User:M.nelson/DR thoughts
Brainstorming ideas about how to improve the massive deletion request backlog. There are good and bad ideas here, and some good ideas that would never get community consensus.
Handy links
[edit]Related discussions
[edit]Scope of the problem
[edit]- What is the scope of the problem? Is it growing/shrinking? What are the risks? Is it worth solving?
- What are the core causes that have resulted in our massive backlog? Can we build solutions that target those problems rather than the symptom?
- What other backlogs are problems today?
Comparison with ENWP
[edit]English Wikipedia has a relatively successful article deletion request process - en:WP:AFD - which generally wraps up deletion discussions within a week. ENWP also has processes to assess/review/approve new articles - en:WP:NPP and en:WP:AFC. These processes might be good inspiration for how Commons processes can be run, but parity might never be possible due to differences outside of our control:
- Far higher volume of records created (many fewer articles created in ENWP than files uploaded to Commons)
- Far higher volume of DRs (how many?)
- Far lower volume of active users and administrators (how many?), and specifically deletion discussion participants
Principles
[edit]- Work Smarter not Harder
- Our huge backlog is likely a symptom of some other problem(s). Simply chipping away at the backlog by working hard to close every deletion request manually won't resolve those core problems, and may lead to burnout. If and when those hard workers retire, the backlog will re-emerge.
- Precautionary principle
Suggestions (brainstorm)
[edit]Working Harder
[edit]While working smarter is preferable to working harder, we can still make some improvements here
- Make it clear how average users can help with the backlog
- Create a page "How you can help"
- Invite users to participate in DRs and provide their informed opinion, particularly on DRs at the end of the backlog which are in need of additional input. This will help closing admins make an informed decision faster and have time to close more DRs.
- Provide training/education material to help users participate in DRs constructively
Working Smarter
[edit]Ideally, automation and processes should make it simple and easy to close the simple and easy DRs, and let us focus our human energy on complicated tasks like legal interpretation
Policy
[edit]- Update our policies to recommended closing DRs in certain scenarios (e.g. delete after 6 months if no input)
Tools
[edit]- Automation to auto-close DRs in certain scenarios (e.g. delete after 6 months with no keep votes)
- AI/ML to review and assess and/or close DRs
- Automation to tag or nominate certain scenarios as likely issues (e.g. includes © in EXIF)
- Ability for reviewer/closer to mass-vote/close similar DRs
- Ability for reviewer/closer to filter and sort DRs, so that a user can focus on their area of expertise/interest. Improved categorization UI.
- Improvements to the upload flow to improve copyright issues
- Ability to merge similar DRs
- UI which provides more information to nominators/reviewer during DRs, for example automatically provide a summary of certain data in the DR (Uploader, license, upload date, usage summary, etc.). See Draceane's comment at Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2021/10#Backlog of DR's
- Interface to help navigate and vote on massive DRs like Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Burj Khalifa
Scenarios which might benefit from auto-nominating/tagging/closing
[edit]- File includes © in EXIF
- Nominated by the uploader within 7 days (convert to {{Db-self}})
- File is/was used on a rejected Wikipedia draft (Commons:Village pump/Archive/2021/07#New report for images in en-wiki rejected drafts)