[WikiEN-l] Discussions for Deletion (DFD)

[Daniel R. Tobias]

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.

-- 
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