[WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion and due process

Thu Aug 21 00:00:51 UTC 2003

Having commented on the great controversy of who changed the policy,
I thought that I might comment on the best practice itself.
This is taken from a recent post by me to
[[Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Listed for deletion notice]],
so please reply there:

I'm strongly sympathetic to listing the deletion notices,
but I understand that some people have objected to the practice
(preferring to simply blank the page) on the grounds that:

1*  Adding the notice more work than blanking the page.
2*  A blanked page tells the software in various contexts
    that there's no content there.

My suggestion:  Redirect to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion,
which explains everything!  That page would need a little text at the top
to explain the redirect, but the objections above are resolved:

1*  Since you have to go to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion anyway
    to list the page, typing in the redirect (a little work)
    saves you work later (you can just click to get to VfD);
2*  The software knows that redirects have no content.

So who has those objections, and do you think
that a redirect would work better?

-- Toby