Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Old

Several articles have been "speedy deleted" while they were on VFD. Are their VFD discussions archived in the same way as the others? Joyous 00:48, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

I have always done so. - SimonP 02:38, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

---

I propose to simply link to the day subpages instead of transcluding them here. The page is so huge it crashes my browser. Comments? dbenbenn | talk 18:43, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've had the server crashing when I try to load this page for the past several days. The only VfD closing I've been able to do is on the main VfD page (for speedy deletes). Have you guys been experiencing the same, or is it just my browser? --Deathphoenix 15:11, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've had the same problem. This is a good idea. I'm going to be bold and do it so we can get the page back under control. I'd rather revert to transclusion someday but for now we need to make the process work. Rossami (talk) 16:32, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Rossami. Two points, though:

1. User:AllyUnion's bot will have to be updated, and might get confused. We'll see what it does tonight.
2. A workaround, which I've been using for a while, is to never actually load this page anyway. I just edit it to see what the oldest open day is, then load that day.

dbenbenn | talk 16:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the meantime, we can convert the bot output by hand if we must. A single day hopefully won't lock up the entire page. Rossami (talk)

Ah, thanks for the workaround, dbenbenn. I was wondering if the old page works that way. --Deathphoenix 18:14, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Discussions of specific VfDs?

Hey fellow VFD/Oldsters,

I don't know if there is a place to discuss these things, but what do you think about Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Mi Último Adiós? A lot of the votes are for Transwiki to WikiSource, but during the VfD, it seems people have added other material so the article now is about the poem, but also includes the poem itself. Is it possible to Keep the article but move the poem to WikiSource? Or perhaps you have other suggestions (or will solve this VfD for me). Thanks, --Deathphoenix 19:00, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's a judgment call for the deciding admin and is exactly why they are supposed to exercise discretion and, at times, to ignore the result that would come of strict vote-counting. Your proposed solution is entirely acceptable and is the reason that the closers are supposed to evaluate the comments and their order in context of the changes to the article during and since the discussion period. If you think it might be controversial, though, just skip that one for now. I hope to have some time this weekend to help work off the backlog. Rossami (talk) 19:59, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, Rossami. I think what I'll do is spawn off a subarticle, Mi Último Adiós/Poem, and submit that for a Transwiki. --Deathphoenix 00:38, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Suppressing closed discussions

Korath just showed me how to suppress the display of discussions which have already been closed (that is, those which have the blue box behind them).

1. If you are still using the monobook style (the default), create a page User:username/monobook.css.
   • If you are using the classic style, create a page User:username/standard.css.
2. Type .vfd { display:none; } into the page and save it.

Unintended consequences:

• This might also suppress the VfD header on articles which have been nominated for deletion (if the nomination box also uses "class=vfd"). It will still be visible in edit-mode but will not show in the regular view.
• This will suppress the entire discussion even when you want to find it. For example,
  • when the article is renominated and you want to evaluate what was said in the prior
  • when the article is kept and you want to follow through the link on the Talk page
  • when searching for the old nomination to see if a recreated article is eligible for speedy
  • if/when someone inappropriately marks a discussion as "closed" while it's still on the main VfD page.
• A few discussions which were closed over a week ago will not be suppressed because we were using "id=vfd" instead of "class=vfd" in the closing header.

Rossami (talk) 18:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is now an even more flexible option for Firefox users. See R3m0t's script for wpvfdhide which allows you to hide and unhide the closed discussions at will. Rossami (talk) 4 July 2005 08:42 (UTC)

New subpage proposal: "Complex discussions"

There are two categories of unresolved vfd discussions: those that no admin has got around to, and those that no admin has managed to decide one way or the other. The second category keeps us from deleting date pages from this page, and wastes time while admins go through some long pages to search for the unresolved ones, and each of us decide we can't resolve them, for whatever reason. Could we maybe list that category on a separate page? That is, if a few admins go through a day's vfd, and all of them decide not to deal with a particular discussion, we can put it on that page, and when a particularly bold/thick-skinned/drunk admin comes by, maybe they can tackle one or two of the "complex discussion" sets. I did one (Islamic fascism) and I'm already getting flak for it, not willing to do more for another day or two. I don't have a good name for my proposed subpage. moink 11:50, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Ongoing discussions: Libertarian capitalism

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Libertarian capitalism

Is there a reason why the above is still in the Ongoing discussions section? I was tempted to just close the discussion and remove it from the page because the discussion has become stale, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something that happened long before I started working here. --Deathphoenix 21:06, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

• Done. Thanks, Rossami. --Deathphoenix 18:40, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki queue

From just a quick check, I've noticed that Scheiße, NEET, Pantology, Eivind, Gay for the stay, and Kjetil have all been transwikied to Wiktionary, and presumably should now be deleted and removed from the queue. Others on the list have been deleted already (red links) or have been redirected (like Meliorist, Agricultura, Neubauten) so I think that means they can be removed from the list, too. The three two remaining Wiktionary ones are Gay for the stay, which looks like it was never closed properly and tagged (so I'll transwiki in a minute), and Nahuatl dictionary and List of Japanese given names, which are lists and much more complex to transwiki. --Dmcdevit 23:40, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC) [Just did gay for the stay, too, and it can be deleted.]

Done. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 14:00, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Conlon has been transwikied and awaits deletion. --Dmcdevit 2 July 2005 19:29 (UTC)

Resolved. Rossami (talk) 5 July 2005 23:12 (UTC)

On a related note, Wikipedia:Yogananda Image Gallery is in the transwiki queue awaiting a move to the commons (see the vfd ruling). However, all of the images appear to be tagged as fair use. As the commons policy states: "since the commons does not accept fair use content this image will need to be deleted." What is to be done? --Dmcdevit 18:56, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh yes, this has been resolved too. --Dmcdevit July 5, 2005 23:18 (UTC)

Question about how to tell if all the debates in a page have been closed

Hi. I am not an admin, but ran into this page and have a question. Here's the page

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 6

for VfD discussions that day. All the discussions there are closed by one admin or another. The way I learned this is by going down on this very long page screenful after screenful and carefully examining all the entries for the characteristic color background of a closed discussion. And my question is: is this how things are done? Or is there a quicker way of figuring out if all the VfD discussions for a day are closed? Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 03:11, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I haven't found an automated way of doing this, no. Although I scroll down at speed now, and just keep my eye on the left hand edge of the 'editable' area and watch for breaks in the double-line that should be there for a closed debate. -Splash 03:27, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually R3m0t has an "autovfdhide" greasemonkey script that can be found here. It's useful for the older pages that are mostly done. (But only when I bother to switch over to Firefox.) Dmcdevit·t 03:39, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. I was thinking of something much more complicated. I should learn to use javascript. :) Oleg Alexandrov 04:23, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Korath also developed a way to autohide using a stylesheet. This technique works in all browsers (I think). See #Suppressing closed discussions above. Rossami (talk) 12:43, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Wonder if it is useful to count the open discussions

I wrote a small and silly perl script to post on Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Old the number of open discussions left for each day which need to be closed by an admin. If their number is less than 10, links to the actual discussions are provided. See the link for the example (uploaded by my bot).

I wonder if this could be considered useful. If yes, I could run such a bot periodically, say every hour or two. Of course no matter what interval one chooses for updating this, the information will be obsolete if some discussions are closed in the meantime. But still, I wonder if there are any comments on the use of a thing like that or not. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 04:09, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I think that's great! We already have that middle section of the page, but that has to be populated by hand and sometimes, I'm sure, debates don't go there before a date gets archived. It too is often (at least) hours out of date and can be tedious to populate anyway. Although with the human version those debates can be removed, it really wouldn't seem like much of a problem to click a link, see it closed, and carry on by. -Splash 04:24, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Speaking as the maintainer for VFD Bot, I'm greatly concerned over whether or not VFD Bot will trip over MathBot's edits and stats. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:04, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Very good point. From what I see, your bot adds a new line each day, of the form:

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 14

My bot can obviously confuse your bot. However, I would think though that it would not be that hard to modify your bot; it would just need to be aware that such a line has some other content after a whitepspace. The big question is whether it is worth it. And that's what this discussion is about. Oleg Alexandrov 16:20, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but the thing is that it scans for the previous day, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 13, then adds the new day. Python's regular expression support is not as flexible as Perl's so... it gives me some concern... --AllyUnion (talk) 19:00, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Taking a look at my Python code...

 fivedaysago_vfdtag = '* [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/' + fivedaysago.strftime('%Y %B ') +
 str(int(fivedaysago.strftime('%d'))) + ']]'
 
 sixdaysago_vfdtag = '* [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/' + sixdaysago.strftime('%Y %B ') + 
 str(int(sixdaysago.strftime('%d'))) + ']]'
 
 vfdold = vfdold.replace(sixdaysago_vfdtag, sixdaysago_vfdtag + '\n' + fivedaysago_vfdtag, 1)

It will be looking for "* Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 13" then it will replace it with "* Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 14\n* Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 13". It may screw up... I still don't know for certain. --AllyUnion (talk) 19:05, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that in Perl things would be indeed simpler to implement. I can take upon myself the task of adding new links to this page. From what I gather, this page should contain links older than five days, so for example, today the link to

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/2005 August 15

would need to come in here. How does that sound? Oleg Alexandrov 19:12, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey AllyUnion, where are you? Oleg Alexandrov 20:07, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

While I certainly don't mind you taking over the maintainance, it's just that I'm very use to having VFD Bot maintain this page. You can certainly go ahead and add the stats, if you like. --AllyUnion (talk) 17:24, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Do either of these two bots remove the days that have 0 discussions left, or does that still require manual intervention? -Splash 05:38, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I did not implement this so far because of the comment:

<!-- Please note that the deletion process has changed considerably over time--please make sure you are familiar with the current Wikipedia:Deletion process NOTICE: Before removing a VFD day subpage, please make sure you review ALL of the discussions of that day and ensure the closed discussion is accurate. --> in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old. If you want the bot to remove days with no empty discussion, that can be easily taken care of. Oleg Alexandrov 15:32, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

At present we eyeball the day log to check that there are no open discussions. Yes, it's tedious and probably not as reliable as script-based records, but it's probably good to have redundancy--both methods. So removing the fully closed day logs from the list of old VfD day logs would probably not be desirable. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 17:29, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

? I just meant from the list of "debates older than 5 days". At present, someone cleans that up periodically and moves the done days to the archive. I was just wondering if the bots removed the bullet points for done-days. I don't mean deleting the subpages or anythgin. -Splash 20:19, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

That's the same list Tony is talking about. Right now, we do a final check on the list by hand to confirm that all the debates really were closed. Then it's a trivial two edits (one cut-and-paste) to move the bullet from the /Old page to the Archived debates page. A script for those two edits doesn't seem worth the trouble. The other way to interpret your suggestion is that the bot will determine that all the debates were closed. I'm not sure I trust a bot to do that properly. A manual review still seems preferable. Rossami (talk) 13:19, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'm fine with that. I've lately been doing some of the review-and-removes myself, which was why I asked. -Splash 00:18, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I am rather new here so I don't know what to say. As soon as you guys reach a decision on how to do things, and if you need to automate more stuff, just let me know. (Always willing to write one more silly script. :) Oleg Alexandrov 23:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Is your bot working, AllyUnion?-Splash 23:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

The server it was running on was brought down on that day. Since then, I've moved the files for the bot to a different server, and have created AFD Bot as a replacement. --AllyUnion (talk) 06:29, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Number of open discussions, on demand

I modified a bit the bot displaying the number of open discussions. Now it will not update hourly, but rather, when requested by clicking a link. I still don't know how useful this counting of open discussions is, but I surely I had fun writing the code. :) Oleg Alexandrov 02:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, as a not-admin, I certainly find it useful. I can only close keep-debates and there's more likely to some of those left where the number of open debates is higher. Rather than scroll the list (or work out Greasemonkey), I can let you do the graft for me! :) Splash 03:03, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

The bot is not working for now. There is a mixture of "votes for deletion" and "articles for deletion" in the page, which confuses it. I will fix it in a short while. Oleg Alexandrov 16:50, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Bot is back in business. Oleg Alexandrov 19:43, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I just closed a bunch of debates on August 27, but this diff suggests something odd happened. Just thought I'd let you know. -Splash 01:43, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I saw the same thing. I have no idea what is going on. If my script had a bug giving incorrect results, it would at least give the same (wrong) result if run twice in a row. My best guess is that the servers are playing tricks with us. Maybe they are out of sink and one server serves an older page while another one a newer page. Very strange. Oleg Alexandrov 01:54, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

When the number of open discussion is rather low, say around 10, it would be instructive to actually count how many discussions are open and compare with what the bot gives. I tried counting now, but 65 is too big a number for me so I lost count after a while. :) Oleg Alexandrov 01:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I am the last refresh to the main page. It counts 52 open on August 26 (it was being fooled in part by a missing {{{vb}}}). However, at a pretty accurate human count, which I have double-checked, there are 59 open debates. If that helps at all... -Splash 02:52, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Splash. I figured out what happened. If you look at the source of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 August 26 you will see a mixture of "Votes for deletion", "Articles for deletion" and "Pages for deletion". Now, normally only one of these must be present. I knew that because of the recent mess we have both "Votes" and "Articles". Seeing in addition "Pages" on top of everything was a complete surprise. I will fix my script tomorrow. And let us hope that people will settle on one of the three versions eventually. Oleg Alexandrov 04:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Fixed now. I counted by hand that at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 August 26 now there are exactly 29 open discussions. By the way, now my script also give the number of closed discussions and the total number of discussions. They are counted independently. If the total does not equal the sum of open and closed, and if the total is not the same as in the table of contents of a given page (for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 August 26) then there is a problem. Oleg Alexandrov 17:15, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Excellent! I think the changeover to Articles for Deletion is nearly complete now, but there're going to be a few days when the rapid changing back-and-forth betwee A, P and V will be in effect at /Old. The open/closed/total thing is handy: but at the moment it only appears on the bot-progress page rather than on the project page. Is this deliberate? (unsigned post by Splash)

OK, I now put the same thing in the project page. Note that my script still gets confused if a section is duplicate, as the one I removed. My script does not count the duplicate section twice, so then in the TOC one may have one more discussion than as counted by the script. This is because Wikipedia uses a different syntax for duplicate section. If this turns out to be a problem in the future, I will deal with it. Oleg Alexandrov 20:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Mathbot inaccuracies?

Mathbot is wrong sometimes. Do we know why? It kept telling me there was one open September 11th debate, and pointed me to a closed debate. I refreshed the page cache, ran it again a couple of times, and then it told me there were two open discussions, and pointed me to two closed ones! This is still better than having to do it manually, but if we could figure out what's confusing the poor mathbot it would make our lives a little easier. moink 11:09, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, what am I supposed to do when this happens? I just went through Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2005 September 11 carefully and verified that all debates are closed. I can delete the link to that day's subpage, but will Mathbot just add it back later? I don't want other closers to have to go through the page like I did; it took some time that could be used closing more debates. moink 11:21, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

It hasn't happened yet so I'm pretty sure mathbot won't readd listings after they've been removed it. I think it only works with the listings that are currently on the page and I assume that the miscounts and stuff are due to cache issues. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 16:19, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Right, mathbot will not add add back links removed from this page, it works only with existing links. I would like to know myself why the bot still shows some discussions to be open when they are closed. If it happens in the future again, I will try to debug it? (It could be some incorrect syntax in that debate which confuses it, or indeed server cache issues.) Thank you for pointing this out. Oleg Alexandrov 16:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)