Wikipedia:Deletion reform/DPL deletion

Centralised deletion reform discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion reform

Part 1: (Pretty much Wikipedia:Requests for deletion, I've now discovered :-).) The VfD template adds the category "proposed deletion" to an article. Ed gets to dispose of the central VfD page again and all articles in this category are instead listed using a m:DynamicPageList. The debate is held on the article talk page. If the consensus is to delete, delete the article, remove all but the deletion debate from the talk page, then add a template to the talk page explaining the outcome and adding the category "deleted". All "deleted" pages then listed on a standard category page.

Part 2: (From Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion, the next generation, more or less.) Voting held in a manner similar to RfA: votes are either Keep or Delete, listed under seperate headings. (Merge transwiki etc added only with a clear Delete vote too.) Admins closing apply similar reasoning on judging consensus as with bureaucrats on RfA - a high percentage of Delete votes required for deletion, and an element of personal judgement.

Comments

This would give me a list of all pages that are up for deletion, but would be effectively useless. For example, I might go there and see John Foo. Is John Foo a non-notable student vanity, or is he someone that I might actually vote to keep? I couldn't tell without clicking each and every link and taking up more of my time than I do now. Any proposal has to list the reasons the article was nominated for deletion. Meelar (talk) 14:09, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

As Ed Poor said, if you want to discuss an article, it should be done on the talk page, and whether or not to delete an article should not be any different. Dan100 (Talk) 15:36, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but how am I supposed to know about it? Here's what'll happen. I log in and go to this dynamic list, and I'm confronted with...a list of article titles. Some of them might fall into categories that I think worthy of keeping (state senators, major league baseball players, etc.), even though other people think they deserve deletion. Others might be clear delete cases (student vanity and so on). How am I supposed to know which of these articles I should take action on and which I should ignore, merely from a list of names? Meelar (talk) 15:42, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Visit each page on the list in turn? Dan100 (Talk) 16:00, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Do you have any idea how many pages would be in the category? Do you have any idea how long the talk pages of some of the articles can be? It will take ages to visit all of the pages. At the moment, I skip most of the VfD's because a consensus has already formed after 4 or 5 votes. I expect many people do that, and it's even encouraged at the VfD page. You'd make that impossible, which would mean that the number of people following the VfD's would dramatically fall, escpecially amongst the reasonable people. Only the fanatic inclusionists and deletionists will have the patience to visit dozens of pages each day, only to influence one or two of the votes. Eugene van der Pijll 16:28, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I second that. There needs to be clear reasons stated so that prospective voters can tell if the nomination is legitimate and not either being done out of spite or ignorance. There must also be other vote options besides the black-and-white keep or delete as on many occasions information from articles can be merged with other articles. 23skidoo 15:00, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I never said no reason for deletion should be given! For merging, you would vote "Delete and merge with..." Dan100 (Talk) 15:36, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

You cannot give these reasons in a category listing.

By the way, "Merge" does not (and cannot) mean "Delete and merge"; is has to mean "Keep, merge, and redirect" to satisfy the GFDL. So the meaning of "merge" is clear: it cannot count as anything else as a keep. Why then would you want to remove this voting option? It was invented because people saw a need for this kind of vote. Specifying "Keep/delete votes only" is needless bureaucracy. And removing the possibility of a compromise position does not help when seeking consensus. Eugene van der Pijll 16:28, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is no problem with "Delete and merge" for single author articles, the author information can (and should) be conserved in the dit record of the merge. For articles which have been edited by multiple authors, there are still ways of preserving the authorship records, either at the talk page or on a sub-page. Physchim62 17:54, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Shunting the discussion onto article talk pages seems likely to create more problems with one of the "Cons" above -- too few voters. Presenting the VFDs in a format (like the current one) where people can see that an article has no votes and needs to be scrutinized is the best way to encourage each article to get a good look-over. With a category listing, it would be much more likely for a page to be listed, have nobody look at it, and then disappear. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:37, 2005 August 2 (UTC)