Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 63

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Archive 60

Archive 61

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AMPLE

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AMPLE was created by now indef blocked Flylanguage (talk · contribs) as part of his recent nomination spree. The AfD had no formatting at all so I fixed that, but then I noticed that it wasn't either added to the log for the day (July 26) nor was the article tagged as nominated for deletion. Given that most of those nominations were closed as disruptive after Flylanguage was blocked, should we go through the motions of listing it and tagging the article before its (in my opinion, impending) speedy closure? - frankie (talk) 18:06, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, for the sake of procedure I went ahead and listed the AfD on today's log and tagged the article - frankie (talk) 20:22, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Never listed on the log, article never tagged, nominator no longer in good standing... that should probably just have been closed. Jclemens (talk) 14:22, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

... and I see someone else has speedily kept it. I would encourage any nominator to start afresh should it be desired. Jclemens (talk) 14:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Reasons To Delete J1c3d (Y-DNA)

Articles that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms, original theories and conclusions, and articles that are themselves hoaxes (but not articles describing notable hoaxes)
Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed
Categories representing overcategorization

JohnLloydScharf (talk) 02:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
The hold on editing has been taken off without explanation, to my knowledge, as of this moment, without justification.
JohnLloydScharf (talk) 00:42, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
The one who took this off the edit hold did so without reading the talk page.
JohnLloydScharf (talk) 01:17, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I refer to the article for J1c3d Y-DNA haplogroup as is indicated in the very first section of my User talk page.
Please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Haplogroup_J1c3d_(Y-DNA)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J1c3d_(Y-DNA)

JohnLloydScharf (talk) 01:57, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

There are clearly reliable sources; see, for example, [1]. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:40, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like this dispute just someone confusing WP:Deletion with WP:Proposed mergers. The actual question is whether Haplogroup J1c3d (Y-DNA) should be split off from Haplogroup J1c3 (Y-DNA). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Backlog

How seriously backlogged is AfD, and what steps can all Wikipedians take to (re)solve this? doktorb _words^deeds 22:05, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

All needs appear to be currently met, there are five "old" discussions still open and that is better than usual I think. jorgenev 22:46, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, sort of. There are always a lot of discussions that don't get any substantive comments. If Doktorbuk wants to help, find some discussions where no one, or maybe only 1 or 2 people, have commented and leave your opinion so that closing administrators may actually act on the discussion, and not have to keep relisting it over and over again. --Jayron32 23:19, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll certainly have a look later today doktorb _words^deeds 06:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Clinton L. Riggs

WP:AFDHOWTO says I should post a request here for someone to finish my AFD nomination for Clinton L. Riggs. Could someone create the article's deletion discussion page and any other steps required? Thanks in advance for your help. 67.101.6.202 (talk) 21:35, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:32, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Glitch?

I don't know if this is the right place to mention this, but at the moment using {{subst:afd1|2nd}} ends up creating a redirect to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atheism 3.0. YSSYguy (talk) 01:09, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

This? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2nd redirects to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atheism 3.0 for some reason. Was it Twinkle that wrote page=2nd? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 01:21, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

No I did that, doing a copy-and-paste from the project page. That was the first time I've opened a second AfD discussion, so it is entirely possible that I did something wrong, but what I pasted was what is in my comment above. If 'Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2nd' is typed in the search box, it will redirect to the AfD discussion for Atheism 3.0. YSSYguy (talk) 01:53, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the choices are either page=2008 Piper PA 28 plane crash (2nd nomination), or using {{subst:afdx}}, which will do this automatically. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 03:26, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Don E. Stevens

notability to qualify for encyclopedic material - Example - Faredoon Driver, Eruch Jessawala (meher baba mandali)

please note: New independent reliable sources that have written about Mr. Stevens Don E. Stevens were included - presenting notability

(Dragonbooster4 (talk) 14:17, 9 August 2011 (UTC)).

Comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Don E. Stevens, not here. Hut 8.5 14:19, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Bot for en masse AFDs discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Bot has been approved, nothing more to discuss. —SW— ^squeal 14:03, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

There is an active BRfA that appeared originally to be for nominating templates for deletion en masse. It now has segued into a bot that can also be used by a single operator to tag 500 pages for deletion, AfDs are included in the list of types of pages:

"Read the instructions for nominating an article for deletion at WP:AFD, WP:TFD, WP:MFD, WP:CFD etc. They all instruct you to add a template to the top of the page you are nominating, e.g. {{Afd1}}, {{Tfd}}, {{Mfd}}, {{Cfd}} etc. These templates notify anyone who visits the page that it has been nominated for deletion, and provides a link to the deletion discussion page. If you are nominating multiple articles for deletion, then it logically follows that you will add the appropriate tag to each article you are nominating. If you are nominating 500 pages for deletion at once, you can either go through and spend 3 hours manually adding these tags to each article, or you can talk to this bot owner who has been nice enough to write a bit of code to help you out. It's really quite simple and not worth all the wikilawyering and drama."[2]

The above section seems to indicate that wikipedia community members interested in AfDs might be interested in discussing this bot. The quote above is not on the bot's BRfA page; that discussion may be found here.

Please discuss issues at those locations to keep comments centralized. Although, if you feel there is a side issue that needs to be discussed here instead, go for it. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 01:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Why on earth should somebody want to nominate 25 or even 500 articles in one go? Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:25, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Someone may want to nominate 4092 articles for deletion because they were bad articles created by a bad idea for a bot approved by BAG with minimal community input (although good editors did communicate, there simply wasn't enough thought put into the bot, or attention paid to the operator's history).[3][4][5][6] --68.127.234.159 (talk) 06:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The bot request in question is not described as being for AFDs. The IP editor above has taken a comment by another person, not the bot operator, out of context for this non-neutral canvassing message. ~~Now they are linking back here and describing your lone reply to the misleading message as evidence of community disapproval.~~ Please come to the bot request for approval if you want to read and/or participate in the actual discussion. --RL0919 (talk) 01:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

No, the link to this page about a discussion seeming to indicate non-approval for mass deletions is to the discussion above this one.[7] And, yes, please discuss the issue at the bot BRfA page. Just delete this if you think it's only about canvasing, and that no one here would be interested in a bot discussion about mass tagging articles that seems to be moving towards mass tagging of articles, in addition to templates. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 01:43, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

My mistake on the section link, so I struck it above, but your message here is still misleading. You asked a question about mass nominations, in a different discussion than the bot request for approval, and someone who is not the bot operator pointed you to the various instructions about different types of XFDs. That does not mean the bot request is for AFD tagging -- the bot operator explicitly ruled that out after the question was raised in the BRFA -- so you should not be posting here claiming that it is. --RL0919 (talk) 02:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Move along people, we're dealing with a troll here. The bot's scope is to tag templates/categories when they have been mass-nominated. For example, if all the categories in Category:Physicists by nationality were proposed to be renamed from "Category:Foobarian physicists" to "Category:Physicists from Foobar", we require that each category gets tagged by a renaming notice (or a deletion notice if they are proposed to be deleted for some weird reason). That's what this bot is dealing with, and this has been explained to this guy/gal several times now, and they just refuse to get it. Obvious troll is a obvious. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:33, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Still can't provide examples from the templates for deletions? Also, remember, don't feed the trolls. If you're going to call me a troll, you ought to act like I'm one instead of having conversations that don't matter with me,[8] while using your troll-hammer wielding BAG power to shut me up in conversations that do matter.[9]

Which one is it, move along it's a troll to everyone else, but not a troll to you? Contradictory. And, yeah, you can't make up your mind what a troll is, so, sure, you explained other things clearly to me. Yeah. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 04:54, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Example of a valid bundled nomination of a lot of articles, for which this bot would have been helpful: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fairbury Police Department (Nebraska). —SW— ^{spill the beans} 05:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

You keep saying it's not for nominating articles for deletion, then you give me an example? So another corrupt thing about the Bot Policy, this particular BRfA and the BAG members rushing it through approval without community discussion and input? Not surprised. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 05:54, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe the request was for a TFD example, such as this. A few other examples were provided in the BRFA, but the editor demanding examples did not acknowledge them. That's the sort of behavior that leads to accusations of trolling. --RL0919 (talk) 05:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I did acknowledge and dismiss that one. It's a bad example for that BRfA, at least for supporting it. In fact, it shows why the BRfA should not have been approved, particularly for that bot operator. That TFD example requested that a "smaller more targeted group" be nominated than the group of about 100+ that were nominated, and the decision was to keep because of various strong reasons that show this particular TFD was not a good choice for a TFD en masse--read the TFD, as I did.

Accusations of trolling are more sound when not accompanied by conversation with the troll. But, name calling does stay off the topic, and one wouldn't want to have to address the actual issues I raised. I can see how hard that is. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 05:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

G7 Records Inc.

The G7 Records Inc. article that I posted has been marked for deletion. Apparently Wikipedia has found several issues I have had with meeting the guidelines. I have included more links to support it and have attempted to write in a more encyclopedic style, but I am willing to further improve it. Please understand that the article is in no way created with promotional intent, however it has been flagged for appearing to promote G7 Records Inc.. I created the article because it is informative and the subject is significant to Canadian hip-hop. Nevertheless, I am a new editor and I am eager to learn more on Wikipedia that will help me improve any articles that I create or edit. If anyone is able to assist in improving the article or provide me with useful tips it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Mmwater (talk) 00:42, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

You'll need to make comments at the AfD itself (located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/G7 Records Inc.) in order for the participants there to see them. I'll copy this over there for you, so you don't have to worry about it, but you'll want to leave further comments there. Cheers. lifebaka++ 02:40, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Is this potentially a behavior - and thus blockable - offense?

I am not trying to derail the above discussion, though I do caution putting too much expected behavior on the nominator when the article creators haven't done their work in the first place. But one thing that I think I see resonating here is that there are AFD nominators that habitually ignore any advice from BEFORE - again a guideline and not required - but end up being proven very wrong that the topic is notable by clear, non-complex Google searches and identification from other pages that BEFORE would have located otherwise. Note that this is different from an editor that nominators an article and sources are found but they are obscure, requiring specific qualifiers on Google searches, or potentially offline sources. The editors where they repeatedly nominate articles with a very high rate of misfires (articles are kept with clear consensus) due to easily-located sources via BEFORE are the ones that it sounds like the above modifications are geared towards.

Right now, as best as I can tell, failure to follow BEFORE and resulting in a misfire that is easily resolved has no behavioral bearing. What I propose - in addition to the above discussion - is basically to make the action of repeatedly nominating for AFD that ultimately are clearly kept a disruptive act. Obviously, one misfire isn't enough, but if 10 of your last 12 AFDs ended up as clear keeps due to readily-available sources, that's a problem, and such users should be blocked from making AFD. If you can identify language - part might be here, part might be in another policy page - that says that willfully ignoring BEFORE and resulting in kept AFDs is grounds for an AFD block, then you are likely going to help coerce more people to take the basic BEFORE steps. --MASEM (t) 23:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose- I don't think this happens often enough to require some explicit rule. Problematic editors who make repeated frivolous nominations can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I also worry that a rule like this could potentially be gamed by people tryong to get their perceived enemies blocked. Reyk _YO! 23:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Oppose - why enforce something that is not a guideline or policy? Nominating an article starts a discussion, and sometimes that creates new insights. In my opinion a "success rate" of about 75% is good enough. (Although I don't have a clue how high/low mine is) Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:42, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Actually, some editors have been topic banned from AFD but in Wuhwuzdat's case there was more to it then not following WP:BEFORE. He also tried to hack his way around having his access to twinkle revoked and was basically telling any editor who came to his talk page to discuss his AFD activities to go piss up a rope. As far as this proposal goes, I might support it if we also topic banned editors who constantly accuse nominators of not following WP:BEFORE when in fact they did and weren't impressed with what they found. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:04, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
While the behavior you describe is indeed disruptive, an RFC/U is a good, general-purpose way to handle editors who consistently breach community expectations. Editors such as LiteralKa who have made COI AfD nominations have had those actions viewed very, very dimly by the community. It stands to reason that aggressive cluelessness would eventually trigger the same sort of reaction, even without any formal pronouncement here. Jclemens (talk) 01:08, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Agree with Reyk, Jclemens, that RFC/U is good enough; failure to reference check is a matter of broad patterns of editor behavior, rather than individual incidents, so exactly what RFC/U is for. Disagree with NotBW that 75% is anywhere close to good enough, but whatever, the commitment to not getting the point there is sufficiently evident. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:13, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
- Can you please keep your PA's with you, thanks! The only point I don't agree with in WP:BEFORE is when an article does not give any hint of notability. Mostly that are oneliners that are still in that shape when I patrol new pages. Due to the backlog I see those articles when they are already about a month old. Will the original author improve that article? No, he would have done that earlier. Sometimes, if I feel that it can be noteworthy, I put a remark on the authors page to remind him/her about the article and put in on my watchlist. That won't work with one-time-editors. And then we are stuck with a oneliner without a hint of notability and no original author. Is it then fair to expect that others will improve this article? To my opinion, it is not. Only on that point I don't agree with WP:BEFORE, but you and several others make it sound like I am disruptive and sabotaging Wikipedia to the core... Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:07, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Sure: if you nom a new article every day of the month, and almost none are deleted, then you're creating needless work for other people, and that is definitely disruptive. There's no question in my mind about the facts there. But I hope that RFC/U would be sufficient for handling this, and I'm concerned that emphasizing it here might result in editors making unfounded accusations of disruption after just one or two noms that end as keep. If I were going to make it clear, I'd probably do that by expanding WP:DE, rather than BEFORE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't occur that the Keep percentage is why we have WP:BEFORE. The nominator has a duty to the community to prepare the discussion so as not to waste the time of other editors. This is why checking for dead links is important, there is no purpose to having the first editor to comment at an AfD discover a dead link that the nom could have marked. This is evidence of an incompetent nomination that has not looked at the sources. Likewise, the basic searches should be documented and laid out. The solution for such failure to prepare is not blocks or bans, it is to revoke the license to make AfD nominations. Unscintillating (talk) 03:01, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
- "Revoking the license to make AfD nominations" is called a (topic) ban in wikispeak. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
  - That was not useful, I plainly stated in the same sentence just three words before the previous respondent started to quote me that the solution is "not blocks or bans". The proposal, and find some new name if someone doesn't like the one that I proposed, is to remove the entitlement to make AfD nominations. The editors can continue to participate in AfD discussions, and there is no stigma of being "topic banned" associated with their work. Unscintillating (talk) 07:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Given that there's no need for special case of a block/bannable offense, I would strongly recommend that the end result of regularly ignoring BEFORE and ending up with noms that are readily kept that BEFORE should have caught is grounds for user conduct review - if only to strength that this is probably stronger than your typical guideline but not exactly policy. --MASEM (t) 05:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Support as a first step Actually, i think there is probably enough support for some version of WP:BEFORE as a guideline--it is very frequently used in AfD discussions, generally with considerable effect--it does not encounter the degree of challenge it did a year or two ago. At the very least, by now it is certainly accepted that repeated afding without checking is indeed disruptive, and I co not think anyone above has said anything to the contrary. It would therefore be good to clarify it. It helps very much to clarify explicitly what counts as disruptive conduct here, because it makes proceeding against it much less argumentative. What the remedy should be, would depend on the extent of the problem in any given case, & the extent to which similarly unconstructive behavior was being exhibited in other processes. DGG ( talk ) 22:41, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, this wasdisussed recently and the consensus was clearly that WP:BEFORE is not obligatory. You participated in that discussion and presumably followed it to the end, so I find your claim that there is enough support to enshrine it as a guideline rather perplexing. The discussion does not support any such interpretation. Since the community does not accept WP:BEFORE as obligatory or a guideline, I do not think there is any way editors can be punished for not following it. There have been a few attempts by a few editors to sneak it up to policy status by treating it as a speedy keep criterion (it's not), but these have been shot down pretty quickly. Editors disrupting Wikipedia by making a whole bunch of clearly frivolous noms can be dealt with without bothering about WP:BEFORE. Reyk _YO! 22:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
  - Quibble: there was no consensus that it was obligatory, which is extremely different from there being consensus that it was not obligatory. (I read 18 opinions that support some kind of obligatory status, 22 that are "weak optionals", usually some variation of an "optional but strongly encouraged" position that wouldn't support NotBW and Basket of Puppies' behavior, and 11 "strong optionals" that basically regard BEFORE as toilet paper and would support NotBW and Basket of Puppies.) —chaos5023 (talk) 23:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Calm down, please! You can't change the facts. Not obligatory = Not obligatory. So you can not enforce WP:BEFORE as it not a guideline, not a policy and not obligatory. But still I keep my stand: it is the original author who has to proof that an subject is notable, not a random Wikipedia-volunteer. Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:27, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
      - WP:N says "can be found", that's a guideline. WP:ATD is a policy. BEFORE is a best practice, and editors who routinely demonstrate bad judgment by their repeated and intransigent failure to follow such a best practice, causing pointless work and disruption to the encyclopedia, can be sanctioned for their behavior. Indeed, as we work to narrow and tighten up BEFORE, the possibility that it will be formally recognized as a guideline only increases. Jclemens (talk) 15:48, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
        So it would be okay to write an article with as sole text "Apicius is a restaurant in Castricum, The Netherlands." and I can expect someone else to turn this into a real article? Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:33, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

At the very least, I wish constant repeat offenders (like 15 times or more in a month, of which there's certainly no shortage of these fine fellows) received a topic ban of a few weeks to a few months. I wish there were at least some considerable deterrent to recklessly nominating AFDs without bothering to do 2 seconds of research on Google News, but we haven't done anything about it before, and the majority here have clearly expressed that the act should continue. It's seems like it's our job as commenters to do WP:BEFORE on the AFD. Not the nom. He's too busy prepping the next AFD the exact same way. It's especially annoying when 5 or 6 voters have to go to 20+ individual AFDs by the same guy where they all were obviously notable, but instead there's another hour or so combined collectively wasted by editors that could've better been used to expand an article or discuss an AFD with at least some relevant merit. I can't expect this to change, since I very, very rarely see this practice discouraged. They may be asked to stop sometimes, but if they're not overly rampant about it like the blatantly disruptive nominators, they know there's zero risk in continuing to throw up AFDs without even bothering with WP:BEFORE. #4 is ignored so often, it is definitely not funny. There's considerable resistance here to asking them to at least do #4, as though it's completely insolent to ask the nom to be at least somewhat accountable for the articles they nominate for deletion.
- "Before nominating due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist."
- Is it truly that intrusive to dare ask a nominator to do at least this one thing? From everything I've seen on AFD, apparently so. Agent Vodello^{OK, Let's Party, Darling!} 04:16, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
  - The majority here haven't supported the behavior you describe behavior continuing at all. We've just expressed that there's no need for additional legalisms to handle it, because WP:RFC/U is sufficient to the task. That means that if you're aware of egregious, ongoing cases of it, and you want to discourage it from happening, you should look into RFC/U (including its prior steps of attempting to resolve the issue through standard talk page communication). —chaos5023 (talk) 05:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Well... Vodello, how many does "no shortage" amount to? If you're certain that you could name a dozen people who have 15 unrelated failed noms in the last 30 days, then we might need to re-think our reliance on RFC/U. (I wonder if someone could actually generate a list of people meeting that criterion for us on the Toolserver.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  - So, I can make safely a hundred articles with a text like "Apicius is a restaurant in Castricum, The Netherlands." and expect all of them to be kept? (with only changing restaurant names and locations) Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:59, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Supposing that people have written about that restaurant, yes (a few brief searches don't lead me to believe that they do, but that's not the point). If you created a hundred such articles, however, I'm fairly sure that at least a few of them would not be notable and would end up deleted. I suggest that you don't try, regardless, as it'd be needlessly WP:POINTy. Cheers. lifebaka++ 22:42, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
      - It is annoying if would do it (but I will not do it) but the whole list would be notable. In this case Apicius is a restaurant with two Michelin stars. Quite notable. But according to WP:BEFORE it is a completely valid article because a random collegue could find the sources that it is notable. Even if I never add another letter to the article. Somebody else has to finish the article due to the fact that this oneliner can not be removed. Ridiculous? No, a consequence of WP:BEFORE... (ow, and sources you can find by this article) Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:10, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
        It is not actually a consequence of BEFORE: it is a consequence of the community's long-standing and firmly held belief that good articles do not spring forth fully formed from the heads of editor-gods, but are slowly grown, through the efforts of many people. A one-sentence article on a notable subject is what we call a good place to start. WP:There is no deadline for improving that article. Merely allowing that to exist increases the likelihood that someone will see it, happen to know more about it than what the article says, and add a second sentence—and then a third, and a fourth, and so on, until we have a decent article. You may certainly start Apicius (restaurant). I recommend adding a second sentence that explains its claim to notability (i.e., that the Michellin Guide awarded it two stars), and the sources you've already identified. If you did that, you would have every reasonable expectation not only of surviving a week-long AFD, but also of preventing an ignorant person from tagging it for CSD, and a sloppy admin from improperly deleting it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
        The way WP:BEFORE works now is an encouragement of that type of sloppy articles. You throw in a oneliner and a random editor has to fix that. I agree with you that most new articles are less then perfect. But what I check in the list of new pages is normally already about a month old. In my experience, the original editor has by then quit or forgotten about the article, so nothing else happens. But in fact I only disagree with WP:BEFORE for those articles that even after 3 to 4 weeks give no indication of notability in the article. I would like to have an option to tag that type of articles as "needs to be improved before it can be kept". The oneliners will then be changed in proper articles or will be deleted. That improves the overall quality from Wikipedia. But to be true, it will probably will be a hell of a job to convince "the community" of the need for that option... Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:30, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

How to AfD -- why do I have to ask

Ramapuram, India So I put up a page for AfD. I had to move the proposal page -- OK. But somehow it did not end at the right place. I moved it seriously, but no good effect.
Whatever. I use a regular template, and it gets fucked up. I redirect carefully, and the fuckup ends somewhere else. Well, all right. i am an experienced editor here, but these basic templates keep ending up wrong. Don't tell me I am the one who doesn't understand it. Boy, yesterday I even had to enter current day&time. -DePiep (talk) 00:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Done AFD fixed, transcluded onto the right log and closed --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Combining AfDs?

Might it be possible to combine the AfDs on S-Chips Scandals, P Chips Frauds and Allegations of fraud involving Chinese stocks, all with similar problems, all by the same author and all nominated for deletion today? Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:36, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Eh, that sounds like more trouble than it's worth. I just put a note on each of the AfD's that links the other two, so that interested users can more easily find all three. That should be sufficient. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:33, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Multiple articles in a single AFD

...are an extremely bad idea. Depending on the discussion, these AFDs make it impossible to determine consensus as everyone casts different !votes for different articles all in one comment. It also leads to the interlacing of multiple independent discussions weighing the characteristics of each article. Determining consensus at a complex AFD is already an art form.

I understand the motivation of the nominator who may think that all the articles she is nominating are qualitatively the same (from the standpoint of inclusion criteria) and so a delete !vote for one is a delete !vote for another, and vice-versa. But the discussions rarely pan out this way in reality as there is typically at least one person who thinks something different should be done with some of them, no matter how closely related the subjects or the condition of the articles.

I'm not sure what should be done, but my initial feeling is that if there is consensus to do it, AFDs nominating multiple articles ought to be closed as malformed. causa sui (talk) 17:06, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Offhand, I can only think of one case where I participated in an AfD for multiple articles: this one [10]. I'd say that in that particular case, it was entirely justified, and having to go through the entire process multiple times would be in nobody's interest. Having said that though, I agree that it shouldn't be done if there is any reason to think that it could be problematic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:29, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I think the problem is that there's no way to know whether it will be problematic until after the fact, and it is harder to speedy close an AFD on procedural grounds once it's in progress. There were a series of these multi-noms recently and luckily most of them closed unanimously, so maybe the problem isn't as big as I make it out to be. Still, I don't see any reason to risk it - splitting them up into multiple discussions, but inter-linking the discussions, serves the same purpose while preserving perfect clarity about who is !voting for what. causa sui (talk) 17:44, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

It is a method that need strongly discouragement, but I can imagine reasons to do it. For example: a series of articles from a sockpuppet or a series of articles that are for more then 90% the same. But I prefer separate nominations. Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:23, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

It all depends. I have seen both good and bad multi-article nominations. The important part is that the subjects be highly similarly situated topics, or actually all related to the same subject and not likely to have different concerns. A good example would be ten articles on ten characters from a single little known game/toy franchise and you've checked each article for secondary sources in the usual places and can't even verify existence much less find notability (actual example from a multi-nom AfD). I don't think it needs strong discouragement at all. I do think some guidance, somewhere, would be very welcome though.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:17, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cisco_1000. Old AFD that's not getting closed, in part because of the fragmented !voting. And this is not even close to a nightmare scenario. causa sui (talk) 16:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Also outstanding is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avaya Secure Router 2330. causa sui (talk) 16:16, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fairbury Police Department (Nebraska) is an example of a rather successful one. —SW— ^chatter 14:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
- At least I got three good AfDs that I might add to my essay WP:NAFD as unconstructive examples. Joe Chill (talk) 21:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  - I don't understand that essay. Since when is it unconstructive to nominate multiple articles for deletion in a single day? Would it be more constructive to nominate them for deletion on successive days? This essay makes no sense and is just a rehash of very basic concepts on WP:GTD. —SW— ^gossip 13:31, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Since I participated in so many AfDs and saw AfDs where members (who mostly call themselves inclusionists) say that nominating multiple articles in AfD in a day is disruptive, pointy, bitey, and unconstuctive. WP:ARS members seem to support that idea the most. I have been called variations of disruptive, pointy, bitey, and unconstructive myself. Joe Chill (talk) 13:42, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
It is unconstructive to nominate more articles for deletion than the process can deal with. People need an opportunity to examine the articles, to check for references, to express their opinions, and to see the opinions of others. To nominate more related on unrelated articles at a time disrupts the process because it does not permit others to deal with them properly. It is an example of the technique of TALKINGTOOFASTFORANYONETOANSWER, which is essentially verbal bullying. WP:Deletion Policy is that deletion is the last resort, and if it goes at too high a volume for other solutions to be considered, it is violating the spirit of policy., and therefore disruptive. Some, but not all, articles can be rescued. The AfD process is designed to make this possible. Leaving the only response as either rejecting or accepting a number of nominations too great to be considered individually is sure to do wrong, by either deleting articles which should be saved, or not deleting those in an overly extensive nomination which really do need to be deleted. This violates deletion policy and is disruptive.I'll give an example. Suppose I personally feel (as in fact I do) that most professional wrestlers are not really notable , and that the sources we usually use for them are indiscriminate. I can easily find one hundred below the most famous. Suppose I nominate them all together, whether in one nomination or in 100 with the same argument. A few of them will indeed not be notable if examined carefully. How should we handle this? DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Meanwhile, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cisco 1000 still has not been closed, 12 days later. Doubtless, someone will eventually invent a rationale for closing it, in spite of its confusing discussion. causa sui (talk) 23:27, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
- Usually, such closes really aren't that complex. Fragmented, with lots of competing ideas, is a pretty clear indication of no consensus. I'd tend to think that the merge proposals were what was scaring off closers, not the number of pages in the nomination. Of course, that said, it's still a good example of an AfD that would've been better if not bundled. Cheers. lifebaka++ 00:39, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
- Only 12 days? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clancy Park is open since 26 May 2011... Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:46, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
  - That would be because you forgot to list it on the daily log. I've taken the liberty of doing so, and it should remain open for another seven days there before someone closes it. lifebaka++ 00:58, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Strange, I use Twinkle for it. I guess Twinkle isn't watertight. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:35, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
It is unconstructive to nominate more articles for deletion than the process can deal with. People need an opportunity to examine the articles, to check for references, to express their opinions, and to see the opinions of others. To nominate more related on unrelated articles at a time disrupts the process because it does not permit others to deal with them properly. It is an example of the technique of TALKINGTOOFASTFORANYONETOANSWER, which is essentially verbal bullying. DGG ( talk ) 21:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I've done many AfD's for multiple articles, some successful, some not. Essential is that they are closely related and that the same deletion reason applies to all of them. A series of connected hoax articles by one author is a typical example (when they aren't obvious enough for speedy deletion), or a series of articles on very comparable subjects like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2011 Australian Open – Boys' Singles Qualifying and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Queen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade (Export) (1966), and of course this highly irregular AfD which ended in the deletion of some 2,000 articles is another one. Obviously, more care should be taken if more articles are nominated, but it is often much more useful to have one discussion than to have 15 or 20 or 2000 separate ones. Fram (talk) 13:25, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

It is far more efficient to have a single discussion about a few dozen (or thousand) very similar articles than to have a few dozen (or thousand) discussions about each individual article. Think about it. In Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fairbury Police Department (Nebraska), 10 users participated in the AfD. Let's say they each spent 15 minutes looking at the articles, searching for sources, etc. That's 2.5 man-hours of time spent on deciding whether to keep or delete these 100 nearly identical articles. The alternative is to list each of the 100 articles separately (maybe even list them one per day or one per week, doesn't matter). Suppose 10 users participate in each individual AfD and spend 3 minutes doing some research and typing their vote. That's 0.5 man-hours per article, or a total of 50 man-hours. Since each article is practically identical, we can safely make an assumption that they will all end up the same way (and if there any notable exceptions, they can be noted and removed from the AfD). And doing it this way reduces the amount of editor time spent twenty-fold. The key is to ensure that all of the articles bundled into a nomination are very similar, or closely related in some way such that the AfD outcome of one has a very high likelihood of being the same outcome for the rest. If that's not the case, then it's not a good candidate for a bundled nomination. —SW— ^chatter 22:06, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

The nominator in the Fairbury Police Department (Nebraska) case wisely sorted wheat from chaff before nomination, and kept the procedure to those sharing identical characteristics and flaws. Sometimes a poorly-considered process should be withdrawn. User:LibStar has had strong success with a recent effort to reduce the amount of uncited and non-notable kickboxing and MMA events often nominating several similar events with identical types of content and sources in a single process. At some point that editor nominated almost a dozen in one process but this last week met resistance with editors about a few in the process list. Was called as no consensus. IMHO, if LibStar had withdrawn the nomination, each could have been renominated immediately. Closed as no consensus, renominating immediately on those could be reasonably seen as pointy. BusterD (talk) 22:47, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I think there are some persuasive arguments that the practice has been successful in the past and so I'm convinced it shouldn't be prohibited. In the event that a multi-nom that turns unwieldy, would it be acceptable for a sysop to close it as "no consensus" without prejudice against renomination? causa sui (talk) 23:15, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

The interesting point you've raised is wikiguidance is not easily seen or found. I found the template, but where's the policy or guideline? Nobody above has linked the relevant shortcut. Is this in plain sight? BusterD (talk) 23:44, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

There is a section at WP:Articles for deletion#How to list multiple related pages for deletion (transcluded from Template:AfD footer (multiple), shortcut WP:BUNDLE). I think that there might be another page that I've forgotten. Flatscan (talk) 04:42, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, but I was aware of the procedure. The procedure explains how. I wasn't aware of anything significant in the literature that indicates why or when. Might make an interesting essay. BusterD (talk) 10:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Corpse cupboard

I'm not convinced this is encyclopedic or notable (or even the proper name for such a cupboard?) - interesting perhaps in a gruesome kind of way, but the stub is little more than a definition at best. Could someone take a look please? 194.205.143.143 (talk) 21:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

As there is a recognzed need, we'll likely see the term used more often now than not. Perhaps a merge of the paragraph and sourcing for now to Singapore Airlines#In-flight services? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 08:12, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

An aging AFD....

The article on Jeffrey Sanzel was nominated for AFD on July 5. It remained uncommented upon for 10 days. I commented on July 15. It was relisted on July 21. Seeing it still open three weeks later, I did some work in support of my earlier comments,[11] and reported my editing progress on August 11. Nine more days have passed, and still no other comments other than my own !vote and report of improvements. Perhaps time to finally close this one? Or shall we relist it again? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 08:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I see the problem: it's not currently transcluded on a daily AfD log. It was but someone erased it here. Hut 8.5 10:23, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Ahhh... not a perfect world. Can transclusion be easily fixed? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 10:39, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I've listed it under today's log. Hut 8.5 10:50, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks much for the assist. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 18:41, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Quick favor from someone

I've just realized that WP:Articles for deletion/Grove Square was never added to the AfD log; I don't really know how to do that, so could someone who does kindly figure out what to do with it? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:22, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Added to today's queue. Jujutacular ^talk 04:18, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:36, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Did I do Something Illegal?

I put the deletion tag on Sêngdo, decided I didn't want to delete it after all, and removed the tag. Was this allowed? Interchangeable|talk to me|what I've changed 16:50, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with what you did. Anyone can change their mind and close an AFD as withdrawn up until someone else agrees with you. Since you never even created the AFD page no one could agree with you. GB fan please review my editing 17:23, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

No, you're fine. There will be no police officers coming to arrest you today. I'd keep a good lawyer on retainer, just in case...</joke>--Jayron32 17:26, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Please Complete AfD steps for Peggy Adler

Vanity article authored by the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.102.52.35 (talk) 20:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

You will need to give a policy reason for deletion. Vanity article is not a reason for deletion. Is she notable? Are there sources to establish notability? These are questions you need to address in your nomination. GB fan please review my editing 20:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Done There appear to be reliable sources talking about her, but I'm not sure if they establish notability or not, so I completed the nomination.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I can't get the damn thing to work!

I'm trying to nominate Dance! Workout with Barbie for deletion, but every time I do on the log, it turns into a red link and says the page does not exsist. How do I nominate the damn page? SailorSonic

You need to follow all three steps at WP:AFDHOWTO. As a courtesy I have done this for you; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dance! Workout with Barbie. Please fill in anything I may have missed in the deletion rationale. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 16:13, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. SailorSonic —Preceding undated comment added 20:21, 24 August 2011 (UTC).

Tagging spree

Hi, someone might want to review the edits at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/124.180.203.25 . A lot of articles have been tagged for deletion with no explanations or discussions, apparently by someone on some kind of spree. Possibly all the tags should just be removed to avoid wasting people's time. 109.151.39.110 (talk) 00:43, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I went through and looked at each one of the articles. None of them had any rational given for deletion. I looked on the article's talk page also to see if the rationale had been placed there. Since no rationale was given I removed them. GB fan please review my editing 01:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I have left a tailored warning at User talk:124.180.203.25.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:16, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Suggstion: One week mortatorium on recently created "current event" articles

After the issues surrounding the 2011 Virginia earthquake article (was sent to AFD, speedily kept, contested, speedily closed, etc. etc.), I would like to make a suggestion:

For newly created articles that were created due to current events, these should not be sent to AFD for at least one week from the event, to allow the event to develop and resolve such that proper evaluation per WP:NOTNEWS and WP:NEVENT can be evaluated. This does not limit deletion via CSD or PROD in obvious cases.

Note that this still is to go along with NEVENT's advice of not creating event articles until one is sure such an event is notable. But if people do create current event articles, we shouldn't be hand slapping them in a limited time. --MASEM (t) 03:43, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose The AFD of the article in question (as it should) pretty much died within a few hours as a speedy keep. However, imposing such a moratorium would prevent us from adequately dealing with other cases where an AFD would be just and proper. The system worked, so there's no need to impose any rule changes. --Jayron32 03:46, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- Here's the problem: I disagree with the results of that AFD, but there's no way I'd win that battle today, the day of the event. A week from now, I may have changed my mind if the damage from the quake was more significant, or if that's basically all that can be reported, it clearly fails policy. The week hold (and mind you, this is recommended practice, not required) would allow everyone involved to look at the event with a clearly mind than what they just learned, while potentially allowing more sources to come around. Again, CSD/PROD can be used for the nonsense. --MASEM (t) 03:50, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

In that case, no one is stopping you from waiting a month or two and starting a new AFD on the article. --Jayron32 03:54, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The results of this AFD will certainly influence any future AFD, even if they shouldn't. (and no, I'm not saying I will AFD that article. I will wait and see if it is merited in due course) --MASEM (t) 04:09, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

As an alternative, how about a one week moratorium on creating "current event" articles? Such article should not be created "...for at least one week from the event, to allow the event to develop and resolve such that proper evaluation per WP:NOTNEWS and WP:NEVENT can be evaluated"? Write them on WikiNews instead, and if they look like keepers, we can add them to the long-term online encyclopaedia we are supposed to be working on... Just a thought... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:52, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Is the article on the Virginia earthquake really that badly written or inappropriate? --Jayron32 03:54, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Right now [12] it reads like what I would expect to find in tomorrow's paper. There's no encyclopedic content presently in the article to meet NEVENT. But that's right now. 24hr from now, it could be much deeper coverage. Or a month from now, there may be nothing new. There's no way to judge that day zero. Hence why such articles should be hands-off from AFD until that point. --MASEM (t) 04:06, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Don't know - not read it. I'm arguing (provocatively, I'll admit), from a slightly longer-term perspective. Far too many recent 'current event articles' have been an unholy mess over the first few days, with 'contributors' trying to add spin, soapboxing, and other offal into the article - this isn't unusual of course, any article can have the same problem, but the normal Wikipedia methods for keeping this under control tend to get snowed under, and WP:IAR tends to become the norm. I've regularly ignored WP:3RR in the most blatant way when trying to keep such rapidly-developing articles relatively free of the more obvious biases for example - and of course no doubt introducing biases of my own in the process. The simple fact is that Wikipedia procedures work a lot better when everyone has time to mull over content, check sources, and we just don't have the system in place to deal with breaking news. We should stick to doing what we do well, rather than trying to do something we aren't equipped to do, and making a mess of it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Before this diverges into a discussion that should happen at WT:NOT or WT:NEVENT, we need to guide people that want to cover current events in a Wiki fashion to Wikinews. But there's no way we can stop current event article creation and be fair to any other type of article across the board. --MASEM (t) 04:16, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there is one simple way to do it - not allow anyone to use a source that is less than a week old! But yes, I'm being provocative here - for a reason. We really do need to think about whether it actually serves Wikipedia's long-term goals to encourage 'breaking news' by giving articles a free pass, as Masem initially proposed. I'll also point out that this proposal would give the Wikilawyers one more provision to argue over - "you can't delete this, something new has just happened..." AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not asking for a provision with strong enforcement; nominating a day-old, current event article (interpreted broadly based on the event itself) should be discouraged, and should this still happen, it is the type of AFD that a non-admin can close without question. Just like not doing BEFORE, editors that continue to nominate current event articles too soon may be subject to an RFC/U. But the point here is that the best we can put up is recommended advice, nothing enforcable. --MASEM (t) 04:37, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Just... wow. Of all the bad ideas I've heard on Wikipedia, this one probably takes the cake for not understanding Wikipedia's contributors and readership. Jclemens (talk) 03:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Definitely not suggesting to block article creation, though I'd rather more people be patient and make sure it is clearly notable before creating, using Wikinews as their drafting board. Once created, we (the rest of the editors) need to be patient to make sure that we're not deleting an appropriate contribution - a consideration we can only make once the news of the event has settled out. --MASEM (t) 04:06, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Do we even have any stats on Wikinews' views? stats.grok.se doesn't appear to keep them. My hypothesis is that readership for current news items on Wikipedia is entirely disproportionate to their coverage on Wikinews. We need to deal appropriately with the readers who want to see things here. If that means merging Wikinews back into Wikipedia, I would support exploring that idea--previous comments have indicated Wikinews does mostly aggregation of public secondary sources, and very little original research, which is the difference between the sites. Jclemens (talk) 05:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Not with WP:N as accepted as a guideline. Wikinews doesn't have that concept, allowing me, hypothetically, to cover a somewhat local event using local sources that would never see the light of day on WP. There might be a better way to incorporate Wikinews content into WP proper, but I'm not sure at the moment. --MASEM (t) 05:40, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Right, I wasn't advocating abandoning WP:N... Let me rephrase: Why not redefine WikiNews to ONLY include news that has a substantial portion of firsthand reporting, and pull aggregation of RS back into WP where our readers look for it? It really doesn't matter if Brittanica would cover this earthquake or not: we have a ton of editors who are willing to write it, using appropriately reliable sources, and plenty of readers who are willing to read it. Given that we have editors and readers, why are we standing in their way with the narrow NOTNEWS interpretation at all? Jclemens (talk) 06:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Support NOTNEWS, even as it currently reads, does not support the immediate AfDs of this, the Norway shooting, and so many other major international news stories. NOTNEWS is for local county fair results--it IS for major incidents like this. BTW, an clarifying improvement has been discussed at WT:NOT, implemented, and reverted twice today on rather tenuous rationales. It's clear that the community does not support this, so let's codify community will to keep the hassle down, shall we? Jclemens (talk) 03:55, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Unnecessary - weak deletion nominations can be handled in due course via the usual process. Most reasonable people who make a proposal that gets thoroughly shot down learn and don't do it again, and there's no evidence here of any kind of WP:POINT violation or history of weak nominations. If there were, and they refused to stop, that could be handled through a different process. I just don't see a problem that needs fixing here. - Wikidemon (talk) 06:08, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Support agreeing except with regard to "news" impacting BLPs. I would prefer to allow some time for BLPs to find good sourcing rather than the "instant news" so often later found to be inaccurate. DSK is but one example. Collect (talk) 08:10, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't see how we can feasibly write a policy to handle the situation which would have community consensus or matter in application. There are thousands of active editors. Someone is going to nominate marginal articles and then we still have the same debate only now it is a meta-debate. DRVs over whether or not something meets the letter of NOTNOTNEWS (or whatever we might call this policy)--collect's suggested exemption being a perfect example of how the edges of this policy would be delineated by lawyering over how central a BLP was to the article in question (as all news articles would involve some living persons). No. I love news articles. I can't even count the number of dedicated editors I have met over the years who became wikipedians because they contributed to a quickly evolving article on a local event. I think that articles on recent events represent some of our finest work. But I don't see the wisdom of this policy. Protonk (talk) 08:24, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Unnecessary and ripe for abuse. As pointed out above, this proposal provides no new real protection for deserving articles about recent events. Instead, as per the law of unintended consequences, this proposal will become a shield for current events such as "new product announcements" or rumors of possible scandals involving prominent persons. --Allen3 ^talk 14:27, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Oppose Three hours should be enough to create an article that convinces readers and writers of the notability of the subject. Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:46, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
- - Clarification: With the present speed of the news coverage on TV and internet, it should be possible to have an article that is convincing enough in its notability fairly quickly. A few hours should be enough to build a convincing stub. A moratorium of a week to safely build an article about a current event is way over the top. Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:37, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
- No, that's completely contrary to NEVENT. I still am not convinced of the notability of the quake article even today (nearly 24hr later), but in a normal situation, because even a causal glance through gnews hits show little to no long-lasting effects except for various minor structural damage to historical monuments and buildings. I would not be able to judge its importance appropriate for at least a few more days. --MASEM (t) 16:01, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
  - You must be using a different version of WP:NOTE than I am. How is an event which has been the subject of hundreds of articles not covered in significant detail by multiple reliable sources? We can maybe make an appeal to NOT#NEWS (a dead letter) but there is no way it is non-notable. Protonk (talk) 02:27, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Notability requires secondary coverage - analysis and evaluation, and not just reporting of facts - and those almost always take time to appear. Take the quake article, in that the first 24 hrs, all that could be said was "it happened, it caused some damage, but no lives were known lost from it." Despite that amount of coverage, that's all primary sourcing, and the only reason the event appeared to have notability is because it was a very rare happenstance that happened to millions of people - which is a criteria that WP:N does not accept. Beyond that, it basically was the equivalent of a tropical storm, stuff that we talk about in list or summary-style articles. Arguably, about 72hrs later, there's very weak notability now established in that the fact that the quake was a rare event in a technologically-advanced, highly populated area led to interesting social media analysis, as well as some analysis of what caused it. But that's 72hrs, not 3-4 hrs as you suggest. That's why there's a two-way issue here: both the period before one can call the event notable for appropriate article creation, and, in case of creation before that, a period to allow articles to develop (As the earthquake one did) before nominating for AFD. --MASEM (t) 12:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
      - We are talking about two different things: a stub (what can be build in a few hours) and a full article (what can take much, much longer). But even the quick built stub should be convincing enough to survive an AfD if it makes clear that the current event is something major. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
        I'm not asking for a full blown article in that week. Stubs are easy to create, and we don't require notability to be explicitly stated, but save for exceptional cases, notability still cannot be established in a few hours. Even if the stub remains a stub within that week, it is going to be much easy to search google news a week later to determine if it was just a blip of news compared to a truly notable event, than it is a few hours out. Because we can't make that evaluation so soon after the event occurs, it simply makes sense to force those that want to AFD to hold off until time has passed so that a fairer evaluation can be made. --MASEM (t) 13:15, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
      - And again, we seem to be working with two different definitions for "secondary sources". I understand what you're getting and and I promise I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse. But I think you're searching for a method to impose a threshold of importance on the event where no threshold is necessary. Further, I'm really confused by your interest in these flash news articles. We don't get articles like the VA earthquake or the Fukushima nuclear disaster (another article we didn't think was "notable") or the plane crash in the Hudson because they are important or worthy of being in a general encyclopedia. We get them because thousands of readers don't have a centralized source for information so they make one. Telling those readers to (my words not your) fuck off to wikinews or come back in 72 hours is damaging to the encyclopedia. Sure in the short run people will keep coming back to make articles for "legitimate" flash events which might have some long term encyclopedic interest but in the long run they will go someplace else. And we will have sent them there. I'm not suggesting that we bend or ignore core content policies because flash articles bring in editors or make wikipedia relevant to readers. I'm suggesting that we not invent new policies to keep them out. Notability is the GNG, not a standard of lasting importance. And we shouldn't pick and choose secondary sources because an article in the paper of record appears about an event that isn't truly important. Protonk (talk) 16:05, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
        First, remember what I am proposing: That current event articles, if they are created, should be immune from AFD for 7 days - enough time for sources to develop and for better evaluation of the significance of the event than there would be within hours of the actual event. Yes, I'm against the creation of such articles immediately after they happen, but I completely recognize that there are people that want to make these, and there's no way we can really stop them, so I'd rather have the process of evaluating them be more sensible by having these be given a temporary grant from AFD.
        
        But as for the rest of the comment: notability is about enduring coverage (not the same as ongoing, but meaning that it was more than a flash in the pan). Arguably the Virginia quake is a flash in the pan story, given the minimal damage but heightened interest due to the rarity of the event, along with numerous editors that likely felt it. Only now does there seem to be some enduring coverage about the event, but that was never apparent a day ago and certainly not on the day of the event. --MASEM (t) 16:32, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I was about to oppose this and just simply urge that editors use a little common sense before sending newly created articles on recent events to AFD. However, after looking at the history of the article in question, I couldn't help but notice that the version sent to AFD was a 1 sentence stub. We have editors from all over the world and not all of them are familiar with the geological history of the eastern US. To some this might have looked like an article on a run of the mill earthquake. Yes, the nominator should have done his WP:BEFORE homework but it's also important for those creating articles on current events to, I'll borrow a phrase from CSD A7, quickly assert the importance or significance of the event. In this case it would be that there are no "run of the mill" earthquakes on the eastern US seaboard. This is apparent in the article now but I'm downgrading my trout for the nominator to a "minnow". --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose It was probably silly to send that one to AFD, but "Robbery of the Smoky Bar" or "Fistfight between Joe Movies and John Film" or "Accidental death of pedestrian hit by skateboarder" should not be banned from AFD. AFD is sometimes a much more appropriate forum than CSD or PROD. In the case of a contested prod, AFD should always be immediately available. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Correct day to list discussion?

I just listed two AFD discussions that had not been completed properly (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lester Leaps In and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Countless Blues). I listed them on today's log (26 August) but they were actually created on 25 August. I'm not sure which I should have listed them on.--Beloved Freak 15:01, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, list them under today. They ought to be listed on one of the log pages for seven days before they are closed, if you list them under yesterday they may be closed before this happens. --Hut 8.5 15:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. --Beloved Freak 17:03, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite of WP:BEFORE; what we really expect before nominating

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Result: BEFORE updated by Siltork: [13]. Further discussion is located below. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:17, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

In a thread higher on this page, though other things were involved, I opined that the problem with WP:BEFORE is that it does not address what we are actually looking for. The most common bad nominations are those citing to notability but failing to perform any search for sources before nominating, and many users are seemingly unaware that notability (and verifiability) do not require sourcing to be present but to exist. A simple search for reliable sources before nominating is by far the most common thing people are looking for "before", that they are criticized for not doing, and which, when not done, results in nominations that cannot succeed, thereby wasting everyone's time.

I have never seen a nomination criticized for not checking what links here, not looking at interlanguage links, and others on WP:BEFORE's unprioritized list of things to do; have you? But the policy section currently lumps together a mishmash of pre-nomination suggestions without giving guidance as to what we are really looking for or any framework. I suggested some new language, which a few other agreed with, and promised I'd attempt a more complete rewrite to re-focus the policy section to address this issue. Below is my proposed replacement text. The front end is the new part. I have done little with the list below it (though there may be a much better ordering, cutting and rewriting to do there as well), except to remove items that have been folded into that prioritized front end. Without further ado:

Rewrite

The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of lack of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that sufficient reliable sources don't exist.
The minimum expected is a Google Books search and a Google News archive search, which in most cases should take only a minute or two to perform. A good nomination where sourcing is at issue will describe what steps were taken to confirm that sufficient reliable sources are apparently unavailable. Many nominations have been criticized in the past where such explanation is not provided—especially where those coming to the nomination are easily able to find sufficient sources themselves.
In the event you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. This is because both the verifiability policy and the notability guidelines do not require adequate sources to be present in an article but to exist, and it is well settled that AfD is not the correct method to seek clean up of an article or address lack of available sourcing. The general rule of thumb is that if the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD.
What you can do in this situation is to apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing issue that led to you considering nominating the article. Common templates include {{unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{third-party}}, {{primary sources}} and {{one source}}. For a more complete list see WP:CTT.
Although sourcing, or the lack thereof, is a common touchstone of many nominations, there are others, including those listed at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. For a general treatment of policies and guidelines upon which a nomination may be grounded, see Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.

Please consider also the following before nominating an article:

Read and understand the Wikipedia deletion policy (WP:DEL), which explains valid grounds for deletion. Some pages should be improved rather than deleted.
Read the article and review its history to properly understand its topic. Some articles may have been harmed by vandalism or poor editing. Stubs and imperfect articles are awaiting further development, and so the potential of the topic should be considered.
Read the article's talk page, which may provide reasons why the article should or should not be deleted; if there was a previous nomination, check that your objections haven't already been dealt with.
If the topic is not important enough to merit an article on its own, consider turning the page into a useful redirect to an existing article – something you can do yourself without opening an AfD case – or proposing it be merged (see {{merge to}} and {{merge from}}). Uncontested mergers do not require an AfD.
If the article is not already tagged to note an existing problem, consider applying a tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, {{unencyclopedic}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
Check "What links here" in the article's sidebar, to see how the page is used and referenced within Wikipedia.
Check any interlanguage links, also in the sidebar, which may provide additional material for translation.
Familiarize yourself with the guidelines and policies on notability, reliable sources, and what Wikipedia is not. Related guidelines include WP:BIO, WP:COI, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, WP:WEB, and, for list articles, WP:CLN. See more generally, the previously mentioned List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.
If the article was recently created, please consider that many good articles started their Wikilife in pretty bad shape. Unless it is obviously a hopeless case, consider sharing your reservations with the article creator, an associated WikiProject, or on the article's talk page, and/or adding a cleanup tag, instead of bringing the article to AfD.
Confirm that the article does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion or proposed deletion.
If you expect the AfD page will be edited by newcomers to Wikipedia (perhaps because the article is linked from some visible place outside Wikipedia), or if you notice this happening, you might want to insert the {{Not a ballot}} template into it.
If you are not logged in, you won't be able to create the AfD discussion page. You could either log in, sign up, or request an account first, or request that a logged in user complete the nomination on the article talk page.
It is recommended that you describe the steps you have taken to check that your nomination is appropriate. This may prevent duplication of effort and inoculate your nomination from being labelled as spurious or thoughtless.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing the posts below (thank you for participating), I am going to implement some of the suggestions, but doing so directly above would leave the discussion logically fragmented, so I will do so below in a collapsed post (click show). All changes from the above will be colored like this paragraph, so they can be easily seen. I have not touched the issue of getting rid of any numbered points below the front end except 11 and 12 which I just removed, as multiple people agreed on them.

Implemented suggestions

The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of lack of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that sufficient reliable sources don't exist.
The minimum expected is some type of search that tends to concentrate reliable sources, such as a Google Books search and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects. Such searches should in most cases take only a minute or two to perform. A good nomination where sourcing is at issue will describe what steps were taken to confirm that sufficient reliable sources are apparently unavailable. Many nominations have been criticized in the past where such explanation is not provided—especially where those coming to the nomination are easily able to find sufficient sources themselves.
If you find a lack of sources, you've completed basic due diligence before nominating. However, if a quick search does find sources, this does not always mean an AfD on a sourcing basis is unwarranted. If you spend more time examining the sources, and determine that they are insufficient, e.g., because they only contain passing mention of the topic, then an AfD nomination may be still be appropriate.
In the event you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. This is because both the verifiability policy and the notability guidelines do not require adequate sources to be present in an article but to exist, and it is well settled that AfD is not the correct method to seek clean up of an article or address lack of available sourcing. The general rule of thumb is that if the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD.
What you can do in this situation is to apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing issue that led to you considering nominating the article. Common templates include {{unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{third-party}}, {{primary sources}} and {{one source}}. For a more complete list see WP:CTT.
Although sourcing, or the lack thereof, is a common touchstone of many nominations, there are others, including those listed at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. For a general treatment of policies and guidelines upon which a nomination may be grounded, see Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.

Please consider also the following before nominating an article:

Read and understand the Wikipedia deletion policy (WP:DEL), which explains valid grounds for deletion. Some pages should be improved rather than deleted.
Read the article and review its history to properly understand its topic. Some articles may have been harmed by vandalism or poor editing. Stubs and imperfect articles are awaiting further development, and so the potential of the topic should be considered.
Read the article's talk page, which may provide reasons why the article should or should not be deleted; if there was a previous nomination, check that your objections haven't already been dealt with.
If the topic is not important enough to merit an article on its own, consider turning the page into a useful redirect to an existing article – something you can do yourself without opening an AfD case – or proposing it be merged (see {{merge to}} and {{merge from}}). Uncontested mergers do not require an AfD.
If the article is not already tagged to note an existing problem, consider applying a tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, {{unencyclopedic}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
Check "What links here" in the article's sidebar, to see how the page is used and referenced within Wikipedia.
Check any interlanguage links, also in the sidebar, which may provide additional material for translation.
Familiarize yourself with the guidelines and policies on notability, reliable sources, and what Wikipedia is not. Related guidelines include WP:BIO, WP:COI, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, WP:WEB, and, for list articles, WP:CLN. See more generally, the previously mentioned List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.
If the article was recently created, please consider that many good articles started their Wikilife in pretty bad shape. Unless it is obviously a hopeless case, consider sharing your reservations with the article creator, an associated WikiProject, or on the article's talk page, and/or adding a cleanup tag, instead of bringing the article to AfD.
Confirm that the article does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion or proposed deletion.
Removed
Removed
It is recommended that you describe the steps you have taken to check that your nomination is appropriate. This may prevent duplication of effort and inoculate your nomination from being labelled as spurious or thoughtless.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:07, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support- I like it better than the current version. It makes it clear which steps are important, and also makes it clear that the less crucial steps (which may not be relevant in every case) are not mandatory. If we adopt this version BEFORE would encourage best practice in nominating stuff for deletion, but without acting like a shopping list of legalistic obstructions. Reyk _YO! 03:20, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
- Addendum- I suggest scrapping points 11 and 12, since they're not really related to the question of when to nominate an article. Reyk _YO! 03:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support in principle. I like it, it may need some tweaks (it gets a bit wordy in places) but in general I like the idea. We do need to make it clearer when articles need to be deleted and when they do not. Good stuff. --Jayron32 03:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support. Looks very good overall. I agree with Reyk that points 11 and 12 can probably drop out. The most important thing is clearly emphasizing the reference check, which this does a great job of. Potential tweaks I'd suggest are that I'd like to see Google Scholar mentioned somewhere, though not necessarily alongside Books and News archive, and it might be appropriate to include a reference to the likes of WP:VG/RS's custom search engine based RS web search. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Generally support with Reyk's caveats. Alternatively, would the meaning of the guideline suffer were we to include only the bulleted points and not the numbered points? Or some variation on the bulleted points? Protonk (talk) 05:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Support and I can live without points 11 and 12. I can also see a few places where the wording can be clarified or tightened, but let's not let copyediting distract from the broad appeal here: this is a big step forward. Jclemens (talk) 05:49, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
The proposed text would mostly do well as a total replacement for the laundry-list below it. However "Before" is already disproportionally large, so I cannot support anything that makes it bigger. See below for details. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 06:28, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

point-by-point on the reasons why items should be removed
There is a bit of wishy-washy in between bullet points two and three. It's easily read as "if you get a bunch of hits in your two-minute search, don't nominate for deletion." A proper look at sources takes time, and even more so when there are a large number of bad-source hits. Remove bullet point three, or re-word heavily. Points 11 to 13 are clearly out of place in this list, and should be removed. Point 10 is nice, but if it's a clear speedy someone will tag it in the debate, the overhead there is very low. If editors are not familiar enough with AfD that they need this list anyway, I don't want them trying to figure out criteria for speedy deletion. Remove for clarity. Point 9 is purely philosophical, and there's no requirement to do it, and it is redundant. The points before all make it clear that "Unless it is obviously a hopeless case," it shouldn’t be nominated. Delete as redundant. [sic] Points 6 and 7 are blarney. They have little relevance to the actual article's state of being, and the number of times that an editor is going to be able to do anything with inter-language links is very small. Delete as instruction creep. Point 5 is also instruction creep. The slow-deletion-tags recommended are not any more effective than the deletion nomination tag. Delete as instruction creep. Point 4 is covered by the very first link on the page, to "Alternatives to deletion." Delete as redundant. Points 1 to 3 are all valid, but would be better as prose. Which prose mostly already exists in the lede.

Support -- I also support this change. I anticipate proponents of calling upon WP:BLP may argue that for biographies of living persons, references that amply demonstrate notability are required from the moment the article is moved into article space. Half, or close to half, of the articles on the English language wikipedia were biographies last time I checked (when we were at about 2 million articles). Geo Swan (talk) 06:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that addressed by sticky prods to the point that AfD has no overlap?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose Although in general okay, two points make me oppose it at the moment. The minor one: too much abbreviations. Shorthand is difficult to read and can scare beginning patrollers away. The big one The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of lack of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that sufficient reliable sources don't exist.. My opposition is 100% based on my opinion that it should be the article itself that has to proof its notability then a random new page patroller. Those articles should be send back to the original author to fix it (with a link to the coaching scheme) or be nominated as "has to be improved before it can be kept" but unfortunately, that last scheme does not exist (YET!). Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:14, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Night, the problem with your oppose is that verifiability and notability on their face do not require sources to be present in an article, so nominating an article at AfD because the sources are not yet present on the basis of either of them does not have a basis in those policies. Until those policies get changed (and they have been debated and honed for years), you need to concede that taking an article to AfD where sources may exist but you have not checked is a great discourtesy to the community because for every one where you didn't check, and the s0ourcing does exist, you will have wasted a lot of people's time on a nomination that cannot succeed. There are many things in policy I disagree with but recognizing how the community stands allows you to pick your battles. To put it another way, your problem here is not actually with our expectation of a source check, but with the underlying policies that make a nomination without doing so where sources exist, doomed to failure. By the way, regarding your first basis of too many shortcuts, there's only one in the lead I wrote. All the others in the numbered list are from the existing text.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I regard that as a severe mistake. Why should I check if somebody else did his job properly? If I can find sources on the internet, the original author of an article could have found them too. It is unfair to let random editors clean up the mess of others... In fact, and I'll put this a bit harsh, you guys are trying to enforce a rule that is not a rule, nor a guideline. It is just an advice! Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:03, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Why should you check? Because we prioritize being welcoming (another part of one of the five pillars you say you believe in) over your pique at another volunteer failing to meet your expectations. The status of WP:BEFORE may be ambiguous, but the status of WP:Notability is not, and it firmly establishes that citations are not required to be present for notability to be present. Nor is WP:Consensus less than policy. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I hate to say it, but WP:Notability is a guideline, not a policy. And WP:Consensus clearly states Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus can change. Don't try to bite me of my different opinion. A lot the medicines I take are dangerous for others or considered doping.

Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if WP:N is "only" a guideline. That page represents the community's actual views on this subject. You might benefit from reading WP:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays. Compliance with guidelines is not optional.

(It is true that consensus can, and does, change. However, the community just had a pair of discussions on that very point, and by the end of the discussion, there was no doubt left in anyone's minds that the consensus had not changed.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Not so strange, my friend. Everybody with a different opinion is hammered silly and shuts up... Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Things you are entitled to: 1) your own opinion. Things you aren't entitled to: 1) your own facts, 2) your own implementation of Wikipedia policy and procedure. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Please, take a mirror and look in it. Gagging orders are not in place at Wikipedia, as it is not censored. Night of the Big Wind _talk 10:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Support - but would include Google Scholar in the second bullet as many article topics are not just current events and popular culture and will never show in Google News. --Mike Cline (talk) 12:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
- What if we changed it to "Google Books, and at least one of Google News (by default or if a current event) or Google Scholar (if a topic of academic study)."? Jclemens (talk) 14:09, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
  - I agree with the basic idea, but I feel that wording is still a bit too "checklisty", which this proposal is trying to get away from. How about just mentioning that Google Books, News and Scholar are good resources for finding references? Reyk _YO! 14:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
    - How would you propose to reword the sentence that begins "the minimum expected is..." to encompass the third, "core" Google search? Jclemens (talk) 01:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
      - Often once we've read a thread up to a certain point, we don't see a new addition that is not added in normal thread order... I added a second section containing revision just below the original post that addresses a bunch of the suggestions here, including adding Google Scholar and making it less "checklisty".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't feel especially strongly about some of the changes, but overall I think it an improvement and therefore I both support the proposal and thank Fuhghettaboutit for going to the trouble of writing this up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Support There is nothing in the changes and additional language that I am opposed to, as it all correctly describes community practice. The checklist, while a bit extensive, still contains good editing advice for any newbie to Wikipedia. Them From Space 23:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
This is all very long, complicated and potentially discouraging to anyone who sees an article that they feels doesn't belong - in effect in an attempt to avoid biting editors who create unreferenced, poor quality articles (which may or may not be salvagable), this change will instead bite those who attempt to nominate articles and will act to discourage new or inexperienced editors for particpating in AFD. Certainly it would discourage me, and I'm not inexperienced - I don't know if this would be a good thing.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:08, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that Fuhghettaboutit is right to flag that BEFORE could do with a rewrite, and this is a great start. I don't think, however, that adding a weight of text to the list is the right approach. A lot of clarity has been lost, and the weight of text is such that it may not even be read to start with. I would suggest that the appended text is placed after the list, and that "4. Before nominating due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist." is restored to the list. A footnote attached to that point could then lead to an abbreviated version of Fuhghettaboutit's text.

I think we should look into the order of the list. The deletion policy should be first - it all stems from there. The list of guidelines and policies should be moved up to point two. Fuhghettaboutit's point 13 is not something you do before nominating, but when you have already imitated a nomination, so that would go below the list, as it does now.

Mmmm. I'll look into amending some of Fuhghettaboutit's suggestions and post here. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I had the same thought about #4 until I realized that the first five bullet points are meant to be part of the new BEFORE. They are more detailed and more pointful than the one-sentence version of #4. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Before nominating an article for deletion

Shortcuts

WP:BEFORE
WP:BEGIN

Before nominating an article for deletion:-

A) Please read and understand the following policies and guidelines

The Wikipedia deletion policy, which explains valid grounds for deletion as well as alternatives to deletion and the various deletion processes
The main four guidelines and policies that inform deletion discussions: notability (WP:N), verifiability (WP:V), reliable sources (WP:RS), and what Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT)
Subject specific notability guidelines, which can be found at Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines, with further related essays at Category:Wikipedia notability. Common outcomes may be checked to see if other articles on a specific topic tend to be kept or deleted after an AfD discussion

B) Please carry out the following checks

Confirm that the article does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion or proposed deletion.
If there are verifiability, notability or other sourcing concerns, take reasonable steps to search for reliable sources. (See "Sourcing search" below)
Review the article's history to check for potential vandalism or poor editing.
Read the article's talk page for previous nominations and/or that your objections haven't already been dealt with.
Check "What links here" in the article's sidebar, to see how the page is used and referenced within Wikipedia.
Check if there are interlanguage links, also in the sidebar, which may lead to more developed and better sourced articles.

C) Be aware that some pages should be improved rather than deleted

If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD.
If the article was recently created, please consider allowing the contributors more time to develop the article.
If an article has issues try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page, with the main contributors, or an associated WikiProject, and/or adding a cleanup tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, {{unencyclopedic}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
If the topic is not important enough to merit an article on its own, consider merging or redirecting to an existing article.

D) Sourcing search

The minimum search expected is a Google Books search and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects. Such searches should in most cases take only a minute or two to perform.
If you find a lack of sources, you've completed basic due diligence before nominating. However, if a quick search does find sources, this does not always mean an AfD on a sourcing basis is unwarranted. If you spend more time examining the sources, and determine that they are insufficient, e.g., because they only contain passing mention of the topic, then an AfD nomination may be still be appropriate.
In the event you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. Instead, you should consider citing the sources, using the advice in Wikipedia:How to cite sources, or at minimum apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing concern. Common templates include {{unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{third-party}}, {{primary sources}} and {{one source}}. For a more complete list see WP:CTT.

OK. After playing around with that I've ended up with the same amount of words. It needs reducing further. I've essentially overhauled the links so that less useful pages are dropped, and more essential ones are added. I've organised the list into sets so there is more logic and cohesion to it. Even though I removed some duplication and wordage, I added links to pages so it's a swings and roundabouts situation. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 20:50, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I've trimmed back and removed some duplication. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 21:11, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Great job condensing it down to something workable! I tweaked three things: 1) Swapped sections D and E: I believe the sourcing comes both logically and chronologically before the miscellaneous advice. 2) I changed "could" to "should" in the heading for C: I believe that accurately reflects the sentiment of WP:ATD, and 3) I fixed a typo. :-) Further enhancements welcome! Jclemens (talk) 04:31, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Swapping D and E makes sense. It was "should" originally, and I changed it to "could" with some hesitation. "Should" implies an obligation, while "could" implies a possibility. Personally, as I am a volunteer, I dislike it when people attempt to impose obligations on me, though I react positively to being offered possibilities. There is actually no obligation to improve any article - that is something we do by choice. However, I understand the thinking that given the choice of deleting an article or improving it, it is better to improve, so perhaps "should" is more appropriate. And, yes, further enhancements welcome. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 11:08, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I changed it to "should", not "you should", or even "one should". To quote the governing policy, WP:ATD: "If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion" (my emphasis) If "should" is in the policy there, why not here? Should expresses an outcome desired, not an obligation on any particular editor. Jclemens (talk) 14:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

"Should expresses an outcome desired". Yes, that makes sense. Anyway, to make it clear, I agree with should over could. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 08:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

A step in the right direction, but some comments and suggestions for consolidation:

I don't E is necessary in BEFORE, as we are essentially at AFD when we get there; it should be moved elsewhere.
D is sort of redundant to parts of B. D2 doesn't really explain anything else that one shouldn't already know.
I would move the last part of section B to the first; especially with stuff such as copyright violations (which should be deleted), even if notability is established, you would still need to start over and rewrite it so that it doesn't plagiarize or violate anyone's copyright. Same applies for pure spam pages, attack pages, and pages created with the sole intent to disrupt. –MuZemike 22:14, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that Speedy takes precedence. Done. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that E) belongs in Wikipedia:Guide to deletion rather than in BEFORE. Done. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Expanding on the sourcing advice was a primary motivation for this overhaul. It is generally agreed that sourcing issues are a significant proportion of reasons for nominating an article at AfD, and there is some agreement that providing more advice to people on how to check sources might encourage the improvement of articles rather than their nomination for deletion. There has been concern raised, however, in a recent discussion, that simply stating that sources are not required by policy would lead to a discouragement to raise appropriate sourcing concerns, and/or a feeling that not sourcing articles is approved. Some expanded explanation is seen as appropriate. It is the nature of that expanded explanation that we are now working on. How would you word D2? D2 is dealing with the quality and significant coverage aspect of the sources - something that can lead to an article being deleted, but often overlooked not just at nomination, but also during AfD discussions. Sometimes people are either not aware or overlook that a trivial mention is not enough to establish notability. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

This rewrite of my rewrite misses the whole point; re-lumps the search check together with others and takes out the language, separate formatting and primary placement of sourcing to unpriortize it again.Fuhghettaboutit (talk) --22:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping that we were building on your suggestions and improvement. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

But Silktork, the main feature of the rewrite was to completely separate out sourcing from the rest of the pack, saying it first, in a separated out section, with separate formatting, and saying it is the "most important thing you should do before..."—all intended to make sure that if a person reads nothing else but the first sentence, they are informed of the one thing that is the chief problem we see with nominations; what people actually fail to do that wastes community time; what gets them in trouble with bad nominations. You have used some of the language, but your rewrite undoes all of the features that were meant to prioritize "what we really expect before nominating".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for delay in response, I've been in France with limited internet access. I think some very positive things have come out of your initial suggestions, and there is consensus for the developments. I note that you have ongoing concerns, and I feel it would be appropriate to look into addressing those (I suggest by an examination of the logs of past AfDs to see what the main nomination problems are); though in the meantime it would be a shame to hold back on implementing the improvements so far. What I suggest is that we update WP:Before with the latest development, and continue to examine it and amend it as appropriate. We can work from the amended version better than the current version, as the amended version will carry the improvements we've all worked on. I will action that now, and start a fresh discussion below on how to improve it further in line with your concerns. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Deletion sorting proposal

Deletion sorting
Egypt - sorted by Example (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Military - sorted by Example (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC) People - sorted by Example (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello all. I would like to propose an idea regarding the deletion sorting system. Firstly, a thank you for all those users who relentlessly keep our discussions meticulously sorted. Now, while it is important that sorted discussions are labeled as such to avoid double-sorting by other users, I think we may be able to label the discussions in a less obtrusive manner. In its current form, these labels seem to unnecessarily break up the discussion, especially when several are added (see example). It would not be difficult, I think, to simply place these sorting tags in a small floating box (see right) or a collapsible table by modifying Template:Deletion sorting. What are your thoughts about some type of change in general? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Support this or any change from the current system, which sucks. I agree that the current system breaks up the substantive conversation unneccesarily, and segregating these notices, which are pretty meta to the actual discussion, is a Good Thing. --Jayron32 01:20, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Previous proposal and discussion at WT:Articles for deletion/Archive 60#New format. Flatscan (talk) 04:31, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I believe our most active deletion sorters use User:John Vandenberg/Deletion sorting tool. It would be very important for this to be included in the change if this goes into affect. Jujutacular ^talk 04:45, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

After looking it over, it seems that User:John Vandenberg/delsort.js uses {{subst:delsort}}, meaning we'd only have to modify the template. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 12:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

While I appreciate the sentiment, the delsorting tags do not "break up" the discussion, any more than not sorting by support or oppose. The deletion sorting discussion tags show roughly WHEN, chronologically, the DELSORT'ing took place. This is important: if DELSORTing happened early, then the discussion has been well advertized and probably need not be relisted, while a late DELSORTing accompanying poor participation would tend to support the appropriateness of relisting. There are other examples, but that should be enough of an example to illustrate why I support maintaining DELSORT and similar tags chronologically within the discussion flow. Jclemens (talk) 05:10, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
- Was that an intended effect or a side effect? Night of the Big Wind _talk 09:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  - Is that relevant? Many of our processes evolved organically, and emergent behavior can be as or more valuable than the designed behavior. Jclemens (talk) 17:56, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
    - - It is just a question. Nothing more. Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:24, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
        Well, the answer is... I don't know. To the best of my memory, DELSORT'ing was going on before I started participating in AfD's 3+ years ago. Jclemens (talk) 04:10, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Like Jclemens, I appreciate the fact that the delsort entries indicate approximately when the delsort listings were made. This information is helpful in evaluating the progress of a discussion. --Orlady (talk) 18:05, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Maybe the bigger question here is, how valuable really is deletion sorting? I find it mildly intriguing that the page views of Delsort:Delaware are only some 250 less than that of Delsort:People, considering Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/People is updated nearly 130 times as frequently (compare revision count: 1, 2). Moreover though, do we get nearly as much out of deletion sorting as we put in? Is it a profitable system; does the time spent sorting outweigh the time spent using the result, noting that we already have several categories such as Category:AfD debates (Biographical) automatically in place? Therein, I suppose, lies the question of how much space delsort tags deserve. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 22:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
- I find deletion sorting very valuable. I have found that it's easier for me to comment on AfDs where I at least have some knowledge of the subject in question. I would estimate that 90% of the AfDs I vote (or "!vote") in are because they were sorted into the Australian or sportspeople delsorting pages. If we didn't delsort, I personally would contribute to a lot less AfDs. I think the same could easily be said of a lot of people, because I see quite a few regulars at either Australia or sportspeople, who comment frequently, but if I venture out into the big wide world of daily AfD logs, it shows that they are only commenting on discussions that have been sorted into their area of interest/expertise. Just as an FYI, I think People was a poor example because it is far too broad, which is the reason that users don't view it all that often. Jenks24 (talk) 04:05, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  - I agree. I wouldn't ever use delsort people, but I do use fictional elements, science fiction, religion, and other areas that align with my interests and expertise. Jclemens (talk) 04:10, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
    - This is understandable. I am comforted to know that deletion sorting is at least being used by some users. Checking the data, however, delsort:fictional elements has only 6 more views in the last month than delsort:people, while delsort:sportspeople has over 100 less. My concern is that the process spends more time than it saves, but admittedly, this would be nearly impossible to prove. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 13:50, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Support I also find it a little awkward because I prefer to see responses to comments like this:

Keep because this source covers the subject in-depth. --User1

No it doesn't. However, the possibilities are endless, and that is kind of awesome. --User2

As opposed to this:

Keep because this source covers the subject in-depth.--User1

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Awesome-related deletion discussions. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 04:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Funky-related deletion discussions. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 04:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

No it doesn't. However, the possibilities are endless, and that is kind of awesome.--User2

So I think putting a separate box somewhere else would be helpful. To respond to the concerns that DelSorting may be not useful, I just received a message that someone helped keep an AfD because they were notified through DelSorting, so I think it does help bring attention to them. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 04:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I want to see when items get put into various categories, as it does help in grokking the way the arguments emerge, and from where. Don't think that it breaks up the flow at all. So, that's "oppose" from me to additional overhead. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 04:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget you can also follow AfDes with Article Alerts, conveniently sorted by WikiProjects. </shameless plug> — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 14:34, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

- Yeah. Just tag the talk page with the relevant WikiProject Banners, and deletion discussions automatically gets reported directly to the relevant WikiProjects. It covers a lot more than AFD too. PRODs, MFD, TFD, etc.... are all covered. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:48, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Formatting change

What if we formatted {{delsort}}s to look something like this example? From above, some users feel that the current system inconveniently breaks up the discussion, while others find it very helpful to see how the discussion's mood has changed since sorting occurred. By floating the {{delsort}} everybody wins. Your thoughts? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 19:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Support Sorry, guess I missed this suggestion. I think it looks good! It's non-invasive and addresses my concern about the old delsort tags interrupting discussion. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 02:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Some light relief

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of guests on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Facepalm Black Kite (t) (c) 02:41, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I will admit to giggling at this. Although, that my have just been my, uh, altered state of mind. jorgenev 03:22, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite of WP:BEFORE; what we really expect before nominating

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Result: BEFORE updated by Siltork: [14]. Further discussion is located below. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:17, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

In a thread higher on this page, though other things were involved, I opined that the problem with WP:BEFORE is that it does not address what we are actually looking for. The most common bad nominations are those citing to notability but failing to perform any search for sources before nominating, and many users are seemingly unaware that notability (and verifiability) do not require sourcing to be present but to exist. A simple search for reliable sources before nominating is by far the most common thing people are looking for "before", that they are criticized for not doing, and which, when not done, results in nominations that cannot succeed, thereby wasting everyone's time.

I have never seen a nomination criticized for not checking what links here, not looking at interlanguage links, and others on WP:BEFORE's unprioritized list of things to do; have you? But the policy section currently lumps together a mishmash of pre-nomination suggestions without giving guidance as to what we are really looking for or any framework. I suggested some new language, which a few other agreed with, and promised I'd attempt a more complete rewrite to re-focus the policy section to address this issue. Below is my proposed replacement text. The front end is the new part. I have done little with the list below it (though there may be a much better ordering, cutting and rewriting to do there as well), except to remove items that have been folded into that prioritized front end. Without further ado:

Rewrite

The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of lack of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that sufficient reliable sources don't exist.
The minimum expected is a Google Books search and a Google News archive search, which in most cases should take only a minute or two to perform. A good nomination where sourcing is at issue will describe what steps were taken to confirm that sufficient reliable sources are apparently unavailable. Many nominations have been criticized in the past where such explanation is not provided—especially where those coming to the nomination are easily able to find sufficient sources themselves.
In the event you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. This is because both the verifiability policy and the notability guidelines do not require adequate sources to be present in an article but to exist, and it is well settled that AfD is not the correct method to seek clean up of an article or address lack of available sourcing. The general rule of thumb is that if the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD.
What you can do in this situation is to apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing issue that led to you considering nominating the article. Common templates include {{unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{third-party}}, {{primary sources}} and {{one source}}. For a more complete list see WP:CTT.
Although sourcing, or the lack thereof, is a common touchstone of many nominations, there are others, including those listed at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. For a general treatment of policies and guidelines upon which a nomination may be grounded, see Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.

Please consider also the following before nominating an article:

Read and understand the Wikipedia deletion policy (WP:DEL), which explains valid grounds for deletion. Some pages should be improved rather than deleted.
Read the article and review its history to properly understand its topic. Some articles may have been harmed by vandalism or poor editing. Stubs and imperfect articles are awaiting further development, and so the potential of the topic should be considered.
Read the article's talk page, which may provide reasons why the article should or should not be deleted; if there was a previous nomination, check that your objections haven't already been dealt with.
If the topic is not important enough to merit an article on its own, consider turning the page into a useful redirect to an existing article – something you can do yourself without opening an AfD case – or proposing it be merged (see {{merge to}} and {{merge from}}). Uncontested mergers do not require an AfD.
If the article is not already tagged to note an existing problem, consider applying a tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, {{unencyclopedic}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
Check "What links here" in the article's sidebar, to see how the page is used and referenced within Wikipedia.
Check any interlanguage links, also in the sidebar, which may provide additional material for translation.
Familiarize yourself with the guidelines and policies on notability, reliable sources, and what Wikipedia is not. Related guidelines include WP:BIO, WP:COI, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, WP:WEB, and, for list articles, WP:CLN. See more generally, the previously mentioned List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.
If the article was recently created, please consider that many good articles started their Wikilife in pretty bad shape. Unless it is obviously a hopeless case, consider sharing your reservations with the article creator, an associated WikiProject, or on the article's talk page, and/or adding a cleanup tag, instead of bringing the article to AfD.
Confirm that the article does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion or proposed deletion.
If you expect the AfD page will be edited by newcomers to Wikipedia (perhaps because the article is linked from some visible place outside Wikipedia), or if you notice this happening, you might want to insert the {{Not a ballot}} template into it.
If you are not logged in, you won't be able to create the AfD discussion page. You could either log in, sign up, or request an account first, or request that a logged in user complete the nomination on the article talk page.
It is recommended that you describe the steps you have taken to check that your nomination is appropriate. This may prevent duplication of effort and inoculate your nomination from being labelled as spurious or thoughtless.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing the posts below (thank you for participating), I am going to implement some of the suggestions, but doing so directly above would leave the discussion logically fragmented, so I will do so below in a collapsed post (click show). All changes from the above will be colored like this paragraph, so they can be easily seen. I have not touched the issue of getting rid of any numbered points below the front end except 11 and 12 which I just removed, as multiple people agreed on them.

Implemented suggestions

The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of lack of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that sufficient reliable sources don't exist.
The minimum expected is some type of search that tends to concentrate reliable sources, such as a Google Books search and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects. Such searches should in most cases take only a minute or two to perform. A good nomination where sourcing is at issue will describe what steps were taken to confirm that sufficient reliable sources are apparently unavailable. Many nominations have been criticized in the past where such explanation is not provided—especially where those coming to the nomination are easily able to find sufficient sources themselves.
If you find a lack of sources, you've completed basic due diligence before nominating. However, if a quick search does find sources, this does not always mean an AfD on a sourcing basis is unwarranted. If you spend more time examining the sources, and determine that they are insufficient, e.g., because they only contain passing mention of the topic, then an AfD nomination may be still be appropriate.
In the event you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. This is because both the verifiability policy and the notability guidelines do not require adequate sources to be present in an article but to exist, and it is well settled that AfD is not the correct method to seek clean up of an article or address lack of available sourcing. The general rule of thumb is that if the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a good candidate for AfD.
What you can do in this situation is to apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing issue that led to you considering nominating the article. Common templates include {{unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{third-party}}, {{primary sources}} and {{one source}}. For a more complete list see WP:CTT.
Although sourcing, or the lack thereof, is a common touchstone of many nominations, there are others, including those listed at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. For a general treatment of policies and guidelines upon which a nomination may be grounded, see Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.

Please consider also the following before nominating an article:

Read and understand the Wikipedia deletion policy (WP:DEL), which explains valid grounds for deletion. Some pages should be improved rather than deleted.
Read the article and review its history to properly understand its topic. Some articles may have been harmed by vandalism or poor editing. Stubs and imperfect articles are awaiting further development, and so the potential of the topic should be considered.
Read the article's talk page, which may provide reasons why the article should or should not be deleted; if there was a previous nomination, check that your objections haven't already been dealt with.
If the topic is not important enough to merit an article on its own, consider turning the page into a useful redirect to an existing article – something you can do yourself without opening an AfD case – or proposing it be merged (see {{merge to}} and {{merge from}}). Uncontested mergers do not require an AfD.
If the article is not already tagged to note an existing problem, consider applying a tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, {{unencyclopedic}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
Check "What links here" in the article's sidebar, to see how the page is used and referenced within Wikipedia.
Check any interlanguage links, also in the sidebar, which may provide additional material for translation.
Familiarize yourself with the guidelines and policies on notability, reliable sources, and what Wikipedia is not. Related guidelines include WP:BIO, WP:COI, WP:CORP, WP:MUSIC, WP:WEB, and, for list articles, WP:CLN. See more generally, the previously mentioned List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates.
If the article was recently created, please consider that many good articles started their Wikilife in pretty bad shape. Unless it is obviously a hopeless case, consider sharing your reservations with the article creator, an associated WikiProject, or on the article's talk page, and/or adding a cleanup tag, instead of bringing the article to AfD.
Confirm that the article does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion or proposed deletion.
Removed
Removed
It is recommended that you describe the steps you have taken to check that your nomination is appropriate. This may prevent duplication of effort and inoculate your nomination from being labelled as spurious or thoughtless.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:07, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support- I like it better than the current version. It makes it clear which steps are important, and also makes it clear that the less crucial steps (which may not be relevant in every case) are not mandatory. If we adopt this version BEFORE would encourage best practice in nominating stuff for deletion, but without acting like a shopping list of legalistic obstructions. Reyk _YO! 03:20, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
- Addendum- I suggest scrapping points 11 and 12, since they're not really related to the question of when to nominate an article. Reyk _YO! 03:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support in principle. I like it, it may need some tweaks (it gets a bit wordy in places) but in general I like the idea. We do need to make it clearer when articles need to be deleted and when they do not. Good stuff. --Jayron32 03:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Support. Looks very good overall. I agree with Reyk that points 11 and 12 can probably drop out. The most important thing is clearly emphasizing the reference check, which this does a great job of. Potential tweaks I'd suggest are that I'd like to see Google Scholar mentioned somewhere, though not necessarily alongside Books and News archive, and it might be appropriate to include a reference to the likes of WP:VG/RS's custom search engine based RS web search. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Generally support with Reyk's caveats. Alternatively, would the meaning of the guideline suffer were we to include only the bulleted points and not the numbered points? Or some variation on the bulleted points? Protonk (talk) 05:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Support and I can live without points 11 and 12. I can also see a few places where the wording can be clarified or tightened, but let's not let copyediting distract from the broad appeal here: this is a big step forward. Jclemens (talk) 05:49, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
The proposed text would mostly do well as a total replacement for the laundry-list below it. However "Before" is already disproportionally large, so I cannot support anything that makes it bigger. See below for details. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 06:28, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

point-by-point on the reasons why items should be removed
There is a bit of wishy-washy in between bullet points two and three. It's easily read as "if you get a bunch of hits in your two-minute search, don't nominate for deletion." A proper look at sources takes time, and even more so when there are a large number of bad-source hits. Remove bullet point three, or re-word heavily. Points 11 to 13 are clearly out of place in this list, and should be removed. Point 10 is nice, but if it's a clear speedy someone will tag it in the debate, the overhead there is very low. If editors are not familiar enough with AfD that they need this list anyway, I don't want them trying to figure out criteria for speedy deletion. Remove for clarity. Point 9 is purely philosophical, and there's no requirement to do it, and it is redundant. The points before all make it clear that "Unless it is obviously a hopeless case," it shouldn’t be nominated. Delete as redundant. [sic] Points 6 and 7 are blarney. They have little relevance to the actual article's state of being, and the number of times that an editor is going to be able to do anything with inter-language links is very small. Delete as instruction creep. Point 5 is also instruction creep. The slow-deletion-tags recommended are not any more effective than the deletion nomination tag. Delete as instruction creep. Point 4 is covered by the very first link on the page, to "Alternatives to deletion." Delete as redundant. Points 1 to 3 are all valid, but would be better as prose. Which prose mostly already exists in the lede.

Support -- I also support this change. I anticipate proponents of calling upon WP:BLP may argue that for biographies of living persons, references that amply demonstrate notability are required from the moment the article is moved into article space. Half, or close to half, of the articles on the English language wikipedia were biographies last time I checked (when we were at about 2 million articles). Geo Swan (talk) 06:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that addressed by sticky prods to the point that AfD has no overlap?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose Although in general okay, two points make me oppose it at the moment. The minor one: too much abbreviations. Shorthand is difficult to read and can scare beginning patrollers away. The big one The most important thing you should do before nominating an article on the basis of lack of verifiability, notability concerns, and any other bases where poor sourcing or lack of sourcing is at issue, is to make a good-faith attempt to confirm that sufficient reliable sources don't exist.. My opposition is 100% based on my opinion that it should be the article itself that has to proof its notability then a random new page patroller. Those articles should be send back to the original author to fix it (with a link to the coaching scheme) or be nominated as "has to be improved before it can be kept" but unfortunately, that last scheme does not exist (YET!). Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:14, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Night, the problem with your oppose is that verifiability and notability on their face do not require sources to be present in an article, so nominating an article at AfD because the sources are not yet present on the basis of either of them does not have a basis in those policies. Until those policies get changed (and they have been debated and honed for years), you need to concede that taking an article to AfD where sources may exist but you have not checked is a great discourtesy to the community because for every one where you didn't check, and the s0ourcing does exist, you will have wasted a lot of people's time on a nomination that cannot succeed. There are many things in policy I disagree with but recognizing how the community stands allows you to pick your battles. To put it another way, your problem here is not actually with our expectation of a source check, but with the underlying policies that make a nomination without doing so where sources exist, doomed to failure. By the way, regarding your first basis of too many shortcuts, there's only one in the lead I wrote. All the others in the numbered list are from the existing text.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I regard that as a severe mistake. Why should I check if somebody else did his job properly? If I can find sources on the internet, the original author of an article could have found them too. It is unfair to let random editors clean up the mess of others... In fact, and I'll put this a bit harsh, you guys are trying to enforce a rule that is not a rule, nor a guideline. It is just an advice! Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:03, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Why should you check? Because we prioritize being welcoming (another part of one of the five pillars you say you believe in) over your pique at another volunteer failing to meet your expectations. The status of WP:BEFORE may be ambiguous, but the status of WP:Notability is not, and it firmly establishes that citations are not required to be present for notability to be present. Nor is WP:Consensus less than policy. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I hate to say it, but WP:Notability is a guideline, not a policy. And WP:Consensus clearly states Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus can change. Don't try to bite me of my different opinion. A lot the medicines I take are dangerous for others or considered doping.

Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if WP:N is "only" a guideline. That page represents the community's actual views on this subject. You might benefit from reading WP:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays. Compliance with guidelines is not optional.

(It is true that consensus can, and does, change. However, the community just had a pair of discussions on that very point, and by the end of the discussion, there was no doubt left in anyone's minds that the consensus had not changed.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Not so strange, my friend. Everybody with a different opinion is hammered silly and shuts up... Night of the Big Wind _talk 15:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Things you are entitled to: 1) your own opinion. Things you aren't entitled to: 1) your own facts, 2) your own implementation of Wikipedia policy and procedure. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:17, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Please, take a mirror and look in it. Gagging orders are not in place at Wikipedia, as it is not censored. Night of the Big Wind _talk 10:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Support - but would include Google Scholar in the second bullet as many article topics are not just current events and popular culture and will never show in Google News. --Mike Cline (talk) 12:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
- What if we changed it to "Google Books, and at least one of Google News (by default or if a current event) or Google Scholar (if a topic of academic study)."? Jclemens (talk) 14:09, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
  - I agree with the basic idea, but I feel that wording is still a bit too "checklisty", which this proposal is trying to get away from. How about just mentioning that Google Books, News and Scholar are good resources for finding references? Reyk _YO! 14:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
    - How would you propose to reword the sentence that begins "the minimum expected is..." to encompass the third, "core" Google search? Jclemens (talk) 01:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
      - Often once we've read a thread up to a certain point, we don't see a new addition that is not added in normal thread order... I added a second section containing revision just below the original post that addresses a bunch of the suggestions here, including adding Google Scholar and making it less "checklisty".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't feel especially strongly about some of the changes, but overall I think it an improvement and therefore I both support the proposal and thank Fuhghettaboutit for going to the trouble of writing this up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Support There is nothing in the changes and additional language that I am opposed to, as it all correctly describes community practice. The checklist, while a bit extensive, still contains good editing advice for any newbie to Wikipedia. Them From Space 23:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
This is all very long, complicated and potentially discouraging to anyone who sees an article that they feels doesn't belong - in effect in an attempt to avoid biting editors who create unreferenced, poor quality articles (which may or may not be salvagable), this change will instead bite those who attempt to nominate articles and will act to discourage new or inexperienced editors for particpating in AFD. Certainly it would discourage me, and I'm not inexperienced - I don't know if this would be a good thing.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:08, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that Fuhghettaboutit is right to flag that BEFORE could do with a rewrite, and this is a great start. I don't think, however, that adding a weight of text to the list is the right approach. A lot of clarity has been lost, and the weight of text is such that it may not even be read to start with. I would suggest that the appended text is placed after the list, and that "4. Before nominating due to sourcing or notability concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources don't exist." is restored to the list. A footnote attached to that point could then lead to an abbreviated version of Fuhghettaboutit's text.

I think we should look into the order of the list. The deletion policy should be first - it all stems from there. The list of guidelines and policies should be moved up to point two. Fuhghettaboutit's point 13 is not something you do before nominating, but when you have already imitated a nomination, so that would go below the list, as it does now.

Mmmm. I'll look into amending some of Fuhghettaboutit's suggestions and post here. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I had the same thought about #4 until I realized that the first five bullet points are meant to be part of the new BEFORE. They are more detailed and more pointful than the one-sentence version of #4. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Before nominating an article for deletion

Shortcuts

WP:BEFORE
WP:BEGIN

Before nominating an article for deletion:-

A) Please read and understand the following policies and guidelines

The Wikipedia deletion policy, which explains valid grounds for deletion as well as alternatives to deletion and the various deletion processes
The main four guidelines and policies that inform deletion discussions: notability (WP:N), verifiability (WP:V), reliable sources (WP:RS), and what Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT)
Subject specific notability guidelines, which can be found at Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines, with further related essays at Category:Wikipedia notability. Common outcomes may be checked to see if other articles on a specific topic tend to be kept or deleted after an AfD discussion

B) Please carry out the following checks

Confirm that the article does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion or proposed deletion.
If there are verifiability, notability or other sourcing concerns, take reasonable steps to search for reliable sources. (See "Sourcing search" below)
Review the article's history to check for potential vandalism or poor editing.
Read the article's talk page for previous nominations and/or that your objections haven't already been dealt with.
Check "What links here" in the article's sidebar, to see how the page is used and referenced within Wikipedia.
Check if there are interlanguage links, also in the sidebar, which may lead to more developed and better sourced articles.

C) Be aware that some pages should be improved rather than deleted

If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD.
If the article was recently created, please consider allowing the contributors more time to develop the article.
If an article has issues try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page, with the main contributors, or an associated WikiProject, and/or adding a cleanup tag, such as {{notability}}, {{hoax}}, {{original research}}, {{unencyclopedic}}, or {{advert}}; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it.
If the topic is not important enough to merit an article on its own, consider merging or redirecting to an existing article.

D) Sourcing search

The minimum search expected is a Google Books search and a Google News archive search; Google Scholar is suggested for academic subjects. Such searches should in most cases take only a minute or two to perform.
If you find a lack of sources, you've completed basic due diligence before nominating. However, if a quick search does find sources, this does not always mean an AfD on a sourcing basis is unwarranted. If you spend more time examining the sources, and determine that they are insufficient, e.g., because they only contain passing mention of the topic, then an AfD nomination may be still be appropriate.
In the event you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination. Instead, you should consider citing the sources, using the advice in Wikipedia:How to cite sources, or at minimum apply an appropriate template to the page that flags the sourcing concern. Common templates include {{unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{third-party}}, {{primary sources}} and {{one source}}. For a more complete list see WP:CTT.

OK. After playing around with that I've ended up with the same amount of words. It needs reducing further. I've essentially overhauled the links so that less useful pages are dropped, and more essential ones are added. I've organised the list into sets so there is more logic and cohesion to it. Even though I removed some duplication and wordage, I added links to pages so it's a swings and roundabouts situation. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 20:50, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I've trimmed back and removed some duplication. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 21:11, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Great job condensing it down to something workable! I tweaked three things: 1) Swapped sections D and E: I believe the sourcing comes both logically and chronologically before the miscellaneous advice. 2) I changed "could" to "should" in the heading for C: I believe that accurately reflects the sentiment of WP:ATD, and 3) I fixed a typo. :-) Further enhancements welcome! Jclemens (talk) 04:31, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Swapping D and E makes sense. It was "should" originally, and I changed it to "could" with some hesitation. "Should" implies an obligation, while "could" implies a possibility. Personally, as I am a volunteer, I dislike it when people attempt to impose obligations on me, though I react positively to being offered possibilities. There is actually no obligation to improve any article - that is something we do by choice. However, I understand the thinking that given the choice of deleting an article or improving it, it is better to improve, so perhaps "should" is more appropriate. And, yes, further enhancements welcome. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 11:08, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I changed it to "should", not "you should", or even "one should". To quote the governing policy, WP:ATD: "If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion" (my emphasis) If "should" is in the policy there, why not here? Should expresses an outcome desired, not an obligation on any particular editor. Jclemens (talk) 14:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

"Should expresses an outcome desired". Yes, that makes sense. Anyway, to make it clear, I agree with should over could. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 08:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

A step in the right direction, but some comments and suggestions for consolidation:

I don't E is necessary in BEFORE, as we are essentially at AFD when we get there; it should be moved elsewhere.
D is sort of redundant to parts of B. D2 doesn't really explain anything else that one shouldn't already know.
I would move the last part of section B to the first; especially with stuff such as copyright violations (which should be deleted), even if notability is established, you would still need to start over and rewrite it so that it doesn't plagiarize or violate anyone's copyright. Same applies for pure spam pages, attack pages, and pages created with the sole intent to disrupt. –MuZemike 22:14, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that Speedy takes precedence. Done. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that E) belongs in Wikipedia:Guide to deletion rather than in BEFORE. Done. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Expanding on the sourcing advice was a primary motivation for this overhaul. It is generally agreed that sourcing issues are a significant proportion of reasons for nominating an article at AfD, and there is some agreement that providing more advice to people on how to check sources might encourage the improvement of articles rather than their nomination for deletion. There has been concern raised, however, in a recent discussion, that simply stating that sources are not required by policy would lead to a discouragement to raise appropriate sourcing concerns, and/or a feeling that not sourcing articles is approved. Some expanded explanation is seen as appropriate. It is the nature of that expanded explanation that we are now working on. How would you word D2? D2 is dealing with the quality and significant coverage aspect of the sources - something that can lead to an article being deleted, but often overlooked not just at nomination, but also during AfD discussions. Sometimes people are either not aware or overlook that a trivial mention is not enough to establish notability. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

This rewrite of my rewrite misses the whole point; re-lumps the search check together with others and takes out the language, separate formatting and primary placement of sourcing to unpriortize it again.Fuhghettaboutit (talk) --22:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping that we were building on your suggestions and improvement. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

But Silktork, the main feature of the rewrite was to completely separate out sourcing from the rest of the pack, saying it first, in a separated out section, with separate formatting, and saying it is the "most important thing you should do before..."—all intended to make sure that if a person reads nothing else but the first sentence, they are informed of the one thing that is the chief problem we see with nominations; what people actually fail to do that wastes community time; what gets them in trouble with bad nominations. You have used some of the language, but your rewrite undoes all of the features that were meant to prioritize "what we really expect before nominating".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for delay in response, I've been in France with limited internet access. I think some very positive things have come out of your initial suggestions, and there is consensus for the developments. I note that you have ongoing concerns, and I feel it would be appropriate to look into addressing those (I suggest by an examination of the logs of past AfDs to see what the main nomination problems are); though in the meantime it would be a shame to hold back on implementing the improvements so far. What I suggest is that we update WP:Before with the latest development, and continue to examine it and amend it as appropriate. We can work from the amended version better than the current version, as the amended version will carry the improvements we've all worked on. I will action that now, and start a fresh discussion below on how to improve it further in line with your concerns. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Deletion sorting proposal

Deletion sorting
Egypt - sorted by Example (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Military - sorted by Example (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC) People - sorted by Example (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello all. I would like to propose an idea regarding the deletion sorting system. Firstly, a thank you for all those users who relentlessly keep our discussions meticulously sorted. Now, while it is important that sorted discussions are labeled as such to avoid double-sorting by other users, I think we may be able to label the discussions in a less obtrusive manner. In its current form, these labels seem to unnecessarily break up the discussion, especially when several are added (see example). It would not be difficult, I think, to simply place these sorting tags in a small floating box (see right) or a collapsible table by modifying Template:Deletion sorting. What are your thoughts about some type of change in general? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 13:47, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Support this or any change from the current system, which sucks. I agree that the current system breaks up the substantive conversation unneccesarily, and segregating these notices, which are pretty meta to the actual discussion, is a Good Thing. --Jayron32 01:20, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Previous proposal and discussion at WT:Articles for deletion/Archive 60#New format. Flatscan (talk) 04:31, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I believe our most active deletion sorters use User:John Vandenberg/Deletion sorting tool. It would be very important for this to be included in the change if this goes into affect. Jujutacular ^talk 04:45, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

After looking it over, it seems that User:John Vandenberg/delsort.js uses {{subst:delsort}}, meaning we'd only have to modify the template. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 12:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

While I appreciate the sentiment, the delsorting tags do not "break up" the discussion, any more than not sorting by support or oppose. The deletion sorting discussion tags show roughly WHEN, chronologically, the DELSORT'ing took place. This is important: if DELSORTing happened early, then the discussion has been well advertized and probably need not be relisted, while a late DELSORTing accompanying poor participation would tend to support the appropriateness of relisting. There are other examples, but that should be enough of an example to illustrate why I support maintaining DELSORT and similar tags chronologically within the discussion flow. Jclemens (talk) 05:10, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
- Was that an intended effect or a side effect? Night of the Big Wind _talk 09:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  - Is that relevant? Many of our processes evolved organically, and emergent behavior can be as or more valuable than the designed behavior. Jclemens (talk) 17:56, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
    - - It is just a question. Nothing more. Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:24, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
        Well, the answer is... I don't know. To the best of my memory, DELSORT'ing was going on before I started participating in AfD's 3+ years ago. Jclemens (talk) 04:10, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
    - Like Jclemens, I appreciate the fact that the delsort entries indicate approximately when the delsort listings were made. This information is helpful in evaluating the progress of a discussion. --Orlady (talk) 18:05, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Maybe the bigger question here is, how valuable really is deletion sorting? I find it mildly intriguing that the page views of Delsort:Delaware are only some 250 less than that of Delsort:People, considering Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/People is updated nearly 130 times as frequently (compare revision count: 1, 2). Moreover though, do we get nearly as much out of deletion sorting as we put in? Is it a profitable system; does the time spent sorting outweigh the time spent using the result, noting that we already have several categories such as Category:AfD debates (Biographical) automatically in place? Therein, I suppose, lies the question of how much space delsort tags deserve. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 22:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
- I find deletion sorting very valuable. I have found that it's easier for me to comment on AfDs where I at least have some knowledge of the subject in question. I would estimate that 90% of the AfDs I vote (or "!vote") in are because they were sorted into the Australian or sportspeople delsorting pages. If we didn't delsort, I personally would contribute to a lot less AfDs. I think the same could easily be said of a lot of people, because I see quite a few regulars at either Australia or sportspeople, who comment frequently, but if I venture out into the big wide world of daily AfD logs, it shows that they are only commenting on discussions that have been sorted into their area of interest/expertise. Just as an FYI, I think People was a poor example because it is far too broad, which is the reason that users don't view it all that often. Jenks24 (talk) 04:05, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  - I agree. I wouldn't ever use delsort people, but I do use fictional elements, science fiction, religion, and other areas that align with my interests and expertise. Jclemens (talk) 04:10, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
    - This is understandable. I am comforted to know that deletion sorting is at least being used by some users. Checking the data, however, delsort:fictional elements has only 6 more views in the last month than delsort:people, while delsort:sportspeople has over 100 less. My concern is that the process spends more time than it saves, but admittedly, this would be nearly impossible to prove. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 13:50, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Support I also find it a little awkward because I prefer to see responses to comments like this:

Keep because this source covers the subject in-depth. --User1

No it doesn't. However, the possibilities are endless, and that is kind of awesome. --User2

As opposed to this:

Keep because this source covers the subject in-depth.--User1

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Awesome-related deletion discussions. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 04:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Funky-related deletion discussions. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 04:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

No it doesn't. However, the possibilities are endless, and that is kind of awesome.--User2

So I think putting a separate box somewhere else would be helpful. To respond to the concerns that DelSorting may be not useful, I just received a message that someone helped keep an AfD because they were notified through DelSorting, so I think it does help bring attention to them. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 04:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I want to see when items get put into various categories, as it does help in grokking the way the arguments emerge, and from where. Don't think that it breaks up the flow at all. So, that's "oppose" from me to additional overhead. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 04:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget you can also follow AfDes with Article Alerts, conveniently sorted by WikiProjects. </shameless plug> — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 14:34, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

- Yeah. Just tag the talk page with the relevant WikiProject Banners, and deletion discussions automatically gets reported directly to the relevant WikiProjects. It covers a lot more than AFD too. PRODs, MFD, TFD, etc.... are all covered. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:48, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Formatting change

What if we formatted {{delsort}}s to look something like this example? From above, some users feel that the current system inconveniently breaks up the discussion, while others find it very helpful to see how the discussion's mood has changed since sorting occurred. By floating the {{delsort}} everybody wins. Your thoughts? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 19:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Support Sorry, guess I missed this suggestion. I think it looks good! It's non-invasive and addresses my concern about the old delsort tags interrupting discussion. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 02:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

BEFORE updated - what further improvements?

Following the discussion above, the amendments have now been actioned. There is still a concern that there is not enough attention paid to addressing the problem of nominations which are due to inadequate research on sourcing. I think there are several aspects to this concern:

The question that, are inadequate sourcing nominations really the main problem? Would it be worth conducting some research on past AfDs to confirm what the main problems are?
Is BEFORE the only, or best solution to problem nominations (be they inadequate sourcing or something else)?
As sourcing is a significant part of the AfD process, is there anything else we can do to assist in getting people to look for sources before, during and after an AfD?
What further improvements can we make to BEFORE?

I'm going to pick two logs from earlier this year and examine those nominations which closed early and which closed as keep, and see what emerges. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 10:15, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Did you also take in account the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Different opinion? I guess not, because the concerns I table there are not resolved.

I suggested the following addition (controversial!!!!): "Articles that are at least 21 days old and still give no hint of nobility in the article, can be nominated for deletion."

In my opinion and experience on the Dutch Wikipedia, articles that are at least three weeks old and are still giving no hint of nobility, will never be improved by the original author. (In fact: that is already the case after one week.) That means that the burden of improving the article will be put on the shoulders of rather random editors. In my opinion it is unfair when an author creates a sloppy article and then dumps it at the orphanage in the hope somebody will adopt it. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't care if articles are improved by the original author. We care whether the could be improved by anyone. The English Wikipedia has far more active editors than the Dutch Wikipedia. We do not have to rely on the original author to do everything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

And who is gonna do that? Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:35, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Especially for you, WhatamIdoing: Sichuan Food (restaurant) Have fun. Absolutely valid article according to WP:BEFORE. Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:09, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The first version you created was an CSD A7 candidate. I could create an article that says "Havana is a Cuban restaurant in Atlanta" and repeat for every single restaurant up and down Buford Highway and they would all be deleted if that's all I said about them, no AFD or WP:BEFORE required. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If there are verifiability, notability or other sourcing concerns, take reasonable steps to search for reliable sources. (See "Sourcing search" below) Night of the Big Wind _talk 02:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Nope, completely irrelevant. WP:BEFORE is not a deletion process, nor it is applicable to all deletion mechanisms. It is a description of what should be done before taking an article to articles for deletion. The article was a speedy deletion candidate, not an AfD candidate, and it met the criterion it was deleted under.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

So in fact you agree with my stance that an article that shows no sign of notability can be removed. Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:56, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

No. You're conflating completely different things. AfD and the CSD are different things. The criteria for speedy deletion define the bases under which we can delete an article immediately, based on its content alone. AfD is for things that do not meet any of the CSD. At AfD we consider deletion on the merits of the subject, not on the merits of the content. I know you wish that wasn't the case, but it is, pursuant to long-standing policy with bedrock consensus. A large portion of AfDs, for example, are on the basis of WP:V and WP:N. That is where the sourcing issues play out. Both policies, which have been debated and hammered out over many years, explicitly provide that the question they seek the answer to (for different purposes) is whether reliable sources exist, not whether sources are present. WP:BEFORE is not a content inclusion policy like these. It is a behavioral guideline that says on a meta level "when you are going to make a nomination on the basis of notability or verifiability, since those policies do not require sources to be present or to exist, you are wasting everyone's time if you make a nomination on the basis of these policies but don't bother to do a simple check for sources; you are passing the buck and making a nomination that cannot succeed; how little consideration do you have for the encyclopedia and your fellow editors that you would waste their time in this manner draining valuable resources like this?"--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:34, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

LOL, twisting and turning to avoid admitting that you are wrong. Okay, Sichuan Food (restaurant) was a lousy article, delibarately made to expose the strange effects from WP:BEFORE. According to WPB it was a valid article, because you can find the sources that proof that it is/was a very notable restaurant quite easy on the internet (and on Wikipedia). The real article, that clearly proofs that the restaurant is notable, can be found here. Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

That certainly quells further discussion (why would I possible waste my breath, given that response). I get that you don't understand, and now I see that you won't or can't understand. I will say one thing though: When numerous people tell you you are wrong about something where you are the sole voice for some position, it's wise to not only consider whether you might in fact be wrong, but whether you should at least drop the stick. That is you, here, now, per this and prior discussions on the same topic. -Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:55, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

My unchanged stance in this is still that articles that don't show any notability in the article itself should be eligable for removal. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

And as has been explained to you numerous times, that is not a WP:BEFORE issue, it is a stance addressed to WP:N, which says "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject... The absence of citations in an article (as distinct from the non-existence of sources) does not indicate that the subject is not notable." If you have a problem with the policy, go there and make a sound argument for change.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:45, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Then why on earth is the research demand in WP:BEFORE, as those articles most likely would have fallen for the speedy deletion criteria or fail WP:N?? The research is in fact covered elsewhere. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:45, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Because our job is to write an encyclopedia, not to play games. There are a ton of things that are neither adequately sourced nor eligible for speedy deletion which, though deficient, add value to the encyclopedia. If you think something deserves to be deleted entirely such that no one but administrators can see it and improve it, then do what the community expects to demonstrate there's no easily added sources. Jclemens (talk) 01:55, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I really wish you'd actually read all these policy and project pages. It kind of behooves you when you speak about them yet obviously do so without knowing what they say or how they apply. WP:CSD is a deletion policy. It defines what we can delete without discussion, i.e., not on the merits. Go read it. It does not allow deletion of anything for being non-notable. It does have two notability-related criteria: A7 and A9, the former being the main one. A7 is for article topics that don't even credibly assert the importance of the subject. It applies only to sharply-defined topics as well, not just anything—real people, individual animals, organizations (but not schools) and web content only. Anything not meeting this list cannot be deleted speedily. If a prod is not applicable then the only place remaining is AfD, where we consider deletion on the merits of various policies and often WP:N. WP:N has a definition. That definition expressly states notability is met by sources existing, not sourcing being present (same with WP:V). So once again, if you have a problem with the policies, take it up with the policies.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:19, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like I have to adopt the policy Wikipedia:Ignore all rules in a few cases. All in the best interest of Wikipedia. Don't worry, it will only be a few cases I have to use this. Most (I guess at least 95%) of my nominations will follow the rulebook. Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:33, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm looking at logs Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 July 1 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 June 1 and listing at: User:SilkTork/Cambridge. Both logs are fairly similar - 75/73 noms; 44/46 deletes; 12/17 keeps, etc. On the assumption that a delete/merge/redirect result shows an appropriate nom, it appears that people get it right most of the time. The July 1 log has 11 "no consensus" results, which is rather high. A number of those had been relisted twice, which was roughly in line with this discussion, though some had not been. The 10 "speedies" across the two logs suggest a cause for concern as they indicate inappropriate noms - though these include incomplete noms, mistakes, or disruptive behaviour which may be beyond what BEFORE can deal with. However, it may be worth looking more closely into "speedies" to see what we can do to cut down on the amount of inappropriate noms.

The "keeps" are the ones that are most pertinent for the view of should we highlight sourcing more prominently in BEFORE, as a "keep" might indicate an inappropriate nom made for sourcing concerns. While there were a variety of reasons given for the noms, and a good number seemed appropriate and led to active discussion, there were a few which could be classed as sourcing concerns which could have been resolved by an active source search beforehand. What is particularly interesting me is that in a number of those AfDs it was discussed that there were sources available, but the sources were not added to the articles.

I wonder if a number of editors find adding sources a little off-putting. In GA and FA nominations there are some reviewers who make fairly demanding and unnecessary requests for formatting of cites. While it's helpful to be neat and consistent, the main point is getting the cite into the article, and into the right place. For that purpose a bare url link to the website, or the name of the book and author, placed within <ref> </ref> brackets by the applicable sentence or paragraph is enough. Someone else who is good at / enjoys formatting can tidy up later. At the moment in BEFORE we link to Wikipedia:Citing sources, which is nearly 7,000 words, and is not easy to understand. The page Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners is easier, but even that doesn't give an easy example of how to get a website reference into an article. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 00:58, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Another issue is that you sometimes have a situation where an article is either unsourced or none of the sources are supersources but a google news search shows that enough "supersources" exist to satisfy WP:N. However, none of them are needed to cite anything currently in the article. In a case like this should it be necessary to find a way to shoehorn them into the article? --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLUE and WP:NOTBLUE have different views on this. I am in the NOTBLUE camp. I feel that we assume too much what others should know. Readers of Wikipedia come from varying cultures and have various levels of knowledge and experience. Even though we share a common language, people from the UK and the USA still manage to confuse each other. I live in Rochester, Kent and once almost made a booking for a conference for 25 people at the Holiday Inn near Rochester Airport when what I wanted was to book it at the Holiday Inn near Rochester Airport. It was only when the person on the phone gave me the price in dollars did I realise the mistake! To have a Holiday Inn next to a Rochester Airport in both the USA and UK is just one way that we can make errors. I assumed that there would only be one such hotel so I did a Google search for "holiday inn rochester airport". I wasn't aware of an American Rochester Airport. Just because we cannot see the need for citing something, doesn't mean there isn't a need. The basic facts in any article should have come from reliable source, and so the sources can be cited. If they came from off the top of someone's head, then that person has likely made some mistakes, and the basic facts need checking and citing. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 11:18, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Google News Archive

Up until a week ago the Google News Archive was a marvelous way to search for references. Now all of a sudden I can't get at the homepage, just "advanced search" which seems to miss a lot of material. According to Google News Archive "On August 14, 2011 without any notice, Google made the News Archives home page unavailable. Apparently, the service has been merged with Google News."

The link that comes automatically with an AfD discussion still seems to work, but trying to get at the archive directly has gotten both cumbersome and unreliable. Any idea what we can use instead, if we want to search for sources on a subject? --MelanieN (talk) 03:30, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

When doing a Google News search select "archives" in the left hand bar. jorgenev 03:36, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see. That does seem to give me a better result than the cumbersome Google News Archive Search I was trying to use. Thank you. --MelanieN (talk) 03:50, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmm strange. Maybe it's something to do with a cookie on your computer? When I search I get the archive link in the left hand sidebar.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)

Google does a lot of live A/B testing constantly. It is possible that some people are seeing different UIs on google news simultaneously. Protonk (talk) 04:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I've had to give up on the buggy "Google News Advance search" as it is broken and not yet fixed. (See realated discussion HERE). And in doing the suggested regular Google News search as instructed above bu User:Jorgenev with with both IE7 and Google Chrome, I have no "archives" option in the left hand bar. It has evaporated as Google has apparently decided it is more cost effective for them to have readers stroll through the perhaps thousands of regular g-hits on a subject, and thus be exposed to the many accompanying ads. Sigh. Darn accountants.
The Quandary is that I have now been seeing many well meant and honest assetions at AFD where someone would state "I have found no sources using a deligent Google News search". If the news archive search engine is broken, how can anyone use its lack of functionality as a reason to declare that no news sources exist? In the discussion I listed I explained how and even when armed with date, source, and article author, the advanced serch fails. While I have myself been willing to use a regular g-search and go page-by-page-by-page and item-by-item-by-item in searching for sources, to require others spend as much time arduously looking for sources page-by-page-by-page and item-by-item-by-item, will be seen as a bit of a burden. What can we do to adress the true but now flawed argument "I found no sources using a Google News search"?? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 20:20, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I followed your comment above and found the article you were looking for (the 1989) review via the news.google search term, ""Jeffrey Sanzel"+"Theater" author:Leah author:D. author:Frank", but only after hitting the left-hand column "Archive" link.[15] It looks like within the advanced search of news.google itself, while there is the time parameter this applies to when it was added to google's db, not when it was published (which can be far different). The only way to spell out the time is to hit the clarifiers on the left column after doing the initial search. (ok, to be fair, there's the start and end year parameters in the URL in the above ex. link, but they're not ones set via the advanced search interface). Thus, to AFD, it is important that users don't just type in the search terms at news.google and say "oh, no hits, therefore no articles", but instead have to hit the Archive button to look through those. --MASEM (t) 20:36, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I already had the article, and used it as an example of advance serach has failed me. I suppose then that my problem is that I do not find an "archives" link when doing the search as you described above. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:02, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I am highly reliant on GNews searches and it seems obvious to me that you always need to use the archives search and not just the latest news search. As for AFDs, these use the archive search by default if you click on the news search given automatically by the {{Find sources}} banner added at the top of standardly formatted discussion pages. Fæ (talk) 20:44, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Me too... but I no longer have a "archive link" on any google news search. For example, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeffrey Sanzel I had originally found numerous sources, both scanned and web pages, when using the news parameter of (Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL). But when trying it just now (PC with WinXP and IE7), I find nothing,[16] and there was no arhcive link on that news search page. Is my settings or is it my browsers? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:02, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
My browser. It's an IIE7 problem. Archive shows up with Mozila (I hate Mozilla) and Chrome (edit screen clunky). As much as I hate too, I'll update to IE8 and see if that cures it for me. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:07, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Was about to say, I just tried Chrome and IE9 and its there. Mind you, Google does push out updates to its service to registered users without warning as part of beta testing and that could have been part of it... but I can't see them getting rid of archive searching... --MASEM (t) 21:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Just did a "repair" of IE7 and it's still absent with that one. Now I will install IE8 and see. IE9 is for Vista or Win7, so I'll be crossing my fingers. I'd hate to slow up my machine by having to install Win7, as it is a resource hog (though not as much as is Vista). I'll be reporting back. I'm an admitted PC geek, and just hate it when things are taken away from me by the vagaries and avarice of acountants. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Whew Okay... it's there with IE8. Now my own odd question at certain AFDs will be to ask another editor if they have themselves upgraded, as IE7 gives a false negative when performing a google news search. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 22:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC).
I wonder if it would be wise to have a page WP:CHECKYOURBROWSER to describe known issues with certain browsers and WP and related fuctions... --MASEM (t) 22:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Brilliant idea Where can such a request be made? While I have no problem writing the occasional essay, as the discussion above shows, I am not versed in browser issues.. specially as there are soooo many available for editors, and some chose one over another for its speed or utility. . Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 22:47, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Some light relief

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of guests on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Facepalm Black Kite (t) (c) 02:41, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I will admit to giggling at this. Although, that my have just been my, uh, altered state of mind. jorgenev 03:22, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

About the large number of SPAs who frequent AfDs

In a recent usertalk discussion I raised the issue of substantial number of low-edit-count users who show up in deletion discussions. I'm wondering if a sensible solution might make this less likely. I'm all about encouraging newbies, but this looks more like sustained blatant socking than mere coincidence. Am I way off the mark? Are there solutions that might work? Is this a frequently raised subject? BusterD (talk) 16:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Newbie editors are encouraged to participate in AFD discussions. The AFD tag states to everyone, including readers who don't edit: "Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page." If an AFD discussion only has a few entries from new editors, then there is no problem. If they make good coherent arguments, the contribution is positive. If there are many such comments, then that may be an indication of sockpuppetry. At that point we usually tag the discussion with {{Not a ballot}} informing people that the discussion is not a vote where ballott stuffing will work, and such "votes" are usually disregarded by the closing administrator. The problem pops up with some regularity, but I feel that our current processes are capable of handling them. Sjakkalle (Check!) 17:21, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks. I didn't know what was normal, but on a fair percentage of processes I'm seeing a succession of pretty obvious socks trying to move the discussion. It happens especially when there's some clear conflict of interest, like an autobio or promotion. I originally was curious whether there was some slang for the subset of user accounts and ips, but I guess the technical term (as a formal statement) is less likely to provoke unnecessary negative response. As it turns out, some COI editors can turn out to be pretty nice wikipedians. I know I made early mistakes as an editor, before I better understood the community and the process. BusterD (talk) 17:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
- For instance, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Turner Author/Performer — frankie (talk) 14:38, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of recent articles for creation

Looking over the AfC submissions I've accepted in the past I noticed that a couple were deleted shortly after being moved to mainspace (from the project space, where AfC submissions are stored). WP:GD advises that "the good-faith creator and any main contributors" of AfDs be notified that the deletion discussion is taking place, and I think AfC reviewers ought to be considered in that group. Even if they haven't contributed much content to the article and might not have much of a direct stake in it (and therefore probably won't have it on their watchlist), they did previously assess it in much the same way as participants in an AfD discussion, and will presumably have some arguments in favour of keeping it. The AfC reviewer who accepted the article will shows up in the history as moving it from Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation/Article X to Article X, and more often than not some minor edits/cleanup after that (for example, here's one I did earlier).

So, if people regularly PRODing articles would bear that in mind I and I'm sure the other people who regularly review at AfC would appreciate it. Or perhaps an explicit reminder could be added to WP:GD? We are expecting that AfC will soon be handling a greater volume of articles as a result of WP:ACTRIAL. Thanks. joe•roe^t•c 11:40, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Fell through the cracks....

Unfortunately, the AFD formatting was corrupt from its July 30 nomination one month ago, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Lloyd Lewis apparently fell through the cracks.[17] No action for over 2 weeks due to the malformed AFD, but on August 17, one editor !voted delete,[18] For me, I swung by on August 30, and while surprised to find a 30-day-old nomination, took a quick look at the award nominations the fellow had,[19] stated that I felt he met WP:ANYBIO,[20] and then went to the article to do some expansion and sourcing so as to validate my opinion.[21] After being motified of improvements,[22] the delete !vote reversed himself,[23] and the nominator has not yet responded to the notification.[24] I suppose it is lucky that the AFd was malformed, else I might not have found it when I did.

But here's the thing... I returned to the AFD and tried to fix its broken formatting,[25] but do not know if my fixes were truly fixes. Could someone check to see if it is now correct? Or, if the point is now moot, could someone perhaps close this 30-day-old AFD? Thanks. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 19:49, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I looked at the AFD and closed it as keep. GB fan please review my editing 20:00, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Appreciated. Being involved, I could not do so myself. Thanks, Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:12, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Honeyford

I got a strange error (nr. 231???) while processing this deletion request. So, did Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Honeyford come through correctly and everywhere where it is supposed to be? Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:13, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be transcluded into the log for the day. I'll do that. Protonk (talk) 01:48, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Done. here Protonk (talk) 01:49, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks! Night of the Big Wind _talk 03:53, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Dominant group (XXXX) articles snowing delete?

Most of those seem to be snowing, can we get an admin to put them out of their misery? Not even the creator is commenting "keep" and he removed all the notification from his talk page so certainly knows the AfDs are going on, and participate in the (art) one... so takers?--Cerejota (talk) 23:01, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

List "mostly advertising" as a reason for deletion

In a recent (yesterday/today "Does this mean what I think? A Wikimarketing firm?") discussion at the pump, comments are that there's no statement that an article can be deleted for being mostly advertising/ spam. A poster-child case is where notability looks likely, but the article is all advertising, with a few encyclopedic factoids mixed into the sales material. Rewriting it would require hours of work by a volunteer. My suggestion is to list this under the criteria for deletion. North8000 (talk) 16:50, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

If it can be fixed, it should be fixed, not deleted. The case you're describing can always be fixed. Also, rewriting rarely takes hours, as it's mostly done by removing large portions of text. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:13, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

It's already there - Speedy deletion criteria G11 ("Pages that are exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic."). Black Kite (t) (c) 17:16, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

The discussion at the VP made most of the points I would make here; I see nothing wrong with quick and somewhat ruthless gardening to reduce an advertorial down to a neutral stub rather than deletion. Such bold trimming is the work of minutes rather than hours though I would also leave some encouraging help on the creator's page which fosters dialogue rather than reverts. See User:Fæ/help/whyn as an example. --Fæ (talk) 17:24, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

(Edit conflict, written prior to the last post)

Black Kite, yes, but it's not clear that speedy deletion criteria apply to AFD. And this article makes it appear that they don't.

Lifebaka, how 'bout a real world example Wedbush Securities Looks like it was written by a wikimarketing firm. Volunteers just deleted the most spammy 3/4 of the article. The firm is notable. The remaining material is nearly all self-descriptive with promotional language. Is the only path forward for a volunteer to re-write it? North8000 (talk) 17:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't "written" by a wikimarketing firm, it was "hijacked" by one. The article was a stub before User:Wikimktg3 "spammed it up". If this is noticed early then the best thing to do is block the hijacker and revert to the last version before he touched it. In the case if Wedbush Securities, it was eventually fixed by here compliant editors. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:04, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I would be more concerned that practically the whole article is closely paraphrased from Wedbush's own website and this one. I would consider stripping it back to a stub (i.e. the first paragraph). Black Kite (t) (c) 17:43, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

In a word, yes. If the company is notable, content issues are explicitly not reasons to delete it via a deletion discussion. Considering that it doesn't take me or others all that long to cut it back to a reasonable short article or stub, I don't see what the big deal is. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with most of the respondents here. The best route (one which I take with these sorts of articles at WP:REFUND) is stubbing them and fixing tone problems. Often the accounts which created the articles never edit again and in other cases some are happy to see their article reworded to be a "neutral" entry (sounds weird but it happens). Only in rare cases (though not unheard of) do they persist in pushing advertising content. In those cases editing is still the best route but may not be the most practical route. As black kite says, exclusively promotional pages can be deleted on site. The rest should be dealt with via normal editing. Protonk (talk) 18:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you everyone. I (and I think other readers) have gained much useful insight (if not total clarity) from the above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:03, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Criteria for speedy deletion to apply to AfD. In fact, often times AfDs are closed early as per CSD (not just SNOW). CSD are not only a method (template then delete), but also a criteria and I for one have successfully argued CSD in XfDs including AfDs. --Cerejota (talk) 23:04, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that what you said is logical. Speedy deletion criteria logically present a higher bar for deletion and so should also be grounds for AFD. But there is certainly no clarity or communication regarding this, and policy seems to say otherwise. (See Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Reasons for deletion) Which is no doubt why it isn't happening. North8000 (talk) 11:48, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Then we need to update the policy for clarity. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of early close XfDs (not just AfDs) under CSD - just as there are speedy keeps and early SNOWs). CSD is simply a criteria for deletion with a bright line, but XfD cannot make an article who meets CSD criteria survive - we are not a democracy.--Cerejota (talk) 22:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I updated the Deletion Policy to make it clear that CSD is reason to delete, I also found this already in place at Wikipedia:Deletion_process#Early_closure "When the nominated page unambiguously falls under at least one of the criteria for speedy deletion, particularly criterion G10 (attack page) or criterion G12 (copyright violation)." I think the wording could be refined and will go ahead and do it, but wanted to make sure that people know CSD is indeed applicable to XfDs.--Cerejota (talk) 03:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Nice. North8000 (talk) 14:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 September 2

I just restored 4 AfD's to the September 2nd log here that were accidentally removed just after their addition. Can someone verify whether there is any additional action needed to ensure these discussions get the requisite amount of visibility? Thanks! VQuakr (talk) 01:40, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Since those AfDs weren't listed under any log for seven days they ought to be listed under today's log instead of being restored to the old log. Hut 8.5 10:29, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Please finish these AFDs

I am here to ask somebody to complete steps two and three of my AFD nominations for John Bradshaw (pastor) and Shawn Boonstra. (As it says on WP:AFDHOW, I have gone ahead and added the template to the pages and my rational on the talk pages so this is my request that someone else complete the process.) Thank you. 75.192.207.68 (talk) 16:56, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Done performed as asked. I used the rationales from the article talkpages that you posted. I suggest you go the to the AfD themselves to confirm the rationales are correct.--Cerejota (talk) 17:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Would someone be so kind as to do the same for Mask (Mugbook)? Thanks. 75.192.15.137 (talk) 03:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Also done. Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Guido Penosi

The debate for this at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Guido Penosi does not appear to be transluded into one of the daily debates lists. Could someone take a look. Thanks. Keith D (talk) 17:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

(re)Listed on today's log page. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:20, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Deletion unjustified

I think the values I've done that Ahad Azam, Niv Antman and Eli Elbaz are normal entries like everyone else and not have to delete them. Take for example the values of Shadi Shaban and Eran Rozenbom that did not erase them and no one has these values discussion. So please do not put the values I presented at the beginning. (talk) 14:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I can't get the damn thing to work, either :-(

I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what.

I want to nominate Mozart: Violin Sonatas K. 301, 304, 376 & 526 for deletion - here was my proposed text:

Back on May 8 2011, using the reasonably common search term Mozart violin sonatas, this article concerning a single CD of four miscellaneous sonatas performed by Hilary Hahn was the first Search suggestion that popped up, rather than the listing I had expected to find. At that time it was then named simply Mozart: Violin Sonatas. To try to avoid this problem I "moved" the page to a new name, adding the specific K. numbers included on the disc. I also left a message on the article's talk page, which has never been responded to. However, even now, as soon as I type in the Search box no more than "Mozart v" this same suggestion continues to pop up as first choice.

The article is nothing but a bare track listing, containing no discussion whatever, or any other kind of useful information -- simply the track names, without even including their timings. It may or may not be a 2005 recording as stated; this is more likely to be the release (P) date.

I'm not opposed in principle to having separate articles on individual recordings, but surely there must be some justification for them, in terms of their notability and how informative the discussion is.

Maybe it's just me getting senile, but every combination I've tried just keeps returning a big red warning notice that I'm doing it wrong. Thanks in advance for any help with this. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:13, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The first AfD page doesn't exist, so I'm betting that you forgot to subst: the AfD template. Just add {{subst:afd}} to the top of the page and it should work fine. Cheers. lifebaka++ 12:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

No, the "((subst:afd))" was the first thing I did - that was the easy part; and then I followed the next set of instructions as best I could puzzle them out. As far as I could tell, it wasn't until I tried to preview my discussion above that the thing kept objecting. I did get the AfD box at the top of the article, but removed it since I couldn't complete it. Milkunderwood (talk) 17:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, now I've saved steps as I've gone along, but don't know how to proceed from here. Milkunderwood (talk) 18:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

What I've saved so far doesn't look right, and in any case, I have no idea where it has gone to. ??? Milkunderwood (talk) 18:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sort of hoping that someone will be kind enough to come along behind me and try to clean up the messes I've been leaving behind everywhere. At least now I'm not getting the big red warning notices. The instructions seem to have been written for long-time Wikipedians who know how to interpret them. Sorry about that. Milkunderwood (talk) 18:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed it for you and listed the page on today's log (step 3). Not sure what the original problem was but it's fine now. Hut 8.5 19:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I never did figure out what I was doing wrong, but thanks very much for fixing it. Milkunderwood (talk) 19:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

TWINKLE is very good at simplifying this sort of stuff. Hut 8.5 19:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

You may want to keep a few notes about what seems most difficult. Once you feel confident with the AFD process, it would be good to revisit the guidelines and suggest some improvements based on your experience. Cheers Fæ (talk) 19:44, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

@Hut 8.5: Thanks again. I looked at TWINKLE, but it was Greek to me. What confuses me now is that I did (I thought) list the page on today's log, at the top, but its formatting was all screwy.

@Fæ: You're quite right. This was the only such page I've ever run across so far for deletion. I've generally found that the best way to figure stuff like this out is to find an example and pull up an edit box to see what had been done. Milkunderwood (talk) 20:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime, going now to the Hilary Hahn#Discography page and section, I find three additional such linked pages that are all exactly the same situation: nothing more than bare track listings, with no other details or discussion, that had all been set up years ago and never subsequently updated. All the other entries in the Hahn discography are just simple entries without links to individual articles, but these three pages do exist, and similarly ought to be deleted as being both misleading and useless:

Mendelssohn & Shostakovich Concertos
Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1 / Spohr: Violin Concerto No. 8
Schoenberg: Violin Concerto; Sibelius: Violin Concerto

I admit defeat here. This whole recommend-for-deletion process is extremely complex and time-consuming (unnecessarily so, it seems to me). In any case, so far these other pages have not yet led me astray like the Mozart violin sonatas did, and I'm not going to fool around with them myself. I do very much appreciate all the help I've received, but I'm afraid I just can't deal with the procedures. If anyone else cares to address these other pages, you would be doing innocent interested Wikipedia users a big favor. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:04, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Kleinzach has posted a notice saying that he has now PRODded these other three Hahn albums. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Consolidating 'miscellaneous' AfD categories

Comments would be appreciated at this thread regarding the need for three separate miscellaneous sorting categories. Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 19:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Use of Wikipedia policies as rationales for article deletion or retention

I recently received some messages on my user page from a user (user:T P) whom ~~stated~~ strongly inferred that it's unacceptable to cite Wikipedia policies in any rationales in AfD discussions to retain Wikipedia articles. The user also ~~stated~~ inferred that my votes that cite Wikipedia policies won't be counted. It appears that there is actually significant precedent and consensus in citing Wikipedia policies in AfD discussions.

Clarification - Here's the verbatim message I received:

"I am now ignoring your comments in AFDs that are not based in notability guidelines. Using WP:NOT and WP:ITEXISTS arguments to keep an article will be completely ignored and your !vote discounted. I will give zero weight to those comments from you anymore."

Per WP:AFDFORMAT - "Arguments commonly used to recommend deletion are: "unverifiable" (violates WP:V), "original research" (violates WP:NOR), and "non-notable" in cases where the subject does not meet their respective notability criteria. (In the cases of non-notable biographical articles, it is better to say "does not meet WP:BIO" to avoid insulting the subject.) The accusation "VANITY" should be avoided,^[1] and is not in itself a reason for deletion. The argument "non-neutral point of view" (violates WP:NPOV) is often used, but often such articles can be salvaged, so this is not a very strong reason for deletion either."

Please note that the abbreviations above ~~are~~ used in the WP:AFDFORMAT instructions are policy pages:

Users are authorized to cite Wikipedia policies as rationales for article deletion per WP:AFDFORMAT. Therefore it is only logical that users can refer to Wikipedia policies to counter arguments for deletion. If users cannot cite Wikipedia policies to keep articles, but can do so to nominate and vote for deletion, this would be quite unfair. Under the rationale I was presented with, all nominations and votes for deletion based upon Wikipedia policies should also be ignored, which just isn't the case. I would like to hear from others regarding this matter, to hopefully clarify the matter. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:04, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me as though you've misinterpreted TP's message - from my reading of it, it looks as though he's saying your Keep !votes have not been backed up by policy, and that is why he is disregarding them. I'm not saying I agree with that - but I think you've misrepresented him here; at no point does he suggest that AfD arguments should not be policy-based. Yunshui (talk) 10:13, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - WP:NOT is a Wikipedia policy. The user stated that arguments using WP:NOT will be "completely ignored". The user also stated that "I am now ignoring your comments in AFDs that are not based in notability guidelines". Essentially, the user has stated that comments in AfD's can only be based upon notability guidelines, and that arguments that utilize WP:NOT, a Wikipedia policy, will be entirely ignored. Per WP:AFDFORMAT, Wikipedia policy pages such as WP:NOT are valid to qualify arguments in AfD discussions. Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:49, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I would have used the word 'misrepresented,' probably preceded by 'disingenuously,' and followed by 'and that is completely unacceptable.' Seriously, NA1K, there is no reading whatsoever of what TP said that is congruent with what you have stated s/he said. Your axe-grinding was already tiresome; it is now becoming disruptive. → ROUX ₪ 10:17, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - My intentions in starting this discussion are intended to clarify matters, promote consensus and are in good faith. Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Each and every one of my votes were qualified by actual rationales, but the user is stating that I haven't, and stated that (verbatim), "I am now ignoring your comments in AFDs that are not based in notability guidelines. Using WP:NOT and WP:ITEXISTS arguments to keep an article will be completely ignored and your !vote discounted. I will give zero weight to those comments from you anymore."

I definitely haven't misinterpreted these matters. Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:18, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I can only say "yes, you have". He is clearly saying that any rationales for keeping that are found in WP:NOT] - which is a list of things that are not allowed on WP - will be ignored. This is completely proper. If anyone makes arguments for keeping an article on a basis that it is something useful, but that is on the list of things that WP is not supposed to have, that argument, like all in an AfD contrary to policy, will be ignored. Van Isaac_WS^contribs 01:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Note - To date, I've never used WP:ITEXISTS rationales, that I'm aware of. I search for reliable sources, etc. Regarding list articles, I've used the rationale of WP:NOTDIRECTORY, which is a Wikipedia policy stating that lists should have a narrow focus per the topic. Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:21, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
Note - For clarification purposes, note that WP:NOT is a policy page. Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:23, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

(editconflict)I think TP's point is that your AfD arguments have tended to use arguments based on less relevant guidelines than those of notability. Notability is the key to any Keep !vote, and if you been arguing from other policies which are not appropriate, that's a fair reason to ignore those rationales. Again, I'm not saying that I agree with TP particularly - I haven't waded through all your contribs to check his case, and I don't plan to - I'm just saying that I think you've missed his point. Yunshui (talk) 10:24, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Clarification - Here is the verbatim text that I received on my user page:

"This is a note that because your votes regularly do not adhere to policy as far as actual reasons to keep or delete, I am now ignoring your comments in AFDs that are not based in notability guidelines. Using WP:NOT and WP:ITEXISTS arguments to keep an article will be completely ignored and your !vote discounted. I will give zero weight to those comments from you anymore.--v/r - T P 12:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)"

I am hoping to clarify the matter in this discussion. I disagree with efforts to promote consensus stated above as being "disruptive", as stated by a user above. Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:28, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Northamerica1000 (talk) 10:28, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I am pretty sure TP meant to link you to Wikipedia:But there must be sources!, rather than wp:ITEXISTS, but accidently used the wrong page. The problem is AFDs like this one, where you say Keep because there might be book sources, but don't provide any. Yoenit (talk) 10:57, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - In part, per the example above, I was agreeing with another user's rationale in the AfD. Here's the verbatim text:

"Keep - Perhaps book sources can further qualify notability of this topic. What user TerriersFan stated makes sense, that "African educational establishments generally have a poor Internet presence and time should be given to find local sources to avoid systemic bias." Wikipedia is intended to cover global matters, not just matters that are available on Google searches. Northamerica1000 (talk) 07:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)"

Please refer to the archived AfD for further context. It appears that I should have listed this as a comment, rather than a keep vote. Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:19, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

And this is exactly the point of the "there must be sources" policy. It doesn't matter that there might be something somewhere that supports your argument, if you can't cite it, it doesn't exist. Again, you have a large inherent bias that erroneously losing a notable article is much worse than having a non-notable one. But to the Wikipedia project, they are both equally unacceptable! and this is the one fact that will always undermine all of your proposed changes to policy. The process cannot be biased towards retention or deletion, it must be neutral. The comment above is a perfect example of how you view a possible unjust deletion as being some sort of affront to the integrity of the project, but the rest of us cannot hold that viewpoint. Van Isaac_WS^contribs 01:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

And probably AfD's like this one (used identically e.g. here, where instead of provoding actual reasons (TParis words), you just copy-paste the text of a guideline. Basically, you just state "ISNOTABLE", instead of stating "is notable because of award X, source Y and second source Z" or something similar. Closing admins look at comments that show how a subject meets the policies and guidelines, not comments just stating that it does (or doesn't). Fram (talk) 11:09, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - For context, here is the verbatim text from my vote in the above-stated AfD discussion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alison Styring):

"Keep – The topic passes notability guidelines per WP:BIO, notability for people, specifically the section WP:BASIC, “A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject.” If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability.” Therefore, the topic passes WP:BIO, section WP:BASIC due to the availability of multiple independent sources which demonstrate notability and the manner of which those sources are not comprised of trivial coverage. Northamerica1000 (talk) 14:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)"

In this matter, specific policies were cited to avoid ambiguity in the AfD discussion. If I hadn't been specific, then it would have been unclear which part of WP:BASIC I was referring to. Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I was citing a notability guideline to qualify topic inclusion in Wikipedia. Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:22, 26 September 2011 (UTC) The rationale is that the availability of multiple independent sources demonstrate notability, because the manner of which those sources are not comprised of trivial coverage. Reliable source availability is one of the core principles of topic notability. Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:27, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

There's no real difference between your comment at those AfDs and the argument of WP:ITSNOTABLE. The fact that you quoted the definition of "notable" doesn't make your comment into a valid argument. If you'd said "the subject is notable because coverage in source X meets the requirement of significant coverage in third-party reliable sources" or "the subject is notable because achievement/award Y confers notability" then the closing administrator would have taken your comment into account. Hut 8.5 11:49, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Per the text that I wrote in this AfD ~~that I wrote~~, I made a qualification based upon stated policies and guidelines. The topic does have numerous independent sources that demonstrate notability, as was stated in the rest of the AfD discussion. I was in part referring to examples of reliable sources that were stated in the AfD discussion. Please note the rest of the context of the discussion, rather than just my vote out of context of the discussion. More sources were provided in the discussion. In the future, I'll be even more specific, and copy/paste the sources that others in the discussion mention. Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I made a qualification based upon stated policies and guidelines - you don't get it: the fact that you quoted WP:N doesn't automatically make your argument valid. You shouldn't be copying and pasting any rationale across multiple AfDs, and if you can't be bothered to write an individual rationale then frankly you shouldn't be taking part in the discussion. Hut 8.5 12:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Please note that this discussion is about "Use of Wikipedia policies as rationales for article deletion or retention". Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:44, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - I've seen the use of WP:NOTDIRECTORY used in AfD's as a rationale for article deletion, and WP:NOTDIRECTORY is a Wikipedia policy. It doesn't seem fair that articles can be nominated for deletion and voted for deletion under WP:NOT policy sections such as WP:NOTDIRECTORY, but that stated rationales are to be ignored when in favor of article inclusion. Northamerica1000 (talk) 11:11, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
- My guess is that he linked you to the wrong page here as well, but I not really sure what his intended target was (maybe WP:ITSNOTABLE)? Lets ask him for clarification. Yoenit (talk) 11:20, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment - Please note that this discussion is about "Use of Wikipedia policies as rationales for article deletion or retention". Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:05, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
Please refer discussion regarding analyses of my voting styles to my user talk page, rather than here. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:31, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Please refer to How to discuss an AfD for more context regarding this discussion. Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Basis - Users are authorized to cite Wikipedia policies as rationales for article deletion per WP:AFDFORMAT. Therefore it is only logical that users can refer to Wikipedia policies to counter arguments for deletion. If users cannot cite Wikipedia policies to keep articles, but can do so to nominate and vote for deletion, this would be quite unfair. Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:28, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, WP:ITSNOTABLE. I also later linked him to WP:WIKILAWYER for using misinterpretations of policy as ya'all can clearly read above. The verbiage at WP:AFDFORMAT does not include using WP:NOT as inclusion/notability criteria.--v/r - T P 12:34, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the RFC tag, as this isn't really an RFC. NA1K, it's fairly clear that TP meant that if the nomination references notability, if your keep !vote does not help prove notability it's likely to be ignored. Stop the axe-grinding, stop trying to lawyer, and stop disrupting this page. lifebaka++ 12:36, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Brief examples

Brief examples of WP:NOTDIRECTORY being used as a rationale for deletion:

And an example of my personal use of WP:NOTDIRECTOY, for fairness' sake:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of paleoconservative organizations

Northamerica1000 (talk) 12:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

You don't get it. WP:NOT is valid delete rationale. It is not necessarily valid keep rationale. Can't you see that the above two AFDs are not using it as keep rationale like you are?--v/r - T P 12:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Addition of the data in WP:NOTDIRECTORY to Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates

A brief rationale: To clarify, I have NOT used WP:NOT (the entire page) to qualify article retention. Rather, I used WP:NOTDIRECTORY (and not WP:NOT) to counter article deletion per the available data in Wikipedia guidelines and policies. I don't refer to entire pages of guidelines, such as WP:NOT, as a specific rationale, because it's too ambiguous. I understand your points, although further clarification to demonstrate them more specifically would be appreciated. For example, why is WP:NOTDIRECTORY valid in one argument and invalid in another? If WP:NOTDIRECTORY is valid to delete, then why is it invalid to retain? An analysis that addresses the matter more thoroughly, beyond the brief examples of AfD's I provided above, would likely significantly benefit this discussion. How is one use valid and another use invalid, beyond the brief examples I provided? When a list article is discriminate, with a narrow focus, it's inclusion appears to be warranted per WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Therefore, use of WP:NOTDIRECTORY seems very reasonable as a means to qualify article retention. I understand how WP:NOTDIRECTORY is worded, as in an example of what Wikipedia is not. Perhaps this data should be included in a new guideline page for lists to clarify the matter.

A concern is list articles, particularly those that aren't referenced, or are poorly referenced. For example, many of these articles listed here are unreferenced: List of and lists of, yet they're useful to the encyclopedia. If someone comes along and wants to delete them, are there any rationales to the contrary, or are they just deleted? ~~Creation of a guideline page for list articles seems to be the best solution to this discrepancy.~~ Addition of the data in WP:NOTDIRECTORY to Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates seems to be quite reasonable to avoid these types of problems. Northamerica1000 (talk) 13:51, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is precisely that: what Wikipedia is not. In particular it doesn't specify what Wikipedia is, and thus the fact that something doesn't fail WP:NOT doesn't necessarily mean that it should be included. Hut 8.5 15:07, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

New discussion thread

I've started a new discussion at a more appropriate place. Please refer to: Proposal: Addition of data from WP:NOTDIRECTORY to the Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates guideline page for more information. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 14:13, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Am I the only one who can't currently keep up with this page and the discussion on it? --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:45, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, we have an editor who has made 94 edits to this page in 5 days time, with, um, original methods of indenting, highlighting his own posts, starting RfCs, and so on, but with apparently a problem in taking the time to read and digest all replies to his posts. It may be positive if some people that haven't interacted with Northamerica1000 previously talk to him and guide him a bit in how to be more productive and clear with less edits. I doubt many people are actually reading his walls of text anymore at this point, which is a waste of the energy he spends on Wikipedia. Some friendly mentoring may be beneficial. Fram (talk) 14:49, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, take a quick look at NA1K's contributions and edit count, 15k edits since June (I keep double checking that since it's an astounding rate). Thus far, they seem unwilling to consider that their actions may be disruptive, and immune to requests to slow down or change behaviour, see my attempt here. The most common response to comments posted by others to their talk page entries is deletion without comment. I'm afraid there my be an underlying competence issue here, and I have a gut based theory what that problem might be, but addressing that would be inappropriate. My feeling is a brief block may be in order just to get their attention and engage them in discussion about how they are acting. --Nuujinn (talk) 15:12, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Yep, but as an involved editor I won't be the one handing it out... Fram (talk) 21:01, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I think a block at this point would be over the top. We only block people to prevent them disrupting things, and I don't agree that Northamerica1000's bizarre antics have risen to the level of actual disruption just yet. The copy & paste keep "rationales" on AfDs are merely wrong and irrelevant, and Tom Paris is quite right in saying they have no weight whatsoever, but that is not a blockworthy offense. Northamerica1000's behaviour on this page is slightly more problematic; complaining loudly and incoherently about everything, ignoring or misinterpreting the replies he gets, and then talking over the top of people with endless repetitive wall-of-text manifestos, is annoying and makes it hard to hold a proper conversation, but even this is not actually breaking anything. I think Northamerica1000 needs to understand that this is not the way to air your concerns. Even if you have pertinent points to make, presenting them in the form of unending litanies of drivel while simultaneously making it clear you don't care about or understand anyone else's opinions will not get you a proper hearing. It won't get you blocked, but it will make everyone inwardly groan and hit the Ignore switch when they see you've edited a discussion page. Reyk _YO! 21:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think this is reaching the WP:DEADHORSE state, Northamerica1000 clearly stands alone in his opinion of this matter, regardless of how many WP:TLDR posts he leaves declaring his opinion that there exists a serious problem, no one else seems to share his view. Eventually, he's just going to have to back down... --Jayron32 21:30, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Shooting the messenger isn't going to solve the problem of improper AfD nominations. We now have AfD nominations that openly admit that they haven't looked at the article, and don't know whether or not the article should be deleted. Unscintillating (talk) 01:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

What? Where? That's nearly impossible. Part of the AFD process is tagging the article. You'd have to look at it to even complete step 1. Where are these nominations that havent looked at the articles?--v/r - T P 01:22, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I think Unscintillating is referring to a rash of articles created by a banned user, and now procedurally AfD'd as part of the banning policy. These have attracted a lot of (IMO wrong-headed) speedy keep !votes because the nominator allegedly hasn't presented any arguments for deletion. I cannot stand this kind of bureaucratic posturing; there are clearly times when the normal procedures don't apply. Reyk _YO! 02:30, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

@Unscintillating: Improper AFD nominations happen everyday, and will decrease in frequency not a single bit because of the changes that Northamerica1000 proposes. You can't make people RTFM by making the FM more complex. Or indeed changing it in any way. You can't eliminate the problem of improper AFD nominations; and no evidence has been provided which supports Northamerica1000's supposition that improper nominations lead to deleting articles which should be kept. None whatsoever. He provided two AFDs which resulted in deletion of A7-worthy articles, which doesn't seem to be a strong evidenciary support for a supposedly systemic problem. Even if he could find two articles which had been wrongly deleted by AFD, it still wouldn't represent a systemic problem, it would represent isolated problems which are not going to be corrected by changing the system. There already exists a system for dealing with improperly closed AFDs, it's called WP:DRV, and if someone runs into a deleted article which should be restored, they can take it up at DRV. I don't see where a) we have any evidence for a need of systemic changes of the typed Northamerica1000 seems to be agitating for, merely his repeated and strenuous assertion that such problems exist, or b) how such changes would have any effect on the occasional wrongly deleted article at AFD, which I can freely concede does happen because the process is manned by humans, and humans make mistakes. --Jayron32 03:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

DRV is only for technical issues of improper deletion, eg the closing admin misreading consensus, an improper WP:SPEEDY, etc. If you have a deleted article that should be restored, WP:REFUND is the place to go. Just wanted to make sure that was clear. Deletion Review is emphatically NOT for contesting the consensus decision of an AfD. Van Isaac_WS^contribs 07:42, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

That's not entirely true. WP:DRV can contest an AFD deletion where consensus was clearly delete when new evidence exists to support notability.--v/r - T P 13:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:REFUND for the most part has nothing to do with AFDs. From the REFUND page, "Requests for undeletion is a process intended to assist users in restoring pages that were uncontroversially deleted via proposed deletion, under certain speedy deletion criteria (such as CSD G6), or in articles for deletion debates with little or no participation other than the nominator." If there was a discussion with participation REFUND is not the proper venue. GB fan 13:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

It's the next part of the REFUND page that is appropriate to what we are discussing here, namely "This page [REFUND] is also intended to serve as a central location to request that deleted content be userfied or emailed to you so the content can be improved upon prior to re-insertion into the mainspace, or used elsewhere (you may also make a request directly to one of the administrators listed here). This means that content deleted after discussion—at articles for deletion, categories for discussion, or miscellany for deletion among other XfD processes—may in some cases be provided to you, but such controversial page deletions will not be overturned through this process." That's the process, and it's done at REFUND. Deletion Review, and I quote, is "the process to be used to challenge the outcome of a deletion debate or to review a speedy deletion. Deletion Review is to be used where someone is unable to resolve the issue in discussion with the administrator (or other editor) in question. This should be attempted first – courteously invite the admin to take a second look. Deletion Review is to be used if the closer interpreted the debate incorrectly, or if the speedy deletion was done outside of the criteria established for such deletions. Deletion Review may also be used if significant new information has come to light since a deletion and the information in the deleted article would be useful to write a new article. In the most exceptional cases, posting a message to WP:AN/I may be more appropriate instead. Rapid corrective action can then be taken if the ensuing discussion makes clear it should be. This process should not be used simply because you disagree with a deletion debate's outcome" so there is one case where Deletion Review can be useful for overturning a consensus delete, namely when significant new information has come to light since deletion. Note that this is completely acceptable at REFUND as well, where the deleted article can be moved into your userspace, but REFUND can also be used where you disagree with the AfD outcome! Van Isaac_WS^contribs 10:07, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

NA1K, there are a few editors here who are becoming critical of your tactics. I have limited contact with you, but as a new-ish editor you should know that editors have previously gotten into trouble for doing a large volume of edits that are likely to be contested, and large volumes of comments that are likely to attract disagreement. ("Fait accompli", "argument ad nauseum", etc.) When one voice begins to dominate a discussion, it starts to have the appearance of shouting others down and abusing the discussion pages. (50% of the past 100 edits is the most I've seen in a long time.) You might be well advised to show a little more patience with your critics, reduce the drama level, and moderate your tactics. There are others with your viewpoint who haven't increased the drama nearly as much as you have. You don't have to listen. But refusing to listen may come back to haunt you. Dzlife (talk) 14:18, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

@Dzlife, if you will read the above comments on this page as of the date of this post, you will see that there is no editor named NA1K, nor are there any editors here that respond to that name. FYI, Unscintillating (talk) 00:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

In case it isn't clear, the editor in question is User:Northamerica1000, NA1k is shorthand. I am very much hoping they will consider some of the points posted here. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:51, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

^ "AFD courtesy problem". Nabble. Retrieved 2010-06-30.

[1] "AFD courtesy problem". Nabble. Retrieved 2010-06-30.

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