The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Mark Historical Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 07:20, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have discussed possibly getting rid of the LOCE with several editors together, both here and here (see bottom of discussion). Having weighed up the ponits, I feel that the LOCE should be abolished. The project is very inactive, and the requests list is hugely backlogged, dating back 14 months, and doesn't seem to be progressing much, if at all. Someone suggested simply tagging it with the historical tag, but given the amount of subpages, I feel that isn't the best option. Also, bringing it to MFD will hopefully get the opinion of the wider community, whether LOCE should be closed or not. Regards, D.M.N. (talk) 18:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete This is strange...I was talking with an editor about this today. But anyway, I have seen too many editors (myself included) waiting months and sometimes over a year for their article to be copyedited. While there are hundreds of members, only a few are active, and the requests list is backlogged beyond repair. It is much more efficient to just ask a fellow editor to copyedit an article. Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 18:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I've just started on this project; I signed up 25 days ago but found the process steps for moving articles through the pipeline somewhat daunting. Maybe this can be chalked up to simple inexperience, but it certainly inhibited my hitting the beaches; I decided to spend my time doing good article reviews, which also entail copyediting — and I was on more familiar ground. Slowly, I parsed the instructions here and now I (think) I can manage walking an article down the production pipeline (I'll be attempting this with Joking apart). Since the time I joined, (May 24) thirty other editors have enlisted themselves. With such an infusion, one would think that work would start flowing nicely. Perhaps this is not the case and I'm not alone in finding this a hard project on which to start. Whatever the outcome of this action, I do think there needs to be some way to marshall editors who are interested in (and are good at) copyediting, and getting them deployed to where they can do the most good. Such deployment is necessary even if this particular project is not the best dispatch agent. I think this MfD is healthy and laudable but incomplete if it does not address the problem of copyeditor dispatch. I certainly agree that there is a need to shake up the project a little bit and force a self-evaluation. At the present time, I think both the featured and good article projects are being affected because LOCE can't deploy a copy editor when needed. In effect, the copy editing practice has been absorbed by those projects in probably a helter-skelter kind of way. I joined here because I think copyediting really needs to be upstream from the article review projects. I'll comment further after I've moved my first article through the pipeline. Take care. Gosgood (talk) 19:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's partly my fault: I designed the listing system. The previous system, which was entirely manual (moving text around on a page), became completely unworkable because there was no one doing the needed administration and maintaining the requests list. The system now at least manages itself; but I do agree it's not the most intuitive. It was designed to not need bot assistance, and it could be more straightforward if a bot script was written (circumventing the need for so many things to be transcluded to so many places by various wierd methods), but it's rather academic if there's no one actually handling the requests. Happy‑melon 17:31, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Mark as historical. It's a big project, and there may be interest in reviving it at a later time (I'd kind of like to get involved myself). There are lots of subpages, but deletion requires the same number of clicks that tagging involves. In either case, if the closer doesn't want to do it manually, tagging just the main page would reasonably suffice, or a simple bot could be written for the task (a very quick task for someone who's written similar bots). — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • After reading Gosgood's comment and reflecting some more, I'm thinking perhaps we should keep the project as is. I'd like to do some work with it (after a few days when I'll have more time) and I suspect that others would as well, given an invitation/reminder. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:39, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is does get Kept the first thing I'd like to see happen is for the backlog to be deleted regardless, whether it's just simply deleting the requests or via another method. D.M.N. (talk) 19:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete LOCE is more trouble than it's worth; it raises false hopes in editors who (reasonably) assume that submitting something will get some kind of response, and then get frustrated when nothing happens (not even a "sorry, we're busy"). I'd go with ((historic)) tagging it instead if someone wants to keep the record, or if anyone is planning on reviving it at a later date. – iridescent 19:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or tag historical...whichever makes it go away. LOCE was a good idea in theory, but became overly complicated and process oriented. Had LOCE created itself as a list of editors willing to do copyediting on request, with a simple request process, it could have done great things. Instead, most of its members don't respond to project requests and my requests for assistance directly on their talk pages went ignored. Either delete it, demolish it and start over, or tag it as historical; the current form must be done away with. - auburnpilot talk 20:00, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Mark historical - inactivity isn't a reason for deletion, there might be things worth keeping as well. The categories work fine without all the process. Mr.Z-man 20:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Esperanify I mean mark historical. Should be kept so if anyone wants to start the next daring superhero team to copyedit, he or she will know how to learn from problems. hbdragon88 (talk) 22:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as Historical Don't see much point in deleting it outright. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Julian and Iridescent. It's just not active anymore, and it's getting to be too much trouble for the few of us that are left to handle. --Mizu onna sango15/水女珊瑚15 23:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC) Tag as ((historical)). --Mizu onna sango15/水女珊瑚15 07:27, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as ((Historical)). — Athaenara ✉ 00:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as historical. Raises false hopes for editors unaware of the backlog. - Merzbow (talk) 01:02, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag with ((Historical)). I agree with the above users, that inactivity doesn't automatically call for deletion. -- iMatthew _T.C. 01:29, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as historical. Per above, it is no longer active but deletion is not necessary. The historical tag is clear that the project is no longer active and will suffice. --Dragon695 (talk) 04:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as historical doesn't matter if there is a large amount of sub-pages. -- Ned Scott 06:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as historical It is still linked from many talk pages via the ((WP LoCE)) template, and deletion would confuse more than it would help. If there are ever plans again to create a similiar wikiproject, this wikiproject may highlight the major scalability issues that come with it. – sgeureka ^t•c 06:18, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• With much sadness, tag as historical. It was a good idea on paper, but died due to a lack of leadership and interest. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - It seems like consensus is historical. However, there are still tons of requests listed. Im my view, they should get deleted because it is still accessable from an article talkpage, for instance here. That LOCE template is visible on quite a few talkpages. I think it will need to be removed to avoid confusion. D.M.N. (talk) 08:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag historical per above. I agree that some references to LOCE from talk page templates should be removed. Yechiel (Shalom) 11:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Perhaps there is discussion elsewhere, but is there reason why this project cannot be revived? It seems to have been active at least through the beginning of this year. I would volunteer. NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 12:36, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Get in there then! There's no reason whatsoever why it can't keep going; it's just that it doesn't appear to be doing so at the moment. Happy‑melon 17:31, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and if deleted, use the same logic ban to all users who oppose keep: This is really institutionalized incivility when we have a project to help others and some want to destroy it. If it is backlogged, then a warning saying that limited participation may cause some articles not to be reviewed or may cause delay. Wikipedia doesn't force people to do things. Otherwise, all administrators would be forced to review certain boards, like 3RR, or be banned. This is the worse example of bad advocacy in Wikipedia; we have a helpful project and because it is backlogged, it is eliminated. I haven't been in Wikipedia very long but I am fed up with bullying by editors, administrators, checkusers, etc. This bullying is hurting Wikipedia. WPIRFU (talk) 18:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I think you're missing the point here. The "delete" and "tag historical" arguments aren't that it's a bad project, but that keeping it is more harmful to new users than closing it. When a new user who's written an article posts it in good faith to LOCE and nothing gets done for months, whilst those articles that are tagged ((copyedit)) do get cleaned up (because Category:All articles needing copy edit is watched far more than WP:LOCE/R), that user's likely to get frustrated. Thus, in my opinion, keeping LOCE "alive" is doing actual harm to Wikipedia as a project, by leading people away from a method that works and towards a method that doesn't. – iridescent 19:14, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please note that WPIRFU (talk · contribs) has been blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppet of Dereks1x (talk · contribs). D.M.N. (talk) 20:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag Historical Thanks to all who tried to make this project run; but it has been overwhelmed. I'm satisfied that the copyeditor volunteer list at WP:PRV and the categories driven by ((copyedit)) both furnish what appear to be process-light access to copy editing services. The former is looking for people who want to help the article review processes, and the latter is a nice, low-ceremony way for editors to flag their articles for copy editing. Together, these mechanisms suffice at replacing this project. In the end, I don't think it was the mechanisms that were at fault here: requests simply outstripped what volunteers could do. Take care. Gosgood (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but rework I have copyedited articles I found on this list, so it's doing at least a bit of good. (It works better than the categories because this shows requests that may be more urgent. It also works for those of use who don't want to sign up on a copy-editors list like WP:PRV.) However, it would make sense to have a WP:PR-type forced archiving, so it doesn't get ridiculously backlogged. If your article doesn't get copyedited in two weeks, say, it gets archived and you should just slap a copyediting tag on the top of it. Mangostar (talk) 21:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem is only partially the overcomplicated system, the main problem is the lack of participation. I don't think re-working it will help that. Forced archiving will deal with the backlog, but most of the articles reported to it will still be left un-copyedited in the end. Mr.Z-man 06:24, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as ((historical)) - A great idea in theory, but large backlogs and a dearth of active members makes for a rather unhelpful project. ((Copyedit)) and its associated category can still be used, but this organised project has (sadly) reached its end-of-life. It would also probably be a good idea to consider the userbox ((User LoCE)) in this discussion (as if the project is marked historical, the userbox becomes somewhat redundant). RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 21:49, June 18, 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: Oh, for shame! And just when my second shot at FLC depended on it. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 06:17, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Per what User:Iridescent said, this page has only lead to frustration on the part of those that try to get their articles copyedited. —  scetoaux (T|C) 21:07, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as Historical - Sad, as if this was active it would be a huge plus to Wikipedia. « Milk's Favorite Cøøkie 22:55, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or Tag historical. How sad, but all good thingd have to come to an end. The backlog is so horrendous it's better not to get others hopes up. I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 14:14, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I would be sad to see this go. I'm a member, and have done a few articles requested of the league. I'm in the middle of a +1 month effort on a major article now, as a result of a LOCERequest. At a maximum I think it should be archived, not deleted, mainly due to the prevelence of LOCE templates on articles. I'd love to see it left alone, or a warning placed at the top that the League is short of members, requests may take a long time to (or never) be answered, and that WP:PRV is another way of requesting copyedit of an article. Livitup (talk) 21:20, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.