[WikiEN-l] Article deletion

Tue Sep 13 09:21:24 UTC 2005

> > No, afd just needs to *die*. I still don't see why anyone thought
> > renaming it would fix the problems.
> 
> But die to be replaced with what?
> 
> Deletion is absolutely necessary.  A community process for deletion is
> absolutely necessary.

By autonomous(sp?) decision making. Currently, VfD is where everyone
is supposed to have a say (aka vote) and the future of many articles
is decided by something similar to a centralized government. It is the
reason why there are so many policies and rules related to deletion.
Hundreds of people have a say and can vote "keep" or "delete" on
obscure articles they have neither any clue nor interest in. It is
IMHO completely opposite to the wiki way. And it doesn't scale very
well either. My replacement system would work like this:

1. A person finds an article.
2. That person doesn't think the article belongs in Wikipedia.
3. That person writes on that pages talk page: "I think this page
should be deleted for this and that reason."
4. That person waits (this step is essential).
5. Maybe some discussions appear on the talk page. The people there
form a consensus on what to do with the article.
5.5 If noone responds to the person at all after a certain amout of
time (see step 4), it is a safe bet noone cares and the article can
safely be deleted.
6. If necessary, someone notifies an admin which deletes the article.

This system has some advantages over the current:

1. It ensures that you have actually seen the article before you add
your opinion about it.
2. The discussion is kept close to where the content of the article
is. That means it is more natural to find "alternative" solutions
instead of VfD which often degenerates into Keep vs. Delete.
3. It scales beautifully. 
4. People who aren't insterested in the article are "kept out."
Because if they haven't seen the article they don't know about the
delete-discussion about it.
5. Similarily, people who aren't interested in the article doesn't
have to deal with it. They can still add their opinions about the
future of other articles without ever seeing the articles they aren't
interested in.

-- 
mvh Björn