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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dpbsmith (talk | contribs) at 23:56, 18 October 2004 (→[[Tran Van Ba]]). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Shortcut

Articles and multimedia are deleted by administrators. Sometimes these decisions are completely correct, and undisputed. Sometimes, they are more controversial. The forthcoming meta:deletion management redesign may address many of these issues, but that is some way off. See also:deletion policy and undeletion policy.

Please note that the archive of deleted page revisions may be periodically cleared. Pages deleted prior to the database crash on 8 June 2004 are not present in the current archive because the archive tables were not backed up. This means pages cannot be restored by a sysop. If there is great desire for them it may be possible to retrieve them from the old database files. Prior to this, the archive was cleared out on 3 December 2003.

Purpose of this page

It is hoped that this page will be generally unused, as the vast majority of deletions do not need to be challenged. This page exists for basically two types of people:

  1. People who feel that an article was wrongly deleted, and that Wikipedia would be a better encyclopedia with the article restored. This may happen because they were not aware of the discussion on votes for deletion (VfD), or because it was deleted without being listed on VfD, or because they objected to deletion, but were ignored.
  2. Non-sysops who wish to see the content of a deleted article. They may wish to use that content elsewhere, for example. Alternatively, they may suspect that an article has been wrongly deleted, but are unable to tell without seeing what exactly was deleted.
    • As a subset of this, sometimes an article which is appropriate for a sister site is deleted without being properly transwikied. If the page is undeleted temporarily, it can be exported complete with history using Special:Export, and then redeleted. This will be especially useful once the import feature is completed.

This page is about articles, not about people. If you feel that a sysop is routinely deleting articles prematurely, or otherwise abusing their powers, please discuss the matter on the user's talk page, or at wikipedia talk:administrators. Similarly, if you are a sysop and an article you deleted is subsequently undeleted, please don't take it as an attack.

If you wish to undelete an article, list it here with a brief reason. The procedure explained at Wikipedia:Undeletion policy will then be followed, and if the conditions are met, the page will be undeleted.

If you wish to view a deleted article, list it here and say why. A sysop will provide the deleted article to you in some form - either by quoting it in full, or by emailing it to you, or by temporarily undeleting it.

See also Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops.

History only undeletion

History only undeletions can always be performed without needing to list the articles on the votes for undeletion page. For example, suppose someone writes a biased article on Fred Flintstone, it is deleted, and subsequently someone else writes a decent article on Fred Flintstone. The original, biased article can be undeleted, in which case it will merely sit in the page history of the Fred Flintstone article, causing no harm. Please do not do this in the case of copyright violations.

Some articles are listed here, and after discussion and review, a consensus is reached to keep the articles deleted. They are listed at Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion/deleted. Archives of recently undeleted pages are recorded at Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion/undeleted

Account

No evidence deletion policy was followed. Undelete and list on cleanup. anthony (see warning) 23:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Content was "An account is something you put stuff in. For instance you put money in a bank account". Keep deleted. RickK 23:45, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted: the author vandalized several user pages and pasted that content into three other articles. As such, this is a vandal article. Content of it is so mind numbingly tautological as to be nil. Geogre 00:27, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Unless the user is banned, ad hominem deletions are not allowed. Even if the author is banned, any non-banned user can recreate the article if they are able to verify it. This is a useful stub, it should be kept as such. anthony (see warning) 00:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. The text was worse than the entry already existing at Wiktionary, and submitter repeatedly removed attempted improvments and resubmitted text.-- Infrogmation 01:48, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • So people were trying to improve the article when it was deleted? And just because the submitter removed those attempts this is reason to allow the deletion to hold? This makes no sense whatsoever. At least temporarily undelete so we can see the history. anthony (see warning) 01:53, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Infrogmation, I'd like to know what those attempted improvements looked like. Did you or anyone else happen to save a copy? Factitious 08:38, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)
      • Keep reading, they are summarized in my comment below. older≠wiser 13:00, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)
        • Thank you very much. What was the IP address of the anonymous user you suspect of being Haydes? Factitious 03:02, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted, especially seing as there's a better entry at wiktionary, where this kind of definition is better placed. Perhaps create a wiktionary link in place of the article. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 14:32, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. There was no content worth keeping. The red links are still there if anyone is interested in creating a worthwhile article. This was a valid candidate for speedy deletion. older≠wiser 16:12, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Why was the content not worth keeping? anthony (see warning) 16:37, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Because it was entirely unhelpful as written. older≠wiser 17:03, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • Unhelpful to you doesn't make it unhelpful. This should at least be a disambiguation page, and the text above makes a good start toward that. And apparently others were already attempting to improve the article, and yet it was still deleted. Undelete so we can sort this out and create a good stub. Speedily, since the deletion was clearly against policy. anthony (see warning) 20:15, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
          • So go right ahead and make a disambiguation page and stop complaing that this was improperly deleted when it was not. I disagree that the text above makes a good start, but that's what makes things interesting, huh? The edits "attempting to improve the article" were absolutely minimal. Several different editors deleted the article repeatedly, and Haydes was warned repeatedly about recreating substub articles after they had been speedily deleted. Before this spate, Jimbo had responded on Haydes talk page [1] to Haydes earlier complaint over similar events: "I did a bit of research on your complaint, and I saw nothing other than the normal proper operation of wikipedia. You should expect several of the things you created to be deleted, as they are contrary to longstanding policies. It's the wiki way, don't be too possessive of your articles, you know? Jimbo Wales 22:40, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)" Haydes started to insert the same text into various unrelated articles--the behavior of a vandal or troll. I think it is asking a bit much of admins when combatting vandalism to stop and consider whether each and every edit by a demonstrated vandal/troll might possibly have some minimal value. In this case no information was lost that could not be recreated with ease by anyone with even a marginal working knowledge of the English language. older≠wiser 13:11, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
            • If I made this a disambiguation page I would immediately request history only undeletion so that I could use parts of the original in my disambiguation page. I am still requesting temporary undeletion so I can view the history in the first place. When I get the temporary undeletion I'll write the disambig page (no sense in not including those minor improvements), and then I'll request permanent history only undeletion. But why make this require three steps, when we can resolve the issue in just one? The information that was lost is the history. I still don't have it. anthony (see warning) 14:23, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
              • Well, sorry. Why bother making it so difficult? The content is very nearly tatuological and any dictionary will have a better entry than this. Haydes recreated the article four times with content of "An account is where you store something. So for instance a bank account is where you store money." Scott T added the note "Technically speaking, that is incorrect in the accounting and banking sense. I'm not sure if that meaning is in layman's terms." Haydes then recreated it twice more with the same content as before before being blocked for one hour by Raul654. An anon, presumably the blocked Haydes, then recreated the article three times with this content: "An account is something you put stuff in. Like a bank account is where you put money. And a network account is where you put your files." After the block expired, Haydes returned to recreate the article again with "An account is something you put stuff in. For instance you put money in a bank account." The only other edits were tagging for speedy deletion or for moving to wiktionary. As has already been pointed out, there already was pretty good entry for this on Wiktionary [2]. What is the point of using a bad starting point to build from? older≠wiser 14:52, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
                • Fine. I created the disambig page. Now I request history only undeletion. anthony (see warning) 18:37, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
                  • Oppose. Your disambig page is an improvement to Wikipedia, restoring the history of troll edits would not be. All semantic value there was before the deletion is summarized in Bkonrad's comment above. jni 12:11, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Oboy...! This whole area needs a lot of work, there's old-fashioned and naive laymen's misconceptions about accountancy everywhere I look. I've done a little work on this article. Undeleting this history seems completely pointless, but no big deal, it wouldn't really hurt either. Andrewa 16:52, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Votes for undeletion

October 18

Tran Van Ba

I am listing this on behalf of User:Jimmyvanthach. I speedy-deleted his article, Tran Van Ba on the grounds that it was a recreation of an article voted for deletion in September, Wikipedia:Candidates for Speedy Deletion point 5, "reposted content that was deleted according to Wikipedia deletion policy." User:Jimmyvanthach argues that the reason for deletion was autobiography (it was created under the username "Tran Van Ba") and that its recreation under the username User:Jimmvanthach is therefore acceptable and deletion was unfair. I'm afraid I'm having difficulty finding VfD discussion archives more than a few weeks old by the way, so I'm not absolutely sure what was and wasn't said. If someone could help me find a link to the VfD discussion I'd appreciate it. I gave him a link to this page and said if he had an issue he should discuss it here. In User:Jimmyvanthach's words:

The article was deleted becuase it was provided as a autobiography, user tran van ba, that is why is was deleted. I researhed the article from the website Order of the Dragon of Anamm http://www.orderofthedragon.homestead.com myself and http://www.orderofthedragon.homestead.com/biographiesB.html gathered my own research and confirmed the photo as fair use. I conducted my own research for the new article as a biography. Jimmyvanthach 18:40, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • My own vote, obviously, is to leave it deleted. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:28, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't think speedy deletion reason 5 applies to user space. Undelete. Wait a second. I'm confused about this. Is the article the same as the one which was deleted on VfD? Temporarily undelete so we can examine the history. anthony (see warning) 20:44, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete, clearly. Sounds like verifiable info to me. Sam [Spade] 20:53, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • To the best of my recollection, this user created many articles about alleged members of the Vietnamese royal family and these articles were very widely seen as problematical. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Tran_Van_Ba for background. I would not be too sure just how verifiable the information in the article Tran Van Ba really is. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:05, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Everyking 21:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Per Anthony's request I've temporarily restored the page. In response to his comments: a) it's not in user space. b) It is either identical or nearly identical to the article which was voted for deletion. c) You will have to quiz User:Jimmyvanthach as to his identity and relationship to User:Tran Van Ba and to the subject of the article Tran Van Ba. If memory serves me, he acknowledged that User:Jimmyvanthach is the same person as User:Tran Van Ba. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:56, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. From what I understand, Jymmyvanthach has been masquerading as Tran Van Ba throughout the Internet, and the real Tran Van Ba has asked him to desist. RickK 23:40, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

Journey Into Bliss

Appears to have been deleted out of process. anthony (see warning) 13:53, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Falls under cat 4 "Very short articles with little or no context". The article was a substub. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 14:58, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

List of terms associated with the color blue

RickK deleted this redirect which was created by me, saying that it was "Undeleted out of process". However, 1) the article was originally deleted, not the redirect, and 2) the article was deleted out of process, as there was no consensus for deletion, and is a candidate for speedy undeletion. anthony (see warning) 04:49, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Honey Nut Cheerios Bee

Another out of process deletion by Geogre. anthony (see warning) 13:52, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

October 17

Helen Neil

Not a speedy deletion candidate. anthony (see warning) 21:44, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Again your skewed interpretation. Keep deleted. RickK 22:07, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
    • Which reason for deletion does this fall under in your (presumably unskewed?) interpretation? anthony (see warning) 22:18, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • On checking, it turns out that Helen Neil was indeed married to Sir Alexander Mackenzie, bore him three children, and died after seven years of marriage. Whether it could ever have been more than a stub or a redirect I don't know, but I think Poccil may have been hasty making this a speedy. Mackensen 04:33, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I passed over it myself rather than deleting it, because the content was coherent and more than a tautology, seemed prima facie legit, and was potentially expandable. Probably only useful as a redirect, but borderline speedy at best. Postdlf 04:51, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Topological Geometrodynamics

The Topological geometrodynamics page has been deleted without notice amid the voting for deletion. I don't know if it has been vandalized or some admininistrator tried to elude an unfavorable discussion. Anyway I wish to call the administrators' attention on the episode and ask for making the page again available until the vote for deletion is reasonably judged. Hitherto, the only argument of deleters (one of them tells at his homepage that he did not have enough brains to become emathematician!) was that TGD is original(!) work and that its creator is not famous. This kind of voting circus looks very weird already in light of the fact that the Mathematical Subject Classification Table of American Mathematical Society: Quantum Theory section has link to TGD.

The article went through VfD and was deleted through due process. Keep deleted. If you really feel that the aritlce should be kept, you might want to let us know who you are. RickK 06:29, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

  • My name is Matti Pitkanen. For my Curriculum Vitae see my homepage


  • Undelete. Reason for VfD seems to have been invalid. There are a number of references to this concept on a number of academic sites. anthony (see warning) 21:48, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • There is no such thing as an invalid reason for VfD. Consensus was delete. RickK 22:06, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
      • What I mean is that the reason given for VfD seems to not be factually correct (hence invalid). There are a number of references to this concept on academic sites, which would imply that this is not original research. Therefore I vote to undelete. anthony (see warning) 22:15, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • I have my doubts about the references:
        • "Google: '"Topological Quantum Field Theory" site:.edu ' gives 1710 hits
        • "Google: '"geometrodynamics" site:.edu' gives 361 hits
        • "Google: '"topological geometrodynamics" site:.edu' gives seven hits, all from Matti Pitkanen
        • So we cannot judge the objective merits of TGD, but it clearly failed to impress academia.
        • Pjacobi 19:20, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • "Google: '"Qubit Field Theory"', 46 google hits. "Impressing academia" is not well determined by number of google hits. The claim of "original research" has not been proven. anthony (see warning) 04:44, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
          • I would not trust too much on academias. I have worked the 21 years after my PhD thesis without practically any support. My work indeed impressed academia. It does not require too much brain to realize the implications of the world view provided by TGD. It is perhaps good to remember that the opinions of German Academia about Einstein and his theories during Nazi era and Poincare's attitude towards Einstein's special relativity. By the way, what is your opinion the link from the Mathematics Subject Classification Table of American Mathematical Society? Shouldn't we try to DELETE also it? Matti Pitkanen.


  • There seems to be organized attempt to prevent TGD to get public attention and even vandalism is accepted as a tool to achieve this. Today (17.10) I found that also the reference from Space-time theories of consciousness(not written by me) to my work as well as my homepage appearing as an external reference were deleted. Really dirty. I expect that the administrators tell here who is responsible this link deletion process. Matti Pitkanen
  • Keep deleted - I am glad to learn that my homepage is read from Finland :-) but totally maintain my initial opinion. I add a note to Mr Pitkanen : Wikipedia:Undeletion_policy requires to place a notice on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion with a link to the Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion heading for the article., and a note to experienced editors : this requirement is not very clear ; due to the shape of VfD page with its inclusion of subpages, some more precise instructions on how to insert this notice would be welcome. --French Tourist 15:45, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)


  • Perhaps the best solution would be for someone other than Mr. Pitkanen to provide an article on this topic. This would get around the difficulty of the original researcher submitting articles about his own research. Since Mr. Pitkanen's theories do have supporters that were willing to come to Wikipedia and cast votes that could not (due to the vfd process) be considered in the voting, one would think that at least one of these supporters could provide such an article. Until then, I think it's keep deleted under the "no original research" rule. --jpgordon {gab} 16:29, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • This would be ok for me. Matti Pitkanen.


  • Keep deleted as long as no evidence from someone other than Mr. Pitkanen is given. Unfortunately his attempts to insert links or mention his theory in a number of places speaks against him. --Pjacobi 19:09, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Just a modest proposal to maintain some respectability of Wikipedia. What if the content of the article would be the basic criterion rather than whether the author is an academic power holder? What if Wikipedia would require every DELETE with a list of ten good arguments why, which would demonstrate that the person can read, has read the article, and even understood something about it? Otherwise the voting could be done by a lottery machine. Or why not hire monkies to push on delete or non delete button. Matti Pitkanen.

October 15

Butterface

Improperly deleted. Expandable. Speedy undelete.anthony (see warning) 14:14, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Keep deleted. Anthony, elaborate as to why you think the following content is expandable and not nonsense. No short answers—fully explain your reasoning so we know you're not just wasting our time. Postdlf 15:11, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Content was: "Butterface: A female who has a very good-looking body but an ugly face (comes from "Everything looks good but her face"). Used by males."
    • Let's see. It's a real term, and that's the right definition and etymology, hence it's not nonsense. And one could expand the article in many ways, including adding a history section, links to similar terms, expanding the etymology section, example uses, etc. Despite what some of you may believe, "patent nonsense" doesn't mean "I haven't heard of it". This was improperly deleted, and is a candidate for speedy undeletion. anthony (see warning) 21:35, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep deleted. Anthony's response is nonsense. This was a speedy deletion candidate and deserved to be speedy deleted. Even if there were a modicum of a chance that this article was worth keeping, it would certaily only be worth keeping on Wiktionary, and I don't believe that's the case either. And despite what Anthony may believe, "I've heard of it" doesn't mean it isn't "patent nonsense". RickK 22:05, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
      • And despite what Anthony may believe, "I've heard of it" doesn't mean it isn't "patent nonsense". You misread what I said. A number of admins seem to think that anything they haven't heard of is patent nonsense. As for this being a speedy deletion candidate, under which criterion? Apparently for you, "nonsense" means you disagree, because my response was not nonsense by any other definition. anthony (see warning) 22:20, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • See geek or nerd or asshole for examples of how this can be expanded. anthony (see warning) 22:51, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • It does seem like there is some usage of this. There is a Butterfacewear clothing line, a number of insignificant bands called Butterface, and a Howard Stern-sponsored Butterface competition. That still doesn't amount to "expanding the etymology" (?!), but "history" perhaps. Can't say it was a mistake to think that it was a worthless and unexpandable excuse for an "article", however, and I don't think anything is lost by letting it stay dead. However, if Anthony wants to submit a fully expanded version, showing this mysterious expanded etymology (seemed moronically straightforward to me) and examples of usage from the Elizabethan era to the present, let's see a proposal. You do know that if a worthless article on a valid topic is deleted, you can still write a worthy article on it, don't you? Postdlf 05:06, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Geez, I didn't even know about the Howard Stern contest. That proves that this isn't patent nonsense, and thus that the article wasn't worthless. So to answer your question, yes, I do realize that if I'm beating my wife I can stop. anthony (see warning) 05:12, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • The reason given for the speedy deletion was that it was "nonsense". The Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion category 1 is "No meaningful content or history (e.g. random characters). See patent nonsense". Patent nonsense identifies two categories: "Total nonsense, i.e., text that has no assignable meaning at all" and "Stuff that, while apparently meaningful after a fashion, is so completely and irremediably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to try to make head or tail of it". It also excludes "poorly written stuff" from that classification. I asked the deleting admin to explain how the article qualified as a speedy deletion and more than 24 hours later have received no reply, while the admin has been active. This dictionary definition is clearly not patent nonsense as described in deletion policy, so I've undeleted it as an out of process deletion and will be listing it on VfD shortly, as required by undeletion policy. Jamesday 13:23, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

List of terms associated with the color blue

The article was not POV, and was of actual terms commonly associated with the color blue Andros 1337 12:32, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Raymond Chen

This article was entirely factual, and was summarily deleted by an admin simply because he did not like the username who created it. (NOTE:unsigned comment by User:KingOfAllTrolls)

  • I went ahead and restored it—there was enough content to keep it from being a speedy deletion, and it wasn't patently false or nonsensical on its face. Based on a quick googling it looks pretty much accurate, but I can't yet vouch, of course, for whether it would or should survive a VfD. BTW, please sign your comments—you can do this with ~~~~ (four tildes). Postdlf 05:28, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Good move. He's one of the more famous Microsoft programming employees - a name I recognised instantly as one of the key Windows developers. Jamesday 16:13, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Alpha Epsilon Pi Gamma Deuteron

The entry was totally factual, and I wrote it (it's not a copyright violation). The entry seems to have been deleted by someone who just deleted hundreds of pages within several minutes with indiscretion (deleted by Lupo) - Shomanjk 01:13, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • The article was a copyright violation and sat on the Copyright problems page with no one objecting to it being deleted. It was deleted through complete process, if you were the original author, you needed to tell us so and that you had released it under GFDL and realized that it would be edited. Until you do such things, copyright violations will be deleted. RickK 06:24, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. Author has now stated that it is not a copyright violation. anthony (see warning) 21:51, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep deleted until author explicitly releases it to GFDL. RickK 05:31, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
      • The author did explicitly release it to GFDL by submitting it to Wikipedia. Should we go around deleting everything you and every other editor contributed too, because you didn't "explicitly release it to GFDL"? That's ludicrous. The author claims it's not a copyright violation, and you have not shown any evidence that this is not the case. You seem to be of the opinion that we can never fix something which we've mistakenly deleted unless it was deleted out of process. That is clearly untrue under our undeletion policy. Yes, the author should have spoken up when this was first listed, but for whatever reason the author didn't. Now that the author has spoken up there keeping the article deleted without an argument as to why it is a copyright violation is lunacy. At the very least I request that this be temporarily undeleted so that I can examine the text and edit history to try to get a sense of how likely it is that this is a copyvio. anthony (see warning) 13:40, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • By this definition, there can be NO copyright violations, because anyone who puts it on Wikipedia is releasing it to GFDL. If you would bother to understand proper procedure instead of trying to establish it, you would see that the Copyright problems boilerplate requests that the author indicate ON THE ARTICLE'S TALK PAGE that they are the owner and are releasing it. RickK 19:39, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
      • By this definition, there can be NO copyright violations, because anyone who puts it on Wikipedia is releasing it to GFDL. Not sure what you claim I was defining, but if the person releasing the text under the GFDL is not the copyright holder, then there is still a copyright violation. If you would bother to understand proper procedure instead of trying to establish it, you would see that the Copyright problems boilerplate requests that the author indicate ON THE ARTICLE'S TALK PAGE that they are the owner and are releasing it. A request in the boilerplate is hardly policy. But let me clarify. Is your only objection to undeletion the fact that Shomanjk said that he was the copyright holder here instead of the talk page of the deleted article? If I put a copyright violation notice on Bill Gates, do we have to delete it until every single contributor puts a note on the talk page? Are you disputing the fact that Shomanjk is the copyright holder? Just what is your objection to undeletion? anthony (see warning) 19:53, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • Yes, I am still disputing the undeletion until such a time as the person who claims to be the copyright holder indicates in the proper place that he/she is, in fact, the copyright holder, and does so in the proper place. RickK 23:38, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. The Recycling Troll 20:02, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • On what grounds? RickK 23:38, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

October 12

October 4

David Connor

No evidence deletion policy was followed. anthony (see warning) 23:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Content was "REDIRECT David Conner (naval officer) ". Redirects for deletion says that illiterate redirects can be deleted. Keep deleted. RickK 00:01, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
    • They can be deleted, if people don't find them useful, but they can't be speedily deleted. anthony (see warning) 00:03, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Agreed. Undelete and rfd. Mackensen 00:11, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • A messy situation - we have a David Conner and a David Conner (naval officer), both of whom are sometimes misspelled as David Connor (including by supposed authorities!) plus Googling suggests there are additional encyclopedia-worthy people of the name, maybe misspelled, maybe not, so I deleted the redir to make slate clean until it's sorted out. But if somebody else wants to undelete and do the grunt work to fix all up, fine by me, it's not that interesting of a subject. Stan 00:34, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Recreate either as a disambig page or redirect to David Conner and turn that into a disambig page. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 13:54, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete, there is no reason to speedily delete here. Sam [Spade] 20:52, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Incorporate a company dot com

Request temporary undelete to check contents. anthony (see warning) 23:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Content was "Incorporateacompany.com is a UK based company specialising in company incorporations. Providing incorporation and company formation services over 70 jurisdictions worldwide, the incorporateacompany.com website can enable you to set up your company quickly and efficiently with just a few clicks of a mouse button and incorporate offshore without leaving your house.External links incorporateacompany.com (http://www.incorporateacompany.com)". It's not policy to undelete an article just so somebody who isn't a sysop can see what its content was. If you want to see what it is, ask a sysop, don't list it here. Keep deleted. RickK 23:43, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
    • Read the top of the page. Temporary undeletion is one of the purposes of this page. "If you wish to view a deleted article, list it here and say why. A sysop will provide the deleted article to you in some form - either by quoting it in full, or by emailing it to you, or by temporarily undeleting it." In any case, now that I see the content, it doesn't appear to be a candidate for speedy deletion. Undelete. anthony (see warning) 23:49, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This was and is spam. We can undelete it but that would be a waste of time: I can predict the result of the vote right now. . . .
. . .
All votes will be to delete, except perhaps for one or two radical inclusionists and the article's creator, plus any sockpuppets that might wander in. Still want to undelete it? —No-One Jones (m) 01:16, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Yes. At least if it's undeleted and VFDed I can copy it into McFly before it gets redeleted. Besides, who knows, maybe people will realize that it's silly to delete these articles when they can be cleaned up instead. anthony (see warning) 01:24, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • If we undelete it all that'll happen is that it'll get listed on vfd and deleted again. Seems like "just another place for Wikipedians to waste time that they could spend creating articles" (to quote Anthony directly). Keep deleted -- Graham ☺ | Talk 14:11, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • You have my full agreement that VFD wastes everyone's time. But wasting time isn't all that will happen, as I've said above. At the very least I request temporary undeletion so that I can back this article up. anthony (see warning) 14:55, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • You can back it up from the content posted here. The original author was an anon so you don't need the history. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 13:30, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • So there was only one author, and it was an anon? I suppose I could manually insert this into the sql database if so. Let me know, and I'll withdraw this request if no one else has voted undelete. anthony (see warning) 14:14, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. [[User:Bkonrad|User:Bkonrad/sig2]] 14:18, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Johnleemk | Talk 18:39, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Allography

No evidence deletion policy was followed. Undelete and list on cleanup. anthony (see warning) 23:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Content was "allography is a fake signature". Undelete and move to Wiktionary. RickK
  • Undelete - the Wikipedia:Deletion log shows numerous deletions, each with different content (some much more detailed than RickK quoted). -- Netoholic @ 01:31, 2004 Oct 5 (UTC)
    • I listed the version that was deleted. RickK 01:34, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. A dictdef at best, at worst, spam. [[User:Bkonrad|User:Bkonrad/sig2]] 14:39, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Dictionary definitions are not speedy deletion candidates, and dictionary definitions which can be expanded aren't deletion candidates at all. anthony (see warning) 15:55, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • There was no content worth keeping. The red links are still there if anyone is interested in creating an actual article. This was a valid candidate for speedy deletion. older≠wiser 16:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • The version above has a lot of content worth keeping. Why do you believe the content above isn't worth keeping? anthony (see warning) 16:36, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
          • Because it is either flat out wrong or at best misleading. Nearly every reference I could find for allography makes no mention at all of fake signatures. The long version was both spam and unhelpful, while the short version was simply unhelpful. older≠wiser 17:00, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
            • That's cute. When an article documents its source, it's spam, and when it doesn't, it's misleading. If other sources have a different definition, you can add them. And documenting your sources is not spam. anthony (see warning) 20:12, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
              • Hmm, the advertisement was longer than the largely unhelpful definition--looks like spam to me. Perhaps there was potential for expansion, but the way I see it, this was a valid judgement call. Others may have done differently, but I don't see that speedy deleting this violated any policy. older≠wiser 11:22, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
                • The length could easily have been reduced by putting it in the references section. The way I see it this was a bad judgement call, and that's why I nominated this for undeletion. That doesn't violate policy either. anthony (see warning) 14:17, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I rewrote this (it was on requested articles and I didn't realise it was a candidate for undeletion) and made it more than a dicdef. It still might be a good idea to undelete and merge the dicdefs into the page history. fabiform | talk 16:19, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Partialism

Request temporary undelete to check contents. anthony (see warning) 23:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Most recent version was a duplicate of account. Last non-account version was "Partialism can refer to many things. It can mean the religion, a Christian sect who believes in atonement which is only for part of mankind. But it also has a much different sexual meaning. In the sexual meaning you are addicted to the part of the person and not the person. So both are very different, but both are based on the word part.". Keep deleted. RickK 23:52, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
  • The non-account version is possible, though it would also be VfD'd immediately. It was overwritten by the "account" creator. As having contents that were nonsensical (did not match topic, not related to topic, made no sense), it was deleted for nonsense. Could be undeleted and sent to VfD, if reverted. Keep deleted. Geogre 00:21, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • You're not supposed to delete an article which has a valid history. Undelete. anthony (see warning) 00:29, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Revert and undelete. This term has both of the meanings described. It will probably never be more than a disambiguation note, but is worth noting nonetheless. [[User:Bkonrad|User:Bkonrad/sig2]] 14:37, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I've made it into a disambig page, and made 2 stubs for both meanings. Evercat 22:13, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Kelly Makin

No evidence deletion policy was followed. anthony (see warning) 23:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Content was "Kelly Makin is a film director. His name is Kelly, but he is a guy.". Keep deleted. RickK 23:54, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted: no content. Geogre 00:24, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Which of you is lying, Rick or Geogre? Because one of you says there is content, and one of you says there isn't. anthony (see warning) 00:44, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted, and block Anthony for 24 hours for trolling per Wikipedia:Requests for Arbitration/Standing orders/Anthony. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete and turn into a substub. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 14:41, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm inclined to leave this one deleted. I personally dislike this type of substub and consider well within bounds for speedy deletion. [[User:Bkonrad|User:Bkonrad/sig2]] 15:05, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • IMDb indicates he is indeed a film director, albeit a fairly minor one, so I vote to undelete and call it a substub, but without enthusiasm. Everyking 13:06, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Why does this page exist but with no content, only a protected message? Either delete it or restore the substub. Everyking 23:51, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

October 2

Ceqli language

A while ago, I added Ceqli to the List of languages when I was adding a bunch of languages. When I came back to the article recently and looked around, I noticed the link had been changed from Ceqli to Ceqli language. Curious, I clicked on Ceqli language and looked at what linked there. I learned that an article on the language had been created and deleted. This is one of the best-known and most often-linked logical languages (Lojban and its ilk) out there. I went on to read the VfD debate. To my chagrin, I saw people from the conlang community dismiss this as too obscure to have an article in Wikipedia, speaking as if they "didn't know enough about it", etc. The conlangers did not, however, specify that they had "never heard of it". In the end, someone deleted based on a for-against count that included a strange exclusion of "dubious votes" (which users' votes were dubious? known screennames of conlangers?). Even after a lot of new information was added and the article got a lot of tuning up, the early votes to delete were still counted. I thought this language was important enough to get linked in List of languages and I'm not even the creator! There are people who care about this, so give it an undelete. Wiwaxia 02:10, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ceqli language and Talk:Ceqli language - it would appear that it appeared on vfd and was deleted, and then was undeleted because the vote was recounted. I don't know why this page is no longer there, there doesn't appear to be any comment by the last admin who deleted this article as to their reasons. As such I have undeleted it as it appears to have been deleted out of process. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 02:18, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Actually having done a further study I've re-deleted the article: see the full archived discussion here. The vote was counted and recounted a number of times, and although it was undeleted due to the recount provided by one user it was deleted again due to the recount of another. Having trawled through (very difficult to read) deletion debate I believe consensus was reached (just) therfore this article should keep deleted. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 02:57, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • OK, that explains how the votes were counted, but it doesn't deal with the questions of "obscurity" surrounding this language (including the fact that apparently three different people made references to Ceqli in Wikipedia). Nor does it deal with the "before and after" factor (do the earliest "delete" votes still count?) The nominator, Kesuari, wouldn't even be straight with us as to whether it was deleted on the basis of alleged obscurity or of vanity (he started out saying only that the article was written by Ceqli's inventor, but after a while . . .) If I went out and wrote a noncopyvio article on Ceqli, would you delete it? Wiwaxia 23:55, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Someone's pet project, & no further evidence of notability has been offered. I counted the votes & deleted the article accordingly (see diff link given by Graham ☺ above). Wile E. Heresiarch 08:29, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • So you're going out and telling me that I was duped into adding "someone's pet project" to the list of languages, along with Verdurian, Teonaht, Talossan (which I added to that lists months before the article got created and subsequently appeared on VfD, by the way) and Ro? There is no way that this can be fit into the same category as "Sardonio" and those other conlangs I never heard of that got listed. It appears on just about every conlang list on the Internet there is (and even appeared in one of Wikipedia's conlang articles, according to the "What links here" function). Of all the languages that were ever mentioned in conlang (not counting Cimeran), why should this one get singled out? Wiwaxia 23:55, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Deleted once, undeleted for a recount, deleted again. Tha's all, folks. This should be de-listed here. Postdlf 17:12, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. I never saw any evidence that it was anything beyond a hobby for a few people. Not a serious language, seems to have no real speakers and no wider notability. Everyking 17:31, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • By the standards you are using, Toki Pona will have to deleted, as it is simply "a hobby for a few people". But it's pretty notable as conlangs come. With all the thousands of conlangs that are out there and mentioned on the Internet, this one appears on all the conlang lists and even the conlang list of a Wikipedia article according to "What links here". That's not even considering the fact that I added it. Also, I don't see how you got the idea that it was a hobby out of its description as a logical language. The logical languages -- Lojban, Loglan, Liva, gua!spi and Ceqli (I may have missed one). On the other hand, I had never heard of Toki Pona or Ithkuil before I came to Wikipedia and saw them mentioned. And as a further travesty, on the VfD debate Ceqli was argued to be obscure on the basis of a Google test when they didn't even count the Google hits for "Cheng-lee"! So let's look at all the facts here and add back this language to the slot in Wikipedia it deserves, shall we? Wiwaxia 23:55, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. This delete-undelete-delete stuff is just plain silly. -- Pjacobi 01:51, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Exactly. So why would you vote to undelete something that has been deleted via the appropriate process? Keep deleted, by the way. RickK 20:21, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. As conlangs go, it's moderately notable; it's no longer simply one person's pet project, and hasn't been for quite a while, as I understand. -- pne 07:10, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I'd like to know who are these other people who are contributing to the Ceqli project. Rex May always talks about the project in the first person: [3] [4] [5] Bruce Gilson, who has played a significant role in the promotion of Ceqli at Wikipedia, and who thus presumably knows something about Ceqli, hasn't heard of anyone else working on it: _Are_ there any other people who are working with you on Ceqli?
      • This is Rex May here, in case I somehow forget to sign that it's me at the end of this post. Here's the story. The basic idea of Ceqli was proposed to the Loglanists twenty or so years ago as a reform of the Loglan language. So, in a sense, Ceqli is largely just modified Loglan. Nothing remotely like Ceqli would ever had entered my head if Loglan hadn't existed. Now, the proposal was rejected completely. So, I let the idea simmer, and a few years ago, I began to systematically pull the ideas together for the language. In the beginning I got a lot of input, as you can see if you read through the newsgroup archives at [6] from people like Alexander Brown, Kevin Smith, Larry Sulky, And Rosta, etc. For the last year, especially since summer, the group has been rather moribund. Point is, I welcome input and suggestions. A language is all too large an animal to be the project of one person, especially a non-euroclone with a lot of a priori grammatical ideas (if not vocabulary) like Ceqli. Now, will somebody tell me the process wherein I can sign myself here as a "User"?

[7] People other than Rex May are trying to promote Ceqli at Wikipedia, it's true. I don't think that qualifies as working on the project. Wile E. Heresiarch 16:03, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Just because someone feels it's non-notable doesn't give them the right to censor the article from here. As if the Wikimedia projects were running out of disk space! So, sorry, but where exactly does it say on Wikipedia:Deletion_policy that this article would've been viable for deletion? It's not advertising and as stated, it surely is not just a hobby of a couple of people. Languages are getting their own Wikipedias on much more questionable merits. --Tmh 09:53, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete! I tried to get this undeleted before, as a result of what I felt was an incorrect count that deleted it in the first place. Now that it's being reconsidered, my position hasn't changed; it deserves an article, and never should have been deleted in the first place. -- BRG 13:23, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
    • (1) You've stated elsewhere [8] that your goal here at Wikipedia is promotion of conlangs: we tried to get some reference to Rex May's Ceqli on Wikipedia and especially I still believe that Wikipedia is a good way to get public exposure of the conlangs we like. That's all well & good, but promotion is quite contrary to Wikipedia's goals. In another message [9] you hit the nail right on the head: I don't think any of us are that involved in the wikipedia community. The essential problem is that you see Wikipedia as the vehicle for the promotion of a personal project. Sorry, you'll have to take it elsewhere. (2) Re: incorrect count -- I counted the votes & deleted the article. So you must mean I counted incorrectly. Please review this tally [10] and tell us where I went wrong. Wile E. Heresiarch 15:49, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete! Though I personally do not like it, Ceqli is an interesting constructed language. Perceived lack of relevance on the part of those who seem to claim to know what is relevant can hardly count as an argument. Add to that the dubious deletion process itself: As far as I can tell, the page should never have been deleted at all. -- Ar 15:11, 2004 Oct 9 (UTC)
  • Undelete. I am interested in conlangs. In fact, I found Wikipedia by following a link from a conlang Wiki. I find Ceqli a notable conlang. It is no longer a one-person project. I hope that my interest in conlangs does not disqualify my vote. -- Felix Wan 21:19, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

List of civilian killed by US force in Fallujah

This article was deleted two weeks ago. I've discussed this with Graham, who deleted it, and I'm convinced that he acted in good faith. It seems that we have a difference of opinion on the interpretation of the deletion policy. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, so please bear with me if this is the wrong forum for bringing this up, and point me in the right direction. I want to get the article undeleted, but more importantly, I want to clarify the deletion policy and, if it turns out that Graham's interpretation was correct, I would propose that the policy be changed.

If I understand him correctly, Graham considers "consensus" to be roughly synonymous with "two-thirds majority" and routinely deletes articles with an edit summary of "deleted per consensus" if there are less than one third votes against deletion. In the present case, there were only two votes against, but they made up about two thirds of the arguments presented in the discussion. Almost all the deletion votes were one-liners without detailed arguments, and no-one bothered to counter my detailed arguments for keeping. What's more, shortly before the page was deleted, I had argued on the VfD page why I thought it would be problematic if the article was deleted by a majority vote, and had made specific alternative proposals. No-one commented on these, and Graham deleted the page without answering my objections. This has nothing to do with consensus as I understand it. It is simply a counting of votes, with a two-thirds threshhold for deletion. I think that would be a bad policy, but if that is indeed the policy, it should be stated much more clearly in the guidelines.

In my view, the attempt to reach a consensus is something quite distinct from a majority rule, be it 1/2 or 2/3. It is an attempt to use public reason to understand each other, take into account each other's concerns and arrive at a solution with which everyone, not just a majority, can be content. Of course I am aware that this will not always be possible, and there will always be situations where a majority vote against a discontented minority cannot be avoided, but the idea of striving for consensus to me means that one tries hard to avoid such situations. In the present case, almost no attempt in this direction was made. Almost everyone seemed to be quite happy with being able to outvote and ignore me. This is not how I would like Wikipedia to be. I think deleting an article is a serious matter, and IMO a policy that allows it to be done without even bothering to respond to the counterarguments is a very bad policy.

I'd like to quote some passages that seem to support my interpretation. I'm not doing this to prove Graham wrong; I'm sure he was acting with the best intentions and I appreciate that he takes so much time for this administrative stuff. But it seems to me that the spirit that I'd like to see embodied in the deletion guidelines is in some places already there, and could perhaps be made more explicit.

The Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators say

"When in doubt, don't delete",

and under "Rough consensus":

"most Wikipedians who have witnessed rough consensus after acrimonious debates feel that the delays often result in better results"

The proposal for Wikipedia:Managed Deletion says:

"Nor will this proposal eliminate the vital deliberative nature of VfD, but it is designed to cut down on the clutter and make it a truly deliberative page."
"The sheer volume of nominations can make it virtually impossible to reason together and consider articles carefully, case by case, which is what VfD is for."

If we can reach a consensus (!) that this is indeed what VfD is for, I would offer to draw up a revised version of the deletion guidelines to more clearly reflect this.

Right, I hope I haven't annoyed the hell out of everyone with this rather longish post; please feel free to move it if it belongs somewhere else.

One more thing, though: the text of {{subst:vfd bottom}} is decidedly unhelpful -- I had no idea what "the relevant 'live' pages" are -- there should be links to VfU and the deletion policy there.

Finally, it goes without saying that I would appreciate any responses to my original arguments on the VfD page :-) Fpahl 16:26, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Undelete. Gzornenplatz 19:21, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Proper VfD. Postdlf 19:44, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Valid Vfd process. Keep deleted. RickK 20:19, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. I have already made my feelings known to Fpahl - friendly fire and soldiers being killed by their own side is an encyclopedic subject, IMO, but this article was badly named and extremely POV and properly deleted. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 21:13, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. Guanaco 01:03, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Jayjg 05:52, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: Writing more than the next guy does not make your vote count more. You're encouraged to (succintly) explain your vote rationale, but there is no requirement that someone address every one of your points. VFD stands for votes (not arguments) for deletion. On one hand, you brought up a few good points; on the other hand, this deletion was valid. No vote from me. • Benc • 06:49, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I don't want my vote to count more. When it has to come to counting votes, every vote counts the same. I want my arguments to count. Thanks for the more-than-one-liner, though – this was beginning to have a slightly Kafkaesque feel to it... Fpahl 08:05, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Sorry — I didn't mean to imply that you or anyone else wants your votes to count more (but hey, who wouldn't?) :-) Anyway, votes on VFD and its sister pages have a way of being either too terse or too long and redundant. We're all aiming for both efficiency and clarity, but it's very hard to accomplish both. To make sure your arguments count, make them as easily digestable (short and sweet) as possible. It's an art. (And it's applicable to writing encyclopedia articles, too.) • Benc • 08:41, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I do think it a pity that no one adressed Fpahls points. Although the the V does stand for votes that does not mean that a straight vote is all that is required. Historically VFD has actually been arguments for deletion not votes. (A debate that goes delete,delete,delete,delete,delete,I've rewritten it, Keep much better! would not be deleted even though 2/3 of the 'votes' were to delete) it says on the top of the VFD page that a "rough consensus" is required. It also says that some consider a 2/3 majority a rough consensus. I am not part of the some. I can't see how we can have a consensus without debate. For this reason I say undelete put through VFD a second time along with the list of 9/11 victims and actually try to reach a consensus on what's best to do rather than a straight vote. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 07:31, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. The original article, though badly named was not particularly POV and was being improved right up to the point it was deleted. Should be put through VFD paired with 9/11 victims. Bosmon 13:11, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. I was one of those who voted for the deletion, and with cause. However, I entirely agree with Fqah's points, which I think point out something I said on VfD just before I despaired of the legal deletion system of Wikipedia altogether: the duty of voters is not merely to vote, but also to provide a rationale for the vote. My recollection is that most of the "delete" voters were implying "me, too," but they really do need to say so. As for maintaining the deletion, it is because the article cannot be verified. To me, there is no real POV issue as much as the fact that casualty figures aren't being released by the US military, and casualties among the Iraqis are entirely impossible to estimate within a factor of 5. We could have an "Honor Roll of soldiers killed in the second Iraq War," but that's about all we could reliably do. Geogre 00:33, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Also, I must say that the voting on the Early Deletion proposal has nearly persuaded me to give up. It was a proposal that would have taken power away from administrators by forcing a community involvement, and people shrieked that new powers were being seized by Sysops. If the community is so blind (or so lazy and unwilling to read), then there isn't much hope for anyone's rewrite of VfD or SD policies, if there is a vote. Geogre 00:33, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete and rename.
    1. Correct the ungrammatical article title. "Civilian" (without "s") is ungrammatical, plus it might be better to write something like "by the (occupying) U.S. force" instead of just "by U.S. force"). Maybe a title of "List of civilian casualties in Fallujah" would be better?
    2. Yes, there will be substantial POV battles over such an article -- because the U.S. military and current U.S. government routinely say that all or most casualties had been "militants", "terrorists", or "enemy combatants". How they know in cases where babies and children have been among the dead that those were also "terrorists" is beyond me, but anyway. Of course such "classification battles" could be avoided by naming the article "List of Iraqi casualties in Fallujah" (or similar). However, on balance I think that (a) just because it's a controversial subject and it's difficult to establish the truth about it, we should not shirk away from trying, and (b) we could take a conservative approach and list only those dead that demonstrably were civilians (the babies for example). We could also (c) include both views on the list: The U.S. version ("Zero, I assure you. Next question?") and the Iraqi version (for which it could be interesting to solicit Iraqi help -- maybe these folks [11] could refer us to someone who knows).
    3. And yes, I think the fact that there is no such list for those killed in Fallujah is unacceptable. Gzornenplatz commented on the article's VfD page:
      • Keep of course, and additionally establish a Fallujah memorial wiki. (Or alternatively, delete and also delete the 9/11 memorial wiki.)
        Of course this is an inappropriate comparison: It is insulting to Iraqis because there was no Iraqi hand in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before the U.S. invasion (but there now is). But nevertheless: Gzornenplatz's comments do strike me as not totally besides the point: The near-3000 dead of the WTC attack get their own Wiki and the Fallujah dead get--not even a list? If Gzornenplatz's point was to say that that's a tad bit peculiar then I would agree.
    4. I do think that due process was followed in the said VfD. I disagree with the outcome, which to my mind demonstrates very inhumane and inappropriate but nevertheless widespread bias, but it really is one man, one vote and contesting that principle is not appropriate. Raising this VfU and following due process here however is.Ropers 01:32, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • No vote, because I really don't care if this gets deleted or not, but the fact that a majority of people need to vote for undeletion after a small majority vote for deletion flies in the face of consensus. anthony (see warning) 23:09, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. There can exist no certainty of who was a civilian and who is not, and unlike 9/11 Fallujah isn't a single identifiable incident with a specific number of victims but rather a series of battles in a city within a continuing wider war. There's no sense in limiting the conflict to "Fallujah" rather than the whole war in Iraq, there's no sense in talking about "killed by US force" (rather than killed in general -- how can you know for certain who was killed by US force and who wasn't) and the distinction between civilians and non-civilians is also uncertain. Keep deleted with extreme prejudice. Aris Katsaris 23:43, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • The presumption that there could not be certainty about the "civilian" status of (at least a fair share of) the dead is patently false.
      Media and other observers in Iraq and Iraqi civilians are no less human and no less credible than the US military (who know very well why they "don't do body counts"). I have now on my harddrive an Excel spreadsheet with a list of civilian Fallujah casualties based on http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ (I compiled the selection accourding to very strict criteria; multiple referenced accredited sources, civilians, places near Fallujah not included) and that list totals between 253 (reported min number) to 273 (reported max numbers) dead from 28 Apr 2003 through 10 September 2004. I obviously can't contribute that list until I know that the iraqbodycount.net folks are ok with that, but proof beyond reasonable doubt is out there. And yes, I do think a list is the least we should have. A Siege of Fallujah article (for that specific human catastrophe a while back) would be better. Ropers 23:57, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted with extreme prejudice. Ambi 07:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Ambi you are doing exactly what Fqah was complaining about. I assume that the fact that you said "extreme prejudice" means you feel pretty strongly on the subject? So please take a moment or two to explain your vote TIA Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 13:25, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete:
  • If we plan to have a war for making Cheney a gigaire, we should know the consequences such as the innocent people we kill -- whose relatives swear vengeance against us -- while we let Afghanistan fall back to the true enemy, and our enemies in Iran and Saudi Arabia --Saudis attacked us, lead by Saudis, financed by Saudi money -- go unchallenged.

September 30

September 20

September 7

Helmuth von Molke

A redirect deleted despite 2 of 5 votes to keep. — User:Docu

Helmuth Von Moltke and Helmuth Moltke were listed for deletion and neither is deleted. Can you link to the vote for Helmuth von Molke? With the last name so misspelled I would say it isn't a good redirect but I'd like to see the vote you reference. - Tεxτurε 23:14, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
See [12]. — User:Docu
I still don't see Helmuth von Molke as ever having existed. The redirect listed on RfD was Helmuth von Moltke and still exists. What am I missing here? - Tεxτurε 16:02, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Check the left side of the diff referenced above. The way talk was refactored, it may indeed appear that it was never listed. -- User:Docu
I don't think i'm the only admin reading this, but no one else has offered this, which i have slightly reformatted from Undelete/Helmuth von Molke and copied here for the benefit of non-admins, who may not be able to view the page at that URL.
--Jerzy(t) 20:40, 2004 Sep 18 (UTC)

Cut-and-pasted quote follows:

View and restore deleted pages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
If you restore the page, all revisions will be restored to the history. If a new page with the same name has been created since the deletion, the restored revisions will appear in the prior history, and the current revision of the live page will not be automatically replaced.

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REDIRECT Helmuth_von_Moltke
This redirect page has been listed on Redirects for deletion. Please see that page for discussion.


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This is a redirect from a misspelling or typo.

Pages using this link should be updated to link directly to the page this link redirects to.

List others. Edit the message.

See also: Template:R_from_alternate_spelling, Wikipedia:List of common misspellings

13:08, 7 Sep 2004 Jnc deleted "Helmuth von Molke" (Typo redir)
06:20, 2004 Sep 4 . . Docu ({{R from misspelling}})
22:39, 2004 Aug 12 . . Mackensen ()
22:28, 2003 Apr 29 . . Djmutex (moved to "Helmuth_von_Moltke")

[End of quoted undelete-page text pasted by Jerzy(t)]

Undelete, please, this is very useful. — i386 | Talk 13:52, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. RickK 04:56, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted -- too way out for a redirect, IMO. Geogre 21:51, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Mackensen 22:20, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted - Tεxτurε 00:57, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Undel. I have an extensive presentation of evidence and argument for undeletion in preparation, but it is still a too much of a mess to tentatively present, after 3 hours work. I beg a delay in any contemplated closing of this vote, since i must leave the terminal for a few hours, and possibly as many as 36. --Jerzy(t) 11:21, 2004 Sep 17 (UTC)
    • I have already given this far more time than 1 redir is worth, bcz it is a good object lesson. I'm embarrassed for WP that none of my colleagues voting keep deleted has deigned to respond to the initial assertion, not that its retention is wise, but that its deletion violated RfD procedure. 3 to 2 would suffice to keep an article, and it should suffice to keep a redirect, where the advice is that if anyone thinks a redir is useful, it should be assumed they are right. Two people thot so, and IMO arguments that the Redir in question is not useful are not in order here, and should be counted as non-votes.
Jnc, in the deletion summary, describes it as a "Typo redir", but it is a misspelling, not a typo. This is borne out by Djmutex saying (my big quote above) '(moved to "Helmuth_von_Moltke")', from title "Helmuth von Molke", and, a minute later, per a diff, correcting "Helmut" to "Helmuth". Djmutex summarizes the missing H as "typo", but neither the missing K nor the missing H is a typo, i.e., a random omission, addition, or misplacement of a keystroke. They both are omissions of a letter that either is silent or invites vocal elision by being awkward to pronounce:
  • "Helmuth" is pronounced indistinguishably from "Helmut", at least to most native-English ears;
  • "Moltke" cannot be fully pronounced without a moment of silence between the stop T and the K, and begs for the T to be softened to within danger of elision in order to reduce the effort of pronouncing it. (If you think the end syllable of the name is "kee", you will do the stop, but it is not "kee" but something less accented and more relaxed, between "keh" and "kuh". Thus if you learned his name from someone with a working knowledge of the language he spoke, you'll avoid the stop and barely pronounce the T, making it hard for non-native speakers of German (not necessarily excluding even the speaker listening to their own pronunciation!) to identify as being there.)
Djmutex systematically omitted "deprecated" letters, and that is misspelling, not a two one-time-fluke typos.
"Molke", by the way, has 100K hits when Google is restricted to German sites; it appears to me to mean something close to "whey". As a legitimate German word, it would be an easy misspelling to pick up.
The reason that we are counselled to take people's word for it about the usefulness of redirs is that such assertions are not just additional opinions, they are generally accurate insights that just happen not to be available to those who don't share them; saying the majority "disagree" with them is irrelevant and misleading. I will illustrate this with two cases that i believe most Americans have been exposed to constantly without any awareness of what they have heard:
  • The director of the CIA was replaced earlier this year; the outgoing director was George Te....t. Think of his surname. Pronounce it in your mind. Pronounce it out loud, doing your best to listen to what you are saying. Identify the common noun pronounced the same way. Do you have in mind a role or status that a person can have? Or a kind of abstract idea? Now hover your cursor over this link to his bio. I estimate 90% of American newsreaders pronounce it like this word, yet no outcry has arisen about it. The likelihood of misspelling his name is not a subject on which most people have any useful insight.
  • The spelling of the word "united" calls for three syllables: respectively, YOU or YUNE, something rhyming with KITE, and something like ED or UD or 'D. But by my observation, well over 95% of Americans rhyme the middle syllable with this word. You can avoid doing so, but it takes an effort; try it both ways, and note the difference in effort involved.
Moltke is the same kind of pronunciation problem, that leads to the kind of misspelling that Djmutex experienced, and will continue to do so despite claims they are typos. My German accent (as opposed to my fluency) is supposed to be pretty good (for a foreigner), but listening carefully to myself, i pronounce the T less prominently in a German sentence than i would in English, and it would be easy for monolingual English-speakers who heard it from me (and i suspect from native German-speakers) to infer and use the T-less spelling. Another person, who lived for years in German-speaking countries and had their professional capabilities judged by their prounciation more than their vocabulary, agrees with me that the T demands to be underpronounced.
The name "Helmuth von Moltke" is subject to two independent spelling errors, and to a choice of 3 treatmenats of the "von" (upper or lower case, and omitted). The total number of renderings of it that can result, without introducing random typos, is 3x2x2= 12 combinations. Of these, 1 is the preferred version, 4 have a single error (Helmuth Moltke, Von, Helmut, and Molke, and 7 with two or three. Each of the 4 reasonable 1-error versions needs a redirect, because entering a single-error version and getting "no article" means the reader will either give up or try changing something. If they aren't lucky enough (odds are close to 3-to-1 against them) to change first the one they blew, they are likely to wander in the wilderness of the 7 long enough to give up trying. I'm not arguing for having 11 redirects for this article (tho that proposal is not insane, since WP INP), but we need 4. If you can't understand how anyone could reasonably misspell it Molke, you may be right that you never would. We who can see that aren't claiming to be experts on what mistakes you could make, only on the ones we could make. We are probably experts on that; take our word for it.
--Jerzy(t) 20:40, 2004 Sep 18 (UTC)
The name is . . . George Tenet, I believe? Wiwaxia 02:38, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This is all well and good, but I imagine the majority of people looking up Moltke have read his name, not heard it pronounced. Moreover, while google does turn up 176,000 hits for "Molke", it returns only 312 for Helmuth von Moltke (not searched as a phrase, mind you, just those three words together). Of this hits, almost all refer to Wikipedia or Wikipedia-spawned sites. Now, I am indeed impressed by this presentation, but I submit that it does not address the more important issues involved: that this is a misspelling not generally found outside Wikipedia, and that this entire process has been made a cause celebre by trolls. Mackensen 02:13, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Many people have a good ear for a number of foreign languages that they do or don't speak; they hear ("in my mind's eye, Horatio") words in those languages pronounced as soon as they read them. Most of us, IMO, and especially those with a good ear, remember the pronunciation more strongly than the letters they deduced it from. (This parallels tactiscope procedures, in which subjects remember the word they saw for a small fraction of a second, but not how they saw it, in the sense that they can report the word but not what color or font it appeared in. Words' sounds are a deeply grounded human experience; written words are superficial ones. Everyone speaks and understands without conscious effort, but gaining the skills of reading and writing are arduous tasks.)
I admit to having focussed on searching for existing entries, but forestalling bad new entries is perhaps even more important; the need to merge Innocence Project bcz none of us who were involved in the VfD on Innocence project thought to fix its casing is the flip side of the problem: it was created because we had only the wrong title; someone may create Helmuth von Molke bcz we don't have a redir at the wrong title.
I may be missing your point about the trolls, since i have no idea what cause celebre and which "entire process" you're referring to. But it seems to me that the only thing we can do to avoid encouraging the trolls is to do what would be the right thing do if there were no trolls. I don't think we can out-game them, but rather that we give them another way to make us jump thru hoops whenever we try to plan around them.
--Jerzy(t) 04:04, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)
As to learning the name from reading or hearing, here's a great example that i stumbled on earlier today: American female multi-sport athlete, early 20th century, Babe D...r... Z...ri.... Most people probably learn her name from hearing it, but i invite anyone to assert their confidence that learning it from reading it would cause them to remember the correct spelling of either surname, rather than just reasonable approximations to the sound of them.
--Jerzy(t) 16:12, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. Ambi 03:28, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. This discussion does more harm than keeping the redirect in place. Guanaco 01:21, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep deleted. There are thousands of possible mispellings of this name; thousands of re-directs are not the answer. Jayjg 05:58, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Why not? Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 08:17, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • The anti-trolling maintenance effort increases exponentially with the number of articles and re-directs. Ideally only common alternative spellings, and perhaps extremely common mis-spellings, should be re-directed. Otherwise we'll have to undelete George Woshingtin as well. Jayjg 08:33, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • OK you make a fair point about not having every possible combination of misspellings. However this particular misspelling should still IMO stay (in the light of Jerzy's comments above) If the redirect is undeleted. I'll add it to my watchlist to keep an eye out for trolling. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 08:42, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
          • "Untied Nations" gets 4,240 Google hits. "William Shakspeare" gets 1,000. "Yewnited States" gets 30. How many is enough for a re-direct? Jayjg 08:52, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
            • Well all those three examples look fine for a redirect. Remember that we want to catch google traffic. It seems reasonable to me to assume that a lot more people are likely to put a spelling error into a google search than are to leave such an error in a website (What with spell checkers).So how many is enough? Hmm I don't know, 0 hits is too few IMO as if a spelling error is a "reasonable" one to make, we would expect someone to have made it. 1 could be a fluke, I think that between 2 and 10 is about right for a cut off point. They should of course be independent. Web pages that are copies of other web pages should not count. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 07:57, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Undelete. Agree with Guanaco. For crying out loud, it's only a redirect. What harm can it possibly have? Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 07:50, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • It encourages the trolls who come in and make more and more of these illiterate redirects. Redirects for deletion policy is to speedy delete illiteracies. RickK 01:38, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)
      • Trolls would make them whether or not we decide to keep this one. It might encorage people who think illiterate redirects are appropriate but that is not the same thing at all. Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 13:10, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Just kill this struggle and undelete the harmless redirect. Wiwaxia 02:38, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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