[WikiEN-l] Another AfD example -- a serious proposal to fix it

[Tony Sidaway]

On 1/20/06, Sean Barrett <sean at 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.