User:MarSch/deleteproposal

This proposal is an attempt to improve the efficiency of the various deletion pages.

The problem
There are a lot of candidates on the various deletion pages that get no keep votes. These clear cases sit right beside the cases which are not so clear and make it very time-consuming to find the cases that need to be debated. A more efficient way of dealing with clear cases is necessary so that the other cases can get their fair share of constructive discussion.

The solution
What we need is a way to separate the clear cases from the not-so-clear cases, so that people who patrol the deletion pages only have to look at the not-so-clear cases and can ignore the clear cases. The people who have a candidate on their watch-list will notice its nomination and should be the first to contest the nomination. If there are no contesters there is no need to waste the time of patrollers on these candidates. This proposal describes a way this can be done.

Why this works

 * There is little reason to suspect that if this proposal becomes policy, all of a sudden, clear cases start getting a keep vote.
 * Patrollers don't have to look at uncontested cases, saving them time (and annoyance).

Proposal
I propose to divide the deletion process into two stages. The aim is to keep unanimous candidates in stage 1 (waiting), while delegating controversial ones to stage 2 (voting).

Definitions

 * candidate := an article/object which is a candidate for deletion, because it has been nominated
 * patroller := a user who regularly looks at the nomination on a deletion page

Stage 1 (waiting)

 * This is where candidates enter. No need to patrol.


 * There is no voting in stage 1. Instead anyone may move a candidate to stage 2 (and vote to keep).
 * Candidates that remain after 7 or more days may be deleted.

Stage 2 (voting)

 * Candidates can only arrive here from stage 1, from where they may be moved by anyone.

Stage 2 is the voting stage. All articles arriving here have one (nomination) vote to delete and one (disagree) vote to keep. Thus they are not candidates that would otherwise have a unanimous vote against them. Discussion and voting proceeds as usual.
 * After 7 days or more, discussion and votes may be archived and proper action taken.

How it works
Stage 1 need not be patrolled. Instead people who have a candidate on their watch-list will notice its nomination and claim the candidate (move it to stage 2) if they think it is worthy. Patrollers are only needed for stage 2. The reasoning is that if some articles don't get any keep votes in the current process, then also in this new process some articles won't move out of stage 1, thus saving patrollers the time to investigate the clear cases.

Number of days and votes
The number of days a candidate stays in stage 1, in stage 2 and the number of votes mentioned in the extension are just suggestions and very debatable.

Related proposals

 * Unlike Preliminary Deletion by Johnleemk (with alternative 1) by Jens Ropers, there is no additional category of candidates, instead the deletion process is staged.
 * Another similar proposal is at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy/Reducing_VfD_load by Radiant!(?). The objections at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy/Reducing_VfD_load suggest that some people want to look also at everything that is in stage 1. For these people the only option is to reduce the number of nominations. That is an entirely different remedy to the same problem, but not an argument against improving the efficiency of the process of deletion.