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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

Why keep subpage?

Is there a reason to keep the subpage if something like Milk was put up for AfD? Why would we even note it? If it is obviously in bad-faith, why keep the subpage around? --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark)|My RfA 20:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

For more controversial articles like George W. Bush having a pre-existing already closed sub-page will potentially deter the casual vandal from going further with the nomination, given the extra hassle that they would need to go to. The less fanatical of the POV merchants will see that the article has been speedily kept already and is thus likely to be speedily kept again. It wont stop the more determined people, but then we have lost nothing by keeping it. For something like Milk it is unlikely to be nominated more than once, and so it wont be seen - but people get fanatical about the strangest things. I am not about to try and draw the boundary between controversial and non-controversial. Having the pages around is also evidence against cabalism and trying to hide things. Thryduulf 20:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Simply wondering. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark)|My RfA 21:34, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
It could also become useful in the RFC or RFA proceedings of someone who was disrupting Wikipedia with inappropriate AFDs. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 17:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Is this necessary?

An intriguing idea, but is this necessary? It seems as if most of the times this is expected to be used is when an obviously bad-faith AfD occurs, but isn't that already 'fixable' under current admin rules? I may be mistaken, but I don't recall seeing George W. Bush remaining in AfD for a week at a time. The other main use cited is when there are 0 (zero) Delete votes, but doesn't the good-faith nomination of the article imply that at least one person (the editor who inserted {{subst:afd}}) is suggesting this is a delete? Finally, I wish to note a concern that this might short-circuit the process of gaining consensus by allowing an admin to summarily override a good-faith AfD that he or she personally disagrees with. I don't mean to be contrarian, but I hope I have communicated my concerns clearly. - CHAIRBOY (?) 20:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It is possible that it will be abused, but no more so than WP:CSD. For the reasons why I feel it is necessary take a look at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Snowspinner 2 and the fallout over Snowspinner's actions in speedy-keeping articles. Thryduulf 20:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I wondered if this was neccessary also, but for a different reason: Speedy keeps are already done, without benefit of a formalized proposal. I patrol Afd quite a bit and I see speedy keeps sometimes. I don't recall seeing any that were controversial. As I read it, the matter discussed in the RFC was not closing the Afds as a speedy keep, it was outright deletion of the Afd pages. I don't see that a problem exists, so I don't know what this proposal is trying to solve. Friday (talk) 21:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
No, many see the speedy keeping as nearly as bad as the deletion. And it is, in the same way that an admin closing an AFD with 99 "delete" votes as a "keep" even after 5 days is bad. ~~ N (t/c) 21:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I really can't see how the two are comparable. A speedily kept Afd is kept around where people can see it. If someone disagreed, they could easily undo it and/or register their objection. The deletion of the Afds was an altogether more extreme action, undoable only by admins. If speedy keeps are done by common sense and with consensus (as I believe they currently are in most cases), I don't see why a formal guideline is neccessary. Friday (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be nice to have a formal guideline just for the purpose of saying "you can't speedy keep just because you feel like it". I mean, even though it's undoable by anyone, it's highly disruptive - just like the example I gave of mass-closing "delete" AFDs as "keep" at the end of 5 days (which is explicitly against policy). ~~ N (t/c) 21:47, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I have no objections to this, but little enthusiasm either. It seems to me to be fixing a problem that isn't there, and will have no real affect on afd's main problems. This is re-aranging the deckchairs, when what we need is some form of change of direction. However, I see no reason to oppose it either (other than being instruction creep that serves little puspose). --Doc (?) 22:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the this-is-policy-creep camp (dare I say "rulecruft"?). Bad faith AfD noms are already being delisted as vandalism or whatever without any trouble, and in the case of a good faith AfD nom of a high profile article, after the first few keep votes and rationales a quick request on the nominator's talk page to retract the AfD does the trick. --fvw* 00:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. It would be nice to have a policy saying "you CAN'T speedy keep for these reasons", but it's not necessary. ~~ N (t/c) 00:28, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to chime in as well. This is a great idea but we already do it and are allowed under the existing rules. Having a separate page of complex rules and instructions creates opportunities for the vandals to nitpick at usand to bog us down in bureaucracy. Bad faith nominations should be speedy-closed as vandalism. Maybe we can keep this around more as a guideline page? Or even better, be bold and make a synopsis of it to replace the current section on "abusive nominations" on the /Maintenance page. Rossami (talk) 20:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Guideline #6

The last proposed guideline reads:

Articles meeting either criterion can be kept if the discussion has not been linked to the appropriate AfD day page within 30 minutes of the sub-page being created.

Why is this being proposed? In my (admittedly limited) experience, unlinked AfD subpages are usually a result of honest mistakes or inexperienced nominators. I feel that one should assume good faith and simply add the missing entry to the appropriate AfD page (and maybe notify the nominator on their talk page). The AfD process can then proceed as usual, possibly even resulting in a speedy keep if the nomination is inappropriate or done in bad faith.

Maybe I'm missing something, and there really is a good reason for this guideline. But it strikes me as an unnecessary complication on an otherwise good proposal, and I feel that its inclusion may even reduce the likelihood of the proposal reaching sufficient consensus for approval. —Ilmari Karonen 22:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, I wasn't reading carefully and didn't notice the meeting either criterion part. Sorry. I'm still not sure if this guideline is actually necessary, but I'm no longer opposed to its inclusion. Ilmari Karonen 22:31, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Objection, your honor

I have two objections to this proposal. First, it is entirely too long (as in complex, verbose and bureaucratese). Complex rules lead to misinterpretation and arguments over their scope. Speedy deletion criteria are extremely short for that precise reason. And second, the vote "speedy keep - bad faith nomination" appears quite often on VFD in places where it is entirely inappropriate (and not infrequently on articles that end up deleted). Just because someone vehemently disagrees with a nomination does not make it bad faith. Thus, I'm afraid that this proposed rule will be abused, and will lead to disruptive arguments on whether or not a speedy keep was valid, with potential revert warring on the reopening/closing of the discussion page.

We already speedily-keep the (extremely rare) obvious disruption cases, and we have guidelines for that (e.g. WP:VAND). If some nomination is an obvious keep, the net effect is that the article will have a VFD tag on it for a grand total of five days. If speedily kept, that is reduced to two days. I'd say that three extra days of having a tag on an article is far less inconvenient than this additional and complex rule. Radiant_>|< 23:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, in my experience, it seems that speedy keeps are accepted in cases where the nominator withdraws and there's no objection. You also see speedy deletes and speedy redirects of things listed on Afd. As long as there's consensus and visibility (Afds are quite visible to those who look for them), I don't see that hurrying things along in obvious cases is a bad thing. In fact, I'd say it helps, as there's a lot of stuff being sent through Afd. Friday (talk) 23:34, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Arguably the fact taht it already happens is an argument for adopting the policy. I think this proposal is a good way of formalising what's 'already happening', open the door to more Speedy Keeps to keep AfD manageable, and clarifying where some of the boundaries are. The Land 17:43, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Formalising what is already happening was one of my main objectives. I don't think what I've proposed goes further than this? Thryduulf 19:45, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I think it does go further than that, for the reasons given above and below. If you want to codify current practice, I think it would go roughly like this...
    1. "Speedy keep" means to remove the AFD notice from the article and close the AFD discussion, but not to unlist or delete that discussion.
    2. An article can be speedily kept ONLY if either
      1. the nominator withdraws the AFD and there have been no votes to delete so far
      2. the nominator clearly states that s/he actually wants the article renamed, merged, moved or redirected, and happens to have used the wrong tag for that
      3. the nomination was clear-cut vandalism or WP:POINT and nobody disputes this or votes to delete it anyway (since calling a nomination vandalistic does not make it so and actual POINT-making AFD nominations appear far less frequently than accusations thereof).
    3. Please realize that while you may personally dislike having an AFD tag on your favorite article, it is not actually doing any harm, and will be gone in less than a week.
  • Radiant_>|< 08:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Support the idea, but too verbose

I support the idea behind this proposal 100%, but it really needs to be simplified. Something like...

"A speedy keep should only occur when there is a consensus among the first few voters do so. The resulting AfD page should be kept as a record and not deleted."

...should pretty well cover the whole thing.

There's no need to seperate "obvious bad faith" nominations into a seperate category, as they'll gather Speedy Keep votes very quickly anyway. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 11:26, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Why not just eliminate Criterion One?

I assume Jesus or Milk would get four "Speedy Keeps" fairly quickly. Criterion 1 is redundant if my assumption is true, and eliminating it reduces complexity and potential for abuse (eg. by an admin who is absolutely convinced Old Elf Inn is fundamental to an encyclopedia.) Xoloz 13:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I take the point, but I don't think that articles like either of the two you mention should have to wait for 4 votes. The only way around that I can think of introduces more complexity - i.e. by defining articles that it is applicable to. As to which articles, I suggest articles on the list (on meta) of articles every Wikipedia should have and articles on current events that have had 100 or more edits in the last 24 hours. Both are easy to check and objective. I haven't actually checked all the articles on the list though so I don't know what the state of them is (the links on meta go to simple:). Thryduulf 19:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Withdrawn nominations

Nominations that have been withdrawn by the orginal nominator have been mentioned above. These have been speedily kept in the past, but do not fit either of the criteria. I think therefore that a third criterion is the only way to allow this. It would be along the lines of

"If the orginal nominator withdraws the nomination the article can be speedily-kept 24 hours later if there have been no objections to a speedy-keep, and no votes other than to keep the article subsequent to the withdrawal."

This is phrased very badly though, so if you can come up with a better wording or a better way of allowing them then please suggest them. Thryduulf 19:49, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you need such protections for a withdrawn nomination, as it's going to be kept instead of deleted and someone can just nominate it again. I would say that it should be speedily kept if there are no delete, merge or redirect votes before it is withdrawn, regardless of the time. I also think, in this case, only first choice votes should be counted (someone who votes "keep or merge", would be counted as a keep). I think there's to much focus on procedure on AfD. Some users complete other people's nominations even when they are non-sensical (no reason or nonsense reason and an obvious keep). -- Kjkolb 08:33, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Good idea; here's an idea to simplify

I think this is a good idea in spirit. Also, I would love to see this expanded to speedy actions in general. For instance, often articles are brought to AfD where the obvious solution is to redirect. Sometimes people go ahead and do this to no objection, but it is awkward that this is officially outside policy—it often comes with an apology of "being bold".

On the other hand, I think the proposal could be simplified substantially. What about something more along these lines:

  • An AfD nomination that has reached unanimous consensus among three eligible voters for the outcomes keep, redirect or merge can be speedily closed and the tag removed. This does not apply to articles with a recent nomination that has been speedily closed.

Because we're not talking about deleting pages (something that is difficult to undo for non-administrators), there is little harm in not giving the article its "due process"--if it is unfairly kept, redirected, or merged, it can be relisted or the redirect/merge undone through the normal wiki system. A relist can't be speedied, so if there is actual contention, then there is an easy way to make sure the article stays on AfD for the full period.

Dealing with bad faith nominations should probably be done through the vandalism policy.

Generally speaking, I think it's better to give editors and administrators leeway to "do the right thing" when it's obvious, as long as we can minimize the potential for abuse. — brighterorange (talk) 21:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I like the simplicity of it. I also most certainly agree with the notion that having leeway to use common sense and do the right thing is preferable to having exact, rigid rules. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Friday (talk) 21:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Simple and unambiguous, just as a policy should be. No scope for abuse. I like it! --Celestianpower hablamé 12:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree, for two reasons. First, we should never unlist a discussion from the AFD page, because then it disappears and hides the issue. Second, this method encourages swift voting rather than actually examining the case. It happens quite often that the first three votes go one way, and the next ten go the other way. Radiant_>|< 08:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I didn't actually mean that it should be removed from the AfD page, but that the tag be removed from the article (I guess I am using jargon incorrectly). I changed the wording. You're right that it does happen (usually from delete to keep after something like a rewrite), but again observe that very little harm is done if an article is speedily kept (or redirected, or merged) since the actions can be undone by regular users (by re-nominating, or regular editing). But unanimous AfDs are the norm, so I still think it makes sense to streamline the process. — brighterorange (talk) 13:18, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I like the simplification and common sense, but I'm uncomfortable using only three votes for anything but speedy keep, at least for now. You have keep, merge and redirect in the proposal, but that's a lot different than a speedy keep. If regular keeps, merges and redirects are added to the criteria, I suggest getting four or five votes, with the administrator using his/her judgment. There's always a few editors who vote to keep, merge or redirect almost anything. Three speedy keeps with no objections should be enough to close a nomination. Also, it must be made clear that speedy keep isn't the same as strong keep, though. Perhaps it should be seen as improper to vote speedy keep when it isn't warranted. -- Kjkolb 08:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, the number of votes isn't really what's important, so I'd support a proposal where the count was higher. (Or was specified that the consensus must be "obvious" or something.) But again, I'd like to remark that there is very little harm if a discussion is speedily kept/redirected/merged prematurely. Redirects and merges can already be carried out and undone by any user without voting on AfD, and a premature keep can be re-nominated for the full AfD. — brighterorange (talk) 13:30, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Objections

I have to oppose this speedy keep policy for a number of reasons. Firstly, anything that qualifies for criterion 1 can most often be deemed in bad faith or vandalism quite quickly, and if it is not so will most often be promptly revoked by the nominator upon receiving a message on their talk page. And that, is on the rare occaision that this high-profile articles are nominated for deletion.

Secondly, this is an unnecessary policy. Unnecessary policies should not exist. This has not been a huge problem on AfD, and I have little problem with an article having the AfD tag for a few extra days. The speedy deletion criterion are very clearly and concisely laid out, and there is a clear need for them. An article that is voted to be kept isn't going anywhere sitting on the AfD for a few extra days.

Thirdly, I believe this policy is too easily misconstrued, and will be subject to abuse.

[[User:Consequencefree|Ardent†∈]] 09:54, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

  • I also object on the basis of innecesary policy accumulations. Admins are expected to use common sense and given that wikipedia is not a democracy (WP:NOT) in such cases admins can just close the vfd as keep. I don't believe any sensible admin would delete Milk because an afd exists. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 14:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Agree with objections above. Criterion 1 does not require new policy, and criterion 2 is a dream come true for trolls and rules-lawyers. --Tabor 18:35, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

It does seem to be an increasing problem on AFD. Just in the last few days there have been half a dozen sitcoms and two world-renowned violinists listed on AFD, all of which were speedily kept. I'm not sure the entire policy outlined here is necessary, but what we currently have at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maintenance#Abusive, invalid or other nominations which are not in good faith is really inadequate IMO. --Angr/t?k t? mi 10:40, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, people occasionally make a WP:POINT with spurious deletion nominations. That isn't new by a far shot. It usually results in the nominator being heavily criticized, and those nominations being kept (there was a controversial user earlier this year who would often get votes like 'keep because (name withdrawn) nominated it'). This is regrettable, but we do have mechanisms for dealing with it, e.g. WP:VAND. The problem with any forms of speedy-keep proposals I've seen in the past half year is that they are too easily gamable, since it happens all too frequently that somebody says "speedy keep, bad-faith nom" when in fact it is a good-faith nom that they strongly disagree with - sometimes even when consensus is already leaning towards deletion. Radiant_>|< 08:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
    • That may happen, but if four or five people (especially names familiar to me from AFD as being good, cooperative editors) have all said "speedy keep, bad-faith nom", and no one but the nominator has voted to delete, I think it's disruptive to have to keep the AFD tag on the article in question and leave the AFD itself open for further comment, which is what Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maintenance#Abusive, invalid or other nominations which are not in good faith suggests we do. I really wanted to get the AFDs on Jascha Heifetz and Gil Shaham closed and the tags off their articles as quickly as possible, and not wait for five days, as if they were seriously being considered for deletion. It makes me sad enough that the {{oldafdfull}} template has to be on the talk pages of those articles. --Angr/t?k t? mi 14:03, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
      • If a couple of regulars claim it's a speedy keep AND nobody but the nominator and/or sockpuppets disagree, then I'd agree that it could be speedily kept. But we have to be careful in wording this to avoid abuse. Really controversial nominations (and lengthy ones) tend to get a bunch of speedy-keep votes, but if they're controversial then they're by definition not speedy. I'd say that a single good-faith vote to delete invalidates a speedy-keep. Radiant_>|< 12:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I've refactored the page in an attempt to reflect the discussion above, and made the proposal less bureaucratic than it was.. Please change whatever you feel is necessary. Radiant_>|< 10:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

New proposal

There is a new proposal for deletion reform at Wikipedia:Deletion reform/Proposals/Uncontested deletions --Doc (?) 21:33, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The second clause

I notice that although reasons 1 and 3 for speedy keep have language to the effect that valid "delete" votes will prevent a speedy keep, reason 2 does not. Why is this? Even if the nominator is abusing AfD to request a move or a merge, I don't think that's enough reason to speedy-close a debate if there are actually people on the AfD seriously favoring deletion. Once an article on AfD recieves a single good-faith delete vote, it seems to me that it has been 'endorsed', so to speak, and the nominator's actions or opinions should no longer be a reason to speedy keep. --Aquillion 01:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Since nobody said anything, I went ahead and added such a clause... However, now that I look at it, I can come up with a simpler version of this proposal:
An AFD that, at any point, has no valid, good-faith delete votes (including its nominator) can be speedy-closed at any time.
That seems like a common-sense proposal, and would cover all the cases currently listed. --Aquillion 02:52, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be being followed

An article that I made Planes of Existence (talker) was nominated for deletion the second that it was created. It then passed with a keep vote of 7/3 (all 3 delete votes being in the first 10 minutes of nomination). Less than a week later, it was renominated for deletion by newly created accounts with the aim to try to prove that their talker was better, and to justify vandalism, personal attacks and other disruptive behaviour. Yet it wasn't speedy kept. Why not? Because they used sock puppets/meat puppets to vote delete? Its a bad faith nomination and falls in to the category of WP:POINT yet I see it on its 3rd day of nomination, with nobody disregarding comments made by meat puppets with no editing history outside of vandalising that page and the one on "their talker", which they turned from a neutral article in to being an advertisement, without referencing any sources or having any attempt at neutrality - Crystal Palace (chat site). Why is this permitted? Surely it should be an automatic speedy keep in such situations. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 01:22, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Speedy keeping clear keeps

I just discovered this guideline (this might be because it is not mentioned in a lot of places and I do wonder how this got elevated to guideline status). I am wondering what people here think about speedy keeping AfDs that are clearly going to be kept, even if there is no suggestion that nomination was in bad faith. I did this with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Liberalism and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boolean logic. It does seem against the guideline, but I think that the practice is fairly widespread and I don't feel bad about it. Should I? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:26, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Not really. It's more a WP:SNOW than WP:SK, but the distinction is academic for most. Stifle (talk) 01:19, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Should this not be a policy?

Guidelines tend to be about behaviour and community standards. Policies tend to be about rules that should be followed. This looks more like a policy than a rule to me. Stevage 11:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

A policy should reflect the consensus. As I say in the section above, I have been using speedy keeps more liberally than Wikipedia:Speedy keep allows, unaware of that page but following what I think to be common practice, so I don't think the page reflects the consensus. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Jitse Niesen, I think the guidelines listed are too rigid. I note a lot of people vote speedy keep when they see an article that just obviously needs to be kept and there are no delete votes. I do not believe these guidelines reflect consensus. Ifnord 13:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been wondering about this for a while, and finally found this. I'll frequently see people vote "speedy keep", or an AFD closed as "speedy keep", sometimes even when there are some delete votes (although the overwhelming majority are keep). I was under the impression there was some actual policy or guideline for articles that are "obviously" going to be kept. The prevalence of this phenomenon certainly suggests to me that the current guideline does not correctly reflect consensus.

Perhaps an additional criterion ought to be listed. One which describes a situation like: overwhelmingly keep, with few delete votes which do not really give reasons or are by people who do not seem interested in explaining their decision or following the discussion. --C S (Talk) 01:14, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Applicability 1.4

"the nomination was clear-cut vandalism or WP:POINT and nobody disputes this or votes to delete it anyway"

I interpret this as meaning that if someone other than the nominator has recommended delete, then Speedy keep cannot thereafter be recommended and also if a Speedy keep had been recommended prior to the delete recommendation that the AfD cannot be closed as a Speedy keep. A delete recommendation is by itself an indication that the person making that recommendation thought that the nomination was not vandalism or POINT (unless it is itself also vandalism or POINT).
It has been argued that Speedy keeps can be recommended even if there are one or more delete recommendations beyond the one of the original nominator. I don't understand how that interpretation can come out of the above text. What do other people understand it to mean? ??????? 16:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Looking at the original form of the guideline diff I think my interpretation is correct. ??????? 21:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I would tend to say that even if there are delete votes, sometimes a speedy keep is still in order, case in point [1]. Perhaps we could extend it to votes that are making a point too? Not sure exactly. But I do know that keeping some AfDs open for the full 5 days would be a bad idea. --W.marsh 21:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I think it's fine as-is. If an article should be kept, it will rarely end up being deleted. Having an AFD tag on it for five days won't harm it that much. Stifle (talk) 01:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Possible Guideline Addition?

Maybe I'm just noticing it more recently, but a number of articles have been coming up multiple times on AfD that have had recent AfDs concluded that resulted in a consensus keep. How would people feel about adding the following:

An article may be speedy kept if a recent AfD on the article concluded within the prior six months as a consensus keep.

This way, we're not wasting time with people AfDing articles weeks after a concluded AfD, and gives a proper buffer in the event that problems with the article a) have not changed, and b) can easily be demonstrated that they cannot change.

I also wouldn't want this applied to "No consensus" keeps, because there is no consensus. But speedy keeping articles that have already shown consensus to keep seems like a good idea to me. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 14:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

  • How about requiring renominations to include a reason that the circumstances have changed? For example, if, in the pervious AFD, the author asked to be given a chance to cleanup the article and it was not deleted, but then he never cleaned it up, that would be a circumstance warranting a new AFD. As an example, I point out the former List of sex symbols article. In the first AFD, the recommendations were 10-7 in favor of deletion. Four of the seven who suggested keeping the article said that their opinion was conditioned on trimming the list. No attempt was ever made to do so. I pointed this out in a second AFD and the article was unanimously deleted. That would be my suggestion - as a requirement for a re-nomination, the nominator should be required to state why either (a) circumstances have changed since the previous AFD or (b) the previous AFD is otherwise invalid (ie, sockpuppeting, etc, that the closing admin was unaware of). If no explicit justification for a second AFD is given, the article could be speedy kept. BigDT 06:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Solves nothing. What if the reasons are without merit? Besides, your example doesn't fall into this category, that would have been a no consensus close. This is only meant to affect consensus keep closes, which are assumed to be in good faith by closing admins. It certainly doesn't preclude DRV examination. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 11:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
  • This isn't the same as the GNAA nonsense. This isn't to stop WP:POINT violations, but to remove the somewhat reoccurring debates on other articles that have been consensus keeps. I don't consider it creep at all, honestly. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 01:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

This seems quite sensible. It's a way to avoid a "vexatious litigant" situation. The only reason I can see to have a second AfD shortly after a vote to keep is if the article deteriorates and, because it's covering a fast-moving topic, a reversion doesn't cure the problem. Runcorn 20:20, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Other reasons I've seen for fairly quick multiple nominations are:
  • The first afd was too early to make a considered jugement (either consensus that this was the case or no consensus about e.g. notablity)
  • The article has undergone sginificant changes during or shortly after an afd that resulted in no consensus.
  • The first afd was a sockfest that made it very difficult/impossible to gain an accurrate consensus
  • The first afd was closed as bad faith/a policy violation (e.g. WP:POINT or started by a banned user), but another editor has good faith reasons to nominate for deletion.
  • There were technical issues with the first afd that made a consensus difficult/impossible to achieve.
IMHO there should be a lower bar to renominating when the first debate was closed as "no consensus" than for discussions closed early (other than for things like WP:SNOW or bad faith nominations), both of which should have a lower bar than for those debates closed with a consensus after the 5 dats. Any rule we create here should allow for exceptional issues though. Thryduulf 14:58, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

As this has been listed here for over a month, advertised at two village pumps, countless AfDs and DRVs, and does not appear to be at all controversial, is there any protest to my adding this to the guideline? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:01, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I see BigDT, Runcorn and Thryduulf arguing above that there are valid cases in which a second AfD is reasonable even when it's less than six months after an AfD closed as a consensus keep. The language you propose implies that "a recent AfD on the article concluded within the prior six months as a consensus keep" automatically permits an admin to close the second AfD as a speedy keep. That does seem controversial to me. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 03:32, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Where? BigDT was talking about "no consensus" results, Runcorn supports it, and Thryduulf wasnot talking about consensus keep closes. What's controversial about it, considering the deafening lack of discussion about it overall? --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
BigDT was not only talking about "no consensus" results; it's just that the examples were "no consensus". Runcorn said "The only reason I can see to have a second AfD shortly after a vote to keep is if the article deteriorates and, because it's covering a fast-moving topic, a reversion doesn't cure the problem." Thryduulf says "Any rule we create here should allow for exceptional issues though", and for instance the first point (too early AfD) can easily apply to consensus keep closes. There are other valid reasons (for instance, new information surfaced). You chose not to reply to the issues they raised, so it's not surprising there was no discussion.
Do you think that AfDs followings on a previous AfD which concluded within the prior six months as a consensus keep should always be closed as a speedy keep? If yes, then that seems controversial to me. If no, then what about adding a proviso, like "An article may be speedy kept if a recent AfD on the article concluded within the prior six months as a consensus keep and no valid reason for the renomination is given." The word valid answers the point you raise in your answer to BigDT. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:03, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Yet BigDT had nothign else to say after it was pointed out that no consensus results were not part of this. Runcorn is in favor of this, and my answer to any sort of reasoning there is that an article should never be able to deteriorate that way - if it's worthy of an article, a rewrite is always possible. If we need the "valid reason" clause, I don't mind hashing it out, but it seems to be counterintuitive in my mind, and eliminates the reasoning for doing this.
I guess my puzzlement comes from why this is controversial now. Little discussion, no protest from my response, but it's controversial. Why do you feel it's controversial, since you're the only one at this stage with a continued protest? --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:29, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Still no thoughts? Does this mean we can move forward with this? --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, perhaps it's not as controversial as I imagined. I don't know; go ahead and we'll see what happens. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 02:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Speedy keep /= 6 months

I've removed the incorrect statement that any article having been nominated with a keep consensus the 6 months prior is an instant "speedy keep" candidate. I came across this statement in the guideline when I saw an AFD with a vote of "Speedy Keep" as per guidelines. It turns out that he added the 6 month guideline in himself.

I have nominated many articles successfully for deletion, a significant proportion of these articles have discussed and kept before, either due to a poor nomination, lack of votes or a meatpuppet scare. Sure, it's customary to leave some time between deletion nominations for the same article, usually over a month, but a hard 6 month speedy keep deadline is way too long.

AFD gets it wrong sometimes. That's why we have DRV, it's also why we don't have clauses saying that anything which has been kept 6 months prior is an automated keep. Although this example I give was of a "no consensus" style keep instead of a consensus keep, had the first nomination ended up as a keep, the second nomination would have been a speedy keep? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vampirism Revolution Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vampirism Revolution (2 nomination)

I'm re-adding it per the discussion above. Feel free to discuss removal FIRST, the addition came with little controversy adn was widely advertised at the Village pump and various AfDs. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it may be bad form to nominate an article soon after it has already been nominated. But to close that off within a 6 month period as speedy keep is just wrong. - Hahnchen 14:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Speedily ending a good-faith discussion simply because a previous discussion was held one, two, thre or four months ago is a bad idea, as new information and new editors joining a conversation ought to be encouraged rather than speedily ignored. Basically, there's no good reason that good-faith attempts of wikipedia editors to fix problems ought to be speedily ignored for half a year. Also, note that this recent guideline change is contrary to the long-standing official Wikipedia:Deletion policy that gives reasons why articles in some cases can be immediately relisted, and plainly states that there is no consensus behind any specific wait period. "In general, articles that have survived a nomination for deletion should not be immediately renominated, unless a discussion had no consensus and a marked lack of contributors. There is no strict policy or consensus for a specific time between nominations." Therefore, this "six months" idea ought to be removed, which I'll be doing shortly unless a compelling argument is given for why this differs from official policy. -- Dragonfiend 00:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with other comments by Hahnchen and Dragonfiend, and as a self-proclaimed weak inclusionist. I support some kind of guideline regarding time between nominations, but this should not be a hard and fast rule and should not be a speedy keep criterion. If the ensuing discussion makes it clear that the renomination is unjustified, because nothing has changed, then a speedy keep might be in order, but we don't want to defeat perfectly reasonable re-nominations, just as we don't want everybody to automatically resubmit failed AfDs after a month. Perhaps more importantly, this "rule" has been here for some time, and pretty much everybody in the world is ignoring it - largely because they can see the discussion in the AfD nomination and they realise that such an action would be strongly contested. Deco 00:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
    • 6 months is way, way too long. An article should be available for relisting immediately if there were problems with the last AfD, like lack of participation (less of a problem, currently, due to frequent relisting), new information coming too late to influence the outcome (discovering the article is a hoax or has inaccurate claims) and the presence of sockpuppets, if they may have influenced the outcome. If there were no problems with the first AfD, then the next nomination should wait a couple of months, unless there is a new development that is likely to change the outcome.
    • The only reason I can think of to extend the time to 6 months or more is if the article is a target of habitual nomination, such as GNAA. Such articles are rare and I don't think we need a rule about it. If there is a rule, I think that it should come into play after the fourth unsuccessful nomination, which increases the chance of there being at least one or two "good" nominations, or hopefully a good nomination and a good reconsideration nomination. My post is not a reply to Deco, I just wanted to breakup the text to improve readability. -- Kjkolb 01:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
  • This topic comes up with great regularity. Every previous time that it's come up, the consensus decision has been "somewhere between 1 and 3 months but we definitely don't want to set a hard standard". A hard standard of six months is inappropriate for the reasons argued above. By the way, I will dispute the claim that this decision was widely advertised. This is a topic I watch quite closely and this is the first I've seen it. I am marking that clause as "disputed" for now. Rossami (talk) 02:06, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, to be honest, I'm not sure how much broader it needed to be. I had it up at the village pump twice, a bunch of AfDs, DRV at least twice. I'm not sure what else I'd have to do. I'm more than a little disappointed that this is coming out of the woodwork now, but better late than never I suppose. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
  • In fairness to Jeff, he DID widely advertise this addition, and this suggestion (or ones like it) have been brought up several times in the past with little or no discussion, unfortunately. Lack of interest is not the same as lack of advertisement; as far as I can tell, everything was done above board. As for the policy itself- 6 months is indeed way too long, but the idea itself is a reasonable one. I would suggest that one way to reduce the number of bad-faith renoms is to explictly require nominators to state what has changed since the last keep, i.e what new information they have, what has changed in the article, any sources that turned out to be frauds or otherwise invalid, etc. If this isn't done, or if the reasoning is considered to be obviously invalid by the resident admin, then the AfD nom would automatically be delisted. Personally, I'd also like to see a reasonably strict time limit of renoms, but I realise this may be pose difficulties. Badgerpatrol 03:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Let me see if I can summarize

The above is a wee bit messy, so let me see if i can condense it with my responses

  1. The "6 month" criteria is too long.
    1. Would shortening it to 3 be out of the question? I thought 6 was reasonable as it allows for a clear amount of time to work on an article and work out any kinks or disputes. Jimbo unilaterally deleted Brian Peppers for a year, certainly a consensus action for half wouldn't be controversial in my mind.
  2. But what if the AfD is wrong/has problems/lacks enough input?
    1. Wikipedia:Deletion review exists for a reason, no? Certainly, using the well-established areas we have shouldn't circumvent this policy, and deletion review can overturn otherwise consensus results, it happens all the time.
  3. But GNAA!
    1. This doesn't get in the way of WP:POINT violations.
  4. Deletion policy says "There is no strict policy or consensus for a specific time between nominations"
    1. This doesn't create policy, it creates a new guideline, and one that is trumped by deletion policy - namely that deletion discussions that editors feel are incorrect/out of process/closed badly can be reviewed.

Honestly, I don't get the fuss except from one person who's upset that it's his article that's getting called upon here. Is 6 months too long? I don't think so, but i'm more than open to a reasonable compromise. But as for the rest, I don't get it. In a lot of cases, admins are doing this out of process already, so this just codifies what's already occurring in some places. The checks and balances are there, and reducing the load and the browbeating at an AfD process considered broken by many is a Good Thing. So can we narrow down what's up and fix it? --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

As you say, the deletion policy page trumps this guideline and the deletion policy explicitly says that "there is no strict policy or consensus for a specific time between nominations." Why would we choose to deliberately create confusion by adding a clause here that is directly contradictory to the policy page? The guideline should be written to comply with the policy from the start.
Second, the policy was set that way for a reason. We have consistently rejected any "hard rule" in the past because we tried it and it caused more problems than it solved. Any such hard rule has been used as a weapon by partisans to attempt to shut down appropriate and good-faith nominations. The partisans ignore the nuance and the exceptions (like the ones you cite above) and quote only the one clause. It creates strife and dissent and causes lots more work for the rest of the participants who ended up endlessly repeating the same explanations and arguments. It's actually easier to deal with the occasional premature renominations than it is to deal with the attempts to game the system by wiki-lawyering our own rules against us.
Third, Deletion Review is deliberately set up to not be a second AFD discussion. It is set up to review process failures and disputed closings of the discussion. If an article was kept and new evidence comes to light - evidence which was not known during the first deletion discussion - the established process is to renominate it, not to nominate it at Deletion Review. What you are proposing would constitute a significant change to the scope and purpose of the Deletion Review discussion - a change that would have to be considered very carefully before being adopted.
What's broken here is the existence of a hard rule. The fix is simple. Delete that clause. WP:POINT violations can still be shouted down without it. The clause adds no value and does create new problems (or brings back old problems depending on your perspective). Rossami (talk) 04:00, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
As a side note, the Brian Peppers dispute is completely irrelevant to this question. That page was banned from recreation for a year, not prevented from being renominated for deletion. Moreover, the reason behind the ban had nothing to do with the issues being discussed here. That page had been nominated six or seven times in rapid succession, several times even before the last discussion had been closed. The tone of the disputes had become so poisonous that Jimbo finally had to step in and impose a draconian solution on us to give everyone time to cool down. That entire dispute represents a major failure and should not be considered precedent for anything except that we should all learn to be more civil and fact-based in our discussions. Rossami (talk) 04:00, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
As for #1, this, again, does not violate the policy. We're not creating a policy here, so i'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Regardless, we can speedy recreated deleted content, which is just as much a "violation" of the deletion policy with that logic, no?
For #2, I'm not sure that's the case, but I also don't have any arguments against it.
For #3, DRV is not a second AfD. It is, however, in its own words, for "if you think the debate was interpreted incorrectly by the closer or have some information pertaining to the debate that did not receive an airing during the AfD debate." Appealing an AfD three months after the fact at DRV because an editor feels that there wasn't enough for consensus in the original close or that there's new information available is exactly what DRV is for.
AfD is broken, according to many. If certainly doesn't help that we have dozens of speedy deletion criteria, but 6 speedy keep criteria. If we want tostart fixing AfD, part of it would include codifying what often already happens, and a) encouraging use of the correct channels to appeal XfD results, and b) encouraging fixing articles when the community thinks they should stay instead of repeatedly doing the same thing to get a desired result. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
      • badlydrawnjeff, you seem to believe that articles renominated for deletion need to go through Deletion Review, and that there is a consensus for some sort of waiting period between renominations. Both of these ideas are inconsistent with Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. Per Deletion Policy, "articles that have survived a nomination for deletion [can] be immediately renominated, [if] a discussion had no consensus and a marked lack of contributors. There is no strict policy or consensus for a specific time between nominations." Per Guide to Deletion, "If you think that an article was wrongly kept after the AFD, you could wait to see if the article is improved to overcome your objections; if it isn't, you can renominate it for deletion." If you'd like to try to make major changes to deletion policy, then go try to make major changes to deletion policy; but in the meantime don't just try to write guidelines that contradict long-standing official policies and consensus in major ways. -- Dragonfiend 16:01, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
        • Per deletion policy, you're making my point, and I hate that I didn't notice this sly paste job before hand: "articles that have survived a nomination for deletion [can] be immediately renominated, [if] a discussion had no consensus and a marked lack of contributors. There is no strict policy or consensus for a specific time between nominations." We're not talking about "no consensus" keeps here, so your protest here is irrelevant to the discussion. The "guide to deletion" is simply that - a guide, not a guideline or policy, and would be trumped by this. Are you saying all the other speedy keep guidelines here are in violation too? --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:48, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
        • No, from what I can tell at this time, the "six months" part of this guideline is the only part that runs counter to deletion policy. What do you mean by "sly paste job"? That sounds like an assumption of bad faith. -- Dragonfiend 17:55, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
          • I'm talking about your entry here, where you didn't paste the part from deletion policy where it was noted that there's no time limit "unless a discussion had no consensus and a marked lack of contributors." You repaired it in this section, which makes all the difference in the world. This change to the speedy keep guideline does not run contrary to the deletion policy, nor the guide to deletion, as it doesn't change any policy. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:01, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
            • I'm still not sure what you're saying. The diff you just cited clearly contains me quoting the phrase "unless a discussion had no consensus and a marked lack of contributors." Also, you're reading the policy incorrectly -- it states that there is no time limit for renominations, but they generally should not be done immediately except in cases of no consensus with few editors participating in the discussion. It does not state, as you seem to believe, that articles cannot be renominated except in cases of no consensus with few editors involved in discssion. -- Dragonfiend 18:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
              • You're right, I misread that, and I apologise, I was distracted by the bold. Regardless, I do not see anything that indicates that, in the guidelines for keeping things, that we cannot have instances that we can speedy keep based on any number of reasons. If that were the case, we'd ditch the entire speedy keep guideline, and that's not going to be on the table. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
                • I'm not sure how many different ways this needs to be said, but here goes again: Yes, you can have guidelines for things. No, those guidelines can't contradict policy. Policy says "There is no strict policy or consensus for a specific time between nominations," so you can't have this guideline say that "commonly accepted practice" is that "An article can be speedily kept [if] a recent AfD on the article has concluded within the prior six months as a consensus keep." That's a clear contradiction with long-standing official policy. -- Dragonfiend 18:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
                  • The "no strict policy" is in the context, I believe, of the "no consensus" vein of things. That's all it talks about in that paragraph, and it would be nonsensical to mean for it to apply that across the board when talking about specific instances. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
                • Also, I appreciate your apology. In the future, WP:AGF. If someone does misquote policy, it is likely to be due to accident or misunderstanding, not the result of a "sly paste job." -- Dragonfiend 18:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Coming to the party late... but the 6 month thing is entirely too long. I'm not sure I like any hard number for speedy keep because it doesn't take into account the situation where a particularly crappy or unsourced article is kept with the caveat of "needs to be sourced" and then that doesn't happen. As an example, I point you to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Negative_edge, where it appears that the consensus will be keep, but as I've stated there, if nobody adds verification, this should come back for AfD again... and it shouldn't have to wait 6 months, particularly when the issue with the article is that it is in violation of a rather important policy. Leaving that caveat out, SK looks like a decent guideline.--Isotope23 19:07, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I personally think it'll come to a no consensus, if not an unfortunate - if outright and justified - deletion, but that's beside the point. Is the real bone of contention that's left at this point the 6 month clause? Would a compromise on 3 be palatable? I don't *like* it, but I'm not opposed to the compromise in order to implement it, which is the greater goal. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
      • Why do you think we need a time-based clause at all? What problem does it solve that isn't already more-than-adequately solved by other processes or rules? Rossami (talk) 22:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
        • I can think of a few, some based in idealism, some based in necessity. One, to encourage more editing as opposed to deleting. Another, to create a little more equality between our speedy deletion and speedy keep guideline. Yet anohter, to discourage the many situations where articles are consensus kept and then nominated a couple weeks or months later in an attempt to game the system in a way the community doesn't currently discourage. Yet another to encourage people to use the systems in place already to get deletion discussions overturned. Yet another, to make it fairer - I can nominate an article for deletion every month if I so choose - if I recreate a deleted article, it's gone no matter what unless I go through something else. It's interesting - this wasn't controversial until one person decided to unilaterally remove it because he didn't like it cited on his AfD, and he hasn't been back to discuss it. Is this really that controversial? --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
          • The biggest problem I have with it is that, in my opinion, 6 months seems like a long period of time, particularly in a case where an article survived an AfD where the consensus was "seems like an important topic but needs to be verified". Admittedly, I have a very low tolerance for unverified articles but I don't see why we should allow 6 months for verification. In my opinion, if an article lacks verification and survives AfD, the onus is on the originator/contributors to the article to source it and I feel they should have 30 days to do that. After that it should be sent back to PROD or AfD. How to implement that is something I'm still mulling over though because at the same time, I don't necessarily want to add exceptions into a guideline; it can make things too arcane: "Rule A applies unless Condition C exists, but if Condition D exists it cancels out Condition C, thusly Rule A can be applied..." I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.--Isotope23 12:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
            • I unilaterally removed the clause because it was ridiculous. And to clarify, it was never cited on "my" AFD, I saw a random erroneous "speedy keep" in the list of AFDs which somehow claimed it was "as per guidelines". Having a 6 month immunity clause means resting on the differences between no-consensus and keep, which invariably vary from editor to editor. If I make nominations of previously kept articles, I do not want them shot down and closed with a speedy keep. If you nominate an article a week after it was kept and nothing has changed (with the article, or the nomination) then it's going to be kept, with comments such as "too soon for a renom". My personal time between nominations is 4 - 6 weeks, and I do not see why this should be enforced. I've not been back to discuss it, because I haven't really needed to, have I? - Hahnchen 14:53, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
            • The 6 month delay is m:instruction creep. WP:POINT and WP:BP#Disruption adequately deal with someone vexatiously AFDing something. Stifle (talk) 14:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

How about a slightly different 6 month proposal?

What if the six month ban only kicked in after the second AFD? That would address both concerns. It would stop silly distracting AFDs, but it would allow a genuine mistake to be fixed without having a six-month "get out of jail free" card. BigDT 19:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not completely against it, but my issue is that, again, a "genuine mistake" can be fixed by existing deletion policy. A third AfD is such a rare occasion, I'm not even sure it'd make a difference. But I'm not completely against it at the moment. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm kind of shocked here, no offense. :-) I had this wrong. I thought you were trying to cut down on 5th, 6th and etc. nominations being done a month or two after the last. It seemed unnecessary since only a few articles are so nominated. However, in your comment above, you acknowledge that third AfDs are rare occasions and limiting them probably wouldn't make much difference. Then, the policy is intended to delay second AfD nominations for 6 months! That's just crazy with all the crap that happens at AfD, like lack of participation, sock puppets, bad nominations on awful articles (like "nn", which sometimes get kept out of principle rather than the article's merits) and new information that come in too late to influence the discussion or comes in after the nomination has closed. Articles that should have been deleted the first time with have to wait 6 months for a renomination and they'll probably end up waiting even longer, unless we get some kind of system for tracking bad articles that got kept at a flawed AfD nomination (many editor's careers are shorter than 6 months). Besides the embarrassment of some of these articles being kept, when combined, there is also a ton of wasted work. People who created an article on a non-notable topic or others who are interested in the topic will get back to work on them for 6 months or more, only to have them deleted. Other people, who are indifferent or even think that the article should be deleted may even decide to work on the article so that it isn't so terrible before it is eventually deleted. Frankly, the crap that comes down the pike at Category:Articles that need to be wikified and [[Category:Wikipedia cleanup]] is bad enough without AfD rejects being added (I'm not angry, you try wikifying the last 50 articles in a particular month). Your comment mentioned that a genuine mistake can be fixed by existing deletion policy. Do you mean sending all of the articles with flawed nominations to Deletion Review? That's slightly less crazy, but Deletion Review has enough articles to deal with as it is and is more vicious and less efficient than AfD. A second, or even third, AfD nomination is much simpler process than this. -- Kjkolb 21:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
My rpoposal only dealt with consensus keeps, not with any article being AfD'd twice. Flawed nominations, no consensus, deletes, none of those would qualify. And DRV isn't backlogged at all, --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
But the problem is, you're attempting to objectively enforce subjective criteria. If we could know for a fact that 12 non-sock, unbiased editors all looked at an article, all did their due diligence, and that 7 or 8 of them concluded keep, I don't think anyone would have a problem with disallowing another AFD discussion for six months. But the problem is that if there is contention on the issue, there will be four sock/meat puppets who show up just for the debate, have redlinked names, and single-digit edit counts. There will be five people who say "keep and improve" even though in 99% of cases, nobody actually cares enough to improve, or, if they do care, there's an edit war between POV-pushing sides who just want to advance propaganda and don't care one bit about what's encyclopedic and so the article never actually will be improved. BigDT 22:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC), continues below
So we don't trust deletion policy, in other words. Or, more to the point, we trust them when it ends in a result that we favor? I completely understnad what you're saying - really, I do - but another quick nomination really shouldn't be the answer, should it? I ask again - what's wrong with DRV in that case? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Meanwhile, the three people who actually read the article all say delete and point out ten WP: guidelines or policies that the article doesn't meet. Shazam, you've got 9 keeps, and three deletes - the article is a consensus keep. This proposal now gives this article six months of life, even though it's unencyclopedic garbage. I'm not talking about any article in particular, but you can see the pattern in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lightsaber combat (third nomination) / (1), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Apartheid (disambiguation) and all of the AFDs for the related WP:POINT articles, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/WrestleCrap/(2), etc. BigDT 22:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC), continues below
If it's in violation of numerous policies, it shouldn't be closed a consensus keep. If it is, we have a problem with the closing admin, and, yet again, we have avenues available to appeal them. For the record, Lightsaber combat should have gone to DRV, and I guarantee it would have been overturned, instead we'll likely see a no consensus here. Aparthied was a no consensus, and wouldn't have ended up under this umbrella, and Wrestlecrap isn't even done yet, and should be a keep anyway. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
It happens all the time. Junk gets kept, despite clearly being in violation of the relevant notability guideline or some other policy. Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators says, "Note also that the three key policies, which warrant that articles and information be verifiable, avoid being original research, and be written from a neutral point of view are held to be non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by editors' consensus." As dangerous as I think it is to have that blanket of a statement, something like it needs to be there. If an article is unverifiable, unsourced trash, it needs to be dealt with in some fashion. If this guideline is going to keep trash from getting a second look, that's a problem. BigDT 22:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC), continues below
So, again, your problem is with a) the closing admins, and b) your interest in renominating to get the desired result instead of trying the available processes. This guideline does NOT get in the way of allowing a second look anywhere, nor is it intended to keep anyone from reviewing deletions, contrary to apparent myth. If something is out of process, that's something that obviously needs to be dealt with, and is not contrary to this change. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
If you put "Israel", "Democrat", or "Republican" in the title of an article, you will instantly get people to show up to an AFD and, no matter how ludicrous the topic is or how badly written the article is, vote keep or delete not on its merits, but on its agreement with their POV. I don't think that administrators should just blatantly ignore a consensus and I think that any controversial closure needs more than just a sentence or two explaining it, but there needs to be some willingness at times to say, "no, this article violates the policy - the arguments were never refuted, 'I like it' isn't a reason to keep an article, it goes bye bye". BigDT 22:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC), continues below
I agree. 100% agree. Note how often I take deletions to DRV because of it. It's not going to make you any friends, but that's not the point, right? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
As I said at the beginning of this long essay, you're attempting to enforce subjective criteria objectively. When "consensus keep" is the subjective opinion of an administrator about what the subjective opinions of those participating were, enforcing the opinion objectively with a hard six-month ban just doesn't make sense. BigDT 22:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC), continues below
Well, we disagree on this. It's a 6 month ban on renominating for AfD, not going through any other myriad of appeals that are available for review. It's not like AfD is the only way to get a result. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There are ways that AFD could be fixed so that it would make sense ... but as long as effective meat puppetry, if not actual meat puppetry, continues to have an influence on the outcome, a hard rule would not work well. BigDT 22:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
see above about the admins. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I trust the policy. I don't even mind that much when the consensus goes against my opinion. I don't necessarilly like it, but I respect it. I trust most admins. There are a few who just do whatever they feel like, ignoring all rules. The userbox situation, for example, was silly. You had administrators vandalizing userboxes and then saying, "see, our vandalism proves that they are divisive and inflammatory - look what they made us do." But that's the exception, rather than the rule. In general, I think there is good faith both on the part of those participating in the discussions and the administrators closing them. On the part of the administrators, I think lack of time is a factor. If there are eleventy billion AFDs, nobody wants to read every word. I kinda wonder if part of that problem could be solved by making a formal rule for snowy deletes. For example, if it stays up for 2 days and is unanimous delete, allow any user to close the debate, remove all links to the article, and tag it with a speedy delete tag. That would save an administrator from having to mess with the AFD at all - all of the work is done and it's just a button to push. But I digress. I think that most of the time, the users participating are acting in good faith as well, but sometimes, there are policy issues that are obviously being ignored by one side or the other and in those cases, there needs to be some recourse. WP:DRV is primarily for reviewing process, not for reconsidering the same issues reviewed the first time. Think of the second AFD as an automatic appeal. In Virginia, if you are charged with a misdemeanor, you have your initial trial, then you have your automatic appeal and get another trial on demand. No grounds are necessary - you just do it. Then, after the automatic appeal, you go to the appeals court (DRV). I kinda think that this is a solution looking for a problem. If the second AFD is obviously without merit, is just creating an annoyance, and is running 100-1 in favor of keep, any admin can always close it as WP:SNOW. It's not a policy, but it's widely accepted. The only thing this policy could do is to stop an otherwise meaningful second AFD. BigDT 03:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm uncomfortable with what some people may consider consensus keeps, like lack of participation (reasoning that if people wanted it deleted, they would have commented, but there are 150 + or - 50 articles a day on AfD and people tend to comment on what most concerns them), no consensus resulting in a keep and suspected sockpuppeting resulting in a keep. It has a potential for abuse by supporters of the article. Also, if an AfD is improper, it can be reversed at Deletion Review, so what's the big deal? Finally, if an article is truly receives a consensus keep (about 75% or more keep "votes"), it is unlikely that it will be immediately renominated. If done properly, this type of speedy keep would be extraordinarily rare. It is better to let such things be decided on a case by case basis. -- Kjkolb 23:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
The "unliklihood" is more likely than I think you realize. Or, let's put it another way - if it didn't happen often, I would have never proposed it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Do you have examples? -- Kjkolb 06:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that the problem is so big that we need to establish a rule. And if we did, it ought to be restricted to nominations for 1) reasons included in the last/prior nominations and 2) articles that have not changed significantly since the last/prior noms. And we should limit deletion review to the process/deletion policy situation it is meant to address. The skills and interests for determining which articles should be kept and for whether process was followed are different, so moving pseudo-AFD discussions to DRV doesn't use the skills of the community as it has divided itself. Process wonks should be at DRV, researchers and 5-pillar policy wonks should be at AFD. GRBerry 03:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The 6 month delay is m:instruction creep. WP:POINT and WP:BP#Disruption adequately deal with someone vexatiously AFDing something. Stifle (talk) 10:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
If it's instructuion creep, then why is it bad in this case? --badlydrawnjeff talk 10:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Rapid renomination

I reinserted the cato reference for the rapid renomination rule. It's generally a good idea to reference where you're getting your best practice from.

Of course, using a reference to an SPQR senator who last spoke 2100 years ago is somewhat outrageous. On the other hand, we're an encyclopedia, so it's actually the kind of cool thing you just might expect us to do! <grin>

On a related note: I am strongly opposed to boringizing the wikipedia: (project) namespace. People don't read boringized stuff, but they'll easily remember things that are somewhat funny, smart, odd, or interesting. Guidelines[1] are not intended to be a big stick to whack people with, so having them bone-dry and closed up is not so handy. Rather, guidelines are our living procedures which we use and need to put up with every day. So they should be light, sparkling, and fun to work with, besides being useful. (Actually, having fun is a great measure for any ruleset!)

Kim Bruning 09:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC). [1] Strictly anything on wikipedia relating to process or procedure is a guideline, since it is not fixed or tied down, is easily changed, and is subject to consensus over current best practices. Where I write "guideline", please feel free to also read "policy", "essay", "rule", "unmarked page", or "page on meta".

Is this even enforcable? The idea behind speedy keep criteria was that they were concrete and not subject to interpretation and bending around, so they could applied uncontroversially. They either applied and it was a speedy keep, or they didn't apply and it wasn't. This current incarnation seems highly subjective. --W.marsh 19:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
For the record, I wasn't trying to "boringize" the page, I just thought that the ":P" at the end of the sentence made the whole thing look rather silly. Aside from that, I agree with W.marsh that this new criteria is far too subjective. "Some regular schedule" doesn't mean anything concrete, and furthermore there is great debate (see above) over whether or not prior decisions of "keep" warrant a speedy keep, and if so, for how long after the keep consensus was reached. "Speedy" decisions especially need to be based on clear, black and white criteria, which this is not. --Nscheffey(T/C) 01:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
While it's tyoo subjective, it's also closer to what's currently occurring out of process. Keep in mind, attempts at making an objective rationale were recently shouted down. This is an okay, but not great, compromise. --badlydrawnjeff talk 01:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


Actually, I guess what's here isn't so good

Note that I'm all opposed to people having strict rules. We're humans. Be sure to make use of human intelligence and creativity, that's what they're there for. It'd be a waste not to.

Strict rules is something that bots are better for.

(If you would prefer bots, then after refactoring you start to get something that looks like the design for proposed deletion, I suppose).

Could we just wipe this page, and go (back?) to if the current consensus is to keep, and at least one person wants to keep speedily (with a good argument), we get to speedy keep?

Kim Bruning 15:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Subjectivity and creativity sounds well and good on talk pages, but in the field with 200 AfDs a day, some of them very controversial, I don't think "Well we need to be creative!" is really going to fly as a justification for decisions. The point of policy isn't to amuse us, it's to make the project easier to manage... sorry if that's boring to you, but whatever. I think the first 5 speedy keep criteria are pretty good, and handle all the common reasons an AfD should be closed early... the weird exceptions like GNAA can be handled by WP:IAR. --W.marsh 15:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
But nothing *should* be ahndled by IAR. If it's something we're already doing, why not just codify it? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
The risk of instruction creep, mostly. Writing rules to handle what basically ammount to individual situations... we'd end up with endless rules and thus it would be harder to manage things. --W.marsh 15:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

You're probably right, to some extent. I think I fell into an old trap when adding point 6. People have kept on adding criteria.

Can we refactor the page back down to a couple of lines?

It should be possible to do so by substituting a single more general rule, making more use of those attributes unique to humans (specifically the ability to think for themselves). That single rule should do roughly the same as the 6 rules did before it. (as that's what "to refactor" means, in this context)

Can you figure out what such a rule might look like? Perhaps you disagree with my proposal.

Kim Bruning 16:39, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, the 5 kind of cover the general types of AfDs where nothing productive is likely to emerge out of the discussion. Merging them into one sentence/paragraph would just be confusing and diminish the usefulness of this page.
Anyway, maybe the sixth just needs clarification... if someone really is nominating the same article every 30 days, 6 weeks, or whatever... that is probably another situation where the debate wouldn't be very productive. --W.marsh 17:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
See, this is what drives me nuts about these policies, though. There's no reasonw hy we can't/shouldn't expand the speedy keep criteria to include what we're doing already. Perhaps "instruction creep" is a good thing if the end result is what we're already doing. I mean, imagine the gnashing of teeth if you tried to refactor WP:CSD down to a couple bullet points. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
What if we made the criteria dependent on the nominator rather than on the timeframe. For example, an article could be speedily kept if it was nominated by the same editor after a clear consensus keep. This would eliminate the problem of a single editor constantly nominating an article. At the same time it would allow renominations of articles that genuinely slipped through the AfD process or require more discussion, since the nominator could easily get the attention of someone else and have them nominate it. What do you guys think? --Nscheffey(T/C) 04:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that I agree with Kim's first comment above. We've discussed and attempted to tweak this for months now and it's getting more instruction creepy rather than less. Did we ever have any hard evidence of the need for this page in the first place? Can we go back to the old process where we just shouted down the clearly inappropriate nominations and speedy-closed them by popular acclaim (and immediately reopened them if the closure was challenged in good faith)? Rossami (talk) 02:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd actually rather love that, but I fear the same on the deletion end. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:27, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Applicability 1

There are a few occurences when a nom has no vote, and everyone is saying keep.
  • A1 states: No-one other than the nominator recommends that the page be deleted, and the nominator either withdraws the nomination, or wishes the page to be moved, merged, or have something else done to it other than deletion.
Is there any possibility we can also add: ...and if nom has no vote.? SynergeticMaggot 04:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Typically, these are for orphaned nominations, right? Or ones where the nominator is just closing a DRV. Or some such technical thing. What's the real harm here in letting the xFD run nromally? In the former situation, if it's a bad-faith nomination, it will fall under criteria 3. In DRV cases... usually (lately at least) they're getting sent back to xFD because of a controversial early speedy close... so another speedy keep might not be very good. Anyway, any other situations this would apply to? Maybe an example? --W.marsh 04:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
First, I'm not entirely sure what DRV is, or xFD for that matter. If possible, can you link me to it?
On to the example here, which I just closed. It seems like a nonsense nomination and wouldnt fall under anything listed. I wouldnt go so far as to state its clear-cut vandalism either, but I havent checked. My point is, there are some times when its not vandalism, and theres no vote. I think adding nom has no vote will strengthen one (if not A1) of the criteria. SynergeticMaggot 05:02, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
How silly of me...I know what DRV and xFD means. Also, there is the possibility that the nom is just letting consensus decide. SynergeticMaggot 05:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
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