Wikipedia talk:Proposed blanking

Why?
This is identical to WP:PROD, except the page is blanked instead. This: (1) means the article isn't really deleted, (2) would require that we change all the vandal patrol bots to not undo page blanking, and (3) if there are any links to the article, will leave blue links behind, which would be confusing to any users who encounter the page or links to it. What problem is this proposal supposed to be solving? WP:PWD never gained consensus, and WP:PROD was developed instead out of the deletion reform discussions that took place 2 years ago. Do we need more deletion reform? If so, why? Mango juice talk 14:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Presumably, we would not just leave a page completely blank, but we would replace it with a redirect or with the Experimental Deletion/XD1/Example template. I'm not sure the vandal patrol bots would identify such a change is vandalism.


 * Currently, if an article is deleted, it leaves behind redlinks. If the article is deleted for a "permanent" reason such as notability/neologism/etc. concerns, then common practice is to remove all the incoming wikilinks. If it was deleted for some "temporary" reason, such as verifiability, reliable sourcing, etc., then common practice is to leave the incoming wikilinks intact. I think we could continue doing this if we used page blanking.


 * If you, as a user, encounter a blanked page, it's a sign that whatever was there didn't meet our standards for inclusion. If you're still curious, though, you can dig through the history. Who knows, in the case of a page blanking for verifiability concerns, the historical pages might give you something to go on in recreating the article, this time with reliable sources.


 * Let's take as an example, delegable proxy. Since it was deleted for notability reasons, presumably all the incoming wikilinks are going to be removed/changed. So, it would be unlikely that anyone would stumble across it. But what if they did happen to enter that title? What's to keep them from inadvertently creating a new article in its place? Well, if we put a redirect there, they end up at at delegated voting or whatnot; so they see that all the information has been moved there. Looking at the AfD gives them some idea of what happened. If they are able to look at the history, that gives them an even better idea.


 * Basically, page blanking is not a whole lot different than redirects. Maybe we should just use more redirects! Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 14:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Really, when it comes down to it, all such proposals (WP:PWD, etc.) are just variants of Viewing deleted articles. There are many ways to get there, but the desired outcome is the same. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 15:14, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You didn't answer my main question. Why should we reform the way we do deletion?  What's wrong with the way things are done now?  There are loads of other ways we could do things, but we have a way to do things, and if we propose to overhaul the system there ought to be a reason.  Mango juice talk 15:58, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Also you should be aware that this is a perennial proposal. It gets brought up over and over but never gains consensus.  Mango juice talk 16:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, there are many reasons to not remove the history of articles from the view of non-admins. (1) There are some poorly-sourced, but true, articles that get deleted. (2) There are some non-notable, but true and/or verifiable, articles that get deleted. (3) Either of these might be useful to future editors and in review decisions.


 * I think there were complaints right after the holidays about people pushing stuff through while most of the editors with an interest in those pages were gone. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong in the five-day deletion process. CSD is even faster, of course. Blanking is more easily reversible than deletion. In practice, WP:DRV is usually an uphill battle, made all the worse because a lot of times, non-admins don't even have a google-cache to look at. Yeah, yeah, people can request a copy from an admin. But if you're just casually browsing WP:DRV, what are the chances you'll go to the trouble to do that?


 * Why should we delete articles, rather than blanking them? Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, every argument you're making here has been made many times in the previous proposals. There are the archived big proposals you can look at from WP:PEREN, and lots of other times the discussion has come up on WP:VPP or other policy pages like WP:DP.  There are good arguments for and good arguments against.  However since every prior attempt at this has not gained consensus, it's not worthwhile to have the debate all over again unless there's something really new and different this time.  Mango juice talk 18:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, the idea is to try a different format. Past attempts took place in a more centralized method, in which people tried polls, etc. which all failed. This is a more grassroots method. Any editor can propose a page for blanking via a regular edit, much like we add any other pastel box to a page. If no one objects, that implies consensus was reached to blank.

It's analogous to how, after efforts to get rid of the United States Electoral College through a constitutional amendment failed, activists resorted to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The end result is basically the same. The main difference is that one method requires overcoming a lot more inertia, and gaining a much larger supermajority, than the other. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 21:40, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd say you should add some explanation to the page about what good the proposal will do. After that it's probably ready for broad community input.  Mango juice talk 04:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Although lately I'm starting to think that it might be better to start with CSB. Some of the worst deletions I've seen were when people took a pretty liberal interpretation of the speedy deletion criteria, and the delete button got hit before there was even time to react. We might have a system where two people can blank a page immediately if they think it meets CSD, but it has to sit on PROD or AFD for the usual five days in order to be completely deleted. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You mean WP:CSD I assume. Yeah, overbroad interpretation of CSD can be a problem.  You should check out Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion and its archives: this comes up constantly.  There's a balancing factor you're not considering, and that's the workload of the processes.  AfD requires significant community attention; PROD requires a little and CSD requires almost none.  If we're screwing up massively, we should reevaluate the process.  But if there aren't very many mistakes, it's probably better to leave things as is.  And that's always the question -- yes, people make CSD mistakes, but is it more like 0.1% of the time, or 10% of the time?  I actually did a study at one point and concluded that the mistake rate, even with the most subjective criterion, is extremely low.  See User:Mangojuice/a7.2 if you're curious.  Mango juice talk 05:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * That's not the only criterion to go by. One might also ask, What is the % of new articles of a given type that get inappropriately speedied? My experience is that any new article that doesn't immediately start with sources is vulnerable to speedy, even if it's verifiable. Some would say we should automatically speedy unsourced stuff anyway, but that's not policy yet. Also, just because something wouldn't have made it through AfD doesn't mean it should be speedied. There's a reason why non-notability, for instance, is not a speedy deletion criterion. We need to give the person their five days to come up with some evidence of notability. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 05:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Whenever an article is deleted via speedy when it should be deleted via AfD, there's a misuse of process. That's a bad thing.  But it's not nearly as bad as when an article is deleted via speedy when it actually should not be deleted at all.  See WP:PPP -- product is the main thing, and as long as our mistakes aren't on the product level, I think it's okay.  Oh and BTW, speedy deletion of articles for being unsourced was proposed and has not gained consensus and therefore probably won't.  Mango juice talk 08:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. I haven't seen it happen to any of my articles for awhile, so maybe things have gotten better, or maybe I've just gotten better at writing new articles that won't get CSD'ed. Perhaps a combination of the two. For awhile though, things were pretty bad. If you didn't include an assertion of importance, you got hit with A7. If the reviewer didn't understand what you were talking about, you got hit with A1 or sometimes G1. If you didn't include sources, you got hit with something or another, probably A1 or A7. But if you did include an assertion of importance and a link to a pertinent website, you got hit with G11 for advertising "your" site. Lately, I see people more inclined to simply add templates saying the article needs attention for this or that reason, which is good. Of course, the issue of viewing deleted articles remains. For instance, I recently created an article called William E. White which had a previously deleted version. All the summary said was that it was an expired prod, so I have no idea what the reason was. Was he considered non-notable, or what? Who knows. Too bad it wasn't just blanked! Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:12, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Too bad you didn't just request it to be undeleted! You can do that, you know, when something is deleted via Prod and it's supposed to be done no questions asked.  Anyway, I've undeleted the old history there so now you can see.  Yes, it was notability that was the concern.  (Also, admins are supposed to include the prod reason when they delete.  These days it's easier to remember to do that.)  Mango juice talk 16:50, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It hurts my pride to have to ask someone else to do it. It takes away from my self-image of being an independent, lone-wolf "I can do everything" kind of guy. Also, I'm just kinda impatient about that stuff; I didn't feel like waiting for someone to get back to me with the deleted versions. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid you will just have to live with the fact you can't do everything. If you request that a prod-deleted article be restored at WP:DRV then it will likely be undeleted quickly - within an hour or two. The same will go for requests for deleted content.
 * I agree with Mangojuice that this proposal is pointless. It is exactly the same as prod except that the article is blanked and not deleted (and most of the text of this proposal was copied from WP:PROD with minor changes). All the other aspects - that anyone can overturn it on request, that it is to be used in uncontroversial cases, and so on - are identical. If we've agreed that content should not be on Wikipedia (which is the reason why the article would be blanked in the first place) then why would we want to keep it around? Hut 8.5 16:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot-related arguments
By the way, objections to a proposal based on changes that will need to be made to bots may actually argue in favor of switching over as soon as possible. After all, if we do nothing, in five years, the current system will be even more entrenched and more difficult to change. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 16:55, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Templates up for deletion
I've listed prob and dated prob for deletion at Templates for deletion. The existence of those templates is premature. The proposal should be reworded to say that the templates will be created if the proposal is accepted, but they shouldn't exist until that point. Mango juice talk 16:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Why didn't you just slap on there? I wouldn't have objected to blanking it. And if you had subst'ed it, it wouldn't have created a template loop either, I don't think. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 20:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * At least in part because WP:PROB says the process is intended only for article space, user space, and user talk space. :) But more seriously, because we don't blank things, we delete them, even if you might like it to be otherwise.  Mango juice talk 22:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Isn't there any way we can get both the benefits of deletion and the benefits of blanking? Let's think outside the box here. Obviously, deletion is one of the most contentious issues around. Can't we come up with a solution that makes everyone reasonably happy? I suppose another wiki could be set up outside the Wikimedia penumbra for the rejected stuff. I.e., pretty much everything that's not in violation of state, federal or international law, that we would normally delete, can be transwikied there. I would recommend that the deleting admin move it there, and that an easy means be set up of doing this. But, if people don't want to do that, then we should at least give the contributor back his wiki markup by default (perhaps email it to him) so he can quickly move it there himself, rather than relying on the contributor to request it from an admin, which most newcomers won't know to do.


 * This is basically very similar to the Trash namespace idea, except that it would be off this wiki. We should, however, have interwiki links between them. Articles that weren't given a chance here can grow up there. And maybe they will come back later once they have become a beautiful swan. (Some ducklings will obviously stay ugly, but that shouldn't be much of a concern to us.) Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I want to see inappropriate things deleted. I will not lift a finger to aid in the preservation of spam, attack articles, vandalism, vanity cruft, and the like.  It's the only way to send the correct message about that kind of contribution, which we have to constantly clean up.  And if you had seen two-hundred article backlogs on CSD accumulate in a matter of half an hour, you would understand that most admins feel this way.  Nor do I think it's reasonable to ask admins or the community to make judgements about what is appropriate to somehow preserve vs. just delete.  So, when there is a consensus for a transwiki, a transwiki happens.  So I say, if you want something back that's been deleted, ask.  Mango juice talk 23:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ugh. It's the cops vs. hippies thing again. I just don't agree with this punitive stuff. Or to be more precise, while I admit there are benefits to being harsh on spammers, etc. I don't agree that it's worth the costs. It's obvious I'm in the minority, though. Most of my kind have left long ago. It's like being a hippy in the 1980s or something. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Look, if you want to create a "Wikiadvertising" site be my guest. I'm pretty sure Wikimedia wouldn't be interested.  Mango juice talk 23:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably not. (Although my proposal is not just for advertising but other kinds of allegedly non-notable stuff. Advertising is simply a subset of non-notable and/or biased articles.) Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 23:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Rejected
Based on the comments on this talk page, on the Village Pump and the fact that this proposal is essentially identical to the rejected Experimental Deletion proposal, I have tagged this proposal as {rejected}. The author(s) of the proposal have failed to make a persuasive argument that consensus of the community lies behind this idea. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:18, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

For the record: the above reasoning is flawed, for the following reasons:


 * Most arguments here are mostly "why do we need to replace deletion?" as opposed to "what are the upsides and downsides of each"
 * This process is not similar to XD. It has merely been compared with one of the original XD experiments.
 * Even if the above were not the case, XD was never proposed (did not use the proposal process), and was never rejected (people successfully argued the utility of the project). It can still be unmothballed and used at any time, provided people use as much care as the originators of the project, and clean up after themselves (the original negotiated requirement).
 * As this page is/was a proposal, it does not need to immediately show consensus by the community. The proposal process shouldn't be used anyway, but that's beside the point.

Nevertheless, I have no opinion on the existence of the rejected tag. Should someone want to remove it and continue work on this, they should be allowed to.

(Though personally I think there are more efficient options)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 19:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Template example
Incase it gets deleted, here's a copy what the proposed template looked like (easily placed here on the talk page, where everybody wins) Only contributor to Template:Prob and Template:Dated prob's content was User:Obuibo Mbstpo :

And there you have it. -- Ned Scott 03:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Userfy or delete
Since the creator of this proposal is now banned, should it be removed from the project namespace in some manner? If I understand correctly, CSD G5 isn't appropriate because this proposal was technically created (just) before the ban. However, this page doesn't look like a very serious "proposal" though, despite not being obviously disruptive, given that it's mostly a find-and-replace job on WP:Proposed deletion.

As for WP:MFD, I was concerned that it would be too bogged down with April Fool's Day material for this to get a fair hearing. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 02:02, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Nah. Leave it here. The WP namespace has a bunch of perennial proposals, and we keep them around for historical reasons. No need to treat this any differently. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 20:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * So what exactly precludes a MfD at this point? Of course userfication (the other choice in the section title) isn't appropriate ... but the word "obviously" in my original post was meant to imply that other users might have different opinions as to the disruptiveness of this proposal. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 22:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)