Well, time to add my opinion...
1)
Approval / Official status Unless behind the name of the author is a fellow team member or appointed admin of ours (of that I seem to lack any knowledge) that page might be considered an imposition, due to its "official appearance" versus it's non-official status. Based on that conclusion, should it be deleted? (And if so, should I have not asked, but done it speedy?)
If the page is to stay, it needs review/approval and eventually to be made a
protected page....
2)
How to requesting deletion- How many of those who have the ability to delete, actually are aware of the
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Category:Pages_for_deletion ?
- And how many are monitoring("watching") it? The wiki says 2 people are watching (I do not know who, the wiki does (as it should) not reveal that)
- Is that really the best way?
Updating the page, takes it out of the "old pages" list... And few people will note.
IMHO a request should alert an admin. A request should not necessarily visible mark the page (i.e., for others) as "to be deleted". That would be for the admin to decide first.
Ideas?
3)
Announcing/Marking as "to be deleted soon"Adding a
category, will at best be seen by someone "watching" the page. So this is only sensible, if the page has some amount of "watchers".
(and that would raise the question, if it should really be deleted).
Other visitors to the page, will hardly notice such a category.
IHMO (if an announcement is thought to be needed), the admin can:
- insert a template at the top of the page
- protect the page (the talk section is still active)
- decide, how much of the content already to remove by editing the page and removing selected content / optionally leaving a description of the removed parts
Unfortunately, I did not find any option to get info on the amount of (recent) "page views" (by non robots).
IMHO, in most cases, a "to be deleted" is deemed to not have enough value to be kept. But then, how would it validate the effort involved in an announcement process?
4)
Deletion is not permanent. Deleted pages can be restored.And there is a log
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Special:Log/delete5)
PolicyHaving such guidelines.... If someone of the admin team wants to oversee their creation, or sign the guidelines off at the end.... fine. Otherwise, imho and afaik the status pro is that each admin decides on their own, or seeks feedback of other admins, or relevant contributors/users.
6)
Deletion vs Delete+Lock vs OutdatedAfaik (need to test)
- once deleted, a new page can be created under the same name
- this does not affect the deletion-log
- the deleted page can still be restored (and afaik then becomes part of the history, from where it can be extracted / or maybe the new/replaced page needs to be moved away first.... something like that)
In certain cases:
"6.A" - it may be desired (after deleting the page / includes removing the history) to protect the empty url afterwards. So nothing new can be created.
"6.B" - not to delete the page, but:
-- edit the page: add a version of the page, with "outdate header" (see point 3 above)
-- edit the page again: remove content (empty the page) / add our own "deleted" message.
-- hide all history, except the just edited "outdated" version (with selected content)
-- optionally protect the page
As for the page from the initial post: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus-_Game_Developers_EditionI had a look at it, and my gut feeling is:
Yes, it should be removed.
There are 5 people who "watch" this page. No idea, if this is a result of the current discussion? Or if those are people still active?
But maybe, that would for this page validate some "announcement" process? Maybe
"6.B" above?
As for one of the counter-arguments
"if someone wants to continue/pick up the idea":
- they are not likely to know about the current wiki page.
- if they did know about , they can request it to be restored
- if it should still be possible to find the page (maybe google??), a header "Outdated content" can be added, the page can then be blanked (aka content deleted, rather than page deleted), and (via delete and restore) the history can be truncated to the single "Outdated content" page.
In case someone is going to continue working on "policies". Here is another idea to be reviewed.
Pages like
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Integer (there are such pages for every numeric type).
- Having an individual page for each such type, simple spreads and disconnects info, that should be kept together.
- There is
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Variables_and_Data_Types- And it overlaps with the documentation
https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/refsu4.html#x26-250003.1.1 (IMHO content addressed in the documentation, should not be repeated on the wiki)