Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load

A size issue

The Votes for Deletion pages have steadily increased in size over the past year, and are likely to continue growing along with Wikipedia as a whole. Since VfD is an important process in Wikipedia, it is useful for people to keep track of it. This, of course, becomes progressively harder as VfD grows. Therefore it would be beneficial to attempt to reduce its size. I have put up some proposals for discussion below; feel free to add more, and give your comments. Please bear in mind that this is not a vote.

Radiant_* 11:46, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

When I first started clearing out VfD/Old last summer there were some 25 to 30 listings per day. Today there are often more than a hundred. This rate of growth is clearly unsustainable. - SimonP 16:23, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

The number of users of Wikipedia has also grown substantially since last summer. I believe that it has done so quickly enough to keep pace with the number of articles nominated for deletion. The growing size of VfD can only be said to make the VfD process in its present form "unsustainable" for one of the following reasons:

• The number of people discussing and voting on VfD nominations is too small to create a consensus.

I don't believe that this is the case. Many discussions produce uniform or nearly-uniform "keep" or "delete" results, whether the number of votes is five or fifty. Many articles are kept after being rewritten, which, while a process more appropriate for Wikipedia:Cleanup, hardly demonstrates inadequate attention to the VfD process. Other debates produce no consensus despite the large number of members discussing the nomination, and thus result in the article being kept. This result is usually due either to the contentious nature of the subject of an article, or to the fact that the subject is only marginally useful to the encyclopedia to the extent that any larger or longer discussion would inevitable produce the same result.

• Closed discussions are not being processed in a timely fashion.

It is my understanding that the "Old Votes" section of VfD can get a bit backlogged at times, but that this is not a major problem. If anyone has information to the contrary, and it turns out that a slew unprocessed discussions is causing an undue strain on the resources of the servers and the attention of the sysops, I will gladly give up the cause.

• The number of daily nominations is putting a strain on the servers.

It is my belief that since the VfD page was split up into separate, daily pages, the strain on the servers has been greatly reduced. If even a day's worth is too much, nominations can be divided again into half-day subpages or along topical lines. Clearly, this is not a realistic solution in the long term, but I do not think that what it proposes to cure is even a realistic problem in the long term.

• Editors are spending time dealing with VfD that would be better spent in other areas of the encyclopedia.

I concede that this is a problem, one from which I am hardly immune, but that reducing the scope of VfD is not the solution. If some users have a perverse attraction to deleting articles or to the terse discussions that accompany current discussions, the desire for power and the desire for conflict will manifest themselves just as strongly in a reduced VfD. The solution to this problem is not to limit VfD, but to make efforts to change Wikipedia, and even to change people's hearts and minds, in ways that will focus more on creating and writing the good articles, and less on eliminating the bad ones.

• Administrators are spending time dealing with VfD that would be better spent in other areas of the encyclopedia.

This is somewhat of a unification of the second and fourth hypothetical causes. If administrators are spending time either processing or contributing to VfD discussions, the solution is not necessarily to en-sysop more users. If this becomes a problem, reducing VfD may become the only viable solution. However, it may be possible to use a bot to process some VfD nominations. I realize that someone would have to run the bot, and I confess that I do not know what is involved in running one (I would be interested in finding out what is, in fact, involved). Moreover, if I were to be able to run such a bot, I would be glad to do so, although I highly doubt that I could actually run a bot. We'll see.

Wow, this was a lot longer than I intended, but I am sincere in my skepticism of whether this proposal is necessary. NatusRoma 01:29, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comment

If you don't know what this is about, read the talk page first!
Lemme get this straight:

• A 3 kB proposal was posted.
• It grows to 22 kB with comments
• And apparently the only way to understand "what it's about" is to go read the preceding 108 kB of unstructured and unedited discussion on the talk page?

IMO, this is an outrageous abuse of supposed participatory decision-making. How valid would any vote eventually taken on this proposal be?
Let's make this banner clearer:
Important Decision. Average editors need not apply.
--Jerzy·t 10:31, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You lost me there. What's the problem? Why do you assume that "average editors" can't just read other people's comments? How can anyone participate if nobody actually reads anyone else's comments? What's this talk about a vote? We don't usually do votes, we do discussions. Sure you can make a contribution without reading any other part of the discussion, but the likelihood of your having anything serious to say that hasn't already been discussed goes down with time as the discussion grows. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:01, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good god! I don't think i ever saw that response. Because, as i had just said, reading a previous 100K of comments fairly well guarantees non-obsessed editors (like myself with respect to that discussion) will have no voice in the matter, and i absented myself from it. Perhaps i was naive in considering it remotely possible to elict an appropriate response from those obsessed enough to tolerate that barrier to participating in the discussion. (Whether it would lead to a vote or consensus, on a solution or on terms of reference for a working group, is irrelevant.) Appropriate response would have been refactoring of the discussion, by one or a group of the obsessed, thereby providing ability to participate to the non-obsessed. Sheesh!
--Jerzy•t 19:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

A significant number of articles nominated for VfD are unanimously voted to delete (as opposed to those who merely have a consensual majority). If everybody agrees that something should be deleted, then it could conceivably be added to the Speedy Deletion criteria. Maybe some people could take a look at recent VfD discussion and notice if there is some pattern there among the unanimous deletes. See also Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD, which closed in january.

• This one was added to CSD by User:Rebroad (then reverted out again since it wasn't discussed) but it may be worth mentioning here...
  • One line, one sentence articles, with submissions by only anonymous user(s).
• Radiant_* 07:56, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I like the risks of deleting a valid article by a new editor. However I stongly feel that we should give that suggestion a trial to see if it can work.

I don't see the point of this. Many contributions by anonymous editors are as good as, or better than, those by logged in editors. One line stubs are better than redlinks. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:59, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Future events

• Withdrawn, archived here.

Per WP:NOT a crystal ball, most people tend to agree that speculation on future events doesn't belong here. Would this make a suitable speedy? Radiant_* 10:58, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Disagree. Take a look at Potential Bush administration nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States. That article was kept after an extremely contentious VfD debate, and if there are cases where future events should have an article the articles on them should not be speedily deleted. Sjakkalle 11:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
• Quite some work has gone into defining the intricacies of when a future event is and is not acceptable. It isn't easy and for that kind of decision I think oversight is required--so VfD or something like it is best. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:56, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
• Okay. Maybe a reasonable difference is "articles on some event that may or may not happen" (as a CSD) and "articles that speculate on how a guaranteed event (such as the 2006 olympics or the 2008 election) will turn out". Or would that be instruction creep? Radiant_* 13:29, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

  I think you already know my answer to that last question. :) But yes, I can give good counter-examples of events that may or may not happen but which are regarded as encyclopedic. We could write encyclopedia articles about global warming projections, ozone layer depletion predictions, predicted properties of transuranic elements that have not yet been isolated or synthesized, the nuclear winter, and so on (actually the current article on nuclear winter is woefully inadequately referenced but that's not the point).

  Also the criterion of an event that "may or may not happen" is not suitable for speedies because opinions on which events will happen vary considerably. Over the next 100,000 years or so, many scientists would tell you that there are likely to be more deaths due to large meteor collisions than all other causes of violent death, but laypeople may well not even perceive large meteor collisions to be a potential billion-killer, and some editors might even outright deny that it's possible. This is the kind of difference of opinion that could be picked up and resolved in discussion. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:04, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Future fiction

Okay, let me try again... CSD proposal for "any work of fiction (book, game, movie, etc) not yet published". This probably needs refining though. Radiant_* 14:36, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is most definitely not a speedy candidate. Also Catch Without Arms has been kept (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Catch Without Arms (album)). Yeah, I know, I'm just sitting here criticizing all the suggestions and not making any constructive ones. Sjakkalle 14:43, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Okay, bad idea then. Just brainstorming :) Radiant_* 08:43, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Vanity

The January poll saw 57% in favour of a proposal for speedy deleting vanity articles. With the continued growth in VfD it is possible that with revised wording this proposal could win consensus. Vanity articles are by far the largest class of pages that garner unanimous delete votes. - SimonP 16:20, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

I think managed deletion would be preferable to expanding the speedy criteria. I've taken "vanity" speedy tags off many things which have gone on to survive Vfds. Kappa 17:43, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

• I'm assuming you meant Wikipedia:Preliminary deletion (the evolved form of managed deletion). Anyway - that could of course be solved by strictly defining what kind of vanity is a speedy criterion. Radiant_* 17:46, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

• Just a humble suggestion - a new speedy catagory of 'vanity that does not assert notability'. That would get rid of the 'John Smith is 23 and studies at UCLA' quickly, but would leave those who claim to be band members, authors, or have doen something significant to be considered through VfD. --Doc (t) 19:36, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
  • That sounds like a good idea. IMHO, eliminating "obvious" vanity by speedying it rather than moving it to VfD for discussion would cut down on the clutter dramatically. Until now, I'd not seen a good way of phrasing what ought to count as "obvious" except for "I know it when I see it." A minor addition: vanity deleted in this manner ought to be userfied before deletion (with a nice note left on the user's talk page) if it seems like the contributor wrote about him/herself, the contributor has a username without a user page, and the article does not contain any questionable material (personal attacks, libel, personal contact information, etc.) AиDя01DTALK 03:16, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree. This criteria ("does not assert") is much less arbitrary than other criteria I've seen, and captures many or most of the obvious vanity cases that we now must drag to vfd. Meelar (talk) 15:05, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
      • Addendum: people from the past who get articles are much more likely to be notable than people from the present, even if no clear notability is asserted. How about have the new speedy criterion being: "Any article that doesn't assert notability, as long as the subject was active since 1990"? That would exclude famous historical figures who don't sound very important but nevertheless deserve articles, e.g. Washington Gladden, whose total original text was "Washington Gladden was a pastor in Ohio during the Social Gospel movement", but who received a unanimous keep vote. Meelar (talk) 12:53, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

The term "vanity" is used over-widely at the moment--any subject a given editor regards as uninteresting can be (and often is) described as "vanity." I might just support a vanity speedy if a very, very tight definition could be agreed upon. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:54, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with both Doc and Tony Sidaway; although most of my votes tend to be "delete", I would be very nervous about significantly expanding speedy criteria for vanity, but Doc's criteria would be a very minor expansion, and if anyone tried to falsely "assert" notability, it could then be speedied as a hoax. Soundguy99 14:00, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you guys too. If we can define a tight definition, I'm all for expanding vanity speedy deletion criteria. Mgm|^(talk) 13:44, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

• Sounds good. Could someone dig up a couple examples and list them here? Radiant_* 14:30, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Anthony James Cartwright Sahand Soufivand Emily Bradford Brian Fechter Howard Lieberman Azzelarabe Taleb-Bendiab Matthew Heroux Suzanne Rowntree Simon F Baarbé Mareth Collins-Wooley Lauren Ashley Wolfe would all fit a 'not asserting notability' criteria - that's just from today - and as of now they don't have a single 'keep' vote between them --Doc (t) 23:35, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Not that any process will work 100% of the time, but the 'not asserting notability' criteria would not have kept the Jerry Hairston, Jr. article off the VfD list because the stub was just plain bad (and Kelly is obviously not a Chicago Cubs fan). DS1953 04:08, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

• One thing that I saw discussed about vanity articles on the talkpage for Votes to Deletion was to politely inform the creator of the vanity article that the subject is probably not notable, ask him to read WP:VAIN, and ask him to attach a {{delete}}-tag if he finds that it shouldn't be in the encyclopedia after all. Perhaps it might be possible to do this abstain from bringing the article to VfD until at least an hour after the page creation. We might avoid a few VfD debates in this way. Sjakkalle 14:51, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
  • It is also being discussed at WP:bite's talkpage, Wikipedia_talk:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers#Newbie_vanity. Sjakkalle 14:56, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Quite some time ago, I voted against vanity as a CSD. I like this version because it gives a very tight definition of vanity. As described above, I think it's only appropriate for articles written by anons. IMO, vanity articles written solely by newbies with blank userpages can be userfied without a VfD because while Delete requires admin access, a userfy does not. This would also get around articles like User:Dueyfinster (which used to be at Duey Finster). That article attempts to establish notability by talking about TV appearances, and therefore would have to go through the VfD process. However, a userfy is easily reverted by any user, if necessary, so is not as drastic as a speedy delete. --Deathphoenix 19:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• I'm afraid a userfy does require admin powers, to get rid of the redirect (from mainspace to userspace, as a result of the move). Still, WP:RFD could suitably handle that. Radiant_* 07:58, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, I didn't realise that. I'd better put up Duey Finster for RFD. Thanks, Deathphoenix 13:49, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
    • After some checking, it seems a redirect to userspace is a CSD under Redirects #2, so while it requires admin powers, it can be speedily done (though the CSD page recommends waiting a day or two after the userfy before actually deleting it). --Deathphoenix 17:55, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

There is vanity, and then there is patent vanity. This article: "Daniel Britt - Local celebrity from north London Muswell Hill, Daniel is the guitarist of the well known band the Dharma Bombs. He is also renouned for being the best looking guy in North London, winning Muswell Hill's annual beauty pagent." is a perfect example of the latter. This should not have to go to VfD for disposal if speedy delete editors are doing thier jobs properly (ie, checking 'Daniel Britt' and 'Dharma Bombs' for Google hits before deleting). Denni☯ 01:13, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

Speedy deletions shouldn't require too much research beyond knowledge of the CSD rules and applying this knowledge when looking at the article. If the admin has to do more than this to check for an article's validity, I don't think the article should be speedied: other editors should also do their research and vote in a VfD instead of only having two editors responsible for a speedy (nominator and deletor). That's the reason why the CSD rules are very narrow and specific (and why the VfU exists). If an article is speedied incorrectly, we waste even MORE time as it's put up on VfU and, if it's undeleted, some time on VfD. --Deathphoenix 02:15, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

• I tend to double-check with Google, even when I'm positive something is rubbish. Just to be sure. I would rather spend a minute or two of my own time so I don't make myself look foolish and so I don't waste the time of others on VfU. Take the example above, for instance. I highly doubt that a man is so beautiful he wins beauty pageants. Let's check the article out, though, just to be sure. "Dharma Bombs" gets 50 hits. Okay, the band exists. "Dharma Bombs" + "Daniel Britt" gets zero. Hmm... not good for the band vanity assertion. "Muswell Hill" + "beauty pageant" gets 15 hits. A place called Muswell Hill exists, and it has a beauty pageant. "Muswell Hill" + "Daniel Britt" gets zero hits. One of the most effective ways to lie is to mix a lie with truth, and it seems that is what was done here. It is highly unlikely that a man would win a beauty pageant. The assertions of the article are not supported by any easily referenced source. I would delete that article as an indisputably bad faith addition. If the vandal person who submitted an obvious joke wants to dispute it, fine. I would rather make them work hard than to waste the time of a lot of people who are honestly committed to this project. SWAdair | Talk 06:09, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

• Yeah, it's a good idea to check even an obvious speedy, but I'm saying that if such checks are required (ie, I absolutely will not be able to delete it without a check because it's not an obvious speedy), it shouldn't be a speedy in the first place. The above example, while nonsense, attempts to establish notability by explaining why Daniel Britt is notable. If it were merely "Daniel Britt - a local celebrity from north London Muswell Hill", or something like that, I would argue that the article can be speedied because it doesn't explain why he's a celebrity, but the above example, as written, cannot be speedied because it attempts to establish notability and therefore needs to be up on VfD. I'm not saying this out of a desire for rules lawyering and instruction creep, but out of a wish to avoid false positives and people electing more and more articles for VfU because something was deleted out of hand. --Deathphoenix 13:40, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• I think that we need to trust people on this, if it looks like a speedy delete then they should have 2 check it quickly on google, for the amount of time it takes it can avoid a lot of hassle if the thing is just obscure, for example an all male beauty pagent. Anything that is important enough to get on Wikipedia is important enough to have a little web space. Given how cheap it is to put up a page and how much help is out there for building a page. In the case of the beauty pagent guy if he is that much of a local star you would expect something on the web, if only some pictures from the pagent. Maybe the other thing that should be checked is who wrote the page, if its anon or the same person then its speedy, if its a different person then its VfD --Shadow Dancer 994 22:49, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is a sticking point for me. Articles that don't "assert notability" are often cleaned up and kept on VfD. I don't see any reason to switch from this to speedying them. In my view it's a criterion capable of very wide interpretation--some people would speedy many university professors and sportsmen on such grounds. Then we'd lose the entry altogether just because of the ignorance of one individual. VfD is useful precisely because it brings several pairs of eyes to bear. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:55, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Is it not possible then to create a separate Wikipedia:Votes for vanity page, where all debates about whether an article is vanity or not are listed, and if consensus is that it is vanity, it is deleted? Hiding 15:27, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC) Never mind, I found the same suggestion further down the page Hiding 15:35, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vanity corollary

How about a CSD criterion for "any article on a non-official fictional character" (e.g. anything from fanfic, any player character from MMORPGs or regular RPGs, stuff like that). Probably needs refinement, please comment. Radiant_* 14:42, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Sounds more like an "any editor can merge and redirect" situation to me, per WP:FICT. Let the lunatics fans of a particular whatever-it-is argue about it over in the articles dealing with the subject and not on VfD. Soundguy99 13:08, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Not really. Fanfic and people's own MMORPG characters and such are generally deleted under vanity. Radiant_* 13:25, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • True, but is it a good idea to assume admins will know enough about any particular crufty subject to make an informed decision to SD? If they don't, then we're asking them to do even more work and research to determine if the article is fanfic or a personal MMORPG character or whatever. Whereas if it gets sent to CruftWorld first, it'll at least get the attention of informed sources, who might (hopefully) even convince the author that it's non-encyclopedic, causing the author to blank the article and request its SD. Soundguy99 14:12, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• This is too complex a criterion for speedy, and in any case would not significantly reduce the VfD load. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:57, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vanity corollary #2

How about a CSD criterion for attack pages? (e.g. "John Doe is a moron and a terrible actor") These kind of reverse vanity pages happen occasionally. Radiant_* 07:59, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

• Aren't those already speedies? I certainly tag them as such, and I think they generally get deleted. -R. fiend 19:43, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
  • There doesn't appear to be a speedy criterion for that on WP:CSD (except maybe vandalism). Apparently, theoretical policy should change to match with actual practice. Radiant_* 08:57, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
    • I guess most such articles could generally fall under libel, which if not a CSD criteria, can be a crime, and thus a de facto CSD criteria. -R. fiend 22:24, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
  • We already speedy attacks. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:59, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Future building

Or, CSD proposal for "any building not yet built" (e.g. planned radio masts, stuff like that). Radiant_* 14:43, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Actually it puzzles me that planned masts are here even regarded as deletable. It doesn't help to consider them speediable, since the determination that a mast has not been built requires research and therefore scrutiny. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:38, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Reasons include WP:NOT a crystal ball, and the fact that lots of things are planned but don't actually happen. But on second thought this doesn't occur often enough to make it a worthwhile speedy. Radiant_* 14:38, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yep, it always seems to come down to the fact that any criterion we can approach agreement wouldn't significantly reduce VfD volume. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:09, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Extension of schema

On the matter of brainstorming once more - sometimes we get weird articles like 5478934 (number) or Binilnilium or septenquinquagintillion or even chemical compounds like 3,1 trichloro-ethene or whatever. WP:NOT a crystal ball has a clause against "articles about words formed on a predictable numeric system". Speediable?

I tend to disagree, as some of these articles might be valid. For example, 262537412640768744 (number) might seem like a completely idiosyncratic topic, but there is in fact something encyclopedic that can be written about it. Deleting it would then require a judgement call, which is something that can better be done at VfD. JYolkowski // talk 01:11, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki cleanup

Presently, if something is transwikied (in particular, to Wiktionary) it requires a subsequent VFD vote in order to actually disappear. This process is rather convoluted. A possible solution might be to make 'dicdefs already in wiktionary' a speedy candidate, as long as it's made clear that creating a good article (beyond dicdef) on the topic is acceptable (and not recreation-of-deleted-material).

"Extremely short articles which add no information beyond what is obvious from the title." got ~60% support in the 'new CFD criteria' votes. If reworded to clarify, it may be suitable.

Another solution might be to list all transwikied articles on some kind of log page for a week, and if nobody objects to them, to delete them. That way, the division can be made between expandable and non-expandable dicdefs. Radiant_* 10:58, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Transwiki log exists already: it is collapsing under the weight of bot-transwikied dicdefs! Physchim62 13:38, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Very good, we should work on that. A bot should probably be employed to remove old entries from this list (anything deleted, redirected or marked as expandable). Then we should be able to have some people salvage out the expandable words, and make the rest (by some criterion) speediable to alleviate VfD. Radiant_* 13:52, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Technically, anything that has been transwikied is already speediable as "available on another wiki"... The main problem is to sort out the stubs which are salvageable from the dross that needs deleting, and this can only be subjective. Physchim62 18:40, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Really? I was unable to find that in WP:CSD - please elaborate? Radiant_* 08:00, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • My mistake. Technically that only applies to foreign language articles that are available on another wiki. I propose that this CSD be extended to English language articles, although I can see some problems with abuse. Physchim62 07:48, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • No, you were correct. It's just not listed properly on WP:CSD. The wording on CSD only mentions the other language projects. At the time it was written, other language encyclopedias were the only other WikiMedia projects that existed. We have never updated the language on that page. The instructions at m:transwiki are more current and take precedence. The Transfer from main to transwiki paragraph explicitly states "The original page may be deleted as soon as it has been moved to the transwiki area." Those instructions guide all the WikiMedia projects, not just Wikipedia. Note, please that it does not require the deletion of a transwiki'd article. If, in the discretion of the moving editor, both projects should have an article on shovel, they can. M:Transwiki simply allows immediate deletion. We can allow it because the history of the article has not been lost. Any editor can transwiki an article out. It does not require admin powers. Any editor can transwiki the article back in with equal ease. Because it is a reversible decision, it does not require the strict controls that we impose on true deletions. Rossami (talk) 17:23, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, just found this discussion, and guess I should chip in. Well, even if speedying is allowed, it has been done before, and the uproar and political tussle that followed is, I think, what caused Kevin Rector's Wikivacation, (and why the transwiki duties passed to me). I think even if this is allowed, we'd have to declare the process on the VfD, CSD, and deletion policy talk pages (at least), so it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. Indeed the main task I'd appreciate help with is going through the list at WP:TL and striking out those that have been deleted, redirected, or expanded (this probably has to be a human job). Then we'll know what we're dealing with, and more easily be able to assess the remaining articles and list the needed ones for deletion. I've been thinking of listing WP:TL on the tasks at WP:AN, as it seems like the only place where required tasks actually get done... --Dmcdevit 20:37, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Making the end result of transwikification automatic speedy deletion is fraught with peril, and I advise against it. It turns the transwiki system into a backdoor deletion mechanism. However, a more restrictive wording that extended the CSD criteria to include "Articles that were the subject of VFD discussion, the consensus of which was transwiki and delete, that have been properly transwikied (including recording the author information)." might gain support, albeit that articles that have been required to loop around to VFD a second time are not a significant proportion of VFD load, and thus this does not help achieve the primary goal here. Uncle G 17:58, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)
  • You say "fraught with peril". The thoughts behind this statement are not obvious. To me, even when the article is deleted from the Wikipedia space, transwiki is clearly not deletion because the article can always be transwiki'd back the other way with no loss of content or history. It's not as easy as hitting the "move" button but it's actually easier than reverting a regular move. (To revert a regular move, you have to have admin powers to first delete the redirect. Because a transwiki move is restricted to cut-and-paste, it is can be executed by anyone.) Could you please give some examples of the dangers you see? Rossami (talk) 20:29, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Redundant copyvio

The point of keeping a copyvio page around is to give someone a chance to rewrite it, but sometimes copyvio pages are posted when there is already an article on the topic, e.g. someone posting a copyvio about Jean-Luc Picard at JeanLuc Picard or similar (real example). In this case there is no need to keep the copyvio article. Kappa 02:13, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

In most cases, those pages first go on WP:CP and then get redirected to the appropriate article. No need for VfDing them anyway. --W(t) 02:20, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

• • I do have a problem with use of copyvio as a mechanism of circumventing discussion. I was more than a little worried to see an old VfD on an article about the literate programming tool FunnelWeb. After a couple of days it was taken off VfD and put on copyvio simply because the latest version quoted a few lines from the website. Copyvio policy is that a copyvio version should be reverted to a previously non-violating version. That was not done in this case. The article was a perfectly good, if rather brief, stub describing one of the most widely-used and usable literate programming tools. The only reason it can have been listed in the first place was that the person listing it had never heard of FunnelWeb. This is not an acceptable reason for deletion and this kind of problem is normally picked up in the course of VfD discussion. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:26, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Quick delete

If an article is voted for deletion 15-0, then it can be deleted after twelve hours from the last vote if no keep votes show up.

If an article has more than 20 votes, less than 10% of which are not delete, then it can be deleted twelve hours from the last delete vote, if no new votes are made that throw it out of balance.

This way, articles that get 30 delete votes and 2 keep votes in the first hour don't have to languish on VfD for a week before getting deleted. →Iñgōlemo← ^talk 19:52, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

• Doesn't really reduce the load on VfD since the data will be there. Also, many deletes happen with fewer votes since you are encouraged to not vote if the outcome is clear and you agree. So your proposal as written could increase the activity on VfD. However I agree with the basic concept. Vegaswikian 23:40, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
  • It's a good idea in theory but too bureaucratically complex in practice. But let's think on it and see if we can get a good variation. Actually, WP:TFD and WP:CFD work on the principle that if there are no objections, the thing gets deleted - and only if there are, a discussion will start. Maybe that'd help. Radiant_* 08:49, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
    • I like Radiant's idea a lot. It significantly simplifies things, reducing the need for abitrary standards, and allows for us to quickly remove obviously bad articles, so that we don't have to wait a week before deletion. →Iñgōlemo← ^talk 05:12, 2005 May 30 (UTC)
      • What's wrong with waiting a week? This proposal puts the emphasis on deleting as much as possible and makes assumptions about consensus which are unprovable. CalJW 05:43, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• I oppose this suggestion. Too many times, we've had lots of "me too" votes early in a discussion then, a day or two or even four later, someone finds the discussion and adds new and verifiable facts that completely change the outcome of the discussion. I will concede that none of those reversals happened on votes with large numbers of participants. But very few votes get large numbers of participants anyway. I would not want to create a bias in the process that would actually encourage people to vote just to run the numbers up. The 5 day discussion period is not too long. The correct control is Don't vote on everything. If it has 5 deletes and 2 keeps (or vice versa) and you agree with the way the concensus is going, pass on to the next discussion. Rossami (talk) 04:29, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
• I don't like the suggestion to speed things up based on the number of votes. Radiant's idea is better, but it doesn't take into account cases where no one is voting at all. You can't assume no vote = agree in all cases. But I think it's worth to work something out based on that. Mgm|^(talk) 13:57, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • I think that, given the high amount of traffic on VfD, one can safely assume that if nobody bothers to vote 'keep' on an article, it isn't worth keeping. However, it may still be a bad idea if people put in a keep vote shortly before the discussion closes. I'd be willing to give it a try though. Radiant_* 14:45, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Closure of Speedy Deletes

I'd just like to mention that anything that is voted by a majority with speedy delete should be closed once the page has been deleted. -- AllyUnion (talk) 17:57, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

CSD: short article

Any article consisting of one sentence or less. Arguably, even if the topic is noteworthy, the article could as easily be started from scratch as from the single sentence. Withdrawn, because of significant opposition. Moved to talk page. Radiant_>|< 13:08, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

1. • I disagree with this part. Just because an article is short shouldn't make it automatically eligible for deletion. There are many on Wikipedia that could eventually expand on such an article. Deleting it will just take away the opportunity for others to expand upon what is written. Revolución 00:16, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
     • That is silly. Deleting an article that says "Wild Honey Pie is a song" or even "Wild Honey Pie is a song by The Beatles" is not going to take away the opportunity for others to expand it. Anyone interested can start from scratch and will not have lost anything they can't replace better in 3 seconds. If you want information added to something a redlink is always better than an article that says nothing. Redlinks get people's attention, bluelinks make people think (incorrectly in such as case as this) that there is already an article there. That being said, I don't think all single sentence articles should be speedies, but the vast majority probably could. -R. fiend 04:03, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
       • It maybe takes away the idea of making an article there at all: that the person who would have expanded upon it would be a person who saw a red link and decided to fill in, rather than a person who hit the "Random Page" button and decided to fix it. If you red links attract attention, and people glaze over blue links, then that indicates a different problem.. no color-coding for articles that are in serious need of expansion. I mean: the 1-sentence article that was deleted might never be re-created, whereas if it had remained, someone else could have gotten the idea to expand. Mysidia 06:53, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
       • This totally ignores the barrier that people have to jump to contribute. At least 99% of readers don't contribute. Only 1% or 2% of registered users contribute regularly. I'm sure that many people are more likely to work on an existing article. Many good articles were barely even one proper sentence to begin with. CalJW 05:35, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
         • Well, there is no barrier, you see. That's why we have so much vandalism and why we're looking for ways to lighten the VfD load. Personally, I think the fact that we have 100 times more readers than contributors (if that's true) is a good thing. It makes us more than a little club that writes articles for each other's amusement. I don't think wikipedia needs more contributors; I think wikipedia needs more good contributors, which is a different thing entirely. We have enough people writing articles on every single thing ever mentioned in any Star Wars novel; there is little chance of us falling behind in that field. We could, however, always use more readers. If someone looks up "Wild Honey Pie" and sees the entry "Wild Honey Pie is a song", they will think "what a useless piece of crap this is". If they find nothing there, however, they will likely not hold it against us. It's a pretty minor song and I'm sure more reputable sources like Britainnica do not have it, and Britainnica knows better than to have an article that just expands 3 words beyond the title. In any case writing some of these substubs is subverting the requested articles process. Writing 5 words is forcing someone else to write an article that the person can't be bothered to write for himself. It's poor form. -R. fiend 06:42, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
   • OTOH, deleting the "Wild Honey Pie is a song" article and creating a redlink probably won't discourage another reader/user/newbie from coming along 2 hours later and recreating an article that says, "Wild Honey Pie is a song." They won't know it's a "recreation" and then we're right back where we started. While it's undoubtedly rude to create a sub-sub-sub-stub and expect the perennial favorite "somebody else" to expand it, I'd bet most of those are newbie efforts and not worth getting worked up about. Better, I think, to make sure such articles are stub-tagged and categorized so an editor with knowledge of/interest in the subject can more easily find it and fix it. Soundguy99 16:31, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
     • I just can't see what's wrong with having a stub saying "Wild Honey Pie is a song" if it is indeed a song. I hear the phrase somewhere and look it up on Wikipedia, which tells me it's a song. I am thus informed in a succinct manner. I then google on "Wild Honey Pie" song and edit the entry to give a pointer to a site containing the lyrics, and add a link to The White Album to the article. Stubs are great! --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:42, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
       • Wouldn't a redirect to The White Album give much more information and be a vastly better solution than "Wild Honey Pie is a song" or even "wild Honey Pie is a song by the Beatles"? -R. fiend 19:15, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
     • Most users don't bother creating such articles. It happens relatively rarely and most people realize that if you don't have anything to say about something it's best not to say anything. I sincerely doubt there's a whole group of people out there who are dying to tell the world that "Wild Honey Pie" is a song, and not a pie. -R. fiend 22:07, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
   • The more I think about it, the less I like this proposal; in the first place, it seems kind of. . . . I dunno . . . . mechanistic? impersonal? to delete based solely on article length. In the second place, I think it's a "to-may-to/to-mah-to" argument; some think that redlinks encourage article creation and that ultra-short stubs harm our credibility with readers; others think that ultra-short stubs encourage people to expand them, especially readers who might use that as their first editing experience and who then start to become contributors. I'd be fairly willing to bet that w'pedians are pretty evenly split on that topic, and that this proposal would never gain consensus when taken to the larger community. Soundguy99 15:30, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
     • I tend to agree. While I think single sentence substubs are often no better than no article I don't think that in itself should be a criterion for speedy, though I wouldn't oppose a differently worded propsal that would cover the grossly insufficent ones. "The University of Timbuktu is a Univeristy in Timbuktu" should be speediable. If someone wants to write an article on such a place (if it existed; I doubt it does) they can go ahead and start from scratch. It's not as if the original "contributor" really get them off to a great start. -R. fiend 19:25, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
       • I think R.Fiends hypothetical University of Timbuktu is worse than Wild Honey Pie (because I didn't know the latter was a song, but the former is exceedingly obvious). "Extremely short articles which add no information beyond what is obvious from the title." was considered for a Speedy criterion, and got ~60% support. Maybe if reworded a bit (and given the changed situation in the past year) it's worthwhile. Radiant_>|< 08:54, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
       • The one-sentence stub for University of Timbuktu is something I'd regard as a test case for stubs. What use would such a stub be? Well it's obvious to me that it's a declaration that there exists a university in Timbuktu (the article will show in relevant categories, for instance) and an invitation to type more on the subject. Thus I don't regard such stubs as speediable, though a Vfd may decide that individual stub of this kind should be deleted for any of a variety of reasons--not least being the possibility that the declared university could not be verified.
       • I think a redirect to The White Album would be fine for the song title. There's probably nothing much to be said about this song except that it's among the shortest and most repetitive of Beatles songs and it's on The White Album. But a redirect is not a deletion matter. Anybody can be bold, and redirect and merge. Discussion is not required. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:43, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Speedy merge

On average, short articles (or stubs) are more likely to end up on VfD. These discussions may well result in a consensus to merge - particularly in certain categories such as fiction (WP:FICT). It would be useful to get users to consider merging before putting anything on VfD (some kind of mergism awareness plan). It might be useful to create a procedure to 'speedily merge' articles already on VfD, to put an end to the discussion.

I agree that more widespread use of merge would result in significantly fewer deletion listings. Merging a stub typically takes less initial effort than listing for deletion, and there is no follow-up cost because there is no VfD discussion. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:59, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Merge is a start. Please help in improving this page, and making it as visible as possible. Radiant_* 13:32, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • I already did. A pretty good idea. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Yep, thanks. The invitation, by the way, is open to anyone else as well. Radiant_* 14:12, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • That's a great page. One possible catch is that an awful lot of "merge" or "How-to-merge" wikilinks send you to Wikipedia:Duplicate articles, which already has this info, but in the context (of course) of eliminating two articles about the same subject, whereas here we're talking more about making "stubs that will never be anything but stubs" part of a larger article. So I think some of these wikilinks should go to Wikipedia:Merge, but I don't know if I'd do that without some discussion at the appropriate Wikipedia talk pages. (P.S. Has Wikipedia:Merge been posted at the Village pump?) Soundguy99 14:49, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Changing the link at Wikipedia:Deletion policy would be a start! However, I'm not sure that this proposal would really help: length on its own is not a criterion for deletion, and if an article has no encyclopedic content then there is nothing to merge anywhere. Physchim62 20:15, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
    • True, but the advantage of this page is it helps to make it clearer to newer editors that they can and should merge & redirect stubs into larger articles. Example (from personal experience): Found a horribly-written stub that was about a fictional character on a cartoon show. No need for this character to have its own article, and the main article on the show already had a good character synopsis. But when I went looking for info on how to fix this, I kept finding Wikipedia:Duplicate articles, which was confusing, since I wasn't really dealing with a "duplicate" article. I eventually figured out that the same principles and practices applied, but with a page like Wikipedia:Merge easily available I would have figured it out sooner and been more comfortable about doing the merge & redirect. The article being merged doesn't neccessarily have to have any useable info in it: merge & redirect is simply a way that any editor can deal with eliminating pointless stubs w/out the VfD process. Soundguy99 13:25, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Speedy keep

The obvious corollary of the two above would be 'speedy keep'. However, this would only apply to bad-faith nominations, or nominations withdrawn by the originator iff there are no other 'delete' votes yet. And frankly, we don't get too many of either. Several proposals for speedy keeping have in the past been shot down by consensus, as m:instruction creep or too easily abusable.

Speedy keep seems to be in effect already: I have seen a number of nominations where an admin has placed the 'expired' box around it and noted that 'consensus was to keep'. →Iñgōlemo← ^talk 06:11, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

• This is very controversial, though, and it is not uncommon for someone else to re-open the nomination. If anything, unlisting them is improper. Radiant_* 08:52, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Countdown deletion

This is a proposed way of tagging articles that are both new and unsuitable (by some criterion, usually 'too short') as 'work in progress', and if they aren't improved within a week, they can be speedily deleted. This mechanism is presently in use to good effect on the Dutch Wikipedia.

• I like the sound of this idea. Create somewhere where editors can go to see if there's something they want to keep off the scrap heap, but otherwise, they go. This mechanism should only be used by admins to ensure people can't put a timebomb on an article they don't like. Could also help improve stub articles that would survive VfD and not go anywhere. I'd love to get involved and improve some of the articles that get VfDed, but this would actually invite people do so regularly. Harro5 03:02, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Something like this is already sometimes implemented by putting a cleanup-importance or explain-significance template up and then checking a couple of weeks later, but this isn't very good at identifying candidates for deletion--it only identifies candidates for cleanup. An article that is unsuitable for Wikipedia should be listed for deletion as soon as possible. A stub article can take at least six months to attract organic growth, but this period can be lessened if the stub is appropriately linked from a related article (either in the text or in a "See also" section. Orphans aren't going to get any improvement because hardly anybody finds them. Thus de-orphaning should be promoted as an alternative to the "countdown to deletion" approach.

There is no reliable process for thinning out articles marked with the various cleanup or explain-significance tags. Articles often linger on these lists for months. See my comments below for more on this. I'd like not to use VfD as a place to draw attention to articles that simply need to be cleaned up. Kelly Martin 18:09, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

VfD is a good place for "deathbed reprieves" and it provides a focal point for cleanup. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:04, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

But that's part of the load as someone finally works on the article and then you have many users switching their votes once fixes are made. That all increases the VfD load. Maybe a {{Speedy-cleanup}} template putting these in a category that will let everyone know the article is gone by way of speedy if nothing is changed. The text would suggest merging if there is a place to keep the sub info. Can a template generate a date and time stamp when it was applied in the text? Vegaswikian 20:41, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• We do actually use Countdown Deletion in one situation - articles in a language other than English are VFD'able if listed on Translation Requests for a certain period (a week, IIRC) and not translated. Radiant_* 13:27, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Not a very good example, as pages that go from Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English usually have go to VfD if they can't be translated! I would suggest that they become candidates for a speedy deletion, as we have tried to improve them (i.e. translate them into the correct language) but found them unsavable. Physchim62 13:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Some kind of countdown to an action sounds reasonable. Before deletion, an attempt to find a merge target should be the last step before a request to delete. How hard would it be to get editors to add a merge tag rather then a VfD tag? Can the merge process be automated after say 30 days? Should step #1 on VfD#How_to_list_pages_for_deletion be can this be merged into another article? Vegaswikian 05:44, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

• It'd be easier if authors just merged the page rather than putting on a merge tag. WP:DP isn't heavily frequented, and requesting for someone else to merge something (apart from sounding a bit lazy) tends not to get reacted to in quite some time. Merge cannot be automated really, because you have to manually fix the layout. But your proposed step #1 sounds very good. Radiant_* 08:02, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • I have done a few merges, but they take time. So maybe the direction to editors is to do the merge yourself, but if you can't, use the merge and not a VfD. Vegaswikian 18:45, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Possible template outline

{{Subst:Speedy-cleanup|1}} This article will become a canidate for speedy deletion 14 days after November 25, 2024. The problem that was identified is, {{{1}}}}. Once the problem is addressed this warning text can be removed. Do not remove this text without fixing the listed problem.

Will subst freeze the month, day and year of posting if these are in the template? Vegaswikian 23:09, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, it will. Radiant_>|< 07:22, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • OK, is there any way we can introduce this as a test? Is there some criteria that has concensus for this type of classification? I'd suggest a category of Pending speed deleteion. Vegaswikian 19:14, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • • I don't think it will work. The day, month and year are just some code in the template and will become code in the page it is substituted on that will also change with time. It would work if we would not evaluate templates themselves, which is never usefull. Then we could write:

"This article will become a canidate for speedy deletion 14 days after June 16, 2005. The problem that was identified is, {{{1}}}}. Once the problem is addressed this warning text can be removed. Do not remove this text without fixing the listed problem."

• • • Otherwise the only way is to add the template with subst and then save and edit and add these three substs yourself. --MarSch 11:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I don't see how this could possibly make sense. Either an article is a candidate for speedy deletion or it isn't. Letting an article hang around for two weeks is de facto admission that the article doesn't qualify for speedy deletion. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:25, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorized Deletion

Another older proposal was to split VfD among several pages, so that people can watch only those pages for which they consider themselves authoritative (e.g. 'fiction', 'geography', 'people'). Or, it would be possible to only list controversial debates on the main VfD page, and create subpages for items that would be largely a matter of procedure (e.g. advertising). On the other hand it may be easier to just expand the WP:CSD.

How about having a template {{delete-vanity}} ({{vanity}} is already taken) which points a page towards a new Wikipedia:Suspected vanity pages? We could do the same with {{commercial}} as well for example. This would leave VfD as a place to discuss issues of notability. Physchim62 20:10, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Not a bad idea. Vanity could be done like 'countdown' deletion - if nobody objects in a week's time, then it's speediable. If somebody does object, take it to VFD or something like that. Radiant_* 08:03, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

• I agree, this is a pretty good idea. However, I find it a little ironic that the "countdown" deletion for vanity articles is actually longer than the official VfD time of five days (of course, sometimes WP:VFD/Old gets a little clogged). I think if you could get enough people to keep the "Vanity Pages for Deletion" page in their radar (or watchlist), you could even shrink the required wait time for an objection to three or even two day. What level of objection is required for a VfD listing will have to be decided by consensus, since we have to consider things like the author, subject (if different from the author), and sockpuppets. --Deathphoenix 18:08, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Since you are giving someone a chance to act before an article is speedy deleted, two or three days sounds reasonable. Either they can fix it or move it to VfD. I suspect that not most will not take the VfD route. Like you said, editors who want to keep these will have a very small list to monitor for articles that need to be fixed. The longer the window, the bigger the list. Vegaswikian 18:51, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

• I wholeheartedly agree with this proposal - at the least, we should separate out suspected hoaxes and neologisms from vanity pages of all stripes (I consider adverts to be a kind of vanity), as they require a different level of investigation. -- BD2412 ^talk 02:55, 2005 May 30 (UTC)
• This is an excellent idea. Dan100 22:17, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
• I think we could turn this into a proposal. We would still need to determine what to do about band vanity and adverts, but speedying stuff that's not objected should speed things considerably. Mgm|^(talk) 14:09, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
• I like this idea, however, the countdown should be only 2 or 3 days at most. K1Bond007 04:00, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • I would say no formal countdown, editors with deletion privilages should be able to speedy articles on the list at any time (otherwise, we end up prolonging the agony). The list would serve as a place for non-sysops to list articles and a place for sysops to have a 2nd/3rd/4th opinion before a speedy delete. Physchim62 11:28, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I support this idea. Hiding 15:36, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Building consensus

There will be a lot fewer articles on Vfd, and the debates will be much shorter, if we can get some consensus on issues like "notability" for schools.

• (by User:Kappa)
• Good point, actually. Schools are under discussion at Wikipedia:Schools. "Notability" is a much-disputed word, but there seems to be a rough consensus for using it in the case of bands (per WP:MUSIC) and people (per WP:BIO). It may be useful to get consensus for other areas as well. Roads & streets come to mind, but the VFD/PC for that didn't help much. Radiant_* 07:36, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
• How about Internet-related stuff? Can we set up some guidelines akin to WP:MUSIC on when a website, forum, blogger, l33t h4xxorm4st3r or any kind of cyberpr0n is encyclopedic? Radiant_* 13:34, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Or game characters... Vegaswikian 05:48, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
    • We have that (WP:FICT). Radiant_* 08:03, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
• Part of building a concensus should be does the information need to be kept. If Yes, then does it really need a complete article. Vegaswikian 05:48, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Proposal (withdrawn as well)

Votes for Deletion has tripled in size in the past year, and there is no reason to suppose it will shrink back again. Because deletion of an article is a drastic measure, it is important to be able to get feedback from as many people as possible, to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus. However, the sheer size of each day's VfD page makes it impractical for people to join the debate.

Looking over VfD nominations of the past couple of weeks, it is obvious that about two-thirds of them are not controversial - they are deleted after a number of unanimous votes. It seems, then, that most nominations are made appropriately, and require no debate. On the other hand, there is a significant number of disputed nominations that do need discussion to establish consensus.

Therefore I would propose to split the VfD into two sections, labeled "non-disputed" and "disputed". Whenever an article is nominated for deletion, it is added to the non-disputed list, along with the nominator's reasoning. If after five days, nobody has disputed the VfD, the article can be deleted by any admin. However, if any user (even if anonymous) disagrees with the nomination for any reason, it is moved to the disputed list, and stays there for debate and consensus as per current VfD policy. The VfD is kept for five days after the dispute arose, after which it can be closed and kept or deleted as appropriate.

To make the process more user-friendly, I would like to reword the VfD template (and non-disputed page) to indicate to new users that, if the article is something unencyclopedic but important to the user (e.g. WP:VAIN), they may save the page by moving it to their user space. Then, there would be no need for further processing (other than removing the redirect). Of course, articles on the non-disputed list are still subject to speedy deletion criteria if applicable, and to the copyvio process.

To make the process easier, it would be possible to employ a bot that runs once per day, that will examine all non-disputed nominations to see if they have been edited since their creation, and if so, move them to the disputed page.

If used well, this would save work for a lot of people. VfD regulars can look over the non-disputed page and see if there's anything that shouldn't be there; by disputing a nominaton, they ensure it will receive fair debate. Other people can casually look at the disputed page and give their opinion on any issues at hand, without having to wade through dozens of non-disputed calls.

Straw poll: is this a good idea in principle?

THIS IS NOT an official vote. Just a quick gauge of public opinion.

Yes, good idea (but may need rewording)

• Good idea. I'd love to see non-disputed VfDs cleaned up much quicker, and would also prefer to see contentious ones in their own section where they receive full consideration. Harro5 10:27, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Yes, but hopefully people will start being more descriptive in their reasonings for deletion. Simply saying "NN" doesn't tell me anything. A better text would be "17-year old high school student, doesn't claim notability. Vanity.", which would enable me to know if I wanted to contest the nomination without looking at it. But overall, a good idea. Meelar (talk) 13:54, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
  • But then some of these articles don't contain enough information to say much other then NN. Vegaswikian 17:22, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Not sure, maybe we should hold a test run?

• As per my comments/summary below (in "A suggestion"), I think there is a problem w/VfD load, I'm just not sure if it's a problem that requires an "official" policy/procedure solution - yet. 2 possible problems I see w/ proposal as it exists:

1. Uberinclusionists, vandals, sockpuppets, disruptive users, newbie article creators that get really worked up if their golden prose/favorite subject is up for deletion, can de facto eliminate the "non-disputed" page simply by running down it and voting "keep."
2. "Bot" idea is good in theory, but I could see that force of habit or misreading or misunderstanding the "non-disputed" instructions would cause editors to add "delete" votes to pages listed on "non-disputed", which would cause the bot to move the page to "disputed", even though there's no actual dispute. I think moving a page to "disputed" should be under human control.
   

Willing to give this idea a try, though. Radiant! makes an excellent point that it is important that we get as many editors as possible involved in/aware of VfD. Soundguy99 14:44, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• Yea doing a test would be one way to see if you could work out an improved process. I still have some issues:

1. If all of the votes are comment or delete and no new votes have been added it 24 hours, the vote closes. This reduces the time clear deletes stick around and it reduces the need for me to votes. Yes, 24 hours seems short, but then if anyone wants it kept they can easly extend the time.
2. I'd be willing to ignore anon votes. A comment in the top page text could explain the reasons for this (stacking the ballot box). It's easy to set up an account and if someone cares enought to improve the quality wouldn't you expect them to have an id? Vegaswikian 17:30, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• Personally, I feel that this is more a significant increase in people nominating pages that shouldn't be nominated, rather than a significant increase in pages that should be deleted. As such, I feel that changing nominator habits might be a better idea than changing the process. However, maybe a test run of this might be useful nonetheless. JYolkowski // talk 01:37, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

No, not a good idea (and please tell us why not)

• I don't see how it helps. It just makes two places that need to be reviewed. Maybe if the "undisputed" got deleted faster (say 3 days or so) I could agree. I think Vegaswikian makes a good point in his #1. I'm not against the proposal, per se, I just don't think we'll be any better off. --Xcali 00:33, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• I'm afraid the non-contested section would get looked at a lot less, and thus items on it have a smaller chance of getting contested than currently. --W(t) 00:57, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
• Serves no purpose. An individual has to make their own mind up about any one vote; ie the list of pages listed need to be scanned personally. Just because no-one has voted differently at some point in time does not mean no-one will. Dan100 22:11, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep them all on a single page. The non-controversial ones will get only delete votes. There is no need for a splitwhich would only make VfD *more* difficult to use. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:31, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
• I do not see how the proposal above reduces the process or the demand on a reader/editor by even a single step. Every interested reader will still have to scan the list, review the article and do some background research to make sure that they agree that the nomination was non-controversial. This feels like instruction creep to no clear benefit. Rossami (talk) 04:19, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
• Won't work. We've got too many sockpuppet voters. Article creators and those who agree with them will contest the deletion and cause nearly everything to be disputed. Mgm|^(talk) 13:38, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
• This is a growth problem exacerbated by flawed perspective, a clash between the real nasty world, and an ideal that was summed up above by this quote: "to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus." Fact is that Wiki has grown too large, too fast to keep to such metaphysical ideals. They are impractical in a situation where 100 plus articles are cropping up per day. Like playing Russian Roulette with Five Bullets and one blank chamber - somethings going to give 'Real' soon. I just don't believe it's gonna be one of the bullets.

• • There are good people, lots of good folks donating their time to this project and they are getting buried because some one group wants to hold onto some mythological moral high ground that never can exist. It's time for some sound management, not platitudes. There are time-wasters and time-stealers out there deliberately sabatoging all the good that Wiki wants to be. You can choose to let 'them' continue running you over, or give over to sound management principles and delegate authority to the editors to make the hard calls. Have them reviewed by an Adminstrator afterwards, or a committee to salve your ideals you call consensus, but don't peddle it to me. I'm Polish, and consensus requirements cost my ancestors their freedom too many times.

• • Regardless of how you do it, you first need to make a decision of whether you will do something effective (re: the immediately preceeding post). I don't see that happening, that resolve, that determination. You've got people in denial on the other page. People saying you have the correct 'how to's already in place, people saying that the problem is minor. TAKE YOUR TIME, ONE EVENING, and see how many VFD articles you can read, vote on, and process in say three hours. I was shocked when I saw how few votes things were getting, and then again that there wasn't some mininum number of votes needed before things were decided one way or the other. Perhaps, that's another answer. Move these articles into a forum page like the 'Project Tab' with the votes to be tallied underneath of each. Leave a template notice in place of the alledged article. (Busted!) Ten votes, twenty votes, whatever but get the junk out of the article space immediately (see below) by putting it into this purgatory until St. Peter grants us all 500X more free time to deal with it, or someone with power sees the scope of the problem, or enough volunteers to wade through it for the minimal number of votes to deal with it. This would be more helpful than you might imagine.

(Technical digression: At least one can see the offending subject material without flipping back and forth to different
pages. A Next | Prev linked list format would be even better. Put 'quicklinks' into the header page and into the article
space as part of the move. Automating that should be almost trivial... The Next Page/Prev Page shouldn't be all that 
challanging either. The 'edit' boundaries in such pages should offer a handle for the software to grab the right text.)

• • You can manage by consensus all you want until the organization gets demoralized... then the team will be abandoned in favor of the self. Look HARD at the weary comments in Vfd. Those contributors are FED UP with the crap masquerading as an new article. Going on much farther down this permissive path will only lead to organizational septisemia. Start taking into account the wear and tear on the volunteers and start respecting their time they so graciously donate to Wiki If this crises of inaction continues, the heart and soul of Wiki will start to walk, or go through the motions because someone is afraid to take a stance and deal with crap as crap should be. Please flush it soon.

• • In this sense, with this change, I endorse the idea above into splitting Vfd. Empower the editors to Speedy Delete/Move the vanity and other time wasters into a seperate catagory - Wiki Votes to Keep. Let's see how many Keep votes that page gets! I want to reiterate one point I made in the other (Project Tab) page. These inflictions ('Death by a 1000 cuts') are being created by Juveniles and they are rewarded every single elapsed minute one of these articles passes w/o being removed, never mind unchallanged. Leaving them sitting around to gloat over their victory is just going to lead to their circle of associates trying to one up them. Call Purgatory "New Articles Needing Justification" or something else that sounds high minded to you, but get them out of article space, and manage the matter without frustrating the people you want working on Wiki.

Also, give some thought to adopting top down managing, there has to be one person in charge for an enterprise of this scope to succeed. 'Trumans Buck' has to stop somewhere! Fabartus 05:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Keep it growing as needed

As Wikipedia grows, so should all of the parts of it. If needed, have them per hour, and so forth. The more contributors there are, the more administrators, and so forth. It's only natural for it to grow and there's really no need for it to change. Internodeuser 13:36, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Er, what are you talking about? We do need change (also known as evolution), because not all of our present processes scale. Radiant_* 13:38, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Using other processes first

It can be argued that most VfDs are unnecessary. VfDs should always be about the subject of the article: is it notable enough to deserve its own article? But most VfDs are about content: it's badly-written, it's subjective, it contains misinformation, etc. There are processes for handling these kinds of problems, but almost nobody uses them -- most people see a VfD as the only possible response to any article they don't like!

Solution: except for obvious garbage, don't accept a VfD nomination unless somebody's made a reasonable effort to fix the article. If there's no obvious notability, slap an explain-signficance on it. If there's problems with the content, put a cleanup tag on it, or even try to clean it up yourself. Only after a reasonable period (2 weeks? a month?) has expired and it's obvious the article will never grow into something useful should a a VfD nomination be allowed. — (Isaac Rabinovitch forgot to sign.)

• Many contentious VfDs are about the content of an article. The problem is that so many obvious speedy candidates (or articles that really should be speedy candidates, obvious vanity articles being the main culprit) are being given the full five days of discussion for no good reason. AиDя01DTALK 03:05, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
• That would be 'countdown deletion' then, see above. The problem is that 1) it's hard to tell the difference between something that doesn't explain significance and something that's just plain junk; and 2) if an article is so short that it doesn't even explain the significance of its topic, then it's not going to be helpful for expanding the article either, so deleting it would be viable in the hope that, if notable, it will be recreated as a full article. IMHO. Radiant_* 11:56, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
• Case in point: I nominated Jackson McNeil for speedy deletion - its vanity and non-notable - but the SD notice was removed and it was sent to VfD. This seems to be because it has content, albeit pointless, and is not mumbojumbo. The VfD currently stands at 10 to 2 in favour of deletion - the anon who created the article has voted twice with a sock puppet. This is an obvious delete, but has to be kept on the server for what is ten days now (someone deleted the VfD from May 15). Harro5 03:10, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, horrors. The poor servers, how will they ever stand having Jackson McNeil on them for ten whole days? Seriously, why is it such a big deal if an uninteresting article stays on the server for a week and half? Are we that tight on disk space? Kelly Martin 14:52, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree with Kelly Martin completely. If we have it tagged VfD, it's clear to any readers that we're seriously considering getting rid of it. It's not making a negative impression on anyone's opinion of Wikipedia because we've demonstrated our doubt about the validity of its presence just by tagging the article VfD. --Unfocused 14:21, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't see that there's any problem to be solved in the Jackson McNeil case. The article is vanity, enough eyes have looked at it, and there is a consensus to delete. However I've seen articles like Nicholas Humphrey listed simply because the lister hadn't heard of the guy and the stub at the time didn't give many clues. I'd rather see people do more research before listing for deletion than give them carte blanche to use their personal ignorance as a decision-making tool.

Keeping the Jackson McNeil article on VfD for five days, or even fifteen, will not cost any more than the original VfD. It's easy enough to close because a clear consensus has formed. What can be costly in terms of time and effort is a marginal listing (which often happens if the lister has a prejudice against a certain type of article) or one due to lack of adequate research by the lister. I don't think changing deletion policy can help here. Education is probably going to work better. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:15, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd also take issue with this: nly after a reasonable period (2 weeks? a month?) has expired and it's obvious the article will never grow into something useful should a a VfD nomination be allowed.

In practise by examining how stubs grow I've found that you can't expect much in the way of organic growth over periods as short as six months. Using a period of two weeks or a month is utterly unrealistic. The Warsaw radio mast article took six months to get to more than three-paragraphs in length and it was nearly a year before it was anything like the current article. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:36, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Nicholas Humphrey, when initially VFD'ed, contained this text only:
  • Nicholas Humphrey was born in England in 1943. He received his Ph. D. in Psychology from Cambridge University in 1968. Dr. Humphrey currently holds a School Professorship at the London School of Economics as well as a half-time Professorship at the New School for Social Research in New York.
• This seems to me like a good candidate for 'countdown deletion'. Jackson McNeil is not necessarily a problem, but it's one of those pages whose VFD process gets messed with by socks. But measures like "disallow anons to edit the Wikipedia namespace" tend to be overly harsh, and while they would likely solve the problem, they would cause a number of others. Radiant_* 13:38, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I cannot see that countdown deletion would be any improvement over VfD for Nicholas Humphrey. The underlying problem was apparently an editor who either failed to do any kind of research, or else did so and still failed to recognise the significance (the latter is entirely understandable). Popping the thing into countdown and forgetting it wouldn't address the problem and might well prejudice the chance of good stubs on encyclopedic subjects surviving.

As an occasional VfD closer I agree that socks are sometimes a problem for VfD, but they're not the reason for the growing numbers of entries on VfD in the first place and they really aren't a big problem in the scheme of things. Part of the reason for the growth in number of entries on VfD is, I think, that there is quite a lot of stuff that needs to be looked at and there are also a lot of editors willing to submit it to discussion on VfD. This is good, there's nothing wrong with it. Part of it, usually a very small part, is that kind of ignorance--we can't all know everybody. A little research is advisable prior to listing on VfD. Even so it's possible to miss the significance if you haven't heard of somebody or you don't know the field well. Perhaps we're not sending the right message, though. How many editors try to improve a stub prior to listing on VfD? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I rather like the idea of putting {{explain significance}} on questionable articles, provided that there is a commitment for someone (or something: a bot, perhaps) to go through Category:Wikipedia articles which could be improved by explaining significance to move anything that's been there for more than a few months over to VfD. Clearly more widespread use of the various article quality procedures which we have but don't use much would be a good thing. Kelly Martin 15:07, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Aaargh! No, I don't want any bot (or even a thoughtless human)listing stuff for deletion! I've found it bad enough to have to go through the relevant cleanup cats fixing the articles that have been wrongly tagged as not explaining significance and whatnot. Most of these templates get slapped on by what I take to be young teenagers for whom anything that they weren't actually taught at school is terra incognita. I don't want a bot taking over from them and dumping perfectly good articles on VfD, and the no-hope items in, for instance, Category:Wikipedia articles which could be improved by explaining significance should have been listed at once. Absolutely (album) and the band Munched that put it out should have been VfD'd immediately because the leader's name "Heydecker-Dent" can't be found on Google. Argyle Street, Hong Kong should be expanded to list major buildings on the street (the French Consulate, the Kowloon West Regional Police HQ, etc). Burgomaster should be marked as a gov-stub, I've no idea what it's doing in that category. Calvin Stowe merged to Harriet Beecher Stowe, [Colleen McLoughlin]] to Wayne Rooney. Many of the items here are only here because of carelessness or inexperience; compounding that with a bot would be very annoying. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:58, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Tony, this is a discussion you and I have had before. I don't think your attitude on issues like this is productive. It may well be that some people who apply {{explain significance}} and simlar tags are poorly educated-ignoramuses. But: (a) the most useful way to deal with a contributor who knows less than you (or who appears to!) is patient explanation and collaboration, not the dismissive attitude you routinely take; (b) applying such a tag is often just a suggestion that somebody needs to improve the article a little -- a reasonable suggestion if you see an article with problems, but you don't have the background to work on it yourself; (c) I can't believe that you're seriously suggesting that all cleanup issues be brought before a VfD tribunal! ---Isaac R 17:46, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

If the various cleanup and article attention tags are being misused so badly, then perhaps they should be consolidated or eliminated entirely. There are, what, over a dozen different "cleanup" tags? Some of the stuff in Category:Wikipedia cleanup has been there for months. There needs to be some process that pushes older articles up to the surface -- and it has to be one that doesn't rely on a person creating entries on Wikipedia:Cleanup because that doesn't scale well. Right now it's far too easy for an article to remain on an "attention" category indefinitely, especially since there are no lists that are sorted by how long the article has remained in the category. The ability to sort category displays by last edit would be useful here, as would a mechanism that logs when articles are added to or deleted from categories, but both of those would require extensions to Wikimedia. Anyway, articles that remain on Category:Wikipedia articles which could be improved by explaining significance without even an edit for several months probably aren't encyclopedic and should at least be reviewed for potential deletion -- which is the purpose of VfD.

As I see it, VfD is currently the first stop for articles critically needing expansion. It should be the last. The problem with moving to a different process is that there has to be some driver to push articles through the process toward either improvement or deletion -- and we don't have that yet, so articles that need to be deleted, won't, unless they're listed on WP:VFD straightaway. If we set up a mechanism by which listing an article on the explain-significance list will eventually lead to deletion and people see that that mechanism works, fewer people will push for immediate listing on VfD, and maybe that will VfD a bit less insane.

Fundamentally, what this comes down to is, we need a workflow engine. One that doesn't require a huge amount of human intervention, because systems requiring lots of human intervention don't scale well. The current article cleanup process requires far too much human intervention, and is too difficult to monitor, to boot. Kelly Martin 18:04, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that VfD "shouldn't" be used for cleanup when it's really rather easy to do the kind of minimal check that I suggested. Most items on the cleanup cats, I find, shouldn't be there at all because the effort of putting the tag on could have been replaced by a quick google search and edit. I advocate the early listing of articles that obviously shouldn't be on Wikipedia, such as the album article. Putting such articles on a cleanup list is just wrong.

Articles on Wikipedia will tend to hang around unedited if nobody ever sees them. The best way to get an article cleaned up is probably to link it to a related article, so a "See also" to that Hong Kong street in the Kowloon article would probably work wonders. If it's a useless article someone with more specialized knowledge will VfD it. But VfDing stubs just because nobody has edited them for ages, that's only going to compound the VfD-as-cleanup function.

You say "we need a workflow engine...that doesn't require a great deal of human intervention." I respectfully disagree. We already have a very large amount of free labor available, it's our most abundant resource. Popping something in a cleanup cat is not the way to harness it. Linking existing articles to new ones is a much better way. The more footfall an article gets, the quicker it's likely to show improvement. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 18:52, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

What do you propose I should have done with Proximity search and Shantung Incident, then, other than marking them for cleanup? I am an expert on neither search engine technology nor Asian military history; I can't link these articles into other articles on topic for them because I really don't understand those topics well enough. Nor do I want to spend the time when I'm on RC patrol (which I try to do at least a couple hours each day) to stop and fully clean up an article, especially one that I would have to spend a lot of time researching to do properly. RC patrol is triage: most people (myself included) doing RC patrol only check edits for vandalism and other obvious problems, tagging them appropriately, and moving on to the next edit. The problem with this is that nobody is following up behind the triage teams. You seem to be telling us not to do the triage, but just to give each article that we find an immediate full treatment, whether or not we're competent to do so. Should I simply ignore problem articles when I find them on RC (on the assumption someone else will)? Should I have listed both of these articles for deletion so they'd get the attention they deserve? Kelly Martin 19:25, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I think there's a misunderstanding.

The two examples you give are examples of reasonable quality stubs that required cleanup. You added a normal cleanup template which says "This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of article quality" and gives some pointers to where to start. That's great, no problem at all.

The explain-significance template is far more aggressive. It says:

Another editor has suggested that this article might be improved by more material on its significance. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand the article, or discuss its significance on the talk page. Please remove this notice if you feel this has been done or is not necessary. If no expansion or explanation is provided, this page may be nominated for deletion.

Note the threat of deletion. The template says, in effect: "I couldn't be bothered to work out what this was about and you'd better explain it to me or else."

I have done RC patrol myself. Mostly it's just a matter of catching the obvious stuff. Vandalism and speedies. Wikipedia can absorb the rest without significant damage, but if you have the time for it you can significantly improve new articles by wikifying, clarifying and linking--and some of us do that as a matter of course during RC.

The practice I'm addressing here is where a new article is tagged in this aggressive manner by someone unwilling or unable to do the research, and then a month or so down the line the article (which will almost certainly not have been edited significantly) is bundled blinking onto VfD where we end up doing what the person in question should have done instead of using that insulting, pointless explain-significance. The trouble is that on VfD it occupies much more than the minute or two it would take us to do a quick google, because the person listing for deletion often won't accept a cleaned-up stub, but expects us to produce the high quality article that he himself is incapable of producing.

Some more discrimination is all that is required. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• One thing that has always seemed odd is the number of articles that get fixed when they show up on a VfD. Even some speedy deletes have been saved by some quick cleanup. No one seems to care unless the article is about to be deleted. Vegaswikian 05:53, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, personal experience is that I don't even know the article exists until it winds up on VfD. AFAICT, W'pedia is still working its way through the first big project of categorization and stub-sorting, so I won't necessarily easily find articles I can fix by poking through the various stub and cleanup categories. Incidentally, I'm kind of wondering if some of this explosion of VfD isn't just an artifact of this organizational process; more editors are looking for stubs to sort and articles to categorize, and more editors are looking through the ever-expanding categories of stubs for stuff to work on, and therefore more editors are finding more "questionable" articles and putting them on VfD. Soundguy99 13:47, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
    • True. I'm looking at one group of stubs right now and adding categories. One big suprise is the number of stubs that are not in my opinion. There are stubs that run several screens and are more complete then other articles in that category that are not stubs. Vegaswikian 19:01, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Many of the stubs I have seen that run several screens were expanded but whoever added that new content forgot to remove the tag. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 10:43, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Posting an article for VfD definitely gets more it attention. More important, there is some urgency to fixing it if you care at all. As I look through the RCs, if I see an article that needs some work (and a fairly large portion do), I may take a quick whack at it if a fix is obvious or it strikes my fancy; otherwise, I move on. With an article on VfD, its more like a poor orphan that is crying for help. But is that really the best way to pick an article to spend time on? When I have spent time on an article that is on its death bed, it is almost always at the expense of something I really find more worthy. Its a kind of triage that tends to the sickest cases first rather than the ones that will provide the most benefit to Wikipedia users. DS1953 04:42, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

A Trial Suggestion w/o guidline changes

• My 'take' after more than three hours of plodding through mostly vanity on Vfd\Today dutifully trying to cast informed votes last evening was frustration. The people that say there isn't a problem from the flood of vanity pieces must be related to Clark Kent, or never try to wade through Vfd\Today one article at a time, giving each target a fair judicious look, then voting, then proceding to the next is extremely time consuming. If that's not grounds for a major shakeup, then you and I have very different ideas about the value of time. In reading through this whole document (Even taking a printed copy to peruse and ponder over coffee), I found many places I could 'tack on' or interject, but as an engineer, I began to think of causality. There seem to be proximate causes wrt Vanity pieces - the perpetuators Act, and the monitors fail to act boldly and decisively (exercising mature judgement) as I suggest below. This suggestion impacts both. This lead to the below trial suggestion that I believe can be tested immediately for efficaciousness:

It was opined humourously in the above section: "Oh, horrors. The poor servers, how will they... ", etc. The problem is not to THOSE servers, but to US Servers (or Servants)... but you knew that already. These vanity pieces are a huge WOT (Waste of Time). So far as I have discerned in lurking around Vfd the past four or five days, they are usually of juvenile origination... keeping them around more than the bare mininum is rewarding these inconsiderate (I'm tempting to say parasites <G>) youngsters by giving them how many ever days to nudge their friends and point out how They put one over on the serious devotees in the Wiki-community. My own view is these things need extremely fast and effective deletion as soon as monitors spot them occuring.

I wrote this sugestion in an UserTalk: Why the heck are the vanity pages tolerated for inclusion into the general Vfd que? If the behind the scenes 'monitors' would immediately tag such as nonsense. Save, then go through the Vfd tagging process themselves, or perhaps allow the the Next (another agreeing) monitor to tag it (as a check and balance kind of thing) A concurring admisistrator can then Speedy-Delete it within the current guidlines. (Lawyering, I know, but within current guidelines, unless I've missed something.) It would be nice to see this tried for a few days or weeks at least just to see if the impact on Vfd\Today goes as I predict.

The current process lets these self-masturbatory puff pieces hang around for five days as 'A kind of further reward' (Psycologically) for the juvenile thrill at the minor personal cost of posting the piece. Five days for them to elbow their friends and say: (wink, wink) look what I got away with! If they instead vanished inside a half-hour, it would certainly speed the processing on the Vfd/Today page to a more managable number of far more important votes. It would also hold their satisfaction down considerably, assuming they like writing as much as MOST TEENS. Which is to say, Not! (Like my two boys) The vanished 'joke on Wikipedia will bite them with a joke on them and disuade copy cats in their circle of friends at least, and the word will get around the web as well in general - even if the lesson is relearned locally by many different people. My time is valuable. How about yours? Fabartus 17:51, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A suggestion: there is no serious problem and no change is required.

I'm not convinced that there is a serious problem here. Maybe some editors who used to scan the whole of VfD every day feel that it isn't so easy now. Maybe some closers have said there are too many items to close in a reasonable timescale (checking the backlog doesn't to support this). Why is a growing number of listings on VfD a problem?

So I propose that the size of VfD (especially since it was rationalized and we got rid of that horrible secondary transclusion) is not a serious issue. People who think VfD is too full of stuff may wish to reduce the size by making fewer VfDs and encouraging others to do likewise, but at present there is no pressing reason to do this. We presently have a fairly well defined, well understood, distinction between speedies and deletion-by-consensus exemplified by VfD. It isn't broken, so there's no need to fix it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:54, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• The problem is mainly that it has become inconvenient to scan each day's VFD page, yes. It used to be possible to read all of them weekly. This draws VFD away from consensus, as vote will be established by the few die-hards who do have the time to read through it all. The current VFD process doesn't scale. It may be the case that no chance is feasible or needed at the moment, but we should at least look into the possibility. For instance, if a certain group of articles is always unanimouosly deleted, why not make it speediable and save everybody the hassle? My main point is to cut short on the amount of repetitive debates going on on the Wikipedia, to free editors' time for doing constructive work. Radiant_* 15:01, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • IMO, the problem is one of classification. Yes, certain types of articles are always deleted, but the problem is knowing which articles are of those types. I like the idea of "does not assert notability", however--it comes much closer than other proposals to not being arbitrary. Meelar (talk) 15:03, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that Radiant's concern about drawing away from the consensus is worth considering, but that's actually why I have a problem with many of the proposed solutions that seem to be intended to streamline the process, taking articles away from the scrutiny of VfD in the process.

I agree with Meelar that the problem is one of classification. In my experience of looking through VfD, articles can't be conveniently sorted into "will definitely be deleted" heaps according to reason for listing. Actually there are quite a few instances where a VfD has looked as if it was headed for deletion, but one person pops up and makes a point and the mood changes, the article gets cleaned up and we end up with a keep. If a certain class of article can be reliably identified by any person and its listing always ends up in deletion, let's go to it, but at present I don't see any sign of that, or anything close.

Articles that are listed as vanity sometimes turn out to be about quite famous people; articles that are listed as ads often turn out to be nothing of the sort, or are easily turned into useful articles by a bit of editing; stubs are expanded or merged or redirected; and so on. Of course there's nothing to stop people doing this kind of thing without listing an article on VfD in the first place, and I presume that this is actually what does happen in most cases. However VfD performs a very useful function that is not adequately performed by any other process--it acts as a kind of last shot at survival for unloved articles.

On the question of the difficulty of following all of Vfd, well if it's a problem a pragmatic solution is to choose a subset at random and examine those every day. Or just do the ones that look, at a glance, interesting. VfD doesn't necessarily need more people, but it certainly could benefit from bright people prepared to look in depth at just one or two articles per day to see whether they should be deleted, and then give an accurate and persuasive reports on their findings. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:32, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

VFD has certainly grown a lot in recent months, but it seems to be working fine at the moment. Most of the listed articles do need discussing, even though many of them end up with a unanimous vote one way or the other. Find new ways of structuring the discussion process, fine, but trying to bypass the system by widening the speedy criteria into grey areas isn't the way to go. (If all users could see non-copyvio deleted articles, and the numbers of users with del/undel access was widened into the thousands, I might be persuaded to change my mind, but that's another can of worms...)

As for the point that it is difficult for many people to spend the time needed to read every debate.....well, you don't need to read every debate. All that matters is that every debate is read by enough people to come to the right decision, and I think we cope fine with that now. If that's because only a hard core of a few dozen people account for 95% of the votes, well, so be it. I'm not convinced that there are regular miscarriages of justice due to the size of the list. sjorford →•← 11:08, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I think Radiant makes some excellent points above. The core "problem" with the size is ease-of-use and a possible resulting "lack of consensus" if VfD is left to a few die-hards. I, personally, like to browse VfD for a number of reasons: it sort of serves as another Village Pump, giving an idea of how the community is thinking about various subjects, I can sometimes find articles to rewrite or get ideas of stubs/subjects to look for, it's fun to research some of the subjects to see if they should be kept or not, and, frankly, it's often the funniest place on W'pedia. But I've discovered that it's easy to spend all my available time browsing and voting and not writing. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I need to learn to manage my time better, but that's something I've been working on for mumble, mumble years with little result.)

Having said that, I don't really think that the problem should be solved by making a major policy change or adding another process to the deletion process. (Although I do like the above "assert notability" minor addition to CSD criteria; after all, admins can always choose to not speedy if they have doubts.) I think the problem would be better fixed by encouraging editors to use VfD more stringently and to take advantage of some other solutions to problem articles. Examples:

1. Research the subject. A lot of articles are placed on VfD because of very little/poor content, but then kept because the subject is determined to be encyclopedic, even if the article in its current state is not. Nominators should put more effort into finding out if the subject of the article is keepable, and make sure it is correctly categorized/stub-tagged/cleanup-tagged.
2. Patience. Two applications of this -
   1. Give an article at least a little time to develop; I understand that some RC patrollers feel they need to take action before an article disappears off the RC page, but nominating an article for VfD within minutes of its creation is often inappropriate. Use the "Watch" button - it won't kill us if a questionable stub is created and sits around for at least a couple of days until the author gets a chance to work on it.
   2. "A month" isn't exactly a long time either; many VfD's seem to be based on "this article's been around for a month (or 2 or 3) and nobody's worked on it!!!!!" Nobody knowledgeable about the subject may have found it (especially if it hasn't been categorized/tagged/listed) or had time to work on it. Not all editors are Wikipedaholics.
3. Merge and Redirect. Any editor can do this, and AFAIK redirects don't create a noticeable server load. This would help with sending "cruft" articles to a place where the info will get attention from informed sources, and unnecessary/inappropriate stuff can get deleted without clogging VfD and requring admin attention. Also Move can be used by any logged-in user, when appropriate.
4. So fix it. While "write about what you know about" is certainly useful, it's definitely not a rule or requirement or anything. No reason that editors couldn't or shouldn't do some research (even if it's just online research) and make some improvements themselves rather than VFDing it.

Them's my 2 cents. Soundguy99 15:40, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks like a good summary of some points we've touched on earlier, and I endorse it. Especially leaving an article to grow, but also categorizing/linking as much as possible to give it a chance of being found and edited. As Wikipedia grows it's becoming increasingly unreasonable to expect every single new article to find a knowledgeable editor who happened to click the random page button and had time to spare. A stub article can take months, or even years before someone shows up and improves it. This time can be shortened by linking, adding {{stub}} and {{cleanup}} templates, and categorizing. In the case of obscure stuff full of technical jargon, try making a note about it on the talk page of an appropriate WikiProject. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:01, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this is a good summary of how one should attempt to handle article problems before deleting them. Points like these need to be more visible. Maybe listing something like this at the top of the "How to list pages for deletion" section of WP:VFD might be a good idea? JYolkowski // talk 01:28, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• Well, if nobody's got any strong objections, how about if I put these up on the Talk pages of WP:DP, WP:GVFD, WP:VFD and the WP:VP miscellaneous and policy sections over the next couple of days ? Soundguy99 14:53, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't, and it doesn't look like anyone else does either. Go for it. JYolkowski // talk 01:33, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

• While these are good points, they fail to address the main concern. Most articles on VfD are deleted by unanimous vote. Asking people to kindly not nominate so much is not going to alleviate that. Radiant_* 07:27, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Lots of them are. And lots of them aren't. We don't have a way for one person to reliably predict which of them are deleted. Most deletion decisions seem to be for vanity, but Anthony Beaumont-Dark was listed the other day, and he was an MP for a Birmingham constituency throughout the Thatcher period. With listings like that appearing regularly I'd rather not permit vanity speedies. I'm already seeing occasional speedies of quite well formed school and school district stubs (though most of the school stubs I revive were originally validly speedied as unintelligible). -Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:12, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• See top of the page for a different proposal. Radiant_* 12:37, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

• I am opposed to any proposal that supposedly makes it easier to delete people on the grounds of vanity. In practice, it often means a person of which the nominator has not heard. For example, an article on Jon Buckland of Coldplay was originally nominated as a vanity article. While this usually means that the article is not much chop, so-called vanity articles often turn out not to be. We must ensure that we have a vfd process that ensures that babies (ie articles on notable subjects) are not thrown out with the bath water. Capitalistroadster 13:55, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

• I have been trying to sort out my thoughts on the VfD issue for the last couple of weeks and it seems to me that most of the contentious cases (though certainly not all) boil down to deleting what are essentially stubs, not articles.

On the one hand, I agree that many so-called vanity articles often turn out not to be, but if they are proposed for deletion it is usually because, in the words of Doc above, it looked like vanity and did 'not assert notability'. But even in those cases like the current posting on VfD for the article on Chicago Cub's second baseman Jerry Hairston, Jr., where the entire original article read "the pride of Naperville North Huskie baseball", what do we lose if it slips through the VfD processs? Certainly there should be an article on Jerry Hairston, but if a stub contains so little information that it appears to be vanity, are we really losing anything? There is nothing to prevent someone from later coming back with a real article (or at least a real stub).

I'll admit that argument falls a little short in the case of the article on Jon Buckland of Coldplay; I looked back at the history and it is hard to see how that would have been even considered for VfD if the editor had even clicked on the link to the band. Also, in that case, content would have been lost. At the very least, the editor should have taken steps to merge the content with the band's article, since he was not also VfD'ing Coldplay.

On the other hand, I fail to see the urgency in deleting stubs unless they are patently nonsense or have enough information that the subject is clearly non-notable (rather than failing to assert notability). Unless it is using up a namespace that a more deserving article needs, the only downside I have heard is that the stub shows up on Special:Randompage. That could be resolved by simply changing the random page feature so that articles must have a particular length before they can appear.

My original thought was that we should have another deletion category for stubs that serve no useful purpose. A notice would be posted on the stub and the stub would be logged in. The notice would state that the stub does not meet the minimum criteria for a valid stub and that it needed to be expanded. If it was not expanded within a specified period of time, it would be automatically deleted with no VfD. The notice would only be posted on stubs that have no content, since a stub with content can already be merged and redirected. Thus, if a stub said "Jacob Smith was a 19th century American politician" and gave no other information, it could simply be deleted at the expiration of the notice period. If it turned out that Smith was the first governor of his state and later served in the U.S. Senate, someone could always create an new article or at least a valid stub. If there was a single edit during the notice period, the deletion notice could be removed and the automatic deletion process would be terminated. No one would ever need to vote to delete, and if someone felt the stub should be kept, all he or she would need to do would be to Google the subject and add a little information to the stub.

Some people have noted that it may take months or even years for a stub to turn into a good article. That may be so, but I am only suggesting a process of turning a worthless stub into a worthwhile stub that would survive a VfD. I think a period of six months with the notice on the stub should be sufficient for that purpose. To the extent that people use the stub-delete process rather than the VfD, that should help reduce the VfD load. DS1953 06:24, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

A Suggestion on Criteria

It occurs to me that many items that show up on VfD are submitted by users who don't check their claims independently (e.g. they say that Topic A is unnotable, and then don't even do a simple google check). I would therefore suggest that we include in the Vfd criteria the following:

• You must clearly state grounds for VfD
• You must justify those grounds
• If your reason is either notability or vanity, you must do a google search to give at least partial backing to your claim, and include it in your grounds for deletion.

Reasonable? (sorry, forgot to sign. --Scimitar 15:27, 31 May 2005 (UTC))

I disagree with you on the last point, Scimitar. I think the article itself needs to have enough information to establish whether or not the subject is notable. I shouldn't have to go to another source to determine what the article is about. Isn't that what an encyclopedia is for, to give a complete overview of a topic?

--Xcali 15:58, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• You know someone is going have to google it, why can't you do it yourself and potentially save the whole hassle of a vfd? Kappa 16:10, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Actually, my point was that no one should have to google it. The article needs to be able to stand on its own. After reading the article, I shouldn't be asking "Why should I care about this person/band/whatever?" That's a question the article should answer.

--Xcali 16:22, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you in principle, but as far as practicality goes, it's not much harder to google the article, get some info, and turn it into a stub than it is to VfD it. For example, yesterday Okahandja was Vfd'd. In about five minutes, I googled and stubified it. This sort of article never needed to be deleted, just editted, and so I'm not sure VfD is the right place for it. Hence, I suggested those criteria to keep articles which won't get deleted from being nominated. --Scimitar 18:00, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Notability is often in the eye of the beholder. We require information to be readily verifiable. This might involve a quick check on Google to see whether it's for real. Xcali seems to be suggesting that every article should satisfy him that it's about something he will find "notable". You should not be asking "Why should I care about this {whatever}?" This is not the encyclopaedia of things Xcali should care about. It's the sum of all human knowledge. The first step to resolving this particular problem would be recognising that there's a gap between those things. Grace Note 05:43, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: pre-emptive closing

Actually, here's a crazy idea that I'll try out. Allow the unlinking of deletion discussions from VfD if the following criteria apply:

1. The article is under six calendar months old
2. The article doesn't qualify for a speedy delete
3. There have been at least two (three?) good-faith keep votes.

Discussions unlinked from VfD in this way should be closed by the person unlinking who should cite this rule and place a link to the discussion at the top of the article's talk page. If the discussion is closed in this way it can be reopened at any time in the next six calendar months if a period of one calendar month passes without any good faith edits to the article. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:25, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I see several challenges to this proposal. First, who gets to decide that the (three?) keep votes were made in good faith? Second, as written this clause requires only that there be a certain number of keep votes, not that those be the only votes. It creates a situation where any (three?) people with an agenda could veto the will of the community and and keep anything no matter how bad for 6 months. (You could argue that having an agenda is not in good faith but that's going to be virtually unprovable in practice.) Last, before considering any proposal to unlink a deletion discussion, you're going to need to look at the deletion process and tell us what changes are necessary to ensure that the discussion is properly archived. Right now, our process is designed so that the daily log page acts as our archive and is the place where we can search for lost discussions. Unlinking would appear to break that process and make us completely dependent on the link that's supposed to be added on the article's Talk page (a solution that we've previously found to be insufficient for several reasons.) Rossami (talk) 14:52, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your expert commentary, which I value. Taking your points in turn:

1. Anybody decides that there have been three good-faith keeps. If there is any disagreement on this the discussion is reopened by the person disagreeing. As usual edit warring is regarded as disruptive so editors are forced to tread on tiptoe here and show good judgement.
2. It's true that any three people who object to a VfD listing could close a deletion listing. This is the intention. It would reduce the volume of VfD greatly. The edit clause would ensure that the VfD could not be deferred indefinitely on a moribund article. The speedy clause would ensure that marginal speedies could still be deleted if thwarted on VfD.
3. You're right about breaking the archiving process. Instead of unlinking I suggest that the discussion merely be closed in the usual way.
4. Finally I would add a rule: the person closing the discussion under this rule must not be a participant in the discussion.

The rules could be tightened up, but I think the principle of getting non-admins to engage in processing VfD is good. As with all activities on a Wiki it is vulnerable to mischief, but we have our normal procedures to deal with disputes and also with disruptive activities (frivolous invocation of this rule would probably be viewed as disruptive). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:15, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wow, you've found a way to kill VFD completely! Just get three total-inclusionists to cut-and-paste a keep vote on every entry, and voila! no article is ever deleted again. This strategy has worked brilliantly for schools, why not expand it to the whole encyclopedia? I'll start writing my vanity article now. —Wahoofive (talk) 15:57, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think you'll find three people to vote keep on that, but good luck. Kappa 17:07, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • He only needs one more vote. Vegaswikian 19:21, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a straw man. As far as I'm aware there are no people who think that no article should be deleted. The mass of bio VfDs would go to completion and hardly get a single keep vote.

As to your comment on schools, that's a misrepresentation of what has happened. School VfDs now quite often return a majority keep, and the number of people coming in and voting seems to be increasing all the time.

It is true that successful school VfDs would be impossible to mount in the first six months of a school article's life, but remember that the edit clause means that the school article VfD can be revived if the school doesn't get good faith edits for any one month in the six months following invocation of this rule. Also it is the case now that successful school VfDs are extremely rate--the last deletion of a school article was seven weeks ago, and since then we've seen well over seventy school deletion discussions closed with a "keep" result. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:08, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So, this approach would be applicable to every new article? Vegaswikian 19:26, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It would be applicable to every new article that got X keep votes and was not speediable. VfD volume would be drastically reduced and the proportion of contentious VfD discussions reduced greatly, and as a side effect editors would commit themselves to maintaining articles whose VfDs they pre-emptively closed, lest they default and the discussions are re-opened. A new VfD listing could be opened at any time, though of course this might try the patience of editors on VfD if it was seen to be done in an unfair manner. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:33, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Altering number of keep votes required for pre-emption.

Would altering the number of keep votes required to invoke this rule make it more acceptable? How about five keeps, plus the person who closes the VfD? We'd still have far fewer of those school VfDs that always end in keep. On the other hand, VfDs closed in this way would amount to a commitment to regularly maintaining and improving the article over the next six months--if this doesn't happen then the VfD can be reopened. And of course a new VfD can be called at any time. We'd have more contested VfD listings being terminated with a commitment to maintain the article. We're still have the hopeless articles being deleted--which is surely the purpose of VfD. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 18:17, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Not for me. I still see the speedy delete after some number of days if not fixed as a better way to go. I beleive that a threat of deletion seems to be the only way to get some articles cleaned up. And remember how easy it is as proposed to remove a speedy delete tag. Vegaswikian 19:21, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We'll never get consensus for speedying articles "after some number of days". It's far too draconian, I've seen too many utter ignoramuses slapping "explain-significance" on articles about world famous classical musicians, pioneers in systematics, and even one "move to wikipedia" for a stub about a whole phylum of protista. Giving people the power to wait a few days and then delete unedited articles on subjects of which they are ignorant would be to destroy many good articles. I don't want to have to spend the rest of my wikipedia editing career reversing the results of policy-sanctioned vandalism allied to brute ignorance. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:26, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think pre-emptive keeping would alleviate VFD, since if the amount required is too low, it would be too easy to abuse (articles with 3 keep votes get deleted regularly); and if the amount is too high, the rule is meaningless. However, I could see the use of a combination of the two - for a certain class of new articles, slapping on a 'speedy cleanup' tag to get them deleted after X days unless Y people oppose that deletion, would plausibly work. Radiant_>|< 14:36, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
• The pre-emption I described doesn't give the article immunity from deletion, it just defers the discussion of deletion of relatively new articles on the condition that the article will be maintained. If it isn't maintained the discussion can be re-opened.
• This whole idea of slapping a tag on saying the article *will* be deleted in X days is utterly barbaric. The article must be listed somewhere so that it can be discussed. This is what VfD is for, but loading the odds in favor of deletion is not the way we want to go. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Expand speedy criteria, limit admin powers

I'm suggesting we expand the speedy criteria to include vanity, advertising, bandcruft and the like, with one small change: remove the "delete on sight" rule for administrators. An administrator could only remove something someone else (possibly another administrator) tagged as speedy. This would ensure that at least two people see every one of these articles and agree that it should be removed. We'd probably still need guidelines/definitions for "vanity," "bandcruft," etc. --Xcali 16:22, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• Far too many keepable or fixable things get speedied for these reasons as it is. Kappa 16:24, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd like to agree to these changes, but I've seen some users who are awfully quick on the 'vanity' and 'cruft' lines. If you look at my voting, you'll see I generally vote delete for these articles, but there are some users who are simply to trigger-happy.

Here's an idea though- inside VfD, if three users unopposed vote speedy delete on the grounds you mentioned, then it could be done. Does that seem practical? --Scimitar 18:06, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• A lot of Vfd votes are just "me too" votes, based on faith in the nominator's judgement or that of a previous voter, so this would not really guarantee due diligence. Kappa 18:13, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not so sure. If I check the article and someone has already make my point, then a me too is the right reply. Vegaswikian 22:20, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• My impression is that even "me too" voters have indeed bothered to check out the article. I support the idea above that three unopposed "speedy delete" votes in VfD should allow an admin to perform a speedy delete at their discretion. -- The Anome 16:46, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

But as UncleG is fond of pointing out, INATV: It's not about the votes, it's about discussion and consensus. If there is a certain "class" of articles that is consistently deleted by overwhelming or unanimous delete votes, especially when all or most of those voters are using a very short reason (i.e. "Delete. Vanity") then I think we should consider expanding CSD, rather than the above suggestions, which seem impractical/unlikely to achieve any kind of consensus. (Expanding CSD plus limiting admin powers is two big arguments/discussions, and allowing speedies after only three "speedy" votes on VFD also seems unlikely to be approved.)

Just to raise the discussion again, Doc suggested above that CSD be expanded very specifically to include "vanity articles that do not assert notability." This would allow the most blatant vanities (articles by or about college or high school students, people in love, friends of gays, bands that have produced one self-released demo and played shows only in their hometown (or no shows at all), favorite high school teachers, so on and so forth) to be speedied and not clog VfD. To pre-emptively respond to those editors with "inclusionist" tendencies who don't want CSD expanded at all, I'd like to point out:

1. Admins can always choose to not speedy an article and move it to VfD instead.
2. You can always go to the article's discussion page and explain why it should not be speedied.
3. You can always fix/expand it yourself, negating its reason for being speedied.
4. Articles can always be recreated as long as they have some reasonable content.

Another possibility (maybe instead of above, maybe in addition to above) would be to merge & redirect or move such vanity articles to the creator's User page, along with the {{vanity}} template tag, and then put the redirect on WP:RFD. Soundguy99 20:00, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I'd love to see the speedy criteria expanded to 'vanity and does not assert notablity'. The problem is with over 100 VfD's a day it's impossible (for me at least) to go through them, research and try to improve. The amount of time burned on putting something in VfD, and all the research and voting, vs the time on speedy kills a lot of otherwise productive wikitime. I like the idea of admin's just deleting stuff that someone else has tagged...I mean the reason they became admins is because we trust them...why doubt that now? If it ends up being a problem, de-admin. Wikibofh 15:33, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Wikibofh. That last part was the point I was really trying to make, but I didn't get it across very well. Let's trust the admins to use their minds, and let's have at least two people agree that an article dosen't belong. If they don't agree, either of them can take it to VfD. --Xcali 05:30, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The solution to Wikibofh's problem--that he can't get through all of the VfDs posted every day--is for Wikibofh to stop attempting to get through all of the VfDs posted every day. No policy changes are required.

We trust admins to perform their tasks within defined policy. Giving them the power to delete articles on subjects that neither they nor the tagger understands would destroy valuable information, because the admins would unknowingly lack the wherewithal to judge the quality of the article. As an admin with a slightly higher level of education and more capacity for research than most, I would find much of my time taken up undoing the damage done by other admins. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:39, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Have no fear, I don't try to go through all of VfD. Perhaps the load is doing me a favor, because it were smaller I might actually try.  :) Wikibofh 16:37, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion for VFD page

Since one thing everyone seems to agree on is that nominators should consider using merge, redirect, cleanup tags, and so on rather than VFD, perhaps a suggestion to that effect should be put on the VFD page itself, perhaps the first thing under "How to list pages for deletion." I'd do it boldly myself, but there are too many people futzing with that page already so I thought I'd better suggest it here first. —Wahoofive (talk) 19:16, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I have seen that suggested before, and I know I have said that at least once. Like you I was not willing to change the VfD page, but maybe now is the time. So if you want to be bold you will have my support. Would it be reasonable to state that if a merge or a category cleanup is available and not used, an adminstrator can remove the VfD? Vegaswikian 22:04, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • And so we put those cleanup tags on the articles, and they sit there for months with nobody doing anything? How long should one of those tags be allowed to sit there? RickK 22:20, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
• I think we should encourage people to use templates, but not insist on it. As to how long they should sit there, a month maybe, less for really non-notable sounding subjects. Kappa 22:49, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about the long wait, RickK, but I'd prefer to have someone slap a {{cleanup}} to start with than to go through VFD and reach a consensus to "keep and cleanup" and THEN have the cleanup tag sit forever. But really the merges are more urgent, because it's policy that we can't merge once a VFD is initiated, and many people nominate for deletion when the really wanted to merge.—Wahoofive (talk) 02:24, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice to be able to look at a cat sorted by date placed there. Right now something like cleanup is too large to deal with. If you could look at the oldest articles, it would be easier for editors to find the stale articles that need work. Vegaswikian 04:57, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • Well, it would be feasible to create two cats, Cleanup and Cleanup / old / deletable, and install a bot that moves all articles into the second after a month. Radiant_>|< 11:59, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
• Can we add something to suggest an investigation for copyvio before VfD? Seems like a good number of articles I meet on VfD end up copyvio. Wikibofh 22:03, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • That would be a worthwhile suggestion, and if that is not clear from the VFD instruction pages feel free to add it. Radiant_>|< 11:59, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
• Cleanup and deletion are two fundamentally different operations. When we delete, we say "this is hopeless, we just don't think an article on this subject belongs on Wikipedia." When we suggest cleanup we say "this article isn't up to Wikipedia standard." Note that not being up to Wikipedia standard is not grounds for deletion. An article can await cleanup for years, decades even. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:42, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Interestingly enough, several other-language Wikipedias use precisely this mechanism. Radiant_>|< 12:49, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Provide a special page with statistics

Is there a way to create a page which shows:

• number of edits by logged in users
• number of matches for '''delete'''
• number of matches for '''keep'''
• etc.. (comments / merge?)
• reason for delete.. (vanity / etc. )

this would allow more efficient contibution to VFD. For example, if I see a title which I know should be kept, but I can see 10 keep votes and no delete, then I know I don't need to view that. Something like User:AllyUnion/VFD List but with more details on each article. Some kinds of technical solutions might help very much. Mozzerati 20:36, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)

• No, there isn't. Radiant_* 13:26, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
  • The reason why this isn't a good idea is because VfD, contrary to what the name suggests, is about discussion, not votes. See m:Polls are evil Ambush Commander 00:59, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
    • Hi; I agree totally that it shouldn't be a poll. However, the truth is that in some sense it already is. If 99% of the votes say delete and you know it should be deleted then you don't need to worry if there will be consensus or not. The same if 60% of the votes say keep. These are the cases which people most need to be able to ignore. If they see a vote going the "wrong" way, (e.g. a delete for someone important that the other voters have never heard of) then that's the point at which they need to intervene and persuade people to change their votes. I don't think that this proposal encourages treating VFD as a vote. The opposite in fact. You only need to get involved when you think your opinion can change the consensus, not for every single issue. Mozzerati

Accidental erasure

In an effort to fix a weird screw up my computer did to me I accidentally erased the bottom of the page (I have browser/size issues). Could someone restore it? Thanks, and sorry. -R. fiend 23:20, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I've restored it. Please double-check your latest two or three contributions, they may have gotten dropped out. Sorry about that but it was a rather messy diff. Radiant_>|< 07:57, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Fanfic thingy

1. Fanfic (since it's vanity)
   • We don't speedy vanity. - Tony Sidaway

   • No, because it's sometimes difficult to define vanity. Fanfiction is quite distinct however, so perhaps it should be speedied. --Scimitar 22:40, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

   • • • The problem with speedying fanfic is that it's usually not too easy for those not in the know to differentiate between fanfic and legitfic (as they're both made up to begin with). As long as it's understood that fanfic is a solid deletion criterion, we can let VfD handle these and allow for discussion. -R. fiend 07:04, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
         • I agree it's sometimes hard to tell the difference. Maybe rewording to 'obvious fanfic'? It really is pretty obvious in some cases (such as the Jedi/DBZ character we saw a couple months ago). Radiant_>|< 07:32, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
         • There really aren't a lot of fanfic deletion listings. I'd rather not see this happen because the possibility of a false positive is too high. Farmer's The Other Log of Phileas Fogg and Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution are examples of widely published fan fic that goes behind canon. The fact that they're fan fic, and rather preposterous examples at that, is obvious from a description of the plot of either--that they're both major works by notable authors (the latter was a movie with an all-star cast) may not be obvious to someone doing RC patrol with an itchy delete finger. This is an example of a criterion that is too broad and wouldn't significantly impact VfD volume in any case. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 11:46, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
           • I think this one will just be too hard to define. Obvious vanity, on one hand, is generally easy to spot. "Sam Gloggerbock is in 8th grade. All the girls love him and want in his pants" is obvious vanity. "Schukkblorr is a wookiee who pilots a XR-989 galactic-cycle in Jedi: You Goin' Down!" is slightly less easy to spot as fanfic. Mind you, I could probably stand seeing Schukkblorr deleted either way, but spotting fanfic is sort of like trying to spot a somewhat credible hoax, and it generally warrants more thought and discussion than a speedy deletion. -R. fiend 07:58, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
   • Nah. Too hard to tell for those not in the know. Soundguy99 16:31, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • Moved here from mainpage, most people agree that a fanfic-CSD isn't feasible. Radiant_>|< 08:32, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

A request

I'm having problems following this on the talk page and the project page since both are so long. Would it make sense at this time for someone to archive what has been said and start with a small summary of where we seem headed and the curent discussions and proposals? I suspect that some of the proposals on the talk page need to be moved to the project page. Vegaswikian 18:11, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I'll give it a shot. Radiant_>|< 10:15, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion: Lock Deleted Articles

When an article is deleted by VFD, the creation of another article at the same title is usually not appropriate. It would be good if the deleting admin had the option of "locking" the title somehow. Someone wanting to recreate an article at a "locked" title would have to get approval from an admin. It would probably require some software changes to implement this, but I think it's worth considering. --L33tminion (talk) 23:04, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

• A less bureaucratic way around this would be to create a redirect from the article to the archive VfD vote. This wouldn't lock the article title to seasoned Wikipedians (the redirect can always be edited), but would serve as a warning against "accidental" recreation. Physchim62 11:44, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • That is likely to lead to the archived VfD vote being vandalized. Kelly Martin 13:44, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)
• But there is an RC patrol to deal with that! An archived VfD vote should never be changed (we could even protect them...), and any changes would stick out like a sore thumb on Special:Recent changes. Physchim62 16:19, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We already do create protected pages to stop articles being recreated (see WP:PP#Protected_against_article_re-creation). This is only done in severe cases. We have a policy of permitting creations of new articles under the names of deleted articles, provided they're different in content, so we have to use discretion here. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:21, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• As Tony said. Also, protecting pages is considered harmful unless there's a good reason. Radiant_>|< 10:15, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)