Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 61

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{{unreferenced}}

How long does an article need to carry the {{unreferenced}} template before it should be tagged for AfD? I've seen articles tagged for this reason. I mean, how long do we carry unverified articles before they need to go? — Fly by Night (talk) 00:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Forever, or as long as it takes until someone sources the article or nominates it for deletion. There is no deadline. Fences&Windows 03:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Join in the backlog cleanup at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles. Fences&Windows 03:35, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

AFD discussion page.

An AFD is a place where we can discuss a consensus on whether or not a article should be deleted. But out of curiosity, what can a AFD talk page be useful for. − Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 20:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not useful for much. But I've occasionally seen it used for a few purposes. One might be to carry on a tangential discussion about the AfD without clogging up the AfD page itself. For example, there might be questions about the conduct of the AfD. Another purpose is for an editor to make a comment or ask a question about the AfD after the AfD has been closed. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. − Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 17:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Please list Enfauser for deletion

See [1], thanks. 217.235.37.238 (talk) 16:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Enfauser. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 16:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Relisted templates

I find it difficult to read, and especially write, in AfDs that have relisted templates in them. The wikitext appears at the bottom of the edit page, which makes it difficult to read or add new comments in-line with the discussion. Can these be placed at the top, and appear in a different format so they don't interfere with the task at hand? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• For the closing admin the position in the discussion where the article was relisted is extremely useful so I can't say that I can see a benefit from moving them. Experience is that users are more then capable of having a discussion after the relist. Spartaz ^Humbug! 12:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Mass AfD nominations noted at User talk:Geo Swan

Seriously, shouldn't we at least consider giving him a chance to respond to all these nominations, rather than piling on him all at once? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 07:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Did you check the timestamps on the notifications? Did you read all their talk page archives to see whether this issue has been raised before? Exactly what outcome are you seriously expecting from raising this thread? Spartaz ^Humbug! 12:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
  • I'd like a sort of moratorium on the batch nominations of articles created by Geo Swan. It's enough he doesn't get a chance to respond to the nominations, let alone improve any of them. As to the timestamps, December 26 doesn't seem too long ago. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 15:45, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Talk AFD has no powers to ban a user from listing AFDs. I note you haven't commented on whether you have reviewed all the talk archives to see what discussions have already been had with Geo.Swan concerning these articles. There have been issues over sourcing and misattribuation of sources conflating two people of the same names and lots of sub stubs for non-notable subjects - just from my own observations closing AFDs and at DRV. I understand that Fram, who has done much of the listing, warned Geo.Swan some months back of their concerns and no action to clean up the pages was taken. You should know that because you checked the archives? Right? Anyway, so many of the pages were deleted that there are clearly valid issues to deal with that further delay is just, well not really on. You would be much better off using your time to deal with sourcing unreferenced BLPs then getting uptight about this. If you still want to spend time on this then UT:FRAM is the venue for further discussion. Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
      • What are you talking about? This is more than just Fram, you can see that from his talkpage. It's Pontificalibus, IQinn, Anotherclown, all these editors piling on together. And yes, I've looked through the archives several times, plowing through a forest of templates to find some little discussion that remains. If you want to help, try to resolve the problem instead of brushing it off on unreferenced BLPs. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 16:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

  You are presupposing that I agree with you there is a problem. The actual answer is that I don't. Unsuitable articles/pages - especially about living people - need to be removed. And for BLPs the sooner the better. Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:47, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

  • • • • Considering that this has been going on for months, by quite a few unrelated editors, and with the result that most of the nominations (AfD and MfD) have ended in deletes, I believe that the problem is not with the nominations, but with many of the pages created by Geo Swan. Seeing how many pages have been nominated already, and considering that there are quite a few more in the same vein, I don't think doing this at a much slower pace would have been advisable (please take into account that Geo Swan had hundreds of user space subpages, and has created over 2000 articles). The deletion discussion have been going on since April or May 2010, and it became apparent that there were many, many problematic pages. If an editor can have his pages nominated (and deleted) at a fast pace for six months running, then the problem may be that he creates too many pages on non-notable subjects, not that too many pages get nominated. Fram (talk) 16:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Listing Erik Kloeker for deletion

Can someone list Erik Kloeker for deletion? I just came across this today and it appears to have quite a few notability issues and the article itself has been entirely edited by Erik Kloeker (Users User:Erikkloeker and User:Edit_tore_n_chief). 216.196.139.146 (talk) 04:30, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Erik Kloeker -- RoninBK _{T C} 13:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

What are the Wikipedia options for original work

16.January 2011. Hi , thanks for considering article Survival Capital .I think that the reality is mature for such an article and my criteria differs a little from my nomination.But I respect your practice and would like to promote results of my master work and to have new options or I will find it myself.Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.200.65.74 (talk) 10:21, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you're looking for Wikipedia:Alternative outlets. Hut 8.5 11:09, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Also examine Wikiversity. Collect (talk) 14:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

How to inform wikiprojects?

The nominator should inform related wikiprojects noticed in the "rules". No I have the big question: how? I know which wikiprojects I want to inform, but are there any tools or formatting rules? I think the tips should be updated. mabdul 00:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The closest thing I think we have is the DELSORT process, which is robust... but inconsistently applied. Jclemens (talk) 01:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If the article is important to you, have it on your watchlist. If a topic area is of interest to you, watch its list on DELSORT. I do usually add any AFD I create to relevant delsort lists but even that is not mandated. Notifying WikiProjects is just a suggestion, if you think it is needed just drop a note on the project's talk page. I don't think we need a tool for that, you can just say "hey this article that falls under your scope might be deleted, here's a link to the discussion." Beeblebrox (talk) 20:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Friends of the Five Creeks

An article I wrote is up for deletion but the AfD was done incorrectly, there is no discussion page and it was not listed on the AfD listings. This needs to be done. Furthermore I would like to suggest a Speedy Keep because the article is well sourced with multiple non-trivial coverage that covers the topic as the main subject. Furthermore on the article's talk page I have noted many more articles regarding the topic directly. What can I do? Will someone please respond to my talk page please.Thisbites (talk) 05:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for registered user to complete AFD steps II and III for IC-92AD

I can't, because I'm just an IP address. Deletion rationale is on Talk:IC-92AD. 24.177.123.74 (talk) 03:21, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IC-92AD (2nd nomination). --Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for registered user to complete AFD steps II and III for Dolphin safe label

I can't, because I'm still just an IP address. Deletion rationale is on Talk:Dolphin safe label. 24.177.123.74 (talk) 04:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dolphin safe label. Jujutacular ^talk 04:37, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

The Case for Removing the Killian Documents Articles

I use to be an Wikipedia editor, focusing mostly on the Killian documents controversy and its sibling article, Killian documents authenticity issues, as well as Climate Change. While everyone knows how politics has made Wikipedia's climate-related articles ideological battlefields, at least there is a core base of reliable scientific sources to keep the articles from deteriorating too much (and they have deteriorated over the years); the case with the Killian articles, once even more volatile than the climate articles, has no such fallback: the media coverage of at time was wholly inept and genuine experts missing from the playing field, resulting in a politically driven free for all in terms what gets included/not included. And unlike the climate articles which inherently maintain a strong, broad interest, the Killian memos were only just a transient "current event" now over 6 years past their heyday. Given the poor sources to start with, the articles were never that good at their best and have only deteriorated since, and now are protected by a little cadre of defensively hostile editors, admin, puppeteers and anonymous IP's. Content that would be immediately removed from more encyclopedic articles with little dissent have been left in the Killian articles for years and attempts at removing them only result in edit wars that go nowhere, and Admin help has been pretty much nonexistent. Given all this, both articles should be removed for the good of Wikipedia -- they are utterly hopeless. I will try to outline the situation as briefly as possible, which unfortunately can't be that brief, given the complexity of the situation.

Backgound: What were/are the Killian memos?

George W. Bush was the American President from 2001 to 2009. During the Vietnam War era, he was a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, where he was suppose to serve for 6 yrs. There are two issues regarding his Air Guard service that have been recurring news topics for most of his political life, at least going back to when he was governor of Texas: did he get into the Air Guard to avoid Vietnam duty and was this done through his dad's political connections (Bush Sr., a decorated WWII pilot and also a former American President, held a number of high level government jobs throughout his political career); and did he shirk his Air Guard duty once the Vietnam War wound down (which included the risk of being sent over if he was got kicked out) and was he able to get away with it, thanks again to his dad's political connections.

While Bush's Air Guard service got some media attention during the 2000 Presidential election, it became much more an issue during the 2004 election due to Bush's opponent, Senator John Kerry, being a decorated Vietnam War veteran and then later an antiwar activist. This brought up comparisons of Bush's and Kerry's service records at the time of the Vietnam war, which turned into an bitterly ideological war in the online media, especially in blogs. A key point was the release of the service records of both Bush and Kerry. While both promised to release their military records, the release of Bush's records was spotty and drawn out, which prompted an FOIA lawsuit by the Associated Press. CBS News was not one of the major news sources for information about Bush's records until September 8, 2004, when it broadcasted a 12 1/2 minute segment on one of its weekly news showa called 60 Minutes II. These came on the heels of a release of Bush's service records the day before, on Sept. 7th, and before another release of records on Sept 24th that forced by the Associated Press lawsuit.

The CBS segment had basically 3 parts: part one was an interview with Ben Barnes, a once prominent Texas politician who supposedly helped Bush get into the Air Guard in Texas; and interview with the White House communications director at the time, Dan Bartlet, for comments; and 4 memorandums that were supposedly written by Bush's commander in the Air Guard at the time, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, the contents of which involved Bush.

The memos were obtained by CBS from Bill Burkett, a former adviser in the Texas Air Guard commander's office. There were actually 6 memos provided by Burkett, to both CBS and to USA Today, the newspaper. CBS only used 4 of the memos for its report, while USA Today published all 6.

The "Controversy"

As mentioned, there was a lot of ideological bitterness in the online media over the military service issues. After the CBS broadcast, there was some "discussion" about it, especially in the right wing blog sites. On one of those sites, The Free Republic, within just hours after the broadcast, a blogger using the name "Buckhead" said the memos were proportionally spaced, and that in 1972, people used typewriters, and that typewriters used monospaced fonts. Buckhead then went on to claim that:

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts

I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.

This should be pursued aggressively.

And indeed it was. The "Buckhead" here later turned out to be Harry MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer and conservative Republican activist. It also turned out that his technical credentials for making such broad (and demonstrably very mistaken) comments about 1972 office technology amounted no more than being interested in computers since 1979 and working in an office environment from 1980 forward. (Yes, those are direct quotes by him on his expertise.)

The forgery claims spread throughout the right wing blog sites and then to more mainstream conservative outlets like The Weekly Standard before starting to get play in the general mainstream media. Additional charges were made, all unsubstantiated, about how in addition to the proportional printing, there were all these other things supposedly wrong with the memos to indicate forgery, from format to use of terms, from the presence of superscripting to how a retired general would have no influence, and so on. As with proportional printing, these other points were either demonstrably wrong or completely unsubstantiated in any meaningful way. It should be pointed out that initially the mainstream media was not really investigating any of the charges -- it just reporting what was being claimed for the most part. And when there was any sort of an attempt at investigation, it was usually, if not always, very poor and either inconclusive or just plain wrong (as will be shown further down.) This did not stop more and more mainstream media outlets, at least their columnist, to echo the forgery charges.

CBS initially brushed off the charges, and then tried to counter them with more evidence, but it was becoming clear that they did not vet the story as much as they should have, especially when it later came out that Burkett had misled the CBS producers about how he obtained the documents. It was that revelation that caused CBS to finally back away from the story and launch and investigation into what went wrong. The "investigation" (yes, the quotes indicate that it turned out not be a very good investigation), ended up with several people involved in the story at CBS being fired.

Was anything actually investigated or proven?

No. There was a lot of news coverage but very, very little if anything in the way of actual research. Most if not all of the people represented as experts were not, at least in a way applicable to the situation. You had a half dozen memos from 1972 and 1973 with all sorts of questions about their appearance and content. You don't exactly need to be a forensics expert to know what basic things should have been done: find similar memos from that time period, preferably from the same base, and start with those for a basic comparison of appearance, format and terms; check the contents and timelines of the memos to the official records maintained by the DoD and see if they matched up or not; find as many samples of Killian's signatures as possible and match them up; find out what made for common office equipment then in both civilian and military environments; and locate and interview as many people as reasonably possible that worked on base at the time and knew either Bush or his commanders.

Pretty basic investigating, but was it ever done? For the most part, no: no comparable memos were ever found for comparison; no serious content matching to the DoD records was ever done; signature matching was left to the confused, contradictory statements by the supposed experts CBS had hired; no research was done whatsoever about circa 1972 office technology (hint: IBM was already making more money then selling word processors than typewriters); and no interviews with anybody with anyone who knew might have known what was going on at the time.

And even when there was an attempt at research, the effort fell a bit short. For instance the Washington Post ran a graphic comparison of the format of one of the Killian memos to that of a DoD record, and noted a lot of what it felt were discrepancies. The problem with this is that military documents have very specific formats by type. For instance, military memos -- which by the way are considered non-official and hence not archived unless classified -- at the time always had the signature block on the right, while official DoD records of the type the Post compared them to always have the signature block on the left. This was a very dumb mistake since any writing guide (like the older versions of the USAF's "Tongue and Quill" writing guide) would have shown this, as well as any of the contemporaneous declassified memos findable on the web. This same fundamental mistake was also made by that supposed investigation panel that CBS put together.

And getting back to the original forgery charge, if you do go Google searching for old declassified military memorandums, you will also find a good many of them proportionally printed, including some dating as far back as the 50's. Which means "Buckhead" was completely wrong from the get-go, which did not forebode well for all that came afterwards.

How does this apply to Wikipedia?

Alrighty, then -- so you have this controversy that generates a lot of press, and you want to add a Wikipedia article about it. But what if all that press is mostly just a rehash of he said/she said charges, mostly originating from highly political (and not too factual) blog sites, and what if the little amount of journalistic investigation that occurs is demonstrably completely botched? What do you do? Just rehash whatever's out there and not worry about things being wrong, or what? With the Climate Change article, it was long the policy to treat most if not all secondary sources like mainstream media coverage on the topic as being suspect since it was often very bad and outright misleading, and to instead use primary sources like science journals. This is counter to what is generally the case for Wikipedia articles, but was deemed necessary because of how poor and politically tainted the news media had been covering climate matters. In the case of the Killian memos, you had similarly very poor and confused news coverage, but there were no science journals or such to offer as good source alternatives. Consequently the Killian articles ended up being a catch-all for all sorts of misinformation and unsubstantiated anecdotes, including lots of wholly unreliable blog-based stuff. Indeed, the main Killian documents controversy article prominently features an animated GIF file showing one of the Killian memos overlaid with one recreated with Microsoft Word. This was created on the then right wing blog site (apparently there's been some sort of political shift), Little Green Footballs. People took this as hard proof of forgery despite all the noticeable character shifting, and, more notably, how this trick doesn't work at all with any of the other memos that CBS used. Since the author, Charles Johnson, is no authority on document authentication nor even on old office equipment, why is that GIF featured in an encyclopedia article? Because a lot people think it belongs there because it proves forgery? Isn't this more than just a little OR?

If you rummage through the main points on both Killian articles and bother to backtrace to what real evidence there is to support them, regardless if the source is a newspaper or blog site, you are very likely to find only random or confused speculation without any sort of real support (fuzzy memories don't quite count.)

The bottom line

Since a "reliable source" means a trusted media outlet that did some sort of vetting and investigation, it can be safely said that there are no reliable sources for the Killian articles. And also given that this is still after all this time a politically volatile topic, there is apparently no chance that either article can be fixed up to meet any reasonable encyclopedic standard. I made more than a few attempts and it just got me bounced and left with a very low opinion of how Wikipedia handles malicious editors, socks and politically charged articles. There's been more than enough time for any improvement to occur if it was ever going to occur. Kill 'em, kill em' good, I say, for the good of knowledge. CallMeBC aka 209.6.39.87 (talk) 17:41, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

• Maybe I don't have a good enough attention span but what on earth do you actually want us to do with this? Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
• If you want to nominate those articles for deletion, you'll find it useful to create an account (or merely log in). But posting long comments here isn't likely to move an AfD forward. Cheers. lifebaka++ 21:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I got so burnt out dealing with socks, IP's, obstructive and malicious editors, and clueless, unhelpful admins that I just can't ever bring myself to create a new login account. I actually got bounced through a collaboration between one of the malicious editors (who's also probably associated with your Scibaby problem) and a random, unreliable source whom I describe in a discussion as being, well, an unreliable source -- that was enough to generate a successful OTRS complaint (no, I'm not exaggerating.) And I actually tried to follow that WP:PROD procedure for removing the articles back in December, but a random admin, User:Ronnotel, deleted the request from the Killian documents controversy article, marking his revert as a minor edit, and then put a block on me for good measure, while a likely sock named Dcxf (whom I've seen around before) removed the request from the Killian documents authenticity issues article the same way about 20 minutes later. This is typical of what happens with the Killian articles -- they are cesspools for the type of problems and behavior that's been driving away your better, much more honest editors from Wikipedia, as well as being cautionary tales for how gameable Wikipedia has become by individuals and groups with ideological and corporate agendas.

And the problem with socks and malicious editors is just out of control. I checked, and as far as I can see, the only sock that I had numerous run-ins with that you guys ever caught was User:Jmcnamera, but only well after he/it helped get me bounced and then for good measure backtraced my edit history in order to revert a good chunk of it out of spite. And yes, I had made numerous attempts to follow Wikipedia's hellishly time consuming process in trying to deal with this stuff in the past, but with little or nothing to show for it besides all the time that was wasted.

Seriously, why should I bother any further beyond pointing out some problems? It is what it is, and if someone concerned enough for the integrity of Wikipedia wants to do what's best for it, then let that person give it a go. But judging from that whole clusterf*ck that happened in October regarding the Climate Change articles (aka "The Victory of the Right Wing Puppets"), I unfortunately have to believe that's less likely to happen these days. Sorry. CallMeBC aka 209.6.39.87 (talk) 14:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Request for registered user to complete AFD steps II and III for Catalina_Island_Marine_Institute

• I can't, because I'm just an IP address. Deletion rationale is on Talk:Catalina_Island_Marine_Institute. 71.189.152.223 (talk) 07:53, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
•  Done Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:37, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

How many articles in a AfD discussion?

Is there any limit to how many articles may be nominated for deletion in an Articles for Deletion nomination and discussion? Would more than ten be too many? What about over 50 articles involving articles in two states? Some general guidance is needed, but maybe I will want to be more specific once I have the guidance here. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

There's no limit. I've seen batch nominations of over 50 articles. But batch nominations have to be done very carefully, you really have to be certain that the outcome would be the same for each article. This is one example. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:00, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

The greater the number, the greater the odds that an article which ought not be deleted will get lost in the mountain. Collect (talk) 21:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Two Rescue Squadron member responses! Lots of Barnstars! Sure to be good guidance from you two responders. Please take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Mark Church (Stratford, Connecticut) and provide advice right here. This discussion is a mess, at least ten editors are contributing to various articles listed, and the resolution phase is approaching. Suggestions for improvement in the process are not going well. Please help me with the process. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I just had to untransclude that following the instructions here because all the extra headings was screwing up the view of the log page. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:33, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

A batch nomination should have (i) a common issue that predominates over all other issues and (ii) a common outcome (e.g., delete) should flow from that predominate issue. It's the same idea as item #2 at Class_action#U.S._federal_class_actions. If there is no predominate issue, then that creates a mess at AfD and, in such circumstances, people usually just !vote keep and requst that a renomination be divided into a more thoughtful nomination. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 14:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately now that you've pointed it out, I can't go over there and !vote on it as it may be seen as canvassing. But that seems to be a total mess and I'd be inclined to close it as a procedural "keep all". --Mkativerata (talk) 20:49, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

My concern is that the nominator may go on to do the same thing, a mass AfD, with Roman Catholic churches in Massachusetts. Maybe only 40 rather than 63/64, but still too many, in my opinion, for anything but a total mess once again. I would like to suggest a policy discussion on mass AfD nominations. Can you tell me where that would be done? --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Right here! --Mkativerata (talk) 00:12, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The danger is what is known as a WP:TRAINWRECK. Fences&Windows 03:22, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

As preparation for making a policy proposal on batch nominations, I am proposing two additions of terms to the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion Project, on the talk page. Please take a look. My intention is to get the terms defined, so the policy proposal can be understood. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

FYI, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lists of ZIP Codes in the United States by state resulted in the deletion of 53 articles from all fifty states, two that weren't in any state, and one that covered the entire country. Nyttend (talk) 03:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for that informative example. It seems to me that there was "a common issue that predominates over all other issues" (per Uzma Gamal) in that situation. That was why there was a clear majority in favor of deletion. When there is not a common issue, at least as perceived by the participants in the discussion, then there can be a mess instead.--DThomsen8 (talk) 03:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with Dthomsen's thoughts on the subject. We don't actually get a good guideline from that analysis, but it seems to me to be empirically true that batch AfDs with good reasons for deletion and a strong element which binds the articles together will succeed and will do so without being to disruptive, regardless of the size. But where a nomination doesn't advance a good reason for deletion (basically anything that isn't an edge case) and where there is no unifying factor involved such nominations will tend to fail and to cause undue stress and trouble. Protonk (talk) 18:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

• In my experience, a bundle is too large if it is into double figures, i.e. more than 9. The reason for this is that, to verify that all articles in the bundle are similar, one should open and review them. Doing this more than 9 times seems too much of a chore given that many participants at AFD don't properly scrutinise even single article when it is presented. A large bundle will encourage participants to make assumptions without verifying them or will deter more conscientious editors from taking part. There will be exceptions, of course - cases where a mass of similar articles have been created mechanically by a bot, for example. Large bundles should be confined to such cases where their similarity is reasonably certain. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

A modest proposal

I've just finished closing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Mark Church (Stratford, Connecticut), which took me quite literally an hour to clean up. This was a WP:BUNDLEd nomination, and reading through the template it struck me that there's actually relatively little guidance given. Can I propose expanding and clarifying what it is and is not appropriate to have bundled? Couple of suggestions:

1. Including a note to expand the articles-standing-on-their-own-merit section to state that where individual articles in the list show evidence of WP:N which may need to be debated, say, it may be necessary to create an individualised AfD.
2. "it is often a good idea to only list one article at afd and see how it goes, before listing an entire group" - no. "In any situation where there is not already good consensus to delete this type of article, it is advised to only list..."
3. Giving a list of examples of what it is not appropriate to nominate in this fashion, as well as what it is.

Thoughts? Ironholds (talk) 02:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

As preparation for making a policy proposal on batch nominations, I am proposing two additions of terms to the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion Project, on the talk page. Please take a look. My intention is to get the terms defined, so any policy proposal by myself or others can be understood. Thank you for pointing out the fact that "This was a WP:BUNDLEd nomination" which may make a definition I have proposed moot. It is late, so I will leave it at that for tonight. --DThomsen8 (talk) 04:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I've read them; the "!keep" suggestion is logically confusing (and already used) and the WP:BUNDLE amendment should be an amendment, not put somewhere else, which rather defeat the purpose. Ironholds (talk) 15:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

So, could I have voted !Keep in the mass deletion discussion? What is the logical confusion? For WP:BUNDLE, I did not know it existed until you mentioned it. I would like it to be easy for everyone caught up in a mass, batch, multiple entry AfD to understand the policies and process. WP:BUNDLE is a redirect to Template:AfD footer (multiple), leaving the policy explanation in the documentation of a template, probably not so easy to find. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

"!keep" means "this is not a keep". That's the logical inconsistency. We already use !keep, !delete, !vote and so on to indicate that this is not a vote. Ironholds (talk) 17:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Bug?

I just !voted in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/11/11/11 and saw that the edit notice says "Welcome to the deletion discussion for 11." Obviously, it should say "Welcome to the deletion discussion for 11/11/11." Is this a bug in the group edit notice? 28bytes (talk) 10:35, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Checking to see if there might be a workaround... Jujutacular ^talk 10:39, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

No workaround that I could find. None of the options at Wikipedia:MAGIC#Variables produce the desired result. This is an unusual case however. Jujutacular ^talk 10:42, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Switching to use {{#titleparts:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|0|2}} should work in all cases, but it should be tested to make sure. Cheers. lifebaka++ 11:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

That seems to work, thank you! I've made the change. Jujutacular ^talk 17:06, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks both! 28bytes (talk) 18:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Double dipping

What is the exact rule that prohibits double dipping? The rule that you can nominate an article, but can't also vote for your own nomination. Is that a firm rule or is it ok to double dip? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, there are two accepted conventions here. One is that you can't !vote twice and the other is that, except for "procedural" nominations, your nomination statement is your "delete" !vote. A nominator is allowed to comment all he wants but he shouldn't bold delete as it would be the same as someone !voting "delete" twice. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:27, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

However, in this nomination, student7 has formatted his nomination rationale as the first "delete" !vote so he isn't "double dipping". It's a non conventional way of formatting AFD nominations. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• in practice I think it only becomes a problem when a nominator misunderstands (or worse) the conventions and formats every comment with a top level bolded "delete". Doing it only once usually just invites another editor to leave a note and usually (hopefully) for close debates the admin is looking close enough to see that the nominator made another delete !vote. Protonk (talk) 03:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Require giving reasons for deleting votes?

AfD Wikietiquette says "Do not make unsourced negative comments about living people. These may be removed by any editor." Recently, a possibly-newbie editor removed some Delete votes without notifying anyone of the deletions.[2] Here is what was deleted:

• Delete per WP:ATHLETE. 4th in a state championship? Not even close. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 17:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Delete: best wishes at becoming notable though. --AerobicFox (talk) 23:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The grounds given, after these deletions came to light, were that these two votes contained personal attacks on the subject. (In fact, the first is only a rather blunt opinion supported amply under WP:ATHLETE for figure skaters; the second, under WP:AGF, should not even be considered a personal attack.) The editor deleting these two comments noted the deletion nowhere. Later, this editor alluded to the above-quoted wikietiquette item, and still later, asked why any comment on the deletion was necessary -- there was no rule requiring it. Personally, I think that excuse is scarcely credible. But it might have been used in the past, it might be used again in the future. Accordingly, I propose adding the following (my additions in bold):

Do not make unsourced negative comments about living people. These may be removed by any editor, and in an AfD discussion, replaced with some clear indication of removal, such as "(Removed unsourced negative comment(s) about a living person)."'

Yakushima (talk) 06:23, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The editor in question is correct in their observation that a in-page comment is not necessary, and in my opinion would not be helpful. In a properly handled BLP-violation situation, any redacted comments should be removed silently without calling any attention to the fact that there might be something controversial in the Page History. Ideally, it would be helpful to include something in the edit summary such as "rm personal attack, WP:BLP" but that is not necessary. Remember that BLP issues are the exception to our usual rules of Wikietiquette; in this case personal attacks are to be shot first, and questions asked later. From my read of the AfD, the situation was handled appropriately. The comments were removed, and then once they were determined not to be personal attacks, they were restored. -- RoninBK _{T C} 08:23, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

• How on earth was this a BLP vio? For goodness sake. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:28, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

For a more extreme example, how about an AfD vote saying something like:

• Keep Very notable - it's common knowledge she slept with the president, someone should add the relevant sources.

If that genuine !vote were removed without notice, the sources might get overlooked and the AfD would result in a delete. --Pontificalibus (talk) 12:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

"In a properly handled BLP-violation situation, any redacted comments should be removed silently without calling any attention to the fact that there might be something controversial in the Page History." Do you really believe that? If so, it sounds like you'd be in favor of allowing editors to launch BLP-violations constantly, with impunity. Could you explain your reasoning? How can you be in favor of "shoot first, ask questions later", but also be in favor of never asking questions? Yakushima (talk) 08:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

That's not what I'm saying at all. First off, I incorrectly used the phrase "BLP-violation," I meant it to be a shorthand for an "unsourced negative comment about living people" but that isn't necessarily limited to BLPs. I will be more precise going forward.

But the point that I am trying to say is that had the statement actually been a negative attack, it should have been quietly removed on sight. By "shoot first," I mean that if there is ever a question as to whether a comment is an "unsourced negative comment", the comment should be removed until it's shown to be harmless. In the vast majority of times that this rule is applied, the content that is struck is considered too damaging to remain in the conversation, something like "Keep, and f**k you for nominating my page," or even something like "The user who nominated this article beats his wife."

Now please don't misunderstand me; I am not endorsing this editor's misuse of the rule. But think about it this way, it's not like the attempt worked. Even without a pointer calling attention to the redaction, it was promptly discovered and reverted. Arguing over whether the editor gave proper notice is burying the lead. The problem isn't that the editor hasn't properly filled out the necessary forms in triplicate, the problem is that the editor is misusing the rule in the first place. Further refining of the rule will not prevent the rule from being misused. (See WP:CREEP.) -- RoninBK _{T C} 06:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The proposed "further refinement" is not to prevent the rule from being misused. That's impossible anyway -- any rule can be misused. It's to prevent tampering with votes and getting away with it using the excuse, "Oh, but I thought those were unsourced negative comments on a living person, and nothing says I have to tell anybody I'm deleting them -- the rules don't say that." You argue: "... think about it this way, it's not like the attempt worked." This time, no. But convince me that there's some mechanism that detects this kind of deletion automatically. If there isn't one, then any number of AfD discussions might have been tampered with, in just this way, with just this excuse. Lots of people vote on AfDs and never look back. They won't notice their votes have gone missing. And maybe worst part about this excuse is that it's reusable. A disruptive AfD editor can simply feign cluelessness whenever the deletions are caught -- which might be rare enough. Yakushima (talk) 05:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The first comment has a low chance of being construed as a personal attack; the second, under AGF, I cannot possibly conceive how that might be considered a personal attack, if anything, it looks more like praise than an ad hominem. Isn't the rest of this covered by WP:CBLANK later? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 20:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I highly disagree with this idea. AfD comments should be removed unless they are gross violations of BLP. And even then, the keep/delete part of the vote shouldn't be removed. I find it interesting that this was done in the same edit as an !keep vote..... --Guerillero | My Talk 00:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Um, I think you meant "AfD comments should not be removed...."? Yakushima (talk) 05:31, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

yes thats what I am trying to say. Sorry for any confusion --Guerillero | My Talk 05:33, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem, actually I got a good laugh from thinking of what AfD discussion would be like if you'd been taken literally and it somehow got incorporated into the guideline:

• Keep. Per WP:ORG. You fucking asshole.
• Delete. Per nom. You tedious moron.
• Redirect and Merge, per my rich white ass, you cretinous wankers.
• Comment [This comment removed per WP:AFDEQ, for being insufficiently offensive. Please see the Talk page for this AfD if you wish to contest this edit. You flaming retard.]

Yakushima (talk) 06:21, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

• I'm surprised I have to say this, but we should be extremely careful in adapting a policy designed mainly for articles to a discussion page or a process page. WP:BLP is the proverbial big stick and we are allowed to wield it because we need to deal with very real problems in articles and elsewhere in the encyclopedia. It is not meant to serve as a sanitizing agent for discussion nor is it meant to be applied overbroadly. Removing comments from an AfD should be a last resort unless the comment is obviously inappropriate or made in bad faith. Anything where there could be confusion should at most be struck through. Often times it is completely unnecessary to refactor a comment, even an unproductive one. Admins are big boys and girls; we can give appropriate weight to dilatory comments without assistance from other editors. Leaving an unproductive or otherwise harmless comment has other benefits too. Sometimes comments like that are left to get a rise out of people or the commenter behind the edit may just check back to see if someone has responded. Leaving a comment alone tends to reduce or eliminate motivation for those commanders to return. Refactoring it or replying with a lecture sometimes results in an unnecessary shitstorm. Protonk (talk) 07:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that can any euphemizing change in, or deletion of, a bad comment might only result in more bad comments, in some cases. I'm interested in seeing how this experiment works out -- I've also left a conciliatory note on the editor's talk page. There's probably no perfect solution, because there are no perfect people among Wikipedia editors. But it seems you see removal of comments from an AfD as a "last resort". Would you support saying so, explicitly, in the AfD Wikiettiquette guideline, together with some guidance on what to do short of applying that ultimate remedy? The current guideline says nothing to that effect. And that was part of the problem I came here with. Yakushima (talk) 05:44, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The AfD policy page should only have a comment about this if we feel it is a significant enough problem and if we feel the current policies or norms on wikipedia and talk pages don't cover the subject. If a specific process page is silent on a subject it usually means "use your best judgment" and "follow whatever general guidance there is on a subject". Protonk (talk) 18:34, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

If that's the default, then in effect we've got conflicting process pages specifically for AfD discussion -- see WP:AFDM, section "Refactoring the discussion thread", which says "6. It is appropriate to redact personal attacks which are irrelevant to the facts of the discussion. The general format is to replace the offensive language with (personal attack deleted). How would you feel about surfacing that point in WP:AFDEQ? Note it's not me italicizing "is", in point 6. The emphasis seems a non sequiter -- unless it reflects a debate that predates the one here. I'd be interested to know how that was hashed out. Yakushima (talk) 11:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Amendment Per Protonk's comments on cascading disagreements kicked off by noting the comment removal at all, and per my remarks on the Counter-proposal below, add this to my proposal:

"When contesting the comment deletion (or the manner of marking the deletion), the debate should be carried out on the Talk page for the AfD, after civilly noting the disagreement in the AfD discussion itself and referring to the Talk page."

Yakushima (talk) 05:58, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Counter-proposal

Perhaps the answer isn't to change the rule to require some kind of notice, but to discourage its use by the random editor. I propose striking the words "by any editor", leaving the rule to read, "Do not make unsourced negative comments about living people. These may be removed." It wouldn't necessarily change how the rule is enforced, just removing the invitation to use it. -- RoninBK _{T C} 00:52, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The "by any editor" seemed odd to me, and I do favor striking it, for the reasons you give. But leaving deletion authority ambiguous here is not a good idea. Maybe AfD would be a lot cleaner and smoother in general if more people were striking negative comments about other editors (or about the article subject, if it's a BLP AfD.) Sure, arguments will erupt over such deletions, as Protonk points out above, but those can be deflected into the Talk page for the AfD, which otherwise doesn't get much use. All such "meta-discussion" might also (with notice) be moved there by (implicitly) "any editor". I'll amend my proposal above, to that effect. Yakushima (talk) 05:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Moving comments creates as much trouble as deleting them. Basically unless you think a comment is actively disruptive you should leave it there. Ignoring a marginally disruptive comment is the best choice in 90% of situations. As for modifying the policy to make clear who might have "authority" to remove a comment made by another editor, take a look at WP:TPO for very clear and very well supported guidance. And finally, remember that history gives us examples where enumerating previously ambiguous authority does not actually improve clarity. Protonk (talk) 21:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

To each point:

• You say "Moving comments creates as much trouble as deleting them." Your "as much" suggests quantified experimental results somewhere. Even if true, it matters where it creates that "trouble." If the trouble gets siphoned off onto the Talk page of an AfD, wouldn't that be better for AfD discussions overall? AfD voters arriving after any such deflection will see a more coherent set of on-topic comments.
• As for WP:TPO, I like it -- it's just common sense. But it's only about Talk page editing. An AfD discussion is not a Talk page. In fact, AfD has its own guideline for discussion editing: WP:AFDM. In its section "Refactoring the discussion thread ", AFDM says this: "6. It is appropriate to redact personal attacks which are irrelevant to the facts of the discussion. The general format is to replace the offensive language with (personal attack deleted)" My proposal is to say "It is almost always better" instead of "It is appropriate", and to say it in WP:AFDEQ as well, where people are far more likely to notice it. Where leaving "(personal attack deleted)" (legitimately) would be disruptive, the real problem isn't with the action itself -- it's with the editor having the disruptive reaction. Sometimes a little short-term trouble helps diagnose a longer-term problem. But having diagnosed a problem, how can admins take action, unless there are very clear guidelines and policies to recite back to the troublemaker who argues from the guideline language itself? It's in that spirit that I proposed the change. Admins could then say 'Please don't quote me that bit, in defense of your silent vote-deletion -- I see what it says in the very next sentence, and you must have seen it too."
• As for what you say history teaches, reading about the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution doesn't clarify much, for me -- and besides, what history says about governing a nation isn't necessarily helpful in governing Wikipedia. (Unless there's been a constitutional amendment saying "Ignore All Rules." I wouldn't know, I slept through much of high school civics.)

Yakushima (talk) 10:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Interpreting WP:TALK for deletion discussions

Background: In this recent AfD fresh non-trivial evidence was added to the nomination text after several opinions had been expressed in the discussion. The added text was not re-dated/timed and so at first glance the text might have been thought to pre-date the comments later in the discussion making it appear as if these opinions were made against the revised nomination rather than the original version. I approached the nominator, pointing out the provisions of WP:REDACT but at that time they refused to change the nomination back or date their revisions, as a result I ended up striking out my opinion rather than having it misrepresented. The nominator happens to be an admin and a second admin intervened to agree with the opinion that REDACT does not apply to AfD discussions as it is the responsibility of a closing admin to check the AfD revision history and work out which opinions related to what version of the nomination text. In a later version the changes were separated out and dated to avoid further off-topic discussion.

Question: Is it the general consensus that the behavioural guideline of REDACT does not apply to an AfD nomination text and, if so, should the text of WP:TALK be revised to make this an agreed exception? Fæ (talk) 15:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

It does seem poor form to change the substance of a comment after others have responded to it in its original form. Although afd isn't strictly a confirm/refute the nom itself (I've seen lots of them wind up hingeing on entirely unrelated issues that came up in later comments), it's still confusing when the nom says X and someone's later comment is written based on it saying Y. This whole situation could have been handled by adding a followup comment rather than changing the original nom. That way it's clear what early-responders are talking about, and might explain why there is a sudden shift in the direction of the discussion (after seeing more data from nominator). It's a discussion, so we assume that comments are written per their date-stamp and others' responses follow from that. DMacks (talk) 15:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Comment: the nominator later did the same thing in the body of the discussion - that is, changed his/her comment after someone had responded to it. He/she commented that an impressive number of Google News hits would be something like 827,000. I pointed out that Google News hits do not run into the hundreds of thousands, after which s/he went back and changed the number to 1,827 - making my comment about hundreds of thousands of hits look foolish. I think the WP:REDACT guideline should apply to all conversations and not just those on talk pages: "It is best to avoid changing your own comments. Other users may have already quoted you with a diff (see above) or have otherwise responded to your statement. Therefore, use "Show preview" and think about how your amended statement may look to others before you save it. Substantially altering a comment after it has been replied to may deny the reply of its original context. It can also be confusing." --MelanieN (talk) 16:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Update: the nominator says the number was changed BEFORE I responded to it, according to the history. Apparently I was in the process of writing my reply when he/she changed the number. My reply was initially refused due to an edit conflict. I of course immediately resubmitted it, without rereading the whole article to see if something had been changed. I continue to think this illustrates why you should not make substantive changes to your comments; someone may already be responding. --MelanieN (talk) 16:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

At the top of WP:TALK it says "When pages in other namespaces are used for discussion and communication between users, the same norms will usually also apply" -- so that guideline does indeed apply to AFD discussions. Jujutacular ^talk 17:17, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

So in other words, no revision of the text is needed; WP:REVERT already does apply to AfD discussions. Thanks. --MelanieN (talk) 18:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

• Agree while strikethroughs (indicating part of a comment has been mooted for some reason) or other modifications which clearly show the change in the text (e.g., parenthetical updating) are perfectly fine, additional comments should be only inserted the appropriate part of the discussion, with an accurate timestamp. As a rule of thumb, if any reasonable wikipedian could misunderstand the order in which things were added by just looking at the page itself, it's been done wrong. If they have to look into the history to see who said what when, it's detrimental to free and open discussion. Jclemens (talk) 17:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has prompted me to request a title change of the associated guideline. Discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Title change. Jujutacular ^talk 19:21, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

• Another note, this discussion covers a lot of the same ground as one above. No reason to fold one into the other but a heads up for everyone here. Protonk (talk) 19:36, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for pointing that out, Protonk, though I think my proposal is now a mess in part because I made it before I discovered WP:AFDM. AFDM addresses "refactoring the discussion thread", in a section potentially relevant here. But even if you consider the nomination argument itself as somehow the initial part of "the thread," it doesn't help with the issue Fæ brings up. It keeps referring to "comments of others" and "votes". Here, the issue is that the nominator edited his own nominating argument, apparently to improve his case, then edited one of his own comments in the actual thread, with the same motive, leaving no indication of either change. I think WP:REDACT covers that kind of thing already, per Jujutacular's argument-from-inheritance, above. I do wish WP:TALK would directly support that argument-from-inheritance, however. E.g., it might read "When pages in other namespaces are used for discussion and communication between users, the same norms will usually apply, but please seek out guidelines specific to those namespaces, to be sure." Perhaps followed by a list of the more important process-page guidelines. And surely AfD is important: that list would include WP:AFDEQ and WP:AFDM. Moreover, WP:AFDEQ really ought to say at the outset that it's basically WP:TALK, "except as modified by what follows and by WP:AFDM." Right now, it says neither, it just refers to "General advice". Most editors won't automatically think of AfD as just a species of Talk page. I know it never occurred to me to look at WP:TALK, when I ran into similar AfD issues. Editors should be told that AfD is subject to WP:TALK except as noted, right where they are most likely to look for AfD editing guidance. That's in WP:AFDEQ and maybe in the section immediately following, "How to discuss an AfD". Yakushima (talk) 07:17, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there a standard disposition for the talk page of a merged article?

I recently implemented the merge of Powered exoskeletons in fiction to Powered exoskeleton, per the AFD. I wasn't sure what to do with the talk page -- redirect, or leave as is? -- so I asked the closing admin, who also wasn't sure what standard practice was in these cases, but suggested a redirect and a note on the target talk page. I did that but was reverted with an edit summary of "Talk pages should not be blanked", which is certainly true in general. Is there a standard approach, or is every case to be decided on its own merits? Mike Christie (talk – library) 17:04, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

On its own merits.
As for the merged fiction article talkpg, the only content below the banners excluding ancient botspam and merge suggestion/confirmation is a one sentence section. You can copy it over and redirect the talkpg if you want to. –Whitehorse1 17:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I did that and was reverted again, so I will let it go at that. Mike Christie (talk – library) 22:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I prefer separate Talk pages, especially for mergers. Templates such as {{Old AfD multi}} and {{Copied}} should stay with the merged/redirected page. Flatscan (talk) 05:26, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I found an old discussion regarding CSD G8: WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 35#Does G8 apply to the Talk page of redirected articles?. Flatscan (talk) 05:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Supervote

After what happened at this AFD and it's DRV and partially inspired by this discussion, I have expanded WP:SUPERVOTE. One of the things I tried to do is differentiate between "supervoting" and "admin's discretion" as the 2 terms are often used interchangeably. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:25, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Rename Articles for Discussion

In reponse to the fact that some uninformed editors have taken it upon themselves to vote based solely on the fact that the title of this page contains the word "deletion". Many articles are placed here daily which are not immediately nominated for deletion. Pages that are rather unmonitored are commonly brought here when a bold action is reverted, but where a one on one discussion is only going to result in no consensus being formed on the talk page.

Based on the other venues on wikipedia being renamed along the same lines of this, I propose that we formally rename this articles for discussion, as the result doesn't need to be that they are deleted, and niether does the original nomination. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:25, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought there had already been a favorable RfC on it or something, and that practical considerations in executing the renaming were the reason it hadn't yet been done. Perhaps someone else recalls the specifics? --Cybercobra (talk) 22:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

That might have something to do with it. There would be a huge mass of pages and templates to change/rename. One idea might be to start a whole new set of pages, templates etc. and slowly phase in the new system. Then when everybody's used to using it, mark the old one as historical. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:32, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

WT:Articles for discussion/Proposal 1, last edited February 2010. Revisited at WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 67#WP:Requested merge, December 2010. Flatscan (talk) 05:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be a frequent return to this idea. It seems like there is general consensus that it should be done, but no consensus on doing the actual work to make the transition. I myself would like to one day vote in an AfDiscussion.--NickPenguin_(contribs) 06:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

At the very least, everything besides the actual page url could be changed to indicate that this is for discussions that don't necessarily have to result in a keep or total deletion. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 06:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose The idea is impractical as there are over 3 million articles now and a general forum for discussion of any and all matters relating to them would risk utter chaos, overload and breakdown. The proper place for discussion of general editing of an article is its talk page. Such discussion may be amplified by RfC as needed to obtain consensus. AFD is a special forum for the special case of deletion only as deletion is a function which is tightly controlled because of its destructive nature. Discussions which are improperly brought to AFD when deletion is not sought should be speedily closed per WP:SK, "The nominator ... fails to advance an argument for deletion—perhaps only proposing a non-deletion action such as moving or merging". Colonel Warden (talk) 23:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose You can discuss other things on the talk page, which you should do before trying to delete something anyway. Dream Focus 00:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a proposal. You missed the discussion. So did I. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 00:14, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The other xfds do fine with "discussion" so there's no cause to worry. I'm willing to to do the work of making all the changes I can find that can be made be normal manual editing, if someone will handle those that require editing the templates. DGG ( talk ) 02:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Irish Democratic Party

This: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Irish Democratic Party dates from 7 February, which is 11 or 12 days ago, depending on your time zone. I'm surprised to see that noone has closed the discussion one way or the other... it appears to be the only AFD from that date that wasn't dealt with some time ago. Can anyone enlighten me? Lozleader (talk) 00:19, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

We must've missed it 'cuz it wasn't listed on the log page. I've relisted it over on today's log. Cheers. lifebaka++ 10:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

RfC: Merge, redirect

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

How much weight should merge and redirect recommendations be given at WP:Articles for deletion, considering WP:ATD (Alternatives to deletion) and WP:PRESERVE? Flatscan (talk) 05:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

At AfD, merge and redirect arguments:

1. Should be assumed valid. As variants of keep, they should be immediately followed by speedy keep, with discussion referred to the article's Talk page.
2. Receive a large amount of extra weight from WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE. Since deletion is a last resort, they must be convincingly rebutted before a delete outcome is possible.
3. Receive a small amount of extra weight from WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE.
4. Have the same weight and require the same justification as keep and delete.
5. (merge only) A merge recommendation requires more explanation than a keep or delete, since merging involves additional content considerations.
6. Are not valid recommendations and should be ignored, since WP:Articles for deletion is focused on deletion.

Opinions are numbered for reference. Feel free to work from or ignore them.

Flatscan (talk) 05:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC), incorporating feedback from S Marshall and SmokeyJoe.

Previous discussion

Feel free to add relevant discussions. Please insert in chronological order and sign with <small>~~~~</small>.

• WT:Deletion guidelines for administrators/Archive 1#Deletion is to be a last resort (April 2009)

Notifications

• WP:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines (tag diff) (bot diff) | (tag removal) (delisting)
• WP:Centralized discussion (diff) | (removal diff) (archive diff)

---

• Same weight, roughly. I understand the argument that WP:PRESERVE should bias us towards these, but merge votes are particularly troublesome, with redirect being slightly less so. People vote "merge" as a short form of "I'm not willing to argue for deletion, but I don't think the article needs to kept." I frequently see merge votes where there is no proposed content to be retained, no analysis to show that it isn't already in the target article, and sometimes no suggestion for where it should go. It's hard to give much weight to those. In my mind, these two factors largely counterbalance each other.—Kww(talk) 05:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• The weight they're given should depend on the strength of the case made for them, just like a keep or delete argument. A "Merge and redirect" argument that doesn't specify what is to be merged or to where has little value, other than to show the editor does not believe the article should remain as a standalone. Conversely, a "merge" argument that points out the content of value to be merged and a good target for it should be carefully considered. "Merge" arguments that ask to merge unreferenced material should be discounted—no use "preserving" a problem! An argument to straight redirect, on the other hand, should be considered by whether the target of the redirect would be logical and expected. Redirecting doesn't even require keeping the old article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Same weight in terms of how to close the discussion, but closers should be aware that if people suggest merging, that likely means there's content to be brought into the merged article, and if the discussion closes in delete, the closer should toss the article to userspace for someone to do so. --MASEM (t) 05:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Same weight for "merge and redirect"; there are various degrees of notability for which keep, merge, and delete would be most suitable, and the correct decision can only be determined through careful consideration of all arguments. "Redirect" !votes, however, have a lot more weight. A single "redirect" !vote might trump a long string of "delete" !votes, if under closer's discretion the redirect target is suitable, the history does not present a liability, and no one has argued to the contrary. Presumably the "delete" !voters will not find fault with the close, since the content is no longer live, and this is equivalent to deleting the article and then someone else creating a redirect. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect should have the same weight as keep and delete and closing admins should feel free to declare a merge consensus or a redirect consensus when appropriate. If opinions are scattered then a no-consensus (defaulting keep) would be best so further discussion could ensue. "Speedy keeping" articles that are better suited for a merge or redirect would be disruptive and prone to Wikilawyering. ThemFromSpace 06:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• In almost all cases, "redirect" is synonymous with "delete". If there are redirect and delete !votes, the closing admin should treat them the same. "Redirect" is most certainly not a "variant" of keep. It is a !vote to remove the content of the article (ie delete) but replace it with a search facility for another article. As KoH says above, if there is no reason not to create a redirect, "redirect" should generally trump "delete" no matter how many !votes there are for either. Obviously delete !voters will get their way if the article is created by a redirect, unless those !voters have an actual objection to the redirect. A merge !vote should only be given weight if it explains what will be merged to where, and why the merge is viable (or, if it relies on another !voter's explanation). Otherwise its just a lazy vote that should be weighed accordingly.--Mkativerata (talk) 06:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Weight is based on how good the arguments are. When counting noses, I count merge, redirect, and keep votes together--they're all variants of keeping in some form. I disagree that "redirect" means "delete", and I will only delete an article before redirection when there's clear abuse (BLP, Copyvio, etc.) rather than just plain non-notability. A redirect can be used as a starting point for a new article, should someone want to re-start it, if the history is kept. I strongly encourage discussions at AfD to NOT focus on merely "should we have this or not?" but "How can this topic best be represented in the encyclopedia?"--Deletion is obviously still a valid outcome with the second phrasing, but a broader question prompts a less narrow discussion, which I see as a good thing. Jclemens (talk) 07:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• They should have the same weight. Merge does not require a detailed explanation of what to merge. If the article in question is essentially a sub-topic of another then all relevant content should be merged. Redirect should, if anything, be given more weight than Delete as people often go for delete simply judging the article on its own without considering whether a redirect elsewhere would be useful in its place. The closing admin needs to consider the weight of arguments presented and the cluefulness of the contributors to reach a closing decision - any idea that one type of opinion should simply be tallied up with another to reach a numerical majority is fundamentally not what AFD is about.--Michig (talk) 07:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• Question on your view of merge votes. What should the closing admin do in the case where people are arguing for a merge of a completely redundant article? Putting my editor shoes on, I nominate redundant articles for deletion, and am frequently stunned to see null merges occur: the discussion closed as merge, but no one identified anything to merge.—Kww(talk) 12:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• If there's nothing to merge then the article can simply be redirected. I've seen some strange interpretations of 'nothing to merge' however, and completely redundant articles are rare in my experience. It is often appropriate to merge the whole article into a section of another - in these cases it's redundant to state that the whole article should be merged.--Michig (talk) 17:37, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In my experience, redundant articles are usually the product of splitting or forking. They sometimes have no substantial edits between creation and nomination and are thus completely redundant. Flatscan (talk) 05:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• They should be treated as completely different arguments. Redirect and Merge are not alternate forms of Keep. In the majority of cases, the reasons for merging are significantly different from the reasons for keeping. In general, arguing to keep means that you think the topic is an appropriate one and the content is, if not usable, at least salvageable. Arguing to merge means that you think the topic is inappropriate for a standalone article, but the content is usable elsewhere. Arguing to redirect means that you think the article is wholly redundant to an existing one or the topic and content are currently inappropriate but may be appropriate in the future. Arguing to delete means that you think the content is unusable and the topic is inappropriate. If there's a mix of merge and keep arguments, the merge arguments should not be assumed to also support keeping the article as-is (unless there is evidence to the contrary) in order to shoehorn the close into a keep. Mr.Z-man 07:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Of course merge and keep should be lumped together for the purposes of determining whether an article is to be deleted or not: if the "delete or not delete?" question is answered "not delete", the "Merge? If so, what to where?" discussion can carry on without needing admin intervention. A "keep" close does not preclude a merge, nor should it, it simply means that deleting the material outright is disfavored. On the other hand, if there is a clear consensus for merge, an AfD discussion can be explicitly closed in that manner. It would be silly for 40% delete, 30% keep, and 30% merge AfD to be closed as delete simply because it had a plurality--60% of the editors opining thought the material should be not deleted. (And yes, I know that's degenerating into nose-counting, but so do many closers. Assume the arguments have equal merit if you prefer) Jclemens (talk) 08:14, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Yes and no. Merge does not mean "delete", but it also does not mean the same as "Keep." In the hypothetical example you give, "no-consensus" would be the acceptable close. There is somewhat of a difference between "no-consensus" and "keep," primarily in terms of future discussions. I would disagree about a "Keep" close not precluding a merge. A discussion with a consensus to keep the article as-is on an AFD should preclude a unilateral merge in the same way that a talk page discussion with a consensus to keep as-is would. Obviously nothing would preclude getting a new consensus for merging though. But given that you can't assume that the people advocating a merge think the article's topic is appropriate or that they want to keep all the content (they may only want to keep a tiny bit), I don't see how they can be unconditionally lumped with Keep. Mr.Z-man 08:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
      • I see a merge as more like a keep than a delete because a deletion precludes a merge, while a keep allows the trimming you're referencing through future normal editing process. Likewise a "merge" needn't mean "merge everything into..." even if the editor doesn't explicitly make it a "trim and merge" !vote. Jclemens (talk) 08:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
        • As I said below, each and every time I opined to "merge" or "redirect" an article I did so because I believe we should not have a standalone article on a topic, but it has some material that should be moved to a parent article, or the topic is a reasonable search term.
          That appears to be the core of those differences, and I have never realized that before: I consider AfD to be a discussion about having a page about a specific topic, you appear to see it about keeping the content of the page under discussion. "Topics for Deletion" vs. "Content for Deletion". Am I right? Amalthea 10:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
          • I think that's a fair assessment. Remember, if the article is deleted, the content can't be merged without a bunch of complicated licensing stuff, so a !vote to delete is to delete the content from the encyclopedia, and can't really be anything else, while a merge or redirect says nothing, by itself, about how much of the content to keep--which can range from "all" to "none", without a formal language for an editor to specify which. Jclemens (talk) 01:14, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
            • "Selective merge" implies <100%, and I interpret "redirect" as 0%. Having no convenient shorthand doesn't excuse an editor from not writing a sufficient explanation. Flatscan (talk) 05:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• I think that they should be considered varients of "keep"; however, if on closing there appears to be a consensus to merge to a specific article, or if there seems to be a consensus to redirect to a specific target, then the closing admin should take this into account. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• In my view the core question discussed in an AfD is whether we should have a standalone article on a certain topic or not. Following from that logic, opinions prefixed with redirect/merge are: a) flavors of "delete", not "keep", in the sense that they opine to not have a standalone article on the topic (and the extent of a potential merge is then to be decided through editing or talk page discussions); b) just as valid an opinion or outcome as keep/delete is; and c) a consensus to "redirect"/"merge" is just as binding as a consensus to "delete". Amalthea 10:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• 3+5 When one !votes in a deletion discussion, one is implicitly voting on 2 different issues which together determine the admin actions taken:

	Keep title	Delete title
Keep content	Merge+Redirect or "normal" Keep	"forceful" Merge
Delete content	just Redirect (actual deletion discretionary)	"normal" Delete

The normal !vote types don't fully convey these nuances, thus admins need to infer these themselves when determining consensus in non-straightforward cases. Given our bias towards preservation of possibly useful content, we should slightly favor the top row (i.e. merges); but the suitability of a merge requires the application of significant judgment and thus a merger proposal by no means automatically trumps the other !votes. --Cybercobra (talk) 11:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• 2 - In the sense that:
  • If the article name is at all plausible, or older than a few days we should really keep something there.
  • If there is any content worth saving it should be saved.

Clearly if there should be an article there then the result is usually a simple keep, however merge and redirect and merge and redirect can also cover merge/redirect for now. Moreover, I see nothing wrong with closing keep and tag for possible merging/splitting. Rich Farmbrough, 13:15, 17th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

• Comment - One thing that's bothered me for some time is the "trick" (beans alert here) to "pretend" to merge a page, by merely redirecting the page to some related or even semi-related list page or overview article. (Sometimes done in a single edit with an obscurative edit summary.) Then getting the category containing the various articles (all now redirects) deleted, claiming that the category is filled with redirects and a single "actual" article. Then getting the redirects deleted as "unnecessary". Effectively causing wholesale deletion of information, without much in the way of actual substantive discussion. And so now the information doesn't show up in searches, and is effectively "gone" as far as our readers are concerned. And should some editor come along with information to add on the topic, they're now faced with an "historical" redirect (or deleted page) that's stood for x length of time, and have to fight and argue to add information to a page which was only really removed due to a single (possibly dubious) edit in the first place. This is, of course, WP:BOLD being singularly abused. Why do I bring this up here? Because this tactic is often used in tandem with the "lost in the shuffle" AfD discussion. (While this is likely mostly common in fiction related discussions, I have seen this happen to a myriad of topics, including nonfictional ones.) Nominate something for AfD. Have several people make simple "It's cruft" arguments (or the semi related - there's a wikia for this isn't there, why do we need it - which should be easily answered with: "We're an encyclopedia, and should include things regardless of what other sites may choose to include".) And have no one make actual substantive comments. and then a "vote counting" closer closes the "discussion" as delete. ("I'm only supposed to determine KEEP/DELETE here, and there were more deletes than keeps.") And now no one can ever be able to create such an article again. DRV is a headache and hassle that most editors often don't understand. (And because - for whatever reason - DRVs sometimes devolve into personal attacks on the closer or commenters, and the commmon editor tends to prefer to avoid such meta drama, not being fluent in the behind the scenes wiki world.) And besides, a DRV isn't supposed to be AFD2 (which is what should be what happens in most of these type of cases - a second AfD discussion - hopefully with more substantive comments), so the DRV can often end up in support of a close, despite the mess. And so, NOW, the information can't be added to a re-created article without even more substantive discussion. Creating a LOT of work, that even the most determined of editors is likely to throw up their hands at. (And the above is merely one example of how this is done, needless to say, there are MANY variations of this.) So is this a major problem? Yes, obviously. But will it be resolved? I don't know. After all, will anyone looking at this page actually read this wall-o-text? I doubt it. But there it is. If it isn't said, it can't be noticed, much less discussed and maybe even someday hopefully resolved. - jc37 13:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  Incidentally, the simple answer to this poll is probably: If in doubt, don't delete. Therefore, comments which substantively suggest merging, redirecting, or whatever other editorial action should not be considered to support deletion. In other words, anything not supporting deletion suggests keeping. Though certainly, editorial action (cleanup, referencing, or even merging) may obviously be suggested in an AfD, including anything which could be suggested in a talk page discussion. And results of an AfD discussion should be treated in the same way as would a talk page discussion. - jc37 13:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  It has always been the meaning behind my "redirect"-opinions to not have a page for the topic under discussion, clearly far closer to "delete" than to "keep", although sometimes with the intention of keeping the material in the history when it is reasonable to assume that a topic will moot the current reason for deletion and is a reasonable search term. But, as I and others have said above, we seem to be looking at AfD from two different sides: Discussing what to do with the content, and discussing whether we want a standalone page of the topic. Amalthea 15:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  I have noticed that some nominators of articles that result in a merge result, simply redirect the article calling it a merge, so I think that is a big problem. I have noticed other editors, where a result is a merge, will redirect the article and say that if someone wants to merge it they should do it from the article history, without doing a merge at all either. Both seems to be disingenuous in my opinion. If you can't be bother to do the merge, don't redirect the article in the first place. There should be a clearinghouse created to list AFD-merge results for people who like to do merges to work on it. 65.93.12.249 (talk) 13:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

• (ec) I come short of declaring that one !vote has more weight than another, but I do believe that deletion should only occur in the absence of alternative options, and I reject the assumption that a Redirect !vote is always a Delete !vote. The difference between a Redirect/Merge and a Delete is one of edit history, which has strong licensing implications under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. It's the reason that a Merge and Delete outcome is not possible, because there must be an attribution connection to the original editor, (and therefore why a merge should never be given the same weight as a delete). I'm not saying we can't delete content that clearly fails our policies and sometimes a Redirect !vote can actually be a "Delete and recreate as redirect" !vote, which can sometimes be appropriate. But deletion should always be the last resort, and if an article can be fixed without use of the Admin Tools, the Admin Tools should not be used. -- RoninBK _{T C} 13:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  I, for one, have not said that it always is, but it has always been that way when I wrote "redirect" in an AfD. Since this is apparently prone to misinterpretation then I'll from now on write "delete, and create a fresh redirect since it's a reasonable search term". Amalthea 15:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  Shorthand for that is Delete and redirect or Delete then redirect. Flatscan (talk) 05:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• Keep the status quo which would be weighted by the argument behind the opinion. Merge and redirect are perfectly valid opinions and often viable routes for an article. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Same weight, per comments previously made ... those who effectively vote merge/delete are saying that yes the existence of the article is incorrect but someone may come looking for the subject hence a redirect is more appropriate. Or they are of the view that the information is better placed elsewhere. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 ^[talk] 17:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• 2.5 and 5 from me. My position is that if any policy-based argument is presented at the XfD and attracts support from good faith editors, then unless it is subsequently rebutted, it needs to receive weight in the close. For the same reason that BLP and COPYVIO can lead to extra weight for deletion, merge and redirect arguments can attract extra weight from ATD and PRESERVE. And finally, we have a rule that says "if in doubt, don't delete". That's because we want to attract new content contributors and deleting their contributions is an excellent way of driving them off.—S Marshall T/C 18:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
  • That's a good way of phrasing the "weight" issue, any argument not sufficiently rebutted gains additional weight in the close. -- RoninBK _{T C} 19:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• 3 and 5 - if you vote merge you should explain how you envision it being implemented. (e.g., the sourced material from the second paragraph) Racepacket (talk) 19:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• 2 and 5, though I still strongly suggest addressing such issues before nominating for deletion, as suggested in WP:BEFORE. –MuZemike 02:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• Per Cybercobra's table, there are two independent considerations, content and title. Merging requires keeping the page history (with limited exceptions), but it's sloppy to say that merge is therefore equivalent to keep. Likewise, a redirect means no standalone article, but redirect is not the same as delete. I should have linked the table at WP:Guide to deletion#Recommendations and outcomes earlier. Flatscan (talk) 05:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• 4 When I pen merge or redirect at an afd I fully expect these options to be treated with the full faith and credit given to the keep or delete votes. There are, and always have been, four options for dealing with the material at afd: keep, which I interpret to be the page being kept exactly as it is at its current location, merge, which I interpret as a salvage effort intended to raise what good material and/or sourcing that can be found in an article and move it to an article where the information would be better served as a whole, redirect, which I interpret to be a page that should not be its own article, but should continue to exist as a kind of electronic gps to get people to the right destination, and delete, which I interpret to be the unilateral and unconditional removal of the material from this site. Therefore, for the community to pretend that merge and redirect do not hold the same weight at an afd as keep and delete means the community is not prepared to consider all available options when dealing with material that arrives at afd. Does this not violate the very spirit of WP:AGF? We can do better than two extremes at afd. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• #4 Any argument made at AFD that is logical and based on policy is a valid argument. Any argument that is illogical and has no basis in policy is invalid. We really shouldn't try to define or regulate it any more specifically than that. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
• Choice number (1) is essentially the best answer here, with further discussion taking place at the talk page of the article in question. -- Cirt (talk) 00:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• The distinction is purely semantic and unimportant, but I've always seen "Merge" and "Redirect" votes as a variant of delete votes. A merge vote is essentially saying that "this article shouldn't exist, but it has some useful material which could be added to Article XYZ before it is deleted/blanked." A redirect vote is essentially saying that "this article shouldn't exist, and it doesn't have any useful material which could be used elsewhere, but it serves as a plausible search term for Article XYZ and should be kept as a redirect." In both cases, we're wiping out the article in question (either by deleting it or blanking/redirecting it), so it seems like a form of deletion to me. I understand that the article is technically not deleted (e.g. no admin is hitting the "delete" button on it), but its content is still being blanked in each case. SnottyWong ^chat 00:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I like this way of thinking about it. Its very simple and to the point. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 ^[talk] 00:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that we use "remove" to refer to the normal editing action and "delete" for the admin tool. Flatscan (talk) 05:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Here is a very recent example of an AfD that involved all four variants, that might help to illustrate a number of the points of discussion. In this close I applied the following four principles: (1) Merge doesn't count for much unless it's a clearly explained merge proposal (in this case the merge had essentially been carried out before the close anyway); (2) Redirect is a less drastic approach than deletion so it should be preferred if there is a consensus to delete but redirection is not inconsistent with the consensus -- often redirect and delete !votes are essentially arguing for the same thing; (3) When redirecting, the page history shouldn't be deleted unless there is good reason to do so -- whether to do so is within the closing admin's discretion.--Mkativerata (talk) 00:50, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Good close. "Delete, will userfy on request" is a distant second choice, with 1) a plausible redirect target and 2) reasonable, though less developed, merge ideas. It looks like content may have been merged to a few articles during the AfD, contrary to WP:Guide to deletion#You may edit the article during the discussion. Flatscan (talk) 05:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• As I see "merge and redirect" is essentially the same as "merge", because if one article is merged to an another, then the history of the first must be kept for GFDL issues. Armbrust ^Talk _Contribs 14:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• There's nothing special about merge or redirects. A well-founded argument to merge should be weighed the same way as a well-founded keep or delete argument. Similarly, an insufficiently explained merge comment should be weighed the same way as an insufficiently explained keep or delete argument. I also agree with the title-content distinction. When necessary, the closer should assess the consensus on the title and the content separately, and reach a close that would implement both. T. Canens (talk) 22:59, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
• I don't think we should be bureaucratic about it. Read the AFD. Look for a consensus. Look hard... not just looking at the surface votes. Do the keepers acknowledge a merge as an alternative? Do the mergers acknowledge problems? Do the deleters acknowledge that there might be a better place to cover the subject? Admins generally get a good read on this. And when they don't... there's DRV. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:57, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
• As much weight as the closing admin believes the accompanying rationale gives them. We don't use scales in AfD so a discussion resembling a CGPM meeting is unnecessary. --Pontificalibus (talk) 18:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
  • I think it's helpful to have some idea where consensus lies. I've come across a few closes closed as simply "keep" (no explanation or notes) despite support for merging or redirecting. I would link this discussion in a note like "Hi, do you know that merge and redirect are legitimate outcomes?" Flatscan (talk) 05:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
• 4, but Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Stifle (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
• Same weight, except that there are 2 types of redirect, keeping the content in the history and not keeping the content in the history, and two types of merge, keeping minimal content and keeping the full content. This makes for six possibilities, and they must all be considered. The sequence of choices is according to our current policy: we choose the least destructive alternative. We first decide whether to keep the article, if not, the default is to merge the entire content if there is a place for it. If not, the default is to merge what can be used somewhere. If not, and there's a possible redirect, we redirect, keeping the history as a "redirect with possibilities",unless the material is actually harmful or unsuitable, which calls for a delete and redirect. For a delete conclusion to be valid, all 5 of the above must be explicitly or implicitly rejected. As Stifle properly observes, we're not a bureaucracy, and often the reasons given make it clear that there is no alternative but deletion even if they are not specifically considered. But perhaps we do need a little more standardized practice, and I would see no harm in having a more formal rubric where each possibility to be formally considered if it aids in clarifying the discussion. I note that when a close comes to Deletion review, where full attention can be given , all of the possibilities are generally explicitly considered. DGG ( talk ) 06:00, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm okay with picking between two well-supported and adjacent outcomes, but I don't like the word "default" – an AfD lacking consensus should be closed as no consensus. I'd be interested if anyone starts a rubric draft. Flatscan (talk) 05:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
• I should point out that "redirecting" is not always on par with "deleting". I closed this AFD on Pigs in Space as "redirect" because I felt that the blurb in The Muppet Show was a little better then the article. I've closed quite a few AFDs that way by saying something like "Redirecting as an editorial decision, consider this a keep (or no consensus) close". A good term for this might be "non prejudicial supervote" --Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
  • My personal preference is to preserve the regular format: "The result was keep. [notes] I am redirecting to [target] in my capacity as a normal editor." Flatscan (talk) 05:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
• Question. There is a question that has always driven me nuts, and I can't figure it out, but judging by the comments above (and elsewhere) everybody else seems to have figured it out, and could someone please clue me in? The question is: in what way is "redirect" substantively different from "delete"? I mean, suppose we have article "Things that Alexander II put up his nose" or whatever, and it's 17 paragraphs long, and it goes to AfD, and the result is "Redirect to Russian Monarchy" or whatever. I mean, the information is deleted, right? So what if there's a redirect left in place as opposed to nothing? It's substantively the same thing, right? What am I missing here? Herostratus (talk) 19:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Does WP:Guide to deletion#Recommendations and outcomes help? If the page is redirected without deleting the page history, the content there is available for use. Flatscan (talk) 05:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
    • In addition, when not abused and used properly it will redirect the reader to the closest article related to that search term.陣内_Jinnai 19:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
• Comment When an AfD decision is to 'redirect' or a simple merge is performed, I encourage closing admins to actually consider deleting the article, and then make a redirect, when appropriate. Otherwise, so many times, people will simply undo the change later - voiding the efforts taken in running through AFD. If the community decides a page needs deleting, it should be deleted. One example; AFD 'redirect', redirected, and reinstated to Darklore Manor.I only add that by way of example; I personally gave up trying to sort out the articles in that topic area.  Chzz  ►  11:59, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• No can do if the result is merge. Per WP:MAD in almost all cases a redirect must be left behind to preserve attribution. For redirect closes I don't like nuking the history unless there are BLP issues, the suggested target is not related to the subject, or there's otherwise a significant consensus to delete. Funny that you should mention Darklore Manor. It was that incident that motivated me to start using the "non prejudicial supervote" I mentioned above.--Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• 4, maybe a little of 5? I don't know. A lot of ti depends on the nature of the content and what sort of merger is being contemplated. If we have two similar subjects being merged into each other the discussion probably shouldn't be on AfD in the first place but if it crops up here I am inclined to treat the merge vote with a little less weight because a merger itself will require a lot more work from editors. If instead we have the much more common case of an obviously subordinated topic being merged into a parent topic (most of the fiction articles) where the merger will likely only involve creating a redirect and noting the potential merge in the history a merge vote gets a bit more weight because it doesn't suggest the imposition of a difficult content decision via a discussion that isn't really about making difficult content decisions. I also think that merge outcomes are totally acceptable at AfD but they should not become common or predominant--this is a battle that has been fought in the past and is basically over. Protonk (talk) 19:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• 4. And to whomever said that 40-30-30 D-R-M means 60% think something should be "kept", it also means that 100% of people don't believe it should stay the way it is. I don't necessarily buy into the idea that merge and redirect are variations of keep; both imply that a topic doesn't have enough content/the right content to stand on its own. Redirect and merge are variations of "take action" Purplebackpack89 03:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
• "Merge", "redirect" and any other variant that leaves the pagehistory intact are and always have been counted as functionally equivalent to "keep" opinions when closing an XfD discussion. Remember that the big difference about "deletion" from everything else is that we are removing the pagehistory. Deletion requires special admin powers to execute and special admin powers to undo. Removal of content, merger of a page or even the complete overwriting with a redirect is an ordinary-editor action which requires no special permissions and which can be reverted by any other ordinary editor. That's what makes it special and why we have dedicated forums for discussing deletion but why we allow the other discussions to (mostly) be decided on the article's Talk page.
  Note also that the "merge" or "redirect" part of the closer's decision is weighted the same as any equivalently well participated discussion held on the article's Talk page and can be overturned with any showing that the consensus has changed. (That is, it's not a decision that requires a second XfD or a DRV discussion.)
  I have to admit that I'm surprised this is coming up and very surprised by some of the comments here. "Merge" and "redirect" as flavors of "keep" is a long-settled policy. Rossami (talk) 04:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Due to attribution requirements for copied content, fully reversing a merge is more complicated than a revert, see WT:Articles for deletion/Archive 58#Merging during live AfD. I agree that modifying a merge, redirect, or keep separate outcome doesn't require XfD/DRV, but I think that it should involve a comparable discussion, something more than WP:BOLD or a few WP:OWN editors. Flatscan (talk) 05:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
• 4. All arguments should be given due consideration by the closing admin. Invalid and weak arguments should be weighted exactly the same, no matter if they say Keep, Merge, Redirect, Merge and Redirect, Delete then Redirect, Comment or Neutral. Strong arguments should be followed by the closing admin. Since AfD discussions are better attended than talk page discussions most of the time, the conclusions reached in AfD discussions should have some force. Abductive (reasoning) 05:02, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

7 days? Or at least 7 days?

The project page states that "Articles listed are debated for at least seven days, after which the deletion process proceeds based on community consensus". Can anyone confirm whether !votes made after the nominal 7 days are considered in reaching a decision? If they are, this seems an odd procedure, with potential to skew the results. To be clear, I am not suggesting that I have seen evidence of this in any specific case. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

!Votes after the seven days count. I don't know of any convincing argument why they shouldn't be. If a late !vote raises a new issue that could "skew" the outcome, a judicious admin should consider re-listing the debate to allow other contributors to consider the new issue. --Mkativerata (talk) 10:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Even without relisting the length of AFDs has always been a suggestion or a minimum. With 5 day AfDs many ran long if there was an active discussion or simply no one around to close them. It happens less often with 7 day AfDs. I don't see any reason why this would skew results. Protonk (talk) 17:00, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary to the OP's thesis here, it isn't a race or a contest. There's no cutoff, and the seven day limit isn't to be read as a deadline "You must get you vote in or it doesn't get counted". Admins aren't supposed to be vote-counting anyways. What is supposed to happen is that admins are supposed to read the arguements, weigh the cogent points made by anyone, and decide if the consensus lies with deleting or keeping the article. Cogent points can be raised at 7 days and one minute just as well as they can at 6 days and 23 hours and 59 minutes. Or even after 8 days. --Jayron32 05:20, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure I just misunderstood the policy (nothing new there). I suppose I was thinking along the lines of "close this one quick, the X are just ahead" vs "leave this one open and see if the X's can get a few !votes" but that rather presupposes (a) a straight vote, and (b) bias on the closing admin - and since (b) can't actually be prevented with a deadline (and I've not seen any obvious signs of this anywhere, in any case) the 'close it when we're ready' approach may very well be for the best: apart from anything else, it stops anyone trying to get 'the last word' in. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:32, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The fact that we say !vote should mean exactly that. The closing admin is supposed to weigh the arguments presented, and "me too" !votes should have little or no effect.dramatic (talk) 00:40, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The primary point behind "at least" is to accommodate relisted discussions. We don't want anyone to say that discussions absolutely must be closed 168 hours and zero minutes after the listing.

Some discussions are closed slightly early, and some closed somewhat later. It's not supposed to be a hard and fast time limit in either direction.

If you wanted to be more accurate, the wording should probably be "usually debated for about seven days". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Frontier Boys

When I listed this article, it appeared to be about a non-notable film. Because of the work of MichaelQSchmidt, it appears this is not the case, and I'd like to ask for someone to close it for me, since I can't stay on the computer for long but I'd really like to withdraw it. Appreciate any help, ceranthor 19:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. lifebaka++ 20:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

And my appreciations as well. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 03:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS and viagra for WP:AFD: Proposal to add to AFD article

Regarding blanking pages under WP:MEDRS when there is an WP:AFD discussion ongoing, there is a favor for "keeping it up" to aid in afd discussions. But the rationale for MEDRS is that keeping it up can actually endanger health or maybe even lieves. It is proposed that the article not be kept up, but blanked under MEDRS, and the AFD discussion can have a link to the history page for the pre-blanked version, instead of "keeping it up". PPdd (talk) 17:23, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you talking about Sonopuncture? If so, I think the AFD notice is adequate in terms of showing that the reliability of this information is in question, and blanking is not necessary. We are not WebMD, and we have a disclaimer. Jujutacular ^talk 18:10, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Juju. In addition to the standard WP:DISCLAIMER (which no one reads), the AFD notice itself, like any template, is a fair caution to readers that the material is of questionable authority. The contrast is WP:COPYVIOs, which have to be blanked since they are illegal in their current state regardless of the template, as opposed to clearly advertised as not reliable but still pending discussion. Worst case, we could create a new AFD template for MEDRS articles reiterating the medical uncertainty. Then again, that creates an actionable distinction, as if articles which lack that warning do not have those problems, which they still do. Ocaasi (talk) 23:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Blanking a highly problematic page while it is deleted may well be a good idea. The presence of a disclaimer does not mean we can be reckless. People do take advice with poor judgment, and if there is a consensus that the entire page is better blanked for the AfD duration, the do it. However, please make sure the AfD nomination points directly, one click, to a relevant version.

Where on the WP:MEDRS page is page blanking during an AfD addressed? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Where on the MEDRS is page blanking adressed at all? We need to be very careful about using guidelines like MEDRS to over-rule what is allowable anywhere else.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:38, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It does not discuss blanking pages. It discusses not allowing unsupported medical claims because of the reality of readers using WP for medical information. In the article in question, there was only one sentence left after removing NRS content. That sentence made false medical claims, suported by the webpage the article appeared to be advertising. So that sentence should not be on WP. I deleted it, but was told not to delete during an AfD discussion, as if inconveniencing editors by making them go to the history page was more important than someone mistakenly using WP as a medical information source. PPdd (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I am a regular and long-time editor at MEDRS. The guideline does not support blanking pages at AFD, or at any other time. While one might choose to exercise some WP:Editorial discretion, to be blunt, if a person is actually stupid enough to choose a Wikipedia article over the advice of their own professional healthcare providers, then they deserve what they get. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I disagree (but I am stupid, as in "stupid enough", so maybe I am biased). Here is a real life example of how this caused harm. I was co-producing a fashion show for a breast cancer fundraiser, and one of the principals got a space donated for it at the Hollywood Celebrity Center, which happened to be inside the main campus of Scientology. A doctor was there who had this very early stage tumor finding machine he had invented that was so good, it found the tumor in almost 100% of women with breast cancer, and he was promoting sales of it. He had a little booth and table next to the Scientology table where they were selling Scientology (in your words, "if a person is actually stupid enough to choose... " exactly applied to this crowd). Just before the event, he put up an article about it at Wiki, which appeared not to be an advert, because the findings of efficacy were published, although it should have been blanked as all statements in it were cited with one primary source study (but they turned out to be "true", but not the whole story). It turns out also that, in addition to finding tumors in almost 100% of women with breast cancer, a secondary source review found that it found tumors in about 50% of all women, whether or not they had one! When someone tried to blank his Wiki page, he nominated his own article for AfD, ande it got protected during the debate, so he could point to Wiki to all the celebs, who are just so stupid as you say, and he got massive funding out of it from investors, who ended up losing their ass (and some may have lost their breast if they followed his recommendations!) The article did not get blanked, stayed up for a week until the fundraiser was over and the and investors had been had. The article should have been blanked before AfD per MEDRS noncompliance on its sources as being primary sources, and not have been kept up during AfD debate. PPdd (talk) 06:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I don’t agree with WhatamIdoing’s hard line against the stupid, but she is clearly right in that WP:MEDRS does not support PPdd’s position. PPdd seems have an extreme case for an example. It is very hard to write good rules for extreme cases. If such a case were to occur again, and an admin fails to get your point and protects the wrong version, take it up at WP:ANI for more eyes. Writing a rule that says any editor may blank a page medical related page at AfD could create more problems that it solves, but that’s at debate for WT:MEDRS (they don’t rule AfD, but their options are well respected). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:02, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that it is not an extreme case. Alt med promoters, and other con artists do this all the time. Another nonMEDRS situation I personally observed it where a convicted felon who defrauded people out of $20 million in 1985 dollars (alot more in today's dollars) with a phony movie company, got out of the pen after a 20 year sentence and started the same con back up again, this time using Wiki as the primary vehicle for advert. He got the article locked down by deliberately edit warring, so his advert stayed up a very long time. The situation is much worse for alt med, where Wiki is now the prime advertizing and legitimacy vehicle for defrauding the elderly. I work as a volunteer at assisted living places, reading to high end scientists in their 90's going blind with macular degeneration, and I see it all the time. In the last two or three years, Wiki is the place to give the appearance of legitimacy to the elderly, conned in alt med schemes left and right, with articles that should be blanked as nonMEDRS. PPdd (talk) 07:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

If an investor hands over money on the basis of a Wikipedia article, then Thomas Tusser's adage about a fool and his money applies.

WP:There is no deadline, not even at AFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

One of us suffers fools more than the other. :) PPdd (talk) 20:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• My general thought is that one shouldn't blank articles under an AfD (or ever) without a very good reason. I'm not entirely convinced that MEDRS by itself constitutes a very good reason. The appropriate course of action is to stub the article and source whatever material remains to appropriate reliable sources, just as it is for any article which has ballooned beyond what reliable sourcing may support. The cases where an article should not be speedily deleted but should be blanked are very rare and anyone actually doing the blanking should be prepared to defend their actions to an incredulous audience. Protonk (talk) 20:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Merged AfDs

Please see Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/2010-2011 Worldwide protests for a discussion about two AfDs that have been merged into one, and whether this is allowed. Cordless Larry (talk) 17:39, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit conflict: I was just writing the same thing: An editor redirected the AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010–2011 anti-government protests to the AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010-2011 Worldwide protests at this diff and then merged the comments from both articles. I don't see that policy allows that and since the anti-government protests was more unpopular than the Worldwide protests article, it seems to change the community consensus. I brought this up at the talk page but since WP:Dispute resolution says questions about such cases also can be brought to the relevant policy page, here I am. CarolMooreDC (talk) 17:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Merging two AfD discussions is a very bad thing. Please do not allow it to go forward. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:47, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

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

The result of the move request was: no change. (Non-admin closure per WP:SNOW.) Kotniski (talk) 09:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

---

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion → Wikipedia:Articles for discussion — All the other deletion disuussions are "for discussion" (e.g. WP:Redirects for discussion) apart from MFD, which I have nominated as well. Japanese knotweed (talk) 22:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• Categories for discussion was once "for deletion". Japanese knotweed (talk) 22:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
• It may sound counterintuitive, but I think the current name is more friendly towards new users whose articles are being nominated for deletion, and may see "discussion" as a euphemism intended to hide from them the process that is actually happening. It is true, though, that there are more possible options than just "keep" or "delete" in an AfD. and a different name might help clarify that. —Soap— 23:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Should we not move Redirects for discussion to "for deletion" then. Japanese knotweed (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• I wouldn't be against that, though I note that the main argument I give for the retention of "Deletion" in AfD wouldn't apply as often to redirects, since most new users (I'm thinking of the sort of people who just want an article about their company/band/family etc) don't create any redirects. —Soap— 23:13, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: It was once called Articles for Discussion - that's why the redirect exists. Ergo there was a reason it was moved. Anyone recall? --Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:25, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure it was. I know it was once "Votes for deletion", but I think the "Articles for discussion" link was just created as a redirect for people who got confused. Though I did find a move request from about four years ago at Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_41#Requested_move. —Soap— 23:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

That may have been what I was thinking of. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:55, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. The process is used to nominate articles for deletion and not for other discussions which usually take place on the talk page. "Articles for discussion" would send a confusing message. WP:Redirects for discussion is a poor analogy. It's both used to nominate for deletion and retargeting, and redirects usually don't have used or watched talk pages where discussion can take place. AfD sometimes results in merging or redirecting but it's not the purpose. We have a different process at Help:Merging#Proposing a merger when the nominator wants a merger. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:47, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - based on an incorrect assumption (they are not the only two). AfD, SfD and MfD are all at "deletion for specific reasons relating to their nature. AfD, the primary negative outcomes are deletion and redirection/merging - renaming is rarely if ever an otion. As such, the principal reason for bringing something up for discussion is deletion. The same is true with MfD. With SfD, while renaming is a potential option, that usually results in deletion of existing template names rather than of keeping redirects and deleting categories (as they are all template-fed and soft redirects are unnecessary). Moreover, many stub types are only taken to that page after a discussion period on the Stub sorting "Discoveries" page, WP:WSS/D, hasd been completed, so referring to it as "Stub types for discussion" is confusing and ambiguous. Similar ambiguity exists, especially for new editors, with "Articles for discussion". What is being discussed about them? Changes to the text? No, that's done on the talk page - but a new editor may not know that, and as suchy may not participate in trying to save their article. "Articles for deletion" spells things out far more precisely. As such, in all three cases, "deletion" is the more appropriate term. Grutness...wha? 00:02, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose In the scheme of things there are two outcomes of an AfD discussion: Keep or Remove. While there are a variety of ways to go about the latter (Deletion, Merging, Redirection) they are all parts of the same thing. On a semi-valid logistics note, It could take months-years for a group of bots to move all of the sub pages to a new name. --Guerillero | My Talk 00:23, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Articles are discussed on their talk pages. AFD is primarily about deletion, and masking that fact is not a good thing. On the other hand, CFD is often about renaming, merging or splitting, and Category talk pages are almoste non-existent. dramatic (talk) 00:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Not going to happen anytime soon. JJ98 (Talk) 01:29, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose and suggest that this be listed at WP:PEREN or a FAQ added to the top of this page. The majority of what ends up at AFD gets deleted. Authors need to know what's on the line. Also, we don't want people to confuse this with RFCs or peer review or dispute resolution—you know, "But I wanted to have a discussion about this article: Why'd you name it 'articles for discussion' if this isn't the place to discuss articles?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support so that certain users aren't voting "keep the status quo" with the rationale that the original nomination was to merge the article (a soft delete). Many article talk pages are not the appropriate place to begin such a discussion, and often such discussions resolve with no input, the merger is made, and then undone two weeks later by someone who disagrees. It then becomes a two sided battle which cannot be won. This is the proper place, in many cases, to hold a discussion that will result in the redirection/merger of the article whilst keeping its history intact for future use. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 02:49, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - I just got involved in a "categories for discussion" debate which should have been a proposal elsewhere and a lot of time was wasted because original poster and 8 responders obviously were confused about purpose of the page or just felt, well, since they are opining on a non-deletion proposal, so will I. keep it clear and simple. CarolMooreDC (talk) 05:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Ultimately, a decision regarding whether an article should remain on Wikipedia comes down to a yes/no decision, and the present name makes clear exactly what is at stake. 'Discussion' should already have occurred if there is a real possibility of article 'rescue', and implying that somehow an article can be 'fixed' at this late stage is only likely to lead to further discord. From my limited experience, suggestions in AfDs about how to 'improve' an article to avoid deletion seem often to consist of little more than a regurgitation of already-discussed issues where no consensus could be found. Eventually, decisions, rather than discussions, are necessary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia:Articles that might be deleted but don't necessarily have to be because it all depends on the consensus of the discussion we are going to have? Feedback ^☎ 05:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

• Probably too long. Japanese knotweed (talk) 08:43, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose: I think any "D" amounts to a deletion discussion and whatever item is sent to a "D" (IfD, MFD, AFD, et al.) is being sent there to be deleted, not to be discussed prior to being nominated for deletion. There may be a subtle difference but there is one. As Dramatic said above - Articles are discussed on their talk pages. AFD is primarily about deletion... I have rarely seen a deletion discussion where the nom starts off with "I don't want this deleted, I just want to discuss this." Soundvisions1 (talk) 16:44, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Too many people waste time sending something to AFD already. Don't want to encourage them to flood AFD with more pointless nominations. Discuss things on the article talk page. Dream Focus 17:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, User:Dream Focus's point is a very good one. Abductive (reasoning) 18:21, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Accuracy and specificity are valuable. Discussions about other potential actions related to specific articles (eg redirects, merges) do not come to AFD, and that exclusion is usefully reflected by the existing title. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:23, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, as something likely to confuse and mislead new editors. We should not be hiding from newcomers (and others) the fact that the article they've just written is in danger of being deleted by relabeling the process as a "discussion." 28bytes (talk) 23:41, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Misleading; if you want to change processes (e.g., remove RM and replace with articles for discussion) that is more than filing an RM, but an RfC. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:40, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose – My first reason is that, as Dream Focus explained above, it discourages users from discussing any major editorial action on the talk pages first, as prescribed in WP:BEFORE. It also discourages actual discussion and relegates about each and every major editorial action to lockstep factionalism and straw-polling. Finally, "discussion" would be misleading to people, especially newcomers, leading people to think that issues regarding actual content can be discussed here as opposed to whether or not the article belongs on Wikipedia. –MuZemike 03:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
• WT:Articles for discussion/Proposal 1, last edited February 2010. Revisited at WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 67#WP:Requested merge, December 2010. #Rename Articles for Discussion above, February 2011 (earlier this month). Flatscan (talk) 05:18, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Nominator gives no reason for the change other than consistency with other pages that have a different scope than AFD. I don't find that compelling in the least. Playing a shell game with the name will not help anyone or change anything real. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Added to WP:PEREN [3]. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:17, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support Or else I propose a speedy keep criterion for AfD entry that has a merge/redirect target. Either we are to be discussing them, or we're just deleting them--which? The current situation is one of a name/process mismatch. Jclemens (talk) 18:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Considering the outcome of #RfC: Merge, redirect above, I think that SK criterion would have limited support. Flatscan (talk) 05:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Like Beeblebrox, my reading of this suggestion is that it is for consistency's sake. In seeking consistency here, we would be basically obfuscating needlessly. There is no real reason that everything must be consistent, even to the point of confusion. Newcomers to Wikipedia are frequently scared off by all the jargon/alphabet soup here , and I'm very much a fan of making things as simple as possible. Even a newcomer who has never heard of Wikipedia before today could figure out what "Articles for deletion" is. Kansan (talk) 18:10, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
• Very strongly support. In fact, this was approved here earlier, but not implemented because of the technical difficulty involved. It's time we faced the facts that the result of a redirect or merge is not the same as a result of keep; the effect can be quite different. In practice we do close AfDs as other than delete or keep, and we have good reason for doing so, as given in alternative to deletion. As an additional line of reasoning, anything that will help to reduce the amount of conflict at AfD is desirable, and encouraging compromise is a good way to do that. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if we change the name to "calm, reasonable, policy based logical discussion on the future of the these articles" moderate people who take things on a case by case basis will continue to do so, and extremists will continue to hold intractable ideological positions. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

the name helps; we still see people opposing suggestions of merge saying it is not within the AfD purview. DGG ( talk ) 03:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that may be an education issue that can be addressed by pointing out relevant guidance and discussion, such as the recent RfC. Flatscan (talk) 05:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

• While redirect and merge are valid results of an AfD, the purpose of AfD remains to decide whether or not an article should be deleted. Unless we are changing the AfD process so that it, and not the article's talk page, is where redirect and merge proposals are brought, I see little point in changing the name. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 20:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
• I'm reluctantly in favor of this proposal. In favor because I don't see any other solution to the interminable debates over merge/redirect/whatever issues coming up in AfD other than to rebrand the process as a centralized site for discussion on how to deal with articles that don't need to be presented in a complete form. Reluctant for two reasons. 1: I suspect that the debates will continue apace (despite the other RfC resoundingly in favor of allowing merge/redirect votes appropriate weight in deletion discussions). 2: The semantics of this requested remove are all backwards. There is an assumption that consistency from the top down in a process is unambiguously good--inverted from the previous complaints that because the d in AfD stood for "deletion" we were somehow lexically forbidden from discussing anything other than the deletion of page history. Now we are engaged in an effort to ensure that the term for a process encompasses all possible action within that process. I think it is a good thing that AfD expanded (without a name change, even!) to include redirects and smerges. More article histories are maintained than otherwise would be and editors aren't sent on a bureaucratic snipe hunt to find the "right" place to get something done. Changing the name of the process was not integral to that shift in attitudes and actions. It looks like this rename will be rejected, but perhaps in the future we can re-examine it. Preferably when everyone has settled down and seen how many actual smerge/redirect discussions are occurring at AfD. Protonk (talk) 20:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support as the current name seems to be a "yes or no" type situation for many editors. As we are unlikely to create an "Articles for Merge" noticeboard, then wording which is more apt would make sense - perhaps not "discussion" but maybe "Articles for Deletion or Merge" as a minimum move? Collect (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Current practice is that AFD is for discussions of whether to keep or delete a particular article. Sometimes participants call for other options and the discussion may be closed with a result to merge or redirect, but it is not for discussions wherein the original proposal is to merge or redirect. This is a "requested move" conversation, not a "request to change the entire format of AFD" conversation. If we're going to radically alter the scope and purpose of AFD that needs a bit more than just a WP:RM. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

A separate process is not likely: WP:Mergers for discussion (2009) and WP:Articles for merging (2010) are both failed proposals. Flatscan (talk) 05:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. I task those who support this perennial proposal to read Politics and the English Language and discuss why obfuscating "deletion" in favor of "discussion" better guides the vaunted newbie editor. Skinwalker (talk) 02:16, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose completely. There is no "euphemism" and the move/renaming would be useless. -The Wing Dude, Musical Extraordinaire (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Discussion is for talkpages. Don't make things more confusing than they have to be. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 19:50, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose General discussion of article editing should take place on its talk page. Merger is performed by the distinct process described at WP:MERGE. AFD is purely for deletion and is a special process because deletion is a restricted function not available to all editors. The purpose of AFD is to authorise an admin to press the delete button. Other outcomes which might arise in the course of discussion are appendices and such tails should not wag the dog. Furthermore, note that AFD is a single process which is not scalable. We already have many AFDs with minimal participation and which are carried forward from week to week. Encouraging editors to bring articles to AFD to discuss anything about the article would risk collapse of the entire process or make it even more arbitrary than it currently is. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:34, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose As a participant in the Article Rescue Squadron, I have participated in quite a few AfD discussions. The present name describes very well just what happens. While sometimes multiple entries in an AfD discussion lead to a mess, the present process generally works quite well. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:41, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, busywork. Stifle (talk) 12:56, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose "discussion" takes place on the talk page, even if it were for renaming or moving it, that can easily be handled without too much dispute. Usually when it comes here, it's because it probably should be considered for deletion, which can be a long drawn out process, which is better left off the talk page. Who (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

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

Question

hello,

will an article about weapons or maps in a game be deleted or not? I think yes, but WP:WWIN and WP:SD don't say a single word about this, I think. Thank you.--♫Greatorangepumpkin♫T 20:05, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

In general, such an article will probably be either deleted or merged into the game's article, unless the weapons or maps themselves appear to be notable. There's no mention at CSD because these articles aren't speedy delete-able. I'm sure you could find some part of WP:NOT that could be made to apply, if you wanted. I can't answer more specifically unless you mention exactly what articles you're talking about, though. Cheers. lifebaka++ 22:28, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I want to create an article about the weapons in Counter-Strike:Source. It can't be merged with the article, because it is simply too much. Here is it in my sandbox.--♫Greatorangepumpkin♫T 10:38, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you not just create a page and then have it as a daughter page so it shows up on the main page, then it wouldn't be deleted. KnowIG (talk) 11:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Please explain in more detail how such a "daughter page" would work.--DThomsen8 (talk) 12:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd recommend just editing Counter-Strike: Source to include information about them (as long as they can be referenced to reliable sources). If that page gets too long it can be spun out to its own article. Jujutacular ^talk 18:31, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless there are numerous sources discussing the weapons themselves in detail (which would grant notability), then it would most likely be deleted. The issue is undue weight, and if you look at well-developed video game articles you won't see sprawling lists of weapons, levels, enemies etc. etc., that would be too narrowly focused on in-universe details. You are very welcome to bring it up at the video game project Greatorangepumpkin. Someoneanother 17:46, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

There's also probably a fan-wiki for CS:S somewhere that would love to have the information. And I note that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:30, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The Counter Strike Wikia already has these details, Strategywiki is missing some of the statistics however. Someoneanother 19:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, somehow missed that it was for CS:Source. Strategywiki does have these details already, links updated. Someoneanother 19:18, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know that there are millions of wikis, for css including. But I want to put the information on this wiki, too. I try to write the text in a natural point of view, but I am not sure. Thank you for your answers so far. I will see if I match this and maybe it became a FL, who knows?--♫Greatorangepumpkin♫T 20:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

how many?

Hi! I need a quick stat for a presentation. Roughly how many articles get deleted per day (counting speedy & AfD)? I know I've seen a number somewhere but can't find it. Approximations are fine. Thanks! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Try this. Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 22:49, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

duh, of course. Thanks! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 23:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yesterday?

Why was the "deletion today" template changed so that the articles link is now for yesterday rather than today? Thanks!--Yaksar (let's chat) 02:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. Perhaps it was just a caching issue. Did you try purging? Cheers. lifebaka++ 02:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The question must refer to this edit by Colonel Warden to Template:Deletion debates. I don't know the reason. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, that's what I was referring to, sorry for being unclear.--Yaksar (let's chat) 03:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I've returned it to today, but have no issue with it being changed back if there's an actual good reason.--Yaksar (let's chat) 04:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Should these be deleted?

Hi,

Not sure if someone might want to delete these two:

Talk:Fuckyoushima

Talk:Fuckushima

They seem to be childish jokes rather than genuinely needed redirects.

86.181.204.166 (talk) 12:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

 Deleted. Jujutacular ^talk 13:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

AONN Records

A couple days ago after I stumbled across AONN Records from another page. It seemed pretty funky; no real sources, lots of remarkable claims, etc. Googling didn't turn up any information in reliable sources to confirm its notability or to verify the information contained in the article. So, I set up an AfD for it and also deleted unsourced discussion of AONN in the article on private military companies.

The original author of the article has since started posting on the AfD page and I'm not sure how to productively reply to him. The AfD has so far gone uncommented on by anyone besides the two of us; I'd appreciate a more experienced editor joining the conversation to hopefully move it forward in a productive way.

Some related discussion is also found on the talk page for AONN since the guy didn't initially realize he had to be posting on the AfD page instead.

Thanks, Kgorman-ucb (talk) 22:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposing a better idea for mass deletions

Given several recent problems with mass deletions (this one above about electronic components, the recent House episode one), I'd like to propose a restriction on when they can be used.

Basically, mass deletions should really only be used to delete a set of 2 to 5 immediately-connected articles where one or two articles are keystone to the set, often created by the same person(s) in the same time frame. I don't know any immediate examples, but say a non-notable TV show, its list of episodes, and its list of characters are all created by the same person. If the TV show article goes, likely so should the two lists.

This is to distinguish where they may be 2-5 articles that are similar and nominated for the same deletion reason, but each has to be considered on its own by the participants, eg the electronics components or the House episodes. That is, the deletion of one article from the set will have no immediate effect on the other articles in the set, beyond deletion under similar reasoning. When the number of articles grows beyond 5, regardless of which case, that's likely too much work to determine consensus or to allow editors a chance to demonstrate their articles.

Basically, if the mass deletion doesn't fit this "keystone article" approach, the deletion discussion should be done in an RFC, allowing for a longer period for discussion and improvement. I'd have no problem if these RFCs were run similar to AFD, including a "keep"/"delete" !vote section, and listed specifically on the AFD page as "Open mass deletion discussions" or the like. Heck, even to keep the format for AFDs, we can have the standard AFD page for the articles to point to the centralized discussion such that on the deletion sorting pages, these would be listed appropriately. The idea here is that because we're considering a large "class" of articles instead of a specific instance, it should be discuss of what, if possible, can be improved on the articles to make them notable, or deciding case by case if they are. As they would be tracked on the AFD page, admin closure after 30 days is ensured.

Note that normally this would be a step done on a talk page of one of the affected articles or a centralized location, but when I've seen this done where person A, an outside editor of these pages, tries to discuss deletion of these with editors from a larger group B, A is always outweighed vocally by B. The RFC approach here assured better outside involvement without pandering to canvassing, and gives a better format to deal with weakly-connected mass deletions that the normal AFD process is just not suited for. I would give admins the ability to speedily or snow-reject a AFD presented as a mass deletion that would be better done in the RFC format. --MASEM (t) 19:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

What is the problem you're trying to solve here? There are 80 or 100 deletion nominations every day, how is another layer of bureaucracy and yet another ritual going to help? Another dozen or so dletion nominations for the odd time that a related group of deletions arise, is a drop in the bucket. We can't get editors to pay attention to WP:N, which is the problem in the first place - why would more procedures make things any better? --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:21, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Because nearly every mass deletion of more than a handful of articles that I've seen or participated in has been a mess to decipher or work through. It is also not appropriate for dealing with a large numbers of articles that these deal with, given that it is meant to be of limited period. Surprisingly, I'm not seeing much advise on WP:AFD to say when mass deletions are best used over single-shot ones, so its a lacking area that can be improved without significant creep. --MASEM (t) 20:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Eh, requirements, especially arbitrary ones, about how many articles one can nominate at once and how exactly to handle larger "nominations" still reeks of instruction creep. A simple note suggesting RFCs instead of a large number (or some such phrase) of separate nominations should suffice. lifebaka++ 22:08, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I understand the need to avoid creep - that's cool. I would however like to see admins (possibly even non-admins) have the ability to quickly access if a mass nom is seriously biting off more than AFD can chew and send the discussion to a central RFC point, either through personal observation or more than likely after a SNOW'd request to do so. Same would be if someone nominates several similar articles as single AFDs but at the same time (See the Transformations situation below), whereas it would be better to discuss the class of articles. I would still encourage these RFCs from mass noms being listed centrally at AFD and included in deletion sorting just to advertise them better.--MASEM (t) 23:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

The big problem with mass nominations is they're almost never all correct. Take the Transformers area, for example. There was initially a lot of stuff that should have been removed entirely, a lot of stuff that should have been merged and trimmed. Whether massive numbers of articles are dealt with serially or in a large group, there's a tendency for internally inconsistent results. What I would like to see is more of a committee-like approach, where editors contribute to an RfC, which hashes out how to handle articles based on precedent, guidelines, etc., resolves sourcing issues, and sets out a roadmap that can be applied to the mass area. Then, individual articles can simply be dealt with per the RFC outcome. Jclemens (talk) 23:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I am of a mixed mind on this issue, on one hand consistency is important, especially because keeping some and deleting others and so it's preferable to deal with them at once than in pieces. On the other hand there is a great risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Another risk is feeding into the myth of "inherent notability" by allowing (or forcing) people to simply batch argue "all of these fictional characters are notable". — Preceding unsigned comment added by HominidMachinae (talk • contribs) 21:20, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

removing AFD tag

A quiet AFD has had its tag removed from the article a few times. I don't want to be WP:POINTY by adding it back; while I've stated my !vote, I am not looking for agreement- just a little help either keeping the tag on the article page and/or some input in on the AFD itself. Here's [the tag removal, here's the AFD. tedder (talk) 20:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It is completely inappropriate to remove the tag while the AFD is in progress. I've restored it and will shortly remind the editor to engage in discussing the AFD than removing the tag. --MASEM (t) 20:43, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and I've warned the editor that. But at this point it's pointy for me to say so, I think. tedder (talk) 20:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's POINTY at all for you to add back the AfD; at the very least, you're just reverting vandalism.--Yaksar (let's chat) 21:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Removing an AfD tag is more likely to be an error on the part of a new editor who doesn't understand how the system works than it is to be an intentional effort to undermine the workings of the project. Let's save the "vandalism" tag for such intentional efforts, eh? Jclemens (talk) 22:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying the editor should be yelled at and banned, just that Tedder should not feel he or she is doing anything wrong by reverting the removal, no matter how many times it had to be done.--Yaksar (let's chat) 21:46, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I have a problem with some wording

I was just reading the page and stumbled upon:

"Unregistered or new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion, but their recommendations may be discounted, especially if they seem to be made in bad faith (for example, if they misrepresent their reasons)"

This is basically saying that we can ignore newbies completely just because they are newbies. I am pretty sure that was never the intention and I propose removing the word "especially", which gives:

"Unregistered or new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion, but their recommendations may be discounted if they seem to be made in bad faith (for example, if they misrepresent their reasons)"

Thoughts? Yoenit (talk) 21:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that the original intent of the current wording was related to sock- and meatpuppetry - puppet votes of course being correctly discounted. I do agree with you regarding the implication of the current wording, and support your proposal. Any explicit statement about meatpuppetry would probably be best made either as a separate bullet point or as an adjunct to the exist one about sockpuppetry. We should always be careful though about not labelling new users as puppets just because the deletion discussion is what spurred them to make their first edit. Thryduulf (talk) 22:28, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think part of the reason that IPs are less tolerated in deletion discussions isn't puppetry, it is because of single-purpose accounts and the reaction by involved parties to go to forums, email groups, facebook, twitter, etc and say "go vote to keep us on wikipedia!". Many non-notable items have an enthusiastic online community. tedder (talk) 22:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support. The proposed wording still makes it clear that vote-stacked SPA !votes and sock/meat-puppetry aren't welcome, as they clearly are in bad faith. The current wording could imply that valid new-user opinions might be disregarded. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but there's no doubt that somebody could. Good proposal :-) Dylanfromthenorth (talk) 22:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

• I'll support the change but I doubt it will have any affect on how we actually treat IP editors acting in good faith in deletion discussions. We routinely treat anyone from a different online community like shit and a few changes to the AFD process page won't change that. However the new wording is completely sensible and I see no reason to oppose it. Protonk (talk) 22:51, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

  Ditto that, I'm afraid. Still, it can't hurt. I've gone ahead and made the change since it doesn't seem controversial. Cheers. lifebaka++ 22:52, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Mass deletion of electronic components

There are a large number of prods and AfDs of numbered electronic components currently going through with scattered discussions all over the wiki. I propose that this discussion is centralised in a single AfD (or elsewhere) so that consistent, rational, decisions can be made, and that all the individual deletion debates are immediately closed or redirected. Besides anything else, it may be possible to come up with a sensible merging plan if the whole picture is looked at. At the moment, most of us involved are finding it a nightmare to follow what is going on. This is being tracked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electronics#a large number of electronics articles prodded for deletion and nominated for deletion and there is a list of articles posted there, but I would not like to guarantee that they have found them all. SpinningSpark 10:53, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the discussion should be centralised. Ideally there should be a moratorium on the prods and AfDs, with an understanding that the information is reorganised from the current bottom-up approach to a top-down approach that discusses specific component types in the context of more general articles on groups of such components. That should prevent this kind of situation in the future and will make the articles more useful for all readers. I note that electronics is far from the only area that suffers from a lazy bottom-up approach, but that's no reason not to fix it. Hans Adler 11:19, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Of the AfDs, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N3055 seems to have the most active discussion. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:40, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

True, but I don't think that is an ideal place for a central discussion. I am in favour of asking an uninvolved admin to close all the current AfDs and prods and then either open an overarching AfD to discuss them all at once, or else move the debate to the Wikiproject to discuss structuring/merging of the more pathetic articles. Possibly excepting some of the more advanced debates like 2N3055 which seem to be coming to a conclusion. SpinningSpark 13:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the venue either, but it's clear to me 20 different AfDs and prods are not the right place for any sort of action, for three main reasons: 1) it risks creating a fiat accompli by volume. 2) it risks inconsistent application of the rules and wildly inconsistent results that will turn any future action into a war of competing precedents. 3) it scatters the involvement of interested parties widely. We need a place to come together and hash this issue out, preferably without the 7-day time limit. HominidMachinae (talk) 18:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It was improper to list them separately for deletion. How do we get an admin to fix? Incident report? Dicklyon (talk) 17:29, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Possibly, although admins already patrolling AfD should be able to do it. I guess they would be looking for some kind of consensus to emerge first. SpinningSpark 18:23, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. I don't give two hoots about the validity of the articles (I haven't looked at them in any depth and don't plan on doing). However, as a procedural point, the AFDs should be kept separate. There are too many to list together, and that would more than likely result in a swift closure of the discussion with a suggestion to relist separately. If there's a long list of articles in one AFD it's difficult to assess each one (as they obviously all have different merits). Best to leave it as it is. Dylanfromthenorth (talk) 17:40, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I care about the validity of the articles, and would keep them all, but I also know from sad experience with Roman Catholic Churches in Connecticut and New York City, that a single mass deletion can create a bigger mess. If those pressing for deletion will let the currently tagged for rescue articles progress to conclusions without adding additional AfDs, then we might all know more about whether, on the merits and by consensus, some or all of the current nominations should be kept, or merged, or deleted. --DThomsen8 (talk) 17:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think SpinningSpark is right and discussion should be centralized as these different discussions don't likely really each have their own merits (I haven't looked at every single one though). AfD also isn't really the way to handle the situation. It would have been better for the proposer to just boldly merge articles that s/he felt needed merging. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 19:06, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Notability and stuff

Scores of articles are deleted every day. This is not a proposal for mass deletion, but instead a cleanup of a few ill-conceived parts list entries.

Parts list entries suggested for deletion

AfD for part number	Comment
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N2907	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1N400X	A set of diodes
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TIP31	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N7000	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1N4148	A diode
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1N540X	A set of diodes
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1N5401	One of the above set of diodes
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/BC548	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N3906	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N2222	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N3904	A transistor
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1381 voltage trigger	An integrated circuit
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2N3055	A transistor

The Wikipedia:Notability guideline requires multiple independent sources with significant coverage of the topic. Sources should be secondary and independent, that is, not publicity by the manufacturers of the parts concerned. Sources should be significant, that is, not just a mention in passing or one-line statement, but some volume of discussion on the part.

Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not says that Wikipedia is not a general collection of all the world's information, but is an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is a reference work containing a summary of knowledge in one or several fields - it is an overview, not an exhaustive listing of every possible fact.

An article about a semiconductor device must contain more than a recitation of the specifications from an unreferenced data sheet. Otherwise, it's not an article but an entry on a parts catalog. Ideally an article would contain "who, what, when, where, why, how" information. Which company invented or developed the device, when it was invented or registered with JEDEC or other authority, was it always a JEDEC part number or did it have a proprietary ancestor, why was it considered necessary to develop the part, what technology does the part use, how does it compare to similar devices available at the time. To assess significance, how many companies make the part, how many parts are or were sold in a typical year, is the part still currently available? What products made significant use of the part? What was made possible when this part was released, that couldn't be done as well or at all before it was released?

Is the part significant in some way? Is it the first/the last/the biggest/the smallest/ the most powerful/ the fastest/the quietest device of its kind? Does the part have some relevance outside the narrow world of (hobby) electronics? Why was this part popular, and just how popular was it?

The problem with the above sort of information and writing an actual article about a semiconductor, instead of a parts list entry, is that sources are not available to hobbyist editors on-line and for no cost. Even if someone who edits here was working for Fairchild or General Electric or Motorola or RCA or Westinghouse at the time, their private experiences count as "original research" or primary sources at best, and lack independence. The marketing decisions that lead to the manufacture of many of these devices are locked in the 40- and 50-year old files of various companies many of whom are defunct or merged. There seems to be a few overview books of the history of the semiconductor business that show up on Google Books, but they rarely spend much space on individual devices.

Some would argue "Give it time, there is no deadline". Many of these items have existed for years with no improvements, owing to the factors described above. These factors are not going to get better with time. Even though Wikipedia data storage space is indefinite and large, the amount of human effort required to maintain articles and to read them must be considered. We' re wasting the readers' time with recitation of specifications that can be more reliably gotten from manufacturer's catalogs. It's not the mission of an encyclopedia to catalog every minute technological artifact. An encylopedia is not a parts substitution manual. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:23, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

• It is not readers' time which is being wasted here but editors'. It seems apparent that there is no consensus for deletion of these articles and User:Wtshymanski should therefore cease pressing the point. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Some of the subject articles have gotten more human attention this weekend than they've had in years...but it's still not enough, for the reasons described above. For example, we've been told the breakdown voltage and current rating of a diode...but still not much more, other than "Here's a list of books that mention this number in passing". It's not pressing a point, WP:POINT is not allowed, it's routine deletion of things that look like articles but aren't. --Wtshymanski (talk) 03:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that deleting the 1N5401 and 1N540X articles would be reasonable cleanup; the others have enough about them in reliable sources to support articles (nothing like the rock band issues you talk about, which would be a good place for some cleanup work if that's what you're into). Dicklyon (talk) 14:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

The sources I added this weekend don't just mention the parts "in passing"; they either recommend the parts, or state that they are popular or important parts or series. That's probably enough, or a good start. Dicklyon (talk) 15:02, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree on the cleanup needed for 1N5401 and 1N540X, and !voted for Snow Delete on both. The 2N3055 is a notable device, as Dicklyon (and several others, including myself) notes. There is a big difference and we should not be lumping all such devices into one pigeon hole. To throw out the baby with the bathwater comes to mind. — Becksguy (talk) 15:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

• I don't think deletion requests (one or many) are the best way to proceed here. Worst case is that each AfD proceeds separately, some are likely closed by different deletionist/inclusionist admins, and we then end up with inconsistent results.

I would suggest instead that we first try to establish some obejctive (i.e. not tied to named parts) criteria for notability, then when they are agreed, apply those to the individual articles. As a starting point I would suggest that notability can be achieved if any of the following conditions are met:

• The part is especially widespread in use, by simple force of numbers, either now or in the past.
• The part was especially common in some specific field of design

Some of the favoured audio pairs, or whatever that dual gate FET we all used for radio front ends in the '70s was

• The part illustrates some new or significant technique in design or manufacturing.

The 2N3819 is a poor performance JFET by today's standards, but it's the one and only FET in common use for years. Likewise the OC71 and the OCP71 connection. Also the 2N2926 and its use of colour-coding by inspection post-manufacture to identify gain grades, owing to manufacturing limitations of the period. Maybe the ZTX327 (first cheap RF transistor that could permit the affordable development of mobile radio in the '60s)

• The part has some significant use today, and is widespread amongst education.

Some of these devices are the standard "toolbox" devices for the Arduino / Dorkbot / Hackspace / schoolkid generation. We should offer content for these, just because there is a demand for it and it's an audience that likely has less access to the standard databooks than others (This is after all our one and only purpose in building an encyclopedia).

• The part has some outstanding performance aspect that distinguishes it from other parts

Obviously none of this changes our geenral requirement for sourcing, but they do distinguish the significant devices from the mere "parts list"

Families of devices like the 1N400X would use redirects from 1N4001 ... 1N4007. Similar the TIP2955 (and the obvious others) would redirect to 2N3055.

Andy Dingley (talk) 16:12, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Rescued, now go back to sleep

OK, now that you've rescued these articles from deletion, you can carry on ignoring them. Don't add any of the zillion citations you found during the Article Improvement Drive AfD discussion. Don't for heaven's sake tell the reader anything about why this part is notable. Don't tell how many were made, who first invented it, what sorts of products it was used in. Just keep this knowledge secret so you can trot out allegations and intimations the next time these parts list entries get nominated for AfD. And always remember the sixth pillar of Wikipedia: If you can't defend the article, attack the nominator. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Please remember to assume good faith of other editors and act with civility in discussions. Your comment above is phrased in such a way that its civility and assumption of good faith are unclear at best and absent at worst. Thryduulf (talk) 03:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

My comments are based on the edit history of the articles. I'm treating my anonymous correspondents with more good faith than I was treated with during these discussions. I propose a trial: By April 1, 2012, (a) none of these articles will have been nominated for GA (safe bet, almost no Wikipedia articles make it to GA), and (b) the rescued set will not have references added to answer my questions about who invented the part, when it was invented, why it was considered an important part, how many were sold per year, who makes or made it, and why the part was considered better than similar contemporary parts. The sources are buried in 40 and 50-year old files of defunct semiconductor companies (remember when Westinghouse made stuff instead of licensing its logo?) and are unavailable to hobbyist Wikipedia researchers. --Wtshymanski (talk) 13:25, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

• Raised at WP:Wikiquette_alerts#Wtshymanski_and_the_transistor_AfDs

Andy Dingley (talk) 23:24, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Is this page a policy, guideline, or just a suggestion?

It doesn't have a tag up top saying what it is. I think this should be policy. In an AFD one person stated it wasn't a policy or guideline, just a suggestion which people could ignore. [4] I figure it needs clarifying. A lot of pointless AFDs could be prevented if people followed the instructions on this page. Dream Focus 08:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

We already have a policy page about deletion (Wikipedia:Deletion policy), I don't see a reason to make this a second (possible conflicting) policy page on the same topic. If you think wp:BEFORE should be a part of Wikipedia:Deletion policy, please propose that. Yoenit (talk) 08:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

This page, meaning its subpages, is a "deletion forum", and is not {{policy}}. If taggery is important, you could make a new template and add it. If the instructions at the top are to be considered mandatorily prescribed, then they should be included at Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Mixing policy requirements with instructions is a bad idea, because it is common practice to ignore instructions as much as possible. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• It is a process page and not a policy. Can we also take this momentary respite to talk about removing the asinine "ARS/Wikiproject deletion" banners from the talk page? Protonk (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

  Don't try to change the subject. You believe something should be discussed, start another part for it. Dream Focus 04:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  Wow you sure showed me. Protonk (talk) 15:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I assume by "this page" DF means WP:BEFORE. A lot of nominators get heat for not following it when in fact they did but were not too impressed with what they found. I think that instead of accusing nominators of not following WP:BEFORE and starting a big dramafest, just simply state what "you" found thereby throwing the ball back into the nominator's court. In other words don't say...

• Keep. The nominator didn't follow WP:BEFORE or he would have found the zillion google hits that I did. He's wasting the community's time with this pointless AFD.

But instead say...

• Keep. A google news search shows that there is significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject including [1], [2] and [3].

--Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

• What I mean is people that don't even bother with any attempt to find sources at all, and are thus wasting our time. If you disagree with them being notable, that's fine. But at least have the decently to check. Dream Focus 04:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  Burden of proof is always on those that want to keep the material. BEFORE is a polite step, but I've seen people who have tried to BEFORE before AFDing an article and still be complained at because it wasn't the right set of search teams, or that one had to go to the nth page of search results, or the like. There is no way we can codify the expected behavior for BEFORE to policy and not expect discussion wars to break out how much effort the AFDer put into it. --MASEM (t) 05:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  WP:BURDEN is more about what's "in" the article then whether or not the article should exist. WP:BEFORE is about finding instances of someone "taking note of" the subject whether or not they are actually used to cite information "in" the article. I propose that these be called "supersources" to distinguish them from plain old "sources". Here's a way to explain the difference. An IMDB entry can be a "source" for basic "verifiability", the actor in question does indeed "exist", but it can never be a "supersource", that is it can't be used to demonstrate "notability". This would address the issue of WP:BURDEN vs WP:BEFORE. The former is about "sources", the later is about "supersources". --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  I disagree. While it is extremely difficult to prove a negative ("no sources exist"), what is actually expected is substantially less rigorous ("no sources are evident"), but a bit more than what some would prefer ("enough good sources are not currently in the article"). The goal of Wikipedia is to develop an encyclopedia--any editor who substitutes rules lawyering or their own opinion for solid research into sourcing is doing a disservice to the project. Jclemens (talk) 06:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  But my point still stands - I have see people that have made good-faith BEFORE efforts and nominated an article complained at because of some reason or another, particularly if the sources that may be easily found are of questionable reliability. I realize there are people that don't do any BEFORE work at all and simply go by the state of the article, and we want to discourage these, but any effort to policy-ize BEFORE will be gamed and affected those trying to help. It still comes down to the fact that WP:BURDEN is policy, and such if you're creating an article that you believe is notable but don't include sources to start, you'd better be ready to throw them in should someone claim an article non-notable. --MASEM (t) 12:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  BURDEN applies to specific statements, BEFORE to entire articles. There's a tension there, but not a contradiction. I do gripe at people who haven't apparently followed before, especially on things where Google News Archive is pretty conclusive by itself, and I routinely encourage nominators to explicitly state how they've searched for sources and failed. I've myself seen people game that part of a nomination, by searching Google Books and Scholar, but not News, for a current event. Gaming goes all ways. Jclemens (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  Which is why AFD is still a consensus-driven venue, and complaining about the actions or inactions of specific editors is fruitless. And BURDEN does apply to the the article space in the sense that if you want the article kept, you need to show it meets notability standards. Without evidence (sources), deletion is a completely valid option. --MASEM (t) 18:38, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

  Not entirely, BEFORE exists as a safety net. The gamers may not like it, but the system is designed so that it's easy to stubbify an unsourced article, but stubs on notable and appropriate topics cannot, by policy, be deleted. It's not about winning or losing, it's about improving the encyclopedia. Jclemens (talk) 20:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

• Behavioral Guideline The steps listed are not just about sources but also contain numerous other good points such as checking the talk page for previous nominations or being polite when discussing the matter. If an editor fails to follow these steps then they may be warned or blocked and so it's a behavioral guideline like WP:DISRUPTION. Of course, editors usually have to violate this in an outrageous way for action to be taken but that's the way it usually goes with our behavioral guidelines. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Why should nominators follow all these steps when all people wanting to keep an article have to do is, apparently, claim that something is notable without providing any evidence.[5] If you want other people to treat this as a behavioral guideline, at least try to give a good example from the opposite direction. Or perhaps we should change the section title of BEFORE to "Before nominating an article for deletion or commenting in an AfD discussion", so that everyone arguing for "keep" has to provide evidence that they as well have tried to find sources, and can show what their "it's notable!" argument is based on. Fram (talk) 14:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
    • This guideline contains a lot more than WP:BEFORE, which is just the logical starting point. In particular, there is an equally substantial section on How to discuss an AfD. Do you contend that this is just hot air too? Colonel Warden (talk) 16:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
      • "Do you contend that this is just hot air too?" is a nice example of "Do you still beat your wife?". I have not contended that anything is "hot air", I have just pointed out that it is rather hypocritical to want to impose "BEFORE" (which was, according to the people above, the focus of this discussion) when your own AfD edits are not really examples of how we should discuss such things. I don't think that you would have been happy to get your reply in that AfD tagged as "disruption" worthy of a warning or a block, so I don't see why you would ask for that to happen to people who may have not taken all possible precautions to avoid an AfD for soemthing that will eventually be kept, or merged, or redirected. Fram (talk) 19:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
        • I often find and cite sources for articles at AFD. In that case, I added the good source of a textbook. Fram's personal attack is therefore groundless. Fram should please address the main issue here: whether we expect editors to produce evidence to support their arguments. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
          • Let's see, you posted at the AfD on 20:21, 3 April 2011, I gave that post as an example of hypocrisy on 14:07, 4 April 2011, you just happened to add that source on 14:53, 4 April 2011, and then come here to claim that my personal attack is groundless? It looks to me as of your actions show that my remark was a very accurate description of your actions, and that it resulted in you improving your behavior in this case (even though that book is hardly a source indicating notability, but that's a different discussion). Your final remark "Fram should please address the main issue here: whether we expect editors to produce evidence to support their arguments." is quite baffling: I adressed a telling example of someone, i.e. you, who didn't produce any evidence to support his arguments in an AfD discussion, until this was pointed out here explicitly. Taking your position, you should have been warned for this, and if it was repeated blocked. Fram (talk) 08:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
            • You are mistaken. My action was in response to the posting of the nominator in that discussion which showed up on my watchlist at that time. The exchange between the nominator and User:Becksguy indicated that the primary focus of their attack had shifted to notability rather than the faux-policy that Wikipedia is not a parts catalog. This is part of a bundle of nominations, as we read above at Mass deletion of electronic components. I've been leaving other editors such as User:Dicklyon to make most of the running in these discussions but, in this case, this particular topic seemed to need some assistance and so I obliged. I first got started with this bundle several days ago. Discussion of the bundle has shown that these components are not random parts but are archetypal and popular - exemplars of their type. Sources are thus not difficult to find and so notability is well-established. Your implication that my contribution was an arbitrary drive-by made without detailed knowledge of the topic is false. Mistakes of this kind are the reason that editors should do background research rather than jumping to conclusions. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
              • I'll let everyone judge for themselves what they think about your explanation (claiming that "The exchange between the nominator and User:Becksguy indicated that the primary focus of their attack had shifted to notability rather than the faux-policy that Wikipedia is not a parts catalog." when the nomination started with "Contested PROD. No assertion of notability for this tiny electronic part." is bizarre, and calling an AfD nomination an "attack" is telling of your mindset) and whether, if "Sources are thus not difficult to find and so notability is well-established", it is logical or user-friendly that you use a minor student handbook as your source instead of some more general, perhaps online accessible or at least in more libraries available source. That is of course assuming that notability is indeed well-established, other people in the AfD seem to disagree. But that's a discussion for over there... Fram (talk) 09:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
        • Is it asking too much that people who want to take the time of other editors accept some responsibilities such as checking for and marking dead links on an article before they bring it to an AfD?  Unscintillating (talk) 00:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
          • As long as there are no such rules for creating articles, there should be no such rules for disputing articles either. If article creators don't have to produce any evidence that the subject is notable and the article truthful, then it is unreasonable to force other editors to make a lot more effort before they can nominate an article for deletion. Of course it is best, in both cases, if people take the time to check things first, to provide sources, evidence, ..., but it shouldn't be enforced, and a supposed lack of following WP:BEFORE shouldn't be a reason to dismiss an AfD and/or to warn or block an editor. That doesn't mean that AfD's never can be disruptive, and that people can't be blocked for disrupting the process; but not following BEFORE is not sufficient for such a response. Fram (talk) 08:09, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

it is perfectly reasonable for people to do the work, because otherwise we are deleting merely on the basis ofthe apparent deficiencies of the article, and not on whether the subject is actually notable, etc. A lack of followingthe rudiments of BEFORE makes work for everyone who looks at the AfD and tries to judge it properly. I certainly will not say a keep or delete at an AfD without at least some kind of a search if it is relevant to the decision, unless I know someone has done it previously--if i were to judge on the basis of someone else's opinion not based on evidence, my !vote would be just as useless as their's. IThe fastest and best way to get unsourcable articles deleted is to show they are unsourceable, not just assert it. ` DGG ( talk ) 03:04, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• For a fresh example of this guideline in action, please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Readercon. In this case, the nominator is censured for failure to follow WP:BEFORE and the discussion is speedily closed. There seems to be a sense of a line which has been crossed and exceptional action is taken. I'm not seeing any practical difference between this and other guidelines such as WP:POINT, WP:BITE, WP:COI and WP:SIZE. Compliance with these guidelines is fairly patchy and there are no draconian penalties for this. But there is a general expectation that these represent good practise and so some scolding may be appropriate when they are not followed. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Perhaps the part about "do a search for sources before nominating" can be a guideline, but most of the other "considerations" have no such agreement. Whether a person nominating an article for deletion has considered a merge, has considered adding a tag to the article, has checked "what links here", ... can not be checked, can not be enforced, and should never be a reason for scolding. However, they would all be a part of the guideline. Bad idea... Fram (talk) 13:05, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

errr

this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_James_and_Joe_Show and this linked one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ashford

are not notable! but i don't know how to list this... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.98.10.96 (talk) 21:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed, and done. You may wish to comment on the discussions. Dylanfromthenorth (talk) 21:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Taken step 1 for Panic Nation

I have taken step 1 from WP:AFDHOWTO towards submitting Panic Nation as an AFD. As I noted at Talk:Panic Nation#Article for deletion, I am resorting to requesting someone to continue the process after realizing that my addition of a {{PROD}} was invalid due to a PROD that occurred three years ago (when the article looked pretty much like it does now). Thank you in advance to anyone who chooses to continue this process. 67.101.7.66 (talk) 06:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• Nomination is completed. Discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Panic Nation. Dylanfromthenorth (talk) 12:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Request to complete nom of Rhinoceros dolphin

My justification for deletion has been posted at Talk:Rhinoceros dolphin, but I will repeat it here: Why should Wikipedia have an article about an imaginary species whose claims to notability are a self-published Angelfire website and an appearance in a fictional cartoon show? Prod was removed because "theres a source" [sic], presumably referring to the self-published Angelfire website. Thank you for your assistance. 63.104.174.146 (talk) 21:50, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• Done. AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rhinoceros dolphin. Cheers. lifebaka++ 22:13, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Advice check

I recently gave this guidance to someone, related to AFD closure. I have found it useful to split contentious AFD issues into two kinds - those where there is a principle being broken, and those where there is a question of weight. Quick eyeballs here whether this seems good advice generally, for this sometimes difficult area:

• Some points simply cannot carry weight, no matter how many people say them. WP:ILIKEIT is one, as are attempts to present as "evidence" material that is simply unable to carry evidentiary weight in terms of WP:RS/WP:N (blogs, self promotion, notinherited, etc), misread or unsubstantiated claims of evidence (!votes based on web hits that when checked all turn out to be links to MySpace, Amazon, iTunes, nothing more, etc) or !votes that don't actually say anything. Unfortunately we do get these and at times a significant number of users present them as arguments.

  An argument that fundamentally contradicts or breaches policy falls within the terms of the closer's judgment to exclude. AFD is not a vote count - if something would obviously not be policy based or contradicts usual AFD norms (eg ILIKEIT) without a good reason then it cannot be a valid AFD view. If this means a surprising result (compared to !votecount) then the closer should explain the logic very carefully.

• The other kind of issue is where the point could be valid but needs consensus to decide. Canonical example, "is this coverage in the media enough to show notability or is it NOTNEWS"? or "Is this significant article in a reliable or unreliable source"? With these kinds of questions, where there is a genuine question and it would not be unreasonable to conclude either way, the closer should pay close attention to, and be guided by (or give considerable weight to), consensus.

Thoughts? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 10:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Far too specific, and horridly wikilawyerable. The closer should weigh !votes which form a clear consensus excluding only those which are IDONTLIKEIT or which are affected by CANVASS or other procedural violations first (CANVASS is grounds for tossing the entire AfD, and starting a new one). If and only if there is no such consensus should the closer try tossing !votes for deletion which do not provide a cogent reason, and noting that positive reasons for deletion are required. And tossing "keep" votes which appear based on personality conflicts rather than on concern about the article at hand (I daresay this might include ARS !votes at times, but not as a rule). If no consensus remains, then close as "no consensus." Where admins have made closes against the apparent !vote results, DRV has rather frequently overturned the close. Asking admins to assign their own weight to reasons (and most especially where !votes are disregarded as "no reason to keep given") is opening a huge can of worms in my opinion. "Surprising results" ought not occur. "No consensus" is not the worst result possible. Collect (talk) 11:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

What are "positive reasons for deletion are required."? Not notable, no reliable independent sources about subject is not a "positive" reason, but a very valid one. Whether one writes "this article fails WP:BIO" (positive?) or "this article doesn't meet the minimum requirements of WP:BIO"? (negative?) shouldn't make any difference. Fram (talk) 11:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are many grounds that are not acceptable reasons for an article (ie excluded by policy or guidelines) beyond IDONTLIKEIT or CANVASS. The closer should attend to these if the matter is clear. What admins should not do is add their own weight to arguments. But they should be able to distinguish arguments that are in fact invalid due to error, mis-statement, or other reasons, and set them aside, even if many users make the same error. That is what judgment is for. If the arguments could potentially be valid then we agree, the consensus is what matters. My observation is that for arguments that simply cannot be valid, as a matter of fact, or policy, or other norms, the closer should disregard them even if several users make the same mistake. When well explained, such AFD closes are often endorsed. I think the problem is that routinely they are not well explained. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Double listing?

Alpha Gamma is currently listed twice on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 April 11 (as of this writing, #9 and #83), which apparently triggered the creation of a second deletion discussion page, so we now have Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alpha Gamma and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alpha Gamma (2nd nomination). What is the best way to clean this up? Chuck (talk) 18:07, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

In the past, I've just merged any discussion, put a note at the bottom of the active discussion, and put a #REDIRECT on the now-orphaned discussion. tedder (talk) 18:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

premature article

I was thinking of nominating Results of the Canadian federal election, 2011 for deletion, but I thought I would ask here first. The article consists of tables that are empty of real data. The election is not until May 2, 2011, so there are no results yet. But clearly some work went into preparing those tables, and they will be useful on May 2, so I'm not sure whether it makes any sense to go through the AfD process only to have to undelete the article a couple of weeks later. Mathew5000 (talk) 04:42, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd tend to say that a few weeks of lead time is fine. Especially given the week that an AfD will take. So, yeah, you're right that it makes little sense to delete this now (assuming that it would be) when it'll be needed just two weeks afterward. It won't do any harm in the meantime. Cheers. lifebaka++ 05:31, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if some admins would take on the job of boldly moving such articles to the incubator.  Unscintillating (talk) 07:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Why? I don't see any problem with these hanging around in mainspace. Yoenit (talk) 07:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Did you see the Serene Branson AfD and DRV, that should have been incubated for a while, I think.  And Wikipedia is the only place you can keep up to date on the latest metal totals for United States at the 2012 Summer Olympics it is kind of like a market niche.  The May 2 election is less urgent, but do you have a problem if an admin chooses to move it?  Unscintillating (talk) 07:25, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would consider it disruptive as the election is just three weeks away and the page is very likely to be recreated by somebody unaware of the incubated version. I have no idea why you bring up those two other pages as one is a BLP where this dispute seems to have been around BLP1E (and thus a completely different situation) and the second one has encyclopedic content (some people who qualified are already known). Yoenit (talk) 08:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems pretty bad to me to have articles like this hanging around mainspace. It can't meet Wikipedia's notability criteria, because there are no reliable sources, yet, for the results of an election three weeks from now. What I will do is change it to a redirect, which can easily be reverted at the appropriate time. 208.99.157.55 (talk) 07:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

"Universities" and User:Murtazajamali

I note that the history of Morpheus Global University includes an early comment of "Tagging for speedy deletion: thrice-deleted copyvio spam". The {{db-g12}} was summarily removed without discussion but I would be interested in people's thoughts. I get the strong sense that the article is an attempt to give some credibility to a degrees-by-post type organisation. The main editor is User:Murtazajamali who seems to have a particular interest in less illustrious institutions that offer degrees. An example is Knightsbridge University which is the sort of institution that is registered in Liberia with a mailing address in Scotland, 500 miles away from Knightsbridge. Indian IP 121.240.76.2 is the other main contributor, with similar interests. Searching the usual sources turns up nothing concrete about Morpheus other than an Indian site with Morpheus franchises for sale. The original source of the copyvio can't spell its own mailing address of High Holborn and presents an impossible postcode. To me the Morpheus article just smells of something that doesn't belong on Wikipedia, and I'm rather sceptical of the other articles in which User:Murtazajamali has been involved. Thoughts? Le Deluge (talk) 14:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• Nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Morpheus Global University. Thanks, I hate fake universities using WP to look legitimate.  Glenfarclas  (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Cheers Gf. Whad I was sort of asking was - would anyone care to have a look through all of the contributions of Murtazajamali and 121.240.76.2? I suspect that all of their edits are about similar institutions but if they're doing it in sufficiently sophisticated fashion that Morpheus could survive nearly two years, then they will need a bright spotlight shining on them. Institute of Integrated Management and Technology, Varanasi is probably a good place to start, as it explicitly claims association with Morpheus and many of Murtazajamali's other contributions like West Coast University – Panama, Newport University CED of...err...Latvia, EIILM University of Kolkatta and so on. I know there's an argument for turning the articles into demolition jobs - the Knightsbridge article is heading in that direction, but I'm not sure it spells it out in terms that are obvious enough for the sort of person to be taken in by this kind of scam. But that's probably unusual in having WP:RS to back up the statements of "it's a fake". Looking back through his history he's pretty persistent and creative in using different capitalisations etc - can something be done to WP:SALT these subjects? Oh, and just looking at the Morpheus history you can throw users Newport1, Ratomgu and 118.94.119.75 into the mix, so you may want to beware sockpuppets. Le Deluge (talk) 08:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I have prodded the other instances I have found. Jezhotwells (talk) 10:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Request to complete AFD nom of ISO 13407

As I note at Talk:ISO 13407#AFD nomination, ISO 13407 was created in July 2008 and has been minimally improved since then. While a case could be made that as an ISO standard it starts out with a WP:GNG presumption of notability, a review of of its current content and my review of a sampling of articles from an internet search places notability in question. That, combined with WP:NOTMANUAL issues and the failed attempt a year ago to PROD the article–something I just documented via {{old prod full}}–prompts me to request that someone complete my AFD nomination. Thanks in advance. 68.165.77.118 (talk) 00:00, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ISO 13407. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:49, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

"Involved" status of nominator and/or AfD participants

Ok, here's a question I can't see on the wiki page (maybe I've missed it though).

Is an editor who happens to be an admin nominates an article for deletion counted as "involved" because they have an opinion on the article's fitness for inclusion in the 'pedia. Thus if the result of the AfD is 'delete', does anyone have concerns if the nominator then uses admin actions on the article thereafter (i.e. deletes it). My own take on it is 'yes' but I'd like to hear from others - if no-one has a problem with it, so be it. It has happened in an AfD recently but am proposing the question first. The case it relates to is:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phyrexia - nominated by Sandstein, closed as Delete by Wizardman, history restored to redirect by Jclemens and then history redeleted by Sandstein.

See User_talk:Jclemens#Phyrexia.

Anyway, this is a process thing - try not to think of it as a deletionist/inclusionist thing :) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:36, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not going to comment on the "Phyrexia" issue but an AFD nominator, admin or not, is definitely "involved" because he wants the article deleted. (else he wouldn't have nominated it). The only exception would be a nomination resulting from a DRV result or one on behalf of an IP editor as in the thread right above this one where the nominator says he's neutral. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:47, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I guess that one can see it that way, but by extension this means that all administrators who !voted in the AfD to merge, keep or delete the article are also involved. We already recognize this by stipulating that such admins may not close the AfD, but I'm not sure that we've applied it to other admin actions such as future protections, deletions or undeletions. Do we want to? I tend to say yes, because it's normally possible to find a clearly uninvolved admin to do things that need doing.  Sandstein  07:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I overlooked that initially. I guess the other thing is that a closing admin should consider the fine print as well, such as whether an article title is a valid search term (i.e. redirect) etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Generally, an admin is involved if they have nominated or !vote in a discussion (exception of procedural nomination on behalf on an IP or non-autoconfirmed editor). Another occasional exception is that where the nominator of an AfD states that he accepts that there is overwhelming consensus to keep, then any admin should be able to close, whether that admin has voted in favour of retention or deletion. Mjroots (talk) 10:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure it's a problem. If the AfD has been closed by someone uninvolved, deleting it is purely procedural. Normally maybe it's best for someone else to do it, but I'm not convinced that actually carrying out a decision made by someone else is a problem. Dougweller (talk) 11:39, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Once an independent admin restores the history, I suspect it is unwise for the deletion-nominator to redelete the article history. The history is not the article, hence maintaining it is not the same as keeping the article. Reverting the act of another admin is, for any admin, generally unwise. While not the same as unblocking an editor who was blocked under AE, it is still verging on that same territory - reversing the reasonable act of another admin. Collect (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with your statement that the history is not the article, Collect. It is part and parcel of the whole thing. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:29, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The history should not have been undeleted by Jclemens to create the redirect, JC was heavily involved in the discussion and should not have used his tools to do that - the result of the AFD was delete. I myself have objected to the early closure of AFD discussions when consensus is towards delete on the grounds to create a redirect specifically because I wanted the history deleted to stop the easy recreation of similar low quality content. Off2riorob (talk) 14:18, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see that Sandstein was "involved" at the point he re-deleted the history -- if the consensus was clearly to delete, and closed and deleted by a completely-uninvolved admin, I can't see why re-deleting it would be a problem. Seems to me he would only be involved for the duration of the AfD.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, not sure I agree with that one, as one still has an opinion content-wise on the article before during and after the AfD. In any case, is it worth noting any of this on the flip side of this page? Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:00, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm more concerned that JClemens, who was heavily involved in the AfD and argued against deletion, used his tools to undelete the article in order to make it a redirect against consensus. The logs show that after the AfD closed as 'delete', 7 hours later JClemens restored the article history and protected the redirect. At the very least there should have been a discussion about it first, and Jclemens should not have been using his tool to implement his preferred outcome. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll second that. Sandstein's actions may have technically run afoul of WP:INVOLVED, but I would look pretty kindly on the idea that his action was one that any completely uninvolved admin would have performed. Jclemens's action clearly and distinctly ran afoul of WP:INVOLVED: his actions directly contradicted the AFD result, and he argued against the AFD result during the AFD. In fact, he argued for "merge", which was rejected by consensus, and then used his admin tools to directly encourage his preferred result.—Kww(talk) 15:09, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)x3 I don't think anything needs to be noted, Cas -- admins should know where WP:DRV is and how to userfy articles, so it shouldn't come up often enough to merit the instruction creep. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

@Off2riorob, I can sympathise with BLPs that insisting on deletion of history is desirable, but with less "dangerous" material I am unconvinced. I guess in the realm of improvable and uncontroversial material which may be able to be referenced that having it accessible in the history is better than not. Anyone can revert an unredirected redirect anyway if there's been no improvement to the resurrected content, which doesn't sound too onerous to me. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in relation to contentious history edits or content especially in relation to living people, my comment is really related to that type of issue, and if I had concerns regarding such I have and would raise them during the AFD and usually the position then gets additional support and so the request to specifically keep the history deleted is supported in the discussion so it would be clear that undelete-ing the history in that case without the DRV process would be controversial. The best course of action for JC would have been to simply ask Wizardman to reconsider his closure and see if he would consider re closing as redirect, and asking Sandstein if he minded. Off2riorob (talk) 15:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

@Ponyo, yes, userfication would have been a more prudent route to take..Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

But even then, not by Jclemens. That would still be a case of him using his admin tools to achieve a result which favored his own position at the AFD, one which was rejected during the discussion.—Kww(talk) 15:19, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Good point, yes I should add that asking an uninvolved admin is the way to go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:40, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

NB: Do we think cases like these strengthen the case for combining AfD MERGE and MOVE discussions into a unified "Articles for discussion" then? Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, but I like the idea anyway. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:24, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea too, but I'm not sure what the issue of involvement has got to do with it.  Sandstein  16:39, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the idea: I think the volume is too high, that less experienced editors would be confused, and that we might occasionally end up with awkward outcomes ("I only wanted to correct the spelling on the name, but suddenly people are !voting to delete it..."). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

@Sandstein I was going off on a bit of a tangent. But sometimes AfD is seen as a keep/delete situation, and it might make editors and closing admins more mindful and explore fully other options. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:17, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this point, merge or redirect is is all too often an afterthought to a keep delete focus. Off2riorob (talk) 21:26, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

• Just jumping in late here, but my opinion is that it is almost always better to ask for another admin to pull the trigger on any action where you have previously expressed an opinion. There's hundreds of active admins, so its not like any single one of us is "vital" towards any situation. As a personal matter of practice, I very rarely even block the same user twice, even if my first block was the first interaction I had with the user. I understand that this is way beyond the standard outlined at WP:INVOLVED, but as a pragmatic matter, the more different admins are involved, the less that any one user can say that a particular admin is misusing their tools. All situations benefit from having more people involved in them, either to correct a mistake, or to reinforce a correct decision. --Jayron32 15:49, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
• I don't consider an admin to be "involved" for procedural nominations. I'd also allow some latitude for uncontested closes (regardless of the outcome). (If the article is going to be kept/merged/deleted/redirected no matter who does it, then it doesn't really matter who does it.) However, IMO asking plainly uninvolved folks to do the work is wiser than doing it yourself. If nothing else, it stops any aggrieved party from pretending that a 10-to-1 AFD in favor of X would have had a different outcome, if only a truly impartial admin had closed it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
• I also don't consider an admin to be involved if the nomination is purely procedural. However, I am a big wuss with my powers and bend over backward to avoid impropriety so I wouldn't delete an article where I had any substantial involvement with the deletion discussion. (Then again, I don't delete AfDs at all.) Even if I PROD an article I won't delete it when the PROD expires even though it's an uncontroversial deletion. As advice, I'd tell someone not to delete anything they nominated (however they did it), but if someone did do it, I think that you'd have to judge things on a case-by-case basis. -- Atama頭 20:17, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
• It looks to me that Jclemens violated WP:INVOLVED more than Sandstein did in this incident, but WP:TROUT to both, of different sized though; A-size for Jclemens ;-) Tijfo098 (talk) 23:28, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
• I feel there is a difference between upholding an existing desision and after expressing an opinion in an AFD to unilaterally use admin powers to undo that desision. I disagree with a comment made further up the page implying that undoing an admin action is wrong in itself. Admins do make mistakes and other admins do have to clean up those mistakes. What is wrong though is then to ping pong actions in a "wheelwar". When it comes to a community desision it will need to be undone by a community desision. Agathoclea (talk) 09:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so shall we discuss tweaking the policy page?

Right, there is nothing on the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion or Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion#General_advice spelling out that editors who are admins who have either nominated or voted on a page at AfD shouldn't use admin powers to fiddle with pages, and that best practice is to ask the closing or an uninvolved admin to userfy or initiate any other admin action associated with said page. Do we think adding something along these lines to the wikiquette bit or somewhere else is a good thing (?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

It seems correct to say that, if an administrator closes a discussion as delete then the history of the article should not be recreated by any other administrator whether they were involved or not without at a minimum a request to the closing administrator to recreate the history and re-close as merge/redirect or a via a WP:DRV. User-fication of community discussion deleted content should also be only done after careful consideration preferably by the closing admin or via a discussion showing community support for such action. Off2riorob (talk) 12:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll endorse this when and if WP:ATD is enforced, such that nothing with a merge or redirect target is deleted in AfD unless the material itself is considered unfixably promotional, copyvio, or BLP/attack. Right now, we have far too many admins who count noses and proclaim "keep" or "delete", when in many cases neither of those Boolean outcomes is the correct outcome. Jclemens (talk) 15:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure any tweaking is needed to the actual policy, excepting that perhaps more explicit referal to existing policies and guidelines is added, like WP:INVOLVED, WP:USERFY, WP:WHEELWAR, etc. --Jayron32 13:00, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• You realize the Perverse incentives here, right? If an admin who's !voted in an AfD is somehow expected to not userify a document him or herself, then the various options are to strike the !vote before closing, comment only instead of !voting, or simply not comment on an AfD at all. Userification, improvement, and restoration is a core function of article improvement, and administrators who know the material, know our sourcing/content expectations, and have the tools to work with deleted material are the best people to go in and fix previously deleted material. If there are specific instances where that has been done badly, those should be addressed. Jclemens (talk) 15:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
  • An undelete to userfy can be marked as such and will only be in mainspace for seconds therefor at the end of the action no reversion of the deletion discussion has occured (Barring any other policies - obvious copy vio or simmilarly unsuitable material). I think no further instruction creep need be given, but common sense should apply. As an admin I might enforce a desision I personally do not agree with. I can theoretically see myself closing an AFD as delete when I !voted keep. Am I "involved"? Some Admins routinly comment on a large number of AFD's - should they forever be held "involved" or is it a case of looking at a large caseload that needs to be dealt with and then when coming accross the same article on another caseload making another desision? I am not as active as I have been or wish to be, but when I was relativly active I found a lot of tasks through articles mentioned at noticeboards and discussion, sometimes watching out for particular problems that I have noticed ie some sneaky vandalism. When do I start getting "involved"? Any mindless instruction creep will hamper more than it will benefit. Agathoclea (talk) 18:32, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
  • While I agree that userfication is usually uncontroversial and should be allowed (see below), filing at WP:Requests for undeletion is not terribly onerous. Flatscan (talk) 04:09, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
• I don't think any revision or emphasis is needed; the cases I can think of seem to be common sense application of WP:INVOLVED. Userfication should not be restricted by AfD participation. Per WP:Userfication#Userfication of deleted content, userfication may be asked for at WP:Requests for undeletion, a venue meant for uncontroversial requests. Requiring an admin to file there is an unnecessary formality. If an admin is engaging in questionable conduct, such as hoarding articles, userfying unacceptable content, or sneaking pages back into article space, participation in related AfDs is a relatively minor issue. Flatscan (talk) 04:09, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

• Its not minor at all, don't do it, ask the closing admin. take it to MFD, if you do it on an article I have been involved in I will chase you around for your tools. Jclemens, I dispute your position completely - your claims that you know best or someone else in a similar position to you knows best is a large jump indeed, you have no authority at all to over ride community discussion and admin closure - follow the correct procedure or you will find dispute at all corners. I agree with users comments like Jayron, there is already clear policy to stop such involvement and userfy and wheelwar issues and if those guidelines had been followed correctly by user Jclemens then this discussion would not even be occurring. Off2riorob (talk) 20:28, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Why do you think that userfication should be considered controversial, something that requires WP:Deletion review? The userfied page is moved out of article space to user space. Flatscan (talk) 04:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

If there are no objections to userfication then if the deleting administrator agrees that is not controversial and I don't think a deletion review is required for usefication unless there was an objection. Considerations should be given to the reasons for deletion and the content not only in the current article but also in the history. Perhaps its a good idea if content that was deleted through community discussion is intended to be recreated in userspace a notice could be left automatically on the deletion nominators talkpage, by way of a good faith notification as the user that nominated the content for deletion they are perhaps going to be a possible objector to recreation of the content in userspace. We all know that in many many request for userfication situations, "please userfy that deleted article for me I want to improve it" - nothing ever happens to it, it sits there untouched. I prefer what some admins do when they refuse userfication but offer to email the article to the requester. These comments are regarding when the result of the discussion is delete - I also like it when the closing admin closing comments are more detailed, which might be beneficial all round, such as, delete - no objection to userfication. That way it is clear to all interested parties. Off2riorob (talk) 12:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• the horse might be out of the barn, but I oppose adding into policy language that suggests admins should be restricted from using the tools merely for having commented on or starting a deletion debate. Not because I feel admins should have carte blanche but because the right answer is to follow INVOLVED. We don't need a constellation of subject specific guidance around each anchor policy. In fact the path should be fewer rules. Where we feel the need to add another rule, consider whether or not the new rule could be replaced by a pointer to the base policy. Protonk (talk) 20:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Question regarding participant arguments

Right now, there are a few AfDs in my main area of focus that I've put up. I've provided, as far as I can tell, solid reasons for deletion based upon policy and gudelines, but participants voting "keep" are not addressing them and this is affecting the outcome. I've tried replying and asking if they'd be willing to elaborate, but no one is biting.

Is deletion review an option in this case, in order to get the debate relisted? Surely someone has options when none of their valid concerns are being addressed. There are few regular editors in this area and notability has not been established; if it had been, you'd think someone would be willing to explain why.

Here are the deletion discussions in question:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Border jack
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shinese (2nd nomination)

Thanks. Please forgive me for being mildly irritated. – anna 20:18, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

After reading those AfDs, I can see why you are frustrated. In my opinion, WP:Deletion review is very likely to endorse the Shinese outcome. You might get a no consensus or redirect for Border jack. It may be helpful to encourage AfD participation from WP:WikiProject Dogs/Dog breeds task force. Interested editors are usually better informed, but please be careful to avoid inappropriate canvassing of any future AfDs. Another thing that might help is a subject-specific notability guideline – a list of checkboxes is easy for a lay editor to understand. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

In response to encouraging AfD participation, I did so here. Out of the two AfDs brought up here, one member voted in Border Jack and none in Shinese. For the reasons you mentioned, my hands are basically tied when it comes to doing anything else. I'd love a subject-specific notability guideline to put these issues to rest, but I'm not sure how to go about proposing one; maybe I'll bring it up on the project talk page.

Just to clarify, there's no recourse in this specific case? I admit, I'm still tempted to try DR because there's really nothing to lose, but I don't want to go through this every time I nominate an entirely unremarkable designer mix. Thanks for understanding, I appreciate it. – anna 08:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

SNG's generally don't trump the GNG--although that point is somewhat contested--so the actual utility of an SNG in this case is questionable. Jclemens (talk) 15:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Jclemens is correct that if participants believe that the GNG allows the article, it is difficult to convince them that it should be excluded on the basis of your SNG. See how WP:Notability (wine topics) (shortcut WP:WINETOPIC) fared at WP:Articles for deletion/Valhalla Vineyards and the follow-up DRV. I think that an SNG might have value as a reference, even if it doesn't bring in delete recommendations. Flatscan (talk) 04:22, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Tangent ahead: I think this might actually be more suited for a joint proposal between various animal projects (horses and cats come to mind immediately, but it also applies to other animals like cows and chickens). Species are notable, sure, and de facto all separate, established breeds are as well, but there's nothing addressing crossbreeds. Really, I think the GNG is suitable, but perhaps others disagree. There are some rare but established breeds that would probably fail, but those have not been nominated, and on my part that's because many, if not all, still have parent clubs or are recognized by their country's registry. – anna 04:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's the root of the problem: Species are notable, sure, and de facto all separate, established breeds are as well, but there's nothing addressing crossbreeds. In my view certain of these "crossbreeds" have likely attained critical mass in terms of popular recognition as established types of dogs — Notable Neologisms, if you will. Borderjack seems to me to have more or less attained that mark. Honest people may differ in that assessment, which is what AfD is about — figuring out a consensus. By the way, the golden retriever "breed" was created as a cross-breed between yellow labs, an extinct breed of spaniel, and bloodhounds. That's how breeds are made... Carrite (talk) 16:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

How has the Border Jack reached said critical mass? I still haven't seen any sources other than the one with two sentences. Most of these designer breeds are in no way well-sourced -- Hans Adler summed it up well as a "ridiculous sub-stub" -- and while this one is a bit more notable than, say, the Labernese, it still lacks said sources. Breeds do not form overnight, and while I'm fully aware that they do not start off pure -- I'm a long-time dog hobbyist, please give me some credit ;) -- that's totally irrelevant. My issue with these articles has nothing to do with my opinion on the validity of designer breeds/mixes, but instead on whether they comply with the general notability guideline and verifiability policy. The Border Jack doesn't seem to, and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary. At this point, I'm flummoxed that none has been provided by those voting keep. – anna 16:35, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The AfDs listed at WT:WikiProject Dogs#Relevant AFD have a high success (non-keep) rate. I see that you've filed the DRV at WP:Deletion review/Log/2011 May 2#Shinese. Flatscan (talk) 04:22, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I have (and noted that it was advised against). Foolish? Almost certainly, and I did think it over, but at least there's a chance, however slim, of relisting. If consensus there is to endorse the closure, I'll accept that and leave the article alone. – anna 04:32, 2 May 2011 (UTC)