Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Talk:List of north–south roads in Toronto/TOC

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was closed with agreement of nominator. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

List of roads in Toronto TOCs


Co-nominating two templates  Floydian  τ ¢  14:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Alright, so this is an odd one, so bear with me. These templates were created about a year and a half ago to serve the articles:
 * List of north–south roads in Toronto
 * List of east–west roads in Toronto

These articles combine numerous geographically related perma-stubs on roads in Toronto, and each article has 40-80 section headers. The purpose of these templates is to create a visually appealing table of contents. Compare my template in the article to the standard Horizontal TOC

About 6 months ago, in February, I was approached by User:Thumperward and told that we could recreate them using Horizontal TOC... I thought "Ok, if we can do this in a more simple fashion, I'm all for it". The templates were nominated for deletion as being redundant and we excised them on the grounds that Horizontal TOC would suffice.

However, when I saw how the new version looked, I was rather displeased. Each entry is preceded by a number that gives the impression of bus routes, while simultaneously adding nothing to the navigability. In addition, the tiny dots offer less of a buffer. While I'm all for consistency project-wide, this would not do. In the deletion discussion, it was noted that a way to remove the numbers was "planned".

After a couple weeks, I grew tired of the compressed and obtrusive TOC and opened a thread at deletion review to have it restored on those grounds. Before the process could unfold, the admin who closed the first discussion restored the templates to my userspace. I moved them back to a subpage of the talk page and reinserted them until such time as the "planned" fix is made (WP:DEADLINE applies here)

Yeasterday, Thumperward posted on my talk page giving me a light chastising for sticking it back in the article. Within two hours, before I could even respond with my reasoning, User:Pigsonthewing (who I will note has a persistent history of creating much bigger drama out of small issues with his 'I'm my own boss' attitude) removed them from the article. I undid his edits, so he nominated them for speedy deletion (without responding any more at my talk page... just content warring). I gave my hold on reasoning, which nobody actually reads when they close a speedy nomination. The pages were deleted, despite my insistence that if indeed "nothing has changed since the first XfD", this should be quick and painless.

Pigsonthewing refuses to allow these to exist, and is acting as the gatekeeper, insisting that I need consensus to overturn him, yet trying desperately to speedy the templates and not allow this discussion to take place... the only reason he even is touching these topics is because he saw the comment on my talk page and wanted to incite a little drama. After a year of increasingly bitter interactions with this editor, I have nothing to assume but bad faith on their part. -  Floydian  τ ¢  14:26, 6 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry but I'm a little bit lost here. The nomination is formally of talkpages that still exist. Is the point that you've copied on the talkpages, the templates that have already been deleted? If the latter, arguably this belongs on DRV or TfD rather than here. I raise this not to be formal and bureaucratic, but because AfD and TfD nominations generate inclusions on subject-area XfD listings that may draw in knowledgeable commenters, which MfD may not. If the real issue is the formatting of a template, then it doesn't belong at XfD at all, but on the talkpage of the template. Most important, please clarify exactly what content at issue. And if there's a user conduct issue, that needs to be addressed as well (I haven't looked into whether there is or isn't a good user conduct complaint here, in case it comes to ArbCom in the future.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:35, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * They were TfD'd in February, recreated in March, CSD'd yesterday, and recreated immediately prior to this nomination, which is meant to confirm that there is justification for these existing as opposed to using Horizontal TOC. I always thought DRV was meant to confirm or overturn the closure based on the closing admin's consensus, and not to contest the debate itself? -  Floydian  τ ¢  15:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Argh. Right, executive summary. I TfDed two custom TOC templates in February. Floydian, apparently under the impression that I'd promised to get some site-wide CSS changed so as to slightly improve the presentation, and therefore believing that I'd deliberately misled people at the TfD, took them to DRV in March, where they were userfied for him. Three days later, Floydian copy-pasted these userfied pages into talkspace (which he is for some inexplicable reason convinced serves as a place to put mainspace sub-pages), without telling anyone, and then pointed the articles that had transcluded the old templates back at them. So we have multiple problems here:


 * 1) The page history is lost. (Actually, it's still located at User:Floydian/List of roads in Toronto/eastwestTOC. No, I don't know why Floydian seems unaware that this is a problem, nor how to fix it. I've repeatedly pointed it out to him.)
 * 2) The pages are in the wrong namespace. They're templates, not talk pages. Despite this having confused multiple editors, Floydian still doesn't seem to understand what the problem is here, apparently believing that there is a precedent for this.
 * 3) Finally (and least importantly, really), the template was deleted at TfD, and it's inappropriate for an editor to simply turn around three weeks later and recreate it. Floydian's used two main excuses here: the first is that he's sticking up for the readers (who conveniently hold Floydian's opinion) and the second is that the TfD was some sort of mistrial because a feature request highlighted in it (hiding the numbers in a horizontal TOC) wasn't followed up. Even given that, an examination of the TfD plainly shows that most of the participants didn't seem to be predicating their deletion comments on that point.

So. #1 and #2 can be fixed easily enough: speedy these talk pages, and move the userfied copies of the original templates back into templatespace. But that leaves #3, and my opinion as to the redundancy of these templates hasn't changed in the last seven months. So the best result IMO would be to leave them userfied until such point as Floydian makes the effort to properly propose their reintroduction. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:28, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd at least like to call innocence on the third. The closing admin userfied the content, which means a deletion review was moot. That really left starting a discussion on the talk page of the article... which I'm going to give a 95% likelihood to WP:SILENCE getting invoked in that situation and the end result would be the same. I only ask that we rediscuss this, because my opinion has changed since the last discussion. It's very clear from the comparison that I offered above that these produce very different results. One looks like a proper TOC, the other looks like a bus schedule. -  Floydian  τ ¢  13:09, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The DRV is not moot; the deleting admin restored the templates to your userspace not template space. That courtesy was not an invitation for you to recreate and redeploy them. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:37, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * DRV is moot when it is in my userspace, hence why the one I started was closed after that happened. Any more nonsense? -  Floydian  τ ¢  13:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Floydian, there was nothing wrong with speedy-nominating these per policy: a dispute is not one guying saying "no" (especially where that one guy is the creator, who should not be removing speedy tags), and this was a perfectly clear G4 candidate (templates deleted per TfD, userfied ostensibly for improvement and then reintroduced essentially unaltered). If I hadn't been the editor who nominated them in the first place, I'd have G4ed them myself without a second thought the minute I encountered them. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:49, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * These have already been speedily deleted (G4 - recreation of a deleted template) once this week, and the deleting admin declined Floydian's to recreate them. They should again be speedily deleted, per the original TfD (like Chris', my view that these templates are redundant to Horizontal TOC, regardless of minor visual differences, hasn't changed since then) and per Chris' points, above. Note that, despite being named in the fallacious and unwarranted personal attack above, I wasn't notified of this discussion; nor, it seems, have been the other people who participated in the original TfD. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * And I have no obligation to, but thanks for assuming... I'll do the same right now: since you're stalking my edit history I knew you'd find it quickly enough. Also, for someone with a history of being a bullyish editor (as has been pointed out to you at several ANI visits), I find it ironic that you'd consider the truth to be a personal attack. The deleting admin declined to recreate them because it was pointed out to them that I was able to, they didn't need to and left it up to me to make the next move. I'll note that you continue to CSD these rather than engage in a proper deletion discussion. Our deletion policy is pretty clear: "Renominations: Either a page fits the speedy deletion criteria or it does not. If there is a dispute over whether a page meets the criteria, the issue is typically taken to deletion discussions, mentioned below, rather than being (speedy) deleted." emphasis and (additions) mine. -  Floydian  τ ¢  13:06, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I have participated in deletion discussion; the result of which was "delete", but you seem to refuse to accept that. This is very odd - not to say disruptive - behaviour fro someone who recently claimed to be suitable to become an admin. Leaving aside your further fallacious accusations, I can't find the edit where the admin concerned declined to reverse their speedy deletion gave the reason you attribute to them; can you provide the diff, please? Are you seriously suggesting that there is a dispute that these templates meet criterion G4, "Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion"? You appear to have described doing exactly that, above. You also appear, when removing the CSD templates from each of the pages just now, to ignore that WP:CSD says (emboldening in original) "The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag from it".  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You ignored our deletion policy in the first place, which says when there is a dispute (not over the criteria necessarily), the article should be taken through a deletion discussion... Not to mention the total conniving behaviour of trying to speedy them so you don't have to bother discussing them. That of course isn't disruptive, correct? I'm not going to have a pissing contest over semantics, I'm here to discuss the merits of this template and not your attempts to subvert a discussion. -  Floydian  τ ¢  13:36, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Again: we had a deletion discussion; I was involved in that discussion; the result of the discussion was "delete"; you seem to refuse to accept that. Further as I have just noted elsewhere, if you read what I wrote recently on your talk page, you will notice that I recommended a new discussion. We do not need these malformed, misplaced and out-of-process recreations of what is already in your user space in order to hold it. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:41, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep as not redundant to our standard TOC templates, as not being adequately duplicated by those templates. This provides a far better visual interface to readers in this particular situation. -  Floydian  τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  14:26, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Why have you moved this comment below several made after it? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:49, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It's my vote and it was getting lost in completely unrelated red tape. Do I need to create a new section header so nobody is lost? -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  13:52, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * When I recently retuned it to the proper location, Floydian reverted me with an edit summary "nothing [in WP:TALK] says I can't move my vote below the discussion". He should read the subsection WP:TOPPOST. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:53, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... the part about properly threading comments to indicate when you are replying to certain comments, or the part about leaving whitespace between different topics... like say arguing over the semantics of how the templates are placed or recreated instead of giving a keep or delete reason based on the merits or redundancies of the template? -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  13:59, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * the part that says, quite clearly, "...the next post will go underneath yours and so on. This makes it easy to see the chronological order of posts... To avoid confusion, the latest comment in a thread should be posted in chronological order and not placed above earlier comments." HTH. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:02, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Floydian, this MfD is already enough of a train wreck without people moving their "votes" (not a vote, by the way) to make them more prominent. You should already know this. Please don't do it again. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:07, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It was getting confusing. Ergo, I separated my vote out from the tangent that lay below it. This isn't giving prominence to it, nor does it make any of the comments that were below it out of place; it's separating it from the discussion on the steps that led to this discussion... ie the past from the future. Can we get back to discussing the template now, or is that a lost cause to these semantics? -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  14:11, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem, as already pointed out to you, is that it is not at all clear to anyone what you're actually trying to do here. If you wanted a do-over of the original TfD, then I explained how to get that to happen on your talk page. Instead, you went down your own path, including recreating your forks after they were speedied and then taking them straight to MfD with a rambling summary that spoke more of your dislike of Andy Mabbett than it did of the templates. If all you want is a do-over of the original TfD then close this discussion, stick a U1 on your forks and then listen to the advice you're getting regarding moving forward. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:44, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * "a rambling summary that spoke more of your dislike of Andy Mabbett than it did of the templates" - That's because you're only reading the bottom. There are 5 other paragraphs above that.
 * "If all you want is a do-over of the original TfD then close this discussion, stick a U1 on your forks and then listen to the advice you're getting regarding moving forward." - The advice I have been given is to open a DRV. I did that in March. After the closing admin, Plastikspork, userfied the content, the DRV was closed as moot. Should I open another to have it immediately closed, or can you not infer from my reasoning what I want to do here - validate the continued existence of this template.
 * Sorry, but when I've played the "This is the wrong venue to discuss this" card before, which I have, all I've ever gotten was "Well the discussion is taken place here now". So I pass the torch on. -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  14:55, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * As I pointed out to you above, the DRV was not "closed as moot"; it was closed by the user-fying of the templates; in other words, a declining of your request that the deletion be overturned. You cannot "validate the continued existence of this template [sic]", because the community has already decided that the templates (plural) do not validly exist. That decision was ratified by the admin at DRV, the admin who speedied them this week, and that same admin in declining to reversed the speedy, and opposed by, er, no-one but you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:27, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Stepping back to see the bigger picture. The underlying issue here is getting swallowed up in process minutiae that will be incomprehensible to anyone who sees this discussion and doesn't want to spend a number of hours looking through the background. It seems to me that what is really necessary is for the editors on the Toronto Roads articles to some sort of a consensus on what sort or style of template to use on those articles. And it's not clear to me in the least that this particular MfD is the best way to frame that discussion, but I am not certain what a better one would be. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:34, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps start - or even continue - the discussion on Template talk:Horizontal TOC? I can buy into Floydian's wish to have a menu looking much as the two templates under discussion. There does seem to be something missing between Horizontal TOC and List TOC, such as a List TOC sans the A-Z and with centered not left-justified text. A comment at Template talk:List TOC suggests at least one of those is not a new idea. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:54, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe List TOC can recreate something similar, but it would require entering each section individually into the template. I'm the first to advocate consistency, so long as it doesn't impede on visibility/accessibility or functionality. -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  17:00, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I wonder how difficult stripping the section numbers from Horizontal TOC is. Perhaps that's why we have the gap between those two templates. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:10, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I dug through common.css and discovered that wrapping the TOC (or TOC template) in supresses the numbers. That's good enough for me. -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  17:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * What, you mean the two templates listed at the top of this age are... wait for it... redundant to Horizontal TOC? Well, who'd a thought it?! Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, no thanks to you. With that discovery they are now redundant and this can be closed. -  Floydian  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  20:21, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.