Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy

• Talk from 2002 -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/2002
• Talk from 2003 -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/2003
• "seven day rule" -> Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/lag time
• policy for redirects -> Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects
• feature suggestions -> meta:searches and redirects
• Various points from the Village pump in September 2003
• use of the word "unencyclopedic" -> Wikipedia:Unencyclopedic
• Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/schools
• Should VfD be renamed? -> Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/title
• Case studies: wikipedia:archived deletion debates
• speedy deletion: Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion
• Archive November 2003 to October 2004
• Archive October 2004 to December 2004
• Archive December 2004 to August 2005

User pages of no particular interest, containing libel, especially by pseudonymous parties

There needs to be an explicit policy regarding pages that seem solely to exist to libel people. They represent a sore temptation to some very stupid editors and extremely irresponsible administrators who will protect pages that contain statements that could destroy Wikimedia by providing grounds for a libel suit: protecting a page containing, or even frequently reverts by administrators to a version containing, grounds for a libel suit, will involve the Foundation.

The following was a warning to User:Essjay who should probably be de-adminned for this type of thing. A standard warning would be useful:

Restoring and protecting libel by pseudonymous parties

As an administrator, restoring and protecting libel by pseudonymous parties (that is, statements that cannot factually be verified to a legal standard of evidence), is a questionable act, one that could cause your administrator status to be revoked, if only so that Wikimedia does not end up taking legal responsibility for your actions. Here is the rationale for that assertion:

1. Pseudonymous parties, unlike those using their real names, and those using transitory IP numbers or obvious troll names, may seem to third parties to be trusted persons acting with colour of support of the community of users as a whole; While not revealing themselves to all users, and hiding their IP numbers from legitimate police or other investigative scrutiny by all parties, they are sometimes permitted (unwisely) to make assertions about persons. This should always be subject to very deep examination, and the more so in talk pages, since those are less controlled, and there is even more risk of presenting the false impression of a trusted person addressing their own community. Accordingly, pseudonyms should have the least rights of any to restore or revert commentary - unlike IP numbers, they can't be tracked down using the law with no administrative help, unlike real names, they can't be sued - leaving Wikimedia to be sued.

2. Repeated reverts by multiple parties, restoring comments to a record from which they may be read from search engines, will in many jurisdictions result in the body that sanctions the multiple parties (Wikimedia itself) becoming legally responsible for not preventing them from repeatedly restoring such comments to view.

3. Protecting pages so as to make further modification impossible is extremely dangerous to the Foundation; It amounts to an exception to the "anyone can edit" rule, and an endorsement of the views that are specifically being protected over all other views tht might replace/modify those.

4. Where there is an alternative wording that does not include any questionable assertions, and that is provided already, hiding *that* from sight to restore the libellous version is dangerous in the extreme.

5. Several persons who are repeatedly named in Wikipedia talk pages, and associated with the activities of anonymous or collective entities, have stated their willlingness to sue Wikimedia. Given that even Jim Wales has expressed public alarm over what has been written about himself in Wikipedia's pages, and declared it inaccurate, any frequent reversion to, or protection of, any version of any page that contains unproven assertions, puts Wikimedia in a terrible situation.

A lot of people would like to own Wikimedia's assets, including its servers and domain names, or even shut the thing down. Permitting pseudonymous parties to post potential libel and permitting people to remain administrators after restoring it to sight, and even protecting such pages, is the fastest way to ensure that Wikimedia is actually owned, in the long run, by the people who care least about Wikipedia's "community": the trolls. If this is what you wish, then by all means, permit pages like User_talk:24ip to stand, and keep reverting and even protecting them ...

Worst case example: User_talk:24ip

For those who think that use of talk pages to propagate libel is not a problem, see the sad history of User_talk:24ip, which makes abundantly clear the danger of NEVER deleting such user pages:

• someone is apparently being accused of being a paedophile
• someone is apparently being accused of being a frequent unpopular visitor/editor
• someone is apparently being accused of being a specific named person who has already told Wikimedia he is watching it and ready to sue it
• the general policy of not deleting comments from talk pages is being used as a justification to keep such questionable and dangerous comments in view
• one administrator, User:Essjay, even protected the page in such a questionable form

Failure to delete this page and make a policy requiring speedy deletion of such pages, is going to wipe out Wikimedia sooner or later.

• Per WP:CSD, pages that serve no purpose other than to disparage their subject are speedily deletable. Radiant_>|< 08:37, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Why make deleted pages invisible?

I can understand that deleted pages should be redlinks and shouldn't show to spiders, but is there any reason not to let ordinary users see deleted pages that aren't copyvios? Very occasionally I've read an interesting VfD or the like and wanted to see what the fuss was all about. ~~ N (t/c) 04:05, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Because, if they were visible, there would be no point in the deletion. Imagine for instance a nn-bio; if the deleted page were visible, the user would still have the "glory" of being on the wiki. Similar arguments can be made for every kind of deleted page. The possibility of seeing deleted pages via Special:Undelete exists to make it possible to revert mistakes on deletion, not for causual browsing (you probably haven't seen the undelete interface yet — it's very limited; you can only see the parsed text of a particular revision (but not its source or a diff with other revisions)). --cesarb 04:25, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess there could be several schools on thought on that. On the one hand, consider the following scenario. Suppose an amateur guitarist adds some promotional text about himself to an article on famous musicians. Someone else reverts. Nonetheless, the text of that promotional version remains in the history forever, and the guitarist can email that link to his friends and show them how he is on the wiki. So in that sense, there is somewhat of an arbitrary distinction between how we treat promotional text within other articles, and how we treat promotional text in its own separate article. Consider this as well: A major reason we delete objectionable articles is so that they don't show up on internet searches. Whether deleted versions are viewable to logged-in users or not, we can arrange it so that deleted articles doesn't show up on internet searches. However, letting users view the deleted articles ensures that any valuable information deleted along with the article that was considered unacceptable as a whole is readily available. It also lets users see what the deleted article was like, so that if they are thinking of re-creating it, and are acting in good faith, perhaps they won't make the mistake of posting a similar article. Moreover, although I'm not too familiar with Votes for Undeletion, I imagine it could help improve undeletion decisionmaking by letting people see the article they're voting on. In conclusion, I say, let's just make the deleted articles available for logged-in users to view, and if it causes an increase in bad articles, we can always change it back. 24.54.208.177 01:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree that we should be able to view deleted articles. We recently had an editor who seemed to have a major interest in merging and deleting. These will be reviewed and it would be helpful to see what was in the merged or deleted article to see if they need to be re-visited.—Who123 16:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree. I think the technology exists so that deleted articles won't show up on searches. A permalink to the deleted article can show it framed within a clear notice that has been deleted, and provide a link to the AfD discussion page. The viewing of deleted articles can be limited to users who log in and have been on WP for some time - the same way only users who are logged in can edit protected articles. Wl219 05:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Companies self-promoting

Sorry if this has been discussed before. I'm wondering whether there's any will to change the deletion policy so that admins can speedy delete clear cases of companies using Wikipedia for self-promotion. I found a page tonight Solms TCD, a company that gets only four unique Google hits, two of which are wikinews pages (now deleted). Yet according to the policy, we'll have to go through a VfD to delete it, which seems like a waste of time. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:03, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

The sticking point in every prior discussion has been our inability to write a "bright-line" distinction between an irredeemable self-promotion and an article that is merely a poorly written stub. Do you have proposed wording? Rossami (talk) 12:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

A discussion was recently raised about this at Wikipedia talk:Spam. At Wikipedia:Deletion policy, "Advertising or other spam" is currently listed under the heading of "Problems that may require deletion," and the solution listed is "List on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (WP:AFD)." On the other hand, "Article is biased or has lots of POV" is listed under the heading of "Problems that don't require deletion," and the solution listed there is "List on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention." My own proposal is that we base the decision on notability as follows: (1) If a promotional-sounding article is posted about a non-notable subject, it should be AFD'ed for non-notability; and (2) If a promotional-sounding article is posted about a notable subject, an NPOV tag should be placed on it so it can be rewritten. If the user who finds the biased article doesn't want to spend time rewriting it, it is pretty easy to temporarily change it to a stub. That also preserves any info in the history that should be retained for future reference. A rationale for this policy is that, as Rossami implies, there can be a fine line between a promotional article and one that is merely informational. 24.54.208.177 01:04, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

User:JoJan deleted "User:FuriousFreddy", it's that Dutch man. Is this vandalism? 1 October 2005 (UTC)

About the schools guideline

I suggest adding a reference to the school page discussion into this page section "Problems that don't require deletion". Something like :

Article is about a school

See Wikipedia:Schools page. Likely not to be deleted.

Thoughts ? Gtabary 23:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I would oppose this. While there has not been consensus to delete school articles recently, neither has there been a celar consesnsus to keep most of them. This creates a rule out of a lack of agreement. DES ^(talk) 23:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it isn't appropriate. Schools are flavor of the month at the moment, but in another six months, who knows, we could all have decided that they don't belong in Wikipedia. Let's try to keep the deletion policy immune to such trends. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 16:17, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Notability proposal

Wikipedia:Notability proposal is a proposal to explicitly make "notability" a requirement for Wikipedia articles, and to explicitly include "lack of notability" as a reason for deleting articles. Please visit Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal and express your view on the proposal. DES ^(talk) 23:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Unlisting a page from AFD

From the current text of the project page:

If another solution has been found for some of these pages than deletion, leave them listed on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion for a short while, so the original poster can see why it wasn't deleted, and what did happen to it. This will prevent reposting of the same item. After the original poster has seen the explanation, or in any case after about a day, the page can be delisted from AFD.

I propose that this be re-worded. The way this reads now, it sounds like following this process would involve actually removing the transclusion from the AfD page, rather than performing a speedy keep, as has often been done. I think that even if a consensus quickly develops for a non-delete solution, the deletion discussion should still remain transcluded on the AfD page, and simply be closed. I propose the following re-wording:

"If a clear consensus for a solution is quickly reached that does not involve formal deletion, a deletion discussion may be closed before the end of the five day discussion period. Examples would include a clear consensus for speedy deletion, where the article is speedy deleted, or a clear consensus for a speedy keep. In these situations, the debate should be closed, but remain transcluded on the AfD page. However, if the proposed solution is disputed, the AfD listing should remain for the full five day period."

Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 16:06, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Comments

This is already current practise (except when things go off the rails). You can probably just make the change. -Splash^talk 16:22, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I made the change. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 15:27, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I rewoirded this slightly. I chnged "is disputed" to "has not achieved a very clear consensus". I don't want wiki-lawyers to claim that because a single person objected, a decision was "disputed" and a speedy result invalid. DES ^(talk) 17:59, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

"Completely idiosyncratic non-topic"

"Completely idiosyncratic non-topic" has been considered a valid reason for deletion literally for years: for almost two years.

10 November 2003 (inline in the text)

17 October 2004 (neatly boxed as in present format)

It was recently removed, with, as nearly as I can tell, no discussion here. The edit comment says merely "removed extremely POV point."

I'm restoring it, pending discussion and consensus here. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:06, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it should be restored. - SimonP 00:42, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

If in doubt, don't delete

This important part of deletion policy seems to have been removed recently without discussion. It's been part of deletion policy since March 30, 2004 (Theresa Knott compromise version).

Whoever did that, don't do it again. Please don't remove aspects of deletion policy simply because you may personally find them inconvenient. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 16:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

1. Added by anonymous editor without discussion.
2. Adds nothing to actual policy except a pithy catch phrase.
3. Don't be coy. If you've forgotten how to read an edit history, perhaps you should hand in your admin badge.

brenneman^(t)(c) 23:47, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't see that the source is relevant, especially since it's over a year old. Kappa 23:58, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreed. This is a significant paragraph, and removing it from a policy page without discussion shouldn't be done. JYolkowski // talk 00:13, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
    • This issue was discussed earlier this year here. Fvw suggested it be removed, others disagreed. The section was rewritten and everyone seemed to accept the compromise. - SimonP 00:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
      • That was hardly an extensive discussion, and fails to mention the apparently sacrosanct phrase that heads this section. - brenneman^(t)(c) 01:13, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
        • Do you mean "If in doubt, don't delete?" That dictum dates to the earliest era of Wikipedia history. It was included on the very first version of this page, written when admins were first created. It has also been the key rule at Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators ever since that page was created. - SimonP 01:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Maybe it is more an interesting reflection on the past though, as back then wikipedia was rather small and IIRC when you deleted something it was gone for good, so then there was an overly pressing need for such a thing. Nowadays with all the new features and the proliferation of articles it isn't really quite as pressing. I don't particularily like the pithy statement but I can live with it, but what I would like is to have it rewritten a bit or at least a note about sock/meatpuppets in regards to the first sentence. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 01:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
        • I strongly disagree. This was necessary when we were small and remains necessary today. As SimonP says, the basic principle of "if in doubt, don't delete" is an important control and has been a part of our philosophy for a very long time. Having said that, I'm less concerned about whether it stays on this page. The principle remains in effect as part of the Deletion guidelines for administrators regardless. Rossami (talk) 04:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Huh? I didn't realize this was a content dispute - I thought it was just some random thing kappa inserted as it seems out of place in a policy page. It needs a rewrite at the very least. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:15, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

If you're going to edit war, at least have the common courtesy not to (ab)use the rollback button. Thank you. ~~ N (t/c) 00:27, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

It stays. If Aaron can seriously convince himself that it's drivel, we definitely need it in order to demonstrate that, on the contrary, it's how we run the wiki. It's why we have AfD and require a consensus for deletion, and why bad speedies can be summarily restored. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 09:06, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Dictum

IIDDD is still being refered to as the authoritative pronouncement of deletion policy as at November 8th. It's clear from the reasoned discussion here that this is false. As this phrase appears to be confusing people regarding the nuances, I'm removing it pending further discussion. - brenneman^(t)(c) 05:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've restored it. It is an authoriative statement on deletion policy and always has been. Its been an offiial policy long before any of us have been here. A very strong consensus would be needed to remove it. Moreover I'm sure most people are quotting it becuase it appears at Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators, where it is far more prominent. - SimonP 15:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think the point is that one cannot simply sum up a policy page into one sentence. IIDDD is useful, and it is sometimes quoted improperly. Just like some people are all too happy to mis-cite WP:POINT and m:instruction creep at random whenever they disagree with something. That doesn't mean they're bad pages, just that they can be abused. Radiant_>|< 14:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the "If in doubt, don't delete" guideline.—Who123 17:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Problematic passage

Someone added this after "if in doubt, don't delete":

Of course, if you are in doubt that doesn't imply that everyone else is also in doubt. If controversy exists on an article, please discuss at WP:VFU to reach consensus, rather than edit warring between deleted and restored status.

This doesn't seem to make sense. If the article is not deleted and you're deciding whether to delete it, I can't see how you'd get into this situation by acting on your doubt and failing to delete. The text seems to me to belong in the undeletion policy (where in fact I believe there is a passage saying you take borderline cases to VFU). I also have problems with policy descriptions that elide difference between undeletion and editing. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 12:28, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

• It should be better worded. But some people have recently been using "if in doubt, don't delete" as an argument for undeletion. This seems akin to reasoning that "if somebody is in doubt, then nobody may delete", which is a fallacy. It is reasonable to assume that if something was deleted, then the responsible admin was not in doubt about that. Radiant_>|< 14:04, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

"If in doubt, don't delete" is a de facto argument for undeletion. It is indeed akin to saying "if somebody is in doubt, then nobody may delete", or at the very least, "if somebody is in doubt, he may undelete it and take it to AfD to resolve the doubt." You say this is a fallacy, but saying it is doesn't make it one.

• No, it is indeed a fallacy. "somebody is in doubt, then nobody may delete" would imply that a single keep-vote would be sufficient to counter any deletion proposal. Policy and consensus dicate otherwise. Radiant_>|< 11:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

You say "it is reasonable to assume that if something was deleted, then the responsible admin was not in doubt about that." But administrators are not god-kings; their actions can always be reversed by another admin. If two admins disagree on a speedy, then perforce there is doubt. Such doubts can be resolved by the normal processes of discussion that take place in AfD. We've done this many times in the past, it works well. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 05:20, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• Precisely because admins are not god-kings, if two of them disagree, the proper thing to do is talk it out, not act unilaterally. Otherwise, we get ugly deletion wars such as this one. It is not true that "We've done this many times in the past, it works well" - the fact is that you have done this several times in the past, a large amount of people expressed disagreement with you, and you ignored their comments. Controversy between sysops is traditionally resolved through discussion (e.g. VFU), not shouting matches. Radiant_>|< 11:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

That's simply incorrect. Unilateral undeletion of out-of-process deletion is part of the undeletion policy and was part of the undeletion policy before I started editing here. That some people are ignorant of its existence or don't agree with it is immaterial. The policy exists and is practised on Wikipedia. Moreover the undeletion policy mandates that AfD should be the place to resolve such matters. I have ensured that this policy is followed in every single case where an undeletion was unchallenged; contrary to your suggestion, I've had overwhelming success with this. Articles wrongly deleted are successfully undeleted by dint of this policy, which in the absence of an effective VFU that acts within the undeletion policy, is often the only way of getting things done. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 15:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

• I never claimed you did not have "success" with your unilateral undeletions. I claimed that "a large amount of people expressed disagreement with you, and you ignored their comments". The key here is the term "out-of-process". You are not the sole judge of what is in or out of process. You have been known to unilaterally undelete something that passed an apparently valid AFD, for instance, and that is inappropriate. The very least you could do if you consider a deletion improper, is contact the admin who deleted it and discuss it however briefly. The consensual VFU wording does allow for that as an alternative, and undeletion policy has stated for a long time that "the sysop who deleted the page should be informed of the undeletion".
• In short - what's the rush? If you wish to undelete something, why not drop a note on the relevant admin's page asking if they object to its undeletion? I do believe you to be an eventualist, so waiting two or three days before doing the actual undeleting is not going to harm anyone. And if discussion about it is already underway on VFU, it will be resolved quickly, and VFU works a lot better than you seem to think it does. If people disagree with you, talk it out for a few days; if you are right, discussion tends to show that. Radiant_>|< 09:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Question about Notability and Current Policy

Currently entries are being deleted because they aren't deemed notable (e.g. AFD: Apollo 9 (webcomic), AFD: Bored and Evil, AFD:Buddies in Big Places). I haven't been able to find anywhere that says accepted Wikipedia policy that says non-notable pages should be deleted (the only time I could even find the word notable was talking about future events). There is a proposal at Wikipedia:Notability proposal but I'm under the impression that until that is accepted as Wikipedia policy, it shouldn't be used when voting on AFDs. So is non-notability currently a valid reason for deleting articles?--John Lynch 09:21, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

As you can see at Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal this is a pretty controversial area. At the moment there is no explicit notability criteria, however there are also no rules limiting what reasons someone can give for AfDing something. - SimonP 14:18, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

This question comes up often. Please see this same question (and the detailed responses) here. The short version is that on Wikipedia, we have found that "notable" is a generally efficient proxy for functionally verifiable. Non-verifiability is an accepted reason for deletion from the encyclopedia. By extension, non-notability may (in many but not necessarily all cases) be a legitimate reason for deletion. Rossami (talk) 02:23, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I've thought about it, but I still don't see how notability can be seen as related to verification. Either something can be verified, or it can't. If it can't be verified at all, then it should be deleted. Notability doesn't need to come into it at all. I looked at the discussion you linked to (and saw your same argument) and I didn't see anything convincing, I also didn't see a consensus to the discussion. If people mean Verifiability when they say notability, then they should say what they mean, so it can be addressed. --John Lynch 07:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

But I've yet to see an article deleted for any reason except it violates Wikipedia policy and it's non-notable. People follow Wikipedia policy when creating an article, how are they suppose to know what can be created, if people can delete stuff for whatever reason they want?--John Lynch 07:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• One reason is that "verifiability" on Wikipedia only counts if the subject is verified from a reasonable secondary source (and there is no strict definition of that). For instance, while the existence of my personal webpage can easily be verified by surfing there, it's content cannot be verified except from any place else. So when people say Verifiable they may not actually mean what's in the dictionary. Also, some things are not encyclopedic despite of verifiability - read WP:BIO, WP:VAIN and WP:NUM for details.

• I've calmed down a bit, so I've come to discuss the point you raised. So when people say Verifiable they may not actually mean what's in the dictionary. Do they mean what's on the official Wikipedia guideline WP:Verifiability page? Also, the other articles you brought up are good, but don't have anything to do with notability. I don't mind people deleting things for the reasons outlined in those guidelines you linked to. I do, however, mind when notability is used.--John Lynch 05:28, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

• At any rate, people don't delete stuff for whatever reason they want (non-admins can't delete stuff period, admins can, but are supposed to use common sense). People nominate stuff for whatever reason they want, but if it's a silly reason (like the last time someone nominated Israel because he disagreed with its government) then the stuff doesn't get deleted. Radiant_>|< 15:22, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• So why is a reason, that isn't in the guidelines, seen as a valid reason?--John Lynch 05:28, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Because Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Radiant_>|< 18:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Isn't that the very definition of "guidelines"? That it is not restricted to those provided? - Tεxτurε 18:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

• But the guidelines I was talking about, were the guidelines to MAKE an article. I really don't see how you can expect people to be happy with deleting articles that don't break Wikipedia guidelines.

• Okay, this is a tricky matter. The first point is that Wikipedia works on the basis of consensus, and many guideline pages are running somewhat behind on that, partly because there's way too many of them. The main point is that most people have a general idea of what they consider suitable material for an encyclopedia. There is a bar somewhere, only its location is subjective. People give various reasons and names to this bar, including but not limited to notability, verifiability, importance and interest (and sometimes, suitability to the general public).
• It is really impossible to describe the bar without waxing subjective. However, has been established that Wikipedia shall not contain articles about every person or every webpage on this planet. People have a tendency to write about little-known things that they are themselves familiar with. That is fine as long as it is plausibly also of interest to somebody else. However, such topics may also include their friends, their website, their band, a story they wrote, or a word their classmate made up. And such topics may end up deleted.
• A possible question to ask would be, 'how many people in the world would care about that?' if you take it as a literal question rather than rhetoric. Hollywood celebs? Obviously. Nobel laureates? Yes, the entire scientific community. Pokemon? Surprisingly, millions of fans (and millions more who hate them, but that wasn't the point). Ludicrous internet memes such as the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Again, surprisingly, tens of thousands of people. Your dog? Er, maybe a dozen people nearby you? A website you like? Consider how many sites you know and how much traffic they all get. Check and compare, and consider that there's literally billions of sites and most are interchangeable.
• I'm afraid it's hard to describe it any better than that as it's really a sliding scale, but some issues are simply off the bar for the consensus. Wikipedia does not work by rules or guidelines, it works by consensus. And consensus has the opinion that a webcomic must have some amount of traffic and recognition before we would write about it. By any other name.
• Hope that helps, and feel free to ask questions or comments etc. Radiant_>|< 01:21, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Very odd addendum to "If in doubt, don't delete"

I noticed this recent addendum to "If in doubt, don't delete."

Of course, if you are in doubt that doesn't imply that everyone else is also in doubt. If controversy exists on an article, please discuss at WP:VFU to reach consensus, rather than edit warring between deleted and restored status.

This is wrong on several points. Firstly the forum for discussion of deletion is WP:AFD, not WP:VFU. Secondly, undeletion policy provides for unilateral undeletion of clearly out-of-process deletions, and again WP:AFD is the forum to which AFD candidates that were wrongly speedied should be taken. Thirdly a false identificaiton is made between undeletion of wrongful speedy deletions and edit warring. This is unhelpful and misleading. We certainly must used AFD to arrive at consensus, on that I agree, but in order to do so it may be necessary to undelete the article whenever it is wrongly deleted. Taken as a whole, that addendum seems to have been written by someone who is unaware of the deletion policy, the undeletion policy, and the established procedures for dealing with out-of-process deletions. I have removed the incorrect and misleading section. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

• Before jumping to conclusions, you should read up on the talk page discussion that has been held on WP:DRV (formerly WP:VFU) over the past month and a half. Radiant_>|< 23:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • "Out of process" is a judgment call. Clearly someone thought it was in process, or they would not have performed it. History has shown that pointless wheel wars will result from unilateral action. *cough* system wars *cough* A more measured response is to use the avenues that exist for discussing with fellow wikipedians the nature of the deletion, and deciding on a course of action. The avenue for deletion is AfD, the avenue for restoration is DRV. I have replaced a tighter version of the highly relevent section.
    brenneman^(t)(c) 23:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

History shows that "pointless wheel wars" are quickly curbed by listing on AfD as the undeletion policy specifies. I've been through this many times myself an AfD always quells the war and settles the matter. I've changed the wording to refer to the undeletion policy. Also the reference to wheel wars smells of [WP:BEANS]] so definitely not a good idea. The idea is to stop people warring about their disputed speedies by taking them to AfD, and it works. It is of course categorically wrong to describe DRV as "the (sole) avenue for restoration". Check the undeletion policy. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:24, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

My fix was reverted on the puzzling basis that it supposedly was an attempt to "airbrush" DRV. Well it goes without saying that the section reverted was a faithful representation of the undeletion policy.

To attempt to remove all cause for complaint, I've changed it to:

If controversy exists on an article's deletion status, undelete and list on Articles for deletion as specified by the undeletion policy. Discussion on WP:DRV is another way to reach consensus, but this can be deferred to the rare event that the deletion debate is disputed.

This places DRV in its proper context: after a disputed speedy is taken to AFD and then the result is disputed. We absolutely do not need to bicker about bad speedies on DRV or engage in wheel wars when there is a forum available for discussion of borderline deletion cases. That forum is and has always been AFD. Where administrators have a good faith disagreement over whether an article is speediable, there is a de facto doubt over deletion, and this policy applies, and no attempt to sugar coat it is acceptable. AFD is for discussion of deletions. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:53, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't really read the rest of that paragraph as dealing with speedies specifically, so much as deletion in general. I don't think we should be saying "undelete if anyone disputes any deletion", and for disputing deletion we have DRV. If the paragraph is intended only to deal with speedies, I'd have much less problem with your phrasing. -Splash^talk 23:00, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

It now says:

When restoration was impossible admins were directed, "If in doubt, don't delete!" Now however, deleted pages can be restored if there is support on Wikipedia:Deletion review or if the page was deleted out of process. See undeletion policy for information on undeletion.

This is accurate, and what's the point in saying "go ahead and restore it"? Did we forget that this is a policy page, not an admin how-to? - brenneman^(t)(c) 23:17, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that is even remotely close to the current state of affairs. "If in doubt, don't delete" is far more relevant now than it was before speedy deletion was adopted. You ask what's the point in saying "go ahead and restore it?" Well obviously the point is to tell people to stop dicking around on DRV, go ahead and restore it, and if necessary list on AfD. Just as the undeletion policy says. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Great, it now says, "Particularly now, administrators are always reminded: "If in doubt, don't delete." Should I put on the end "...by Tony Sidaway"? Attempts like this to pervert policy are exactly why I oppose inclusion of IIDDD in this page.
brenneman^(t)(c) 23:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Amazing. You attempt to remove a key bit of policy from the deletion policy, and you falsely accuse an administrator, who uses that key bit of policy, of perverting policy. Please reconsider, you've been told many times by other administrators who have been around far longer than I have, that you don't get to remove "if in doubt, don't delete." It's possibly the most important part of deletion policy. We're here to create an encyclopedia, not to hinder its creation. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:53, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, an encyclopedia. You know, that thing that is somewhat smaller than that which it represents?Editing includes both addition of information and refining of that into a more usable form. I attempted to "clarify" that IIDDD was a historic phrase. IIDDD is also "possibly" an anachronistic hold-over from a previous era used as a club to beat those whose philosophy doesn't match yours. Please do review the discussions, I recall it somewhat differently. - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:05, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's a wiki. You've been here a few months now and had time to absorb that fact. If I run into an article that talks about a school, and I can verify the school but it's a nursery adjunct (albeit state registered) to another school, I'll redirect to the article about the school. This is how wikis work. How would deleting the article altogether be better? Someone who wanted to look up the school by the name of the deleted article would find nothing. By this method--involving deletion only when there really is nothing worth knowing about, we create an encyclopedia.

You claim that "If in doubt, don't delete" is anachronistic, yet it's very much a live issue. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It sure is and a month and a half of debate on a single talk page can't change that. I don't think a key policy becomes anachronistic when something is so narrowly debated. Rx StrangeLove 01:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Standardizing second, third, AfD headers?

Can we come up with some sort of policy for standardizing what the AfD title should be when an article is nominated for a second or later time? Suppose I have a sizable watchlist, but I think there's reason to think someone may try to delete a particular article; I can put a link to what an AfD for that article should be titled on a page in my userspace and then just check that page, and if any link has turned blue then I know to investigate.

However, what happens if it survives that AfD and someone starts another? The new AfD might be called "Articles for Deletion/Foo/2"; "Articles for Deletion/Foo 2"; "Articles for Deletion/Foo (2nd nomination)" or other variants. Even as the first AfD has proved that yes, someone out there thinks it should be deleted and might initiate the process, the lack of any standard naming convention for subsequent AfDs makes it harder to look out for them.

I would propose the +"/2" syntax be the standard; it's easiest to extrapolate (and type) the next in the series and we don't have to worry that there might be a collision between "Articles for Deletion/Foo 2" (a 2nd AfD for the article "Foo") and "Articles for Deletion/Foo 2" (an AfD for the article "Foo 2"). Comments, thoughts? -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:56, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Somehow, pre-emptively watching for potential future deletion nominations just seems ... I'm not sure what word I'm looking for but it doesn't seem right. If you're that interested in the article, aren't you already watchlisting the article itself? And wouldn't you therefore see the afd tag when it's added? I'm not sure I understand yet why you need to watch for the deletion discussion. Rossami (talk) 01:23, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

The syntax above would create an extra level of sub-page, which I think is undesareable. I recently added a suggestion to the AFD footer to use {{AfDx}} in thsi case, which will help with standardization to some extent. Besides i agree with User:Rossami on this. DES ^(talk) 02:04, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but many of us have watchlists a thousand articles or more long. A watchlist will tell you that some change was made to the article. It won't tell you, unless the AfD notice was the most recent of the changes made (and if the person who placed the AfD notice didn't, ah, "forget" to use the appropriate subject line) that the article is now on AfD. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:15, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

The last thing we want to do is to encourage this kind of obsession. I've removed the silly thing. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:27, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be strongly opposed to mentioning the template. I don't see that it's harmful and it might even be helpful. We all know you don't think things should be deleted, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But, you should remember that not everyone agrees with you. Sometimes things get Afd'd twice for legitimate reasons, so where's the problem? Friday (talk) 23:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

You say We all know you don't think things should be deleted. Well obviously you don't, because I do think things should be deleted, where their deletion is supported by the deletion policy. Moreover I don't see why my opinion on this matter matters here.

What I object to here is a pointless bit of nitpicking over whether an article has been listed for the first time, the second time, or whatever. How about a third AfD template, a fourth AfD template?

It's all way too obsessive. If you're worried about an article being deleted (or not deleted) for a second time, pay a bit of attention to that article. it's harmful because it feeds the obsession. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Merging and redirecting

I've added this to the intro. It's a pivotal point of deletion policy and deserves far more prominence.

Many problems that people are tempted to solve by deletion can actually be solved by any editor simply by proper use of normal editing powers. In particular, articles about inconsequential or obscure branches of a subject may be merged with a more substantial article on the subject, or simply redirected if the content is too small. The advantage of this approach over deletion is that it expands the scope of the encyclopedia.

--Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

It's already in the (admittedly gigantic) table already, but ok. -Splash^talk 23:47, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I like it, since people very frequently Afd things that could be redirected or otherwise taken care of. To me, it's worth a bit of repetition to try to drive home the point. Friday (talk) 23:48, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Why don't we just put a big sign, "Hey never delete anything!" Is there some compelling reason that we need editorialising of this nature in the lead of deletion policy? - brenneman^(t)(c) 23:50, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Further, I'm and AfD regular and I don't see that many nominations of this sort.
brenneman^(t)(c) 23:51, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

It is editorialising, and no, I don't think we need that paragraph, except for the first sentence. It plainly chooses to raise one part of the policy to prominence above others. I, for isntance, and much more concerned about the slack verifiability standards enforced on AfD and would like to see that emphasised more. But I'd be letting my personal preferences creep in, so I won't. -Splash^talk 23:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

• Would but that all involved were so circumspect. - brenneman^(t)(c) 23:57, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

(multiple ec) Hmmm, you do have a point there. I see things that are speediable and things that should just be redirected quite a bit. I'd like to make it clear to editors that Afd isn't always the best thing to with a junk article, but as you rightly point out, that may be editorializing. Friday (talk) 23:59, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I certainly agree that we shouldn't delete anything unless we're sure it should be deleted. That's what our deletion policy is about. On Aaron's comment about AfD, I'd remind him that hundreds of school articles have been nominated for deletion over the past year, and a tiny proportion have been deleted. There just isn't a consensus for deletion of those articles. If the people who listed those articles for deletion had either edited them to make them more consequential, or redirected them to an article on, say, the school district, there would have been a lot less sound and fury, and the result would have been pretty much the same. Deletion is a sledgehammer, to be used when an article is irretrievably biased, a personal attack, unverifiable, or composed solely of copyright infringements. There probably is no reason to use deletion in any other circumstances. We probably made a big mistake in not spelling this out in the early days. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

<sarcasm> And I think that we "probably" made a big mistake in not killing the first school article, putting it's head on a spike, and sending it's entrails out to warn off other of its kind. </sarcasm> However, I'd imagine that policy should be about more than what _I_ want. - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Thank you for clarifying your belief that deletion should be used as a deterrent to editors wishing to provide share similar information with users. Kappa 00:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Whole lotta revertin' goin' on

Based on recent edits, it sure looks like it'd be a good idea for people to get consensus on the talk page before making changes here. Friday (talk) 00:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

But then we might have to do something useful. - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Some of the body was still AfD specific, and internally inconsistant. Changed that. - brenneman^(t)(c) 01:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

If in doubt, don't delete again

I see little plausible justification for the implication that this is some sort of historical note. Please explain this change in particular. Phil Sandifer 02:09, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Please do familiarise yourself with the talk pages of those meta-discussions that you intend to edit. If you'll see above, and in particular the notes pointed to here. It had been archived, so I'll reproduce the relevent section in full here. - brenneman^(t)(c) 02:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

From: Wikipedia talk:Deletion review

There is currently some controversy about the meaning and relevance of this phrase, and its suitability for inclusion on WP:DRV and WP:DEL. The controversy has manifested as an edit war on those pages (see for example [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]), and a short block on two editors [7]. I believe it might be helpful, in efforts to resolve the dispute, to look at the phrase's history and intent.

History

Tony Sidaway, SimonP and others are correct when they say that the phrase has been with WP for a long time. Its earliest use that I know of was in the document that eventually became WP:DEL. The original page can still be seen; it dates from February 25 2002, but was actually written in November 2001 in the old software.

That page was an instruction to administrators. In the old UseModWiki software, page deletions were qualitatively different from page deletions in our current system: once a page was deleted, it was completely removed, such that it was "impossible to restore from within the system." The present day equivalent is removal of the page history from the database by a developer.

This permanent quality of deletions made it imperative that any deletion decision was made with particular care—there was no such thing as "undeletion" at the time. The rules were a reminder to anyone about to delete a page what was generally expected of them; to wit, these were "some rules that those tasked with permanently deleting pages can generally be expected to follow in making the decision to delete or not."

On September 20 2003, more than two years ago, old time user Cimon avaro moved the instructions to a very appropriate, newly created page, Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators. You can see the original here.

Meaning & intent

The above history makes the meaning of the phrase in question crystal clear. It is an instruction to administrators (ie. to people who can delete pages) to be careful when commiting that final act, and to desist if they cannot make up their minds about whether they should delete a page. The phrase is an axiom for individual administrators to bear in mind when they make their delete decisions. The Deletion guidelines for administrators also provides other helpful tips to administrators. For example:

• Use common sense and respect the judgment and feelings of Wikipedia participants.
• As a general rule, don't delete pages you nominate for deletion. Let someone else do it.

These are all sensible rules of thumb for administrators to keep in mind as they consider their closes; "if in doubt, don't delete" is one among them.

(Mis)use

I have noticed that this phrase appears to be often misused these days. The clearest misuse happens when someone uses it to proclaim that another admin's close was invalid, because it was closed at a rough consensus standard that they believe to be unacceptable. This is often expressed with something like: "You should not have deleted that page. It was too close; two-thirds isn't a consensus. Remember 'if in doubt, don't delete.'"

This is the sort of thing that makes you go "Whaa—?". It's a misunderstanding of the axiom. IIDDD is not intended to call into question deletion decisions made in perfect accordance with the criteria in WP:DEL and WP:CON by an administrator who had no doubts as to the validity of the closure.

Another misuse of the axiom is the idea contained in the following: "You should not have deleted it because there was doubt. The very fact that I'm disagreeing with you proves that there is doubt. Remember 'if in doubt, don't delete.'" This is incorrect, for what should be very obvious reasons.

Tony Sidaway has recently made several edits to the VFU header page, in which he characterizes IIDDD in an interesting way. He writes,

Deletion can be challenged [in DR] under two policies:

• Deletion policy the chief precept of which is "if in doubt, don't delete"[8]

and

This page operates within two policies, both of which deliberately adopt a very permissive approach to Wikipedia articles:

• deletion policy, if in doubt, don't delete.[9]

It is unclear to me how an instruction to administrators to be careful when performing deletions became "the chief precept" of WP:DEL. The deletion policy is a document that specifies what things within WP may be removed. Where the main namespace is concerned¹, what may be removed are

• pages which conflict two of the article policy trifecta (ie. WP:V and WP:NOR),
• pages on or containing a number of things deemed unencyclopedic by long-standing tradition, which are noted in WP:NOT, and
• pages contravening WP:Copyrights.

These are the bases of article space policy and the fountainhead of deletion policy—they are what the deletion policy was written to enforce.

The axiom IIDDD on the other hand is merely a simple reminder to admins who're on the job not to be trigger happy. It is most certainly not "the chief precept" of deletion policy, just as "don't delete pages you nominate for deletion" is not the chief precept of deletion policy, nor any other of those little, if helpful, reminders given to admins who're working on deletions. The idea that IIDDD makes WP permissive is also misleading, I believe. It neither makes it more permissive nor less. What goes and stays on WP is determined by WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:NOT, and WP:Copyrights. All else are secondary, and all else are derivations. In this editor's humble opinion, at any rate.

Perhaps the intent is to emphasize the open nature of the wiki. This is a fair point, but:

1. if so, that point should be properly expressed. This phrase does not express that idea, despite many people apparently believing it does. It simply cannot: its very construction shows that.
2. the openess of the wiki is subservient to WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:NOT, and WP:Copyrights. As I said earlier, these foundational principles form the basis of the deletion policy, and together with WP:NPOV they dictate what is and is not allowable in the mainspace.

Where should IIDDD be placed?

This brings us to the question that started all this. Should "if in doubt, don't delete" be placed in WP:DEL and WP:DRV? This seems to be the source of much dispute, but that is only because IIDDD is misunderstood. Personally I will not strongly object with listing the admin reminders on the deletion page, because I know what they are and what they were written to for, and putting them there will not make me treat the article-space policy any less seriously. However, I do see the point that they're out-of-place. WP:DEL is primarily written for users and editors of the encyclopedia, not sysops. Placing IIDDD in such a page, in the way it has been placed there now, does sound odd—because non-sysops can't delete, whether they are in doubt or not. IIDDD is directed at sysops, the folks who do the deleting. The correct place for it is Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators, where it fits perfectly and where it has been placed since the inception of that page. (Yes, it was also in the page that eventually became WP:DEL, but that was when that page was in fact directed at admins. You can read it [http://here.)

What about WP:DRV? The same applies. Wherever the thing is placed however, I would ask that it is not misrepresented, or written in a way that gives a misleading account of article space and deletion policy on Wikipedia. If I've been wrong in any of the above, do correct me—it will not be the first time, nor the last :) I do believe that this issue needn't divide us as it has. Kind regards encephalon 20:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Note

¹ There is one more class of item that can be deleted from the mainspace and which is not covered in the above policies, and that is the "useless redirect," normally deleted via WP:RFD. I have left it out from the above for simplicity. encephalon 20:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Response to Encephalon's comments on "If in doubt, don't delete"

Encephalon is right to state that the principle was first found in the earliest versions of WP:DEL; he even admits that it survived the transition to the new software. The rest of his piece appears to be an attempt to explain this away by claiming that the reason for not deleting an article about which some doubt existed had to do with older software.

Let's assume that part of the original reason was that the software would completely lose all content that was deleted. Does this then justify abandoning the principle? In other words, are the occasions when, if doubt exists over whether a piece should be deleted, we should delete it anyway?

Encephalon appeals to Verifiability. Unverifiable statements of fact must be removed from articles, and completely unverifiable articles must be deleted, of that there is no doubt.

Encephalon appeals to copyright. Copyright infringements are deleted under the copyright policy, which as a Key policy overrides the deletion policy and all others. We delete copyright infringements.

Encephalon appeals to No original research. Original research is removed from articles, and articles based solely on original research are deleted.

Encephalon appeals to What Wikipedia is not. This document is sometimes persuasive in deletion debates and is given in the deletion policy as an umbrella for a host of reasons for deletion.

Deletion policy is permissive, I think we can all agree on that. If an article doesn't fall under those principles then we don't delete it.

There are gray areas. "If in doubt, don't delete" informs our conduct in deciding whether to delete. The question of whether there is a consensus really boils down to whether the closing administrator is convinced by the deletion debate. If there is significant reasoned opposition then there isn't a consensus--if in doubt, etc.

Nowadays we permit administrators to delete some classes of article summarily, and well over 1,000 such deletions are carried out every day. But there are safeguards on this, as it's a very controversial. An administrator can undelete an obvious "out of process" speedy deletion, and if it's still a deletion candidate under the deletion policy it should be listed on AfD. If in doubt, don't delete, again.

If an administrator disagrees over an undeletion, what's to be done? AfD, obviously. If in doubt, don't delete. Why would an administrator want to delete an article that another administrator, in good faith, has undeleted? If in doubt, don't delete. List it on AfD, or Copyright problems.

The principle is simply stated and informs every aspect of our undeletion policy and our deletion policy. That is why it belongs here. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:29, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I've read your response several times, and yet to me it still appears that your argument is mostly based upon, "because I say so". I see that his analysis provides diffs and links to back up most of his arguments, and that yours does not. Is this as good as it gets in defense of IIDDD? Specifics, then:

• Are you disputing that the original intent of the phrase was as an instruction to admins?
• Are you further disputing that the scope and purpose, as well as the technical implementation, of the entire deletion process has changed considerably since this/that page was first written?

brenneman^(t)(c) 06:22, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Aaron, I think that your reliance on trying to discern the original intent of the language, with the implication that if the original need no longer exists then the language should be tossed out, completely ignores the fact that a very large portion of the community seems to believe in the principle itself. The United States has certainly changed immensely in the 200+ years since 1787 when the Constitution was drafted and many of the factors that gave rise to certain provisions, the Bill of Rights in particular, are arguably no longer present. However, people continue to believe in the principles themselves. Without tagging editors as "inclusionist" or "deletionist", there certainly exists a broad range of opinion on this issue, but in my experience a very substantial number believe that IIDDD is a basic tenet of Wikipedia, whether or not one of the historical reasons for creating the policy has changed. -- DS1953 06:55, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point. I'd counter that by saying that the reason that "a large number" of people believe that IIDDD is a basic tenet of Wikipedia is because there exist a "small number" of people who proselytize to that effect. It is, as has been pointed out several times, only one part of a complex web of competing suggestions. To suggest that it is the be-all and end-all of deletion policy is at best reductionist and at worst deliberately misleading. - brenneman^(t)(c) 07:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You apparently honestly believe that the reason that people believe IIDDD is because of proselytizing; I believe it is simply organic and has very little to do with the fact that a few well known editors repeat it in their arguments. I see it too often from new editors on AfD to think that they are being swayed so easily when there are many other editors who vehemently argue that the sanctity of the project demands deeper cuts. Obviously, neither of us really knows, so you will labor under your belief and I under mine. Furthermore, my statement that many users believe it to be a basic tenet of Wikipedia is far from asserting "that it is the be-all and end-all of deletion policy". I believe that most of the dreck that makes it way to AfD should be deleted. My point is only that if a significant number of users want to keep an article, whether it be on some arcane mathematics concept that only a PhD in math would have heard of or an episode of Seinfeld, I believe most users favor keeping the article. It doesn't negate all other deletion policies, it only affects the degree of "consensus" necessary to delete. Furthermore, it is only shorthand for the underlying principle. If there are twenty editors urging deletion and two firm believers who want to keep an article, there is certainly some level of "doubt", but I don't think even the most strict constructionist of the language would believe that every scintilla of doubt means that the article should be kept in the face of overwhelming opposition. -- DS1953 07:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Well if there is a "small number", of these proselytisers, they must be somewhat persuasive individuals, for the acceptance of this principle is indeed pervasive!

However I think I've given a good account above, showing how "if in doubt, don't delete" dovetails well with practically every aspect of deletion policy, providing a solid, workable way out of gray areas (if there's a dispute, seek consensus to delete using the forums set up for the purpose). It's hardly reductionist to point out how all-pervasive and, damn it, how useful the concept is. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:17, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Incidence like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ceraphite, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Serbian Greek Empire, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_modern_day_dictators or the disaster recorded on Talk:Authentic Matthew show that people ought to be reminded of core policies WP:V and WP:NPOV first. These are useful principles in encyclopedia-making. The pithy slogan IIDDD is a slogan to begin with, a battle-cry. Pilatus 13:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Database organisation

I think that removing "if in doubt, don't delete" is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how mediawiki databases are organised. We still need to be conservative when deleting. Please check with a developer if you haven't already done so!

Of course, if it turns out that the engine has improved and I'm wrong ... the consequences would be ... interesting. :-) Kim Bruning 03:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Even if the archive weren't a separate table, deletion still would involve preventing non-administrators from seeing and editing articles. We would still need to be conservative. We shouldn't be deleting anything we're not sure needs deleting. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 03:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Right, so it still is a separate table that gets randomly purged, and doesn't get backed up? Kim Bruning 07:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Where is that "Two versions" template when you need it?

Just putting things side by side. - brenneman^(t)(c) 06:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Current version

My proposed revisions.

In the normal operations of Wikipedia, over one thousand articles are deleted each day. While it is possible for any user to blank a page, the original content will still be available in the page history for others to view and restore if they wish. When pages are deleted, this removes not only the current version but also all previous versions from view. Only administrators have the ability to delete and undelete pages, and this is limited to those pages that are kept in the archive. Some older deleted pages are completely inaccessible.

While it is possible for any user to blank a page, the original content will still be available in the page history for others to view and restore if they wish. When pages are deleted, this removes not only the current version but also all previous versions from view. Only administrators have the ability to delete and undelete pages, and this is limited to those pages that are kept in the archive. Some older deleted pages are completely inaccessible.

Deleted pages can be restored if they've obviously been deleted out of process, or if there is support on Wikipedia:Deletion review. See undeletion policy for information on undeletion, but the onus is on the administrator never to delete an article without good reason.

When restoration was impossible admins were directed, "If in doubt, don't delete!" Now however, deleted pages can be restored if there is support on Wikipedia:Deletion review or if the page was deleted out of process. See undeletion policy for information on undeletion.

If an article is repeatedly re-created by unassociated editors after being deleted, this may be evidence of a need for an article. Conversely, if an article is repeatedly nominated for deletion, this is not in and of itself evidence that it should be deleted. In some cases, repeated attempts to have an article deleted may even be considered disruptive. If in doubt, don't delete.

If an article is repeatedly re-created by unassociated editors after being deleted, this may be evidence of a need for an article. Conversely, if an article is repeatedly nominated for deletion, this is not in and of itself evidence that it should be deleted. In some cases, repeated attempts to have an article deleted may even be considered disruptive.

Many problems that people are tempted to solve by deletion can actually be solved by any editor simply by proper use of normal editing powers. In particular, articles about inconsequential or obscure branches of a subject may be merged with a more substantial article on the subject, or simply redirected if the content is too small. The advantage of this approach over deletion is that it expands the scope of the encyclopedia.

Since deletion cannot be undone by non-administrators, and it is often disheartening for new, good-faith users to see their work sumarily deleted, it is important to use deletion powers sparingly.

This is totally new material.

Commentary

So, for all practicle concerns, we've got ArbCom material over the addition of the words "When restoration was impossible," and "Now however". Please do let the record show that this dust up began when Tony attempted to subvert consensus. Oh, and can we all see that several new caveats have crept into the deletion policy's lead paragraph, as well as "If in doubt don't delete" now being boldface?
brenneman^(t)(c) 06:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Dangerous policy change

(See #Database organisation for context)

People need to come back from nasa-shuttle-disasters-can't-happen/let's-cut-down-the-last-tree-on-easter-island type lala land right now. There has been no back-end change to how deletion has been handled, as far as I'm aware. No matter how strong you feel consensus is or how large a supermajority you get; reality will not change. If you are unsure, but still delete, there are odds that actual valuable data will be lost forever.

If this information has been superseded, please inform me, as that would have several interesting consequences. Kim Bruning 07:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Whether or not articles can be restored, the statement "if in doubt don't delete" should remain, since it cautions an admin that they are expected to justify their decision to delete. I don't agree with any of Aaron's amendments, which seem to be based upon a point of view regarding the framing of the policy. I also support the extra text at the end, there should be exploration of other options besides deletion. Steve block talk 13:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

All of the options are in the table slightly further down. It is uneven to promote one particular part of that table above the others. -Splash^talk 13:51, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's academic anyway. Anon's can't now create new articles [10] so remove what Aaron identifies as new material in the above but retain the rest. Steve block talk 14:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Uh, I'm fine with the removal, but for the time being at least, anons can still write new articles. I just checked myself. -Splash^talk 14:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

It's being turned off today. Jimbo posted an announcement to the mailing list less than an hour ago. I don't know that it has showed up on Wikipedia yet, I'm not sure where or even if the information has been placed on Wikipedia. Steve block talk 14:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Here [11] Steve block talk 14:23, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. -Splash^talk 15:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletion request

Would someone please delete Beauxbaton Academy? It is fictional. I am brand new, have no idea how to do this, and figure that this will get it done fairly quickly. Sorry to dump it in here-- please delete this entry when you fix Beauxbaton. 216.185.84.246 03:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. Please refer to the Guide to deletion to learn how the process works. Rossami (talk) 05:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion for minor reorganization

Now that the wording of the policy has at least temporarily been settled, I have a purely organizational change to propose. The subsection now numbered 1.1 "What to do with a problem page/image/category" appears under the section heading "Procedure for deletion". I would propose putting that as its own section, followed by the section "Procedure for deletion" and all of the other subsections, except that I would also move the "See also" subsection to its own section as the more typical style. As it stands, subsection 1.1 does not seem to fit under the "Procedure" banner. I think that the change would make the policy easier to use for someone looking for guidance. -- DS1953 23:17, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletion surprise

There are so many deletion pages and talk pages that I'm not sure where to post this. The speedy delete pages mention tags but often new pages disappear a few minutes or less than a minute after being created. Even for a seasoned user like myself this is very confusing. Nothing on my watchlist. A little tiny link saying the page may have been deleted. I don't want to spend my time looking at delete logs for bad speedy deletes. Many speedy deletes could be handled by a tag (and maybe deletion of one version of the article.) I've rewritten advertising articles to real NPOV articles about a company. If the original bad version had not been there the article would never have been written. Unless there is something that needs to be removed for legal reasons then all deletions should go through a process. There should always be a tag that shows up on watch lists. The process of speedy delete deletes the evidence of any problems with speedy and those most likely to be victims of a bad deletion are those least likely to know how to work their way through or have the time to mess with wikipolicy. --Gbleem 20:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Introduction to Deletion Policy

I am not very happy with the introductory paragraphs of the deletion policy. Like any other thing done on Wikipedia, the purpose of the deletion policy is to build an encyclopedia. At the very least, the core policies should be mentioned. At the moment, the introduction mostly cautions against deletion; it could to with a heavy dose of WP:NPOV. Pilatus 02:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, that's a good point. However, since this is a wiki, {{sofixit}}! Radiant_>|< 03:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

New deletion policy proposal

I've written a new policy proposal advocating specific time limits between successive AFD nominations for the same article. Please read it if you have time, and comment. Firebug 03:23, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Deleted speedy tags

If the creator of a page repeatedly deleted the speedy delete tags, what is the correct way to respond? In the past, I have listed in as a Quetioned delete on Wikipedia:Speedy deletions, or it's become an AfD. If it's a clear speedy candidate, should I ask a random administrator, or stick with Wikipedia:Speedy deletions? Or could someone point me to the guideline for this scenario if one exists please? Thanks. --Whouk (talk) 15:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

• In this particular case, I've speedied the article. In general, this policy page is not the best place to ask. It depends on what is the case, really. If the article is crappy, POV or unsourced, tell the author how to fix it. If the subject is desperately NN, notify your friendly neighborhood admin on Speedy Deletions. If someone keeps reverting the tag without responding to what you say, inform them of the 3RR. If you two get into discussion and disagree, take it to AFD. Hope that about covers it. Radiant_>|< 15:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I have exactly the opposite question. What if a user places a speedy deletion tag on an article as a way of vandalism? What should be done then (besides listing if on Questioned speedy deletions)? This was done to WP:NJ and Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey. AndyZ 23:11, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Never mind, I just reread the deletion tag description, and removed the deletion tags myself. AndyZ 23:14, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
  • (after edit conflict) This sort of thing can be reported at WP:VIP or WP:AIV or WP:ANI, or just discussed on the talk page of the article in question. if a spedy tag is clearly inappropriate, any editor, aprticuarly any editor other than the creator or recent major editor of an article can remove a speedy tag, IMO. DES ^(talk) 23:17, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

One line summary

There being a need for concise one line summaries of guidelines, I offer this version. Please feel free to change it as necessary, and update the template Template:Guideline one liner to suit your taste. If the summary is inaccurate, please improve it rather than removing the template. Comments and opinions welcome! Stevage 17:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

It's not right because we are always willing to revisit a deletion in the light of new information. There does not, I think, exist a one line summary of a subtle and nuanced policy. The template should be removed. (And I don't understand the point of it anyway.)-Splash^talk 17:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

And I removed it until something is worked out: this is an official policy page, that's an inaccurate statement of the policy and it shouldn't appear here until it is accurateified. Discuss it here on talk first. -Splash^talk 17:46, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Stevage starts with the premise "There being a need for concise one line summaries...". I question that premise. I do not see a need for a one line summary. The only possible summary which is that concise is already on the page - the page title. The next layer of detail is the introductory paragraph. Our introductory paragraphs are not always perfectly written but creating an eye-blurring template with a redundant sentence adds nothing of obvious value to the page. Rossami (talk) 18:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• It is correct that many guidelines and policies could use some cleaning of pointless, redundant and confusing lines. However, summarizing them all to a single line each is overreaching a bit, and is not going to meaningfully work for each policy page. In this particular case, your oneliner is wrong; one that would match existing practice is "if you feel an article to be unencyclopedic, you may nominate it on WP:AFD; if discussion there yields a consensus to delete the article, it may be deleted by an admin." Radiant_>|< 22:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletion History

I regret to point out the Deletion Histories are now only available to Sysops. Anyone know why? -- Eddie 06:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Brion turned it off until there's a better way to deal with edit summary vandalism. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Deleted history permissions. —Cryptic (talk) 23:47, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Consensus or Supermajority?

There is talk on Wikipedia:Consensus concerning the statement that certain Wikiprocesses, in particular WP:RFA and WP:AFD, no longer work on the principle of Consensus, but instead on the principle of Wikipedia:Supermajority, which seems to imply a more-or-less strict numerical limit. I would appreciate it if some AFD regulars would weigh in on the discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Consensus to comment on this. Radiant_>|< 14:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

For your review: Wikipedia:Notability (software)

Hello everyone! Please review the newly-proposed guideline Wikipedia:Notability (software). Your thoughts are much appreciated. --Perfecto 20:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

"Redirect" option

This is a policy update proposal.

The policy must clearly distinguish the two very different cases of propasals to replace an voted article by #redirect.

• One is "redirect" to an article with the same topic, and it is basically equivalent to "keep". An example would be a redirect of a nonnotable one-liner "pokemon" to "list of pokemon" (or something like that; I hope you got the idea). The idea is that the topic is valid, but not yet warrants a separate page.
• Another is "redirect" to an article with basically different topic, which is basically equivalent to "delete" of the current topic. An example would be a replacement of a (possible) hoax Joe Doe article (55,000 google hits! need an article here ASAP! :-) with a redirect to John Doe (assuming that is a common variant or a typo, as in, eg. [[12])

The current rules "Wikipedia:Deletion_process" say: "If the decision is KEEP (including any variant such as REDIRECT or MERGE),...", i.e., fail to make this fundamental distinction.

I am posting it to discuss here because it is not a hypothetical issue: exactly this kind of confusion is happening with aladin article; see its talk and Afd. Mukadderat 23:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

People tend to specify the latter as "Delete and redirect" and the former as "merge". Guettarda 19:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Other people tend to confuse the issue and just write "redirect". What is more confusion, in the aladin's Afd people actually wrote "keep", bearing in mind to edit it "normally", turning into a redirect to something totally different. Like, if I turn Sulayman into a redirect to Suleiman the Magnificent (Allah forbid!), by their logic it is just a "normal" edit, while I say it is a clandestine and malicious deletion. Mukadderat 19:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Your example is an excellent one because it highlights the confusion. Converting an article into a redirect is a normal edit because it can be reversed by any other reader/editor. Reverting back to the non-redirect form requires no special admin powers. The decision to turn it into a redirect is visible in the article's edit history and can be reviewed by anyone. If it turns out to be a controversial decision, it gets discussed and decided on the respective talk pages.
Deletion, on the other hand, destroys the page and the edit history. Reversing a deletion does require admin powers. The decision can not be easily reviewed by non-admins. In that regard, deletion is special.
That's why an unmodified "redirect" vote is generally interpreted as a "keep" vote. Deletion means that the article is so bad that the page history must go. Turning a good article into a redirect may be a bad idea - it may even be vandalism - but it is not a "deletion". Rossami (talk) 20:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

You seem to miss my point: turning an article from one subject to a completely different one is a de-facto deletion. In the case of aladin there is no way to agree on a "NPOV" version, because the issue is inherently polarized: either apples or oranges. It is not the "discussion about content" (or to say it differently, everything in wikipedia is "discussion about content"), and saying that this kind of discussion must be at talk page is essentially sweeping the problem under the carpet. Why don't we vote for deletion in talk pages? Because we want a broader participation, so that the decision is not made by a clique who happen to frequent this page.

• So I say if the whole topic is being deleted by whatever action, this is a matter of votes for deletion.
• Also, my suggestion is to clarify the policy, so that people not throw ambiguous votes

Being not stupid, I know how I could circumvent the issue: by creating the aladin, the magician page. But which rules will forbid someone to turn it into a redirect to, say, "magician" (or even to "the") and start a "content dispute"? Mukadderat 21:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Rossami's already heard my rant about this, but you may be interested in reading Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#merge_vs._keep_vs._delete_vs...., Mukadderat. -- nae'blis _(talk) 21:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The Three Types of Deletion

An idea I've been kicking around for a while... it's probably not original, but what the hey. This is not intended as a proposal (at this time), just a set of talking points.

Often times, in a deletion vote, one prefaces their vote with strong or weak--i.e. weak keep or strong delete. As far as I can tell, this only is used to indicate the editor's strength of opinion, and has little impact (if any) on how the vote is tallied.

However, it seems to me that there are three types of deletes. I'm giving them cute names here, but better names can be suggested. Unlike strong/weak/standard delete, policy might in the future treat these diffently when deciding how to dispose of a XfD.

• Delete without prejudice: The article as it stands is wholly unencyclopedic and/or inappropriate, and unsalvageable; so little existing content is worth preserving that were one to do so, all that would be left is a stub. However, the topic is encyclopedic; so the deletion action should not be construed as a barrier to creation of the article again in the future (with appropriate content). Obviously, re-creating the article in it's current form isn't acceptable and may be speedy-deleted. Examples: Any article on any encyclopedic topic, whose content is crap.

• Delete with prejudice: The topic of the article is currently unencyclopedic, but may become unencyclopedic in the future. Re-creation of the article (without being speedied) requires adequate demonstration of why the topic is now appropriate, and/or a VFU. Examples: Articles on garage bands (the band might get a record deal in the future), highly speculative articles (which become appropriate as the event in question approaches), original research topics (which become appropriate if the research is published elsewhere and thus no longer in violation of WP:NOR).

• Delete with extreme prejudice: The topic of the article is unencyclopedic, and likely to remain so for all time. Re-creation of the article (without being speedied) definitely requires a VFU. Examples: Articles whose topic is blatantly POV or nonnsensical.

Note that this taxonomy is orthogonal to the question of speedy vs regular deletion. An attack article on an otherwise notable subject would be an example of "speedy delete without prejudice", an article on "Reasons George Bush should be impeached" would be a delete with extreme prejudice, but probably wouldn't qualify as a speedy.

--EngineerScotty 19:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Article voted for deletion

Recently got into a spat with a user in a talk section, then they come to my project article and AfD it on the basis that it is misnamed and NPOV.

Wikipedia and public opinion

• Article may be misnamed, but does a misnamed article really merit deletion consideration?

• I thought we had an NPOV flag for articles with NPOV problems?

Yeago 15:52, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

previously deleted articles that are re-made

How are you supposed to handle articles like Redux which were deleted before after a vote, but then were unilaterally re-made? I'm not sure what the policy would be there. -Elmer Clark 05:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

The current article Redux is completely unconnected to the article which was deleted. That one was about a fanzine, this one is about a short animated film. If you'd like to have a look, I have temporarily restored it at User:Stormie/Redux. --Stormie 05:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

How to alert about copyright problems?

Hello.
I'm active on the Hebrew Wiki and was trying to translate the article about Savanna. While I was working on the article I've spotted a very possible copyright problem (which I've written about in here). Since I know that the copyright problems are a big issue in Wikipedia, I tried to learn how to deal with it in here (ie: En. Wiki) - but I've failed to understand.

As you might have understood already, I read English quite well, so this is not a case of a language block. The problem I had was that there is no simple explanation on how to react to such issues. I had to scroll all the way down in the Community Portal in order to find something that talks about the subject - and that article was no good to me. I had to go here, then scroll down the page in order to find the table which read "Problems that may require deletion". But all I've found there was the template to use - but what else should I do? So I had to scroll further down and read more passages and go to more references. I'm not a lazy reader, but it is hard to understand a procedure from so many different pages.

I finally gave-up. Instead, I wrote about the problem in the discussion for the article. Now, while I am writing this post, not minutes after I've posted the original problem, I was answered and helped - but it would be better if I could have understood the policy by myself.

If I may suggest a few things to improve the system:

• The Common Procedures, as listed in the Community Portal, should be a bit more accessible to the users. There is a-lot of information on the portal and one must search through it all in order to find a common procedure.
• In deleting a page (as under Common Procedures) there should be, right at the beginnig, a list of links with wording akin to "about copyright problems deletion", "about Inappropriate user pages deletion", "about not suitable articles deletion" etc..
• From these links, the user should go to a page where he can find (if he was interested in copyright problems, for example): A. What is a copyright problem; B. What is not a copyright problem; And C. How to deal with a copyright problem.
• The last part - about how to deal with the problem should be a problem-specific solution, unlike the general Template:AfD in 3 steps explanation.

I hope you may consider these suggestions. Havelock 21:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry you had trouble finding it. You should have been immediately directed to Wikipedia:Copyright problems which, I think, answers your questions. (The shortcut that's easiest for me to remember is wp:copyvio.) I suspect that you had trouble finding the answers you needed on the deletion-related pages because deletion is not the first line of defense against a copyright violation. We don't generally resort to deletion until we have exhausted other options such as contacting the copyright holder to request permission, etc. (There are some exceptions which are immediately deletable which, I admit, does confuse the issue.) Once you've gotten to the deletion step, you are correct that the only real answer is at Wikipedia:Deletion policy. I think the Deletion policy page and even the CopyVio page are well linked on the Article for deletion page but if you have recommended improvements to the linking, please be bold and make the changes. I would recommend some caution against expanding those pages, though. They are considered by many to be too complex already. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 23:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Feature request suggestion

I often watch Special:New Pages for a variety of reasons, one of which is to look for articles that have no place in Wikipedia. However, what looks at first like an article that should be deleted, is sometimes an article that is being created in stages by a well-meaning writer. It would be useful to me to have a [[Special:Seven Day Old]] category that I could watch instead. This tool would be useful to me because it would put these articles in one watch list for me, but not when they are brand-spanking new and the author may still be trying to get the first decent draft done.
I'm considering suggesting this as a software enhancement, and I wonder if other editors would find this feature useful? Johntex\^talk 03:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

AFD policy

What is the policy regarding AfD. I understand editors are invited to vote Keep-Delete. But what if they use invalid argunents violating Problems that don't require deletion.? Nomen Nescio 12:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Answered at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#AFD policy. Rossami (talk) 15:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Renoms

The policy regarding time limits between nominations is currently a wee bit fuzzy. Currently, there is little defence against multiple (more or less) bad-faith noms by editors opposed to the article (or, more usually, opposed to an article's subject). I had a look at Firebug's proposal above; it's pretty harsh. My idea for a compromise would be something along the lines of requiring a renominator to EXPLICITLY state reasons for the renomination (ie what's changed to the article or context since the last nom). Where no reason is given, or where an admin can clearly justify that the reasoning is false or flawed, the article will automatically be speedily kept. Within a three-month (or so- entirely negotiable) period, ANY subsequent renoms should only be done by an admin, albeit potentially through the (reasoned) request of a non-admin. I don't mean to add to the morass of policy we already have, but this issue is one that causes some problems and backlog on AfD and is one that surely can easily be addressed by a simple rewording of the current deletion protocol. This isn't new policy, it's better policy. What d'y'all think? Badgerpatrol 23:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

There's no real need to codify this, as it already happens. When people repeatedly nominate an article for deletion, as with the oft-cited GNAA, it is already quickly speedy kept for WP:POINT violation. I think this would just be instruction creep. Stifle (talk) 10:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure- GNAA is an obvious example, but there are numerous others where WP:POINT nominations are the norm and are not picked up as Speedy Keeps. The basic plank of what I am saying is merely that in order to renominate within a certain amount of time, editors simply be required to explicitly state what has changed since the last nomination. See here for a related discussion. Badgerpatrol 13:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed additon

Making the following (or something like it) deletion policy may calm the few remaining Userbox Warriors.

Many Wikipedians disapprove od user pages templates that are frivolous or which express personal beliefs, ideologies, ethical convictions, or viewpoints on controversial issues. They may be perceived as unencyclopedic, or as condoning partisan behavior. It is always in order to suggest that such templates be substituted into user pages; or to reword them in a non-partisan fashion (for example, replacing This user likes x with This user is interested in X). If this fails, they can be listed at Wikipedia:Templates for Deletion; a consensus shall delete them if they are harmful to the project.

Cooments? Septentrionalis 23:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Question: Some other discussions have linked templates and their related categories - advocating the deletion of both. How does this proposal relate to categories, particularly those of the form, "Wikipedians interested in X"? Rfrisbie^talk 23:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposed addition: Biographies of semi-notable people who do not wish to be included

* A biography of a living person with a low degree of verifiable, persistent, and long-lasting notability and where the subject has requested that the article be deleted.

Rationale: Wikipedia may be an encyclopedia, but it is not a newspaper. Legal issues are not problematic if the article is neutral and well sourced, but articles about living persons who request them to be deleted should be removed out of politeness to the subject. No one should have to have to suffer an article included if he or she does not want it there. Think of it this way: Say you, as a private person, did something highly embarrassing that gained yourself 15 minutes of fame. Your actions would be notable and verifiable enough to have a bio stub created. Now, for the rest of your or Wikipedia's lifetime, you would have to monitor this article about you. Future employers would be able to Google your name and see what you did even long after your actions have fallen out of pop-cultural reference. However, you would have no recourse since it is verifiable. Out of common courtesy, you should be able to request you article be removed. Consensus on persistent and long-lasting notability should be gained through the deletion process since this can be a sliding scale from Bill Clinton to Brian Peppers. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 22:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

For the same reason as I opposed this at WT:CSD, I oppose it here. People don't get to choose whether they have an article or not. If they are notable, they're included, and if they're not, they get deleted. Note too that notability can be time-varying - plenty of bio articles have been kept during the 15 minutes but deleted not too long afterwards.

As a result, I for one am happy with how things are, this seems like instruction creep. I'll assume good faith and not accuse you of venue shopping too :) Stifle (talk) 10:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Speedy Keep Guideline addition

I'm currently attempting to get some consensus regarding handling speedy keeps of recently-nominated AfDs: Wikipedia_talk:Speedy_keep#Possible_Guideline_Addition? As few people look at WP:SK, I'm hoping to get a few more eyes on it so it isn't controversial. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 22:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion Confusion

What the difference between CAT:CSD and WP:SD, And why does neither link to each other, when they both do the same thing in a different way? Pardon my newbieness of course. --DennyCrane 13:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Help anyone?

I don't know if any one can help but I've speedied a couple of pages and the users who made the pages or other users removed the tags. I added {{db-empty}} to the page Jack Faber and Vissenaken. And the tags have been removed thanks for the help. Whispering 05:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey Whispering! In both instances the Speedies were removed by an administrator. This is because the Admin most likely thought they did not meet the requirements for a Speedy Delete. And I would have to also agree with that judgement, as there are many stub like articles out there which would be very usefull if they were expanded and thus should remain to encourage others to add content. If you feel the article should still be deleted, you should go for an WP:AFD. Whereby a consensus is called on to whether or not the article should be removed.--DennyCrane Talk 06:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please delete the Sakina bint Husayn page

Sakina bint Husayn’s page should be deleted because there are two pages about binte Hussain (Sakina bint Husayn and Sakina binte Hussain). Sakina binte Hussain is more popular and more informational page then Sakina bint Husayn. The two pages (Sakina binte Hussain and Sakina bint Husayn) are about the same girl. So I think Sakina bint Husayn should be deleted because it contains less information and less contributors then other article (Sakina binte Hussain). Thank you Salman

There's no need to delete in this case. Instead, you can simply replace the short page's contents with "#REDIRECT Sakina binte Hussain" and turn it into a redirect page. That way anyone who searches for her or links to her with the other spelling will be automatically sent to the correct one. I'll do that now. Bryan 05:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Renomination and resources

As you (SHOULD!) know, deleting an article costs additional time and resources. Typically at least as much as the original article cost.

So if you've been going around deleting stuff just to save time and effort, you're wrong, stop deleting right now. :-P

Anyway, a recent deletion debate turned up that some people aren't aware of the costs and manpower required to deal with (re)nominations, so I added a short phrase about that, without judging either way.

Kim Bruning 19:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I hate the power hungry deleters on Wikipedia

I was building a site on Edward Capehart O'Kelley, the man who killed Robert Ford in 1892, with assistance from his descendants. It was given a "delete warning," within seconds of my first "save," so I gave my reasons, as asked, to not delete it, as I was still building it. Within a very short time some power hungry ass went ahead and deleted it anyway! Wikipedia has given me nothing but grief since I started! You will always have destroyers, and as long as they are given the authority to do so, they will. I am really regreting coming here in the first place.Soapy 00:03, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see that in your contribs - what was the article name, please? KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Edward Capehart O'Kelley ?--Andeh 22:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

It looks like it was deleted under Prod, and the admin missed the Hangon. I see the next day it was undeleted and moved to User space for expansion, and currently exists as an article. Seems like an honest mixup which has been corrected, surely this is not worthy of "hate" and descriptions such as "power hungry bastards"? KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

There was recently a problem with an editor who seemed to be on a mission to delete articles. It is much easier to delete than to create. Once again, I suggest a 2 month delay on merges and 6 months on deletions.—Who123 17:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions for deletion criteria

Deletion has always been used as a tool to get rid of clearly bad, clearly unencyclopaedic articles. I think it can also be used as a tool to encourage higher standards, by introducing some criteria for deletion that (hopefully) would seldom be used in practice. Much thought has led to me to suggest the following as criteria for deletion:

1. Article has been a stub for more than 6 months

   There are huge numbers of stubs which have been stubs for a very long time. If they cannot be expanded, they should be merged with another article. The possibility of deletion ought to encourage editors to expand or merge on a much larger scale than occurs at the moment

2. For new articles, no references 7 days after the article has been created

   Referencing is essential. An unreferenced article, on a wiki-based encyclopaedia, is as good as useless, and the fact that probably 99% of our articles do not cite their sources seriously damages our credibility as an encyclopaedia. The assumption is often that someone else can come along later and find sources. In practice that's extremely difficult, if not impossible. I've often found it pretty hard to cite the sources for articles I've written myself, when I've not referenced them as I wrote them.

3. For older articles, tagged as unreferenced for more than six months

   Same logic as above.

In practice, it really ought to be the case that these deletion criteria would not be used very much. A tag on an article saying "This will be deleted in six months unless sources are cited" would surely give ample time for that to be done, and ample encouragement as well. For new articles, probably the most important thing is that they're referenced, as it's so difficult for anyone else to cite sources later to back up what the original author wrote. Poor prose can be corrected easily even if you don't know anything about the topic, neutrality issues likewise, but referencing is crucial enough that we should much more strictly enforce its universal application. Verifiability is, after all, one of the three most basic policies of Wikipedia. Worldtraveller 13:47, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

To be as gentle as possible, god no. For unreferenced materials, AfD already does a decent job handling those issues, and expecting an article that draws little attention to have a more experienced editor come along and find sources is poor. The stub stuff in particular really gets my goat, as a small article is better than none at all. Yikes all around. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

To re-emphasise, my idea is much more about providing incentives than actually deleting articles. All articles should be referenced - if references cannot be provided, the article should not be here, but in all likelihood references would be provided if an article was going to be deleted otherwise. Permanent stubs imply that a topic is too small to warrant its own article - we should strongly encourage merging into larger topics. Worldtraveller 14:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't doubt for a second that you're trying to improve things, but if your intent is for higher standards, then proposing that otherwise worthwhile stubs be deleted simply because they're stubs is the wrong route to go. If your intent is for higher standards, then instead of tagging something as unreferenced and hoping that it either gets fixed or canned is the wrong route to go as well. Current deletion policy more than deals with unreferenced material, and stubs are not a problem. If you're intending to increase standards, then certainly there are some Wikiprojects out there who have charged themselves with fixing these problems without attempting to place it into deletion policy. There's no such thing as a "permanent stub," it's simply a stub that the right editor hasn't expanded yet.

Truly, if we want to improve things, we need to march over to the pages for verifiability and reliable sources, and start expanding our base of what can be reliable, rather than just assume that things that stay stubby for an arbitrary period can't be improved upon further. This, of course, is outside of the calling of this page, but that's a much better option, IMO. An uphill battle, as all things are, but better. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

But the content wouldn't be deleted - just merged to a more substantial article, and thereby placed in context. I don't see that unreferenced material is adequately dealt with - I just clicked on Random 20 times and found only 1 that cited its sources. None had inline citations. It's so difficult to find sources for what someone else has written that we really should try and avoid the situation arising in the first place. Other approaches, as you say, can also work, and I wouldn't want to discourage them, but I think that together with them, my suggestion can also play a role in pushing us on from a situation in which any content whatsoever is published unquestioned, unless someone asks to see a source, to one in which articles must always cite their sources. Worldtraveller 14:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

And for articles lacking a clear merge target? And if the merged information isn't dealt with properly in the main article? And if it's considered "merged" but the consensus at the article is that they don't want it? In a perfect Wiki, nothing would have to be "merged," and stand-alone articles would be encouraged. Stubs are useful and important, and really shouldn't be discouraged, especially though deletion policy.

Just because references aren't clearly marked for certain articles is by no means an indicator that there aren't sources. Perhaps it's a new editor who doesn't understand our sourcing policy, perhaps it's all generally referenced in the external links, etc.

"It's so difficult" is no reason to give up on it. Articles should definitely cite their sources, no one's saying otherwise. It's no reason to simply advocate deletion over a time period in the event few people see an article. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

But the situation at the moment is that 95% of articles don't cite their sources, and there is no incentive at all for people to add references to articles they find that don't have them. I could write a bot, I suppose, to automatically add {{references}} to the million or so articles that lack references. I think there needs to be a stronger incentive. As for newly created articles, people get their information from somewhere, and it seems madness to allow them not to cite their sources and expect someone else later to go to the great effort of finding out where they got the information from. If new editors don't understand our sourcing policy, they really need to learn about it, otherwise their contributions ultimately create far more work for everyone.

So an incentive is a carrot that your article won't get delete? There's enough reason to delete just about anything as is that we don't need to expand this further. If you think an article can't have any sourcing, take it to AfD to be deleted, don't look for an automatic out on it. That's simply silly. Just because they're not inline linking or using <ref> tags on their external link areas doesn't mean there's no othe roption but deletion. To be blunt, it feels like an easy way out, especially when a rationale like "their contributions ultimately create far more work for everyone." --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:47, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

As for stubs, actually I think they should be discouraged. They should be a very short term thing. If they were a good thing, we wouldn't have the stub tags telling people they're not finished. At the moment, the way things work, there is little incentive to expand a stub, and many or most could easily be merged into larger articles. Worldtraveller 17:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow. We have a real fundamental difference in our perception of what stubs achieve. I see stubs as an admittance that, yes, we have an article on this subject, and it likely needs work. To delete them says that we don't, and to do a merge, sloppy or otherwise, takes people to a place they didn't intend to go. I'll pass. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:47, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

On this case, I agree with BDJ. Deletion procedures are NOT the way to get articles improved; it just happens to be a relatively nice side-effect for those that are kept. There's a wealth of possibilitees available short of the nuclear option that is AFD, or the sneak attack of PROD:

• Wikipedia:Collaborations_of_the_week
• Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Wikipedia:Requests for expansion
• Category:Wikipedia maintenance in general... -- nae'blis _(talk) 15:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, all these can do the job as well, but ultimately the average quality of the encyclopaedia is brought down by its acceptance of very very poor quality articles. The extreme lack of referencing severely damages the project's credibility. How enormously better would we be, if all our articles had references. We probably need many different approaches to trying to make that the reality. Worldtraveller 17:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. We definitely agree on your overall statement - lack of referencing hurts us. Deleting, merging, those don't fix the issue, it simply makes us look worse. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:47, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, as I say, I would expect that not really many articles at all would ever get deleted if these criteria were adopted. They'd just be a strong encouragement to follow fundamental policies. It's often incredibly difficult to find references for articles I've written myself, months after I wrote them, and it would have saved me an enormous amount of time if referencing had been mandatory when I wrote them. Worldtraveller 08:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

So make it mandatory, for yourself. It would require a huge shift of Wikipedian philosophy to require all added statements to have direct sources; however there's nothing preventing you yourself from requiring this of yourself. Lead by example, and maybe someday the attitude will change. I myself make sure to add at least one source on any new/expanded article I make about real-world phenomenon (fictional subjects are a little more lenient in my world), but I know not everybody is good at doing this. It's one of the strengths of wiki, after all, that people do what they're good at. -- nae'blis _(talk) 14:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I strongly believe it's a shift that needs to be made, if we're serious about writing a high quality encyclopaedia, perceived as accurate and reliable. I can't really understand why it would be a problem to make referencing mandatory from the start for new articles - people are getting information from somewhere, after all. If they tell us where, that's great - takes two minutes to type it. If they don't, someone else has got to find a source for each statement, and that can be very time-consuming. Without a strong incentive, I can't see people suddenly becoming diligent referencers. That is doing incalculable harm to the encyclopaedia and generating millions of man-hours of work that will have to be done later, if we want to be, and be seen to be, a serious, high quality reference work. Worldtraveller 17:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's arguing with the need for sources and references. What some people are saying here is that Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy is not the place to enact that change, and that the threat of deletion is not the way to accomplish that goal. Let me know if this comes up somewhere else, and I'll probably support it. -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Where else would you suggest? For the vast majority of articles which are unreferenced, I don't really see any viable way of enforcing the basic policy of verifiability, except by saying they might get deleted unless sources are cited. I'd love to know any other ideas, because I really feel that unreferenced articles are a huge drain on credibility and, if anyone wants to cite sourced for them, time as well. Worldtraveller 22:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I have admired Worldtraveller's die-hard views on verifiability for a long time. The state of our WP:LIVING people biographies in particular irk me greatly. And while I try my best to add sources to random pages I come across (sometimes a quick google throws up a gem of a reference) I feel like it's a losing battle. Unfortunately, I think your creation of positive incentives (such as WP:GOOD and your very welcome interventions on WP:DYK) is likely to be the best you'll be able to do - clearing out the unreferenced rubbish is unfortunately a task likely to be beyond any of our deletion processes, or any extension of them that I can foresee. Actually I do have a positive suggestion for you. What we need more of is not outright deletion of articles (which is hard to get support for anyway, especially if it is perceived as using deletion as a "big stick" rather than a tool to remove utterly unencyclopedic information) but more removal of unverified claims. What we need is a "slasher's charter" that we can point people to in edit summaries or replies to disgruntled editors that their hard work has been removed. Removal of unverified information is to be treated as utterly acceptable; doing it to a WP:LIVING bio is to be treated as a Very Good Thing Indeed. Whack 'em back to substub - A-OK. Spin-off article, no sources? Redirect it to whence it came, no questions asked (or a ready answer available). Restoring unverified information leads to a warning. Having their content stripped is often a painful experience from editors; if they can see a link to why it's so unacceptable they may change their minds. Violating the warning gets a slap on the wrist from an administrator. They picked a WP:LIVING bio to do it on? Even bigger slap. Continually restoring unverified information wouldn't be treated as typical edit-warring but as a serious offence. I'm sure there'd be some support for this in existing policies and guidelines but even though I'm an absolute stonewaller on referencing issues at WP:FLC, WP:FAC or WP:GAN I really don't have a thick enough skin to do it "in the wild" without a clear charter of some kind to back me up. I've got burnt enough on dead obvious cases involving living people bios. Wikipedia is basically like a giant sponge that grows by absorbing and assimilating packets of informations that tens of thousands of people are chucking at it. Some is good, some is even very good, while other bits aren't quite in the right format just yet but will be assimilated with a little bit of effort; on the other hand others aren't so good at all. There's "George W. Bush is an @$$" stuff that bounces right off, and a massive amount of stuff somewhere between shoddy and mediocre, and all utterly untrustworthy, that seems to settle in and bed down without getting checked over or sorted out, even if it's completely sourceless. Many of these articles are essentially correct and fairly useful, and in time people may add references and help them come good. The big problem is that it's far easier to include a source at the time you include a fact from it, and far harder for somebody else to fill it in after the event. We need to get people into the habit of pruning the stuff they can't verify when they look over an article. It's in this critical bulk of material that's held to be so sacred as to be "above deletion", but nobody's got a clue whether or not it's actually true, that our fatal bullets may lie. WP:DEL appears not to be the place to discuss this (I guess it's fair enough not to see deletion as an educative whacking stick).WP:V perhaps would be a better forum? Supposedly WP:V is one of our long-standing and most robust core editing policies(!) Or why not put a charter of sorts at Wikipedia:Removing unsourced material is justified? Now that people are taking us (far too) seriously, the joke (though hopefully not the fun!) is over. The time has come to zap the crap before the crap zaps us (again). Deletion seems to be for sub-crap that can't bite back. We obviously need other tools, both positive (WP:GA being a good start) and negative (ideas on a postcard addressed to WP:V?) TheGrappler 06:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC) (Do you think there'd be much opposition to a "slasher's charter" by the way? I suspect that most of the opposition here is to the fact that deletion is something of a holy cow, whose name may not be invoked within 2 miles of the word "article" or 5 miles of the word "automatic", rather than any substantive opposition to the idea of removing content. Indeed, due to edit histories or somesuch, the idea of "article" and "content" are not treated as synonymous. Threatening deletion sounds mililaristic; but to strip out unverified claims is to be factist and not at all a fascist. I suspect most editors would agree. TheGrappler 07:16, 15 July 2006 (UTC))

There was recently a problem with an editor who seemed to be on a mission to delete articles. It is much easier to delete than to create. Once again, I suggest a 2 month delay on merges and 6 months on deletions after the merge and delete tags are placed.—Who123 17:24, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Biggish change

• Biggish change

I'd like to see some more discussion on this change, it's a bit big. - brenneman ^{L} 17:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Help

I tried to edit this page to reflect the change in policy on {{prod|reason}} changing to {{substr:prod|reason}} but I didn't understand what the tlp tag meant in the edit page. Could someone make the change and explain what it means? Thanks! JamieJones ^talk 03:33, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I've just learned this one myself. Instead of using <nowiki> tags around a tag you wish to refer to (rather than transclude), you can use the {{tl}} tag in this form: {{tl|name-of-template-to-not-transclude}}, which produces the template with double-curly-braces and an internal link to the template itself.

To make {{prod}}:

{{tl|prod}}

which essentially is the same as using

<nowiki>{{</nowiki>[[Template:Prod|prod]]<nowiki>}}</nowiki>

• BigNate37_T·C 18:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

RfD discussion time

Freakofnurture (talk · contribs) just made an undiscussed, unilateral change to the Deletion policy discussion time for Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion, writing "seven days (in practice, more like two)". There have been numerous complaints and Deletion reviews over Freak's rapid and unwarranted closures at RfD.

Many of us, with other responsibilities in life, only check our XfD pages once or twice per week. For special cases, with clearly defined requirements, there is Speedy deletion.

I oppose turning all RfDs into speedy deletions. The official policy is seven days, and should remain seven days, to give editors time to participate.

--William Allen Simpson 18:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. There's no rush. Two days isn't exactly speedy deletion, but it's certainly not enough time to form meaningful consensus on any remotely debatable redirect. Deco 19:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well. — Catherine\^talk 21:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Then again, the vast majority of RFDs are obvious no-brainers. As long as you have an intelligent admin working on them (rather than a mindless vote-counting drone), they can be closed significantly faster than seven days. Seven days to deal with a redirect is ... very long. Unlike deleting an article, there really isn't anything to be lost by an RFD closure. It's about fixing what stuff points to and if it shouldn't be pointing to anything it gets deleted. It's trivial, basically. Seven days seems unwarranted. --Cyde↔Weys 00:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

FoN has take to running RfD as something of a personal decision-making zone of his own. That he gets fed up with people in 48 hours is not really a reason to expect everyone with an interest to keep up with a comparative backwater within one admin's interest horizon. In the case of some widely-linked redirects in particular, there is something to be lost by early closures; that a different outcome might require the reversal of all the delinkage some time after additional edits have been made to the relevant articles. There is no hurry; there is no reason to make it the fastest of all the deletion processes. However, if there are a large number of very obvious redirects passing through RfD that need deleting as slam-dunks, then there is probably a case for a new speedy criterion. -Splash - tk 00:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Seven days may seem to some people as "very long", but to some of us it's not very long at all, especially if it's over a weekend or holiday. This is Summer and people do go on vacations, also. I often am able to access the net only on weekends and just have gotten my laptop back from repairs after over 2 weeks. And Wikipedia is not the ONLY thing I do on the Net. Six months may be way too long, but for some people a few days is going to the opposite extreme. I would suggest 2 weeks plus the next weekend with an extra week if there's a MAJOR holiday during the period. CFLeon 01:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

MAJOR holiday? What did you have in mind? — Jul. 22, '06 [14:04] <freak|talk>

Christmas, New Year's, etc. My local public transportation agency recognizes 6: NY's, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and XMas. It's a bit heavy at the 4th Quarter of the year, but is a guide to work from. Notice that all are either 2 days or have Mondays off. This is opposed to Flag Day, for instance. CFLeon 22:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The wiki runs at its own pace, not yours. You don't have any inherent right to be involved in every discussion on Wikipedia. If you can't be around for weeks at a time, just accept that you will miss a chance to get involved in some stuff. --Cyde↔Weys 19:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The discussion here seems to be focusing on quick closings as "deletes". There are also many that are closed quickly as "keeps". In fact, part of Freak's edits that were reverted included the statement: "Additionally, a nominated redirect may be edited (by any user) to create a new article or disambiguation page, at which point the corresponding RFD nomination is typically closed as null, void, meaningless, and no longer applicable." I'd hate to see bureaucracy get in the way of clear cut decisions that benefit our readers. When it's obvious that a redirect should be changed, it should be closed quickly so that readers get the content and not a dead end page. -- JLaTondre 01:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, that's why I close RFDs early; to benefit the readers. If it's obvious that something is no longer going to be a redirect and it needs to be a disambiguation page, there's no point in waiting five more days; just fix it now! --Cyde↔Weys 19:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The original text prior to Freak's edit was "about a week"[13]. When Simpson changed that, he made it "seven days"[14]. I've restored the original text. I would note that wording is consistent with categories and images. If we're going to argue over the duration, we should keep the original definition and not either sides particular view. It seems to me that the original ambiguity recognizes that it's not a hard and fast rule, but that there are times when the decision is clear cut. -- JLaTondre 00:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

That's fine, I merely removed the Freak parenthetical, rather than reverting. In general, I view "about a week" to be longer than 7 days. Heck, at Cfd, everything is usually listed for at least 8 days!

--William Allen Simpson 22:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Too-fast Deleters?

I'd like to make a complaint about people that are way too fast to use the Delete Template. I was just putting up James Madison DeWolf, and someone put up a Delete template LITERALLY within a minute! I didn't even have time to access the page a second time! And this is not unique- I've seen several deletes posted in just the time it took me to go to the restroom and come back. Whatever you think of the particular articles, this is way too speedy. There should be a minimum length of time to fairly give the poster a chance to eat, go to the restroom, access a source or whatever before some Net Nanny freaks out. CFLeon 01:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. Recently, there was a problem with an editor who appeared to be on a mission to destroy articles though merging and deletion. Not every editor checks articles that they are interested in frequently. At that time I would only check those articles once a month or so. I would like to suggest that a policy be adopted that a merge template must be up for 2 months or so before the merge is done. I would like to see something similar with perhaps 4-6 months notice on article deletion. Is this the best place to discuss this?—Who123 16:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Yet another (very) early close of an RfD (that came back through DRV for being closed to soon)

We either need to change policy to reflect practice (but only with consensus) or stop closing RfDs early. I've seen at least two admins complain that RfDs that should be obvious to everyone are coming back through DRVs. Rather than prevent it from happening by allowing all RfDs to conform to policy by allowing the discussions to remain open for the full duration, what usually happens is the DRV itself is closed within a day. I've woken up to see a new RfD open and close before I can comment, and I edit quite often. Now, we have WP:RFD#King's Highway (Ontario) → List of Ontario provincial highways which came back from DRV (and rightly so; five deletes and one "strong keep" by the redirect's creator) after being kept and closed before the seven days. This DRV RfD was closed the next day it was opened. Might I point out that these are to stay open for seven days unless they qualify for early closure per WP:DEL#Early closure:

If a clear consensus for non-deletion is quickly reached, discussion may be closed before the end of the typical period, for example, a clear consensus for speedy deletion, a clear consensus for a speedy keep, or a consensus for a redirect. The debate should remain transcluded on the appropriate deletion page. If the proposed solution has not achieved a very clear consensus, the listing should remain for the full five-day period. Any substantial debate, regardless of how lopsided the keep/delete count may be, implies that an early closing would be a bad idea (emphasis added).

Surely an RfD with several delete nominations should not be kept immediately after one person argues for keeping it, and after it comes back as a DRV there is definately substantial debate on the redirect. This is getting frustrating. Have the admins who close RfDs early against policy never read the relevent policy, or do they just have no respect at all for it? I'd really like to hear a good explaination why there are multiple pages of policy being violated on a nearly-hourly basis through RfDs. BigNate37_T·C 18:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• It's unfortunately the latter. I've tried everything I know of short of RfAr for the most egregious violators, as this is one of my major pet peeves, but if you can't convince the admin to reopen on the talk page, I encourage you to take it to DRV. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• That's not really a good solution; I'd rather take it to dispute resolution if it is an ongoing, repeat-offense sort of thing than make a WP:POINT of taking redirects to DRV for policy's sake (even if policy needs something done for its sake). I understand where you are coming from though, I'm just hesitant to get into a policy war such that the offending admins become even more obstinant in closing valid DRV-RfDs early, rather than just the WP:POINTs. BigNate37_T·C 18:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

• Well, it isn't a point, it's what DRV is for. I'm in on whatever you decide you want to do about it, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

This isn't the place to discuss that close. Try deletion review or arbitration. There is a fundamental difference of opinion between different administrators on whether robotic and slavish adherence to written policy is appropriate. Longstanding Wikipedia tradition is that it is not. --Tony Sidaway 19:02, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this is a perfectly viable venue to discuss deletion policy, especially as he was asking whether we need to adjust policy to meet with those who don't consider it important. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not here to discuss the specific early-closure DRV/RfD except as an example of a broken process and/or policy. BigNate37_T·C 20:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

What does it matter if an RFD is closed early? Are you denying that the majority of early decisions made on RFD are the right ones, or are you upset because you didn't get a chance to have your say before it was over? If there is an RFD outcome you disagree with remember WP:NBD and contact the closing administrator on their talk page. I've been working on RFD very actively recently, and yes, a lot of them are being closed early, but then again, a lot of them have really obvious resolutions. --Cyde↔Weys 19:09, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

You mean like the Reichstag thing? Only commenter who got in within the 4 hours it was open said "Keep, harmless", and as it had the [[WP:]] pseudo-namespace prefix, the usual mainspace arguments wouldn't have applied here. Is it silly? Yes, but so is BJAODN and Hangman and the target article to begin with... reducing the timeline to 48 hours is one thing, but 4 hours is just over-the-top. There's no speedy criteria for this example. Give it a rest. -- nae'blis _(talk) 19:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

A case could be made for CSD G1 (Patent nonsense). -- JLaTondre 19:36, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

If that is so, then {{db-nonsense}} should have been placed on the redirect. If the attending admin agreed and deleted the redirect, that warrants early closure (but does not prevent recreation). BigNate37_T·C 20:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

No. If an admin decides something meets CSD, they can delete it without it being tagged and close the nomination. If it get's recreated, it can be re-deleted using the same criteria. -- JLaTondre 21:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Cyde, I think that's a bit of a straw man fallacy. I'm not arguing the individual merits or lack thereof of premature closes but rather the habitual disregard for policy that governs RfD. In my eyes, the only two fixes are to either stop this disregard for policy and end this ultra-liberal use of WP:SNOW and WP:IAR reasoning, or reach a consensus on a policy change that would reflect the current status-quo. In other words, either bring RfD administration in line with policy or bring policy in line with the admins' actions. As a side note, I am not condoning a ninja-change to the policy. BigNate37_T·C 20:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

There were 8 keeps and 1 delete this time and that's not counting all the original overturns at the first DRV. Even if you add the deletes votes from last time, I think closing this was a ligitimate application of WP:SNOW as it's clear there is not going to be a consensus for deletion. However, the {{rfd}} tag was not removed from the article so it wasn't a properly executed close either. I think, given the circumstances, this one should be re-opened and allowed to run its course. As such, I've reverted the closure. -- JLaTondre 19:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stop saying "votes" ... none of this is a vote. --Cyde↔Weys 19:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why people get so hung up on that word. For all practical purposes, it is a vote. It's just not a simple majority system with binding results. People seem to equate voting as synonymous with Western-style democracy. Even dictatorships can have voting. But if you want to substitute "opinions" for "votes", feel free. -- JLaTondre 20:22, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Simply put, why would we evade process on ANYTHING that got sent back from DRV? The whole point there is to correct flaws in process, not to give people another chance to be bold (we're already past edit, revert, and now solidly into discuss). I'm not a process slave, but this just doesn't make sense. -- nae'blis _(talk) 20:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

You said it, we're not slaves to process. Where Deletion review makes a clear mistake, it should be ignored. --Tony Sidaway 20:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but flanning the flames over an extra few days just doesn't seem worth it. -- JLaTondre 20:22, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't regard closing a clearly pointless discussion as "fanning the flames". Mindless insistence on following petty bureaucracy for its own sake, on the other hand, is a most disturbing abuse of a process whose purpose has already been served by what has gone before. --Tony Sidaway 20:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

When people oppose the result, it is -not- a pointless discussion. Everyone need to get it through their heads that words like obvious and clearly are not valid arguements, especially if someone else is arguing against your point of view. Hint: if an RfD comes back via DRV, it is not obvious or clear to everyone involved that the original RfD was the correct decision. BigNate37_T·C 20:45, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

"Mindless insistence" on saving 5 days despite some users feeling like it's being rammed down their throughts could also be argued as "a most disturbing abuse" of a WP:IAR. Why shouldn't both sides maintain civility and assume good faith? Would having the debate remain open 5 more days really hurt anything? Does saying "we're right and you're wrong no matter what the process says" really help anything? Short cutting process is an important aspect of Wikipedia, but it seems to me that this un-used redirect is hardly important enough that it couldn't wait. -- JLaTondre 21:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, Nae'blis—why would we evade process on ANYTHING that got sent back from DRV? "Obviously" someone disagrees with a previous result and the RfD should be open for the full duration. DRV/RfD wars are not productive in writing an encyclopedia. We should at least be letting DRV RfDs run the full time, even if we can't apply policy correctly to first-time RfD nominees. BigNate37_T·C 20:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Major correction - there is no legitimate application of WP:SNOW. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:SNOW is an opinion and not policy. That there is no legitimate application of it is also an opinion and not policy. -- JLaTondre 21:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The Snowball clause (also known as WP:SNOW) is an essay that describes a kind of boldness that has been present in Wikipedia since the earliest days. as such, it's an expression of a strong trend in Wikipedia editing. It's a bit late to claim that it has "no legitimate application." All it says is that bothersome process can be sidelined when the effect would be the same without the process. If the snowball clause were invalid, we couldn't delete (or keep) anything without a discussion. --Tony Sidaway 02:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Pehaps this should be listed on a more-traversed page where other editors will have the opportunity to join the discussion? I don't know how to go about this, but if someone does and thinks that it is worth doing, feel free. BigNate37_T·C 20:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:CENT comes to mind since this has to do with deletion policy, but it's already kind of overloaded (I suspect people aren't removing dead discussions there). Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) also seems like a likely candidate. -- nae'blis _(talk) 21:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, somebody reverted JLaTondre's reopening. Where is the discussion? And I'll note that this is abuse of process by those 3 (Cyde, Freak, Tony) is fairly frequent. So, where is the Arbitration?

--William Allen Simpson 22:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Process has to be pissed on regularly, to stop it getting dry and dusty. --Tony Sidaway 23:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

If you don't actually have anything particularly forward-looking and constructive to say.... -Splash - tk 23:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe I just did. Fuck process. Long live Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway 23:52, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

If the admins won't follow process, policy, or rules, perhaps they aren't appropriate to serve as admins. rootology 01:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Something to consider for both sides

I should append that last statement--it's not an attack on Tony (although I *do* strongly disagree with many of his viewpoints on process). Any "system" of this size, complexity, and magnitude depends on process. From the government to corporate settings, an established procedure and workflow is critical to ensuring that everything remains on the up and up, and that nothing can fall through the cracks. At worst, if *EVERYTHING* were done by the book, is that you'd get a backlog on some relative queues of work, but that again is a self correcting thing. As they back up, more people could become admins to help in turn keep up. Bypassing or "pissing" on the process and systems that 99.9% of the users of Wikipedia rely and expect for expediency is a HORRENDOUS idea and attitude for anyone to have. It leads to pointless fights, hurt feelings, and endless ill will.

In the case of erring on the side of Keep for deletions, this is not a bad thing--if you AfD and in 48 hours you have 90 people saying Keep and one lone voice saying to nuke the article, you might as well keep. However, if it's a possible no concensus either way, or a possible delete, it MUST run out the duration. What does it honestly hurt to do that? Keeping it "by the books" ensures that no one can complain: it was done by the books. And no, Tony, I can see you gearing up to type it--this does not give anything to the trolls. It disarms them, if they are trolls, since they can't cry foul. If the community BY IT'S OWN RULES says "You're out", you're out, and that's that.

I suspect that some people may be in favor of bypassing process--not naming names--or general procedure to see their own personal ideals, ends, desires, and vision of the project wrought or brought about. However, this is a Very Bad Idea. No one man or woman's vision is relevant in the end beside Jimbo's; everything else should be consensus. If all the people discussing this say that concensus is you "do it by the book", well, then, anyone who bypasses that should be set to be held accountable. There is oversight for perceived bad deletions, as there should be, but there should also be a firm, committed, and iron clad committment to err in the side of keeping at all times. At worst, you'll have to wait another day or four, and at best, if you have a vested personal interest to see an article 'gone', it'll be gone anyway by the book, with no wiggle room for complaint, if you do it RIGHT.

I honestly recommend that it be set as a policy that WP:SNOW be judged 100% inappropriate for anything as an AfD, or No Concensus. It should only be even considered or allowable as practice when the final closing will be clear keep, never othewise. Deleting content from Wikipedia is a very serious business, and if something is up for AfD rather than Speedy or Prod, there's a good reason for it be up for discussion in all likelihood. It's foolhardy and irresponsible to torch content that can be worthwhile or possibly rehabilitated to "piss on the process". As an addendum, I propose that with this adjustment to policy it be ALSO policy that any inappropriate and premature closings as a matter of policy by reversed and reopened to run correctly. There's no good reason to just torch something--I mean, literally, in the fifth day and 23rd hour someone could make a compelling argument of such clarity and insight that it could sway the closing admin one way or the other--it would be wrong and unfair for both inclusionists and deletionists to simply deny them that right and oppurtunity in the spirit of "Faster Pussycat, Delete Delete." 02:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Problem articles where deletion may be needed

I added Proposed Deletion to the Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Problem_articles_where_deletion_may_be_needed table, as it only listed AfD as a method of deleting articles. Some of the long time policy articles still haven't been updated to include PROD deletion, this was one of them. --Xyzzyplugh 19:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

video game characters and such drivel?

is there a page specifically devoted to notability requirements for video game characters, old TV series, etc.? wikipedia seems totally stuffed with such crud. e.g. i was surprised to see a prominent mention on Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac song) to the "fact" that this song appeared in a single episode of "Knight Rider" -- and even more surprised to see the *endless* reams of drivel written about that show (which ran only between 1982-1986, for god's sake!). do we really need an article about FLAG, the organization that Michael Knight worked for; Garthe Knight, his occasional doppelganger; KARR, his car's nemesis; the plot of every single episode List of Knight Rider episodes, etc. etc.? similarly, when i tried typing "zero" with the expectation of a disambig page with a clear link to the japanese fighter plane, i instead got an endless list of characters from video games and tv series i've mostly never even heard of. (the link to the plane was about the 50th entry before i moved it up.) i'd suggest a page specifically about fictional shows, games, etc. that tries to get people to think twice or three times before posting. (one possible criterion: imagine someone reading wikipedia 20 years from now, do you think anyone would possibly care about this? if not, probably doesn't belong.) Benwing 05:11, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

For episodes of TV shows, see Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Television episodes, which suggests that individual TV episodes only have their own article if there's enough verifiable stuff that can be said about them. Otherwise, the content should be merged. JYolkowski // talk 01:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Bad faith nomination

We are having a bit of a brawl over at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Warcraft character articles. Many feel this entire nomination is bad faith, and the original nominator has even pulled out. How do I go about getting the nomination strikken, as this entire AfD is wrong. After the nomination went up, people started adding new articles to the list which gives no concise way for people to vote, as new things are added. Most, if not all, are major characters inn the Warcraft universe, and as such work in accordance with WP:FICT. The admin who re-opened the nomination stated that it was heading for "deletion" which I don't see. And nominating that many articles is plain wrong, seeing as there is no way to keep track of how the vote is being counted and which of the articles should be exempt from the vote. I don't think editors who vote "delete", actually read all the articles nominated. And as such have no idea which of the articles are major or not, or if they should be keept or not. This entire vote is messy, and should anyone want to nominate characters for deletion, they should do so individual. Havok (T/C/c) 06:13, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Reality Television Contestants

This keeps coming up - all over Wikipedia are people whose only noteworthy aspect is that they were a contestant on Survivor or some other show. I understand if you won, and even if you are a runner-up, but that being the only noteworthy thing in your history, well, I don't see it. But I'm open to being swayed. Is this an old discussion? What is the consensus? --DavidShankBone 20:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Do they have non-trivial mentions in the media? Are they famous for more than just their appearance on the show, and thus worth having their own article? Are they making the article too long by their inclusion? That'd be a start, and none of those are specific to reality TV. -- nae'blis 21:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. Take Rafe Judkins, where one person in the discussion page made the point that his inclusion seemed merited by the fact he is was the first gay Mormon on the show - he was voted out early. External links include one to his brother's website. Eliza Orlins's only noteworthy attribute is that she was on the show, although some well-wisher has included her study abroad and Key Club awards to argue for her merit as an encylopedia entry; and then there's Ami Cusack whose only other noteworthy aspect is that she appeared in a Playboy spread (before the show). I realize some of these people may have a fan base, but I don't see evidence of it, nor that this alone merits inclusion. Cindy Hall didn't even make the final four and is a zookeeper. Morgan McDevitt has nothing noteworthy. However, Gary Hogeboom was an NFL quarterback. Fine. But this is quickly going to get out of hand, if it has not already. These very entries are handled perfectly well by the ABC homepage (if not better). Guidance?--DavidShankBone 22:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with nae, their notability should be tied to how many non-trivial references they have in the media, perhaps regarding controversial aspects of their participation in the show. This whole conversation assumes non-notability for anything else, naturally. (I don't believe their religion or sexual persuasion qualifies as "notability" on its own, either.)Michael Dorosh 22:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

There's no consensus one way or the other at the moment. But I disagree with nae - if they're on the show, they very, very notable, and they really should have individual articles. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I was asked to opine on this. It is often true that conversations about these things make more sense if every instance of the word "notability" is changed to "verifiability". I suggest that the sensible thing to do is to only create child articles from the television show article for those contestants for whom there is enough WP:V material from reliable sources. Jkelly 23:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious Jeff, who else do you consider "very, very notable?" Unlike American Idol, Survivor contestants are chosen for an innate ability in all of us - the ability to "survive" under certain circumstances. What, exactly, makes them "very, very notable" that, say, you or I do not have? Their desire to hope their instinct is good enough to win $1,000,000? I agree the top two challenges merit a page, but beyond that they are discharged game show contestants. Can you find anything in the WP:BIO section that makes them "very, very notable?" I can be swayed, but as it stands now, I don't see what they have accomplished or achieved if all they have done is compete in a game of survival for a lot of money; a television game that has a heavy production quotient. --DavidShankBone 01:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is full of articles of people who do not deserve them because they are simply unnotable and that's a shame. I have read the articles mentioned above. None of them are within Wikipedia's standards. The formating is terrible and they seem more like a fansite type of work then something worthy of an encyclopia. None of the articles meet the minimum cualifications to be considered notable, see: Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Just because a person participates in a T.V. show does not make him notable. If that were the case, then there would be an article for all the hundreds of thousands of T.V. show constestants. I believe that the above mentioned articles should either provide verifiable sources of their notability or otherwise they should be nominated for deletion. Let us remember, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a fansite. Tony the Marine 02:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Protected deleted pages

Hi.

Curiosity question: If I have a good enough reason to re-create a deleted *and* protected page, can I do it myself? Can you grant temporary adminship/unprotecting to allow for such a thing, if you agree that the reasons I give are good enough?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.138.199.173 (talk)

The best way to go would be to create a username (it takes seconds of your time), go to User:Yourusername/sandbox, create your proposed article there, and then convince someone it should replace the protected deleted page notice. Jkelly 23:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

So it depends on being able to "convince" somebody -- and if they have some sort of bias against the attempt (even if the proposal is good and would actually be acceptable under the rules), then I still couldn't do it. That sucks ****. Then again, it would also apply to the ideas of getting temporary adminship or unprotection as well. But thanks for the answer anyway. (Original poster) 70.101.145.181 01:46, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't another alternative be to re-create the article in a User sandbox (as above), and then bring the original deletion to Wikipedia:Deletion review and provide a wikilink to the replacement article? That way, it's not one person's opinion; a consensus would be obtained.—Chidom ^talk  01:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, if it's uncontroversial, try any one admin (or just post on the talk page of the deleted page, and hope). If you run into opposition, take it to Deletion Review or reconsider your page creation. :) -- nae'blis 21:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Identity of deleting administrator

I've just run across a page that was Speedy Deleted by a user who is only identified by an IP address. I would think that this wouldn't be possible; if users without accounts can't create pages, how do they delete them? I don't disagree with the deletion; I just wonder about the methodology.—Chidom ^talk  16:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Tagging an article to speedy deletion is a normal edit, and anonymous editors may edit pages. But deleting is possible only by administrators; the log is here. (AFAIK only registered may become administrators) googl t 16:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to the log; that identified the administrator. Having tagged a few articles with {{db}} myself, I know anyone can tag it; I also knew that only an administrator could act on the tag/actually delete the article. What was confusing me was that the note at the top of the page is "The result was Speedily Deleted as a non-notable biography. 82.33.48.5 13:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)"; that didn't identify the Administrator and gave the impression that someone signed in under an IP address had done the actual deletion. Apparently they deleted the article while signed in as an administrator and added the comment while they were logged out.—Chidom ^talk  01:41, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Deleting illegal material

While reviewing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Viceroy seeds, it occurred to me that for Wikipedia to publish this in my country is illegal. Allowing the information to be downloaded is publication according to the law of both the US and Australia. In future we ought to be able to do something about this. If someone were to publish methods of committing suicide or images of child pornography on wikipedia, that too would be illegal. - Richardcavell 05:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Since the servers are in the States, I don't think it matters what is illegal elsewhere. More to the point, we can't track every nation's laws and admins looking after CSD pages would not be able to easily verify whether it is, in fact, illegal in country X. Further, if the material is illegal, fix it! Then nominate it for deletion, but there is no rule saying you can't cut out the child porn and bomb-making instructions first. CSD isn't the right way to deal with these matters. If your removal of illegal or illegitimate material is being reverted, or if it is grossly inappropriate and should not be on the history even, perhaps it should be brought up on WP:AN/I. BigNate37_(T) 09:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, the only way to fix the article I named is to delete the whole damn thing. If someone posted an advert soliciting mail orders for child porn, I think that it would get deleted because it offends people. The fact that the material is on US servers is not relevant; under both US and Australian law, it's published where it is downloaded. - Richardcavell 22:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The article you use as an example should be deleted but as spam, not because it happens to be illegal in your country.
First the practical issues. Almost everything is illegal somewhere and legal somewhere else. If we tried to dumb Wikipedia down to the lowest common denominator, we'd have almost nothing left.
Second, your statement that "it's published where it is downloaded" is an untested and controversial assertion in law and is not to the best of my limited knowledge, the law in the US. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union in particular seems to dispute that point. US court decisions on the applicability of local obsenity standards to downloaded materials are also unclear. IANAL but from what I've read, the general rule in both US and international law is that you have to have some sort of presence in the jurisdiction to be subject to the laws of that jurisdiction. Amazon.com can be sued in the states where they house their servers, their warehouses, etc. If they have no physical presence in Alabama and don't do any business there, they can't be legitimately sued there. Likewise in the international arena, something may be illegal in North Korea but unless the organization has a physical presence in the country, any judgment is going to be moot.
If you're really concerned about the legality of a particular point, though, the right answer is to contact our legal office directly. Dealing with such issues through the community-driven deletion process is no guarantee that the consensus decision would match the relevant law. The whole question is really outside the scope of this policy. Rossami (talk) 23:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It's gone to AfD and been speedy deleted.[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Viceroy seeds] Tyrenius 23:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Offering a home for unwanted content

Considering my own experience with deletionists and my experience as a mergist, I offer the ManyBytesAgo wiki as a substitute home. I've already petitioned meta for an Interwiki address, and I've implemented existing Interwiki addressing on the site. Cwolfsheep 17:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)