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VfD page is RIDICULOUSLY long. Surely non-broadband/T1 users are at a disadvantage. Not to mention slower PCs! (takes 4-5 seconds to load up on my PIII-500)

Zoney 15:33, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Changeover to date-based VfD pages

Here's how it's going to work: Everything currently at the top of VfD will stay there, but instead of the lists for each day, there will be a list of dates, in descending order. Each one will link to a subpage of VfD where the voting for that day takes place. We'll bold the ones that are still undergoing voting, and keep the day links around for a month or so after voting ceases. Here's why:

  1. It's no longer possible to edit VfD without edit conflicts. This is deterring users from participating.
  2. It is extremely difficult to find anything in the VfD history. Date-based pages will make this trivial.
  3. VfD does not scale to increased activity. Measures such as classifying deletions with different levels and listing on separate cleanup pages do not work. The system must be as simple as possible.
  4. No cleanup necessary. This means "no constant VfD cleanup necessary".

Unless somebody comes up with a SIMPLE alternative I am going to do this today. silsor 18:39, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)

I have a question. Why aren't we just offloading VfD discussions to the individual articles' talk pages? The goal is to improve the article 9 times out of 10, correct? Wouldn't it be better served to have these discussions on each page and then have VfD just be a central list? RadicalBender 18:42, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That may work, but only after much bureaucratic discussion and a major change in deletion strategy. What I propose is a simple change to the existing system which preserves the current spirit of the VfD clearinghouse and makes it WORK. We're still free to make changes like your proposal later. silsor 18:47, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)
Fair enough. There will likely still be a problem with edit conflicts on whatever the most recent page is, but in the interim, anything is better than what we have now. RadicalBender 18:49, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It's a good idea, but secondary to the idea of doing the voting and discussion in the article talk. — Sverdrup 19:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to see discussion on the article's talk page, links to the candidate for deletion and the talk page and a current vote count on VfD (auto tallied on a nightly basis)? Or maybe the tally could be included in the msg:VfD template? Ideally the msg:VfD template could have buttons/links in wikimedia to concur, or object (or abstain?), and a time/date stamp that counts down to the end of the voting period.
Please excuse me if this proposal sounds absurd, I don't know anything about the design of wikipedia so I have know way of knowing if this is wildly infeasible.JimD 22:25, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)
There has been discussion of tallies before, but it's a separate issue. This is a simple proposal to solve a particular problem. Let's not complicate it by redesigning the system in any other way. A complete redesign, just btw, is already underway, see Wikipedia talk:Deletion requests. Andrewa 22:40, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I support the idea. My only objection is that you should probably wait 24 to 48 hours before you implement this. That will give enough time for people to log in and read this idea; it will give them time to object, if they want to. Kingturtle 19:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Agree. Archiving is automatic, pages are shorter, but a slight delay would be recommended. That said, the need is urgent and the solution looks good, so not too much delay. Andrewa 21:26, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'd prefer to move voting to the article talk pages. Anthony DiPierro 19:12, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
No. Then we lose the discussion when these are deleted. Andrewa 21:23, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Does deleting a page automatically delete the talk page? Even if so, just move the page to Votes for deletion/page_name. Then you don't lose the discussion. Anthony DiPierro 23:39, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Regarding loss of VfD discussion after deletion: Can't we mark the database so that an attempt to access and article that's been deleted goes to a locked page whose contents summarize the VfD discussion; the reasoning for the deletion of the page. (Most often just redirects to a policy statement about vanity pages; for example). I means most true deletions are of topic that simply don't belong in the 'pedia. (Mostly vanity pages) – otherwise we delete egregiously POV or other bad content and leave a msg:stub; e.g. the topic might be suitable but the content was bad. I guess those are the three real dispositions: keep, delete, stub out!JimD 22:36, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)
Both of these can probably work, and should be discussed as part of the new proposal. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't want to keep a talk page for every deleted article, but suggest it there by all means and perhaps it will inspire something workable. This proposal is just a simple way to keep the existing system workable so the redesign can be given the time it needs. Andrewa 00:15, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, they will still technically exist (and can be brought back through undeletion if necessary), just not publicly, but if a page is deleted then what do we still need the vote for? Besides, if it's really an issue, when an admin deletes a page after it's gone through the requisite VfD process, the talk could be moved to another page at that time. RadicalBender 21:45, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Undelete only works until the database is cleaned up, similar to most PC garbage or recycle bins. We need these discussions whenever the page or a similar page is recreated, to avoid reinventing the wheel each time. The beauty of this proposal is that the archiving just happens, nobody needs to do anything. So we can all get back to writing articles. Andrewa 21:57, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Well, the way I'm reading the proposal, the archived VfD pages eventually get deleted too, so we would pretty much be recreating the wheel after a month or so, anyways. Secondly, it doesn't address problem #1. The newest page will still have a considerable number of edit conflicts, maybe even more than we get now, especially if this page begins to do the job of Cleanup as well. RadicalBender 22:09, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There's no mention of deleting them, only the pointers from the parent VfD page, and no reason why they should be deleted any more than the current archives are.
So far as edit conflicts go, I certainly edit days other than the newest and oldest, although like most people I tend to concentrate on what is either new or about to be decided. This proposal would provide some incentive to edit the intervening days, where edit conflicts would be fewer, thus improving the whole process. Andrewa 22:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I would strongly oppose any move to do away with cleanup. This is not part of the proposal, although it is listed above as an advantage. I don't think it is at all, if anything it's one of the few drawbacks. Andrewa 22:22, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'm not proposing getting rid of Wikipedia:Cleanup, what I meant by "no cleanup" is that it won't be necessary to constantly prune VfD. silsor 22:26, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)
What about this: the VfD page lists only the *names* of the articles in question, with links to the article and to its talk page. All discussion takes place in the article's "talk" page. Then the VfD page could be created automatically by scanning the articles for msg:vfd tags.Jorge Stolfi 20:24, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I strongly object to this proposal. It has already been tried, and it didn't work. It became almost impossible to find out what's going on, so people had to add a list of the articles to the main VfD, which was perpetually out of sync. Your argument that it will become easier to find things in the history seems fallacious to me. Now I have to check the history of 5 subpages to figure out where a discussion about a particular entry took place. Nobody is going to remember which day they nominated something on, so they will have to keep looking it up by following backlinks or, again, an out-of-sync index.
No, this is the wrong approach. Please don't do it. What we need to do right now is implement the Wikipedia:Deletion votes part of the policy reform proposed and accepted at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy, and then enter the trial period for that policy. Among other things it includes a mandatory cleanup phase for most articles, and requires long discussions to be moved to their talk pages.
Furthermore, code for merging is currently in the development branch of MediaWiki. This will end most edit conflicts, except for those to the same article.—Eloquence 23:30, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)
This isn't incompatible with these developments. It's a simple interim solution to keep things going while the new things are carefully prepared and discussed. If it works well it should have some input to the new scheme, of course. Andrewa 00:11, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This has already been tried a few months ago. It didn't work. There is nothing we can learn by trying it again, except for those who weren't here when we tried it.—Eloquence 00:17, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)
Eloquence, sorry, but it did work an order of magnitude better than what we've got going on here now. Are you trying with a straight face to say what we've got here now actually works? - Hephaestos|§ 21:53, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I was there. Two things. One is, from memory it wasn't quite as simple a change as this one, other changes to the system were tried at the same time, which in hindsight was a mistake. The other is, we have a lot more experience of edit conflicts now. The motivation to make it work is far greater. That was the main problem before, not that it didn't work but that people weren't prepared to give it a fair go. We have no choice now - unless the new system is ready, in which case by all means let's use it instead. But let's not mess up the new system by rushing it in. Andrewa 00:40, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was exactly the same thing - move the days to subpages, nothing else. You can read the lovely discussion here and here. Some selected negative comments:

  • "the current system killed my interest in participating on vfd almost to nil" -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick
  • "I especially like the part where someone made a unilateral decision to drastically alter the whole page and then botched the job." -- anon
  • "I'm not saying it's unredeemably terrible, and something needs to be done about the length of the Vfd page, but I don't think that this is it. ... I've stopped participating on the VfD page because of the new format." --Dante Alighieri
  • "The new VfD format stinks ?the cure is almost worse than the disease. Splitting everything into separate pages by day is a very poor solution...." -- Daniel Quinlan
  • "I'd thought this might turn out well... I was wrong. The current format is not working." -- Jake
  • "I have to say that I'm not fond of this new style." -- Martin

We have no new knowledge about edit conflicts that we haven't had before. Edit conflicts are as old as Wikipedia. I am absolutely against going through this ordeal once more without a poll prior to the changeover.—Eloquence 01:00, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

When will the edit merging code be brought live? silsor 00:38, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe a couple of weeks.—Eloquence 01:00, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)
Fair enough. It was to allow comments like this that I supported the idea of a short delay (see above), and you'll note that the links from this page to Wikipedia talk:deletion requests and from there back here are among my contributions too. I disagree that we know nothing more, we have several more months' bitter experience, we now have had practice at working with daily headings, and we have cleanup. Andrewa 02:52, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Duchy of Pinica

The stated justification for the inclusion of this article on VfD is just plain inaccurate. I am not saying Duchy of Pinica shouldn't be included on VfD but it has to be for an accurate reason. There either is no such thing as a "sub-province," or I am at a total loss to know what it is. The Empire of Upper and Lower is not a "fictional micronation," as that phrase is mildly redundant. Include Duchy of Pinica on VfD, but do it for a valid reason! --Daniel C. Boyer 19:14, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Edit problems

Someone has put a header inside unreadable brackets, making editing of the correct section impossible. I tried to fix it, but my browser won't support editing of the entire page. Can somebody fix it, please? RickK | Talk 01:25, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maintainability experiment

Starting with the vote on pessimism I have put in an experiment whereby the actual voting takes place inside MediaWiki messages. This should help with edit conflicts and maintainability at the end of votes. Please report if this works with caching etc... Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 19:53, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I like the fact this will reduce edit conflicts. Some questions...
1)What is supposed to happen to old talk in the mediawiki namespace? Will this now stay here forever, or be moved to the article's talk page?
A couple of suggestions, move to MediaWiki-Archive-Article_Name - this then could be included in the article talk space. Or just copy paste content from mediawiki: namespace into talk namespace and delete mediawiki title. The former is more complex maybe, but will be useful in the sense it would help us keep track of what has already been on vfd.
2)Does this solve the size problem of VfD or will the page still take as long to load with these as it would if the text was actually on the page?
The full 150KB or more of text still has to be transferred. There may even be some extra overhead relating to parsing. We need to know from developers if this is an issue, VfD is a heavily accessed page.
3)Will the VfD page need purging every time one of these is edited?
Angela. 19:57, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)
This could be an show-stopping issue potentially. I am not sure what the latest state of play is with purging.

Does adding the {{msg:VfD-pessimism}} create the new vote article in mediawiki space? Or does it need to be done separately? I love the idea and the fact that you can still browse on Vfd since all text shows up there. Too bad it will show up on watchlists individually. - Texture 20:08, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think you'll need to refine the instructions for adding entries. Do we need to create the MediaWiki entry before we can add to VfD? Is there a clean way to do that or will we be altering URLs or creating in sandboxes? - Texture 20:28, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think URL hacking is required - what would be ideal would be if {{blahblahblah}} became a red link to MediaWiki:blahblahblah if that page didn't exist... but that would require a software change.
ANOTHER PROBLEM. Spaces are not supported MediaWiki pages. _s have to be used instead... at the moment my feeling is that this method is close but no cigar... I was hoping we could do it without developer botherment. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:38, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Knowing nothing about how this wiki stuff is coded.. (but I'd love to find out...) I am wondering if you can create a form to generate the necessary URL creation string. Users enter the entry they want to add and the form would generate an edit window while adding an entry to the bottom of VfD. This is possible in normal web pages but I have no clue how this one works. - Texture 20:43, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I tried creating MediaWiki:VfD-First 100000 digits of pi and had problems. I can see further problems when we lower case the "d" in VfD... And you corrected the first line to the text to edit but it isn't showing up on VfD yet. Is this because of my attempt's beleaguered childhood? - Texture 20:40, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is going to involve editing in sandboxes (or using the preview button), and manually constructing ugly links saying "to edit this page you have to click here" for every single entry.
No this is not an issue, you are already on the edit page itself when you create that click here - you just copy and paste from your address bar, quite neat really. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:17, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The page will still be as big for viewing, and the multiple transclusions will indeed put extra load on the server. Every vote will require finding and editing a different page, and afterwards you'll have to remember to do a manual purge else anyone not logged in won't see your comment. Oh, and you'll have to explain this on the Village pump every time someone doesn't read or doesn't understand the instructions.
You can't vote on more than one thing at a time anyway. Purging is an issue - there are a few non-logged-in VfD users.
Erm... Do you get the impression I don't like this idea at all? Bit of a rant really, I apologise. All true, though - seems to me to be a manual duplication of the section editing facilities already available, which will cause more problems than it will solve. As I said on the village pump, the only feature that needs tweaking is the edit conflict screen for a single-section edit. - IMSoP 20:49, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Yes, that will be a better solution than this one, but is still vapourware right now. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:17, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm always a bit negative in the start of everything, but I think this is pushing the usability of the MediaWiki elements a bit too far. Maybe we should not even have an all-inclusive wikimarkup. (Meaning that all our functions are administered by wikicode of increasing complexity. Perhaps we should code UI solutions to each of the important Wikipedia functions, like VfD.— Sverdrup 20:53, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I hear that edit conflict code is already in the cvs version of the software. As such, maybe this isn't going to be necessary shortly. In the mean time, it seems like an ingenious solution, but hopefully there aren't any kinks. anthony 22:08, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Also in CVS is dramatically improved inclusion code, so that e.g. spaces will work, red links to missing inclusion pages will work, purging will not be required. This clears out virtually all the teething problems with this method. But if cleverer merging comes on stream at the same time, all that may be moot. :)

I agree with the goal of reducing edit conflicts. However, I have two issues with the current implementation. First it makes the page that much bigger and slower. But mostly I want to be back at VfD after hitting Save--not having to type "vfd<enter>" every time (which is probably slower, as I assume it is a redirect). Niteowlneils 03:03, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps, we could just make this page into a list of pages with VfD, and make something like VfD:ArticleName for each page that is being voted about. Falcon 00:16, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

Check out all the archives to this page. People like being able to see the debates in one place. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:39, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I HEARTILY dislike that it is now impossible to add comments to the comments that are already there. RickK | Talk 03:29, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't know what you're talking about. People have been adding comments to the comments that are already there all night. - Hephaestos|§ 03:36, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You can do it if you edit the entire page at once. I guess you can't. I thought I did before. -- Decumanus | Talk 03:38, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I just added one. Check the history. - Hephaestos|§ 03:41, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You're right. Of course. I think I was looking at one that actually didn't have any comments in it yet. -- Decumanus | Talk 03:42, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
(I wasn't using section editing either, I have that turned off. - Hephaestos|§ 03:48, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC))
When I click on the "edit" link next to a section that has one of these msgs, all I get is the msg and none of the already-existing comments. RickK | Talk 04:17, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Can we PLEASE get rid of these? Is this an end-run attempt at limiting the usefulness of VfD by making people have to create a MediaWiki entry before they can list things on this page? I hate it. RickK | Talk 04:20, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree 110% with Rickk. →Raul654 04:23, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)
VfD as it has become is not useful if one has to wait half a minute to load the page, and then again each successive time when it hits an edit conflict. It was rapidly becoming unusable. If you click on the message instead of the section edit link, it will open the window with the comments. - Hephaestos|§ 04:26, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Furthermore, you don't even have to learn how to make the links to add a listing. Just put it there, and someone (probably me at the moment) will fix it for you. - Hephaestos|§ 05:17, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You have to come back to VfD in order to click on the article page, because the MediaWiki page doesn't have a link to the article. RickK | Talk 06:09, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think you are just looking for problems that don't exist here. That is exactly the same as saying (for the old style listing) "Hey, when I click edit this page and go to the edit screen, if I want to go back to the article again I have to click back to vfd and then click on the article." i.e. You read the article, read the comments then click "Click here to discuss" and add your comment. Just like you always did! The only difference is that edit conflict resolution is built in by using mediawiki pages. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:40, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That it is a technical measure you are wrong on. On a more political note, you are suggesting this an attempt to decrease the usefulness of vfd. To me this is an incredulous example of AssumeBadFaith. Of course it was an attempt to increase the usefulness by getting rid of edit conflicts, which must run into the hundreds per day. Note that there are at least many listings as normal, with at least as many comments. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:40, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)


I clicked on the link for Iain Smith, adding the comment "Keep stub. Nice work". It shows up in the MediaWiki, but not on Vfd itself. What gives? I must say that, though it's nice to be able to edit more quickly, I'm not a big fan of the new setup. A better idea might be to archive each day on a separate page, getting rid of the huge single Vfd. Meelar 05:59, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the deal is there, but it shows up fine for me on VfD. (You mean Iain Sinclair, right? There's no listing for Iain Smith.) - Hephaestos|§ 07:29, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Probably a caching problem: Meelar's browser is using the old version of VfD because editing the Mediwiki page doesn't send a "dump me I'm invalid" message down the caching chain. Thus when the browser looks again there's nothing to tell it the page needs to be re-fetched. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 11:33, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)
Note that as Meelar is a logged-in user, he is probably using "back" on his browser after visiting the MediaWiki: page to get to VfD proper. This will result in a cached page (in my experience). Reloading the page will get the updated comment. If Meelar were not logged in, even reloading would not help. This is a known issue because of the Main Page, and is fixed in the forthcoming release of MediaWiki software. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:46, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's puzzling that the {{msg:VfD-YOUR-PAGE-HERE}} and {{subst:DD}} tags are both case sensitive unlike most other tags. --Eequor 17:41, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The msg:VfD link for Syxx doesn't seem to be working correctly (links to YourPage Here), but I can't tell why (case seems to be correct). Niteowlneils 19:43, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There is a Javascript thing that might help with creating the mediawiki namespace pages needed for listing articles on VfD. I've no idea if it works in anything other than IE6 and Mozilla 1.4 on Windows. Angela. 04:00, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

This seems working with Safari. -- Taku 04:10, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I am just going on the record to say that this new system blows as it adds a lot more effort to the process. Maybe that's the intended consequence as I am simply not going to bother to add any more pages to VFD (unless I feel very strongly about a page). Dori | Talk 06:49, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I'll second that. Go back to the pre-media wiki system, or switch to "each day gets a separate article", it would be much easier. Meelar 06:50, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I concur. The new method is a joke in terms of usability - one has to jump through hoops to get this working. This method would only have merit if there is some easy, automated methods to shield the processes behind making this page work Dysprosia 08:02, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There seem to be two groups of people-those that get it and think its easy, and a second group that do not, and think it's awful. But the fact that there is a second group at all, and that it includes many old hands, means that something is seriously wrong with it. -- Decumanus | Talk 08:04, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Dori is right, it's now quite a bother to post/add to vfd. We should encourage the developers to get section-edits conflict proof, and it would be so much better. — Sverdrup 15:53, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I hate this new format. Grrrrr. I've mostly stopped participating in vfd, and I think it will really confuse the newbies. moink 04:01, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why don't you just list candidates for deletion the old way, then, and let someone else come along and fix the markup later? Like I do with the old vs new table markup that I find impossible to use? - Hephaestos|§ 16:16, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am afraid that someone would come along and accuse me of vandalism. With the old method, all I had to do was use this link [1] with no subject, but a section with four bars to add an entry. Dori | Talk 16:19, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
That still works, yes? Nobody has accused me of vandalism for using HTML tables (which I do a lot, I still have a months-old taxobox template that I haven't updated). - Hephaestos|§ 16:48, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It will work, but it will make more work for others as entries are not uniform. This might piss a few people off. Also, the mixed format will confuse users. Dori | Talk 16:51, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)
Thing is I don't think a listing will stay in the old format very long before someone comes along and converts it. - Hephaestos|§ 17:35, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I like this new format. It cuts down a lot on size and makes it easier to maintain the many sections. If this ever gets to be too much of a problem, it could just be automated with a CGI submission page and automatic deletion. Ashibaka ✎ 21:18, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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