I do a lot of work in NFD Guardian, so I see many NFDed articles every day. What I’ve noticed, though, is that a few of these articles are ridiculously hopeless and have no chance whatsoever of surviving the Guardian (example: an article that is pure advertizing, an obvious ‘not’, an unmistakable joke, etc). In my opinion, there is no purpose in putting these article into the NFD Guardian when they could be deleted much faster. So, I propose that we broaden the speedy deletion policy to cover these articles. It would be much more efficient and shrink the NFD Guardian backlog a little. Thoughts?
Once again, you’re trying to change a policy that is fine the way it is.
Why, then, do we even have the Collaboration Corner if we should never try to bring up new suggestions? Not being able to do so without fear of told that “the policy is already fine” defeats the purpose of a collaborative wiki.
Need I remind you about your previous attempts about changing the deletion policy? Regardless, all suggestions are welcome, but as I was saying, this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to change a deletion policy.
How does that require changing anything? It falls under the Speedy category. /me is confused.
system
7
@WritingEnthusiast14
For that specific example, it’s best to tag it speedy (and then use the appropriate template on the author’s talk page), rather than treating it as any regular copyvio
If @WritingEnthusiast14
is talking about a change to the Deletion Policy, and if she has done so before, this has to be for a darn good reason. I agree. It’s always okay to review the Deletion Policy. Why do I stand in such firm agreement? Because there really is a huge amount of junk around here to clean up, and very few of us to do it. Much of the deletion work has to be addressed my multiple, multiple people, resulting in a waste of precious volunteer hours. We are none of us bottomless pits of time and energy, particularly when it comes to complete junk writing. Let’s keep the conversation flowing around this point and around any other topics where anyone sees a real problem. The Deletion Policy may or not be the answer, and perhaps there is a better way to solve this conundrum, but I always want to hear what trusted editors have to say. Seriously, the other option is for trusted editors to wander off to other pursuits in life. If we want people to stay here, let’s listen to what they have to say when they are frustrated.
Perhaps I made a poor choice on my example, but I didn’t think that article would fall under the speedy deletion policy. It’s not patent nonsense (after all, it was readable), it wasn’t a personal attack or libel, it wasn’t profanity, it wasn’t highly offensive, and the site wasn’t on the content farm blacklist. Therefore, I concluded that it would fall under the regular “adv” NFD criteria. I think one problem here is that there’s a lot of people NFDing articles, but a very small circle of people that actually vote on them. Every day in NFD Guardian, I always see mostly the same names (Lugia2453, Maluniu, Eric, KnowItSome, AndrewG1999, myself, etc.) While we have a large number of boosters and admins, a very small portion of them are actually active. What I’m trying to get added to the speedy deletion policy are articles that are just hopeless and have no chance of surviving. For example, I’ve seen articles that are just essays, and I once saw a joke article on finding Issac Newton and about how he was still alive and hiding in England (yes, this thing seriously went through the formal deletion process). In opinion, the NFD process should only be reserved for articles that might be debatable.
Patent Nonsense doesn’t necessary mean illegible. It’s broad in its sense and includes things such as spam (i.e. Contact a Love Cast spam), gibberish, and other things. In theory, that’s the way it’s been. NFDs are for those that can be saved, speedys are for ones that dont’ have a chance (spam, gibberish titles, etc). So I don’t believe a change is needed in any way.
Lojjik
11
What you just described is already in place. Articles that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing NFD don’t make it to NFD (at least in my book).
Exactly, SK, we just redirect them to your userpage!
system
13
I’ve generally made it a practice to NOT tag an article for “speedy”. If they’re THAT bad? I just summarily delete them. The issue arises when a non-admin comes across these. I’d recommend either posting them to the Admin notice board or perhaps tagging an admin’s talk page with a link to them. Another option would be to ping for an Admin in IRC and ask them to speedy it. And yet a third option for especially egregious articles is to BLANK them pending an admin’s review and final deletion.
What kind of articles do you mean by especially egregious articles? I know that articles that are copyright violations are blanked, but what others can be blanked, if any?
@Lugia2453
Just to clarify: are you asking me or Lois? I’ve already said what I believe to be worthy of a speedy tag (obvious ‘not’ articles that are just essays, advertizing, and most joke articles, etc). The issue is, while all the admins here say that this system is already in place, I actually don’t see it in action (unless I’m missing something).
I was asking Lois, in response to her post.
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@WritingEnthusiast14
You don’t see it “in action” because whenever admins encounter articles that are worthy of speedy deletion, we delete them. As @Lutherus-Shyrilser
said, the speedy policy can be and is interpreted by admins to include spam, gibberish, and titles that have no chance of surviving or cannot be changed to a viable title. If there is no chance an article can be salvaged into a helpful how-to, speedy is a good option. In addition, there are admins who periodically check the speedy category to delete them and/or correct speedies that should be NFDs because they could be edited to be viable. I understand the confusion about the difference between speedy and NFD policies—even more experienced editors on wikiHow don’t always apply them properly. Admins won’t blindly delete articles with speedy tags without checking them first, so you can probably be more liberal with applying them given the excellent suggestions in this thread, knowing that an experienced editor review it before deleting it, and if need be, change it to an NFD.
Some time ago, I had started to write an article to clarify which articles should be tagged as speedy deletions, but realized that the standards are intentionally left unstated and to admin discretion. (Apparently admins tweak their interpretation of what constitutes a speedy by watching other speedies and by talk among themselves—unseen by most contributors.) Even though I had shelved the idea, I do believe such an article would help to clear the deck of such articles more expeditiously. However, I do not feel qualified to write such a guide.—That seems best left to one of the admins: ( @BR
), @Isorhythmic
, @Lutherus-Shyrilser
, @Maluniu
, @Anna
, or another. Generally, I follow what I think @Isorhythmic
advocates: If in doubt, speedy it and let the admins further sort it out, then fine-tune future tag placements according to feedback you receive (if any).
I’ve always interpreted the policy as if this idea of summarily deleting them can be applied, but you’re not an admin, put a speedy tag on it so an admin sees it quickly and deletes it for you. Another way I’ve looked at it is by considering using a normal NFD tag. If I were to look at this article and put nfd it, how would it go through the Guardian? If it would breeze through the tool with absolutely no chance of it being saved, I usually consider it a speedy.
system
20
I generally will instantly delete any articles that are profane, scatological, pornographic or are personal attack of any sort. Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of people “out there” who are such jerks that they’d post anything immediately deleteable. It’s rare that I come across something that bad that needs immediate deletion.
