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Archive 1

This archive includes discussions from Wikipedia talk:AfD categories from 2006 through May 2007.

Support

I like the idea of categorization, but for exactly the opposite reason. I think, for example, that people who are part of the Wikiproject Bridges should have their voices respected more, not less, when the topic touches on their area of expertise.--Jimbo Wales 14:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, categorization is geared to involve more experts and nonexperts alike. I am strongly opposed to the suggestion that those involved in nominated articles (often the experts) be "banned" from participation. There are common sense limits to how far WP:OWN should be taken, as a social experiment, versus WP:ENC. El_C 00:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
This touches at a much wider issue at wikipedia, and that is between objective experts at one hand and fans at the other hand. How to separate those? Especially with no mechanism to distinguish who are experts and who are not? It could also refers to a wider issue, do some editors have more to say than others (along whatever line of division)? Just some rambling, I think most of the time it works fine. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 17:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
This was ironic. Out of 140 or so deletion candidates each day not more than five are contested, and the contested ones invariably involve entrenched loyalties. - Dr Zak
Once it is broken down by category more people can put the list they care about on their watch list. I don't care about deletion in games. I do care about deletion in science. The way it is set up now, there is too much noise for me to waste my time filtering it out. Maybe others feel likewise. WAS 4.250 15:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Not going to happen Shlomke, you'd need specific categories for banning, but we need broad categories for listing sanity. JeffBurdges 10:51, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, it makes sense, AfD is such a cluterred mess as such that is impossible to read them all and of course we don't like talk page spam so this seems like an excellent solution to the said problem -- Tawker 14:03, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. I recommend using the article's own categorization if an appropriate one exists at the bottom of the article (like living person). I also recommend one or more deletion reason categories for stuff we know should be deleted and that reason is judged a more important identifyer. Examples: it's not even a good enough article to appropriatly fit into a category; the person initially suggesting a delete knows exactly why he wants it deleted but that is unrelated to the article topic; the article claims to be about one thing but really exists to push a point of view (at least that's what the deleter thinks). WAS 4.250 14:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. I think it would be convenient if AfDs could be double listed by placing appropriate tags - once on the main AfD page and once on the specific category's AfD page. This would solve concerns about balkanization, and would encourage input from specific groups of editors as well as from the community at large. This shouldn't be too difficult, either. HKTTalk 15:48, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. The whole AfD process is just crying out for some rational organization by subject area. Such a measure I think would both ease participation for editors frustated by the huge daily lists of topics they are unknowledgable about or uninterested in, as well as facilitate the development of more basic standards on what is considered notable in the different subject areas.--Pharos 20:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support as long as we still have a page with the general listing, it is nice to be able to browse the AfDs and comment on ones that one might not otherwise have interest in. JoshuaZ 01:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes. My above support is tentatively dependent on this, as well. HKTTalk 03:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
That is the plan, along the lines of Requests for comment/History and geography and so on, in relation to Requests for comment/All. The master list (and respective archives) page/s need not be categorized, though, thus its current chronological order can be retained. This proposal is intended as a counterpart to, not replacement for, the current system. Those who prefer the old system should not notice a difference, except in the nomination stage where a category would be specified (a prerequisite for the new model to work). El_C 03:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Support. AfD has become a labrynthine list that is almost impossible to wade through. Notwithstanding that half of then need to be speedy-bio. speedy-group, or the like. This way, we can first focus on the topics that interest us, and we still have the option of picking our way through the mess if we wish. -- Avi 13:41, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Rossami (talk) 14:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC) My concerns about balkanization of the decision-making process are unchanged
  • CanadianCaesar Cæsar is turn’d to hear 19:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Reason? -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm a little weary about making AfD more complicated than it already is, don't want to risk creating factions and cliques by splitting up the community further, and don't see much pressing need for change. CanadianCaesar Cæsar is turn’d to hear 20:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
        • Regarding complexity, esp. instruction-wise, see my old Guide to deletion! But I don't see why it has to be more complicated than writing out {{fair use as|AfD category}} versus {{fairuse}}. I think the current "AfD clique" (those with the time & patience to browse the entire list) tends to represent within it the "cliques" (intellectual currents) in Wikipedia at large. The proposal is only geared to expand participation, by offering those without the time and patience to browse the entire list, a filtered view of this master list. AfD is "split" too widely from the community; more intelligible increments are needed. El_C 00:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC) There are three main problems, as brought out by the similar categorisation of WP:RFC:
    1. Articles don't neatly divide into such categories, and it can be a real pain to decide where to put them sometimes.
    2. Fewer editors will see what's up for AfD, unless they're prepared to go through all the categories (which most are not), and this means that:
    3. AfDs will be seen and discussed by a sub-set of editors — those interested in the area. This can often lead to skewed results, with different criteria (or interpretations of criteria) being applied to different subject areas. This is already a serious problem in parts of Wikipedia; categorising the RfC process exacerbated it, and I fear that this would take things further. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Indeed, articles do not divide neatly into such categories. For that reason, I've always disliked Wikipedia article categories. (On that note I agree with Larry Sanger, who, I believe, has opposed article categories from the start.) Still, since AfD is just a matter of the interal functioning of Wikipedia, and is not a part of the encyclopedia, article content standards are not undermined if if an editor includes an article in a wrong or murky category on AfD... Your third point raises a serious problem. I'll have to give my support here some more thought. 172 | Talk 08:49, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
      • It seems that concerns #2 and #3 would be addressed by the planned double-listing that would keep all AfDs on the main page, as well as on subject pages. Concern #1 could be solved by tags that allow users to list an AfD under multiple subjects (with the voting only occurring on one page). HKTTalk 16:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
        • I don't see that double listing solves 2 or 3; the point of the proposal is presumably that a significant number of editors would only use the categorised version (otherwise why go the trouble of changing the system?) — the fact that they could look at the complete list doesn't affect the fact that they won't. The argument is that a large number of editors will participate in AfDs who don't at present, but are there any figures on editors not participating because of the all-in-one list? Did participation in RfCs go up? (My informal impression is that it went down.) --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 21:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
          • I doubt that most people who already watch the AfD page would participate less or even watch the main AfD page less. I don't have any idea how we could get reliable figures about increased participation, but I certainly get the impression that currently alienated/apathetic people would participate much more in AfDs if only they had less video games and vanity bios (etc.) to look through before they could get to matters of interest. Setting up broad categorization would encourage more varied participation by adding participants to the current group of AfD aficionados. Anyway, I think that AfD is potentially much more attractive to most editors than is RfC. HKTTalk 03:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
        • Double-listing solves the visibility problem in #2 but does not address the self-selection bias inherent in #3. I'd like to remind everyone that we've experimented with categorization before. That experiment eventually died out. I don't consider it to have been a success. What makes this proposal different? Rossami (talk) 17:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
          • It makes it different in that not a single person here was part of that experiment, including Jimbo. Many of us would like to be part of AfD and are tired of being excluded from it by virtue of its rather gross inaccessability. El_C 18:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
            • (re: Mel's comment #1 above) This can be remedied with exceedingly simple guidelines, including a 'when uncertain' clauses. (re: #2) That is the point, I'm not interested in browsing every category, and without categories, me and many like me will not visit it at all. (re: #3) This proposal is set to expand that number, by also offering a filtered view of the master list. El_C 18:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Per Mel Etitis. Powers 16:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  • First, it is almost a dead cert that the categories will spread like a bad rash. We've already had some, um, intersting results created at AfD by things like FooWatch making it impossible to have meaningful discussions on Foos. We're still having a bun-fight over the perceived "vote-stacking" potential of the evil little boxes. How is a category like Catholic deletion or Counter strike deletion going to do anything but re-create those problems? We need wide input on deletion discussions. - brenneman {L} 09:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
    • To me, that argument reads as a straw man, since it employs extremely narrow categories that would never exist under this proposal. El_C 11:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
      • We have solid evidence that category proliferation has occurred in other circumstances within Wikipedia. It appears that there is consensus even among the supporters of the proposal that such proliferation would not be a good thing in this situation. Yet so far no one has suggested how category proliferation will be prevented or controlled. It's not a straw-man - it's a reasonable request for you to refine the proposal. Will you use technological controls to prevent further fragmentation? Or will you rely on policy language to prevent someone from being bold and setting up their own categorization? If policy, what language are you proposing? Rossami (talk) 15:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • What about consensus and common sense. I'm pretty sure that not many people would endorse the creation of a Counterstrike category. I think the proposal is very clear that the categorisation should be broad. If it turns out in practice that there is a problem that can be reviewed at that stage. jaco♫plane 16:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Certainly in the policy language itself, possibly also technically. I don't see why it has to become a key issue if the policy states that an especially substantive consensus is needed to modify categories. I'm open to suggestions on how to phrase it. El_C 16:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I am still skeptical. I have outlined my objections to such categorization here. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This idea has cropped up before, and I still don't like it. For similar reasons to the objections raised above. - Hahnchen 16:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose – there are already three completely different ways of getting articles deleted. That's confusing enough for newcomers without giving them something else to think about – Gurch 22:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Deleting anything is too confusing for newcomers - until they read the instructions! Editors learn on the job. Anyway, listing things for deletion is not usually a common activity for newcomers.HKTTalk 22:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Too complicated - stubs are overcategorized and there is no evidence that this sort of thing adds value overall. --Henrygb 23:17, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Since there is no way to obtain such evidence, there of course isn't going to be any. But it is obvious that numerous editors avoid AfD because of the hassle involved in looking through the morass of listings. And the proposal sounds pretty darn simple to me. HKTTalk 01:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose - one of things about AFD is that you're not supposed to comment on articles about subjects that you feel strongly about. If people just browse categories about their interests, you will find that many articles which probably should have been deleted were voted to be kept by fans of the subject of that article. —Mets501talk 23:12, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Categorization would tend to bring more input from people who are more informed about specific subject groups. Under the current system, articles are unfortunately deleted when they probably should be kept, and articles are kept when they probably should be deleted. Google shouldn't supplant human knowledge and input. And an interest in "society and culture" (or whatever) doesn't mean a desire to indiscriminately keep bad or non-notable articles. HKTTalk 01:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose At the moment, all those stupid areas of crap, such as articles on Star Trek fan fiction, and StarCraft guides, that shouldn't be on Wikipedia, get kept because the loons who make these pages spam any AFD votes and the admin just closes it as no consensus, which solves nothing. Breaking this down into categories will just further encourage such behaviour, and so we will have a wonderfully high standard of notability, verifiablility and scholarship applied to maths, geography sections and the like, and every godawful unsourced, original research gobs of vomitry related to Star Wars, porn stars, and Islamic terrorists will be block kept (sort of like Mets501 said). Proto||type 11:29, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
    • It seems unlikely that such broad categorization would make the problem worse. As it is, speedy deletion or {{prod}} should be used for obvious junk. HKTTalk 20:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. Categorising AfDs will inevitably lead to interest groups focussing on articles in their area with only the most ardent outside that group prepared to browse through a list. I have watched the interest-group-driven plethora of keep votes on truly awful articles without respect to their merit. Withdrawing these articles from plain and obvious view cannot but inflate this problem. We don't categorise RfA as it is important that this is visable to anyone interested not simply to those with the inclination to follow multiple links. I see AfD as no less important for it is there that we set the bottom standard for acceptability to wikipedia that FAs form the top of. - Peripitus (Talk) 12:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
    • You may have missed reading that this proposal doesn't entail "withdrawing these articles from plain and obvious view." All articles would remain listed as is, while also being listed on categorized pages. HKTTalk 20:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. Delete by consensus, not by clique. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:41, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The suitability of an article is a matter for all to be concerned about, not just specialists within a certain area. Johntex\talk 22:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose this will likely concentrate POV voting. Vaquero100 02:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above and that all the articles listed for deletion are closely related enough because they are here in the first place--Musaabdulrashid 08:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Too complicated, and per Vaquer100 as well as tendency for less popular topics to receive little opinon. - Mailer Diablo 14:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Solution seems more problematic than the mischief it purports to solve. Agent 86 18:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Although at first I thought this was a great idea, now I don't think it is. The only reason some people will vote in some AFD's is if they are all together. This will make POV cliques. -Royalguard11Talk 23:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose just seeing it today, looks very complicated. Jaranda wat's sup 03:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose unnecessarily complicates, instead of simplifies, the process. Given the steady number of incomplete/faulty nominations we have today implementing this would only cause even greater disorder. CharonX/talk 12:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Other

As I said above, the problem is the entrenched loyalties that some subjects attract. With greater participation of subject experts maybe we can get a reasoned discussion going that goes beyond "Keep all $FOOs 'cause they're $FOOs!". The other thing that we need to do, of course, is to hammer out inclusion guidelines and stick to them. Dr Zak 16:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

True on the first point. Regarding the second, This proposal isn't set to deal with inclusion notability-wise, but if you meant category-inclusion (likely), then, yes again. El_C 16:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Ambiguous - categorising will assist those of us who are better 'qualified' with respect to certain articles e.g. people on the ground for geographical bits and pieces or national figures, or people who practice in a particular discipline. However, it may cause people to overspecialise instead of encouraging contributors to the AfD discourse to develop a good grasp of different policies. I tend to support the idea but it has its detractors and they are to an extent valid. Definitely, we need better sorting tools of some sort. Jammo (SM247) 06:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed categories

I want these categories to be very broad. This I think will help alleviate the concerns expressed by Mel regarding categories becoming dominated by narrow interests groups and currents. Obviously changes to the categories will need to take place at the policy-level, to avoid the addition of overly narrow categories by parochial and specialized interests.


Games and sports Politics, history and geography Science, technology, and medicine

All

The current pages with all AfD nominations.

Art, culture and society

Cultural topics, including religion

Biographies

Biographies (often double listed with another category) discussion

Books, movies, music, and other media

Print media, audio-visual media and content on the web, including webcomics. This includes authors, TV and radio presenters, and most fictional characters. (often double listed with another category)

Companies, products, and transport

Entries about companies, comercial products, or transport, including business personalities, CEO's etc.

Politics, history and geography

Political, historical and geographical items and concepts; political figures both contemporary and historical

Science, technology and medicine

Any topic immediately related to mathematics, medicine, the physical and the social sciences (for simplicity, excluding history and historiography), as well as technological topics. This includes pseudoscientific topics and computers.

Games and sports

Games and sports related entries, such as football stars and video game characters.

General (uncertainty clause)

Anything that dosen't immediately fit into the above categories. The plan is to be lax about how demanding precise category selection is. We're essentially talling the nominator: 'if it dosen't come to you in 5 seconds, use this category.' It may end up being a sizable one, which is fine. Other readers are welcome to add double listing for entries in this category to other apppropriate categories. This category includes debates about merging schools with the article for their school district.

Comments

  • Please try to keep comments brief. Are the categories broad enough, inclusive enough, etc., should there be different combinations? El_C 01:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • These seem like good categories, but categorization should be refined (if necessary) such that all categories would receive approximately the same amount of AfD listings. Those who frequent the AfD pages could probably give a good assessment which topics get how many listings. HKTTalk 02:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Agreed. I invite those who actively participate in AfD, even if they disapprove of this model, to help us figure out and refine this balance. El_C 06:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Done. I considered its place in that category to be implied, but it's certainly useful to be explicit here. Thanks for pointing it out. El_C 06:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm going through the recent daily AfD logs to see how the categories will be populated. (Painful, that!) Observations so far: Dr Zak 14:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Frequently at AtD (and almost always uncontested) are groups and clubs (gaming clans, myspace bands, pub sports teams etcetera). Those could to with a category just to keep them out of the way of more "interesting" categories
    • Often at AfD are webcomics, authors, books with low circulation and radio presenters with only local or otherwise limited notability. Those should be grouped together. Maybe people will settle on a standard. What irks people is different standards applied to different foos.
    • Political concepts, political figures and historical events attract controversy. Has an article deliberately been forked to avoid policing, does the title present a viewpoint and so on? It's probably worth having a category for that to keep related debates together
  • Not sure if it's worth keeping biographies separate. Sportsmen should be grouped with sports and so on, hoping that more of those interested in sports scan that category and help inject sanity in the mess. Dr Zak 14:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Politics, that's right! I even mentioned it in the old proposal; good catch. RE: biographies — you really hit a key choice. See bellow. El_C 15:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Application to CfD: It would seem that this proposal should also be applied to categories for deletion. What do others think? IZAK 19:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Looking at the ten last AfD noms I've done:
Guus Hermans — hoax footballer
Corndogging — hoax / non-notable sexual practice
Balga bogans cricket club — non-notable possibly hoax sports club
Brutonstock — a drinking party explained as a festival
Continuity Forum — nn web site
Pextip forums — nn web site
ToneSwep — nn artist / unpublished writer
Otakubuu — an unpublished work of fiction
Portacabin — a nonsense/non-notable philosophical movement
Bullz — slang dicdef / WP:NFT
a more useful categorization would be more like "hoax (possibly nn)", "WP:NFT", and "WP:NN". If a categorization must be made. Where do I put sticking stuff into your uretrha for sexual gratification, medicine? Unpublished writers and boozing parties masquerading as festivals would go into art and culture I guess. Is this really helpful? Weregerbil 13:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
  • That sounds good. It'd be probably more useful to split the AfD categories into deletion reason type, than subject area, but both are good. Could both be done? Ahh, feature creep is so enjoyable. fel64 15:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I've been seeing many nominations lately that essentially say NN, without saying a NN what. Topical listings would help me figure out if I care, a NN/NFT/etc... categorization system wouldn't help with such weak nominations. And the statistics below show that the overwhelming majority of noms are NN noms, so it also wouldn't do much to split the page up. GRBerry 04:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Biographies, centralized or split?

  • I'd like to focus on Dr Zak's point more closely and devote a section to it. What should we do about biographies? Centralized? Split? If split, how? Broadly, such as non/living people, or category specific? As mentioned above, I, myself, do not have a strong opinion on the matter. El_C 15:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
    • As I said above, I feel biographies are best sorted into the area the subject is associated with. People interested in athletics will be interested in sportsmen, people interested in science will be interested in scientists (and scientific frauds) and so on. Dr Zak 19:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
      • Going through a day's AfD (painful!) my conclusion is that "biographies" is useful as a wrapup category for people that don't readily fit into any of the other categories, that is people that aren't politicians, scientists or media personalities. Listing of people on AfD usually aren't controversial, the people listed are the usual unremarkable lot of unsuccessful political candidates, aspiring band members, pseudoscientific cranks and guys with their 15 minues of fame on Dah Web. Dr Zak 16:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Religion, its own category? Subcategories?

General remark, we start already to split them into to small categories. If this is goig to succeed, it should be WIDE categories. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, though religion itself is fairly broad. I think it would be quite helpful to get input on the proportion of religion-related AfD listings to determine whether it merits its own category. HKTTalk 19:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I think we should be pragmatic. Start with really wide categories, and it it shows that they are to broad (compared to what we have now it is much narrower anyway), there is always space to subdivide. I think it is unwise to do it at this stage, especially when there is resistance against the idea of subdividing to start with. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Since the intention was to have few broad categories I don't think it's wise to split up by religion or even to put religious topics into a category of their own. "Culture and Religion" makes more sense. Dr Zak 19:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Agreed! Maybe call it society?-- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Like above ("Art, culture and society"), or is that a viewpoint that's too secular? Dr Zak 20:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I am fine with that. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 20:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, keep the categoreis as broad as possible, lets see which one ends up overstuffed first. JeffBurdges 11:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Commercial products, in companies & transport?

Does it make sense to add commercial products to the abovementioned category? What do people think? El_C 11:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds okay. For clarity, why not rename the category to Companies, transport, and commercial products? HKTTalk
Sure, sounds good. El_C 08:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Wise man once say "Fools talk of vices, ordinary people talk of other people, the wise talk about ideas." The primary criteria for categorization ought to be firstly wether or not an article would fit as a page in a textbook. If no, then is it about people, persons,

groups, or movements? If no, Then its pretty much got to be about distractions, entertainments, vices, etc. Thats a dimensional set of factors in that the other categories listed above could be multiplied together to form a sort of category matrix. Prometheuspan 20:50, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Technology

Isn't computers a little narrow? Wouldn't it be best to have a general technology section? Likely merged with the science since medicine is already there.

Also games is to vague if listed with computers anyway. Games could be split into existing sections acording to the type of game: drinking & card games go in culture, computer games go in media, etc. Or even better: sports could be expanded to include all games (computer, cards, etc.). Effectively games & sports would be low brow culture (vaguely like Prometheuspan's vices), and art & society would be high brow culture (vaguely like Prometheuspan's ideas).

If we're going to have a seperate biographies category, we might also expand media to include books. OTOH, you could merge media with sports & games if your going for low brow, like TV, with media. But I find the books biographies analogy more important.

So maybe the topics should be:

  • Art, culture and society
  • Biographies
  • Books, movies, music, and other media
  • Companies, products and transport
  • Games and sports
  • Politics, history and geography
  • Science, technology, and medicine

As well as All and General/Other. Thoughts? JeffBurdges 10:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I expect this will be implemented by the lister so categories are not exclusive. For example, a game known for its graphics may be listed under both games and media. A lister can always just improperly list one under General and let another person fix the categorization.

Okay, I'm pretty confident that this is the right change, so I'm going to go ahead and make it above, revert me if you really disagree. JeffBurdges 10:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Schools

I also added a note that schools go into general, but feel free to move that note to politics. JeffBurdges 11:13, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiVoter

This is a new program that just came out last week. If anything changes to the AfD format, I would like to know as I will have to do some extensive reprogramming. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 19:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Using some statistics to help sort

A lot of effort has gone into this, but it looks a lot like a very theoretical debate about categorizing general content. In truth it's more a question of how can we sort random crap? For example, geography, history and math might make up the majority of our articles, but are a tiny minority at AfD. The odd hoax geographic location, some WP:OR in math or history, perhaps the occasional WP:POVFORK... but not much really. Generally notability isn't contested in these cases and verifiability is often straightforward. There's a big cleanup queue for horrendous geographic and historical articles, but because their subjects aren't in doubt they don't tend to arrive at AfD. On the flip side, a seriously disproportionate amount of bands and living people biographies do come here. So what kind of rubbish does AfD mainly filter?

I did some research, based on a sample of 100 nominations. I could have kept going but basically my results showed no new trends than when I was at 30. I didn't detect any instances of this being skewed by a particular series of nominations. 100 nominations is around 10-20% of the ongoing AfD load at any times, so it's not that bad a sample. Here's what happened when I bunched them up into the smallest categories I found reasonable:

This is very light on most technical and academic areas. I also noted the reasoning in debates:

In many ways this was a more revealing way to sort. Many debates requiring expert technical or academic opinion were contested on V or NOR grounds (is a result or term obscure but notable, or just OR? Is a subfield of study academically recognized?), while debates about how should WP sort information were often category vs list issues. There was also debate about certain content forks, though it can be hard to tell a merger debate from a deletion one. The Wikipedia is not... debates discussed what general classes of subject WP should include, while the nn debates focussed on how important a subject had to be within those classes to be included. Many of the notability debates were very one-sided, though a few really needed subject-specific expertise. There were a lot of instances that were just delete vote pile-ons that should by rights have been prodded or csd'd. Similarly, 5% of nominations were dull and pointless debates about articles that were (sometimes hideously) malformed, and for various reasons hadn't gone through, or couldn't go through, alternative deletion routes.

In fact, I think the main conclusion that can be drawn from both graphs is something most editors are well aware of. Despite WP:CSD, and despite WP:PROD, AfD remains primarily our chief vanispamcruftisement-whacking center. That's not necessarily a criticism - it whacks it well and good, and even some "obvious" cases are sufficiently subjective (someone could feasilbly disagree: implicitly, the creator thought it was worth putting into WP) that it's worth, in the absense of objectivity, to invoke collective rather than individual subjectivity. But this does mean that classifying AfD is akin to sorting the contents of your neighbours' trashcan after they've emptied their cat litter [the stuff that survives CSD or prod] into it, in the quiet confidence you'll find a few glass bottles worth recycling, and with a 1 in 10,000 chance of recovering that missing ring you reckon their cat might have swallowed.

Judging from the data, these seem fine:

  • Biographies: agree, decent size, and should explicitly exclude bands (they're decided the same way, no need to split them up)
  • Books, movies, music, and other media: also agree, but be aware that this will probably be dominated by flash animations, webcomics, music. I'd also suggested putting in TV characters or minor presenters too.
  • Games and sports: spot on, quite sizable.

Could do with a little bit of rearranging perhaps?

  • Science, technology and medicine: strongly disagree about including social science. There's not usually heavy traffic for social sciences, and splitting between history/historiography and "the rest" would fragment it even further.
  • Companies, products, and transport Organizations and products: may as well combine corps and other organizations, judging from the numbers (bands excluded as an "organization"). Transportation is tangential and liable to get swamped, and since it is likely to need expert attention (e.g. is a certain class of road in a certain country so notable that individual roads require articles?) it's perhaps not a good idea to leave it marooned and alone in the heart of Spamtisement Country.

Probably needs more extensive rearrangement:

  • Art, culture and society - "the Arts", as represented, at AfD tend to be ... painful, and this would be an odd mix with some of the cultural and social topics (List of Purgolian characters in Starscape:Era 4 to Criticisms of criticisms of criticisms of Islam?). I'd suggest some splitting up. Also it's odd to have social things here with the exception of social science at science with the further exception of history/historiography elsewhere...
  • Politics, history and geography - probably not feasible due to insufficient nominations?

Suggested alternatives:

  • Indiscernible or unclassifiable topic - for the really rubbish and really weird. There's actually enough of this stuff that its own category would be good.
  • Fiction and the Arts - there's a lot of cross-over on AFD. Fictional characters, plots and items, indeed entire fictional realms, have a cross-over with the associated writers who often end up here. Artists are rarer but similar criteria are likely to apply.
  • Society related - almost but not quite a catch-all; something to cover social science, history, beliefs, crime, education, history, hobbies, the military, sex...
  • Places and transportation - a significant type of -cruft that appears at AFD is "placecruft" or "localcruft". People often write articles about their local street, roads, mall, random buidings - in essence, "schoolcruft" is just a particular genre of localcruft. I think that places ought to get their own category in the same way that suspected biocruft should. There's a degree of overlap between places and transportation (bridge, roads, and other transportation infrastructure) and since places and transportation are inherently related, I think this is a comfortable match.

Based on these categories, I would expect roughly the following relative frequencies, based on my sample:

To me this seems pretty well- balanced. None of the smaller categories seem to fit especially well into the others without bloating them, while of the larger categories, none predominate. All of these would be usefully browsable in size. Any comments or suggestions? TheGrappler 15:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Developers developers developers developers

Kim informs me that regretfuly he was unable to recruit the aid of a developer. He also suggested to me the possibility that my recent criticisms of certain IRC-related practices might prove a hindrence (since I'm the original author of this proposal) to finding ones. Let's try to organize in finding ways to have developers looking into this now, so that when we're finished the drafting process, it could be implemented. So, if we're unable to find developers through the normal channels or whatever means we have at our disposal, we could appeal to Jimbo directly to find us some. Or I could misuse my foundation wiki priveliges and appeal for help there. That'd be funny! So, go hunt them developers, with honey! El_C 08:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

:-P The criticism is not the problem. It's the hunting grounds. If you want to hunt deer but refuse to enter the scary forest, you're going to have some trouble. Kim Bruning 10:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Gah! I misread that (ircphobia as a xeno- rather than a claustrophobia, which may suggest a certain measure of AGFphobia – no, strike that last part).Sorry! This confusion could have been cleared in 5 seconds on IRC, btw. El_C 11:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Now that we've established the consensus to experiment, I will be listing monthly development/developers-related updates bellow. El_C 08:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Monthly update: May 2006

Nothing happned (one effort by Kim, above). El_C 08:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Monthly update: June 2006

So far, nothing is happning (that I know of). El_C 08:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Monthly update: July 2006

So far, nothing is happning (that I know of). El_C 06:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

If you want developer help, how about making a concrete proposal in the form of an enhancement request in bugzilla? E.g. "add a 'Special:Nominate for deletion' page which has some check boxes for the relevant categories". I can't tell so far what help you're hoping to get. Phr (talk) 03:27, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Why do you need developers?

I've been working on a way to implement this proposal. Try creating a test page (in userspace, please) and tagging it with {{subst:User:ais523/ElC/afd}}, and then completing it via the maintenance links. I've used TheGrappler's suggested categories for the example. Let me know if you have any feedback! --ais523 15:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment

Wouldn't the new category math feature totally eliminate the need for this i.e. I could get a list of all the articles in both categories: Category:Articles for deletion and Category:My favorite stuff?? --Trödel 20:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Possibly, but even if implemented, many AfD'd pages are entirely uncategorized, and very few are categorized completely. An Argentinian actor might have been placed in Category:Actors but not in Category:Argentinian people (or vice versa). -- Visviva 09:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

How would this work?

Would special categories be added to AfD subpages? Would they have to be deleted once the AfD is completed? Would there be some easy way to browse AfD by category? Would editors have to add the AfD subpage to a category page? Need answers. Fagstein 18:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The success of this proposal is inevitable

The number of articles on AfD has been going up at an exponential rate, as wikipedia increases in size and popularity at an exponential rate. 9 months or so ago, we were getting close to 200 AfD's per day, and to solve this overload Proposed Deletion was put in place. This took a huge load off AfD... temporarily, but now we've doubled in size again, 200 articles a day are being Prodded, half of them being deleted this way, and AfD is back nearing 200 a day. Within another year we'll be up to 300 or 400 articles a day on AfD. Clearly this is not going to work. Already, 15 or 20 AfD's per day have to be relisted because of not getting enough responses to form a consensus.

One monster massive page with 300 or 400 or 500 AfD's simply is unworkable, there will be no choice but to break these down into categories, as this likely is the only way to make the whole thing more manageable and to get more people involved in the process, and obviously more people will be needed as the number of articles AfD'd continues to rise. --Xyzzyplugh 02:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

No, this simply means that some form of reform is necessary and will almost certainly pass. Not necessarily this reform. JoshuaZ 02:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
What other proposed deletion reforms are out there? --Xyzzyplugh 13:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
There's been some talk about refining CSD #A7, for one. What else is needed? Let's get some dialogue going... -- nae'blis 20:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Policy implemented

I've implemented the proposal and am pleased to tag it official policy. Many thanks to principal tech author ais523 for doing the practical work in setting up the templates/categories, as well as to TheGrappler for his valuable statistical work and councel, and to all others who supported in various ways so as to make this a reality. I would like to also extend a special thanks to those who opposed for often providing crucial insights. El_C 05:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't all this stuff be moved to the Talk page then, and an actual policy put in its place? Fagstein 21:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, now where's the policy? Fagstein 04:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
So, when will this be officially implemented in AfD pages? The pages are still without any sub-categorizations. --Siva1979Talk to me 04:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Addition of a category

I think this category feature is great. I have been moving items into the appropriate categories. I am not sure where is the best place to raise this, but could an additional category be created for langunage. I have been putting those entries that deal with WP:NEO and dictionary definitions into the Society topics because nothing else fits. Also, is there any ranking or preference for entries that could fit into two or more categories, ie an online flash game could be in Web (W) or Games (G)? Thanks--Gay Cdn (talk) (email) (Contr.) 18:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

How to stop proliferation of new categories?

The main concern people had with this proposal was the danger of more and more new categories being added, eventually leading to highly specific subcategories like "star trek" or "webcomics", which might then make it highly difficult to delete any article in certain categories, as dozens of people come pouring out of the woodwork to vote keep on any webcomic/babylon V/wrestling/etc. article. As many people voted keep with the caveat that the number of categories needed to remain small, and most of the Oppose votes were opposed to this policy for this very reason, I believe we need to make it clear that new categories should not be added. This would never have become policy if there were going to be a hundred categories, so category creep needs to be forbidden from the outset. --Xyzzyplugh 13:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Small bug/feature with categorization

I (and several other closing admins, see User talk:Gay Cdn) have run into the issue of not removing the {{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}} template after the recent implementation. One of the problems which arises is that if one clicks on the "edit" link off of, say, the Afd page Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 September 9, this template doesn't show up at all. For example, just picking a AfD discussion off random of that page, one finds that clicking on that link (or dragging it into another tab) brings up [1], and of course the notice is contained in Section 0 since it's ahead of the article name, at [2]. As for now, the only fix I can figure out is to click on the edit link, then in the new opened window, click "project page" and then "edit page" again, and then the template shows up. This seems like a problem to me, and it has caught a fair number of fellow admins off guard as well.

I can see two fixes for this, the first is for the REMOVE template to appear somewhere below the article name. Putting it right below makes it slightly more complicated for the admin to close but might be the best solution here, as putting it at the bottom guarantees it will be accidentally changed by commenters. The second fix is to somehow modify the code so that the edit button on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2006 September 9 brings up [3], but I don't know if this is even technically possible or there are global reasons why this change breaks something.

All in all, it's a great idea and I'm glad it's being added, but this feature of the implementation seems to be a bug to me. So I propose the following question: Is there any way to fix this?

Thanks! --Deville (Talk) 18:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Note also that this new feature is not described at[[4]] - which is where it shoudl be described! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Land (talk • contribs) .
I agree, I've edited {{afd2}} to place the categorisation template below the heading. Please consider thinking things through and properly documenting changes before you start implementing them on a massive scale. --bainer (talk) 02:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Informing the creators is being ignored

The text formerly in this location is now being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Informing the creators is being ignored; please direct comments on that debate there. --ais523 17:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

  • But now ais523, no-one knows what it's about and will ignore it if all they care about is the talk on this page. Please be patient as this discussion will come together of its own accord and not by your artificial prodding. So I am reposting it again. Thanks. IZAK 17:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • The full discussion has been removed again in order to prevent fragmented discussions. A one-line description would be appropriate. A repetition of your full complaint is inappropriate. Rossami (talk) 19:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Guideline vs. Policy

The tag was changed from "proposed" to "guideline" to "policy". I reverted it back to "guideline" but I'm not happy with even that. The text on the "guideline" tag reads "It has general acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow."

The vote above shows that there is NOT "general acceptance among editors" and therefore this doesn't even qualify as a guideline.

I say this even though I voted to support and I really like this idea. It has increased my participation in AfD dramatically.

--Richard 06:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

There's about three times more editors supporting than opposing. I don't care what you call it, so long as it remains a mandatory stage in the AfD nomination process (i.e. exists), you can mark it historical for all I care (you may wish to update the conclusion, in any event). El_C 07:47, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I have to admit that all I did was scan the proposal page quickly. I saw quite a number of oppose votes and I didn't bother to count whether the opposes were 20%, 30% or 40% of the total number of opinions expressed. We could quibble about whether 75% support is "general acceptance" or something else. I would argue for changing the phrasing of the "guideline" template but that's another can of worms.
Let's skip the battle over words and move on to talk about AfD categorization being a "mandatory part of the AfD process". In reading what follows, please remember that I am an enthusiastic supporter of AfD categorization and my participation in AfD debates has more than tripled since the institution of this process.
However, do you really mean "mandatory"? Would you advocate de-listing an AfD if it were uncategorized? I would argue for saying that AfD categorization is a highly recommended part of the process. Omitting it will lead to low participation rates and so it is in the interest of most nominators to categorize the AfD so as to get the maximum participation.
--Richard 08:33, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, textually, the oppose section appears to be greater than it is due to the sheer volume of discussion in that section, whereas most support votes are a single line (or word). At any rate, so long as it remains part of the AfD nomination steps and so long as the unsorted cat remains in relative proportion, I don't really care about the semantics, not to mention intend on delisting anything. El_C 08:56, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
The policy vs. guideline argument is probably irrelevant, as this is a process; there isn't a policy tag on WP:DPR or WP:AFD, and there shouldn't be one here. That doesn't imply a lack of consensus, just that it's not the sort of thing that gets a policy/guideline tag. --ais523 10:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

"academics:

Current the AfD debates on scholars tend to attract a good deal of one-sided automatic votes from people who don't think anyone less than Plato is notable. Some of this is covered under science, but the most difficult ones are non-Science; in the last few days I've seen a Professor of law at Oxford nominated on the grounds that it did not assert notability. If people from a subject area or who cared about things like this more generally would know, there could be a more informed discussion either way. This would also apply to those who have access to Web of Science or Scopus or other expensive service. (Google Scholar does not work for anything before 1998 or 99.).DGG 19:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Categories as subcategories of each other

Why are some of the various deletion categories listed as subcategories of each other? For example, the Sexuality and gender deletion-sorting page is itself in Category:AfD debates (Web or internet). confusing, and clutters up the deletion-categories lists. DMacks 07:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It's because the pages listed in the categories are transcluding AfDs, which in turn contain the category. When creating the system, I decided not to suppress this behaviour, because it was potentially useful (for instance, it may point users interested in a particular AfD cat to deletion-sorting pages that might interest them; it has for me at least once), but if this is deemed desirable, the logs and deletion-sorting pages could be removed from the category by making yet more changes to {{afd2}}. --ais523 09:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:AfD debates (Linguistic topics)

Category:AfD debates (Linguistic topics) has recently been created. Should it be deleted, or as integrated into the system as a formal category? It'd be useful for neologisms and language articles. –Pomte 12:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The AfD categories are intentionally broad; the original discussion (at the top of this page) made it clear that narrow categories are probably a bad idea. --ais523 13:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Main topics

Just wondering, whether the Category:Main topic classifications is completely covered by the Category:AfD debates.

In any case, IMO it will be useful for the page Category:AfD debates to contain the mathes between the two. For example, I guess the main topics category:Culture and category:Belief.

And the main topic category:Geography, I guess, is something between "P Places and transportation" and "T Science and technology".

I understand that both Category:AfD debates and Category:Main topic classifications refl;ect some "natural" and "convenient" taxonomies, but IMO to avoid confusion they must have a reasonable match.

In any case, clarification is needed in page Category:AfD debates, to aid peolpe in making a choice. `'mikka 17:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

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