[WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

Tue Sep 13 11:26:04 UTC 2005

On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an
> editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide
> a rationale.  Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case,
> delete as necessary.  If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can
> either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision,
> or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed
> afu?)
> 
> This seems to me to have the following advantages:
> 1. It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
> deleting admin to query deletions.  This would avoid a giant page of bad
> feeling.
> 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to
> really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably
> should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'.  However, if things
> were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu
> decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to
> include.  If an article does not attract sufficient community input to
> determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
That's exactly why I oppose decentralization. If it's on a category
instead of a centralized page, admin's can't see when notices are
removed, and if I visit a category at two different times, it's very
hard to see what's been added and what I've already voted for (I often
work on different machines, so link color isn't always an indicator).

Deletion discussions will cause bad feeling no matter how we do it.
It's best to keep it centralized, so people who don't want anything to
do with it can stay away.

--Mgm