Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates

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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  Keep all. Premature "snowball" closure due to overwhelming number of unanimous responses. (Non-admin closure) Fleet Command (talk) 18:46, 7 October 2011 (UTC) List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates
 * (main article)

Whilst I appreciate the irony of nominating these pages for deletion, I believe that harbouring a "how-to" instruction manual for editors in how to game the system is inappropriate as Wikipedia is not a battleground  and runs contrary to the interests of the community. Many of the Wikipedia: namespace essays in this series make no pretense to be anything other than tutorial on gaming Wikipedia discussions; for example, List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates opens by stating explicitly, "The following is a quick reference of policies that can be cited in deletion debates in favor of one's position". It's impossible to assume good faith when these pages are clearly written with the intent of providing a sort of wikilawyers' reference and are potentially harmful, not least from the perspective of encourage contributors to manipulate discussions (q.v. WP:BEANS). Tristessa (talk) 02:00, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Documenting practice is a good thing.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: I've changed the links above the nomination to pagelinks, based on mfd2. → Dynamic&#124;cimanyD ← (contact me) 02:29, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Most of these seem to be pretty low-traffic things by the same author. Userfication would be a good start. It's confusing to have things other than WP:ATA titled as "arguments to avoid..." when it's only ATA that has broad community buy-in. There are other issues, such as How to save an article proposed for deletion recommending copy-paste userfication as a sort of last gasp rescue tactic, but those can be fixed by simply editing the essay. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 09:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * 'Keep' WP:Arguments to avoid in image deletion discussions (I have little knowledge of the rest) -- this was created by {User|Tryptofish} who has an exemplary record, independently of any of the others on the list, to try to clarify points that regularly come up at WP:FFD by editors who don't know or understand the often intricate policy stance in this area, and as a result make contributions that can only be dismissed as irrelevant, and fail to advance the discussions. The page has been highlighted at[WT:NFC] both in its development phase in user-space and on its subsequent move to project space, and has received praise and suggestions from several of the [WT:NFC] regulars.  Remarkably, this support has come from right across the spectrum of editors' personal viewpoints in the often contested NFC area, bearing witness to the hard work that Tryptofish has done to produce something which is genuinely informative, even-handed, and an accurate representation of NFC policy as it is understood.  Debates at WP:FFD all too regularly can become misinformed and poorly-anchored in policy -- which helps nobody, and can lead to poisonous rancour and bad feeling.  The page, which still a recent creation, has the potential to very much improve the quality of discussion in such debates, which is why it has generally been applauded, and should most definitely be kept.  Jheald (talk) 11:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Discussion noted at WT:NFC -- Jheald (talk) 11:32, 4 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment - This nom needs to be split. The pages, while similar in nature, have different creators and reasons for existance and thus cannot be handled in one AFD block (eg: I would be wanting some of these kept, and some of these deleted).  --M ASEM  (t) 12:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep at least one! Per Jheald's very generous comment, for which I thank him profusely, I'm sure you can guess which one I am talking about. I haven't yet looked at the others nominated, but I am very confident that the arguments given by the nominator do not actually apply to that essay. (I also would have appreciated a notice on my talk page, but, whatever.) As I understand it, the nominator is concerned about essays that might provide guidance to editors of bad faith about how to game the system. It's useful to note that the image essay page is based upon Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, which has not been nominated here, and which has become widely accepted by the community as a useful tool in preventing gaming of the system. The intent, and, I believe, the effect of this essay has been to cut down on bogus arguments in deletion discussions. The arguments given by the nominator simply do not apply. I note that the heading of this group nomination refers to "lists of policies and guidelines". Perhaps essays that are about the logic of arguments do not belong here; the essay I helped to start is not at all such a list. --Tryptofish (talk) 13:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Per Masem, I would also like to see this discussion split. In addition, I'd like to ask for evidence, for each page nominated, of there actually being a problem. Are there diffs of edits or discussions where editors have used any of these pages disruptively? If not, this nomination may be a solution in search of a problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:16, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thinking about this further, I can increasingly see an argument for keep all. If, hypothetically, one of these essays said one should cite a policy or guideline to argue "X", where "X" is either something that the policy or guideline never addresses, or that is contrary to what the policy or guideline actually says, or that only applies the policy or guideline in a one-sided manner, then that certainly would justify either deletion or fixing through an edit. But if anything points users to how to apply policies and guidelines correctly, that's not gaming the system! It's using the system correctly. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:04, 4 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep all per SmokeyJoe. But especially keep the first and the last.  The last one is a useful guide improvement of Afd'd articles and a guide for how AfD works; the first one is a list of relevant policies/guidelines for the less-policy-saavy among us. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 14:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep all. Consider renominating separately as needed. Lumping these all together for a giant deletion isn't going to succeed, no matter how altruistic the intent. Some of these certainly have problems. Some of these are referred to so often they are part of the culture here, and go a long way to explaining to others what the common practice is. I am not a fan of knee-jerk responses to suggestions to delete, and some of the passages in these guides provide that. However, a careful examination of each would go a long way towards either (a) improving them or (b) having a clear basis on which to delete a given page. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep all. These are not guidelines on how to "game" the system- these are guidelines on how to not game the system, but how to use it fairly and equitably.--WickerGuy (talk) 16:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep the whole shebang, particularly Arguments to avoid in image deletion discussions per everyone above. However, separate nominations for any of the above should be allowed if someone has a damn good reason why it should be deleted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep all - far from instructions on how to game the system, this is freely available information on established policies and practices, which will help prevent the gaming of the system. Warofdreams talk 13:30, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep all - These essays themselves do not actually violate any policies by their presence. If these essays could be used to game the system, so can all the other 1000+ essays there are. Basically, this is saying there should be no essays at all. If that were the case, then all essays should be deleted. Sebwite (talk) 13:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not too bothered about most of these, but definitely Keep Arguments to avoid in image deletion discussions which has saved a lot of people a lot of time in the past, through being able to direct the confused and clueless there (and with images, there are always a lot of editors in both categories). [[Special:Contributions/Black_Kite|(c) 08:32, 7 October 2011 (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.

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