On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Stephen Bain wrote:
On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein rebrane@gmail.com wrote:
The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or no-brainer merges.
My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem article tag for a week gets deleted.
Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and dealt with on an individual basis.
You've just described how the present works -- in theory. Vanity pages, spam, articles with negligible content all get listed as Speedy Delete. The rest go to VfD.
VfD will always be a contentious forum, if for no other reason than we are discussing whether to knife someone's baby; in effect, a vote to delete an article can be perceived by its original contributor as a criticism that their work is "unimportant." Add to that the diverse philosophies present on Wikipedia, & that the size of the Wikipedia community has grown to the point where cliques or factions have begun to emerge, & Wikipedia has come to the point where VfD will always be a hotly controversial topic unless we agree to accept all articles that do not meet the criteria of a Speedy Delete -- in effect, removing it entirely.
Although it wouldn't help to streamline the process for actually deleting an article; last time I looked at the instructions, I found them so intimidating that I gave up & went back to just contributing material.
Geoff