Wikipedia talk:Improving AFD debates

Um, obviously this is very early days right now, but the plan is to ask regular AFD closers and relisters to sign up to this and publicise this at CENT/AN/DRV/ARS/VPP to increase awareness of good practise in AFD discussions. Ideally, this will enable us to maintain a credible deletion process even though participation is decreasing. Spartaz Humbug! 10:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Examples, please
Could you provide links to several AfD debates that you see as especially problematic, as well as several that you think went well? That might start some useful conversation.  Cullen 328  Let's discuss it  18:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit reluctant to point fingers as the point is to educate gently rather then to be seen to be critical but I suppose I can list stuff as and when I see it. How does that sound? Spartaz Humbug! 18:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Here is a relist today where direction has positively improved the quality of discussion. Articles_for_deletion/List_of_allergies_(2nd_nomination) Spartaz Humbug! 18:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is a good idea for a relisting administrator to make a comment that points out shortcomings in the debate and suggests how the discussion can best proceed.  This particular debate has strayed from the appropriateness of the list into ideas for improving it (good but even better on the list's talk page) to general discussion of the topic and editor's feelings about the topic (not so good).  There seems to be a difference in the dynamics of deletion discussions about lists as opposed to conventional articles.  I am not sure that there has been a deterioration in the quality of our AfD debates, and am interested in what others have to say.  Perhaps an AfD Primer might be useful - a narrower version of Michael Q. Schmidt's WP:PRIMER.  Cullen 328   Let's discuss it  21:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The relist of Articles_for_deletion/List_of_allergies_(2nd_nomination) was quite wrong as it already seemed clear that there was no consensus for deletion. The continuing discussion is just resulting in paralysis by analysis because editors are very ready to suggest work for others to do but no-one is now actually doing any real work upon the article because AFD is disruptive &mdash; it has a chilling effect upon development because editors are reluctant to invest effort in an article which may be deleted at any moment and structural changes such as moves are discouraged.  All we are doing now is adding to the ever-growing mountain of AFD discussion pages.  This is not the point of Wikipedia because it is our policy that Wikipedia is not a forum.  Warden (talk) 00:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You may want to have a look at the examples I mentioned here: Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(sports). Four very similar AfD that led to completely different outcomes, even though the very same arguments were brought up in most of them. This is very confusing to editors and we don't know whether to go on creating such articles or not. Actually, of the three tennisplayers it was the one with the most notable season that got deleted. How are we supposed to make sense of this? MakeSense64 (talk) 11:34, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

AfD nominations should have a clearly stated and valid policy/guideline rationale first
Having participated in and closed a few AfDs over the years, I believe that fixing the nomination requirements is the first step in resolving the issues this essay addresses. If the nomination doesn't present (w/supporting facts) a valid policy/guideline basis for deletion, then all the participants in the discussion are free to make comments that are all over the place. In turn, these types of discussions are very difficult to assess objectively. Simply stated the process ought to be: --Mike Cline (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Clearly stated nomination the lays out valid policy/guideline rationale for deletion
 * Discussion give thumbs up (delete) based on rationale given or thumbs down (keep) when policy/guideline rationale is incorrect or doesn't apply.
 * Admin assesses keep/delete discussion ONLY in light of policy/guideline rationale given and discussion. All extraneous discussion is discounted and/or ignored.
 * Feedback from the closing admin on the quality of the nomination would certainly focus nominators' attention on doing better next time for sure. Spartaz Humbug! 20:44, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, if a nomination is pretty weak I think admins should more readily than now speedily close the discussion down, with a reason, allowing the nominator or anyone to reapply. However, could we reasonably insist on discussion only on the basis of the nomination provided (as suggested above)? Suppose new evidence arises (copyright breach, new reference supporting notability, etc), we cannot ignore this. However, people who have already commented may not come back to comment again. In the spirit of this essay, I suggest the closing admin should refer to this aspect in the closing rationale (or relist with an amended nomination???). (And btw AFD discussions seem to me generally better conducted than MFD, TFD or the rather shocking FFD). Thincat (talk) 23:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Just looking at today's nominations, "Article consists entirely of original research (especially WP:SYNTH). In addition, this does not appear to be a notable topic – I can find no journal articles or books that discuss it" is good, "Person is not notable" is bad - surely the nominator has a responsibility to do some preliminary work and establish the basis of a rational debate. I'd like see semi-automatic withdrawal of excessively brief nominations that don't do what Mike Cline says above.--Northernhenge (talk) 23:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC) (not an admin)

Non-admin closures?
The circumstances under which non-admins can close an AfD are listed at Non-admin_closure and WP:NAC. Even though there are only a limited number of situations where non-admins can close (e.g. Unanimous or near-unanimous support to keep/redirect/merge based on consensus, speedy keep closes, it seems just as important for non-admins to also explain their reasons behind their closes as it is for admins. What I am concerned about is non-admin interpretation of what comments counted or not, and non-admin assessment of why an AfD should be relisted.  Personally, I have only sometimes listed an detailed explanation when closing an AfD, mostly because of this latter concern that I didn't want to impose my own specific interpretation over the discussion beyond just "the consensus was to keep."  In any case, I'm wondering if (or if not) there should be a statement in this that non-admins should be held to the same accountability to provide a rationale for their closure.   I, Jethrobot  drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 21:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I am a big fan of thoughtful closing rationales but if the consensus is quite clear I see no reason why you should not simply say so. My problem is when I see little clarity in the discussion but the closer does not seem to share my difficulty. Thincat (talk) 23:11, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Obviously there are bound to be no brainers - I'm not looking to legislate a requirement to provide a rationale for every last AFD but to encourage closers to identify the stronger/weaker arguments to improve the overall tenor of AFD discussions.. Spartaz Humbug! 04:46, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Not really a fan of this at all
It's quite appropriate for sysops to give little nudges, in debate. "I think the question we should be considering is this." "I think we need to pay more attention to that." But the correct way to phrase that is as a comment, or as a vote. I really don't think it's appropriate for a sysop to be giving directions to the debate. That's not the sysop role. When using the tools they're supposed to be janitors, not managers. When not using the tools they're equals. Yes, by all means encourage sysops to patrol debates due for closure and improve them by commenting and !voting instead of closing. But it's not right to encourage sysops to close or relist in such a way as to give directions to other users. Basically, Spartaz, if you come across a defective debate, you ought to be !voting or commenting in it and leaving the close to the next sysop (who will find the close easier because of your participation).— S Marshall T/C 12:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Will this help?
In general, I'm sympathetic to the idea that we need to increase participation at AfD, but I don't think lack of participation is as a result of problematic closing of AfDs! Indeed, making it more complicated to close AfDs by requiring more detailed closing rationales seems intuitively unrelated to whether or not editors participate at AfD.

I think part of the problem stems from the fact that as a result of concern about the inclusionist/deletionist debates of yesteryear, there's a general attitude that deletion is something we ought to try and brush under the carpet. It can be something that a few dedicated admins and a small gang of deletion-oriented editors handle, but not something that editors outside the 'deletion regulars' take an active role in. Like death, we don't really want to think or talk about deletion.

Part of the reason why I do deletion sorting is to try and make it possible for people to get involved in deletion debates. We should be trying to get people who are interested in particular topics to watchlist the relevant deletion sorting pages and encouraging people with familiarity with the relevant resources on that topic to participate.

Perhaps another method would be to have some kind of RfC bot but for AfD. Given that there are about 70-100 pages nominated for deletion every day, if we could get 1,000 people to sign up to get an AfD notification on their talk page, they could be given a nomination to look at once a week.

Reducing the amount of deletion discussions means that the admins and !voters can have more time to look at each discussion. There are a few things we can do here too. One thing we see at AfD quite frequently is articles which are clear WP:NOT violations. They just slip past the CSD hoax criteria, then someone PRODs them, they sit there for six days and then the article creator contests. Then they go to AfD, everyone !votes delete on the basis of it being a clear WP:NOT violation, and it sits there for another seven days, and then it gets deleted. In the past, I've seen admins IAR delete those. Clear and unambiguous WP:NOT violations should be CSDed. There can be no intelligent discussion of sourcing or notability for these kinds of articles. See the discussion at WT:CSD back in July for more details. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Improving AFD debates/Stats
Fascinating, thanks Snottywong. Spartaz Humbug! 21:11, 8 December 2011 (UTC)