Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 27
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Votes for Deletion or Votes for deletion
Is the Deletion capitilized or not?
In favor of capitilizing, aka, proper noun usage
- A lot of the usage on this page: VfD
- The idea that VfD is a title for the page, not just a generic name (it's gotten it's own sort of etymology at this point)
- Some of the templates, ex) {{VfD header}}
- Internals of our See Also
- Page title as in text
In favor of not capitilizing, aka, generic usage
- Page titles for most of the Votes for Deletion related pages.
- Votes for deletion long term
- Some of the templates, especially the ones that didn't bother to capitilize anything
Interesting facts
- The 'official' abbrieviation of Votes for D/deletion is VFD: does this mean Votes For Deletion, or does this endorse the "generic usage"? Does it not mean anything at all (afterall, acronyms are capitilized regardless)? Of course, that doesn't mean that's used everywhere. Everyone seems to have their own preference. Wikipedia:Deletion policy heavily favors VfD
My Opinion We need to standardize this: it will cut down on unnecessary redirects, and will also stop official pages from sprouting up from all these different uses of VFD/VfD/vfd. Was there previous discussion about this? Although I can't prove it, I have this feeling that VFD started off as a generic label, but has become so prevalent that it deserves it's place as a proper noun. Wikipedia's VFD page is fairly high up in Google's ranking (for the search 'vfd'), Acronym Finder seems to also think it's a proper noun. In short, I think we should adopt Votes for Deletion, and move all these pages and get it over with. Ambush Commander 02:11, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
- Although thinking about it, this may not make much sense. Maybe we should keep it generic, and then pore through all the pages and find instances where people used VfD and change it to VFD. Ambush Commander 02:15, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
- I'm not convinced this is even an issue worth spending time on. In any case, the use of VfD or VFD does not denote that people think that it is a proper noun. It's just that all acronyms are commonly capitalized, especially for our shortcuts. COTW, VP, FA, etc are all in caps just becuse they're acronyms. And to be clear, it appears that Acronym Finder deals only in all caps regardless of proper/regular noun. Also, think about other popular places. Presumably, the community portal, random page, recent changes, etc. pages which are all in the toolbar on the left are the most heavily used because of their prominence, and yet none has been promoted to that of proper noun except for the Main Page. I think it would be breaking precedent and making a lot of work for nothing to change it now. --Dmcdevit 02:35, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
- You're right, this is a petty issue. If I get a chance, I'll go throught the deletion related pages and fix VfD to VFD. VfD does actually infer proper-noun-ship because it expands to Votes for Deletion: the deletion would not be capitilized unless it were proper. Ambush Commander 02:41, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
- Maybe I wasn't clear. I don't think that VfD implies proper-noun-ship. Acronyms of normal nouns are commonly capitalized. COTW expands to "collaboration of the week" and VP is "village pump", etc., go to those pages and look at their titles; they're not proper nouns regardless of the acronym. What about if I said LOL, or IMHO, or WTF, aren't I just saying "laughing out loud," and not "Laughing Out Loud"? --Dmcdevit 02:48, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
- But all the examples you cited didn't have a lowercase embedded within them. Ambush Commander 15:44, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
- Maybe I wasn't clear. I don't think that VfD implies proper-noun-ship. Acronyms of normal nouns are commonly capitalized. COTW expands to "collaboration of the week" and VP is "village pump", etc., go to those pages and look at their titles; they're not proper nouns regardless of the acronym. What about if I said LOL, or IMHO, or WTF, aren't I just saying "laughing out loud," and not "Laughing Out Loud"? --Dmcdevit 02:48, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
- You're right, this is a petty issue. If I get a chance, I'll go throught the deletion related pages and fix VfD to VFD. VfD does actually infer proper-noun-ship because it expands to Votes for Deletion: the deletion would not be capitilized unless it were proper. Ambush Commander 02:41, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
I think the title of the page stems off the Wikipedia naming conventions... which, so far, is to keep the first letter capitalized and the rest of the title of the article lower case, unless it's a proper noun. Deletion is not a proper noun because we don't necessarily consider Votes for deletion as a proper noun / title. Furthermore, we have a backlog of several pages of dates that use the lowercase 'd' and would require moving and changing due to this suggested change. -- AllyUnion (talk)
- I agree with AllyUnion's reasoning. "Votes for deletion" should stay at that name, which is in accord with Wikipedia's naming conventions. Also, it's not just several pages of dates; since every VFD page is in the form Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Pagename, we would have to change thousands of pages. —Lowellian (talk) 15:42, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
- Then the question is: does VfD imply Votes for Deletion??? Ambush Commander 02:56, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
Anonymous VFD's
So an anonymous user nominated Mirror Universe (Star Trek) for VFD for an absurd reason and has universal keep vote (sans Barno's merge & redirect, but that's another discussion about WP:FICT all together).
I'd like to propose that VFD's proposed by anonymous users can be removed without continuing the VFD unless a user "sponsors" the VFD by supporting the VFD. Now consider that loosely stated. Putting an article with universal opposition to deleting is just wasteful of resources and I'd like to add exemptions, if you will, to avoid cases such as this one.
Now, please don't consider my proposal a black & white issue. What about it would you support (if any) and what about it would you oppose (if any)? Any other stipulations or conditions to add? Cburnett 06:30, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
- well it wasn't the first time that a previously-never-seen anon has nominated an article for deletion as their first act. I'd certainly support the principle that if a sysop sees it before there are any comments on the nomination they can 'speedy remove' the nomination as - effecively - a case of vandalism unless they want to 'sponsor' is you suggest or unless others have started to comment in support. --Vamp:Willow 11:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
- If it's the anon's first act, then it seems like bad faith to me (and will probably get a bunch of keep-votes and get ignored). However, if made in good faith (such as by a longstanding anon editor) I see no reason why an anon wouldn't be able to nominate. Radiant_* 15:46, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
- I also support the idea. Though, one question to ask: what will the be "bar" for an annon editor to reach in order to becoming "longstanding"? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 16:52, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- If it's the anon's first act, then it seems like bad faith to me (and will probably get a bunch of keep-votes and get ignored). However, if made in good faith (such as by a longstanding anon editor) I see no reason why an anon wouldn't be able to nominate. Radiant_* 15:46, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
- foundation issue #2: "Ability of anyone to edit articles without registering". Anonymous users make hundreds of good-faith edits to Wikipedia every day. Anonymous users have made numerous good-faith VFD nominations in the past, too. Nominations by anonymous users should be treated equally to nominations from pseudonymous users. Both can be either in good faith or in bad faith. Both can be vandalism. A nomination in bad faith should be treated as such irrespective of whether it is by an anonymous user or a pseudonymous user. Being anonymous is not of itself a sign of bad faith. Uncle G 14:48, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
- Agreed that there are good annons out there, but lately, have we been dealing with more annons who have caused problems than have helped us out? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 14:51, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- Speedy deletion of Votes for Deletion??? A speedy deletion of a VFD can be put into place if the following VfD is... Ambush Commander 02:59, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
- That's a red herring. No one wants to stop anons from editing, just to stop them from participating in Wikipedia proceedings. There are many places in the Wikipedia: namespace that require you to be logged in to participate. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 01:13, May 25, 2005 (UTC)
- Agreed that there are good annons out there, but lately, have we been dealing with more annons who have caused problems than have helped us out? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 14:51, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- Making anonymous users unable to VfD will just force them to create a throwaway user account... what's the point of that? ··gracefool |☺ 04:08, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I agree with UncleG: bogus nominations should be removed on sight, irrespective of anonymity/logged-inness. --MarSch 17:53, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I disagree. Bogus nominations should be cherished and kept for posterity, so people can see and agree on what a horrible WP:POINT is being made. There certainly is no point to censoring anons here; the number of anons who come to VfD and nominate articles just to stir up trouble is negligible (sockpuppet voting on existing nominations is another matter...) How about nominations made in perfectly good faith by people who just don't get the deletion criteria? It also raises the question of who exactly will decide what nominations are "bogus" and just how quickly they should be removed. In other words, please let people shoot themselves in the foot (for misguided newbies) or give them enough rope to hang themselves with (for dicks). Reacting to a bogus nomination is your choice. They may be "wasteful of resources", but it's quite likely that trying to stamp them out is just going to be even more wasteful, as people will find a more destructive way of venting their frustration. JRM · Talk 18:13, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
Server cache purging...
... should only be done on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/Today, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/Yesterday, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (long form) and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Please do not place the purge server cache links on the individual day pages. -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:44, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Suggestions
- Has Wikipedia given serious consideration to prevent editors from tampering with articles until the VfD process is over? I must admit I've improved upon articles during the course of a vote however, in all honesty, this undermines the original integrity of the proposer. When an article is nominated, we should be voting on the state of the article as is. Maybe the process needs to be changed - instead of going through VfD first all articles must be placed on a page which indicates an intention to delete the article. After a maximum of lets say, 7 days, with no expansion or improvement to the article, it is locked and placed on the VfD queue for debate - this will prevent editors from tampering with it during the voting process and discussion, and vandals from removing VfD notices. And maybe this will encourage more people to improve the article before rather than waiting with its last gasp to save it. At the end of the normal voting process, if the article is kept it can then be unlocked for further improvement.
- Voting should be anonymous during the VfD process - only editors with user accounts who participate in the discussion should be allowed to vote without prejudice or intimidation. Only when voting has been completed should the final tally of results be made known - this would discourage vote stacking and sockpuppets. It would be interesting to see the outcome of many nominations if other editors did not see what the intention of the other voters were. Megan1967 05:59, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Many voters don't vote based on what the article is but rather what they think it can become. In fact, that's policy. Still, there are many articles whose significance is discovered after they've been on VfD a day or two, so I understand it might be hard to interpret early votes.—Wahoofive (talk)
- Don't you think though if it the article is kept in a queue before the actually voting and commentary for improvement that voters can actually see whether the article has any merit in being kept if no-one can be bothered to actually do anything with it? Thats why I think the notice of intention to delete would give those editors warning beforehand that the article needs improving rather than improving it during the course of the vote - it would also give the nominator time to remove the VfD notice if the article has been improved - thereby reducing the increasing traffic on VfD. Megan1967 06:28, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- By "anonymous", I take it you mean "invisible" or "secret ballot". Kind of takes the community aspect away, and definitely wouldn't stop sockpuppets. Wonder if there's a technical way to stop an account from editing a VfD subpage created before the creation timestamp of the account? —Wahoofive (talk) 06:10, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Is there much community by showing votes? Certainly votes and comments have added to a few personal attacks between editors - very few editors actually congratulate each other for voting a certain way.
- Oh, and thanks for brainstorming on this. VfD is broken, and we need all the ideas we can to try to fix it.—Wahoofive (talk) 06:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- VFD is not broken. Uncle G 15:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
I think the suggestions above are outrageous and accomplish exactly opposite of what VfD is trying to archieve (to separate the good from the bad) by making decisions harder. When there is an article on obscure topic many people could not realize its importance, but when someone improves the article or votes keep on it, explaining the reason why it's notable, they could change their opinion. Your suggestions take both options away. I fail to see why they improve VfD process rather than completely destroying the point of it. Grue 06:42, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Just how is it making decision making harder? If the article is improved upon before voting, giving editors time to work on it, it would make it much easier for people to decide later whether it should be kept or not. Megan1967 06:52, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Once again, the VFD talk page slogan: "INATV!" ("It's not about the votes!") The best VFD discussions I've participated in were those where discussion occurred, and where feedback from the discussion resulted in changes to the article. This is not an election, where candidates must be given equal airtime. This is not a test, where examinees aren't allowed to do any further revision once they enter the examination room. Preventing articles from being modified, so that they can be voted upon, out of some misguided sense of levelling the playing field, is entirely missing the point of VFD. Uncle G 15:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
- I disagree with point 1 - although I admit it can obfuscate the issue. At present it is possible to put a VfD message on an article one minute after it has been created - whilst the creator may still have a lot to add (as not everyone uses "show preview", especially when WP is going really slow). Where an article has undergone big changes throughout a VfD process, it could be for a number of reasons. It could be genuine, good article expansion - and the expanded article may clearly be worth keeping. It could be a vanity or joke article that an "in group" is editing. Usually it is clear what is the case and an intelligent admin should consider carefully what's happened to an article before deciding to keep or delete - and this may, in my view, include relisting the expanded article on VfD, jguk 06:47, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- My suggestion is that editors discuss the changes during the VfD process rather than actually making physical changes to the article. If editors are persuaded or not to vote keep, the suggested changes in the discussion will be added to the article after the vote has been taken and it has been unlocked. The actually voting process would not discourage improvement rather it would give editors time to discuss and debate the proposed changes. Megan1967 07:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- The problem with 2 (assuming it could be done) is that it would encourage more users to vote on every single item. Whereas at present a user seeing four "deletes" and no "keeps" who thinks an article should be deleted may well just move on, under the proposal, you might get 25 deletes. However, I agree that the process should, if possible, be simplified, jguk 06:51, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- That's why voting should be limited to those actually involved in the discussion - it will eliminate the "Me Too!" factor. I have very rarely seen 25 people discussing an article during VfD. Megan1967 07:11, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- I don't see the harm in editing articles during VfD (save for the already-forbidden redirection). The easiest way to demonstrate what an article might become...is to actually improve the article. Sensible editors note on the VfD discussion that the article has been significantly updated, and let other editors follow up. (The number of times I've seen "Keep with Capitalistroadster's changes" is staggering.) The admin who closes the VfD can also take major changes into account. If all else fails, there's VfU. Putting a week-long freeze on editing an article because of a VfD notice is arguably counterproductive to our purpose: creating an encyclopedia. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 12:04, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Seeing a whole load of Delete votes being stricken through and replaced with "Keep after rewrite by X" is part of the fun of VFD. Uncle G 15:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
- I don't see why point 1 is necessary, when there is a whole selection of {{cleanup}} tags which could be used instead. I think one way to simply VfD is to continue gently nagging people to use them. Kappa 13:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- A variant for #1: lock the page itself but encourage would-be editors to create /temp pages for improvements (similar to the copyvio process) —Wahoofive (talk) 15:57, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- I'm a little concerned about how that would complicate the VfD process. There could then be multiple overlapping debates: first, voting on whether the original article should be kept; second, voting on whether the topic is worthy of an article; third, voting on whether the new temp article should be kept; fourth, voting on which version of the temp article to keep if there are multiple options put forward. If the original article is deleted and replaced by a temp article, will we end up seeing the new version back on VfD the next week?
- I suspect we might want to think very carefully about precisely what problem we're trying to solve here. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 16:17, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Good point, and you're right about the fork problem. I think the problem Megan's concerned about is this: Someone nominates a crappy article for VfD, and the first day ten people vote to delete. Then the eleventh person massively improves the article, and a couple of people vote to keep, but there's still a preponderance of Delete votes, mostly based on an out-of-date version. How about this alternate suggestion: make it a point of honor that people who vote on a VfD page must put the page in question on their watchlists until the VfD is resolved. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:35, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- I thought this was common practice. I always do this. android↔talk 02:32, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
- There is no problem to be concerned about. Good closing administrators don't blindly tally votes like robots. And good contributors note, with one of the common shorthands, when a major rewrite has been done. INATV! Uncle G 15:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
- Good point, and you're right about the fork problem. I think the problem Megan's concerned about is this: Someone nominates a crappy article for VfD, and the first day ten people vote to delete. Then the eleventh person massively improves the article, and a couple of people vote to keep, but there's still a preponderance of Delete votes, mostly based on an out-of-date version. How about this alternate suggestion: make it a point of honor that people who vote on a VfD page must put the page in question on their watchlists until the VfD is resolved. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:35, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- Actually, in retrospect I kind of like Megan's #1 suggestion. Rather than argue that such-and-such is notable, inclusionists would have to put their editing where their mouth is and put some real content on the page. The idea that we have to keep every possible stub "to encourage growth" is getting out of hand. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:10, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- A variant for #1: lock the page itself but encourage would-be editors to create /temp pages for improvements (similar to the copyvio process) —Wahoofive (talk) 15:57, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't think VfD is necessarily "broken," as some have claimed, but it could use some improvement. We always say it "isn't about the votes" but I think that many people – including myself – lose sight of that every now and then. I'm just brainstorming here, but what if we make the discussion a bit more formal, with two separate phases: one for evidence/discussion, and one for voting? This could be as simple as making a convention not to start each comment with Keep or Delete or Whatever right away and just starting the voting phase whenever someone feels there's enough participation; or, it could be as formal and rule-bound as something like arbitration, with evidence presented, up-or-down votes on findings of fact, etc. This would make the process longer, certainly, and might cause instruction creep, but it might end up making the whole thing more fair, allowing the chance for editors to improve the article before it goes under the axe, so to speak. Just some ideas, anyway... android↔talk 02:32, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
- I always put the "Keep/Delete" at the ends of my discussion contributions. And several VFD participants have for a long time made contributions along the lines of "vote pending" or "no vote yet". There is no problem to be solved with instruction creep here. There is no "unfairness" to be addressed. Editors get the whole VFD period (which in practice is often longer than the advertised lag time) to improve the article to address the concerns raised in the discussion, and there are plenty of tags like {{music-importance}} and {{cleanup-importance}} that allow for further extension of the period during which an article can be improved (and even elimination of the VFD discussion entirely when the "warning shot" results in clear evidence that the topic is encyclopaedia-worthy being added to the article). If you are trying to address the problem of people putting VFD notices on articles 2 minutes after they are created, do so by encouraging nominators to use {{music-importance}}, {{cleanup-importance}}, and their ilk instead of such VFD notices. Uncle G 15:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
Should I finish somebody else's VfD proces?
Somebody (an anon user, seemingly with very few previous contributions) nominated my Tourneys in A Song of Ice and Fire for deletion and almost followed procedure. However, he or she seems to have failed to do the crucial third step: to actually get the page listed on the VfD list. As far as I can see, this means that very few people will find it to provide any feedback. Also, nobody will actually ever remove the VfD template. What to do? Should I be so courteous as to actually get my own article listed on the VfD page? Wouldn't that make it an automatic speedy delete? Or could somebody else "sponsor" the anon user's nomination, possibly even by adding a valid reason for the deletion? Surely there is be some fancruft-hating deletionist out there who would help me out of my moral dilemma? Arbor 19:22, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
- There should be some automatic process (or automatic calling to attention of administrators) when a VfD subpage is created to get it listed here. Why don't we have that already? Or do we have it, and it just hasn't been picked up yet? Gene Nygaard 20:41, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
- Several editors routinely check for orphaned VFD notices. It's not required that an incomplete nomination be completed. It may be rolled back. WP:GVFD specifically warns that incomplete nominations may be discarded or ignored. And there are cases where discarding is reasonable. For example: If only the first part of a nomination has been performed (applying the notice to the article), but the nominator has not indicated, either with an edit history comment, a talk page contribution, or a VFD sub-page with a radionale on it, why they applied the notice, then it is unreasonable to expect another editor to be a mind-reader and to perform the remaining two parts of the nomination process. (A nominator who isn't just vandalistically applying the tag will have an incentive to perform the nomination process properly, moreover.) Conversely, there are cases where completing is reasonable. For example: If the only thing missing is the third step, then it's reasonable to simply do it (and note the fact on the discussion sub-page), especially if discussion has ensued on the sub-page, as is indeed the case here. Uncle G 15:44, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
Moving this page
I realise this would take a lot of work, but I feel particularly uncomfortable with this page being "votes for deletion". This, to me, totally ignores the huge amount of discussion that goes on. Could this page be renamed Wikipedia:Pages for deletion or Wikipedia:Articles for deletion? I am bringing this up here rather than at WP:RM, because I want to sound out the water first. What do people think? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 20:45, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
- I noted yesterday that Simple: use the term "Requests for deletion". This would conflict with the existing WP:RFD for redirects though. If people want to move the page (I personally don't think its worth the hassle), then I think Wikipedia:Articles for deletion / WP:AFD would be better. Thryduulf 21:15, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
- I prefer AFD to VFD and I am prepared to help with the work arising from such a renaming. --Theo (Talk) 00:05, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- This has been discussed extensively before (Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/title). Remember that pages in the Wikipedia namespace are sometimes also nominated for deletion.—Wahoofive (talk) 03:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- I think some want to rename the page, perhaps to keep it in line with Images (and other media) for Deletion, Categories for Deletion, Redirects for Deletion, etc. We can always mention on the main page that pages in the Wikipedia: namespace can also be listed here and will be treated the same as an article in regards to the voting protocol. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 17:00, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- That page only shows that:
- The only opposition really came from one user, Jtdirl
- The main reason the page wasn't moved was the lack of decision where it should go.
- I find the current title totally misleading and discouraging to proper discussion. It encourages people to vote and leave, rather than discuss. There are satisfactory alternatives, and I think we need to use them. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 17:35, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- I absolutely agree with the move. The last time the vote happened the only reason no move resulted was that the vote was badly organised, which led to no way of getting consensus and so the status quo remained.
- Further it may be useful to keep Wikipedia: pages for deletion discussions separate anyway, they are usually of a very different character, and obviously have completely different deletion criteria. Pcb21| Pete 07:26, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- This has been discussed extensively before (Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/title). Remember that pages in the Wikipedia namespace are sometimes also nominated for deletion.—Wahoofive (talk) 03:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- I prefer AFD to VFD and I am prepared to help with the work arising from such a renaming. --Theo (Talk) 00:05, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
- I've long thought Wikipedia:Articles for deletion to be the title more in line with Wikipedia:Images for deletion, Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion, Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, and Wikipedia:Templates for deletion, as per User:Benc on the aforementioned discussion page. I have a vague recollection that the reason that the redirect exists there now is that this title was suggested again a month or so ago. But a very brief search of the archives doesn't turn up the relevant discussion. Uncle G 15:53, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
- As it would seem that most people are in favour of this move (that is, to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion), would anyone object if I made an RM to move it? I know I could move it myself, but I would prefer to get consensus before doing so, as it is clearly a major move. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:04, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- My only concern would be that this page is really "Articles being considered for deletion", not "Articles for deletion", jguk 16:37, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- I find your suggestion a little long-winded for such a popular page, and think that Wikipedia:Requests for deletion might be a happier middle ground. Something with so many interested parties will have to go to a vote, so lets get the voting system well-organised this time. Pcb21| Pete 16:43, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
Alternative names storage area
Here is a list of an alternative proposed over the last year or so for your perusual. Please leave the list intact, i.e. keep the discussion about their various benefits and problems separate. Add more variations as you see fit.
- Wikipedia:Votes for deletion
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion
- Wikipedia:Articles being considered for deletion
- Wikipedia:Proposals for deletion
- Wikipedia:Requests for deletion
- Wikipedia:Requests for page deletion
- Wikipedia:Requests for article deletion
- Wikipedia:Proposed deletions
- Wikipedia:Consensus for deletion
- Wikipedia:Problem pages
- Wikipedia:Deletion votes and requests
- Wikipedia:Pages to be deleted
- Wikipedia:Nominations for deletion
- Wikipedia:Pages for deletion
- Wikipedia:Editorial decisions
- Wikipedia:Deletion decisions
- Wikipedia:Purposeless pages
- Wikipedia:Deletions
- Wikipedia:Deletion
- Wikipedia:Votes to keep articles
- Wikipedia:Votes for retention (!)
- Wikipedia:Article deletion
How to manage the change
This change is bound to attract the interest of a lot parties. Please provide below some links to successful similar votes so we can pick a system that seems to work well in situations like this. Pcb21| Pete 21:51, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- How about this. I haven't got a link, because this is the way polls on Wikipedia have always worked. Users nominate their favoured options. We use consensus voting to decide which one has the most consensus. My nominations would be: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion (for the status quo), Wikipedia:Requests for page deletion (this is the clearest to me, and the most general, encompassing Wikipedia: as well as articles), or Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (this fits in best with the other ?fD pages. I would support the second two. Does that sound a reasonable method? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 22:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- It seems reasonable to me. --Theo (Talk) 22:27, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- So we list some candidates, and users votes for as many options as they will accept. And the one that is acceptable to most users wins? Pcb21| Pete 13:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- It would be like the vote we had on template standardization. See Wikipedia:Template standardisation/vote. --Dmcdevit 23:45, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- Basically, yes. We might then need to go through the whole RM process for that one title, if there was not a clear consensus. I think we would need to plot a strategy for any move that was to take place before it actually did take place, on account of the huge amounts of pages using the VFD name. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 14:52, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- I don't yet understand what problem you are trying to solve. Change just for the sake of change is not particularly good. What specific behaviors do you seek to incent by changing the name of the page? And what evidence or reasoning do you have to believe that this proposed change will be effective? Rossami (talk) 02:03, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- It isn't behaviour that is the intended change, but perception. I feel that, currently, Votes for deletion makes it sound like voting is all we do here, not discussion or improvement. It isn't change for change's sake, but to show what this page actually is, a forum for discussion about possible page deletion, rather than a vote-and-go system. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 11:05, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- The title of a page should reflect the purpose of a page. There is widespread concern that a page entitled "votes for..." implies that the purpose of the page is to vote on stuff, but the actual purpose of this page is to discuss potential deletions and, if possible, improve pages so that we don't have to delete them. As Smoddy says it isn't about changing behaviour so much as reinforcing it. Pcb21| Pete 13:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- I am going to stick with "behaviors". I can't touch or measure "perceptions" so we'll never know if we succeeded. The behavior you want to drive is increased discussion and reduced rote voting. I absolutely support that goal. Your hypothesis that changing the name of the page will change those behaviors (at least incrementally) is intuitively attractive. Right now however, we have no evidence that it will be effective. Nor do we have any evidence which name would be most effective at driving those behaviors. I recommend framing the question in those terms. Rossami (talk) 23:25, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- See my new suggested move at bottom of page. Superm401 | Talk 01:14, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)