Wikipedia talk:Repeated AfD nomination limitation (failed proposal)

Instruction Creep

m:instruction creep. 'nuf said. Also note that this policy was suggested at the 6th GNAA nom forest fire, and it was decided that basing policy on a single instance is a patently bad idea. And finally, strict legalistic limits are unwiki, as WP:NOT a bureaucracy. Radiant_>|< 03:28, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• Hear, hear. We don't need a silly policy for one specific case. — Dan | talk 03:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • You'll note that, despite the proposal's title, it actually would apply to any multiple AFD attempts, not just GNAA. Firebug 03:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Straw man. I've made several points and you've only addressed one (and only barely - if this would apply to other pages than GNAA, change the policy name and cite examples). Radiant_>|< 03:44, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
      • OK. First of all, I disagree with the notion that so-called "instruction creep" is bad. I think it is preferable to have specific policies than ones that rely on whim and caprice. Secondly, we already have at least one prominent "strict legalistic limit" - the 3RR. Thirdly, while GNAA is the only article that has been AFDd as many times as it has, there have been others that were nominated two or three times. This is an attempt to formulate some consistent standards. Do you think "fuzzy" figures (e.g. "about two months") would work better than specific ones? Firebug 03:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• Agree with Radiant!- bad, bad idea. Created to justify an article like GNAA to keep going to AfD again and again. Does not solve the GNAA problem. Does not refute the arguments that the constant re-nominations are a disruption. CanadianCaesar 03:49, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• In response to Firebug - well, you can disagree with the notion but that's how the wiki works. It is preferable to have rules relying on common sense than on strict legalism, to avoid people gaming the system (not to mention to avoid confusing the less legally minded). The 3RR is not a strict legalistic limit, please read up on its ramifications. And there is no point basing a preemptive policy on what might happen in the future - you've just admitted that this policy is really only for the GNAA article (which means it falls under YHBT YHL HAND). This is not the first attempt to "formulate consistent standards" and all previous ones have been voted down. Radiant_>|< 03:53, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, and just because the previous attempts were voted down, does not mean this attempt will be voted down. I dislike instruction creep as much as the next person (see my rants against WP:WSS/P on WP:MFD), but there needs to be some clear explanation here otherwise we'll have admins prematurely closing new AfD nominations as disruptive (when they most certainly are not), as with this latest GNAA fiasco. It doesn't matter if this makes it as policy, but it should be possible to get everyone to a point where this would work as a guideline for AfD closers (and could be used as a basis for overturning a premature closure at WP:DRV). —Locke Cole 04:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• I do not support as-is, and object to ever granting immunity from VfD. I would support guaranteeing a six-month delay for an article after its first VfD survival, and a one-year delay between any subsequent VfD attempts. --Improv 04:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I've removed the language regarding indefinite protection from AfD. I agree on your idea of allowing a six month delay for the first keep, and extending it for each subsequent keep, but will wait for further comment before making the change. —Locke Cole 04:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Please rename this page to something more appropriate. --Gurubrahma 06:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Very often an early renomination is justified. Let's say someone wrote an article on the NSB El 19 locomotive. Someone nominates it for deletion with the reason "NN locomotive". People vote keep and argue that all locomtives are notable and the article is kept. Now, there is no such locomotive (NSB El 18 is as high as it goes) and renominating the article as a complete hoax would be entirely justified. Using common sense is better than having rules for everything. The GNAA issue is annoying but not disruptive enough to merit an entirely new policy. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• In such a case, ideally people will be convincable, before the vote closes, that their vote should be changed. This very issue has been called too many times, with great controversy, for us to handle it without a clearer rule, and I honestly don't think that it comes up often enough that any serious problem will occur if people need to wait awhile to renominate things. --Improv 15:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
• WP:BEANS. Nuff said. Pilatus 17:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• I strongly oppose this legalistic approach to the solution. Strict limits tie our hands and will be inappropriate more often than they will be helpful. Among other concerns, this set of rules will be far to easy to game. Wikis depend on social controls to continue to function well. Our social control has been that inappropriate nominations are loudly shouted down and the nominator is rebuked by his/her peers. I see no situation where that social control has actually failed. The GNAA example is an extreme one and severely tests our patience and civility but the process itself actually seems to be working. I think we are better off continuing to rely on the social controls and the general appeal to common sense and civility than attempting to codify this into a strict law. Rossami (talk) 17:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• This policy does not adaquetly handle cases where new information justifing deletion comes to light after a previous AfD has closed. A year is a long time. Make it 4 months for a Keep, adn 2 months for a non-consensus, and I might support this. DES ^(talk) 21:55, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • To be honest, I would prefer longer limits rather than shorter. I'm sure we can live with inappropriate content for a little longer than that, and if it may take time for opinions to change and similar, then 2/4 months is certainly not enough. It's hard for me to imagine new information suggesting deletion anyhow -- it's primarily a judgement call and the purpose of running it again is to suggest that the judgement of those involved will change. That takes time. Further, I suspect that later noms for deletion will exhaust the patience of voters if done too frequently, and will thus almost always favour special interest people who want to keep cruft or similar rather than lead to a legitimate, nonexhausting, well-founded discussion/vote. Short limits don't help anyone. --Improv 22:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The obvious case of new information is a source indicating that a vital factual statement in the article is incorrect, or that a factual assumption in the prior AfD discussion was mistaken. For ewxample, an AfD debated on whether items of type X should have articels when a source is later found to indicate that a particualr member of the class doesn't exist. Or Notability shown based on web hits, with latter evidence that thy don't all pertanin to the same person or thing. In any case, a year seems a very long time for an AFD to bind the future consensus. If an excption were made fro truly novel information or gorunds for deleteion, not discussed in the previous Afd debate (soemthing that is not likely to happen with the GNAA case) that would change things, IMO. As written this would apply to many cases besides the GNAA, indeed to most of the cases in which {{afdx}} is used. DES ^(talk) 22:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

This is instruction creep. We should be allowed to frown upon things that we think have been improperly relisted, and relist things that we think seriously need to be reconsidered. Defining a term or number that averages all our opinions together is just going to cause more unnecessary arguing. Ashibaka tock 22:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Ending the Proposal Stage

Seems like consensus here is that this policy is construction creep. Might as well get rid of the proposed tag since it's never going to get anywhere. karmafist 03:18, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the point regarding significant article change pretty much swayed my vote. Any instructions that did manage to take into account article change would likely be convoluted and difficult to interpret without the assistance of an attorney. :P —Locke Cole 04:55, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

No consensus?

If no consensus can be had about listing articles too many times, then we are left with no recourse but to remove the AfD nominations arbitrarily to stop ridiculous disruption and POV pushing. I might also note that Jimbo feels that something should have been implemented. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

This was not advertised well enough. I just found out about this because you left a note on Jimbo's talk page. There is nothing to be gained from arguing in circles over the deletion of an article, as we have done with the GNAA article and a few others. This policy proposal has my support. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 10:55, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I support something along these lines, but there does need to be flexibility for cases in which there's new information. We might say something like: If deletion is proposed based on the same information (a mere reconsideration of the previous vote), it has to wait at least four months or six months or whatever. If deletion is proposed within that time, the nominator must identify specifically what circumstances have allegedly changed since the last vote. This could be new developments in the world, new developments in Wikipedia (such as a new policy on this class of articles), or something that existed before but wasn't known and wasn't referenced in the deletion debate. "I think maybe the mood has shifted and this time there'll be a consensus to delete" does not count as a changed circumstance. A deletion nomination that's within the restricted time period but that doesn't include a good-faith effort to satisfy the "changed circumstances" criterion may be speedily deleted. (By this "good faith" clause, I mean that, for example, the revelation of Bush's illegal wiretapping might justify renominating something in the area of civil liberties or U.S. presidential power, but wouldn't justify renomination of an article having no connection to the wiretapping. A renom of GNAA citing the wiretapping could still be speedily deleted.)

Regardless of whether there are changed circumstances, and regardless of when the renom is made, it might be reasonable to impose a requirement that the renominator leave a message on the talk page of each editor who voted in the previous AfD, or perhaps just the non-delete voters. Yes, this will be a bit of a nuisance, but a renom shouldn't succeed just because some editors who opposed deletion happened not to be monitoring AfD the second time around. JamesMLane 16:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Non-creep alternative

Jimbo vaguely suggested trying to delete GNAA exactly once per year. Why not just follow this suggestion without creep. Just add a banner to the top of Talk:GNAA saying:

December 15th is GNAA AfD day. GNAA is up for deletion on December 15th, but please don't list it on any other day. The poor admins who must manage GNAA's potentially numerous AfDs intend to speedy keep GNAA AfDs on any other day. A user may challenge such speedy keeps, but most people are quite happy to see GNAA on AfD only once per year, so such challenges are likely to fail.

Thoughts? Its not a rule, its just a statment of probable behavior, all within existing rules. JeffBurdges 23:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)