Wikipedia:AfD churn
This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
AfD Churn occurs when an article for a future annual event is created too soon and is deleted at AfD only to be re-created soon after. This has been observed to happen year after year for the same event.
An example are the Formula One championships:
- ...
Most of these were simply re-created a few months later using the same content. The problem became so comical there was an April Fool's AfD in 2019.
Solutions
editAfD should consider previous cases as precedent and a form of consensus. If there is a history of articles being deleted and then quickly re-created, take this into account as a strong signal the same will happen in a future case. For example in Formula One, the record suggests a 2-year lead time is within the window when it will likely get churned. Avoid wasting time flipping articles during this window.