Wikibooks talk:Deletion policy/Unstable

= Info from prev. discussions =

See Wikibooks talk:Stub as pointed out by User:Robert Horning in 22 March 2006.
 * Is there a further need to cover Videogames walkthroughs ? as proposed by User:Jguk in 22 April 2006.
 * Should the policy cover old redirect pages to speedy deletion ? as proposed by User:Swift in 31 July 2006.
 * Should we add information where the content could be moved, on the tag or on the policy itself? as proposed by User:DavidCary 21 October 2006.

There are still other discussions on Wikibooks_talk:Deletion_policy.

Other pages that may have related information Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion and Wikibooks_talk:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstable.

Lets also try to simplify and reduce (in size) the policy a bit. --Panic 05:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

On CopyVio
This was inside the policy commented out...


 * 1) A module that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these specifications:
 * Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service) and;
 * The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
 * Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none seems likely and;
 * The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).

... I have simplified that section. --Panic 07:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Unstable Branch, Initial Thoughts
Considering the problems that some of the other policies have been having in writing and enforcing new versions, I think that we should try to improve this policy in babysteps. Here are some of the things that I would like to do with this policy branch first (assuming other people are okay with this), and we can do things in stages, rather then trying to do everything at once: Once we get everything updated and pretty, I think we should move to enforce the unstable branch before we make any other changes (and therefore slow down the process). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Rewrite existing prose to be easier to read, without necessarily changing the meaning of the policy
 * 2) Update the policy to account for current deletion practices (Speedy deletions and VfD votes) that are de-facto rules already, but which are not reflected in this policy yet.
 * Here's one de facto rule that I've seen used but isn't official as far as I can tell from reading this policy: speedy deletion of unused fair use images (I'm not sure if this falls under "copyvios" or not but I don't think something is "fair use" to keep on the site if it's not being used for anything). As far as redirects are concerned, if there is a redirect that isn't linked to and is unlikely to be searched for (for example, a redirect made after a page move, and after all the links to those redirects are removed), I say get rid of it... we can't just get rid of all unlinked redirects of course, because people could search for stuff that is redirected somewhere else (such as what happens when you search for matlab, I'm not sure if anything links to that redirect.) Mattb112885 23:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would tend to agree with you Matt, that's a good point that we generally like to delete fair use images if we dont absolutely need them. I think that might need to be either added here, or somewhere in the image policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I would firmly disagree. While I think it is unnecessary and overwhelming to indefinitely maintain redirects, I have come across many link even just from Wikipedia that are dead from page moves immediately followed by deletions. The whole Fighting Game Moves Wikibook, for example, still has links from at least 40 Wikipedia pages (by Google's count) and had more before I changed a few.
 * I would strongly encourage a general trend towards soft redirects to be deleted after a period of time. It should probably be modularised, though, and put into its own "guideline" document, with a mention of when soft redirects should be created and a link to that document. That way, the accepted (though not punishably enforced) guideline would be to create a soft redirect if a user decides to take on the task of moving a Wikibooks's pages to meet the naming convention. --Iamunknown 19:37, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I question how much it is our job to account for external websites. I am inclined to say that the links on wikipedia (or any other external site) that point to wikibooks are the responsibility of wikipedians, not wikibookians. Consider the converse, where a link in a wikibook points to a wikipedia article: when the wikipedia article is moved/deleted, do people come here to fix the links on our project? Or, more to the point, when a page is deleted on wikipedia, do they check whether any links on our project become broken?
 * That point aside, books that are deleted are simply deleted, and we shouldnt be replacing the pages with redirects or notices unless specifically requested. Books that are moved, especially to a new naming convention will produce a large number of redirects. While it isn't imperative that these links be deleted immediately, if an admin is so inclined, and if the "what links here" list is empty, I can't see why those redirects should not be removed. We can only worry about our own project, unfortunately. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I fail to see how a disregard for users who are directed to our project is anything but irresponsibility on our part. The point of soft redirects is so that hopefully a user who comes from Wikipedia or another site will notice it and then change the link to go to the hard page (i.e. hard page vs. soft redirect). If we move books around, then it is our job to direct users to those books. --Iamunknown 00:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not a disregard for new users (at least not intentionally so), but instead a desire not to be mired indefinately by the potential that other projects might be pointing to a page that has moved or no longer exists. It sounds to me like a packrat mentality to say that "we must keep anything that might be potentially useful to somebody". What about pages that are deleted? should we not delete books or pages on the basis that wikipedia might host a link to that page? I'm not going to say that we must delete all unused redirects, but at the same time I'm not going to say that an admin who is inclined to delete a redirect shouldnt be allowed to. Useless and obscure redirects clutter searches, they obscure the results at Special:Prefixindex, and they create an insurmountable backlog at Special:Lonelypages. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I neither advocate becoming indefinitely swamped by redirects and/or soft redirects nor adopting the packrat mentality.
 * should we not delete books or pages on the basis that wikipedia might host a link to that page? Obviously we should delete the pages; to jump from redirect/soft-redirects to that is a fallacious strawman argument. Further, I think pragmaticallly that when deleting an entire book, redirects should not be created, as that could encourage reposting or remaking content.
 * I refute that redirects are as cluttering as you say they are. Javascript can clear out the Special:Prefixindex results. Redirects can be categorized (thereby un-obscuring Special:Uncategorizedpages) by date and then deleted a while later. I am, however, unfamiliar with Special:Lonelypages. How would redirects create an insurmountable backlog there? --Iamunknown 02:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * While the deletion argument is a bit contrived, it nonetheless demonstrates my point that we can't be making decisions here based on the potential that people might be following links to en.wikibooks from other projects, and that those links might be broken. The deletion of content pages and the deletion of redirects, while they may seem distinct, are very closely related subjects.
 * Special:Lonelypages is an automated list of pages to which no other pages link. Admins in the past have gone on crusade against this list, declaring (with some merit) that these pages are worthless, they are taking up space (although space is certainly not a pressing concern), and that they should be deleted. I personally have never concerned myself with any of these automated lists (lonely pages, uncategorized pages, etc), but my noninvolvement in the issue is not a benchmark concerning it's importance.
 * I'm not really prepared to argue this point any further, i see it as a non-issue. Whether we keep or delete redirects should be a matter left up to the judgement of the performing admin. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I just have one question: does special:Lonelypages include links from other projects (eg wikipedia) or only those which aren't linked to within Wikibooks? Because if it's the former then it really is a non-issue, since we dont need to worry about bad links from wikipedia and so on. If it is the latter, the problem with making other projects fix their own links is that, as far as I know, if you link to a bad page in another project (e.g. ghgihg, a page that doesn't really exist), the link will still be blue, so the people won't be able to tell anything's wrong unless they actually follow the link (and then may not know where it's been moved to)... as far as Whiteknight's point that it should be left to admin judgment, I think it would still be helpful to put have some sort of guideline so that for example if two admins disagree, we know what the policy says, and since every other type of suggested deletion is (or should be) defined in policy. Maybe there should be some guidelines for interwiki linking? Or are there? (I haven't seen any) Mattb112885 04:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as i know, Special:Lonelypages only accounts for local links, not links from other projects such as wikipedia. Also, guidelines are okay, but I think we should avoid scripting what admins "must do" in different situations. As an admin, I like to think of myself as a "voluneer", and a "helper", not as a "slave laborer". --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, we are all volunteers of course, and people will use their own judgment even when policy is in place (since we all have different interpretations of the same policy a lot of the time). I apologize if I implied that implementing a guideline would be an act of forcing the admins to do one thing or another, for that was not my intention (probably was because of my wording), my main intent in suggesting a guideline be put in place was to avoid potential conflicts over whether something could reasonably be deleted (without a vfd) or not, but maybe that question would be better to handle on a case-by-case basis anyways. Mattb112885 19:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry if my last comment seemed hostile, it wasn't supposed to be. I think what i'm not understanding is User:Iamunknown's use of the term "soft redirect". is this something different from a regular redirect page? is there are "hard" type of redirect? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

(reset) I think what he meant was redirects created when a page is moved, rather than by the user directly. I'm not sure if there's any way to distinguish them other than looking in the move log though. Mattb112885 21:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Administrator override
I added the following note to the text of this policy:
 * According to Jimbo, administrators are able to delete pages from wikibooks that manifestly do not belong here, regardless of the outcome of a discussion on VfD. In practice, such actions should be extremely rare, and should never be performed without strong justifications and significant forethought.

I added that text in response to a comment made by Jimbo last year on the VFD talk page:
 * I want to encourage admins to feel more bold to go against a vote when the result is clearly wrong. If something is not a textbook, then delete it anyway. A reasonable respect for the voting process makes sense, but doing the right thing is what we should do.

Jimbo also had this to say on another occasion:
 * Admins remember: we do not vote, we follow policy. If a vote is manifestly wrong, ignore it, and delete the junk anyway. Wikibooks deserves the respect that all projects have for themselves

I think that this is an important thing that we should have in this policy for these and a number of other reasons. What do other wikibookians think about this? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm just curious as to what the source of those quotes is (I believe you, I just would like to know context and so forth). I think this supports my view (since Jimbo mentioned following policy) that if something is to be deleted, there should be some policy or guideline that the admins can turn to as justification for that action, and if the community does not agree with the decision the debate would then be turned against the policy rather than against the administrator performing it. After all the policy itself (well, most of them) was determined by community consensus in the first place and therefore by extension the admins are following consensus by invoking them in their deletions.
 * Having said that, I'm not really sure I agree with Jimbo on this, but he knows what he's doing more than I do, and if this were not followed there WOULD be a lot of stuff left on here that shouldn't be. The admins in question just would have to be careful not to let either inclusionist or deletionist tendencies get in the way of making what would be considered "the right choice" in the matter (I would think that this is why we have the votes in the first place, so that all viewpoints are heard and can be weighed accordingly) Mattb112885 21:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I go a step further and say that without a clear policy (approved and enforcible), giving such decision rights to administrators is plainly wrong at least within the actual way the administrator status is granted. --Panic 22:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Panic: Administrators should be able to do things like this, but it should definately be part of policy first. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Those two quotes were made in response to a VfD discussion some months ago. The community voted to keep a particular book, and the discussion was closed and marked "Kept". Jimbo deleted the book shortly thereafter. Here are some links:
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks_talk:Deletion_policy&diff=prev&oldid=451828
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:Votes_for_deletion&diff=prev&oldid=451824
 * Jimbo hasn't really been active here since right after he made those comments. If you check out the contribution history of User:Jimbo Wales, the edits that i've referenced here should be up near the top. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe we need to have something about how discussion on whether to keep or delete a book needs to be based in part on whether or not the book meets Wikibook criteria rather then just whether the contents is good or not? Perhaps reaffirming that the transwiki process is meant to be used as a means of transferring good contents to a better place when the contents doesn't belong here. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 08:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * (reset) I think that it is implicit that things on VfD should be discussed concerning whether or not the book needs to be deleted based on whether or not it meets policy. However, implicit is never a good thing for important stuff to be. Let's include a specific mention of that. I'll do it now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Listing of new books on VfD
Hum..... I'm left with a feeling that this part of the policy may well date back a way. I certainly agree with it fully when a book is being "worked on". On RC you see editors working very hard on books but this usually involves quite a number of saves. However for copy and paste dumps (almost always a single edit or at best edits lasting a day with nothing else done) I am much less happy. A VfD just closed even had a "date" on it of 2002 (IIRC). I do not consider pasting this into a page here means we have to wait a week to list it. -- Herby talk thyme 15:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * A copyright violation is a completely different issue, in my opinion, then a newbie book that isn't quite right. There is a difference between protecting this project from copyright violations, and biting newbies who likely don't know any better when they create their first books.
 * VfD rules apply to pages that have meaningful content, and things like copy+paste dumps I would deem to be "unmeaningful".
 * Also, in case their is confusion, the 7-day waiting period is counted from the day the book or page is first created. A book created on 1 January, for instance, can be nominated for deletion on 7 January (assuming it isnt a copyvio, or some other rubbish), even if the book is still under active construction, or subpages to that book have been created on 6 January. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not on about copyvios (I agree that these should be deleted as soon as tehy are apparent). Equally I accept that books under construction can be VfD's after 7 days (I would not be wildly happy about that tho I confess).  However your comment in the recent VfD was that it should not have been brought to VfD as it had not been here 7 days but it was a one off copy & paste (& the comment was made in an earlier one - Futurology maybe, again a large copy & paste)?
 * I think the policy should be quite explicit that apparently finish books (or very nearly complete ones) that are copy & pastes can be VfD's before 7 days? -- Herby talk thyme 16:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, that much can be made apparent. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * How would this be
 * While it would not be normal practice for any book or page to be placed in VfD within seven days of it being created if it appears likely that it is a "copy & paste" from elsewhere and not being actively worked on it can be tagged for VfD before the seven day period
 * Thanks -- Herby talk thyme 13:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

...Inclusion Criteria
I disagree with this edit made by Panic2k4. I dont think that we should be talkign here about how to alter the inclusion criteria if we haven't included mention of such changes in WB:WIW the current WIW policy, or in the new proposed draft of it. I think that this change should be reverted until we've discussed the matter first. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You may reword it as you like but there is a clear need to state that VfD decisions may be used to extend the inclusion criteria, as they are very specific and would avoid discussing any future policy in full by creating precedents (may not even be WIW as it has now being discussed to make it a guideline and create a what is not policy), I take no offense and thank you for the consideration on not reverting/rewording it on the spot.
 * Anyway besides the dependency what do you consider as problematic ? --Panic 02:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

New criteria idea
" Delete books/contents that are too narrow in topical choice to ever be much good, i.e., a book on the geological studies of 1883/4 on Krakatau by the Dutch. "

I just added the one on being too narrow to be of use, thinking of this, which would fit that criteria. Thoughts? Laleena (talk) 02:00, 21 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't like the idea of limiting (by force of deletion) contributions due to scope or organizational reasons, since the number of users working on complete works is so small. We should give a higher priority in generating useful content not particularly in a useful structure. We can always reshape content at a later date but for that we must have content first. On the other hand I'm in favor on writing and having some guidelines on how content should be structured (and we have already some, and those can probably be improved) but I don't see that deleting content only based on its presentation/limited scope will be a good thing for Wikibooks. --Panic (talk) 03:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

ATTENTION
Call any editors of the unstable branch of the deletion policy to the proposal and discussion occurring on the parent's module talkpage Deletion_policy that will affect the future of this module. Please post any comments, objections there... --Panic (talk) 18:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)