Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 6

message: This is a summary of Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion for February 2004. See also February uncut.
#Miscellaneous events and comments in February
#*Wikikiwi noted issues with page size and edit conflicts.
#*Bmills wondered if we needed a reminder that people must read articles before voting on them. Gentgeen agreed. Angela was unsure. Pcb21 thought it unlikely to be effective. Angela said users voting without reading articles should have their votes ignored.
#*Zestauferov proclaimed that "VfD has become a harbour for the same old group of censorship bandits"! He asked people to use talk pages instead and noted the need for clearer policies and summaries of those policies.
#*Sam Spade asked what can be done about trivial lists and zandperl asked what can be done about porn. They were redirected to Wikipedia talk:List and Wikipedia talk:Content disclaimer by Angela and Reddi.
#*orthogonal explained how he fixed an edit conflict. Dandrake apologized for trouble caused and Michael Snow confirmed all was well and removed orthogonal's notice from VfD.
#*Jamesday  protected VfD following a page history loss caused by the page being moved. Texture noted sysops were ignoring the protection.
#*Francs2000 fixed something on Feb 27 but didn't say what.
#Deletion before all votes are complete 
#* Texture noted that the deletion policy requires a five-day period to allow people to vote on a deletion request and said deleting early prevents valid consensus as not everyone will have voted.  Bmills agreed as a user could come with an irrefutable argument why a page should be kept or deleted. Texture suggested it would be ok for the VfD tag to be removed, but the votes should stay on VfD 5 days. Pcb21 argued keeping items that would not be deleted was "a complete waste of space and resources" but Texture felt it was important for people to see the votes and understand what action was taken. Pcb21 said this was harmful (page too large, genuine listings get lost) and that people could check the page history instead. He clarified this in the deletion policy. Texture still felt people should be allowed to see the votes and requested deletions.  Pcb21 said in that case, discussions could be moved to talk pages and noted that it is not necessary for every member of the community to be involved in every minor decision. They continued to disagree on whether policy allowed early removal of fixed items. 
#*BL and Angela reported they had removed listings from VfD for space reasons. Angela explained that the point of VfD is to get pages deleted, not to have some discussion on the merits of pages that aren't, which means pages that are not going to get deleted have no reason to remain on VfD.
#Re-nomination policy
#*Raul654 asked what should be done about re-nominations of kept articles. Angela thought they should be removed. Kingturtle proposed no re-nominations for at least one year. Sj agreed relistings were a problem and thought that people should list less on VfD in general. He said to use cleanup, and to check an article had not been VfD'd before.
#*Anthony DiPierro suggested a three months rule of thumb and felt that if consensus to delete an article was reached, it should be deleted regardless of what happened in the past. He also said there should be a way to take things off VfD early but that this was notspecific to re-nominations.  Meelar and Jamesday agreed with Kingturtle though Jamesday said that if an article is clearly significantly worse than the last time it left VfD, there's no need to bar relisting. Relistings would be assisted if VfD discussions were always placed on talk pages.
#Proposal: shortened VFD time for spammed ads
#*Modemac wanted blatant ads to be more speedily deleted. Pcb21 disagreed and said we should go through the process of identifying whether the website is worthy of an entry, and then re-writing to removed ad-iness. Palapala felt a week for ads was find and that some of these might be interesting if modified. Anthony DiPierro said it wasn't possible to know if something was really just an ad, and said the ad part of an entry, and the non-encyclopedic part, could be blanked, if there is a consensus that this is the case. 
#Moan about how- to listings
#*theresa knott wanted people to stop listing how-tos and moved them to Wikibooks. Gentgeen explained people had objected to the speedy deletion of pages moved to wikibooks. See m:Talk:Transwiki. Davodd said some how tos, such as Poker were appropriate. Angela said that if people want something moved to Wikibooks, they ought to move it to Wikibooks and then list it on VfD and proposed removing listings of items that need to be moved where the person listing it has not bothered to move it. Patrick agreed with the proposal. Dpbsmith wanted to know what was wrong with how tos. See Wikipedia:How-to. Jamesday thought some how-tos and recipes are encyclopedic and said they should be kept. Theresa knott disagreed and said moving to wikibooks was not the same as deleting. Jamesday said links to wikibooks are no good in a print version.
#Who can decide to remove "clear votes" before seven days?
#*Secretlondon asked who should remove articles from VfD and Pcb21 replied that no-one should remove an entry if they have voted. Later in the month, Texture asked the same question. Anthony DiPierro felt anyone could if there was no reason given for deletion. Francs2000 agreed for items where there was a clear consensus to keep an article, or if an article had been rewritten. Texture still felt additional clarification of the rules was needed.
#Size
#*Optim brought up the age-old issue of page size. RickK suggested he use edit section links. Optim said even sections were too large, though Angela disputed this.
#*Angela wondered whether we should go back to the page per day scheme or use Wikipedia:Deletion requests instead. Dori proposed sections containing only 10 items.
#*Anthony DiPierro felt the solution was to stop voting on the same issues over and over again and to stop listing things that have no consensus for deletion. Cyan noted that it was not always obvious what will get consensus and through interaction on VfD better solutions can be found. He noted that an adversarial attitude regarding deletions creates an unfriendly atmosphere on the page. Anthony thought VfD was inherently adversarial and thought it not important to bring nominations to anyone's attention. Cyan considered consensus-building and discussion about possible courses of action important. Anthony said VfD is not about consensus-building and that deletion is not a reasonable course of action for the vast majority of nominations. Anthony DiPierro blamed the deletionists for the adversarial nature of VfD and RickK blamed the inclusionists. Cyan concluded that this was the other reason for acrimony and that neither faction had been particularly careful to direct discussion away from unnecessarily inflammatory comments or to express respect for opposing views.
#**Two households, both alike in dignity... -- WormRunner 
#***LOL.  :-) RickK 04:48, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: February 2004 summary