- User:Shaddim/Hedgewars (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore)
Recently a draft of an deleted article (Hedgewars) I worked on in my userspace was speedily deleted by an administrator (RHaworth) with the unfitting speedy deletion policy G4 as argument. G4 explicitly encourages drafting in user-space. G4: "This applies to sufficiently identical copies, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion. It excludes pages [...] content that has been moved to user space or converted to a draft for explicit improvement" The deleting admin and another admin I talked before for support (JamesBWatson), are unwilling in re-instantiating the draft, despite intensive discussion my outspoken intent and through my edit history proven capability for a constructive work on articles & drafts. Shaddim (talk) 07:27, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Previous discussion history of the primary article, Hedgewars (edit: requester initially linked instead to one of the titles created to avoid salting): AFD1, DRV1, AFD2, DRV2. This userspace draft started as an unattributed copy from a deleted revision of the article, and the only edits made to it before deletion were formatting, infobox changes, and an additional external link to www.hedgewars.org. More discussion specific to the draft is at User talk:JamesBWatson#Hedgewars and User talk:RHaworth#Hedgewars; the former especially inclines me to endorse. —Cryptic 07:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- It started as unattributed copy as JamesBWatson was unwilling in helping me creating a draft, based on the old article, therefore he is to blame. Shaddim (talk) 20:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Second, the deletion discussions (2 it seems) before involved only a small amount of authors & little discussion. The first one was more or less split between keep and delete, not at all a consensus. The second one misses basically any discussion. Therefore, this aggressive enforcement of a non-consensus seems over the top: the article was live for quite some years and is on quite some other WPs: 10 (see the Spanish one) , therefore my assessment in "Hedgewars is one of major open source games and deserve some second look" has some ground. Shaddim (talk) 20:32, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- First of all, thank you Cryptic for informing me and RHaworth of this discussion. For some reason Shaddim did not do so.
- This has been deleted at least 10 times (to my knowledge) under different titles. As Cryptic has pointed out, it has been the subject of two AfDs and two deletion reviews (before this one) all of which have ended with the article being deleted, or staying deleted. It has been created as an article again following the last of those four discussions, and deleted again. When an article has been discussed four times and the same conclusion has been reached each time, namely that it should be deleted because of lack of notability, it is not helpful to recreate it without producing new evidence that it is notable. If Shaddim knows of sources that show notability he can easily tell us what those sources are, and then I will be perfectly happy for the article to be re-created; if, on the other hand, he does not know of such sources, then he should not be trying to re-create the article. In the discussion on my talk page four times I asked him to provide evidence of notability, and on no occasion did he either do so or give any answer to my requests. At one point he said that he wanted the deleted article restored so that he could look at the sources in it. I posted the sources to a user space page, which would have served his ostensible purpose perfectly well, but he didn't accept that, and still demanded restoration of the deleted page.
- Shaddim has indicated numerous times in different places that he is against virtually any kind of deletion. On his user page he refers to what he calls the "notability policy" and the "reliable sources policy" (actually guidelines) as "infamous". He doesn't want the article deleted. He doesn't care that consensus in four different discussions is that the subject does not satisfy Wikipedia's notability standards, because he doesn't like those standards. (Note: There are many things that I disagree with in various guidelines and policies, including the notability guidelines, but I accept that they are guidelines and policies, and try to stick to them.)
- Shaddim gives a selective quote from the speedy deletion policy for criterion G4, omitting to mention the bit that says that the exemption he mentions does not apply to user space copies created to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy. The purpose of speedy deletion criterion G4 is to prevent time being taken up discussing again a page which has already been discussed. When there have been not just one but several discussions on a particular article the need to prevent further timesinking discussion is even greater than after just one discussion, and it is reasonable to require evidence of notability to be provided first. Allowing restoration to user space for improvement is generally a good principle, but it is not reasonable to treat that principle as though it were a solid law that should be applied irrespective of the circumstances, even if the policy said that, which it doesn't.
- Nowhere in the talk page discussions about this has Shaddim made any attempt to show that the subject is notable. In his opening statement for this review he has not done so either. I think the deletion should be endorsed. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 11:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Accusing me of being virtually against any deletion is a lie. I'm acting very well inside the policies and said I want to improve the article and will consider scrapping the draft if not enough sources can be found. Also, G4 explicitly allows draft, G4 motivates only killing repeatedly recreated articles which got deleted before. You have the G4 policy wrong.Shaddim (talk) 20:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- How should I find **new** sources if I'm not allowed seeing the old article and/or creating a draft? Also, I want to see some discussion on the wrongly motivated speedy deletion. And, I want to see the policy which don't allow the creation of drafts. Drafts are encouraged and motviated in WP Shaddim (talk) 20:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Now you're just being obstinate. For the purposes of knowing what sources were already used, you can look at User:JamesBWatson/Hedgewars sources. You've also already located an archived copy of this off-site; that will give you everything you need. If you want to argue about policy for the sake of arguing about policy, that's one thing. But, claiming you are being prevented from finding better sources is silly. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:06, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- The webarchive version is very outdated and misses major extensions in reception: in general I believe all authors should be capable of seeing the history of deleted articles; that we have to beg for them is wrong. Shaddim (talk) 23:37, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn G4 only applies to drafts of AfDed articles in very limited circumstances, and this isn't one of them. G4 does not apply to pages which have been converted to drafts for the purpose of improvement - the wording of the criterion says that very clearly. The OP claims to be doing this, I don't see any evidence that they're lying, and we're supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt anyway. If this was some dodgy SPA then I could understand having reservations, but we're talking about an experienced editor. G4 does apply to pages which have been moved to draft space just to avoid deletion by hosting the article in draft space instead of mainspace, but I don't see any evidence that that's happening here. Whether some admin thinks the draft isn't viable is irrelevant to G4, that kind of decision would have to be made by the community at MfD. The major purpose of G4 is to ensure that AfD results are "sticky" and can't be overturned unilaterally on the whim of one editor. Drafts of AfDed articles don't overturn the AfD result because a draft of an article is very different to an article. Hut 8.5 20:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I haven't figured out if I agree with that or not, but one thing is clear. If we are going to have this as a draft (whether in draft or user space), it's got to be a restored copy of the original, with the editing history intact. What we had in User:Shaddim/Hedgewars was a copy-paste from an external mirror, so the history was lost. That's a non-starter. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I fully agree. JamesBWatson refused to give me this possibility. (Side note: In general I think deleted articles' history should be always visible (for all authors) and in general (beside controversial manual set exceptions) automatically exportable to user space/draft. That authors are currently dependent on the capriciousness of individual admins is a mistake in the system) Shaddim (talk) 23:31, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, we should fix the attribution issue. You don't technically need to restore the deleted article to do that (although it's the preferred option), a list of contributors to the page would be sufficient. Hut 8.5 06:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- overturn and send to MfD This is an IAR deletion. I think speedy deletion is a horrid place for IAR. But this seems like it should probably be deleted and given the history, I have some sympathy for the deleting admin. That said, MfD exists and I can't see why it can't be used in this case. Hobit (talk) 02:56, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- And yes, it should have the whole history. Hobit (talk) 03:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn - I've said it before and I'll say it again: "(but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy)" is too subjective and needs to be removed from G4; removing it would make deletions such as these wholly indefensible. History merge Hedgewars into User:Shaddim/Hedgewars after restoration. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 06:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- With every respect for your opinion that the relevant policy should be changed, the administrator who closes this discussion should assess the arguments advanced according to policy as it currently exists, and should give little if any weight to arguments based on rejecting current policy. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:35, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @JamesBWatson: I agree with Hut 8.5's statement that "G4 does not apply to pages which have been converted to drafts for the purpose of improvement - the wording of the criterion says that very clearly. The OP claims to be doing this, I don't see any evidence that they're lying, and we're supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt anyway." — Godsy (TALKCONT) 02:31, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse The community ha sspent enough tyime on it. The cut and past was incorrectly attributed and its supreme process wankery to insist that an admin dfo a history merge and then list at MFD. Spartaz Humbug! 10:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and list at MfD. The practice of restarting a deleted article as a draft is explicitly permitted. We have a good way to deleted the drafts too if they are hopeless. This is not a policy that should permit shortcuts by IAR, because the ieditor has the right to make at least an effort. The deleted admin either diagrees with the poliy or chooses to ignore it. For deletion policy such as this, no admin has that right, even if having it would sometimes be conbvenient. Yjod od theproper place to deal with such incorrect process. DGG ( talk ) 05:42, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and list at MfD. WP:G4 states it does not apply to "content that has been moved to user space or converted to a draft for explicit improvement". That seems to describe this draft. WP:MFD would be the most appropriate place to discuss this deletion as it's specifically meant to be where Wikipedians decide what should be done with problematic pages in the namespaces which aren't covered by other specialized deletion discussion areas. Lonehexagon (talk) 19:14, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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