Wikiquote talk:Deletion review

Question

So what are the thoughts on participation by the admin who initially deleted the page in question? I don't feel that I should 'endorse' my own action, so should an admin not participate in a review of a page he or she deleted? Or should there be another possibility in the list in addition to 'endorse', 'relist' or 'overturn' - where the deleter can offer a statement as the reason for the deletion? ~ UDScott 16:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be entirely appropriate and welcome for the deleting admin to "comment" with an explanation of the deletion/process rationale. ~ Ningauble 17:34, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that an admin should not endorse his or her own action in a deletion review process. I see nothing wrong with offering a statement preface with "Comment". Cheers! BD2412 T 17:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! You pretty much echoed my thinking. ~ UDScott 18:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

If closes are based on arguments, then a deleting admin presenting evidence or argument or opinion in a review is not a problem at all. The "involvement" issue would only arise if the deleting admin closes the new discussion. Involvement should be disclosed. Involved users may vote or comment. Previously undiscussed deletions (i.e., speedy deletion or proposed deletions) should generally be undeleted on request, and submitted for VfD, if anyone still wants deletion. (In a closing review, the difference between votes and comments may be mostly moot, the issue being strength of argument and community consensus.) --Abd (talk) 14:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Deprecating this page

The draft policy introduction has this page be used for review of keep/no consensus closes. In my opinion, that's a process error, leading to less review, not more, because deletion reviews are always less-watched by the community. Rather, if someone disagrees with a keep/nc close, the process is first to request review by the closing admin, and if that is not satisfactory, to file a new VfD. A new VfD may be speedy-closed if considered abusive, but this should not be done by an orginal closer, it should be independent. However, VfD process should be described on Wikiquote:Votes for deletion, implementing Wikiquote:Deletion policy. The policy does not contemplate Deletion review for keep/nc decisions.

I have seen Wikipedia Deletion review used to contest a keep decision. It was, every time I recall, disruptive, and accomplished nothing that a renewed nomination would not have accomplished.

Here, VfD could be used for the relatively rare undeletion discussions. The equivalent of that is what is done on Wikiversity.

The page is not being archived, so old closed discussions are sitting there. I'll fix that. The current version: [1]

• Penn & Teller: Fool Us was speedy deleted. This should never have come to this page. It should have been undeleted on request and VfD filed. The deleting admin not only commented in the discussion, but also closed it, thus confirming the administrator's own action. (That is two process errors. Normally, if one has taken a position in a discussion, one only closes of consensus is obvious and nobody else closes after a lapse of time) The last vote before close provided information that completely removed the reason for deletion, and the closer did not address that. This was an example of a "preponderance of votes" result, with a standard deletion discussion problem: votes may be cast not based on full evidence. The votes themselves did not show consensus, there were two supports for undeletion and three opposed, including the original deleting admin. That admin had commented on this talk page, about participation by a deleting admin, then acted in contradiction of his own comment. A few days later, one of the admins who supported the deletion undeleted on request. Situations like this (action while involved) are common on small wikis, and this is discussed for the purpose of examining process, not to raise complaint about the admin.

• Kedar Joshi was under discussion at VfD at the time. This request, by an IP, should have been speedy closed (blanked) on that basis, and promptly. Instead, it was discussed, thus creating a discussion fork. There was no request to the closing admin. My opinion is that this should be *required* before coming here, with some time allowed for the closing admin to respond. Only if the request is denied (as I'm sure it would have been) should the user come here. I am not very friendly to IP users filing advanced process. It is far more likely to be disruptive than when a regular user files, and there is nobody to hold accountable for abuse of filing. There was no support for undeletion. Under these conditions, mild involvement is irrelevant.

• Sumit Chowdhury was a VfD keep as no consensus, Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Sumit Chowdhury, closed April 18, 2014. This was brought here by an admin, 21 April 2014, who was the original VfD nominator. The nominator properly requested the closing admin reconsider. That admin did not respond to the request.[2] As with the Penn & Teller situation, there were original votes to overturn, but the situation changed. The book was published, which was pointed out 23 May. There was an original consensus for deletion here, but it wasn't closed (and still is not, I intend to remedy that). The original VfD could easily have been closed as delete, based on arguments, my opinion, and community consensus only shifted when the book was actually published. (And, given the publication, my opinion shifts as well. Sorry, "management babble" may seem that way to those who are not management consultants or involved in business coaching. I am. Those quotes are quite interesting to me. This is why we don't base content decisions on personal opinion like that.) There was another solution, suggested in the VfD and noted in the DR, which we routinely use on Wikiversity, that avoids contentious debate and fuss. We readily userfy resources that are considered objectionable for mainspace. This can be done by any user. It requires no discussion, and if discussion is needed, it may start small-scale, user to user. Dispute over it is extremely rare. Users are not upset when their work is userfied. The user who moves it becomes a watcher of the page, routinely, and may assist and support move back to mainspace if this becomes necessary. We also have a precedent -- I established it -- that IP creations may be userfied by any user willing to take responsibility for watching them. See wikiversity:User:Abd/Playspace. It was originally called Playspace because it was invented to support very young users. (The first was 7 years old, and he was writing what anyone would think was nonsense.) This transformed what was rapidly becoming cross-wiki "vandalism" into cooperative wiki editing, with the user learning wikitext and how to avoid disruption. I.e., fulfilling the Wikiversity mission of "learning by doing." I'm very pleased with the results. Send people who want to create stuff to Wikiversity, we can handle it.

Those are the only usages since this page was started in 2007. For none of them did this page add value. The process could be improved, but it's clear that Wikiquote does not need this, so it is not worth the effort. I recommend deprecating it, and changing guidelines, policy, and templates to suggest a clear undeletion procedure that ends on the VfD page, i.e., there is an undeletion request section on that page, and only if that section becomes routinely overwhelmed would a separate page be created.

The VfD page is naturally much more watched. Using VfD for undeletion discussion requests will shift toward community participation, from the administrative participation common here. It will collect the discussion of a page into a single subpage, instead of spreading it out (and thus watchlists will tend to automatically notify all prior active comment authors). The process improvements that I would suggest for this page, I will, instead, suggest for VfD procedure. --Abd (talk) 16:04, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the above comments on particular cases:

• Penn & Teller: Fool Us:
  1. It is entirely appropriate to seek review of a speedy deletion when the deleting admin has declined to reverse himself. It's not as if DR is being flooded with spurious requests.
  2. The last vote did not address the fact that the page contained no quotes, even though this was already pointed out by others, and falsely asserts otherwise. There is longstanding precedent that pages with no quotes are not Wikiquote articles, and they are routinely deleted.
  3. This was not merely a "preponderance of votes" result: the strength of arguments grounded in established policy and practice made it a clear cut case. If you want to rescind or revise the WQ:CRYSTAL policy then take it up at the policy talk page.
  4. Deleting admin UDScott commented exactly as recommended by responses to his question above. There is no inconsistency in asking for advice and then following it.
  5. It was not restored "a few days later", but five months later – when the regular broadcast season commenced. The requestor was advised in no uncertain terms that if quotes were not promptly added then it would be speedily re-deleted.
• Kedar Joshi:
  1. This was not under discussion at VfD at the time of the appeal. The last VfD had been closed for three years.
  2. The appellant was trying to make a case for recreation on the article talk page, and I suggested an appeal could be made here. I did this for two reasons: (1) to provide a fair hearing for his argument in case there was actually anything to it, and (2) primarily to have a venue that would leave a permanent and official record of community consensus, instead of a talk page that would likely be deleted, in order to attain more lasting closure on the matter.
  3. Speaking of permanent and official record:  Please use all due care and diligence not to mix up closing statements, signatures, and date stamps when archiving discussions. I have corrected the error here and do not expect to see it repeated, ever.
• Sumit Chowdhury:
  1. I think this case was a complete travesty. The original article should have been speedy deleted at the outset as blatant advertisement, and I only hesitated and took it to VfD because another administrator had undertaken to improve it – before the advertisement from which it was copied had been identified.
  2. (My own experience as a business consultant was much more about the brass tacks of process improvement, and about the fitting together of strategic objectives with tactical implementations. If I have a narrow BS filter for business "coaching", some of which is actually very good, it is not from disdain due to ignorance but from discrimination due to practical experience.)
  3. Notwithstanding whatever Wikiversity thinks appropriate, I do not believe Wikiquote "user space" is the right place to host spam. Rather than enshrine it in some back page, it might be more appropriate to "revision delete" the copyvio of a full page advertisement from the article history.

In general I agree that the process could be improved, but I do not agree that none of the cases here added value. The Penn & Teller case has helped to clarify policy (even if it remains unclear to you) and the Joshi case served to put a definitive end to a recurring problem. On the other hand, the Chowdhury case, which languished for a year and never was closed by an administrator despite reminders at the Administrators' Noticeboard, was indeed a failure of process. (Some particular conduct in that case is part of the reason I have taken an extended break from administrative work here.) ~ Ningauble (talk) 20:16, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Ningauble. There is no question about the appropriateness of a review of the Penn & Teller deletion. The only issue I'm raising here is how to create a review discussion. On Wikiversity, review of speedy deletion is almost always, now, by request to the deleting admin, and undeletion of speedies is routine, because speedy is intended for completely uncontroversial deletions, as to any legitimate objection at all. The admin -- or anyone else -- may then choose to start a Request for deletion. However, if the admin refuses or fails to undelete, then a request is filed on the ordinary Requests for Deletion page, in the section for that purpose: [3]. Because that page is much more watched, we try to keep it clean, so closes are more reliable there.

On the archiving error, I responded on Ningauble talk. I've done a lot of archiving, for many years, and never made a mistake like that before. I think it happened because (1) I archive one discussion at a time, to keep the history very clear and transparent, and to allow individual reversion if needed, and (2) closing comments were placed outside the section, which then means that a section edit does not catch them. So I needed to manually restore those closing comments, and somehow confused them.

As to the Kedar Joshi article, I must have misread the history somehow, and it's not important to the point here. Yes, good idea about creating a discussion for the record. However, discussions here have, obviously, low participation. I would suggest something more like what we do at en.wikiversity, described above.

As to Sumit Chowdury, speedy deletion would have been controversial. We have completely different policies on "promotion" on Wikiversity. Again, the issue for me is not the decision, but the process, and, again, discussions here do not attract much participation. That one did manage to attract quite a bit, but not every user who commented in the original VfD. To bring a no-consensus keep decision for review here is backwards. If you disagree with a keep, a goal of consensus suggests widening discussion, not narrowing it. The normal way to handle that is a refiling of a request for deletion, preferably after some time. That discussion makes my point. I would recommend, in fact, that renominations take place on the same subpage, but below, as a new discussion with new close. In that way, all who participated before will see it on their Watchlist. A closer will consider arguments that remain valid from the original discussion, as a background, but may look for a new consensus to appear. (This is not en.wiki procedure, for sure, but it's used on Commons.) --Abd (talk) 18:03, 24 April 2015 (UTC)