Talk:Semi-deletion

En version

For discussion about implementing this on en.wikipedia, please see en:Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system

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Please can we keep all discussions on this page, and reserve the "proposal" page for a detailed specification of the proposal. Hopefully the proposal will grow and evolve to take account of any ideas and criticisms that emerge on this talk page. It's clear that there are several users who oppose the whole idea in principle, and we should accord their views due respect. However, the purpose of this page is to work out the details of this reform, not to discuss whether we need it at all. A more appropriate place for discussions of those wider questions is Talk:Strengths and weaknesses of the current deletion system GrahamN 14:43, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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"Hard delete"/"Soft delete"

• 'Soft delete': Blanking of page, links to page appears as a non-existent page link
• 'Hard delete': Deletion as it is carried out now, only sysops can delete/undelete

Is this a meaningful distinction? As I understand it, the contents and history of even "hard deleted" pages remain in perpetuity somewhere in the database, so it's just a question of who is permitted to access them: standard users, administrators, or developers. GrahamN 14:43, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think this is a common misunderstanding. The contents and history of deleted pages do remain in the database temporarily, and this is why a deleted page can be viewed and undeleted by administrators. But database management can and does remove these deleted pages. After this, the page and its history should still be recoverable from the backup taken before the database reorg, but that's a developer's job. Andrewa 00:01, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So where's the misunderstanding? That's exactly the point I was making. In the present system nothing is deleted irretrievably. Some information can be retrieved by anybody, some only by administrators, and some only by developers. The idea of the reform is to make all the information available to everybody. How could that be a bad thing? GrahamN

Well, the point probably is that database management should be able to permanently remove pages that have been "really" blanked - that have been gone for a long time. Otherwise the page "Sirmob is the coolest man alive" that I created (not really) would never be able to be cleaned up, and it and thousands of others would crowd the database for all time. I've added a point to this effect in "Possible Changes." Sirmob 01:45, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Basically, soft delete leaves the history of every edit ever made in easy reach of anyone who wants to read or restore them. Hard delete moves them someplace where they're hard to access. Hard deletion has to be left available in some form to save room on the places that are easy to access, and we can't allow regular users to read, restore, or otherwise play around with these 'hard deleted' pages, since it takes many more resources (in extreme cases, a developer manually accessing the backup) to dig them up. Thus, the creation of an intermediate 'soft deleted' state--in this case, blanking--which pages can be moved into and out of as easily as a normal edit. Aquillion 23:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Pros and Cons (please add/edit this)

Pros:

1. Because soft deletion can be trivially reverted, it is less of a big deal. All users could do it, dramatically increasing openness and democratic nature of WP.
2. Decisions to soft delete could be made the same way as all other wikipedia decisions... unilaterally if the change is 'obvious' or through discussion on the talk page if more tricky.
3. The whole community can come together to deal with pages created by vandals, test pages, and other detritus.
4. The workload of administrators will be dramatically reduced, allowing them to get on with the real work of writing brilliant encyclopaedia articles.
5. Less strain on sysops to be in the "front line" against vandals.
6. The current need for sysops to excercise their best judgement in judging consensus is divisive and creates arguments, suspicion and resentment, placing additional strain on sysops
7. The central VfD page gets lots of edit conflicts, discouraging discussion and discouraging listing of pages that should be deleted.
8. The lack of space on VfD hinders proper debate and discussion of options available, leading to stereotyped keep/delete arguments and no real attempt at consensus.
9. Deletion discussion could take place on a page's talk page.
10. Someone who finds the information useful (either for another Wikimedia project or for a non-Wikimedia project) can still use it. In addition to the direct benefits to Wikimedia and society, this will have the indirect benefit of lessening the animosity between many of the inclusionists and deletionists.
11. Many articles start off very bad - completely unverified and biased. However, they this does not mean that they are unverifiable and don't have the potential to be written from the neutral point of view. Bad articles, that could be deleted under the present system, could eventually work their way up to featured status, if given the chance to evolve. Thus, this system would be the perfect compromise between Immediatism and Eventualism.

Cons:

1. More potential for damage? Vandals who decide to blank pages wreak slightly more havoc as they cause red links to appear on other pages.
   • Vandals already blank pages. The high number of red links would cause a more rapid response, thus reducing the potential for damage, not increasing it.
   • A Special page listing of recently blanked pages could be kept.
2. More strain on server, with more pages for it remember/linkify
3. The disappearance of VfD would amount to the loss of a real community page where lots of users interact, and get to hear about recent developments. A lot of discussion on VfD gives people a good idea of what should or should not appear in Wikipedia.
   1. The best thing for an open content encyclopedia is to encourage as many people as possible to contribute their knowledge. While communities are nice for the people that live in them, by definition they are exclusive. So the more "real community pages" there are, the less effective Wikipedia will be.
4. May add extra strain to another oft-edited page, the Village Pump, as people rush there to say... blanking of X is being considered... please come and support/deny it at the talk page... maybe we'd end up with a pages where blanking is being considered page which could (given how built-in the VfD way is) become a de-facto VfD
   1. Mitigating factor: The number of controvertially deleted pages would presumably be significantly less than the total number of deleted pages, so this discussion page would be more wieldy.
   2. Restoring a page you believe should not have been deleted would be as trivial as reverting an edit you believe shouldn't have been made. You don't get people rushing to the Village Pump to say "the word English has been used on such-and-such a page instead of British. Please come and help me change it." There's no need. You just do it yourself.
   3. Yes, but as with any significant change, there might need to be consensus reached in order to decide whether the page should live as a blank page or as a page with content - and deletion isn't like English/British, it's a big thing. But that said, yes, another page might become a de-facto VfD. But that's displaying more trust in the wiki system than de-jure VfD.
5. Some developer work required.
6. Pages begun as patent nonsense, test pages, and vandalism would never be permanently deleted, even though they will often never yeild a real article.
   1. Deleted pages would not be visible to visitors, so this wouldn't matter.
   2. Blatant cases could still be "hard deleted". Besides, harddrive space is cheap (says the guy who doesn't have to pay the bills).
   3. Note that the possible change where long-blanked pages are hard-deleted automatically would address this concern (although it would also limit some of the advantages.)
7. Opens door to severely disruptive varient of the edit war: the delete/restore war.
8. Articles that one or two people feel very strongly should exist and that most editors consider useless and deletable but not a great evil (i.e., most vanity pages) would be harder to remove. If one nut keeps on restoring a blanked article, concerned editors with other things to do may give up.

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Do a Test Case

This proposal, to me, seems elegant, and quite possibly the "last, best hope for peace". The main objection to its implementation is that if it blows up, it'll blow up big. So why not do a test case?

I mod for a MediaWiki-based wiki. We are beginning to need a policy for deleting borderline case pages. I think we'll keep hard deleting obvious cases, but I'd prefer to skip a VfD system for the borderline ones, given the heartache it has caused here. We're a special topic wiki, which means we have quite a few pages that are marginally offtopic.

We have not yet come to a decision regarding policy on this issue, but I believe I could convince them of this proposal. But the technical implemntation may be more than our coding staff would wish to bite off.

Assuming that I could get approval, would somebody be willing to implement this proposal at our wiki? Crazyeddie 18:57, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Critique by Cyan

I believe the main advantage of the deletion process as it exists is that people can't get into deletion wars. In my view, edit wars represent a failure of consensus: disputants become emotional and cease communicating in a productive manner. The protection system was designed to force people to take their argument to the Talk page, so that an agreement can be worked out. The present deletion policy effectively makes all deletions protected automatically, so deletion wars can (in theory) never occur.

To move to the proposed wiki-based deletion process would have an effect that I believe the author of this proposal has not considered: protection by sysops would be able to prevent deletion/resurrection of articles (see footnote). And since the protection system does not operate on consensus, but rather on each sysop's own best judgment, this proposal actually increases the power of sysops to affect the content of Wikipedia!

While some may feel that such deletion wars are simply consensus in the making, I personally feel that edit wars actually block the development of Wikipedia. For me, the proposed deletion system doesn't make sense: sysops are already responsible for cooling off edit wars, and the issue of which version of the article is protected can be contentious; are sysops now expected to make interim decisions about whether an article can exist or not?

On a different topic, I feel that the present system is more transparent than the proposed one, for the simple reason that substantive deletions can be seen and discussed by all users in one place. Bureaucratic? Yes. Complicated? Yes. But you can't beat it for transparency.

Footnote: actually, sysops already have the power to use protection to prevent article resurrection. But it is rarely needed under the present system

-- Cyan

Admins can already delete pages at a whim. They would just loose their privileges for it (I'd hope). It would be similar with blanking pages and locking the page: it would be an unacceptable, disciplinable action.

Edit wars and aggressive use of VfD are two sides of the same coin. There's nothing to recommend VfD in that respect. In fact it's worse, as you can enforce your decision by contacting a few people on IM if the objector can only work on the article occasionally, and hasn't time to persuade people to save their article or make a case within the time limit. 213.162.110.250 12:49, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Reply by Crazyeddie

As many others have pointed out, the number of controversial deletions is far less than the number of total deletions. The effect of the current VfD systems is to make every deletion a controversial one. Under the proposed system, the few controversial "deletions" could be settled under the systems already in place for dealing with edit wars.

Further, the purpose of the sysop's power to protect a page is to buy time, to allow cooler heads to prevail and a true consensus to develop. Any sysop who used this power inappropriately would highly visible, and would probably be removed. By contrast, the VfD system operates by majority vote (granted, usually a 2/3s majority), not by consensus. Furthermore, the VfD system is said to be controlled by a "shadow tyranny" of regulars, who might not truly represent the will of the Wiki.

Under the proposed system, "deletions" would be visible to the people who actually use the page, and could be "undeleted" by any dissenter. Under the current system, "wrongful" deletions can not be so easily undone.

I would say that the burden of proof lays on the side that wants to delete a page. So in case of a delete war, the sysop should protect the undeleted version, until a consensus can be reached.

Crazyeddie 18:46, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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General discussion

I think it's worth a try. We already have edit wars, and we live with them because we can't have wiki without them. This proposal makes things more wiki and less cumbersome, but potentially more contentious. But most deleted pages wouldn't end up in a deletion war. The ones that did would then become protected and go through the VfD process. So, we'd be no worse off than today.

-- Axlrosen 17:51, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So VfD wouldn't disappear, but would be reserved for problem cases. Hmm... I could deal with that, if others strongly support the notion. Transparency (at least my version of it) would still be a problem, though. GrahamN seems to feel that the present VfD system removes power from John Q. User, but I don't see it that way. It's centralized in the sense that everybody who wants to comment can do it at one place, but that's not the same as a centralized power structure. -- Cyan 21:34, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The VfD system as it stands is working, in my opinion. When this whole discussion started on another page here at meta, it seemed as though the objection to VfD was that we shouldn't be deleting things. But the proposed new system, in my opinion, will lead to much higher amounts of "soft deletion". I've seen many pages that I think are bunk and should be blanked: many have been submitted to VfD only for me to find that others like them and would prefer that they be kept. I could easily have blanked these pages under the proposed system, forcing someone else (note--not en:User:Someone else) to come along later and undo my well-intentioned misdeed. Under the current system, I post a little note at a central location which hundreds of people check each week--at any point during the week, a couple of them can object, and then there is no problem. For some reason, GrahamN thinks VfD's system is clunky. I think it's actually a nice model, and far less clunky than the inevitable soft deletion wars (and if we think deletion wars will be rare, I think we're kidding ourselves). Until we see VfD being horribly abused, with a cabal of sysops wreaking havoc (something I've not seen), I don't see any reason to change the system. That's my two cents. -- Jwrosenzweig 22:23, 14 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If a user tried to blank a page, they could be presented with a warning first, i.e. are you really sure you want to do this? Have you read the relevant policy pages? Did you provide a good explanation in the summary and/or talk page? etc. The idea would be to give the user pause, so that they think, well maybe this will be controversial so I should list it on VfD instead.

I guess that's a new proposal for this system. How about this: if something violates an explicit Wikipedia policy (e.g. anything on What Wikipedia is Not), then you can blank it. Otherwise (e.g. if you think it's "unencyclopedic"), then you list it on VfD. I kind of like that idea. Most (though not all) of the controversies on VfD are about whether something is not important enough (or otherwise unencyclopedic) to be in WP. So we'd keep the discussion for controversial topics but punt it for uncontroversial ones, thus streamlining the process.

Axlrosen 14:54, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I strongly support the notion that we should devolve power on deletion and undeletion to everyone, rather than restricting it to sysops. There are lots of deletions that are wholly unremarkable, and Wikipedia would be more efficient (and sysops less burdened) if everyone could do them:

• deleting a page in order to perform a name change.
• deleting nasty pages created by vandals
• deleting test pages created by newbies
• etc

Currently only sysops can do this, and that gives us sysop burn-out: I'm thinking of en:user:Zoe here, and all the people who spend so much time fixing Michael's created pages, and so forth. If we enabled everyone to help with this kind of problem, then rather than having a few sysops "on the front line", it could be a problem that the whole community can barn raise and solve together. --mrd

I had the occasion to arrive at a plan very similar to this one myself. I am in support of creating a soft-deletion option parallel with the hard-deletion option. -Smack 04:26, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• I like the idea of the soft-deletion system. It would be sad to see the votes for deletion page go. But would it have to?
• As someone previously stated (i think), why not just use the current vfd to discuss articles that should be blanked? It's good to have a central place (rather than doing it on individual talk pages).
• Hopefully the blanked page will have a quick link to see the previous contents (i think it does), which will make it easy for users to see what's been deleted.
• I don't see a reason for hard deletion to coexist though. A deletion's a deletion.

202.180.83.6 09:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In recent changes, we'd need to be able to display only edits containing DELETED or REVIVED or either, to keep better track. —siroχo

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Wikipedia is a Wiki. The idea of a Wiki is that anybody can change things, or change them back. Why do so many people who evidently don't believe in that principle spend so much of their time here? GrahamN 01:58, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In response to Cyan's critique - the fact of the matter is that right now, the English Wikipedia system appears to be tilting towards a Request for Deletion system that gives all admins the power to delete pages. So yes, the Pure Wiki Deletion System might be giving admins a little more power, or asking them to use it, by more often having to protect deletions/undeletions of articles - but it's not that much more power, and the possibility that admins might be given much, much more power due to the issues with Votes for Deletion makes it worth it in my mind. Sirmob 02:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Central pillar unnecessary

I'd say the so called "central pillar" of this proposal is actually rather inconsequential. The vast majority of pages which are listed on VFD and deleted either don't contain any links to it or have only links to it which are removed after deletion.

The real central pillar is simply a policy change. We no longer allow admins to delete pages, and we allow and in fact encourage page blanking in certain situations.

The technical details are what makes this paletable: blanked pages are kept out of the search engines, out of search, and out of random page.

Tuning up?

I like the proposal. I still think a few small things should be tuned up:

• After some period of inactivity (say 1 month) soft deleted pages should become hard deleted - save space
• Severe copyright violations, etc. should be hard deleted through the existent process
• Should be a policy that in the case of deleting wars the article should go through the existent process (say after three deletion and reverting by at least two different people on each side).
• Some articles (e.g. feature articles) should be delete protected.

192.67.248.216 03:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC) (w:User:Alex Bakharev)

Space is not an issue. Dan100 12:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not about space being an issue. It's about information that is dead should become "really" dead because it makes it more tempting to do a vandalize-undelete if the old information is there. Let the dead pages die (those poor soft deleted pages in their persistant vegitative state...) Sirmob 04:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

For the third concern: Articles with that kind of dispute would effectively go through the wiki's existing dispute-resolution process, just like any other revert war. I think that's fai; nobody has yet given me an argument as to why disputes over the deletion of an entire article should be treated any differently than disputes over, say, the deletion of a section in that article.

And for the last concern: There's no need to give feature articles and the like special protection from "deletion-vandalism". If someone tries to delete them without consensus, it will be treated just like any other vandalism on a featured article. Aquillion 23:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal with these tweaks:

• After 1 month, blanked pages should be auto- deleted: Agree.

With this change, Cyan's valid critique is less of an issue: admins won't need to protect (if inclusionists keep reviving within 1 month w/o violating 3RR, then we probably want the article)

• Severe copyright violations and vandalism should be hard deleted through the existent (speedy delete) process. (Less General reason #4 & #8, which would be dealt with the new way.)

If there's a (long or short) deletion war, we should NOT revert to the existent XfD process, rather this is a proposal to replace it, not add to it.

--76.103.138.81 18:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC) (yes, I see this has been rather idle for a long time.)

Central pillar is good

"Links to blank articles will appear the same as links to non-existent articles." Makes sense.

• {db|reason} tag should still be used - but instead of an alert to an admin, it should work like any other dispute - policy should be take it to the talk page.
• If the criteria for CSD are met, the policy should allow the ordinary user to blank at once.
• If CSD criteria are not met, user should be required to wait a period of time (1 week?) after tagging it, and then may blank if there are no objections.
• In either case, if there is objection to the blank, keep (or restore) the page, and try to reach consensus.
• Final step in dispute resolution, keep a VFD process, but the vote takes place on the talk page. A VFD page similar to the RFC page can allow pending deletes to be listed with a brief description and link to the talk page.

This should take some of the burden off of admins. But they will still need to be involved in some cases where there are disputes, and may at times need to lock pages, as in other dispute situations. Acerimusdux 04:35, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Brilliant idea

Why would anyone who thinks they're working in a wiki oppose it? Yes, you might have deletion wars -- especially with pages created by anons -- but it would allow unloved pages to slip away. -- Grace Note 4:45 AEST August 2, 2005

I like this, although I would still keep hard delete. It would be used for existing speedy categories on WP:EN, for example. —Theo (Talk) 17:49, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

This proposal will make it harder to find vandalism

A lot of page blanking vandalism occurs, which can be found fairly easily with en:Special:Shortpages. How would that vandalism be found if this system were implemented? It would make en:Special:Shortpages useless. Angela 18:59, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Shortpages is a db query on article size less than x. It's trivial to change that to a query on article size greater than 0 and less than x. --Martin

I think we would also need some kind of "Special: Recently blanked pages" or something like that. In fact, that really, really needs to be part of the proposal... Without it, there will not only be no easy way to track page-blanking vandalism, but no easy way to track page-deletion vandalism. This will address the above concern, since people could track the recently-blanked pages list to hunt both kinds of vandals. Aquillion 23:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Policy implications

It makes no sense to implement this before any policies are proposed. If someone keeps blanking/deleting a page, when is that regarded vandalism and when is it regarded as part of the new deletion process? When can someone revert the blanking? Would they have to get consensus before doing so, or after? The suggestion at en:Wikipedia:Requests for deletion that this could be implemented within a week is a very bad one if it implies such a thing would be implemented with no policies in place, and no agreement that blank pages should appear this way. Angela 19:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

It would be considered vandalism if there was no edit summary explaining the action and/or if they page was "obviously" not suitable for deletion. Anyone can revert the blanking if she thinks it was inappropriate - just like anyone can revert any change in Wikipedia. - Haukurth (en:wikipedia) 17:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

No minimum edit summary

One change is necessary, I think:

"A page cannot be blanked unless the user enters an edit summary of at least twenty characters."

I appreciate the thought behind that rule, but it will only lead to blanked pages with an edit summary of "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" or "blankkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk". --DavidConrad 09:32, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Another Special

We would need something like Special:RecentlyResurrectedPages (shortcut S:RRP) as well. -- ~~~~

Support

I really like this idea, especially considering that so many of the other proposals are so convoluted. Controversial deletions should work just like other disputes, and perhaps VfD can have a new life as a more specific version of RfC.

And maybe this will even get people to pay attention to other kinds of disputes. VfD makes it easy to get the community involved when someone adds an unencyclopedic article, but it's hard to get the community involved when someone adds content that is unencyclopedic to an existing article. By making the processes more similar, we can remove this strange dichotomy. w:User:Rspeer 23:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Refactoring

I removed this para: Deleted pages may be moved just like live pages, except that there will be no re-direct created. By this means, a live page can be moved on top of a deleted page without losing the deleted page's history.

It seems to require a lot of complicated coding, and is not particuarly necessary; IMO, moving a page on top of a PWD(Pure Wiki Deleted) page should be the same as it is now to move on top of a page with a history; you need an admin to merge the histories. We should address this in the Rebuttals section, but not in the introduction.

and this one: The system will be de-centralised and self-regulating. There will be no "votes for deletion" procedure, just as there is currently no "votes for re-naming" procedure, no "votes for blanking" procedure and no "votes for this particular edit that I want to make here" procedure. There will be no deletion log, just as there is no "re-naming log", no "blanking log", etc.

AFAIK, many of the current supporters of PWD don't want to remove Full Deletion(i.e. hiding the revisions from the general public, conventional deletion), so this paragraph is just wrong. We could have an argument about this on this talk page, if people want to.

and the whole Possible changes section - we should not have "possible" changes listed on the main proposal page. They should be discussed here, and only added if and when they are agreed to. Here's the excised section: Possible changes

• Administrators' powers to prevent deletion/resurrection of articles will be rescinded.
  • Unfortunately, administrators need the ability to prevent the resurrection of articles, as the WP article on the "popularity of Adolf Hitler" - "a great man, admired by many Jews" - shows. It was created, and created, and created, and finally blocked from being created.
• Pages that had been blank for a long time (a month? a year?) should be able to be "cleaned up" by the database, if necessary for the good of the database.

and the bits about the edit summary: *A page cannot be blanked unless the user enters an edit summary of at least twenty characters.

• When a page is blanked, the word "DELETED" is automatically added as a prefix to the edit summary.
• When a page is revived, the word "REVIVED" is automatically added as a prefix to the edit summary.

IMO, this is redudnant with the log of blanking(and unblanking); we don't use technical measures to require a reason for anything else, and as said above, they wouldn't work even here. The auto edit summary bits are redundant with the log.

66.81.178.169 07:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC) (actually en:User:JesseW) (Yes, that was me, in case anyone was worried.) (Now signed in at meta) JesseW 07:55, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Pure Wiki Deletion System and Prod

It occurs to me that this proposal could work well with the Prod system recently introduced on the En wikipedia. In essence, Prod and speedies could continue to use 'hard' deletion, with Pure deletion covering any controversal cases. Those things seem to be working well, and would settle some of the concerns people have raised about this idea with regards to it leaving a bunch of junk histories scattered over the Wiki. After all, the vast majority of deletions seem to be uncontested. --Aquillion 00:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Some General Thoughts

(See: en:Wikipedia_talk:Pure_wiki_deletion_system#Some_General_Thoughts - Jc37 02:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC))

Interesting idea, question

Very interesting. A lot of material which is useful to somebody gets deleted through lack of notability, cruftiness and so on. I once considered setting up a site to collect these articles, a "wiki hell" if you like. With this I might not need to!

I wonder if we could bring back old deleted articles too? Or are there simply too many? I suppose it would be impractical because they'd each have to be checked for suitability before restoration... could be a Mediawiki feature, "review a deleted article"? :) --Kingboyk 17:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we would, too many people would try to restore them. If you need histories, people can restore and salt pages for you temporarily to export to an external wiki. 63.86.151.246 14:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Images

You forgot to include images deletion. There are hundreds of uploaded images everyday, and many

• are not used in any articles
• are copyright violations/have doubtful copyright info
• are advertisement/hardcore pornography/unencyclopedic

All users should be able to delete these images as well by blanking the desk page of the image. This process should be expanded to other media files as well. --87.162.10.26 10:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Article should be rewritten

Given that the article Pure wiki deletion system (proposal) proposes something that concerns everyone, I suggest that it be rewritten so that it is intelligible, grammatically correct and void of insider lingo. I read theory, philosophy and critical theory all day long and I really only feel that I have a vague idea of what is being proposed in the article. For instance, what the heck does this mean? "Blank pages will appear to all intents and purposes if they didn't exist, except there will be a link to their history on the page. (as is now the case, except that the specific revisions are still hidden from non-admins.)" I don't think that anyone capable of butchering the language like this should be making decisions about what articles are unworthy of the Wiki! Saudade7 unsigned in 66.245.25.104 09:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

SpiritWorldWiki

Please see my essay, User:The Unknown Rebel/SpiritWorldWiki. I propose that, in view of the likely unwillingness of Wikipedia to switch to pure wiki deletion, a system such as this proposed SpiritWorldWiki system be used to accomplish many of the same purposes. Deleted articles would be respawned there for rework and possible transwiki elsewhere. SpiritWorldWiki itself would use PWD. I believe certain technical methods for linking wikis together, including some mentioned in my essay, can make this a workable alternative to implementing PWD on Wikipedia itself.

I am rather serious about implementing this, unless someone dissuades me. Of course, it is always good to get input first; this current proposal is the result of feedback received on previous ideas and from many unsuccessful attempts to get PWD implemented on en.wikipedia.org. The Unknown Rebel 02:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)