Wikipedia talk:Pure wiki deletion system/Archive 1

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Please can we keep all discussions on this page, and reserve the "proposal" page for a detailed specification of the proposal. Hopefully the proposal will grow and evolve to take account of any ideas and criticisms that emerge on this talk page. It's clear that there are several users who oppose the whole idea in principle, and we should accord their views due respect. However, the purpose of this page is to work out the details of this reform, not to discuss whether we need it at all. A more appropriate place for discussions of those wider questions is Talk:Strengths and weaknesses of the current deletion system GrahamN 14:43, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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"Hard delete"/"Soft delete"

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

• 'Soft delete': Blanking of page, links to page appears as a non-existent page link
• 'Hard delete': Deletion as it is carried out now, only sysops can delete/undelete

Is this a meaningful distinction? As I understand it, the contents and history of even "hard deleted" pages remain in perpetuity somewhere in the database, so it's just a question of who is permitted to access them: standard users, administrators, or developers. GrahamN 14:43, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think this is a common misunderstanding. The contents and history of deleted pages do remain in the database temporarily, and this is why a deleted page can be viewed and undeleted by administrators. But database management can and does remove these deleted pages. After this, the page and its history should still be recoverable from the backup taken before the database reorg, but that's a developer's job. Andrewa 00:01, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So where's the misunderstanding? That's exactly the point I was making. In the present system nothing is deleted irretrievably. Some information can be retrieved by anybody, some only by administrators, and some only by developers. The idea of the reform is to make all the information available to everybody. How could that be a bad thing? GrahamN

Well, the point probably is that database management should be able to permanently remove pages that have been "really" blanked - that have been gone for a long time. Otherwise the page "Sirmob is the coolest man alive" that I created (not really) would never be able to be cleaned up, and it and thousands of others would crowd the database for all time. I've added a point to this effect in "Possible Changes." Sirmob 01:45, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Basically, soft delete leaves the history of every edit ever made in easy reach of anyone who wants to read or restore them. Hard delete moves them someplace where they're hard to access. Hard deletion has to be left available in some form to save room on the places that are easy to access, and we can't allow regular users to read, restore, or otherwise play around with these 'hard deleted' pages, since it takes many more resources (in extreme cases, a developer manually accessing the backup) to dig them up. Thus, the creation of an intermediate 'soft deleted' state--in this case, blanking--which pages can be moved into and out of as easily as a normal edit. Aquillion 23:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Pros and Cons (please add/edit this)

Pros:

1. Because soft deletion can be trivially reverted, it is less of a big deal. All users could do it, dramatically increasing openness and democratic nature of WP.
2. Decisions to soft delete could be made the same way as all other wikipedia decisions... unilaterally if the change is 'obvious' or through discussion on the talk page if more tricky.
3. The whole community can come together to deal with pages created by vandals, test pages, and other detritus.
4. The workload of administrators will be dramatically reduced, allowing them to get on with the real work of writing brilliant encyclopaedia articles.
5. Less strain on sysops to be in the "front line" against vandals.
6. The current need for sysops to excercise their best judgement in judging consensus is divisive and creates arguments, suspicion and resentment, placing additional strain on sysops
7. The central VfD page gets lots of edit conflicts, discouraging discussion and discouraging listing of pages that should be deleted.
8. The lack of space on VfD hinders proper debate and discussion of options available, leading to stereotyped keep/delete arguments and no real attempt at consensus.
9. Deletion discussion could take place on a page's talk page.
10. Someone who finds the information useful (either for another Wikimedia project or for a non-Wikimedia project) can still use it. In addition to the direct benefits to Wikimedia and society, this will have the indirect benefit of lessening the animosity between many of the inclusionists and deletionists.

Cons:

1. More potential for damage? Vandals who decide to blank pages wreak slightly more havoc as they cause red links to appear on other pages.
   • Vandals already blank pages. The high number of red links would cause a more rapid response, thus reducing the potential for damage, not increasing it.
   • A Special page listing of recently blanked pages could be kept.
2. More strain on server, with more pages for it remember/linkify
3. The disappearance of VfD would amount to the loss of a real community page where lots of users interact, and get to hear about recent developments. A lot of discussion on VfD gives people a good idea of what should or should not appear in Wikipedia.
   1. The best thing for an open content encyclopedia is to encourage as many people as possible to contribute their knowledge. While communities are nice for the people that live in them, by definition they are exclusive. So the more "real community pages" there are, the less effective Wikipedia will be.
4. May add extra strain to another oft-edited page, the Village Pump, as people rush there to say... blanking of X is being considered... please come and support/deny it at the talk page... maybe we'd end up with a pages where blanking is being considered page which could (given how built-in the VfD way is) become a de-facto VfD
   1. Mitigating factor: The number of controvertially deleted pages would presumably be significantly less than the total number of deleted pages, so this discussion page would be more wieldy.
   2. Restoring a page you believe should not have been deleted would be as trivial as reverting an edit you believe shouldn't have been made. You don't get people rushing to the Village Pump to say "the word English has been used on such-and-such a page instead of British. Please come and help me change it." There's no need. You just do it yourself.
   3. Yes, but as with any significant change, there might need to be consensus reached in order to decide whether the page should live as a blank page or as a page with content - and deletion isn't like English/British, it's a big thing. But that said, yes, another page might become a de-facto VfD. But that's displaying more trust in the wiki system than de-jure VfD.
5. Some developer work required.
6. Pages begun as patent nonsense, test pages, and vandalism would never be permanently deleted, even though they will often never yeild a real article.
   1. Deleted pages would not be visible to visitors, so this wouldn't matter.
   2. Blatant cases could still be "hard deleted". Besides, harddrive space is cheap (says the guy who doesn't have to pay the bills).
   3. Note that the possible change where long-blanked pages are hard-deleted automatically would address this concern (although it would also limit some of the advantages.)
7. Opens door to severely disruptive varient of the edit war: the delete/restore war.
8. Articles that one or two people feel very strongly should exist and that most editors consider useless and deletable but not a great evil (i.e., most vanity pages) would be harder to remove. If one nut keeps on restoring a blanked article, concerned editors with other things to do may give up.
9. Content in blanked pages is not accessible to users, so consensus will still not be possible in disputed cases
10. Previous content in blanked pages is inconvenient for editors to access, making the task of keeping an eye on deletions more arduous.

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Do a Test Case

This proposal, to me, seems elegant, and quite possibly the "last, best hope for peace". The main objection to its implementation is that if it blows up, it'll blow up big. So why not do a test case?

I mod for a MediaWiki-based wiki. We are beginning to need a policy for deleting borderline case pages. I think we'll keep hard deleting obvious cases, but I'd prefer to skip a VfD system for the borderline ones, given the heartache it has caused here. We're a special topic wiki, which means we have quite a few pages that are marginally offtopic.

We have not yet come to a decision regarding policy on this issue, but I believe I could convince them of this proposal. But the technical implemntation may be more than our coding staff would wish to bite off.

Assuming that I could get approval, would somebody be willing to implement this proposal at our wiki? Crazyeddie 18:57, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Critique by Cyan

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I believe the main advantage of the deletion process as it exists is that people can't get into deletion wars. In my view, edit wars represent a failure of consensus: disputants become emotional and cease communicating in a productive manner. The protection system was designed to force people to take their argument to the Talk page, so that an agreement can be worked out. The present deletion policy effectively makes all deletions protected automatically, so deletion wars can (in theory) never occur.

To move to the proposed wiki-based deletion process would have an effect that I believe the author of this proposal has not considered: protection by sysops would be able to prevent deletion/resurrection of articles (see footnote). And since the protection system does not operate on consensus, but rather on each sysop's own best judgment, this proposal actually increases the power of sysops to affect the content of Wikipedia!

While some may feel that such deletion wars are simply consensus in the making, I personally feel that edit wars actually block the development of Wikipedia. For me, the proposed deletion system doesn't make sense: sysops are already responsible for cooling off edit wars, and the issue of which version of the article is protected can be contentious; are sysops now expected to make interim decisions about whether an article can exist or not?

On a different topic, I feel that the present system is more transparent than the proposed one, for the simple reason that substantive deletions can be seen and discussed by all users in one place. Bureaucratic? Yes. Complicated? Yes. But you can't beat it for transparency.

Footnote: actually, sysops already have the power to use protection to prevent article resurrection. But it is rarely needed under the present system

-- Cyan

Admins can already delete pages at a whim. They would just loose their privileges for it (I'd hope). It would be similar with blanking pages and locking the page: it would be an unacceptable, disciplinable action.

Edit wars and aggressive use of VfD are two sides of the same coin. There's nothing to recommend VfD in that respect. In fact it's worse, as you can enforce your decision by contacting a few people on IM if the objector can only work on the article occasionally, and hasn't time to persuade people to save their article or make a case within the time limit. 213.162.110.250 12:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Reply by Crazyeddie

As many others have pointed out, the number of controversial deletions is far less than the number of total deletions. The effect of the current VfD systems is to make every deletion a controversial one. Under the proposed system, the few controversial "deletions" could be settled under the systems already in place for dealing with edit wars.

Further, the purpose of the sysop's power to protect a page is to buy time, to allow cooler heads to prevail and a true consensus to develop. Any sysop who used this power inappropriately would highly visible, and would probably be removed. By contrast, the VfD system operates by majority vote (granted, usually a 2/3s majority), not by consensus. Furthermore, the VfD system is said to be controlled by a "shadow tyranny" of regulars, who might not truly represent the will of the Wiki.

Under the proposed system, "deletions" would be visible to the people who actually use the page, and could be "undeleted" by any dissenter. Under the current system, "wrongful" deletions can not be so easily undone.

I would say that the burden of proof lays on the side that wants to delete a page. So in case of a delete war, the sysop should protect the undeleted version, until a consensus can be reached.

Crazyeddie 18:46, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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General discussion

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I think it's worth a try. We already have edit wars, and we live with them because we can't have wiki without them. This proposal makes things more wiki and less cumbersome, but potentially more contentious. But most deleted pages wouldn't end up in a deletion war. The ones that did would then become protected and go through the VfD process. So, we'd be no worse off than today.

-- Axlrosen 17:51, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So VfD wouldn't disappear, but would be reserved for problem cases. Hmm... I could deal with that, if others strongly support the notion. Transparency (at least my version of it) would still be a problem, though. GrahamN seems to feel that the present VfD system removes power from John Q. User, but I don't see it that way. It's centralized in the sense that everybody who wants to comment can do it at one place, but that's not the same as a centralized power structure. -- Cyan 21:34, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The VfD system as it stands is working, in my opinion. When this whole discussion started on another page here at meta, it seemed as though the objection to VfD was that we shouldn't be deleting things. But the proposed new system, in my opinion, will lead to much higher amounts of "soft deletion". I've seen many pages that I think are bunk and should be blanked: many have been submitted to VfD only for me to find that others like them and would prefer that they be kept. I could easily have blanked these pages under the proposed system, forcing someone else (note--not en:User:Someone else) to come along later and undo my well-intentioned misdeed. Under the current system, I post a little note at a central ___location which hundreds of people check each week--at any point during the week, a couple of them can object, and then there is no problem. For some reason, GrahamN thinks VfD's system is clunky. I think it's actually a nice model, and far less clunky than the inevitable soft deletion wars (and if we think deletion wars will be rare, I think we're kidding ourselves). Until we see VfD being horribly abused, with a cabal of sysops wreaking havoc (something I've not seen), I don't see any reason to change the system. That's my two cents. -- Jwrosenzweig 22:23, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If a user tried to blank a page, they could be presented with a warning first, i.e. are you really sure you want to do this? Have you read the relevant policy pages? Did you provide a good explanation in the summary and/or talk page? etc. The idea would be to give the user pause, so that they think, well maybe this will be controversial so I should list it on VfD instead.

I guess that's a new proposal for this system. How about this: if something violates an explicit Wikipedia policy (e.g. anything on What Wikipedia is Not), then you can blank it. Otherwise (e.g. if you think it's "unencyclopedic"), then you list it on VfD. I kind of like that idea. Most (though not all) of the controversies on VfD are about whether something is not important enough (or otherwise unencyclopedic) to be in WP. So we'd keep the discussion for controversial topics but punt it for uncontroversial ones, thus streamlining the process.

Axlrosen 14:54, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I strongly support the notion that we should devolve power on deletion and undeletion to everyone, rather than restricting it to sysops. There are lots of deletions that are wholly unremarkable, and Wikipedia would be more efficient (and sysops less burdened) if everyone could do them:

• deleting a page in order to perform a name change.
• deleting nasty pages created by vandals
• deleting test pages created by newbies
• etc

Currently only sysops can do this, and that gives us sysop burn-out: I'm thinking of en:user:Zoe here, and all the people who spend so much time fixing Michael's created pages, and so forth. If we enabled everyone to help with this kind of problem, then rather than having a few sysops "on the front line", it could be a problem that the whole community can barn raise and solve together. --mrd

I had the occasion to arrive at a plan very similar to this one myself. I am in support of creating a soft-deletion option parallel with the hard-deletion option. -Smack 04:26, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• I like the idea of the soft-deletion system. It would be sad to see the votes for deletion page go. But would it have to?
• As someone previously stated (i think), why not just use the current vfd to discuss articles that should be blanked? It's good to have a central place (rather than doing it on individual talk pages).
• Hopefully the blanked page will have a quick link to see the previous contents (i think it does), which will make it easy for users to see what's been deleted.
• I don't see a reason for hard deletion to coexist though. A deletion's a deletion.

202.180.83.6 09:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In recent changes, we'd need to be able to display only edits containing DELETED or REVIVED or either, to keep better track. —siroχo

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Wikipedia is a Wiki. The idea of a Wiki is that anybody can change things, or change them back. Why do so many people who evidently don't believe in that principle spend so much of their time here? GrahamN 01:58, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In response to Cyan's critique - the fact of the matter is that right now, the English Wikipedia system appears to be tilting towards a Request for Deletion system that gives all admins the power to delete pages. So yes, the Pure Wiki Deletion System might be giving admins a little more power, or asking them to use it, by more often having to protect deletions/undeletions of articles - but it's not that much more power, and the possibility that admins might be given much, much more power due to the issues with Votes for Deletion makes it worth it in my mind. Sirmob 02:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Central pillar unnecessary

Latest comment: 19 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

I'd say the so called "central pillar" of this proposal is actually rather inconsequential. The vast majority of pages which are listed on VFD and deleted either don't contain any links to it or have only links to it which are removed after deletion.

The real central pillar is simply a policy change. We no longer allow admins to delete pages, and we allow and in fact encourage page blanking in certain situations.

The technical details are what makes this paletable: blanked pages are kept out of the search engines, out of search, and out of random page.

Tuning up?

I like the proposal. I still think a few small things should be tuned up:

• After some period of inactivity (say 1 month) soft deleted pages should become hard deleted - save space
• Severe copyright violations, etc. should be hard deleted through the existent process
• Should be a policy that in the case of deleting wars the article should go through the existent process (say after three deletion and reverting by at least two different people on each side).
• Some articles (e.g. feature articles) should be delete protected.

192.67.248.216 03:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC) (w:User:Alex Bakharev)

Space is not an issue. Dan100 12:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not about space being an issue. It's about information that is dead should become "really" dead because it makes it more tempting to do a vandalize-undelete if the old information is there. Let the dead pages die (those poor soft deleted pages in their persistant vegitative state...) Sirmob 04:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

For the third concern: Articles with that kind of dispute would effectively go through the wiki's existing dispute-resolution process, just like any other revert war. I think that's fai; nobody has yet given me an argument as to why disputes over the deletion of an entire article should be treated any differently than disputes over, say, the deletion of a section in that article.

And for the last concern: There's no need to give feature articles and the like special protection from "deletion-vandalism". If someone tries to delete them without consensus, it will be treated just like any other vandalism on a featured article. Aquillion 23:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Central pillar is good

"Links to blank articles will appear the same as links to non-existent articles." Makes sense.

• {db|reason} tag should still be used - but instead of an alert to an admin, it should work like any other dispute - policy should be take it to the talk page.
• If the criteria for CSD are met, the policy should allow the ordinary user to blank at once.
• If CSD criteria are not met, user should be required to wait a period of time (1 week?) after tagging it, and then may blank if there are no objections.
• In either case, if there is objection to the blank, keep (or restore) the page, and try to reach consensus.
• Final step in dispute resolution, keep a VFD process, but the vote takes place on the talk page. A VFD page similar to the RFC page can allow pending deletes to be listed with a brief description and link to the talk page.

This should take some of the burden off of admins. But they will still need to be involved in some cases where there are disputes, and may at times need to lock pages, as in other dispute situations. Acerimusdux 04:35, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Brilliant idea

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Why would anyone who thinks they're working in a wiki oppose it? Yes, you might have deletion wars -- especially with pages created by anons -- but it would allow unloved pages to slip away. -- Grace Note 4:45 AEST August 2, 2005

I like this, although I would still keep hard delete. It would be used for existing speedy categories on WP:EN, for example. —Theo (Talk) 17:49, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

This proposal will make it harder to find vandalism

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A lot of page blanking vandalism occurs, which can be found fairly easily with en:Special:Shortpages. How would that vandalism be found if this system were implemented? It would make en:Special:Shortpages useless. Angela 18:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Shortpages is a db query on article size less than x. It's trivial to change that to a query on article size greater than 0 and less than x. --Martin

I think we would also need some kind of "Special: Recently blanked pages" or something like that. In fact, that really, really needs to be part of the proposal... Without it, there will not only be no easy way to track page-blanking vandalism, but no easy way to track page-deletion vandalism. This will address the above concern, since people could track the recently-blanked pages list to hunt both kinds of vandals. Aquillion 23:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Policy implications

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

It makes no sense to implement this before any policies are proposed. If someone keeps blanking/deleting a page, when is that regarded vandalism and when is it regarded as part of the new deletion process? When can someone revert the blanking? Would they have to get consensus before doing so, or after? The suggestion at en:Wikipedia:Requests for deletion that this could be implemented within a week is a very bad one if it implies such a thing would be implemented with no policies in place, and no agreement that blank pages should appear this way. Angela 19:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

It would be considered vandalism if there was no edit summary explaining the action and/or if they page was "obviously" not suitable for deletion. Anyone can revert the blanking if she thinks it was inappropriate - just like anyone can revert any change in Wikipedia. - Haukurth (en:wikipedia) 17:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that a blanking/deletion is a revert, so 3RR applies. Do it often enough and someone will arbcom you for it. It should be reversible straight away, just like any edit. "Consensus" should be found in exactly the same way it is for edits. Disputes that last longer than X (where X is a number of days to be determined) should be referred to VfD for a binding decision. I think a blanking of useful content without an explanation is vandalism. The explanation needs to be consonant with the policy on deletion. "Consonant" means that the explanation must follow the policy, not that it must necessarily be correct. A blanking log for pages that are not speedy deletion candidates would probably be a good idea but I'm not sure it should actually be compulsory. I think you'd have a lot less fighting than you think. Grace Note 05:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

No minimum edit summary

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

One change is necessary, I think:

"A page cannot be blanked unless the user enters an edit summary of at least twenty characters."

I appreciate the thought behind that rule, but it will only lead to blanked pages with an edit summary of "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" or "blankkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk". --DavidConrad 09:32, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Another Special

We would need something like Special:RecentlyResurrectedPages (shortcut S:RRP) as well. -- ~~~~

Support

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I really like this idea, especially considering that so many of the other proposals are so convoluted. Controversial deletions should work just like other disputes, and perhaps VfD can have a new life as a more specific version of RfC.

And maybe this will even get people to pay attention to other kinds of disputes. VfD makes it easy to get the community involved when someone adds an unencyclopedic article, but it's hard to get the community involved when someone adds content that is unencyclopedic to an existing article. By making the processes more similar, we can remove this strange dichotomy. w:User:Rspeer 23:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

why does the community need to get involved when someone adds content that is unencyclopedic to an existing article?--Alhutch 07:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Refactoring

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I removed this para: Deleted pages may be moved just like live pages, except that there will be no re-direct created. By this means, a live page can be moved on top of a deleted page without losing the deleted page's history.

It seems to require a lot of complicated coding, and is not particuarly necessary; IMO, moving a page on top of a PWD(Pure Wiki Deleted) page should be the same as it is now to move on top of a page with a history; you need an admin to merge the histories. We should address this in the Rebuttals section, but not in the introduction.

and this one: The system will be de-centralised and self-regulating. There will be no "votes for deletion" procedure, just as there is currently no "votes for re-naming" procedure, no "votes for blanking" procedure and no "votes for this particular edit that I want to make here" procedure. There will be no deletion log, just as there is no "re-naming log", no "blanking log", etc.

AFAIK, many of the current supporters of PWD don't want to remove Full Deletion(i.e. hiding the revisions from the general public, conventional deletion), so this paragraph is just wrong. We could have an argument about this on this talk page, if people want to.

and the whole Possible changes section - we should not have "possible" changes listed on the main proposal page. They should be discussed here, and only added if and when they are agreed to. Here's the excised section: Possible changes

• Administrators' powers to prevent deletion/resurrection of articles will be rescinded.
  • Unfortunately, administrators need the ability to prevent the resurrection of articles, as the WP article on the "popularity of Adolf Hitler" - "a great man, admired by many Jews" - shows. It was created, and created, and created, and finally blocked from being created.
• Pages that had been blank for a long time (a month? a year?) should be able to be "cleaned up" by the database, if necessary for the good of the database.

and the bits about the edit summary: *A page cannot be blanked unless the user enters an edit summary of at least twenty characters.

• When a page is blanked, the word "DELETED" is automatically added as a prefix to the edit summary.
• When a page is revived, the word "REVIVED" is automatically added as a prefix to the edit summary.

IMO, this is redudnant with the log of blanking(and unblanking); we don't use technical measures to require a reason for anything else, and as said above, they wouldn't work even here. The auto edit summary bits are redundant with the log.

66.81.178.169 07:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC) (actually en:User:JesseW) (Yes, that was me, in case anyone was worried.) (Now signed in at meta) JesseW 07:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

After copy

Demotion, not deletion

Latest comment: 19 years ago12 comments5 people in discussion

I think this proposal is passing up the opportunity for a much more useful reform which could give everyone more-or-less want they want, which is a system of demotion, not deletion. "In-between" pages which inclusionists feel belong in a comprehensive encyclopedia, but which deletionists feel don't belong in a general encyclopedia, could be "demoted" with consensus and appear as red (maybe some other color) links by default. They would still be easily accessible to anyone who needed them. Pure wiki deletion wouldn't prevent fighting over this kind of in-between page, because a page which is blanked is inacessible and useless. Actual junk which no-one feels should be kept could then be disposed of easily, with consensus, by AFD or any other method. Kappa 00:58, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The beauty of the PWDS is that it is so simple, does almost nothing that can not already be done, and requires very minimal changes to the source code. Your idea lacks those features, so it seems to me to be just another deletion reform proposal like the dozens that are already proposed that won't get much support. RSpeer 02:28, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

• Technically the only difference is using some kind of tag to indicated a "deleted" page, instead of it being blanked. I think the software can check for a tag almost as easily as it can check for an empty page. Kappa 02:59, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

So long as you can do a Special:Blank pages, it's no problem to find out what's been blanked. Deletionists will only war over schools until they're sick of being reverted. At first, they'll delight in expunging articles they don't like but they'll grow tired of having to defend each deletion ex post facto. Grace Note 05:26, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

• Empirically people never get tired of trying to get schools deleted for being "non-notable", there would just be continuous revert wars instead of continuous useless Afds. Kappa 12:55, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

How does this work if an editor decides to do a merge and then blank the page? The information is now in another article, so if someone decides to undelete we have the information in two places. Of course another editor could revert both changes. I think if someone took the time to do the merge, reverting the deleted article should be a little harder to do. Vegaswikian 07:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Merges already operate on a pure wiki system, so I don't think it would make any difference. Kappa 12:55, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Clarification - because the usual thing to do after a merge is to leave a redirect (NOT a blank), correct? Sirmob 05:47, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think it's an issue. Merges can be undone anyway as things stand, but they rarely are. What Vegaswikian doesn't understand is that editors such as Kappa and I don't vote to include schools just to piss him off but because we think they should be part of the encyclopaedia. We're not waging a war to have lots of crap school articles. If you merged the small articles quietly and without fuss, I don't imagine you'd meet any opposition. It's the offensive and arrogant repeat listing of them on AfD that causes the problems. Grace Note 01:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh god. AfD can keep the school debate for all I care. (And if AfD ends up being used only for controversial deletions, it will, because every school deletion is controversial to a ridiculous extreme.) Just don't bring it here. RSpeer 05:26, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

It's something that's a concern. You don't own this page and you can't direct what people may or may not be concerned about! Grace Note 07:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Calm down. It's off-topic, that's all. RSpeer 01:05, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm perfectly calm. So far as I can see, the topic is whatever we're talking about, which was deletion. -- Grace Note.

Evangelism

Latest comment: 19 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Anyone interested in trying to get more people to support (or at least comment on) this idea? What would be good ways of doing so? To me, the argument for pure wiki deletion is obvious: anyone can edit Wikipedia, and removal of undesirable content is a type of edit, so anyone should be able to do it. Making deletion/undeletion a special case instead of just another edit is a clear case of instruction creep. The "burden of proof" should be on those who want to do it any other way.

Has it occurred to anyone else that we could (sort of) start using pure wiki deletion without waiting for software changes? The software doesn't support it directly, but we could attempt to approximate this kind of system. Friday (talk) 09:04, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

WP:XD#XD4 is a workaround that is very similar to the PWDS - but it works only for logged-in users. -- grm_wnr Esc 21:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that a good way to promote PWDS for now is to experimental delete anything you would once have AfD'd, and add something like "See Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system for how this process can become smoother." to the edit comment. What I'd like to see is an XD template (XD6? XDPW?) that actually includes a link to the PWDS. RSpeer 02:19, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I've added such a comment to the the {{XD4}} template. —Jwanders 20:38, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

MediaZilla

Latest comment: 19 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

To get the process started, I filed a MediaZilla request for enhancement at MediaZilla:3843. I haven't done this before, so I hope I did it right. RSpeer 02:39, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I went ahead and voted on it, which I assume makes a difference. Those interested should visit and vote on the bug as well to increase it's priority. ∴ here…♠ 05:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. I went and voted on it too. Other people who want to see the PWDS implemented should do the same. RSpeer 15:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)</nowiki>

Moving Forward

Latest comment: 19 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

It seems we have very strong core support for this project but are lacking many proposals of what to do next. I figure we should consider:

• Making the XD4 blanking system above an official project strategy (i.e. moving it to the project page).
• Adding something to on deletion reform to indicate the level of support, with the view of moving this towards official Wikipedia policy.

As I'm not sure how either of these would be received by the rest of the deletion reform community and am loathe to start yet another rambling discussion, I figured I'd ask for other suggestions and find a consensus here before proceeding. Thoughts? —Jwanders 07:58, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and consolidated the XD options into one to be refined. Hopefully well received, and a step forward to using this more widely. See WP:XD. ∴ here…♠ 18:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Friday (talk) 18:45, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Simple vandalism versus content dispute

Latest comment: 19 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

There doesn't seem to be a good answer to this in the proposal itself, so maybe someone can clear this up.

Under the present system, blanking a page is almost always vandalism, with everything that entails—we can use rollback on it, block for it, etc. This is true regardless of what the edit summary may contain.

Under this new system, blanking a page is equivalent to an AFD nomination. It may be removed if added in obvious bad faith, but is not, generally speaking, blockable. How do we distinguish between a good-faith attempt at deleting an article by blanking it, and simple vandalism that also entails blanking it.

In other words: if a user were to blank a hundred articles under the current system, they would be blocked in short order; under PWDS, what recourse, beyond the disruption clause, is there for dealing with them? Kirill Lokshin 23:53, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, the edits would be easily reverted, so undoing it is no more difficult than dealing with any present forms of vandalism. But, as far as blocking a problem editor, a string of bad-faith deletions would be pretty obviously a type of vandalism. The only difference I can think of is that page-blanking would not be automatically considered vandalism as it is now. Yes, making the distinction between good-faith blanking for deletion and bad-faith blanking for vandalism would require human judgement. But, pretty much anything we do here requires human judgement, so I don't see that this is a problem. Friday (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

How would they be easy to revert, though? Granted, someone blanking United States is probably a vandal—but what about someone blanking a (potentially) deleteable article? If someone blanks "Exampleville High School" or "Random Pokemon #28781", is the deletion automatically considered good-faith or not?

This problem seems to be aggravated by the idea below—that un-blanking an article would cause it to become a "contested deletion" and would require the un-blanker to complete an AFD nomination for it. This would make reverting blanking vandalism much more time-consuming than causing it. Kirill Lokshin 14:24, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Well.. As for good/bad faith, I wouldn't think in those terms. You don't HAVE to speculate about the motive of the editor. You can simply decide whether you agree with the edit or not. If someone blanks a deletable article and you agree, you do nothing, except possibly note your support for the deletion on the talk page. If you disagree, you would start a discussion on the talk page about why you think it shouldn't be deleted. And, of course, you could revert the deletion, at your discretion. I do not agree at all with the idea that an article should be sent to Afd the minute there's disagreement, because, as you point out, this would be completely silly in many cases.

Ideally, people would do what they should have been doing all along: use the talk page to resolve disagreements. If you see a page you think shouldn't exist, but you think there might be disagreement, explain on the talk page what you think should be done with the article. This is how people (ideally) decide on things like merges/redirects and it works there. Why should deletion be different? Friday (talk) 14:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

My apologies, I wasn't being quite clear. When talking about good/bad faith, I was referring not to the blanker's motivation for wanting the article deleted, but to whether the blanking was an attempt at deletion in the first place. In other words, there should be a distinction between "I am blanking this article, and by doing so I am invoking the PWDS deletion procedure on it" and "I am blanking this article because I'm bored", and it should not be made according to how inclusionist/deletionist the person examining the edit is.

I would be a lot more comfortable with the proposal if language to the effect of "blankings by anons are not considered acceptable" and "blankings without proper edit summaries are not considered acceptable" were added; this would, at least, limit the use of PWDS as an excuse for otherwise unrelated blankings. Kirill Lokshin 16:29, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that a proper edit summary is highly important. Maybe something could go in there about "don't expect people to take your deletion seriously if there's not a reasonable edit summary." Friday (talk) 16:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Clarify place of PWDS

Latest comment: 19 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Most of our recent opposition seems to have a different understanding of where PWDS fits into the overall deletion system. As I understood it, we weren't suggesting that either AfD or Speedy delete be abolished, but that PWDS be added as a third option. Then patent non-sense and copyvios go to speedy delete, other deletes use PWDS unless they're contested, in which case the page is unblanked and sent through the current AfD process. This saves the overhead of AFD for articles which would be annanomously deleted while keeping the centralised discussion process for borderline cases.

If no one objects, I'll clarify the proposal page to reflect this understanding. —Jwanders^Talk 06:52, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

So how much "contest" does it take to go to AFD and place the PWDS out of line? And, given that links to the blanked article will simply "go red", what exactly will you encounter when you follow the red link? Will it be clear that there previously was an article here? Otherwise I can easily see a scenario where someone deletes a valid but obscure article, and someone quite innocently starts a stub from scratch, unaware that there was quite recently an article on the topic. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Second question first: Newcomers to a "blanked" article would see exactly what they do now: the info-box regarding new article creation with "View X deleted edits?" above it. Do you think that would be enough to prevent most people from unknowingly recreating an article?

Regarding the amount of "contest": Any user would be able to revert the article to pre-blanking, add the AfD template and list it under AfD. Once this has been done, deletion by blanking would no longer be acceptable. This errs on the side of sending articles to AfD too often rather than not often enough, which I believe is where we want to be.—Jwanders^Talk 07:24, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Jwanders, yes, please do clarify the proposal along those lines. I had thought it was mentioned, but it does seem clearly insufficient, so adding more to make it clearer is important. Re: Jmabel's comments: Jwanders answered this pretty well, but I have no problem with making the link larger if needed. The "contested" level absolutely should be as Jwanders said - PWDS should only be for things that no-one but the proposer cares enough to notice. OTOH, I'm leaning towards the view that things are working OK as is, and the PWDS might not be all that needed... JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but in the case of a contested deletion, I'd rather see people discuss it on the talk page than on Afd. Maybe a category could be made for ongoing deletion discussions, to help those people who like to find them. Also, I'd hate for one revert of a deletion to make the article go into a special state where you're not supposed to pure delete it again. A blatant vanity article could be unblanked by its newbie creator who's unfamiliar with how things work here, yet it's obviously unneccessary to send such a thing thru Afd or other long discussion. Friday (talk) 14:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

After any revert, an attempt at discussion should be made. That does not necessarily mean AfD, but certainly a stab at the talk page and at least 24 hours of wait time. Obvious cases, likely determined by current speedy standards, might be again simply deleted with an additional note on the talk page. ∴ here…♠ 05:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Thoughts on benefits of PWDS

Benefits of PWDS: For deletionists:

• More stuff would be deleted
• Because:
  • More people able to do it (rather than just nominate it to be done)
  • Easier (one step vs three steps)
  • Less work overall (one step vs 10 or so steps for AfD)
• AfD would be smaller, and therefore easier to view

For inclusionists:

• Much less stuff would be hidden from public view
• Because
  • PWDS deleted stuff would still be in the history
• AfD would be smaller, and therefore easier to view
• A large amount of deletion could be canceled easily - just undo the blanking, and leave it alone - or list it on AfD to prevent it from going through PWDS again.

(most of these may also be regarded as disadvantages ;-) ) Comments, arguments, spelling corrections? (sorry, it's late at night) JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:22, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

On edit wars

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The main complaint, and particularly the main one that makes sense, is that this will increase the number of edit wars. Possibly dozens per day! But here are two responses:

• Dozens of edit wars per day would be a drop in the bucket for Wikipedia. AfD is not the entirety of Wikipedia discussion.
• I've experimental deleted numerous articles over the last few weeks. Only one was ever reverted. I sent it to AfD where it was dealt with without conflict. I think that it removes conflict to not draw undue attention to every stupid page.

rspeer 14:17, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Response to Greg

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Responses to Greg's opposition:

• A perfectly easy way (a Special: page) to see all recent deletions and recreations is a part of the proposal. That's how you would know.

  Right, but I mean on the non technical side. Right now you can be almost sure that an article being blanked is vandalism, but with this, it takes alot more time. Yes, I know, we shouldn't all be computers, etc. But it puts alot more strain on RC Patrol.

• I have no idea how a decentralized process like PWDS could be a "cabal", so what do you mean by that word?

  Maybe that wasn't the best choice of words, what I mean is the proccess for deletion is less transparent, right now you can check AfD and KNOW what articles are up for deletion, with PWDS there would be no way to know. It isn't that big of a negative, but I like the way I can see what is up for deletion right now.

• If an article that is "totally worthy for inclusion in Wikipedia" is deleted, and nobody cares enough to bring it back, is it such a loss? How does it affect you if an article you never paid any attention to gets deleted by people who edit in that topic area? Why do you know better than them? I believe that people on talk pages make thousands of article content decisions that you disagree with every day.

  I conceed this, you make a good point.

• What kind of "serious problems with unilateral deletion" could arise? If it can be reverted, it's not any more serious than any other disputed edit on Wikipedia.

  What if someone doesn't notice it? Like I brought up below, it just creates more dramatic edit/deletion wars.

• PWDS gives users no additional rights, so I find a comparison to giving everyone developer rights to be completely absurd.

  It gives them the right to delete pages

• The reasonable objection, I'd say, would be the creation of some more edit wars; as I've said above, though, this would be a drop in the bucket. rspeer 14:33, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

  I don't think it would be a drop in the bucket though, we currently have edit wars going to ArbCom, deletion wars would be a problem. I think the current AfD system has some minor flaws, but I disagree with this change. -Greg Asche (talk) 22:00, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Problems

Latest comment: 19 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

First off, I'm not sure who thought of the name "pure wiki" but it is obviously a peacock term because it isn't necessarily more "pure" or more "wiki" than anything else we use or have proposed. I'd suggest renaming it to what it actually does, e.g. "deletion by page blanking".

Second. The PWDS cannot deal very well with 1) copyvios, 2) linkspam, 3) vanity, 4) attack pages and 5) anything supported by socks, and it has been established several times in the past that allowing anybody to see a deleted page goes against the very point of deletion. Acrimony of AFD notwithstanding, deletion is sometimes necessary, and it is with good reason that it cannot be reverted by just anyone.

And third, PWDS would make it easier to delete pages on relatively obscure subjects, since unless anybody is watchlisting them, the deletion will simply go unnoticed. This is a bad thing. Presently, such either show up on AFD, or on the Logs.

Radiant_>|< 17:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Regarding copyvios, linkspam, attack pages, and perhaps even vanity: Your point is that those need to be permanently deleted and hidden from general view in the history, right? But anyone, today, can replace the content of any article with copyvios, linkspam or attack pages. When the article is reverted, the linkspam or attack pages are still in the history. What's the difference?

Similarly, for the relatively obscure pages that nobody is watchlisting: right now, today, anyone can replace those pages with a 5000-word essay on gorilla genitalia, and unless anybody is watchlisting them, such changes will simply go unnoticed. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, they can, and that's bad, and PWDS will encourage this behavior by basically telling people it's okay to blank pages. Radiant_>|< 17:51, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

No more so than WP:BOLD encourages vandalism. Also note that the proposal includes a special page showing all recently-blanked pages. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

(via edit conflict) I don't think anyone is suggesting that we wouldn't also have a "hard delete" option as we do now, even if most normal cases would be handled by PWDS. My opinion is that the new problems created by PWDS are not in fact new- they're problems we already have, and already deal with. I don't see how PWDS would encourage people to put junk into articles. The people putting blatant junk into articles would not likely be aware of PWDS, just as they're probably not aware of our current deletion methods right now. Friday (talk) 17:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

a few refining points

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The new system looks great, but a few modifications should be made in order for it not to run astray. Those I see are:

• The talk page should definitely be available, not only the history, because the talk page is likely to contain the debate and vote that led to the deletion, if any.
• Only logged-in users should be allowed to blank pages, because this would make impeding the vandalism much easier. And people who haven't been long enough on wikipedia to bother logging in have no business deleting pages anyway.
• We should remember to ask for blanked pages not to be listed anymore on Special:Short pages, because otherwise it's going to be flooded with them. Jules LT 21:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

a few refining points

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The new system looks great, but a few modifications should be made in order for it not to run astray. Those I see are:

• The talk page should definitely be available, not only the history, because the talk page is likely to contain the debate and vote that led to the deletion, if any.
• Only logged-in users should be allowed to blank pages, because this would make impeding the vandalism much easier. And people who haven't been long enough on wikipedia to bother logging in have no business deleting pages anyway.
• We should remember to ask for blanked pages not to be listed anymore on Special:Short pages, because otherwise it's going to be flooded with them. Jules LT 21:49, 14 November 2005 (UTC)