Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 April 9

9 April 2009

Bosnia and Herzegovina–Malta relations

Bosnia and Herzegovina–Malta relations (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

I think that User:DGG wrongfully speedy closed this discussion of ten bilateral international relations articles. Eight editors (including myself) had voted that all the articles be deleted as they were not notable, one editor had voted that all but one article be deleted (also on notability grounds), and there were no comments about the scope of the nomination. Despite this, DGG closed the discussion on procedural grounds, stating that the notability of the articles was likely to be different. This argument is basically a vote to break up the AfD (which is a common vote in bulk nominations like this, and as such needs to be weighed against the views of other editors) and it appears to be an abuse of procedure to use this as grounds to close the nomination (not to mention an assumption that all the other nine editors who had commented in the AfD were acting inappropriately). Nick-D (talk) 06:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I did a technical close, in order to split the AfD, on the basis that previous similar nominations had also been split, and that in such cases a few of the articles were sometimes kept. I made no statement at all about whether the articles should or should not be kept, individually. My view is that anyone can make such a split if they act in good faith. I do not see on what basis a nominator can insist that the separate articles be kept together--I see no basis whatsoever in policy or reason for requiring this if anyone disagrees. I see it essentially like Prod: one objection is sufficient. the bias should be against both summary judgement and combined process. Nor do i see on what basis this appeal was taken--does the nom. think they are more likely to get deleted if they are kept together? It's just as logical to guess that one good one might keep bad ones from being properly deleted. It has nothing to do with my own opinions on the merits--based on previous articles of this sort, where if I !vote at all I usually !vote delete, i expect i shall probably !vote to delete most or possibly all of them--if they get renominated & nobody takes the trouble to improve them. I notice nobody has bothered to do either, so far. I said nothing at all about the other people who commented, and any assumptions about this are those of the person who brought this appeal. I don't judge things on the basis of who does them. I try not to look at the names, just the material at hand. DGG (talk) 08:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Overturn and reopen, with all !votes cast to date still counting. I hope this was a minor aberration on the part of DGG, who is usually very reliable and fair. Renominating individually would correctly be placed as a !vote. The closure was altogether inappropriate bearing in mind the existing !votes.
  For future reference, it's usual (not to mention more courteous) to notify the closing administrator of your disagreement and give an opportunity to reverse the decision before making a listing here. It also usually obviates the need for a five-day discussion period. Stifle (talk) 08:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Stifle, I was certainly notified, and given a full opportunity to change my mind, and I declined to do so. I continue to uphold the principle that joint nominations can be split at anyone's asking. As someone mentioned commending another perhaps unexpected decision of mine, i tend to go by principle. Seems basically fairer. I consider that by no means an aberration., but a way of preventing rush to judgment--especially considering that all the votes were pile-ons in the first 15 hours, & they were not unanimous. DGG (talk) 08:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's see if you still think that way once my bot has created 10,000 articles on town twinnings. Perhaps I will start with a few manual ones to figure out the basic structure, beginning with Town twinning between Lorsch and Zwevegem. Or should I post the suggestion on 4chan instead of using a bot? The potential disruption caused by these silly articles is enormous, but only if people go out of their way to defend them. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Or for even better amusement value and an n³ explosion instead of merely n², how about International conferences where Cape Verde, Liechtenstein and Palau met? --Hans Adler (talk) 08:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Threats of WP:POINT don't tend to go over well here. I remind you to respect the opinions of other ediors and behave in line with WP:CIVIL. If someone went forward with something like your suggestion above, it would be dealt with then and there. [[::User:Usrnme h8er|Usrnme h8er]] ([[::User talk:Usrnme h8er|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Usrnme h8er|contribs]]) 09:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

You should have your sarcasm sensors checked, I think they are malfunctioning. I thought it was obvious that I am not threatening, but trying to make DGG aware that we must draw the line somewhere, and that the articles under discussion are an excellent opportunity to do so. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

At the rate these articles are still, currently being created, Hans Adler is not the one who should be accused of trying to make a point. --BlueSquadronRaven 14:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't follow you. I agree that mass-creations of such non-notable articles is close to a POINT violation, and that the articles created by Hilary T probably shouldn't exist. But her recent creations aren't of the extremely obscure type we are dealing with here, they come at a rate of only one per day, and they are referenced. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Overturn. Every single of these articles lacked, and still lacks:
  • Sourcing
  • Information establishing notability
  • Claims of notability
  • A realistic chance that there will be enough editors watching the article so that it is properly maintained, defended against vandalism etc.
  • Information that cannot be placed into an article about the foreign relations of Malta
  • Information that cannot be more easily recovered from the original source of the articles, once it is identified, for the purpose of adding it to an article about the foreign relations of Malta
  • Significant edit history
  • Sufficient concentration by the article creator to prevent errors, and subsequent copy edits:
    • "Peru is represented in Thailand through its embassy in Rome (Italy)." (from Malta–Peru relations)
    • "Thailand is represented in Thailand through its embassy in Athens (Greece)." (from Malta–Thailand relations)

A general problem with our deletion process is that the effort involved in deleting an article with little potential that should never have been created in the first place is often out of proportion with the effort that went into its creation. This is OK for individually created articles, but not for mass-productions like what we are facing here. I think nominating these articles in bunches of 10 strongly related ones is a very moderate approach. What we really need is a process for mass-deleting such articles without prejudice.

Why bother? One problem is, if we leave these articles lying around, we are effectively encouraging other well-intended editors to create more articles of this kind. Creating an article such as this provides instant gratification: It looks good, much better than the average stub, even has graphics etc. The initial return on investment is much higher than for creating a small number of proper articles with the same content. But 2–5 minutes, say, work by a clueless editor should not be allowed to take more than a man-hour by experienced wikipedians to clean up. Under normal situations this would have been handled by a prod, but unfortunately an editor is insisting that all inter-country relations are automatically notable and removing such prods, and an admin is helping and encouraging this editor.

Relevant background information: both the population and the size of Malta are only roughly half those of Leeds. No wonder that it has only 23 embassies worldwide, see Foreign relations of Malta. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Unequivocal Endorse. Joint AfDs are generally a bad idea as whether pages will be percieved to have varying degrees of notability/verifiability by other people cannot be known to the nominator. This is demonstrated by the very first comment "Delete all except Finland–Malta relations.". As soon as anyone in a discussion objects the the group deletion suggestion or !votes differently for different articles it should be split. Whether we should have an process that requires the closer to create the individual AfDs is a different matter. If you think these articles should go, list them for deletion and then delete them. [[::User:Usrnme h8er|Usrnme h8er]] ([[::User talk:Usrnme h8er|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Usrnme h8er|contribs]]) 09:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Endorse - it is not possible to have ten seperate discussions overtop of one another. Bilateral relations in general are being kept, deleted and no consensus'd with equal regularity, and these articles are not identical in notability. Obviously as the person who requested it be closed so we could have a discussion rather than cut off the possibility of one, I'm biased, but that hardly leaves me alone. WilyD 12:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Overturn Mass nominations are appropriate in some instances, such as when someone has mass-produced variations on the same theme. With few exceptions, the "nation x and nation y relations" articles are cranked out using a fairly simple format, with a few sentences and a couple of colorful flags. Many of us feel that creating one stub after another is disruptive to Wikipedia. My feeling is that an administrator to decide, on his own, that each article must be nominated separately, is an endorsement of that type of disruption. DGG is well-known as an inclusionist; there's nothing wrong with that if he wishes to be one of many participants in a debate. On many occasions, he has made arguments persuasive enough that people changed their minds about deleting an article. There is something wrong with an administrator being an inclusionist or a deletionist, however. In return for the greater power that an administator has, he or she must take a neutral stance, limiting the rulings to policy rather than preference. Mandsford (talk) 12:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Mandsfield, my motive is not that I am trying to keep these articles. far from it. I have said that when they are renominated, i will almost certainly !vote to delete all or almost all of them if they are not much improved. I would not close a debate on the individual articles, because I have a generally deletionist view of them. I only close if it is either a/technical b/obvious or c/against my own usual position. I could fairly close in favor of my usual position when there is a clear majority for it & its not a subject I am particularly involved in, but I so far have avoided doing so. I consider this an instance of a/technnical. Nothing i did prevents in any way the deletion of the articles. DGG (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Overturn all of the articles have almost the exact same structure and all of the votes except for one wanted them all deleted. If we renominate them separately, we would be unnecessarily clogging the AfD boards with more discussions, only to result in the same outcome (delete). Tavix |  Talk  13:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Endorse-There's absolutely nothing stopping the person who brought this DRV, or anyone else, from re-opening another AFD for the individual articles. The close simply says that they should be re-nominated seperately and considered on an individual basis, which makes a lot more sense. This DRV just seems a waste of time. Umbralcorax (talk) 13:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Overturn and reopen - the discussion (which, admittedly, I initiated) was proceeding with a clear conclusion ahead and no confusion expressed by any participants. True, mass nominations should generally be avoided, but discussing each of these separately would almost certainly yield no different result. Plus, it's not that hard to investigate notability for ten articles over five days. - Biruitorul ^Talk 14:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Overturn and reopen. The nominator was quite careful to bundle a group of articles that were equally poorly fleshed out and had the same issues of non-notability. There was not one dissent against the bundling except for one minor point of one article, the content of which was shown to have been presented in another article. --BlueSquadronRaven 14:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Endorse -- Multiple {{afd}} are a mistake for several reasons, including, (1) unfortunately, they have a tendency to trigger a kind of lynch mob mentality -- they are not unlike the bonds based on toxic mortgages that brought down the stock-market; (2) it places an unfair burden on those who want to defend the articles, when some of the article are, in fact, notable -- but for different reasons. Marshalling the time to improve a single article is a burden... Geo Swan (talk) 15:08, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Overturn An extraordinary lapse from a normally scrupulous admin. There is no policy requirement to list related articles individually. If editors participating in the AfD had felt this was required they would have so expressed themselves. As it was, there was clear consensus and DGG's actions look suspiciously like the imposition of personal preference varnished unconvincingly with a false appeal to procedure. Eusebeus (talk) 16:12, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

again, my current person preference is to delete them. DGG (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• Endorse There is absolutely nothing stopping the individual relisting of each of these article. DGG acted by closing these on the technical reason that if even one person objects to a mass AFD that they should be listed separately. Again should the nom or anyone, for that matter, desire to relist the articles, more power to them. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Slightly off topic but... What do you do with an article like Bosnia_and_Herzegovina–Serbia_relations? That one is extremely notable as a topic considering recent history, but the actual article is just as cookie-cutter as the rest. I don't know whether that's an argument for taking these all one by one (hoping that some are salvagable) or just nuking the bunch. 128.103.197.57 (talk) 21:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Charm School Gives Back

Charm School Gives Back (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

The reason this page was deleted was because it had little information on the upcoming series such as the cast, airing date, and hosts. The full cast has now been revealed as well as the airing date and hosts so I believe it should be recreated. However, it is under creation protection by an administrator (User:Chaser) who says he/she will not be logging in for an extended amount of time. I have tried to contact Chaser but to no avail. Andrew097 (talk) 05:38, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• When a page has been deleted so many times that an administrator has felt compelled to protect it against recreation, it's usual to bring a userspace draft to the DRV to show how the topic has become more notable and/or how the previous expressed concerns do not apply any longer. I recommend you do that. While I would normally offer to userfy the page to facilitate this, it appears a lot of it has been copied from the VH1 website. Stifle (talk) 08:19, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
• If you are asking asking for a review of the AFD, I Endorse it because the consensus was clear to delete, also it appeared to be a possible copyvio. As for removal of the salting I agree with Stifle that it would be best to come back with a draft of the article. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)