Wikipedia:Dead letter office (proposal)

A proposal for a buffer for unobviously appropriate articles

Use the talk page to comment on this page. (BTW this whole top bit should be moved to talk, if this ever goes live) Rationales (more on the talk page [I hope]):

See Wikipedia:Cleanup, based on this page and its ideas

First Contact

• The first contact with wikipedia most users have is with editing, which is so darn easy that it easily becomes addictive. It would be nice if all the subsequent steps could be made similarly natural.

• The first contact many users have with wikipedia users is a boilerplate welcome message, however friendly phrased, after that, they generally (not always) get messages telling what they did wrong, and either explaining graciously how they might do things better, or more rarely, but much more regrettably, telling them that what they did would not be tolerated, "so don't do it again!" without much instruction beyond that. Those are matters which should be addressed, but that is not within the purview of this page.

• The first contact most new users have with the way Wikipedia acts as a community, is the Votes for Deletion page/pages, and that is what this page tries to soften and play down the impact of.

The Experience From The Newcomers side

• Most new users have a vivid memory of their own first edits, the first articles they created, and all the emotional reactions they had to the way they were dealt with. Who of us can deny that those first emotionals reactions still linger on in one form or another, and instruct the way we interact with the "Leviathan" that is Wikipedia?

• On the crucial matter of deletion a newcomers threshold for submitting another new users creations to a process which only knows two verdicts, "Guilty" (delete), and "Innocent" (keep [maybe embarrassingly long, if it really isn't that good]) may well be daunting.

• Even though those new users may thus be the best experts on what the experience is from the other side, the threshold may even keep them from expressing their viewpoint within such an on/off process.

What then?

• The proposal is a more multivalent process which would explicitly aknowledge that "deletion" is not the prime issue, but rather what "exactly" of many alternatives would be the best. An exchange of views, to be sure, but not over deletion, which would then be a last resort, rather than the first alternative, as it is nowadays too frequently (no matter how often diverted by samaritans rescuing articles from the jaws of deletion)

• Currently there is no shortage of wolves (or euphemistically "weeders") looking for articles to list on Votes for Deletion. With the volume of new articles we have now, that may not present an insurmountable drain on personnel.

• At some time in the (I assure you) quite foreseeable future, there will come a point at which we will be turning away all but the most hardshelled contributors, if we don't lower the threshold to contributing not just content but to the community process itself.

• There should be a place where the newest of new users will genuinely feel they know what is going on, and can give valuable advice as to the final disposition of articles, without feeling they only have the choice of advocating deletion or keeping (for who knows how long) an article.

• The heuristic should be such that an increase in new users should also increase the number of users who find it easy and useful to comment, and direct the disposition of new articles by those who are even newer than them!

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begin text of the proposed page itself (feel free to edit)

• Although it is probably not useful that articles stay on this list much longer than {foo-number} {timeunit-bar}, no one should feel rushed to transfer an article to any of the possible categories just because some imaginary deadline has passed. The goal should be that the correct category of treatment is found.

• List on this page any articles for which you yourself don't know what the correct treatment should be, or those pages you feel unprepared to tackle for other reasons. Also list here patent nonsense that you have blanked, an administrator will take care of it.

• When you list something on this page, only post a link to the article and a five word description at the most (one word may make the point better!), about which direction you are tending as to the approppriate response. Do not sign your opinion.

• Any obscene or hurtfully intended comments will be removed as a matter of course.

• The best response to any listed article is to actively fix the problem with the article it refers to.

• If you feel an unquenchable urge to argue the case of an article with more depth and verbosity, list it on Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion, or discuss the article on its own talk page.

• Comment tags you can use, include: delete - repair - fixed - wiktionary - vote - keep - fine - nonsense - unimproved - insufficient - meta - asdfjkl - stubified - expand - nonexistent - obscure - idiosyncratic - advert - selfpromotion - ungrammatic - ????? - silly - joke - repeat - link - chatty - rant - POV - NPOV - copyvio - brilliant - obscenity - blog - ...

• You may remove usernames from timestamps which have been left before your edit, if you like. This page works based on anonymity.

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• 00:09 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- Old socks (nonsense) + stubified - unimproved + fixed - insufficient - delete - vote + (moved to VfD)
• 00:12 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- Linked from somewhere (asdfjkl) + (test deleted)
• 00:15 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- Lake Joutajärvi (nonsense) + fixed - fine + (article rescued)
• 00:17 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- Woohoo (obscenity) + (deleted)
• 00:22 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- George CMXVII of En-ger-land (whitespace) + (deleted)
• 00:23 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- Military of Sealand (joke) - delete + (deleted) + (undeleted, the facts check out) - we shouldn't have this crap - watch your language, article factual - sealand is a joke + (moved to Vfd)
• 00:23 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- List of polydactyl large apes (joke, same IP as above) + (deleted)
• 00:23 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- List of tinfoil-capped dictators (as above) + (deleted)
• 00:23 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- You can't stop me (ditto) + (deleted)
• 00:23 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- You've been tesprodged to the max (simply delete) + (deleted)
• 01:02 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- hindquarters (substub) - repair - wiktionary + (article moved to wiktionary)
• 02:15 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- abuse of power (delete?) - vote - keep - repair - meta - nonsense
• 05:25 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- pro patria (I've no idea) - keep - repair + stubified - insufficient
• 10:17 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- jubjub (joke) - Lewis Carroll - garbage - keep
• 21:45 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- fillyloo (joke) - Lewis Carroll again, keep -
• Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 00:36 26 Jul 2003 (UTC) -- Felchenmaier effect (?????)