Wikipedia talk:Article rescue contest

Origin

Proposed after some bitching on IRC about people who vote "keep and cleanup, encyclopedic topic" but never actually do any work on the article, and because it's terribly difficult to be an impatient eventualist. :-) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 23:58, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Focus resources elsewhere

Just one thought about this contest...very few visitors read articles that are the sort that end up on VfD. It seems strange to concentrate quality-improvement efforts on articles that would likely receive only a handful of hits each year, when there are articles that receive thousands of hits that are also in great need of attention. — Matt Crypto 00:29, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vicious circle: if we focus our efforts on "popular" articles, why ever spend time on the nooks and crannies other encyclopedias don't cover, right? Wikipedia is a big place. There will be people taking care of those big hitters too, don't worry. JRM 06:49, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)

Sure, but I think it's fair to say that if you want to improve Wikipedia as a whole, you should concentrate on improving popular articles, not on articles that might be visited once a year. Of course, as a volunteer/hobby project, people are entirely free to invest their resources on Wikipedia as they see fit. However, if we're making contests to encourage the community to focus their efforts, then I don't think it's wise to focus on the least popular articles (which VfD candidates tend to be). There may be people taking care of the "big hitters", but it would be better to have more. — Matt Crypto 15:28, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've always felt that the strength of Wikipedia is that editors work in areas where they have knowledge and/or interest. Every major or minor topic of interest will eventually be created, and so will a whole lot of trivial topics. This is a method of generating further interest in editing a variety of articles in general. There will be people interested in this contest, so I approve.  ;-) Unfocused 17:31, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Copyright Violations

expand candidates to include copyvio re-writes.--Duk 01:13, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Great idea!

I love this idea. I've done a little VfD saving in the past, even when it meant rewriting the article, and it gives a feeling of satisfaction to yank the article from the very jaws of death and see all the VfD voters admire it and change their votes. I suggest that in the same manner barnstars are awarded for cleanup, we award an endangered species badge for every rescue. There are so many endangered species we could have a bunch of them, for variety. Deco 23:46, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This would be an even better idea if we could somehow force uberinclusionists who vote "keep" for everything no matter what to be the ones who have to rewrite the articles. Cattle prods, maybe. . . . . . . No, seriously, great idea. This definitely goes on my watchlist. Soundguy99 06:15, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Searching

Is there a way of searching through all of the subpages of AFD (or VFD)? I would like to find an article to work on that I know something about or am interested in. I'll definately do something but I have no idea what yet... --Celestianpower ^hablamé 20:51, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I've never tried this, but you could say, use google, and type in the search bar "site:en.wikipedia.org <stuff you want to search for>". This restricts the search to English Wikipedia, perhaps serching for AfD will help? Let us know! --HappyCamper 20:55, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, although not perfect, I went to the search capability and at the bottom found a little search box with lots of checkboxes above it. If you uncheck all but Wikipedia and then type in the box, Articles for deletion/foo then it will display articles for deletion pages with foo at the beginning of the title. I really would like a better solution though... --Celestianpower ^hablamé 21:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Or, if the particular topic has a specific term used for it then searching just the wikipexia namespace with that term gets plenty of relevant hits. Eg, [1]. --Celestianpower ^hablamé 21:25, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not comprehensive, but if you're just looking to browse a general subject area, you can check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Beta and the various subpages of that project. — Laura Scudder | Talk 05:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

To see all deletion debates ever, use Special:Allpages like this: [2]. AllyUnion maintains an AfD List updated with a bot which has a list of the last seven days of debates. --bainer (talk) 09:36, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Signpost?

Perhaps we should attract attention to this via the WP:POST? --HappyCamper 13:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

• I already sent a message to Ral. - 131.211.210.17 09:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Isn't this wonderful?

Look, we have a good collection of submissions on the page now! --HappyCamper 01:50, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Stats for Article rescue contest

If you like, I can generate a list of stats of articles that were kept. Let me know. --AllyUnion (talk) 05:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

If you could, and if it's simple to do, sure :-) It would be interesting to see for informational purposes too. But if it takes too much time then forget about it. --HappyCamper 21:19, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Signpost

Let me know when you guys figure out the winner; I'll make sure and mention it. Ral315 (talk) 03:25, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Checks and Balances in the Articles for Deletion Nomination Process

There needs to be better checks and balances in the process of how articles are currently nominated for deletion, to prevent notable topics from being deleted without actual qualification per Wikipedia article deletion guidelines. This is a significant problem, because it is very likely that notable topics are being injustly deleted. It's easy to nominate an article for deletion and then type five or six words and wait to see if an article will be deleted, whereas it takes more time to refute nominations. Perhaps there should be more sophisticated criterion to nominate articles for deletion. As it is now, anyone can nominate any article without providing a just rationale for doing so, and can instead simply base the nomination upon basic, generic and inspecific statements such as "doesn't pass general notability guidelines", while not specifically stating which parts of the guidelines they are supposedly referring to. If nobody comes along to correct an injust or baseless nomination, the article is then deleted based upon unqualified, general statements that don't actually correspond with the required source searching per WP:BEFORE prior to nominating an article for deletion. This definitely makes it very easy for people to censor Wikipedia, for whatever subjective reasons. Here's how it's done: an article is nominated for deletion and an AfD entry is created, a generic rationale is provided to misqualify the deletion without actually checking for reliable sources to establish topic notability. Afterward, if nobody comes along to correct the faulty nomination, the article is deleted. It's also easy for people to message one-another to delete articles, often per an "as per nom" rationale, while disregarding the actual notability of topics. If nobody comes along and provides an objective analysis to refute the deletion of an article in which the topic is actually notable, nominated per generic statements and without the required source searching prior to nomination, then the article disappears. Hopefully Wikipedia can introduce better checks and balances to prevent this type of easily accomplished, simple censorship. One idea is to include a requirement prior to article nomination for deletion in which the nominator has to state, or check-box on a template, that they've performed the required minimum search in Google Books and in the Google News Archive required by WP:BEFORE, and in Google Scholar for academic subjects, as suggested in WP:BEFORE. This would be a simple addition to the AfD nomination process that would add significant integrity to the process, and would also encourage users to follow the proper procedures.

Please place responses regarding this matter here on this Article rescue contest Discussion page below, rather than on my personal talk page. In this manner, other users can view and respond to responses. Thank you. Northamerica1000 (talk) 08:04, 22 September 2011 (UTC)