- List of national capitals in alphabetical order (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
This AFD was closed abruptly with redirect outcome contrary to the consensus. I tried reverting the closure and explained myself to the closer, asking they let the reversion stand, but they will not. I see that at their Talk page another participant already contacted the closer to point out their closure was wrong and asking their approval to proceed with Keeping the page instead, to which the closer already agreed. Doncram (talk) 20:44, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- To be clear, IMO the consensus was to Keep the nominated article, and also to move it to "List of national capitals" and probably to merge others into it, with appreciation for it having been created in 2001 and serving well until it was trashed somewhat by an editor in 2012. The close given gives primacy to some other version, which is just not the consensus. At their Talk page the closer has stated they didn't mean to insist this not be done, and that they merely assert "it is now for editors to decide what to do with this content, as long as no additional lists are created". The correct close, by consensus, is Keep. --Doncram (talk) 20:59, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Closer's comment: I don't understand what the argument Doncram is trying to make here is, or why they think that the first thing to do to contest an AfD closure would be to revert it. They do not explain why they believe the closure was wrong (in the AfD they even supported redirecting as an alternative to deletion), so I can't really comment on this request as such. My view of the outcome of the discussion was that consensus is that this is one list of capitals too many, but that there's not necessarily consensus about which of the several lists should be retained and under which title. The redirect, intended as a provisional measure, allows editors to figure this out through editing, moving and merging as may be required; it only prevents the recreation of the hard-coded alphabetical list in its original form. Sandstein 20:52, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- It is not the first thing I do in usual cases. Here I thought the close was egregiously wrong and I tried reverting it, and asking Sandstein to let that stand, rather than having a DRV, which they did not agree to. I understand that the purpose of a DRV is more about evaluating the conduct of the closer and passing judgment about that. I wanted to avoid that, but here we are.
- About the facts, there is consensus that the AFD'd article is the primary one to be restored/resurrected/expanded, so "Redirect" away from that is not the correct close. --Doncram (talk) 20:59, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Further, I think that it matters that the closure be "Keep" to underline a clear consensus that recognition of the original, 2001 version is valued and important. In that list and competing other lists, there has been disrespect and trashing going on, of the decent/good/great work. To close this with "redirect" is another instance of disrespect, a mild further trashing that "whatever, it doesn't matter", when it does. --Doncram (talk) 21:02, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. I'll offer that in some other recent AFD closures, not necessarily by the same closer, I was frustrated by closes which cut short productive discussion about what to really do about some situation, when the discussion was nearing some good resolution. Only to have a closer butt in with a close directing further discussion to a move discussion or elsewhere, causing more work requiring notifying all participants of a new discussion, etc. A "provisional" close just kicking the can down the road is far less helpful than a proper closure which settles the issue. --Doncram (talk) 21:14, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse I don't really understand what the goal of this deletion review is, to be honest. The AfD was closed after eight days, so timing is not an issue, and consensus was that several pages from Wikipedia's history needed to be cleaned up/merged. The AfD result allows the discussion to continue elsewhere while preserving everything necessary if the final decision would be to recreate the page and merge the other pages into this one. AfDs aren't the places to get consensus on how to clean up specific pages - they're the places to determine whether or not a specific page should be deleted. SportingFlyer talk 22:38, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse I also don't understand what this is here for. If you don't like the close of an AfD then you can't just revert the closure and try to sort-of-close it yourself. (Well you can if you're an admin and the closer is a non-admin but here it's the other way round.) The (original) close is perfectly fine, while there was consensus that we should have fewer lists of this type there was no agreement on which list to keep, and plenty of participants did not express agreement with the OP's view. The close doesn't prevent the OP's solution from being enacted either, it just means the call is an editorial decision rather than one for AfD. Hut 8.5 06:46, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. The outcome is reasonable and in any event, a ready-made, self-maintaining, and clean list is available as a category. Stifle (talk) 10:24, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. We have a strict process at AfD because it handles 50–100 articles a day and we need to keep on top of it. If the seven days elapses and there is a consensus on whether the article should or should not be deleted (not necessarily on the final fate of the page – it's articles for deletion, remember), then closing is the proper thing to do. I understand what Doncram is saying, but keeping them open for extended discussions isn't really practical. Following up on the talk page and pinging the participants isn't exactly onerous. – Joe (talk) 10:31, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse-ish. There was clear consensus here that we didn't need all of these lists. In the long-run, I think power~enwiki's suggestion to move this to List of national capitals made more sense than the current redirect, but that's a complicated process because it in turn redirects to Lists of capitals, only some of which is devoted to list of national capticals sorted by whatever, so that was probably too big a thing to undertake as part of an AfD close. The close correctly points out that the current redirect preserves all the history and people can continue to discuss a better solution on the talk pages and then implement it without need for heavyweight processes like AfD or DRV. I get Doncram's point that it would be nice to preserve the longest article history in the final result. And also that fragmenting the discussion into various places is not perfect, but we live in a non-perfect world. As long as we continue to make progress towards reorganizing these multiple lists that have been obsoleted by better technology (i.e. sortable lists) that didn't exist in the old days, we're good. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: a few thots
- Sandstein got it wrong, and there is great reluctance to admit it, in part because Sandstein is an administrator and y'all are ganging together against a non-administrator calling them on their mistake. As if this was a de-sysoping vote. Would it be so terrible to comment that the closer did get it wrong?
- Sandstein is wrong in casually asserting here that I supported redirecting, which is a bad read of the AFD again now when they should be more careful, after two editors (myself and User:Tavix) informed them they got it wrong. Admit no mistakes is a policy that works for some.
- It does cost other editors when you get it wrong. Here it cost at least two editors time to try to think out how to proceed, in order to save/develop the article per consensus. It would require getting admin help to move pages, against the outcome of the AFD. I thought about it overnight and took one approach, the somewhat extraordinary step of reverting the close, and asking the closer nicely to consider just leaving that, which they declined to do. I didn't see that Tavix beat me to the closer's Talk page with a different request, asking the closer to back off and let Tavix fix it which they said they would do. Maybe Tavix was politer, and their approach conveyed less the fact that the close was wrong (although simple reading of their request was that the close was wrong). My choice to revert the close was also a lesser thing than opening a DRV, which would put public attention on the closer's decision. Anyhow, your wrong choice causes work/hassle for others, including our trying worry about your little egos. It is not just a matter of notifying others, it is a hassle to create a new decision venue, and it is a hassle to ask administrators to make a move against the close decision, and so on. And it is a hassle to risk having to go to DRV in the end anyhow, if an administrator won't admit a mistake and a less confrontational approach doesn't work out to fix the situation.
- Right, it is not the end of the world, because "redirect" outcome did not delete the page history, and other editors can fix it.
- If you think it doesn't matter, that the only purpose of AFD is to determine "Delete" or "Not delete", then I would like to kindly ask that you don't close AFDs. And I would like to ask you don't participate in DRVs, too. AFD is not merely that for numerous conscientious editors trying to really fix content situations, and trying not to drive away as many editors as AFD has done over time. Protect the administrators first, screw the creators of articles and the good faith participants in the AFDs.
- Gee thanks for listening. :) --Doncram (talk) 16:28, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Relist for further discussion. Most AfDs are determined in 7 days, with adequate or sometimes minimal participation. Most of the others get relisted, not because it isn't decided what do do between suggested alternatives, but because nobody has yet participated. Only a few each day have significant discussion and remian undecidedafter the 7 days. We can well handle the work of relisting them.It's less han the work of dealing with an incompletely thought out decision. The idea that AfD is to decide between keep and delete with no alternatives has not been the case for several yearts now. Regardless of what the process is called, in practice we consider all of the various possibilities. A redirect decision at AfD is different from one taken in editing--the convention has developed that overturning a redirect or merge at AfD takes discussion, not just a revert. We have in my opinion only one process at WP for deciding on content that works well, which is XfD. I think the reason for that is beause we have the supplemental step of deletion review as a regular proceedure, and we should use it more.
- But I hope no admin minds criticism , even undeserved criticism. The two basic abilities of an admin are the ability to decide according to the knowledge or rules, and the ability to tolerate even unfair discussion of the their decisions. Anyone who thinks they are always correct should run their own site, where nobody can contradict them. DGG ( talk ) 16:41, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Relist. It's way more effort to take discussion elsewhere and start over to a certain extent when we were close to figuring it out at the AfD. Another week and I think we can figure out a bit more than "there are too many national capital lists", but which list(s) should be merged where. -- Tavix (talk) 17:36, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Note, I've started a related discussion at WT:AfD -- RoySmith (talk) 00:45, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. AFD is not a good place to be trying to reorganise a group of articles. Leave this to discussion on the talk pages. With the closer's view of the discussion either "keep" or "redirect" would have been fine with the extra guidance offered. An explicit "do not delete" would have been better still. An unqualified "redirect" would have been unacceptable. Thincat (talk) 06:47, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Right, you agree that "Redirect" was not the consensus, but you "endorse" nonetheless. I don't get this.
- Umm, the AFD which was an attempt to delete an article, is an excellent place what to do about the article. Discussion was indeed happening which disproves that, and in my view was close enough to done that it could have been closed "Keep". Instead, you want discussion to happen where? At the Talk page of a now-redirected article? And the authority of me and a few others to force a new discussion and decision being that we don't like the outcome of the AFD, so we are trying to do something different, and we are to ask the other participants to all show up and vote again? And now we have to summarize what went on in the AFD and how the close didn't matter because the closer wasn't trying to close it as an accurate summary of the AFD? How much weight should me and the others who don't like the (incorrect) outcome to get, relative to the views of any participants who "won"? Who is supposed to close this new discussion, an administrator who is supposed to judge that the original closer was wrong? Or should it be closed by an administrator who is pledged not to criticize the original closer's decision? --Doncram (talk) 15:27, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I am endorsing the overall closing statement (which I thought was good) and saying I think that "redirect" as a one-word summary was within discretion. It is clear (to me) that redirection was not mandatory. Thincat (talk) 16:14, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Okay I shouldn't overstate it. But the closer did redirect it, and did state the AFD outcome as "The result was redirect to List of countries by national capital, largest and second-largest cities."
- This followed upon, and seemed to ratify very last comment in the AFD which had not yet been supported or otherwise commented upon, but in my opinion now was pretty incoherent and incorrect, including in that it stated the contents of the article were included in the suggested redirect target, which is not so (it lacks the useful column of notes about national capitals). Certainly in any following discussion, that editor would feel entitled to insist more that their view was accepted.
- What else did the closer have to base a decision upon? Well, the discussion by Peter James, myself, Tavix, power~enwiki, and myself, [and Ansh666], the series of previous commenters (
45 in total), was making a trend. The simple "Delete" votes of previous 54 others should have been evaluated (downweighted) in light of fact they were not informed by information that had been put forward. The example of power~enwiki [and Ansh666] who changed their early "Delete" vote to "Keep" based on the additional information, should especially have been weighted more, IMHO. That's 5:4:14:5:1 voting for Delete/Keep/Redirect to that one list, and the closer should take into account the quality of the arguments. [revised to reflect ansh666’s change of vote which I missed in counting —-Doncram (talk) 05:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)][reply]
- Yes, the close statement goes on to state "There's consensus that this is one list too many. But there are concerns that the lists we have are not the right ones. The redirect preserves the history and allows editors to figure out editorially how to organize these lists such that they make sense to readers and are not redundant." But it has taken a stance for a specific redirect and it has raised difficulty for keeping the AFD'd article instead. The simplest interpretation is not that "the close was not too terribly wrong and it doesn't matter" (my wording), but rather is "the close was wrong and causes difficulties for other editors in making this right". --Doncram (talk) 18:08, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- The sorting in List of countries by national capital, largest and second-largest cities doesn't work correctly as some cities appear twice - something that should be fixed before the alphabetical list can be redirected to it, or an alternative would be to redirect to one that sorts correctly. It would be better to wait, as there is a consensus to merge or redirect but discussion is needed to decide which lists to merge, and how to merge them, and there's still the possibility of redirecting the other lists to this one. Actions resulting from AFD consensus don't have to be implemented immediately, that is why Template:Afd-merge to exists. Peter James (talk) 11:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Can you give an example of cities that appear twice? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:39, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Any that has separate rows for city proper and metropolitan area in the largest or second largest city column, Berlin for example. When sorting the list, the double rows are split. Peter James (talk) 14:40, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- About the "List of countries by national capital, largest and second-largest cities", this is getting off-topic from the DRV, which should decide to "Overturn to keep" or should decide "Relist". But okay, to continue the AFD discussion (which some could say is not allowed in this DRV), that article is stupid. What is needed is restoration of a proper list of national capitals, with facts about the national capitals. Not facts about largest other cities, which are not the capitals. We don't want a list of national capitals at a title about "countries" either. The point is to have coverage of the capitals. That list is missnamed for what it is, it is NOT a "by national capital" or "by largest city", it is in fact a "list of countries by alphabetical order which includes names but not any other info about capital cities, largest cities, and second largest cities". Sure it can be sorted differently, so we don't need to add "by alphabetical order" to its title, just like the subject of the AFD did not deserve to get that added to its title in 2012. And what a stupid list-article that one is, with it making some point about covering the size of cities but not including their sizes. If you sort it by "largest" you get those cities in alphabetical order, not by size. Ugh. Again there was a consensus or near-consensus about the original AFD subject, but what to do about that other mess of another article is a different topic. --Doncram (talk) 15:27, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree that's a badly designed table. From a database point of view, it's unnormalized. I agree that it's badly titled. I agree that it should be titled, List of national capitals. We should salvage the data but WP:TNT the presentation and turn it into a sane, normalized, table, with, as you say, information about the capitals, which the reader can re-sort by any column on the fly. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:12, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. I read a consensus that the page was not ok, and the close is well supported by the rough consensus of the discussion. I read the page, and the current target, as attempts to improve navigation. Fairly crude attempts, with a lot of redundancy. Navigation aids are worth working on, the work should continue, nothing has been deleted, and the enduring effect of the close is that redundancy in mainspace is not ok. This is the right outcome. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:29, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Relist There didn't seem to be a consensus on what exactly to do with this page, there was productive conversation which resulted in changed votes, and new comments were still being added right up until the close. I feel this should be relisted to see if a consensus can be reached. Lonehexagon (talk) 19:05, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Relist as a valid option given the dissent and confusion on where and what to redirect, a talk page discussion could go on for years ... Atlantic306 (talk) 18:12, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- The problem is that there is no perfect redirect target, all of them are imperfect. AfD is not suitable for these complex problems. It will take years, there may never be a perfect solution for navigation aids between similar things. Categories are good but with severe limitations. A general discussion may be had at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. A relisted AfD discussion is not a good place. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:33, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- You are entitled to your opinion but IMHO it is a bit out-of-the-blue, as was the last opinion stated in the AFD (which the closer seized upon to endorse). Continuing the AFD discussion, you see "navigation issues" between the various lists of national capitals or between the national capital articles themselves; I don't think this is what any participants in the AFD saw. Although there is a comment above, here in the DRV, by editor Stifle asserting essentially that no list is needed because a category of national capitals serves just as well in their view. This DRV is not supposed to continue the AFD discussion, but I would strongly disagree with eliminating a national capitals list-article, including because of the arguments given in wp:CLT which you reference (i.e. a list can hold photos and sources and notes, etc.).
- This DRV should be about the status of the AFD discussion. I thought the AFD included productive discussion that was working, with 5 editors (including two of original 5 delete voters, who changed from "Delete" vote) agreeing that what is needed is a restored article on national capitals, probably to absorb later-split-off lists. It was working. Cutting it off, and refusing to allow it to continue, makes it harder. For example, now you are suggesting discussion cannot succeed, and/or that discussion should continue at the Talk page of a Wikipedia guideline/policy. If the AFD is left closed, the original article effectively does not exist and its Talk page is hard to get to. You and others could argue that any new discussion there, while it happens or after it concluded, is invalid, it should have taken place somewhere else, etc. It is simple to let the AFD continue and to be closed by someone who actually reads the AFD discussion and does not take an "it doesn't matter" view about outcomes, because it does matter to the AFD participants and other editors involved. The priority for the AFD is not to close the AFD for closure's sake. The priority for DRV is not to defend the close with "it was close enough and nothing matters" type reasoning. --Doncram (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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