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How long to wait before second nomination?

I can't seem to find this anywhere, so I'll ask here: What's normal ettiquette for how long you should wait after an article survives AfD before renominating it? There is an article which survived three months ago which needed some real improvement, and nothing has been done to improve it, despite its being tagged for improvement. I believe, now as then, that the article isn't needed, but I don't want to nominate it yet if the general consensus is that three months is too short. Heimstern Läufer 03:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The Guide has some background on this topic but the short version is that there is no hard-and-fast rule. It's been proposed several times but any hard rule is likely to do more harm than good and just subject us to even more wikilawyering than we already have. That said, premature nominations are generally shouted down pretty quickly. Here are the general rules I use:

1. If the situation has changed (new evidence, different facts, sources found to be fraudulent, etc), an immediate renomination may be appropriate.
2. If the "keep" decision was conditional (such as "keep because John said he'd clean it up") but John shows no signs of actually working on the article, a renomination within a few months is entirely reasonable.
3. More generally, 3-6 months seems to be the accepted period for a reconsideration of an article.
4. Decisions closed as "no consensus" can usually be reconsidered a bit earlier than decisions which were explicitly closes as "keep".

Regardless, be very sure to provide links to the previous discussion(s) in your deletion nomination and to explain why you think that a reasonable period has passed in this specific case. Rossami (talk) 06:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Will read the guide. Heimstern Läufer 06:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• Can articles that are renominated in a very short period time with no addition reasons for deletion be speedily closed? Take for example J. P. Calderon which is up for its third deletion in a month. The reason for deletion is the same as the first two nom, the last of which was a solid keep. Koweja 23:17, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Another one: Cleaners which was renominated five days after a keep vote. Koweja 15:11, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Someone please explain this unique google hits to me.

I had this conversation in an AFD

• Question Please explain what you call "unique google hits". The link Mikkia gave http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Game+Freaks%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&lr=&start=60&sa=N shows 271,000 links. Anomo 10:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Google is acting really strangely! Try the search "game freaks 365". It returns 140,000, but then try to click on the 6th or 7th page- the results then reveal that there are only 77 unique hits. I definitely tried this search a week ago and it wasn't acting funny like it is now- it just returned 53 unique hits. johnpseudo 15:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Hmm.... I kept clicking and it got to page 30 and said, "291 - 296 of about 387". I don't understand the relevance of this. If you put wikipedia in google and go for unique hits, it gets "Results 21 - 30 of about 33", which is very little

Can someone explain the whole unique google hits? John had almost explained it to me and then I tried it on Misplaced Pages for unique google hits and seeing so few when it's I think the 3rd highest pageranked site really threw me off. Anomo 04:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... google for "wikipedia" gets "Results 561 - 567 of about 280,000,000". wikipedia.org gets "Results 821 - 829 of about 174,000,000". I'm not sure how I got the first one. Maybe google is acting strangely. Anomo 04:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

140,000 is the total hits, but Google by default shows only unique hits. So, you need to go to the last page, and click the repeat the search with the omitted results included link. -- ReyBrujo 04:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Huh? So which of those ways is the "unique" hits? Anomo 06:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

In the example above, "game freaks 365" returns 140,000, but when you reach the 6 or 7th page, there are only 77 unique hits, right? Well, the 77 are the unique hits, the 140,000 are hits that are found in the same sections of the sites (in example, in a forum you may get one hit, but when you expand the search results, you may get 50 or 60 hits in a single thread of the forum). -- ReyBrujo 06:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

What's the range of unique google hits to tell if a website is not notable vs. partially notable vs. clearly notable vs. super-notable? Anomo 06:20, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Search engine test for all the gory details. The short answer is that 1) the large number (280,000,000) is only an estimate, 2) the maximum possible returns from a google search are capped at 1000 and 3) duplications within that 1000 are suppressed by default. Rossami (talk) 06:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but it doesn't say what is the right number that a google unique test should have to determine notability. Anomo 09:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Deliberately so for several reasons. First, the quality of the hits is far more important than the quantity. 5 hits in scholarly journals could be enough to establish notability but 1000 hits in blogs and other self-publications are probably not. Second, different topics are subject to different degrees of skewing in their on-line coverage. 1000 hits about a modern-day pop star says, well, relatively little. 15 hits about a 17th century musician, however, is significant. Third, the way Google returns results can skew the evaluation. That's why the google test must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and used with great care.
In my experience, the Google test is more useful as a negative test than a positive one. For example, if someone claims to be a notable pop star but google finds only a few thousand hits and most of them trace back to a few dozen blogs, that's clear evidence that the person has not yet achieved popular status. Rossami (talk) 00:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The answer is there is often *no* way of knowing the number of unique Google hits. Google gives the number of unique hits that exist within the top 1000 results. That produces absurdly low results for very some popular terms. It is also tied intimately with Google's ranking alogorithm, which happens to be a trade secret. So, for Google raw hit counts below 1000 we might say its "low" depending on certain factors. But if its over 1000, we really can't say much. In any event Google hit counts (unique or raw) never indicate (or disprove) notability. Anybody arguing they do, should read WP:N and also check a dictionary. It may be good to remind some people that notability and encyclopedias did exist prior to Google. And beleive it or not, there are high quality well researched publications that aren't given away for free on the Web to every person who's mastered Google. Seriously, there is. We want good articles, which require multiple independent reliable sources, that cover the topic non-trivially. That has nothing to do with Google hit counts. --Rob 01:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Rob comment that this doesn't matter. The thing to get notability is multiple non trivial sources. 10K google hits may be blogs and thus not reliable sources. 2 google hit may be Time magazine and the Guardian. Comments about Google is helpful in an AFD discussion if for no other reason as to prove you took a look rahter than agreeing with the previous commenters.Obina 16:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't agree completely. A new band which claims to be very popular but has no hits outside its MySpace page is very suspect, and in such a cse Google is a very good indicator of notability. A battle between two cities in 1438 with only 2 Google hits may still be very significant though. A low number of Google hits, tied with the topic of the subject (recent, pop culture), can be a very good indicator of lack of notability (but indeed, even then it can be overruled by other reliable sources). On the other hand, a high number of Google hits on its own is very rarely an indicator of notability, since they can not be adequately checked. And distinct Google hits are a good way of showing that while 400 Google hits can look impressive, they only come from 12 distinct websites or so. Google is a very useful tool, for providing sources, but also for a first indicator of notability, if used wisely and with caution. But all people saying that 'X may have 50,000 Google hits, but only 120 distinct ones' must be shown their error for this misuse to stop (or lessen). Fram 09:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

• FWIW, This thread basically explains why I personally do not pay much if any attention to ghits when I am assessing the notability or verifiability of something. I've been in AfDs where the article's proponent had flooded the internet with their key word in preparation for claiming broad awareness on WP. Keesiewonder 10:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:DELPRO and extra "social" restrictions on non-admins

WP:ADMIN says that non-admins may behave exactly as admins, except for the extra capabilities that admins have. This is backed up on the same page by Jimbo's assertion that adminship is "not a big deal" and that he wants to "dispel the aura of "authority" around the position". Nevertheless, Misplaced Pages:Deletion process#Non-administrators closing discussions creates new, purely social, restrictions on how and when non-admins may close deletion discussions "keep", which of course they are capable of doing. I propose changing DELPRO to dispel the aura of authority around adminship per Jimbo and bring it into line with WP:ADMIN, please discuss at Misplaced Pages talk:Deletion process#Social restrictions on non-admin behaviour. —Ashley Y 05:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

January 23 log; same entry appears multiple times

For some reason Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/A Best 2 seems to be showing up 9 times on the Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 January 23 page, even though it only seems to be transcluded onto there once. Is anyone else seeing this, and why is it happening? --Metropolitan90 07:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Process for reinstating an entry is being circumvented...

The process for reinstating a deleted article is being circumvented. The article for one "Allen Greenfield" was deleted as it was deemed that the subject was a "non-noteworthy person." Apparently, some of Mr. Greenfield's associates are attempting to recreate the article under the heading "T. Allen Greenfield." If I am to understand correctly, if they had admin permission to do this, the original article would be unlocked and they could introduce the subject under its old heading. Please, look into this as I feel that this is an abuse of Misplaced Pages's policy. Eyes down, human. 00:52, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Speedily deleted per WP:CSD#G4. ~ trialsanderrors 01:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Shortcut to current log

Is there an existing shortcut towards the current daily log of AFD nominations? I think that this would be a good idea, since some people prefer to skip to the daily log of noms, but have to go to WP:AFD and click on the current links.--Ed Reviews? 03:48, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if there is, but if you'd like to place an easily accessible permanent link somewhere on your user or talk page that will always point to the current day's log, you can use this code: ]--Fuhghettaboutit 03:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:AFD/T. —Cryptic 04:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

What happens if the AfD is a bad faith nomination and the reasons for the nomination are clearly false?

RE: Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Common Dreams NewsCenter

In my opinion, it seems ludicrous that users are claiming this webpage in non-notable, considering the facts brought out on the AfD.

Also, there is a small group of like minded editors who actively make the same decisions on AfDs who are stating their opinion on this AfD.

This entire AfD is a bad faith nomination. Even User:Hipocrite, who often makes comments in tandium with this group, admits on the AfD that it is a bad faith nomination.

I know bad faith nominations have been closed before, can I solicit a third opinion about this AfD?

Caveat: To be open about who I am, I have been in a bitter edit war with the nominator and his small group of like minded editors for some months.

This is why I think a neutral third opinion on this issue is really needed. Travb (talk) 17:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

If neutral opinions are needed, simply leave the discussion open. Others will see the discussion and join in. If the facts are as clear cut as you think they are, the decision will be clear. Leaving the discussion open (and the article tagged) for a few days is a small price.

We do have a mechanism for speedy-closing truly abusive nominations - nominations which are patent vandalism. This does not appear to qualify. It may be controversial and you may disagree with the nomination passionately but in the end, speedy-closing the nomination often ends up inflaming the controversy, not quelling it.

I commend you for your recognition that you are too close to the dispute to decide the issue yourself. If someone uninvolved in the dispute thinks that it qualifies for speedy-closure, let them be the one to carry it out. In the meantime, let the discussion run its course. Rossami (talk) 19:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to better understand the process. The nomination states 0 google hits, which its clear they did not even attempt to search for the website as they are familiar with CommonDreams as they have critisized it as a source in the past. Is the nomination suppose to be what the discussion is about, for instance can I nominate articles with something completely wrong, then hope someone else makes a valid point later? Is the nomination reason taken with anymore weight then anything else? is it just a "first word in" on the topic kinda system? Any information you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks. I too am highly biased, but at what point do you say, this nomination is clearly false. --NuclearZer0 19:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks User:Rossami, for the 15 months I have been on wikipedia, I have been really troubled at how wikipedians can work so hard on an article, adding well referenced material, and how easy it is for someone else to remove content.

Especially troubling are policitically motived AfD's, which in my opinion, this group seems to participate a lot in.

Granted, there is a less organized group of liberal editors who often fight these deletions, but the stark difference between ourselves and this group who often deletes political articles, is that we are attempting to keep information on wikipedia, whereas this other group wants to delete information which is contrary to their own POV.

When I bring this troubling issue up, most wikipedians always state they have faith in the AfD system. They believe that the AfD admin will always make the right decision.

I respectfully disagree.

Thanks again for your comments User:Rossami and taking the time to respond :). Have a great evening. Travb (talk) 03:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Generally, the closing admin is expected to ignore all of the false or poorly reasoned opinions, whether they are keep or delete. If the nomination is false, that's just one more opinion that doesn't count, IMHO. TheronJ 03:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

AfD instructions (Notifications)

I've now come across a number of AfD discussions where the nominator did not notify the article' originator and contributors and I also forgot it myself. Fortunately, there is a bot. However, I think the current layout of the AfD interactions does not help to remind editors, since the suggestion is some place below the highlighted colored 3-step instruction. Since many users will not read beyond step 3, and since this step is actually about notification, I would suggest to include already there a hint to also notify other interested parties (with a link to the more detailed section). Tikiwont 13:06, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Delsort placement preference

I've looked through the last 8 or so archives and didn't see anything on this, so I'll venture out for an opinion.

I've been adding the delsort templates in chronological order - but find that in long discussions they tend to get lost in the discussion. As they're not technically part of the discussion, is there any problem in putting them at the top, just under the nominator's rationale, no matter when they're added? I've noticed this a couple of times, and it seems to be a bit more logical place to put these templates, rather than breaking up the "flow" of the article. SkierRMH 02:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't see a problem with that. Trebor 14:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

What does one do

If a Wikipedian deliberately disrupts a AfD nomination through bad faith remarks similar to trolling, what can one do？ Mandel 21:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow strong accusation, who are you referring to ? Aarontay 15:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

No one in particular, but if that happens, what does one do？Mandel 16:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Battlemaster game page

The result of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/BattleMaster discussion was To Keep it. WHY then this page Battlemaster is removed??? I request restoring it or a good explanation why it was removed against the strong keep vote from users. Merewyn 01:32, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/BattleMaster (second nomination) ~ trialsanderrors 02:36, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Let's see, 5 votes of Delete with 2 votes for Keep in Second Nomination versus 7 votes of Strong keep and 5 votes for Keep with 0 (null) votes for Delete in First Nomination. Altogether: 5 votes for Delete, 14 to Keep and the page is deleted. Now, who would dare to call it a fair decision?? Merewyn 02:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

"Votes" don't accumulate between discussions. The result of a previous discussion can be used as precedent in a new discussion by those participating, but it is not used by the closing admins, as discussions are meant to be independent. -- ReyBrujo 05:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

So, please explain to me why ever the second discussion occured while the first one unanimously decided to KEEP? Do you organize the Nominations as long as the decision happens to be congruent with your expectations?? I would like to call the third nomination and you will see that the decision will be To Keep again. Merewyn 11:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

First of all , they were MONTHS apart. Secondly, in the first discussion none of the keep votes used any sort of coherent policy. Finally, the only reasons EVER given for keeping were basically "well it exists I played it lol". If you think the discussion was improper you can take it to Misplaced Pages:Deletion Review or have someone do it for you, but please remember that AfD is not a vote, it is a discussion, and that all articles must conform to WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:N -- and this one didn't conform to any of them. --Elaragirl 11:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

How can I prove the Reliable sources or Verifiability more and more than by giving a link to the manual and community?? Other MMOG games pages are kept, why Battlemaster is different? Merewyn 12:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

By providing independent sources which have mentioned this game in a non-trivial manner. I could set up a website with a game, but it wouldn't automatically deserve an article. If we can only source something directly from the subject in question, there is no way to know whether what they are saying is accurate. And the existence of other articles does not mean this one should also exist; Misplaced Pages is (by its nature) not consistent. Trebor 15:32, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Aha, I see your point. Now please show me the example of independent source for other MMOG games. For example Anarchy Online has links only to its own webpage, nothing more (if not counting those "citation needed" brackets). Merewyn 19:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent find. Let's send that to AfD too. ~ trialsanderrors 20:25, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Good god, I can't agree more. Anarchy Online is a complete piece of crap as far as sources go. --Elaragirl 23:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

So, still no example of a good page about MMOG game with Reliable sources or Verifiability...... Or rather let's say it aloud that to fill those requirements for a page about games is simply impossible and it will be all deleted - it would spare time for those who want to/did write it. Merewyn 09:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a very insightful comment. I'm all with you. ~ trialsanderrors 10:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Please someone finally give the clear rules for the articles about MMOG games or delete ALL such articles! Impossible to write such rules? Then restore BattleMaster now. Merewyn 12:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Putting an article up for AfD as a replacement for a source tag

I see a number of AfD's, especially on webcomics (that in the AfD become well-sourced and get a keep), that are being put up for AfD as a replacement for a source tag. It's a waste of a lot of people's time really, and a waste of the Wikistress it causes to some people in some cases. Is there something we can do to prevent such AfD's? JackSparrow Ninja 22:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

No, unfortunately. We can tell people "please search for sources before nominating", but if they choose to ignore that, we really can't do anything about it. Because for some articles, no sources exist, and those should be deleted.. -Amarkov moo! 22:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If the unreferenced tag wasn't motivating the editors, and the AfD did, I wouldn't see it as bad necessarily. I think this has to be on a case by case basis, because the description you are giving is vague and general. Is it a particular editor making all these AfDs? Is it a particular editor responsible for creating the unsourced articles in question? If not, I don't think there's anything that "can be done" per se. Leebo 22:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It's one thing to send it through AfD after some time with an unsourced tag, but I think his issue was people who just skip straight to AfD, without making any attempt to get sources. -Amarkov moo! 22:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It's the skipping indeed. If people ignore the tags, I stand behind an AfD, but this regards skipping straight to AfD. JackSparrow Ninja 22:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I understand now. I read that as "they're replacing unreferenced tags with AfDs", or that they were tagging as unreferenced and then after no one responded, they were replacing the unreferenced tag with AfD. Leebo 22:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It depends. If the article is a month or two old, and has only a few edits, then yes, it needs some tags. If it's from 2004, and has a hundred edits, and no one has bothered to add any sources, there likely aren't any reliable sources. Tag it anyway, but be expected for the tag to sit there and generate nothing. Regardless, if tagged, people should have a month or so , maybe two, to find at least a couple of good sources. --Elaragirl 00:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

As a nominator of a few webcomics recently, I can guarantee that I had searched for sources before nominating, but of course I can't access all possible (offline) sources. Looking at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Webcomics, I can see no examples of webcomics that were clearly kept after sources were added during the AfD. The closest may be these ones from late September (Cyanide and Happiness, no consensus AfD, not really a keep), and early November (Everybody Loves Eric Raymond, again a no consensus, not an outright keep). Furthermore, there is The Suburban Jungle, no change between start and end of AfD, no consensus. So, of 18 "open debates at the Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Webcomics page, four ended in no consensus, and all others were deleted: none of them ended in a clear "keep". Which of those AfD's should not have happened? Looking through all the closed cases there, only one was an incorrect AfD (Irregular Webcomic!), almost all the others were deleted after the AfD. Again, where's problem? On the contrary, the major issue seems to be that we have loads of non notable webcomics and that not enough of them are taken to AfD. We can even see that of the 46 articles considered "OK" by the project, 11 already have been deleted!

For the moment, we have Starslip Crisis, where the sources added were to show that it received many WCCA nominations and some awards, but then again, the WCCA are deemed non notable by a previous AfD. But this may end as a no consensus, perhaps. Again, I don't see that this AfD should not have happened and preventing this would be very bad. Other current AfD's include Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Terinu (second nomination), Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Greeneyes (second nomination), Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Final Phoenix, and , all but one quite certain to end in deletes.

Recently closed ones are Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Realms of Ishikaze, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Planet Earth (and other tourist traps), Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Darian's Friends, and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The Beevnicks, the last one was merged, all the others deleted. I really fail to see what AfD's you are talking about and what the big problem is that should be prevented. Fram 12:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Update: perhaps you refer to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The noob (Second nomination). The outcome is still unclear and it is an ugly AfD, but even if this would be the one mistake that triggered your post, I still would like to see your "number of AfD's, especially on webcomics". Fram 12:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the wait. I overlooked your post. Anyway, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The noob (Second nomination) is one and though the AfD is not closed yet indeed, it is clear that there are plenty references. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Starslip Crisis is another one that is well referenced suddenly. Your own Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Terinu (second nomination), though said to have no consensus, could also have clearly done with a reference tag. However, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Viper Comics and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Superosity (2nd nomination) are very clear cases of AfD before tagging. JackSparrow Ninja 04:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Another example JackSparrow Ninja 07:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Changes

The following changes have recently been discussed and there seemed to be a reasonable amount of support for them, so I'd like to pursue them.

• Adding new entries to the top. Received considerable support, so I think we should just decide to do it.

Pro: more eyes on late entries, which at present get a fraction of the !votes of the ones at the top.

Con: automated scripts add to the bottom, contrary to normal practice in many discussions (e.g. village pump).

• Keep and cleanup: articles can be closed as "keep and cleanup", they will be revisited in a month and if not substantially improved can be tagged for speedy or brought back to AfD. Add an "expedited cleanup" category and encourage the keep !voters to actually fix the article.

Pro: Fixes the problem of articles repeatedly getting "keep and cleanup" with nobody actually cleaning them up; in keeping with Wiki philosophy of judging the subject not the content, while actually getting round to deleting truly crap articles on good subjects, so leaving redlinks which may then prompt a new good article.

Con: More bureaucracy, needs policing in some way.

There are other ideas, but these are the two I'd most like to see implemented. Guy (Help!) 16:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• Both sound reasonable to me. As to the second, I'm not sure a second AFD would help, because people may send it to cleanup yet again, or call it a speedy keep "per the previous nom". We should interpret "keep and cleanup" as "keep iff cleaned up". >Radiant< 16:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
• I strongly oppose any speedy deletion of articles that are kept but not cleaned up in any arbitrary time. I disagree with the pros - the redlinks wouldn't be a good thing in those cases, and could just as well be replaced with something worse. Perhaps articles that are "keep and cleanup" should be stubbed by the closing admin? That way, the article sticks around and people know it's a subject accepted by consensus, and the cleanup is forced to occur because the poor bits are gone? --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with the opposition to speedy delete if nobody cleans-up. Also using {{expert-subject}} is a more targeted approach than {{cleanup}} and may produce better results. AfD should be reserved for articles that cannot be improved, not a thumbs up/down critique of an article's current state. I think WP benefits more from patience rather than impulsiveness. Dhaluza 01:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't agree with that. If an article is said to be "keep with cleanup" and it isn't cleaned up, then who does it? "Cleanup" becomes "crap". Articles should have a month if voted keep and cleaned up, then stubbed to the barest minimum. Articles so stubbed and that are reverted to states with unsourced and unverified statements should be considered vandalism. --Elaragirl 06:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

All of these methods do work, if editors follow them up. I would suggest wording it as keep and relist with it automatically be added. On the one hand we need more flexible procedure, on the other any added complexity can be taken advantage of. But any improvement which will decrease indefinitely repeated AfDs is worth trying.

(and, in my opinion, no procedure should encourage use of speedy for anything conceivably contestable ) DGG 03:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

On reverse chronological order in AfD logs, I'm neutral. Either way is okay with me.

On keep-and-cleanup, I support any suggestion that doesn't involve speedy deletion. Keep in mind that the creation of a unique category for such articles might be helpful even if nothing else is done about them. YechielMan 03:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Boguslawa Cimoszko

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Boguslawa Cimoszko resulted in delete but article is getting recreated by socks. I think the usuall procedure in such a case is to perm-protect the blanked article and block all the socks?-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  05:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Places of local interest

There is discussion on its talk page as to whether or not this is a consensually-supported guideline. Comments are welcome. >Radiant< 17:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Too much instruction

These instructions have gotten awfully CREEPy. They used to be a helpful guide on how to go about making an AFD. Now they're just pushy, even telling you exactly what to write in your edit summary. Can we turn down the "do this, then do that, then copy this and paste it there, and don't do anything wrong in this process or your AFD will be invalid and everyone will laugh at you" attitude? —Angr 18:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what you're referring to, they seem fine to me. I don't see anything wrong with giving set instructions for how to list an AfD as it's much easier if everyone does the same thing. Same for edit summaries, it makes tracking changes much easier if everyone follows the same format. What changes would you suggest? Trebor 18:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

About a year ago, we cut the instructions way back and moved most of the commentary into Misplaced Pages:Guide to deletion but they've slowly grown since. Now we have a lot of overlap again. I agree that it's time to prune. Put the Guide back to work. Rossami (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I did an AfD a week or so ago, and so absolutely nothing that wasn't necessary to guide the user through the process. Before someone "prunes" the step-by-step instructions, please post here the text that is proposed for removal, so others can judge as well.

As for "what to write in the edit summary", if the instructions say "write this", it can always be changed to "write something like this". Suggestions are useful. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I find the instructions useful. Using copy/paste I can easily create the edit summaries, etc. The edit summaries help this place run a little smoother, and I can't imagine what issue there could be with having the instructions there. You may know exactly how you would like to proceed, and that's fine, but everyday I suspect there is someone coming to this page that has never done an AfD before and I suspect they find the instructions helpful. —Doug Bell  21:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for Deletion

Could somebody please put Monday Night Mayhem up for deletion as failing reliable sources and verifiability requirements? Due to my lack of an account (and lack of a wish to make one) I do not have the capability to do so? Nevermind, disregard this post: I thought this was an internet radio show but apparently it has radio syndication.

These pictures needs to be deleted.

I uploaded these pics: File:Ambrella.gif and File:Ambrella.JPG

But the first image is in poor quality, so I uploaded the same logo, but from a different source, and the result was perfect, but then I tried to replace the original upload with the second pic here so that the perfect pic would show in an article, but it didn't work.

So can someone delete both of the above logos please? Hero of legend 02:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. In the future, just tag the pages with {{db-author}} and they will be cleaned up in a few hours. Rossami (talk) 02:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, this will really help me in the future! Hero of legend 15:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Markup

I royally screwed up some markup while trying to bundle articles for deletion. I'd be grateful if someone with more experience could go to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 February 24#Bopsta and fix my mistake, and maybe leave a note on my talk page so I don't make the same error again. Thanks. --Djrobgordon 05:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for change to closing procedure

One of the frustrating things about the AfD pages is how long they are. After a few days, there are so many closed discussions, that finding the active dicussions becomes difficult. I suggest using the same approach as is used at Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion where closed discussions are moved to a separate section at the end of the page. —Doug Bell  06:17, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Or you could use any of the script-tips that will automatically hide the closed discussions for you. There are several alternatives discussed in the archives. I use one that you can copy from here. (Just paste the code onto your own monobook page.) Rossami (talk) 06:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but that javascript doesn't seem to do anything. The closed discussions are still visible (and yes, I forced the cache to clear my old monobook). —Doug Bell  06:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

There should be a tab saying "hide closed discussions" or similar, I believe. Daniel.Bryant 02:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessarily complicated edit summaries

So when creating the deletion debate page, we're now supposed to: "Please use an edit summary such as Creating deletion discussion page for PageName because ... replacing PageName with the name of the page you are proposing for deletion and providing reasons for deletion".

What would be the point of my wasting my time doing this? This is basically asking me to take the full text of my edit and put it all into the edit summary. Perhaps the edit summary itself will then need its own edit summary. The AfD process is tedious enough without expecting people to post long complex pointless edit summaries. If I nominate an article for AfD and put "AfD" as an edit summary, that's good enough. When I create the deletion debate page, everyone knows the first edit is the creation of the page, so I don't even see why any edit summary would be needed, much less one which contains the full text of the first edit. --Xyzzyplugh 13:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

That summary is absurd. What else could you possibly be creating? It's not like the title isn't right there... -Amarkov moo! 04:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Mass AfDs

Some users seem to just go through categories and nominate everything in it for deletion. I guess there doing it in good faith, since they probably do believe everything they tag should be deleted. Is this just how we roll, or are they supposed to make it easier to find what they've done by combining the AfDs or listing them somewhere or something? - Peregrine Fisher 07:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The main AfD page gives a bunch of examples of when it is appropriate to bundle AfD's together. Because a bunch of articles are in the same category doesn't necessarily mean they should be bundled together. For example, one can generally go through the Website Stubs category and find dozens of articles which ought to be deleted, but it would make no sense to bundle them together. --Xyzzyplugh 08:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Writing on the Wall

I see no reason to have to delete the Movie's page, though yes, it does seem fishy that it's about, what, 8 years ahead in planning?

I don't know, I figure that they are probably over 50% telling the truth.

Jus thought it would be a good idea to share, because eventually, they'll have to say, "Oh, it's 2014, WE'RE NOT FILMING because we have financial problems" to prove they are lying or "Filming's started; here are the pics," for proof. You never really know. I think we should, as an online community, hold on to this page, removing the giant "deletion" template, and wait and watch to see what these authors do to it. Who knows, maybe they might just come right out and say it!

Bobbypirate123 19:01, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

In The Woods (2007 film)

Could someone check out In_the_Woods_(2007_film)? The page is a pretty blatant promotion for an unreleased film that is pretty much unheard of outside of Misplaced Pages. I'm not usually someone who edits or tries to have articles deleted, but this person is spamming this movie at various message boards using wikipedia as his primary source.

Category:Misplaced Pages articles with topics of unclear importance from June 2006

Is it okay if I dump the 150 articles in this category into the AfD discussion? These articles' notability is so-so (questionable), and they have been sitting around for some time now, some earlier than June. I am really trying to clear the CAT:NN category, which is now approaching 7000 articles, and I feel that doing this would really help to clear the category. Diez2 23:27, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest you prod or speedy as many of them as you can and see how many remain. Then nominate a certain number a day so AFD doesn't get overwhelmed. Koweja 00:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

New York Anime Festival

First, this looks legit, and second, I found out about it on the Comic Con site. Therefore, deletion shoukld be denied. NoseNuggets 5:19 PM US EST Mar 2 2007.

Oversight request of ongoing AfD -- North America (Americas), canvassing

Hello! Recently, the article North America (Americas) was created; as it's a clear POV fork of North America, I nominated it for deletion (and am also involved in a editing a number of similar regional articles). Apparently incensed -- and with an apparent majority as of now to delete or redirect the article -- a couple of the editors (including the author of the article, who has willfully removed information in the parent article regarding this very topic) decided to canvass editors at the Spanish Misplaced Pages to vote in the AfD to 'keep' it, effectively stacking the deck. Some of those editors have already voted, and I'm sure a comparison of the wikis will reveal the editors. Anyhow, for lengthy comment, see the nomination here.

This is rather deplorable -- to ensure an equitable outcome, I ask that some administrative action or oversight occur regarding this AfD and actions stemming from it and that corrective actions be taken. Thanks! Corticopia 01:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Need for Speed XI

I have to say I'm rather appalled by the fact that this article was not deleted. An unnannounced video game with not a single reliable source to support it's existance, only speculation on fansites... Do other admins feel that the result of this AfD was no consensus? In my opinion there was not a single good argument for not deleting the article. JACOPLANE • 2007-03-3 16:04

If you disagree with a decision, deletion review is that way. Trebor 16:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Seperate page for disputed AfD's?

I suggest that we create a weekly seperate page that lists all the disputed AfD's of that week (AfD's where the consensus to delete/keep is below 75% after a 24 hour period). Any objections?--TBCΦtalk? 05:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Like User:Dragons flight/AFD summary/Controversial, with different percentages? –Pomte 06:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Just because a deletion discussion has some fraction of "votes" one way or the other does not mean that the decision was controversial or is actually disputed. Creating such a report reinforces the misperception that this is a vote. I can't stop you from creating the report in your userspace but I object to posting the results anyplace that would give the impression that the results are an endorsement of process. Rossami (talk) 13:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your assumption that the page will give people the impression that AfD is a vote. The purpose of the page is only to give people an idea of which AfD's might be disputed/controversial, not which AfD's are. After all, RfA isn't a vote, yet percentages of consensus for candidates are listed on Misplaced Pages:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.--TBCΦtalk? 17:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Federal Commonwealth Society

This seems to be malformed inasmuch as it has overwritten an earlier AfD on the same subject. I wonder if someone could take a look and disentangle it. I don't think it's been listed properly as a result. Tyrenius 00:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Right enough, looks like someone needs to separate the edit histories. It wasn't transcluded in the AFD logs, so I added it to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 March 5. The fact it was mentioned at AN (or ANI) means it has had a fair load of attention without the listing being complete. Angus McLellan (Talk) 09:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

House Elestar

In short time the article, House Elestar will be rewrited to a standard form of Misplaced Pages-Article - Fiction. Patience pelase!

--Elestar 18:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

This user's contrib history is practically a roadmap of articles writen 'In Universe' in the form of either fiction, or somehow, an on=going D&D game being played through Misplaced Pages. Crazy. I'll try and list and tag a number of other articles which should be deleted. ThuranX 00:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Crichton Leprachaun

Why was this article deleted? It was supposed to be kept. http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Crichton_Leprechaun --Michaelzheng 01:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that you read Misplaced Pages:Why was my page deleted? Ah, I see. I apologize for the misunderstanding.--TBCΦtalk? 06:17, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Michael has a valid point, since the artcile survived an AfD and should hence not be subject to a proposed deletion as it seems to have been done by mistake. You could either ask the responsible admin or here for restoration. --Tikiwont 09:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. I'm more on the side that feels it should be deleted, but since it was decided to be kept I just wonder who and why it was deleted? There's no record or any information explaining it's deletion. That's what I'm looking for. --Michaelzheng 09:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I need to read more carefully. Thanks for the information Tikiwont. I never knew that deleted pages had 'special logs.' --Michaelzheng 09:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I suggest taking this to WP:DRV and citing the AfD; Tikiwont is quite right that an article which survives AfD should not be prodded. To be fair, this was probably an honest mistake on someone's part. Walton 16:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, contested prods are a straightforward undeletion at DRV, so I have restored the article already. It can of course be taken to AFD again, and still badly needs sourcing. -- nae'blis 21:24, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

AfD appeal/dispute

Is there a process to appeal a concluded AfD on the grounds of impropriety? --Iantresman 15:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:DRV. -Amarkov moo! 15:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Way to count noses on long AfDs

I mentioned this on the Brandt AfD talk page, but I should mention it here, too. If you want a rough count of opinion summaries in long AfDs, you can use Firefox's XPath Checker extension. You can use XPaths like these

• id('bodyContent')/ul/li/b/text()
• id('bodyContent')/ul/li/b/text()
• id('bodyContent')/ul/li/b/text()

to pull out and count the summaries. It's not perfect, as people use bold for other things, so it shouldn't be used when closing, but it is a quick way to get a sense of the numbers. Oh, and if you can't see all the items found, just make the window bigger until the scroll bar appears. William Pietri 17:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Speedy no consensus?

I have a question about this debate:

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Free The Hops

After about 30 minutes the debate was closed and declared a no consensus. I have no opinion about this nomination whatsoever, but I'm curious what the grounds for "Speedy No Consensus" are, and why an article wouldn't simply be discussed for a couple of days to see if a consensus forms? --JayHenry 17:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't look speedy to me. AfD started at 18:12, March 1, 2007 and closed at 15:23, March 9, 2007.... Could you explain where the 30 mins figure comes from? WjBscribe 17:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, it was listed on the Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 March 9 so I misinterpreted that and thought it meant that it was nominated on March 9. I see now that it was nominated on March 1 and was on the March 1 log as well. I wasn't criticizing at all, simply didn't understand what had happened. --JayHenry 17:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It was probably relisted to generate more consensus, but whoever relisted it didn't add a comment to that effect. Another admin then came along and closed it oblvious to the relist... WjBscribe 20:17, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It was trascluded a second time on todays log by the nominator himself . I then added the missing header in the AfD itself and then found it closed soon after. Due to the missing header it was hardly visible and did not attract much interest, with the header, it will have looked on the March 1 log as something overdue.--Tikiwont 21:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages poor man's encyclopedia brittanica

I am outstounded this article meaninglessness is being considered for deletion and other articles listed in the brief. It seems wikipedia is no more than a poor mans encyclopedia brittanica. It seem to be aligible for entry in wik you must first be in encyclopedia brittanica -so why not just go to encyclopedia brittanica . So much for open sourcing and internet democarcy Once again mainstream takes control of the net Wik may as well just get payed monkeys typing AUTHORATIVE articles so it can sell them to the highest bidder ie encyclopedia brittanica It seems all wik is is a watered down version of brittanica with articles which just reproduce briitanica written by amateurs who in effect just paraphrase more authorative sources —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gamahucher (talk • contribs) 16:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC).

What do you mean? Someone has proposed that it be deleted. That doesn't mean that it will be deleted. -Amarkov moo! 17:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

people are running around wik deleting entries that mention mr dean ie case in point an entry about his ideas in Absurdism was just completly removed based only on it basicvally has no britanica entry-ie not s a so called notable. Also entries on dreamtime and Indigenous Australians have also been flaged for removal . It seems wikipedians may as well jus go to brittanica paraphrase that then past in wiki

You're missing my point. This is a wiki, so anyone can propose that an article be deleted. That does not mean that it actually is going to be deleted. Oh, and notability has nothing to do with Brittanica entries. -Amarkov moo! 17:50, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

None of those articles are tagged or deleted. Pages get deleted if they don't have verifiable sources or are non-notable. We have tons of articles that aren't in the BE. Try and find an article on a specific movie in a printed general encyclopedia. Also, Misplaced Pages is not a democracy - nor has it ever claimed to be. Just because you can edit (almost) any page doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Koweja 17:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

What about the complete removal the the meaninglessness entry in Absurdism. In regard to mainsteam articles like philosophy absurdism poetry wiki will only put entryies in only if they are already in britanica Wik may as well just get payed monkeys typing AUTHORATIVE articles so it can sell them to the highest bidder ie encyclopedia brittanica It seems all wik is is a watered down version of brittanica with articles which just reproduce briitanica written by amateurs who in effect just paraphrase more authorative sources. Wik in fact just pillages other authorative sources it is a parisite feeding of others works -like brittanica

Because the section lacked proper attribution, as the person who removed it explained. If you disagree you can discuss it on the article's talk page. Don't you think that would be more effective than insulting Misplaced Pages? Koweja 18:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Whatever. Go read Britanica then. Koweja 18:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

the only attribution it lacked was not being in brittanica- that is the core issue —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gamahucher (talk • contribs).

old AfD

Where are old AfDs for prior months archived? I assume they are somewhere, because they can be found for examination during a 2nd AfD. DGG 21:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The link doesn't change even after the debate ends so you can find it at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Article title. Koweja 00:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

That pattern works for discussions back through August 2005. Prior to that, the naming convention was Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Article title. Going further back, debates before late December 2004 were not stored by preserving the sub-page - they were archived by hand to a sub-page of Misplaced Pages:Archived delete debates. Debates from 2003 and older were generally moved to the article's Talk page if the decision was "keep" and the discussions lost if the decision was "delete". Rossami (talk) 01:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

When you say "lost", presumably they are still in the page history? Carcharoth 17:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

In theory, sure. But which page and how do you find it? Was it an archive of the VfD discussion page, a sub-page, a moved page? Those old discussions are functionally gone. And, by the way, those edit histories from before that last database crash (which was in 2002 if I remember correctly) are gone permanently. Rossami (talk) 18:34, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Please improve AfD procedure

I just went through the AfD procedure for the first time. Man! What a workout! I'm still not sure that I did everything according to protocol. This procedure is far too complex - or at least, the instructions are. It seems like the kind of thing that a bot or script could do. I'd like to see something along the lines of {{afd|controversial|bio|reason}}

Let the bot figure out the creation of the entries on the log pages, the talk pages, the article pages, etc., as well as the entries in the one-line edit summaries. The way it is now, it is too easy to put the tags in the wrong places, to click on the wrong links, to copy and paste the wrong text ... See what I mean? Cbdorsett 04:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

A proposal for a bot that could do this was rejected, although it was linking from an externally-hosted form rather than looking at templates on-wiki. (It might be accepted if this were done entirely on-wiki; I've thought about this myself in the past.) Scripts to do this already exist; see WikiProject user scripts' script repository. --ais523 11:19, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Aveda Page

I do not think that the Aveda page should be deleted. It is no longer written as an advertisement, I have spent upwords of 3 hours correcting edits that were made by a different salon in an attempt to promote themselves. This company is more than notable as it has established salons and a reputation world wide and is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If somebody could please help me to re-write this so that the advertisement tag can be taken off and the article taken off the list of deletions, I would very much appreciate it. This is a company that helps people world-wide, and it should not be deleted for the simple reason that one salon tried to ruin it. As for the external links on the bottom of the page, I believe that they should be kept; it is important to view the differences between lifestyle/concept/experience centers, and people can either visit the sites to see these differences or, if they are in the area, Aveda asks all salons to offer full tours and information to all clients. Thank you for your time, and again, please help me make this article better. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.246.144.52 (talk) 14:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

Please comment on individual deletion discussions on the discussion page itself, not here. The discussion pages are named in the form "Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/(name of page)", alternatively just go to the article and click the "this article's entry" link on the deletion notice. Thanks – Qxz 17:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Strange article

I don't want to nominate this directly for deletion, but is Statistics of Aberdeen really the way Misplaced Pages wants to go? Seems a bit like an indiscriminate collection of information to me. Carcharoth 17:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that an article consisting entirely of statistics isn't a particularly good idea. If you don't want to delete it, I recommend that you bring up the issue on the article's discussion page, apply appropriate tags to the article, and/or contact the article's creator and discuss the matter with them. For future reference, bear in mind that this page is intended for discussion of the page Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion and its associated process, not individual articles or deletion debates. Thanks – Qxz 17:21, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. I also know that some places get more traffic than the talk page of an article last edited, um, 2 days ago. OK, I eat my hat. I'll think about toddling off to the article talk page or that of the creator. :-) I also see that you responded likewise to the post in the previous section, which is more obviously in the wrong place than my post. Mine was a sort of preamble to starting a deletion discussion. I tend not to do that on the talk pages themselves, because if the article is deleted, then what I write there gets deleted as well. Also, would you have time to consider what I posted a few sections further up? The reply to the old AfD discussions thread. Finally, where do people discuss in general the boundaries of what is suitable for AfDing, if not here? Carcharoth 17:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

At the talk page of Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy perhaps, or (better) at the relevant policies / guidelines (WP:NOT, WP:NOTE, ... This page is more for "how to AfD", not so much "What to AfD". Fram 08:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy does look like the right place. Thanks. Carcharoth 16:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

New template

What does anyone think of the new template Template:Deletetop? I think it makes it simpler for a notice at the top of daily pages, as all previous pages had the full boilerplate text. Any other thoughts? Alex43223 06:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I like it. Substitution is always easier, and better. Bigman17 01:52, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Whhops, I meant inclusion. Bigman17 04:25, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Use of Cruft

I know a lot of people use the term cruft to say they think a page should be deleted, but I think this is poor form, as it's a slang term, without a real defined meaning. Would it be acceptable to folks to add an admonishment of some kind against using that term in the etiquette section? I also think the guide to deletion should advise against using the term as well. Mister.Manticore 15:02, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions does mention it under WP:IDONTLIKEIT, but it couldn't hurt to mention it elsewhere. The biggest problems I have with it the increasingly widespread misuse of it and the use of it as an insult. Koweja 18:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Editing pages that you have proposed for Delete

I have come across a situation where a couple of Editors wanted an article deleted, and then, when they were losing the argument, they went to the page to edit it to make it worse and more likely to be deleted. I am tempted to add something to the AfD ettiquette to state what I would have thought was obvious, which is that if you have voted delete (or redirect/merge which comes to the same thing) you should not edit the page in question while the AfD debate is going on. What do people think? NBeale 22:52, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Obviously a nominator shouldn't trash an article to get it deleted; anyone doing that will produce a backlash. That's obvious enough not to need a specific rule, I think. A blanket rule against editing by delete/merge voters would be bad -- it's perfectly reasonable to, say, argue for deleting the whole article as OR and then cut a section that has WP:BLP problems as well. —Celithemis 23:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Also some conscientious nominators will sometimes improve an article to give it its best chance. Tyrenius 23:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

This is the article Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit and I am one of the naughty editors who is asking that he phrase the subject of the article in the authors own words and not via comments from a critic. Trashing the article?????? Sophia 23:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

A similar thing happened to a TfD for {{Underdiscussion}}. It may have been done in good faith, but changing the appearance of the template when nominating it for deletion is poor form IMHO. So this applies to pages in general, not just articles. The basic point is that pages that can be improved, should be improved, not deleted. When you nominate a page for deletion, you are saying that it cannot be improved, so you should not be changing it (except for Copyright, BLP, or similar serious problems). Dhaluza 01:46, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Things can occur in the course of an *fD that weren't obvious at the outset. If an editor makes the article or template worse, that can be addressed in the *fd discussion, and the edit, if necessary, reverted. Deleted material in an article can actually improve its quality, if done properly. Obviously any deliberate subversion is to be stopped, as it would be normally anyway. Tyrenius 01:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Utter nonsense as extrapolate this to say some fan-boy cruft page containing utter nonsense which reflects badly on Misplaced Pages. Then what you are saying is that editors who say delete cannot go in and edit the page ?. Obviously the fan-boy is going to feel somewhat narked and will quote your proposed change to AfD policy to stop any cleanups.

The converse is that I have come across the situation where when it looked like I was losing the AfD I dug around and edited the article to improve it. The article 'won' the AfD. It is thus unfair that according to your suggestion some editors cannot edit when others can based on how that vote in an AfD. There are no sides to an AfD just an outcome that is the consensus as to what improves Misplaced Pages. If to improve means a redirect or delete then so be it: that is the consensus and your proposal would unbalance articles by placing a handicap on one of the consensus viewpoints. Ttiotsw 03:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Editors working to improve an article should be praised and appreciated in most any circumstance I can imagine. I can't, however, figure any valid reason why someone would go into an article aiming specifically to damage or otherwise worsen it, which is my impression of the complaint above. I haven't seen this happening, but if I did, it might be worth a trip to WP:AN/I or other venues. – Luna Santin (talk) 22:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Not sure whether to Afd this

There is a template on U.S. demographics. It has a link to the article, Ethnicity (United States Census), which offers a few quotes, completely without context, from the 2000 Census. The template also links to the article, Race (United States Census), which includes a section on ethnicity with some of the same quotes (this time in some context). I understand that "ethnicity" is a different concept than "race," but the ethnicity article really doesn't say much. I'm tempted to nominate the former article for merger into the latter, but before I do I was hoping to get a reality check. Any opinions?--Vbd (talk) 21:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Merging doesn't require an AFD -- you can just propose it. —Celithemis 22:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Better still, you can just do it. >Radiant< 13:39, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I favor the merge concept. This gives other users the chance to voice their opinions which should form the basis for consensus. Ronbo76 13:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed AfD template change

I have proposed a change in an AfD template. Please comment at Template talk:REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD. —dgies_c 17:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

POVDelete

this section seems to show how to vote delete, but doesn't say how to vote keep. McKay 22:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

At first glance, I'm not sure if I see what you mean. Could you be more specific? – Luna Santin (talk) 22:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

example: "Arguments commonly used to recommend deletion are:" and a list of common arguments for deletion. But it says nothing about commonly used recommendations are for keeping. McKay 22:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

That's 'cause there aren't any. Common arguments to keep are "here's the evidence rebutting the argument(s) for deletion". Trying to list all possible "keep" arguments would be pointless. On the other hand, listing a few of the more common "delete" arguments helps readers understand what is not a valid argument for deletion. Rossami (talk) 01:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not sure what section you were looking at but the section you tagged doesn't show either one. #How to discuss an AfD/Wikietiquette says don't vote, don't cheat and follow the standard bulleted format.
Now, personally I'd like to see the entire section obsoleted in favor of the much richer discussion at WP:GAFD because this page has again grown out of control. But that's a separate discussion. Rossami (talk) 22:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. This page has NPOV problems as it does not present a balanced view of deletion, i.e. when to delete, and when not to delete. The bias, if any, should be to use deletion only as a last resort when all other options (e.g. improve, merge, etc.) have been exhausted. But this page makes only a brief mention of the alternatives, then goes on at great length about the deletion process. I would prefer to see a little more balance. Dhaluza 01:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The page you are looking for, then, is Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy. That page is where you should be walking through when to delete and when not to. But once you've worked through the policy and come to the conclusion that deletion may be appropriate, you go to the AFD page where, yes, we go on a great length about the deletion process. We have to tell people about the procedure somewhere. Rossami (talk)

• The section "alternatives to deletion" lists a bunch of problems that have other solutions (like editing, merging or tagging). It follows that these are not arguments for deletion. At any rate, we do not have a limited list of possible arguments either way; if you think something is a good argument, make it in the discussion. >Radiant< 07:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

• I did, but you systematically removed my contributions: . My point is that both of these pages lack a balanced treatment of the issues surrounding deletion. Dhaluza 12:10, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  • No, I said make it in the discussion, meaning individual AFD debates. The deletion policy is not intended to give an exhaustive list of possible reasons either way (nor, for that matter, to enumerate all cleanup templates). >Radiant< 12:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, let me be more clear. I tagged a section, because it does not represent an NPOV. There are two points of views, equally valid presuming the policies are kept:

1. Keepists
2. Deleteists

The rest of the article discusses how to list an article up for AfD. There should be a section on how to participate in an AfD, and it might as well go on this page. This is the section on how to contribute to an AfD page. I'm saying that this section is POV, because the entire section is NPOV except the bullet:

• Arguments commonly used to recommend deletion are: "unverifiable" (violates WP:V), "original research" (violates WP:OR), "unencyclopedic", and "non-notable", if for example, a person does not meet WP:BIO (it is advisable out of courtesy to use the latter term, rather than the former). The accusation VANITY should be avoided , and is not in itself a reason for deletion. The argument "non-neutral point of view" (violates WP:NPOV) is often used, but often such articles can be salvaged, so this is not a very strong reason for deletion either.

It tells people how to vote delete, but the keepists don't ever get advice on how to be a keepist. If someone wants to be a deletist, they get guidelines on how to be effective. If someone wants to be a keepist, they have no choice but to muddle around making mistakes over and over again until they learn by the school of hard knocks. I think that this needs to be resolved. McKay 14:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

• • "Those who wish for an article to be kept are advised to improve the article to address the complaints given in the deletion nomination and debate, search out references showing the notability of the subject, and refute the deletion arguments using policy, guidelines, and examples from our good and featured articles." Problem solved, annoying edit war may now cease. --tjstrf talk 20:38, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I like it. Maybe we could also reference WP:NOT? McKay 20:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I see where the problem lies. It's not a POV problem with the text, it's a POV problem with the user. If you approach the situation with the notion that there is a camp of "keepists" and a camp of "deleteists", then you're going nowhere fast - AfD simply does not work that way. What is supposed to happen is someone presents a reason for deletion, and either that reason is not good enough or someone presents some counter-evidence. Chris cheese whine 21:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

True, he does have a rather skewed view of the whole matter. However, he does raise a point that newbies pointed to WP:AFD are given no hints as to what to say, which may in part be why so many new voters say things like "it's useful" or "I worked hard on that!" It certainly can't hurt anything to append a sentence or two on explaining how to give a reasoned keep vote. --tjstrf talk 21:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Be that as it may, it still remains that the POV of the description is not a problem - it isn't right to say that it favours deletion in some way. It could stand to some improvement, but nothing to justify a POV dispute tag. Chris cheese whine 22:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

When it comes to that, POV dispute tags aren't meant for policy pages anyway. I just figure that if there's an obvious way of quieting a complaint, then dealing with the edit war now makes sense. Explaining the finer points of AfD culture and dispute template usage to him can be saved for a later time. --tjstrf talk 22:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

New bullet point to address complaint

Since McKaysalisbury indicated that it would address his complaint, I have gone ahead and made the addition (with minor rewording) that I suggested above.

The new bullet reads "If you wish for an article to be kept the best thing you can do is improve the article to address the complaints given in the deletion nomination and debate. You can search out references showing the notability of the subject, and refute the deletion arguments given using policy, guidelines, and examples from our good and featured articles." I do not believe this should be a controversial change, since it simply advises people on existing practice (if you fix the page, we will not delete it) and recommends adding citations to articles. Given that lack of citations is the primary reason for nominations based in both notability and verifiability, this is about the best piece of advice you could possibly give to a newbie wanting their article kept.

I also simultaneously made a minor change to the preceding bullet point, which may have been erroneous. (It made sense at the time, but I'm having nagging doubts now.) This was removing "unencyclopedic" along with a paranthetical comment which appeared to be saying not to call pages unencyclopedic. Since the sentence mentioned three terms rather than two, it is possible that I misinterpreted it and would appreciate being corrected if that is the case. Never mind, I figured out what the sentence was trying to say and clarified it. --tjstrf talk 22:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

our good and featured articles. You are in effect suggesting that these articles be used as precedent. I do not recall seeing this mooted specifically before, and in any case I do not accept it. They may represent long-ago decisions, they may contain major flaws--many articles have been promoted over opposition. As a practical matter, this would require those trying to maintain standards to monitor not just AfD, which is certainly difficult enough, but every Good and FA discussion. I understand the need to say that existing WP articles' mere existence is not enough precedent. . I do not think anybody doubts that. Also, I cannot remember hearing this G & FA comparison argument used in AfD or Deletion Review in the last few months. So to extend this further would I think require a major discussion--or did I miss it somewhere above. ?DGG 03:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Consensus is that our featured articles are among our best articles quality-wise, regardless of their subject matter, and they tend to use proper citation formats with the {{cite}} family. I don't see a problem with this, however, I'm not sure the relatively unreviewed WP:GA process is a good example to use. Chris cheese whine 11:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Link to WP:BIAS

I don't think that it's a good idea to include a bullet point saying to make sure systemic bias is not exacerbated, because it's far too easy to misapply. For instance, deleting a completely unsourced article on some Pakistani activist would be interpreted by quite a few as increasing systemic bias. The problem is, it's still unsourced, and sourcing can't get overruled by cries of "systemic bias!". -Amarkov moo!

Agreed, easily abusable and we shouldn't be expecting people to read every single anicillary policy page before they nominate things anyway. --tjstrf talk 02:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Disagree, WP:V and/or WP:ATT are policy, and are not trumped by WP:BIAS. Anything can be abused (including AfD) but that is not reason for not mentioning it. Biases are a real problem, and AfD reveals them. It is relevant to this discussion. Dhaluza 09:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. There are far, far, far too many AfDs for notable people, events, locations, and items which are simply unknown among tech-savvy white male United States residents. There are also too many AfDs for notable people, events, and items that the average tech-savvy white male United States resident thinks "frivolous" or "useless" (read "popular with women"). Notable means notable, not cool or guy-related or American-themed or Googleable. --Charlene 08:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree that something needs to be done about that. But this is not the solution, because it's quite often misused to say "You can't delete my unsourced article on a Persian dude, because that would be systemic bias. Maybe a sentence saying "Remember, Misplaced Pages's definition of notability is different than you might think.", but not this. -Amarkov moo! 04:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Re-open AfD, or further discussion of a closed AfD

Where could I go to discuss an AfD after it has already been closed? I am not trying to nominate a page for AfD, I want to discuss the AfD itself.

Specifically, I want to contest the outcome of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Lindner Ethics Complaint of the 83rd Minnesota Legislative Session. The result was to "rename", but this I think was done hastily, and did not consider that they are renaming an article about a scandal to an article about a person, making the article a HUGE NPOV violation.

Can a closed AfD be re-opened? If not, where should I bring my concerns? :: ZJH 21:14, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see Misplaced Pages:Deletion review.--Fuhghettaboutit 21:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Deletion Review won't touch that one since the result was "redirect" which is a variant of "keep". The decisions about redirects and renaming are solved on the respective Talk pages. In this respect, AFD decisions are not definitive - they can be changed by any consensus of future editors to a different destination or even to an independent article. Future editors would only be expected to give some acknowledgment to the research that went into the AFD discussion and not to overturn that consensus without clear evidence that consensus has changed. Make your case at Talk:Arlon Lindner. Rossami (talk) 20:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

What to do with unquestionable bad-faith nominators?

In Scalgon's 14 minutes of Misplaced Pages existence , he has nominated 10 random pages for deletion. We know it is random because of the "Nominating 10 random pages for deletion" that he thoughtfully provided for each one. I'd say it is obvious that a speedy keep is the call for all of these AfD's, but should the user's actions be brought up anywhere? Vandalism notice board? I have no idea where this sort of thing should go. Tarc 14:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:AN/I.⇒ SWATJester 22:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Protest!

Some time ago, on this very page (look above for # 11 Battlemaster game page) I asked for the clear rules for articles about the games. Everybody agreed that such CLEAR rules are needed and the other articles like Anarchy Online are the crap currently and should be deleted as well like BattleMaster. BUT only this one article of BattleMaster is deleted while others live.

I asked for the clear rules but nobody replied, so I tried to rebuild this article from the scratch to keep all WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:N required (BattleMaster had the links to independent Reviewers articles - it's quite rare for the article about a game) and what? Someone keeps deleting my work without even checking it! I protest against the vandals among the administrators! Merewyn 17:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

AFDs - should they run for the full 5 day period??.....

I think they should, unless they are explicitly a bad-faith nomination or a frivolous one, or they are about someone who does not meet notability standards or WP:CORP, WP:WEB et.al at all (I think I've seen one that was speedily closed as CSD A7, and another as CSD G11).

There is a good reason for this. I feel, by leaving all AFD's open for the 5 day period in full, it opens them up to the wider Misplaced Pages community. Longer period - hopefully more views.

Comment is welcomed. --sunstar net 23:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

In general, certainly. However, if every single person for 3 days has agreed that an article is, for instance, a terrible POV fork, there is really no point in allowing it to stand for another two days. -Amarkov moo! 23:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Bad faith noms are pretty apparent, though occasionally while the nom itself is lacking and openly recognized as such, some such noms end in a delete consensus. Unless the nom is completely fruitless and frivolous, or contains personal attacks, it should stand and let the community review it. As far as meeting the guidelines, they are just guidelines and not binding policy. It is the purpose of AfD to determine community consensus on those matters in relation to inclusion/exclusion. WP:SNOW already allows overwhelming obvious cases to be closed. Just some thoughts. Vassyana 04:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur with one exception. If the article unambiguously meets a criterion for speedy deletion, that criterion may be applied immediately and the debate closed. Vandalism or copyright violations should not be allowed to remain for 5 days just because the nominator was unfamiliar with the CSD process and used the AFD process instead. Speedy-closes based on CSD cases A7 and G11 are allowed but if there's any room for doubt at all, the AFD discussion should remain open. Rossami (talk) 14:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. There are over 100 articles per day. It is a lot to ask not only the admins patroling them to close, but perhaps even more importantly, the editors evaluating and weighing in to review. While I definitely prefer a conservative approach to early closures, I think it is very helpful to the process to clear out AfDs as soon as consensus has been established. I think it is almost exclusively early closures that are not conservative, or early closures on high-traffic AfDs where people want to have their say in the matter, that cause problems and inevitably end up at DRV. It is in these cases that AfDs should always be left to run the full course. What we need to focus on are those AfDs, but establishing a blanket rule that all AfDs must run the full 5 days will just clog up an already overburdened system. —Doug Bell 19:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Unless there is a clear result the 5 days must be given. Even then if an article goes to deletion review, and has not had 5 days, it will be instantly reinstated. The rules are 5 days and should be followed unless absolutely sure (10+ delete votes etc).--Dacium 09:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Deletion discussions are not governed by number of votes, but by weight of opinion backed by policy and consensus. —Doug Bell 10:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Are the votes even considered at all? If that is the case, why are the opinions in any given discussion preceded by a YEA or NAY response? Aarktica 20:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

AfD process, is it just me?

On two or three occasions I have AfD'd an article and everything goes fine until I get to the 3rd step. I copy the afd3 template onto the log page, add my edit summary, preview or save, and my comments get added to the last entry's nominator summary. See Apr 1 deletion log, #23 Red and white nights. The AfDtemplate is on the page I nominated, Nation of Deseret, the discussion page is created with my comments, but the article does not show up on the Apr 1 log. I've AfD'd other articles and had it appear correctly, but at least one other time this has happened. Now my comments are attached to #23's nomination and I can't get them out of there. Help! --killing sparrows 05:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You're missing part of step 2, where you add this template to the deletion discussion page:

{{subst:afd2 | pg=PageName | cat=Category | text=Reason the page should be deleted}} ~~~~

That template creates the heading that separates one AFD from another. If you click the "preloaded debate" link in the article's AFD tag it should add this template automatically; otherwise you can just paste it in. (I've repaired the Nation of Deseret nom.) —Celithemis 05:30, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Great! Thankyou! I knew I was doing something wrong. I'm going to find another article to nominate (not frivolously) so I can get it right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Killing sparrows (talk • contribs)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 08:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed rename Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion -> Misplaced Pages:Articles for discussion

I think such a rename would promote "discussions" rather than "votes". After all the intention in a nomination is creating a discussion over the "usefulness" of an article. The proposed change is indeed mostly symbolic but I feel the end results might be worth it. They are both AFDs so the shortcut wouldn't change. -- Cat 22:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Um... why does including the word "discussion" rather than "deletion" change anything? It makes sense for CfD, because CfD also includes merge and rename decisions. AfD does not, and renaming it might encourage people to start bringing their rename and merge discussions here. -Amarkov moore cowbell! 22:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree. It isn't uncommon for an AfD to end up with a merge, keep or even move. -- Cat 23:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

No, but it isn't binding either. A redirect is arguably binding, since that can be seen as equivalent to "Delete but I'm going to make something useful with the title". A merge outcome is widely considered not to be binding, move outcomes are definitely not binding, because that is an editorial decision that should be made by people familiar with the topic, and a keep decision is just a decision not to delete it. -Amarkov moore cowbell! 23:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. The primary purpose of the AfD process is deletion. People who nominate articles for AfD with the intention of having them merged or redirected are told outright, "Do not bring articles to AfD unless you want them deleted." howcheng {chat} 23:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. If articles are brought to AfD one outcome is deletion, another is merger, another redirection, another cleanup, another nothing. "Articles for Discussion" captures this as poorly as "Articles for Deletion". A better term, though I do not advocate changing the name at all, would be "Problem Articles Considered for Change" WP:PACC. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose "Articles for discussion" doesn't read well. "Articles for deletion" reflects much better what happens at AfD, as stated above. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose for now, until these discussions can have other binding results (like renaming, sourcing, cleaning or splitting). -- ReyBrujo 00:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Nothing wrong with having a page entitled Articles for discussion, but there is nothing to be gained by losing a page specifically dedicated to nominations for deletion. Cbdorsett 06:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose ... Deletion does not imply voting. Instead it should be made standard to not allow people to place KEEP/DELETE at the front of their comment, instead let the comment stand for itself.--Dacium 09:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Need I point out that you preceded your remarks on this subject with the Oppose vote? --Aarktica 20:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - As almost everyone else has mentioned, naming it "deletion" does not imply a vote. Actually, the instructions themselves state Remember that while AfD may look like a voting process, it does not operate like one. Justification and evidence for a response carries far more weight than the response itself. Thus, you should not attempt to structure the AfD process like a vote (from WP:AFD#AfD etiquette). --Kimon 23:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Although I have pointed out the irony in Dacium's remarks on the subject matter, I believe that underlying assertion is true. However, as long as remarks are preceded by bold-faced phrases and one-liners, the system will always be considered a vote by those who are removed from wiki-mechanics. Aarktica 20:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Support although I'm going against the flow here. I don't think the proposed name change would cause a problem in terms of it being used for move, merge or redirect proposals; non-controversial moves, merges or redirects already take place without discussion, and I don't think it would be harmful if controversial ones were to be brought here. I also think it would fit better with the other XfDs (redirects for discussion, etc.) if the same system was applied uniformly. However, I can also see the opposers' point of view, in that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and the proposed change would be more symbolic than practical. Walton 18:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Gem

Happened to run across this little gem of a "conspiracy", someone may want to comment to these guys: Dreadlocke ☥ 21:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

One topic two articles

There are two article present about Hilal-i_jurat ( A Pakistani Medal)

1. Hilal-E-Jurrat
2. Hilal-i-Jurat

The first one should be deleted as 2nd one is more elaborated. §Sulaimandaud 14:59, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Rather than delete the first one, I redirected the first to the second, see the latter's talk page for more information. McKay 15:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Aspects of Mars

This article has been nominated for deletion, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Aspects of Mars on the same day it survived its previous nomination, bundled with Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Aspects of Pluto. There is no new evidence put forward to support this AFD, no discussion has occurred on any of the talk pages, and further a mess has been made of the nomination so it is not realy clear exactly which articles are being nominated and for what reason, also because the title article has changed it is not clear that this is a second nomination, which is unfair considoring the very short gap between nominations. Having discussed the issue with the sysop who closed the first AFD (no consensus) I have decided to post here and ask that the current AFD be speedy deleted, kind regards sbandrews (t) 20:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

IP's voting?

Can IP's vote? --TeckWiz Contribs_@(Lets go Yankees!) 13:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

"Unregistered or new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion, but their recommendations may be discounted, especially if they seem to be made in bad faith (for example, if they misrepresent their reasons). Conversely, the opinions of logged in users whose accounts predate the article's AfD nomination are given more weight."

They can, but they may not be given as much weight for consideration. Bladestorm 14:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

We also should clarify that despite appearances, we are not really voting. Weight of argument and policy influences the final outcome far more than numbers or signature. You can read more at Guide to deletion. Rossami (talk) 17:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

If an anonymous user gives a well-thought out, policy-driven explanation of their reasoning, and doesn't appear to have the same editing style of a user who has already commented, it's likely that their opinion would be given decent weight. If a lot of IPs start commenting, or they use the same, strange formats for their comments, they'll probably be ignored. Leebo /C 17:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Until the appearance of "vote-stacking" becomes evident, I suggest assumption of good faith. Aarktica 17:36, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

AFD is dead

If you don't like the result, nominate it again! If there's no consensus, delete it anyway! Fantastic. Js farrar 07:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

If you have a problem with a closure, bring it up at WP:DRV. -Amarkov moo! 20:08, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:DRV won't help with a repeat nomination will it? sbandrews (t) 20:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It depends. If the repeat nomination was like two weeks after the previous one, and no new information has come to light, then it will help. Otherwise, it won't, but it shouldn't anyway. Remember, consensus can change, it just doesn't do so after only two weeks. -Amarkov moo! 20:42, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

then did I put my above post for Aspect of Mars in the wrong place? nominated the same day as closure!.. sbandrews (t) 20:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

If it isn't closed yet, than DRV won't help. But in this case, it doesn't matter, because that is obviously too soon. -Amarkov moo! 20:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

ok, thanks for the advice :) regards sbandrews (t) 20:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

How to remove an AfD

Hi there, I started an AfD for Parras Middle School and then found out it had just been AfD'd a few days ago. I realize I should have checked the Hx but I didn't and now think I should wait awhile to nominate it. How can I remove it from the list? I was going to go ahead and list it a second time, just so I would know how to do that but the directions for that are not clear to me. Yes, maybe I am a moron, but the process is not well explained.

'...you must manually edit the AfD nomination links in order to create a new discussion page using the name format of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/PAGENAME (2nd nomination).'

Does this mean I just create a new page, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Parras Middle School (2nd nomination) and then put on that page something like...

...reason I think this article should be deleted. This is a second nomination, see Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Parras Middle School?

Then on the AfD log do I just use Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/PageName(2nd nomination) ?

I'll take my lashes for not checking the history but would like to know if this is the procedure.

Thanks, killing sparrows 03:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the directions. I followed them, or thought I did, and the discussion page is created but when I try to add it to the log its at the bottom of the previous entry, not as it's own entry. This has happened to me before. I really wish I knew what I was doing wrong here! Help! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Killing sparrows (talk • contribs) 04:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC).

AfD guideline proposal - minimal research before nominating for AfD

A very serious problem I've been noticing is that some editors have been nominating articles for deletion, wether speedy or AfD, which topics very easily follow even the more rigid interpretations of our inclusion standards. Frequently these are topics which don't yet have published works about them listed in the article, although those published works can be very quickly found by a simple g-search. Recent examples of this have been

Firehouse Subs (AfD)

Stéphane Crête (AfD)

Woodhaven Lakes (AfD)

Incendiary Blonde (speedy deletion tagged)

The direct negative result of these needless AfDs is a great deal of time and effort by good and productive editors goes wasted. If all the effort that goes into investigating and dealing with these AfDs went into improving existing articles and creating new ones of worthy topics, I think we can all agree that the quality of this project will be improved.

I know there's an argument that might go "An AfD can be used to motivate editors to demonstrate inclusion worthiness." This is wrong for two reasons; 1. That is not the purpose of AfDs. They are meant for editors to propose deletion of articles they genuinely feel are not worthy for inclusion and for other editors to build consensus to keep or delete the article. They are not meant as a regular editing tool. 2. If an editor has examined an article topic enough and concluded an article about it should be deleted, they should have already determined that the topic didn't meet our inclusion standards. A google search is a procedure that takes only a few seconds. The "I don't see published works on this topic so other editors need to find some or I will delete this" argument is a bizarre statement on that editor's laziness and, again, it wastes the time of other editors who now must seek out published works about the topic to show that editor that it's a "notable" topic. With some of these AfDs, the time it took to create the AfDs likely was several times longer than doing a 5 second G-search that would've determined "notability." Which brings me to a proposal...

The proposal is adding the following to the "Before nominating an AfD":

Please ensure to the best of your ability that the topic does not meet Misplaced Pages's inclusion standards. If an article is nominated for AfD that can easily be determined to meet inclusion standards, the AfD can waste the effort and time of Wikipeda editors and administrators alike. Many articles that do not have secondary sources about the topic listed in the article may in fact have multiple published works about it which are easily found but have simply not been inserted into an article yet. This can be determined by, for examples, a Google search or a Google News Archive Search. If you are unable to find sources about the topic, consider inserting a source tag before nominating an article for deletion.

Opinions? --Oakshade 03:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the article, but I have seen source tags sit for months and no editor ever bothers to address the problem. Yet those articles may never be brought to Afd either. In some situations, if the editor who started the article, and even others who have contributed to it, have not been able to satisfy the notable requirement, then why should the burden be shifted to the editor who wants to bring the article to Afd? Why does that make him/her lazy?--Vbd (talk) 03:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• As amazing as it may seem, some people nominate articles of notable topics for deletion within a day of their creation when the editors could've used less effort with a simple g-search. Barbara Biggs and Kalanidhi Maran are examples of this. The iconic dot.com bust company eToys.com article was prodded and then AfD'd within 5 days of it's creation . I'm not saying that any editor who considers nominating an article for deletion must spend hours scouring the net and their local library for evidence a topic meets inclusion standards, but just take literally a few seconds at a search engine. This proposed clause is aimed at people who don't even do that. --Oakshade 06:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Oakshade, but Vbd makes good points too. Hmmmmm. Personally, I think we should favor procedures that minimize the time editors and admins have to spend doing their jobs, and also minimize anything that results in duplicated effort. On the one hand, we have tags for stubs and articles that need cites, both of which automatically put the articles into easily searchable categories. The article starts out in terrible shape and may sit around for a while, then eventually someone takes interest in it and cleans it up. That doesn't mean it's worthless. How long should it sit? Beats me, but a week sure seems like way too short.

I think charges of "laziness" should be applied with great care, just like charges of vandalism. Sure, some people are lazy, but there are lots of valid reasons why people don't do a thorough professional job the first time through, such as:

• • No applicable reference works readily at hand. The editor may know something and be able to write about it quite nicely, but doesn't have the books in his or her personal library, and can't run out to the public library at the moment.
  • No time to really sit down and think about every little keystroke. Maybe the editor is dashing something off during a coffee break at work, or is interrupted by something offline in the "real world", or has small children in the house, or has big kids who have dibs on the computer ...
  • A beginning editor who does not yet know all the protocols (who does?)
  • The editor has certain strengths, such as being able to translate from another Misplaced Pages, and wants to make a contribution where possible. Let someone else find the cites or copyedit for spelling, grammar and punctuation.
  • The editor has an opinion regarding noteworthiness or copyright infringement, but instead of "being bold," wants others to make the actual decision to delete.
  • The editor's most effectively personal style may be to dash off a quick first draft, then come back after a few weeks to polish it up.

Sure, editors should be encouraged to make contributions which consist of summaries of citable published works. But if, at the same time, we tell editors to scrub vigorously when they find unsupported assertions, we will get nowhere. Like filling in holes because nobody has planted trees in them yet.

So on balance, I guess I would have to say I'm with the crowd that thinks articles should only be deleted if they are irredeemable. Cbdorsett 04:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• I understand what you are saying, but my issue might be a direct challenge only to your 2nd example;"No time to really sit down and think about every little keystroke. Maybe the editor is dashing something off during a coffee break at work..." I strongly believe if someone doesn't have the time to employ even 10 seconds of research on a topic they've never heard of, they shouldn't nominate that topic for deletion. As mentioned in a previous response, this proposed clause is aimed at the users who don't employ that less-than-half-minute of typing a topic name in a search engine where they might find evidence of "notability." After all, if someone doesn't see sources in an article, that 10 seconds of googling is less time than it is to set up an Afd. As for opinions of notworthiness, I do understand that people feel that way about certain topics, but that's a different issue - I've seen articles nominated for deletion even with multiple non-trival published works about the topic. All I'm proposing is something to encourage editors to do the slightest search on a topic before nominating an article for deletion. That likely will save a lot of time and effort for editors on this project. --Oakshade 06:53, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi there,

I am a newcomer here (3 months, approx 1000 edits), and am appalled at the amount of crap I see. I know there is much good here also and I work in several ways to make it better. I saw this topic listed and thought I would add that in my opinion the burden of sourcing and referencing should be on the creator, not the reader. Here I am speaking as a reader.

I saw somewhere that 90% of users are not editors, they are readers. If we want to have a credible resource we must insist on credible sourcing by creators. I have seen the argument re: cheap or unlimited disk space used to allow the inclusion of almost anything and leaving almost anything in since someone else can source it and improve it, that may be true, but the human resources required source, verify, copyedit and wikify is not unlimited, or even cheap! I see articles that are poorly sourced and I am willing to work on these, if the topic is of interest to me, but not for endless cultural minutiae that has little value (granted, in my opinion). Leaving it for the next guy is a poor choice, what if there is no next guy? Again the reader, the person we are creating this thing for, is the loser.

A point is made about the time and effort involved in the AfD debates, if the articles were properly sourced, they would not be up for deletion except for notability! If someone goes to the trouble to write an article they must have used sources or it would be WP:OR! List the sources after you write the article! Ask for help! I have offered and given help to those who have asked and will continue to do so, but the burden should be on the creator, not the reader.

Again, I am new, and don't think that I am belittling the effort of those who have done all the work here before I came along, I'm not. If I am naive and misinformed, point me to enlightenment, I can be reasoned with. The perception of, and the credibility of WP is pretty low and insisting on sources by the creators of articles is not setting the bar too high. Thanks, --killing sparrows 04:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Killing sparrows, you're not all that new, and you've been getting a very intensive experience at AfD So you know that the problem is that we also want to rescue the good articles and encourage the good editors. Some even obvious things truly do need just a bit of research.

• Someone nominated Brown Girl Brownstones for speedy a few months ago. it was a short article, and they had never heard of the book. Take a look at that article. 30 seconds with Google would have prevented that ed. from looking like a fool.

Most WP articles start out modestly. We want to give every incentive for them to be improved. throwing them out is not the way. Follow the history of some articles and you'll see. Everybody has a different idea of "endless cultural minuentia" that's why no one person should remove articles that might just possibly have merit. I know a guy who usually deletes short articles on snakes. He doesn't think they're interesting, but the Biology people have reasonably decided there are so many species that stubs are OK. Prod lets people have 5 days to look. it deals very nicely with apparently abandoned articles. If anyone wants to save them, they will. speedy allows 5 minutes sometimes, 5 hours if there's a real backlog. That does not give people a chance. DGG 07:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)