Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 40

message: Trialsanderrors has created a good pair of templates for closing deletion reviews ( and ), and I propose that the code from these templates be merged into Template:Afd top and Template:Afd bottom respectively.
The key benefit is that the text of closed debates is wrapped in a show/hide box and hidden by default, so:
#Closed discussions will not occupy so much visual space on the daily logs.
#It will make it easier for admins closing old discussions to spot unclosed ones.
The key disadvantages I forsee or have been raised are:
#Might not work for non-Monobook skins? Workaround: Make separate includeonly and noinclude text but with the same parameters so that the show/hide magic is reserved for the daily log but the regular closing text is displayed in the AfD subpage itself. People using non-Monobook skins can still view the full discussion in the subpage.
#Might mess up section editing. Possible workaround: Fake section headers (not sure).
But I think it is worth discussing the merits of merging the code from the DRV into the AfD closing templates. 
For those who can read Chinese and wish to see how it might look like, the Chinese WP does it this way: see their AfD page and sample closed discussion. Regards, Kimchi.sg 07:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. How much pre-transclusion space do those new templates occupy? We only have 2MB of transclusion memory available per page, so any changes from a simple template to a more complex template should be double-checked for server impact. Titoxd(?!?) 08:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They're all supposed to be subst'ed (both the DRV templates and the current AfD closing templates) so there should be no transclusion problems. None of them use any meta-templates either. Kimchi.sg 08:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm wrong... the noinclude section of template:drt includes  but that's a small meta-template though. Kimchi.sg 08:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this is a good idea. AfD log pages are huge, they don't need to be filled with loads of confusing code. -Amarkov blahedits 05:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The system as used by DRV does not reduce the amount of text downloaded - it's something like , but done with CSS classes. So the main advantage is that closed discussions take up less visible space. Kimchi.sg 10:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed change to closing templates 

message: When you nominate an AFD do you also get to vote against it? Or is that double dipping? Or is that part of the process? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 04:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If an admin does a strict count of votes they will count the nomination as one deletion vote. JoshuaZ 04:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not actually a vote per se, it is a discussion and the closing admin will decide based on the points raised. If only 1 person votes keep but it is a very good reason then it outweighs delete votes, especially if they are "per nom". James086Talk | Contribs 05:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That may be the way it's supposed to work, but the admins almost always seem to treat it like a vote. I've never seen any evidence of "delete per nom" actually being given less weight than an real argument on the subject. 71.203.209.0 05:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Trust me, it happens. If anything, that happens too much. requests for undeletion (at least, the ones which actually suceed), almost exclusively provide new evidence, and have no issue with the closing. -Amark moo! 05:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nomination vs Voting for Deletion 

message: I am hoping to have the AfD on Law in Star Trek ended as a keep since the article has not only been renamed into a much broader topic, but it now undergoing a major rewrite with mergers of other mateiral into it, active editing in progress, and research of sources with discussions on real world legal influences both into and out of law in Star trek.  It is 180 degrees fro the Starfleet Judge Advocate General and is perhaps no longer even the same article.  A keep conclusion, please, the whole situation has been very tiring. -Husnock 06:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A speedy-close would be inappropriate in this case.  Good participants in AFD discussions will return to the discussion and may (or may not) modify their opinions and concerns based on the rewrite.  If they agree with you that the original problems have been resolved, then the article will be kept.  On the other hand, if they do not agree that the changes were sufficient to address those concerns, the deletion discussion should continue.   You've already noted in the discussion that the rewrite occurred.  That is enough to alert the closing admin.  He/she will weight the opinions posted before the rewrite appropriately.  Rossami (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for speedy close 

message: Twice now, Cominoverdahill2 has removed the AFD notice from Master Exploder. The first time, I let them know that they can't just remove the notice, which I said in both my edit summary and on their user talk page. They have since removed it again. I just put it back up. My question is, what should be done in this situation? Joltman 13:44, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Warn the user on there talk page with the templates  , , ,  (Not all at the same time).  If they have done it several times, the drmafd4 may be appropriate to start with and directly report them to WP:AIV.  Otherwise, if they continue, report them to WP:AIV.  -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 13:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  User keeps removing AFD note on article 

message: Could someone please delete Summit School? I put it up but then I realized that no one knows about it and its not a big enough topic. Please delete it. Thank you Ilikefood 02:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This subject is not well enough known 

message: Can anyone tell me why, when I print out this whole section as a reference, paragraph 5 (How to list pages for deletion) refuses to print? It comes out blank, with all the other paragraphs printing as one would expect.--Anthony.bradbury 19:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Printing 

message: This suggestion might have been discussed in the past - I did not consult the archives.  During an AfD discussion, persons who have an interest in the article staying will sometimes (often) rewrite sections or modify the article in some way to help it survive and remain in Wikipedia.  I don't recall ever seeing people refer to the version of the article that they are commenting on, but I've sometimes seen heated discussions where it is clear that the 'combatants' are talking about two different versions or arguing over the fact that a change was made at a critical time.  My thinking is that there should be a recommendation added to the guidelines for AfD that suggests it is a good thing to indicate which version (with a permalink) is being commented on during a discussion; I've implemented an example of this at the AfD discussion around 'Brothers Cider' where re-writing the article is being discussed as an option.  Thanks for considering this.  Regards, --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 22:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Guide to deletion (where we put most of the general advice on etiquette and participation in deletion debates) does strongly recommend that you comment in the deletion debate when you've made a significant change to the article under discussion.  That way the rest of the participants can reevaluate their earlier comment.  A few people use the permanent links to keep track of the different versions as the page changes but most people just compare the edit time-stamps.  Permalinks are easier for the reader but are an extra step for the editor.  Either way can work.  Rossami (talk) 06:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referring to versions during AfD discussions 

message: I've figured out a way at User:Amarkov/afd2 and User:Amarkov/REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD to make the AfD categories timed, so they automatically remove themselves 7 days after listing (the extra days to allow for closing time). Is this a good idea, so people don't have to manually remove the templates, or is there a problem I'm missing? -Amarkov blahedits 02:23, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only problem I can see is if people miss that AfD and it isn't properly closed so it disappears without anyone noticing and ends up inconclusive. Or am I missing something? Otherwise it sounds good. James086Talk | Contribs 06:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would still show up in log entries, which I assume admins do the closing from. -Amarkov blahedits 16:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bot523 looks for categorized AfDs over 7 days old; it decats the closed ones and outputs a list of the unclosed ones (which I place on the wiki here in case anyone finds it useful; I can't update it very often at the moment). Generally speaking, there are quite a lot of entries on the list, which would mean a lot of prematurely decatted AfDs; relisted AfDs make up the biggest proportion (your proposal would require an edit to resubst the template whenever an AfD was relisted, and I've also caught quite a few malformed AfDs (most common seems to be AfDs that were never listed because the article was speedied between the Afd2 and Afd3 stages). All this, however, isn't necessarily an argument against the proposed change, it just means that we need to think carefully about this. --ais523 09:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed tweak to some templates 

message: It seems to me that as of late, Wikipedia's editors are getting more zealous about marking articles for deletion.  
While copyright, libel and falsity may merit deletion, I would say that it is counter-productive to delete articles based on the idea that they are not notable or well-known.  First, the fact that the item in question is notable to at least one person makes it notable to at least one person; where can a line be drawn?  Second, as a repository of knowledge anyone can edit, deleting pages because they do not meet the criteria of the elite seems to be against that goal.  
I shudder to think what would happen to knowledge if libraries burned the books that were checked out only infrequently on niche topics.  
May I suggest a "not notable" or "niche" tag, instead of marking for deletion and, eventually, deletion?  To me, this seems like Wikipedia Vandalism under another name.  
-- Brian Boyko
-- brian.boyko@gmail.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.129.167.114 (talk) 15:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Wikipedia:Notability#Rationale offers some good arguments. Foremost among them, IMO, is "In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that it will not be monopolized by partisan or fanatic editors." Non-notable subjects tend to be single-editor (sometimes SPA), POV, occasionally OR, and, quite frankly, frequently COI. If an article is not notable enough to attract multiple, significant, impartial editors, I think that's a major red flag. That one person thinks a subject is notable is certainly insufficient, as witness the hundreds of autobios that get deleted every day for teenagers who believe themselves to be worthy of an article. Fan-1967 16:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The line is drawn at publication in reliable sources. Notability is not a function of whether we or you have heard of the subject but whether the world at large has deemed a subject notable by writing (or addressing the subject in other forms of publication) about it in a non-trivial manner in sources independent of the topic. That a subject is notable, as that term is vernacularly defined, because one person thinks so, is not a standard that can work for an encyclopedia which is inherently a tertiary source synthesizing primary and secondary sources already in existence. The analogy of libraries burning infrequently checked out books is false. If a library analogy lies, it is: "if libraries were such that anyone could print a book on any topic and place it in the library without any control, then that library would very quickly need a mechanism for determining what books should be removed because they were not actually published." A bit unwieldy but far closer to the state of affairs here if articles are to be compared to books.--Fuhghettaboutit 19:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: If only that were true! I have seen well researched and referenced biographies deleted as not-notable, based on the number of Ghits the person has, and that number of Ghits required is creeping upward. The excuse given is that the person wont be of interest in the future. Who knows why someone will be searching for information in the future, and the more ephemeral someone's fame is the more reason to preserve it. I have been looking for websites from just a year ago and they are gone, and the cached version at Google dont have all the scanned documents, and don't have the formatting that was in the original PDF. Sadly libraries do discard books that are no longer needed. I think they should bury them in Arizona under the desert sands. Remember nothing is deleted from Wikipedia, except images (now they are archived as of a few months ago). Every article deleted from Wikipedia is still available, but you have to be an administrator to retrieve it. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 23:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently well-researched and well-referenced articles can still be less than fully accurate if the subject is not notable enough to attract multiple editors. The vast majority of articles I've seen deleted for lack of notability have been overwhelmingly the work of a single editor. Even if every word in the article is true and sourced, there is no guarantee that relevant facts on the subject have not been selectively included. Only multiple pairs of independent eyes can do that. Fan-1967 23:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding the post two above, can you give some examples to articles for deletion debates? Though I have been a bit absent of late at afd, I have participated in around 1,000 give or take and though I have come across a few articles for which reliable sources existed which were deleted, I have not once seen a well-researched articles which cited to reliable sources (non-trivial, independent, etc.) deleted. There are articles of the "this street exists" variety which can cite to reliable sources for their existence, but that is more of a "Wikipedia is not a tech manual/yellow pages/atlas/game guide/etc.--Fuhghettaboutit 00:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed change in policy 

message: I was wondering why the article Kevin Wilson was deleted? First off, I know it existed as I uploaded an image to it (that in hindsight probably violated WP policy, but thats another issue). Granted it wasn't a long article but I was hoping to remedy that. I'm not seeing any deletion discussion on the article, either. Any help would be appreciated.--NMajdan•talk 22:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article was deleted for not asserting notability, per WP:CSD A7. The entire thing consisted of "Kevin Wilson is the offensive coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Sooners football team." If you want, you can create an article more than that one line that makes a better case for notability. --Sam Blanning(talk) 22:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, thought I remember it being longer than that. Thanks.--NMajdan•talk 22:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article deleted? 

message: I have noticed that often an editor will "relist" an AfD on a subsequent day in order to generate more discussion.  Can someone explain the procedure for that?  I nominated an article 5 days ago and it didn't generate a single comment, so it seems like it should be relisted before the 7 days are up.--Dmz5 01:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The closing admin will normally relist if it doesn't get enough comments, but if you do relist be sure to remove or comment it out of the previous day log, and add the  tag below the last comment, so everybody knows why it is reappearing in the new day's log. Yomanganitalk 02:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  relisting? 

message: There are 3 articles up for deletion at once, which is probably against AfD policy:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America 
Can an admin look at this? thanks Travb (talk) 14:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's nothing wrong with nominating multiple related articles at the same time - there's even a section on how to do it in the instructions. Yomanganitalk 14:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, my mistake. Travb (talk) 14:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  3 articles up for deletion at once 

message: Can someone close the: 
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America
snowball keep? 
There is 5 deletions and 22 keeps. Thanks. Travb (talk) 02:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That shouldn't occur. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Snowball keep? 

message: I created this template for myself: , it can be called by entering .
It links to 5 day old AfD's and 6 day old AfD's, and should automatically change as the date changes. Handy for people who close often. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 23:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't work right for the first 5 or 6 days of the month, hehe. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Now it works anytime. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 20:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useful template 

message: The following is listed:
Don't add tally boxes to the deletion page
I am asking when this consensus came about. Two years ago, it was common practice in more controversial discussions to keep a tally just to let administrators know what it was. Is there something inherently evil about tally boxes I'm not seeing?
--ScienceApologist 12:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Part of the same reason we don't call it "Votes for deletion" anymore. In most AFD's, the reasons behind the "votes" are more important that the votes themselves, so tallies are frequently misleading. Fan-1967 16:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there anything wrong with keeping a running tally of the votes, just for fun? Does this prejudice the closing arbitartors too much? Is it appropriate for another user to remove a tally statement inserted by another user and is it appropriate for an admonishment to be made on the other user's talkpage regarding the placement of a vote-tally statement? --ScienceApologist 06:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The practice was never "common" but it did happen more two years ago than now.  It's not that it necessarily prejudices the closers of the discussion but it does tend to inflame and prejudice the participants of the debate.  It also reinforces the (false) impression that "votes" matter.  This is a common misperception by new editors.  We should be doing everything we can to lead them to the realization that strength of argument and facts matter far more than any mere "votecount".  So I would say that no, we should not be keeping those running tallies even "just for fun".  And yes, it is often appropriate to politely remove the tally and to tactfully explain why they generally do much more harm than good.  Rossami (talk) 21:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which leads to another problem. When you have a socknew editor-filled AFD, the last thing you want is to give them the impression that more socknew editors casting more votes will swing the result. Fan-1967 21:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't add tally boxes 

message: Wouldn't it be a good idea to automatically semiprotect AFD debates? Everyone must be tired of the horde of IPs and sock/meat puppets that likes to invade deletion debates such as this one screaming STRONG KEEP DO NOT DELETE OR ELSE at the top of their virtual lungs? - ∅ (∅), 16:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about the IPs with a valid point. I have seen anons come by a give citations that helped the debate alot. Protection should not be used for preemptivly, only once a problem has occured. The anons who spout nonsense are pretty easy to ignore. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

text: It is a very strong principle of Wikipedia to not be hostile towards new users/anons without reason since locking pages runs counter to the concept of an open site. Beside, we should be more concerned with what is said than who says it. I see just as many registers non-new users voting based soley on personal interest in the topic as I do new users. There is a template notice for discussions being "voted" on by single purpose accounts, and considering how infrequent it gets used, I'd say it really isn't a problem. Koweja 23:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree here, I frequently have to remind myself that this project is about being open and allowing anyone to edit, not just building an encyclopedia - if that were all, there would be education requirements and all sorts of other hurdles.--Dmz5 09:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semiprotection 

message: It says "Don't reorder comments on the deletion page to group them by keep/delete/other." Today a user moved discussion entirely off the page because it was "long". Can the guidelines please explicitly address this as well? — coelacan talk — 18:33, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While rare, there is precedent for moving exceptionally long tangents and rants off the AFD page.  If I remember right, it's already discussed in the Guide to deletion.  (And if not, that's where it should be mentioned.)  Rossami (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It shouldn't be moved without leaving a link on the project page though. ~ trialsanderrors 21:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving comments 

message: This was removed from the article page, I think it should be discussed: "Please also consider leaving a notification on the project talk page of any WikiProjects identified by colored boxes at the top of the article's talk page." I think it is good form to follow, do we have to vote on it? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 19:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No it's not good form to follow, it's instruction creep and it creates the impression that WikiProjects have a right to be informed. Intermittently we get WP:DRV requests basically saying a closure was invalid because WikiProject X wasn't informed. There's about five gazillion WikiProjects, 85% of which are functionally inactive (I just removed a "WikiProject Country Music Collaboration of the Month" tag from the Hank Williams article because zero collaboration was going on). It's an unnecessary burden to expect a nominator to add WikiProjects to the list of parties to be notified. ~ trialsanderrors 20:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Writing an online encyclopedia is difficult too, but here we are. I don't see it as burdensome at all, and it can easily be handled by a transclusion process, if more people think its worthwhile. Too much deletion is done by small groups of people, and not enough Wikipedians come to the AFD pages to vote. The more eyes on the process the more useful the process becomes. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 20:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't see why an active WikiProject is onerous to "consider" notifying. Most do not have enough volunteers to keep up with tracking the level of XfD nominations themselves, and an increased level of intelligent discourse at XFD can only be a good thing if we're not voting, right? If there's a problem with a biased WikiProject always voting Keep (or Delete, or whatever), then take it up with them, but this is a much more reasonable proposal than the perennial "inform all editors" or "inform creator" suggestions. -- nae'blis 20:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because an active WProject does the monitoring itself. What is onerous is to expect the nominator to sift through the list of WProjects, decide which ones are 1. relevant, and 2. active, and follow their notification procedures. Your assumption that this knowledge is readily available is flawed. The issue about WProjects as internal meatpuppet collectives is an additional one, but that's not what I'm aiming at. So why don't you, for the next ten AfD's you create, add notifiers to the relevant WProjects and report back how it went? ~ trialsanderrors 20:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Deal. As soon as I make another 20 AFDs (10 for control of course), I'll get back to you. Probably after the holidays. -- nae'blis 22:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikiprojects 

message: I understand articles being written NPOV but what about being nominated NPOV what I mean is. If you have personal issues with articles. How could one know this. Looking at a user page for one. Assuming (yes I know i used the evil word assume) a member puts they are a vegan on their user page and then suddenly they seem to be nominating just about every meat related page. Or someone who's a userpage admitted white power believer starts nominating lots and lots of non white race pages on each and every nit picky thing? Is this frowned apon in some way? should it be? Or is this just the bad that comes with the good of it? --Xiahou 01:21, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's frowned upon to question nominator's ulterior motives, unless the nomination is really stupid. But if they say "This has no reliable sources", nobody likes it when people say "Oh, but you hate article X, your nomination is invalid." -Amarkov blahedits 03:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen nominations that were clearly in bad faith. I've also seen article authors who assumed it to be true just because they couldn't imagine an impartial editor wanted the article deleted. Unless it's so blatant that you can't avoid it, it's always best to just stick to the merits of the article and nomination, and avoid drawing any conclusions about motives, if possible. Fan-1967 03:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah. If the nomination is in bad faith, then there obviously aren't going to be reasons to delete the page, so you can just point to that. -Amarkov blahedits 03:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  questioning intentions of nominators 

message: Is there something about the licensing, or is there another policy. There isn't anything I want moved over, I'm just curious. Koweja 04:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Licensing. Wikinews is Creative Commons, Wikipedia is GFDL. -Amarkov blahedits 04:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, I didn't realize that. Thanks. Koweja 05:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why can't we transwiki to wikinews? 

message: Shouldn't this be Articles for discussion? Often, many pages are not deleted, instead merged or moved. Or would that make the scope too large? Simply south 12:02, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's only supposed to be deletion, although it usually isn't. It would be too much work to rename everything, and there's not an incredibly pressing reason to do so. -Amarkov blahedits 15:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Also, merges and moves have their own pages (as do cleanup, copyright violations, and a bunch of other things AFD is hijacked for, but...). This would just lead to greater confusion on process, I think, and in any case the reason TFD and CFD changed I believe is there's not enough volume to justify separate process pages for merges and moves there (in my opinion). -- nae'blis 17:46, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, everything that gets nominated here is an attempt to delete. Discussions just result in moves/merges/cleanup discussions because the people involved in the discussion find it to be the best course of action. Sure, we could vote keep, then in a separate discussion get it handled, but why bother? This just streamlines the process. That said, Articles for deletion is still the right name for it since these are attempts to delete. Koweja 18:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There aren't seperate pages for say WP:CfD but from WP:TfD i would guess there are. Simply south 14:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page move query 

message: Could somebody take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New old stock.  Something was done wrong when it was created and it's not linked into the daily lists.  I'm not enough of a template wizard to figure out what went wrong.  Thanks.  -- RoySmith (talk) 22:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. ~ trialsanderrors 22:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New old stock]] 

message: I've never submitted an AfD - can someone help me prepare the AfD submission, and let me know if copyvio is a valid reason for AfDing an article?  The Simpsons Archive is the product of a Usenet newsgroup, and appears to be one large copyright violation.  
*WP:EL says "Sites that violate the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked. Linking to websites that display copyrighted works is acceptable as long as the website has licensed the work. Knowingly directing others to a site that violates copyright may be considered contributory infringement." Checking only a few of the references listed at  The Simpsons, I found at least these likely copyvios on The Simpsons Archive:
**http://www.snpp.com/other/interviews/meyer00.html
**http://www.snpp.com/other/articles/toshame.html
**http://www.snpp.com/other/articles/firstfamily.html
**http://www.snpp.com/other/interviews/groening99e.html
**http://www.snpp.com/other/articles/roundspringfield.html
Is this a valid reason for AfD, and if so, can someone please prepare the nom on my behalf?  Thanks, Sandy (Talk) 18:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also asked the question at media copyright. Sandy (Talk) 18:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, since it appears not to meet WP:WEB, I'm going to figure out how to nominate this myself.  Sandy (Talk) 19:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[The Simpsons Archive]] 

message: Please see Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_December_18#Chase_headley.  Am I really going to have to bring hundreds of articles which fail WP:BIO, WP:BAND and WP:NOTABILITY to AfD instead of using my common sense and deleting them?  User:Zoe|(talk) 18:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just the ones that don't meet the standard of speedy deletion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As determined by you.  User:Zoe|(talk) 18:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As determined by policy and guideline, Zoe.  If I contested each one of your speedies, you might have a point in this fit of rage, but I didn't because most of your speedies are fine.  Just read the damn policies and guidelines, that's all I'm looking for. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Policy says minor league ballplayers fail notability.  If someone else, anyone else, had deleted the article, you would have not cared.  It's only because I did it that you turn it into a crisis.  User:Zoe|(talk) 19:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which policy are you citing, then?  You haven't cited one yet.  Meanwhile, I challenge plenty of speedies when I catch them.  I noticed this one because he's been listed on some Red Sox boards recently.  Believe it or not, it has very little to do with you - I disagree with some of your A7s, but you don't see me challenging all of your speedies.  --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: CSD A7.  Being a minor league ballplayer is not a claim of notability.  User:Zoe|(talk) 19:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then you're not interpreting it properly.  WP:BIO says that people who play in a fully professional league are notable.  Thus, minor league ballplayers have an assertion of notability.  You're putting your own opinions into the CSD criteria again, that's not good. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speedy deletions 

message: Should there be a limit at how many times an article can be nominated for AFD??
We've had:
*Gay Nigger Association of America - 18 times
*Briefsism - repeatedly, under different titles (e.g. The Cult of Briefsism etc.)
I'm not sure if this is good myself.... it's a suggestion only! --SunStar Nettalk 01:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, and your arguments, ironically, gave the reason why. Both have been deleted, so obviously, restrictions on AfD nominations would serve to make bad articles get kept. I don't see any big advantage to balance that out. -Amarkov blahedits 01:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake, Amarkov. sorry! --SunStar Nettalk 01:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text:  I guess if you vote on something multiple times the vote will eventually go your way, and you will get your deletion. Its just a matter of gaming the system, and choosing the right time to put something up to a vote, and starting a "get out the vote" campaign to the right people. Once it is gone its doubtful anyone will relist it to be resurrected, since only administrators can see deleted entries. Just my humble opinion. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 23:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I tried that already, it was pretty unceremoniously shot down.  --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I just found the discussion in the archives of the Speedy Keep Talkpage. The proposal was 6 months I gather. Has it ever been tried with something shorter e.g. 3 months? WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The vibe I got was that any limitation was a bad idea.  I still disagree, but I can't imagine this being approved.  I'm behind you if you want to try again, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At the moment I just wanted to get a feel for the mood. There must be some period of time (however short) when the appropriate response to a keep result that is disagreed with is deletion review. Otherwise articles could spend time perpetually in AfD. Logically a keep vote as a concensus of the community of the validity of an article should have consequences. To renominate it within a couple of months in the hope that different users will contribute to the debate, seems improper. It is analogous to starting a court case and losing, suspecting that another judge might take a different view, and relitigating the case. I would hope that such nominations could be treated as an abuse of process. At the very least a new argument for deletion not raised at the previous AfD should be needed. This would serve as the counterpart for WP:CSD G4 (recreation of deleted material). I shall ponder the form a new proposal might take. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no "X months before renominating" because different cases require different time periods. A candidate who is going up for election next Tuesday may be eligible for re-nomination in a few weeks, whereas a failing micronation might be better reviewed in several months. To lay down some sort of hard and fast time limit begs for rules lawyering, IMO. I think in most cases articles that come up for renomination too soon get sympathy keeps, which is not exactly proper but a self-correcting balance on most abuses of the system. Personally, I usually wait at least a month or two, even for something like Carlsbad grimple which was pretty clearly a hoax. -- nae'blis 16:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Time shouldn't be the criterion ... content change should be, in my opinion.  If an article survives an AfD and a month later is a) unchanged and b) re-nominated at AfD, it should be speedy kept based on the previous result.  If, however, the article has substantially changed, then another trip to AfD could be justified very soon after survival the first time around. The comment above ("Repeated attempts at AFD" section above) in support of 'gaming the system' with appropriately targeted 'get out the vote campaigns' until the desired result is achieved is exactly how the system is not supposed to work, and predicating acceptance at AfD on content change would help to reduce the influence of 'system gamers'. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thoughtful and well stated. I agree 100%. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 00:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would argue that it's not necessarily change to the content but change to the circumstances.  If the content got worse, then the page should be reverted, not AFD'd.  On the other hand, if the consensus opinion of the original decision was "keep pending rewrite" and after a month or three the article remains unchanged (that is, still unimproved), that would be reasonable grounds for a renomination - the fact that no one has been able (or willing) to fix the concerns raised during the discussion is a new fact that may be considered by a subsequent discussion.  Likewise, if the decision was "no consensus" because the facts being argued in the discussion were unclear, a renomination may be in order as soon as the relevant facts become known.  Premature nominations and attempts to game the system are bad for the project and should be shouted down when they occur.  But I do not think that the project would be best served by attempting to impose time-based criteria on renominations.  Rossami (talk) 05:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Keep pending rewrite" shouldn't happen, because AfD isn't cleanup. Something shouldn't be deleted simply because nobody has cleaned it up. -Amarkov blahedits; 05:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are some limited cases where that might be in order; for instance, if notability is not established in the article, but evidence is presented during AfD or on the talk page that establishes notability, retention of the article contingent on inclusion of such information wouldn't be out of order.  However, I tend to agree that 'unclean' is not in general a good reason for deletion.  --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 05:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

text:  "Keep pending rewrite" happens when the community is skeptical that the article can be cleaned up (without, for example, violating NPOV, NOR or one of our other core policies) but is willing to give the "keep" voters the benefit of doubt.  I've argued for a number of articles that way.  Sometimes I've been successful with the rewrite and turned them into usable articles.  Other times, I had to admit defeat and ended up renominating the page myself.  "Keeps" are often contingent.  That flexibility of outcome is part of why we are so insistent that this is a discussion, not a vote.   Unfortunately, it seems more common that AFD participants argue "keep - it could be cleaned up" then abdicate any responsibility for actually helping with that cleanup.  But that's really a separate discussion.  Rossami (talk) 05:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repeated attempts at AFD 

message: I agree with Amarkov completely that there should be no cap on number of nominations. I was wondering, is there any feeling as to how much time should have to elapse between nominations. Should there be a policy that an article cannot be nominated until X months have elapsed since its last nomination? WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried that already, it was pretty unceremoniously shot down.  --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I just found the discussion in the archives of the Speedy Keep Talkpage. The proposal was 6 months I gather. Has it ever been tried with something shorter e.g. 3 months? WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The vibe I got was that any limitation was a bad idea.  I still disagree, but I can't imagine this being approved.  I'm behind you if you want to try again, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At the moment I just wanted to get a feel for the mood. There must be some period of time (however short) when the appropriate response to a keep result that is disagreed with is deletion review. Otherwise articles could spend time perpetually in AfD. Logically a keep vote as a concensus of the community of the validity of an article should have consequences. To renominate it within a couple of months in the hope that different users will contribute to the debate, seems improper. It is analogous to starting a court case and losing, suspecting that another judge might take a different view, and relitigating the case. I would hope that such nominations could be treated as an abuse of process. At the very least a new argument for deletion not raised at the previous AfD should be needed. This would serve as the counterpart for WP:CSD G4 (recreation of deleted material). I shall ponder the form a new proposal might take. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 14:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no "X months before renominating" because different cases require different time periods. A candidate who is going up for election next Tuesday may be eligible for re-nomination in a few weeks, whereas a failing micronation might be better reviewed in several months. To lay down some sort of hard and fast time limit begs for rules lawyering, IMO. I think in most cases articles that come up for renomination too soon get sympathy keeps, which is not exactly proper but a self-correcting balance on most abuses of the system. Personally, I usually wait at least a month or two, even for something like Carlsbad grimple which was pretty clearly a hoax. -- nae'blis 16:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Time shouldn't be the criterion ... content change should be, in my opinion.  If an article survives an AfD and a month later is a) unchanged and b) re-nominated at AfD, it should be speedy kept based on the previous result.  If, however, the article has substantially changed, then another trip to AfD could be justified very soon after survival the first time around. The comment above ("Repeated attempts at AFD" section above) in support of 'gaming the system' with appropriately targeted 'get out the vote campaigns' until the desired result is achieved is exactly how the system is not supposed to work, and predicating acceptance at AfD on content change would help to reduce the influence of 'system gamers'. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thoughtful and well stated. I agree 100%. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 00:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would argue that it's not necessarily change to the content but change to the circumstances.  If the content got worse, then the page should be reverted, not AFD'd.  On the other hand, if the consensus opinion of the original decision was "keep pending rewrite" and after a month or three the article remains unchanged (that is, still unimproved), that would be reasonable grounds for a renomination - the fact that no one has been able (or willing) to fix the concerns raised during the discussion is a new fact that may be considered by a subsequent discussion.  Likewise, if the decision was "no consensus" because the facts being argued in the discussion were unclear, a renomination may be in order as soon as the relevant facts become known.  Premature nominations and attempts to game the system are bad for the project and should be shouted down when they occur.  But I do not think that the project would be best served by attempting to impose time-based criteria on renominations.  Rossami (talk) 05:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Keep pending rewrite" shouldn't happen, because AfD isn't cleanup. Something shouldn't be deleted simply because nobody has cleaned it up. -Amarkov blahedits; 05:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are some limited cases where that might be in order; for instance, if notability is not established in the article, but evidence is presented during AfD or on the talk page that establishes notability, retention of the article contingent on inclusion of such information wouldn't be out of order.  However, I tend to agree that 'unclean' is not in general a good reason for deletion.  --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 05:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

text:  "Keep pending rewrite" happens when the community is skeptical that the article can be cleaned up (without, for example, violating NPOV, NOR or one of our other core policies) but is willing to give the "keep" voters the benefit of doubt.  I've argued for a number of articles that way.  Sometimes I've been successful with the rewrite and turned them into usable articles.  Other times, I had to admit defeat and ended up renominating the page myself.  "Keeps" are often contingent.  That flexibility of outcome is part of why we are so insistent that this is a discussion, not a vote.   Unfortunately, it seems more common that AFD participants argue "keep - it could be cleaned up" then abdicate any responsibility for actually helping with that cleanup.  But that's really a separate discussion.  Rossami (talk) 05:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gap between nominations

message: This might have been dealt with over and over again, but I just want to point out some inconsistency in the way the multiple nomination procedure is applied.  The suggested criteria on the main AfD page gives such examples as "a non-notable book and articles about all its characters", or "a non-notable band and articles about its members".  What I don't see is "a non-notable mall and every other article about a mall on wikipedia".  But this is how many users (in perfectly good faith) apply the criteria; for a current example, look here.  This is not egregious but it is symptomatic.  I would like to emphasize that in the past month, during which I have been particularly active on AfD pages, I have not yet seen a mass nomination that hasn't resulted in conflicts and debate over the procedure rather than the article(s) at hand.  See, for example, this.  It also leads to users going on mini-vendettas (which is fine IMO) against perhaps non-notable churches, schools, etc, but then nominating them all in a huge bundle with the explanation that "these are all non-notable churches."  Does this perhaps suggest that a tweak to that part of the AfD procedure guidelines might be in order?  Has this topic already been done to death, and no one even wants to talk about it anymore?  If so I apologize, but if not, I'd like to see other opinions.--Dmz5 09:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's your proposed remedy? ~ trialsanderrors 09:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh I was just about to add a message suggesting something.  Since the examples I cite are counter to the given guidelines, perhaps an additional bullet in that section to clarify that multiple-nominating is not intended for x,y,z purpose - so then editors and admins can refer to something concrete in asking that the mass-nominees be un-bundled.  Or something like that.  So far, I have not seen such an action occur without additional excessive debate (such as the second example I link above).  --Dmz5 09:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm this thread at least partly overlaps with "mass deletions" above, which is odd because I swear I did not see that thread when I created this - otherwise I might not have done so!  --Dmz5 16:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple nominees 

message: In a recent afd that I started, a fellow editor wrote the following 
This is an AfD discussion, though, so the important question is not whether the current article is good, but whether there should be an article about this in the Wikipedia
I'm not sure that I agree, I think that an afd should remain about the article.
I'm not sure that this is the right place to ask, but are there any policy pages where the gist of this statement is discussed?
I did not find anything on this page regarding that statement.
The afd where the statement is made is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/11:11 phenomenon
If there is a more appropriate place to ask this question please let me know.
TheRingess 20:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps I am misinterpreting your comment, but as it is written above it appears you believe he is suggesting that the article should not be deleted. The statement makes no such claim. He's simply saying that quality of an article is not a consideration for AfD. He further states that the real concern for an AfD is whether or not the article should be on the wiki. Both of these statements are basic policy. Yes, in the full discussion he does indeed give reasons for a Keep, but these arguments are based on notability, as they should be. Am I missing something here? Maury 22:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the prompt response. I do not believe that he is suggesting the article should not be deleted.  To me, the quality of the article is not in question (as you point out and has been pointed out on this page, poor quality is not grounds for deletion, but improvement).  Quality and original research are not necessarily linked.  A well written article can still be original research.  The point I made in the afd is that the article is original research (and I outlined the reasons why I believe it is), which according to this page, is grounds for deletion.  Is the question of whether or not an article is original research and therefore should be deleted, overridden when the purported subject of the article is decided to be notable?  The answer is still not clear to me. TheRingess 23:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If sources exist, but simply aren't in the article, notability overrides OR, yes. But if no sources exist, it will always be OR, so it should be deleted. -Amarkov blahedits 05:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the reply, I figured that about sources.TheRingess 06:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about policy 

message: Here is a google coop search engine for Afd, Tfd (etc ...) archives. It doesn't seem to be reliable, however.  () --Fasten 13:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It does seem to be improving. So the "google algorithm" (awed voice) appears to be working on it. --Fasten 14:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: AfD discussions should not be indexed by Google because of robots.txt. Don't know about the other *fD. Tizio 16:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Search engine 

message: I the last few days I reverted two edits that increased the number of days in the "Active discussions" section. This number shouldn't be changed from the standard six days though since technically only discussions not older than 120 hours are considered active. Open discussions older than 120 hours appear in WP:AFD/Old. I asked Oleg who runs the Mathbot whether transcluding the links to the old discussions from WP:AFD/Old to the main page would interefere with bot operations, and he said No. So I'm throwing this out here to gather consensus. Currently the transclusion would look like this:
 Current discussions
 ----------------------------------------------
 * 22 December (Friday)
 * 21 December (Thursday)
 * 20 December (Wednesday)
 * 19 December (Tuesday)
 * 18 December (Monday)
 * 17 December (Sunday)
 
 Old discussions
 ----------------------------------------------
 * Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 December 15 (70 open / 92 closed / 162 total discussions) 
 * Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 December 16 (76 open / 40 closed / 116 total discussions)
I gather the bot script can be tweaked to change the formatting of the old links to match the current ones, but transclusion would create a simple way to access old discussion logs with open discussions (if the number is small enough they can even be accessed directly). Any feedback is welcome. ~ trialsanderrors 06:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The old discussions already show up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, see section 2 there. That section transcludes Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/old, I think that one needs to be merged with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old, and then one could follow your suggestion above.  As you wrote on my talk page, WP:AFD/Old would need to have a bunch of <noinclude> statements so that only the links to the discussions are transcluded and not everything else from it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From the edit history, this looks like it's being updated by hand (infrequently), which is certainly not a satisfactory solution. ~ trialsanderrors 06:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's right, and there is no good reason for that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/old page to exist if Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old is updated by the bot every day. I think if we get no comments in the next day or two, you could implement your suggestion with the transclusion and perhaps you could redirect Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/old to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old (I will be traveling and won't be around to do that). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 07:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I set it up and it seems to work properly. ~ trialsanderrors 19:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just spotted this. Good job, I was thinking something like this should happen (as one of the infrequent updaters) but had no idea how to accomplish it. Trebor 21:31, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transcluding [[WP:AFD/Old]] 

message: Just an FYI, I renominated "the game" for deletion here. KnightLago 02:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you nominate it another 10 or 20 times, Jimbo will probably delete it anyway, per the Gay Nigger Association of America article. Just H 02:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[The Game (game)]] 6th AFD 

message: Hi, I tried to fix the afd for Rachel Marsden, the third, on the log page, but I can't seem to make it work right.  The subpage is Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rachel_Marsden_%28third_nomination%29
Bucketsofg 21:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lemme check. Just H 02:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: ok, never mind....Just H 02:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  help? 

message: My nomination for Neutomic Keyboard is screwed up. I don't know how it got that way or how to fix it. I fixed it so my text shows, but there is no header. Please see my text under Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 December 27#Danasoft Signatures. -Freekee 05:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I figured it out. I missed adding the header template when I created the deletion discussion page. -Freekee 05:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  help 2 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention.  Badbilltucker 19:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: I'd like to make closing editors aware of an ongoing problem.  I recently banned several sockpuppets of JB196, who has been on a disruptive campaign for the greater part of 2006 to aggressively delete non-North American professional wrestling articles.  The sockmaster had been banned since September 2006 and has returned to evade multiple blocks, most recently at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_December_27#Chuck_E._Chaos.
Please exercise special scrutiny with new and low edit count comments on these topics due to the high probability that these are new manifestations of one persistent vandal. DurovaCharge! 22:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sockpuppet deletion efforts by banned user 

message: Although WP:IDONTLIKEIT isn't a guideline or policy, I believe every AfD consensus voter should read this essay. The best way to do this is to post a link to it at the top of the main AfD page and the AfD logs. Is this in any way possible? Sr13 (T|C) 09:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think adding a link to the top of the page will convince people to read it - it'll just increase the clutter. A better way to deal with fallacious arguments on AfD is to challenge them personally and show why they're wrong. Trebor 21:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree people won't read it any more than anything else.  An article just proposed for deletion (Palaeos) even has a link to its brief write-up in Science (journal), it's been written up in other peer-reviewed journals, something not said for many user written websites, and its demise was the subject of intense discussion by scientists over the past few months, yet the assertion was made that it failed notability--in all fairness, it's a crummy article, but clicking on the link to Science should have given the proposer some pause.  A world famous translator (sorry if you haven't heard of him) was proposed for deletion because he failed the google test--look him up in Barnes and Noble, people with fewer book listings are all over Wikipedia, and this guy doesn't even write in English!  The arguments will still be offered, no one will read the link, and it will just clutter the page.  Yeah, just challenge.  But coming here worries me that plenty of good articles and necessary articles are being deleted simply because they are outside of someone's venue.  I don't speak Albanian, or know any Albanians, but I've heard about this cool dude who translated Antony and Cleopatra into Albanian!  KP Botany 21:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: As we all know, debates added towards the end of the day attract less attention than those added at the beginning.  I commented on this on the mailing list and a couple of really good ideas came up.
* Add new debates at the top.  Yup, very simple.  We do it with some discussion pages, it's simple to do and it means that people won't lose interest before they get to the newest debates.
* Transclude the previous day's debates at the bottom of a new day's debates.  Do this in a <noinclude> in case people forget to knock it off during maintenance. Or do it only at /today.
What do people think? Guy (Help!) 20:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we should try to standardize top- or bottom adding over our forums. Top-adding seems to makes more sense because it gives the newest additons the most attention. On transcluding yesterday's debates to today's log, I don't think that's feasible since we're already running 150+ debates per day. We could possibly create a "last 100/150/200" log page though. ~ trialsanderrors 21:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Both those proposals make sense to me. Top-adding should be done ASAP in my opinion, the first AfD always gets a lot more comments than the last few and this is a simple way to try to correct that. A last 150/200 page log would work pretty well I think (adding all the previous day's debates would bloat today's log). Trebor 21:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Standardizing Wikipedia pages on top-down or bottom-up would be helpful, but I'm pretty sure the momentum is with top-down, based on the impetus provided by the [+] button. -- nae'blis 23:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  That works fine for discussions, but I think newest first makes more sense in xFD type pages. Guy (Help!) 14:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I also see quite a couple of late additions that are sneaked in on the top spot of the day. I assume that happens accidentally, but it's another reason to switch to top adding. ~ trialsanderrors 11:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A couple of ideas 

message: I nominated this for deletion earlier, and I have now withdrawn my nomination. It is now, or will be a notable current event shortly. So deleting it now is useless. I would ask that an admin close the debate if possible. Thanks. KnightLago 20:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Close/withdrawn nom for [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/100-Hour Plan|100-Hour Plan]] 

message: Once an article has been deleted, how can I view its History and previous Talk page? --Iantresman 15:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You can't - that's rather the point of deleting it. It's only viewable to admins (although the talk page is not always deleted). Trebor 15:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Request a history restore at WP:DRV. ~ trialsanderrors 21:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article deletion history 

message: I'm sure this isn't the right place, but as it's related to something happening at an AfD, I thought I'd put it here. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kielbasa (song) there are two accounts that, the first edit they did was comment on the AfD. The one has that as it's only edit and the other has one other edit of their own user page. Is there anything I can do to determine if one of the previous people who voted for the AfD just created these new accounts to get more votes on their side? Joltman 18:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a group of admins that check for sockpuppet accounts. As for those two, it is quite possible that they are two independent single purpose accounts. In any case, their "votes" won't mean much, just mark their comments as being made by accounts with few or no other edits. Koweja 18:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Determine if a new account is the same person? 

message: Is there a general guideline on soliciting votes? It appears that QuackGuru is visiting user's pages to request they bring in others to swing the vote on an AfD.
I don't know of any guideline for or against this, but it strikes me as a bit... off. -- Kesh 23:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have been feeling for some time now that this sort of thing is a major problem for wikipedia. It is very easy for bias and censorship to jump in here: wikipedia votes for deletion are usually only voted on by a few dozen editors, out of the hundreds of thousands of people who might read an article. It does not take much soliciting to go on to swing a vote. Votes are generally not vetted for honesty: it is trivial for someone to give a bogus rationale for their vote (e.g. declare that they are voting for an article to be deleted on the basis that it violates a wiki policy, when in fact it does not) - who checks? who decides the number of votes cast was representative of a sensible cross-section of the wikipedia community? --feline1 17:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The closing admin vets the comments and decides all those issues.  This is exactly why 1) we are discussing the article, not voting and 2) we restrict the closing of AFD discussions to experienced administrators in almost all cases.  By the way, to answer the first question, solicitation of "votes" is strongly and actively discouraged and, when discovered, will almost always backfire, resulting in a raft of comments that the solicitor acted in bad faith and causing those solicited "votes" to be discounted (to some degree) by the closing admin.  See Wikipedia:Guide to deletion for more.  Rossami (talk) 20:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:SPAM#Canvassing is the current guideline. WP:CANVASS which is a spin-off of that section, is in proposal stage. ~ trialsanderrors 21:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Really? This all surprises me. In the past, for instance, I had my editing rights locked for 24 hours under the 3 Revert Rule: what happened was that an admin solicited other users to revert my edits, so that they could effectively revert me more than 3 times, and push me over the limit, then temporarily ban me! I see much the same strategies going on in deletion votes. I've basically given up bothering to edit on contentious/political/pseudoscience type articles because of this kind of behaviour.--feline1 22:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soliciting votes? 

message: The two following articles are both theories of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a "self taught" artificial intelligence researcher:
* Friendly artificial intelligence
* Seed AI
The articles do not appear to be supported by citations outside of Eliezer's own self-published writings hosted on Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.  Eliezer has no peer-reviewed publications describing these speculative theories, thus I am not sure why they deserve to be featured in an encyclopedia.  Also many of these four articles (the two theories and the person and organization) read like advertisements, not true encyclopedia articles.  Thoughts?  --70.48.69.136 00:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These are good articles, but maybe Eliezer Yudkowsky's role in Seed AI should be made clearer. - Peregrinefisher 00:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Quick cite search tells me that Yudkowsky has two papers listed on ISI, with one citation each. Two articles on Newsbank. I'm hard-pressed to say that he meets WP:PROF. The Kurzweil link might be considered notable, but I'm not sure if it is independent. On the other hand those articles are stone old and were heavily edited. ~ trialsanderrors 11:16, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Just now someone added to Bayesian probability a link to an on-line tutorial by Yudkowsky. I am sometimes tempted to shoot these things on sight but the tutorial isn't half bad. Will perhaps try to engage the anonymous contributor in a conversation. (WP:EL appears to say that external links should be explained and justified in the text of the article). There is an online paper by Yudkowsky that is said to be a forthcoming publication in a book called 'Global Catastrophic Risks'. The content of that paper looks like standard science, and it appears appropriately scholarly. If someone really thought the Eliezer Yudkowsky article and the two AI articles mentioned above were inappropriate,  I suppose they could take them to AfD, but if enough disclaimers are included as to the (small) influence of this work I think this stuff might be OK. These ideas do not appear to be pseudoscience (at least, from what little I've checked). Some merger might possibly be considered, because with so little peer-reviewed discussion, having three different articles might be excessive. EdJohnston 21:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are these articles appropriate for Wikipedia? 

message: *Notice - participants in AfD may be interested in this proposal at WP:V to clarify that article improvement is preferable to deletion or blanking. Please come by and join the discussion if you would like. Johntex\talk 21:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed policy re-wording 

message: This just came through on wikipedia-l. Nominators are asked to take especial care to remember that not everything is on Google - David Gerard 14:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Dunno - mention it on the mailing list and go looking for portals for smaller countries, I suppose - David Gerard 17:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semiautomatic deletions and inadvertent anti-Third World systemic bias 

message: I saw the thing on scripts, but basically none are feasible for me. I created a nom for an article here, but it seems that all the articles in  are fair game along the same grounds. Is there a way to nominate all of them in one fell swoop? (as far as I know they don't belong to a particular category.) Dåvid ƒuchs (talk • contribs) 00:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no "automatic" way, you need to follow the steps described here. If the AFD already started, maybe you should consider seeing if it is deleted, and then creating a massive AFD using the deletion result as precedent. -- ReyBrujo 03:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

text: <grin> I'm flattered to be used as an example now, but while I haven't been struck by lightning (or otherwise warned or cautioned) for starting that AfD, I'll just point out that the articles are not deleted and that no conclusion on what type of discussion is needed for these has been made yet... If you want to mass nominate articles, you can a) start with one to set a precedent (make it clear in the AfD nomination that that is the objective, or you'll get "why did you single out this one" counterarguments) - if theis AfD is successful, nominate the other ones all at once or in batches of e.g. 20 (like is done with the towers AfD we recently had), or b) just go for it and nominate them all. Make fairly certain that they are very comparable (i.e. not some more notable than others), or people will start complaining (I wont, I like mass nominations, but I seem to be an exception). Fram 15:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any way to nominate LOTS of articles 

message: Question: on AfDs, why don't we make a procedure of listing all previous AfDs at the top of a page for review? For example, on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Nihilist Underground Society (5th Nomination), that article is up now for the 5th time. I put a comment just now in that copied the multi-AfD table from the Article's talk page. Wouldn't it make sense to just have someone put this by default at the head of each AfD page, for complete disclosure of an article's history? F.F.McGurk 18:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My opinion is to ditch the WP:AfD/Blablabla (5th nomination) format and to create subdirectories WP:AfD/Blablabla/1, /2, ... /5, etc. Simplifies using the  and  tags too. The main page could contain the summaries of the previous AfD's or, if my proposal to reformat the closed debate boxes will ever get adopted, the transcluded discussion, and of course every individual subpage will automatically have a link to the WP:AfD/Blablabla main page. ~ trialsanderrors 08:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think (hope?) that this would be unnecessary overhead for the vast majority of deletion discussions.  What proportion really turn out to be repeat nominations/discussions?  Rossami (talk) 01:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The nominator should note any previous nominations under the current name when nominating, yes. If they have not read the talk page/deletion log, then they have not done their homework. However, failing that, I have to agree with Rossami that it's overkill to rework the entire structure to avoid this problem. Adding something to the instructions should be sufficient. The bigger problem I can't sort out is when you go to the deletion record and end up at the first one, with no indication that others have taken place. Would it be worth documenting future AFDs on the talk page of the prior ones? -- nae'blis 02:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My proposal is actually to achieve the exact opposite, to simplify a whole number of steps. For instance, editors now need to know the difference between  and . For every repeat nomination using  the nominations have to be corrected manually to remove the "(Nth nomination)" from header and  template. The , which has to be written by hand, could simply be replaced by a transclusion of the main AfD page, etc. ~ trialsanderrors 17:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The user should not have to manually correct the repeat nominations.   defaults to "2nd" but it's a parameterized template and can be used to enter any level of nomination.  For subsequent nominations, the user types .  If you follow the process properly, I don't know of anything you have to correct by hand.  But I'm pretty sure you knew that so maybe I'm not understanding your concern yet.  Now, I will concede that knowing the difference between afd and afdx is complex - but it only occurs in a small number of cases.  If I understood the proposal correctly, we'd be adding a layer of complexity to all deletion discussions just to deal with a minority which are repeated incorrectly.  Rossami (talk) 01:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually it was me who implemented "2nd" as default in , but even then you still have to manually change the header from ===Header (2nd nomination)=== to ===Header (2nd nomination)=== and the  tag from  to . I do this all the time when I close DRV's and renominate overturned AfD's. We're not adding anything, even if we were to set the first discussions to WP:AFD/Header/1 (which isn't really necessary, it really only changes things from the 2nd nomination on). ~ trialsanderrors 02:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Listing of all previous AfDs on a given one? 

message: This edit by an anon seems to have screwed up the list of nominations at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 January 11. I noticed my two nominations disappeared, maybe others too? ~ trialsanderrors 07:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Another anonymous IP attacked two former AfD pages too that are on my watchlist: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Curtis Newart and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Immaculate Records. The odd thing is both of these AfDs are related. It would be one thing for a random IP to wipe out one or two AfDs but two related ones that were separated by other AfDs? Seems too much of a concidence to me. Ronbo76 07:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disappearing AfD's in January 11 log 

message: A discussion regarding is underway at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Disputed tag. Navou banter 02:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-admins closing debates 

message: Is there anything like "arguments not to make at AFD", something we can point new editors to read? I'm thinking of common arguments like "Article X is crap as well but that's not up for AFD!" --Larry laptop 17:10, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions KP Botany 17:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arguments not to make at AFD 

message: Could an admin review Accusations against Israel of war crimes during the Al-Aqsa Intifada? It's past five days and starting to get more heated the longer it goes... F.F.McGurk 14:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heated AfD 

message: I have today been the subject of censure by Doc glasgow for completing AfD's (, ) that other users have nominated, but for which the process has not been completed properly - this usually involves creating the AfD discussion and/or adding the AfD tag to the page.  I've been doing this for several months without critisism; I quote the reasons given by the nominator from any source (edit summaries, talk pages) that I can find, and state that my opinion is neutral.  Can I confirm that my behaviour has been incorrect, and what I should have done in this, and other similar cases, is to delete the entry from the log file? Tevildo 17:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the problem in those cases was that there wasn't a case for deletion, so it wasn't really a nomination. If they've just made a mistake in listing and there is some reasoning somewhere, then I think it's fine to list, quoting their reasoning and stating you're neutral. If there's no reason, however, then there's no need/point in listing the article for deletion. Trebor 17:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'll just delete any nominations that don't specify a reason, and advise the nominator appropriately, in future.  The anon nominator of the 2Advanced AfD _did_ specify a reason, albeit a very short one; should this be re-activated, or shall we let it go as a glitch in the system? Tevildo 17:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say it should be reactivated. The anon did provide a reason to delete it, so it should be discussed. It would seem that the only reason 2Advanced was closed was because Gay icon was, which isn't a valid reason. Koweja 22:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To me the crucial element is whether the original nominator's reason for deletion can be ascertained. If they can, then listing the incomplete AfD noms is fine. If not, then there's no way to know if its a genuine, trolling, or just a delettion request with no policy to support it. Nonetheless, we don't reopen closed AfDs. The correct process is either to seek deletion review or to start a new AfD. WJBscribe (WJB talk) 22:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Apologies, I misread the 2Advanced one and somehow didn't notice the reason (I'll blame tiredness). That one could have stayed open, in my opinion, despite the reason being fairly brief, but others might think differently. Not really worth a DRV, but someone could relist it with an expanded nom if they think it's worth deleting. Trebor 22:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Procedural nominations 

message: I had this conversation in an AFD
----
*Question Please explain what you call "unique google hits".  The link Mikkia gave http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Game+Freaks%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&lr=&start=60&sa=N shows 271,000 links. Anomo 10:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 140,000 is the total hits, but Google by default shows only unique hits. So, you need to go to the last page, and click the repeat the search with the omitted results included link. -- ReyBrujo 04:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh? So which of those ways is the "unique" hits? Anomo 06:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In the example above, "game freaks 365" returns 140,000, but when you reach the 6 or 7th page, there are only 77 unique hits, right? Well, the 77 are the unique hits, the 140,000 are hits that are found in the same sections of the sites (in example, in a forum you may get one hit, but when you expand the search results, you may get 50 or 60 hits in a single thread of the forum). -- ReyBrujo 06:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

text: See Wikipedia:Search engine test for all the gory details.  The short answer is that 1) the large number (280,000,000) is only an estimate, 2) the maximum possible returns from a google search are capped at 1000 and 3) duplications within that 1000 are suppressed by default.  Rossami (talk) 06:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, but it doesn't say what is the right number that a google unique test should have to determine notability. Anomo 09:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Deliberately so for several reasons.  First, the quality of the hits is far more important than the quantity.  5 hits in scholarly journals could be enough to establish notability but 1000 hits in blogs and other self-publications are probably not.  Second, different topics are subject to different degrees of skewing in their on-line coverage.  1000 hits about a modern-day pop star says, well, relatively little.  15 hits about a 17th century musician, however, is significant.  Third, the way Google returns results can skew the evaluation.  That's why the google test must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and used with great care.   In my experience, the Google test is more useful as a negative test than a positive one.  For example, if someone claims to be a notable pop star but google finds only a few thousand hits and most of them trace back to a few dozen blogs, that's clear evidence that the person has not yet achieved popular status.  Rossami (talk) 00:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Agree with Rob comment that this doesn't matter.  The thing to get notability is multiple non trivial sources.  10K google hits may be blogs and thus not reliable sources.  2 google hit may be Time magazine and the Guardian.  Comments about Google is helpful in an AFD discussion if for no other reason as to prove you took a look rahter than agreeing with the previous commenters.Obina 16:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Don't agree completely. A new band which claims to be very popular but has no hits outside its MySpace page is very suspect, and in such a cse Google is a very good indicator of notability. A battle between two cities in 1438 with only 2 Google hits may still be very significant though. A low number of Google hits, tied with the topic of the subject (recent, pop culture), can be a very good indicator of lack of notability (but indeed, even then it can be overruled by other reliable sources). On the other hand, a high number of Google hits on its own is very rarely an indicator of notability, since they can not be adequately checked. And distinct Google hits are a good way of showing that while 400 Google hits can look impressive, they only come from 12 distinct websites or so. Google is a very useful tool, for providing sources, but also for a first indicator of notability, if used wisely and with caution. But all people saying that 'X may have 50,000 Google hits, but only 120 distinct ones' must be shown their error for this misuse to stop (or lessen). Fram 09:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: *FWIW, This thread basically explains why I personally do not pay much if any attention to ghits when I am assessing the notability or verifiability of something. I've been in AfDs where the article's proponent had flooded the internet with their key word in preparation for claiming broad awareness on WP. Keesiewonder talk 10:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Someone please explain this unique google hits to me. 

message: WP:ADMIN says that non-admins may behave exactly as admins, except for the extra capabilities that admins have. This is backed up on the same page by Jimbo's assertion that adminship is "not a big deal" and that he wants to "dispel the aura of "authority" around the position". Nevertheless, Wikipedia:Deletion process#Non-administrators closing discussions creates new, purely social, restrictions on how and when non-admins may close deletion discussions "keep", which of course they are capable of doing. I propose changing DELPRO to dispel the aura of authority around adminship per Jimbo and bring it into line with WP:ADMIN, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process#Social restrictions on non-admin behaviour. —Ashley Y 05:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:DELPRO]] and extra "social" restrictions on non-admins