Wikipedia:Closing administrator is not an edit-on-demand service
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 | This page in a nutshell: A closing administrator's job in an XfD is determining if the consensus is to keep or delete. Editors should boldly improve articles themselves. |
The closing administrator isn't an edit-on-demand service.
There are times when an XfD discussion veers away from the nomination recommendation to delete, but not directly toward keep. Such discussions typically make editing recommendations such as removing references, adding critical commentary, merging appropriate content with another article, and transcluding to Wiktionary. This is a natural and welcome part of the process. However, when a consensus begins to form that the article should have certain edits done in a particular way, but the participants in the discussion do not actually endeavor to make those edits themselves, it sets up the expectation that the closing administrator should acknowledge this consensus and get to work editing.
The problem with this is that ideally, the closing administrator is a person who has very little direct knowledge of the subject of the page in question. Administrators with a high level of subject familiarity should participate in the debate, rather than closing it.
Editors are expected to be bold. Bold editors edit. If the XfD discussion is moving to a consensus for certain non-administrative actions, such as
- removing something
- fixing something
- adding something
and if it is actually a good idea, then do it. Make the recommended edits and state in the discussion that you have done so. Then, request the closing administrator to simply delete or keep. If page histories need to be merged to provide continuity of the GFDL contribution history and provide attribution for the creative commons licence, so state, but do not direct the closing administrator to do anything other than simple complete merges of a whole page as a section on another page.