Wikipedia talk:Trash namespace

That was long enough ago that it is worth reconsidering. And perhaps the details are a bit different. Sbowers3 (talk) 00:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The XD project is mothballed, not halted. If you want to unmothball and try stuff, who's stopping you? --Kim Bruning (talk) 13:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts

Make articles in Trash fully protected. They would be visible so that a user could retrieve an article (perhaps into a user subpage), and work on it to improve it to a satisfactory article. I'd probably allow the Talk page to be editable.

One benefit of a Trash space is that users who wanted to improve an article wouldn't have to request an admin for a copy - freeing up some admin time.

I assume that only articles (and their talk pages) could be moved to Trash because otherwise it could contain multiple pages (article, wikipedia, help, template, category, etc.) all with the same name.

I'd consider letting normal users move to Trash and undo a move. It would be no worse than the vandalism or bad moving that bad users can do today. This again might free up a lot of admin time for CSD, for closing an expired prod, or for closing an AFD.

I expect that an article in Trash after say a month would be deleted, possibly with admin oversight.

Sbowers3 (talk) 00:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a discussion for this to reach consensus? Because I believe this proposal is worth considering, and also believe that pages in the trash namespace would need to be full protected or semi-protected plus move protection. Earth bending master 16:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's not how it works. Fortunately. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What I said is what I meant, but what I meant is not what I said, do you understand what I said? Earth bending master 17:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that it is a discussion to refine the proposal, to try to consider every detail, then to take the proposal to WP:VPR. Sbowers3 (talk) 00:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're making that up. :-P In reality, try to get the system working on a small scale, and invite more people to join in as you get the kinks out. You will know that it's working properly at each phase. This project might take some coding work. If so, you will need a coder, and they need to get the code past Brion. For the code part, consider using Betawiki (http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Betawiki:Translator) as a testing ground, as IIRC they accept and test plugins too. --Kim Bruning (talk) 14:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It might be necessary to have multiple articles in the Trash namespace in the event of multiple recreated articles getting deleted (aka moved to Trash), e.g. Trash:Blood electrification might be disambiguation for Trash:Blood Electrification 1, Trash:Blood Electrification 2, Trash:Blood Electrification 3, etc. Or perhaps each time an article were recreated and deleted, the second-to-most recent one would be archived and the most recent one would be moved into its place. Perhaps there is another way to do it, though, that would involve less admin work. Any ideas? Sarsaparilla (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have an idea about how deletion would work with this, if anyones interested. When an article is deleted with the trash process, my suggestion is:(1) An administrator moves the article to the trash namespace,(2) full protect or semi-protect plus move protect the trash article,(3) delete the redirect created as a result of the move, and (4) protect the title of the deleted article to prevent repeated creation. What does everyone think about this idea? Earth bending master 23:39, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, you generally don't want to salt it against re-creation. Suppose someone creates a non-notable game called GunLord and writes a promotional article on it which is deleted. A year later, Eidos Interactive comes out with a hugely successful game called GunLord that sells five million copies. If that name was protected, then someone wanting to create a new article would have to seek admin assistance. It's better to just provide a mechanism to let people know that an article by that title was deleted (which is already in place) and also let them see what exactly the deleted content was. Sarsaparilla (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can not believe I did not think about that! What do you suppose then? Also, what about the other steps in my proposal? Earth bending master 23:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This functionality already exists offwiki

See http://wikibin.org/articles/index.php . MER-C 06:21, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Though that's not integrated --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would welcome the functionality. There are many offwiki things going on to work on deleted material. It would be a great help in making this material meet WP standards, to have integrated functionality.  Xiutwel ♫☺♥♪ (speech has the power to bind the absolute) 22:44, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Point?

What exactly is the point of this? So non-admins can see deleted revisions of pages? What percentage of pages ever need to be looked at after deletion? If I had to guess I would say that the number is not very high and really does not justify the huge change this will require. Any script/program that can do deletion (Twinkle, AWB) will have to have the deletion methods rewritten. Regular deletion will take twice as long. Currently we delete the page and talk page. With this we would have to move the page/talk, then delete the resulting redirects (if we keep the redirects it kind of defeats the purpose). Will pages still be categorized after being trashed, would they still be searchable? If yes, how are they in any way close to deleted? If no, how do we find them? With any significant change, the benefits have to outweigh the costs and I just don't see a lot of benefit from this. Mr.Z-man 17:18, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With creativity, acceptable workarounds can be found for all the technical aspects. Code could be written to automate the page moves so that it could be done with one button. For purposes of backward compatibility, a new user preference could be created so that the "delete" button, when used from that account, would run the page move function instead of the delete function.

I would not recommend that pages continue to be categorized. As for searchability, similarly to how we allow user preferences to determine whether one's search will automatically search the Wikipedia, Talk, etc. namespaces, there could be a preference allowing one to search the Trash namespace if so desired.

There are many benefits to keeping deleted articles around, even if they aren't fit for the main namespace. It is similar to how we keep old versions of articles in the page history, even if they are vandalism, spam, or content that's otherwise not up to our standards. They provide a useful historical record, can be helpful in deletion reviews, and can be used to illustrate points and processes (e.g. the Heavy Metal Umlaut video, or the examples of overlinking at Wikipedia:OVERLINK#Link_density, etc.) Ron Duvall (talk) 16:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I believe there could be two delete tabs. One to actually delete it, (for copy vios), and one that moves the article to the trash name space and deletes the redirect created. Maximillion Pegasus (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that technical workarounds can be done, I don't believe that the cost (time spent developing) outweighs the benefit (??). If the pages are not categorized, removing categories and any template that puts articles into categories would add another step. I should also note that we mainly keep old versions around for the GFDL, to make reverting easier, and because revision deletion is hard to do. Most articles deleted are done through speedy deletion - obvious crap that will never be looked at after deletion or housekeeping things like talkpages of deleted articles that had no real content or bad redirects. If we want to keep a few examples around to illustrate WP:CSD, that's fine, but there's no reason to keep all of it around. Mr.Z-man 07:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As deletion uses more resources (storage, CPU time, human time) than leaving a page well alone, the default position is that there's no reason to delete. --Kim Bruning (talk) 12:55, 15 February 2008 (UTC) Note that while deleting a page can use up many times the storage space of keeping a page, the actual storage requirements are actually fairly trivial either way. (but that's such a boring argument! :-P )[reply]

I agree. By the way, one of the things that really uses up a lot of human time are some of these MfDs. People say we need to delete stuff because of "drama" or "wasted time" that they cause; actually, the MfDs cause a lot of that. We should just transwiki unacceptable userspace/Wikipedia namespace content to (the proposed) Wikicommunity site or something and let it continue there if desired. It would be like a Trash namespace proposal for otherwise MfD'able stuff. Although in my opinion, the best thing is just to take a laissez-faire attitude toward the whole thing; we really want people to do their community-building stuff here rather than taking it off site, because the same people checking their watchlist to see what's going on with the chess tournament or whatever are also seeing article changes and so on. The community building stuff can divert attention away from articles, and the articles can divert attention from the community building, and in the end it's probably a wash, if not a net plus. Ron Duvall (talk) 02:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Try this

Keep the user interface for deleting exactly as it is now. Any scripts or programs that do deletion would still work. Right now, deleted articles remain in the database. They are unindexed, removed from categories, and made inaccessible by search engines. Keep all that as it happens now.

The proposal is that deleted items be visible in a pseudo namespace (Trash). The only difference from now is that users would be able to read the deleted article.

This would be useful in deletion review, for users who want to rewrite a deleted article, and for non-admin helpers at (e.g.) the Help desk when asked, "Why was my article deleted?"

A small additional proposal: keep deleted articles in users' contribution histories as redlinks. I'd like to see easily that an article I nom'd for speedy, or prod, or AFD was actually deleted. When I help remove bad material, that is a contribution to the project. Why remove the record of my contribution? Sbowers3 (talk) 14:34, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's very confusing for newbies to look through their contribs and scratch their head thinking, "I thought I created an article on _______..." 14:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ron Duvall (talk • contribs)

Almost more importantly: the pages would actually be backed up, and we will still be able to review our history a couple of years from now. --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, a pseudo name space would be fine except for one thing: Users would not be able to look at past revisions of a page. Maximillion Pegasus (talk) 01:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why not? It's all in the database. Let users look through the history. Sbowers3 (talk) 01:51, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why is this needed?

I really don't understand the reason for this proposal. Pages are typically deleted because the community has reached consensus that they should not be part of Wikipedia; deletion should mean exactly that, not moving them to another namespace accessible to everyone. I understand the arguments that it's sometimes useful to be able to view a deleted version of a page, e.g. to help someone decide whether to recreate it; but any editor who feels they have a good enough reason to do so can always ask an administrator to provide a copy of the deleted page for them (and in fact this happens all the time at Deletion Review). Are administrators currently not providing copies of deleted pages quickly enough? As far as I'm aware, there have been no complaints of that nature; so what's the need for this? I see a major downside to this idea (it undermines the very concept of deletion) and no obvious upside at all. Terraxos (talk) 03:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's kinda like how at Taco Bell, you will notice people getting a lot more refills of soda than at Wendy's. The reason is that at Wendy's, you have to ask someone behind the counter to do it. This concept is noted at http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38898 . Currently, in order to see something that's been deleted, we have to contact a sysop on that list; the average person is not going to want to bother them very frequently. Eliminating the extra step of human interaction required to view deleted articles makes people more inclined to do it, which could be helpful to producing more participation and more informed results at WP:DRV. Ron Duvall (talk) 03:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Negative consequences of the proposed change

Having read the proposal and the comments on this talk page, I would like to share some of my thoughts. On the whole, I feel that the costs of implementing this change exceed the benefits.

The proposed change complicates the deletion process. The content of some pages, such as pages that contain BLP violations and copyvios, needs to be hidden from view (i.e. deleted); it is not enough to move them out of the mainspace. The proposed change would add another step to an already multi-layered deletion process: not only must editors consider whether a page should be retained or removed from the mainspace, they must also judge whether the page should be moved to the Trash namespace or actually deleted. Just as deletion decisions are often controversial, these types of decisions (to move or to delete) will also be a source of controversy and wikidrama.

The proposed change undermines the purpose of deletion. If people can still view articles that are deemed not worthy of inclusion in the mainspace, then what's the point of removal? For instance, what is to deter spammers from posting advertisements if they can still be viewed? What is to deter individuals from posting personal political essays, blog postings, and the like? The proposal states that "[m]easures could be taken to prevent articles in the Trash namespace from being indexed by search engines", but that is not a satisfactory solution. Making it so that pages in the Trash namespace are not indexed by search engines does not deter someone who seeks to use Wikipedia as a personal webhost; moreover, it implies that editors would also have difficulty finding such articles, which automatically calls into question the utility of their continued existence.

The proposed change provides minimal advantages. The proposal seems to be intended to allow for more informed participation in deletion reviews, but I think that it takes an unnecessarily complex approach. First of all, if there is a valid reason for a deleted article to be restored, it will generally be restored under the current process. Second, if a deleted article does not contain copyright or BLP violations, it's easy to temporarily restore it during a DRV, so that editors may view its content. If it's really necessary to view the contents of a deleted article, this method is much simpler than setting up a new namespace and splitting the deletion process.

I also have some other concerns, but they are secondary to these three. One of them is the name of the proposed namespace: many of the articles we delete are not created in bad faith or irredeemably worthless, and placing all deleted pages into a "Trash namespace" fails to represent common reasons for deletion (e.g. an OK article about a subject that fails to meet notability guidelines; a well-written personal essay that consists of original research) and is likely to offend the authors of content that is removed. Plus ... a trash talk namespace. :)

– Black Falcon ^(Talk) 07:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think by now most people are pretty familiar with the concept of Trash folders, etc. from working with email. It's just a name for a repository of deleted stuff; it express a judgment on why it was deleted.

I don't know what the deal is with people raising the same objections to this every time, which have been addressed satisfactorily, in my opinion. Most deleted stuff is not going to be so heinously bad that it has to be made completely inaccessible to non-admins. By default, when we send stuff for deletion, it goes to Trash. If it's deemed to have BLP, copyvio, etc. issues then it can be fully deleted (i.e. deleted the way we delete stuff now). It's not that complicated.

There is a place in user preferences that has a bunch of checkboxes letting you select what namespaces to search by default. When you start a new user account, by default, Wikipedia namespace, for instance, is not searched. If people want to search through the Trash namespace (using Wikipedia's search function), they can set it up to do so, but that would give each person an option to do so or not as they see fit. However, we can make it so that Google, etc. don't search index the Trash namespace, which removes most of the incentive for spammers to post here.

If we wanted to, we could set it up so that pages in the Trash namespace are not even accessible unless you are a logged in user, and perhaps one who has been here awhile, similarly to how we don't let people move pages until they've been here awhile. That would obviate some of the concerns about people using it for a free web host. People might still try to use it for community-building type stuff (basically using it as a kind of sandbox) but at least they wouldn't be using it like a mySpace page or blog intended for outsiders to view.

As for the internal stuff that we've outlawed, such as user subpages for editors to play Unreal Tournament No Limit Hold'em Virtual Poker Challenge, I think people need to lay off the WP:NOT for awhile and have a nice glass of WP:CARE. But that's just my opinion. (The funny thing is that someone even sent WP:CARE to MfD.) We're not supposed to have fun here, this is a serious hobby, gosh darn it! If we have all this unprofessional-looking stuff around, people might think that we're amateurs.

I see little need to harm transparency and inconvenience editors for the sake of deterring a few miscreants... I also have little hope in the prospects of this proposal going anywhere, because of people's unwillingness to use a little creative thought to come up with solutions to the obvious initial problems. And then when you come up with solutions, they say "That's too hard. It's not worth it." People just don't like change or reform around here. And also, I think people like to hang onto the power to send stuff to the grave completely, where people can't see it and kick up a fuss about it. Kind of a heavy-handed way of dealing with conflict, which basically says, the decision's made, quit talking about it, it's over. In reality, there might be something we can learn from those debates. An example might be Esperanza. People view that as being the archetypical example of something we need to lock away where no one can see it and start arguing about it again. Then you have newcomers (e.g. me) come around and say, What was all that about? And we can't see what it was exactly, so we don't know. And sometimes proposals are raised (e.g. delegable proxy) in which people argue that it's like Esperanza, and we're like "What are you talking about?"

That's about all I have to say on this matter. Hopefully there will be some turnover in the editor base of Wikipedia to the point where a Trash namespace, or Pure Wiki Deletion, or something like that can fly, and it can be tried again. However, I'm not particularly optimistic, since the policies tend to shape the membership of an organization, as people who like them are attracted to it and stay, and people who don't, eventually go away. Ron Duvall (talk) 08:09, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not claiming that these issues don't have solutions, but I just think that they would be solutions in search of a problem. I won't try to contest any personal opinions - we believe what we believe - but I do consider the claim that "It's not that complicated" to be inaccurate. It may not be extremely complicated, but it does add another layer to the process. Moreover, as various instances have shown (e.g. Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 December 9), discussions about seemingly minor points – such as what to do with a redirect or a decision about deletion versus moving to the Trash namespace – can be highly contentious.

While it is undeniable that some of the opposition to this proposal will be due to an inherent resistance to change, I don't think one should assume that all opposition is of this nature. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 08:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I was just blowing off some steam, which probably was related to spending way too much time in the Wikipedia namespace lately... some of those comments were probably uncalled for...

Anyway, in deletion debates, we might add another option, so that people could vote to send to the trash namespace, in addition to delete, merge, redirect, etc. But that probably would make things kinda contentious, compared to just moving it to Trash by default and completely deleting it only if it falls within certain narrow criteria. I think if we restrict outsiders' access to it, that will take care of most of the problems. The remaining problems would be internal stuff, such as permanently killing someone's favorite community building project, that others WANT to remove from editors' view because they see it as a waste of time, or disruptive, or whatnot. You know the usual wikidrama. I'm basically talking about the stuff that we frequently see at MfD.

So, we might start out by just using the Trash namespace for stuff moved from the Main namespace, and see how that goes. Later on, we might have junk piles for stuff moved from other namespaces. I'm thinking that we should change the heading of this article from {{proposed}} to {{brainstorming}} since more tweaks are probably needed before this thing can get approved. Ron Duvall (talk) 21:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. I agree that workarounds can be found for most of the technical problems or issues (though there is a chance that some solutions will create problems/issues of their own, but such is the nature of any process), but remain unconvinced of the benefits of the change. Looking at this from the perspective of a cost-benefit analysis, there are at minimum two distinct costs to implementing this proposal:

All else equal, implementing this change will add complexity to the deletion process. Whether this added complexity is significant or negligible is another matter... For each individual deletion, the difference in terms of the effort required will be minimal; in the context of circa 5000 deletions per day (many of which involve disputed copyright issues) it may be.

All else equal, implementing this change will involve learning costs; that is, people will have to become aware of the change and will have to learn how to modify their actions and behaviour accordingly. As above, the actual cost can be speculated about, but is ultimately unknown; all we can know is that the cost will be non-zero and positive.

In addition to these two automatic costs, there are likely to be other (large or small) costs associated with the specific method of implementing the change. The part with which I have a problem is the identification of the benefits of the change. Yes, it can make DRV participation easier/more transparent in some cases (specifically, deletion reviews of articles that do not contain libel or copyvios and are not cached by Google), but are there any other advantages to creating a Trash namespace? Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are many situations in which the information could be useful in starting a new article. For instance, suppose that someone writes a detailed article about a local band, with citations to concert reviews, biographies, interviews in online student newspapers, etc. It gets deleted because the band is not notable. Then the band comes out with a song that hits the Top 40 and gets played on the radio non-stop and suddenly they're doing tours across the country, landing on the cover of Rolling Stone, etc. Normally, someone would come along and write an article from scratch and after the first edit, it might not even be noticed that there were was a previous deleted article, and if it were known, still someone might not go to the trouble of asking an admin to retrieve it (after all, it might just have useless info; why else would it have been deleted?) With this system, it would be easier to retrieve the deleted article on impulse and get that useful information.

If there are enough situations like that, it might counter-balance the extra work involved in maintenance. Granted, these days, new articles typically don't get very far before they get tagged for deletion, so in most cases there's not a whole lot of work getting deleted... But there are some cases where it's just some arcane topic, maybe a sub-sub-specialty of a field, with only a few references, maybe ones that you can't even access without going to a university library. But the subject itself is notable. And the author is someone who doesn't frequent Wikipedia much; the people voting on it don't understand it very well; and by the time the guy comes back, it's gone. I've been told this happens sometimes but I haven't personally seen it. (Interestingly, we even make it impossible for people to piece together their own deleted articles by looking through their own contributions, because we remove those contributions from view.)

The Trash namespace could also better enable regular users to analyze patterns of what exactly is being deleted. It might lead to better-informed deletion policy debates. There might also be a corps of users who go digging through deleted articles, perhaps randomly, looking for stuff that should have been saved. Some would say it's undesirable, because we want to close these debates with finality. But it's kind of like how in Virginia, death penalty cases are automatically appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court. The idea is that for society's benefit, you WANT to have another set of eyes reviewing these cases, whether the interested party has their act together or not. One could also argue that the time spent reviewing those would be better spent participating in current AfDs. Well, perhaps. But what if we have more people available in the future to sift through that stuff than we do now? The Trash namespace gives us more flexibility for the future, because it will have been presorted to get rid of the copyvios and so on. I'm just throwing out random thoughts now, some of these are not particularly well-formed arguments but maybe they will lead to other thoughts about it. Ron Duvall (talk) 22:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that being able to view the prior version of an article can be useful when staring a new one. However, the deletion history of a page is prominently displayed when someone starts a new article, so I don't feel that lack of knowledge of a prior deletion would be much of an issue. However, having the content of the article preserved in the Trash namespace would increase the likelihood of GFDL violations. That is, someone might view an article in the Trash namespace, copy-paste that content into a new article without carrying over the attribution history, and then modify the article as needed. While this problem would not be unique to the Trash namespace, the existence of such a namespace would increase the likelihood of such GFDL violations and complicate detection efforts. So, being unable to access the prior version can be an inconvenience, but it is also an automatic safeguard of sorts.

As I read your comments and worked on my response (it was initially much longer than this), I realised that my initial and subsequent evaluations and comments reflect my personal bias/belief that we should be much more willing to temporarily undelete than we are now. Thus, from my perspective, attempting to change undeletion standards and the culture at WP:DRV is a simpler approach to essentially the same problem. (By the way, I realise that my comments focus almost exclusively on possible downsides to the proposed change, but that is primarily so that there is an equal coverage of both the pros (which you identify) and cons. To a certain extent, I too am just brainstorming, and I don't carry any fundamental opposition to this proposal -- in fact, I prefer it to pure wiki deletion.) Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(un-indent) What if we allow any user to temporarily undelete an article? We could have policy set restrictions on when this is allowed, e.g. because of a pending WP:DRV debate or something. And any user should be able to re-delete temporarily undeleted articles. I guess that would be not much different than Wikipedia:Viewing deleted articles, eh? Perhaps we could have a time limit, e.g. logged-in users can view any article that was deleted within the past 30 days. We already let everyone view deletion-worthy articles that are currently on xfD, so this is just extending it a bit so that the "appeals" process, so to speak, can take place. Google caches are helpful, but they don't give you the history. Maybe Google cached a version of the article that wasn't the best version. By the way, in reference to copyright violations, I would say an analogous statement could be made about Wikipedia to the one made about Google here: "Most people are concerned about getting into Wikipedia, not getting out of it." Ron Duvall (talk) 00:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should allow any user to delete or undelete (that's primarily the reason I don't like the pure wiki deletion proposal), as I feel that the potential for vandalism, abuse, and misuse is much too great. I meant that administrators should be more willing to temporarily undelete articles -- see Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 01:05, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep deleted articles in contribution histories as redlinks

(I mentioned this above but I would like to separate it for comment on its own.)

I would like deleted articles to be kept in users' contribution histories as redlinks. I'd like to see easily that an article I nom'd for speedy, or prod, or AFD was actually deleted. When I help remove bad material, that is a contribution to the project. Why remove the record of my contribution?

Secondly, it would eliminate a confusion, especially for newbies, who create an article, then don't see it in their contributions. A redlink would make it easy to see that it was deleted, and make it easy to see the deletion log.

Is there any reason to remove all of the edit summaries when an article is deleted? All of them are still in the database. Why go to the trouble of removing them from every contributors' record? Sbowers3 (talk) 01:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another example of why I wish edit summaries to deleted articles would be kept. Earlier today I {{db-copyvio}}'d an article. I came back a little while later and saw that the article was still there. I thought that I must have edited, done a Show preview, forgot to do a Save, then closed the tab in my browser. So I speedied the article again. Only after that did I think to look at the log and I found that my earlier nom resulted in a speedy deletion, but the author had recreated the article. It would have been much clearer what happened if my edit summary of "db-copyvio" had remained in my contribution history and on my watchlist, but with a red link. Sbowers3 (talk) 04:10, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm all for it... it's a step in the right direction... Ron Duvall (talk) 04:13, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea too, as long as the individual revisions are not viewable. (That is, the history of who edited, when, and why would be preserved, but the actual content of the article would not be viewable.) Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I also like this idea. As long as the article and revisions are not viewable, I see no reason to delete contributions. Maximillion Pegasus (talk) 19:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdenting) So is the next step to take it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)? Sbowers3 (talk) 23:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And/or to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) to find out if it's technically feasible... Also, this proposal would be separate from the proposal to set up a Trash namespace, right? Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, probably. Anyone else know? Maximillion Pegasus (talk) 18:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did take this to VPT and learned that displaying deleted pages in the contribution history looks very easy technically, but displaying deleted pages in the watchlist might not be easy. After getting the technical answer about contributions, I took the proposal to WP:VPR for more feedback but so far there have been no comments. And yes, this proposal is completely independent of a trash namespace. Sbowers3 (talk) 18:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a great idea, so much so I'm surprised it isn't already the case. Think outside the box 15:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not a bad idea

That's not such a bad idea. Basketball 110 :) 03:05, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No nonsense or vandalism, of course. Basketball 110 :) 03:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IP's, new users and necromancy

I like the idea, especially for prodded articles, and for templates in general. I am sure that I am not the only person who has come back to find an out-of-the-way/work-in-progress article prodded in to deletion. Would it makes sense to restrict this to registered users (i.e. those who can edit semi-protected articles) as it would remove the articles from casual readers and from 'resurrection vandals' that I'm sure would appear (who copy & paste the article back or spam the content). The proposal would allow articles in deletion review to be viewed and a 'resurrect' button that would take the article to review would be a useful addition.--Nate1481(^t/_c) 10:45, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Use of Wikipedia as a free webhost

One reason a lot of material gets deleted and needs to be deleted is that we are not in the business of making a free webhost. I worry that people could take advantage of this namespace simply by making their personal pages in mainspace and then having them moved over to trashspace where'd they'd keep them. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, actually a better solution would be to move deleted content to another wiki. See m:User:The Unknown Rebel/SpiritWorldWiki. Larry E. Jordan (talk) 20:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This proposal just seems like a way to get around WP:N, WP:V, and the deletion process. Deleted articles can be retrieved by an Administrator if one needs a copy (provided there weren't BLP issues or copyvios). While I would support making that method more obvious, moving deleted articles to a new namespace makes a mockery of WP's policies on inclusion. Karanacs (talk) 17:16, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If worries are about being used as a web host, making it required to login to view would effectively eliminate this. That way it would be a resource for editors, you could also add a purge 'vote' in AfD's for advertising type content, that would be fully deleted. --Nate1481(^t/_c) 17:42, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The requirements for login are so minimal that this will not make a substantial difference. The fact that we have nearly 7 million user accounts, only about 40-50 thousand of which are active (defined as making 5+ edits per month), is telling in this respect. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I dissagree, a web host where you have to log in & (as Is specified above) wait a day or two is not much use, especially as it would not index on any searches. --Nate1481(^t/_c) 17:51, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why not? MySpace requires registration and it's popular as a webhost... Moreover, even though some of the negative consequences of this proposal can be controlled through various tweaks and changes, the benefit is not apparent. I just don't see how improving one process (Wikipedia:Deletion review) warrants such a major and problem-ridden change, especially when there are other, less complicated solutions -- for instance, Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GMTA!

Seems we both had the same idea. See the discussion on D-SPACE concept and lets discuss if any of my "restrictions" and other ideas would be acceptable for what you call the "Trash" namespace. Low Sea (talk) 18:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On a separate note I think the namespace should have a less demeaning name as many good editors might not be thrilled to be working on trash. Low Sea (talk) 18:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support this idea

I support this idea because I don't think someone else (be it an individual or a collective) should be able to decide what information I have access to, assuming no legal issues are involved.

Lately, I wanted to access a page that had likely had information that I would find useful. Someone, however, decided that it wasn't good enough for some reason or another, and frankly, I don't care what those reasons were. I just want the information. Contacting an admin to access the information seems like a silly intermediate step that could be automated out by just, you know, not restricting the information from the public in the first place.

related concept