Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Archives/2023/November

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Every single time there's a deletion review, I see people trying to relitigate the AfD rather than analyzing the discussion and strength of arguments. The distinction between those two is nuanced enough that this is pretty much inevitable, but I do think that an editnotice explaining how deletion review works and how discussion is supposed to be focused might help on the margins. (For a very rough parallel, think of the editnotice we use for RfAs.) Would folks be in support of adding something? And if so, anyone want to contribute some language we'd want to use/help draft it? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:34, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• I've no objection to that, but I do think this happens less than people seem to think. Could you take a few recent DRVs where you see this problem and highlight what you are trying to shoot down? Sometimes the underlying issue does matter at DRV. For example, if the discussion consists of one side providing sources and another side arguing those sources shouldn't count toward WP:N, the discussion at DRV will by necessity have to involve looking at the sources. If they clearly are way under or way over the bar, that matters. If the matter is borderline, that matters. I rarely see comments at DRV that are so far removed from the role of DRV that I think they shouldn't be there. So I guess what I'm saying is that while I don't find this objectionable, I also don't see a need and that I'm guessing some of what you are trying to keep out, are things I might find productive. Hobit (talk) 21:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

  Calling out specific instances is a sure way to sidetrack/derail the discussion, but I'm happy to offer some more abstracted explanation. The stated purpose of deletion review (for the most common type of review) is to judge whether the closer of a deletion discussion interpreted the consensus incorrectly, and should not be used because of a disagreement with the deletion discussion's outcome that does not involve the closer's judgment. We should therefore be encouraging participants to focus in their comments on assessing consensus rather than relitigating the AfD. It's a similar distinction to the difference between a good close and a supervote. Granted, as I said at the top, it's a fine distinction, and as you note there can be gray areas. The difference between Overturn because the subject clearly passes GNG and Overturn because the arguments made that the subject passes GNG were clearly stronger and should have been given more weight often reflects just that the latter editor is more experienced and knows how to frame their view. Still, weighing the strength of arguments without injecting one's personal opinion is what we expect closers to do, and it's what we should aspire for deletion review participants to do as well. If an editnotice helps on the margins to get a few more editors to put aside their personal views and focus on assessing consensus, I think it's worthwhile to have. Does that help explain? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:24, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• Plenty of deletion reviews are just seeking permission to recreate a previously-deleted article. Plenty of those are for pages that were deleted a long time ago and aren't salted, so we say to just go ahead and do it; for more recent deletions, and ones that have had long histories of abuse, we generally do want arguments that could be viewed as relitigating the afds - namely, new sources, or why the people at the previous discussion were wrong. And of course, for reviews of speedy deletions, there's no getting around discussing the content directly.
  I think replying to individual comments at DRV with a pointer to WP:DRVPURPOSE Not#5 is sufficient. We haven't had to do that very often. —Cryptic 22:29, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Template:NewdelrevCFD has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. -- 65.92.247.90 (talk) 07:21, 11 November 2023 (UTC)