When was the Votes For Deletion process changed?

It was back in 2005, supposedly because Votes for Deletion emphasized campaigning over the articles' actual merits (or lack thereof). The big mantra was "Reasons, not votes."

Yet, when you look at yesterday's log of Articles for Deletion, you see a lot of people just saying "Per nom" (meaning "What the nominator said") instead of bringing up new reasons. Some of the voters try to get creative and rephrase the nominator's reasons in different words. For example, one voter might say "It's just an undefined fusion of two terms" then another follows with "non-notable neologism."

Despite all the huffing and puffing about protecting "BLPs" (Biographies of Living Persons), the deletion process makeover has not resulted in any improvements in that department.

As with everything on Wikipedia, it changed with the carefree whim of someone who had racked up enough "power" points in the admin community to force through a change to the status quo. After that point, if you questioned or argued the change, you would be labeled "disruptive", or "a troll", or "not here to build an encyclopedia", and you would be subject to being slapped with a digital image of a trout.

Or, alternatively, the answer may be September 9, 2005:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedi...