People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one hell of a mess. In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a proposal. Regards *Keith Old* User: Capitalistroadster On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer(a)wordzen.net> wrote:

Jtkiefer wrote: Answer the numbers in Tony's post in detail. - d.

Jtkiefer wrote: That's bit of an opinion. Personally, I can't see why turning it off for a short time is "ludicrous"; if it turns out to suck and we turn it back on it'll just have to run at slightly higher capacity than usual to work through the backlog that built up during the outage. If AfD can't handle running at a slightly higher capacity then it's all going to fall apart in a little while anyway once Wikipedia grows past that limit.

On 12/8/05, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm having real trouble determining if people are being facetious or not when they write such things as the above. "People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions before they post." That sounds like Ari Fleischer's admonition to Bill Maher: "It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate... There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." http://unquietmind.com/presssec.html My proposal is entirely serious; just because someone doesn't like the thought of it doesn't make it unserious. Just because someone thinks it will fail or have negative consequences doesn't make it unserious. You *might be wrong*, you know. I often am. Because I'm human.

David, What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up being speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would they have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism. Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to salt the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding participants in Articles for Deletion. We have agreed procedures for deletion that to my way of working work well most of the time. It isn't perfect but few human institutions are. Regards *Keith Old* User:Capitalistroadster On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

Tony, At the moment we have a process where these debates are centrally located and where the communities that may be affected can be advised. I do this for Australia related deletions for example. If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs, Under that system, articles can be deleted with hardly anyone knowing. Further, if you are a newby, you are not necessarily going to know where to go to have your say. It would be less user friendly and less accountable than the existing system. That is why I strongly oppose it. I simply add: if in doubt don't change. Regards *Keith Old* Keith Old On 12/9/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep, redirect or merge? We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we look at making such a significant change to our processes. Regards *Keith Old* User:Capitalistroadster On 12/9/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well and performs an important task without having something that works better. On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:

G'day Keith, Ay, there's the rub. I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task. Rather, they'd prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already apparently go too far ...). If you've noted an element of sarcasm or, at the very least, tongue-in-cheekery from David, Anthony, etc. then this may provide a plausible explanation as to why. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/197 - Release Date: 9/12/2005

On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: For my part, I just want to get rid of the enormous waste of time. I kind of think we should take the exact opposite approach. Shut off AFD, and then we'll find out what was right with it. Then those exact solutions can be found and addressed. Anthony

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: I don't think so. I think it's bad enough that just dynamiting the damned thing can't be worse than it is now. We do need a deletion mechanism, but we don't need it more than we need not to have a festering pit of bad faith. - d.

Mark Gallagher wrote: Oh no, not at all. Most of what hits AFD is complete shit, and should be killed as quickly, messily and painfully as is feasible. A deletion mechanism is something that we have a need for; my objection is to the atmosphere of the AFD we have and the fostering of bad faith, and that getting any policy change on deletions is like stalemated trench warfare. - d.

G'day Phil, And if we can't agree on the results? If a vocal minority --- including your good self --- cries "yippee, my article on minor fanfic characters can't be deleted! Neat!", do we consider the experiment a success? -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/197 - Release Date: 9/12/2005

Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's working reasonably well. Jay.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 JAY JG stated for the record: Which certainly describes AfD, for sufficiently /unreasonable/ and /bad/ values of "reasonably well." - -- Sean Barrett | Dear Santa, for Christmas I would like sean(a)epoptic.org | a copy of your list of naughty girls.

Keith Old wrote: The creator often doesn't have a chance now, because the AFD regulars think it's too much like work to notify them. See current RFAr. It blatantly encourages an atmosphere of bad faith and that's damaging. - d.

Basically, I agree with Keith here. We need some centralized discussion. Not only is does it take a lot less time for admins to manage one central place and delete what needs to be deleted, it's also easier to refer people to that place. Also without AFD, there's still too many articles that can't get speedied because of a technicality. "More than one person bvut still vanity" and "advertising" come to mind. They're deleted 99% (figure of speech) of the time and AFD research shows those are the kind of deletions often uncontested. How are we going to get rid of non-speediable crap without AFD? How is everyone going to have input (the wiki way)? Turning off AFD even for one day will cause too much of a mess. Sure, we can clean it up eventually, but why open your bag of trash indoors when the garbage man is waiting outside? No matter what method you use, deletion is always going to have some ill-will with it. It's something that can't be avoided until we all reach common ground, and stop taking deletions personal. As Keith said, you can use AFD without any ill-feelings by simply bringing forth good arguments. Mgm On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote:

True that last bit was my opinion, but we can't speedy something which doesn't fit the criteria (that's a fact). You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like). Can you please address those questions? Mgm

On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote: Its not quite reversible yet: 1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I believe so copyvios can be hidden). 2. Deleted stuff goes away eventually in database purges. I think, although I may be wrong. If 2 is a non issue, admins could be given free deletion and restore without afd, but not normal users. Justinc

On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack <justin(a)specialbusservice.com> wrote: We need a way to lock revisions from public view, separately from deleting the article. A locked revision would remain in the edit history (showing the date and editor who made it) but would not be viewable (nor could a diff be constructed against it) except by an administrator. The ability to lock (and unlock) revisions needs to be restricted to admins. That would take care of the libel and copyvio issues. It's almost enough to get me coding again. Kelly

On 12/9/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer(a)wordzen.net> wrote: Locked revisions would have their edit summaries obscured (it would appear as "(edit summary obscured for legal reasons)" or something like that). Kelly

On 12/9/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: We have to retain the edit history for GFDL compliance. We may have to exclude the text of locked revisions from database dumps, then. That's not totally infeasible, just requires a few changes to the code used to generate database dumps. Kelly

On 12/9/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com> wrote: Strong support for the locked revisions idea. Also for the ability to obscure edit summaries, perhaps independently of this. -Kat [[User:Mindspillage]] -- "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams

The Cunctator wrote: Yep. Anyone who thinks becoming an admin is a big deal hasn't looked too closely at some of our admins. - d.

On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hmm, I couldn't find the article (guess it's been deleted), but I did find a mention of it in the New York Post. I don't think this article should have been deleted, and in fact I think it's kind of obvious that it should have at least been kept as a redirect. Turning it into a redirect wouldn't have required AFD or a speedy deletion criterion. I assume you don't mean [[Forums and Blogs]], so I'm really not sure where you're coming from. But I also think maybe we miscommunicated over what I was disputing. You suggested that there were articles which "everyone agrees should be deleted" but which there could be no speedy deletion criteria to cover. Your first example was of something which I think pretty much everyone would agree should be a redirect. This one, well, it doesn't seem to be an article at all. User:Zordrac certainly doesn't seem to think so. But I'd say the article meets a speedy deletion criterion I'd like to see established - it contains no references to verify the information in it. Yeah, you don't have my support to delete any schools, and I think a lot of people would agree with me. I think what will happen eventually here is that schools will not be eligible for deletion due to notability. Well, the only one which I agree should be deleted fails a quick and easy test - it contains no external references. Anthony

On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: I would certainly not agree with making the failing of the WP:MUSIC tests as a criterion for speedy deletion - or indeed any other of these guidelines. I agree that a decent article on a band that passes WP:MUSIC *should never* be deleted, but that there are grounds for keeping beyond those included in any such set of guidelines. I also don't, bluntly, trust every admin out there to apply complex criteria fairly (in either direction). -Matt

Tony Sidaway wrote: Furthermore, WP:MUSIC is hopelessly US pop-biased. It was something someone made up as "no no these aren't requirements for an article to exist" and somehow it's morphed into being it. - d.

Mark Gallagher wrote: And let me add that despite my concerns over WP:MUSIC, it is a *flood* of really bad band vanity articles that thoroughly deserve a quick death. I've just looked through five days of AFD. The stupid (the articles nominated), it *burns*. To be fair, I can see why AFD regulars become terse and hard-bitten. - s.

The Cunctator wrote: Really? I never knew this. But honestly, I don't see why I anybody could be that optimistic about this. RfA is getting ridiculous. On one RfA (NSLE's), we had an oppose vote because, among other things, the user started thanking people for voting support before the RfA finished. On another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your talk page seems to be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on the side of caution, and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure". Adminship is supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more clear when you look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people vote oppose because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is off-topic, but I really think we should be looking into the RfA process as well as AfD, because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD (yes, VfD). Last time, it was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's the "in" thing to bash RfA, as anyone who spends some time on our IRC channels should notice. This is worrying. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

John Lee wrote: Never underestimate the overwhelming power of stupidity. In more dangerous circumstances some of these people woud be candidates for Darwin Awards. :-) I'm perhaps one of the longest standing non-admins on Wikipedia. I turned down the nomination on a couple of occasions. I have no intention to apply in the forseeable future, but I think that the inquisitorial process would be a deterent. Ec

Ryan Delaney wrote: ??? I'm not too sure what you are addressing. If I were voting for this sort of thing in Wikipedia I would likely take a stronger stand than you about the need for fewer bureaucrats AND admins. As long as I'm not a candidate for anything, I don't need to worry about the outcome of any such vote. Ec

On 12/12/05, Kat Walsh <mindspillage(a)gmail.com> wrote: We also need fresh faces. Otherwise we end up with a bunch of burnt out cynics. -- geni

Steve Block wrote: This is bizarre. I know that some places have laws to prevent non-lawyers from giving legal advice. It is understandable that when lawyers are deeply involved in legislation they would take steps to protect their own interests. Writing about law is not the same as giving legal advice. That latter term has normally been interpreted as giving specific advice to a person about his own circumstances. It does not apply to general discussions of law. Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote: Most of it can be semi-automated. e.g. CDVF is a fantastic tool. It's not even the greatest software (CryptoDerk would be the first to admit this, and if not then Kelly Martin can get quite direct about the code ;-), but the fact of it being there has helped RC patrollers immeasurably. So we need more admins who are also coders, because boy will they have an itch to scratch! - d.

On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable? Here's a thought - make it speediable! Anthony

On 12/9/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities. Anthony

On 12/9/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: You're really going to have to explain this one. It is the communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion, not the admins. What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins that they didn't have before? I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete [whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion]. But even that isn't a responsibility. So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better? I really don't understand. (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case I don't even see what the new responsibility is.) Anthony

On 12/9/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: I never said which areas I would expand to. I'd suggest looking at what articles "everyone agrees should be deleted" and then coming up with objective criteria to describe them. Surely this can be done, and while it might take a while to come up with good criteria, that's a one time job which will save countless hours of time wasted on AfD in the future. Of course, a "unanimous delete" on AFD is not necessarily an article which "everyone agrees should be deleted", it's merely one that everyone who hasn't gotten frustrated with AFD agrees should be deleted. There's no subjective decision that has to be made to delete "obvious band vanity". After all, the fact that it's "band vanity" is "obvious". Anthony

On 12/9/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea: 1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity 2. Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people stoped trying to make it so 3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers. 4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the number of subjective descissions will not help that. -- geni

Replacing AfD means instead of a decision being located in a central spot where it is open and accountable, you will have decisions being made by one or two people. You will then end up with hellacious disputes at Undeletion and accusations of Admins acting in bad faith. While there may be grounds for expanding the Criteria for Speedy deletion, there are always going to be cases where more careful consideration is required. Regards Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: On 12/9/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths No it would not. It would simply start an all out fight between the inclionists and the deletionists. -- geni

On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a problem. -- geni

On 12/9/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: I suggested something like this in August under the name of Free fire deletion. The idea is that if an administrator thinks an article should be deleted, he goes ahead and does it. If it's contested, it's undeleted and taken to AfD. I think this would seriously reduce the traffic in AfD because administrators in general do exercise reasonable judgement.

On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or whatever. We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a good idea. -- geni

That last line is pretty much my view. Anon article creation blocking was based on the fact a lot of nonsense articles are created by anons, so not allowing them to create such articles would alleviate a lot of new pages patrol. I think Jimmy made a reasonable assumption here. Even if he didn't, he is our benevolent dictator. If he required us to stand on our heads every time we didn't source our edits, we'd have to do it. He's the boss. Mgm

AFD holds people accountable for their action and asks what the community actually wants. While I'd love more freedom in deleting obvious crap, I think it should be based on policy rather than some freedom. I'm sure we'd get at least some accusations of abuse of admin powers of people who feel their opinion wasn't heard when something not specifically falling in policy gets deleted. Admins should have a recourse if they're not sure. Mgm

You wouldn't, but the AFD regulars resist any such move furiously. People are happy to agree with these ideas on wikien-l. But I strongly suggest they try saying it on [[WT:AFD]] and see for themselves how resistant the AFD regulars are to any change to the deletion process short of anyone pulling a complete replacement deletion system out of thin air. I would oppose moving deletions to such places, but I have yet to see proof people oppose informing people with knowledge about a deletion. I've done so myself on several occasions. Please reply to my newly started thread. It's not AFD that's poisonous. People will always feel ill-will when deletion is concerned no matter what method is used. It is how people act and react on AFD. We need to treat the cause not the symptom. It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to cover them. Mgm

On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: [[Historical persecution of Muslims]] [[Historical persecution by Muslims]] and suchlike. -- Sam

On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: other than the fact that the article is [[Muslim]] :)

On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: I don't think having a category here is more useful than (or as useful as) having a list. A list has a history and you can pop it on your watchlist to see when its content changes (as new articles would be proposed for deletion or older ones are removed after discussion). There are three problems with a category: Firstly, our current display software doesn't handle categories with a large number of entries. Secondly there's no easy way (as there is with a list) to see which articles were recently added; you need to use your memory for this (mine has a chronic malfunction) Thirdly you cannot watchlist a category and thus track changes in its contents. Our current AfD system where we have a list of transcluded lists is probably the best that can be done with our software.

On 12/11/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: Verifiability is in some ways quite a harsh requirement. It was what got [[yoism]] deleted. -- geni

On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: No. I'm just saying that verifiable thing can be a lot harsher than many people think. You can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Yoism And yes this did go through deletion review as well. -- geni

On 12/11/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Problem is the boston article provides minimal info. -- geni

Anthony DiPierro wrote: Yes. Could the staunch defenders of AFD please give an appropriately loving clip round the ear to people who make this sort of unneccessary nomination? AFD is the size of a planet as it is. - d.

On 12/11/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: *[[André Dumontagne]] - no references, should be a speedy *[[Andvakaar]] - no references, should be a speedy *[[Main series]] - useless, technically contains no references, could be redirected to [[Dancemania]] I suppose, but it's not even properly capitalised. I'm sure we could come up with some sort of speedy criterion for this crap. Even if not, I wouldn't hesitate to delete it anyway if I was an admin (guess this is one of the reasons I'm not). I guess I'll admit I don't have a perfect solution for this, though AFD is not a particularly good one either. I just noticed it was made 5 October 2005, by an anon. *[[John Fullerton]] - move to User:Johnfullerton or keep (I didn't even bother looking at it), neither require AFD. *[[Narniaism]] - no references *[[Datacomsys]] - no references, not in English, probably a copyvio (speedy, transwiki and speedy, list on copyright problems or speedy, accordingly, none of which require AFD) *[[Übersexual]] - redirect somewhere. not [[human sexuality]], there's probably something more specific; if not, create an article to talk about metrosexuality/ubersexuality/etc and merge [[metrosexual]] there too as it is currently a dictionary definition. None of this requires AFD. *[[Cilek]] no references *[[Overnightscape]] [[The Overnightscape]] - keep *[[Rockman Resurrection]] - no references *[[List of people who resisted the Holocaust]] - list; resurrect [[wp:lists for deletion]] *[[Ben Humphrey]] - keep *[[Paige Craig]] - keep Should I go on? AFD is nothing more than a collossal waste of time, in my opinion. Anthony

Anthony DiPierro wrote: I've been hitting AFD of late and occasionally reminding people that if they can possibly just merge-and-redirect they should do so, because AFD is the size of a planet already ;-) - d.

On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: Well, articles should be on nouns (more specifically, articles should be about the thing which the noun describes). Otherwise you're talking about a dictionary definition. But other than that, yeah, verifiability is pretty much all you need to at least have a redirect (whether or not we should be redirecting things like [[beautiful]] to [[beauty]] is a separate question the answer to which is probably "sometimes", but I don't suggest getting rid of redirects for deletion). Anyway, I was specifically talking about "articles that everyone agrees should be deleted". "MGM" asked "You haven't addressed my questions on how to deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is not actually speediable (like obvious band vanity, blatant adverts and the like)." My response was to "make [them] speediable".

On 12/10/05, John Lee <johnleemk(a)gawab.com> wrote: I *don't* think anything will have changed. I said was talking about what we *should* do, not what's going to happen. If everyone agrees something should be deleted, we should delete it, period. Running it through some AFD process first is not smart. That said, if we turned off AFD, I think the number of speediable categories would quickly grow. Plus, in my opinion, Jimbo has set us into a new era of experimentation on Wikipedia. We no longer need consensus before we can at least try something out. Don't you think the paranoid community would have rejected a proposal to disallow users that weren't logged in from creating new articles? I certainly do, in fact if you want consensus I don't even think the community would accept such a proposal now (maybe it'd get a majority, I really don't know). I don't understand that question at all. Why should the votes of a few non-admins and a few admins override the consensus of all admins? If all admins insist on keeping something deleted, then there's nothing that can be done about it. As long as the ability to delete remains possible, the potential for admin abuse is very small. What is the potential abuse here? GNAA gets deleted? I actually doubt it would. You know what, forget the AFD experiment. Let's give admins free reign over deletion for one week. Surely they won't vandalise Wikipedia to the point where we can't fix things after the week is up. After one week, we look at what got deleted, and we see if there was any admin abuse, and if so how severe it was. AFD is still there, but it's there for actual disputes. Preferably it's there mainly for discussion about the underlying issues of what should and shouldn't be deleted, and doesn't get bogged down in minutiae of every single article (in some especially heated cases maybe there will be a vote over a single article, but not hundreds a day). AFD doesn't get it right perfectly 100% of the time. There's no reason admins need to either. As long as there aren't gross violations of the standards which we reach *through consensus*, it really doesn't matter. We'll probably wind up with somewhat more deletions this way, and really I see that as a bad thing. But as AFD has pretty much completely abandoned the notion of consensus anyway, it's probably inevitable. This is actually more a problem with the enormous reluctance to take adminship away from people. In my opinion (and this is really a completely separate topic), the bar to adminship needs to be lowered, and the bar to deadminship needs to be lowered as well. The real question is how can this be achieved. I don't think it can be achieved through voting, at least not voting among a large group of people, because adminship and deadminship should not be based on popularity, and large groups of people invariably factor popularity into a vote (because there is essentially no *accountability* in voting). If you want perfection... Of course, if you just want "better than AFD", it'd only need to be a measure that more than 2/3 of people would agree with. Well, I'd resolve it through compromise. Keep the articles somewhere outside the encyclopedia, somewhere which isn't controlled by a for-profit corporation and somewhere that respects the GFDL. That leaves two possibilities, really. We put it in a sister project, or, if the board won't let us start the sister project, we start a new organization and put it there. Now that we've moved the information, we change the links to that article from red links into light blue links, that is, external links to the other source. Sure, not *everyone* will be happy with this, but I think most people would find it acceptable. And sure, we wouldn't wind up with exactly the same breakdown as we'd get through AFD. But that second point I really think is irrelevant. AFD is not perfect. Even those that really like AFD only feel that it gets things approximately right. If a few borderline cases get decided differently from AFD, it's not the end of the world, especially not if the information is still preserved somewhere else, and maintained under the GFDL so that we can retrieve it back, most likely in better condition, if we change our minds. Personally I don't feel that any schools are deletable. I think enough people agree with me that one couldn't legitimately say that there is *consensus* to delete an article on any school. That some get deleted through AFD is simply an unpatched flaw in the deletion system. In any case, we've strayed off the original topic. This particular subthread got started when someone claimed that there were articles which *everyone* felt should be deleted but wouldn't be because we couldn't come up with an objective measure. Articles on schools don't fall under this category. True, though CSD deletes quite a few articles which not everyone feels should be deleted. Anthony

On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think it's kind of obvious when an article is so horrible that no one thinks it can be retained - not even if it's cleaned up, not even if it's changed into a redirect. Obviously this experiment won't take place without a) consensus, or b) Jimbo's approval. My posts on here are an attempt to either form such a consensus or convince Jimbo to implement it. You delete it and see if anyone objects. If it's already been deleted and undeleted, then obviously there's a dispute. *That* is when we need dispute resolution. I'm suggesting being bold in deleting pages. "Be bold" doesn't mean get into edit wars, but it does mean that you don't ask for permission to do something which you don't think anyone would have a problem with. I think we have enough admins at this point that the abuse level would be negligible. Of course I'd be more comfortable if people everyone could see the content of deleted articles, not just admins. Even that is much less of a problem now, though. Non-admins can at least see that an article has been deleted. And the vast majority (everyone but me?) can ask to see what the deleted text is on wp:vfu.

On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: Why not spend the day organizing the mess that's already there? The biggest problem with AFD is that the same questions get asked over and over and over again. Anyway, I don't understand how turning AFD off for one day would cause a mess. It'd just double the number of nominations the next day. Considering the growth rate, that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. Might as well get a feel for how it's going to work. How do we reach common ground? Certainly not by just keeping things the way they are now. You could probably eliminate 99% of the ill-will surrounding deletion by simply giving people access to the content that was deleted.