- Template:Empty section (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
OK. This is the first time I do this and I generally trust JPG-GR as a good closer. But I think this close doesn't reflect the consensus. First some stats. During the discussion we had
- 18 delete for we should not have empty sections or we should comment them out (the skeleton should not be visible)
- 1 strong delete (if necessary add an "empty sections" tag on the top)
- 2 delete and use expand section instead (including nominator)
- 2 weak delete (same argument)
- 17 keep as usefull
- 1 keep with no explanation
- 5 strong keep
- 1 keep but change the wording
- 1 reword to "meaningless"
This means that during the discussion the main discussion was whether to have empty sections or not. The editors were divided on that. Only 1 editor, apart from the nominator, really suggested to use "Expand section" instead. Moreover, the last suggestion (to reword to "meaningless") was provocative and I tried to answer to this but I didn't have the chance because the discussion closed. Instead of just merging two templates because they populate the same tracking category we could change the tracking category of the one of the two for instance. Most of the half of the participants think we should have skeleton sections visible and work on them. Most of those that were in favour of deleting think we should not use skeleton articles because the pages look ugly, nobody is obliged to use a specific structure (this is partially true depending on the nature of the page). The big problem with "Expand" tags was that there were not specific of what is has to be done and I bet soon someone will propose deletion of "Expand section" too. Tracking a page with no content and adding some content is easy. Tracking a age that needs expansion, adding some data and deciding whether to keep the expand tag or not is not that easy. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC) Magioladitis (talk) 10:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- AfD is not a head count. With the exception of your own comments, the majority of the arguments to keep were of low quality ("somebody might find this useful", "don't go deleting templates") or didn't adequately address the predominant deletion rationale (that while empty headers are not forbidden, and can still be used to structure articles, having a template for that purpose goes too far in encouraging people to work that way). Indeed, very few of the comments to keep did anything to address the deletion rationale. The close was an adequate reflection of the debate. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 10:23, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree that it is not a head count. I did the calculations to show that the discussion was not exactly on your initial argument but on skeleton articles in general. I understand the problem you describe and my response was the we could just delete the empty section from the Hyacinthe Rigaud page. Articles on painters don't follow a strong pattern that would explain these empty sections. But, I am thinking the following: If I see that Hyacinthe Rigaud has empty sections I might take a look to check if the empty section are really needed or not. IF the page was tagged with "Expand section" I won't bother because I don't know much stuff on painters. I can work with making pages look nicer and constructed but I am not very good in adding real text. Till now I 've seen using "What transcludes here" to detect pages with empty sections that's why I haven't noticed it shares a tracking category with "Expand section". Moreover, if 20k pages in a category is chaos we could just divide them to get better results. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:45, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- At first glance, that looks like it might be a close that should have been a !vote. The closing statement doesn't analyse or summarise the debate in any way, it merely analyses and agrees with the nomination, which is often the smoking gun for a supervote. I'll wait to see if JPG-GR elaborates on his thought processes in making this close, but my first inclination is to consider overturning to no consensus.—S Marshall T/C 11:13, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm surprised to find myself in the same boat as S Marshall :) NW (Talk) 12:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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- Just seems to me that we disagree a lot at DRV. Not a bad thing, just the way it is. Or perhaps that's just all in my head. NW (Talk) 14:06, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I honestly can't say I'd noticed that. If it's so then I assure you there's nothing personal about it. :)—S Marshall T/C 14:17, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus per S Marshall. In my view, there did not appear to be clear consensus for deletion, even if the rationale given for doing so was somewhat logical. The fact that the closer made a thinly veiled swipe at {{expand section}} reinforces the perception of a supervote, whether that perception is accurate or not. —WFC— 15:14, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
sustain overturn to no-consensus on the basis of that being a common sense decisions. Too many of the arguments were based on whether we should permit empty sections. But the tag serves to indicate them, so they can be filled in, which is usually better than deleting them---or, if it seems they are very unlikely or impossible to ever be filled in, to delete them. Indicating a potential problem is a useful things to do. DGG ( talk ) 15:47, 22 June 2011 (UTC)![reply]
- I suspect that even though he said "sustain", what DGG meant was that he feels the template should not be deleted.—S Marshall T/C 16:04, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- quite right, my carelessness. I fixed it. DGG ( talk ) 18:35, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- My close was based half on the fact that the keep votes didn't do a very convincing job (as thumperward said) and half as a common sense close, in that another template exists which already does this job. Before I even considered analyzing the discussion, I counted the !votes out of sheer curiosity and found a fair portion on each side of the debate. After analysis, as mentioned, the keeps were short and unconvincing. As I mentioned to Magioladitis on my talkpage, one does not close XfDs like this without expecting to see the yellow talkpage notice. If consensus here changes the decision, by all means. JPG-GR (talk) 16:42, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree it was a difficult decision. That's why I never close TfDs with long debates and I leave them to you. Then I can complain freely :P -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse- I think "no consensus" would have been acceptable too, but DRV is for overturning obvious blunders and misreadings of consensus. This was not a blatantly wrong close. Reyk YO! 21:53, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus - Definitely a supervote, there is no clear consensus. Consensus should be pretty clear for deleting relatively high-use templates. Had I voted in the TfD, I would have advocated merging/redirecting the two templates into one. —SW— chatter 21:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. The closing admin correctly figured out that the keeps were talking balls and weighted their votes accordingly. None of the keeps explained adequately why the template wasn't redundant to {{expand section}}, nor was there sufficient explanation of why you need a template to point out the blindingly obvious ("hey, did you notice that this empty section is empty?"). A DRV was a tedious inevitability, but the closing admin should be congratulated for sticking his neck out and deleting it anyway. All too often, admins chicken out on what should be open-and-shut deletion decisions and just decide by comment headcount. "No clear consensus" is not an excuse to keep a worthless template and won't be until someone can explain why we need a template to point out that an empty section is empty. The keeps were mostly WP:ILIKEIT anyway. Miracle Pen (talk) 11:21, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- This is not a TfD discussion so not the correct place to state that you think the template is "worthless". The closing admin evaluates the discussion and doesn't cats a supervote. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- JPG-GR didn't cast a supervote. He pointed out that the keeps' arguments were worthless, just like their template, and weighted them accordingly. Having done so, the conclusion was to "delete" the worthless template. (Did I mention that the template is still totally and utterly worthless?) Miracle Pen (talk) 12:21, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Concur with the deletion (register as "endorse" if you will). Apart from the ridiculously superficial (e.g. "I see no good reasons to delete this template."), most of the arguments for keeping were based on them being useful for sections which are empty. However, only a few people argued for why there should be empty sections in the first place, and why it wouldn't be better to put the proposed article skeleton in the comments. None of them take into account that empty sections are very annoying for the regular readers, and make the article look unprofessional. (Also, I strongly doubt that empty sections are as helpful for article development as the proponents claim, compared to starting from scratch with a blank section, I find it easier to expand a stub section since it may contain a few pegs and references to help a would-be expander get going. I feel that an empty section with an {{empty section}} template is no better than a a blank page with a {{stub}} template on it.) The main debate concerned the usefulness of empty sections as such, and not whether the template was redundant with {{expand section}}, and so the closing rationale should have addressed the arguments which concerned that. However, I feel the ultimate result is in line with the arguments, so I endorse the outcome. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:57, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- You say that you endorse the outcome but the outcome says we go and replace empty section with expand section. There is already a proposal to make a redirect instead so the tags will remain in position. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:12, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- In that Tfd someone proposed that users who create empty sections should be blocked. Nobody rejected that position. Does that mean it should be implemented right away? Most of the participants chose to address only the question whether the template should be deleted or not, and chose not to reply to every other proposal, silly or not, tangentially made in that discussion. Their choice to focus solely on the main question certainly does not invalidate their opinion on the main question. FuFoFuEd (talk) 07:50, 26 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus, closed by supervote. In the absence of substantive policy guidance, it is not appropriate for the closing admin to disregard expressed community sentiment. Without policy standards, it's not the place of the closers to judge the wisdom of the community, dubious as it might seem to them. There probably is a line of sbsurdity that could be crossed, where community sentiment reaches a ridiculous conclusion that conflicts with encyclopedic purposes despite not infringing policy/guideline, but I have yet to see that happen, and this by no means approaches that limit, even remotely. I think the best thing to do with empty sections (assuming we're not dealing with an article in the process of being written/expanded) is to delete them or comment them out, making this template useless, but my opinion apparently doesn't enjoy consensus (even though I believe it's more logical and better thought out than the community's), so I have no business asking that it nevertheless be imposed on the community. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 14:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- overturn This seems like a textbook no-consensus, default to keeping. Admins can override that when there's a compelling policy argument. In this case, no such argument was raised. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:54, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus. I saw this on an article marked as being deleted. The discussion was already closed, but I was surprised by the closure rationale. As DGG put it in the other discussion below, being useful is a reason to keep a template. About half the participants though it was useful, the other half thought it was not. FuFoFuEd (talk) 19:14, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Largely because I concur with Chris's analysis, and because I believe JPG-GR when he says that it wasn't a "supervote" decision. I think that it's important to consider the effects of a delete decision here as well, especially since the deletion rational used this as a reason. Deleting this template may actually get many instances completely removed from articles (which isn't a bad thing at all, in my opinion. Note that I was a partisan during the TFD.), but it'll simply be replaced with the existing template in most cases. 1 template that does the same thing as 2 is better for the encyclopedia, in the long run. It also looks as though the "overturn" votes here are just as weak as the "keep" votes were during the TFD... some of y'all may want to work on that.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- It looks like this endorse vote ignores the lack of consensus just as the closer did. There is no policy saying that fewer templates is better. This endorse argument is therefore weak. FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Consensus is not something that can be determined by counting up supports and opposes. It's not a majority rules system, even if that's the way it works out sometimes. More importantly though, "it's useful" is actually a valid keep rational for the template namespace, but "it's redundant" is typically a much more heavily weighted deletion rational. It actually is policy to delete templates that are redundant, which is listed on WP:TFD#Reasons to delete a template point #2. Keep in mind that we're not talking about an article here.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- WP:TFD is not marked as policy. And pray tell how is consensus determined if not the number of editors agreeing with a policy-permissible position? FuFoFuEd (talk) 15:02, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think a random DRV is the best place to educate onesself on why consensus isn't a head count. Suffice to say that it isn't. Remove the word "vote" from your vocabulary and you're on the right track. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 21:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn if the template is, as the closer maintains, redundant with "Expand section" (it is not, since removing an empty section is more likely to be a valid edit than removing a section needing expansion), then this would mean a template redirect. Redirect is a keep. Rich Farmbrough, 00:21, 24 June 2011 (UTC).[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus Whether the template should be deleted or not is not relevant here, as this is deletion review, not a new discussion. There was no clear consensus, so it should have been closed as such. PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 00:47, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse A reasonable reading of the discussion, and the keep arguments were especially weak. In no way was this an obvious error, though no consensus would also have been a reasonable read. Courcelles 01:48, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- The result will affect thousands of pages so "When in doubt, don't delete." applies perfectly here. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:01, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- It will positively affect thousands of pages. And the relative doubtfulness of the close is very much a matter of debate; I and several others don't believe that the close was inappropriate. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 09:02, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I left some notes in Template_talk:Empty_section#Empty_section_vs._Expand_section. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn to no consensus, albeit weakly. While I personally see no point to this template, more than several users indicated that it had legitimate purposes. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 20:22, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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