Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion/Archive 3

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Re-{{prod}}ed pages?

I was skimming the previous nominations tool, and I saw a fair amount of articles that were "Re-{{prod}}ed." What is the justification for being able to re-prod an article? The only step necessary under "How to prevent an article from being deleted" is "Edit the article to remove the Template:Prod. Please note this in your edit summary." Are these re-prods only occuring when the removing user provides no edit summary, when it's the creator of the page (see "Can article creators remove this tag?" above), or is there some other reason a page can be re-proded? (N.B.: Not accusing anyone of any wrong doing, just curious.) EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 00:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I think an instructive case is Dornon verse. Some anonymous vandals keep removing the PROD tag. Every time it's put back with a revert, the PROD timer is reset. However, the project page says anyone can remove the prod tag at any time for any reason, and that's final. Which is it going to be? I think that there is a major slippery-slope problem here, and that once that PROD tag comes off, it simply should not be put on again. This is now Dornon verse's third go-round in PROD; it should never have made it to #2. Instead, it should have been AfD'd. -ikkyu2 (talk) 03:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ikkyu2. If the tag is removed, it should not be put back. If the initial PRODer disagrees with the removal, the issue should go to AFD. Joyous | Talk 04:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. There's always the tmpation to try to distinguish between good-faith de-proddings and bad-faith de-proddings... but that way lies madness. · rodii · 04:37, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

As discussed above somewhere, I think obvious vandalism of a page which happens to remove the prod notice is okay to revert, because page blanking and insertion of "Dornon is gay" is difficult to construe as an opposition to the article's deletion. But if the so-called vandalism is simply removal of the tag without an edit summary, then we have to assume they oppose the deletion. This doesn't seem to me to be as crazily subjective as Rodii seems to think, as long as we restrict the assumption to obvious vandalism. But moving to AfD would see perfectly acceptable in any case. NickelShoe 11:44, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, agreed. I was thinking of simple tag removal. I have seen articles tagged and re-tagged several times recently by otherwise reasonable editors as "reverting vandalism" when the only "vandalism" is removing the tag. In those cases trying to intuit which removals are "good faith" and which aren't is a mug's game. · rodii · 14:28, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, NickelShoe, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Blanking the article to substitute "Dornon is gay" is difficult to construe as opposition to the article's deletion - but not impossible. I see it differently - I see the vandal implicitly stating, "Don't delete this article, because it's a place where I come to do personal attacks on Dornon." What does "for any reason" mean to you? To me, it means any and all reasons. If it doesn't, then the whole premise of PROD - that any Wikipedia user's objection is sufficient to prevent the article's deletion - falls to pieces. I'm quite serious about this, because: I do not believe you can write a guideline clear enough to prevent uncertainty at the borders. -ikkyu2 (talk) 08:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to agree with Ikkyu. Attempting to introduce more subjective factors into prod will only make it easier to abuse. Imagine, for example, deleting the article and replacing it with "Blah is gay", where Blah is the guy who prodded it - this is clearly in favour of keeping the article (albeit destroying it in the process). There's some degree of use common sense, but there's no harm in a few spurious articles going through VfD. Deco 08:20, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, 2 days later, after three people have agreed with me, Dornon verse is still PRODded, even though it's clearly in violation of process. Don't mistake me - Dornon verse is a garbage article - but all that's necessary for the deletion of good articles under PROD is for good people to do nothing. I think that's my major beef with the whole deal. -ikkyu2 (talk) 08:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

So remove the {{prod}} already and move it to AfD, if it matters to you. But it doesn't—you've already said as much as this is just a strawman. There has to be a little give in the process. Somebody created each and every article that gets {{prod}}'ed. If the process is going to be useful for anything other than mistakes that the original creator wants to fix without bothering with speedy deletion, then we should allow for an exception for blanking vandalism. And not just when they blank and vandalize the entire page, either. Somebody already vandalized the template. How long do you think it will take for some vandal to realize that they can use the PROD tool or even the template's whatlinkshere to undo every single nomination? (I wrote a bot a few days ago to remove a template from every page on which it appears on another MediaWiki site I run. It took all of 10 lines of code. I can assure you, a vandal isn't going to stop to ask for permission on Wikipedia:Bot, and they'll be long done before any admin notices and blocks them.)

If we can't get past even such an egregious case of vandalism, then I agree with some of the rest of you—PROD is dead. This is supposedly an experimental process. As such, the rules should be evolving more quickly than with other Wikipedia processes, not cast in stone. I don't know what the final answer will be, but it's throwing the baby out with the bilge to declare that we must mindlessly follow the current letter of the process even as we discover problems with it. --TreyHarris 09:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I totally disagree with Ikkyu on this one. A "clear" violation of process? No, it's not clear, and process isn't God. Dornon's verse was blanked and "Dronon is gay" was added to it. I don't see how any rational person could say, Okay, now it's been objected to and prod is not appropriate.

All you have to do is add to the project page (except in cases of clear vandalism, i.e. blanking the entire article. Do not consider removal of the prod tag itself to be vandalism, even without an edit summary). Now suddenly it's within "process".

And I sure don't understand how you can complain about it and not fix it.

What I think would reduce the possibility of deleting good articles is a longer time. But people would whine that it takes longer than AfD. Like it's the end of the world for a dicdef to sit here for five days. I think the problems in the deletion process run a lot deeper than prod can fix, but I still think this is better than speedying under A7 or putting an article thru AfD that doesn't have a chance to improve before people start judging it merely on the basis that someone else thought it should be deleted. NickelShoe 13:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

"What this process is NOT for"

I just inserted the parenthetic phrase "even without stating the reason" to the part about not restoring the template no matter why the person removed it, because this is what we determined on the talk page and some people haven't been interpreting the guideline that way. NickelShoe 17:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree with you that I was using Dornon verse as a straw man, by the way, and that common sense is important in making wikidecisions. -ikkyu2 (talk) 04:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

"Time nominated" doesn't seem right

It looks like the prod data is somewhat askew. Unfortunately, that time actually comes from the wikipedia database itself (categorylinks.cl_timestamp), it's not something I calculate or have control over. I'm trying to find out what happened from one of the wikimedia admins (especially to make sure that it doesn't happen again), but I don't know what to do beyond that. --Interiot 15:43, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

You can fix it, though, can't you?—the articles' histories show when the template got added. Some articles got four extra days added to their current deadlines for deletion. Surely they can be deleted once the deadline has passed, even if your tool shows the deadline still remaining, right? I guess my question is, which takes precedence, the deadline shown in the tool, or the actual time the template was added? --TreyHarris 03:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, apparently it was caused by vandalism of Template:Prod. Well, that sucks. No, I can't really fix it easily, I don't have code to directly detect when {{prod}} or {{subst:prod}} is added or removed. I'll remove the whole list of re-prod-ed from the history tracker though, at least. --Interiot 06:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Does this mean that the Prod process is dead as long as some vandal remembers to hit the Prod template every few days? --Measure 12:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

The template is protected now. And I have to write the {{prod}}-detection code sometime anyway. And some people are pushing for PROD to be moved off of the toolserver. *shrug* One way or the other, prod won't die. --Interiot 16:09, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Prodding on notability and verification

In practice, prod actually seems to be useful in cases that aren't uncontroversial, as a wake-up call for the editor before people start voting against it in AfD. I've seen a couple of cases where an article which was deprodded by the creator was reprodded by someone who found prod to be a more forgiving method of deletion than AfD. Swiftcover and Best Friends...Different Personalities, specifically.

I can totally see this, particularly on newly created articles. Even though prod is supposedly for uncontroversial deletions, it works well for cases of notability and verification by giving a deadline instead of asking people to vote on something based on their guess that it isn't verifiable or notable simply because they don't know about it or find it on Google. Does this make sense? It seems that prod is effective for this, but this wasn't its goal, and maybe it should be tweaked to emphasize this aspect a little more? Notability is technically speediable if no claim is made to it, but sticking it on prod gives someone a few days to fix that (And if prod stays, I'd be in favor of despeedying that criterion to give articles a chance without forcing it to go through AfD). Instead of just being a streamlined deletion, it seems to work for improving articles. If this gets rid of a few articles that had the possibility of expansion and clearer claims to notability, they'll be abandoned stubs without much information in the first place, so the loss isn't that great. Thoughts? NickelShoe 18:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Note that reprodding is against the proposed policy. I agree that some of the more subjective criteria for speedy deletion should be removed in favour of PROD, such as nn-bio and the controversial new T1. Deco 19:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Like everything else on WP, we need to do what is best for the situation at hand. If re-PRODing is the BEST solution, no technicality should prevent it. Examples would be 1. miscommunication between creator (especially a newbie) and editors adding or removing PROD tag. 2. An accidental removal. 3. The removing editor, intending to expand an article/provide sources, changes their mind. The reason for the re-PROD should be explained in detail on the talk page of the article. FloNight ^talk 20:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree and have occasionally reprodded something for some of the reasons you describe. However, the reason described by NickelShoe isn't sufficient, in my opinion. Deco 22:38, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Nickelshoe, you are proposing that it be OK to place the PROD template on an article more than once. I'm strongly against the proposal as you state it. If you proposed a clear guideline about when it would and would not be permissible, there'd be more room to debate and think about it. I think PROD is already too easy to abuse, and the kind of creep you're proposing simply begs for the eventual use of PROD as "Keep putting this on every article you think should be deleted until it finally slips through the cracks and gets zapped." -ikkyu2 (talk) 08:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposing might be a little strong. I was just observing something that was outside the proposed policy as it stands and wanted to know what people thought. I guess where you and I differ most is that I don't see AfD as offering more of a chance for articles, especially not when they're nominated on notability. In my experience, even when people provide evidence of notability, people still vote "delete, nn" if they haven't heard of it. NickelShoe 13:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I've mostly tried to comment on PROD on this page. Problems with PROD can be constructively addressed here. Saying that PROD should be a flawed process because it replaces another flawed process is not the kind of argument I like to waste time with. -ikkyu2 (talk) 04:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

AfD advertising and {{PRODcomment}}

I don't know if we already do this, but I suggest we advertise proposed deletion on uncontroversial votes on AfD. PROD is not realising its full benefit due to many people who don't yet know about it. Maybe we could have a template that says something like this:

• Comment. Note that uncontroversial deletions like this one are good candidates for the proposed Wikipedia:Proposed deletion process. Consider trying it out for the next nomination like this.

Deco 19:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

A fine idea. I've created {{PRODcomment}} for this purpose; please use and modify it as you see fit. +sj + 06:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. I've started tagging discussions that look like sure deletes at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_February_21. Thanks! Deco 23:31, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

reprodded?

Looking at the Proposed Deletion: previous nominations I notice a large number of articles marked as "re{{prod}}ed"—all at 2006/02/25 14:31. Taking a random sample of these articles I noticed that, at least the ones that I looked at, were marked with a prod tag once, and the tag has not been removed. Is this a bug in the system? JeremyA 21:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I looked at two of these. How to Implement Your Software Improvement Plan was an article that I prod'd. Another editor then marked it for speedy delete. Someone else then reverted the speedy delete tag. The reversion is probably what caused it be marked as a re-prod, but the tag was never deleted so it really isn't. Virtual network address shows that only two edits - the creation and the prod'ing. However, there was a previous version that was deleted via Afd (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virtual network address). I'm guessing it was prod'd, de-prod'd, AfD, recreated, and prod'd again. -- JLaTondre 01:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I picked another two - Salmon Green & Sheldon Marcel Wagner. Both of these have not been edited since the prod tag was applied and both have existed since before prod'ing started. It must be a bug in the system. -- JLaTondre 01:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

A couple more examples: Universal Audio--prodded only once; Salmon Green--only two edits in total, the second edit was a prod. I estimate that there are about 400 articles like this that still have a prod tag but for some reason have been pulled out of the system. As it all happened within two minutes (UTC 2006/02/25 14:30 - 2006/02/25 14:31) I presume this was a glitch, and as it hasn't happened since it seems that it might now be fixed--but something needs done with these articles. JeremyA 05:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Some problems

I found 4 (so far) articles that had been tagged with PROD twice. I've removed them and notified the editors that adding it a second time is not supposed to be done. That's a minor thing until people get a better idea of how it's supposed to work. However, this followed by this is probably not a good idea. As now you have the orphan Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dinosaurs and Ethics. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:49, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

• We'd have to ask the editor to be sure, but the short amount of time between the tagging of the article, creation of the AfD page, and then the replacement of the AfD tag with the PROD tag suggests to me that he just forgot that PROD existed, or he saw the mention of PROD on the main AfD page. It's probably not a great idea, as you said, but not a big deal in this case. Joyous | Talk 00:56, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I just found (and lost) 2 or 3 PROD tags on older articles that had survived VfD and these of course should also have not been tagged. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:22, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I've encountered the same thing and moved the articles to AfD. (I just felt it was unnecessary on Lulu Lemon by the spirit of the guideline because the deprod wasn't actually intended as an objection to deletion.) Probably around 4 on my part as well. As far as I can tell, about half the time people just don't check the page history, and the other half they don't realize they aren't supposed to reprod. (If people notified the article creators, they'd be forced to check the page history...) NickelShoe 01:52, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I came back to see the reply and realized that I had forgot to close the above AfD. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 03:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

What to do when 5+ day {{prod}} is not deleted due to backlog and then hijacked?

I {{prod}}ded Spotscouter on February 21 as "advertising and protologism". The tag survived for more than five days. I have read elsewhere that there's some sort of admin backlog on prod deletions, which is fine. However, a little while ago Rory096 blanked the page and turned it into a redirect to Spotscout (which I had also {{prod}}ed at the same time, but was turned into a full AfD, where it is about to be killed off thanks to a unanimous consensus to delete). What is the next step in the process in this case? I have no reason to believe that any admin intentionally refused to delete Spotscouter, and it's going to die anyway as soon as some admin closes the Spotscout AfD, so I have no idea why Rory096's made that edit, and see no reason why it shouldn't be deleted now. Does this qualify as a speedy delete? --Aaron 05:22, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Once the other article is deleted, it'll be a speedy delete of a redirect to a non-existent page. But I don't think backlog is relevant at all. It doesn't have to be deleted after five days. If it's still there and somebody contests it, the deletion shouldn't go thru prod, it should be AfD'd or left deprodded. NickelShoe 05:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, up until the moment it's deleted, the tag can be removed. The five day mark is only when it can be deleted. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the closing administrator to remove the tag if they thought this appropriate. Deco 07:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Speedy??

I see some very obvious speedy candidates being prodded. It must be mentioned somewhere that people can add a speedy tag to a prod-ded article or that an admin can speedy del a prodded one if it meets CSD criteria, just as in AFD. --Gurubrahma 13:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Gurubrahma, I thought this was clear on the project page. Could you read it again and suggest wording that makes it more clear. The process is being used by some editors (myself included) with newbies for less bite, so some of speedy candidates may be among those. These should have written explanation to the newbie on the article and new user talk page. FloNight ^talk 13:48, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It's probably better to have it go through prod anyway, especially if it's an A7 candidate, as it will give the articles a chance to actually assert notability instead of rushing to delete articles we should probably have. If prod ends up being kept as a form of deletion process, I'll be bringing that up in detail over there. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 14:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I speedied a prodded article just last night, and found myself unsure of the protocol. Should I have removed the prod tag when I added the speedy tag, or should I have left both on? I chose the latter, but mainly because I was unsure. Advice welcome. · rodii · 15:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Leave both on. That way if someone decides it shouldn't be speedied, it's already going thru prod. It's under "relationship to other processes" on the project page. Yesterday I saw someone speedy an article while removing the prod tag, and I was somewhat distressed, because it was a three-day old prod tag, and they speedied it as a hoax, which isn't technically speediable, even when it's obvious. So re-adding the prod tag makes the whole thing take another five days. But someone deleted it anyway, which is fine, happy ending, it was a hoax about immortal pink super pandas. NickelShoe 16:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Prodding an article which may be a speedy is often harmless, and may even be useful as it gives good-faith creators the chance to see the reason why their article is being deleted. Also, the total amount of work is about the same, one time-unit to add the tag and one time-unit to speedy the article after 5 days. Speedying an article which is not a speedy can be a problem. I have been changing a good deal of speedy tags to prod in CAT:CSD. Yes, there is the problem of bad-faith vandals who will remove a prod tag, but their articles typically fall very clearly into the speedy class. Thue | talk 16:49, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Good to know I did the right thing. I would never speedy an article unless I thought it was really clear-cut--in this case it was a recreation of an article that had been deleted in AfD twice in the last three months, so I felt like I had god on my side, and it seemed unlikely that it would have been an uncontested deletion anyway in those circumstances. · rodii · 17:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am not the ultimate authority on this point :). This is just my opinion and common sense. Thue | talk 22:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

No no, too late for that. If I get yelled at for this, it's your fault. :) · rodii · 22:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I've changed quite a few speedy tags to prod, but wouldn't feel comfortable doing the reverse.

• Prod should not be seen as an extension to speedy deletion criteria - I think that we can all agree on that.
• In most cases having an article around for few extra days isn't harmful - Some scope for disagreement, see caveats below.
• The more infrequent an "exception" is the more attention we can pay to it.

So, even if it's so obviously a speedy that it should never has been tagged, it's a low-cost "rule" that doesn't have many drawbacks. In fact, do we have a system for seeing anything that gets deleted prior to it's five days? That was anything that was (for example) clearly libelous that got deleted early would set off an "alarm" and get examined and everyone would say "good job". Conversly, if we see lots of things going early, we either tune up people to what to put prod on or tune up our admins about deleting early.

So, long story short, I don't see any advantage right now to deleting a pink panda hoaxes early.

brenneman^{T}{L} 05:58, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I will say, I just rescued Mark Eitzel this evening from a prod that said "Does not assert significance," which would have likely been a speedy due to that blasted A7 catchall. It wasn't speedied, but probably would have been if I didn't decide to click on it. Another I changed from nn-speedy to prod was Riverdale High School, Montreal, Quebec, which would have gone against the relative consensus about schools, and some time on prod will probably catch the eye of school editors and bring it around to a more viable stub. I think those articles are great examples of where many (most?) of these speedy candidates based on "significance" would be better served sitting on prod for a few days and deleted when it can be assumed that many eyes had the opportunity to see them. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 06:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Schools are almost never speedy-able anyway: they usually give enough context to allow expansion, and there isn't any consensus to stretch "groups" that far. - brenneman#000000">brenneman^{T}{L} 06:52, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The only problem I see with this is that if someone removes PROD, it goes to AFD and everyone there starts yelling, why bring it here? why not speedy?? and all that. :) but I guess it is okay, especially given that PROD is still in test stage. We can refine it when we are ready for the roll out. --Gurubrahma 11:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Display the username of the nominator

I think that displaying the username of the nominator would make it easier to identify inappropriate or bad-faith nominations. -- Kjkolb 07:01, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Not appropiate on an article page, and one click in history is all it takes. - brenneman#000000">brenneman^{T}{L} 12:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Not on the article, on the log - at least I assume this is what was meant. — sjorford (talk) 13:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd support that. There's the potential for someone violating WP:POINT here, and seeing one person nominating swaths of articles should subject the nomination to greater scrutiny. --TreyHarris 02:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Disagree per Aaron Brenneman. User signatures/usernames/real names should not appear in the article namespaces under any circumstances. --causa sui ^talk 14:24, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Not in the article. On the log where it lists what articles are up for deletion. That's not in the article namespace. NickelShoe 15:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree that it might add some slight amount of transparency if it was present in the PROD toolserver log page. Of course it's not appropriate in the article namespace. -ikkyu2 (talk) 04:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I meant the log, not the article. -- Kjkolb 03:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Backlog?

I prodded some articles 7 days ago. They are still alive but they don't show up in the toolserver's current list (I thought they should turn red indicating they can be deleted). For example (Nobelcom). Is this a bug in the toolserver or are the articles listed somewhere in an admin backlog file? Thatcher131 18:52, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually they're still listed but with the date of 25 Feb at 15:00 rather than the actual date and time (22 Feb at 13:47 or something). A bug I guess? Thatcher131 18:56, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

That might be because the template was vandalized on the 25th, see above. NickelShoe 19:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Cryptic and his bot did record the version of the page just before the vandalism, see here. Admins should be able to delete according to that schedule (or just by hand, noting which articles have been tagged for 5 days) if they wish. --Interiot 14:53, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Reasons

When a page is deleted through WP:PROD the deletion summary typically says "WP:PROD - listed for 5 or more days without being contested". This means that the reason for the article being submitted to PROD in the first place is deleted with the article. This means that anyone interested has no idea on what grounds the article has been deleted. Would it be possible to require that all deletion summaries include the original reason for submission to PROD? (See WP:HD for the discussion that brought this up) Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 15:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Another option would be, at the end of the 5 days, instead of deleting the article outright, replace it with a "This was deleted via prod" type template. Then, the history is still available for those who want it. Friday (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict):Of course, some articles are prodded without a reason. I don't think it should have to include the actual text, but I think guidelines for deletion already indicate that a helpful reason be included. We just need to remind people is all. NickelShoe 16:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't make any sense to combine the XD with prod. Why wait five days if you're just going to blank the article? NickelShoe 16:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Template:polite-prod

I created a template called Template:Polite-prod, similiar to Template:polite-afd, to put on user's talk pages when prodding an article. Instead of directing them to the Afd talk page, it directs them to the article talk page and the WP:PROD guidelines page. I hopeI did a good thing, this was my first template. Anyway, if you think it might be useful, should it be mentioned on the main page? Thanks. Thatcher131 04:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, a template already exists at Template:PRODWarning. What we might could use are specific templates. I'm thinking prod-bio, prod-music, prod-neo, prod-corp, prod-dicdef, prod-hoax, which direct people to WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, etc. It would actually be awesome not to be in the first person. So I could use it to tell people about articles that I didn't nominate. Just a thought. NickelShoe 04:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I just saw the PRODWarning, problem is it wasn't on the list on Wikipedia:Template messages/Deletion which is where I went to it first. I have added it there underneath polite-afd. PRODWarning confused me a bit in that it says "discuss the issue in the prod template." That's certainly not how I've seen it used. A variety of specific prod templates would be nice as long as they were listed in an easy place. (Although WP:PROD should have been easy enough for me to find.) Oh well. Thatcher131 04:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't blame you for not finding it right away. I didn't know there was one for AfD myself.

That's a recent change to the template. I've reverted it. What it meant to convey is that the prodder might have raised the issues within the prod template, but I believe that was quite confusing. There's probably a clearer way to word the template still, but I'm not sure what it is. NickelShoe 04:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

In response to NickelShoe's thought above, I've taken the liberty to create {{PRODNote}} (and, incidentally, {{AFDNote}}) for notifying users about deletions proposed by someone else. Sandstein 06:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Adding deletion link to the template

It's possible to pre-specify a reason for deletion in a URL: [{{fullurle:{{NAMESPACEE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}|action=delete&wpReason=PROD:{{{1}}}}} delete] This would allow the PROD reason to be automatically filled into reason for deletion box, if people use the link to delete the page. This would be a Good Thing. However, there's a problem. PROD reasons often include a spaces, and sometimes include wikilinks. Both of these things screw up the URL above. What's needed is a way to urlencode the arbitrary stuff in the PROD reason. I don't know of a way to do that in MediaWiki; hopefully someone reading this does, because this would be a really nice feature to have... JesseW, the juggling janitor 06:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

afd1 should flag this

I just afd'd an article, then saw at the top of the page that perhaps I should have used this process. I suggest that someone who understands this proposal should update the afd1 template to let people know that this alternative exists. Regards, Ben Aveling 13:08, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Meh. I don't think it's a big deal. You see it when you finish, so you can use it next time. NickelShoe 17:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Not working out well from my perspective...

I have yet to have an article that I've prod tagged actually go as prod (out of at least 3 or 4), and that is because just one person who is either unaware of or uninterested in reading WP article guidelines can object and thus send the article to AfD, where it will probably be deleted. So what prod is doing is adding another step to the process, because there's no qualification for removal required. MSJapan 17:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

If I'm reading your comment right, you're using a sample size of 4 to decide how well this is working. I've personally deleted at least 5 times that many articles that went the distance without getting the tag removed. android79 17:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Alright, it doesn't work ideally in every case, but that's ok. If the prod fails and it goes to Afd, that's no worse than what would have happened without prod. However you made a good point about people removing prods for no reason. I personally think that any reasonable editor would give a reason for undoing a prod, and prods removed without a reason should be put back. Ned Wilbury 17:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

That's probably the only improvement I can think of - prods shouldn't be removed without an explanation on talk or in the edit summary or they can be put back. At the same time, though, prods shouldn't be added without summaries of why they're being prodded. Other than that, I think prod is working great. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 17:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Working great for me too. I'd like to see some stats eventually of how many prodded articles get unprodded, go the distance, stay kept, go to AfD, etc. · rodii · 18:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think prod is working about as well as could be expected; its not perfect, but neither is Afd. A more general problem in my mind is editors pouncing on new articles within minutes of their first edit. Yes, many are crap, but some have potential. New articles, especially from newbies, should be cultivated, not crushed, if they show any potential of becoming valuble. I think its unreasonable to expect new contributors to create brilliant articles offline or in their user space and post them in a single gloriously perfect edit. At the moment there seem to be too many weeders and not enough gardners among editors in the RCP and those following the deletion debates. (There are probably over 500 articles on AfD and fewer than 20 user talk pages have the {{polite-afd}} template.) It could be very discouraging and turn wikipedia into a club for the already-clued in, and a few lucky users, like me, whose first article escapes the sentries. Thatcher131 18:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The number of user_talk pages with the {{polite-afd}} template on is misleading as this is counted using What Links Here. No user pages should show up here because the template should be substed to reduce server load. —Whouk (talk) 20:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

True. Thatcher131 20:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think PROD is working great. It can be a success. even if the tag is removed. A problem that exists with the old-AFD approach, is an article is often rapidly improved in the first 24-hours. All the early votes are on the old version become moot, as the article is transformed. With PROD, either it's fixed to be good-enough, and there's no need for an AFD; or if there's an AFD, people can see the article is "as good is it's gonna be", and vote accordingly. --Rob 20:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Rob. I think it has less WP:BITE for newbies, too. FloNight ^talk 20:44, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Only when the original prodder doesn't slap an afd on it the same day. Thatcher131 21:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that people prod too quickly. But as far as the extra step involved when a prod is removed, that just means those articles should not have been prodded in the first place, for the most part. For instance, people frequently prod hoax articles, right? Only, hoaxes are bad-faith edits, so the creator of the article in equally bad faith removes the prod tag, if it's recently created. They should go straight to AfD. Some borderline cases of notability are prodded, when they should go to AfD for discussion, because their deletion is not obvious. People just need to get a better feel for what should go where. NickelShoe 21:44, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There are lots of pluses and minuses, but it seems like the question should be first, is it a net benefit for Wikipedia overall? If the answer is yes, then trying to make the edge cases, like bad-faith editors and unfinished articles, work better is a good idea. · rodii · 22:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that it's a pretty good solution. If you think an article would be a nolo contendere delete at AfD, this is the one to use. If you think an article should be speediable but doesn't quite fit the stringent CSDs, this is the one to use. If it doesn't get deleted and it still looks deletable to you, there's nothing to stop you listing on AfD. What is there to lose? --Tony Sidaway 23:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Amen. Can we make it better somehow? Possibly—but there's no question that having prod is better than not having it. -- SCZenz 00:04, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Hell, I'd rather see most speedy deletions that don't deal with patent nonsense or outright slander/libel be prods as opposed to CSDs. Give articles a shot. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 01:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Prod logs

The prod seems to be working very well (beter than I expected) and I'm impressed by the history reports. There's one problem and I don't know who to tell. The history log doesn't filter by time and it's getting too long. It takes a long time for my browser to display it because it's so long. Can someone add a time filter so users can control what range of dates it displays? RJFJR 18:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

That was the Proposed Deletion: previous nominations report. RJFJR 18:41, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I haven't had time to implement the (next 50) links, etc yet, sorry. Also, personal and work issues are probably going to prevent me from spending much time on Wikipedia for the next two weeks. For now, I've truncated the display to just the latest 1000 entries. The older data is still stored in the database, and it will be visible again once the (next 50) links are available. --Interiot 19:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, it runs much faster now. RJFJR 15:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

User pages should not be on deletion log

User:NATEamx currently appears on the Proposed Deletion log -- even though I can't find any evidence of a {{prod}} tag on his user page. I note that his page formerly included a template (Template:User MAX (band)) which had been subjected to the PROD tag, but I have removed PROD from that template because PROD is not supposed to be used for anything outside the main space. In other words, I don't know how it is that User:NATEamx appears on the deletion log, and at any rate, he shouldn't. --Metropolitan90 07:59, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

• Was the database replication lag high enough to account for the problem? The information on the log is not always being updated in real time. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't know about that, since changes I made to other nominated articles (i.e. fixing the PROD reasons) were updated in real time, but in any event the problem has been solved. User:NATEamx has been moved off the current nominations log and onto the previous nominations log instead. --Metropolitan90 04:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
    • The lag varies (seemingly randomly) anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. It is probably the cause of this issue, but anyway glad the problem is solved. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
• Actually this might be a big problem. If you put a prod tag to the template, it will probably prod all the articles using this template. And if you subst the template, prod tag will remain in the article (there are bots doing substing of certain templates). This might really cause huge problems if not solved somehow. --Jan Smolik 19:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
  • You just shouldn't prod templates, as the project page already says. If it's substed and categorizes articles before someone deprods the template, this should not be a huge problem, because the article is not supposed to be blindly deleted anyway. NickelShoe 20:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Proposed deletion to handle Wikipedia:Copyright problems also

Is this idea so crazy that no one, AFAICS, has suggested it before? --Perfecto 16:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd go even further and advocate putting much of the speedy stuff based around notability under prod jurisdiction too if we end up keeping this. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 16:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The prod guidelines clearly allow prod to be used for copyvios or other reasons a page might be deleted (say, notenglish), but an anon user removed the prod tag from both Villa del Undoso and Joaquin Albarran as not eligible for prod. What gives? the guidelines say you can list something as both. I would have re-added the prod tag but the prod guidelines don't allow this. Nardman1 17:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I did not interpret the guidelines that way. Rather, I interpret as meaning that you can prod a copyvio or Portuguese-language of a non-notable person, so that even if it turns out not to be copyvio, it can be deleted thru prod. I don't think you should use prod on these, because we have a waiting period on copyvios and other language articles to allow them to be evaluated first. NickelShoe (Talk) 17:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Report lag to?

The lag is currently 14 hours. Who/how do we tell? RJFJR 15:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Ask around in #wikimedia-toolserver on WP:IRC, I guess. I don't personally have enough information right now to be able to tell what's causing this latest replication lag. Unfortunately a toolserver admin hasn't been available yet to look into it. --Interiot 07:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

List of "deleteable" pages

The tool server pages seem to be using external or tool server links, so there's no quick way of seeing which &gt>5 days PROD'd articles have already been deleted (redlink) and which haven't. If admins are to be encouraged to close PROD issues there should be a simple one stop shop which lists the pages which have been PROD'd for greater than 5 days and not yet been dealt with by an admin (either deleted or had the PROD tag removed). If there is such a list, please tell me where :) --kingboyk 07:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Under "normal" operation (when the toolserver database is more or less up to date (give or take a minute or two) deleted items are automaticaly removed from the report in (near) real time. And deletable items are clearly highlighted at the bottom. The problem start when the database replication start to lag behind by several hours, or days even (as it is currently doing). No real fix for that though, since the toolserver is lagging behind it can't generate redlinks because it thinks the article still exist. There is a "on wiki" backup of the list (User:Crypticbot/Proposed deletion), but it links to the script redirect on the toolserver (in order to register the number of times the article have been viewed) rather than using a real wikilink, so it does not display any redlinks either. I suppose if database lag is a common problem we could look into work arounds, like having a "spider" type bot ping the actual articles on Wikipedia for entries that have "timed out" (rarely more than a dozen or two at any given time so it should not be too big of a server hog). --Sherool (talk) 08:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Evaluation of the process

I think this proposed deletion process is a success. It says on WP:PROP, this process goes live for a test run in one week (Feb 4th). That's nearly six weeks ago - is its test run over yet? Can we agree on its graduating from a proposal? Can we remove {{proposed}}? --RobertG ♬ talk 16:56, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds OK to me. I think there were some more structured evaluations that were considered, but... JesseW, the juggling janitor 22:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I concur. I think the new method has proved very workable and has met with very little opposition. I'd be glad to see it become policy. Sandstein 08:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems to work really well, and my problem with a previous proposal (that nobody could see how many people had looked at an article) has been dealt with. But one thing - should we be relying on the toolserver in a policy? r3m0t ^talk 13:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Wait - I'm confused. If somebody disputes a PROD, surely they should move it to AFD? r3m0t ^talk 13:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Only if they think it maybe should be deleted, but arn't sure. If they are sure it should not be deleted, there's no need for them to list it on AfD. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this, but it's worth adding that if you remove a prod tag because you honestly feel the article should not be deleted, you should make some kind of effort, somewhere, to give an argument why. This is not a requirement, but it's good tactics and/or good manners. In the edit summary or on the talk page, but somewhere. Increasingly I'm seeing "prod removed without comment" given as a reason for deletion in AfD nominations--which is wrong, but I think it indicates that people are starting to see de-prodding without comment as aggressive, or at least passive-aggressive. I think the logic is, if you really want an article kept, you should say why; if you don't, it's because you're looking for an argument, so by god, we'll give ya an argument. I know this is counter to the spirit of the prod proposal, but there it is--it's an unintended consequence, I think. · rodii · 14:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

 rodii ·, that is my take on the situaton, too. From the beginning of PROD, I've wondered if it's success was the process or the positive attitude of the users involved. I concluded that is both.

Been busy the past few weeks and neglected reading PROD talk. I definately think PROD is a success and should be continued. Later today, I'll give more ideas on how we should evaluate the process and where we go from here. --FloNight ^talk 15:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Wny shouldn't the template be subst'ed?

Is there any reason why I shouldn't use {{subst:prod}} ? The forn {{prod|...}} does not work if a diff is mentioned in the reason, probably because of the = character in the URL. See User:Jitse Niesen/sandbox for an example. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Change the reason to 1=Reason instead of Reason. I demonstrated this in your sandbox for you. Hope that's okay. NickelShoe (Talk) 21:56, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course that's okay. Thanks very much. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 04:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Disappearing deletions?

I prodded a page (Bulge of Africa) on Feb. 24, and it was (I thought) deleted a few days later. See [[1]] for the log. However, the page is still there, and the history doesn't show my edit, nor indeed any edits between Feb. 2 and my re-prodding of it tonight. (I re-prodded because I thought I was losing my mind, then thought to check "What links here" and found the log entry.) When I click on the "Time nominated" link in the log, I get a message that says The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Bulge of Africa (Diff: 37878939, 41037120)". I'm really confused by this. Can anyone explain what's going on? Was the edit where I prodded the page deleted? · rodii · 04:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

You did. For some reason known only to him, User:Grutness restored the page, except leaving your prod'ing deleted. I suggest you ask him about this odd action. See log for details. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If anybody had bothered to google the phrase, they'd have noticed it's a commonly used term, found on, inter alia, the NASA site, the BBC site, and various academic pages. Prod is, by design, an easily reversible process. Monicasdude 14:16, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the condescension. I not only "bothered to google" the phrase, I asked some geographer friends, and I have done field work in Africa myself and am reasonably conversant with the lingo. Note that the top several google entries are from the Wikipedia article. It's not really a term of art in geography, the way Horn of Africa is, it's just a phrase that happens to come up sometimes. But I don't want to debate the substantive question here--if it stays, it stays, no problem. I understand how prod works just fine--my question was why all trace of my prod was removed. It just leads to confusion. I wouldn't have re-prodded it if I had seen it was deleted and restored--but instead there was no trace of the process so I didn't know what was happening. This strikes me as a bad way to handle the restoration of prod-deleted pages. · rodii · 15:25, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If you actually did Google the phrase, but nevertheless wanted to delete the term as "nonexistent" even though it's used by NASA, the BBC, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, your editing wasn't just careless, as I suggested; instead, it borders on outright vandalism. Rather than displaying pique and posting an unsigned personal attack on my talk page, you ought to recognize that you just plain screwed up. Monicasdude 15:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Noting that I concur with Monicasdude apropos of the proper disposition of the article and that I readily recognize this isn't the best place at which to have this discussion, I fear that Monicasdude continues improperly to ascribe the appellative "vandalism" to actions which surely are not vandalism and continues to impute malign motive to nominators who surely aren't acting untowardly. Even as I may think that WP:V doesn't go far enough in its description of what is vandalism, and even as I am not particularly a fan of WP:AGF, each represents a view for which a strong consensus exists, and it seems that Monicasdude, as I've previously discussed, inter al., here, rejects the definitions of each and operates as though his (well-intentioned and well-articulated) views reflect the views of the community writ large, which surely they do not. Joe 17:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

A disagreement over whether an article should be deleted is not vandalism; a difference in interpretation of google results is not a screwup. I have no agenda regarding the article, and I'm perfectly happy to let the restoration stand. My failure to sign my message on your talk page was simply an oversight. My question above was about what happened to a deleted edit, not a complaint about the restoration of the article. You are correct, though, that I shouldn't have reacted the way I did to your message above; repaying unpleasantness with more unpleasantness was a mistake. Have a nice day. (And thanks to JesseW for answering my original question. Sorry for the disruption.) · rodii · 22:36, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Apologies to all the above. I misinterpreted the new prod rules. When an article is prodded and you disagree with the prod, you remove the prod notice. This article was prodded and deleted. I restored it (as I believed it was perfectly expandable and useful) and removed the prod notice, as per the prod instructions. The easiest way to do that was simply to restore the version immediately prior to the addition of the prod notice (perhaps I should have restored the prod, then removed it, so it was laziness on my part). I'm not quite clear what was wrong with that other than laziness, but it seems it was wrong, so I apologise. Grutness...wha? 00:40, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

(Sequence of comments is getting confusing here, but I wanted to get this one next to Grutness.) The effect of that strategy was this: when I went to edit my watchlist, the article was a blue link, which surprised me, because I thought it was gone. When I went to look at it, and viewed the history, there was no trace of my prod, which made me think "I was sure I prodded that, but maybe I screwed up somehow--better try again." Then I discovered all te facts noted above, went "oh," and went back to revert myself--but monicasdude had already done the honors. So the only thing "wrong" with your method, in retrospect, was that it was confusing and didn't leave enough of an edit trace for me to figure out what had happened. No biggie--I just wondered what was going on. Anyway, thanks for checking in. · rodii · 02:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I had an edit conflict with Grutness. This post was made after the post below. Is it okay for an article to be undeleted after it is prodded without a deletion review? If a non-admin asked that an article that was deleted be undeleted, would his or her request be fulfilled, no matter how bad the article (there is no review or restrictions on the admin's decision, so it would be unfair to place any on the non-admin's)? -- Kjkolb 01:03, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I looked into the term after rodii first posted here. I'm somewhere in the middle. The term appears to be widely used, but it does not appear to have a formal, specific definition. One clue to this is that it is almost never capitalized in the search results, including those of the BBC, NASA and Britannica. Horn of Africa, on the other hand, is capitalized. Far more importantly, it does not have an entry in Britannica or any other reputable source I could find (it is only mentioned once in the entire encyclopedia, in the Senegal article). Finally, it is not identified on any maps that I could find, while Horn of Africa is found on many maps. The best option might be to have an article, but have it mention the term's limitations. However, deletion is a valid opinion and should not be referred to as vandalism. -- Kjkolb 00:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to be clear, when I referred to vandalism, the comment was phrased hypothetically, and referred not to the deletion proposal itself, but to the justification -- describing the phrase as "nonexistent" despite roughly 15,000 Google hits, including citations to NASA, the BBC, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the Afd nominator had noted those points (and I doubt he did) but wrote what he did, I think an inference of bad faith is fair from his use of the term "nonexistent". I think a careless, but good faith, nomination is a better inference. I also think merging the two articles, wouldn't be a bad idea, with "Horn" as the principal title. Monicasdude 01:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The first time I prodded it--and it was reviewed and passed on by four other people, according to the log--my edit summary said "Unsourced and unverified since 2004." The second time I was sloppier--mea culpa. But I will stand by "nonexistent geographical term"--it's clearly not a nonexistent phrase, but it is (as far as I know, and I welcome corrections) nonexistent as a term of art in any field. As I said on your talk page, Google has 15,200 hits for "America's wang," meaning Florida, but that doesn't mean "America's wang" is an encyclopedic label for Florida. My reasoning might be wrong, but it was done in good faith and was not in any way vandalism. Your continuing suggestion, against my explicit claim, that I didn't in fact google the term is insulting. I stated above that I not only googled it, I asked some geographer friends of mine whether they had ever heard the term used, and they said they hadn't. I'm not sure what AfD you're talking about above--did this poor article go through AfD *too*?

But this is all so beside the point. PROD is supposed to be for uncontroversial deletions. I clearly misjudged that, the article was restored, everyone lived happily ever after, end of story. If you somehow think I stay up at night scheming to delete innocent stubs, you're mistaken. I don't think I really deserve this level of vitriol for asking what I think was a fairly innocent question about the process--and in fact I think there is potentially a useful clarification to be made about that particular part of the process. · rodii · 02:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe that he is referring to its "nonexistence" as an actual geographic term (being used by geographers), not that it is not being used at all. It would have helped a if he had provided more information in the nomination. The articles cannot be merged because they do not refer to the same thing. They are on opposite sides of the continent (edit conflict with rodii). -- Kjkolb 02:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

<-- Speaking only for the proper application of prod I'd hesitate to restore something deleted without placing it up for AfD. This comes down to the "Administrator/Morlock" boundry again: most people couldn't simply restore as a way of objecting to a prod, thus I'm hesitant with regards to administrators doing so. DRV does a pseudo-automatic restore of prodded material as well. Thus it's a fair call to restore it as long as some sort of oversight is applied. This would include the same note we should place on an admin's talk page whenver we reverse there actions. - brenneman#000000">brenneman^{L} 01:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I see the point, but as to prod and restoration after deletion, I was under the impression that prod could only be used if something was obviously deletable in the first place. This is a very well-used term as any quick google will show. As such, it should never have been prodded in the first place. I'm convinced that if it had been placed on afd for all to see it would have been kept, but it never got that sort of review process. And if it shouldn't have been prodded, it shouldn't have been deleted. As such, restoration of the article made perfect sense. I probably should have afd'd it, but I've never yet seen an afd where the nominator said "keep", so didn't see that it would have made much sense. Grutness...wha? 02:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the policy says "Since this process is about uncontested deletions, any page deleted here can be undeleted without further argument." So I think you were toally in the right there. Aaron makes a good point, and in fact since prod got going, I have started to see people doing exactly what you say--de-prodding, listing at AfD and voting to keep. But there's nothing in the policy about that, and I'd say you were fine process-wise... just personally confusing to me. :) · rodii · 02:55, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

I thought I recall something about prod not being for redirects, but I don't see it on the page nor did I see anything when I skimmed through the page history. Skull Trap is currently a redirect marked for prod. Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion operates similarly (nominations with no objections result in deletion), but it has less traffic & the criteria for keeping redirects is different than with articles. I'd recommend that we leave redirects to Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. Any other thoughts? -- JLaTondre 19:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

That seems corret. Better to have these go through a process specific for them. --FloNight ^talk 19:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, sending it through a specific process would be a good idea. Redirects are more likely to have the {{prod}} go unnoticed, and when it does get noticed (i.e.- someone tries to use that redirect), it might take a relatively experienced user to be able to say, "Where did this redirect go? Why was it deemed unuseful? How can I restore it, or redirect it somewhere else?" In addition, prods are usually challenged by the removal of the tag; but in the above case with Skull Trap, if a user were to just remove the prod, it would become a worthless blank page. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 20:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, based on no objections, I went ahead and added redirects to the section of things prod is not to be used for. Thanks. -- JLaTondre 03:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Policy time?

Our "test run" has been live for a couple of months now. It seems to me that most people think Proposed Deletion is doing its job, and I see it talked about as if it were policy. Would now be a good time to get consensus to make it an actual policy? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 17:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• I concur. PROD has found very wide acceptance, is frequently referred to as policy (as noted above), and works very well as a intermediate measure between AfD and CSD. I do not think that another month of testing would change our perception of this process. If consensus to make it policy is established, as I hope, I would support making it a mandatory step before AfD, thus lightening the load on AfD another bit. Sandstein 18:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Don't make it a mandatory step before AfD. Lots of articles should go straight to AfD. If an article has a long history or lots of incoming links, if it's been AfD'ed before, if it's a bad faith contribution whose author is just going to remove the tag without comment, it should to AfD straightaway. Making prod a mandatory step when it's just going to be contested anyway makes things more complicated, not less.
• I certainly agree that another month of testing is silly. By this time, everybody who's interested should have made up their mind if they think it works or not. Run a vote/survey/poll/whatever, make a decision, and let's move on. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:25, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Agree that PROD should be an alternative not a step before Afd. PROD should become policy, part of the deletion process. I don't think a poll is needed. Lets get consensus here. I do think the process should be evaluated now for any other tweaking. I made a list of ways to evaluate more than a month ago per the concern of some editors that PROD was being pushed on the community. I think there is value in collecting some of the information for evaluation. Regardless, it should go forward as policy because it has been a success. --FloNight ^talk 18:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• Seems to me we've already got consensus, in the form of a great many people using the process. No need for a vote. --Carnildo 19:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
• I agree, we've already got it. People are using it; it could be marked as policy at any time and I would not object. Friday (talk) 19:35, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
• Agree, it's being used and whilst I haven't been following this that closely I haven't come across any major opposition. Petros471 19:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
• I would like to note that there was a strong opposition of some users namely of Ikkyu2. He called for a straw poll on February 13 but agreed to wait because the process needed some more testing. You can read the conversation in archive [2]. --Jan Smolik 20:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
• I agree that PROD is definately doing its job and that it should be an alternative to AfD and not a mandatory step before it; as has been said on this page many times, PROD is great for non-controversial deletions that would end up being unanimous delete on AfD anyway. As for consensus, I say we wait for about a week before marking this as policy. If there's no serious objections on this thread by then, I would have no problem saying consensus has been reached. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 23:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
• I agree, me too! I was skeptical of PROD at first, but all around it seems to work well. The biggest problem people seem to have is with users who re-add the prod tag when they should be going to AfD, but that's against the proposed policy anyway... the tag itself might need a little more refinement though for people who won't read the policy page. --W.marsh 23:12, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Most of the tag re-adders are experienced users, who soon enough will figure out they're not supposed to do it. I think it's okay. NickelShoe (Talk) 03:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• Looking at this show of support, I've decided to remove the {{proposed}} tag and the list of people watching the process, and make it into a policy page. If someone wants to do the more formal evaluation, feel free. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • It seems that Carnildo already added the {{policy}} tag, so I just removed the proposal-related sections. Good work, everyone. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:52, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced that this should be policy yet because I'm not convinced it is working. Are people using it? Yes, absolutely, but I'm not sure it is saving any time, since a portion of the articles end up now going through two processes. Please understand I'm not saying it is failing, I'm just saying I'd like to see more evidence presented that shows some tangible benefit, like a total time savings for having the dual processes. Thanks, Johntex\^talk 00:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
  • As a sort-of metric, you could see Image:Is PROD working.svg which shows the different to numerical AfD load that PROD has made, as of about 3.5 weeks ago. This doesn't deal directly with time, but then analysing a PROD is pretty quick work for the most part, and doesn't involve admins reading and weighing debates and things. -Splash^talk 00:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Let me try to clarify this. Time savings can come in a number of different places. I don't think whatever net time saving is as important as how PROD moves where the time is needed. There is no possible doubt that nominating an article for PROD is quicker and easier than nominating an article for AfD. It is also undoubtably quicker and easier to close PRODs(either by removing the tag, or by simply copying the prod reason into the deletion reason field, and deleting the article). In the case of an article whose deletion was thought to be uncontroversial(i.e. right for PROD), but turned out not to be, but still needed to be deleted, only then would it have to go through both processes. This seems pretty unlikly, esspecially if done by experienced Wikipedians. Every article that is correctly deleted by PROD is a savings in time and effort. The only possible greater time use is for articles that are mistakenly put through PROD when their deletion is actually controversial. If such a mistake is made, then yes, the process can take longer, but this is only when the nominator guessed wrong. There is no requirement to use PROD before AfD, and if the nominator suspects the PROD tag would be removed, the most efficient course would be not to use it. I look forward to your response. JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:24, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

• I think that by virtue of the (virtually?) undisputed use of this process for about 2 months now, it has enough establishment to be considered policy. It is being implemented as described on the page, although the page is really about 2000 times too long. So yes, I think a policy tag is appropriate. -Splash^talk 00:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
  • 2000? Wouldn't that cut it down to about 3 sentences? I'd be curious what parts you think are too long, and what you would cut. Please expand on this... JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Tool?

I think we need some sort of tool or possibly addition to AWB to help with the deluge of pages. When I first saw this a couple months ago, the influx of articles to be deleted was managable and acceptable. Now, however, it is a different story. I just deleted about twenty of over 100 or so articles marked red by the toolserver. While a few pages do require admin attention, others just sit there, with few picking up the slack. There's a massive backlog, and it's very difficult to deal with. A possible js monobook extension or addition to AWB would be greatly needed and appreciated, I believe. Is anyone willing or able to create such a tool, or do possibly have to revise the policy? Enough admins patrol AfD and there are enough tools that it isn't as much of a problem, nor with CSD, but I think the level here on ProD is over-the-top. Anyone else think so? -brennemanblack">Mysekurity ^[m!] 22:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• I think the problem is that the toolserver is almost 2 full days behind real-time. Many of the articles on the list HAVE been deleted, but the long lag-time keeps them from falling off the list, making it look like there's a massive backlog. When the lag is shorter, the list of articles that qualify for deletion is much shorter. Right now, it's frustrating to try to find which articles need to be deleted, and which ones are already gone. Joyous | Talk 23:06, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes and no.... approximately 20 of them had been deleted last I checked, and I deleted about 20 more, but that still left about 60. Maybe I'll request something at the AWB page to deal with this. Honestly, it really shouldn't take this much manual labor....there's no reading of the article involved—or at least there shouldn't be, except in obvious cases of wrong—and waiting for the page to load, then the delete dialogue, then the confirmation, and all that is just tedious, and seriously limits ProD's benefits. Is it just me, or am I seeing a lot more ProDs than there have been previously, vastly eating away at the chunk of AfDs? In any event, in order to keep WP in the top 20, I guess this is a trade-off. Thanks again, brennemanblack">Mysekurity ^[m!] 01:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not totally comfortable with the idea that a prodded page be deleted without the admin taking a look. Making it easier to delete is fine, but to say "there's no reading of the article involved" seems counter to the spirit of the proposal somehow. When PROD started, the biggest worry people had was the idea that good articles would be deleted without oversight. I see review by the deleting admin as the minimum of that oversight. It would be possible--maybe not the norm, but possible--for a worthy article to get through the five day period to the "deletable" stage without review from anyone but the original proposer. At least one other pair of experienced eyes should take a look before it's deleted, in my opinion. · rodii · 02:10, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Prodded articles are definitely supposed to be reviewed by the deleting admin. Doing otherwise is very much wrong. The policy page isn't explicit about this, but somewhere in the talk archives, this was made clear to be the way the process is supposed to work. The closing guidelines require the deleting admin to be different than the proposing editor to ensure an extra pair of eyes--because there has to be a guarantee that at least two people looked at the article and thought it should be deleted. NickelShoe (Talk) 04:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree with NickelShoe and others that an administrator needs to review each article at the time of deletion. To my knowledge, there has been no attempt to draw attention to the backlog. Rather than a tool for deletion, maybe a tool could notify willing administrator if a big backlog develops. FloNight ^talk 04:23, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with this (and I'm a janitor myself). I've done a number more, and made a list with red-links working out of this version of the on-wiki backup list. Feel free to use it to finish up the rest of the (not too big) backlog. And bug whoever you can about moving the log over to the main servers(and off the toolserver)... JesseW, the juggling janitor 05:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Re to Rodii: Heh. I knew that would come back to bite me... What I meant to say is that careful reading is not required. If you've used AWB, you know that it shows you the page before. I'm not saying delete 'em all without looking, I'm saying that it would be a lot more efficient to have some sort of tool to take the tediousness out of it. ProD is supposed to be easier with that, not harder. Thanks for all your comments, guys, and sorry to have not made myself clear. Perhaps someone with more experience and leverage could bug whomever is responsible to get it on the main server? Thanks, brennemanblack">Mysekurity ^[m!] 14:36, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand (though I'm on a Mac, so no AWB for me :( )--but it's possible to use AWB responsibly or not. I see people making AWB-assisted changes sometimes at the rate of ten per minute, and you just know they're not doing a very careful review of their changes. So the issue is not the technology, but the care taken. I totally support what you're suggesting, I just wanted to get that concern out there. · rodii · 15:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

They'll make a Mac AWB one day... especially with the Wintel chips and Boot Camp. Thanks for the understanding, and maybe it'll come in place one day soon? -brennemanblack">Mysekurity ^[m!] 14:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Failing to understand this process

I want to bring to notice, the Car dealership article. I removed {{prod}} from the article. User:UtherSRG feels otherwise. Who is going to keep track of all these articles that deserve to exist? I managed to fight for just one. - Ganeshk (talk) 22:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

UtherSRG acted wrongly in this case. 99% of the time, a {{prod}} tag with no reason is wrong, as it was in this case. His reversion of your removal was also wrong, although he did quickly fix it by listing the article on AfD, where it is looking quite likely to be kept(possibly temporarily redirected). Many people do watch the list of PROD'ed pages to find wrongly tagged ones; as someone who's deleted a number of PROD'ed pages, nearly all the wrongly tagged ones have already been filtered out before I get to them. JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking time to explain. I will keep a look out too. - Ganeshk (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

This may have been asked before but...

Is it implied within the policy, and should it be explicitly stated, that it is considered bad form (and maybe even is prohibited) to remove the PROD tag on an article that you have created? I have been PRODing a number of nn and vanity pages recently, only for the people - usually very new users - who have made the page in the first page to remove the tag straight away. In the spirit of WP:IAR, I reinstated the tags, but was what I did strictly against policy, and if so, should it be? Batmanand | Talk 20:21, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Prod is strictly for uncontested deletions. The creator has the right to contest any page deletion (prod, speedy, or AfD). If they remove the prod, you should not restore it, but send the article to AfD. -- JLaTondre 20:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I understand that, but who is going to create an article and then willing see it deleted? I think the policy should be changed; "contested" to me suggests contested by someone other than the creator. Batmanand | Talk 20:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Agree with JLaTondre. The only utility of prod in situations where anyone objects is simply to verify that fact that someone does, in fact, object. To delete things whose deletion someone objects to requires AfD (or in extreme cases, administrator discretion(where the discussion happens after the deletion, and generally on the mailing list or RfC, etc...)). Don't use PROD for that, but please do use it for any uncontroversial deletions. (added after edit conflict) As for examples of people who created an article and then were willing to see it deleted, see any of the PROD'ed articles that are deleted, for example(among the ones I just deleted a few minutes ago): Maurice Postal, Girlhour, etc... JesseW, the juggling janitor 20:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

If that is the general consensus, then that is fair enough, and I will desist from reinstating the tag in future. Thanks for the clarification. Batmanand | Talk 20:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the only part of PROD policy that I think needs to be changed. When a new user creator removes the PROD, I think we should consider it a newbie mistake rather than a validly contested PROD. If a new user creates an article and it is PRODed, and the creator is willing to re-PROD, then a re-PROD should be allowed. It is common sense that the person that just wrote the article will want to stay. A new user has no idea about Afd. The new user's vote and comment in Afd is likely to be discounted by regular voters there. The comments can be down right mean. I think it is in the best interest of the new user and Wikipedia to make this change in policy. FloNight ^talk 21:27, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

That's certainly fine. If someone wants to do a bit of newbie helping and manages to successfully educate someone that an article they created is not right for Wikipedia, the article certainly doesn't need to go through AfD. In fact, it doesn't need to go through PROD, either. The creator can simply tag it for Speedy Deletion (giving as the reason: created by accident), and it will be deleted. Mentioning this on the PROD page would certainly be fine, although I'm not sure it's required. JesseW, the juggling janitor 22:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

It is explicitly stated that creators are allowed to remove PROD tags and people may not add them back. WP:PROD#What this process is NOT for:

• This process is not for contested deletion, and edit warring with it is not allowed. If anyone removes Template:Prod from an article for any reason, don't place it back. If the template was removed and replaced, the article will not be deleted. If you still believe the article needs to be deleted, list it on AfD.
  • Do not discount the opinion of the creator of the article. If the creator removes the tag, the deletion is controversial and should go to AfD.
  • Do not assume that because an editor did not state a reason for keeping the article that he/she does not have one. If the tag is removed without an edit summary, the deletion is controversial and should go to AfD.

If you want newbies to understand the process you have to tell them. When you prod an article, tell the creator why you're doing it and how the process goes from here.

And I disagree that we should reprod it when a newbie deprods it. Newbies don't understand the process, and that includes not understanding why they need to justify keeping the article. We need to give them the opportunity to learn instead of saying that we only care about the opinions of established editors. Agree with Jesse that if we convince the article creator that it should be deleted, speedy takes over, so there's no reason to reprod. NickelShoe (Talk) 02:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

user script to automate prodding?

anyone know of a script to prod cruft at the click of a button? thanks, --Urthogie 13:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Nope. PRODing is stunning simply, and couldn't be made much easier. A mouse-click wouldn't work, as a reason has to be given for deletion. If anybody were to run a script to auto-prod articles, that would be a good reason for a block. --Rob 13:45, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

You can create scripts that have javascript prompts, you know.--Urthogie 13:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

"Cruft" implies a certain lack of good faith that I can't support in the PROD process. But anyway, you want a script that will automate this process?

1. click on "edit this page"
2. type "{{prod|"
3. type your reason (which you would still have to type with a script)
4. type "}}" and hit save

That seems... less than onerous. By my count your script would save you nine keystrokes! PROD is already about as easy as can be for the proposer, and there's a certain amount of due diligence and good faith required. I dislike the idea that someone might make a series of AWB-style edits, proddding dozens of articles in one session. Anything that would make it too easy to prod articles and allows doing it indiscriminately undermines the validity of the process in my opinion. · rodii · 13:52, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Er, after edit conflict... what Rob said. · rodii ·

The reason I ask for this script is because on Italian keyboards there is no first bracket symbol. The character map is slow. Thanks, --Urthogie 14:13, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, that makes lots of sense, but really what would help you would be a button to add a template; i.e. click a button and {{}} is added, with the cursor between the inner ones. That would solve your problem with adding any template. That doesn't sound too hard to code up; try asking on WikiProject User Scripts. 24.39.139.98 04:24, 12 April 2006 (UTC) (really User:JesseW/not logged in)

I have a script that adds a "Tag" button for general-purpose tagging. It prompts you to type some tag(s) (separated by &&), then auto saves with an appropriate edit summary. To use it for PRODing, type "prod|reason..." in the query box. http://wikipedia.quarl.org/scripts/autotag.js —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-04-13 07:05Z

Does this concept apply to AfD articles?

That is to say, if after five days nobody has stated any reasons to keep an article, can it be deleted based on the rationale of this policy even if not enough people to establish a consensus want to delete it? —Doug Bell ^talk 23:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting question. Not if the article ever had a contested prod or prior AFD in the history. Otherwise, I would say that it could be closed as if a PROD had run, rather than as an AFD consensus close. That seems to be the spirit of the two deletion processes, although it probably skirts the line on the letter at the very least. GRBerry 00:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

i don't think that's really a good idea. AfD assumes a controversal decision, and there's no need to muddy it further, methinks. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Well here is the AfD that got me wondering. It almost certainly would be deleted at this point if it had been nominated using PROD instead of AfD. It's apparently non-notable enough that nobody cares to comment on it, which is true of many things listed on AfD. —Doug Bell ^talk 01:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

That specific one has a prod removal in its history, so I wouldn't say it is appropriate to treat the AFD as a prod. I'd relist I guess. GRBerry 02:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• AFD has heavy traffic, so it's rather unlikely that any article there has not been seen. I don't think we should encourage people to "rubber stamp", so in general if there have been no objections, you could delete it (note that CFD/TFD/RFD also work in this fashion, and regularly get issues that get no objections or other comments). However, if the article had a prior AFD or PROD, this is probably not such a good idea, and relisting would be preferable. (Radiant) 09:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

time for a prod

I've been looking at them every few days, and about 1 in 10 are worth thinking about. But unless a number of people do this regularly looking for different things--(I check for anything possibly religious or political or ethnic, to prevent using prod for expressing prejudice.) -- the 5 days is much too short, especially with newbies. I suggest ten days -- for all prods. It will get rid of just as many. DGG 03:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that people will be less apt to use prod if they know it takes twice as long as AFD. If the newbie misses the countdown, the article is recreatable/restorable. NickelShoe (Talk) 03:48, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed for reasons discussed in the archive. Some people prod, hoping that no one who cares enough to reverse the decision will see it in time. Calbaer 03:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Reasons

There should be a more visible list of reasons for the prod template. KevinPuj 14:39, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Reasons that the policy exists or reasons for prodding an article? The latter is clear enough: it is appropriate to prod an article iff one reasonably expects that it would be deleted (near-)unanimously if it were to go to WP:AfD instead. Henning Makholm 15:42, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

"Previously discussed on AfD"

Currently the intro says that "Articles that have been previously proposed for deletion or undeleted, or discussed on AfD, are clearly contested and are not candidates for {{prod}}."

I have tended to assume that only applies to AfDs that resulted in "keep" or "no consensus." Is there a more clear way to express this without being wordy? NickelShoe (Talk) 23:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I actually think such articles should not be prodded. An article that is recreated after a prod deletion should be taken as a sign that someone objects to its deletion -- couldn't the same be true for AfD? WP:CSD#G4 takes care of the bulk of such cases; in the rest, a re-AfD is probably more appropriate. However, articles that have been through AfD and have no mark of it may get prodded anyway, and deleted, because no one notices the AfD; it's not such an easy thing to check for. So, basically, don't bother. :) Mangojuice^talk 11:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

a new reason

There was recently a prod for the reason "contains erroneous capitalisation." DGG 02:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

So deprod it, move it, and explain to the prodder. It's a simple newbie mistake. NickelShoe (Talk) 02:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I found the article in question, and he said that the organization "fails to assert notability"[3], and you deprodded it because you didn't like his secondary reason? NickelShoe (Talk) 02:53, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:prod-2

I suggest adding mention of Template:prod-2 to this policy -- its existence appears to be a little known secret.

I suggest also adding it to

• Wikipedia:Template messages/Deletion
• Category:Proposed deletion (the header)

--A. B. ^(talk) 13:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason why it is not advertised wider is that it is not part of the consensus-approved prod process. Whether {{tl:prod-2}} is present or absent makes no difference for the deletability of the page under policy. If you think it should make a difference, start by proposing which difference it should make, and we can talk about documenting a changed policy consensus once it is reached. Henning Makholm 14:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not going to push the point. I received feedback that I should use this in addition to leaving a comment on the talk page of a PROD'd article. Curious, I looked around. I could find nothing in the standard policy and template list pages referring to this page. That's why I left this note --A. B. ^(talk) 14:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

{{prod-2}} is more important to Wikipedia:WikiProject proposed deletion patrolling than anything else. Still, there's no harm in putting it as a "see also." Mangojuice^talk 15:42, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect lots of people informally peruse Category:Proposed deletion without being aware of Wikipedia:WikiProject proposed deletion patrolling, in effect unofficially patrolling PROD candidates. I think mentioning the template in the text of the top of the category page would be especially useful. (For that matter, you might want to mention the patrol). I know we don't like a lot of text in category headers -- I'd think something like this should be sufficient:

• "Editors that agree with a proposal can note this by adding {{prod-2}} below the existing template."

Finally, now that I think of it, it might be most useful to mention {{prod-2}} on the actual {{prod}} template; possible wording formatted for consistency with the rest of the tag:

Other editors: If you agree with this proposed deletion, you may note this by adding the {{prod-2}} tag below this one"

{{prod-2}} --~~~~

I mention these purely as something to consider; if some major policy change process is required, they may not be worth the effort. --A. B. ^(talk) 16:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

As a prod patroller, I find this template most useful when I agree the article but should be deleted but disagree with or want to elaborate on the reason or want to suggest a post-deletion action to the closing admin. An example of the latter would be delete then redirect... GRBerry 17:59, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Prod for templates idea

I know things along this line have been discussed before, but I think there is a need for, and fair way to implement, a 'prod like' system for templates. Prod is effectively a 'speedy deletion' criteria... if an article has been marked 'prod' for five days with no objections an admin can delete it without discussion. The same concept has recently been extended to user-pages of people with no 'non user space' edits... again, basically a speedy deletion criteria (user page with no encyclopedia contribs) which includes a pre-notice requirement. There are thousands of templates out there which have been around for months but are not used anywhere... thousands more which are virtual duplicates of other templates and only used on a handful of pages. I'd like to suggest that we expand prod/csd to allow deletion of templates if they have zero active transclusions (either because they were replaced or if they never had any) and no objections to deletion for a month after being tagged. It would give people plenty of time to notice and object, standard 'undelete on request' would apply, et cetera... and it would help to clean out tons of stuff which isn't worth flooding TfD over. --CBD 13:41, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I also feel that there is a need for this (in fact, I was typing a proposal for this over at WP:TfD before I found this). The only issue I have with CBD's suggestion is with the length of time that the template is on PROD. A month seems too long; I'd suggest something more like 14 days. Mike Peel 17:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

re: {{prod}} Thanks for the 'heads up message' Mike Peel!
I have to presume this came out of some of our email discussions, CBD, on revamping the TfD deletion criteria. I can support such provided we be careful with the notification procedure to anyone significantly editing the template function... such would exclude BOT edits for this and that, and interwiki's and such. You and Mike probably have a better handle on that than I, but that sort of wide notice for your 'objections' satifaction criteria. (Might explicitly require any of those installing or altering WP:DPP code, as they saw something there for it, or wouldn't have spent the energy and time. Perhaps the thing is subst'd as a rule. The history and links wouldn't show that, and such cases need a tag probably, as well!)
  As I understand you and others like Mike Peel want to eliminate spurious 'creations', not in fact used, and that makes sense. Send me a link of what list you guys are peeking at! (So much to learn, so little time, such a bad memory, so many distractions! <G>)
  On the other hand I have a suspicion that many of the problems of something not being used in the past is a side effect of
    - a - Inproper categorization
    - b- Insufficient documentation of purpose and usage on the face page.
    In short, something ain't going to get used unless it's known and easy to find. Hence, if either of those pertains, I'd prefer a first notice template that the template needs to be documented using WP:DPP and properly categorized, or would be susceptable to Speedy deletion as a first step, or perhaps that's an alternate criteria... if the sad-sack doesn't care enough to fit it into the system, it should be speedy-D'd in the near term. I can go with Mike's two week time limit there, and am I correct in assuming there would be a tag similar to the tfd tags for the template page itself?

We'd also need some other kinds of fences&#58;

1. Reference templates, like {{ASCII}} and the Maps project reference {{LctNAS}} aren't ever going to be transcluded, but are handy to those doing the grunt work. Probably ought to have a template tag for those as we do now on a fair number of wikipedia administration and tracking categories.
2. I'm about to propose (indeed, have a draft email pending time to finalize, unsent to you CBD on such!) an template self-substing schema, generated from the aftermath of respective Tfd's on interwikitmp-grp and macro 'W2' hence taking {{tl}} as a case in point where a /page can be set to auto-subst the template. A global peram might be coded in as well, assuming the pieces can be made to work at all.
3. This would be a limited scope in that such a subst would only occur if the trigger page was 'True', and the page was edited and saved, but in the long run, said template page would not show transclusions, but look like this for prod... -- all talk pages. It would also eliminate the server loading issues with such handy macro types of templates. (I see no reason for {{Tl}} to not be subst'd, it is, like {{WD}}/{{W2}}/{{W2c}} just a useful macro time saver for us overworked editors. So ((WP:DPP}} might even be more important in self-substing code!
4. 'Objections' having been made, I presume the template is then susceptable still to the normal TfD procedures, which is acceptable. As CBD knows, I've some gripes with that, which I'll be raising once I free up more time for such politiking! Best regards // FrankB 19:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Add this excerpt from Mike Peel's talk:
... does raise another point... nothing should be challengable (by Prod) until it's been around at least a month... maybe two. Some of us (Me, Mel Etitis, David Kernow for some sure one's) need to park wiki matters now and again for lengthy periods. Email notification, or an attempt to do such should be a Prod requirement too. Actually, I want such in all the Xfd's, save perhaps Afd... I've already discussed that cynical pragmatism in the draft Tfd changes I've got unfinished somewhere. At least I know I've also got that saved offline! // FrankB 19:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There's a big list of unused templates at Special:Unusedtemplates, but looking at it a fair few of those are redirects to templates, so it's not actually as bad as it seems. It would be interesting to see how many of those are actually templates, and not redirects, and of those how many are subst'd only.

I've also just found out that Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates exists, although it doesn't seem to be too active.

I like the idea of self-subst'ing templates, although that would require the coders of mediawiki to implement. A possible quick-and-dirty method would be to have a bot keeping an eye on the recent changes list, and whenever prespecified templates are used it would make an edit to subst them. However, I think that there was a bot that did something similar one time, but it wasn't liked by the community. Anyhow, this isn't really related to PROD, so shouldn't really be discussed here.

I'm not so keen on the suggested requirement for emailing the creator of templates that are put up for PROD, for the following reasons. 1) a lot of people don't provide emails, so they can't be emailed. 2) How do editors prove that they have emailed the creator? 3) A message left on the user's talk page will usually be sufficient; if it isn't, then the user can always request that their template be undeleted, or ask for a copy of the page's wikicode, from an admin. Mike Peel 21:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

emailing issue

• Thanks on Special:Unusedtemplates, I aggressively tag with {{redirects from other template}}, but iirc, I wrote that one and opened it's category... so the practice may not be widespread.
  (1) Part of the problem, imho. An initiative like this can start to change that old holdover problem in our society; which feature is a prequisite of all others I've encountered, this being a unique place allowing posts without such—Just try posting a reply to any blog post or talk forum like NFL.com, etc. without one!
  (2a) I'm willing to AGF, such that when {{Prod-t}}ing a user talk page, one switch adds in additional text '~~~ attempted an email notification about the administrative state of this matter.'
  {2b}}Wiki-email now includes capability of having copy sent back to self... so that can be used and kept in a side folder, produced if necessary, etcetera.
    (2c) Since the email and any notification (of the creating editor) should 'go on' prior to actual tagging of the template, one begins that edit, navs to history, navs to user talk (creator), opens edit (bottom post), opens email this user. Then forks behavior of the pending two edits based on that case -- no email... Prod-t 30 days per CBDunkerson's proposal, if email, Prod-t 15 days (I can agree with 'fair' as 'a definition for this' as even down to as little as a week), the key to me is making an effort to be fair.
     See no reason to just shortcut the 'ask for copy part, and just create a user page (again a courtesy) for the template now being deleted. Actually, as an alternative, just nesting it in a nowiki block and adding it to the user talk page would be a good notification that it's been removed. That pulls in all the comments as well. The user can then dispose of it... if they edit again someday. Gotta run. Regards // FrankB 15:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
• The thing is that TFD used to work on the principle of "no objections = delete" (as did RFD and CFD and MFD). There have been a few people pushing for bureaucratic relistings, though. Of course it does tend to backlog, and TFD closing is a rather lengthy procedure. But overall there may not be need for this. >Radiant< 10:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Starting More Discussion

This has been brought up time and time again, we far too often have templates that are being deleted almost procedurally. They are deprecated/unused, and there is no reason whatsoever to hang on to them. However, we must go through the mess of listing on TFD, waiting 5 days, and closing. As a TFD regular, I can assure you that TFD is *often* backlogged with these never-opposed deletions, and it gets quite tiresome. While I would love to cite WP:IAR and start clearing out CAT:DT (by using CSD G6), I know more than one person would raise a hand and object. I've attempted to get CSD to adopt a criteria, but we couldn't managed to hammer one out that worked 100% of the time (which CSD needs to be), so can we please attempt a PROD for it? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)