Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/Archive 8

message: A discussion to fix a problem w/A7 and G11 is going on at the speedy deletion talk page. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A7 and G11 

message: What would be the best wording for this, and if there is no strenuous objection I will endeveour to write this up and add it: during AfD process, there are many articles which are being deleted based on apparent local political biases or flavoring, or perhaps personal biases or lack of knowledge. For example, if a given John H. Smith is written about in "multiple, non-trivial sources" currently he is considered notable. However, I see that on my AfDs, especially of a biographical nature in particular, or related to films and books, such articles are routinely deleted simply due to the weight of people saying "non-notable", or via saying "per nom, nn", and so forth, despite the fact that the individuals meet the simple key requirement. I believe that AfD process needs to adhere to and serve the other policies which determine who merits inclusion--not supercede them.
So, in short, the requested and I feel needed change is simply one that says, unequivically: calls/comments/"not votes" by any user to delete must be bases in stated policy. We should not delete simply for not liking something, nor create an article for simply liking something. If no one can demonstrate why this change is bad I shall make it in several days. · XP · 18:52, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is up to the editor to make sure that a given article meets all policies and guidelines; the nominator/AfD participant does not have to help make it conform to those policies and guidelines. Given that, why should a !voter have to go out of their way to describe their reasoning? --Aaron 19:00, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

text: To start, the various nobility critiera (ie WP:BAND, WP:BIO and WP:CORP) are guidelines and not policies dispite what User:XP states.  As guidelines, the headers state, "is considered a standard that all users should follow. However, it is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception" (italics mine).  As such the community consensus could be to include an article that does not meet any of the given criteria as well as delete an article that does meet one of the criteria.  I agree that a nomination simply stating "non-notable" without referencing a specific guideline is poor, it does not negate the nomination and the reasoning underlying it.  I do not have any issue with people stating, "as per nom" because there sometime is nothing more to say.  Sometimes the differences of opinion on an article come down to disagreements on the definition of "multiple, non-trivial sources" or "two albums".  I currently see no need to change the deletion policy.--Gay Cdn  (talk) (email) (Contr.) 20:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

text: An encyclopedia it there to tell people things they don't know. Therefore if everyone were allowed to vote to remove what they don't know there wouldn't be any encyclopedia (ie. it would only include what most people already know). Like the encyclopedia deletion should be based on evidence rather than predi-juice. --Mike 09:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested change to policy 

message: Hi.
I know this is going to probably sound really, really dumb, but what happens to the creator of an article that gets deleted? Do they get punished/reprimanded in some way because it failed to live up to WP standards, policy, etc.? 70.101.144.160 23:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't sound really, really dumb at all. :) There is no punitive action related to deleted articles. It is possible that an article was created as a prank/hoax/attack, or some other such nonsense - but that is a separate issue aside from actually deleting the article. Remember that articles are not "owned" in any sense at Wikipedia, and sometimes the consensus of the community may simply be different than that of one particular editor (say, the one who created the article). --Bookandcoffee 23:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. 70.101.144.160 06:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They may be sad at it being deleted though. —Centrx→talk • 21:33, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps, yes. Of course if it was something like a test, maybe not. If it was to push their point of view, they might get angry. 170.215.83.212 21:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  After deletion? 

message: Please ensure that nominations to delete an article which was previously voted "keep", are carefully considered, and are based upon policy and not opinion.
In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kryder's law (second nomination), someone quoted this policy to claim that a second nomination cannot be based on whether a subject is non-notable, because whether something is non-notable is an opinion.
I suggest removing the "and not opinion" clause.
The policy also says "The most common reason for a repeat nomination is that there was marked lack of discussion or lack of consensus in the original decision and the second vote is required to clarify opinion.", which implies that opinions may be involved in a second nomination, contradicting the first quote.  Ken Arromdee
*The intent of the phrase is that comments like "keep, I like it" or "delete, it's boring" should not be considered. Many of our policies and guidelines involve some subjectivity in their application. Thus people may disagree whether article X is supported by guideline Y. Such opinions should not be discounted, since a main point of AFD is finding out consensus about whether some guideline applies. >Radiant< 12:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So does that mean you agree with the suggested change? Ken Arromdee 16:38, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just took it out.  I'm sure any number of people would put it back in without bothering to participate in any discussion, but I'd rather they not. Ken Arromdee 00:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can this be changed? 

message: In one particular area of interest, there have been about a dozen different articles tagged with AfDs within the last few days.  While the articles in question related, they are more or less independent of one another, have been around for months (in some cases over a year), and have been developed and maintained pretty much independent of one another.
Given that there are probably tens of thousands of articles at any given time that could reasonably be AfD'ed, without even looking at ones that are relatively new, it looks a little suspicious to see this many from one corner of Wikipedia getting targeted at the same time.  It tends to arouse suspicion of selective enforcement, of one or two individuals going on a  crusade against that particular subject.
If you think about law enforcement and any number of laws or rules that are often not followed to the letter, such as the speed limit, where full compliance and enforcement are not feasable.  What kind of reaction does it usually get when it is suddenly being heavily enforced in a particular area or against specific types of people while enforcement elsewhere remains as relaxed as ever?  Granted, the enforcement authorities can correctly state that they were only enforcing the law in each individual case, but such patterns of targeted enforcement usually tend to make the targeted groups feel that they're being treated unfairly.
I would contend that this sort of selective enforcement, or targeting, is a form of AfD abuse, and if there is not a policy in place to address it there should be.  Application of the deletion policy should within reason be applied uniformly across all subject areas of Wikipedia and should discourage people from targeting or crusading against specific subject areas.
Mwalimu59 19:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While I can comepletely appreciate the feeling of being targetted, the simple point for me is, are the articles nominated actually AfD candidates?  The articles (which I do not know which subject they are about) must have some linkage, likely a category or contributor.  I often use a category that I at least have a passing knowledge (sometimes more then passing) about and review the articles.  If this category has a lot of entries that do not meet the criteria for Wikipedia - likely but not nessesarily nobility - then it is completely appropriate they be nominated.  A case could actually be made that if these articles are linked in some way, it is better that they be discussed at the same time so that a consistant concensus be reached about the subject.--Gay Cdn  (talk) (Contr.) 19:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

text: It is also possible (likely?) that the articles have simply been discovered because some one knowledgable volunteer chose to work through some issue and happened to find a pattern.  For example, I recently started working through :Category:Date of birth missing.  Per the policy at WP:BLP, we should not even be asking for date of birth for many of our biographies so I am evaluating each one and removing the category where it is inappropriate.  Along the way, I am reviewing a large number of biographies that have not previously had much scrutiny and discovering some that appear to fail to qualify under our generally accepted inclusion criteria.  That's not the primary reason that I'm looking at the article but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't at least tag the article and ask for a second opinion.  By coincidence, about half the biographies in the A and B section of that category were one-line stubs about jazz musicians.  Is that "selective enforcement"?  You could argue so.  Am I doing it with intent to abuse the process or even with the intent to seek out jazz musicians?  Not at all.  Rossami (talk) 21:18, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Selective enforcement 

message: I would like to refer to Wikipedia:Courtesy blanking in the Wikipedia page.  I added it  but was reverted, understandably, since I did not discuss the addition beforehand.  Wikipedia:Courtesy blanking is currently marked as a guideline rather than policy (perhaps it should be policy ), but I believe it should be mentioned even if it is "only" a guideline.  If the guideline is disputed, the dispute should happen on that talk page.  Personally, I like courtesy blanking.  I also note that courtesy blanking was instituted by Jimbo Wales.  Apparently most users and even many admins don't know of courtesy blanking, so I would like to increase knowledge of the guideline.  I recently stumbled upon a closed AFD where vandal patrollers were battling anons trying to blank an AFD because of unfavorable comments regarding the subject, when they could have used . —Quarl (talk) 2006-11-27 07:54Z
*I've replaced the link, since it is a relevant one, and adding it does not change this policy. Only substantial changes have to be discussed first. (Radiant) 13:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was one of those vandal patrollers, which is how I noticed the change to policy, and the same one who reverted this addition to policy when I was unable to find any discussion of it, even as a guideline. I personally find it troubling to "accidentally" discover that wording allowing the blanking of a talk page can go from creation to guideline to policy without a single line of discussion or any awareness of the issue by the larger Wiki community. CovenantD 18:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The page is still tagged as a guideline, and has support from the BDFL anyways. It is helpful to take note of when discussing deletion policy, and I personally don't think that being linked to from a policy page makes this a policy—by that logic, the fair use guideline is policy as it is linked from CSD, and the Wikipedia:Publicity photos essay is a guideline (or perhaps also policy) since said fair-use "policy" links to it. Not very coherent, and I don't think that linking to Wikipedia:Courtesy blanking gives it any more "officiality" than it currently bears. BigNate37(T) 18:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see  for the initial discussion on 2006-01-17 that created this.  (You may find this weird, but wikien-l is considered a valid forum for discussing Wikipedia policy despite being off-wiki.) —Quarl (talk) 2006-11-27 21:35Z
* I remember this being discussed but don't remember exactly which page led to the recommendation.  It was about the same time that we started working on the privacy clauses of WP:BLP - and might have been on that policy's Talk page.  Regardless, courtesy-blanking has been an accepted practice for some time.  The fact that someone finally took the time to write it down and give it a name does not suddenly make the practice controversial.  Rossami (talk) 22:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Courtesy blanking]] 

message: Hi.
Technical question: Does deletion actually remove the information from Wikipedia's server's hard drives, even if not immediately, in order to free up disk space? 170.215.83.4 01:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: With few exceptions, deleted pages are saved and viewable by admins.  See Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops.  In exceptional cases, individual revisions or pages may be removed from the database entirely using Wikipedia:Selective deletion. ∴ here…♠ 06:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So are you saying that every page since "time immemorial" (just about) is still stored on the Wikipedia hard drives, just simply "deactivated" and removed from the "public" wiki? How does this thing manage to cope with all that wasted disk space? 170.215.83.4 07:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, all deleted pages are still hogging server space, and lots of it, but it's good to know that a rogue admin can't delete the whole site without us being able to restore it... I'm not sure if it's enabled on Wikipedia, but old revisions of pages (including deleted ones) may be compressed to save space on MediaWiki installations. Also, server space isn't at all in short supply, there's plenty left, and even if we manage to use it all up, we can just get more servers :D Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 08:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

text: *Yes, old revisions are compressed (and also, generally not cached); if you do some history digging, you'll note that it takes significantly longer to retrieve versions older than a certain threshold. IIRC there was a database crash early in 2004, and all deleted revisions prior to that are lost. The remainder is visible to admins, and backed up of course. If you think this approach is surprising, consider that archive.org is backing up the entire internet and is making practical use of the term "petabyte". (Radiant) 09:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So are "deleted" pages also compressed, then? Also, why call this "deletion"? Why not call it "hiding"? 170.215.83.4 19:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

text: *I believe that in older versions of the software, deleted articles were in fact removed from the database. The name simply has stuck; we have that a lot. For instance, the terms "admin" and "bureaucrat" are also misnomers. (Radiant) 09:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, so it's more of a "historical" thing, then, for example the word "planet" means "a wanderer" yet nowadays we know that planets do not "wander" but instead orbit in circular or elliptic paths (and the present definition has nothing to do with "wandering" at all. Although we haven't yet moved to a more accurate, more descriptive term such as "balls". 74.38.35.238 07:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

text: *Astronomy has balls! I like it already ;) (Radiant) 16:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: <giggles> 70.101.146.27 07:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion technicality 

message: I was doing a bit of wikignoming by removing "linkless" tags from June's orphaned article list, and came across an entry for Amado Garcia Guerrero.  As it was an unsourced allegation that this person had conspired in a political assassination, I took a few minutes to do some googling.  As best I can tell, this is a fictional character from the book "La Fiesta del Chivo"  (The Feast of the Goat)by Mario Vargas Llosa.  Guerrero does not appear to be a major character, as he is not mentioned in the article about the book.  Any suggestions on how to best tag this article for deletion? Risker 02:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Relatively inexperienced with speedies, but ?  If not,  then AfD?  In any case, add a link to the source suggesting the fictional nature of the subject to avoid confusion with reality. ∴ here…♠ 07:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't qualify for any speedy deletion criterion. Proposed deletion or AfD is the way to go. BigNate37(T) 13:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: *Or, you could take a leaf out of WP:FICT's book and merge/redirect to the article on the book. (Radiant) 14:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: **That's a better alternative to deletion. BigNate37(T) 14:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How would one categorize this deletion request? 

message: I put a speedy deletion tag on an article that has sense been deleted. However, when I look at my contributions, that edit isn't there. Does anyone know how to explain this? I'm sure I'm just missing something. --Farquaadhnchmn(Dungeon) 02:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Edits to deleted articles don't show on contribution logs. -Amarkov blahedits 02:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. --Farquaadhnchmn(Dungeon) 15:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing Deleted Page from Contributions 

message: I note that there is plenty of discussion regarding sockpuppets, but there is no discussion to people who tag things for deletion improperly. There is no balance in this aspect of the deletion process. Hypothetically, if I went wandering around and posting deletion notices on everything I laid my hands on, there is nothing demonstrable in this deletion process which would determine that I was being naughty. This should be addressed. --TaranRampersad 07:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  A few, actually. --TaranRampersad 05:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Do you mean movies that are not released yet? "Wikipedia is not a crystal ball", i.e., future events must be very well referenced with notable discussions of them. Did you provide reliable references in these pages, so that the content/notability may be verified? If yes, you may complain about the deleting admin. Mukadderat 02:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't actually get a chance to put any references because as soon as I created the pages they disappeared, heh. Beyond that, I wouldn't even know which Admin deleted the pages because there is no record, or is there? Anyhow I'll try again later. Ekantik talk 04:09, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's listed in Special:Log for the page. -Amarkov blahedits 05:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The best course of action is to avoid making more than one save when working on an article. Save the text on your local computer if necessary as a precaution. The browser's back button allows you to go back and save your text in case of a communication problem with the server, and making more than one save in a short span means extra and unhelpful history entries. I'm not saying that the article should have been speedied if you couldn't get the references in the first edit, as that's a big can of worms someone else can deal with, I'm just saying it's best to avoid the scenario altogether. BigNate37(T) 15:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks very much for the advice. Much appreciated. Ekantik talk 02:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Abuse of Deletion Process

message: I don't see any mention on this page of deletion by an article's author, e.g. by blanking the page or using . I was recently told about this when I requested deletion for a template I had created but which later became obsolete. I have since found specifics on criteria for speedy deletion, but I had not proceeded to that page at the time because the description of speedy deletion on this page is quite specific: 
Pages that are suitable for instant deletion, being patent nonsense or pure vandalism and which can obviously be deleted on sight (see criteria for speedy deletion)
I believe that the following would cover the matter better:
Pages that are suitable for instant deletion and which can obviously be deleted on sight (see criteria for speedy deletion; examples include patent nonsense, advertising, or pure vandalism, as well as certain housekeeping situations such as deletion by the original author)
I am reluctant to make any edits to a policy page without input from wiser heads than mine however. Trevor Hanson 22:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems reasonable.  I've been bold.  Rossami (talk) 06:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Sounds fine to me, too. I've seen a lot of XfDs filed by an author that could have been speedy'ed. -- Ned Scott 07:47, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion by author 

message: I thought I had seen a deletion guideline (or some previous AfD's) for articles about individual dates (e.g. February 22, 1905), but I can't seem to find it anymore. Can anyone point me in the right direction or enlighten me as to what is the consensus on such articles before I nominate some 1500 of those for deletion? 12:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Articles for individual dates

message: A couple of edits were just made by User:BigNate37 and somebody at 12.216.74.107 over the spelling of the word "judgment/judgement". BigNate37 has called the former spelling both a typo and vandalism; however I must point out that both spellings are acceptable (cf. OED) and that "judgment" is preferred in the US (cf. OAD). I of course question the merits of making such a change in a stand-alone edit (editors should not capriciously change the style of articles, per MoS) but I would not classify such a change as either a typo or vandalism, any more than changing "realization" to "realisation" or vice versa. JMO. Trevor Hanson 01:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A case of either / or. Vandalism suggestions are probably over the top. --Kind Regards - Heligoland  |  Talk |  Contribs 02:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake. I looked up wikt:judgement and saw that the entry existed, and missed that the usage note mentioned the alternate spelling judgment. The v-word came about as a result of the anon user re-adding the edit without regard for the note I left on their talk page, so I used the JavaScript revert- vandalism tool (see User:VoA) and left a substituted  note, since it was a second-level warning (after the first which I hand-crafted to be more friendly). At the time, I thought that judgment was simply incorrect and based on that flawed knowledge I stand by my actions. For what it's worth, I use a mostly Canadian English, though that is no excuse for mistaking an alternate spelling as an error. BigNate37(T) 02:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Judgment" considered typo or vandalism?