Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Libraries/Cleanup listing

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: mark historical and carry on ignoring it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:21, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Libraries/Cleanup listing[edit]

Obsolete page previously maintained by a bot last run in 2010. Link to current cleanup tool provided here LibraryGeek (talk) 09:00, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and mark as {{historical}}. It is best to preserve the history and maintain the link the page provides to the new tool. — Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 15:15, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm inclined to delete but the historical idea isn't bad either. In any case it should be removed from the WP:LIBRARIES header. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 21:20, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral for now pending more discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:20, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment/Update Page de-linked from the WikiProject "tabs", as it seems we have consensus that the page is not only no longer useful, but is confusing to newcomers. The page was created in Nov. 2009 and was maintained by a bot that stopped running in March 2010. All further updates were by newcomers to the project who thought they were being helpful, not realizing the page was stale. I nearly made the same mistake, myself. Currently the only links to this page are MfD and Talk page links, along with two old user page links. There is also an unused redirect at Wikipedia:WikiProject Librarians/Cleanup listing (no links to it at all) that could be deleted with this page. As a historian, I do understand the general principle behind keeping obsolete pages for the historical value and tagging it as such. I'm just not sure that this page does indeed have that value. Had the page been nominated when the bot stopped running, I think it would have been a no-brainer. Either way, the page is effectively orphaned, and unlikely to be found by most users. LibraryGeek (talk) 07:01, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Consider archiving, but do not delete. Do not delete old ideas, do not delete old practices, the records may be useful, and the confusion for old Wikipedians who remember them is very undesirable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:42, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment/Reply Okay, so we've had two replies from members of the project, myself, who nominated the delete, and Semmendinger who was "inclined to delete". Two non-members have objected. Godsy's concerns were for the page history and the link to the new tool. Links to the new tool are found in multiple places on the project pages, so that item is not of concern. SmokeyJoe seems to object to all deletions, no matter how insignificant the data is. As I noted, I am a historian, and I do retain a lot of things most people discard, such as old phone books. I do not archive, however, used toilet paper or grocery store receipts over a month old. This is not a content page. The page was initially created by a bot, which has not run in eight years. This page is not about the bot, that page is at User:WolterBot, which I agree should be retained. Had the page been nominated for deletion when the bot stopped running, I think the issue would be non-controversial.

I'll also note that the new bot, User:CleanupWorklistBot, does not create a wiki page like this one and does not produce a "history" of the kind you see on this page. If the "history" of this page is so valuable, why was the old bot replaced by one that does not save this "history" eight years ago? Clearly, it was because the "history" was not of any value. The purpose of the page was to direct users to article pages in need of clean up, and the changes to the articles are recorded in the history of those pages, not here. The question we need to answer is: does the "history" in this page have any meaningful value? Well, if you keep all your toilet paper and grocery store receipts during your entire lifetime, then this question may escape you. However, for those of us who do not, I suggest that this page is of equal value. I would not have nominated the page for deletion if I felt otherwise.

The page created great confusion for new users, many of who wasted a lot of time and effort reviewing years-old "clean-up" recommendations before realizing the page was meaningless, and had been replaced. For that reason, the page was removed from the "tab" links on the top of project pages. Since MediaWiki always uses the current version of templates, even when viewing old pages, links to this page have been effectively deleted. The original version of this page no longer shows a link to itself, and neither do any of the old versions of other project pages. In fact, the only links to this page are either directly or indirectly a product of this nomination, and two user pages of inactive users. "Old users", that is, users who were active during the four months the bot was active, over eight years ago, would be highly unlikely to find this page in its current state. It is also clear that the project is barely active right now, as my comments / suggestions for improvements on other project pages have not been responded to. In other words, "It's dead, Jim!" Time to send this page to the great Bit Bucket in the sky. LibraryGeek (talk) 11:11, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per the professor in my electronic-records management class: instead of asking "will researchers find this useful", let's ask "Does this do a good job of documenting what happened in the context that created it". How well does this page's history demonstrate the workings of this wikiproject? If a researcher fails to find this, will his understanding be seriously impaired, either because this has critical data or because it lets him find critical data? I don't see how the answer is "yes" in any way. Moreover, as LibraryGeek notes, this doesn't show the historical data anyway, so even if documenting individual cleanup listings would deserve a "yes", the page is doing a horrid job of retaining that data long-term, so it's pointless as an archive. Nyttend (talk) 12:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.