WeRelate talk:Speedy delete

Willing to Serve on the Speedy Delete Committee [8 September 2012]

• Jillaine 14:15, 13 August 2012 (EDT)

Great! I'll add your name to the main page. --Jennifer (JBS66) 09:14, 14 August 2012 (EDT)

• --Amelia 13:00, 16 August 2012 (EDT)

Please count me in, too. --Pkeegstra 19:51, 8 September 2012 (EDT)

Let's get started [24 October 2012]

I finished deleting all the pages yesterday. There were hundreds of pages. Could we would out some sort of rotation so this doesn't happen again? I would rather bow out at this point. I am involved in other maintenance. Perhaps you could each agree to take particular times, i.e. Amelia takes the first ten days of each month. Jillaine takes the second and Pkeegstra takes the last 10 days of the month. What do you think? --sq 19:54, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

Thank you Solveig. I thought I had just checked the list... then I realized you did the bulk of the work a couple weeks ago! And for workload purposes I should note that it looks like a good percentage of the ones you deleted had been up for less than 30 days, which is the rule of thumb I use before I start deleting. Do we want to keep waiting 30 days? Does anyone know a way we can tell other than clicking through to look at every page?

I click through and look at the date in the template. I don't know any other way.--sq 08:49, 16 October 2012 (EDT)

I don't know that it has to be done particularly scheduled if we all agree to check every so often. The major people using the speedy-delete template tend to go in spurts, so I'd be afraid one of us would get stuck with a ton all at once. Maybe if we leave a log of when we take a major whack at the list -- there were X entries, I did Y, noticed a bunch will expire next week, etc.--Amelia 20:57, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

You may be right about one of us getting stuck with tons. It took a long time to do the last batch. As a rule of thumb, I give people three days to respond. If they don't care about their page being deleted within three days, I delete it. Maybe that's too harsh. But I don't check the SD that often and I've never had anyone object to their page being deleted. It doesn't matter whether the page was there 3 days or a month. But if the rest of you want to give them a longer, we can. Opinions?

However, I think obviously living pages (Pages with titles like "Living Sanders" or pages that have "living" in the death field)should be deleted immediately--no three days. Posting living data causes identity theft and privacy issues.

So, Jillaine and Pkeegstra, what do you think? We could all check in once a week or so, and do as many as we have time to do. Then we'd know the rest of the committee could pick up the slack if there is a deluge.--sq 08:50, 16 October 2012 (EDT)

We might want to consider giving admin rights to User:Susan Irish and invite her to this conversation. She places many of the living people into speedy delete 1. because she cannot delete them and 2. to give the user the 3 day warning. If we no longer want to give the 3 day warning for living people, then perhaps Susan could just delete them instead of placing them in SD. This would save some work. Also, hopefully we will have a bot written to automatically delete the living people and families that already exist on the site - that will also help in the workload of this patrol. --Jennifer (JBS66) 10:02, 16 October 2012 (EDT)

I agree. Does anyone object to inviting Susan to participate? --sq 00:43, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

If we delete "Living" pages on sight, what about my arch-nemesis, the "Private" pages? Should they get the same treatment? --Pkeegstra 06:28, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

I agree that Living people should be deleted on sight, and same goes for "private", assuming that's because they are living. I also agree that we should ask if Susan can be given admin privileges so as to be able to delete, and asked if she'll help formally. Even without a formal commitment, that will help us a lot.

For non-living pages, 30 days or 3 days? I think 3 days is too short, personally, since I often reserve substantive work for the weekends so I would guess others do to. --Amelia 09:50, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

I agree that 3 days is a bit on the short side. Can we say something like 10 days while using 30 days as our actual practice? --Pkeegstra 14:33, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

I left a message for Susan Irish asking if she is interested in participating and if she'd mind her user status being changed to Admin. --Jennifer (JBS66) 09:44, 22 October 2012 (EDT)

I've changed Susan's user status to admin and explained that she can now delete pages for living people that she comes across. --Jennifer (JBS66) 15:30, 22 October 2012 (EDT)

Sorry for not responding. Was on the road. Happy to sign up for a particular time each week. I will put it in my calendar with a reminder set! :-) Jillaine 11:05, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

How do actually DELETE a page [24 October 2012]

The instructions end with "go ahead and delete the page" but don't say how. I have Admin access, but don't see a Delete command other than "speedy delete". So, um, excuse my denseness, but how do I actually DELETE the page? Jillaine 12:38, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

Hi Jillaine, the delete option is listed under More from the menu on the left. In the Reason for deletion field, we generally put something like "living people not allowed on WR" if it's for living people, or "user requested speedy delete" for others. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:56, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

Thanks for the pointer. I wouldn't have thought to look there. Jillaine 13:03, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

I just took care of about five more that didn't really need a waiting period (and were also missing the date requested). Jillaine 13:10, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

SD marking/deletion process [6 January 2013]

Many times, a user will mark a "living" Family page for SD, but it is obvious that both spouses are also living (but not marked with SD). Also, users will mark both living spouses with SD, but not mark the associated Family page. Then, when we go through and delete the pages marked with SD - it leaves pages that are harder to locate in the future as needing deletion.

Here is one example:

• Family:Rodolphe Vautour and Dina Gallant (1) (marriage year of 1997) was marked with SD and deleted.
• Person:Dina Gallant (1) was the wife, not marked for SD, and not deleted.
• The two children from that 1997 marriage, Person:Dani Vautour (2) and Person:Dani Vautour (1), not marked for SD, not deleted, are now orphan pages.

Another example:

• Spouses Person:Ronald Scott (1) and Person:Marie Fonder (1) were marked for SD and deleted.
• Family:Ronald Scott and Marie Fonder (1) was not marked and not deleted.

I'm hoping that we can problem solve this and come up with some solutions to streamline this process. --Jennifer (JBS66) 07:39, 6 January 2013 (EST)

Do we think there's some programatic way to detect these pages and mark them? Because otherwise I think it's just on us to check all related pages. I always do that, because I assume that volunteers marking SD are like me and don't want to add the same template umpteen times to make the same point about the same people. Sometimes there are a couple dozen pages related to one SD. This isn't perfect because it's hard to keep track, but I don't know what else we can do. We can't expect people to put SD on all pages - not only is SD usable by the entire user base of varying skill and attention, but it geometrically increases their workload just so we have a nice list to work from, that we won't be able to trust anyway, and we'll have to touch all the same pages again.--Amelia 09:48, 6 January 2013 (EST)

Timeline [9 March 2013]

Can we explicitly talk about the timing please? I really don't think 3 days is long enough, particularly if it does not include a weekend. I have to be one of the most hyper users on here, and I would miss a 3 day window frequently. Since someone just went through and deleted everything more than 8 days old, we are obviously not operating on the same timeline.

I propose:

• Living as a name: Deleted on sight. If you have deletion privileges, no template even required, and we can delete these as soon as they appear in the list.
• Requests to delete one's own pages: Immediate action.
• Anything else, including "possibly living" under other names: 14 days.

Comments?--Amelia 10:56, 9 January 2013 (EST)

The only thing I'd add is a notation that if a person with living as a name was created by a presently active contributor, at the patrol person's discretion the page MAY be handled as option three instead of option one. --Pkeegstra 06:26, 11 January 2013 (EST)

How to find the old pages with Speedy Delete: Search for "speedy delete" and sort by date modified. Or go here! --Amelia 15:25, 9 March 2013 (EST)

Great tip, thanks! --Jennifer (JBS66) 17:23, 9 March 2013 (EST)

When to keep family pages intact [15 April 2013]

During the last Overview Committee meeting, we talked about how the GEDCOM uploader would handle Family pages such as Family:Carl Collins and Living Garrett (1). Dallan said the criteria has been:

• When there is a Family with a living spouse and deceased children, the Family page is kept intact by titling with Unknown for the living person and removing the marriage date.
• If the Family has no deceased children, then the Family page is not created.

It was suggested this same criteria should be used during our cleanup of living pages. --Jennifer (JBS66) 15:43, 15 April 2013 (EDT)