[WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion

Mon Aug 18 08:37:25 UTC 2003

Daniel-
> Erik wrote:
>> I choose not to follow this policy as I consider it
>> unnecessary extra work, but I don't mind if others
>> add the boilerplate notice. (We already bend over
>> backwards to inform newbies whenever they make
>> a mistake.) Just don't remove pages I add to VfD
>> or reset the timer because of the missing boilerplate.

> What? So you are saying that we can list items on VfD and /not/ make an
> attempt to inform the author and readers of the page that it is being
> considered for deletion?

I'm saying that an individual user does not *have* to add the boilerplate  
notice for the page to be listed on VfD. It's already great if the user
goes to the length of listing a problematic page on the often very long  
VfD page. 7 days are more than enough for interested parties to verify  
whether the page should indeed be deleted and if it is, it is almost  
certainly useless. Of course, someone else may add the notice when they  
see it missing.

If you want to make sure users are informed, you'd have to leave a message  
on their talk page as well. Certainly this kind of information is helpful,  
but from the perspective of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, the deletion  
process can work without it, as it has for many months prior to this  
guideline (and I note that many users, including anons, have figured out  
that their pages were listed on VfD before we added the notice). It is  
similar to other boilerplate notices like "This article is a stub" or  
"This is a disambiguation page" -- these are not mandatory, but simply  
added by users when they notice them missing.

Making things optional and not mandatory is more wiki-like; it encourages  
others to jump in and add the missing text, while not forcing anyone to do  
anything. Yesterday I already noticed that you put a comment on someone's  
talk page: "You *must* say 'Listed on Votes for deletion' on the page you  
are listing. Otherwise the page will not get deleted." (Emphasis yours.)  
This kind of admonishment for violation of "rules" should IMHO be kept at  
a minimum.

Regards,

Erik