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Vfd for Vfd

FYI: User:DavidLevinson listed this page for deletion, see [1] and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Votes for deletion. I rolled back the listing and gave him a warning on his talk page. -- Chris 73 Talk 01:47, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Warning ... like I am more vandalous than the VfD crowd, I doubt it. It should be listed and debated fairly. Why should it be discussed on VfD talk before it is listed ...the VfD process don't post talk on the pages before they propose for deletion. The VfD process should be applied to VfD, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. dml 02:50, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Deleting VfD would require a policy change, hence the normal deletion process for articles IMHO does not apply. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:53, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)
I agree—VfD normally applies to articles, not to policies that are currently in effect. Certainly if one wanted to change the deletion process, a new policy should be discussed and agreed upon before abandoning the old one. Even if I thought the VfD process were horribly flawed, it would be inappropriate to vote "delete" since is it is a currently-active policy page. — Knowledge Seeker দ (talk) 03:06, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Are we allowed to create a poll in order to see how many wikipedians support an active policy? How a policy becomes active? Can you point to the poll that shows how many people supported Vfd policy when it become active? Are we allowed to repeat that poll and ask the opinion of wikipedians again? And how many people must support a policy in order to become an active one? Is simple majority enough?
You are Iasson and I claim my ψ5. sjorford →•← 11:20, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Heh! I bet you earned a bonus point that time. Barno 17:57, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Kees A. Schouhamer Immink

I listed this page a couple of hours ago, it was on the list but not on the main page. Technical error? Censorship? I cannot get it onto the main page, please can someone help.- This page is always difficult to put things on. Can the format be changed so articles are not arbitrarily rewmoved from here. An irate --SqueakBox 18:02, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

  • Not a technical error. Not censorship. Pilot error. It is yourself that you should be irate with, if anything. You didn't follow the step-by-step instructions at the bottom of WP:VFD. I've performed the step that you omitted. Uncle G 19:46, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

How to make friends and influence people

I know I'm going to regret this bit of stirring I'm about to do, but here goes anyway...I was bored recently (for about a fortnight) and produced some VFD stats. This table shows how many nominations were made per user from December 25 (the start of day pages) to February 18. I've divided everything into a basic keep or delete outcome (merge/redirect/no consensus = keep, copyvio/transwiki = delete). The top 7 users account for a remarkable 25% of nominations, and the top 35 account for 50%.

Nominator Delete Keep Pending Total Delete %
Radiant! 75 56 70 201 57%
Fvw 122 25 147 83%
RickK 93 41 6 140 69%
DCEdwards1966 85 48 133 64%
Uncle G 69 28 2 99 71%
GRider 12 46 38 96 21%
Niteowlneils 73 12 85 86%
Hoary 46 13 1 60 78%
Curps 44 12 56 79%
LeeHunter 42 13 55 76%
Thue 47 1 5 53 98%
JoaoRicardo 30 19 1 50 61%
Gadfium 39 7 46 85%
Jni 41 2 2 45 95%
BM 17 19 5 41 47%
Kelly Martin 35 4 39 90%
Smoddy 18 15 33 55%
Cdc 26 4 30 87%
ZayZayEM 15 12 27 56%
Antaeus Feldspar 22 2 1 25 92%
Michael Ward 22 2 24 92%
Thryduulf 15 9 24 63%
Xezbeth 16 7 23 70%
R. fiend 14 8 1 23 64%
Woohookitty 18 4 1 23 82%
Rje 21 1 22 95%
Sjorford 20 2 22 91%
J3ff 21 1 22 95%
Scott Burley 17 3 1 21 85%
InShaneee 16 4 1 21 80%
Ta bu shi da yu 11 9 20 55%
Tregoweth 6 14 20 30%
Brookie 4 6 10 20 40%
Inter 15 5 20 75%
Deb 16 3 1 20 84%
Total (684 users) 2387 963 209 3559 71%

I'm not passing judgement on any of this, because I know you'll all do it for me. Or can we all learn to live together in peace...? (ow! OW!) sjorford →•← 23:29, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • What is the purpose of this table? — Knowledge Seeker দ (talk) 23:57, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I must admit I'm puzzled and dismayed by this. As much as some people would like us to believe otherwise, VfD is not an inherently "unWikiloving" bad thing. Look for instance at the fact that "copyvio" is counted under "delete" -- is this table admonishing us that we should leave copyvios alone, lest we get the bullseye on our back of being tagged as Wikipedia's biggest deletionists? It's encouraging people to take our VfD records out of context that I find less than Wikiloving. -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:39, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • We may well need a VFD slogan of "INATVD!" ("It's not about the votes, dummy!") at this rate. This table is a prime example of where the "voting" mentality, rather than the discussion mentality, takes one. It completely mischaracterizes the contributions of everyone in that table, ignores the fact that (a small minority of "keyboard macro voters" aside) many people pass over VFD discussions where a clear consensus is forming (either way) that they agree with, and discards the most important information: the rationales. I strongly suggest, again, that people read WP:WIN#Wikipedia_is_not_an_experiment_in_democracy, WP:GVFD#Discussion, and m:Don't vote on everything. Uncle G 12:34, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)
        • Okay, I said I wasn't going to comment, but I feel I need to clarify this: this table doesn't count votes. It lists the outcome of each discussion, sorted by who originally nominated the page for deletion. I actually agree with you, that the voting aspect of VFD should be played down, but that's not what these dats show. sjorford →•← 13:22, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • Thanks for inserting the extra words to make it clear. The table takes on a different character now. I'm taking your last sentence to be implying that these data don't show anything about the voting aspect of VFD, rather than to be implying that these data show that the voting aspect of VFD should be enphasised, by the way. Uncle G 00:07, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
  • Hmm food for thought. Actually I'm surprised that the top 7 only account for 25%, but I think this may be changing. Personally I wouldn't count copvios at all, since they aren't really a matter for Vfd, and I'd count transwiki as keep since the information survives. One interesting think to do would be to track nominators' percentages, to see if their ability to make persuasive nominations is increasing. Kappa 13:00, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Another reason to count "transwiki" as "keep" is that it doesn't require an administrator's attention. Anyone can add the appropriate transwiki tag to the page, without adding to the VfD overload. dbenbenn | talk 14:00, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • What's the point? Nominations should be the opening of a discussion, not an attempt to predict the outcome. Is this a deliberate attempt to factionalize Wikipedia? Are we going to start compiling Americans-for-Deletionistic-Action scores? Blacklists? I don't get it. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • "What's the point?" There aren't that many of us who close VfD votes; the backlog at WP:VFD/Old is currently at 8 days. Although I understand that nominating a lot of articles is a useful contribution, I'd appreciate if the people on this list with low "success rates" would be a little more conservative about nominations. Fewer unsuccessful nominations means less VfD work for me, and more time I can spend working on articles. dbenbenn | talk 13:54, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Interesting analysis, thanks sjorford. I guess the conclusion to draw is that those who are getting very high percentage "eventually deleted" are being too cautious - some of their nominations should perhaps be speedys (after all VfD is colossal). Those are getting a very low percentage "eventually deleted" should perhaps hold their fire - they are nominating things that the community as a whole wants to keep. And those in the middle... great job guys! (p.s. it is truly amazing that so many articles are nominated, you'd've thought by now we know what to keep and what to delete through policy and precedence, so there would be few "thorny cases" that need vfd discussion... anyone would think people like taking part in vfd debates!) Pcb21| Pete 23:07, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • It shouldn't be amazing. I recognize several fellow New Page Patrollers on that list. The main reason for VFD being large is that it is simply a knock-on effect of the increased popularity of Wikipedia. (Note the similar backlog that has built up at WP:CP, from the same causes.) More articles are being added, and thus there is an increased volume of traffic in the various "bins" that new articles are sorted into. VFD is simply one of those bins. (The penultimate stage in New Page Triage (which I really should finish my article on) is considering whether the article should be nominated for normal deletion.) The fact that an increasing input article volume is being reflected in an increasing VFD volume is an indicator that New Page Patrollers are, in the main, keeping things honest and not taking shortcuts. Although I've on occasion unspeedied articles that didn't fulfil the CSD criteria (triggering a torrent of personal attacks in one case). And because of that I disagree that those nominators with the higest percentages should switch to speedy deletion. Some articles simply do not qualify for speedy deletion, and abuse of the speedy deletion process simply because one "knows" that normal deletion will very probably result in a delete should not be encouraged. There are good reasons for the speedy deletion criteria being narrow and specific. Uncle G 00:07, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
  • Interesting table! Please post updates to it occasionally. Those users with delete-% < 60 should definitely be more careful when nominating articles, we have too many false positives. I don't think that large % means lots of cases that end up as speedy deletions, although someone could collect statistics about this also. Most RC-patrollers seem to know the distinction and the speedys to VfD come from newbies. jni 18:46, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • 98% of my vfd requests go though - My mind control machine is working :). Today, vfd, tomorrow, the world! Thue | talk 12:56, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • In my dreams I would love to see something like this integrated into the guts of WP so that people who demonstrate that they understand WP (i.e. can identify pages that others usually agree don't belong) have access to a shortcut that speeds up the nomination process. In other words, they just have to place a tag+comment in the article and it goes straight to the VFD page. People who consistently demonstrate that they don't understand WP (i.e. usually make nominations that others disagree with) have to go through the current PITA three-step process. Or maybe an even more convoluted four or five step process. This would slow down people who nominate pages just to make a point and reward people who are just doing good work. --Lee Hunter 16:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How to make VFD of manageable size

One way to make VFD of manageable size is to enforce step 3 of the procedure for nomination, which is: "3. Under the section, describe, in accordance with our deletion policy, why the page should be deleted and clearly write what action you think should be taken for the nominated article to assist others in determining consensus. Don't forget to sign and datestamp (using ~~~~)." An awful lot of nominations are bogus - listing reasons that are nowhere to be found in Wikipedia:Deletion policy.

Therefore, I propose:

Any VFD nomination not listing a reason in Wikipedia:Deletion policy may be summarily removed from the page.

This alone would only be enforcing existing policy and would reduce the size of VFD considerably.

(It could also be applied to votes, but that would be making new policy, not reinforcing existing policy.)

Thoughts? - David Gerard 18:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We really just need to expand the deletion criteria. -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:17, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
David's idea is good in principle, but I worry about the extra controversy that would result. Attempts to expand speedy deletion criteria also seem to have failed. What we could do is again shorten the deletion timer. At least 80% of VfD votes are cast in the first twenty-four hours and only a tiny fraction on the last day. Reducing the deletion timer by a day would considerably shorten the page, without changing the outcome of any votes. Since there is a perennial backlog on VfD/Old articles will still usually wait a week or so before actually being deleted. - SimonP 18:30, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with shortening the timer. Not everyone has the time to sweep through VFD daily. Not everyone has the time to sweep through it twice a week. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's really long. - David Gerard 18:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I too disagree. I've been doing random surveys of VfD when I remember to and feel like it and then posting the results at User:Johnleemk/VfD statistics. From my experience, the results can do a 180 after the second day. At the most, I would tolerate reducing the cycle to four days, but not any less. I think five days is a good sweet spot. Would this be a good time to plug preliminary deletion? :-p Johnleemk | Talk 19:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I was only suggesting shortening the time by one day. - SimonP 22:52, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
I think that would be a good idea; people can always read earlier logs by date, and can still vote on any issues that are still open. It would reduce loading time for the main page. Radiant! 23:20, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Does the deletion policy enumerate the unexpected? As a general purpose deletion processing unit VfD needs to be ready to handle every imaginable kind of unencyclopedianess including cases without clear precedents. I would however support removing requests that clearly belong to IFD, TFD, RFD or CFD immediately after routing to the correct destination (with deletion of the now redundant subpage). The root cause of big VfD is rampant inclusionism that is eroding Wikipedia with garbage and the correct cure is expansion of the deletion criteria, as AllyUnion commented, not more redtape. jni 18:34, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
That's the point - my proposal is to actually enforce existing policy, and hence reduce the clog. The red tape of going through the whole of VFD is now significant.
Adding criteria is a separate creation of new policy, and hardly of actual urgency such as to be more important than actually ratifying said new policy.
The question is then, really: is Wikipedia:Deletion policy to be regarded as merely decorative and hence deletable itself? Or is it to be regarded the way the VFD instructions read as regarding it? - David Gerard 18:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The deletion policy cannot be regarded as window dressing, of course, but I fear strict enforcement of your proposal just causes arguments about which listing to keep and which to remove prematurely. I haven't read the policy in months, so I don't remember what wording it uses, but would you consider "nn. del. ~~~~" as a valid nomination? (I guess I have internalized the existing practise quite well, since no one has been complaining about my votes or noms...) What to do when you see a nomination for article that obviously needs deletion, but some formalities are missing? Either fix the formalities or resubmit it yourself after someone has removed it from the log. Again, extra work. Now, enter the trolls whose raison d'etre is to disrupt VfD...
I feel that requiring extra punctiliousness just reduced the demand (in economic sense) for VfD, which has the effects of either leaving more garbage intact or increasing demand for speedy deletions. Widening the CSD criteria or reducing the lagtime both increase the deletion throughput and thus reduce the size of the page. In my experience as a regular VfD contributor, the obvious false positives are not that much of a problem, although they are annoying, and we currently need more people closing keeps at /Old (and even more so for merges). jni 20:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The nominator alleges that this page violates the no original research section of the deletion policy.

Rather than a "hard policy" of expelling any page that does not conform to current policies, why not a "soft policy" that can serve as a gentler reminder that we have do have policies. By my count there are some 25 reasons for deletion currently in policy. Why not start marking each VfD debate with a template indicating what specific one of these deletion criteria and article falls under. See for instance the template to the right. Nominators would of course be under no obligation to add these templates, but someone could come along later and add a template, or several based on the nominator's reasoning.

This nominator of this article has not mentioned which of the current deletion criteria it falls under.

Some votes will also have a template saying something along the lines of the template to the left. This allows the flexibility to delete any page that clearly should be removed to be deleted, but also encourages voters to pay attention to the deletion policy. The systematic annotation of VfD debates has several other advantages for those of us interested in analyzing VfD. - SimonP 22:52, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Per RedWordSmith's analysis below and for the reasons which follow I have to discourage this development.
  • The boxes will bloat an already large and slow-loading page;
  • There are likely to be (stupid) edit wars over which of the templates is appropriate for a particular VfD entry;
  • For the same reason that the tally boxes are a bad idea: these boxes may discourage a careful reading of the VfD nomination and arguments;
  • Some deletion-worthy articles may resist easy categorization; and
  • The VfD page isn't there for the convenience of people who want to analyze the VfD process—and you would have to read the reasoning in each VfD section anyway, to verify that the reason(s) for deletion (or retention) actually do match the reason(s) cited in the nomination and the reason(s) in the templates.
Can I call for a moratorium on the use of these template boxes until something of a consensus is reached here? I know SimonP means well, but I'm not sure if this should be unilaterally implemented. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 18:14, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Please do. They are plainly visible now, so people can form their opinion on whether or not they are useful. Several people have complained already on SimonP's talk page, so they're at least somewhat controversial. And if these boxes are to be policy, its implementation must be discussed beforehand. Radiant! 23:18, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that people need to make an argument when they list a page. However, won't removing listings when people don't make one just make VfD harder to use for people not very familiar with it? Just because they don't state one of the correct reasons for deletion doesn't mean a page should not be deleted. See also Wikipedia:Deletion requests, where Eloquence proposed having a separate section for the reasons for deletion to be listed. Angela. 23:44, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Do you think my template proposal could help advance these ends? - SimonP 23:57, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

This is an annoying little box that is here to call the reader's attention to the possibility that the use of the phrase "well done" could be an example of Dpbsmith (talk)

I do believe that template manages to implement my suggestion in the most obnoxious way possible. Well done - David Gerard 00:56, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Part of the issue is that David Gerard does not consider lack of "notability" to be a valid grounds for deletion, and many other editors do. People find support for "notability" as a grounds for deletion in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, although that policy article does not directly use the term "notability". Notwithstanding that, it is among the most common reasons for the nomination of an article for deletion, and among the most common reasons given when people vote to delete. It is a shorthand for "not encyclopedic" and for many of the grounds listed in What Wikipedia is not under "Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base". (I notice Dan100 has recently changed the the phrase "no potential to become encyclopedic" as the first-listed reason for a VfD nomination out of Wikipedia:Deletion policy [2] How can he edit key aspects of policy unilaterally?) When David says people are not citing valid reasons for deletion, he wants to force them to stop appealing to "notability", which he does not agree is a valid reason, or even valid shorthand for a valid reason. By the way, concerning the issue of notability as a grounds for deletion on VfD, I recommend the very insightful comments by Dpbsmith recently in Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Notability not a criterion for deletion? --BM 02:13, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I do not like this idea at all. I think it makes the already terrible and blocky layout of the VFD page even worse, and it will increase, not decrease the size of the page. There are 389 current nominations on VFD right now. These templates are about 440 bytes each (actual rendered HTML size of VFD-or). The rendered VFD page is 274 kb in size. If you had 75% compliance with 1.25 templates for each nomination, you would increase the size of VFD by 160462 bytes (389 nominations * 75% of nominations with tags * 1.25 tags each * 440 bytes per tag, approximately 157kb). Nevermind that the language for these tags seems inclusionistically biased, and I do not like the idea of anyone possibly using these templates to make serial keep or delete votes based merely on the justification tag used. - RedWordSmith 08:03, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Consider Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Star Wars MUSH. The nominator called it vanity, which it may (if one of the game's creators placed it) or may not (if a player did, though even then it's borderline) be. Either way, though, the article's primary purpose is to promote the game, which is just one of thousands trying to get to fifty players online. Do we really want to see someone list it again with {{vfd-sp}} instead of {{vfd-vp}}, claiming that it was kept only because the vanity page assertion was disproved, and that those who especially dislike ads didn't look at the vfd past seeing the pretty pastel box? —Korath (Talk) 10:51, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Vanity articles are a subsection of self-promotion articles, any vanity page is also promotional so I don't think that scenario is too likley. As to RedWordSmith's objections I agree that it does seem paradoxical to try and shorten VfD by adding stuff to it. My hope is that these templates will cause nominators, especially new ones, to at least keep policy in mind when nominating articles and thus refrain from nominating those that clearly do not belong. - SimonP 15:30, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Deleting VfDs unilaterally is inappropriate and would only lead to edit wars and bad feelings. Just leave them alone and let them run their course. RickK 08:14, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. "Summarily removed" sounds as if they are to be removed by an individual sysop, much as speedy deletions are today. So, this is basically a proposal for a "speedy keep."

Speedy deletions work only because most think the guidelines are clear, and the articles that meet them are deletable. The boundaries set are narrow and well-defined.

If we thought the guidelines set by Wikipedia:Deletion policy and WP:NOT were equally clear, we could declare them to be cause for speedy deletion, and let sysops handle everything. No VfD needed.

If we think they are not clear, then inverting them and saying anything that does not meet them is a speedy keep is not going to work.

In fact the existing deletion policies work only because nobody tries to treat them as bright-line definitions. The policies are not complete. What they are is a summary of those actual VfD practices that are clear enough and have enough consensus so that they can be codified for the guidance of those entering the community.

Two ha-ha-only-serious scenarios under David Gerard's proposal:

1) a nomination is deleted because the nominator said the article had no potential to become "encyclopaedic;" and policy says the criterion is no potential to become "encyclopedic." Invalid, surely. But what's the process for reconsideration? Is there to be a Votes for Renomination page and rules to go with it?
2) Me and a couple of buddies have a quick talk on the WP:NOT talk page, reach consensus that articles should not be removed just because they are advertising, remove that clause from WP:NOT, remove all the "advertising" nominations from VfD. WP:NOT is reverted, but it was policy during the ten minutes in which we deleted the articles. Wasn't it?

Dpbsmith (talk) 13:35, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I believe a strict adherence to policy-as-written runs countery to the nature of Wikipedia, because it doesn't allow for the fact that consensus and Wikipedia evolve over time. Over the past few weeks, I have seen a number of VfD nominations that were said to be 'not according to policy' by one or two disagreeing users, but that do actually get a flood of delete votes, and thus end up deleted because of consensus.
  • Also, because of ongoing discussions on VfD, articles may end up deleted for another reason than the one it was originally given. If an article is nominated as 'vanity', it may turn out to get deleted because people think it's 'unencyclopedic' instead. But with David's suggestion for summary removal, the article could be unlisted from VfD as soon as it is found that the article isn't actually 'vanity'.
    • The best thing in this case would be for votes with 'vanity' given as the reason to be discounted. However, admins don't usually seem to do more than a raw count, so the result will be prejudiced against the article. Likewise with a nomination that makes an incorrect assertion like "800 google hits" when in fact over 8000 can be found. Kappa 17:28, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • I don't think that would be a good idea. An editor may explicitly state 'vanity' (or another reason), but agree with the deletion for other reasons as well. With respect to the specific term 'vanity', many editors (rightly or not) have adopted a very broad, inclusive definition that encompasses concepts like fancruft and plain absence of notability (for biographical articles). I don't think it's appropriate for an admin to act as a mindreader (though I still expect them to use good judgement in evaluating VfD outcomes). Ultimately, the question is one of whether a consensus exists that an article does not belong on Wikipedia—full stop. (Hypothetical case: 4 votes for deletion due to "vanity", 4 votes for deletion due to "bandcruft", 2 votes to keep. Drop one category of delete votes and there's no clear consensus left even though 80% of voters thought the article needed to go.) We also don't want to open the can of worms of excluding "keep" votes because they're for the "wrong" reasons. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 17:46, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • In your example, you don't know that those 4 votes would still be for delete if the voters realized it wasn't vanity. In my case, I would probably change from delete to keep. Kappa 18:39, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • With respect to the second point, if the nominator makes a verifiably factually incorrect statement (with respect to Google count, for example) someone on VfD usually corrects them within the first couple of votes. I think most editors who've been on VfD for any length of time know to take nominations (and all comments) with a grain of salt. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 17:46, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • As a side point, I believe the pastel categorizing boxes impair legibility of the VfD page, not to mention needlessly increasing its length, and reiterating what the original nominator already said. Of course, I do agree that a nominator should list a plausible reason for deletion - but the large majority of all nominators do.
  • Wikipedia should not be an exercise in courthouse law (not to mention bureaucracy). Adding extra rules and procedures is not going to make things easier on anyone. Radiant! 17:14, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • As a way of telling which nominations might have been deleted under this proposed new rule, look at the ones recently where sysops have commented that the nomination was "bogus", etc, or that the person making the nomination should be "censured". David Gerard, himself, provides many examples of the "bogus" comment -- which is rather interesting to note considering he is the one making this proposal. In general, one does not find that nominations being characterized this way were illegitimate. Indeed, at the point they were called "bogus", they often have more Delete votes than Keep, and many of them go on to achieve a consensus for deletion. One gets the impression that "bogus nomination" just means "keep", an the proposal boils down to: if one administrator thinks an article is an "obvious keep", then it should be kept, notwithstanding community consensus to the contrary, and therefore it should be removed from VfD since there is no point in continuing with the consensus-forming process. I very much doubt that we can create a sharp enough definition of "bogus nomination" for people to be comfortable with sysops unilaterally short-circuiting the consensus process. I think the proposal is "bogus" (which means: I don't agree with it). --BM 13:11, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • On another point, I don't find "bogus" nominations to be a great contributor to the bloat on VfD. There are actually very few "bogus" nominations, and even the ones that turn out to be ill-advised generally seem to have been made in good faith. It is rare for a nomination to be wrong, or bad faith, on its face. Either there was lack of information about the importance of the topic. Or the nominator had an honest and legitimate opinion about what should be included in an encyclopedia, which turned out not to be the consensus opinion. For example, I have a relatively low "success rate" with my nominations -- only around 50%. This is mostly because I have nominated quite a few articles on tiny details about fictional universes, such as artifacts in Star Wars that were on-screen in one of the movies for literally seconds. I was (and am) astonished to learn that there is no consensus that these should be deleted. However, those are not "bogus" nominations, and the policy is not clear enough to permit sysops to declare them so. People like me go through that process a couple of times, realize that there is no community consensus to delete certain types of cruft, and stop nominating those types of articles, as deletable as they might seem, simply because it is a waste of time. Another example is school articles, about which VfD is completely fickle at present. I usually don't nominate them any more, but I will generally vote Delete if someone else does. If the aim is to reduce VfD bloat, there are other reforms that would work much better than this proposal. For example, it is very regrettable that the proposal to allow obvious vanity to be speedy-deleted didn't obtain consensus. If David thinks that his proposal would have a significant impact on the size of VfD, then I would like to challenge him to produce a list of the nominations in the last seven days that he would have removed under his proposed rule. --BM 13:11, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Little tally boxes...?

Keep Delete
0 25

I've noticed that little boxes are starting to spring up on some VfD entries. (A sample is to the right.) I wonder about their usefulness for a few reasons. First, they're manually updated, and most editors don't...so the count is usually incorrect. Once or twice I've noticed more votes recorded in the box than appear in the commments. Second, I fear that they encourage a militant us-against-them sort of mentality on VfD...more of which is not required there. It seems to run counter to Wikipedia's consensus-building philosophy. Third, the count doesn't address conditional votes, or distinguish between votes for redirection, merging, and keeping. Finally—and perhaps most importantly—it may discourage people from reading through the entire discussion. Editors may be inclined to say, "I don't see what's important about Article X, but it has a lot of keep votes; I better slap a delete on it" without looking to see why the article has accumulated so few negative votes.

Vote counting is something that's handled by an admin at the end of VfD, and the admin should be exercising judgement anyway. Any thoughts on these curious little boxes? I'm inclined to suggest they be excised on sight. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 20:44, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree with you. Wasn't this discussion also held in WP:TFD few days ago? jni 20:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • So it was; I'm embarrassed to say I missed that discussion, which seems to have covered the points I raised. Oh well. Is it legitimate to cut out the little box if we see one, then? --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 21:11, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • I've been removing them wherever I've run across them. Just about all have been added by GRider, who has been asked several times to stop; however, he doesn't much seem interested in listening. (Ominously, I chided another user today who added one, thinking they were the norm.) —Korath (Talk) 21:51, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
        • I seriously thought these were becoming the norm when I ran across them. I shall delete all that I see, including mine. -- Riffsyphon1024 23:55, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • It is very probable that you missed the WP:TFD discussion because as soon as the template version of these boxes came up for deletion, placing the "this template has been nominated for deletion" notice (with its link to WP:TFD) prominently above all of the boxes, the posters of these boxes switched to copying & pasting them in directly, so that the notice would not appear. Uncle G 23:11, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

Let us confirm this as consensus then. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus/Regarding tally boxes. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:58, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • This discussion has indicated a near-unanimous consensus against the boxes. I believe the matter is clear. Radiant! 12:30, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Little boxes

Little boxes on the right side, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes all the same

Malvina Reynolds,

There's a green one

where are you

And a pink one

when we

And a blue one

really

And a yeller one

need you?

And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.

Let's stop the übercommentary-in-sidebars that amounts to continuous editorial judgement on the VfD process, illustrated by punchy graphics, hey? Wikipedia is not a Powerpoint presentation. Let's make our points in good old inline ASCII text. If people don't pay attention to them on the merits, putting them in pastel boxes to call attention to them isn't going to help. I don't truly believe that adding a ton of boxcruft to VfD is going to make it load faster or be more manageable. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:23, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whoops, didn't mean to be US-centric. Good old inline ISO 8859-1 or Unicode text is fine, too. Sorry. As penance, I promise to use nothing but SI units in Wikipedia for the next 24 hours. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:21, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I think the point of the little boxes would be to inform voters, and especially the original contributor, of what policy they should be looking at to try and form a judgement, find evidence, fix the article etc. A newbie getting hit with a Vfd and seeing "vanity" or "non-notable" with no explanation is not going have a clue what's going on. Kappa 13:30, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Problems with newbie confusion should be more clearly addressed in Template:Vfd. I think the bolded link to Wikipedia:Deletion policy is sufficient for this purpose, though I'm generally in favor of Uncle G's proposed reworking of it. —Korath (Talk) 15:03, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
    • Voters should be looking at all policies when forming judgements, not just the ones the nominator thought were relevant. — Gwalla | Talk 03:05, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I concur with Dpbsmith's statements, and add to them my similarly themed remarks from the section above. Perhaps it's time for a policy consensus? (I'd create it myself, but I don't want to muck up the process.) --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 16:11, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Unless there is consensus in favor of David Gerard's proposal above (and so far consensus seems to be heavily opposed) there really isn't any point in these boxes. Even then, it's doubtful that people will want an already listed reason listed again in a pastel shade. Concur with DpbSmith. Radiant! 18:45, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
  • I also agree with Dpbsmith; they are ugly, annoying, and pointless.
    • Ugly: They take up space, intrude on the next vfd nomination on the page (at least while the nomination is small enough), which if fixed would cause lots of extra vertical whitespace, and they make the page look positively psychadelic. The first reaction I had when I saw one was yuck.
    • Annoying: I would be positively annoyed if someone else added one of these to a nomination I made. They encourage summing up possibly complex nominations (who said a nomination needs to be because of exactly one reason?), ignore the fact that new reasons for deletion can be found by the voters, and are really arrogant ("the nominator alleges", "the nominator asserts", "the nominator believes"...).
    • Pointless: They do not reduce the amount of work. They add to the amount of work. Now you also have to keep track of dozens of little templates with similar cryptic names. They are visually distracting – the eye gets attracted to the box, and not to what the people are saying (it might be a qualified reason; it might need an explanation of why it's vanity when it's not obvious; the voters also have their say; etc). It helps nothing when closing a discussion. It helps nothing when opening a discussion (you still have to type your reason). It helps nothing when voting (you still have to read what the nominator typed).
In case I didn't make myself clear enough, I really think this madness should stop. cesarb 19:17, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is now a formal policy proposal at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus/Deletion criterion boxes. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 20:29, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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