Memory Alpha talk:Deletion policy

Archive?
As discussions about deletion suggestions seem to get longer and the final decisions more controversial, should we start to archive those discussions instead of deleting them? IIRC, we discontinued this procedure during the early days when there was basically no controversy about deletions... -- Cid Highwind 15:56, 14 Aug 2004 (CEST)


 * In case after long discusion a page is not deleted, the policy states we should archive that discussion on the article's talk page. If a page is deleted, the discussion would have to be archived elsewhere. I think this should be done, so if the discussion arises again (at undeletion for example) we can refer to it. The standard Memory Alpha:Votes for Deletion/archive would not cover images and imediate deletion. Perhaps a new page the likes of Memory Alpha:Deletion archive? -- Redge | Talk 17:08, 14 Aug 2004 (CEST)


 * I've started the archive, using the latter option. If it is not properly named, it can be moved, or even deleted. I just thought the Votes for Deletion article was getting a bit too long. -- Redge | Talk 01:26, 21 Aug 2004 (CEST)

Immediate deletion of images?
After discussion, I added the following paragraph to Memory Alpha:Image use policy:
 * Currently, there is no easy way to rename an image — it has to be downloaded, then uploaded using another name. Administrators are allowed to "copy" images to a new name this way and delete the original image, if the file name doesn't adhere to the above rules.

I'd like to add this to the list of Candidates for immediate deletion. This would mean that images can be deleted immediately if Are there any objections? -- Cid Highwind 16:30, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * the file name does not adhere to the rules stated on Memory Alpha:Image use policy,
 * the admin re-uploads the image under a new file name, mentioning the original uploader in the edit summary and
 * makes sure that this action does not result in any broken links.
 * Nope, however, I do find it quite annoying that I find all of these files that are poorly named and I can't delete. :( Surely I've proved my competency with such details. --Gvsualan 09:53, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Any further comments? If not, I will make this a part of the official policy soon... -- Cid Highwind 11:49, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Added to policy for immediate deletion. -- Cid Highwind 10:57, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Immediate deletion of user talk pages?
This special page shows all user talk pages. I'd like to add another item to the list of candidates for immediate deletion:


 * User talk pages of anonymous (IP) users if the content consists of only any type of welcome message and was edited more than 7 days ago.

Reason: Anonymous users either read the message immediately, or never. We don't need to keep those messages forever. Any objections, otherwise I will add that rule in the next days... -- Cid Highwind 11:03, 17 Jul 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds very plausible, one week is ok I think, because non static ips change after one day usually .. -- Kobi - (   ) 12:20, 17 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Added to policy. -- Cid Highwind 08:57, 20 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Deletioned of user pages of departed members
(The following was originally placed on Memory Alpha:Votes for deletion)
 * User:Gul Reid -- I'm leaving MA and I don't want to take up posthumous space.Gul Reid 16:00, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * I see that this is already being deleted (although it's not an "immediate deletion" candidate, I guess), but I think that these pages should not just be deleted (reasons follow if necessary, I just don't have the time right now). I suggest to (blank and) protect instead. -- Cid Highwind 16:16, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * I really didn't figure we had to vote on somebodies decision to leave ;) I did however blank it and protect it. --Alan del Beccio 05:10, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * No, we don't have to vote on that - but I think that we shouldn't remove it without comment, either. First, it isn't really necessary to delete the page at all, second, the user might want to return at some point in the future, third, we want to protect that users' page (and the talk page) from editing if the user isn't there to see it, fourth, there might still be something of interest to the rest of us on those pages and fifth, I really don't want to see any more User: pages in the list of wanted pages. :) -- Cid Highwind 10:58, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * In all fairness, I did mention that it was a user requested deletion -- and he did want it deleted so that it didn't take up space, that much is clear. Deleting it is the only way to fulfill such a request, no? --Alan del Beccio 18:07, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * This is the first time such a request has been made, so this discussion might better be moved to Memory Alpha talk:Deletion policy or something - let's not concentrate on these specific two pages. The most important question I see are:
 * Do we want any user page to simply disappear (leading to many broken links to User:X) and
 * Does a user have the right to request the deletion of comments made by others (regarding User Talk:X)?
 * Disk space is irrelevant here, because even deleted pages and their respective histories are kept somewhere (for possible later undeletion)... -- Cid Highwind 18:20, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki check before deletion
I'm just running my monthly interwiki check with my Bot and the poor guy is beeping all the time, because it wants to remove a lot of links from MA/de to MA/en, claiming there is no content on the page. When I look those up, I have to notice that the pages were deleted after moving. I think every Admin should check before deleting any moved page if there are interwiki links that need to be adjusted -- Kobi - (   ) 13:49, 2 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree - this ties in with my earlier comment about the deletion of redirects (now on Help talk:Redirect). Since this has already been discussed there, I will edit the policy immediately. -- Cid Highwind 15:03, 2 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Question about deletion (moved from Memory Alpha:Ten Forward)
I was thinking, there are quite a few pages on Memory Alpha that hardly have any relation to Star trek other than they appeared in a single episode. An example of this would be the Marley page. Why do we have these? Should these pages be deleted? The thing I am stuck with is that Memory Alpha is not a dictionary. Since Marley only appeared in for a few seconds, why do we have him? Anybody else have any thoughts? --Galaxy001 01:14, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * We have articles like this in an effort to be complete. Marley was a character in that episode like any other. Where should we draw the line? Should we delete references to characters mentioned but not seen, like Nogura? That would eliminate half our database. I don't really think there any way to qualify them, so including them all seems prudent (a lot of people probably agree with me and like the fact that MA lists minor characters and literary characters that appeared on Trek -- I know that I do).


 * And last time I checked, dictionaries didn't list people or literary characters. -- Captain M.K.B. 01:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I see what you're saying. I was just curious, that's all.  Thanks! :)--Galaxy001 01:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

October 2006 deletion policy

 * moved from Memory Alpha talk:Deletion policy/temp
 * moved from Memory Alpha talk:Votes for deletion

Comment: Actually we don't have a "vote system" regarding pages to be deleted - rather a page where all contributors can form a consensus on a page, based on which an admin can act. The title of this page is a little misleading, but was taken from Wikipedia when this project was created. Wikipedia has since renamed its page to "Pages for deletion", and perhaps we should do the same. Anyway, if any of our policy pages explicitly states that we don't accept a specific type of article (as in "We're not a dictionary"), and some page is exactly that, it should go, or the policy be rephrased. In any case, Vfd should not be a place to circumvent policies... -- Cid Highwind 08:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm for this and any other related updates. The site is starting to get that campy feel. --Alan del Beccio 00:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I support that as well. I've been getting real concerned both here and on images for deletion of that type of voting. As has been said, this isn't the place to establish new policy or to circumvent it, but in the last few weeks, it has started to feel like that is what people are trying to do. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  01:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I put a suggestion for a rephrased deletion policy here: Memory Alpha:Deletion policy/temp. Changes include: Please comment. -- Cid Highwind 14:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Clarified that "deletion discussion is not a vote".
 * Unified "lag times" from "5" or "7" days to "generally 5-7, with exceptions"
 * Removed part about vote restrictions - if it's note a vote, we don't really need those
 * General text rephrasing
 * Change: "Vfd" -> "Pfd"


 * gvsualan and OuroborosCobra, give some examples. Isn't the point of the speedy deletion page to list pages that clearly violate policy? --Bp 14:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

For example the deletion discussion regarding "Dismissed" (where my initial comment was taken from, and which now resides on Talk:Military parlance). There were three "votes" to "keep" when the article was still a simple dictionary definition, although our policies clearly state that we don't want to have those. Other examples are the several canon-related discussions of the past. Vfd/Pfd should not be the place where we discuss if a page should be kept although there are policies against it - take that discussion to the policy page itself, if really necessary. -- Cid Highwind 15:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * There have been other examples as well, that is just the most recent one. In addition, speedy deletions has a set list of what can be put there, and "Dismissed" simply did not qualify. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  15:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * What are some of the other examples? --Bp 15:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to search through the whole deletion archive to find those occurences - but there exist several discussions where the best outcome (according to policies) was not the one that got the majority of votes. This isn't restricted to a deletion against a majority of "keep votes", sometimes content was correctly moved/merged against several "delete votes" as well. -- Cid Highwind 16:10, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You are all talking about this huge problem that requires changing policy, I just want some examples to demonstrate the kind of things that you want to prevent. "There are many examples" doesn't do it. If it's really such a huge problem then there should be several instances for you to pick from. --Bp 16:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The "huge problem" is not a single instance of something happening on Vfd, it is the simple fact that one of our policy pages states that "we don't want an article of type X" (X being anything from pure nonsense to, for example, an elaborate article about fan fiction), and another policy page allows to keep it by having a vote on it. Is it a bad thing to correct that problem? -- Cid Highwind 16:42, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That there exists a policy that includes a procedure to override another policy is not a problem by itself. It is not wrong to have a procedure to provide a means to give exemption or to make exception to a policy. It also is not unreasonable to ask you and the others that favor changing the policy to demonstrate why it needs to be changed by showing more than one instance of an article that you believe was kept incorrectly. Furthermore, that an admin believes an article was kept incorrectly is not enough to override a consensus to keep the article. Your change proposes to make an admin's opinion carry more weight than the majority opinion of several archivists and remove a means by which archivists can make a special exception to a policy. --Bp 17:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a lot of stuff there, including some incorrect speculation about my intentions, so bear with me while this post is probably becoming a little lengthy...

First, you say that it's not a problem if one policy can override another - I agree, but that's not the case here. What we have are two policies that are able to override each other: "Content policies clearly disallow an article, but let's just vote to keep it anyway" vs. "We voted to delete an article, but let's just recreate it because, hey, that clause in the content policy allows it" (vs. the two other permutations necessary). I hope I'm not the only one who sees the inherent problem here? So, if we can't have two policies that work in combination, always, then we should at least make sure that it's possible for one to override the other, but not the other way around - and that is exactly what's being done here: make sure that content policies can override deletion policy, but don't let deletion policy override content policies. Realistically, that's the only possible way to have a mostly consistent article database; taking the other route would mean that, while there are pages describing in detail which articles should or should not exist on MA, the existance of individual articles contrary to those descriptions would depend "randomly" on how many users are available to voice their opinion for or against during an ill-defined time slot, and also including the possibility of sockpuppet accounts being used to skew the result of a vote.

Second, you say that this proposal would "remove a means to make a special exception to a policy". I say, the deletion procedure was never meant to allow for this - and regardless of that, I think that's a good thing, because I believe that something like "special exceptions to a policy" don't really work on at least this wiki (can't speak about others). So far, in the three years that I've been here, nearly every "one-time special exception" we made has been registered by someone just to drag it out of the depths of the archive and use it as a "precedent" in another, similar case. In the long run, any of these "special exceptions" will lead to either endless discussions about similar topics, or a change in content policies to fully allow content that was not allowed before (and yes, we already had several iterations of that). I think there should be more than a simple "deletion vote" necessary for that - and there still is a way to achieve this. If a change in content policies is considered necessary by someone, he should actually start discussing possible changes to those policies, and not do it using this strange procedure...

Third, and probably most important, you say that this proposal would "make an admin's opinion carry more weight than the majority opinion of several archivists" - this is simply untrue. My proposal is not about personal "opinions", it is about clear rules (and, still a consensus if the rules are not clear). I hope that any admin here is able to differentiate between his "opinion" about a specific page and the rules as laid down in our content policies. If he can't, he's just not a good admin - and if all admins are like that, we might as well just leave it at that and "go home". :) -- Cid Highwind 21:22, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Um, ditto. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  22:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Alright Cid, your's and Cobra's argument has convinced me. Especially the part about " talk  ", that was brilliant. --Bp 11:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The sig issue aside, are there any other comments regarding this? If not, I will move this suggestion to the policy page later. -- Cid Highwind 10:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

non canon and Immediate Deletion
Should we consider adding obvious non-canon based pages to the "Immediate Delete" list? It would save a few days wait time for what is really a simple black/white policy matter.Capt Christopher Donovan 09:45, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced that they need to be immediate deletes, as the policy already states that lag time can be dropped for obvious deletions. -- Sulfur 11:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Sulfur. Current policy would allow for pages to be deleted in less than the "suggested" time while still keeping the ability to wait for at least a "rough consensus" to form before proceeding with the deletion. We don't need another exception for that, I think. -- Cid Highwind 12:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm cool with that...I was just raising the possibility... :) Capt Christopher Donovan 07:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Images without copyright
Images in Category:Memory Alpha images without copyright disclaimer for 5-7 days should be candidates for immediate deletion. It seems silly to either add the deletion template right away and list it or have the image on the site without any copyright information for at least two weeks, assuming that a week is given for copyright and citation information to be added. - 15:45, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Rephrase suggestions
The section "Resolve a suggestion" currently states:
 * "As a general rule of thumb, an administrator should not delete a page he suggested himself"

As per Forum:Deletion of disputed images‎‎, I suggest to rephrase this as follows or similar (suggestion #1):
 * "Admins must not delete pages they suggested themselves, unless the following deletion discussion has been clearly uncontroversial"

Reason: There should be a "separation of powers" between suggesting a page or image for deletion (as a user) and acting upon that suggestion (as an admin)

While I'm at it, I also want to add another suggestion (#2), to be added near the top of this page, for example in the section "What does Deletion mean?":
 * "In case of images, this policy also applies to the act of deleting older image revisions, with the possible exception of revisions that don't differ from the current one except for quality."

Reason: "Clean-up action" should be restricted to image revisions that only differ in quality but not in content. In all other cases (meaning the old revision shows a different motive), there's no reason to not go for a full deletion discussion. -- Cid Highwind 14:43, February 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * Regarding #1, I don't currently see how the proposed reword changes much. The current wording is AFAIK already interpreted in such a manner.  I don't think it would have affected anything with the discussion that prompted this suggestion.  I don't yet have any issues with adding #2.--31dot 15:10, February 16, 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... In that recent case, AD brought up an image for deletion, then we had a controversial discussion about it, then he deleted it. According to the current policy, this form of basically being "judge, jury and executioner" in one person is acceptable, and only the additional facts that the controversy hadn't really been resolved yet and that I complained about led to a review by another admin. My suggestion would add another layer of "checks&balances" (the review by another admin would happen automatically) to prevent something like this from happening in the first place, hopefully leading to less incivility along the way.

A (perhaps even better) alternative might be to add a more general form of the suggested statement to our admin policies:
 * If you've already acted "as a user" in a discussion, you mustn't also act "as an admin" in the same discussion. For example, if you have suggested an article for deletion, you mustn't perform the deletion yourself.

-- Cid Highwind 15:25, February 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem I have with that suggestion is that admins tend to be the only ones who participate in deletion discussions- which would mean that either none of them would be able to comment on deletion discussions, or none of them would be able to delete something if that was the consensus(since they would have commented on it) which would affect how deletion discussions are done.
 * I would simply, if necessary, add to the current wording, "especially if the discussion was controversial". Maybe it should be stated clearer, but I don't think the wording inherently results in incivility between users. --31dot 16:00, February 16, 2012 (UTC)

In which case, I prefer your suggestion from AD's talk page of some "advance notification" well before deletion. In our case, a comment along the lines of "I'm going to delete this tomorrow, because there's consensus for it." would obviously have clashed with the earlier request to "remove the deletion suggestion as unsuccessful". In combination, the new phrasing might read:
 * "As a general rule of thumb, an administrator should not delete a page he suggested himself, especially if the discussion was controversial. In exceptional cases, an "involved" administrator can delete a self-suggested page, but only after adding a notification to the discussion well before deletion."

-- Cid Highwind 17:00, February 16, 2012 (UTC)
 * I could live with that.--31dot 17:40, February 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * I will not live with it. There is no need for further instruction creep here, until matters are settled elsewhere. - 00:06, February 17, 2012 (UTC)

Participation of non-logged in users
Upon seeing this PfD suggestion proposed by an anon user, I quickly reviewed the deletion policy and was confused; it states that "Anyone may submit a page for deletion" but further down states that "Any logged-in archivist may join the discussion of any deletion suggestion" Does this mean that an anon user who suggests a page for deletion cannot participate in the discussion of their own suggestion, or that only other anon users cannot participate? 31dot 03:07, May 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I would say that anons shouldn't take any part in a deletion discussion, including starting one, if only to be sure that it is the same person if they reply to comments. IP addresses can be changed easily, a user name not as much, and accounts are easy and free to set up. - 03:14, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

I'm actually slightly less concerned about the sock puppeting(though a valid point) than having submissions by users who might just be passing through- posting the Jumper suggestion and deletion tag are the only edits by that user. I would suggest changing "Anyone may submit..." to "Any logged-in archivist..." to match the same phrase seen later in the policy. 31dot 03:24, May 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't really have any issue with "drive by deletion suggestions" as it were, but we should be consistent in who can participate. If I remember correctly, we changed who could nominate FAs for the same reason, so I'm fine with the suggested wording change. This wouldn't effect the open discussion though. - 03:32, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

Agree with your last statement. 31dot 10:06, May 10, 2012 (UTC)