Forum:VFD

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Why is VFD down right now?

Could someone give us an update on the status of VFD? ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 02:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Unless people direct me otherwise, I intend to keep VFD down for about 2 weeks. The idea came from a combination of this and that I felt things were getting out of hand: too many things with potential were being deleted and too many pieces of crap were being kept. Basically, I feel that we need a reassessment of our deletion policy and I figured the best approach was to step back, take a deep breath and then recommence. I'm of the opinion that the reassessment should extend beyond VFD to include NRV as well. Additionally, I thought it would be nice to give Uncyclopedia a bit of a break from my deletions. As I see it, things should meet a few standards to be kept:
  • Relevance: Is the article actually about what it's title is?
  • Significance: Does the title refer to something that matters?
  • Writing Quality: Is the article written with acceptable English spelling and grammar? (unless not doing so is relevant to the topic)
  • Humor: Can the article be construed as having humor potential? (note: this is not, do you find it funny)
If an article does not meet all of those criteria, it should be marked NRV. If an article is ambiguous about whether it meets all of those criteria, it should be sent to VFD. If an article does meet all of those criteria, it should be kept. Those articles that are kept but need work, should be marked with an appropriate maintenance template. --Sir gwax (talk) Signuke 15:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)


I have no objections to having VFD go down as long as when it reemerges it is healthier for it. (I will note that in my own experience, however, that closing VFD has had the effect of making the determination of vanity less dependant on the site and more dependant on the cabal.) A few points:
  • I think NRV is largely functioning well in its intended purpose, which is catching new pages that can't stay in the state they were submitted in and forcing them to be either improved or trashed. NRV shouldn't have more purpose than that and we have not-that-recently decreed that old pages are off limits for NRV. Older pages can still be marked with {{fix}}, {{cleanup}}, {{expansion}}, {{ugly}} or {{rewrite}} (if they are about notable topics). I have been devoting a lot of attention to how well NRV is working and I think that this aspect shoulld remain unchanged.
  • Per the criteria: I don't think "significance" should be a factor beyond rooting out vanity. Something can be completely insignificant or even fictional and still be funny to people. The key in my mind should be "could this be funny to someone." I am especially opposed to saying that pages that don't meet this criteria whould be NRVed, since no 7 day period will ever turn an article that doesn't meet this criterion into one that does.
  • Additionally I think two other criteria are important. 1) Author effort: I am infinitely more patient with pages that look like they had some effort go into them for the simple reason that if someone cares about a page it is much more likely to end up good in the long run, even if it still needs work now. 2) Portability of idea: A funny one-liner that won't be expanded by its author and which seems to have little potential for secondary contributors is worthless in my mind. A funny one-liner that another writer could use to form the basis of a great article is much more valuable.
  • If you are suggesting that many of the stubs that are currently NRVed should be maintanence tagged instead because even though they suck they meet all of your conditions, I would urge you to reconsider. Maintainence tagged pages have an alarmingly low rate of being fixed as it it. The exponentially larger burden this move would place on the people sifting through expired maintanence tags and the generally lower quality level of articles they would find there would almost certainly turn this job into a monthly burning spree rather than the job it should be, which is a closer and more carefull assessment of quality and potential.
  • Finally, I want to argue slightly against the mindset that NRV is just a slower form of deletion. I would be happy to go through NRV one day and find that I can remove the tag from every article I put it on, while deleting none. NRV simply reflects the fact that to keep ourselves from drowning in poor quality pages, we need authors to finish their own stubs.
Also, a final question: as it stands I am under the impression that VFD runs on whatever criteria the voters on it choose. That means that articles can be deleted simply because people don't like them. I assumed this was intentional and a primary purpose of VFD. Are you proposing that this change or am I misunderstanding you? ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 23:12, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

How should NRV be used in the new deletion process?

I strongly disagree with Isra1337's proposal that new articles should be treated differently from older ones in terms of use of {{NRV}}. If the article, old or new, has no redeeming value, then it should be {{NRV}} tagged. Likewise, if the article, old or new, just needs expansion to be keepable, they both should be tagged {{stub}} or {{expand}}. Giving people less time to finish new articles doesn't seem to help the writing process, and reserving {{NRV}} for "crap" won't effect ideas that may have humor potential, but need more work. If these ideas fail to develop after 30 days, then I see no reason why they shouldn't be eliminated, but giving people only a week seems counter-productive, which is what {{NRV}} does. All I'm proposing is that NRV be used for what it says it is: articles with "No Redeeming Value." Putting it on ideas that just aren't developed is a misuse of the template. As Gwax noted, a problem with the existing system is that "too many things with potential [are] being deleted." I can't help but think that this means that too many things are getting NRV tagged when an expand tag would serve better. Maybe we need a tag that gives the user more time to improve than NRV, but doesn't claim that the idea or subject of the article itself doesn't belong in uncyclopedia, which is what NRV seems to do.--RudolfRadna 23:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
It isn't a proposal. It is how things work. And it is the consensus of the admins who spend a lot of time maintaining this site. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 16:22, 3 April 2006 (PDT)
I disagree. This is a forum for discussing how the reformed deletion process should work, and therefore maintaining the status quo is a proposal. And I don't see how it can possibly be a good idea to maintain the status quo, since the whole point of taking VFD offline for two weeks is that it's not working: "too many things with potential were being deleted and too many pieces of crap were being kept." --RudolfRadna 23:34, 3 April 2006 (UTC)


I am personally optimistic that issues with the way people are using VFD and NRV can be fixed, and am particularly pleased that one of the criteria for the standard use of deletion and NRV regarding humor states, to the effect, that the test will be not whether the individual user who wants to VFD or NRV finds the article funny, but whether it has humor potential. I think some users have been using NRV just to zap things they think are stupid, leading to the problem of stuff getting tagged that shouldn't. These standards will help remind users that VFD and NRV should be used more selectively, where it's actually justified, the process will work faster, and obtain better results, removing poor quality material with little or no humor potential, and keeping material that is, or can become, useful material.

Everyone recognizes that genuine crap writing, or patent nonsense that isn't funny, or vandalism, is a threat to uncyclopedia. I'm glad to see a recognition that Obsessive-compulsive deletion, like an immune system gone out of control, is attacking stuff that belongs in uncyclopedia, and is also a threat.

--RudolfRadna 20:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I use {{NRV}} responsibly when I find articles that doesn't have enough content. Which reminds me, why did Guest keep on recreating Template:QVFD?--User:Jtaylor1/sig 22:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I've said this before, but I don't understand why articles where the idea may be funny, but where there isn't enough content, aren't tagged {{expand}}, or some other template that expresses the concept that the article will be deleted unless it is lengthened and "beefed up." I could be wrong on this, but it's my opinion that {{NRV}} should be reserved for ideas with no humor potential, or which violate one of the other four main standards proposed for the new deletion procedure by Gwax above, not stuff that just needs to be longer and more developed. I don't think it's responsible to use {{NRV}} when {{expand}} is appropriate, and I think it's possible people are abusing {{NRV}} for this purpose as a source of narcissistic supply.

--RudolfRadna 22:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe there is a template called {{stub}} for this purpose ... - David Gerard 23:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
{{Stub}} is the tag used to indicate that an article is a stub, but that it is appropriate for one reason or another that it may remain that way. This includes being a vital part of a series or just somehow working even though it is shorter than would normally be allowed. Users also put them on their own pages to encourage others to add to the page. Our stub is different from en.wp's because there stubs will likely be expanded, whereas here they won't for a large variety of reasons.---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 23:27, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

{{stub}} is more of a template the user would apply to their own created article, {{expand}} would be one the user applied to an article they didn't create. One issue I think should be addressed is, as I said above, people misusing {{NRV}} when {{stub}} or {{expand}} is more appropriate. It may be fun to add an {{NRV}} to a page that's just short, but in my opinion it's a misuse of the template, and constitutes 'being a d**k' where the only issue is length, not whether the idea has humor potential. This isn't a trivial issue, since {{expand}} gives you 30 days to save the article from deletion. {{NRV}} gives you only a week. Why should ideas with humor potential for uncyclopedia get shortchanged on improvement time just because someone likes using maintenance templates incorrectly? --RudolfRadna 23:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

What you characterize as "misuse" is exactly what the template was designed to do. {{Expansion}} is a tag largely in use by my decree. For all intents and purposes it is younger than NRV and it is used to mark pages that are high enough quality to stay as they are, but really should be expanded. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 23:32, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Then what we need is a tag that is somewhere in between {{expand}} and {{NRV}}, which would say to the effect "This idea may be funny, but needs work! If this article isn't significantly expanded within (say 15?) days, it will be deleted." That would give the writer more time to improve the article, and distinguish between crap ideas {{NRV}}, and ideas with humor potential, that merely need expansion. How do you propose to address the problem of "false positives" for ideas with humor potential being deleted, without rethinking the use of {{NRV}}? --User:RudolfRadna 23:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
We already have three levels: truly worthless articles are deleted on sight. Ideas that are funny but should really be fixed up in some way are maintanence tagged. Ideas that have some potential but need work before that potential amounts to anything are NRVed and given a week. That week is continually restarted whenever the user makes any attempt to improve the article. Trust me, if someone doesn't come back to touch their article in a week, two weeks won't do it. The one week time limit instead of two also has a technical component to it. The code for 2 weeks would be much more difficult to manage. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 23:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Then perhaps the right thing to do is to have an expand tag specially designed for new articles, to the extent of the one I described above ("This idea may be funny, but needs work! If this article isn't significantly expanded within seven days, it will be deleted."), keeping the one week timeframe. I just don't want ideas that do have redeeming value marked NRV, which is what is happening, and one reason why VFD is down and we're having this conversation in the first place. When something has no redeeming value, that doesn't invite someone to rewrite. That's telling them their whole idea is crap. Which is sometimes the case, but what we're talking about is the misindentification of ideas with humor potential as crap, which is, like I said, a major reason why we're here. By the way, you never answered my question. "How do you propose to address the problem of "false positives" for ideas with humor potential being deleted, without rethinking the use of {{NRV}}?" --RudolfRadna 23:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

If the problem you have is with the naming of the template or the text on it, the appropriate thing to do is suggest alternate text (though it would help if you really understood the process around here). As for VFD being down, it has absolutely nothing to do with how NRV works. It has much more to do with how VFD worked. Gwax is simply proposing shifting more of the burden of VFD onto NRV, he is not suggesting NRV is too widely applied. If anything, Gwax is the admin who feels the widest possible scope of articles should be NRVed. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 00:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
re:false positives -- first, don't edit your previous comments, just add new lines so you don't edit conflict me every single f*ing time I post. Second, had you actually understood NRV before you launched into your spirited explaination of how everyone is misusing it, you would have known that an admin checks each and every NRV before she or he deletes it. Any false positive gets its tag removed by the admin. This prevents abuse of the system. It also means that unlike on VFD there are no compulsary deletions. Gwax makes a good point that on VFD people vote to kill things that shouldn't die. Gwax's hands are tied, however, and he has to delete them even if they have potential. This is not true of NRV, where the admins save a lot of material, most of which is stuff that Gwax doesn't think is a false positive. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 00:14, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I did suggest alternate text, where the idea may be funny, but the article is just too short:"This idea may be funny, but needs work! If this article isn't significantly expanded within seven days, it will be deleted." Accomplishes the same thing as NRV. Like I've been saying, if an idea has some humor potential and should not be deleted, how can it have no redeeming value. If it has humor potential, it has redeeming value. That doesn't mean it can't be deleted in a week if it isn't expanded beyond a stub. But that's no reason to call it something it isn't. I don't disagree with the concept of putting a gun to articles' heads and say "get better or die." I disagree with saying something has no redeeming value when it does. As for Gwax's position, I agree with it. I'm going a step further and saying we should shift more of the burden of NRV to a template for ideas that can work but just need more writing, and just save NRV for vandalism, vanity, gibberish, and similar nonsense with no humor potential. In other words, articles that literally have no redeeming value. --RudolfRadna 17:06, 3 April 2006 (PDT)

Vandalism, vanity, gibberish and similar nonsense don't need a template. That discussion has been had a dozen times. It always comes out the same way. That stuff is deleted on site if it is found by an admin. It is put on QVFD if it is found by a regular user. As for stuff with humor potential: it has no redeeming value (please note the qualifier, it has meaning) unless that potential will ever be exploited. The template's name isn't changing without a boatload of people not only deciding to change it, but then doing a lot of work. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk)


Re: adding new commants: ok. As for NRV, my position is very simple, and I've stated it above. You're entitled to disagree. I think labeling ideas that have humor potential as having no redeeming value contributes to ideas with humor potential being deleted. You, Gwax, or anyone else on the planet are entitled to disagree with me on this. I don't have a problem with the use of NRV staying as it is. I just think the creation of new articles would be easier if instead of just NRV we had more flexibility for tagging articles where it's essentially "(maybe) good/funny idea, but bad article." Even easier: how about changing the NRV text so it says somewhere "The idea behind this article may or may not be hilarious. As it stands now, however, the article as a whole is utter crap."? That makes it clear that it's the article's form, not its idea, that is being criticized.

Template_talk:NRV is your friend if you want to discuss the text. Your suggestions fail, however, because they do not account for the varying use of the template. We aren't going to add yet another template to make things harder for the admins if we don't need to, so the text needs to be wide enough to cover things. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 00:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Also: use the preview button instead of sumbitting 5 edits when one will do just fine if you take a moment to reflect on whether you have said all that you want to say. ---QuillRev. Isra (talk) 00:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm confortable with the idea of leaving NRV in place, and just changing the text slightly as noted above to clarify that it's not the idea or subject of the article, but just its current written execution, that is being characterized as having No Redeeming Value. I think that would keep the current framework, and make the template's purpose clearer, actually, based on what you've been saying.

--RudolfRadna 00:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, at http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:NRV I made a proposal concerning the text. It inserts one word. I'll let this issue go on from there on that page. Thanks for the help and attention in addressing this concern.

--RudolfRadna 00:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

See my last comment above. It states that I use NRV Responsibly whenever the articles have very poor content, and if each sections of the article have only one sentence, that article is offically worthless.--User:Jtaylor1/sig 00:57, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


Proposal to make an Edit Summary explaining the reason for an NRV mandatory

I propose that for an NRV template to be added to a page, the person adding the template should have to explain the reason they are adding the template in the edit summary. This doesn't have to be mandatory, and can just be strongly encouraged, but for the following reasons, I think it should be mandatory for the template to be effective upon the article:

  • Let's say someone puts up a page that's a horrible idea. It gets NRV'd. The person who created the page decides to write a lot more to try to fix it. They work on it. Then, since the idea, not the writing, was the reason for the NRV, it gets deleted, wasting that person's time. People who use the template should be encouraged to (perhaps required to?) explain why they are adding the template in their edit summary, since otherwise the person who created the page has no idea what needs to be done to fix it, and could end up working on a page where the idea was the reason for the NRV, and it just gets deleted anyway, despite the work.
  • Wouldn't it help the admin reviewing the NRV'd pages for deletion to know the original motivation for the NRV? Then it/she/he can make an informed decision on whether the page should be deleted or not, whether it's improved enough in the relevant way to justify or deny its inclusion in uncyclopedia.

--RudolfRadna 01:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm logging out because I have to do an errand, so I won't be able to respond to comments left here immediately. Will check back later.

--RudolfRadna 01:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Discussion Moved

This discussion has moved to Forum:VFD2. Please direct yourself there to continue the discussion. Additionally, please try to be more concise and less repetative in your discussions. --Sir gwax (talk) Signuke 01:57, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

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