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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fuzheado (talk | contribs) at 03:37, 29 October 2003 (Archived some older talk to 2003). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Where should we draw the line?

I've just made a unilateral policy change, basically because lots of people have been deleting pages that don't fit into the seven categories in the "Procedure for deletion" section, and I was pissing everyone off by going around complaining rudely to them about it...

I've noticed that the "What to keep, what to delete" section seems to contradict the "Procedure for deletion" section anyway, because it says to delete "stubs that don't even have a decent definition" and even "stubs that will never become more than a simple definition". A decent definition is a stronger requirement than any definition at all. And I think that saying we can delete "stubs that will never become more than a simple definition" is too much - that involves a degree of prescience that I don't think someone can be expected to have. Just where should we draw the line? -- Oliver P. 20:01, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You do realise that what you added to 1.4 contradicts what you said to me on my talk page? You've made the policy say I can delete "blah blah his wife was great!. Angela 20:25, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I haven't contradicted myself. What I said to you was about the policy as it was at the time I said it. What you did was, in my opinion, contrary to what the policy was at the time. (I think. But see below for some confusingness.) Just now, I unilaterally changed the deletion policy so that (assuming my change sticks) what you did will be allowable in the future. So you should be happy! :P -- Oliver P. 20:41, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Ok, I understand now. I'm happy. :) -- Angela

Ah. It seems from the page history that this rather large change by Martin is the biggest cause of my confusion regarding the apparent contradictions between the "Procedure for deletion" section and the "What to keep, what to delete" section. It seems that Martin replaced a section headed "Don't list on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion" with a section headed "What to keep, what to delete". The latter starts by saying, "When considering whether to list a page on VfD," but then goes on to talk about keeping or deleting (rather than listing) pages. So it could now be interpreted to mean that we are allowed to delete "stubs that don't even have a decent definition" and "stubs that will never become more than a simple definition" and so on without listing them on VfD. Perhaps "delete" should say "list", throughout...? I think I need to get Martin over here to discuss this... -- Oliver P. 20:41, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Ok, but bear in mind that Martin's decision isn't final. If any controversy remains over these points there needs to be more discussion about them. Angela 20:47, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Hi Oliver. I discussed this above with Evercat and GrahamN, but it was to some extent unilateral. Your change looks fine to me - you might want to check with Evercat - I think it was her suggestion.
You raise a good point about "What to keep, what to delete" - I hadn't seen that ambiguity (which existed prior to my change, just to engage in buck-passing!) - I'll edit it to make the meaning a bit clearer. Martin 09:01, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Oh, I wonder if patent nonsense should be another exception to the VFD requirement. Martin 10:45, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I thought it was covered by "no meaningful content". Angela 10:52, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
So it is. I added a link to make that explicit. Martin

I'm not convinced that Oliver's changes solve the problem he was concerned about. Could not "do not list stubs" be misinterpreted to mean that one can delete stubs without listing them on VfD? :-/ Martin 13:56, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, my concern in my last message was that the lead-in sentence in the section headed "What to keep, what to delete" was about listing on VfD, whereas the section itself spoke of deletion, not listing. Your changes today clarified a few things, but left in the word "delete" everywhere, so it sounded like we were allowed to delete those things without listing them. So I took the liberty of renaming the section to "What to list on VfD", and changing "keep" to "don't list" and "delete" to "list" throughout that section. I also removed the sentence that said, "These recommendations also apply to admins deciding whether or not to delete a page that has been listed on VfD for a week," because that the section (according to my interpretation) is about what to list on VfD, and not about deletion. But if it's still unclear, I'll try again... -- Oliver P. 14:02, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I disagree with these three points;

  1. List pages that you believe will simply will never become encyclopedia articles.
  2. List stubs that you believe will never become more than a simple definition.
  3. List stubs that don't even have a decent definition.

Why would you want to list these? They should be deleted on sight. Angela 14:04, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

My reasons would be:
  1. I may believe that a stub will never become an encyclopedia article, but I may be wrong. Therefore, list on VfD, in case I'm wrong.
  2. I may believe that a stub will never become more than a simple definition, but I may be wrong. Therefore, list on VfD, in case I'm wrong.
3: Scenario: somebody writes two paragraphs of useful text on an encyclopedically important subject area, but neglects to include a decent definition. Listing on VfD gives the author, or someone else, a chance to save the content by adding a decent definition.
Scenario two: somebody finds a picture of someone famous, and creates a new article on that person, initially including just the picture. After uploading all the pictures, they then go through and add stubby biographies.
Scenario three: somebody adds some definition-free content at British history. A sysop doesn't know about the article on History of the United Kingdom, so thinks it should be deleted. If listed on VfD, someone will notice and do a redirecting merge.
However, articles in all three cases can be deleted on sight if they meet one of the seven criteria for instant deletion. Martin 15:04, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I agree. (Useful contribution by me there. ;) -- Oliver P. 15:24, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"No meaningful content" (allowed to delete) overlaps with "stubs that don't even have a decent definition" (not allowed to delete). Useless stubs should be deleted. They don't help someone that actually wants to put some effort into writing a proper article. If the stub makes sense and has something useful then fair enough, but it if doesn't and is never even likely to, then delete it. Angela 14:19, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The intro to that section starts: "If a page does not fall into one of the seven categories listed at the top of this page". Hence, if an article has no meaningful content, then it can be deleted on sight, even though it may also be a definition-free stub. If a definition-free stub has meaningful content, is not a test page or a piece of vandalism, is not very short, is not reposting deleted content, was not created by a banned author, and is not a personal subpage, and does not only contain external links, then it should be listed on VfD rather than deleted on sight. Reasonable? Martin 15:15, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Argh, edit conflict! My reply to Angela is that if someone writes a paragraph about a noteworthy person, but neglects to say what that person actually did that made them noteworthy, then that doesn't have a "decent definition", but I don't think it should be deleted on sight. If a page has some meaningful content, I can't think of a way in which this wouldn't be of help to someone wanting to expand it. They can always just stick some key words into Google, and quite likely end up with a whole load of pages that would enable them to put that information into a meaningful context with very little effort. And if not, it can always be deleted after the seven days on VfD, with little harm done. -- Oliver P. 15:24, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • Sorry for the delay in replying, real life intervened. I have no objection to what you have both said above, although what counts as patent nonsense may be subjective. Perhaps I should try to be slightly less hasty about what I delete as nonsense. Angela 22:57, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A recent discussion of the policy in relation to redirects can be found at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects.

Opinions differ as to the correct approach to pages with only external links is not a very useful thing to have on a policy page. Angela

But it is true, which is a benefit. ;-) Martin

more speedy deletion

  1. Deleting a redirect (which has no useful history) to make way for a non-controversial page move.
  2. Temporarily deleting a page in order to merge page histories after a cut and paste move.

I added these because we already do this. Any objections? Martin 13:28, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Personal subpages

Can the deletion of user pages requested by the user be added to the list of things that can be deleted immediately? See also Wikipedia talk:Personal subpages to be deleted. Angela 22:51, 6 Sep 2003 (UTC)

number 7: "Personal subpages that have been listed on Personal subpages to be deleted". I think that covers it. We could change that to "on request (eg, being listed on Personal subpages to be deleted)", but I like the additional transparency of having them listed someplace (aside from the deletion log, that is): cf wikipedia:protected page.
Either way, it looks like we need to clarify the issue a little :) Martin 22:37, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Oops. I'm sure that wasn't there yesterday. :) I'm not sure about the necessity to record them anywhere though. A lot of other pages are deleted without record. Angela 22:50, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

rough consensus

Wikipedia talk:Deletion guidelines for administrators has discussion on what we mean when we say that pages should be deleted as a result of consensus. Please express your views there. Martin 22:48, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Defamation and personality rights

Not to be confused with copyright issues or fair use are the problems that we may have here under the rubric of Wikipedia:Personality rights and defamation deletion policy. These problems can be summed up briefly, libelous statements, publishing private personal information about anyone (including other users). Personality rights are a general category of rights known by terms such as privacy rights, right of publicity, and rights of private life. They include publishing things like a personal information, one's address, one's social security number, etc.. It can also include one's image. Generally speaking it is not proper to publish the image of a private person without their permission (this obviously does not apply to public figures, or people in public in historical images).

There does not seem to be a clear statement about these kinds of postings when done by third parties. I am not discussing the subpage or the personal page issue where someone publishes their own personal information. But the case where a third party does so (of course there is the issue that someone may have a user account and say they are one person but are really another person, good reason not to post anyone's personal home address or telephone number on Wikipedia).

Should not there be a quick deletion policy once such a violation is identified? Alex756 07:18, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic

When describing material on Vfd, is the word "unencyclopedic" useful or useless? Contributors weigh in.

moved from VfD

    • Keep. And I'm hereby starting a campaign against the word "unencyclopedic". It just begs the question. "Unencyclopedic" = "shouldn't be in an encyclopaedia" = "should be deleted from an encyclopaedia". So you're just saying, "This should be deleted because it should be deleted." I think the only meaningful criterion for inclusion of a person (or any other subject) is the amount of verifiable information we can obtain on them. And I think this person has quite enough. (Over 1,000 Google hits, for a start.) And what we have is, in any case, interesting. :) So keep! -- Oliver P. 01:49, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
      • Hear hear! Let us stamp out use of this terribly irritating word. I read "This is unencyclopedic" as "I don't understand this." or "I don't like this." or "I don't think this person is important, even if a million other people do." (cf. snooker player incident) -- Jake 20:05, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
        • Don't criticise me about that. Why do you criticise me instead of my actions? RickK 05:36, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
      • "unencyclopedic" is simply shorthand for "I don't think this topic is note-worthy or relevant enough to include in an encyclopedia". That's a valid and useful distinction. An encyclopedia should only contain information about note-worthy things. Most relatives of famous people are not note-worthy and are therefore unencyclopedic. Not everyone who's written a book is encyclopedic (there are probably millions of people who have written books). In this case, it's a relative of a famous person who has written a book, and has some unusual views which have presumably come up in the news and embarrassed this famous person. So he may be encyclopedic - I think in this case it's a matter of opinion (that's why we vote). But "unencyclopedic" is still a useful term. Axlrosen 04:07, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
        • Hear, hear. RickK 05:36, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

end of moved text

copied from User talk:Oliver Pereira

Re: "unencyclopedic". I rather like that term, and I believe I use it in the following (not necessarily distinct) non-tautological ways:

  • "unencyclopedic" = "unimportant (my own subjective assessment, of course)"
  • "unencyclopedic" = "does not match my idea of the Platonic ideal of encyclopedic content"
  • "unencyclopedic" = "readers don't come to an encyclopedia looking for that info"
  • "unencyclopedic" = "when readers see this material, it will adversely affect their opinion of Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information"

I suppose I could use the longer phrases...

Cheers, Cyan 03:37, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Hmm... Well, if the term means lots of different things to you, perhaps it would be good to use the longer explanations; otherwise we wouldn't know which one you meant. :) I think the main problem with the term is that everyone has a different idea of what an encyclopaedia should be, so unless you can be sure that you are using it to people who have the same idea as you, it's not very helpful. I'll tell you my idea of the ideal encyclopaedia. I think the goal should be complete coverage of all human knowledge. :) Unattainable, of course, but what Platonic ideals aren't? I think that general encyclopedias were always meant to contain all of human knowledge, but that they were frustrated in getting anywhere near that goal by all sorts of constraints. Early encyclopaedists had limited staff (usually staff need to be paid), limited time (they have to publish the finished version at some point), and limited space (who would buy a 1,000,000 volume encyclopaedia?). Wikipedia doesn't suffer from the same constraints. It has millions of potential editors, doesn't need to pay them, there's no publication deadline, and hard discs are cheap! So I think the traditional idea of what an encyclopaedia is can be pretty much thrown away. :) -- Oliver P. 04:12, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Hope you don't mind if enter your conversation... I have always been unhappy with the fact that "unencyclopedic", when used as an argument in dispute, is much frowned upon and often regarded useless. Philosphical problems (read: tautological definition) aside, I think it would be very helpful if Wikipedia had a stated ideal of what an encyclopedia should be. Do you know of any (failed?) attempts at reaching a consensus about this? Best, Kosebamse 07:33, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC) - or, to put it differently (as there are, of course, endless debates about what an encyclopedia should be): has there been any discussion resulting in a consensus that the term "unencyclopedic" is not a valid argument? Kosebamse 07:43, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I have to disagree completely with "I think the goal should be complete coverage of all human knowledge." Frankly, that would be useless - there would be so much information that it would overwhelm the reader. It would be information, but it would cease to be knowledge. The job of an encyclopedia is to serve as a filter (created by humans) of all possible human knowledge, so as to include the wheat and exclude the chaff (aka the "unencyclopedic"). The NYC phone book is part of "all human knowledge", should that be included? How about every phone book in the world? No, there are better sources for that information than Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia, Platonic or not). Similarly for every primary school in the world, or every relative of every actor, or everything that gets a few dozen hits on Google. They don't belong in an encyclopedia. (FYI This semi-rant is directed as much at the geo-bot debate as the "unencyclopedic" debate.) Axlrosen 21:56, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

end of copied text

I agree with Oliver P., people should be more specific if they have objections against an article text than using this vague general term "unencyclopedic". - Patrick 08:27, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, "unencyclopedic" is the most precise way to say that something should not be included in an encyclopedia - VfD could be retitled list of unencyclopedic articles - and says nothing more. Cyan's list above is good; people should say which of the four things they really mean when they say "unencyclopedic". I think in some cases the the word is just a six-syllable way to avoid voicing one's real objections in a form that could be rebutted point by point. Stan 13:24, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Actually, the most precise and concise way is the verb "delete"... Martin 21:29, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Whilst I understand your concerns Oliver, I have no problem with "unencyclopedic" being given as the reason for listing a page. The aim is to give a brief description on why you are listing something here, not a 500 word essay on the meaning of unencyclopedic and how such a term may be applied to the article in question. Everyone knows what it means. If others wish to point out why something should be included, then they can do that, but 'unencyclopedic' is a great way of putting across what is wrong with an article in a single word, and possibly a more diplomatic way of saying what you really think of an article. As for Jake's comment on "the snooker player incident" – I fail to see what the problem is here. The whole point of VfD is that it prevents mistaken deletions taking place. It gives people a week to point out that in fact someone is famous. You can't expect all Wikipedians to be familiar with every sporting hero or otherwise 'famous' person. Rick hadn't heard of him - fair enough – it wasn't deleted, so what's the problem? It was perfectly valid for Rick to list the page here as at the time the 37 word 'article' gave no indication that this person was "encyclopedic". Angela 21:02, Sep 30, 2003 (UTC)

It's vague: precision is good. "incomprehensible" or "rant" or "nonsense" or "never heard of this person" or "too obscure" or "fails google test" or "uninformative" or "unhelpful" or "vehicle for advertising" or ....
By all means use "unencyclopedic" when you don't really know, or can't put into words, why you want to delete something. That's what I do. Martin 21:27, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I don't see what the problem is with unencyclopædic. It is a perfectly straight-forward term with an obvious meaning - does this belong in an encyclopædia? The implicit questions raised by the term are:

  1. Is the topic worthy of enclusion in an encyclopædia? (Josef Stalin clearly is, Shades of nail-varnish clearly isn't, unless it is an article that charts the use of colour in female make-up from say a historical perspective, etc. List of Albums by the Eagles clearly is. My Pet Dog is called woofy isn't, unless it is the name of an album, book, film etc. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to spot the encyclopædic from the unencyclopædic.
  2. Is the content encyclopædic? (ie, is it neutral, informative, balanced, well written, etc?)
  3. If the content currently isn't, can it be made so? If the topic isn't, can it be made so? If the answer is no, then the article belongs as some scribble on the back of a notepad but not on wikipedia, just as it would not get into Encyclopedia Brittanica, World Book, etc.

The issue is perfectly clear and an obvious reference point for deciding what should and what should not be in an encyclopædia. FearÉIREANN 22:12, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I guess I'd just prefer to see these things made explicit. Hence: rather than:
One would have:
* shades of nail varnish - trivia, unimportant topic. Martin 22:45, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
* Alan Davies - current content irredeemably POV. Martin 22:45, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I just think the latter is more useful to folks reading the VfD page. Martin 22:45, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
When I have used the word unencyclopedic in the past, I meant that it did not belong here for a wide variety of reasons I thought would be obvious to everyone else too (like obscenity, "I know it when I see it."), however, some have disagreed (for example, I can think of a dozen places I'd look to find an Eagles discography before trying an encyclopedia, however, speaking as one who has struggled with being colorblind and using nail varnish, I'd love for someone to finally explain to me what Cleopatra or Zing or WetNWild #401 actually are, especially if they could provide the nearest Pantone or CMYK numbers!) so perhaps clarification is always a good idea. So, I'll stop using the word. -- Paige 03:47, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

How about simply "unencyclopedic, reason why"? Best of both worlds :) Dysprosia 03:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yep, the best of the world of redundancy coupled with the best of the world of rational discourse. :) But still, even the best of the world of redundancy is still redundant, so best to leave it out, I think. Angela says, "The aim is to give a brief description on why you are listing something here," and I entirely agree. My point is that the word "unencyclopedic" is not such a description. It gives no further information than that already conveyed by the fact that something is being listed on Vfd in the first place: that it doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia. I think it is only courteous for people to say why they think that. After all, others might disagree, and they frequently do. What we should aim for is a consensus on what should and should not be deleted, and there is no hope of any consensus being formed if people won't even say what their problems with articles are. (Sorry for dragging this up again after a week, but I took a break from the Wikipedia, and I have to have my say!) -- Oliver P. 07:05, 8 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Biased articles

I disagree with the following:

Article X is totally biased!

Take it to pages needing attention or NPOV dispute. You don't need the VfD page for that.

It depends on the page. Most pages that are biased should indeed be NPOVed, but sometimes they simply contain only POV rant, from which no NPOV information can be distilled. POV pages should go on VfD if, after removing the POV, what is left would be small enough for putting on VfD or straightout deletion.

As an example: "President Bush should not have invaded Iraq in 2003. He didn't do it to fight terrorism, but only for the oil, and millions of Iraqis have died" should be NPOVed. "Bush is a murderer who likes to kill people and deserves to die." should be deleted. Andre Engels 20:41, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What you say makes sense. Want to add something to the policy page? Something like "Keep pages that are not neutral, adding an NPOV dispute header. But list pages that contain only POV rant, from which no NPOV information can be distilled"... or something better than that. Martin 21:22, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Good work, Martin. We should call you The Compromise King. You are good at finding a workable middle ground. :-) FearÉIREANN 22:35, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"Administrators' judgement"

Administrators necessarily must use their best judgment in making this decision.

I don't believe this statement is true. Maybe the reality now is that deletion decisions are made according to the judgements of individual administrators, rather than by the consensus of the wider community of Wikipedians, but it has not always been this way, and it doesen't necessarily have to be this way in future. I point out that Wikimedia's first press release currently says that Wikipedia operates "by consensus". Since this appears not to be entirely true, maybe we should consider amending it. GrahamN 20:28, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So you're saying that sysops don't have to use their best judgement? Evercat 20:45, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes. In my opinion they shouldn't have to use any judgement at all. Their role should be merely to enact the consensus decision. GrahamN 20:52, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Have you ever looked at Wikipedia:Deletion log? There are maybe 100 deletions a day. Do you really expect a "consensus decision" for all of them? Evercat 21:20, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
If every page that is currently deleted on sight had to be put onto the VfD page, the page would hit 200K regularly and Wikipedia would slow to a crawl. FearÉIREANN 22:00, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You have both made my point for me. If you deliberately tried to design a system that would make consensus decisions as difficult as possible, you could hardly do better, could you? I consider the "Votes for Deletion" system to be an anachronism. We don't have a "Votes for Re-naming" page, a "Votes for Blanking" page, or a "Votes for This Particular Edit That I Would Like To Make to The Manic Street Preachers Article" page. Consensus happens everywhere else on Wikipedia using that rather clever thing, the "Wiki". It may not be a perfect form of consensus - bullies tend to get their way rather more often than we might wish - but it is how Wikipedia works. I can't understand why we treat deletion decisions differently from any other kind of decision. A simple software tweak would make links to blanked articles appear the same as links to non-existent articles. Anybody could then "delete" or "undelete" any page by simply blanking it or reverting it. With a few other minor software tweaks, deletion decisions could be then made by exactly the same brand of consensus that is used for every other decision here - the brand of consensus that has made Wikipedia such a success. GrahamN 20:36, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Please go to meta:Talk:Deletion management redesign if you want to discuss this idea. GrahamN 20:51, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I must admit I like Graham's proposal a lot! Axlrosen 17:41, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)
  1. Pages where a unanimous agreement has been reached on Wikipedia:Cleanup.

I added this based on what Martin said. Angela 07:04, Oct 10, 2003 (UTC)

Twas merely a suggestion - cleanup is stevertigo and cimon's baby, not mine. But I do think it makes sense. Martin 16:25, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I don't, and I've removed it. --Camembert

Taku added:

I don't think this needs to part of the policy and it may confuse people about whether pages in the Wikipedia namespace are perhaps not allowed to be listed for deletion. Saying VfD shouldn't be listed is stating the obvious. :) Policies very often are discussed at VfD; I don't think stating in here that it is not allowed will help. If the policy surrounds the deletion of an article, then there may be justification for discussing it. If it gets too long, it can be moved. Angela 01:15, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)

No, policy discussion is not VfD for. Some people might disagree with VfD, but it does not mean we need to delete VfD permanently. -- Taku

Shortpages should be deleted

I recently created a one-line article, and then posted it on VfD. Everyone who replied said "Keep"? What gives? If I create a one-line article, can't I just as easily delete it? Maybe I originally intended to write a longer article but then realized I wouldn't have time to turn the article into a decent stub or long article....so shouldn't I be able to just delete it? It's just common sense to me. Wikipedia needs a stronger policy on deletion. Whenever a stub gets put on VfD, some person just adds one line and tada! it's no longer a stub. Pretty soon people are going to figure this out and every time they need some articles created they'll just post them on the VfD page! This is not the point of VfD. The point of VfD is not to expand on stubs/shortpages, it is to delete articles which should be deleted, and shortpages CAN be deleted under rule #4 on the deletion policy. Sub-stubs/shortpages should be instantly deleted IMHO, because as all people can agree, they can be re-created in a second. Sub-stubs are a waste of time, you click on a link, wait for it to come up, and are extremely disapointed when it does come up, as it is only one line of information you already knew. I'd rather it be a red hyperlink, meaning the article was not written yet, so that I don't have to waste my time clicking on it. That's my rant. dave 15:20, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Rule 4 of the deletion policy states that you may delete sub-stubs. Angela 17:39, Oct 14, 2003 (UTC)
That's what I thought as well, until User:Jiang reversed my deletion and stated on my user page that Stubs are not useless. Its a start in content. If it is a genuine stub, it will say something as opposed to nothing. I personally don't like stubs, but I see no point in deleting them. Besides, it's against the current policy. --Jiang 20:43, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC) The reason I deleted it was because I was looking at the List of British Columbia premiers page and clicking on all the premiers. I clicked on John Hart and saw the following: "John Hart was a premier of British Columbia". What is the use of that!!! And it just wasted 5 seconds of my life having to click on it when it should have been a red link like the others. Clearly we know he is a premier since all the pages on "What links here" say so anyways! Jiang undeleted my delete, and he also added two dates to the article, in order to justify keeping it somehow. Anyways, I'm a bit frustrated that as an administrator I was overruled by another administrator (User:Jiang) for doing something which was well within the policies of Wikipedia. dave 22:27, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Everyone gets overruled now and then. When it happens to me, I try not to take it personally. It all worked out for the best, didn't it? Even your experimental sub-stub got turned into a seed stub. -- Cyan 22:32, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I don't take it personally...I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what I did wrong so it doesn't happen again. I think I know what went wrong...I pissed off Jiang by first blanking the John Hart article (a Wikipedia no no because the link stays blue I guess). He unblanked it, and then I deleted it (which was my real intent all along when I first blanked it). He then undeleted either because he was annoyed at me, or just because he is an inclusionist? That's my only theory. He says it is "against wikipedia policy" to delete a stub. Perhaps it is, but the John Hart article wasn't a stub, it was a shortpage, and gave no new information (the disambiguation page said the same thing). Deletion policy exception #4 applies here I think. dave 01:59, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
In as much as Wikipedia is a "work in progress" I think it is to be expected that any article (long, short, or stub) may or may not yet have information useful to the reader. I think stubs serve to remind editors (everyone) that there are articles in need of work. They should not be listed at VfD (and seldom are, actually) unless there is a sense by the lister that the "proposed" article will have problems (POV, troll bait, etc.). In general, a valid term used as a stub article is best just edited to a redirect if, IYHO it has no present hope to become anything. You can do that without listing or eliciting peer review. This practice can become very useful if later a disambiguation is required. - Marshman 17:43, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Dgrant, if you look at the timing of the votes, you'll see that people were voting on Delerium's update of your stub. I believe that if your original stub had remained unimproved, people would have voted to delete. -- Cyan 18:07, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Damn Delirium.  :-) dave 22:27, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Dave, instead of Trolling, just write the article or not, in accordance with whatever standards youve got. Such a thing can be either a newbieism or trolling --the latter, applying best to you, simply because you should know better. Thats really what this is about -- treating a perennial newbie phenomenon like if it was something you want to eradicate -- like you cant simply improve upon the thing. Of course people would look at who wrote it (you) and it had some bearing on how the vote went. Duh.戴&#30505sv
How on earth is it trolling? He's just trying to establish the policy and it is not surprising he needs to do that considering the conflicting advice he has been given. Angela 00:21, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
Steve, this is not whether or not I'm a troll (I'm not and never have been), whether I'm a newbie (I'm not), or whether or not I should know better. It is about the fact that I deleted a useless article (the John Hart article), and someone else went to the trouble of undeleting. I'm trying to figure out a) who is right? b) is anyone right? c) what IS the correct Wikipedia policy on this? Here's what I think: I was correct for deleting the John Hart article, it was a sub-stub/shortpage, and was useless. No need to put it on VfD IMHO. I was perhaps slightly lazy for not ADDING something constructive to it, but I wasn't interested in writing that article. Jiang was incorrect for undeleting it. If he was so inclined to write >100 words about John Hart, he should have then created the article and done so. But to re-create this useless article was pointless. And about c), I think Wikipedia's policy on deleting articles needs to be made more clear, through debate and discussion. dave 01:59, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think in this case, it is clear. The words "John Hart was a premier of British Columbia" do not make an article. Although having said that, Tarquin once claimed that an article consisting only of the words "Jim was born in 1968 and likes hedgehogs" would not be classified as something which should be immediately deleted. I don't think you're going to get any sort of consensus on this. Some people are far too adamant that everything remains and others simply say it is up to you to make a decent article out of such nonsense. However, in terms of policy you did not do anything wrong. Angela 02:12, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks Angela...I think I have also come to the conclusion that there is no conclusion, and I will thus drop the issue, but I will certainly stick my nose in if these kinds of debates about deletion crop up, and I will also perhaps not hesitate to delete certain things, assuming the Wikipedia deletion policy stays the way it is. Perhaps your redirect trick is the way to go, so that they don't notice, although I don't think it should have to come to that. dave 02:57, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
And this is why we should have a meta:deletion management redesign. Martin 10:51, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

'Day' Pages

There are several pages, that seem to me spurious to an encyclopedia, describing 'days' observed by various numbers of people, eg Pi Day, Yellow Pig Day (!) and others. Should there be a policy on this? Should there be a 'Wiki of days' or similar just as there is a Wiktionary, etc? What do people think?

MrJones 01:13, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The precedent set by past 'votes for deletion' is that as long as it seems like a 'real day' and gets a sufficient number of Google hits, people usually vote not to delete such pages (they voted to keep International Talk Like a Pirate Day). I don't think a 'Wiki of days' will be nearly as useful as wiktionary. I'd have to say that Pi Day is a real day (at least math teachers seem to think so), although personally I always liked Mole Day better. Maximus Rex 01:28, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

That may be the precedent, but is it sensible? MrJones 01:36, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I understand where you're coming from. I listed Yellow Pig Day on Vfd, since it seemed suspect and of little interest to most people (who would go to an encyclopedia to find that?). I'd favor a much more rigorous deletion policy, but it seems like enough people feel differently. If the "day" pages for unimportant things bother you, you could merge all 'unimportant' so-called holidays to one page and turn the pages into redirects to that one page. Maximus Rex 01:47, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I may assess the extent of the problem if I still can't get to sleep when I go back to bed in a minute :-) Those pages seem to me just to be vanity pages for very small numbers of people. There are pages about people that have been deleted with similar justification. I guess if I come up with something more solid, more people will be inclined to address the (potential) problem.
The reason I suggested a 'Wiki of days' is because they don't neatly fit into the encyclopedia's timeline (being recurring events). Even then, finding information becomes harder when you get a lot of junk hits. As you say, who would want to know about that stuff? MrJones 02:04, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If you're interested there seems to be talk on the mailing list about deletion policy (I haven't been following closely though). Maximus Rex 01:53, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Thanks MrJones 02:04, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Major Change Proposed

Major changes have been made to the deletion policy, but this should not be too surprising because this has been discussed for weeks, and even a real vote has taken place on the "lag time." So here are the highlights:

  • Time on the list has been reduced from 7 days to 5 days.
  • Only usernames which are at least 1 month old can vote
  • Only usernames with at least 100 non-minor edits can vote
  • Deletion requires a 2/3 majority in order for page to be deleted

This is a bold edit, and not the final word, so please feel free to discuss, but be aware that a vote has already captured the will of people on the lag time: 15 folks wanted 5 days or less, 4 wanted no change, 1 wanted more days. Fuzheado 08:56, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I do like points 2 and 3 very much and think it's a step in the right direction, but the 100-edits is a little worrying; a ballot-stuffing username person thingy could make 100 tiny little edits: would this qualify them as a valid voter? Just a point Dysprosia 08:59, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes, this number is quite arbitrary, but it should be set high enough so that it is tough to create numerous fake accounts. Some wanted it as low as 50, but that's definitely too easy. OTOH, for the logo vote, we only required 10 edits... Fuzheado 09:22, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I see your point now; rapid 100-edit-making would be really visible and be able to pointed out. Dysprosia 09:31, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I suggest that this is modyfied to allow the author of a given page to vote on that page's fate. I.e., if a user less than 5 days old/100 edits/ect. created a page which is subsequently listed on VfD, that user should be able to vote on this article. 129.234.4.10 09:01, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
This sounds like a reasonable amendment. Fuzheado 09:22, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In the spirit of boldness, I made some changes:

  • 3/4 supermajority changed to 2/3 supermajority (3/4 is far too high, what was wrong with 1/2?)
  • changed 100 edits to 100 non-minor edits
  • changed 5 days to 1 month

Daniel Quinlan 18:54, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

100 non-minor edits and 1 month is a pretty high bar. That's pretty much a wizened veteran around here. I'd vote for one or two weeks, and 25-50 non-minor edits. Axlrosen 21:12, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Eh? What does that make me? I often do more than a 100 non-minor edits in a week and have over 40,000 edits so far. I would still take out the "non-minor" part of the criteria and replace it with "valid". --mav 23:24, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Folks, let's not raise the bar too high -- we're simply trying to prevent ballot stuffing by people rapidly creating new accounts, while still encouraging legit users to take part. So weeks and a month is too much. We allow anyone to edit any article anytime, but to vote you need a 1 month probation? Seems way out of balance. As for "non-minor" edits, that's not such an easy determination, so as long as they're valid article (not Talk) edits it should be fine. Fuzheado 23:51, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Any specific policy we endorse here can be evaded by a sufficiently determined troll. How about, "Sysops clearing out VfD are permitted to disregard votes and comments if there is strong evidence that they were not made in good faith," followed by a list of the kinds of evidence that can indicate a lack of good faith. This is, I believe, the de facto policy anyway, and probably will continue to be. (My $0.02.) -- Cyan 23:39, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes, this sounds reasonable too and in line with what we do already. Fuzheado 23:51, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I like it! VfD now 30kb smaller. Cyan's suggestion sounds sensible and avoids the problems of wartortle-types trying to circumvent the policy by making the required number of edits. Angela 02:33, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

  • Username has been in existence at least one month before the listing, and
  • Username has at least 100 non-minor article edits logged

1: This precludes frequent readers from voting on infrequent topics that concern them. You are putting the interest of EDITING wikipedia users above that of READING wikipedia users. 2: Wikipedia is a classless society, but you are trying to create a new class of wikipedia users, disenfranchised from voting. 3: You are valuing a person with 100 non-minor edits in one month over a person with 1000 minor edits in one month. 4: You are saying you don't care about the opinion of someone who has been a editor for six months and has only made 50 edits. 5: This is not the wiki way - you are tyring to solve a problem by simply creating more divisions and rules.

Wanwan, thank you for placing your concerns in the discussion section of this page. I understand your desire to participate in the deletion process. Please understand that there are reasons why wikipedians have decided to put a waiting period in place. One purpose is to prevent someone from creating many accounts, and casting votes on the Votes for Deletion page. I hope you can understand this safeguard. Maybe others can chime in here.
Please know also, that your comments are still welcome on the Votes for Deletion page. Maybe your vote won't count yet, but your opinions count immediately. Kingturtle 03:11, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
No you, you won't take away my right to vote. This is not the way to fix your problem, and this new "rule" is no rule at all. I'm lucky I even found this so-called policy here. This talk should be in the pump , not hidden away here. The three or four users here don't change the rules to take away votes from hundreds of others. -Wanwan

I think that a 50 edit minimum might help cut down on the number of sock puppets voting recently. Wanwan, you seem familiar do I perhaps know you from somewhere. Maximus Rex 03:16, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Maybe, but from where? What other boards do you like to visit on? -Wanwan
Wanwan, it is not my problem. It is an ongoing problem involving users who create alias accounts and portray their new accounts as innocent bystanders; you'd be surprised how often an angry user hides behind a new user name and uses it as a bully pulpit. You have not once suggested another solution to this problem. Kingturtle 03:21, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Use the IP Address to filter out multiple votes - that is easy way. -Wanwan

Sounds plausible. Maybe you can write the script to get that idea off the ground. Kingturtle 03:28, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Wanwan, I'm somewhat sympathetic to your point, so instead of deleting the entire proposal, why not propose an alternative amount of time or number of edits? You've deleted the proposal without comment or alternatives. I know your username in only 24 hours old (nearly to the minute!) so what kind of time period would you consider reasonable to prevent sock-puppets and ballot stuffing? IP address filtering is insufficient because many stuffers are coming in via proxies (ie. AOL) Fuzheado 03:30, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
another way - remove desire for ballot stuffing - create a policy for what should be deleted in stead of creating policy for how to delete. -Wanwan
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