Standing

Copied from March 30th

  • Pretty much as tfeilS said; at the threshold, DRV requires something more than bare disagreement with the outcome, but the petitioner relies on nothing more than that, advancing an argument that could have been made (although it wouldn't have been accepted) during the normal run of the AfD. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 13:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I think the custom and practice is that deletion reviews can be, and have been, opened when the petitioner agreed with the outcome and had no quarrel with the deleting admin whatsoever. (Petitioner might be seeking unprotection of a page, for example.) DRV is usually adversarial in character but not necessarily so.—S Marshall T/C 16:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
  • WP deletion process requires the deletions to be in accord with WP policies and guidelines, and to take account of the arguments submitted and the consensus, and to use good judgment. Therefore any closure that fails to do any of these is a mistake in following WP Deletion process. For all practical purposes, this opens up everything. As a principle, there needs to be a way of correcting mistakes, even if the community has made them, and in many cases, this is the only place available. The ultimate guiding policy is NOT BUREAUCRACY. DGG ( talk ) 20:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
WP:DRV says, in as many words, "[t]his process should not be used simply because you disagree with a deletion debate's outcome for reasons previously presented but instead if you think the closer interpreted the debate or have some significant new information pertaining to the debate that was not available on Wikipedia during the debate." We should either adhere to that or delete it, and I think we should adhere to it. As to WP:BURO: Generally, see WP:PIMP, and let's look more closely at BURO while we're at it. "While Wikipedia's written policies and guidelines should be taken seriously, they can be misused. Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies." What principle is served by letting every nomination be refought here? "If the rules truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them." That obviously doesn't doesn't apply here: making it harder to purge fancruft makes the encyclopedia worse, not better. And while it's true to some extent that "[d]isagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, rather than through tightly sticking to rules and procedures," the fact is that without rules and procedures for moving from proposal to execution by way of consensus, the search for consensus telescopes into infinity (which is why MERGE is such a total disaster). BURO is not the ultimate touchstone; WP:5P is. We are trying to build an encyclopedia. To the extent bureaucracy and rules hinder that goal, they're bad, which is all BURO and WP:IAR say. But in the mine run of cases, process helps build the encyclopedia.
None of this matters in this case, of course, because even if review of this result is appropriate (and I say it isn't), the result should still be endorsed, because the closing admin correctly interpreted the result of the nomination and correctly applied WP policy.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 21:12, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

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I wanted to reply to the first part of Simon Dodd's remark here. The rest of it seems uncontroversial to me, but the passage I wanted to discuss is: [WP:DRV]] says, in as many words, "[t]his process should not be used simply because you disagree with a deletion debate's outcome for reasons previously presented but instead if you think the closer interpreted the debate or have some significant new information pertaining to the debate that was not available on Wikipedia during the debate." We should either adhere to that or delete it, and I think we should adhere to it.

It seems to me that the magic word is "should". Those nominating a deletion "should" state some basis for it, certainly. It does not say "shall" or "must", and I think the subjunctive is important. If there's no valid reason for the deletion review, then fine, it should be closed, and speedily at that. This is so for the specific case under discussion. But what if there were some valid grounds that were unstated? I wouldn't want DRV to be debarred from considering the matter.

I want to emphasize this because there has been a time when this "should" clause was mentioned as a reason to close a review that I felt should be continued—in other words, it's not just a theoretical objection, it's based on real experience. (I ought to insert a link here but I'm blessed if I can find it. As I recall the DRV remained open because I threatened to re-open it myself as a good-faith user, and WP:BURO was invoked to keep it going.)

In any case, the principle I want to establish through discussion is that requirements of "standing" are satisfied just by the fact that a good faith user wants a deletion review to take place. This should not be an obstacle to speedy closure if no valid grounds exist.—S Marshall T/C 22:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

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Here is a case in which I brought a review to DRV, after the closing admin refused to make a supplemental ruling of the AfD as per the guidelines.  Early participants IMO took WP:IAR positions during which time no discussion of the guidelines developed.  Another admin snow closed, also refusing to discuss the guidelines, and in circular reasoning here explained that I should take action that would have required that I knew the closing admins supplemental ruling.  In summary, it was a total waste of everyone's time.  Would have preventing the early close have helped?  We will never know, and this is exactly the point, on analysis, the snow close was unconstructive.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
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  • Yes, it's actually happening—Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 March 30. Sorry, I thought SMarshall had included the link so I didn't bother to add it in my remarks. Petitioner has done exactly what Eluchil404 posited: "[S]omeone comes to DRV with what is just an ILIKEIT argument they have not stated a claim on which relief could be granted…." Unlike Eluchil404, however, in this kind of situation I would "have admins speedy closing such DRV's by analogy of a 'motion to dismiss.'" Review should be confined to administrator error or serious flaws in the the AfD itself. I gave an illustrative example of a reviewable case before, so here's another one, illustrating what I mean by "serious flaws" in an AfD: nom claims that the subject isn't notable, there's a cascade of delete !votes, closing admin (or NAC) follows consensus, but no one has bothered to check google and discover that there are oodles of reliable sources that easily establish notability. But that almost never happens. DRV should police outliers and error, not serve as an on-demand extension of an AfD.- Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 16:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Sorry, by "this" I meant closing a review instantly because of a flawed request. I sympathize with your view, but I think it's a little further than I'm willing to go. After all, there have been many circumstances in which someone has objected to a close without a good reason, and someone else has pointed out an actual flaw in the XfD. Chick Bowen 16:22, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Any other challenge to an AfD can be seen as a question of whether or not it was closed properly. :Correct WP deletion process requires the deletions to be in accord with WP policies and guidelines, to take account of the arguments submitted and the consensus, and to use good judgment. Therefore any closure that fails to do so in any of these respects is a mistake in following WP Deletion process. I think it would be rationally possible to challenge about half the AfD decision and quite a number of speedy deletions on some such basis (the other half are so blatantly obvious one way or another that there would be no point in it, and such DRVs are now normally closed very quickly without any problems. The people who regularly work at DRV know how to recognize nonsense). The reason most of these appealable closes are not appealed is because it seems fairly clear that another AfD would come to the same conclusion, or because it's not sufficiently important to bother.But a substantial number are not appealed because of unfamiliarity with the process, or an unwillingness to challenge the closer, and I'd say we should be reviewing twice the AfD closes we do , and many more of the speedys.
The correct basis for all admin actions is that admins must act reasonably. Therefore any closing that is asserted to not be in accord with correct judgment, or with the facts of the matter, can be reviewed here. All admin decisions are reviewable, otherwise the community would not be willing to have admins, as nobody agrees with every single decision of every one of the admins here, The guiding policy is NOT BUREAUCRACY. If any statement on this page or elsewhere is inconsistent with that, it is not applicable. The way to make the present statement applicability is to read it. Don't bring something to deletion review without a good reason. Disagreements with well-established policy should be discussed elsewhere. DGG ( talk ) 19:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Deletion Review is not available for actions deleting articles taken by or on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation or OTRS.
Accurate enough? Collect (talk) 23:43, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
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