I have been using the Answer Request tool an awful lot and throughout the history of using it, I have given some thought to some ideas I’ve had, and although it can be low priority for now, I think I can at least open up my idea for others.
I love envisioning ideas. When any user (besides Admins) come upon a title that they feel should be deleted, it might make it easier on the Admins who have control if upon doing the research for creating a page, when the page says there are other potential Proposed Redirects possible - another option on the appropriate page could be a delete button. Now, this is where a bunch of splits happen - depending on the User’s rights.
If the user has no Booster or Admin rights, the Delete button wouldn’t be a full-blown delete. The “delete” would send their suggested ideas to a tool that must be review by Admins - would work more like a “hide” tool to just that User’s list. This user must input their reasoning into a box, or select the reasoning based on our Deletion POlicy reasons here ( https://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Deletion-Policy
).
If the User has Booster rights and comes upon the same article, they can help speed up the process. Although Boosters will not be told there’s active deletion requests, if a Booster also asks for the same request to be Deleted, Active Admins should get notifications that a “hidden title” to a user has been “hidden by a booster” and it may be necessary that this is a valid title for deletion." If there are no active admins (or more than one), the system should either pick the last Admin to have made an edit or the system should pick one of the multiple sets - or if all else fails - send it to someone higher up if the need may be pressing.
If a booster comes upon a brand new topic for deletion, these can enter the queue and the latest Admin should get pinged.
On the other side of the equation, with Admin rights, Admins must “vote” to delete a request inside a tool. They’d generally get an “Accept” to accept and delete the request or “Decline” (which declines the request and restores all hidden access to all users who’ve hidden this article request in the past.) The tool would link to the article and would utilize the Admin’s rights and name and the title would be deleted or restored to the database.
In the meantime, if a non-Booster asks for a request to be deleted, the link would just hide the topic from that user’s account. Topics that are hidden waiting to be deleted shouldn’t affect other user’s ability to see these topics - maybe there’s some merit that others might have the information to.
Now, obviously, there’d have to be an additional option of Other, where someone could answer in large text-box form, why they feel this title should be deleted. Perhaps this should be the titles that head to the STTD section of the ANB to make note of special issues with certain topics - and the system can auto-sign with these users’ signatures.
Requests in this tool must not create a backlog. Skip buttons could be placed in these tools, but under ultimate conditions - that it will only take a few days to be decided by other Admins. If no Admin responds to the request, users higher than Admin status should get pinged to make the final decision - ultimately Staff and higher.
Running it through this type of process speeds up automation and reduces both the time to type out the entries on the ANB and still creates a working link back to the proposed request - and thereby proves that no article gets stuck/lost behind or holds on in the back-end system because the deletion causes the article request deletion to get stuck. It would help speed automation for Admins, because on top of actually removing the request using their tools (which would ultimately be used less often), would also not force Admins to delete the notice on the ANB (as is used right now) - unless there’s some merit to leave critical notes behind for certain article requests.
At any time for any admin inside the tool, a “Decline” decision - would be crucial. If the admin says “no”, the title is shown to all users again - including those who previously hid these titles. Previously-hidden titles would only be shown as hidden to those who hid them until being declined. If a “temporary deleted article” is seen by another user in the timeframe, it’s still shown to others to perhaps be written.
If an Admin comes upon a topic, their choices can go through, if they click a separate button that should only be accessible to them - ones that get Delete straight from the Answer Request tools straight through the tool to be deleted.
(I may be missing some thoughts here and some angles. Sorry. If you need additional clarification, please contact me through my talk page and I’ll finish these additional angles.)
