Wikibooks talk:Deletion policy/Archive

msg:VfD
No mention of a msg:VfD? Well, I just created one: MediaWiki:VfD Akagu 01:34, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Which votes to count
The recent discussion on Cookbook:Special brownies has caused a problem. Several wikipedians have come over here to vote, yet they have no history at this project and are voting based on Wikipedia procedures/policies. However, Wikibooks is not Wikipedia. I'm inclined not to count the votes of users with no history here. Gentgeen 10:14, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * This is not fair, as said policy was unilaterally formulated, voted for, and put into place by, guess who, Gentgeen. Just as (in many cases, at least) a contributor from de.wikipedia with no edits on en.wikipedia will sometimes be allowed to vote on en.wikipedia, en.wikibooks, which is not only a closely-allied project of the same organisation as en.wikipedia but also is in the same language as en.wikipedia, should allow Wikipedians with a reasonable number of non-vandalism contributions to any project to vote on issues. If you are concerned because they do not seem to have a grasp of Wikibooks policy differences from Wikipedia (which you have in the past and continue to greatly exaggerate), then why not tell them? And even if I voted on en.wikipedia for the deletion of a page, giving the justification "I don't like it", it would still count as a vote. In fact, no justification is nessecary on either project. --Node ue 23:06, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * In fact, the "keep" votes for "Special brownies" greatly outnumbered the votes for "delete", 9-4. It was extremely irresponsible of Gentgeen to 1. remove it from this page and 2. delete the article, without further discussion of which votes should be counted, and which should not, especially since he himself had voted "delete". --Node ue 23:13, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Wikibooks isn't Wikipedia. We have different domain names, main pages, software, goals, users, and pages for things like this. If VfD, VfU, Main Page, etc. were all the same page for all projects, we could count users from all different languages and projects. But we aren't the same. For one, anyone can create an account with the same name as a user on another project/language. This should be the deciding factor. - SamE 23:36, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * No shit, it isn't. Are you a sockpuppet of Gentgeen? And as I noted before, en.wikipedia often lets well-established users from other Wikipedias vote. Each Wikipedia is essentially a different project, and it definitely has a different main page, users, pages for "things like this", goals, etc. However, you are wrong about different software: Both use MediaWiki software.
 * Now, as to being able to create another account: If a Wikipedian has over 1000 edits, there's a very good chance they already have a Wikibooks account, even if they don't use it. If they haven't, there is no good reason for somebody to create an account using the user name of an existing Wikipedian: it would be very easy to find out, and there's a good chance they would be caught in the act. Plus, how do we know that Gentgeen isn't an evil impersonator of the Gentgeen from Wikipedia? He used his sysop status on Wikipedia to make his request for sysop permissions on Wikibooks seem less objectionable, what if he's not really the same person? Does this mean I can register a new account under the name of a well known, well-respected sysop from Wikipedia, and then after contributing just a tad, put a page up for votes which, depending on when and where it was posted, could get only a vote from me (and potential sockpuppets I created, even, with over 100 contribs each; ie contrib distribution), and then go to Angela when I won in that way and ask for sysophood.
 * Going back to what you said about this not being Wikipedia: we share a lot with Wikipedia, more than what we don't share: a large portion of our users, some parts of our content, our software, our licence, the fact that we both have "wiki" in our names, a commitment to quality and to be neutral (or in the case of Wikibooks, at least to some degree), the fact that things change quickly, the fact that the number of Wikibooksians is growing rather than staying the same, a large portion of our policies (where do you think "What Wikibooks is not" came from? it's obviously not an original idea for a policy page), and most importantly, the fact that ANYONE CAN EDIT AN ARTICLE (with some exceptions)! --Node ue 04:48, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * In fact, en.wikipedia let a Wikibooksian that was mostly new to Wikipedia vote once, at least that I can remember. --Node ue 04:50, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, for one, I'm not a sockpuppet of Gentgeen as I work on totally unrelated stuff and have edited things at the same time as him many times. Wikipedia and Wikibooks use different software in that Wikipedia uses a different version of MediaWiki. One example is that articles that say "Wikipedia:" get a blue background on Wikipedia, but articles like this one on Wikibooks are still white. I'm not saying that impersonating someone else is a smart thing to do, or that anyone's doing it. I'm just saying that that should be the deciding factor for VfD and VfU. For example, if Wikiversity becomes a major section of Wikibooks, with its own policies and VfD, but is on the same site name and domain of Wikibooks, then Wikiversitians should be able to vote on Wikibooks and vice versa.
 * Before, you complained that What Wikibooks is not isn't a valid policy, and now you're saying it comes from Wikipedia. Let me give you some advice: Stop contradicting yourself! - SamE 02:04, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Be careful what you say, it may be used against you. Hyprocracy is an ugly thing. From
 * Uhh... no shit I deleted votes. Were some of them from non-sockpuppets? Yes. Were any of them from users who had made any other contributions other than to here (with the exception of users who made one or two other contributions, or who made quite a few other contributions but they were all vandalism)? No, with the exception of Nohat and one other (forgot who it was), who I replaced IMMEDIATELY. In short: I have only removed fraudulent votes. If "some" of them were by legit users, why not just add back the ones by legit users and leave the rest deleted? --Node 05:24, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Gentgeen 17:05, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Oh, come on. That was a massive VfD where both sides were plagued by tens of obvious sockpuppets. Most had no userpages, had just been created, and did not exist on any other projects. I have never done this on any other VfD. Current Wikimedia policy regarding votes is that you leave them be - even if they're from anonymous users - unless you have reason to suspect bad intentions beyond just "Oh, it's /possible/ that this person is a sockpuppet". That means that in massive votes that are especially ugly, restrictions are generally more stringent, but in smaller-scale votes like all those which occur on Wikibooks, without obvious evidence of sockpuppetry or other voting irregularities, you are supposed to ask a developer to check for you or just let it be. --Node

I believe a special factor here is whether or not there is a conflict of interest. Did the vote-counter have a position on the deletion of the article? If so, is it one that would benefit by eliminating the votes in question? If they hold the opposite point of view and stand to lose support for their opinion, then there's no problem. But I believe at Wikipedia (and it should be the same here, too) administrators are prohibited from using their administrative powers in cases they are personally involved with. Thus, it's OK to delete vandalism, but if you are involved in a content dispute or the like you may not use your admin powers to trump the other user. Gentgeen has done this to me in the past, and has done it on here, too. He has an obvious and strong opinion in a VfD case, then when it comes time to judge whether or not consensus was reached, he often decides it has been if the majority are in favor of his opinion and that it has not been if the majority are in favor of the opposing opinion. In addition, his vote-counting seems to suffer from the same problem. If it's to his benefit, he keeps questionable votes, but if they are votes against his viewpoint that push the opposition into the majority, he doesn't count them. --Node


 * Update: I have re-worded the page to indicate that each registered user should be considered equal, and should have one vote, to give the impression that the system is fair. In reality, the admins can do what the hell they like until policy dictates otherwise. If anyone can think of a better policy which is easy to enforce, suggest it here. - Aya 19:10, 10 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The #1 problem I see is when something here is unpopular on Wikipedia... at least to a sizable group on Wikipedia, they come storming over to Wikibooks and vote en masse, which in effect overwhelms the typical Wikibookian user base. On the positive side they probabally aren't going to be voting on general policy issues, but they will be arguing for specific Wikibooks or pet projects.  The issue with Wikiversity is similar only it got a big storm of support from Meta.  I don't think this is completely avoidable, but policy decisions should be made by the rank and file ordinary Wikibookians and not some group that comes over, smashes up policy for a single "party" or cause, and then leaves.  On the other hand, if we can treat those visiting with a little respect we may be able to get them to help contribute over a longer term.  The question is how to do that and still protect Wikibooks to keep a consistant policy and organization outlook. --Rob Horning 12:26, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposition
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

This page whilst fulfilling a useful and required role is also responsible for some decisions which are stifling creativity. I would therefore suggest that it becomes the object of a wiki research project to ensure creativity and reviewers are suitably encouraged and accomodated 82.69.58.117 16:13, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Users of this site are continuously trying to make it better. It would be more helpful if you could give some suggestions for new policies. - Aya 19:10, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Templates on this page
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Both the VfD and speedy deletion pages appear on this page, which causes the page itself to be listed as VfD. Is there a way to include the templates without this happening? Should we just copy and paste the contents instead of including the templates? MShonle 19:08, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I added these templates yesterday because it helps newbies understand what's going on with the templates. In answer to question on surpressing the categories, no, there is no way, and the demonstration of the candidates for speedy deletion template requires the use of the template because of the |reason thing. But it's not a big problem, they've done it on Wikipedia for a long time and I thought it wouldn't hurt us here. If you'll notice, I mentioned on the categories pages that neither of these are actually being considered for deletion- as I hope any admin would know anyway.--Naryathegreat 20:01, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmm, it still seems a little sloppy. Why can't we just copy and paste the contents instead of actually using the templates themselves? (Also, remember it's just HTML generated in the end, the |reason thing is a red herring-- perhaps you don't know what I'm getting at?) The only disadvantage of copy and paste (which would *look* exactly the same as it does now) would be that if one changes, the other will need to change too. This seems far less of a problem than having the page actually be listed for deletion. MShonle 22:22, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Fixed. The categories will still contain the templates, but there's no reasonable way around this - Aya 19:10, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Images by User:Siegfried Petry
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * All images by User:Siegfried Petry that can be converted to HTML and TeX. There appear to be hundreds of them, so it will be a long time before these can be deleted. Guanaco 21:36, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Not all of them can, but many could. One can look for them here: Special:Contributions/Siegfried_Petry -- mattrix 22:31, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Orphaned pages
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

There are more than 500 orphaned pages, and many of them should be deleted. Some are not in English, so I can't judge. I deleted all pages in French among them. Yann 14:49, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

'''Keep, keep keeeeep! Your list is bogus!''' I see 3 copies of the perfectly-good Egg_Roll recipe in that list. Something is not right about that list. AlbertCahalan 22:20, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I spotted something that appears 5 times, all identical. Soppose there are 6 copies in the database, 5 of which are counted as orphans. So you delete 5... but in doing so, wipe out the copy with the most recent history. Maybe you even corrupt the database worse than it is already. As for the egg roll, that may be partly my doing, caused by the wiki telling me that the page is empty when I save it for the first time. So of course I hit the back button and try again, figuring that some database connection somewhere got dropped the first time. So that's at least 2 serious bugs right there, falsly (?) reporting that a fresh module has no data and allowing the addition of multiple modules with the same name. It would be very unwise to touch this mess without first investigating what is going wrong with the wiki database and other code. AlbertCahalan 22:46, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why is this even listed here? It's not a specific page or book to be deleted. AlbertCahalan 21:38, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Read what Yann said. "many of them should be deleted". Some of them may be speedy deletes, which needs to be brought to immediate attention. Dysprosia 04:08, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Candidates for speedy deletion
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm confused about one thing.. should candidates for speedy deletion be listed on this page or is enough? - Sik0fewl 04:20, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


 * It's always helpful to list it on this page too, so there can be a discussion (if neccessary). Also, this page is read more than the page that lists all pages with the Delete template. MShonle 16:05, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I've changed policy to remove this requirement. There's no need to list speedies on this page, since the whole point of them is for deletions which don't require a vote. Should an admin be uncertain as to whether or not to delete a speedy, they should personally add it to the VfD list, and change the 'delete' template inclusion to a 'vfd' one. It's probably wiser to use a speedy deletion tag even if the page doesn't break policy, but that you suspect it would be unilaterally voted to be deleted. An admin can easily promote it to a full VfD if they think you're wrong. This should save a lot of time. - Aya 19:10, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki and votes
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused on the "Pages to be transwikied." I don't see anybody voting on them? And neither any one of them seems to be signed? There is a lot of pages listed under the different languages, are there no administrators working on them? Or are there just a lot of books written in other languages(?) It's hard to get an idear on how long the different books has been listed there, because they are not signed. RoceKiller 22:43, 28 May 2005 (UTC)


 * That's just an open note that tells users that these articles are written in other languages, and thus must be moved out of the English wikibooks and into the ones for the approprate languages, as per the transwiki policy set out on meta (I think it's at Transwiki). The reason that little work has been done is that we are patiently waiting for MediaWiki 1.5 where new features will make the transwiki process will be largely painless (currently it's a cut-and-paste job, and legal restrictions make moving page histories more difficult to deal with).  If you want to do transwiki, you are of course more than welcome. KelvSYC 01:49, 29 May 2005 (UTC)


 * There's no real need to debate these for any length of time. Stuff that isn't in English should be moved to the appropriate place, and that list is just a simple way to keep track of which ones need to be moved where. TUF-KAT 21:11, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry to beat a dead horse, but the transwiki list is starting to be a nuisance. :) I'm not familiar enough with other languages and other languages' Wikis to help, so I can only bug people to ask if there is any progress in this area. - Lynx7725 7 July 2005 06:46 (UTC)


 * These entries seem to be beyond the scope of VfD, so I've moved them all to Pages to be transwikied, and linked from here. - Aya 19:10, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Deletion of images
Note: This section moved from Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion. - Aya T C 22:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I've listed a few images for speedy deletion. The actual image has been removed form the image page (this is the big step, because it's not undoable), but the image page has remained intact. So, does the image page get deleted eventually, or does it remain forever? If they are never deleted, then I'll simpy remove them from the speedy deletion list. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 05:03, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * After watching the same images for a few days, I've come to the conclusion that it does no harm. One, any image uploads in the future with the same name will simply override whatever's inside there with no warning, so no big issue there.. (well there is, but still.) Two, if nothing is linked to it, it becomes orphaned and nobody but us ghosts will know of it.


 * Given the lack of response to this query, I'll housekeep this next week (after you have a chance to read this), to keep the Talk Page manageable. - Lynx7725 7 July 2005 06:49 (UTC)