User talk:Rossami - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rossami (talk | contribs) at 04:41, 15 November 2005 (→Signatures). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 04:41, 15 November 2005 by Rossami (talk | contribs) (→Signatures)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Purged into page history as of 22:05, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 23:22, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 06:01, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Purged onto page history as of 12:36, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 19:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Awarded for your creativity and thoughtfulness when wading through VfD discussions.

Please accept this barnstar. I'm impressed that you never seem reluctant to handle the tough, convoluted VfD closing decisions that lots of people shy away from. Joyous 03:26, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

SLA members merge

Hi Rossami, thanks for your comments and actions on the SLA member merge. I felt that both being bold and merging, or VfD-ing was going to be controversial, so I opted for a consultative process. I'm fairly new to all this, and still finding my feet in terms of best wikipedia practice. Thanks again, An An 08:17, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I was just wondering if you missed Camilla Hall on VfD. Her decision was rendered by another admin., and now there is a revote which might result in a keep. I'm fine with merging or keeping each SLA, but I think it will be a bit odd if all of these decisions aren't consistent. Just thought I'd bring her to your attention. Thanks. Xoloz 07:26, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

greeting/deletion policy debate.

Hi thanks for replying. I would reiterate that any current contribution I might make on wiki is very arbitrary and due to random investigation. Happily I managed to find the page again, though I have yet to discover a real vote for deletion. It does sound a little like watching gladiators in the arena, so far. Oh, and I see you were once accused of wanting to retain any and all pages, however trivial. Also that you seem to be respected here.Sandpiper 23:45, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Star Wars Wiki

Hey there. I have noticed your contributions to Star Wars articles, and I thought you might be interested in the Star Wars Wiki project. We could use new Star Wars contribs like yourself helping the cause. Take a look, and I hope to see you there. Cheers! --SparqMan 14:42, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks for reposting and reformatting that material

... and I'm sorry it was so badly written in the first place. It did look repetitive, and I am very grateful for your fix. BrandonYusufToropov 20:53, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ed Poor has been kind enough to nominate me for an adminship

...which I think will go a long way toward resolving unproductive disputes on pages he and I both edit. Anyone who is interested in voting one way or the other is invited to the discussion here. BrandonYusufToropov 17:08, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vfd: Hoaxes

Misplaced Pages:Patent nonsense says that patent non-sense is not to be confused with... Hoaxes and to Check the Deletion policy policy for information on how to handle these things. But the deletion policy does not mention anything about hoaxes. What is the policy regarding hoaxes?--AI 16:24, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Articles which are hoaxes are deletable. (Articles about a particularly notable hoax may or may not be accepted by the community.) Hoax articles, however, are explicitly not speedy-deletable. We have had far too many cases where an article was nominated for deletion as a "hoax" but during the VfD discussion were discovered to be true (though very obscure). Because of this, hoax articles must go through the Votes for Deletion process so that they are scrutinized by multiple people. See my user page for an informal list of examples. Patent nonsense, on the other hand, is speedy-deletable and can be deleted without discussion by the first admin who happens to discover it. Rossami (talk) 18:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks--AI 23:07, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

CSD expansion

Hi there! Based on the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load, I've put together a proposal to expand CSD, here: Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal. Before it is put to a general vote I would like your advise on the wording and intent; could you please take a look? Thanks, R adiant _>|< 13:32, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Yogananda Image Gallery

I asked this on the vfd/old with no response, so I thought I'd ask one of the admins that works there. Misplaced Pages:Yogananda Image Gallery is in the transwiki queue awaiting a move to the commons (see the vfd ruling). However, all of the images appear to be tagged as fair use. As the commons policy states: "since the commons does not accept fair use content this image will need to be deleted." What is to be done? --Dmcdevit 18:40, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Surnames

Some Wiktionarians want to delete surnames from Wiktionary. I'm opposing, on the grounds that this is a long-standing arrangement between Wiktionary and Misplaced Pages, where Wiktionary handles the lexicography and Misplaced Pages handles the people and places. Please come to Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#Surnames and contribute to the discussion. Uncle G 2005-07-03 13:43:16 (UTC)

Deletion Policy Question

Hi, I was the user who listed "Dr. Jerry Griffin" on VfD. I am glad it was deleted, but curious about your comments: why are the votes of "extremely new users" discounted? First, you can't infer with certainty from the fact the network ID doesn't correspond with previous edits (etc.) to the fact that the USER connected with the identification in their signature is in fact a novice. Second, why does it matter? It seems a bit elitist ... absent proof of sockpuppetry, I don't see why those votes shouldn't count. 128.122.91.174 3 July 2005 20:16 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the problems with sockpuppets become very severe a while back. We had some egregious examples of attempts to bias voting. It was especially bad in VfD discussions. By themselves, they actually weren't so bad for Misplaced Pages. They were so egregious that they were obvious. But we also had people who started making public statements about their intent to become more sophisticated in their attempts to bias the voting. A few people actually started bragging about how they were going to create endless sockpuppets and "bring Misplaced Pages to its knees". (VfD discussions often bring out the worst in people. It can become very easy to lose sight of our sole purpose - to write an encyclopedia.) Anyway, the problems got bad enough that many admins (myself included) decided that it was more fair to discount all the unsigned, anonymous or very new votes. It was also the only practical solution. It is actually very difficult to prove sockpuppetry beyond the level of mere suspicion. This practice of discounting all anon or new votes is allowed by the Deletion policy but does fly in the face of Misplaced Pages:Assume good faith. Good admins do their best to strike the right balance and to make exceptions based on the specific facts at hand but everyone makes mistakes. We just hope that there is enough community oversight that the mistakes will get corrected.

I'll also add that a good admin will weigh the comments and ignore the votes. Despite the name "Votes for deletion", it's not about voting at all. The purpose of the page is to reach a working concensus (as much as possible within the time available) through discussion, debate and the presentation of facts and evidence. The "vote count" is an informal measure of the degree to which concensus has been reached in the discussion so far. But the "vote count" is only one piece of evidence. An admin can consider it when making the decision but the vote count is of far lesser weight than the comments and facts presented by the discussion participants. One well reasoned, fact-based and cited comment from an anonymous user can outweigh an unlimited number of unsubstantiated "votes" made signed-in users. That's why I use the word "discounted" rather than "ignored". I carefully read the comments no matter who made them. I weigh the comments and check the evidence before making my decision. I do everything I can to carefully compare the comments and arguments to Misplaced Pages's established policy. Comments in line with policy get more weight. Comments at odds with policy get less. Then I make the best decision I can. But I do exclude the anon and new users from the "vote count". It's more consistent that way.

The problem is that anonymous and/or new users rarely have the experience with Misplaced Pages policies, practices or norms to make those insightful and fact-based contributions to the deletion discussion. Every admin uses his/her best judgment and makes the tough call. We hope that the good decisions outweigh the bad decisions and that we continue to make progress toward creating the encyclopedia - and we trust that the really bad decisions will get reviewed and reversed as necessary. I hope that answers your question. Rossami (talk) 4 July 2005 03:13 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the detailed and insightful response. I appreciate your taking the time to explain how the policies are interpreted. Have a good one. 66.218.13.24 4 July 2005 23:39 (UTC)

wpvfdhide

You can now see the instructions on my user page. Basically you need Greasemonkey which runs on Mozilla Firefox only. Check my user page. r3m0t July 4, 2005 07:10 (UTC)

VfD wisdom and diligence

You did an excellent job handling the difficult VfD case of Don Black. In fact I came over to award you a barnstar for it, but I see you recently received one for your VfD skills already. You deserve it, and even a second one, unless you don't want to clutter you page. In the case of Black you had to use both diplomatic and research skills. Thanks for handling it so well. Cheers, -Willmcw July 5, 2005 06:34 (UTC)

Redlinks in dab

Every one of the redlinks in Conlon was a person mentioned in an existing Misplaced Pages article. It seems to me most unlikely that the creator of the redlinked articles will think to update this list. I do not understand the harm done by having them as redlinks until they are populated. —Theo (Talk) 6 July 2005 09:27 (UTC)

Answered at length on your Talk page. Apologies for the very long post. Rossami (talk) 6 July 2005 15:35 (UTC)

Thank you for thaking the time to answer so fully. —Theo (Talk) 6 July 2005 20:52 (UTC)

Expeditious deletion

Sounds like a good idea. In answer to your concerns,

"if a disputed or controversial assertion is added, the article should/must be added to VFD". I do prefer the word 'should'. People are never under any obligation to list anything on VFD, nor to delete anything. If someone thinks that the assertion is controversial, then it would be proper for that person to add it to VFD. If the person isn't sure, or has something better to do, we cannot force him.
That is true, and it makes sense to add it under one of the notes below. "When an assertion to importance or significance is made to the article, the template should be removed."
True. I intentionally limited this to the three biggest burdens on VFD - people, websites and bands. It would make sense to expand this at a later point, for instance to include player characters from RPGs, or secret societies that are so secret that we don't know a thing about them. I believe WP:COMIC should be merged into WP:WEB.e
Also true. This is not an expansion on the CSD process, and is (I hope clearly) marked as such. It would be a separate policy (Misplaced Pages:Expeditious deletion for now) and we should link it from policy pages as appropriate.

It just struck me, by the way, that this proposal may not be able to get rid of sockpuppets (e.g. if the template states 'please assert notability' then a vanity user may simply do so and force it onto VFD anyway). However, that means that the proposed policy isn't perfect, but still very useful.

Discussion is good! Thanks for your interest. Yours, R adiant _>|< July 7, 2005 19:59 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Jew York Times

Sorry — I should have checked. I picked it up from Misplaced Pages talk:Votes for deletion, and it didn't occur to me that it hadn't been set up properly. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 7 July 2005 21:15 (UTC)

Timeline for missing persons following the September 11, 2001 Attacks

It's really quite funny, I had just finished transwiking the article to sep11: Timeline for missing persons following the September 11, 2001 Attacks when you deleted it. :) func(talk) 7 July 2005 23:38 (UTC)

Finding a place was easy, I just gave it the same name. It's easy enough to allow editors there to decide where it should be moved to. :) func(talk) 7 July 2005 23:45 (UTC)

Vfd conflict

Your decision on Flick's article is fine with me. Have a wonderful evening. Joyous (talk) July 8, 2005 00:54 (UTC)

An extended essay about Ferrari covering from the birth of Enzo Ferrari to 200

I understand your reasons for keeping this as a redirect in order to preserve the edit history, but could you perhaps move it to a better redirect title, and then delete the resulting redirect from the original title? After all, no one will ever search for "An extended essay about Ferrari covering from the birth of Enzo Ferrari to 200". Cheers! -- BDAbramson July 8, 2005 17:57 (UTC)

GTA4

Right, firstly I’d like to say that deleting Grand Theft Auto 4 was no more that a pathetic attempt to flex your deletion muscles, second - I’d like to point out that the least you should of done is made a placeholder & finally Please don’t try and call this vandalism, this is purely an attempt to give my opinion of your actions! not a personal attack. Agent003 - Grand Theft Auto Fanatic

Just to add if you do decide to bring the page back may I suggest making it Grand Theft Auto IV not Grand Theft Auto 4 -- Thanks Agent003

verses

Hiya,

you recently voted to delete John 20:16

Uncle G has made a wider proposal covering a much larger group of verses.

would you be prepared to make a similar vote at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Individual Bible verses, which covers the full list of verses in Uncle G's suggestion?

~~~~ 9 July 2005 16:43 (UTC)

VfD closing

Thanks for the template tips, I have put them in my toolkit! Cheers! -- BDAbramson 20:44, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

American West VFD

I've put together a tally in my sandbox for the vote. Since you are already familiar with the situation, could you please double check/correct the tally or confirm it's accuracy. Thanks. -JCarriker 23:08, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't say you were butting in at all, as a matter of fact I'm pleased you've taken a passing interest in it. You're right that I take it personally, but the answer as to why is somewhat complex. In short CPret knowingly went around an existing article to create a POV duplicate article that dismissed the existing article, and then preceded to pretend as if I were not capable of interpreting policies I had a hand in writing. That's what intitated it- but continually asserting to an East Texan that Texas no ties to Southern culture, which is like trying to tell someone in southern Scottland that they're English, means eventually their tolerance is going to wear out and there going to take an aggresive defensive posture.

You're right that there is a vision, but it's larger than just defining the West. The vision is to have regional articles that ackowledge something traditional encyclopedias have ignored for years, but that every (rational) person knows: regions over lap, and with most of them there is not a single defintion of what they should include. Eliminating stereotypes (presented as fact) from articles and recognizing the geographic and cultural diverisity of regions, is an important secondary goal. The WikiProject's policies, most of them drafted by me and approved by the partipants, can be viewed on WikiProject US regions' main page. I think you'll find the policies more cosmopolitan, than certain users argued. For an idea of how regional maps would be presented and captioned see at the map at East Texas, and just substitute to the word counties for states. -JCarriker 08:07, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

VFD multi-noms

This issue has come up before - in fact, in the discussion on reducing VFD load, there was a proposal to set a strict limit of nominations per user per day. Also, I agree that consolidating nominations should be done with great care, but then shouldn't we at least have some place to explain how to do it? The GVFD sounds appropriate. Yours, R adiant _>|< 12:54, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I don't really care about nomination limits per day; the worst that can happen is that some user will only make one nomination per day, so we might as well leave that out as you suggest. However, the issue of consolidated noms does come up every now and then, and in particular it could save us time if people did it correctly, so I would like to have it explained somewhere. As a side point, regarding instruction creep, the entire GVFD has probably gotten too long by now, we may want to look over it and snip it down a bit. R adiant _>|< 13:35, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Re my nasty attempt to clarify

You need have no fear of seeing me on your page again in any context. Bishonen | talk 20:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Request for advice

Hi Rossami. I did something very dangerous today. I closed Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Religious persecution by Jews as a "keep (no consensus)". A number of users, IZAK and Ambi for instance, have protested my decision and have asked the debate to be reopened (see Talk:Religious persecution by Jews). Do you have any advice as to what I should do? I have also going to asked SimonP for his input. Thanks, Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:07, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Tranwikiing

Right here might be what you are looking for. It's pretty clear. Bear in mind that while tranwiking keeps the article in some form, if deletes it from wikipedia. VfDs in wikipedia can only decide what happens with this project, and cannot dictate what happens to the material elsewhere. As a courtesy, it can be submitted to another project, but it is deleted here. Do you believe that when people vote "dicdef: tranwiki to wiktionary" they are implying that they want to article kept in wikipedia as well, even though WP:NOT a dictionary? Or "transwiki to wikibooks" on "how to grill the perfect steak" means they want it to keep it? The other projects are out of the scope of what happens here. -R. fiend 23:26, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I admit it's a difficult distinction. As long as a tramswiki vote is interpreted as "get it the hell out of wikipedia" I don't much care if people call it a keep or a delete. The thing I like about transwiki votes is that they can sometimes please everyone. Since I have no involvement in any other wiki I can honestly say I don't care at all what happens to any article after it leaves the wikipedia articlespace. So to me, when I see something I think has no place in an encyclopedia and want it deleted, a tranwiki is as good as a delete. Yet people whose sole concern is not "destroying" any "information" are appeased as well, because it's kept somewhere (in theory, though the other wiki can delete it too if they don't want it).

Now if you really want to, as you say "get rid of that artificial distinction between "keep" and "delete" votes", well, I'm all for that, I guess, but the whole binary position of VfD (which states that everything is either some form of keep or delete) is pretty well established and vehementtly defended by some. The problem, in my mind, is one of consensus. I've been in a rather heated argument with an admin who seems to go out of his way to avoid seeing a consensus in any VfD vote. I think anyone in their right mind would see a VfD with just 5 delete votes and 5 transwiki votes as a consensus to, if nothing else, remove the article from wikipedia. He has clearly stated that such a vote has no consensus, and should be kept (he has the same opinion on, if you can believe it, delete and BJAODN votes). This can be a real problem, and is something I feel needs to be addressed, but it may mean overhauling the entire VfD system, which is difficult. There are enough people who are so opposed to deletion of any sort that they will fight tooth and nail against anything that has he appearance of making deletion consensuses easier to form. I just think the wishes of the voters should be honored when interpreting their votes. -R. fiend 12:16, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

If you don't mind me bumping in... "transwiki" of course isn't theoretically a deletion since the information isn't lost, but rather stored on a sisterproject. However, some admins contend that VFD is a binary process between 'keep' and 'delete'. In the spirit of that, and per the recent CSD addendum that an article may be deleted if transwikied after VFD consensus to do so, if an admin is summing up votes, a vote to transwiki should (probably) be counted under the heading of delete. I did this reorg after a remark by Tony Sidaway along these lines. I'm not necessarily happy with the process as it stands now (note the dozen discussions to change it) but within our current framework, I believe this to be workable. R adiant _>|< 12:42, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

E-mail away

Just a note to say that I sent just a note a moment or two ago. Geogre 16:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Deletion reform

The discussion has split over a dozen subpages, become an awful mess of people wanting to throw in their personal pet peeve, and mostly died down. I've seen few workable proposals down there. And I think involving Meta is not useful since most EN users don't read it. Sorry if that sounded harsh but it was kind of messy. I believe a useful thing to do would be to wait a week or two, and at that point show two or three fully worked-out proposals (as opposed to vague suggestions) for community input. The deletion requests you mentioned sounds like a candidate (I'll add some comments to its talk page). I've written some of my own thoughts on User:Radiant!/Deletion (feedback welcome, in particular on the very lightweight proposal at the end).

Other than that, I think it's worth establishing (by vote, if necessary) what certain votes mean; there are some people that consider 'redirect' a keep vote, or 'merge' a delete vote. And it's worth establishing whether VFD should be 'binary' to begin with - many people assert either way. R adiant _>|< 08:23, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Couldn't help but overhear, as it were. There are some people who consider BJAODN to be a keep vote! It is, to me, among the first ranks of abuse for people who disagree with the deletion process to "volunteer" to be the ones who close VfD's and not even be sanctioned when they reverse other admins by undeleting (without VfU) articles. I'm pretty livid about it and astonished at how meekly the community is reacting -- which is a reason why I should stay out of the particulars of it, I guess. Geogre 16:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Peace is good

Glad to know that things are mellowing and that there's no need for anything more. The issue behind it is going to sometimes show up for all of us, and probably we all end up on the "other" side at some point. I'm just glad that this is taking care of itself. If there's anything I can do, just let me know. Geogre 16:21, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Religious persecution by Jews again

Hi again Rossami. I though the matter was settled. But now User:Neutrality decided to go ahead and override my "no consensus" decision and delete the article anyway. Twice. It was restored twice as well. From the deletion log we have:

18:33, 8 August 2005 Kim Bruning restored "Historical persecution by Jews"
14:59, 8 August 2005 Neutrality deleted "Historical persecution by Jews" (Re-deleting. There was an obvious two-thirds consensus on VfD to delete. This is "broad consensus." A small minority of users will no be allowed to override the broad consensus. Take it to VfU if you must.)
10:03, 8 August 2005 Tony Sidaway restored "Historical persecution by Jews"
19:47, 7 August 2005 Neutrality deleted "Historical persecution by Jews" (VfD debate had an overwhelming vote to delete (at least 2:1).)

There is also discussion about this taking place at WP:VFU#Historical persecution by Jews and at Misplaced Pages talk:Votes for deletion/Religious persecution by Jews.

From what I can see, a number of users are defending Neutrality's actions by voting "keep deleted" on the VFU debate. I am at a complete loss... why do people think that it is alright to let a participant in the VFD debate unilaterally overturn the result simply because he doesn't agree with it? As far as I know there is no precedent for allowing anyone, much less a participant in a VFD debate, to alter the result of a debate which was validly closed by someone who had the authority to do so. It makes me quite angry to see people arbitrarily override my decisions. I wonder if I should start an RFC on this, or ask the arbitration comitee to look into this. Since you are one of those most knowledgable about the rules and regulations about VFD, I wonder if you have any advice? Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:28, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. The article in question is not one which I have many feelings for, and if I thought there were a consensus to delete that article I would have done it without blinking. I know that there are a number of users here who have very strong feelings about it. But it upsets me when a majority uses it's size and sheer number to try to force it's opinion in violation of all process. (First delete the article out of process, and then have the majority say "keep deleted" on the VFU debate.) In general my view on following or bending or breaking policy is that it is alright sometimes, barely, to act in violation of policy if it won't upset anybody. We shouldn't follow policy just for the sake of following policy, common sense is a virtue, and I am a supporter of WP:IAR. But when breaking or even bending policy upsets or wrongs people we should follow the policy really tightly. Not for the sake of following policy, but for the sake of ensuring that everybody is treated fairly. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:14, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

m:Transwiki

I saw your revert to m:Transwiki asking for confirmation. I posted the best explaination I could at m:Talk:Transwiki, specifically asking for what I need to offer as evidence. Can you take a look at it and let me know? Since I'm not on Meta very often, could you give me a heads up at my talk page here when you've responded on Meta? Thanks! -- Essjay · Talk 11:52, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you completely; I think having to VfD a transwiki'd page is overkill. I wasn't trying to change the policy because I disagree with it, I just didn't want some other admin (most likely a new admin, and new admins get enough criticism as is) to follow the Meta page and get jumped on because the process on EN has changed. I'll ask at AN and see what happens; my guess is that it will create a discussion that gets us nowhere, but still, it's a discussion. Since the issue is obviously unclear, I think the Meta policy should stay as it is (without the caveat) until we have some definate source to point to one way or another. I'll let you know what turns up from the AN discussion. -- Essjay · Talk 03:24, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Your message

Thanks for taking the time to write, I appreciate your comments and advice - I hope that you didn't consider any of my questions or comments to be inflamatory, please let me know if you do. I'll take a look at the new pages though! Thanks, Trollderella 18:44, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for reopening the Historical persecution by Jews VFD debate, I have now irrevocably made it clear that I will not be closing that one (one black eye is enough). I have no particular feelings for the article, I don't care whether or not it is deleted, and even if I did, there would be nothing preventing me from reading it. I would like to thank you for your assistence during this saga. For the sake of whoever volunteers to close this debate, I hope that there will be a clear result this time round. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

VFD Bot & Policy discussions

Being that the Policy discussions has been changed to central discussions, do you wish for the Central discussions to be removed from now on? --AllyUnion (talk) 04:06, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

It will be no problem. I'll have to get NekoDaemon up and running first. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:38, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Tony Little

I'm hoping it's ok. I created a brand new Tony Little article, free of oopy-vio. So, you may wish to resume the vfd voting process now. --rob 21:45, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/University of Washington Police Department

That probably was a good decision and as a closing admin I know we're allowed to use our descresion. But deleting that would be making Misplaced Pages a democracy, wouldn't it? I'd say that's a definite no consensus. Redwolf24 00:19, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

See also Misplaced Pages:Votes for undeletion#University of Washington Police Department. P.S. you're a great guy and I have nothing against you :) Redwolf24 00:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Deletion

You said, "Decisions closed by an admin stay closed". But that's hardly the case for anything else; any admin action (or, indeed, any action) can be discussed and overturned. So why should a deletion decision be immutably set by whichever admin happens to get there first? It seems to me that this is precisely what VFU is for. R adiant _>|< 10:28, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

It may have worked so far, but it seems to be cracking lately, hence the discussion here and there. There is (imo) an improper difference here... VFU is about examining whether the process was valid - but VFD is not. Putting an article through VFD a second time is likely to have the same results as the first time (plus to annoy some people - there are often strong sentiments against re-VFD-ing anything). And the same admin can then close it yet again and make the same contested decision yet again. That seems undesirable. It may seem strange to use VFU for something that wasn't actually deleted, but we have more misnomers in process (VFD itself, for instance). The idea of VFU is to establish whether a process was valid, and mistakes made in closing a VFD can happen either way. Radiant_>|< 13:03, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree. If two admins disagree, the matter should be taken to the community (AN/I for blocking, RPP for protecting, VFU for deleting - sound good?), to avoid admin wars. Radiant_>|< 13:21, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
  - Please visit WP:VFU's talk page - I've put up a formalized proposal and would like your opinion. R adiant _>|< 10:01, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Evil?

Gee, I don't know, I suppose someone merged it? I'm not really active on meta anyways. The three pages were pretty much redundant anyway (the third being m:don't vote on everything). See also WP:EVILPOLL, or maybe it was WP:EVILVOTE. R adiant _>|< 22:47, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Instruction creep and VfD

I was ticked off by somebody for closing a VfD with a keep for no consensus. She pointed the Misplaced Pages:Deletion process which had been changed to read:

If the discussion failed to reach concensus, the decision defaults to "keep" but should be explicitly recorded as "NOT DELETED: No Consensus". This tends to reduce future confusion

I thought it was some kind of prank at first, then noticed that you had done it. Going to the discussion it doesn't seem like there was much in the way of consensus for this rather drastic and prescriptive change, and looking at recent closes I see no sign that sysops are even aware of the ~~suggestion~~ policy, let alone following it.

Is there a particular reason why you're attached to this? I do think it's one of those instances of m:instruction creep that must be examined carefully. Does this change really reduce confusion? In my mind it only compounds it by introducing a term "not deleted", which is imprecise. We keep, we don't "not delete", the process is identical in every respect and the reason is that we don't delete without consensus. It also seems to me that it sends the wrong message, implying a third class of article: kept, deleted and undeleted. I've had some um, shall we say slightly overheated bods baying for my blood for doing some closes that seem to have been pretty damned unexceptionable, and I suppose that might be held to be evidence of a need to change, but I see no enthusiasm in the greater community (I think there were like two dozen endorsements to my response to that RfC) and hate to see all this rushing to-and-fro changing things that probably don't need to be changed.

And all-in-all, I would have expected far wider discussion prior to such a prescriptive move. --Tony Sidaway 06:06, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, you may have seen my responses to you on my talk page. I've thought some more about it since then. Broadly I think it's okay now that it's clear to me that you didn't aim for a prescriptive result. Would it be in order to replace the form of words with an injunction to "aim for clarity"? It seems to me that any form of words promoted will tend to be misused as a prescription, as has already happened on my talk page. If we simply have to aim for clarity then we will be free to make our own mind which is the most clear way to represent the result. Some think the most clear way of expressing a result is to call a keep a keep; others may think that they should say "not delete" rather than "keep". I do not think that there will be substantial agreement in the near future on what is more clear. As you know I don't even understand why "do not delete" could be thought more clear when the effect is identical to keep in every way. --Tony Sidaway 21:49, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. Will you do the edit or would you like me to? Rossami (talk) 23:14, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

If I did it, it would be somewhat controversial in some sensitive quarters. If you think it's okay for you to do so then please feel free. --Tony Sidaway 00:38, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll tweak it a bit to soften the appearance of prescription. --Tony Sidaway 03:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a wonderful idea, and it would prevent people from misrepresenting outcomes. No consensus is not the same as a consensus to keep, and there's no reason why VFD closers shouldn't be accurate in their summarizing. It's amazing that Tony talks about his RFC everywhere even when it's not relevant and still considers it a strong endorsement for all his actions; anyone who has read it will see that it is in fact substantial criticism that he chooses to ignore. R adiant _>|< 08:55, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

WP:RM

Not my call please ask the proposer user:Uncle G. I'm happy to go along with anything, but if a WP:RM is made then like VDFs there is a procedure to go throught and unless (s)he is willing to withdraw it, for clarity and transparancy, the requested move ought to follow WP:RM guidelines. The reason I formatted it that way is because at the moment it is impossible to tell if a consensus is emerging or if it is just some noisy people saying there is. Philip Baird Shearer 23:51, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion change over

VFD bot has been set up to do the new Articles for deletion pages. Please make certain that all the necessary moves are done. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:29, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

User:AFD Bot now set up to take over User:VFD Bot's tasks. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:40, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Guide_to_deletion#Relisting_when_no_consensus_because_of_few_votes

As an experienced AfD/VfD closer I would appreciate your comments on this. I've been moving unclosed very short discussions from the oldest day log to the newest one instead of just passing them by or closing them. Radiant took a violent dislike to this for reasons that aren't clear to me, and he's voiced his opinion by editing Misplaced Pages:Guide to deletion. --Tony Sidaway 08:36, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Tony, would you mind being civil for a chance and not insulting me on other people's talk pages? I've explained the reasoning several times - that a discussion with only four votes, all of which are to delete, is a consensus to delete. If you fail to understand that you really shouldn't be doing AFD closing. R adiant _>|< 15:34, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

I apologise if my description of your actions in claiming that I was violating WP:POINT, followed by going to policy and changing the wording, apparently so as to forbid me to do relistings of this kind, struck you as insulting. I felt that I was putting it mildly.

I disagree with you that two or three people saying "delete" or "keep" or whatever necessarily constitutes anything that can meaningfully be termed a consensus, and see no harm in extending discussion in order to get more feedback. Your reaction to this simple expedient puzzles me. I try to understand your point of view, but it all seems to come back to your apparent belief that you alone can arbitrate on when there is or is not a consensus, and your evident wish to turn that opinion into Misplaced Pages prescriptions on Misplaced Pages policy pages. --Tony Sidaway 17:59, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

re: CBHQ

joe at joe-baldwin.net. If you could include any pictures present in the article that would be fantastic...please send the article in Wikitext form. Thanks very much. JoeBaldwin 13:51, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

done. Rossami (talk)

WP:GVFD

It looks quite good to me. I think I saw a few grammatical bits that I might work with tomorrow, but, for various reasons tackling them right now could prove counterproductive. Joyous (talk) 02:02, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

rojo deletion

Wondering why Misplaced Pages:Votes_for_deletion/Rojo.com was deleted without consensus. I feel that I justified the page based on public wikipedia policy. what gives? thanks, but frustrated. Here 02:46, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

responded on your Talk page. Rossami (talk)

Rosicrucian article

Dear user Rossami, as I have seen an edition of yours at the article Rosicrucian, I come to request your support to this article that I have just purposed for nomination at Misplaced Pages:Featured_article_candidates#Rosicrucian. May you may give a look into it? And, if you consider it acceptable, then may you support it? Thank you! :) --GalaazV 02:49, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Sectioned AFD

Proposed a change to AFD to make internally chronological sections the default format for the AFD discussion pages. Take a look at Template:afd2s and Template Talk:afds2. In the interest of being bold I impliment my idea by adjusting the instructions, but User:Uncle G voiced an objection and suggested I also discuss the matter with you. I believe the primary concerns around AFD's with sections have been driven by expirence with AFDs converted to sections after they have begun, and do not exist (or at lest not exist to the same extent) in the case where the AFD begins as a split body. If you could comment on this matter on the afd2s talk page or on User Talk:Uncle G I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks --Gmaxwell 01:03, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

So you alone are the community now?

I would appreciate it if you would remove the notice you placed on Template talk:Afd2s right away. I requested your position on the matter after Uncle G voiced some dissent because I wanted to move forward with my proposal in a way which would minimize disruption. By unilaterally placing that notice you have subverted my ability to discuss the matter by implying that there is consensus and closures where there is none, and although you intended no harm you have substantially overstepped your authority to make such a determination on your own. In short, you made a mistake now please undo it. If you would like to discuss my suggestion, that would be fantastic. If you would like to ignore my suggestion, thats your call. But to imply that there was a consensus to stop discussion is bogus, particularly referencing meta:Polls are evil as the basis your call of all things, and I hope you don't do this sort of thing to newbies who don't know any better. --Gmaxwell 02:45, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

responded (at length) on your Talk page. Rossami (talk)

CSD:G4

I think it can safely go now. Anyone who's voiced an alternative opinion has had a bit of time to respond, and the changes are made. Perhaps a note beside the archive describing the changes? I'd do it but my browser has the s l o w s right now. Oh, on that note, could you watch User:217.33.2.207 while you're around tonight? Persistant viagra-style linkspammer, I've caught two but experiance shows there will be more. I'm actually going to quit waiting for pages to load and go smell some flowers or something.
brenneman 14:02, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

done Rossami (talk)

Re:Request help closing some deletion discussions

I agree with your assessment. Delete these and copy the content to BJAODN, which seems like the perfect home for this sort of thing. - SimonP 00:28, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

The scope of VfU

Considering the Harry Potter trolling VfU discussion and several recent ones, it's time we revived the discussion on Misplaced Pages talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU and dealt with the question directly. You were involved in the original discussion and your remarks on this VfU suggested you might nevertheless want to chip in, so I thought I'd let you know. We'd got about as far as simplifying the immediately preceding discussion and then things sort of stalled. Anyway, I've started a new section on that Talk: page. -Splash 21:52, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for deletion/Harry Potter trolling (second nomination)

Ambi and I are in a bit of a to-and-fro at the moment. I think the central question seems to boil down to: "must a 6 delete, 6 merge vote be interpreted as a consensus to merge?"

My position is that I can see no consensus there, but I think some bolder admins might guess that the delete voters would be happier with a merge. While they may be prepared to do that, I don't feel that it's correct, because the merge can be performed, if there really is a consensus for it, outside the AfD close. There is (or should be) nothing special about an admin performing a merge. If other admins want to do this, it's their business and I don't think it's that bad an idea, but I think it's a little bit of m:instruction creep that I'd rather not support, given the guesswork involved.

Ambi's position seems to be that I'm wilfully misreading policy and disregarding consensus. I find it frankly incredible but this is apparently her strongly held view and the reason why she brought an RfC against me in early August.

As far as I'm aware my interpretation of deletion policy is as faithful as I can make it.

You're an experienced and respected AfD closer. Is this really the storm in a teacup I think it is, or am I doing something basically wrong? Should I accept that I'm expected to make assumptions like this, and conjure a consensus where I do not see one? --Tony Sidaway 12:43, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Rossami, I just wanted to say that this was the most instructive piece I've read on AfD-related matters in a while; as a newer editor, I'm especially appreciative of it. Thank you for your clarity.—encephalon ὲγκέφαλον 00:33, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Moves to Wiktionary

Thanks for the invitation, but I don't feel a particular need to discuss these particular articles in a fragmented manner. The centralized dic def discussion works fine for me. If, however, you would like to put someone of the items which were closed with no consensus back on AFD after a reasonable time, I'd be happy to comment. - Mgm| 09:03, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

You might also perhaps care to consider the argument being put forward by some editors that a straight alphabetically ordered list of Greek words with their pronunciations and English translations is not a Greek-English translating dictionary. See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of traditional Greek place names. Uncle G 10:57, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Please review the discussion at Template talk:Move to Wiktionary#Move_vs._copy. Uncle G 15:24, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

A merge may be in order.

With respect to the articles on egg (person), banana (person), oreo (person), etc., I suggest we merge them all into one article on something like Terms describing persons whose ethnicity differs from their cultural characteristics. I think it would put them all in context, be more useful to the reader, and eliminate overly short separate articles on the topic. Perhaps we should open a centralized discussion on how to address these. -- BDAbramson 20:36, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we already have an article on that concept. I believe it would be acculturation (or one of the closely related articles linked there). Rossami (talk)

Thanks

Hi Rossami! I'd like to thank you for pouring some oil on troubled waters at Tony Sidaway's talkpage. I think that less quarelling there will be very helpful. :-)

BTW, I took the liberty of editing your userpage slightly, in the last section, the link to my talkpage now points to an archive instead of of my main talkpage. Yes, I was also surprised at the low number of delete votes on the second debate. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:42, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Xixax

Is that a vote to "delete"? - Tεx τ urε 23:23, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Deletion Review

Hi. You were involved in the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Votes for undeletion#The scope of VfU which looked to establish a Deletion Review process in place of VfU. There is now a discussion about how we might construct the mechanics of such a process. The current proposal suggests that debates be relisted on AfD if there is a majority of editors wanting to overturn the debate (usually on procedural grounds) and that the alternative result be implemented if it is supported by three-quarters of editors. Please call by Misplaced Pages talk:Votes for undeletion/Deletion review proposal when you can to discuss. Thanks. Titoxd 02:06, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

re: Speedies on Deletion Review

I've been thinking about your suggestion.

I don't think we need to say a thing about admins in the proposal. They should know about our good faith policies and if they suddenly start to disrupt VFU/DR and make it pointy, there's always RFC→RFM→WP:RFAr.
As for non-admins, I think that if within 48 hours, there is an outpouring of "this is a good speedy, delist this thing!" votes from the DR regulars, then it is safe to delist. You may want to post your second point in the DR talk page. Titoxd 02:08, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

... very distracting to mark all possible words as hyperlinks...

I would like you to reconsider the revert of my change to Make only links relevant to the context. One of the things that makes Misplaced Pages great is that it is accessible to all, and the tone, especially of the "how to" articles, is light and fun, to the point of being almost irreverent without actually crossing that line. Sure, the excessive linking, as an illustration of excessive linking, will be lost on some people. Some won't notice the excessive linking. Others may be slightly annoyed by it, but not get the joke. But others will see it and laugh (and maybe even follow some of the links). They will likely remember the example.

OK, that's my case. If you still feel the change is unwarranted, I'll bow to your greater experience in this matter.

--GraemeMcRae 02:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Protecting Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Sopme

Protecting an AfD subpage because there's a bit of a pile-on is a bit... unusual, no? Far, far worse "come here and vote!" instances have survived without such drastic intervention, especially since the pilers-on seem to have been satisfied with "take it to Wiktionary" anyhow. — File:Ontario trillium sig.png mendel ☎ 18:09, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

As I said on the page, it was a temporary protection only - just to give me a few uninterrupted minutes so I could walk through the entire edit history and restore the chronology of edits. With all the vandalism and spotty reverts in that particular discussion, it required an edit-by-edit review in order to find and restore several comments which had been lost. It also gave me some time to document the anonymous users who had not properly signed their comments. Rossami (talk)

More on Mills malls AFD

Please see the group AFD for all the Mills Malls at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Various "Mills". So far only mall enthusiasts have voted...

Thanks Blackcats 22:23, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

SOCKPUPPETRY

Regarding your conclusions in the debate on this page: Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/8_1/2_by_Eleven

I am entirely unopposed to your deletion of the article (in fact, I think it's the right decision as I don't feel that my own webcomic IS notable at this time, despite its good Alexa ranking), however, I do wish that you'd reconsider the allegation you made in regards to sockpuppetry.

The user you refer to is in no way connected to me... a little research would have shown that quite quickly, and the allegation you made may affect a future Vote for Deletion if the page is recreated. Thank you. Tedzsee 03:42, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Signatures

Sure, no problem. I use the "Raw signature" method, but I still had to work to fix it today. My signature, as it looks right now, is:

]]<sup>(])</sup>

I noticed that having HTML outside the wikilink is useless, as the CSS of the link will override it, so all tags must be inside the brackets. Tito xd 03:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

test. Rossami (talk) 04:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)