A model AfD, except for the word "vanity" which was unnecessary and irrelevant (though, as it turned out, true). If you are unhappy with the way this article was deleted, David, maybe you could tell us how you would have preferred it to be deleted? I'm asking in good faith. How would you have expressed a delete opinion on that page if you had done so? And, if AfD were replaced with some other system of your choosing, how would you have handled this article in that system? Or do you think that deleting this article under any system does more harm than good? Anyone who's been on this mailing list for 15 seconds knows you don't like AFD but I'm still not quite sure what you want to replace it with. You've suggested disbanding it altogether with the argument that it only deletes some 200 articles a day anyway. But disbanding it and replacing it with nothing would greatly increase the influx of new marginal articles. People who've previously been turned off by having their stuff deleted would be "back in business". The place would start filling up with articles on non-notable people, dolls, webcomics etc. ;) But I know you're not actually a super-inclusionist. Just a couple of days ago you said on [[WT:AFD]]: "Note: my personal opinion is that almost everything nominated on AFD does in fact deserve as quick, messy and painful a death as can be managed." I'm not sure what to make of that. What system do you envision to achieve the following two aims? a) Solve the PR problems currently generated by AFD. b) Deal a quick, messy and painful death to almost everything currently handled by AFD. But I'm probably misinterpreting, considering the opinions you've expressed elsewhere - like cautioning against haste in deletion - you were probably being ironic. Presumably what you want to do is: b) Deal a slow, clean and painless death to almost everything currently handled by AFD. Regards, Haukur

Sure it can :) Just make [[WP:SNOW]] a speedy deletion criterion: "If you think an article doesn't have any chance of surviving AfD then just go ahead and delete it." But if someone disagrees you'd better be prepared to undelete... Regards, Haukur

"Nick Boalch" <n.g.boalch(a)durham.ac.uk> wrote in message news:43DA3680.3030904@durham.ac.uk... So you're saying that nominating an article for AFD is a cunning way to jump the clean-up queue? That's a Baldrick-worthy plan, and I don't even mean clever Baldrick from Series One. As I have said before, if the AFD regulars put half the effort into cleanup that they do into AFD, there would be many more high-quality articles on Wikipedia. HTH HAND -- Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

Phil Boswell wrote: No, as I suspect you know perfectly well from the context that is not at all what I'm saying. I was drawing a distinction between AFD, a process which lasts for a few days and gives ample time for an article to be improved to a point where it's improvable, and CSD, where the article is just gone. Does this make sense? Cheers, N. -- Nicholas Boalch School of Modern Languages & Cultures Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456 University of Durham Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421 New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/