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Warning This is a discussion archive created in or until 2006, though the comments contained may not have been posted on this date. Please do not post any new comments on this page. See current discussion or the archives index.

Master list of beta policy issues

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Here is a concentrated list of issues, questions, and to-dos that I came up with while copying and adapting this policy article from Wikipedia:Deletion policy. It's here to get people thinking, but I highly recommend we create separate sections to discuss each point, because inserting discussions between each point will make this one monstrously long and complex debate! So here's the starting point for future discussions:

  • Templates that should be implemented quickly:
  • Missing pages referenced in this policy page:
  • Pages that should be created as soon as possible:
  • Other fixes:
  • Other issues that need to be discussed:
    • I've added some estimated times and numbers in bold red to show where something official should be said. I've just thrown in some placeholder numbers; they need to be discussed.
    • What is the state of Transwiki (move between projects) pages and templates? The only things I've found so far are the Transwiki log (currently only including incoming articles) and pages in the Transwiki: namespace, not automatically collected anywhere.
    • Do we need or want Wikiquote:Pages needing translation, or should we expect contributors to provide English articles for en:Wikiquote? (Has this issue even come up yet here?)
    • Do we need POV templates? If so, do we need either or both of {{npov}} and {{POV check}}?
    • Images, redirects, categories, templates: Each has a separate deletion process at Wikipedia, but that's probably because they delete "hundreds of pages each day", in their words. This beta policy suggests that we simply divide everything into speedy deletes and votes, just as we've been doing.
    • Copyright violation: This is a separate process on Wikipedia, but again, unless there's a compelling need to treat copyvios differently, I suggest we tag them either with {{db|EXPLANATION}}, where EXPLANATION shows the copyvio source, or {{vfd}}, with the nominator describing the copyvio source in the VfD listing.
    • Speedy deletion (SD) explanations: Standard Votes for deletion have a place to describe why they're listed, but with the deprecation of Wikiquote:Speedy deletions in favor of tagging SD pages with {{delete}} to place them in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, we have no explanations of why these are listed. It may be obvious, but it often isn't, and we've had several SD'd pages that were perhaps more appropriately listed on VfD. I suggest that we recommend the use of {{db|EXPLANATION}} instead of {{delete}} to make it easier for Admins to quickly decide the appropriateness of the SD tag.
    • Now that we've obsoleted Wikiquote:Speedy deletions (except as an explanation page), we have no record of what was speedy-deleted outside of the Wikiquote deletion log (which requires a brief explanation for each deletion). Is this sufficient? (I hope so, since the whole point of speedy deletes is that they can be done quickly, and adding a separate detailed log would be more effort than archiving the old speedy deletion page entries.)
    • Some of the described processes use tags (templates) to automatically place an article in a category. Some use a tag, but require a separate effort to list the article somewhere (along with an explanation). Some use no tag, but require listing. This is very confusing, but this is a trade-off between the ease of category tagging (automatic inclusion for review by Admins — good for quick action) and the robust opportunity for explanation and argument offered by lists (for anything that takes time and consensus to resolve). I think that these instructions should eventually make it easier for newcomers to understand the distinction. (I think old timers will also benefit from greater clarity, as it might get us thinking about simplifying the processes. ☺)
    • The Wikipedia deletion policy includes the step:
      At the end of the lag time, the VfD discussions may be moved off the main VfD page onto a "holding page" called Votes for deletion/Old where they will stay until an admistrator [sic] has time to act on the consensus decision.
      It appears that this Old is equivalent to our Archive, except we currently only put items in Archive when they've already been acted upon. Also, Wikipedia's Old is subdivided into action types (Transwiki, delete) and further by date. We could consider a similar structure (without the date subdivisions) for our Archive, with separate sections for "Ready for deletion", "Consensus against deletion", and "Deletion pending technical problem resolution" (like what Rmhermen has already done for the main VfD page). We still need to decide how to sort the listings (oldest-first, newest-first, alphabetical, etc.).

As I mentioned above, I ask that each of these issues be the start of a new section, to make the discussions easier to follow and avoid spreading out the above list so far that we can't go from one point to the other to see where it started. I'm planning to add in the templates and shortcuts almost immediately, and I'll be working on the other Deletion pages in the next week (unless someone else wants to do it, so I don't hog all the fun!). — Jeff Q (talk) 05:22, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikiquote-specific deletion policy pages

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(transferred from VFD talk) We should copy over the main deletion policy pages from Wikipedia and edit them severely for Wikiquote use. We have only 1% of the registered users, so we should avoid the complex infrastructure Wikipedia requires. But we need instructions here; otherwise, people either ignore the unwritten processes or get lost in the complexities of Wikipedia's processes. Any changes we make should also be easy for Wikipedians to adapt to, since we'll get a lot of new folks from there. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've already started this process with this article and its talk page. I expect that these pages I'm adapting are only beta versions. The Wikiquote community should review them and decide what we want to keep, throw out, modify, or expand upon. At some point, we should probably hold some kind of vote for approval of the resulting document. — Jeff Q (talk) 07:19, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lag time for deletions

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refactored by Aphaia 17:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jeff Q Asked
... how long should we give ourselves to vote on deletions? on 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
he also commented

Wikipedia gives five days for people to review articles listed on VfD. Wikiquote's lag time has been much longer ...(omitted) ... how long should we give ourselves to vote on deletions? —  (talk) 07:21, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia supported a longer term discussion
two weeks are fine ...

No opposition till 17:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So could we now conclude "On English Wikiquote each routine deletion needs two weeks discussion except some cases"? --Aphaia 17:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

original discussion: (your edit and correction of the summary the above will be appreciated.)


Wikipedia gives five days for people to review articles listed on VfD. Wikiquote's lag time has been much longer, partly because we were overburdening poor Kalki, and partly because we're still growing, apparently perceiving less need to delete. Now that we have several active admins, how long should we give ourselves to vote on deletions? — Jeff Q (talk) 07:21, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • (transferred from VFD talk) Give VfDs at least 2 weeks, and perhaps a month to run. I think Rmhermen's suggestions above about clear-consensus and ongoing VfDs (from Revisiting old VfDs) make sense, except that nearly all VfDs here in the past few months have been decided exclusively by the sysops. I'm afraid that the new, very active sysops will be able to achieve consensuses (consensi?) too quickly for the much smaller Wikiquote readership to get a reasonable chance to vote. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Currently I support a longer term discussion. Two weeks are fine, specially deletion candidates are not apparent copyvio or libel or any other illegal contents. Even today many major Wikipedia like German or Japanese keep one week discussion. They have over 100 active registered users but currently our community is much smaller, hence discussions need more attention and longer discussion in my opinion. --Aphaia 07:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No opposition till 17:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC): so could we now conclude "On English Wikiquote each routine deletion needs two weeks discussion except some cases"? --Aphaia 17:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Order of VfD and VfD archive

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We should decide which way to order VfD and VfD archive. Last year, the general order was oldest-first, although there were exceptions. The archive was apparently strictly oldest-first. With the recent spate of candidates, people have mostly been following Wikipedia's practice of putting them newest-first. Last I checked, the archive was fairly well mixed, as Rmhermen noticed. (I suspect it's more than just the recent additions.) — Jeff Q (talk) 07:22, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • (transferred from VFD talk) I have three suggestions:
    • For the main list, we should have a link that someone can click to start a new VfD. This will greatly assist in maintaining a chronological order, whichever it may be. (I've been planning to add such a link, but I wanted to discuss it first, especially since the order was still in question.)
    • For the archive, we might consider alphabetical order instead of chronological, since the archive's main purpose is to allow people to see if an article has been discussed, so they'll be looking for a title, not a date.
    • Whichever order we decide, we need to make it clear at the top of the main VfD page.
    — Jeff Q (talk) 17:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • It is eqaul for me newest first or older first. The important thing is stick to one order without mixing. As for archive I prefer order by date but if there is a way to mix it (alphabetical and date; perhaps having each discussion separately - like Wikipedia - and sort them by two category, alphabetical and month+year, for example), it would be better at least for me. --Aphaia 07:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • For the archive, if we do it alphabetically, there's no need to mix in dates, since each article title is different. If we do it chronologically, we don't any need to mix in alphabetical order, since each entry will have a slightly different time. One or the other should be sufficient. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:27, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • For the active VfD page, I can quickly create a link at the top to allow people to add an entry at the bottom. I don't know how to do this to make it go in at the top. This makes me want to order the active VfDs newest-last. Also, if we do that, we can't have the "tech problems" section at the bottom. But based on what Aphaia and I are saying under Deletion pending, if we immediately move block-compress problem deletions to the archive, this won't be a problem. Otherwise, we probably need either to leave each problem entry in place (which is a little confusing) or move the section to the top. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:29, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Alphabetical archive sounds good. New to bottom on Vfd is good for consistency with other projects. Rmhermen 13:44, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Votes

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We've passed around some ideas, and there are now calls to vote on some of these issues. Because there are really two separate orders to decide on, I've broken this into two separate decision discussions: the main Vfd page, and the VfD archive page. Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Order of VfD archive

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I've put this first, because a new alphabetical order demonstrated at Wikiquote:Proposed Votes for deletion archive seems to be uncontroversial, having been well received by everyone who has commented so far. It includes a higher division into Kept articles, Deleted articles, and Pending deletion articles (the last of which serves some other administrative purposes). The comments here above indicate two people in favor of trying alphabetical, one preferring chronological (but commenting on WQ talk:PVFDA that the proposed alphabetical page looks better). I have boldly proposed that we adopt this shortly on or after 17 April 2005, so we can focus on other, more controversial matters. (It can always be switched back to chrono order if the community doesn't like it, although then we'd still have to decide which direction, and whether it would be based on date of entry or date of closure, which can be extremely different on Wikiquote.) Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Proposal: Try the three-section alphabetical order for a while, keeping it if there are no objections. Add instructions to make the new structure and order clear on VfD, the archive page itself, and in related Categories and policy pages.
    • This proposal will be implemented shortly after 00:00 17 April 2005 (UTC) unless there are serious objections. Objections, questions, or comments should be posted at WQ talk:VFDA#Restructuring, to ensure they will be seen by the people working on this effort. Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Order of main VfD

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There is some difference of opinion on which order the main VfD page should be in. There are three basic orders suggested: chronological order, newest-first; chrono order, newest-last; and alphabetical.

NOTE: There is also the complication of whether we should have a separate section for articles that are "pending deletion" but can't be deleted because of technical problems. (We have recently added that section.) But this complication goes away if we decide to move closed VfD entries immediately to archive, which appears to be likely (see When to move to archive below).

Here are the basic choices, along with some pros and cons. Please vote on your preferred VfD entry order (or add another line if I've missed something). Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vote closes: 01:00 23 April 2005 (UTC)
Vote closed. "Chronological, newest-last" it is. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:00, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Chronological, newest-last. This corresponds to Wikiquote tradition and to many post-new-item pages in wikidom. More importantly, it is necessary if we want an Add a new deletion request link at the top of the VfD page (like the one shown in WQ:Proposed VfD), unless someone can figure out an alternative.
    1. Jeff Q (talk) 01:10, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    2. Rmhermen 13:00, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    3. jni 14:15, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Chronological, newest-first. This corresponds to recent Wikiquote practice and to many wiki pages that prefer to focus on the latest info. There is no proposed means at the moment to add a link for easy creation of a new entry.
  • Chronological, but it is equal to me newest-first or last.
    1. Aphaia 17:26, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Alphabetical. This would make finding an entry somewhat easier, and would match the proposed order of the VfD archive, but corresponds with no other VF* or RF* practices (that JeffQ is aware of, at least). It also provides no easy means to create a new-entry link.

I must apologize to the Wikiquote community for making a hasty move that stomped over this vote. On 18 April, I resorted the VfD page in "chronological, newest-last" order because Aphaia had just added a new-entry link, which automatically posts new entries last. (Aphaia's action was clearly meant to help the community, but I had been pushing the link, so I take the blame for the lack of coordination.) Although my intention was to ensure the VfD remained in some recognizable order, which would have been disturbed the first time someone added a new entry after this point, I had forgotten that this vote was still in progress. Fortunately, the consensus to that point had been for the resulting newest-last order, and no one voted after that point. I probably should have left the order untouched until after the vote, as it wouldn't have been any more confusing than VfD had occasionally been in the past, and it would have been fixed in a few days anyway. I hope my precipitous action has not caused anyone problems or concerns. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:00, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your understanding, but I would like to apologize to the community on my haste editing - addition a link. Perhaps I forgot completely the vote was on-going at the moment I added the link. But for fairness it would be better for me not to add this link "for creation". It matched the vote result, but it is merely as a result. Sorry for my careless edit. --Aphaia 15:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

When to move to archive

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Should we move VfDs for deleted pages immediately to the archive, or should we leave them on VfD for a while to allow people to see the results of the vote? — Jeff Q (talk) 07:23, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • (based on comments transferred from VFD talk) Moving a deleted page immediately to the archive gives the same appearance (initially) as if some unhappy person just deleted the VfD, which I suspect may be one reason they wait on Wikipedia. If we do expect to move completed VfDs immediately, we should probably add a note at the top, so people know to look in the archive if their important VfD suddenly disappears. This is especially important if we don't have a firm date by which we close VfDs. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Currently making a list on the top seems fine but when we have many discussion for deletion, it will become unfeasiable. How about noting the (former) candidate name in the summary box? And I propose we make a rule for deletion processing and archiving, that is,
  1. Sysop A deletes a page and reports the deletion on VfD.
  2. Sysop B archives the discussion.
    1. Sysop B moved the discussion first.
    2. Then sysop B deletes the discussion from VfD and put a link to the archive in the Summary of this removal edit.
How about this? --Aphaia 07:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, I didn't say this very clearly. I meant to say that, if we move deleted entries to the archive right away, we should have a statement like:
    When an administrator determines that the vote is for deletion, they will immediately move the discussion to the archive.
    … in the instructions at the top of WQ:VFD, so people don't think someone just deleted the entry to prevent further discussion. I'm not worried about requiring two different people to decide and archive. (In fact, I think that's needlessly complicated.) I just want to make sure that people have time to see the results of the vote before they're archived. With a note at the top, perhaps we don't need to delay between deciding and archiving. This should probably also apply to votes to keep, which must also be available for review and eventually archived. The time between an admin taking action on the vote and an admin (possibly the same one) archiving the results should probably be the same for both deletions and keeps, to avoid confusing people. Finally, whatever we decide on lag time between action and archiving, it would be easier for readers to follow if we posted closing dates in each entry. (E.g., if I know beforehand that the vote on FooBar closes on 20 April, I won't be surprised if I find on 21 April that the results have been moved to the archive.) — Jeff Q (talk) 08:48, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
With the closing dates, I suggest moving soon after it closes. If we keep theVfd page clean, more people may find the new listings that need comments. Rmhermen 13:44, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm coming around to this approach myself. Not only is it easy enough for people to check the archive for "missing" votes, but my impression of Wikipedia's practice was incorrect (or no longer correct). While checking on the Reirom issue, I saw that they promptly move entries off the main list after their five day period (even before a sysop has had a chance to take action). For Wikiquote, with closing dates posted and clear instructions at the top, moving decided entries immediately into archive shouldn't cause confusion. — Jeff Q (talk) 19:29, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Would you let me write down the proposed procedure to make it sure if I understand correctly?
  1. A vote is closed since the closing time has come.
  2. A sysop moves this discussion to the archive.
  3. Then if the conclusion is deletion, he or she deletes the page. If not, an appropriate edit will be done (keep, merge or rename and so on).

--Aphaia 16:14, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia, your procedure above says to move articles to archive first, then take action. That seems to be where we're headed. However, in your recent edit to the instructions for WQ:VFD, you recommended leaving non-deleted articles on VfD for a while. Did you do this because of the current Deletion policy text? If so, I apologize, because I didn't remove the contradiction between Unlisting a page from VfD (which says "leave [non-deletions] listed... for a short while") and When the lag time runs out (which says "an Admin will determine whether there is a consensus, delete the page if so, and move the entry", which might imply that all closed entries will be moved). Sorry about that confusion.
Aphaia's steps above, Rmhermen's desire to keep the VfD clean by moving "soon after closing", and my change of heart on lag time suggest we may be in agreement that moving to archive as soon as the vote is closed is a good thing. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If no one objects, shortly after 00:00 18 April 2005 (UTC), I plan to edit the VfD instructions and the deletion policy to reflect Aphaia's steps. (I will also move any VfD entries that are closed at that point to the archive.) — Jeff Q (talk) 00:23, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your clarification, and don't take it so serious. I tried to keep consistency between VfD and policy, mainly to avoid my own confusion ;-) I prefer your newly proposed procedure. It is much simpler than the current one. Instead of "a month keeping" we add probably a new remark "before you list a deletion candidate here, please give a look to the archive if the community decided lately to keep it." And I support hereby both proposed procedure and proposed voting schedule ;-)--Aphaia 17:36, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have rewritten the two sections I mentioned above into a new Finishing a vote for deletion section, which briefly lists Aphaia's steps and elaborates on them. It also accomodates some recent changes in VfD and Vfd archive practice. Please review this to ensure I haven't forgotten anything or messed something up. Thanks. — Jeff Q (talk) 04:19, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe that the instruction under Keep are correct or optimal. If the article is kept, we don't do nothing further - we have to go to the article and remove the Vfd tag. Wikipedia also copies the Vfd discussion to the article talk page which I suggest might also be useful - or at least have a tag that directs to the Vfd archive which could be added. Rmhermen 14:14, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
You're certainly correct on the first item; perhaps it's no wonder I've forgotten to remove the VfD tag on two "keeps" so far. I'll fix that in the policy right away. The second point, adding a link to the VfD discussion or the entire thing to the article's Talk page, hasn't been practiced here (at least that I've noticed), but makes sense. I suggest we go with the link, so we don't have two copies of the material (and incidentally avoiding having to prevent unscrupulous editors from making changes to the article copy; I assume the sysops have the VfD archive on their Watchlists). — Jeff Q (talk) 01:42, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've fixed the "keep" information in the policy. I went ahead and added an instruction to post a link to the Vfd archive entry as well. I also went through the current kept articles list in the archive to post notes in all their Talk pages. In the process, I created a {{vfd-kept|ENTRY}} template to make posting the notice much easier for any articles that are just left in place (as opposed to moved or redirected). The ENTRY field, which is usually just the article title, also allows odd cases like "Speeches" (whose article was "Ich Bin ein Berliner") and multiple articles listed in a single header (like the old proposed main pages). (See Template talk:vfd-kept for instructions, and check out the talk pages of the odd VfD entries' articles to see the fancier uses of the template.) — Jeff Q (talk) 05:23, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Loose or firm deadlines

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Jeff Q put a question on 2 Apr 2005

Should we have a loose deadline, (omitted) ... or should we post a closing date/time for each VfD entry?

And supported a firm deadline with a proposal of closing date announcement.
  • (transferred from VFD talk) We might consider a firm deadline that would be explicitly stated in each VfD. (omitted) ... I've found that explicitly announcing the closing date/time of a Wiki vote greatly improves assistance and cooperation. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Aphaia supported firm deadline first weakly, later strongly.
Rmhermen supported both ideas too,
13:44, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I like a firm deadline and have no objection to adding the closing date. Having pages which languish with the deletion notice for months or longer looks poorly for our effort. If we don't get consensus, we can always relist at an appropriate time later.


Example by Jeff Q
08:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

... I was thinking of one line in each VfD, like so:

  • Vote closes: 08:30, 17 Apr 2005 UTC
… since I'd expect that most people coming to VfD are probably just looking for information on a specific article, so they'd jump right to its entry. But a summary at the top might be useful for those who scan the whole list periodically and might like to see which votes are near closing. (I'm thinking more of the general readership, not the Administrators, who I expect will be rather familiar with the entire list.) It would be a bit more effort to synchronize info in two different places, but it might be worth it. — 
Remark
Aphaia once proposed a list of vote closing dates but later withdrew her idea because it was not yet necessary for the project.

Now we reached the conclusion and established it as a part of our practice. Can you now get rid of this part from talk? --Aphaia 17:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

original discussion


Should we have a loose deadline, like Wikipedia's "five days (but more like two weeks)", or should we post a closing date/time for each VfD entry? — Jeff Q (talk) 07:24, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • (transferred from VFD talk) We might consider a firm deadline that would be explicitly stated in each VfD. (It would follow policy and could be added by a sysop if the original nominator didn't post it.) It's not Wikipedia practice, but that's partly because they have vastly more work to do, even with more sysops. I've found that explicitly announcing the closing date/time of a Wiki vote greatly improves assistance and cooperation. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I prefer a loose deadline (minimum so-and-so days but factly longer). If we make it clear the discussion length is at least so-and-so days (or precisely hours) from the date this deletion was requested, and it seems me ok. But I don't oppose to announce the closing time. How about that we create a section on the top for closing date announcement? --Aphaia 07:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do you mean a list of active VfDs with their closing dates, like this:
  • Death By Stereo: 11:30, 1 Apr 2005
  • Daniel Aubrey: 07:00, 2 Apr 2005
… and so on? I was thinking of one line in each VfD, like so:
  • Vote closes: 08:30, 17 Apr 2005 UTC
… since I'd expect that most people coming to VfD are probably just looking for information on a specific article, so they'd jump right to its entry. But a summary at the top might be useful for those who scan the whole list periodically and might like to see which votes are near closing. (I'm thinking more of the general readership, not the Administrators, who I expect will be rather familiar with the entire list.) It would be a bit more effort to synchronize info in two different places, but it might be worth it. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:36, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I meant not so a close list but it could be easier because we make it only with C&P. I thought only a list like below:
Vote closing dates
1 Apr 2005
Death By Stereo
2 Apr 2005
Daniel Aubrey
Today is November24, 2024

We could condense closing & overdue discussion into a list like:

Vote closing dates
Overdue
Death By Stereo, Daniel Aubrey
April 5
...
Today is November24, 2024
I think it is informative but currently we seems not to need it yet. Without such a list we can manage the request well at least now.
As for your idea the tag on each candidate seems to me a good idea. --Aphaia 07:40, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that a summary at the top is probably more work than we need now, especially since it involves keeping the same information in two places, which always gets confusing. I'm going to try posting some close dates on my recent VfDs and see how people take them. — Jeff Q (talk) 09:05, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like a firm deadline and have no objection to adding the closing date. Having pages which languish with the deletion notice for months or longer looks poorly for our effort. If we don't get consensus, we can always relist at an appropriate time later. Rmhermen 13:44, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
After visiting VfD, the firm deadline notes are very nice to me. I strongly support we include it. --Aphaia 18:12, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deletion pending

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There are some artciles which we cannot delete because of object compress and its bug, and now some of them are listed at the bottom of VfD. Without discussion. I think we can strip those discussion and make the section a simple list of pages which we can't delete now. Perhaps some speedy deletion candidates could be added there. Any other suggestion? --Aphaia 07:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Isn't it general Wiki policy to keep VfD discussions long after they're decided (in the archive), so that people will see how they came to be deleted? That shouldn't change just because the pages are technically undeletable at the moment. Do you perhaps mean to transfer them to the archive right now, before they're deleted? This makes sense, since they will presumably be deleted without further discussion as soon as the software is fixed. Speedy deletions don't need the discussions because they're supposed to be manifestly unacceptable articles.
And speaking of speedy deletions, I had added a list of SDs that had block-compression problems at Wikiquote:Speedy deletions, but I quickly discovered that Kalki had already started such a list at Category talk:Candidates for speedy deletion. His location makes more sense, since that's the place we track SDs now. I transferred the ones I'd accumulated over to Kalki's list. So we do have a place to list block-compression problems with speedy deletes. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:14, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I would prefer we had one single location to list all block deletion problems. This is simplified by using the pending deletion tag on all of these and checking the category. Let's tag 'em and transfer the discussion a new section of the archives to clear up the main Vfd page. Rmhermen 13:44, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Per Rmhermen's idea, I've added Category:Pending deletions to the pending-deletions template and created the category, based on the Wikipedia model. (I put it under Category:Wikiquote maintenance for now.) That will automatically make all properly-tagged pending deletions appear on the category page. Once I've confirmed that that is working, I'll post a note at the "Candidates for speedy deletion" talk page that the automatic category list supercedes its manual list. We should now have one place to go to see all deletes stopped by block-compression errors, just like Wikipedia does.
As far as listing on VfD goes, I think there's some confusion going on here, at least on my part. Aphaia originally stated that the PD articles were grouped at the bottom of the list "without discussion". But the entries included their discussions. She proposed that we could "strip those discussions". But Wikipedia:Deletion policy (and the nascent Wikiquote version) requires that we keep discussions for later review, even in the archive. (Indeed, it looks like the archive includes every article that's ever been VfD'd here, which isn't that big a list.) Thus my reponse above. But I may have misunderstood her point. She also suggested we might add speedy deletion candidates with PD problems to this group on the VfD list. But the VfD list exists mostly to allow readers (not just sysops) to consider questionable deletion candidates, and adding speedy-deletes suddenly would be very confusing, especially since there would be no discussion (or room for discussion). I'm afraid that we new sysops might be forgetting that VfD exists for the sake of the entire Wikiquote community, not just for sysops. We must think about what this page looks like to people whose main activity is reading quote pages, occasionally contributing to them, and once in a while visiting VfD to see why their article has been nominated for deletion.
I suggest that if we decide on when to move to archive as soon as possible, then we don't need to have the current VfDs that are having pending-deletion problems in a separate section. They can just remain in their original place (just like the successful-deletion entries and the kept-article entries) until they're moved into the archive, where it makes plenty of sense to keep them in their own section, just as it would make sense to have complete deletions in another section, and completed keep-article entries in a third section. (That would be a variation on the chronological or alphabetical orders proposed above, with the chrono or alpha order being maintained in each section). Also, if we want to make it easy for people to add a new entry by clicking a link, which I can do if we choose to add new entries to the end of the VfD list, that pending-deletion list is in the way. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:58, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for confusion. I didn't intent to merge PD articles through VfD and speedy deletion on VfD. It is surely confusable. And after Category:Pending deletion works, we can have a complete list of those poor articles. For convinience it would be better to make a note, "there are pages now pending deletion from technical reasons, see Category:Pending deletions." But more friendly to make a list - I hope it won't become too large. -- Aphaia
Aphaia, where do you mean for that note to go? I would agree it's a good idea to mention it in the VfD page instructions section or in the archive section as an explanation before the list (or perhaps both). I also agree that lists are friendly, but they require separate maintenance efforts, and any time you have to do things in two places, they inevitably get out of sync with each other. (That seems to be a major problem in the transwiki system right now, for example.) As long as we have a link to Category:Pending deletions in (A) the instructions for VfD, (B) the introduction for a PD section in the archive (if we have a PD section), and (C) the Wikiquote:Speedy deletions instructions, anyone who might want to see a list of deletion-problem articles can find it there. — Jeff Q (talk) 18:37, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your suggestion. I confess I was confused this idea with another list of "recently kept". I think still such a list is friendly, but willingly admit it seems unfeasiable as you pointed out on the above. If we don't forget to tag them with a proper template + category, they generate lists without our manual effort. I withdraw hereby my proposal. --Aphaia 06:58, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
We don't have to remember to tag bad articles after deletion failures if we always use the following process to delete all articles (regular or speedy):
  1. Change {{vfd}}, {{delete}}, or {{db}} tag to {{pending deletion}}.
  2. Protect the page.
  3. Attempt to delete.
If the delete works, you're done. If it doesn't, the page is already protected, already has the pending-deletion message prominently displayed, per policy, and is already in Category:Pending deletions. I've done this ever since I started deleting articles, and the whole process takes about 30 seconds. (I thought this was the official WP process, but apparently Wikipedia:Deletion process, like so many other policy pages, was written in confusing shorthand for people who already know what they're doing and just want reminders. When I get around to porting that page for Wikiquote:Deletion process, I'll be doing some rewriting, I tell you.) The tremendous advantage of my mindless process is that you never have to remember to do something different. Jeff Q (talk) 01:58, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Recently kept articles

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I propose we have a list of recently kept articles at the top of VfDRfD avoiding listing those articles twice. It works well at least on meta (that is, I sometimes failed to list such articles ...) --Aphaia 18:22, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aphaia, could you give an example of (and a link to) the Meta usage you mention? I couldn't find a "Votes for deletion" there. — Jeff Q (talk) 18:41, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for confusion; there the equivalent of our VfD is m:Requests for deletion. The section I meant is m:Requests for deletion#Recently kept. --Aphaia 06:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It looks to me like our proposed sectioning of the VfD archive accomplishes the same thing. (Except ours will be sorted alphabetically, so it'll be easier to find a specific article.) Take a look at the table of contents for Wikiquote:Proposed Votes for deletion archive, under the Kept articles section, and see if that doesn't accomplish the same thing. Plus, nobody has to maintain it, since the TOC is a side-effect of following the VfD-closure process. (Maybe Meta should consider using our method. ☺)
The question is, why does someone need to know what was recently kept? If someone wants to see what happened to their pet article, they'll find it faster in an alphabetical list. If they are thinking of listing an article for deletion and want to see if it was listed recently, a complete alpha list is again better than just a recent list. I don't see the need for the additional list-maintenance work. Jeff Q (talk) 01:38, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The one merit to keep a list on VfD (not on archive) is you needn't check the archive before you list a new deletion candidate *g Alphabetical order is reader-friendly but sometimes not editor-friendly. But here on EN WQ, I guess those difference are ignorable and alphabetical order might be preferable .. As general principal, I like to keep the effort necessary to administrative issues as small as possible (yes, I am very lazy as administator ... *g) --Aphaia 10:02, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree that a list on VfD would be handier, but it seems like it would take up too much space, even for the current list. And if it was only "recent" kept-votes, how recent should it be, and why? Do we expect people to try to relist recently-kept articles much more often than ones that were voted for keeping a longer time ago? It doesn't seem like a useful distinction to me, but I'm pretty new to this sysop stuff, as you know. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 10:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
When it comes to reader- vs. editor-friendliness (or actually sysop-friendliness, since nobody but sysops should be adding sections to the archive), I usually favor the readers, because there are 300 times as many of them, and they usually know less than sysops. I'm all for making sysops' jobs easier — just not at the expense of readers. Otherwise, smart-and-lazy is the way to go! — Jeff Q (talk) 10:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Considering current trend on our community, I reached the conclusion we need such a list at the moment; reasons
  • Weather keep or delete, we haven't almost experienced split opinions; there might be less possibility recently-kept articles would be listed on the list.
  • And archive is not too huge to check if an article was decided recently to be kept, in particular in "kept" section.
  • If I recall corectly we have no serious conflict "What is not" vs "What is" or "Kept" or "Delete" if we can not count Reirom case (and I think we haven't to take it serious). Our community is not so large as others
So I think now it is for us appropriate to leave this idea for a while and remember when it will be really necessary. How do yo think, guys? --Aphaia 21:14, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The discussion the above seems to me ended. So if no one objects till May 1, 0:00 UTC, I'll replace it with a link to history. --Aphaia 00:13, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please move this to an archive, not just create a link to page history, per my argument below under #Proposed change to Votes for deletion and archive. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:35, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Policy on framework articles

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We've been tagging a lot of articles lately for speedy deletion that contain no quotes, but appear to be a decent attempt to start a framework for adding quotes (e.g., name with Wikipedia link, external references). This strikes me as a reasonable (though not ideal) interpretation of "stub" for Wikiquote. I'm concerned that we might delete articles out from under people before they get a chance to add some quotes. I propose that we don't tag any articles like this for speedy deletion, and we consider putting them on Wikiquote:Votes for deletion only if they've been around for some time (2 weeks? 1 month? 3 months?) without any quotes being added. This gives people a "last chance" to add useful material before the articles go away. Comments? — Jeff Q (talk) 18:57, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To give a specific example of why we should do this, Will Cuppy originally had a one-line description, with no quotes. It was tagged for speedy deletion, presumably reasonably based on the "very short pages with little or no definition or context" policy. (This is a new interpretation, however. Past practice has been to wait patiently for contributions, partly because we had a tiny sysop staff, but also because there was genuine desire to encourage article expansion.) If I hadn't been a sysop monitoring SDs, I might not have rescued it from oblivion. (I'm assuming the community accepts what I added, of course, but I doubt this will be a problem.) The Wikiquote community should have the chance to rescue articles like this before they're deleted — that's one reason we have VfD. — Jeff Q (talk) 19:20, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It sounds a nice and friendly attempt for editors. I propose we have a separate page or a category for those would-be articles. Because they are just not well written yet, perhaps contains no copyvio or other legal fringement. And those substubs are possibly continously created, I don't prefer to merge those would-be articles into a heap of routine requests.
This idea came to me just now; how about calling those frameworks "substubs", which are supposingly on a good faith without but have quote. We keep such "substubs" for a certain days or months. It is easily known from history or a category with date (German Wikipedia sort their stubs under categories like "April 2005 stubs") when it was labeled. After this term ended, sysops check each "substubs" and if they grow up, then put the tag aside. Sadly if not, just treat them as speedy deletion candidates. This idea is influenced by a proposal on Japanese Wikipedia drafted by User:Tomos. --Aphaia 06:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking about that myself, because I found it ironic that we're are in the process of voting to delete Template:Substub right now over on VfD. We could instead change this template to say something about the article being a framework (i.e., all the structure, none of the quotes). We could even create several framework example pages (I'd call them "templates", but I don't want to confuse them with the things that use curly braces), and make sure our basic help on editing an article says where these sample frameworks are and how to use them (i.e., edit, copy, and paste). Some samples already exist as pieces on a single page at Wikiquote:Templates, and can be selectively copied. (Again, we should clearly describe for newcomers, how to copy these pieces.)
The only problem I see is that people coming from other wiki projects might confuse our "substub" with the generic ones on Wikipedia and elsewhere, and just add it to any old article that is really short. It might be better to call our template something like {{framework}}, to emphasize its correct usage. (We could also keep {{substub}} for now and change its name to something else later.) — Jeff Q (talk) 04:44, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I would prefer a name other than substub and an agreement that they can be deleted if they are not expanded in a certain timeframe. Rmhermen 14:33, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Just before I deleted Template:substub. No one support to keep it. I haven't voted, but now think substub is not a good name because of other meaning on other projects (too short article). I prefer the name framework and support to create {{framework}} template for those article frameworks.
I propose a procedure following:
  1. If an editor creates or finds a framework article, the editor may put {{framework}} on the article top.
  2. The editor is strongly recommended to make a remark on putting this tag on the summary box for easiness of tracking.
  3. The article should be kept during a certain period (e.g. 3 months) after tagged as framework.
  4. If the article is appropriately expanded, the tag may be removed. Or it remains within a certain period and after that may be removed and may be a deletion candidate. (and then two weeks [currently] are assured for further survival attempt).
--Aphaia 00:21, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category problems

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Can anybody explain why Category:Pending deletions doesn't seem to be working? There are currently 13 pages that obdiently show Categories: Pending deletions at the bottom (because of the pending deletion template included in them), but clicking on the link shows an empty category (except for the template). — Jeff Q (talk) 20:12, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's a feature or bug with a category putting on Template. When we put a category into a template already existing on a page, this happens if I recall correctly. To fix it, just edit the article again and then we can get a normal one. --Aphaia 06:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)-
That works. And should solve my problem on the needing translations category. I did dummy edits on the Pending deletion pages listed on the Vfd page -don't know which the others are. Rmhermen 22:27, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proposed change to Votes for deletion and archive

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Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I've been getting sufficiently confused about all the elements we're discussing here that I thought it would be very helpful to have an example of VfD and archive pages that implement some of the things we've been talking about here and elsewhere. The pages are Wikiquote:Proposed Votes for deletion and Wikiquote:Proposed Votes for deletion archive, and the details on what I am trying to demonstrate are given at WQ talk:VfD. Could everyone take a look at these pages and my explanation of what I'm trying to show, and let me know if any/some/all of it makes sense? At the very least, I'm hoping it'll make it easier to visualize some of the things we've been talking about. — Jeff Q (talk) 12:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Looks good. I made one small change. I would suggest we might qalso want to mention examples of "other" votes - by mentioning Wait, Transwiki, Merge, Redirect, Comment we might limit more creative "other" inventions. Rmhermen 22:29, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I changed your change back, because the "Add a new deletion request" link automatically puts section header markup (==) around the new entry when it's saved. I did change the instructions to make that clearer. — Jeff Q (talk) 10:20, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Wow. Don't know how you made it do that - even Wikipedia doesn't do that. Now is it possible to add that automatic functionality to the vfd template so that we don't have to separately go there to add pages? Rmhermen 21:39, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I claim no ingenuity; I merely stole from the "Create a new topic" link at Wikiquote:Village pump. (Which is why there's a pair of "stupid" entries in WQ:VP's history when I forgot to change the edit target — a rookie programmer error!) I think it is possible to add the functionality you mention — I think I recall seeing it in some Wikipedia process — but it's somewhat complicated and a bit hard on newcomers. If we could make it reasonably easy for them, I'd definitely go for it, since people often forget to add the WQ:VFD entry after tagging the article. — Jeff Q (talk) 23:40, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Your point about the other kinds of votes is well-taken. I'll think some up; feel free to do so yourself as well. (In fact, try the add link yourself — we could use more examples. I recommend that we not add any real articles as test candidates, though; we don't want to get confused. In fact, we probably should get rid of the copies of the live ones.) I wouldn't want to imply that the suggestions are the only ways people can vote; it's just that it's much easier to count the votes if their intent is clear. (I see Wikipedia is now specifically asking people to make their expected actions clear when they create a VfD. I imagine it might be because it's too easy to wander away from the main purpose in the discussions.) — Jeff Q (talk) 10:20, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I made a change too on Project:Deletion policy/Archives/2006#Wikiquote:Category schemes section. My original vote lacked label and most of it was comment (and off-topic, sorry ...). It makes me hold a new proposal, that is
Derivative discussion from a vote should be moved to VP once, or talk of the candidate article, unless there is more appropriate discussion place (like how to treat a sort of free licence unfamiliar to us ... it would be suitable [[Talk:Wikiquote:Copyright]] rather than VP). --Aphaia 08:25, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, Aphaia. What do you mean by "VP"? And I assume you mean Wikiquote talk:Copyright. — Jeff Q (talk) 10:09, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I was just going back to the Village Pump, when I realized how silly my question above sounds. Never mind. ☺ Jeff Q 10:38, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for my abbraviation adict and unclearness; As for Wikiquote talk, you assumed right ;-) And how do you think my idea, "sweep all derivative topics" itself? --Aphaia 09:18, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Have we instituted a mechanism for adopting this policy? A straw poll or vote, closing date, advertising on VP, etc. I would like to see this instituted but am not sure how we begin to accomplish it. Besides Being Bold, of course. Rmhermen 13:34, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I am not sure but some of us including me follow already some of proposed improvements; like Being Bold, Newest the top, Vote closing date announce and so on. And I think most of our discussion the above reached its conclusion ... has the time to summarize and refactor come already or not? --Aphaia 16:37, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please understand that I did not introduce these "proposed" pages as in toto examples to be voted on, but rather as ways to visualize some alternatives that were being discussed, giving us a means to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of procedures different from what we currently have. Wikiquote:Proposed Votes for deletion archive seems uncontroversial enough that I felt I could be bold by offering to convert the existing archive into the proposed format very quickly, but there are many individual issues for the main VfD page and for our policies. (Admittedly, some are confusingly related.)

It was my expectation that we would talk about each (as we've done above), then declare a proposition in each section and vote on it. I'll try to do that in the next few hours, although I'll hold off on #Lag time for deletions for now because I've asked Aphaia to restore the original discussion first before making new changes to it. (Aphaia refers to this as "refactoring", but I believe it is bad practice to edit down these discussions. When I transferred my Wikiquote-specific deletion process text from VfD Talk to this page, I copied every piece into an appropriate section, so that none of it was lost (not because I'm in love with my own writing, but because I'd brought up many points, and it would have been confusing to have some disappear or mutate in the transferral). I would do the same for anyone else, and only if I had at least tacit prior approval to do this. I am vehemently opposed to editing anyone's contributions to Talk pages, except for the occasional friendly typo fix, unless they are obvious vandalisms.) — Jeff Q (talk) 22:44, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think there might be a controvercy; not serious but a sort of theological. I am not a foundamental wiki enthuasist supposingly but proper refactoring is much better to keep all the discussion on talk or archive, specially it become very a long discussion. Some instructive documents on Wikipedia shows this idea is not so bizarre but some folks support it. But I think this is more general topic suitable discussed on VP rather than here; or meta or mailinglist. And I admit it was more polite to ask if such editing are welcome, but none of us need such approval before refactoring after the discussion reached its conclusion. So I apologize I did it in not an appropriate moment, but I advocate refactoring without approval of all participants strongly. Once I saw a talk page over 200KB (remark NOT 20KB) on another project; it was really a nightmare to grasp what was the core dispute on that page ... Proper refactoring is helpful to avoid such newbie-free pages. --Aphaia 17:49, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Both archive and VfD were switched to their new form and assumingly the discussion the above has done and now has only historical meaning. If anyone make no objection till May 1, 0:00 UTC, I will replace this section with a link to a history. --Aphaia 00:11, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you are planning to move this discussion to an archive, like Wikiquote talk:Deletion policy/archive or similar name, I support this, but I adamantly object to deleting or editing down the material. People who were not around for this discussion (both current Wikiquotians who didn't come across it, and future ones who may wonder how we developed our policies) are entitled to review our old discussions. (That's my position on all non-user talk pages.) Please don't just replace this with a link to a page history. An archive, however, is reasonable and would remove the potential for confusion, since, as you say, we've pretty much dealt with all that the proposed pages had proposed. It also follows common practice to archive these policy discussions. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Jeff. Links to history become unwieldy when the wiki grows in size. Archiving as a subpage like "/Archive 1" is much better, even more so if the archiving conventions are standardized and same for every policy talk. jni 06:58, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Okay I don't oppose to archive them. But I would like to say "read all older discussion" is also not newbie-friendly, in particular the discussion has a long history. Personally I prefer link and one line descripition to each section. --Aphaia 00:47, 9 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Imminent move of VFDA entries to subpages

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Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I am proposing an imminent, significant change in the deletion close process — changing all the entries in the current Votes for deletion archive into transclusion links — so please review the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion archive#Imminent move of VFDA entries to subpages and comment as soon as possible. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Major deletion revision

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Latest comment: 18 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

Since we're discussing and even executing a number of changes in our deletion practices simultaneously, and not making much progress on actually revising the policies, I volunteer to do some bold revision and cleanup to update both our policies and practices along the lines that we're discussing at Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion and Wikiquote talk:Speedy deletions. Starting after 0:00 UTC on Sunday, 10 September, and during the following two weeks, I will execute the following unless objections are raised (and subject to suggested tweaks):

  • Update Wikiquote:Votes for deletion to reflect the new archive process and a 7-day "lag time". The lag time will be phased in starting 14 September, so that all nominations between 14 September and 20 September will be considered closed at 0:00 UTC, 28 September, and anything after that will be 7 days from nomination.
  • Create a Wikiquote:Deletion review page similar to Wikipedia's, using transcluded years (rather than days), severely reducing the overhead. (Since we're moving toward WP practices, this page title seems better than "Votes for undeletion".)
  • Update Wikiquote:Deletion policy in the following ways:
    • Describe the new use of Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Log. This should include a new closing process that doesn't require the now-redudant replacement of the "Vote closes" line with a signed closure, as that information will now be part of the closing header, like on Wikipedia.
    • Include a "speedy-keep" mechanism for non-controversial closures.
    • Update any missing documentation of recent changes in practices.
  • Finish converting all older archived discussions to new logged format.

I have posted brief summaries of this implementation at WQt:VfD, WQt:SD, and Wikiquote talk:Speedy deletions/Draft. If there are no immediate objections (in case I've lost my mind and misunderstood our intent), I plan to post the same brief summary on the village pump in 24 hours.

There are some questions that I've raised or have seen that remain unresolved:

  1. What do we want to do with VfD-nominated articles that should be speedy deleted? Current practice is to close the vote early, then just delete the entry, not archive it. This made sense when the speedies were typically re-creations of vanity articles, but with more cases for speedy-deletion, perhaps we should require archiving for anything that isn't a vanity re-creation.
  2. Do we want to change "Votes for deletion" to "Pages for deletion", "X for deletion" (X = "Articles", "Categories", etc., like WP), or something else that reduces the incorrect implication that these are simple majority votes?
  3. Do we want to implement a deletion process that uses transcluded discussions; i.e., creates each nomination as a separate page, like WP, so that all edits to the nomination are logged in the history of the entry, not the massively-edited WQ:VFD? (This would also greatly simplify closure. It makes nomination a bit harder, but almost no one but experienced editors ever nominate articles anyway. Still, if we do this, we should probably include a statement about asking for help in this process.)
  4. Unlike Wikipedia, both our lag time and closure decisions are made explicit in each nomination. (I remember pushing this because we had so few participants that I worried about complaints from article creators, especially in the absence of an "undeletion" policy.) With the above revisions, should we move more toward WP, not citing a specific closure time, or not bothering with explicit closure rationales?

I recommend these questions be discussed separately, either here or on the relevant deletion talk pages, as we switch to these new practices.

I'm getting reasonably competent with MediaWiki tricks and AWB mass-editing, so I believe I can implement whatever we decide to use and convert existing structures into new ones as needed. We just need to decide how we want things to work. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've taken the liberty of changing your questions to numbered from unnumbered to make it easier to refer back to them. I'm in general agreement with your proposed course of action. On question 1, I believe that everything that *has* a discussion should be archived, even if the ultimate result of that discussion is a speedy deletion. Articles that are deleted by admin discretion on the basis of {{db}}-tagging without discussion obviously have nothing to archive. As to question 2, I prefer to keep the existing name, but don't feel very strongly about it. (I would point out that even in legislatures with consensus rather than majority rule, there are still votes taken.) No opinion on 3. I rarely see the closure rationale, so it doesn't matter much to me what happens with it, but I would prefer to keep the closure time. 121a0012 05:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
There are too many different places to discuss the speedy draft, so I'm going to bring it up here. I'm a bit concerned that the description of an "Unremarkable subject" may be inappropriate for WQ use. In general, a WQ page's introduction is not going to say what this text seems to expect it to say. I would instead suggest that it ought to allow speedying any article lacking an introduction, or with an introduction that makes the subject's non-notability obvious beyond doubt (e.g., student vanity pages). That will cover most of the cases. When in doubt, go to the full VFD process. 121a0012 05:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)Reply


Concerning #1 (to archive or not to archive), my feeling is that if the page was listed on VFD, regardless of the outcome, the discussion (whatever of it there is) should be archived.
Concerning #2 (renaming VFD), I think that something like "Pages for deletion" could work, though the name suggests a list of pages to be deleted, not discussions regarding the deletion of pages. If we left it as Votes for deletion (which I have no problem with), we may want to expand the section of text above the TOC to explicitly say something along the lines of "This is not a vote in the traditional sense. The Votes for deletion process is meant to generate consensus among active editors about whether a page should be kept or deleted."
Concerning #3 (transclusions), I'm not sure I really support that; presently, it's easy to just have the VFD page on my watchlist, and be able to get a sense of activity for all the votes, and to see at a glance if there was some immediate vandalism/vote tampering/etc. With tranclusions, we (well, I, at least) would lost that, unless I added every new page to my watchlist as it was created. I think it's also a lot of extra work for nominators, for little gain; while it's usually the same few people that bring new nominations, I don't think that we need to raise the difficulty bar. Really, the change just shifts the creation of the subpage from the closing admin to the nominator, since the closing admin would still have to edit the VFD page to remove the entry, and then add it to "Log" (unless we adapted the Wikipedia practice of giving each day its own page, but I don't think that we have nearly enough nominations in the typical day for that to be necessary or wise).
Concerning #4 (explicit close times/deletion decisions), I support leaving them in. It helps to give a better sense that the whole process isn't arbitrary. It's also nice to see the voting summarized in the "Vote closed" line, especially when discussions get long and/or have a lot of discounted votes. —LrdChaos 14:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
I've been doing some thinking lately about #3, about whether VFD nominations should be done by creating a subpage and transcluding it. I realize that I have mixed feelings about it; certainly it's easier to keep an eye on all the voting at this instant with one monolothic page, but that makes votes hard to find, especially when there are a large number of falsified/fake votes or vandalism (and especially when the vote's name isn't mentioned in the edit summary). All things considered, I think I've mostly changed my mind, and would support a Wikipedia-like transclusion-based VFD system. —LrdChaos (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
I see two aspects of "keeping an eye" on VfDs: observing the text and watching the edit history. Most folks will be concerned with the first, and the transclusion system will leave the VfD page looking exactly as it currently does, while the "Edit" function will appropriately edit only the VfD entry selected. Watching the edit history in a single page, which I suspect is LrdChaos's concern (as sysops especially need to watch for pranks and vandalism), is clearly not as easy with dozens of individual discussion pages. But it may not be too much to ask folks (especially sysops) to add each new VfD discussion to their watchlists, which in some ways will make it even easier to spot problem (and useful!) edits. We can always delist them after they're closed. Just a thought. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

NOTE: Due to a memory fault on my part, I posted the phase-in date period on WQ:VFD as starting on 15 September, not 14 September, and failed to notice this until 121a0012 corrected the resulting bad math by moving the target closure time of all phase-in nominations to 0:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC). Since it's already 14 September, it seems wiser to go with the day-later start. Therefore, I ask all VfD date-stampers to use 0:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC) as the close time of all nominations added between 0:00, 15 Sep and 0:00, 22 Sep. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

Major update to deletion policy

[edit]
Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I created this beta-policy page back in April 2005 from discussions between Wikiquotians (mostly sysops, as I recall), so that Wikiquote could have a specific policy adapted to its own more modest needs than the WP policy it had been loosely operating under before then. Given that we have evolved a number of practices since then that were required to accomodate our growing project, and hadn't really done more than minor updating to reflect these changes — not even to formally ratify the beta policy — I have been bold and updated the policy to reflect most of these changing practices, especially the ones recently implemented to get a handle on problems relating to Wikiquote's expansion.

As the details of this major revision were too many to squeeze into an edit summary, here is a fairly comprehensive list of the changes I made, roughly in order they first occur in the text:

  • Replaced old beta warning with a current "policy revision" notice.
  • Replaced the old introduction to page deletion with a Wikiquote-specific version of the latest WP deletion policy intro, which addresses many of the meta-policy arguments we've had to make individually in many VfD discussions.
  • Replaced use of <nowiki> elements for templates with {{tl}} tags, and use of deprecated <font color=red> elements for emphasis with new {{red}} tag.
  • Updated estimate of monthly closures.
  • Changed references to Wikiquote:Votes for undeletion to Wikiquote:Deletion review (WQ:DRV).
  • Moved entire undeletion discussion to bottom, as it no longer fit the flow of the introduction. (It will have to be revised, anyway, once we establish WQ:DRV.)
  • Changed the "lag time" for VfD closures to 7 days (down from 14) per Wikiquote talk:Votes for deletion#Decrease of voting period.
  • Replaced <tt> tags with more visually striking <code> tags, per current WP example practice.
  • Corrected link to Wikiquote:Template messages.
  • Described {{vfd}} tagging nominated pages as mandatory (rather than suggested) and better explained the rationale.
  • Replaced the confusing discussion of omitting {{vfd}} for pages with no significant history with a simpler rule: all VfD-nominated pages must include the tag at the top, in order to notify users of its potential deletion. Rationale: the two most common cases of "no signficant history are new pages from new users, and redirects.
    • New users' articles: User is not familiar with Wikiquote, so it's vital they be given a notice that their article is under discussion for deletion, and given a link to this discussion.
    • Redirects: The only way to notify redirect users of a deletion discussion is to break the redirect, which the {{vfd}} tag accomplishes rather handily.
  • Made clearer the requirement for signing VfD postings.
  • Removed awkwardly phrased reiteration of nomination and comment process at the start of "Decision policy" that only applied to VfD, and which threw in an mention of "votes or comments relating to a listed page must be made in good faith" that neither explained "good faith" nor was a good fit in a paragraph about the decision itself. I think this section needs a bit of work, possibly adding another paragraph to cover the "good faith" issue and more cleanly cover decisions for both VfD and SD.
  • Added mention that VfD consensus is not simply a democratic vote, and must accomodate WQ policies and practices as well as Wikimedia Foundation rules and guidelines.
  • Added note that closing sysops will consider the general WQ involvement of discussion participants to avoid "ballot stuffing", and may strike duplicate or forged votes.
  • Expanded and changed the order of discussion closure to accomodate the latest practices (e.g., archived discussions, Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Log replacing Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive).
  • Changed use of the unclear term "ENTRY" to the more specific "DISCUSSION_TITLE".
  • Corrected use of {{vfd-redirect}}.
  • Described the use of edit summaries simply to identify closures and archives, per existing practice, rather than to serve as a "backup archive" for a closure decision.
  • Replaced unclear "easy to lose track" warning about hasty deletions with specific rationales of loss of potentially useful material and Wikiquotian discouragement.
  • Removed mention of the still-nonexistent Wikiquote:Deletion process, as our process is currently included in this policy page.
  • Fixed Category:Wikiquote official policy label.

It's quite a bit of change for a single revision, but much of it was long overdue, anyway, and I felt I had to force the issue so that our policy page matches our actual practice. I invite everyone to discuss these changes so we can move from an "under reviision" policy to a formally accepted one. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:51, 16 September 2006 (UTC)Reply

Great work! 121a0012 03:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
Much better. BD2412 T 05:45, 17 September 2006 (UTC)Reply
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