Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 15

message: There have been a few essays posted recently to VfD. Some suggestions:
*The purpose of a VfD listing is to decide whether or not the listed article is to be deleted. Anything not relevant to that decision belongs somewhere else (typically this talk page or the article's own talk page).
*This is important not just to the many who are contributing to VfD, but also to the poor admin who at the end of the process needs to read it all and try to determine whether consensus has been reached. Typically they will be doing lots of articles in a sitting, not just the one you are interested in. So fair go!
*IMO Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Commenting_on_a_deletion_request should be more closely followed than at present. This encourages brief, relevant comments and arguments.
The goal of all of this is of course to allow VfD to do its important job as efficiently as possible, while allowing other important discussions to happen efficiently too, and leave us all as much time as possible to create and improve articles. Andrewa 16:13, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Mea culpa. Quite a bit of this is my fault. I guess that having a separate sub-page, and the leisure of not fearing a imminent edit conflicts made me more loquacious that I should have been. I'll try to be more brief in future comments. -- orthogonal 16:34, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Length and format of votes

message: I would greatly appreciate if those who archive the page actually deleted the articles that were voted to be deleted. Once in an archive they are forgotten like Template:Persecution and will only be deleted if an admin comes across the outdated Vfd-note and feels like checking back. Get-back-world-respect 20:28, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, people do go through Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old to clear things out. Please be patient, we archive when items have been listed for the customary 5 days, to keep the VfD page itself manageable. It may take a little bit longer for the actual deletion to occur, but it will happen if appropriate. I'm actually in the process of removing the links to this particular template right now. --Michael Snow 21:32, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete before archiving! 

message: I propose that Vfd be made a special page and software support be incorporated for listing a page for deletion (assuming that it is technically possible). Vfd IS a special page. It does not have to have the normal wiki character as long as the sections have the wiki character. It is just a listing of the pages which are being considered for deletion. So let's make it that. I think the current look can be retained even with a special page and people who want an alternate look (who don't want to see all the details at once) can have that if it is a special page. A special delete this page link could be provided for adminstrators which would delete the page and archive the debate automatically. shouldn't be a problem as all of this is fixed procedure and does not interfere with the other (not interdependent). Although I must confess, I can't anticipate any programming problems that could arise. Thanks for reading. --Hemanshu 14:26, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems to be the logical solution to the problem of VfD getting too large. But it would have to make use of subpages, as in, not show all the votes on the one page. Possibly have a list of all articles under consideration, with a tally beside them, and a link to view the votes for that specific article. - Mark 06:35, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vfd proposal 

message: The first few listings on July 20 were all from User:67.160.75.230, an anon who has been a good contributor.
But, as we don't accept votes from IPs, I don't think we should accept listings either. Other thoughts? Andrewa 01:32, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Listings by anons 

message: I tried to list :Category:Atheism and agnosticism . Is placing a catagory here not possible? Something is clearly wrong. Sam [Spade] 04:46, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Category:Atheism and agnosticism puts the article it appears in into the category. :Category:Atheism and agnosticism makes a clickable link to the category. It's just like with interlanguage links. And you want Wikipedia:Categories for deletion anyway. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:17, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the stated purpose of Categories for Deletion is to delete categories that are empty.  Categories that are not empty and need some debate end up there too, but I suspect they'd be better off on Vfd where they will get wider exposure and a more well rounded debate.  There's a few unresolved discussions on Cfd that I've actually considered moving here. I'm tempted to say that unless it's a spelling error or obvious, it should probably go here. --ssd 05:07, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  If anything, non-empty categories (the removal of which impacts many pages and undoes the work of many contributors) need more discussion and consideration than regular articles before deletion. Jgm 18:38, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help deleting a category