User:Rodarmor/Delisting

Summary
This is a draft proposal for an alternative to deletion of non-notable Wikipedia articles. It retains Wikipedia's current notability guidelines unchanged. However, articles not meeting those guidelines are proposed for delisting, instead of deletion. Unlisted articles are largely hidden from view across the site, and individual users can opt-in to view them, see them in Wikipedia search results, and edit them.

Background
Wikipedia's policy guidance that articles not meeting notability guidelines should be deleted is controversial. It is impossible to briefly summarize the debate. In short, and missing much detail: some argue that non-notable articles detract from the trustworthiness and reliability of Wikipedia, make finding content more difficult, and waste editor time in the maintenance and management of these articles; while others argue that non-notable articles are still useful to many people, do not impede discovery of content, and that since notability is a subjective criterion, more time is wasted arguing over whether articles should be deleted or retained then is wasted instead retaining non-notable articles.

Goals
The goal of this proposal is to:


 * Reduce or eliminate conflict between editors who disagree about the notability of articles
 * Allow users individual opt in to viewing non-notable articles
 * Be minimal and non-disruptive

Non-Goals

 * Raise or lower the criterion for notability
 * Alter deletion guidelines not related to notability

Reason for Delisting
The only reason for deletion that becomes a reason for delisting is:

Articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP, and so forth)

Creation of Unlisted Articles
When creating an article that an editor does not believe meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines, they may elect to create an article that starts in the unlisted state.

Listing of Unlisted Articles
A proposal may be advanced to list an unlisted article.

Treatment of Unlisted Articles
As this proposal is a draft, each of the following subsections lists alternatives for the treatment of unlisted articles.

Linking to Unlisted Articles

 * Unlisted articles may link to listed articles but listed articles may not link to unlisted articles. Links to unlisted articles appear as dead links. Following delisting, a bot runs that removes all links to the delisted article.
 * Listed articles may contain links to unlisted articles, but link text is not decorated nor clickable. Users may individually opt in to seeing decorated, clickable links for unlisted articles.

Unlisted Articles on Disambiguation Pages

 * Links to unlisted articles may not appear on disambiguation pages.
 * Links to unlisted articles may appear on disambiguation pages, but must appear only in a separate section, which is not visible by default. Users may opt to make this section visible.
 * Links to unlisted articles may appear on a disambiguation pages, but must appear only in a separate section, which is visible by default.
 * Links to unlisted articles may appear anywhere on a disambiguation pages, but are not visible by default. Users may opt to make these links visible.
 * Links to unlisted articles may appear anywhere on a disambiguation pages, but are visibly distinguished from links to listed articles.

Unlisted Articles in Search Results

 * Unlisted articles do not appear in wikipedia results. Users may opt into seeing unlisted articles in search results.
 * Unlisted articles appear in search results, but are visibly distinguished from results for listed articles.

Distinguishing Unlisted Articles

 * "UNLISTED" is prepended to the page title of unlisted articles
 * Unlisted articles have visibly different page-wide formatting, e.g. a beige background.