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Overdue AfD needs to be closed

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Major League Baseball players with 2000 hits is overdue for closure; it was opened on April 21, and the debate has petered out. The reason I'm posting this here is because the AfD slipped out of WP:AFD/O when it was (inappropriately) NAC-closed, an action which was subsequently reversed. Anyway, if an admin who hasn't participated would take a look, I would appreciate it. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 09:26, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Since I posted this, the debate resumed and Wizardman relisted the AfD. So, while it is still ripe for closure, this is no longer a special case; it will be listed on WP:AFD/O in a few days. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:16, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Donald Trump

Resolved

 – Folks, all I want is this to be fixed, somehow. With more users editing this, and assurances from disinterested admins that they will patrol this page, I am now fine with this situation. I hereby withdraw my proposal. Bearian (talk) 19:41, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Please read and comment at Talk:Donald_Trump#Close_to_beyond_repair. If it isn't repaired, or if I don't get any response otherwise, I will list this article next week at AfD. 01:24, 10 May 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bearian (talk • contribs)

Good luck with that. I predict SNOW keep without even looking at the article first. I'd honestly recommend ongoing repair attempts, involving WP:BLPN as necessary. Jclemens (talk) 01:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:TNT needs to be packed into that article --Guerillero | My Talk 02:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

We do have the ability to take some rather drastic action if necessary; I doubt that deletion is needed at this juncture. T. Canens (talk) 02:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

step III needed

Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Olympic class starship needs to be converted to Wikipedia: Articles for deletion/Olympic class starship, and added to the day list. 184.144.163.181 (talk) 06:04, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

 Done Done.   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 06:43, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Olympic class starship

An editor removed the AfD banner from the article Olympic class starship, which is under active discussion. Do I jusr revert it? 184.144.163.181 (talk) 08:01, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

No, you ignore it per the discussion here.   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 08:16, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The instructions at PROD are that if it is disputed, it is sent to AfD to establish consensus. A one day discussion does not establish consensus, merely that it is disputed whether it should be deleted or not. I can transfer the entire discussion over from the PROD discussion to the AfD discussion. As I closed the PROD discussion, because the prod was disputed, and opened the AfD, since it was disputed, that seems to be the procedure for these things. 184.144.163.181 (talk) 10:35, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The instructions should say that if you still feel the article should be deleted after the Prod is removed then the only option is to bring it to AFD. If the discussion has swayed you in feeling that that the article will survive an AFD there is no requirement to take it to AFD. From my viewpoint looking at the discussion and the article, the article would survive an AFD and not be deleted. It is well sourced to reliable sources. GB fan (talk) 10:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I was never swayed by the arguments presented by the PROD dissenters, since the references are for the most part primary sources. 184.144.163.181 (talk) 04:39, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Consensus was reached before it ever reached AFD. I made the mistake of opening an AFD on it without doing some homework first. Once I saw that section, I then closed the AFD. Now, if you'd like to open another AFD on it, what would be your reason?   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 10:59, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I missed the discussion above this one when I commented earlier. I don't know if that was a valid close, an AFD is supposed to be about expanding the number of editors looking at the article. In a discussion on the talk page the discussion is between people who have the article watchlisted for the most part and those are people who think the article should be kept so the discussion would be a consensus to keep the article. The AFD when you closed it had a delete recommendation already from an established editor. I am going to undo your close to let the discussion run until consensus is reached on that discussion. GB fan (talk) 11:23, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Why is the Rescue template mentioned in this process space, but not included in Policy, Process, Guide, or Administrator guidelines ?

If the template is official and part of policy, why is its usage not described as other than "in accordance with info given at WP:RESCUE" and not described in the four deletion instruction pages? Am I missing something? If some template usage abuse which occurs regularly isn't being dealt with by an informed Article Rescue Squadron, where would an editor go to further read Wikipedia on the template's proper use in relation to deletion policy? BusterD (talk) 02:05, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• The question is similar to that commonly raised by pointing to WP:BEFORE — the list of actions which we are encouraged to take before nominating an article for deletion. These include sensible ideas such as considering alternatives to deletion and searching for sources. But whenever this is brought up, the editors who do not wish to do these things observe that WP:AFD (the page on which WP:BEFORE appears} is not marked as a policy or guideline. But what is it then? If the entire deletion process is not governed by policy then we may do as we please? Colonel Warden (talk) 03:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE is maintained here in the appropriate talkspace with hundreds of eyes watching. Template:Rescue isn't even maintained on it's own talk page; ARS members regularly steer discussion away from templatetalkspace and onto projecttalk where the same 10-15 editors (now minus Benjiboi, who was truly charming for a banned user) will fail to address issues raised by different editors approaching the project separately in good faith. BusterD (talk) 15:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not certain I see an answer to my question. Is the Rescue template a part of any policy or guideline, or is it merely a project template? Given the issues I raised at Village pump, I'm wondering how the squadron can fix such a problem by itself. BusterD (talk) 03:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a project template, devoted to carrying about what is already policy, the WP:Deletion Policy#alternatives to deletion: "If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion. " To change policy requires a supermajority, and the minority at Wikipedia who disagree with the policy of saving articles do not have anywhere near the consensus to overthrow it, but can prevent the consensus to say it more emphatically. DGG ( talk ) 05:15, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Just curious, why would people be opposed to saving encyclopedic content? -- Avanu (talk) 16:12, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Because we're never gonna be able to compress Wikipedia into 30 printed volumes unless we cut, cut, cut!!! Carrite (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Nobody is opposed to saving encyclopedic content that can be supported by high-quality reliable sources. However, some people's "encyclopedic content with high-quality sources" is other people's "tabloid fodder with junk citations". For example, I recently saw a well-intentioned and experienced editor stuff a BLP with a dozen third-party citations to "support" the text and "prove" notability, but when you looked at them, the actual content was absolutely trivial, like a book that merely cited a paper he wrote in the footnotes, or mentioned his name as an example of an author who wrote about a given subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. People see some insipid news-of-the-day story and rush here to create a Wikipedia article about it without the slightest consideration or recentism, not-news, and other guidelines. It's like monkeys flinging poo at the wall; some sticks (homeless man becomes radio announcer), many do not (news reporter has seizure on-air). Tarc (talk) 15:32, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

William R. Craft, jr.

This article is self-promotion and has already been deleted twice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.195.177.190 (talk) 09:48, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: additional guidelines/suggestions on AFD to help mitigate exodus of Wikipedia Volunteers

Hi guys. I'd like to propose the addition to the article for people looking for guidelines on AFD. This place has become a bit hostile to new users and some of the deletion trigger-happiness have caused many sincere volunteers to become frustrated, disillusioned and leave. Hopefully this addition may mitigate it?

Please exercise caution, common sense and discretion before nominating an article for deletion. Wikipedia is losing a large number of volunteers due to frustration on excessive article deletion -- a big problem that needs to be addressed. To allow an article to grow organically and be properly shaped and fleshed out by multiple users, wait a number of days before tagging or proposing an article for deletion. Contributors who start new articles may not have the time to immediately produce an article that is up to Wikipedia's standards upon creation. Also, be friendly to newbies. Many volunteers who start articles are new to Wikipedia and hostility to new users is seen as one of the problems that is causing an exodus of contributors.

What do you guys think?

A some things that happen it comes to editing and moderating here have been downright ridiculous and go counter to common sense. 10 of Wikipedia's wackiest arguments - In Depth: Behind every page there's a battle raging for control All the rules and guidelines are here for good reason, but sometimes, other editors get caught too much in enforcing narrow sets of rules too much to the detriment of the entire community and lose sight of the forest for the trees. -Object404 (talk) 16:44, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a terrible idea for inclusion here as it's irrelevant to the AfD process and redundant to WP:BITE, not to mention being synthesis. Feel free to make a user-space essay along the lines of Wikipedia:Why I Hate Speedy Deleters. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

You could address this concerns asking for new garbage articles to be moved to user-space instead of deleted. There they could live their few days test-drive before being ruthlessly (and rightfully) proded. --Damiens.rf 18:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

One question here is how is this text going to change behavior?  I started a discussion here about an AfD that was started 19 minutes after an article was created.  As you can see, no one added to this discussion page.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The sources given above are full of misinformation that just shows how unreliable most modern journalism is, and how little the reporters concerned have bothered to check facts. Jezhotwells (talk) 08:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

As someone who has had his first unhappy deletion experience after about 5 years of intermittent participation and hundreds of edits, I agree that something is wrong with the deletion process. In my instance, the issue is one of self regulation. Deleters should have some expertise in the topic of the article; so I heartily endorse the addition proposed. Part of the problem is that I hate bureaucracy and have no understanding of the deletion process and probably never will. But the chutspah to delete someone else's contribution suggests that the deleter is unlikely to impose any self restraint even with this admonition. Probably they will never read it. Personally I have never deleted stuff except to change grammar and intended meaning by adding phrases. In my fumbling to create a discussion of the deleted topic I was even warned that I might be blocked. So it goes. Imersion (talk) 19:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Have you though that maybe there's something wrong not (only?) with the with the deletion process, but with the article creation process? Or actually, with the lack of a process for that. --Damiens.rf 20:35, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the deletion process is that there are three different ones. This is confusing. The one where you can tag an article for deletion, but the page creator can simply remove the tag to stop the process seems particularly useless. It's also hard to determine if an article should be put up for speedy deletion or not. It should be possible to come up with just **one** deletion process. but I'm not sure where the correct place to discuss that is. --OpenFuture (talk) 22:25, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Three thoughts:

• I think that adding this here is unnecessary and useless: it will not change people's behavior. If you'd like, it could join the list of essays on this subject.
• I think that AFD isn't driving away nearly as many editors as CSD and the tag-bombing of brand-new articles.
  • I think that some of those "editors" (read: spammers) actually need to be driven away.
• I think folks have been making this complaint since at least 2005, i.e., even back when the number of editors was still rapidly growing. As a result, I'm having a hard time believing that the sky is falling here. Mere proliferation, as measured in the rate of increase on the number of articles, is not the actual goal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I do think people are driven away, but not by deletionists, but by bullies. So after have read these reports I think they can be ignored. The problem is not that too many articles get deleted. I have myself had one article I created marked for deletion for entirely the wrong reasons, and that article didn't get deleted and he backed down after I implemented some suggested improvements. The articles that get deleted really should be deleted in the vast majority of cases. --OpenFuture (talk) 06:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This is an opinion piece and doesn't belong on the AfD process page. Placing this banner on the page because "Wikipedia is losing a large number of volunteers" doesn't solve the problem, in fact, it's more likely to exacerbate it, since it shows how desperate we are that we risk encyclopedic material to bring in new people. This should belong on an essay about deletion in general, not just AfD. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 07:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that changing our deletion standards would really solve the problem of people creating low-quality or unencyclopædic content. I'm more interested in retaining the subset of editors who actually create encyclopædic content and AfD is less vexing for those people. We could think of ways to move some new editors into that subset, but that is done by improving their editing, not by lowering the encyclopædia's standards. Also, expecting substantial subject-matter expertise from whoever hits the AfD button is unrealistic, as so many articles are deleted for low notability, and others are nonsense or fiction.

I'd be all in favour of an initiative to be nice to newbies, though, with a slightly more friendly approach to the CSDing or tagging of recently-created articles. We were all newbies once. bobrayner (talk) 11:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

New toolserver tools relating to AfD's

I have recently created two new toolserver tools which allow you to track statistics related to a user's activity at AfD. The first one allows you to view statistics related to a user's voting history at AfD, and it can be found at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/afdstats.html The second one allows you to view statistics related to an admin's AfD closure history, and it can be found at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/afdadminstats.html Feel free to contact me on my talk page if you find any issues, or if you have any suggestions or concerns. —SW— ^{spill the beans} 20:55, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Wow, very cool. Thanks for the all the hard work that you no doubt put into this! Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC).

Nice, Snotty. Thanks! --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:23, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Wow this is really interesting, thanks! doomgaze (talk) 01:41, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for Discussion concerning the future of AfD

AFD is different than all other X for discussion/deletion processes for one simple fact. This encyclopedia could still exist as an encyclopedia (though arguably not as user friendly) if all misc. project pages, categories, redirects, stubs, templates, and even images were all removed from Wikipedia.

The articles are simply the heart of the encyclopedia project.

And related to that, all the other items noted above, would seem to be more metaprocess from the perspective of the average user/editor. While editing an article in real time, has more of a "feel" to editing the encyclopedia.

So I would like to propose that AfD be deprecated in a particular way.

Individual AfD discussions should be on the talk pages of the article in question. the same way requested moves, and other such discussions are.

And just like seeming current practice with those, may be split to a sub page of the page in question if the discussion grows too large to be manageable on the talk page.

Why:

Because regardless of those of use who may be fluent in wiki-ese, and are decent at navigating project space, not every editor is. And I honestly don't think we should require them to be for discussing direct article content. (As opposed to things like redirects and categories which I would agree are better discussed at a central page.)

And as much as so many editors have sincerely tried many creative ways to try to make AfD open, transparent, and accessible, it just isn't.

It's a battleground of many wiki-philosphies (more than just the generic call of inclusionist or deletionist).

And it's a system and structure that is constantly gamed. (And I apologise in advance, but for now at least, I would prefer to not offer specific examples for this, for BEANS if no other reason.)

One of the most basic examples of this is: tag a page for deletion, using a poor or non existant edit summary; make one or more innocuous edits immediately after; then the fact that a particular page may be up for discusssion/deletion won't appear on watchlists (yes there are ways to modify the watchlist, but still...)

And then a discussion NOT on a talk page of the page in question, determines the fate of the page.

Compare to if it was on the article's talk page. The comments to the AfD should be more likely to light up someone's watchlist.

And more, it shows on the talk page, for those who might not even understand a watchlist. If they are editors, they at least know how to click on a particular page and look to the talk page of the page. Especially if there is a template on the main page of the page stating that it is under discussion for deletion.

As for implementation, it should be fairly innocuous. altering various bots to target an article's talk page, instead of a subpage of WP:AFD.

We could still have the letter-based categorisational system, and all the other tools which have been devised for this.

And finally, one more why - AfD (fairly or not) gives the impression that the discussion about the page is being done by the wikipedia elite (whoever they may be).

I would strongly argue that sincere editors are far more likely to join in on a deletion discussion which is on an article's talk page, than if it's in project space.

(This is long enough so I don't want to go too deep into it, but this is also somewhat related to the seeming steep learning curve to Wikipedia. Not to mention some rather common misconceptions concerning project space.)

And if making this change brings even a single additional voice to the discussion, then it is worth it.

The negatives? Well, as anything, there are those who look at any long standing system and not want to change, simply due to not liking change.

And of course, some bots/scripts (and maybe some templates) will have to be slightly modified.

I think the positives (of which I have only numerated a few) far outweigh the negatives.

That said, I am a firm believer in the Wiki-way method of resolution, so please, discussion would be greatly welcome.

Thanks for your time : ) - jc37 23:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Wow, no. Your suggestion would guarantee that disinterested editors would never see deletion discussions. Frankly, this would be an excellent way for the Article Canvassing Squadron to make sure deletions never happen. And that's just stupid. The whole 'inclusionist' position is incredibly stupid anyway; more shit != better encyclopedia. Shit that might one day in some far away universe be useful != better encyclopedia. And deletionists don't even exist; it's the word inclusionists use to describe anyone who doesn't think that everything should be kept. In reality, most people realize that not everything belongs here. Or, rather, intelligent people realize that. Point being, your proposal is a guaranteed way to ensure that inclusionists will get their way. Always. Every time. Which makes a certain userbox on your page depressingly unsurprising. If the only people who see a deletion discussion are those who created or have edited the article... gee, I wonder which way the discussion will go? By 'gaming' above, what you mean is people getting articles properly deleted without the ARS making an end-run around community consensus, I suspect.

This is one of the worst ideas I have ever seen on Wikipedia. Kill it with fire. → ROUX ₪ 23:29, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

(inserted comment) Calling other people "stupid" isn't helpful. Describing those that disagree with you as unintelligent is also uncivil. In fact, 2/3rds of your response runs contrary to WP:AGF, WP:CIVIL, WP:ADHOM, and more. I respectuflly request that you tone it down and keep discussion civil. Comment on the contribution, not the contributor(s). — BQZip01 — ^talk 23:18, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Before you start criticising what someone has said, it's usually a good idea to make sure you understand what they have said. It is especially important to be sure that you are not accusing them of doing something they have not done. I respectfully request that you do not bother responding to me when you betray such blatant lack of comprehension. → ROUX ₪ 00:17, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I would like to clarify a few things regarding your response.

First, please read http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/May_2011_Update this], as well as a semi-related thread directly above on this talk page.

In my opinion, the attitude conveyed in your response is exactly what we Wikipedians should be working towards removing from our collegiate environment. Regardless, please do just a touch of presuming good faith, it might help facilitate better discussion.

Second, what you may or may not be aware of, is that the venue of where the discussion is placed, is of very little concern to the various bots and transcluded pages. It's simply just a matter of retargeting a link.

Which means that "disinterested editors" would be able to find them just as easily as now.

And yes, the system is gamed, from many sides of the wiki-philosophies (and some philosophies which aren't as easily pigeon-holed.)

- jc37 23:41, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for completely ignoring the central point of what I had to say. That is unsurprising when you preloaded your argument by stating that the only possible downside is people being resistant to change, presupposing that anyone opposing this proposal has no real reason. You want to set up a system which is very much biased in favour of inclusionists by making sure the majority of people who see a given deletion discussion is made solely of those who have edited or created an article. You're an inclusionist. The proposal is then unsurprising, unsurprisingly bald in its attempts to end-run around community consensus, and unsurprisingly bad. → ROUX ₪ 23:46, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

lol. please read my comments again. I sincerely want civil, honest, open, productive discussion.

And I think you'll be hard pressed to find a more stalwart defender of the consensus process than me.

The inherent problem I have with your argument is that you seem to presuppose that any discussion must be about why some article should be deleted. And so you feel that any person who might have the article in question watchlisted must be biased for the article, and on the converse that right-thinking Wikipedians should therefore be biased against any article up for deletion by default. You will please pardon me if I do not find that to be open minded, or disinterested, for that matter.

But I do thank you for helping to clearly illustrate my observation about the battleground mentality/perspective that is presently inherent in the current system. - jc37

Uhh.. see this is the problem with inclusionists, the whole battleground mentality, and precisely why I do not participate in AfD unless there's a really important issue at play; I prefer to avoid all those things. The very statement "presuppose that any discussion must be about why some article should be deleted" is exactly the problem: inclusionists moving the goalposts. Of course I presuppose that; this is Articles for Deletion, not 'Articles which we should talk about and maybe delete.' Articles which people feel should be kept are in what's known as 'the encyclopedia' because either nobody thinks they should be deleted (thus not bringing them to Articles for Deletion), or somebody did and was outvoted (thus not bringing them to Articles for Deletion again, usually). The articles that end up here are the ones people think should be deleted. And so therefore the discussion is about why some article should be deleted; not enough rationale or support and the proposal that the article be deleted fails. "and on the converse that right-thinking Wikipedians should therefore be biased against any article up for deletion by default" is the most breathtakingly dishonest thing I've seen around here in a while. You will please pardon me if I do not find that to be worth engaging you any further in discussion. With any luck this deliberately biased proposal will fail, and will fail hard. It is sickening watching how the inclusionist side of the spectrum continually attempts to make sure that community consensus is only followed when it benefits their goals. Disgusting. → ROUX ₪ 00:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I can believe that you are not familiar with AfD (your comment about avoiding participation), in that you believe that

a.) this is Articles for Deletion, not 'Articles which we should talk about and maybe delete - there are more possible outcomes from an AfD discussion than just keep, delete, or even no consensus... And second, while I like to presume good faith, just because someone noms a page, doesn't mean that by default, it's time to delete. Neutral means just that, neutral to the discussion regardless of whether its' nommed or not. I apologise if you don't appreciate my phrasing, but your most recent response would seem to reinforce my observation.

b.) that AfD is in anyway a "vote", in which someone can be "outvoted". though I will agree that this is a common misconception. and one in which having a separate process than just it being a talk page discussion helps foment and foster.

I'm sorry, but I don't see all this as a "spectrum" of "sides". I would agree that such can and does exist, but also that that concept is one in which I would like see GONE. Our goal should be the betterment of the encyclopedia, not creating philosophical adversaries through our very processes...

Anyway, engaging in a discussion or not, is fully your option. - jc37 01:19, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

There is one possible idea of this, that being the transclusion of the AFD onto the talk page of the affected article so that it can be directly commented on. These would still live at WP:AFD of course, but this would possibly help get interested eyes on the deletion discussion. --MASEM (t) 23:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

That is a fine idea, and would be quite easy to implement. I like that idea a lot, not so crazy about the original proposal. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:38, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) What are your (plural) concerns with reversing that? In other words, having the discussion on the talk page, and transcluding at AfD? - jc37 23:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I've enumerated my concerns above. You ignored them. Unsurprising. → ROUX ₪ 23:48, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

The (plural) note was that I was asking everyone who had commented.

What I was trying to ignore were what I perceived as preconceived notions, accusations, and fear mongering, among many other comments which seem to (as I already noted) seem to illustrate how AfD as a separate stand alone process helps maintain and facilitate it being a de facto battleground...

But hey, if you feel that there was some cogent, tangible, constructive argument in your response, that you feel that I may have missed, please feel free to clarify. - jc37 00:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

One clear reason that AFD discussions cannot live at the article talk page is that if the article ultimately deleted, then so does the talk page and the AFD discussion. Those are of historical importance (for WP:DRV, or if a user recreates an article and there is a need to check if the concerns at the AFD are met) so we can't wipe them away. Keeping the system as it is now but adding a transclusion link to the affective article is a trivial matter of programming a bot and doesn't alter any other part of the process. In other words, it is by far the easiest solution. --MASEM (t) 00:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Nod at the attractiveness of an easy to implement suggestion : )

However, I agree with what someone said below - transclusion can be confusing for newbies.

Which is why I would rather see an AfD discussion handled just as straight forward as a requested move, a merge or a split or any other talk page discussion that involved factoring or refactoring the article in question. (With deletion being pretty much just completely refactoring everything, through our technical process).

I would think making the process simpler, and more straightforward, with the overhead of complexity (bots scripts transclusion templates, etc.) in project space, would be the preferred outcome?

What do you think I am missing here? - jc37 00:33, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

here is what an in-place transcluded GAN review/discussion looks like. You see that, like any other page in that section, hitting the "edit" button right next to the header of the section opens that transclusion in edit mode. We can add more text to the intro of the transclusion to make it as clear as possible how to edit and add comments. It's also by far the simpliest method do to this. --MASEM (t) 00:57, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Simplest from a re factoring of the process POV, but I think more difficult from the day to day usage perspective.

(That aside, explanations are a good thing imo, regardless of what is eventually implemented.) - jc37 01:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

@Jc37 What are your (plural) concerns with reversing that? I note an additional concern. Although this would be functionally identical for articles without talk pages before they are AfD'd, that doesn't account for all AfD'd articles. Transcluding the entire talk page of every article nominated for AfD would result in unnecessary bytes of talk page material showing up in the logs. Wading through the unrelated things would quickly become burdensome to the process. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:24, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

You can't directly comment when something is transcluded, you can only comment underneath, or click an edit link that takes you to the AFD page anyway. How is that any more useful than the notifications which are already placed on the article and talk pages when an article is up for deletion? → ROUX ₪ 23:41, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

If it follows the WP:GAN model , the section where the transclusion is placed will have an (edit) button, so you can basically click once to add to the discussion. --MASEM (t) 23:46, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Which is what I just said. And explain how that is any more useful? → ROUX ₪ 23:48, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

If anything, it highlights *better* that the article is at AFD, actually showing the discussion in the talk page rather than just a header box on the main page or a line in the Article History in the talk page headers. One click gets you to commenting on the AFD instead of two. --MASEM (t) 23:53, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Due (in part) to the post's formatting, I find the original argument difficult to follow - it's also a bit TLDR. However, moving AfD discussions to article talk pages would be a really bad idea as this would greatly decrease the visibility of the discussion, with the result that it would become much easier to delete an obscure article as few people would notice the nomination and harder to delete more prominent articles. The main benefit of the current AfD process is that the discussions are centralised, so editors who haven't previously seen the article before can weigh in on whether it should be deleted, take the opportunity to improve the article so there's no question about it being deleted (as frequently happens) or notice that the article or nomination forms part of a theme and take action as appropriate (for instance, an admin might notice that lots of hoax articles created by the same editor are being discussed and step in and save everyone's time by deleting them all per CSD G3; conversely if an editor is making lots of frivolous nominations this can also be stopped through admin intervention). I also don't see the benefit of transcluding the discussions on article talk pages - when an article is nominated for deletion a great big ugly box is placed at the start of the text directing readers to the discussion, and transclusion would add an additional step for no benefit. Nick-D (talk) 00:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I wrote this rather stream-of-consciousness. And was trying to convey what I was thinking while attempting to try to minimise specific examples.

So my apologies. Anything you would like me to clarify, I would be happy to.

As for visibility, AfD can still be a central hub for linking to discussions, and could even have transclusions (AfD today is an already existing example of that I think.)

The point here is to simplify everything for the newbie editor. I presume that everyone commenting here likely is at least decently experienced with editing.

But why should the AfD process be more complex than: place a template on the main page, and type the nomination on the talk page.

The same process we use for moves, merges, and splits.

Compare that to the (imo) much more complicated process of nomination now.

And in addition, the AfD process, by fact of being a concrete form of an abstract "idea", it becomes an entity itself. It's a venue, with all its baggage.

I'm also suggesting that this construct that we've created, albeit in good faith, is counter productive to collegiate discussion, and actually aids and abets the battle ground mentality that currently exists.

A great way to visualise this is how we Wikipedians use the word 'patrol'. one patrols a region, or a certain type of location. So consider the mentality that we foster when we have new page patrollers, or AfD patrollers.

Yes it's a lot of good intentions, but it's also becoming Wikipedia: The game. All we need do is witness several of the award controversies of the past to see that.

Does this help better clarify? - jc37 00:25, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• I think Masem's suggestion of having the AfD transcluded onto the talk page is at least worth trying. Just as AfD regulars may review the daily AfD log and click on the "edit" button next to the AfD they want to comment on, readers of the talk page would be able to click on the edit button next to the section of the talk page and comment on the AfD from there. As long as there are no technical problems which would cause problems with this idea, I would support it at least on a trial basis. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 00:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• The original suggestion is not attractive, as it is far more useful to have a central place for AfD discussions. The follow on idea of transcluding the AfD discussion onto the article talkpage in the same manner as GAN is more interesting, though the reality of the GAN translucion is that people not experienced with it do make mistakes and not use the correct section level heading, so their comments only appear on the takpage, not the review page. This is not so important during a GAN, as the two pages are close together, but when closing an AfD, it would add an extra (easily overlooked) duty of checking the article talkpage for comments and !votes that were not transcluded. I've not yet experienced even the newest user not being able to find the right AfD discussion page - the link takes them right there. And as we know, sometimes an AfD discussion page is found by plenty of new IP accounts who swarm in from the internet to protest that the article on their favourite local unsigned band should not be deleted. No, finding the discussion page has not been signposted as a problem before. The AfD template will alert people's watchlist. And various WikiProjects are also alerted to related AfD discussions. The discussions are assured seven days with guidance against early Snow closes. And if there are not enough people to make a decision, the AfD is relisted. And if the close was inappropriate the discussion can be reviewed. I don't see that copying the discussion onto the talkpage will add anything, and can detract. Oppose. SilkTork *^{Tea time} 00:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I really like Masem's idea. Short of wholesale reform (and wholesale reform would be pointless until we've dealt with the Turkey farm), simplest steps often are the best. —WFC— 00:41, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I would of course like to see a bot responsible for adding the AFD to the talk page to reduce errors. I would also not mind seeing a message to remind those coming from the talk page that AFD is not a vote (which can be put in a message before the transclusion). There is an issue with multi-article AFDs, how they should be handled, but I would think its still possible as the solution of least resistance if we want this idea. --MASEM (t) 00:52, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with Roux's remark about inclusionism, but other than that, it seems like a good summary of most of the problems with this proposal. I just don't see any substantial benefits. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:28, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose any changes so far described for the AFD process. Changes can be beneficial. The AFD process needs changes. These changes are not it. First of all, removing the centralized location for AFDs means that less uninvolved editors will see them, which would reduce, rather than increase, participation at an area that needs more participation. Secondly, transcluding the current discussions to the article talk page would only serve to bifurcate the discussion, as people would be confused about how to add their own comments. There's already a giant flashing neon sign that screams CLICK ME IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS DELETED at the top of every article up for AFD. I'm not sure that transcluding the discussion to the talk page would improve visibility in any meaningful way. --Jayron32 01:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose: the point of AfD, as opposed to prod & speedy delete, is to gain input from as much of the community as possible. Restricting to the talk page would restrict the discussion to only people who have watchlisted the page and presumably are "fans" (for lack of a better word) of the page. The argument of "newbies" being more likely to see a discussion on the talkpage makes no sense to me, I can't see how anyone is more likely to click on the talkpage tab than see a big ugly tag on the top of the article's page and follow the link to the deletion discussion. J04n(talk page) 02:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - AfD is where the rubber meets the road at Wikipedia. It is indeed the place where various philosophies of the encyclopedia interact and attempt to hammer out standards, precedents, and procedures. It needs to be centralized and that process of debate is very healthy. Scattering deletion debates to the four corners of the encyclopedia will do nothing but open up the floodgates for IDONTLIKEIT shenanigans. The current system works fine, as soon as necessary rules banning automated mass deletion campaigns emerge, as they no doubt soon will. Carrite (talk) 02:17, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose In fact, I'd go the other direction. The quality of the decision at AfD depends upon the number of previously uninvolved people who contribute to the discussion. Rather than restrict it, we need to encourage more people to join from time to time in contested discussions. In fact, there is little wrong with Wikipedia that increased participation will not go a long way to remedy. DGG ( talk ) 02:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose To confine AfD nominations to only the talk page and then a complex way of mirroring the nominations to the main AfD page is something that would not only add grossly unneeded steps to the process (which is already complex enough for someone like me, who might only launch a few AfD's per year manually without tools), but in the arts and media section where I specialize in, would bring back in the "throw everything on Wiki including inane TV series cruft" and fan-person editor content that has been thankfully culled in the last two years thanks to the AfD process doing what it's designed to do; give a good guideline to what should and should not be included in an article. I was one of those 'throw everything on' editors at first when I came here five years ago, but now I know clear and concise writing about a subject with little to no useless natter is the best way to avoid the AfD process in the first place. There need to be changes to the process (especially when it comes to mass-noms that have begun to spring up lately that clog the pages), but we need to do more about encouraging good AfD guidelines before we change the nomination and discussion process in such a rash manner. Nate • (chatter) 02:48, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - A solution in search of a problem. Tarc (talk) 03:25, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose The centralised discussion is essential for transparency and participation. Not all article talk pages are well monitored or ar on watchlists, and removing the central AfD will be detrimental to the quality of discussion. I feel that having AfD discussions on the talk page will not counter the battleground nature, but limit uninvolved participation which benefits due to increased objectivity brought to the arena. We already have Speedies and Prods taking place in article space, so I do not see the need for another deletion process that is not easily monitored in one place. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:23, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I am fascinated to see the objection of some of the commentators to the proposal on the grounds that it would make things too easy for the inclusionists. Actually, I think it would be make things absurdly easy for the deletionists: it would permit the facile attack on individual articles at dispersed places where relatively few people were involved. True, it wouldn't work to delete articles which had hundreds of watchers and dozens of active contributors, but these are a minute fraction of Wikipedia and are in any case almost always notable--for why else would so many people be interested in them? But a series of attacks on diverse articles on notable but relatively obscure artists or professors or organizations or artifacts or products--only a few people would notice each individual one of them. By bringing these deletions into the full light on a single widely watch processed, people who care about maintaining and increasing encyclopedic content have the opportunity to see them.

What is unfortunate is that not many of the people opposing deletionists do currently see them--that most of them avoid AfDeletion, which is after all a process named in a decidedly negative tone and having the consequent bias, Additionally, many of of the effective opponents of reckless deletion who are willing to work at AfD regularly tend to leaver Wikipedia (or at least to leave AfD) relatively early, either in frustration with dealing consistently with a negative attitude, or as a result of active discouragement. If only the people who in the proper spirit join the Article rescue squadron were actually willing to help rescue articles, by improvement or even by policy-based argument! I'm glad to see jc37 wishing to try something new to bring about a more reasonable balance, but the need is not change of procedure, but to do the only thing that really works, the willingness to approach the matter article by article, patiently argue when the putative reasons for deletion are invalid, and do the actual improvement or sourcing of the ones that need it. The weakness of voluntarism is that people sufficiently dedicated to something will persist indefinitely, while the ordinary person with broader interests will have other things to do also. It is so much easier being destructive--as I know well, for even with my inclination, I have personally deleted at least ten times as many articles as i've been able to rescue. Any fool can delete, just as any fool can write garbage. The ability to write decent articles and to argue responsibly for keeping them go together. DGG ( talk ) 05:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment AfD should be renamed "Articles for Discussion", rather than deletion. Such a name change would make the issue a little less confrontational. Re the suggestion about talk pages, would it be possible to transclude an AfD discussion to the talk page of the article being discussed, in much the same way that an articles GA nomination is transcluded onto the talk page of the article nominated for GA status. Mjroots (talk) 07:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Question. The proposer said that "tag a page for deletion, using a poor or non existant edit summary; make one or more innocuous edits immediately after; then the fact that a particular page may be up for discusssion/deletion won't appear on watchlists" is a scheme used by some editors. Is this in fact occurring? Are people deliberately obfuscating that a page is being AfD'd from people who have watchlisted the page? If so, they should be called out on this and prevented from doing this. If this is a common practice, the we definitely have a problem and this needs to be addressed. I'm not sure the proposal is the best way to address this, though (and don't see any other use for the proposal). Perhaps the proposer is engaging in hyperbole, though. Is he? Herostratus (talk) 06:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC) Original diff, moved from another section. Flatscan (talk) 04:21, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose the original idea, but support Masem's idea to transclude AfD discussions to the article talk pages. This may require a change to the speedy deletion criteria though, since I envision this being posted and kept with deleted, merged, redirected, and kept articles. It would make it easier to see pertinent discussions and a Bot could be created to handle the transclusions. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:03, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Handling the transclusion is not the problem, it is editors unfamiliar with a transcluded discussion putting their comments in the wrong place. This happens in GAN discussions. People see a discussion on the talkpage and either add a new section using the wrong section level, or click on the New Section tab, their comment will not then be included in the AfD discussion, but will be in a separate section. I don't think it would be possible to devise a bot that can distinguish an AfD comment and any other comment given the wide range of comments that people use in an AfD. Even a simple oppose/support can be mistaken if there is another discussion on the article talkpage which involves people taking a straw poll. SilkTork *^{Tea time} 09:09, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

  One possible solution there is to wrap the transclusion in a marked box/div so that it's clear this is a separate section, maybe providing duplicate edit links at the top. Maybe a talk page warning message as well (Again, if a bot is used to setup the transclusion...) so that if an editor edits the talk page but not the AFD transclusion, the talk edit page header reminds them of this. This I realize is an issue with new editors unaware how to follow links, and probably the biggest issue against this. --MASEM (t) 14:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

  Alternatively, it wouldn't be difficult to add some code like {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:1}}|<Some message that says click me to edit the AfD>| }} to {{afd2}}, so that new editors have a nice big, visible link to click so that they can edit the AfD instead of the rest of the talk page. lifebaka++ 17:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: Jayron32 put it very well, saying The AFD process needs changes. These changes are not it. I'd love to see AfD improve, but I don't think this would help at all (for many of the reasons already given above). The further idea re. transcluding them on article talks would be problematic, because dealing with transclusion is very confusing to newer editors; it works (mostly) for GAN because the editors dealing with GAN almost inevitibly have a decent knowledge of Wikipedia machinations.I'm not opposing change "simply due to not liking change" - it was an interesting idea to consider, but doesn't hold up to analysis (IMHO).  Chzz  ►  11:05, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support transclusion of discussions, but not of breaking down AfD. I would also support "Articles for Discussion", but like that's ever going to happen. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 11:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• It's a non-starter really. AFD brings these articles to wider attention, whether to editors who are likely to agree that they should be deleted or to those that may see a reason for keeping them. What AFD really needs is more people getting involved who can judge an article/subject on its encyclopedic merits (and who are prepared to put in a little effort before reaching a conclusion) rather than trying to make it a silly battleground between 'inclusionists' and 'deletionists'.--Michig (talk) 11:29, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose moving all AfD discussions to talk pages. There are big advantages to keeping the process centralised, as getting uninvolved editors involved in a discussion over the article prevents articles which should be deleted from being kept and bad nominations from resulting in deletion. I suppose we could find some way to maintain the current daily lists with discussions taking place on the talk pages but as has been pointed out above this will result in the discussion being destroyed if the article is deleted. I don't have any real objections to transcluding all AfD nominations on the article's talk page but I don't think it would help much either. Hut 8.5 11:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• jc37 is right, articles are different than the rest of the pages within wikipedia. Articles are why we are here and we need to make sure the right decision is made when we discuss the possible deletion of an article. We need to have the widest possible participation in the discussion. The editors that watch the article should already be aware of the AFD and be able to participate. The editors that need to be alerted are those that are interested but don't watch the article. This can be accomplished different ways. The default is to continue with way we are doing it now as centralized discussions. A possible change would be to go to a similar setup as requested moves with the discussion on the talk page and a centralized listing of pages. Someone above mentioned the problem with the second setup. If the discussion is on the talk page and the results are delete, the discussion is deleted along with the page. This would preclude most editors from seeing why a particular page was deleted in the past. We need to have the discussion preserved for future editors to evaluate whether the reasons still apply. I am opposed to the proposal as written. GB fan (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose There are a number of misconceptions here. Firstly, I do not agree with the idea that deletion discussions need to take place on talk pages rather than on separate pages. They obviously need to be on a separate page for review in the future, like WP:DRV, for seeing how arguments have gone on regarding similar subjects (so, if you have page A and it is very similar to page B, how the deletion discussions have gone on for the now deleted page B). Transclusion of AfD into article talk pages seems very reasonable, but AfD should definitely be on a separate page. Secondly, any motion to change the name of Articles for deletion is something I oppose, even though I'm not a deletionist. The idea that we need to change the name to something like Articles for discussion is something I don't really think will have any effect. Everyone who participates in AfD knows (or should know) that AfDs are not automatically slated for deletion unless enough all the deletionists pile on(heh) good arguments for deletion are presented. This is a bit like saying we shouldn't call a criminal trial a "criminal trial" because the person isn't technically a criminal until they've been convicted. Yes, semantically, whatever, that's probably right, but it doesn't matter. If you are concerned about deletionists gone wild or whatever, argue for a change of policy to make the notability guidelines more inclusive and defend that. I've said it numerous times before: changing the words people use is a poor way of changing reality. Linguistic rebranding of AfD won't change deletion policy or notability policy. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose You claim that the centralized deletion system that is AfD is subject to gaming; however, moving these deletion discussions to the articles' talk pages will only make matter worse. Canvassing and small CABALS will have greater influence over deletions as the whole system becomes far less transparent. This won't reduce the battleground mentality of some editors, but only enhances it. Also, discussions will get fewer "third-opinions" from uninvolved editors and it will be more difficult for administrators to patrol ongoing discussions and close them after the appropriate time. And finally, if the outcome of the discussion is to delete the article, the record of that discussion will be deleted as well. However, we need to keep that discussion as a record about why the article was deleted in the event the deletion is questioned, disputed, or recreated. The AfD notice gives editors who keeps the article on their watch lists plenty of notice about the discussions. And finally, it's not a good idea to transcluded talk pages, in whole or in part, to another page. Deletion discussions will have to be on a separate page to begin with so as to make translcuding the discussion in multiple forums, such as deletion sorting, much easier. —Farix (t | c) 18:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Centralized discussion is critical, and transcluding talk pages that have non AfD related discussions into the AfD pages is a non-starter. I would support additional consideration of MASEM's idea of transcluding the AfD into the talk page, but I would be worried that an inexperienced editor would accidentally leave an AfD comment on the article talk page, and I don't see a good way to protect against that. Monty₈₄₅ 19:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Not a good idea. History2007 (talk) 20:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Probably too late, but I strongly support the idea of having deletion discussions on article talk pages - it's the natural place for them, particularly as they often (and most usefully) develop into discussions of other ways to improve the article. This would in no way mean that people with a deletion obsession would lose a centralized means of finding the discussions - just look how WP:Requested moves works.--Kotniski (talk) 08:34, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose For the reasons given above, viz., this doesn't solve any problems with AfD. I have my own theories why AfD doesn't work in some cases -- for the most part, speaking from my 8+ years of experience with Wikipedia, it does work in 70-90%+ of the cases -- but I don't have the time at the moment to pontificate why AfD can fail to provide the correct result. -- llywrch (talk) 16:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose I won't rehash the above stances at length, but suffice to say centralized consideration of the issue to draws from a wider cross-section of editors is to be encouraged, not restricted. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 19:42, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Highlighting at-risk articles on your watchlist

The idea that an AfD or similar discussion could be missed on your watchlist is a valid one. What about a JS gadget that highlights pages under discussion on your watchlist, showing as orange instead of blue or somesuch? If the page has a certain template on it, it sets off the flag. It would only affect people with the gadget installed, and only when the item is already on their watchlist. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 11:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This functionality, and much more, is already available by using User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js from your Vector.js. It's just not a gadget and I think it uses quite a bit of resources. Hans Adler 14:42, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Just have it when something goes to AFD, it automatically seeks out those who have that article on the watchlist, and contacts them. That'd solve the problem. Even on your watchlist, it might be hard to spot everything. This way any article you care enough about to be monitoring, you'll know when this happens. Dream Focus 03:45, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• You could always watchlist the relevant Article Alerts. </shameless plug> —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:38, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Not every edit is decietful during an afd in fact many are improvements edits, we should be preventing them so alternatively there could be a bot(AFD_warning_bot) that makes a twice daily null_edit to the article while the discussion is open with the edit summary AFD: Join the discussion at..... that way it reappears every 12 hours on user watchlist. Gnangarra 01:50, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

ASD - Article Status Discussion

Perhaps a new tag to replace Articles for Deletion, Rescue and others could be "Article Status Discussion", where the nominator suggests an alternative location for the existing content. All alternatives might be mentioned in the introduction for ASD pages, such as Keep, Delete, Improve, Merge, Split, Redirect, Incubate, Userfy, Convert (to list or similar) or move to other Wikimedia projects. The nominator could set the initial course for such a discussion, but this would not preclude the discussion from taking other directions. -- Avanu (talk) 08:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. In a thread above, an editor basically called another editor clueless for not knowing that AfD is not just for deletion. Yet when you nominate a content fork in order to enforce a merge that is violently opposed by a POV pushing owner, there is a good chance that you will be attacked by an editor who believes an article should never be nominated unless you actually want to delete it, or that the discussion will finally be closed by someone who insists that 12 merge, 2 keep, 7 delete results in "keep" because as far as AfD is concerned, it's formally the same as "merge". We had a similar confusion at the 3RR noticeboard and that was successfully addressed by renaming it as the edit warring noticeboard. Hans Adler 14:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Assuming that the count is consistent with the strength of argument, a close like that would be egregious enough to overturn at WP:Deletion review. Flatscan (talk) 04:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose The merge process is described at WP:MERGE. We should not overload AFD with such additional processes because it would tend to muddy the waters and overload the AFD process which does not scale well. The main reason that some seem to want to use AFD as a universal panacea for all article issues is that it is supported by Twinkle and so is mechanically easier than processes such as merger which are not so supported. The combination of ease of use, poor scalability and expansion of scope would cause the process to collapse. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:24, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

How many times do you see people !vote for things other than delete in an AfD, Colonel? This would reduce (somewhat) the adversarial nature of the process, since it would be implied from the get-go that we're seeking consensus, not just deletion. -- Avanu (talk) 16:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• I am just going to comment that this almost a perennial proposal - to expand the scope of AFD to include other options - but nearly all past discussions resulted in no consensus to move on this. This should not discourages discussion but a reminder that this is not new ground here. --MASEM (t) 16:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Good to know. I really only put the idea here to encourage discussion. Honestly, I see no need for AfD to be removed entirely if the community so chose, because we could have an ASD tag *and* an AfD tag. -- Avanu (talk) 16:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Something I really like on the German Wikipedia is that for some areas with a large WikiProject, AfD is replaced by a subject specific, open-ended "quality assurance" process. If something is seriously wrong with an article in the scope of such a project, you nominate it for quality assurance. (Or if you nominate it directly for deletion, someone will transfer it there.) Then the WikiProject discusses what to do about it. Does it just need some moderate rewriting? Then someone will do it. Is it a content fork? Then it will be merged. Is it not even notable? Then it will be deleted. Is it a structural problem affecting several related articles that need to be reorganised? Then the project members will discuss how to best address this.

This is how an encyclopedia should be written. What we currently have here is an adversarial system where some editors concentrate on nuking what they think are worthless articles and other concentrate on what they think are salvageable articles. This system encourages extremist (deletionist, inclusionist) attitudes and should ideally be abolished in favour of one that encourages looking at the big picture and dealing with articles that one is actually knowledgeable about. Hans Adler 16:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• It tends to work like that here too where you have a strong project and a subject area which is well-defined — mathematics, say. It doesn't look so different for the soft subjects like Pippa Middleton though. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Support I think that this proposal would eliminate some of the negative connotations, and be more in keeping with what we actually do--which is very often close with one of the alternative to deletion. DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Politically-correct, inclusionist-friendly claptrap. Tarc (talk) 03:06, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

claptrap - c.1730, "trick to 'catch' applause," a stage term; from clap (v.) + trap (n.). Extended sense of "cheap, showy language" is from 1819; hence "nonsense, rubbish."

Is it also claptrap for people to offer alternative suggestions in AfDs? That's essentially what I'm suggesting here, just making it part of the process. Just wondering why compromise and consensus-building is so bad. -- Avanu (talk) 03:19, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

wikt:disingenuous → ROUX ₪ 03:26, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - as I pointed out above, this is just yet another way for people incapable of understanding that not everything belongs here to do an end-run around community consensus. If such an ill-advised change were to go through, I confidently predict it will take about three seconds before someone claims that you can't vote for deletion anymore since that's not what the page is about. The sooner we stop pretending that the extreme inclusionists (who are the only people who even use the word deletionist) have anything worth listening to, the better we will be. → ROUX ₪ 03:22, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose yet again This came up not long ago. You don't start an AFD just to discuss something, you use the talk page for that. And you could discuss a merge on the talk page as well. You send something to the AFD because you want it deleted. There are times when people get confused already and nominate something for deletion, just to discuss people improving it, which is just a total waste of everyone's time. Dream Focus 03:40, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't even remember asking for poll-style votes, but yet here they are. Its funny how people seem to fall into that... its a very adversarial TOTALLY YES or TOTALLY NO kind of approach where people start saying Strongest Keep EVER!

This suggestion isn't about black and white world. It is about the real world where compromise and collaboration require people to consider the points of view of others. I'm not an inclusionist or deletionist, if I had to label myself (labels are lazy), but if I had to, I would say I'm a encyclopedic-ist. Let's strive to include the best, and if it isn't improve it or get it gone. That means that we work together, we train one another, we teach one another, and we work on bickering less, and solutions more. -- Avanu (talk) 07:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Its just easier this way to keep track of who agrees or disagrees with what. Also, before I started a poll last time on the Article Rescue Squadron's talk page, you just spend days having a long winded discussion. Best to get to the point straight away, and avoid never ending chatter that never goes anywhere. Dream Focus 07:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Well people could also simply improve on the idea. No need to just say "this is useless claptrap". The wind could be put to use if we all work on getting the sails rigged instead of watching it blow by. -- Avanu (talk) 07:27, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• AfD exists separately, because there are so many of them (above 700 most of the time). Other avenues, such as mergers, splits have thousands of candidates, spanning years of backlog. I see no net benefit in merging them into a central place or introducing an additional dedicated discussion location. We already have talk pages for every single article, where most article-relevant topic can/should be discussed. That said, I have no objection to a simple talk page section header template to helpfully prompt editors to suggest different venues for the article at hand. But it should not contain lengthy guidelines, editing processes, other WP:BURO. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose: AfD is for articles that the nominator believes in good faith should be deleted. Article Status Discussion would be a bureaucratic mess. Even the staunchest of inclusionists agree that many articles do deserve to be deleted, the "wars" only erupt over a small subset of articles.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 13:43, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment If someone is bringing an article to AfD that they think might have an alternate solution than deletion, I would hope they would bring it by Wikipedia:Proposed mergers before they send it down the AfD tube. PM works pretty well when reasonable stuff shows up. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 13:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support although I find it ironic and sad that both strident inclusionists and deletionists come out in force against an attempt to find a common ground on how we can best present info in existing articles. Jclemens (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
  • That's not actually what's going on here. My objection, and I think that of others, is that renaming this to ASD gives far too much credence to the inclusionist viewpoint as well as giving them more ammunition for their bizarre crusade of including every bit of fluff and stupid trivia anyone ever thought to type. FYI, I would never call myself a deletionist; the term has no meaning whatsoever and is only used by inclusionists to demonize those of us who realize that editing--as in paring down--is a very good thing. → ROUX ₪ 22:37, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
    • You believe in improving the encyclopedia by deleting the good-faith contributions of others? I rest my case. Jclemens (talk) 00:30, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
      • I believe in improving the utility of the encyclopedia by removing articles, whether created in good faith or not, that do not fit within the scope. Your deliberately slanted statement kind of proves my point that 'deletionist' is a term used only by inclusionists to demonize others, in much the same way that the anti-abortion crowd has successfully framed the debate by referring to themselves as 'pro-life.' The very simple fact of the matter is that encyclopedias do not and should not contain everything. That sort of bloat is not conducive to being a useful resource, and quite frankly, that's what the entire rest of the internet is. As a compendium of important (i.e., notable) human knowledge, Wikipedia is not well-served by having articles on every last little thing anyone can think of; it renders the signal:noise ratio far too low.

• • • • Putting it another way, we delete the good-faith contributions of others all the damn time. This is known as 'editing'; when someone puts in an article about, oh I dunno, hamburgers the phrase 'hamburgers taste really good,' they are on balance probably acting in good faith. And yet we would unquestioningly remove--delete--that contribution. What you want is for the first person to have actually created a particular article to be given special status of some sort, which is self-evidently an unworkable proposition. So too is the idea that 'good faith' contributions should always be kept; if that were the case, most articles would be an unreadable mishmash of poorly-spelled, ungrammatical nonsense. Because that is the exact and direct outcome of what you are saying. I suspect you're going to say that removing 'hamburgers taste really good' is somehow different from deleting yet another page about yet another Myspace band; it's not. Both are, to use your words, 'deleting good faith contributions.' And both improve the encyclopedia by doing so. → ROUX ₪ 01:26, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Timestamp?

Should the Article for deletion template as it is displayed on a given page have a timestamp, of when an article is nominated for deletion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by NVSBL (talk • contribs) 09:21, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Query--dispense w/notability rules, for non-English-country entities?

Hi -- I would be interested in some views on whether the closing non-admin is in accord w/the process here. He bases his (90-minute-early) close in part on the assertion that because the subject is a non-English-speaking-country band, "it is unlikely that there are many English sources available." Do we dispense with that requirement, for non-English speaking entities? Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:27, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The requirements of WP:N are for significant coverage in third-party reliable sources. These sources can be in any language. The point with that AfD is that the subject is a band in a non-English speaking country, and if no effort has been made to find sources in the language of that country then it is entirely possible that such sources exist - unless someone checks we simply don't have the evidence to make that judgement. If it is likely that the subject has received significant coverage in non-English sources and there is no evidence to suggest that such sources don't exist then it is certainly possible to argue that there is no case to delete an article. Hut 8.5 22:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

IMO opinion the decision was correct as we are not a bureaucracy and it appears there was no doubt left that the band is actually notable. That there may be no reliable sources in English is completely irrelevant for non-English topics. If the original language does not use a Latin-based script, it's easy to miss a lot of coverage in reliable sources even when that is available online. Hans Adler 23:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

• To clarify -- the question was never whether non-English sources are OK. Of course they are.

The question is whether, in the absence of RS reflection of notability per GNG, do we no longer require RS GNG coverage (just because the band is from a non-English-speaking country).

Under GNG, we don't retain article because sufficient RS sources may exist. We retain them because they have been shown to exist.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

That's why I reminded you that we are not a bureaucracy. Those editors who commented and were knowledgeable about the band didn't understand how we usually handle these things. The last commenter gave the correct search string, which is "Стары Ольса". A Google News search for that turns up what looks like in-depth coverage in a reliable source [1] as well as a mention in another. The first source in the article also seems more than adequate to me. [2] They are also mentioned in a tiny number of books. It seems to me that for a country such as Belarus that's plenty as we can't expect much to be online. – A totally different matter is whether an article can be written with that information. I would be the first to support a rule that makes topics fail notability if we don't have enough sources to write a reasonable article. But this rule does not exist at the moment. Hans Adler 23:25, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

If we were to have sufficient RS coverage (in any combination of languages), I of course agree that GNG would be satisfied. What the closer suggested was that we need lesser coverage if the coverage is in other languages -- which I don't understand to be the rule. (Hence my question ... and even the indicated coverage, of questionable RS-age, would not qualify if this were an English band, IMHO). You raise a similar suggestion -- that for "a country such as Belarus" that should be enough. That's at the heart of my question -- is a band with X coverage notable if it is from Belarus, but not if it is from England? I hadn't understood that to be the case. And yes -- those editors weren't knowledgeable, as they though that being a real band and actually having real Youtube videos were indicia of notability.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the answer is that we very often infer notability in many cases, without requiring an itemization of sources. That's what most of the specialized guidelines are for, and why the more controversial ones have been shown to be bad predictors of the extent of coverage that can eventually be found. But we do set different standards, in AFD discussions, in different circumstances. For example, the older the relevant events, the harder it is to turn up coverage. We had a rather raucous AFD discussion a while ago where somebody wanted to delete most of the films directed by D.W. Griffith because nobody could turn up many newspaper reviews of them online. We take the difficulty in turning up online sources into account in determining how much coverage must be produced in particular cases, and the fact that much coverage is likely to be in non-English, offline media is something we take into account. The level of coverage we may insist to be identified for a 2010-vintage American rock band will be higher than what we look for for a pre-World War II Greek jazz musician. That's not dispensing with notability requirements, it's recognizing that we need to adjust our expectations for what should be found to reflect the difficulty of searching. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 01:12, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

If there is a consensus along these lines, I wonder whether it might not be helpful to reflect it in the relevant guideline(s)? Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 15:49, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

About the claim, "Under GNG, we don't retain article because sufficient RS sources may exist...":

This is not true. WP:GNG doesn't say one single word about the need for citations to be named in the article or even known to the editors.

You may be thinking of WP:NRVE, the section of WP:N dedicated to telling people that hand-waving and Jedi mind tricks are not the same thing as a list of credible sources, and that WP:AGF doesn't always extend to automatic trust in a claim that the sources exist. However, even there, it's not absolute; I've seen more than one AFD close as keep with nothing more than a (very) plausible assertion that the sources very likely do exist. (I can't say I've seen it close that way on anything except a first-ever nomination, however.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Tsinghua University Cultural Revolution records

I wish to nominate Tsinghua University Cultural Revolution records:The memoir of a Red Guards leader for deletion, because I think it fails the notability requirements of Wikipedia. A Google search result failed to find any results for the book, and all of the sources on the page links to Chinese webpages. The page's creator said on the talk page that the book's Google search has to be done in its Chinese name, but I don't think this is in accordance with policies on a English language Wikipedia.--60.242.159.224 (talk) 13:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems that you missed out some steps when listing it so I have re-listed it for you. It's quite time consuming to do manually, but if you create an account you can have access to the Twinkle tool which, amongst many other things, lets you nominate pages for deletion at the click of a button and fills in all the other steps for you. doomgaze (talk) 13:08, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Star (Unix)

I see little benefit in this article, which is about just one of the "Tar (Unix)" implementations. Probably the default one on Solaris, but then we should also have one on GNU tar (default on Linux) and BSD tar (default on *BSD I assume and Mac OS X)? I figure the main reason this article exists is the narcissm of the author (sorry for being insulting here), User:Schily = Jörg Schilling, who also just removed the COI and N tags along with my PROD. In my opinion, it clearly is sufficient when star is mentioned in the Tar (Unix) article alongside with the other Tar implementations. --188.104.104.135 (talk) 06:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I've started AfD, but I cannot do the "preloaded debate" step, due to not having a username. I think I've done all the other steps appropriately, including putting a reasoning on the talk page. It would be nice if someone could "preload" the debate (Step #2 in the template) to make the AfD complete. And of course, join the discussion. --87.174.113.246 (talk) 07:24, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

 Done --Cybercobra (talk) 09:28, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Paper on recruiting at AfD and bias

Fun reading: The Effects of Group Composition on Decision Quality in a Social Production Community. Quote:

"We also found that there have been two bots [...] that automatically automatically notified article editors about AfD discussions and recruited them to participate per the established policy. These bots performed AfD notifications for several months, and offer us an opportunity to study the effect of recruitment that is purely policy driven. We use a process like one described above to detect successful instances of bot-initiated recruitment: if a recruitment bot edited a user's talk page, and that user !voted in an AfD within two days, then we consider that user to have been recruited by the bot.

Using the above processes, we identified 8,464 instances of successful recruiting. [...] We see large differences in !voting behavior, which suggests that there is bias in who people choose to recruit. (From these data we cannot tell whether the bias is an intentional effort to influence consensus, or the result of social network homophily [14].) Participants recruited by keep !voters were about four times less likely to support deletion as those recruited by delete !voters. The participants that bots recruited also appear unlikely to support deletion, which reflects the policy bias we observed earlier."

Dcoetzee 08:54, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

"The participants that bots recruited also appear unlikely to support deletion, which reflects the policy bias we observed earlier." That's not an accurate conclusion. The paper fails to distinguish who the bots notify, as the sample pool is not random and is very specific. Bots notified the editors that had significantly edited the article in the first place (BJBot BRFA, Jayden54Bot BRFA). Bots did not notify editors who have no connection to the article, as that would be all the other editors. So, obviously, the notified editors are those most likely to !vote keep, otherwise they wouldn't have bother editing the article in the first place. But that does not come from "policy bias" (a term not too well explained), but from the prior involvement in the article. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:14, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

When evaluating the article it should be noted that the authors have skirted the idea of "no consensus", only choosing to evaluate "keep" and "delete" discussions. Perhaps they omitted these discussions from their sampling, or perhaps they added them into the keep category (since no consensus defaults to keep). This might impact their finding on participation size, since the more participants we have the harder it is to come to a consensus (while AfDs with a small participation oftentimes don't attract attention simply because their fate is not in doubt). ThemFromSpace 09:43, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

One Year of Love

Should the 1986 Queen song One Year of Love have a seperate article to the album it is from? It was indeed released as a single but there is no chartings anywhere that I can find and the article itself has been a stub for a very long time. Ajsmith141 (talk) 18:07, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Might not merit a standalone article but instead of deletion, a merge to its album might be a better option. I've started a discussion on the article's talk page so you can make your case for it. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:50, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lamia (Dungeons & Dragons)

I dont think I have ever gotten the technical portion of an AfD correct. The above discussion does not seem to have been migrated to the the main AfD page. Can someone help?Active Banana (^bananaphone 02:10, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

•  Done Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2011_June_5#Lamia_.28Dungeons_.26_Dragons.29 --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

If you use Twinkle (which I very strongly recommend) it automates the process for you, which I have to say is an absolute lifesaver! doomgaze (talk) 14:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Require a seconder?

Can we add the requirement that someone second AFDs before they become active? Too many AFDs are raised out of spite or petty revenge; the requirement to find a seconder would eliminate most of these time-wasting bad-faith nominations, along with ones that are simply misguided. A simple change to the AFD template would suffice, along with some words in the guideline. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 07:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

No, much of my reasoning unshareable per WP:BEANS, should this idea ever come to fruition. Without suggesting details, this would simply become another way for people to fight and snipe at each other. I suspect bad-faith nominations are a small percentage of the total (diffs and statistics if you'd like to assert they are a major issue, please), as are those which are actually misguided, and are caught quickly and efficiently for the most part. You propose adding another step that people will use to fight over, which seems like a poor solution to the problems of AfD. → ROUX ₪ 08:39, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Can't see how this will cause fighting. If no seconder, the AFD fails. If one is found or appears, the AFD proceeds as before. (And this mirrors the outside world, where motions normally require a nominator and a seconder to get off the ground.) -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 09:25, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Roux, bad faith nominations are minimal as to not require a solution. Off2riorob (talk) 09:48, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Note: This discussion was advertised at meta:Talk:Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians. Just FYI. Jafeluv (talk) 11:18, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

This is my shocked face. The more rabid end of the inclusionist spectrum has somewhat admitted, it appears, that AfD won't be going away. But they're doing their best to ensure that it can't work as intended; this proposal would be an excellent way for them to argue "well that's not really a second, it's a sock, it's invalid because it was seconded one minute after the closing time period, blahy blah fucking blah." Pure violation of WP:CANVASS → ROUX ₪ 22:32, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Since I have been threatened with an indef block [3] for posting a FYI to get more input I shall have to withdraw from this discussion. Well done guys. The AfD process works fine. No one ever gets upset and editors don't leave WP because of it. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 04:03, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Now now, let's be honest here. You were threatened with an indef block for violating WP:CANVASS by only inviting inclusionists to this discussion, a clear attempt to influence the outcome and an even more clear depiction of exactly what the point of this proposal is. → ROUX ₪ 06:24, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Roux and Off2riorob. Bad faith nominations are not that frequent and when they do happen the article is kept. Unless there is some evidence that I am not seeing that bad faith nominations are being deleted, the current system works. GB fan (talk) 11:46, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem with AfD nominations begins with the creation of articles that should not be on Wikipedia.  I think that we need to both reduce the creation of deletable articles and the following flood of AfD nominations, these are time wasters.  Administrators quickly build up their habit strength to delete, from there being so many articles to delete.  Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Proposal_to_require_autoconfirmed_status_in_order_to_create_articles is going in the right direction.  But what I find to be amazing is that only 70% of participants there see the need for new and gentle restrictions to the creation of new articles.  Other suggested restrictions for new article creation on that page include (1) require a statement of notability on the talk page, and (2) require the listing of two sources, and (3) require the existence of a redlink to the new article.  Each of these requirements would in turn reduce the burden on AfD.  So is it practical to require that an AfD nomination be seconded?  I agree that something is needed, but I'm not seeing accountability here, it appears that it would just take one or two dedicated seconders to second every AfD nomination that came through.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The number of clear-cut bad-faith nominations may be small, but the number where WP:BEFORE is not followed is significant, and these waste a lot of time, using resources of several editors where one doing a bit more work themselves would suffice. I don't however, think that this proposal would work for several reasons. Firstly, there has never been a shortage of editors who are happy to wade in with 'Delete per nom', so most would probably easily find a seconder. Secondly, it simply creates another process that has to be managed (i.e. continuing to AFD or rejecting it). The problem of poor AFD noms would better be dealt with by blocking editors who persist in repeatedly taking articles to AFD without following the necessary steps to explore alternatives.--Michig (talk) 13:59, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard of an editor being blocked for silly AfD raising. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 19:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

That should serve as an indicator of how common the problem is. Protonk (talk) 21:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, no it doesn't. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 21:40, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Um, actually, it does. You have never heard of an editor being blocked for silly AfD raising is probably indicative that it never or rarely hqappens. This is basic logic. → ROUX ₪ 22:32, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The lack of convictions does not mean an absence of crime. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 04:03, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I second everything Michig has said here. Jclemens (talk) 22:13, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Not because I am on either side of the fence, but because this would create additional bureaucracy and slow AfDs down. I don't think we can afford this together with existing complex discussion venues and lowerish participation in many AfDs. Few bad-faith nominations are usually easy to spot and we shouldn't introduce another procedural layer. Besides, a nominator convinced in his decision who has ignored WP:BEFORE will not be convinced by someone refusing to second the nomination. What happens then? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:40, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

easily flouted by creating a sock account and then you have all that additional mess. a "solution" for a problem that doesnt exist and will create additional issues.Active Banana (^bananaphone 16:01, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Of course it can be flouted - as any procedure can - but it takes some effort and will act as a brake on some of the more frivolous, time-wasting AFDs that are raised.-- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 19:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure that the number of bad-faith AfDs is large enough that "seconding" would actually reduce the AfD workload? I strongly suspect that there will be more work required to "pre-approve" every AfD than to let the bad-faith AfDs run their course. How many of AfDs really need this additional verification? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:37, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't see that it would create any more work at all, once the template is altered. Just means folks don't have to waste time "keep"ing an article that only a single editor (the nominator) wants to delete. There's a reason why having a seconder is required in the real world. Why is it different here? -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 21:05, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Because it's unnecessarily complicated and would change nothing. Pages that currently end up deleted would end up seconded under your proposal, which changes nothing. Pages that are obviously going to be kept (snowball keeps or speedy keeps, mostly) aren't going to be seconded, so they would sit around for a while and then be closed as keep, again changing nothing. And pages that are going to attract a lot of attention from both sides but eventually end up as keep are going to end up seconded, which still changes nothing. I don't see the point of this change. Cheers. lifebaka++ 21:11, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

You're assuming that AfDs always arrive at the "correct" decision. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 21:40, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm assuming that people won't change the way they !vote because of this. Which they won't. So anything that currently ends up with at least two delete !votes (including the nominator) will be seconded, including all discussions which end in delete and a good number of those which do not. Those discussions which do not currently receive at least two delete !votes (including the nominator) are only a small subsection of AfDs, and I'm not convinced that your proposal will do anything other than let the ones of these that would be snowballed or speedy kept sit around longer waiting for a second. Whether or not the decisions arrived at are "correct" isn't relevant, my point is that your proposal doesn't change these decisions, or indeed appear to do much of anything to how AfDs will run. So, again, I see no point. Additional steps without real effect seems to be running afoul of instruction creep. lifebaka++ 22:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - there is related proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Should deletion nominations be limited to a certain amount of tries?. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 04:29, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose There are far too many articles about subjects that exist only in the mind of the creator or have virtually no available sources, and are therefore doomed to be permanent OR/POV problems. TFD (talk) 04:42, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose as not really necessary. In my view the first "delete" !voter is the "second". In most cases, except for BLP issues or if an article is speedy-able, I won't punch an AFD "delete" unless at least 2 editors concur with the nom. (though I would prefer 3 or more) Some admins will delete "1 voters" but will normally restore and relist them on request. Very rarely do I see a "no !vote" delete close. Therefore, if an AFD doesn't get that first delete !vote "second", the article is not going to be deleted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 05:24, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I am amazed by the discussion above, which suggests that this is an inclusionist idea. To me it looks like a deletionist scheme: "Seconding" would be functionally equivalent to a "delete" !vote. Not allowing any "keep" !vote before the first "delete" has come in would make it more likely that borderline articles are deleted. I don't think that's a good thing. Hans Adler 07:25, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - the first "delete" !vote is essentially a seconding nomination. Also, what's the point of not making it active until there's a second? It still has to be publicly viewable somewhere to get that second, otherwise it'd be incredibly hard to actually take something to AfD. Inks.LWC (talk) 07:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose- An inclusionist scheme to erect yet another roadblock in the way of editing the encyclopedia. Hans Adler makes an excellent point though; this failed proposal had the potential to backfire spectacularly. Reyk _YO! 00:49, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE

I am curious. Is WP:BEFORE an essay, guideline or policy? Is it in another category I am unaware of? Basket of Puppies 14:57, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Defacto guideline. It isn't tagged as a guideline, and doesn't sit on a guideline page, but I think it would be pretty petty to try to claim that it isn't generally accepted as best practice, and a bit of an overreach to describe it as policy.—Kww(talk) 15:17, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Yup. There have been attempts to upgrade it to a de-facto policy with AfD !votes like "Speedy keep- nominator hasn't explicitly stated how they followed WP:BEFORE", but these have rightly failed to have much impact. It's good advice and good practice. Reyk _YO! 00:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

It's still kind of subjective. In some AFDs I do see nominators getting raked over the coals for not following WP:BEFORE. Occasionally it's justified if there are 3 obvious supersources flashing and honking on the first page of a google news search. In many cases it's not. A "keep" !voter sees a zillion google hits and lambasts the nominator for not following BEFORE when in fact he did and didn't find anything among the trash that he thought established notability. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:07, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE is in a class of things I like to call "pseudopolicy", most of which are essays and sections of essays that are often quoted as if they were policy. Along with WP:BEFORE, there's also WP:NAC, WP:ATA and WP:HAMMER, (a userspace essay). I've also seen WP:COMPETENCE and WP:DTTR occasionally used in block messages. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't Look Up

Is Don't Look Up a notable film? It doesn't appear to be. Lachlanusername (talk) 04:27, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

There isn't anything in the current version of the article to establish notability. There might be significant coverage in Japanese sources but I don't know. GB fan (talk) 10:43, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Nominating Bruno Dunckel for AfD

I've completed step I from WP:AFDHOWTO and am requesting someone complete the AfD process for Bruno Dunckel. See the justification for deletion at Talk:Bruno Dunckel#AfD nomination. Thanks in advance. 67.101.6.24 (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

 Done. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Articles for Discussion

I've recently sent a couple of articles to AfD and, not for the first time, I feel as though I'm sending them to the wrong forum even though it is the best one. Let me clarify.

Take Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Éliane Jeannin-Garreau as an example. I wasn't determined to delete the article. I came across it while working through the backlog of articles tagged for unclear notability. I prodded it in line with comments on its talk page. The prod was seconded. Then, when it was dePRODded, I AfDed it following the dePRODders suggestion. My goal at all times was solely to remove a 3½-year-old notability tag. Sending the article to AfD seemed like the best way to have the article dealt with once and for all, rather than be stuck in notability limbo for another 3½ years. I emphasise again, my AfD was not begun out of deletionism or any other such garbage. Unfortunately, because I was the AfD nominater, I risk being thought of as a deletionist, potentially clouding the true purpose of the discussion.

I think this is an ongoing problem. How many AfDs have been dragged into that cold war of deletionists vs inclusionists, drowning the real reasons for the discussion and sometimes forcing nominaters to apologise for their nominations ("I'm only AfDing this because...")? How many people have voted delete simply because some inclusionist went on the offensive? Or vice versa? We need to bring AfD away from a focus on deletion.

I believe the role of AfD is to bring a level of attention to an article that wouldn't be seen on its talk page, with the purpose of discussing that article's future presence on Wikipedia.

Having the name, "Articles for Deletion", does not, I think, fulfil that purpose. Therefore, what do people think about a rename to "Articles for Discussion"? Any comments? Has this discussion come up before? Thank you. LordVetinari 04:43, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Quick reply. Yes, has been proposed before, see Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Rename AFD. It was most recently shot down in March this year, see Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 61#Requested move. The main problem, in my opinion, is that AfD is not really for discussion. Other venues such as WP:RM and WP:MERGE exist if you don't actually want the article to be deleted. Jenks24 (talk) 04:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick reply. I know about Merge and have dealt with quite a few notability tags in that way. As for the last debate, I note that some of the arguments there assume that (a) discussion has or should have already taken place, and (b) that all articles sent to AfD are sent there to be deleted. Regarding the first of these arguments, discussion is near impossible because people simply don't know the page exists; several pages of unclear notability have had no significant edits in two or more years, and sometimes, their talk pages haven't yet had any WikiProject banners added (assuming the talk page has been created yet). Such articles don't appear on watchlists and thus remain invisible. As for the second argument, what about "procedural nominations on which the nominater has no view."? LordVetinari 05:14, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I understand where you're coming from in terms of notability tags on invisible articles, having had the same problem with unreferenced BLPs. The last debate was probably a poor indicator, as the nom was proposing the rename only for consistency with CfD, TfD, etc., which is a pretty weak reason to make what would be a fairly fundamental change. I would be supportive of the move, except it seems to necessitate WP:RM being 'merged' into Articles for Discussion and the problem could arise where someone nominates an article for a name change and it ends up turning into a deletion debate. If some small issues like that could be resolved, I'd be supportive of the idea (personally I like the idea to be able to start an AfD along the lines of 'I think this should be redirected/merged). Wikipedia talk:Articles for discussion/Proposal 1 might be interesting reading, as it seems like it almost got up. Anyway, if you (or anyone else) is serious about this proposal, the biggest challenges would be the 'WP:PEREN' votes and, as Jclemens says, a lot of users at the extreme polar opposites of the inclusionist/deletionist spectrum are against it. Jenks24 (talk) 05:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

How about this, then:

• AfD - Articles for Discussion

for general discussions where (a) consensus is needed (such as topics of unclear notability and poorly referenced BLPs), (b) the discussion is not better placed at AfDD or AfDM (see next two points below) and, (c) where there is a reasonable presumption that discussion on the article's talk page would be hindered by a lack of community awareness.

• AfDD - Articles for Discussion (Deletion)

for gauging support for or opposition to page deletion (i.e. restricting current AfD to deletion discussions only).

• AfDM - Articles for discussion (Moving)

for gauging support for or opposition to page moves (i.e.renaming WP:RM)

In other words, highlighting the similarity of the relevant forums.

I'd like to pursue this because there are just not enough people dealing with the huge backlogs at such fundamental issues as notability and unreferenced BLPs. On the other hand, there appears to be a large number of Wikipedians ready and willing to participate in the various forums (AfD, RM, RFC etc). Therefore, if people won't come to the backlog, why not send the backlog to the people? And if we can offer a space for where the existing forums don't quite fit, why not do so? LordVetinari 07:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, it has come up before. No, it appears unlikely to happen because multiple editors at either end of the deletionist/inclusionist spectrum are against it. No matter how much sense it makes, changing the D from deletion to discussion would turn the tug-of-war into a conversation, and it's hard to keep score, declare victory, or dance on a defeated opponent's grave when there are no winners or losers. Jclemens (talk) 04:59, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Regrettably... LordVetinari 05:14, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I like your proposal, and I think it still has a chance. Trying to replace an existing policy or process always creates a lot of resistance, but introducing a new one is much easier. We just need to come up with a name that means the same as "Articles for Discussion" but has an abbreviation that is different from "AfD". For example, "Articles for Attention" or "Spotlight". Then we can set up a new process similar to AfD under that brand. If successful, we can begin to subdivide it by topics rather than desired outcomes. Due to the open-ended nature we may at some stage need a process for quickly removing nominations that are not considered helpful. But we can think about this problem when it appears. It is probably best if a discussion at the new process cannot result in immediate deletion but only in referral to AfD, where of course the earlier discussion will be considered.

Alternatively, for just discussing an article's notability or otherwise, I want to advertise WP:N/N as a relatively non-confrontational environment, probably because the discussions there cannot result in an immediate deletion outcome. Hans Adler 09:21, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree it may not be wise to rename AfD, to do otherwise would unnecessarily confuse a lot of people, as well as being a bugger to implement. Nonetheless, I think I'll hold back from pushing a particular proposal at this point and just see what ideas this discussion throws up. LordVetinari 12:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• I have never treated an AfD as only and only about "D" as in "Deletion". I'm always happy to discuss notability-related disagreement. And I am yet to see someone saying "this is deletion, do not discuss any other related issues here", expect if the wrong venue was taken in the first place. This can be seen when AfD do not close as "keep" or "delete", but other possibilities as well, such as "merge" or "redirect". But at the same time, this venue is for deletion. I don't support renaming RM; but I might support a well-laid out proposal for AfX for "articles for discussion/attention/spotlight" or whatever the title. That would be one step lower than an RfC, but one step higher than just the talk page. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• AFD already can't handle the number of articles which are nominated each day. For example, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/La Salle-FEU MBA-JD Program which has been listed three times without attracting any comment. And remember that we have over 3 million articles here and a thousand new ones are added each day. 99% of these are still work-in-progress and so in need of some work and discussion to raise their standard to that of a GA. The primary place to have those discussions is on the article's talk page. User:LordVetinari has not posted any discussion on the talk page of the article which so vexes him. He already knows that another editor does not agree with his proposal that the article be deleted. Is the reason for avoiding the article's talk page that he does not wish to discuss the article with someone who knows and cares about it? Is he going to AFD in the hope of finding more hostile editors who will support his cause? If it is the case that he does not actually want to delete the article then such action is contrary to WP:GAME and the discussion should be speedily closed per WP:SK for reasons such as "nominations that are clearly an attempt to end an editing dispute through deletion, where dispute resolution is a more appropriate course".

Regarding my reasons for going to AfD, I've explained myself already in the second paragraph above. Please read it. I won't repeat myself. And please assume good faith in others as you expect them to assume good faith in you. LordVetinari 02:13, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

A better way to attract more attention to a neglected article is to post on its talk page. If that doesn't seem to attract much attention, then use the Requests for comment or Third opinion processes to invite other editors. And one could, of course, just work upon the article to address its deficiencies by improving it.

AFD is purely for articles which are so hopeless that the delete function should be used to erase the article and its history completely. It is not for redirection, merger, forced improvement, transwiki, splits, rewriting or any other action which may be performed by ordinary editing. The process exists because deletion is so disruptive that it is a controlled function and community authority is required to sanction its use. But why do people keep trying to overload this process with actions beyond its scope? My belief is that it's because Twinkle has made the deletion process easier to use than any other. This is all wrong because the process was designed to be difficult to start so that it would not be used frivolously or inappropriately. What's needed is for Twinkle to implement some of the other actions listed at WP:BEFORE so that they are made easier too.

Warden (talk) 20:34, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• What Warden writes above is not even remotely reflected by community norms and consensus. AfD is not literally just for deletion; redirection, merger, and transwiki are valid outcomes routinely found as the closing result of AfDs. And remember that the infamous WP:BEFORE is not policy or guideline, but merely a sort of meta-suggestion. Tarc (talk) 21:18, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• Before posting here, Tarc was active at Talk:Murder of Meredith Kercher. He didn't go to AFD to discuss that article; he discussed it in the appropriate place — its talk page. AFD is not a general forum for discussing articles; it is, as the name indicates, for deletion specifically. What part of Articles for Deletion is difficult to understand? Warden (talk) 21:52, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

If the goal is to resolve a {{Notability}} tag, then an AFD is effective, but a discussion at WP:Notability/Noticeboard another option.

Which reminds me: if anyone knows the equivalent for the {{globalize}} tag, I'd like to hear about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

A discussion is underway to remove usage instructions from deletion process tag

All interested AfD editors are invited to look and join the discussion at Template talk:Rescue. BusterD (talk) 12:00, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

That's small beer. A more significant discussion is at Village pump. Warden (talk) 13:36, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Both discussions deserve wider eyes. Thanks for pointing it out. BusterD (talk) 13:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Asana Articles

We don't have a yoga wikiproject, so I hope you don't mind me asking here:

I've looked at the asana articles listed by {{asana}}. They are mostly little more than stubs and unsourced medical advice and it is difficult to establish notability outside the use of yoga because they are not unlike the many pokemon (actual pokemon) articles that were delete many years ago (which resulted in the page wp:pokemon test). Some of them are tagged for merging, some of them into list of yoga postures.

What are you thoughts?

Also, what about yoga schools such as Anahata Yoga (cf Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anahata_Yoga)?Curb Chain (talk) 12:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I have now opened a deletion discussion.Curb Chain (talk) 05:09, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem here is that these are not all yoga postures. Some of these are also postures used in Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, etc. To combine some of these into a combined "asana" page for yoga would be inappropriate in these cases. Specifically, lotus position is very notable for Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, and there is a significant amount of material available just on this one position. In these cases, its role and function are not at all the same as an asana in yoga. Tengu800 11:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Generation of Youth for Christ

Please complete my deletion discussion opening as posted on the talk page per the instructions for anonymous editors on the AFD instructions page. Thank you. 50.72.159.224 (talk) 02:41, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I am opposed to this deletion. This organization is notable with the SDA church. It has annual conferences that regularly receive 6000 attendees, and has numerous articles on it in the media of the denomination. It is also seen significantly from an ideological perspective as it has been accused of being a vehicle for turning the young into "fundamentalists". Regardless of one's perspective, it serves an important function within it's community.--Fountainviewkid (talk) 02:45, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Make that argument in the discussion. This isn't the discussion. I am just following instructions for anonymous users to list things for deletion. 50.72.159.224 (talk) 02:46, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Last I checked this is the place where the discussions are occurring.--Fountainviewkid (talk) 03:10, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

This page is to discuss Wikipedia:Articles for deletion in general. The discussion of that individual article is taking place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Generation of Youth for Christ. Cheers, Jujutacular ^talk 03:42, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

 Done--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 03:21, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Nickerson Family Association

I've completed step I from WP:AFDHOWTO. Would someone please complete the AfD process for Nickerson Family Association? I wrote a justification for deletion at Talk:Nickerson Family Association#Resubmitting for AFD; note that this article underwent an AFD three years ago, with the only significant changes since then being the addition of more unreferenced material. Thank you. 67.101.5.92 (talk) 10:18, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

 Done GB fan (talk) 11:24, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Blanking a currently running AFD

Could someone point me to the relevant text on this? In a nutshell, is there a guideline somewhere that says AFD's that are currently open should not be blanked?   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 21:45, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Its a pointy out of process nomination without any rationale, from imo a user that has supported the previous connexted Sex neo and likely supports this one to - AFD is not for confirmation. Off2riorob (talk) 21:47, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that you wouldn't blank *any* ongoing discussion without a very good reason, I can't see why we would need a specific policy. Protonk (talk) 23:06, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I had that same thought, but wanted to see if there was anything written that covered that scenario.   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 00:14, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Historical States of Russia

First, my apologies; I realize this probably isn't the right place to bring this up, but I don't know where else to go with this. If someone can redirect me to the correct spot, that would be great.

The issue is that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Historical states of Russia has been around since January of this year and has yet to be closed, or even relisted. Someone removed it from AfD categories a few days ago, and the nominator never placed the requisite note on Historical states of Russia saying that the article had been nominated for deletion, so I'm worried that this AfD page is in danger of being permanently lost in the ether.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:16, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

He also failed to transclude it to an AFD log. Therefore I've closed it under SK 1. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:48, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

American 3rd Party

Hi. I've nominated this page on a political party for deletion as it doesn't appear notable. But I'm only an IP user, so I can't complete steps II and III. Can someone else? Much oblidged. 71.184.241.68 (talk) 16:58, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

•  Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American 3rd Party. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 17:09, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Accurately describing WP:N

I recently expanded a paragraph to say:

Before nominating due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist. Notability requires only that reliable sources have been published; it does not require that any sources be named in the current version of the article. WP:Deletion is not clean up.

It was deleted because there's a related discussion going on(?), restored because it's accurate, and deleted again with no explanation, so I bring it here.

Does anybody here believe that WP:N requires citations to be named in an article? (Relevant quotation from that guideline: "Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate citation.")

Does anybody here believe that AFD is an article clean-up forum?

And since none of us actually disagree with this text, can we please restore the text again? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, WP:V certainly requires that the article be based on "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", so no article can be demonstrated to pass WP:V unless it identifies those independent, third-party, published sources. Whoever added "Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate citation" merely demonstrated that they didn't understand WP:V. WP:N as a guideline serves only to explain the impacts of WP:V: it doesn't add any new restrictions on articles, nor does it (or can it) remove them. WP:N further states that "The common theme in the notability guidelines is that there must be verifiable, objective evidence that the subject has received significant attention from independent sources to support a claim of notability. The absence of citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that the subject is not notable." Given that, while WP:N doesn't require the existence of inline citations, it's impossible to pass WP:N or WP:V without an unambiguous pointer to a reliable, third-party, published source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The argument that the article can be kept without such a source being identified is generally pretty dubious, and, if it can be identified, it can be referenced in some form. The whole "sources may be found someday" argument neglects the fact the sources have to precede article creation if the article is to be based on them. —Kww(talk) 21:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

And to answer the next question: yes, if no one can identify an independent, third-party, published source, the article should be deleted or userfied. It doesn't belong in mainspace.—Kww(talk) 21:06, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "Deletion is not clean up" makes no sense and should not be used. But otherwise I don't think there's much to object to in the proposed addition. We don't delete articles just because no source is currently given; we delete them because sources have been looked for and not found. In other words, it's not generally helpful to nominate articles for deletion just because they don't contain sources (there are millions of such articles, some of them very good), but because you've looked for sources and can't find any. (Or: drive-by deletion nominations are not helpful to the project.) --Kotniski (talk) 07:42, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

And that's really the key: the point isn't about what is or is not currently in the article; it's about whether there exists sufficient coverage (independent, non-trivial, RSes) to merit inclusion. If there exists such coverage, but an article is deleted because it wasn't cited in that article since no one could be bothered to look for and include it, the encyclopedia is diminished pointlessly. Jclemens (talk) 07:57, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we do see people (usually inexperienced people) who believe that AFD is merely a tool for forcing other editors to clean up an article within the next seven days. WP:NOTCLEANUP has been considered an invalid argument for deletion for years, but WP:Nobody reads the directions, so we do see this mistake being made. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I won't argue that a search for sources beforehand isn't best practice, but it really is more than a matter of finding a single source or two. It needs to be possible to demonstrate that the material in those sources is sufficient to source the majority of the article, not just a random factoid contained in it. Arguments similar to the one being proposed are all too frequently used to support keeping articles where people only believe sources exist but are unable to actually point at them. The "AFD isn't cleanup" argument is flawed: before an article is kept, the sources need to be identified, and the article actually modified to make use of them. Only then can it really be judged whether the article can be kept.—Kww(talk) 13:42, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

This proposed revision makes no sense. How can anyone ever state that "sources don't exist"? They can't - they can state that they have looked for them, but haven't found them. To which the response will be 'look harder'. The burden of proof for article notability must remain with the article creator. Yes, it is reasonable to look for evidence of sources in many cases, but this cannot be obligatory, as it is unenforceable. Nobody can prove whether another editor has looked for sources, so why pretend that they can? If people are too lazy to source articles properly in the first place, expecting others to sort out the mess is arguably a breach of WP:CIVIL at minimum - or at least, it ought to be. Wikipedia is sufficiently mature now to be able to at least assume that there are few articles that are so important that it is better to keep an unsourced stub for something that might be sourcable, on the offchance. If the subject is notable (and sourcable), and the article is deleted, no doubt it will be recreated later. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:17, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, nobody can prove that a nominator didn't look for sources but if I click "find sources" in an AFD and there are 3 supersources flashing and honking on the first page of a google news search, then it's a good bet that he didn't. However, I wouldn't say "look harder" or bash the nominator over the head for not following WP:BEFORE, I would just civilly present the sources. This throws the ball back into the nominator's court. He now has to "impeach" those 3 sources. (ie show why they are not "significant", "reliable" and/or "independent") --Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:32, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Assumpion, unfounded: that the creator ever had a particular burden of proving notability. In fact, the burden of proof has always been on those arguing for deletion to prove that an article doesn't meet inclusion criteria. To borrow judicial parlance, however, that's simply a "preponderance of evidence" standard, rather than a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard--good, reasonable arguments that "I've looked for sources and can't find any" generally stand--unless they're proved to be incompetently inaccurate by a later editor, in which case, the editor asserting that sources aren't discoverable has caused the encyclopedia harm by his negligence or malfeasance. Jclemens (talk) 01:35, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Kww, you see to think that the policy is verifiED, not verifiABLE. WP:V actually only requires citations for three specific kinds of content (WP:BLP adds a fourth). Many substubs on notable topics do not contain any of those kinds of material. Even when an article is required to contain citations, the absence of those citations does not make the subject non-notable. To give a simple example, deleting all the citations from Cancer would not make that class of diseases a subject that we shouldn't have an article on.

Andy, your worry is misplaced. Wikipedia doesn't require anyone to prove that the sources don't exist. Wikipedia accepts the results of a good-faith search for sources. But that's really irrelevant, because the change didn't affect that sentence. The change is a straightforward reminder that {{unref}} articles are not automatically {{nonnotable}} articles, and that the only acceptable solution to under-cited articles is to provide citations, not to delete the articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

That still assumes that the article is citeable. Furthermore, your present wording actually doesn't require the potential AfD-proposer to add any citations he/she finds to the article either. We need no further instructions than the first sentence. The rest is nothing more than an illogical assertion about abstract notions of potential notability based on hypothetical 'evidence'. We don't need to make decisions about whether a subject is notable in the abstract - only on whether an article demonstrates that it is. To deal with your 'Cancer' article, I'd say that if an article subject like that was entirely uncited, it hasn't any business being in user space. A bad article is worse than no article at all. If people cannot understand that, I have to question why they bother to contribute to Wikipedia. This is supposed to be an online encyclopaedia, of benefit to readers, not a gentlemen's debating society cum custard-pie fight. Preserving junk just because we think that a proper article might somehow come along later isn't in the readers' interests. And please don't tell me that policy says otherwise - it probably does, but that doesn't make it right... AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:35, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

break 1

If the article isn't citeABLE—or even if it is fully citED, but with the wrong kinds of sources (and the proper sort don't exist, so far as we can tell; many books, music, and businesses have non-independent sources that make it possible to verify the entire contents, without demonstrating the the subject is even slightly notable)—then the article IMO should be deleted, no matter how beautifully written it is.

But "imperfect article on an perfectly acceptable subject" isn't actually a valid reason for deletion. Cancer, for example, contained zero proper citations for nearly three years after its creation. Deleting an article because it needs to be improved is a violation of the WP:Deletion policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, WhatamIdoing, I have no misconception of the contents of WP:V. The only way to pass it is to identify independent, third-party, reliable sources for the majority of the content in an article. That can be done at article creation or the article can be retroactively repaired, but an article cannot be said to meet WP:N unless independent, third-party, reliable sources can be identified, and can't be said to meet WP:V unless the majority of the content of an article can be traced to those sources.

AndyTheGrump's concern is actually fairly justified: take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lamia (Dungeons & Dragons), for example: an article that passes neither WP:V nor WP:N, but is kept because we have editors that either can't understand them or don't care about what they say. We don't need to put any language in any policy or guideline that encourages such people.

The question really isn't one of deleting an article because it "needs to be improved", it's a question of deleting an article because no one can demonstrate a method to improve it to the point that it meets policies and guidelines.—Kww(talk) 20:51, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

No, WP:V does not actually require "the majority of the content" to be supported by cited sources. The best practice is for all non-trivial material to be provided with an inline citation, but only four types of material are required to have citations.

Even if it did, WP:Notability does not require any of the content on any page to be supported by cited sources. Cancer is a notable subject because sources were WP:Published in the real world, not because some of them are WP:Cited in the current version of the article. We delete articles because they are non-notable. We do not refuse to have an encyclopedia article about a subject merely because some of the material on the page is not verifiable. (We challenge and remove unverifiable material from articles about notable subjects. We do not delete an article on a notable subject merely because someone spammed in some unverifiable nonsense.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Independent, third-party, reliable sources are not required for the majority of the content in an article in order for the article to be kept. If parts of the article cannot be reliably sourced (and assuming they don't meet an exception) those parts can be edited out, and the parts that are reliably sourced retained within the article. Rlendog (talk) 23:52, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing,Rlendog: I don't know any way an article can be said to be based on independent, third-party reliable sources unless the majority of its content is derived from them. If you know how to base on article on such sources and not have the article reflect that by having the majority of its content derived from them, I would like to know your secret.

It's true than an article that is based on primary sources or sources financially or creatively tied to the subject may be able to be repaired to the point where it is based on independent sources and is still a meaningful article. Certainly, if an article can be repaired to the point where the motivation for deletion no longer applies, there's no longer a valid motivation to delete it. That's true about any motivation for deletion. Most of these cases aren't like that: to point out Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lamia (Dungeons & Dragons) again, the most charitable possible view of independent sources would give credit to one one-line mention: the article cannot possibly be rewritten such that it is based on independent sources.

Please stop talking about inline citations like that is a point that is even being discussed: I'm not arguing that any article must use inline citations, only that they unambiguously identify their source. That's a major and important distinction.—Kww(talk) 02:19, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I can easily base an article entirely on independent, reliable sources and fail to name them. It's easier to do this than to name the sources. Inexperienced editors do it every day of the week. The fact that I failed to name the sources I used does not change the fact that the material is drawn from said sources. The only thing it affects is your ability to discover which sources I got the material from.

More relevantly, the fact that I failed to name any sources—or that I used lousy sources—does not affect whether the subject is one that Wikipedia ought to have an article on ("notable"). Wikipedia ought to have an article on Heat intolerance, because Pubmed gives me a list of 150 scholarly publications about it, Google Books lists more than 9,000 books that address it, and Google Scholar lists nearly 5,000 publications (quoted phrase search in all three cases). The subject is notable, even though the page is a redlink at the moment.

You still don't seem to be reading what WP:V actually says. WP:V does not require that sources be unambiguously identified. You will not find those words in the policy. WP:V requires inline citations in three cases (and WP:BLP in one other). Outside of those three cases, WP:V does not require any citations, whether general or inline. I'm not saying this is desirable, but I am telling you that's what's actually written on the page. There is a requirement that all (not merely a majority) of information be verifiABLE to some reliable source. There is a requirement that three kinds of material be supplied with inline citations to specific reliable sources. All other material is not required to be supported by any citation at all.

Let me give you an example: If you decided to start a substub whose contents were only "Heat intolerance is when people do not tolerate heat very well", you would not be required to name any sources at all. It would be a lousy stub, and I personally hope you wouldn't do that, but:

1. the subject would be notable no matter what you wrote on the page, because of the thousands of sources mentioned above, and
2. the one-sentence substub would fully comply with low standard actually documented in WP:V (The sentence is not a direct quotation, has not been challenged, and idiotic tautologies like this aren't WP:LIKELY to be challenged.)

And, again, if I can drag you back on point: It doesn't much matter what WP:V says about citations. WP:V is not an inclusion policy. We include articles because independent sources have been published about them—called "notability"—not because a good editor conveniently cited those sources for us. Notability does not require the editor to document his sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Deleting an article is about deleting its content. It isn't a statement that no worthwhile article can ever be created on a topic, it simply says that the contents of the article and its history doesn't include material that is a part of that worthwhile article.

What I've said over and over is that you can't verify that an article meets WP:V without pointers to sources. An unverifiable assumption that an article is based on independent sources is worthless, and, if you can verify that the article is based on such sources, it takes three lines of text to throw in a "References" section that points to them. No fancy inline citations, no fancy formatting, but something. WP:V is not a topic inclusion policy, but it does contain statements about the acceptable contents of articles. Articles without acceptable content can (and generally should) be deleted. WP:N, as a guideline, can't reasonably be interpreted to contradict WP:V, and, in general, WP:N serves only to elaborate on statements contained in WP:V, to wit: "If a topic hasn't been covered in reliable, third-party sources independent of the subject, Wikipedia should not have an article on it", and "base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Without those two statements, there is no policy basis for WP:N. One of the main functions of WP:N is to elaborate on the impact of those two sentences. You can't discuss WP:N without discussing WP:V, because any content that isn't a natural consequence of WP:V is on shaky ground, and any content that contradicts WP:V is just plain wrong. And to claim that policies and guidelines can be met even in the event that no one can find evidence that they do is just strange. Trying to interpret WP:N in a fashion that says "because sources exist on the topic, we don't have to worry about whether the existing content can be traced to sources" is granting power to WP:N that it simply doesn't have. Topics can be notable independent of us having a good article about them.

I will go for bold on one part, because you don't seem to read it no matter how many times I say it: I am not talking about inline citations. Please stop talking about inline citations. No one else is talking about inline citations. Inline citations are not the topic. I'm simply saying that you can't assert that an article is based on independent sources without identifying those sources, and WP:V requires that articles be based on independent sources.

Most of your statement that you want to add is actually pretty unobjectionable. What I'm objecting to is an implication that unsourced articles should be kept. They shouldn't be. Look for sources before nomination, fine. If you find them, add them and don't nominate, fine. If you nominate and no one finds them, delete, because no one can reasonably assert that WP:N has been met if no independent sources can be found.—Kww(talk) 04:09, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• "Deleting an article is about deleting its content" — No, it's not. Deleting an article may be about the content (e.g., for copyright violations), but deletions at AFD are almost always about the notability of the subject, not the content currently on the page.
• "you can't verify that an article meets WP:V without pointers to sources." — Sure I can. I do it every time I add sources to a previously unref'd article. I do it every time I supply a list of sources at an AFD involving a previously unref'd article. I do it every time that I ask Mr Google about material added without a source. I'll bet that you can do this, too.
• ""If a topic hasn't been covered in reliable, third-party sources independent of the subject, Wikipedia should not have an article on it" — This is exactly what I want you to pay attention to. It says that the sources must exist. It does not say that the sources must be cited. WP:V says that Wikipedia should not have an article on any subject that has not been covered in appropriate sources. WP:V does not say that Wikipedia should not have an article on any subject that does not name those sources somewhere on the page (what you've been claiming). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• Is this some kind of semantic problem? When you add sources to an previously unreferenced article, what are you doing besides providing pointers to sources so that whether the articles passes WP:V can be reasonably ascertained? All I am saying is that before you made the repair, the article didn't pass. After you made the repair, it did. Have I ever stated that all articles that cannot be verified in their current state can not possibly be repaired? No. I'm simply stating that they need to be checked and repaired, and don't get an automatic pass based on an unsubstantiated claim that they are sourceable. The actual existence of the source needs to be demonstrated. You are right that the topic may pass WP:N based on the mere existence of sources, but the article may not. The contents may be useless. Imagine an article named John D. Rockefeller that consisted of the contents "Bulbasaur is one of the three starter Pokemon", correctly cited to a Nintendo game guide. Would you argue that we have to keep the article because John D. Rockefeller is a notable topic? I hope not. Contents and topics are overlapping things, and have to be evaluated in appropriate context.

You are quite right that people use arguments based on WP:N to discuss content, and that's a shame. There are a lot of hopeless articles that will never make the foundation of a good one, and they should be deleted. Nothing about the existence of a hopelessly bad article about a topic should prevent the creation of a good article about the topic, and the existence of the garbage article frequently interferes with the creation of a good article.

If you wanted to insert a statement along the lines of "WP:N addresses the notability of topics. Other policies, such as WP:V, address the content of articles about those topics. It is quite possible for the article to be about a topic that passes WP:N, while the current content of the article is completely unsalvagable. In such cases, alternatives such as deleting the unsalvagable content and installing a redirect in the location of the notable topic should be considered", I'd be happy with that.—Kww(talk) 21:21, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what the problem is. Is it "semantic" if you say that it's utterly impossible for anyone to verify that the contents of any article are supported by a reliable source unless someone has typed the name of the source into an article, and I say that you're wrong, because I regularly do verify unreferenced material by asking my favorite web search engine whether a reliable source exists for that material?

NB that after I have personally verified this information, I do not always type the name of a source into the article. The material is verifiABLE if a reliable source exists (=has ever been published in the real world), and if no sources are named in the article, I can veriFY that material myself by figuring out whether any sources exist (assuming it's actually verifiABLE). It is not actually necessary for anyone to type up the name of a source for me to be able to do this. Citing sources saves me the bother of looking for sources, but it doesn't actually change either the subject's notability or the content's verifiability.

An article on a notable subject passes WP:N before it is even created. Notability is (primarily) about whether sources have been published in the real world. (It also addresses a few other issues, such as whether it's indiscriminate, better handled as part of another article, and so forth.) Notability is not about whether anyone ever types up the names of those sources on Wikipedia. Typing up the names of sources demonstrates (the biggest aspect of) notability, but it does not make the subject be notable. Failing to type up the names of sources does not make the subject be inappropriate for Wikipedia; it only makes the current version of the article is badly written.

Nearly all AFDs are nominated for deletion on the grounds of notability. We do not handle serious content problems like copyvios through AFD. (Remember, please, that this change is proposed for the AFD page specifically, not the whole deletion policy.) "Unsalvageable" articles on notable topics are few and far between, and nearly all of them are correctly handled by someone boldly stubbing them, not by pretending that the current contents of the article affects whether or not it's appropriate for Wikipedia to have about that subject (=notability). This is why we keep saying that WP:Deletion is not clean up. We don't respond to badly written articles on notable subjects by deleting someone's inept or incomplete efforts; we respond by improving them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree that notability is the pivot point for most AFDs. The problem is that it is being used incorrectly. There are two major questions to be answered for the existence of an independent article:

1. Are there multiple independent sources about the topic, thus allowing it to pass WP:N.
2. Is there sufficient information about the topic to be derived from those reliable sources to allow creation of a suitable article, thus allowing it to pass WP:V.

These two questions are pretty basic, but the discussions keep getting derailed (much like this discussion) by people that deny that there is a policy-rooted requirement for discussion of the topic in independent sources. That is the main thing that I want any wording describing WP:N to clearly communicate: there must be independent, third-party sources that discuss the topic and support the information included in the article. Now. Today. Not in the future. Not in a hypothetical alternate universe, not possibly in foreign sources that no one can identify, but available and clearly identifiable at the present moment. Jclemens may be afraid of hurting editors' feelings, but that doesn't negate either WP:N or WP:V. It simply doesn't matter whether a Wikipedia editor is interested in the topic. It doesn't matter whether there are licensed game-guides, episode guides, and DVD commentary that discuss topics. It only matters that there is enough information available in multiple, third-party, independent sources that discuss the topic in a manner that supports the material in the article.

Any language that undermines the need for reliable sources is problematic. I don't mind any addition that emphasises that adding the sources to the article is preferable to deletion, but language that makes it sounds as if being able to identify those sources and identify what information has been derived from them is optional simply encourages a group of editors that needs to be soundly and thoroughly discouraged.—Kww(talk) 02:54, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Are we agreed that the suitable sources must have been published, and that whether or not any editor has actually typed the names of those sources onto the article page is actually irrelevant to AFD? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

No, because such an articles can't be reasonably stated to have passed WP:V, and articles that don't pass WP:V should normally be deleted. You have to be able to demonstrate that the content of the article is based on independent sources, and that can't be done without comparing the content to the sources. That's different than a quick notability check. In theory, I guess a talk page discussion dissecting the article and comparing it to sources could be done without actually updating the article, but that seems to be a very rare case.—Kww(talk) 21:29, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay... Are we agreed that suitable sources must have been published? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

For "suitable" == "directly support the information contained in the article", yes.—Kww(talk) 18:01, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, we don't agree. In my books, even if every single jot and tittle in the article could be supported by a reliable source, that's not actually enough.

The content policies say that a self-published, non-independent source (e.g., a corporate website) can be perfectly reliable and totally sufficient for verifying the material in the article, but that's not good enough to justify having an article on that subject in the first place.

Wikipedia should not have articles on subjects for which no third-party sources have been published. These third-party sources must provide a significant amount of information about the subject, not merely a passing mention. "Alice Expert said the Earth is an oblate spheroid" is not a sufficient source to justify having an article on Alice Expert, because it lacks significant information about her. "We are the premier carpet cleaning company in the Bay Cities" is not a suitable source because it's not written by an independent third party. These sources are sufficient for verifying statements like "She was named in the newspaper one day" and "They clean carpets", but they are not suitable sources for demonstrating notability.

So having considered that distinction, would you agree that "independent, third-party reliable sources with significant coverage of the subject" (=suitable) must have been published? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I neglected to include the reliability criterion, but I've typed it so many times that it should be apparent it was an unintentional omission. Your criterion is sufficient for an article to exist. That doesn't mean the article that currently exists should be retained. For an article to exist, yes, "independent, third-party reliable sources with significant coverage of the subject" must have been published? For the current article to be retained, it must be possible to demonstrate that the majority of the information in the article was derived from such sources, or that it is possible to repair the article such that the article is based on independent, third-party sources with a reputation for fact checking and accuracy.—Kww(talk) 01:10, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't agree. The content policies require articles to be based on high-quality (e.g., independent, secondary) sources, but when they fail to meet that standard, the prescribed solution is WP:BOLDly improving them, not nuking whatever we've got and starting from scratch. "This article isn't good enough" is not' a valid reason for deletion. The community has rejected the use of deletion in this way for years. You will not find one line in AFD or the deletion policy that says articles should be deleted if the current version does not fully conform with the sourcing policies. If that were true, we'd routinely be deleting every other revision in some articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Have I ever said "delete first, ask questions later"? What I am saying is that someone has to be able to demonstrate the possibility of improvement, and that the content that the article currently contains is material that can be the foundation for that improvement. We have far too many articles like Lamia (Dungeons & Dragons), where no one can show any rational hope for improvement. There's simply nothing that can be done to make it meet WP:V, no matter how bold someone is.—Kww(talk) 00:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

This is only true if you believe that WP:V is an inclusion guideline that prohibits Wikipedia from having articles unless a physical majority of the contents can be sourced to an independent source. While I'm personally sympathetic with this goal, I do not actually think that is what the community means to indicate when it says "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:31, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know why you keep bringing up the phrase "inclusion guideline". An article can violate WP:V in the same sense that an article can violate WP:NOT. Neither one is labeled an "inclusion guideline". If you have an alternative interpretation of what it means to base articles on independent reliable sources, I'm all ears. I don't believe in literally counting characters myself, but I do think that it provides a useful indication of whether you can legitimately say an article is "based" on those sources. There's certainly wiggle-room in the determination.—Kww(talk) 02:53, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

break 2

More to the point, there is a recent movement to use text in V that prefers independent RS to narrowly draw the lines around acceptable sources in ways that defy WP:PSTS in those contexts. Primary sources about the battle of Iwo Jima, necessarily partisan and limited in their perspective, are entirely different critters than primary sources about D&D monsters, which are definitive and exhaustive. But then, we've known that our guidelines don't work well for fictional elements for years now. Jclemens (talk) 01:38, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The applicable text in WP:V predates the existence of WP:PSTS. I think the guidelines work quite well when applied to fictional elements: we generally shouldn't have articles on fictional elements (as opposed to fictional works).—Kww(talk) 02:19, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Policy is supposed to describe reality, not warp Wikipedia into its image. The fact is, objectively lousy articles on fictional elements are created all the time, no matter what the guidelines and policies say, because that's what readers want to see, and that's what editors want to contribute--to steal Andy's article from below. Policy is Wikipedia's servant, not its master, and to the extent people are using policies to try and get rid of content they disdain, then it's misapplied and should be ignored, regardless of the letter of the "law". Jclemens (talk) 06:57, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

It's not "warping the encyclopedia" at all. It's true that some take inclusionism to an extreme, and want to keep all content, regardless of how useless. The thing to do with "objectively lousy articles on fictional elements" is to either improve them or delete them, not hold on to them perpetually because we don't want to hurt peoples feelings. It's especially bad to argue that primary sources are sufficient to base articles on ... doing so perverts the entire concept of NPOV. Without independent sourcing, there is no balance, no perspective, and no judgment that tells us where to stop detailing the topic. Nothing to tell us that an article on the Nostril hair density of aliens in World of Warcraft 33 is probably not a suitable article, but World of Warcraft probably is. Recognition of topics in independent sources is what should keeps us out of interminable arguments over whether articles should be kept or not. If people would stop working to undermine our best and most accurate method of determining topic suitability and embrace it instead, AFD could become a fairly collegial place, where people tried to objectively apply guidelines against content, not rely on insults and subterfuge to try to get bad articles to appear like they meet the guidelines.—Kww(talk) 13:35, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The problem with this is that the encyclopedia serves both objective and subjective needs. There are plenty of articles of relatively little meaning that get developed into FA/FL/FT etc.--to include my own work on Veronica Mars, for example--and plenty of hard, objective science articles that languish as stubs. The fact is, the prohibition on primary sources was designed for the latter: as "not a publisher of original thought", Wikipedia is not a primary publisher of new research, nor is it a publisher of novel fiction. Having said that, when the discussion of a notable fictional element is confined to those with a commercial interest, the guidelines don't serve us well, and a slavish adherence to them would have aborted Wikipedia's own development. Guidelines serve the encyclopedia and the readers; it is not our job to tell readers what they should want to see, nor our editors what they can write about. If there's no more specific WMF project, odds are that good faith content does, in fact, belong in Wikipedia in some shape or form. Jclemens (talk) 23:21, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• User:WhatamIdoing's suggestion seems reasonable though we already have text of that sort in places like WP:BEFORE, don't we? As for the general discussion, note that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a search engine. Its purpose is to present articles of original text of our own creation, not link farms. Warden (talk) 21:39, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
  • The underlined text is my proposed addition to BEFORE. The non-underlined text (which Andy apparently disagrees with) has been there as long as I can remember. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I wrote "We need no further instructions than the first sentence". So yes, I do agree with the non-underlined text, as an instruction/recommendation (it can actually only ever be a recommendation since non-compliance is impossible to prove). As for the rest, I think we need to go back to basics here. If someone creates a Wikipedia article, they are agreeing that it is subject to Wikipedia notability criteria. So why shouldn't they be expected to provide evidence for this from the start? Obviously a little common sense is needed, so we shouldn't start an AfD on an article five minutes after it is first created, and neither should we start one on the Cancer article just because somebody has deleted all the references. But otherwise, I think we need to start moving towards the position that all new articles have an implicit "lack of evidence for notability" template on them until a time as such evidence is provided - by those responsible for creating the article. This is hardly an extraordinary requirement, after all. Try writing an undergraduate essay with a note saying that the sources exist, but you haven't included them in references because you can't be bothered to find them... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:11, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
      • Because the main point about "anybody can edit" is that non-vandalism contributions have value. They may not get an article to where it should be, but then, someone can come along and improve an article like I did with Yellow Star (book), which is the best example I've seen of what one can do with a really rotten, incompetently written article on an encyclopedic topic. Because that lousy article was there, I found it, I improved it, and we have a GA on a significant children's book. Had it been speedily deleted, I would not have found it and rescued it. Thus, even sub-par good faith edits help draw attention to topics which usually can and hence should be later improved by people who know the ins-and-outs of sourcing, etc. Jclemens (talk) 02:16, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
        • That's not necessarily true: there are a lot of contributions to Wikipedia that have no value and cannot be used as the foundation of a useful article.—Kww(talk) 02:22, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
          • Sorry, Jclemens, but Yellow Star is a poor example of anything. Are you seriously suggesting that it the initial poorly-sourced article hadn't been written, there would be no article by now? This seems highly implausible. If a subject is 'notable' to our readers and contributors, in the sense that they expect to find an article, as would surely be the case here, they will all do nothing about it? No. Someone will start the process, and if they (a) fail to find any sources, and (b) nobody else does either, so it gets deleted, all that has happened is that Wikipedia is in the same situation as it was before, and the 'notable' article can - indeed, statistically speaking will - be created later if there is a need for it. We are actually dealing with two different causations here - the proximate cause for an article's existence is that someone wrote it, but Wikipedia's whole philosophy is based around an implicit ultimate cause too, that articles exist because our readers (and contributors) expect them to, and if they don't, somebody will do something about it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:45, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
            • You can pontificate and theorize, but I can only speak to my experience: 1) I found a crappy article probably started by an editor in the book's target demographic and improved that article to GA status. 2) Had I not seen it up for deletion I never would have improved it. You can theorize all about how someone might have done thus-and-so, but the fact is this actually happened. There is no excuse for throwing away good-faith content unless it runs afoul of NOT. Improve it, transwiki it, merge it, whatever, but new editors writing about what they care about are the lifeblood of Wikipedia, and those who seek to "improve" the encyclopedia by restricting new entrants--actively or passively--are enemies of its survival. Jclemens (talk) 07:01, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's my take on this. To be "notable" there needs to exist, as spelled out and simplified at WP:42, "significant coverage" in "reliable sources" "independent of the subject". Sources that meet all 3 I like to call "supersources". However, to cite information in the article (and depending on the information) only the middle one "reliability" is needed. It's possible for an article to be fully cited with "reliable sources" that aren't "supersources" but for "supersources" to exist elsewhere. This is how we reconcile WP:BURDEN and WP:BEFORE. WP:BURDEN is about information "in the article" not whether or not an article should exist. An editor who wants to include information in an article has a "burden" to provide a reliable source, "super" or otherwise, for it. WP:BEFORE is mainly about "supersources". Someone who wants to nominate an article for deletion should do a reasonable check to see if supersources exist.

I think it also should be noted that "lack of notability" is not the only reason to delete an article but it's the primary reason in most AFDs. It's possible to make a case for deletion if supersources exist such as if there are WP:BLP1E or WP:NOTNEWS issues. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussions on the AfD or DEL pages which relate to the fundamental question of how WP:N is interpreted should probably be moved to WT:N. However I was asked a similar question on my talk page and here is the response. Protonk (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but discussions about how WP:AFD ought to describe the notability guidelines very much belong here. This is about how to clarify an item on this page, with an eye towards reducing the amount of time the community wastes on nominations based on "but I thought that the policies prohibited unreferenced articles!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course. I just posted the note because it felt like a lot of the discussion was related to the intricacies of interpreting N. That sort of discussion ought to occur on the talk page for the guideline insofar as it doesn't render the discussion here meaningless. Protonk (talk) 22:14, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• I believe the sentence should stay as it explicitly states an important distinction that might otherwise be missed. Article quality is not a measure of notability. I would love to have every article properly sourced from day one and delete the rest; but that will not happen. That is against the spirit of collaboration over time with no deadline. That's why WP:N and WP:GNG require sources to establish notability, whereas lack of said sources on article page is not a valid argument for deletion. For example, hardly any stubs have sources, and nominating them for deletion requiring they be sourced now, would get the majority deleted. There simply are not enough interested editors to work on them right away and the sources are sometimes not easily available. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:06, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

FC Chalon

I am nominating FC Chalon for deletion...see Talk:FC Chalon. I request a registered editor to complete the AFD process for me. Thanks in advance. 72.244.204.221 (talk) 00:52, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Why not just create a handle? TerriersFan (talk) 02:00, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

In any case, there are 8 groups of clubs at this level (tier 5 in the French league system) and there is no point in deleting just one club out of many. What we need to do is agree a notability standard at WP:Football. TerriersFan (talk) 02:03, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps that's a comment you can make at WP:Articles for deletion/FC Chalon, once someone completes the AFD process as requested. 72.244.204.250 (talk) 18:12, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Let me try this again: I am nominating FC Chalon for deletion...see Talk:FC Chalon. Based on the process defined by WP:AFDHOWTO I request a registered editor to complete the AFD process for me. Thanks. 72.244.204.106 (talk) 09:32, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

 Done —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:49, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Diamond Programming Language?

Apparently someone recommended my article about the Diamond Programming Language. The message said that a google search of Diamond Programming Language came up with no results. Curious I decided to look it up on Google. Sure enough the very first result was the Diamond Programming Language codeplex page. I hope we can agree that there is no reason to remove the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GruntX117 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

More to the point, there's no reason to have the article. If the only release so far has been a pre-alpha, and no independent sources have covered it, it can't demonstrate sufficient Notability to survive an AfD discussion. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Articles related to CommerceNet

User:Rat2 noticed that most of the "facts" in the zhwiki article zh:黄哲贤 can't be verified. Later User:Rat2 found out that there are 3 related articles on enwiki: CommerceNet, CommerceNet Singapore and Wong Jeh Shyan. I believe the sources provided in these articles can't prove most of the "facts" in the articles. Since I'm neither a native speaker of English nor familiar with enwiki policies, I'd like to ask other Wikipedians for help. Please help look for reliable sources. If no reliable source can be found, perhaps I should request an AfD? Thx. (P.S. I don't know if this is the right place to post it. Feel free to move it to the right place. On zhwiki we have a section for articles-related disscussions in the Village Pump. ) --t m yan OMG 14:36, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

How come

I was reading this page and expected the topics here to show up on Category:Proposed deletion as of 14 July 2011 but I don't see them. Also, I notice that each entry here has a slash so it is actually a sub-page, but I don't see these listed anywhere. How come there are not subcategories which will list the voting pages? Especially since articles often get removed from those pages but the talk discussions about their deletions could be categorized forever. AweCo (talk) 23:16, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

You're looking for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 July 14. That link you gave lists WP:PRODs, not AFDs.--Yaksar (let's chat) 23:49, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Where is Redirects for Deletion?

Wunderland was created due to an old AfD, and replaced with a redir. The redir goes into the article that links to the redir. I think this should be a redline, but where do I say that? Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:50, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:RFD jorgenev 01:58, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! It was "discussion..." Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:01, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Point of Order on Nominator voting Twice

On the current deletion vote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SS personnel assigned to Auschwitz, the nominator of the deletion vote appears to have voted again within the body of the article. It is my understanding that the nominator of the deletion vote cannot also vote again in the body of the deletion template - in a sense voting twice. This gives the appearance to someone not looking closing that there is a second delete vote supporting the nominator's views. I recommend the comment above be changed to remove reference to the bolded word "Delete". I would do this myself by did not want to revert or undo a vote cast in a deletion vote on an article I created. -OberRanks (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up to this, the policy is under Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#How_to_discuss_an_AfD, specifically Nomination already implies that the nominator recommends deletion (unless indicated otherwise), and nominators should refrain from repeating this recommendation on a separate bulleted line. Would ask that a neutral 3rd party remove or modify the second deletion recommendation which the nominator placed in the body of the template. -OberRanks (talk) 21:51, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

It's not recommended, but it does happen. Same as closers shouldn't be vote tallying, but it happens. It's not an issue that requires removing or modifying someone comment, though leaving a note under the comment drawing attention to the recommendation will serve to alert both that individual and the closer to the situation. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 22:33, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

On a related issue, I'm wondering if we should discourage nominators from formatting their nomination rationales as a bulleted "delete" !vote as was done here. This sometimes causes confusion among some editors who think the nom is !voting twice when they're not. See this thread for an example. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 04:09, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Time dating the AfD template

DGG started this discussion on my talkpage, after I closed an AfD early because I was looking at the time date on the nomination which was saying "7 days ....". As it is easy to close an AfD early by mistake (or simply out of ignorance that we wait a full seven days), what are the thoughts regarding adding a message and a timestamp to the AfD template similar to the one on the Prod template? Proposed wording is:

The discussion may be closed if this message has remained in place for seven days, or the discussion meets the criteria in either WP:Speedy keep or WP:Speedy delete. Please check the history to see when this template was added. / This message has remained in place for seven days and so the discussion may be considered for closing or relisting.

The wording is slightly different to my talkpage as I wasn't comfortable with "only". I feel the template should be informative rather than restrictive. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:15, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Thinking about it - the notice may be better placed on the AfD page rather than on the AfD template. Even though all closers should look at the article page before closing, this may not be done, and it's possible for someone to close an AfD via Twinkle without ever looking at the article page with the AfD template on it. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:30, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that we want to do anything that would make people focus on whether the AFD was open for exactly 168 hours. They are normally held open for about seven days, but if one closes two hours "early", and another closes twelve hours "late", then no real harm has been done. We sometimes close debates days early, not just a couple of hours.

When AFDs were normally held for five days, we had a few people who did little else except fuss about how those terrible admins were closing discussions a couple of hours (or even a couple of minutes) "early". Part of the goal in moving to a seven-day default was to make the exact number of minutes less important.

I don't recommend that you close discussions early (outside of SNOW), because it sometimes results in silly people believing that "if only" the discussion hadn't been "unfairly cut short", then the result would be the opposite. But I also don't think that you need to be too worried about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

And sometimes the issue is 20 minutes. And if you're reading this Tothwolf, no I'm not calling you "silly" but this example is the best one I can think of. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:23, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

if it closes two hours early harm is done. Not just that someone may come along at the last minute and make a definitive argument, but that admins will start to race each other, and they time will drift--it's been known to drift as far as 6 x 24, and even shorter. Ideally admins should not compete in this manner, but sometimes they do, especially at the beginning, or , even worse, if they want to get their own way on an article. There's no way to do it even a minute early without drifting--this is one of the places where a slippery slope argument is valid. If I see you closing at 127 hours, I'll try 126, and then the next guy will try 125, and so on. There are a few places where we need clear rules, and this is one of them. It is not intended that this rule eliminates the use of SNOW, which is sometimes necessary to prevent embarrassment or disruption, or just when consensus is overwhelming. But anyone closing SNOW does it at the risk someone will object, and closing SNOW in a disputed case is the surest road to deletion review.

as for the place to put the notice, it should be right on the AfD page, where nobody can miss it. WhatamIdoing, the rule is already part of deletion policy, so what harm can come from there being a clear reminder? DGG ( talk ) 07:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm definitely more careful about now that then I use to be but my motivation was never to "race" anybody. As a lot of people know I have been doing a lot of relisting for the last 3 years, both before and after I was dragged kicking and screaming to RFA. With relisting the 168 hours is not an issue as long as the AFD ends up transcluded on the right log but while there it only makes sense to go ahead and punch any "slam dunkers" I come across. I'll still do it if it's a "borderline snow" case. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

As an occasional closer, I’d like to make two suggestions. 1) adding some sort of note at the top of each AFD indicating that it is eligible for closing would be extremely useful. 2) In addition, there ought to be a 3rd section heading on the WP:AFD page between Current Discussions and Old Discussions that links to a category: AFDs eligible for closing. A bot or something could easily move individual AFDs into the category as they reach the magic 168 hour limit. That way closing Admins need only puruse the Category to find AFDs eligible for closing. (very similar to CSD and PROD).--Mike Cline (talk) 15:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The harm that comes from over-emphasizing the 168-hour "magic number" is that it violates our fundamental WP:NOTBURO principles and encourages people to whinge about the process even when a few minutes one way or the other would have made zero difference in the actual outcome. Outcome matters more than procedural details. I do not want to take even baby steps in the direction of making people think that they are entitled to revert at closing that is a few minutes early.

And I'm not buying the slippery slope argument: we can resist the slippery slope without formally emphasizing a bureaucratic detail.

I like Mike's idea of a template that says something like This discussion has been open for more than one week. Please either close or re-list this discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Help!!!

I hope this is the right place for this sort of question. I nominated this article Articles_for_deletion/Bunbury_Street_Railcam_Project on the 27th July. My problem is I'm having trouble getting it included here Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2011_July_27. Can I list it in current nominations seeing it was missed on the 27th? and some advice on how to do so with the proper code would be helpful. Please leave a message on my talk page if you wish. Thanks JimmyGiggle (talk) 12:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

It is on number 37 of that log! Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:23, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Back to BEFORE

I'd still like to add the underlined text to WP:BEFORE:

Before nominating due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist. Notability requires only that reliable sources have been published; it does not require that any sources be named in the current version of the article. WP:Deletion is not clean up.

The non-underlined text has been on this page for years. I know that this doesn't describe what some people wish the policy was (some folks would like to make {{unref}} a speedy deletion criteria), but does anyone believe that this doesn't accurately describe what WP:N currently says about the difference between "a reliable source has been published in the real world" and "somebody typed the name of said source into the article"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• Support That would be helpful at times. Save some pointless AFD nominations hopefully. Dream Focus 00:42, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - The WP:Notability guideline mentions "If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate." The Deletion Policy page has at least 6 'Alternatives to Deletion' starting with "If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion." And finally the Verifiability policy states "...all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question, but in practice you do not need to attribute everything. This policy requires that all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed...."

I think it might be helpful if WP:BEFORE just reflected this stuff a bit more. -- Avanu (talk) 02:52, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• Question- Is there ever a good reason to have a source available and not cite it? I asked this question once before and the only answers I got were "laziness" and "incompetence", so I still haven't been made aware of a good reason. I would also argue that nominating an article for deletion on the grounds that it is unreferenced is a challenge to it. Reyk _YO! 03:13, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Exactly: if you know a source exists - but for some reason you can't get a hold of it to cite page or quote, or the like, but are sure it covers the work, put it as a general reference and note this on the talk page. A page lacking any references - even if they are known to exist - will continue to be challenged at AFD until such sources are actually provided. --MASEM (t) 03:23, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • No, Reyk, a statement challenge is fine, and can result in that statement being removed, but it you're challenging the existence of the entire article, WP:BEFORE is triggered, which means the nominator has the burden of trying to source it. There is no corresponding obligation for particular statements that an editor challenges in good faith, in those cases, WP:BURDEN applies. Jclemens (talk) 03:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
    • You know perfectly well that WP:BEFORE is merely a set of suggestions that do not trump our content policies, and you also know full well that challening an entire article at once is the same thing as challenging all the statements in it. Reyk _YO! 04:45, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
      • I disagree. Challenging whether or not an article should exist is not always the same as challenging facts in the article. An article can have every statement sourced and "unchallenged" but still fail our notability guideline if none of the sources are supersources (and none exist elsewhere). Conversely, an unsourced and poorly written article on a notable subject can have almost every statement in it challenged but still not have its existence as an article threatened. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 05:22, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
        • The most recent article in mainspace which User:Reyk has edited is Corey Enright. This is a BLP which Reyk has edited repeatedly. But we notice that it has no references or inline citations and that the external links do not seem to be independent reliable sources and are variously dead, irrelevant or do not support the biography. Please can User:Reyk explain why, if citing sources is so easy, he does not do it himself? What is the "good reason" for the poor state of this article? Warden (talk) 06:09, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
          • Sorry, Colonel, but I don't listen to lectures on the adequacies of references from people with a history of faking them. Reyk _YO! 06:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
            • Got nothing, eh? Please tell us whether, in your opinion, WP:BEFORE should be followed in this case or whether that article should be taken straight to AFD? Warden (talk) 07:06, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
              • There's an actual real policy that prevents you from doing something like that. Reyk _YO! 07:22, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
                • That's not actually a policy and, in any case, you'll find that WP:BLP trumps it: "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons ... Be very firm about the use of high quality sources.". Me, I've got other things to do today so what is done about this case is someone else's problem. I've seen it ruled lately that specialist notability guidelines don't override the general notability guideline so there may be a big bonfire of such articles soon. Best to be ready before someone like Scottmac lights it. Warden (talk) 07:39, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
                  • I saw that ruling too.  My only suggestion currently is term limits for admins.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:05, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
      • You may wish everything was perfectly formed, but the facts are that in-progress articles that are in no way completely compliant with "content policies" are 1) what interested volunteers often create, 2) stepping stones on the way to GA/FA, 3) useful to our readers, and 4) compatible with our project goals. That is why BEFORE expects (if not outright requires) a good faith effort on the part of a deletion nominator to prove his impressions wrong: because rules are made to help develop a useful, readable, free encyclopedia, and making sure that lousy-looking content is indeed irredeemable is consistent with encyclopedia-building. Jclemens (talk) 06:22, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Challenge is for content, not the article itself, and only for material that needs to be sourced because someone sincerely doubts it. BEFORE is on a policy page, and is thus part of that policy. The discussion about that never really went anywhere though. [4] Dream Focus 08:34, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Um, technically, BEFORE appears to be on a {{Processes}} page, not a {{policy}} page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support If you know a source exists but isn't in the article, you have two or three options: 1) insert it, 2) note it on the talk page, or 3) do nothing--this is, after all, a volunteer project. 4) nominate it for deletion anyways because the source isn't in the current version of the article, is not a good-faith encyclopedia building action. Jclemens (talk) 03:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Please. This is a Good Thing. The underline (and maybe some bold, and flashing red text) should also be included with this. --Jayron32 04:29, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose because the statement that "notability only requires reliable sources have been published" is very much mistaken. That may be fine for WP:V, but notability for an article should rest on obvious demonstration (through the GNG or the SNGs) that a topic is presumed notable. Not having any sources at all present in the article to point to this is clear grounds for challenging notability. Granted, every other aspect of BEFORE (eg doing a good faith check of sources ones self before AFD) is still a good thing, but if you article is claimed to by non-notable at AFD and its kept because you say it has sources but do nothing else after that, do not be surprised to see it back at AFD. This is not a requirement to have inline cites, well-formatted references, or the like, and even if you can't get to a source immediately but are sure it is covered, a simple name drop does wonders than just saying nothing in the article on the source. (Basically, at this point in the WP's maturity, if you create an article without any mention of sources, don't be surprised to be seeing it at AFD.) --MASEM (t) 06:19, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • You're mistaking existence for presence in the article. If someone can prove in an AfD that sources exist, as I routinely do, that is sufficient to meet N and V: the sources are there and documented. If anyone wants to delete the article badly enough, they can go back to the original AfD and add the sources I came up with, per WP:ATD. There is nothing about the proposal as written that empowers bare assertions that sources exist; it just clarifies that substantiated existence is sufficient and that inclusion in the article is not required. Jclemens (talk) 06:26, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Trust me, this is very bad advice. If there is an AFD and sources identified, there is absolutely no reason for those sources not to be added to the article. While you're claiming that the person that wants to re-AFD should be the one, this is completely counter to WP:BURDEN. Plus, the situation I see more often is User 1 AFD'd the article, sources are found, but not added, and then some time later User 2 (completely unrelated to User 1) AFDs the article, again citing the lack of sources. User 2 is completely in the right here - the article as it stands lacks sources, and it is not his job to go chase them down if they were discovered in the AFD. I believe I understand the point you are trying to make with the addition (and I think there is the concept to add), but I am reading it as basically free allowance never to add sources to an article as long as you can point to something that says its verified and notable but never drop that in place. If anything, the primary change I would be making is to caution editors that once sources have been ID'd, they should be added (even in a messy, unformated form) to avoid future likelihood of being at AFD. --MASEM (t) 06:40, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
      • "there is absolutely no reason for those sources not to be added to the article" ... except that this is a volunteer project and no one is compelled to do anything. You are wrong on BURDEN: BURDEN applies to individual facts, BEFORE applies to entire articles facing deletion. No one is disputing that sources should be added... but if they're identified but not added, then the solution (assuming one is needed) is to add them, and by following BEFORE, that job falls to the editor who prefers to see the article deleted. Failure to do this will identify editors with wanton disregard for the improvement potential of articles, and that's a good thing. It's not so much extra work that it's unreasonable, nor will it stand in the way of most uncontroversial deletions. Think of it as yet another safety net for inclusion-worthy topics with regrettably bad current articles, if you prefer. Jclemens (talk) 07:40, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
        • BURDEN applies throughout the encyclopedia, applying to WP:N and WP:NFC, to name a few; as it impossible to prove a negative (no sources exist), there's a reason that BURDEN is written to focus on those that want to keep information than those that delete it. Now, as as you said, we can't force people to add sources to an article if they know they exist, and an editor may be the most effective with words that they can demonstrate the sources with no problem at an AFD challenge and have the article kept. But at the same time, BEFORE is only a guideline, and just as adding sources is voluntary, following BEFORE before AFD is also voluntary. Right now (for the last 3-4 years) WP has been on a deletion-heavy approach; any active editor should be aware of this even if we can't state this in policy/guidelines. There are going to be people that even will go AFD after google-searching a few terms and finding nothing, and many more that will do it without even the courtesy of a google search. We can talk all we want about this being non-AGF, that they should be following BEFORE, etc. etc. , but at the end of the day, that is our deletion policy they are following at the barest level. Without changing WP:DP, all editors need to know that's going to happen. Ergo, the better one edits their article to put in the right sources (specifically those for notability) to protect it from AFD from the start, the better. It is bad advice to suggest that you don't need to add sources, as the proposed addition is doing. Granted, this is BEFORE, this is aimed at the AFD-nominator, not the page editor, but we all know that people will want to argue with any thread of policy and guideline they can find when it comes to AFD, and giving poor advice here is something that will come back to bite BEFORE later. --MASEM (t) 11:59, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
          • BURDEN applies throughout the encyclopedia, but only to material. It runs counter to the available evidence to assert that it includes articles within material: 1) It's written as a general user instruction, and non-administrators are incapable of removing articles, and 2) There is no speedy deletion criterion for "unsourced" material, never has been, and likely never will be. Thus, it's entirely clear that BURDEN applies to the removal of information FROM articles, while other policies apply to the removal of entire articles, which brings us to your second point. BEFORE is indeed only a guideline, but one that implements WP:ATD, which is policy. So, at the "barest level" editors who nominate articles without a good-faith effort to disprove their belief that the article is unworthy of inclusion are in violation of ATD. Jclemens (talk) 15:15, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
            • You're absolutely right that there's no CSD for lacking sources, and even A7 , the CSD for no significances of importance, calls out that sourcing cant be used to CSD. I'm not arguing this at a policy level though: This all comes down to the presently unwritten practice that drives a large number of editors that AFD material that lacks sources that still do follow ATD, even googling a bit to try to find sources. Given that BEFORE is unlikely ever to gain policy status or even having the practice of AFDing without source checking made a "punishable" effect, we need to assume that when you put unsourced material on WP, it will be challenged; if its part of an article, via WP:V, if its the article itself, under WP:N. It is very bad advice to tell editors they don't need to source works under the pretense that lack of sourcing is not grounds for removal. You are 100% right that policy/guidelines support this point, but the common practice of AFD work around these facets and there's no obvious shift to implement changes in policy/guidelines to change this practice. We need to encourage and urge editors to source whenever possible when they know a source exists, simply to stave off those that are quick to delete unsource materials. --MASEM (t) 15:34, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
              • I guess I just don't see this as advice to authors, but agree that the advice we give to editors on adding material should be "include reliable sources with footnotes everywhere it makes sense". This is advice to those seeking to delete articles. How would you modify the proposed statement to clarify its intended audience? Jclemens (talk) 19:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
                • My take would include a couple of footnoted points (wording is not perfect): An article lacking sources is not grounds for deletion, as both WP:V and WP:N require simply the acknowledgement that sources exist.(REF1) Before nominating due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't appear to exist;(REF2) there may be discussion of sources on the article's talk page or past deletion discussions. REF1: Though the lack of sources in an article is not grounds for deletion, editors will be more prone to quickly nominate articles that lack sources regardless of the other advise on this page. If you know of a source, it is far better to place the relevant info about it in the article (even if not formatted appropriately) than to defend the article at AFD. REF2: Such attempts usually involving using Google's general search, news search, Scholar search, and Book search tools, to discover if any obvious links arise from the topic. Editors that still nominate an article for deletion should not be chastised if such searches require specific search terms, such as an alternate spelling, a foreign language name, or an addition term to distinguish from a highly common name, that would cause the term to be otherwise overlooked. --MASEM (t) 15:52, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
                  • While I like the proposed change better, I am fine with these footnotes as a move in the right direction. If that's all we have consensus for, then count me as supporting this sort of a compromise. Jclemens (talk) 06:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Um, Masem, the following sentence is a direct quotation from WP:Notability (third paragraph of WP:NRVE:
    "Notability requires only the existence of suitable independent, reliable sources, not their immediate citation."
    Can you tell me how the proposed sentence ("Notability requires only that reliable sources have been published; it does not require that any sources be named in the current version of the article") disagrees with this direct quotation from the guideline itself? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support The proposal is a good improvement. Warden (talk) 06:24, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Amendment The text to be added should read "Notability and verifiability require ..." rather than just "Notability requires...". WP:V is the more important core policy and it has been repeatedly confirmed there that that article contents just have to be verifiable, not that everything has to have a source supplied. A lot of editors still don't seem to understand this and so it is worth emphasising the point. Warden (talk) 06:24, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • This is completely wrong. Yes, WP:V does not require sources as long as the information can be verified. WP:N requires sources to show the reason why we should be carrying an article on the topic at hand. This cannot be hand-waved away "Oh, its notable, you can go find the sources yourself", otherwise, we'd be keeping pretty much any article at hand as long as someone is willing to speak for that. Now, I'm willing to bet a lot of editors (myself including) aren't going to immediately smack down an AFD on an article lacking in sources if the information and likeliness for notability is high, but there is nothing stopping other editors from seeing a notability-asserting lacking article from taking it to AFD. It is completely stupid for editors to create an article without a single source mentioned and expect that no one will ever challenge it ever for notability.
  • Basically, I'm not opposed to this because it's wrong (though it is), but it is very bad advice given the current attitudes on WP today. People are more aggressive on notability factors than verification outside of certain controversial areas, even though notability is only a guideline. We should not be waving that away as long as the reigning attitude on notability is where it is today. It is very bad advice to tell editors to ignore adding any sourcing for an article. --MASEM (t) 06:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• I just looked to see what User:Masem's most recent content addition was and found this: "I think this can be sourced (not the quote itself, but its use via the brony community to defend), but I'm having problems hitting one immediately". The addition to the article in this case seems to be a statement of advocacy contrary to core policy in which a good source (C.S.Lewis) is being used out of context to support a topic to which it did not refer. This seems to be improper synthesis and User:Masem seems to be doing this while openly stating that he is unable to find a source for this usage, contrary to core policy. Now his action seems to be in good faith but it is so at variance with our core policies, that his opinion on this matter of WP:BEFORE should be discounted. Warden (talk) 06:43, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• Comment on the contribution to this discussion, not the contributor. You're making this personal, where no one has made a personal attack. Secondly, I'm talking about notability, not verifiability. I'm not at all suggesting that sources need to presence to justify every fact (this is in line with what WP:V says). I'm saying that if an article has no sources at all but it is claimed sources can be named, that might meet WP:V, but you are going to have people wanting to delete it per WP:N because WP:N requires demonstration via sources that notability thresholds have been met. --MASEM (t) 11:59, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• Support as before [5]. "Article quality is not a measure of notability. I would love to have every article properly sourced from day one and delete the rest; but that will not happen. That is against the spirit of collaboration over time with no deadline. That's why WP:N and WP:GNG require sources to establish notability, whereas lack of said sources on article page is not a valid argument for deletion. For example, hardly any stubs have sources, and nominating them for deletion requiring they be sourced now, would get the majority deleted. There simply are not enough interested editors to work on them right away and the sources are sometimes not easily available." P.S. I would add "Notability requires only that reliable, secondary sources with significant coverage have been published;" to clear off entire GNG, instead of mentioning only "reliable". —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:38, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose- I think the proposed addition is instruction creep. The underlined sentence is redundant to the non-underlined one, and its wording could be misinterpreted as encouraging unsourced articles. That's the last thing we need. I also think WP:BEFORE is way too long already, full of useless and irrelevant hurdles, and I hardly think adding more stuff to it would help. Reyk _YO! 08:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Any guideline that encourages sourcing while stifling pre-mature deletion nominations is good for WP. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:10, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support with modification. Rather than saying "reliable sources," which can be read as suggesting that no minimum level of coverage is required, the text should say "sufficient reliable sources". This preserves the essential point at issue without adding any substantive criteria that could be read as conflicting with the notability guidelines. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:31, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose  In case it is not obvious, the part of the sentence in the proposal that is not underlined refers to a policy, WP:V.  The WP:N guideline issue for WP:BEFORE is, "If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate."  WP:V, on the other hand, requires for article content that "reliable third-party sources can be found".  Especially given the need to get editors using WP:BEFORE in general and admins on board with what the policies and guidelines actually say, I see no need to repeat the proposed material.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:41, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Just a note in passing to say that there's an open discussion about whether we should remove WP:Verifiability#Notability entirely, as being both redundant and not what that text was originally meant to describe. WP:POLICY recommends that policies carefully maintain their scope.
    Also, it might be misleading to imply that WP:V requires that anyone have already typed the names of said sources into the article. WP:V#Notability only talks about whether suitable independent sources exist (="can be found" or "have been published in the real world"), not whether their names have been typed into the article (="have been cited"). Consequently, the proposed wording is fully compatible with the existing statement at WP:V. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
• I think the usual language of "unsourceable" is the correct term to use for both WP:V and WP:N. It means incapable of being sourced, not being currently unsourced. The difference between WP:V and WP:N, is that for WP:V, the sources must be sufficiently reliable to reasonably demonstrate the accuracy of what is being said, whether in the article as a whole or for particular content--it applies to all WP content , not just to the question of keeping articles. For WP:N, the criterion of sourceability, refers to the necessary sources to show notability, however notability may be defined for a particular subject. In some cases V and N are the same. Verifying that a person is was an Olympic athlete satisfies WP:V and WP:N, as does verification that a building is on the National Register, or that a person is a member of a state legislature. Much more usually that is not the case: verifying that someone is a local police magistrate, or published a book, does not show they are notable, but if it is asserted of a clearly notable person that they had either of those accomplishments, it still must be verifiable if it is to be in the article. The purpose of WP:BEFORE is to ensure that, in either case, we do not discard the article or the content for mere lack of looking. The problem case--for which I offer no solution--is where the material probably does exist, but nobody here is able to find it because of lack of available sources for the subject or geographic area. DGG ( talk ) 07:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
  • The more verbose "unable to be sourced" might be a better choice than "unsourceable". We have a lot of people who seem unable to grasp the distinction between "unsouceABLE" and "unsourcED". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I'm reluctant to encourage anywhere on Wikipedia the notion that sources are not required. And while I agree that it would be helpful to encourage people to look for (and cite) sources before nominating for AfD, I am unwilling to make it harder to challenge an article than it is to add an article. Nominating an article for deletion is not actually deleting an article, it is raising a concern. If the AfD process works well, then the article may improve during the process with sources added. AfD is not overwhelmed. There are plenty of people willing to close discussions. I come here now and again to close overdue discussions, and much of the time there is little or nothing to close. I think we should be supportive of people who have concerns, and not make it too difficult for them to say: "I'm not sure about this, can someone look into it?"

I would be supportive of putting the {{find}} template into the nomination process so the nominator is given a link to possible sources before the nomination is completed. Seeing that "Miss Huggy Bear" has three thousand sources may give the nominator pause for thought, and they might not only cancel the AfD, but also be motivated to add a cite or two to the article. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 15:51, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

• For what it's worth, I would encourage making adding NEW articles more difficult than it currently is. My bigger concern is articles written long ago, now abandoned, on perfectly notable topics. If there was a way to mandate good searches for articles >1 year (or even >1 month) old, I would be much happier with that than the current state of affairs, which effectively places old articles in jeopardy for failure to meet standards that were not standards when those articles were originally developed. Jclemens (talk) 06:14, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose per Reyk. The proposed sentence is redundant and seems to validate the laziness that leads to unsourced articles. —SW— ^chat 17:13, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Articles must proof their own noteworthiness. It should not depend on someone elses research. If a new page patroller can find proof that it is noteworthy, an original author should have been able to find it too. Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:15, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • WP:Notability directly says that articles are not required to prove their notability by naming any sources at all. NRVE says that editors at AFD are not likely to believe bare assertions that "sources exist" without specific examples of sources being given, but it then goes directly on to say that what matters is whether the sources have been published, not whether anyone has typed the names of the sources into the article.
    Sourcing articles is certainly best practice, and I don't believe that I've ever created an unsourced article, but typing the names of notability-demonstrating sources onto the page is not technically required. The presence or absence of citations does not change the notability of the subject. Cancer is a notable subject that Wikipedia ought to always have an article on, no matter what (and, BTW, it contained zero proper bibliographic citations for nearly three years). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but as you can read just below here, I don't agree with that point. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:28, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
      • So what? It's a consensus-supported guideline. It's one thing to express disagreement, it's quite another to engage in a low-grade campaign of attrition to frustrate its implementation. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:33, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
        • Ow, it is not a Guideline, you can look that up. And the use is also not mandatory, you can look that up. And it is inconsequent, just read it. Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:45, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
          • If Wikipedia:Notability is not actually a guideline, then can you tell me why it has had {{guideline}} at the top of the page for years and years? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
            • Unfortunately we are here discussing WP:BEFORE, not WP:NOTABILITY... Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:11, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
              • No, we aren't. We're talking about how to accurately describe WP:Notability in WP:BEFORE. Consequently, the actual content of WP:Notability is extremely relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose there are two competing risks/errors at play here. Error one: people get sloppy with AFDs for articles that would easily have sources with a little effort. Error two: people say "there are sources" on a hunch, when the sources don't actually exist. This proposal might reduce the first error type, but with no check on the the second error type. The best way to avoid both types of errors is still to actually produce the sources when it becomes an issue, if not preemptively. Dzlife (talk) 18:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support. It's not a new sentiment, already being part of WP:N, and it seems like it would help discourage the trend at AfD toward obnoxious, time-wasting "I couldn't be bothered to check Google Books, News or Scholar" nominations. I also support Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's modification of "sufficient reliable sources", which avoids some potential miscommunication. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:45, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
• Don't care much either way about the proposal, but editors who nominate on grounds of lack of notability without even a brief look for source availability are horrible horrible horrible editors. Thank you.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 04:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Different opinion

I have come under attack from several people who don't agree with the way I nominate article for discussion. In my opinion, articles must proof their noteworthiness themselves. The article should contain enough information to proof that the subject is noteworthy. I am not asking for a perfect article, just for articles that are good enough to keep. Articles virtual without information are in my opinion not good enough to keep. In my opinion, it is the original author who has to proof noteworthiness. It should not be a job of a new page patroller to check if a substandard article might become good enough once. That will lay the burden of improving bad articles upon the shoulders of peoples who could do better thing. The present rules are, in my opinion, faulty and should be changed to reflect the need for more quality articles over a large quantity of articles. Wikipedia is built on the quality and trustworthiness of his articles, so substandard articles are threatening the very foundation of the encyclopedia and Wikipedia itself.

The attacks, containing promises of harassment and blocks, is not the way collegues should treat each other. We are here to built and maintain an encyclopedia. And building an maintaining an encyclopedia is what I want to do. I am trying to garantuee its neutrality and quality. Just like you, lads and lasses (I hope).

Please respect other views on when to nominate an article. Due to the fact that I consider WP:BEFORE faulty and inconsequent, I can not and I will not adhere to all its demands. Thank you. Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:35, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

You talk of the way "colleagues" should treat each other and you have a point. However, a "colleague" also should not continue to do something when asked to stop by multiple good faith editors. You use the phrase "in my opinion" a lot, so do I. You also act on that opinion and even that is encouraged by WP:BOLD and WP:IAR. The reason we have those 2 concepts is so that someone should be able to do something that he thinks improves, or prevents harm, to WP without having to "ask permission". However, when asked to stop doing something by multiple reasonable editors, YOU STOP, and then you discuss it. Even if it's something you think you have a right to do, you stop. Even if it's something you think is supported by the policies and guidelines, you stop, and you definitely stop if it's "just your opinion". To say "I can not and I will not adhere to all its (WP:BEFORE) demands" is the same as saying "I'm going to do what the hell I want do do and screw you all". That's not the way "colleagues" collaborate and I think it's safe to say that most of the editors who were eventually banned from this project were banned because their attitude was "I'll do what I want, screw you". --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Improving the quality of WP is an important Strategic Goal of the foundation [6], but it is not the only strategic goal. Improving participation and Improving Reach are of equal importance. Every new article by a new or inexperienced editor should be seen as an opportunity to progress against all three of these goals—quality, participation and reach. Unfortunately, pre-mature and callous nominations for deletion, especially where new editors are given the back of our hand in the name of quality. In my opinion, it is the original author who has to proof noteworthiness. It should not be a job of a new page patroller to check if a substandard article might become good enough once. That will lay the burden of improving bad articles upon the shoulders of peoples who could do better thing. We don’t have the luxury as editors of choosing which of the strategic goals are important and which we can ignore—they are equally important and our actions must support all the goals, not just the ones we as individuals think are important. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

For one example of the supposed "attacks" upon this editor, and a broader articulation of why he feels he is entitled to ignore WP:BEFORE at will and use unresearched AfD nominations to coerce article-improvement work from other volunteers, see User talk:Night of the Big Wind#WP:BEFORE. You may particularly enjoy the bit at the end where he engages in blatant WP:NPA and WP:AGF violations, including repeating this immediately after being asked not to, and unilaterally declares the discussion closed after characterizing his interlocutor's comments as "blahblahblah". —chaos5023 (talk) 18:07, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If someone came up to me on my talk page to lambast me about an AfD opinion I'd made two weeks earlier, I might respond defensively as well. I think NOTBW goes a little too far in his disregard for BEFORE but is entitled to his opinion on it. And I think he is correct that BEFORE is not compulsory, that it is filled with irrelevant fluff, and that the current rules encourage a multitude of rubbish articles without doing anything to promote good ones. Reyk _YO! 20:25, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The quality of an article has nothing to do with the notability of the subject it covers. It's either notable or not, as set by WP:GNG. When you nominate an article for deletion, you are saying to others that you believe it is not notable. By asking others to respect your viewpoint of nominating possibly notable topics based on article quality, you are creating a workload for others. If you state your intent to ignore the rules, then this will only attract opposition and is unlikely to change the status quo. Are you asking for your nominations to be an exception to the existing consensus? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

It would be great if we had an instrument to nominate bad quality articles for improvement, with deletion as ultimate penalty if they are not sufficiently improved within a certain timeframe. Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

What would be even greater would be if everytime an experienced editor encountered an article needing quality improvement they would seek out less experienced editors interested in the subject, mentoring them on the ways to improve any given article through better sourcing, prose, citations, images, etc. Deletion does not improve the quality of a deleted topic and does little overall to improve the quality of the encyclopedia.--Mike Cline (talk) 21:42, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it will be a great idea working on articles outside your comfort zone. Wikignoming, bit of prose and layout I will do. But not more, because lack of knowledge can easily make me screw up such an article.

Deletion does not improve the quality of a deleted topic and does little overall to improve the quality of the encyclopedia. Not completely true. Indeed deletion will not improve the article. But deletion will improve the average quality level. Due to the large number of articles just a tiny bit, but still it brings it up. We can not (as far as I know) put an incentive on good articles, but we could put a penalty on substandard articles. Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:23, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem with WP:BEFORE is that it pretty much lumps together all manner of relative inconsequentials or things that rarely apply with what we are really looking for, with no priority suggested except possibly for the ordering of the list. I think it should say something that actually comports with our real expectations. The vast majority of the time, a simple google books and news archive search is all people are looking for before a nomination. The rest of the list can go hang. We should say something like: The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist. The minimum expected is a Google Book search and Google News archive search, which normally takes less than one minute. Consider also the following: (and the rest of the list thereafter).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. Reyk _YO! 03:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be entirely good with that. All I actually asked of NotBW is that he do a Google Books/Scholar/News check. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to put together a proposed rewrite, with a bit more wordsmithing and of the entire section (but not tonight). This is one of those places in policy that every time I see I scratch my head and say why is it written like that? but have moved on without doing anything.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:08, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that's really the core of BEFORE: make a good faith search using one of the top search engines, reasonable and appropriate search terms, and say that you did it and didn't find anything important in your nom. That's all I think anyone has ever really been asking. The extra advice is... nice to do, but the single, core search is really the minimum effort consistent with AGF'ing that the person who wrote the article may have written it on something notable but not articulated that effectively. Jclemens (talk) 06:10, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

If somebody thinks that I completely ignore wp:before, but that is not the case. If an article makes me doubt about notability, I do a Google search. If I still doubt after that, I often skip the article without marking of nominating. Geographical articles, no matter how bad they are, I mark as patrolled. Useless to nominate due to the fact that every two farmhouses with a community name is considered noteworthy. The main difference between us is about the articles that do not have the content to proof their own notability and what to do with them. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, frankly, you don't have a lot of choice in the matter. The community has directly said, in a widely supported guideline, that if sufficient reliable sources have been WP:Published on the subject, then you should not nominate it for deletion, even if no one has (yet) typed the names of sources into the article. This is particularly true for brand-new articles, since it's not at all uncommon for someone to spend several days working on an article, and figuring out how to format sources is usually a new editor's last task. You can tag it as needing improvement (I suggest {{third-party sources}}, but you cannot try to delete it.

People who refuse to follow the community's consensus end up blocked or banned for disruption. Wikipedia is WP:NOTANARCHY: you do not get to do whatever you want, just because you want to, over the objections of other people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Good luck there. I tried to tell him that, in as calm and nonthreatening (while communicating that serious consequences are at stake) a manner as I could manage (though according to Reyk this constituted lambasting), and got some of the most insulting things I've ever had said about me on Wikipedia for my trouble. But NotBW claims to believe in the five pillars, so maybe this time he'll remember the less convenient ones like WP:CIVILITY and its component WP:CONSENSUS, not just ones he can read as telling him it's okay to do what he likes. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:44, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think "lambast" is exactly the right word. Reading through that discussion, I see that you call NotBW lazy, misinterpret his position to paint him in the worst possible light, and then cry foul when you feel the same things have been done to you. And if what NotBW said are truly among the most insulting things you've heard, then you've led an uncommonly sheltered existence on this encyclopedia. This was actually pretty tame by Wikipedia standards. Reyk _YO! 20:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Hm. The laziness point is kind of odd, since I was quoting another discussion entirely, but I suppose I essentially called everyone who meets the conditions of that statement lazy, didn't I? And NotBW appears to meet them. So okay, I'll own that. But I really have to challenge you to show that I misinterpreted his position. I didn't make up that he sees deletion as a way to extract article-improvement labor from people; first he articulated it in a general way, then he went so far as to propose a procedural expansion to make using deletion for that exact purpose easier and more formal, which he has also done on this page. That is his position. As to the matter of insult, I suspect we have different standards. My idea of what's insulting isn't like most people's, which is based around whether certain social-class-shibboleth words are used; it's about how bad it would be for whatever assertion being made to be true. So being called a totalitarian fascist and a rule-follower is a lot more insulting to me than being called a dick, a cock-sucker, and so on. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:36, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

So we agree on the point that we disagree on some of the measures we have to use to raise the quality of Wikipedia. If I was blunt, my apology, but I still don't have the fine language feeling. English is only my second language, and to make matters worse I normally speak Irish-English. Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:42, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Heh. Yes, that we agree on. Apology accepted, and I'm sorry I called you lazy. And I welcome your disagreement, I really do; all I don't welcome is disruptive editing arising from it. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Why will it be disruptive editing? See this discussion. I don't break a rule. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:12, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

"Disruptive" is not a fancy word for "breaking a rule". You can get in trouble even if you don't technically "break a rule". Wikipedia is not a set of laws: we need people to work together, not to barely avoid technically breaking a written rule. This means not doing things that upset a lot of people, even if there's no written rule that prohibits you from doing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

--Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:26, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

To my opinion is fiercely attacking the method of nominating more disruptive to the process, then nominating according to an alternative method. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)