[WikiEN-l] The answer for AfD

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 10/28/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > By the way, we *don't* have a very clear policy on deletion and
> undeletion.
>
> We do. People just choose to ignore it.
>
> --Mgm


Do you care to explain where this clear policy is?

"Each deletion category has a slightly different procedure. See the page for
that category for details. *Give the reason why you think it should be
deleted*. It will remain there for a time, giving other users the chance to
comment on whether they think deletion is in fact appropriate. After an
appropriate lag time, an administrator will delete the page if a rough
consensus is reached - see Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for
administrators#Rough_consensus<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_guidelines_for_administrators#Rough_consensus>."
Going to that page:

"Administrators necessarily must use their best judgement, attempting to be
as impartial as is possible for a fallible human, to determine when rough
consensus has been reached. For example, administrators can disregard
opinions and comments if they feel that there is strong evidence that they
were not made in good faith<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_faith>.
Such "bad faith" opinions include those being made by sock
puppets<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppet>,
being made anonymously, or being made using a new userid whose only edits
are to the article in question and the voting on that article.

Some opinions can override all others. For instance if someone finds a
copyright violation, a page is always deleted. If a page was to be deleted,
but a person finds references for a particular topic or rewrites the
article, the page might be kept. If the consensus so far was to delete, but
it is requested that a page be userfied, then typically the page will be
moved into the user namespace."
That doesn't seem very clear to me at all. Undeletion policy is somewhat
more clear, although with the new speedy deletion criteria there is quite a
bit of ambiguity as to what constitutes being "speedily deleted
out-of-process". Of course, even undeletion policy has the huge loophole of
saying that "If, after five days have passed, at least 3 people (including
the person who proposed it) currently want to undelete and a majority are
currently in favor of undeletion, the page *may* be undeleted by a sysop."
Emphasis is in the original, and trust me, there are many admins that like
to point out that loophole.

So, unless you mean that the deletion and undeletion policies are clear that
admins can do basically anything they want, then no, the policies aren't
clear. Somewhat of a de-facto unwritten policy has emerged, but that's about
it.