Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/User conduct/Archive/Archive 1

deletion-vs-archiving
MyRedDice, I think the proper way to handle the old archive is to import it under the new hierarchy or something. Deleting it is not really useful... --Shallot


 * It's very useful. It's a bunch of old stuff, with no actual purpose in life. By its presence, it makes the atmosphere less pleasant. Deleting it helps move us on to somewhere new. Forgive and forget.


 * Still, as you will. I'll trim off the completely irrelevant stuff for now, instead. Martin 14:03, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Most of it applies to users that are still around, and some of the complaints are perfectly valid. We can relegate old problems to an archive, but we shouldn't just sweep it /all/ under the rug. I'm not sure it's good for the atmosphere to go overboard with the forgetting part.


 * The user who moved stuff to the new namespace went through several of those lists and removed stuff that actually has no purpose, but left that which isn't obsolete. This should continue :) --Shallot 14:47, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The user being referred to is me, I take it. I have some sympathy for what Martin wanted to do, although I would point out that principles discussed on Meatball (in this case, forgive and forget) are not necessarily Wikipedia policy. Anyway, current policy is to delete uncertified pages, and I think we can at least extend that to disputes that are closed. In other words, where the participants agree that the dispute is over and it has not flared up again, as opposed to disputes that are merely dormant. As for the usefulness of the old stuff, in my operation to move from Conflicts between Users, I tried to use a little judgment and discard truly useless material. Martin did some more of this, and I hope that nobody minds if that continues, with the limitation that we should err on the side of not deleting. --Michael Snow 21:48, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Two years pass

Well, it appears the archives are still with us. I propose that we set up some kind of table to make it easier to find things:

What do people think? Mackensen (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * "Ever have that feeling that you're being watched?" -- Bugs Bunny
 * Seriously, I just added a bunch of cases that were removed from the main page but never listed here. I think I got them all, back to the last time the archive was regularly maintained anyway.  Archives in any format are only as good as the maintainers.  A table seems like as good an idea as any other going forward, but I won't be the one to backfill it. Also, the guidelines for delisting and archiving cases should be mentioned on the main page.  Someone tipped me to the general idea and then I found them on this archive page. Thatcher131 (talk) 19:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I'm happy to start on the table; should be an interesting enough project. Mackensen (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's another question - should the archives be ordered by the date the RfC was opened, or the date it was archived? I'm also thinking that listing the certifiers might be of doubtful utility. Mackensen (talk) 19:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, date filed is on the RFC but date archived is going to be somewhat arbitrary, if its even given at all (I did not go through the page history to find when each of those cases was removed from the list) so I would go with date filed. I think listing the certifiers in some form is possibly valuable because it might be of use to be able to determine that certain people file a lot of RfCs. However, some cases have a lot of certifiers, so I would go with (in this order of preference) the first two certifiers; or the filer only; or no one. Thatcher131 (talk) 19:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * (I created nearly 300 subpages for old RFCU reports. Interesting, yes, but boy did it get tedious from time to time.) Thatcher131 (talk) 19:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Guys, do you insist on continuing this table-based listing format? The main page is full with at least 25 stale unarchived RfCs, partly dating back to July. I was going to archive them, but seeing the sheer amount of work required to fill in this table, I think I'm not going to bother right now. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:54, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Which is how we got the big unwikified mess that the table is meant to address. Mackensen (talk) 12:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but why, just for wanting to help keep the main page tidy, should I be required to copy out the names of the certifiers, read through the whole RfC plus related talk pages to find out what the "conclusion" was, think up a good summary of that conclusion, etc etc? Seems like exaggerated bureaucracy to me. Quite sufficient, in my view, would be: Page name, date of opening, perhaps date of last contribution, and a note about follow-up Arbcom cases, if any. At most also a copy of the original case summary on the main page, but even that is often not really very helpful anyway. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * That's about all that is required, really. Notes are filled out at someone's discretion, and figuring out whether it got sent to arbcom isn't too difficult. The purpose here is to make it possible to find things. Mackensen (talk) 13:05, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, fair enough. Maybe to reduce the markup clutter in filling these out we ought to have a substable template rather than the commented boilerplate text there is now. Something like  Pagename . Might give it a try later. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed move
Should the archived be moved to Requests for comment/User conduct/Archive? Thatcher131 (talk) 19:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me. Mackensen (talk) 21:39, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * And done. Mackensen (talk) 22:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Table
Is this table a good idea? It takes ages to fill in just one entry, which means the archive won't be maintained. I suggest we return to the previous list format. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, there's a trade off. The list didn't contain meta-information and was unusable. I'm not sure there's a good solution. Mackensen (talk) 22:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It was helpful to be able to see the list of RfCs at least. This way, it's not being maintained and so RfCs are just falling through the cracks. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Malformatted
I see the oldest entry on Newman Luke has some formatting errors. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:32, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * By mistake I remove alot of the older archives. I've  now. I've no idea why or how I did that, and I should have noticed it but I didn't. However, personally I feel that the older archives (the ones dating back in 2008/2009 and earlier) should be moved to a sub-page to reduce the size of the archive page.  Hey  Mid  (contribs) 22:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps split them by year? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:26, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but I would prefer moving them to a sub-page; the page is too big and long right now. Hey  Mid  (contribs) 14:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I meant having a different page for each year. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:50, 1 November 2011 (UTC)