Template talk:Proposed deletion

Note to self/anyone else: Need to figure out whether we need Template:Proposed deletion/dated. If so need to make consistent, otherwise might be able to just redirect here. Used on Wikipedia and looks like it's been copied from there. Adambro 21:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Not in use, needs some editing if it is to be used (still got Wikipedia categories). Not really in our "house-style", if you know what I mean. I'd suggest redirecting it to here. --Claritas 23:11, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Defective instructions for removal in template

They make no sense as to what is actually in the page wikitext when the template is substituted. It says:

You can remove {{proposed deletion}} from this resource's text to contest this proposal, with or without discussion.

What appears in the wikitext is a complete template that begins with "{{Ombox ..."

This is a highly useful template, creating a "slow wastebasket," that allows a user who finds a marginal resource, but where speedy deletion is not appropriate for whatever reason, to tag it, and eventually it will be deleted if nobody objects within three months.

That increases efficiency without causing harm. Any user may review Category:Proposed deletions and may object by removing the template. But ... what is to be removed should be made very clear. Perhaps we can add text comment that surrounds what is to be removed.

As well, the template does not display a deletion reason. That is also a defect that should be remedied. Agreed? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:33, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

• A proposed fix is at [1]. [Template:Editprotected removed] --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:06, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Y Done by --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:00, 11 September 2015 (UTC), let me know if this is insufficient.

Ugh! I missed that the page was only semi-protected and I could have edited it myself! It took 13 days for a custodian to notice this request template, and action could have been as simple as yanking the editprotect template, having noticed what I now see, and asking me to edit it myself! However, no harm done. When I see unanswered templates that persist, I will normally take this to WV:RCA. Mostly, we have been keeping the queue clear.

Thanks, Marshall. Something was left out, but I'll fix it. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:00, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

• However, there is more to be done.

• If possible, an expired prod should add the page to a category. For careful process, this should not be the speedy deletion category, but an expired prod category, I recommend that any user may then tag the page for speedy deletion (or remove the prod). The problem with the existing process is that few may notice a prod. Some pages have expired prods for a long time, and we need to clean up the category, it having many, many pages in it is one reason for the process being gunked up. While any custodian might simply delete an expired prod, reviewing the history, this is only in order, my opinion, where the deletion is so obvious that the page might have been speedied in the first place. The point of our developing cleanup process is to make each step extremely simple and clear.

• It may not be possible to add the category. However, a bot could do it. "Expired prod" should not be exactly a speedy deletion reason. It means the page is ready for further action. We now know many things that can be done with pages that formerly we would speedy delete. These can typically be done by any user, but how will a user find these pages? The present process doesn't make it simple and easy enough, that's my impression. I look at Category:Proposed deletions, right now, and there are 62 pages. There is little that I see that would prioritize my attention. If there were a sorted list by expiration date, it would do that. I would certainly look at expired prods and take action, doing one of these would not take long, usually. One of the actions I might take would be to tag for speedy deletion.

• A simpler alternative. Prods may be categorized by date of prod, when placed, instead of being in a single category. This could simply be month of prod. Before a year has elapsed, we should clean out the category; any prods left should either be handled or placed in an "old prod" category. This would make identifying old prods easy. I or someone else can look at template code that will do that. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:06, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I like this idea! I keep a list by my computer so that when I'm on Wikiversity I check the list for Category:Proposed_deletions. Right now it runs though 10/1/2015. Then, I will create a new one, but having that done here would be so much easier to delete as needed. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:19, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Wikis in general have not valued user labor. Consider, for example, w:WP:RCP. I did RCP on en.wiki. There are many, many users doing it at the same time. Or not. It's unreliable. However, most of the time, I would pull up 50 edits, look for anything suspicious, and by the time I actually opened an edit window and saved the page, it was already edited, vandalism was already removed. In order to make an RC edit, I had to be very quick. And even then, usually someone with an assisted editor was faster, and even when I was using an assisted editor, most of the time my time was wasted. And yet many kinds of vandalism would get through this because it caught only the most obvious vandalism and anyone who put in serious effort (like checking sources) could only handle a few edits. Missing: any system for dividing labor so that all edits are reviewed. Flagged revisions made that possible, in a way, though I don't recall any division of labor. It would be done, say, by users taking responsibility for a specific time slot, which could be narrow, and validating every edit in that period. However, I don't think the software allows Recent changes display to be sorted by time (I have often been frustrated in research by limitations of Recent Changes.) Tgere would still be ways to do it, involving bots and mailing lists. Even better, relative experts and fact checkers reviewing in an organized way. Watchlists do that. Notice that page information displays the number of users watchlisting pages, but fear of vandalism has kept that from displaying the number if it is less than 30, and because editors become inactive, "30" can mean "none."

As we set up workable systems, we can also solicit community participation. I know that maintaining this site leads, for me, to constant learning opportunities. At my age, this may be part of what keeps me alive. So let's share the wealth! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:16, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Reforming the system

Prod category

I first proposed the concept of a slow wastebasket back in 2011, beginning with Category:Slow deletion. I notice that this category suggested that it might become classified by month.... back then.....

This template present template was created in 2012, while I was blocked, so I did not participate in the discussions.

A slow wastebasket is a management technique I learned when I was managing a nonprofit. Basically, there can be a lot of paper to deal with. Commonly, there is a philosophy of Handle It Once, which means that one files what might be needed, and tosses what isn't needed in the trash. However, this requires a crystal ball, eh? And making that decision can increase the time it takes to handle a mess. So, there is an intermediate choice. 1. Know it will be needed or high probability? File it. 2. Know it is not needed? Trash it. 3. Have any difficulty deciding" Put it in a Hold for Discard box.

When the Hold for discard box is full, close it and date it. Start another Hold for Discard box. How many HFD boxes you keep is a management choice, but you will know the approximate date of every item in a box without looking at them. Some may toss the first HFD box when the second is full, so there are never more than two of these boxes. In a rare case, one may need to find something in the box. It will be in rough date order, if one has been regularly cleaning up. One will usually know approximately when the document might have been tossed in the box, and one would only rarely, then, need to look through more than one box. It works.

Now, what Proposed deletion did was somewhat equivalent to setting up one big HFD box. The individual items are dated, but there is no way to look at Category:Proposed deletions and see what is fresh and what is old or expired. So pages sit around for much longer than the three months. I look at the Category, intending to help clean up, and don't know where to start. The obvious place to start would be with prods about to expire or expired. I could tag them for speedy deletion and they will be gone in a flash. Or I can remove the prod, possibly handling the page in some other way, such as moving it to be a subpage of another page (where stubs can be much more useful), or moving it to user space as being something that might be valuable to the user. (And I handle IP-created pages differently. I may move them to a WV:Playspace; thus mainspace is cleaned up and the IP's content is given some level of respect.

What the process needs is "boxes sorted by date." Hence, when tagged, the template should not place the pages in a single category, but in dated category. It would work quite well if the category were just the month. I expect that if this is done, we would never accumulate prods for more than a year. (But there could be another category for expired prods, more than a year old. Easy to maintain, and a bot could do it.)

So I can choose to work on old prods first, particularly expired ones. The resource Neoism was created in October, 2013, and prodded in March 2014, It is obvious why. However, at that point, the page was linked from another page, [2]. When I became aware of this page, last month, I looked at the work of the page creator, and it was obviously part of a learning or educational project. So one of my first actions was to remove the proposed deletion template, which had been "updated" to renew it. It did not need to be renewed. The page was a stub, and would make complete sense as an incorporated part of a learning project.

So how did that stub survive with an expired prod so long? I have a pretty good idea. Category:Proposed deletions is currently 67 pages. While that is not "huge," it is not at all obvious how to prioritize handling it. I expect, as well, that Wikiversity will grow, I expect a wikiversity that will have a thousand times as many pages as it now has. Structure we build now should be scalable.

This is scalable. If the scale grows, the categories could become finer (shorter periods), but a month could probably handle even heavy traffic. The prod expiration date can be changed. Basically, I don't see a problem with allowing even a year, or more but some pages have so little content that deletion is essentially harmless.

Thoughts? After a time for comment here, I will take this to WV talk:Deletions for review.

The specific proposal is that the wikicode for the template would add to a Category:Proposed deletions (month) rather than one single overall category, where month is the current month. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:46, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Prod procedure

Deletion is a custodian function, but review of prods should be a general community function. We have speedy deletion criteria that allow custodians to delete ad hoc. Right now, "expired prod" is not clearly a reason for speedy deletion, and these pages are not readily displayed as needing immediate action. It has its own section in Wikiversity:Deletions. I'd leave that section in, but modify it. Handling Proposed deletions should become a general user responsibility, with actual deletion, then, being requested by a user looking at expired prods. We have an excellent speedy deletion system. I propose a speedy deletion, it takes less than a minute, though I may take more if I'm being careful (I check for incoming links, etc.) and it is typically done within hours, depending on how active custodians are at the time. WV:RCA has a display of pending rapid-response requests. This really works! So ... "expired prod" would not be a custodial task. It would be a community task, that anyone can deal with, by placing a speedy deletion tag on an expired prod (or removing the prod).

It is very important, my view, that the work be spread out. This would reduce necessary custodial labor. And the less that custodians need to make content decisions, as custodians, the better. The proof will be in the pudding: if we do this, and the backlog of proposed deletions is handled, so that there is never anything hanging around with such a tag for much longer than three months, we will have succeeded in involving the community. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:00, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

• I had not noticed that the template places the page in a new category after 90 days. This only takes a little more refinement to accomplish the goal of prioritizing attention.
• If undeletion is easy and simple, and we are working on that, there is little harm if a marginal page is deleted. I would think of four categories, basically fresh, 30 days pending, 60 days pending and 90 days pending (expired).
• So if I have some time, I might look at the 90 days pending first, then 60, etc. This allows extended community participation, and I've been thinking of ways we can encourage that. As the system is, that single prod category is forbidding. Right now, I'm going to look at Category:Pending deletions!!! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

There was one page in the category, and my opinion was that it should be deleted, so I replaced the prod with a normal deletion template, reason "expired prod." I intend, now, to create new categories, starting with a 60-day age of prod, to provide notice of pending expiration. I will then, looking at the proposed deletions category, review them and, if I see it not hazardous, add the Pending deletions category to the RCA action needed box. Then I may add a 30 day category. One step at a time. Objections? any edit may be reverted, ad hoc, if it will do no harm to revert, and/or ask me to stop and discuss! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Template now shows 60-day prods

... in Category:60-day proposed deletions. It is also now easy to add a 30-day category if we want to. Bonus: there are prods out there which were created with a fixed date instead of through substitution: those correctly display in the 60-day category. Other prods will not show, to fix them a new substitution with the original date will do, or the additional template code could be added. New substitution is probably simplest. I don't expect a problem with this, so I may go ahead and start substituting. All it's doing is adding a new category that has an obvious use. Expired prods still go into Category:Pending deletions. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion/Question

Why don't we have the specific discussion pages to discuss Prod as we have on Wikipedia? The Prod tag doesn't seem to be of any use if it can simply be removed to decline the deletion. Lightbluerain (discuss • contribs) 18:36, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Lightbluerain: Separate discussion pages aren't necessary. You are welcome to use the talk page for the resource(s) in question if you would like to discuss their proposed deletion.

The reality is that Wikiversity rarely has or requires deletion discussions because deletions here are rarely controversial. A large majority of proposed deletions end in deletion, because no one finds any value in the content and the original author isn't active to oppose the proposal.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:34, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Okay👍 Lightbluerain (discuss • contribs) 12:02, 6 December 2021 (UTC)