Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 12:58, 10 January 2007 (→Proposal to deprecate deletions and archive instead: reply to Addhoc). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

What's wrong and how to fix it

This is my effort to examine what is wrong with the structure of WP:PAIN, and then turning those cons into pros. Please note each bad point as a subsection, e.g.:

===Encourages incivility===
blah blah blah WP:CIVIL WP:BEANS WP:DICK ~~~~
===Overly bureaucratic===
blah WP:NOT blah blah Jimbo Wales ~~~~

etc. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 02:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to deprecate deletions and archive instead

Not strictly the right place to mention this, but as this is the most active MfD at the moment, I thought the people here might be interested in the proposal I have made here. This is to make clearer the differences between deletion and archiving. Comments over there would be appreciated. I've also posted a notice at the policy area of the Village pump. Carcharoth 11:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for you comment. If the page was deleted, I wouldn't object to anyone posting to a short explanation of the notice board and the consensus to delete. I don't expect that many non-admins would be very interested in trawling through page histories, consequently I would suggest the difference between "delete followed by posting an explanation" and "close down followed by posting an explanation" is very subtle. Addhoc 12:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Really? The difference is not very subtle at all. Deleted pages shouldn't funtion as an "admin-only archive". If something needs to be kept as an archive, then archive it properly and keep it accessible to all. Deletion should be reserved for rubbish that really can be deleted completely at some point, and that no-one will be interested in. Deleted pages have been lost completely before, so anything that should be archived should be tagged that way and (if necessary to properly 'disconnect it') blanked, not deleted. Blanking a page and adding an explanation is much more of an open approach than deleting. Note that I am only referring to the Misplaced Pages namespace here, not article space, which (for various reasons) does need outright deletion to take place to keep things under control. The Misplaced Pages namespace is a lot more about organisation and planning and strategy than the other namespaces, and the history is often useful. Carcharoth 12:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)