So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
This seems to me to have the following advantages: 1. It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad feeling. 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
Any thoughts?
WT
While I appreciate people are trying to think of ways to improve a process which they perceive as deficient, that process and others not involving a central process open to all users would end up working very inconsistently with articles being deleted or not at the whim of which admin comes through at a particular time.
Let us look at an article about a person who is notable in Australia but not elsewhere (for example) which is in a poor state. Editor A comes and tags the article for deletion. Editor B comes through and deletes it. Neither editor is aware of the significance of the person in Australia and the article is deleted.
If it was listed on articles for deletion, an editor or editors from Australia could argue for its retention and improve it meaning we have a better article.
Apart from that, I suspect that the undeletion process will become unclogged with many accusations of editors/admins acting in bad faith.
I will flag now that I will not vote for any proposal unless that I am pretty sure that it will improve the system. I will not vote for any proposal which removes the deletion process from the scrutiny of ordinary users.
Keith
aka Capitalistroadster
On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller wikipedia@world-traveller.org wrote:
So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
This seems to me to have the following advantages:
- It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad feeling. 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
Any thoughts?
WT
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Apart from that, I suspect that the undeletion process will become unclogged with many accusations of editors/admins acting in bad faith.
I will flag now that I will not vote for any proposal unless that I am pretty sure that it will improve the system. I will not vote for any proposal which removes the deletion process from the scrutiny of ordinary users.
Keith
aka Capitalistroadster
I'll go even further myself. I will oppose any system I believe will make the deletion worse. By the way, thanks to Keith for the great wording. He captured my feeling much better than I could ever have myself.
--Mgm
Keith Old wrote:
While I appreciate people are trying to think of ways to improve a process which they perceive as deficient, that process and others not involving a central process open to all users would end up working very inconsistently with articles being deleted or not at the whim of which admin comes through at a particular time.
Let us look at an article about a person who is notable in Australia but not elsewhere (for example) which is in a poor state. Editor A comes and tags the article for deletion. Editor B comes through and deletes it. Neither editor is aware of the significance of the person in Australia and the article is deleted.
If it was listed on articles for deletion, an editor or editors from Australia could argue for its retention and improve it meaning we have a better article.
This is why I proposed splitting AFD by topic, and look where it got me... I remember when I was more active on the [[WP:AWNB]] that we had a section for "Australia-related articles on VFD", sometimes we would keep these out of mainstream VFD, and we would perform the same courtesy to other regional noticeboards.
Apart from that, I suspect that the undeletion process will become unclogged with many accusations of editors/admins acting in bad faith.
I concur. Under PWDS there is too much room to assume bad faith. Either people will leave over month-long revert wars, or we will have groups of sysops running around protecting and unprotecting articles in order to try and "keep" or "delete" them.
I will flag now that I will not vote for any proposal unless that I am pretty sure that it will improve the system. I will not vote for any proposal which removes the deletion process from the scrutiny of ordinary users.
Indeed. Hence my scepticism of the "hidden semi-deleted pages" option.
Damn, I feel like being bold and just going and...
On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller wikipedia@world-traveller.org wrote:
So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
This seems to me to have the following advantages:
- It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad feeling. 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
That's exactly why I oppose decentralization. If it's on a category instead of a centralized page, admin's can't see when notices are removed, and if I visit a category at two different times, it's very hard to see what's been added and what I've already voted for (I often work on different machines, so link color isn't always an indicator).
Deletion discussions will cause bad feeling no matter how we do it. It's best to keep it centralized, so people who don't want anything to do with it can stay away.
--Mgm
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller wikipedia@world-traveller.org wrote:
So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
This seems to me to have the following advantages:
- It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad feeling. 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
That's exactly why I oppose decentralization. If it's on a category instead of a centralized page, admin's can't see when notices are removed, and if I visit a category at two different times, it's very hard to see what's been added and what I've already voted for (I often work on different machines, so link color isn't always an indicator).
That's easily solved by just using a DynamicPageList to list the articles.
Worldtraveller's ideas have been proposed in several forms before, but AfD zealots always reject the idea as it would make their past-time harder (they'd have to go and edit talk pages, rather than edit all the votes on one big AfD page).
This is why I said it's impossible to get any sort of consensus for replacing AfD - the people who hang out there don't want it changed, and will (and have) vociferously oppose any proposals.
Dan
G'day Dan,
<snip />
Worldtraveller's ideas have been proposed in several forms before, but AfD zealots always reject the idea as it would make their past-time harder (they'd have to go and edit talk pages, rather than edit all the votes on one big AfD page).
This is why I said it's impossible to get any sort of consensus for replacing AfD - the people who hang out there don't want it changed, and will (and have) vociferously oppose any proposals.
When you're quite finished assuming bad faith, the people discussing how to improve AfD are meeting over ========================> there.
In fact, there's even somebody by the name of "Dan Grey" who's submitted the odd reasonable post. I assume, from what you've written above, that he's actually an imposter of some kind.
Regardless of the all the bad feeling surrounding AfD, it appears to do its work fine. If articles are wrongly deleted, people should use VFU more instead of complaining about the Deletion process.
I'm not talking about making voting easier for fanatics. It's meant to make closing debates easier for administrators.
Deletion may need some reform, but that should be aimed at people's mentality and not the place the discussions are done.
(y the way, I just visited Uncyclopedia and I recommend it for people who need to wind down and have a laugh.)
--Mgm
From: Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com
Worldtraveller's ideas have been proposed in several forms before, but AfD zealots always reject the idea as it would make their past-time harder (they'd have to go and edit talk pages, rather than edit all the votes on one big AfD page).
"AfD zealots" is extremely unhelpful language, and in my opinion undermines your arguments.
This is why I said it's impossible to get any sort of consensus for replacing AfD - the people who hang out there don't want it changed, and will (and have) vociferously oppose any proposals.
People who don't hang out there also oppose its deletion.
Jay.
On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller wikipedia@world-traveller.org wrote:
So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
This seems to me to have the following advantages:
- It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad feeling. 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
Any thoughts?
WT
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No such descission are much better made by the comunity than admins. Admins should only make descisions when for logicistical reasons it is imposible to get wider community input.
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Worldtraveller wrote:
So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
What you're proposing is more or less "pure admin deletion" -- the idea that admins should get to decide what articles are deleted, and fight it out amongst themselves. I think this moves the balance of power even further away from the general populace of editors in an unfair way. There is nothing that says a non-admin's opinion about what should be deleted is any less valid than that of an admin.
Beyond that, there is no practical advantage to this over pure wiki deletion, because in PWD, admins would still have control over what articles stay deleted because they would be the ones with the power to protect a deleted article. I envision that this would happen rather commonly, and would be the simple solution to the edit wars that the doom sayers are always prophecizing would occur under PWD. If an admin is certain that a bad article should stay deleted, he or she will delete and protect it. There is simply no drawback to this. All the problems that exist in PWD also exist under AFD. The only difference is that we lose the bureaucracy, we lose the drama, and we lose the sense of finality that AFD gives to deletion.
Ryan