User:Donald Trung/We need to re-think deletion requests

This is a draft page where I wish to articulate several ideas I have regarding the reform of the Wikimedia Commons deletion system before posting it to the Wikimedia Commons village pump.

We need to re-think deletion requests

Making the Wikimedia Commons deletion system more easy to understand for newcomers and easier to use for Powerusers

Introduction

Something I only recently realised is that despite Wikimedia Commons being an arguably larger Wikimedia project than the English-language Wikipedia with a lot more daily deletion requests, we have a relatively disorganised deletion requests system that only sorts by date. At the English-language Wikipedia deletion requests are also sorted by subject. But this is not the only way in which deletion requests can be improved, I recently requested undeletion for a file and then started thinking about the context of how the file got deleted and why. I remember seeing the image a couple of years ago on Wikipedia but wasn't able to find it later, well, I will go into the context of the deletion later, but will first list some suggestions I have and why I think they should be implemented.

Making the deletion and undeletion request system more accessible.

Some ideas on how to make that happen:

• Categorise deletion requests based on subjects. (Example: "Category:Vexilollogy related deletion requests".)

• Categorise deletion requests by deleting admin after the file(s) have been deleted (Example: "Category:Files deleted by User:Example".)

• Categorise deletion requests by nominator (Example: "Category:Deletion requests started by User:Example".)

• Create separate pages for every individual undeletion request and if exists link the undeletion request to an original deletion request (or requests). This would notify the original participants in the deletion discussion and would allow for the undeletion request to be linked as "This file has been nominated for undeletion at XXX" or something similar.

• Categorise undeletion requests in a similar way. (Example: "Category:Vexigollogy related undeletion requests".)

• Categorise the aforementioned categories chronologically and not alphabetically. (Similar idea to this comment related to these changes.)

• Create sepate pages like "Commons:Open deletion requests/FOP in the United States" and "Commons:Open deletion requests/Paintings from Portugal" so people can choose to watch deletion requests "in their field of knowledge" (for example User:A knows a lot about the copyright status of electronical parts while User:B knows a lot about the copyright status of buildings and statues).

• have a robot list every deletion request of a(n) image(s) in a category (ONLY THAT DIRECT CATEGORY AND NOT SUBCATEGORIES) on the talk page of that category. Most category talk pages are redlinks that barely see any discussions and many categories don't have any edits happen to them in many years this would actually make "watching" categories more beneficial, as you would then be informed about when images in that category get nominated (or plainly tagged) for deletion. Also deletion tags like speedy tags could be listed on category talk pages while they wouldn't be listed in any deletion requests system. This system can also notify who tags what and who deleted what. Undeletions can potentially also be listed in such a manner. Empty categories can potentially become something useful as logs of previous deletions.

• Categorise deletion requests by uploader. (Example: "Category:Files uploaded by User:Example nominated for deletion".)

What inspired these ideas.

Explaining why, and how I was inspired to write these proposals. I wanted to originally leave a comment at the page "Commons:Deletion requests/File:Drapeau de la République Autonome de la Cochinchine.png" about the context of the previous deletion request and the closing sysop and why I believe that that should weaken the case of deletion, but I realised that wouldn't really come off as a good argument, per se, but then I kept thinking about similar deletion requests. Initially I wanted to explain the historical context of the previous deletion request, as the admin that deleted was INeverCry and point out that the deletion discussion was closed with the rather standard "Deleted, per nomination" line. Now this line isn't rare on Wikimedia Commons at all, in fact most deletion requests are closed with this reasoning, nor would I argue that the line itself is problematic in any way, as a well-reasoned deletion nomination doesn't need any further comments by a deleting sysop. My issue comes with the systematic abuse done by this particular person of Wikimedia Commons over the years, and while I am sure that most veteran Wikimedia Commonists will condemn this person's immature trolling and insults after they lost their admin tools, very few users criticised their Deletionist and Exclusionist behaviour and "lived" (remain unblocked/unbanned) to tell the tale. I wanted to point out that the deleting admin in question after their Global Community Ban, Global Steward Ban (or "Global lock 🔒"/"Stewban"), and WMF Global Ban (or "SanFranBan") they continued coming back to Wikimedia Commons bragging about having over half a million admin actions while nominating files for deletion with very little reasoning behind the deletion requests (note that the above bans don't invalidate ANY of their actions as some people love to bring up in deletion requests, including the aforementioned party). I would have brought these things up that this user seemed to have some sort of addiction to deleting files on Wikimedia Commons and often when looking at deletions and user blocks from certain periods one would note that INeverCry / Daphne Lantier basically dominated certain periods and often when I saw files and other pages that were badly deleted based on very little reasoning their names would appear 99% (ninety-nine percent) of the time. In fact, they had some pretty indecent deletion behaviours. I have seen INeverCry / Daphne Lantier (and socks) remove images on Wikipedia's from user pages of long-retired users and then nominate them on Wikimedia Commons as "Unused personal images" (and this is basically only when they even bother with deletion requests). So I began to think on how to address bad deletions by systematic abusers that deleted images basically to get a number of deleted files so they can brag about the number of their deletions. So I came up with this idea. Deleted files would be categorised by deleting admin and blocked / permabanned users by admin as well, creating "Category:Files deleted by User:Example" and "Category:Users indefinitely blocked by User:Example" which could further be subdivided by year. Regarding the latter this was because INeverCry deleted all images from a Canadian author and then blocked him for "Spamming", when they requested unblocking on INC's English-language Wikipedia talk page (as they had no talk page or e-mail access on Wikimedia Commons) INeverCry said that they couldn't do anything despite having an Adminsock (Daphne Lantier), later Guanaco unblocked him. This user seemed to be so commonly behind bad blocks and bad deletions that I am sure that they all deserve a review. In fact, blocking users from Talk page access and e-mailing without precedent is a very common thing and indefinitely users basically never are ever unblocked. As this user was quite easy in dealing out these de facto unappealable actions (as deleted files are only rarely undeleted, regardless of the reasoning behind the original deletion as "Not done" is the de facto standard in complicated cases). Then I started thinking about other examples of how the system can currently be abused and who abuses it. I had to think of an idea that I had that if INeverCry was still around that people 50 (fifty) years from now won't know how a single Wikimedian looked like because they deleted all the images, perhaps an overstatement, perhaps not. But the reality remains that very few users spoke out against their abuses and they received regular praise for "tackling backlogs", while ironically their lack of competence when actually handling deletion requests allowed for more people to have to "waste their time" with the above undeletion request and subsequently re-opened deletion request. Then I remembered a Thai user that used to tag any public domain Vietnamese file on Wikimedia Commons as "No source" and then they would automatically be deleted, in one case this user started tagging 19th (nineteenth) century books I uploaded as "No source" despite the files clearly having a source. When I pointed out to them that they should nominate files for deletion rather than abuse the tag several admins and other users saw their abuse (as it was earlier only seen by bots as many affected users didn't see these as they hadn't edited in years nor did they notify any users about the "No source" taggings, as apparently this doesn't happen automatically). If all their deletion requests were organised in a category admins with knowledge of Vietnamese and Thai copyright © laws could review their actions. Then I remembered a whole bunch of "Anti-porn warriors" that basically nominated every pornographic image for deletion, now, many pornographic images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons are bad quality photographs that don't add anything new and should be deleted, but unfortunately some people see all pornographic images as inherently lacking educational value and want to see them all deleted. Usually you can differentiate between the good faith ones from the Anti-Porn Warriors by seeing their other deletion requests as the latter rarely operate outside that area. Of course, I do not want a system where deletion requests are based more on the person that nominated them or the deleting admin, but currently abusing individuals can go "under the radar" because nominators aren't logged. Other effects this could have is allowing users to show their histories during admin requests and to "the INC-/DAPHNELANTIER-types" to brag about the number of deletion requests they started and / or closed, something which I do not see as inherently wrong as to some people life is just a game of numbers. Though this would also allow users to see if hounding / stalking occurs, how users evolve and become better/worse, Etc. I'm not articulating my points well, I meant that it is a handy way to categorise deletion requests in some overseeable dimension. I should probably argue it better below. Anyhow, so I began thinking about other ways to improve the deletion requests system, well, I came up with organising them based on subject so people with certain expertise in certain fields can more easily find deletion requests and argue why such files should be deleted / kept. Today deletion requests are organised by date and date alone, users have to manually add "Undelete in 2XXX" categories and deletion requests are not only rarely categorised, the only time you might find out about them is through watching a Wikipedia page the image is used on, this is not an ideal system. Then I realised that the English-language Wikipedia already automatically categorises every deletion nomination there, Wikimedia Commons has millions of more pages and sees an enormous amount of deletion requests more than the English-language Wikipedia, so why do they have a better system? Several years ago I thought about re-thinking Wikimedia Commons categories and allowing bots to list files in categories like already happens with files used per Wikipedia article, more and more it seems to become clearer that improvents are all technically possible but that on Wikimedia Commons little is done to actually fix the system or improve it. Bots can easily notify users of deletion requests through category talk pages and dedicated lists of current deletion requests per subject. In the current system you basically have to be "in the know" about deletion requests, which means that deletion requests receive less scrutiny by people who have knowledge about certain subjects than they could. This would make the work a lot easier for new volunteers, for admins, for Powerusers, Etc. It would make things easier to find and would inform users more quickly and more relevantly related to deletion requests. I will go down and list more advantages to certain proposals and try to better word them at every individual proposal. Well these improvement proposals are "a package" they aren't all mutually inclusive and I will try to build a case why each individual improvement should be made, plus "voting" for something as vague as "we need better notifications" without stating how this should be implemented is useless.

 TL;DR I was inspired to make these cases after witnessing several cases where categorisation of deletion and/or undeletion requests would have been preferred.

I will go down and list more advantages to certain proposals and try to better word them at every individual proposal. Well these improvement proposals are "a package" they aren't all mutually inclusive and I will try to build a case why each individual improvement should be made, plus "voting" for something as vague as "we need better notifications" without stating how this should be implemented is useless.

Implementing these improvements.

I think that these should all be added retroactively, as bots can easily read logs and create categories I don't think that starting with "Architecture in Albania-related deletion requests in 2022" when we should also have a "Architecture in Albania-related deletion requests in 2012". In the beginning this will create a lot of work, but then it will make subsequent work easier for everyone.

Regarding the categorisation of deletion requests in "the Metacommons" / "the Metacommonswiki" should follow large categories which should all be up for debate, at the English-language Wikipedia they have a system for categorising deletion nominations that we can emulate, but it "doesn't go far enough" for a Wikimedia Commons as we have much more files and cover much more subjects.

It might be wise to "Start big" with "Sports-related deletion requests" and then create pages like "Football-related deletion requests" and "Cricket-related football requests" if too many items are listed per day.

Generally the implementation will not be too difficult as bots can do most of the tagging as they have access to log actions and probably not everything can easily be retroactively added.

What's most important is that Wikimedia Commons is frequented by people that do not really know or understand Wikimedia Commons, they come here from a Wikipedia and want to upload something to use there, they most likely won't be able to find deletion requests based on similar categories and won't be able to see in the history of why certain things have been repeatedly rejected here or even how to look for them.

The categories should be bot-added (no different from how statements for the Structured Data for Wikimedia Commons are added by a number of bots now) and if possible the make-up of how deletion requests are made should include the automatic addition of the "<noinclude>[[Category:CATEGORY_NAME]]</noinclude>" tags. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:30, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests based on subjects

• Categorise deletion requests based on subjects. (Examples: "Category:Vexilollogy related deletion requests, Category:Russian Freedom of Panorama related deletion requests, and Category:Project scope related deletion requests", Etc.)

Categorising deletion requests based on subject will allow people to find deletion requests which concerns them more easily as well as subjects they have more knowledge in.

Note that this would also just be handy in general for gathering statistics, and for getting a better (and easily accessible) view of the workings of (the community of) Wikimedia Commons.

 Implementation, to implement it the bots can simply discover in what categories images are, not too different from how the OgreBot makes lists of new uploads. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:28, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests based on subjects (Votes)

•  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:28, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests based on subjects (Discussion)

I will be the first to say that I already see some issue with it, there are some anti-porn warriors (APW's) that patrol new deletion requests just to "vote against" porn, while I believe that pornography should be a category of "deletion requests by subject", I can see certain types of people storming certain subjects with what can best be described as "empty votes". But I believe that the benefits of such a system outweigh any potential downsides, as experts in certain subjects can find deletion requests that "talk to them". --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:28, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

 Additional comment, yes, I am aware that a lot of problematic uploads aren't categorised at all, but for this there can also be a solution like creating a "Category:Uncategorised files uploaded in November 2013 nominated for deletion" or "Category:Files uncategorised since November 2013 uploaded for deletion", people deciding to watch lists of uncategorised files for deletion can always patrol those and find out where they belong, especially since uncategorised files which may be in scope can be nominated as unused "out of scope" images if it's not exactly clear what the image represents, it just adds an extra dimension for patrol and people are free to choose what to patrol. Of course, "the master list" should be "Uncategorised files nominated for deletion" so people can simply watch this page for notifications. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:45, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by deleting admin after the file(s) have been deleted

Categorise deletion requests by deleting admin after the file(s) have been deleted (Example: "Category:Files deleted by User:Example".)

This can also include the categorisation scheme "Category:Files kept by User:Example".

Note that this would also just be handy in general for gathering statistics, and for getting a better (and easily accessible) view of the workings of (the community of) Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by deleting admin after the file(s) have been deleted (Votes)

•  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by nominator

Categorise deletion requests by nominator (Example: "Category:Deletion requests started by User:Example".)

This could also include a sub-category for files tagged for speedy deletion which wouldn't list pages but be a list page itself.

Note that this would also just be handy in general for gathering statistics, and for getting a better (and easily accessible) view of the workings of (the community of) Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by nominator (Votes)

•  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by nominator (Discussion)

• This could be handy in cases where users make the same mistakes in multiple nominations or if someone wants to check in their own history which files they have nominated for deletion. I mostly thought of this is an abuse case where a Thai user started basically nominating almost every old Vietnamese file for deletion because the original uploader didn't fill in the source field by themselves, even if the file was already in the public domain dozens were deleted and many didn't even see a deletion nomination. I noticed that a 19th century book I uploaded was tagged with a deletion notice, I wasn't informed about this tag and as deletions are assumed on Wikimedia Commons we need to be able to keep bad and/or incompetent actors accountable as we already do for bad and/or incompetent uploaders. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Create separate pages for every individual undeletion request

Create separate pages for every individual undeletion request and, if exists, link the undeletion request to an original deletion request (or requests). This would notify the original participants in the deletion discussion and would allow for the undeletion request to be linked as "This file has been nominated for undeletion at XXX" or something similar.

Note that categories for discussions aren't common either, but they all have separate pages, this is mostly for allowing better categorisation, but also to keep better track of undeletion requests. When I file an undeletion request I have to watch the entire page and potentially miss the result because the notification system doesn't always properly work when many different editors make different edits and as it's usually the same few sysops that patrol the UDR page notifications don't really notify users properly. Separate pages would work so much better here. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Create separate pages for every individual undeletion request (Votes)

•  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Create separate pages for every individual undeletion request (Discussion)

• Even if all other proposals fail, this proposal is also about discoverability and if someone decides to nominate the same file for undeletion that the entire history of undeletion requests is then visible to both the nominator(s) and deciding admin(s). --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

• This is also the only one of this "batch of proposals" that isn't intended to be retroactively applied, although if it is possible I would like to see it so, but if it is better to not do so, then this should only be implemented going forward. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:33, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by uploader

Categorise deletion requests by uploader. (Example: "Category:Files uploaded by User:Example nominated for deletion".)

This would allow people to view if certain users upload the same type of copyright violations repeatedly.

This could also include a sub-category for files tagged for speedy deletion which wouldn't list pages but be a list page itself. For example "Category:Files uploaded by User:Example nominated for deletion/Tagged" and then include lists for "No source" and "Speedy".

Note that this would also just be handy in general for gathering statistics, and for getting a better (and easily accessible) view of the workings of (the community of) Wikimedia Commons. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:26, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by uploader (Votes)

•  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:26, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorise deletion requests by uploader (Discussion)

I must state that I am not a fan of any blocks based on such a list, but it should be able to allow us to try and educate people on what mistakes and assumptions they should avoid when uploading in the future. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:26, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

List (un)deletions and nominations on "Category talk:" pages

Have a robot list every deletion request of a(n) image(s) in a category (ONLY THAT DIRECT CATEGORY AND NOT SUBCATEGORIES) on the talk page of that category. Most category talk pages are redlinks that barely see any discussions and many categories don't have any edits happen to them in many years this would actually make "watching" categories more beneficial, as you would then be informed about when images in that category get nominated (or plainly tagged) for deletion. Also deletion tags like speedy tags could be listed on category talk pages while they wouldn't be listed in any deletion requests system. This system can also notify who tags what and who deleted what. Undeletions can potentially also be listed in such a manner. Empty categories can potentially become something useful as logs of previous deletions.

This can be added by adding one "=" (level 1) at the top of the listing deletions and undeletions, then two "==" (level 2) per year. Then adding one "=" (level 1) below that named "Discussions" and then preserving all the discussions below.

The main scope of this proposal is both making the "Watch" button for categories more useful and making it easier to find deletion requests that concern categories you watch. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

List (un)deletions and nominations on "Category talk:" pages (Votes)

•  Support, as proposer. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

List (un)deletions and nominations on "Category talk:" pages (Discussion)

Please check the nowiki tags for what I mean above:

Category talk:Example

= (Un)deletion tags, discussions, and reviews = == 2015 == * [[Commons:Deletion requests/File:Obvious copyright violation is obvious]] = Discussions = == Example discussion == Should we rename this category to "[[:Category:Examples]]" as Commonswiki cats are typically plural? --~~~~

This version isn't definite, it is just how I envision it to be easy to see. Since most category talk are never created I assume that the (un)deletion requests should be listed on top. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Discarded

Maybe, maybe not.

I prefer to have a discussion about these changes before adding anything to the Proposals Village Pump in order to have the system worked out before proposing it.

Loose ideas

Some ideas:

• Categorise deletion requests based on subjects. (Example: "Category:Vexigollogy related deletion requests".)

• Categorise deletion requests by deleting admin after the file(s) have been deleted (Example: "Category:Files deleted by User:Example".)

• Categorise deletion requests by nominator (Example: "Category:Deletion requests started by User:Example".)

• Create separate pages for every individual undeletion request and if exists link the undeletion request to an original deletion request (or requests). This would notify the original participants in the deletion discussion and would allow for the undeletion request to be linked as "This file has been nominated for undeletion at XXX" or something similar.

• Categorise undeletion requests in a similar way. (Example: "Category:Vexigollogy related undeletion requests".)

• Categorise the aforementioned categories chronologically and not alphabetically. (Similar idea to this comment related to these chsnges.)

• Create sepate pages like "Commons:Open deletion requests/FOP in the United States" and "Commons:Open deletion requests/Paintings from Portugal" so people can choose to watch deletion requests "in their field of knowledge" (for example User:A knows a lot about the copyright status of electronical parts while User:B knows a lot about the copyright status of buildings and statues).

• have a robot list every deletion request of a(n) image(s) in a category (ONLY THAT DIRECT CATEGORY AND NOT SUBCATEGORIES) on the talk page of that category. Most category talk pages are redlinks that barely see any discussions and many categories don't have any edits happen to them in many years this would actually make "watching" categories more beneficial, as you would then be informed about when images in that category get nominated (or plainly tagged) for deletion. Also deletion tags like speedy tags could be listed on category talk pages while they wouldn't be listed in any deletion requests system. This system can also notify who tags what and who deleted what. Undeletions can potentially also be listed in such a manner. Empty categories can potentially become something useful as logs of previous deletions.

Proposals draft outlines

(Votes)

•  Support, as proposer.