User blog:GLaDOSPortal/Deletion Request Policy Discussion

ILikeBloons brought up some good points on my Deletion Requests blog. I've thought really similarly for a long time, but never really said anything about it.

First, he said this:

ILikeBloons: Why does anything even have to be deleted at all? It just doesn't seem very nice or necessary to delete something that people actually worked on. Also, sometimes people mention things about copyrights, and I know people aren't supposed to edit each other's articles. Well, if people's pages are their copyright, and no one else is supposed to edit them, then why does anyone have the right to delete them?! Even if they're the worst things ever, if the owner doesn't want them to be deleted, they shouldn't be deleted! The only thing I think could be legitimately deleted without the owner's request would be obvious spam (and by "obvious spam", I mean gibberish, a TOTALLY empty page, or something that has nothing to do with Bloons or Bloons-related topics). If people still think something needs to be done about certain pages, then instead of deleting pages with enough requests, those pages could just get some kind of template warning people about the page's problems (which is sort of like what Wikipedia does with some articles), or be added to some kind of special category.

Overall, for the reasons I said above, I think the policies should be changed so that the only cases in which articles can be deleted are by the owner's request or when there is obvious spam. No matter how many "requests" something gets, it shouldn't be deleted. Would anyone else support that?

Then he said this:

ILikeBloons: In addition to answering my other question, I'd also like to know:

If the policies do get changed, would anyone support bringing back ANY non-spam deleted pages if the original creator of those pages requests it? I think that should be allowed, too.

And then I said this:

Honestly, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'd support changing the policies in pretty much the way you described, and it seems like supporting your additional proposal would make sense, too. I've thought almost the same things as you for a long time, but just haven't really said anything about them before. In my opinion, the policies contradict themselves, anyway - they say that no one can delete a page just because people told them to, but that's really all the request system is....

Although I do think that the "already used" and "obvious copy" reasons for deletion should be added to your definition of "obvious spam" as legitimate reasons to delete articles without the owner's request. So it might be best to keep the policies the way they are, except that the two sections that allow delete requests should be removed (leaving the other sections pretty much alone).

Also, I don't know if any kind of template or category would be needed to mark some of the articles in the way you mentioned (though I guess I probably wouldn't be against it if other people wanted it). People could just express their problems with the article in the comments. If the author chooses to take their criticism and improve his or her pages, that's great! But if the author doesn't want to change anything, that should still be his or her choice!

So, anyway, I decided to make a separate blog so there could be a separate place for an actual discussion about this. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.