Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal

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Old discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Archive.

Please read it. I'm sorry if this turned out longer than intended, but a lot of people came with a lot of suitable ideas, and several of the more unfeasible ones have already been removed. Take your time, it's open for two weeks so you can vote on one proposal daily if you want, giving you plenty of time to consider it. Thanks for the bandwidth :) Radiant_>|< July 4, 2005 15:14 (UTC)

The missing proposal

I realized that one proposal was missing for a frequently VFD'ed type of article, and that would be neologisms. Only I can't think of a feasible way to word that since it's often impossible to tell from an article (other than for an expert) whether it's a neologism or a jargon term. Radiant_>|< July 4, 2005 21:29 (UTC)

Hmm... It's a good point. I have noticed that many neologisms cite their "inventor." (Making it basically vanity, "unremarkable words?"). Take a look a Strangiety. I don't know if this could be incorporated into a new criterion, but it seems to be a good bet that if it's either coined by a nonnotable person or within the last few years (if either are given) and it's not in any dictionary, it's a neologism. --Dmcdevit 4 July 2005 23:17 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you then need to determine notability of the inventor. We obviously don't want to delete Positronic brain. But there are a large number of people who's notability falls somewhere between Isaac Asimov and some guy the editor went to college with. I'm not sure that this can be reasonably achieved. Perhaps, instead, it could be based on the number of people who use the term? Often these articles state something like "It is used by everyone in his dorm.". If the article states that a very small number of people use the term, it could be elligible for speedy deletion. Pburka 4 July 2005 23:58 (UTC)

Conditional voting?

By the way, though I haven't seen anyone do it yet, I'd say conditional voting is perfectly fine for a large proposal as this (e.g. "I support #5 iff #8 passes and #3 fails"). I promise to sort out any such votes if the need arises (though I doubt they'd get that complex :) ). Radiant_>|< July 4, 2005 21:29 (UTC)

It seems there will be some (at least some of mine, and I think there are others) votes that are conditional on the test run passing, ie, weak or cautious support. In the unlikely event the test run does not pass, (or any other conditional votes arise), I would say these votes would just be disregarded, and not become opposes or anything like that. --Dmcdevit 5 July 2005 00:00 (UTC)

This is a symptom of a badly-prepared proposal vote. -- Netoholic @ 5 July 2005 00:30 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, DMC. I'm sure Wikipedians understand elementary logic anyway :) (technically this could lead to some circular voting but we'll deal with that in the unlikely case that it appears). Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 07:51 (UTC)

Tampering with the voting while in progress

User:Radiant! made several changes to the proposals after the voting has begun, in contrast to the the instruction at the top of the page - "Please do not change the wording of this page.". He also, in at least one vote, has striked out almost all the votes.

I find this, and his subsequent revert warring, in extremely poor form. I have suggested already to him that he should simply wait for the voting to conclude, and then fix whatever went wrong here. We cannot expect voters to judge a "moving target".

I ask that others agree, and restore this vote to the version it was at the start of voting. Of course, spelling corrections are fine, but rewording the CSD proposals and additions of creative "bolding" or examples should be left out, since those are being used by the proposers. -- Netoholic @ 5 July 2005 09:04 (UTC)

  • This is a strong misinterpretation. What happened to the proposal I1 is that Dragon's Flight pointed out that an important part was missing, and several people concur with that. In other words, consensus was that the idea was good but the wording was lacking. So, I have added that part in order to make the proposal make the most sense, and asked all the 'support' voters to check whether they support this addition, and asked everybody who opposed for that reason to check whether they find it sufficiently improved. Since the vote was supposed to last for two weeks, I shall extend the ending by one day. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 09:08 (UTC)

I am voting to oppose all proposed changes in policy until this is irrevocably fixed. Any policy changes made in light of such a tainted election cannot be seem as legitimate. If serious measures are not taken to stop User:Radiant!'s tampering, I will be the first of three voters to request the revote one month later on that grounds alone. — Phil Welch 5 July 2005 10:22 (UTC)

  • This is irrevocably fixed now. There were two proposals for which consensus indicated a problem in wording, and they had to be fixed quickly to conform with consensus. In two or three cases an example was added, but that doesn't change to proposal per se. I will not make any further changes. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 10:26 (UTC)

Maybe you should have gotten everything together before the vote started, just like any other organization that takes itself seriously. — Phil Welch 5 July 2005 10:50 (UTC)


(copied from Philwelch's talk page since it's relevant here Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 12:04 (UTC))

No, you don't understand the principle. Wikipedia is a world-class organization that has to take itself seriously here, and any properly-run election that takes itself seriously does not change the wording of what is being voted on during the middle of a vote. You screwed it up. — Phil Welch 5 July 2005 10:39 (UTC)

  • That is true. However, a world-class organization would also not discard a consensually supported idea for the sake of procedure. Voting is the means to an end, the end being showing where consensus lies. Anyway. I would like to resolve this matter, preferably without bothering too many people. How does this proposal sound... I would remove the changes to the proposals #3 and #I1, to change them to what they previously were. Then, I would create two new proposals named #3-B and #I1-B that have the new wording. These are to be independent proposals, subject to the same rules, and having a two-week deadline (which would mean they close roughly a day later than the rest). Then, everybody can vote on all four proposals. If this needs work please tell me how. Yours, Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 10:51 (UTC)
    • Your idea intrigues me. For the sake of propriety, I suggest that you revert the proposal pages back *including votes*, notify everyone who has voted for the proposal since your changes to it, and delay the end of voting to the exact time period that the proposal was changed. I am not so sure of resubmitting amended proposals--whether that should wait until the next cycle or be done now. I think that there's little problem with resubmitting the amended proposals at this time but I'm not going to definitely assent to it quite yet. Thanks for choosing to resolve this the right way. Procedure matters. — Phil Welch 5 July 2005 10:55 (UTC)
      • I've done the splitting. Please check and tell me if you find this acceptable. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 11:17 (UTC)

Is this a vote?

Are we actually having a vote? I'd no idea. I thought we were still discussing the proposals and airing several objections. I haven't seen my objections satisfied. This doesn't mean we can't have a vote until I change my mind, of course, but I am just a little surprised. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 14:20 (UTC)

  • Well, yes. The discussion had rather died down (perhaps unsurprisingly, since it had lasted about six weeks). So I've re-read all of the discussions and tried my best to form the proposals according to people's concerns and suggestions. I have withdrawn several issues because of your concerns (e.g. 'articles promoting illegal activities'); and some effort has been (and is being) made to make users more aware of the alternatives from VFD, to prevent pointless listings.
  • I believe your main concern is that you don't think that VFD is more crowded than it should be. That is a valid opinion, but one I disagree with. You've also said that 80% of VFD nominations end up with deleting the article. So, then, if we can find a clear-cut case, why not streamline? We've tried hard to find and formulate clear-cut cases. I'll leave it to the votes to determine whether we've succeeded. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 14:30 (UTC)
  • In short - Is VFD broken? In my opinion, it is not. Can it be improved, however? In my opinion, definitely. That goes for many processes on the Wiki. We all know that the Wikipedia works. But we continually evolve its ideas and processes. Progress may not be necessary per se, but it can certainly be helpful. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 14:34 (UTC)

Comment by Tony Sidaway: VfD isn't broken, why try to fix it?

I accidentally posted this in the archive yesterday

I think it's been over two weeks at least since I commented on this. I still see what I regard as utterly absurd presumptions being made:

  • Firstly, that there is a serious problem with VfD. If people are listing too many articles for VfD (it's blatantly obvious that this is true of some categories, schools for instance--a 1% success rate isn't worth all that discussion) then the solution to this problem is to list fewer articles for deletion. If people feel that VfD has reached the stage where most people cannot read every single VfD nomination, then those people who think that they ought to do so should perhaps rethink their priorities. If people processing VfDs are finding it harder to get through them all, we can improve the process. Let's all set our expectations higher, for instance, and make it plain to would-be listers: "Do you really think this article is likely to be thought deletable by an overwhelming majority of people who read it?" Let's make it easier for editors to defer a VfD listing of an article that's less than six months old--if we give the article another six months then it will be easier to decide whether the article is capable of growth. If articles are harder to delete we'll get fewer VfD listings of articles that haven't been given the chance.
  • Secondly, we're in danger of instruction creep. At the same time you say that administrators are expected to use their commonsense, you're saying that the rules should be tighter. Mixed signals.
  • In short, what's so radically bad about the current situation that we have to put the life-or-death decision on an article into the hands of a single person? The figures show that we're getting a good hit rate out of Vfd, some 80-90% of articles are being deleted. The exceptions are in general nominations by people who mistake their personal ignorance for an absence of encyclopedic potential, and also by cases that genuinely do need to be fought ought by discussion on VfD, such as schools. VfD works. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 14:36 (UTC)
I think you've hit the nail on the head, though it might be a different nail than you aimed for. Given that 1) a sizeable majority of articles nominated for deletion are deleted, 2) many of those articles are deleted based on unanimous votes, 3) Votes for Undeletion receives very little traffic (less than one article per day), it suggests that we're putting an inordinate amount of effort into processing bad articles. VfD requires a significant amount of work from the nominator, voters, and admins, and perhaps that effort would be better spent elsewhere on this project.
In other words, these proposals might allow participants in VfD to spend more time considering (or improving!) the borderline cases. If the occasional poorly-written stub on a worthy topic is deleted, I might even be so bold as suggest that it's no big loss. It takes our editors less time to write a good stub than to VfD nominate, argue, and close without consensus.
It should also be noted that our admins can and will use their judgement—even if an article happens to meet a criterion for speedy deletion, deletion is not mandatory. --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 5 July 2005 17:51 (UTC)

"Abuse"?

I don't understand the point of making the rules this strict. As far as I remember, speedy deletion rules have been bent by the admins. — Bcat (talk | email) 5 July 2005 14:43 (UTC)

Since there is some argument on how and how far they should be bent (see WP:VFU for examples), it may be useful to formalize valid ways of bending (e.g. prop 10 and 11), and prohibiting others (e.g. prop 1). Additionally, most parts of this proposal will (if passed) make certain articles speedily deletable that presently aren't - specifically, groups of articles that regularly appear on VFD and always get strong consensus to delete. The most difficult part was coming up with a suitable wording that wouldn't allow for valid content to be deleted. HTH! Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 14:55 (UTC)
I agree with you for the most part. However, I don't think admins who bend the rules and delete a page in good faith should be penalized, as this proposal suggests. After all, what is Votes for undeletion for? — Bcat (talk | email) 5 July 2005 15:03 (UTC)
Penalizing would be rather harsh. However, censuring (as in, clearly telling them to change their ways, if they are responsible for a significant number of improper deletes) would not be bad. However, I have looked over the deletion log and VFU and found exceedingly few improper deletes, so I doubt this'd become a large issue. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 15:15 (UTC)
OK, I misunderstood that section. I just think we need less "follow this exactly" and more "use common sense". — Bcat (talk | email) 5 July 2005 16:01 (UTC)


I really strongly question this claim that we can reliably characterize articles that come up for discussion and always make deletion, except trivial cases like the age limit, which would be learned by trolls and circumvented. I just don't see it. I've seen some very famous people listed for deletion as "not notable" and "vanity", and these articles should never on any account be made speedy material. One person cannot be expected to know everything. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 17:39 (UTC)

On the other hand, if it's not possible to determine if or why a person is notable based on our article, is the article useful for anything anyway? At least a redlink will let someone else know that a decent stub is needed.... --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 5 July 2005 17:55 (UTC)

An article that says "Charlie Hurley was born in 1936 and played centre-back" wouldn't tell you that Charlie Hurley was a first class player and a member of the Irish international squad, played for Sunderland, was voted their Player of the Century on their centennial, and went on to manage Reading F.C.. But it still contains useful information and a started for someone who might not even have thought of writing a piece on Hurley. There is more to a person than what someone else might consider "notable". We've seen heads of Fortune 500 companies listed for deletion because someone thought they were not notable. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 18:33 (UTC)

Quite true. (On the other hand, Charlie Hurley's article may not be the best example—it actually started off with information supporting his importance.)
I think it's important to remember that criteria for deletion are circumstances where deletion is permitted—not required. Further, while any editor can tag an article for speedy, only an admin can actually carry out the deletion. Most of our admins actually show reasonably good judgement, and might be trusted to use Google on those borderline cases.
Perhaps I am mistaken in my judgement about our admins. I haven't been following VfD for the last little while. If we were to assume that admins will in future exercise no more restraint in speedy deletion than in making nominations for deletion, we might estimate an upper bound on the collateral damage associated with these proposals. Are there many examples of recent VfD nominations that
  1. were made by admins,
  2. qualify for speedy deletion under the proposed new criteria, and
  3. ultimately were not deleted?
Such articles would be the babies that go out with the bathwater; does anyone have such examples from which we might then demonstrate a nonzero baby:bathwater ratio? --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 5 July 2005 19:29 (UTC)

Tail wags the dog

The fundamental reason that 24 votes have been thrown upon us all of a sudden (this proposal may have existed for weeks, but it was poorly linked, so for most of us it was all of a sudden) is because "vfd is too busy".

We should not let the tail wag the dog
If vfd is too busy, we should change vfd. Make it topic-specific, let the musicians decide on those dodgy bands, the scientists decide on the crank science. Something to de-centralize the decision-making progress off one central point.
Instead these proposals propose to shift ever more power to admins, asking them to make judgements on ill-defined notions of notability and importance in areas way out of their domain of expertise. This is the recipe for chucking out good content just because we want to make vfd smaller.
Wikipedia becoming more popular should not force us to sacrifice our principles of openness and flat hierachy. We just need a little imagination.
Vote no to these proposals.
Pcb21| Pete 5 July 2005 20:33 (UTC)
  • Since VFD is busy, we should indeed change VFD. This has been lengthily discussed. There are three important points here.
    • First, the size of VFD makes it prohibitive from people to read and respond to many of the issues, thus drawing the decision away from consensus, and let it be made by those people willing to invest lots of time in VFD.
    • Second, many VFD nominations that end up kept, are made by relatively new users somewhat ignorant of our policies. Thus, we should strive to educate them, and effort is being made in that area. See Wikipedia:Merge and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Precedents for two examples.
    • Third, a significant number of kinds of VFD nominations always receive a vast majority of delete votes. It would then save everybody's time if we could make strict definitions of those, and make them speediable.
  • What you suggested (splitting VFD by topic) has been discussed before. The problem is that most VFD nominations fall within the area of personal vanity articles, unremarkable websites, advertising (all three are generally deleted), relatively unknown bands and bits of local topograhy (both vary wildly depending on their actual fame) and the occasional high school debate (which almost always ends up with keeping the high school). Please look through a number of VFD pages before deciding that a sensible split can be made, for your proposal isn't new. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 21:04 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting it was novel. Having VfD (vanity), VfD (unremarkable websites), VfD (advertising) <-- Not a reason for deletion btw, despite the inbuilt biases of the community, VfD (places), would be better than this. Pcb21| Pete 5 July 2005 21:56 (UTC)
You said above "let the musicians decide on those dodgy bands, the scientists decide on the crank science". Radiant pointed out that VfD really gets mainly vanity, websites, advertising, bands, places, and high schools. You then suggested they be divided on these topics - but most of these topics don't imply obvious knowledgeable constituencies - what is the natural constituency for vanity, or places, or advertising?
You seem to misunderstand these proposals - they are meant to limit the use of speedie deletion to articles which are already being deleted, rather than the case now where the criteria are vague(such as G1), and don't cover articles that have a consenus to delete, thereby encouraging admins to bend the rules because they don't match the reality.
And claims of poor linking seem odd, considering that Whatlinkshere includes Wikipedia:Announcements, Wikipedia:Current surveys, Wikipedia:Deletion policy, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Requests for comment, Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, and Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load. It was not listed on Wikipedia:Goings-on, is that what you were refering to? (Note that I didn't check when this page was added to those pages - if it was added to most of them after voting started, I would agree it was previously "poorly linked".) JesseW 6 July 2005 07:42 (UTC)
I think those links were added when the voting started. Pcb21| Pete 6 July 2005 08:43 (UTC)

Objections to Shotgun Voting

1. It's a mass vote. Too many items to vote on forces users to move from one item to the next without any real time for consideration and deliberation. Shotgun style approaches to changing policies are about as messy as a shotgun blast. Have a look at a few of the voter's contibutions and you'll see that the delay between votes is minimal in almost all cases. (Yes, some users, like myself, have all the votes open in tabs for consideration before voting on any of them, but I feel certain that some users have just rushed through the process to get their opinions in before they ended up so far down the list that fewer people read their included comments.)
2. It's a vote and not a poll. Polls determine where consensus already lies, votes force the community to decide a result. This should have been presented in the first round as a poll.
3. It isn't very deliberative, nor cautious of the end result. Because so many proposals are floated at the same time, no one could possibly guess what policy we'll end with. Haphazard assembly of policy would be like putting an article together paragraph by paragraph, forming each by this process:
1. Present several alternate starting sentences.
2. Present several alternate middle sentences.
3. Present several alternate ending sentences.
4. Vote on all.
The end result would be a disjointed assembly of ideas, not a coherent, thoughtful article. I think it is clear that this would be an unacceptable method for creating an article; likewise I think it is an unacceptable method for forming Wikipedia policy.
These are the reasons that I find this entire mass voting to change policy highly objectionable. Unfocused 7 July 2005 14:27 (UTC)

There is nothing about the above that I disagree with. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 16:52 (UTC)

Nor do I disagree in principle. But what is your proposed alternative process? (The only actionable proposal I see is a recommendation to change the wording from "vote" to "poll" - which I doubt will really resolve your core concerns.) Previous attempts to update the CSD cases using other means have been instantly reverted. Anyone being bold gets a nasty comment about "changes made without discussion". Attempts to start a discussion on the CSD Talk page get largely ignored. This is imperfect but it seems to be the only way that the community will allow anything more than the most minor of wording changes to the cases. What process do you recommend? Rossami (talk) 7 July 2005 17:26 (UTC)

My general advice... "Go slowly". Wikipedia is not in a state of emergency. Even a cursory look at the proposals ahead of time would have shown they had no chance of success. It was a waste of time to blast them all out - it is like trowing a bucketfull of s**t at the wall and seeing what sticks.
As for this proposal series, I move we immediately close every proposal which has greater than 1/2 opposing, because there is no chance in hell those are passing, so why waste the time. I suggest adding no more proposals to the convoluted mess.
People, we need to learn from the past. Most of the proponents of the policies are newbies who weren't around for ALL the previous discussions. They keep re-hashing the same ideas. Expanding CSD will NOT help lessen the load of VfD in any constructive way. Think of other solutions. Hell, one right of the cuff would be to turn of anonymous IP editing. In addition to helping stem vandalism, about 1/2 of all VfD candidates were created by IP users. Does anyone really believe that in this day and age Wikipedia needs anon contributions? -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 17:36 (UTC)
  • Unfocused has a point. However, I should point out that the entire proposal was debated for about six weeks, first at Wikipedia:Deletion_policy/Reducing_VfD_load, and then at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Archive. There were a number of ideas hammered out, several of which have gotten strong support already, and several of which turned out to be not so great for a variety of reasons. It is unfortunate that there are this many proposals now, but that's partly because of built-up pressure... for instance, the 'images on commons' issue and the rewording of the REdeletion criterion have been noted as proposed on the relative pages for at least half a year.
  • However, now that it is here, please leave this be for two weeks. It's not that long. I realize that several proposals have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of passing. But what's the problem in that, we can just ignore them and they won't be going anywhere. Simply drop in one more vote if you must, and keep them off your watchlist. There are at any moment half a dozen failed policy proposals floating in Wikispace, and they're not harming anyone (e.g. the AD/CE proposal, and VFDA#2 to name a few). Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 17:48 (UTC)
Is there any reason, over six weeks of discussion, that we couldn't have seen each of these brought forward one or two at a time? Minor, incremental changes to policy are the best because they don't discard the value of experience, and they allow the new shifts of policy to be fully integrated into the ideas that already exist. Weren't there any proposed changes made that already appeared to have consensus in the debate? Shouldn't someone propose a point or two as already has consensus to see if there is general agreement?
What we're actually voting on now is for near-random replacement of portions of policy without considering the possibility of interrelation, or the possibility of condensing several of these into more general, and theremore exponentially more useful, cases. This has the appearance of the primary vote author throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall to see what sticks. It is not mature, reasoned policy development. Just as we wouldn't vote line by line on article replacements, we shouldn't do this for policy. It is both aimless and a bit reckless to attempt to address everything all at once.
Populism won't tell you this, but Don't vote on everything and polls are evil. These are especially appropriate and express the anti-wikiness of a mass vote such as in progress now. Unfocused 7 July 2005 17:51 (UTC)
I need to add that I don't fault Radiant! or those who helped assemble this mass vote at all for putting this forth. I don't think that there has been precedent for such a procedure, and he obviously was doing what he thought was best at the time. I only hope that this sort of policy mass-vote never comes up again. Unfocused 7 July 2005 17:53 (UTC)
  • Yes, there were proposed changes that, from the debate, appeared to have consensus. Those are the ones put up for voting (although to be fair, some of them suffered from a lack of response). There were several that were rejected, e.g. "anything copied from any website" and "buildings not yet built". It would have been possible to create two or three votes per week, but then someone would have complained about "why couldn't you have put the lot of them together". I realize that this is not the best way of getting somewhere, and I have no intention of doing it again in such manner, but I did not see another feasible way. You can create a reasonable guideline with ten people in a talk page discussion, but not something as important as CSD. Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 19:29 (UTC)

New proposal P1

User:Tony Sidaway added proposal P! to deal with the issue of articels that fail to assert notability, but are in fact about notable subjects. This proposal adds a waiting period and a new category to alert people to the impendign deletion of such articles.

User:Netoholic citing This proposal is open for voting, as described below. Voting will close on July 19, 2005 15:11 (UTC). Please do not change the wording of this page. reverted the additiom of thsi proposal.

I think the above wording is intended to prevent changing the text of a proposal in mid-vote, but not adding new proposals to a multi-proposal package such as this. Proposals 3-B, 3-C and Z have already been added to thsi package after the vote opened, and no one reverted thsoe additions. I propose to revert User:Netoholic's revert, but I wanted to explain here what I was doign and why, first. DES 7 July 2005 15:26 (UTC)

  • If you'd even bother looking at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/P1, you'll see that proposal was withdrawn. In fact, it should not be added to this proposal series because voting is already open, plus, it proposes a brand new deletion process, not something that should be kludged into WP:CSD. What about "Please do not change the wording of this page." is so hard for people to understand? This is a vote and the choices (good or bad) are to be locked in. Doing otherwise makes any "result" questionable. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 16:37 (UTC)
    • If you look at the timestamps you will see that I posted the above before the proposal was "withdrawn" for editing. I gather that a revised version of it will be reposted later today, unless you can convince Tony and Radient not to do so. My arguement ia that adding a new proposal to the page is not "changing the wording" in the sense that is prohibited. If it is, why didn't you object when Proposals 3-B, 3-C and Z were added? In any case, even if you are absolutely correct, psoting a note about what you were doing and why on this talk page, before you did it, might have been a good idea. DES 7 July 2005 16:44 (UTC)
      • I objected to those additions, plus the rewording of I1 that happened after voting opened. This whole proposal vote is a sham, with some clever folks trying every trick in the book to get their pet proposals passed with minimal review. I should close the whole damn thing. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 16:49 (UTC)
  • I think Tony's proposal is a very good compromise - it serves both to reduce VFD by putting the 'obvious' deletes somewhere else, and it should cause no concerns about improper deletions because articles get the time to be examined by others before they get removed. I'm sure nobody will object to deleting "John Doe is a 14-year-old who likes to eat spaghetti", and I'm sure this will cause "George Washington is a nice chap with a hat" to be expanded as it should be, rather than removed. Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 17:52 (UTC)
    • I am not commenting on the validity of the proposal, just the nature of it's inclusion here at this time. This is obviously a re-stated Wikipedia:Countdown deletion, and that page should be where this is hashed out and later voted on if needed. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 17:58 (UTC)
      • I disagree. It's a related proposal, and a valid hybrid. Also, it's very different from countdown deletion, since it's far simpler. We already have a proposal here that is unrelated to modifying speedy deletion criteria (e.g. proposal Z, which you have read and responded to) so there shouldn't be many objections to this one. The issue is progress, and consensus. Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 19:03 (UTC)
        • I literally fear people who go around declaring things are "consensus". I have consistently opposed all additions and modifications to this proposal from the start. I am not the only one. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 19:42 (UTC)

I moved this whole proposal to Wikipedia:Countdown deletion/Revised proposal. The proponents even admit it has nothing to do with speedy deletion, and there is still a LOT of work needed on it. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 20:23 (UTC)


Vote closure

I've closed this vote. It started off wrong, and only got worse, with wording changes being made after voting and additions of new convoluted proposals. The format is a mess, and we cannot trust any result.

I do think there is enough feedback gathered already to make some progress. The really bad ideas failed miserably, and the good ones can be made better with the voter comments. I'll be looking this over and probably be making some recommendations. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 21:14 (UTC)

You have no right to unilaterally "close" a vote. I am about to revert the main project page. This is wayout of line. DES 7 July 2005 21:17 (UTC)
It was not unilateral, any more than it was unilateral to open the vote without announcing it ahead of time. In fact, there are many comments above and in the voting which despise the hurried tone of this vote and the various tampering. This whole thing is an embarassment - it is the worst-run vote I've ever seen. -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 21:24 (UTC)
I agree that this vote is a big mess, but I don't think you have the right to close it. — Bcat (talk | email) 7 July 2005 21:26 (UTC)
Neto, it's not up to you to "close" this vote. It's up to the community. If you really think the vote should be considered invalid, let's at least wait until the agreed-upon time has passed. Then we can discuss your accusations of irregularities and decide if any action needs to be taken. sɪzlæk [ +t, +c, +m ] July 7, 2005 21:27 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the "right" to close a vote is relevant in a wiki. Nonetheless, I think you were incorrect to close it early. It's only been going a few days. Let the process run it's course. We will learn from it either way. Rossami (talk) 7 July 2005 21:29 (UTC)


Protected

Since it's apparent that this whole thing is a horrible mess and that no one seems to agree on anything, I've protected it. There will be no voting until you guys come to some kind of agreement as to what this page should or should not say.

I agree in principle with Netoholic, that it's a very bad idea to have people changing proposals in the middle of voting. I don't think unilaterally declaring the vote closed was the best idea, but he's got a valid complaint - how can people vote for something if the next day it says something different? If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion, I think the best course of action would be to open the floor to suggestions and proposals (to allow people to make new suggestions and fine-tune current ones), and say that voting will begin at such-and-such an hour on such-and-such a date after which there will be no modifications allowed. →Raul654 July 7, 2005 21:33 (UTC)

If I have followed this right, there have been no changes to current proposals. Only new proposals have been added, with their deadlines extended accordingly. So no one's vote was changed, and everyone is free to vote on the new proposals just like when the original vote opened. I see no proplem with this, and it seems like Netoholic is doing things like this because he disagrees with the proposals themselves, not necessarily how the were added (did he revert when the proposal to shut down this vote was added?) We should just let each vote run its course from now on. --Dmcdevit July 7, 2005 21:50 (UTC)
The rise of "new" proposal additions was itself a result of my initial complaints of tampering (see #Tampering with the voting while in progress). It's still tampering, in that when they add Yet Another rephrase, effectively all the previous oppose votes are canceled. Of course, the only ones really paying attention are the supporters, and that skews the results because the original opposers may not return (thinking they were done here). Also, many voters are making "conditional" votes based on items that were "revised". -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 21:59 (UTC)
I note that when I added Proposal 3-C, I made it a point to notify every person who had voted on 3-A or 3-B, support or oppose, including you, on each such person's talk page. Check my contribution history, you'll find the talk page edits grouped together. I think that radiant did the same when he added 3-B. If you didn't notice that, you should have. if you did notice that, it makes your argument that something was being snuck past those who opposed it unsound, at least for those proposals. You may have a case for not adding proposals in general, but not for such a bias effect in this particular case. DES 7 July 2005 22:10 (UTC)


Unprotected

Ok, I didn't realize that there were like 20 subpages many of which already have dozens of votes. I'm going to wave this one off, and let it go ahead and set up. Netoholic - don't stop the voting. →Raul654 July 7, 2005 21:44 (UTC)

All those sub-pages and votes, in my mind, make it even worse to be changing the vote options mid-stream. Oh well, hopefully some people have learned how not to run a vote in the future. As it is, this is such a mess, I'll just go about my business and then deal with it in a week and a half when the vote "closes". Only two options were clearly supported, and I've already incorporated them in CSD (in a subtle way, to avoid cries of instruction creep). -- Netoholic @ 7 July 2005 21:51 (UTC)

Is this vote premature?

I would like to point out that discussion of Ways We Could Improve VfD has been ongoing essentially since the beginning of the project. The CSD were adopted, IIRC, a little over a year ago, and there have been some tweaks to the amount of time an article stays on VfD, and a few CSD added and tweaked, and so on. Discussion has been ongoing throughout this process. Though these proposals with their particular wording have perhaps not been discussed, none of the ideas here is new.

I believe that Radiant is to be commended for forcing some sort of closure on these issues and I am pleased that at least some of the proposals have drawn a measure of support.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 8 July 2005 03:53 (UTC)

Another new proposal: Safetynet

The major reason for caution with Deletion and Speedy Deletion is precisely that deleted articles are gone and therefore the decisions are unreviewable by most editors. (I have considered requesting some form of admin status mostly to be able to see deleted articles.)

I therefore put forth the suggestion:

P2: The text and edit history of deleted articles should be available, in protected form.

I can hear the responce now: "<arrgh> That's just an invitation for the dweeb to repost it!"

But I think that's a non-problem, for two reasons:

  • the reposted article will be speedied, and the dweeb banned.
  • those dweebs who are computer-literate and stubborn enough to evade that probably have a copy of their text somewhere off Wikipedia anyway.

I await revision, and would have no objection to a time limit, if there is a storage question Septentrionalis 21:08, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"and the dweeb banned" That is an illusion. --Sn0wflake 21:53, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Another new proposal: Stubs for Deletion

Just a thought, but why not trim down the votes for deletion page by hiving off any articles of three paragraphs or less onto a stubs for deletion page, and make the VfD page an articles for deletion page? Steve block 21:54, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, but not really relevant to the issue at hand (speedy deletion). — Gwalla | Talk 01:41, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
But relevant to the causes for the current discussion, no, judging by the lengthy preamble on the proposal page. However, suitably chastened I have moved discussion to Reducing VfD load Steve block 07:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suffrage

The Proposals section states "Anonymous votes will be discounted, as will votes cast by any user that had less than 250 edits when this vote started." People who don't read proposals like this one carefully enough annoy me, and I noticed a fair number of them, so I wrote up some javascript to simplify checking when a user's 250th edit was. When in place, it replaces links to user pages from ordered lists (# in wikisyntax) on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal's subpages with links of the form http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=250&go=first&target=Cryptic, which show the user's first 250 edits (with the last of those, i.e. their 250th, at the top). I've also gone through the votes already cast and noted those that my tool turned up.

There are a couple caveats, though:

  1. If a user has less than 250 edits, the top edit shown will be his most recent, and it isn't immediately obvious that he hasn't made 250 yet. For these purposes, it doesn't matter (since it'll still be dated after the poll opened), but it's something to keep in mind if you want to reuse this script elsewhere.
  2. Links to user subpages (like User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage) break.
  3. It doesn't, of course, catch forged signatures; also, it relies on a link to the user's page being present in his signature.
  4. It's conceivable someone had more than 250 edits at the start of the poll, but some were to articles that have now been deleted. Deleted edits don't show up in the contributions list, so they aren't counted.
  5. If someone changes his username, it won't, of course, account for edits made under the old user name. (Case in point: ArmadniGeneral used to be Alex12 3. There might be others that I didn't notice.)
  6. I didn't account for the fact that some of the votes started after the others.

If you're reading this because I've marked your vote, please don't be offended if it doesn't actually apply to you due to one of the caveats above (particularly 4, 5, and 6); just say so and move on. —Cryptic (talk) 07:57, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Can someone point me to the Wikipedi policy that either states that users without 250 edits don't have suffrage, or a policy allows someone who sets up a policy vote to arbitrarily declare a threshold under which other editors are denied suffrage? I haven't found it, and I really think it's inappropriate to apply ANY ad-hoc policy to a vote regarding changing Wikipedia policy.
  • Further, I think that unless there is a pre-existing policy, we'll have to consider the fact that some users may have looked at this proposal and chosen not to participate because they didn't think they were qualified due to the fact that this was posted as a requirement to vote.
  • This is not an argument over whether an edit count suffrage threshold is appropriate or not. That is a separate decision (which may have already been made). Please let me know if there is a pre-existing policy that I am unaware of. Unfocused 17:44, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like to know of the precedent for this, as well. There's something fundamentally... well, fishy... about imposing an ad-hoc suffrage policy on a far-reaching policy vote. In all honesty, it reeks of gerrymandering. If the consensus has already been reached, then fine, my mistake for missing it. But it would be nice to refer to that debate and/or policy now. – Seancdaug 23:53, July 11, 2005 (UTC)


  • It seems completely arbitrary, the proposal might as well have a clause that all votes and comments will be ignored, except those made by the author, or except those made by Wikipedians wearing blue socks when they press save and whose usernames happen to start with a C. Why do we need such bureaucracy? And more importantly, does a survey actually have the consensus it might appear to have when such onerous bureaucratic restrictions w.r.t to participation are placed on it? I think not. --Mysidia 03:58, 12 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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