View source for User:Hex/Notes/Changes to policies and processes

Wikipedia has no coherent record of how and when changes to policy (I use the term loosely to include "accepted practice") have occurred. Many changes have been entirely forgotten.

== Administrators ==

=== Behavioral concerns ===

The earliest attempt at establishing a process for raising concerns over an administrator's actions, along the lines of the "request for comment" model, was in 2004, following the [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/The Cunctator|requested de-sysopping of The Cunctator in December 2003]]. [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment]] itself was created at the same time and eventually absorbed it and others. [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents]] subsequently became the standard venue for doing so. ''[Details?]''

The collapsed list below details many process proposals since that time, up to the implementation of [[Wikipedia:administrator recall|administrator recall]] in 2024. Additional discussions exist on the talk pages of what are now redirects:

* [[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 9]] (January 2004)
* [[Wikipedia talk:De-adminship]] (January-March 2004, merged into the below)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Possible misuses of sysop rights]] (January-December 2004)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Requests for review of administrative actions]] (January-June 2004)

{{collapse top|Proposals made for de-adminship processes}}
{{excerpt|Wikipedia:History of de-adminship proposals|Proposed processes}}
{{collapse bottom}}

== Deletion ==

A history of deletion in general up to 2006 is given at [[meta:History of wiki deletion process]] and will eventually be merged into here.

=== User talk pages ===

{{Diff||prev|oldid=39962969|label=On 15 February 2006|diffonly=yes}} an editor added this text to [[Wikipedia:User pages]], a month after [[Wikipedia talk:User pages/Archive 2#Deletion of user talk page|someone else had commented]] on the talk page that "My impression is that the standard has been to not {{sic|delte}} user talk pages":
{{talk quote block|As a matter of practice User talk pages are generally not deleted...}}
It survives in modified form today at [[WP:DELTALK]]. 

Until 2010 there was a habit, without any formal policy basis, of deleting the talk pages of indefinitely blocked users. Discussions in early 2008 led to the deletion of a template used to tag "temporary" user talk pages, but people kept adding the pages by hand into a category for it, until that was finally deleted in 2010. Thousands of user talk pages were deleted this way - for example, in 2008 a single admin deleted [[/Mr.Z-man user talk deletions|nearly 12,000 of them]].

{{collapse top|Discussions}}
* [[Wikipedia talk:User pages/Archive 2#Deleting user talk pages]] (November 2006)
* [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive121#Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages]] (January 2008)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 27#New criteria proposal]] (January 2008)
* [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive137#Talk pages for indef users]] (April 2008)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 29#Proposal for U4]] (April 2008)
* [[Wikipedia talk:User page/Archive 4#Proposal to not delete talk pages for all indef users]] (April 2008)
* [[Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 April 10#Template:Temporary userpage]] (April 2008)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 33#Stop the wholesale Deletion of the Usepages of Indefinitely Blocked Users]] (March 2009)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/Archive 34#Deletion of indefinitely blocked user talk pages]] (April 2009)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 36#CSD_U1, user talk pages, and the right to vanish]] (September 2009)
* [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 July 12#Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages]] (July 2010)
* [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CAT:TEMP]] (August 2010)
* [[Wikipedia talk:Courtesy vanishing/Archive 1#RfC on deleting user talk pages]] (November 2010)
{{collapse bottom}}

=== Speedy deletion ===

Speedy deletion on Wikipedia is an extensive area of policy which has been assembled ad-hoc over decades, and logging the times at which and reasons why will require significant effort. It does however have the rare distinction among policy pages of having [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion#Obsolete|a list of the discussions]] which led to the retirement of obsolete criteria.

Speedy deletions were originally handled at [[Special:PermanentLink/983556|Wikipedia:Speedy deletions]], with the criteria for doing so being listed at [[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion]]. In March 2007 that page was obsoleted by the system of speedy deletion templates which continues to be used today, and replaced with a redirect to the criteria page which now acted as an overview of the entire process. In January 2025 it was renamed to simply [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion]].

==== Redirects to user pages for renamed users ====

[[WP:CSD#U2|CSD U2]] permits the speedy deletion of some user pages:
{{talk quote block|'''U2. Nonexistent user''' This applies to user pages, user subpages, and user talk pages of users that do not exist on the English Wikipedia (check [[Special:ListUsers]]), except user pages for IP users who have edited, redirects from misspellings of an established user's user page, and redirects created due to a [[Wikipedia:Changing username|user being renamed]]. Pages of users who exist on other WMF wikis but do not have local accounts are eligible for deletion.}}

It was created {{diff||next|66583446|on 29 July 2006}}, less than two hours after [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 11#A suggestion for U2|being proposed]] as:
{{talk quote block|'''Nonexistent user'''. User pages of users who do not exist. Check [[Special:Listusers]] to verify.}}

{{diff||prev|331589318|On 14 Dec 2009}} an editor unilaterally added conditions, which went unremarked-upon:
{{talk quote block|except userpages for anonymous users and for the previous name of a recently renamed user (which should normally be left as a redirect to the new name for a reasonable time).}}

This remained unchanged for the next seven years. {{diff||prev|751971814|On 28 Nov 2016}}
an editor removed the parenthetical condition, after [[Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 60#%22Reasonable time%22 in U2|an extremely brief discussion]] which itself was only referring to [[Wikipedia talk:Changing username/Archive 4#%22Reasonable time%22 for retaining a redirect (CSD U2)|an even briefer discussion]] they had had elsewhere with a single editor, whose opinion was "There is usually little to no harm in leaving the redirects be."

This ruling has been holy writ ever since, despite having the flimsiest of foundations.

==== User subpages ====

A discussion from September 2003 predating the introduction of "speedy deletion":
* [[Wikipedia talk:Personal subpages to be deleted]]

In the mid-2000s many users had "secret" subpages as a game for other users to find. A controversial purge in 2008 wiped out most of them and disagreement over the topic continued for at least a couple of years after without establishing a basis in policy. [[User:Bahamut0013/Secret pages|This essay by the late editor Bahamut0013]] goes into detail and links to many contemporary discussions.

=== Notability ===

Early discussions in 2004-6 leading up to the formalization of our policy of [[WP:notability|notability]] have been [[WP:Notability/Historical|collected]], and former user Pixelface put together a [[User:Pixelface/Timeline of notability guidelines|highly detailed implementation timeline]] in 2008.

=== Vandalism ===

* [[Wikipedia:Abuse response]] ran from 2006-2013 - created by Essjay, of all people

== See also ==
* [[WikiWikiWeb:OnionInTheVarnish]]
* [[Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people]] - a similar effort started in 2005 and abandoned a year later
* [[User:Wavelength/About Wikipedia/Manual of Style/Register]] - a similar effort to document the history of changes to the Manual of Style. Unfortunately its author departed long ago and it only extends to 2014. Some day I may integrate it here