Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy

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Deletion timescales

How quickly should articles that are proposed for deletion actually be deleted?

I waa shocked that a speedy deletion was proposed for an article that has not been edited for a long time.

The argument for deletion was reasonable, but the speed (1 week) is not when human editors who are not very active on wikipedia are concerned. There should be stronger reasons for speedy deletion.

Also, making it easy to ask for a delay to a speedy deletion would be helpful, without having to make a real case, at least for a single extension.

The article I saw which I am concerned about is one on the British Furniture Confederation. I was glad to find the info and not interested in doing an update. I am just concerned that someone who had a real interest would not have much chance of addressing the issues raised.

The short timescales favours active editors who use bots effectively. They are in a serious, but powerful, minority. CuriousMarkE (talk) 06:44, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Many, if not most, speedy deletions can be restored upon request, provided there is an indication that the requester intends on fixing the original issue. PROD deletions can be refunded without even that. I'm not sure what you mean about delaying deletion; if you want to start a discussion, start a discussion, don't just wish that it could be longer. Primefac (talk) 10:19, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CuriousMarkE The nomination was for a PROD, not a Speedy Deletion. The PROD template says "You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason.", which makes it pretty easy to stop the process.

It was also very easy to find a couple of sources, which I've just added. I'll dePROD it on that basis.

There are many editors who monitor PRODs and might well also have come to the rescue of this one. PamD 10:40, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At one point I advocated for more than 7 days before PRODs were deleted but two observations makes me no longer think this would be very helpful:

A longer review period does not reduce the number of proposals that must be reviewed per day so a longer review period won't greatly improve the number of eyeballs on each proposal. The WP:PRODPATROL workload is too much for individual patrollers such as myself to keep up with. I don't know how the administrators manage.
Many of the proposals are at the margins of the encyclopedia. The creators are no longer active or not bold enough to contest and the articles aren't likely to be on an experienced active editor's watchlist.

~Kvng (talk) 05:05, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion regarding BIODELETE/BLPREQUESTDELETE

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons § Remove "non-public" from "relatively unknown, non-public figures". This concerns a policy section that is mirrored between this page and that one. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 03:33, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Move protection for articles at AfD

Not sure whether this should be here or VPP, but I thought I'd start here. Is there any reason against or technical impediment to automagically extended confirmed move protecting articles at AfD? I didn't see a prior discussion. This morning's Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem spurred the post, but I've seen a few recently. ECP so that if folks agree an early draftification is fine, it can be closed early that way. But there's otherwise no reason to move an article at AfD and since it's most often in good faith, the protection will stop them from doing what they shouldn't. Will also leave a note at WT:AFC since many of these are recent moves from draft space. Star Mississippi 14:19, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For my part, I support EC'ing AfD move protections. Happy to hear clash, no matter where this is eventually discussed. BusterD (talk) 14:37, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support protecting, should save a fair bit of totally unnecessary hassle, and prevent occasional system gaming. (If there is a technical reason not to protect, I'll be curious to hear what it is.) --DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:47, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the only technical reason is that there is that protections need to be applied by a user, they cannot be automatically applied (with the exception I suppose of cascade protection). I'm not sure folks would like adding cascade protection to the AFD hardware so that it tricks the system into thinking the page being nominated for deletion falls under that schema. Primefac (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh okay, thanks; wasn't aware of that. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:53, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I wonder if the move protection could be a Twinkle setting since a number of nominators use that to make nominations. If the nominator isn't an admin, the tick box (if applicable) could notify RPP. I'll leave a note at Twinkle Talk. Star Mississippi 19:15, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, Twinkle already has the option for admins to protect a page, but again a non-admin who is nominating a page for deletion cannot move-protect a page anyway. Primefac (talk) 16:21, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are too many AfD nominations done by non-admins that it could significantly increase traffic at RfPP. It would be simpler to have an adminbot to do protections automatically. In that case, no change to Twinkle is needed. The edit filter route suggested by zzuuzz sounds even simpler. – SD0001 (talk) 17:40, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ECP move protection for articles during the course of an AfD nomination sounds entirely appropriate. No one NOT EC'ed needs to be doing such a move. Jclemens (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure an edit filter could easily accomplish this. 'action == move & article contains "{{Article for deletion/", etc'... -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:30, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a common enough problem to justify doing thousands of protections a year? Would it be easier to just revert bad moves on a case by case basis (i.e. the status quo)? –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:32, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The last RfC on this subject failed, and that was just a proposal to change the instructions. My views have evolved a bit since then as I've noticed more problematic moves, but the community may not feel the same way. I do think an edit filter would be the only viable way of doing this. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 04:49, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure how I didn't find that - thanks for flagging @Extraordinary Writ. @Novem Linguae it seems to be getting worse, but could also be perception since I had wandered away from AfD. While AfC is (and should be) optional, it seems to go a lot like this. "I know my subject better than you do, so I'll move it despite the decline. Oh, now I understand what you were saying, and my article could disappear entirely, let me go back to draft". @Zzuuzz an edit filter makes total sense as people would understand why the move isn't ideal. And an EC editor or whomever could them properly close it as draftify and then move it. Star Mississippi 13:33, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That previous RfC looks pretty convincing. I'll note however that a good proportion of oppose votes explicitly did not object to preventing (ordinary) moves from mainspace to the Draft: namespace. Again that specific action would be trivial to implement with a filter, but it would obviously require another RfC. Maybe a warning instead of disallow? I'm not really for or against (OK, maybe a little against), just mainly offering some technical options. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 16:04, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion is in the minority, but I agree with the intent of this proposal and disagree with how it is proposed to be done. I think that move-protecting the articles is work, and should only be done if a simpler measure is insufficient. The simpler measure, in my opinion, will be adding an instruction to the AFD template saying not to move the article. In my opinion, any renaming of the article is not so urgent that it needs to be done while the AFD is still open, but can be done when the AFD is closed. I am aware that other editors think that sometimes the moving/renaming of the article must be done urgently while the AFD is still in progress. I will again say that my reason for thinking that articles should not be moved while the AFD is in progress is that moving an article to draft space (or user space) after it is nominated for deletion is done to game the system. I think that the template on the article should be expanded, and that should be enough (because an editor who ignores the instruction not to move the article can be sanctioned for disruption). I know that I am in the minority. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:54, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Potentially dumb question: Are Draft articles noindexed? What about userspace? If so those are effectively "hidden" from "the public at large", and abandoned drafts get deleted automatically (and abandoned user ones can be too). Is there really a problem here, then? Moving to draftspace isn't some big "gotcha on a technicality" kind of thing: "Oh ho ho, now this can't be deleted at AfD, and if I then move it back in a month you have to start AfD all over again! Gotcha!" Since we can always just... not, and "re-open" the AfD discussion or whatever. Wikipedia's not a game of Nomic.

Speaking of: if they aren't noindexed, then we could just make that policy, that if a mainspace article gets draftified it's automaticallty noindexed.

I'm recalling something I've read from user interaction research about how people perceive technical restrictions—something being just disallowed by software—as less personally hostile than, positive action taken by other people—such as, someone going and blocking them. The former people perceive as "impersonal" and not specifically "about them" ("the computer" just saying, "can't do that sorry") while the latter people often perceive as a personal slight or attack by the person on the other end ("Why are you targeting me? I'm not a bad guy! I bet it's because you're just a huge jerk and personally hate me for no reason/are a corrupt nationalist shill for Country X out to censor everything about Country Y/etc"). --Slowking Man (talk) 03:52, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support instructions on AFD header not to move. But preemptive or automatic protection is not really required, as it is not happening frequently. We can just revert the move, and warn or block the mover. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:45, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just concerned that this could flood AfD with a lot of arbitrary proposals following a move discussion that another user strongly disapproves of (possibly WP:OWN), leading to significant delays, backlogs, and a lot of manual work to speedily keep them. Squawk7700 (talk) 15:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. WP:MOVP lists a small number of specific reasons to set move protection, and a vague "It's annoying when people move pages at AfD" isn't one of them. RoySmith (talk) 16:01, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we need this. Just have the policy say that moving is not permitted until the AFD concludes. Then block anyone who moves such a page prematurely. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:16, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is transwiki still active?

Out of curiosity, I checked the relevant help pages, and they seem to all suggest that the procedure as a whole is deprecated. If so, should the entire section be removed? Sesquilinear (talk) 16:48, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have restored some game fandom related pages for transwiki in the recent times. Transwiki still occurs, but the speedy delete criterion was eliminated. (A5. Transwikied articles) So now I just would use G6 instead. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:54, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be okay to include navification under WP:ATD yet?

Incomplete draft of the proposed section; open to revision and/or expansion
Navification Shortcut ATD-N As an alternative to redirection, a page can be navified if there are multiple suitable pages to redirect to, and if multiple targets appear equally appropriate.

Navification, the process of turning a mainspace page into an entirely new type of page called a navigation page (which is sorted into its very own category), has started to be proposed in discussions as a potential fate for articles such as Mohamed Sy Savané and Armand Biniakounou and for redirects such as Poor people's rights. Even though I'm capable of adding the § Navification subsection there myself (complete with the shortcut WP:ATD-N), I'm not sure whether it was the right thing for me to ask first before any potentially controversial edits are made to a policy page, or if I should've been bold and done that anyway, even if it meant being reverted for a good reason. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 12:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Now that I think about it, it may be better for us to hold off on that idea until WP:NAVPAGE is developed to the point where I can safely bet that it's no longer "in development". – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 15:16, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The central discussion on navigation pages appears to be at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Navigation pages if anyone would like to weigh in. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:02, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion affect statistics?

If a page is deleted, are its respective statistics removed from links like this? FastF20 (talk) 14:42, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

dates from deleted June_2025_Iranian_strikes_on_Israel

After shocking deleting of article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2025_Iranian_strikes_on_Israel I cannot find dates from infobox & table about places of strikes in Israel, informations about killed & injured person for the separate days. Please, rebuilt it urgent. KKE 94.172.21.243 (talk) 08:16, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was not deleted, it was merged. You can see an earlier version here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=June_2025_Iranian_strikes_on_Israel&oldid=1296004180 Click on history to see other past versions. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:50, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]