On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Have nominations painlessly canceled, with no repercussions at all, would make the deletionists /more/ likely to nominate stuff for deletion, not less.
I don't think words like "deletionist" are helpful here, really. But Jimbo has hit on the core problem: that there is not enough discussion, not enough thought, put into alternatives to nomination for deletion. Our written deletion policy has lots of pious words that, if followed, would turn a large proportion of our daily deletion listings into merges and whatnot.
You know if arbcom gets a request, and the person making the request hasn't bothered with other parts of the dispute resolution procedure, and hasn't given a good reason for not doing so, the case is rejected.
Let's develop a similar procedure here. If someone sees a deletion nomination where deletion could obviously be avoided if a merge or redirect were to be negotiated, then that person should remove the AfD tag and start a discussion on the talk page about that alternative action. The discussion should not proceed to deletion until those proposing deletion have diligently investigated all alternatives. *NO ONUS SHOULD BE PLACED ON THOSE OPPOSING DELETION*. It should be for those proposing that the article, category, article template or other encyclopedia component, should be deleted, to show by due diligence that the item cannot be reorganised in a fruitful manner.