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Votes for Deletion (VfD) is where Wikipedians discuss whether a vote should be deleted. Votes listed here are debated for up to five days, after which the deletion process proceeds based on Wikipedia community consensus. The vote is then either kept or deleted per the deletion policy.
Many Wikipedians might ask why one should endeavor to delete votes. Most importantly, votes are evil. In addition, Wikipedia policy states that Wikipedia is not a democracy. Votes encourage a democratic process, which is counter to the spirit of Wikipedia. Deleting them avoids this problem, and keeps discussions within the bounds of Wikipedia policy and guidelines, which expressly discourage polls, voting, and other democratic methods of making decisions.
Criteria for deletion
editIf the answer to any one of the following questions is yes, a vote may qualify for deletion per WP:NOVOTE:
- Is the vote's purpose to make some sort of decision rather than to create a discussion to create a consensus?
- Is the vote controversial (it has a large number of votes on both sides) yet the vast majority of voters merely vote once and do not participate in the discussion?
- Are many of the voters coming from a WikiProject or other in-Wikipedia community where a Wikipedian has posted a link to the vote, telling others to come vote in their favor?
- Are people voting who probably don't know anything about the topic, just for the sake of voting? For example, in a poll on Japanese language names, someone might vote who has "ja-0" in the Babel tag on their userpage, indicating that they hardly know a word of the language.
How to list pages for deletion
editThis page describes how to list for deletion votes and their associated talk pages. See the related pages for articles, templates, categories, redirects, stub types, pages in the Wikipedia namespace, user pages, or images and other media, or use copyright violation where applicable.
- 1. Post {{subst:vfd1}} on the page where the vote is taking place.
- 2. Post ==pagename== (where pagename is replaced with the name of the page where the vote is taking place) and then your reason for deletion, along with your signature (~~~~) in the latest section below.
- It is generally considered civil to notify the good-faith creator and any voters who took part in the vote that you are nominating the vote. To find the main contributors, look in the page history.
- To avoid confusing newcomers, the reasons given for deletion should avoid Wikipedia-specific acronyms. The majority of creators of votes are new Wikipedia users, as experienced Wikipedians are more familiar with the policy on voting.
Before nominating a VfD
edit- Read and understand the Wikipedia deletion policy, which explains valid grounds for deletion.
- Read the vote's talk page, which may provide reasons why the vote should or should not be deleted.
- Familiarize yourself with the frequently-cited guidelines WP:NOVOTE and WP:NOT.
- Note that if you are an editing under an IP address because you have not yet created a user account, you will not be able to complete the VfD process, as anonymous contributors are currently unable to create new pages (as required by step 2 of "How to list votes for deletion," above). If this is the case, consider creating a user account before listing a vote on VfD.
VfD etiquette
edit- Users participating in VfD discussions are expected to be familiar with the policies of Civility and Wikiquette and the guideline Don't bite the newbies.
- This also applies to the other deletion pages.
- Don't make personal attacks against people who disagree with you.
- Don't add tally boxes to the deletion page.
- Don't reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other.
How to discuss a VfD/Wikietiquette
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You don't have to make a recommendation on every nomination; consider not participating if:
What to do after a VfD discussion has passed with a confirmation?editNothing. If the discussion has been listed according to the rules above, at the end of the discussion period (about five days), it will always be closed within a few more days at most. Asking for someone to close the discussion is not necessary. VfDs for September 6, 2024editVfDs for September 5, 2024editVfDs for September 4, 2024editVfDs for September 3, 2024editVfDs for September 2, 2024editVfDs for September 1, 2024editPurge server cache for today's VFD page
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