Re: IRC summary: Issues around CategoryProposedDeletion
On Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 11:01:35AM +0200, Beatrice Torracca wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> As a Wiki user and contributor (basically translations) I am following all
> the discussion on the new Wiki (with a delay) with great interest.
>
[...]
> I am all for removal of outdated contents. I think that, as pointed out
> elsewhere, the fact that people (me included) always felt uneasy with
> deleting what others have created, created a Wiki with lots of
> duplicated/outdated content. ...but I digress...now to the question...
Continuing that thought, I often find a page that covers a topic,
spend a day or two fixing it up, find three other pages on the topic,
then feel bad about deleting them because "my page is better".
I generally put them into CategoryProposedDeletion then move on.
I think I've been avoiding CategoryRedundant because it's for pages that
"need to be cleaned up or merged with other pages", so I don't want
to add a page that just needs to be reviewed and deleted.
I've made a CategoryProposedMerge[0][1][2] in the new wiki -
would that be more usable?
And in case you want to add another CategoryProposedFoo,
I've abstracted the logic out too[3][4][5].
[...]
> Will the removal, both of the proposed-for-deletion page and the links be
> somewhat automatic after the waiting period (I think maytham 1 month period
> could be reasonable), or there will be a "role" of "wiki-cleaner" (wiki
> editor if you prefer) to fulfill. I think I could give a hand to that work
> for instance, with my time constraints.
I think the mention of "roaming editors" was getting at the same point as
the "wiki-cleaner" role. I haven't heard anything conclusive (it was only
mentioned in passing), but it does suggest the question -
why haven't wiki-cleaners thrived on the current wiki?
It seems to me the two major culprits are that MoinMoin makes cleaning
an unrewarding a slog, and that Debian's culture of individual ownership
doesn't reward collective work well enough to overcome that slog.
Installing a new wiki won't install a new culture, but what tools could
be added to make the cleaning role more attractive?
The proposed actions in the new wiki implicitly move instructions from
DebianWiki/EditorGuide to individual pages. I think that sort of
exposed plumbing aesthetic suits Debian, and encourages casual clean-up?
Nobody's complained yet about the suggestion to have bots help with
[[DebianBug]] links[6] - are there any other bots we should add?
A lot of interface text is implemented as wiki pages that could expose
some more plumbing - for example, I just found MediaWiki:Moveddeleted-notice[7]
which could be edited to encourage reverting deletions you disagree with.
That page isn't listed in Category:Interface_messages[8], but can be found
by searching online for the default text. What other snippets would help
encourage clean-up work?
[0] https://wiki2025.debian.org/wiki/ExampleForProposedMerge
[1] https://wiki2025.debian.org/wiki/Category:ProposedMerge
[2] https://wiki2025.debian.org/wiki/Template:ProposedMerge
[3] https://wiki2025.debian.org/wiki/Category:ProposedAction
[4] https://wiki2025.debian.org/wiki/Template:ProposedAction
[5] https://wiki2025.debian.org/wiki/Template:CategoryProposedAction
[6] https://lists.debian.org/debian-wiki/2025/07/msg00067.html#:~:text=a%20bot
[7] https://wiki2025.debian.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Moveddeleted-notice
[8] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Interface_messages
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