Wikidata talk:Requests for deletions/Archive 2

New items that are still max 159 bytes

The user جار الله is creating a new batch of items, but leaves a lot empty (107 at time of writing this). Here the list of all items that are left empty. Is it possible to delete them almost directly? Q.Zanden questions? 18:47, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@QZanden: This was mistake and now all new items is not empty, and i agree with delete the empty items directly.جار الله (talk) 18:52, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@جار الله:, Thank you for your quick reaction! I hope we can settle this down in no time. If there is an administrator who can delete these empty items. Q.Zanden questions? 18:58, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@جار الله:, Are you sure you did not made a mistake again? The counter is now at 370 items with only 159 bytes, created by you. here the list again. If you want to check, press Ctrl+f and you can search for '+159'. Q.Zanden questions? 23:17, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Overflow of mass deletions

@Steak, Queryzo:Please do not create subject headers for every single item. USe a collapse box for multiple items, and state a reason for each. RFD is unbrowsable with the massive amount of subject headers. PokestarFan • Drink some tea and talk with me • Stalk my edits • I'm not shouting, I just like this font! 13:45, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

For example, do

{{Collapse top|title=Mass item deletions}}
* {{Q|An item number}}
* {{Q|An item number}}
* {{Q|An item number}}
* {{Q|An item number}}
...
{{Collapse bottom}}

which results in

Thanks

@PokestarFan: see my answer at my disk page. Queryzo (talk) 09:40, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Archiving

Which templates trigger the bots to archive a section? The box says {{Deleted}}, but to my experience {{Not deleted}} also works. What about {{Didn't delete}}, {{Done}}, and {{Not done}}? What about other templates in Category:Resolution templates? —MisterSynergy (talk) 05:32, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Please use {{Q}} the first time you mention an item.

Where do I use it? How? The instructions don't say. SharkD (talk) 04:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Whereever you link to an item, do it by {{Q|Q42}}. The result looks like this: Douglas Adams (Q42). —MisterSynergy (talk) 05:30, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Again flooding of rfd

Now user:Putmantime has added 30 requests with all the same reason for deletion. Maybe there should be a change in the header that says something about how and when to add a bulkrequest like this: If you want to nominate more than 5(?) items with the same reason within one hour, please create a bulkrequest by clicking the button next to this text. This keeps the RfD more clear and easier to edit. How about it? I'd like to hear your responses! Q.Zanden questions? 23:36, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Unresolved section archived

Just letting you know that after this action the bot archived the related section while it wasn't resolved yet.[1] Maybe it's Ok (as that discussion was stuck), but maybe not (who has the right to close RFD discussions and to send them to archive? Admins only?) XXN, 18:39, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Deltabot false positive

See https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions&curid=454&diff=518206214&oldid=518193337

I want specifically a deletion of the redirect. DeltaBot is considering the work is done because there is a redirect but is missinq the point. What should we do ? author  TomT0m / talk page 14:27, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I removed the redirect by restoring an earlier version, but there was another item redirected to it so it did not work. Applied the same to that other redirect, but PLbot misteriously redid the redirect 11963020. Means it’s a nightmare to actually be able to delete an item on purpose and not merge them … author  TomT0m / talk page 18:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

To request a redirect for deletion, just add a new header with title Redirect deletion or something like that. That way, the DeltaBot won't recognize the item to be actually a redirect and then the admin can handle with the redirect. Q.Zanden questions? 00:34, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

We must delete genes that are deprecated by NCBI?

@Jura1, Gstupp, ProteinBoxBot, ChristianKl, Pasleim I write here to see what we can do (Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions/Archive/2017/11/20#Delete_deprecated_genes). For this items isn't the first time that there is a request to delete a batch of items. In past I have already deleted thousand of them. The problem is that if we search on InterPro the InterPro ID (P2926) of these items, we don't find nothing. Personally I don't like keep these item , but if the community prefer keep them, no problem. --ValterVB (talk) 20:27, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I feel implicitly pinged as well and want to give some input without personal preference. There may or may not be other aspects to consider, of course.

• First of all I would like to say that I “closed” the archived discussion with the {{Delete}} template to trigger archiving after the items had been deleted. The comment was not meant to overrule ValterVB.
• However, I saw that Jura1 several times tried to open a discussion which never really went off for some reason, but his comments included valuable aspects to consider in the future. I have exlicitly no opinion whether we should undelete already deleted items in this matter.
• Regarding the treatment of deprecated genes:
  • Genes seem to be much more “transient” than most typical entities we create items for. I also have the impression that the items are about bleeding-edge knowledge, and thus more often affected by deprecation. That’s why the deletion requests are somewhat special in their character, and we might not be used to the situation of entity deprecation on that quantity scale.
  • Techniques to deal with gene deprecation could be: use a (new) suitable item with P31, deprecate old P31 value, other measures, combination of measures, …. It would be valuable it this could be done by bot as well due to the many affected items.
  • Advantages of keeping the items would be that the (transient) knowledge about genes would not be lost, and (external) use of our items do not lead to 404 requests. Particularly genes items are very likely predominantly used outside Wikimedia, thus not trackable at all. Assuming we get the deprecation transported to data users as well, we could also help to teach users about the deprecation.
  • However, if references in external databases are simply deleted (example from Q28544001), we often do not have any working references for verification left. What can we do to rescue sources? Archive links, perhaps?
  • The matter of deprecation often has to be considered in some (but not necessary all) other items which use the gene item in a claim. @Gstupp: can you imagine repairs by your bot as well?
  • We should have documentation for this situation somewhere.

—MisterSynergy (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

• It might be worth mentioning that some of these items cross-reference other identifiers. The entire update process for gene items seems somewhat a garden of its own.
  --- Jura 21:56, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I would prefer if the statements were deprecated instead of the items deleted, per above. Wikidata deals with claims. Claims don't disappear just because they were found to be wrong. The more recent claims can be assigned preferred or normal rank. --Yair rand (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

This feels like a difficult question for me. For the start it's worth noting that we have to separate items. On the one hand we have the items about genes (deprecated by NCBI) like Q20957890. It has an MGI Gene Symbol identifier that someone can use to find "replaced with GeneID: 108168758".

Then we have protein families which have InterPro ID which is from EMBL and not from NCBI.

My first instinct is to keep the items for the sake of not breaking external links to our items but I don't have strong opinions. I consider the team behind ProteinBoxBot as having enough subject matter expertize to make good judgements about whether or not we should delete the items. Basically I'm okay with deleting both deprecated NCBI genes, InterPro Families neither or one or the other. ChristianKl (✉) 22:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

As ChristianKl said, we are talking about two different classes of items here: genes/proteins (data from NCBI or Ensembl) and protein families (data from EMBL/Interpro), and we may decide to treat them differently (or the same).

For protein families, using Interpro, as MisterSynergy said, the reference in the external database is deleted and we have no working references for any statements on the item. Interpro is also the source of the protein -> is part of -> protein family statements, and so those get changed if the protein families are updated. And so once all statements using that item are changed (to point to a different/new protein family), I think it makes the most sense to delete the deprecated protein family items. Regarding keeping these statements, this data is, say, more "cutting edge" than typical data, and it is expected that it changes on a regular basis. I don't think most people would even expect that the historical statements would or should be preserved. This is in contrast to broadly accessible, clinical research claims (for example: the use of cardiac stents for coronary artery disease (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/health/stents-show-no-extra-benefits-for-coronary-artery-disease.html), or changing prescribing information / indications for a drug), which would make sense to keep as a deprecated statement, which supporting information as to why it was deprecated.

For genes, we have a little more information to go on, as NCBI still has a record for the gene, and in addition, we can often see what happened to it. For example Gene ID: 106144543, discontinued on 3-Sep-2017. This record was replaced with Gene ID: 8840. So it might make sense to redirect the wd item for 106144543 to the item for 8840.

Gstupp (talk) 00:29, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@Gstupp: Do you know why InterPro doesn't host some for of redirects? ChristianKl (✉) 10:25, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

if "replaced" is a common action in these cases, I think merging the wikidata items is a good strategy here. The old external ID could be kept in deprecated state, or deleted. ArthurPSmith (talk) 14:53, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

• To evaluate, could we undelete three samples of each and indicate how they they were linked from other items, e.g. Q24775789 that we linked from Q23588880 among others.
  --- Jura 13:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Undelete Q24775789 --ValterVB (talk) 19:00, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I think these were different: Q20780141, Q21128171, Q29760680. Maybe there are other groups that are relevant. Could we have three of each?
--- Jura 19:24, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Done --ValterVB (talk) 20:20, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Merging

There are two items that refer to the same forest reserve Cerro Blanco in Ecuador: Q2838186, which only links to the Spanish wikipedia page where the other languages are not shown but it has more data, and Q5732523, which also links to the English and German wikipedia pages. I see an option to ask to delete one but how do I merge the two? Could this be made clear on this page? Crotopaxi (talk) 18:00, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

We've got Help:Merge for information how to merge. Mbch331 (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I used the merge tool and figured it out. Crotopaxi (talk) 21:59, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Strange and messy edit conflict

Hi,

Does anyone know why this edit Special:Diff/729449260 by Daniele Pugliesi (WMIT) messed up the page? It looks like a bit like the old edit conflicts we had back in 2006 on the French Wikipedia.

More importantly how can solve the situation ? Jura1 solved the current situation (thank you) but can we find a way to prevent this to happens again? Maybe subpages for each deletion request would be cleaner and avoid this issue?

Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 18:15, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Looks like User:Daniele Pugliesi (WMIT) made an edit to an old version of the page: Special:Diff/729176152/729449260. Nothing to fix here, I’d say. —MisterSynergy (talk) 19:38, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

I followed the standard procedure, clicking the button to open a new discussion. --Daniele Pugliesi (WMIT) (talk) 15:27, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedian with a job

Some people were a bit unhappy about some items about living people I deleted. Let's explain my reasoning a bit more so we can have a constructive discussion. Wikidata:Notability is very brief and broad. "It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity. The entity must be notable, in the sense that it can be described using serious and publicly available references. If there is no item about you yet, you are probably not notable" is the guideline being cited that a lot of things are notable. I don't think Wikidata should become a phone book containing every person out there. Not every guy with a job is notable. When it comes to Wikimedians, we should be even more strict. Lead by example, only the people in our community who are really notable should have an item. Currently I see self created items as some sort of self promotion and nepotism: Other users tricking the system into making their friends notable. If I deleted your item, it's not because I don't like you (I deleted myself too), but because I don't think you're notable enough to be on this project. So can we please be a bit more critical about items about Wikimedians? Multichill (talk) 16:38, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Totally agree --ValterVB (talk) 18:54, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing, Mike Peel: Mahir256 (talk) 19:05, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

That's not the only criterion on the list, though - a number of the cases here meet the first point of the notability document with sitelinks to Commons (and the information held here is used there in the infoboxes). In general, though, I tend to think the opposite - that we should be doing better at documenting Wikimedians, particularly the most well-known ones, than on average. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard of completeness, not a higher standard of notability. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:32, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

See my comment at Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions#Q29918442. Also referenced at Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions#Q16338092, Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions/Archive/2018/07/31#Q55765702 and Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions#Q55818712 that don't seem to draw suspect keep votes.
--- Jura 19:56, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

It's one thing for you to delete such items; but far worse for you to refuse to undelete them, so they can if necessary be sent to RfD for the community to discuss, when you were requested to do so. That a number of the items concerned have already been kept shows that your refusal was improper. As for constructive discussion, that would be helped if you could avoid straw-man comments like "I don't think Wikidata should become a phone book containing every person out there", since there is no evidence that anyone wants that. Your deletion of the item about yourself - and the item that was linked to it - is clear case of CoI. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:43, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Note: My comment is intended to be part of the HTML (definition) list initiated by the opening reply's ":", and not to start a new list. Jura1, for reasons known only to them, has elected to disruptively start a new, bulleted, list, with a "*", and then to insert that between my comment and the one to which it is a reply, breaking the continuation of the list markup. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:20, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Another editor has now fixed this. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:51, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Talking about COI, you are a paid editor according to Andy Mabbett (Q15136093). You seem to be unemployed since 2011 (according to the Wikidata) item so the paid editing seems to be the only source of income. That significantly increases the risk that you put your income in front of the Wikimedia projects. Please update your user page clearly listing all your paid Wiki jobs (example). Multichill (talk) 22:36, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

If you have evidence that I'm in breach of WMFs Ts&Cs, you know how to contact them. Otherwise, cease your ad hominem attacks, and your fanciful speculation, and stop trying to deflect from criticism of your improper actions in the case at hand. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:16, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

You start attacking my person with lies and bring up the COI, but you seem to be having a much bigger COI problem.

So you deny being paid as a Wikimedia in residence? So Jane got money and you did it for free? Multichill (talk) 09:01, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I haven't lied nor attacked your person; you have done both of those things about me. I've sadly had cause to compllain about your doing so on more than one occasion previously. I suggest you cease now, before you dig yourself into a hole so deep you can no longer extract yourself from it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:41, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Please stop, both of you! I really don't see the problem with hundreds or thousands of wikidata items about Wiki(p/m)edians by the way. Maybe at some future point this could on some level become interesting from a personal marketing perspective but honestly, until Google figures out how to index Wikidata for their knowledge graph I am pretty sure that "having a Wikidata item" will only be noticed by a few core insiders like us anyway. So calling "COI" on this is just silly. I do think the notability needs to go beyond "has a Commons category" and should at least be "has a Wikipedia page" or "has a notable work item" like most other living people though. Yes Andy and I have been paid in the past for Wikidata edits, but I don't think that data import had any "junk edits" and I honestly think it is a useful dataset and it was definitely a useful data modelling experience for us and Wikidata as far as property proposals, import methods, item labelling etiquette, etc. I still feel confident that it was a beneficial contribution to Wikidata and the wider wikimedia family of projects. Jane023 (talk) 06:08, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't think we should create an item for each Wikimedian but we should do a much better job in describing the Wikimedia movement. We should have at least an item for each member and former member of Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees (Q15735628) and for each chairperson and founder of a Wikimedia chapter. Of course, people who are author of a publication or even have a Wikipedia article should not be deleted only because they set Wikimedia username (P4174). --Pasleim (talk) 08:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Update

• Update: Query of the Wikimedians order from low to high notability. Multichill (talk) 19:33, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
  • This does not appear to show any such thing; what criterion for measuring notability is being applied? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:50, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Wikidata seems to be pushing pretty hard for Commons to adopt Wikidata as a way to describe content. At a quick look, many (most?) of these people have enough photos on Commons to merit a category, so right there that creates a need for a Wikidata item. Or do you feel that Commons shouldn't use Wikidata for this purpose? Because, on the whole, it isn't like the Commons community asked for this, the push has come mostly from the Wikidata side. - Jmabel (talk) 04:30, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
  • @Multichill: I'm not clear on what you intend to imply by that query. Everybody seems to have at least one of our identifiers, be linked to another item, or have actual wiki articles about them, which to me indicates they ALL qualify as notable by our criteria. Anybody with zero for all three quantities I would agree is probably not notable. Perhaps you are suggesting we should have some cutoff - maybe minimum of 2, or 5? external ids before we consider them notable? But we don't apply that to other people do we? ArthurPSmith (talk) 13:38, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Wrong perspective

Notability of Wikimedians is applied in a way that is inconsistent with other fields. In my opion a Wikimedian who spoke at a Wikimania or any other conference is notable. The fact if someone is paid for the priviledge as an WMF/chapter employee or a wikimedian in residence is immaterial. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 09:31, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

We have speaker (P823) and I posit that would satisfy WD:N#3 "fulfills some structural need". But I'm certain that would piss people off. —Dispenser (talk) 22:15, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Duplicate killifish gene

I am currently working on a script to import torqoise killifish genes into wikidata, and I accidently created two items for a single gene. Please delete Q56462255. The version that should be kept is this one ras-related protein Rab-33A-like LOC107382813 (Q56462473). djow (talk) 19:20, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 20:06, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

request deletion for page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q56669074

I added this without realizing there was already a page for this:

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q55380974

Can we delete the new page I created? thanks

 Done--Ymblanter (talk) 19:46, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Bencemac (talk) 15:40, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Please delete Q44915140

Please delete Käthe Münzer-Neumann.

Käthe Münzer-Neumann already exists as Käthe Münzer. I created Q44915140 before the alias "Käthe Münzer-Neumann" was added to Q29057389.

Hgkuper (talk) 15:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Merged--Ymblanter (talk) 20:05, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Bencemac (talk) 15:40, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Delete

Please delete this wikidata

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17488737

Why? Lazypub (talk)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Bencemac (talk) 15:40, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

request deletion for page Q60441258

I added this without realizing there was already a page for this: Berlin Congress Center (Q27729238)  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by SimeonKeske (talk • contribs) at 13:46, 5 January 2019‎ (UTC).

Merged by User:Tacsipacsi —MisterSynergy (talk) 18:01, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Search box problem

How come it says "No match was found" when entering "Wikidata:RFD" or "WD:RFD"?--Hildeoc (talk) 22:57, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Hildeoc: Our search box only auto-suggests for items in the "item" namespace. Actually submitting a search for one or other of those terms will find the page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:50, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

I messed up

I added a deletion request for Kirschner (Q1743613) because it should not exist and all linked wikipedia articels should have been assigned to Kirschner (Q21448153) (A general issue)

Than i was still willing to put in work fore this one case, and transferd the links manualy.

That meant I had to delete them from Q1743613 and add them to Q21448153

My editing priviliges gote revoked after deleting "cs - Kirschner" from Q21448153 and before adding it to Q21448153

Now that link is completly gone, and i cant add it to either, and I am not willing to create an account.

Would anybody be so kinde to fix my mistake by adding the wikipedia article "cs:Kirschner" to wikidata again? Don't even care if it is added to Q21448153 or Q1743613.

thx --anonym  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 109.202.107.20 (talk • contribs) at 23:31, 30 January 2019‎ (UTC).

Added to Q21448153 Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:48, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:48, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Q56303078 should be merged with Q2631692

Q56303078 only contains sitelink svwiki Mandelmassa, which is the swedish language article about Almond paste Other 8 languages are in Q2631692. Helsingland (talk) 23:03, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

They have been merged by Cycn. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 18:47, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

FAQ on too simple reasons like "deleted on XXwiki"

I think we should document if such reason can indeed be deletion reason or not, because some archive of this page told me that in sometimes, items are also kept even the last ever sitelinked wiki deleted that page. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:20, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

If a sitelink has been removed from an item and there are no other sitelinks left in the item, we re-evaluate item notability according to Wikidata:Notability. If the item meets another notability criteria, it is kept of course—otherwise deletion may be an option. —MisterSynergy (talk) 05:54, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Q1009064

Doesn't link with anything anymore  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by ThainaYu (talk • contribs) at 15:32, 8 April 2019 (UTC).

I've merged it with gemstone (Q83437). —Vercelas (quæstiones?) 19:27, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Q62128509 & Q62082397

Amateur musician created both items. Speedy deleted on es.wikipedia left items orphaned here.--Zeroth (talk) 01:55, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Q37448822

Must be a joke. "Muistul" is not a name, it is a vulgar word in Romanian. Mycomp (talk) 13:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

That was actually vandalism --- now reverted, cf. the item history. No need to delete the item. --MisterSynergy (talk) 14:11, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm still learning the ropes here. Regards, Mycomp (talk) 14:20, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Implement export/archive/move to other Wikibase instance feature

Premise

At any point in time any good-faithing new user could have accidentally contributed to the project with a non-notable but well-written item; since such data is in any case free (as in freedom) material and (in many cases could be) the result of some hard referencing work, our currently policy of not necessarily waiting for user reply to proceed to deletion (which is right in itself) can easily have the chilling effect to induce such users to think that we, as a community, do not value the time our contributors donate to the project.

Proposal

Implementing in Wikibase and/or redirecting the user to an user-friendly import/export/move per-item functionality, compatible with any other (are there?) Wikibase instance would limit such chilling effects, improve and lessen administrators work (no long useless discussion will happen if users can easily export their work somewhere else or admins can move it to temporary namespaces), extend the software expanding technical userbase (if people have to use Wikibase without Wikidata more people will have to know at least how to use it) and create new markets by letting commercial actors competing to get non-notable Wikidata items.

I am available to implement this and bootstrapping an off-topic general purpose instance with a 1 or 2 year group grant. Posting here to receive opinions and brainstorm.

Ogoorcs (talk) 22:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Q33462476

Hi!

Can you please delete the Q33462476 item? It's a bad-formatted old duplicate item from Q94694527.

Thank you, --Remontees (talk) 13:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

• No, we could merge the newest item into the older one, since Help:Merge recommended to do exactly so. Best regards, --Wolverène (talk) 06:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Deletion request made in error

What's the best way to withdraw a deletion request made in error? I'm referring to the request regarding item Q733685, dated 01:35, 1 June 2020. One of our users (on iawiki) inadvertently linked an unrelated article to the item and came here looking for help undoing the mistake. What was wanted was NOT to delete the item, but just remove the erroneous link fron the item. I have done the latter and will have a word with the individual. I trust the item will not actually be deleted—it has links to articles on two dozen wikis—but the request is still sitting there, marked on hold, just waiting for the bot to make a mistake. This seems untidy. Any suggestions? Thanks! —Tortoise0308 (talk) 08:04, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

The deletion process should be made more visible

I don't like that at Wikidata item deletions are mostly discussed without notifying the author about it. Therefore, I suggest that the rules for deletions should be extended:

• On the talk page of the object a "this object is nominated for deletion" template has to be added.
• On the talk page of the object's creator, a message has to be posted linking to the discussion.

What do you think? -- Discostu (talk) 07:37, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

There is a related discussion currently going on at Wikidata:Project chat#Deletion policy. If we change something regarding the deletion process, it must scale well as this is a project where the majority of content is created automatically and we do already have severe problems to keep up in the current setting. —MisterSynergy (talk) 08:04, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Disruption

User:Vojtěch Dostál made a batch deletion request which swallowed up all of the requests below. Can someone fix this? Thanks. Prahlad (tell me all about it / private venue) (Please {{ping}} me) 19:31, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@Prahlad Hello, isn't this because the page is too long and MediaWiki is unable to cope? Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 19:35, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

• [edit conflict] This happened about a week ago. It seems to be because we are reaching the size limit of the page. What they did last time was to move a bulk nomination to a separate page. But here we are again because of the backlog. Quakewoody (talk) 19:37, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@Vojtěch Dostál, Quakewoody: What do you suggest then? Prahlad (tell me all about it / private venue) (Please {{ping}} me) 19:39, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Specifically, what separate page? Prahlad (tell me all about it / private venue) (Please {{ping}} me) 19:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, the only way to fix this is to process a lot of RFDs, so they can be archived :-). Other way could be to have more than one RFD page, which would need consensus, I presume. MediaWiki has its limits :/. --Martin Urbanec (talk) 19:43, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@Martin Urbanec: thanks for the advice. @Vojtěch Dostál: sorry for blaming you. Prahlad (tell me all about it / private venue) (Please {{ping}} me) 19:47, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Fixed, sorry for the trouble. Regards, Prahlad (tell me all about it / private venue) (Please {{ping}} me) 00:26, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Prahlad (tell me all about it / private venue) (Please {{ping}} me) 00:31, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Splitting this process into speedy deletions and deletion discussions?

Hi all. Since becoming an admin, I've been watching this page and deleting items when I've felt comfortable that their deletion is per policy. For some items, it's obvious that they can be deleted immediately, but for others (particularly "notability?" items) it seems like it would be better to allow time for a short discussion before they are deleted. However, at the moment they are all mixed together. So I'm wondering: would it be worth splitting this process into a 'speedy' process for the obvious items, and a 'discussion' process that allows for a day or so of discussion at least before deletion? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:23, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

You did not outline here how this would improve the deletion workflow, or which actual problem you want to solve with the proposal.

• If you do not feel comfortable to solve a case, you can either leave it for other admins, or request input by other community members to trigger a discussion, or participate in non-admin role by improving the item or adding background to the discussion. In the current scheme, a discussion will usually develop automatically in case it is needed.
• "Notability" cases are rather simple, as it requires a pretty schematic evaluation on a technical level.
• Some cases sit here because something needs to be solved elsewhere without requiring any "discussion" here at Wikidata.
• Any sort of splitted venues would also bring up the question whether an item belongs into this one category or that other category. From my experience, users would probably put quite a substantial fraction into the wrong category and we had to rearrange or work with the mess.

IMO it would not help if we were to split this venue, but it would create a lot of procedural problems instead. —MisterSynergy (talk) 21:52, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

@MisterSynergy: "If you do not feel comfortable to solve a case, you can either leave it for other admins" - this is what I normally do. I could probably also comment more on the other cases, but when I do, like at Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions#Q83609870, it seems to stall things. I think splitting the process would help speed up the obvious deletions, while also providing a bit of breathing room for people to contest other deletions, but still with a timeframe that they will be closed after. The structure of Wikidata makes it difficult to tell whether items are being continuously recreated, but a bit of discussion time might at least reduce that. 'Speedy' and 'Discussion' are the normal approaches that other wikis use to handle items for deletion (sometimes with 'Proposed' in the middle), with good reason, and with your last point, it should be easy to go from speedy to discussion, but not so much the other way around. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:18, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

• Well, other projects have y very different sort of content, much more complex notability policies, and substantially fewer cases to process. Their deletion schemes would not fit to our project.
• You can challenge a deletion at any time even after it has taken place. The undeletion procedure is as unbureaucratic as the deletion procedure.
• Your proposal has the potential that way too many cases land in the "discussion" section and we'd never be able to process those as it is a pretty inefficient procedure. We need to become more efficient, not less efficient.
• Fixed timeframes do not help to solve a case if the discussion is stalled. We would accumulate the same backlog as we do currently.
• A reasonable number of seemingly stalled cases can in fact be solved rather quickly based on the provided input. It just needs an admin with some time to close those cases, but we are unfortunately pretty short on active admins.
• Another slightly related issue to keep in mind is that per current policies there is no discussion or listing on WD:RfD required at all prior a (potential) deletion, and the majority of deletions actually takes place without such a listing. The main purpose of this WD:RfD page is to bring items to admins' attention, not to trigger a discussion.

—MisterSynergy (talk) 22:46, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

A lighter weight speedy delete system would be good. I feel too many things are deleted but half the things here are just totally blank items or other garbage. The only borderline cases surround the notability concerns. Also, I still think we need to notify creators when their items are listed. Admins just leaving items they are uncertain of just biases towards deletionism as the admin most willing to delete will eventually come around. The current process is broken. BrokenSegue (talk) 02:32, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

• Creators do get notfied if one uses the gadget.--- Jura 06:58, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
  • What are you talking about? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2020 (UTC) MediaWiki:Gadget-RequestDeletion.js ? I do not remind having been notified when several item that I created where proposed to deletion. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 15:16, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

• Oddly, the other day I got a nomination closed with the explanation that it should have been discussed first (full details). ;) --- Jura 06:58, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose Hello, The more time the admin spends on this page, the more its efficiency and speed increase. For Wikipedia, the article can claim a debate over its deletion because WD is different on content. It is true that WD:N is difficult to assimilate to newcomers, but once understood, these recommendations are easily applicable. And this is where the term "obvious deletions" is not defensible: the recommendations are refined over time and the Items can be judged quickly (normally). The only serious discussions that appear are "jurisprudence", as for the Emmet family and the need to welcome all or part of the genealogy (or more simply: is it relevant to welcome families going back to Mathusalem?). By following the recommendations, it is clear that all related items should be kept, but… So a debate page would add to the confusion contrary to what you think. The weak point is the number of active admins and I already wrote that. Cordially. —Eihel (talk) 19:23, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
  • "these recommendations are easily applicable" disagree. there is tons of disagreement about what counts as "structural need" or a "serious and publicly available reference". The problem is the process doesn't exist to let people properly challenge/dispute deletion requests and so much of it happens with zero oversight. BrokenSegue (talk) 01:11, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
• Spoiler Alert - all requests for deletions are requests for speedy deletions. There is no discussion needed. An item either passes or it doesn't. There is no "consensus" for keep/delete. And, what few know - daily deletions outnumber daily request for deletions 1000 to 1. Wikidata RfD is not a discussion page, it is simply a notification for admin to look at something that may have slipped under their radar.

Sure, I would like to see some things (such as known spammers) deleted faster than others. But considering how fast things get deleted in comparison to other projects, I'm good with it. If you really want to fix deletions, then we need a way to prevent people from removing the listings, and keeping non-admin from adding 'done' templates. Particularly since the 'undo' process is useless unless you are sitting on top of the page when the edit happens. If someone removed a listing, let's say overnight, the only way to get get it re-listed is to re-nominate it. Quakewoody (talk) 21:25, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

• • "There is no discussion needed. An item either passes or it doesn't. There is no "consensus" for keep/delete". maybe true but that's not good. basically gives admins all the power. BrokenSegue (talk) 01:12, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

• Wikidata isn't freeform writing the way Wikipedia is. You fill out a form on WD. Therefore, this is either pass or fail. Admin should have all the power. Quakewoody (talk) 02:20, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

• @Quakewoody: Your comments here scare me, I don't think this should just be a notification system, and if the 1000:1 ratio you mention is accurate then I'm very worried that many good items are being deleted without any sort of checking system. Mike Peel (talk) 17:50, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Or is it scary because of the amount of spam that gets posted. A more accurate figure would be - the deletion log shows just shy of 500 items were deleted in the past 24 hours. But how many were nominated first? And how many don't appear on the deletion log? In comparison, there were just over 100 edits (edits, not individual item nominations) in the same 24 hour period.

IMO, it is a very simple pass/fail situation. Wikidata is 'authored' information. The form is already created, you either fill out enough data to pass notability or you don't. Pass. Fail. Quakewoody (talk) 19:41, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Quakewoody: If it were that simple we could write a bot to delete things and clearly we cannot. There is a level of judgement here which is being used. BrokenSegue (talk) 13:12, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

• The ratio is not 1000:1, but it is true that the majority of deletions does not see WD:RfD at all. Here are some deletion statistics on a monthly basis. Around 1.45 million items have been deleted in total (~120.000 this year only), and currently the number of deletions per month is roughly 14.000 (or ~500 per day). There would be much more content which would require a notability assessment each day, but we are far away from being able to deal with all of it. —MisterSynergy (talk) 20:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

•  Strong support - It is clearly an issue that admins interpretes notability policy differently. For example, "described using serious and publicly available references" - what is the meaning of "describe"? And also the undeletion procedure is not efficient.--GZWDer (talk) 15:00, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Further what does "serious" mean. BrokenSegue (talk) 19:57, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Item marked as deleted although it is not

See this edit: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata:Requests_for_deletions&diff=1289853610&oldid=1289850791

mobile device (Q491359) has been marked as deleted, but it still exists. Its version history does not show any change. What happened? -- H005 (talk) 12:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

• The log shows it was deleted, then restored. Quakewoody (talk) 13:18, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I don't think the restoration makes sense. Where is the suitable place to debate this? Request a deletion again ans ask the user to join the discussion? -- H005 (talk) 18:09, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

• I would think a merge would be better. Or maybe a lexeme. But, talk to the guy that restored it. Maybe he may have a solution (or a link to a discussion). Quakewoody (talk) 20:01, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

We need a better way to combat vandalism to RfD

or in this case assuming good faith, accidental edits

What happened with this edit. I really don't have the patience to reinstall everything that was removed or to remove everything that was re-added. But I think the better question is why did this happen. Something like this happened the other day. I believed it to be vandalism, and if I remember correctly at least one user was blocked. I don't think UWashPrincipalCataloger did this intentionally. Is there a problem with the database? Can we somehow fix the page so that it is easier to revert edits that occur before bots make changes (archiving bot edits seem to be when "this edit cannot be undone" occurs)? Quakewoody (talk) 12:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• I re-added what was deleted, but am not even going to try to remove what bots had already been removed (plus, they can remove it again). I'd still like to know what's going on with that. Let me rephrase that - I don't need to know what happened. I am just letting you guys know it happened, as well as the fact that it happened the other day. Plus, as part of vandalism, it happens too often for you not to attempt to find if there can be an easier fix. Quakewoody (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Hi Quakewoody, I certainly did not intend to delete anything on the RfD page, and the only thing that I (thought I) did on that page yesterday was to add a vote to keep one item Charles J. Sharp (Q54800218). If I deleted other things it was certainly unintentional and I can't really understand how it could have happened. UWashPrincipalCataloger (talk) 17:41, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think you intentionally did it, and since I did go back and manually restored most of what happened, I think we should focus on the bigger picture - In the past, vandals have done this intentionally. And we have had it happen unintentionally to editors. Typically, someone does something, we hit the 'undo' button. But on certain pages, like RfD, if you aren't there to revert a vandalism right away, you'll find that you can't undo the edit. And a "restore" takes away good edits that happened after the bad one. That's why it took me 15 edits to re-add the removed content. Once a bot comes in and archives something and that list gets shuffled around - you can't undo a bad edit. There has to be a better way other than hoping someone looks at each and every individual edit that happened overnight. It's unreasonable. But without me having done it, look at all of the content that would have been lost.Quakewoody (talk) 18:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Handling of items with existing site links that are pending deletion

Hi. I've seen a number of posts (and probably made a few myself) along the lines of "Please delete QXXXX, its not notable, once the sitelinks are deleted, they have been tagged for speedy deletion". This makes it a bit hard to deal with the request - until the sitelinks are deleted, the item shouldn't be deleted, but in the meanwhile they just sit on the requests page, and every time I see one I need to go and check if the sitelinks have been deleted yet or not.

I propose that a bot be created to help handle these. Assuming the control page is at Wikidata:Requests for deletion/When ready (name to be determined):

• If you want to request that an item be deleted once its sitelinks are deleted, post to that control page with the item, reason, and signature, everything that would normally go an the main RFD page
• Every so often, the bot checks all of the entries on that page, and if an entry has no sitelinks it gets moved to the main RFD
• If an entry is still there after a while (weeks?) and the sitelinks haven't been deleted, an admin can deal with it by moving it to the main RFD page manually and marking it as not deleted (move to main RFD so that it gets archived and there is a record of the nomination)

Users can either add requests directly to the when ready page, or an admin could move it from the main RFD page.

Example:

== [[Q12345]] ==
{{RFD when ready|1=Q12345|2=Not notable, sitelinks already tagged}}

Not notable, sitelinks already tagged [[User:DannyS712|DannyS712]] ([[User talk:DannyS712|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 12:00, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

would become checked by the bot and once Q12345 had no more links, moved to the RFD page

== [[Q12345]] ==
{{rfd links|1=Q12345|2=Not notable, sitelinks already tagged}}

Not notable, sitelinks already tagged [[User:DannyS712|DannyS712]] ([[User talk:DannyS712|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 12:00, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
:{{comment|Bot note}}: Moved here from [[Wikidata:Requests for deletion/When ready]], no remaining site links [[User:DannyS712 bot|DannyS712 bot]] ([[User talk:DannyS712 bot|<span class="signature-talk">{{int:Talkpagelinktext}}</span>]]) 18:00, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Thoughts? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:33, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Forgive me for commenting here, because I don't have any comment on this particular proposed deletion process EXCEPT to say that when any item is deleted, everyone who is "watching" that Wikidata item should get a notice THAT INCLUDES ENOUGH INFORMATION SO THE Wikimedian can tell what was deleted.

I've received multiple notices of deletion of Wikidata items, and I had no idea what the item was. In at least two cases, the Wikidata administrator who deleted the item kindly restored the item so I could see what it was. In one case, I had requested the deletion -- several says earlier and did not connect the deletion with the request until I saw what had been deleted. Another case involved a duplicate item, which required more work to fix before one copy was deleted.

Thanks for reading. DavidMCEddy (talk) 19:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Where do I report a copyright violation?

See User:Paptilian.

This user has been using Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons as a personal web host to hold copyrighted material copied from various sources on the web.

This particular page page appears to contain a copyright violation; content was copied without permission from [ https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/blm/co/16/foreword.htm ] --Guy Macon (talk) 01:02, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: While not exactly germain to Wikidata -- facts aren't generally copyrightable -- that specific link is the work of the United States federal government and therefore the text in the public domain. Although the photos may have some licensing issues if they're not by the US Gov. William Graham (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

To add, my only objection to his edits is that this user should probably be uploading these USGov items to Wikisource and/or Commons. --William Graham (talk) 02:33, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Unactioned request count

On my watchlist I see this edit from @MisterSynergy: listing 130 unactioned requests in the edit summary, and eleven minutes later I see this edit from @Pasleim:'s DeltaBot listing a bit over a third of that number in the edit summary. Where is this discrepancy coming from, and can it be addressed? Mahir256 (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

• See Wikidata:Project chat#User:BeneBot*/RfD-stats.
• Somehow the bot reports an incorrect number; interestingly, I use (pretty much) the very same script, but it reports another number when I run it from PAWS. (I forked Pasleim's script a while ago when his bot was broken.)
• I do not plan to do these edits regularly, so we might just end up with an incorrect count from Pasleim's bot.

—MisterSynergy (talk) 20:04, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

That's weird. Is the source code available somewhere? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:45, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

"Requests" section edit button

The "Requests" section says "Please add a new request at the bottom of this section, using {{subst:Rfd |1=PAGENAME |2=REASON FOR DELETION }}." The "Edit" link of the section I'm supposed to add to takes me here, basically telling me I can't edit this section. Can the non-functional edit button be made functional or removed? Kusma (talk) 15:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Conflict on adding new request

Frequently getting this massage whenever trying to add new request: "Your changes could not be saved because of an edit conflict. Would you like to resolve the conflict manually?" And after multiple attempts error goes away on its own. And when adding another new item same thing happens again. What's going on here? BeLucky (talk) 10:52, 26 April 2022 (UTC)