[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[MZMcBride]

Sarah wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 16:16, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> The entire deletion process is broken and needs to be fixed. Werdna was
>> working on an extension to make nominating a page for deletion less horrible
>> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Werdna/dev>), but I don't believe there
>> has been any recent activity on this.
>> 
> What is the problem with allowing editors to do this kind of thing
> manually -- open AfDs and RfCs, and the like? Why does there always
> have to be a template, just as a matter of interest?

Well, you hit the answer to your second question in your second paragraph:
templates have been implemented largely to appease bots/scripts and to make
the processes (and their related pages) more standardized and consistent. I
think templates make much more sense in the context of something like speedy
deletions: you want a consistent banner that auto-categorizes the page so
that admins can review the queue later.

The problem with templates from a usability/user interface perspective is
that they're arcane and needlessly confusing. "{{subst:afd1}}" is gibberish.
I know what adding that code does and where the names come from better than
most, but I think that expecting users to have to deal with it is
unacceptable. The project that Werdna was working on was a system in which
users could nominate pages for deletion without needing templates. They
would instead have a "delete" tab or a sidebar option that would allow any
user to nominate a page for deletion and have the votes for deletion tracked
properly in the database. (Freeform wikitext is almost impossible to parse.)

There is an idea that power needs to be distributed; e.g., not just a few
power users should be able to figure out that adding "{{csd-r1}}" to the top
of a page means that you've come across a broken redirect that should be
deleted. (And if you went the manual route and put a nice note at the top of
the page, who knows what would happen, but likely nothing good or expected.)
Following this idea, a proper system for nominating pages for deletion would
allow for more users to get involved in the process, could include automatic
notification to the page's creator/watchers/major contributors, and could
even possibly eliminate the need for admin intervention altogether in some
circumstances.

The difficulty of using templates and some of the current processes does
come with an advantage or two, namely that there is security through
obscurity. It's rare to see frivolous nominations for deletion with a system
that's so complex and confusing. If you implemented a one-click system,
you'd have to also develop means to prevent people from trying to nominate
"Abortion" and "Barack Obama" for deletion every few minutes.

MZMcBride