User:Ningauble/Useful/VFD tips

These are tips for handling the mechanics of Votes for deletion in some special circumstances. There are alternative ways to handle some of these situations – this is just what works for me. These notes assume familiarity with the normal process for nominating articles for deletion.

Repeat nominations
Sometimes a page that previously survived a vote for deletion is re-nominated, or it may have the same title as one that was previously deleted. In these cases, the name of the VFD page should have something like "(second nomination)" appended to distinguish it from the previous discussion.

In the following examples, the title of the page being nominated is given as "PAGENAME":
 * 1) Tag the page with    or  instead of.
 * 2) When creating the discussion page, which will be at "Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/PAGENAME (second nomination)", use    as usual; but be sure to link to the prior discussion(s) in the REASONING statement.
 * 3) When listing the discussion on the main Votes for deletion page, use    instead of
 * 4) When notifying contributors, use  PAGENAME  instead of PAGENAME
 * Administrators: see Closing specially named discussions below.

Bulk nominations
A group of pages can be nominated using a single consolidated discussion. This should only be done if they are closely related and the deletion reasoning applies equally to all of them. A bulk nomination should only be used if it is extremely unlikely that someone who agrees (disagrees) about some of them would not agree (disagree) about all of them. In these cases, the name of the VFD page should be something descriptive of the group.

In the following examples, the name of the discussion is given as "BUNCH OF STUFF":
 * 1) Tag each page being nominated with    or  instead of.
 * 2) When creating the discussion page, which will be at "Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/BUNCH OF STUFF", use   ; but after saving the page, re-edit it to unlink the section heading, which will have a redlink to BUNCH OF STUFF. In the REASONING statement, be sure to list links to all of the pages being nominated.
 * 3) When listing the discussion on the main Votes for deletion page, use    instead of
 * 4) When notifying contributors, use  PAGENAME  instead of PAGENAME, or write a brief personal note with a link to "Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/BUNCH OF STUFF".
 * Administrators: see Closing specially named discussions below.

Non-article pages

 * Category contents
 * If you want the contents of a category to be deleted, rather than just the category itself, state this clearly in the nomination. Tag each page to be deleted with   &etc., as described at Bulk nominations above, but reference the category itself in lieu of listing all of the pages in the nomination statement.
 * Templates
 * Use   instead of   . This avoids big, confusing deletion banners appearing on every page where the template is used. Note: the template name is not optional in vfd-template-new.
 * Administrators: see Closing specially named discussions below.

Closing specially named discussions

 * When deleting after a specially named discussion, the "Reason for deletion" dropdown does not know where the discussion is. Use the "Other reason" option to manually link to the pertinent discussion.
 * When linking to a discussion, use a subpage link (/) rather than a section link (#) so it will still work after the discussion is archived.
 * When keeping after a specially named discussion, use   instead of  on the talk page.