need to do a proper search. For games of this sort, I think this should include printed books on children's games. Atthe very least before nominating, you should check Google Books.
2. The second reason is just like the one above; it does need them, & the thing to do is to look for them. It's not a reason for deletion unless there are none to be found. (t
3. If the factual accuracy is disputed, then it should be edited, not deleted. The disputes about accuracy should be discussed on the talk page and resolved. It would only be a reason for deletion if you were prepared to show it did not exist at all, or that there was so much dispute that it was impossible to write even a brief article.
4. If copy editing is needed, then it should be done. The need for this is never a reason for deletion.
5. Ditto for general cleanup. If it needs it, do it. This too is never a reason for deletion.
6. If the lead section needs expansion, expand it. This again is never a reason for deletion.

Thus, none of the unresolved issues were a good enough reason for deletion, just as I said. I hope this explanation helps, more than my edit summary did. As a general rule, what we do with poor articles is improve them. What we do with misinformation is correct it, if we can show it incorrect. If you know enough about the game to make these statements, you know enough to help the article. Articles of this sort do tend to attract dubious material, and need proper attention. Then Wikipedia will be a more credible encyclopedia and not provide patent rubbish. I see you are interested in these games, so I look forward to seeing your improvements in this set of articles. DGG (talk) 20:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I can see you mean well but you are being very unrealistic. If the original editor will not make the effort to provide proper sources, why should anyone else? You have to remember that other editors don't have the time to do "proper searches" or expand the lead or edit factual inaccuracies and original research. Quite often, when you find a bad article, it has been created by some redlink userid who has made no other "contributions". Best thing to do is get rid of it or you end up wasting valuable time. If the creator is a genuine editor, he can always come back and recreate it. --Orrelly Man (talk) 21:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

why? because of our Deletion policy, as clearest expressed at WP:BEFORE, our need to encourage new contributors, and WP:BITE. It is you who unrealistically expect perfection at the first edit. It is every bit as valuable and necessary to fix articles as contribute new ones. DGG (talk) 22:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

from a recent deletion review: how to close XfDs

judging consensus is trying to evaluate what the other responsible people there think should be done. One can evaluate arguments, but only to see which ones are not in conformity with policy. I completely disagree one can choose which policy of competing ones applies, or how to interpret policy: both are for the community to decide (or whatever small fraction is paying attention). I do not argue to convince the closer in particular of the merits of my argument, but to convince others who may come and look at the discussion and give an opinion. The closer should follow whatever policy-based argument a clear majority agrees with, unless it's totally irrational. DGG (talk) 02:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

DGG:FYI (Lin Chen )

I am surprised to see that you have concluded the consensus of the discussion for deletion of ‘Lin Chen’ is to merger ‘Lin Chen’ to ‘Chen Model’. To my understanding the discussion has not reached a consensus. Given the indecisive result, the best solution is ‘status quota’, to leave the article ‘Lin chen’ alone.

Here is the result of the votes in the discussion: 3 keeps: 1 delete: 2 mergers ( Lin Chen to Chen model) 1 merge (Chen model to Lin Chen) In particular, DGG, a senior editor of Wikipedia, best interprets the Wikipedia criterion and suggests to keep the article. If merger, DGG added, Chen model should merger to Lin Chen, not the other way around.

As you did not participate in the discussion I am not sure if you have full knowledge of the discussion, but I hope you could take the majority’s opinion seriously. At least you should take DGG’s opinion seriously. Thank you.

Bankert (talk) 03:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

from an afd

"It was asked above what the inclusion criteria should be for material like this. the answer, is they can be whatever we want them to be. We make the rules, and we can make whatever exceptions are indicated. It's not as if we were working on someone else's project." DGG (talk)

DRV process, restoration and system

Heya, your recreations of DRV pages are a great help for us non-admins helping out in DRV and majorly appreciated. I was wondering, would you back up a proposal for a change to the DRV process to include restoration of the article as deleted to DRVPAGE/PAGENAME instead of mainspace? That would still allow non-admins to see the page while avoiding any confusion or frustration that may arise from the temporary restoration and would keep deleted articles out of mainspace (and thus main search index) until a decision is made to recreate them... For example, the recreation of TurnKey Linux (DRV at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 29) could then be done to Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 29/TurnKey Linux instead of the mainspace location. Obviously recreation would not be mandatory (as this would be difficult to enforce/support without placing further strain on an already low population of admins) and wuld not be possible if the page contained attacks, copyvios or similar but could be requested and serviced exactly the way it works now. Just a thought. Usrnme h8er (talk · contribs) 14:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I would support any procedure which gets the articles routinely visible during DRV. The proposed one has some disadvantages: The work involved for the admin would be slightly greater in moving it to a sub page, because after the DRV the page would have to be moved back even if deleted, so it can later be found where one would expect it. It will also be a burden on the servers for long pages, as all the links would need to be changed, and then changed back; for pages with a few thousand revisions, the load is significant. But it does have the great merit of keeping it out of mainspace & the index; personally, I dont think it normally does any harm to have it there for 5 days or so, especially if it was originally in mainspace for a long period; however, many people do think this harmful,and the proposal would eliminate their objections,and probably be easier to pass than a plan for routinely using mainspace. We are not the least bit short of administrators: what we are short of is fully active administrators. Too many use it as a trophy, but don't do much of the work. But a script could probably be written do do the move, and the move back. It can't be literally required, because we cannot do this for copyvio and many BLPs, and there's no real point in doing it for obviously meritless reviews. I think it should be required otherwise, just as I think notification of all significant editors should be, and all who commented at the previous XfDs. But there is no reason I can see not to use it boldly as a trial.DGG (talk) 16:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and suggested this change at the end of WT:DRV. Usrnme h8er (talk · contribs) 08:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

reply from Ched on recent AfD (Supermarket tabloids)

Hey DGG, how you doing today? Regarding your recent comment at this AfD. While many editor would like to see a simple "Keep" or "Delete" !vote on the XfDs, and in theory perhaps it is preferable to stick to one or the other, in practice I've seen many articles go through quite a change throughout the 5 day (soon to be 7 day?) process. Being an administrator, I'm sure you've seen even more bizarre discussions. I'm not sure how you're hoping to differentiate between "Tabloid" and "Supermarket Tabloid", but I don't have a problem with it either way. I do think that the "Supermarket tabloids in the United States" is a bit pretentious in title, but that's just a passing note on my part.

Getting back to my Merge !vote: While you may prefer a cut-and-dried "Keep-or-Delete" situation in XfD, the changes that articles are able to go through during the process does lend some credence to the possibility that suggestive !votes can accomplish some positive input. At this point in time, neither Supermarket tabloids in the United States nor Tabloid are particularly well along in development. The former is not much more than a list and some trivia, but the later could be brought up to C or B class without too much difficulty I would think. I agree that the former should not have been tagged, but I'm not going to comment on specific editors, but rather the articles and items in general. It simply seems to me, that at this particular time and in their current states, it would benefit the wiki to merge the articles, get Tabloid up to snuff, and then if one finds enough RS to split out a notable "in supermarkets" fork, or a "in particular countries/cultures" fork - that's fine. Well, that's just my thoughts on the matter, and all previous comments are simply IMHO. Best of luck with the article(s). — Ched : Yes?  © 06:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I left a note on the AfD that the closing editor is free to consider my !vote in the "Keep" category ;) — Ched : Yes?  © 06:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Commented there—in short, the idea that AfD's are not the place to opine about mergers is contradicted by (extremely longstanding) WP process. Bongomatic 07:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

and pretty nonsensical practice it is too--see below:

how to differentiate a straight keep close from a merge is an unsolved question. Officially, there is no difference, merge is a form of keep, and technically a merge close is a keep, with a recommendation to merge. All this is,as you seem to realize, a little artificial, and there are two separate problems, whether to keep content at all, and how to arrange it. Obviously, we could have a Wikipedia with a few large articles, or we could have one with many short articles, and it would be essentially just the same,except for such matters as the prominence of topics in Google, and the ability to link & organize: we do not have the technical capability at present to link securely to article sections, and we cannot list article sections in categories. I look forward to the time when the contents of Wikipedia will be rewritten as a proper database, with discrete units of data, and the appearance and arrangement of the content adjustable according to the readers preference and needs--technically, this is attainable now. In dividing things up, I think it is a good idea to follow the literature. The existence of a separate book on a subject usually indicates the advisability of a separate article--it's an indication that there is quite a lot to say. That standard journalism texts differentiate them tends to confirm this. I'm not about to expand it, but it seems to me that the contents and purpose of the typical US supermarket tabloid is very different to that of the US news-stand tabloid--one aims at sensationalism mixed with a little human interest, the other at human interest mixed with a little sensationalism and perhaps a little news. The UK tabloid is another type altogether. In terms of writing articles, sometimes separating out a small subject can lead to easier improvement in an article--many editors here do much better with topics of more limited scope. But i do know that 5 or 7 or 10 days is a very short time to expand an article properly if done by cooperative editing--most articles here grow slowly over time. If, however, one person takes it in hand, then I think the best principle is to let an ambitious and competent writer do pretty much whatever organization they want, and submit it to criticism. There are many ways to build good encyclopedia articles. There are also many ways to avoid doing so, among which is disputing too long over the proper merging at AfD. As my favorite author Samuel Johnson said, you may stand there disputing over which leg to put in your breeches first, but meanwhile your breech is bare. DGG (talk) 07:14, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Possibly nonsensical, although if an actual consensus occurs to merge in an AfD it seems as valid a conclusion as if it had occurred anywhere else. In any event, my point was simply that your statement that "AfD is not for merge discussions, in any case" is (possibly valid) opinion, and shouldn't be confused with or stated as policy / established and fully documented practice. Bongomatic 08:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

←OK, I'll be the first to admit that I probably should be contributing to articles, rather than socializing on your talk page. Now comes the "but" part. Several things come to mind here, and I've read and re-read the items of topic. Several items spark my desire to reply; one would be that great quote you mention of Mr. Johnson, wonderful quote; our (US) forefathers did have an enjoyable flair for the language. The other, and more relevant, topic would be my choice of Merge as my !vote on this AfD. I'll admit that I'll most likely never become a prolific contributor to any of the XfD sections, but I do wish to conduct my posts in with proper insight. In fact, it appears that you, (DGG), and I actually share many common intents. Be they the expansion, or organization of material on Wikipedia, or more "real life" related items such as politics. I also have no desire to play "let's gang up on the admin" ;). Now looking back, two statements come to my attention, which indicates that it was wrong for me to post the "Merge" portion of my comments. At the AfD and here, I'm drawn to 2 statements:

1. "AfD is not for merge discussions, in any case." (from the AfD)
2. "...and pretty nonsensical practice it is too--see below:" (from posting above)

That indicated (to me at least) that you felt it was wrong to post "Merge" on the AfD topics. Then I came across this post by you, and now I'm really confused. I do want to understand what is proper, but I often find that actual practice doesn't always see intent in an eye-to-eye fashion. — Ched : Yes?  © 09:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• Full disclosure: It will be very rare that you'll see a "Delete" from me in any of the XfD sections. Short of NPA, NLT, or an article on what somebodies grandmother had for breakfast - I'm all for including any info we can at Wikipedia. ;) — Ched ~ ^(yes?)/_© 12:27, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Essentially, how to handle these is an unsettled question, and there is no consistent practice. This is because of a very basic discontinuity:

AfD is about whether articles should be kept, not what the content of them should be

A merge or a redirect does not actually keep an article, though it may sometimes keeps the content--but not always. What it does depends on what happens after the AfD.

The problem arises because of our focus on articles and notability , rather than on content , appropriate extent and detail of coverage, and "suitable arrangement." I see no solution within the current framework. The first step to a real solution would be to delete WP:N, but this does not have sufficient support yet. The reason is doesn't is because it would force us to decide what we actually wanted to include in Wikipedia--about which there is no agreement, so people prefer to take their chances with ever more complicated rules on sourcing, and the presence of principles such as NOT NEWS. The current policies are such as to permit a plausible argument for keeping or deleting almost anything. One extreme solution is to say that we we should keep in whatever a sufficient number of established Wikipedians want to keep in--but a glance at some of the articles that actually get some support at AfD indicates this might not work too well. The opposite, to keep out whatever enough people want to keep out, gives equally bad results. Why we think that establishing the balance of those who come to a discussion by chance gives better results is not clear to me, except that it has some rough resemblance to popular democracy. It might even give a reasonable result a little more than half the time. (more seriously,i think for those that are actually disputable rather than obvious, the figure might be as high as 66%) . And it might be that having the arguments as a !vote on content would be even more chaotic and inconsistent.

In the meantime, we can only use whatever manner of argument that will give a reasonable solution case by case, under the framework at hand, for how else are we to proceed? I make no claim to perfect consistency. When I participate in AfD I speak as an advocate to get what I think should be done, either for the particular article at hand, or sometimes in hope to influence the decision on future articles also. When I close, which is rare, I try to judge what others think should be reasonably done. There is no way a community as large as this will actually have consistent consensus on details. DGG (talk) 14:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Rescued

I have added a "rescued" tag to show where in AFD debates the rescue effort has begun, previously we have been adding a tag that shows when ARS was notified, but I don't think that is useful since nothing has changed at that point.Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bahamas–Russia relations See here for an example that contrasts the difference in placement. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest modifying it to include major changes by people not in the squadron. We there have no monopoly of the good editors, & it's just as important whoever does it. Additionally, I think it over-advertises the ARS. I urge you to change that template right away or we will be back at TfD.DGG (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Arguing against redirects?

Any idea why all the sudden several editors are taking the unusual stance of insisting fictional characters can't even get redirects? I mean, I am sure it is probably coincidence, but it is rather annoying having to waste my time arguing for redirects. Surely there is strong consensus that these type of redirects are complete appropriate and they cost almost nothing. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think I do know why:

1. They are afraid the articles will be re-created using the existing information
2. They are even afraid that if the article is deleted (to remove the history) and then the redirect created, that something like that will be restored anyway.
3. They no longer even ask for merges, because with a merge it is not permitted to remove the history: there is no such thing as merge, delete history , & redirect, because it violates the terms of the license
4. In a few instances, they may simply want to remove as much information about fiction as possible. I checked the 18th c Éncyclopedie yesterday on this very point, and their article about novels simply mentions the names of a dozen French authors and a few works, without talking about any of them elsewhere. That's the sort of encyclopedia some people want.

Now, I myself would be extremely happy if some genres of fiction had never been devised in the first place, but, astoundingly, in many cases the people wanting to remove material are fans of the series or the work. They apparently feel that they are wasting time with things that aren't worth talking about in general company. DGG (talk) 17:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I just made a question along these lines at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gavilan ElessedilDGG (talk) 17:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Points 1 and 2 are good ones. It is unfair (and a waste of time, ThaddeusB) to rely on people checking their watchlists to find reversions of redirects, which occur all too regularly. There should be a mechanism to prevent this without a new consensus.

Otherwise I give a lengthy explanation of my rational in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lokar which I would like your opinion on, either there or (preferably) here. I like to think that if I am in the wrong, I, like DGG, can see my position evolve. Abductive (talk) 23:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying on Lokar, but I still thing a "redirect" through disambiguation is better than nothing. In any case, Lokar is the exception - normally these character names only have one possible target. In general, a redirect is better than deletion for several reasons:

• Obviously someone was looking for the material or the page would have never been created
• Pointing new editors directly to a place where the content exists encourages them to edit there and/or spend their time on something else rather than recreating material that exists somewhere
  • Yes, redirecting makes it easier for experienced editors to undo the redirect, but experienced editors are far less likely to do so against consensus than a new editor is to recreate against consensus
  • Additionally, have one's first page deleted is probably the #1 way to scare someone off. Better that they not create the worthless page rather than be crushed when it is immediately deleted/nominated for deletion.
• Adding a page to your watch list costs essentially nothing in terms of time or effort. Additionally, if you wanted to insure the page wasn't recreated the blank page after deletion you'd have to watch list the non-existent page or otherwise keep an eye on it.
  • I have merged and/or redirected more than 100 articles in the last couple months and only 2 or 3 were undone by anyone (and none went through AfD prior to my redirect). If people aren't undoing my BOLD redirect, I really don't think people undoing consensus redirects is a serious problem.
• If a particular redirect is becoming a problem, it can always be protected just like any other page
• Redirects cancan't be hit by "Random article" so there is no risk of someone being pointed to one by accident.

• • • That generally makes sense. Three things; I do find that monitoring my watchlist takes time, a few minutes each time, and over many times it adds up. A reversion rate of 1 or 2 percent per month is 12 to 24 percent per year. And, are you sure that redirects are found by Random article? Abductive (talk) 00:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Of course monitoring a watch list takes time, but (at least for me) almost none of that time comes from changes to slow moving articles (or redirects). I have ~1000 articles on my list and probably 90% of the changes come from noticeboards and swine flu articles, as all the rest of my list is slow moving articles - in many cases I am probably the only active editor watching.

My results are perhaps not typical but take at Patrick Star. Even this very prominent redirect has only been undone less than once a month on average. If the page was repeatedly deleted (and not protected) rather redirected, I can quite confidently say it would be recreated more than once a month.

Finally, I meant "can't" that was an unfortunate typo. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Now is the end of the world if some fictional character doesn't have a redirect? Of course not, but neither should it bother you or anyone else that a redirect exists. It is just sitting there doing no one any harm and if it is helpful to a few people a year, then that is enough to keep it. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

What do would you guys think if a new popular work of fiction along the lines of Twilight came out, and a user created all the redirects prophylactically? Abductive (talk) 00:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I personally would be fine with that as long as the characters are mentioned by name in the target article. The redirect could always be overwritten if needed. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

You are probably correct. I think this sort of attitude is a real shame. While I personally care very little about fiction, I do think that for a large percentage of our readers fictional topics are of great interest. It would be a great disservice to remove fictional topics altogether and would surely be a net negative for Wikipedia. I know you are a strong advocate for merging fictional topics in the "characters of"/"places of"/etc type article and I am on the same page entirely. If the information can be covered in one article there is no need for 5, 10, or even 20 stubs with little more than a basic character description. At the same time, there is no reason to delete information that is of interest to our readers just because it doesn't need its own article.

I think the majority (or at least plurality) of editors agree that merging is usually best, but there are far too many (on both sides) that simply refuse to compromise and I don't really understand why. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:30, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

and of course in our system such people can prevent consensus indefinitely. The basic problem which affects every topic lies in our not having a mechanism to get reasonably consistent and stable decisions on content. (There are techniques though for handling very large watchlists, by looking for related changes. What is lacking is some way of filtering so only changes above a certain size are listed. ) But I see many changes in the other direction also--stable agreements to keep content, destroyed by someone going in and changing everything to redirects, or removing large amounts of content from a combination article. The main reason I still support keeping many articles intact even if perhaps better combined is to discourage that. We each think the other side is doing the worse, and it doesn't matter, because both are wrong. A first step would be a rule that BRD cannot be used for redirects and merges--that non-obvious ones MUST be discussed first, with full notice, and consensus. I suppose in equity that should apply to splits also.

Thaddus, the reason why people reject compromise is very simple. Rather than get a situation that consistently gives a result they can accept but do not really like, they prefer a situation where they will get what they want some of the time, even if they will lose others. They prefer chaos to a decision that does not satisfy them. I've heard people say as much in AfD in other topics entirely--their reason for deciding case by case instead of precedent , is that they can at least keep a certain percentage of the articles like X in--or out--even if its a random selection. This general way of thinking is characteristic of young children before they learn how to interact in groups in kindergarten. There's a large number of editors here who never learned. DGG (talk) 00:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I would be curious as to what kind of articles tend to suffer was this later deletion of merged material. I personally do a lot of merges, but they are mostly all from 6+ day old PRODs where article being merged is either pretty unlikely to be notable or has very little content (2 sentences or less). I figure it is better to PRESERVE what I can than just let it disappear. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'm not like that. Abductive (talk) 00:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

You might want to check your current argument in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gavilan Elessedil, [2] DGG (talk) 01:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Since nobody looks at the article, and there are only 42 Google hits, and the search bar and the user's brain will take tham to the article on the novel, I would still prefer outright deletion. What if somebody created an article on a village that the characters visited, but it was not important to the plot or an encyclopedic discussion of the work? How about a stew with a unique name that the characters ate once in the novel? Should Wikipedia have an article, disambig or redirect on every named thing in every fictional work? Abductive (talk) 01:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It is very hard to define the concept of "important" to the plot. In literature worth the attention, every place named there, even in passing, is included and discussed in works on the subject. There is always a reason for authors writing what they wrote; in good literature it is worth tracing the reasons--it adds depth to the story--the reader, or at least the careful reader, is much intended to make the associations. There has for example, been very extensive work done with Austen's names for people, places, and houses; similarly with Faulkner, or Joyce, or Hardy. Nothing is too trivial for a good writer. I remind you of the extraordinary care that Tolkien gave to this--he constructed a complete legendary history behind ever single name, and discussed it either in the works themselves, or his notebooks. Or the considerable less complicated but still meaningful names in Rowling.

As a librarian, I have learned to assume nothing about users' brains in searching; if they used them the entire profession would be much less necessary. The goal is to set it up so the users will find directly exactly what they no matter how stupidly they go about it. DGG (talk) 02:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you, but point out that the metric from importance is mention in secondary sources. I've read Tolkien, Rawlings and Brooks, and recall thinking that Brooks was a pale imitation. The paucity of secondary sources on him and his works suggests that his treatment on Wikipedia needs to be scaled back; it seems especially unfair given that minor characters in the Harry Potter series are playing by the rules on their page. Abductive (talk) 03:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

rescue tag

After dipping my toe in again, I noticed some unfortunate things about what seems to be casual application of the rescue tag, and on clicking through today's AfD discussions I see a pattern which I don't understand: This, this, this, this, and this page subject each appear to be created as autobiographical or self-promotional, and of the group I'd only keep the library as notable. Does the AfD process commonly ignore self-promotion as a factor in keep or delete closes? In only one case of the five was the self-promotional aspect mentioned in the nom. How should this weigh in the closing admin's decision? BusterD (talk) 14:10, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

nothing common in the article history, and 4 promotional articles in one day is under the usual quota--there are many thousands of equally bad ones here. (That's why I regret the effort in fighting over whether to merge character articles and similar obvious things--there is real work that needs doing). The library page is a copyvio,by the way--pages that read like that usually are. They will all 4 probably go, unless the motorcycle art is actually notable. The problem is the use of the rescue tag by different editors as a matter of course when the articles come up for deletion. It should not really be used for lost causes, but it's hard to tell what's a lost cause until we look for references--some amazing rescues have been pulled off, typically where a very bad article is written about something where there are actually references for notability--sometimes excellent references for major notability. Ideally, each article on AfD should get attention, and receive a careful look for the possibility of doing something with it. Ideally every new article should get a careful look for the very likely need of improving it and making a strong article out of it. In fact, all the old articles too should individually get the kind of concentrated attention a potential FA gets, to update and strengthen it. We are approaching 3 million articles. Another 100,000 active careful skilled editors are what we most need. If they each revised one a week, we could reedit the encyclopedia properly in 7 months. Or 5,000 people as active as the best people here, who could devote considerable time to it and do one a day. DGG (talk) 16:08, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

All this gives me more respect for those of you admins who take on "drinking from the firehose" directly. I feel I just help with splatters. There's only so much one can see without doing RC patrol a bunch. Thanks again for offering your view. I may come back around to this again. BusterD (talk) 03:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

we in turn rely on you and all the other sharp-eyed editor to spot these problems. Do not be reluctant to follow up. Never hesitate about letting someone know if you have doubts about something. DGG (talk) 03:13, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're not already reading this, I'd appreciate eyes (but please hold your comments). I've been reading some of the previous discussions on this subject, and sampling actual tagged processes, and it's not pretty. I'm going to perform a more formal examination as soon as I figure exactly how I'm going to set it up. BusterD (talk) 03:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Members of the project things in different ways--I'm a member myself. What would be an interesting analysis is the % of time the tagging got the article kept by consensus. If it is very low, taggers are not being selective, or not improving it sufficiently, or there is a prejudice against them. If it is very high, then either they are very successful, or there is a prejudice for articles they work on. I expect something in the range of 30% to 70%, which I think is an acceptable range. What I think the ideal range should be is 60%-80%. Let's see how the evidence matches my guess. DGG (talk) 03:31, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Would you care to suggest a sample size? BusterD (talk) 03:47, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Turns out to be easy, using Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles subpage, which I should have known about but had not recalled, in June out of 416 articles, 279 were saved in some form or other, and 137 were not saved. This is 67%. More than I thought, but at about the minimum level I would consider acceptable. Next question: also can be done by counting, how does this compare with the ones not tagged, or the % before the ARS started? One would expect a higher % of the total afd's articles saved than those not tagged, or there would be no need for the tagging--though there will be articles so obviously a keep that there's no need to tag them. I hope there would be a higher % saved now than there was before the ARS started--but that's hard to differentiate from changing views towards deletion. Harder questions: how many should have been saved, but were closed wrong, how many should not have been kept, but were closed wrong. Obviously everyone will disagree here. However, all these numbers as not as meaningful as they look, because many of the saved were saved by a merge or a redirect: I do not consider a redirect with loss of all content a save, though it is technically. Key question? of the ones not saved, how many should not have been nominated? maybe 10 or 15; if 15 out of 416 were tagged in error, or at least wildly overenthusiastically, that's 3.6% of the total tagged. No wikiprocess really operates with errors much less than 5%. They're doing fine, though more articles are being lost than should have been. Evidence of a few really foolish ARS taggings are the sort of anecdotal evidence that should not say anything about the general process. The main reason I think they should be tagging more carefully that if they did, they might save some more articles overall by concentrating on them. I found at least 10 in there that should be appealed or reintroduced after improvements. DGG (talk) 15:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

reguarding redirects

I wrote on another editors page the possibility of a RFC.[3] I know you were embrolled in all of this. I don't want to have hundreds of newly created WP:BATTLEs over redirects now.

The redirecting was supposed to stop these battles.

As I mentioned to LibStar, I always wondered what he would do when he was unable to delete anymore articles. I saw a preview earlier: put the articles up for deletion a second time, and now today, put the redirects up for deletion.

Please advise if you think a RFC would be a good idea, either highlighting the editor, or over the entire series of articles. Ikip (talk) 00:46, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It's been seen many times. Many many times. In many subjects. The various XfD processes other than AfD are small closed shops where newcomers are badly needed, but generally not very welcome, at least until they learn the particular style of argument that works. And even then, it's one newcomer at a time, so they can expect to hand in there for a very long time until there are enough new people to have much of an effect. My proposal is the deletion of a redirect after an AfD should go to AfD, where it will be visible.

With respect to changing articles into redirects, as you have proposed elsewhere, this is now a multi-directional conflict between

a./changing to redirects with the intention of then doing a merge, because of thinking the material is best put in the larger or more accepted articles

b./ changing to redirects in order to preserve the content in the history for future expansion gradually

c./ changing to redirects in order to do gradually try to delete the redirects, in the hope that RfD is relatively poorly watched as compared to AfD

d./ keeping as small articles in the hope of improving them quickly

e./ keeping as small articles in the hope of defending them at AfD

f./ keeping as small articles in the hope of merging then into larger or more accepted articles

I favor f as a second choice to d. As you are now seeing, using redirects especially when the material is not clearly represented in the article redirected to is a poor and unstable compromise--& should be done as an act of desperation only. It's technically called "keep", but it is not. It's a delete as far as the article is concerned, which is no longer visible to users. The only difference is that the history stays there read to restore. But history can always be retrieved for those wanting to work on articles. I look forward to restoring improved versions of essentially all these articles over the next year or two. My working guide is Big with anything: article; Medium with Medium:article; Medium with Small: article if on same continent or otherwise related or if there are special circumstances, otherwise merge; Small with Small: article only if they are close neighbors or there are special circumstances; otherwise merge. No redirects. No deletions. I can understand people going one step less inclusive, and I'll accept Big with Small or Medium with Medium if merged. I will not accept any redirect or deletion, but how hard I will fight them depends on the circumstances. Usually I won't fight a redirect very hard--but that will change immediately if people start trying devices like deleting redirects that were originally articles. A person who !votes for a redirect with the intention of later deleting it is in my opinion not acting in good faith, and is violating NOT BUREAUCRACY, as with other procedural tricks.

The odds of anything good happening at a conduct RfC are never very great unless the person is cooperative and in good faith-- and if they are then an RfC should not be necessary. What Wikipedia needs is ways to encourage more people to participate in RfD and similar processes, and do what the judgment tells them on all sorts of articles. Not to get decisions I would prefer on this topic--which might not be the result, but to get better decisions generally, which is much more important. And more people in any process here protect against error, prejudice, and trickery. Unfortunately, too much rescue work in these processes takes time from improving articles and few people can keep it up for long. DGG ( talk ) 02:11, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

thanks DGG for your comments. whilst we don't always agree, the best way is to get more people involved in discussion to gain better consensus of issues. I'd rather spend my time improving notable articles than arguing over policy interpretations. LibStar (talk) 02:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your long, thoughtful response DGG. I find it ironic that only you can get away with such long answers. Several other editors have been critized for such long answers. You probably are excempt because you are a much better writer than those other editors.

It appears like LibStar was only targeting a small, select group of redirects, it felt like peeling onions to get to the real answer from him.

I wish he would have contacted me first before putting these redirects up for deletion, I would have simply renamed these redirects correctly.

I have more questions than answers at this point. The opaque way wikipedia works, I may never have all the answers to what happened today and why. Ikip (talk) 03:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You're right. You never will. And it is not worth trying. The thing to do is acknowledge everyones good faith all around, and get on with things. Lib Star, if you nominated them in good faith please do not read any implications into what I said above & if it sounds otherwise I apologize. I was discussing a general problem. DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

no problems DGG. LibStar (talk) 03:13, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You may find this a useful argument in some deletion discussions

Responding to several comments over at the NOT talk page, based on the idea of "unencyclopedic" content, I put up a new section, Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#The reason why the "unencyclopedic" argument just doesn't fly on that talk page. Much of the "unencyclopedic" argument is a pet peeve of mine. It's a bit of a tangent to the main discussion, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on it. Basically, when people say "unencyclopedic", they may be under the impression that Wikipedia policy is a lot more restrictive than it really is. Thanks, Noroton (talk) 19:06, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

"unencyclopedic" just as well as "encyclopedic" is a word that can mean whatever one wants, and any book, can be called an encyclopedia. Therefore either terms can be used to support any argument whatsoever. I tend to interpret "unencyclopedic" as meaning "inappropriate for this encyclopedia." I've commented there. It's interesting seeing all the perfectly reasonable arguments being used to destroy the weird and inconsistent assortment of criteria we use in Wikipedia to decide what to include as articles or as content. Nonetheless some things do belong and some do not, and we have to find some way of agreeing on what. Find a rule, almost any rule, and with enough ingenuity one can use that rule to support either keeping or not keeping any particular article. DGG ( talk ) 20:29, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article Incubator

You commented at: WP:AFD:ARSify
I thought you maybe interested in this: Wikipedia:Article_Incubator which will go live soon.
Your comments are very welcome. Ikip (talk) 20:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

it will be an heroic accomplishment if it succeeds, and i will leave to you the problem of handling the details and getting it integrated into our procedures. DGG ( talk ) 05:57, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

how to delete

if we have only 5% of articles that snuck in by negligence at NPP, that's still 150,000 articles, which ,as you say, will be quite a job. Especially since we have to separate them from the considerably greater number that look equally bad, but are fixable. The only practical way to do this by subject area, where people can concentrate of a group of related articles of similar merit. This has been going fairly well for athletes and porn performers. Not group nominations, which almost always include the good with the bad, but carefully considered individual ones in reasonable groups of 4 or 5, and starting with the worst. And, of course, following WP:BEFORE, and fixing at least the easily fixable ones. I would actually like to do more of this myself, if I didn't need to deal with emergencies when people try to delete without using BEFORE DGG ( talk ) 13:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Notifying of prods

I apologise for ignoring this message. I have now formulated my policy - see this exchange.

Incidentally, I was most amused by this edit! — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 02:07, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

David, notification of deletion notifications is one of the issues that gets my attention. So I took the liberty of popping over to User talk:RHaworth#Notifying of CSD noms, and leaving some comments of my own. I listed four strong reasons I consider it essential for good faith contributors to be advised every single time someone deletes material they contributed. And I added that I thought lapses in advising promising newcomers why their material had been deleted was a contributing factor in triggering some promising newcomers into the kind of vandal behavior that gets them permanently blocked.

Anyhow, I thought I would let you know. I'd welcome any comments that occured to you on my comments.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 17:15, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Closing rationales

Would it be a good idea to add this proposal to Template:Cent? Fences&Windows 16:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

yes. DGG ( talk ) 16:47, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Equazcion has suggested that I close the RfC, admitting that consensus is not going to be gained for compulsory rationales, and instead gain consensus for a new wording that requires a rationale in the case of substantial disagreement. I'm thinking this is a good idea. Whaddya think? See User talk:Fences and windows#Deletion RFC. Fences&Windows 02:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

might as well. The sensible thing to do is to get what can be gotten now, and continue if still needed in 6 months or so. Just as it takes a good while for children to reach the age of reason, it takes a while for new and chaotic organizations who originally try to do everything ad hoc to develop systematically fair ways of proceeding. DGG ( talk ) 02:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Notice how this was AFD was closed?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison between U.S. states and countries nominal GDP

"Quite a few of the usual "it's notable" non-votes which are ignored as usual"

It appears as if this admin is once again using his philosophy to close AfDs against overwhelming consensus.

Suggestions? Ikip (talk) 21:45, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

commented on his talk page. But I would suggest NOT carrying it to deletion review; the practical result isn't worth the trouble in this case. DGG ( talk ) 00:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, I ignored three Keep votes. DreamFocus' was a bare keep per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, Colonel Warden's was WP:ITSNOTABLE, and Boxsockrox88's was WP:INTERESTING. All these are listed in "arguments to avoid", and I will always discard such !votes, such as I would any of the Delete arguments listed there as well. Discarding those three, we have two Keep votes and two Delete (including the nominator). Hence "no consensus". At what point will people realise that "AfD is not a vote" is actually true, regardless of how many administrators keep closing AfDs badly by counting votes? Black Kite 10:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• • On happening to come across this on DGG's talk page (which I don't usually stalk unless he and I are talking about something else), I'm concerned about the issues raised here. I certainly do not have an issue with that close, but I am concerned about the general issue of WP:ATA being considered in a closure. WP:ATA is an essay, and users may disregard essays if they wish. But there is no point in having a distinction between an essay and a policy if closers will treat essays as policy in a close.

    Further, WP:ATA is a crap essay. It's a list of arguments that other people think shouldn't count, and in a number of places, its reasoning is distinctly shaky. It needs to be disregarded in closing. But I want to be clear that I can very much understand discarding !votes that do not bring any useful new factors into the debate.

    But what really concerns me is that this looks like the beginning of yet another skirmish between elements of the Article Rescue Squadron and elements of the Article Extermination Squadron. There is a recognisable group of editors who show up en masse to !vote "keep" in certain discussions, but there is also a recognisable group of editors who show up en masse to !vote "delete" using arguments that are not perceptibly better, and on examining Black Kite's closes and occasional sharp phrases when he runs out of patience, I can't help wondering whether Black Kite perceives this clearly. It seems possible that Black Kite thinks the problems are all one-sided.

    It's hard to discuss this in detail without naming certain problematic users, and I certainly do not intend to pollute DGG's talk page by naming names here, but I do think this is less simple than it looks and there's a genuine issue.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 12:40, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• • • The problems are certainly not on one side. Yes, WP:ATA is pretty crap, but the three examples I gave above are perfect examples of !votes without rationales that should be disregarded, in exactly the same way as if the same votes were "Delete: other stuff has been deleted", "Delete: not notable", or "Delete: not very interesting". However, I think the community as a whole is rapidly running out of patience with the block-voting, wikilawyering, and process avoidance of certain members of the Article Rescue Squadron. The "rescue" tag does seem to be used as a canvassing tag these days. I have to admit that I do not see as much block voting from so-called "deletionists" in XfDs, though I am willing to be presuaded otherwise if you can give examples. If there are groups of users that show up en-masse to vote in pre-determined ways on AfDs, then the solution is simple - topic-ban them all - on both sides - from XfD. Black Kite 14:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
      • Can I email you to name names, Black Kite? Shouldn't be airing them here.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 14:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
        • Yes, that's fine. Black Kite 16:19, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
      • PS: Topic bans are too simple. Last thing Wikipedia needs is another incentive to sockpuppetry, and I'm already having enough trouble keeping track of who's really who without that.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 14:56, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
        • Which is why I think admins should be recognising such patterns and, unless such !votes have reasonable rationales - just ignoring them. Black Kite 16:19, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
      • Since we are on this subject, I've got some material that I should probably send your way as well. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:10, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

to the extent the rescue tag is used as a canvassing tag it won't work well--it's not really canvassing because anyone with deletionist tendencies can look there also. It will only be effective if people use it on rescuable articles--and i do not think anyone can object to it being used for those. I don;t actually know how it's being used, because I don;t check there--I simply look at every AfD, to the extent possible, and comment where I think my comments would be appropriate and helpful. Appropriate = where I have something sensible & pertinent to say, helpful = where it might make a difference, or --sometimes--register a protest that might be useful in the future. some people have used it wrongly in the past, but then people have done wrongly here everything that it is possible to do wrongly--I think by and large the ARS overenthusiasts have learned by now. If we come down to topic bans, I see a number of people saying delete as a reflect immediately after nomination, without even checking the links to references that are given. And how about denials, after references are presented? What some people do not seem yet to have learned is the inadvisability of proposals to eject one's opponents, instead of out-arguing them--and I have other things in mind here than What some people do not seem yet to have learned is the inadvisability of proposals to eject one's opponents, instead of out-arguing them--and I have other things in mind here than that. , such as many of the cases at arbcom.. In general, it seems an argument used by those who know they cannot outargue the opposition. DGG ( talk ) 15:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm talking here about stopping block voting from both sides. I completely agree that there is an issue on both sides. On one side, you have people !voting "Delete" without looking for ways of improving the article, or sourcing. On the other side, there are people !voting "Keep" with spurious reasons, and adding reams of irrelevant trivia and sources into articles and then claiming this makes them "notable". Clearly, there is no problem with a deletion nomination being "outargued" if it is argued reasonably and in line with policy. What is a problem is swathes of !votes with little rationale which can sway closing admins into closing AfDs incorrectly. Black Kite 16:24, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

(I want to clarify that this is a discussion between us, not a debate--BK and I may personally have very different positions, yet as editors, AfD !voters, and admins, we would probably agree about 80% of the time on particular cases, It's with the relatively few not quite so clear ones where the conflict lies, and we should not over-estimate their frequency. If BK and I did not consider each other's arguments worth serious consideration we would not be discussing them in this detail.) DGG ( talk )

BK, I think you misunderstand the position of admins. We're not here to decide issues. We're here to do the necessary operations to carry out express or implied community decisions. We're not to even guide the community, except by arguing like any other editor on the strength of our own positions. People in clerk-like positions like ours' can manage to have a great deal of effective authority, but here it's a temptation that must be resisted. There is a group here who decide certain types of issues-- arb com, and proposals to have a similar group for content have been soundly rejected. I may consider myself competent to be editor in chief of an encyclopedia, but I did not come here to try to maneuver into such a position; in appropriate other places, I am very willing to make judgments--such as my book reviews for CHOICE. DGG ( talk ) 17:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I realise that, but we are charged with judging the level of valid contributions when assessing consensus at XfD. It is noticeable that when admins do this rather than counting votes, the inevitable resulting DRV usually backs their position up. However, too many admins seem to regard being taken to DRV as something terrible (or maybe they're so lazy that they can't be bothered to do anything except count votes), and so many AfDs are closed, IMO, wrongly. Now much of the time this is functionally irrelevant (i.e. the difference between No Consensus and Keep) but in a non-trivial number of cases, it isn't. Black Kite 18:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

If you are saying that more questionable AfD closings should be taken to Deletion Review, I certainly agree. I think we would all also like to see more participation there by ordinary WPedians--at present, unless something exceptional is involved, it tends to fall to a few of us who specialize in it. DGG ( talk ) 20:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have to admit I'm as guilty as many others there; I rarely participate at DRV unless it's one of my closings (which happens less often than I expect, considering that I often close the "late" AfDs that others have shied off from). DRV is certainly underused and often misused, and too often turns into AFD2, however many times people point out that it isn't. Black Kite 21:08, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

DRV will inherently partake of the nature of AfD2: A close must be reasonable. An incorrect decision on which arguments have no support in policy is an incorrect & unreasonable close. This often involves examining the arguments in light of the article. An incorrect decision on which policy rules, and whether it is sufficiently clear to overturn consensus is a mistake, and an unreasonable close. This too requires evaluating the arguments in light of the article. Since IAR is a fundamental policy, it is always relevant, and this essentially opens all issues to review. DGG ( talk ) 21:25, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• Black Kite does not seem to have read my contribution to that debate with sufficient care. I did not simply assert that the matter was notable but provided a link to a source and an association between the example and the list. As it seems that brevity is not understood or appreciated in such cases, I shall perhaps have to be more wordy to avoid my contributions being discounted in future. This seems a poor outcome but so it goes. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oh, I read it. You found a single source with a mild relevance to the article and synthesised that the subject must be notable. This is arguing from a false premise for the same reason that someone saying "I couldn't find any sources on the Internet, so it must be non-notable" is doing. Black Kite 18:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• No, I have seen numerous comparisons of this sort in the past and so already had a good understanding of the matter. If I'd just given my own experience and knowledge then that would have been WP:IKNOWIT and so I did more - I made a brief search to cite a third-party example. This is everything one would expect from an argument at AFD - knowledge of the topic, cogent argument and evidence. The closing admin's job is not to second-guess such contributions and discount them if he doesn't agree with them. Your failure to recognise that multiple experienced editors found your close to be unsatisfactory seems to show that you are unable to properly assess consensus in cases of this sort. Colonel Warden (talk) 21:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• In my view, BK, what you have done is the situation often is is that the closer has reached a desired conclusion by evaluating the arguments in view of the conclusion you want to reach. This is acceptable in a debate-- most of the time, most of us holistically decide whether we want to keep or delete an article and look around for reasons to support our position. This is not acceptable in a closing. The closer has to close in accordance with consensus, after removing irrelevant arguments and arguments contrary to policy , spa's and sockpuppets-- or if the closer departs from it, to show why the consensus is clearly opposed by unambiguous policy. I do not think a closer is able to do this in debates where he has a personal opinion. In such a case, he should contribute to the argument and let someone else close. BK, you say you've been selecting difficult closings, which makes it all the more necessary to pay due regard to this . DGG ( talk ) 21:39, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

• Well, I'd disagree with the first point - since the difference here is between Keep and No Consensus, which are functionally the same (i.e. the article is kept), even if I'd perceived a "desired conclusion" it would've been pointless to stretch the bounds of closing to reach it. If the difference had been between No Consensus and Delete, then there may be a case to be made that the closer is letting their own biases affect the result. As for the second point, you're actually backing my point up - "after removing irrelevant arguments and arguments contrary to policy". I admit that now I have heard Colonel Warden's explanation that I have slightly more regard for his point of view, but he could have made it far clearer. I stand by my discarding of the other two !votes, however. Black Kite 22:04, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You know, I actually forgot that, as I'm so used to arguing against a delete-- and because we have really been discussing generally, more than about this article--so I have changed the wording. As for the second point, the question is of course when to call something irrelevant. Looking again at this article, the arguments you rejected seem in general relevant enough not to be unrelated to policy--or, like mine, simply said keep, without seeing the need to argue in any detail in an AfD where nobody had supported the nominator. So I therefore do not understand what you did, which is how the discussion got started in the first place. There are a few admins here, where instead I would have answered much more cynically: "You wanted it deleted, but knew that close could not possibly be supported, so you said non-consensus, to allow for a rapid renomination" DGG ( talk ) 00:33, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't think then, and I don't think now, that a rapid renomination would achieve anything. I don't think that's really the idea of "No Consensus", to be honest. However, I do think that some sort of merge of these disparate articles would be more encyclopedic - though that's not why I closed as I did. Black Kite 11:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

If you look back, you'll find that discussing a merge was what i suggested also. As I said, we don't disagree quite as much as it looks at first. I think at this point you might have made a call out of annoyance at the level of arguments. I think much of the time when we admins do something wrong, we realize it to some extent. I've been impatient also; I recall once when I tried what i knew to be a shortcut, but one I thought would be accepted --that was the one time a close of mine reached Deletion Review (and was overturned). DGG ( talk ) 15:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

• From my experience at DRV, I've come to the view that there's a sort of hierarchy of arguments in closing AfD. I mean, it's perfectly possible to give a single reply that wins the argument outright. With a "keep", you do it by finding some sources, citing them by direct link or by ISBN and page number, and subjecting them to critical analysis that shows they're reliable. One person doing this at any stage in the debate is worth a hundred "delete: not notable" !votes, because all the delete !votes are explicitly refuted and hence null and void. (See Uncle G's AfD contributions for examples.)

  The equivalent "complete win !vote" for a delete is linking the copyrighted source it's been copy/pasted from. But assuming it's not copypasta, the best "delete" is still a critical analysis of the sources. ("I found this, but it's a blog, and that, but it's a press release. Couldn't find anything else.")

  In an AfD where you have !votes that give you a critical analysis of the sources, the closer can safely ignore everyone who doesn't give such an analysis, and DRV will still support them. Except in the annoying case where someone uses the currently-fashionable three letter acronym "BLP", in which case everyone starts to run around like headless chickens screaming "delete, delete!", apparently because of Daniel Brandt. But if Wikipedia made sense, BLP policy would be about removing unsourced material, which comes back to the same thing I was saying before.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 23:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

OCLC outside linkage to worldcat website

A discussion about whether of not the infobox books template should include outside linkage from the OCLC number is posted here. You are being notified because you posted in a discussion at infobox books about this template functionality. Please stop be and include your input into the issue at the link. Thanks. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 06:51, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Merging at AfD

Hello DGG. I've replied to your comment at User talk:EdJohnston#merging at afd. EdJohnston (talk) 03:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the real issue, the broader issue, is the relationship of AfD to merging, about which there is no agreement (There are certainly n a number of proposals, at a number of different places, (for example, whether deletion review can revert a merge carried out as a consequence of an AfD closing), but I am not sure that any of them really represents agreement--and not just because there are different views about the desirability of particular issues it might affect, but because we simply don;t know how to handle this. I think I am going to propose a rather radical solution, which is to call AfD Articles for Discussion, and accept any solution there as within scope (more or less like the other XfDs)--in other words that AfD should have jurisdiction over contested merges. I'm not sure it will get the result I want for all the articles that I care about, but I think it's the most workable solution, that will cause the least work, confusion, duplication, and --especially-- the least opportunity for wikilawyering.

this particular part of the issue, how much changes can be made during an AfD, is a problem, because I can see the advantages of saying to never do it, to avoid confusion , and the advantages of taking any steps that will improve articles whenever we can do so. Different people have argued different ways, depending on what they want in a particular AfD. or type of afds--I am not sure how consistent anyone has been.

Enough background. specifically, I agree with your view of the matter, that most people support keeping the present state of discouraging it, to a similar extent or perhaps more so Where I disagree is that the change accomplishes it. ; I doubt whether it might not do the reverse. WHat I would like to do is to try to write something that accomplishes the goal you and i seem to agree on. Tomorrow, I hope. DGG ( talk ) 05:04, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

DGG, may I ask why you did not comment sooner? EdJohnston worked on the close for two weeks, including nearly a week rewriting the relevant paragraph. It appears that you reverted before preparing a justification. I see the broader WP:AfD and mergers topic as mostly irrelevant to this specific issue.

Regarding Articles for discussion, you may be interested in WT:Articles for deletion#Consolidation. Flatscan (talk) 06:37, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I did comment early on--frankly, I regarded the need for change as so unlikely as not to need further attention. and so i lost sight of it. I appreciate your view that I have the ability to keep track of everything here. I do try , perhaps more than my actual capacity, and so I get to some things late, which is better than not at all. I think you are correct in your friendly reminder that I should pay more attention to policy disputes, even though it means less to individual articles. DGG ( talk ) 20:49, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

2010

Articles for discussion, encouraging compromise

Hi. Could you expand on how your proposal at WT:Articles for deletion#Move a disputed merge to AfD, retitled Articles for Discussion "encourages compromise"? It's the last point (#8) in your list of reasons, but it seems somewhat redundant to "keeping all options open" (#7). Thanks. Flatscan (talk) 07:31, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Keeping all options open is a rather general statement that merging the processes will establish the disputed proposition that a merge or redirect close is enforceable, and let any discussion end in the appropriate way for the situation--even letting a disputed merge end up as a delete, if that's really what consensus thinks is needed. Encouraging compromise means that merging the processes will immediately present the solution every time of a merge or redirect--will not leave it open to the possibility that someone will say so, and bring it more often to mind. It's the difference between the present: should we keep or delete this, and of course we might decide to recommend a merge. and saying what shall we do with this: keep/merge/redirect/delete. Instead of encouraging people to say, as I often do, "keep, but as an alternative merge". I would say "Perhaps we can agree on a merge, though I would rather keep it separate." It would induce the nom to say, if they did want a delete, not just why it should not be kept, but not merged & not redirected.

Any comprehensive argument generally has parts that overlap--one tries to say it in a way that will address the way different people see the problem. DGG ( talk ) 17:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I see the distinction now. I think that "encourages" is an exaggeration over "allows". Flatscan (talk) 06:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

floating idea at AFD

WP:BEFORE concerns by Jimmy Wales:

"I think one of the core problems here is that the original nominator should have raised the issue on the talk page of the article!!! We have gotten to a cultural state where "Gee, I never heard of this" seems to be a good enough excuse to nominate something for deletion, RATHER THAN raising legitimate issues on the talk page first to see if anyone can help improve the article." Full post by Wales is very enlightening. [4]

Mr. Wales comments made me think. What do you think of the chances of proposing that editors must comment on the talk page of the article before putting it up for deletion? Or something to that effect. Ikip 16:41, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom just decided that repeateadly nominating stuff for deletion that passes the google books test is not a punishable offense. So tell Mr. Wales to pound sand ;-) Pcap ping 16:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Arb Com does not make deletion policy, and at this point in the development of the encyclopedia, neither does Jimbo. The community can make what policy it decides to make. But going on from those generalities, I think Jimbo made very good sense here, though in many cases of prodded or AfD'd articles, the case for deletion is pretty obvious, and adding required rounds of discussion would not accomplish a fairer result. He was commenting a particular case, where an apparently really absurd doubt about the article had been raised.

As for Arb Com, they are saying in the proposed decision that "[various parties] are reminded to observe deletion best practices when nominating articles for deletion, including the consideration of alternatives to deletion such as merging articles or curing problems through editing." Thus, they support WP:BEFORE. Had that procedure been followed, the deleteable articles would have been deleted none the less, and the accusations of wikihounding would have been less likely to have been made. Following careful procedure diminishes the effect of personal antagonisms--and I think the arbs see it that way also, . DGG ( talk ) 17:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I read:

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tothwolf/Proposed decision#Deletion_best_practices

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tothwolf/Proposed decision#Miami33139 and_JBsupreme reminded the same way DGG did.

I am no longer a supporter of Wikipedia:Argumentum ad Jimbonem I simply mention his statment because it got me thinking about soliciting community consensus about WP:Before. (which has, BTW, been tried and failed many times before) And Mr. Wales can express himself better than I can.

I have brought proposals to WP:AFD before, which are embarrisingly brutally torn to pieces by a super majority of editors, so I have found the best course of action is to solicit responses from veteran editors before, attempting to get help in refining my thinking and proposal. But instead, this solicitation always results in me never bringing the proposal up in the first place.

I would be interested in DGGs opinion about this idea.

Pcap, I will continue a question I have on your talk page. Ikip 18:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Well, I always follow WP:BEFORE, and yet I find that topics which have no secondary sources, no encyclopedic content and no internet buzz still get kept at AFD, so I fail to see a problem. I have not seen anything deleted in the last year that did not richly deserve it. Abductive (reasoning) 18:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I have. Just off the top of my head: SUPER (software), OggConvert, Licq at AfD. Never mind prods: Klibc, fping. Pcap ping 18:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

They're all still there, or merged. I did remember one merge I disagreed with, Mariqueen Maandig. Abductive (reasoning) 19:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Because I restored them (except for licq, which is still in my sandbox); they got deleted first. Pcap ping 19:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Then the system works. Abductive (reasoning) 19:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Except WP:BEFORE is a joke, which is the point of this thread. Pcap ping 19:38, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Is it? I believe in it, and failure to follow it usually means keep. If more people followed it, less incorrect nominations would make it to AFD, which would result in more deletions in the long term, since false claims of not following it would more likely to be discredited. Abductive (reasoning) 19:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Starting from the easy end:

1. It is inevitable that some prods will be unreasonably deleted. Just ask for them back--they will be restored at the request of any good faith editor.
2. It is also inevitable that some AfDs will be wrongly decided. My guess for the frequency of erroneous keeps is between 10 and 15%, of erroneous deletions about 10 to 20%. A statement that the erroneous deletes are essentially zero is absurd, no matter what one thinks the standard should be. With even the most optimal procedure, we could not expect to reduce it to better than 5% either way for any group process like ours.
3. The real argument is not error, but standards. It will be no surprise that I consider Abductive's standard in those areas where we have both worked extensively to be generally much too rigorous, and that I consider Ikip's often too permissive. It should also be no surprise that i consider the correct and sensible standard to be my own. More generally, I'd think we will have a better encyclopedia if we accept anything a significant group of Wikipedians want to keep, than if we delete everything a significant group wants to delete. I consider the opposite attitude incompatible with cooperative work on a group project, which requires tolerance of each other's favorites.
4. Arbcom's statement of preferred practice is, as usual, an accurate although bland statement of currently accepted policy. I think that they give as ":generally preferred" ought to be "absolutely required", but they do not have even collectively the authority to say that. The community does.
5. It is more reasonable to expect the community to get there in a series of steps. We have now seen a number of them accomplished: The length of time for AfD and Prod is now 7 days, not 5. More items are relisted--we no longer have decisions after one or two comments only. The contested merge and the delete procedures are about to be partially merged. There is less tolerance of quickly repeated AfDs, though we still have no formal time periods. There is less tolerance of over-grouped nominations. The project notification is working quite effectively, for those projects where there are people paying attention. What should be next? As formal steps, I would say first, mandatory notification of significant contributors by bot supplemented by manual checking--this seems the minimum for basic fairness. Second, the explicit statement by a closure of the reason; ditto. And third, requiring WP:BEFORE to be followed explicitly to the extent it applies. There are also attitudes: greater participation in /deletion review, greater participation in a variety of afds by those without any key interest one way or another, greater modesty in administrators claiming to decide which of two competing rules should be followed, greater public scrutiny of admins making idiosyncratic decisions. All of these would reduce the error in both directions.

And a personal statement. I agree with Abductive that following the rules would result in more good deletes, as well as more good keeps. There is a lot of newer and older junk here, especially promotional junk, that has escaped careful scrutiny. the key to this is not just following the rules to make procedure simpler and bad arguments more obvious, but also the practice of compromising what can be compromised, which will let the material than should not be compromised be more carefully examined. DGG ( talk ) 20:34, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

RE: Notification. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erwin85Bot_8 is already approved and has been in use for months. All creators are notified. All editors with 5 or more edits are notified.

Working extensively on wikia myself these past few months, I think if we were to create a bot which automatically moved, or help move articles to wikia's when they are put up for deletion or after deletion, then the deletion process would become less argumentive. Ikip 21:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not accept Wikia as a substitute. I am committed to the principle of a comprehensive but advertisement-free encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 21:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Ouch, the conversation about wikia just ended. I sense a firmly held belief, border line doctorine. next subject.

Back to the conversation. thanks DGG, your comments are always so insightful and helpful. :) Once again, the proposal has died before it ever got to WP:AFD, which is a good thing. Ikip 22:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

2011

Question about deletions (another admin)

Sigh...I feel like an elementary school, tattling on another student...here I am only 3 days into adminning, and I've encounter another admin doing deletions that are...concerning to me. I know I could take this right to ANI, but I feel like bringing it here is a little better, since it's less likely to cause unecessary drama in case I'm wrong. You know deletion policy better than anyone else. If you could, please take a look at the Special:log] of User:DragonflySixtyseven. I came across the admin because a user whose page had been deleted by DS was questioning the process and the outcome. So, I asked DS about that specific deletion (it was of The Creator's Testimony: An Introduction to Applied Philosophy. Now, this is a vanity press book (so DS claimed), so, odds are very high that no matter what process was used, the article would eventually be deleted. However, DS deleted it with an edit summary of "(published by Author House => notability not asserted)". As was made abundantly clear in my RfA, A7 (the closest criteria) is not about notability; furthermore, A7 doesn't apply to books. I mean, I suppose WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY could apply here...but then I looked at DS's log, and saw a broader pattern. See, the second thing about the deletion of that article that surprised me was that no CSD tag was every put on the article--instead, DS just deleted it without giving the editor a chance to contest the deletion, without even notifying xyr. I checked policy, and I can't find information either way, but I thought that part of the principle behind CSD is that at least 2 editors (one tagging, one deleting) see and confirm that the article meets the criteria. When I looked through DS's log, I see a lot of deletions that fit this pattern: no warning, no discussion, no second editor. Again, in the cases that I looked at, it seems likely that the articles would like be deleted (I saw a lot of User pages that were being used for promotional purposes), but this type of deletion without even a second opinion worries me. It seems like, at best, it saves a little time, but, at worst either alienates editors (who could easily not even readily understand what to do when the article they were working on suddenly disappears w/o warning or discussion) or even ends up with articles deleted without at least a minimal amount of double-checking.

So...does this look like a problem to you? Am I simply, in my inexperience, failing to see the method to DS's work? Is this, in fact, acceptable behavior (i.e., if I come across a new page that I'm certain is deletable, can I just delete it immediately without tagging it first)? If this is a problem, how would you suggest is the best way to handle it? I've already asked DS a question about the specific book article in question, but not about the overall pattern. Qwyrxian (talk) 10:40, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

First, generally: There are other admins doing similar, including at least one wikifriend. This is the sort of situation that shows the weakness of some elements of our community structure. With 700 active admins, the only way to avoid incessant conflicts is to avoid challenging one another except in extreme situations, and to tolerate things we know to be harmful to the encyclopedia. A long-term admin who has made many interpersonal connections can essentially do as they please, unless they violate one of the few bright-line rules--and even they experience shows they are likely to forgiven, or that nobody will have the courage to complain, and this has led to mutually-protective long-term alliances. No one admin can break this; it is not as much a matter of courage as the almost certain failure.

fortunately , for some situations there are direct ways of procedure--in cases like this, deletion review, where a truly wrong admin action will usually be reversed. However, in the past this has not always worked with an article like this for something which is clearly and hopelessly non-notable. The response has in the past often been, NOT BURO, and IAR. But recently this has sometimes been the case, and I would not hesitate to do this if I thought the article had any merits whatsoever. However, for this particular article there is a more evasive solution which I would normally do: G11 is flexible enough that the the article can be considered entirely promotional, so I can simply assume the wrong reason was accidentally chosen--and this does happen in good faith, especially using semi-automated tools; I've done it myself-- so I can undelete and immediately redelete under the right rationale to correct the error in the log, justifying it , of course, by NOT BURO and IAR. I intend to find similar ways to deal with some other deletions, and will comment accordingly on the user talk p. There is a related discussion at WT:CSD you might be interested in.

Systematic errors are a more difficult situation, and though the articles can be dealt with, the admin remains a continuing source of new errors. . The usual course is to wait for slightly defensible articles, and take each of them to Deletion Review in the hope of eventually embarrassing the admin into improvement. Almost everybody here pays some attention to public opinion, If not , the deletion review decisions serve as a background to AN/I, And, if necessary, AN/I, to arb com.

I do not think I have ever taken something to AN/I, except to confirm a block or some other admin action, though I comment if someone takes something there & I think I can be helpful, or if I need to add another voice to establish a clearer consensus. I have once suggested the available technique of blocking the admin, which I think might at present prevent them from admin actions except viewing deletions, but in any case is a perfect prelude to a quick Arb Com, as unblocking oneself in a case like this is one of the bright-line rules, and taking admin actions even if the system allows would is probably be treated as another. However, my suggestion was totally disregarded, and it's not something one admin can do without clear consensus, for another would unblock, and then Wheel-warring applies. Similarly, there's the possibility of starting an RfC/U; I have certified once, to no avail, and offered a second time, which would also have been to no avail. I've rarely know RfC/U to produce anything useful, unless the editor is actually willing to change in good faith, which used to never be the case, but has this year happened once or twice.

As for second editor, I have tried repeatedly to get such a rule, and come near it. I suggest you propose it at WP:AFD, using the above examples, I think consensus has changed sufficiently. There are valid cases when one admin alone is enough, and these have caused some difficulty in the past. I'd suggest limiting the rule to criteria other than copyright, vandalism, defamation, and author-requested. Empty and no-context have been previously proposed as exceptions, but there have been errors here also. There is one additional possible exception: an article that has already been prodded, but seems AfD-able. I've sometimes deleted them myself, on the theory that the prodding ed. is a second set of eyes. But I may have been wrong in doing this. A previous argument was the backlog at CAT:CSD, but of late weeks there have not been backlogs. DGG ( talk ) 20:38, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the extended response. I also saw your response to DS on Anand's talk page, and that was another point I had made to DS earlier. As has been widely discussed elsewhere, the whole speedy deletion process, if when fully complete, must be quite frustrating for new users who really are trying to contribute what they see as a useful article. The idea of shortcutting it even farther, down to a single person making a decision and not even informing the editor of it, disturbs me. And on applying the criteria strictly or not, I read over some of WT:CSD, and there I see numerous editors strongly derying that both they and the community as a whole believe the criteria must be interpreted very narrowly. I have no interest in taking any sort of actions against DS (at this time), nor do I think I'll spend much of my already limited and over-full WP time monitoring xyr deletion logs...but it just shocked me and, in fact, saddened me a little. At some point, I'll probably look into participating at Deletion Review (in general, I mean), so I'll see what rolls over there. For myself, I'll try to stick to more "standard" interpretations of CSD. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:05, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the practical way to affect policy in this area is deletion review. It has a rather specialized way or working, so just as you plan, it is easier to become effective if you you watch it a while first. There are a few regulars (like myself) who seem to do it all unless something of widespread (and usually unfortunate) interest is there, so wider participation would help greatly--as with everything in Wikipedia including the overall project. Things can change, sometimes for the better; there used to be many more single-handed deletes. (cc. to all talk page lurkers.)

Meanwhile ,the best way to help is to get people to improve articles before re-submitting them. There are probably about one or two hundred worthy cases a day, but if you and I and everyone else who care gives friendly effective help to one of them a day, it will help--and the good new editors will I hope know enough to be friendly in their turn. If people are treated in an unfriendly manner when they start, even those who overcome it are all too likely to treat others just the same. (cc. to all talk page lurkers.I wrote this paragraph expressly for you) DGG ( talk ) 23:32, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

AFD

Any thoughts on the notability of Roy Eriksen? Loads of hits in google books. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Dr B, I know you've been around here long enough to know not to use WP:GHITS as an argument in a deletion discussion, and I'm sure you know PROF, ANYBIO, and GNG like the back of your hand. Also, you are more than capable of clicking a link, doing a news search, scholar search, etc., so why on earth wouldn't you actually offer an opinion with real supporting evidence? Being the author of books in itself doesn't demonstrate notability. ^Bongo_matic 00:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I am surprised, Bongo, that any editor who understood G Scholar would use the low number of hits there as an argument for deletion of anything in the humanities. I have almost never encountered a full professor in a major research university who was not found notable here. DGG ( talk ) 14:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see it as an argument for deletion, but (as I intended to imply in my nominationcomment) a (weak) lack of argument for keeping. Indeed, the notability guidelines work this way—something affirmative fact is required to meet them (even the intrinsic ones—in which case it's simply a demonstration of inclusion within a class.

The career of the individual in question appears to have received little note in sources that are conveniently available to me and I haven't seen anyone here argue that other sources have identified more. Your opinion at the AfD was just that--an opinion, possibly—no, probably—with compelling reasoning based on guidelines, with consideration of specific accomplishments or publications behind. But such reasoning was not offered along with the opinion, so I'm not sure if it's just general feeling that someone who's been in the trenches for 20-odd years is notable, or if Agder is a "highly prestigious" award or if Early Modern Culture Online is a "major well-established academic journal" in the subject area, or what other considerations may be determinative. ^Bongo_matic 15:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

the determining factors in most non-ovious AfD discussions in any subject are opinions. The key words we use "substantial" "authority" " reliable" are all non-quatitative. Myself, I'd certainly be in favor of a more quantitative categorical approach--not in order to reach fairer results, but to avoid discussions over topics which could go either way. One of the traditional values of a reference source is consistency, both consistent level of writing and consistent coverage, and Wikipedia notoriously has neither. DGG ( talk ) 15:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The opinions are supposed to informed by verifiable facts (e.g., "editor of X") used in conjunction with interpretations of guidelines ("X is a major well-established journal"). Of course, whether X is a major well-established journal, or whether an individual's (verifiable) contributions to a field if inquiry have had a "significant impact" are opinions. Your own thought process would be useful to me, anyway, and I'm sure to anyone else who stops by the AfD. ^Bongo_matic 16:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

2012

Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion

I'm trying to get the above project active again. If you like to participate, please add you name to the project page. Mad Man American (talk) 15:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

commented there: a worthy project, but part of the difficult is that there are so many aspects to it. And I would strongly prefer if we got as far away as possible from the word "deletion". We need to think of the process as positive: whether or not to include content, and how to arrange it. DGG ( talk ) 10:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I was thinking about this myself this morning, not knowing a prior project existed. I'm definitely with DGG on the naming issue--the overuse of the whole "deletionist vs. inclusionist" paradigm was half the problem in the recent kerfuffle. But I can see a lot of good work for a project like that to do. For example, I recently went through a very narrow category of primary schools in one county in the UK, and redirected all of those that don't meet GNG, per the common outcome for primary schools. That's not deletion (though some people think it is), but it's something that would likely fall under the scope of such a project. Similar things would be taking a serious look at television episodes, individual songs, etc. Much of that information would be (or, in some cases, already is) better focused in collective articles, and likely to be better maintained. One thing that might be worth considering are some issues being raised at WP:VPP#Proposal regarding Article Rescue Squad--specifically, the proposal that ARS have a hierarchy to help keep its members in line. I think it would be good if any such project focused on merging/deleting would also work hard to slap down any member that got over-anxious. It would also be for it to make sure that, as a whole, the group never become too active. One concern that is regularly raised is at ANI is when someone nominates dozens of the same type of article simultaneously, meaning that good faith contributors don't have enough time to attend to all of the issues. It would be bad if such a project suddenly created a really significant increase in the total number of AfDs (even though I think that this encyclopedia could stand a good house cleaning). Lastly, it seems like it would be useful for them to be involved in setting/refining notability guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 11:08, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

"No consensus to close Template:Rescue as delete"

I noticed here, you claimed there was no consensus for Template:Rescue to be deleted. Of the 80-90 editors, more than twenty more editors said delete than keep...so at least 60% of them said delete. How is that not a consensus, if I may ask? Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 21:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Even if I were counting votes, I would never decide an xfd on that basis. And in any case it's consensus of the policy based opinion, and you probably know my opinion on that one. Many of the votes for delete were for those who want to increase the already existing bias towards deletion by making it harder to attract people to rescue articles, and all such votes were in blatant contradiction to deletion policy that deletion is the last resort. Most of the other votes for delete were on the basis that there had been a few scattered cases of misuse for canvassing resulting in the keep of articles that should not have been kept, and to consider that more significant than the otherwise improper deletion of many articles is a misjudgment. I regret that I had not gotten involved in the tfd earlier, but I cannot watch everywhere, and, as usual, nobody had canvassed me--and I do not watchlist that page. I cannot quite see the point of continuing the discussion here: my support of this project is consistent and long-standing. My view lost, rightly or wrongly, so why should the winning side try to squelch the remaining opposition? (and that certainly seems to be what they are trying to do to Dream Focus; are you hoping I too can be led into saying something blockable--it's a vain hope--I never yet have come near that.) It's for the losers to appeal if they wish; and I normally wait for someone else to decide to carry on an appeal. DGG ( talk ) 22:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Uh, why would I want you blocked? The only thing I had a problem with is that you said that something with 60% support for deletion should have been kept (and that you call it "few scattered"; of the dozen or so times I've seen the template used, all were used poorly). I disagree with you that the rescue template's deletion was motivated solely because people want to delete articles, or that that's necessarily a 100% bad thing. And I do wish you'd divorce DF's block from his inclusionism...the people who want him blocked (me included, though only for the one week) want him blocked because he repeatedly says snarky things, not because he's an inclusionist Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 01:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Well , why would anyone have wanted Dream focus blocked either, except they didn't agree with him, and he expressed himself a little unreasonably, in what I consider understandable annoyance. It is appropriate to extend tolerance to people who have just lost debates; a certain amount of what you called snarkiness is understandable. (For example, people sometimes lose their temper when their article gets justly deleted, but why should it bother us? What would blocking them accomplish besides making them even angrier?) I know the block was done by a good person, for what he thought was the good motive of preventing even more inappropriate action, but it was nonetheless an error. As for deletion, I do not know if you are carelessly or deliberately misreading me, but I did not say that the motivation was solely excessive deletionism; I said it was what seemed to motivate "many" of the people , and I stand by that. It is perfectly OK to want to delete articles--at least I sure hope it is, because I have deleted over 10,000 of them myself, mostly in speedy but also in prods and AfDs--my estimate is that this is 5 or 10 tines what I've been able to rescue. There is a lot of junk, and anyone who says otherwise is over-reacting to the deletionists.

The basic reason for deleting something is that including it would be harmful to the standing of Wikipedia. Advertising is harmful. BLP abuse is harmful. Nonsense is harmful. Utter non-notable things are harmful. Marginally notable things may not be ideal, but they are not harmful. At the least, efforts spent in deleting the marginally notable are efforts better spent in improving articles: the yield isn't worth it. And, therefore, the established deletion policy is when it doubt, include, which is reasonable considering the wide range of people's interests, and feasible in the era of NOT PAPER. I answer you on the basis I often will answer here, to convince those who will come and see it. Experience has shown me its the most effective contribution I can make, to explain things to people so they can construct good arguments. I'm sure we will find many places to continue this , elsewhere. But I thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my feelings about these actions. DGG ( talk ) 06:18, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I ran across this conversation when I came to this page for another purpose. My comment is that I think that you have done an excellent job describing your opinion on this matter, DGG, and my philosophy on this is very close to yours. Purplebackpack, you are a very good contributor here, and you would be even better if you kept the drama to a minimum. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

"...efforts spent in deleting the marginally notable are efforts better spent in improving articles..." Well said. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 05:49, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Business articles

I appreciate your call for "more text" on business articles - I have to say that this is not my "primary topic", and I have a long backlog already of articles to write on other things..

I have some issues with the style of a lot of the business articles. for example Business requirements - I am not complaining that it is badly written - but it is almost completely inaccessible to the non-expert, unreferenced - and frankly - I am not convinced it it not WP:OR (even if it is good "OR"), or a personal viewpoint essay. The term "business requirements" is clearly and obviously a term that turns up often in business related discussions - however I don't see that the article presents any information that it is more than a "two word pair" or that it has a defined meaning worthy of an encyclopedia, or that the term is not self explanatory.

I will propose this article for deletion discussion - please comment.Mddkpp (talk) 19:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

If it is not adequately accessible, there is certainly a good case for improvement. If something is a term that frequently crops up in discussions, and the article is too technical for understanding, then it certainly is a very good subject for improving. If what we did with inadequate articles was delete them, then the encyclopedia would never have developed--almost all articles were pretty low quality when they got started. If sources are available, then an article is not OR, or need not be--it is considered acceptable in technical articles to use numerical examples: its a way of writing prose. Business is a poorly covered area here, and you seem determined to make it yet worse. To do this in a field which is not your primary subject, and where you admit that you do not understand the articles, is one of the most unproductive things a person could do here. DGG ( talk ) 19:25, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Trigger happy deleters off putting to new comers

I joined about a week ago and have been trying to contribute to this community and am grateful DGG for the guidance you have provided but regrettably there are a few trigger happy admin people that have put me off and as a result I am signing off and will not be participating any more. I wanted to share with you and your readers the comment I left with the trigger happy deleter:

"I appreciate that you're a whizz at Wiki but I don't think its encouraging to new people to delete their work without giving time for them to respond to the notices raised such as "notability". Pages are works in progress. It takes time to develop and raise the necessary information to note that a page is notable. I have found many examples of academic centres that have their own pages, starting with all under the Kennedy School of Government. I understand the concept of proving notability but deleting pages immediately does not give one a chance. I note that you deleted and redirected another page that had been on Wiki for several years. Having just joined I hardly see this as a community experience but rather a heavy handed mechanism of imposing someone else's will. I spoke about the notability of the pages to another old hand who advised on how to adapt it and had the courtesy of leaving it up there for this process to work itself through. I have also started a conversation on the general topic of notability of academic centres and whether they should be separate pages or not. To simply delete someone's work without bothering to engage in a discussion is just contrary to everything I thought wikipedia was about and has, quite frankly, put me off. The good experiences with people like DGG have been completely over whelmed by your actions." --Ddragovic (talk) 16:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Useless stubs

I find meaningless stubs irritating. I click on a link, see the stub, mutter under my breath and click the back button. And I am not on dial-up or a 2G phone, like so many of our readers. But some people think the most trivial stub has value as the seed for a new article. Maybe it depends on your view of the relative importance of giving readers a good experience versus encouraging expansion by editors, the outward or the inward view. A useless stub degrades the quality of Wikipedia to a reader, but may encourage addition of content from editors who think "I could add to that". (Not from an editor like me though. I am much more likely to make significant expansions to articles I started myself.)

I started a discussion a while ago on whether "preferably a stub should at least have one source and one fact." There was no consensus even on "preferably", let alone making it a rule. It may not matter much. Consensus would be easy if there was an obvious answer. But possibly a discussion would be useful on the proposition "A stub should be deleted unless it meets some minimal requirements." Not what these requirements would be, but that there should be some. If that were accepted, the next step would be to discuss requirements. Would this be a waste of time? If not, where should it be discussed? Aymatth2 (talk) 18:53, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem is newbies might not know how to source so banning it yes might be destructive. One fact and one reference bare minimum I think. Its finding a balance I think and something is clearly wrong if an article is devoid of any encyclopedic information.. But at times in sheer desperation at how much is missing I know the way of thinking where it seems more important than anything to just start the articles however short as efficiently as possible in viewing the project as a long term goal.. The problem is in the meantime it looks bad and if a category is full of articles which are empty it is irritating from a reader's viewpoint when they;re looking for something decent.. My way of thinking in past times on here was that wikipedia should be the most comprehensive source possible and in order to achieve this the article must exist, a mention in the encyclopedia being a start and with the intertranswiki links direct the reader to add the content and become wikipedia editors themselves and help build wikipedia together. The problem is that the vast majority of editors don't to that... I agree with Aymatth2, I prefer to create the articles myself than expand articles. But there is a fine line between a "useless stub" and one which is productive and encyclopedic.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:15, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

hey, give me a chance--i've written two replies on this already today. DGG ( talk ) 20:12, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Calm head siree, nobody is pressuring you!♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Any opinions on my example Mikhail Tovarovsky?♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:09, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

You may be getting confused with Alonso Miguel de Tovar, his great great grandfather. But seriously, the question here is whether it is worth starting a discussion on whether stubs should meet some minimal requirement. Not whether there should be a requirement and definitely not what that requirement should be. Just whether there is any point starting yet another debate on the subject. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:39, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Well there is certainly one requirement already: it must say what the article is about. There are about 10 or 20 a day that do not even do that, some deliberately just to play with us, some simply because of incompetence. Both fall under speedy A1. DGG ( talk ) 00:11, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I think a stub should be more than one word long and some of those words should be in English. Others may disagree. The question is whether there is any point opening a discussion on whether there should be any requirements for stubs. if so where should the discussion should take place? Aymatth2 (talk) 00:20, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Salon des Cent is short but sweet... Don't know if either of you can find anything more on it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

• (I hope this is not a private discussion?) The reason I stopped adding material to many stubs is my concern that it will only serve to draw the attention of Wikipedians who nominate articles for deletion. Maybe other Wikipedians feel as I do? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:26, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

That is not my impression. The more added, the less likely to be deleted. Even if nominated, the easier to defend. An attitude like you suggest is basically letting the deletionists ruin the encyclopedia. Not adding content is every bit as bad as discarding content. DGG ( talk ) 18:39, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

 DGG ( talk ) 18:39, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with you that my attitude is not good for Wikipedia. I envy your energy and your contributions to Wikipedia and to human kind. However, me, I don't have what it takes to both contribute new content and also at the same time spend countless hours debating deletions in several deletion discussion areas. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:29, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Please advise me

Hi you deleted the page reference below. 00:31, 15 August 2012 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted page Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children (G12: Unambiguous copyright infringement: their web site )

I have re-written the content and hmmm not sure how to mover forward. the instructions said to contact you, and so I hope you will guide me better.

Thanks and best regards,

Simone

 Dont know why page on Neuromuscular dentistry has been deleted, please educate. It is a blow to newer sciences.Dr Sanjay Arora 17:43, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Deletion of Levitt Robinson Solicitors page

Hi,

Please advise why this was deleted. You did not provide an explanation and I cannot see how the two categories for speedy deletion which you cited would apply.

2015

Deleted Page

David, could you help me understand what I need to do to have my page added back to wiki? I was referred to you by Stephen P. Thank you.Chipespinoza (talk) 17:59, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Deletion of Waterflame

Can you rebuild the page Waterflame? User:NanobyteExo (User talk:NanobyteExo)

Page Deletion Sammy Samir

Hi, the page of "Sammy Samir" exists under the misspelled name "Sammi Samir", i need to correct that as soon as possible and i haven´t been able to contact the creator of the page (i am completly new on creating content in Wikipedia), if you could help me with a solution i would be extremely thankful, it is really important. I need to add the text in english too. Thanks a lot. Pablo.

Adding Material to articles only serves to draw the attention of editors who nominate articles for deletion

Hi DGG,

(This is a continuation of similar threads on your talk page in 2012 and 2014). I have been away for a few months, and when I started editing again, I was hoping to be left alone to help build areas that, in my opinion, are sorely lacking.

On 8 August 2015 5 I found a little visited article about a very important organization: Condo Owners Association (Ontario) (which has an article here under the incorrect name) and at 17:10 I started renovating the whole area surrounding Category:Condominium on Wikipedia. According to recent news reports 50% of new home buyers in Toronto are now purchasing condos, and the number of condo owners is staggering, considering how little information exists on Wikipedia on this topic.

As usual, however, it appears that my efforts to build up have attracted the attention of the deletionist faction. By August 9 the article that was getting no attention at all for months, was up for wp:AfD, and instead of continuing my efforts to built this neglected Codominium area, I find myself spending more and more time getting into conflicts with other editors intent on deleting whatever else is associated with this article. I seem to have been unsuccessful in trying to convince another admin that the article that is now getting very little attention at AfD should be moved to its correct official name.

This is very discouraging, and I know that posting this on your talk page will undoubtably bring out more of the same, sigh… Ottawahitech (talk) 07:21, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It might help me if you could specify the articles involved. DGG ( talk ) 07:57, 13 August 2015 (UTC) Thanks for clarifying.; response forthcoming. DGG ( talk ) 21:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I consider it a little too much like a press release, and this will inevitably affect people's attitude towards it. Possibly there might be a little advocacy in some of the other articles also. The last thread is now at [5] DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I belong to a (dying?) minority of editors who like to work on articles that are not yet developed. Unfortunately it appears that my edits only serve to bring those articles to the attention of editors whose mission is to nominate articles for deletion. I have been asked before to provide examples of this phenomenon and thought : Condo Owners Association (Ontario) can be mentioned as one because no one paid attention to it until I started to work on it.

I am worried that my sad conclusion is also shared by others, which means few editors will be working on improving wp:stubs around here. Thanks btw for finding the 2014 thread - I am unable to locate the 2012 one tirled Useless stubs because the Edits by user tool is broken (another sigh...) Ottawahitech (talk) 09:43, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

It also looks like posting a link to an article at Helpdesk is a good way to send existing long-time articles to wp:AfD. See for example Wikipedia:Help_desk#Lynn_Walsh, I think. Ottawahitech (talk) 18:41, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

For those interested, I moved the discussion of this particular point to Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk#Deletion_of_articles_referred_to_in_questions_here. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I have a dual intention here: One is to try to keep everything suitable for an encycopedia. The other to to remove promotionalism. Lately, due to the flood of promotional articles, the second has become more important--even critical. Small variations to the notability standard either way do not fundamentally harm the encycopedia, but accepting articles that are part of a promotional campaign causes great damage. Once we become a vehicle for promotion, we're useless as an encycopedia.

There are several hundred thousand of articles in WP accepted in earlier years when the standards were lower that we need to either upgrade or remove. It will take years, but work on them as I see them.

Normally I send a long standing article to AfD rather than to speedy unless it's utterly outrageous--t will not be deleted unless the consensus agrees with me. I accept the consensus there as the guide in establishing standards. DGG ( talk ) 22:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

paid editing deletions

I'm sure you've seen the outcome of this and this. Personally, I relist at least once before closing as no consensus, but this is an admin's prerogative and is not a reflection on the closer. What I'm more concerned with is that while Cunard's efforts to rescue such articles are laudable, such closures possibly deny us of much needed evidence for finding solutions to Orangemoody and other issues concerning blatant paid-for (or indeed any) promotion. Perhaps one could consider employing G13, G11, and G5 more broadly or more vigorously. Thoughts? --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:44, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Cunard is taking the same approach I would have taken 6 years ago. I then argued that the most important thing is to have acceptable content, and how it got there is secondary. I still think that the ideal way of looking at it, if it were not for the current epidemic of paid editing (and the realization that it was there before, also, but we paid insufficient attention to it.) You & I have been assuming a deterrent effect. Cunard has challenged that assumption, and I can't prove him wrong. As you said, its "possibly deny us", but just possibly. Based on some discussions, perhaps what it's most likely to do is discourage pd eds. from giving money-back guarantees, but they will still be able to show portfolios of whatever of their work has not been deleted, including that done before they were detected.

Frankly, I am no longer willing to challenge on the grounds of having been started as paid editing any article that he will rewrite and take responsibility for; I started thinking in the course of the discussion that I am not sure my renoms of those two articles was justified.

G5 has never covered articles started before someone is blocked, or articles with substantial contributions by others. I can see permitting it retrospectively, but the sort of thing we're discussing would require removing the " substantial edits by others" part. I'm not sure I would support that.

G11 of course should be more consistently applied, but I am not sure what wording would make it stronger, as every article on an organization or its product will have some promotional effect., We could add something about "promotional intent", but this is hard to really prove.

I don't see what you propose to do with G13 to make it stronger. I still have my list of 500 or sos articles that shouldn't have been deleted but were because the contributor gave up after improper reviewing.

What we need to concentrate on I think is the notability standard for organizations. Even here, it's hard to think of how to reword it so it doesnt remove the clearly notable--our emphasis on the GNG prevents any rational work on this area. DGG ( talk ) 23:47, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

There is already an extra-strict WP:NSOFT-essay, where three coverage-bursts are needed (not just three publishers). If the details of WP:NCORP-guideline are tweaked, so that three coverage-bursts (not just three published sources) are needed, that might ease some of the not-startup-type burden, since most startups only have one product, they get a coverage burst for their first funding round, a coverage-burst when their beta-product actually ships... and then have to wait around for that third coverage-burst (usually a second successful round of series B funding) prior to getting a dedicated wikipedia-article. In the case of Circle, they got their first burst in Oct&Nov'13, their second burst in Mar&May'14, and their third burst in Sep'14, plus their biggest burst yet in Apr&May of 2015. But if the WP:NCORP-guideline standards were shifted to require three bursts of coverage, spaced several months apart, then Circle (company) would have been a redlink (or more likely a WP:NOTEWORTHY mention under Bitcoin#companies methinks) for all of 2013 and most of 2014. Because they had a famous serial-entrepreneur founder, and got plenty of money early on, it would only have taken them a year of operation to get a wikipedia page... but that is still 12 months of WP:FAILN under the three-coverage-burst-test, used by WP:NSOFT-essay already. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

75.108.94.227 (talk · contribs), I don't think the number of coverage-bursts matters--it's rather what gets said. If it's just funding, it doesn't show notability. I agree that a famous founder can be relevant--but if that's all there is, the information should be added to that pindividual's article as part of the list of companies he's funded. DGG ( talk ) 04:53, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Policy change opinion

I believe there should be a sensible balance between deletion and creation of articles which balanced. What is your opinion about requiring an article historically kepted through AfD to undergo a DRV process before renomination as well? Valoem ^{talk contrib} 02:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

excess bureaucracy. It is already well established that there has to be a reasonable time between nominations, and that thistime increases after successive keeps. We haven't been able to mandate specific months or years, but we no longer seethe 6 or 7 times repeated attempts to delete an article we did when I joined. consensus can and does change, and afds are where the action is. What they need for fairer & more consistent decisions is more participation, and that's what we should focus on. If you are referring to Fastwalkers, I don'rt see it was kept by previous afds. The recent one is the first. If you have some other article in mind, what article is that? DGG ( talk ) 06:52, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

It was something I noticed in general not related with Fastwalkers. I believe certain situations which require deleted articles to go through DRV, should apply to kept articles as well. It was a question I pondered when I read Emijrp's sum of human knowledge which calculates that there are at least 104 million notable articles that should exist here, we are at a mere 5 million. The reason is the flaw of human nature inherent in us all. While we are all here to built an encyclopedia we are also here to ensure our views prevail, after all, ego is unavoidable. The degree which we suffer varies. Some people become defensive to the point they refuse to admit a mistake was made, protect their views knowing it is incorrect, find petty reasons to maintain it and then mobbing, as you eloquently put it, occurs. There are those who edit to expressive themselves by content creation and others through content deletion and much like defense and offense in combat, defense (being reactive) has its advantages. If the growth of Wikipedia is to be maintained policy needs to favor content creation and entice new editors.

Right now, policy favors deletion and impends the rate of content creation. It may take a hundred editors to create an article, but only one to delete it. To combat this, policy should be changed to favor inclusion. AfD by nature favors deletion, modifying policies to slightly favor inclusion brings natural balance. Requiring a DRV process for renomiation seems like a sensible start we could avoid situations like OpEdNews where a single editor refuses to admit error and attempts to have content removed perhaps in hopes previous participants are occupied elsewhere.

Another idea is to make AfD closure numerically based. For example, we could require a minimum amount of participation from established editors before discussion is valid. The AfD nominator's opinion should accounted and their vote discounted, after all he is looking for the agreement of others, this prevents articles with little to no discussion from being deleted. This of course should not apply to promotional or vanity articles, but NPOV articles with secondary sources. Fewer the participants means higher probability of missed sources and errors. Perhaps a new close called lack of discussion which defaults to keep could be included and applied to articles which have secondary sources. Of course discretion should be applied in exceptional cases. In the end, numbers don't lie, minimum AfD participation requirements could partially remove human bias and error. Valoem ^{talk contrib} 08:27, 25 November 2015 (UTC)