Regarding the proposal made recently on this list for a "Links for Deletion" area to conduct discussions on whether a particular link ought to be kept or deleted in a project, talk, or user page (main article space was explicitly disclaimed from this process), it would seem that the point of this (besides creating another highly bureaucratized and highly contentious venue within Wikipedia, and hence achieving the seemingly contradictory aims of both creating more wikidrama, and making it stultifyingly boring) is to encourage discussion about what links should be allowed to be used in the course of discussion. How, precisely, one can go about doing this with regard to a specific link without actually linking there so that participants in this meta-discussion can be properly informed about what it is they are debating, I don't know. But anyway, the proposal doesn't go far enough. Links aren't the only thing in Wikipedia- internal discussions that sometimes offend people and make them wish to see them go away; sometimes the entire discussion does this, and editors, admins, and arbitrators have on numerous occasions deleted entire threads from discussion pages on various grounds. Shouldn't there be a process for everybody to follow in doing this?
Thus, I propose creating Discussions for Deletion (WP:DFD). There, it will be possible to nominate a discussion to be deleted (including all of its external links); a possible !vote would be to keep the discussion but kill the links, or to screw up the spelling of the site name to discombobulate people, etc.
A problem might be that those who are offended that a discussion is taking place might also be offended by a discussion about whether to delete the discussion. Have no fear; since the latter is also a discussion, you can file a DFD on it too! Then we'll all be discussing whether to delete the discussion about whether to delete the original discussion. Those who object to *this* can file a DFD on the DFD on the DFD. Eventually, when the DFD on the DFD on the DFD on the DFD on the DFD on the original discussion is finally closed, it might be possible to get on with the DFD on the DFD on the DFD on the DFD on the original discussion. Perhaps at some point prior to the heat death of the universe it might finally be resolved whether the original discussion can proceed.
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
A problem might be that those who are offended that a discussion is taking place might also be offended by a discussion about whether to delete the discussion. Have no fear; since the latter is also a discussion, you can file a DFD on it too!
I think the "for Deletion" pages are starting to proliferate a little too wildly. I therefore propose "for Deletion" for Deletion (fDfD), wherein we can hold discussions over whether various for-Deletion pages should be deleted.
fDfD itself would never go up for deletion, of course, since we'd need some sort of fDfDfD forum to discuss it in.
On 10/12/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I think the "for Deletion" pages are starting to proliferate a little too wildly. I therefore propose "for Deletion" for Deletion (fDfD), wherein we can hold discussions over whether various for-Deletion pages should be deleted.
fDfD itself would never go up for deletion, of course, since we'd need some sort of fDfDfD forum to discuss it in.
WP:BEANS.
--Darkwind