User talk:Davidwr/Choosing SPEEDY, PROD, or AFD deletion

Discussion[edit]

This started life in December 2008 as a user essay. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Using CAPITAL LETTERS as a means for emphasis is annoying and should be switched to italics or perhaps bolding
The if-then format is a bit tedious and perhaps confuses more than it clarifies
Things like "Speedy deletion should only be used when: * An article qualifies for speedy deletion AND:" don't really make sense. Things can (and should) be speedily deleted even if they don't fall into one of those three bullets (perhaps you meant "or," not "and"?)
"The preferred alternative in any deletion situation is to improve the article" ← This is not particularly true. In quite a lot of cases the page should be deleted, and we shouldn't be wasting anyone's time by trying to convince them to spend more time improving the article on their MySpace band when it will be deleted regardless of amount of effort (perhaps just de-emphasize the "any" bit?)
I would move the alternate options to the top of the page. If you truly believe that it's best to try to improve rather than nominate for deletion, make that part most prominent
The "Proposed deletion" section doesn't mention things like the requirement that it only be used on articles...
The title IS SHOUTING AT ME. So if you're going to move this into the project space, perhaps genericize it a bit? "Choosing a deletion method" or something?

--MZMcBride (talk) 04:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be instruction creep to have as a seperate guideline, no problem with it being an essay in wikispace however. Davewild (talk) 09:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MzMcBride, can you elaborate on "Things like "Speedy deletion should only be used when: * An article qualifies for speedy deletion AND:" don't really make sense. Things can (and should) be speedily deleted even if they don't fall into one of those three bullets (perhaps you meant "or," not "and"?)" It's supposed to be read as "and one of the following," with 99% of the time the 3rd one applying. The point I was trying to make is except for official actions, "just because it qualifies for speedy deletion doesn't mean that's the right way to do it, improving the article or taking it to AFD may be better." Can you give a couple of examples of deletions that should be speedied that are rejected by these criteria? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:50, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- If an article meets the requirements for speedy deletion, it should be speedily deleted. The same is true if it comes very close to meeting a requirement (in my opinion). Obviously if there's a near assurance that the speedy deletion will be controversial, AfD is probably a better venue, but this is an extremely rare case. The speedy deletion criteria are supposed to be constructed so that they are narrow enough to allow all articles that meet the criteria to be deleted.... If it an article qualifies for speedy deletion, in almost all cases it should be deleted, otherwise our criteria need to be adjusted accordingly. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]