Topic on Talk:Content translation/Flow

About 20 translations (or more, I don't even know anymore) of science-related topics were simply deleted by WiIkipedia! The content was removed and is not available to portuguese speaking people anymore. The content was not updated by me in the past year (the notification had this claim as an excuse for removing the page), but I cannot imagine how an slightly outdated translation is worse than no translation at all. Specially because many "original articles" in pt Wikipedia in the field of the biological sciences are either poorly written or incomplete drafts and have not ever been removed.

I am very frustrated, as these pages contain some important topics in biology , such as the translations of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platelet-activating_factor to portuguese .

Is it possible to put them back on Wikipedia?

These deletions are very upsetting and a neglect of the lusophonous community.

I only see 3 deleted articles from Your account in the Portuguese Wikipedia. One has been recreated. If those articled have been published, usually notes about deletions will remain. See https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/pt.wikipedia.org/TiagoLubiana?uselang=pt

Thanks for the feedback, @TiagoLubiana.

The tool deletes the old translation drafts that were started but not the final content that was published. If you started a translation but do not publish it in more than one year, that in-progress transalation gets deleted. If you publish the translation, the published content becomes a regular Wikipedia page that does not get automatically deleted by the tool (the community will review it and may decide to delete it as part of the review process, but that is a different story).

There are several reasons to avoid in-progress translations to be stuck for a very long time, including outdated content, blocking others from translating the same topic, and use of database space.

This is insane.

a) There is no warning before deletion, and it is unexpected, at least for the first deletion a user is subjected to, as nowhere when they started the translation did it say that it might get deleted. Because the deletion is unexpected, it is frustrating, and makes the user whose translation was deleted feel out of control

b) What if somebody put hours and hours into translating parts of an article, and now you delete these translated parts? You are deleting their work

c) You could at least, when you delete something, email the author the content

Re the reasons mentioned for deletion:

"outdated content"

When I get back to a translation draft after some time, I make sure to look if the article to be translated has changed. So the reason "outdated content" doesn't apply to me. Furthermore, by deleting you are treating the user like you are the nanny, and as if like the user can't properly take care of such things as outdated content. I can do that myself, thank you.

"blocking others from translating the same topic"

There is an alternative available to deleting drafts, that accomplishes the same thing: We could after a year make the topic available for translation by others, without deleting the translation draft.

"use of database space."

You gotta be kidding me. When I donate like a dollar, that could pay for how many translation drafts to store for 10 years? Thousands, tens of thousands? Storage is incredibly cheap these days. But if it is a problem, I am willing to donate, just say so. Also, if you really have to delete it, which I doubt, why not email the user the contents first?

Simply do not delete, publish as a draft in user space with a notice on user talk page.

Many pages simply do not exist anymore. For some reason, even the logs are not present anymore.

The pages were translated, I am sure.

I will just hope it does not happen again...

After a year not working on a translation, it will be deleted.

Thanks for the quick answer. Why is that so?

Does that apply for finished translations, or only to works in progress?

EDIT: By finished translation, I mean published works.

I petition whoever can stop this to put deletion on hold, so that not even more user content is deleted!