Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 28

Speedying speedy debates
If an article is up for VFD and is validly speedily deleted, either during the debate (usually because the nominator didn't know about speedy deletion) or because the nomination and the speedy coincide, does anyone have any objection to removing the vfd page from this list and deleting it? DJ Clayworth 04:36, 13 May 2005 (UTC) A workable compromise might be to remove the transclusion from the page and leave a short explanatory sentence with a link to the discussion. I think that's more trouble than it's worth, though. JRM · Talk 09:31, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't object, but I wouldn't personally bother to remove them either - leave them on the page allows people to see that they have been speedily deleted and object if they want. If the and  tags are added to the discussion, then they stand out on the page and can easily be skipped by those who don't care about them. sjorford &rarr;&bull;&larr; 08:59, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I object. Keep those "debates". Wiki is not paper (an odd argument to invoke here, perhaps, but you know what I mean). As sjorford said, it costs very little, and it's valuable in two ways: it educates people if the nomination was wrong (or rather "less appropriate than slapping &#123;&#123;db&#125;&#125; on it") and alerts people if the speedy was. We don't get that many of them, and you can easily skip them.
 * I'd prefer to close the debates as we do in WP:VFD/Old, by slapping a and  tag on a speedy-deleted vote. In fact, I did that for a little while before my browser stopped loading the VfD pages (even the daily subpages were getting problemativ). --Deathphoenix 16:55, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Close it early but close the discussion the same way we do all the others.  Rossami (talk) 18:58, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I suggested that several months ago. Any debate which has already been speedied deleted on VFD should be immediately archived and the discussion be closed. -- AllyUnion (talk) 21:12, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Barking up the wrong tree?
I wonder if the problem isn't so much with the way VfD is laid out as with the concept of voting for the deletion of articles. A lot of junk is added to Wikipedia every day. Some of it is deleted speedily by admins, but a lot of it goes to VfD. Yesterday, 12 May, 99 articles were added to VfD (see Votes for deletion/Log/2005 May 12). This is ridiculous - far too many of them are obvious candidates for deletion, as a look at the voting results demonstrates. Of those 99, 42 received unanimous votes for deletion. If they are that obviously hopeless, there's no point voting on them.

To alleviate this, I'd suggest three changes:
 * 1) The speedy deletion policy should be widened to encompass vanity articles and the items listed under the Articles heading, viz. foreign language articles; articles whose contents consist only of an external link, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, or interwiki link; and articles which consists only of attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title. Such articles should be speedily deleted for being intrinsically junk; we shouldn't need to vote on them to decide that they are junk.
 * 2) More people need to monitor Special:Newpages to identify junk articles. The deletion log suggests that there aren't many people doing this at present.
 * 3) People should be actively discouraged from proposing articles for VfD; if an article is obviously hopeless, put a speedy deletion tag on it instead.

I think we also need to look at more radical ways of cutting down on junk articles getting into the system in the first place. The volume of crap is frankly awful - today alone, over 500 articles have been deleted and an unknown number of others have slipped through the net (and there's still 5 hours to go!). I've noticed, in patrolling Special:Newpages, that the vast majority of junk articles are created by anonymous users. Logged-in users, by contrast, seem to produce relatively few junk articles. The solution is obvious (though controversial, I'll admit) - stop anonymous users from creating new articles. If we did this I would bet that the number of deletions and articles being proposed for deletion would go waaaaaaaaaaaaay down. Perhaps we should try this as a trial measure to see if it makes a difference? -- ChrisO 18:58, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Instead of doing this, why not just patrol new pages more vigilantly. Turning the patrolled edits feature back on (at least for new pages) would help stop pages from sliping through the cracks. BrokenSegue 19:22, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I, for one, shall endeavour to start doing some New Page Patrol at Wikipedia again. (I've been New Page Patrolling Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews recently, and simply haven't had the time for New Page Patrol here.) I oppose abuse of the speedy deletion criteria, however.  Two editors are simply not enough in many cases. Uncle G 16:01, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
 * You seem to have misunderstood WP:CSD - the points mentioned under 'articles' are indeed criteria for speedy deletion of articles. However, it may be suitable to expand the CSD policy to allow speedy'ing of Vanity or Personal Attack pages, but that would first require a careful definition as not everybody agrees what exactly constitutes WP:VAIN. If you can find a pattern among unanimously-deletable items, please mention it here. Radiant_* 12:28, May 17, 2005 (UTC)


 * Pattern observed: they get no keep votes. --MarSch 17:38, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Adding links to before/after daily pages
First, let me say that I very much appreciate that VfD has been broken up into successive days. It is much easier to read, and it can become even more so. Just as an old version of an article has the Older Revision|Newer Revision links at the top, each day's VfD page should contain links to the day before and, where applicable, to the day after. This will make it easier to view VfD discussions for several days in turn while keeping the current, and quite preferable, simplified structure. NatusRoma 01:43, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Well... that was what Template:Vfd log was created for... If you like the VFD Bot to add the link automatically, please let me know.  A sample can be seen on Votes for deletion/Log/2005 March 1.  So far, I've been linking per month after the month is up. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:36, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'd like a link to all of the open votes, like the previous seven days for the current day, on each page. It would be easier to click there when following multiple discussions on different days, rather than have to backtrack to the main vfd page and click on the next day. --Dmcdevit 00:50, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll work on that. Please don't add it manually as I have to reprogram the VFD Bot's VFD List script. -- AllyUnion (talk) 21:09, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Might be handy to have a template resembling the "Current votes" which could be transcluded on each day's pages. Heavy transclusion cost, but saves the VfD update bot a lot of work. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 21:32, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * You could put that in the policy discussion transinclusion which already is put on every page. I rather not have the addition of another transinclusion page on a day-to-day VFD page.  The index is fine, but the way I have the bot programmed now will require for me to tell it to ignore the index so it doesn't show up on the VFD List. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

googletest
It might be handy if a googletest would be included in the nomination requirements for non-notable articles. Perhaps this could somehow be incorporated into vfd3. -MarSch 16:37, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, not everybody accepts the Google test in some or all cases. I disagree with them, but they have the right to their own reasoning, apart from Google. NatusRoma 17:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think that's necessarily a good idea. There are several problems with a compulsory Google.
 * Poor keyword choices can render a Google result completely irrelevant (false positive or negative.)
 * Many historically signficant topics are poorly represented on the internet.
 * Self-promoting individuals often spam a substantial number of external sites to increase their apparent significance.
 * Important topics associated with non-English-speaking countries and cultures are often underrepresented in English Google results.
 * Article titles may use alternate or less-accepted spellings, particularly of names not in the standard English alphabet.
 * In other words, Google results can be suggestive but are certainly not conclusive. Nominators (or other contributors to the discussion) are welcome to mention Google results, but I don't think we should make it compulsory. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 17:27, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Can someone point me to a policy page which actually cites "non-notable" as a criterion for deletion? It's implied all over the place, but I can't find it spelled out (WP:NOT has some references to "famous", and of course a few specific topics such as WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO have notability criteria). Any reference to Google-testing should be incorporated into a general set of guidelines for notability. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 17:51, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

TenOfAllTrades makes several excellent points about Googletest weaknesses, many of which are already on the Google test page. I'd add one other, which is that some people tend to use Googletest "by the numbers" - all they do is look at the total number of hits and don't actually check the content of any of the pages hit to see if they can get more perspective. I'm more-or-less responsible for saving two articles simply by doing that; both were connected w/ Canadian history and were definitely keepable, but Canadian Wikipedians woud most probably have to research the subjects using paper references only available in Canada. They had low Google numbers, but checking some of the various webpages hit convinced me that the subject was notable enough, just that they had a low presence online. Google testing should definitely not be any kind of requirement for any part of VfD. Soundguy99 06:13, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

As far as "notability" goes, there is no actual "stated policy", but my HO (and I think this is how most people who quote it view the subject) is that if a subject is "non-notable" then it is simply not possible to write an encyclopedic article about the subject, and the article "fails" based on wikipedia is not a general data base, and also possibly vanity. It should be noted that both WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC are just guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. For an excellent analysis of the whole "notability" topic, please see my user page where I have preserved some comments from User:Dpbsmith (and others) that were initially on (I think) the Village pump. Soundguy99 06:13, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you, the discussion on your user page is very much to the point.&mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 06:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Ah, I have just (accidentally) rediscovered where I got User:Dpbsmith's comments from; Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. I just copy/pasted them to my user page because I liked them and was afraid I would forget where they were (which, of course, happened.)  Soundguy99 08:49, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Verbose VFD Headers
For convenience purposes I've created several additional templates for VFD tagging. They are as follows: More will be forthcoming. LevelCheck 23:02, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Note that all four of these are listed on TfD, and current voting is strongly in favor of deletion. --Carnildo 06:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

SFD
Can we create a new page called Schools for deletion and let the deletionists and the inclusionists cut-and-paste their votes to their hearts' content? It's cluttering up VfD and getting really boring. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 06:07, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Often when people nominate multiple articles of the same type at once, the nominations get bundled together. That would cut down the clutter. Kappa 06:40, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It would allso be daft if some schools got deleted and some got kept due to who was most active on the days of the votes. Keep em all or delete em all (since the argument about all of them is the same).--JK the unwise 08:00, 17 May 2005 (UTC) (oh and I say keep)
 * We really need to work out some sort of compromise on the issue. Radiant_* 12:29, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * As Radiant talked about on my talk page, we should have an entire Wikimedia Project just for Schools. I like to call it WikiSchools, and here is how I wish for it to work. We set up a outline of what should be in the article (basic info, sports, accredation, school systems, testing scores). Once a school article has been set up, they shall be categorized by County, State and School board. I know it sounds simple now, but yall really think this can work, I will try to set up the whole proposal in a few days. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 01:33, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think the idea of splitting things off will go down well with school inclusionists, I know I'd hate it myself. The framework/outline idea is good though. Have you noticed the Schools discussion yet? Kappa 01:45, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Not yet, but I will take a peek. My main goal with the Wikipedia:Schools is that we should turn it into a free version of Greatschools.net. We should be inclusive, but fair about the schools. Parents should not have to pay in order to find out what is best for their children's education. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 01:49, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * One more thing, if we have separate projects for species, dictionary entries, how-to stuff, I figured we can have a WikiSchools project. That was my logic. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 01:50, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

An orphaned VfD entry
Admins! There is an orphaned VfD entry page: Votes for deletion/3,4-Methano-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-carboxylic acid. It was listed on May 3 but isn't on the relevant log page (or any other one). The vote seems to be a clear-cut case, but nothing has been done about the article. Wipe 01:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... Even though the page was up for the required time, it wasn't listed properly and may not yet have gotten the visibility it needs to confirm the decision.  I'll re-list it with an explanatory note.  Should be non-controversial but let's give it another few days to be sure.  Rossami (talk) 03:56, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

vs.
Why must we advocate one over the other?? It seems POV, considering there are advantages to both. Jesse's Girl 13:25, 18 May 2005 (UTC)


 * What? POV only applies to encyclopedia articles, not policy pages. We don't have a policy page that says "vandalism is a bannable offence, although some people think we should have more of it". Anyway, I don't see the advantage to - since the message is only supposed to be there for a few days, there should be no need to pick up changes to the template. sjorford &rarr;&bull;&larr; 13:52, 18 May 2005 (UTC)


 * This has been extensively discussed here. The overwhelming conclusion was that the benefits of  outweigh the advantages of mere transclusion for this particular template.  Most of those discussions have since been moved to the archives of this page.  Rossami (talk) 14:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of this, but I do not know where to find those...Could you point me to the exact discussions? Jesse's Girl 15:01, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Here is a partial list based on what I found by quickly scanning the archives. I also remember other discussions that I have not yet been able to find.  I think some of the better discussions have been moved over to Meta where I can't find them.  Note: Some of the older discussions need to be read in light of the technological capabilities which were in place at the time.  WikiMedia has made significant changes to how templates are handled.  Rossami (talk) 15:38, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Boilerplate text
 * Template talk:Vfd/Archive01 (See Angela's comment half-way down)
 * Template talk:Vfd/Archive01
 * Template talk:VfDFooter
 * Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/April 2004
 * Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/September-December 2004 and scroll down to vs.
 * Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/April 2005 Part Two
 * Deletion policy

Purge link
Would it be possible to have the VfD bot include the purge link in daily pages, as it used to appear at the top of the VfD page when all was on one page? --Tabor 21:21, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

VFD Categories
How do you submit a VFd for a category on wikipedia? Such as Category: Scientific neologisms I can't get it to work! Can someone help?--Deglr6328 17:08, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Use Categories for deletion. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 17:30, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Post-VfD vote casts
I would like somebody to make a category called "Post-VfD locker" so that people can look through post VfDs for historic interest. --SuperDude 23:49, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
 * There's a log for each day's-worth of votes, for example, Votes_for_deletion/Log/2005_May_12. A &#1080; D &#1103; 01D TALK 02:07, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * You may take a look at my VFD Calendar, should you like to review previous VFDs by a calendar date. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:10, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, the "official" archive is at Archived delete debates. This includes not only the archive under our latest scheme but also the prior records.  Rossami (talk) 13:50, 25 May 2005 (UTC)